I’m as much a fan of public safety as the next guy, but I think we’re in trouble over at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
One thing that tipped me off was the report that DHS is getting a new home. A 173-acre campus, actually, an office complex rivaled only by the Pentagon. With nearly 250,000 employees, in fact, only the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration are bigger than DHS. The development budget is a healthy $5.3 billion. If past government estimates are any guide – Boston’s Big Dig is a good example – the final tab will be closer to $15 billion. It’s perhaps ironic that the DHS facility is being located on the campus of the former St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, the first mental health facility operated by the federal government.
Created in the wake of Sept. 11, the DHS consolidated some 22 executive department agencies. Its mission statement now reads, “to protect America from – and in response to – terrorist attacks, man-made accidents and natural disasters.” Not exactly “damn the torpedoes full speed ahead,” but certainly good intentions.
To accomplish its ambitious goal, DHS has gathered together everyone from FEMA to the Secret Service to Immigration, Customs and the Border Patrol; plus a basket full of laboratories, response teams, training centers, cyber and countermeasure councils, preparedness offices, not to mention the Coast Guard, the Transportation Security Authority (or as they’re known at the Jetport, Thousands Standing Around) and curiously, the Plum Island Animal Disease Center.
Two familiar management strategies – both highly suspect – are at work here because they promote the creation of massive bureaucracies. The first is the bigger-is-always-better strategy. Separate agencies, it was argued, weren’t playing as well together as one giant agency could play with itself. Secondly, centralizing intelligence meant it could be more efficiently gathered and shared a criticism of the intelligence community for decades.
Reorganization, even in corporate America, is often a way to create the illusion of progress while leaving things substantially as they are. Within DHS this was raised to an art form. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) divided its enforcement and service functions into two separate and new agencies: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Citizenship and Immigration Services. The investigative divisions and intelligence gathering units of the INS Customs and Service were merged forming Homeland Security Investigations. Additionally, the border enforcement functions of the INS, including the U.S. Border Patrol, the U.S. Customs Service, and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service were consolidated into a new agency: U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
And on. And on. The new stationery alone will cost a fortune.
What is different, is now there are thousands more federal employees gathering information about U.S. citizens. Data stream starts at the street level with police and activity reports gathered in small towns and cities across the land. The streams merge at networked “fusion centers” where information is analyzed by computer programs looking for the juxtaposition of words like Obama and assassination, or Tom Ridge and nitwit.
The problem with all this is that it doesn’t work. Burying small, independent, more nimble agencies inside a sea of cubicles predictably harvests sludge. The bigger you get the more approving signatures it takes just to order Reply Envelopes. The real beauty of bureaucracy is that it parses responsibility among so many layers no one is personally responsible for anything. Making your job at DHS safe, if nothing else.
The results of the data mining are also in. DHS has blacklisted huge swaths of Americans because they are openly pro-environment, pro-animal rights, Muslim, Tea Party or militia members, either pro-abortion or pro-life (figure that out), anti-war activists, or simply voted for third party candidates. Afro-American universities have been targeted. People that were caught tweeting jokes about the agency were listed.
Note: DHS hasn’t identified a single domestic terrorist in 10 years. Nor are they ever likely to. Fort Hood and the Boston marathon are cases in point.
Don’t forget, these are the folks who gave us the original Homeland Security Advisory System: a color-coded national mood ring. More significantly, a rich vein of material for late-night TV hosts. And it was none other than Tom Ridge who advised wrapping your home in plastic sheets sealed with duct tape. This nonsense was eventually rescinded but not before a lot of parakeets died.
DHS is also running a fever. Of 36 federal agencies, the agency finished 33rd to 36th in four categories measuring employee morale. Two years ago, AMC television suddenly canceled its plans for a documentary series, “Inside the DHS.” Maybe all they got was, “No comment.”
Even more disturbing news: this month DHS was reported to have stockpiled some 3 to 4 billion rounds of ammunition. As someone who lives in America, you have to wonder: If they need 4 billion bullets, just how many people are they planning to shoot? Other than a handful of Secret Service agents and the Border Patrol, are we supposed to believe that 250,000 short-sleeved data crunchers will rise up, grab their AR-15s and man the ramparts against an invading force from – let me guess here – Yemen? With all that private information and all that firepower, our robust Department of Homeland Security couldn’t be thinking civil war, could they?
Oh, almost forgot to mention. They can also open your mail.
Rick Roberts (reroberts46@yahoo.com) is a veteran of Boston’s advertising community and the U.S. Army. He lives in Windham. He is author of two books:“Digital Darling,” recently awarded Honorable Mention at the New England Book Festival; and the boomer rant, “I Was Much Happier When Everything I Owned Was In The Back Seat Of My Volkswagen.” Both are available through bookstores, Amazon.com, or visit BabyBoomerPress.com.
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