March 27, 2007, - 5:49 pm
A Legit Anti-Gonzales Grievance: DOJ Wasted $200M on Failed Post-9/11 Communication System
By
With all of the pontificating and lecturing Democrats are engaging in against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, they’re missing his real areas of incompetence.
The latest is a $5 billion interagency communications system that the Department of Justice was supposed to develop, but didn’t. Remember all of the info that came out since 9/11 exposing the lack of communication between federal agencies regarding terrorists–an unfortunate fact that stopped us from stopping the 9/11 attacks?
Gonzales (and John Ashcroft, before him) and his agency were charged with developing a wireless communications system that would allow agents from the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security to communicate across agency lines. It was to be called Integrated Wireless Network (IWN). But despite the fancy name and a whopping $5 billion that was going to be spent developing the system, the whole thing is a total failure. And $200 million in tax money has, so far, been wasted on it, with zero results, according to DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine, in a report he issued, yesterday.
Besides identifying the huge waste of money, the report says this failure could:
affect the safety of (federal) law enforcement officers [because existing systems have] limited functionality, diminished voice quality and weak security, making them vulnerable to hacking.
Failure of the IWN project would represent a significant missed opportunity to achieve needed communications interoperability among federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.
Yup, almost 6 years after 9/11, agencies still aren’t communicating too well, and the incompetents assigned to the task haven’t done the job that plenty of technology companies do quite well.
But you know how it goes: What you do well (or even with mediocrity), government does . . . worst.
Read the full report.
Tags: Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General, Central Intelligence Agency, Debbie Schlussel, Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Glenn Fine, Inspector General, interagency communications system, John Ashcroft, law enforcement officers, local law enforcement agencies, needed communications interoperability, technology, USD, wireless communications system, Wireless Network
Debbie,
You might want to check whether CIA was involved in this program. The article doesn’t indicate that CIA was to have been involved and they don’t operate domestically. Also, I skimmed the DOJ report but didn’t see a mention of CIA. It seems more likely that this system was intended for U.S. federal law enforcement agencies.
Another small point, CIA refers to their professional operators as “officers” rather than “agents”.
MarcH:
THAT’S AN INCORRECT “CORRECTION.” INSTEAD OF SKIMMING, YOU MIGHT WANT TO READ JUST A TAD MORE CLOSELY. THE ARTICLE LINKED ABOVE CLEARLY MENTIONS THE CIA:
“The system was planned to allow agents to communicate across agency lines. For example, it would allow an FBI agent to tap into information obtained from another department or agency, such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or CIA. It could also be used to coordinate federal agents as they respond to a disaster.”
AS FOR YOUR CLAIM THAT THE CIA DOESN’T OPERATE DOMESTICALLY, THAT IS ALSO IN DISPUTE WITH REGARD TO THIS ISSUE. PERHAPS YOU FORGOT THAT BOTH THE FBI AND CIA HAD INFORMATION OF NAWAF AL-HAZMI AND KHALID AL-MIDHAR PRIOR TO 9/11, AND THAT NEITHER OF THEM SHARED WITH EACH OTHER (YET, BOTH AGENCIES WERE SPYING ON THE TWO, WHILE THEY WERE HERE IN THE U.S., IN SAN DIEGO). THAT LACK OF SHARED INTERAGENCY INFO IS THE REASON THEY WANTED THIS NEW COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM.
DEBBIE SCHLUSSEL
MarcH on March 27, 2007 at 7:14 pm