Planned security center left out of 2004 budget

Advertiser Staff

Plans for a $220 million intelligence gathering complex at Pearl Harbor are apparently on hold.

The U.S. Pacific Command was expected to be included in the government's fiscal 2004 budget recently sent to Congress. The Bush administration budget includes $268.3 million for military construction in Hawai'i.

However, the proposed Pearl Harbor project, to be called the Pacific Security Analysis Complex, was not included, said Michael Slackman, a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawai'i.

The complex would have become the new home for the Navy's Regional Security Operations Center in Kunia — a massive complex about 15 miles west of Honolulu — and the Joint Intelligence Center Pacific.

It was unclear whether the U.S. Pacific Command would seek money for the project in fiscal 2005, which starts in October 2004.

"I'm not sure where we go from here," Slackman said.