Commander Steve Recca, of the new DoD endowed UCCS Center for Homeland Security, told his Shove Chapel audience last night that Homeland Security is about being safe. That means everything to him from keeping his daughter safe at school to keeping the streets safe from excessive snow fall. Does the DHS want a crack at Climate Change?

Recca also explained that Homeland Security is about community. Yes, community: the local community and the global community. Whatever does he think “homeland” refers to? Manitou? Planet Earth? Before Bush and Ashcroft I’m pretty sure “Homeland” had only ever meant Nazi Germany, needing to be kept safe from Fascist-haters like socialists, anarchists, discontents and others who objected to Nazi land grabs. In the Soviet Bloc security would have been about community: the community of neighbors ready to rat on you.

Steve Recca kept Homeland Security affairs out of Greg Mortenson’s presentation until the end. Then, to cap off the questions from the audience, from the darkened anonymity of the public microphone, Recca asked for everyone’s patience while he read an “email from a Marine at an FOB (Forward Operating Base) in Afghanistan.”

In this “email” a soldier explained how protecting one of Mortenson’s schools was the most important goal of his mission, etc, etc.

The inattentive audience may have become too accustomed to visualizing boiler room letter writing sessions assigned to soldiers in the field, or soldiers laid up in VA hospitals with nothing else to do but hand-write form letters dictated to them by military PR specialists. Those Letters to the Editor sent to newspapers across the country, or emails to Dr Greg in this case, may be outsourced to India for all we know. In any case, the Colorado College audience was bored of it.

I’d like to see Recca explain what role propaganda or jingoism plays in Homeland Security.

Commander Steve Recca is a career spook, now pioneering the post-graduate studying of keeping white America safe. I can understand that DHS might require information sharing with the Intelligence Community. Does it have to be part of that community? Is that the “community” Recca was talking about?

Will Homeland Security be training its airport shoe-sniffers to conduct surveillance and torture too? Steve Recca doesn’t bring transportation or border guard experience to his job. His background is entirely about spying.

1983- graduate (with honors) of U.S. Naval Academy
1990- Master of Arts (with distinction) from Naval Postgraduate School
1990 to 1993- tours on USS YORKTOWN, USS TEXAS, USS AMERICA
1993- Staff, Commander Naval Forces Europe (CNE), in London
    Intelligence Watch Officer, Head of the Current Intelligence Branch.
1994- Certificate in International Political Affairs
    from University of Zurich
1995 to 1997- Special Assistant and Speechwriter
    for the Secretary of the Navy
1997 to 1998- Office of the Director of Central Intelligence,
    speech writer, member on Director’s Long-Term Planning Board
1998 to 2001-American Embassy in Oslo, Norway,
    as Assistant Naval Attaché,
    Joint Staff and Office of the Secretary of Defense
2001- Inman Intelligence Chair, Naval Postgraduate School,
    Senior Intelligence Officer and Intelligence Programs Coordinator
2003- Department of Defense Chief Liaison
    to the German Federal Intelligence Service.
2005- United States Northern Command’s Interagency Coordination
    Directorate, policy planning and technology consultant
2007- UCCS Center for Homeland Security

Here is Steve Recca quoted in the August 24, 2007 Colorado Springs Business Journal about a newly formed COLORADO HOMELAND DEFENSE ALLIANCE:

“The whole point behind the alliance is creating partnerships, networking — collaboration with government, military, university and corporations in the aerospace, defense and security industries.”