Bush Signs Bioterror Bill
President Bush signed legislation Wednesday allocating $4.3 billion to protect Americans and their food and water from biological attacks.
"Protecting our citizens against bioterrorism is an urgent duty of America," Mr. Bush said at a signing ceremony at the Rose Garden.
Mr. Bush said that last fall's anthrax attacks, for which no suspect has been arrested, "sent a warning that we needed and have heeded."
It was a busy day for domestic security issues as the president met for the first time with his new advisory council on homeland defense, a group that includes former FBI Director William Webster and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., and pledged to rally the American public behind his proposal.
"You're going to help us leave a legacy, so that future presidents, future administrations and future congresses can deal more effectively with how to do the most important job any elected official has, which is to protect innocent life," Mr. Bush said.
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, meanwhile, met privately with lawmakers on the House floor, fielding questions and objections to the president's plan for combining 22 agencies into a new Cabinet-level department for defending America against terrorists. Leaders of the intelligence committees were summoned to the White House later for separate briefings.
Ridge meets with the Senate on Thursday.
"Obviously, this is a complicated and intricate proposal, and the Congress deserves the ability for everyone to be involved in input to try to perfect the proposal and make it as good as it can be," said House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., who has called for action by Sept. 11.
Ridge told the president's advisory council that, given the turf battles built into any government restructuring, five or six months was a more realistic goal for getting legislation approved and the new department up and running.
David Bell, CEO of The Partnership, a global marketing and communications company, told fellow council appointees that he would use his business experience to get Washington to "kiss change on the lips."
Ridge warned the group that terrorism is now a "permanent condition" for Americans that won't disappear even if Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network are destroyed. "There will be successors," he said.
Among those sharing the stage with the president at the Rose Garden was Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a co-sponsor of the bioterrorism bill and one of several people who might be considered to head the new homeland security department once it's created.
While White House officials still view Ridge as the president's natural choice for secretary of Homeland Defense, some question whether Ridge might prefer to keep his more informal office in the West Wing.
That has fueled speculation about other possible candidates, including Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Joe Allbaugh, former Secretary of State James Baker III, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine.