Rewind - ABCNEWS.com : How Secure Are U.S. Borders?

I realize this stuff disappears from the collective consciousness
faster than Britney's snap-on track pants, but this story definitely
bears revisiting in light of recent events concerning the student who
snuck the box cutters, bleach, etc onto Southwest flights. The following story is from ABC News on Sept 10, 2003:

"For a second year, U.S. government screeners have failed
to detect a shipment of depleted uranium in a container sent by ABCNEWS
from overseas as part of a test of security at American ports.
The ABCNEWS project involved a shipment to Los Angeles of just under 15
pounds of depleted uranium, a harmless substance that is legal to
import into the United States. The uranium, in a steel pipe with a lead
lining, was placed in a suitcase for the shipment. "If they can't
detect that, then they can't detect the real thing," explained Tom
Cochran, a nuclear physicist at the Natural Resources Defense Council,
which lent the material to ABCNEWS for the project.
Cochran said the highly enriched uranium used for nuclear weapons
would, with slightly thicker shielding, give off a signature similar to
depleted uranium in the screening devices currently being used by
homeland security officials at American ports. The ABCNEWS suitcase
containing the uranium was placed in a teak trunk along with other
furniture put in a container in Jakarta, Indonesia, a city considered
by U.S. authorities to be one of the most active al Qaeda hot spots in
the world. The container was shipped to Los Angeles in late July, just
one week before the bombing of the Jakarta Marriott Hotel that killed
12 people. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has claimed major
improvements in port security, in part because of enhanced vigilance
overseas. "So that our borders become the last line of defense, not our
first line of defense," Ridge said in a speech last week. He said the
United States was increasing security "thousands of miles away, long
before a container is first loaded on a ship." But in Jakarta, ABCNEWS
producers David Scott and Rhonda Schwartz found that the chest in which
they had placed the depleted uranium was never opened or inspected
before being sent on to Los Angeles. "It took us only a few days to
find a shipper willing to send a container to America with almost no
questions asked," said Scott. "We did not tell the company about the
depleted uranium," said Schwartz, "and they never asked." When the
ABCNEWS container was released from the port, it still had the same
metal seal that had been put on in Jakarta, meaning it had not been
opened. "The test that you put to them, which looks to me to be a fair
test, they fail," said Graham Allison, a former assistant secretary of
defense and now director of the Belfer Center for Science and
International Affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of
Government. "What indeed is the most likely way that a nuclear weapon
would be delivered by a terrorist to the U.S.?" asked Allison. "The
most likely way is in a cargo container ship."

As far as I can see, ABC News did a service to the American people by
illustrating that the illusion of safety is much, much different from
reality. One would have hoped that the Department of Homeland Security
would have addressed this glaring problem by coming up with some sort
of plan that would actually have made us safe instead of what they actually did, which was to demonize ABC News:

On the night the shipment left the Los Angeles port, on
Sept. 2, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security began a
weeklong investigation of ABCNEWS personnel and others involved in the
project, suggesting possible violations of felony smuggling laws. A
Homeland Security official said any decision on whether to prosecute
would be made by the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles. The ABCNEWS test was
criticized by officials at the Department of Homeland Security, who
assigned agents in at least four cities to investigate ABC personnel
and news sources involved. "I think you're a news reporter that is
trying to carry out a hoax on our inspectors," Homeland Security
Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson told Brian Ross, ABCNEWS' chief
investigative correspondent, for a report to be broadcast Thursday on
World News Tonight and PrimeTime Thursday."

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa summed the situation up perfectly:

"If my neighbor told me my barn was on fire, my first
instinct would be to thank my neighbor and get some water for the fire.
I worry that the government's first instinct is to pour cold water on
the neighbor," Grassley wrote.

Indeed.

Posted by flow Frazao on October 21, 2003 at 12:51 PM | Permalink