Manage American ports

On average, there are about 4,000 containers connected end to end in new york Port and New Jersey Port every day. They unloaded the freighter stretching for 65,438+05 miles and put it into the artery of American commerce. On a recent morning, a 47-year-old American customs inspector named Michael Hegle looked warily at a small part of this endless river. Hagele stood in the cab of an 850-foot-long Saudi ship docked at the Brooklyn pier, overlooking the Statue of Liberty and a striking area of Manhattan real estate, which was once controlled by the World Trade Center building. He stared at the five-story deck below.

It is covered with rectangular steel containers, most of which are 40 feet long and printed with the words "NSCSA", which are prepared for Saudi National Shipping Company. The container is four stories high and tied to the deck with long metal strips. It passed through several exotic places: Karachi, Pakistan, Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Today, these ports are likely to attract the interest of American law enforcement agencies. Hagele is concentrating on handling 148 containers, which were unloaded from the deck by a huge blue crane and stored on the dock. Under normal circumstances, men and women inspected by the US Customs and Border Protection only account for about 3% of the 7 million containers that flow into the United States every year. But considering the pedigree of these boxes, they will be screened out.

The trailer transports the container to the gamma ray machine, which is a vehicle-mounted device that uses gamma rays instead of X-rays to penetrate objects and visualize their contents, which is 150 yards away. The arm of the machine extends to the top of the container. In the cab of the truck, a customs inspector glanced at the electronic list of container contents, while another customs inspector looked at the computer screen showing the results of gamma-ray scanning. To foreigners, this picture looks vague, but soon you can see the outline of goods, tiles, furniture, machinery, electronic products and ready-made clothes in cartons. Then, something caught the inspector's attention: there was a long tubular metal object in a pile of quilts from Pakistan. Explosive? Uranium? Stinger missile? An inspector drove the container to a nearby warehouse for careful inspection. There, inspectors opened the metal pipe and found it. .. tractor parts. They are not listed on the manifest, so they are illegally imported, but they are still only agricultural machinery. At the same time, Hagele and his colleagues have begun to suspect that there are several containers on board destined for other ports in the United States. Most of the holes are very small, and the metal and plastic transport seals are improperly pasted or show signs of tampering. Hagele is a big man with curly blond hair hanging down his collar. He cut one of the seals with wire cutters. Other inspectors opened the container door and cut several boxes. They climbed over the carton and looked at the farthest corner of the container. But they only found some household goods and several boxes of Italian wine.

In the end, Hagele and his customs inspection colleagues found no * * *, no weapons, and nothing that might be related to * * * *. On that day, so did counterparts in new york City and five other ports and docks in northern New Jersey, as well as thousands of customs inspectors in Charleston, Baltimore, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Oakland and Seattle. In fact, since September 1 1, 200 1, small-scale inspectors at 36/kloc-0 seaports in the United States have scanned or inspected tens of thousands of containers and carefully inspected hundreds of thousands of manifests, but they have not found any physical evidence with the meaning of terrorist conspiracy.

Optimists may cheer up and point out that although analysts compare finding weapons of mass destruction in 7 million containers to catching a small fish in Niagara Falls, this possibility seems impossible. The Customs Bureau has set up enough barriers to stop Al Qaeda. But pessimists have reason to worry. The customs inspector may miss a smuggling bomb or a batch of missiles. If so, it's not because of lack of motivation. Kevin McCabe, Chief Inspector of new york City and New Jersey Port of US Customs and Border Protection, said: "Many people here watched the 9 1 1 attack from the office window. You don't have to tell us what these two missions are. " Very clear. "

The problem is that McCabe and his colleagues are at the receiving end of a huge global conveyor belt. The contents of steel boxes transported by this conveyor belt are declared by shippers, but they are rarely verified along the way. Stephen E.Flynn, a 43-year-old retired commander of the Coast Guard, said: "This system is completely open. Anyone with $3,000 in Asia and a little less in Europe can send a box to their parking lot or home. They can put it on their cheeks at will, seal it with a 50-cent lead seal, and then they can participate in the competition. " Port safety expert. "When I look at the cargo transportation system today, when I wake up every morning and find that we are not attacked, I just declare myself lucky. America's Treasury Secretary, Defense Secretary, Commerce Secretary, Secretary of State and President have to toss and turn at night because they know that the security of this system is too low.

