Representative Peter King, incoming Homeland Security Committee chairman

risk if those hazardous materials are shipped to plants and facilities in Baltimore and Washington D.C. What compounds the problem is that the railroads, because of security reasons, are very tight-lipped about informing cities about such shipments — say, that this hazardous material or that would be passing through your city on such and such a day — making it very difficult to prepare for a disaster. What is your view on this?

King: Over the last several years, Transportation Security Administration has done a pretty good job of reducing the overall risks of shipping of hazardous materials that can be lethal if inhaled. They’ve done this primarily by reducing the times that these materials remain at a standstill or unattended. In 2008, TSA added even more layers of security. Also, in the 9/11 Act of 2007, Congress created a grant program to help rail carriers and rail car owners better secure shipments of security-sensitive materials.

HSNW: Regarding Wikileaks. Some people say the root cause of what happened — two huge dumps of materials: in June about the Iraq war, now about U.S. foreign policy more generally — are the results of running too far with some of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. The commission complained that there were too many silos in the intelligence community, and people did not share information. Now, perhaps, there is too much sharing, and too many people now have access to too much information. You will always find a bad apple somewhere to leak it. Do you agree with that analysis?

King: Yes. It’s not even so much that so many people have access, but that there’s very little control and that’s the main danger here. And it’s theoretically possible for half a million people in the government to have access to this information. For me the number clearly has to be reduced and we have to have fail-safe policies in place to prevent this type of downloading, to prevent this type of distribution. This problem goes back to the Bush administration as well. As far as Wikileaks in particular, this administration has had almost eight months to get ready for this, seven months anyway, and they’ve done very, very little. We are still at risk. I can’t go into details other than to say there are still a lot of glaring gaps which have not been closed here. And yes, the 9/11 Commission concept was right, and I certainly support it — the concept of information sharing. However, if we are going to do it, we have to put many more restrictions on who has access to it and how that information can be distributed.

HSNW: If you had to name your top three priorities on day one, week one, or month one of your chairmanship, what would these three priorities be?

King: Number one, and this is an overall view, is to examine the radicalization of the Muslim community in this country. Number two, a very specific one, very targeted, is air cargo security — that is much more difficult to secure than passenger flights. Air cargo is a threat we have to look at. And thirdly is the issue of dirty bomb attacks in urban centers. This is why I’m a strong supporter of the Securing the Cities program. These would be the top three priorities.