$1 Bil Later DHS Admits it Uses Wrong Bio Attack System
Monday, June 24, 2013 14:15
(Before It's News)

As if it weren’t bad enough that the U.S. government has blown $1 billion on a faulty system that’s supposed to detect biological attacks, Homeland Security officials now reveal it’s not exactly the right technology for the job and they want more money to revamp it.

It only took the nation’s homeland security officials a decade and a big chunk of taxpayer dollars to figure it out. So is life in the bloated federal government, especially the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the monstrous agency created after 9/11 to protect the nation from another terrorist attack.

This particular case involves BioWatch, a costly program that for 10 years was promoted as life-saving technology tasked with detecting biological attacks. After DHS invested $1 billion in it, BioWatch never came close to meeting its goal of accurately detecting pathogens that cause anthrax, tularemia, smallpox, plague and other deadly diseases. Instead it is well known for false alarms and other glitches.

In fact, the system has become such a joke that state and local authorities don’t bother ordering evacuations when its alarm triggers. Federal agencies documented 56 false alarms in just a few years yet DHS kept pouring money into it and planned to keep investing billions more. In fact, the DHS’s medical officer has even vouched for the upgrade, telling a congressional committee that it’s “imperative to saving thousands of lives.”

Now DHS officials want to revamp BioWatch, asserting that the original technology was not appropriate for the type of threat that is likely to occur. In a congressional hearing last week, a Homeland Security official said the original system was designed to detect large-scale biological attacks though small-scale attacks are more likely to occur. Geez, why didn’t you say something a billion dollars ago?

This occurred because officials evidently believed that hostile foreign governments would commit large-scale attacks on U.S. cities, but that theory has changed. Instead, our brilliant Homeland Security folks believe this has evolved to small-scale releases of pathogens like anthrax. The BioWatch technology that American taxpayers have funded to the tune of $1 billion is unlikely to detect this sort of attack.

With that in mind, DHS wants more money from Congress to fund a revamped BioWatch program called Generation 3 that officials claim could actually get the job done. Last week an oversight panel of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce addressed the issue in a hearing. The panel’s ranking member, California Democrat Henry Waxman, pointed out that DHS approved the new program“without fully developing critical knowledge that would help ensure sound investment, decision making, pursuit of optimal solutions, and reliable performance, cost, and schedule information.”

Is anyone really surprised? A DHS official who testified at the hearing brushed it off, saying that he was unable to address decisions or actions that occurred before he joined the agency in 2009. This angered Congressman Waxman, according to a mainstream newspaper that has been a leader in exposing the scandal-plagued BioWatch system. “You’re the head of the program, you ought to know what happened,” Waxman said at the hearing, referring to the more than $1 billion spent to date on BioWatch and the department’s pending proposal to spend billions more to automate the system. Don’t be surprised if the hearings are just theater and DHS ends up getting more money for this experiment.

http://beforeitsnews.com/opinion-con...m-2669746.html

BioWatch's chief aim is off-target, U.S. security officials say


BioWatch, which has cost more than $1 billion so far, is designed to detect large-scale biological attacks. But Homeland Security officials say small-scale attacks are more likely to occur.


June 18, 2013|By David Willman, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Department planners have privately rejected a central premise of BioWatch, the nation's decade-old system for detecting biological weapons released into the air, according to government documents and testimony Tuesday at a congressional hearing.

Although BioWatch was designed with the belief that hostile foreign governments could sponsor large-scale germ attacks on American cities, the Homeland Security planners said they no longer saw this as the primary threat. They instead believe that small-scale releases of anthrax or other pathogens are the most plausible type of attack — but that these events would be least likely to be detected by BioWatch.


The only Homeland Security official to testify at the hearing, BioWatch Program Manager Michael V. Walter, said efforts were underway to improve BioWatch's performance, but that he was unable to address decisions or actions that occurred before he joined the department in 2009. Walter's testimony ultimately drew the ire of the congressional panel's most senior Democrat, Rep. Henry A. Waxman of Beverly Hills.

"You're the head of the program, you ought to know what happened," Waxman said, alluding to the more than $1 billion spent to date on BioWatch and the department's pending proposal to spend billions more to automate the system.

Called "Generation 3," the automated system would expand BioWatch's reach in both outdoor and indoor settings. BioWatch presently operates in more than 30 U.S. cities and at major spectator events, including sports championships and national political conventions.

The chairman of the congressional panel that convened Tuesday's hearing, Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), questioned the worthiness of the current system and Generation 3.

"After 10 years of operation, we still don't know if the current BioWatch technology can detect an aerosolized bioterrorism agent in a real-world environment," Murphy said.

The oversight and investigations arm of the House Energy and Commerce Committee began examining BioWatch in July in response to reports in The Times about the system's deficiencies.

Two Homeland Security scientists, Segaran Pillai and Douglas Drabkowski, have "cited a number of limitations" with BioWatch's detection ability, called sensitivity, according to an investigative summary prepared by the Energy and Commerce Committee's staff.

Pathogens released at low, yet infectious doses are "least likely" to be detected by BioWatch because of "the system's lack of sensitivity," the summary said.

At the hearing, Walter was pressed about his role in reviewing in advance the department's earlier claims that BioWatch had never generated a false alarm.

Walter acknowledged that he had vetted one such public statement in July, when Chief Medical Officer Alexander Garza said there had been 37 "BioWatch actionable results." A National Academy of Sciences expert panel and scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have concluded those events were indeed false alarms.


By late 2012, a total of 149 BioWatch false alarms had been recorded. Garza's statement — titled "The Truth About BioWatch" — had drastically understated the volume just a few months earlier.

"I reviewed it and I missed that," Walter said, regarding Garza's six-paragraph statement. "I should have caught it."

Walter indicated under questioning that he thought the Homeland Security Department had promptly corrected the error. No such change, however, had been made.

As for Generation 3, Murphy suggested that spending billions for it would be inconsistent with the Homeland Security Department's revised assumptions regarding a large-scale bioattack. The assumptions are outlined in the department's bioterrorism risk assessments, conducted every two years.
"This costly approach is unbalanced and misdirected," Murphy said. "It makes no sense to expand outdoor monitoring for a less likely large-scale attack, while not addressing the declining number of public health responders who are needed in any kind of attack."

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jun...watch-20130619