Executive Order 13228: Establishing the Office of Homeland Security

On October 8, 2001, President George W. Bush issued the Executive Order Establishing the Office of Homeland Security (formally termed Executive Order 13228). The primary mission of the Office of Homeland Security, which became the Department of Homeland Security, a cabinet department, with the passage of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, was to protect the United States from terrorist attacks. The order also put in place the Homeland Security Council as the president's advisory agency for matters relating to homeland security.

Bush issued the Executive Order Establishing the Office of Homeland Security in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States that killed nearly three thousand people. At the time, the perception was that the nation's security agencies lacked coordination and information-sharing capabilities. Some observers argued that if such organizations as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency had a way to “talk” to each other, the pieces of information that might have foiled the 9/11 attacks could have been assembled into a coherent picture of the impending threat.

Although the FBI and the CIA remain independent agencies, the Department of Homeland Security folded together twenty-two agencies and represented the largest government reorganization since the creation of the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, and the CIA in 1947. Some of the agencies of the new department include the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Transportation Security Administration, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, among numerous others that have security responsibilities. The hope was that bringing together these various organizations and agencies scattered among the Justice Department, the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture, and others would enable analysts and policy makers to gather information, assess threats, and make informed recommendations to the president about any national emergency but particularly about terrorist threats.