The challenge of protecting the port and monitoring the goods in all these 20-foot and 40-foot boxes is terrible enough. But it also brings a dilemma, which makes our demand for security run counter to the ideal of open society and free trade. Container network is the circulation system of global new economy, which carries 90% of international trade. There are about 1 1 10,000 containers in the world. From178,000 foreign enterprises enter and leave the United States with goods worth $500 billion.

This system is designed for speed and efficiency, not for safety. After the attack on September 1 2006, the US Customs and Border Protection (now under the Department of Homeland Security) stepped up the inspection of inbound containers, conducted a comprehensive inspection of computer programs for high-risk goods, and used new X-ray and gamma-ray machines for inspection. But according to Flynn and other security experts, * * * has not done enough to monitor the contents of overseas containers. (The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment. )

Experts worry that containers can easily transport chemical or biological weapons, explosives, missiles or nuclear weapons components. This weapon is divided into small batches and can be hidden in machines, food or thousands of other commodities shipped to American ports every day. Even if a container is dragged out of the trade flow and aimed at by gamma ray machines and radiation detectors, customs inspectors may not find weapons. In the past two years, * * * has successfully smuggled a piece of 15 pound of depleted uranium provided by the National Resources Defense Council to American ports twice. In both cases, inspectors inspected containers through gamma rays and radiation screens, but found no materials. Customs officials denied that the inspection system was out of order; They say depleted uranium is not considered dangerous, and they will find enriched uranium for nuclear weapons because it will release detectable radiation levels. But some nuclear scientists disagree. They said that given the current detection equipment and possible radiation shielding, weapons-grade radioactive materials are more difficult to find than depleted uranium.

Security experts are not only worried about detonating weapons of mass destruction in a city, but also about an attack on a major port. Such an attack will almost certainly force * * * to close the country's container system in order to achieve a remarkable goal. During the ant period, the main economic sectors were paralyzed. Flynn said: "I'm almost certain that we can see from the conversation with senior people in * * * that if there is a major accident in one of our ports and a container, we will overthrow the system," said Senior Research Fellow of National Security Studies of the Council on Foreign Relations and Chief Advisor of the Congressional Port Security Caucus. We will shut it down until we solve it. Now, when the president stands in front of the American people after a very obvious and fatal action, how will he assure them that these other containers can cross our border and enter our port without worrying about them?

The neighboring ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, covering nearly 25 square miles, are the busiest ports in the United States, handling 43% of containers entering the United States. Crossing the Vincent Thomas Bridge and arriving at the destination island of Los Angeles, an amazing scene is presented: dozens of towering container cranes set up the skyline, dozens of large cargo ships docked at ports or berths, thousands of containers piled up on the huge asphalt road, and hundreds of trucks roared in all directions. If this lively scene reminds people of the heyday of American industry, then this impression is somewhat misleading: the reason why this place is prosperous is precisely because the United States stopped producing many goods. If everything you buy now seems to be from China, the Philippines, Turkey or made in taiwan, you can thank the Global Container System for bringing it to you.

"Ordinary people don't know about container transportation and its impact on them," said Christopher, president and CEO of Washington. Christopher Koch said that members of the Washington-based World Shipping Council shipped 93% of containers to the United States. "It's like asking a child where electricity comes from. As far as he is concerned, it comes from turning on the switch. Nike shoes on their feet, shirts in the closet, condiments in the kitchen, Heineken beer in the refrigerator and DVD player in the study were all delivered to them because of containers.

