The Washington Post - 19.03.2020

A2 eZ sU THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAy, MARCH 19 , 2020

HAPPenIng ToDAy

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8:30 a.m. | The Labor
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8:30 a.m. | The Commerce
Department issues the current
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l A March 15 A-section a rticle
about how presidential c andidate
Joe Biden’s primary victories and
the c oronavirus are altering
Democratic calculations about
the general election c ampaign
misstated t he name o f a super
PAC helping Biden. It i s Unite the
Country, n ot Unite America.

the Washington Post is committed to
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Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), the t op Democrat o n the Rules Committee, has b egun to w ork with Republicans to see if there is some way to u pdate procedures and m odernize things. “I’m open to talking a bout it,” Sen. Roy B lunt (R-Mo.), c hairman of the c ommittee, said Wednesday. But Blunt s aid he was skeptical on some of t he m ore far- reaching ideas. For now, t he plan is to go forward and, if there is a major virus-caused disruption a mong lawmakers, the House a nd S enate could convene with just two lawmakers a nd a few staffers on hand to a pprove must-pass legislation. But that o nly a pplies to legislation t hat can be approved without any dissent. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) is supportive o f the K lobuchar effort but also a cknowledged that lawmakers h ave to stay i nside the Capitol f or the n ext few days o r longer to pass several bills critical to fighting the virus and i ts impact on the economy. “There’s s uch a crisis here that we are needed to be w orking and getting the j ob done in whatever the q uickest, best, healthiest way is,” S chumer s aid. Durbin l ooked o ut the s ame window Monday e vening, peering down the Mall and recalling that the d anger was coming from t he outside. “A nd t hen they s aid, ‘get o ut of the b uilding’,” h e said. “A nd w e all rushed out o f the b uilding.” Durbin i s ready t o rush out of the b uilding a gain, and i nto t he 21st c entury. [email protected]

Congress f ought t he l ast war. Understandably s o, t he focus back then was o n an attack against t he Capitol from an outside force, given that most experts believe that a fourth hijacked plane was h eaded f or the Capitol until p assengers overtook it and crashed it in western Pennsylvania. Congress held hearings w hile ideologically opposed think tanks, s uch a s the American Enterprise Institute and t he Brookings Institution, joined forces to c reate a commission to study t he continuity of e ach branch of t he f ederal government. Each of t hose studies focused on how to reconstitute the House and S enate i f there were an attack on the Capitol building a nd many lawmakers w ere l eft dead or incapacitated — s uch a s the Cold War-era policy of a bunker u nder the G reenbrier resort, 250 m iles southwest of Washington, to house government o fficials i f the Soviets l aunched missiles. Sen. Christopher A. C oons ( D- Del.) a rrived Monday at t he Capitol hoping to figure out what planning h ad b een made for a viral attack t hat would i nvolve not relocating C ongress to another building, but a llowing lawmakers to meet f ar a part from others. That’s w hen h e talked to his former chief of staff, w ho w as part of the S enate’s review of continuity i ssues. No, t hey never planned for today’s environment. Also, Coons said, traditionalists were afraid of allowing l ong- distance voting. “There w as grave concern that, if y ou e ver triggered the ‘ we don’t h ave to come here to vote,’ well, we would never come back,” h e said.

Bottled w ater is available in the cloakrooms, and a sign on t he clerk’s d esk says i n capital letters: SOCIAL DISTANCE. The new protocols w ere n ot good e nough for some senators, who h ave seen family and f riends adhering to the g uidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention against g athering in groups larger than 10. They a re hunkering down and telecommuting, or missing work altogether i f they are employed i n the r estaurant and b ar i ndustry, Some senators b elieve t hey should b e under t he same restrictions as t he general public, both for their o wn p ersonal bid t o limit the s pread o f the v irus and to set an example to the p ublic. And a s the w eek began, some started t o wonder h ow much longer Congress could stay i n session. Just Tuesday, Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) became t he fifth senator t o announce s ome form of s elf-quarantine after coming in contact with someone who t ested p ositive f or this strain of coronavirus. His announcement c ame hours after he h ad attended a closed- door luncheon with other Republican s enators — m any in the a t-risk age group — a nd Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. “We can’t c onfidently p redict that we can j ust reconvene Congress repeatedly as a normal course o f business, given whether it’s a irline interruptions or health issues that could impact staff or members,” S en. Marco Rubio ( R- Fla.) t old reporters. But t here is no easy answer. The people who oversaw t he post- 9/11 review of t he c ontinuity of

