Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2022 | 2 a.m.
It appears that not only the Secret Service but high-level Homeland Security officials have destroyed their text messages for key days surrounding the Jan. 6 assault on the nation’s Capitol. And the inspector general for Homeland Security is in the doghouse for failure to timely notify the House committee investigating the attack that these records had been destroyed.
Note the word “security” in this department’s name. Note that we are talking about the Secret Service, which has a major effort in electronic surveillance as a part of its mission. It is starting to smell like the dog ate everyone’s homework.
The Department of Homeland Security was created after 9/11 to ensure that people responsible for national security activity were effectively organized and working with one another, as a part of what was needed to ensure that 9/11 never happened again. This reorganization has failed. All that’s been done is to create a huge department in the federal government, loaded with new political appointees who can be used to undermine the efforts of other departments and agencies.
Jan. 6 is not the first time Homeland Security and its collection of agencies have come up short. Hearings on this agency and its failures should be held.
