By John Mintz
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Six months after it was established to protect the nation from terrorism, the Department of Homeland Security is hobbled by money woes, disorganization, turf battles and unsteady support from the White House, and has made only halting progress toward its goals, according to administration officials and independent experts.
The top two officials under Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge are stepping down amid criticism from some White House officials and elsewhere in the administration.

So few people want to work at the department that more than 15 people declined requests to apply for the top post in its intelligence unit and many others turned down offers to run several other key offices, government officials said.

As a result, the department has made little progress on some of the main challenges cited when it was created in March by merging 22 federal agencies and their 170,000 employees, according to officials in the Bush administration and Congress and some outside experts.

Efforts to organize the government's 10 or so disparate lists of potential terror suspects, secure airline cargo against terror plots and advise local police and firefighters on training and equipment have foundered, the officials said.

"Not a lot is getting done at the top of the department, and nobody's making them focus on it," said a White House official who handles homeland-security issues and who asked not to be identified. Two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that spawned it, the department has become the centerpiece of the Bush administration's efforts to guard against another terror strike, making its success a factor in Bush's political future. Already, Democrats, including some presidential candidates, are criticizing what they assert is the department's ineffectiveness.

"Many of the initiatives needed to protect our homeland have not been vigorously pursued," House Democrats said in a report released Friday. It said the Homeland Security Department had failed to hire enough border agents or to protect jetliners from shoulder-fired missiles, initiatives the department is pursuing.