According to a NY Times article this morning, former DHS officials and terrorist analysts are criticizing the Department of Homeland Security for living in the past. They are warning that the DHS obsession of preventing another 9/11 scenario is causing another “failure of imagination” when it comes to other terrorist methods that Al Qaeda (and others) may employ.
You see, the Bush administration’s PR strategy on the GWOT is getting very tiresome it seems. Even the American corporate media is seeing the writing on the wall. The game may be over, if the Dems follow suit.
Americans were lucky the other day in London. And as it turns out, Bushco. seems not to be able to manage itself out of a wet paper bag, let alone protect Americans. Indeed, as an AP article concludes — Michael Chertoff and DHS’s approach to protecting Americans is a freakin’ joke…
An eye-opening report by Associated Press now tells us that Michael Chertoff and the Department of Homeland Security wanted important funding for bomb detecting research and development diverted.
While the British terror suspects were hatching their plot, the Bush administration was quietly seeking permission to divert $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new homeland explosives detection technology.
Congressional leaders rejected the idea, the latest in a series of steps by the Homeland Security Department that has left lawmakers and some of the department’s own experts questioning the commitment to create better anti-terror technologies.
Again I ask: Why did you help the terrorists, Mr. Chertoff
The use of liquid disguised explosive devices on aircraft was known to be used by Al Qaeda since 1994. Why are we just now taking precautions? (and why is the American media not connecting the dots to this question?)
According to investigators, Yousef’s specialty was making bombs from innocuous-looking objects that could be smuggled through airport security – a digital wristwatch modified to serve as a timer, or a plastic bottle for contact lens solution filled with liquid components for nitroglycerine.
In fact, you’ll be happy to know that while you are giving your expensive perfume and make-up to security personnel at airports across America, the Department of Homeland Security has been seemingly unconcerned about this particular threat for years.
Homeland Security’s research arm, called the Sciences & Technology Directorate, is a “rudderless ship without a clear way to get back on course,” Republican and Democratic senators on the Appropriations Committee declared recently.
The committee is extremely disappointed with the manner in which S&T is being managed within the Department of Homeland Security,” the panel wrote June 29 in a bipartisan report accompanying the agency’s 2007 budget.
Rep. Martin Sabo, D-Minn., who joined Republicans to block the administration’s recent diversion of explosives detection money, said research and development is crucial to thwarting future attacks and there is bipartisan agreement that Homeland Security has fallen short.
“They clearly have been given lots of resources that they haven’t been using,” Sabo said.
The department failed to spend $200 million in research and development money from past years, forcing lawmakers to rescind the money this summer.
The administration also was slow to start testing a new liquid explosives detector that the Japanese government provided to the United States earlier this year.
Since 2002, practical and inexpensive technology important for detecting carry-on explosives has been rejected by DHS over and over again.
A 2002 Homeland report recommended “immediate deployment” of the trace units to key European airports, highlighting their low cost, $40,000 per unit, and their detection capabilities. The report said one such unit was able, 25 days later, to detect explosives residue inside the airplane where convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid was foiled in his attack in December 2001.
A 2005 report to Congress similarly urged that the trace detectors be used more aggressively, and strongly warned the continuing failure to distribute such detectors to foreign airports “may be an invitation to terrorist to ply their trade, using techniques that they have already used on a number of occasions.”
Tony Fainberg, who formerly oversaw Homeland Security’s explosive and radiation detection research with the national labs, said he strongly urged deployment of the detectors overseas but was rebuffed.
“It is not that expensive,” said Fainberg, who retired recently. “There was no resistance from any country that I was aware of, and yet we didn’t deploy it.
According to former senior managers in the DHS R&D, there has been “a lack of strategic goals” and inefficiency at using the money given to this department to quickly develop important and useful technology.
Even Lawmakers are befuddled:
The administration’s most recent budget request also mystified lawmakers. It asked to take $6 million from Homeland S&T’s 2006 budget that was supposed to be used to develop explosives detection technology and instead divert it to cover a budget shortfall in the Federal Protective Service, which provides security around government buildings.
As with the Katrina response & prepardedness, we see dangerous incompetence and negligence from DHS and Michael Chertoff.
