WP: At Homeland Security, Doubts Arise Over Intelligence

[Nambe]

The Washington Post

The intelligence unit of the four-month-old Department of Homeland Security is understaffed, unorganized and weak-willed in bureaucratic struggles with other government agencies, diminishing its role in pursuing terrorists, according to some members of Congress and independent national security experts.

The vast majority of the department's intelligence analysts lack computers that are able to receive data classified "top secret" and above. The department has only three experts on biological terrorism, a number that lawmakers said falls far short of expectations, given U.S. officials' grave concern about that kind of attack.

In passing the law establishing the department last year, Congress intended Homeland Security to be the focal point for handling intelligence to protect America from terrorists. The current controversy over its intelligence unit shows how elusive that goal has become since the Bush administration decided in January that the agency should not have the standing of the CIA or FBI in analyzing intelligence about terror threats ---

Ride Don’t Drive It’s Global Cool

[bemildred]

1. Being primarily a PR operation, I dunno what else to expect?

I mean when you start with a color-coded system to tell
your citizens how anxious they need to be ...

[Melinda]

2. Eyup, Senator Bryd said this would happen.

Is anyone really surprised?

[I AM SPARTACUS]

3. could fiction be more ironic than the reality of this boondoggle???

it's an outright caricature...if you wrote this as a novel, no one would find it plausible...