In less trying times, President Bush’s plan to consolidate dozens of federal agencies and offices charged with various aspects of guarding against terrorist attacks might be seen as a bold exercise in rearranging bureaucrats. Previous government reorganization plans have come and gone with scant visible result, a record that does not bode well for one that treads of the turf of eight cabinet departments and at least 80 congressional committees and subcommittees.

These are extraordinarily trying times and there is much more at stake that trimming a little fat or excising a bit of waste. In calling upon Congress to create a new cabinet Department of Homeland Security, the president drew an appropriate parallel to the intelligence restructuring that took place in 1947 – like the Cold War, the war on terrorism will be long, complex, even confusing; it will not be won by brute force but with perseverance and finesse.

This new department will be responsible for nothing less than safeguarding the nation’s borders and transportation networks, bringing under one umbrella agencies ranging from the Immigration and Naturalization Service and Customs to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Secret Service and the Coast Guard. Left out of this umbrella, for intelligence and investigative reasons, are the FBI and the CIA.

Congress’s task now is not just to create a new federal department, but to make that department work. The potential for conflict in this reorganization is great; some of the organizations involved are famous for being uncooperative with other organizations, some officials will give up their positions of sole authority with great reluctance. The independence of the FBI and CIA is an important safeguard that must be preserved, but there also must be genuine progress in the two agencies’ effort to improve counterterrorism information-sharing. Streamlining must not come at the price of loss of oversight; the duplication in intelligence analysis built into this proposal is necessary to prevent signals of terrorist activity from being overlooked, but it must not become a means to duck accountability.

Coming after several weeks of embarrassing disclosures about intelligence failures and just hours after FBI Agent Coleen Rowley testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about her agency’s specific failures, President Bush acknowledged Thursday night that signals were overlooked on his watch in advance of Sept. 11. He wisely avoided reminding the American public and Congress that similar signals were overlooked by prior administrations. An example of leadership was set that Congress, and the bureaucrats, should follow.