6 years later, Hart laments status of national security

Former senator forecast catastrophic attack

M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News

Published January 31, 2007 at midnight

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WASHINGTON - An anniversary will pass today with no balloons, speeches or fanfare.

It was six years ago when a commission led by former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart completed a report, predicting a catastrophic terrorist attack on the U.S. and calling for sweeping changes to protect the homeland.

The U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century report received some attention after its release, but it got far more nearly eight months later, when the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks turned homeland security into household words.

On Tuesday, Hart noted the anniversary of the report. But he did so with great lament. At a House Appropriations subcommittee, he testified that the U.S. government had adopted only a handful of the 50 recommendations.

"It's just not acceptable" Hart told the Rocky Mountain News later. "People are dying."

The report thrust Hart and his co- chairman, former Sen. Warren Rudman, a New Hampshire Republican, into the uncomfortable role of telling the public they had told them so.

In the aftermath of 9/11, the White House and the U.S. Congress scrambled to fulfill one of the high-profile recommendations - creating what is now called the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate an array of agencies that protect the country.

But Rudman said the new department has not lived up to the blueprints that the commission helped draw. And he and Hart said the country is not as safe as it could be because dozens of other, lower-profile recommendations largely were ignored.

Among them was a call to pour massive resources into science, technology and educational systems that ultimately would help protect the homeland. And President Bush has disregarded a key recommendation that the National Guard be used as the backbone of homeland security.

"We all know where the National Guard is today," Hart testified, alluding to the Iraq war.

"It's not securing the homeland."

Members of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, now controlled by Democrats, sympathized with Hart and Rudman on Tuesday.

They focused on the inability to get a reliable system in place to let federal, state and local first responders communicate during a disaster. They also addressed the need to get the private sector - such as power companies, oil refineries and transportation companies - to protect their own facilities.

Still, by the time he excused himself from the hearing to go catch a plane, Hart sounded less than hopeful when asked about today's anniversary.

"If you're looking for a mood piece," Hart told a reporter, "you're talking to a frustrated man."

Excerpts from the report

An archive of the Hart-Rudman commission's work can be found at www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/nssg

"A direct attack against American citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter century. The risk is not only death and destruction but also a demoralization that could undermine U.S. global leadership."

"As it enters the 21st century, the United States finds itself on the brink of an unprecedented crisis of competence in government. . . . Both civilian and military institutions face growing challenges, albeit of different forms and degrees, in recruiting and retaining America's most promising talent."

"The stakes are high. We of this Commission believe that many thousands of American lives, U.S. leadership among the community of nations, and the fate of U.S. national security itself are at risk unless the President and the Congress join together to implement the recommendations set forth in this report."

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