[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
PREVENTION OF AND RESPONSE TO THE ARRIVAL OF A DIRTY BOMB AT A U.S.
PORT
=======================================================================
(114-30)
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
COAST GUARD AND MARITIME TRANSPORTATION
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 27, 2015
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
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COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania, Chairman
DON YOUNG, Alaska PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee, ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
Vice Chair Columbia
JOHN L. MICA, Florida JERROLD NADLER, New York
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey CORRINE BROWN, Florida
SAM GRAVES, Missouri EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DUNCAN HUNTER, California RICK LARSEN, Washington
ERIC A. ``RICK'' CRAWFORD, Arkansas MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts
LOU BARLETTA, Pennsylvania GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California
BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
BOB GIBBS, Ohio STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
RICHARD L. HANNA, New York ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
JEFF DENHAM, California JOHN GARAMENDI, California
REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin ANDRE CARSON, Indiana
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky JANICE HAHN, California
TOM RICE, South Carolina RICHARD M. NOLAN, Minnesota
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina ANN KIRKPATRICK, Arizona
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania DINA TITUS, Nevada
RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois SEAN PATRICK MALONEY, New York
MARK SANFORD, South Carolina ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
ROB WOODALL, Georgia LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
TODD ROKITA, Indiana CHERI BUSTOS, Illinois
JOHN KATKO, New York JARED HUFFMAN, California
BRIAN BABIN, Texas JULIA BROWNLEY, California
CRESENT HARDY, Nevada
RYAN A. COSTELLO, Pennsylvania
GARRET GRAVES, Louisiana
MIMI WALTERS, California
BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia
CARLOS CURBELO, Florida
DAVID ROUZER, North Carolina
LEE M. ZELDIN, New York
------ 7
Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation
DUNCAN HUNTER, California, Chairman
DON YOUNG, Alaska JOHN GARAMENDI, California
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
BOB GIBBS, Ohio CORRINE BROWN, Florida
MARK SANFORD, South Carolina JANICE HAHN, California
GARRET GRAVES, Louisiana LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
CARLOS CURBELO, Florida JULIA BROWNLEY, California
DAVID ROUZER, North Carolina PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon (Ex
LEE M. ZELDIN, New York Officio)
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania (Ex
Officio)
CONTENTS
Page
Summary of Subject Matter........................................ iv
TESTIMONY
Panel 1
Rear Admiral Peter J. Brown, Assistant Commandant for Response
Policy, U.S. Coast Guard....................................... 4
Huban A. Gowadia, Ph.D., Director, Domestic Nuclear Detection
Office, U.S. Department of Homeland Security................... 4
Todd C. Owen, Assistant Commissioner, Office of Field Operations,
U.S. Customs and Border Protection............................. 4
David C. Maurer, Director, Homeland Security and Justice, U.S.
Government Accountability Office............................... 4
Panel 2
Gregory H. Canavan, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, Los Alamos National
Laboratories................................................... 32
Charles A. Potter, Ph.D., Distinguished Member of the Technical
Staff, Sandia National Laboratories............................ 32
Joseph M. Lawless, Chairman, Security Committee, American
Association of Port Authorities................................ 32
Stephen E. Flynn, Ph.D., Director, Center for Resilience Studies,
Northeastern University........................................ 32
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES
Rear Admiral Peter J. Brown...................................... 48
Huban A. Gowadia, Ph.D........................................... 53
Todd C. Owen..................................................... 58
David C. Maurer.................................................. 65
Gregory H. Canavan, Ph.D......................................... 82
Charles A. Potter, Ph.D.......................................... 91
Joseph M. Lawless................................................ 98
Stephen E. Flynn, Ph.D........................................... 101
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Rear Admiral Peter J. Brown, Assistant Commandant for Response
Policy, U.S. Coast Guard, response to request for information
from Hon. Garret Graves, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Louisiana............................................. 26
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
PREVENTION OF AND RESPONSE TO THE ARRIVAL OF A DIRTY BOMB AT A U.S.
PORT
----------
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2015
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime
Transportation,
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:01 a.m., in
room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Duncan Hunter
(Chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Hunter. Good morning. The subcommittee will come to
order.
Before I get into my statement, I want to indicate my
displeasure at the lack of response from the Secretary of
Homeland Security regarding a letter I sent on October 7th for
this hearing asking for information related to today with what
we are going to talk about.
I specifically asked about the number of containers
inspected prior to arrival at a U.S. port, the percentage
inspected after arrival, the different inspection methods used
and criteria used to determine increased or reduced screening.
So basically I asked them: How many containers do you screen?
How do you screen them? How do you scan them? You would think
that the Department of Homeland Security would have those
numbers in front of them because that is what they do.
In addition, I asked about the Department's progress to
meet the 100-percent container scanning requirement in the 9/11
Commission Act of 2007 for containers headed to U.S. ports. The
information requested is relevant to today's hearing, and the
Department should have been able to provide a response within a
3-week lead time, roughly the same amount of time taken to
develop the testimony we will hear from Department witnesses
today.
Are any of you aware of the status of the Secretary's
response to my letter I guess would be the first question.
Mr. Owen. Yes, sir. I am aware that the letter has cleared
the interagency with the departments within, and it is waiting
for final approval at the Department level.
Mr. Hunter. Of the numbers?
Mr. Owen. I am aware of the numbers, sir. Yes, sir.
Mr. Hunter. So you have the numbers?
Mr. Owen. I have the numbers prepared for today, sir. Yes,
sir.
Mr. Hunter. Great. OK.
And let me say one last thing, too. We are not going to
hear from anybody from SOUTHCOM [U.S. Southern Command], and we
are not going to hear from anybody from NORTHCOM [U.S. Northern
Command], because the OSD, the Office of the Secretary of
Defense, refused to send witnesses or briefers from either
SOUTHCOM or NORTHCOM.
I am not sure whether that was the Department of Defense
saying this is a Department of Homeland Security issue and a
Department of Homeland Security issue only or whether they just
didn't care enough to send somebody. Maybe they have a beef
with me. And I would say to OSD that that is pretty petulant,
to not send anybody from any--besides the Coast Guard from the
Department of Defense, from NORTHCOM or SOUTHCOM.
The subcommittee is meeting today to discuss the scenario
of a dirty bomb--a radiological dispersal device--in a U.S.
port; the potential for how such a device could be brought in;
measures that can be taken to deter, detect, and interdict the
security threat; and ways to prevent an adversary from reaching
its intended target within the U.S.
The United States has an exclusive economic zone spanning
3.5 million square miles, 95,000 miles of open shoreline, over
360 ports, and numerous small harbors across the country. Our
maritime border is unique compared to our land or air borders
due to its sheer size and the potential ease of moving large
quantities of materials undetected.
Interdiction efforts are about more than the seized
contraband. Understanding the pathways used by smugglers is a
critical part of the process. Pathways used for drugs today
could be used to bring in anything--nuclear, radiological
material, or anything. If you can carry thousands of pounds of
something, you can carry thousands of pounds of something else.
Knowledge of existing smuggling practices coupled with trends
on how actions change due to law enforcement efforts can assist
in disrupting future smuggling efforts.
After 9/11, security measures were enacted to better
protect our homeland by expanding efforts to detect and deter
threats overseas. It is obviously much better to find things if
they are not on U.S. shorelines. These efforts include
screening cargo manifests before containers are loaded onto a
U.S.-bound ship, scanning shipping containers that have been
determined to be high-risk, screening ship personnel data,
knowing where a ship and its cargo have been before entering
United States territory, and intercepting a vessel at sea and
preventing its entry into a U.S. port.
We will hear from our witnesses today on how the Federal
Government deploys a whole-of-government, layered approach,
including law enforcement, technology, and intelligence, to
detect, deter, and interdict potential threats.
These internal measures are combined with treaties and
agreements with foreign governments to conduct cooperative
enforcement efforts at ports overseas.
In early October, the Associated Press reported on the FBI
[Federal Bureau of Investigation] and Eastern European
authorities' efforts over the last 5 years to successfully
interrupt four attempts by criminal gangs with suspected
Russian ties to sell cesium to Middle Eastern extremists. And
we can talk about cesium either in this panel or the next
panel. It is not the most dangerous stuff, but it is still bad
stuff. The successful disruption of the sale was a positive
result; however, the desire of our adversaries to obtain, at a
minimum, materials for a dirty bomb or, to the extreme,
materials for a nuclear weapon are growing.
Due to the Iranian deal, no matter what you think about it
one way or the other, and the reaction that the other Middle
Eastern countries are going to have to Iran having nuclear
facilities, there is going to be more nuclear material out on
the market. That is just the way it is going to be going
forward. Over the next 10 or 25 years, you are going to have
more countries with more nuclear capability than we have
probably ever seen in the world.
And I think that is one of the reasons we are going to kind
of start this series of hearings up, is because the
interdiction efforts by the Coast Guard and Department of
Homeland Security are going to be paramount. I mean, that is
the only line of defense, not just the first line of defense,
that we have in this country.
It is concerning that the administration's whole-of-
government approach does not appear to include foreign nuclear
policy. For an administration that proclaims to be anti-
nuclear-proliferation, we are heading down a path where our
adversaries will have greater access to nuclear material. While
this hearing is about preventing, deterring, and interdicting
threats from coming onto our ports, it is important to be aware
of how our foreign policies may conflict and potentially
disrupt enforcement measures to keep our country safe.
With that, I yield to Ranking Member Garamendi.
Mr. Garamendi. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the
hearing.
When you first noticed the hearing, I am going, ``Wait a
minute, I have been here, I have done this. What is--when did
it occur?'' About 2005, we did a national meeting on natural
disaster insurance. Including among the three things that we
looked at in 2005 was, let's see: Hurricane up the east coast--
that would be Sandy; earthquakes at the New Madrid fault, but
that hasn't happened, thankfully; and terrorism, a dirty bomb
at the Port of Long Beach. So there is a study out there. I
really wanted to get it in time for this, but I wasn't able to
gather it.
In any case, this is a subject that we need to pay
attention to, and I thank you for holding the hearing.
The threat of a nuclear or radiological dirty bomb arriving
at a U.S. port is sobering. It certainly was in 2005 when we
did that national review of disaster insurance. An idea that
was virtually unimaginable 15 years ago--well, not quite 10
years ago--is now the primary focus of coordination,
multilayering strategy involving multiple Federal agencies,
including the U.S. Coast Guard.
By most accounts, it would appear that the Global Nuclear
Detection Architecture and numerous Federal programs,
activities, capabilities that are implemented to fulfill this
strategy seem to be meeting the challenge of keeping
radiological or other nuclear threats outside of the U.S.
homeland. This is something we ought to be grateful for, and I
certainly appreciate that because of the effort made by
thousands of Federal employees every day to protect us.
