Keeping America out of harm's way: from a national health-surveillance network to better whistle-blower protection, security experts provide their com

U.S. leaders and our allies have made great strides in fighting terrorism and increasing homeland security. During the last seven months they have ousted the Taliban, frozen substantial assets used to fund Osama bin Laden and his associates, rounded up hundreds of likely terrorist "sleepers" and enacted a host of measures to try to stop the next attack before it happens.
This all comes at a price: The war on terrorism not only has cost billions of dollars, but precious lives as well. And every step along the way has required expenditure of political capital and high-level maneuvering of the sort that accompanies every initiative originating inside the Washington Beltway. The controversial USA PATRIOT Act, an attempt to balance security with concerns about civil liberties, and continued bickering about screening at the nation's airports show that the war on terrorism has been as divisive as many another war. Even when the United States is united, as polls indicate it is now, concerns about politics and money tend to slow the drive for reform.

Meanwhile, say Capitol Hill insiders, many of the nation's most vital structures remain vulnerable to attack, and measures to reform key institutions such as the Immigration and Naturalization Service still are being battered in bureaucratic turf wars. Does this mean the quest for a secure America has stalled? Not necessarily.
INSIGHT spoke with some of the nation's most prominent experts on security issues and asked them for a few ideas that, once enacted, would have a profound impact on national security. Some mentioned grand campaigns such as toppling Saddam Hussein or disengaging from the Middle East altogether. While proposals of this kind undoubtedly will receive attention, INSIGHT asked the experts to concentrate on "low-hanging fruit" -- measures that either are such commonsense prescriptions that enacting them should be politically painless or so cheap that even budget hawks would be willing to give them a try. Here are the results of that inquiry.

On the right side of the political spectrum, the Heritage Foundation has presented more than 20 commonsense security measures in Defending the American Homeland, a nearly 100-page report issued in January. INSIGHT spoke with Michael Scardaville, project manager for homeland security at Heritage, and asked him to pick a few recommendations from the report that he thought best fit the category of low-hanging fruit. Two popped into his head immediately.

"One of the top priorities is the notion of better sharing of information within government," Scardaville says. He suggests vital security agencies would benefit from "an intelligence fusion center" that would use advanced information technology and data-mining systems to ensure that all federal officials are up to speed on critical security matters. Scardaville notes that several of the terrorists who brought down the airliners on Sept. 11 had been pulled over for speeding prior to the attack, but police officers had no way of knowing that federal officials were watching the people involved. "The cops had no idea they should give these guys anything more than a warning for speeding," he says.

Scardaville says this fusion center does not exist today because officials within agencies tend to guard their own turf and often refuse to share information. To remedy this ingrained culture, he says, "someone needs to come in and break the political china." He says that, apart from appropriating money to pay for the necessary technology, the solution probably doesn't rest in legislation. "I don't think an act of Congress can change that culture," he says. "At the end of the day it comes down to leadership."

Although Scardaville does not think the fusion center necessarily should operate out of the new Office of Homeland Security, he does believe Director Tom Ridge could deliver the political strong-arming necessary to make agencies comply -- especially if President George W. Bush lets people know it is a top priority. "This isn't Tom Ridge talking, this is the president of the United States talking," Scardaville says. "That carries a lot of weight."

Scardaville says another priority is a national health-surveillance network that would collect and analyze information from around the country. The network would help public-health officials recognize a biological or chemical attack in its earliest stages and immediately mobilize resources. The beauty of this strategy, Scardaville says, is that "we could probably start doing it tomorrow if we wanted to."

According to Scardaville, such a system would operate as a pyramid, with doctors, hospitals and clinics on the bottom. They would compile local data about symptoms and conditions as patients walk through the door, then pass it on to regional officials. These officials would pass it along to state officials, who would in turn answer to directors at the federal level. This way, public-health authorities would know if people in a particular region were contracting, for example, respiratory ailments consistent with a known chemical or biological agent and could react accordingly. "Early detection is key to mitigating the consequences of an attack," Scardaville says.