Homeland Security

I stood on the cottonwood-lined banks of the San Pedro River in Arizona recently and watched it flow freely under a "water gap" fence -- two strands of barbed wire and two of wound cable. Those four strands, which mark the line between Mexico and the United States of America at the edge of the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, are a modest boundary to be sure, as most of the border has been since 1848. Soon, this border will get a much more powerful and disturbing representation.

The woman at the heart of the scandal that has tarnished the image of the Secret Service worldwide called the agents she ran into “stupid brutes” in an interview with NBC's “Today.” Dania Londono Suarez, speaking through a translator, had nothing but contempt for the agents and their behavior in Cartagena, Colombia prior to President Obama's arrival for the Summit of the Americas. “They were full of themselves,” she said. “I'm not to blame for being attractive,” she said after being asked if she has culpability for tempting the agents.

In the face of what  counterterrorism officials called a “credible but unconfirmed terror threat involving New York or Washington,” the Department of Homeland Security is calling on Americans to be vigilant this weekend as the anniversary of 9/11 looms. The threat was reported Thursday by Fox News and later by the Associated Press. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly are expected to give a news conference about 6:30 p.m. PT to talk about the threat, NBC News reported.

WASHINGTON -- The White House's threat to veto the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act is prompting more amendments from its supporters as the bill heads toward a planned House vote on Friday. President Obama's senior advisors will recommend he veto the bill if it passes Congress in its current form, the administration said on Wednesday, pointing out that the bill goes too far in releasing companies from liability if their computer networks are not secure and does not include enough oversight to limit how information gathered by the government can be shared.

It was a natural reaction after 9/11: Protect the nation at any cost. But a survey of homeland security projects by Times staff writer Kim Murphy reveals that the "any cost" rationale has resulted in unnecessary and eccentric responses to the possibility of a terrorist act. Congress should block such projects in the future. For example, Murphy told of a grant for anti-terrorism equipment to a county in Nebraska, which received thousands of dollars for cattle nose leads, halters and electric prods — in case terrorists waged biological warfare against cows.

On the edge of the Nebraska sand hills is Lake McConaughy, a 22-mile-long reservoir that in summer becomes a magnet for Winnebagos, fishermen and kite sailors. But officials here in Keith County, population 8,370, imagined this scene: an Al Qaeda sleeper cell hitching explosives onto a ski boat and plowing into the dam at the head of the lake. The federal Department of Homeland Security gave the county $42,000 to buy state-of-the-art dive gear, including full-face masks, underwater lights and radios, and a Zodiac boat with side-scan sonar capable of mapping wide areas of the lake floor.

The Department of Homeland Security issued but recalled a 2007 intelligence analysis about the Nation of Islam after deciding the document dealing with the black Muslim group broke rules on intelligence activity in the United States, officials said Wednesday. Internal documents revealed that intelligence chiefs found analysts had "unintentionally and inadvertently" violated rules governing the collection, retention and distribution of information concerning "U.S. persons and organizations."

Wanted, to serve their country: a few (thousand) good dogs. As it guards the borders and hunts for terrorists, the Department of Homeland Security relies on an elite squad of about 2,000 canines to sniff for bombs, drugs and smuggled cash. Now the department is moving to expand its four-legged force by 3,000 — about 600 dogs a year over the next five years — according to a recent bid solicitation aimed at small breeders across the country. Males and females ages 12 months to 36 months are eligible.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has decided to kill a controversial Bush administration program to use U.S. spy satellites to collect domestic intelligence for counter-terrorism, law enforcement and security, a senior Homeland Security official said Monday evening. The National Applications Office program was established in 2007 to provide up-to-the-minute electronic intelligence to local and state law enforcement.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who has a new book out this week, warned in an interview that national security will suffer if counter-terrorism warriors fear that bosses will second-guess their front-line actions after the fact. Chertoff said his book, "Homeland Security: Assessing the First Five Years," lays out an architecture for defending the nation against the threats of the 21st century. As Homeland Security chief from 2005 through the end of the Bush administration, Chertoff oversaw 218,000 employees and a $50-billion budget.

