Establishing the tone for upcoming posts about the Department of Homeland Security

Recently, a man named Clark Kent Ervin has been making all sorts of media appearances. Ervin was the former Inspector General for DHS, and he found that DHS was basically inept and ineffective. I am going to be writing about some of what Ervin has said and written in his book, Open Target: Where America is Vulnerable to Attack, but before that I want to reprint what I have already said about DHS. Just keep the basic themes in mind for future reference.

• The Kerik debacle
  Friday, December 17, 2004

Quick--just what does the Department of Homeland Security do? What does the DHS Secretary do? Just what did Tom Ridge do in the office? You see, folks, the Homeland Security Act's major effect was NOT the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Instead, the primary, overarching effect of that legislation was a massive reorganization of the federal bureaucracy. This is really a subject for a series of posts, so I will not go into detail now. Here's the bottom line for me: DHS is not a clearly defined agency, so it can be molded into whatever, the President wants it to be. I think that DHS was always intended to be a bit of a smokescreen which could be used to cover any activity the President wanted to undertake. For instance, other agencies--such as the FBI and CIA could be doing one thing while public focus could be shifted to DHS, or vice versa.

• Example #1 of the Bush agenda: Alberto Gonzales
  Tuesday, May 31, 2005

As AG, he also ultimately controls the domestic efforts of the war on terror (thanks in large part to the Homeland Security Act), and he sets the policy and agenda for all federal criminal prosecution efforts.

• Bush's concept of using the military in disaster relief is part of a disturbing trend.
  Tuesday, September 27, 2005

This desire by Bush to put the military in charge of "extraordinary" and "catastrophic" events is just another step in the ongoing trend to centralize power in the federal government. First came the USA PATRIOT Act (check out Truth in acronyms). Next came the Homeland Security Act, which 1) created a new cabinet level agency that supposedly was to oversee all homeland security efforts in the country, and 2) so poorly defined just what DHS was supposed to do and made such a mess of the federal bureaucracy that it would be easy for DHS to do just about anything and either justify it or hide it.

• Comment from A tangent from the extended rant (a "rantgent" perhaps)
  Thursday, September 8, 2005

As for the Homeland Security Act, it is a huge piece of unnecessary legislation. Did there need to be better organization and coordination? Yes. Could it have been done in an easier way? Yes. As I have said before, the chief feature of the Act is NOT the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. The chief feature is the massive, wholesale reorganization of the federal bureaucracy. Read the Act sometime and you will see what I mean. The Act created a new cabinet-level department--which adds to the bureaucracy--and created so many new levels of bureaucratic chaos. This creation/reorganization resulted in further confusion and red tape and inefficiency and thus hurt efforts in the war on terror.

Here's an example. Prior to the Iraq war and passage of the Homeland Security Act, the Treasury Department had a task force called Operation Green Quest, whose purpose was to find and stop terrorist finances. Operation Green Quest was very effective--far more effective than any other federal effort--and was set to expand operations when the HSA was passed. To make a long story short, the HSA resulted in Operation Green Quest being shut down and all similar efforts being reserved to the FBI, which at the time was horribly ill-equipped and understaffed.

By the way, can you tell me just what it is that DHS does? Do you know just what the Secretary of Homeland Security is supposed to do? I am not trying to be flippant. I really do not know these answers.

The HSA produced changes in the bureaucracy that will take YEARS to sort out. It has been almost three years since its passage, and things aren't worked out yet (the recent FEMA situation is a good example). In my opinion, we did not have the luxury of wasting this kind of time in combating terrorism. Thus, while I agree that there was a "need," the means chosen to address that need was and is inefficient and unnecessary. There were other ways to go about this.