Ridge tells governors to identify more potential terror targets

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Ridge's comments came Tuesday in Indianapolis at the close of the National Governors' Association summer meeting.

Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina attended the meeting and questioned Ridge on greater flexibility in spending dollars from Washington.

His spokesman, Will Folks said that Sanford "is very encouraged and believes significant strides are being made which only benefit our state's ability to coordinate with local First Responders. He hopes that along with enhanced communication comes enhanced flexibility with respect to funds the federal government provides for anti-terror security."

Folks said Sanford is satisfied with the amount of information-sharing provided by Washington.

Robert Stewart, the state director of homeland security who doubles as chief of the State Law Enforcement Division, said he has observed "a marked improvement in intelligence-sharing. Our Joint Terrorism Task Force is up and running. We have groups of SLED agents that report to work every day with the FBI, gathering information and seeing that it gets to the proper place."

"That report on the 150 (sites) is classified and one on a second tier is classified that this office, obviously would not discuss that with anyone," Folks said.

Some defense analysts have suggested that the state port at Charleston, Savannah River Site and nuclear plants are among the 150 high profile potential targets subject to enhanced security.

Also, Folks said there would be no discussion of Ridge's request that five state officials receive top-secret security clearance and that governors prepare to add 180 potential terrorism targets to the 150 already secretly listed.

"That's not information this office would give out," Folks said.

Ridge wanted the governors to "take a look at the next tier of very important sites that we need to work together on to protect. We're going to call that Project 180, because once we get the project started, we'd like to get the sites up to another level of security within the next six months."

He also told the governors that he wanted each to "identify five other people within the state that you want security clearances for" for dissemination of intelligence data on threats. "Sometimes it's actionable information. Sometimes we'll want you to do something with it. Other times it's important for us to pass the information on to you, so that your knowledge base and your data base is similar to ours as it relates to your providing security to you citizens."

It was not clear from Ridge's statements whether he was talking about additional law enforcement personnel or high-level state officials who would be granted the new security clearance.

Governors and most state homeland security directors now have such clearance.

Stewart said some SLED agents already have the clearance.

Top-secret means "you get info and its source but not that many people need to know the source of the information. I may or may not be cleared to have it, but I need to know what information I need to act on, not where it came front," he said.

Sanford, according to a transcript on the department's Web site, commended Ridge for his overall efforts, but asked for greater latitude for states to shift homeland security funds to deal with natural disasters, including the hurricanes that periodically devastate the state's coast and hinterlands.

Ridge didn't appear to hold out too much hope.

These regular and predictable events "involve the threat of mass casualties and the need to prepare to move people distances, et cetera," Sanford said, according to a transcript. "But we can't move some of those Homeland Security moneys over into what would be the same threat area because if we had an atomic plant blow up, we'd have to involve logistics that move large numbers of people because of the way that the dollars are configured. And I'd just ask you to try and look for opportunities to go one step further in providing dollar latitude as well."

Replying, Ridge said, "I'm not sure Congress is going to give us the flexibility to do that. But it's something that, we need to know what your priorities are, we sit down and agree with them, and we've got to go to the Hill and see if we can convince Congress to agree with us. I mean, that's just the way it works."

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Dan Hoover covers politics and can be reached at 298-4883.