Department Homeland Security Quotes

In a replay of McCarthyism paranoia Bachman and 5 of her more paranoid fellows in Congress accused a number of fine American officials who were Muslims of being agents of the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical terrorist group in some countries and an extreme Islamic political party in others. The accusers, following the classic pattern, provide no credible proof and immediately publicly publish their accusations. Since members of Congress cannot be held to account for anything that they claim, no matter how false or malicious, the accused have no real forum to defend themselves.

The new security procedures for allowing foeign students to study in the United States caused huge delays in the process and messed up a system that had been working well for years. It didn’t occur to the Secretary that a new system might be more efficient. That was the main reason for most organzations changing their systems--to gain efficiency.

Arguing for deploying American Homeland Security Personnel in foreign countries He was at the time Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security.

The "spigot" refers to the fact that immediately after the 9-11 attack, huge sums of money were available and the Department of Homeland Security was created by moving many different agencies from other departments into the new department. There were poor or no fiscal controls, and at the same time the public officials of the new department were under such extreme pressure lest there might be another attack that they went forward with almost every scheme that anyone claimed would make the nation safer. Most were useless and some just frauds, and much money was wasted. What is particularly interesting about this quotation is that a high government official admitted that things were handled badly and money had been wasted.

Congress did reorganize, and the Department of Homeland Security was created

After 9-11, the Congress reorganized the government agencies under the theory that all the agencies responsible for homeland security should be in one agency. So they combined many of the agencies from different cabinet departments, but never included the FBI of the intelligence agencies like the CIA or NSA which lobbied to stay out of the massive new bureaucracy.

After the 9-11 terrorist attack, Congress and President George W. Bush hastily reorganized the Federal Government creating a Department of Homeland Security supposedly to combine in one department the major government agencies that could maintain the safety of the nation. However, what they ended up doing was taking minor agencies from departments and creating an unwieldy, disparate department, but they did not include some of the most important agencies such as the FBI, CIA, Defense Department, NSA, or the State Department. Many concluded later that the reorganization had not been a good one.

He was summarily dismissed by the George W. Bush administration as a result of his reports showing security weaknesses that were the responsibility of the department.