[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 38, Number 30 (Monday, July 29, 2002)]
[Pages 1239-1243]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at the Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne

July 22, 2002

    The President. Thank you all. Please have a seat--[laughter]--unless 
you don't have a chair. [Laughter] Thank you all very much for welcoming 
me here. I'm honored to be here. I'm honored to be here with some of the 
finest Americans in our country.
    We're in a new kind of war today. We face a ruthless and a 
resourceful enemy. We do. That's the reality of the 21st century. These 
people seek to acquire the most destructive of weapons because they hate 
freedom. They intend to spread fear and death around the world. To 
prevail in this war, we're going to take the battle to the enemy in 
foreign lands. To prevail in this war, we'll use our law enforcement and 
our intelligence gathering all across our country to prevent the 
American people from being harmed. And to prevail in this war, we will 
fight on the frontiers of knowledge and discovery.
    In this new war, we will rely upon the genius and creativity of the 
American people. And that's why I'm here, to look in the eyes of those 
who posses the genius and the creativity of the American people. Our 
scientific community is serving on the frontlines of this war by 
developing new technologies that will make America safer. And as you 
tackle new scientific challenges, I want you to know, our Government 
will stand by your side to make

[[Page 1240]]

your job easier. It is in our interests that we work together.
    I want to thank Spence Abraham for his leadership at the Department 
of Energy, and I want to thank all of you for working for the fine 
Department of Energy. I want to thank Tom Ridge for coming. He's a man--
I asked him, I said, ``You know, you need to serve your country.'' He 
was serving as the Governor of Pennsylvania. I said, ``You've got a nice 
mansion over there.'' [Laughter] ``It's heavy lifting, but we need you 
in Washington.'' And for the good of the country, he came to help us 
spearhead the effort for a Department of Homeland Security.
    And I want to thank Dr. John Marburger, who is the Director of 
Office Science and Technology Policy. Dr. Marburger is a fine scientist 
who represents the best of American scientists in Washington, DC.
    I appreciate the Speaker of the House being here. He's my friend. 
He's doing a fine job on behalf of the citizens of Illinois and the 
United States of America, Speaker Denny Hastert. And I want to thank 
Senator Durbin and Senator Fitzgerald for coming as well. I know they've 
got busy schedules. Thank you all for being here. I appreciate you 
coming. I appreciate Judy Biggert, Jerry Weller, and Mark Kirk, fine 
Members of the House of Representatives from Illinois, being here today. 
I look forward to giving them a lift back to Washington. [Laughter] It's 
a nice way to travel. I think you all will like it. [Laughter]
    I want to thank the Governor, George Ryan, for coming. Governor, I 
appreciate your time. I want to thank the attorney general of Illinois, 
Jim Ryan, for coming as well. I want to thank Ray Orbach, who is the 
Director of Office and Science at the Department of Energy, who led us 
on our tour. And of course I've got to thank Dr. Grunder. If everybody 
had a spirit like Dr. Grunder, the world would be an incredibly happy 
place. We're proud of you, Hermann. Thank you for your service to the 
country, and thank you all very much.
    The Argonne National Laboratory is a cutting-edge facility. You're 
on the cutting edge, and you've got a great history as well. It is a 
direct decedent of the University of Chicago laboratory, where in 1942 
Enrico Fermi and his colleagues achieved the world's first controlled 
nuclear chain reaction. This is a place where smart people work. 
[Laughter] It is the home of some of America's greatest scientists, who 
continue to dazzle the world with astonishing breakthroughs.
    I've just come back from viewing some demonstrations of the great 
work done at national laboratories, whether it be here or Los Alamos or 
Sandia or others. The American people need to know we've got a lot of 
brainpower working on ways to deal with the threats that we now face as 
we head into the 21st century.
    For example, I saw a warning and response system that will supply 
first-responders with timely and life-saving information in the event of 
a chemical attack on a subway or any other enclosed space. I saw a 
project that uses new advances in genetic research to identify and 
understand biological agents that could be used against us. I saw 
computer simulations to help policymakers and first-responders 
anticipate the effect of an attack of natural disaster and to develop 
life-saving plans. What I saw was new technologies that our scientists 
are developing to help us secure the homeland. America is grateful. It's 
grateful for your work. And our Government must be organized and focused 
to support these efforts.
    Right now there are more than 100 different Federal agencies that 
have some role in the homeland defense of our country. And despite 
everyone's best intentions in those agencies, this inevitably leads to a 
dispersal of authority. Imagine, 100 of them scattered all over 
Washington, DC. It makes it hard to have accountability when you've got 
100 agencies scattered around, and it's a drain on critical resources.
    So I asked Congress to join me in creating a single, permanent, 
Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security with an overriding and 
urgent mission, with this primary focus: to secure the American 
homeland. There are agencies--once they're under this--in this new 
Department will have other missions, no question about it. But their 
primary mission is to recognize the new world in which we live. The 
world has changed, and so must our Government change with

