CQ HOMELAND SECURITY
Sept. 9, 2008 – 8:00 p.m.
Stephan: ‘No. 1 Killer in the United States Is Entrenched Bureaucracies’
By Daniel Fowler, CQ Staff
Calling them “more clever than al Qaeda in many respects,” a Department of Homeland Security official said Tuesday that bureaucrats are the “No. 1 killer in the United States.”
“Most of the time, every day, I spend most of the bullets in my single 30-round magazine that I bring to work every day shooting into the backs of our own bureaucracy trying to clear a field of fire,” said Robert Stephan, DHS assistant secretary for infrastructure protection.
“So, I have one bullet left to either pump at al Qaeda or save it for me because the bureaucracy is about to overwhelm me.”
Stephan made his comments at the National Defense Industrial Association’s 2008 Homeland Security Symposium and Exhibition, where he addressed critical infrastructure protection.
“I think one of the biggest impediments I’ve had to deal with is our own structure, our own set of laws, regulations, policies, authorities, people worrying about turf, their own personal turf, their own agency turf instead of the country and the adversaries, the threats and the hazards we face,” Stephan said. “That still remains to me, in my mind, the No. 1 killer in the United States is entrenched bureaucracies that focus more on themselves than they do the collective good.”
Stephan said that situation needs to end.
“We have to work together with Congress,” he said. “We have to work within the administration and I’m talking about any administration, Republican or Democrats. They all are served by bureaucrats and those are the people that impede progress in the war on terrorism and the war on Mother Nature. And we have to figure out a way to overcome that.”
But besting the bureaucrats won’t be easy, he said.
“In fact, they’re more clever than al Qaeda in many respects,” Stephan said. “And that’s a pretty far-out statement, but it’s true.”
During a question-and-answer session following his presentation, Stephan tempered his comments a bit.
“The entrenched bureaucrats are a part of a larger problem,” Stephan said. “And there are bureaucrats that are just hard-working, fundamentally willing to do the right thing for their country.”
In fact, Stephan said the “greatest number” of people within the bureaucracy want to do the right thing, accomplish the mission, are excited and want to save lives.
It’s the “career bureaucrats that know they are going to outlast any political leadership that is put above them” who are the problem, said Stephan, who noted that he’s had them in his “own organization.”
Stephan: ‘No. 1 Killer in the United States Is Entrenched Bureaucracies’
“They’re going to try to outlast you, and either try to do the minimal, try to get by or they’re so focused on just protecting their own turf,” he said. Those people, according to Stephan, “haven’t learned the hard lessons of Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina.”
To address the problem, Stephan told CQ, the problem must be attacked in various ways.
“It starts with leadership at all levels that needs to put the word out to their troops that we’re all in this fight together, whether we’re fighting hurricanes or whether we’re fighting international terrorism,” Stephan said.
“We have important authorities and capacities and resources, but alone they will be ineffective at dealing with any of the threats we face in the 21st century risk environment,” he said. “But, if we band together with others and preserve our authorities and our capacities, work and integrate together with others, we can get the job done. There’s been increasingly less of this type of individual, of this type of bureaucratic allegiance or loyalty. . . but there’s still some important pockets out there.”
Daniel Fowler can be reached at dfowler@cq.com.
Comments
Although I agree with Mr. Stephan, I must ask: Since when was this the party of the "collective good". Isn't each individual, business and yes agency supposed to look out only for themselves and make it on their own. Or I suppose big government is only good when it comes to eavesdrpping, limiting civil liberties, torturing etc.
what a manly display of republican manhood -- talk gleefully about shooting someone in the back. it figures.
I'm not exactly sure what things this Bush administration official is trying to do but the bureaucracies are stopping, but I'll give the bureaucracy the benefit of the doubt. We are talking about by far the worst executive branch in modern times here, So, on average, the country is probably better off when they are prevented from doing something than when they get what they want.
