Here are the Blogs in the National Security category.
Sunday, 11 April 2010
Peace through weakness?
1. Obama Officially Abandons Missile Defense in Europe
2. Obama Bans Islam, Jihad From National Security Strategy Document
3. Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms
1. Obama Officially Abandons Missile Defense in Europe
According to the Polish [1] daily [2], Gazeta Wyborcza, sources in the United States have confirmed that  the Obama administration has made the decision to abandon our anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Unfortunately this news is not surprising at all. In March of this year it was revealed [3] that President Obama “secretly” offered Moscow a grand bargain whereby it would sacrifice missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic in exchange for Moscow’s help discouraging Iran’s nuclear program [4]. Then in his July summit [5] with Moscow, Obama reinforced his message that missile defense remains a bargaining chip that can exchanged for his college dream of a nuclear free world. This is a grave mistake for several reasons: Read more here.
2. Obama Bans Islam, Jihad From National Security Strategy Document
 The change is a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventative war.
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's advisers will remove religious terms such as "Islamic extremism" from the central document outlining the U.S. national security strategy and will use the rewritten document to emphasize that the United States does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror, counterterrorism officials said.
The change is a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventative war and currently states: "The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century."
The officials described the changes on condition of anonymity because the document still was being written, and the White House would not discuss it. But rewriting the strategy document will be the latest example of Obama putting his stamp on U.S. foreign policy, like his promises to dismantle nuclear weapons and limit the situations in which they can be used.
The revisions are part of a larger effort about which the White House talks openly, one that seeks to change not just how the United States talks to Muslim nations, but also what it talks to them about, from health care and science to business startups and education.
That shift away from terrorism has been building for a year, since Obama went to Cairo, Egypt, and promised a "new beginning" in the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world. The White House believes the previous administration based that relationship entirely on fighting terror and winning the war of ideas.
"You take a country where the overwhelming majority are not going to become terrorists, and you go in and say, 'We're building you a hospital so you don't become terrorists.' That doesn't make much sense," said National Security Council staffer Pradeep Ramamurthy.
Ramamurthy runs the administration's Global Engagement Directorate, a four-person National Security Council team that Obama launched last May with little fanfare and a vague mission to use diplomacy and outreach "in pursuit of a host of national security objectives."
Since then, the division has not only helped change the vocabulary of fighting terror but also has shaped the way the country invests in Muslim businesses, studies global warming, supports scientific research and combats polio.
Before diplomats go abroad, they hear from the Ramamurthy or his deputy, Jenny Urizar. When officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration returned from Indonesia, the NSC got a rundown about research opportunities on global warming.
Read more here.
3. Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms
WASHINGTON — President Obama said Monday that he was revamping American nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons.
But the president said in an interview that he was carving out an exception for “outliers like Iran and North Korea” that have violated or renounced the main treaty to halt nuclear proliferation.
Discussing his approach to nuclear security the day before formally releasing his new strategy, Mr. Obama described his policy as part of a broader effort to edge the world toward making nuclear weapons obsolete, and to create incentives for countries to give up any nuclear ambitions. To set an example, the new strategy renounces the development of any new nuclear weapons, overruling the initial position of his own defense secretary.
Mr. Obama’s strategy is a sharp shift from those of his predecessors and seeks to revamp the nation’s nuclear posture for a new age in which rogue states and terrorist organizations are greater threats than traditional powers like Russia and China.
It eliminates much of the ambiguity that has deliberately existed in American nuclear policy since the opening days of the cold war. For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.
Those threats, Mr. Obama argued, could be deterred with “a series of graded options,” a combination of old and new conventional weapons. “I’m going to preserve all the tools that are necessary in order to make sure that the American people are safe and secure,” he said in the interview in the Oval Office.
White House officials said the new strategy would include the option of reconsidering the use of nuclear retaliation against a biological attack, if the development of such weapons reached a level that made the United States vulnerable to a devastating strike.
Mr. Obama’s new strategy is bound to be controversial, both among conservatives who have warned against diluting the United States’ most potent deterrent and among liberals who were hoping for a blanket statement that the country would never be the first to use nuclear weapons.
Mr. Obama argued for a slower course, saying, “We are going to want to make sure that we can continue to move towards less emphasis on nuclear weapons,” and, he added, to “make sure that our conventional weapons capability is an effective deterrent in all but the most extreme circumstances.”
The release of the new strategy, known as the Nuclear Posture Review, opens an intensive nine days of nuclear diplomacy geared toward reducing weapons. Mr. Obama plans to fly to Prague to sign a new arms-control agreement with Russia on Thursday and then next week will host 47 world leaders in Washington for a summit meeting on nuclear security.
The most immediate test of the new strategy is likely to be in dealing with Iran, which has defied the international community by developing a nuclear program that it insists is peaceful but that the United States and its allies say is a precursor to weapons. Asked about the escalating confrontation with Iran, Mr. Obama said he was now convinced that “the current course they’re on would provide them with nuclear weapons capabilities,” though he gave no timeline.
He dodged when asked whether he shared Israel’s view that a “nuclear capable” Iran was as dangerous as one that actually possessed weapons.
“I’m not going to parse that right now,” he said, sitting in his office as children played on the South Lawn of the White House at a daylong Easter egg roll. But he cited the example of North Korea, whose nuclear capabilities were unclear until it conducted a test in 2006, which it followed with a second shortly after Mr. Obama took office.
“I think it’s safe to say that there was a time when North Korea was said to be simply a nuclear-capable state until it kicked out the I.A.E.A. and become a self-professed nuclear state,” he said, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency. “And so rather than splitting hairs on this, I think that the international community has a strong sense of what it means to pursue civilian nuclear energy for peaceful purposes versus a weaponizing capability.”
Mr. Obama said he wanted a new United Nations sanctions resolution against Iran “that has bite,” but he would not embrace the phrase “crippling sanctions” once used by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. And he acknowledged the limitations of United Nations action. “We’re not naïve that any single set of sanctions automatically is going to change Iranian behavior,” he said, adding “there’s no light switch in this process.” Read more here.Posted on 04/11/2010 5:22 AM by Bobbie Patray
Sunday, 11 April 2010
What Kind of Attack Can Kill 70 to 90 Percent of Americans Within One Year?
1. What Kind of Attack Can Kill 70 to 90 Percent of Americans Within One Year?
2. America is Vulnerable to An Electromagnetic Pulse Attack
3. Don’t Let a Catastrophic Disaster Leave You Stranded Miles from Nowhere
1. What Kind of Attack Can Kill 70 to 90 Percent of Americans Within One Year?
Jena McNeill
When the power goes out, what’s the first thing we do?
Grab a flashlight. Search for batteries. Light some candles. Next, we worry about what’s in the fridge. If the power outage lasts for more than four hours, hundreds of dollars in food may be wasted.
Cleaning out the fridge and replacing lost food is costly, messy and unpleasant. Fortunately, however, the lights do eventually come back on, and we can go about our daily lives. After an EMP attack, however, getting the power restored would take much, much longer.
EMP stands for electromagnetic pulse. It’s a pulse that can be used as a weapon (most likely caused by blast of a nuclear weapon in the Earth’s atmosphere), and would destroy the critical infrastructure that Americans rely on. Specifically, an EMP, under the right conditions, is extremely damaging to electronics and the electric grid -- the system that keeps those refrigerators (and the food supply) running.
Most Americans are used to fast, cheap and easy food options. McDonald’s, in fact, prides itself on a 90-second or less service time. And given our tendency to eat too much, it is odd to think about any American starving to death.
The impact of an EMP attack on America’s food supply, however, would be enormous. Food wouldn’t simply spoil, but delivering food and cooking it also would be problematic. Many Americans would struggle to survive.
You may not realize, but your grocery store carries very few foods from the local area. Strawberries
are often from Mexico, oranges from Florida, and plums from California. For those curious,Ramen Noodles are made in Richmond, Virginia.
EMP, however, would take down the equipment that makes this system function. Besides problems getting food from place to place, preparing, baking, or cooking food would be difficult for both food production companies and everyday citizens. Remember the jalapeño salmonella outbreak in 2008? One small facility in Texas caused the outbreak. Swiftly, at least 1,251 people all over the nation got sick. Preventing food-borne illnesses would be difficult without needed refrigeration or necessary heat. Read more here.
