Ridge clarifies homeland intelligence roles

After months of congressional pressure to state clearly which of four federal agencies has primary responsibility for coordinating terrorism-related intelligence, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge indicated Tuesday that the Terrorist Threat Integration Center would take the lead.

The controversial new center, a largely autonomous body created last year under the aegis of the CIA, is "the coordination point for the entire intelligence community as it relates to homeland security issues," Ridge said at a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee on the Bush administration's fiscal 2005 budget proposal.

At a related hearing of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee yesterday, Ridge said the administration would give Congress a written answer within weeks on the matter.

The determination of responsibility will address a major source of controversy in the administration's terrorism prevention efforts in the wake of the September 2001 al-Qaeda attacks. Critics have questioned the decision last year to set up the new intelligence center, citing the Homeland Security Department's mandate to coordinate terrorism-related intelligence.

Ridge was pressed Monday on the intelligence question by Senator Carl Levin, D-Mich., who last year joined Governmental Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, in questioning Ridge and the heads of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, the FBI and the CIA about the matter.

In a letter dated Oct. 30, 2003, Levin and Collins asked the four agency heads "which component of the U.S. intelligence community has the primary responsibility for the analysis of foreign intelligence relating to terrorism" and "which component of the U.S. intelligence community has the primary responsibility for the analysis of domestic intelligence relating to terrorism."

The letter arose out of senators' questions about the new center, which some in Congress have advocated bringing into Ridge's department. "It is critical that there be clear lines of responsibility in the analysis of intelligence and that these responsibilities be understood by all of the agencies involved in our counterterrorism efforts," the two senators wrote.

Ridge said yesterday that the four agencies are coordinating their reply to Levin and Collins and will provide an answer "in the next couple of weeks."

Ridge's budget testimony is part of a series of congressional appearances to discuss the Homeland Security Department budget proposal.

At Tuesday's hearing, top Appropriations Committee Democrat Robert Byrd of West Virginia attacked the administration for spending too little overall on homeland security. The administration claim of raising the Homeland Security Department's budget by 10 percent for fiscal 2005, Byrd said, is "just another puffed-up gimmick" based on a misleading presentation of the numbers. Ridge agreed that the increase can be calculated in various ways but stressed that the amount is sufficient.

Senators at both hearings expressed particular concern over a proposed cut in funding for the department's Office for Domestic Preparedness, which provides emergency-response grants to state and local governments.

Claiming an increased capability to target such funds based on the risk of terrorism, the department is seeking to allocate more funds to the Urban Area Security Initiative, which provides grants to cities, while proposing cuts that are likely to hit hardest in lower-profile geographical areas.

Ridge said the cut is related to "fiscal concerns that legitimately must be imposed on all of government," but senators questioned the move.

"While our urban areas are receiving unprecedented federal assistance, the concerns and vulnerabilities of our small cities, small towns and small states must not be overlooked. Perhaps more than any other area, this one gets shortchanged in the department's budget request," Collins said Monday.

Top Governmental Affairs Committee Democrat Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, returning to the Senate for the first time after an unsuccessful campaign for his party's presidential nomination, accused the administration of "shortchanging the homeland side of the war against terrorism" and of lacking an overall strategy for homeland defense.

In response to such remarks, Ridge pointed Monday to specific increases in the budget request for customs and border protection, the Coast Guard and overseas inspection of shipping containers, among other programs and repeated the claim that his department is now better able to target its first-response spending.

Collins and others also cited a provision in the budget request that they said could eliminate per-state minimum payments for homeland security-related first-response efforts.

Pressed by Collins, who vowed that Congress will in coming months "clarify" the question, Ridge said he still supports the minimum payments but also repeated that the department, having sought homeland security assessments from the states, is better equipped than before to dole out grants based on the risk of terrorism, rather than on payment formulas.

"I believe we can better target these resources," Ridge said, citing in particular the "maturity and growth" of the department's Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate. He added that the department, not Congress, should decide on criteria for state and local grants and on the amount of minimum payments to the states.