By Mark Hosenball

One of the most powerful, but also most perilous, national security posts in the post 9/11 US government is the job of Homeland Security Secretary. The Secretary is responsible for running a huge department encompassing a grab bag of agencies. These include a medium-sized Navy (the U.S. Coast Guard), an elite plainclothes presidential bodyguard regiment (the U.S. Secret Service), a substantial prison system (detention facilities run by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau) and massive uniformed battalions that police airports and land borders. Not to mention the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a bureau that processes citizenship applications and the department's own intelligence office. The person heading the department has sweeping powers to organize, hire and fire work forces and award giant contracts for high-tech equipment like radiation detectors and border protection sensors. But if another terrorist attack occurs inside United States borders, the Homeland Security Secretary will be among the first to face blame. The outgoing Homeland Security Secretary, Michael Chertoff, is still living down his department's slow response to a non-man-made disaster, Hurricane Katrina.

Given the challenges, perhaps it's not surprising that President-Elect Obama's team is proceeding carefully when it comes to Homeland Security. Obama's transition team for Homeland Security will only meet for the first time later this week, according to a Democrat close to the Obama campaign who would speak about the decision-making only on condition of anonymity. The person reportedly heading the team is Rand Beers, a low-key former White House and State Department advisor on intelligence and counter-terrorism issues who resigned from George W. Bush's national security council staff only days before the start of the Iraq war and subsequently became a top national security advisor to Sen. John Kerry's unsuccessful 2004 presidential campaign (Beers could not be reached for comment). Despite the Obama team's cautious approach to the subject, the President-Elect does have several high-profile candidates who might be interested in the the top Homeland Security post. Only a few days before the election, one of the nation's most respected cops, Los Angeles Police chief William Bratton, almost applied publicly for a top job in an Obama Administration when he co-authored an op-ed piece in the New York Daily News that suggested Osama bin Laden "likely" wanted John McCain to become president. Another esteemed police exec to whom the Obama camp could reach out is New York Police commissioner Ray Kelly, who under President Clinton ran US Customs, most of whose operations are now part of Homeland Security. Rep Jane Harman, who chairs a House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence, is also reputed to be interested in the post; Michael Sheehan, a former top federal and NYPD terrorism expert, is also being mentioned as a possible top Homeland Security appointee.

Last week, shortly after the voters gave their verdict, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence began giving President-elect Barack Obama highly classified intelligence briefings similar to the daily briefings given to a sitting president. Many intelligence officials had been anxious about the election. CIA veterans were concerned that if John McCain became president, he would proceed with a long-standing proposal he touted to further "reform" the agency by dismembering it again and building a new leaner, more secretive (and presumably less accountable) covert-action agency, which McCain himself likened to the legendary OSS of World War II. Like many of his policy positions, Obama's designs for the intelligence community are clouded in obscurity. But the president-elect is believed to be much less likely than McCain to make radical changes to an intelligence establishment, which is still trying to cope with the consequences of post-9/11 intelligence-reform legislation, which set up an "intelligence czar's" office to better coordinate the activities (and budgets) of 16 often fractious and ferociously turf-conscious intel agencies.

One reassuring signal to the CIA is the indication that Obama's transition team on intelligence matters will be led by CIA veteran John Brennan, who has experience in the agency's most important disciplines, operations (secret spying) and analysis (sorting out reliable intelligence reporting from the dubious and false). After 9/11, Brennan was chosen to head a new interagency unit, now run by the National Intelligence Director's office, which coordinates intelligence on the activities of suspected terrorists. Now known as the National Counter-Terrorism Center, this office is regarded as one of the bigger success stories to date resulting from post-9/11 intel reforms. The NCTC's current director, Michael Leiter, a former federal prosecutor and clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, is held in high regard both inside the intelligence community and among intel overseers on Capitol Hill, and may well keep his job under President Obama. Brennan himself is regarded as a possible candidate to succeed retired Air Force general Michael Hayden as CIA director; another possible candidate as new CIA director is Anthony Lake, a top Obama campaign adviser on security issues and a former national-security adviser to President Bill Clinton. Reportedly helping Brennan to run Obama's intelligence transition apparatus is Jamie Miscik, who headed the CIA's analytical operations when George Tenet was in charge of the agency.

No immediate announcements are expected regarding Obama's choices for top intelligence jobs, although sources close to Obama's campaign said that some of his advisers had begun detailed discussions of intelligence-related issues before the election. One of the intelligence jobs that Obama may have most difficulty finding the right person to fill is the top job, national intelligence director, who according to post-9/11 intelligence-reform legislation is not only supposed to manage rivalries among competing agencies but also is supposed to serve as principal intelligence adviser to the president. Some prominent politicians who have handled intelligence issues--including Rep Jane Harman, a former top House Intelligence Committee Democrat; former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Bob Graham; and former 9/11 Commission member Tim Roemer--have expressed interest in the job, according to people following the Obama transition. The same sources said, however, that Obama is believed to be more interested in finding a new intel czar with extensive management or military command experience--and that an ideal candidate for the post would be a former admiral or general with more field-command experience. One person frequently mentioned as the type of person Obama would want as his intel czar is former four-star Marine general James Jones, who served as Supreme Commander of U.S. forces in Europe.