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Friday, August 11, 2006

So why did the Bush Administration try to divert $6 million in explosives detection R&D money?
Posted by Jill | 8:40 PM
While the Bush Administration continues to try to take credit for cracking the airplane bombing plot, and people are emptying lip gloss and bottles of what airport security measures fear could be explosives into one big container at airports, perhaps we should ask why the Administration sought to divert $6 million in money allocated to R&D into explosives detection devices -- the kind that could detect explosives being smuggled onto airplanes:

While the British terror suspects were hatching their plot, the Bush administration was quietly seeking permission to divert $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new homeland explosives detection technology.

Congressional leaders rejected the idea, the latest in a series of steps by the Homeland Security Department that has left lawmakers and some of the department's own experts questioning the commitment to create better anti-terror technologies.

[snip]
Lawmakers and recently retired Homeland Security officials say they are concerned the department's research and development effort is bogged down by bureaucracy, lack of strategic planning and failure to use money wisely.

The department failed to spend $200 million in research and development money from past years, forcing lawmakers to rescind the money this summer.

The administration also was slow to start testing a new liquid explosives detector that the Japanese government provided to the United States earlier this year.

The British plot to blow up as many as 10 American airlines on trans-Atlantic flights was to involve liquid explosives.

[snip]

The administration's most recent budget request also mystified lawmakers. It asked to take $6 million from Homeland S&T's 2006 budget that was supposed to be used to develop explosives detection technology and instead divert it to cover a budget shortfall in the Federal Protective Service, which provides security around government buildings.
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