Could pork be a threat to homeland security?

It could be, when all homeland security appropriations have to go past the Prince of Pork.

Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) is the chairman of the House Homeland Security Appropriations subcommittee, which means he has control of all of the money that the federal government spends on homeland security. And, it seems, he diverts as much of that money as he can toward his own district, whether it’s good for security or not.

In at least one case, his pork-barrel antics have resulted in years-long delays in implementing homeland security programs such as the Transportation Workers Identity Credential, a secure identity card for airport, maritime and rail workers which uses biometric identification technology to control access to secured areas of airports, seaports and railways. Or, it will, if the project ever gets off the ground.

The Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002 required the Department of Homeland Security to develop the identification program, and several delays (PDF) in its implementation have been traced directly to Rogers diverting critical funds for the program to the small town of Corbin, Ky., in his Congressional district.

But within months after the plans for the card were announced, Mr. Rogers started to intervene. He inserted language into appropriations bills that effectively pushed the government to use the same patented green card technology and to produce this new card in Corbin.

“The committee does not want T.S.A. to develop new technologies if existing ones, already developed by other federal agencies, are good enough,” a 2002 Appropriations Committee report, signed by Mr. Rogers, said, referring to the Transportation Security Administration.

Language added in 2003, again in a report submitted in Mr. Rogers’s name, urged the agency to use “existing government card issuance centers” to make the card, which Homeland Security officials said, in their view, referred to Corbin. The law blocked spending until the department bowed to the mandates.

Two former Homeland Security officials said they were confounded. They had already identified a more flexible and secure technology known as a smart card, which relies on tiny computer chips embedded into the identification card. Most other federal agencies were moving toward this approach rather than the technology used for the green card, in which data are recorded on a reflective optical stripe affixed to the card.

“It would be like saying it would be quicker to take a bicycle instead of a Toyota Corolla,” said one former Homeland Security official, granted anonymity because he now works for an organization that does not permit him to speak about the matter. — New York Times

That’s right. Rogers, known in eastern Kentucky as the Prince of Pork, wrote into law that the effort had to use inferior technology produced by his companies in his town. Rogers said he did it because he was tired of the program’s delays, failing to mention he had caused some of them by doing the same thing previously.

TheTimes documents the whole tangled web of pork wherein Rogers diverted contracts related to the effort to companies connected to him, one of them run by his son, and when Homeland Security wanted to bid out the projects, or use a better company, Rogers would write it directly into the law that DHS would have to skip the whole bidding on contracts and use the companies he picked.

Those companies rewarded him generously, contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign fund and flying him all over the world, including 11 separate trips to Hawaii.

And the inferior identification cards, which were supposed to be ready in 2004, are now expected to start rollling off Rogers’ production line in Corbin sometime in 2007.