CREATING HOMELAND SECURITY

Since 9/11, incremental but significant changes began being made to the American system of government. This movement culminated in hurried passage of the Homeland Security bill in late November. This act, which authorized an entirely new cabinet-level department, was the greatest restructuring of the federal government since the National Security Act of 1947, yet with none of that act's deliberation and review.

In early June 2002, Bush began urging the creation of a permanent and cabinet-level position for Tom Ridge and his Homeland Security staff, hurriedly created in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Ridge was calling for bringing myriad government agencies under one central control. And it all needed to be done rapidly, Bush argued, because “we face an urgent need, and we must move quickly, this year, before the end of the congressional session.” Thus began the push to create the Department of Homeland Security with Ridge holding a cabinet-level position controlling more than 170,000 federal employees and 22 federal agencies.

But Bush would not allow Ridge to confront Congress directly, claiming his was simply an adviser role, not a policy maker. Congress fumed but, as usual, rolled over and played dead.

“The real losers are the American people…” groused Senator Robert Byrd, a Democrat from West Virginia. “The Congress and the American people are forced to learn about the administration's homeland security efforts in piecemeal, patchwork fashion.”

On July 15, 2002, Ridge finally submitted a written statement to the House Select Committee on Homeland Security. In it, Ridge wrote, “We are today a nation at risk to terrorist attacks and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The terrorist threat to America takes many forms, has many places to hide, and is often invisible. Yet the need for improved homeland security is not tied solely to today's terrorist threat. It is tied to our enduring vulnerability.”

Ridge indicated that in studying how best to implement homeland security, it became clear that the federal government would need reorganization, and that “the structure of the federal government must be adapted to meet the challenges before us.” He admitted that this new reorganization would result in the most significant transformation of the US government in over a half-century.

“It would transform and largely realign the government's confusing patchwork of homeland security activities into a single department whose primary mission is to protect our homeland,” he wrote, adding that the new department must have the “right set of tools to work with” and that undue oversight would be “damaging to the new department's ability to carry out its mission successfully.”

He stated that FEMA would be a leading component of the new Homeland Security Department. “The new department would build on FEMA to consolidate the federal government's emergency response assets to better prepare all those pieces for all emergencies—both natural and man-made, stated Ridge.

Without mentioning that this consolidation would bring concentrated and unparalleled powers to the presidency, Ridge added that in a national emergency, Homeland Security would “provide a line of authority from the president through the secretary of homeland security to one on-site federal coordinator. The single federal coordinator would be responsible to the president for coordinating the entire federal response to incidents of national significance.” In vague generalities, Ridge indicated he sought changes deep within the American infrastructure. “We must therefore promote the efficient and reliable flow of people, goods, and services across borders, while preventing terrorists from using transportation conveyances or systems to deliver implements of destruction,” he stated.

How to accomplish this? In writing, Ridge explained that, “the principal border and transportation security agencies—the US Customs Service, the US Coast Guard, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and the Transportation Security Administration—would be unified within a single, powerful division of the new Department of Homeland Security. The new department also would control the issuance of visas to foreigners through the Department of State and would coordinate the border-control activities of all federal agencies that are not incorporated within the new department. As a result, the department would have sole responsibility for managing entry of people and goods into the United States and protecting our transportation infrastructure.”

He added that the federal budget for 2003 provided $7.1 billion to the US Coast Guard, and admitted it was “both the largest increase and the highest level of funding in Coast Guard history.”

While Ridge paid some homage to the “longstanding principles” of the United States and said he believed that government intrusion into the daily lives of citizens should be strictly limited, he nevertheless noted that the president would serve as the ultimate authority over the control of sensitive intelligence information. “The president, as commander-in-chief, must have the ability to make decisions about how the nation's most sensitive intelligence information is handled in order to carry out his sworn duties. The President will be able to exercise his authority in regard to intelligence distribution through such tools as presidential decision directives and executive orders.” Ridge explained.

“Therefore the new Homeland Security Department would incorporate the Secret Service and would have its director report directly to the secretary of homeland security. It would also assume all authority for controlling the nation's borders.”

