Bush Still Opposes Merging of FBI
by Bill Miller and Mike Allen, Washington Post
The new Department of Homeland Security would have access to raw intelligence about domestic terror threats collected by the FBI, the CIA and other agencies under legislation submitted by President Bush to Congress yesterday, but White House officials said Bush remains determined not to merge the FBI into the new agency.
The draft legislation provides the most detailed look yet at Bush’s plan to bring all or parts of 22 agencies into a new department in the biggest reorganization of the federal bureaucracy in more than 50 years.
But it still leaves many questions, including where the department will be located, how much it will cost to establish and how its creation will affect the roughly 170,000 federal employees involved in the merger.
Bush’s proposal calls for the FBI, the CIA and other agencies to promptly and regularly share information about terror threats and intelligence about the nation’s vulnerabilities with the Homeland Security Department. That could include everything from raw reports generated by FBI field agents to CIA analysis of external terror operations.
The department would also receive -- and put together on its own -- assessments of threats to dams, power grids, food and water supplies, transportation systems, and many other components of the nation’s infrastructure.
Since June 6, when Bush unveiled his plan, lawmakers have cautioned that the new department must be given sufficient access to such information.
The legislation makes clear that intelligence-gathering agencies are obligated to share even sensitive information with the Homeland Security Department, although they can protect sources and methods. Where disputes arise, the White House would make the call.
The new department also would have its own analytical arm and would issue terrorist alerts. “This department will have very powerful access to the information . . . residing in the federal government,” a White House official said.
Although some members of Congress are exploring the idea of moving the FBI into the new department, the White House official said that Bush believes “the organizational integrity of the FBI needs to be maintained.”
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge delivered the 35-page draft of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to the Capitol yesterday, along with a message from Bush.
“Responsibilities for homeland security are dispersed among more than 100 different entities of the federal government,” Bush wrote. “America needs a unified homeland security structure that will improve protection against today’s threats and be flexible enough to help meet the unknown threats of the future.”
Ridge is scheduled to testify at the first hearings on the plan Thursday. House and Senate leaders said they hope to achieve final passage of the bill by Sept. 11, the one-year anniversary of the terror attacks, and Bush has said he hopes the new department can begin operating Jan. 1.
Although the framework of Bush’s proposal has early bipartisan support, questions arose yesterday from lawmakers, union officials and others about its day-to-day operations. House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) still have concerns about the new department’s ability to coordinate the flow of intelligence, aides said yesterday. Lieberman, chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, plans to convene a hearing devoted to that issue next week.
Leaders of both parties pressured the White House to speed delivery of the legislation, which administration officials had said on June 10 could take three weeks.
But the draft version, pieced together over the past two weeks, was not nearly as comprehensive as many who have been tracking the proposal had hoped.
“It’s the kind of legislation that you get when you spend a few days trying to pull together very complicated subject matter and ram it through on a fast track,” said Paul C. Light, a vice president of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
Light said that the intelligence section, for example, is not strong enough to cure the problem of getting the FBI, the CIA and other agencies to work together. “Thirty-three lines of draft legislation will not undo 50 years of noncommunication,” Light said.
Another unsettled issue is where the department would be located, a decision that White House officials said remains under consideration. A White House official said that a homeland security building could be in Maryland or Virginia for security reasons.
“We think it’s something that at least should be discussed,” the official said. “We should be thinking differently about this department.”
David Sirota, spokesman for Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, complained that the legislation contains no cost estimates, saying the White House “continues to ignore key homeland security funding questions.”
The White House said the costs have yet to be determined but predicted they would be covered mostly by money saved from efficiencies and by the $14 billion budget increase for fiscal 2003 that the administration has requested for the agencies involved.
The legislation calls for a Cabinet secretary, a deputy secretary, five undersecretaries and up to 16 assistant secretaries along with other managers. G. William Hoagland, the Republican staff director of the Senate Budget Committee, said the new management tier would probably generate additional operating expenses and that he did not envision any immediate major savings from the merger of agencies that include the Customs Service, the Coast Guard, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Transportation Security Administration and others.
The White House proposal also would give broad powers to the homeland security secretary and the director of the Office of Personnel Management to set the pay, benefits and work rules for employees moved under the reorganization. The proposal would allow the two officials to move employees out of the civil service system, which has been criticized for years as cumbersome and outdated.
Federal labor unions and their collective bargaining agreements would move intact to the new department, but the proposal would permit the Cabinet secretary and the OPM director to open up labor pacts or remove unions from the department after a transition period, probably one year, senior government officials said.
“This step threatens the rights of the very people the nation is depending on to make it more secure,” said Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents about 12,000 employees of the Customs Service.
Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), said the legislation “would allow the new secretary of homeland security to eviscerate the civil service.”