US security boss warns Congress on pre-emption

13 June 2007 16:25  [Source: ICIS news]

FALLS CHURCH, Virginia (ICIS news)--A top US security official said on Wednesday that Congress could unravel antiterrorism chemical plant protection measures now being put into play if it does away with federal pre-emption of state site security regulations.

Robert Stephan, assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, charged that congressional insistence on state rights to enact site security legislation more stringent than the new federal programme could even make US chemical plants more vulnerable to potential terrorist attacks.

The US House of Representatives is considering a fiscal year 2008 spending bill for the department that includes language to amend last year’s chemical site security law by specifically allowing state governments to enact and enforce their own plant protection regulations even if they conflict with the federal law.

“We find that language very disturbing,” Stephan said.  “It is not helpful or productive, and it could unravel the important security work that is already being done at US chemical facilities, and it might only make our chemical plants more vulnerable.”

Stephan, who is responsible for the department’s work to protect critical US infrastructure such as chemicals manufacturing, said that if a state were to impose uniform security procedures on its resident chemical facilities, knowledge of those requirements could make attack planning easier for potential terrorists.

“We must have federal pre-emption of state law that conflicts with or frustrates federal enforcement in this area,” Stephan said.  “If a state were to take a cookie-cutter approach, for example, and mandate that chemical facilities do 20 specific things, with fences so high and a specific number of guards and so on, knowledge of those uniform provisions would simplify matters for Al Qaeda.”

“That’s the sort of thing we would want to and would have to pre-empt,” Stephan said.

He said that if Congress acts to bar federal pre-emption in chemical plant security law, “they will be driving a wedge between the federal government and state governments in this” and create conflicts and infighting among state and federal regulators.

“Infighting in this situation would serve only one master: Osama bin Laden,” Stephan said.

Speaking to some 400 industry executives at the fourth annual chemical security summit, Stephan said his department and others in the Bush administration are working hard to defeat the pre-emption ban in Congress.

Co-sponsored by the department and 18 chemical sector trade associations, the three-day summit concludes on Wednesday.

By: Joe Kamalick
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