Pennsylvania Homeland Security Director James F. Powers Jr. has resigned, two weeks after it was revealed that he hired a Philadelphia-based terrorism intelligence firm that monitored activists statewide.
"Jim is a good man who made a very significant mistake in judgment," Gov. Ed Rendell said at a news conference Friday with reporters in the Capitol, where he announced Powers' resignation.
In the last two weeks, the state's $103,000, no-bid contract with the Institute on Terrorism Research and Response — awarded by Powers last October to help track potential threats to Pennsylvania's infrastructure — has come under intense scrutiny. The attention followed revelations that the institute was reporting on the activities of citizen groups that posed no obvious threat to public safety, including student protesters and opponents of natural-gas drilling.
That information, in turn, was being disseminated in thrice-weekly bulletins, sent out by the Homeland Security Office, to law enforcement as well as a number of private companies.
Rendell has said he was "deeply embarrassed" by the bulletins and their civil-liberties implications, and ordered that the contract not be renewed when it expires next month.
He has said he was not aware of the contract and the resulting bulletins until the recent controversy began.
At Friday's news conference, Rendell said that he did not ask for Powers' resignation, but that Powers had offered it.
Powers, a former colonel in the Army Special Forces, has said his office paid for the intelligence bulletins because other state and federal agencies weren't providing information about local activity that he thought was critical to protect nearly 4,000 sites in the Commonwealth.
"I sincerely apologize to any individual or group, regardless of their views or affiliation, who felt their constitutional rights infringed upon because they were listed in the bulletin," Powers said earlier this week, when he was called to testify before a Senate committee on the matter.
Powers, whose salary is $107,678, has served as homeland security director since 2006.
His office was folded into the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency three years ago.
