ANNOUNCER: WomenMatter’s Facts and Trade-offs is the place where we can take one issue at a time, match what we do about it every day of our lives to the facts of the bigger system which we all live in, and recognize that every idea for making it better has trade-offs. This show is about the balance between the two, and the very different ways people think we might create that balance. The debate over what would make it better is what makes it an issue.

NANCY BAUER: I’m Nancy Bauer, and we’re here to talk today about security and fear. Our take on it is that although the words “national security” conjure up images of symbolic destruction worthy of being played again and again on the evening news, many women conceptualize security and terror differently – in terms of tangible and everyday dangers to themselves and their families.

In this sense, the concept of security encompasses not only large scale disasters, like all those hurricanes (and they’ve shown all too clearly they can be natural as well as planned disasters), but also the more routine threats of losing a job, or health care, global warming, or the rising price of gas.

In fact, many women report understanding intuitively what the terrorists have known all along – that the greatest threat to our national security is our own fear of harm coming to ourselves and our loved ones, and ultimately the destruction of our way of life.

My guest this morning and my partner in this discussion is Dr. Michelle Berlinerblau, psychiatrist from Philadelphia, who is a specialist with particular interest in fear and how we react to it, and particularly how men and women may react differently. So good morning Michelle.

MICHELLE BERLINERBLAU: Good morning, Nancy.

BAUER: Tell me Michelle about terrorism. How did it get to be an “ism”? And what causes fear?

BERLINERBLAU:: Well first of all, terrorism is not just an act. It’s a psychology of what traumatizes people. And it’s an understanding of one of the most painful human emotions, which are the feelings of helplessness.

I’d like to start by having a working definition of what fear is. It’s an emotion which is produced by present or impending danger. Nancy, when I think about fear, I think about 9-11, I think about Osama Bin Laden, I think about he was, is, a master of human psychology.

9-11 transcended across every boundary – generational, political, sociological, cultural, racial. He knew what would traumatize a nation, the level of utter helplessness, the threatening of not just the loss of our physical security but our emotional security. The shattering of any fantasy that we had of invulnerable we are. And in doing so, those planes crashed headfirst into our fantasies about the level of control we have.

And now with the constant security threats that we’ll be talking about in this program, the emotional aftershocks of 9-11 are easily triggered, and we are constantly seeking ways to control our fears, to avoid re-experiencing that level of helplessness. Because quite frankly, that level of helplessness is one of the most unbearable human emotions, and it is something that we seek to avoid.

ANNOUNCER:: Every issue – including this one about fear and security in the United States – meets up with the big questions. How much of this do I already handle on my own? How much do I want to handle on my own? What benefit is there to me if we take care of this as a larger community? How might we use government, which, if enough of us act together is us, to make the taxes we pay go to the standards of excellence we want?

Nancy Bauer spoke with James Jordon, assistant manager for public operations and safety with the Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. She also spoke with Congresswoman Jane Harman, of the 36th district of California, who serves on both the Intelligence Committee and the Homeland Security Committee of the House of Representatives. Then Nancy spoke with Joyce Purnick, columnist for the New York Times. Her column is Metro Matters.

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BAUER: And now I turn back to my partner in today’s show, Michelle Berlinerblau, psychiatrist, who understands the differences between why women and men address fear, and how what we do about fear affects the way in which we think of the lives that we have, and the behavior that we then do in terms of how much control we have. Michelle talk some more about why fear works. What do you mean that women have a different perspective on this than men?

BERLINERBLAU:: Well first of all, I think it’s a question of how we’re socialized. Men are socialized, or have been, to suppress dependency needs, and to act in a more autonomous position. Women are taught to submerge themselves in relationships, make affiliations. In the past that was seen as maladaptive; now that’s seen as something healthy and desirable.

BAUER: Wait a minute, just a second then. What you’re saying is that men don’t have fears? Or they’re just told they’re not supposed to show them?

BERLINERBLAU:: Men absolutely have fears. But they, in many ways, have been socialized to suppress those fears. So on the surface, they may give the attitude that they don’t have as much concerns, that they’re not as worried, that they don’t have as much intense concerns about relationship. But deep down under the surface, it’s there. And in a sense, as psychiatrists at colleges, it’s our role when these men come into therapy, to enable them to come into contact with that part of themselves.

BAUER: I like that part, because that’s a little like taking the Henry Higgins thing, instead of, “Why aren’t women more like men,” “Why aren’t men more like women?”

BERLINERBLAU:: [laughter].

BAUER: I’m going to do that song over.

BERLINERBLAU:: [laughter] I’ll join you in that song.

BAUER: [laughter] Right. So then tell me then, as we women address – I mean after all, Osama Bin Laden as you said, was the master psychologist, and he knew that what he was doing was making us afraid. He wasn’t trying to destroy America physically, he only had to destroy a couple of buildings.

BERLINERBLAU:: Absolutely. But he also knew that by engendering that level of trauma, and what I mean by that, it’s a reaction to an overwhelming event which we could not even begin to imagine that we were totally unprepared, and we were helpless to resist. So he set up conditions for fear.

What are the ways that we can handle this? Well there’s a multitude of ways. And a lot of it is based our personalities. For some, fear like this can be inhibiting. It can be paralyzing. More so for somebody who’s been traumatized. So in a sense, for many people 9-11 was re-traumatizing.

BAUER: When you’re traumatized that means you’re paralyzed into not doing anything?

BERLINERBLAU:: Right. You’re paralyzed into not doing anything, you realize your helplessness, and often your ego is not able to handle whatever the stressor is. So you’re not able to think in ways, or think of the options in which you could escape the frightening situation.

BAUER: This is really interesting, because the politicians (whose job it is, and we vote for them—)

BERLINERBLAU:: Right.

BAUER: –and their job is, they are supposed to use our tax dollars to give us as much protection as is possible. And Jim Jordan, when he was talking about (tense?) how after all it’s transportation – tunnels and bridges are easy targets. And big cities, the big cities are the best targets for physically hurting us again. So this is expecting the same thing that happened on 9-11. Where might it happen again? Congresswoman Harman says intelligence, and Jim Jordan said it too, when you have good intelligence you prevent it from happening.