And yet we cannot let our guard down, for even the
likelihood of a terrorist cell smuggling weapons of mass
destruction into the country in a shipping container may be low
but the consequences would be catastrophic. At least, that is
what we learned in 2005. And because the risks are potentially
catastrophic, we must continue to do everything possible to
make sure it doesn't happen.
Among the questions we are going to be asking, or, at
least, I will be asking--I assume you will also, Mr. Chairman
and Members: Are we adequately testing and validating our
technologies and procedures and training to make sure that they
remain relevant given the current and emerging threats and
circumstances?
Second, in the event of a detonation of a dirty bomb at a
U.S. port, are we making sure today that we will have in place
the technologies and capabilities to quickly and effectively
respond to the cleanup and recovery of such an attack? I know
on the insurance side the answer in 2005 was ``no,'' and today
I am sure it is also ``no.''
And, thirdly, considering that a future terrorist may be
homegrown, are we doing everything we can to track and monitor
within the U.S. the coastwide trade to make sure that vessels
operating in U.S. domestic waters are not a potential conduit
for those seeking to do us great harm?
It is going to be an interesting hearing. Thank you for the
panels. I thank the witnesses who are here. And looking forward
to the testimony.
Thank you.
Mr. Hunter. I thank the ranking member.
I am going to introduce everybody really quick.
Rear Admiral Peter J. Brown, the U.S. Coast Guard's
Assistant Commandant for Response Policy. Thanks for being
here.
Dr. Gowadia--did I get it right?--the Department of
Homeland Security's Director for the Domestic Nuclear Detection
Office.
Mr. Todd Owen, the Department of Homeland Security's
Assistant Commissioner for the Office of Field Operations for
U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Thanks for being here.
And Mr. David Maurer, the U.S. GAO [Government
Accountability Office] Director of Homeland Security and
Justice.
And we will start with you, Admiral Brown. You are
recognized.
TESTIMONY OF REAR ADMIRAL PETER J. BROWN, ASSISTANT COMMANDANT
FOR RESPONSE POLICY, U.S. COAST GUARD; HUBAN A. GOWADIA, PH.D.,
DIRECTOR, DOMESTIC NUCLEAR DETECTION OFFICE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
HOMELAND SECURITY; TODD C. OWEN, ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER, OFFICE
OF FIELD OPERATIONS, U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION; AND
DAVID C. MAURER, DIRECTOR, HOMELAND SECURITY AND JUSTICE, U.S.
GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Admiral Brown. Well, thank you. And good morning, Chairman
Hunter, Ranking Member Garamendi, and distinguished members of
the subcommittee. I am honored to be here today to discuss the
Coast Guard's role in the prevention and response to the
arrival of a radiological dispersion device, or dirty bomb,
into a U.S. port. And I thank you for your strong support of
the Coast Guard and our men and women in uniform.
It is a pleasure to be here today with two of our most
important partners within the Department of Homeland Security:
Customs and Border Protection and the Domestic Nuclear
Detection Office. The Nation is safer in no small part due to
the partnerships that we have with these two organizations. And
I would like to personally thank both Dr. Gowadia and Assistant
Commissioner Owen for their ongoing support and leadership.
My complete statement has been provided to the
subcommittee, and I ask that it be entered into the record.
Mr. Chairman, through a layered security approach, the
Coast Guard pushes border and port security out well beyond our
Nation's shoreline and the exclusive economic zone by fostering
strategic relationships with partner nations to detect, deter,
and counter threats as early and as far from U.S. shore as
possible in order to prevent an attack on the homeland.
The Coast Guard's efforts to prevent dirty bombs from
nearing the U.S. ports and shores begins overseas with robust
international partnerships that provide access to maritime
ports of origin. Through our International Port Security
Program, the Coast Guard performs overseas port assessments to
confirm that foreign trading partners meet international
standards for security and antiterrorism. Since the inception
of this program in 2004, Coast Guard personnel have visited
more than 150 countries and approximately 1,200 port
facilities.
To more effectively counter these threats in the offshore
region and throughout this hemisphere, the Coast Guard
maintains more than 40 maritime bilateral law enforcement
agreements and 11 bilateral Proliferation Security Initiative,
or PSI, ship-boarding agreements, which allow Coast Guard teams
to board vessels suspected of carrying illicit shipments of
weapons of mass destruction, their delivery systems, or related
materials far from shore.
The Coast Guard's membership within the intelligence
community provides global situational awareness, analysis, and
interagency collaboration with various components, including
the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], National
Counterterrorism Center, and the FBI, among others. Through our
Maritime Transportation Security Act, we provide security plan
compliance and inspections for maritime facilities and vessels,
and this reduces the vulnerability to terrorist attacks in or
involving our ports.
Building on these preventive efforts, the Coast Guard also
brings agility and mobility to our detection regime with the
ability to deliver our detection capabilities anywhere in the
maritime domain. The Coast Guard conducts over 400 routine
vessel inspections, examinations, and law enforcement boardings
every day. And Coast Guard personnel who visit boats, vessels,
and regulated facilities carry detection devices to alert the
users to the presence of radiation.
In 2004, we developed a Maritime Radiation Detection
Program and have since maintained a close relationship with
DNDO [Domestic Nuclear Detection Office] to standardize our
equipment and enhance our national capacity for detection with
multiple levels of capability, including the ability to reach
back to scientific experts for more information. We do this in
conjunction with CBP [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] and
with TSA's [Transportation Security Administration's] Visible
Intermodal Prevention and Response, or VIPR, Program.
Many of our units, including our Coast-wide sectors, our
deployable specialized forces, and our major cutters, are
equipped with these devices that can identify specific
isotopes, distinguish between man-made and natural sources,
and, as I said, reach back to interagency experts for
assistance.
Specifically, our Maritime Security Response Team, or MSRT,
provides the Nation with a unique maritime capability for
nuclear and radiological detection, identification, and self-
decontamination in routine or hostile situations. The MSRT is
specifically designed and exercised to integrate with other
interagency or DOD [Department of Defense] response forces.
At the national level, together with CBP's National
Targeting Center, the Coast Guard screens ships' crew and
passenger information for all vessels that are required to
submit what we call an ANOA, advance notice of arrival, 96
hours or more prior to entering port. In 2014, that process
screened over 124,000 notices of arrival and over 32 million
crew and passenger records.
The Coast Guard's response to a dirty-bomb threat would be
part of a coordinated interagency effort to bring the most
capable and appropriate resources to bear. If a dirty bomb is
suspected en route to or identified within a U.S. port, the
interagency Maritime Operational Threat Response protocol, or
MOTR, would be employed to coordinate whole-of-government
interagency action to achieve the best solution.
And, with that, sir, thank you.
Mr. Hunter. Thanks, Admiral Brown.
Doctor?
Ms. Gowadia. Good morning, Chairman Hunter, Ranking Member
DeFazio, and Ranking Member Garamendi, and distinguished
members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the invitation to
testify with my colleagues from the Department of Homeland
Security and the Government Accountability Office on our
efforts to prevent and respond to the introduction of a dirty
bomb into a maritime port.
An attack with a radiological dispersal device--that is, a
dirty bomb--at a U.S. port would have profound and prolonged
impacts to our Nation and the world. At the Domestic Nuclear
Detection Office, or DNDO, we have a singular focus: preventing
nuclear terrorism. It cannot be accomplished by any one agency,
and, in fact, it takes a whole-of-enterprise approach. And so
DNDO was deliberately established as an interagency office and
benefits from the support of detailees from across the Federal
Government.
In both our nuclear detection and forensics missions, we
work closely with our Federal, State, local, and international
partners and those in the national laboratories, in industry,
and in academia. My testimony today focuses on DNDO's work to
strengthen the operational readiness of our maritime partners
to detect illicit radioactive material.
DNDO is responsible for the domestic implementation of the
Global Nuclear Detection Architecture. The GNDA is a framework
for detecting, analyzing, and reporting on nuclear and other
radioactive materials that are out of regulatory control.
Now, the tendency can be to place great focus on technology
alone. It is, however, more effective to carefully integrate
intelligence, law enforcement, and technical capabilities to
improve the GNDA.
Indeed, our GAO colleague, Director Maurer, captured it
well in a previous hearing, stating, ``Detection technology is
an important part of the overall effort to keep a nuclear
device out of the U.S., but it is not the only one. Consider
this,'' he said. ``If the U.S. ever has to rely on a radiation
portal monitor to stop a smuggled nuclear device, a lot of
other things have already gone wrong. It means law enforcement
missed it, the intelligence community missed it, our allies
missed it, risk-based screening missed it, treaty regimes did
not work, and nonproliferation programs failed.''
Keeping his words in mind, our strategy is to provide
effective technologies to well-trained law enforcement and
public safety professionals as they conduct intelligence-driven
operations. By implementing a multilayered, multifaceted,
defense-in-depth approach, it is our objective to make nuclear
terrorism a prohibitively difficult undertaking for the
adversary.
And so our efforts to secure the homeland begin overseas,
relying largely on sovereign foreign partners to develop and
enhance their own national detection programs. In this
endeavor, DNDO works closely with the interagency and
multilateral partners to develop and share guidance, best
practices, and training. The collective efforts abroad help
ensure illicit radioactive material or devices can be
interdicted before they arrive at our shores.
The layered approach continues at our borders. DNDO
procures radiation-detection systems for use by DHS [Department
of Homeland Security] operational components at our ports of
entry, along our land and maritime borders, and within the
United States. Today, all Coast Guard boarding teams are
equipped with detection devices. DNDO has also acquired
detection systems for the Coast Guard and Customs and Border
Protection to scan small vessels before they reach our shores.
And at our seaports of entry, CBP scans nearly 100 percent of
all incoming maritime containerized cargo for radiological and
nuclear threats.
Building operational capacity across the Federal, State,
and local enterprise is also critical. And so DNDO is presently
working with 33 of the Coast Guard's Area Maritime Security
Committees, sharing information and intelligence, assisting
with alarm adjudication, and providing technical support to our
operational partners as they build their detection programs.
In case of an attack of nuclear terrorism or the
interdiction of a nuclear radiological threat, leadership will
need rapid, accurate attribution based on sound scientific
evidence. Nuclear forensics, when coupled with intelligence and
law enforcement information, supports those determinations.
DNDO, therefore, advances technologies to perform forensic
analyses on predetonation nuclear and other radioactive
materials.
Make no mistake: The United States remains committed to
holding fully accountable any State, terrorist group, or other
nonstate actor that supports or enables terrorist efforts to
obtain or use weapons of mass destruction. At DNDO, we will
continue to work with our partners to counter nuclear terrorism
and improve our overall collaboration across the technical,
intelligence, and law enforcement communities.
