Washington, DC - Synagogue Security Funding Gets Shaft

Washington, DC - Synagogues and community centers that want to harden facilities against terror attacks can't get help from the feds because stingy homeland officials won't unlock the funds Congress told them to spend.

Congress directed the federal Department of Homeland Security to hand out $25 million this year to nonprofit groups under threat - but DHS is sitting on the money, claiming there are no credible threats.

"It seems like the position of the Homeland Security Department is: We'll come running in with a bucket of water once the fire starts, but we'll do nothing to invest in smoke detectors," said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.). Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) wrote Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff expressing "grave concern" that the money wasn't getting spent."

But Tracy Henke, a DHS grant official, said, "The law requires us to have credible threat. We don't have any credible threat that allows us to disseminate resources."

New Yorkers aren't buying it. "We have to be prepared to encounter whatever threat might appear on our radar screen," said a senior official at one New York City synagogue, who asked not to be identified.

U.S. troops in Afghanistan have found documents naming a dozen American Jewish groups, prompting the FBI to warn Jewish organizations in 2002 that they could be targeted.