Agenda Setting: The State-Centric Approach (Creation of the Department of Homeland Security)

(United States Congress, Photo by Susan Sterner. Wikimedia Commons)

            Prominent leaders in the US Congress have demanded explanations from President George W. Bush why the federal government failed to detect, monitor, and negate the terrorist attacks. The most vocal critic on this issue was New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) when she told the reporters on May 16, 2002, that “the public demands answers immediately . . . And the people of New York deserve those answers more than anyone.”

            The Director of the CIA and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were not spared from the blame-game either. In the midst of this political turmoil, the people demanded accountability. There was a public outcry for the resignations of DCI George Tenet and Director Robert Mueller. The actions and inactions of their organizations were reflective of the way they led and managed the CIA and the FBI before the 9/11 attacks. The public clamor for an explanation of what caused the massive intelligence and security failure has not only reverberated in the streets of America but also rang in the halls of US Congress.

            Rep. Peter Goss (R), Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, himself a former CIA Intelligence Officer, said that “over the years, success in the FBI meant ‘to go out and apprehend criminals’ prosecute them and ‘get them off the streets’ . . . that approach is still needed but with terrorism, there is a new element of integrating overseas intelligence to prevent acts inside the United States.” Likewise, Rep. Jane Harman (D), a ranking member of the intelligence committee, said that “the CIA, which by law operates overseas, and FBI, which operates within the United States, have to rethink their separate roles when it comes to dealing with terrorism. . . I still see a separate law enforcement and intelligence function, but if we stop at the border's edge, we may not be preventing terrorism.”

            The political activists and the Democratic Party leaders demanded that the Bush Administration be held accountable for the 9/11 tragedies as they happened under his watch. The Republicans countered that the terrorist plan was hatched during the time of the Clinton Administration, which had failed to detect and negate the attack including those that had happened before 9/11.

            On the span of just nine years—from February 26, 1993, in the first bombing of the World Trade Center, to its second attack on September 11, 2001—the United States had encountered ten major terrorist hits on US mainland and on US interests overseas. These attacks have resulted in the total death of 6101 people and injuries to 19,735. The blame game and political mudslinging from both parties have not produced any positive results to address the problems of terrorism. On the other hand, the crisis had spotlighted the years of dysfunctional relationship in the IC, which were then revisited by the members of the US Congress through the fact-finding commission.

            The US Congress noted the professional jealousies in the IC and this harmful rivalry among the members had hampered the coordination and sharing of information about the terrorists. Reports gathered by the media, the revelations of FBI whistleblowers, and the results of the congressional investigation have concluded that there were operational leads in the hands of the IC members, and had that information been shared with one another, it could have been used to negate the AQ network from carrying the attacks.

            Moreover, the congressional leaders had also seen the weakness of the FBI in analyzing and assessing the raw information coming from the field offices. For instance, Special Agent Kenneth Williams of Phoenix FBI Field Office wrote a five-page memorandum on July 10, 2001 about a possible attack on the United States. His report did not reach the key Bureau officials. Senator Richard J. Durbin (D), who attended the closed-door congressional hearing when Williams testified before the Judiciary Committee,  learned that the memorandum did not go up to the chain of command. Durbin commented that the report was “never treated seriously within the FBI, never circulated, never analyzed, nor referred to the CIA."

            The responsibility of securing the mainland from terrorist attack is the primary assignment of the FBI. However, the FBI had no strategic plan to address the rising danger posed by the Islamist terrorists that time. The Bureau came up with a draft assessment entitled “FBI Report on the Terrorist Threat to the United States and a Strategy for Prevention and Response” in September 2001. The lack of strategic planning on terrorism has clearly reflected in the Bureau’s organizational behavior towards terrorism.

            The FBI serves as the federal government’s lead agency in charge to respond, investigate, and prosecute terrorists. However, it will only pursue the terrorists after they struck, not while they are still in the planning stage. As an example, a request to conduct manhunt on AQ operative Khalid al-Mihdar in the United States was denied by the Bureau heads because the FBI Special Agents are criminal investigators and not intelligence operators. Al-Mihdar was one of the terrorists that crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon building.

            The 9/11 tragedies created a groundswell in the US Congress to review the FBI’s role as the lead agency that oversee the efforts in counter-terrorism because its organizational culture and operational thrusts are not suitable for counter-terrorism. It took the lives of thousands of people for the federal government to finally admit that there is a need to create an organization that will focus mainly on countering the threats of terrorism in US mainland. Thus, after so much discussions and hesitations, the proposal to create a super organization that is distinct from the FBI and CIA has been proposed to the members of the US Congress by the Bush Administration. The US Congress, on the other hand, had its own version of a domestic agency, which was incorporated later on in the White House’s proposal.



