9/11 Attacks Led To Half-Trillion-Dollar DHS Spending Binge

9/11 Attacks Led To Half-Trillion-Dollar Homeland Security Spending Binge

WASHINGTON -- In July, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security quietly scuttled a multi-billion dollar program to install high-tech radiation detectors at the nation's ports. A top priority of the Bush administration, the advanced spectroscopic portal (ASP) devices that the Raytheon Company was being paid to build weren't just way behind schedule and enormously over budget -- they didn't actually appear to work. The failed project cost taxpayers well over $230 million.

And earlier in July, DHS had scrapped its unfinished and dysfunctional Risk Assessment Management Program, a computer application intended to help officials distribute their small army of private security guards between federal buildings, based on the chances of those buildings becoming terror targets. DHS had already shelled out $35 million over three years for a project that contractor Booz Allen had promised to complete in one year for $21 million. With the program axed, some eight years after DHS was founded, the department still isn't able to do something as basic as assess which federal buildings are more vulnerable to attack than others.

These are just a few of the most recent -- and in these cases, now staunched -- examples of how DHS has hemorrhaged money since its creation in 2003.

According to an estimate by Ohio State University political scientist John Mueller and Australian engineer Mark Stewart, the cumulative increase in U.S. domestic homeland security spending since the 9/11 terror attacks totals about $580 billion.

Critics of the department say its poor track record when it comes to the distribution of its considerable funds is directly related to how the department was formed: in a panic, out of a need for a grand political gesture -- and without a clear mission.

Stories of smaller-scale DHS excesses have become the stuff of legend. One is the famous terror target list used to allocate DHS grant money. It listed 77,069 sites under possible threat, including the Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo in Woodville, Ala., the Amish Country Popcorn factory in Berne, Ind., and the Mule Day Parade in Columbia, Tenn.

The Los Angeles Times reported just last week that DHS grant money is still buying such things as state-of-the-art dive gear, cattle nose leads and electric prods for rural Nebraska counties and a nine-ton BearCat armored tactical assault vehicle for suburban Glendale, Calif.

"[T]he reality is that DHS is a colossal and inefficient boondoggle," Joan Johnson-Freese and Tom Nichols, both professors at the Naval War College, wrote this week for AOL Defense:

DHS was a panic reaction, a precipitous act by a Bush administration determined to show it was 'doing something' about terrorism. The horses had already escaped, but the Bush administration went ahead anyway and bought more land, constructed extra barns, equipped them with state-of-the-art doors, and then hired thousands of conscientious civil servants to slam them shut over and over again, for the rest of eternity.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/0 ... 53288.html

Now THERE is some serious "job-creation"... I wonder how many billions, tens-of-billions, hundreds-of-billions, those DoD contractors sucked up to be "job-creators"?

Yikes, why didn't we just buy every member of Al Queda a nice little villa in Spain and supply them with free virgins for life?

The cost of importing virgins into Spain would have doubled that figure I assume.

They have to FIND them first....

Most of those guys seem pretty sexually naive, do you think they could tell the difference?

Denver Post has been covering the local versions of this crazy spending. When spending is going to sacred cows like DHS and the military, it seems like common sense gets thrown out the window.

They have to FIND them first....

The terrorists -- the virgins --- or the villas in Spain?

Critics of the department say its poor track record when it comes to the distribution of its considerable funds is directly related to how the department was formed: in a panic, out of a need for a grand political gesture -- and without a clear mission.

Sounds similar to the Stimulus plan, except that cost almost $800 billion.

Maybe we need to wait at least 6 months after a disaster until we do something about it? Government rushing into things doesn't seem to work real well.

Particularly when the knee-jerk reaction seems to have been: "determined to show it was 'doing something' about terrorism." Even if it was a $580 BILLION exercise in futility.

Why don't we just do away with DHS? We have the CIA and FBI and both units have been involved in some form of protection for decades. Why not let them handle it again, that along with enforcement of immigration and better visa control? All those departments exist already and just need to act. Oh my, we might be able to take something other than a miniature tube of toothpaste onto the flights and mitigate the endless security lines at the airport.