Ridge Says Al Qaeda Still Active in United States
June 09, 2002 07:14 PM ET
By Mark Egan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said Sunday al Qaeda operatives remain active all over the world including the United States, underlining the need for a new U.S. cabinet department to oversee domestic security.
"Literally you have thousands and thousands of people probably located in 40 or 50 countries around the world, who look at the United States of America as the primary target," Ridge said on NBC television's "Meet the Press" talk show.
"They are all over the world and, I suspect, some of them remain in the United States of America as we speak."
Asked if the al Qaeda network, believed to be responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on America, was still viable and still plotting against the United States, Ridge replied, "They have, and they will be. That's the reason you need one agency where the primary focus is to secure the homeland."
With pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures an issue, President Bush has proposed setting up a new Department of Homeland Security to coordinate efforts to protect the nation.
House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt Saturday called for the new department to be approved before the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Ridge suggested that timetable might be too ambitious.
"I don't know whether they can get it done by Sept. 11. There is still a lot of heavy lifting," he said of the process, which requires Congressional approval. "We're going to do everything we can to get it done as quickly as we can."
But he said he was "absolutely convinced" the new department would be set up by the end of the year.
Congress has 88 committees and subcommittees with jurisdiction over homeland security, leading many to expect turf battles over oversight of the proposed new department.
On "Fox News Sunday," White House chief of staff Andrew Card said he hoped the department would be set up by year end. "It's clearly imperative that, for the safety of the American people, we get this department up and running as quickly as possible," he said.
RIDGE EXPECTED TO TAKE THE HELM
Ridge declined to say whether he will be offered the potential new cabinet position while Card said it was "premature" to say who might lead the department.
But Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat, former vice presidential candidate and chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, told Fox that lawmakers in both parties expected Ridge would head the new department.
"There's no question that the presumption on Capitol Hill ... is that Gov. Ridge will become the first secretary of homeland security," Lieberman said. "It would be a surprise if that does not happen."
Bush announced plans in a prime-time speech Thursday night to create a Department of Homeland Security, with 170,000 employees and a $37 billion annual budget.
Congressional hearings are underway investigating intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States with the FBI and the CIA under scrutiny.
Card said it was "an absurd suggestion" that Bush made his announcement to deflect attention from those hearings.
The United States currently relies on intelligence from the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency and various other agencies to determine if there is a threat of attack, but those organizations do not always share information with each other.
One example of that was the FBI's failure to connect a July memo from an agent concerned about Middle Eastern men possibly connected to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden taking flight lessons in the United States to the August arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui in Minnesota, who authorities now suspect had intended to be one of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
The new Department of Homeland Security, if approved by Congress, would include an intelligence clearinghouse that would analyze data from all agencies.
Bush proposed the new department as his administration has struggled to explain intelligence lapses before the Sept. 11 attacks, putting the president on the defensive and knocking him off stride after getting credit for months of sure-footed leadership.
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