Homeland Security Appointments Watch

President Bush nominated Charles McQueary of North Carolina to be Homeland Security's science and technology undersecretary late last week. McQueary is the retired president of General Dynamics Advanced Technology Systems and a former board member of the National Defense Industrial Association. He was with AT&T/Lucent Technologies from 1987 to 1997 as president and vice president, and with AT&T Bell Laboratories from 1971 to 1987 as director and department head.

The president has not yet nominated someone to be the information analysis undersecretary, the other key position in the department for the high-tech sector.

January 30

The Senate voted 99-0 Thursday to confirm Gordon England as deputy secretary of the Homeland Security Department. England, a former executive with General Dynamics and other aerospace firms, has served as Navy Secretary for the past two years.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge also announced two officials who will play leading roles in a major reorganization of agencies that protect U.S. borders. Robert Bonner, current commissioner of the Customs Service, will head a new Bureau of Customs and Border Protection. Bonner, a former federal prosecutor who logged time in the Reagan and previous Bush administrations, has helped Customs develop several homeland security initiatives, including the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism.

Ridge also announced Michael Garcia, acting commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, will lead a new Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Garcia, who has been acting INS chief since December 1, previously served as assistant secretary for export enforcement at the Commerce Department. He is a career federal prosecuter who in 2001 helped convict four members of al Qaeda for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

Both will report to Asa Hutchinson, Undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security.

January 29

Asa Hutchinson was sworn in as the first Undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security at a Washington ceremony Wednesday.

Hutchinson, a former Republican congressman from Arkansas, has led the Drug Enforcement Agency for the past two years. In his new post Hutchinson will supervise nine of 10 employees in the new department and integrate several agencies with responsibilities for protecting U.S. borders.

January 22

The Senate voted 94-0 Wednesday to confirm Tom Ridge as secretary of the new Department of Homeland Security.

Senators from both sides of the aisle effusively praised Ridge prior to the vote, while warning that he faces serious challenges in coordinating the efforts of the 22 agencies slated to move into the new department.

At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee last week, Ridge said he would hold Homeland Security agencies to strict performance targets, and work with employees to improve management of their operations.

January 21

One name circulating to be chief human capital officer at Homeland Security is Melissa Allen, currently assistant secretary for administration at the Transportation Department. Allen has some background in human resources, but has also dealt with a wide array of management issues, from technology to procurement to finances. Allen's background gives her a broader view of how an organization functions than someone who has strictly a human resources background, making her a strong candidate for the job, some observers say. She may be headed to the department in some other capacity, however.

On Jan. 21, Transportation officials announced that Allen would leave the department to work on transition issues for Homeland Security, leaving open the question of what official role Allen will take at the new agency. Vincent Taylor, the former deputy chief of staff for Transportation, will take over Allen's old job as assistant secretary for administration.

Under the legislation creating Homeland Security, every major federal department and agency must name a chief human capital officer. These executives will be responsible for developing workforce strategies and making sure agencies have the right people in the right places to complete their missions. The newly created position is a step up from traditional human resources directors, who have generally concerned themselves only with compensation and benefits, workplace policies and other day-to-day management issues. The chief human capital officer position will be even more important at Homeland Security, because the department will have broader power over its personnel than agencies operating under the standard civil service system.

John Tritak, director of the Commerce Department's Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office, has left the government and will not take a position at the new Homeland Security Department, as many in the high-tech industry had expected. "This was something he was planning to do for awhile," a department spokesman said of his departure, which was final Jan. 10.

January 13

President Bush Friday nominated Michael Brown, a top official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to serve as undersecretary for emergency preparedness and response in the Homeland Security Department. Brown, deputy director of FEMA, was previously executive director of the Independent Electrical Contractors.

Charles McQueary was also tapped Friday to serve as undersecretary for science and technology in the new agency. McQueary is the retired president of General Dynamics and a former member of the Board of Directors of the National Defense Industrial Association. Other candidates considered for the top science position in the new department included Penrose "Parney" Albright, the senior director for research and development in the Office of Homeland Security, and former Rep. Connie Morella, R-Md. McQueary is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a doctorate in engineering mechanics.

January 10

Confirming Tom Ridge as the nation's first Homeland Security secretary and Gordon England as deputy secretary will be the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee's first task in the 108th Congress, the panel's chairwoman said Thursday.

The Senate this week received President Bush's nominations for Ridge, who now heads the White House Office of Homeland Security, and England, the current Navy secretary, to head the new Homeland Security Department. "I hope to move very quickly on that," Maine Republican Susan Collins said during an interview with National Journal Group reporters.

January 9

President Bush Wednesday tapped W. Ralph Basham, chief of staff of the Transportation Security Administration, to be the new Secret Service director. Basham had served at TSA for the past year. Prior to his assignment, he served as the director of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Ga.

Basham is a career Secret Service agent. He began working for the agency in 1970 as a special agent in the Washington field office. He has held the top positions at the agency's Cleveland and Washington offices. He has also served as special agent in charge of the Vice Presidential Protection Division.

Two names have been circulating for the position of undersecretary of science and technology, who would oversee research and development of counterterrorism technologies: Penrose "Parney" Albright, the senior director for research and development in the Office of Homeland Security, and former Rep. Connie Morella, R-Md.

Albright has extensive experience in national security R&D projects. Most recently, he managed programs at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and prior to that he served in the science and technology division of the Institute for Defense Analyses. Albright also has expertise in ballistic missile defense and weapons of mass destruction countermeasures.

Morella lost her House seat to Democrat Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland state lawmaker, in the November 2002 elections. She has long been recognized as a supporter of career federal employees. She also served on the House Science Committee, which created the undersecretary position.

