The Office of Homeland Obscurity

The U.S. intelligence establishment has never seemed so helpless. Not only have investigators failed to trace the highly refined anthrax sent to government leaders and media icons across the nation, but worse yet, they don’t even know whether to look here or overseas. After Sept. 11 showed how unprepared we are to defend against terrorism at home, the ongoing anthrax scare suggests that we are even less equipped to investigate it.

Although President Bush rests his hopes on the Office of Homeland Security to restore our tattered peace of mind, its creation only adds to public uncertainty. The mission charged to it is one that needs to be filled: to “secure the United States from terrorist threats or attacks” by bringing the 40 or so agencies responsible for domestic safety into close cooperation. But in light of the immediate terrorist threat, nobody knows exactly how the new Office or its cabinet-level director, former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, plan to carry out that mission. On the one hand, the order shows that Bush is capable of a rapid response to new danger. But on the other hand, that response “expanding the cabinet and adding another layer of bureaucracy” seems entirely out of left field.

And that’s because it is. Besides the fact that the Bush administration deserves no credit for the idea in the first place, the authors of the idea never intended for it to answer an immediate terrorist threat. The proposal was first made public in a little-known report issued in January by the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century. The report called for a Homeland Security Agency to coordinate the security and intelligence efforts of the 40 agencies with a hand in our national safety. Because the authors recognized that it would take years to make headway into the problem, they suggested that the director hold a cabinet-level appointment in order to preserve the Office’s influence on future administrations.

Perhaps Bush is reluctant to give the commission its due credit because if he did, he would have to explain why he ignored them until Sept. 11. When the bipartisan commission presented its 50 recommendations to Bush in the spring of this year, the White House was less than receptive. “Frankly, the White House shut it down,” said Senator Gary Hart (D-Col), the commission’s co-chair, in a Salon.com article. Instead, Bush announced his own plan in May, which made no reference to the commission’s recommendations. Rather than create a Homeland Security agency—which meant more government, a no-no in the Bush campaign—Bush opted to leave the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in charge of developing policies to deal with domestic terrorism. Bush’s plan assigned an already overburdened Dick Cheney to assess the state of national security, even though the Commission had already made significant progress in that direction.

But now is no time for Bush to come around. Although the Office of Homeland Security may prove valuable in years to come, it will be useless in the short-term, when we need it most. Director Ridge has so much to learn about the security community that he will be ineffectual for some time. And once he gets his act together, his powers will remain limited without a Congressional mandate. With the White House’s national security responsibilities divided so many ways already—between the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, and the Chiefs of Staff, to name only a few—Ridge will have to work hard to establish a place for himself.

But even after Ridge establishes his place within the White House, he still has to gain the respect and trust of the rest of the intelligence community. The largest agencies, the NSA, the FBI and the CIA, enjoy tremendous autonomy and are viciously territorial. For these agencies to share information with each other and the White House and to take orders from the President, Ridge will have to scratch and claw every inch of the way. Unless the Office of Homeland Security is given some power over the budgets of those agencies, they’re unlikely to respond at all.

The Office of Homeland Security will be more of a burden in the short term. The last thing we need now is to add the growing pains of a new agency to an already ailing security network. Its hurried creation will come back to haunt it sooner rather than later. And its vague position among existing security agencies are likely to lead to divisive infighting if Ridge and Bush assert powers for the Office that other agencies are not ready to give up.

In the short-term, Bush’s best bet is to leave FEMA is charge of directing anti-terrorism efforts. FEMA already has a rapport with the major security agencies, and although its shortcomings are well documented, FEMA has the most experience coordinating large-scale prevention and response efforts. To make the agency more effective in the current crisis, Bush should schedule teleconferences every few days between his own security team, FEMA officials and the leaders of the major security agencies—including the FBI, the CIA and the NSA—to ensure that everyone is on the same page.

But to secure our homeland in the decades to come, the fractured intelligence establishment needs the glue of an agency like The Office of Homeland Security to hold it together. Because of the daunting task before it—of assessing the current state of domestic security and proposing long-term reforms—Ridge should begin his work immediately. But while Ridge works toward long-term solutions, he should steer his agency away from immediate policy decisions, which are better left to experienced groups like FEMA. With threat of another terrorist catastrophe growing every minute, we cannot depend on a hastily constructed agency led by a security outsider to avert disaster.