Letters

One for All

"London Lessons" (Aug. 1) details the bureaucratic problems that fail to protect us from terrorist threats. Do you think the Homeland Security Department is actively pursuing terrorism investigations? If you answer yes, then you are wrong. Terrorism investigations have come to a halt at DHS because the Justice Department wrestled authority away from DHS two years ago.

This took from the fight several thousand dedicated special agents. They were investigating the terrorist culture within legitimate U.S. communities and the crimes that financed their acts.

Unity was evident after Sept. 11, 2001, when all agencies worked toward a common objective. Two years later, the Justice Department put an end to DHS' ability to freely conduct investigations into the financing of terrorist operations. The few remaining DHS cases have run into problems with Justice's bureaucratic procedures.

I have to believe that the administration is doing all it can to stop domestic terrorism. I have to believe that the Patriot Act is working, because it has allowed the intelligence community to take a more active role in sharing information. What concerns me is that the world's best intelligence agencies had no effect in London.

What convinces us that we can do any better? Our government owes it to the American public to display a course of action to prevent the same acts from occurring here. Until then, we are in jeopardy of waiting for the next attack in one of our cities and then pointing fingers once again.

I lost many friends on 9/11, including my mother. Many agree that politics has weakened our federal unity and we risk being blind to another attack.

Human Error

"The Perfect Candidate" (July 1) showed that the government hiring process is mediocre at best and overdue for an overhaul. But several points were missing.

Some HR specialists like things the way they are because they can manipulate knowledge, skills and abilities in ways that will guarantee relatives and other politically connected applicants get hired.

Many HR specialists have no credentials beyond a high school diploma, and that is why a Harvard graduate gets ranked with everyone else.

Managers don't want to hire staff with more credentials and experience than they have, which leads to ego versus ego and a loss of productivity. Federal managers like to hire people they can control. There are exceptions, but I know of 10 to 15 professionals who left government because of conflicts with incompetent managers, largely because the employees were more qualified than their bosses.

And the biggest reason for a faulty hiring system: Congress and the federal budget. Thousands of federal workers have job titles that cannot be justified. They are not doing anything remotely related to their job title. When is a chemist, economist, policy analyst or manager truly what their title implies? Only time will tell.

Correction

In the July 15 issue, "America's Spies" in The Buzz incorrectly stated that the Army released the Full Spectrum Warrior video game. Published by THQ Inc., the product is a commercial version of a game developed solely for the Army by the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California. Only America's Army games, produced by the Army Game Project at West Point, are published as official Army games.