June 6, 2002
NOW THAT'S WOBBLY :
President to Propose Department of Homeland Security (Office of the Press Secretary, June 6, 2002, White House)The Organization of the Department of Homeland SecurityThe Department of Homeland Security would have a clear and efficient organizational structure with four divisions:
Border and Transportation Security
Emergency Preparedness and Response
Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Countermeasures
Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection
Great, just what America needs, more bureaucracy. The only way it would make any sense is if you put the FBI, CIA, Coast Guard, INS, ATF, etc. under the control of this Department.
UPDATE :
SOME DETAILS MIGHT HAVE BEEN NICE :
Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation (Office of the Press Secretary, June 6, 2002, White House)
HERE THEY ARE :
Attacks-Bush Glance (The Associated Press, 6/6/02)
President Bush's proposed Department of Homeland Security, if approved by Congress, would draw from the budgets and jurisdictions of eight current
Cabinet departments or Cabinet-level agencies, including:--Justice Department: ...would lose the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Office of Domestic Preparedness and the Domestic Emergency Support Team, as well as the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center. [...]
--Treasury Department: ...would lose the Customs Service and the Secret Service. [...]
--Transportation Department: ...would lose the Coast Guard and the fledgling Transportation Security Administration. [...]
--Health and Human Services Department: ...lose all workers doing bioterrorism research, preparation and response. [...]
--Agriculture Department: ...lose the Plant Health Inspection Service and the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. [...]
--Energy Department: ... lose the nuclear incident response team and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory [...]
--Commerce Department:...lose the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office. [...]
--Defense Department: ...lose the National Communications Systems division. [...]
--The General Services Administration: ...lose the Federal Computer Incident Response Center and the Federal Protective Service. [...]
--The Federal Emergency Management Agency, now an independent agency, would be folded into the new department's emergency response and preparedness division.
That's a start...but it's truly bizarre that the new agency got no intelligence gathering capability. Why not make the FBI just a domestic intelligence service--targeted solely at terror and subversion--and the CIA a foreign intelligence service--detailed to study only threats to U.S. security--and put both in this new Department? Posted by Orrin Judd at June 6, 2002 6:33 PM