1. Written by Paul Dickson for Professor Michael Deegan; 2/17/06
Writing Sample Essay: “The creation of the Department of Homeland Security: issues of autonomy in
creating an agency with momentous scope in a unique legislative environment.”
The circumstances surrounding the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in many
ways support James Q. Wilson’s arguments in Bureaucracy about the autonomy of federal agencies. The
creation of this agency, in response to a national disaster of historical proportions, also indicates the
problems that Wilson describes as they relate the autonomy and turf of the agencies that failed to prevent
such a disaster. It is important to note, however, that the nature of DHS is unique to Wilson’s arguments: in
the way it was legislated, the momentous scope of the agency, the speed in which it was formed, and kind of
disaster it faced soon after its creation.
The creation of the DHS, according to James Gillies, of the University of British Columbia, in a paper
prepared for the Canadian Political Science Association Annual Conference, “…is one of tremendous
difficulty and frustration for many of the 180,000 employees of the department…The DHS offers a
cautionary tale of embarking on a massive bureaucratic overhaul…” Created in the aftermath of the
September 11th
attacks it is important to consider how turf and autonomy played a role in how the department
came about, what factors were at play in its creation, and what challenges, both bureaucratic and political in
nature – the administrators and managers in DHS are facing. (Gillies, 1)
According to Wilson, most agencies of government will tend to protect their own turf. The executive
protects the responsibilities of the agency, or department, even if the consequences are not necessarily for the
good of the department, its mission, or its budget. Although the events of September 11th had not unfolded
as of Wilson’s last publishing, the intelligence failures of U.S. government are good examples of the author’s
argument. Autonomous desire, as described by Wilson, was certainly part of what is now referred to as the
intelligence failures that led up to 9-11, and the failure of the agencies to communicate. Former Senators
Hart and Rudman made this clear in their report, Roadmap for National Security: Impetus for Change. The
150-page report outlined a series of national security inadequacies in almost every department, with
particularly pointed criticism of the Departments of Defense and State. (Hart and Rudman, 2001: x-xi)
Infighting among government agencies slowed homeland security progress even further; a point Wilson
parallels with regard to other agency transformations. Turf wars between the FBI, the CIA, and the
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) undermined efforts by lawmakers to create a more
comprehensive homeland defense plan. (Gillies, 2) “Their inability to work together contributed to the
failure to the follow up leads that might have exposed the al-Qaeda plot prior to 9/11.” (National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks, 2004) The precise nature of the failure to share information is now well
documented in the Congressional joint inquiry into intelligence community activities surrounding 9/11 and

2. Commission hearings led by former Governor Kane and former Congressman Hamilton (the 9/11
Commission). (Gillies, 2) This kind of fighting among agencies over homeland security had really been
occurring since the Oklahoma City and at the World Trade Center during the Clinton years, and some would
contend that it had been occurring since the end of the Cold War. (Hart-Rudman report)
As the testimony of Richard Clarke, former counter-terrorism director, to the 9-11 Commission shows,
his warnings were not urgently attended to. Clarke was the National Coordinator for Counter-terrorism from
1998 to 2001. As Clark says, “we know that there was information available to some in the FBI and CIA
that al Qida operatives have entered the U.S.” That information was not shared with senior officials despite
the heightened state of concern. “In both CIA and the military, there was reluctance at senior career levels to
fully utilize all of the capabilities available.” (Clarke, testimony before the National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks Upon the U.S.) As Coleen Rowley’s letter to FBI director Robert Mueller shows, her
efforts to warn her superiors also fell on deaf ears. Ms. Rowley was Special Agent and Minneapolis Chief
Division Council at the time, and had jurisdiction over the Moussauoi investigation. These examples of
bureaucratic failure are dramatic, but they speak directly to what Wilson writes about autonomous desire.
The Office of Homeland Security (OHS) was formed by executive order just four weeks after 9/11, and
the President nominated Tom Ridge to be the director. The drive to create the DHS was originally set forth
and lobbied for by Senator Lieberman, the leading Democrat on the Senate Governmental Affairs
Committee. Many, including some in the administration, felt that if such an office was going to be created,
its director would have to be more than just an anti-terrorism czar and be given authority over other agencies
to maintain control on the ground when disaster strikes. “To be effective, Ridge would have to be able to
override line departments not under his authority. But at this stage, the OHS was not a line department nor
did it have much real authority (Gillies, 3). National security advisors believed that Ridge and the OHS
would be forced to “take powers away from various different agencies that have them now. There is nothing
harder in the federal government than doing that” (Nakashima, 2001: A7)
Another aspect of this government formation that echoes Wilson is that the resources of the FBI and the
CIA, among other groups, did not become part of the agency directed to protect the homeland. The CIA and
the FBI remained separate from DHS. According to the Brookings Institute, most of the homeland security
functions of the government were not included in DHS, such as the FBI, who are responsible for domestic
surveillance, the CIA, who are responsible for tracking terrorists and the materials they might bring into the
country, and CDC, who are responsible for detecting and responding to a bioterrorist attack (Gillies, 4). In
addition, without the authority over the CIA and FBI, DHS could not be perceived as a lead agency. “If the
coordinator is seen as a competitor, other agencies whose cooperation is crucial will likely balk at following
its lead, and bureaucratic fights over turf become pervasive.” (O’Hanlon et al, 2002a: 104) “As secretive

