Chemical Security: DHS Should Provide Options for Voluntary Vetting of Facility Personnel for Terrorist Ties

Filed 23h ago · Via GAO · The Buffoon Desk

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Heavy Heart

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Myotus · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

A Government Accountability Office report finds that a Department of Homeland Security program requiring high-risk chemical facilities to vet staff against the terrorist watchlist lapsed in July 2023 and was never replaced. Vetting against the watchlist is a government-only function, so facilities now have no way to check their own workers for terrorist ties at all.

CISA staffing dedicated to chemical sector security dropped from 214 people in fiscal 2024 to just 52 in fiscal 2025, cutting most on-site facility assessments. DHS estimates more than 89 million people live or work within two miles of a high-risk chemical facility, and says a successful attack could cause damage comparable to a nuclear explosion.

GAO recommended CISA set up voluntary vetting options and seek new legal authority if needed. DHS did not agree with the recommendation, even as its own officials described the vetting gap as the most significant challenge facilities have faced since the program ended.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Here's a department that says a security gap could produce nuclear-explosion-level harm, and its answer is to shrug at its own watchdog's fix. Cutting the chemical security staff by three quarters while the danger stays the same size is the kind of arithmetic nobody would accept from a bridge inspector. When the agency in charge of the risk won't even nod along with the recommendation to lower it, you have to wonder who exactly they think is minding the plant gate.

Source: Read the original at GAO → Scored: Heavy Heart · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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