Whoops!

Isn't this is the sort of thing that Homeland Security was supposedly designed to stop?

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Wednesday it was a mistake for Hawaii to post a confidential report on its Web site, but the department will continue to communicate openly with state and local authorities about potential terror threats.

Hawaii officials published a draft copy of a confidential Homeland Security report that catalogues ways terrorists might strike in the United States. The report, requested by a presidential directive in December 2003, marks Homeland Security efforts to spur state and local authorities into thinking about preventing attacks.

"My understanding is this was an error," Chertoff said in an interview with reporters. "… It's not going to deter us from working closely with our state and local partners in fashioning these plans."

Read the whole thing here.

I have known people who are in a position to speak authoritatively on the matter and they all tell me that the Department of Homeland Security has always been an administrative mess. This is not, they say, Tom Ridge's fault, but because the whole enterprise was poorly conceived right from the get go.

Jonathan Gewirtz over at Chicago Boyz notes how Homeland Security inefficiency and insensitivity is undermining Florida's tourist trade and hurting America's reputation among ordinary people who are subjected to treatment by Security agents. Read it here.