Bush Homeland Security Plan Risky, US Think Tank Warns

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, July 15, 2002

Bush Homeland Security Plan Risky, US Think Tank Warns

A US think tank warned Sunday that President George W. Bush's proposal to create a Department ofHomeland Security was risky as it "merges too many different activities into a single department."

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A US think tank warned Sunday that President George W. Bush's proposal to create a Department ofHomeland Security was risky as it "merges too many different activities into a single department."

The Brookings Institution, in an independent study published here Sunday, said that Bush's plan should be significantly scaled back if it is to have any chance of success.

The Washington think tank urged Congress to move cautiously as it considers the White House proposal to merge all or parts of 22 agencies into a department with a 38 billion dollars budget and approximately 170,000 employees.

The report comes as Congress is moving at an unusually fast pace to act on the reorganization, with the House and Senate preparing separate versions of a bill for votes late this month.

"The question is no longer whether to reorganize but how and towhat extent," the report contended. "Congress is clearly moving toward creation of a new department, but it can still choose what kind of department -- how large and how comprehensive."

"The danger is that top managers will be preoccupied for months,if not years, with getting the reorganization right -- thus givinginsufficient attention to their real job: taking concrete action to counter the terrorist threat at home," the report warned.

The study, conducted by a team of veteran policy analysts, recommended that the White House plan be stripped down to focus onborder and transportation security, intelligence analysis and protection for the nation's critical infrastructure.

It called for leaving the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which responds to natural and man-made disasters and functions well as a free-standing agency, out of the department and keeping biological research under the control of the Department of Health and Human Services.

According to the Brookings team, the core elements of a new department should be the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Transportation Security Administration. All are part of Bush's plan.

The study also recommended that a Homeland Security Department should have more access to raw intelligence information than the White House is seeking. Instead of creating a center that receivesand analyzes information gathered by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other agencies, the new department should take over an FBI unit that specializes in terror-related intelligence analysis, the report said.

The report was prepared by an eight-member Brookings team that included Ivo H. Daalder, senior fellow in foreign policy studies; Paul C. Light, vice president and director of governmental studies;James B. Steinberg, vice president and director of foreign policy studies; and James Lindsay, senior fellow in foreign policy studies.

Their recommendations mirror some of the changes proposed by congressional committees and critics in recent weeks. Last week, numerous House committees recommended revisions to the president'splan that included leaving the Coast Guard and FEMA out of the department and strengthening civil service, union and whistle-blower protections for workers who would staff the agency.

Those recommendations were forwarded to the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, a specially created nine-member panel that will prepare a House version of the bill for floor debate, the Washington Post reported Sunday.

The committee, led by Majority Leader Richard K. Armey, a Republican from Texas, is scheduled to hold a series of hearings this week, starting Monday with testimony from Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge. It plans to complete its work by Friday and forward a bill for debate on the House floor during the week of July 22.

In the Senate, the Governmental Affairs Committee, headed by Democratic Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, also plans to draft a version of the bill at a hearing set for July 24. The full Senate will consider it before lawmakers begin a month-long recess Aug. 2.

US Congress is expected to approve a final version of the homeland security bill by the one-year anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

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