Incoming DHS Chief Kicks Off Top-to-Bottom Review
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Reported by Joe Pappalardo
When Michael Chertoff, the new secretary of the Department of Homeland
Security, took the helm of the new government agency in March, he
wasted no time imposing a department-wide self-examination.
“I have initiated a comprehensive review of the organization,
operations and policies of the Department as a whole,” he
said during a speech in mid-March. “Over the course of the
next 60 to 90 days, this comprehensive review will examine what
we need to do, and what we are doing, without regard to component
structures and programmatic categories.”
DHS has been beset with charges from politicians and Beltway watchers
that it lacks structure, a clear sense of direction and overall
management focus. Chalked up by some as growing pains from the giant
governmental reorganization that created it, and mismanagement by
the administration by others, getting DHS under control will be
a monumental task for the new secretary. “The first thing
we have to do is examine the mission and work of all elements of
DHS through the template of consequence, vulnerability and threat,”
Chertoff said. “Have we fully defined our missions? How far
have we gone in carrying them out? What more needs to be done?”
Chertoff is a graduate of Harvard Law School in 1978, and became
known for targeting organized crime as U.S. attorney for the District
of New Jersey in the early 1990’s. He also served as special
counsel for the Senate’s Whitewater Committee, investigating
the business deals of President Bill Clinton and his wife, Sen.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. Chertoff worked as an assistant to
Attorney General John Ashcroft from 2001 to 2003, before being nominated
by President George W. Bush as a federal judge of the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the Third District.