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Chertoff OKd as Homeland Security Chief

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Times Staff Writer

The Senate unanimously confirmed Michael Chertoff on Tuesday as head of the Department of Homeland Security, with lawmakers expressing hope that he would forge the troubled agency into a more effective tool in the war on terrorism.

The 98-0 vote for President Bush’s second choice for the post reflected a widespread belief that Chertoff -- a former prosecutor with a record of taking on mobsters and corporate wrongdoers -- would bring a strong hand to the helm of the government’s newest Cabinet-level department.

“I think he is well qualified to be secretary,” Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said.

It was Levin, however, who held up the confirmation for a week while demanding that the administration hand over an internal FBI memo on interrogations of detainees at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, written while Chertoff was head of the Justice Department’s criminal division. Republicans said the memo was irrelevant.

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Levin’s move -- and the Republican anger at it -- underscored the partisan tensions on Capitol Hill between the GOP majority and the Democratic minority since the start of the new session on several issues, including the nominations of key members of Bush’s second-term Cabinet.

Republicans have accused Democrats of unfairly dragging out the confirmations of Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, whom many Democrats faulted for his role in fashioning the administration’s policy on interrogations, and of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, whom Democrats took to task for the administration’s policy on Iraq.

In Chertoff’s case, Democrats did not question his qualifications for the job of transforming the sprawling Homeland Security Department -- composed of 22 disparate agencies -- into a single, well-functioning unit. Since its creation in 2003, the department has been plagued by morale problems and has seen its turf eaten away by more powerful, entrenched bureaucracies, such as the Pentagon and the FBI.

Privately, lawmakers of both parties have criticized the department’s first secretary, Tom Ridge, for losing too many internal battles for money and power and for failing to resolve personnel problems.

“Judge Chertoff assured me he would fight within the administration for resources that have been missing from Homeland Security,” Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said.

Bush turned to the 51-year-old Chertoff -- appointed two years ago as a federal appellate court judge -- after questions arose about the business practices and personal life of his first choice for the Homeland Security job, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik.

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Chertoff was considered a safe choice. A lawyer who served as an assistant U.S. attorney in New York in the mid-1980s, Chertoff headed the Justice Department’s criminal division after the Sept. 11 attacks. He played a key role in developing the administration’s legal strategy in response to the terrorist threat.

“This is one of the most challenging and critical jobs in the entire federal government,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said. “Judge Chertoff is clearly the right person to take the helm.”

Collins took issue with Democrats for holding up the confirmation, saying it was “past time to put him in that post.”

Levin unsuccessfully had sought an unedited copy of an internal FBI e-mail summarizing a meeting held while Chertoff was head of the Justice Department’s criminal division on the interrogations at the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

Chertoff testified to the Governmental Affairs Committee that he knew nothing about the interrogation practices.

Levin said he believed the memo was necessary to back up that statement. Without the memo, the Democrat argued, the Senate could not perform its oversight role.

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In his committee testimony this month, Chertoff also denied any involvement in a Justice Department memo that narrowly defined torture.

“I was not involved in the process of how the memo was generated.... I had no involvement in that,” Chertoff said of the memo that was sent to Gonzales, then the White House counsel, in August 2002.

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