Written Statement of Governor Tom Ridge

On the Department of Homeland Security

Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry

July 17, 2002

I. Introduction

Chairman Harkin, Senator Lugar, distinguished members of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, President Bush asked me to convey his appreciation for the comprehensive, expeditious, and most importantly, bipartisan manner in which the Senate is considering his proposal to make America safer by creating a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security to unite essential agencies that must work more closely together.

I am here today, with Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, to speak to you about the President's proposal regarding the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and the Plum Island Research Center. The President believes these components are critical to the border security and scientific goals of the new Department.

Through all of this legislative activity, it is important to stay focused on our goal. The United States is a nation at risk of terrorist attacks and it will remain so for the foreseeable future. We need to strengthen our efforts to protect America, and the current governmental structure limits our ability to do so. Change is needed now. It is our job - Executive Branch and Legislative Branch working together - to implement this change.

II. The Need for Homeland Security: Threat and Vulnerability

All assessments of the terrorist threat must start with a clear understanding that terrorists are strategic actors. They choose their targets deliberately based on the weaknesses they observe in our defenses and our preparations. They can balance the difficulty in successfully executing a particular attack against the magnitude of loss it might cause. They can monitor our media and listen to our policymakers as our Nation discusses how to protect itself - and adjust their plans accordingly. Where we insulate ourselves from one form of attack, they can shift and focus on another exposed vulnerability. The tools available to the terrorist - agro-terrorism, bioterrorism bombs, nuclear attack, to name a few -are many and diverse. We must act to protect ourselves as best we can from all and any combination of these methods.

Our population and way of life are the source of our Nation's great strength, but also a source of inherent vulnerability. Our population is large, diverse, and highly mobile, allowing terrorists to hide within our midst. Americans assemble at schools, sporting arenas, malls, concert halls, office buildings, high-rise residences, and places of worship, presenting targets with the potential for many casualties. Much of America lives in densely populated urban areas, making our major cities conspicuous potential targets. Our factories, power plants, and parts of our transportation system could be attacked to cause systemic disruption. Americans depend on the produce of farms in rural areas nationwide, making our heartland a potential target for agroterrorism.

III. The National Strategy for Homeland Security

When President Bush established the Office of Homeland Security in October 2001, the first mission he assigned the Office was "to develop and coordinate the implementation of a comprehensive national strategy to secure the United States from terrorist threats or attacks." The President recognized that the United States has never had a shared national vision of what must be done to secure the homeland against the full range of terrorist threats we face today and might face in the future.

The National Strategy for Homeland Security released yesterday by President Bush is the product of over eight months of intense consultation across the breadth of the United States. In preparing this document, we consulted with thousands of people across the country - from the public and private sector and from numerous disciplines. Their ideas are reflected in the Strategy. Above all, we sought to create a national strategy that can mobilize and organize our Nation to secure the U.S. homeland from the threat of terrorism.

The National Strategy for Homeland Security will help to prepare our Nation for the work ahead in several ways. It is a single, comprehensive statement of virtually everything that needs to be done to secure the homeland to which all Americans can refer. It provides direction to the federal government departments and agencies that have a role in homeland security. It suggests steps that state and local governments, private companies and organizations, and individual Americans can take to improve our security and offers incentives for them to do so. It recommends certain actions to the Congress. In this way, the Strategy provides a framework for the contributions that we all can make to secure our homeland.

The Strategy aligns and focuses homeland security functions into six critical mission areas:

· Intelligence and warning

· Border and transportation security

· Domestic counterterrorism

· Protecting critical infrastructure

· Defending against catastrophic terrorism

· Emergency preparedness and response.

The first three of these mission areas focus primarily on preventing terrorist attacks; the next two on reducing our vulnerability; and the final one on minimizing the damage and recovering from attacks. Starting with the President's FY04 Budget, every homeland security dollar in future budgets will correspond with one, and only one, critical mission area. In this way, the Strategy provides a framework to align the resources of the federal budget directly to the task of securing the homeland.

