You don’t have to be a PR expert to expect that the words “nipple” and “pliers” composed in the same sentence of any afteraction report is likely to end badly.

Over the past week we have run a series of suggestions by Randy Beardsworth, former Assistant Secretary for Strategic Plans at the Department of Homeland Security, advising the next Administration on the DHS transition. Below is a recap of all five suggestions:

The new President’s ability to implement his homeland security agenda, and perhaps his larger agenda could be lost if the Department and new administration fail an early test.

DHS, more so than any other department, cannot afford an aloof, take-no-prisoners approach to the transition. Most departments have a strong bureaucracy and established processes that can temper the whims of an ill chosen transition team. DHS has neither the strong bureaucracy nor the established processes. Based on my own experience during the transition effort to initially set up DHS, as well as decades in public service, I will offer five pieces of advice for the next president’s DHS transition team, laying out one each day over the next several days.

This week, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is marking its 5th Anniversary with a number of events - including one that brought together President Bush, Secretary Chertoff and Secretary Ridge to reflect on the Department’s creation and look forward to the next steps in its future. Security DeBrief Contributors Chris Battle & Rich Cooper weigh in.

The creation of DHS was the first major step we took in a new era of Darwinism (survival of the fittest). For too long, we allowed our country’s power and success to breed bureaucracies and complacencies that fostered individualized, self-focused operational cultures to take root. As a result, we often ignored and overlooked the threats and challenges (foreign and domestic; terrorism and Mother Nature) that were gaining in strength and consequence.

In what became more of a rapid fire reverse panel discussion, Chertoff sat opposite the eight of us fielding exactly one question from each person. The topics ranged from immigration modernization to cyber security to warrantless wiretaps. As usual, the Secretary enthusiastically – if sometimes combatively – took on every question with the gusto of a real policy wonk.

For anyone who has never been in a roundtable session like we were having, it’s important to note that the Secretary opened the session with the Bloggers without a note card in his palm or a pile of papers in his hands to reference in typical Washington principal fashion to remind him of who he was meeting with and why, and what he was supposed to say to them. He immediately sat down and you could almost hear the starter’s pistol fire, “BANG!” and he was out of his starter’s block rounding the first curve on the track of information he wanted to convey.

Last week, the Center for American Progress released a report, ‘Safe at Home: A National Security Strategy to Protect the American Homeland, the Real Central Front’ that offers its vision for what the future of homeland security should look like. For all of the things it professes that we should do, the Report is painfully shallow on recognizing the foundations that have been built and established over the past five years to enhance border protection, chemical security, emergency management, security operations at airports, ports and a number of other areas.

Stories in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, along with congressional testimony by the GAO, caused a frenzy in the media and blogosphere this week with suggestions that the Department of Homeland Security was “mothballing” the effort to build a virtual fence along the southern border. After millions spent and high expectations set, the idea that the Department was dropping the effort — known in typical government bureaucratese as “P28″ — caused quite a stir. However, Secretary Michael Chertoff responded assertively in a post on the DHS Leadership Journal, saying that the idea that the virtual fence is being dropped is simply inaccurate.

Security Debrief contributor and former Homeland Security Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson gives an interview on Federal News Radio regarding the 2009 DHS budget priorities. The interview ranges upon topics such as border security (border patrol and technology funding), REAL ID, and the potential for DHS to finally have a headquarters in Washington.

Admiral Allen focused on the challenges facing future Coast Guard border security and rescue missions with an aged and diminishing fleet. He noted that the post 9/11 mission for the Coast Guard placed additional demands on an already strained fleet and personnel, and suggested that Americans might be alarmed if they knew the nation’s premier marine lifesaving outfit could fit into the Washington Nationals’ new stadium.

Congress has much to do to improve on its below-par performance on homeland security in 2007. These five priorities are good places to start: Consolidate congressional oversight of DHS; stop turning DHS grants into pork barrel grabfests; establish an Undersecretary for DHS; repeal the damaging mandate to scan 100 percent of all cargo; finish immigration reform.

Passed in 2002 by one vote, the Support Anti-Terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies (SAFETY) Act provides limited liability protection to companies and/or organizations that have technologies, products or services that could be used to combat terrorism. The rationale was to protect providers from being disemboweled by a litany of lawsuits should a product or service fail during a terrorist event.