183 remains recovered along AZ border

Derechos Humanos Press Release
August 28, 2009

183 Remains Recovered in Arizona

Five Weeks Left in the Fiscal Year, the Count Has Already Reached Last Year’s Total Arizona— The number of human remains recovered on the Arizona-Sonora border since October 1, 2008 has reached 183 three weeks into the month of August.

With five weeks left in the fiscal year, the count has already reached the fiscal year total for 2007-08. From the beginning of the fiscal year to the end of July, 162 human remains were recovered—this figure does not reflect any of the 21 remains recovered through August 24th. The compilation of data from medical examiner reports from Pima, Yuma, and Cochise counties is an attempt to reflect more accurately the human cost of irresponsible U.S. border and immigration policies.

The count of 183 includes 121 males, 27 females, and 34 individuals of unknown gender (19% of the total). The number includes 98 individuals of unknown identity, which is approximately 54% of the total recovered. The identification of at least 29 of the unknown individuals is hampered by the fact that only skeletal remains were recovered. The remains of 168 individuals had been recovered at the same time last fiscal year.

“While the media has hailed the efforts of the Border Patrol in rescuing migrants, nobody questions the policies that are pushing migrants further and further into the gauntlet of death” says Kat Rodriguez of Derechos Humanos. “How disingenuous is our government to applaud itself for taking measures to rescue people from the danger that it has placed them in? This is precisely why proposals to reform immigration must not agree to more militarization of our borders and communities. Our community security must come before any political gain sought or misinformed media hype.”

‘Unknown gender’ indicates that not enough of a body was recovered to determine gender, and without DNA, which is costly, it is impossible to know even this basic information about the individual, making identification and return to their families even more difficult. This fiscal year, the families of at least 34 individuals will suffer the continued agony of not knowing what has become of their loved one.

The dramatic increase in unknown gender cases is a clear indicator of what happens as border enforcement strategies push migrants out into more and more isolated areas, making rescue and detection less likely and the likelihood of death more certain. This ‘Funnel Effect,’ which has been documented by the University of Arizona’s Binational Migration Institute, has shown that the practice of sealing of traditional crossing points ultimately pushes migration into the deadliest areas. The real extent of this crisis is not known as the numbers of human remains recovered in neighboring states are not available.

“In addition to the staggering number of recovered remains reported, Derechos Humanos has received a record number of reports of missing migrants.” continues Rodriguez.

“There are countless cases of individuals who have never been heard from again. The complete list of recovered remains is available on the Coalición de Derechos Humanos website www.derechoshumanosaz.net. This information is available to anyone who requests it from us and is used by our organization to further raise awareness of the human rights crisis we are facing on our borders.

Mexico nabs 6 in theft of border-fence steel

Associated Press
August 26, 2009

TIJUANA, Mexico — Police in the Mexican border city of Tijuana say they have arrested six men for stealing pieces of the U.S. border fence to sell as scrap metal.

Holes in the border fence once were more commonly made by migrant smugglers, but fewer people are trying to cross because of a weak U.S. economy and a crackdown on immigration.

The Tijuana police department says the suspects intended to sell the steel sheeting as scrap.

The first two men caught cutting into the fence on Monday. An alleged accomplice was detained Tuesday with 11 pieces of fencing. The U.S. Border Patrol alerted police to three more suspects.

Police said Wednesday in a statement that the men may face federal charges because the fence area is considered federal property.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gkWI7QHcw_qxnm7D2XGFyFA96ZAAD9AATS0O1

Former Bush Security Chiefs Find Terrorism Obsession Can Be Profitable

Americas Program
Center for International Policy
August 25, 2009
by Tom Barry

Contracts with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are spewing billions of dollars into private industry, largely to companies that also rely on Pentagon military contracts. In this new variation of the military-industrial complex a new revolving door is now in full swing.

Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, the two Republican stalwarts who served as the first two Department of Homeland Security secretaries, are now busy attracting defense, homeland security, and intelligence contracts in the country's rapidly expanding high-tech security complex.

Tom Ridge, former Pennsylvania governor who was appointed by President Bush to direct the newly created DHS, has parlayed his government service into a lucrative career in business since he stepped down as DHS chief in November 2004. Soon after leaving DHS, Tom Ridge became president and CEO of Ridge Global, a global strategic consulting firm. He also has joined numerous corporate boards and advisory groups, including major military and homeland security contractors. (See Box: Ridge's Post-DHS Security Businesses).

Chertoff Group Covers Homeland Security

Michael Chertoff, former secretary of the DHS, has taken his portfolio over to the private sector. Homeland security is business—an estimated $200 billion in annual revenues—and the newly formed Chertoff Group is seeking a major stake in this booming industry.

As the latest homeland security consulting firm, Chertoff Group will be competing with two other security companies formed by top Republican Party figures: Ashcroft Group founded by former Attorney General John Ashcroft; and Guiliani Group, formed by former New York City mayor and presidential candidate Rudolf Guiliani. Although not specifically focused on homeland security, Ridge Global, formed by the first DHS secretary Tom Ridge, also has a piece of the expanding global security industry.

Chertoff Group describes itself as "a security and risk management advisory firm that counsels corporate and government clients addressing threats related to terrorism, fraud, cyber security, border protection, and supply chain security."

The Chertoff Group has a leg up on its competitors. The revolving door between government and industry has brought a half-dozen former high government officials of the Bush administration into the Chertoff Group.

Not only does it count on the political and business connections of Chertoff, the new firm has a roster of five other former government officials that can translate government experience and inside information into lucrative industry contracts.

Chertoff boasts, "Among the six of us we pretty much have all of those things in DHS, in DOD, and the Department of Justice, law enforcement, and finally, in the intelligence community. So we have pretty much every element of homeland security covered."

The Faces of the New Homeland Security Complex

Chertoff's associates who will be covering all the elements of homeland security business include figures with long experience in intelligence, industry contracting, and international banking.

Chad Sweet, Chertoff's chief-of-staff at DHS, cofounded the Chertoff Group and will direct the firm's operations. According to his company profile, Sweet worked at DHS "to restructure and optimize the flow of information between the CIA, FBI, and other members of the national security community and DHS. Mr. Sweet also supported the Secretary during numerous operations to detect, disrupt, and respond to terrorist plots both in the United States and overseas."

Before joining DHS, Sweet was a vice president at Morgan Stanley and then at Goldman Sachs, with a special focus on international investments. Sweet came to Wall Street after "having helped to fight the threat of Communism" at the CIA, where he was in the agency's Directorate of Operations.

In his new position, Sweet "utilizes his unique background in intelligence, homeland security, and investment banking to provide M&A advice to companies wishing to expand within the defense, aerospace, and security industries, and to help private capital groups evaluate investment opportunities within the sector."

Other principals at Chertoff Group are also former government heavies, including former CIA director (2005-2009) Michael Hayden, who also directed the National Security Agency (NSA, 1999-2005); DHS deputy Paul Schneider (who prior to his position at DHS was head of acquisitions for NSA and the U.S. Navy); Ret. Admiral Jay Cohen, who was DHS director of science and technology and previously the Navy's technology chief, and Charlie Allen, who was the intelligence chief at DHS and, according to Michael Chertoff, "pretty much head of everything you could be for the CIA and head of national collections."

The New Business of Homeland Security

DHS' private contracting provides one look at the new homeland security business. In large part, it's an offshoot of the military contracting industry. DHS's top 10 contractors, for example, include Boeing (ranking first), General Dynamics, SAIC, L-3 Communications, and Lockheed-Martin.

Also prominent among DHS contractors are information systems and computer technology firms, such as IBM, Accenture, Unisys, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Siemens. Also figuring prominently among the top DHS contractors is Wackenhut, a more traditional security industry that provides custodial services for the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Intelligence contractors represent another booming business in the new homeland security industry. According to an estimate by the Defense Intelligence Agency, as much as 70% of new intelligence operations by the federal government's intelligence apparatus, including NSA, are contracted out to private businesses.

The expanding homeland security industry also includes biotech, electronic surveillance, and cyber security firms—all of which are likely prospective clients of the Chertoff Group.

Fresh from DHS, Chertoff says that the Chertoff Group provides an especially well-informed perspective of the character and direction of the new homeland security industry.

HSToday, a new homeland security industry magazine, interviewed Chertoff shortly after he founded the new firm and observed that part of Chertoff's "new mission is to better define homeland security for the private sector and thereby increase investment opportunities."

Chertoff concurred with the HSToday editor's description of the firm's mission and went on to expound on the emerging definition and dimensions of the homeland security industry. Chertoff noted that there exists much confusion about what homeland security really is.

Having emerged directly from government the Chertoff Group has, says Chertoff, "a clear vision of what homeland security is." Here is his clarification, "It's not the same as defense, it's not the same as law enforcement, although it partakes of elements of those, as well as things that are neither."

Homeland security, Chertoff explained, is a blend of the military and the police/first responder sectors. He observed that there is a great need in the private sector "to fill the gap and cover a system of homeland security in a way that is end-to-end that is not covered by the defense community or the law enforcement community."

Chertoff asserted that there are "many great opportunities" for investment and "many great technologies" to apply to homeland security needs. Chertoff Group, he said, can fill the gap, define the opportunities, and pick the best technologies. Furthermore:

"As many of the principal architects of homeland security and the doctrine, we [Chertoff Group] have a pretty good feel for how to look at problems end-to-end and then to anticipate problems where there may be technologies that fit into that problem solution …. So, working with investors, defense contractors, and others who either want to organically grow into homeland security or want to make acquisitions, I think we've got a really unique value and perspective that we can add in terms of how things fit in terms of an overarching strategy."

"What sets the Chertoff Group apart," says Chertoff Group, "is the breadth of our industry knowledge, the depth of our experience, and the extent of our close contacts with industry leaders worldwide."

Ridge's Post-DHS Security Businesses Ridge Global, headed by former DHS Secretary Tom Ridge, "provides strategic consulting services that advance the security and economic interests of businesses and governments worldwide." It offers "a team of talented professionals, drawn from high-level posts," with expertise in risk management, global trade security, event security, crisis management and communications, and technology innovation. In 2006 Ridge Global entered into a $480,000 contract with Albania to help the country "develop an overall homeland defense strategy. According an AP report, Ridge's "main priority" was "to help Albania meet its goal of joining NATO in 2008." It wasn't until after the media outed Ridge's relationship with Albania that the former DHS chief filed the required foreign lobbyist report with the Justice Department in 2008—two years after the one-year contract with Albania had ended. On August 7 Critical Mission Support Services (CMSS) announced that it contracted Ridge Global to help the company develop its "security strategy and international business plan." CMSS says it specializes in "providing governments and organizations around the world with mission critical services," including de-mining, logistics/procurement, security, and IT communications. In addition to tending to global security needs at Ridge Global, Ridge also is president of Thomas Ridge, LLC. Aside from developing his own security consulting business, Ridge after leaving DHS joined the corporate boards of Vonage, Hershey, Home Depot, and Exelon (the country's largest nuclear plant operator, including the infamous Three Mile Island reactor). In April 2005 Ridge also joined the board of Savi Technology, described as the primary technology provider for wireless cargo-monitoring for DOD. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin. Homeland Safety Against Counterterrorism Liability Ridge recently got a new gig as senior adviser to the San Francisco-based Building Protection Systems Inc. (BPSI), where he will have the responsibility of advising the corporation on the marketing of its Building Sentry One product line. BPSI's Sentry One products are among the thousands of newly manufactured systems and technologies developed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, forming a major part of a new DHS/DOD industry complex underwritten by government contracts and grants. BPSI, now advised by Ridge, recently announced that its Sentry One toxin detection technology has received the DHS stamp of approval. According to BPSI, Sentry One is the "first complete building protection system which has also received full Safety Act designation from the Department of Homeland Security for protecting buildings and public gathering places from an airborne chemical or radiological targeted terrorist attack or accidental release." What does this Safety Act designation signify? Fundamentally, it means that Sentry One is protected by the Support Anti-Terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies Act of 2002 (Safety Act), which was rushed through Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks to spur industry investment in counterterrorism and security technology. According to DHS, the Safety Act is intended to "encourage the development and deployment of new and innovative anti-terrorism products and services." This government liability protection also covers software and other intellectual property. It fosters this development not through government contracts but through government guarantees—shielding technology providers from liability lawsuits in the event of product failure during a terrorist attack. The Safety Act also spurred the creation of a firm whose sole purpose is to provide liability advice to homeland security industries. That's Safety Act Consultants, whose motto is: "We help organizations protect themselves from catastrophic liability following a terrorist event." The Safety Act Consultants firm explains the Safety Act this way: "The SAFETY Act is a little known and often misunderstood Federal Law enacted in 2002 as a part of the Homeland Security Act. This law grants unprecedented statutory immunities, liability caps; affirmative defenses for things used to identify, protect against, stop, mitigate, respond to, or recover from, a terrorist event. These can include products, technologies, services, facilities, designs, advice, actions, software, hardware, or other methods, procedures, or strategies used in helping prevent, respond to, or recover from a physical terrorism [sic] or e-terrorism act. BPSI's Mike Welden, referring to the Safety Act approval, said: "This elevated designation is another example of the expert validation that BPSI's systems keep earning. We are absolutely pleased that the DHS has issued BPSI technology full designation. It is a clear indication of the trust in our technology that lives will be saved during certain acts of terrorism and as a result our customers will truly benefit from the extended SAFETY Act liability protections." On July 30, 2009 DHS bestowed its Safety Act designation on the 300th anti-terrorism technology.

Chertoff Group Gets Down to Business

In a nod to the key role of Bush administration figures in the new security company, Chertoff Group states that it "provides business leaders and local government officials with the same kind of high-level, strategic thinking and diligent execution that have kept the American homeland and its people safe since 9/11."

According to its website, the Chertoff Group approaches the business from three angles: risk-management and security services, crisis management, and mergers & acquisitions (M&A).

The group's risk-management and security services division aims to cover everything from global strategy, border protection, infrastructure protection, biometrics, global commerce, disaster preparedness, information assurance, intelligence, counterterrorism, and chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear security. The firm promises to "guide you to the best sources for trained personnel and security technology."

One of the firm's first contracts involves a cyber security client, according to a Wall Street Journal article. Chertoff Group has also secured a contract with BioNeutral Group, which hopes to commercialize a chemical-based technology that will neutralize toxins.

"We are excited to engage former Secretary Chertoff and his firm to assist us in our endeavors; presenting our proprietary technology to the various markets including health, defense, and bio security," commented Stephen J. Browand, president and CEO of BioNeutral. "It is a privilege to have such an elite group represent our company and we are confident that they will play a significant role in the successful strategic introduction of our life saving technology."

Strategic Partnership with "PR Firm from Hell"

Chertoff Group, founded by former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, has formed a "strategic partnership" with the controversial public-relations firm Burson-Marsteller to carry out the crisis-management part of its homeland security business.

"No one knows crisis communications better than the team at Burson-Marsteller," states the Chertoff Group, and the partnership will "combine our extensive crisis management expertise with their broad crisis communications skills."

No doubt that Burson-Marsteller has extensive experience in what the industry calls "crisis communications"—spinning a business, government, or product failure so as to minimize damage to a company's bottom line or a government's global reputation.

Burson-Marsteller, now headed by Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign pollster and strategist Mark Penn, has been called "the PR firm from Hell" by MSNBC's Rachel Madow, because of the firm's long track record in representing companies involved in major disasters. Says Madow (March 5, 2009), "When Evil needs public relations, Evil has Burson-Marsteller on speed-dial."

According to the Guardian in London, "The world's biggest PR company was employed by the Nigerian government to discredit reports of genocide during the Biafran war, the Argentine junta after the disappearance of 35,000 civilians, and the Indonesian government after the massacres in East Timor. It also worked to improve the image of the late Romanian president Nicolae Ceausescu and the Saudi royal family."

A recent corporate client of this "communications crisis" firm is AIG, the investment firm bailed out by the U.S. government with $163 billion of taxpayer revenues.

In the past Burson-Marsteller has provided communications remedies: after the Three Mile Island partial nuclear meltdown; for Union Carbide after the Bhopal gas leak that killed up to 15,000 people in India; and for British Petroleum after the sinking of the Torrey Canyon oil tanker. More recently, it has represented tobacco firms, European biotech industries that produce genetically modified food, and, according to Madow, for the Blackwater security services firm after reports of murders of civilians by its government-paid mercenaries in Iraq.

Chertoff Group is also going directly to the heart of the industry with its M&A division. "For deals in the security industry," the Chertoff Group says it "offers unparalleled subject matter expertise and contacts to give you the competitive advantage."

"We have overseen billions of dollars of technology development and acquisition for the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the National Security Agency, and the CIA. We have keen insight into which new technologies are likely to transform the landscape, and our experience allows us to predict which ones may be headed for obsolescence."

The firm sees a bounty of opportunities for consolidation in the new but "highly fragmented" homeland security industry. It promises clients to "help leverage economies of scale" and to "monitor and manage target companies during periods of transition," reminding security companies that "it pays to know what we know before you decide on a merger or acquisition."

Pumping Up Homeland Security Business

Not relying solely on its industry contracts, the Chertoff Group is also benefiting from a trail of media interviews and media events that bring the firm's principals to the attention of prospective clients.

Chertoff and his DHS predecessor Tom Ridge, along with their entry into the homeland security industry, are releasing new homeland security books in September.

Ridge's new book is titled The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege ... and How We Can Be Safe Again. Michael Chertoff's new book, Homeland Security: Assessing First Five Years, will also likely help promote the Chertoff Group within the homeland security industry.

In his book, Chertoff argues that the Bush administration effectively secured the country because there haven't been any terrorist attacks on the homeland since Sept. 11—an assessment that the Chertoff Group regularly uses to sell itself.

But in the new book Chertoff occasionally exhibits a foreign policy perspective that appears dangerously aligned with the neoconservatives that drove the Bush administration's Middle East and counterterrorism policies. He predicts, for example, that the anti-Israeli Lebanese opposition group Hezbollah could surpass al-Qaeda as the most serious terrorist threat to the United States. Chertoff alleges Hezbollah is better equipped, better trained, and better politically positioned than Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda.

