[Infowarrior] - WH Integrates Security Councils, Adds New Offices

[Richard Forno]

Obama Integrates Security Councils, Adds New Offices
Computer, Pandemic Threats Addressed

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 27, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/26/AR2009052603148_pf.html

President Obama announced yesterday that he will merge the staffs of  
the Homeland Security Council and the National Security Council to  
speed up and unify security policymaking inside the White House.

The combined national security staff, about 240 people, will report to  
national security adviser James L. Jones.

The White House also will add new offices for cybersecurity, for  
terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction, and for "resilience"  
-- a national security directorate aimed at preparedness and response  
for a domestic WMD attack, pandemic or natural catastrophe, officials  
said.

"The challenges of the 21st century are increasingly unconventional  
and transnational, and therefore demand a response that effectively  
integrates all aspects of American power," Obama said in a statement.

Obama's changes to the national security structure, to be implemented  
over six weeks, address concerns that former president George W. Bush  
created an overlapping White House bureaucracy by establishing the  
Homeland Security Council after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.  
The 9/11 Commission, among others, recommended merging it into the NSC.

Instead, Obama will preserve the Homeland Security Council's role as  
the main forum for government policymaking on issues such as  
terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, natural disasters and pandemic  
influenza. Doing so will improve state and local officials' access to  
the White House and does not require an act of Congress, aides said.

"The idea that somehow counterterrorism is a homeland security issue  
doesn't make sense when you recognize the fact that terror around the  
world doesn't recognize borders," Jones told reporters in a briefing.  
"There is no right-hand, left-hand anymore."

John O. Brennan, Obama's assistant for homeland security and  
counterterrorism, will continue to report to Jones as a deputy and  
maintain direct access to the president.

"There's no diminishment at all of the effort on" counterterrorism,  
Brennan said.

Jones and Brennan, whom Obama tapped Feb. 23 to lead a 60-day  
organizational review, said the changes will strengthen the White  
House security staff, which includes aides detailed from other  
departments.

Among other things, Obama is establishing a new global engagement  
directorate to coordinate U.S. communications with other countries and  
to streamline U.S. diplomatic, aid, environment and energy policies in  
support of security objectives, officials said.

Jones said the biggest pitfall for the new structure will be if he and  
Brennan "don't achieve this degree of collegiality that we've  
achieved," adding: "If we don't do this well . . . that will  
contribute to instability."

Senior lawmakers in Congress and former Bush aides generally praised  
the moves.

Kenneth Wainstein, Brennan's immediate predecessor, praised the  
administration's "inclusive" approach and said it allayed fears that  
changes "might diminish the perceived importance of homeland security  
issues."

"It doesn't bury the homeland equities," said Frank J. Cilluffo,  
director of George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy  
Institute, who served as assistant to the president for homeland  
security in 2003.

However, Frances Fragos Townsend, who served in Brennan's role from  
2005 to 2008, cautioned in an e-mail that he "will no longer have  
direct control of the resources required to the job."

"John Brennan and Gen. Jim Jones are experienced, competent  
professionals and they will bear the burden of ensuring the necessary  
resource allocations across the broad spectrum of threats against the  
United States," Townsend wrote.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the top Republican on the Senate  
homeland security committee, said she remained "concerned" that  
changes may dilute the focus of Brennan and homeland security staffers.