The New Reality
WASHINGTON – Although most Americans still worry about terrorism two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Rep. Christopher Shays (R-4th) said the nation is more secure than people realize.
“People are safer today than they were before Sept. 11,” Shays said in an interview earlier this week. “They don’t feel that, because there was a false sense of security in the past.”
Shays chairs the Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emergency Threats and International Relations, with Homeland Security Department oversight responsibilities.
He said the federal government has made the nation safer by investing billions of dollars to prevent another terrorist attack and to minimize the impact if one should occur. In the current fiscal year, Congress created a Department of Homeland Security and authorized it to spend about $34 billion, which represented a 55 percent increase in what was spent on homeland security before the attacks. President Bush has proposed granting the department more than $36 billion in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.
Shays also said the government has reorganized to better deal with the threat of terrorism: the Homeland Security Department coordinates work previously done by 22 agencies, and Congress has passed numerous bills, including those intended to give intelligence agencies more tools to detect terrorism, to make flying safer and keep airlines in business and to protect people from bioterrorism.
But Shays’ optimism was offset by senators from both parties at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) said the United States had failed to crack down on the Saudi government, in part because of America’s heavy reliance on Saudi oil. Members of the Saudi royal family had financially enabled terrorists, actions that Washington “met with a wink and a nod,” he said.
Fifteen of the 19 men who hijacked four planes on Sept. 11, 2001, were Saudi nationals. Nevertheless, Durbin said, the federal government did nothing to stop Saudis from leaving the United States days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said he agreed with Durbin, but did not elaborate.
Shays said that before the Sept. 11 attacks, he had held 23 hearings in his subcommittee about the terrorist threat the country faced but that “there was no interest” in them.
While the country has come a long way in two years, Shays said, there is still work to be done.
“We need to do a better job of helping first responders,” he said. “We need to have a very clear understanding of what it takes to be safe at home. We need to establish minimum preparedness levels and equipment and performance standards.”
There also have been some positive developments outside the political realm, Shays said. “I think the public has a better appreciation for what the blue-collar folks do for us, particularly those who risked their lives defending us,” he said.
“Americans appreciate more than they have in the past just the opportunity to be with their families,” Shays added. “We don’t take for granted as much as we have in the past. We have a better appreciation and gratitude for what we have.”
