Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee and a senior Republican colleague voiced grave doubts Thursday about the viability of BioWatch, the nation’s system for detecting biological attacks that has been plagued by false alarms. Committee members endorsed a new report from the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, that bluntly faulted the Department of Homeland Security’s management of BioWatch and recommended that contracting for a multibillion-dollar overhaul be halted while plans are reevaluated. Lawmakers reacted skeptically to assurances that Homeland Security officials would indeed reassess the next phase of BioWatch, called Generation 3.
Security Debrief is a blog dedicated to homeland security, terrorism and counter-terrorism, intelligence and law enforcement that provides context to the debates, policies and politics that are playing out in Washington, D.C.
