WASHINGTON, 13 August 2006 — Democrats have often accused the Republican party of politicizing terrorism for political gain, and say their “war on terror” gave President George Bush and Republicans a clear advantage through enflaming fear.
Yesterday, Bush cautioned Americans over this week’s threat of a plot to detonate liquid explosives on commercial flights during his weekly radio address: “We believe that this week’s arrests have significantly disrupted the threat. Yet we cannot be sure that the threat has been eliminated.”
Vice President Dick Cheney touted the same line on Wednesday when he said the Democrats’ defeat of Connecticut Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman in the state’s primary on Tuesday because of his support of the Iraq war could embolden “Al-Qaeda types.”
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada responded sharply to Cheney on Friday: “Once again, GOP (Republican) leaders are using terrorism and our national security as a political wedge issue. It is disgusting — but not surprising.”
But there’s a hiccup on the radar: Bush said of the suspected plot in Britain: “The terrorists have to succeed only once to achieve their goal of mass murder, while we have to succeed every time to stop them.”
How, then, will both the Democrats and Republicans respond to news that as the British terror plot was unfolding, the Bush administration quietly tried to take away $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new explosives detection technology?
Significantly, both Republican and Democratic congressional leaders rejected the idea — the latest in a series of Homeland Security Department steps that have left lawmakers and some of the department’s own experts questioning the commitment to create better anti-terror technologies.
Homeland Security’s research arm, called the Sciences & Technology Directorate, is a “rudderless ship without a clear way to get back on course,” Republican and Democratic senators on the Appropriations Committee declared recently.
Lawmakers and recently retired Homeland Security officials say they are concerned the department’s research and bureaucracy, lack of strategic planning and failure to use money wisely, bogs down development effort.
The department failed to spend $200 million in research and development money from past years, forcing lawmakers to withdraw the money earlier this summer.
The Bush administration also was slow to start testing a new liquid explosives detector that the Japanese government provided to the United States earlier this year.
The British plot to blow up as many as 10 American airlines on trans-Atlantic flights would have involved liquid explosives.
In their defense, Homeland Security says it spent a total of $732 million this year on various explosives deterrents. It tested several commercial liquid explosive detectors over the past few years but hasn’t been satisfied enough with the results to deploy them.
For more than four years, officials inside Homeland Security also have debated whether to deploy smaller trace explosive detectors — already in most American airports — to foreign airports to help stop any bomb chemicals or devices from making it onto US-destined flights.
But a 2002 Homeland Security report recommended “immediate deployment” of the trace units to key European airports, highlighting their low cost, $40,000 per unit, and their detection capabilities. The report said one such unit was able, 25 days later, to detect explosives residue inside the airplane where convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid was foiled in December 2001.
A 2005 report to Congress similarly urged that the trace detectors be used more aggressively and strongly warned the continuing failure to distribute such detectors to foreign airports “may be an invitation to terrorist to ply their trade, using techniques that they have already used on a number of occasions.”
Tony Fainberg, who formerly oversaw Homeland Security’s explosive and radiation detection research with the national labs, said he strongly urged deployment of the detectors overseas but was rebuffed.
“It is not that expensive,” said Fainberg, who recently retired. “There was no resistance from any country that I was aware of, and yet we didn’t deploy it.”
Fainberg said research efforts were often frustrated inside Homeland Security by “bureaucratic games,” a lack of strategic goals and months-long delays in distributing money Congress had already approved.
“There has not been a focused and coherent strategic plan for defining what we need ... and then matching the research and development plans to that overall strategy,” he said.
The administration’s most recent budget request also mystified lawmakers.
It asked to take $6 million from the Sciences & Technology Directorate’s 2006 budget that was supposed to be used to develop explosives detection technology and divert it to cover a budget shortfall in the Federal Protective Service, which provides security around government buildings.