2. America is Vulnerable to An Electromagnetic Pulse Attack
Posted 06/29/2009 ET
I f a small atomic bomb were to explode 400km above Chicago it could fry all electronically-based technology from Chicago to Dallas affecting the infrastructure of all major cities on the east coast and as far as South Dakota.
An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack is as instantaneous as an atomic bomb blast. It moves like a wall of energy overloading, and destroying all computer based technology. Such an attack would shut down the power grid. Air traffic would be grounded, telephone, internet and other communications would be shut down. America would be reduced to the agricultural economy we had in the 1800s.
Despite having developed the technology to protect our infrastructure in the event of an EMP attack, this technology has not been integrated into our infrastructure – our infrastructure has not been hardened: backed up by non-computerized components yet. EMP is not a sci-fi War of the Worlds
Brief analysis shows that our computerized, electronically-dependent society offers any rogue nation a perfect target: an EMP-vulnerable power grid susceptible of a sucker punch to the heart of our infrastructure. On the floor of the House, Rep. Roscoe Barlett (R-Md) recounted a story of a Russian, who, prior to the G-8 meeting said “If we really wanted to hurt you, with no fear of retaliation, we'd launch an SLBM, submarine launch missile. We wouldn't know where it came from; it came from the sea. And we'd detonate a nuclear weapon high above your country, and it would shut down your power grid and your communications for 6 months or so.” Our enemies are well aware of what an EMP attack is, and just what precisely it would do.
The incentive to attack America through EMP is high because the cost to America would be catastrophic. As the 2004 commission report said “The current vulnerability of our critical infrastructures can both invite and reward attack if not corrected. Correction is feasible and well within the Nation's means and resources to accomplish.” Our electric grid systems, communication networks, financial system, fuel/energy infrastructure, transportation infrastructure, food infrastructure, and most importantly water supply would be corrupted to an un-workable extent in the event of an attack, because we have yet to make the vital corrections.
If America were hit with an EMP over the course of one year 90% of Americans would be dead. America would be reduced to third world status. Read more here.
3. Don’t Let a Catastrophic Disaster Leave You Stranded Miles from Nowhere
Jena McNeill
It’s a sinking feeling. You’re miles from a gas station. The car’s fuel level has been on E for far too long. You’re not sure you’ll make it to the pump in time. Inevitably, its 120 degrees outside or pouring rain and the idea of pushing your car the rest of the way or leaving your fate to the nearest passerby leaves you in a panic.
Yes, it’s a massive inconvenience to run out of gas. In a natural disaster, though, gas shortages aren’t uncommon. They don’t necessarily halt the U.S. supply chain, at least not permanently – but a catastrophic disaster can snarl transportation nationwide. In fact, shortly after Hurricane Katrina, gas prices went up 40 percent – a real hit to drivers. The problem is that gas stations don’t have much fuel on hand. That’s partly for fire safety reasons and partly because of environmental regulations. Still, when demand skyrockets right before something like a hurricane, stations run out quickly and have to wait for a fresh supply.
But what if it was impossible to get additional supplies? In an EMP attack, where, for example, an enemy might choose to take down the electric grid by exploding a nuclear weapon high in the Earth’s atmosphere, the transportation system (and supply chain for that matter) would go haywire –making such a problem a reality. No amount of AAA auto protection would help – as EMP literally destroys the electric grid and the electronics functioning off of it.
Station pumps need electricity to operate and so do the refineries and other facilities that bring the fresh supplies. Try driving through a city like New York with no stoplights, or no lights at all for that matter.
Even those more “environmentally-conscious” folks who pat themselves on the backs for their “greener” purchases would be stuck. Forget the hybrids (which rely on gasoline), forget the electric cars (duh), and forget the hydrogen vehicles, which also rely on electricity.
Transportation would be nearly impossible. No Amtrak, buses or subway. The impact of this would be large. For example, emergency responders need transportation to get the sick to the hospital (assuming one was functioning and that you could actually get in contact with 9-1-1 personnel). Ever take a 700 mile trek to a hospital? Probably not -- but that’s how long it could take to find one actually operating. The likelihood of making it on whatever was left in the gas tank would be slim.Read more here. Posted on 04/11/2010 5:24 AM by Bobbie Patray
Thursday, 24 April 2008
CIA to describe North Korea-Syria nuclear ties
CIA to describe North Korea-Syria nuclear ties
Officials will tell Congress members this week that North Korea was helping Syria build a reactor last year when it was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike, a U.S. official says.