“Terrorists are determined, opportunistic, and agile, and the secretary [of Homeland Security] must build a department that can continually adapt to meet this rapidly changing threat,” explained Ridge. “Moreover, even if our adversary were not so devious and nimble, the sheer organizational and management challenge confronting the new secretary of homeland security is enormous. The creation of this new department is larger and more complex than most corporate mega-mergers. History shows that a governmental reorganization of this magnitude is never easy. Providing the secretary with the freedom to manage the department is, therefore, profoundly important to achieving our goal of securing the homeland. Without this authority, an already challenging task will be far more difficult. If the new department is to be greater than the sum of its parts—if it were not, it would obviously not be worth creating—its leadership must have the flexibility to organize it in the optimal way, create a new institutional culture, motivate and reward an outstanding workforce, and respond quickly to changing circumstances, emerging threats, and emergency situations.

In other words, give me the power and I will protect you.

Just four months after the 9/11 attacks, such power was approved by Congress through the Department of Homeland Security Act of 2002.

By 2006, Homeland Security encompassed more than 87,000 government jurisdictions at both the state and local level. Its directorates included Preparedness, Science & Technology, and Management and Policy. By 2010, DHS listed nearly 400,000 employees and, like the armed forces in Iraq, private contractors outnumbered federal employees 200,000 to 188,000. In a letter to DHS chief Janet Napolitano, Senators Joseph Lieberman and Susan Collins wrote,“The sheer number of DHS contractors currently on board again raises the question of whether DHS itself is in charge of its programs and policies, or whether it inappropriately has ceded core decisions to contractors.”

As requested by Ridge, Homeland Security included FEMA, the TSA, Customs, Border Patrol, the INS, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, US Coast Guard and the Secret Service. By 2010, Homeland Security had spent federal money to intrude into all of the more than 18,000 police and sheriff's offices in the US. If Congress, the media or the public wanted to know what exactly was going on with Homeland Security, their queries were doomed to failure as all DHS employees, both federal employees and contractors, were required to sign nondisclosure agreements prohibiting them from disclosing any information, whether classified or not. Watchdog organizations such as the Federation of American Scientists [FAS] described this policy as a potentially precedent-setting expansion of official secrecy whose provisions are overly broad and unworkable, if not unconstitutional. Steven Aftergood, editor of the FAS newsletter said the DHS was sweeping whole categories of government information under restrictions previously used only for classified data. “Employees will naturally fear that even the most trivial conversation could mean a violation of this draconian agreement, and so the result will be a new wall between the government and the public,” predicted Aftergood.

Even workers within DHS apparently disdained their own department. A 2007 government poll showed out of 36 agencies surveyed, Homeland Security employees rated theirs as last: 36th in job satisfaction, 35th on leadership and 36th on results-oriented performance. A former inspector general of DHS, Clark Kent Ervin, warned, “Dysfunction equals danger. The less good people feel about their jobs, the less likely they are to be attentive and alert.”

Critics also have questioned how such a massive restructuring of the US government has helped protect the nation, especially in light of the dangerously open national borders both north and south. To many thoughtful Americans it would seem to be a common-sense first step in the War on Terrorism to tighten security on the United States borders but this does not appear to have happened. On the southern border, despite an increasing clamor for tighter security, a flood of illegal immigrants continues unabated.

Border security also came into question in the case of Gregory Despres, who on April 25, 2005, arrived at the US-Canadian border at Calais, Maine, carrying a homemade sword, a hatchet, knife, brass knuckles and a chainsaw stained with what appeared to be blood. Customs agents confiscated Despres’ weapons, but then allowed him to enter the United States.

The next day, the decapitated body of 74-year-old Frederick Fulton along with his wife, who had been stabbed to death, was discovered in Despres’ hometown of Minto, New Brunswick. Despres, who had a history of violence, was immediately suspected of the crimes and eventually arrested in Massachusetts and deported.

Bill Anthony, a spokesman for US Customs and Border Protection, said the Canada-born Despres could not be detained because he is a naturalized US citizen and was not wanted on any criminal charges on the day in question. “Being bizarre is not a reason to keep somebody out of this country or lock them up. We are governed by laws and regulations, and he did not violate any regulations,” explained Anthony.

