"It will help us hold meetings."

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Washington notables broke ground on the future home of the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday, symbolically starting construction on the biggest federal building project in the Washington area since the Pentagon 68 years ago.

The project will bring together more than 15,000 employees now scattered in 35 offices in the region, placing them on a 176-acre campus strewn with historic buildings in a long-neglected corner of Washington, five miles from the Capitol building.

Department leaders hope the $3.4 billion consolidation will help the department fulfill its core mission -- protecting the homeland -- in ways big and small.

"It will help us hold meetings," Secretary Janet Napolitano said. "It will help us build that culture of 'One DHS.'"

At the groundbreaking, political leaders shoveled dirt with care, but pitched historical references and metaphors with abandon.

"I do have a kind of paternalistic feeling towards DHS," said Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut, an early advocate for creating the department. "I feel like we've finally given a home to this child we've created, which is finally reaching maturity."

read more @ cnn
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/09/homeland.security.headquarters/


oh by the way....

homeland security marked by waste, lack of oversight

Soon after hijackers obliterated the World Trade Center towers eight years ago, Marin County received more than $100,000 in surveillance equipment to keep its water treatment system safe from a terrorist attack.

But four years after the funds were awarded, state authorities found more than $67,000 worth of the gear still boxed in its original packaging.

It had never been used.

The rest of the homeland security money went toward an alarm system to protect remote tank and pump sites. Because of the region’s hilly terrain, the system didn’t even work.

The Marin County example is not an isolated one. Under the state’s open-records laws, California Watch found scores of instances of wasteful spending, purchasing violations, error-prone accounting and shoddy oversight at agencies across the state during the years immediately following 9/11.

read more @ center for investigative reporting