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After Mumbai, what about U.S.?

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 10, 2008

-WASHINGTON

Talk about tall orders. When he chose Janet Napolitano to head the Department of Homeland Security, President-elect Barack Obama said, "She will be a leader who can reform a sprawling department while safeguarding our homeland."

Oh, really?

Don't get me wrong. I'm sure the Arizona governor is a highly capable and dedicated public servant, but it seems unrealistic to expect anyone to revamp the behemoth that is Homeland Security while protecting the country from the growing threat of terrorism.

It's likely that Homeland Security will test Obama's urge to change, reform and overhaul government against the realities of the federal bureaucracy.

Created five years ago by combining 22 federal agencies, Homeland Security is a giant nobody loves, not even its 216,000 employees. The department routinely has the worst morale in the federal government - a shame since the work is so vital.

Despite the department's problems, Current Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says rushing reform is a bad idea.

"There's a presumption in my mind against any massive changes," Chertoff told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast last week. "At a minimum, you ought to take a couple of years and make sure you're using existing structures as well as you can."

Obama and Napolitano face pressure to make changes immediately. But Chertoff, who gave up a lifetime appointment as a federal appeals court judge to lead Homeland Security, warned that reorganizing is a recipe for federal inaction.

"Each time you reorganize, you freeze everything. People become uncertain what their future is. All actual, substantive work becomes impeded, and then you lose time," he said.

What Homeland Security lacks is credibility. The change the new administration could start on is restoring the people's faith in the government. Obama is likely to make high-profile appointments on specific areas of concern, such as weapons of mass destruction and cyber security. These czars would report directly to him, bypassing the Department of Homeland Security. Also under review is whether to remove FEMA from the department.

For what it's worth, Chertoff doesn't think much of those ideas either. What, he asks, would more czars add? And he said that having the agency that responds to disasters as part of the larger prevention effort makes sense.

The bipartisan federal WMD commission recommended that the government do more to make information available that helps people understand the terrorist threats, what specifically they can do to help prevent them and steps they can take if an attack occurs. That could go far toward creating real Homeland Security.

© 2008 Media General News Service

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