[lbo-talk] Plundering Homeland Defense to fund Iraq

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Wed Oct 1 03:26:26 PDT 2003


http://www.juancole.com/2003_09_01_juancole_archive.html#106489017491301103

September 30, 2003: Posted 9:00 am

Homeland Defense Funding Plundered for Iraq

For those who believe that the Iraq War was a major detour from the

War on Terror, there is excellent evidence for it if any investigative

reporters wanted the story. Major funding for anti-terrorism science

programs in the US, already appropriated and given out in contracts,

to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, has been diverted to

Iraq funding. The US is as vulnerable today to a dirty bomb as it was

on September 10, 2001. But a high-tech program that would allow the

detection of neutrons could have made us safer. That program has been

mothballed for the time being by Tom Ridge; it is being alleged by my

correspondent that the money is going instead to prop up the fragile

US presence in Iraq.

I received the following from a source I consider impeccable. It is

appalling.

"An angry scientist at one of the national laboratories gave me some

(non-classified) insight into how the Iraq war is being financed.

The Department of Homeland Defense allocated half a billion dollars to

a project called the Tri-Lab Initiative, which offered grants to teams

at Los Alamos, Sandia, and White Sands for homeland defense research.

Proposals were made, ranked, and granted funds. For example, something

called VLAND would have used techniques developed for the purest of

pure science--neutrino research--to create truck-sized neutron

detectors to detect hidden nuclear weapons. Apparently, the contracts

were signed because new staff was hired. But the money never came, and

the responsible Homeland Defense officials stopped replying to calls

and emails. The labs have been paying the new staff out of normal

Department of Energy funds intended for pure scientific research. The

homeland defense projects that were funded are doing nothing. The only

exception are projects funded by the Air Force, but the national

laboratory scientists prefer civilian funding due to concerns about

academic freedom.

Clearly, what has happened is that funds intended for other purposes

have been diverted to pay for the Iraq war. None of this is

classified, but government scientists are prohibited from using

government resources--i.e., their computers or their email account--to

make it public."



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