A New Sheriff in Town

With only a few weeks to go, the President-elect has 689 key positions to nominate for leadership positions requiring Senate confirmation.

Among them, the Department of Homeland Security has 16 such positions to be filled, only one of which has been named as of this writing: DHS Secretary: Gen. John F Kelly, and no one yet for Under Secretary for Transportation Security Administration. Several former TSA Administrators were former military personnel, and there is reason to believe that trend may continue.

Further down the pecking order, the Plum Book lists 286 positions in DHS, which includes TSA as one of 22 sub agencies. For the policy non—geeks, the Plum Book is a list of roughly 4,000 political appointees throughout government who work with about 2.1 million career civil servants, and who are traditionally the great bulk of staff turnover when a new administration comes in. There are at least four basic types of appointments within those 4,000 slots, both with and without Senate confirmation, so tune up those resumes and have a chat with your Congressman; you still may have a chance.

One of the problems that General Kelly and at least four other potential military appointees face even before they measure their new offices for camouflage drapes, is a long-standing 1947 Act that requires a seven-year gap between military service and control of a civilian agency of government … and there’s the rub. In addition to requiring a waiver of that constraint, much apprehension has been raised regarding Mr. Trump’s rhetoric regarding military matters in general, and DHS- specific matters specifically, that they may become heavily militaristic in their approach to problem-solving – recall that during the campaign he said the military had been “reduced to rubble” and that “he might have to fire them all.”

That leaves a great deal of doubt in how Mr. Trump may seek to govern. But it also raises a bigger question: What does Trump, whose military experience consists of military boarding school and five draft deferments, understand about how military officers manage their operations? Most have spent their entire career in the military environment, including the past 15 years in various foreign wars.

Among the 22 agencies under the DHS umbrella are TSA, CBP, ICE, Coast Guard, Secret Service, and a lot of other LEO support… Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Federal Protective Service and more, most of whom carry badges and guns. Indeed, I’m reminded of the kerfuffle a few years ago, when there was a serious effort to arm all TSA screeners with weapons, which thankfully didn’t off the ground. What could possibly go wrong? Then, TSA successfully lobbied to swap their front-line officers’ sewn-on cloth badges for gold-colored metallic badges so they’d look more law-enforcementish. Appearances apparently matter.

The concern with TSA specifically is that it is not, repeat, not a law enforcement agency. That’s the work of the US Congress which created DHS in haste immediately after 9/11, threw in a cluster of loosely related badges, and in a particularly ill-advised move, brought in the Secret Service to organize and operate TSA. I was there; it got downright ugly for a while. To its credit, TSA has evolved considerably in the 15 years since, including some good ex-military leadership, but it has taken some time and effort from a lot of embedded civil servants bringing the necessary FAA AVSEC background, to bring some hard-earned civil aviation experience to the table. But consider that Mr. Trump was also quoted saying “he got more training at a military prep school than guys who actually joined the military.” We’re left to wonder which style of governance will prevail in matters of homeland security – the real General, or his prep-schooled boss. I’m a bit afraid of both.