Almost a decade after its creation, elements of Homeland Security were still under attack by civil libertarians. For example, in mid-September 2010 the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security over its policy allowing customs agents to seize and view the contents of laptops and other electronic devices without reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. In its complaint, the ACLU stated that between Oct. 1, 2008, and June 2, 2010, more than 6,500 travelers, including 3,000 Americans had their electronic devices searched as they crossed US borders under policies originating from US Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, both Homeland Security agencies.

The ACLU represented, among others, Pascal Abidor, a US-French dual citizen and doctoral student at McGill University in Montreal. Abidor was returning by train in May 2010 when a customs agent confiscated his laptop after finding images related to Islamic studies, Abidor's academic specialty. He was handcuffed and detained. The laptop was finally returned 11 days later, after agents viewed several personal files, including the transcript of a chat with his girlfriend. The ACLU argued that such searches violate both the Fourth Amendment prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures and the First Amendment's protection of free expression.

“We agree,” stated an editorial in the Los Angeles Times. “Searching a computer, which can contain a wealth of personal information, is much more intrusive than inspecting baggage for drugs, weapons or other contraband. Possession of child pornography is a vile offense, as is terrorism, but in combating those and other crimes, law enforcement agents aren't free to randomly search homes. Neither should they be allowed to engage in electronic fishing expeditions at the border.”

The editorial sought support for two bills introduced in the Congress, one by Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren which would clarify that US sovereignty rights do not include the power to search laptops or similar devices, and another by former Democratic Senator Russ Feingold, which would largely exempt American citizens and make searches and seizures permissible only with probable cause. “The [ACLU] lawsuit is a worthy attempt to close a gaping loophole in the protection of personal privacy. But courts so far have been inhospitable to such claims, which is why Congress must act,” argued the editorial.

According to the Bill of Rights, the states have more control than the federal government. Many people suspect that the creation of Homeland Security was nothing less than a plan to stealthily take control over state governments and hence, the population.

Many libertarians look to the county sheriff for relief. After all, the local sheriff is the highest elected law enforcement agent in the land, answerable to his constituents. Yet today, sheriff's offices across the country are coming under the sway of Homeland Security. For example, in Denton County, Texas, which includes the regional headquarters of FEMA, the commissioners court in 2007 began to turn all accounts receivable over to the state through Homeland Security. Everyday, a gun-toting member of Homeland Security in an unmarked car would come to pick up the days receipts. This process supposedly saved the county money on bounced checks and charge backs on credit cards, but the trade off was the loss of power through loss of fiduciary control not to mention requirements that extensive reporting procedures on citizens be provided.

Such reporting seems innocuous enough, but the reports requested by Homeland Security include all vaccination records kept by the local health departments and information regarding who is getting aid from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, better known as the WIC program. Certain counties also offer data from the various county and city-wide wellness programs, which keep extensive records on an individual's health, medications, doctors, blood tests and daily exercise plans.

Homeland Security has gained control over state departments of transportation and the police departments by supplying them with grossly expensive equipment in return for report uploading—information sharing —with Homeland Security databases. Also Homeland Security through state transportation agencies supply city governments with expensive $100,000 computerized street lights which come equipped with closed-circuit surveillance cameras and high technology RFID readers to record the exact location of individuals. This system is tied into all insurance databases so if a driver is caught without car insurance, they can easily be ticketed or arrested.

Adding to this ever-growing maze of regulations and policies from Homeland Security is the fact that since the creation of the department, police officers and sheriff's deputies have been exposed to monthly and bi-monthly newsletters coming from Homeland Security fed to it by the Southern Law Poverty Center (SPLC) as well as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Critics contend that these reports have tagged everyday citizens as possible terrorists, and worse, that these reports have slowly changed the worldview of law enforcement officers to one that perceives all citizens as potentially dangerous suspects.

