At DHS, this rule was only for rank-and-file

There’s a difference between the perks and privileges of wealth or high rank, and whether the privileged have to follow the same rules.

Example: If you pay 10 times as much money for a ticket in the front of the plane to Paris as the poor schmuck in the back of the plane, you are entitled to champagne, lobster and Johnnie Walker Blue. And a slumberette in which to drool your way across the Great Circle. But you’ve also got to buckle your seatbelt when the captain says so. And you can’t bring a gun on the plane either.

If you’re a GS-13 toiling away in your scuffed loafers, you expect the Secretary to get whisked around town in a black Denali, or the President in a 50-vehicle motorcade while you fight to squeeze onto a stinky Metro car.

I once had a loud swearing match with a senior publisher at the company where I was a mere editor. He was smoking a thin black cigarette on the elevator. I called him out. He said f— you. I said drop dead you filthy P.O.S. Highly mature exchange. I don’t resent perks, but rule flouting gets my goat.

So it was with some interest I read the Judicial Watch release on use of web email using secured government computers by high ranking staff at the Homeland Security Department. Judicial Watch, frustrated by thwarted Freedom of Information Act requests, sued DHS and got 700 pages of documents about email. Specifically, about a policy DHS instituted in February 2014 banning employees from accessing personal web email accounts from their government PCs. The directive came from the chief information officer’s office. It cited security concerns with web mail accounts. Judicial Watch was prompted by a story from Bloomberg News.

The day the ban went into effect, guess who waived himself from it? None other than Secretary Jeh Johnson. Waivers also went to 28 other senior officials, including Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, general counsel Stevan Bunnell, and Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis Francis Taylor. It all went on for a year, according to Judicial Watch, until Justice Department CIO Luke McCormack advised DHS to stop it.

Judicial Watch didn’t uncover a foundation-shaking scandal. Yes, the officials incurred a security risk. But they also sent a bad message to the organization was their assumption  that a critical rule was only for the rank and file, not the top leadership. Why would you want people to get that idea?

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