U.S. Ports Vulnerable to Attack, Experts Say

Ports and ships present vulnerable, high-profile targets for militants who can exploit security gaps to inflict massive economic damage and civilian casualties, maritime experts said Thursday.

Despite new U.S. and international programs that have increased port and vessel security since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the experts told a maritime security conference that huge gaps remained in the chain between the origin of goods and their destinations.

“We are living on borrowed time -- and squandering it -- while our most serious vulnerabilities lie ominously exposed,” said Stephen Flynn, a 20-year Coast Guard veteran and former White House official with ties to the Department of Homeland Security.

Experts at the conference said it would take only one incident involving a single container to bring shipping to a halt in the United States and cause billions of dollars in damage.

Deputy Homeland Security Secretary James Loy told the conference that was a “dramatic challenge.” He said officials had put a lot of work into contingency plans, but they were far from complete.

“Can I stand here and suggest to you we have it all figured out? Not even close,” Loy said.

Flynn said Americans should not be lulled into a false sense of security by new defensive efforts such as the Container Security Initiative, the C-TPAT program for private industry and the International Ship and Port Facility Security Code because militants knew how to exploit their weaknesses.

“The importance of maritime targets is on the rise,” said James Boutilier, special advisor at Canada’s Maritime Forces Pacific Headquarters. “The gargantuan scale of the problem suggests that, at best, we will have to live with imperfection when it comes to combating maritime terrorism.”

Flynn said terrorists knew there was “a big bang for your buck if you attack critical infrastructure.... We should have learned that from 9/11 but we didn’t.” About half of all imports to the U.S. arrive through the country’s 361 seaports.

Several participants at the conference pointed to the difficulty of securing sprawling port areas that had many facilities and large labor forces. They also noted that about 5% of the 7 million containers that reached the United States each year were examined on arrival.

Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John F. Kerry raised the issue at the final presidential debate Wednesday and accused the Bush administration of falling short on port security.

“We haven’t got enough money to inspect every container that comes into the United States,” said William H. Webster, a former head of the CIA and the FBI.

Flynn estimated it would cost private industry between $30 and $80 per container to include stepped-up security procedures such as enhanced seals, tracking and content checks before shipping to mitigate security risks along the transportation chain.

He said if such additional security precautions were mandatory and applied across the board, they would not break the bank of private-sector shippers.

Flynn said U.S. officials had not come up with a plan for reopening ports and restarting ship movements if an attack crippled the shipping network, creating gridlock as vessels were stuck outside ports with time-sensitive shipments on board.