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Topic: High-tech U.S. security center to open | Topic page views:
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Dan Rockwell
Hoka hey! - heyokas!
Stamford, CT, USA
1750 posts, Dec 2001
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posted 05-10-2002 02:45 AM
   
High-tech U.S. security center to openJoseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published 5/9/2002 A new, highly secretive facility to monitor terrorist threats and coordinate responses will become operational in the next few weeks, connecting for the first time nearly all federal agencies with state and city authorities using state-of-the-art technology.
Set in the 38-acre Nebraska Avenue naval complex off Ward Circle, the Homeland Security Coordination Center will be home to more than 100 workers, who will be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
"By the time we get done — this is still a work in progress — we'll be able to connect with just about every conceivable public institution in the country," said Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, who led reporters on a tour of the new facility yesterday.
Mr. Ridge, appointed to the post in October and a daily adviser to President Bush, said he is not frustrated by Congress' repeated demands that he testify about his activities.
"I'm not authorized to be frustrated. I'm authorized to be patient, persistent — and I am both," Mr. Ridge said.
Yesterday's tour of the empty facility was an attempt by the Bush administration to exhibit the unclassified work Mr. Ridge has been coordinating. But the director was unapologetic when asked who should have oversight of his office.
"I believe the president should have a homeland security adviser that's accountable and answerable to the president, and then accessible to the Congress," Mr. Ridge said.
The new center is split into several groups, housed in a three-story, red brick building in the Navy complex at the intersection of Cryptologic Court and Intelligence Way.
The Threat Monitoring Center — a expansive room with a bank of televisions, numerous workstations with computers and nine clocks — will be manned by representatives of more than a dozen federal agencies, among them the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the departments of Energy, Transportation and State and the National Security Agency.
Although the offices and cubicles are now vacant, a sign on a door reveals the top-secret nature of the work to be conducted there: "No Classified Discussion Outside of Door."
Just four miles or so from the White House, which has a Situation Room where the president and senior administration officials can go to discuss national crises, the new coordination center will act as a clearinghouse for information.
"We needed to be within a strategic distance of the White House, but not too far away," said Carl Buchholz, executive secretary for the Homeland Security Council. "We're doing a lot of things that the Situation Room has not done to date, especially with state and local government."
The occupants of the Situation Room could evacuate the White House if necessary and regroup at the Nebraska Avenue complex, he said. Officials would not say whether the complex has bomb-proof bunkers, but the facility — surrounded only by a chain-link fence topped by a few strands of barbed wire — can be locked down.
The Coordination Center, another facet of the building that goes into action when an incident is deemed worthy of attention by the Homeland Security Center, has not been activated to date, but it has monitored some events, including one in California.
When a mile-long freight train collided head-on with a double-deck Metrolink commuter train last month, killing two persons and injuring more than 260, the Coordination Center began monitoring the nation, looking for other train wrecks that might signal a terrorist attack. None occurred.
Officials said the new center also would likely get involved in major incidents, but left those undefined. One senior intelligence officer said: "We'll know them when we see them."
