The Bush Administration initially opposed the creation of such a department, but politics pushed them to embrace the idea. At first, existing agencies threatened to interfere, not wanting to lose valued turf:
"The lesson his staff took away was the need for secrecy: When bureaucracies were informed of potential threats to their empires, they tended to resist. 'Everybody realized the agencies were not going to look at mission first, they were going to look at turf first,' recalled Bruce M. Lawlor, a National Guard major general working for [Tom] Ridge."
Those words should echo familiarly to anyone who's been involved in a government reorganization. The White House formed a small working group of five people, which cherry-picked agencies and functions that would be thrown into the new mix.
Not surprisingly, they lacked detailed knowledge of all the functions of so many different departments. They didn't know, for example, that immigration judges belong to Justice, not any of the immigration agencies they were poaching. "Inside the White House, some aides were appalled by the specter of a 'group of people who really didn't know a whole lot about the boxes they were moving around,' as one put it."
The story is long, with more to come tomorrow on FEMA. But it's filled with remarkable quotes and great insights into why DHS appears to have been doomed from the start. Check it out.