We sincerely appreciate the committee's support of our
efforts to secure our homeland. Thank you for the opportunity
to be here today. I look forward to your questions.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you, Doctor.
Our next witness is Mr. Todd Owen, the Department of
Homeland Security's Assistant Commissioner for the Office of
Field Operations for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Mr. Owen, you are recognized.
Mr. Owen. Good morning. Chairman Hunter, Ranking Member
Garamendi, esteemed members of the subcommittee, thank you for
the opportunity to testify today on the role of U.S. Customs
and Border Protection in preventing and responding to the
threat of a radiological weapon at our ports of entry, an
important responsibility we share with our partners here today.
As the lead DHS agency for border security, CBP works
closely with our domestic and international partners to protect
the Nation from a variety of dynamic threats, including those
posed by containerized cargo arriving at our air, land, and
seaports.
Before my appointment as the Assistant Commissioner of
CBP's Office of Field Operations earlier this year, I served as
the Director of Field Operations for the Los Angeles-Long Beach
Seaport, and I have also served time as the Executive Director
responsible for all of CBP's cargo security programs. I know
firsthand how complex cargo security operations are and how
valuable our programs and partnerships are to our national
security.
Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, CBP has
established security partnerships, enhanced our targeting and
risk assessment programs, and invested in advanced technology--
all essential elements of our multilayered approach to
protecting the Nation from the arrival of dangerous materials,
such as a dirty bomb, at our ports of entry.
CBP has several key programs that enhance our ability to
assess cargo for risk, examine high-risk shipments at the
earliest possible point, and increase the security of the
supply chain. I would like to highlight just a few of these
efforts for you today.
Since 2002, CBP has been receiving advance information on
every cargo shipment, every vessel, every crewman before they
arrive at our ports of entry. For maritime containerized cargo,
this information is received 24 hours prior to lading the cargo
in the foreign seaport.
This advance information is then run through CBP's
Automated Targeting System, which will compare the data against
multiple law enforcement and trade databases. Those shipments
identified as high-risk will be selected for examination.
High-risk shipments may be examined overseas before being
laden onto the vessel heading for the United States as part of
CBP's Container Security Initiative. CBP's CSI program places
U.S. officers in 60 foreign seaports in 35 countries around the
world. These overseas CBP officers have the ability to reach 80
percent of the maritime cargo heading to the United States. All
overseas examinations are performed with the assistance of our
host-country counterparts.
Every cargo inspection conducted overseas includes a
scanning of the container for radiation, as well as subjecting
the shipment to a nonintrusive inspection. A nonintrusive
inspection uses systems of high-energy x ray or gamma ray to
look into the container for anomalies which may be of concern.
In fiscal year 2015, CBP performed over 124,000 overseas
examinations of high-risk cargo before the cargo was placed on
a vessel destined to the United States.
If the exam is not performed overseas at a CSI seaport, the
shipment will be inspected upon arrival at a U.S. port of
entry. At the U.S. ports of entry, CBP also deploys the same
large-scale, nonintrusive inspection systems to quickly examine
containerized cargo for the presence of anomalies which may
indicate a threat. Those containers found with anomalies in
their cargo are physically searched at warehouses located in
the seaports.
Lastly, every containerized shipment leaving a U.S.
seaport, every single shipment, is scanned for radiation and
has been since 2010. There are over 1,280 radiation-detection
portal monitors deployed at our U.S. border crossings, allowing
for nearly 100 percent radiation screening of----
Mr. Hunter. Mr. Owen, you just said that 100 percent of
cargo leaving U.S. ports?
Mr. Owen. Leaving U.S. ports, yes, sir.
Mr. Hunter. ``Leaving'' is correct?
Mr. Owen. Yes, sir, 100 percent.
So the 1,280 radiation portal monitors allow us to scan
nearly 100 percent of the arriving seat containers, trucks, and
passenger vehicles arriving from Canada and Mexico, as well
shipments in the mail and aircargo environments. So most
Americans are unaware of this critically important security
measure in place at U.S. ports of entry throughout the country.
CBP's detection technology, targeting capabilities, and
partnerships are strategically aligned to prevent the arrival
of a dangerous weapon like a dirty bomb at a U.S. port.
However, if such an event were to occur, CBP has established
contingency plans and standard processes to ensure a
coordinated and effective response. In the event CBP detects or
suspects radiological material, all personnel are trained in
``secure, isolate, and notify'' protocols. The suspect cargo is
secured, the immediate area is isolated, and scientific experts
are notified. CBP scientists at the CBP Teleforensic Center in
northern Virginia will confer with the Department of Energy
and, when necessary, refer the findings to the FBI to
coordinate an appropriate response.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and I am
here to answer your questions.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you very much.
And our last witness is Mr. David Maurer, again, the U.S.
GAO's Director of Homeland Security and Justice.
Mr. Maurer, you are recognized.
Mr. Maurer. Good morning, Chairman Hunter, Ranking Member
DeFazio, Ranking Member Garamendi, and other Members and staff.
I am pleased to be here today to discuss DHS's efforts to
prevent a dirty-bomb attack on a U.S. port.
Preventing the smuggling of a nuclear or radiological
device into the U.S. is understandably and deservedly a top
national priority. And, as we have heard from the other
witnesses, there are a wide array of programs and activities at
several Federal agencies to help address and mitigate this
threat. Mr. Chairman, my statement today focuses on one key
aspect of this much larger effort: DHS's covert operations to
assess its capabilities to detect and interdict the smuggling
of nuclear materials into the U.S.
Over the years, DHS has invested billions to develop,
purchase, and deploy radiation-detection equipment on our
Nation's borders, as well as equip and train DHS personnel on
how to use this technology. DHS has invested substantially less
on testing to see whether it is being properly used. For
example, over a recent 5-year period, CBP spent $1 million for
covert testing--and that is ``million'' with an ``m''--and that
spending covered all types of covert testing, not just nuclear
and radiological.
Now, it is very important to give CBP credit. Through much
of that period and up to the present day, they were only
required to do a single covert test per year. CBP took it upon
themselves to do more than that, roughly one or two dozen a
year. While CBP did more than required, this resource
investment meant that they could not test every port of entry.
In its covert tests, undercover CBP officers tried to
smuggle radiological materials through U.S. ports of entry.
Basically, this is a real-world test of the equipment and the
personnel using it. We found that CBP's testing provided
limited assessment of its rad/nuc-detection capabilities.
Specifically, the number of covert tests was not sufficient to
make a generalizable assessment of all U.S. ports of entry.
Over an 8-year period, CBP conducted covert tests at 86 of the
655 locations where testing could have been done.
In addition, CBP's decisions on which locations to test
were not based on risk assessments. That meant its covert
testing did not prioritize the most dangerous materials, most
vulnerable locations, and most critical equipment. For example,
31 percent of CBP's tests were done at fixed checkpoints within
the U.S., not at ports of entry. We recommended that CBP use a
risk-informed approach to help determine where to conduct its
covert tests. CBP agreed and is in the process of doing just
that.
We also reviewed what CBP did with the results of its
covert tests. Over a 5-year period, these tests found problems
with officer noncompliance with policy, equipment failures, as
well as officer error due to lack of training. The good news is
that CBP followed up on systemic problems like these to ensure
corrective actions were taken. However, they did not
consistently track the status of actions to fix problems at
individual locations. We recommended that they do so, and they
have actions underway to do that.
Mr. Chairman, in some respects, our findings on this
program mirror some of the themes we have seen over the past
several years. In general, the U.S. has made significant
progress combating nuclear smuggling and enhancing the security
of U.S. ports. In particular, we have made great strides since
1998, when the U.S. began deploying radiation-detection
equipment.
At the same time, many of these programs could and should
have been implemented better. Agencies sometimes failed to
assess whether their programs were working as intended or did
not fully integrate risk assessments into their planning. In
some cases, agencies rushed to failure to deploy technologies
before they were ready. Over the years, DHS and other agencies
have implemented GAO recommendations to address these problems
and, as a result, strengthened their programs.
Looking ahead, Congress, DHS, and other agencies face some
tough decisions. The multilayered Federal effort is complex,
vital to our security, and certainly not inexpensive. As DHS
and other agencies adapt to changing threats, upgrade or
replace aging equipment, and enhance their capabilities, GAO
will be there to provide Congress independent oversight of this
critically important mission.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to testify this
morning. I look forward to your questions.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you, Mr. Maurer.
I am going to now recognize Members for questions,
beginning with myself.
So let's just stay on this. You are satisfied that CBP took
into account what you guys found and that they are making
corrective action?
Mr. Maurer. Yes. They took the findings from our report
from last year very seriously. They put together a team of
folks within CBP to address those recommendations, and they
have actions underway to fully address them. They are not all
the way there yet. We are working with them on that. But they
have taken actions.
Mr. Hunter. Good. Thank you.
Mr. Owen, let's start with the questions from my letter
with the numbers. And what is the percentage of shipping
containers inspected prior to arrival at a U.S. port?
Mr. Owen. Yes, sir. Every container, again, is assessed for
risk. The highest risk inspections occur overseas. In fiscal
year 2015, 124,000 of those containers were inspected overseas.
That is about 1 percent----
Mr. Hunter. So what is that percentage?
Mr. Owen [continuing]. A little over 1 percent of the 12
million containers that arrive from foreign ports every year.
Mr. Hunter. OK. But everything is analyzed----
Mr. Owen. Everything is analyzed. Every shipment is----
Mr. Hunter [continuing]. And screened, I guess you could
say.
Mr. Owen. Depending on how you define ``screening'' and
``scanning.'' And there is confusion as to how those terms are
used.
We do look at the advance data we receive from the shipper,
in terms of the manifest, as well as from the importer, in
terms of our importer security filing. We compare all of that
data to what we have in our databases in terms of our Automated
Targeting System, the intelligence information that is
provided. And, from those reviews, certain containers will rise
to the top, causing us greater concern. Those highest risk
containers are the ones we look at overseas.
Mr. Hunter. So what happens when you look at a country like
UAE [United Arab Emirates] that have--they scan everything.
Mr. Owen. Yes.
Mr. Hunter. They have those passive systems set up--by the
way, those are made in San Diego.
Mr. Owen. Right.
Mr. Hunter. But, anyway, they have those passive systems
set up, and they scan everything, right?
Mr. Owen. Yes, that is correct. Many countries have now
deployed radiation-scanning equipment similar to what we have
in the United States, you know, in seaports around the world.
The radiation scanning is very doable from a technology
standpoint. The challenge becomes the x-ray imaging of the
containers. Whether it is a high-energy, medium-energy, or low-
energy system, it still takes human intervention to analyze the
result of that scan.
So you have a radiation portal monitor that is a very
effective passive system, will tell you if there is a source
emanating from the container that is of concern. You then need
to take a second step to have the x-ray technology see what is
inside.
That is really the part of the process that slows things
down. Most countries in the world use a risk approach like we
do and only inspect those highest containers of concern through
x-ray systems.
Mr. Hunter. OK.
What percentage are inspected after they get here? So if 1
percent total----
Mr. Owen. A little over 1 percent overseas, yes, sir.
Mr. Hunter. And then what percentage when it hits U.S.
ports?
Mr. Owen. Here in the maritime environment, it is about 2.7
percent on top of the 1 percent. So we are looking at a 3.7-
percent overall in the maritime arena.
Mr. Hunter. The next 2.6 or 2.7 percent is the next level
down----
Mr. Owen. Yes, sir.
Mr. Hunter [continuing]. From the highest risk stuff?
Mr. Owen. Yes. And then the next level down is what we will
inspect here in the U.S. seaports.
And, again, that is in the maritime environment. The rates
are approximately 26 percent on the land border with Mexico. So
we look at, obviously, a higher percentage of what is coming in
from Mexico because of the narcotics threat.
Mr. Hunter. And when you use the risk-based assessment on
where you should do this at, are there any ports in particular?
I mean, like Mr. Maurer said, when you were doing your own
testing, you did not use your own risk-based approach on where
you were going to do that testing at, right?
Mr. Owen. Right.
Two aspects of this. Number one is high-risk containers
will be examined at whatever seaport they come into. A lot of
that is dependent on the shipping patterns of what is arriving
from what parts of the world, you know, into what parts of the
country. So you will see those.
The GAO's findings were specific to the testing that we do
of ourselves and should we focus more on those ports that have
a greater likelihood of finding that type of device as opposed
to a more universal approach.
So their findings, we felt, were very fair, and we have
taken those into building a new risk matrix that will allow the
operational testing at the ports that have the more likelihood
of finding those types of containers. However, we will inspect
high-risk containers wherever they enter the United States.
Mr. Hunter. So let me just get this--because in 2007--was
it 2007 was when you all passed the--I wasn't in Congress in
2007--that said--2006--100 percent of cargo will be inspected,
right?
Mr. Owen. Yes. That is correct.
Mr. Hunter. So what happened was everybody said, ``That is
impossible. There is no way to do that.''
Mr. Owen. Well, what happened was, from 2007 through 2010,
we ran a series of six pilots around the world: in Qasim,
Pakistan; Southampton, the U.K.; Salalah, Oman; Puerto Cortes,
Honduras; a terminal in Busan, Korea; and a terminal in Hong
Kong.
From those 4-year pilots, we were able to identify and
clearly document all sorts of challenges, from the technology,
the logistical impact, the effect on the efficiencies of the
throughput of the cargo, things down to weather that would
impact the dependability of the machines. So, through our 4-
year pilots, we were able to identify and catalog all of the
challenges that we have found.
From that time, we didn't really move forward in pursuing
that any further. Now, since then, the Department has reengaged
on this issue and has committed to take a look at what can now
be done, being 5 years from when these pilots last ended, in
terms of the technology that is available, the relationship
with host countries, an understanding of what technology, as
you mentioned, in the UAE is now present at other locations.
And, again, throughout all of these pilots what we have
learned is it is not the radiation screening piece that is
troublesome; it is the x raying of these containers. And,
again, the 100-percent scanning law requires both aspects, 100
percent scanning, 100 percent screening for radiation, and 100
percent x ray of all of the containers. And that becomes the
troublesome piece.
Mr. Hunter. And just for everybody's benefit who is here,
the next panel are a bunch of smart people from labs who can
tell us what can be seen and what can't be seen, as far as they
can go in a nonsecret hearing.
That answers enough for now, Mr. Owen. Thank you.
One last question for Admiral Brown. If something did
happen--and this is, I guess, just a general homeland security
type of question--but if something did happen, can the Coast
Guard talk to everybody? I mean, can you communicate with the
CBP and can you communicate with the sheriff and the ports and
everybody all at the same time right now?
Admiral Brown. Yes, sir. There are systems in place called
Area Maritime Security Committees that bring together port
stakeholders, governmental and nongovernmental, to plan for,
prepare for, and, in the case of an actual event, respond and
set up an incident command system network that responds to an
incident, whether it is a dirty bomb or some other type of
incident in a port.
So at the tactical level, there are ongoing communications
among all the port stakeholders. From unit to unit, vessel to
vessel, patrol car to patrol car, there is no single
communication system that integrates all of Federal, State, and
local government, but----
Mr. Hunter. So you are saying that there is not a
communication system that integrates everybody?
Admiral Brown. There is not a tactical radio system that
communicates across all those entities--State, Federal, local,
and industry. But there are coordination protocols and the
incident command system that allows each agency to communicate
with others and then to communicate to their own unit.
Mr. Hunter. So satphone to satphone?
Admiral Brown. So we use interagency operations centers,
some of which are virtual, some of which are actual bricks-and-
mortar facilities, to coordinate those operations.
And, again, in a significant incident, those entities would
be brought together in an incident command structure so that
the operational priorities for action would be taken, divvied
up among the agencies. The agencies would go out and perform
those, given the tasking to their individual tactical units.
Mr. Hunter. OK. Thanks, Admiral.
Thank you all.
And, with that, I yield to the ranking member, Mr.
Garamendi.
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I want to go into the budget and the availability of money.
It looks like you have spent $2.4 billion on this overall
project since 2013. Is that correct, Ms. Gowadia?
Ms. Gowadia. I do not have the exact numbers at my
fingertips, but across the enterprise that sounds about right
for the Global Nuclear Detection Architecture.
Mr. Garamendi. I will take that back. It is since 1995 to
2013, $2.4 billion putting in place the technology.
And the question for the three of you is: Is this a money
issue--that is, not enough resources, not enough money to get
the job done?
Let's start with Admiral Brown.
Admiral Brown. Sir, I would say that one of our challenges
remains coordination. We have a great thing going now with
DNDO, CBP, TSA. And, within our department, as we have
implemented the unity-of-effort goals of the Secretary, one of
the areas in which we are applying greater effort is to
coordinate the acquisition, the technology, so that the
physical devices that we are using and the doctrine and the
tactics by which we use them are similar and coordinated across
multiple agencies. And DNDO has the lead in that.
Mr. Garamendi. So in your annual budget request to
Congress, do you need more money or less money for this
specific purpose?
Admiral Brown. Sir, for this specific purpose, we run our
requirements through the Department and through DNDO.
Mr. Garamendi. OK.
Ms. Gowadia. Good morning, and thank you for that question,
sir.
We at the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office are the
strategic sourcing partners for this particular mission in the
Department. What that means is we have the responsibility to
bring in all the requirements from all the operational
components, work with the Department's Joint Requirements
Council, and allocate the right resources to meet the mission
need.
Very recently, we did something for the first time in the
Department. We pulled together requirements from across the
agency and made a single purchase, not just for the equipment
itself, one particular unit, thereby standardizing the
capability across the operational components, but also the
maintenance contract. In the long run, this will save the
Department a good bit of money. So that has helped, certainly.
I would put in a slight plug for your efforts to pass our
budget. The continuing resolution, sir, would put a significant
clamp on our ability to support CBP, in particular, to replace
some of the aging radiation portal monitors and support
operations at high-volume ports.
Mr. Garamendi. Ah, yes. Back to sequestration and
continuing resolutions.
Mr. Owen?
Mr. Owen. Sir, and similar to the Coast Guard, we define
our operational needs to the DNDO, who then will survey the
technology that is available and procure those equipment on our
behalf. So their funding purchases the equipment that we need
in terms of rad/nuc detection.
Mr. Garamendi. OK.
Most of this has been dealing with dirty bombs. There is
another whole aspect of this radiological material control that
is over in the Department of Defense budget and the Department
of Energy budget, having to do with the international
transshipment and the effort to address that.
I will note that in the House version of the NDAA [National
Defense Authorization Act] we cut that budget, which would seem
to be unwise. I understand that the recently vetoed bill
increased it at the Senate level--perhaps still insufficient.
I do note that we are spending some $30 million this year
on an east coast missile defense system to protect us from an
Iranian nuclear bomb. And that is a $3.5 billion investment,
should it ever come to pass, and another $1.2 billion annual
investment in missile defense systems.
So the question for the three of you is: Are we more likely
to see a missile incoming or a bomb in a tugboat or a fishing
boat or in a container?
Mr. Owen? A dirty bomb or otherwise bomb?
Mr. Owen. I think the likelihood of a dirty bomb is
mitigated by several factors. Beginning on the international
arena, as you mentioned, the presence of radiological-detection
equipment at ports of entry or border crossings throughout the
world is much higher.
There is also the logistics aspect of international
shipping. If you actually have your hands on a dirty bomb, you
turn it over to a truck driver, who is going to take it to the
port. The port will turn it over to the terminal operator, who
will turn it over to a carrier. The carrier will put it on the
vessel. That vessel may move to other ports, where it is
offloaded. You lose control of your asset. So I think the
nature of that works against supporting the dirty bomb in that
container.
So there is much more detection than we have had in the
past, and you would also, again, lose control of your asset for
some time as it goes through the shipping channels. I think
there are probably other scenarios where you retain control of
that asset that may be more of a greater threat.
Mr. Garamendi. For example?
Mr. Owen. General aviation, small boats.
Mr. Garamendi. Admiral? Small boats? General aviation?
Admiral Brown. I would tend to agree with Mr. Owens'
assessment, sir. I think the answer to your question probably
would better come from the intelligence community, but I would
say that, in addition to the dirty-bomb scenario in a container
and the challenges associated with delivering one, that some of
the other threats we would face would be from smaller boats.
And whether they were radiological devices or other improvised
explosive devices or small arms attacks, those are another area
of port security that we take very seriously.
Mr. Garamendi. I think most of this hearing is going to be
focused on other than that, but it would be useful for us to
focus on that. I know we have had some previous testimony in
other hearings about that piece of it.
My time has expired. I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
yield back.
Mr. Hunter. I thank the ranking member.
Mr. Gibbs is recognized.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for the witnesses and all the work you do to
protect this country.
I guess, Mr. Owen, a year or so ago, some of us had the
opportunity to visit the Shanghai port and Hong Kong port. And
we saw at Shanghai, I guess, the radiation detectors, you know,
the container semis coming through there. I think they were
probably put in place in the early 2003 period after 9/11,
correct?
What is the status for monitoring their effectiveness,
their wear and tear, and the lifespan? And then to replace
them, is there a plan? Or if there is new and better
technology, is there a plan for replacement?
Mr. Owen. To the ports in Shanghai or to----
Mr. Gibbs. Well, in general. I just saw that in Shanghai's,
but----
Mr. Owen. Right. We started deploying that equipment here
with U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2002. So it was
right around that time that you would see this equipment
deployed nationwide or around the world.
