Newsletter From Mark Warner

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Governor Mark Warner this week outlined a series of immediate actions that would make Americans safer at home, five years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. As governor of a state that was attacked on 9/11, Governor Warner also called for a different type of leadership—one that rekindles the spirit of civic engagement that many Americans felt in the wake of 9/11, and involves more than just our military and first responders in the effort to defeat terrorism.

Watch a video excerpt from the speech.

“Americans can and should be safer today than we are,” said Governor Warner. “And we should not be more divided today than we were on September 10, 2001. We can do a better job of making Washington work, setting priorities for protection and policing, and tapping the American people’s will to come together in defense of our homeland. It will take an approach that favors competence over ideology and leadership that brings us together over the politics of division.”

At the national level, Governor Warner outlined these next steps in the effort to make America safer:

A New Focus for Homeland Security: The Metropolitan Area

Empower Metropolitan Areas: Governor Warner supports the recent Century Foundation Task Force recommendation to make the nation’s 150 largest metropolitan areas the primary units for planning, funding, and training for homeland security.
Establish Priorities: Each metropolitan area must develop a “Protection and Response Plan” that delineates roles for disaster operations, eliminates redundancies, and increases efficiency through integration. In cooperation with local and state-level stakeholders as well as security experts, the DHS must determine and prioritize “minimum essential capabilities” that each metropolitan area would be required to fulfill before using federal funds on other needs.
More First Preventers: Our country’s police officers are not only the first to respond to attacks, they are also the best placed to prevent them if given the requisite training and better integrated into a wider intelligence-sharing system. Governor Warner supports a renewed federal effort to put more police on the beat, like the successful COPS program. The new officers will be trained to help spot terrorist activity in the course of their duties.
Making Washington Work

Create a Director of Homeland Security Intelligence: One individual should oversee and hold responsibility for the integration of domestic intelligence on homeland security threats.
Make FEMA Independent: FEMA must be the lead federal agency for disaster crisis management, with the authority to mobilize and coordinate the federal response to disasters.
Protect Civil Liberties: Domestic intelligence efforts should be subject to oversight by a board comprised of citizens chosen to receive the security clearances needed for this oversight.
Closing the Glaring Gaps in Infrastructure and Transportation Security

Screening Cargo: Through adoption of new standards and technologies, we must move toward 100 percent shipping container screening and air cargo screening.
Get the Lines Moving: Expand access to “smart card” programs that enhance security and make travel more efficient.
Secure Our Chemical Facilities: Create a priority list of vulnerable sites; issue new federal guidelines to reduce hazards, introduce safer chemicals; and institute hazard-reduction and target-hardening measures.
Protect Trains and Subways: Carry out vulnerability assessments made for all rail and mass transit systems. We must improve training for transit personnel, increase the number of cameras on board transit vehicles and in transit stations, and improve fencing to better control access to transit facilities.
Medical Surge Capability: No state has yet completed a medical surge plan to adequately deal with disaster or an attack, and while $500 million has been dedicated to meeting federal medical preparedness goals, these funds should be doubled.
A Call for Civilian Service

A Real Commitment to Citizen Corps: Federal funding for Citizen Corps and real promotion of the program is needed. A national structure to train and coordinate volunteers in preparedness and response efforts could be dramatically ramped up.
Civilian Medical & Emergency Reserve Corps: Highly skilled citizens can be invaluable during crises if their skills can be matched to the right tasks, and equipment to perform these tasks is made available. Citizens should be encouraged to register as volunteers if they have held licensed positions or worked in heavily regulated industries—such as nuclear power and water treatment—in which it would be difficult to quickly replace workers who are unable to work after a catastrophic attack, disaster, or pandemic.
A Corporate Reserve: America’s businesses can and wish to do their part. Corporations have developed assets in areas valuable to disaster response, such as logistics and deployment of redundant communications. Washington should form and encourage businesses, non-profits and unions to join an all-volunteer Reserve to provide logistics, supplies, and manpower.
Read the full text of Governor Warner's remarks at George Mason University

Read more details on the ideas outlined above


Thank you,

Ellen Qualls
Forward Together PAC


If the links above do not work, try cutting and pasting the following links into your browser:

Video: http://www.forwardtogetherpac.com/contents/show/287
Full Speech: http://www.forwardtogetherpac.com/pages/Security
More Details: http://www.forwardtogetherpac.com/pages/Safer



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1. Mark Warner Video--Making America Safer At Home

http://www.forwardtogetherpac.com/contents/show/287