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Cargo shipping poses big problems for
homeland security
By JOHN YAUKEY
Gannett News Service
Gannett News Service
WILMINGTON, Del. — A lone cargo ship
lumbering up the Delaware River suddenly explodes and sinks,
the work of terrorists who planted a bomb in one of the
vessel's 1,200 bus-sized shipping containers.
This fictitious terrorist attack takes
several dozen lives, small by Sept. 11 standards. But death is
not the goal. The hulking wreckage cuts off oil tanker access
to the nation's second-largest cluster of refineries, possibly
for months, choking off energy supplies to the Northeast. The
government responds to the attack by clamping down on port
security nationwide, backing up American waterborne commerce
and everything that relies on it.
''The effect of something like this is
almost impossible to calculate,'' said William Bowls, security
manager at the Port of Wilmington and part of a regional
strategy group charged with preparing for such an attack.
Intelligence agencies know terrorists want
not only to take Americans' lives, but also to devastate the
economy. And container cargo shipping — developed 50
years ago so that cargo could be moved quickly from trains to
trucks to ships — provides the backdrop for one of the
most feared scenarios.
Gerardo Hernandez of the Wilmington Port
Authority Police checks identification of motorists entering
The Port of Wilmington last October. Jenny Corbett, The
(Wilmington, Del.) News Journal.
''Most people don't' realize that
everything from the bananas on their cereal to the shoes on
their feet to the parts they need to make cars in Detroit come
from these containers,'' said Rob Quartel, U.S. maritime
commissioner under the first President Bush.
The question is how to protect them. The
answer is not encouraging.
As security continues to tighten at the
nation's airports, nuclear power plants, chemical factories and
other points of vulnerability, commercial shipping remains a
vexing Achilles' heel. Security experts and lawmakers still do
not agree on a theory, let alone a practical plan, of how to
protect commercial shipping and ports.
Logistical nightmare
The vulnerability of container shipping
stems from the success of far-flung international industry.
Any given day, an estimated 15 million
containers brimming with everything from albacore to zinfandel
are en route somewhere in the world, accounting for 90 percent
of global trade by value.
Those numbers alone present a daunting
security challenge, but the problem gets much more complex when
the logistics are factored in. A large ship can carry as many
as 6,000 containers, and each container can change hands as
many as two dozen times — from sellers to truckers to
shipping lines — before it reaches its destination. No
one authority has control over the entire process.
''This tug of war blurs authority and
ultimately leaves no one in charge,'' Sen. Richard Shelby,
R-Ala., lamented at a recent congressional hearing on shipping
security.
Each container is supposed to carry
documentation on its contents. But that's not as easy as it
sounds. A single transaction can generate 30 to 40 documents
per container, and each container can carry cargo for several
customers, multiplying the number of documents. What's more,
documents are only as valuable as they are accurate. In some
remote ports of the Third World, there is often little to
discourage manipulating books or looking away as unauthorized
cargo is added to containers.
''Most people don't realize that everything
from the bananas on their cereal to the shoes on their feet to
the parts they need to make cars in Detroit come from these
(cargo) containers.''
Rob Quartel
Former U.S. maritime commissioner
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''It's really scary when you think about
it,'' Bowls said. ''In some places where this cargo originates,
the jungle comes right up to the port, so you really have no
assurances of what's in these containers.''
Then there is the geopolitical factor. Not
all nations follow U.S. guidelines on packing and inspecting
containers or want the United States to meddle in their
shipping.
In late May, Greece refused a request to
allow U.S. officials to inspect ships sailing in Greek waters.
More than a thousand of these foreign vessels reach U.S. ports
every week, in most cases with only paperwork to validate their
cargo.
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Gannett News Service
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A longshoreman at the Port of Wilmington
in Delaware unloads steel from a cargo ship. (Jenny Corbett,
The News Journal at Wilmington, Del.)
U.S. Customs is largely responsible for
inspecting incoming cargo, but it's clearly overwhelmed by the
task.
''Customs inspectors are, in many places,
working 12 to 16 hours a day, six to seven days a week,''
Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner told a Senate panel.
Currently, only about 2 percent of
container cargo entering the United States is screened. That's
not expected to increase appreciably anytime soon.
Security strategies
Most ports have increased perimeter
security. Some issue conspicuous badges to all visitors. The
Coast Guard has demanded earlier notice of ship arrivals. The
government has provided funding to improve port security.
But none of this gets at the fundamental
vulnerability of the cargo container.
Bonner advocates a global container
security initiative that would scrutinize containers for
weapons at their ports of origin. The plan would start with
enhanced inspections at the world's top 10 ports — among
them Hong Kong, Rotterdam and Shanghai — using X-ray
machines and radiation detectors.
Critics point out the cost would be
prohibitive and, more importantly, it would slow cargo flow.
The two-day delay at the American-Canadian border immediately
after Sept. 11 created near-chaos at Detroit's car factories,
which rely on the smooth flow of parts from Canada.
Other point-of-origin strategies stress
intelligence over inspection.
One calls for the creation of a
comprehensive computerized profile of each container's contents
— type, point of origin, travel route, handlers, weight
— for cross-matching against databases of terrorists,
related financial transactions and other information. The idea
is to raise red flags that would help guide inspectors. Most
inspections are now random.
Proponents admit the plan is cumbersome
and porous, but it could be part of a more comprehensive
multilayered approach yet to materialize.
Congress has done little in its spate of
hearings on the subject other than to recognize the problem and
propose new security standards with little guidance on how they
might be achieved or enforced.
One Senate bill, for example, would direct
the Transportation Department to establish locking and
anti-tampering standards for shipping containers, but ends
there.
''This is all a good start,'' said Bowls,
emphasizing ''start.''
Indispensable
Packing cargo into containers rather than
shipping it as individual items was first done during World War
II as an efficient way to move military equipment.
It has since become the backbone of
international commerce.
Container shipping has helped make the
distribution of goods so efficient that manufacturers have been
able to reduce inventories dramatically, paving the way for the
cost-saving ''just-in-time'' business practices. Since 1980,
the ratio of inventory to gross domestic product in the United
States has dropped from 25 percent to 15 percent, according to
Cass Information, a Missouri-based logistics company.
''These efficiencies have helped knit the
economies of the world together,'' said Chris Koch, president
of the Washington, D.C.-based World Shipping Council. ''They
underpin a network of commerce that touches the life of every
American. I think it's lost on a lot of people how important it
all is.''
In October, when Italian authorities found
a suspected Egyptian terrorist living in a shipping container
bound for Canada, it became clear how vulnerable it all is.
''It's really scary when you think about it.
In some places where this cargo originates, the jungle comes
right up to the port, so you really have no assurances of
what's in these containers.''
William Bowls
security manager at
the Port of Wilmington
the Port of Wilmington