Security and Accountability for Every Port Act

SECURITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY FOR EVERY PORT ACT -- (Senate - September 07, 2006)

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, it has been 5 years since September 11, and our country is still dangerously vulnerable. We have huge loopholes at our ports and in our cargo container system, and none of us should sleep well at night until we close those security holes and protect our country.

That is why I am on the Senate floor once again pushing for us to pass the bipartisan GreenLane bill. I am excited that after working for a number of years, we are now on the verge of making our country more secure.

The full House of Representatives passed our bill. The Senate Homeland Security Committee passed our bill. We have worked with the Commerce and Finance Committees to address the issues in the bill they have raised. Now it is up to us, the full Senate, to finally pass this bill.

Today I wish to explain why our ports are so vulnerable, how an attack would affect our people and our economy, and finally, how this bill will make us more secure and keep trade flowing.

To understand why our ports are so vulnerable, one just has to look at something that happened in my home State of Washington 3 weeks ago.

On August 16, there was a big scare at the Port of Seattle. Two containers that originated in Pakistan were offloaded at terminal 18. They were targeted for inspection. They were first scanned by a gamma-imaging machine, which is essentially a giant x-ray machine for cargo containers. The initial images suggested what was supposed to be in the container was different than what that x-ray scan showed. Next, the port officials brought in two security dogs, and both dogs detected what they thought were explosives in that cargo container at terminal 18.

To understand why that is such a scary incident in Seattle, one just has to look at the Port of Seattle and what surrounds it.

This photograph shows the Port of Seattle. We can see the port very clearly in the foreground. That is Seattle in the background. My colleague, Senator Collins, was out there and remarked, tonight and while she was out there, about the incredible closeness to where our containers are brought into the Port of Seattle, to where our downtown area is, where there are two sports stadiums that can have thousands and thousands of people at one time sitting in them, and I-5 is over here. That is the main highway that goes through the State of Washington, right through downtown Seattle. As one can see, these cargo containers sitting on these docks are within feet and yards of mass people, infrastructure, our community, our railroads, our transportation system, sports stadiums, and where people live and work.

During the scare I just mentioned, officials had to close the terminal and establish a 500-yard safety zone surrounding the terminal, and they had to create a 300-yard safety zone around the entire Seattle waterfront. Fortunately, that day, after having the port closed down for some time, further testing showed that what was in that container was just a false alarm.

I wish to take a second to commend everyone on the ground for doing an excellent job of immediately responding to a possibly very dangerous incident.

Here is the problem: We did not know what was in that container. We did not know. It could have posed a problem, and it was sitting right on the dock, right within our sports stadiums, within all of downtown Seattle, within our transportation systems, and where people live and work.

That is why we are presenting this bill tonight. The main idea of this bill is to push our country's borders out, to do the screening and testing for these cargo containers overseas so that the container never gets close to our shores if we think it is dangerous. But today, too often we wait until that container is sitting on American soil, dangerously close to our cities, before we find out whether it could pose a danger.

Fortunately, that Seattle incident ended well, but that very same week, we got a very stark warning about how it could have ended differently.

In August around the same time, the RAND Center for Terrorism and Risk Management Policy issued a very troubling report that showed what could happen if there is a nuclear device in a cargo container.

The RAND Corporation looked at the following scenario: terrorists put a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb inside a cargo container and detonated it at the port of Long Beach, CA. The researchers chose that scenario because, as they put it, ``analysts consider it feasible, it is highly likely to have a catastrophic effect, and the target is both a key part of the U.S. economic structure and a critical global shipping center.''

Here is what they said would have happened: Up to 60,000 people would be killed instantly from the blast or from radiation poisoning; 150,000 people would be injured by radiation exposure; up to 6 million people would flee Los Angeles; 2 to 3 million people would need to be relocated because their land would be contaminated by radiation. And finally, the economic loss simply would be about $1 trillion. That is 10 times worse than September 11. Those costs would include medical care, insurance claims, workers' compensation, evacuation, construction. Imagine that--the economic damage would be 10 times worse than what happened on September 11.

