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Watchdog Faults U.S. Port Defenses By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — Radiation inspections of seafaring cargo entering the United States are in need of improvement, the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general said in a report released yesterday (see related GSN story, today). In a review requested by two House of Representatives Democrats following two successful uranium-smuggling incidents conducted by ABC News (see GSN, Sept. 11, 2003), Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin’s office said Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection Bureau should improve detection equipment and search protocols. The inspector general’s office said the bureau has made steps toward such improvements. ABC News in July 2002 shipped 15 pounds of depleted uranium from Turkey to the United States, where customs officials failed to detect the material. In August of last year, the network shipped the same cylinder of uranium from Indonesia to the United States via Malaysia, again succeeding in bringing the uranium into the United States. Customs officials targeted the shipments as high-risk but then failed in both cases to detect the presence of uranium. Customs and Border Protection stressed to the inspector general’s office that depleted uranium such as that used by ABC News has a different radiation signature from that of weapon-grade uranium. For the purposes of the inspector general’s report, Customs and Border Protection enlisted Energy Department scientists from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to conduct analyses of various detection devices. The inspector general yesterday released an unclassified version of the report describing the results of the analyses only in vague terms. “The analysis described the distances beyond which the detection equipment would no longer detect the radiation source. The radiation portal monitors installed by CBP have the inherent sensitivity to detect both depleted and highly enriched uranium in cargo,” reads the report. “The ability to detect is reduced by certain factors. We made recommendations that will enhance the effectiveness of radiation-detection equipment.” “The protocols and procedures that CBP officials followed at the time of the two smuggling incidents were not adequate to detect the depleted uranium,” the office added. “CBP has since enhanced its ability to screen targeted containers for radioactive emissions based on deployment of more sensitive technology, better procedures and training. Along these lines, we made recommendations that would enhance training and search procedures followed by CBP inspectors.”
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