By Greg Seigle
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — In an effort to make it more difficult for terrorists to smuggle a “nuke in the box” into U.S. seaports, the United States wants to reverse worldwide shipping procedures by inspecting outgoing rather than incoming ships, U.S. Customs Service Commissioner Robert Bonner said yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 9).

By inspecting containers aboard U.S.-bound ships at their point of departure instead of on arrival, when it “might be a little late” to stop the effects of even a crude nuclear or radiological bomb, the United States hopes to prevent an attack that would bring worldwide shipping to a “cold stop,” Bonner said.

Any interruption in the flow of shipping would have a debilitating effect on the United States and hence the global economy, he told a large group of analysts, diplomats and reporters.

The United States also plans to push for the development and worldwide use of “smart boxes” — containers laden with high-tech seals and sensors that would reveal if they have been opened or tampered with, Bonner said.

The key to implementing such security enhancements is persuading the nations overseeing the top 10 ports that ship 25,000 containers to the United States daily — China, Taiwan, Singapore, Holland, Germany and South Korea — to a allow teams of U.S.-led, multinational inspectors at their ports, Bonner concluded.

“The United States must work in partnership with other governments of the world, particularly the governments where these megaports are located, in order to build a new security standard for ocean-going sea containers,” Bonner said.

“If we begin by focusing on the just those top 10 ports, almost half of the container traffic coming into the United States will be secure,” he continued. “If through their governments those ports commit to the concept of security for sea containers, other ports will follow.”

More High-Tech Screening Equipment Needed

U.S. Customs officials are preparing to purchase and in some cases develop an undetermined amount of high-tech devices that will enable a ship’s containers to be inspected quickly and safely, Bonner said.

U.S. officials already possess sophisticated X-ray and gamma ray screeners that can view a container’s contents without having to open the container and search it by hand. These devices help determine that the cargo of inspected containers matches its manifest — if it does not then a container is opened and searched more thoroughly, Bonner said.

Customs agents also have about 4,000 hand-held radiation detectors so sensitive that one recently detected the radiation of a man who had been undergoing radiation treatment for thyroid cancer as he crossed the border from Mexico into the United States.

With 16 million containers a year entering the United States— 11 million by truck and railroad and 5.7 million on ships — Customs officials need more of these devices, he said.

“The fact is that if there’s a car or there is a container coming into a seaport that’s emitting radiation, our customs inspectors are going to know that,” Bonner said. “I’d like to make sure that the containers, before they leave Rotterdam or Singapore, [have been screened with] some sort of radiation device to make sure there’s not the nuke in the box.”

U.S. officials also want to install electronic seals on container doors and light sensors inside to alert authorities if they are opened before reaching their destination, he said.

After a container has been targeted and inspected by such equipment — Bonner said the level of incoming containers being inspected is “much more” than the 2 percent typically mentioned in press accounts — it can be further secured by monitoring it with the seals and sensors.

“Once you’ve done that … we know when it arrives at the port of Newark or Norfolk on the east coast of the United States, we know that box is secure,” Bonner said. “We don’t even have to look at that box for security purposes, and we won’t.”

While the X-ray, gamma ray and radiation detection devices already exist, U.S. and foreign customs officials need more of them, he said. Last week President George W. Bush signed a bill intended to enable U.S. officials to buy more of this equipment, he added.

“We’re [also] looking at a radiation detector that could actually be mounted on the crane of a shipping container, so that when those containers are being on-loaded or off-loaded we can get a radiation detection reading,” Bonner said.

Politically Sensitive, Potentially Expensive Proposal

It will be difficult to persuade other countries to allow U.S. and foreign inspectors at their ports, particularly China, which oversees Hong Kong and Shanghai, the top two “choke points” that send ships to the United States, analysts have said.

Countries that do a lot of shipping with the United States but have better relations than China — including Taiwan, South Korea, the Netherlands and Germany — should be more amenable to outside inspectors at their ports, analysts said. But even customs officials from those nations will need formal agreements with their U.S. counterparts, they added.

“There are some details that we need to talk about, but the first one would be sovereignty concerns and issues,” Bonner said, adding that any outside inspectors should be comprised of international officials who utilize U.S. technology and targeting techniques.

“In an ideal world, a nation that’s involved in this process overseas would understand the importance of protecting ocean-going sea containers, and so that they would want to implement this program on their own,” Bonner continued. “We would simply be technical experts to advise [local officials of] the type of technology and screening methods and security criteria that would be appropriate.”

The United States already has customs officials stationed in Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai, but they only act as liaisons and do not inspect outgoing cargo. Officials from China and elsewhere have not yet responded to the plan revealed yesterday.

“We do prescreening with our good ally in Canada, and they do prescreening for passengers who are flying up to Canada. So it’s not exactly an unheard-of concept,” Bonner said. “A few of the details have to be worked out, as they always do in these proposals.”

U.S. Not Only Country at Risk

The detonation of a crude nuclear or radiological bomb in a U.S. seaport would have a ripple effect throughout the world, essentially shutting the shipping industry down for an undetermined period of time, Bonner said.

“As horrible as this disaster would be, what would become of the global shipping industry and the global trade if a sea container were used to smuggle some weapon of mass destruction that was detonated?” he asked.

“The shipping of sea containers would stop cold for at least a significant period of time until we then establish a security system … that we felt was reliable to prevent it from happening again,” Bonner declared. “This is not a lesson we want to learn … if [shipping] stops, it will have an incredibly disruptive effect, not just on the economy of the United States, but the economy of the world.”

All industrialized nations rely on shipping, at least indirectly, while many are completely dependent on it. South Korea, for example, relies on shipping for 99.7 percent of its imports and exports.

“Countries whose economies are particularly dependent upon sea container transit — like the Netherlands, or Singapore or Japan or South Korea — first would be profoundly impacted” by any weapons of mass destruction attack in a U.S. port, Bonner said.

“So the stakes are high, the system is vulnerable,” he continued. “We must do everything in our power now to establish a system for the protection of global sea containers before a devastating event occurs. We must devise and implement a system to detect and deter this from happening in the first instance.”

About Newswire  |  Contact National Journal  |  Re-Use Guidelines

HOME  |  CONTACT US  |  GET INVOLVED  |  SITE MAP

Back to top