anti-terrorism

The nation has committed billions of dollars to improving homeland security since 2001, including large sums awarded to states in preparedness grants. In this CIR web exclusive map, reporter G.W. Schulz reports how authorities in each state have managed, or mismanaged, anti-terrorism funds from the federal government. Click on each state to learn more, and to download source documents obtained through state open records laws. Follow our ongoing coverage on CIR's homeland security blog: Elevated Risk

>> Launch interactive map.

MAP PRODUCED BY SHIMRIT BERMAN AND CARRIE CHING

This unique multimedia investigation uncovers in unnerving detail the post-9/11 marriage of private data services and government anti-terror initiatives. Led by Robert O’Harrow, Jr., award-winning reporter for The Washington Post and an associate of CIR, “No Place to Hide” shows how the government now depends on burgeoning private reservoirs of information about almost every aspect of our lives to protect homeland security and fight the war on terror.

With unrivaled access, “No Place to Hide” tells the inside stories of key players in this new world – from software inventors to counterintelligence officials – and examines the impact of the new security system on our traditional notions of civil liberties, autonomy and privacy. This eye-opening examination takes readers, viewers and listeners behind the walls of secrecy to show how we are rushing towards a surveillance society with few rules to guide and protect us. In this new world of high-tech domestic intelligence, there is literally no place to hide.

* * *

READ No Place to Hide, by Robert O’Harrow, Jr., published by Free Press (division of Simon & Schuster). Available now in paperback.

LISTEN to “No Place to Hide,” produced by John Biewen and Robert O’Harrow for American RadioWorks. Begins airing on public radio stations Wednesday, Jan. 12th.

WATCH "Peter Jennings Reporting: No Place to Hide," produced by Peter Bull for PJ Productions. Airs on ABC at 10 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 20th. Buy a copy of the documentary.

VISIT the “No Place to Hide” web site to:

• Learn more about each of the multimedia components.


• Read a book excerpt.


• Listen to the radio documentary, buy the book, and read more of O'Harrow's reporting for the Washington Post.


• Read interviews from the radio and television documentaries.


• Join us for upcoming No Place to Hide screenings and events in New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.

This project was made possible in part by support to the Center for Investigative Reporting from the Ford Foundation, Deer Creek Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

FRONTLINE, the weekly PBS television series, investigates the new front in the war on terror: Europe. Now home to 18 million Muslims — which some call "Eurabia" — the continent is a challenge to intelligence services on both sides of the Atlantic, exacerbated by political divisions over the Iraq War. In this joint multimedia project between the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's documentary program "the fifth estate", The New York Times and FRONTLINE, Lowell Bergman examines the alarming threat radical Salafist jihadists pose to Western Europe and its allies including the United States.

The Center for Investigative Reporting provided support to reporter Marlena Telvick for her contributions to the program's companion website at PBS.org. Telvick edited and produced the online project along with FRONTLINE's web editors and authored two stories, "Al Qaeda Today: The New Face of the Global Jihad," and a second, a look at why some Muslims are becoming radicalized in Europe.

Reporting for "Al Qaeda's New Front" was done as a project of the Investigative Journalism for Print and Television Seminar at the University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, taught by Lowell Bergman and Rob Gunnison. Reporting by students helped inform the on-camera interviews, and more extensive articles by them are featured on the FRONTLINE Web site.

"Contracting Rush for Security Led to Waste, Abuse." The headline of the Washington Post's lead story on May 22, 2005 was an eye-opener. Over the course of a 15-month investigation, veteran Post investigative reporters Scott Higham and Robert O'Harrow, Jr. had uncovered case after case of mismanagement and misuse of taxpayers' money by the U.S. government in its post-9/11 sprint to tighten national security. Their odyssey began with a tip from legendary Post reporter (now assistant managing editor) Bob Woodward. It led them to a secret world where politics, business and homeland security intersect to produce profit for a chosen few -- without necessarily making the country safer.

When Woodward told the investigative desk about a call from an unnamed source who claimed serious flaws in the way the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does business, Higham and O'Harrow were assigned to the story. They learned, through a second anonymous tip, that a federal audit of the Transportation and Security Administration's (TSA) contracts contained evidence of some $700 million in misspending by companies hired by the agency to implement national safety programs -- and that many of these new systems simply did not work. But the contents of the audit were a closely held secret, and attempts to obtain other records were denied repeatedly. The reporters realized that federal contracts representing billions of tax dollars are cloaked in secrecy. Experienced in cultivating confidential sources, Higham found out the caller's identity and persuaded the person to meet with them face-to-face -- and provide a copy of the TSA audit.

With the audit in hand, the reporters had a virtual roadmap of abuse of the federal contracting system. It also became clear to them that Homeland Security, in its effort to meet Congress's demand for anti-terrorism measures in the chaotic weeks after 9/11, provided little if any oversight of the projects on which it had spent millions.

A company called Eclipse Events Inc., for example, was contracted to provide logistics for the hiring of airport screeners. The Post reported that, according to auditors, "$15 million in expenses submitted by Eclipse could not be substantiated." The paper also revealed that Eclipse's owner paid herself more than $5 million for nine months' work before taking a $270,000 pension. The major global consulting firm Accenture and its subcontractors were awarded a 10-year deal worth up to $10 billion to develop "a 'virtual border' that would electronically screen millions of foreign travelers." The system, the Post reported, is marred by obsolete technology and "a fingerprint system that does not use the government's state-of-the-art biometrics standard."

Higham and O'Harrow arranged to meet with Michael P. Jackson, Deputy Secretary of DHS, to get the agency's response to the allegation that it was authorizing rampant spending of tax dollars with little oversight. The Post reported that "Jackson praised government employees and said their efforts have made the country safer. But Jackson acknowledged that 'there were problems, and significant ones,' with some contracts."

The Post team also discovered a web of connections between Kentucky Congressman Hal Rogers (R-KY) -- the powerful leader of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security -- and businesses that bid for federal contracts. In one case, a company moved part of its business into Rogers' district and was later awarded a lucrative government contract.