A Eulogy to DHS
August 24th, 2008I wrote this as a course assignment—the prompt was my professor’s commentary on FEMA’s failure to respond quickly and efficiently to destrsuction and devastation caused by Katrina:
Consider the agencies present 24/7 at any federalized international airport: FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), DHS (Department of Homeland Security), TSA (Transportation Security Administration), Federal Air Marshal Service, JTTF (Joint Terrorism Task Force), ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) and the airport police.
Have there been problems? Generally, no: pre-flight scrutiny is done through the JTTF, people flying out are scrutinized by the TSA, the bad people get arrested by the FBI, if anything goes wrong while in the air, the Air Marshals take care of it, and people coming in are examined by the ICE. All under the common direction of the DHS. In fact, the only recent problem has been when a delay was caused by FBI and DHS fighting over who had jurisdiction. The protocol over “acts of air piracy” is a constant source of bickering between the two agencies and have been the subject of at least one DHS Inspector General’s Report. If the FBI was under the DHS’ control everything would be set in stone by some sort of “internal” hierarchy”.
That is why the DHS was created after the 9/11 fiasco. Useful intelligence was lost because all the law-enforcement agencies used different protocols, different ways to describe things, and there was no intra-agency communication. The DHS was created to be a one-stop for coordinating “homeland security” efforts. In fact, the new DHS regime, better implements the ideal bureaucracy as described by Weber. Instead of having agencies without any official relation to one another, all major agencies being headed by one single entity establishes authority and accountability, while it simplifies reporting relationships and clarifies global priorities. That DHS’ FEMA failed to respond to the Katrina emergency has little to do with its placement under the DHS.
First-responders co-ordinate using DHS protocols. That the new FEMA, the State government, and other parties involved were not well acquainted to the new hierarchy tells us very little about the hierarchy itself. These observations should only serve as a way to criticize the transition, not the new system.
