Probe Faults System for Monitoring U.S. Borders

By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 11, 2005; Page A01

A critical network of cameras and sensors installed for the U.S.
Border Patrol along the Mexican and Canadian borders has been hobbled
for years by defective equipment that was poorly installed, and by
lax oversight by government officials who failed to properly
supervise the project's contractor, according to government reports
and public and industry officials.

The problems with the $239 million Integrated Surveillance
Intelligence System (ISIS), which U.S. officials call crucial to
defending the country against terrorist infiltrators, are under
investigation by the inspector general of the General Services
Administration.

That probe, into whether government officials allowed the contractor
to cut corners on the project and receive huge overcharges during its
eight-year lifetime, could lead to administrative or criminal
charges, the officials said. Perhaps tens of millions of dollars were
wasted, the GSA suggested.

Many irregularities were documented in a scathing GSA inspector
general's report, released in December, which cited millions of
dollars in potential overcharges by the contractor, International
Microwave Corp. (IMC), as well as the record of U.S. officials paying
for work never performed.

The investigation focuses in part on IMC's employment of the daughter
of Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.), a former Border Patrol official and
key backer of the system of 12,000 sensors and several hundred
cameras installed for the Border Patrol between 1998 and last year,
officials said. There is no indication that Reyes took part in any
impropriety, they said.

Investigators are looking into the past activities of the Connecticut-
based firm, as well as the actions of some current and former
officials of the Border Patrol; its former parent agency, the
Immigration and Naturalization Service; and GSA.

Many of the ISIS cameras, which are placed on 50- to 80-foot poles,
break down frequently. The wiring of the electronic system on the
Canadian border with Washington is so slapdash that cameras there
often jerk randomly in warm weather.

"The contractor sold us a bill of goods, and no one in the Border
Patrol and INS was watching," said Carey James, the Border Patrol
chief in Washington state until 2001. "All these failures placed
Americans in danger."

Controversy about the project led U.S. officials to stop almost all
work on ISIS about 16 months ago, officials said.

Officials at the Department of Homeland Security, now the parent of
the Border Patrol, acknowledge that there were serious technical and
oversight problems with the ISIS program.

Homeland Security officials say the ISIS network of cameras and
sensors is helpful in spotting intruders and guiding border agents in
hot pursuit, but needs to be expanded. It covers only a few hundred
miles of the 6,500-mile Canadian and Mexican borders, and can be
evaded by crossing the border where there is no ISIS gear.

Roger Schneidau, who helps run the Border Patrol's electronic barrier
programs, said that "there are sites in varying need of repair," but
that in places where the equipment is available and working, "it's
incredibly useful to agents."

Anthony Acri, IMC's president until 2003, said ISIS is well-built and
was a good investment for taxpayers. He said oversight by U.S.
officials was proper and effective. Acri said that the halt in work
on ISIS "is very dangerous for our country."

Many -- but not all -- of the system's problems have been resolved in
the past year by repair work done by L-3 Communications Holdings
Inc., a New York firm that bought IMC in 2003, officials said. L-3
officials fired some IMC executives, including Acri, industry
executives said.

Waste and Dysfunction

The story of ISIS, designed to monitor the large swaths of the
nation's borderlands that agents cannot physically protect, is a tale
of wasted taxpayer money and bureaucratic dysfunction.

The GSA inspector general's report said official inattention to the
system "placed taxpayers' dollars and . . . national security at
risk." A GSA inspection of eight Border Patrol zones found that $20
million had been paid to IMC for work there but that none of its
camera systems was fully operating.

Near Buffalo, IMC billed the government for 59 cameras but only four
were installed, and in Naco, Ariz., unassembled high-tech gear was
found lying in the desert, the report said. "No IMC personnel had
been on-site since the equipment was delivered" in 2003, the report
added.

The most troubled part of ISIS was in Washington state, where the
more than 64 cameras fogged up in cold and rain and sometimes broke
down completely, according to Border Patrol officials and the GSA
report. IMC-hired workers had done such shoddy wiring of fiber-optic
cable at junction boxes that Border Patrol operators couldn't control
the cameras, according to the officials and documents. Electrical
wires were found corroding under water in supposedly sealed concrete
vaults, they said.

The GSA report found that IMC was paid about $1 million up front to
install 36 poles to hold multiple cameras in Washington state, but in
fact had installed only 32. Contract documents executed by both GSA
and the company "misrepresented the work that was actually
furnished," it said.

It was common, the GSA report said, for the government to pay
IMC "for shoddy work . . . [or] for work that was incomplete or never
delivered."

IMC's Acri said the Washington project was "a nightmare" but blamed
it on miscommunications with Border Patrol officials. L-3 has fixed
many of the problems there recently, but Border Patrol agents still
complain of malfunctions and blind spots.

The GSA inspector general's report also sharply criticized operations
at a Border Patrol repair center in New Mexico staffed by two Border
Patrol officials and 19 IMC employees. Many Border Patrol agents
complained that repairs on the ISIS equipment they sent there took
months to complete.

The GSA report said "little or no work" was done at the center in the
previous year, even though IMC billed the government for $500,000
during that time. The report said millions of dollars in IMC
overcharges might have occurred there.

The Border Patrol official who ran the center, David Watters,
acknowledged he had a brother and a niece who worked for IMC. But he
said his relatives' jobs did not affect his dealings with the company.

Watters said that the GSA report was unfair and that the center's
slowdown in repairs was caused by the halt in ISIS work. IMC's Acri
disputed some of the GSA's findings, saying it failed to accept his
assertions that IMC did not profit improperly.

The GSA report and numerous government and industry executives said
Border Patrol, INS and GSA officials -- most of whom lacked
experience on complex contracts -- often deferred to IMC in deciding
what equipment to buy and how much IMC should be paid. The GSA report
said IMC's contracts with the government lacked detail, "thereby
leaving interpretation of the government's needs up to the
contractor."

"Government officials failed miserably to do their job," said Tim
Golden, an IMC subcontractor on the program who later had a falling
out with IMC. "It's incomprehensible how inept they were."

Many ISIS documents were drawn up in such a way that IMC was paid up
front, and escaped financial liability if its performance was
disputed, said the GSA report and U.S. officials.

Over the objections of Border Patrol officials, INS official Walter
Drabik chose cameras distributed by a firm called ISAP. U.S.
officials and contractors said IMC had bought the ISAP firm without
disclosing it to U.S. officials. This allowed IMC to buy cameras from
its own subsidiary, substantially increasing profits. Undisclosed
self-dealing could be illegal.

The GSA report said officials' lax oversight of IMC's purchases of
cameras and other gear "created a potential for overpayments of
almost $13 million."

Acri and Drabik denied the allegations of overcharges, and both said
Acri informed Drabik of IMC's purchase of the ISAP firm.

Family Ties

Drabik launched ISIS in 1996, a few months after the arrival in
Washington of Rep. Reyes, a strong proponent of placing cameras on
the border. Drabik chose the Alaska-based Chugach Development Corp.
to install the system, and in 1999 he helped select IMC for a $2
million contract to succeed Chugach.

Drabik said in an interview that he recommended that first Chugach,
then IMC, hire Rebecca Reyes, the congressman's daughter, as liaison
to the INS. Both did so. Rebecca Reyes, 33, ultimately became IMC's
vice president for contracts, and ran the ISIS program.

In 2001, her brother, Silvestre Reyes Jr., a former Border Patrol
employee, was hired by IMC as an ISIS technician. He quit a few years
later to form his own company.

A spokesman for L-3, where Rebecca Reyes now works, said she declined
to comment, and her brother did not return repeated telephone calls
seeking comment.

Rep. Reyes said that he never interceded with U.S. officials to help
IMC win a contract and that he helped IMC retain congressional
funding because he believes cameras "are an important part of our
ability to defend the borders."

L-3 chief executive Frank C. Lanza said, "We have concluded Ms. Reyes
hasn't done anything wrong or criticizable" at L-3. A Chugach
spokesman declined to comment because the firm's executives who
worked with Rebecca Reyes have left the firm.

Drabik said that he maintained an arms-length relationship with IMC
and that he is proud of his achievements on ISIS. "The contracting
procedures were all straight," he said.

In 2000, Drabik was removed from his job running ISIS. Drabik said
during that period he had been investigated by superiors who
expressed discomfort over his close dealings with IMC. But he denied
that was the reason for his removal.

About that time, Congress threatened to eliminate the ISIS program,
and IMC turned to Rep. Reyes and other allies to help rescue it,
IMC's Acri said. Within months, INS and GSA officials granted IMC a
contract expansion worth $200 million, with no competitive bidding.

Early last year, a small group of Border Patrol officials drew up
plans for a far more ambitious multibillion-dollar project under
which a contractor would cover the nation's land borders with an
expanded network of cameras, sensors and high-tech devices.

The new project, called America's Shield Initiative, was
enthusiastically endorsed in Congress and by the Bush administration.

"We've identified the problems; they're very evident," the Border
Patrol's Schneidau said. "We're taking steps to prevent them from
happening again."