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it, in order to allow all of us who have responsibility to say to the 
American people, ``We're doing everything we possibly can to protect 
innocent American lives.'' This Department of Homeland Security will 
foster a new culture throughout our Government, one that emphasizes 
cooperation and working together on behalf of the American people. And 
this Department will have four primary tasks.
    First, it will work to control our borders. There needs to be much 
better cooperation amongst the agencies to make sure we know who is 
coming in the country, what they're bringing in the country, why they're 
coming in the country, and are they leaving when they said they're going 
to leave the country.
    We need to work--one of the primary responsibilities will be to work 
with State and local authorities to respond quickly and effectively to 
emergencies. In other words, we need to be better coordinated with the 
brave first-time responders--that means police and fire and EMS teams 
which exist all across our country. We want to have them have the 
strategy necessary to respond, the tools to respond effectively, and to 
be coordinated not only at the Federal level, the State level, and the 
local level.
    Thirdly, we need to merge under one roof the capability to identify 
and assess threats to the homeland, map those threats against our 
vulnerabilities, and address the vulnerabilities. So prior to September 
the 11th, we had the CIA collecting information, and we had the FBI 
collecting information, and sometimes they weren't talking all that 
much. Now they talk. Now they coordinate.
    When I'm there in Washington, I meet every morning, face to face, 
with the Director of the CIA and with the head of the FBI. It's a way to 
make sure that, at least at the very top levels of Government, people 
are communicating, and we're sharing information. We need to do that 
throughout all our Government and the Department of Homeland Security. 
We need to be able to take the information--intelligence gathered from 
around the world, as well as at home, and understand what might or might 
not be happening. One of the key tools that we need to use effectively 
against the coldblooded killers who we're trying to chase down is the 
capacity of our Nation to collect and analyze information.
    And finally, we need our scientists to develop the kinds of 
technologies I saw today. We need to have an effective strategy of 
mating up our brainpower with the problems we face, so as to stay on the 
cutting edge of technological change necessary to protect the homeland.
    And this last point is an incredibly important point, and that's why 
I've come to this laboratory to make the point. [Laughter] It's a 
perfect place to make the point. We will harness our science and our 
technology in a way to protect the American people. We will consolidate 
most federally funded homeland security research and development to 
avoid duplication and to make sure all the efforts are focused.
    You see, we need to learn to set priorities in our Government. And 
the number one priority is to protect America from attack, because we're 
at war. The Department of Homeland Security will work to create a long-
term plan. And once you have the long-term plan with the goal of 
securing the homeland, then we can set funding priorities. We give our 
scientists the resources they require, and that's important for you to 
know--resources necessary to counter the chemical and the biological and 
the radiological and nuclear threats that our Nation faces. And these 
threats are real. And therefore, we need to stay focused, not only to 
make sure resources are spent but that critical research continues, 
because you all know better than anybody, when we research and we set 
priorities, this great Nation can achieve any objective.
    We're making progress. We are making progress in Washington. I 
appreciate so very much the House select committee getting a bill out, 
and it's going to get to the floor. And the Speaker was telling me today 
that it looks like they may get a vote this week, and the Senate is 
working hard on it. Both Republicans and Democrats are working hard to 
reconcile any differences that may be had. It's important for people to 
understand, particularly in Washington, this Department of Homeland 
Security is not a good Republican idea; it's not a good Democrat

