February 02, 2005

"Infighting Cited at Homeland Security"

As its leadership changes for the first time, the Department of Homeland Security remains hampered by personality conflicts, bureaucratic bottlenecks and an atmosphere of demoralization, undermining its ability to protect the nation against terrorist attack, according to current and former administration officials and independent experts...

[...list of problems...]

...The department's investigative arm, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has operated under severe financial crisis for more than a year -- to the point that use of agency vehicles and photocopying were at times banned. The problem stems from funding disputes with other DHS agencies...

[...getting the bureaucracy humming smoothly...]

"It's very thinly staffed at the top of DHS, and there's no policy vision . . . thinking through the main threats," Stodder said. In the absence of such strategic thinking, he added, "DHS practices management by inbox, getting distracted by daily emergencies" such as a congressman's complaint about a late-arriving passport...

[...bureaucratic infighting... ...Asa Hutchinson was a "consensus-builder who had difficulty demanding an end to the turf fights"...]

Maybe there's more in the print version. If not, Drudge really oversold this article.

See also "Red Alert", which covered the same ground a few months back.

Posted to Immigration2005a at February 2, 2005 12:23 AM

Comments

One look at or listen to Asa Hutchinson should be enough to tell you he's a pussy and absolutely the wrong guy for the job; his comments and backtracking over the Border Patrol arrest sweeps in Southern California last year were particularly pathetic.

It should also be clear in what is an 'undersold' scandal that 1) despite 9/11 George Bush is the titular head of the 'Open Borders Lobby', and 2) the federal govt is not really serious about enforcing immigration law.

So problems e.g. "demoralization" are no surprise.

Posted by: eh at February 2, 2005 03:06 AM