Report: U.S. to Spend Billions More to Alter Security Systems

May 9, 2005
After spending more than $4.5 billion (euro3.48 billion) on screening devices to monitor the nation's ports, borders, airports, mail and air, the federal government is moving to replace or alter much of the antiterrorism equipment, concluding that it is ineffective, unreliable or too expensive to operate, a report said Saturday.

NEW YORK (AP) -- After spending more than $4.5 billion (euro3.48 billion) on screening devices to monitor the nation's ports, borders, airports, mail and air, the federal government is moving to replace or alter much of the antiterrorism equipment, concluding that it is ineffective, unreliable or too expensive to operate, a report said Saturday.

Many of the monitoring tools -- intended to detect guns, explosives, and nuclear and biological weapons -- were bought during the blitz in security spending after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In its effort to create a virtual shield around America, the Department of Homeland Security now plans to spend billions of dollars more, The New York Times said.

Although some changes are being made because of technology that has emerged in the last couple of years, the paper said many of them are planned because devices currently in use have done little to improve the nation's security, according to a review of agency documents and interviews with federal officials and outside experts.

''Everyone was standing in line with their silver bullets to make us more secure after Sept. 11,'' it quoted said Randall J. Larsen, a retired Air Force colonel and former government adviser on scientific issues, as saying. ''We bought a lot of stuff off the shelf that wasn't effective.''

Among the problems the Times cited:

  • Radiation monitors at ports and borders that cannot differentiate between radiation emitted by a nuclear bomb and naturally occurring radiation from everyday material like cat litter or ceramic tile.

  • Air-monitoring equipment in major cities that is only marginally effective because not enough detectors were deployed and were sometimes not properly calibrated or installed. They also do not produce results for up to 36 hours -- long after a biological attack would potentially infect thousands of people.

  • Passenger-screening equipment at airports that auditors have found is no more likely than before federal screeners took over to detect whether someone is trying to carry a weapon or a bomb aboard a plane.

  • Postal Service machines that test only a small percentage of mail and look for anthrax but no other biological agents.

Federal officials say they bought the best available equipment, the Times said. They acknowledge that it might not have been cutting-edge technology but said that to speed installation they bought only devices that were readily available instead of trying to buy promising technology that was not yet in production.

The department says it has created a layered defense that would not be compromised by the failure of a single device. Even if the monitoring is less than ideal, officials say, it is still a deterrent.

''The nation is more secure in the deployment and use of these technologies versus having no technologies in place at all,'' the Times quoted Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, as saying.

Some critics say that even though federal agencies were pressed to move quickly by Congress and the administration, they made some poor choices. In some cases, agencies did not seek competitive bids or consider cheaper, better alternatives. And not all the devices were tested to see how well they worked in the environments where they would be used.

''After 9/11, we had to show how committed we were by spending hugely greater amounts of money than ever before, as rapidly as possible,'' it quoted Rep. Christopher Cox, a California Republican who is the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, as saying. ''That brought us what we might expect, which is some expensive mistakes. This has been the difficult learning curve of the new discipline known as homeland security.''