DHS reveals details of Boeing border security contract

Homeland Security Department officials on Thursday formally announced that they have entered into a $67 million contract with Boeing Co. to construct a series of towers monitoring a 28-mile stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border. Congressional sources briefed on the decision already had leaked word of the deal.

DHS and Boeing will monitor a stretch of border near Tucson, Ariz., with a line of towers equipped with ground-based radar and camera systems. Those systems will be able to transmit images to border agents' hand-held devices to allow them to individually track targets. Unmanned planes also will factor into the plan.

The project is the first in a series of initiatives aimed at creating what DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff has called a "virtual fence."

But DHS officials said the scope and magnitude of the deal is not as big as some reports claimed. They said the $67 million being committed to Boeing over the next three years represents the extent of the department's current agreement with the company.

In their briefing with reporters Thursday, DHS officials said they are "flat-out denying" reports that the department signed a multibillion-dollar deal with Boeing. To commit the department and contractor to such a deal would "set us up with some target that would be wholly unreasonable," said DHS Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson.

Jackson said there is "no exclusive commitment" to continue the contract with Boeing, should it fail to meet performance goals. But he also acknowledged the department will not accept bids from other companies on forthcoming contracts to secure other stretches of the border unless Boeing's work on the initial stage is unacceptable.

"They're going to have to prove the solution sets they bring to this party are the right tools," Jackson said. Boeing will "build a little, prove it, build more," he said.

Asked what the department might spend in the coming fiscal year on the Secure Border Initiative, the project of which the Boeing contract is a part, Jackson said appropriators were settling the matter on Capitol Hill "as we speak."

DHS' border monitoring initiatives - excluding the three-year, $67 million Boeing deal - are not defined on a timeline beyond the goal of securing the Southwest border by the end of 2008, Chertoff said. Department officials pledged to secure the U.S.-Canada border as well, without offering a timetable.

No contractor has been tapped to lead the initiative to secure the northern border, in part because the Southwest border has been granted priority status, officials said. But Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar said the Canadian border remains important because it is a point of entry for illegal immigrants, as well as narcotics smugglers.

"Ten percent of [illegal immigration] apprehensions are along the northern border," he said.