In addition, the Strategy also describes four foundations of our homeland security effort - unique American strengths that cut across all of the mission areas, across all levels of government, and across all sectors of our society. There are: (1) law; (2) science and technology; (3) information sharing and systems; and (4) international cooperation.

The Strategy is a national, not just federal, strategy. It recognizes that homeland security is a shared responsibility and that the federal government does not have the solution to all problems. The Strategy pays close attention to the roles of the state and local government, the private-sector, and citizens. The President's intent in publishing the National Strategy for Homeland Security is to help Americans achieve a shared cooperation in the area of homeland security for years to come.

IV. Overview of the Proposed Department of Homeland Security

When President Bush directed his Administration to develop the National Strategy for Homeland Security, it was immediately clear that doing so would require careful study of how the federal government is organized for the mission of homeland security. Like many who have examined this question, we quickly concluded that the federal government can be much better organized than it presently is. Homeland security is, in many respects, a new mission, so it should come as no surprise that our strategic review concluded that the structure of the federal government must be adapted to meet the challenges before us.

The President proposed the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security on June 6, roughly five weeks prior to the publication of the Strategy. The proposal to create the Department preceded the Strategy because we finished our work on the organizational issue first and because of our wish to deliver the proposal to create the new Department to the Congress in time for action during the current legislative session. As the President said in his June 6 address to the Nation, "we face an urgent need, and we must move quickly, this year, before the end of the congressional session."

Creating the Department of Homeland Security proposed by President Bush would result in the most significant transformation of the U.S. government in over a half-century. It would transform and largely realign the government's confusing patchwork of homeland security activities into a single department whose primary mission is to protect our homeland.

Currently, no federal government department has homeland security as its primary mission. In fact, responsibilities for homeland security are dispersed among more than 100 different government organizations. Creating a unified homeland security structure will align the efforts of many of these organizations and ensure that this crucial mission - protecting our homeland - is the top priority and responsibility of one department and one Cabinet secretary. The fundamental mission of the Department would be to:

· Prevent terrorist attacks within the United States;

· Reduce America's vulnerability to terrorism; and

· Minimize the damage and recover from attacks that do occur.

The Department of Homeland Security would mobilize and focus the resources of the federal government, state and local governments, the private sector, and the American people to accomplish its mission. It would have a clear, efficient organizational structure with four primary divisions.

Establishing a new department to meet current and future homeland security challenges is both a vital enterprise and an extraordinarily difficult and complex one. The success of a new department in protecting our country will depend upon two principal factors: (1) ensuring that the new Department has the right building blocks moved into it, and (2) ensuring that the leadership of the new Department is given the right set of tools to work with and manage those blocks to ensure that the benefits of consolidation, in terms of both security and efficiency, can be achieved. There are a variety of issues in both categories, and we have strong views about many of them. I look forward to answering any specific questions members of the Committee may have about the President's proposal. I'll use the balance of this statement to focus on aspects of the proposal that relate to protecting the American people from the threat of agroterrorism.

V. Responding to the Threat of Agro-terrorism

We are today a Nation at risk to terrorist attacks and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The terrorist threat to America takes many forms, has many places to hide, and is often invisible. Yet the need for improved homeland security is not tied solely to today's terrorist threat. It is tied to our enduring vulnerability.

One-sixth of the U.S. gross domestic product and one-eighth of all jobs are connected to agriculture, either directly or indirectly. A terrorist attack on crops and/or livestock would have a direct financial impact on growers or breeders, but it would also hurt shippers, stockyards, slaughterhouses, distributors, and so on. Attacks against the nation's agricultural sector could also impact consumers, threatening not only their pocketbooks, but their confidence in the safety of the food supply as well. We only need to recall the terrible impact of foot-and-mouth disease in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe to understand the potential devastation of the intentional introduction of disease to our agriculture sector.

