4.5 Homeland Security Council

WHO? The Homeland Security Council.

WHAT? Advises the President and oversees interagency coordination.

WHEN? The HSC advises the President in crisis, or when it foresees issues and opportunities.

WHERE? The HSC is a White House organization within the Executive Office of the President.

WHY? Because Homeland Security requires coordination across the Homeland Security Enterprise.

As we learned in the last topic, Homeland Security is a team sport requiring the coordinated efforts of many Federal, State, and Local agencies, collectively called the Homeland Security Enterprise. Coordination among government agencies is called, obviously enough, “interagency coordination”. Interagency coordination takes place at all levels of government. However, formal oversight and direction of interagency coordination is exercised from the White House. Interagency coordination for Homeland Security is overseen by the Homeland Security Council. The HSC was created together with the Office of Homeland Security shortly after 9/11. When OHS was replaced by DHS, the HSC remained to conduct interagency coordination and advise the President. The Homeland Security Council is modelled after the National Security Council, created in 1947. Both the NSC and HSC are managed by Special Assistants to the President. The NSC is managed by the President’s National Security Advisor, and the HSC is managed by his Homeland Security Advisor, though their full title is Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. Both the NSC and HSC are comprised of two parts: 1) an advisory council, and 2) a supporting staff. The advisors set the agendas for council meetings, either to consider a crisis or issues raised by the staff, and forward the President’s decisions for interagency coordination by the supporting staff. The advisory council for both the NSC and HSC consist of the Vice President, Secretary of State, Defense, Homeland Security, Energy, and Treasury, Directors of the FBI and CIA, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the US Representative to the United Nations. The NSC is convened whenever there’s a national security incident or important matters of national security need to be discussed. The HSC is similarly convened for homeland security matters. When matters of international economic impact are on the agenda, then the Secretary of Commerce, US Trade Representative, and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy also attend. Of course, these are just the formal members of the NSC and HSC. The President can invite whomever he wants. President Kennedy relied on many advisors during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The NSC and HSC don’t just convene during crisis. They may also be convened to consider issues or opportunities raised by the National Security Staff. When the HSC was first created by President Bush, it also included a separate Homeland Security Staff. In 2009, President Obama merged both staffs into a single National Security Staff. The National Security Staff is headed by a Chief of Staff. In addition to bringing issues and opportunities to the attention of the President, the staff is also responsible for interagency coordination. The HSC advises the President. The President makes a decision. The National Security Staff oversees the interagency coordination necessary to execute the decision across Executive agencies. Easier said than done. The upward flow of advice and the downward flow of direction require a complex organization to prioritize what’s important and ensure that things get done. The upward flow of advice is facilitated by a two-tier hierarchy of committees. The first level is the Deputies Committee staffed by Deputy Secretaries from the Executive agencies. Issues approved by the Deputies Committee are forwarded for consideration by the Principals Committee, staffed by the Secretaries from the Executive agencies. Never a dull moment for the Secretary of Homeland Security. When they’re not running their Department, advising the President, or reporting to Congress, then they’re sitting in Cabinet meetings, Security Council meetings, or Principal Committee meetings, and goodness knows what other meetings! The downward flow of direction is facilitated by the Policy Coordination Committees. The PCCs are where day-to-day interagency coordination happens. There are an indeterminate number of functionally-organized Policy Coordination Committees. The number changes as needed. The PCCs are chaired by members of the National Security Staff, and attended by designated representatives from the different Executive agencies. And this is how homeland security gets done at the highest levels of Federal government.