How many more reports such as that is it going to take? How many port evacuations and scares is it going to take before we get serious about port security? Time is not on our side. Each year, 6 million cargo containers enter our U.S. seaports, and that number is expected to quadruple in the next 20 years. These cargo containers carry the building blocks of our economy, but without adequate security, they can also provide an opportunity for terrorists to deliver a deadly one-two punch to our country. The first punch would create untold number of American casualties. The second punch would bring our economy to a halt. Today we are not doing enough to keep America safe.

Standing in this Chamber, it can feel as if the dangers at our ports are a distant concern, but given that our ports are connected to our Nation's transportation system and are close to our major population centers, the threat is never far away.

I want to share a very disturbing photo that shows us what a terrorist attack could look like. On March 21, a container ship called the Hyundai Fortune was traveling off the coast of Yemen when an explosion occurred in the rear of the ship. This is a photo of what happened. This is a container ship close to Yemen with an explosion at the rear of the ship. Remember the picture I just showed of the port of Seattle and where we are and imagine this happening in the Port of Seattle.

What happened when this ship exploded was that 90 containers were blown off the side of this ship and it created a debris field 5 miles long. Thankfully, amazingly, there were no fatalities and the crew was rescued.

This incident, by the way, did not appear to be terrorist related, but it gives us an idea of what it would look like if a terrorist incident occurred on a container ship in one of our seaports.

I want my colleagues to imagine the same burning ship sitting just a few feet off our shores in New York Harbor or Puget Sound, off the coast of Los Angeles or Charleston, Miami, Portland, Hampton Roads, the Delaware Bay, or the Gulf of Mexico. Now imagine we are not dealing with just a conventional explosion; we are dealing with a dirty bomb. I want to walk through what would happen next.

Of course, there would be the immediate horrible loss of life. Many of our ports, as I said, are located near major cities. If this were a chemical weapon exploding in Seattle, the chemical plume could contaminate the rail system, Interstate 5, SeaTac Airport, not to mention, as I showed my colleagues, the downtown business and residential areas. At the port, there would immediately be tremendous confusion. People would try to contain the fire, but it is unclear today who would be in charge. Then when word spread and chaos ensued, panic would set in and there would be chaos as our first responders tried to react and people who lived nearby would try to flee.

Next, what would happen is our Government would shut down every single port in America to make sure there were no other bombs on any other containers in any other city. That shutdown would be the equivalent of driving our economy into a brick wall and, in fact, it could spark a global recession. Day by day, we would feel the painful economic impact of the attack. American factories in the middle of our country would not be able to get the supplies they need. They would have to shut their doors and lay off workers. Stores around our country would not be able to get the products they need to put on their shelves. Prices would spike, demand would outweigh supply, and consumers would not be able to afford the simple items they rely on every single day.

In 2002, we saw what the closure of just a few ports on the west coast could do. It cost our economy $1 billion a day. Imagine if we shut down all of our ports. One study, in fact, concluded that if U.S. ports were shut down for just 9 days, it would cost our economy $58 billion.

The RAND report I mentioned earlier found the economic damage could easily top more than $1 trillion. Of course, we would soon realize we have no plan for resuming trade after an attack. We have no plan today for how we would resume trade, no protocol for what would be searched. We wouldn't know what would be allowed in or even who was in charge, and there would be a mass scramble to create a new system in a crisis atmosphere. Eventually, we would begin the slow process of manually inspecting all the cargo waiting to enter the United States. One report found it could take as long as 4 months to get all the cargo inspected and moving again.

Finally, we would have to set up a new regime for port security. You can bet that any kind of rushed plan we put together in this kind of scenario would not balance strong security with efficient trade.

This is a realistic portrayal of events that could happen tomorrow. Five years after September 11, we have not closed a major loophole that threatens our lives and our economy. Time is not on our side. We have to act, and we need to act now.

