DHS Needs a Little Help

A Senate Subcommittee has just published one of the most scathing reports I have seen.  The report by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs permanent subcommittee on investigations looked at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) so-called fusion centers, which are scattered across the country with the goal of coordinating intelligence between the feds, the states and local governments.  To say that these centers have been mismanaged is an understatement.  The mismanagement of the centers is of such a degree that you have to question the executive management of DHS. 

• For example, DHS' estimate of the federal money spent on the centers between 2003 and 2011 was between $289 million to $1.4 billion.  Just a very slight difference. Right?  
• As to the intelligence reports, they were "of uneven quality – oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism."  High quality output!
• DHS either lied or is really out to lunch as they "asserted that some fusion centers existed when they did not."  
• They bragged that the centers were “one of the centerpieces of our counterterrorism strategy,”and “a major force multiplier in the counterterrorism enterprise.”
• They initially refused to give the Senate copies of the centers' internal reports.
  "Despite reviewing 13 months’ worth of reporting originating from fusion centers from April 1, 2009 to April 30, 2010, the Subcommittee investigation could identify no reporting which uncovered a terrorist threat, nor could it identify a contribution such fusion center reporting made to disrupt an active terrorist plot. Instead, the investigation found: The Subcommittee investigation found that the fusion centers often produced irrelevant, useless or inappropriate intelligence reporting to DHS, and many produced no intelligence reporting whatsoever."

How can Napolitano hold her head up?