More holes than Swiss cheese

I thought the Patriot Act and the wire tapping and the blahdy blah blah were all supposed to make our country a safer place. And yet, investigators were able to enter the U.S. (via the Mexican border) with enough radioactive material to make two "dirty bombs. From Reuters:

Two teams made simultaneous entries at the U.S.-Mexican border and the border with Canada carrying radioactive material in their vehicles in December 2005, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in the report on its investigation.

The congressional watchdog agency said the test was designed to examine potential weaknesses related to radiation monitors that have been installed at U.S. border ports of entry, the GAO said.

The monitors worked. But the investigators, posing as employees of a fictitious, still got past the border patrol with fake paperwork authorizing them to transport the material, the report said..

"The CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) inspectors never questioned the authenticity of the investigators' counterfeit bill of lading or the counterfeit NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) authorizing them to receive, acquire, possess and transfer radioactive sources," the GAO said in a letter to Sen. Norm Coleman, chairman of a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee.

"We believe the amount of radioactive sources that we were able to transport into the United States during our operation would be sufficient to produce two dirty bombs, which could be used as weapons of mass disruption," the letter said.

Mind you, this breaches in our border security happened in December. 2005. What if this was the real thing and not an investigation?

Feel safer yet?