Durbin s aid. “Can we bring t he United States S enate into t he 2 1st century w hen it comes t o voting? The standards that we are using are s tandards that date back t o the w riting o f the Constitution. Present and v oting. What is presence anymore?” For now Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has r ejected the idea, believing that Congress can c ontinue to function with revised s ocial distancing features that will keep everyone safe. “We’ll n ot be doing that. L ook, there a re a number o f different ways to avoid getting too m any people t ogether,” McConnell t old reporters Tuesday, suggesting that roll calls could be v astly extended to allow s mall g roups to cast votes without crowding one another. “We will deal with t he social d istancing i ssue w ithout fundamentally changing t he Senate rules.” On Wednesday m orning, some senators followed McConnell’s new directive t o vote a nd leave the c hamber rather than linger in the s mall, shoulder-to-shoulder huddles that usually o ccur d uring votes. But o thers congregated, with one g roup g athered around the desk of S en. L indsey O. G raham (R-S.C.) — f resh off a three-day self-quarantine that e nded with a negative t est — a s they d iscussed the e merging financial rescue package. At one point the g roup grew to nine R epublicans, standing c lose together. Gone are t he teenage pages who s huttled d ocuments o r glasses o f water t o senators, because their s chool h as been closed l ike so m any others.

Sen. Richard J.
Durbin s at i n a
leadership
meeting Monday
night in the same
room he w as in the morning of
Sept. 11, 2 001, with the location
and t oday’s environment
reminding him of that f ateful day.
“Looking d own t he Mall, as t he
white black smoke came a cross
from the Pentagon. I remember i t
well,” t he Illinois Democrat s aid
in an i nterview Tuesday.
Those attacks on Washington
and New York — f ollowed five
weeks later by a nthrax-laced
letters sent t o two senators —
prompted a sweeping review of
doomsday p lanning for how to
keep C ongress running in the
event o f a terrorist attack o r other
calamity. T he past few days h ave
sparked anew talk about t he
continuity o f Congress but
against a n entirely different
threat — a threat from within,
literally, a virus that two members
of the House announced late
Wednesday t hat they h ad been
diagnosed with, setting off a
round of s elf-quarantining by
other l awmakers.
Several Democrats have c alled
for s pecific rule changes that
would allow s enators to w ork a nd
vote from home, j ust as tens of
millions of A mericans are doing
amid the p andemic outbreak o f
the d eadly c oronavirus. A nd
Republicans, w hile n ot fully
embracing the proposals, a re
raising fears that t he e conomic
recovery packages that are meant
to d eal with the virus have t o be
passed very quickly b ecause the
spread could make the C apitol
uninhabitable.
“Here’s what i t boils down t o,”

Congress tries to adjust to a crisis never envisioned

@PKCapitol

PAUL KANE

BY ELLEN NAKASHIMA

President Trump on Wednesday announced his intent to nominate Christopher Miller, a senior Penta- gon official in charge of Special Operations and combating terrorism, to head t he National Counter- terrorism Center — the agency set up after 9/11 to safeguard the nation from attack. Miller, formerly the top counterterrorism official at the Nation- al Security Council, is seen as an experienced hand and career professional who can lead the agency at a time when its mission and effectiveness are u nder review. But the move is also being seen with trepidation by some insiders who wonder i f it is part of a Trump administration effort to purge the intelligence community of career professionals. The acting NCTC director, Russell Travers, a respected career intelligence officer with decades of experience, has held the line against cuts at h is agency. A nd though he has long been expecting to retire, he did not learn of Trump’s intention to nominate Miller until Wednesday morning, according to a person familiar with the matter. At the National Security Coun- cil, Miller, an Army Special Forces veteran with more than 30 years of government service, focused on pressuring the Islamic State, hos- tage recovery and hunting down

