Bush: 'We're doing all we can to protect America'
US President George W Bush has named Tom Ridge to head the new Department of Homeland Security, but said even the biggest government shake-up in more than a half century can “neither predict nor prevent every conceivable attack”.
“We’re doing everything we can to protect America,” Mr Bush said yesterday as he signed a bill creating the department. “In a free and open society, no department of government can completely guarantee our safety against ruthless killers who move and plot in shadows.”
With that sobering assessment, Mr Bush asked the Senate to confirm his nomination of Mr Ridge.
A large portion of the department will take shape on March 1, next year, when the Secret Service, Immigration and Naturalisation Service and a few other agencies transfer their employees and budgets to the new entity, officials said.
Mr Ridge, 57, is a Vietnam veteran, a former congressman and long-time political ally of the Bush family who nearly 14 months ago left his position as Pennsylvania governor to serve in the White House. No one else was seriously considered for the job, Bush aides said.
As the President’s homeland security adviser, Mr Ridge has won praise for improving communication between Washington and local governments. His most visible creation – the colour-coded national warning system – became an instant butt of jokes but has helped Americans understand the ebbs and flows in terrorism threats.
Mr Bush initially opposed creation of a homeland security department. But, facing criticism from Democrats, he embraced the concept in June and used it as a political issue in the mid-term election campaign.
He has given Mr Ridge a daunting assignment to combine nearly two dozen agencies, $40bn (€40.3bn) in budgets and 170,000 employees spread across a broad swathe of federal bureaucracy and well-protected turf.
It is the biggest federal reorganisation since the Defence Department’s birth in 1947, and critics warn that problems are sure to crop up.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said it will take more than a year to get the agency fully up and running. But the administration’s transition plan, devised in secret meetings near the White House for months, sets a more ambitious goal of September 30, 2003, officials said.
Agencies can begin moving to the new department 90 days after the plan is submitted to Congress, which Bush did yesterday.
The first wave of agencies folding into the department on March 1 include the Secret Service, Coast Guard, Customs Service, Immigration and Naturalisation Service, Transportation Safety Administration and the General Service Administration’s federal protective services, officials said.
The department will soon open temporary headquarters in the Washington area. Its long-term housing will be determined later.