But the $14 million center can only work, officials said, if states and municipalities have emergency operation centers of their own with comparable equipment. Mr. Bush has asked Congress to approve $56 million to equip such centers, a request Ridge spokesman Gordon Johndroe said "needs to be passed now." http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020509-933637.htm
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Duncan Kunz
Senior Member
582 posts, Oct 2000
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posted 05-10-2002 09:46 AM
One of the reasons our government was set up with three branches was to ensure that each would "play off" against the others, thus limiting any one agency (or individual) from getting too powerful. Two hundred thirteen years' worth of experience has shown that this leads to slow and cumbersome operation - but also a strong guarantee of the primacy of the people over a fragmented system. In other words, the plan worked.The same philosophy is inherent in the Federal system itself, with the states having (theoretically) the bulk of the responsibility for laws and governance. Different states would be able to use differing approaches; and the Federal government supposedly would be responsible for a few "big picture" items such as defense, and providing some sort of Constitutional oversight in the case of armed rebellion, etc. Inefficient? Yes - but that was considered a small price to pay for a new country that considered personal liberties to be paramount over a smooth-running Big Brother. And most other aspects of this multi-layered government, including law enforcement, mimicked the fragmented approach as well. Law enforcement, of course, is supposed to be the Good Guys against the Bad Guys, and really can suffer from a fragmented approach. Anyone who has tried - and failed - to chase a delinquent spouse through several states in order to get support for a child can attest to that. A Bad Guy gets locked up for a violent crime, gets back on the street and commits another violent crime - and the prosecuting entity may not even know of the perp's prior record. So he gets a slap on the wrist, and six months later gets out of the slammer again -- and kills somebody. A highly-efficient, multigovernment-coordinated law enforcement approach seems fine on the surface: The Arizona driver with the three DUI's can't get her license renewed in Nebraska; and the California deadbeat dad can be tackled by the kids' mom with help from the system in Illinois. Everybody wins except the Bad Guys. Except that the Bad Guys aren't quite so obvious anymore. Ever since the sixties, we've seen a disturbing rise in labeling as criminals people who are annoying to the government. It's not just the people that choose to medicate themselves with a joint rather than a margarita; it's the people who hold the wrong views. Consider:
One particular guy who refused to be dragged off to a stupid war made the comment "No Viet Cong ever called me a nigger", and it cost him a fortune. If he hadn't been the heavyweight boxing champion of the Milky Way Galaxy at the time, he'd probably still be breaking rocks or fashioning license plates.A bunch of harmless nuts, including over a dozen kids, were roasted in their home because the Government believed that their chief was an illegal gun dealer, child molester, and all-around jerk. The fact that they tried - and failed - numerous times to prove these allegations didn't stop them from murdering the Branch Davidians, bulldozing the remaining evidence, prosecuting the survivors, and lying to this day about their activities. Another fruitcake, whose "crime" consisted of a desire to be left alone and to be with his own kind of people, had his 14-year-old son shot in the back by trespassing federal agents, then saw his wife, with another child in her arms, have her head blown apart by a federal sniper.
The Bad Guys are now whomever the government says they are. Weird religions, politics, cults, behavior - all the things that used to mark them as harmless eccentrics - are now considered as signs of criminality, or, at least, signs of a propensity toward crime. . Don't like or trust the government? Think that you should be free to practice your own brand of religion? Think taxes are wrong? Sounds pretty criminal to me. And that's the real problem with the new "Homeland Security" bit and the "Coordination Center" bit and the computers linking every cop with every other cop and every state or federal bureaucrat with his brothers and sisters across the continent. We are getting chillingly efficient, and, given the computers and budgets and high-tech gadgets, we're going to make it really tough on the Bad Guys. Just wait and see. The problem is, we can all become Bad Guys ourselves - just by ticking off the wrong set of people.
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Duncan Kunz / duncankunz@cox.net
Mesa AZ / 480-891-2525
[Edited 1 times, lastly by Duncan Kunz on 05-10-2002]
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Scanner
benign presence
Shreveport, LA
207 posts, Sep 2001
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posted 05-10-2002 12:25 PM
Yep...now all we have to do is tick off our friendly Neighborhood Watch/Citizens Corps members and POOF! we're a possible terrorist and our name is on the watch list...Like the Bible says, it'll be brother against brother, etc. Not a pretty sight. Scanner
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Nirvana
Senior Member
Seattle, WA
180 posts, Nov 2001
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posted 05-10-2002 12:31 PM
Duncan,I agree that the three branches of federal government should theoretically produce the best government via the system of "checks and balances". What concerns me is that many (but not all) government people appear to be too cozy with their corporate and rich-buddy counterparts. Throw in shadowy organizations such as Bilderberger (meets in D.C. at the end of this month), the CFR, and others and we have too much continuity, too much decision making pressure via groups vs. intellectual individuals idealistically driven to create the best possible country for the masses vs. help their favorite contractors (run on sentence, I know). Also of concern is the global mandates via "UN Resolution". I am beginning to feel the Executive Branch is given too much power. A president can appoint his men/women to all departments and bureaus. He can wage wars as he desires without a declaration of war, or circumvent the US process all together with a "UN Resolution" or probably even NATO resolution.