In 2009, for example, DHS distributed a “Reference Aid” from its Homeland Environment Threat Analysis Division entitled “Domestic Extremism Lexicon.” This paper claimed to “provide operational and intelligence advice and assistance to other elements of DHS, as well as state, local and regional fusion centers.” Among the topics of concern listed by this DHS arm are alternative media; animal rights, anti-abortion, anti-immigration, environmental and anti-technology extremism; black nationalism; Christian identity; hate groups, defined as white supremacist groups; Jewish extremism; Mexican separatism; neo-Nazis; the patriot, sovereign citizen and tax resistance movements; and even “leaderless resistance.” Such loosely-defined criteria could conceivably be applied to more than half the US population.

A pamphlet issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety's Counterterrorism Intelligence Unit in the mid-2000s described these among “characteristics of terrorists:

• Will employ a variety of vehicles and communicate predominately by cell phone, email, or text messaging services.

• Well prepared to spend years in a “sleeper” mode until it is time to attack.

• In many cases, will try to fit in and not draw attention to themselves.

• May appear “normal” in their appearance and behavior while portraying themselves as a tourist, student, or businessperson.

• May be found traveling in a mixed group of men, women and children of varying ages, who are unaware of their purpose.

• Trained to avoid confrontations with law enforcement and therefore can be expected to project a “nice-guy” image.

• Known to use disguises or undergo plastic surgery, especially when featured on police wanted posters.

Since such nebulous “characteristics” could be applied to a majority of US citizens, is it any wonder that law enforcement officers today increasingly view the public as adversaries, if not potential enemies? Critics have attacked such questionable definitions. Americans for Legal Immigration Political Action Committee (ALIPAC) issued a national advisory warning all local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies and officers against any reliance upon “faulty and politicized research” issued by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Anti Defamation League (ADL).

This advisory came on the heels of criticism leveled against the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) for issuing an eight-page report which, according ALIPAC, “attempted to politicize police and cast suspicion on millions of Americans.” By mid-2009 there were at least 75 such fusion centers designed to gather anti-terrorist information from both government and, most significantly, private sector sources. The centers are a joint project of Homeland Security and the Justice Department begun during the Bush administration. They were designed to facilitate information sharing between government agencies such as the FBI, CIA, and the military in the fight against terrorism.

The “Missouri Documents” as the report came to be known during a brief national scandal, listed more than 32 characteristics that police should be alert to as signs of domestic terrorists. Such suspected terrorists included persons who might like gun shows, short wave radios, combat movies, movies with white male heroes, Tom Clancy novels, and presidential candidates Ron Paul, Bob Barr, and Chuck Baldwin.

William Gheen of ALIPAC complained, “When many of us read these ‘Missouri Documents’ we felt that the false connections, pseudo-research, and political attacks found in these documents could have been penned by the SPLC and ADL. We were shocked to see credible law enforcement agencies disseminating the same kind of over-the-top political propaganda distributed by these groups.” Gheen said ALIPAC was advising all media sources, law enforcement officers and agencies, that the SPLC and the ADL are political organizations, with “stated political goals and agendas which are contrary to the candidates, political parties, and millions of Americans besmirched by the MIAC documents.”

The SPLC was widely suspected of being the source of the MIAC information. This prompted ALIPAC to send a letter of inquiry to Missouri Governor Jay Nixon on March 20, 2009 asking for more specific sourcing information. Such action may have led to Lt. Governor Peter Kinder placing Missouri Public Safety Director John Britt on administrative leave. Kinder also issued a public apology to presidential candidates Ron Paul, Bob Barr, and Chuck Baldwin.

Superintendent of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, Col. James F. Keathley later sent a response to ALIPAC and others, stating the Missouri Documents were being withdrawn as they did not meet the standards expected from the MIAC, and that “certain subsets of Missourians will not be singled out inappropriately in these reports for particular associations.” He said closer oversight will be applied to future releases from the fusion center.

The SPLC has come under its share of criticism, despite well-funded self promotion—in 2005 the SPLC reported an endowment fund of more than $152 million—and close ties to Democratic machine politics. Founded in 1971 by Morris Dees, himself a controversial figure impugned regularly on the internet, and Joseph J. Levin Jr., the nonprofit center has led the effort to enact laws against “hate crimes,” which range from hate-inspired murder to simple outbursts of speech. Despite its ongoing efforts for further “hate crime” legislation, the SPLC’s own website, quoting crime experts, admitted that the whole hate crime reporting system is plagued with errors and its hate crime statistics “worthless.”

