Previous IFPA-Fletcher Conferences
National Security
Strategy and Policy:
Planning for and Responding to Threats to the U.S. Homeland
October 28-29, 2004
Ronald Reagan Building
and International Trade Center
Washington, D.C.
The Honorable Paul McHale,
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense
Opening Address
28 October 2004
A New Homeland Defense Strategy for the United States
Introduction By: Dr. Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr.
The Honorable Paul McHale: Dr. Pfaltzgraff, General Inge, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, have you noticed that there are some public officials who will do almost anything to pander to an audience? Anything for a cheap laugh or an easy round of applause. But not me, I'm much too dignified.
Good morning. [Laughter] [Applause] I think we may still have some residual Yankee fans in the audience judging from that response. As I watched Boston play over the last several weeks, I thought of a story that occurred about ten years ago when I was still serving in the Congress. Like many members of the Congress, I would rush home at the end of each week; unlike many members of Congress, my first stop was almost always the Little League field. My son Matt was then nine years old; Matt was playing Little League, and whenever I'd get off the plane at the airport in the Lehigh Valley, I'd head straight to the Little League field and I'd try to catch the end of Matt’s play.
On one particular Friday, I was delayed getting out of Reagan, and for that reason was a little bit late getting back to my Congressional district. And so when I finally got the Little League field, the game was obviously over. My son Matt was standing on second base; literally, he was the only person on the field. And as I approached and realized that once again I'd let him down and was too late to watch his game, I started apologizing profusely.
Matt looked at me and said, “Dad, that’s all right, don’t worry about it, I know you did the best that you could.” So hoping to a more optimistic subject I said, “How did the game go?” And he was disconsolate, obviously upset. I said, “What’s the matter, son?” He said, “Dad, we lost and it was all my fault.”
I said, “Son, tell me about it.” He said, “It was the last inning of the ballgame, or what turned out to be the last inning. We had two outs and I came up to bat,” Matt said. And he said, “The ball game toward the plate and it looked like a good pitch, so I took a swing at it and I connected and hit a good, solid ground ball and took off for first base, but the grounder went straight to the shortstop. And, Dad, I ran as fast as I could, but he threw me out at first. And because that was the third out, my team lost. And it was my fault.”
I said, “Well, son, what was the score?” And he said, “16 to 1.” [Laughter] And then with the mistaken judgment of an adult, I said, “Matt, it wasn’t your fault, the score was 16 to 1, you just made the last out of the game.”
And with wisdom that I have come to understand, he said, “Dad, you don’t understand, we could have made a comeback.” [Laughter]
Now, that struck me as being the spirit that motivated the Boston Red Sox over the last several weeks, having been down three games in the playoffs they made a comeback, and that comeback was not fortuitous; it was the result of courage and commitment and a recognition that you can indeed always make a comeback.
During the past three years, since the brutal events of September 11, 2001, our nation has made a comeback, a powerful, often courageous comeback, and we, the people of the United States of America, have very much benefited from that effort.
I gave a speech here in Washington not too long ago and during the Q&A, a person stood up and said, “Secretary McHale, are you surprised that we have not experienced another Al-Qaeda attack since September ”
In response to that compound question, I said, “I have been surprised, because I think if given any opportunity, Al-Qaeda will attack again.” I said, “But it’s not that we’ve been lucky. We’ve been protected by defensive measures that went far beyond mere luck.”
What I'd like to do this morning is talk to you about the answer that I gave to those questions, why I answered them as I did, and provide as an introduction to this superb conference an overview of some of the homeland defense issues that I think shape any discussion that we might want to have.
First and foremost, I would note at the beginning that, at least in my judgment, the nature of war itself has fundamentally changed within the past two decades. I had the privilege of putting on a United States military uniform for the first time in 1972, more than three decades ago, and during the three decades I've been privileged to wear that uniform, much like the uniforms that I see in the audience today, I, and many others of my generation, trained for the possibility of conflict with the Soviet Union. We anticipated that the fundamental threat to the national security of the United States involved a hostile nation state, or a coalition of nation states, the Warsaw Pact. And throughout our nation’s entire history, until quite recently, we believed accurately that it took the collective resources of a nation state or a coalition of nation states to fundamentally threaten the national security of the United States.
In an age of transnational terrorism at the dawn of the 21st century, that paradigm of threat has now changed. Transnational terrorist groups, unaffiliated with the nation states, but obviously taking advantage of safe havens wherever they can find them, can now acquire incredibly miniaturized, very powerful weapons to include potentially weapons of mass destruction that would bring to them small groups of transnational terrorists, even to individuals, the destructive capacity which in the past could only be associated with the collective resources of a country.
