NYT: How 2 Firings Upended Army-MTA Security Program(NYC transit security)

[DeepModem Mom]

How Two Firings Upended Army-M.T.A. Security Program
By SEWELL CHAN
Published: July 12, 2005

The idea seemed ambitious and innovative at the time. In early 2002, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, eager to respond to post-Sept. 11 worries over terrorism, started negotiations with a specialized Army unit to help develop novel security measures for the New York City transit system.

Over many months, there was talk of using of motion detectors, infrared sensors and sophisticated software to protect a wide range of infrastructure, from subway tunnels and bus depots to bridges and tunnels. The office of the deputy secretary of defense, Paul D. Wolfowitz, even signed off on the collaboration, which would have involved some of the Army's most sophisticated technologies.

Then, the discussions suddenly ended, in ruins. The transportation authority's top security officials, who had taken the lead in the negotiations, were fired, in an unrelated episode, after they made public accusations of corruption against other authority officials. And then the new security chief at the authority examined the proposal and walked away.

The costs of the detour were paid not in money, but in time - a year and a half lost as cities around the country moved ahead in implementing security measures and as train bombings in Moscow and Madrid highlighted the need for an aggressive, even radical, rethinking of transit security.

Since 2002, when the authority announced it had $600 million on hand to spend on hardening the transit system against terror threats, it has spent only about $30 million. There are, officials inside and outside the authority said, many reasons for the pace of the modest progress. The ultimately abandoned deal with the Army is one of the more dramatic of those reasons....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/12/nyregion/12mta.html