[[Page 1242]]

idea; it's simply an American idea. And they need to get their work 
done.
    And as they do so, the new Secretary of Homeland Security must have 
the freedom and the flexibility to be able to get the right people in 
the right job at the right time, so we can hold people accountable in 
Washington. We need the freedom to manage. We don't need to be 
micromanaged. And that's sometimes what happens in Washington, DC. The 
new Secretary needs the ability to move money and resources quickly, to 
respond to true threats.
    I understand why that may not happen sometimes in Washington, and 
it's because, for example, appropriators may not want the executive 
branch to have the capacity to make decisions necessary to make the 
Homeland Department work effectively. But we're in new times in America, 
and that requires new thinking. And Congress must give us the 
flexibility necessary to make the right decisions to achieve our goal, 
which is to protect the American people.
    As well, this new Department must have every tool it needs to secure 
the homeland. This new agency should include all of the departments 
which protect our border--all of the departments, not just some, but all 
of the departments. That includes the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, 
the INS--INS inspectors, Border Patrol, and Customs agents must report 
to the same boss and work together for the same goals. And this new 
Department needs to be able to respond effectively to any attack that 
might come, so it must house FEMA in its entirety.
    What I'm telling you is, I understand that these changes won't be 
easy for some in Congress, but for the sake of the security of the 
American people, Congress needs to give up some of its turf and 
recognize turf is not nearly as important as security for the people--
security for the American people. We're in new times, folks. We're in a 
different world. We face an unprecedented threat, and we cannot respond 
with business as usual.
    But I want you to know something, how I feel, and what I know. I 
know that the best way to secure the homeland is to hunt these 
coldblooded killers down, one by one, and bring them to justice. And 
that's what we're going to do. And it's going to take awhile. It's going 
to take awhile. Unlike past wars, where you could see platoons and 
battalions moving here, or airplane formations moving there, we're 
chasing down these people who are willing to hide in a cave and send 
youngsters to their death. That's the kind of people we're facing.
    You know, these people hate--they hate America because we love 
freedom. They hate the fact that--as I look out, I mean, I can see 
people who worship an Almighty and some who don't, who worship an 
Almighty one way and others another way. They hate that. They can't 
stand a society which honors freedom, freedom to worship, freedom to 
speak, freedom to express our opinions. That's what they hate, and 
they're going to hate us for a long time because those are the values 
we'll never relinquish in America.
    We believe in tolerance in America. That's what we believe in. We 
respect the other person. We always don't agree, but we respect, and we 
tolerate. And we believe everybody ought to have access to the great 
American experience, regardless of how they're raised or where they're 
from. That's what we believe.
    And any time anybody who tries to get us because of those beliefs--
they're going to find something out about America. I don't know what was 
going through the minds of the enemy when they were plotting and 
planning. I don't know who they thought they were attacking. They must 
have thought this country was so materialistic, so self-absorbed that we 
would sit back and, you know, after the attacks, maybe file a lawsuit or 
two. [Laughter] That's not the America I know. And that's not the 
America you're a part of.
    Listen, when people come after us, we're plenty tough. We're a 
compassionate nation. And so we're on the hunt. You just need to know 
we're after them, one by one--one by one. And so long as I'm the 
President of this country, we're going to chase them down, one by one, 
to make sure the American homeland is secure.
    And we're making progress. As I said in a speech in front of about 
10,000 of our troops and their families in Fort Drum, New

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York, last Friday: We've hauled in thousands--that means captured--
[laughter]--and another couple of thousand weren't quite as lucky. We're 
making progress. Sometimes it's not quite as dramatic as, you know, the 
newscasters would like, because--they learned their lesson, by the way. 
They understand if they bunch up, if they get together, our military is 
going to find them. And it's not going to be a pleasant day when our 
military does find them, because we're good. I'm really proud of the 
United States military and those who serve.
    And I'm proud of you all too. That's really what I'm here to tell 
you. I'm proud of you. We're depending on you to develop the tools we 
need to lift the dark threat of terrorism for our Nation and, for that 
matter, the world. All of us here today, whether we're scientists or 
engineers or elected officials, share in a great calling. It's an honor 
to participate in a noble cause that's larger than ourselves.
    Audience member. God bless America.
    The President. It's an honor to defend this Nation. It's a high 
honor to be called into action and to defend our Nation when it's 
threatened, and that's what you're doing. It's an honor to help protect 
the American people against the forces of evil.
    History has called each of us to defend America. That's what's 
happened. History has called us into action in a time of great peril. 
The struggles against nazism and communism helped to define the 20th 
century. The war on terror will be the defining conflict of the 21st 
century. It's our solemn duty. It's our responsibility, and it's our 
great privilege to help America prevail in this war. And prevail we 
will.
    May God bless you all. May God bless your work, and may God bless 
America. Thank you very much. Thank you all.

Note: The President spoke at 10:33 a.m. in a courtyard behind the 
Advanced Photon Source Building. In his remarks, he referred to Hermann 
A. Grunder, director, Argonne National Laboratory.