Ridge says homeland agency open to ideas

WASHINGTON -- Concerns and complaints grew Wednesday as Congress dug deeper into the details of President Bush's proposed Homeland Security Department, prompting a top Bush adviser to assure lawmakers the White House would accept changes.

During multiple hearings 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.

So far, the doubts do not appear to threaten strong bipartisan support for the legislation. Still, White House homeland security chief Tom Ridge took pains 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.

Ridge continued to resist suggestions that the FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies be brought under the new department's authority. FBI director Robert Mueller and CIA chief George Tenet are likely to reinforce that message in testimony scheduled for today.

After appearing in a morning Senate hearing to favor 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 this year.

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

Earlier, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., 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," said Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Ridge said the agency would be subject to the whistle-blower law, which protects employees who disclose wrongdoing and corruption from reprisals. But he defended the plan to exempt from public inspection certain information about vulnerability to terrorism brought to the agency by private companies and other nonfederal entities.

Disclosing such information, Ridge said, could "draw a roadmap of critical infrastructure vulnerabilities for those who would do us harm."

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

"Visa issuance should not be about speed and service with a smile," said Weldon at a hearing of the House Government Reform agency reorganization subcommittee.

The lead State Department witness, Undersecretary of Management Grant Green, said the decisions on who should be entitled to visas are only as good as the background information visa officers receive on each applicant. The 19 people involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, he 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 raised objections 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.

In other action Wednesday, the House approved by 422-2 a bill to improve information sharing between the FBI, the CIA, governors, mayors and state and local law enforcement officers and firefighters.

Information-sharing procedures would be put in place within six months under the bill introduced by Reps. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., and Jane Harman, D-Calif. Any classified information would be edited so that it can be shared with state and local authorities.

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