by Mike Allen and Bill Miller, The Washington Post
WASHINGTON - President Bush, outlining the most ambitious reorganization of the government’s national-security structure in 50 years, urged Congress last night to create a Department of Homeland Security to coordinate intelligence about terrorism and tighten the nation’s domestic defenses.
The department would absorb a huge swath of the executive branch, including all of the Coast Guard, Secret Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Customs Service and the Transportation Security Administration, the new agency in charge of airport security. Only the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs would have more employees.
Bush wants Congress to pass the proposal in time for the department to open Jan. 1.
“As we have learned more about the plans and capabilities of the terrorist network, we have concluded that our government must be reorganized to deal more effectively with the new threats of the 21st century,” Bush said in a televised speech.
With the proposal to create a new Cabinet department, Bush embraced an idea he had long resisted. In the frantic days after Sept. 11, Bush established a small Office of Homeland Security within the White House and named Tom Ridge, then Pennsylvania governor, as its director.
But officials came to the conclusion this structure was unworkable because Ridge did not have clear authority over the agencies charged with homeland protection or even his budget.
In presenting his plan, Bush navigated between trying to reassure Americans about the government’s efforts to protect them and building the case for major change. He began by listing the financial, military and other steps he has taken to hinder and punish terrorists.
“Based on everything I’ve seen, I do not believe anyone could have prevented the horror of September the 11th,” Bush said. “Yet we now know that thousands of trained killers are plotting to attack us, and this terrible knowledge requires us to act differently.”
Bush’s speech came days after Congress opened hearings to examine intelligence failures before the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Democrats said the timing suggested an effort to control damage to the White House after revelations about lack of communication among intelligence officials before Sept. 11.
The department was planned in secret by a small group of White House officials led by chief of staff Andrew Card, with Ridge’s help, and many of the officials who would lose substantial power under the plan did not learn about it until yesterday.
Administration officials said the announcement was scheduled hurriedly as support built on Capitol Hill for Democratic proposals for such a department.
Ridge is considered weak by Capitol Hill and the bureaucracy because he has no control over budgets for the agencies he is supposed to coordinate. He became a late-night punch line for his best-known accomplishment: creation of a color-coded warning system.
Bush did not say who would lead the department, although several senior officials said they believed it would be Ridge. Bush plans to retain a separate homeland-security adviser, not accountable to Congress, in the new structure.
Reaction from Capitol Hill was largely positive, with Republican leaders promising to work toward passage of the reorganization. Democrats generally embraced it, although some critics said the department would be unwieldy and would have the effect of combining dysfunctional agencies.
Some lawmakers questioned the need for so much secrecy about such an important plan.
“I’m concerned that Congress was not consulted,” said Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., who has done much recent work on border issues. “This proposal could have benefited from the great expertise and significant work already under way in Congress.”
The administration said the department, which would be the first new Cabinet agency since the Veterans Affairs Department was created in 1989, would take more than 169,000 employees and $37.4 billion from existing agencies. It would add no employees or expenses to the government, the administration said.
It would have four divisions, responsible for controlling borders and keeping out terrorists and explosives; working with state and local authorities to prepare for emergencies; developing technologies to detect chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and to treat those who are exposed; and analyzing intelligence and law-enforcement data.
The FBI and CIA are to keep their current functions, but the new department would have an intelligence-and-threat-analysis unit to combine intelligence from those agencies and others to assess threats, take preventive action and issue public warnings. White House officials described the unit as “a customer” of the FBI and CIA, which have been reluctant to share information with each other, let alone a third entity.
Bush’s plan is so broad that it is likely to ignite months of turf battles. The White House said 88 congressional committees and subcommittees have jurisdiction over elements of homeland security, and the department would incorporate parts of the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Health and Human Services, Justice, State, Transportation and Treasury.
Bush’s plan went far beyond the proposals by several lawmakers to give Ridge more authority by creating a Cabinet-level department. The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., voted along party lines last month to create a homeland-security department.
A national-security official said the White House had concluded the Lieberman bill “was gaining traction, and the worst of all worlds was that it would be passed by veto-proof majorities with the president in a reactive position.”
Lieberman praised Bush’s plan but said he expects “opposition from the bureaucracies that are being put under the new secretary of homeland security and from members of Congress who are close to those bureaucracies.”
White House officials privately acknowledged the plan could be watered down as the affected agencies fight to retain power.
One of the few critics was Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, who said the plan might prove unworkable.
“These kind of slapdash plans often are diversions,” he said.