Daily Archives: November 24, 2010

This comes as no surprise.  Yet, Chertoff claims that he made no profit from advocating for the current scanner systems now used by the TSA.

Huffington Post

After last month’s plot to send bombs from Yemen to the United States aboard a cargo plane, former U.S. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff’s whiskerless visage was ubiquitous on cable news. Solemnly warning that the nation needed stronger security procedures, Chertoff patiently repeated his talking points on ABC News’s “World News Tonight”, “Fox and Friends”, CNBC’s “Squawk Box” and Bloomberg TV.

Almost unmentioned in these appearances: Chertoff has a lot to gain financially if some of these measures are adopted. Between his private consulting firm, The Chertoff Group, and seats on the boards of giant defense and security firms, he sits at the heart of the giant security nexus created in the wake of 9/11, in effect creating a shadow homeland security agency. Chertoff launched his firm just days after President Barack Obama took office, eventually recruiting at least 11 top officials from the Department of Homeland Security, as well as former CIA director General Michael Hayden and other top military brass and security officials.

(Chertoff’s predecessor at DHS, Tom Ridge, has also parlayed his experience into a lucrative career. Since 2005, he has served on the board of Savi Technology, the primary technology provider for the Pentagon’s wireless cargo-monitoring network, and he has served as a senior advisor to TechRadium, Inc., a Texas-based security technology company.)

Chertoff’s clients have prospered in the last two years, largely through lucrative government contracts, and The Chertoff Group’s assistance in navigating the complex federal procurement bureaucracy is in high demand. One example involves the company at the heart of the recent uproar over intrusive airport security procedures — Rapiscan, which makes the so-called body scanners. Back in 2005, Chertoff was promoting the technology and Homeland Security placed the government’s first order, buying five Rapiscan scanners.

After the arrest of the underwear bomber last Christmas, Chertoff hit the airwaves and wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post advocating the full-body scanning systems without disclosing that Rapiscan Systems was a client of his firm. The aborted terror plot prompted the Transportation Security Agency to order 300 machines from Rapiscan. Yet last spring, the Government Accountability Office reported that, “It remains unclear whether [the scanners] would have been able to detect the weapon” used in the aborted bombing attempt. And according to a recent report by DHS’s Inspector General, the training of airport screeners is rushed and poorly supervised. 

Continue reading here…

Last week, two Republican congressmen took to the floor of the House to blast Chertoff and condemn the TSA’s security procedures. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) introduced legislation against the scanning equipment.

“Michael Chertoff!” Paul exclaimed on the House floor, as shown in the video below. “I mean, here’s the guy who was the head of the TSA, selling the equipment. And the equipment’s questionable. We don’t even know if it works, and it may well be dangerous to our health.”

The pertinent segment starts around 4:30:

Last Wednesday, Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) claimed that Chertoff gave interviews touting the scanners while “getting paid” to sell them. “There is no evidence these new body scanners make us more secure. But there is evidence that former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff made money hawking these full body scanners.”