The rapid development of container freight system since 1960s has completely changed the world trade, making it possible for people to load a 40-foot-long box in a factory in the inland of China and transport it to Hongkong, and then load the container on a ship and transport it to Los Angeles. In some cases, it can be unloaded and loaded on a truck in one minute, for example, in Wal-Mart in New Mexico. Flynn said: "This basically makes geographical factors less and less important in production and trade. From 200 1 to 2002, the number of inbound containers handled by Los Angeles and Long Beach ports increased by 13% to 2.8 million, and it is expected to double in the next decade. " . Port officials estimate that 40% of American trade depends to some extent on containers flowing through the complex in Long Beach, Los Angeles. In 2002, a labor dispute caused the west coast dock workers to stop working 10 days, resulting in a daily loss of $654.38 billion, which made people feel the importance of the seaport. Before the 9/ 1 1 event,

Customs inspectors focus on drug control, commercial contraband and illegal immigration. They trudged on a mountain of paper manifests with vague words such as "all kinds of goods" and "allegedly including goods". Port security measures are lax, and people in many areas can walk around at will. Captain John m Holmes recently retired. He is the commander of the Coast Guard at the Long Beach Port Complex in Los Angeles, and is considered to have improved the security of the port. He said that the security at the airport was as bad as before. "Compared with our port, it is like Fort Knox."

Officials are scrambling to plug the loopholes in the container freight system, and the measures formulated have won unanimous praise from security experts and chief accounting firms. US Customs now requires all shippers to declare the contents of containers 24 hours before loading and boarding the cargo ship bound for US ports. In addition, the bureau has improved an automatic computer system, which was originally used to detect drugs and other contraband to help identify suspicious goods. Many features that the system should identify include unknown importers, manufacturers or shippers who have never been to the United States, and small quantities of goods from high-risk countries. For example, for the first time, a consignor from Pakistan shipped a batch of goods to a new destination in the United States, and it was almost certain that he could be inspected by customs inspectors working for Vera Adams, director of the Customs and Border Protection Bureau of the port complex of Los Angeles and Long Beach. She said: "Our goal is to check 100% of high-risk substances." . Customs inspectors in the port building now carry out four times as many actual inspections as before 9/ 1 1. Shipping executives said that increased inspections have not slowed down container trade.

As part of the container security plan launched in June 5438+ 10, 2002, the US Customs and Border Protection has sent inspectors to 16 foreign ports, and plans to send officials to dozens of other ports. Its goal is to cooperate with local customs authorities to inspect suspicious containers before they are shipped to the United States. The Customs Bureau also provides advice to thousands of shippers, brokers and manufacturers on how to strengthen the supply chain so that people all over the world can fill containers and mail them to the United States at will. Even the shipping industry admits that this is the main weakness of the system. "Carriers don't load containers," said Koch of the World Shipping Council. "It sent a container, and a few days later the container came back with a seal on it. The most obvious loophole is not that the container has been tampered with in transit. This is what was put in the box. It's like trying to find out what's in every letter sent to the post office.

Concerns about the security of container systems surfaced in the early 1990s, when Flynn and others pointed out that container systems were increasingly used to smuggle drugs, guns and people. In 1998, Flynn first pointed out that * * * might use the container system to attack the United States. After the 9/ 1 1 incident, officials and other security experts began to take this possibility very seriously. In their doomsday scenario, the most important thing is to send a nuclear device to the United States in a container. With the present technology, can customs inspectors find out small nuclear weapons hidden in containers? Customs officials including mccabe agreed. But some nuclear physicists disagree with this view, saying that a few pounds of shielded weapons-grade uranium will not release strong radioactive signals. Stanley Prussin, a nuclear engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, said: "It is extremely difficult to see enriched uranium in a huge shipping container." The possible cargo range is wide, so it is difficult to find this substance. "What is certain is that smuggling uranium into the country is not enough to make an explosive nuclear bomb; This is a considerable technical task, which requires expertise in nuclear science and access to other technologies.

Scientists funded by the United States are studying new technologies to improve the detection of radioactive substances. At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, researchers are testing a device that bombards an object with a neutron stream, which can penetrate a thick shielding layer and react with nuclear materials. The question is whether scientists can apply this technology to dozens of ports and docks. Prussia, consultant of Lawrence Livermore project, said: "We are actively trying to develop a method, and the detection probability of this method will be 1000 times that of the current one." . "I'm not sure whether it can be done in a practical way now."

But experts believe that the best way to exclude nuclear, chemical or biological weapons from American containers is to completely reform the transportation system.

