Senator Tom Coburn's
recent oversight report on the Department of Homeland
Security provides Americans with an interesting glimpse of what goes on inside
DHS and whether or not it is fulfilling its five core functions; enhancing
national security preparedness, enforcing immigration law, securing America's
borders, preventing terrorism and guarding cyberspace. The report
suggests that the Department has been a failure on many counts as you will see
in this posting.
In case you've forgotten,
DHS was created under George W. Bush's Homeland Security Act of 2002 after the
September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York. It resulted from the
consolidation of 22 different government components and offices with the aim of
creating a unified department that could focus solely on national security.
Since 2003, DHS has spent approximately $544 billion; its annual budget
for 2015 is around $61 billion and it currently employs more than 240,000
people.
The report shows that the
Department is not "successfully executing any of its five main missions.
Let's look at a few examples:
1.) Sharing intelligence
information and analyses: The original mission of the DHS was to receive,
analyze and integrate law enforcement and intelligence information to assess,
identify and detect terrorist threats. To this end, the DHS created its
own public-private information sharing system called the Homeland Security
Information Network or HSIN. In the first 9 years, a total of $231 million
was spent on HSIN; there were 35560 active account holders across the nation
but only 4 percent logged into the system on a daily basis and only 12 percent
logged into the system once a week. The main complaint? The system
content was "not useful".
In addition, DHS was to
support so-called fusion centers which would serve as hubs for sharing
intelligence between federal state and local officials. In total, up to
$1.4 billion was spent on the 70 fusion centers between 2003 and 2011 but a
report from the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation showed that the DHS's
work with the fusion enters had not produced any useful intelligence to support
federal anti-terrorism efforts.
2.) DHS preparedness
grants to governments to enhance counterterrorism efforts:
The DHS was to provide homeland security grants to lower levels of
government that would enable them to enhance their abilities to respond to,
prevent and recover from mass destruction incidents. Since 2003, DHS has
spent more than $38 billion on preparedness grants. The oversight
committee found that many states and localities used the preparedness grants
for "questionable" purposes including the hardening of county jails,
purchasing color printers, paying for first responders to attend a five day spa
junket, install bollards and surveillance equipment at a spring-training
baseball stadium, to purchase armoured vehicles and to buy long range acoustic
devices that are capable of emitting an ear-splitting sound. As well, as
of 2012, $8.3 billion of previously awarded grant funds remained unspent.
3.) Protecting against
domestic chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attacks: The DHS
was set up to prevent domestic chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and
explosive (CNRNE) attacks. One key example from the fall of 2001 was the
use of mail containing anthrax which resulted in five deaths. DHS's
responsibilities are to oversee and secure materials that could be used in an
attack or to deploy tools to detect the use of CBRNE materials before they are
used in an attack. As such, DHS launched the BioWatch program in
2003, spending $1.1 billion on its deployment by 2014. Given the number
of false positives and negatives that have been reported over the years, it
appears that the system is not effective in preventing an attack or in
detecting an attack before it happens. DHS has also been unable to
develop or deploy equipment that could be used to scan cargo for nuclear
materials entering the United States. The DHS proposed the acquisition
and deployment of advanced spectroscopic portals for detecting nuclear
material, however, after the equipment failed to pass field testing, the
program was cancelled....after spending $230 million on developing the
scanners.
4.) DHS programs to
protect federal buildings: The DHS has responsibilities for protecting
federal facilities under the Federal Protective Service (FPS). FPS has
more than 1300 federal employees and 13,000 contract employees used to protect
9500 federal facilities. In 2013, one contract security company used by
FPS reported that 38 percent of its guards did not receive any training in the
use of X-ray or magnetometer screenings from FPS. As of 2014, FPS was
still not providing training for contractors on how to respond to an active
shooter. In addition, it appears that FPS employees and contractors are
not prepared to prevent or recognize a potential bombing attack as shown in
this quote from the report:
"A Department
of Homeland Security OIG Report issued in August 2012 reviewed an incident at
the Patrick V. McNamara Federal Building in Detroit. Contract security officers
found a bag containing an improvised explosive device outside of the building.
The guards brought the bag, which contained a locked safe, inside the building.
They attempted to determine the contents of the bag by “shaking and moving the
metal safe inside the bag,” which contained the IED, and X- raying the bag.
The
Inspector General reports that the security guards placed the bag and its contents
at their security console for a period of 21 days. The
report noted that the guards were working with equipment they did not know
how to use, procedures for handling found property were unclear, and FPS post
inspections did not identify unauthorized items at the post."
5.) Protection of
America's international borders: According to DHS and the Border Patrol,
there is an 80 to 85 percent effectiveness rate along the U.S. southern border
at catching or turning back those who are trying to enter the United States
illegally. In contrast, a report by the Council on Foreign
Relations suggested that the effectiveness rate is between 40 and 45 percent.
Obviously, it is unclear whether DHS is accomplishing its mission of
securing America's borders. Documents show that there are gaps of up to
700 miles along the southern border where there is little DHS deployment
or aerial surveillance coverage. The use of unmanned aerial vehicles
has been particularly poor; during 2013, the ten DHS unmanned drones flew a
total of 5000 hours, averaging less than 12 hours per week with one aerial
asset flying only 7 hours per book. In addition, a 2012 GAO report
on misconduct and corruption in the Border Patrol found that more than 140
former CBP employees had been arrested for corruption offences in
including smuggling and 125 had been convicted as of late 2012. In
addition, in 2011, the DHS Office of the Inspector General had 600 open
investigations examining CBP employees.
Let's close with two of
Senator Coburn's recommendations:
"The most important
recommendation is for Congress itself—reforming Congress’s dysfunctional
approach to overseeing the Department and setting its priorities, including
overcoming the political and parochial interests that too often shape our
programs, even those that relate to our national security.
Congress and DHS must
also focus on earning and restoring the American people’s trust. This includes
ensuring that all of the Department’s programs and operations are consistent
with the American people’s Constitutional rights and the proper role of the
federal government. Too many of DHS’s programs have faced questions in this
regard. We have also witnessed incidents where the Department’s programs have
raised concerns about excessive federal authority or otherwise contributed to
some of the public’s distrust of law enforcement. Congress has a duty to
conduct vigorous and persistent oversight of DHS’s programs to ensure that they
are operating in a manner consistent with the Constitution."
Given the $544 billion spent over the past
decade on homeland security, one really has to wonder if our "safety"
is just an illusion?
Most of the people arrested prior to committing their terrorist attacks are baited into to it by special undercover agents. These are people with extremely low IQs and very easy to manipulate. These are the arrests and things they use when the cite the success of the Department and programs.
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