Homeland Security Job Filled amid Controversy
    By Philip Dine
    The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

    Thursday 05 January 2006

    When Tracy A. Henke assumes a top homeland security job Monday, she will begin under a swirl of controversy.

    Henke, a former Missourian, will be managing the federal government's coordination with state and local officials for natural disasters and terrorist attacks. The controversy involves the way she was named to the post, as well as her background and qualifications for the job.

    Her supporters call her an extraordinarily hard-working and effective administrator. But some critics said she had little experience relevant to the job she is about to assume, while others questioned her role in a racial-profiling study last year that resulted in some discord within the Justice Department.

    Henke was among 17 recess appointments President George W. Bush made late Wednesday while the Senate was not in session, bypassing the normal process of Senate confirmation. Administration officials said the jobs needed to be filled and that the Senate was not acting quickly enough.

    Her appointment was criticized Thursday by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which held a hearing on Henke's nomination last month.

    Lieberman said he was "particularly troubled" that Bush appointed Henke before the committee held a vote, saying that showed "disrespect for the Senate and for the American people." Lieberman urged the committee to engage in "particularly searching oversight" over Henke's actions while she is in office.

    A spokeswoman for Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the committee chairman, said it was "unfortunate that the White House has circumvented the normal nomination process."

    Henke, who turns 37 today, is currently acting assistant attorney general at the Justice Department. In her new post, she will be executive director of the Department of Homeland Security's Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness, and is soon slated to become assistant secretary of homeland security, performing the same functions.

    Henke will be responsible for helping state and local officials prepare for terrorist threats and natural disasters. She also will oversee training exercises, technical assistance and allocation of resources. She will manage a $3 billion budget, 250 employees and a large base of contractors.

    Henke worked for Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., before being brought into the Justice Department by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. Bond said that in Washington, Henke has been "consistently promoted in recognition for her work," and has gained bipartisan respect.

    Critics weren't mollified.

    "The fact is you're putting political loyalty above professional experience," said P.J. Crowley, director of homeland security at the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning think tank. "We're at risk of seeing another Mike Brown," a reference to the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Brown was fired after the poor federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

    Experience

    Henke is from Moscow Mills, between Wentzville and Troy. After graduating in 1991 from the University of Missouri at Columbia with a degree in political science, she held several low- to midlevel jobs with then-Sen. John C. Danforth, R-Mo., first in his St. Louis district office, then in Washington.

    Rob McDonald, who was Danforth's chief of staff and hired Henke, calls her "a tremendously hard worker" who got along well with state and local agencies in Missouri and brings an aggressive spirit to work. "Tracy can be a bull in a china shop," he said. "She's a doer."

    Offered a job by Bond as a legislative assistant, she rose to become his senior policy adviser. In 2001, Ashcroft, a former Missouri governor and senator who had just been appointed attorney general, brought her to the Justice Department.

    David Heyman, an expert in homeland security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said members of Congress are understandably concerned about whether Henke possesses relevant experience.

    "In a post-Katrina environment, members who are responsible for congressional oversight want to be assured that the appointments are meritorious," Heyman said. Such concerns have been heightened in Henke's case because the nomination process has been cut short - meaning questions about experience and qualification persist, Heyman said.

    Jim Carafano, a homeland security expert at the Heritage Foundation, said that while Henke may not be an expert in homeland security, she has much relevant experience in dealing with state and local officials.

    "This is really about knowing how state and local governments operate, being able to work with local and state officials," he said. "That is the critical thing. She's not out there supervising operations. She's basically looking at state and local strategies and the allocation of resources."

    Henke noted that while at the Justice Department, one of her tasks involved overseeing the Office for Domestic Preparedness, which subsequently moved to the Homeland Security Department when it was established in 2003.

    Racial-Profiling Study

    Last year, the Justice Department did a study that found black and Hispanic motorists stopped for traffic violations were more likely than white motorists to be handcuffed, arrested and face other sanctions.

    Henke decided that mentioning the apparent racial disparities in the department's press release on the study would be misleading because it didn't properly reflect the study's findings. The department's head of the bureau of statistics disagreed, complained that he was getting political pressure from Henke to change the text, and was subsequently reassigned.

    At last month's nomination hearing, Lieberman said he feared that Henke's actions "may have undermined the office's reputation for objectivity and independence."

    Henke said in an interview Thursday that she had "edited it to make it accurately reflect the underlying document." The report itself noted that the disparity could not be attributed to racial matters because the study hadn't looked into the behavior of stopped motorists, she said, but explaining all that would have made the press release too lengthy. In the end, she said, the press release simply wasn't issued.

    Marc Short, a homeland security spokesman, said Bush had decided that in the interest of national security, it was "imperative" to appoint Henke rather than wait for Senate action. The Senate had had time to act since her nomination in the summer, Short said.

    Short said Henke responded to a number of questions at the hearing and in writing, and had been "more than cooperative," providing "literally reams of paper," though he said he wasn't sure whether she had answered subsequent questions.

    That was disputed by the spokeswoman for Sen. Collins, the committee chairwoman, who said the post-hearing questions, submitted in writing, had not been addressed.

    "We never received the answers to those questions," she said.

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