THE BORDER REPORT

Hearing President Bush's speech this morning announcing that his Secretary of Defense is out, I got to wondering about Robert Gates and whether we're getting more of the same. In 2002, Gates came forward with an op-ed in Time Magazine, basically calling the Sept. 11 FBI Phoenix memo writer a Monday morning quarterback (is that enough clauses in one sentence for ya'?). "While some pre-9/11 items of intelligence today seem like red flags, pulling together incomplete or ambiguous fragments of information into a credible and compelling analysis is more difficult than the Monday-morning quarterbacks would have you think. Especially doing so convincingly enough to prompt high-level, high-risk decisions." I would hope the man is beyond the poo-pooing dismissal of FBI agents who tried to warn their bosses of the impending attack. I mean my god, even the local travel agency up the street from my office in San Diego had a State Department travel warning faxed in, saying that al-Qaida may try to hijack a plane. That was Sept. 7. If the State Department found the threat credible enough to issue a warning four days before the attack was launched, what other "ambiguous fragments" were missing to connect the dots? I would hope that Gates remains under as close of scrutiny as he was under Bush Senior and during the Reagan Administration. In 1987, Reagan withdrew him for Director of the CIA because it became clear the Senate was going to reject him. He resurfaced in 1991, when Bush Senior put him out there; this time the Senate approved the nomination. In the Final Report for Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, it becomes clear that nobody could stick the Iran weapons-Nicaraguan narco scheme on Gates. That doesn't mean he was innocent. It's all nuanced history now, but at the time, the independent counsel couldn't determine if Gates knew the U.S. was using money from the Iranians to support the contras in the autumn, like he claimed, or months earlier when the scheme was still going on. He was eventually cleared. Nothing stuck and to be fair, maybe that was judicious after all. This is also a man who's dedicated himself to a lifetime of public service. Maybe he deserves the top position in Bush's last two years after all. I've been hearing a lot of cheering as Rumsfeld steps down and that's fine. The Republicans - like the public - badly needed a scapegoat today. But you know what they say about the devils you know versus those you don't ...

THE BORDER REPORT

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THE BORDER REPORT

Taking a drive down the dirt road by the Naco port of entry, the efforts to seal the border seem clear. A graded border road stretches for miles. Yards of steel vehicle barrier abut tall landing mats or barbwire fence as far as the eye can see. A U.S. Border Patrol agent nods grimly from behind his mirrored shades, his Chevy Tahoe powdered with red dust from patrolling the desert. The public information offices churn out stats; the numbers look good. Homeland Security boasts there's been no terror attack on U.S. soil for five years. Thousands of pounds of narcotics were seized and hundreds of thousand of illegal immigrants were captured in the Tucson sector alone by the end of the last fiscal year. You want to believe. The narcotics can be stopped; the wave of cheap labor can be controlled. Then you find the hobbyhorse and a creepier reality sets in. I didn't notice it at first; maybe because it was so out of place it didn't register. But there it sat, between a pile of vehicle barrier steel and a blue port-a-potty. Someone had fun building the thing; an old bicycle handlebar for your hands, horseshoes for your feet, all sitting on an immense metal spring; a white tire rim for the base. To give them credit, Tucson sector admitted readily enough it belongs to them. It was made a long time ago; somehow it turned up on the border road. "Obviously there's better uses of our time than building stuff like that," said Gustavo Soto from the sector's media office. Nobody's admitted to riding it, he says. One has to be careful not to make too much of these things. After all, U.S. Border Patrol agents account for the majority of our security along the Mexican border. They save lives, arrest gang members, nab smugglers, all for about $2 billion a year. We've spent 150 times that amount trying to secure Iraq. But it’s disturbing, in the midst of a national debate over what to do with 12, 20, 30 million illegal immigrants in the country, some federal agent is out riding a hobbyhorse. What do the illegal immigrants watching from Sonora think when they see La Migra playing games? Maybe, "Esta loco. Let's get across while he's busy." It's sad but indicative of a larger problem. We don't have it in us. We don't have a security culture; maybe we never did. We just don't take it seriously. The Sept. 11 attacks got us excited for controlling the border but even that is fading away. Throwing up its hands, Homeland Security is outsourcing the job. Last month it rewarded a $67 million contract to the Boeing Company in hopes they can develop sensors that do more than identify cows. A Southern Arizona drug agent laughed when I suggested we seize ten percent of all incoming narcotics. "Ten? In a good year, when we've identified warehouses and growing fields, maybe ten percent," he said. "At most." A million illegal entry attempts are stopped every year. But by Customs and Border Protection's own admission, half a million people successfully slip into the country every year and we have little idea who they are. President Bush recently approved a homeland security bill with $1.2 billion for border fencing - enough for about 150 miles. There's still little sanction for employers who profit from the Diaspora. Maybe Congress is waiting for us to forget. A federal agent in the Arizona desert believes it's too late, the American public won't forget. "I think that there is a growing number of people across the country who are sick of the invasion and want it stopped regardless of what it takes," he said. He may be right. But unless border security becomes a debate that lasts beyond the elections, we're stuck with what we have. A piece of political theatre, nothing more.

THE BORDER REPORT

Alonzo Peña started work today as Special-Agent-in-Charge of what may be the most beleagured, low morale workplace in the state of Arizona - ICE.