6.15.2005
Anti-Terror Absurdity in America: Hemorrhaging Money for Homeland Security (Speigel.de)
By Georg Mascolo
June 13, 2005
Fear can be a lucrative business. That, at least, is what American companies selling security gadgets are finding out as the US government continues to spend billions of dollars on a variety of different Homeland Security programs. The only problem? Most of them are useless.
Clark Kent Ervin, 46, is one of those people on whom the US president likes to depend. The staunch Republican is an old friend from Texas who once worked for George W. Bush in the governor's mansion and who, on Bush Junior's recommendation, managed to get a job in Bush Senior's administration. Ervin is an amiable man who is usually quick to smile. The exception? When you mention his last employer -- the two-and-a-half-year-old US Department of Homeland Security.
The problems at the bureaucratic behemoth -- with its 180,000 employees -- are myriad, says Ervin, a graduate of Harvard. "I've never experienced anything like it before," he says.
And now Ervin, appointed by his friend Bush to the position of highest-ranking internal auditor on the homeland security front, is suddenly without a job. 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. Since Ervin was forced out of the department, the gold rush-like mood in the American security industry, whose excesses were at the center of Ervin's complaints, has continued unabated.
The business of fear in the United States of America has been booming ever since September 11, 2001 and the price tag for the protective cordon of high-tech gadgetry intended to keep the US safe from more terrorist attacks is enormous. Devices designed to detect nuclear material in shipping containers will cost the US government $300 million. The budget for the American Shield Initiative, a plan that calls for monitoring the country's borders with sensors or drones, comes at the hefty price of $2.5 billion. A further $10 billion is budgeted for a new computer system designed to monitor visitors, while outfitting all 6,800 aircraft in US commercial aviation with anti-missile systems will cost about the same amount. The total 2005 Homeland Security budget weighs in at a whopping $50 billion -- roughly equivalent to the gross national product of New Zealand.
(More ... Anti-Terror Absurdity in America: Hemorrhaging Money for Homeland Security - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News) ¶ 15:49
June 13, 2005
Fear can be a lucrative business. That, at least, is what American companies selling security gadgets are finding out as the US government continues to spend billions of dollars on a variety of different Homeland Security programs. The only problem? Most of them are useless.
Clark Kent Ervin, 46, is one of those people on whom the US president likes to depend. The staunch Republican is an old friend from Texas who once worked for George W. Bush in the governor's mansion and who, on Bush Junior's recommendation, managed to get a job in Bush Senior's administration. Ervin is an amiable man who is usually quick to smile. The exception? When you mention his last employer -- the two-and-a-half-year-old US Department of Homeland Security.
The problems at the bureaucratic behemoth -- with its 180,000 employees -- are myriad, says Ervin, a graduate of Harvard. "I've never experienced anything like it before," he says.
And now Ervin, appointed by his friend Bush to the position of highest-ranking internal auditor on the homeland security front, is suddenly without a job. 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. Since Ervin was forced out of the department, the gold rush-like mood in the American security industry, whose excesses were at the center of Ervin's complaints, has continued unabated.
The business of fear in the United States of America has been booming ever since September 11, 2001 and the price tag for the protective cordon of high-tech gadgetry intended to keep the US safe from more terrorist attacks is enormous. Devices designed to detect nuclear material in shipping containers will cost the US government $300 million. The budget for the American Shield Initiative, a plan that calls for monitoring the country's borders with sensors or drones, comes at the hefty price of $2.5 billion. A further $10 billion is budgeted for a new computer system designed to monitor visitors, while outfitting all 6,800 aircraft in US commercial aviation with anti-missile systems will cost about the same amount. The total 2005 Homeland Security budget weighs in at a whopping $50 billion -- roughly equivalent to the gross national product of New Zealand.
(More ... Anti-Terror Absurdity in America: Hemorrhaging Money for Homeland Security - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News) ¶ 15:49
