CIP Law Team attends ABA Breakfast event featuring a keynote speech by Assistant Secretary Paul McHale

Sept. 29 , 2006.
Washington, D.C

Members of the CIP law team attended a breakfast hosted by the ABA's Standing Committee on Law and National Security on Friday, September 29, 2006.The featured speaker was Mr. Paul McHale, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense. Originally from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Secretary McHale served in the US Marines and was a member of both the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and the United States House of Representatives. He was nominated to his current post by President George Bush on January 9, 2003 and was confirmed by the United States Senate on February 4, 2003.

The theme of Secretary McHale's talk was the role of the Department of Defense in homeland security, including the protection of critical infrastructure.  He began with a discussion of the difference between the mandates of the Department of Defense (DoD) and that of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).   An important difference between the two involves the fact that while DHS looks to protect the United States through systems and procedures rooted in law enforcement, DoD's mandate involves systems and procedures rooted in military war-fighting.

Secretary McHale spoke of the need for the various agencies involved in protecting the United States homeland to effectively communicate amongst themselves. He made reference to the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act in which the military's operational authority was centralized through the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs as opposed to the service chiefs. The Act led to the coordination of policy amongst the various military branches rather than the development of individual policies within each branch which had contributed to an environment of inter-service rivalry and inefficiency.

Secretary McHale also spoke to the importance of the military remaining subordinate to civilian command, a cornerstone of the American system. For example, under the posse comitatus statute the United States military is prohibited from enforcing domestic law, except in certain prescribed conditions. Secretary McHale underlined the need to retain this civilian-military relationship, and made reference to its historical beginnings in the Federalist Papers writings of Alexander Hamilton.

For Hamilton, the main threat to be avoided is the dependency that can arise should a civilian government look to the military to secure its internal order. Hamilton feared that as soon as the government started deferring to the military, it would embark upon a path that would finally lead to a total reliance at the price of civil liberties.

Secretary McHale spoke for about one hour, including fielding questions.