Infighting Cited at Homeland Security

[leftchick]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1802&ncid=716&e=16&u=/washpost/20050202/ts_washpost/a55552_2005feb1

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.



Although the 22-month-old department has vast powers over the lives of travelers, immigrants and citizens, it remains a second-tier agency in the clout it commands within President Bush (news - web sites)'s Cabinet, the officials said. Pockets of dysfunction are scattered throughout the 180,000-employee agency, they said.

<snip>

Less well known is the role that turf battles, personal animosities and bureaucratic hesitancy have played in limiting the headway made by the infant department, an amalgam of 22 federal agencies that Congress merged after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, officials said.


• The department made little progress protecting infrastructure because officials spent much of their time on detailed strategic plans for that task and believed they were technically prohibited by law from spending money on most such efforts. Others in government disagreed, and DHS officials did not reword the technical legal language until recent months.

[SpiralHawk]

1. Thank you George Bush

for another example of your failed leadership.


"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." (Abraham Lincoln)