3. agencies, the FBI and the CIA are autonomous from the people trying to change them,” writes Patrick
Roberts of the University of Virginia. Roberts goes on to say that that these agencies used their autonomy to
make changes on their own terms. These changes were more successful, when they were incremental and
local in nature, rather than broad and outside their realm (Harris, 4).
After the DHS was officially created and Secretary Ridge had served his short term, he was replaced by
the second Secretary of DHS, Michael Chertoff. Not surprisingly, the turf challenges within the department
were not any less challenging then they were before creation of DHS, or during Ridge’s term. DHS
Secretary Chertoff was expected to coordinate with the FBI and CIA, two agencies with cultures traditionally
inclined to resist information sharing between each other. Ridge had not made significant progress on that
charge. Chertoff was faced with the unfortunate truth that agencies that are critical – the secretaries of
Defense, Treasury, Justice, and State, as well as the CIA and FBI – have not developed the instinct of
coordination. “Interagency coordination led by individual Cabinet secretaries has seldom worked well in the
past and it is not likely to do so in the future.” (Gillies, 10, 11) In addition, these secretaries are “unlikely to
defer to directives from another Cabinet agency that is a competitor for funds and presidential attention.”
(O’Hanlon et al., 2003: 16)
There was significant evidence to suggest that DHS was not working as it should, both after it was
created and had been in effect. The New York Times, among other news outlets, have “painted a picture of a
second tier agency in Cabinet and a department fraught with turf battles”, and other problems that include
budget and autonomy issues. “A number of these agencies are highly dysfunctional, have overlapping
jurisdictions, and long-standing rivalries…there is little incentive for these agencies to give up previous
authority and autonomy in their specific areas and submit to a new structure under the authority of the DHS”
(Gillies, 8)
When the White House began crafting the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), less than two years
after DHS had been finalized, it was clear that turf was involved in important ways. Again, Professor Wilson
would have had another example to use to expand upon his arguments. Since the intelligence community
was not made part of DHS, it needed to be made part of a broad national strategy. However, the turf of the
CIA, the FBI, and others had to be dealt with and could not be left alone this time around. “In short, what is
clear is that the wrong agencies, with a focus on non-homeland security activities, have been included in the
DHS, and correct ones, particularly those dealing with terrorism assessment and analysis, have not…the
department may be unable to address the intelligence failures of intelligence organizations like the FBI and
the CIA.” (Gillies, 9) In July 2004, as Congress debated creating a director of national intelligence, which
might dilute the CIA’s clout, then acting director John McLaughlin, a career official, dismissed the idea on
television. ‘It doesn’t particularly relate to the world I live in.” (Harris, 2)

4. Leaders in Washington knew that part of the difficulty in giving new agencies real power was to include
budgetary powers in their discretion. The OHS, formed four weeks after 9/11 by an executive order, was
supposed to bring Tom Ridge into Bush’s inner circle. But the mandate of OHS was massive and vague. It
also had a tremendous staffing shortage in terms of meeting its objectives and lacked budget leverage.
(Gillies, 2) Wilson argues that executives of federal agencies value control more than funding. If given the
choice, they would sacrifice some funding for more autonomy. In addition to Wilson’s example of the
defense department under two different executives, another example can be found in the creation of the DNI.
In founding that office, the idea is to have one person in control, not only of coordinating the intelligence,
but also of the budget. The DNI was established, but the CIA has yet to be brought under its discretion,
despite some high-level lobbying efforts. For example, although the agency lost the privilege of preparing
the president’s Presidential Daily Brief, the agency resisted an attempt to move human intelligence gathering
operations to the Defense Department. (One of these PDBs, on August 6th
, 2001, was titled, “Bin Laden
Determined to Strike Inside the United States”, and included specific mention of hijacking airplanes, and
destroying Federal Buildings in New York.) “The FBI has only recently pooled its intelligence units into the
new National Security Service, which DNI will help manage. But it’s unclear how the DNI will fare if his
plans for the new service conflict with the broader goals of FBI leaders.” (Harris, 3)
Although Wilson’s description of turf and autonomy and the problems they present to government
bureaucracy are generally correct, there are aspects of DHS’ creation that provide arguments that are unique
to Wilson’s. He provides keen observations, good analysis, and well-supported and specific examples. As
explained it detail in the first section, DHS, and the circumstances surrounding it actually bear out Wilson’s
arguments, and dramatically so. There is no major flaw or glaring problem with his arguments. It cannot be
overlooked, however, that the very nature of the DHS in many ways showed that turf and autonomy issues
were unique to Wilson’s arguments and played out differently. (It is not necessarily fair to say that this is a
weakness in his argument, considering the events that led up to DHS’ creation)
In many areas, the way in which DHS was created provides us with a unique view of how the
autonomy of the agencies involved in the restructuring effected the way Congress wrote, debated and
approved the bill approving the agency. The momentous scope of DHS, in terms of the number of agencies
that were involved, (all or part of 22 different federal agencies), and the momentous mission of the agency,
provides insight on turf and autonomy within bureaucracy, that Wilson did not, and could not provide in his
book. Especially when you consider the speed in which it was formed, the public fervor and anger that
precipitated it, and the turf battle between the White House and the Congress that developed, all in context of
this momentous scope, it suggests a necessary addendum to Wilson. The White House’s strong desire and
success in creating, and winning a turf battle not between agencies, but with the U.S. Senate is certainly a

