Editorial: An act of faith

Sunday, July 16, 2006 | 7:49 a.m.

UNLV's troubled Institute for Security Studies could get another $1.5 million in public money if it manages to deliver on promises to make the university an academic leader in homeland security issues.

According to a story in Friday's Las Vegas Sun, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has put the $1.5 million earmark in the Senate's energy and water appropriations bill for 2007, along with some terse language that puts the institute on notice. A portion of the bill says that the Senate Appropriations Committee "is concerned that (the institute) has not adequately fulfilled its key mission objective of establishing an academic center of excellence on national security and terrorism-related issues." The measure has been sent to the full Senate.

A story by the Sun in June showed that the three-year-old institute has received nearly $9 million in public money but hasn't lived up to expectations. Its master's degree program is on hold, and it has not produced a single advancement in counterterrorism technology.

Institute officials have dropped from its original objectives studies of terrorism's psychological and social effects, research about the relationship between terrorism and the Internet and the development of a laboratory to study organisms that can be used in weapons of mass destruction.

UNLV, the Board of Regents and the Nuclear Security Administration all are conducting audits of the program. Still, the institute remains in the process of applying for some of the $5 million Congress set aside for it last year, the Sun reported Friday.

We are withholding judgment on the institute's worth until after the audits of the program are completed. A full, accurate accounting of what taxpayers can expect to receive for their $9 million investment is needed to determine whether this program should continue.