The Department of Homeland Security’s New HQ is an Abandoned Insane Asylum
public intelligence.net, 26 September 2011
Five miles southeast of the gleaming Capitol dome, on a scenic bluff overlooking the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers, the future office of the secretary of Homeland Security sits boarded up and abandoned.
Four years ago, U.S. officials announced plans to renovate the dilapidated, castle-like structure —opened in 1855 as the Government Hospital for the Insane — to anchor Washington’s largest construction project since the Pentagon was built 70 years ago.
The goal was to unite on a single campus the 22 agencies that were stitched together to form the Department of Homeland Security after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
But the $3.4-billion headquarters project stalled as Congress tried to cut the federal deficit.
Phi Beta Iota: There is no evidence that in the meantime, the CIA is using the facility as a secret prison for US citizen dissidents. As clear as it is to the public that DHS needs to be eliminated immediately, DHS has clearly not gotten the memorandum. We believe there will be a one-third cut in federal funding and federal employment beginning in 2012. The current leadership of the two parties, of Congress, and of the Executive appears to be grotesquely out of touch with reality, out of control, and operating completely against the public interest.
