The Department of Homeland Security has invested tens of millions of dollars and countless hours of labor over the last four years on a seemingly simple task: creating a tamperproof identification card for airport, rail and maritime
workers. Yet nearly two years past a planned deadline, production of the card, known as the Transportation Worker Identification Credential, has yet to begin. Instead, the road to delivering this critical anti-terrorism tool has taken a series of detours to locations, companies and groups often linked to Representative Harold Rogers, a Kentucky Republican who is the powerful chairman of the House subcommittee that controls the Homeland Security budget.
It is a route that has benefited Mr. Rogers, creating jobs in his home district and profits for companies that are donors to his political causes. The congressman has also taken 11 trips — including six to Hawaii — on the tab of an organization that until this week was to profit from a no-bid contract Mr. Rogers helped arranged. Work has even been set aside for a tiny start-up company in Kentucky that employs John Rogers, the congressman's son.
"Something stinks in Corbin," said Jay M. Meier, senior securities analyst at MJSK Equity Research in Minneapolis, which follows the identification card industry, referring to the Kentucky community of 8,000 that has perhaps benefited the most from Mr. Roger's interventions. "And it is the sickest example of what is wrong with our homeland security agenda that I can find."Mr. Rogers said that any mandates imposed on the TWIC program, as it is commonly called, have been motivated by a desire to end the delays. "I have been extremely frustrated with the slow, wandering pace of the program," he said in a statement. He declined to comment further beyond the statement, which was issued on Thursday. Asked about the legislative mandates and the delays in starting up the program, Darrin Kayser, a Homeland Security spokesman, said, "We are not going to get into finger-pointing back and forth." He added, "This has languished for too long."
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