The cargo container had been targeted for special attention even before it arrived from China. Then, after it was unloaded at this sprawling port, a scan by an X-ray-like device produced a shadowy image that caught an inspector’s eye.
Now the cardboard boxes that had been inside the suspect container were stacked in neat rows in a warehouse, and customs officials were going through the contents by hand.
The boxes held not bombs but plastic storage bags. Officials concluded that the bags had been packed so tightly that they appeared denser than normal when scanned. The boxes were sealed and sent on their way.
The storage bags were part of the 5 percent of seaborne cargo examined upon entry into the U.S., a statistic that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry cited repeatedly during the campaign as an example of how little the Bush administration has done in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to improve homeland security.
That simple statistic is true as far as it goes. But does it prove that America’s ports are practically wide-open, easy pathways through which terrorists could smuggle a nuclear bomb or other weapon of mass destruction into the country?
The answer is complicated.
Government officials say that the changes that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has made in the three years since the attacks go far beyond inspections, while critics of the federal measures say other problems with cargo security have not been addressed.
“In terms of where we are today and where we were before 9/11, there has been a big step forward,” said Stephen Flynn, a former Coast Guard commander who has been a leading voice for tightening controls at ports worldwide. But, he added, “my main concern is that customs is overstating their confidence that they’re screening the right 5 percent.”
From any angle, the task of trying to ensure the safety of incoming cargo is daunting. About 90 percent of world trade moves in cargo containers; nearly 9 million containers from abroad are unloaded at U.S. docks annually. No expert seriously proposes that every container be inspected. The personnel and dock space are not available, and opening every container and going through it would slow world trade to a crawl.
“It’s simply not possible to inspect every container,” said Elaine Dezenski, director of cargo and trade policy at the Homeland Security Department.
New regulations
Short of that, the department developed regulations and techniques aimed at increasing the security of cargo containers. Shippers now are required to notify customs officials 24 hours before a U.S.-bound container is loaded at a foreign port so authorities can assess in advance whether the cargo should be inspected.
Also, most of the world’s busiest ports, including Singapore, Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Hong Kong, have joined the Container Security Initiative, under which U.S. customs officials stationed at foreign ports work with local governments to identify risky cargo.
While a container ship is at sea, inspectors at the destination port evaluate its cargo manifests and give each container a score based on such criteria as the country of origin, the type of product and the history of the importer. High-scoring containers–about 5 percent of all containers arriving by sea–are targeted for inspection.
Those containers are first scanned by equipment that works like an X-ray machine, generating a high-resolution image of the contents that inspectors scrutinize for irregularities, such as the shadowy patch on the shipment of plastic storage bags.
If an inspector’s suspicions are aroused, the containers are taken to a Customs and Border Protection warehouse and unloaded–“stripped out,” in agency parlance–and inspected by hand.
Of the 4,000 containers that arrive daily at ports in the New York City area–the third-busiest U.S. port system after Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif.–about 30 are stripped out.
“If a container is high-risk, we take care of it,” said Kevin McCabe, the chief customs official for seaport enforcement in New York. “When people stand up and say you’re only doing 5 percent of cargo, I say you don’t know everything we’re doing. One hundred percent of the cargo is evaluated with our targeting system.”
But experts say the targeting system relies heavily on the trustworthiness of shippers when they make out the cargo manifest for a container. Currently there are very few ways to make sure that the contents match the manifest before the cargo arrives in the U.S.
And because 95 percent of the cargo is deemed low-risk, it probably is not too hard to figure out how to disguise a shipment and slip it through, said Flynn, the former Coast Guard commander and author of the book “America the Vulnerable,” which argues that the government has not done enough to protect the country from terrorism.
“You can find somewhere a way to get into that system,” said Flynn, who advocates scanning cargo with X-ray-like equipment overseas before it is loaded on a ship.
As an additional precaution, customs officials are installing radiation portal monitors–large metal frames holding radiation detectors–at the nation’s seaports and border crossings, a project Dezenski said will take “a couple of years.”
The goal is for all containers entering the U.S. to be checked for radioactive cargo. That reflects deep concern about the potential for terrorists to smuggle material into the country to make either a nuclear or a so-called dirty bomb, an explosive that spreads radiological material. As damaging as such devices might be in the area where they explode, their economic effect would be felt nationwide.
The consequences of such a shutdown can be measured by the impact of a 2002 West Coast dockworkers strike that lasted 11 days. Experts estimated the strike’s cost to the nation’s economy at $1 billion a day.
Monitors in New York
Radiation portal monitors already are in place at many ports in the New York area, which is considered at the top of the terrorist target list.
At Port Newark recently, a steady stream of trucks loaded with containers drove through one of the yellow portals, which cost $1 million each. The detectors pick up traces of radioactivity surprisingly often.
Roughly 2 percent of the cargo loads emit some kind of radiation, but in all cases so far at the New York and New Jersey ports, it has been radioactivity from such things as ceramic tiles or slabs of stone.
Those materials contain naturally occurring forms of low-level radioactive atoms, which pose no threat to national security, according to deputy seaport enforcement chief Richard O’Brien.
“You can’t make a dirty bomb out of ceramic tile,” O’Brien said.
In 2002 and 2003, ABC News sent two shipments of 15 pounds of depleted uranium concealed in cargo containers to the U.S. from abroad. Depleted uranium emits extremely low levels of radiation and is used in such things as jets and elevators, but the network said the shipments show flaws in the screening and inspection process.
Last month, the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general said that while the inspection system needs improvements, the agency had increased its ability to detect lower levels of radiation.
McCabe, the seaport enforcement chief, noted that depleted uranium could not be used to make a nuclear or dirty bomb.
“By definition, it’s depleted,” he said. “Our entire approach is to find a real threat, not mock-ups.”
