TWIC hobbeled by politics-as-usual in Congress
tiny computer chips embedded into the identification card (unlik the Corbin Green Card, in which data are recorded on a reflective optical stripe affixed to the card). Most other federal agencies were also moving toward this approach rather than the technology used for the Corbin-produced Green Card. “It would be like saying it would be quicker to take a bicycle instead of a Toyota Corolla,” said a former DHS official.
* DHS had no choice but to follow Rogers’s orders. In 2003 the department hired a contractor to study both alternatives, and after spending $4 million the contracgtor concluded what everyone already knew: The smart card approach was far superior to the Corbin-produced. Note that The delay while the study was conducted benefited Corbin somewhat. Note that reston, Virgnia-based Maximus, the company hired to test the crad tehcnologies, shared its business with three companies with operations in Corbin.
* Virginia-based BearingPoint was hired in 2004 to test prototype transportation worker cards. It selected the Kentucky-based Senture to set up a call center for the test. About the time that contract was first advertised, but before it was awarded, John Rogers, the congressman’s son, was hired by Senture as a computer systems administrator.
* Tests on a smart card prototype identification card finally got under way in November 2004, but Rogers-created obstacles continued to be thrown in its way. To try to speed up the work, contractors decided to produce the prototype cards in Pennsylvania. DHS, however, insisted that the work be moved, because owing to a congressional mandate, it had been written into BearingPoint’s contract that the card production take place in Corbin. The smart card printing equipment was picked up and sent to Corbin, adding to the expense and causing another delay.
*Starting in 2004, Rogers’s staff repeatedly pressed the TSA to hire a nonprofit Virginia-based trade association, the American Association of Airport Executives (AAAE), to handle background checks that transportation workers. The trade association had no connection to Corbin, but it had longstanding ties to Mr. Rogers: Since 2000, it has paid for trips by Rogers and his wife worth more than $75,000, including the six visits to Hawaii. The aviation group has also contributed at least $18,000 to Rogers’s campaigns.
* Rogers’s staff was unable to persuade DHS to hire the trade association voluntarily, so the congressman inserted language last May into the 2006 appropriations bill which mandated such a move.
* In March 2006 the non-profit AAAE signed up with Reston, Virginia-based biometric software company Daon to set up their for-profit venture to prepare for the promised work. But the provision that Mr. Rogers inserted into the legislation ultimately backfired.
The planned hiring of the inexperienced AAAE aroused a wave of criticism among security experts and legislators, and Daeon’s rivals in the biometric industry added fuel to the fire (“It is a sleazy arrangement,” said Walter Hamilton, chairman of the International Biometric Industry Association). Last Thursday the no-bid contract Rogers arranged for AAAE would be kiled.
Represnetative Rogers may still have the last laugh: As things stand now, when the TWIC identification cards will finally be produced — DHS says it will be early next year — they will be produced in Corbin, Kentucky.
