Senator Tom Coburn Goes After John Murtha Boondoggle

The Hill/The Lid ^ | 5/26/09 | The Lid

[Shellybenoit]

The Johnstown based National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) began with the blessing of President George HW Bush. Its mission: to collect and coordinate intelligence from often-feuding law enforcement agencies in order to provide a strategic look at the war on drugs (it was still called that at the time). But the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), worried that its pre-eminent role in the drug war was slipping away, fought the idea "tooth and nail". So did many on Capitol Hill, arguing that the new center would duplicate the efforts of existing intelligence centers, notably the El Paso Intelligence Center, operated by the DEA. With little support in the law enforcement community, the NDIC looked all but dead. Enter the King of Pork, John Murtha. Murtha hid the enabling legislation for the NDIC into a Pentagon authorization bill, with the caveat that it would be placed in his district (surprise, surprise).

NDIC has been wasting your tax dollars for sixteen years and Senator Tom Coburn wants it stopped:

From the beginning, the NDIC’s mission “just wasn't workable” because, “In some cases, federal law prevented agencies from sharing sensitive intelligence; in others, rival agencies simply refused to give up proprietary information. Stonewalled, the NDIC began operating, effectively, as an extended staff for other drug agencies, working on projects too cumbersome, peripheral, or time-consuming for their own teams of intelligence analysts. The center was costing about $30 million a year, but, as a former official of the drug czar's office put it bluntly, ‘we saw nothing’ from it.”

Coburn doesn't stop there, he has asked Attorney General Holder why all of these millions are being spent on a John Murtha Boondoggle:

[Maelstorm]

Good for Tom. Smells like a pig roast to me.