The Border Boondoggle

So the final effect of securing the border was to increase the overall number of illegal immigrants staying permanently in the United States.

Therefore, the "problem," and the consequent need for more border protection, automatically increased with each appropriation by a Congress eager to show no less resolve in warding off the Mexican threat than it had in standing up to the Russians.

Now, however, we are moving into an era of serious money, set to surpass previous border-control initiatives by a wide margin. All those extra Border Patrol officers may be expensive, but as any general or admiral worth his salt will tell you, it's technology -- the more complex and "state of the art," the better -- that really runs up the bills and brings home the pork.

This trend is typified by the soaring surveillance towers, not to mention soaring cost, of SBInet (as in Safe Border Initiative), a high-technology surveillance system managed by Boeing. It's being marketed as a "virtual fence" that will detect intruders from Mexico and ultimately Canada. The fence employs radar, cameras, acoustic and other surveillance technology sensors. These are all linked by a complex computer network that theoretically will enable agents in some distant command post to monitor any and all illegal incursions and take appropriate action, including broadcasting high-volume warnings from tower-mounted loudspeakers.

One useful indication of where all this is headed can be found in the Army's ongoing Future Combat Systems program, also managed by Boeing. This $168 billion extravaganza of computers, sensors and robots is theoretically able to automatically detect and target battlefield threats, making it so deadly to a foe, its proponents claim, that it may be possible to dispense with armor on U.S. military vehicles.

Conceptually and in other ways, FCS and SBInet have much in common. Both are based on the notion that technology can confer total awareness of a situation, leading to the automatic destruction of an enemy tank or the apprehension of a would-be tomato picker sidling across the border. Both, furthermore, can trace their ancestry to the Vietnam War and the original electronic fence composed of thousands of sensors that was deployed at vast expense across the Ho Chi Minh Trail, in hopes of detecting and destroying supplies coming south for the Viet Cong.

Known as "McNamara's Wall" for then-Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, it never showed any sign of working and was quietly abandoned in 1970. As a memento, Pentagon analysts preserved the tape of a relay from one sensor, the smart rock of its day, faithfully transmitting the sound of some passing Viet Cong urinating on it.

Despite this sorry record, our border guardians love their electronic fences. Before SBInet, there was the 1990s-era Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System, ultimately shelved as a technical and financial disaster, complete with contractor rip-offs. Then came the more ambitious America's Shield Initiative, generating a similar result. Together, the two failed efforts cost $429 million.

SBInet, even more ambitious in design than its predecessors, was endorsed by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in 2005. The southern portion is projected to cost $7.6 billion by 2011. But Richard L. Skinner, DHS's inspector general, has reported that the cost could reach $30 billion. (Old Pentagon hands refer to this disparity between present and future costs as "front loading.") Boeing, the prime contractor, is largely being left to itself to define the program objectives. As the Government Accountability Office delicately reported earlier this year, the project's budget "lacked specificity" on "anticipated costs" and "expected mission outcomes," meaning that DHS has no idea what it will cost or what it will do.

Given such deficiencies, it seems safe to assume that $30 billion and more from now, migrants will still be sneaking in to mow our lawns and clean our discount stores, and that this ongoing threat will ensure ever-expanding rounds of spending. That's what "militarization of the border" is all about.

amcockburn@gmail.com

Andrew Cockburn is the author,

most recently, of "Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy."