L.A. Harbor Ports to Get $6.7 Million for Security

The Department of Homeland Security announced Thursday that the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports would receive $6.7 million as part of a national initiative to strengthen cargo security at the nation’s busiest commercial harbors.

The grants, which also were announced for the ports of New York/New Jersey and Seattle/Tacoma, will fund the testing and analysis of commercial technologies that can better safeguard U.S. ports’ handling of about 10 million containers a year.

The technologies include tracking devices on containers, intrusion-detection seals and more sophisticated X-ray equipment.

Before Thursday’s announcement, the three regional ports already had received $55 million for technology testing. The earlier grants included $13.7 million for the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, which combined represent the third-largest seaport in the world, handling 45% of the nation’s container cargo.

The technology funds targeted at the three major ports are in addition to the department’s port security grants that provide money to smaller ports throughout the United States. This summer, federal officials are expected to announce $150 million in such grants, more than twice the $65 million allocated in fiscal 2004.

For some time, U.S. lawmakers have been urging the department to turn more attention to protecting the nation’s ports. Homeland security officials said they were screening 100% of the nation’s “high-risk” cargo, using overseas intelligence, manifests and other investigative techniques, including inspections.

In practice, officials acknowledge, that translates into actual inspections of about 5% or 6% of the containers entering the country. Under existing security protocols, containers from regular trading partners such as Germany are not routinely inspected, but containers from such high-risk states as Yemen are opened and searched.

“Our ports remain vulnerable to those who would do us harm or wreak havoc on our economy,” U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice) said in applauding the latest Department of Homeland Security grants.

“This funding will help increase the security of cargo containers without disrupting the vital flow of business,” Harman said.

Since the beginning of the year, security officials at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach intercepted two separate groups of Chinese immigrants trying to enter the country illegally inside cargo containers.

The incidents, the most recent on April 3, illustrate the importance of tightening security measures at the nation’s ports, said Harman, who is a member of the Homeland Security Committee and ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

“Instead of people seeking better circumstances, these stowaways could have been terrorists or the containers could have been filled with components of a dirty bomb,” Harman said.

Harman’s comments came on the day she reintroduced legislation to provide public safety agencies greater access to broadcast frequencies for communications in emergencies.

“On 9/11, we learned the hard way that our first responders are in dire need of improved communications,” said Harman, whose legislation co-author is Rep. Curt Weldon, the Pennsylvania Republican who is vice chairman of the Homeland Security Committee.

“It’s been more than three and a half years since terrorists attacked our country and we have yet to fix the problem of first-responder communication,” she said.

Meanwhile, a panel of terrorism experts told a Rand Corp. conference in Santa Monica that the nation had made significant homeland security strides since the Sept. 11 attacks.

At the same time, the experts said, the United States must reach out more to young Muslims and brace itself for a decades-long battle against terrorists that will require diplomacy, vision and sacrifice.

Domestically, they said, the nation also must move away from viewing homeland security as nothing more than what Rand terrorism expert Brian Jenkins described as “a matter of gates and guards.”

James Gilmore, the former Virginia governor who led a groundbreaking U.S. terrorism commission before the Sept. 11 attacks, sounded a similar theme.

“My concern is that we have decided we are going to protect everything and as we all know the old adage, ‘If you protect everything, you really protect nothing,’ ” he said.

Without a more focused national policy on security priorities, Gilmore said, the nation will waste huge sums of money on measures that will drain the country’s economy while needlessly upending the lives of citizens.

“Do we really want the government having all this information about us? Do we really want, every time we get on a plane, to be patted down by people in rubber gloves, which I find nauseating? Do you really want cameras on every corner?” Gilmore asked.

“Many people keep saying, ‘Well, we just have to give up some freedom so we can have more security,’ ” Gilmore said. “I’m here to tell you, I think we are going to have to give up more security in order to maintain our freedom.”