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The US Department of Homeland Security: From the Ground Up

In Part 1 of our series, we investigate the context, fears and executive orders that shaped the formation of DHS

March 01, 2004 — CSO — Talk about pressure. The Department of Homeland Security, its 23 agencies cobbled together as fast as it takes to choose a team for a game of pickup hoops, is shouldering quite a lot of it these days. Beginning operations in January of 2003, in the wake of 9/11, when all of Washington was scrambling to figure out the best way to respond to future attacks, DHS is still an organizational baby. Yet it's being asked to perform miraclesprotect the nation from the bad guys while simultaneously undertaking the biggest reorganization of government in decades.

In a more peaceful world, the department might be cut a little more slack as it attempts to weave together some 180,000 employees, integrate scores of legacy IT systems, hire top-level leaders to guide the emerging behemoth, fight turf battles with longstanding agencies like the FBI and CIA, and figure out how best to allocate scarce resources. But the nation's relatively comfortable state of security pre-9/11 has been shattered like a thin pane of glass, and fair or not, DHS doesn't have the luxury of shrugging off the many mistakes it will make as it rises from the ground up, because any mistake could have consequences much worse than the destruction wreaked upon the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The relative speed with which this massive reorganization is taking place certainly raises many questions. Was DHS too hastily put together in response to political pressures? Is it too big and cumbersome? What hurdles must it overcome to succeed? Will it ultimately prove more capable of fighting terrorism than would the individual efforts of the 23 discrete agencies that make up its DNA? As a kickoff to CSO's homeland security series, this story looks at how DHS came into being, its current organization and some of the challenges it faces as it moves forward into an era in which a nation with a history of openness, unguarded borders and a Cold War defense paradigm must defend against shadowy, unpredictable opponents bent on its destruction.Past Is ProloguePrior to 9/11, federal responsibility for homeland security (though the term was not widely used then) was highly fragmented and decentralized. "There was no focal point for operational responsibility or accountability for the execution of a homeland security strategy," says Ronald Dick, director of national security and foreign affairs at Computer Sciences Corp. and former director of the National Infrastructure Protection Center. A variety of agencies, such as the FBI, CIA, National Security Council and others, certainly paid attention to counterterrorism, but those organizations by and large had different objectives. "Each agency essentially had its own security prioritizations. There was little in the way of intelligence-sharing, little in the way of coordination or threat analysis," says Michael Hershman, president and CEO of Civitas Group, a homeland security consultancy, and a former counterterrorism specialist in military intelligence. Hershman adds that what typified the nation's response to terrorism, both in the public and private sectors, were reactive measuresfor example, beefing up security in New York City following the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. But after such incidents, he says, instead of thinking ahead strategically on how best to address future threats, the country lulled itself back into complacency, partly because the events were sporadic and seemingly uncoordinated.