# A Former Insane Asylum Is a Fitting Place for the Mess That Is Homeland Security 

Since 9/11, spending under the rubric “homeland security,” both inside and outside the department, dwarfs even the New Deal. 

March 24, 2014 • Commentary 

By [Gene Healy](https://www.cato.org/people/gene-healy) 

This article appeared on *[DC Examiner](http://www.washingtonexaminer.com)* on March 24, 2014. 

It’s “a boondoggle of epic proportions,” an exasperated Rep. Richard Hudson, R‑N.C., told Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson at a [recent congressional hearing](http://homeland.house.gov/hearing/hearing-secretary-s-vision-future-challenges-and-priorities), “if you’re in the middle of a huge mess, you stop digging.”

The specific object of Hudson’s ire was department’s massive new headquarters complex in southeast Washington, the biggest federal construction project since the Pentagon. As the *Washington Times* [reported Sunday](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/23/dhs-under-fire-with-st-elizabeths-plan-over-budget/?page=1), the project — featuring amenities like eco-friendly “rainwater toilets” and sustainable Brazilian hardwood decking — is running at least a decade late and over a billion dollars short.

Since 9/11, spending under the rubric “homeland security,” both inside and outside the department, dwarfs even the New Deal.

But the larger point applies to the department itself and the nebulous, all-encompassing rubric under which it’s organized. “Homeland Security” is a mess; “stop digging.”

“We should finish what we started,” Johnson countered, “the morale of DHS, unity of the mission, that emphasis would go a long way if we could get to a headquarters.”

The department, which ranks dead last among large agencies on the Partnership for Public Service’s 2013 “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government” list, could use a morale boost. But it would take a pretty goth sensibility to be cheered up by a move to the site of what Congress established in 1855 as “[St. Elizabeths Government Hospital for the Insane](http://stelizabethsdevelopment.com/history.html).”

The hospital’s former employees include the inventor of the “icepick lobotomy”; among its famous inmates were disgruntled federal job-seeker Charles Guiteau, who assassinated President Garfield, and pioneering recreational chemist Owsley Stanley, who supplied Ken Kesey’s “merry pranksters” with high-grade LSD. “One of many historically interesting features of the site,” the redevelopment webpage boasts, “is a cemetery originally established for … ‘friendless patients.’ ”

“It’s a terrific place,” Johnson told Hudson, “I am envious. But I will probably never work there.” (Tough break.)

Johnson’s other goal, “unity of the mission,” has bigger obstacles than a dispersed workforce, as that House Homeland Security Committee hearing made clear.

“Syria has become a matter of homeland security,” committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul, R‑Texas, insisted. Judging by the other topics covered, so have “massive flood insurance premium increases”; the capture of “top drug lord El Chapo Guzman”; “conducting proper oversight over the state of New Jersey” for Sandy relief; the “human-trafficking question”; and “put\[ting\] pressure on \[the Transportation Security Administration\] to use small businesses.”

More than a decade after [9/11](http://washingtonexaminer.com/section/september-11-terrorist-attacks), the Congressional Research Service [observes](http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/R42462.pdf), the federal government still “does not have a single definition for ‘homeland security.’” Definitions in the government’s key strategy documents range from “provid\[ing\] essential support to national and economic security,” to ensuring a homeland safe “against terrorism and other hazards where American interests, aspirations, and ways of life can thrive.” A deputy secretary quoted in the report helpfully explains that homeland security is “transactional, it’s decentralized, it’s bottom-driven,” and it’s “strategic, it’s centralized, it’s top-driven.”

“In short,” writes Wired’s [David Kravets](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/01/homeland-security-definition/), “ ‘homeland security’ is whatever the government says it is.”

Whatever it is, it’s [expensive](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2011/09/does_the_united_states_spend_too_much_on_homeland_security.html). By some measures, since 9/11 spending under the rubric “homeland security,” both inside and outside the department, dwarfs even the New Deal.

It’s also dangerous. the department’s recent, aborted attempt at building a national [license plate tracking system](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-24/homeland-security-scraps-plan-to-scan-license-plates) is only the most recent example of the myriad ways the agency’s “mission creep” [threatens Americans’ privacy](https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/civil-liberties-may-not-survive-gorgon-stare).

The Times reports that Rep. Jeff Duncan, R‑S.C., has urged the department to skimp on eco-friendly Brazilian hardwood and “consider composite wood material for the decking” at the headquarters. But we can do better than rearranging the decking on a titanic waste.

##### About the Author 

[![Gene Healy](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/author_picture/public/2021-01/Gene%20Healy.jpg?itok=EhkBZWC4)](/people/gene-healy) 

##### [Gene Healy](/people/gene-healy)

Former Senior Vice President for Policy, Cato Institute