It did nothing to lessen concerns over spurious and prying information being push onto law enforcement when Pennsylvania Homeland Security Director James F. Powers Jr., resigned under a cloud in early October 2010. He had drawn criticism for releasing terror bulletins that listed law-abiding protest groups.

The bulletins, distributed to law enforcement agencies, local governments and private security officials, warned of protests by environmental activists, anti-war demonstrators and anti-tax groups. They were based on information provided by something called the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response, a for-profit company that had won a $103,000 contract from Powers. Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell said the contract would be renewed.

Powers, decline to comment to the media, but released a statement saying that after “a thorough examination, detailed consideration, and reflection on emerging events,” he had decided to resign to protect the state Homeland Security office from further distraction.

State Senator Lisa Baker, who chaired a Pennsylvania Senate committee hearing on the matter, commented, “Given the troubling revelations about the security contract and his continuing defense of it, his position was untenable. So his decision to resign is the right one. His departure opens the door to some badly needed changes, but restoring credibility to the operation now looks to be a monumental task.” Others were not satisfied that the problem was fixed. State Representative Daryl Metcalfe, whose anti-tax and Second Amendment rallies were among those groups listed in the bulletins, said Gov. Rendell should have fired Powers.

In Texas, State Rep. Lon Burnam voiced concern over the expansion of fusion centers there, which had grown to include 170 agencies in more than a dozen counties. Civil libertarians feared such police collusion could lead to racial profiling, the targeting of perfectly legal groups, and even harassment of individuals. “I am tremendously concerned about the potential violation of privacy [in such fusion centers],” said Burnam. “I have been trying through the Open Records Act to discover what they have gathered on me.”

According to journalist Peter Gorman with Fort Worth Weekly, the first fusion center in Texas was opened in 2004 by the Department of Public Safety's Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division. “Since then several others have been created…All the participating agencies supply data to [a data] ‘bank’…The result thus far has been the creation of overlapping data centers with different missions, each run independently—and some taking the kind of actions that civil libertarians have feared all along.”

One example of abuse involved the fusion center in Collin County, which in February 2009 distributed a “prevention awareness bulletin” ordering law enforcement authorities to report on all civil rights meetings involving Muslims and to gather and pass along information on any anti-war groups in the 16-county jurisdiction. “It turned out that the bulletin was not authorized by the Collin County head of Homeland Security, but was sent out by a computer worker in the center. In the months that followed, everyone from the ACLU to religious groups objected to it,” wrote Gorman. “This memo is not a plea for legitimate intelligence, and seems to endorse discrimination against Muslims,” noted Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office. “The idea that the tolerance advocated by the groups being targeted would be treated as a menace to American security demonstrates a disregard for civil liberties and a disdain for democracy itself.”

Abuses range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Dallas Police Lt. Todd Thomasson, who headed that city's fusion center, stated that other centers have “passed out documents that suggest that if a person has a certain bumper sticker they might be a terrorist and other misleading things.”

Of particular concern was the Texas Fusion Center run by the state's Department of Public Safety (DPS) in Austin, which shares information with the Texas prison system, Homeland Security, the US Treasury Department, immigration agencies, the Air and Army National Guard, and many other police and non-police agencies. D Magazine blogger Bill Baumbach noted that the DPS center also collects personal information every time a police officer talks with someone, including drivers who are pulled over and issued nothing beyond a warning. “That is gathering information on people who were not only not convicted of a crime—they weren't even charged with one. That's very frightening to me,” said Baumbach. Decrying the lack of oversight on the fusion centers, he added, “But these fusion databases have escaped scrutiny because they wave the flag of national security. They're all mavericks. You can have a good one in Dallas but one that overreaches in Collin County and affects millions of people.”

State Rep. Burnam saw the fusion centers as “a direct result of 9/11 and all of the phobias that have ensued since that day. People think that if they sacrifice enough of their own liberty they will be safe, but that just isn't the case. There is a huge potential for abuse of people's right to privacy in this dragnet approach to gathering data.”