Chertoff to hand over a changed guard

By Carl Prine
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, November 22, 2008

Over the next eight weeks, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and his staff will pack framed photos of their children, delete e-mails and say good-bye to career bureaucrats at the sprawling agency cobbled together in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Chertoff's last moments at the Nebraska Avenue complex in Washington's Maryland suburbs will tick away Jan. 20 as President-elect Barack Obama swears to faithfully preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.

Since early 2005, Chertoff, a former federal judge, prosecutor and assistant to the U.S. attorney general, has sought to protect the nation from terrorists.

His replacement -- if confirmed by Congress, Democrat Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano -- will inherit a department Chertoff largely revamped during a four-year reign.

Created by Congress in 2003, the agency usually referred to as DHS oversees a $52 billion budget that pays nearly 216,000 employees at 22 merged agencies. These workers do everything from protecting the president to arresting illegal immigrants, inspecting beef imports, scanning ship cargo for smuggled bombs, enforcing boating safety laws and confiscating items as arcane as toenail clippers from passengers boarding jetliners.

"We probably touch more people more often in this country than any other department, except maybe the IRS. As a consequence, there are going to have to be a lot of tough decisions, there are going to be trade-offs. There are going to be people who are disappointed if you make decisions," Chertoff said during an interview with the Tribune-Review on Wednesday at his office.

"But if you go into this with a dedication to get the job done, because you're committed to what we do and you know how important it is, and if you're prepared to listen to people and to make decisions, and you're not worrying about where it's going to take you in the next go-round of your career, then I think it's a great job."

Rough beginnings

DHS is the nation's youngest cabinet agency. After helping to write the controversial anti-terrorist Patriot Act, Chertoff, 54, succeeded former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge as agency czar on Feb. 15, 2005.

Six months into Chertoff's tenure, Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast. The storm caused an estimated $90 billion in damage, destroying shoreline communities and the reputation of the disaster relief plank of DHS, the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

As the water receded, Chertoff continued retooling FEMA and the rest of DHS while encountering other controversies: construction of a 700-mile-long fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, enforcement of workplace immigration laws, fears about erosion of civil liberties from DHS spying, and $15 billion worth of DHS contracts Congress marked in September as "failed."

"The tragedy of Katrina was that the hurricane hit one month after Chertoff announced his reorganization plan. He was brought in to make changes, and he had started to do that and then Katrina happened. He got a lot of criticism for that, but that obscured what actually has been a tremendous job recreating DHS," said James Jay Carafano, assistant director of The Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy group in Washington, and an expert on homeland security issues.

"Organizationally, the DHS he inherited was all screwed up. It wasn't well-coordinated. Chertoff wanted to move it toward a business model and take on a role similar to that of a chief operations officer of a large corporation. I think he really did a good job at this second stage of change. He was very good at surrounding himself with good talent from the private sector, promoting competent career people from within the agency, and breaking the code internally on what they wanted DHS to be."

Carafano counts as Chertoff's successes: foiling 19 terrorist conspiracies against the United States; responding better to disasters such as Hurricane Ike and Western wildfires; and bolstering morale at an agency known for dispirited employees.

"I think we're much, much better integrated and more coherent and much further along in these initiatives than we were when I came in," Chertoff said. "Now, some are largely completed. Others we've launched, but need more work."

Plagued projects

Critics point to problems Chertoff didn't solve, especially waste, abuse and mismanagement of $15 billion worth of failed DHS contracts. Congress blamed these snafus on weak DHS oversight and purchasing procedures.

Two years ago, Homeland Security's Coast Guard scrapped eight new boats so structurally defective that Adm. Thad Allen considered them unseaworthy. Congress found similar multibillion-dollar boondoggles in the "virtual fence" surveillance program along the Mexican border, an agencywide computer system and numerous disaster relief contracts.

"It's not that Chertoff didn't inherit a mess; he certainly did. He had to take a bunch of disparate agencies with all their problems and challenges. But at the same time, he's certainly leaving a series of major problems to his successors," said Steve Ellis, vice president of the nonpartisan Washington watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

"With contracting at DHS, there has been a lack of transparency and accountability. There's clearly a lot of work that still has to be done to make that process less dysfunctional."

Chertoff acknowledges the criticism, but said his department worked hard to fix procurement problems he inherited.

"It's a problem throughout all government," said Chertoff. "One of the issues is that we had to hire acquisition experts, program managers; we've done that. It was difficult, partly because we're competing with the private sector, partly because initially during our first budgets there was a tendency to spend money on obvious things that are glamorous and attractive -- and not the kind of practical but not particularly exciting things like your acquisition managers.

"But I think we've moved a long way in correcting that."

To help finish the job of correcting problems, Chertoff is writing a letter to nominee Napolitano that explains reforms he hopes DHS will continue. A key challenge for his replacement is what he once termed "oversight run amok" by 88 congressional committees.

Although DHS absorbed operations such as immigration enforcement and customs inspections, Congress didn't consolidate its oversight of these former agencies. Chertoff contends this "multiplicity of committees" -- especially in the House -- hampered his ability to prioritize missions and funding, a problem he predicts might bedevil his replacement, too.

"My successor is going to have the same problem. There are going to be a lot of different inputs, and they'll be conflicting, and it will be hard to get the priorities aligned with Congress," he said. "And I think that's an important part of managing the department."

Carl Prine can be reached at cprine@tribweb.com or 412-320-7826.
Back to headlines

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsbu ... 99580.html