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<figcaption class="image-caption">Tom Ridge, after being named the first Homeland Security director</figcaption></figure>

On November 26, 2002, George W. Bush signed the Homeland Security Act. The New York Times explained the new department’s mission:

It will bring together nearly 170,000 workers from 22 agencies with widely varying histories and missions, like the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, the federal security guards in airports and the Customs Service. The goal is to improve security… strengthen the ability of federal, state and local authorities to respond to an attack…

Bush’s pen-flick turned into the largest state reorganization since the creation of the Department of Defense, as those 170,000 employees turned into 260,000 by 2024. Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman imagined a single mega-agency could better coordinate intelligence, border control, and other missions to prevent attack. That the U.S. already had more than enough capability to prevent the original 9/11 (the FBI failed to stop suspects already being monitored) didn’t matter. The Homeland bill was “politically expedient” for Bush, who signed over objections of fiscal conservatives in his staff, who worried a blank check for “security” would create a spending suckhole.

Twenty-two years later, the DHS has not only become a mountain of waste, it stands among the biggest threats to democracy we face. Ostensibly designed to hunt terrorists abroad, it sees the American population as the primary enemy, wilfully confusing threats to its funding with “terrorism.”

Buried in the story of former presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard being stalked as a terrorist threat by a DHS sub-agency, the Transportation Security Administration, was a grotesque detail. As Gabbard noted, documents were released earlier this year detailing the work of the (thankfully short-lived) Homeland Intelligence Experts Group, another DHS “advisory panel.” This fledgling Politburo was dominated by party and intelligence figures in much the same way as its Russian counterpart:

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