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.

Major General Timothy J. Lowenberg
Adjutant General of Washington State,
and Chairman, Homeland Security Committee
Adjutants General Association of the United States

Introduction By: Dr. Jacquelyn K. Davis

Major General Timothy J. Lowenberg: Thank you, Jackie. Fellow conferees, as with every previous speaker, I've viewed the purpose statement for this panel’s discussion with some bemusement, particularly as it seemed to suggest the bright line between homeland defense and homeland security. I was really taken with General Anderson’s suggestion that what we’re talking about within the broader sphere of homeland defense is an area of overlap with homeland security. The Defense Science Board’s summer study in 2003, in which the Secretary of Defense asked the Board to specifically address the issues homeland defense and homeland security and the roles of the National Guard and other Reserve components was pointing with alarm to the fact that an overly rigid fixation on distinctions between defense and security not only perpetuate, but in some cases create, gaps and seams that create great vulnerabilities to the safety and security of the American public. We simply can’t afford the gaps that exist.

Notwithstanding those rice bowls and turf wars and fights over resources, the fact remains, as Secretary McHale told us so clearly this morning, the battle space is a global battle space, and the continental United States and the North American continent are key elements of that global battle space. So the Defense Science Board called for leveraging the unique capabilities of the National Guard and other federal Reserve components, and it did so -- and I was taken with Mr. Williams’s question after, I think, the second panel this morning -- with specific reference to the National Guard, saying that the National Guard should be used, to use the words of the DSB, to the maximum extent possible in Title 32 status, which means under state control, for all domestic military operations.

In making that recommendation to the Secretary of Defense, the DSB had four things in mind, some of which have been alluded to by previous speakers even on this panel. One is the Guard’s established command and control and communications infrastructure and capabilities. The other is the Guard’s demonstrated record of dealing effectively in response to catastrophic emergencies and disasters in the United States, well before 9/11, and during the response to 9/11, and since.

The Guard’s statutory and responsibility under existing state laws in several states and territories, and the relationships that Adjutants General and other senior National Guard commanders have not only with governors, but with other local and state and federal officials and influence leaders, all of which suggest that the National Guard and the resources of other federal Reserve components can and should be leveraged in a very pragmatic way in executing what Secretary McHale referred to as a more global or enterprise-wide layered defense strategy.

What I'd like to do is talk to you about some of the ways in which the National Guard can be appropriately leveraged to, again, take pragmatic advantage of what is already there as part of the national stake.

This is a reflection of the Joint Forces headquarters in my particular state. You’ll find a Joint Forces headquarters, a standing Joint Forces headquarters in every state and territory, in which the subordinate Air National Guard and Army National Guard commanders are responsible for generating combat-ready forces in support of any of the combatant commanders to include Northern Command, but in particular in the CONUS AOR, to provide ready forces for the Joint Forces commander, that being the Adjutant General, either for military operations in support of civil authorities independent of Northern Command, or in synchronization with Northern Command, or in support of Northern Command, depending upon the scale of the operations.

What you will see in this diagram, that you will find in the majority of the states and territories in the Joint Forces headquarters, but I dare say not in any other military headquarters, is the embedding of the civilian emergency management and consequence management functions, because in fact one of the hats I wear, and that a majority of Adjutants General wear, is in addition to our military command responsibilities, we are the state’s designed senior emergency management official responsible for the entire portfolio of emergency management functions in our state.

Recognizing that particularly in an era of bio-terrorism threats, and lethality of unprecedented proportions that can be applied domestically, that time to need to critical, that every emergency is local, that every terrorist attack site is local, that every response is local, every defend, prevent, deter, dissuade, respond, mitigate--

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SIDE B

--is local at its core, the positioning of forces becomes important, because a response that is 48 or 72 or 96 hours after the event means that the responders are most likely going to be assisting with mass burials and other catastrophic mop-up operations.

So when you take a look at the map of where active duty installations currently are -- this is pre- the next BRAC cycle -- you will see there are vast regions in which there is no active duty Air Force physical presence; there are even larger regions throughout the United States in which there is no significant active duty Army installation. And of course, the Navy, the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard physical locations, the major installations are largely confined to a few maritime port areas on the outer perimeter of the continental United States.

By contrast, the National Guard has a physical presence in every population center of every state and territory throughout the United States, and this graphic is purely illustrative. There is one star for every three National Guard installations. If I put a star up for every installation, you would not be able to see the underlying map.

These Joint Forces headquarters were used successfully in responding to the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in New York City. It’s the Joint Forces headquarters that oversaw the military deployment of nearly 10,000 New York National Guard members, still 500 on duty to this very day. It’s the Joint Forces headquarters that pushed out the military response and support to civil authority in Florida most recently, with up to 6,000 National Guard, Army and Air National Guard responders for nearly two months; with, by the way, National Guard assistance from 13 other states for the supported state, Florida, under the Emergency Management Assistance Compact.

And from these Joint Forces headquarters, we not only deploy quick reaction forces and rapid reaction forces, and the civil support teams, as we did for assisting with the Space Shuttle disaster recovery, but we also deploy mass medical decontamination units that are trained and certified by First and Fifth Armies, ready to go in response to a domestic crisis. So the strategic placement of forces suggests that we would be smart in the United States to leverage this capability.

I mentioned the interstate Compact. The Emergency Management Assistance Compact is the largest of all of the multiple layered, mutual aid agreements that exist among the states with the Charter of Congress. Governors Linda Lingle in Hawaii and Arnold Schwarzenegger in California are sponsoring legislation in the upcoming sessions to make Hawaii and California the last two of the states and territories to join the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, and you’ll see that in the Pacific Northwest-- I was so happy to see the Secretary from Canada as our luncheon speaker, because the Pacific Northwest emergency management arrangement for us includes British Columbia and the Yukon Territory in western Canada. I provide assistance to British Columbia authorities almost every year, and on almost a near equal basis, I accept assistance as appropriate from British Columbia officials in support of emergency operations in our state.

The command and control arrangements that are in place for the National Guard also are supported by a very robust IT system. This happens to be, again, illustrative. There’s one mark on this map for every three distance training technology point facilities, and these essentially are VTC complexes with up to, roughly, 35 separate operating screens. What this gives us is, in addition to the secure, as well as unsecure, VTC data and facsimile suites that the Department of Homeland Security placed in every governor’s office last December, and in every state emergency operations center, and in every Adjutants General office, this gives us the ability now, in my state for example, to push and pull information and create a virtual joint operation center, or joint information center, not only in the governor’s office, in my office, in my conference room, in my state emergency operations center, which is at our Joint Forces headquarters, at our Joint Forces headquarters joint operations center, and in ten other locations strategically sited throughout our state.

Imagine the leveraging power of tapping that into Northern Command’s site picture and their situational awareness of what’s going on, not only in my state, but replicating in every other state and territory throughout the nation. And I'm proud to say that we’re working with Major General Dale Meyerrose, the J-6 at US Northern Command for the Joint CONUS Coordination Communications Enterprise Project that all of the 6’s of the respective services, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff have subscribed to, and which, by the way, was a central recommendation of the 2003 Summer Study by the Defense Science Board.

This is a true network, with hubs, that is self-healing. So it’s not something that’s combined to an individual state, and this is something that is already a sunk cost capital investment and mature infrastructure that can be used and leveraged to build a true enterprise IT system, which we do not have, for the respective services, and, more importantly, for the Department of Defense, and for the federal executive branches of the federal government.

This is, as we peel back the layers of the onion, what is behind that Joint Forces headquarters alignment in which the emergency management division function is embedded in my military command structure. In a majority of the states and territories, the Adjutant General, as I said earlier, is dual-hatted as the senior emergency management official for the state. Several of us are also designated as the homeland security advisor or director for our state. Let me tell you what this means, and I’ll use my own state as an illustration.

It means that there is a state-wide Emergency Management Council that convenes at my Joint Forces headquarters every 60 days. The next meeting is next Thursday. It will be the first meeting all year I have been unable to attend. And that brings in to advise the Adjutant General and the governor, police chiefs and sheriffs, fire chiefs, city administrators, mayors, county officials, other subject matter experts, focusing on the state’s overall readiness for all hazards, not just manmade threats. But focusing on Presidential Decision Directive 63 in 1998, we formed a committee, what we initially called the Committee on Terrorism in 1999, and later called it the Committee on Homeland Security, which is a subordinate or subcommittee or of the Emergency Management Council. That Homeland Security Committee has been meeting two full days each month at our Joint Forces headquarters since January of 1999.

