America’s post-9/11 increase in homeland security efforts might make you feel safer, or maybe they leave you feeling violated and cramped. But it’s made many revolving-door lobbyists feel much richer. The crater in lower Manhattan and the hole in the Pentagon spawned a nearly trillion-dollar homeland security operation, including a new Cabinet department, new congressional committees, and new local government jobs. A Homeland Security-Industrial Complex now towers alongside the Military-Industrial Complex that President Eisenhower made famous in his 1960 farewell address.
With $100 billion in Homeland Security contracts since 9/11, defense giants like Lockheed Martin had a new pot of government money to divvy up. Specialized security companies — like the guys who make airport scanners — suddenly became huge government contractors. And the politicians and bureaucrats who got in on the ground floor of this new agency cashed out as consultants and lobbyists for this burgeoning industry.
Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge was George W. Bush’s pick as director of homeland security until Congress created the Cabinet department, and then Ridge became the department’s first secretary. Ridge left DHS in 2005 but he never returned to Pennsylvania.
Now ensconced inside the Beltway, Ridge started a consulting firm, Ridge Global, populating the firm with his DHS colleagues. Homeland Security Chief of Staff J. Duncan Campbell and spokeswoman Michele Nix joined Ridge Global along with their colleagues Christopher Furlow and Susan Galen. Among other consulting work, this crew, brimming with the original Homeland Security public servants, helped Albania set up its homeland security apparatus. Ridge also joined the board of directors of Homeland Security contractor Deloitte, which has raked in a half-billion dollars in DHS deals.
Within months of leaving DHS, Ridge owned a million-dollar home in Chevy Chase.
Ridge’s deputy, Adm. James Loy, filled in for a spell as acting homeland security secretary. A few weeks later Loy, who had also served as the first head of the Transportation Security Administration (division of DHS), cashed out, joining the homeland-security practice of the Cohen Group, a consulting firm founded by former Defense Secretary William Cohen. Loy now sits on the board of directors of Lockheed Martin, the No. 1 recipient of Homeland Security contracts in 2010. Since the department’s founding in 2002, Lockheed has chalked up at least $2.4 billion in contracts.
Michael Chertoff ran DHS for the rest of the Bush administration. Then he got a gig at K Street giant Covington & Burling and started the Chertoff Group. One of his clients is Osi Systems, whose quarter-billion dollars in DHS contracts includes the TSA contract given to Osi subsidiary Rapiscan for the airport “nudie-scanners” that see through your clothes.
Chertoff is not registered as a lobbyist, but Rapiscan’s official lobbyists include veterans of the homeland-security revolving door. Rapiscan lobbyist Susan Carr is a former legislative aide to Rep. David Price, D-N.C., who chaired the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee and championed funding for airport security. Scanner company AS&E was another TSA contractor, and its lobbyists include TSA alumni Chad Wolf and Tom Blank.
The first undersecretary of border and transportation security was former Sen. Tim Hutchinson. Hutchinson now lobbies his old department on behalf of a handful of clients.
One of Hutchinson’s underlings, C. Stewart Verdery, DHS’s first assistant secretary for border and transportation security, founded Monument Policy Group, which lobbies Congress and DHS on cybersecurity, border security, and aviation security on Boeing’s behalf. Smiths Detection, another scanner company, is a Monument client.
The giant government and for-profit homeland-security sector likely makes us at least a bit safer. But it has huge costs: a recent academic paper estimated $690 billion in direct spending and $417 billion lost because of delays and insurance and other inconveniences. And it’s not going away. National-security reporter Eli Lake last week quoted current DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano saying our homeland security apparatus will not shrink any time soon.
So, is the marginal improvement in safety worth the costs? This is not the sort of calculation our leaders are likely to make. For one thing, there’s political pressure to “do everything possible” to prevent another terrorist attack. But just as important, there is now a growing entrenched set of special interests who profit more when homeland-security spending grows more — regardless of whether it makes us safer.
The interests of this Homeland Security-Industrial Complex are not identical to the interests of the American people. But this crew of former public officials is the single most influential group on the matter. This is bad for the cause of good government. And it’s another casualty of 9/11.
Timothy P.Carney, The Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Monday and Thursday, and his stories and blog posts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com.
