Friday, July 21, 2006 | 7:46 a.m.
The failure of UNLV's embattled Institute for Security Studies to keep the Energy Department abreast of its changing counterterrorism mission over the last three years is threatening its federal funding.
The department's National Nuclear Security Administration informed the counterterrorism institute in writing this week that it has authority to withhold $5 million in unused funding if the institute does not comply with the terms of its original 2004 grant and explain why it has strayed from its objectives.
That warning comes after the institute, in a June 30 application for $2.5 million of that unused funding, told the Nuclear Security Administration that it has reorganized again. It said it has now washed its hands of its master's degree program in crisis and emergency management, the centerpiece of its promised academic mission, and placed it under the university's direct control.
The institute's pledge to focus on academics helped it to sell itself to the federal agency and university regents in 2003.
The Nuclear Security Administration's concerns about the way the institute has kept the federal agency in the dark were conveyed in a letter Wednesday to the UNLV Research Foundation, a nonprofit fundraising organization tied to UNLV that runs the institute.
Martha Youngblood, a contracting officer at the Nuclear Security Administration's service center in Albuquerque, said the institute has failed to file required progress reports explaining why it has changed direction.
"You are hereby directed to submit a corrective action plan that identifies the changes made to the original grant objectives, includes the necessary justification for the changes proposed and identifies the impact of the proposed amendment on the project," Youngblood wrote.
The institute, Youngblood said, has five business days to submit the plan to her agency.
The aura of secrecy surrounding the institute's operations was illustrated further in a heavily censored copy of the June 30 grant application that the university provided to the Sun at the newspaper's request. The copy is so heavily censored - to protect proprietary information, officials say - that it is impossible to determine precisely how the institute plans to spend the money. (Federal officials have an uncensored copy of the application.)
Regent Steve Sisolak, who oversees the audit committee of the Board of Regents, said he is troubled by the institute's latest attempt to conceal its activities. The regents and UNLV currently are auditing the institute.
"This is one of those 'trust me' deals, and right now I don't have much trust in them," Sisolak said. "This is taxpayer money. It doesn't grow on trees. We have an obligation to see that this money is being spent appropriately. This whole thing is beyond embarrassment."
Sisolak also said he is concerned that the institute seems to have abandoned its academic mission, suggesting that the regents might not have approved the organization's creation three years ago had they known that it would shift its direction in the way it has.
"I'm disappointed," he said. "This was their original mission when they came before us. Now they're divesting themselves of that responsibility, but they're trying to keep all the money."
The institute already has received more than $6 million in federal funds, not counting the $2.5 million in unused money it is seeking from the Energy Department. Although Congress previously earmarked those unspent dollars for the institute, the institute must formally apply to the Energy Department to receive the money.
In addition, the institute is in line to receive an extra $1.5 million under a government funding bill for fiscal 2007 that the Senate Appropriations Committee approved last month - money authorized with the understanding that it would be spent on academics.
Language inserted into the measure by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the institute's chief federal sponsor, pointedly took the institute to task for not fulfilling "its key mission objective of establishing an academic center of excellence on national security and terrorism-related issues."
Only one day later, however, institute officials did not follow that clear instruction in going after another pool of money - the unused $2.5 million, half of the $5 million awaiting release by the Energy Department.
In their June 30 application for the $2.5 million, institute officials informed the Nuclear Security Administration that the institute has been reorganized into "three major components" - administrative, advanced technology and training, assessments and readiness - none of which has anything to do with turning UNLV into a promised leading academic authority on homeland security.
All of the institute's operations, officials said, are "transitioning to UNLV's oversight" - a move that was supposed to have been made when the institute was approved by regents in 2003.
As of July 1, officials said, the stalled master's degree program, which produced 17 graduates from one pilot class, was turned over to UNLV's Public Administration Department. But the institute, officials said, still plans to pay its own academic director a $90,000 salary for another year and to work with UNLV in developing homeland security and counterterrorism programs and courses.
The institute's leaders went to great lengths in the application to describe its accomplishments, particularly in the field of training emergency responders.
But in the copy provided to the Sun, it blacked out large portions that explain why it is seeking the additional $2.5 million. More than half of the 26 pages were heavily censored.
Some of the censored pages refer to plans by the institute to develop a high-tech data collection system related to counterterrorism.
The institute also intends to design and provide training for a terrorism early-warning system to help law enforcement authorities improve surveillance and intelligence gathering, officials said.
And the institute said it wants more federal funds to beef up its disaster training for medical professionals being run in conjunction with University Medical Center.
How the institute intends to accomplish those objectives, however, could not be determined from the copy of the application given to the Sun.
UNLV General Counsel Richard Linstrom said some of the information on the application could not be disclosed "because it is deemed for official use only under federal law."
But while Linstrom said the blacked out information is proprietary in nature, he could not explain why it was proprietary or whether the information belongs to UNLV, the institute or any private companies.
Mark Rudin, UNLV's interim vice president for research and Graduate College dean, who is overseeing the institute's transition to the university, could not be reached for comment.
The Nuclear Security Administration has an uncensored copy of the application, but spokesman Darwin Morgan said his agency is barred from making it public until it decides whether to give the institute any of its funding.
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