When Bush came to office, specifically in the DOJ, he threw out many career officers and many resigned their post because Bush was putting in his cronies, who we have now to thank for our current situation. You can look at what happened during Katrina and the leadre of FEMA, Brown, he was another Bush appointee. I am not saying that Mr Stephans is wrong but to be informative to the American public a line need to be drawn on what types of Beuracrats from which insititutions are impediments and why. Simply telling the American public that there are career government emplyees who are worried about protecting their own is nothing new. I have grown up around the military and it is no different than the government beuracrats Mr Stephan describes. And yet they signed up and swore an oath to the constitution and yet day after I day I see military people only worried about their won issues, rather than the countries. A little more specificity would help.
I have come to the conclusion that in all things it is bigness that is the enemy, neither ideology nor biology nor theology but bigness. Big business, big government, big labor, big money, big crime, big media, big religion -- it is their bigness alone that predisposes them to predatory behavior.
"We have to work together with Congress," he said. "We have to work within the administration and I'm talking about any administration, Republican or Democrats. They all are served by bureaucrats and those are the people that impede progress in the war on terrorism and the war on Mother Nature. And we have to figure out a way to overcome that." Bureaucrats get in the way of the War on Mother Nature"? This story is a spoof.
"It's the 'career bureaucrats that know they are going to outlast any political leadership that is put above them' who are the problem, said Stephan, who noted that he's had them in his 'own organization.'" Stripped down to its functional meaning, that sounds like what he's recommending is a reduction of the non-partisan civil service and an increase in patronage positions. Stephan appears to believe that the practical solution is increased politicization of DHS.
I love how it never occurs to political appointees that resistance to their plans might occur in part because their plans are stupid, self-defeating, needlessly dangerous et cetera. Maybe it's watching you empty your '30-round clip' into our backs, while we do the work that justifies your paycheck, that leaves us in a skeptical mood about giving 110% to implement your vague notions of the right thing to do.
what a blowhard, and what a poor leadership example. If that's truly how he feels, he should quit. Maybe join Blackwater...
Let's not forget that moments before a hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld had declared war on the bureaucracy that he was responsible for leading. Reflecs the same offensive and un-patriotic mindset.
The problem at DHS is not the bureaucrats. It's the stupid legislation that took fourteen different agencies, some good and some bad, and put them all together in one big, dysfunctional department. Putting them all together has done nothing to provide greater security; it has only resulted in the turf wars that this gentleman is talking about. And the decision to put them all together, the decision that is causing all these problems, was not made by the bureaucrats; it was made by Congress and the Bush administration.
While I am no fan of the Bush Administration, which has been one of the worst in the nation's history, I think I know what's going on here. Anybody here remember the old British sitcom "Yes Minister" (and it's follow on "Yes Prime Minister") It's about a bumbling, inept cabinet minister, the wonderfully named Jim Hacker MP, whose party (never named ) has come to powe, and who has been named Minister for Administrative Affairs ( the "DAA" -- a fictional department). He soon finds out that his chief opponent in implementing his party's platform (open government , eliminating waste, etc.) isn't the opposing party, but the Civil Service -- and in his case, his own Permanent Secretary-- Sir Humphrey Appleby--who has his own agenda and reminds his underlings that "ministers come and go--we are the ones who REALLY run this department" and so forth. The writers of the program mention that many of the actual episodes are derived from actual events and that they had no shortage of ideas because people from all levels of government would send them stories of bureaucracy run amok. I would mandate watching this program to anyone wishing to work in government --it's quite informative--and I've run into the same tactics used by Sir Humphrey (usually without his wit and charm) in my dealing with the health care bureaucracies in the Commonwealth of Massachussetts
All the cubes around that guy are strangely empty. Seriously, in this day and age, joking about mass murder of co-workers ought to have serious consequences, like immediate firing.
..and whats with referring to the his personnel as "troops". They are employees, not enlisted soldiers who must follow every detail of there orders or be court-martialed. If he wanted to command troops, he should have stayed int he airforce. civilian employees have the right to let their bosses know that they are wrong, or to show their appreciation for their boss by leaving (as so many experienced skilled civil service employees have).
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