I approach this as someone who really understands the importance of both improving our security and maintaining the flow of commerce. My home State of Washington is the most trade-dependent State in the entire country. We know what is at stake if there is an incident at one of our ports. That is why I wrote and funded Operation Safe Commerce to help us find where we are vulnerable and to evaluate the best security practices. It is why I worked hard to boost funding for the Coast Guard, and I fought to keep the Port Security Grant Program from being eliminated year after year.

Right after September 11, 5 years ago, I started talking with security and trade experts to find out what we needed to be doing to both improve security and keep our commerce going. Last year, I sought out Senator Collins as a partner in this effort. I approached Senator Collins because I knew she cared about this issue. I knew she had done a lot of work on it already, and I knew she was someone who could get things done. Since that day, she and I have worked hand in hand to develop this bill and to move it forward.

The reason we worked so hard on this bill is because we know how vulnerable we are. Terrorists have a lot of opportunities to introduce deadly cargo into a container. It can be tampered with at any time from when it leaves a foreign factory overseas to when it arrives at a consolidation warehouse and moves to a foreign port.

It could even be tampered with while it is en route to the United States. There are several dangers. I outlined what would happen if terrorists exploded a container, but they could just as easily use cargo containers to transport weapons or personnel into the United States to launch an attack anywhere on American soil. In fact, in April, 22 Chinese stowaways were found at the Port of Seattle. They reached the United States inside a cargo container. In that case, they were stowaways, but they could easily have been terrorists sneaking into this country.

The programs we have in place today are totally inadequate. Last year, thanks to the insistence of Senator Collins and Senator Coleman, the Government Accountability Office found its C-TPAT was not even checking to see if companies were doing what they promised they would in their security plans. Even when U.S. Customs inspectors do find something suspicious today at a foreign port, they can't force a container to be inspected. So we have a clear and deadly threat, and we know that current programs are inadequate. So what are we going to do about it? We could manually inspect every container coming into our ports, but that would cripple our economy.

The real challenge we face is how to make our trade more secure without slowing it to a crawl. That is why the Homeland Security, Commerce, and Finance Committees, through the leadership of Senators Collins and Lieberman, Senators Stevens and Inouye, and Senators Grassley and Baucus and I, have worked with stakeholders and experts to strike the right balance. The result is the bill that we are now considering. It provides a comprehensive blueprint for how we improve security while keeping our trade efficient. At its heart, this challenge is about keeping the good things about trade--speed and efficiency--without being vulnerable to the bad things about trade, which is the potential for terrorists to use our engines of commerce.

The GreenLane bill does five things. First of all, it creates tough new standards for all cargo. Today, we don't have any standards for cargo security.

Second, it creates a GreenLane option which provides for an even higher level of security. Companies have the option to follow the higher standards of the GreenLane. Their cargo will be tracked and monitored from the moment it leaves the factory floor overseas until it reaches the United States. We will know everywhere their cargo has been. We will know every person who has touched it, and we will know whether it has been tampered with. The GreenLane pushes our borders out by conducting inspections overseas before cargo is even loaded into a ship bound for the United States, and we will provide incentives for the companies that use this highest standard of GreenLane.

Third, our bill sets up a plan to resume trade quickly and safely, to minimize the impact of a terrorist attack on our economy.

Fourth, our bill will secure our ports here at home by authorizing and funding port security grants. This funding will help our ports and port operators to develop and implement security plans. They could use this funding to strengthen their perimeter security, which would help prevent a number of security lapses that were highlighted in a recent Seattle Times article in which a reporter was able to enter a port and walk around the containers without anybody stopping him.

Finally, our bill will hold DHS accountable for improving cargo security. DHS is long overdue in establishing cargo security standards and transportation worker credentials. We need to hold DHS accountable, and our bill provides the infrastructure to ensure accountability and coordination.

