Ex-police chief to lead homeland security agency

WASHINGTON – President Bush will name Bernard Kerik, a plain-spoken career law-enforcement officer who was New York City’s police commissioner during the Sept. 11 attacks, as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, senior administration officials said Thursday.

Kerik, 49, who spent 4 1/2 months in Iraq last year to rebuild a police force, would take over a department created less than two years ago to keep Americans safe from the threat of terrorist attacks. He would replace Tom Ridge, the first head of the department, who announced his resignation Tuesday.

The announcement of Kerik’s appointment is expected today. Also on Thursday, Bush nominated Mike Johanns, a two-term Republican governor of Nebraska, as secretary of Agriculture. If confirmed by the Senate, Johanns, 54, would succeed Ann M. Veneman, a Californian.

Bush first met Johanns, the son of a dairy farmer, while governor of Texas. Johanns, a onetime Democrat and a former mayor of Lincoln, Neb., was elected to his current post in 1998 and re-elected in 2002.

In addition, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Danforth, announced Thursday that he had submitted his resignation last month. A former Republican senator from Missouri, Danforth had served at the United Nations only since the end of June.

In his Nov. 22 letter to Bush, Danforth, 68, cited his desire to return to private life but said he would remain available for short-term assignments. Before taking the U.N. post, he had served as Bush’s special representative for peace in Sudan.

Since Bush’s re-election a month ago, seven out of his 15 Cabinet secretaries – of the departments of State, Justice, Energy, Commerce, Agriculture, Education and Homeland Security – have announced that they were leaving the administration. The White House has already announced replacements for five of those positions.

More departures are expected in the coming days and weeks, administration officials said.

A self-acknowledged troublemaker in his youth – he dropped out of high school and fathered a child with a young woman shortly after arriving in South Korea with the Army – Kerik has a reputation as a forceful leader who gets results.

If confirmed by the Senate, he would face the challenge of trying to defend against the possibility of another terrorist attack while trying to finish the job of putting together the sprawling department, whose 180,000 employees were assembled from 22 agencies with vastly different missions.

Supporters of Kerik who watched him lead the New York Police Department through the tragedy of the attacks on the World Trade Center said he was up to the difficult job.

“He has always been a very strong leader,” said Lynch, president of the New York City Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the police union. “He understands security needs, especially in response to terrorism.”

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement that Kerik “knows the great needs and challenges this country faces in homeland security.”

“He has a strong law enforcement background and I believe will do an excellent job in fighting for the resources and focus that homeland security needs and deserves in our post-9/11 world,” Schumer added.

Administration officials said that Kerik’s success in leading the police department during the city’s most difficult weeks proves his qualifications to head Homeland Security.

“If you can run the New York City police department, you know how to do things,” said one senior administration official, who did not want to be identified before an official announcement.

Kerik was police chief under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and now works closely with his former boss at Giuliani Partners, a strategic consulting firm in New York. Some administration officials said a Kerik nomination would reflect Giuliani’s influence.

Other contenders for the post – such as Asa Hutchinson, the department’s under secretary for border and transportation security – have more experience with the Washington bureaucracy and with Congress, qualifications many observers said would be necessary to manage the department’s varied and sometimes conflicting parts.