Now groups and individuals, malevolent in character, can acquire incredibly destructive weapons, and they will use those weapons in a new threat environment to kill Americans and destroy our property and, from their perspective, threaten our freedom whenever given an opportunity to do so. That’s a very different threat environment. We’re no longer talking about just combined arms warfare, or supporting arms, or the movement to contact on a conventional battlefield. We’re talking about small groups of highly mobile individuals acquiring unprecedented destructive weaponry with the intent of delivering that weaponry probably from some foreign source to the United States in order to shape our political will, to degrade our will to resist, to produce a political change that they deem to be beneficial.
That’s a very different threat from the one that I used to train to confront, and very different from the threat that we have faced over the past two centuries [sic]. President Bush captured it very well when he said, “The world changed on September 11, 2001. We learned that a threat that gathers on the other side of the earth can strike our own cities and kill our citizens. It is an important lesson, one we can never forget. Oceans no longer protect America from the dangers of this world. We’re protected daily by vigilance at home and we will be protected by resolute and decisive action against threats abroad.”
Let me emphasize at the outset that from our perspective homeland defense begins overseas. I think it is not an exaggeration at all to say that when Marines and soldiers went into Kandahar in our initial military actions against the Taliban in Afghanistan, their achievement within a battle space on the other side of the earth, in Kandahar, contributed directly to the security of California and Kansas, and we who live here within the United States.
Homeland defense begins overseas. It is accomplished, at least initially, through power projection. When we removed the Taliban government and Al-Qaeda’s safe haven in Afghanistan, when we forced Osama bin Laden and the remaining portions of his leadership up into the mountains, we disrupted their command and control capabilities to a degree that I think has had a direct impact upon their ability to conduct follow-on complex operations of the type that I believe they would have conducted right here in the United States had we not disrupted their planning process.
On September 11, incredibly capable men and women responded as quickly and as effectively as they could to an unprecedented threat. That threat had not been well anticipated. The 9/11 Commission wrote of those events in a chapter that’s entitled, “Improvising Homeland Defense.” Indeed, I see my good friend Ed Anderson is here in the audience. Ed could tell you better than I the extraordinary length to which competent, dedicated military personnel and civilians attempted to respond on September 11. We were unsuccessful. We had not anticipated the mission requirement that would compel us to interdict a commercial airliner that had been converted into a weapons platform because of terrorist activity. And so, indeed, on September 11, we improvised as best we could.
Improvisation is no longer acceptable. When 3,000 Americans died, we realized we had to do a much better job of anticipating the transnational terrorist threat, and we had to plan our defenses accordingly. We are no longer improvising. The Secretary of Defense at the direction of the President of the United States created United States Northern Command. For the first time since the days of George Washington, a single general officer was given the legal and moral responsibility to personally, physically defend the United States of America from an imminent foreign threat. NORTHCOM’s AOR was carved out of the UCP, the Unified Command Plan. The land masses of Canada, the United States and Mexico, the domestic air space and the maritime approaches were assigned to NORTHCOM for the protection of our nation’s citizens, our property and our Constitutional freedoms.
Incredible progress has been made over the past three years. I'm going to talk to you about some of the operational capabilities that have been developed by NORTHCOM for the most part; these are operational capabilities that did not exist on September 11, 2001.
But first of all, let me put it in context for you. My shop recently drafted, and it is still in draft form, it has not been approved by the Secretary of Defense and it will be modified during the staffing process, but we have drafted, and there has been some widespread distribution, of a homeland defense and civil support strategy. I'm going to talk to you in a moment about some of the strategic objectives of that strategy, but as I go through those objectives, there is a common theme that ties them together, and that is this:
A passive, reactive defense, one that is only implemented after the threat becomes clear is too slow to be effective. A passive defense, a reactive defense is a formula for failure. Those of us who have had access to the Al-Qaeda target packages, the reconnaissance capabilities that our adversaries have exercised in recent years come away with a recognition, though brutal and clever, they are also quite professional in terms of their reconnaissance capabilities. They probe our defenses. They look for seams. When they discover a seam in a defense, they exploit it. Their target packages are professionally prepared. They are not amateurs when it comes to a reconnaissance capability.
Therefore, if our defense is static, unchanging, high predictable, it is therefore easily subject to an effective reconnaissance. The weaknesses in the defense will become obvious to our adversaries, and they are not foolish, they are not stupid; they are brutal, they are barbaric, but they are not stupid. They will identify those vulnerabilities and they will exploit them, therefore.
Our defense cannot be passive and reactive. We must seize the operational initiative. We must make it difficult for them to conduct a thorough reconnaissance. Our defenses must be changing on a daily basis so that there is no predictability in terms of enemy exploitation. It must be a defense in depth. It must be layered. We must attempt to identify the threat proactively, not wait for it to materialize and then respond passively.
In the homeland defense and civil support strategy, the principal objectives we hope to achieve are the following: Number one, achieve maximum awareness of potential threats. In short, anticipate the attack, detect it, deter it, defeat it proactively. Identify the approaching threat at the earliest opportunity, which in most cases, I would argue, means an identification of that threat before it ever enters the NORTHCOM area of responsibility. The area of interest of the commander at NORTHCOM is worldwide; he must be able to see the threat coming before it enters his AOR.
Secondly, interdict and defeat threats at a safe distance from the United States, US territories and possessions. In the immediate aftermath of September 11, we tended to be focused on the close-in defenses, and that was understandable, and at that point in time probably appropriate. We focused on better port security; we immediately recognized the requirement for better border security. But over time we’ve come to recognize that those kinds of activities form the last, not the first, layer of our defense. We must push out the borders of defensive preparation and we must interdict and defeat threats at a safe distance from the United States, preferably not within the United States.
Number three, we must provide mission assurance. We have to make sure that even if the United States is attacked, perhaps in a tactical sense, successfully attacked, that we are able to continue in our mission requirements, that no enemy attack will degrade our ability to project power in response to that attack.
Number four, we must assure DoD’s ability to support civil authorities in domestic WMD, CBRN consequence management activities. Al-Qaeda doesn’t ordinarily attack at one place at one time. I think it is the history of their concept of operations to conduct well-timed, coordinated, multiple attacks at geographically dispersed locations, employing the most powerful weaponry that’s available to them at that time. Now, in the past, that has tended to be high explosives, but I have no doubt that if given the opportunity to acquire and deploy weapons of mass destruction, Al-Qaeda will do so.
Therefore, when we look at the potential vulnerability of the United States and remain resolutely committed to the defeat of an attack, prudent judgment requires us to recognize that we must also be prepared to respond to such an attack at multiple locations throughout our country involving simultaneously timed attacked where civilian authorities probably in DHS and at the state and local level may require DoD support in order to achieve an effective response. We have years of partnership and cooperation with FEMA, and we are building a similar relationship, very effectively I think, with the Department of Homeland Security now that FEMA has migrated to DHS. Building on the old Stafford Act model related to natural disasters, we are now preparing it. Ed and I have worked diligently on this issue. General Inge is now following in Ed’s footsteps, and we continue the effort.
We in DoD recognize that if our country is hit at multiple locations, it is likely we’ll get a request for assistance at Presidential direction from FEMA. And we in DoD, through NORTHCOM, have to be prepared with appropriately trained forces to ensure that where there is a contaminated environment or series of such environments, we have military personnel prepared to work shoulder to shoulder with our civilian counterparts within DHS and FEMA to achieve an effective response.
And lastly, number five, improve domestic and international partner capabilities for homeland defense and homeland security. It is a tragic fact of modern military life that we in the Department of Defense have been prepared for more than a half century, probably close to a century in some cases, to conduct warfare in a contaminated environment, going all the way back to the days of the first World War.
The requirement to deal with weapons of mass destruction, or what we today call weapons of mass destruction or a CBRN, chemical/biological/radiological/nuclear high explosive event, was imposed upon us 100 years ago, and therefore, we in the Department of Defense developed a certain expertise unique to the Department of Defense in dealing with those kinds of contaminants. We now have the obligation -- again, both a legal and a moral obligation -- to migrate those kinds of capabilities out into the civilian community, principally to the Department of Homeland Security, so that we as a nation have the collective capability to manage, respond to and remediate weapons of mass destruction if they are employed within our own country or on a distant battlefield.
Those are the five principal objectives that you would find in our draft strategy. And again, taken collectively, what they really total is a picture of modern warfare that is now more directly oriented toward the transnational threat, recognizing that we continue to face the risk of armed conflict with hostile nation states. Nonetheless, this strategy now orients us much more directly toward the emerging, and in some cases imminent, threat of transnational terrorists, potentially armed with weapons of mass destruction, to create a defensive capability that is no longer passive and reactive, but rather one that is a defense in depth, one that is layered and active, where we seize the operational initiative and we keep the enemy in a position of uncertainty as he conducts his reconnaissance.
Now, let me talk to you about some of the capabilities. I come out of a Marine Corps experience and we tend to talk about steel on target or boots on the deck. These are the kinds of capabilities that we have developed within the Department of Defense in the past three years to make our nation safer and to more effectively defend against that transnational terrorist threat.
On September 11, 2001, we were not flying combat air patrols within our domestic air space. As a result of the brutality and the tragedy of September 11, we now recognize that we have to have a continuous defense of our domestic air space, prepared to defeat any terrorist attack that might employ private aviation assets, whether general aviation or a takeover of a commercial airliner.
So each and every day, since September 11, over major American cities and over critical infrastructure, over appropriate locations that require an immediate air defense, we have had F-15s and F-16s in the air, often flown by the Air National Guard, in other cases with additional aircraft on a very short strip alert, prepared to go wheels up and enter the air space in order to provide an effective defense against the kind of attack that we experienced on September 11, and that cost 3,000 innocent men, women and children their lives.
In the air domain, we must continue to press to develop an effective and deployable defense against cruise missiles. Short-range cruise missiles are now proliferating throughout the world. It is not a complex task to place a weapon of mass destruction as the armament upon such a missile. We are moving toward, and will develop, an effective cruise missile defense so that we can protect the American people, our property and our freedoms against that foreseeable method of attack, particularly one that might employ a maritime platform off the coast of the United States, from which a terrorist organization might launch a cruise missile armed with a weapon of mass destruction.
In the maritime domain, we are now prepared to conduct maritime intercept operations in a manner that would have been problematic, it not impossible, just three or four years ago. It seems to me that if terrorists are going to attack the United States with a weapon of mass destruction, particularly a radiological or nuclear weapon of mass destruction, the basic component parts of that weapon will likely be obtained overseas. That’s not a certainly; radiological materials can be obtained within the United States -- not easily, but they can be obtained. However, the probability is that we would face such a threat involving, let’s say, a dirty bomb, where the radiological material was acquired overseas and brought to the United States probably through the maritime domain, across an ocean, en route to the coast of the United States.
Again, a passive, reactive defense would unlikely be successful in defeating such a maritime threat. In recent days you have heard references to a maritime NORAD. The earliest such reference that I have found is one that appeared in an article that was authored by the Chief of Naval Operations about two years ago. Writing in Proceedings, Admiral Clark said, “Forward-deployed naval forces will network with other assets of the Navy and the Coast Guard, as well as the intelligence agencies to identify, track and intercept threats long before they threaten this nation.” And he went on to say that, “To extend the security of the United States far seaward, taking advantage of the time and space purchased by forward-deployed assets to protect the United States from impending threats is our mission requirement.”
I can’t say it better than the CNO did. We cannot think about maritime defense exclusively, or even primarily, in terms of better port security. Better port security is crucial. But in addition to better port security, we must push out the boundaries of our maritime defense so that with a much more focused reliance on evolving technology, for remote detection of WMD, better surveillance and tracking capabilities real time, the development of a common operating picture within the maritime domain, I've been working with my good friend and colleague, Jim Loy, over at DHS in a partnership of DHS and DoD to develop true maritime domain awareness so that we develop a clearer picture of the emerging terrorist threat and anticipate a terrorist ship approaching the United States long before it arrives.
Secretary of Defense, about a year ago, signed an execute order, an ex-ord, that approves in a manner that is consistent with the Proliferation Security Initiative more effective maritime intercept operations designed to detect and defeat weapons of mass destruction on the high seas. In our strategy, we call upon the Combatant Commander at NORTHCOM. These are military decisions now to be made, not civilian decisions. We can present a strategy, but the operational issues should be subject certainly in the first instance, and primarily subject to the judgment of the Combatant Commander.
So we asked the Combatant Commander at NORTHCOM to assess the requirements he anticipates in order to execute effectively his maritime mission, most especially the interception of weapons of mass destruction on the high seas, so that they may be successfully rendered safe. And we asked the Combatant Commander, in his professional military judgment, to come back to the Secretary of Defense early next year with a statement of his resource requirements so that we can benefit from his professional military judgment in terms of the kinds of platforms, both sea-based and aviation assets, surveillance capabilities, boarding parties, their training and equipment, which collectively may be brought to bear upon an enemy maritime target to defeat a weapon of mass destruction before it gets into the port of Long Beach or San Francisco or New York.
And we raised certain issues as to the kinds of platforms that might be appropriate for these new maritime missions. And we suggest for consideration by appropriate military professionals the possible incorporation of LCSes into a maritime defensive posture. We talk about UAVs and various sensor packages that could be mounted aboard UAVs in order to detect at a distance an enemy threat, most especially an enemy threat involving a weapon of mass destruction.
We talk about boarding parties and the training that will be required, not to physically take down a ship, but more routinely to simply board a ship where we believe that there is a potential threat in order to determine conclusively, with hand-held or transportable WMD detection capabilities, whether or not there is in fact a threat aboard such a ship.