By Paul Richter and Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
April 23, 2008
WASHINGTON -- CIA officials will tell Congress on Thursday that North Korea had been helping Syria build a plutonium-based nuclear reactor, a U.S. official said, a disclosure that could touch off new resistance to the administration's plan to ease sanctions on Pyongyang.
The CIA officials will tell lawmakers that they believe the reactor would have been capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons but was destroyed before it could do so, the U.S. official said, apparently referring to a suspicious installation in Syria that was bombed last year by Israeli warplanes.
The CIA officials also will say that though U.S. officials have had concerns for years about ties between North Korea and Syria, it was not until last year that new intelligence convinced them that the suspicious facility under construction in a remote area of Syria was a nuclear reactor, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing plans for the briefing.
By holding closed, classified briefings for members of several congressional committees, the administration will break a long silence on North Korean-Syrian nuclear cooperation and on what it knows about last year's destruction of the Syrian facility. Nonetheless, it has been widely assumed for months that many in the administration considered the site a nuclear installation.
It was not clear Tuesday how recently North Korea may have been aiding Syria. But disclosure of the relationship to the committees is likely to bring criticism from conservative lawmakers who already believe that U.S. overtures to North Korea have offered the government in Pyongyang too many benefits without assurances that it will disclose the extent of its nuclear arms effort or ultimately surrender its weapons.
U.S. officials provided little explanation of why they want to brief lawmakers on the North Korean-Syrian links after declining to do so for months.
A senior Senate aide said the timing appears driven by a Bush administration desire to apprise committee members of the latest intelligence on the reactor before releasing some of the information.
"I have this strong impression the reason they want to brief the committee is they want to say something publicly," said the aide, who discussed contacts with the administration only on condition of anonymity.
The administration has briefed senior members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, a senior Senate aide said. But other lawmakers have remained in the dark. The administration has been under pressure to extend briefings to a larger circle of lawmakers.
The administration is planning to ease sanctions on North Korea as part of talks aimed at removing Pyongyang's nuclear weapons. The six nations involved in the talks, which also include China, Russia, South Korea and Japan, have been negotiating since 2003.
After a breakthrough last year in which North Korea agreed to shut down its only functioning nuclear production facility, it was rewarded with fuel oil and the release of frozen bank funds. But talks stalled after the Bush administration demanded that Pyongyang provide a full description of its past nuclear activities by a December 2007 deadline.
To continue reading, go to http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-norkor23apr23,0,3070215.story
Posted on 04/24/2008 4:14 PM by Bobbie Patray
Thursday, 10 April 2008
New Proof of Reagan's Wisdom
New Proof of Reagan's Wisdom
by Phyllis Schlafly, March 26, 2008
The U.S. Navy gave Ronald Reagan a dramatic 25th anniversary gift on February 21. A Navy missile raced into outer space and destroyed an orbiting satellite, thereby providing new proof of the vision President Reagan proclaimed in his then-sensational televised address on March 23, 1983.
While the Navy SM-3 missile didn't knock down an incoming nuclear missile, the direct hit on a satellite proved again that our anti-missile technology is mature and reliable, and that an effective anti-missile system is within our grasp. Traveling at 6,000 miles per hour after being launched from a cruiser in the Pacific, the SM-3 missile was even more accurate than anyone had predicted because it struck precisely at the satellite's dangerous fuel tank.
The successful kill of the satellite also confirmed the ability of the SM-3 to intercept at a higher elevation than had ever been tested before. It revalidated the Bush Administration's expenditure of $10 billion a year on anti-missile defenses.
This direct hit comes on the heels of a particularly impressive track record of successful anti-missile tests in 2007. Since 2005, the Missile Defense Agency has scored 21 successful space interceptions in 22 tests.
The so-called world community, egged on by U.S. pacifists and disarmament professionals, grumbled and sputtered because the United States dared to knock out a satellite. Actually, there was a very persuasive reason for our government to take immediate action against this particular satellite.
It had failed in its mission and was edging closer to Earth carrying a large tank of toxic fuel that would be harmful to many people if it crashed into a populated area. Our government acted properly to protect the world against such an unnecessary disaster.
