HOMELAND SECURITY PORK BARREL

Five years after the 9/11 attacks Homeland Security has steadily become the largest pork barrel game in Washington with lobbyists setting up shop all over capitol to get a slice of the pie for states across the nation, as well as for big security companies.
For example, The Ashcroft Group LLC, founded in May 2005 by former Bush attorney general, John Ashcroft, has clients that include major technology and surveillance giants like ChoicePoint. Ironically, it was companies like ChoicePoint that benefited from Justice Department contracts while Ashcroft was in office authorizing new surveillance programs to extend the fight against terrorism. The Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based watchdog, has said that Ashcroft has been able to trade on his post 9/11 role as attorney general and that his White House connections have proved invaluable.
Ashcroft’s’ company’s website is not yet up and running and his staff have refused to disclose the names of his clients. However, reports have connected his company to an Israeli aircraft corporation, a French firm involved in email monitoring and to several research corporations involved in counter terrorism.
In February 2006, O'Dwyer's PR Daily reported that Oracle paid Ashcroft $220,000 and four months later the same publication announced that General Dynamics had retained him for “trade and defense” matters.
The 9/11 Commission in its report on the 2001 attacks warned that Homeland Security was vulnerable to pork politics and that, if care was not taken, members of Congress would seek to exploit HS funds to benefit their own states. That warning was ignored and the growth in firms with security contracts, as well as lobbyists and lobbying has been staggering. The figures speak for themselves.
In 1999 there were fewer than 10 companies with federal homeland security contracts. Two years after the 9/11 attacks that figure reached several thousand. Today, there are 33,890 companies with HS contracts, representing a 3,000% increase in nine years. And what of the billions of dollars earmarked for the security of this nation? Well, since 9/11 over $100 billion has been awarded in contracts and it is thought that spending could reach an unthinkable $150 billion per year within the next decade.
There is so much money available even now that is has not been surprising there has been an appalling amount of wasteful spending. The incentive for states to grab some of the money has meant that Congress has played pork politics with the HS budget and states have sent an army of lobbyists to swarm all over Washington and Capitol Hill. In the three years since the Bush Administration created the Homeland Security Department, scores of its top staff have left their posts to set up their own lobbying firms. A stark example of that trend was Tom Ridge the HS Department chief who handed over the reins to Michael Chertof and then established his own lobbying group. Normally, Federal employees, like those involved in Homeland Security, are not permitted to transfer to jobs in the private sector until they have been out of a government contract for more than 12 months but that rule has rarely been applied to Homeland Security staffers.
The sheer scale of the privatization of Homeland Security has meant that the scope for companies seeking contracts has quickly been extended from research organizations looking for millions to develop new surveillance programs about email and personal banking to contractors paying mercenaries to undertake the patrolling of waterways and to provide personal protection for visiting foreign diplomats and heads of state.
The biggest scams, however, are by individual states seeking HS dollars for the most bizarre projects, including bullet proof vests for police dogs, a popcorn factory, and a $260,000 bomb disposal robot in Grand Forks ND.
In search of lucrative HS contract are 543 security experts, or as they like to call themselves “security consultants. Compare that to the fact there were only 2 security consulting companies registered before the 9/11 attacks. Nowadays there are HS bulletins, pamphlets, magazines, conferences and training courses, some at universities.
The 9/11 Commission foresaw the dangers in creating a HS department with a massive budget that was not allocated on proper risk assessment across the nation and that handed out contracts as just another way of subsidizing individual states. While those issues wait to be properly addressed, bigger problems are surfacing as more money becomes available and lobbyists exploit the Congressional tendency to favor pork barrel politics over political integrity. No one doubts the threat to the nation but the sheer expansion of companies claiming to have a genuine security role has meant that there has been little oversight of the security industry. That in turn has led to HS contracts being awarded purely on the basis of successful lobbying, political favoritism and nepotism. The casualty has been security at our critical parts of our infrastructure such as ports and airports where more needs to be done to combat the terrorist threat.
Some critics claim that too much HS money is being handed to companies like ChoicePoint and the Dulles Research Corporation who have become surveillance giants involved in spying on American citizens and eroding their constitutional rights.