CIA, FBI chiefs back Bush's Homeland Security agency

Associated Press WriterWASHINGTON (AP) -- CIA chief George Tenet told Congress on Thursday that President Bush's proposed Homeland Security Department will bring a crucial "single focus" that does not now exist to protect Americans at home.

Tenet, in prepared remarks to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said the agency will bridge a gap between foreign intelligence services like the CIA and law enforcement agencies such as the FBI.

"The nation very much needs the single focus that this department will bring to homeland security," Tenet said.

Tenet and FBI Director Robert Mueller were appearing before the Senate panel as many lawmakers question Bush's decision to leave them out of the new agency, which would have its own intelligence analysis office.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., chairman of the committee, said Congress would "move forward to strengthen" Bush's blueprint as it relates to intelligence gathering and analysis, but he did not say how.

During multiple hearings Wednesday and Thursday on Capitol Hill, lawmakers raised questions about the plan ranging from whether the State Department should still process visas in foreign countries to the wisdom of having the new agency oversee farm programs such as boll weevil eradication.

Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., said the House Science Committee he chairs would push to include a separate office within the new agency dedicated entirely to research and development in such areas as computer security. The president's plan, he said, "simply does not give R&D a high enough profile."

The doubts prompted White House homeland security chief Tom Ridge to assure lawmakers that Bush does not view his plan for the new Cabinet agency as set in stone.

"By definition, it's a work in progress," Ridge told the House Judiciary Committee.

After appearing in a Senate hearing Wednesday to support keeping the Immigration and Naturalization Service intact under the new agency, Ridge told a later panel that Bush still supports splitting it into separate border control and citizenship pieces, as the House voted to do earlier this year.

That seemed to mollify House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., who said that otherwise the government would be left with "the same old, same old INS ... which will bring along its incompetence."

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the new department must be subject to whistle-blower protection laws and the Freedom of Information Act, which critics say the plan omits.

"What this does is put the new department above the law," Leahy said.

Ridge said the agency would be subject to the whistle-blower law, which protects employees who disclose wrongdoing and corruption from reprisals.

Exactly which agency should control issuance of visas in foreign countries emerged as another sticking point. Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla., said the new Homeland Security Department should take that duty away from the State Department, which he said is unable to screen out terrorists.

The lead State Department witness, Undersecretary of Management Grant Green, said the decisions on who should get visas are only as good as the background information visa officers receive on each applicant. The 19 people involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, Green said, were not identified as terrorists by law enforcement agencies before they got their visas.

At a House Agriculture Committee hearing, farm groups and many lawmakers objected to shifting the Agriculture Department's plant and animal health division to the new agency. In addition to border inspections, it deals with eradication of pests and diseases affecting the food and fiber supply, ranging from cotton boll weevils to citrus canker. Farm-state lawmakers fear these programs could become lower priorities.

"The reality is that even in wartime, cows must be milked," said Rep. Charles Stenholm, D-Texas.

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