Seven Sheet Cakes and Three Cheese Displays

In November 2003, the Transportation Security Administration – one of the front-line fighters in the war on terror – shelled out almost half a million dollars for one glorious night of awards and entertainment. According to an internal investigation carried out by the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General, the $461,745 poured into the event included "$1,850 for seven sheet cakes, $1,500 for three cheese displays, and more than $81,000 for awards plaques," as well as $3.75 each for soft drinks and $64 per gallon of coffee. Then there were the "per diems," transportation and hotel costs for award recipients.

Since the war on terror is so often a thankless and grueling job, the TSA extravaganza was doubtless a much-needed morale booster for those on the front lines. Not all agree, however. ""There's something terribly wrong with that agency," declared Senator Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) last October. "Of all the agencies, that's the one that's supposed to be working full-time against terrorist attacks."

It may be the biggest con ever carried out on American soil, and the irony of it all is that it was so easy for the state to pull off. By manipulating the 9/11 terrorist attacks to spread paranoia and fear across the country and justify a perpetual war state, the Bush administration and its acolytes on the state and local levels were able to justify the need for massive funding increases for so-called homeland security needs. What was true after 9/11, and true in May 2002, remains true today: "homeland security dominates the consciousness of all levels of government."

While some of the $10 billion doled out so far has been spent wisely, for equipment, services, and training that would be vital in the case of any future terrorist attack, millions of dollars have been and continue to be misused. This indicates the utter brazenness of those in power, as well as the fact that people have become so indoctrinated that they no longer question whether they have been getting the royal shaft from Emperor Bush and his courtiers.

From the Federal Right Down to the Local, the Story's the Same

But we can't lay all the blame on the Beltway. When it comes to homeland security funding, the attitude of profligacy and greed has proven infectious, pervading every level of government. Directly at the opposite end of the scale from the TSA are places like Tiptonville, Tenn., which 60 Minutes visited for a compelling exposé aired just over a week ago. Chronicling the feeding frenzy with an eye focused directly on the trough, 60 Minutes reported that this sleepy southern hamlet has, together with adjoining Lake County (7,900 souls in all), received $183,000 in homeland security funding since 9/11. Tiptonville, says 60 Minutes, "probably isn't on any terrorist map of potential targets. It's not even on the rental car map, and neither is the road you take to get there."

Nevertheless, Mayor Macie Roberson believes that a terrorist organization such as al-Qaeda might find his rural outpost a handy base for operations against say, St. Louis or Memphis (2 hours away): "[N]o one would ever expect me [al-Qaeda] here," the mayor confides. In that case, someone had better get Ann Coulter down there on the double – those "swarthy males" of al-Qaeda might just blend in with the good residents of Tiptonville. Puh-leaze!

Profitable Wisdom

The prevailing wisdom of homeland security grant-getters large and small was enunciated by Mayor Roberson: "[I]f it's available, we're gonna apply for it." When his "13-page shopping list" was approved by the DHS, 60 Minutes reports, "he went out and got a Gator, which is an all-terrain vehicle. He also bought a couple of defibrillators, one of which is being used at high school basketball games, and purchased protective suits for the volunteer fire department, in the unlikely event terror comes to Tiptonville."

Meanwhile, over in Converse, Texas, a brand-new "homeland security trailer" was used for bringing riding lawn mowers to the town's annual lawnmower races. The Columbus, Ohio, fire department got bulletproof dog vests for its dog detachment, just in case. Mason County, Wash., "famous mostly for its Christmas trees," requisitioned $63,000 of DHS money "for a decontamination unit that no one's been trained to use. It's been sitting in boxes in a warehouse for a year." And citizens of Des Moines, Iowa, can breathe easier knowing that they have received a key weapon in the war on terror – traffic cones.

Pork Barrel Polka

How are such expenditures being justified according to homeland security needs? "Well, you know, that's one of the beauties of homeland security," said Rep. Chris Cox (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, for 60 Minutes. "In the end, everything has something to do with homeland security." And so, as it turned out, everyone in Washington has had something to do with it as well. The biggest bipartisan agreement of the age of terrorism has been the need for congressmen of both parties to lobby as hard as possible for DHS funding for their states and districts – whether they need them or not.

Considering the state he represents, Congressman Anthony D. Weiner (D-N.Y.) felt justified in criticizing this sure recipe for pork. "[I]n a decision that was either boneheaded or politically ingenious, they distributed the money in a formula that treated all states the same," said Weiner in the aftermath of last August's Republican National Convention. "So Dick Cheney's home state of Wyoming received $38 per capita while New York received only $5."