Now the government says that they’re fighting a war somewhere else in the world to keep the bad guys from coming here. But we’re getting several messages. One is that government can try to protect us, and then that government does protect us in some ways, and then we take actions to prevent trouble. But then that’s different from the actual security that we would feel if something bad happened. So how do you expect that as people listen to these various interviews, and listen to government every day of our lives, does it help us to hear what they’re saying? How does it play into how women and men listen to this, particularly women?

BERLINERBLAU:: I think it helps us based on preexisting sorts of personality. If we’re people who want to believe in authority figures, who have absolute or blind trust, then we can listen to them and say, “Good, the government is taking care of us.”If we’re people who are able to have a reasonable level of doubt and reasonable level of trust, then we listen to this, but we don’t become totally dependent on what the government is saying.

In fact, you know one of the things that I liked about what Jane Harman was saying was that when the government tells you something, don’t just read one Internet [site]. You know, look at different web [sites]. In a sense she was saying, “Don’t have blind trust.” Because, quite frankly, blind trust is not a protective stance to have in life. It’s something that we all need to work in terms of not having. And obviously there are people who, for whatever reasons in terms of their childhood and their past, need to have blind trust.

BAUER: Tell me about the roots, and this is interesting, as I take my thumb out of my mouth and put my blanket down in order to continue this conversation with you—

BERLINERBLAU:: [laughter].

BAUER: —and I intend to grow up between now and the end of this show, but this idea that it’s good to doubt. If I have a reasonable level of doubt about what other people tell me, then what I’m saying is that I can trust myself to judge what I need to know and what they’re telling me, and to think about it. And of course that’s what WomenMatter is all about, is for us as women who are so concerned with and responsible for the safety and health and whatever of the people around us, that we need to trust ourselves to understand that we can figure this out.

So some of us are more prone to following a leader and wanting to be protected, and others of us maybe not so? And that even those of us who might follow a leader are making a mistake? that we could learn how to rely more on ourselves? How do we do that?

BERLINERBLAU:: Well I think it requires the ability to know yourself, to know your vulnerabilities, to look at your childhood, and to understand how your response to authority figures in your childhood has contributed to how you listen to your boss, to the government, to the president, to Jane Harman, to Jim Jordan, to Joyce, to Nancy Bauer, and to myself.

But one of the most important things that have to be able to do is the ability to question. And one of the things that I found in my work is that there are so many people that because of family dynamics, cultural issues, have not been allowed to question. And so they grow up to be adults that have a lot of anxiety about questioning. So that when the government says this, “OK, I’ll believe it.”

Now there are other people whose sense of trust has been so betrayed early on that they question everything, and they don’t trust anything. That itself is not healthy. What I tell my patients, and what I work in terms of my work, is that we try to work towards what’s the gray zone – things are not black and things are not white. You don’t trust someone one hundred percent and you don’t [mis]trust somebody a hundred percent. You want to try to get into the gray zone. And our ability to question, our ability to have a reasonable level of trust are those qualities that enable us to do that.

BAUER: That’s really interesting, because this idea of knowing yourself, and that something in one’s past could make a difference. During the 2004 election, both candidates vied were telling the women when they wanted to get out the women’s vote – which every two years they remember we’re there. And of course WomenMatter is trying to keep ourselves up to date with what’s going on every day, so that every two years we can make even more of a difference, but we don’t wait for them to come and get us, we’re going to tell them what we want.

But this idea that both men said, “I will protect you. Vote for me and I will protect you.” And they used their military background, or the wars that we’re carrying on now, and the fact is that all that discussion about who was braver in a war and who showed up to be in a war –a lot of that was aimed at the female vote.

In our research in WomenMatter, we found that they may have, in their childhood, thought that somebody was going to protect them but what they’ve learned over the years is that they can’t rely on other people, and they weren’t disappointed about it, they felt quite independent. They were celebrating the fact that something went wrong in my life, I took care of it. Partners came and went out of my life, but I took care of it. That things happen every morning I didn’t expect to happen, but I can take care of it.

So what’s the difference between the men who are running for office, and their message to women, and what we’re hearing from WomenMatter’s research, that women celebrate their resilience and their ability to bounce?

BERLINERBLAU:: Well I think it’s good that women can celebrate that, but I think that women also need to be aware of the fact that consciously they may feel that they’ve established a certain level of independence emotionally, but there are always unconscious factors at hand. And that in a sense we always need to stand back, at every stage of our life, and have an observing ego, where we can distance ourselves and say, OK, you know, I feel independent, et cetera.

But you know, I’ve found that a lot of women feel independent, but a lot of them are denying their dependency needs. And it comes out in a variety of situations in which they’re not conscious of. So I think when somebody feels, “I’m totally independent,” that’s a warning sign. Because nobody’s totally independent. In fact, in order to be healthy, we have to admit a certain level of emotional dependency.

BAUER: So that goes back to one of the questions we asked at the beginning, “What benefit is there to me if I don’t have to handle this all on my own, if I can take care of this problem of security and response to security as a larger community?” That recognizing that what happens when a woman tries to stand alone, I mean it’s one thing to be Eleanor Roosevelt or Sally Ride, but on the other hand I don’t want to be Joan of Arc, I know what happened to her.

So what happens if a woman stands up on her own, like whistleblowers, for instance. What happens to fear then?

BERLINERBLAU:: Well you know, I think from the work that I’ve done with whistleblowers, these are not women that, at some level in their life, knew that they were going to be a whistleblower. It was some particular event that triggered them. Maybe it was an ethical issue, it was a feeling that they were put in a situation of utter helplessness, which again, is one of the most painful emotions. It was a feeling that maybe in their past they had to listen to authority figures that lied to them, and so the present is retriggering a situation in which authority figures are doing the wrong thing, and these are women that feel, “You know what, I’m not going to keep the family secret anymore. I’m going to try to break the family secret, because this is hurting people. It’s hurting me and eventually it’s going to hurt other women.”

