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Congress Calls for Outside Look at Radiation Detectors By Jon Fox The new requirements are just the latest development in a more than yearlong battle between the Government Accountability Office, lawmakers and DHS officials over the efficacy of the new technology and the way in which the department has tested it. The new detectors, called Advanced Spectroscopic Portal monitors (or ASPs), are designed to not only detect radiation but to identify the nature of its source, eliminating the need for time-consuming secondary inspections to determine whether the material is innocuous or dangerous. A number of mundane items regularly shipped into the Homeland Security officials have said they hope to deploy 1,400 of the new machines at a cost of $1.2 billion over about five years, but congressional appropriators have required DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff to certify the devices before deploying them (see GSN, May 16, 2007). Congress raised the bar in the fiscal 2008 spending bill passed in December, requiring the secretary to ensure the machines represent a “significant increase” in effectiveness by “separate and distinct” certifications for primary and secondary deployments — creating a distinction between using the new technology to back up current sensors and using it as the primary detection system. The bill also mandates that the Homeland Security Department consult with the National Academy of Sciences before making any certification. Once contacted by DHS officials, the academy will assemble a panel of industry experts, academics and academy member to review the technical details of the program. The new requirements come after a year in which both government auditors and members of Congress dug into Homeland Security’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office for what they said were questionable testing techniques used to vet the new detectors (see GSN, Sept. 19, 2007). “This is a critical first step toward ensuring this technology works before it is deployed. … Federal officials need to have valid, unbiased and complete test results on ASPs before the devices can be trusted to keep us safe,” Representative Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) said in a statement regarding the bill’s language. In September, Stupak chaired a House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing in which he leveled harsh criticism of the testing regime at Homeland Security officials. “The machines need to be successful 100 percent of the time, whereas terrorists only need to be successful once,” he said. It was Stupak’s panel that brought the issue to the attention of appropriators who later drafted the language that appeared in the omnibus bill, according to a Capitol Hill staff member. “We’re going to march forward with the program as it stands,” said Ryan Eddy, a policy adviser at the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office. Agency officials will comply with congressional demands and move toward deployment, he said. “I think what they were trying to get at was [to] have another independent assessment,” Eddy said. He was unable to offer any time frame for either of the required certifications of detectors but said he expects that officials this spring could have better idea of when certification for secondary deployment could take place. Late last year, Homeland Security officials announced a delay in the initial certification schedule for the machines, indicating field tests had “led to the determination that additional functional capacity is needed to meet the operational standards” (see GSN, Nov. 27, 2007) The National Academies are often called to provide outside scientific assessment for Congress, receiving about 50 such requests in fiscal 2008 budget bills. “This is a fairly standard thing for Congress to ask us to weigh in on for a matter that hasn’t been resolved,” said Paul Jackson, an academies spokesman.
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