We anticipated about a 10- to 15-year life cycle at that
time. This technology was new. We didn't quite know what to
expect. It has held up very well. It has been the workhorse of
radiation detection in our seaports.
They are now coming towards the end of that life cycle, so
we do need to replace them. There is better technology, or the
algorithms that support this technology have advanced from
where we were in 2002.
The original equipment, again, just speaking for Los
Angeles-Long Beach, the equipment that was deployed would
receive about 300 to 400 radiation alarms a day of the roughly
13,000 containers that enter L.A.-Long Beach on a given day.
Those were all nonthreat materials, naturally occurring
radioactive materials, medical isotopes, those types of
nonthreat. With the new algorithms that we now have within our
radiation portal monitors, we have reduced that number to about
35 to 50 alarms a day, so about an 86-percent reduction, by
having science advance in the last decade and where the
algorithms are in 2015 as opposed to where they were in 2002.
Mr. Gibbs. So there is a plan in place to, you know,
replace those, you know, just like the private sector does, a
business----
Mr. Owen. There is, like, a refresh of all the algorithms
behind the radiation portal monitors here in the States that
have been taking place for the past year and a half. I would
assume globally that same type of activity is underway.
Mr. Gibbs. I also wanted to ask you--I believe, if my
memory serves me right, there is, like, a certified program of
shippers, because, you know, stuff like--for example, coming
out of China, there are a lot of containers coming out of
China, obviously. And if you have shippers that you work with
all the time, that are credible or go through certain
procedures, you can certify----
Mr. Owen. Right.
Mr. Gibbs [continuing]. Those containers?
Mr. Owen. There is the Customs-Trade Partnership Against
Terrorism program that we work with not only vessels but as
well as importers, manufacturers, truckers. They adopt higher
security protocols, and, as part of that adoption, we go out
and we validate that they have implemented what they said they
would. We will treat them as lower risk than an unknown company
or----
Mr. Gibbs. So, in essence, you can segregate that
somewhat----
Mr. Owen. That is the intention of it, yes, sir, the higher
risk from----
Mr. Gibbs [continuing]. So you can be more effective.
Mr. Owen [continuing]. And the unknowns from the unknowns.
Yes, sir.
Mr. Gibbs. I guess for the admiral: Once a specific pathway
for smuggling is intercepted, how often is that used for
interdiction? You know, when you find something, when you shut
it down, does it open back up later on, the pathway?
Admiral Brown. Transnational criminal organizations, sir,
are very resilient. They react when we are successful, and so
they will move the geography of their smuggling. They will
sometimes change the conveyance and the timing in ways to try
to thwart us. We combat that primarily with intelligence and
intelligence-based operations so we can try to have our very
limited offshore assets in the right places at the right time.
I would say, though, that I started my career as a boarding
officer in the Caribbean in the mid-1980s. And, just this week,
we interdicted fishing vessels and go-fasts that are trying to
get from South America toward Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin
Islands. So criminal organizations, in my opinion, never
completely give up on something that works for them, and so we
continue to monitor those same threat pathways even 30 years
later.
Mr. Gibbs. It was just mentioned earlier, the real
challenge is small aviation and small boats, you know,
offshoring from somewhere else and getting through. I think,
you know, that would be a real challenge. And I don't know how
you handle that, but, you know, that has to be a real
challenge.
Did you want to say something, Doctor?
Ms. Gowadia. When it comes to small or general aviation, I
would mention that all incoming general aviation aircraft are
met by our CBP officers using radiation detectors. So we have
even increased in the last 10 years our capability in the
general aviation environment, thanks in large part to their
efforts.
Mr. Gibbs. All right. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Hunter. I thank the gentleman.
I guess, just dovetailing there, bad guys aren't going to
send stuff on cargo ships; they are going to send stuff up the
way that the bad guys are sending stuff up now, right? Which is
small fast boats coming up from Central and South America. I
mean, isn't that how they would get anything here?
Semisubmersibles?
Meaning, do you think we are putting too much priority on
the shipping container portion, when the bad guy is sending all
the drugs up in small boats to go-fasts that are hard to
interdict, of which we only get--what was SOUTHCOM's number?
Thirty-something percent total of the 100 percent that we know
of coming up from South and Central America, right?
Admiral Brown. That is a fairly accurate statistic, sir. We
do interdict somewhere in the 15 to 20 to 30 percent, depending
on how you measure and what we believe the flow rate to be of
those drugs that are bound ultimately toward the United States.
However, sir, those small vessels, semisubmersibles, almost
never attempt to make landfall in the United States. The era of
a go-fast vessel going from the Bahamas towards south Florida
or a fishing vessel going from Colombia all the way to the
Florida Keys are long over, sir. Most of the drugs that leave
South America first make landfall somewhere in Central America
and then take land pathways toward the border in much smaller
packages, much more difficult to detect.
So the success that we have using offshore aircraft, highly
capable offshore cutters, that really takes the multiton loads
out of circulation. And because of the success we have had over
the past decades, we see very few drug-smuggling vessels
actually arriving in the United States. Small amounts of
marijuana landing in California, some relatively small amounts
of cocaine and marijuana landing in Puerto Rico.
So that particular pathway from South America toward the
United States is not really a full maritime pathway. And so we
don't see a significant threat of nuclear material along that
pathway in the maritime. Certainly, it could be exploited. It
would have to make landfall somewhere in Central America and
then move on land pathways toward the U.S.
Mr. Hunter. OK. I got you. Thank you.
And we are honored today to have the ranking member of the
full committee, Mr. DeFazio, who is recognized.
Mr. DeFazio. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for holding this.
I served 8 years on the House Committee on Homeland Security,
and a lot of these programs were very much a work in progress
when I served there.
GAO, have you audited the C-TPAT [Customs-Trade Partnership
Against Terrorism] program lately? I mean, when I served a
number of years ago, we found significant problems in the
integrity of that program.
Mr. Maurer. Yes, that is right. We looked at that program
in roughly 2008. We have an ongoing review that just started
just a month or two ago. So it is still underway, and we are
very far from having our final findings, but we would be happy
to come up and chat with you about what we are learning along
the way.
Mr. DeFazio. OK. Thank you. Because that was a major
vulnerability previously.
Now, Admiral, in terms of, you know, when you say that
under the NOA [notice of arrival] you are going to have the
registered owner of the vessel--real registered owner or a
front?
When I was in Malta discussing these issues when I was on
the Committee on Homeland Security, they were like, ``No way we
are going to give you the names of the people who own these
ships because we will lose all of our business here.'' You
know, that is what we provide. We provide cover.
Has that changed? Are we getting the names of the real
owners?
Admiral Brown. Sir, we typically get corporate names and
holding companies.
Mr. DeFazio. Right, which are double-blind, triple-blind,
lawyers' offices and--yes.
Admiral Brown. Yes, sir. So what we scan against are the
names of all of the ownership entities associated with the
vessel, with the containers, and with the crewmembers and their
hiring. So those are some of the areas that we look at to try
to see beyond the individual names of the people on board or
the company that is shipping a given container.
But we try to look at all of the corporate entities and
their history behind the vessel itself, its cargo, the ports
that it has been in, and the crewmembers and the hiring
practices, as well, because we see some characteristics of
companies that are engaged in the hiring of mariners that may
be more problematic that an individual mariner, himself or
herself.
Mr. DeFazio. OK. Thank you.
Dr. Gowadia, you mentioned the radiological monitoring of
all GA [general aviation] aircraft coming in. What are we doing
in a maritime environment for ships or boats or even large
pleasure craft that cross international borders into the U.S.?
Ms. Gowadia. So, as I mentioned in my opening statement,
sir, all Coast Guard boarding teams carry radiation sensors. So
all the boardings that the admiral mentioned certainly include
the radiation-detection element.
We have also worked with our CBP and Coast Guard partners
to give them some capability to detect the standoff ranges for
small-vessel scanning. So whether they are scanning a marina
for a 4th of July event or they have some basis or some reason
to go up out at sea to look at a particular small vessel, they
have now a capability not just that they can carry on their
backs but in their boats as well.
Mr. DeFazio. OK.
Ms. Gowadia. The Coast Guard also asked us to look at
detecting from above. So we have a very interesting research
project where we are looking at the ability to equip Coast
Guard's fixed-wing and rotary craft with detection systems so
that they could scan out at sea from above, as well.
Mr. DeFazio. Excellent. Very good.
Admiral, on the AIS [Automatic Identification System], I
mean, what about an exchange, a theoretical exchange, at sea? I
mean, maybe the containers have been scanned, we know the risk,
but a ship stops at sea and exchanges a container. I mean,
theoretically, I guess if someone was watching every vehicle's
AIS at every moment, you would know that, you know, perhaps
these two ships came in very close proximity and there seemed
to be no movement, but, I mean, we are not doing that.
Admiral Brown. Right. And that type of rendezvous at sea,
while it would be, I think, extraordinarily uncommon in a
container ship environment, is a common thing we see in drug
trafficking. And so we use a variety of systems, AIS being one
of them, to try to detect if a vessel lingers somewhere for a
longer period of time than expected or deviates from an
economically viable route.
So, using AIS systems and other national sensors that are
available, I think we would be able to detect if a laden
container ship deviated from its track or significantly delayed
en route in a noneconomical way. And we would be able to then
decide how to target that vessel either offshore or once it
arrived in port for additional scrutiny.
Mr. DeFazio. OK. All right. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Hunter. I thank the ranking member.
Mr. Sanford is recognized.
Mr. Sanford. I thank the chairman.
A couple questions. One is, I notice that you had said that
we monitor every container on the way out. Who cares? Why?
Mr. Owen. We scan every container before it leaves the port
of entry before it enters the commerce of the United States.
Mr. Sanford. No, no. But you said in the reverse, on the
way out of the country.
Mr. Owen. No, on the way out of the seaport.
Mr. Sanford. Out of the seaport.
Mr. Owen. Out of the seaport.
Mr. Sanford. On its way still in.
Mr. Owen. No. The radiation portal monitors are positioned
at the exit gates of the seaport before it gets on the roads
and leaves the seaport environment.
Ms. Gowadia. To enter the United States.
Mr. Sanford. To enter the United States. So we are not
monitoring on the way out. So I misunderstood that.
Mr. Owen. You mean our exports?
Mr. Sanford. Correct.
Mr. Owen. No, we are not radiation screening exports.
Mr. Sanford. Got it. OK.
Mr. Owen. No, sir.
Mr. Sanford. I guess in the post-9/11 environment, I
wouldn't call it overreaction, it was, I mean, warranted
reaction based on the tragedy that occurred on 9/11. But what
we all know, whether from the civil liberties standpoint, from
a variety of different standpoints, there was probably
overreach in some cases because of operational things, were
just flat out impossible to get to, and in other cases from a
cost standpoint, they didn't prove that effective in deterring
whatever it was that we were trying to deter in that particular
sphere.
