Grassley and CFATS

Last Friday I asked why CBS News was quoting Sen. Grassley (R,IA) about the problems at ISCD. Today a press release on the Senator’s web site may have answered the question; it looks like former DHS Assistant Secretary Keil may have come to Grassley when it was clear that none of the oversight Committees were going to take a serious look at the ISCD problems.

Last week Grassley sent a letter to Secretary Napolitano. The letter asks the first set of detailed questions about specific problems in ISCD. Unfortunately, the questions that he asks are about relatively minor problems in the administration of the CFATS program and don’t get to the basis of the real problems at ISCD.

Locality Pay

I’m relatively sure that the Keil, or someone like him, is the unnamed whistle blower in the letter. Only a late comer to the program, with little actual knowledge of the operation of ISCD, would raise the issue of locality pay as a means to insinuate that the chemical facility security inspectors were trying to cheat the government. Field offices were set up, but it was clear that inspectors would be spending little time in them so there was initially no requirement that the inspectors move to the city where their office was located.

Due to a misunderstanding of the rules by ISCD management, inspectors were given locality pay based upon the location of their office instead of their home. According to multiple sources the Department’s recoupment of those improper payments was one of the reasons that the inspector corps sought union representation.

This was a management issue, but it doesn’t appear that it was due to any special malfeasance. In retrospect it seems clear that the management team was inadequately trained on the rules under which their employees would be operating. That couldn’t be because the people were being pulled into NPPD from all over the Department. Or spending so much time putting a new program together in a short time period with little guidance from Congress that they didn’t have time to learn the admin rules.

HAZMAT Suits

Grassley asks a series of questions pointing out the gross waste of taxpayer funds spent on HAZMAT suits for the CFATS inspection force. To a chemical professional like myself it is pretty clear that CFATS inspectors would probably never have any use for such equipment. Unfortunately, no one assigned to the ISCD management team had any experience with chemical manufacturing facilities.

Now anyone that has watched anything about chemical plants on TV knows that HAZMAT suits are an integral part of protecting employees at such plants; hazardous chemicals leaking at such facilities being such a common occurrence. Who would expect a government agency to provide any less protection of their employees? Okay, it was stupid, but their hearts were in the right place.

What Questions Should Have Been Asked

Because Grassley is totally unfamiliar with the CFATS program he has to rely on a whistleblower who knows even less about the program. Someone who actually knew something about the program would have asked a completely different set of problems.

Why hasn’t anyone in industry been able to submit an acceptable site security plan (SSP)? There isn’t any clear, unambiguous guidance from ISCD about what constitutes an adequate SSP.

Why hasn’t ISCD been able to tell facilities what is needed to correct their inadequate plans? Because Congress specifically prohibited them from providing such guidance.

Why hasn’t ISCD redone the questions and instructions for the on-line SSP submission tool? Because they don’t understand why the chemical community doesn’t provide the ‘necessary information’.

Has anyone independently verified that the reasons for declining the approval of any chemical facility SSP are in accordance with currently accepted security practices? Probably not.

Is there anyone in ISCD who is trained to review control system security procedures? Not hardly.

Is there anyone in ISCD with experience in emergency response planning? Probably not.

Why hasn’t ISCD gotten an approved TSDB vetting program set up yet? I don’t have any idea.

Grandstanding Senator

Oh well, we couldn’t get anyone with a background in CFATS to be concerned about the problems in the program, so I guess we’ll just have to deal with Sen. Grassley. Unfortunately, he’s getting his information from someone with an apparent ax to grind with Under Secretary Beers and Deputy Assistant Secretary Armstrong rather than from someone who actually has dealt with the CFATS program.

This is why this should be handled by the two Homeland Security Committees. They have staffs that are at least conversant with the CFATS program. Their staffs could ask the pertinent questions of the people involved in the program and learn that while the whistleblower may have some pieces of information, that those minor problems have nothing to do with the real problems being experienced by this important program.

We need much more than silly questions by a grandstanding Senator. Grandstanding? I bet he doesn’t make public the reply he has requested from the Secretary. It would make him look silly.

CBS News Discovers ISCD Problems

Last night the folks at CBS News provided a brief look at the problems at ISCD that have been discussed here for over a year now. Nothing new here other than former DHS Assistant Secretary Todd Keil confirms what I said back in February about his being forced out because of CFATS problems.

Okay I’ll take that back. On the video (I didn’t see this on TV, who would have known) Keil claims that he requested an IG investigation, but that request was not forwarded to the IG. If there is any documentation of that request (and I really doubt that there is) then Under Secretary Beers has something to answer for. Of course someone like Keil would have known that such a request was political suicide, so if it was really made he would have gone directly to the IG as was his ‘right’ as a federal employee. More likely he mentioned that an IG investigation was needed and it was quashed with his reluctant acquiescence.

The timing on this is absolutely stupid. Congress is leaving town so they can’t (wouldn’t really any way, but now they have the excuse) do anything about it. This is a 90 second wonder that will be forgotten in the news about the campaign and political conventions.

One question for the producer at CBS; why Senator Grassley? This was the only member of Congress that they included in the piece and he has little or nothing to do with the oversight of CFATS. Why didn’t they ask Lieberman, Collins, King or Thompson? These are the people that have abdicated their oversight responsibilities for the CFATS program.

Of course, this piece by CBS, all of the hearings to-date, have ignored the basis of the problem. Congress saddled the folks at CFATS with an unenforceable program, denying them the ability to tell facilities what they needed to do to get a site security plan approved. With each facility requiring a multiple visit negotiation where one side had to remain silent ensures that the site security approval process would be time consuming at best. The fact that the folks at ISCD were less than efficient at implementing this was really just icing on the cake.

BTW: A reader pointed me at this story last night, commenting that I had been ‘scooped’ by CBS. Hardly, but CBS is over six months late covering this story; FOX News beat them with their story back in December.