Homeland Security

REMEMBER when immigration officials sent out flight-school visa approval notices for two of the 9/11 hijackers - six months after they committed their suicide attacks on America? President Bush was outraged, four federal immigration officials were reassigned and Washington vowed that such embarrassing bureaucratic snafus would never happen again. It has, in fact, happened again. On Jan. 15, immigration officials sent a notice to Eugueni Kniazev of Brooklyn, N.Y. The letter informs Kniazev, an immigrant from Siberia, that he is "deemed to be a lawful permanent resident of the United States.

The Democrat-controlled Congress and President Bush haven't agreed on much this year, but the new homeland security legislation is a shining exception. Signed into law by Bush Friday, this measure finally implements many recommendations made by the independent 9/11 commission. That report came out three years ago, and too many of its wise suggestions have been ignored in Washington. The new law addresses one of the biggest drawbacks of recent homeland security spending: sparsely populated states with few terrorist targets have received a disproportionately large share of the federal pie. This measure will cut in half the amount of guaranteed grants given to states without regard to their risk of attack.

VICE President Dick Cheney recently charged that a vote for John Kerry was an invitation to a terrorist attack. Tough rhetoric notwithstanding, it is actually the president's homeland security policies that leave this nation unacceptably vulnerable to such an attack. Consider Pennsylvania: The state is home to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, two of the most potent symbols of our democracy. That and other factors make large areas of the state a potential terror target. Despite this, in 2004, Pennsylvania received just $5.90 per capita in federal counterterrorism funding, placing it 45th among all the states.

RUDY WAS THERE within minutes. No sooner had American Airlines flight 587 dropped from the sky than the mayor of New York arrived with the first responders. The accident occurred in Queens, but so strong and bright is Rudy's star that I wouldn't have been surprised (or disappointed) if I saw him at a tragedy outside of New York's city limits. It doesn't look like this crash was the work of terrorists, but Rudy's presence was nevertheless reassuring. He's a realist, he's honest, and if somebody's butt needs to be kicked in the name of justice, you know he'll put the hammer down.

THE OFFICE of homeland defense has accomplished very little so far, and Americans are beginning to wonder if Tom Ridge, its director, is holding an empty title. A little perspective and a little patience are in order. The parts of the government that organized our response in Afghanistan have had more than 50 years of experience in working together through the National Security Council. Their bureaucracies have collaborated through several wars and scores of lesser military operations, covert actions and attendant diplomatic endeavors.

President Bush (right) signed legislation yesterday creating a new Department of Homeland Security and launching the largest government reorganization since 1947. About 170,000 workers in 22 agencies will move into the new department to foster better communication among agencies in an effort to prevent future terrorist attacks on American soil. Key dates in the White House transition plan released yesterday: JAN. 24: Establishment of office of the secretary of the new Department of Homeland Security.

Lawmakers blistered the Bush administration yesterday for "a severe attitude problem" in its dealings with Congress, threatening to withhold money because of Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge's refusal to testify on Capitol Hill. At a hearing, White House Budget Director Mitch Daniels was taken to task by House Appropriations Committee members. "You and several others in the administration, in my view, have a severe attitude problem," said Wisconsin Rep. David Obey, the top Democrat on the committee.

President Bush's selection of Michael Chertoff to head the Department of Homeland Security could be good for residents of this region. The New Jersey native should be responsive to the legitimate criticism that too few federal dollars are being spent to protect those East Coast sites most likely to be hit by terrorists. Bernard Kerik, Bush's previous nominee to direct homeland security, was lobbied hard by both Sen. Jon Corzine (D., N.J.) and acting New Jersey Gov. Richard Codey to change the way funds are allocated.

The United States must develop a more focused plan to protect the country against terrorist attacks, panelists said yesterday at the midyear meeting of the American Bar Association. The lawyers' group, whose standing committee on law and national security has examined terrorism for 10 years, said homeland security involves such legal issues as civil rights and international law. Yesterday, experts discussed the "roles and responsibilities" of homeland defense. After the Sept.

This Week U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.) and his opponent, U.S. Rep. Joseph Hoeffel (D., Pa.), will answer questions from members of The Inquirer's Citizens Voices panel on the Pennsylvania and Metro commentary pages. Subjects will include No Child Left Behind, military spending, and national energy policies. Michael J. Leventhal of Doylestown asks: Is enough being done to protect local targets in Pennsylvania, such as our nuclear plants, water sources and harbors, from terrorism?

