Fred, Did We Really Know You?

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The bill passed and was signed by Bush with fanfare in the waning days of the 107th Congress. But don't look for signs of that landmark achievement in Thompson's r?sum?.

His Fred 08 Web site contains a captivating biography of his life as "a small town kid of modest means and modest goals." It touts his achievements in Tennessee and Washington, but there's nary a word about his role in the creation of DHS. He also didn't mention it in his announcement speech Thursday.

Perhaps the omission is because the Department of Homeland Security is a Rube Goldberg contraption designed to perform straightforward tasks in the most convoluted ways. No one knows that better than the folks who work there.

According to the Congressional Research Service's July 17 report on DHS's 2008 appropriation, that $35 billion superagency "placed last or almost last for the categories of job satisfaction, leadership, and workplace performance in the 2006 Federal Human Capital Survey administered by the Office of Personnel Management."

Those dismal results don't even take into account criticism of the department's performance. Who can forget DHS's response to Hurricane Katrina? And despite promises by Thompson and the DHS bill's supporters to put homeland protection under one government roof, spending by the agency accounts for only 49 percent of total federal funding for homeland security.

Now listen to Thompson the Outsider this week: "When we look to Washington, we see a bureaucratized government that is increasingly unable or unwilling to carry out basic government functions, including the fundamental responsibility of securing our borders against illegal immigration and enforcing our laws."

That sounds like Thompson's Department of Homeland Security.

Fred, we hardly know you anymore.

kingc@washpost.com