This week, I sat down with John Brennan, the current chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. Brennan, who was the first director of the National Counterterrorism Center, is now advising Sen. Barack Obama on intelligence and foreign policy. Brennan is also the president and chief executive officer of The Analysis Corporation, headquartered in [...]

The No. 2 official at the Homeland Security Department, Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson, is leaving his post for financial reasons, he announced in an e-mail to colleagues today. Jackson has been at DHS since March 2005. He said he’ll leave next month. I interviewed Jackson in May about his efforts to prepare DHS for the [...]

Just when you thought it was safe to come back from vacation… At the same moment we learned Alberto Gonzales would step down as attorney general, that favorite Washington parlor game, “Replacement Pick,” kicked into high gear. Initial speculation focused on Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, a former prosecutor, federal judge, and senior Justice Department [...]

My colleague at Government Executive magazine, Katherine McIntire Peters, has a good story about the exodus of senior officials in the Homeland Security Department’s upper ranks. Senior Homeland Security Department employees left their jobs over the past two years at rates significantly higher than the average for other Cabinet-level departments, according to a report released [...]

In a discussion about surveillance cameras in New York City this morning, Diane Rehm devoted some air time to turnover and vacancies in the senior ranks of the Homeland Security Department. (See yesterday’s post.) DHS Spokesman Russ Knocke joined by phone, and said that, in April, the department was permitted to hire an additional 73 [...]