And I personally believe in that entire effort there is an emerging, important role for the Naval Reserve, and the Coast Guard most especially, so that we bring together a partnership in order to enhance our MIO capabilities. Certainly, the United States Navy, under command and control of NORTHCOM, will take the lead in international waters, but that effort will be unsuccessful unless we incorporate the combined capabilities of the Navy, the Coast Guard, perhaps the FBI, the Department of Energy and many others to achieve a task organization that is better oriented to the 21st century responsibility to detect and defeat weapons of mass destruction on the high seas.
Finally, in the land domain, when I left the Congress of the United States, I went back to Pennsylvania and I taught for a couple of years, and because I had never read the Federalist Papers, I decided I'd better teach them. It was the only way that I could discipline myself to actually read two or three papers ahead of the kids in order to explain with that vast wisdom that I had acquired what the Papers meant. I recommend to you, though it is a challenge, when you're dealing with the 18th century language of the Federalist Papers, that reading them is not an easy task, but it is an enormously rewarding task. Take a look at Federalist 8, written by Alexander Hamilton. It is an incredibly perceptive analysis of the proper role of the military within domestic American society.
My concern, I thought at the time that I started teaching the course, was that the Founders viewed with alarm a large standing military from the perspective that that military might impose its will and destroy Constitutional freedom by force of arms. And there was such a concern, but in Federalist 8, Alexander Hamilton presents a much more thoughtful argument. His concern, expressed in Federalist 8, was that if we allowed the military within our own country to play a too decisive role, if we became too heavily dependent upon the military for domestic security, particularly in the border areas. In 1787, the concern was physical security along the western border. And Hamilton argued that we should not become overly dependent upon the military for domestic security because if the situation were to emerge that only the military could guarantee the domestic security of the American people, the American people would become dependent upon the military for such security, would deeply appreciate such security, would soon recognize the military as the saviors of society, and that by choice, not force of arms, the American people would soon make the transition, in Hamilton’s words, from saviors to superiors, that excessive dependence upon the military would raise the role of the military in domestic society and, consequently, degrade the role of civilian leadership and Constitutional freedom.
Now, when I taught that course, I told the kids that Federalist 8 was an anachronism, that it was a concern 200 years ago, but not a concern today. And then September 11 occurred, and we had to revisit that issue to determine what is the role of the military in terms of providing domestic security, and how do we achieve the important mission requirements that are appropriately assigned to the military without usurping the responsibility or the leadership of civilian authorities.
Recognizing that that requires a balance, over the last three years we have developed certain capabilities that we believe strike that balance. On September 11, 2001, we did not have military forces in the United States trained and equipped for a quick reaction within our own country. We do have such forces today. We routinely have soldiers and Marines on alert, ready to deploy within our own country to defeat a foreign terrorist attack on our own soil if it is determine that the primary defensive capabilities within civilian law enforcement, and resident as well within cannot adequately protect the country. It would take an extraordinary circumstance of the magnitude of September 11, or greater, for us to deploy such military capabilities on the ground within the United States. We’ve not had to do that with active duty military forces within our own country in 150 years. But the Constitution does provide for it. We are prepared to conduct war-fighting operations on our own soil under the extraordinary circumstance that foreign terrorists had penetrated our country, and under the circumstance where we had concluded that civilian law enforcement could not adequately protect us from such an attack. An example would be credible intelligence that multiple nuclear power plants were subject to a credible and imminent Al-Qaeda attack. We would be prepared under that circumstance, potentially, to deploy military forces as part of a coordinated air/ground defense of such facilities.
As I mentioned earlier, we need to be prepared for multiple CBRN response. I see many good friends in the audience from NORTHCOM, and other related capabilities within the United States Army and the other services that would migrate to NORTHCOM if we had to provide consequence management following multiple CBRN attacks.
JTF-Civil Support is an emerging capability, located at Ft. Monroe, Virginia, a subordinate command of NORTHCOM, the largest, most competent capability we have in the United States, to respond to a major CBRN attack. JTF-Civil Support and CBIRF within the Marine Corps are providing mentoring capabilities to the National Guard and other military capabilities, First Army and Fifth Army, to ensure that we will have multiple task forces, robust in size, well trained, well equipped, with incredibly courageous men and women, working in conjunction with the CSTs in the National Guard, and most especially in close partnership with FEMA and civilian capabilities, so that we have a coordinated rapid response to one or more WMD attacks that might be conducted by foreign terrorists within our own country.
We’re not there yet. We need additional training and equipment. We need to reorient some of our thinking. We need to recognize that from the enemy’s perspective, the United States is not a backwater, we’re not a separate element of the international battle space. From the enemy’s perspective, there is only one battle space -- it’s global. And the United States is an integrated element of that battle space, and, I would argue, the preeminent battlefield.
