I write this blog today with a heavy heart and an immense amount of frustration. For the last 14 months, we have fought to re-establish a critical program governing security for our industry, the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program, which was created in response to the devastating attacks on September 11, 2001, to protect our nation from similar threats.
In late July 2023, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) derailed the reauthorization of this program on the Senate floor due to his ardent philosophical belief that if we don’t need this regulation, we should dispense with it. Normally, I would wholeheartedly concur with reducing the burden of overregulation, but for CFATS, this is not the case. In fact, chemical industry leaders, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and 99% of Congress have all vehemently disagreed with Paul’s sentiment regarding the extension of CFATS.
To put the importance of CFATS into perspective: More than 89.5 million people live or work within two miles of a high-risk site, and the DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has not conducted terrorist vetting for an estimated 118,000 personnel who have recently gained and/or are seeking access to restricted areas or critical assets of chemical facilities. That’s 9,000 names—each month—going unvetted against the Terrorist Screening Database.
Yet here we are, 23 years since that awful day in 2001 when terrorists launched multiple attacks on our homeland. Congress is failing to fulfill its commitment to ensuring that what transpired on that day in Washington, D.C., New York City, and outside Shanksville, PA, will never happen on U.S. soil again.
For me, this issue is personal. When it comes to the security of our country, we must impress upon our political leaders the need to stand up and make tough decisions so we never, ever have to experience another 9/11. When the planes hit the towers in lower Manhattan, I wasn’t sure if my father had made it out alive, all I knew was that he was supposed to be in one of those towers for a meeting. It wasn’t until 24 hours later that we learned his meeting had been canceled, he ended up having to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge, finally making it home very late that night of September 11, 2001. That was the good news. Many people lost loved ones that day. I lost high school friends who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald and had no hope of surviving the plane crashes, as their offices were so high up in the towers.
Fast forward 23 years, and it seems we haven’t learned a thing from that day. We shouldn’t be putting ourselves in a position to live through another U.S.-targeted terrorist attack. We shouldn’t put our citizens at risk of having to wait 24 hours to hear if their father made it out of the attack unharmed. And, we damned sure should not be fighting with one solitary senator who, without cause, believes that the CFATS program has no merit. With no regard to the nature and makeup of the program and the immense resources it provides to chemical facilities working with DHS to identify and address potential security threats. It’s his way or the highway.
It’s time for Congressional leaders to fulfill their commitment from 23 years ago to secure our homeland. It’s time for CFATS to be reauthorized.
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