Ever stroll through Washington’s Capitol Hill past the Supreme Court and Senate office buildings and wonder: How do they manage to keep a place with such famous statesman safe from lunatics and even terrorists? Well, um, they don’t.

The Washington Post’s Mary Beth Sheridan has an in-depth look at what she calls stunning gaffes by the U.S. Capitol Police. These 1,600 officers used to be hired by House and Senate members, but since 9/11 the capitol police became its own federal entity with the explicit mission to prevent terrorism.  The transition has been rough.  Sheridan notes that a quarter of the Capitol Police’s recent hires failed criminal background checks and missed an IED placed in a truck near the Capitol in January.

But one theme in the article reasonates throughout the post 9/11 federal bureacracy: Terrence Gainer, the oft-criticized former capitol police chief, says the police is a success because there hasn’t been another terrorist attack. I guess you can’t argue with that.-MB

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