Pre-9/11 mind-setsTWIC hobbeled by politics-as-usual in Congress
Pork-barrel politics is as old as politics; still, the length to which one Kentucky congressman went to make sure that his home district and donors to his political campaigns benefit from an important DHS program, ,ay appear excessive; to say nothing of the damage the “bring home the bacon” approach did to the program, and to U.S. port security
We have written about the delays in the Transportation Worker Identification Card (TWIC), which was supposed to conduct background checks on some 750,000 port and transportation workers, then provide them with tamper-proof biometric ID. The original deployment date was December 2004. DHS last months has launched an intermin program to equip some 400,000 port workes with IDs, while waiting for TWIC to be ready.
One of the main reasons for the delays — to say nothing of what critics charge are waste and mismanagement — is the continuous intervention in the program by Representative Harold Rogers (R-Kentucky), the powerful chairman of the House subcommittee that controls DHS budget. The New York Times’s Eric Lipton offers a detailed study of how Rogers’s meddling — aimed to make sure that the small town of Corbin, Kentucky, would be the main beneficiary of TWIC — is at the source of much that has ailed the program. “Something stinks in Corbin,” said Jay Meier, senior securities analyst at Minneapolis, Minnesota-based MJSK Equity Research, which follows the identification card industry, referring to the Kentucky community of 8,000 that has benefited the most from Rogers’s interventions. “And it is the sickest example of what is wrong with our homeland security agenda that I can find.”
Rogers’s persistent interventions have hobbled an important national security program, but they have benefited his district and donors to his campaing coffers. The highlights:
* In the mid-1990s the Clinton administration needed Congressional backing — and money — to fix problems in printing a new fraud-resistant Green Cards. To win Rogers’s support, administration officials offered to set up the centralized card production plant in Corbin(until then known only as the birth place of Kentucky Fried Chicken). The $5.2 million plant, run by contract employees, opened in 1998.
*TWIC was first proposed in 2002. To ensure security, the card and the automated reader at the port entrance gate would have to communicate with each other. Rogers, however, inserted language into appropriations bills which effectively pushed the government to use the same patented green card technology and to produce this new card in Corbin. Rogers added language in 2003 urgingd the DHS to use “existing government card issuance centers” to make the port security card. The law blocked spending until DHS bowed to the mandates.
*DHS experts were furious, as they had already identified a more flexible and secure technology known as a smart card, which relies on
