The President could have made no finer choice in responding to the disaster of September 11 than by appointing Tom Ridge to be Director of the Office of Homeland Security. The challenge before him is daunting, but those of us who know Tom also know that he has always heeded his country's call.

In 1968, while still in law school, Tom Ridge was drafted into the U.S. Army. He fought in Vietnam as an infantry sergeant and was awarded the Bronze Star. He was the first enlisted Vietnam veteran elected to Congress.

Now he has been enlisted in a new struggle. True to form, he has labored tirelessly since last September to help improve the security of our homeland and our fellow citizens.

The President's proposal is a bold one. It envisions a department whose mission includes border and transportation security; emergency preparedness and response; chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear countermeasures; information analysis and infrastructure protection. If approved as now proposed, only the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans' Affairs would have more employees than the almost-170,000 workers proposed for the Department of Homeland Defense.

Few would dispute the need for consolidation and coordination of the nearly 100 agencies that now share responsibility for these critical tasks. This subcommittee's oversight over the past 2 years also has demonstrated the need for a single agency to take charge of the responsibility to enhance the protection of our Nation's critical infrastructure and key terrorist targets, both in the public and private sector. The latter includes several industry sectors over which this committee has principal jurisdiction, including the electricity and telecommunications grids and our Nation's drinking water systems.

As our hearing last April demonstrated, precious little has been done since 1997 when a Presidential blue ribbon panel urged the establishment of a robust public-private partnership to identify critical assets, assess their interdependencies and vulnerabilities, and take steps to mitigate our risks.

Moreover, this subcommittee's oversight with respect to Federal counterterrorism R&D programs has raised many of the same concerns. As the General Accounting Office reported to this subcommittee last September, just prior to the anthrax attacks on this city, our Federal bioterrorism research programs, scattered throughout a dozen or more agencies, are poorly coordinated and lack a clear sense of priority and focus. The same is true for the myriad of Federal programs aimed at improving the preparedness of Federal, State and local governments and emergency response providers to deal with major disasters, terrorist attacks and other public health emergencies. In fact, there were so many such programs within the Department of Health and Human Services itself that in the bioterrorism bill this committee recently shepherded through the Congress, we created a new Assistant Secretary at HHS just to coordinate all these emergency preparedness and response functions.

And this is just one department. Can there be any doubt why every serious study of this issue has ended in a call for some form

of centralization, or focal point of coordination in the executive branch? The President's proposal moves us firmly in that direction. The focus of today's hearing is on the critical aspect of emergency preparedness and response and how the President proposes to improve our national efforts in this area. We cannot move too soon. Yesterday, for example, CNN reported on the new threats being made by a spokesman for al Qaeda who, in a sickening and warped reference to September 11, told Americans they should, quote, fasten their safety belts and then spoke of the death of up to 4 million Americans including 1 million children through the use of chemical and biological weapons.

Although Governor Ridge will testify today on all aspects of the President's proposal, the remainder of our panels and witnesses will focus on the emergency preparedness and response issue, namely Title V of the administration's proposal. With respect to those functions or programs that are proposed for transfer from any agency to the new department, two questions seem in order: First, how do these programs operate currently; and second, what are the potential advantages or disadvantages to the proposed transfer?

In our case, while the President's bill is a useful blueprint, many important questions remain to be resolved. For example, what is the scope of the new secretary's authority over HHS's public health preparedness programs and how might it alter the current focus on important dual-use programs? Why are some of the agencies' preparedness and response programs transferred completely, others transferred partially and others left unchanged in their respective departments? And for those assets or functions not fully transferred to the new Secretary, but under his authority, how does the administration plan to ensure a workable model with one Secretary directing the assets or programs of another?

As I said at the outset, the task before the President, the Congress and today's chief witness is daunting, but whatever the challenge, we must meet it. In the midst of the battle of Bunker Hill, Abigail Adams wrote these words to her husband in Philadelphia: "Dearest friend, the day, perhaps the decisive day, has come on which the fate of America depends. Now the fate of America rests with us, and of one thing I am certain. Unless a spirit of cooperation and trust informs all of our efforts, we are unlikely to succeed. And to be successful, we have a duty to speak plainly to the American people about the clear and present dangers that lead us to this enormous investment in this massive undertaking."

Again, I want to thank Governor Ridge and all of our witnesses for agreeing to appear before us today, many on short notice.

I will recognize the ranking member, the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Deutsch, for an opening statement.

Mr. DEUTSCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Governor Ridge.

This is an issue where I think it is accurately described that there is no light between any of us in the Congress, the 435 Members of the House and the 100 Members of the Senate. And I think that we stand completely with the President on the creation of this department, which is an integral part of the war on terrorism.

I think if we have learned anything post-September 11, it is reminding us that the most fundamental thing we can do as a government and as elected officials is the security of our constituents. And, in fact, I think we understand that unfortunately, prior to September 11, we were not looking at it quite the way we should. And specifically, I think, we acknowledge at this point that terrorists' or terrorist states' particularly weapons of mass destruction are an existential threat to the United States and to our people. And, Governor Ridge, I have read your comments and I would completely agree with basically all of them, but one I want to focus on which I think is the-in a sense, the essence for the creation of the department is that, at the present time, there really is no one who is responsible or no agency that is responsible, but you are in your position, but no agency that is responsible for homeland security.

And my experience in life-and I think for most of us if we think about our experience in life-is, something never gets done correctly unless someone is responsible and in charge. And I think that is the essence of, the purpose of this agency where I think the goal, the need, is absolutely imperative.

I also think the facts of, again, what you have put together and what others have put together at this point specifically show the sort of ad hoc dispersed nature of some of these responsibilities. I think as we move forward-and I think this is one of these issues where we really are working hand-in-hand-in a very bipartisan tradition in this committee, although we have many disagreements, we have many agreements as well.

