Beefed-up security aimed at thwarting terrorist attack

by Bill Geroux
Virginia Business
September 2005

On average, the alarms sound three times a day at the exit gates of the Port of Virginia. Pulled over for closer inspection are trucks hauling imported cargo containers, whose contents have triggered the radiation detectors. So far, all the alarms have been false, tripped by low-level radioactivity from such everyday cargo as kitty litter and ceramic tile. More than a third of the time, the truck drivers themselves trigger the sensitive alarms. Often their bodies are faintly radioactive from medical tests, such as a stress test that uses a radioactive dye.

Still the port cannot afford to ignore the alarms, says Ed Merkle, the Virginia Port Authority’s security director. Ever since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, ports around the nation have been considered potential targets. The most haunting scenario is a terrorist using a cargo container to smuggle in a radiological “dirty bomb,” a conventional bomb packed with radioactive material and designed to spread long-term contamination throughout the blast area.

In Hampton Roads, that area could include U.S. Navy facilities that share the harbor with the port terminals. The largest terminal, Norfolk International Terminals, adjoins the world’s largest Navy base, Naval Station Norfolk.

With the port handling more than 5,000 shipping containers a day — far too many to be searched individually — the first and main line of defense is the ability of U.S. intelligence to uncover and break up any terrorist smuggling plot, says Merkle. But the port itself has added more than $22 million worth of security improvements since 2001, including more police and a new police headquarters, fences, surveillance cameras and the radiation detectors, the first at a U.S. port.

Just over half of the money for the beefed-up defenses came from the Department of Homeland Security, leaving the port to come up with the rest. Airports, rather than ports, are getting the lion’s share of federal help in tightening terrorists’ access to America. J.J. Keever, the port authority’s deputy director, complained to a congressional subcommittee this spring. “Only the maritime port industry has been compelled, under threat of fines and Coast Guard sanctions, to bear the high cost of protecting the nation against terrorists.”

The port’s security budget has grown from $4 million a year to $6 million. To recoup some of the costs, it began charging all shippers a “security fee” of $2 per container. In the next round of federal grants, the port wants $12.5 million to improve its command-and-control facilities and tighten security for computers, which track the flow of containers and keep records of their contents. Another serious need, says Merkle, is a standard ID card system, possibly activated by fingerprints. Attempts by the federal government to develop such a system are progressing slowly.

Once every few months, Port Authority police are deployed to keep close watch on a cargo ship. Surveillance is required either because immigration officials will not allow crew members to leave the ship or the ship has recently called on a foreign port with dubious security, such as several ports in Africa or Aden, Yemen, where the U.S. destroyer Cole was bombed in 2000.

But the most visible safeguards are the radiation detectors, which resemble oversized versions of the antishoplifting devices in stores. In some ways, though, the detectors illustrate the holes remaining in America’s security system. Ideally, radiation detectors for ports would be erected offshore, where they could screen ships before they reach the U.S. Yet detectors have proved ineffective at sea, notes Merkle, and virtually any large container ship would probably carry some cargo capable of setting off the alarm.

The next best thing would be a radiation detector on the cranes that lift containers off the ships. But so far no detectors have proved sturdy enough to withstand the rough work the cranes do. “I think we’ll see radiation detectors on cranes in my lifetime,” predicts Merkle. For now containers flow into the ports unexamined for radiation. They may sit at the terminal for several days before being picked up and hauled out, when they would pass through the detectors for the first time.” The detectors are our last line of defense,” Merkle said, “not defense for the port itself, but for the country outside it.”