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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

In late April, according to The Washington Post, Bush assembled four of his most trusted aidesRidge, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, then Office of Management and Budget Director Mitchell Daniels, and White House counsel Alberto Gonzalesto craft an initial proposal. Over a number of weeks, they met in an underground room at the White House known as the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. Eventually more aides were pulled in, but the group remained small. All participants were held to a code of silence. Cabinet officers, members of Congress and other top White House staffers were not consulted about the plan. The Bush team felt that the element of surprise would give the plan its best chance for success. If word had leaked, or the process had been made public, many in Congress would have jumped into the fray, adding their own desires and agendas while slowing down the process. On June 6, 2002, the president announced his proposal to create a Department of Homeland Security.

It was a shrewd move politicallyBush grabbed the initiative back from Congress and took on the new department, which he had previously resisted, as his own cause. But the narrow makeup of the group had drawbacks. "You don't engage everybody who knows something about [homeland security]," says I.M. Destler, professor and director of the international security and economic policy program at the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs. "And the people who were involved in the process didn't know a lot about it." Nonetheless, after some months of debate, Congress passed the law establishing the new department in November. In January 2003, DHS opened for business.Putting Together the PuzzleDHS is a startup wrapped in an acquisition wrapped in a mergerit makes business unions such as HP-Compaq and J.P. Morgan Chase-Bank One look like exercises at an offsite. The 23 agencies composing DHS are a patchwork quilt of missions; all have some homeland security-related duties but plenty of other responsibilities as well. (Note: At the time of its formation, DHS comprised 22 agencies. Currently, there are 23.) FEMA, for example, focuses on responding to natural disasters while the Coast Guard enforces marine safety, rescues stranded boaters and interdicts narcotics. "If you think of the 22 entities in DHS, probably only one would have said [before 9/11] that homeland security was its primary mission: the Transportation Security Administration, which didn't get formed until after 9/11," says Randall Yim, a managing director of the homeland security and justice team at the General Accounting Office. (For a look at DHS's 23 agencies, see "Catch-23," opposite page.)