Anti-Terrorism Technology Key to Homeland Security
Remarks by the President at Argonne National Laboratory - Illinois
10:33 A.M. CDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, all. Please have a seat -- (laughter)
-- unless you don't have a chair. (Laughter.) Thank you all very
much for welcoming me here. I'm honored to be here. I'm honored to
be here with some of the finest Americans in our country. (Applause.)
We're in a new kind of war today. We face a ruthless
and a resourceful enemy, we do. That's the reality of the 21st
century. These people seek to acquire the most destructive of
weapons, because they hate freedom. They intend to spread fear
and death around the world. To prevail in this war, we're going
to take the battle to the enemy, in foreign lands. To prevail in
this war, we'll use our law enforcement and our intelligence
gathering all across our country to prevent the American people from
being harmed. And to prevail in this war, we will fight on the
frontiers of knowledge and discovery.
In this new war, we will rely upon the genius and creativity of
the American people. (Applause.) And that's why I'm here, to look in
the eyes of those who posses the genius and the creativity of the
American people. (Applause.) Our scientific community is serving on
the front lines of this war, by developing new technologies that will
make America safer. And as you tackle new scientific challenges, I
want you to know, our government will stand by your side to make
your job easier. It is in our interests that we work together.
I want to thank Spence Abraham for his leadership at the Department
of Energy, and I want to thank all of you for working for the fine
Department of Energy. I want to thank Tom Ridge for coming. He's a
man -- I asked him, I said, you know, you need to serve your
country. He was serving as the Governor of Pennsylvania. I
said, you've got a nice mansion over there. (Laughter.) It's
heavy lifting, but we need you in Washington. And for the good of
the country, he came to help us spearhead the effort for a Department
of Homeland Security.
And I want to thank Dr. John Marburger who is the Director of
Office Science and Technology Policy. Dr. Marburger is a fine
scientist, who represents the best of American scientists in
Washington, D.C.
I appreciate the Speaker of the House being here. He's my
friend, he's doing a fine job on behalf of the citizens of Illinois
and the United States of America, Speaker Denny Hastert. (Applause.)
And I want to thank Senator Durbin and Senator Fitzgerald for coming,
as well. I know they've got busy schedules. (Applause.) Thank
you all for being here, I appreciate you coming. I appreciate
Judy Biggert, Jerry Weller and Mark Kirk, fine members of the House of
Representatives from Illinois being here today. (Applause.) I
look forward to giving them a lift back to Washington.
(Laughter.) It's a nice way to travel. I think you all will like it.
(Laughter.)
I want to thank the Governor, George Ryan, for coming.
Governor, I appreciate your time. I want to thank the Attorney
General of Illinois, Jim Ryan, for coming as well. (Applause.) I want
to thank Ray Orbach, who is the Director of Office and Science at the
Department of Energy, who led us on our tour. And of course I've got
to thank Dr. Grunder. If everybody had a spirit like Dr.
Grunder, the world would be an incredibly happy place. (Applause.)
We're proud of you, Herman. Thank you for your service to the
country, and thank you all very much.
The Argonne National Laboratory is a cutting edge facility. You're
on the cutting edge, and you've got a great history, as well. It is a
direct decedent of the University of Chicago laboratory, where in
1942 Enrico Fermi and his colleagues achieved the world's first
controlled nuclear chain reaction. This is a place where smart people
work. (Laughter.) It is the home of some of America's greatest
scientists, who continue to dazzle the world with astonishing
breakthroughs.
I've just come back from viewing some demonstrations of the great
work done at national laboratories, whether it be here, or Los Alamos,
or Sandia or others. The American people need to know we've got a lot
of brain power working on ways to deal with the threats that we now
face as we head into the 21st century.
For example, I saw a warning and response system that will
supply first responders with timely and life saving information in the
event of a chemical attack on a subway or any other enclosed space.
I saw a project that uses new advances in genetic research to
identify and understand biological agents that could be used
against us. I saw computer simulations to help policy makers
and first responders anticipate the effect of an attack of natural
disaster, and to develop life saving plans.
What I saw was new technologies that our scientists are developing
to help us secure the homeland. America is grateful -- it's grateful
for your work. And our government must be organized and focused to
support these efforts. Right now there are more than a hundred
different federal agencies that have some role in the homeland
defense of our country. And despite everyone's best intentions in
those agencies, this inevitably leads to a dispersal of authority.
Imagine, a hundred of them scattered all over Washington, D.C. It
makes it hard to have accountability when you've got a hundred agencies
scattered around. And it's a drain on critical resources.
So I asked Congress to join me in creating a single,
permanent, Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security with an
overriding and urgent mission, with this primary focus: to
secure the American homeland. (Applause.) Their agencies, once
they're under this -- in this new department will have other
missions, no question about it. But their primary mission is to
recognize the new world in which we live. The world has changed, and
so must our government change with it, in order to allow all of us
who have responsibility to say to the American people, we're doing
everything we possibly can to protect innocent American lives.
This Department of Homeland Security will foster a new
culture throughout our government, one that emphasizes cooperation
and working together on behalf of the American people. And this
department will have four primary tasks. First, it will work
to control our borders. (Applause.) There needs to be much better
cooperation amongst the agencies to make sure we know who is coming in
the country, what they're bringing in the country, why they're coming
in the country, and are they leaving when they said they're going to
leave the country. (Applause.)
We need to work -- one of the primary responsibilities will be to
work with state and local authorities to respond quickly and
effectively to emergencies. In other words, we need to be better
coordinated with the brave, first time responders -- that means
police and fire and EMS teams which exist all across our country. We
want to have them have the strategy necessary to respond, the
tools to respond effectively, and to be coordinated not only
at the federal level, the state level and the local level.
Thirdly, we need to merge under one roof the capability to
identify and assess threats to the homeland, map those threats
against our vulnerabilities, and address the vulnerabilities. So
prior to September 11th, we had the CIA collecting information and we
had the FBI collecting information, and sometimes they weren't
talking all that much. Now they talk. Now they coordinate.
(Applause.)
When I'm there in Washington, I meet every morning, face to face,
with the Director of the CIA and with the head of the FBI. It's a
way to make sure that, at least at the very top levels of
government, people are communicating, and we're sharing
information. We need to do that throughout all our government,
and the Department of Homeland Security. We need to be able to take
the information intelligence gathered from around the world, as well
as at home, and understand what might or might not be happening. One
of the key tools that we need to use effectively against the
cold-blooded killers who we're trying to chase down is the capacity of
our nation to collect and analyze information.
And, finally, we need our scientists to develop the kinds
of technologies I saw today. We need to have an effective strategy of
mating up our brain power with the problems we face, so as to stay on
the cutting edge of technological change necessary to protect the
homeland.
And this last point is an incredibly important point -- and that's
why I've come to this laboratory to make the point.
(Laughter.) It's a perfect place to make the point. (Applause.) We
will harness our science and our technology in a way to protect
the American people. We will consolidate most federally funded
homeland security research and development, to avoid
duplication, and to make sure all the efforts are focused.
You see, we need to learn to set priorities in our government.
And the number one priority is to protect America from attack, because
we're at war. (Applause.) The Department of Homeland Security will
work to create a long-term plan. And once you have the long-term
plan, with the goal of securing the homeland, then we can set
funding priorities. We give our scientists the resources they require,
and that's important for you to know -- (applause) -- resources
necessary to counter the chemical and the biological and the
radiological and nuclear threats that our nation faces.
And these threats are real. And therefore we need to stay
focused, not only to make sure resources are spent, but that
critical research continues, because you all know better than
anybody, when we research and we set priorities, this great
nation can achieve any objective. (Applause.)
We're making progress. We are making progress in
Washington. I appreciate so very much the House Select Committee
getting a bill out, and it's going to get to the floor. And the
Speaker was telling me today that it looks like they may get a vote
this week. And the Senate is working hard on it, both Republicans
and Democrats are working hard to reconcile any differences that may
be had. It's important for people to understand, particularly in
Washington, this Department of Homeland Security is not a good
Republican idea, it's not a good Democrat idea, it's simply an
American idea, and they need to get their work done. (Applause.)
And as they do so, the new Secretary of Homeland Security must
have the freedom and the flexibility to be able to get the right
people in the right job at the right time, so we can hold
people accountable in Washington. We need the freedom to
manage. We don't need to be micro-managed.
And that's sometimes what happens in Washington, D.C. The
new Secretary needs the ability to move money and resources quickly, to
respond to true threats. I understand why that may not happen
sometimes in Washington, and it's because, for example, appropriators
may not want the executive branch to have the capacity to make
decisions necessary to make the Homeland Department work effectively.
