An Ignoble Experiment

2. Citizen leader details bottom-up recovery in Joplin

The U.S. Forest Service and the Department of the Interior need hard data on the effectiveness of various types of firefighting aircraft before they can identify how to best to expand the fleet, the General Accountability Office says in a new report (.pdf).

Better collaboration also is needed between federal agencies and the fire aviation community, says the Aug. 20 GAO report.

Both the Forest Service and Interior Department contract for firefighting aircraft, with the Forest Service contracting for large air tankers and Interior contracting for smaller tankers and water scoopers, GAO notes.

Between crashes and planes aging out, the size of the large tanker fleet has fallen from 44 in 2002 to eight earlier this year, raising concerns about the amount of aerial support available to fight wildfires, GAO says.

From 2007 through 2012, the agencies spent more than $2.4 billion on contracted firefighting aircraft, fuel and retardant, according to the report

The Forest Service faces several challenges in expanding the large air-tanker fleet.

For now, the plan is to rely on contracted legacy tankers plus other contracted aircraft, including military tankers. In the medium term, the Forest Service has awarded contracts for faster, more capable "next generation" aircraft, but it's unclear when those aircraft will be available, GAO says.

In the long term, the Forest Service wants to shift to owning its own fleet, buying more large air tankers and taking ownership of surplus military and other governmental tankers.

GAO says the Forest Service couldn't justify earlier plans for purchasing large tankers to the Office of Management and Budget. Plus, there are questions about the capabilities of the transferred governmental aircraft, including cost and effectiveness.

In its recommendations, GAO says the Forest Service and the Interior Department need to collaborate with the fire aviation community in identifying the number and type of firefighting aircraft needed.

The two agencies then need to update strategy documents that include analysis of aircraft performance and effectiveness and input from the fire aviation community, GAO says.

The agencies generally concurred with the findings.

For more:
- read the report summary (GAO-13-684)
- download the report (.pdf)

Read more about: GAO report, Forest Service
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By Zach Rausnitz

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3. House Judiciary chairman opposes citizenship for those brought illegally as children

The recovery from the tornado that devastated Joplin, Mo., in 2011 thrived under the guidance of a citizen advisory group, that group's leader said Aug. 22 at an event in Washington, D.C.

Jane Cage, who won the Homeland Security Department's National Award for Resilience in 2012, said the group was able to implement a bottom-up recovery plan for Joplin. Cage was an executive at a local technology company who had no recovery credentials but had "a second life as a volunteer," she told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies

Local residents established the citizen advisory group and held its first meeting about a month after the tornado. Twelve days later, the group held its first public meeting, which drew more than 300 people who wrote input and suggestions on 1,500 sticky notes posted around the room.

"That night was a way to give citizens an opportunity to stop looking around and start looking ahead," Cage said.

More than 100 volunteers consolidated the input into a list of priorities, and the citizen group then held another public meeting to find out whether residents approved of the list.

After that, the group formed an implementation task force that presented the priorities to stakeholders, including the city council, the school board and the local chamber of commerce. The task force's ideas became the de facto long-term recovery plan, Cage said. "It's amazing that it came...not from the top down but from the bottom up."

Cage attributed her group's success to its lack of allegiance to anyone other than citizens.

"I don't have a dog in the fight. I don't get paid by anybody," she said.

That position also made the other stakeholders more receptive to her input, Cage said, because she could be neutral where other groups had their own interests to protect. As she put it, "Sometimes I'm Switzerland in Joplin."

For more:
- go to the CSIS event webpage (webcast available)

Read more about: FEMA, tornado
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By Zach Rausnitz

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4. DOJ OIG: Patriot Act civil rights complaints not substantiated

Undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children should not receive a path to citizenship, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said Aug. 20.

Goodlatte, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said they could receive legal status if an employer petitions to hire them after failing to find a U.S. citizen to fill an open position.

"Even for them, I would say that they get a legal status in the United States and not a pathway to citizenship that is created especially for them," Goodlatte said during conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt's radio program. "I wouldn't give them the pathway to a green card and ultimately citizenship based simply on their entering the country illegally."

At a hearing in July, Goodlatte had expressed sympathy for the predicaments of undocumented immigrants brought as children. "Many of them know no other home than the United States, having grown up as Americans since they were toddlers, in some instances. They surely don't share the culpability of their parents," he said.

Congress is currently in recess. When it returns in September, Goodlatte said he expected the House to take up the immigration bills that have passed the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees--"that take the step-by-step approach that we've outlined," he told Hewitt, instead of voting on a comprehensive package.

Members of Congress have not encountered the level of opposition to immigration reform among constituents and activists that they had during previous reform efforts, according to an article in Politico. But reform opponents say that's a sign that they aren't concerned that the Republican-controlled House will approve comprehensive reform, the article says.

Meanwhile, USA Today reported that a coalition of evangelical Christians is set to launch an advertising campaign in favor of reform, mostly in districts with Republican representatives.

For more:
- go to the transcript of Goodlatte's remarks

Read more about: House Judiciary, DREAM Act
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By Julie Bird

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5. Studies overestimated impact of reducing soot, methane

The vast majority of the 515 complaints to the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General alleging civil rights or civil liberties violations by DOJ personnel in the first half of 2013 were misdirected or unfounded, according to the OIG's most recent report (.pdf).

Of 515 complaints, 444 either were not in the OIG's jurisdiction (with 386 being against non-DOJ agencies) or did not warrant further investigation, according to the report. Of those, 58 could not be investigated or referred to other agencies because they didn't identify a subject or agency.

Of the 71 complaints requiring review, 64 raised issues outside section 1001 of the Patriot Act related to civil rights and civil liberties investigations, such as complaints about general prison conditions, and were referred elsewhere within DOJ for review.

Seven complaints were found to warrant further investigation, with six of those referred to the Bureau of Prisons and one handled by the OIG. That complaint, involving a prison inmate who alleged harassment by a guard and a cook supervisor of inmates observing Ramadan, was found to be unsubstantiated.

The BOP also determined the six complaints it investigated were not substantiated. All involved allegations of discrimination or harassment against Muslim prisoners.

The overall number of complaints reviewed fell from 670 during the same time period in 2012. The number of complaints investigated by OIG of BOP also fell from 11 last year, none of which was substantiated, according to the September 2012 report (.pdf).

Ongoing OIG activities relating to section 1001 requirements include:

Reviewing DOJ use of the material witness warrant statute.
Reviewing FBI use of national security letters, pen register and trap-and-trace authorities.
Reviewing the effectiveness of FBI management of terrorist watch list nominations and encounters with people on the watch list.
Monitoring domestic DOJ use of unmanned aerial systems.

OIG did not detail the reviews or any findings.

The report noted that earlier this year OIG also recommended several areas where the FBI's Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force could improve operations, including the transparency of its information systems.

For more:
- download the report, "Report to Congress on Implementation of Section 1001 of the USA PATRIOT Act - August 2013" (.pdf)
- download September 2012 report, "Report to Congress on Implementation of Section 1001 of the USA PATRIOT Act - September 2012" (.pdf)

Read more about: Patriot Act, DOJ OIG
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By Julie Bird

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