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The relationship between the Homeland Security and Defense departments has never been healthier, a top Pentagon official said Tuesday.

Since Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was sworn in as the second head of the blended agency, a great deal has changed in the organizations' ability to work with each other, such as improved communications and the ability to perform security functions, according to Paul McHale, assistant Defense secretary for homeland defense.

"A lot of it is for the better," McHale said at a Defense Writer's Group. "I am very confident that the working relationship between the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security is precisely where it needs to be in terms of attitude."

McHale said the link between Defense and Homeland Security was strained at times under its previous leader, Tom Ridge, but is now "improving every day."

Fifty-five of McHale's full-time staffers are assigned solely to working with Homeland Security, and a memorandum of understanding institutionalizing the relationship early in Chertoff's tenure helped solidify the departments' ability to share information and conduct security operations, McHale said.

McHale, a former member of Congress, oversees Defense's Northern Command, the office that oversees the consolidated homeland defense and security operations for the military. He also serves as a liaison between the Defense and Homeland Security departments.

The Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support, a report being prepared by McHale's office, will call for the creation of an active, layered national defense, is in its final stages McHale said. According to a spokesman, leadership changes within the Pentagon have kept the document from officially being released.

Steps to improve the agencies' ability to communicate with each other have been taken McHale said, and agencies - particularly those dealing with air defense like the Federal Aviation Administration and the North American Aerospace Defense Command - have recently shown that they can work with each other.

"We are by no means fully prepared, but we have improved," McHale said of the agencies' capability to communicate.

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