White House aide says reorganization will be 'extremely difficult'
Reorganizing the federal government to defend the nation against terrorist threats will be an "extremely difficult challenge," a key White House aide told hundreds of state and local emergency-management officials on Monday.
"This is probably the most extraordinary intergovernmental, public-private challenge we face as a nation," Mark Holman, deputy director of homeland security, said during a conference sponsored by the Performance Institute's Law Enforcement Development Center. "There is no magic to this. It's going to be a lot of hard work."
Holman said President Bush hopes legislation to authorize his proposed, Cabinet-level Homeland Security Department will be enacted during the current congressional session.
Although turf wars are sure to erupt over the proposed $37 billion, 170,000-employee agency -- which falls under the jurisdiction of 88 congressional committees -- Holman predicted that Congress will approve Bush's plan this year. "In my lifetime, I cannot think of another issue where there is more genuine, substantive, positive bipartisan interest," he said.
Holman also said he is optimistic that federal agencies would succeed in making the types of "profound" cultural, administrative and technological changes necessary to effectively share counter-terrorism information with state and local officials. "We'll be able to take information we found literally in a cave in Afghanistan, and drive it down to local law enforcement," Holman said.
Information-sharing already has improved "dramatically" since the Sept. 11 attacks, according to Holman, who noted that the White House Office of Homeland Security recently established a 24-hour communications center for exchanging possible information on terrorist threats with state and local officials.
"The ability and the desire to work together is very much there," Holman said. He added that the FBI, CIA and other agencies with intelligence divisions are working on ways to share sensitive but "relevant" information -- such as 55 different watch lists of suspected terrorists -- with state and local officials who have never had access to that information before.
"People get it," Holman said. "People now understand why a law enforcement officer on the beat may need access to those 55 watch lists."