Editorial: Las Vegas, an invisible city

Thursday, April 20, 2006 | 7:41 a.m.

Homeland Security Department officials who cut Las Vegas from the list of cities that could apply for counterterrorism funding apparently failed to recognize much of what makes Las Vegas one of the world's top tourist destinations and, therefore, a target for terrorists.

Classified documents recently examined by a handful of Clark County officials, including Sheriff Bill Young, who met with the Las Vegas Sun's editorial board Wednesday, revealed that Homeland Security officials claimed that Las Vegas had no convention centers, no military bases and possessed a "limited number" of shopping malls.

Evidently the more than 6.1 million people who attend the more than 22,000 conventions hosted here annually are an illusion, as is the $7.6 billion in nongaming revenue they generate.

And Nellis Air Force Base - where the military tests and develops some of its most promising weapons - apparently wasn't included in the federal agency's assessment either.

Young told the Sun on Wednesday that federal officials arrived at their conclusion that Las Vegas was not at risk of a terrorist attack through a "very complicated formula" that "was done in a vacuum." Homeland Security Department officials "did not reach out much to Nevada," Young said.

What they did do, for all cities considered in all 50 states, was collect information from each state's Homeland Security point person and cull additional information from a collection of databases. But what they didn't do, Young said, was consult any of Southern Nevada's officials or even the Homeland Security person assigned to Las Vegas. The only Nevada contact was someone in Carson City who, Young said, "was contacted at 4 p.m. on a Friday and told they needed the information ASAP."

The result is that Homeland Security officials completely mischaracterized the Las Vegas Valley.

The Stratosphere, which at 1,100 feet is considered the tallest structure west of the Mississippi River, was listed as an amusement park, while the 600-foot-tall Wynn Las Vegas resort was listed as the valley's tallest building. (Had Homeland Security officials sized up the resort in person, perhaps one of them would have glanced across the street and noticed the giant spaceship-looking projector marking the entrance to the massive Fashion Show mall.)

When it came to listing stadiums or major sports arenas, the Las Vegas Motor Speedway wasn't even mentioned. Guess the estimated 130,000 NASCAR fans who show up there for a single race also are figments of our imagination, as is the fact that our city includes 12 of the world's 13 largest hotels.

And no mention was made, Young said, of the "two planeloads" of federal agents who descended on Las Vegas on New Year's Eve in 2003, suspecting a terrorist attack could occur.

"This is where the action is. This is where the (bulk of Nevada's) people live," Young told the Sun. "You can't convince me that Las Vegas isn't a city that's deserving of this (funding) in the future."

Without inclusion on Homeland Security's terrorist attack risk list, Las Vegas authorities can't apply for future grants. Programs to safeguard our city - the one that five of the Sept. 11 hijackers visited just months before their 2001 attacks - are in peril. And the more we know about how Homeland Security reached its conclusions about Las Vegas, the more we have to wonder how much the agency actually knows about assessing terrorist risks.