There's a US "Planetary Defense" Department?

Is he on call 24/7?  Because, surely he should be.

In early January, NASA announced the establishment of a Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), which will synchronize U.S. efforts to deal with threatening near-Earth objects (NEOs) and will supervise all NASA-funded projects to find and characterize asteroids and comets that visit Earth's neighborhood.

"There is no identified threat that we know of right now," said Lindley Johnson, NASA's new planetary defense officer.

  Scientific American

"That we know of."  I'd think "identified" would imply knowing of.

And will they be any better at responding than the Bush administration was to the identified threat of planes crashing into the World Trade Center?

"Our intent is to work within the international forums," Johnson said, "and encourage more involvement by other countries."

God knows they've been slackers in the War on Terror.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.