Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Economies of Scale

POGO has an interview with former DHS Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin, which gives us important new insights into the taut, alert, elegant mind of Asa Hutchinson:

What are some examples of waste and inefficiency you’ve found at DHS?

There are so many. We did this undercover work where we found that it was still easier than it should have been after 9/11 to sneak guns and knives and bombs onto airplanes. We were able to confirm that ABC News was able to smuggle depleted – not weapons-grade – uranium into the United States. Even though Customs and border protection had inspected those containers, the Department missed it on two occasions. In terms of border security, they’re not catching as many people as they might if their systems were interoperable with the FBI's. It's entirely a DHS decision not to, the reason being the FBI takes ten fingerprints while DHS only takes two. When asked why, [DHS Under Secretary] Asa Hutchinson said it would be too time consuming. I don’t know why. It's not five times more time consuming, you just put down all ten fingers instead of two!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Phila, thank you for this. It is so consoling to know that we have such exemplary decision-makers in charge in the Bush administration, and to know that those further down the chain of command exhibit such expertise in their operations.