5. unique element to the turf issues involved in DHS, before during and after its creation. Bush and the White
House strategists opposed creating an actual homeland security department for a number of reasons. Two of
those reasons were that first, “Bush and his advisors wanted this controlled out of the White House”, and
second, “with the infighting among the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon, the White House sought a
key place at the table in the post-9/11 intelligence and information gathering operations. The OHS could be
used a conduit between the various organizations to keep the White House in the loop and even ahead of the
game… a powerful tool the administration could use to stay ahead of the other agencies in order to receive
full political credit for the national security effort.” (Gillies, 3)
It must also be pointed out as unique to Wilson’s writings on turf and autonomy that the extremely
problematic issues of turf that created the conditions to the national catastrophe of 9/11, followed by the
creation of DHS, and the creation of the DNI, may prove to actually force them to work together
successfully, thus making these turf battles a thing of the past. Only time will tell, but as of February 2006,
at least one of the missions of DHS has been successful: there has not been another serious terrorist attack
within the U.S. One could argue that this is because the agencies have finally shed their autonomous turf, in
exchange for communicating and sharing information successfully. Of course, it would not be hard to argue
that another attack inside the U.S. could have been avoided without the creation of DHS, or that terror groups
have focused attacks elsewhere.
It was not long after DHS was formed primarily to respond to a terrorist attack, that the enormous
new federal agency was in charge of responding to a category-five hurricane making landfall not far from
New Orleans, and the breaking of the levies and flooding that followed. The Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA), now under the direction of DHS, was supposed to be in charge of responding
to this disaster. If it wasn’t clear during the tragic response, it became so during FEMA director Brown and
DHS director Chertoff’s testimony to the Government Affairs Committee, that turf played a large role in this
failing response.
The natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina, forced DHS, and FEMA under the authority of DHS to
deal with a tremendous challenge, that was within its responsibility, but that it was not apparently ready for
or prepared to respond to. As reported in The New York Times on February 24th
, the turf battles may not be
over with respect to DHS. The White House is shaping a proposal for the Pentagon and the Justice
department to take over certain responsibilities from DHS “during catastrophes of extraordinary scope and
nature.”

6. Works Cited
Clarke, Richard A. “Prepared Testimony to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United
States.” 24 March, 2004
Firestone, David. “Threats and Responses: Legislation; Senate votes, 90-9, to set up a Homeland Security
Dept. geared to fight terrorism.” NYT 20 November, 2002
Gillies, James Clark. “The Creation of the Department of Homeland Security: Lesson learned two years on.”
Canadian Political Science Association Annual Conference. 2 to 4 June, 2005
Harris, Shane. “Survival of What Fits.” GovExec.com 1 August, 2005
Lipton, Eric. “Homeland Security Would Share Duties for Disaster Response Under Proposal.” NYT 24
February, 2006
Rowley, Coleen M. “Letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller.” 21 May, 2002
White House Press Office. Transcript of Presidential Daily Brief from 6 August, 2001. (Parts of the original
document were not made public for security reasons)
Wilson, James Q. Bureaucracy. Basic Books, 1989

7. Works Cited
Clarke, Richard A. “Prepared Testimony to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United
States.” 24 March, 2004
Firestone, David. “Threats and Responses: Legislation; Senate votes, 90-9, to set up a Homeland Security
Dept. geared to fight terrorism.” NYT 20 November, 2002
Gillies, James Clark. “The Creation of the Department of Homeland Security: Lesson learned two years on.”
Canadian Political Science Association Annual Conference. 2 to 4 June, 2005
Harris, Shane. “Survival of What Fits.” GovExec.com 1 August, 2005
Lipton, Eric. “Homeland Security Would Share Duties for Disaster Response Under Proposal.” NYT 24
February, 2006
Rowley, Coleen M. “Letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller.” 21 May, 2002
White House Press Office. Transcript of Presidential Daily Brief from 6 August, 2001. (Parts of the original
document were not made public for security reasons)
Wilson, James Q. Bureaucracy. Basic Books, 1989