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National Security Watch: At DHS, friends and family pose problems
Posted 9/23/05
By Angie C. Marek

It has not been a good year for cronyism in Washington. Especially not in the 180,000-person Department of Homeland Security, a sprawling federal agency that critics say hides dozens–if not dozens of dozens–of political appointees short on experience and long on ties with the big guys.

Who, of course, can forget Michael Brown? The former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency became a fall guy during the Katrina response. He had a threadbare past in emergency management: His longest and most significant job stint prior to joining FEMA was a post as a judge and stewards commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association, a job that involved ensuring that judges played by the rules. Brown was widely thought to have landed his job because he was college buddies with Joe Allbaugh, Bush's chief of staff when he was governor of Texas (and later the campaign manager of the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign).

And already this week it's clear that a fresh, younger face within DHS is becoming Washington's next vulnerable crony–unfairly or not. Enter Julie Myers, whom President Bush has nominated to head the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Bureau within the Department of Homeland Security. ICE, as the bureau is called, is the main federal agency responsible for interior immigration enforcement, meaning it tracks down violent smugglers and busts employers stocking the back room with illegal immigrants. The agency has been riddled with problems in the past two years: A widely publicized budget shortfall in 2004 resulted in agents' not being able to put gas in their cars and a multimonth hiring freeze. Says Charles Showalter, a Pittsburgh-based ICE agent, "We've been through the ringer."

And it's unclear whether Myers is the woman to pull them out of it. Myers most recently held a White House post that put her in charge of personnel decisions, and she also held a yearlong position as assistant secretary for export enforcement at the Department of Commerce. She worked as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn and logged in time as an associate for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. At Commerce, she was responsible for 170 employees and a $25 million budget; at ICE, she'll control 20,000 employees and a budget of $4 billion.

During her Senate confirmation hearing, Republican Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio put it bluntly, demanding a meeting with DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff on the matter.

"I'd really like to have him spend some time with us," Voinovich said, "telling us personally why he thinks you're qualified for the job, because based on the resume, I don't think you are." Myers, for her part, speckled her defense with a cutesy quip: "I realize that I'm not 80 years old," Myers said. "I have a few gray hairs, more coming, but I will seek to work with those who are knowledgeable in this area, who know more than I do."

What Myers does clearly have, though, is enough political connections to make the brain swim. Most notably: She's a niece of Gen. Richard Myers, who is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the wife of John Wood, who is the current chief of staff to Chertoff. And Julie Myers was once Chertoff's chief of staff as well–that would be in 2003, when Chertoff was head of the criminal division at the Justice Department.

During a morning-show blitz to promote DHS's relative preparedness for Hurricane Rita, Chertoff bristled at a question about Myers's qualifications for the job.

"This is a superbly qualified former prosecutor, someone who has been involved with law enforcement from virtually every side of the issue," Chertoff told viewers of CBS's The Early Show.

For now, Jen Burita, a spokeswoman for Sen. Susan Collins, the head of the committee handling the Myers nomination, insists a vote is not yet scheduled, pending the answers to after-hearing questions posed by the committee. (Myers is currently on her honeymoon with Wood, whom she married last weekend, so Burita says the delay was expected.) Meanwhile, Democratic Sen. Carl Levin says he'll block the hearing on procedural grounds in an attempt to get the FBI to release an unedited version of a memo on the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. A spokeswoman for Voinovich, the Republican famed for breaking ranks to help delay the John Bolton nomination, says that although her boss balked at Myers's qualifications during the hearing, the senator now is likely to support her.