Supporters seek new department by Sept. 11 anniversary

House and Senate sponsors of various anti-terrorism bills expressed support Tuesday for President Bush's proposal to create a Cabinet-level Homeland Security Department, and urged their colleagues to set Sept. 11 as the target date for approving such a plan.

"The president's support of reorganizing our homeland security apparatus clearly changes the whole dynamic of the debate," Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, told the House Government Reform National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations Subcommittee during a hearing on counterterrorism measures. Thornberry, who is chief sponsor of a House bill to create a Homeland Security Department, as well as a National Office for Combating Terrorism within the White House, said Congress must act quickly on the issue.

"Everyone agrees that 100 different [homeland security-related] agencies scattered around the government is not acceptable," he said.

Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., who is sponsoring similar legislation with Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Bob Graham, D-Fla., said Bush's proposal "embraced the ideas in our bill ... and added ideas of his own which I think, overall, strengthen the proposal."

But Lieberman questioned whether Bush's plan to establish an information analysis "clearinghouse" within the new Homeland Security Department would adequately address the types of serious interagency communications lapses that occurred prior to Sept. 11.

"I think all of us have to ask whether that's enough," Lieberman said. "Whether we need to put more authority either in the secretary of Homeland Security, or in another office in the White House ... to demand the kind of coordination of intelligence resources that is the best security that we will have."

The Senate bill would give the White House statutory authority to coordinate intelligence information from the FBI, the CIA and several other agencies. Lieberman and Specter said such a coordination system might have helped federal agencies "connect the dots" prior to the attacks. "My judgment is that there was a veritable blueprint in advance of 9/11," Specter said.

But, lawmakers said, federal agencies must dramatically upgrade their information technology and communications capabilities in order to enable that type of information sharing.

"Part of what we do needs to [ensure] that we're not blowing money all over the place on a procurement strategy that buys us stuff that is not interoperable," said Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., a co-sponsor of Thornberry's bill. "We have to take down these artificial firewalls ... so that people can get the information to the people who have to have it, and they can act quickly."

The private sector must play a crucial role in those efforts, Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., said. "This is an effort akin to World War II, when the president called in industry and asked them to volunteer some time and expertise," he said. "I hope this president takes the leadership to do just that."