Harman Blows Another $22 Million on Terror Panel

By a vote of 404 to 6, the House of Representatives passed a bill the other day to create a 10-member, $22-million "National Commission on the
Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism."

That flushing sound you hear is your taxpayer money going down the toilet.

As far as Congressional wastes of money go, the NCPVRT ("nick-pervert?") bill doesn't quite reach the level of Jack Murtha-scale pork. But that doesn't make it kosher. As *CQ's *national security editor Jeff Stein points out, the proposal was floated by House Homeland Security Intelligence Subcommittee chair Jane Harman (D-CA) -- reportedly in response to a 2005 plot to bomb synagogues in Los Angeles. Quoth a source close to the committee:

"She had to be seen doing something about it."

To give you an idea of what $22 million buys you in the way of just straight brainpower, you could hire about 70 contract analysts to work on this problem over the course of the commission's 18 month lifetime. That's 70 people actually studying, analyzing, filling knowledge gaps and possibly revealing new insights into the problem -- instead of ten figureheads and goodness knows how many subordinate staffers who will spend most of their time gathering up the data that those already working this mission have already assembled.

(Remember, we're already throwing $43.5 billion at issues like these.) The end result of this Congressional largess would be a glossy report repeating what is already known about self-radicalization and homegrown terrorism and a data dump to a university that would continue studying the problem.

Your author humbly suggests a more cost-effective and sustainable effort would channel the $22 million to a university now and prevent an 18-month taxpayer funded time sink. I'm not sure how fast your average university burns through cash, but I'm guessing that students work cheaper than contract analysts, and that $22 million would keep several years worth of students busy. A nice fringe benefit: dozens if not hundreds of new counterterrorism analysts with practical experience under their belts.

That's the difference between wanting to appear to do something about home-grown radicalism and actually doing something.

-- Michael Tanji, cross-posted at Haft of the Spear**____