September 14, 2002

HOMELAND IMPROVEMENT (Cover Story)
By Sydney J. Freedberg, Jr.

It has been a long, hard year since 9/11. And for all the immense resources that America has spent on security, the results are not always immediately apparent. So, amid all the alerts and reports, the disorganized reorganizations and the debated departments, a cynical public might be forgiven for wondering whether the government has done anything but argue with itself. But "the government" is as complex a reality as "the jungle," where many different animals do many different things. While the lions roar at the sky, the ants are down working in the dirt. As official Washington struggles with the grand strategy of homeland security, local governments grapple with the details of hometown security. And it seems that some of the locals are getting it right.

What follows are five case studies from around the country -- places where city, county, state, and regional first responders are working together to fit pieces of the homeland security puzzle into place. Many of these joint efforts make use of federal support; others do not. But all rely on local initiative, not federal direction, as their driving force. Some are as far from official Washington as the Great Plains and the West Coast. The closest is only a few hundred feet away, straight down.

Highly trained response teams can make a major difference in disasters. But no matter how quickly they arrive, they are always, by definition, too late for someone.

When the enemy is terrorism, the ideal would be to avoid an attack altogether. But most homeland security efforts focus on the pound of cure, not the ounce of prevention. In a study of public actions taken by eight counties and cities, four state governments, and four civilian federal agencies, International Horizons Unlimited, a San Antonio-based think tank, found that some 81 percent of actions fell in the category of response -- and only 2 percent were directed to prevention.

"We deal with after-the-fact damage," said Dr. Saul Wilen, president of International Horizons. "It's important, and it must be done, but nobody's doing prevention.... How do you prevent the problem in the first place?... Information-gathering and -sharing among departments within a city is imperative -- and it doesn't happen there, just as it doesn't happen among federal agencies."

Pulling It All Together

The initiatives in California, metro Kansas City, Pennsylvania, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, and the Washington area are all distinctly different animals. But they share certain secrets of success. Although most make creative use of federal funds, they all remain local programs, under local leadership, firmly rooted in local needs and capabilities. Although most also make good use of new networking technology, they don't lose sight of the importance of intangible connections between human beings. And, instead of uprooting what is already in place and starting over, they build on what they have. Instead of creating expensive, all-new systems specifically to fight terrorism, they work to link ongoing, everyday efforts together.

Each of these projects is a part of the homeland security solution; none is a panacea. They are all models for the country, but none of them can be the model. But imagine a region that learned from all five of the case studies here and the sixth on the next page. Planners would coordinate spending to create a coherent defense across jurisdictional lines. Working groups would pool intelligence from federal, state, local, and public sources, including multiple databases, to head off terrorists before they struck. Sensors in subways and other key sites would warn of surprise attacks as they are happening. Elite interagency teams would lead the response, backed by the full forces of all area jurisdictions. And everyone could actually talk to everyone else on the radio. Such a place would never be invulnerable. But it would be safer than anywhere in America today.