Three thousand Americans died here in the United States on September 11. Not just Americans. I should be cautious in my description. Americans and citizens from many, dozens of other countries died on September 11. That was not an aberration from the enemy’s perspective. Their goal is not to confront us conventionally. They do not seek a war of attrition. What they choose to do is inflict brutality upon our people so that they are then able to degrade our political will to resist. They want to break us. And they choose to do that by executing attacks, when possible, within our own country.
So unlike the three decades that I've worn the uniform, where we thought only about power projection, we now have to recognize that weapons are so transportable, and the intent of the enemy is so clear, that we in the United States now live in a portion of the preeminent battle space when viewed from the enemy’s perspective. They want to hit us hard, they want to hit us here, they want to do it with brutality and they want to break our political will to resist.
That means that our defenses within the United States, civilian and military, must be integrated into a global concept of the battle space. I have said on many occasions, wrongly, that there is a home game and an away game. Many of my good friends have used that analogy as well. That’s an inaccurate analogy. There is no home game, no away game. There is a global conflict with Al-Qaeda, and potentially others, where we make a mistake if we distinguish this area of conflict from other areas of engagement. We must recognize that from the enemy’s perspective there is an integrated battle space and we must reach out and touch the enemy at the earliest opportunity to shape that battle space and defeat the threat at the greatest possible distance from the United States.
Finally, I mentioned the emerging, really, truly the transformational responsibilities that will likely be assigned to the National Guard. I think Steve Blum is going to be here today. I don’t know if Steve is out in the audience right now, but Lieutenant General Blum, who is Chief of the Guard Bureau has-- don’t tell him I said nice things about him, if he’s not there, but he’s exercised incredible transformational leadership in terms of a recognition that a force structure that was created, largely to augment and reinforce the active duty Army and the active duty Air Force during the Cold War had to be transformed so that the missions of power projection and homeland defense could be properly addressed within a revitalized institution.
When I served in the Congress, there were those who argued that we should reduce the size of the National Guard; we didn’t need eight Guard divisions. I don’t hear that kind of argument being presented today. The National Guard plays a vital role, incredibly brave men and women from the Guard are fighting on behalf of our country at this very moment in Iraq. The Guard will continue to be a balanced force engaged in overseas war fighting, but also with homeland defense missions, because the Guard is geographically dispersed throughout the United States, can rapidly and flexibly respond in state active duty status or Title 32 under command and control of the governor at DoD expense, in order to provide an immediate military defense that can augment and reinforce civilian law enforcement authorities in full compliance with Posse Comitatus.
In short, we have layers of defense -- civilian law enforcement, the National Guard working with civilian law enforcement, and ultimately quick reaction forces drawn from the active duty military capabilities, so that when taken cumulatively, those capabilities are able to defeat any foreseeable Al-Qaeda threat.
The Guard is going to be developing additional civil support teams for the assessment of WMD contaminants. We now have, almost have, 12 CERFPs, those are replications of the Marine Corps’s CBIRF capability, so that our country will not have one CBIRF, we’ll have 13 of them. The National Guard, today, plays a more important role in our nation’s defense, across a broader range of missions than at any time in our country’s history, and I expect that kind of integration of Guard capabilities into the total force to continue well into the foreseeable future.
The last point that I would mention is this: We cannot possibly achieve a defeat of Al-Qaeda through the effective employment of military capabilities alone. Our fight with Al-Qaeda is a national effort. It’s not a governmental effort, it certainly isn't a military effort. To defeat Al-Qaeda and other foreseeable transnational terrorist groups that might wage war against the United States requires the collective capability of our entire society, our economy, our private and public sectors and, yes, the employment of military capabilities, but not in isolation from all of those other tools of defense.
In 1929, Winston Churchill visited my hometown, and Dr. Pfaltzgraff indicated that I'm from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the Lehigh Valley, Bethlehem Steel, and in 1929, Winston Churchill visited Bethlehem Steel because, unlike so many others, he anticipated what would then become World War II, and he knew that to defeat what became the Axis powers would require the might of American industry. So he toured Bethlehem Steel in 1929, almost 75 years ago to this day; as a matter of fact, within a day or two it’s precisely 75 years.
He assessed those industrial capabilities because he knew they would be vital to success in a war that he could only dimly imagine at that point in time. Similarly, if we are to defeat Al-Qaeda, and we will, it will require technology drawn from the private sector that is only now in the process of development, most especially the ability to detect weapons of mass destruction at a distance.
We need better biometric identification. Our enemy today is clever, brutal and no longer in uniform. Identification of the enemy requires new tools, and biometric data, consistent with appropriate privacy concerns, can provide a tremendous capability to distinguish between friend and foe in the 21st century requirement of engaging and defeating transnational terrorists who no longer wear conventional uniforms.
