AP/Wide World Photos Heightened security measures extend the time it takes to pass through U.S. border crossings, such as this one in Blaine, Washington.

  Ingraham would like to see many of the Hart-Rudman suggestions enacted immediately, including full cabinet status for the Office of Homeland Security. Though mindful of the potential dangers that large concentrations of power can present in a democracy, She is thoroughly convinced of the necessity of creating an agency with powers broad enough to supercede entrenched Washington bureaucracies. “The CIA and the FBI, to name two crucial examples, are agencies that have not been receptive to change or to formal coordination,” she says. “Neither has adapted to the new conditions brought about by terrorist threats; until now, neither has had to. Both of them, along with the State Department, the Coast Guard, Immigration and Naturalization, Customs, and the Border Patrol—at least a dozen organizations—must be made to behave in different ways than they have in the past by an authority capable of leading them. This is a significant problem that has to be addressed forcefully. Mere ‘coordination’ of these agencies is not enough to get what the president, Congress, and, I think, the vast majority of Americans want done.”
      According to Ingraham, the Maxwell School’s public administration curriculum anticipates problems of this nature. “We stress these kinds of questions in our public administration classes,” she says. “How does one bring about change in large, well-established agencies in a predictable and effective way? How does one reform organizations that really don’t have any particular incentive to reform? The current crisis adds a huge new emphasis for us and a huge new way of framing these questions.”