This demonstration of U.S. anti-satellite capability also had a useful side effect. It signaled Communist China that we have anti-satellite technology and power.
China shocked the world on January 11, 2007 by conducting the first successful test of an anti-satellite weapon. In its usual disregard for the health of humankind, China's test left 2,500 pieces of debris in space spread out in a way that poses a danger to manned and unmanned spacecraft.
U.S. officials recognized China's action as a new strategic threat. Killing a communications satellite could knock out U.S. military and civilian communications systems.
In his 1983 address, Reagan announced that he was "launching an effort which holds the promise of changing the course of human history." Indeed, it did. His speech extricated America from the defeatist McNamara-Kissinger-Nixon-Ford-Carter strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction, known descriptively by its acronym MAD.
The MAD strategy postulated that our only hope of avoiding nuclear war was by threatening massive retaliation and killing as many enemy people as we could. "Morning-in-America" Reagan offered the contrary vision of hope.
"Wouldn't it be better to save lives than to avenge them?" he said. "What if we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?"
Reagan thus added the necessary fourth leg to his strategy of Peace Through Strength. It encompassed not only diplomacy, deterrence and offensive weapons, but also defensive weapons.
This made eminently good sense to the American people, who fully understand that battle requires both a sword and a shield. Conservatives had been pleading for an anti-missile defense system for more than 20 years.
The whole disarmament/pacifist crowd attacked Reagan unmercifully for his determination to defend America with defensive as well as offensive weapons. Ted Kennedy led the pack by ridiculing Reagan's plan as Star Wars.
Reagan's opponents criticized him on every front, claiming an anti-missile system can't work because it requires hitting a bullet with a bullet. This new test should finally put to rest the false claims that it won't work.
Now, with the benefit of hindsight, we know that it was Reagan's determination to push forward with what became known as his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) that won the Cold War. SDI was the centerpiece of his strategy.
At the Geneva and Reykjavik Summits, Mikhail Gorbachev offered every carrot and stick in his arsenal to persuade or intimidate Reagan into abandoning SDI. When Reagan refused, Gorbachev realized the jig was up for the Soviet empire and its delusions of world conquest because the Soviets could not compete with the U.S. military-economic powerhouse.
Reagan's SDI, so courageously proposed in 1983, ultimately enabled him to defeat the Evil Empire without firing a shot. We know the system works, and it's just as necessary in the post-9/11 world as in the days of the Soviet threat.
Read this article online: http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2008/mar08/08-03-26.html
Posted on 04/10/2008 3:53 PM by Bobbie Patray
Friday, 4 April 2008
Outsourced passports -- risking national security
Outsourced passports netting govt. profits, risking national security
By Bill Gertz
March 26, 2008
This is the first in a three-part series on the outsourcing of passports.
The United States has outsourced the manufacturing of its electronic passports to overseas companies — including one in Thailand that was victimized by Chinese espionage — raising concerns that cost savings are being put ahead of national security, an investigation by The Washington Times has found.
The Government Printing Office's decision to export the work has proved lucrative, allowing the agency to book more than $100 million in recent profits by charging the State Department more money for blank passports than it actually costs to make them, according to interviews with federal officials and documents obtained by The Times.
The profits have raised questions both inside the agency and in Congress because the law that created GPO as the federal government's official printer explicitly requires the agency to break even by charging only enough to recover its costs.
Lawmakers said they were alarmed by The Times' findings and plan to investigate why U.S. companies weren't used to produce the state-of-the-art passports, one of the crown jewels of American border security.
"I am not only troubled that there may be serious security concerns with the new passport production system, but also that GPO officials may have been profiting from producing them," said Rep. John D. Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Officials at GPO, the Homeland Security Department and the State Department played down such concerns, saying they are confident that regular audits and other protections already in place will keep terrorists and foreign spies from stealing or copying the sensitive components to make fake passports.
"Aside from the fact that we have fully vetted and qualified vendors, we also note that the materials are moved via a secure transportation means, including armored vehicles," GPO spokesman Gary Somerset said.
But GPO Inspector General J. Anthony Ogden, the agency's internal watchdog, doesn't share that confidence. He warned in an internal Oct. 12 report that there are "significant deficiencies with the manufacturing of blank passports, security of components, and the internal controls for the process."
