Enter the 'Mayhem Magnet'
Newsweek, December, 2004 by Evan Thomas and Mark Hosenball (Graphic by Andrew Romano)
The Department of Homeland Security is a bureaucratic nightmare. Cobbled together out of 22 government agencies with 180,000 employees, it was guaranteed to generate epic turf struggles. Well-meaning and decent, but maybe a little too nice, the first secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, always seemed slightly overwhelmed by his job during his two years in charge. To replace him, President Bush last week picked a very different sort of character.
During the late-'80s cocaine epidemic, working as a New York undercover cop with a black belt in karate and six diamond studs in his ear, Bernard Kerik seemed to thrive on violent chaos. (His colleagues called him the "Mayhem Magnet.") Later, as Gotham's tough-talking police commissioner, Kerik boasted about firing bureaucrats...
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