Norton Hopes Trip to Middle East Will Add Knowledge about Balancing Security (1/03/08)

Washington, DC-Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), a member of the Homeland Security Committee, will travel to Egypt, Oman, Jordan, and Israel January 4 - 13 with colleagues in an official delegation organized by the Subcommittee on Homeland Security of the Appropriations Committee. "I want to go to the Mid-East because it is the epicenter of terrorist risks and attacks, to gather information that will help in my own efforts to more quickly reduce the District's many vulnerabilities as a high target city," Norton said. The Congresswoman also wants to learn more about how these countries, which have experienced the highest levels of terrorism and risk for many years, have learned "to live with a very high risk and to reduce the risk, and particularly how they have balanced and accommodated the twin imperatives of security and freedom, or have failed to do so." Norton has introduced the Open Society with Security Act and expects hearings in two committees on the bill in 2008, an indication of congressional concerns about continuing problems in striking the "necessary balance between security and freedom."

The Congresswoman said that she also hopes the trip helps her in her ongoing efforts as a member of the Aviation Subcommittee of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to achieve more reasonable security for general or non-commercial aviation. Norton's 2006 amendment to the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization opened general aviation at National Airport, but the security requirements are so "burdensome, redundant and financially taxing that the United States is the only major country which has all but eliminated general aviation service to its capital." National's role as a service airport for one of the nation's major economic regions and for the federal government, she said, makes such service essential. Norton, whose work on rerouting hazmat rail shipments and on the public transportation security bill was successful this year, will seek standards for judging the hazmat regulations required by the bill and the requirements in the bill for shoring up the nation's public transportation systems.

Norton and her colleagues will meet with U.S. and foreign officials involved in international aviation, port, maritime, trade and visa security; human trafficking; smuggling; and terrorist travel threats.