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DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano recently warned the nation about "home-grown terrorism," and for good reason: in addition to the Fort Hood shootings, authorities have uncovered a string of extremist plots, and a quartet of misfits from Northern Virginia were nabbed in Pakistan after allegedly attempting to find their way into a terrorist training camp.
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In hopes of squelching these sorts of threats, Napolitano has come up with such initiatives as re-deploying intelligence analysts from Washington to the heartland and sharing information with state and local governments in a more timely manner. In addition, there's a move afoot to improve ties between the government and Muslim communities.
Good ideas, but there's another serious home-grown problem for which Napolitano may have no ready solution: greed and corruption in the ranks of those charged with defending the homeland. Last week, for example, as ICE agents in California were helping to round up hundreds of foreign nationals with criminal records, a high-ranking official of that same agency, who for years had been a thorn in the side of drug smugglers on the southern border, pleaded guilty to obstructing justice by helping two Mexican drug traffickers avoid arrest. As the Arizona Republic noted: the conviction "comes amid a rise in criminal-corruption cases involving U.S. law-enforcement officials along the border, many involving Customs and Border Protection officials, who are tempted with bribes of money or sex to look the other way as smugglers move drugs and illegal immigrants into the country."
Consider some more recent goings-on: in Houston, an officer with the Citizenship and Immigration Services was charged with taking bribes for assisting applicants with their immigration paperwork. In Phoenix, a former Customs and Border Protection Officer pleaded guilty to attempting to bring illegal aliens into the US and accepting a bribe. Also in Phoenix, a Customs and Border Protection officer and his wife were each sentenced to federal prison terms after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery and conspiracy to import the drug ecstasy. In Texas, a probation officer pleaded guilty to receiving bribe payments from a drug trafficking organization to provide its members with confidential information from government records. In Dallas, a former sheriff's deputy was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for his role in a cocaine trafficking conspiracy.
But it's not just happening along the southern border. In Illinois, for example, a former ICE deportation officer pleaded guilty to federal charges of obstruction of justice and producing a fraudulent immigration document. In New York, two officers with the NYPD were arrested on charges of cocaine distribution and extortion. In Washington, a lawyer who worked as an FBI linguist pleaded guilty to providing a blogger with classified intelligence documents.
And for good measure we have the likes of Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner (and would-be head of DHS) who pleaded guilty to eight felonies. And a former Army colonel who was sentenced to five years for his role in a scheme to defraud the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. And a former Navy master chief petty officer who just earned four years in prison for his participation in a scheme to steal 10 million gallons of fuel from the US army in Iraq. If anyone thinks it's just government employees who are corruptible (not that any sane person would), there's this reminder: a program that grants trusted trucking companies faster access across American borders is being overrun by Mexican drug smugglers.
The ranks of those up to no good are, of course, small (how small is anyone's guess), but it takes just a few to undo the good work of the many. So Napolitano can institute a wide assortment of initiatives in hopes of thwarting home-grown terrorism, but there's still the matter of human nature -- i.e., greed, corruption, and the like -- that she has to confront. Good luck trying to get out front of that mess, Madame Secretary.
Alan Green was formerly editor of investigative projects at the Center for Public Integrity, in Washington, D.C. His books include Animal Underworld: Inside America's Black Market for Rare and Exotic Species, which chronicles such issues as the threats to human health posed by the trade in pet primates.
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