Policy Formulation: The Key Government Players (Creation of the Department of Homeland Security)

(President Bush Addressing Joint Session of Congress. Photo from Wikimedia Commons)

            Even before the 9/11 tragedies, there was already a call for major changes in governmental structures, infrastructures, and processes that relate to protecting the homeland from terrorist threats. During the Clinton Administration, a bipartisan commission known as the US Commission on National Security for the 21st Century (Hart-Rudman Commission) had existed to review, among others, the US national security apparatus. The 14-member Commission were headed by former Senators Gary Hart (D) and Warren Rudman (R). The Commission stated, “The combination of unconventional weapons proliferation with the persistence of international terrorism will end the relative invulnerability of the U.S. homeland to catastrophic attack. A direct attack against American citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter-century. The risk is not only death and destruction but also a demoralization that could undermine US global leadership. In the face of this threat, our nation has no coherent or integrated governmental structures.”

            The Commission recommended the creation of a super organization to be called the National Homeland Security Agency (NHSA) that would be in charge of “planning, coordinating, and integrating various US government activities involved in homeland security.” The Commission pointed out that was very important to consolidate the various organizations in the federal government as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Coast Guard, Border Patrol and Bureau of Customs to name some. The NHSA, as envisioned, will be created by Congress and will be funded by the body, too. The Commission submitted its final report to the US Congress in February 2001.

            On April 2001, US Representative William Thornberry (R), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, introduced House Resolution 1158, which called for the creation of NHSA. The resolution did not gain support from his peers. Some House Resolutions and Senate Bills were later on submitted to the US Congress purposely to create a domestic security agency.

            Days after the terrorist attacks, President Bush, in his address to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001, announced the creation of the Office of Homeland Security (OHS). The OHS is created under the Presidential Executive Order and function to “coordinate executive branch’s efforts to detect, prepare for, prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks within the United States.” Bush hand-picked his personal friend Pennsylvania Governor and former Congressman Tom Ridge to direct the OHS.

            Many believed the OHS had not met its mission and had not operated freely under its functions because of the way the organization was designed. Senator Joseph Lieberman (D) said, “This is the most important responsibility the federal government will have in the near future, and to give Mr. Ridge less power in this office is just not what the nation needs.”

            On September 21, 2001, Senator Bob Graham (D) introduced S. 1449 that will establish the National Office for Combating Terrorism (NOCT). It gained seven co-sponsors, and they were Evan Bayh, Richard Durbin, Barbara Mikulski, Jay Rockefeller, Dianne Feinstein, Bill Nelson, and Susan Collins. The Bill proposed that the NOCT be established under the Executive Office of the President and to be modeled after the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). US Representative Alcee Hastings (D) introduced a counterpart bill in the House of Representatives under H.R. 3078. Senator Graham and Representative Hastings reportedly “promoted the findings of the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction under Gilmore Commission.”

            Having seen the weakness of the OHS, Senator Lieberman gained a co-sponsor to introduce S.1534 which will establish the Department of National Homeland Security (DNHS). Together with Senator Arlen Specter (R), Senator Lieberman sent the proposed bill to the US Senate on October 11, 2001, which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Governmental Affairs. The Bill 1534, among others, will transfer the authorities, functions, personnel and assets of several agencies in the federal government that deal with security and disaster operations. The Agencies were affected were the FEMA, United States Custom Service, Border Patrol of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), United States Coast Guard, Critical Infrastructure Office and the Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection of the Department of Commerce, and both the National Infrastructure Protection Center and the National Domestic Preparedness Office of the FBI.

            A year later, on May 2, 2002, after refining and widening the scope of his original resolution, Congressman Thornberry joined with Senator Lieberman to introduce H.R. 4660 and S. 2452 that will establish the Department of National Homeland Security and the National Office for Combating Terrorism. Thornberry got 40 co-sponsors and Lieberman got 5 co-sponsors after two Senate amendments in the proposed bill.

            On June 6, 2002, President Bush appeared on the national TV for a televised address from the White House to call for the members of the Congress to create a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security, which was envisioned to be the central agency that will consolidate the domestic security apparatus against threats of terrorism. Leaders from both parties accepted the announcement in a positive manner and promised to work a bipartisan bill to make sure of speedy passage in the US Congress. In response to the President’s request, Representative Richard Armey (R) introduced H.R. 5005 on June 24, 20002 that will establish the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and for other purposes.

