Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Where's Al Haig When You Need Someone In Charge?

Three years after 9/11, Washington still can't get its act together over homeland security. Sure, we've got a whole Department of Homeland Security, but they don't get to run the whole show.

Settling power struggles and turf battles, Congress and the President divided the responsibilities into 43 areas. But the Government Accountability Office could only identify lead agencies for 37 of those top priorities.

More than two-thirds of the projects have three or more departments taking a lead role. And the GAO found plenty of problems with coordination and cooperation between departments.

So that leaves a lot of confusion over who's supposed to be doing what to keep us safe. And we've all seen how Washington's confusion can leave a hole in our security big enough to fly four wide-bodied jets through. (GAO)

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