How's this sentence for grabbing your attention? "Some radiological waste storage areas may lack adequate protection against sabotage which could cause wide-area radiological dispersal." That's from a retired Admiral's independent report on the security capability of the Department of Energy, another crony-laden organ of the Bush Administration.
The GOP's new motto seems to be "One, two, three, many FEMA's ...." As the SBA controversy continues to develop, there is more word that the next avoidable disaster may be nuclear in nature. We've already discussed the poor security being provided at military bases by private contractors who were hired through non-competitive bids. Now we learn that the that the Department of Energy is riddled with more cronies, and nuclear security is another catastrophe waiting to happen.
Fromthe SEIU's Eye on Wackenhut site:
The DOE (overseeing nuclear weapons and R&D of nuke power) has energy insiders and Bush-loyalists in top leadership posts. For example, Clay Sell is the new Deputy Secretary of Energy after serving (with Ken Lay) on the Bush-Cheney Transition Team on Energy and as special assistant to W.
Well, just because they're cronies doesn't mean that can't do a good job of protecting us from future disasters, right? Ask retired Admiral Richard Meis, whose independent report (warning: pdf) on the DOE's National Security Agency is a scathing indictment of mismanagement, potential disasters, contracting run wild, poor interagency coordination, and a lack of awareness of the severity of the risks. Says Admiral Meis:
The NNSA enterprise lacks a comprehensive strategic security plan. Policy collaboration is lacking between DOE and DoD, internally within DOE/NNSA headquarters, between headquarters and the sites, and among sites. NNSA does not have adequate staffing to direct policy to the field or facilitate site implementation.
He chides the program that protects nuclear materials on-site for its "weaknesses" and its "false sense of security in selected areas." Protective forces are "degraded by an excessive backlog in security clearances, inadequate guidance and training in several significant areas ... and a lack of collaboration with vulnerability assessment experts, FBI, and local law enforcement officials." You've already heard what he has to say about sabotage.
Contracting - always a gold mine under this Presidency - comes under attack, too: "The contractual relationships for security which NNSA has inherited are varied and adverse." Good digging there for investigative journalists ...
Mies also lacerates the organizational culture at DOE/NNSA, citing "lack of a team approach to security," "an underappreciation of security" throughout the organization, an entrenched bureaucracy, a "bias against training" (maybe they're afraid that they'll teach evolution?), and "an absence of accountability. He concludes with the observation that these problems have been raised, and ignored, before:
Many of these issues are not new; many continue to exist because of a lack of clear accountability, excessive bureaucracy, organizational stovepipes, lack of collaboration, and unwieldy, cumbersome processes. Robust, formal mechanisms to ... effectively implement change are weak to non-existent within DOE/NNSA.
Will it take one of Condi Rice's famous "mushroom clouds" over one of our cities to make these problems visible? It turns our there is a country whose WMDs could get into terrorist hands: ours.
There's some tendency to see Katrina and Iraq as the culminating points of Bush's policies. As you've made clear here, neither of these situations is the culmination of anything, unless the people and their elected representatives chose to say, "Enough." The policies are alive and kicking and, unless serious steps are taken to damp down the consequences that must rise out of them, these events are but harbingers of things to come.
Posted by: optional | September 18, 2005 at 10:34 PM