The almost-successful terrorist
attack on Christmas day has led some to demand that heads roll in the Homeland Security Department, beginning with
the top head, Janet Napolitano.
To be sure, Napolitano wins the award for dumbest spin of the year when she
claimed that "the system worked." But I think it is premature to fire Napolitano,
and not simply because she has changed her spin.
It is premature because it takes time to figure out exactly what went wrong and
thus who should be held accountable and in what fashion. The naval standard of
accountability -- the ship ran aground so the commander is automatically relieved -- might
result in her immediate dismissal. But for bureaucracies devoted to
strategy against a cunning adversary, such a standard can lead to a zero-defect
mentality.
Rather, the incident calls for a thorough congressional investigation - one
that asks the tough questions and obliges members of the administration, including
Napolitano, to answer those tough questions. There are all sorts of
questions about who knew what, when, and what they did about it. But I am
most interested in what the investigation will reveal about the bureaucratic
mindset, and here I am not talking about a zero-defect mentality but a
potentially more pernicious mindset. One of the more important
revelations of the 9/11 Commission investigation was the pervasiveness of what
Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called the "pre-9/11 mindset."
The mindset led the Clinton administration to view al Qaeda as merely a
law-enforcement problem and, as a consequence, to limit themselves on what they
might do to counter the threat. The Obama administration has likewise made a big point of seeking to reinstate the law enforcement mindset throughout the counterterrorism
enterprise. Congressional investigators should pursue the leads to
determine whether this mindset has taken hold and led to the security lapses
that almost resulted in the decade ending with another devastating terrorist
strike on American soil.
Bottom line: the "law enforcement mindset" may not be appropriate for fighting
terrorists but it is appropriate for overseeing the national security
bureaucracy. It may well be that there were lapses of judgment and
oversight that rise to firing offenses. But let's investigate the alleged
crime before we execute the sentence.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
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