The Homeland Security Team

What does “security” mean?

For Team Chertoff it means “securing the future of your organization” through outsourcing and government contracts.

It’s the job of the revived Team Chertoff -- in the form of the national security consulting agency the Chertoff Group – to bring the government to its clients and its client to the government.

The government is not just the Department of Homeland Security – where Michael Chertoff served as secretary for Bush’s second term – but as the Chertoff Group explains: ‘Our principals have worked closely together for years, as leaders of the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the National Security Agency and the CIA.”

It’s the team that brought us the immigrant crackdown, the border fence, surge in immigrant imprisonment, the Iraq war, the outsourcing boom at DHS and in intelligence, Guantanamo Bay prison, and the Hurricane Katrina disaster response.

Yet Team Chertoff – “New Team, Long-Term Colleagues” – boasts of their government record. It’s no wonder. At DHS alone, outsourcing means $15 billion annually to private firms, while during the Bush administration intelligence outsourcing grew to 70% of the estimated $66 billion annual intelligence budget.

“We came through it together,” says the Chertoff Group, “And the United States came out stronger. We reorganized the country’s disaster response system, so we’ll never again see anything like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. We vastly improved interagency communications, so federal and local agencies won’t be in the dark about who’s doing what. We developed a whole new approach to border security and counterterrorism, and since 9/11 not a single person has died from a terrorist attack within our borders.

“We came to know each other under the most trying circumstances. We came to trust each other with our lives. We work incredibly well – together – under pressure.

“And once you get to know us, you’ll understand how valuable we can be to securing the future of your organization.”

Here are Chertoff Group-airbrushed bios of its team:

• The Honorable Charles E. Allen
• Larry Castro
• The Honorable Michael Chertoff
• The Honorable Jay M. Cohen
• Nathaniel T. G. Fogg
• General Michael V. Hayden
• The Honorable Jeffrey W. Runge, MD, FACEP
• The Honorable Paul A. Schneider
• Dr. Gary M. Shiffman
• Chad C. Sweet
• Dr. J. Bennet Waters

Security means big business. Security means a reconstituted military-industrial complex comprising intelligence, homeland security, and defense – a national security complex.

See related:

Tom Barry, “Former Bush Security Chiefs Find Terrorism Obsession Can Be Profitable,” CIP’s Americas Program.

Tom Barry, “Not Systemic Failure, But Failed System,” Border Lines Blog.