By Debbie Schlussel
It’s not just that most of his administration is a bad re-run of the Clintons. It’s that for the other positions Barack Obama is keeping some of the more incompetent, failed people and programs of the Bush Administration. For a guy who derided the last eight years, you gotta wonder why he so embraces some of the worst features of it.
And that includes Melissa Hathaway.
Last week, Barack Obama named Hathaway to conduct a two-month review of America’s cyberdefense policies and is considering elevating Hathaway to cabinet status–taking her out of the Department of Homeland Security, with her reporting directly to Obama.
But here’s the rub. Hathaway, 40, was Bush’s cybersecurity point man and policy advisor for the last two years. And she was a complete failure. During her tenure and top Bush cybersecurity chick, cybercrimes against federal computers soared 40% from 2,000 at the end of 2006 (Hathaway took over in March 2007) to 5,488 cyberattacks against government computers in 2008. And those are just the “major intrusions.” It doesn’t even include the many minor hacker attacks on federal data.

It’s ironic that just as the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) released date to the media on cyberattacks during the time Hathaway ran our “security” efforts, Barack Obama–the “smartest” man in the world, allegedly–isn’t even smart enough to read the handwriting on the wall about this completely inept “cyrbersecurity expert.”
Fail to prevent attacks on America, get a promotion. Hmmm . . . sounds just like the entire FBI and CIA in the post-9/11 Bush Administration.
Also ironic, Obama assigned Hathaway to review President Bush’s cyberdefense policies and their effectiveness. You know–the policies Melissa Hathaway put into place. Do you get to do your own job performance review? Didn’t think so. But apparently they do in the O-ministration.
Hathaway, by the way, had a $30 billion budget to prevent cyberattacks, and–judging by its complete failure–it was a waste of your tax dollars.
For a guy who is telling failed Wall Street CEOs their pay must be limited, why is Barack Obama giving a promotion to a woman who wasted $30 billion in taxpayer money? More “Do as I say, not as I do” Obamanations.
Clearly, this woman is a complete failure. So why is Obama keeping Melissa Hathaway, and even promoting her?
Don’t ask me. Ask Mr. Hope and Change. I’m sure he’ll be able to come up with enough fertilizer to make some kind of answer grow out of it.
For now, he’s saying he chose her because she “spent two years at the epicenter of Bush’s cyberefforts.”
Yeah, two years of failure. And now we can have four to eight more years of that when we can ill afford to.
If your social security number or tax info “accidentally” gets accessed by hackers, you’ll know who to blame.
Not just Melissa Hathaway. But the guy who kept her on the job and promoted her.
Graph Shows Failure of Obama Cybersecurity Chief; Now She Gets to Evaluate Herself . . .