Members of Congress and others in the administration have expressed frustration at what they say are lengthy delays in producing a list of vulnerable infrastructure sites. Officials involved in infrastructure protection said some of the delays were caused by Liscouski, who, they said, at times failed to coordinate with others working on the matter. He has had several bitter arguments with members of Congress and their staffs, they said.
Finally, the infrastructure division was at times distracted by arguments between camps of officials pressing the competing agendas of firms or other agencies offering plans to secure plants and landmarks, officials said.
Liscouski denied that any such disputes distracted his office, and he denied failing to meet with colleagues. He said he met continually with them and had "an open-door policy." He disputed suggestions that his office dragged its feet in securing or preparing lists of infrastructure sites.
"We worked with a sense of urgency, and we made significant progress," he said. "But this work had never been done before, and it was hard."
Liscouski said that until the past few months, technical language in DHS budgets barred his office from spending money on chemical plants and other sites. Department officials said that within days they will announce distribution of $92 million, the first large expenditures for these purposes. The money will be given to states by a separate DHS bureaucracy.
The infrastructure office also has been hobbled by turf fights. Another DHS agency -- the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), with 45,000 airport screeners -- said that a sentence in a budget law established it as overseer of security on trains, including ones moving dangerous chemicals. Hassles between TSA and infrastructure officials slowed progress, including efforts to secure chemicals that travel on tracks near the U.S. Capitol, for a year, officials said.
"I'm sorry to say, since 9/11 we have essentially done nothing" to secure chemical plants and trains carrying chemicals, Falkenrath told Congress last week. "This [issue] stands out as an enormous vulnerability we had the authority to address."
The TSA's claims that it supervises all transportation security also led to fights with DHS agencies that handle immigration and customs. The struggles delayed progress for a year on developing anti-tampering technology for shipping containers and deciding which databases to use to track foreigners and cargo entering the country, officials said.
The fighting amounted to "a civil war within the U.S. government," one former official said.
Eventually Ridge decided that the TSA should not lead the way on these issues. But an authoritative study released in December by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Heritage Foundation concluded that the TSA's actions led to years-long "policy impasses." It said the DHS section that oversees the agencies involved, and which refereed the struggles -- Border and Transportation Security -- was "not particularly effective" in straightening it out.
Several officials described the undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security, former representative Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.), as a consensus-builder who had difficulty demanding an end to the turf fights. Especially troublesome was a personality conflict between the affable Hutchinson and one of his subordinates, Robert C. Bonner, the aggressive head of Customs and Border Protection, whose airport and seaport inspectors investigate people and cargo.
"There were knock-down, drag-out meetings every day" between leaders in some parts of the department, said Loy, who added that "management styles can pour gasoline" on such arguments. But he said the fights are now resolved.
Asked about conflicts with Bonner, Hutchinson said: "I'd be enormously disappointed if I didn't have agency leaders who leaned forward and fought for their agencies." But, he added, "people who work under me know I make decisions."
Through a spokesman, Bonner declined to comment.
Loy, who once ran the TSA and will step down March 1, said the Homeland Security Department is fated to be criticized for its public failures, such as creating long lines at airports, and rarely praised for its success protecting the country.
"Most of the publicity is bad, but that's the nature of our work," he said. "We operate in a fishbowl."
