BAD NEWS:
The nation’s new system to combat biological terrorism, such as the 2001 anthrax attacks that struck The Post (inset), is a mess. (
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An ambitious federal program to protect big cities from biological attacks is running six years late and $3.7 billion over its projected cost — and nobody has been able to make it work, The Post has learned.
A new federal report discloses that Department of Homeland Security chiefs in Washington have long known their plans for the futuristic BioWatch system were based not on science but on their frenzy to show that they were doing something after the 2001 anthrax attacks terrorized a nation traumatized by 9/11.
Several employees of The Post were sickened by anthrax mailed to the paper’s headquarters.
Documents obtained by Government Accountability Office auditors show the research done prior to proposing the system “does not reflect a systematic analytic and decision-making process.” Instead, the records paint a disturbing picture of bureaucrats looking “to support the decision the [department] had already made.”
Analysts “did not fully explore costs” and don’t even know whether the technology they’re counting on can be developed.
It doesn’t exist now.
At best, investigators determined, the feds are going to be stuck spending at least $5.8 billion instead of the $2.1 billion originally proposed.
And instead of seeing the technology installed by 2016, the best the feds could hope for is 2022.
The new system would update the current system, which generally works well, if slowly.
Sensors the size of small sheds have been placed around New York and other big cities to collect air samples.
The problem is the samples are picked up by workers at regular intervals and taken to central locations to be tested for anthrax, smallpox and three other viruses or bacteria the government will not identify.
About 2,570 devices are supposed to be installed before the old system is deactivated — federal officials would not say how many are currently operating.
The goal, the feds said, is to have 90 percent of the population in the 50 biggest urban areas covered by sensors.
There are two big problems with the existing system: It takes lots of manpower to pick up the samples and more than a day to process them. By the time the process is completed, a lot of people could die.
In the hoped-for new system, the tests would be done automatically at the sensor sites and the results instantly made accessible by managers. The process would take only a couple of hours.
But the updated system is nowhere near being operational.
“We are now 11 years afterward [the post-9/11 attack], and we still do not have a coordinated plan,” Dr. D.A. Henderson, who helped coordinate federal bioterror planning in the wake of the anthrax attacks, told The Post.
The report found that Homeland Security officials started planning and awarding contracts without calculating all the costs or even planning how to test the system.
They haven’t even figured out how to reduce BioWatch’s ongoing problems with false positive readings.
GAO auditors also pointed out that BioWatch would detect only the same five bioterror agents that are now tested for, although others could be used in attacks.
DHS officials did not argue with the report’s findings but said they will continue with their plans.