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C. Stewart Verdery Jr., the Homeland Security Department's assistant secretary for border and transportation security policy and planning, announced his resignation Thursday.

Verdery's resignation comes amid the departures of a handful of other senior managers who helped start the department and as a growing chorus of critics says the department needs better long-term planning and strategic thinking.

In an interview with Government Executive Thursday, Verdery said he agreed DHS needs "a more robust planning capacity."

"I think that would be of great help to the leadership," he said.

Susan Collins, R-Maine, chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, recently said that reports on management challenges at DHS have made a "compelling case" for creating a new undersecretary for long-term policy strategy. She said the move could be part of a homeland security reauthorization measure her panel is likely to draft.

Verdery has served in his position since June 2003. Before joining DHS, he was senior legislative adviser in the Washington office of Vivendi Universal Entertainment, a media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered in Paris. He said he plans to find work in the private sector and is evaluating options.

In his resignation letter to President Bush, Verdery cited several accomplishments his office and the Border and Transportation Security directorate have made. Specifically, he noted the deployment of the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program, which screens immigrants coming into the country, and successful negotiations with the European Union over aviation issues and sharing airline passenger information.

"However, as the administration and DHS move to create the broad policy office that the department deserves," Verdery wrote, "it is an appropriate time for me to depart and allow the enhanced position to be defined by and filled on a permanent basis to support the new secretary."

Verdery told Government Executive that there is a difference between policy and planning. He said the department has done a good job of hashing out short-term policy matters, but long-term planning has lagged, mainly because DHS is only two years old, has not had the appropriate staff for strategic planning, and has spent a considerable amount of time meeting congressional mandates.

"Now's the time to take on that bigger and better effort," he said.

Verdery also acknowledged that Homeland Security needs to do more to secure cargo. For example, he said, the department should decide if more regulations are needed for cargo security as opposed to relying on voluntary actions. He said DHS is implementing a regulation for sealing cargo and evaluating additional rules.

COMMENTS

• Well, call me simple, but I can only hope that with our up and coming leadership that I finally will get a bigger cubicle. Anyone know of any government studies showing what a GS-13 rates for space when assigned a cubicle? Go Patriots!! A Truly Special Agent Posted February 5, 2005 1:59 PM
• I couldn't agree more, but I would go a step further. This whole department was poorly planned from the beginning, by outside "experts" and think-tankers with little or no actual experience in border security, who decided to merge 22 agencies, many with widely diverse missions, together. The U.S. Customs Service, America's oldest law enforcement agency with 214 years of service, honor and tradition, was eliminated, even though Congress passed Homeland Security legislation that actually was supposed to eliminate the dysfunctional INS. These "experts" then threw Customs and INS agents together in ICE, for the stated reason that they often investigated the same crimes, and frequently ran into each other on cases. Nothing could be further from the truth, as Customs and INS agents had very different jobs. They also separated the agents from the uniformed inspectors, which is like separating detectives from police officers in a traditional police department. This makes absolutely no sense, and in practice actually impedes this nation's security, by creating barriers between CBP and ICE. To make matters even worse, they threw the Federal Protective Service and Federal Air Marshals into ICE as well, even though what they do has absolutely no connection with Customs or INS investigations. Finally, they allowed the FBI to take away the successful Customs initiative against terrorist financing, Operation Green Quest, and stood by as the FBI asserted jurisdiction over export investigations, another traditional Customs mission. The Coast Guard is performing vessel searches formerly conducted by Customs, the DEA is seeking to become more of a force in money laundering, and so on, all with no protest from DHS or ICE management. To sum up, the creation of DHS was a kneejerk reaction to 9/11, and was not well planned or thought out at all. Ironically, DHS has no jurisdiction over terrorism investigations, other than the crumbs thrown to ICE by the FBI. Now that's what I call planning! GovExec.com reader Posted February 4, 2005 11:48 AM
• So the assistant secretary for planning quits and tells us we need better planning. Does anyone see the irony? If we had better planning we would not have hired him in the first place. Someone help me to understand why we can't recruit top Pentagon brass who have the planning experience we need, once they retire? Taxpayers pay for top management degrees for these guys so they can go to work at Boeing? What do we get? A manager from a movie company, has anyone seen a French movie? They suck! I'm tired of hearing how difficult it is to manage 180,000 DHS employees. Especially, when half of them are asleep or feeling me up at the airport! GovExec.com reader Posted February 3, 2005 7:02 PM