{"id":7820,"date":"2006-06-30T12:23:01","date_gmt":"2006-06-30T16:23:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7820"},"modified":"2006-06-30T12:23:01","modified_gmt":"2006-06-30T16:23:01","slug":"the-stunning-disconnect-between-dhs-and-law-enforcement-agencies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-stunning-disconnect-between-dhs-and-law-enforcement-agencies\/","title":{"rendered":"The stunning disconnect between DHS and law enforcement agencies"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know I should be accustomed to a high degree of administration incompetence, especially when it comes to [tag]domestic security[\/tag], but this<\/a> is just stunning.<\/p>\n

Nearly five years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, [tag]law-enforcement[\/tag] authorities around the country say Washington’s efforts to share vital security information with them are in shambles.<\/p>\n

While police departments from several big cities have representatives working full time with the [tag]Department of Homeland Security[\/tag] to glean sensitive information about terror [tag]threats[\/tag], some of these departments say they still are denied access to timely, relevant information about threats and terrorist activity. And often the information they get from federal agencies — if they get any — is confusing, late and little better than what’s on [tag]television[\/tag] news channels, they say.<\/p>\n

Some police forces have threatened to pull out of the homeland-security department’s information-sharing programs, which cost hundreds of millions of dollars to set up, unless they are given greater access to intelligence data that they can share with their officers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Department of Homeland Security created a $337-million “information [tag]network[\/tag]” for the sole purpose of sharing [tag]confidential[\/tag] information with hundreds of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. As the WSJ noted<\/a>, DHS described it as its “backbone” for dealing with national emergencies and terrorist threats. Sounds great, right? Wrong. The homeland-security department’s inspector general, Richard Skinner, found that officials across the country “are confused and frustrated, without clear guidance on [the network’s] role or how to use the system to share information effectively.”<\/p>\n

Best of all, some law-enforcement agencies have refused to provide information on the network because they aren’t convinced it’s secure enough to be trusted.<\/p>\n

All of this, of course, comes after recent revelations about the Department of Homeland Security’s revolving door to K Street<\/a> and its bizarre funding priorities<\/a> for likely domestic terrorist targets. Which came shortly after a series of fiascos, including the [tag]DHS[\/tag]’s handling of Hurricane Katrina, it’s inability to secure its own headquarters<\/a>, its inability to set up a list serve<\/a>, and a Washington Post series<\/a> explaining in alarming detail how the agency has been beset by almost every bureaucratic problem imaginable. House Democrats released a report<\/a> recently highlighting the fact that DHS set 33 clear goals for itself last year — and failed to meet all of them.<\/p>\n

I’m curious — what exactly does [tag]Michael Chertoff[\/tag] do all day?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know I should be accustomed to a high degree of administration incompetence, especially when it comes to [tag]domestic security[\/tag], but this is just stunning. Nearly five years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, [tag]law-enforcement[\/tag] authorities around the country say Washington’s efforts to share vital security information with them are in shambles. While […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}