From The New York Times:

Bush Selects Kerik as New Secretary of Homeland Security
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
and CHRISTOPHER DREW
Published: December 2, 2004

WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 - Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, has been selected by President Bush to replace Tom Ridge as secretary of homeland security, a senior administration official and associates of Mr. Kerik's said today.

Mr. Kerik was offered the job and has accepted, the associates said. The senior administration official said the formal announcement would be made on Friday.

Word of his selection came on another busy day of comings and goings in the administration as Mr. Bush remakes his team for a second term. Mr. Bush nominated Mike Johanns, the governor of Nebraska, to be his new agriculture secretary, replacing Ann Veneman, who resigned last month.

And John Danforth, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, abruptly stepped down from his post after only six months in the job.

Republicans with ties to the White House said they also expected Tommy Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, to announce his resignation within days, most likely to be replaced by Mark McClellan, the administrator of the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Mr. Thompson would be the eighth cabinet secretary to leave since Election Day, part of what has become a wholesale reshaping of the administration and an effort by Mr. Bush to avert the risk of running out of policy and political steam in the next four years.

Mr. Kerik, 49, is a sharp departure from the usual mold of Bush appointees. A high school dropout, he was a military policeman in South Korea and a private security guard in Saudi Arabia before becoming an undercover narcotics officer in New York, sporting a ponytail and diamond earrings when he worked the streets. He went on the run the New York City Corrections Department, where he established a reputation as an energetic reformer, before taking over as police commissioner in 2000.

After helping oversee the city's response to the 9/11 attacks in 2001, he left office a few months later, at the end of Rudolph Giuliani's second and final term as mayor. He went to Baghdad at the White House's behest last year to help re-establish an Iraqi security force, holding the title of interim interior minister during his stint. Now a partner in Mr. Giuliani's consulting firm, he campaigned this year for Mr. Bush's re-election.

In an autobiography published in 2001, he recounted being abandoned by his mother as a young boy, and learning much later that she had been a prostitute who died in an apparent homicide. In recent months he has toyed with the idea of running for governor of his native New Jersey, an idea he had to abandon because he did not meet the seven-year residency requirement, and more recently has been promoted by some Republicans as a candidate for the United States Senate from New Jersey.

Assuming he is confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Kerik would take on the job of running the Department of Homeland Security, established by Congress two years ago out of 22 existing agencies to bolster domestic defenses against terrorism. Mr. Ridge, who announced on Tuesday that he intended to step down by Feb. 1, was widely credited with getting the 180,000-employee department up and running. But many Democrats and some outside analysts said Mr. Ridge had not done enough to fight for bigger budgets or to secure chemical and nuclear plants and ports.

Ambassador Danforth's resignation was not foreseen, and the reasons for his departure were not immediately clear. Not long ago, he was considered a candidate to replace Colin L. Powell as secretary of state. Instead, President Bush nominated his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, for that post.

When Mr. Danforth became envoy to the United Nations only last summer, his friends suggested that his would be a moderate, distinctly nonpartisan voice at the international organization. John Deardourff, a longtime Republican political consultant and adviser to Mr. Danforth, said the choice reflected the attempt of the Bush administration to soften its earlier criticism of the United Nations, which Mr. Bush had been known to describe as a nearly irrelevant debating society.

An ordained Episcopal minister, John Claggett Danforth seemed at first glance to fit easily into a presidential administration that does not draw a fine demarcation line between faith and public policy. He has also been President Bush's troubleshooter before, most notably as the president's special envoy to Sudan.

Mr. Danforth served as Missouri's attorney general, then served three terms in the Senate before returning to St. Louis to practice law. He returned to public life for a time in the Clinton administration as the head of a panel that investigated the disastrous federal assault on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex., in 1993.

In announcing his choice of Governor Johanns for agriculture secretary, Mr. Bush hailed the Nebraskan as a "a faithful friend of America's farmers and ranchers." Mr. Bush said Mr. Johanns, a Republican who grew up on a dairy farm and has fought against tax increases in his six years as governor, was the right person to advance the administration's "pro-growth, pro-job, pro-farmer" agenda. The two first met as fellow governors in the 1990's.

Assuming Mr. Johanns is confirmed by the Senate, which seems all but certain since Republicans will have 55 seats in the chamber when the new Congress convenes in January, he will replace Ann M. Veneman, whose resignation was announced on Nov. 15. Ms. Veneman has battled breast cancer for much of her tenure.

"I'm very, very proud of my ag background," Mr. Johanns said today, adding that the hard work on his parents' dairy farm in Iowa had shaped his personality.

The nomination of Mr. Johanns, announced in a midday ceremony at the White House, is part of the continuing reshuffling of the cabinet as Mr. Bush prepares for his second term. Seven of 15 cabinet members have announced their resignations thus far.

Over the years, the agriculture secretary has usually had a much lower profile than, say, the secretaries of state and defense. But Ms. Veneman had to deal with issues like mad cow disease, international trade, rules for logging on federal land and food safety amid fears of terrorism, and Mr. Johanns will surely have to cope with the same issues. Moreover, the Agriculture Department is a multibillion dollar bureaucracy with some 113,000 employees.

Mr. Johanns, 54, was first elected governor in 1998. In 2002, he became the first Republican in Nebraska to be re-elected governor in nearly a half-century. As noted in The Almanac of American Politics, he has expressed the antipathy toward tax increases that President Bush often voices.

Mr. Johanns has been mentioned as a possible challenger to Senator Ben Nelson, Nebraska's Democratic senator, in 2006.




Christopher Drew, Jim Dwyer and William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting for this article from New York, and David Stout contributed reporting from Washington.

I met him (Kerik) at a conference I attended in July. He was very moving and seemed very genuine. I think he will be a good guy. Do you think he will remember us little people?

Sure he will remember. He is a good guy.

Naww, he met a lot of people that day. But I do have his book, and he signed it.....so that's gotta mean something, right?

Yep. It does to me.

Maybe I'll put it on EBay if he gets confirmed and make some money for us. I'll share if I get more than 10 bucks. Gotta share the wealth......he, he.

I need to find a way to live without money. None of my ideas seem very good about how to work that out.