Review - Reader Comment: Wither CFATS?

I had an interesting telephone conversation today with a long-time reader (and CISA employee, so they cannot be named here) about the future of the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program. While CISA is officially certain that Congress will get its act together and reauthorize the program, they are bit by bit taking the still existing FY 2024 CFATS funding and parceling it out to other under-funded or un-funded programs. The reader wanted my take on the future of CFATS.

At this point, I do not hold out a lot of hope that the Congress will get its act together and pass HR 4470. It appears that it is hard to get congress critters excited about preventing terrorist attacks using industrial chemicals. Part of the reason for that is the success of the CFATS program in making it difficult for terrorists to get their hands on weaponizable chemicals. There has been no terrorist attack in the United States using an industrial sized improvised weapon since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Maybe there will never be another.

But, if there is, people will be demanding to know why the federal government failed to prevent the attack. And we will be able to point the finger at the 118^th Congress. The Congress that found it too hard to overcome the objections of a single Senator.

 

For more details about how I reached this conclusion, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/reader-comment-wither-cfats - subscription required.