WASHINGTON - With no broader budget deal in sight, a key House panel responsible for implementing sweeping cuts to agency budgets moved Wednesday to exempt veterans and largely protect spending on border safety and other homeland security programs in the coming year. The strategy by the pragmatic House Appropriations Committee is to begin advancing a handful of its 12 yearly spending bills even as Republicans controlling the House and President Obama are at an impasse over how much to lay out on the government's day-to-day operations.

WASHINGTON - Citing problems exposed by the Boston Marathon bombings, senators weighing amendments to a sweeping immigration bill agreed Tuesday to boost security provisions around student visas. The Senate Judiciary Committee agreed by voice vote to an amendment by Republican Sen. Charles F. Grassley of Iowa meant to ensure that border patrol agents at U.S. ports of entry have access to information on the status of student visas. The committee action follows recent revelations that a student from Kazakhstan accused of hiding evidence for one of the Boston bombing suspects was allowed to return to the United States in January without a valid student visa.

WASHINGTON - Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis III said Thursday that his department was unaware that the Russian security service sent a query to the FBI about one of two brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombing long before the attack. When asked whether he would have given the suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a second look had he known, Davis told a congressional committee: "We would certainly look at the information. We would certainly talk to the individual. " Davis, testifying at the first congressional hearing into the April 15 bombing, said the FBI had interviewed Tsarnaev after the Russian warning and closed out the case without finding any derogatory information.

The Delaware River Port Authority board on Wednesday promoted a longtime DRPA police officer to chief of the 164-member force that patrols the agency's four toll bridges and the PATCO commuter rail line. The DRPA board also named a former Philadelphia police officer and regional director for the Pennsylvania attorney general as its director of homeland security. John L. Steif, 50, of Sewell, had been acting chief of the DRPA police since last July, following the retirement of former Chief David J. McClintock.

Wake-up call on security steps Bombs going off. People maimed. A child killed. The questions are not who or why, but how this could occur. Where was the much-praised Department of Homeland Security? Hopefully, those responsible for our safety will protect the runners at Philadelphia's Broad Street Run. We are a complacent people. If we thought this couldn't happen in our country, then 9/11 taught us nothing. Gloria Gelman, Philadelphia Haunted by a violent history From Boston to Baghdad and Beirut and beyond, the ghost of 19th-century French anarchist bomber Ravachol and other perpetrators of the violence that knows no boundaries, borders, or limits haunt our everyday lives.

WASHINGTON - Federal authorities would be required to establish vast new border fences and surveillance as part of a bipartisan Senate plan aimed at allowing the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants to earn permanent residency and, potentially, citizenship, aides familiar with the proposal said Wednesday. The provisions would call on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to increase surveillance to cover 100 percent of the southwestern border and to apprehend 90 percent of the people who attempt to enter the United States illegally, said the aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

WASHINGTON - The choice of a successor to Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state has turned into a heated political fight that could cost the White House goodwill with Republicans. Republican opposition to presumptive front-runner Susan Rice did not fade after the election, as White House officials and her supporters had predicted. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, did not win any public GOP support after meeting with two Republican senators Wednesday, her second day of face-to-face sessions intended to blunt critiques of her role in explaining the Sept.

CONCORD, N.H. - Colleagues knew former Sen. Warren B. Rudman for his abrupt manner, but they trusted his expertise. On one matter in particular, though, he wished people would have listened to him: that the United States was vulnerable to a major terrorist attack. Sen. Rudman left the Senate in the early 1990s but later led a commission that predicted the danger of terrorism on American soil just months before the attacks of Sept. 11 and called for the creation of a Department of Homeland Security.

Philadelphia's sluggish efforts to build and staff a counterterrorism center came under an unflattering spotlight Wednesday when a U.S. Senate report criticized oversight of a project that has spent roughly $2.3 million in federal money since 2006 but that has barely gotten launched. The report asserts that as of August, the "fusion center" - intended as an intelligence-sharing crossroads for city, state, federal, and port officials from around the region - still didn't exist. At one point, state officials blocked federal aid for the center because of a request for construction money, a prohibited use, the report found.

Good fences may make good neighbors, but not for Bristol Borough and Amtrak. An 8-foot-high chain-link fence that Amtrak erected along four blocks of residential Garden Street is ugly, unsafe, unnecessary, and unwanted, borough officials and homeowners say. Amtrak says it's needed for the safety of residents, especially children, who live across from four sets of tracks used by Amtrak, SEPTA, and freight trains. The chain link looks like a temporary fence at a construction site, residents complain, with trees and weeds overgrowing it and a 25-foot railroad right-of way. It doesn't keep people off the tracks, they say. All it blocks is any police cars, fire trucks and ambulances that would respond to an emergency on the tracks, plus neighbors' mowers that used to keep down the weeds.