← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Walter Yannis
Thread ID: 20556 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2005-10-07
2005-10-07 11:19 | User Profile
[URL=http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/12708530.htm]Miami Herald[/URL]
Posted on Thu, Sep. 22, 2005
An unqualified nominee for a top job
OUR OPINION: SEASONED PROFESSIONAL NEEDED TO LEAD KEY DHS AGENCY
Even in the surreal world of Washington politics, this is hard to believe: A Senate committee could approve a person with virtually no law-enforcement or immigration experience to head the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, one of the most troubled and critical agencies on the front lines of national security.
Qualifications, professionalism and a solid track record should be the key factors in filling such a top government job -- not political connections. Julie L. Myers, a lawyer who has held numerous staff jobs at the White House and Justice, Customs and Treasury Departments, is not qualified to lead ICE, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security.
Ms. Myers, 36, briefly worked for DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff when he was at Justice, is married to Mr. Chertoff's current chief of staff and is the niece of Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff. Those are nice associations to have, but they aren't qualifications for a job requiring an ability to protect our country from terrorists, drug-traffickers and others wishing us harm.
Lawmakers and President Bush, who nominated Ms. Myers for the ICE job in June, should take a cue from the Michael Brown fiasco. A political appointee with insider connections, Mr. Brown resigned as the FEMA chief after his inexperience and lack of qualifications became all too clear in the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina. The same mistakes should not be courted with ICE, the agency tasked with keeping terrorists from entering or staying in the country.
ICE includes the Border Patrol, which is key to controlling illegal immigration; all immigration detention and deportation operations; immigration inspectors who screen foreign visitors at U.S. ports; and customs operations, among other services. The head of ICE will manage 22,000 employees and a $4 billion budget. In Ms. Myers' most-related job, she managed 170 employees and a $25 million budget for a year as assistant secretary for export enforcement at the Commerce Department.
That's simply not enough managerial or law-enforcement experience to qualify her to run ICE. Nor does having worked on money-laundering and drug-smuggling cases give her the policing know-how essential for the person who will lead the nation's largest law-enforcement operation. Also troubling is her lack of experience with U.S. immigration law or enforcement -- a system so complex and dysfunctional that it confounds seasoned experts.
Senators should reject Ms. Myers' nomination. The person to head ICE needs to be a field- and time-tested leader who understands the tough challenges that immigration and customs enforcement entail.
2005-10-07 16:43 | User Profile
[url]http://www.gsnmagazine.com/feb_05_03/chertoff_chertoff.html[/url] Chertoff & Chertoff: New power couple
With his nomination of federal appellate judge, Michael Chertoff, to be secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), President Bush may have scored a political "twofer."
When the Newark, NJ-based Chertoff returns to Washington, he will bring with him not only his hands-on experience as a senior level Justice Department counter-terrorism warrior, but also an important political asset ââ¬â his wife.
In the wake of 9/11, as Michael Chertoff, was working to ferret out other potential terrorists and developing cross-agency information sharing and multi-agency collaboration to detect and disrupt terrorist operations, his wife Meryl was equally busy in her role as director of the State of New Jerseyââ¬â¢s Washington, DC, office, strategizing ways to get congressional lawmakers and the executive branch to fund homeland security projects for the state.
"As the governorââ¬â¢s primary Washington contact following the September 11, 2001 attacks, she spearheaded state efforts to secure earmarks and grants for New Jersey homeland security and transportation projects from Congress and federal agencies as part of the stateââ¬â¢s relief and recovery efforts," according to a brief biography of Meryl posted on the Web site of her most recent employer, Trenton, NJ-based lobby and public relations firm Nancy H. Becker Associates.
Meryl resigned as the firmââ¬â¢s vice president and legal counsel after President Bush nominated her husband to be DHS secretary.
Not only is Meryl, 46, experienced in lobbying Congress and the agencies, but she also has worked at the very agency that her husband now heads.
Indeed, in 2002 Meryl left her position with the State of New Jersey to become a "disaster response branch chief" in the Office of Legislative Affairs at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In this position, Meryl briefed Congress on various FEMA response and relief efforts, such as the February 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster and the World Trade Center cleanup.
As a member of FEMA's "task force on external communications" she subsequently helped with FEMA's transition into the new DHS in 2003.
Like her husband, Meryl earned her undergraduate degree at Harvard (Harvard-Radcliffe College, to be precise) and a subsequent law degree from Harvard University School of Law. Her degrees were conferred five years after those of her slightly older spouse.
The two were married in 1988 in what was Michaelââ¬â¢s second marriage. He and his first wife were divorced in 1981.
With the arrival of the Chertoff team in the nationââ¬â¢s capital, Washington could soon see the emergence of what may be the perfect homeland security power couple ââ¬â Chertoff & Chertoff, highly educated, politically savvy, and practically old hands in the evolving realm of homeland security.