PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH has chosen Bernard Kerik, the former New York police commissioner who helped to oversee the response to the September 11 attacks, to run the Department of Homeland Security. Mr Kerik, 49, will take over from Tom Ridge, who resigned this week. Mr Kerik's path to the top anti-terrorism position, replacing Tom Ridge, has been anything but conventional. A moustachioed, upright character who began his anti-terrorism career as a private security officer in Saudi Arabia, Mr Kerik won national fame in the ashes of the World Trade Center, and often appeared at the side of the former Mayor, Rudolph Guiliani, to discuss the bloodshed.A military policeman in South Korea in the 1970s, his first anti-terrorism work was as a paid private security worker in Saudi Arabia. He joined the New York Police Department in 1986, first walking a beat in Times Square when it was still a haven for small-time hustlers. He rose to lead the city's corrections department, and was appointed commissioner in 2000. It was in that position that he became known to the rest of the country, supervising the New York Police Department's response to the terror attacks in 2001.