WASHINGTON - The Senate Homeland Security Committee will hold public hearings on the Secret Service sex scandal, Chairman Joe Lieberman said Sunday, to explore whether the incident in Colombia was isolated and what rules govern the conduct of agents who are on assignment but off-duty. "From what we know about what happened in Cartagena, they were not acting like Secret Service agents," Lieberman (I-Conn.) told "Fox News Sunday. " "They were acting like a bunch of college students away on spring weekend.

In 2007, the Bush administration set out to double the size of the U.S. Border Patrol. It was a tall order and called for some creativity, with the Border Patrol even sponsoring its own racing vehicle at NASCAR events as a recruitment tool. Because recruits were hard to find, Border Patrol - part of the Department of Homeland Security - also lowered its standards and training regimens were relaxed. Individuals without a high school diploma could already join the force, but background checks were also deferred.

House Republicans are backing legislation in Congress to give the Department of Homeland Security control of more than 50 national parks and forests within 100 miles of the U.S. borders. The legislation involves a sweep of land along the frontier with Canada and Mexico, but exempts state land, private property and federal holdings used for mining, livestock grazing and timber harvesting. The new authority would carve through 54 national parks, including Joshua Tree, Saguaro, Acadia and Glacier.

OXON HILL, Md. - A team of skilled teenagers from Highland Park traveled across the country recently to test its ability to protect American interests from potentially dangerous attacks. Its only weapon: laptops. Cloaked in blue oversized hoodies, a handful of students from Benjamin Franklin High School hunched over their computer screens, armed with the knowledge to thwart hackers from infiltrating computer networks and stealing sensitive information. At CyberPatriot: The National High School Cyber Defense Competition, held here, a stone's throw from the nation's capital, students mostly played defense against sophisticated computer whizzes with ill intentions.

With the FBI pounding on his door, and his wife and two children barely awake, Shawn Rice allegedly strapped on a bulletproof vest, grabbed a semiautomatic pistol and stepped out his back door on Dec. 22. But dozens of FBI agents and local police had surrounded the ranch house in Seligman, Ariz., about 80 miles west of Flagstaff, and the only nearby cover was knee-high sagebrush. Rice ducked back inside, and warned the FBI to keep away. After a tense 10-hour standoff, Rice, 49, was arrested.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Tuesday called on federal officials to find ways to eliminate long delays for passengers who go through immigration and customs processing at Los Angeles International Airport. In a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, the California Democrat said she was concerned that a shortage of customs and immigration officers was causing unnecessary problems for travelers and increasing security risks at the nation's third busiest airport.

A high-tech "virtual fence" to catch illegal border crossers. Next-generation nuclear detectors at ports. Tamper-proof driver's licenses in every state. These were signature Bush administration initiatives to protect the country against terrorism and secure its borders. All have been proven to be flops, according to government and outside experts, and expensive ones at that. The Department of Homeland Security paid defense contractor Boeing Co. $1.1 billion to build what is sometimes called the virtual border fence.

Five miles southeast of the gleaming Capitol dome, on a scenic bluff overlooking the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers, the future office of the secretary of Homeland Security sits boarded up and abandoned. Four years ago, U.S. officials announced plans to renovate the dilapidated, castle-like structure —opened in 1855 as the Government Hospital for the Insane — to anchor Washington's largest construction project since the Pentagon was built 70 years ago. The goal was to unite on a single campus the 22 agencies that were stitched together to form the Department of Homeland Security after the Sept.

The chief of the Homeland Security Department's drone aircraft program is facing an ethics investigation for joining the board of directors of the largest industry group promoting the use of unmanned aircraft, officials said Monday. The internal affairs office of U.S. Customs and Border Protection is reviewing whether Tom Faller, director of unmanned aircraft systems operations, violated internal rules when he took an unpaid position as a board member of the Assn. for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International on Aug. 16. Faller oversees eight Predator B surveillance drones that are chiefly used to help search for illegal immigrants and drug smugglers on the northern and southwestern borders.

The House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena Friday requiring the Department of Homeland Security to hand over the names of thousands of illegal immigrants who were arrested by local authorities over the last three years but not deported by immigration officials. The subpoena is the latest volley in a contentious debate between House Republicans and the Obama administration over its immigration policy, which makes deportation of illegal immigrants with criminal records a priority.