Now I think initially with whistleblowers, they’re thinking about how it hurts them. But I think with time it becomes more of an altruistic thing – this is going to hurt a lot of other women. Now in terms of how we support these women, you know from what I’ve seen, it’s a very, very lonely journey.

BAUER: And so it seems when you read in the paper that they’re out there all by themselves, and they get burned at the stake too.

BERLINERBLAU:: Absolutely. And I think that one of the things that we have to recognize is that we can’t all be whistleblowers. We can’t all be women in government. We can’t be Hilary Clinton, we can’t be—

BAUER: Condoleeza Rice, we’re nonpartisan here, right.

BERLINERBLAU:: [laughter] You know, we can’t be Rosa Parks. There’s a multitude of things we can’t be. I mean, we can’t all be front and center stage. But we can be backstage. There is room for all of us. And one of the things in my work in terms of women who do things which are quite courageous, is that they need the people in the background. They need the people who can support them. And it doesn’t mean that the people, these people need to openly support them, because quite frankly, realistically that might mean the loss of their job. And that would not be a self protective thing for them to do. So they can support the whistleblower by maybe, on a private level, writing her a note, calling her. There’s a multitude of ways that we can support the people who do have the courage—

BAUER: And this of course is where WomenMatter comes in. We don’t ask people, and we can do this anonymously, we can do it on our time and place, that by listening to this show, by going to our blog, by telling their stories. And then, for heaven’s sakes, with this information that WomenMatter can put up three times a week, what actually is happening can begin to inform the government, local and national governments, of how we want things to happen.

So it’s very interesting, this morning we have looked at a new idea for me, that between the information that WomenMatter provides in this nonpartisan way to women, so they can arm themselves with knowing what the facts are, and then when we come to judge the trade-offs (this is confusing what is between connecting?)– that is how much money we’re going to spend in a war, how much money we’re going to spend in cameras or dogs, how much money we’re going to spend in getting ready to mop up after something happens – these are details we have to have the information about and know what the budgets are doing, and if we do so much of that we’re going to get less Medicare and less Medicaid, and less something else, less transportation.

So that knowing that information, that’s the front end, the facts part. And before we come together, what you’ve taught me this morning is that (not only do we have to understand our emotions, or our lack of emotional response, but that we have to understand how we feel about that if we as women are going to come together. Because it’s not the role necessarily that we’ve been socialized, taught to play as kids. And so as we grow up to take our shared responsibility with men, letting them get their fears out and our helping to take control of where we can, we need to realistically then, after we understand our emotions, come together. And women together are a powerhouse. There are millions of us. And if we come together with the way we approach security, and we approach the whole idea of fear, and we don’t let it run away with us, we can make a difference. So when you talked about reasonable levels of doubt, trusting ourselves and a reasonable level of trust, and maintaining the distance that comes with informing ourselves, thanks very much Dr. Michelle Berlinerblau, this morning, for WomenMatter, Facts & Trade-offs, talking about security and fear really one subject, not two.

BERLINERBLAU:: Thank you Nancy.

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BAUER: Women of WomenMatter, what do you believe? And what are you willing to trade off? On WomenMatter.com, right here go to our blog and tell us your story, stay up to date on what the government and the parties are trying to do three times a week, and tell your representative what you think right from here. And if you and your representatives disagree, find a candidate that agrees with you and support her.

ANNOUNCER:: WomenMatter: Facts & Trade-offs is brought to you by the Albert M. Greenfield Foundation, with support from Quita W. Horan and the Mandel and Madeliene Berman Philanthropic Foundation. I’m Victoria Jones.

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BAUER: Today we’re talking about security and what causes us to be or feel secure, and the idea that there’s both public safety, which is the people who ride on those trains and buses and subways, and operational safety, for the people who work on them. My guest is James Jordan, who has had a career as a lawyer and in city government, and now holds the important job of assistant manager for public and operational safety of the Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, what in Philadelphia they call SEPTA.

And so I welcome you Jim, and let’s talk with your career and how much you know about this. What is security?

JAMES JORDAN: Thank you Nancy. Security really has a double definition. There is security, meaning you were being protected from a threat, and then there is the feeling of security, which very often can be even more important, because as we can all sense you may in fact be safe, but if you don’t feel safe that is going to have a lot of very negative effects and implications.

BAUER: We’re spending a lot of money in this country on trying to think about those being almost the same thing. If nothing happens, is somebody keeping me safe? Or is nothing happening because there wasn’t anything happening to be afraid of in the first place?

JORDAN:: And some of that is unknowable, and at the end of the day it may not matter, because if the money is being properly spent, people will feel safe, and again if it’s properly spent we’re at least maximizing our protection against a threat.

BAUER: OK, so one of the things we say in WomenMatter, and this show is about facts and trade-offs, is that all government really does is to set standards and spend our taxpayer dollars on those standards. So the standards have to be based on what we know about what works, I mean that’s the “facts” part – what works in keeping the public safe?

JORDAN:: The two best things-- and I think virtually all law enforcement security officials have a consensus on this, are a well-lit area and a highly trained uniformed police officer. They both prevent crime and make people feel safe. So our two best weapons are putting in a lot of lights and putting our highly trained officers, many of them with police dogs, out in our system where they can be seen.

BAUER: So that the idea that I like it when I travel on the trains or in the subway and there’s a uniformed officer with that dog I’m not supposed to pet, that this actually does make a difference.

JORDAN:: Like I say, it’s the best thing we have to make a difference because it satisfies both sides of the security challenge.

BAUER: So I was trying to think about what does it cost. I mean dogs are expensive, and the police officer’s going to get paid anyhow. But that dog is driving a car and (think we can leave this, up to you), [laughter], where does he live?

JORDAN:: [laughter] It generally lives with the officer. The dogs are wonderful and no one has yet invented a machine that can detect explosives and the chemicals that are explosives better than the dog can. But the dogs generally cost about five, six thousand dollars apiece, they’re specially bred, they have to go to school to be trained and that costs money. They get their own air conditioned cars to ride around in, they have their own health insurance plan, and they get fed, including treats. And they work with only one officer, the officer and the dog bond, the officer keeps the dog at home. And when the officer retires the dog has to retire too because they can’t go to work for somebody else.