the remnants of al-Qaeda’s leadership. On his watch, the Trump administration killed Islamic State leader Abu B akr al-Baghdadi and a key lieutenant. Miller also shepherded comple- tion of the White House counterterrorism strategy in 2018 that ex- panded the scope of threats facing the United States to include Iran, Hezbollah and domestic terrorism. He moved to the Pentagon in December. “I’m encouraged that the administration is turning to a career national security professional for this job as opposed to picking a career politician or some known ideologue,” said Nicholas Rasmus- sen, who led the NCTC from 20 14 to 2017. “What’s important is whether Chris Miller or any nominee can do what needs to be done most — which is to preserve the integrity and independence of the NCTC as an intelligence organization,” he said. The counterterrorism agency has been helmed by Travers, who stepped into the position last Au- gust when then-Director Joseph Maguire was tapped by Trump to serve as acting director of national intelligence. Maguire was pushed out by Trump last month amid a controversy over a briefing given by an Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) official on Russian threats to the 2020

election. The president named a loyalist, U.S. Ambassador to Ger- many Richard Grenell, to serve as acting DNI until a permanent director is confirmed. The ODNI is weighing cuts in funding and staff for the NCTC, which w as set up in 2004 t o ensure that information from any source about potential terrorist attacks against the United States was available to analysts. But as the Islamic State’s caliphate has been wiped out and al-Qaeda has diminished as a threat, policymakers are weighing whether to downsize the agency amid a shift to other priori- ties such as China, Iran and Russia. The NCTC, which is the largest component within the ODNI, is not an operational entity. Rather, its roughly 1,000 personnel inte- grate analysis and collection from the government’s counterterrorism enterprise. A review of the NCTC began in the summer of 2018 as part of a broader “transformation initia- tive” l aunched by then-DNI Daniel Coats. The goal was to gain effi- ciencies without cutting capabili- ties. As the largest of the four centers under the ODNI, the counterterrorism o rganization was a natu- ral place to look. “But it’s a lso a reality t hat NCTC has a line mission function that is unlike most of what the rest of ODNI does,” said a former intelligence official, who spoke on the

condition of anonymity to be can- did. That function incorporates authorities and abilities from vari- ous agencies across the intelligence community that no one spy agency possesses, the former official said. At the same time, there is pres- sure to cut, and as a second former intelligence official put it, “The knives are o ut for NCTC in a pretty major w ay.” Christopher Costa, a former special assistant to the president for counterterrorism who hired Miller onto the National Security Council, has known him since the 1990s, when they were both in Special Operations. He hired Mill- er as his eventual successor. “I wanted somebody who could lead that White House team, and Miller was the r ight g uy at t he right time,” Costa said. Miller became senior director in the spring of 2018, eventually tak- ing on the title of special assistant in the spring of 2019. Javed Ali, who preceded Miller as senior director and who is a former senior NCTC official, said Miller under- stands both policy and operations. One of the main questions is how much latitude he would have to shape recommended changes, Ali said. “Hopefully he will have a fair amount of autonomy instead of being directed to implement a preexisting mandate.” [email protected]

Trump chooses head of counterterrorism center

BY LISA REIN

The federal personnel director quit with no notice Tuesday after five months on the job, leaving the agency that oversees workplace policy for 2.1 million civil servants with no leader amid the government’s r esponse to the coronavirus pandemic. Office of Personnel Manage- ment chief Dale Cabaniss resigned in frustration following months of tension with the White House budget office and more recently with its newly configured staffing office and a political appointee the office installed at OPM in the past month, according to three people familiar with her decision. Caban- iss thought that she was being micromanaged and that her authority was not respected, the people said. An agency spokesperson said in a statement that Cabaniss’s deputy, Michael Rigas, would take over the agency on an acting basis. A s the administration prepared to confront the threat the novel coronavirus posed to federal work- ers, Cabaniss found herself and her agency sidelined by the White House budget o ffice. A s human resources manager of the federal workforce, Cabaniss was unable to communicate clear, timely messages to agency managers on how they should respond to the growing public health threat, said the people familiar with her

decision, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss her resignation. Guidance to managers on when they should send their staffs home to telework was often vague and came weeks after U.S. health officials urged Americans to work from home and minimize contact with others. Even now, managers say privately they have not received clear instruction from the Trump administration on how to manage their workforce during the crisis. Cabaniss, 58, has deep experience with federal personnel issues and was respected by her staff and by Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill, where she served for

two decades as a top Senate aide overseeing civil service issues. Her departure was first reported by Politico. Since her Senate confirmation in October, Cabaniss was viewed as restoring morale to the agency after a tumultuous two years of shift- ing missions and leadership. OPM’s government-wide mission is to administer federal health in- surance policies, retirement claims, benefits and workforce policy. President Trump fired his first Senate-confirmed personnel director, Jeff Tien Han Pon, in October 2018 after seven months because he resisted the administration’s plan to dismantle the agency and

