This article is very right about the lack of critical elements.What is interesting is the spin that the programs ended before the Department of Homeland of Security was created, and it is the DHS fault for not restarting it while they built an entire new agency out of the scraps from dozens of other places.
Building all this has not been easy and has included many mistakes. The good outweighs the bad, however, and things are getting better all the time. There is still a long way to go and this article points that out. I am kind of ticked about their approach, but they are the Times, and will find a way to slant things to make the Democrats look good.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/us/23helium.html?_r=1
The Department of Homeland Security has spent $230 million to develop better technology for detecting smuggled nuclear bombs but has had to stop deploying the new machines because the United States has run out of a crucial raw material, experts say.The ingredient is helium 3, an unusual form of the element that is formed when tritium, an ingredient of hydrogen bombs, decays. But the government mostly stopped making tritium in 1989.
"I have not heard any explanation of why this was not entirely foreseeable," said Representative Brad Miller, Democrat of North Carolina, who is the chairman of a House subcommittee that is investigating the problem.
An official from the Homeland Security Department testified last week before Mr. Miller's panel, the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Science Committee, that demand for helium 3 appeared to be 10 times the supply.
Some government agencies, Mr. Miller said, did anticipate a crisis, but the Homeland Security Department appears not to have gotten the message.
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