A message from Jacob Goodwin,GSN’s Editor-in-Chief
Jacob Goodwin
For years, in Iraq, we've seen IEDs blow American soldiers, private security guards and all sorts of Iraqi civilians to smithereens. In the UK, Spain, Germany and elsewhere, these inexpensive, easily-built and astonishingly lethal devices have become the weapons-of-choice for Islamic terrorists.
Fortunately, no such IED attacks have occurred yet on U.S. soil. But the horrific thought that one day such attacks might occur has led DHS counter-terrorism strategists to develop a multi-faceted plan to try to thwart them.
DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff talked about his department's counter-IED strategy during an intriguing speech he delivered last month at the prestigious Center for Strategic International Studies in Washington, DC.
He emphasized that there are a number of points on the chronological spectrum, moving from left to right, at which security officials and law enforcement could intervene in the development, planning and detonation of an IED. Obviously, the earlier on that timeline - Chertoff called it to the "left of boom" - that a deadly plot could be interrupted, the more likely it is that innocent lives could be saved.
"What we're trying to do is push that effort to counter the IED as far to the left as possible," Chertoff told his audience. "Interfering with the obtaining of funds [by terrorist organizations]; stopping the organization from developing; preventing people from coming into the country if there are operatives from outside who are going to be the ones who actually manufacture and deliver the bomb; finding ways to disrupt the manufacture of the bomb; making it harder to accumulate the materials that would go into a bomb; making it hard to move the bomb, once it's manufactured, into the site where it's going to be detonated; and ultimately giving us the ability to detect and defuse the bomb if it's delivered on site."
Chertoff noted that good intelligence enables the U.S. Government to narrow the focus of its counter-terrorism activities, which in turn can minimize disruptions and reduce the inconvenience to the vast majority of people.
"When we don't have intelligence and we don't have information, we have to operate in a much more generalized and, dare I say, blunderbuss fashion," he acknowledged, which unfortunately can lead to greater encroachment into citizens' privacy.
Chertoff shared a few interesting tidbits from the front in the war against IEDs:
• Peroxide-based explosives used in some IEDs are harder to detect than nitrogen-based explosives. That fact has caused DHS to push its airport screeners to look for smaller and smaller components of detonators and other bomb parts.
• A Homeland Security Presidential Directive that will memorialize the DHS counter-IED strategy will be issued "very soon," the secretary indicated on October 19.
• The secretary described details of Appendix A to its forthcoming chemical security regulations, (which were released November 2), setting forth the categories of chemicals, and the quantities of those chemicals, that merit restricted access.
• Chertoff says DHS will work with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to tighten controls over certain radioactive materials, such as cesium-137, which can be obtained from medical and research facilities and used to create a dirty bomb. "Although a nuclear bomb would be very, very hard to fabricate and very, very hard to steal," said Chertoff, "the material for a dirty bomb is unfortunately not that hard to steal or obtain, and it's not that hard to add it to an IED."
But suppose authorities can't intervene to the "left of boom." What then? DHS is equally concerned with protecting U.S. sites against detonations of IEDs.
To that end, Chertoff admitted that two little-discussed security threats have recently caught his attention.
"You know what I haven't heard a lot about in all the discussion about protecting ports, including from some of the most vigorous advocates of worrying about containers?" Chertoff asked his audience, rhetorically. "I havent heard about small boats."
A nuclear bomb delivered in a small boat could do just as much damage as a nuclear bomb smuggled into a port inside a cargo container," he suggested. "Common sense would tell you that is a vector we ought to look at."
Similarly, he raised a red flag about "general aviation coming in from overseas." He said the U.S. will cooperate with foreign governments to develop a new set of rules that would control who enters the U.S. on those private jets. The new rules also might force general aviation aircraft to be stopped and screened for dangerous materials before they depart for the U.S.
All in all, Chertoff strikes me as a public servant who is not resting on his laurels or taking the blessed absence of terrorist attacks in the U.S. for granted.
"This is a period where I think we need to be more on our toes," he concluded, "rather than spending all our time patting ourselves on the back."
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