Congressman Peter King (R-NY2) currently serves as a member of the Homeland Security Committee and as Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence.
Harvard Political Review: What do you currently think is the greatest threat to homeland security?
Peter King: I think part of it is complacency. We’ve gone 12 years without a successful attack other than Boston, which was solved very quickly, and the good part of that is those two guys were stopped very quickly. The American people think it’s easy, that there’s not going to be an attack and that if there is, it can be solved very quickly. In many ways though, Al Qaeda is more dangerous than it was on September 11, 2001. Its leadership has been decimated, its core in Afghanistan and Pakistan is now weakened, but it’s morphed into any number of different groups.
Also, we now have the lone wolves who are radicalized in this country over the Internet. Some have links with overseas groups that we’re not fully familiar with, that we haven’t fully been able to monitor. In spite of that, Americans don’t realize how serious that threat is. They just look at Bin Laden being dead and the fact that there’s not been a major successful attack other than Boston, and that’s looked upon as meaning the threat is not there, that Al Qaeda has been defeated.
I think that with increasing criticism of the NSA in surveillance tactics, we’re going to lose some valuable intelligence that we would have gotten otherwise. Also, with the budget cuts in Congress—this is almost backwards logic—but because we haven’t been attacked, the number of people in Congress in budget positions feel that we can start cutting back on Homeland Security funding: if we’re not being attacked why do we need the funds? But the reason we haven’t been attacked is because we have that funding, especially for local police departments, because one thing we found with September 11 and with Boston is that the FBI, the CIA, and Homeland Security are not enough to protect the country. You need to have strong local police and strong cooperation, and that requires funding so you can have the training. You need multi-jurisdictional cooperation, and that requires training, and that’s expensive.
HPR: There have been many criticisms that the Department of Homeland Security has become a home of government waste and unaccountability, and that it has not successfully run a cost-benefit analysis of its expenditures. How do you respond to those criticisms and how can the Department be more efficient in spending its resources?
PK: There’s always room for improvement. If I was going to make a criticism of the expenditures with Homeland Security, I wouldn’t blame the Department as much as I’d blame Congress. Rather than give funds to the areas that need it the most, it’s been spread over too many jurisdictions for political reasons. There are some parts of this country that are not going to be attacked in a million years, and yet we give them money for the most sophisticated technology in fire trucks and first responder technology. In a perfect world you give everyone everything, but when we have limited resources we should give them to the areas, the cities, the regions that are the most likely targets. I would say if we based expenditures on threat analysis rather than on political pressures, DHS would be more effective. But as it is, it’s only been in business for 11 years, and I think it’s doing a good job. Can it improve? Yes. But it’s doing a good job.
Congress should narrow the number of committees that deal with Homeland Security. Right now there are 110 committees, subcommittees and federal agencies that claim some sort of jurisdiction over Homeland Security, so it’s hard for them to get a coordinated message or coordinated policies.
HPR: How effective do you think the NSA’s metadata surveillance program has been in aiding Homeland Security efforts, and do you think the program is constitutional?
PK: First of all, as far as constitutionality, I think 34 out of 35 judges have said it’s constitutional. It’s monitored by the Justice Department, the Congress, and the courts. The NSA does not listen to people’s phone calls, it does not read their emails; it collects metadata, which is phone number to phone number. If they make any inquiry into that at all, it has to be reported to a federal court, and that’s only done when they’re trying to track down a terrorist phone call from overseas to find out what number they’ve contacted here in the U.S. They can do that, and then they have to report that to the court, but to get a warrant to listen to any future calls, they have to go to the FISA court to get it.
I know of a number of cases where it’s been very helpful. There was the case in New York involving Zazi, who was the subway bomber in 2009. Very significant information was found through the NSA, which was very instrumental in saving hundreds, if not thousands, of lives in New York. As far as civil liberties violations, I don’t know how many hundreds of millions, if not billions, of calls that have been maintained, but I think they found ten examples of abuse, and they were pretty much all internal—like some guy in the NSA checking up on his wife or his girlfriend or something—and that was all self-reported. There’s probably not a police department or law enforcement agency in the country that would have that type of record. It’s not even just because NSA people are very patriotic, but because they’re monitored so carefully, so despite what Rand Paul and others say, this is not an agency that’s out of control.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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