House Likely to Stumble into Cutting Counterterrorism Programs

By Michael Kraft

This Thursday, if the tentative House schedule holds up and there are no unexpected amendments, members will vote to cut the Administration’s funding request for programs to counter terrorism overseas, despite all the speeches that it is better to fight the terrorists abroad than at home.

The cuts were buried in the Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 2007 that the Appropriations Committee approved shortly before the Memorial Day recess.

If the past is any indication, the full House will probably go along next week with the Committee’s recommendations most members will be unaware that deep in the fine print of the committee report are funding cuts that undermine the fight against international terrorists.

It happened last year, and the year before, as if 9/11 and subsequent terrorist against our allies overseas never took place.

Members will be voting on the $21.3 billion Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill that cut the Administration’s request to $122.5 million for the Antiterrorism Training Assistance Program (ATA). The Administration requested $135.6 million for the ATA program, which is run by the State Department and not only provides training to foreign officials but also helps develop working relationships.

The Committee report has not been filed yet but this should happen Monday, a committee source said Friday and the Committee hopes the bill will go to the floor Thursday. The counterterrorism program figures were obtained from another source familiar with the Committee’s actions. Such details are usually down in the fine print of the subsection of the Appropriations bill called “Nonproliferation, Anti-terrorism, Demining and Related Programs.” These disparate programs have to compete with one another for final allocations if the overall account is cut.

The ATA program is a pillar of the U.S. Government’s efforts to work with other nations on counterterrorism efforts. The 9 per cent cut by the Appropriations Committee unfortunately is consistent with its cuts in past years. And even before the State Department’s request reaches the Hill early in the year with the rest of the budget, it is usually cut by the OMB. That has been the pattern of Administration and Congressional indifference to this low-profile but important program, despite 9/11 and despite President Bush’s repeated speeches that we must fight terrorists overseas before they hit us at home.

The ATA program is intended to do just that. It trains civilian law enforcement officials of friendly countries in such skills as bomb detection, airport security and hostage negotiation. The program helps strengthens the capabilities of the foreign airport security officials and others who have the primary responsibility for both protecting their own citizens but also Americans who are traveling and living overseas. There is a strong demand for the courses and US officials involved with the program have said they could double the training if they had the funding. The $13 million cut from the Administration’s request could go a long way toward providing more courses, which typically run about $300,000 or $400,000 each for a class of perhaps 20 students, depending on the numbers and course length.

Smaller counterterrorism programs, such as the Terrorist Interdiction Program, also were cut by the appropriators who approved $8 million instead of the $11.8 million requests for the computer-based system that helps friendly nations identify terrorist suspects and drug traffickers trying to enter or quickly leave their country. A still smaller program to strengthen international cooperation through counterterrorism seminars and also assistance in drafting counterterrorism legislation was cut in half, to $1 million. Only a $9 million program to counter terrorism financing was approved intact.

Accounting for inflation, the funding level the House appropriators approved for the ATA program is a reduction from the the actual $122.3 million funding level that survived the final FY 2006 appropriations allocation process. The Senate last year had approved the Administration’s full request but the House’s cuts prevailed in the Senate-House conference.

To no great surprise, the Appropriations Committee’s press release last week glossed over its actions in cutting counterterrorism funding, just as it has in past years. To the contrary, the press release claims that the bill “provides significant increases in security assistance to our allies in the global war on terrorism. It also increases resources for our anti-narcotic programs abroad.” But the release does not mention the ATA and other multi-national programs, only saying that the bill “provides an $83 million increase for Foreign Military Financing for Israel to assist in their security and counter-terror efforts. “

Israel indeed faces a terrorism threat and has received some specialized training assistance under the ATA program. There also have been major terrorist attacks in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Turkey, Indonesia, Kenya and other friendly countries where the appeal of Al Qaeda fundamentalism appears to be growing. It is only by luck that more Americans, have not been hit in these attacks along with the citizens of the affected countries. These developing countries have received US training assistance in the past but to be effective, the training must cover a wide variety of courses. Courses, such as airport security, sometimes have to be offered repeatedly every few years as local officials are promoted or move on from their original jobs.

The appropriators, as well as OMB officials, appear to be following the old pattern of paying more attention to the previous year’s appropriation figure as a “base line” for their decisions instead paying enough attenton to the actual requirements of the program in the face of continuing terrorist threats..

One committee source said there was no explanatory language in the draft report on the justification for the cuts, but the cuts were made to find money for other programs that benefited from organized letter writing campaigns.

Once again, the cuts made by the Appropriations Committee as well as the administration, which last week announced significant reductions in counterterrorism funding for New York and Washington, are better at talking about the terrorism threat than really doing all they can to counter it.

Surely one would think somewhere in the usual special interest funding usually earmarked in the bill, $13 million could be found to provide a little extra investment against terrorist attacks.

Canada and Britain are not participants in the ATA program. But the arrests this weekend in Toronto and London of large numbers of terrorists suspects should serve as a reminder that there are also like-minded individuals in other parts of the world that badly need our assistance.

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