DHS releases security funds

The U.S. Homeland Security Department released $24 million in funds for securing non-profits. Friday’s was the second such release of funds; most of an earlier allotment of $25 million went to securing Jewish institutions. The delay in releasing the funds, first earmarked in 2006, was caused by DHS bureaucrats who preferred to reserve the money for imminent rather than potential attacks. Jewish groups, backed by lawmakers in Congress, lobbied for the funds’ use for potential attacks. Last year, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff intervened to release the money. “If there was any doubt about the level and seriousness of the threat to segments of the nonprofit sector,” United Jewish Communities legislative director Robert Goldberg said in a statement, “one only has to read the Associated Press’ translation of an al-Qaida training manual that called, in unambiguous terms, for special terrorist units to attack large gatherings of Jews, at their ‘organizations, institutions, clubs and hospitals’ in every country they are located, in order to ’cause thousands of deaths.’ ” UJC, the Orthodox Union and Agudath Israel of America led lobbying for the funds.