US wraps up in homeland security blanket

The United States took another step yesterday towards remaking itself as a country subsumed in a never-ending war on terrorism. In a brief ceremony at the White House, with President Bush looking on, Vice-President Dick Cheney swore in Tom Ridge as the country's first secretary of homeland security.

This was the formal confirmation of the biggest reorganisation in Washington since the Pentagon was created to bring together the old war and navy departments 56 years ago.

Mr Ridge did his best to look his usual cheerful self yesterday. But if he truly feels cheerful, he may not have assessed his situation properly.

The worst that can happen is that the US suffers another major terrorist attack at home, in which case Mr Ridge - having been de facto in charge of defending the homeland for 15 months - is certain to get a large chunk of the blame.

The best case scenario involves no further attacks, which will mean the new department will slide into irrelevance, its funding perpetually vulnerable to the White House budget office and Capitol Hill. Even in the current atmosphere of extreme tension, homeland security has already lost out.

Mr Ridge is already being identified as a potential target by leading Democratic politicians. Senator Hillary Clinton said yesterday that American vigilance had "faded at the top" since September 11.

"We have relied on a myth of homeland security - a myth written in rhetoric, inadequate resources and a new bureaucracy instead of relying on good, old-fashioned American ingenuity, might and muscle," she added.

A more telling fact is that in the history of the republic, only one job has ever completely disappeared from the cabinet: the office of postmaster-general.

The phrase "homeland security" may be here for ever. So may its financial and bureaucratic frustrations.

Three months ago a commission led by the former senators Warren Rudman and Gary Hart, who are now seen as visionaries for predicting the terrorist attack, identified a number of areas they said needed urgent attention.

These included improving security at ports and land borders, preparing emergency workers for a chemical or biological attack and giving the police access to terrorist watch lists. Analysts say that there is still almost no movement in those areas.

Mitch Daniels, the president's budget chief, said: "We will spend what it takes." But there is growing scepticism about the reality of this in a situation where the unusual dual objectives of tax cuts and war have become the top priorities.

"We are not putting funding where it needs to go," said Rob Kanake of the thinktank the Council on Foreign Relations. "The only elements of homeland security that have received proper funds are the defence department elements. The indications are that when the 2004 budget comes out, there will be a lot of smoke and mirrors."

In effect, the problem for Mr Ridge is not the war on terrorism but the one that has been going on in Washington since the federal system was devised: the war for bureaucratic turf. He was sent in to solve this problem by knocking heads together. He may end up being a casualty himself.

As things stand, he will have a staff of only 100 or so, who are shortly to move into an underused, landlocked naval base in the Washington suburbs, several miles from the heartland of government.

By the autumn, he will have 170,000 employees under his supposed control, including the secret service, customs, immigration and the transportation security agency, which has now taken over affairs at US airports from the hotchpotch of often incompetent and sometimes suspect contractors who were previously in charge.

However, Mr Ridge will have no control over the masterful bureaucratic infighters at the FBI or CIA, and certainly none over Donald Rumsfeld's empire at the Pentagon, or the individual state and local authorities.

Yet it is the inability of the US's vast array of different security and policing agencies to talk to one another - because of legal constraints, technical failings and ancient habits - that it is the biggest problem he faces.

Mr Ridge's formal appointment brings the number of cabinet members to 15, the first increase since the more manageable department of veterans' affairs was created in 1989.

Technically, he will ranked at the bottom of the cabinet's hierarchy.