Homeland Security & Defense Business Council Honors U.S. SENATOR JOE LIEBERMAN AT ANNUAL DINNER
WASHINGTON, DECEMBER 15, 2011– The Homeland Security & Defense Business Council presented its Lifetime Distinguished Service Award to U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, at its Annual Dinner tonight.
“This event is about celebrating and recognizing the work of the homeland security community – in both the public and private sectors. The Council’s leadership, members, senior advisors, strategic partners, and our friends in government who understand the role the Council and its members play, and the responsibility we have in working together on our common mission, came together to honor a leader who was instrumental in the creation of the Department of Homeland Security,” said Marc Pearl, President & CEO of the Council. “Ten years after 9/11, we felt it was important to bestow our 2011 Lifetime Distinguished Service Award to Chairman Lieberman, thank him for his steady leadership and dedication to the homeland security mission, and hear his perspective on the future of that mission going forward.”
In his speech, Lieberman thanked the HSDBC for its hard work over the past seven years on the nation’s security challenges.
“Since its founding in 2004, the Council has been bringing the voice of the private sector to the many security challenges that confront us,” Lieberman said.
The main topic of his remarks was the need to pass comprehensive cybersecurity legislation, which the Senate is scheduled to take up early next year. Our vulnerabilities in cyberspace are an “existential threat that comes not in fleets or tanks, missiles or planes, but in the strings of ones and zeroes that now touches almost every aspect of modern life,” Lieberman said.
The Chairman of the Council’s Board of Directors Jack Mayer, Executive Vice President at Booz Allen Hamilton, also delivered remarks and outlined the need to establish a National Commission on Homeland Security. Recognizing the budget situation, the ‘new normal’ of the political landscape, and the need to begin to look seriously and strategically at our homeland security mission needs in the future, Mayer told the attendees, “Congress needs to create such a commission to include members of the relevant federal agencies, state and local authorities, and executives from the private sector to work with one another to help break down barriers that have led to inefficiencies and duplication of effort. Only by bringing all of these groups to the same table at the same time can we hope to achieve in the next decade the homeland security we need and can afford.”
Over 120 guests from the public and private sectors attended the Council’s Annual Dinner, which brings together representatives that work together in the pursuit of a safer and more secure nation.
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About the Council
The Homeland Security & Defense Business Council is a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization of the leading companies that bring homeland security solutions to the marketplace. It works to ensure that the perspective, innovation, expertise and capabilities of the private sector are recognized, respected and integrated with the public sector. For more information, please visit www.homelandcouncil.org.
CONTACT: MELISSA MIDDLESWORTH
(202) 470-6443
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