farm out its functions to other de- partments, including the White House. Pon was replaced by Margaret Weichert, a senior official in the White House Office of Manage- ment and Budget, who pushed the plan for 18 months as a way to shrink a troubled agency whose mission was disjointed. But the idea had little traction in Congress, even among Republi- cans, and in December, the president abandoned the effort. Wei - chert had continued to push the breakup when she returned to the budget office. She and Cabaniss clashed over multiple issues, with Cabaniss feeling that her authority was diminished. Weichert resigned from the administration this month but has stayed on during the coronavirus crisis. It i s not clear for how long. In recent weeks, the White House installed a new liaison at OPM, an attorney who does not have experience with federal personnel issues but tried to exert authority over Cabaniss, according to the people familiar with the situation. The White House Personnel Of- fice, which has been in transition in recent months under the leadership of 29-year-old John McEntee, a Trump confidant, also exerted a level of influence on staffing deci- sions that she found untenable, the people said. [email protected]

OPM director resigns after five months on the job

U.s. office of Personnel mAnAgement Office of Personnel Management director Dale Cabaniss felt she was being micromanaged, people familiar with her decision said.

BY ELLEN NAKASHIMA

More than 80 career national security professionals have signed an open letter of support for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, saying that President Trump “has created an existential danger to the United States.” Most of the signatories, who include career diplomats, i ntelli- gence officers and defense policymakers, have served both Re- publican and Democratic administrations. They noted that their policy views cover a spec- trum and as officials they “have often been in opposition, some- times bitterly, with each other.” But in a letter published on- line Wednesday, they expressed a shared belief that Trump’s approach to leadership has un- dermined the country’s role in the world. “His reelection would contin- ue this downward spiral and will likely have catastrophic results,” say the signatories, most of whom have never publicly en- dorsed a candidate for president. Doug Wise, a former CIA clandestine officer and former deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, broke a career-long vow to serve in silence by signing the letter. “We need to restore courtesy, respectability and consensus decision-making based not on the personal interests of Donald J. Trump but on the personal interests of Americans,” said Wise, who retired in 2016 after 48 years of government service. Wise, who leans Republican, said that he has never v oted for president, content to trust in the American democratic system “ to produce a good president and commander in chief.” But the system h as failed, he said. So this November, he said, he will cast his first vote for president — for Biden. Larry Pfeiffer, former senior director of the White House Situation Room and a former chief of staff to then-CIA Direc- tor Michael Hayden, said he leans Republican. “If Donald Trump wasn’t running, and it was Mitt Romney versus Joe Biden, I’d be endorsing Mitt Romney,” he said. “And I proba- bly wouldn’t be public about it.” Pfeiffer, who served five presi- dents dating t o Ronald Reagan, said he sees himself as nonparti- san, so much so that endorsing a candidate feels like “an unnatu- ral act.” Margaret Henoch, a former CIA officer who joined the agency in the Reagan administration, agreed that a public endorsement is “absolutely” unheard of for career professionals. But these are not normal times, she said. Henoch said her endorsement is “not political.” It’s driven by a desire to restore “the stability of the country and the world and the respect for the role and function of government” in a democratic society. Paul Rosenzweig said he was a Republican but became an independent in 2017 because “the standard-bearer for my party no longer represented the values that I think the party should stand for.” “Even though I am sure I will disagree with much of what [Biden] does, I am also certain that the overall result will be far superior under Biden than under Trump,” said Rosenzweig, who served as a senior policy adviser at the Department of Homeland Security under Presi- dent George W. Bush and as a senior counsel to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr in the Clinton administration. James R. Clapper Jr., a former director of national intelligence who entered government service in the Kennedy administration and retired in 2017, has voted “both ways” in federal elections. He considers himself a “Demo- crat domestically and a Republi- can in the foreign and national security realm.” He, too, said he would vote for Biden. “I just think he would represent, if elected, a restora- tion of normality to the country,” said Clapper, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who served in five Democratic and five Repub- lican administrations. [email protected]

National

security

veterans

back Biden

More than 80 b reak with tradition to endorse a presidential candidate

The Washington Post - 19.03.2020

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