The Office of Inspector General in the Department of Homeland Security issued a report on an internal audit it conducted in which it found that the Department has awarded a number of port security grants for projects that were considered “marginal” in one way or another by a review board. The report was particularly critical of grants awarded under the former Office for Domestic Preparedness prior to the time responsibility for port security grants was shifted to the Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness in 2004.
Hey, protecting ports is hard. One congressman who seems to get it is Chris Cox:
The IG investigation also came up during a “Lou Dobbs Tonight” interview with House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Christopher Cox (R-CA). Dobbs asked why the port grants have not gone to where they are badly needed and why this “bureaucratic mistake” is being permitted. Cox replied that “it isn’t just a bureaucratic snafu that is the reason that our port security remains a work in progress. Rather, it is because there isn’t broad general agreement on precisely what to do and how to spend the money.”We always want to stop it "off shore."
He added: “We have got the national labs working now looking at the whole supply chain to find out how best we can deploy our resources when it comes to port security. It isn’t just spending the money in the ports, because once something enters our ports, its too late. We have got to make sure we apprehend, particularly, radiological devices well before then.”
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