RIDGE FACES TOUGH TASK IN SECURITY OFFICE

Specialists See Need For Broad Authority

WASHINGTON -- Governor Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania, tapped this week to
direct the domestic war on terrorism, will need broad authority if he hopes
to influence the bureaucracy he is supposed to coordinate, government and
independent specialists say.

President Bush has declared the new Office of Homeland Security a top
priority, saying Ridge would "direct every resource" at coordinating local
and federal efforts to gather intelligence and stop infiltrators plotting
attacks inside the United States. But veterans of past unconventional
"wars," especially the war on drugs, say the task is more easily assigned
than finished, because of institutional inertia, competition between more
than 40 agencies, and lack of funds.

"Somebody who's just there to coordinate but can't give orders and has no
money is just not going to be effective in Washington," said Representative
Mac Thornberry, a Texas Republican who has advocated a separate office for
homeland defense for years. Asked if the FBI or CIA would resist the
directives of a White House coordinator, Thornberry replied, "Absolutely."

Under the orders Bush gave on Thursday night, Ridge, who leaves his current
job on Oct. 5, will have full Cabinet rank, giving him equal status with
the other department heads. But as he works to tie together the
departments' counterterrorism functions - coordinating agencies as
far-flung as the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the US marshals -
it remains unclear whether he will have the power to assign tasks to his
peers, a critical function, authorities on terrorism said.

Ridge will have his own budget, a senior administration official said, but
its size is yet to be determined. In Senate hearings on terrorism
yesterday, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, said that
to give the new office teeth it will probably be necessary for Congress to
pass new legislation about its powers and budget.

"If you want to get a job done, there's no substitute for having an agency
with a budget," he said.

No one knows the perils of underfunding better than the former generals of
the war on drugs, which began as a triumphant attack on illegal substances
but left many of its senior officials feeling frustrated. Some 13 years
after it was created, the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy is still in existence, a sign that its mission is incomplete.

The original concept of the drug war is not a bad comparison to the new war
on terrorism, several security specialists said. Both are protracted,
unusual battles that must be waged on multiple domestic and international
fronts, requiring highly coordinated efforts from border police, the Coast
Guard, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the FBI, the CIA, and
dozens of local agencies. Organized properly, the Homeland Security office
could serve as a model for a whole-scale reorganization of law enforcement
in the United States, as several blue-ribbon commissions recommend.

Specialists warned the administration not to err on the side of limiting
Ridge's power.

"When Bill Bennett was appointed as the drug czar, he called Senator Sam
Nunn and he said, 'Can you help me get some appointments at the Pentagon?
They won't return my calls,"' said Randy Larsen, director of the Institute
for Homeland Security, a nonprofit group. "Hopefully we will give Ridge the
tasking authority and the budget authority he needs to get something done."

Ridge, who according to White House officials spoke to Bush about the
position for the first time on Wednesday night, has not fleshed out the
details of his new post, his former chief of staff said.

"I think the enormity of the task moves him, but I don't sense in the
governor any concern with how the job will evolve," said Mark Holman, who
will work with his former boss in the new office. "When you know the
president and have the president's ear and your only goal is to serve him
and the country to the best of your ability, you know the job will take
care of itself."

Indeed, Ridge comes to the job as one of Bush's closest gubernatorial
friends, an advantage that could elevate the stature of the office
immediately. And he has the nation united behind his cause, which is likely
to reduce inter-Cabinet squabbling.

"He will be part of a team that always has worked very closely together.
And if you notice, there's always areas of overlap between various
government agencies and between different Cabinet departments," White House
spokesman Ari Fleischer said. "The key here, when it comes to homeland
defense, is to have one very effective person at the pinnacle of it who can
help coordinate it."

Another senior administration official portrayed the new office as a
domestic version of the National Security Council, which draws from the
State Department, Defense Department, and CIA to coordinate security
matters within close range of the president. "The key issue is creating a
focal point," the administration official said, comparing Ridge's new role
to that of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Despite the challenges Ridge faces, security and counterterrorism
specialists gave Bush credit for moving beyond Clinton's decision to place
an authority on counterterrorism under the umbrella of the NSC, with
limited clout. Under the current system, intelligence-gathering agencies
share information, but do not report to a single official on a regular
basis - a structure that may have allowed the hijackers in the Sept. 11
attacks to live undetected in the United States for years, preparing to
execute their plans.

'It's helpful to have one individual with whom the buck actually stops but
who also has detailed knowledge of all of the resources at his command,"
said Tony Blinken, who worked at the National Security Council during most
of the Clinton administration. "Obviously the buck stops at the president,
but the president can't be expected to know the minutiae of the
counterterrorism effort."