Homeland Security's 'mission creep' problem
August 5, 2003

Tom Ridge was a pretty good governor and is President Bush's friend. People who know him say he's also a pretty good guy. But it's becoming increasingly clear that he's rapidly becoming little more than another run-of-the-mill Washington bureaucrat more interested in accumulating power than in doing his job.

Anyone who doubts that should look at what his Department of Homeland Security is up to these days.

The department was cobbled together in the days after Sept. 11 by an administration rightly worried about our security, and, on paper at least, it made a lot of sense. The new department would concentrate on protecting you and me and the American homeland from airplane hijackers, shoe bombers and terrorists of whatever stripe who might try to import, plant or build weapons that might be used against us.

The bureaucrats under Ridge's control were not to supplant existing law enforcement agencies or fashion the new department into a general law enforcement agency like either the FBI or a national police force. Instead they were to bring together certain existing but scattered functions that might be better directed or coordinated by the new department while doggedly pursuing the limited but vital mission of protecting us from terrorists.

That sounded fairly reasonable, even though some among us feared what has come to be known as "mission creep." That occurs when a bureaucracy set up for one purpose begins to expand and to take on new jobs outside its original mission, usually when its original mission is nearing completion and it needs to justify its continuing existence. That would not be a problem with Ridge's department, we were told, not only because its assigned mission is crucially important but also because its importance demands that he and his team remain focused, laserlike, on that mission.

Well, that may have been the intention, but it hasn't worked out that way.

The Department of Homeland Security is morphing before our eyes into something quite different and far more dangerous. The first signs may have been there when Ridge announced sometime back that his people were launching what he dubbed "Operation Predator" and joining the war on sexual predators, child prostitution, Internet pornography and other particularly obnoxious criminals. Now, catching and prosecuting the creeps who engage in such activities is a good thing, but one has to wonder why Ridge thinks his department should focus its attention on them rather than on preventing Osama bin Laden's disciples from wreaking damage on the American homeland.

I was a little surprised that there wasn't much of an outcry at this diffusion of the new agency's focus but figured that no one wanted to be seen as suggesting that the government shouldn't maximize its efforts to put such people out of business. Still, someone could have or should have pointed out that sometimes the question of who should take on a task is as important as or even more important than doing the job itself.

Now, however, it is clear that "Operation Predator" was part of a general effort to broaden the agency's mission and to change it into what its critics feared it might one day become despite all the well-intentioned rhetoric that accompanied its formation.

Last week, the department issued a "Privacy Act Notice" in conjunction with its plan to deploy what is known as CAPS II, to protect airline travel in this country by screening passengers or potential passengers against commercial and government databases to verify their identities and allow airport security people to prevent passengers who fit a secret profile from boarding.

When you make a reservation and attempt to board a plane once CAPS II is operational, the ticket agent will be flashed either a green, yellow or red signal by his or her computer. Passengers earning a "red" will not be allowed to fly and will probably be detained. Anyone who comes up "yellow" will be subject to additional screening and questioning but theoretically will be allowed aboard.

I asked retired Coast Guard Admiral James Loy, the head of transportation security at the department, how many people he expected to be subject to the additional harassment that goes with a yellow. He said not more than 8 percent of passengers, or about 200,000 passengers a day. It didn't seem to concern him, but over a year that would subject an awful lot of people to harassment.

Why so many? The answer is to be found in the privacy notice and in mission creep.

It seems the system is to be used not just to make flight safe, but also to screen people for a variety of general law enforcement goals. It is unclear what the agency has in mind, but one thing is clear … Tom Ridge is putting something together that no one envisioned when the Department of Homeland Security was announced.