It wasn't the first red flag Bivens raised. And it wasn't the last, he testified Monday.
Bivens told a state Senate committee that he and his superiors warned repeatedly that information provided to Powers' office by a private Philadelphia-based intelligence contractor was often inaccurate and almost always useless.
Worse, Bivens told the Senate Veterans and Emergency Preparedness Committee, Powers' office was circulating the contractor's intelligence alerts to as many as 800 law enforcement and other officials, causing undue alarm and leading the state police to waste time and manpower tracking down bogus leads.
"I likened it to reading the National Enquirer: Every so often they have something right, but most of the time it's unsubstantiated gossip," Bivens said of the data provided by the Institute on Terrorism Research and Response.
In the last two weeks, the institute's $103,000 no-bid contract with the state, awarded last October to help track potential threats to Pennsylvania's infrastructure, has come under intense scrutiny. The attention followed revelations that the institute was reporting on the activities of citizen groups that posed no obvious threat to public safety, including student protesters and opponents of natural-gas drilling.
That information, in turn, was being disseminated in thrice-weekly bulletins, sent out by the Homeland Security Office to law enforcement as well as a number of private companies.
Gov. Rendell has said he was "deeply embarrassed" by the bulletins and their civil-liberties implications, and ordered that the contract not be renewed when it expires next month. He has yet to reprimand or fire anyone in connection with the contract.
Rendell has said he was not aware of the contract and the resulting bulletins until the recent controversy began. But documents revealed Monday contained new suggestions that some of his top appointees knew before that.