Agricultural terrorism is the malicious use of plant or animal pathogens to cause disease in the agricultural sector. Animal diseases like foot-and-mouth, pests like the Mediterranean fruit fly and Asian long-horned beetle are very difficult to contain once they are established. Many biological agents are readily obtainable in countries where animal diseases are endemic, and could be introduced within the United States. Insects or plagues could also be used to target specific crops or regions.

We do, however, have some of the tools to detect and prevent such attacks. With the information-sharing and vulnerability assessments envisioned by the President's proposal, we will become better positioned to detect and intercept agro-terror efforts.

We are improving our national ability to confront the threat of agro-terrorism. Our border protection personnel levels will be at their highest levels ever, and investments in the areas of research, laboratory upgrades, security, have enhanced our ability to prepare and respond to potential threats to American agriculture. These much needed resources help protect not only against unintentional threats, but are helping as we deal directly with the potential acts of terrorism that we now face in the wake of September 11.

A major goal of the President's proposal is to unify the border and transportation security functions of many Federal agencies. For this reason, the President proposed including Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) - the agency that prevents and manages outbreaks of pests and diseases - in the new Department. In the past few weeks, the Administration has worked with many interested members of Congress to refine the President's proposal. We believe that moving the specialized border inspection and enforcement functions of the U.S. Department of Agriculture recognizes the critical role in border security played by inspections of agricultural cargo, conveyances, and international passengers. It also acknowledges the close partnerships USDA inspection personnel have developed with their counterparts from the U.S. Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Similarly, the President's proposal seeks to unify within the new Department much of the federal government's efforts to develop and implement scientific and technological countermeasures to CBRN terrorist threats, including agro-terrorism. The Department would incorporate and focus the intellectual energy and extensive capacity of several important scientific institutions, including the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. The Department would unify our defenses against human, animal, and plant diseases that could be used as terrorist weapons.

Finally, the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 authorized the Department of Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to promulgate and enforce regulations concerning the possession and use of Select Agents. The Administration proposes transferring the select agents program to the Secretary of Homeland Security in consultation with the Secretaries of HHS and USDA whose agencies would continue to make key medical and scientific decisions, such as which biological agents should be included in the select agents list.

In short, the transfer of APHIS' agricultural quarantine inspection functions, the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, and the USDA component of the select agent program to the Department of Homeland Security is the right step to take to protect our Nation's security and agricultural health.

VI. Conclusion

Over the past nine months, the Administration has conducted a thorough review of existing government institutions and systems for providing homeland security, such as law enforcement, public safety, public health, and emergency management. We concluded that the current arrangement was not the best way to organize for homeland security because responsibility is scattered across the government, information is not fully shared, authority is shared by multiple agencies, and numerous redundancies cause inefficiency.

The fragmentation of border security responsibilities is a case in point. In his testimony before the House Select Committee last week, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill cited a recent example of overlapping responsibilities. The Customs Service - part of the Department of Treasury - stopped a suspicious boat and searched it for illegal drugs and other contraband. However, the Customs agents found illegal aliens. Customs transferred the aliens to the Coast Guard - currently part of the Department of Transportation. The Coast Guard, upon reaching land, then turned over the aliens to the Immigration and Naturalization Service - currently part of the Department of Justice. In such a fragmented system, a terrorist can easily slip through the bureaucratic maze undetected. Under the President's reorganization proposal, a single department would be responsible for border security.

The Homeland Security Act of 2002 includes twenty-two of the more than one hundred Executive Branch organizations or entities that have significant homeland security responsibilities. The President's proposal includes agencies and entities - such as APHIS and Plum Island - whose ability to contribute to homeland security would be improved by being in a Department whose core competency and single mission is homeland security.

Again, I thank the members of the Committee on Agriculture and the Senate for the serious and expeditious action you are taking on this proposal to strengthen the Nation's collective effort to secure America. We look forward to working with Congress so that the final bill provides the Secretary of Homeland Security the coordinating authorities required to ensure integrated plans to address the threat of agro-terrorism.