In 2003, the state of Idaho – with a population of just under 1.3 million and a questionable status as a terrorist target – was awarded almost $1.7 million from DHS' Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate. And, despite his earnest complaints about fiscal mismanagement at the TSA, Senator Dorgan's home state of North Dakota "ranks third in the nation in the per capita money it receives to protect itself from terrorists." According to the IHT:

"[I]n the 2005 fiscal year, North Dakota will receive $12.85 million in state homeland security funds, according to Federal Funds Information for States, a Washington service that tracks grants for the states. That equals $20.27 for each of North Dakota's 634,000 residents."

Among the goodies for Grand Forks are a "$200,000 bomb-dismantling robot," gas masks, decontamination tents, and a "$205,000 vehicle to carry the bomb squad to cover any hostage situation, explosion, or what the police call a 'weapons of mass destruction event.'"

Rep. Cox, whose bill to change the DHS funding scheme was shot down last year by the Senate, seconded Weiner's opinion. "It's pork barrel. It's the kind of distribution of funds that Washington always makes when politics comes before substance." How severe is this problem, asked 60 Minutes? According to Tom Schatz of Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog on government overspending, "pork barrel spending on homeland security this year will reach $1.7 billion."

Local Lobbying: Emphasizing Risk Assessment – or Not

Despite the failure of last year's bill, Rep. Cox has pledged to submit a new one to make funding rationales follow a more logical risk-based scheme. Recent congressional testimony from the new DHS secretary, Michael Chertoff, indicates that policymakers may be starting to get the message.

According to critics, the post-9/11 use of risk quotients was flawed and manipulated almost from the start. Former Ft. Wayne, Ind., mayor and past president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors Paul Helmke recently recounted that many cities and towns requesting funds hadn't first conducted a "decent threat and vulnerability assessment that analyzes what's vulnerable, what's critical, [and] what's been threatened in the past."

Further, heavy lobbying for inclusion on Congress's list of high-risk cities, says Rep. Weiner, led to an unrealistically large number of cities claiming to be terrorist targets – meaning that in the end, "the cities that needed the most got less." Effective lobbying is how 31 cities were added in 2003 to the DHS "Biowatch" program, a monitoring system that is supposed to track the air for deadly chemical and biological agents at secret urban locations. Despite criticisms that it might actually not be of much help in the case of any such WMD attack, the government went ahead with it – at a cost of $1 million annually per city.

After 9/11, the National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National Association of Counties got their collective act together and established a "Homeland Security Task Force" to better lobby the federal government. Said Dallas City Council member and Task Force co-chair Mary Poss in 2002, "[W]e have to continue working with the president and Congress to make sure that a larger share of the dollars that are available for homeland security are, indeed, given directly to the communities … we absolutely believe that the local fire chiefs, police chiefs, and other personnel can make the best decisions about how money needs to be spent."

Indeed. That's how we ended up with critical decision-making like traffic cones, bulletproof dog vests, and "homeland security"/riding lawnmower trailers.

To be fair, the lower-level lobbyists have a point when, like Poss, they argue that direct funding to local government can save time and money by skipping the bureaucracy of state-level middle management. However, the opposite situations of officials on both ends of the totem pole ironically enough results in the same waste and misuse of funds: while high officials can operate with impunity and remain above the law, simply because of who they are and the great power that they wield, local yokels are so far beneath the radar that no one would ever think to question what goes on in a Tiptonville or Converse, without the efforts of the media. Motivated by Lilliputian, self-serving instincts, low-level fund-getters can profit handsomely from the war on terror precisely because they are nowhere near the front lines of that alleged conflict.

However, new DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, who is replacing Tom Ridge, was grilled on April 13 before a congressional committee, where he announced that:

"[R]isk management as the template for how we do our work. And that means that in our handling of grants, in our deployment of resources, in our policymaking, we have to be driven by a disciplined, analytical approach that looks to the issue of measuring consequence, measuring vulnerability, and measuring threat."

Sketchy Investments, Paradoxical Priorities

Even if Chertoff really believes in this bold pledge, which he may well do, the sheer size of the DHS bureaucracy makes any sort of reform a formidable task. Some experts, like Ivan Eland, don't believe the DHS has a prayer in this regard.

