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A huge government reorganization for homeland security

Former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge was sworn in as director of homeland security in October 2001.

(CNN) -- The attacks of September 11 forced a wholesale reexamination of the United States' anti-terrorism efforts, including how big a role the federal government should play in fighting terror within the nation's borders.

Shortly after the attacks, President Bush announced plans for a new Office of Homeland Security. Nine months later, he proposed making the office a Cabinet-level department, an agency capable of marshaling the forces of law enforcement, intelligence experts and others in combating the sometimes shadowy world of terrorism.

Bush administration officials call the proposed reorganization the most dramatic change in the federal government since World War II -- a new department with a budget of $37.4 billion and more than 169,000 employees pulled from elsewhere in the federal workforce.

The new department, Bush said, would be devoted to overseeing functions now dispersed among a "confusing patchwork" of dozens of agencies.

More than 40 federal entities -- the Coast Guard, Customs Service, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Border Patrol, Transportation Security Administration and Secret Service, to name a few -- have a role in fighting and responding to terrorism, the GAO reported. Still, some officials have criticized the proposed department's structure, arguing that it doesn't include the FBI -- the nation's lead terrorism agency -- or the CIA.

The proposed new department would take over some of the functions of those existing agencies and serve as a central homeland-security point of contact for state and local governments and authorities in a nation that has more than 87,000 jurisdictions. The White House also said the department would help state and local authorities by giving them one point of contact for homeland security.

The nation needs a new department to fight terrorism, one official in Indiana said recently.

"The federal government desperately needs to rearrange the collection of activities that now find themselves in disparate places so that they are better positioned to respond to, plan for, interdict the collection of threats that represent this entire genre of terrorism in the new millennium," said Peter Beering, coordinator of Indianapolis Terrorism Preparedness.

Like Indianapolis, numerous other U.S. cities have established homeland security liaisons or task forces to gather their own intelligence and coordinate with federal authorities. But some officials fear the transition to a new homeland security apparatus may create a local-federal communication gap, at least in the short term.

"When you make these kinds of massive changes, because of the nature of change -- transitioning from one management structure to another -- you're going to have a period of time when there's probably going to be less federal ability to engage cities directly than there is now," said Cameron Whitman, Director for Policy and Federal Relations at the National League of Cities. The Washington-based organization has more than 1,800 member municipalities in every state.

The department would be divided into four parts: Border and Transportation Security; Emergency Preparedness and Response; Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Countermeasures; and Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection.

Some officials have criticized the proposed department's structure, arguing that it doesn't include the nation's primary intelligence-gathering agencies -- the FBI and CIA.

Legislators in both parties have voiced support for the department, but there have been disagreements, largely along party lines, over how the agency would be administered.

The White House has argued for more authority over the new department's personnel. Key Democrats, who control the Senate, believe Bush's proposal grants too much power to the executive branch.

Congress still needs to approve the department. In a resounding 295-132 vote, the House in July passed legislation to create the new department. The Senate has yet to vote on the bill.