Closing anti-terror office raises questions

Nevada's decision last month to do away with its homeland security office reflects a national trend away from treating anti-terrorism as separate and apart from "all-hazards" emergency management.

Twenty-one states since 2003 have merged anti-terrorism offices with existing emergency management agencies. That leaves just 13 states with independent homeland security offices. The other 16 have had merged offices since the 9/11 attacks.

Beverly Cigler, a professor of public policy and administration at Penn State University, said such mergers have benefits, especially in states such as Nevada where emergency management offices are already handling tens of millions of dollars in federal homeland security grants.

"Governors are saying it's more effective financially, and it just makes sense to put homeland security offices within a FEMA-like agency," Cigler said.

But the decision to put these agencies under one roof isn't universally popular.

Sheriff Doug Gillespie and other members of the state's Homeland Security Commission, a body that advises Gov. Jim Gibbons on terrorism-related matters, criticized Gibbons' consolidation of agencies at a commission meeting earlier this month.

"I think it further diminishes that sense of urgency we had after 9/11," Gillespie said in an interview with the Review-Journal. "I think at the state level you need an individual and an office that report directly to the governor on homeland security issues."

Citing the vulnerability of hotels and a recent history of attacks at hotels overseas, Gillespie said Las Vegas remains an attractive target for terrorists.

Following the 9/11 attacks, the then-new Department of Homeland Security asked every state to develop a system for working with the federal government on fighting terrorism.

Many states responded by forming homeland security offices in the belief that anti-terrorism and traditional emergency management did not belong together.

After Gibbons announced the merger on Oct. 21, homeland security chief Rick Eaton resigned his post, rather than accept a position within the Department of Public Safety, which oversees emergency management. Eaton, whose resignation will take effect at the end of the month, said he wanted to spend more time with his family and pursue new challenges. Emergency management director Frank Siracusa's office will absorb Eaton's staff of three.

The brief history of homeland security in Nevada started in 2002 when then-Gov. Kenny Guinn, by verbal authority, established the Nevada Office of Homeland Security and named retired Army Col. Jerry Bussell his special adviser on terrorism. During its nearly eight-year run, the office received about $500,000 annually in state funding, more than $100,000 of which went toward the yearly salary of its director.

In contrast with homeland security offices in many other states, as well as the state commission Gillespie now sits on, the Nevada homeland security office wasn't created by statute.

Three men succeeded Bussell as anti-terrorism coordinator: Maj. Gen. Giles Vanderhoof, Nevada's former adjutant general; Larry Martines, a former CIA operative; and Eaton, a former official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Bussell and Martines both ran into controversy, Bussell for apparently giving special treatment to a lobbyist who bid on a $40 million statewide emergency communications system, and Martines over his support of a Gibbons proposal to put the state's primary counterterrorism center in Carson City.

Bussell has denied the allegation.

Gibbons and Gillespie clashed over whether the Carson City "fusion" center should be the state's main link to federal homeland security officials. Gibbons got his facility, but it now shares responsibilities with similar centers in Las Vegas and Reno.

As the years passed and the state developed a more complex homeland security infrastructure, including the three fusion centers, the role of the homeland security adviser came under scrutiny.

Earlier this year, Nevada officials began questioning the need for a separate homeland security office. At a February legislative hearing, Eaton defended his office's record, arguing that he had helped steer federal grant money to Nevada and obtain federal security clearances for state and local officials.

State legislators grilled Eaton on several matters, including why his office hadn't used funds it received to improve communications networks in Nevada. Others wondered why there was no comprehensive plan for protecting the state's critical infrastructure from a terrorist attack.

Nevada Public Safety Commissioner Jerry Hafen said at this month's Homeland Security Commission meeting that the state's homeland security advisers hadn't accomplished enough.

"We haven't seen the kind of performance out of the Office of Homeland Security over the past eight years as we expected to see," said Hafen, whose department manages the fusion center in Carson City.

Gillespie and others have questioned whether the Division of Emergency Management has the resources to handle its new duties.

With 31 full-time employees, the Emergency Management Division is among the least staffed agencies of its kind in the nation, according to National Emergency Management Association data.

Siracusa said his agency can handle the added responsibilities: "So much of what is homeland security is what we've already been doing in emergency management."

Contact reporter Alan Maimon at amaimon@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0404.