BAUER: I mean this makes a lot of sense. So that when we hear about the kinds of things that happen, however, when we saw the terrible troubles on the London tube stations, the underground in England, what happened there? They talked about cameras. And I keep wondering about cameras – what do they do? The people that they found on the London tube were dead already.

JORDAN:: The cameras, like a lot of things, are a tool. They have some advantages, they have some disadvantages. Every bank in the country has surveillance cameras; people still try to rob banks. We don’t think cameras are a tool of prevention so much as assisting in detection. They are something that people do think everybody should have. A lot of comments in the press say how everybody should go out and buy hundreds or thousands of cameras. You have to be careful with a surveillance camera system because it does have limitations. Having said that, they can be a deterrent to some types of crime, to opportunistic crime, people do like to see them in the stations.

BAUER: Yeah, what’s an opportunistic crime?

JORDAN:: Let’s say, and it’s typically a male or female, 17 to in their 20s, wants to snatch your cell phone or your purse, if they think somebody’s watching them – a cop or camera – they’ll go somewhere else to do it.

BAUER: So that it doesn’t reduce the crime it just sends them away from me.

JORDAN:: Probably.

BAUER: We’ve all learned when you’re in an elevator don’t scratch because somebody’s going to watch.

JORDAN:: Yes.

BAUER: So that it prevents some behaviors, if you know the camera’s there. What about hidden cameras?

JORDAN:: They generally are used in what we call targeted investigation. Let’s say a bank suspects a teller of stealing money, or we suspect a cashier, we can if we have that suspicion use hidden cameras. Generally I don’t think they work as well as visible cameras, again because the advantages the visible cameras have is the possible thief sees them, doesn’t do anything; the citizen sees it and feels there’s a measure of protection in that place. You don’t get that prevention element from a hidden camera.

BAUER: I can understand when there’s such a thing as (take out?) a crime, you can catch the person. If you catch him with this bank then he goes to jail and you save other banks from being robbed.

JORDAN:: Yes.

BAUER: But if we’re talking about terrorism, which by definition simply means they’re creating fear…

JORDAN:: Yes, and you have a very different dynamic then in I guess what you would call traditional crime-fighting, because the whole issue of prevention changes. For prevention of terrorist acts, we all have to rely very heavily on our national defense agencies or national intelligence agencies, the FBI. They are at work where there’s the opportunity to detect the terrorist plots. Once the terrorists strike, local law enforcement is there to try to minimize the harm, try to catch them if they’re not suicide bombers, but you see a very different dynamic when it comes to prevention.

BAUER: So this really is an interesting question, about people are not afraid on the street where they live, or they try (?), women particularly (we’re aiming to show) at (are) those of us who are responsible for security in our families and our neighborhoods, sort of in our local community. But what are the chances then of something happening in my neighborhood, we depend on what people are calling “first responders.”

JORDAN:: Yes.

BAUER: That’s the firemen, the fire truck, the policemen, the local hospital. So we’re putting money into what to do after terrorists strike and something big happens. And it could be, we’re talking now about the flu, the Avian flu being, or some other kind of chemical agent. These are all very different kinds of things. We’ve got a long list of things to be afraid of that may or may not happen. How does one judge where to put the tax dollars on this one? And what can we really expect government to do about it?

JORDAN:: And to answer that question, since September of 2001, there’s been the emergence again of a very strong view of focusing on vulnerability and vulnerability assessments, because we have learned not all places are equal. The reality is you’re pretty safe in your home from a terrorist attack because that’s not a target. Terrorist attacks since 2001 have been focused on public places, including unfortunately in Madrid and London subway stations, and subway cars.

Part of the assessment is geography, and I believe we continue to have a little problem in this country. The terrorists are going to attack major political centers, major economic centers, like New York, like London, like Madrid. They’re pretty unlikely to attack a little town in the middle of the country. And yet Homeland Security funds to this point have been distributed throughout the country, including to places that no professional is going to feel is really likely to be a threat.

So that’s a long way of saying, for most people in the country outside of maybe the five to ten largest cities, you probably have virtually no risk of being the subject of a terrorist threat.

BAUER: That’s really interesting, and of course each one of us wants our Congressperson to make sure that our neighborhood is getting its share.

JORDAN:: Yes.

BAUER: And we don’t reelect them unless we can see that they are bringing back the dollars to buy the dogs to put on the subways.

JORDAN:: And I think it’s fine when we’re talking about roads and bridges and a whole host of other areas. It’s just not in my view the best use of scarce dollars. To give you an example, we work very closely with the Philadelphia police and fire department, but unfortunately we’re on different radio frequencies. The Philadelphia Police Department took the lead in applying for a grant to allow them to put appropriate equipment in our tunnels to allow their radios to work down there. That grant was denied, but money was given to small towns in New Mexico and Idaho, places where you don’t have subways, you don’t have threats in any meaningful sense.

BAUER: So this idea of what is the real risk, they talk about soft targets on television all the time. A soft target is a place that nobody was thinking about it, or it’s a place that’s easy to get to?

JORDAN:: The combination is open, it’s easy to get to, and a lot of people, and a lot of people in an environment where a lot of death and injury will result. And it’s why the subways are so vulnerable, as again we’ve seen in the attacks of the last couple of years, because in rush hour you have hundreds of people in a very confined environment. And given again that the aim of modern terrorists (is fear/ creating fear), and this is an important change in terror attacks, say from the IRA in the eighties, the modern terrorist attack is aimed at killing and hurting as many people as possible. And so we focus more on subways, on other areas where a great deal of people may be in a fairly small area at one time.

BAUER: So the idea then of it’s the baseball stadium, it’s the football stadium, or it’s the train station or a place at rush hour or all of those things where people do come together.

