Brookings Study Calls Homeland Security Plans Too Ambitious Adding to a growing list of Congressional concerns about domestic security, a study released today warns that the president's plan for a new Department of Homeland Security is too ambitious and could create more problems than it solves. The report by the Brookings Institution recommends a pared-down department concentrating on border and transportation security, intelligence and threat analysis, and protecting the country's infrastructure. In a letter to the White House, Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and David R. Obey of Wisconsin, both Democrats, wrote this week that the president's new department would have far-flung responsibilities like administering the National Flood Insurance Program, cleaning up oil spills at sea and eradicating the boll weevil. That, the lawmakers said, could dilute the department's mission to fight terrorism and "risks bloating the size of the bureaucracy." For similar reasons, the eight Brookings scholars and former government officials argued in their study today that the Federal Emergency Management Agency should remain separate from the new department. "Fortunately, terrorist attacks are rare, but you can count on national disasters every year � right now there are floods in Texas, fires in Arizona � so why should the Department of Homeland Security be pulled away from its mission and worry constantly about those disasters?" asked James M. Lindsay, an author of the study, "Assessing the Department of Homeland Security." The study also recommended that Congress delay deciding whether to include scientific and technological research on chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear countermeasures against terrorist attacks. "The proposal put on the table is too big; it needs to focus on just those functions directly related to homeland security like the Coast Guard, customs, intelligence analysis and protecting public and private infrastructure that doesn't really exist today," said Ivo H. Daalder, another author of the study and a former member of the National Security Council. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/14/politics/14HOME.html

Congress Looks at How Justice Uses New Power After passing the antiterrorism bill in record time in the fall, the House and Senate Judiciary Committees are making an unusually prompt and thorough, if sometimes unsuccessful, effort to determine how the Justice Department is using its new powers. This week, the House panel agreed to let the department have a few more days to finish answering 50 questions, some with as many as seven parts, that it submitted on June 13. Representatives F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Wisconsin Republican who leads the panel, and John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, its senior Democrat, asked about the law section by section, questioning how new authority like sharing grand jury information, easier search warrants, greater ability to deny entry to the United States and other features had been used and to what effect. The Senate committee, which has shorter lists of questions that await replies, had planned to question Attorney General John Ashcroft on Thursday. But Mr. Ashcroft canceled his appearance, which would have been his first before the committee since Nov. 25. The cancellation prompted Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the chairman, to send what the senator's spokesman called a stern letter of complaint. Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who is probably the Senate's most devoted advocate of vigorous oversight, complained that the department's answers were not very satisfying. He characterized the response as stonewalling and said that considering all the additional power voted, "there is less reason for us to tolerate this stonewalling." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/14/politics/14PATR.html