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| A Petty Officer on the Coast Guard Cutter Drummond
keeps a watchful eye during a security escort of a Disney cruise
ship leaving the Port of Canaveral Oct. 25. (USCG photo by PA3
Dana Warr) |
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U.S. Ports Represent
Weakness in Nation's Defenses, Analysis Shows
Knight Ridder/Tribune
October 30, 2001
Oct. 28 - Even as America scrambles to secure airports against terrorists,
it is neglecting the nation's most vulnerable gateways -- its 361 seaports.
Officials have moved to bolster coastline security since the Sept.
11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. But the steps they've taken do
little to address the problems that led a U.S. senator last year to call
seaport security "an embarrassment" and a danger to national defense.
Among the problems identified in interviews, documents and a
Seattle Times analysis of government data:
-- Of the 11 million
shipping containers coming into the nation's ports, only about 1 percent
are inspected. At some ports in other countries, all incoming cargo is
inspected.
-- The overstretched U.S. Coast Guard, on average,
inspects a port facility only once every two years.
-- Cruise
ships, some with as many as 5,000 passengers and crew, present especially
vulnerable and inviting targets.
Addressing these issues and
others is a daunting task.
In recent years, officials at ports
around the country -- including the Port of Seattle -- have resisted any
uniform federal standards for security. Now, with legislation under
consideration in Congress, tougher standards are inevitable -- but they
could get softened in the effort to protect commerce.
As Port of
Seattle spokesman Mick Shultz puts it: "There's very much a business
mindset at U.S. ports, and certainly here in Seattle. We see our role as
an economic engine."
The laxity of American seaports has long been
an open secret among smugglers. For decades, they have used boats and
shipping containers to bring drugs into the United States. In the 1990s,
the smuggled cargo expanded to include humans, especially Chinese, who
paid tens of thousands of dollars to enter this country illegally.
Desperate immigrants are not alone in using the huge cargo
containers. Two weeks ago, inspectors in Italy found a suspected al-Qaida
terrorist hiding in a shipping container equipped with a bed and makeshift
bathroom. The suspect, an Egyptian in a business suit, had with him a
Canadian passport, a laptop computer, two cell phones, airport maps,
security passes for airports in three countries and a certificate
proclaiming him an airplane mechanic. The container was headed for
Toronto.
Osama bin Laden maintains a secret shipping fleet flying
a variety of flags of convenience, allowing him to hide his ownership and
transport goods, arms, drugs and recruits with little official scrutiny,
according to recent reports and court testimony. In 1998, one of bin
Laden's cargo freighters unloaded supplies in Kenya for the suicide
bombers who weeks later destroyed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania.
"Virtually every time a ship docks, the only people who
know what is on a container are the people who shipped it and the people
picking it up," said U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, during
testimony before a presidential commission last year. "And if those people
are terrorists, they are free to ship munitions and weapons overseas to
their compatriots or even set off a bomb."
Security arrangements
at the nation's seaports are similar to those at its airports: Private
companies provide the front-line defense against trouble.
Terminal
operators, usually shipping companies, determine the number,
qualifications and pay of the security guards they hire. Operators are
required by federal law to file security plans with the local U.S. Coast
Guard office, which can order changes and fine or shut down those that
don't comply.
In general, the Coast Guard patrols the waterways,
the U.S. Customs Service spot-checks international cargo and the
Immigration and Naturalization Service reviews the visa status of
cruise-ship passengers and crews.
The local port authorities serve
mainly as landlords, leasing out terminals to private companies. One
Florida port official compared the arrangement to a shopping mall, where
mall security polices public space and each store provides its own
security.
The difference, of course, is that the stakes at
seaports are much higher.
In 1999, a special presidential
commission looked at 12 seaports around the country, including Tacoma's
but not Seattle's, and found alarming inadequacies. Those included
unfenced cargo yards, poorly trained security guards and insufficient
standards for workers with access to sensitive areas.
Since Sept.
11, the Coast Guard has stepped up patrols around the country, activating
2,700 reservists nationwide and requiring ships to give 96 hours' notice
before pulling into ports. In some cases, Coast Guard officers are
boarding vessels to check cargo and crew identification miles before the
ships enter harbors.
How secure is Seattle?
Five cargo
companies dominate Port of Seattle operations, occupying dozens of acres
along the waterfront. The Port also manages the increasingly busy
cruise-ship terminal on Bell Street, projected to handle 250,000
passengers next year.
All U.S. ports must comply with various
federal regulations such as how to store explosive substances and where to
station guards to provide "adequate surveillance" of facilities.
But federal code does not set a minimum standard for security
plans. The adequacy of those plans is left to the judgment of the local
Coast Guard captain of the port, who weighs them against the perceived
threat to the port at any given time.
Records indicate that before
last month's attacks, the threat of terrorism was considered remote. In
the nine previous years, the Puget Sound Coast Guard repeatedly inspected
companies at seven ports and two oil refineries, and issued only four
formal citations for security violations. (At least two informal warnings
also were issued during that time, according to Coast Guard officials.)
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Coast Guard looked again at
security plans for those facilities and cited 30 of them as deficient. All
cited have addressed the problems, said Mike Moore, Coast Guard captain of
the port.
Some ports, such as Los Angeles and Port Everglades in
Florida, are considering requiring their tenants to provide better
security before leases are renewed. Port of Seattle officials said last
week they were not pondering such a change, but on Friday said they might.
The Coast Guard wants the Seattle Port to do more.
"Each
port has to make its own decision about what services it's going to
provide," said Capt. Moore. "The Port of Seattle has decided not to do
much security in their budget."
Spokesman Shultz defends the
Port's stance, saying there have been no specific threats against the
Seattle facilities that would require extraordinary measures beyond what
federal agencies mandate.
Moore thinks more is needed.
"Clearly, the baseline that was acceptable before Sept. 11 is
going to change," Moore said. "The risk, the threat and the vulnerability
is higher than previously thought."
The Port of Los Angeles takes
a more aggressive posture toward security.
Since Sept. 11, cargo
ships entering the harbor are given an armed escort, with officers from
the Port and the Coast Guard going aboard, securing the engine room and
bridge, screening crew members and spot-checking cargo. Even more
attention is paid to cruise ships.
"Our biggest target for
terrorism is our passenger-cruise terminal," said Noel Cunningham,
operations director and the port's former chief of police. "Based on what
has happened in New York and other attacks, they want to destroy the
business of Americans traveling and their sense of security. They don't
seem to care if they're civilians. According to my discussions with the
FBI and Coast Guard, they seem to be a very likely target."
Cruise
ships are essentially floating hotels, with as many as 5,000 passengers
densely packed in a steel-plated shell. At a port or in a shipping lane,
suicide terrorists using a small, fast boat laden with explosives could
quickly tie up at a ship near its vast fuel tanks and ignite a holocaust.
"A successful terrorist attack on any one of these ships could
result in a catastrophic number of casualties and threaten the economic
viability of the entire industry," Coast Guard Commandant Adm. James M.
Loy said in June.
In Los Angeles, cruise ships get armed escorts
into harbor. While they are approaching the port, no other ships are
allowed to move. And once docked, they are flanked by Coast Guard and
police boats.
"We're not going to have a USS Cole situation here,"
Cunningham said, referring to the terrorist bombing of a U.S. Navy
destroyer last year during a refueling stop in Yemen. The attack, launched
from an explosives-laden tugboat, killed 17 sailors.
Seattle's
protection for cruise ships has been stepped up, with Port or Coast Guard
boats patrolling the harbor and a boat stationed alongside ships at dock.
But procedures are looser than in L.A. The Coast Guard's Moore
said the differences can be attributed in part to the physical layouts of
the facilities and the waterways leading up to them -- but there is also a
clear difference in philosophy toward security.
In Seattle, there
are no escorts into the harbor, armed or unarmed. Unlike in L.A., other
ship traffic is permitted while cruise vessels are arriving. Shipping "is
a time-sensitive business," said Port spokesman Shultz, and "companies
don't want (ships) sitting at anchor or at berth. If it's sitting there,
it's not making money."
"It's also a matter of what's a likely
target," he said. "Port Everglades (Florida), Port of Miami, Port of Los
Angeles, any number of other ports have a much larger presence in the
cruise industry than the Port of Seattle. As that presence increases, we
could very well see a different approach for the cruise vessels here in
Seattle."
Cunningham, the L.A. port's operations director, said
the stringent measures imposed there are worth the cost and the
inconvenience, and are ultimately good for business.
"We found
that we are able to convince our customers -- the container companies and
the other port users -- that a dollar saved now is not a dollar earned in
the future," he said, noting that one incident resulting from cut corners
could mean that the criminals would own the port.
"We have a
90-day or four-month window of opportunity to shore up security in our
ports, and we better do it," he said. "We better do it now because there
will people waiting for that moment to pass so it can be business as
usual."
Two years ago, the presidential seaport commission
estimated each port would need to spend $44 million to provide
state-of-the-art security. The commission's reform recommendations failed
in Congress, with officials from many ports -- including Seattle -- saying
it was too expensive and unneeded. As recently as this summer, the
American Association of Port Authorities went on record opposing a revised
version of the reform bill.
Since Sept. 11, however, reform
efforts are getting more serious consideration with less dissent.
The Port of Seattle's executive director, Mic Dinsmore, will
travel to Washington, D.C., this week to meet with congressional and
Department of Transportation officials about new methods and ideas for
security.
"I'm not satisfied that we as a port and we as a nation
are doing everything we need to do in the way of security, both at
airports and seaports," Dinsmore said Friday. "I'm not satisfied that the
nation has thought this through thoroughly enough."
-- Seattle Times staff reporters Jim Neff and Justin Mayo contributed
to this article.
To see more of The Seattle Times, or to
subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.seattletimes.com.
(c) 2001, The Seattle Times. Distributed by
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
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