And I guess, as I listen to this, my question would be
along the same lines. I mean, if you look at the briefing
material, it says with a dirty bomb there is really not enough
radiation to kill people. You look at the logistical component
in terms of the improbability of use in that somebody trying to
do it that way would, as you put it, lose control of their
bomb. You look at alternatives to sort of masking where one
would come from in terms of rendezvous at sea or other things.
It becomes a relatively low-probability vehicle, but we are
spending a couple billion dollars a year, as I understand it,
in the gestalt on these different programs.
Is it overplay relative to the degree of risk that we are
really confronting as a Nation in this particular sphere?
Ms. Gowadia. Congressman, the way we calculate risk is we
couple the likelihood with the consequences. And the
consequence of a nuclear attack would be so catastrophic that
we cannot afford to take our eye off this ball. We do need to
remain vigilant, make sure that we have sufficient capabilities
to detect and mitigate. This is the ultimate preventable
catastrophe. We can't stop doing it.
Mr. Sanford. But, again, let's back up just a second. I
mean, we are looking at in essence a 1-percent real check rate
on the way in, maybe you bump that up to maybe close to 4
percent. But the reality is that papers in Pakistan or papers
in a lot of other places around the globe can be relatively
mixed. That is ultimately what we are checking in about 95
percent of the cases, we are looking at that as to trigger a
degree of further inspection or look. And that further
inspection look is at less than a 5-percent rate.
So you would say the consequences are catastrophic, but we
have already determined that we can't inspect every container,
we are not doing so, and so we are inspecting less than 5
percent, and we are still spending a couple billion dollars a
year.
Ms. Gowadia. I apologize. I was thinking about the nuclear
threat writ large.
Mr. Sanford. Correct.
Ms. Gowadia. We do need--I could not agree with you more--
we need to level our investments across all the pathways,
across all the layers, so that we are not overstrengthening any
one element of our transportation system or the ways and means
things can come into the Nation.
Mr. Sanford. Well, I see I have only got 1 minute. Let me
just come at you from a different angle. I guess what I am
saying is this: If you look at break bulk, for instance in the
Port of Charleston there is a lot of break bulk activity as
well as containerized activity, the overwhelming majority of
our inspection seems to be at the containerized level, not at
the break bulk level. So if you wanted to bring something in
bad, seems like you could do it break bulk.
Going back to what one of my colleagues was raising with
regard to a small boat, the reality is if you leave Bimini in
the Bahamas and you head for Fort Pierce, you are not inspected
by an officer until after you have docked that boat. Well, at
that point, you are in the Intracoastal Waterway, you could
have hopped off and let the boat go and it goes. I mean, in
other words, the inspection is coming after the point of entry.
So if you really want to do harm, it just seems to me that
there are a variety of other relatively porous vehicles by
which to do so if you are looking at maritime traffic. So we
are, again, spending a couple billion dollars a year on an
overlay that gives us, I think, a false sense of security.
Ms. Gowadia. Sir, again, really I could not agree with you
more. We have to be careful to make sure that we apply our
resources across the board, which is why we work with our
interagency partners, our international partners, to begin with
nuclear security, material security, build their own detection
architecture so the law enforcement capabilities overseas are
attuned and aware to when materials come out of regulatory
control and can stop them before they are in any form of
conveyance to the United States. And we will continue to work
with our interagency partners to do that.
Mr. Sanford. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Hunter. I thank the gentleman.
The distinguished gentleman from Maryland is recognized.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much.
Mr. Maurer, your testimony describes GAO's review of the
CBP's operational geo-testing division covert tests. Your
review found several areas in which the CBP could do a better
job of targeting its limited covert testing resources. Do you
believe that the CBP has taken the steps necessary to identify
systemic trends and systemic weaknesses and to resolve these
trends and weaknesses in a timely manner when and where they
are found?
And let me tell you why I am asking this question, this
series of questions. I have found that so often, as in Katrina,
we have a situation where we are talking to each other, telling
us everything is going to be fine, and then we say when the
rubber meets the road everything is going to be fine, but then
when it comes time for the rubber to meet the road we discover
there is no road.
So where are we? Talk to me.
Mr. Maurer. Sure. We had three recommendations to CBP in
our report last year. CBP has taken actions to address all
three of those recommendations. They have taken actions to try
to use a more risk-based approach to target their limited
resources for covert testing to areas that are of higher risk
or on the technologies that were more costly to deploy and to
use.
They have also done a better job of following up on the
recommendations on the findings of their prior covert tests.
So, in other words, when they found problems in the past, we
want to make sure those problems have been recognized and those
problems have been fixed. They have made improvements in that
realm as well.
They haven't done enough quite yet for us to consider those
recommendations closed, but they are very close, and we are
pleased with the progress they have made. It has only been
about a year since our report came out.
Mr. Cummings. Now, is the deployment of DHS's screening and
detection capabilities across our Nation's seaports done in a
manner that corresponds specifically to the varying threat
levels and scenarios at each port or is the deployment simply
based on a single standard that all ports are to meet, and if
so, are all ports meeting the standard?
Mr. Maurer. The radiation detection equipment is deployed
to ensure that every single container is scanned for radiation
before it leaves the port and enters into the United States. So
from that perspective, DHS is making investment decisions to
ensure that everything is looked at before it is entered onto
the roads in the United States.
Mr. Cummings. Now, Admiral Brown, can you please discuss
the steps being taken to counter the risk posed by the
smuggling of people onboard vessels arriving at U.S. ports, and
what trends are you observing in human smuggling onboard
vessels?
Admiral Brown. Thank you for that question, sir.
I will really address this in two different ways. We did
have for quite a while a problem with stowaways on commercial
vessels, but since the implementation of the International Ship
and Port Facility Security Code and the reciprocal arrangement
that I described in which we can go out and assess port
security at international facilities, the number of stowaways
on commercial vessels has dropped dramatically over the past
decade. We are down in essentially single digits per month of
stowaways on commercial vessels arriving in the United States.
Mr. Cummings. As compared to what?
Admiral Brown. As compared to what had been hundreds in the
early 2000s. And the fiscal responsibility for the repatriation
of those stowaways is on the shippers and shipping companies,
and so the shippers and the ship captains are highly
incentivized to prevent stowaways from coming onboard. So that
problem has been mitigated substantially with a combination of
international standards and appropriate financial incentives.
With regard to migrants coming on more traditional pathways
from the Caribbean, South and Central America toward the United
States, including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, we do
have a nationality and threat-screening process. In the case of
Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, it involves biometric
scanning of many of the people who are attempting to get in.
And we have maritime repatriation agreements with Haiti, the
Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, and Cuba that ensure that
those migrants interdicted at sea are in very high percentages
returned to their country of departure or origin.
Mr. Cummings. Now, Mr. Owen, in your testimony you
identified the Secure Freight Initiative and Pakistan as an
example of the CBP's strong working relationship with our
foreign partners. As I understand it, the Secure Freight
Initiative was previously being implemented at several foreign
ports other than the one in Pakistan. Is that correct?
Mr. Owen. Yes, sir, that is correct. Secure Freight was our
pilot program to test 100 percent scanning overseas, 2007 to
2010. Qasim, Pakistan, was one of the six locations we piloted
in.
Mr. Cummings. I see my time has expired, so I will have
some questions in writing.
Mr. Hunter. I thank the gentleman.
Ms. Hahn, my colleague from California, is recognized.
Ms. Hahn. Thank you, Chairman Hunter, Ranking Member
Garamendi. Thanks for holding this hearing.
This has been of a huge concern for me really since 9/11.
Actually when I came to Congress, I started the PORTS [Ports
Opportunity, Renewal, Trade, and Security] Caucus because
ports, I think, are so important to this country, they are the
main economic engine. And yet I always had a sense that after
9/11 we spent a little more time, effort, and money on securing
our airports than we did our ports. And when people ask me what
keeps me up at night, it is a dirty bomb at the Port of Los
Angeles or Long Beach.
You know, ships make 50,000 calls a year on our U.S. ports,
they carry 2 billion tons of freight, 134 million passengers.
They are incredibly important. And one dirty bomb at Long
Beach-L.A., which accounts for about 44 percent of all the
trade that comes into this country, would be disastrous.
We were able to finally quantify what those ports meant to
our economy in 2002 when there was a labor dispute and the
workers were actually locked out for 10 days. Everyone finally
figured out that the closure of the west coast ports accounted
for about $1 billion a day to our national economy.
So I am concerned. And I applauded Congress when they
passed the 2006 SAFE [Security and Accountability for Every]
Port Act and wanted 100 percent scanning of all cargo
containers. And as we are hearing today, we are around 3
percent of scanning. Screening is very different than scanning.
We keep moving that deadline. No one really seems to believe
that we can ever do 100 percent scanning. And so that deadline
just keeps being bumped down the road.
But it makes me extremely nervous. All the scenarios that
you all are saying never could happen, like we had a panga boat
that made land in Rancho Palos Verdes, about 1 mile from where
I live, not too long ago. And do you all remember in 2002 and
2003 when ABC News smuggled depleted uranium through the Port
of New York and the Port of Long Beach? No one detected it. It
was, like, was in the size of a soda can, it was shielded by
material that was bought off the shelf, and no one detected
that in either port.
So I get that with resources we are doing this layered
approach and risk-based approach, but I am still very concerned
that we are not scanning. And by the way, there is a big gap
between when they come into port and then scanning them before
they leave on a truck. I am worried, and I thought this hearing
was about what could happen at one of these large ports, a
dirty bomb exploding, not to mention the lives. We have 5,000
men and women that work on the docks at Long Beach and Los
Angeles every single day.
So I am still extremely concerned. And the next panel I am
going to see if we can talk about technology that actually
could scan 100 percent without slowing down commerce. But I am
worried. And I think part of why our ports are vulnerable to
this kind of terrorist attack is because of the disruption that
it would cause to our national economy and the global economy,
and also because I am not convinced all of our ports in this
country have a good recovery plan if, in fact, something like
this happened.
So I was going to ask Rear Admiral Brown, what are you
doing to work with ports in their recovery plan? You know, if
you imagine the Port of Los Angeles or a couple of those ships
overturned in the main channel, not to mention maybe thousands
of lives that would be lost, folks not even being able to get
there to work or to rebuild a ship or clear a main channel.
What are you doing that would convince us--and maybe the
terrorists--that it wouldn't be such an attractive target,
because we can get back up and running quickly? There was a
question in there somewhere.
Admiral Brown. Thank you for that question. I am going to
have to go overtime to answer it, though, because it is fairly
complex.
One of the things I would say is that through the Area
Maritime Security Committee process, part of that is an
exercise program that we call AMSTEP [Area Maritime Security
Training and Exercise Program], and each port Area Maritime
Security Committee can prioritize for itself what scenarios
they think are the most important security-related scenarios.
