Homeland Insecurity

Choice tidbits from the Calgary Herald story:

About 25,000 passports lost or stolen each year never appear on border watch lists, and 4,500 airport employees with "possible criminal associations" have access to restricted areas, Fraser said.

...

"The government as a whole failed to adequately assess intelligence lessons learned from critical incidents such as Sept. 11 and systematically follow up on needed improvements," Fraser wrote in the most stinging line of her report.

Well, hello? Who was in charge, again?

Chrétien said the Western world is "looked upon as being arrogant, self-satisfied, greedy and with no limits. The 11th of September is an occasion for me to realize it even more." Chrétien said he told Wall Street business leaders last year the West mjust not exercise its power so as to humiliate other countries and peoples. "When you're powerful like you are, you guys, this is the time to be nice."

("Western World"... wink wink, nudge nudge...)

Last week, McLellan announced additional measures to create a government-wide communications system in anticipation of the embarrassing accounts in Fraser's report about gaps in intelligence-sharing.

There was the time, for example, when a federal agency failed to circulate a terror alert from a foreign ally.

And in another case the government's top-secret messaging system sent a response to the wrong address, and the sending agency waited a month to follow up and check whether the message had ever been received.

"Fortunately, (that) alert turned out to be a false alarm," Fraser wrote in her typically dry prose.

$7.7 billion just doesn't buy what it used to.

Posted by Kate at March 31, 2004 12:09 AM