Flynn praised CBP for obtaining beachhead positions by sending inspectors to foreign ports. However, he believes that it is necessary to expand this presence in order to regularly review the maternal and child container business and even regularly check the trusted shippers. At present, overseas customs operations are understaffed, and customs requirements are basically voluntary. Flynn said: "In order to achieve the goals we need, you must formulate incentives and disincentives for Wal-Mart, Target and genetically modified foods, and insist that everyone in the food chain take adequate safety precautions, and they can track and monitor materials." . "The core issue is that everyone knows that the customs has no ability to check." Large manufacturing and transportation enterprises, such as those used by large American companies, may need to hire security personnel and inspectors to ensure that no one tampers with their goods.

Security officials also foresee that "smart containers" have radiation detectors, tamper-proof electronic seals and GPS equipment to alert dispatchers when containers are transferred. Smaller shippers will be encouraged to use this technology and pack containers at supervised locations. Those who abide by the rules will see their goods transported faster and their inspections at American ports will be reduced. In the United States, those who do not comply with the regulations will face delays and compulsory inspections. Flynn said: "If you want to get better behavior upstream, the only way is to create pain, which means a lot of inspection." . "If you fail the compliance test, you will have to run in this slow lane for another six months. You must have a heavy hammer and an incentive mechanism.

These measures will include investing more money in port security and establishing a large group of overseas customs inspectors equivalent to the foreign affairs department of the Department of Homeland Security. Flynn is the author of the forthcoming book "America's Fragility: How America Fails to Defend its Home and Protect its People from Terrorist Attacks", and he appeals to those who take new measures not to be lonely. Last summer, the chief accounting firm reported that the Customs Bureau did not allocate enough manpower or formulate effective supervision procedures when inspecting overseas ports. So far, * * * has spent about $350 million on port security, which critics say is only a small part of the required funds. The United States Coast Guard estimates that improving port security in 2004 will require $654.38 billion+$500 million.

Most shippers and manufacturers expressed their willingness to comply with stricter security measures. Koch of the WorldShippingCouncil said: "The shipping industry supports these initiatives because it recognizes the need to establish a security infrastructure before terrorist incidents occur." . In the event of an attack, stricter security systems may allow investigators to quickly find weak links and reopen US ports within days instead of weeks, thus saving billions of dollars. In other words, even a strengthened container network is not immune from terrorism. The number of containers flowing into the United States is really too large. "We will never be impeccable? Adams of Long Beach Port Customs in Los Angeles said. No, the only way we can be impeccable is to close the border and become a police state, and then (* * *) will win. "

In a high-rise glass building in Long Beach, a customs inspector named Keith Petit tries to find out in front of the computer every day whether the next American tool attack may be hidden in 65,000 containers passing through Long Beach Port in Los Angeles every week. Petit, a 42-year-old navy veteran, was hired after the 9/1/incident. He looked for "anomalies" in the electronic invoices he received, such as strange addresses or vague descriptions of goods. Sliding on his computer screen is the result of globalization, and it seems that Americans can't do it: sweaters, shoes, tights, plastic bags, tiles, marble urns, lighting equipment, furniture, DVD players, a 3 1 year-old ex-marine, who is known as one of the most radical customs inspectors in Long Beach, Los Angeles. Tall and muscular, with thick black hair and goatee, the local Virginians wear a pair of sunglasses, a 9mm automatic pistol and shiny black boots. He is used to addressing others as "sir" or "madam". When we were standing on the dock near a cargo ship with three football fields, a crane (whose operator was ten stories above us) lifted the container and put it on a yellow covered trailer, which shuttled through the huge yard. Pulich attended the anti-terrorism course and studied the captured training manual, which he reflected on. He said, "The bad guys have deep pockets. They are attacking. " When I saw the handbook, what surprised me was how much their organization looked like an army. They are not just a group of desert residents. They are very clever. They believe what they are doing. They are very patient.

During the process of scanning containers, inspecting containers and instructing recruits how to board and search cargo ships with gamma ray machines, I stayed in Ploetz for two days and was deeply impressed. When he didn't find anything related to the work of the bureau day after day, he was full of enthusiasm for his work. The main task now is to fight terrorism. He said: "If I go home every night and spend another day, nothing happens in the port, then I will be very happy."