"Having operated for more than a quarter-century, (Hezbollah) has developed capabilities that al-Qaeda can only dream of, including large quantities of missiles and highly sophisticated explosives," writes Chertoff.

Alarmism about Hezbollah, whose principal grievance is with Israel, is a common denominator of neoconservative ideology. Although not closely identified with the neoconservatives, Chertoff is firmly rooted in right-wing thinking, particularly with respect to terrorism and the role of the judiciary. Chertoff is also closely associated with the right-wing Federalist Society.

Chertoff is also speaking publicly about the government's cyber security programs and intelligence gathering systems. During an August 7 presentation at the Potomac Officers Club in Washington, Chertoff promoted the deployment of Einstein III, the latest phase of a web-traffic monitoring system sponsored by DHS to detect and deter cyber attacks. The Obama administration has authorized the deployment of the latest phase of the program, which will screen government traffic on private networks and will be managed by the NSA.

Cyber security is perhaps the most lucrative source of homeland security business, which may explain the Chertoff Group's interest in the Einstein project. Among the reported private partners awarded contracts for the Einstein system (which was allocated $600 million in 2007-2008) are AT&T, which is the lead partner with NSA, L3 Communications, General Dynamics, Sprint, Qwest, MCI, and Verizon.

The first two phases of the Einstein monitoring program didn't measure up to government expectations. Nonetheless, the Obama administration is set to launch the latest version of the cyber security system—amid widespread privacy concerns resulting in large part because of NSA's unauthorized monitoring of private communications during the Bush administration.

Explaining the third iteration of the system, Chertoff told the Washington Post:

"Intrusion detection is like a cop with a radar gun on a highway who catches you speeding or drunk and phones ahead to somebody at the other end … Einstein III is a cop who actually arrests you and pulls you off the road when he sees you driving drunk."

While Einstein I and II were more protective than proactive, Einstein III rather than looking for predetermined indicators of cyber attack is empowered to look at the content of emails and possibly signatures including personally identifiable data. Millions of emails that pass through government agencies as well as any person logging on to a government website would set off Einstein III.

Aside from privacy concerns, the effectiveness of such electronic surveillance in improving homeland security has been questioned by a wide range of critics, including congressional members and employees of NSA and DHS. Jesselyn Radack, homeland security director of the Government Accountability Project, calls for the administration to abandon the program, calling it "NSA's cyber overkill."

Outsourcing's New Hold on National Security

The homeland security business not only involves protecting communications and information systems from intrusions and attacks, it also entails extracting intelligence from monitored electronic communications. The Chertoff Group will likely serve these two sides of the intelligence/security business.

On August 20 Michael Chertoff and Michael Hayden, along with former CIA Director of Operations Jack DeVine (now president of the Arkin Group international crisis management group), led a discussion panel at the National Press Club on the privatization of intelligence. Neither Chertoff nor Hayden was identified in the NPC news release about the event as private contractors themselves who benefit financially from intelligence outsourcing.

Not surprisingly, all three former government officials who currently are in the private sector strongly supported intelligence and DHS outsourcing. Chertoff explained that the outsourcing of immigrant detention to the private sector was the largest component of DHS private contracting, which makes good sense because of the long time-lag in building federal facilities and because of the variable flow of immigrants. It would be "foolish," he said, to build an immigrant prison in western Arizona and then have empty beds if the immigrant flow switched to the southeastern United States.

Hayden described the CIA as a "blended team" of government employees and contractors, noting that "we used contractors as an integral part of our workforce."

Tim Shorrock, author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing, says that "private contractors are operating in the most sensitive areas of intelligence." According to Shorrock, "with the post-September 11 hikes in intelligence spending, spying for hire has become an industry worth nearly $50 billion a year." With the Chertoff Group's close ties to the CIA and NSA, this huge intelligence outsourcing budget will likely form an important part of the firm's revenue stream.

The homeland security industry is emerging as the country's fastest growing government-industry complex. It's an industry where Chertoff and an array of ex-Bush administration officials are playing leading roles.

While the full extent of the influence and power of the new homeland security complex has yet to be determined, it is worrisome to consider that the complex's leading architects are former government officials responsible for the USA Patriot Act, the border wall boondoggle, massive unauthorized domestic surveillance, and disastrous intelligence scandals of the Bush years.

The increased outsourcing of homeland security and intelligence operations also raises pressing concerns about who is truly in charge of our security—industry or government. But with security being viewed as a new profit sector, our national interests and security will likely lose out to the interests of investors and security consultants like Ridge, Hayden, and Chertoff.

Tom Barry is a senior foreign policy analyst with the Americas Program at the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC. He blogs at: http://borderlinesblog.blogspot.com/.

http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6382

Michael Chertoff on His New Firm

Homeland Security Today
June 1, 2009
interview with David Silverberg

April 28, 2009

Offices of Covington & Burling, Washington, DC.

Q: Tell me about The Chertoff Group.

We just opened our doors in the last couple of weeks. There are six principals. We’re in the process of negotiating to add two or three senior staff people to fill out our roster. We may bring in an additional principal or two in the not-too-distant future.

But right now it’s myself as chairman and founding principal, Mike Hayden, Paul Schneider who was, as you know, my deputy before that was head of acquisition for NSA and the Navy in the Clinton administration, Admiral Jay Cohen, who was head of technology and before that head of technology for the Navy, and Charlie Allen, of course, who was our head of intelligence and before that was pretty much head of everything you could be for the CIA and was head of national collections. Finally, Chad Sweet, who was my chief of staff, a former Goldman Sachs banker and before that a government person, is our chief operating officer. A person who is hands-on and chief of operations.

The idea is that we wanted to bring together a really unparalleled team of experienced homeland security architects and people who could look at the issue of homeland security as broadly as possible, including the intelligence side, the acquisition side, the technology side, the policy side and the operations side. And among the six of us we pretty much have all of those things in DHS, in DoD, and the Department of Justice, law enforcement and finally, in the intelligence community. So we have pretty much every element of homeland security covered.

Q: Who are your potential clients?

Let me take a step back and ask: What is homeland security? We in the government and those who have spent a lot of time on this do have a clear vision of what homeland security is and we understand it’s not the same as defense, it’s not the same as law enforcement, although it partakes of elements of those as well as things that are neither.

What you find when you get out into the private sector, and I found this pretty rapidly after I left, is that there’s a lot of uncertainty in the private sector about what homeland security is. In fact, there’s a lot of uncertainty in foreign governments about what homeland security is. They know they need it but they’re not quite sure what the doctrine is, how it differs from defense. Well, we know that you’re not going to treat every homeland security problem like a military problem because you’re not going to use the military to police your own country.

At the same time, the nature of the issues that you deal with are broader than just police issues or emergency responder issues. There’s an obvious need to fill the gap and cover a system of homeland security in a way that is end to end that is not covered by the defense community or the law enforcement community when they’re [consulted?]

So that was really the felt need and perception and my experience talking to people in the hundred days that I’ve been out has been to confirm for me that the people feel the need to have clear doctrine and an understanding of what the nature of homeland security is and we haven’t got that in the private sector and they’re looking to get that.

What that translates into in a concrete level is a number of different opportunities. One is the opportunity of people who want to invest in homeland security, whether they are people in the defense space or people who are in business in general and they’re not quite sure how to evaluate the investments. There are many great opportunities out there, many great technologies but picking an isolated technology doesn’t tell you how it fits into the system or whether it’s a value or not. Some technologies may be great but they may not perform a [?] function.

As many of the principal architects of homeland security and the doctrine we have a pretty good feel for how to look at problems end to end and then to anticipate problems where there may be technologies that fit into that problem solution in a way that’s not just throwing technology at an issue but fits into an integrated scheme to accomplish a mission. So, working with investors, defense contractors and others who either want to organically grow into homeland security or want to make acquisitions, I think we’ve got a really unique value and perspective that we can add in terms of how things fit in terms of an overarching strategy.

On the other side of the spectrum, obviously, there are also those who worry about their own security, whether corporations, state and local governments, international entities, even including some foreign governments and they want to understand: How do they protect themselves, whether against physical threats, cyber threats or a combination of the two. It can be against all kinds of hazards, not just against terrorism. It can be transnational crime, it can be disasters, it can be swine flu. And so where we, again, have a special perspective, is because we understand the entire 360 perspective, the kinds of threats you face and how you respond to them. I think we have the opportunity to advise people on those kinds of challenges.

I was talking to someone today, a potential client, about how they look at setting up their business, a particular global business. There are certain obvious things they need to think about but there are certain things that aren’t obvious and often people who are experts in particular areas focus on the threat to the area of their expertise, but no one stands back and looks at the entire enterprise and says: “You know, you’re looking at this, but you’re not looking at this.”

For example, in the area of cyber: People might think about how they’re protecting against a network intrusion but they’re not thinking about a physical failure, whether it’s a natural disaster or some kind of physical attack. So again, because of the breadth of our experience and skill set in the area, I think we bring a special perspective to those kinds of problems.

Q: Do you have a client roster already?

We have some clients who—I’m not going to publicly disclose—but we’re working with clients on both the acquisition or entry-to-the-marketplace side, and the protection side.

Q: Can you say how many?

I don’t want to say.

Q: Are you incorporated?

We’re incorporated, we moved into our new space about a week ago, we’re actually, our website is being built, we’re about to get our new phones, and a special phone, lines, and we just got our service for our electronic communications. So we’re launched and we’re ready to move down the runway.

Q: Whom do you consider your competition?

There are a lot of people with experience and people tend to orient themselves in different ways. There’s a very fine firm, for example, who work in the area of law enforcement consulting and there’s a little overlap. There are a number of firms that do political risk and we are going to do some of that and again, there’s going to be some overlap. There are some firms that do some defense and again, there will be some overlap.

I think what’s a little unusual about us is the number of people and the range of skill sets in one place. When we thought about setting this up, I didn’t want to be just a former secretary of homeland security, a former Department of Justice [official] adding a couple of staff. But I thought that there would be real value of complementing my experience with the experience of leaders in the area of intelligence, cybersecurity, acquisition technology because there are people who …some of our principals are deep in some areas, some are deep in other areas but among us we cover the waterfront about as well as anybody that I’m aware.

But there’s a lot of fine firms out there and we look forward into entering into the space.

Q: Did you think of joining an existing firm like Ridge or Cohen?

I thought about joining an existing firm but it was kind of interesting and exciting to think about forming a firm of my own and recruiting principals and being able to devise a firm culture from the ground up. And the culture that we have is one that is—without getting into the details—in terms of the way we’re organized and in terms of compensation, is focused on a team effort. The idea is to bring multiple perspectives and skills to problems and to work collaboratively. That’s kind of how we did it at the department when I was there. I think it’s the wave of the future in terms of modern businesses and I think it gives us a much more rewarding experience from a personal standpoint but also creates a better client experience because the client knows that everybody’s committed to producing the result.

We’re also not a highly leveraged firm. We’re not looking to have a few principals and then a huge team of junior people. We’re more like—I describe this as a cylinder. We have a pretty high number of principals relative to the size of where the firm is going to be because we’re really looking to add intellectual capital, not to just grind out a lot of paperwork or just to churn hours but to come in and provide high-value, focused advice based on experience with staff support but not with the staff overwhelming what the principals are doing.

Q: Tell me about your transition back to the private sector?

We’re sitting in my law firm now so the second piece of what I’m doing is senior “of counsel” at Covington & Burling. The one thing we can’t do in my consulting practice is practice law.

It’s been, really, an enjoyable transition for me. I was in private life and the private sector for eight years between the time that I left government in 1994 and when I came back in 2001 and I’ve always enjoyed working with clients and the different kinds of client problems and challenges. And, of course, in this new endeavor I actually built a business, which is exciting. So although, obviously, the people I worked with at DHS were terrific and I miss a lot of the great experiences I had with them, it’s been a fascinating experience to make the transition into being an entrepreneur. And, taking a lot of skills and experiences, which I and my colleagues were able to hone over the last four years and translate those to benefit—on the private side—which I think also benefits the country, to be honest.

Q: Any one particular thing that you miss about being out of office?

Well, I used to be able to cut through the White House to be able to get from 17th Street over to 14th Street and I can’t do that any more—I can’t do it in my car.

Less facetiously, it was a great privilege serving the country. We got to work on enormously consequential things with really bright, committed people and I treasure that experience. I did it for four years and considering the prior four years, I really did it for eight years of public service; I’ve spent most of my life in public service.

I’m a believer that turnover is a good thing. It’s good for the individual because you get to recharge your batteries and it’s good for the government because you get fresh perspectives. So, from my perspective, I felt fulfilled in my four years as Cabinet secretary and I was in the right place to move on to do something else.

Q: What do you see as the upcoming trends in homeland security and industry and the way business is done?

What you’re seeing in the last three, four months is that we have not seen an end to history or an end to homeland security and there’s people taking the position: “Oh, we haven’t been attacked, time to move on.”

Well, first of all, the terrorism threat remains real. Pakistan is certainly experiencing a certain amount of disorder in the border areas and has worsened recently and it’s still back and forth and in the balance. That, of course, has very serious implications for homeland security in terms of expanding the safe havens for terrorism. We’ve seen piracy in Somalia and in the Indian Ocean. That’s not terrorism but it’s kind of a kissing-cousin to terrorism and it reminds you that, once again, ungoverned spaces create problems. We’ve seen the violence in Mexico, which is posing a real problem to the government of that country. I was talking about that the last couple of years in my tenure in DHS; we put together a response plan, a contingency plan and that has remained as urgent an issue as ever. We put together an extended pandemic flu plan and—what do you know?—in the last week we’ve seen a pandemic flu become a potential issue to be dealt with. And of course, other challenges: Transnational criminal activity, we’re getting into hurricane season. All these remain.

People think we’re in an economic crisis and therefore we can ignore homeland security, allowing themselves the luxury of believing that you only have to deal with one problem at a time. In fact, problems tend to come in waves and they tend to reinforce each other. For example, as this flu process moves forward, is it going to have an impact on the economy? How do we deal with that so as to minimize the impact on the economy? You don’t have of luxury of saying: “I’m going to deal with one issue or the other issue.”

I think that security remains urgent, I think that the flu outbreak is reminding businesses again of the importance of planning, planning for resiliency, planning for what do you do if people in fact stay home either voluntarily or because they’re told to stay home to minimize their travel or their attendance in crowded places and managing these issues is much easier if you have a plan and you’ve worked with a plan.

So, I get asked the question sometimes: “Don’t you think that people are not going to want invest in homeland security because it doesn’t go to the bottom line?” Nothing wipes out the bottom line more quickly than a disaster, whether it’s an act of terror or a significant criminal event, a cyber attack, or an actual disaster or a medical disaster. So it’s like putting your money in the bank and getting an insurance policy. If you want protect your assets, which I think goes very much to the bottom line, you’ve got to make sure you have your security protected.

I’m pleased that the department is continuing to move forward on many initiatives that we got underway, as of today—which is April 28th—it looks like the planning that was done with respect to pandemic flu is paying off in the way the government has responded. Obviously, we have to see how that moves forward. I think it’s important to support Mexico, which the administration is doing and I’m pleased to see that. So, in many respects there is good progress that my successor is making in building on what we’ve done at the department.

I’m particularly gratified that St. Elizabeth’s has got funded, now the department is going to get a headquarters that will make it easier to manage a large enterprise.

http://www.hstoday.us/content/view/8710/151

Vendors flock to border security expo

San Antonio Express News
August 15, 2009
by Lynn Brezosky

EL PASO — As Border Patrol chiefs huddled over maps plotting the border fence, tech types at Raytheon Co. were plotting a system to detect the inevitable tunneling beneath it.

Two years and a good deal of controversy later, almost all of the 670 initial miles of fencing called for by the Bush Administration are up — and Raytheon's Tunnel Detection System is for sale.

So were other private sector innovations at this week's Border Security Conference, an annual event that draws Department of Homeland Security honchos and is underwritten by vendors seeking a piece of the department's $50.5 billion budget.

Products like a “non-lethal anti-personnel weapon” (Raytheon), the Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment (L-1 Identity Solutions), or the SensorWeb (SAIC) were on display. Other firms at the podium for a 75-minute presentation on “Integrating Technology and Connecting Communities” were Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing and CSC.

And if U.S. Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar, DHS assistant secretary Alan Bersin, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Assistant Secretary John Morton or any of the attending members of Congress or border sheriffs missed the talk, they could stop by the tables for gadget demonstrations.

Business opportunities have exploded since the 9-11 attacks spurred consolidation of 22 agencies into the Department of Homeland Security. The nine government contracts related to homeland security in 1999 had jumped to 3,512 deals by 2003. By 2007, there were 33,890.

In fiscal year 2008, DHS spent more than $14 billion on contracts, spokeswoman Sara Kuban said.

Conferences are part of the business.

“Nothing beats having an expo with some whiz-bang device that will wow the observers into thinking this is a good investment,” said Pete Sepp of the National Taxpayers Union. “I wouldn't say that these kinds of events make the difference between buying or not buying, but I do think they can influence the decision of how much, when and where the new system might fit in.”

The contracting came under fire in a 2006 General Accountability Office report that found the surge in procurement spending in the department's first few years included $34.3 billion in contracts “plagued by waste, abuse or mismanagement.” Most of the criticism centered on mismanagement within DHS itself.

The $67 million contract for Boeing's “virtual fence” became an embarrassment in 2007 when the system of sensors, drones and infrared cameras didn't work.

DHS spokeswoman Kuban emphasized that the problems dated to a previous administration and that DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano has pledged widespread efficiency reviews.

Marthena Cowart, spokeswoman for the Project on Government Oversight, said that if agencies follow longstanding ethics rules for attending these conferences, there is nothing illegal about them.

“The bad news,” she said, “is that this is another example of pay to play, where contractors have an opportunity to interface with the federal government and make their case for spending more tax dollars.”

Not that the products don't have merit.