The inspector general's report said GPO claimed it could not improve its security because of "monetary constraints." But the inspector general recently told congressional investigators he was unaware that the agency had booked tens of millions of dollars in profits through passport sales that could have been used to improve security, congressional aides told The Times.
Decision to outsource
GPO is an agency little-known to most Americans, created by Congress almost two centuries ago as a virtual monopoly to print nearly all of the government's documents, from federal agency reports to the president's massive budget books that outline every penny of annual federal spending. Since 1926, it also has been charged with the job of printing the passports used by Americans to enter and leave the country.
When the government moved a few years ago to a new electronic passport designed to foil counterfeiting, GPO led the work of contracting with vendors to install the technology.
Each new e-passport contains a small computer chip inside the back cover that contains the passport number along with the photo and other personal data of the holder. The data is secured and is transmitted through a tiny wire antenna when it is scanned electronically at border entry points and compared to the actual traveler carrying it.
According to interviews and documents, GPO managers rejected limiting the contracts to U.S.-made computer chip makers and instead sought suppliers from several countries, including Israel, Germany and the Netherlands.
Mr. Somerset, the GPO spokesman, said foreign suppliers were picked because "no domestic company produced those parts" when the e-passport production began a few years ago.
After the computer chips are inserted into the back cover of the passports in Europe, the blank covers are shipped to a factory in Ayutthaya, Thailand, north of Bangkok, to be fitted with a wire Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, antenna. The blank passports eventually are transported to Washington for final binding, according to the documents and interviews.
The stop in Thailand raises its own security concerns. The Southeast Asian country has battled social instability and terror threats. Anti-government groups backed by Islamists, including al Qaeda, have carried out attacks in southern Thailand and the Thai military took over in a coup in September 2006.
The Netherlands-based company that assembles the U.S. e-passport covers in Thailand, Smartrac Technology Ltd., warned in its latest annual report that, in a worst-case scenario, social unrest in Thailand could lead to a halt in production.
Smartrac divulged in an October 2007 court filing in The Hague that China had stolen its patented technology for e-passport chips, raising additional questions about the security of America's e-passports.
Transport concerns
A 2005 document obtained by The Times states that GPO was using unsecure FedEx courier services to send blank passports to State Department offices until security concerns were raised and forced GPO to use an armored car company. Even then, the agency proposed using a foreign armored car vendor before State Department diplomatic security officials objected.
Concerns that GPO has been lax in addressing security threats contrast with the very real danger that the new e-passports could be compromised and sold on the black market for use by terrorists or other foreign enemies, experts said.
"The most dangerous passports, and the ones we have to be most concerned about, are stolen blank passports," said Ronald K. Noble, secretary general of Interpol, the Lyon, France-based international police organization. "They are the most dangerous because they are the most difficult to detect."
Mr. Noble said no counterfeit e-passports have been found yet, but the potential is "a great weakness and an area that world governments are not paying enough attention to."
Lukas Grunwald, a computer security expert, said U.S. e-passports, like their European counterparts, are vulnerable to copying and that their shipment overseas during production increases the risks. "You need a blank passport and a chip and once you do that, you can do anything, you can make a fake passport, you can change the data," he said.
Separately, Rep. Robert A. Brady, chairman of the Joint Committee on Printing, has expressed "serious reservations" about GPO's plan to use contract security guards to protect GPO facilities. In a Dec. 12 letter, Mr. Brady, a Pennsylvania Democrat, stated that GPO's plan for conducting a security review of the printing office was ignored and he ordered GPO to undertake an outside review.
Questionable profits
GPO's accounting adds another layer of concern.
The State Department is now charging Americans $100 or more for new e-passports produced by the GPO, depending on how quickly they are needed. That's up from a cost of around just $60 in 1998.
Internal agency documents obtained by The Times show each blank passport costs GPO an average of just $7.97 to manufacture and that GPO then charges the State Department about $14.80 for each, a margin of more than 85 percent, the documents show.
The accounting allowed GPO to make gross profits of more than $90 million from Oct. 1, 2006, through Sept. 30, 2007, on the production of e-passports. The four subsequent months produced an additional $54 million in gross profits.
To continue reading, go to:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080326/NATION/840186493/1001&template=nextpage
Posted on 04/04/2008 12:16 PM by Bobbie Patray
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