Decision Making: Analyzing the Costs and Benefits (Creation of the Department of Homeland Security)

(US Capitol, Washington DC. Courtesy photo by Andrew Bossi. From Wikimedia Commons)

            The DHS was established amidst strong challenges and oppositions from union leaders, political activists, and civil libertarians and from members of Congress themselves. The monetary costs of establishing the DHS became a big issue. Oppositions said that that Bush Administration has created a “big government” that added burden to the tax-paying public for the big expenditures. Also, the fear that DHS would infringe the civil liberties of the citizens were sounded-off by the civil libertarians. There were trade-offs on the costs and benefits of establishing the DHS, but in the end, the benefits of security to the nation had outweighed the cost in monetary obligations.

            The Bush Administration’s original plan was to have different personnel systems in the DHS. The plan will allow the Homeland Security Secretary to regulate the pay schedule, performance measures and termination policies. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGA) opposed this as the proposal accordingly would diminish the rights of the federal employees to form and join unions.

            However, the Senior Executive Association (SEA) supported the President on the ground that “the organizational challenges inherent in creating this new Department and the importance of its mission to all Americans necessitate maintaining current Presidential authority related to national security exclusions from collective bargaining.” Because of the controversy on the civil service issue the legislative proposal has created and the fear that the legislative proposal would be stranded in the Senate, the Republican House leaders Dick Armey and Rep. Rob Portman modified the H.R. 5005 to include the traditional rights of the employees.

            The American Civil Liberties Union was very vocal against the establishment of DHS because of the fear that it would operate in secrecy and with no public accountability. On their press release on June 25, 2002, ACLU legislative counsel Timothy Edgar said, “If you like the idea of a government agency that is 100 percent secret and 0 percent accountable, you'll love the new Homeland Security Department . . . The Administration's plan exempts the new agency from a host of laws designed to keep the government open and accountable and to protect whistleblowers."

            One of the oppositions to H.R. 5005 is Congressman Ron Paul, who said, “Congress was led to believe that the legislation would be a simple reorganization aimed at increasing efficiency, not an attempt to expand federal power. Fiscally conservative members of Congress were even told that the bill would be budget neutral! Yet, when the House of Representatives initially considered creating a Department of Homeland Security, the legislative vehicle almost overnight grew from 32 pages to 282 pages- and the cost had ballooned to at least $3 billion.”

            Moreover, some Democratic Party leaders like Senator Tom Daschle opposed certain provisions of the bill.  He was against giving the pharmaceutical companies who make vaccines the protection from liability.  He did not like the creation of a research center in the Texas A&M University for Homeland Security programs. He also contested the holding of secret meetings by the advisory committee that will favor the corporate lobbyists and the protection from liability of the companies who make anti-terror technologies or products. The Democrats found a supporter in Senator John McCain (R). The opponents to the provisions contend that the Bush administration had politicized the establishment of the DHS by catering to the interests of the special groups.

            The consolidation of other government agencies into the Homeland Security was not met favorably by congressmen in charge of the committees that supervise the affected offices. The agency-transfer would mean losing oversight, influence, and budgetary control. Because the Congress has the control on the budget of Homeland Security, it was not surprising that the establishment of DHS fell to the whims and caprices of congressmen who worried more about losing their clout over their committees than the threats the terrorists posed to the nation.

            The process of identifying the costs of establishing the DHS and the benefits coming from its existence were debated passionately throughout the deliberations in Congress and in the public hearings by the committee. The positive angles, as well as the negative sides of establishing a central domestic anti-terror agency outside the FBI, was seriously studied. In the end, the benefits DHS will provide to the nation outweighed the monetary costs and complexities of consolidating other federal agencies into one organization.

            H.R. 5005, which had 118 co-sponsors, was passed in the House of Representatives by a YES vote of 295 and a NO vote of 132. H.R. 5005 was received in the Senate on July 30, 2002, and was passed with an amendment by a YES vote of 90 to a No vote of 9 on November 19, 2002. The H.R. 5005 was subjected to 409 amendments in the House and the Senate floors, and finally on November 25, 2002, H.R. 5005 was signed by President Bush. H.R. 5005, otherwise known as the Homeland Security Act of 2002, had paved the way for the largest reorganization of the federal government since the passage of the 1947 National Security Act that created the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency.