Political marketing and dirty underwear

You just knew, somehow, underwear would make a threat against the homeland. Before the next great fashion designer begins marketing their Dirty Bomb Boxers, let’s look at a couple of points.

Perhaps nowhere in the modern english language is product identification more easily recognizable and associated with someone than the phrase homeland security and the name Michael Chertoff. Yes, you remember him. Well, he’s back.

This is irony. Before Chertoff’s rise to unchecked power within the the Bush administration, he served time as Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division of the Justice Department. Without going too far into the oxymoron arena, think about that: criminal and justice and Chertoff. Before you go taking everything out of context, think about this: he was able, thanks to herculean efforts, to trace the 9/11 attacks to al-Qaeda. Remember enemy combatants? War on terrorism? Dig deeper, how about the real war on terror, the Whitewater scandal?

Perhaps in his desire not to be upstaged by his pal Donald Rumsfeld and that connection to swine flu marketing, Chertoff is promoting the need for full body scanners in all of the nation’s major airports. This effort to expose those with dirty underwear is our nation’s latest solution to terrorism.

The Chertoff Group is a security consulting firm (a.k.a. risk management) that provides insight for companies interested in expanding into the the expanding market of homeland security. Whether you be a defense contractor or a private investor, it seems homeland security is a safe bet for the well-connected. States Chertoff: “We can’t afford to shift our attention, as a nation, away from security.” Thus Christmas day underwear. World travelers be damned.

First impressions tell a huge story, more so within the connection network. While not intimidating, the Chertoff Group website provides plenty of subtle implications. On their What We Do page comes this gem: Because no one makes better, calmer decisions in an emergency than someone who has done it hundreds of times before.  More irony lies within the paragraph just above that statement, the words “...whether true or fabricated...

Buckle up here. Currently there are 40 body scanners being used at 19 airports in the U.S. Because of a pair of underwear, expectations are that this number will skyrocket in the coming months. Since the Christmas day incident, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has informed us that another 300 scanners will be ordered. To date, I have been unable to determine the contract amount for these soon-to-be-ordered scanners.

However, California-based Rapiscan Systems provided the U.S. government with five scanners back in 2005, within months of Chertoff’s appointment as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Additionally, during the summer of 2009, TSA ordered another 150 scanners from Rapiscan, to the tune of $25 million USD. Rapiscan was the sole company to qualify for this contract, thanks to its use of advanced technology and quite possibly the wording on the contract bid. This money came from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and is exclusive of a $5 million contract coming from NATO “to provide an integrated security screening solution that includes advanced vehicle, cargo, baggage and personnel screening systems.” Although a new company, L-3 Communications is currently qualified for any future contracts, none have been awarded.

As of the time of this writing, I am still awaiting a reply from Andrew Goldsmith, Vice president of marketing for Rapiscan Systems, to help me identify the source of even more money in this apparently lucrative war on terror, a $3.2 million contract his firm was awarded to help provide security at the Vancouver Winter Olympics that will begin in February.

Says Chertoff, in a December 30, 2009 interview with CNN, as he beats the drum for his hi-tech scanning client, “We could deploy the scanning machines that we currently are beginning to deploy in the U.S. that will give us the ability to see what someone has concealed underneath their clothing.” More drumbeats as he states that the Christmas day underwear incident is “a very vivid lesson in the value of that machinery...”

There is an evil wind blowing through this country. Is it possible that America is the only place on the planet where, among all the absurdities, plastic box cutters and dirty underwear are used to destroy basic civil rights? Anybody home?