He can do a lot with Executive Orders alone. Only six companies own all major media in this country. That may soon shrink due to loosening of FCC regulations. What people must remember is that media organizations are not non-profit! They are capable of bias and do have bias to further their own gain and ties with people that help them make money. Trust in these organizations have a tremendous impact on the thinking of the general public. They rarely ask too probing questions any more, such as demanding to know who shorted the airline stocks just before 9/11?! They let government people get away with too much! We live in a democracy, but not particularly an open government. Far too much is deemed secret or national security. If you look not even very hard, there appears to be an intelligence and agenda going on that spans time and mere individual candidates... Check out the latest Justin column too: http://www.antiwar.com/justin/justincol.html
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Duncan Kunz
Senior Member
582 posts, Oct 2000
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posted 05-10-2002 04:12 PM
No argument here, Nirvana.There's a big difference between theory and actuality in the way our government's set up. We've had an "imperial presidency" starting as far back as Lincoln, and, since 1933, it's gotten continually worse. The executive has way too much power, but in a way, it's because Congress hasn't stepped up to the plate as much as it could've. The most obvious case in point is "war". The last real war we had (being declared by Congress and all) ended when I was less than a year old. Ever since then, it's been "police actions" or other similar foolishness that we manage to get ourselves into without anything from Congress but a few squeaks of outrage (but big budgets, none-the-less). I can say from first-hand experience that someone who's been dead for a while in a 'police action' looks and smells just as bad as someone killed in a real war.... And it's also true that the moneyed corporate interests, including companies like my employer, play a way-too-big role in the way we make laws and policies. But it's not just big business; big unions, the AARP, the NRA (of which I'm a member), American Trial Lawyers Association, the AMA, environmental groups,... everyone is falling over themselves to donate money to politicians hoping for a payoff down the road (and getting it, too). It's interesting that the US is the only large democracy with a federal system; most other democracies have a parliamentary system. There's a lot to be said for that approach; a simple vote of no confidence in the parliament forces the entire government to call for new elections and resign. Also, with a parliamentary system, coalitions seem to be more prevalent, which provides even a smaller political party with the opportunity to join a government and get at least one cabinet ministry. You see this in Germany, where the Christian Democrats had to bring in the Greens to get a majority in the lower house; now the German Minister of the Environment is a Green. Personally, I think the Greens're a bad choice, but I do like the idea of the government power being spread among more than the two big tweedledum and tweedledee parties we have here in the US.
[Edited 2 times, lastly by Duncan Kunz on 05-10-2002]
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Nirvana
Senior Member
Seattle, WA
180 posts, Nov 2001
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posted 05-10-2002 06:09 PM
You are right about congress. My favorite committee is the House Reform committee, which is chaired by a republican, Dan Burton.Even the most independent branch, the judicial, seems to be faltering under increasing political bias, sadistic judges, and corruption. The house just passed a 400 billion 'defense' spending bill. Included in that bill is an exemption to the marine mammals protection act. If that provision gets through the Senate, the underwater sound blasting devices will go forth and start blasting the whales and other animal's hearing systems. So many people have lost touch with the needs of the Earth. I would love to see a parliamentary system here in the USA. That seems to be the best system of checks and balances. Sometimes I watch the British parliament proceedings on cable television. Tony Blair has to sit amongst his peers and get up and talk spontaneously and intelligently (which he does) about the issues of the day. Could you imagine George W. having to do that??  )
No spin-doctors, cabinet members, press conference chiefs to help him, no staged debates, just raw brains and verbal skill... We live with a nicely staged government brought to most by their local newspaper, CNN, FOX TV, Dan Rather, etc. The disturbing thing is that many people don't look at each issue in depth. They just believe what the mainstream media and government propaganda tells them. Our general populace is suffering from lack of education and probably many just don't care as long as they continue to get their basic necessities.
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