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A whole weekend with no posts. Maybe it's all too boring, given the advent of summer and all the outside activities. One can only hope that venues like this will disappear as people who are frustrated, lonely, angry, fearful, curious, or just in need of some validation for their views all find more healthy things to do. The real world is so much more interesting! Happy Summer!
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Amazing stuff!
House Bid To Merge Homeland Security WMD Offices Draws Cautious Praise
June 1, 2012
WASHINGTON -- Plans for a possible merger between two Homeland Security Department offices responsible for monitoring potential threats from weapons of mass destruction is eliciting cautious praise from observers who hope such a move would help address concerns that some of the department's key detection technologies are not useful (see GSN, May 9).
In a little-noticed section of the legislative report that accompanies the fiscal 2013 homeland security spending bill, the House Appropriations Committee calls on DHS officials to develop a plan to consolidate the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office and the Office of Health Affairs.
The first team is tasked with monitoring radiological and nuclear threats, with the second team focused on chemical and biological threats, among other responsibilities.
Under the House proposal, the department would have six months from the enactment of the legislation to develop the plan for a potential merger that would take place the following fiscal year.
Before changes are implemented, the Government Accountability Office would review the Homeland Security plan and assess “whether and how proposed changes would improve DHS coordination … on WMD defense issues,” the legislative report says.
Unlike at other government agencies, Homeland Security Department “WMD programs continue to be spread across many offices with duplicative and overlapping functions,” the report states. “There is confusion, for example, over which components are the ‘lead’ in certain incidents involving [chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear] agents and also over which are responsible for research and development to detect those agents.
“As a result, DHS programs have failed to satisfactorily fulfill congressional and presidential mandates to develop robust capabilities to detect WMD threats aimed against U.S. interest,” the committee contended.
A Homeland Security Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the legislation.
The House panel argued that inside the department, coordination between the various offices responsible for WMD issues is “ad hoc and intermittent, with limited cooperation between certain offices and limited awareness of what each is doing in the WMD defense mission space.” As a result, Homeland Security views on WMD issues “are presented in divergent and sometimes conflicting ways in interagency meetings, impairing the Department’s cooperation” with other government agencies, the report reads.
Just plunk that ol' copy/paste in anywhere you want - don't pay any attention to the topic of the thread. Typical. Where's Scooby?