It may just be that the waste and corruption are now too ingrained, too systemic. Examples of fiscal misuse from all across the nation abound. In Colorado, one town spent an undisclosed amount of money to buy gyms and hire personal trainers for its volunteer firefighters. And, not to be outdone by North Dakota, Pennsylvania's Allegheny and Northampton Counties got 10 bomb-handling robots. The Philadelphia Fire Department procured a $1.8 million boat "to fight maritime fires and make river rescues," while the sheriff's office in Warren County (almost half of which lies within the Allegheny National Forest) has its eyes on a $75,000 patrol boat.

Perhaps best of all is the case of Newark, N.J., which spent $174,804 on 10 top-of-the-line, air-conditioned garbage trucks. Despite being an illegal use of funds, city spokeswoman Donna Purnell defended the purchase, stating, "[T]hey're not your typical garbage trucks. … [T]hey have special apparatus on them for handling waste and debris. These machines are to be used in the event of a major cleanup [after a disaster]."

Top officials have claimed that overspending mistakes have been made because the DHS was set up in such haste. However, huge caches of money nationwide have also been left unspent. Sometimes officials blame a slow bureaucracy. But other times they just seem fresh out of ideas, as unfortunately seems to be the case with Washington D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, who has spent less than 10 percent of the $145 million set aside for the nation's capital. "Anybody could just spend money," said Mayor Williams on 60 Minutes. "We want to spend it wisely."

Fair enough. Washington is surely, along with Los Angeles and New York, one of America's top three terrorism targets. This must be why the prudent, fiscally cautious Williams has decide to purchase leather jackets for the metropolitan police force, wide-screen TVs, " $100,000 to send sanitation workers to a Dale Carnegie course that has nothing to do with emergency preparedness," as well as another hundred grand for a summer jobs program, which included creating a rap song on emergency preparedness. 60 Minutes adds that "Mayor Williams not only has $130 million left to spend, he's about to get $96 million more."

At the same time that cities and towns are reveling in new gadgets, outerwear, and leisure activities, more basic elements of security preparedness have gone neglected. Rep. Weiner points out that the police presence – which most people would agree is vital for keeping track of what's going on at the street level – has actually decreased, due to a sharp reduction in funding for the Clinton-era COPS program. Deeming this program "the most successful and widely used anti-crime program in American history," Weiner adds that its achievements were even recognized by former Attorney General John Ashcroft. And on the issue of port security, Weiner states that only 2 percent of the 7 million cargo containers arriving annually at American ports are actually screened, and that President Bush's 2005 budget "calls for $50 million for port security grants, down from $200 million in his 2004 budget."

Nevertheless, as Tom Schatz of Citizens Against Government Waste noted, not all ports are being shortchanged when it comes to DHS funding. The ports of landlocked Oklahoma, for example, are safely under control: "[T]hey have a river somewhere. And that is included under this maritime security provision that was passed by Congress."

Rep. Cox was no doubt thinking of this case at the April 13 congressional hearing when he mentioned that "the DHS inspector general recently found that $67 million in port security grants had been spent on projects of, quote, 'marginal' homeland security benefit."

The Scourge of Secrecy

How have officials across the land been able to get away with such gross mismanagement of funds that has led, in many cases, to indefensibly unnecessary expenditures? And how have they justified their freedom from all accountability? Easy – with a handy tool picked up from watching the Bush administration in action: secrecy.

When the media has questioned officials about cases like those cited above, officials have invoked their alleged right to not disclose any funding-related information – lest it play into the hands of the enemy. The brazen contempt for the public attested by such dubious logic, along with officials' sudden and bloated sense of self-importance, has allowed them to purchase with impunity in the name of fighting terror.

Noting that "the public is getting little information on how the money is being allocated, even as the pipeline of federal money flowing into Pennsylvania has grown to more than a quarter-billion dollars," the Associated Press spoke of having filed a request under the state's Right-to-Know law, in which it asked the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency for details regarding all DHS purchases since 2003. However, this umbrella agency, which must make final approval for all such expenditures, declined the request, citing "security reasons." And when the AP tried to make systematic inquiries into how other Pennsylvania agencies were spending their DHS cash, it was stonewalled by a secrecy defense put up by local officials. In the end, "only one of the state's nine regional counterterrorism task forces, the northwest task force, would provide the AP with a fully itemized account of how it is using its share of the grant money."

According to the AP, officials claimed that listing their DHS purchases was "too dangerous," as doing so "could expose weaknesses to terrorists or others bent on causing trouble."

