Among other time-consuming initiatives were laying out new doctrines for counterterrorism preparedness that assigned the responsibilities of many agencies before and after an attack. Almost all this work, which involved tedious vetting by dozens of agencies, is now complete, but it was invisible to the public and will yield results only in the future, officials said.
"These are a family of plans coming into play that's received virtually no publicity," said retired Coast Guard Adm. James M. Loy, deputy secretary of homeland security, who is widely described as the department's strongest manager. "When he comes, we want to say, 'Judge Chertoff, here is the strategic plan.' "
All the while, Homeland Security has had to contend with the daily demands of searching air travelers, patrolling harbors, protecting the president, distributing threat warnings to state and local agencies, and many other duties.
But several current and former officials said the department remains underfinanced and understaffed and suffers from weak leadership.
"DHS is still a compilation of 22 agencies that aren't integrated into a cohesive whole," said its recently departed inspector general, Clark Kent Ervin, who released many critical reports and was not reappointed after a falling-out with Ridge. Asked for examples of ineffectiveness, he replied: "I don't know where to start. . . . I've never seen anything like it."
Ervin cited a report from his office last month that DHS immigration inspectors had continued to let dozens of people using stolen foreign passports enter the United States -- even after other governments had notified the agency of the passport numbers. Using stolen passports is a well-known tactic of al Qaeda operatives.
Even when immigration officials realized someone had entered the United States on a stolen passport, they did not routinely notify sister agencies that track illegal immigrants, the report said.
When officials made missteps such as this, Ridge rarely intervened, Ervin said. "Tom Ridge is a prince of a man, but he's not a tough guy," he said.
"Nobody's kicking anybody to do things" at Homeland Security, said Seth Stodder, former policy and planning director at the department's Customs and Border Protection agency. "There's a reluctance to make decisions that will be unpopular with the loser, so things just drift."
Stodder and other government officials said the department's main problem is that, under pressure from the White House to keep staffing lean, it lacks a policy staff to study its largest strategic challenges. The Pentagon, by contrast, has 2,000 people doing that, he said.
"It's very thinly staffed at the top of DHS, and there's no policy vision . . . thinking through the main threats," Stodder said. In the absence of such strategic thinking, he added, "DHS practices management by inbox, getting distracted by daily emergencies" such as a congressman's complaint about a late-arriving passport.
Acknowledging that the lack of a policy staff was a mistake, DHS officials say one will be launched within days.
Infrastructure Protection
One of the department's biggest failings is its performance securing the U.S. infrastructure, some members of Congress and administration officials said. Fifteen people declined requests to apply for the undersecretary job supervising this area, and the person who took it, retired Marine Lt. Gen. Frank Libutti, was not confirmed until 2003.
Libutti was unfamiliar with Washington's ways, as was his subordinate who directly oversaw infrastructure, former Coca-Cola Co. executive Robert P. Liscouski. Both became distracted by small bureaucratic obstacles they could have surmounted, other officials said.
