The Age of Unity may indeed be upon us. The right-leaning Heritage Foundation and left-leaning Center for American Progress appear to be in significant agreement on at least one thing: The need for a BRAC-like commission of independent voices to review the tangle of homeland security laws and mandates issued in the frantic years after 9/11.
Congress should establish an independent, bipartisan commission to study the results of the mandate for 100 percent screening of shipping containers and air cargo. The commission should assess the likely threats and look into alternatives for securing global supply chains and report its findings after the 2008 presidential elections so Congress can return to the issue in early 2009 with the politics of the election behind it.
I see from yesterday morning’s press reports that House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson has written another letter to DHS asking about the status of the cargo screening mandate Congress has shoved down the throat of the aviation and maritime industries.
The U.S. Coast Guard says that the “Coast Guard Report,” a blog which is not affiliated with the U.S. Coast Guard, simplified and mischaracterized information provided by Admiral Thad Allen during a Department of Defense sponsored Bloggers Roundtable regarding potential distinctions between bloggers and traditional journalists. (Security Debrief had published a repost of the Coast Guard Report’s comments.)
A week after dressing down TSA for suggesting that Congress did not really mean for all air cargo to be scanned, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson followed up with a letter to DHS accusing it of trying to undermine congressional intent to fully scan 100 percent of all cargo — both air and maritime.
We are providing too much money in port security not to invest pennies to save dollars. DHS, through the CEDAP and SAVERS Program, have provided a significant amount of financial assistance to first responders conducting objective assessments and validations on commercial equipment and systems – a process that has been crucial to ensuring we are investing our security funding wisely. Yet Congress is now considering reducing the funding for these programs significantly, or cutting them altogether – steps that would have serious implications for the security of our nation’s ports.
A terrorist operative hoping to use the flow of international commerce against us found his job all the more difficult because of the security programs which Admiral Peterman oversaw and directed.
The most glaring problem with the “100 percent” model is that it goes against the globally accepted consensus that a risk-analysis and layered approach is a far more comprehensive and effective security model than the concept of “100 percent scanning.”
Global resistance is growing to a looming Congressional mandate that will require the scanning of all containers entering U.S. ports by 2012. The World Customs Organization (WCO) released a new report on Tuesday analyzing the 9/11 Bill’s requirement for 100% cargo scanning – a measure that Le Havre University researchers found will have significant “technical and organizational difficulties.”
As the GAO report shows, C-TPAT is not perfect. As with so many areas of homeland security, there are still a number of challenges that must be addressed and improved. Most critical among them is the lack of systematic follow-up by Customs and Border Protection officials to ensure that full implementation of their security requirements are met before granting benefits. Anyone who reads this report, however, will be struck by the degree of improvement C-TPAT has undergone since it was formally adopted, as well as the sophistication of DHS’s overarching risk-based approach to security. It is the very opposite of the model called for by some critics, who want to replace this model with the so-called 100 Percent model.
Sponsored by:
