Bush acts on agency to tackle terrorism in US

THE long-sought Department of Homeland Security will begin taking shape on March 1 when the Secret Service, Customs Service and several huge agencies will be folded into the massive new department.

It will be fully operational by September 30, 2003 more than two years after the attacks that prompted the overhaul.

"The threat of mass murder on our own soil will be met with a unified, effective response," President George W Bush said as he signed a bill creating the new 170,000-person agency. Mr Bush chose long-time political ally Tom Ridge and two high-powered deputies to lead the new Department and mount a "united, effective response" against terrorism on US soil.

Within hours of signing the department into law yesterday, Mr Bush asked the Senate to approve his hand-picked leadership team and submitted his transition blueprint to Congress.

The plan calls for a large portion of the department to take shape March 1, when the Secret Service, Coast Guard, Customs Service, Immigration and Naturalisation Service and a few other agencies fold their employees and budgets into the new Cabinet entity.

Other changes will continue in phases even as the new agency searches for permanent housing, according to an outline of the shift distributed by the White House. According to the plan, the final pieces will be in place by September 30, 2003, more than two years after the September 11 attacks.

But even as Mr Bush lauded the biggest government shake-up in more than a half-century as "historic action to defend the United States," he offered a sobering assessment of the terrorist threat.

"In a free and open society, no department of government can completely guarantee our safety against ruthless killers who move and plot in shadows," the president said.

Mr Bush initially opposed creation of a Homeland Security Department. However, facing criticism from Democrats, he embraced the concept in June and used it as a political issue in the midterm election campaign.

In the 57-year-old Mr Ridge, Mr Bush picked a Vietnam hero, 12-year congressional veteran and long-time political ally of the Bush family who was on the president's shortlist of potential running mates in 2000. Creating the department will involve merging $40 billion in budgets from a broad swathe of well-protected bureaucratic turf. Critics warn that problems are sure to crop up.

Dwight Ink, a former Office of Management and Budget and General Services official, said: "I wouldn't expect all the warts to be worked out in the first year."

Mr Ridge was more optimistic.

"Hopefully from day one we'll see tangible results," he said on CNN. "I understand that blending 22 departments and agencies and 170,000 people is going to be a very complicated, time-consuming task."