Good narrative. I saw a bit of the inside of this at a meeting a month after 9/11. From what I saw, I would give importance to your statement: "But it was also partly due to traditional DC power politics -- these congresspeople were on the hawkish, national-security-oriented end of the spectrum, and pulling together all the little agencies that tended to their pet issues into One Big Agency would give that agency more budgetary and bureaucratic clout, making their views more prominent."

I would emphasize in your statement the term "budgetary" and follow the money.

The meeting I was in at a "front company" in the D.C. area ended a day of brainstorming with a guy I had just met that day slapping me on the knee, saying "We're gonna make a lot of money off this!". Several at the meeting claimed to have spent the prior evening swilling whiskey with the then Governor of Pennsylvania, saying he was to be the head of this yet to be announced DHS and its our job to cook up multi-billion dollar projects for private gain. And cook up they did. Every idea discussed that day eventually became a reality and Tom Ridge did become the first head of DHS.

I would say more, but these guys spook me. I had zero experience with D.C. prior to that day. I was the accidental tech guy that should have never been in the room. I left and never went back.