http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/316/metro/Specialist_sees_gap_in_harbor_security+.shtml

Specialist sees gap in harbor security

Urges new scrutiny for ship containers

By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff, 11/12/2001

Despite assurances from local Coast Guard officials that the harbor is well protected from terrorists, a senior Coast Guard official warns that Boston is vulnerable to a sea-borne chemical attack or explosion because few containers entering the harbor are being searched.

Sealed in foreign harbors and overwhelmingly accepted on Boston's docks without inspection by US Customs, the 150,000 containers handled here each year could hold anything from chemical weapons to nuclear devices, said Coast Guard Commander Stephen E. Flynn, a security specialist and senior fellow with the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations.

Flynn said containers pose a much greater potential threat than the vessels sailing into Boston Harbor that have attracted most of the attention lately: tankers carrying liquefied natural gas, diesel fuel, oil, and gasoline.

''I don't think anybody can say with any confidence that containers are relatively safe. We don't have a credible system to make that kind of assessment,'' Flynn said.

That chilling analysis differs sharply from the official position expressed by Coast Guard officers in Boston and US Customs officials in Washington. They contend that stepped-up patrols, more boardings of arriving ships, and increased cargo inspections have made it difficult to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into Boston and other US harbors.

But, said Flynn, ''We have now a very wide open and quite dangerous situation. We have very little idea what comes into port, and very little capacity to police what comes into these ports.''

Boston is not alone. The threat that exists here is common to other seaports in the United States that handle containers, said Flynn, who holds a doctorate from Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

The reasons range from maritime protocol that allows foreign containers to travel unscrutinized across the United States to patchwork responsibility for harbor security that is divided among several agencies.

Before Sept. 11, only about 2 percent of containers were inspected by US Customs officials on the docks, federal authorities said. The remainder were loaded unchecked on trucks and railroad cars headed for destinations scattered across the country.

Dean Boyd, a US Customs spokesman, said container inspections have increased since the attack. But Michael Leone, who supervises the port of Boston for the Massachusetts Port Authority, said the number has not risen significantly.

Said Leone, a former Coast Guard commander,''There are no guarantees, and it's incumbent on the federal government to give additional resources to US Customs to X-ray [containers] and check.''

The Customs Service has sole responsibility for clearing cargo that lands in Boston. To help inspectors do that job, technologically advanced X-ray equipment arrived recently to enable officers to check more containers. But ''it's like trying to catch minnows at the base of Niagara Falls,'' Flynn said.

Customs personnel, who have been stretched thin by increased border deployments since Sept. 11, are also limited by procedures that discourage inspection of containers at the port. To keep commerce flowing, containers are routinely allowed to travel uninspected from a foreign harbor, to a US port of entry, and then by rail or truck to another location. As a result, the contents of nearly all individual containers that enter the United States are not presented for Customs inspection until their final destination, often thousands of miles away.

Boston Police Commissioner Paul F. Evans said container security deserves closer examination. ''Things that we wouldn't have given a second thought to before Sept. 11 have to be evaluated in a different light now,'' he said.

In testimony about port security last month before a US Senate subcommittee, the Coast Guard's top officer, Admiral James M. Loy, delivered this warning: ''I am not about to sit here this morning ... and remotely infer that we've got a handle on this, or that you can rest comfortably that the maritime side of the homeland security package is OK. It is not.''

Indeed, one ominous scenario cited in that Oct. 11 hearing had been posed by Flynn in a November 2000 article for Foreign Affairs, a journal on international relations. In that article, published 10 months before the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Flynn wrote that if Osama bin Laden asked him for advice on smuggling a catastrophic weapon into the United States, he would recommend a ship-borne container.

In an interview last week, Flynn said that US security measures in this regard have not changed substantially since he wrote the article.

Under Flynn's scenario, such a plot could work this way: Bin Laden would use or buy an export company that has been sending goods to New York City for decades. In that shipment, he would place a chemical weapon and a satellite-linked transponder to track the container on its journey.

The container would leave Karachi, which Flynn said has notoriously lax security, and travel to a US port such as Long Beach, Calif., via Singapore and Hong Kong. Once in the United States, the uninspected container would be loaded on a train to travel cross-country to its purported destination of Newark.

But halfway across the country, Flynn said, the terrorists could detonate the weapon to cause maximum damage in an urban area such as Chicago. And unlike a missile, Flynn added, the explosion could not be traced. The last foreign port would have been Hong Kong, the container would not have been presented to customs officers, and the origins of the explosion would be left to speculation.

Today, two months after the devastating terrorist attacks, such a catastrophe remains feasible, Flynn said.

A suspected Al Qaeda terrorist was discovered hiding in a container last month in Italy. Carrying airport maps and security passes for airports in Canada, Thailand, and Egypt, the suspect was bound for Canada in a container that he had outfitted with a bed, toilet, heater, global satellite phone, and laptop computer.

Also, earlier this month, four stowaways from eastern Europe arrived in containers in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

In Boston, Coast Guard Captain Daniel May said a newly formed, heavily armed, 20- member security team has reinforced the front line of the Coast Guard's 24-hour watch on ships and movement in the harbor.

Large vessels must now notify the Coast Guard 96 hours before approaching the port. After doing so, they are met offshore by a boarding party that checks cargo lists and crew identification and searches for contraband.

''We cover every inch, pretty much,'' said Petty Officer First Class Eric Lepley, who leads the port security team.

But Flynn said boarding parties are limited in what they can uncover, especially given the enormous time pressures that drive an industry whose schedule is shackled to the rise and fall of the tide.

''They can't inspect every hold and compartment on that ship,'' Flynn said. ''If they did, that ship would be out there for weeks.''

Flynn proposed that containers be inspected at foreign ports, where time constraints often are not as great, before they are loaded for the United States.

Meanwhile, May said, the Coast Guard has the difficult dual mission of facilitating commerce while using its military muscle to thwart terrorism. That task, he acknowledged, is a formidable one.

''We can't protect everything,'' May said.

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2001

Answers

But Miami International Airport has the distinction of worst security in the nation.

sure am glad I'm outta that flight path!

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2001