'to France where they came from'? They were American citizens, a lot of them just graduated from the ENA (some also came from German programmes and Benson was from the Russian higher civil service academy, but the public always latched on to the enarques). This Republican propaganda is pretty annoying.
For the POD, the first question you have to address is the preconditions. Without the civil service reforms under Carter and Dole and the demand for qualified professionals, most of them would never have started their careers. And without the success of the 'continental model' in France after the d'Estaing reforms, that would never have happened. Mind you, France was hardly as successful as the most starry-eyed reformers thought, but it was where they got their ideas. So where do you want to stop their rise? You could argue that after the 1996 and 1997 congressional deadlocks, a transfer of that much authority to the cabinet was a defensible emergency measure. Of course they badly misread public opinion, but back then, would you have trusted Congress (or the governors) with finding their own asses?
The aftermath of the attacks was pretty horrible (especially in Eastern Europe, what with the US government suddenly creating a power vacuum in post-Soviet states), and I can't see any of the crisis happening if there hadn't been the accumulated ill will between Congress, the States, and the Feds. Without that, the USA could still be the unilateral global hegemon, and we could have been spared the second oil crisis.