Leadership Quote by Warren Rudman

Rudman’s sentence reads like a man trying to say “mission creep” without using the phrase. He’s talking about FEMA’s post-9/11 migration into the Department of Homeland Security, and the key move is the double demand embedded in the clause: FEMA should “be what it was,” yet also become more enmeshed in the broader security apparatus through “lateral communication.” That tension is the point. “Be what it was” invokes an older FEMA identity: disaster response, logistics, federal coordination when states are overwhelmed. But DHS is not a neutral container; it’s an organizing idea built around threat, suspicion, and centralized command.

The phrasing is revealingly bureaucratic, almost evasive, which is its own form of criticism. “My understanding is” distances him from the architects of the change while still positioning him as a sober insider. It’s a hedge that signals: someone sold this as a tidy integration, and reality didn’t cooperate. “Lateral communication” is technocratic euphemism for what was politically hard: interagency trust, clear authority, and speed without turf wars. By naming the ideal in management-speak, he’s quietly implying how rarely that ideal happens in Washington.

Context matters: Rudman, a former senator and a 9/11 Commission co-chair, is speaking from the era when “homeland security” became a magnet for reorganizations that looked decisive on paper. The subtext is a warning about structural fixes masquerading as readiness: if FEMA becomes just another node in the security web, disaster response can get subordinated to the priorities, culture, and chain-of-command instincts of counterterrorism.