U.S. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge yesterday urged Congress to quickly approve the Bush administration’s plan to create a Homeland Security Department (see GSN, June 20).

During testimony before two congressional committees, Ridge faced several questions on the plan, including how the new department would analyze and assess terrorist threats, according to the Washington Post.  Many lawmakers, however, said they supported the new department.

“I haven’t heard anything today that tells me we won’t or can’t get this done,” said Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.).

Ridge told members of Congress that the new department would receive all the information it would need to assess terrorist threats.  The FBI, CIA and other agencies would be required to give the department intelligence reports and analyses, but not raw intelligence data, he added.  The CIA and FBI would still continue to perform their own terrorist threat analyses in addition to those created by the new department, Ridge said, adding that all reports would be given to the president.

“This is another opportunity to connect the dots,” Ridge said.

Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), however, said the proposed intelligence system would lack accountability.

“If the FBI doesn’t share the information with you, you don’t know about it.  If the CIA doesn’t share the information with the FBI, the FBI doesn’t know about it,” Levin said.  “Where is all the relevant information ... about terrorist threats going to be coordinated?” (Bill Miller, Washington Post, June 21).

It could be useful to have different agencies creating their own — and possibly competing — terrorist threat analyses to generate multiple perspectives, Ridge said.

“The president believes, and I suspect members of Congress believe, having competitive analysis, having another set of experienced people, would — this is one area where redundancy adds value,” Ridge said.  “I think that’s at the heart of the president’s idea.”

At a session of the House Government Reform Committee, Representative John Tierney (D-Mass.) asked whether or how information from a whistleblower in one of the agencies would make its way to the department.

“If the FBI and the CIA were loath to communicate before Sept. 11 and are now casting blame on one another as we investigate Sept. 11, what makes anyone think they will communicate with a new, untested agency and with state and local first responders?” he said (David Firestone, New York Times, June 21).

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