January 8

President Bush on Wednesday nominated Steven Cooper as the chief information officer for the Homeland Security Department. Cooper currently serves as special assistant to the president and senior director for information integration in the White House Office of Homeland Security.

Before his White House service, Cooper was the chief information officer for Corporate Staffs and the executive director of strategic information delivery at Corning. He also served as director of corporate information systems at the pharmaceutical maker Eli Lilly.

December 18, 2002

Army Maj. Gen. Bruce M. Lawlor, the senior director for protection and prevention in the Office of Homeland Security, is expected to be named chief of staff in the new department, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

Before working in the Homeland Security Office, Lawlor served as the first commanding general of the Defense Department's Joint Task Force Civil Support, an organization designed to help out civilian emergency agencies in the event of a terrorist attack or other disaster. Lawlor is a Vietnam veteran and former intelligence officer.

December 17

Janet Hale, currently the chief financial officer at the Health and Human Services Department, appears to be a leading contender for the same spot at Homeland Security. Hale, who is also the HHS assistant secretary for budget, technology and finance, would bring vast financial management experience to the job. She was an associate director at the Office of Management and Budget in the early 1990s. Prior to that, she served as the Transportation Department's assistant secretary for budget and programs.

After a five-year hiatus from government in the mid-1990s, Hale returned to public service as policy director for Sen.-elect Elizabeth Dole's failed 1998 presidential bid. Two years later, Hale became associate administrator of finance for the House of Representatives. She moved to Health and Human Services in June 2001.

Hale could also bring a controversial past. The Nation magazine reported in January that as a senior official at the Housing and Urban Development Department in the mid-1980s, Hale "was a second-tier figure in a HUD scandal that involved politically connected developers winning big-money contracts and favors from the department." The magazine cited Wall Street Journal reporting that Hale approved waivers of regulations on a construction project sought by a former law partner of then secretary Samuel Pierce, who is currently the subject of an independent counsel investigation of alleged fraud in the administration of department programs.

November 27

The buzz among acquisition experts is that Al Burman, who served as the administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy longer than anyone in history, will be tapped as the chief of acquisition in the new department. Burman wrote a 1991 policy letter that established performance-based contracting as a goal of procurement reform. That contracting style has received the endorsement of senior advisers in the Office of Homeland Security and is being tested at the Transportation Security Administration under a $1 billion information technology contract.

It's still unclear where in the Homeland Security organization the leading acquisition official would sit. Two likely spots are reporting to the undersecretary for management-the de facto chief operating officer of the department-or to the undersecretary for science and technology. Acquisition watchers say Burman, who served in two Republican administrations, is a palatable political choice, and that his deputies would be taken from the ranks of career officials.

November 25

President Bush Monday signed legislation creating the Homeland Security Department and announced his picks to head three key positions in the new organization.

Office of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge is the nominee for secretary of the new department. The announcement came as no surprise, even though Ridge previously had been reluctant to take the job.

Also, as expected, the president nominated Navy Secretary Gordon England as the department's deputy secretary. Before taking his Navy post last year, England was executive vice president of General Dynamics Corp.

Finally, the president nominated Asa Hutchinson, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, to serve as undersecretary for border and transportation security. Sixty-six percent of the department's budget and 93 percent of its personnel will be devoted to this segment, which will create a single federal entity to manage all entry into the United States. Earlier this month, Hutchinson linked his efforts at DEA to the fight against terrorism, saying drug trafficking funds terrorist organizations. "[They] work out of the same jungle, they plan in the same cave and they train in the same desert," Hutchinson said.

November 22

President Bush is expected to appoint White House homeland security chief Tom Ridge as the new Homeland Security Secretary, National Journal reports this week. Ridge previously had been reluctant to take the job, because he feared that it could be a bureaucratic quagmire that might muddy his high-quality reputation. That, in turn, could have jeopardized his hope to be at the head of the line should Bush need a new vice president in 2004, a well-placed GOP source told the magazine. But Ridge apparently decided that Bush would not take kindly to a rejection of the new Cabinet post.

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta all but publicly confirmed that Ridge will be the nominee in an appearance with Ridge Monday at Washington's Ronald Reagan National Airport to mark the federalization of the passenger screening workforce at the nation's major airports. Mineta noted that the Transportation Security Administration, which oversees passenger screening, would become part of the Homeland Security Department. He said: "If the rumors are true"--then he turned and looked deliberately at Ridge for several seconds--"the country will have a superb candidate to head this important agency."

John Gannon, the former CIA deputy director for intelligence, now looks to be the likely pick to head the department's intelligence and infrastructure protection division. Gannon was expected to receive a top position in the new department, The Washington Post reported Monday.

Before Ridge made Gannon a member of the White House's homeland security transition team, he was vice chairman of Intellibridge Corp., a Washington-based firm that provides customized intelligence and information gathering services for corporations and government agencies. It's been presumed that Ridge brought Gannon back into government in preparation for the posting as undersecretary for information analysis and infrastructure protection at Homeland Security.

Gannon also headed the interagency National Intelligence Council, where he coordinated the work of 11 federal agencies. And he oversaw an internal reorganization at the CIA in 1997, when the Directorate of Intelligence cut some mid-level managers in order to raise the pay of analysts, many of whom had been leaving the agency.

On the technology front, it seems all but certain that Steve Cooper will get the chief information officer job. He's been serving as CIO of the Office of Homeland Security for months and knows more than anyone about how IT in the new agency is taking shape. Other candidates, including Jim Flyzik, a senior adviser to Ridge, and former FEMA CIO Ron Miller, are leaving government or going to other departments, giving Cooper an unobstructed path to the new position.