IMO AOC is a revolutionary subversive sitting in the House of Representatives after having insincerely sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution of the US and laws legally enacted under it.
BUT, she can be right on some issues. It IS within the bounds of possibility that she could be correct on a few things.
She says she wants to see the Department of Homeland Security dis-established. If by that she means the department rather than its component parts, then I agree with her and always did.
This monstrosity was cobbled together in the same wave of hysteria following 9/11 that saw the enactment of the Patriot Act, massive illegal wiretapping of Americans and the subsequent "unleashing" upon the American people of such creatures as Comey, Clapper and Brennan.
All the significant parts of DHS existed and functioned well before 9/11. The successful surprise attack on the US was not caused by a failure of coordination among these groups.
It was caused by massive HUMINT collection failures in the IC and the FBI. The reason these failures occurred was simply a lack of courage and imagination in the bureaucratic leadership of these agencies.
And guess what! None of the significant IC agencies were placed under DHS when it was created. The directors of these outfits simply told GW Bush that they would go public against the move if he tried to bring CIA, State INR, NSA, etc. under this "elephant created by a committee."
DHS has an analytic bureau? Sure it does! It is yet another analytic bureau duplicating the functions of all the others in, CIA, FBI, etc. The DHS analytic outfit has NO authority over any IC unit including the FBI.
Get rid of DHS and return its components to their prior "owners." pl
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Homeland_Security
Given that AOC has publicly asked for ICE to be disbanded and is going after CBP too, I’m guessing that she means getting rid of the component departments of DHS.
I agree with that completely. In the aftermath of the attacks on 9/11 I argued against the Patriot Act, the setting up of DHS, and, later, the AUMF. I felt pretty lonely at the time but IMO my views have been completely vindicated.
As to AOC, it’s hard to tell what she actually means by the things she says but I suspect when she advocates getting rid of DHS she doesn’t mean letting its functions return to their original supervising agencies but to get rid of its functions as well.
Of course.
All
I should not have been so arch about this. Of course, AOC wants to wreck federal law enforcement. It is a necessary precondition to her revolution and the creation of the SJW dictatorship but IMO the Department of Homeland Security is a massive waste of money and personnel spaces. The organizations within it should be liberated from it.
DHS – another bloated dysfunctional bureaucracy whose primary function is to employ otherwise unemployable drones.
While disbanding this monstrosity, here’s a suggestion:
Put the Coast Guard in the Navy Dept. – not the Navy, the Navy Dept. like the USMC.
Yes Sir…But Construction of the DHS did Open all the closed Doors to Kosher Pickle Shops in New Jersey and New York and Insure their Safety..and for That Director to Author the Patriot Act..It did nothing else it was Intended to Do..Katrina and Immigration For Example..We should be Lean..Mean ..and Prepared for the Likely hood that with a Pending Disaster in the Gulf and 90 degree Tempos In Alaska….AOC and Bernie might look like the “anointed Ones” By this time next Year…IMO
MP98, I don’t think the CG belongs permanently in the Navy Dept. It’s primarily a law enforcement organization. It was fine under the Treasury operating in US territory and US waters. As in the past, it falls under the Navy Dept in time of war or other overseas conflict.
I agree DHS and the Patriot Act are terrible mistakes for the all Americans. In addition to grabbing our acronym (Defense HUMINT Service) the idea of Homeland Security sounded way too Orwellian, like defense of the motherland. The worse part was the Patriot Act and it’s authorization of massive surveillance of the American people. The only good thing that came out of this was greater info sharing among the IC and between the IC and other agencies. That would have happened anyways, maybe with a modification of an Executive Order to cement the change. Although DHS was a horrible creation, other agencies metastasized in similar ways. DIA grew several layers of bureaucracy since 9/11 including the JFCC-ISR (Joint Functional Component Command – Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance). I still don’t know what that thing does.
TTG
I coined the name Defense HUMINT Service at the time as a place holder until we could come up with something better. DIA had about 5K people world wide when I left.
TTG
Greater info sharing led to Chelsea Manning.
Colonel Lang and TTG And Chelsea Manning Learned Hacking Methods from Assange…and the there Was Edwin Snowden.. I Understand or read the AI Robots can now tell if humans are Lying .Enhanced Security Measures…A HAL on The Wall..Filtering with PURE Systems..We have got to Do better…Too Many Assets have Been Compromised ….As for DHS..Restructering began in 2013…on a New Better more Refined PROGROM Taking out all things offensive to The Elites…..Layering in MANY FISA Friendly Articles..that scared Hell out of the ACLU and was Signed into Law by Barack Obama..Democrat President..June 2nd…2015..It is Called the USA FREEDOM ACT..I think by June 2016…to December 2016…People at the Justice Department Saw Potential..For the Steele Dossier and ONE FISA Judge..(Plus Lunch and Wine)
So, one positive outcome then.
Jim Ticehurst
Manning did not need “hacking methods.” He/she had access to all that stuff because of the relaxation of compartmentation rules after 9/11.