That creates a powerful synergy of habitual relationships that not only have many of the same stakeholders that are on the larger Emergency Management Council, but includes our association of hospitals, recognizing that medical surge capacity is one of our greatest vulnerabilities in any state or region or in our nation.

It involves the Association of Ports, recognizing that for maritime states, like the State of Washington, port security is critical. It involves in our area, most recently as an added advisor, the Pacific Northwest Economic Region, which includes representatives from British Columbia and the Yukon Territories, recognizing that there is an economic region that doesn’t recognize conventional or hard jurisdictional boundaries.

Of course, all of our federal stakeholders to include, principally, the US Coast Guard, which for our state is quite important, and my good friend Admiral Jeff Garrett is the only trained and designated principal federal official in the entire Pacific Northwest. We enjoy a very close working relationship.

That also means that part of my portfolio as the Adjutant General, as a line general of the Air Force, is to oversee the enhanced 911 system in our state, everything from technical upgrades to the public safety answering points, everything that ensures that when you pick up the phone and say “911,” the system is rigorous and sustainable. And we include meetings every 60 days with key representatives not only from stakeholder groups in the public sector, but from the wire line and wireless communications industry.

We also have a state interoperability executive committee that focuses on everything from allocation of spectrum in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission to interoperability of emergency communications equipment. I serve as a voting member of that state interoperability executive committee in my status as the Adjutant General.

Finally, the governor, immediately after the nation was attacked in September of 2001, formed a Domestic Security Executive Group. We have met weekly without fail. It involves the governor’s senior cabinet executives, the independently elected attorney general, the governor’s chief of staff and his senior policy advisors, and I have been privileged to chair that weekly meeting for the governor since its inception.

So you will find in a majority of the states and territories the Adjutant General having the conventional command, authority and responsibility that we would expect to see in any Joint Forces headquarters operation, but in the National Guard you also find these additional statutory and policy responsibilities being added on, and as the homeland security advisor, then, those of us who serve in that additional capacity, deal regularly with Secretary Ridge and other principal federal officials as the spokesperson for the governor and for the state in these homeland security and homeland defense areas.

What this really means, when we talk about horizontal integration, is not a vertical wiring diagram, as the previous diagram may have suggested; it’s a system of systems in which the Adjutant General is the senior military commander in the state, and think now in terms of the forward-deployed commander for NORTHCOM mission execution purposes, in which we serve as the fusion point, the conductor, if you will, to make sure that there is meaningful horizontal integration of all of the stakeholders to include the regular updates I get on the open, active domestic cases for the FBI. Along with all of this interconnection and the establishment of this network comes access to information that can be extremely critical to defending, deterring, dissuading as well as responding to.

The Adjutants General in our association also partner with the National Governors Association, the Council of State and Local Governments, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the League of Cities, all of the other stakeholders that you see here as part of the Homeland Security Consortium. Our next meeting is going to be on the 8th and 9th of December here in Washington, DC. We meet on the order of about three times a year to bring all of these principal policy shaper groups together to make sure that, where possible, we can find, articulate or create common ground and speak with a single voice to effect national policy.

This isn't something that’s hypothetical. This is not an artificially created table top exercise scenario, or a field exercise that we do once a year, or maybe twice a year. We have averaged a Presidential disaster declaration event in our state on average once a year for the past 40 years. This is what the National Guard does as its bread and butter, and the suggestion is that we be smart and pragmatic in leveraging that experience and those established relationships.

Now, Secretary McHale said, and I've used this analogy, too, of the away game and the home game. That really is not appropriate. The layer of defense that’s reflected in his office’s draft strategy for homeland defense and civil support recognizes that there is a global battle space, and therefore the strategy must be a global one. And with the demise of the Soviet Union, with the collapse of the Iron Curtain and with the newly independent states of the former Soviet bloc emerging, the State Department and the Defense Department recognize that the National Guard could be leveraged to contribute to the stability of these newly emerging nations.

So partnership programs were established between the National Guards of individual states and newly independent states principally in center Europe. The program has now been so successful it has expanded to Eastern Europe, to South America. Mostly recently it is expanding to southwest Asia and to Africa. I'm privileged to lead the charge in the Pacific, working closely with Admiral Fargo and with Ambassador Johnson and the Kingdom of Thailand to use Thailand as the hub of a hub-and-spoke outreach program.

