DHS is the department that never should have been.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up when I heard GWB announce its formation. I did some light research and learned that formation of a "Homeland Security Agency" had been discussed and in the works for years.
You can bet your bottom dollar that discussions are underway at this point for government agencies to be unveiled as suitable (and inevitable) crises present themselves. The public is highly manipulated, woefully uninformed, and compliant.
Mr. LIEBERMAN: ... Shortly after the attacks, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing to explore how government could better organize itself to defend against such threats. Former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman, co-chairs of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, offered compelling testimony in favor of creating a homeland security agency.Website of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century (Hart-Rudman Commission, formed in 1998) discusses its history and vision for the future. The firm Booz-Allen & Hamilton is probably the primary provider of substantive material.The legislation we are introducing today is based largely on the Commission's recommendation. It will create a cabinet-level Department of National Homeland Security.
From the April 2001 Volume I of the the Phase III report (1.2 Mb pdf file):
D. The national security of all advanced states will be increasingly affected by the vulnerabilities of the evolving global economic infrastructure; ...Just saying, there's a "shadow" operation that is barely discernible to the public, that is at least influential and often determinative in setting public policy.The U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century proposed a new national security strategy to meet the needs of the future security environment described above. In Seeking A National Strategy: A Concert for Preserving Security and Promoting Freedom,3 the Commission's Phase II report articulated America's survival, critical, and important national interests, established a future strategy for the United States--a concert for security and freedom--and developed six key objectives and policies to attain those objectives. These objectives were:
First, the preeminent objective is "to defend the United States and ensure that it is safe from the dangers of a new era." Achieving this goal, and the nation's other critical national security goals, requires the U.S. government, as a second key objective, to "maintain America's social cohesion, economic competitiveness, technological ingenuity, and military strength." A third key objective is "to assist the integration of key major powers, especially China, Russia, and India, into the mainstream of the emerging international system." The Commission's fourth key U.S. objective is "to promote, with others, the dynamism of the new global economy and improve the effectiveness of international institutions and international law." The fifth key objective is "to adapt U.S. alliances and other regional mechanisms to a new era in which America's partners seek greater autonomy and responsibility." The sixth and final key objective inheres in an effort "to help the international community tame the disintegrative forces spawned by an era of change." ...
The National Economic Council (NEC) was created in January 1993 by executive order. It was designed to coordinate domestic and international economic policy, to integrate economics with traditional foreign and national security activities, and to provide advice to the President.