Panel recommends Ridge confirmation Homeland Security vote set for Tuesday

WASHINGTON – Tom Ridge sailed through Senate confirmation hearings Friday on his way to becoming the nation’s first Homeland Security Department chief and taking on the task of harnessing a giant federal bureaucracy responsible for protecting America from terrorist attack.

“The inertia of the old way of doing things will be enormously difficult to change,” Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, told Ridge before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee unanimously approved him for the new cabinet post. The full Senate is expected to vote on the nomination Tuesday.

Ridge, in a hearing before the committee Friday morning, said “terrorism directly threatens the foundations of our nation” and eradicating that threat will be “a long struggle.”

Lawmakers said the fight should not come at the expense of civil rights or the free flow of commerce.

Ridge spoke of the “enormity of our task” of bringing together 22 federal agencies with 170,000 employees to lead the security campaign. The new department, he said, “will not in and of itself be able to stop all attempts by those who wish to do us harm.”

The department officially will come into being next Friday, although it won’t assume operational control of the agencies until March 1. The government has yet to decide the location of the headquarters.

Ridge is a former congressman and governor of Pennsylvania who since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been President Bush’s chief adviser on homeland security.

While there was no dissent over Ridge’s qualifications for the job, senators used the four-hour hearing to question the administration’s anti-terrorism policies and ask how the focus on homeland security could affect civil liberties.

“Overall it’s been too weak,” Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., a presidential hopeful, said of the administration’s record on homeland defense. “Its vision has been too blurry and its willingness to confront the status quo, including with resources, has been too limited.”

Lieberman’s comment came a day after the Senate rejected a Democratic attempt to add $5 billion to this year’s budget for homeland security, primarily to fund programs at the state and local levels. “I hope that this administration will not give us a hollow homeland security,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said at the hearing.

Ridge said there would be additional money in the 2004 budget for first responders and others on the ground floor of the fight against terrorism.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who on Friday formally took over from Lieberman as chairman of the committee, also expressed concern that the law creating the new department did not assure coordination and communication between the federal agency and the 2 million firefighters, police and other first responders across the country.

Ridge said there would be a direct line of authority from the president down “to a single on-sight response coordinator.”

The new agency will combine the Secret Service, Coast Guard, Customs Service, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency and other offices with security-related functions. It will mark the biggest government reorganization since the Defense Department was formed in 1947.

“We are only at the beginning of what will be a long struggle to protect our nation from terrorism,” Ridge said. “We face a hate-filled, remorseless enemy that takes many forms, has many places to hide and is often invisible.”

Congress last November passed legislation to create the department after a drawn-out debate touching on such issues as whistle-blower protections, maintenance of civil liberties, collective bargaining for department employees and the division of labor with the CIA and FBI, which will remain independent.

“The cost of creating this new department cannot be at the expense of our fundamental freedoms,” said Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, at the hearing.

“Any new data-mining techniques or programs to enhance information sharing and collecting must and will respect the civil rights and civil liberties guaranteed to the American people under our Constitution,” Ridge said.

Ridge also rejected any arguments that the nation was as unsafe today as before Sept. 11, 2001, saying airports were more secure, border agents more vigilant, the Customs Service more aggressive in monitoring trade and the CIA and FBI doing far better in sharing information.

“America is a safer place today,” he said.

Ridge, 57, won a Bronze Star for valor in the Vietnam War and in 1982 was elected to Congress, where he served for 12 years. He was elected governor in 1994. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush asked Ridge to head the new White House Office of Homeland Security.