Update on Homeland Insecurity

It was inevitable that pork barrel politics would have a seat at the homeland security table. That would have been true whether Republicans or Democrats had been running the show in Washington since 9/11.

But the extent to which the pork barrel tail has waged the homeland security funding dog has shocked even this jaundiced observer, and we're not even talking about the criminally negligent mess that the Bush administration has made of the entire matter of protecting the homeland. (Although we sure will later in this post.)

WELL DRESSED CARIBOU

The fires at the World Trade Center had barely been extinguished when Congress approved the first homeland security funding, and shock of shocks, the allocation of monies had little to do with actual need.

Under the original scheme, homeland security funds were equally distributed among all U.S. states, including crucibles of terrorism like Wyoming, which happens to be our carpetbagging vice president's adopted state.

This mischief resulted in Wyoming getting $37.74 in anti-terror dough per capita, which meant that every caribou could be issued a biohazard suit, while the Northwest Arctic Borough, an area in Alaska inhabited by 7,300 people, spent $233,000 (or $31.91 per capita) to buy decontamination tents, night vision goggles and other equipment. New York got a measly $5.41 per capita, leaving some of its most pressing needs underfunded or not funded at all.

Then earlier this year, the clowns at the Department of Homeland Security announced that they would evaluate requests for funding based less on, er . . . politics and more on where terrorists are likely to strike. Unfortunately, the change was driven less by common sense than a shortfall in funding. Blames goes to that pesky Mess in Mesopotamia.

THE HEARTLAND, NOT THE HOMELAND

When next year's funding was announced by DHS this week, both 9/11 targets -- New York City and Washington, D.C. -- got screwed. In fact, funding for both was cut an astonishing 40 percent, or from$207.6 million to $124.5 million for the Big Apple and from $77.5 million $46.5 million for D.C.

Meanwhile, terrorism hotspots like Omaha and Louisville got beaucoup bucks.

So rest easy, America. Our meat-packing plants and the Kentucky Derby will be safe from suicide bombers.

This astonishingly shortsighted move prompted New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to grouse:

When you stop a terrorist, they have a map of New York City in their pocket. They don't have a map of any of the other 46 or 45 places.

DHS officials said those "other" places, including Omaha and Louisville, got more dough because of a "more sophisticated" evaluation process, as well as the aforementioned funding shortfall. Said Tracy Henke, DHS's assistant secretary for pork:

We want to make sure we are not simply pushing dollars out of Washington. The reality is you have to understand that there is risk throughout the nation.

Her arguement is not entirely without merit. Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta did get justifiably sizeable increases, while DHS said it found numerous flaws in New York City's application for funds.

But that "more sophisticated" evaluation process involved governors, mayors and local homeland security departments, an invitation for more pork barrel spending.

KLINGONS ON THE STARBOARD BOW

The Dubai Ports World debacle of February laid bare what was obvious to anyone who has followed the feeble federal efforts to protect America in the age of Islamic terrorism -- our ports are among the most vulnerable targets.

And still are.

Both the Bush administration and its helpmates up on Capitol Hill, kissing big business ass, have resisted writing into law the kind of thorough security measures that would make U.S. ports less inviting to terrorists.

And as I reported here just the other day:

The Coast Guard, under intense pressure from shipping companies concerned about costly delays, is now tipping off some large commercial ships about security searches that had been previously been a surprise.

There simply is no excuse for this overweaning ignorance. Or is it arrogance?

Singapore and Hong Kong have devised thorough security checks for their busy ports, but officials there have something lacking in Washington:

The will to shake things up even if special interests -- in this case port operaters and shipping companies -- don't like it.

DISASTROUS MANAGEMENT

And finally, boys and girls, we come to the most gaping holes in America's homeland security armor -- disaster management and intelligence.

As for disaster management, no event better captured the hubris and ineptness of the Bush presidency than the federal response to the suffering of Hurricane Katrina's victims.

Because the president took a battering in public-opinion polls and warnings that the 2006 hurricane season promises to be another humdinger, one would think that an effort has been made in the eight months since Katrina to repair the literal and figurative damage that cataclysm caused.

Wrong.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency remains the first-line of defense and the leading responder for large-scale disasters. Yet the Bush adminstration has done such an effective job of crippling FEMA by folding it into the Department of Homeland Security and treating it like an unwanted stepchild, that a replacement couldn't be found for the disgraced Michael "You're Doing a Heck of a Job, Brownie" Brown, despite a lengthy nationwide search.

The reason why the White House eventually had to promote someone from within FEMA to run it:

Prospective replacements were all too aware that President Bush had installed a series of political hacks to run FEMA and none believed that he was serious about fixing it.

A bipartisan Senate panel agreed and said that FEMA is beyond repair and should be abolished.

UNTELLIGENCE

As for intelligence, the nearly five years since 9/11 have been characterized by dithering, backbiting, recriminations and turf warring between the major U.S. intelligence agencies-- the CIA, FBI and NSA.

It is abundantly clear that all three agencies had credible information that Al Qaeda planned attacks on the homeland.

The CIA had a specifial section devoted to tracking Al Qaeda. The NSA had radio intercepts between Al Qaeda operatives about the attacks. The FBI had information from agents in Phoenix and Minneapolis that operatives were training at U.S. flight schools and planned to hijack passenger jets.

We will never know if the attacks could have been prevented because the agencies never acted on the information, let alone shared it with one another.

The CIA's Al Qaeda posse was marginalized as a bunch of paranoid kooks. The NSA intercepts went into the round file at the White House, where National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice was still fighting the Cold War. The FBI agents were told to stop pestering the big boys at headquarters.

Although the president vowed to "reform" the agencies in the wake of these debacles, the reform buck simply never stopped -- certainly not at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

This three-ring circus recently up chucked another casualty when CIA Director Porter Goss, whom Bush had installed to do the reform thing, suddenly decided to spend more time with his family.

Goss was the very type of old boy insider who was bound to make a bad situation worse and proved yet again that the president's predeliction for appointing people like he and FEMA's Michael Brown to important posts based on loyalty rather than competence is bound to have unpleasant consequences.

Then there's Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, whom Goss plucked from obscurity and appointed to run day-by-day operations at the CIA. Foggo also has decided to spent more time with his family.

The Duster is a hack of the first water and is being investigated by both the FBI and the CIA's inspector general for being mobbed up with some pretty unsavory characters, including a high school buddy who grew up to be a defense contractor now linked to the bribery case against former U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham of California, who was the first of what is bound to be a fair number of current congressman to add the frog walk to their repertoire.

Foggio had a fondness for playing high-stakes poker at a Watergate Hotel suite run by friends of the contractor where there never was a shortage of cigars, booze or hookers. Not just any cigars, mind you, but fine Cuban habanos, which it is against the law to posses.

TICK, TICK, TICK

It has been 1,725 days since four hijacked jetliners slammed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and -- only because of some heroic passengers and the grace of God -- a field in western Pennsylvania and not the U.S. Capitol.

In contrast, 1,365 days transpired between the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and formal surrender of Japan.

Tell me, do you feel safer than you did 1,725 days ago? Do you?