Tuesday, June 20, 2006 | 2:24 a.m.
A three-year-old UNLV institute designed to create cutting-edge counterterrorism technology and research along with a master's degree program has yet to deliver fully on those promises, despite nearly $9 million in public money it has received.
According to a story by the Las Vegas Sun, the Institute for Security Studies in 2003 received Energy Department funding and approval by the Nevada Board of Regents on the basis of a seven-point mission that was to turn UNLV into one of the nation's leading academic authorities on homeland security and anti-terrorism technology.
Three years later, six of those seven objectives have hit the skids. The institute's master's program is on hold, and it has not produced a single advancement in counterterrorism technology. The study 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, all have been dropped from its original objectives.
The institute has cut ties with the university's outreach division, through which the institute was to offer education credits and training for emergency workers. Only one of the original seven objectives - to provide a forum for public discussion of homeland security issues - remains part of the institute's mission, at least on paper, the Sun reports.
The institute has managed to create full-time jobs for 14 former Nevada Test Site employees and military veterans, who draw annual salaries of $79,500 to $160,000. In addition to $8.9 million in mostly federal funding and the promise of another $5 million from Congress, the institute also landed a $500,000 Nevada Commission on Homeland Security contract to analyze the state's vulnerability to terrorist attacks.
The Sun reports that the lion's share of that amount, however, was handed off to a New Mexico consulting firm - one that just so happened to employ a former Nevada Test Site contractor, who shortly thereafter became the institute's No. 2 man.
The list of what the institute hasn't done is lengthy, while its achievements remain hazy. When asked by the Sun to provide a list of what has been accomplished with millions in public money, the institute's interim director, Thomas Williams, submitted a four-page list of goals and accomplishments, many of which officials later acknowledged had been misrepresented or exaggerated.
Sen. Harry Reid, who supported the institute's initial concept and funneled federal money its way, is concerned. "Unless they have some deliverables that I can see, they're not going to get any more money," Reid said. University system Chancellor Jim Rogers is calling upon UNLV's new president to launch an investigation. University regents Steve Sisolak and Mark Alden also are calling for an audit.
Strict oversight of this institute is long overdue. Its officials should provide a full, and accurate, accounting of where they have spent nearly $9 million in taxpayers' money. And while they are at it, perhaps they can give some reasons why this program should continue. So far they haven't produced even one of those, either.
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