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United States Department of Homeland Security

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Dept. of Homeland Security

Seal of the Department of Homeland Security
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Established: November 25, 2002
Activated: January 24, 2003
Secretary: Michael Chertoff
Deputy Secretary: Michael P. Jackson
Budget: $36.5 billion (2004)
Employees: 183,000 (2004)

The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a Cabinet department of the federal government of the United States that is concerned with protecting America's people from harm and its property from damage. This department was created primarily from a conglomeration of existing federal agencies in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Although controversial, the reforms instituted by the Department have been instrumental in uncovering several domestic terror plots. The agency has been tested again during Hurricane Katrina.

Performance during times of crisis

Hurricane Katrina

The Hurricane Katrina disaster, some say, was the first major test of Department of Homeland Security with Michael Chertoff at the helm. There have been questions on who was in charge of the disaster and who had jurisdictional authority. 9/11 commission chairman Thomas Kean spoke of the abysmal lack of coordination during and immediately after Katrina. "It was obvious nobody knew who was in charge. There was no unified command structure...". What is clear, is that the Department of Homeland Security became the ultimate authority on August 30,2005, the day after Katrina hit the coast, when Michael Chertoff triggered the Homeland Security's National Response Plan[1] thus placing him as the designated leader of the federal, state, and local response efforts. According to many media outlets, as well as many politicians, the response to the disaster was inadequate in terms of leadership and response. On September 16, Knight Ridder reported that Chertoff kept a scheduled engagement in Atlanta for a briefing on avian flu even after the levees failed some 24 hours earlier causing 80% of New Orleans to be flooded. Many in the press argue that this demonstrated Chertoff's unexcusable profound recklessness by spending valuable time going to a conference on avian flu instead of flying to Louisiana where water was pouring into New Orleans at that very moment. Jamie Gorelick, a deputy attorney general who investigated 9/11 said "I'm puzzled as to what happened here,". Referring to Chertoff, "Everything he did and everything he has said strongly suggests that that plan was never read," said Michael Greenberger, director of the University of Maryland's Center for Health and Homeland Security said of the National Response Plan. Scott Silliman, director of Duke University Law School's Center for Law, Ethics and National Security, was surprised why Chertoff did not engage a full military response quickly and earlier. In Katrina, the failure of Chertoff to quickly (order to move did not reach some key units until five days after Katrina according to some reports) engage active-duty military in Homeland Security's response in emergency and terrorist events forebodes the possibility of repeated miscalculation in future disasters say some reports.

Others, however, maintain that the complexity and scope of the greatest natural disaster in American history made a quicker response difficult if not impossible; further, they say, at least some of this criticism represents an attempt to exploit a natural disaster for political gain. In either case, both President George W. Bush as well as Congress plan separate investigations into Department of Homeland Security's response to the Katrina disaster as many question whether the nation has the right people in the Department capable of "getting the job done" in handling a terrorist catastrophe similar in scale to Katrina should one occur. Similar to charges about Brown getting his job through political favoritism because of not having a bona fide relevant work history, critics contend that while Chertoff has a work history similar in scope to many other sitting federal judges, law school professors, and private law partners , he has "zero experience" in emergency, disaster, and security operations needed for the post of Secretary of Homeland Security. Increasing pressure for Chertoff to step down among political insiders on both sides of the aisle appear mainly due to the the serious questions and concerns raised about his lack of judgement and leadership ability.

History

The department was established on November 25, 2002 by the Homeland Security Act and officially began operation on January 24, 2003. After months of discussion about employee rights and benefits and "rider" portions of the bill, Congress passed it shortly after the midterm elections, and it was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush. It was intended to consolidate U.S. executive branch organizations related to "homeland security" into a single cabinet agency.

It was the largest government reorganization in 50 years (since the United States Department of Defense was created). The department assumed a number of government functions previously in other departments. It superseded, but did not replace the Office of Homeland Security, which retained an advisory role.

The new Department was initially headed by former governor of Pennsylvania Tom Ridge, who had chaired the Office of Homeland Security since October 2001. On November 30, 2004, Ridge announced his resignation. President Bush chose former NYPD commissioner Bernard Kerik as his successor, but on December 10, Kerik withdrew his nomination citing personal reasons and saying it "would not be in the best interests" of the country for him to pursue the post. On January 11, 2005, President Bush nominated federal judge Michael Chertoff to succeed Ridge. Chertoff was confirmed on February 15, 2005, by a vote of 98-0 in the U.S. Senate. He was sworn in the same day.

President George W. Bush signs the Homeland Security Appropriations Act of 2004.

Controversy about adoption centered on whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency should be incorporated in part or in whole (both were not). The bill itself was also controversial for the presence of unrelated riders, as well as eliminating some standard civil service and labor protections from employees of the department. President Bush wanted the right to fire an employee within Homeland Security immediately for security reasons, for incompetence, or insubordination. Then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle wanted an appeals process that could take up to 18 months or as little as one month.

On March 12, 2002, the Homeland Security Advisory System, a color-coded terrorism risk advisory scale, was created as a Presidential Directive to provide a "comprehensive and effective means to disseminate information regarding the risk of terrorist acts to Federal, State, and local authorities and to the American people." Many procedures at government facilities are keyed off of the alert level; for example a facility may search all entering vehicles when the alert is above a certain level. Since January 2003, it has been administered in coordination with the DHS; it has also been the target of frequent jokes and ridicule on the part of the administration's detractors about its perceived ineffectiveness.

Grants

The Department of Homeland Security occasionally gives grants to universities and corporations for developing technologies which could be useful for its activities. For example, in February 2005 a team of researchers from the University of California, Riverside (UCR) and Lucent Technologies received a US$800,000 grant from the US Department of Homeland Security to evaluate modern data-mining methods for discovering behavior patterns which could be a threat to the national security of the United States of America.

Organization

On July 13, 2005, Secretary Chertoff announced that DHS would be undergoing a reorganization which should be completed by October 2005. The reorganization includes the dissolving of the Directorates of Border and Transportation Security and Emergency Planning and Response and the creation of Directorates of Policy and Preparedness.

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