Please find below an example of UPI's continuing coverage of Homeland Security and related issues. I hope you find it interesting. You may link to it on the web here:
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20041222-043312-8888r If you have any comments or questions about this piece, need any more information about UPI products and services, or want to stop receiving these alerts, please get in touch. Thank you, Shaun Waterman UPI Homeland and National Security Editor E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: 202 898 8081 Two audits examine DHS budget figures By Shaun Waterman UPI Homeland and National Security Editor WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- Two sets of auditors are reviewing the way costs and assets were apportioned among the 22 agencies merged into the Department of Homeland Security, amid claims from one that they were "shortchanged" by hundreds of millions of dollars. The investigations are the latest in a string that have examined the troubled finances of Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- the agency charged with hunting down money launderers, sanctions busters and human traffickers, and which is the sole enforcer of immigration laws inside the country. The agency is continuing a hiring freeze and a ban on all "non-mission critical" travel or other expenditure, instituted earlier this year because of serious budget over-runs. One investigation was commissioned by Homeland Security Chief Financial Officer Andrew Maner, in an effort to sort out competing claims about the way costs should be apportioned when one agency pays another's bills or provides legal or accounting services for another element of the department. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Dean Boyd said auditors from U.K.-based accountants Grant Thornton had completed their examination of the agency's books and were expected to look next at the records of other Department of Homeland Security agencies. "These issues are very, very complex," Boyd told United Press International. "Every agency is making claims about its costs and how the reimbursements should be done. ... Going forward, we want to ensure that this is resolved." The department's inspector general is also looking into the budget crisis at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Assistant Inspector General for Audit Richard Berman told UPI. Berman said the inspector general's report will be much wider-ranging than the Grant Thornton audit. "We will be looking at the whole question of exactly how (Immigration and Customs Enforcement's) budget problems arose and ... whether the actions taken in response have had a direct and serious effect on operations," he said. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have always insisted that operations were unaffected by the hiring freeze and other belt-tightening measures. But Berman said his office had "heard a lot of complaints ... from field offices" about the effect of the measures. "What were the effects on operations?" he asked. "That's what we aim to find out. It's an open question for us at this stage." The roots of the financial crisis at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Berman and other officials say, lie in the complex merger of 22 federal agencies from numerous departments into a single, but not yet coherent, whole. "We still consider Homeland Security to be in a start-up mode," Berman said, explaining that when the merger took place, many elements transferred from other departments did not have their own accounting or legal personnel or their own procurement systems. Immigration and Customs Enforcement "lost a lot of key staff" during and after the merger, said Berman. "They got way behind" with their accounts. There was also a lot of "cross servicing" between agencies, said Berman, with different elements of the department providing legal or other administrative functions for each other. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had to "use its own resources and its own budget to pay bills incurred on behalf of other elements of Homeland Security," he said. Disputes about the way those costs should be allocated dragged on throughout the 2004 financial year, Berman said. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ended up "not only behind the curve on their accounts, but with serious budget problems." It was only as the 2004 fiscal year ended Sept. 30 that Immigration and Customs Enforcement received a $500 million reimbursement. But some say this solves only half the problem. One government official familiar with the agency's predicament said that it had done badly in the way costs were allocated during the merger. As an example, the official cited the transfer of Customs special agents. "When Customs gave (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) the budget for the special agents they were transferring, they didn't transfer any of the overhead, just the base salary. There was no money there for training or travel or equipment," the official said, adding that the agency "started in the hole hundreds of millions of dollars" budget-wise. Those allocations, said Berman, are what Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials blame for their predicament. "That's where they say the problems come from," he said. "They believe they were shortchanged in the initial (budget) allocations." -- (Please send comments to [EMAIL PROTECTED]) Copyright � 2001-2004 United Press International ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $4.98 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/Q7_YsB/neXJAA/yQLSAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
