Homeland Security's list of vulnerable U.S. targets, including rural flea markets and a popcorn factory, is a joke with serious consequences.
By Times editorial
Published July 17, 2006
The terrorist attack in India's largest city of Mumbai followed a familiar pattern: bombs planted on trains during rush hour in an urban hub of commerce. It was the London subway last year, and a year before that Madrid's commuter rail lines. The way terrorists calculate it, trains are difficult to protect, and well-timed bombs can do maximum harm to people and the economy.
It shouldn't take a Sherlock Holmes to realize that America faces a similar threat in New York, Washington and a few other major cities. All of which makes dalliance by the Department of Homeland Security indefensible.
The latest setback for the agency came in a report by its own inspector general. That office found the National Asset Database of vulnerable targets to be a haphazard list of "unusual or out-of-place" sites "whose criticality is not readily apparent," the New York Times reported.
The list included the Amish Country Popcorn factory in Berne, Ind. (Pop. 4,150). That came as a surprise to business owner Brian Lehman.
"I am out in the middle of nowhere," Lehman told the newspaper. "We are nothing but a bunch of Amish buggies and tractors out here," he said of his five-employee operation. "No one would care."
Apparently the state of Indiana did. The popcorn factory was one of the 8,591 assets it listed as potential targets. By that count, which is collected by Homeland Security, Indiana is at the top of the terrorists' hit list. New York and Washington, D.C., the actual targets of the 9/11 attacks, listed only 5,687 and 416 potential targets respectively.
The list would be laughable if the consequences of an unfocused homeland defense weren't so dire. The database of potential targets includes Old MacDonald's Petting Zoo in Woodville, Ala., and the Mule Day Parade in Columbia, Tenn. Even those associated with some of the listings were incredulous.
"Seems like someone has gone overboard," said Larry Buss, an organizer of the Apple and Pork Festival in Clinton, Ill., which made the list. And Angela McNabb, manager of the Sweetwater Flea Market, outside Knoxville, Tenn., showed more common sense than a dozen government bureaucrats. "I don't know where they get their information," she said. "We are talking about a flea market here."
Officials with Homeland Security were hardly contrite. "We don't find it embarrassing," Jarrod Agen, the department's deputy press secretary, said of the report. "The list is a valuable tool."
No it's not. It is a distraction, which might explain why the department chose to cut security funding in New York by 40 percent. "Now we know why the Homeland Security grant formula came out as wacky as it was," said senior New York Sen. Charles Schumer.
The inspector general's report clearly summed up the problem and offered a solution. The database "is not an accurate representation of the nation's CIKR (critical infrastructure and key resources)." Homeland Security should provide clear guidance to the states on what belongs on the list of vulnerable locations.
This report should be the final straw for Congress. It should demand improvement, and quickly, on antiterrorism funding for the places that are the most likely targets. Homeland Security's list is a joke, but it's not funny.