Let me just tell you some of the things we’re doing in the partnership program to contribute to our collective defense and security in the United States. We obviously engage in the full portfolio of traditional military-to-military assistance. A lot of that’s in the traditional lanes of First Corps in Ft. Lewis ... (inaudible), and we contribute to that as a niche player. But we happen to have the lead, then, in addition in military-to-military assistance in working with the Thai National Security Council to develop a true national call center system so that when they're dealing with the Muslim insurgents in the two southern provinces nearest Malaysia, they're not dealing with the confusion even for the government response agencies of more than 453 emergency call numbers and systems. We’re trying to create a single system for them, for the entire country and for neighboring countries.

We’re working with them on port security. We’re working with them on training of air marshals for domestic and international flights. And a host of other programs in which our partner is, in part, the Department of Defense through the combatant commander PACOM, and in part Secretary Ridge, with whom Ambassador Johnson and I met in Bangkok last spring to outline support that we can provide to international customs and commerce officials. And we have engaged in a subject matter exchange on the average of once every 90 days, either in the United States or in Bangkok, trying to make sure that container cargo that emanates from the Port of Laem Chabang destined for Long Beach or destined for Tacoma on the West Coast is more secure.

So all this is a long way of acknowledging what we call ground truth. If there weren't a National Guard, it would have to be created. The National Guard does literally connect every firehouse and police station to the Pentagon in a very meaningful way, connects every State House to the White House. And the suggestion simply is that we will achieve a much truer level of security by taking maximum advantage of, by properly resourcing and by building upon the current and future capabilities not only of the National Guard but of the other federal Reserve components that operate in each one of our states and territories.

Thank you very much. [Applause]

Questions and Answers

MAJOR MOREA: I'm Major Morea from the US Air Force Doctrine Center. For the panel, when functioning in the support role outside the mission of homeland defense, is it conceivable that OpCon, operational control of military forces would ever come under the authority of a component-like commander of a lead agency other and a component commander from DoD? And if so, would that possibly be done maybe under the model similar to the way the Air National Guard provides forces to the DoD?

GENERAL ANDERSON: Before you turn the mike over, let me just have a little dialogue with you here if I could, please. Could you expand upon the model again that you're referring to, the Air National Guard model?

MAJOR MOREA: Similarly, how the Air National Guard provides forces right now under the operational control of a component commander, could that similarly be done if we had to provide forces over to another lead agency such as FBI, or whoever it might be, for whatever situation it might be. Just a thought there on that model, but overall the operational control is really the question.

GENERAL ANDERSON: Wow, that would be a tough one. My inclination is I don’t see that that’s anything we have looked at. I don’t suppose that it’s impossible and perhaps should be looked at, given the environment that we’re looking at for the future, as Secretary Duncan is referring to here, perhaps breaking some glass and thinking new ways, but at the moment I really don’t see that as a model.

Now, where I do see that there is some application and extension of a model that has been demonstrated by the Air National Guard in the context of NORAD have been the context of Title 10 orders and Hip Pocket, and so on and so forth, and I know Tim Lowenberg and his group, along with NORTHCOM, have been looking at the possibility of the application of that concept to the land component to be able to provide capability for both federal and state use as driven by whatever the situation may be.

GENERAL LOWENBERG: I don’t disagree. I'm struck by the question in recognizing that there are essentially two groups that are authorized to kill in the course of their duties, as a primary focus of their duties -- executioners and members of the military. The circumstances obviously have to be appropriate for the rules of engagement and the rules for the use of force, but ultimately the person exercising that unique authority in our society, I think, needs to be held accountable within a military chain of command, not responding to a civilian official. So I would just throw that out as a word of caution as we’re taking a look at this philosophical doctrinal proposition that you’ve thrown out.

__: Thank you again, gentlemen, for your statements today. I'd just like to pick on the most recent statement, which was that there is skills transfer. Right now the American Society of Industrial--

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TAPE 5

--a strategic security thinking with multinationals. We heard this morning that the most vulnerable parts of the United States are the commercial infrastructure. I would just like to ask for the full panel’s comments on how to truly address in the short term the American corporations’ focus on return on investment during a period of war. Thank you.

