Since 9/11, the U.S. government has spent billions of dollars to keep Americans safe — including airport screeners, portal radiation monitors, explosive detection systems, and an elaborate electronic network to track visitors and ease legitimate travel using fingerprint readers. But do they really work?

The latest EXPOSÉ tells the story of two WASHINGTON POST reporters who followed the money flowing out of the Department of Homeland security and found case after case of failed programs. Watch “Nice Work If You Can Get It” online.

>> Producer Joe Rubin talks about working with veteran investigative reporters Scott Higham and Robert O’Harrow, the legacy of “Deep Throat,” and a very important parking garage. Read the producer’s notes on the EXPOSÉ site.

The EXPOSÉ: America’s Investigative Reports series is produced by Thirteen/WNET New York in association with CIR.

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Carrie Ching is an award-winning, independent multimedia journalist and producer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. For six years, she led digital storytelling projects at the Center for Investigative Reporting as senior multimedia producer. Her multimedia reports have been featured by NPR.org, The Huffington Post, Rolling Stone, Grist, Time.com, Fast Company, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, KQED, PBS NewsHour, Salon.com, Mother Jones, Public Radio International, Poynter, Columbia Journalism Review and many other publications. Her specialty is crafting digital narratives and exploring ways to use video, audio, photography, animation and interactive graphics to push the boundaries of storytelling on the Web, tablets and mobile. Her work has been honored with awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors, Best of the West, the Online News Association, Scripps Howard, The Gracies, and was part of the entry in a Pulitzer-finalist project. Prior to her time at CIR she was a magazine and book editor, video journalist, newspaper reporter and TV comedy scriptwriter. She was on the 2010 Eddie Adams Workshop faculty as a multimedia producer working with MediaStorm to teach digital storytelling techniques to photojournalists. She completed a master’s degree in journalism at UC Berkeley in 2005.