Homeland Security Initiative
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New York City Police
Commissioner Ray Kelly,
Aspen's Clark Kent Ervin, and
Ford Foundation President
Susan Berresford.
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Thanks to a generous grant from the Ford Foundation, the Aspen Institute’s Homeland Security Program has launched a two-year project that will assess five cities’ (namely, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and New Orleans) preparedness for another 9/11-scale terror attack and another Hurricane Katrina-scale natural disaster. Moderated by program director, Clark Kent Ervin, the first of several roundtable discussions (at least one in each targeted city) was held in New York City on December 3-5 at the Ford Foundation’s offices.
Among the speakers and panelists were New York City Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly; Deputy NYPD Commissioner for Intelligence and former top CIA official David Cohen; and the top FBI counterterrorism official in New York City, Mark Mershon. The invited guest list included homeland security think tank experts; foundation representatives; area university representatives, and key congressional staffers.
The Rockefeller Foundation has given the Homeland Security Program a complementary grant to assess New York City’s preparedness, with a particular focus on the nexus between climate change and homeland/national security. A discrete roundtable on that topic will be held in New York at Rockefeller’s offices sometime in the spring of 2008.
Roundtables in Los Angeles and Chicago assessing those cities’ preparedness will likewise be organized sometime in the spring of 2008.
A report will ultimately be prepared that will identify best practices in these cities that can be replicated elsewhere in the nation. Gaps in preparedness will also be highlighted in this report, along with recommendations for closing such gaps. The report is intended to help set the homeland security/counterterrorism agenda for the new president and the new Congress taking office in January, 2009.
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Program Description
Years have passed since 9/11, and yet gaping holes in America's defenses against terrorism remain. Because weakness is provocative, these security gaps heighten the risk of another terror attack.
The Aspen Institute's Homeland Security Program works to heighten public awareness as to the nation's continued vulnerability to terrorism, and to persuade the nation to take the necessary steps to close the gap between how secure we should be and how secure we actually are. Through books, speeches, congressional testimony, media appearances, op-eds, blog postings, and forums, we strive to influence Administration and congressional policy makers, state and local officials, private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure, and the public at large. Our goal is to reduce the risk of another terror attack, and to minimize the death, injury, and economic damage from any future terror attack that is not prevented.
Led by the former (and first) Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Aspen Institute's Homeland Security Program has become a "go to" destination for insightful analysis of homeland security issues and practical solutions to the nation’s most pressing homeland security issues.
Clark Ervin is an Aspen Institute Paul H. Nitze Fellow and Director of the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Initiative.
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