Since about 2003, different ports around the country have
done over a dozen--two dozen, actually--exercises that
specifically address dirty bomb scenarios, and one of the
elements of each exercise is recovery. We have learned through
a variety of real-world events that the resilience of the
maritime security system is vitally important to our population
and to our economy.
And so we have developed a process called the Maritime
Transportation System Recovery Unit, or MTSRU, that we have
used in response to Superstorm Sandy. We used it actually in
response to the Haiti earthquake, recognizing, that you do,
that you don't feed the country or its economy through an
airport, but in fact through the seaport.
So helping to recover that port from containers in the
water, sunken vessels, damaged piers have all informed our
processes so that we engage with industry, the Army Corps of
Engineers, the Navy Supervisor of Salvage, and other Federal
partners, as well as industry, to put recovery of the maritime
transportation system on the fast track of priority for
recovery in a scenario like this.
Ms. Hahn. And I know my time is up. I know Los Angeles has
a port recovery plan. Are you convinced that every seaport in
this country actually has at their disposal a recovery plan in
the case of a major disaster?
Admiral Brown. I couldn't tell you that every port has a
plan as robust and partnerships as well exercised as the Port
of L.A.-Long Beach, but it is a significant part of every Area
Maritime Security Committee's responsibility.
Ms. Hahn. I would like to see that as being the Coast
Guard's priority in working with ports.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Hunter. I thank the gentlelady.
The gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Graves, is recognized.
Mr. Graves of Louisiana. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for being here today. I just have a few quick
questions.
Number one, Admiral, do you have any information on the
percentages of vessels that are inspected that are actually
coming into U.S. ports, and then any breakdown of foreign
vessels as opposed to domestic vessels?
Admiral Brown. Sir, I am afraid I don't have a specific
percentage breakdown, because the inspection and examination
regimes for U.S. vessels and foreign-flagged vessels are quite
different. For foreign-flagged vessels, as a port state, we
have relatively limited authority primarily related to safety
and security of that vessel. And what we do are called ``port
state control examinations,'' and they are risk-based, based on
the vessel's history, as I was discussing with one of the
Members earlier, the ownership, the cargo shippers, and so on.
And so some vessels are examined every time they come to a U.S.
port based on their track record; for some, they may go years
without being examined.
Mr. Graves of Louisiana. Would you be able to just kind of
gut--and obviously you could come back to the committee and
provide information for the record--but would you know just
off-the-cuff if we inspect more domestic or foreign vessels
coming into U.S. ports?
Admiral Brown. I would have to ask my staff to do some
research and get back to you in writing.
Mr. Graves of Louisiana. Would you mind, if you could
provide that information on the----
Admiral Brown. We would be happy to do that, sir.
Mr. Graves of Louisiana. Thank you.
[The information follows:]
RESPONSE PART 1: In calendar years 2010 through 2014, an
average of 9,220 distinct vessels made 78,068 port calls to the
United States. The Coast Guard conducted a yearly average of
9,644 port state control (PSC) examinations and 8,718
international ship and port facility security (ISPS)
examinations on these vessels during this period. The average
yearly number of ships detained for environmental protection
and safety related deficiencies during this period was 124. The
average yearly number of ships detained for security related
deficiencies during this period was 12.
Vessels are targeted by their Coast Guard inspection history;
associations with owners, operators, charterers, flag states,
and recognized organizations (often classification societies)
with poor PSC performance history in the U.S., lack of recent
Coast Guard inspections, vessel type and age, and last ports of
call. More often than not, a vessel is targeted for examination
due to its first arrival to the U.S. or because it has not
visited the U.S. in more than 12 months. For the most part,
ships are examined one or more times a year, except for ships
recognized as quality ships by our QUALSHIP 21 program (these
ships are subject to port state control safety examinations
every 2 years and ISPS examinations every year, unless a threat
is identified prior to arrival).
Additionally, the USCG imposes Conditions of Entry (COE) on any
vessels arriving to the United States after calling on ports
that the Coast Guard has determined to lack effective anti-
terrorism measures, or from those ports that the Coast Guard
cannot ascertain that effective anti-terrorism measures are in
place. COEs are additional security measures that the vessel
must implement while in identified countries. These countries
and the list of COEs are found in the publicly available USCG
Port Security Advisory (3-15), dated 22 June 2015. The USCG
verifies COEs prior to, or immediately upon, the vessel's
arrival to the United States. The USCG conducted 1,627 of these
boarding in calendar year 2014.
RESPONSE PART 2: In calendar years 2010 through 2014, an
average of 20,326 inspections were conducted on U.S.-flag
inspected vessels. Currently, there are 11,867 active U.S.-flag
inspected vessels. This equates to an average of 1.71
inspections per vessel.
Generally speaking, U.S.-flag inspected vessels are attended at
least once a year. In addition, those in saltwater service are
attended twice in any 5-year period for a drydock and internal
structural exam while those in freshwater service are attended
once in a 5-year period for a drydock and internal structural
exam. Next, should a vessel be involved in a marine casualty,
it is generally attended for a damage assessment and to
witness/test any repairs. Finally, those vessels enrolled in
the Alternative Compliance Program (ACP) or the Maritime
Security Program (MSP) may be targeted for additional oversight
inspections based on their compliance history, vessel age/type,
owner operator history, outstanding deficiencies and/or
classification society requirements and history of port state
control detentions or domestically initiated operational
controls.
Additionally, the USCG imposes Conditions of Entry (COE) on
vessels arriving to the United States after calling on ports
that the Coast Guard has determined to lack effective anti-
terrorism measures, or from those ports that the Coast Guard
cannot ascertain that effective anti-terrorism measures are in
place. COEs are additional security measures that the vessel
must implement while in identified countries. These countries
and the list of COEs are found in the publicly available USCG
Port Security Advisory (3-15), dated 22 June 2015. The USCG
verifies COEs prior to, or immediately upon, the vessel's
arrival to the United States. The USCG conducted 1,627 of these
activities in calendar year 2014.
Admiral Brown. With regard to U.S. vessels, because as the
flag state we are responsible not only for the safety and
security, but the safe manning, operation, and environmental
standards on the vessel, they are subject to a different
inspection regime that may subject them to more visits than a
foreign-flagged vessel or less depending on the specific
inspection regime.
Mr. Graves of Louisiana. Thank you. A second question. I
have seen, and am actually curious about the Department of
Homeland Security's response as well, but I have seen
statistics and somewhat dated that showed the percentage of
vessels that are actually inspected, and I remember it being
extraordinarily low and that raising serious concern. But can
you talk about the some of the work that you are doing in the
source and transit zones as well, which may suggest that the
actual percentage of vessels inspected at U.S. ports may be
deceiving? Does that make sense?
Admiral Brown. It certainly does, sir.
Mr. Graves of Louisiana. And then how that relates to
transnational criminal organizations.
Admiral Brown. Certainly. So with regard to both security
with regard to a dirty bomb, the main subject of this hearing,
but also with regard to protecting our borders from other
transnational threats, our operation is based on layered
security, where we attempt--and I have described earlier some
of the partnerships that we have with regard to port security--
to inspect port facilities for their security regime overseas.
With regard to specifically the source and transit zone for
narcotics, we also have significant partnerships with countries
in South and Central America that allow us to board their
flagged vessels on the high seas, recognizing that many of
these nations don't have robust coast guards or navies with the
kind of offshore capability that we have. And so those
partnerships allow us to detect and interdict drug shipments
very far offshore, in the case of one interdiction I made at
sea of a major cutter, over 1,000 miles west of the Galapagos
Islands, with drugs that were destined for a maritime landing
in Mexico, but then ultimately for the United States.
So we do, using our long-range aircraft, our long-range
cutters, and detection and monitoring capabilities of the
Department of Defense and other partners, we attempt to
identify those targets as far away as possible, interdict them
as far away as possible, but then whenever we can, prosecute in
the United States so we not only take the drugs off the market,
but we attack the criminal network behind those shipments.
Mr. Graves of Louisiana. I am not sure if any of the
Customs or DHS or any of you folks care to----
Mr. Owen. In terms of your vessel inspection question, I
would just like to note that every vessel arriving from foreign
are boarded by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to
take care of the immigration admissibility issue. So there is a
Federal law enforcement presence on each one, not to the level
of inspection for the issues that the Coast Guard looks for,
but to determine the admissibility of those crew.
Mr. Graves of Louisiana. Great. Thank you.
Commissioner, I would actually like to ask you one other
question. You know, whenever I look across Government, you
obviously have local law enforcement, you have State, and you
have Federal law enforcement entities that are out there. In
the State of Louisiana, particularly in the Baton Rouge area
where I am from, the Pointe Coupee Parish sheriff--we have
parishes instead of counties--has formed this organization
known as JTF-7, Joint Task Force 7, that initially was seven of
the surrounding parishes' sheriffs that were all grouped
together and they were doing a lot of maritime security work.
What role do you see those folks playing, considering they
are on the ground, they have better coverage in many cases than
some of your folks do, but what role do you see them playing in
port security, maritime security as part of the overall system?
Mr. Owen. Yes, absolutely. I mean, our presence is limited
in some of the ports, especially in some of the parishes. I was
the port director in New Orleans for 4 years, so I understand
the parish system. And the important role that the local county
sheriffs will play in assisting us is that additional presence
as to what is taking place. They will often come in contact
with individuals that may be of concern as to what they are
doing in those seaports. They will notify us. We'll respond
out.
So very strong working relationships, particularly in small
communities where all of the law enforcement community have to
rely on each other because no single entity has the resources
that they need. So clearly a strong role for that State,
Federal, local partnership.
Mr. Graves of Louisiana. Great. Thank you, Commissioner.
If the chairman will----
Mr. Hunter. Sure.
Ms. Gowadia. Well, I would just like to add that we
certainly believe very strongly in our State and local
partnerships, and we have been working with our Area Maritime
Security Committees and also with our State and local partners
in law enforcement, particularly in your backyard, to build
capabilities across the State public safety and law enforcement
agencies. In fact, today all 50 States, we have engaged with
all 50 States beginning to build capabilities across our
Nation.
Mr. Graves of Louisiana. Great. Thank you very much.
I just want to make note that Sheriff Torres, who leads
this thing, called me and told me a while back that apparently
the Department of Homeland Security was no longer allowing the
seven or eight sheriffs that are all part of this task force to
apply for a Federal Homeland Security grant jointly, that they
were required to separate out. I am not sure of the status of
that, but I just wanted to put it on your radar.
Thank you.
Mr. Hunter. I thank the gentleman.
Ms. Brownley, my colleague from California, is recognized.
