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Review of U.S. Homeland Security Department Moves Forward, Secretary Says By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — The U.S. Homeland Security Department last month completed the initial, information-gathering phase of its current comprehensive self-review, Secretary Michael Chertoff said today (see GSN, May 25). Homeland Security completed its “second-stage review,” as the wide-ranging evaluation is known, on May 30, or one day ahead of schedule, Chertoff told the House of Representatives Government Reform Committee. Ordering the review was the first major step Chertoff took upon assuming office earlier this year as the second secretary in the department’s short history. He estimated this morning that he would be able to begin discussing initial results of the process in another month. Chertoff also told the panel he continues to focus on “risk management” as the “template” for his tenure as head of the agency and that he is seeking to build the department’s institutions around the goals it pursues, not vice versa. Members of the panel took the opportunity to express frustration with the department, notably in the areas of radiation detection, border security, spending priorities, information sharing and intradepartmental coordination. “Additional work is needed to fully integrate and coordinate the disparate entities that constitute the new department,” committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-Va.) said. Davis voiced concern over a lack of adequate information sharing within the department and between the department and private entities. Representative Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) was more sanguine on the same subjects, saying, “The disparate elements of the department have begun to fuse into a force as nimble and discerning as our enemies.” The committee’s top Democrat, Henry Waxman (Calif.), was sharply critical of Homeland Security, a department he called “seriously dysfunctional.” “This administration has misspent literally billions of dollars on wasteful and ineffective contracts,” Waxman said. Included in that figure, he said, are “hundreds of millions” of dollars for “largely ineffective” contracts awarded by Homeland Security. Both Waxman and Shays drew attention to the shortcomings of radiation monitors the United States has installed at border points in a bid to thwart nuclear terrorism. Waxman blasted Homeland Security for deploying detectors that are largely unable to distinguish among different sources of radiation, while Shays warned against overconfidence in technology to foil nuclear terror attempts (see GSN, June 8). “Intelligence is still our best portal monitor,” Shays said.
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