In a range of areas, we need help from the private sector, and they include improved chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear countermeasures; better protective suits for military and civilian missions conducted in a WMD-contaminated environment; improved non-lethal weaponry. The Marine Corps has taken a lead on behalf of DoD, and we’re not just talking about blunt trauma non-lethal weaponry. We are now talking about very innovative systems, area denial systems, effective and humane use of microwave systems that would allow us to protect a site against a terrorist attack without endangering innocent civilians, either overseas if employed there, or domestically, a much better alternative in close proximity to civilians than the use of traditional deadly force.
When you use an M-16 to protect a site, there is always the chance that a stray round, which will travel a mile, will travel into a surrounding civilian community. Overseas or here at home. And what you intend to be a security measure can become, inadvertently, life-threatening to the surrounding civilian community. We are developing non-lethal weapons that would allow us to protect such sites without endangering the surrounding civilian community.
We need more affordable, more effective communications equipment necessary to support complete interoperability of communications between civilian and military personnel working in the same AOR -- first responders, state HAZMAT personnel, emergency managers at the state and local level, the National Guard, Title 10 forces. A vast array of capabilities will be co-located in the same AOR; they need to talk to each other, they need to be able to transfer data and graphics in an effective way. And we are working with the private sector on that element of interoperability so that a first responder with a good map can transfer that map electronically to a Title 10 military commander who has the need for that information. We’re not there yet, but again we’re making great progress.
And we need better equipment for MANPAD defenses, as well as superior equipment for mass casualty extraction from a contaminated area. Transporting non-ambulatory patients from a contaminated area, from a hot zone is incredibly labor-intensive. CBIRF has trained to that mission. A few of our other military units have begun to train to that mission. But we need better technology in order to employ superior equipment, as well as raw muscle, in the movement of large numbers of injured personnel, patients, casualties, following the contamination of a terrorist attack.
In these and many other areas our success as a nation will, as was the case in the context of Churchill’s visit of 1929, be wholly dependent upon the effective integration of private sector capabilities, most especially technology, into the overall national effort, including DoD’s mission requirements.
To come back to the questions that I presented at the beginning, have I been surprised that we’ve not been attacked? The answer is yes. Have we been lucky? No. Our successful defense of the past three years has not been dependent upon luck. Rather, it has relied upon power projection, a seizure of operational initiative from the enemy, and the raw courage of young Americans in uniform. Luck has had nothing to do with it.
Thank you. [Applause]
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
AVON WILLIAMS: Secretary McHale, Avon Williams, General Counsel of the Army. You spoke of some of the technological challenges that we face in providing for the homeland defense, and I'm curious as to, from your perspective as a lawyer, what are some of the whether or not we need to contemplate different major changes in not only domestic law, but public international law to effectuate full and comprehensive protective environment, especially with special reference to Title 10 versus Title 32 authorities, Patriot Act and Posse Comitatus on the domestic side, and maritime law treaties on the international side.
JASON SHERMAN: Secretary McHale, Jason Sherman from Defense News. I wonder if you might say what expectations you have for this strategy to reorder the procurement priorities of the Defense Department, and specifically what budget cycle you hope to see some of the changes that you have called for to be implemented.
__: Mr. Secretary, what is the response of Mexico and Canada to their inclusion in the Northern Command’s area of responsibility?
SECRETARY McHALE: I'm not sure I heard all the question, sir. The response of Mexico and Canada in what respect?
__: They are included, their land mass.
DR. PFALTZGRAFF: As you know, we have Canadian and Mexican representation later here to talk about this, too.
SECRETARY McHALE: Three pitches, let me take a couple swings here and see how I do. First of all, with regard to the questions from the General Counsel of the Army, with regard to domestic and international law, I promised Jim Haynes when I took this position that despite having practiced law off and on for about a quarter of a century -- more off than on -- that I would not practice law in my current position. So I offer you the perspective not of a lawyer, but of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense. I can’t duck that one.
We as a department, and I personally, have taken the position that there is not a need to amend the Posse Comitatus Act. Posse Comitatus, if I recall correctly, was enacted in 1878. It was designed in the Reconstruction era to limit the role of the military in domestic American society and specifically to preclude the military from engaging in law enforcement-related activities. It was also meant to husband, to conserve the military resources for military missions and not to expend those resources on domestic law enforcement activities.
What the Posse Comitatus statute says is that what we call Title 10 military forces, active duty and reserved component forces in Title 10 cannot engage in law enforcement-related activities without a criminal offense, unless the law enforcement-related activities have been expressly authorized by the Constitution or by intervening statutory law.
There have been many exceptions so grafted upon the general principle of Posse Comitatus. Many of those exceptions deal with weapons of mass destruction, counter narcotics, restoration of civil order following a civil disturbance. There are so many exceptions to Posse Comitatus that we have not yet identified a DoD mission that we believe to be legitimate that could not be exercised in the context of the global war on terrorism in full conformity with Posse Comitatus.