After Hurricanes Ike and Dolly, officials in the stricken areas who months earlier had attended the 2008 Texas Hurricane Conference in Galveston, organized by the Governer's Division of Emergency Management, may have thought wistfully of the air-conditioned Rapid Air Shelter, the water-inflated flood barriers or the debris removal services.

Those devices were busy in the towns that had already contracted for them. Luckily for all, a few truckloads of Heater Meals had been scooped up by the Texas National Guard.

Jeffrey Hathaway retired as a U.S. Coast Guard admiral and found a new career with L-1 Identity Solutions, which currently makes all new U.S. passport cards (a $107 million contract) as well as driver's licenses for 45 states.

At the El Paso conference, he was showing off handheld fingerprint readers and Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment (HIIDE), an identity scanner capable of holding a 35-piece biometric portfolio for 250,000 people.

“I was in the world of counter-narcotics and I always had a problem with identifying people,” Hathaway said. “We would be on the high seas. I could identify the cocaine but not the five people sitting on top of it because any identification had been thrown overboard.”

The HIIDE is now used in lieu of an access card at security posts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Companies expend plenty of resources in the race to think ahead of the government and beat the competition.

In Raytheon's case, it took about $2 million in research and development to test a ground-based sensor array system on a 30-foot deep tunnel in Douglas, Ariz. It now has a proposal pending with an “end user” — the Border Patrol.

The company in April scored a $19 million Defense Department contract to use similar technology to find tunnels and land mines.

“In this case, we said, ‘OK, we know putting these fences along the border, what's gonna happen?'” Raytheon vice president Jerry Robertello said. “We know they're going to be digging more and more tunneling. ... We said, how would we, Raytheon, approach putting a stop to tunneling to solve a real threat?”

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/state/Vendors_flock_to_border_security_expo.html

Walled Off

Rio Grande Guardian
August 15, 2009
by Char Miller

CLAREMONT, Aug. 15 - Pygmy owls and Bighorn sheep make an odd couple.

These keystone species along the U.S.-Mexico border have little in common--their size and weight (so perfectly captured in their names), like their mode of transportation and food sources, could not be more different. Yet they share a desert habitat, and there in lies their mutual problem.

It comes in the form of the impenetrable border wall the United States is building across the southwestern states, which will inhibit their ability to move, hunt, and reproduce. How ironic that this triple-thick bulwark, which has failed miserably to stem the flow of undocumented migrants into the United States, may have a fatal impact on animals so innocent of the human politics and policies that led to its erection.

This dire situation has been the focus of the research of two conservation biologists, Aaron Flesch at the University of Arizona and Clinton Epps of Oregon State. In an article to appear in Conservation Biology, the scientists have explored the troubling possibilities the wall may pose to these two species’ daily life and long-term survival.

Consider the Pygmy owl’s below-the-radar flight path: most of its sorties are conducted less than13 feet off the ground, as it swoops down on its prey from its preferred perch in a secluded thicket. A wall that stands upwards of 19 feet, and whose construction requires bulldozing a wide swath on either side, thus poses serious problems for individual owls to protect themselves from their predators and to sustain themselves over time.

More complicating still is that the newly leveled ground will have a multi-generational impact. Juvenile owls need undisturbed landscapes in which to colonize, a nesting behavior that the wall’s structure necessarily will frustrate. And the breeding colonies on the American side of the border apparently require contact with those on the other. As Professor Flesch has observed: “Movement of pygmy owls from Mexico to Arizona may be necessary for the persistence of the Arizona population.”

The need for cross-border fertilization may prove even more important for the Bighorn sheep’s survival, Flesch and Aaron argue; their research indicates that there is a strong genetic link between those sheep populations living in the Sonoran mountains in Mexico and those inhabiting the southern highlands of Arizona.

Unimpeded connectivity between the two is essential because without it the different herds will become cut off, degrading their genetic diversity. “Bighorns in places like the Sonoran desert will form small populations – sometimes with only 10, 15 or 20 animals,” Epps said in a press release. “Yet they will occasionally move back and forth and mix with other groups. That connectivity is critical to their survival. Without it, they can still sometimes re-colonize, but often that small group will go extinct.” Should that occur, these sheep, like the pygmy owl, will find that human agency has sabotaged their biological imperatives.

The political impulse that built the wall in defense of U.S. borders is itself a form of territorial marking, a behavior that all species manifest; of necessity all species try to manage their habitats. The purpose of such management is to enhance their chance of survival, a process, often enough, that depends on beneficial interactions with other creatures; this mutuality is critical to the creation of sustainable landscapes and the rich biodiversity that makes them so.

But Homo sapiens also love monocultures, as our suburban lawns, big-box malls, and agricultural practices testify. Through our tools and technology we have the power to clear away competitors or build environments that diminish their odds of survival. The border wall is a monument to human hegemony.

Yet the wall’s construction is only one expression of our dominance. As contractors flatten the land; dig fence posts and hang chain-link and concertina wire between them; set up guard towers, complete with searchlights and infrared cameras; and lay down hardened roadways for high-speed patrol vehicles, they are manufacturing a new landscape with a single purpose.

The goal of this high-tech infrastructure on the ground--when combined with aerial surveillance--is to halt illegal immigration into the United States. To accomplish this mission, the federal government has spent millions of dollars; hired and trained thousands of new border guards; and has flexed its muscles in ways fiscal and physical that is designed to display its authority.

One manifestation of this is captured in the commotion that Professor Eppes describes as integral to the new habitat that the U. S. has built along the border. “The sheer number of people moving across the landscape is stunning. The crackdown on urban crossings has forced people into wild areas,” intensifying “the amount of human activity--both people crossing and the border patrols seeking them” in an arid region that once was thinly settled and rarely visited.

Bearing the brunt of this escalating human presence is the very wildlife that Flesch and Epps have been tracking. As a result, they propose a number of well-intentioned changes to the border wall’s physical structure in hopes of increasing the chance that pygmy owls and bighorn sheep will be able to survive in this trampled terrain; for the owl, they suggest maintaining tree cover along the border; for the sheep, a more open wall that will allow these them to continue their cross-border migrations. Even so, they recognize that their proposals conflict with the governmental desire to maintain an impassable barrier, and are thus a non-starter.

