US focus on risk

US focus on risk 'poses threat to economy'
All Financial Times News

Michael Chertoff, the US homeland security secretary, has warned that emotional responses by Congress to security issues, such as the recent flare-up over ports, threaten to damage the nation's economy.

"We do not want a regime in which we are so focused on risk to the exclusion of all else that we lock everything down and we destroy our country," Mr Chertoff told the FT. In his first interview since congressional opposition forced Dubai Ports World to divest the five US terminals it obtained through its acquisition of Britain's P&O, Mr Chertoff said Congress underestimated the progress made by the Bush administration in promoting port security.

While conceding that more work was needed, he stressed that the administration had to focus on "intelligent security" in a way that "doesn't burn down the village in order to save it".

In the wake of the ports controversy, some lawmakers have argued that all cargo containers entering the US should be inspected. But Mr Chertoff said such a move would be "tantamount to shutting the ports down".

"Anybody who is thinking about that ought to go to their local port community and ask the longshoremen how they feel about losing their jobs, and Wal-Mart and Target about how they feel about losing goods coming in," said Mr Chertoff. "There would be a tremendous negative side-effect."

Mr Chertoff said he was surprised the US business community had not been more vocal on the ports dispute and other homeland security issues that could hurt their companies.

"The business community...doesn't really get as aggressive as I would imagine that they would be on issues that really strike at the heart of their interests," he said. "Every business has employees. If there is anything people care about...in politics, it's employment."

"If I were in the shipping industry, the maritime industry, the cargo industry. I would be concerned about measures that would strangle business and put workers out of work in this country."

Asked whether the administration should shoulder the blame for the congressional backlash over the ports deal, the security chief replied: "There are times when, if we were quicker in explaining what we do, we might avert a certain amount of heartburn." Sometimes the hard thing to anticipate was "when the reaction is not based on the facts necessarily but based upon some emotional reaction."

On whether the administration's constant warnings about terrorism were making the public overly sensitive to security risks, Mr Chertoff said: "We have to have alertness and care but not hysteria or anxiety?.?.?.?We don't want to build a system that smothers us as a society, whether it is civil liberties or our economy."

Mr Chertoff, who faced calls for his resignation following the administration's dismal response to Hurricane Katrina last year, declined to say whether he had considered stepping down. "For me to quit just because the going got rough was not what I think is my responsibility," he said.