Admitting intelligence lapses before Sept. 11, US President Bush on Thursday proposed a radical overhaul of government to create a new 170,000-strong Cabinet agency for homeland security as part of "titanic struggle against terror."
"Based on everything I have seen, I do not believe anyone could have prevented the horror of Sept. 11 -- yet we now know that thousands of trained killers are plotting to attack us -- and this terrible knowledge requires us to act differently," Bush said in a prime-time televised speech laying out his vision for a Department of Homeland Security.
Bush argued that the new department, with an annual budget of $37 billion, would not expand the size and scope of the federal bureaucracy, saying it would largely be drawn from agencies being combined and would end duplication and overlap.
"America is leading the civilized world in a titanic struggle against terror. Freedom and fear are at war -- and freedom is winning," Bush said in his speech, delivered from the grand foyer of the White House residence.
He called on Congress to approve the new agency before the end of the year. "We face an urgent need," he said.
"So tonight, I ask the Congress to join me in creating a single permanent department with an overriding and urgent mission: securing the American homeland and protecting the American people," he said.
Guaranteeing a turf battle in the federal bureaucracy and among members of Congress accustomed to setting agency budgets, the new department would absorb the Secret Service, the Customs Service, the Coast Guard, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and Border Patrol, and draw from many other federal agencies.
(China Daily June 7, 2002)
