Bolton's chance to bolster counterterrorism efforts

By Michael Kraft

The following op-ed appeared in today's "The Oklahoman," pegged to the changes in OMB and the White House.

Funding counterterrorism
By Michael B. Kraft

President Bush's shift of Joshua Bolton from the administration's top budget job to White House chief of staff, replacing Andrew Card, gives the administration a last chance to finally match its anti-terrorism rhetoric with the necessary resources.

A favorite Bush administration theme, both before and after the 2004 election, was that we must fight terrorists overseas before they can strike us at home. Despite the rhetoric, while Bolton was director of the Office of Management and Budget, the OMB, even after 9/11, consistently cut the State Department and other agency budget requests for low-profile but important counterterrorism programs.

OMB reduced funding requests for such programs as training civilian law enforcement officials of friendly countries to help stop terrorists before they can hit us at home or while traveling overseas, clamping down on terrorist financing, interdicting terrorists crossing international borders, and port security and border security inspections.

For example, the fiscal year 2007 budget request submitted to Congress in February includes $135.6 million for the State Department's Anti-terrorism Training Assistance Program. The program provides a wide variety of courses to improve the capabilities of civilian law enforcement officials, ranging from airport security to bomb detection, hostage negotiation to handling threats from weapons of mass destruction.

This request is only $2 million more than the $133.5 million the OMB approved for fiscal year 2006. Allowing for inflation, this actually is a cut in the new budget proposals submitted to Congress, which last year cut $11 million from the fiscal year 2006 request. FBI, Treasury and Homeland Security program requests, including port security inspections and protection programs, also have been cut. Only 3 percent of cargo containers are being inspected. Government Accountability Office investigators recently testified that they were able to smuggle in enough radioactive material to make two "dirty" bombs.

True, OMB traditionally cuts department budget proposals before they are sent to Congress. But if terrorism is such a high priority, OMB and Congress should pay more attention to the requirements and training capacity of the programs instead of routinely calculating their allocations against the "benchmark" of the previous year's appropriation.

When Bolton becomes White House chief of staff and presumably becomes more policy oriented, hopefully he will use his new clout to direct OMB to back up the president's rhetoric with the funding needed to fight the long terrorism conflict. Maybe the new OMB director and staff will pay more attention to the counterterrorism program requirements needs than did the old guard.

With the 2007 budget starting to work its way through Congress, it's time for the public and business communities to demand that the government walk the walk as well as talk the talk in implementing the basic programs needed for fighting terrorism.

Kraft is a counterterrorism consultant and retired senior adviser in the State Department office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism.

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