And so that’s where also the fear factor comes in. That is, if we decide not to do that. As you say, we’re safe at home. So what’s happened is, since 9-11, is that more people are staying home because they feel safer there, which of course is really tough on the economy, because then they don’t travel, and then they don’t spend the money, and then jobs get worse, and then we have something else to be afraid of.

JORDAN:: Certainly that is a theory that has been advanced since 9-11. I think we probably see it more short term in the immediate aftermath of an attack, like Madrid or London, people react that way and then within 30 too 45 days, I think do return, and certainly in terms of what we’ve seen in our rider-ship, do return to normal patterns. And they should.

I mean it’s said over and over but it’s really true, that if we change our behavior because of a terrorist attack we are letting them win a battle that gives them a great deal of satisfaction. So it’s important, while taking appropriate precautions, we live in an open and free society and we should all do what we can to take advantage of that.

BAUER: So the idea that we can close ourselves off, and all the talk about immigration is now talking about Homeland Security. Can we close off our borders between Mexico and the United States? And I’ve looked at the map and I don’t see a crossing point, I see hundreds of crossing points.

JORDAN:: Yeah, I mean just go to one of the many satellite photo sites that you can get on the Internet, you can get satellite photos of that border area, it’s massive and nobody can control it. Again, it’s valuable for the authorities to impose checks on immigration, to have watch lists, to especially in the wake of 9-11, increase security on the airports. But the reality is you can’t do it.

We in the United States are much safer and have a much safer environment than in Europe, where the borders are not simply porous, but you can go through two or three countries with less trouble than it might take to go through a couple of states in this country. The reality is Europeans have a much more serious threat, and they as far as I can tell are determined to live with it and not isolate themselves from their neighbors in the European community. And I think we should take a lesson from them.

BAUER: That’s really interesting, and thank you Jim Jordan, because we’re talking about what is the reality? What are the facts and then the trade-offs in where we spend our money, and the trade-offs in how we spend our time, and the importance for women particularly, who hold the responsibility at the local level and in their families for safety, to know the facts and then to let our representatives know where we want the money spent, because we have the information. So that learning to live with it (is this referring to what he said above?) is also learning to live smarter and to have that information. And Jim thanks a lot for it today.

JORDAN:: Thank you, it’s my pleasure.

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BAUER: WomenMatter: Facts & Trade-Offs is happy to welcome Congresswoman Jane Harman from the 36th Congressional District of California, who holds two of the most interesting positions in the Congress. She’s on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and in addition to that is on the Committee on Homeland Security. So welcome Congresswoman Harman, and tell us, what’s the connection between intelligence and security?

JANE HARMAN: Well I often say intelligence is the tip of the spear, and I don’t mean that to sound just like a war fighting term, but it is good intelligence that, to the maximum extent, insures security. We have to know what threats are out there. The goal is to prevent and disrupt them, not to respond to them.

BAUER: Aha, and the question about response is really an interesting one. One of the things that we hear, with our women’s audience particularly, is that women are in charge of sort of security on the home front. But how much fear is a good thing? Does fear help or does fear hurt?

HARMAN: Well there’s no such thing as one hundred percent security, and I don’t think anyone who seriously thinks about it would argue with what I’m saying. You can get run over by a bus just stepping off your curb; you can fall out of bed and hurt yourself. Random accidents happen; random illnesses happen and so forth. And no matter what we do, there’s going to be some of that in our world, so let’s start with that.

You asked how much fear is good for security. I frankly think that the goal is to minimize fear and maximize preparation. Or, put it the other way, to maximize preparation for any variety of security threats, against any variety of security threats, which will minimize fear, because when you’re prepared, you’re much more effective at either preventing some harm, or responding to it.

BAUER: So how do we describe then, how can you, from where you sit, describe to women what the potential dangers really are so that when they try to judge the standards that government sets and the way that tax dollars are going, that they can speak up and understand what they’re getting and what kind of result we can expect?

HARMAN: Well let me start with a view I hold. In fact, I blurted it out during the last presidential campaign when I looked out at an audience of women and men who were at a large defense facility, and I was helping to introduce one of the candidates. And I blurted out to this group, “Security is a woman’s issue.”

BAUER: Aha.

HARMAN: And what I meant by that was that women, in most instances, not always, but in most instances are the protectors of our family. We’re the ones who probably spend more time with children and we’re the ones who do whatever’s necessary at home to keep the home safe. We worry about the school bus and we worry about the school site. Not necessarily exclusively, but these are things women worry about, I would say, more often than men do. And so the security of the family – the lioness protecting her cubs – is something that comes instinctively to women. So in that sense, security is a woman’s issue.

I also think security is a woman’s issue because we have an enormous amount to contribute to the making of security policy and the activities, like intelligence, that are necessary to make us as secure as possible. We are qualified at every level, and a lot of women underestimate their talents. So in those ways security is a woman’s issue.

You asked what can women do? Well, preparation, preparation. Just thinking about the home and the school site, women can insist that government at all levels provide maximum information about what threats are out there in a coherent way – not just so that people are terrified, but that people are informed about what to look for and what to do. That would be Step One.

Step Two would be, women should insist, again focusing on the home site or the local community, that their government at all levels acts in a way that is helpful to them. So that, for example, if the goal is to get a vaccination against some prospective biological threat, that it is clear what they’re supposed to do, when they’re supposed to do it, what they’re supposed to do about their kids, et cetera.

And then building up from that, women should insist that, at every level, the government deliver the services, the response capability, in the even of a major natural or terrorist disaster. We’ve just seen some government meltdowns after natural disasters, and women should demand that government does better.

BAUER: (So we depend?) on government to get us the information. And of course what WomenMatter wants to do through WomenMatter.com is to make sure that that information is easily available whenever they want it. And that’s why it’s a real privilege to have a chance to talk to you, because how do we know that the information we’re getting is not spun just to make people feel that, “Vote for me because I can protect you.” I mean, our research showed that women don’t really expect that anybody else is going to come and protect them. They know that they have a job to do themselves. But this idea that what can government promise us and how much protection – what’s a reasonable expectation?

