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It's certainly true that no one knows where terrorists might strike next, and some remote places have critical infrastructure -- nuclear plants, say, or military bases -- that put them at heightened risk. But none of the locales above can credibly claim to be top worries of our Homeland Security department.Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, assesses the dangers differently. "It's a mistake to assume that the risk occurs just in big cities; all states continue to have vulnerabilities," Collins says. "My state, for example, has got one of the longest international borders. It has more than 3,000 miles of coastline. It has a major shipping port, international airports, military installations, and two of the 9/11 terrorists started their journey of death and destruction from Portland, Maine." She is referring to the two terrorists who flew from Portland to Boston, where they boarded the plane they would fly into the World Trade Center.
No one would deny that major shipping and land ports, in particular, need beefed-up security. Calais, a busy port of entry in Maine, just across the river from New Brunswick, Canada, received funding for motion sensors and land and air surveillance. That's money well spent. But another strategy seems to be at work if you look at a press release from Collins's office this past March. Trumpeting that Maine has received nearly $17 million this year for "homeland security efforts," Collins is quoted as saying that the grants "also provide half of the state of Maine's Emergency Management for non-homeland security disaster prevention, mitigation and response."
When Reader's Digest questioned her about homeland security funding being used for non-related disaster relief, Collins said, "How can you really separate the two? A firefighter uses the same gear and training whether the fire is the result of a terrorist attack or a natural disaster." You might call that the North Yarmouth defense.
Other localities have discovered that this "dual-use" rationale comes in very handy. Lake County, Tennessee, used $30,000 in federal grant money to buy a defibrillator to have on hand for basketball games at its high school. In a statement, the Homeland Security department says the county's defibrillator "is an allowable item under the medical supplies category" for possible terrorist attacks. Similarly, The Steamship Authority in Massachusetts received $900,000 for the resort island of Martha's Vineyard to upgrade one of its harbors with fencing and video cameras. Again, the Homeland Security department said these projects "reflect allowable expenditures." A Vineyard harbormaster, meanwhile, was quoted in the Vineyard Gazette saying, "Quite honestly, I don't know what we're going to do, but you don't turn down grant money."
With as few as two percent of cargo containers being examined nationally, you'd think more money would go to major ports instead of to a wealthy vacation spot like Martha's Vineyard.
Big cities are rolling out the dual-use argument too. In a recent press release, Newark, New Jersey, touts how it used homeland security grants to help purchase ten new garbage trucks with air conditioning and power windows. A city spokeswoman told the Associated Press that the trucks have a homeland security function in a potential terrorist attack, because "they have special apparatus on them for handling waste or debris."
There's little sign that reform will come easily, or soon. Consider what happened last fall when Rep. Chris Cox got a provision passed in the House to reduce the percentage of funds that must be parceled equally among the states. The Senate, where members representing rural states have more clout, killed the measure. The clear message: Don't mess with our money.
Susan Collins, who was among those against Cox's measure, says she will introduce a bill to ensure accountability for all states applying for grants. Cox thinks it's a pipe dream that any such bill will rein in the states as long as they are raking in so much money.
No one is more exasperated than Lee Hamilton. Now director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University, Hamilton says Americans must come together and demand their representatives take the pork out of homeland security funding. And he has a blunt message for his former colleagues in Congress: "If you want to set up a general revenue sharing program, do it with other dollars. You're dealing here with the security of the American people."
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