Homeland security is a lexically challenging phrase as well as a bureaucratically challenging responsibility. The word "homeland" rests uneasily on our ears-evoking the language of Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa-while the demonstration of it so far manifests a high level of homeland ineptitude. We do not dispute the fact that the nation faces unprecedented challenges. Nor should the difficulties of mounting a comprehensive response to the dangers of terrorism be underestimated. But even as we await a promised congressional inquiry into the intelligence failures of the CIA and FBI on September 11, the subsequent missed calls on anthrax in Washington seem to be of a piece with the bureaucratic infighting over bioterrorism that went on before September 11. Something is awry.
Tom Ridge, the head of the new homeland defense office, is a wonderfully serious and earnest presence before the TV cameras, but will he, any more than Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson or Attorney General John Ashcroft, succeed in building cooperation among the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the FBI, the Army, the CIA, and other federal agencies? Who would know that they all work for the U.S. government and the American people?
Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War (Simon & Schuster), published just before September 11, recounts the bureaucratic infighting over bioterrorism within the federal government and foreshadows the ineptitude we have just witnessed. The authors, Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad, report the repeated warnings from leading scientists, arms controllers, and State Department officials about the potential for a biological attack. Despite the keen interest of President Bill Clinton when in office, there was little cooperation among the several agencies given responsibility for coordinating a response to biological weapons of mass destruction. Even the personal enmity of Congressman Dan Burton (R-Ind.) toward Clinton spilled over into the effort, derailing the use of anthrax vaccine to protect the military. Among other items, the book also shows that a simulated biological attack with pneumonic plague in Denver, May 17-23, 2000, ended with the supposed disease raging out of control. The exercise showed that localities were woefully unprepared for a mass attack and that the federal government itself could do little to help treat or contain such an epidemic. Lack of coordination as well as years of underfunding public health agencies were apparent in Denver. We are not better prepared today.
Consider the postal workers in Washington. From what is now known, two postal workers died of inhalation anthrax on October 22 because the postmaster general was assured by the CDC that the envelope laced with anthrax and delivered to Senator Tom Daschle’s office could not have contaminated the post offices that handled it. The CDC was wrong. In fact, the nation’s chief disease fighters had not examined the anthrax spores themselves. The FBI, which had examined them, misinformed or did not fully inform the CDC of the spores’ virulent quality. Clueless doctors and nurses at hospitals where the postal workers went for treatment diagnosed flu and sent them home. Unexpected crises produce unexpected tragedies; these two deaths are sad examples. But consider then, the immediate response in Congress to the anthrax: Close down Capitol Hill; test everybody who works there; and where exposure is found, provide prophylactic treatment. At the same time, hundreds of mostly African American postal workers are left unwarned and unprotected. This not only smacks of race and class bias, it confirms the suspicion that our politicians and their staffs are woefully self-interested-as self-interested as they often appear to be in managing the nation’s political affairs.
Which brings us to the most recent and sorry examples of political chicanery. In the midst of the chaos caused by the anthrax shutdown, the Republicans forced through the House on October 24 the so-called economic recovery plan. Two weeks earlier, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill seemed to dismiss the bill as "show business," but it is more than that: tax rebates to large corporations, more tax cuts for the best-off Americans, and a paltry subvention to rising claims for unemployment compensation by laid-off workers. Furthermore, despite their abysmal performance before and after the terrorist attacks, private companies are likely to retain the airport security business because Republicans refuse to federalize this responsibility. These measures, and others, show how far Republicans are from the bipartisan spirit that they have asked for and received from their Democratic colleagues.
The continuing terrorist threat has taken its toll on the economy, the national psyche, and the well-ordered running of the government. That has to change-and swiftly. If the Bush administration expects support, it cannot call for national unity while advancing the demands of a debatable economic ideology and the special interests to which it is beholden. If sacrifice is called for then fair and equitable treatment must be the order of the day. Postal workers and laid-off workers deserve better. So does the country.
