There was a long, detailed story in Sunday’s Washington Post about how government weapons experts kept telling the White House there was no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program, even as the White House was telling the opposite to the rest of the world.
What if the situation was reversed? What if experts from throughout the government told top administration officials that Americans faced a grave threat from terrorists and the White House chose to ignore the warnings? Actually, that’s what happened in the weeks leading up to the September 11th attacks, but let’s put that aside for a moment. That was a different era; that kind of tragic mistake couldn’t happen again, could it?
In the recent issue of the National Journal, Margaret Kriz describes a potential terrorist threat in thousands of locations across America, and although many officials are sounding the alarm, the White House and congressional leaders refuse to take even minimal action to avert catastrophe.
In the summer of 2002, when George W. Bush announced the formation of the Department of Homeland Security, he also made other branches of government responsible for certain security tasks. The Environmental Protection Agency was put in charge of ensuring hazardous materials at chemical and industrial facilities could not be used as weapons against civilians. This is a huge task, as there are 15,000 facilities in the U.S. that make or use hazardous chemicals. Of those, 3,800 facilities use hazardous chemicals in sufficient quantity and are close enough to population centers to affect 10,000 or more people in the event of a chemical release.
Any sensible homeland security plan would look to the threat posed by industrial chemicals, but the warning in this case was more precise. In February of this year, the Bush administration specifically warned that terrorists might try to launch conventional attacks against nuclear and chemical facilities, in an effort to cause contamination and disruption. The same month, a Justice Department letter to the General Accounting Office said, “the risk of terrorists’ attempting in the foreseeable future to cause an industrial chemical release is both real and credible.”
Acting with due diligence, the EPA began a program to inspect the most likely facilities, with an eye toward assessing their vulnerability to attack. Two facilities refused to grant the inspectors entrance; others had minimal or no security safeguards in place.
In response to these inspections, the chemical industry was quick to – complain to the White House, which shifted responsibility for hazardous material to the Department of Homeland Security, even though Homeland Security does not have the budget, the personnel or the expertise to conduct hazardous material assessments.
In Congress, Democratic Senator Jon Corzine of New Jersey introduced an amendment that would provide $80 million to the Department of Homeland Security to assess security at chemical plants, but the Republican leadership tabled the amendment.
What we are left with is a classic Bush administration program by which the chemical industry is policing themselves with voluntary programs. Does that make you feel safe? It shouldn’t. A survey published last month by a business research group found that since 9-11, American companies have increased their security spending by just four percent. Chemical industry trade associations do have voluntary security programs, but they cover only one third of all chemical facilities. That means 10,000 of 15,000 plants have neither government oversight nor voluntary security systems in place.
Last fall, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and then-EPA Administrator Christine Whitman wrote a letter to the Washington Post, in which they wrote, “Voluntary efforts alone are not sufficient to provide the level of assurance Americans deserve.”
The bottom line is that George Bush cares more about saving chemical companies four cents on the dollar than he does about your safety, or that of your children. In the words of FBI Special Agent Troy Morgan, who focuses on weapons of mass destruction, chemical tank farms are “a poor man’s atomic bomb.”
Poor Man’s Atomic Bomb
There was a long, detailed story in Sunday’s Washington Post about how government weapons experts kept telling the White House there was no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program, even as the White House was telling the opposite to the rest of the world.
What if the situation was reversed? What if experts from throughout the government told top administration officials that Americans faced a grave threat from terrorists and the White House chose to ignore the warnings? Actually, that’s what happened in the weeks leading up to the September 11th attacks, but let’s put that aside for a moment. That was a different era; that kind of tragic mistake couldn’t happen again, could it?
In the recent issue of the National Journal, Margaret Kriz describes a potential terrorist threat in thousands of locations across America, and although many officials are sounding the alarm, the White House and congressional leaders refuse to take even minimal action to avert catastrophe.
In the summer of 2002, when George W. Bush announced the formation of the Department of Homeland Security, he also made other branches of government responsible for certain security tasks. The Environmental Protection Agency was put in charge of ensuring hazardous materials at chemical and industrial facilities could not be used as weapons against civilians. This is a huge task, as there are 15,000 facilities in the U.S. that make or use hazardous chemicals. Of those, 3,800 facilities use hazardous chemicals in sufficient quantity and are close enough to population centers to affect 10,000 or more people in the event of a chemical release.
Any sensible homeland security plan would look to the threat posed by industrial chemicals, but the warning in this case was more precise. In February of this year, the Bush administration specifically warned that terrorists might try to launch conventional attacks against nuclear and chemical facilities, in an effort to cause contamination and disruption. The same month, a Justice Department letter to the General Accounting Office said, “the risk of terrorists’ attempting in the foreseeable future to cause an industrial chemical release is both real and credible.”
Acting with due diligence, the EPA began a program to inspect the most likely facilities, with an eye toward assessing their vulnerability to attack. Two facilities refused to grant the inspectors entrance; others had minimal or no security safeguards in place.
In response to these inspections, the chemical industry was quick to – complain to the White House, which shifted responsibility for hazardous material to the Department of Homeland Security, even though Homeland Security does not have the budget, the personnel or the expertise to conduct hazardous material assessments.
In Congress, Democratic Senator Jon Corzine of New Jersey introduced an amendment that would provide $80 million to the Department of Homeland Security to assess security at chemical plants, but the Republican leadership tabled the amendment.
What we are left with is a classic Bush administration program by which the chemical industry is policing themselves with voluntary programs. Does that make you feel safe? It shouldn’t. A survey published last month by a business research group found that since 9-11, American companies have increased their security spending by just four percent. Chemical industry trade associations do have voluntary security programs, but they cover only one third of all chemical facilities. That means 10,000 of 15,000 plants have neither government oversight nor voluntary security systems in place.
Last fall, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and then-EPA Administrator Christine Whitman wrote a letter to the Washington Post, in which they wrote, “Voluntary efforts alone are not sufficient to provide the level of assurance Americans deserve.”
The bottom line is that George Bush cares more about saving chemical companies four cents on the dollar than he does about your safety, or that of your children. In the words of FBI Special Agent Troy Morgan, who focuses on weapons of mass destruction, chemical tank farms are “a poor man’s atomic bomb.”