Wednesday May 9, 1:09 AM WASHINGTON, May 8 (AFP) - Vice President Dick Cheney announced Tuesday he will head a task force on "homeland defense" to assess changing threats to the United States and how to prepare for potential terrorist attacks on US soil. "The concern here is that one of our biggest threats as a nation is no longer a conventional military attack," Cheney said in an interview on CNN. "It could be domestic terrorism, but it may also be a terrorist organization overseas or even another state using weapons of mass destruction against the US, a hand-carried nuclear weapon or a biological or chemical agent." The Federal Emergency Management Agency will devise plans and strategies "to figure out how we best respond to that kind of disaster of major proportions that would effectively be man-made, or man-caused," Cheney said. The task force will submit results of its work to President George W. Bush and the National Security Council, Cheney said, without setting a time frame. As the vice president spoke, the US Senate opened a three-day hearing to question other key members of Bush's cabinet on the country's state of readiness against such attacks. Secretary of State Colin Powell joined Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta to explain their efforts to protect US citizens at home and abroad against terrorist attacks. "Terrorism is a part of the dark side of globalization," Powell told the hearing. But he rejected the idea of becoming "helmeted giants huddling in our bunkers awaiting the enemy," and instead insisted on the importance of crafting the appropriate counterterrorism efforts and accompanying public diplomacy to deal with the threat. "We will continue to strenghten our cooperation with those fighting terrorism domestically," he said. Senators focussed their questions on the importance of the multiple national agencies involved in US security being able to coordinate to stave off, or deal with the consequences of terrorism. The unprecendented hearings comes a week before the execution of Timothy McVeigh, convicted for the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City, the deadliest terrorist attack on US soil which killed 168 people. He is scheduled to die by lethal injection at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, on May 16.
