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The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a Cabinet department of the federal government of the United States that is concerned with protecting the American homeland and the safety of American citizens. This department was created primarily from a conglomeration of existing federal agencies in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
1 History
The department was established on November 25, 2002 by the Homeland Security Act and officially began operation on January 24, 2003. After months of discussion about employee rights and benefits and "rider" portions of the bill, Congress passed it shortly after the midterm elections, and it was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush. It was intended to consolidate U.S. executive branch organizations related to " homeland security" into a single cabinet agency. The new Department is headed by former governor of Pennsylvania Tom Ridge.
It was the largest government reorganization in 50 years (since the United States Department of Defense was created). The department assumed a number of government functions previously in other departments. It superseded, but did not replace the Office of Homeland Security, which retained an advisory role.
Controversy about adoption centered on whether the Federal Bureau of InvestigationFor other uses of the initials FBI see FBI (disambiguation). The Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI is the principal investigative arm of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). Title 28, United States Code (U. Code), Section 533, which authorizes and the Central Intelligence AgencyThis article is about the foreign intelligence service of the United States of America. For other uses of the term CIA see CIA (disambiguation . The Central Intelligence Agency CIA is the United States' foreign intelligence agency, responsible for obtaini should be incorporated in part or in whole (both were not). The bill itself was also controversial for the presence of unrelated riders, as well as eliminating some standard civil serviceA civil servant or public servant is a civilian career public-sector employee working for a government department or agency. Further workers in non-departmental public bodies may also be classed as civil servants for the purpose of producing statistics. and labor protections from employees of the department. President Bush wanted the right to fire an employee within Homeland Security immediately for security reasons, for incompetence, or insubordination. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle wanted an appeals process that could take up to 18 months or as little as one month.
On March 12, 2002, the Homeland Security Advisory System, a color-coded terrorism risk advisory scale, was created as a Presidential Directive to provide a "comprehensive and effective means to disseminate information regarding the risk of terrorist acts to Federal, State, and local authorities and to the American people." Since January 2003, it has been administered in coordination with the DHS.
2 Organization