But we're in new times in America, and that requires new
thinking. And Congress must give us the flexibility necessary to
make the right decisions to achieve our goal, which is to protect the
American people.
As well, this new Department must have every tool it needs to
secure the homeland. This new agency should include all of the
departments which protect our border -- all of the departments, not
just some, but all of the departments. That includes the Coast Guard,
the Customs Service, the INS, INS inspectors, Border Patrol and
Customs agents must report to the same boss and work together for the
same goals. (Applause.)
And this new Department needs to be able to respond effectively to
any attack that might come, so it must house FEMA in its entirety.
What I'm telling you is, I understand that these changes won't be
easy for some in Congress, but for the sake of the security of the
American people, Congress needs to give up some of its turf, and
recognize turf is not nearly as important as security for the people
-- security for the American people. We're in new times, folks.
We're in a different world. (Applause.) We face an unprecedented
threat, and we cannot respond with business as usual.
But I want you to know something, how I feel, and what I know. I
know that the best way to secure the homeland is to hunt these
cold-blooded killers down, one by one, and bring them to justice. And
that's what we're going to do. (Applause.)
And it's going to take a while. It's going to take a while.
Unlike past wars -- where you could see platoons and battalions
moving here, or airplane formations moving there -- we're chasing down
these people who are willing to hide in a cave and send youngsters to
their death. That's the kind of people we're facing.
You know, these people hate -- they hate America because we
love freedom. They hate the fact that -- as I look out, I mean,
I can see people who worship an Almighty and some who don't; who
worship an Almighty one way and others another way. They hate
that. They can't stand a society which honors freedom -- freedom
to worship, freedom to speak, freedom to express our opinions. That's
what they hate. And they're going to hate us for a long time
because those are the values we'll never relinquish in America.
(Applause.)
We believe in tolerance in America. That's what we believe in.
We respect the other person -- we always don't agree, but we respect
and we tolerate. And we believe everybody ought to have access
to the great American experience, regardless of how they're raised
or where they're from. That's what we believe.
And any time anybody who tries to get us because of those
beliefs, they're going to find something out about America. I don't
know what was going through the minds of the enemy when they were
plotting and planning. I don't know who they thought they were
attacking. They must have thought this country was so materialistic,
so self-absorbed that we would sit back and, you know, after the
attacks, maybe file a lawsuit or two. (Laughter.) That's not the
America I know. And that's not the America you're a part of.
Listen, when people come after us, we're plenty tough.
(Applause.) We're a compassionate nation. (Applause.) And so we're
on the hunt. You just need to know we're after them one by one. One
by one. And so long as I'm the President of this country, we're
going to chase them down one by one to make sure the American homeland
is secure. (Applause.)
And we're making progress, progress. As I said in a speech in
front of about 10,000 of our troops and their families in Ft. Drum,
New York, last friday: we've hauled in thousands -- that
means captured. (Laughter.) And another couple of thousand weren't
quite as lucky. We're making progress. Sometimes it's not quite as
dramatic as, you know, the newscasters would like. Because they
learned their lesson, by the way. They understand if they bunch
up, if they get together, our military is going to find them and
it's not going to be a pleasant day when our military does find
them. Because we're good. I'm really proud of the United States
military and those who serve. (Applause.)
And I'm proud of you all, too. That's really what I'm here to
tell you. I'm proud of you. We're depending on you to develop the
tools we need to lift the dark threat of terrorism for our nation --
and, for that matter, the world. All of us here today, whether we're
scientists or engineers or elected officials, share in a great
calling. It's an honor to participate in a noble cause that's larger
than ourselves.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: God bless America. (Applause.)
THE PRESIDENT: It's an honor to defend this nation. It's a
high honor, to be called into action and to defend our nation
when it's threatened. And that's what you're doing. It's an honor
to help protect the American people against the forces of evil.
History has called each of us to defend America. That's
what's happened. History has called us into action in a time of great
peril. The struggles against Naziism and communism helped to define
the 20th century. The war on terror will be the defining conflict of
the 21st century.
It's our solemn duty, it's our responsibility, and it's our
great privilege to help America prevail in this war -- and
prevail we will. (Applause.)
May God bless you all, may God bless your work and may God
bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you, all. (Applause.)