President Bush's proposed new Department of Homeland Security, bringing together scattered agencies with roles in protecting against terrorism, provides laudable managerial tidiness. Its creation will focus these agencies on their new priority of protecting the country. But the basic problem of overall strategy and coordination remains, and inserting a new agency into the mix will not solve it. ...

With the Defense Department, FBI and CIA still separate, the reorganization won't remedy what Congressional intelligence committees have been investigating this week: the failure of various agencies to work together effectively in the past to prevent terrorism. ...

There is also reason to question whether the Bush administration is prepared for the sheer scale of managerial virtuosity it will take to create this new department. ...