It took the most hard-fought midterm election in decades, a dramatic increase in President Bush’s clout and stunning reshaping of Congress to break months of stalemate over legislation to create a department of homeland security. Now comes the hard part.

Just how hard it is no one can say; melding more than 170,000 federal workers from 22 separate agencies with disparate missions together into one agency with one mission will be the greatest federal makeover since World War II. If the latest antics by the FBI – leaking an anonymous report and making unsubstantiated accusations of incompetence by a rival agency on the eve of this transformation becoming law – are an indication, a new standard in obstinacy may be set.

From the moment, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, that the phrase “homeland security” was coined and the new department was conceived, the likelihood of turf wars has been high. The FBI, which considers the homeland its turf, has been assertive regarding the prominence it expects in this new regime and it has been right to do so, given its expertise in domestic intelligence and investigation.

There is a difference, however, between being assertive and being divisive – a difference the FBI does not seem to grasp. The internal report that somehow went external this week ripping the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms every way possible is hardly a good foundation for the inter-agency cooperation that should precede the melding into a single agency.

Everything about the 11-page report, now available throughout the Internet, is designed to generate animosity: Though unsigned, it is written in an authoritative, even dismissive, tone experts say make it the work of a high-ranking FBI official; the criticisms of ATF – poor training and dangerous procedures exposed in joint ATF-FBI investigations- promise specifics yet never go beyond generalities; timing the leak just as Congress is working on the final key votes and compromises does nothing but add noise to the debate. The overall impression the FBI gives that the ATF is a bunch of bumbling amateurs would pack more punch if the FBI did not have such a reputation for saying that about every other law-enforcement agency.

The American people have waited long enough for the revamped domestic protections Sept. 11 made so necessary, and Homeland Security Director (soon to be Secretary) Tom Ridge has enough do to without one agency out of 22 making things needlessly difficult. Putting a stop to this bad behavior would be a good next use for President Bush’s new clout.