Let me take a few minutes to share a few ways that our bill does make America safer. First of all, we close the loopholes that leave us vulnerable today. Senator Collins and I have studied the 9/11 Commission Report and the various GAO reports and we worked very hard to put their recommendations into this bill. The 9/11 Commission examined what went wrong 5 years ago and how we can prevent another terrorist attack. We listened to the 9/11 Commission and we worked very hard to incorporate their recommendations and to close the loopholes that the Commission identified. The 9/11 Commission said we needed a layered security system. Our bill adopts that layered approach.

Here is what we envision as the Secretary of Homeland Security implements this bill. Each step in the GreenLane system will have multiple and redundant security layers. Cargo would be monitored and secured starting at a foreign factory overseas. In addition, containers will be sealed with high-tech container security devices, such as e-seals, to protect against their being tampered with or compromised. Then, before that container is ever loaded onto a ship, its manifest is reviewed and the container is inspected for radiation, seal tampering, and x-rayed. Finally, the cargo will be secured with access controls, ensuring anyone with access to GreenLane cargo has undergone a background check and possesses verifiable identification. Those multiple layers provide the type of layered security that the 9/11 Commission called for.

Now, the 9/11 Commission also said we have to centralize authority and responsibility so that there is finally someone accountable in our Government. Our bill does that. It centralizes authority by establishing the Office of Cargo Security Policy within the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate Federal cargo security programs and to advance security research and development.

The 9/11 Commission also said we need to do a better job sharing information throughout our Government. Our bill promotes coordination by establishing regional interagency operational centers to enhance cooperation between our Federal agencies. So our bill is responsive to the problems and the loopholes that the 9/11 Commission identified.

Our bill gives us new tools so we can approach cargo security in new ways. It gives U.S. officials in foreign ports the authority to inspect suspicious containers before they are loaded for departure into the United States. Our bill makes the haystack of containers smaller. It allows the Government to focus on suspicious cargo that enters our ports, and it ensures that we are inspecting and stopping cargo that poses a threat. And it cuts down on the smuggling of weapons, people, drugs, and other illegal cargo.

This bill will also protect America's economy in the event of a terror attack, and that is because it provides a secure, organized way to quickly resume cargo operations after any emergency shutdown because any shutdown of our ports has the potential to cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars a day. Our bill would minimize the economic impact of a terrorist attack.

So I am very proud of this bill, and I thank all of our partners and all of our supporters. I especially thank Senator Collins for her tremendous leadership and work on this very complex issue, and I commend her for the job she has done. I thank Senator Coleman for his work as chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. I thank Senator Lieberman and all of our cosponsors, and I thank the Commerce and Finance Committees, especially Senator Stevens and Senator Inouye, Senator Grassley and Senator Baucus.

We have also seen tremendous progress on the House side with the Safe Port Act, and I want to thank Representatives Dan Lundgren and Jane Harman for their leadership. Finally, I especially tonight thank the numerous Federal, State and local officials and all of the industry representatives for their tremendous assistance in helping us craft this legislation. They truly are at the front lines of securing our Nation's ports, and I have been very proud to work with all of them and to get to know them and see their dedication and commitment to making our country more secure.

Today, we have a choice in how we deal with the cargo security challenges that face us, but if we wait for a disaster, our choices are going to be pretty stark. So I think we have to make the changes now, on our terms, before there is a deadly incident. Let's protect America before an image like this appears on our television screens. Let's not wait until a terrorist incident strikes again to protect our people and to protect our economy.

Earlier this year, the American people woke up, and they spoke out when they heard that a foreign government-owned company could be running our ports. That sparked a very critical debate. Now we need to set up a security regime that will actually make us safer. Until we do so, none of us should sleep well at night. A terrible image like this of a burning container ship with a dirty bomb in one of America's harbors could be on our TV screens tomorrow. So this Congress needs to act today. We only have a few days to get this right, and I hope that all of our colleagues will work with all of us to move this bill quickly and expeditiously and pass a GreenLane bill before it is too late.

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