by Becky Akers
Becky Akers is a historian and freelance writer.
My heart skipped a beat at the USA Today headline: 'Abolish' FEMA, says bipartisan Senate panel. Yes! But I should have remembered that this is the Senate, after all. Leviathan is hardly altruistic enough to advise amputating its limbs, and the story's finer print revealed the truth. The Senate merely wants to replace FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) with — no surprise here — a powerful new organization. In their ongoing efforts to fool us, the Feds will also re-acronym their hurricane-strength FEMA: it will become the NPRA (National Preparedness and Response Authority).
I'm only a lowly taxpayer, not a senator. That's probably why I can’t see how a more powerful FEMA will do anything but ruin more lives and waste more money than the current version. Probably 80 rather than a mere 60 percent of the trailers supposed to house victims will sit vacant; the agency will likely displace more people from their homes; and more bureaucrats will obstruct the private relief agencies actually helping folks.
And, again as a taxpayer rather than a sapient senator, I dare to suggest it's not just FEMA we should abolish. The agency's only a drawer in the cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Let’s rid ourselves of the entire department.
DHS has had a banner month, between the revelation that it's silencing whistleblowers and the arrest of its deputy press secretary as an alleged pedophile. Even politicians should hesitate at expecting Americans to trust this bureaucratic behemoth with their safety.
On April 19 Congressional Quarterly reported that the department’s security personnel were required to sign nondisclosure agreements. The compulsory autographs came one day after some of them had complained to NBC News about security breaches at DHS headquarters.
That’s one way to solve a problem: force everyone to keep quiet about it. I think that non-disclosure statements are a common part of government, and that's for very obvious reasons, said DHS spokesman Russ Knocke. Yep: it’s tough for bureaucrats to hang onto their jobs if we know how incompetent they are.
Then again, how concerned should we be about an attack on DHS? Terrorists worldwide probably are grateful for this bumbling boondoggle. They are hardly going to destroy it: we might replace it with citizen militias or something else that actually works.
DHS has been the butt of jokes since its creation in October 2001. The executive order establishing it defined its mission as develop[ing] and coordinat[ing] the implementation of a comprehensive national strategy to secure the United States from terrorist threats or attacks. Huddled under its umbrella today is everything from the Orwellian Directorate of Preparedness to the Secret Service. That means DHS's employees total a whopping 180,000 people — including the crew who gave us the color-coded Threat Level alerts. But they atoned for this Rube Goldberg complexity with their advice on surviving a terrorist attack: stockpile duct tape and bottled water. For this we’re paying $42 billion a year?
Lurking among the DHS mob, in addition to the alleged pedophile, are a disturbing number of thieves. First things first. Brian Doyle, the deputy press secretary, was arrested a few weeks ago after he e-mailed pornography to a cybercop posing as a 14-year-old girl. Doyle worked for Time magazine before joining the Feds; while there he'd been scolded for pursuing porn on the company's computers. According to the Washington Post, Federal officials would not say whether the incident came to the attention of federal investigators who conducted a background check on Doyle.
Indeed, Michael Chertoff, secretary of homeland security, apparently lacks the imagination to see how damaging Doyle could have been had the right people gained access to him. From time to time, he told reporters, there will be instances when misconduct occurs. He added, We try to weed out those who pose a security risk. I don't know . . . that background checks with people hired will predict future behavior. Tell that to illegal aliens hunting jobs.
Doyle began his career with the feds at the DHS’s daffiest agency, the Transportation Security Administration — those friendly folks at the airport checkpoints who frisk grandparents in wheelchairs. But turns out the grandparents should be frisking them: a surprising percentage of TSA screeners are criminals. In Hailey, Idaho, a screener whom the TSA has employed for three of its four years awaits trial on charges of kidnapping a 10-year-old boy. Thirteen baggage screeners at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport were arrested for stealing passengers' belongings in 2004. Ten were recently charged with theft; the charges against two were dismissed; and the last suspect was spared indictment in this case because he faces another allegation: second-degree murder. The ranks of Hawaii's screeners were thinned by three arrests just within the last month. One TSA officer helped himself to $16,000 from a passenger's backpack while two others stole a thousand dollars' worth of yen from a Japanese tourist.
Can't Tell Real Bombs from Phantoms
Screeners sometimes can't distinguish between actual explosives and phantom images on their screens. One such mistake recently shut down Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International for two hours. This is the world's busiest airport, and even the government admits that 120 flights were delayed. (Private-sector estimates put that figure much higher.) But at least this screener discerned something. When undercover DHS investigators earlier this year tried to smuggle through 21 checkpoints ingredients that could be used to make a bomb on the plane, they succeeded every time. Other tests confirm that the TSA is no better at finding weapons than the private security airports used before 9/11. Indeed, the only area in which the TSA excels seems to be in creating long lines.
Rep. Peter King (R-NY), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, says, Homeland Security is our last line of defense, and to be taken seriously, you have to have very, very strict security standards. That may explain why the only folks taking the DHS seriously are late-night comics and congressmen.