Federal security measures likely to intensify

by Tod Robberson
Reprinted with permission of The Dallas Morning News

June 3, 2007

WASHINGTON — The list of hassles already pushes American travelers to the limits of their patience: Remove shoes and jacket. Take off belt. Place hair gel and after-shave in plastic bag. Put laptop in separate tray. Present photo ID. Walk through scanner.

Above all, do not complain because they can make you do it all over again.

If anything, federal inspections and intrusions for people citizens and businesses are only going to get worse, according to top Homeland Security and counterterrorism specialists in Washington. In interviews, they said the threat of a major terrorist attack, taking advantage of remaining security gaps, remains too high for Americans to let down their guard.

Passport requirements for vacationers heading to the Caribbean this summer are only the start of tighter security measures, said Michael Chertoff, secretary of the homeland securitysecretary. New initiatives will require the screening of ships, air cargo, boats and private planes, he said.

Dallas a key spot

Dallas can expect its own share of new hassles as it becomes an increasingly important nexus for rail, sea, air and truck -cargo traffic, according to other security specialists. Other major cities are gearing up for requirements that will tighten monitoring of chemical shipments of chemicals and other hazardous materials.

Many metropolitan areas, including from southern Florida, Los Angeles and New York, have assigned police representatives to a new counterterrorism operations center in Washington to better prepare themselves if the nation goes on high alert.

“I think it would be a big mistake to dismiss the lesson of 9/11. It was bad enough when people said that before 9/11 there was a failure of imagination” about the possibilities of a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil, Mr. Chertoff said. “We no longer have to imagine this. We experienced it. Do we really want to go back to where we were prior to 9/11?”

Agency's premise

He acknowledged that businesses, including airlines, already are complaining about the newly tightened procedures but countered, “Everybody who says, 'I don't want to take reasonable security measures' has got to ask themselves: Would you feel differently if your child perished in a thing that occurred because we didn't take the measure?”

Current and former congressional leaders said the security hassles are all but certain only likely to get worse but questioned whether there is a point at which Americans will begin to rebel at some point.

“I had my toothpaste taken away from me about three weeks ago” despite having travelinged with it in his hand baggage on three previous trips, said Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. “We need uniformity as much as we can so we can put a little confidence back into travel — without compromising security.”

Congressman critical

He questioned whether the Homeland Security Department, a 4four-year-old conglomeration of 22 disparate government agencies, is capable of reassessing rules and procedures “based on a common-sense approach” rather than continuing to impose security measures adopted quickly in times of crisis.

To do so requires “somebody standing back and saying, 'Look, there has to be a better way of doing this.' You can't get that from the department,” Mr. Thompson said.

With the steady combination of new rules and potential security threats, “I think you'll see a whittling away of how we have come to know travel in this country,” he added. “Those traditional things that we've known [from pre-9/11 travel], we won't see them again in our lifetime.”

Cathy Lanier, chief of police for the District of Columbia, said she has learned quickly that there are limits to the public's tolerance of security hassles — even in a city that was hit on 9/11 and has faced numerous high alerts ever since.

“There is a balance in everything we do, and this is one of the balances where nobody knows where the middle of the road is yet,” she said. “Our community tells us very quickly when things are out of balance.” She said authorities need to apply the “reasonableness standard” to all security procedures and keep the public informed about why tighter measures are sometimes needed.

“If I fail and overreact” to a potential threat, “I'm going to get a black eye,” she said. “If I fail and underreact, 2,000 or 3,000 people could die.”

'Critical infrastructure'

Daniel Prieto, a senior fellow at the Reform Institute, a research organization in Washington, said Americans should expect to see tighter measures to secure the “critical infrastructure” — such as ports, refineries, chemical plants, trucking and rail networks, pipelines and electrical grids.

—around the country.

He said 85 percent of the nation's critical infrastructure is owned and controlled by the private sector, which means businesses either will have to cooperate voluntarily or face greater federal intrusion to ensure sensitive facilities are secure against sabotage or attack.

John McLaughlin, former deputy director of the CIA, said the world's shipping and cargo -transportation networks, including shipping, are likely to become the particular focus of a major homeland security crackdown, although he said the Homeland Security Ddepartment had already begun substantial efforts to screen cargo containers before they reach U.S. ports.

Still, only a small percentage — probably less than 5 percent of the millions of containers arriving in the U.S. each year — are inspected or scanned before entry, officials and specialists said.

Since Dallas is among the cities developing large-scale “inland ports” to handle rail container transfers, cross-border shipping and overflow cargo from the Port of Houston, the “nuke in a box” scenario — a crude nuclear bomb hidden inside a cargo container — will be an increasingly dominant aspect of federal inspections targeting North Texas, Mr. Prieto said.

Workers in critical -infrastructure industries — including thousands of port-cargo truckers and longshoremen — soon will have to submit to federal background checks and obtain biometric identity cards, Mr. Prieto said.

The costs to business and the government could be staggering, while workers can be expected to object to the government's increased prying into their lives, officials and specialists said.

The intrusions already have reached a worrisome level, said Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman and former vice chairman of the commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks.

“I hope some day we're going to get a little more balance,” Mr. Hamilton said. “It has meant a very sharp deterioration in civil liberties and privacy. * I think there is too much erosion in civil liberties.”

Still, he noted, there hasn't has not been another major terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, “So we must be doing something right.”

CONTAINING THE THREAT

Ninety percent of all goods entering the U.S. come in via cargo containers, which counterterrorism officials say is perhaps the most serious biggest major vulnerability in U.S. homeland security. But the challenge of inspecting those containers is underscored by the following statistics:

20 million — number of cargo containers in circulation around the world

2.1 million — number of shipping routes used to move goods around the world

12 million — number of separate shipments (by ship, rail or truck) of containers into and through the U.S. each year

400,000 — number of different companies importing goods into the U.S.

75 — number of different companies involved in bringing any single shipment into the U.S.

SOURCE: John McLaughlin, former CIA deputy director

Copyright © 2007 International Reporting Project. All Rights Reserved.