HARMAN: Well, that’s a well put question. And the predicate’s also right – women are capable and we need to take responsibility for the things that matter most to us. Let’s start with that. Not all of us can do that. We can be incapacitated, we could be uninformed. The problems can be so great that even those with marvelous educations and high energy levels and all that could be overwhelmed – that’s something I hate to admit but it can be true.

BAUER: [laughter].

HARMAN: But the point is, Step One is, take responsibility yourself. Make an effort to be as informed as possible. Step Two is, be very thorough in reading and attempting to understand materials that governments put out or that candidates put out. I was thinking government when you asked me these questions, not candidates for office.

Most government agencies have websites. Most people can use the Internet well enough to access those websites. I would read them carefully, and make certain that they have useful information on them. And I would compare, obviously, the local community websites and the city website. I’m not asking people to do an enormous amount of homework but I would do some homework to make certain that the information is consistent. And if it’s not I would push back.

And then certainly my goal, at the federal level, is to take this behemoth Homeland Security Department, which I voted to form some years back and thought a good idea, and make it work – which it does not yet do – as the principle threat warning system in the country. So that it basically analyzes the major threats out there, and figures out a way to inform citizens and first responders about what to look for and what to do. A threat warning system that says, “Beware, don’t drive over a certain bridge,” is not very helpful. A threat warning system that says, “There is credible information that certain groups may attack and this bridge may be attacked and we want you to look out for A, B, C, and try to avoid traveling there, but we want to assure you that your government’s doing everything it can to protect that bridge and protect against this threat,” is much more useful.

BAUER: That’s fascinating because what you’re saying is that they are in the information-gathering business, and the evaluating of that information, so that when it comes, it’s not just saying all these other things we hear about. I mean people are talking about Homeland Security when they talk about the borders, the immigration bill is full of things about sealing off Mexico and Canada. The last time I looked at those borders on a map, there are a lot of places to cross over.

HARMAN: I think that’s unhelpful. I could say more about it, but it’s unhelpful. First of all, not every immigrant is a prospective terrorist, whether they’re legal or illegal. Second of all, sealing off all borders to the United States is a goal much too ambitious to accomplish, and inconsistent with other goals that we have of welcoming people here – most of whom are law-abiding people who are in search of a better life. So that’s not the most productive way to do this.

Again, start with good intelligence. Do we have reason to believe that a certain group might try to cross our borders? Where might they try to cross our borders? What might they try to do? And make these warnings much more specific.

BAUER: Does every member of Congress find that his or her constituents want to see Homeland Security dollars spent in their community, even though some places are more vulnerable than others?

HARMAN: I would say the answer to that is no. I think America, most people in America, when they have an issue carefully explained to them, will have pretty good instincts about it. Sure, most politicians want to bring dollars home. But if you ask someone living in the outback in Alaska whether he wanted some of his tax dollars spent in the wisest way to protect America, which might mean that we had to spend more money on the top targets in America -- obviously New York perhaps, again, Washington again, and certainly, I don’t want to shill for my own hometown, but LAX, Los Angeles International Airport had been an intended Al Quada target twice, it’s thought to be the most vulnerable, airport in America, spend to protect LAX, spend to protect ports, where most of our un-inspected containers cross, like the ports of LA and Long Beach -- I think this guy in the outback in Alaska would say, “Hey yeah, it’s my country, and I want to protect my country.”

BAUER: Then people have to learn to think of themselves as part of something bigger than their local place.

HARMAN: Well, but people do that. They do that when there are tragedies, like Katrina.

BAUER: That’s interesting.

HARMAN: A lot of the help for Katrina came from folks all over America, who put aside their own agendas and spent hard earned dollars to be helpful. So Americans are a generous people, but it takes leadership and/or huge human tragedies to inspire them, and I’d like to hope that the leadership would get it done, and we wouldn’t have to have the tragedy part.

BAUER: Because one of the things that’s been very interesting, and we will be talking about it with the female psychiatrist who’s going to be talking with us on this show is what fear has done to the economy. When people get afraid, where do we spend our money? And how do we know the best places to spend it and get enough information about that.

But we are out spending enormous amounts of money concerned with natural disasters, and the question of terrorism versus natural disasters against routine crime – all of these things that Americans seem to want to have them all go away. Can we learn to live with them?

HARMAN: Well again, some level of risk is always going to be there. I said a few minutes ago that you can get run over by a bus tomorrow.

BAUER: You bet.

HARMAN: And anybody can. No matter how much money you spend and how well trained you are, that can happen. There is not infinite money, nobody would argue that, and so we can’t make everything a top priority. No one in a family would do that. The goal is to have a strategy, to do some sort of threat and vulnerability assessment, which would include, as far as I’m concerned, both terrorist and natural threats. Again, just talking about my home state of California, earthquakes are a huge threat. How big a threat are they? What are the sensible things to do? How much money of a small pot of money should be spent against that?

We should invest on the front end to protecting ourselves against what we think are the most likely threats. The response capability is similar in each case. I mean we need inter-operable communications, which we don’t really have yet. We need adequate medical capacity, which we certainly don’t have. We need the ability to quarantine people, vaccinate people, treat people, and remove people from very hard hit areas, which again we have in some places and not in others. Think Katrina – we had a total meltdown, we couldn’t do any of those things.

We need water, basic supplies for a few days. These are things families can do for themselves, but the goal is to have this strategy, both the prevention piece and the response piece, in place, in advance, and have people knowledgeable about it, so that they know what to do.

BAUER: Well I think that this has been very helpful to hear you talk about the fact that you’re in the information business and the education business, helping people to educate themselves. And each woman has to decide, what are the trade-offs? That is, how much can she handle by herself, and how much do we do as a local community, and then how much can we do with government, recognizing that it is us? So how do you want women to react?

HARMAN: I think you just stated it beautifully. I think that’s the order one has to think about it, starting with herself. Women are very capable. I’m amazed at how resilient women are. I would include some men in that comment, but seriously, women multitask in ways that I think my husband would certainly say he can’t. We think about our kids, we think about what’s going to be for dinner, we remember that the plumber is coming. And, oh by the way, we go to work, and we do five or six other things all at the same time.

