Thread by @pleasesaveour

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The Trump administration has quietly dismantled or cut back multiple programs that were created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to help detect and prevent terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction

latimes.com/politics/story…

More than 30 current and former Homeland Security employees and contractors voiced concern that the changes — including the cancellation of dozens of training exercises and the departure of scores of scientists and policy experts — have put Americans at greater risk.

“What we

had done in the past was analytically based: Where are the threats? Where can we get the most return on the taxpayers’ investment for security?”

“We’re not as secure as we were 18 months ago,”

Among the programs gutted since 2017, however, was an elite Homeland Security

“red team,” whose specialists conducted dozens of drills and assessments around the country each year to help fed, state and local officials detect such potential threats as an improvised nuclear device concealed in a suitcase, a cargo ship carrying a radiation-spewing dirty bomb

Operations Support Directorate had helped lead up to 20 WMD-related training exercises each year with state and local authorities. The directorate participated in less than 10 such exercises last year and even fewer so far this year

Experts at Homeland Security’s National

Technical Nuclear Forensics Center had worked with counterparts throughout the gov to strengthen detection and tracing capabilities that might deter a hostile foreign state from slipping radiological or nuclear material to terrorists.

The center has been reduced to a shell

International Cooperation Division, which worked closely with foreign counterparts and the UN nuclear watchdog agency to track and stop the smuggling of dangerous nuclear materials overseas, has been disbanded.

Also cut back was the use of specialized, mobile detection units to

help protect large public events from nuclear and radiological threats.

For the first time in years Homeland Security did not send a unit to protect the NCAA Final 4 college basketball championship in April in Minneapolis or to an annual hot air balloon festival in Albuquerque

Homeland Security also has halted work to update a formal “strategic, integrated” assessment of chemical, biological and nuclear-related risks. The assessment had previously analyzed millions of potential WMD threat scenarios.

Overall, more than 100 scientists and policy experts

specializing in radiological and nuclear threats have been reassigned or left to take jobs unrelated to their expertise undermining the department’s ability to protect the nation from devastating attacks.

“You keep the country safe by empowering state and local first responders who are out and about 24/7, 365 [days a year],”

“The real thing could happen tomorrow with no warning, and the only practice our defenders are going to have is through these ‘red team’ studies and actual

exercises. That activity is necessary to ensure even basic competence”

The changes have undermined the US gov's multi-agency commitment since 2006 to build and maintain a “global nuclear detection architecture”

@maddow @SenBlumenthal @SenatorDurbin
latimes.com/politics/story…