Tue, Jul. 13, 2004
Surveillance system lacking at U.S.-Canada border
BY TAMARA AUDI
Knight Ridder Newspapers
DETROIT - (KRT) - It was supposed to be a 24-hour border superhero, a sentry with eyes that never blinked, could see in the blackest night and could zoom in on objects miles away.
Able to detect body heat even on a warm summer day. On constant watch for terrorists, drug runners and illegal immigrants trying to sneak from Canada into Michigan.
But a year after officials expected the system to be up and running, a much-hailed high-tech network of surveillance cameras is still not installed along Michigan's border with Canada and at other locations along the northern border. And now federal investigators want to know why - and whether millions of dollars in taxpayer money has been squandered.
U.S. border officials said Friday that investigators with the Office of the Inspector General for the General Services Administration recently spent a week in Michigan looking into delays and financial questions surrounding the system.
The administration is responsible for purchasing the cameras. The inspector general investigates criminal misconduct and audits financial contracts.
The Detroit sector of the U.S. Border Patrol monitors 804 miles of border with Canada. The region was originally slated to get eight cameras, called remote video surveillance, last year. But now it is unclear when the system will arrive.
Some agents said they had been told the cameras would be operating by this summer. Then they heard that plan was recently delayed.
"It's not going along as quickly as we hoped," said Dan Heibert, assistant chief patrol agent for the Detroit sector.
He said investigators from Washington interviewed Michigan border agents, but the probe "doesn't involve any wrongdoing on the part of the Border Patrol."
The surveillance contract will come under further scrutiny as part of a rare national review being conducted by the internal auditing arm of the General Services Administration. The review was launched after auditors discovered considerable financial waste and bogus contracts after looking into a fraction of the nation's technology and defense contracts, said Eugene Waszily, assistant inspector general for auditing for the administration.
"Because of the seriousness of the deficiencies" in the sample audit, he said, "the agency requested that we review all of them."
The General Services Administration purchases about $5 billion annually in technology-related service and products for border agencies and the military, according to auditors.
A Connecticut-based company called International Microwave Corp. was awarded a $200-million government contract in 2002 as the only prime contractor to install the camera system along the northern border.
Shortly after the award, IMC was acquired by L-3 Communications Inc., a global company based in New York that deals in defense communications and surveillance systems.
Company officials could not be reached late Friday.
Robert Bonner, commissioner for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told a congressional panel in October that 238 remote video surveillance sites were completed and operating along the United States' northern and southern borders. Sixty-eight were installed on the northern border, he said, and an additional 224 installations are proceeding nationwide.
The cameras act as the eyes and ears of agents in remote parts of the northern and southern borders where no one is typically watching.
Border agents have said the cameras are an important tool for an agency that is strapped for manpower and is supposed to be guarding against terrorists, drug runners and human smuggling.
"The RVS system significantly enhances the Border Patrol's ability to detect, identify and respond to border intrusions, and it has a deterrent value as well," Bonner said in testimony last month before a U.S. House subcommittee on trade.
Detroit border officials chose eight sites for the cameras a year ago, Heibert said. Border agents said they are eager to get the cameras up and running.
Though there have been reported reliability problems with the system, in border cities like Blaine, Wash., where 32 cameras are installed, drug seizures and arrests of illegal immigrants have increased, according to government records.
Some border agents said they are not surprised by the wait.
"It boils down to, they get to us when they get to us," Heibert said.
Border Patrol sectors in Havre, Mont., and Grand Forks, N.D., have received some cameras, but are waiting for more. The sectors together are responsible for more than 1,300 miles of Canadian border.
Meanwhile, in a budget hearing June 17 before a U.S. Senate committee on science and transportation, Homeland Security Department Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson presented 2005 budget requests for border security. Among them: $64 million for more cameras along the borders.
© 2004, Detroit Free Press.
POSTED: 10:39 am EDT July 13, 2004 LONDONDERRY, N.H. -- Police are investigating how a tractor-trailer loaded with 40,000 pounds of explosives flipped over in Londonderry Monday.
Lt. Scott Saunders said the 18-wheeler was headed from Utah to Green Mountain Explosives in Auburn, N.H., when it turned over. Saunders said he believes the driver got onto the soft shoulder of the road and couldn't recover. The top of the trailer split open, and a few dozen cylinders of explosives went onto the road. Police alerted Green Mountain Explosives, and employees arrived to pick up the pieces.
The explosives are used by excavation crews and need blasting caps to be set off. Police said they did not pose an immediate danger. Link to Article
Almost sounds like a another pork barrel project.