IN 2018, WAS THE GOVERNMENT’S PANDEMIC POSITION ELIMINATED?

… Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer, Former head of the: National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense. 

John Bolton had folded the pandemic part of the biodefense operation into another department.

Did Donald Trump’s administration eliminate the White House National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense. 

This was the Obama-Biden operation that after the Ebola scare, was set up to prepare for future pandemics such as the current Coronavirus pandemic.

Here are the facts from the Washington Post’s Fact Checkers.

The National Security Council staff is supposed to help the president coordinate the government response to international crises, pandemics, and homeland security issues.  This is achieved by identifying emerging problems and making sure all Cabinet agencies and other departments are notified and are working cooperatively.

This structure survived during the early part of Trump’s presidency, when the office was headed by Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer.

However, after John Bolton became Trump’s third national security adviser, he decided the organizational chart was a mess that led to too many conflicts. He also thought the staff was too large, having swollen to 430 people, including staffers in the pipeline.

Bolton then fired Tom Bossert, the homeland security adviser, realigning the post to report directly to Bolton.  He then eliminated a number of deputy national security advisers so there was just one.  He also folded the global health directorate into a new directorate that focused on counter-proliferation and biodefense.  After those changes, Ziemer decided to leave for the US Agency for International Development.  However, a former administration official has admitted that Ziemer was due to leave the NSC anyway. 

Asked at a congressional hearing on March 11 whether it was a mistake to eliminate the Global Health Office, Anthony Fauci, who today runs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, diplomatically replied saying: “I wouldn’t necessarily characterize it as a mistake. I would say we worked very well with that office. It would be nice if the office was still there.”

Can one office such as this really make a difference?  At a news conference on March 13, President Trump dismissed this question as a “nasty” question, and he then proceeded to ignored it..

Critics say the changes by Bolton were shortsighted in the long run.  Ron Klain, the successful Ebola “czar” appointed by Obama said biodefense and pandemic prevention require different skill sets and expertise. He said the move was akin to terminating a fire department chief and putting the firefighters in the police department. “The next time you have a fire, they will send a police car with a couple of firefighters in the back,” he said.

“A pandemic is an odd policy challenge because it straddles a lot of other positions,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, who served in the Obama administration.  He cited the following: “Global health, diplomacy, domestic health policy, border and travel controls, foreign aid and chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive materials threats.  But [a pandemic] is always a subordinate priority in any of those other streams, which leads to a fragmented and disconnected policy process.”

“During the summer of 2018, NSC merged three directorates into one to reduce the seam between those preparing for biological threats whether they are man-made or naturally occurring,” said NSC spokesman John Ullyot. “No director-level positions were eliminated during this process, and the organization retained its subject matter expertise under a different organizational structure.” He added that under Bolton’s replacement, Robert O’Brien, “no NSC biodefense director positions were eliminated under the right-sizing.”

But one can see the dueling narratives here, and neither is entirely incorrect. The office, as set up by Obama, was folded into another office. Thus, some could claim the office was eliminated.  But the staff slots did not disappear and at least initially, the key mission of the team remained a priority.  So one can also claim that nothing changed.

The question that cannot be answered until a congressional, mandated commission examines the US and its actual preparation for this pandemic crisis.  The question is whether a separate directorate would have had enough clout to bring the issue immediately to the president’s attention?  That might have helped buy the necessary time to stem the spread of the disease by focusing the full attention of the government on the emerging problem at its beginning, not months later.

As one example, China had refused to let American experts into Wuhan.  That was when and where the virus had originally erupted.  It is not known whether early presidential pressure from President Trump through the pandemic organization would have swayed Beijing to cooperate early on.

For those reasons, the president is not going to be rated with additional Pinocchio’s from The Post Fact Checkers.

President Trump lucked out for once, even though the pandemic post had been diluted and was somewhat eliminated under his watch.

Copyright G. Ater 2020