So the Secretary of Defense, I believe, has testified, he certainly has said in public forums, I have said in Congressional testimony, that we are more than willing to continue to under the restrictions of Posse Comitatus as written. However, there are many fine members of Congress who are skeptical with regard to that analysis, and who believe that Congressional hearings, or perhaps even Congressional amendment of the Posse Comitatus statute might be in order. We do not yet share that opinion, and I don’t mean to put emphasis upon the word yet. We do not see a reason to amend the statute, but will certainly cooperate with the Congress in any review of the statute that legislative leaders deem to be appropriate.
With regard to Title 10 and Title 32, there is now language-- the National Defense Authorization Act contains a substantial, a significant amendment to Title 32. Title 32 is a status of the National Guard where historically the Guard has been paid by the Department of Defense, certified in competency by the Department of Defense, but under command and control of the governor and exempt from Posse Comitatus. Title 32, in short, has been a training status where Guardsmen were prepared for their ultimate Title 10 missions, were they to be brought to federal service.
The amendment that has now passed in both Houses, included in the Conference Report, would transform Title 32 so that it would not only be a training status, but an operational status. And in fact, under the current provisions of Title 32, we operationally employed the National Guard for security purposes at the G8 Summit at Sea Island, Georgia, the Democratic Convention in Boston, the Republican Convention in New York and we anticipate in the current threat period there will be additional missions assigned to the Guard in Title 32. That’s a historic and imminent change in the preexisting language of Title 32.
With regard to, and forgive me, I'm going to try to move quickly, with regard to procurement priorities, the question raised by the second gentleman, I do anticipate that there will be changes in procurement as a result of the ultimate adoption of (a) homeland defense and civil support strategy. I cannot, and dare not, provide a specific answer to that question because it’s in draft form at this point. I don’t know what decision will be made by the Secretary of Defense. It’s his call, not mine. He’ll review the strategy that we have prepared, and in terms of future procurement, future acquisition, the decision as to how those acquisition efforts will be effected will be entirely the result of the Secretary’s final determination with regard to the strategy.
So it’s a good question, but a bit premature. My hope is that in about six months I can give you an honest and straightforward answer following the approval of the strategy by the Secretary of Defense.
And lastly, Mexico and Canada. Again, I turn to my friend Ed Anderson out there. Ed is the recently retired Deputy Commander at NORTHCOM. Looks pretty good in a suit, has a decent haircut, cleaned up pretty well, but until quite recently he was a Lieutenant General Deputy Commander at NORTHCOM, and he and I on many occasions dealt with NORAD issues.
We have had a long, extraordinary partnership with Canada in terms of our integrated air defense of the two nations, and we hope, and I believe based on statements that we’ve heard from Canadian officials, that we’ll be able to expand that relationship, not necessarily under the formal auspices of NORAD, but expand that relationship to include, potentially, cross-border consequence management response capabilities and also Canadian integration into that concept of a maritime NORAD that we talked about a little bit earlier.
With regard to Mexico, we ought not to superficially view two independent nation states as if they were mirror images of one another. We have a distinct relationship with Canada, and a similarly unique relationship with Mexico. Those relationships exist within vastly different historic contexts. All of which is to say we very much look forward to a close level of cooperation with Mexico in our integrated effort, our common effort to defeat transnational terrorism.
I met just day before yesterday with the CNO of the Mexican Navy, Marina, and our discussion focused upon our joint interest in decisively defeating transnational terrorists. We recognize, however, that there are special constitutional and political sensitivities in Mexico that we must respect as we move forward in that relationship, and that we ought to be attentive to and sensitive to those historic concerns.
So the message that we have communicated to Mexican military authorities is we are looking for a much closer level of engagement, but the pace at which we achieve that engagement will be set entirely by the judgment and the willingness of your political leadership in Mexico to enter into such cooperation.
But clearly, the defense of the United States is enhanced by close cooperation with our friends and our allies both to the north and to the south.
And with regard to the specific element of the question, the land mass, the inclusion of the land masses of Canada and Mexico within the NORTHCOM AOR should not be seen in any way as a diminution or a degradation of sovereignty on the part of those nation states. It’s simply an assigned area of responsibility. We do it globally so that there are military commanders prepared to respond anywhere in the world if the United States is threatened, either at home in the case of NORTHCOM and PACOM, or overseas in terms of our geographic Combatant Commands.
We are fully respectful of both Canadian and Mexican sovereignty and the drawing of those lines within the UCP should not be interpreted as a slight or a degradation of our profound respect for the sovereignty that is justifiably defended by and subject to the protection of two other sovereign nation states.