White House officials say they took initiative on security directives

The presidential directives on critical infrastructure and emergency preparedness issued Wednesday were not in response to any congressional mandate despite falling two days after a deadline imposed by a key House committee, Bush administration officials said on Thursday.

A Homeland Security Department spokesman said they were not in response to a mandate; rather, the White House and the department had been working on the directives for months at their own initiative. The White House chose the timing of the announcement, he said.

"It was just a matter of these two directives working their way through the system," a senior White House official added. "That's why they were released yesterday."

An assessment of critical infrastructure is mandated in the law that created the Homeland Security Department, but that mandate did not carry a deadline. However, after hearing from administration officials repeatedly in congressional testimony that the assessment was ongoing and would take several years, the House Appropriations Committee imposed a deadline of Dec. 15 in its report on the bill to fund the department in fiscal 2004.

That report directed the department to detail the proposed scope, estimated cost and schedule for completing a risk analysis and vulnerability assessment for critical infrastructures. The directive released on Wednesday provided neither a budget nor schedule and drew some criticism from several Democratic members of Congress.

"This directive is an admission by the administration that the Department of Homeland Security is not getting the job done," House Homeland Security Committee ranking member Jim Turner, D-Texas, said in a statement. "For months, the Congress has been urging the [department]...to move forward with its responsibility [under the law creating the department] to complete its analysis of critical infrastructure vulnerability in our nation. In addition to [the department], the directive now charges a multitude of other federal agencies with this responsibility."

"This directive gives the department another year to do a job we need completed today," Turner added. "Our enemies will not wait, and neither can we."

On Wednesday, Senate Governmental Affairs Committee ranking member Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., cited a desperate need for "leadership to protect its critical infrastructure from terrorist attack. Today, the president has given DHS Secretary Tom Ridge yet another year to develop a 'plan' to develop a 'strategy' to identify, prioritize and protect key critical infrastructures."

"This would almost be laughable were it not such a devastating failure for our country," added Lieberman, who was one of the originators of the department. "The administration has repeatedly assured us it was at work on such plans and strategies. Now we discover the administration has been running in place, leaving us no closer to having meaningful protections for the vital systems and assets the country depends upon each day."

Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, on Wednesday commended Bush for issuing the directives. She said she hoped the administration would "define the roles and responsibilities of federal agencies, establish an effective means of interagency coordination [and] facilitate coordination with the private sector."