U.S. has no plan to keep nuclear bomb materials from crossing border

— the office did not adequately address other security gaps, including those along rail lines from Canada and Mexico and along air cargo routes, according to the GAO.

Gene Aloise, GAO director of Natural Resources and Environment, said at the hearings that instead of planning properly, DNDO became obsessed with trying to deploy ASP radiation detection monitors when existing technology adequately fulfilled that need. He said that DNDO would have better spent taxpayer money by finishing the strategic plan and determining how to prevent nuclear smuggling by aircraft, small boats, and at the border, he said. All three areas present a significant risk of nuclear smuggling, especially by small boat. According to the Coast Guard, smaller vessels present a greater threat of nuclear smuggling than shipping containers.

“Almost four years ago, they took their eye off the ball in what they were supposed to do, and that is complete the architecture with existing equipment,” said Aloise. He believes that if the DNDO had developed the strategic plan, it wouldn’t have spent four years trying to unsuccessfully develop ASPs.

Dana A. Shea, a specialist in science and technology policy at the Congressional Research Service, agreed, adding the lack of an overarching plan makes it extremely difficult for other agencies to coordinate with DNDO to create a common defense.

“Absent a strategic plan that lays out what the architecture’s goals are and how to measure success towards those goals,” he said, “it would be very difficult for an agency to be investing with that purpose in mind because they wouldn’t have that information to bring into their budgeting process.”

The failure has left vulnerabilities terrorists could exploit, Shea said.

Matthew Harwood writes that in previous reports, the GAO has criticized the cost and performance of ASPs. Individual machines cost almost three times as much as already deployed technology, which DHS reports is currently screening nearly 100 percent of cargo at U.S. land borders and seaports. The GAO says the DNDO has already spent $224 million on ASPs, which does not include the cost of testing the technology.

 

O’Harrow quotes Micah D. Lowenthal, director of the Nuclear Security and Nuclear Facility Safety Program at the National Research Council, to say in a draft of his remarks to be delivered to the committee Wednesday, that without an overall “detection architecture” to block gaps, the focus on ports of entry, even with new detection equipment, may simply “deflect adversaries, causing them to focus on other gaps in the nation’s security that are identified as easier targets.”