Former officials with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday urged members of Congress to centralize oversight and codify the responsibilities of a department whose budget has more than doubled since its creation roughly a decade ago.
DHS was formally established in 2002 to combine 22 different federal agencies and departments and integrate intelligence, law enforcement, disaster response, and transportation security in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
While the United States has managed to prevent terrorist threats on the scale of the World Trade Center attacks 12 years ago, critics of DHS say vital intelligence still appears to slip through the cracks of the sprawling 240,000-employee department and its appendages. The DHS budget has swelled from nearly $20 billion in 2002 to $46 billion this year.
The Boston Marathon bombings renewed concerns about information sharing between federal agencies and local law enforcement entities. Congressional testimony in May revealed that the Boston Joint Terrorism Task Force received scant direction from the FBI about keeping tabs on Tamerlan Tsarnaev—the older of the two brothers who perpetrated the bombings—after the federal agency determined he did not pose a threat in 2011. The Massachusetts State Police and the local "fusion center" for intelligence sharing were also not aware of the brothers or Tamerlan’s 2012 trip to the radicalized Dagestan region of Russia.
Tom Ridge, the first DHS secretary, told members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that the department needs better oversight to improve its information sharing. He added that communication across branches of a department still poses problems for entities like NASA, which was formed by combining agencies in a similar manner more than 50 years ago.
"I don’t think we should be surprised that we’re not where we think we should be," Ridge said.
"We’re not as efficient as we need to be; we’re not as risk-based as we need to be. It’s about information sharing; it’s about resiliency; its about a risk-based approach."
Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) expressed concern that DHS has become an "all-hazard" agency rather than a risk-based agency, expanding responsibilities at the expense of coordination. An investigation by a Senate subcommittee last year found that DHS has spent up to $1.4 billion on state and local fusion centers that produce shoddy intelligence, fail to aid federal counterterror efforts, and lack basic intelligence capabilities.
"Everytime we’ve seen a problem it’s because it’s either a stovepipe or an individual decision," Coburn said.
"In Boston, we had some errors made by individuals or by process rather than having flat, good, horizontal communication that was real time. How do you get [to better coordination] and how do you hold people accountable?"
Witnesses testified that DHS needs streamlined oversight, strong leaders, and clear responsibilities.
A patchwork of more than 100 congressional committees and subcommittees currently have jurisdiction over DHS, prompting department employees to spend more time and money answering requests from lawmakers than on security duties, Coburn said.
Additionally, President Barack Obama has only nominated four persons for 15 vacant positions at DHS, including a replacement for former DHS secretary and current president of the University of California system Janet Napolitano.
Stewart Baker, former assistant secretary for policy at DHS, recommended that Congress create a central staff to eliminate duplication between the department and the NSA, for example, and specify its duties. DHS has authorization to revoke visas and freeze funds for suspects linked with potential terrorist threats but often neglects to do so, he said.
The United States is also "falling behind" on cybersecurity because Congress has not passed a bill granting DHS authority on the issue to allay the concerns of the private sector, Baker said. Obama issued an executive order in February advising increased information sharing between federal agencies and the private sector to protect critical infrastructure from cyber attacks.
Baker said the United States needs to be more proactive and employ deterrents to cyber attacks.
"We cannot defend ourselves out of this cyber crisis," he said.
"That’s like telling people we will solve the street crime crisis by making civilians purchase body armor."
Baker noted that the United States might face a cyber attack in response to a military action for the "first time" if Obama orders limited strikes against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Syrian ally Hezbollah, the Lebanese terrorist group, could initiate retaliatory cyber attacks as could Iran, which is "less constrained" about launching such attacks after charging the United States and Israel with planting a computer virus in its nuclear facilities.
The Senate committee is staging multiple hearings to conduct a "top-to-bottom" review of DHS, which has never been reauthorized.