Right. I'm sure that terrorist masterminds bent on destruction are right now clutching their clipboards, eager to jot down how many rolls of caution tape or how many Hazmat suits or how many patrol boats an individual city may have. This kind of info is going to affect their strategic planning? Come on!

Nevertheless, the same scourge of secrecy has taken hold elsewhere. In Colorado, home of the rather suspect "fitness trainers for firefighters" scheme, state law "allows Colorado agencies to keep homeland security spending secret." According to the Denver Channel report, "Colorado lawmakers say releasing the full financial records could compromise security if terrorists got hold of those documents." Actually, if terrorists had to read (provided they could) the excruciatingly detailed invoices that only a government inspector or accountant could love, they would probably just fall asleep.

Concealing the Indulgences of an Ever Expanding State

Of course, there are many critics of this disingenuous defense. Paul F. Campos, a constitutional law professor cited in the latter article, states that "we're talking about a very significant amount of money, and the mandate is so amorphous as to what constitutes 'homeland security' that there is a real potential for a lack of oversight or corruption" – thus echoing Rep. Chris Cox's quip that "everything has something to do with Homeland Security." So why shouldn't everyone who can cash in?

The AP report quotes Danielle Brian, executive director of the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight (POGO): "[S]ecrecy typically hides inefficiency, mismanagement, and sometimes corruption." It's also a good cover for embarrassment – if an official's not brazen enough to point out, of course, that "these aren't your typical garbage trucks."

All four of these shortcomings were manifested in the most famous post-9/11 case of the government's bad faith – that of Sibel Edmonds, who was fired from her job as a foreign languages translator when she spoke out about incompetence, fraud, corruption, and espionage inside the FBI. While not in precisely the same category as the aforementioned cases, which involved dubious purchases of tangible assets, Edmonds' case had basically the same result: large sums of public money meant to make the homeland more secure just evaporated, and to block inquiries into the matter, the weapon of secrecy was wielded: in this case, the "State Secrets" privilege ordered by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.

A few other brave people from the FBI and other agencies have similarly sought to confront the leviathan of government incompetence since 9/11. Most of them have shared the fate of the outspoken Mrs. Edmonds and been terminated. This was the case with the onetime "superman" of homeland security oversight, the former DHS Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin, who was mysteriously dismissed in December 2004 after making numerous criticisms of the "huge, dysfunctional bureaucracy" he had been tasked with investigating. According to Ervin, major security flaws in maritime and airport security, as well as customs and immigration work, still existed, even as the department was hemorrhaging money left and right. He described DHS accounting methods as "chaotic and disorganized," and also blamed fiscal waste on "lavish spending on social occasions and employee bonuses and a failure to require competitive bidding for some projects." The ill-fated Ervin was called "the citizens' last chance of ensuring that vitally important money was being spent well" by POGO's Danielle Brian.

Sharing the Wealth

Red-blooded patriotism was not the only knee-jerk reaction to manifest itself after 9/11, though it certainly was (along with government-generated paranoia and fear-mongering) one of the most useful for creating the conditions for the state's effortless and apparently infinite expansion. The byproduct of this phenomenon, the Department of Homeland Security, was supposed to streamline bureaucracy and expedite cooperation between agencies involved with the war on terror. Instead, it merely created another level of government, another layer of insulation from the public gaze for avaricious officials. With their profligate use of the secrecy and security alibis, these officials have been able to open the door of a veritable candy store of public funds. Accountability, what little of it had existed before, went out the window with the creation of the homeland security state, along with what little remained of the short-lived budget surplus.

According to the White House, the 2005 budget envisions a 9.7 percent increase in homeland security funding, "nearly tripl[e] the FY 2001 levels." Given this continuing pattern of largess, who needs to compete anymore for scarce funds? The bonhomie of this ever expanding state was well attested by the same bunch who invested $3,350 for seven sheet cakes and three cheese displays. In a bout of "share the wealth" joviality, TSA executives awarded cash bonuses one-third higher on average than those of any other federal agency ($16,477) – to a whopping 88 of its 116 senior managers. CNN notes that "on average, federal departments give bonuses to 49 percent of eligible managers."

To receive such a reward, a TSA official must "demonstrate extraordinary vision and leadership." From this and all the other examples mentioned above, it looks like the country is not hurting for extraordinary vision and leadership these days, though it may be well beyond bankrupt – and not necessarily safer than it was before 9/11.

Seven Sheet Cakes and Three Cheese Displays

Anti-terrorism funding misuse and the ever expanding state