February
23,
2006
Government
Accountability
By Jack D. McNamara
Hurricane Katrina
will go down in history as one of the greatest American disasters.
Along with the natural fury of the storm will be recorded the awesome
incompetence of the government agencies responsible for dealing with
the wind and water. Last week the U.S. House of Representatives finally
began to act with the release of a report on those failures. In the
center of the ring of criticism was the Secretary of Homeland Security,
Michael Chertoff.
He went before a House Committee and said he was accountable and
responsible, which he is. This is admirable. But in a mess as huge as
the Katrina debacle admission of fault is not the end of the matter.
The federal
government’s failure — as opposed to that of local and state government
— is attributable in large part to the creation of a huge and unwieldy
Homeland Security Department (DHS). Two years ago the Bush
Administration tossed together 22 agencies and 180,000 people. Some of
the agencies were competent before the formation of the department and
are competent now. The U.S. Coast Guard, for example, has made the
journey from the Treasury Department to the Transportation Department
to Homeland Security in the past few years and has not yet been
destroyed. They were commended in the House report on Katrina. The
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was highly praised until
recently but it is questionable if FEMA will survive the Bush
Administration and the DHS. As it now stands, with a new hurricane
season approaching and the Gulf Coast still a disaster area, the DHS is
a failure.
And who has the responsibility for the area where we live, the
borderland between the U.S. and Mexico? Mr. Chertoff and his DHS,
that’s who. Do we have a mess here? You bet we do. For at least the
last 20 years the federal government has failed utterly to deal
adequately with narcotics smuggling and illegal immigration here.
Secretary Chertoff had best be preparing for a public admission of
failure on this front also because he will soon be before the Congress
again in the glare of the television lights.
By now we are all aware of the incident at Neely’s Crossing near Ft.
Hancock on January 23. Armed Mexicans in military-style uniforms, SUVs
loaded with marijuana and Humvees were in a standoff with Hudspeth
County deputies and Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) troopers.
This is not an unusual set of circumstances here on the border. For
many years there have been reports of official Mexican involvement in
narcotics smuggling.
But the U.S.
government, for their own reasons, has never acknowledged what
borderlands law enforcement are sure to be true. Specifically that is
some of official Mexico is complicit in narcotics smuggling. As of
February 7, 2006 before a hearing by the House of Representatives’
Subcommittee on Investigations, Committee on Homeland Security,
official involvement by the Mexican government in narcotics smuggling
is still denied, according to the testimony of the Chief of the Border
Patrol (DHS) and Elizabeth Whitaker, Department of State.
In the weeks since the hearing, there has been a constant flow of news
on the border issue. Border news rarely involves Mr. Chertoff, however.
He and DHS have successfully ducked responsibility for Neely’s Crossing.
There have been conversions to the border emergency congregation. As
recently as late August (just before Katrina hit) Texas Governor Rick
Perry denied there was any emergency on the border at the same time the
governors of New Mexico and Arizona were announcing just that. (See
“Was No One Minding the Store?” the Nimby News, August 25, 2005.) Just
after the border sheriffs went to Washington, D.C. he spoke to the
Conservative Political Action Committee. The headline in the Dallas
Morning News (DMN) was “Perry Scolds GOP Over Border, Spending.”
Governor Perry has announced “Operation Rio Grande,” a considerably
enhanced commitment of state resources to border law enforcement. The
state money to support Governor Perry’s recent conversion must come
from Texas’s every-declining funding for social and medical services,
such as Medicaid.
As the Texans saddle up for border duty, the principal responsibility
for that funding is Mr. Chertoff’s. Over the past weekend a short,
concise and well informed news article ran on the wire service
Associated Press. Suzanne Gamboa, a reporter familiar with this area
from previous experience, wrote the article. The headline selected in
the Laredo Morning Times (online) of February 19 was “Agencies spar
over border defense.” Referring to the hearing on February 7 she wrote,
“Folded within the rancor over the confrontation between Texas lawmen
and armed drug smugglers is a tussle over whose job it is to guard the
border and who gets the money for it.”
Exactly and precisely. The January 23 standoff was preceded by the
drumbeat concerning the appearance on the border of numerous volunteers
announcing their intention to enforce U.S. border laws. The border
sheriffs took up the beat and slowly, belatedly, the border governors
have joined in.
The press was fascinated and the frontier volunteers received extensive
coverage. The press coverage, as it always does, followed the public
opinion polls. More than two thirds of Americans believe the government
has lost control of the border. It is the single worst category in
President George Bush’s approval ratings.
Up in Hudspeth County, where this recent round of political crossfire
started, the current question is whether narcotraffickers are
threatening Hudspeth County deputies and their families. For more than
a week the allegations have been published and for the same period
there has been uncertainty as to just who would investigate such
threats. The leading opinion at present is that that would be the Texas
Rangers. The FBI declined even though Representative Silvestre Reyes
was the one who originally called for the investigation.
The question is who has responsibility for what here in the
borderlands? For the 20 years I have been reporting here the problems
haven’t changed. Everyone wants the money in the forms of good jobs,
new vehicles with big tires, cushy detention center contracts,
oak-paneled courtrooms, and jazzy radios. But no one wants to do the
work of coordinating the entire 2000 miles of U.S.-Mexico border.
Now, as I see it, the job is Michael Chertoff’s. He is a tough guy, as
anyone who watched the Katrina hearings should recognize. He was a
tough guy when he was the U.S. Senate’s committee counsel during the
hearings on the Bill and Hillary Clinton Whitewater scandal. He was a
tough U.S. attorney and when he was head of the Justice Department
Criminal Division. But he failed utterly in the Katrina hurricane.
Nothing in what has happened since January 23 at Neely’s Crossing gives
us any confidence he will succeed here.
Sorry about that. •
(Also
published by the Big Bend Sentinel of Marfa, Texas Feb. 23,
2006.)
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