Make secret deals in haste - repent at leisure

Add the Coast Guard, those would be the guys in charge of port security, to the list of agencies that expressed strong reservations about the Dubai port deal.

[I]n a Dec. 13 intelligence assessment of the company and its owners in the United Arab Emirates, the Coast Guard warned: "There are many intelligence gaps, concerning the potential for DPW or P&O assets to support terrorist operations, that preclude" the completion of a thorough threat assessment of the merger.

"The breadth of the intelligence gaps also infer potential unknown threats against a large number of potential vulnerabilities," says the document, released by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

They have since issued a statement saying the concerns they raised in this preliminary report were sufficiently addressed and they signed off on the deal, but one wonders how such broad questions could have answered satisfactorally in the short time it took the oh so secretive Committee on Foreign Investments to approve it.