We will disagree, as we did last week on prescription drugs, but on this, I think there are no disagreements. And I think what we are really looking for is working with you, working with each other, just really trying to make it as good as possible.

And I think we are at the level of details. I don't think that this is a case where the devil is in the details. I really don't. I think it is the details of working with you to really try to structure a department that will maximize the imperative that we are successful.

One of the analogies that I have used in talking about post-September 11 and I would add to this creation of this department, I think there are several World War II analogies-two, really, I think, at least for me, and when I have spoken about this, they have been very on point.

One is clearly, obviously, Pearl Harbor where the United States wasn't prepared; and if we look historically, the Japanese might have seen it as a short-term victory. But I think historically, obviously it was an incredible disaster for them. Had the United States entered the war in the Pacific, which is unclear whether we would not have would have, and I think it was overdetermined once we entered the war that we would be successful.

The other analogy is the Manhattan Project. And when it was started it was not overdetermined that we would be successful in that effort. But if we were not successful, obviously history would be a lot different.

Governor, I speak to you, and I know your commitment is total on this; and I speak to ourselves about this, that I think that just as we had no choice but to be successful with the Manhattan

Project, we have no choice but to be successful with what we are doing to prevent weapons of mass destruction attacking the United States. And I believe the creation of this department is a critical component of that.

So I look forward to working with you and with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle over the next, really, hopefully, just several months. I think setting the date of September 11 to try to get it resolved by is doable. As you well know as a former Member, we can always argue about things. We will have enough things to argue about between now and January 20 if we want to. Hopefully, we won't.

Hopefully, we will put deadlines on ourselves and force us with the minutia of details, with the minutia of jurisdiction. Hopefully, we will get over that and understand that we are all working together for one goal.

So I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GREENWOOD. The Chair thanks the gentleman and yields 5 minutes for an opening to the chairman of the full committee, the gentleman, Mr. Tauzin.

Chairman TAUZIN. Thank you, Chairman Greenwood, and I am pleased to join you in welcoming Governor Ridge to testify on President Bush's historic proposal for the creation of the new Cabinetlevel Department of Homeland Security.

Governor Ridge, I think you and we, too, understand that we are going to play some important roles here. But the truth is that bureaucrats and legislators and even Cabinet-level officials really play a second-place role when it comes to defending the country in this very important time. It is the men and women of the military, the National Guard or the fire and emergency response teams and the incredible heart and courage of the people of America who are on the front line, the eyes and ears of our country, the first responders who really have this task at hand; and our job is to help arm them and properly coordinate them.

And I, first of all, want to thank you because the other side of that coin is that we have learned since September 11 that there can be a lot of finger-pointing in this country when things go wrong, and there can be a lot of people trying to put the blame on someone else for not sharing information or coordinating properly. You, however, left your job as Governor of the great State of Pennsyvania at the summoning of our President, and you decided to be the person where the buck stops in coordinating and making sure this awful finger-pointing exercise doesn't happen again. And this is the next, obviously, important step in that process, to make sure there is someone at a Cabinet level for whom the final responsibility rests in coordination.

That is an awesome responsibility, sir, and I commend you for taking it on in this temporary position. And frankly, I would hope that the President has the good sense, when we are through with this work, to continue you in a permanent position if you are willing to undertake it.

I wanted to talk briefly with you this morning about some of our roles in connection with your role in the establishment of this new department. First, our committee has jurisdiction, and we will continue to have jurisdiction, obviously, over many of the programs

that the Department of Energy and the national labs, the Department of Health and Human Services, all of which serve vital roles in preparing and responding to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attacks. All areas where if this spokesman for al Qaeda is real and his statements are believable, all areas of vulnerability these people hope to exploit in these programs, such as the nuclear emergency support teams that identify and respond to radiological and nuclear threats as well as public health programs; such as the strategic national stockpile of drugs and vaccines that must be stocked and rapidly deployed, this new department will now play an important role.

Title V of the President's proposal contains a plan for consolidating and coordinating these functions. Well, obviously we have to help you make sure that that is done properly. It is a critical function as we face new threats.

Second, our committee has jurisdiction and will continue to have jurisdiction over research and development programs for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear countermeasures. Programs that the Health and Human Services Department, DOE and national labs in which the country's top scientists are currently working on new methods for detecting and detecting terrorist attacks. For example, there are improved sensors to detect radiological devices, new scanners to screen luggage and cargo, new technologies to detect and neutralize biological hazards.

Title III of the President's plan would transfer many of these programs, and it is important, I think, as we handle this transfer, to see what we can do about somehow coordinating the very diverse efforts that are going on in as many as four different labs on the same subject, and to make sure we get the best in new, innovative technologies out there to protect our borders and to make travel in this country as safe as we can make it.

And a third of the department's jurisdiction will continue to have jurisdiction over the regulation of many of the Nation's most critical infrastructure and assets, including both publicly and privately owned assets in telecommunications and energy and safe food and drinking water, as well as many manufacturing facilities in the country that could be targets.

Governor Ridge, I want to thank you for something else: for being accessible to this committee without subpoena, voluntarily meeting with us, counseling with us, as we went through the process post-9/11 of examining all the agencies under our jurisdiction and all these critical assets, and where the vulnerabilities might be and what we might do to encourage the agency heads to begin developing protection and countermeasures to make sure these assets are protected.

The key is to recognize that most of the critical, important infrastructures are privately owned, privately operated. And the only way to succeed is going to be creating the strong public-private partnerships for national security. It doesn't create new regulatory regimes in this country, new bureaucracies that are going to make the economy worse off, but literally relies upon the strength of those private-sector-owned and operated entities to work with us. in a partnership to make sure they are protected properly.