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Fri. Jun 07, 2002

Birthing a Department

Birthing a Department – This new ”child” will born into the governmental world larger than all but one of it’s siblings, the Pentagon. But have no doubt, at first the Department of Homeland Security will stumble and bump its head against the real world at times, as it learns to play with the Big Boys. A lot of concerns are being expressed about this initiative, but I think it, or something like it, is quite justified. How well it is implemented remains to be seen. But this announcement brought a few key thoughts to mind.

One, the manner in which it was drafted, polished, and announced. From the Washington Post: "The proposal was designed largely by just four of President Bush’s most trusted senior aides, meeting for 10 days in a bunker-style, secure conference room beneath the White House. Those sessions, in late April and early May, were the beginning of a seven-week deliberative process secret even by the standards of a Bush administration known for its discipline and control. By the time of yesterday morning’s meeting of Bush’s 20 most senior aides, the majority did not know the details of the plan to create a new cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security."

A lot of us ponder about the Bush administration’s seeming blunders, the whole ”rope-a-dope” theory, and their apparent lack of initiative in the war on terror outside of Afghanistan. But we should also now keep in mind, this administration spent seven weeks working up the largest reorganization of our defense and law enforcement agencies in over 50 years, creating a new department with a $37 billion budget and 160,000 employees, and until 36 hours before Bush’s speech, you could count the number of people who knew the plans on your fingers.

These are the capabilities of the White House when dealing with a domestic initiative. I’m now a little more willing to give them the benfit of the doubt on their foreign initiatives.

A Little.

Because this also has a sense of ”deja vu all over again.” The President creates a new governmental organization because information sharing about our #1 enemy has become a real problem, and he needs people to coordinate and prioritize this flood of information. This is not only the situation today, it was the situation in 1948, and it resulted in the birth of another organization to fulfill that now neglected task: the CIA.

From CNN’s Cold War special: "In December 1941, Japanese warplanes attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor—despite warnings to the U.S. government that a Japanese carrier force was sailing toward the Hawaiian islands. The attack brought America into the war—and remained a painful reminder of what can happen to a nation without the proper intelligence coordination. In the prewar years, the United States relied on the FBI and the military for its secret spy work. But World War II crystallized the need for a centralized intelligence network.

"In 1942, on orders from President Franklin Roosevelt, the United States set up the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was responsible for intelligence and secret operations. Led by William ’Wild Bill’ Donovan, the 13,000 agents of the OSS played an important role worldwide in the victory over fascism. But at war’s end, President Harry Truman closed the OSS, fearing an ’American Gestapo’—an intelligence organization that might be used against U.S. citizens.

"The emergence of the Cold War, and increasing Soviet domination in Europe, soon changed Truman’s mind. He later recounted to an aide, ’When I suddenly became president I had little or no knowledge how policies had been arrived at before my accession. I had information coming at me from 200 different sources and no one to boil it down for me.’ "

Now President Bush faces a similar situation. So we get a new agency. One can only hope it will not become another bureaucratic boondoggle. In fact, the only hope may be for this new organization to be birthed with a mindset that appears to be lacking at certain levels of the CIA and FBI, levels where personal advancement is Job #1, and departmental advancement and butt covering is Job #2. As the President said in his speech, "Employees of this new agency will come to work every morning knowing that their most important job is to protect their fellow citizens."

That’s the only hope for this mission. It’s spotlighted by testimony before committee about the shamefully woeful state of ”computer technology” at the FBI where you can search ”aviation” or ”school” but not ”aviation school,” aided and abetted by an apparent culture of tradition where some are reluctant to even learn typing. And one needs some hope when you’re left with the visual image of an agent hunched over a Packard Bell 486, hunting and pecking their way to 10 words per minute, taking more time to type out ”mohammed atta” than it took Atta to fly across the Hudson River before slamming into the Trade Center.

That’s the only hope. That each person in the Department of Homeland Security will have to start each day by reading an obituary recounting a life lost September 11. That ought to keep them motivated nearly a decade, by itself. And developing that culture and mindset requires strong focused leadership. To me, the Secretary of this new department needs to be one of two types (or ideally, a mix of the two): [1] A George Marshall – Norman Schwartzkopf – Former Joint Chief type; someone with a good background in defense, strategy, tactics, the logistics of these new demands, and cutting through chain of command red tape, and/or [2] An FDR – Rudolph Guliani type; someone able to not only inspire by their calm in crisis, but who has earned a level of public trust and confidence. In fact, if I had to make a snap judgment, I’m not sure Rudolph Guliani might not be the best man for the job.

Whatever the case, I don’t think Tom Ridge exemplifies either of these qualities, at least not so far. I’m sure he’s a nice guy, and may have been a good governor. Well, I’m a nice guy, and I’m a good photographer, which to me means he is only marginally more qualified for the job than I am. We both lack skills critical for the job. I know he was instrumental in the planning for the new department, and it’s probable he’ll be named the head of it. But I’m reminded of the movie, The Godfather, when Tom Hagen, the non-Italian family ”attorney” played by Robert Duvall, is replaced as ”consigliere” when the family goes to war. He’s told, ”it’s nothing personal, Tom. It’s war.” I think Ridge and Ashcroft should be given the Godfather treatment, myself. Nothing personal, guys, but it’s war time, our needs have changed, and there are other people who can better fill them.

Guliani has a background that would qualify him for either job, Attorney General or Homeland Security. And while some argue he’s too much of an independent loose cannon to fit into the tighly controlled ship that is the Bush administration, the other side of that argument is wouldn’t you rather have him inside the boat than outside rocking it? From a political, and populist point of view, it would be a winner.

But it won’t happen. The path will contain enough resistance without unnecessarily creating it internally. As the President’s Mouthpiece of Understatement put it, " ’Reorganizing the government is never easy,’ said White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. ’It involves turf.’ "

Lots of turf. The agencies affected by this restructuring are overseen by more than 80 committees and subcommittees on Capitol Hill. Howard Kurtz adds, "What’s more, there are fierce turf battles in store. If you’re chairman of the subcommittee that oversees the Coast Guard only to find that the emergency agency is being folded into this new department your panel no longer has a reason to exist. Which might cause you to find the plan fatally flawed."

The partisan tug of war over this reorganization will take a toll, though I’m sure it will be bulldozed through in some form. But let’s face it. The Department of Homeland Security will be lucky to be a fully functioning entity by 2nd quarter, 2003. Our Congress, after taking nine months to have the first official session where they actually ask questions about 9-11, while simultaneuously complaining about all the answers they haven’t been given, will not release a report of their findings and recommendations until 1st quarter, 2003. And that’s the Joint House-Senate Subcommittee for Intelligence, not the independent investigation that many have called for, but as yet exists only as overheated brain vapor. In the end, we might begin to see real governmental change as a result of what happened September 11 by, oh, 24 months after it happened.

As bad as they are, it’s a good thing our enemies aren’t more capable. They probably spend too much time in tears; ”Oh, please turn off the TV, Osama, it is too rich, my sides are splitting. Tell me again, what exactly is an ’Orrin Hatch’? It is so very funny.”

I’m not a big proponent … or opponent … of guns, and largely stay out of those discussions. But I sometimes wonder if our Founding Forefathers put ”the right to bear arms” in the Constitution because they knew the day might come when the citizens would need to rise up, not against an oppressive government, but because their elected government was not properly prepared to defend them.

Of course, the number of guns I might own will have no impact on the next Islamist attack on this country. But the recent revelations of governmental exploits in the name of my defense does leave me feeling a bit ….naked.

”M …o …....h ….a [Bobby, does Mohammed have one m or two?] ...m ….”