JAMES FALLOWS AND THE JEWEL THIEF

In Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief, diamond-​​nabber Bill Mason notes notes a strange secu­rity trend: peo­ple will spend big bucks to have a whole host ultra-​​sophisticated locks on their front doors — but they’ll put some­thing flimsy on the back door, or leave the win­dows unlocked alto­gether.
That’s what came to mind as I read James Fallows’ home­land defense story in the cur­rent Atlantic Monthly. The Transportation Security Administration is spend­ing $4 bil­lion — 80 per­cent of its bud­get — on air­port screen­ing. Making sure grandma takes off her Mary Janes before she gets on the plane. That leaves, Fallows notes, “well under $1 bil­lion for every­thing except air­lines: roads, bridges, sub­ways, tun­nels, rail­roads, ports, and other facil­i­ties through which most of the nation’s peo­ple and com­merce move.“
Kinda reminds you of Mason’s back door, hunh? Except the anal­ogy doesn’t quite hold together. It’d prob­a­bly be more accu­rate to say that, while the Bush admin­is­tra­tion is mak­ing sure America’s front door is tripled-​​locked, it has left the jewel box out on the front lawn.
From President Bush to Senator Kerry to just about every home­land secu­rity guru in between, all these guys agree that “loose nukes” — the 30,000 atomic war­heads from the for­mer Soviet arse­nal — are the worst threat to our nation imag­in­able. But, as Fallows notes, the U.S. seems to be “in no appar­ent hurry” to make sure these weapons are “safely locked away.“
Yes, it’s true that the U.S. has helped secure in recent years about a hun­dred kilo­grams of Russian bomb-​​grade ura­nium. But that’s out of 460 met­ric tons of Russian weapons-​​usable mate­r­ial. The Defense Department will spend about a bil­lion — a twen­ti­eth of a per­cent — of its annual bud­get next year on “all forms of nuclear mate­r­ial con­trol,” Fallows observes. The Energy Department will add some addi­tional dol­lars. But still, we’re talk­ing rel­a­tive peanuts thrown at what every­one agrees is the biggest threat to our coun­try.
For the cost of a hand­ful of Raptor stealth fight­ers, we could dou­ble our efforts to gather together these loose nukes. For what it takes to pay a cou­ple of dudes at the air­port inspect­ing grandma’s shoes, we could hire a Russian nuclear sci­en­tist — and make sure he doesn’t start work­ing for the other team.

January 21st, 2005 | Homeland Security | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.