Certain Tech for Detecting Radiation in Vehicles, Cargo Turns into Bush Era Boondoggle
The Department of Homeland Security office responsible for
protecting the nation from nuclear and radiological terrorism is largely
scrapping plans for new high-tech detectors for screening vehicles and cargo,
saying they cost too much and do not work as effectively as security officials
once maintained. As reported first by The Washington Post, in a to the chairman
of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the acting
chief of the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office said officials will possibly use
the machines only for secondary screening, at no more than about a third of the
cost originally planned. The development virtually ensures the collapse of one
of the most prominent national security initiatives in the previous
Presidential administration, which aggressively touted the machines as a
high-tech front-line defense against the importation of nuclear materials.