Ports Called "Enormous" Targets

Counterterrorism officials say the nation’s ports may now pose an even greater threat than our airports, but they receive far less security funding. The ports process almost 10 million containers per year.

According to an article by Greg Krikorian in the Los Angeles Times, Homeland Security officials say they screen 100 percent of all containers as part of a new "layered" defense system. The system begins overseas, as foreign shippers must provide full cargo and crew manifests 24 hours before loading any ship bound for the U.S.

However, Krikorian says after these manifests are examined, "mountains of shipping intelligence are sifted and ships are tracked as they cross oceans, only about 6 percent of the containers arriving at U.S. ports are classified as high risk and examined using X-ray machines."

"If you look at where we are today, there has been notable improvement in terms of security at the ports," Randy Parsons, the FBI's chief counterterrorism official in Los Angeles told Krikorian. "But it is just such an enormous target in terms of the volume of cargo and the numbers of employees and the crews and the ships moving in from foreign lands."

Krikorian says the government considers the vast majority of cargo secure because corporations and international shippers have their own safety checks and inspections. The government estimates that approximately 40 percent of cargo heading for the U.S. is shipped by about 7,000 businesses worldwide that are cooperating with U.S. authorities to improve defenses against terrorists.

To read the full article, click here: http://ktla.trb.com/news/local/la-me-port26nov26,0,4166594.story?coll=ktla-home-3