BAUER: There is a female life and a female perspective and our research shows that.

HARMAN: I think that is true. And so add to that list, being prepared against calamities that we now understand could befall us in an increasingly dangerous world. Not just terrorist attacks, which we know have happened, and can happen again in America. I don’t want to hide that from anybody, I believe they could happen at any time, but also natural disasters. I think we’ve had our fill of hurricanes for the next generation, but nonetheless we had them all in one year.

BAUER: Right. So what do you want from women from your point of view in government, what do you want from us?

HARMAN: Well from my point of view I want women to use their talents to a maximum extent to become informed about their own situation, and what they can personally do. And to take responsibility for what they can do. I then want just what you said – them to be aware of what services their local communities offer. And if they’re not good enough, to help fix them. That’s not hard for women to do. If the school evacuation plan is in Urdu, and it doesn’t make any sense, a parent should speak up. It should be absolutely clear what happens if there’s a terrorist attack, a major earthquake, a fire, or whatever. Where is your kid? And how are you going to know that the kid is fine?

BAUER: Well this is wonderful, because you’re both on the intelligence committee and the homeland security committee and we look to you, really, for the kind of leadership that offers us the details that we can trust, and that’s so terribly important. And then you’re speaking across party and that’s very important.

HARMAN: Well thank you for saying that. I mean I’m speaking as a mother too. On 9/11 I was in Congress, there was no evacuation plan, and 200 or more members of the house were standing on the lawn in front of the Capital wondering if that last plane was going to hit. It went down in Pennsylvania, as everyone knows, 20 minutes out. And the target was either going to be the Capital or the White House and we were sitting ducks or standing ducks on that lawn. And what was I thinking about? I was thinking about how do I reach my kid, who was then in high school. And I couldn’t reach her.

So this is common sense, you’ve got to think about that. Then as women, go up the chain. Once you’ve got the community aspect in place, of course you want to know, if the catastrophe is or could be bigger than your community, what is in place at the regional level, the state level, and the national level. And women’s voices matter. Not only because we are the primary protectors of our family, but because we are qualified to be involved in the response effort, the preparation effort and the policy effort at every level.

BAUER: Thank you very much Jane Harman, Congresswoman from the 36th District of California. Thank you for your leadership and thank you for being part of Facts & Trade-Offs.

HARMAN: Thank you.

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BAUER: The person I want to talk to today (sounds like you want to talk to her more than the other guests) is somebody who understands New York City almost better than anyone else. This is Joyce Purnick, columnist for the New York Times, and her column is called Metro Matters. And so welcome Joyce Purnick, to WomenMatter, Facts & Trade-offs.

We’ve been hearing from other people, ones in charge of transportation security, what you can do about that, and what works and what maybe doesn’t work. And we’ve heard from the government about what they’re trying to do to prevent trouble through intelligence, and then how to mop up afterward in case something awful happens. What’s it like to live in one of the target cities of our nation, knowing that there are people out there that want to create fear for Americans? What’s it like to live in New York?

JOYCE PURNICK: I may be going out on a limb in saying this, but I don’t think that that level of consciousness that you are referring to exists here. And that may sound strange. But I think that New Yorkers are practical, if not pragmatic people, who have become very accustomed now to these constant – constant is wrong- frequent alerts that we’ve been getting since September 11th. And I have to say, I’ve been out with the people, I’ve talked with a number of them. I know my own reaction, and I think the general reaction is, Well, what does it mean to “be careful?” What does it mean to say, “If you see something, say something” – what would the something be? And so I think, I’m convinced that the broad reaction is, all right, this is the reality we have to live with, and you know what? We’re just going to go on with our lives.

BAUER: That’s really interesting, the idea that does anybody there expect to be protected? I mean do they think their tax dollars are supposed to keep badness from happening?

PURNICK: You know that’s a very good question. I’m not sure. I suspect that while the city police department and the mayor make a very good effort to convince us that they are out there – and they are, you can see them. I mean they’re checking backpacks on the subway. I went into the Times Square subway recently and there was a table there with three police officers and a sign saying “Checking backpacks, bags.” And they were. They were picking people out at random, though it wasn’t quite at random. It’s every certain number, I think it was every eight, because they’re trying to prevent the questions of discrimination.

BAUER: Do people jockey for place then? When they think that it’s eight, the way we used to in school?

PURNICK: No, no, nope. People are very blasé, practical, accommodating. It’s, “Oh well, here’s another pain in the neck in New York.” And they just do it. And I think that everybody understands that and appreciates it. I also think that people realize, as anybody should realize, we should, that this is not entirely in our hands. And if the authorities check one thing then the bad guys are probably going to go somewhere else.

So I think there’s a certain fatalism about this, and a certain feeling that, you know, lightning can’t strike three times, because as you know the World Trade Center was struck once before, in ’93, and it happened again in 2001. And a certain feeling that there’s only so much that we can do.

BAUER: That’s interesting, I mean now there’s a lawsuit, I gather from yesterday’s paper, about the one that happened in ’93.

PURNICK: Yes.

BAUER: And so the idea that between ’93 and 2001 maybe they should have done something about that building. But if it hadn’t had been that building would it have been some other building?

PURNICK: But what was being recommended wasn’t about 9-11. What was being recommended would have closed the parking garage.

BAUER: I see, so it’s –

PURNICK: What destroyed the towers were the planes flying in. How do you stop that? So, you know, I think there’s a certain feeling that even though with the 9-11 hearings and the 9-11 commission and report, there were certain problems both before and after, flaws in both our response and our lead-up, missteps, we know, missing signs, not acting on concerns about certain figures in the country. I think there’s also a feeling that government cannot be everywhere and do everything, certainly not in a democracy. I think if you were to ask most New Yorkers that’s what they would say, if you took a poll.

BAUER: So there’s a sophistication, a little like what happens in Europe, where they’ve been living with these threats for a long time, and with the IRA in England. That there’s a point at which people are, in a sense, rolling the dice and saying, you know, life is a crapshoot, and it might or might not happen?

