When President Bush went on national TV Thursday evening, his mission was to make the case for a massive reorganization of the federal government. Its purpose: to address the broad and urgent demands of homeland security.
The need for a shift in focus became clear on Sept. 11, when Americans discovered that they and their government had paid too little heed to the threat of anti-American extremism. The revelation of pre-9/11 failures by the FBI and the CIA to pick up on warnings has only dramatized the need for fresh and more vigorous efforts to head off terrorism.
But the president’s speech hardly settled the issue. Sprung suddenly, and coming on the same day that FBI whistle-blower Coleen Rowley testified before Congress on how her superiors bungled the investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui, the administration offensive had the air of a resolute attempt to change the subject and deflect blame.
Conceived in secret by a small group of White House aides, it arrived without the benefit of congressional input that might have smoothed the way for approval on Capitol Hill. Equally important, there is no assurance that the reorganization is necessary or sufficient to address the new peril.
No one questions the need for a more unified and better coordinated response. Until Sept. 11, homeland security was a low priority at best in Washington, and no one except the president could ultimately answer for it. Bush’s appointment of Tom Ridge to the new post of Homeland Security Director was intended to concentrate anti-terrorism efforts in one place.
Ridge, however, lacks not only resources but authority over the agencies that man the front lines–which are numerous, with multiple responsibilities, and scattered throughout the federal bureaucracy. The White House says that dispersal has hobbled its efforts. A new Department of Homeland Security, it says, would give a single person responsibility–and accountability–for protecting Americans from attack.
There is something to be said for that. This plan would take 100 agencies, in whole or in part, and put them into a single department with 170,000 workers and a $37 billion budget. Among those that would be relocated are the Coast Guard, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Customs Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Secret Service.
All these would be housed under the same roof and answer to the same person. One obvious problem, though, is that the CIA and the FBI, perhaps the two most important bodies in the fight against terrorism, would not be included–which sounds a bit like leaving the Army and the Navy out of the Defense Department.
The failures by the FBI and the CIA, in any case, were the result mainly of failing to take seriously a threat that was, to a large extent, hiding in plain sight. And in any event, they won’t be much affected by this overhaul. The administration also needs to make the case why consolidation will compel all these disparate bureaucracies to work together better.
The proposal has been compared to the 1947 creation of the Defense Department, which combined the War Department and the Navy Department.
But that was a simple marriage of agencies with similar missions. This brings together dozens of bureaus, including some for which homeland security is only one of their duties.
The goals set out by the president are crucial ones: “securing the homeland of America and protecting the American people.”
His blueprint, however, should be taken as the start of the debate on how to achieve them, not the end.
