Senator seeks fixes, review of DHS scanning contracts

Senator seeks fixes, review of DHS scanning contracts U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer on Tuesday demanded that the Department of Homeland Security renegotiate contracts for advanced radiation detection machines after testing problems led Secretary Michael Chertoff to postpone the purchase and deployment of more than 1,200 machines at the nation's ports and border crossings.
   The New York Democrat also called for the department's inspector general to review all DHS contracts related to the manufacture and installation of all next-generation detection technology after the inspector general issued a critical report about the improper award of a 2003 no-bid contract for maintaining large-scale imaging machines.
   'When the Department of Homeland Security messes up royally on such an important mission, it makes every American less secure and should make every American wonder about the towering incompetence of this department,' Schumer said in a statement.
   A House committee released news earlier this month that Chertoff had delayed certification and production of next-generation machines used to detect radiation in cargo and vehicles after congressional investigators determined tests had been rigged to enhance the performance results.
   At the Customs Trade Symposium last week, Chertoff said he slowed the march towards procurement to make sure that the technology works properly in real-world applications. He said the software fixes and testing should be completed in several months, rather than the full year the committee reported.
   The Advanced Spectroscopic Portal (ASP) monitors are supposed to be able to distinguish between naturally occurring radiation from benign sources and radiation from weapons-grade nuclear material so that inspectors do not have to respond to hundreds of false alarms per day. But the auditors claimed, over the objections of DHS and its Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO), that the new machines are no more accurate than the existing technology.
   The DNDO issued a $1.2 billion, five-year contract in July 2006 to purchase 1,200 of the drive-by devices from Raytheon Co.-Integrated Defense Systems, Thermo Electron Corp., and Canberra Industries.
   The first year of the ASP contract calls for research and development followed by four years of system acquisition.
   Schumer said in a letter to Chertoff that DHS should consider new contractors for the project and immediately seek to renegotiate its contracts with the device’s current manufacturers in order to offset the cost to the government from extra rounds of testing the machines needed to certify the devices.
   Schumer reacted to stories in the Washington Post on Monday about the deployment delay for the advanced radiation detectors and the contract for maintenance of X-ray, gamma ray and radiation detection devices.
   News about the ASP postponement was reported a full week earlier by Shippers’ Newswire. ' Eric Kulisch