PURNICK: I think so. And what is the practical alternative? If the practical alternative is sit in your house, not go to work, not go to school and be frightened all the time, no one’s going to do that here. I mean maybe three people, but this is not the way to live a life. And people know that.

BAUER: So getting that message out to others in the country, so they can continue to flock to New York to go to the theatre.

PURNICK: Hey, I have news for you – they’re here.

BAUER: They are there.

PURNICK: You cannot – [laughter] – you cannot walk the streets of the theatre district. You sort of have to walk sideways. And most of them are tourists.

BAUER: That’s really interesting.

PURNICK: And I’ve interviewed a number of them. And there is some, “Aren’t you nervous? Aren’t you frightened?” People look at me like, “Come on,” you know? “They could hit anywhere at any time, we know that. We love New York, we want to see New York, and we want to go to this production.” And I’m really not being Chamber-of-Commerce-y here. That is exactly what’s going on. You cannot get through the theatre district, especially on a Wednesday, when the matinees are on. I mean it’s ridiculous, I can barely get to work. [laughter].

BAUER: I see.

PURNICK: My office is in the Times Square area.

BAUER: So when they relocated the office they should’ve thought of the Wednesday, right? Especially if you have a Wednesday deadline.

So the question of all the other things that are causing Americans to be concerned today, does this play into the economy of New York? Jobs in New York? Or has the idea that people are worried about routine crime and guns the way we’ve talked about guns? Then there’s the Avian flu. I mean we’ve got all these things that we’re supposed to talk about (be thinking about).

PURNICK: Well first of all, in terms of crime, as you know New York has now been rated one of the safest big cities in the country, and that’s just a fact. That’s the FBI statistics, not our statistics. And so I think that the fear that used to exist about walking around the streets of New York, certainly in Midtown, has changed dramatically – absolutely dramatically. And I have not seen anything like this in a long time.

BAUER: And what’s caused people to either feel or to be more secure?

PURNICK: Well that’s an enormous question. In fact, I was talking to a colleague about it yesterday saying, there’s got to be an encyclopedia about this, or a book or something. You’re asking why did crime go down, is that what you’re asking?

BAUER: Well or—

PURNICK: Crime has gone down dramatically here, it’s gone down all over the country, and there have been many criminologists who have tried to tell us why, and understand it. And they always give us multiple answers, which is somewhat unsatisfying. Crime has gone down more here, per capita, than it has in other places. Most people credit the Giuliani and Bratton – his first police commissioner – strategies. And I think that’s a large part of it, but that would not explain A, why it’s continued to go down, and B, why it went down more here than elsewhere. The demise of, thank God, of the crack epidemic is one issue. I think their strategies helped, but the number of people in the crime, the age group who commits crimes who were in prison is a large factor. There are many, many factors.

BAUER: Well that’s really interesting, and it’s a very interesting thing about, we’ve heard about homeland security. That is in the national defense budget, the big defense budget, only 14 percent went into homeland security.

PURNICK: Right.

BAUER: And a lot of that hasn’t been spent yet.

PURNICK: Right.

BAUER: And so the question of trying to connect up, the FBI and the CIA and the police department and the hospitals and all the rest of it, and are there enough hospital beds if something ghastly happened?

PURNICK: Well that’s a second question. I mean one question is prevention and the other is response. And there, I don’t think any community can be fully prepared, as we learned now through the hurricane season.

BAUER: And Congresswoman Jane Harman talks about the fact that in the getting ready for what to do after something ghastly happens, there’s no difference between a hurricane and a terrorist attack, and maintains of course one of the things we notice is the terrorists saw how we responded in New Orleans.

PURNICK: Yes.

BAUER: Therefore they know what we know.

PURNICK: Yes, as in pretty badly, the response.

BAUER: So are New Yorkers concerned about that? If there are enough hospital beds if we have a flu epidemic?

PURNICK: We’ve been looking into it, the authorities claim there is enough, there is enough response, there is enough this, there is enough that. I don’t, how does one possibly know? How does one even possibly know -- is Jane Harman, is that who you spoke to?

BAUER: Yes.

PURNICK: Who said we’re prepared, I don’t know of any community that would be prepared for some kind of chemical attack. That’s not the same response as hurricanes.

BAUER: No it’s more like the flu.

PURNICK: Oh.

BAUER: And are New Yorkers thinking about this? One of the things that WomenMatter wants people to do, of course, is to stay informed about what’s happening, and actually know the facts and understand how much we can control and how much we can’t. But one hopes that a good many people in America would begin, and women particularly, begin to think like New Yorkers, who have dealt with this in such a dramatic fashion, and seem to incorporate it into their lives. It’s a lesson for us all to learn.

PURNICK: Are New Yorkers thinking about things like the Avian flu and so on? I think the authorities are. I do not think that the people are in any great degree. I think they’re very aware of it, they’re pretty well informed, but it remains such a theoretical at this point that I think it’s more a matter for the authorities. For example we also have had hearings about hurricane preparedness. The likelihood of New York getting a category of hurricane beyond category one is not great, but it has happened. And legislators have held hearings, they’ve tweaked the plan, they’ve come up with a new evacuation plan for those living in low-lying areas, that kind of thing. And we all read about it in the papers.

BAUER: I see. But let me ask one last question, and that is, do you see any difference to the way women are responding to the way the men are responding?

PURNICK: No.

BAUER: OK.

PURNICK: That doesn’t mean there isn’t, but I haven’t really seen it.

BAUER: Right, wonderful. But it is very interesting to get a look at our major city, and the one that of course was on the television set, so it was everybody’s backyard. And thanks Joyce Purnick of the New York Times, her column is Metro Matters. And WomenMatter, Facts & Trade-offs will take all this into account as we try to help women and help ourselves know enough so we know what to ask from our legislators and what to expect from ourselves. Thanks a lot.

PURNICK: Thank you.

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ANNOUNCER:: WomenMatter.com is the place to get the facts, weigh the trade-offs, and sharpen your conversation with your legislators. For WomenMatter, Facts and Trade-offs, this is Victoria Jones.