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its all about the money, plain and simple.
After the arrest of the underwear bomber last Christmas, (former U.S. Homeland Security chief Michael) 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.
In the past year and a half, $118 million in stimulus funds have been used to buy technology from Rapiscan, but all that money hasn't produced many jobs -- the ostensible purpose of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In fact, it accounts for only 84 positions, according to a HuffPost analysis of government data, meaning roughly $1.4 million was spent to create each job.
Rapiscan has upped its lobbying expenditures in recent years, spending $271,500 so far this year compared to $80,000 five years ago, USA Today reports.
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