The BushCo culture of lies...

OK, it's one thing for military or quasi-military contractors to do anything from stretch the truth to outright lie about performance metrics related to their projects. Usually you don't see agency heads lying for them, though. But then again, this is BushCo, and they're used to telling Congress whatever they want and not being called on it. This time, it's over a surveillance system to be used along the US border:

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials have been lambasted by Congressmen after apparently attempting to conceal technical problems and programme slippages. ... The first trial of SBInet was to have taken place on June 13 at a 28-mile sector of the Mexico/Arizona border designated "Project 28". Boeing and DHS functionaries reported on SBInet to the Congressional Homeland Security Committee on June 7, and apparently everything was hunky-dory at that point.

But then, according to a report in Aviation Week, the SBInet scallywags apparently tried the old "oh, just one more thing," gambit. The next day they phoned the committee staff and said that, sorry, they'd forgotten to mention it, brain like a sieve, forget my own head next, erm - actually Project 28 won't go live on the 13th. It'll be the 20th, though, never fear.
...
In a letter to DHS head honcho Michael Chertoff, committee chairman Bennie Thompson (Democrat, Mississippi) and border subcommittee chairwoman Loretta Sanchez (Democrat, California) expressed their displeasure.

"It is difficult to believe that with problems of this magnitude, delays were not foreseeable at the June 7 hearing," grumbled the legislators. They asked Chertoff to come clean regarding SBInet, citing "failure to be forthcoming and the repeatedly slipping project deadlines".

(emphasis mine)

But the problem here is that Michael Chertoff, DHS Secretary, is the same piece of shit that lied point-blank to CNN during the storm, telling the world they didn't know about all the people stranded at the Morial Convention Center with no food, water, or shelter. Chertoff is used to living in this Cheney-induced "1984" universe where he can do and say whatever he pleases and nobody will call bullshit.

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