IS HOMELAND SECURITY BEING SHORTCHANGED?….Juan Cole has a disturbing report from a source he considers “impeccable” that funding for some important homeland security programs has been diverted to the war in Iraq:
The Department of Homeland Defense allocated half a billion dollars to a project called the Tri-Lab Initiative, which offered grants to teams at Los Alamos, Sandia, and White Sands for homeland defense research. Proposals were made, ranked, and granted funds….but the money never came, and the responsible Homeland Defense officials stopped replying to calls and emails.
….Clearly, what has happened is that funds intended for other purposes have been diverted to pay for the Iraq war. None of this is classified, but government scientists are prohibited from using government resources–i.e., their computers or their email account–to make it public.
What kind of funding, you ask? Research to better detect hidden nuclear weapons, for one.
Now, this is just one guy who’s obviously putting some pieces together on his own, so there may be more here (or less) than meets the eye. But Juan is right: it seems like a good story for an enterprising journalist to check out.
