Homeland Security Department absorbs agencies

Most of the 22 agencies that will make up the Homeland Security Department officially move into the new department Saturday.

The Transportation Security Administration, Coast Guard, Customs Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Secret Service and most of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which will be split into three parts in the new department, are part of Homeland Security as of March 1. The Bush administration announced the deadline in November when it released the organization plan for the new department.

The Bush administration has taken a number of steps since the Sept. 11 attacks to beef up security across the country, including stricter security procedures in the nation's airports and the deployment of more than 50,000 trained airport screeners and thousands of air marshals and a nearly 40 percent increase in the number of FBI counterterrorism agents.

The new department will assume authority for more than 170,000 employees gained through the March 1 merger. About 100 employees moved to the agency's temporary headquarters in the U.S. Naval Security Station in Washington on Jan. 24.

"You are people who serve with skill, and who frankly don't get enough credit for what you do," President Bush told Homeland Security employees Friday. "But you are not here [seeking] to get the credit, you are here to do your job."

Department officials will also name interim port directors at 350 U.S. ports of entry following Saturday's merger. All inspectors will then be merged under a single port director, who in turn will be accountable to the new Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, headed by current Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner. The Customs Service, Immigration and Naturalization Service and Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service will all maintain their own management structures at ports of entry.

Despite a broad mandate for handling terrorist-related intelligence, the Homeland Security Department will not have its own intelligence analysis agency. Instead, department officials will work closely with the new Terrorist Threat Integration Center, consisting of the FBI's counterterrorism division, the CIA's counterterrorism center and intelligence units from numerous Defense Department agencies. The center will house a database of known and suspected terrorists that officials will be able to access, according to Bush.

"The work ahead will not be easy … [but] I am confident in our success because I am confident in you," Bush said at Friday's event. "There is no doubt in my mind that this nation will prevail in the war against terror."

The Agriculture Department's Plum Island Animal Disease Center will shift to the Homeland Security Department by June 1. All agencies slated for the new department must be transferred by Sept. 30.