I am sure that this is old hat to all the professionals at SST, but I think it needs to be said: There is no one-size-fits-all rule for sharing. This was understood and explained very clearly in the classes I took at Fort Holabird in the sixties. Not sharing information with the people who can use it makes it useless. Sharing too widely can make it public. The goal is to get it to the people who need it and only to them. This is not an easy problem.
The tendency in any bureaucracy is to over-classify to cover your ass at the expense of getting the job done. An example at the time I took the classes was a report on rice production in South Vietnam. As though there was anything about rice production in Vietnam that the VC didn’t know. Over-classification can also be used to hide things from the American people rather than from actual or potential enemies.
So every now and then somebody has to go in and try to clear up the hardening-of-the-arteries in the IC. Information gets made available more widely. This eventually results in some sort of scandal and everybody resumes covering their asses. Modern technology can make the quantities of data involved quite dramatic. Soon bad actors are running around observed by multiple IC agencies, none of which have a wide enough picture to put together the patterns.
Sharing is neither good or bad in itself. Intelligence data needs to be managed fairly intensively. Getting the maximum benefit and minimum damage is a constant struggle. There is no easy answer. And there was no lost golden age of tight security. Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen inflicted their damage long before 9/11.
Your and my DHS went through two major reorganizations while I was there, the Reinvigoration and the Transformation. Both times the HQ and staff elements grew with no growth in the field. I always figured the next reorganization would be called the Transmogrification. DHS was referred to as Defense HUMINT after the standup of Homeland Security. It then became DCHC (Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center for a while until it became the DCS (Defense Clandestine Service) after I retired. Lord knows what’s going on now.
A lot of ICE people would like to see it put back into its old form as Immigration and Naturalization Services (“INS”) and some of the concomitants of the DHS merger undone. That is how “Abolish ICE” started . . . if not, perhaps, where it ens.
A LOT of libertarians are less than completely comfortable with the many federal law enforcement agencies. I think you have to look at it on a case-by-case basis and think long and hard if there is a not-too-attenuated nexus with an enumerated power.
Or, perhaps, put the Coast Guard and the Merchant Marine under Commerce in Peacetime and OPCON to the Dep’t of the Navy in time of War.
Perhaps you know and can talk about it. How did the BDE S-2 and BDE S-2 Sergeant Manning worked for let a depressed, suicidal and marginal Soldier deploy to a war zone and have access to SCI material, much less bring a data stick into a SCIF?
This was almost unimaginably bad.
“Get rid of DHS “ Agreed.
I would hope though that the TSA is returned to the DOT and not to the potluck stew of private security companies hired by airlines prior to 9/11. There is a huge lobbying effort going on to privatize. That would be a serious mistake IMHO.
John Minehan
Let’s see — ten cubicle doing busy work requite ten butts. As I said, compartmentation did not exist after 9/11. Chelsea is not a lot different from MI junior enlisted men I remember.
I never had anyone that troubled in an S-2 Section, which was good for me and made my life easier.
Not being willing to Flag the kid as someone who should be non-deploy-able AND the lack of compartmentalization was not without consequences for the S-2; the S-2 NCO and the Republic in general.
John Minehan
Nah. A lot of MI people, both enlisted and officers are squirrels like this, spoiled kids. Son of a bitch that I am I have fired many.
John Minehan
“S-2 section?” Is that the extent of your experience in intelligence?
Kind of like the mistake of outsourcing background investigations for the military largely to private companies under the aegis of some federal government HR agency (OPM). I understand DoD is taking back this work from OPM later this year but it should’ve been done a decade ago.
While I agree with the disbanding of DHS, I think ICE, and especially their HSI division, should be strengthened. HSI is head and shoulders the most effective federal law enforcement agency going after human trafficking.
If I had to choose one agency to disband it would be the FBI. Apart from the concerted attempts to subvert American democracy over the past 3 years, they missed 9/11 (except Colleen Rowley), the Boston bombers, the Florida school attack/shooting, et al. And for the last two attacks they were tipped off more than once. https://howiecarrshow.com/2018/01/24/scandal-ridden-fbi-must-be-abolished/
Lastly, I would transfer intelligence operations back to the Army/DoD.
Colonel, TTG,
Have my eyes deceived me, or [blink, blink] has DHS become little more than a turd in a toilet bowl as far as accomplishing anything worthwhile besides their needlessly spending money and taking up resources that are urgently needed elsewhere.
BTW, the oath of office for a Congressperson does not include a promise to uphold the laws enacted under the Constitution. After all, their job is to change those laws (and for the inconvenient laws, they can and do write exceptions for themselves).
https://history.house.gov/Institution/Origins-Development/Oath-of-Office/
IanB
IanB
It is clearly implied in the oath of office that legislators will support existing law until they may succeed in changing it.
Former Field Artillery officer, BDE S-2 twice, once in the Gulf War, S-4 (and acting XO) in a CEWI Battalion, Senior Analyst for a CJTF. I liked the Artillery more, so I became a lawyer (although I was called up for this last thing).