Editorial: Institute’s new direction

Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2006 | 7:32 a.m.

In a story in the Las Vegas Sun on Tuesday, the UNLV Institute for Security Studies' new executive director, retired Army Maj. Gen. Scott Smith, acknowledged to reporter Jeff German that he hasn't worked with homeland security. But he does bring the troubled UNLV institute strong administrative skills and the knowledge to manage university-led research - key skills the institute's past leadership lacked.

A recent internal audit - prompted by a series of Sun stories over the summer that detailed the institute's shortcomings - showed that the institute's leadership had lost sight of its original goals regarding counterterrorism research. Despite critics' calls for an independent probe, the audit was performed by UNLV and revealed that record keeping was so poor that an outside auditor would have had a difficult time examining the institute's operations anyway.

The institute's secretive dealings were so poorly tracked that university auditors had trouble determining just how its leaders had spent much of the $8.9 million in public grants they had received in its three years of operation. The institute also has failed to meet its goals of creating a graduate-level program that would have made UNLV a leading academic authority on homeland security and has failed to develop any counterterrorism technology advances.

Smith told the Sun that hiring a financial manager and a business manager, to oversee the institute's record keeping and day-to-day operations, are among his first priorities. The fact that these are new positions for the institution helps illustrate why the lapses in paper trails and financial dealings existed.

The UNLV Institute for Security Studies may finally have the leader it needs to become one of the premier institutions for homeland security research and development. We certainly hope so, but only time will tell.