Column: 9/11 Commission holes yet to be filled

In July 2004, the 9/11 Commission that we chaired made 41 recommendations for keeping our country safe. We understood then, as we do now, that a continuously evolving terrorist threat requires that we regularly reassess our priorities and expenditures to determine what is needed to defend our country. This includes looking at our vulnerabilities and anticipating new lines of attack. The threat will endure far into the future, demanding that we be ever vigilant.

Recently, we released a report assessing the 9/11 Commission's recommendations and detailing the work that remains mostly or entirely unfulfilled. The good news is that substantial progress has been made in fulfilling many of the commission's recommendations, including the transformation of the intelligence community that has enhanced information sharing between agencies and facilitated the successful elimination of Osama bin Laden. Dedicated men and women in government and the private sector should be credited for their tireless efforts and accomplishments in protecting our homeland during the past decade.

The unfinished recommendations, however, demonstrate that we are not as secure as we could or should be. Therefore, we urge immediate action to complete their implementation.

Disaster coordination

One of the critical lessons of 9/11 is that a well-coordinated response at the scene of a disaster can save lives. While training under a uniform command structure has taken place, many metropolitan areas where multiple agencies respond to a disaster still have not solved the problem of who is in charge. Our concern is that the failure to resolve the basic building blocks of establishing roles and responsibilities, conducting catastrophic disaster planning and exercising those plans would likely result in confusion at the scene of a major disaster.

A related problem is the inability of first responders to communicate during an emergency. Incompatible and inadequate communications led to a needless loss of life on 9/11. To remedy this failure, the commission recommended legislation to provide for the increased assignment of radio spectrum to improve radio interoperability of first responders. Despite the lives at stake, this recommendation has stalled in part because of a political fight over allocating 10 MHz of radio spectrum — the D-block — directly to public safety for a nationwide network. Efforts to achieve unity of effort and interoperable emergency communications must be dramatically accelerated.

We continue to believe that a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board should be established to address such concerns across government. Since 9/11, the executive branch has received greater authority to collect information and to conduct surveillance. Even if these powers are being employed in a careful way respectful of civil liberties, the history of the abuse of such powers should give us pause. Although legislation was enacted to establish this board, the legislation has, in fact, been dormant for more than three years.

The congressional oversight of the government's homeland security and intelligence functions remains as dysfunctional as it was when we released the 2004 report. Congress should immediately consolidate jurisdiction over the Department of Homeland Security within the House and Senate homeland security committees to avoid the duplication of having DHS respond to more than 100 congressional committees and subcommittees. And the appropriations committees should establish separate subcommittees for funding the intelligence agencies, rather than including them in the Defense subcommittees' jurisdiction.

DNI clarity needed

Finally, the establishment of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center to coordinate the activities of the intelligence community represented major progress. But having four directors in six years, and ambiguity about the director's authority over budget and personnel, demonstrate that clarity about the DNI's role is needed — whether through legislation or with repeated declarations from the president that the director of National Intelligence is the unequivocal leader of the intelligence community.

While we have done much since the attacks 10 years ago and are safer than we were on that day, there is much more to do. Political leaders from both parties and at all levels of government should renew their focus on completing implementation of the 9/11 Commission recommendations.

Thomas Kean, former governor of New Jersey, and Lee Hamilton, a former congressman from Indiana, served as chair and vice chair of the 9/11 Commission. Together they now co-chair the Bipartisan Policy Center's National Security Preparedness Group.