Chabad Wants Security Grant

by Mike McAndrew / The Post-Standard

In the past four years, the federal government has given $64 million in grants to nonprofit groups it considers at risk of attack from international terrorists.

But is that the best use of the nation’s Homeland Security money?

The groups that won grants have not been threatened or attacked. In fact, federal auditors critical of the program said in 2006 that experts knew of no threats of foreign terrorism against any nonprofit.

The grant program was born after Sept. 11, 2001, when Congress feared al-Qaida would strike again. Lawmakers spent hundreds of billions of dollars on security.

Eight years after the attacks, international terrorists have not attacked nonprofits in the United States. The Department of Homeland Security does not claim the taxpayer-funded security cameras and other improvements helped prevent violence. Still public money continues to flow to private religious organizations.

New York, which received more money from the Urban Areas Security Initiative Nonprofit Security Grant Program than any other state, kept the nonprofit recipients’ identities a secret until The Post-Standard independently obtained that information.

Nearly 70 percent of the grants awarded to New York nonprofits were given to Jewish organizations, including synagogues, private schools and community organizations.

No Syracuse-area nonprofit received money.

When the Department of Homeland Security spends another $15 million in September, two Syracuse nonprofits hope to receive about $60,000 each: Temple Adath Yeshurun, a synagogue in DeWitt, and Chabad-Lubavitch of Central New York, a Jewish worship center in Syracuse’s university neighborhood.

“I wouldn’t say there’s an immediate danger,” Rabbi Yaakov Rapoport said of the Chabad House. “But based on what just happened in New York … there would seem to be a need to ensure the safety of the people who come here.”

He was referring to the May 20 arrest of four Newburgh, Orange County, men who plotted to plant bombs outside two synagogues in the Bronx.

Last Sunday, Gov. David Paterson announced that the two congregations would be awarded $25,000 each from the grant program.

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who appeared with Paterson at the news conference, said she’s requested $25 million more for the program because fewer than half of applicants received money this year.

But the Bronx case, according to one security expert, is no endorsement for the spending.

The FBI prevented the Bronx bombings because an informant tipped off law enforcement authorities about the conspiracy, said William Banks, director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism at Syracuse University.

“There’s a very slight chance of something horrible happening. You can’t do a very reliable risk assessment because you don’t have reliable data to build any kind of report,” Banks said.

“I don’t think spending a lot of money to secure facilities is a good payoff. Investments in good intelligence and police work and law enforcement information-sharing might be more valuable than hardening targets that are unlikely to be hit,” he said.

New York’s Jewish nonprofits received most of the grants because they submitted more applications, said Amy Bonanno, a spokeswoman for New York’s Office of Homeland Security, which reviews the applications. Other targets of terrorism — abortion clinics, gay rights organizations, African-American groups or animal research clinics, for instance — did not apply, she said.

“You have to make the case that there’s an international terrorism risk or threat there,” she said.

None of the grant winners in 2005 claimed their facilities in the United States were threatened or attacked by terrorists, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found in an audit.

“DHS officials stated that, according to federal law enforcement and the federal intelligence community, there were no known credible threats against nonprofit organizations,” the GAO wrote in 2006.

Some nonprofits received grants because they had been victims of vandalism, while others were deemed to be at risk because terrorists threatened or attacked an affiliated group in a foreign country.

Some state and local Homeland Security officials told the GAO that helping the nonprofits was a comparatively low priority, according to the GAO report.

A DHS spokeswoman declined to comment on the GAO’s criticisms.

Congressional history

The grant program was created by Congress in 2004 near the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

President George W. Bush proposed the Department of Homeland Security receive $40 billion in 2005, including $1.4 billion in grants for urban areas most at risk from terrorists, but no funding for nonprofits.

U.S. Sens. William Frist, Arlen Specter and Hillary Rodham Clinton pushed for $50 million for nonprofits.

“The assistance is intended for basic security enhancements to protect American citizens from car bombs and other lethal terrorist attacks,” Specter told his colleagues in 2004.

Initially, the House and Senate did not approve the money.

But Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., then chairman of the appropriations subcommittee overseeing Homeland Security funding, added $25 million for nonprofits into the final budget bill.

Congress authorized more money for nonprofits every year since, except for 2006.

New York’s grants

The federal government has awarded nearly $15 million to 218 nonprofits in New York. Nearly all of that went to New York City area organizations. The only Upstate grant winners were two nonprofit hospitals in the Buffalo area.

Fifty-one synagogues in New York won grants. Three churches received grants.

For years, New York declined to identify the recipients. Bonanno, the state’s spokeswoman, explained that disclosure could put those nonprofits at greater risk.

But after The Post-Standard pointed out that most of the recipients of the 2007 and 2008 grants were listed in a database of state government contracts on the Office of Comptroller’s Web site, the Office of Homeland Security provided the complete list.

The state publicized the availability of the 2009 grants in the State Register, on the state Homeland Security Web site, and by e-mailing notices to local emergency management officials, Bonanno said.

Then it assigned the task of scoring the applications to local officials in Urban Area Working Groups in New York, Syracuse, Albany, Buffalo and Rochester.

Pete Alberti, the Onondaga County director of emergency management, led a small committee responsible for scoring the two applications from Onondaga, Oswego and Madison counties.

Rapoport’s Chabad House seeks $61,876 to install blast-resistant windows, security cameras and other improvements. The organization should get the money because in November terrorists killed six people, including a rabbi, at a Chabad House in Mumbai, India, Rapoport said.

No terrorists have threatened the Ostrom Avenue house in the 28 years he has been the rabbi, Rapoport said. He said he is not convinced security cameras or blast-resistant windows will stop a suicide bomber. But Rapoport said the federal government wastes more money on less-important issues.

Temple Adath Yeshurun wants $52,997 to install security lighting and cameras. It said it is at risk because a 74-year-old Georgia woman and her daughter disrupted services Sept. 8, 2007.

Judy Overby, who claims she receives visions from God, declared that day that a temple was going to be destroyed. She was convicted of disturbing a religious service and falsely reporting an incident.

Meanwhile, Syracuse-area nonprofits that have been victims of domestic terrorism have not received the grants.

Weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, Gobind Sadan, a Sikh temple in Central Square, was burned to the ground by a group of Oswego County youths who mistakenly believed the temple supported Osama Bin Laden.

“We did not apply for any grant from the government as we do not know about anything regarding the grants,” said Gurbachan Singh, chairman at Gobind Sadan, which has rebuilt.