Der Spiegel tells the story of how Clark Kent Ervin — an old pal of George Bush who once worked in the Texas governor’s mansion — was forced out of his job at Homeland Security after his reports on “the chaos, corruption and wastefulness at the department were so thorough and full-throated that he became a liability to the president.”
Ervin, the fired auditor, is wary of the current consumerist climate and would have preferred spending funds more slowly and judiciously. …More below:
More snippets from Der Spiegel:
[…..]
“We’ll call these the good old days in ten years,” says an enthusiastic Ray Oleson, whose information technology company posted a fifty percent jump in sales in the first quarter of this year. The American newsmagazine US News & World Report calls the booming business “Washington’s version of a Turkish bazaar.”
[…..]
Peddling as products designed “to secure America’s future” (an industry marketing slogan) has proven to be insufficiently developed and prone to failure. To this day, the harbor nuclear detectors are incapable of distinguishing between bombs and kitty litter or bananas, leading frustrated customs officials to simply shut them off. The new $1.2 billion explosives detectors for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), a part of Homeland Security, are equally unreliable.
Another criticism of Homeland Security’s money-spending ways is that it isn’t terribly focused. The security business is booming in places like the Virgin Islands, American Samoa and Wyoming as well — hardly places that come to mind as potential terrorist targets. But according to the requirements stipulated by Congress, the Department of Homeland Security’s budget must be equally distributed among all US states and territories. Last year, Wyoming spent $37.74 per capita on homeland security while the state of New York had to make do with $5.41 per capita. The result? Every police officer in Wyoming now has his or her own ABC protective suit.
To make sure that all this lucrative hemorrhaging of American taxpayers’ money doesn’t come to an end too soon, the security industry has taken a page from the defense industry and hired specialists who are aptly nicknamed “rainmakers” — political insiders adept at selling their influence to the highest bidder. Tom Ridge, the former Secretary of Homeland Security, is now lobbying on behalf of container security, while many of his former top officials have set up shop on K Street, Washington’s magnificent mile for lobbyists.
[…..]
[I]n the three years since it came into being, the Transportation Security Administration has already gone through four directors. Each of the current director’s predecessors was simply unable to resist the temptations of the industry. Richard Clarke, the former White House Chief of Counterterrorism, warns that “we’ll never have a competent team if this goes on.” According to a government study, thus far only four of the Department of Homeland Security’s 33 homeland protection programs are considered effective, leading the new Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, to promise Congress that he’ll be taken a closer look at how the department spends its billions. But despite Chertoff’s promises, the booming industry’s prospects remain as rosy as ever. Indeed, the Secretary recently told a gathering of 400 industry executives that the government still depends on their help. “We need you to make America a safer place,” he said — to roaring applause.
I know we can’t make a campaign issue out of this, but consider these facts that are widely proclaimed by our most hawkish leaders:
Several other facts we constantly hear in public circulation:
We’re not in a terror war.
Appropriate response to the threat:
American response to the threat:
The business of fear in the United States of America has been booming
The beauty of the War on Terror:
The war must endure until there no longer exist individuals capable of operating independently.
War without end: amen, amen.
I agree. And, I’d wager that if we did absolutely nothing, we’d be just as safe as we were.
The audacious and stunning 9/11 attack happens so infrequently — because of its utter complexity, difficulty in getting the right people, patience and extraordinary careful, brilliant planning — that we haven’t that much to worry about.
I’d feared that we’d start having suicide bombers in the U.S. But there hasn’t been one.
Suicide bombings are rather easy to pull off, no? So, the lack of any is rather telling.
My local paper (The Long Beach Press-Telegram) is pretty much a joke, but they have actually been really good on covering the problems with Homeland Security.
The Long Beach/Los Angeles Port (the busiest in the country) is finally getting a trio of radiation detectors (LINK). This is a good sign, provided the detectors actually work.
As for Homeland Security funds, the misallocation of funds has been covered at least since June 2003 (LINK).
In September 2004, they ran a three part Special Report entitled “Missing the Target: A flawed plan to protect the homeland” which detailed how funds were being misallocated and misspent:
Part 1 focuses on how state and local authorities are misspending their homeland security grants, largely due to the lack of federal guidelines and coordination.
Part 2 is about how California ranked terror targets and why officials largely ignored the list as they doled out money to protect the public against a terrorist attack.
Part 3 continues the discussion of the misallocation of funds.
Also of interest two interactive graphics in the sidebar of any of the 3 parts linked above. The first graphic is on airport security, and the second is on how the government is protecting various terror targets (sorry, I couldn’t figure out how to link directly to the interactive flash graphics).
That’s fascinating .. and that’s a paper the vast majority of us will never see.
Would you consider writing this up in a diary? Probably a series of diaries?
Back in September, I did 2 diaries at Daily Kos about the 3 part special report and they got zero attention. The second diary was really brief, since I was discouraged after the first diary died a quick and quiet death. At this point the report is 9 months old. Would people really be interested?
I’ll think about doing another diary or two, but I am kind of busy with other stuff right now. If you like, you can run with this…
The War is not on terrorism, which, as we know is a technique, not an entity. The threat of terrorism is one more fear-mongering excuse to justify repressive government and the insane military spending that seeks to subjugate the entire planet. This is a Culture of Death that contemptuously discounts Mother Earth and all who live on her in pursuit of raw power.
“During 2003, world military spending rose by 11 percent, in real terms, reaching $956 billion. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute: “The main reason for the increase in world military spending is the massive increase in the United States, which accounts for almost half of the world total.” According to the 1998 United Nations Development Program report, the additional cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education for all, basic health care for all, reproductive health care for all women, adequate food for all and clean water and safe sewers for all is roughly $40 billion a year. This is less than one-tenth of the annual U.S. military budget, and in my view, a perversion of priorities that should be considered a crime against humanity.”
Human Security, Development and Disarmament
Address by Jacqueline Cabasso, Executive Director, Western States Legal Foundation, USA
This is the answer to “Why do they hate us?”