Indisputable is their larger, if unstated argument: to worry about the survival of wildlife, regardless of size, is to be anxious about our own.

Char Miller is director of the environmental analysis program at Pomona College, Claremont, CA., and author of Deep in the Heart of San Antonio: Land and Life in South Texas.

http://www.riograndeguardian.com/columns3_story.asp?story_no=5

Wall Worries: Grijalva pushes the Department of Homeland Security to review the border fence's environmental destruction

Tucson Weekly
August 13, 2009
by Tim Vanderpool

Call it an expression of public will, or just political pandering; either way, you can't call the new wall on our southern border benign.

Cutting a daunting swath from California to Texas, it has degraded waterways, chopped up private property and wreaked environmental havoc by severing wildlife-migration routes and pummeling habitat.

Now, three years after the construction began, and with nearly 700 miles of the fence and barriers complete, Rep. Raul Grijalva is pushing for a fresh—some would say first—look at the environmental fallout from the Secure Fence Act of 2006.

On July 23, Arizona's District 7 congressman sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano urging her department to conduct a full analysis of those impacts, and consider steps toward repair. The letter was co-signed by 42 of his congressional colleagues.

Grijalva says the time was right, given that Napolitano hails from the borderland—she was Arizona's governor before succeeding Bush appointee Michael Chertoff last year as head of Homeland Security—and that the fear factor behind the fence has waned a bit.

"I sensed an opening," he says. "Before, when we'd bring this up, we'd hear, 'Oh, you're promoting terrorism,' from Chertoff and his minions. Anytime we'd even mention the idea of mitigation, study, monitoring, evaluation, we'd hear 'Aah, you're helping harbor terrorists.' They'd wave that bloody rag every time.

"There's a different attitude now," Grijalva says, "a professional attitude, not an ideological attitude. I know that Janet (Napolitano) wants to do the job to keep the border secure. But she's dealing with it in a professional manner and a policy manner, which, to me, creates an opening."

Homeland Security spokeswoman Sara Kuban declined to comment on Grijalva's letter, except to say that Napolitano would be in contact with the various members of Congress.

Meanwhile, Grijalva's request has drawn plaudits from environmentalists, including Dan Millis, coordinator of the Arizona Sierra Club's Borderlands Campaign. "To the Sierra Club, this is a very important and very urgent issue," Millis says, "and I definitely think the timing is good. I don't think a serious look at this has been taken yet, at least by the higher-ups in the Department of Homeland Security."

The letter to Napolitano expressed concerns "regarding mounting environmental and societal impacts related to border security infrastructure and operations." It also requests that the secretary work with other agencies "to create and fund a robust border-wide environmental monitoring program and to provide sufficient mitigation funding for damage caused by border security infrastructure and enforcement activities."

That this letter was dispatched with any optimism at all reflects the sea change since Chertoff's time. In his drive to complete the fence, he repeatedly brandished his congressionally granted authority to waive bedrock environmental laws—such as the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act—to keep fence construction humming. In many cases, he used the waiver as a threat, browbeating land-management agencies into abdicating their resource-protection responsibilities.

Southern Arizona's San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area could be a poster child for that abuse. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management cobbled together a half-assed environmental assessment of the fence's potential impacts—concluding that the Normandy-style barriers "won't impede animals or people, because they have enough distance from the ground up," according to a BLM spokeswoman. "They're really just to keep vehicles from driving through the riverbed."

But in hindsight, such kowtowing has "damaged" those agencies, says Stephen Mumme, a border environmental management expert at Colorado State University. "It has led to the impression along the border that they're not using sound science—that they were being heavily influenced by political considerations in the Bush administration and continuing even now.

"If anyone, they were responsible for saying—even if it was politically unpopular—that they needed to have a better sense of what's going on," Mumme says. "But in the last administration, I think it was politically dangerous for managers to say that."

Of course, Chertoff's frantic pace didn't occur in a vacuum. Even as the project rolled forward, there was a steady drumbeat from anti-immigrant right-wingers such as Glenn Spencer and his Arizona-based American Border Patrol. Spencer's group routinely flies along the border to monitor the fence's progress, and loudly complains when there is a slowdown.

That pressure hasn't entirely vanished; Grijalva's efforts come as the Senate is considering a measure to expand "pedestrian" fencing to the entire 700 miles of barrier mandated by the Secure Fence Act. This high steel fencing is meant to block people from walking across the line, and is far more extreme—and damaging to wildlife—than the vehicle barriers now lining much of the border.

But there's been scant attention paid to the enormous social costs inflicted by this security juggernaut. Consider the impacts endured by Texas families who have seen their property—much of it passed down through generations—sliced in half by the wall. More fallout has been felt in Nogales, Ariz., where downtown merchants last year were engulfed by floodwaters that had backed up behind a concrete barrier placed in storm drains by the U.S. Border Patrol.

Then there's the fiscal factor: Grijalva cites Congressional Budget Office estimates that the border barrier has cost taxpayers an average of $3 million per mile to build. Another 15 percent will be added for continuing maintenance.

But the cost to the environment is incalculable. According to biologists, damage to habitat and wildlife migration is impacting species ranging from tiny lizards to mule deer, bighorn sheep, coatis, bears and jaguars. That's exacerbated by damage to watersheds and riparian areas. Again, the San Pedro River could be a perfect example. Two years ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constructed a "temporary" vehicle barrier across the river near Sierra Vista, south of Tucson. The placement followed roughly two miles of fence already existing within the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area.

Groups such as the Sierra Club fought that fence, and lost. Meanwhile, the clock is still ticking, says Millis. He notes that the Department of Homeland Security recently transferred $50 million to the Department of Interior to help soften impacts upon endangered species along the San Pedro and elsewhere.

"But that's all off-site mitigation, basically trying to restore potential habitat for endangered species in the same quantities that it was lost along the border. It doesn't really address the big problems that are happening on the line every day, and that we have tons of pictures of—wildlife blocked by the wall, huge erosion problems in wilderness areas, etc., etc.

"Now there's a huge priority on getting the science in order," Millis says. "This whole thing was really just shoved down our throats."

http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/wall-worries/Content?oid=1281501