A Toothless Tiger?

By DOUGLAS WALLER/WASHINGTON

Tom Ridge has the most important job in America: to make sure that the horror of Sept. 11 never happens again. Now, in addition to the former Pennsylvania Governor, George W. Bush wants retired General Wayne Downing, a dashing commando, to join his new team as a top counterterrorism aide. But in the three weeks since Bush tapped Ridge to head his new Office of Homeland Security, the unified front against terrorism has started to develop some cracks.

Last Tuesday the White House circulated an Executive Order outlining Ridge's powers. Senior Administration sources tell TIME the draft order will not give Ridge direct control over the counterterrorism budgets in other agencies, which could be key to shaping the antiterror bureaucracy. Moreover, Pentagon sources say Downing, word of whose likely appointment was leaked by Bush aides more than a week ago, has had second thoughts about taking the job because the powers he expected to be granted have been trimmed. The new office, says a senior Administration aide, "is being set up for failure."

If the air strikes against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon taught us anything, it is that terrorism knows no boundaries. The hijackers were indoctrinated and trained in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, plotted their operation in Europe and Asia, and carried it out in the U.S. Bill Clinton recognized this "transnational" fact of life in 1998, when he named Richard Clarke, a National Security Council aide, as his counterterrorism czar to supervise the battle both at home and abroad. Clarke was hamstrung because he had no control over other agencies' budgets. But he made a strong case for having one person oversee the attack on terrorism and knock heads in the bureaucracy.

It looks as if Ridge won't have much more authority than Clarke did. Ridge, like Clarke, won't be able to force agencies to spend more on homeland defense. The draft Executive Order circulated last week says the agencies will "retain" that control. Ridge will be able only to coordinate activities and coax other agencies into spending money on his cause. And instead of one person overseeing the fight against terrorism at home and abroad, there will now be two. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was willing to let Ridge run the war in the U.S. against terrorists. But she insisted that control of the overseas battle remain at the National Security Council, with Downing as its head.

A can-do general, Downing led U.S. special forces in the 1989 invasion of Panama, then Delta Force commandos who hunted for Iraqi Scud missiles during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But he became disenchanted with the appointment last week after discovering he probably would not get the $10 million budget or the staff of 30 he thought he had been promised. Senior White House aides believe they can talk him into taking the job.

The State Department sent a stinging memo to the White House last week on the plan to keep domestic and foreign counterterrorism efforts divided and complained that it was "startling" that Secretary of State Colin Powell doesn't get a seat on Ridge's Homeland Security council. "Doing it piecemeal like this sets us back 10 years," says a State Department official.

Ridge says he'll have "all the resources I need." White House aides insist he'll be able to shape budgets behind the scenes because he has Bush's ear. "He knows the President well," says one. "He has the most important new portfolio in town. The notion that he wouldn't have power strikes me as quizzical."

In Washington the perception of power certainly is as important as what is written in an Executive Order. How Ridge manipulates that image with other departments will determine his heft. "He's got to say, 'This is what the President wants,' with a cold steely eye, which Tom Ridge is good at," says Senator Pat Roberts, a G.O.P. member of the Intelligence Committee. But the bureaucracy has seen coordinators come and go, and it's very deft at staring them down.

--With reporting by John F. Dickerson/Washington

With reporting by John F. Dickerson/Washington