It was ironic that George W. Bush, one of the most conservative presidents in modern U.S. history, passionately committed to reducing the sphere of government, backed by a Congress then controlled by equally passionate conservative Republicans, should have signed the legislation that brought the DHS into existence.

For the DHS is indeed a return to the dinosaur age of big government in the United States. It is centralized, it seeks to run and coordinate the activities of more than 20 federal agencies, several of which used to enjoy the privilege of direct access to Congress. The last time such a super-department or mega-ministry was cobbled together from disparate parts of the U.S. government, it was by the president all conservative Republicans love to hate -- President Jimmy Carter -- almost 30 years ago.

Some of the most scathing criticism of the DHS comes from experienced veterans of U.S. government and national security.

On March 23, retired Marine Maj. Gen. Arnold Punaro, chairman of the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves, told the Armed Services Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives that the DHS was not fully prepared for the 15 most likely serious disasters it was likely to face.

Nor is Punaro's view an isolated one. It is shared by the man who served as first inspector general of the DHS.

"I am often asked whether, in my judgment, the Department of Homeland Security has made America safer than we were on 9/11. My answer to that question is yes. But, whether we are safer today than we were on 9/11 is not the only question. The key questions are: Are we really as safe as the government says we are, are we as safe as we need to be, and, are we as safe as we can be. The answer to these questions, ominously, is no," Clark Kent Ervin, who now heads the Aspen Institute's Homeland Security Initiative, wrote in an e-note based on his presentation "Five Years After 9/11: What Needs to be Done," a December 2006 conference in Philadelphia sponsored by the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Center on Terrorism, Counterterrorism and Homeland Security.

Ervin noted that, for example, in April 2006, "Investigators working for Congress' investigative arm, the Government Accountability Office, were able to sneak bomb parts undetected through checkpoints at some 21 airports around the country. And, as recently as late October, screeners missed guns and bombs in 20 out of 22 tests at Newark International Airport."

Nor has the DHS won or retained the trust of the American people for its gargantuan labors. It came in dead last of all 74 federal agencies in a national survey published in early March by the Michigan-based Ponemon Institute, which sampled the views of more than 7,000 Americans.

Yet despite all the criticisms and widely publicized failings that the DHS has endured, President Bush, notorious for keeping his loyal favorites in crucial Cabinet positions even after they have presided over chaotic mismanagement or disastrously unsuccessful policies, appears to have retained his confidence so far in Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

Unlike Porter Goss, a washout as director of the CIA, Chertoff has not made the mistake of feuding with more influential or powerful figures in the administration like former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte or long-time Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

However, the major failings of the DHS are many, well-documented and have been well-publicized: It was catastrophically slow-moving and inept in directing the Federal Emergency Management Agency which under President Bill Clinton had won widespread praise as one of the leanest, fast-moving and most efficient agencies in the federal government -- in reacting to the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. In the months after that disaster, the DHS and its agencies including FEMA were later estimated to have paid out more than $1 billion to fraudulent claims.

The project to develop anti-missile defenses to protect U.S. airliners from being shot down by terrorists on the ground operating handheld ground-to-air missiles or MANPADS remains years from implementation and years behind schedule.

Security experts warn that operations to counter small unmanned aerial vehicles being used by terrorists to deliver attacks against key domestic targets, possibly even with chemical and biological warfare payloads, remain starved of essential funds, despite the warnings of many experts.

The DHS is devoting massive resources to trying to upgrade port security, especially in the screening of the more than 1 million cargo containers that enter the United States every day. However, Ervin noted that the DHS's Container Security Initiative is based on inspecting cargoes at the foreign ports where they are loaded. But the GAO has pointed out "that more than 80 percent of the time, foreign inspectors refuse to inspect cargo that our intelligence indicates is potentially dangerous."

Yet huge progress has indeed been made since Sept. 11, 2001. There is a massive and so far, generally effective security infrastructure in place to protect U.S. airports and airliners from hijackings, sabotage and other disruption.

And at the basic, grassroots level, first responders around the nation such as serving firefighters and policemen are often enthusiastic in their praise for the new resources that the DHS has delivered to them in terms of equipment, training and courses.

Now, the Democrat-controlled 110th Congress is looking hard and fast at the DHS. But this may help the department rather than hinder it. Historically, big government has usually worked better in the United States when Congress has been in the hands of an opposition party that did not control the executive branch.

Ervin concluded, "There is reason to expect that America is now on the road to becoming safer. There is, however, considerable work yet to do, and there is not a moment to waste."

Next: Shaun Waterman examines the department's ability to change

Related Links
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
News and analysis about the Global War Against Terror at SpaceWar.com
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