They walked right through Homeland Security Checkpoints -- with WHAT?


GAO investigaors carried all the making for a couple of radioactive "dirty bombs" right through two Homeland Security checkpoints. One on the Canadian border. One on the Mexican border.


Undercover investigators slipped a radioactive substance – enough, they say, to make two dirty bombs – across northern and southern U.S. borders last year in a test of security at American ports of entry.

Radiation detection equipment at the unidentified sites went off, but the investigators were permitted to enter the United States after using counterfeit documents to deceive customs agents.

To test security at U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada, GAO investigators represented themselves as employees of a fake company. They presented counterfeit shipping papers and NRC documents that allegedly permitted them to receive, acquire, possess and transfer radioactive substances.

Investigators found that customs agents weren’t able to check whether a person caught with radioactive materials was permitted to possess the materials under a government-issued license.

Kind of gives you that nice secure feeling, doesn’t it?

Now, if the GAO investigators were doing something suspicious — like hiding copies of the Bill of Rights in their armpits — that would have raised the alarm, right away!

Posted: Tue - March 28, 2006 at 05:47 AM