MAJOR LOWENBERG: One of the things we talk about a great deal with the private sector in our state is the vulnerability to IT attacks, and when we have the State Department of Information Services folks sit down and talk to them about the millions of attempted penetrations each and every month into the state system, and they're well aware of the attempted penetrations into the banking and finance system, whatever sector they may come from, and then they look at the relatively, shockingly low percentage of their operating resources that are devoted to information assurance. Sometimes it’s a process of elevating an awareness of the threat. Presidential Decision Directive 63 recognized that not only the military but the private sector economy is increasingly interdependent upon information technology, and that it’s our greatest strength as we go into the information age, but it’s potentially our greatest vulnerability.

So I focus not only on physical security, perhaps, but an even greater level of attention on information assurance and IT security. And that’s particularly compelling and important to the private sector.

MAJOR CHRIS WHITMIRE: Major Chris Whitmire from the Air Force Counterproliferation Center. I’ll throw the question and the statement out to anyone who would like to jump on it. The comments on Posse Comitatus, I take it personally quite refreshing compared to earlier today, but ultimately we are bound by the law. The national strategy for homeland security does address using all of our defense mechanisms, including Department of Defense, and legal reform where needed. So ultimately the Title 32 and the Hip Pocket Title 10 self-initiated orders that I've heard of from some of my friends-- I'm a ... (inaudible) airline pilot, so I keep up with a lot of the guys who are flying the ... (inaudible) and what have you. It seems to me like a temporary band aid for now, and we really need to make that a whole better than it is.

So ultimately, I think a start would be, as wearers of the uniform we so often, especially when it comes to subordinancy to civilian control, we err tremendously to the conservative so we’re not breaking any of the rules, and we sort of culturalize, or institutionalize restraints and they sort of grow and grow, and maybe Posse Comitatus has a lot of exceptions, and that’s already been voiced; ultimately I think something that needs to be started at the mid-level ranks and what have you, just some general education to the people in leadership positions starting at the mid-levels and maybe even earlier on what the true Posse Comitatus restraints and exceptions are.

But ultimately, I think, from a proactive standpoint, because when things occur, such as 9/11, and future 9/11’s, God forbid, but inevitably we’ll probably get them, ultimately that too-hard-to-do tasking many times falls on the Department of Defense, and so that we’re not behind the 8-ball, I would really like for someone to entertain some solutions, especially legal reform, in regard to Posse Comitatus and what can allow the military to be more proactive sooner, because terrorists do strike at their time and place; it’s usually not ours.

GENERAL LOWENBERG: Thank you for the question. The issue of Posse Comitatus and the analyses of Posse Comitatus, particularly the reviews that have been undertaken since September 2001, have focused on need. So the question I would send your direction would be, what is the probability of need for more than nearly a half-million uniformed members of the Army and the Air Force to execute the laws domestically, and what is the need for the force above and beyond that using the ample exceptions that are already provided in the statute for Posse Comitatus, and is there a demonstrable, reasonable risk or need for altering the statute to provide forces above and beyond what could be surged beyond the National Guard. I think that’s what the reviews have focused on to this point.

I would like to address the Title 32 issue beyond Posse Comitatus just to explain some of the pragmatic operational distinctions between Title 32 and Title 10 because I don’t think they're commonly understand. Quite often the focus is almost singularly on who’s in charge or who’s in control.

In Title 32, the National Guard can employ forces domestically in a very sensitive way to the employers and families upon whom not only the National Guard but all federal Reserve components are entirely dependent. We can forge a joint force to respond to the need for military support to civil authority from both the Army and the Air utilizing volunteers, and when those who volunteer for the mission or those who are simply called in voluntarily to Title 32 status if there aren't sufficient volunteers, need to be relieved for family emergencies or employer emergencies. We can control that at the state level without any degradation of the mission execution. That’s not possible in a centralized Title 10 artificially created command structure. I have ample experience with that.

Not only that, but in Title 32, we can assure that there is individual soldier and airmen skills training and unit skills training synchronized with the domestic mission that we’re engaged in, so that we maintain ready forces not only in executing this particular domestic mission, but ready forces for all combatant commanders, not just for NORTHCOM. And our mission is to provide support, as needed, for all combatant commanders for the defense of the United States, not a singular mission that happens to be maybe the first mission we step into.

So flexibility of the force and the readiness of the force and the readiness and the ability to avoid degradation of individual medals and soldier training and skills is part of the focus on using Title 32 to the maximum extent possible for domestic operational purposes. Thank you.