The recent proposal for a Department of Homeland Security is among the boldest steps in the administration's response to 11 September terrorist attacks on the United States and the continuing terrorist threat. Even those most alert to the danger and unfairness of exercising 20-20 hindsight have been troubled by evidence of pre-attack poor coordination between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency. Many Americans have been perplexed by the sheer number of agencies responsible for programs that bear on our protection against terrorism. A new cabinet-level department may well be an answer to the kind of risks and shortcomings that already have been identified. But it is critical that we not permit ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security that the Department of Homeland Security (or whatever its initials turn out to be) will be a panacea or that its benefits will be achieved easily, in a timely fashion, or without unintended consequences.
The first thing to focus on is what the new department will include, and what it will not include. Initial reports suggested that some of the many agencies and parts of agencies that might be transferred to it might not be entirely justified components. Agricultural inspections programs, for example, may fall within this category. On the other side of the ledger, it certainly seems odd—if efficiency and commonality of management and direction are the goals—to exclude such obvious candidates as the FBI. Of course, some of the exclusions might be a function of agency-specific political clout on Capitol Hill as well as a reflection of our country's traditional reluctance to create a national police force. Anyone who has noticed the plethora of uniformed police agencies in Washington will be aware of this-how else to justify the separate Uniformed Division of the Secret Service, Capitol Police, Supreme Court Police, Executive Protection Service, Park Police, and Metropolitan Police Department? When it comes to law enforcement, we have tended to think there is strength in numbers—of agencies.
Moving programs and agencies from one cabinet department to another might look easy on paper, but it is likely to present a mare's nest of problems in execution. After the fact, the entire process inevitably will generate shelves of doctoral dissertations by public administration scholars, but even now it is possible to foresee some of those problems. For example, legislative oversight is enormously complicated as it is. Over the decades, committees and those they oversee and fund develop a modus vivendi as well as personal relationships and revolving-door practices. Will moving an agency from one department to another shift oversight and appropriation responsibilities? Will the taxpayers lose if established patterns of oversight—also known as micromanagement, if you are on the receiving end—are scrambled? Will changes on the executive branch end of the microscope mandate corresponding changes on the congressional end? Will once-powerful committee chairmanships be devalued, with power flowing to less obvious (or less-prized) committees? Will the reshuffling set off a scramble among congressional leaders in which, as in a game of musical chairs, some will wind up being left without a chair? Will the reshuffling have permanent effects on the seniority system on the Hill?
To further complicate matters, what about the established patterns of lobbying? If a game of musical chairs is triggered on the Hill, will a corresponding scene be played out among all the interest groups well represented inside the D.C. Beltway?
In the affected line agencies themselves, where the rubber meets the road, it is likely that life will go on pretty much as before, and that any adjustments will not be felt for some time. Here I speak from a little personal experience. When I began active duty in 1969, the Coast Guard had been part of the new Department of Transportation (DoT) for less than two years, and the pieces were still being fit into place. When the DoT Act took effect in 1967, parts of the Coast Guard's dowry from the Treasury were some functions that had been performed previously by the Customs Service. They were still being integrated by the time I reached my first duty station in June 1969. The Coast Guard also picked up some functions that had been performed by the Army Corps of Engineers. My recollection is that by and large the task of integrating these functions went pretty smoothly, but I am certain a lot of work had to be done behind the scenes to arrange a smooth transition. I am equally certain that something was lost in the translation, in that institutional memory that is so central to public administration must have been eroded to some extent.
There is also a cultural dimension to be taken into account. While government personnel of course feel loyalty to the government in general and to the cabinet department under which they ultimately serve, they identify with the particular subcabinet-level agency in which they serve on a day-to-day basis. Anyone who has been in the armed forces is familiar with this: identification is with the branch of service (and sometimes with the specialized community with the branch), but never, really, with the Defense Department as such.
When I was on active duty, I thought of myself as a Coast Guardsman, not as a DoT person. Standards of conduct might have been DoT-wide so far as the Code of Federal Regulations was concerned, but the Coast Guard's placement within DoT had nothing to do with defining what constituted conduct unbecoming an officer, dereliction of duty, or customs of the service. The Transportation Secretary's regional representative, when I was stationed in Boston, was viewed as an inconvenience to be avoided if at all possible. It still seems a complete anomaly that the judge advocate general of the Coast Guard is the civilian general counsel of DoT, and it struck me as baffling that the honored guest at my Officer Candidate School graduation was an entirely forgettable assistant secretary who owed his appointment to prior service as, I believe, highway commissioner in Vermont or New Hampshire. The Coast Guard has an anthem; I am willing to bet that DoT does not. (What would it be? Certainly not "I've been Working on the Railroad" or "Charlie on the MTA." Perhaps Woody Guthrie's "Hard Travellin"?)
I imagine the same kinds of reaction will be felt by Coast Guard personnel and those of other agencies who find themselves shifted into a new Department of Homeland Security. I, for one, would not expect any of those public servants to be inspired by a sudden sense of identification with this new department-unless it turns out to be led by a team of extraordinary, charismatic leaders, well-versed in the ways of government and also attuned to the need not only to lead but to inspire and excite. For this there is no substitute if the current exercise is to be anything more than a paper shuffle.
Eugene R. Fidell is a partner in the Washington, D.C., law firm of Feldesman, Tucker, Leifer, Fidell & Bank LLP, and president of the National Institute of Military Justice.