Please note, this write up was written when the Department of Homeland Security was still just an office. I've taken note of the change and I will fix this write up to reflect the current situation as soon as I can manage some free time.
The Office of Homeland Security was established by
executive order on October 7, 2001, by the 43rd
president of the
United States,
George W. Bush.
The idea to found a National Homeland Security Agency was first proposed in House Resolution 1158 that was introduced on March 21, 2001, but it was not deemed a high priority at the time and it remained in committee. With the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001, however, President Bush was convinced that such an Office was needed immediately. Bush appointed former republican governor of
Pennsylvania,
Tom Ridge to be the Secretary of the Office of Homeland Security.
Despite being a
Cabinet-level position, the director of the Office of Homeland Security will not need
Senate confirmation and the office will be based within the
White House, giving the secretary unprecedented access to the president. The secretary would serve as an assistant to the President, not as an agency chief.
The new Office is a sort of super-agency that must coordinate and streamline the activities of federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities. A variety of agencies have been brought under the Office’s wide umbrella, including the Immigration and Naturalization Service(
INS), the
Border Patrol, the Drug Enforcement Agency(
DEA), the
Customs Service, the
Department of Justice, the
U.S. Marshals Service, the
Department of Defense, the
National Guard, the Federal Bureau of Investigation(
FBI), the Federal Emergency Management Agency(
FEMA), the government’s intelligence community, as well as others. The new Office will hope to bring and end to agency rivalries and turf battles that have often kept one part of the government ignorant about the activities of other departments, creating vulnerabilities that
terrorists can exploit.
The Office’s primary mission will be to walk the fine line between achieving greater
security at home while at the same time preserving the
civil liberties guaranteed in the U.S.
Constitution. In his address to a
joint session of congress on September 20, 2001, Bush stated that the Office’s mission was to, “lead, oversee, and coordinate a national strategy to safeguard our country against terrorism and respond to any attacks that come.”
The very creation of the Office of Homeland Security has caused a great deal of controversy. There are some that believe that Bush is taking advantage of the
September 11, 2001 attacks to consolidate presidential power. Others fear that the new Office will intentionally or incidentally erode
civil liberties in the name of security. What role the Office of Homeland Security will play now and how it may evolve in the future is yet to be seen.