Ms. Brownley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think my first question is to Mr. Maurer. I represent a
small port, but a deepwater port, on the coast of California,
Port Hueneme, and a lot of automobiles come through that port.
Big ships come in, and there are 6,000 automobiles coming off
of those ships.
And so I was wondering if the GAO had reviewed the
screening procedures for noncontainerized cargo versus
containerized and if you had any specific recommendations for
improving screening for noncontainerized cargo.
Mr. Maurer. Most of our work has been focused on
containerized cargo, because that is where the bulk of the
Federal investment has been. From a larger perspective, we have
done work looking at the much broader interagency effort to
make sure that terrorists and nation-states aren't getting
their hands on radiological material or nuclear material that
would allow them to construct a device and bring it into the
United States through whatever mechanism.
So one of the themes of our body of work has been that the
technology and the screening procedures are very important. But
there are all these other programs that are designed to secure
the material at the source or to work through treaty regimes or
to ensure that we have a robust intelligence community or law
enforcement presence that is sharing information among Federal,
State, and local partners to identify plots well before someone
is able to construct a device and bring it into a port.
Ms. Brownley. And, Mr. Owen, can you talk a little bit
about the screening process for noncontainerized?
Mr. Owen. Yes, absolutely. For all of the bulk, the break
bulk, the RoRo [roll-on, roll-off], as you see up in Port
Hueneme there, dependent on how the cargo is discharged, it may
still pass through a radiation portal monitor. If it does not,
the officers will address that through handheld radiation
isotope devices. So in the case of Port Hueneme, most of those
roll-on, roll-off vehicles do pass through the radiation portal
monitors. The bananas, the pineapples that are coming into Port
Hueneme as well are often containerized in that warehouse there
onsite and then actually comes through the radiation portal
monitor.
So the radiation portal monitors are our primary detection
methodology. However, we do have the handheld radiation isotope
devices that we use on bulk, break bulk. And every CBP officer
carries a personal radiation pager on their duty belt that will
alert should they come in contact with any of that as well.
Ms. Brownley. Well, thank you for that. Do you think small
ports are more vulnerable than large ports?
Mr. Owen. I think small ports are less vulnerable, because
everyone seems to know everyone. And, again, in the case of
Port Hueneme, you have those same vessels that call every 3 or
4 days, you have the same crewmen, you have the same
stevedores, you have known entities working these. I think in
that environment someone from the outside unknown who may be up
to something no good clearly stands out.
We have strong relationships with the seaport communities.
When the terminal operators, the longshoremen, the stevedores,
when they notice something that is amiss, they reach out to
either the Federal or the port police across the board.
Ms. Brownley. Very good.
And, Rear Admiral, to follow up on Ms. Hahn's line of
questioning, if there was a port that went down, are there
contingency plans to keep trade moving?
Admiral Brown. That is a great question. Thank you. Partly,
since trade is not entirely a Federal responsibility, the
private sector and their distribution shipping networks would
adapt to any disruption, whether it was a natural or man-made
disruption, in a port. Some of that could be directed or shaped
by Federal response, including the actions of the Coast Guard
captain of the port responsible for a port, who might need to
shut down a port from certain activities for a time to allow,
whether it was recovery or investigation, and would work with
neighboring captains of the port to see if we could expedite
the adaptation of shippers to the new conditions.
Ms. Brownley. So each port is not necessarily aware of a
specific contingency plan, it is just if something happens, you
will adapt?
Admiral Brown. Right. Each port has this Area Maritime
Security Committee which has a planning process, but because
the type and the duration of the disruption would be so
dependent on the specific scenario, the vessels that happened
to be in port on that particular day, it would be impossible to
prescribe ahead of time a specific recovery plan for shipping
in that particular port.
Ms. Brownley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Hunter. I thank the gentlelady.
We have a second panel now. We were just looking at their
testimony, and it is in math, whatever language math is, it is
in math.
But I just want to stress one last--we talked today about
stuff coming in from known areas where you can do risk
assessment. I guess my last question for all of you is, why
wouldn't bad guys that want to get a bad device in the U.S.
take the same routes as guys that want to get drugs into the
U.S.? Meaning, why wouldn't you bring it up from Central or
South America and work up through the land borders and sneak it
across? Is that totally--is that crazy talk? Do you think that
they would ship it in and have the manifest be honest and all
that kind of stuff?
Ms. Gowadia. So that is certainly one of the scenarios we
consider in the Global Nuclear Detection Architecture when we
analyze it. So we do look at multiple means and modes of
bringing the vessel in. In fact, I would love to sit down and
share with you a classified briefing where we analyze almost
400 elements of the architecture and base it on defensive
capabilities, offensive options, and then base our resources
and our----
Mr. Hunter. We will take you up on that. We are going to
have a classified hearing on this exact thing, and we can talk
there more.
Ms. Gowadia. Excellent.
Mr. Hunter. Ms. Hahn is recognized.
Ms. Hahn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I guess I just want one more clarification from the three
of you. I mean, we are basically banking on this layered
approach, this point of origin when it leaves the port. Are the
three of you sitting here today saying that you are 100 percent
positive that a dirty bomb could not slip through and get to
one of our ports under this security model?
Ms. Gowadia. Ma'am, I don't think anybody could give you a
100-percent guarantee for that, but I can tell you that based
on the incredible resources of our law enforcement officers,
our intelligence community, and our technical community, we are
bringing every last resource we have to bear. And if we didn't
use all that was at our disposal in this layered, multifaceted
approach, we would be more vulnerable. We are far better off
today than we were 10 years ago.
Ms. Hahn. Would we be better off with 100 percent scanning?
Ms. Gowadia. In a classified session, I would love to walk
you through and explain to you why we probably would not be.
Ms. Hahn. Rear Admiral?
Admiral Brown. Ma'am, the only thing I would add to that is
that we have had over the past 12 years or so several scenarios
in which there was a radiological or threat concern on a vessel
coming in from overseas. And with the MOTR process begun, that
is the Maritime Operational Threat Response interagency
process, we are able to either board the vessel at sea and
resolve the issue or bring the vessel to a safe place with
minimal population to conduct an examination and resolve the
issue.
And in one very specific case, not regarding a bomb threat,
but a possible terrorist threat where it was ambiguous as to
whether the vessel was going to a United States port or a
Canadian port, we are able to do that same level of interagency
coordination with our Canadian counterparts to very good
effect.
So I am confident that the processes that we have in place
are effective for recognizing and responding to these threats
in a way that will mitigate the probable impact. But as Dr.
Gowadia said, I couldn't say with 100 percent certainty that we
can prevent a dirty bomb scenario.
Ms. Hahn. Todd?
Mr. Owen. And I would also agree there is no 100 percent
certainty. But with the 100-percent scanning, I think when you
look strategically at where it does make sense, like what we
are doing in Qasim, Pakistan, where every container coming out
of Qasim is scanned, with what we started this year in Jordan,
in Port of Aqaba, where every container coming out of Jordan is
scanned, I think in those strategic locations that give us more
concern, it is the right approach.
Ms. Hahn. Thank you.
Mr. Hunter. I thank the gentlelady.
And we are not going to shake hands and stuff, because we
have about a half an hour with the next panel. So thank you
very much for your time and for what you do.
And we will have more hearings on this coming up, Ms.
Gowadia, so we will have a classified, fun hearing.
Mr. Garamendi [presiding]. While the chairman is out, if
the next panel would come up and take their places. Mr. Gregory
Canavan, Charles Potter, Joe Lawless and Stephen Flynn. The
chairman is out of the room for a few moments, but he asked me
to begin your testimony. We do have a short period of time, so
we will begin.
Mr. Canava, Canavan?
Mr. Canavan. Canavan, sir. It is Irish.
Mr. Garamendi. It is a fine name, then.
Mr. Canavan, please.
Mr. Canavan. Should I begin?
Mr. Garamendi. Yes, would you please.
TESTIMONY OF GREGORY H. CANAVAN, PH.D., SENIOR FELLOW, LOS
ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORIES; CHARLES A. POTTER, PH.D.,
DISTINGUISHED MEMBER OF THE TECHNICAL STAFF, SANDIA NATIONAL
LABORATORIES; JOSEPH M. LAWLESS, CHAIRMAN, SECURITY COMMITTEE,
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF PORT AUTHORITIES; AND STEPHEN E. FLYNN,
PH.D., DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR RESILIENCE STUDIES, NORTHEASTERN
UNIVERSITY
Mr. Canavan. I am Greg Canavan. I am from Los Alamos. I
submitted my testimony. Apparently the chairman doesn't want me
to read the math, so I will summarize, if you don't mind, and
ask that you submit it for the record.
I am very honored to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
And I will not use math, I will just say a few words.
I am listed as a senior fellow from Los Alamos, that is my
daytime job, but this is not necessarily a Los Alamos project.
It is something that I have been working on, on and off,
whenever I had a few minutes, ever since 9/11. On that day, the
Department of Energy and the Department of Defense were kind
enough to send an airplane out to New Mexico to get Dr.
Hagengruber and I from--he is from Sandia--to come back here to
pursue some projects that we had been looking into before 9/11
on unusual threats to the United States, one of which was a
concern that there might have been nuclear materials here in
the Capitol, perhaps in an operational form. And so we spent
some time looking into that.
We were not looking for dirty bombs, we were looking for
nuclear weapons, but the detection approaches are similar and
also quite difficult. As Ms. Hahn pointed out earlier, groups
have smuggled depleted uranium into the country fairly
frequently. Actual enriched uranium is a little harder to find,
but not that much easier. And so we were trying to find nuclear
materials.
I might say that as an Air Force colonel and for the last
50 years or so, I have worked on designing nuclear weapons,
testing nuclear weapons, occasionally flying nuclear weapons.
But 9/11 was the first time I ever had to worry about the
problem of trying to detect nuclear materials, and I found it
to be a very difficult and challenging business. There is not
much signature from them at all. They are a lot harder to find
in a way than dirty bombs. And we also found that although we
have quite good techniques for defeating nuclear weapons--that
is diffusing them once you have found them--that the business
of trying to find them in the first place is very, very
difficult.
After 9/11, I continued to work with the Department of
Defense for a couple of years to try to remedy this problem. It
was very frustrating, it was quite difficult, in part because I
think we went off on the wrong direction. We recognized that
neutrons, tiny particles of matter that don't carry any
electrical charge at all, can go right through anything,
through this building, through ships, through whatever, so they
are a great way for candling nuclear materials. Particularly
since when they hit a fissionable material they produce a lot
more neutrons and enhance the signature, so that makes them a
good thing to work with.
But we kind of got off on the wrong footing in that we
adopted the idea that the right approach was to stand off 2, 3,
4 miles with an enormous particle accelerator from high-energy
physics and try do the interrogation from there. It didn't
improve your survivability if something went off, it just made
everything a lot more complicated, and we kind of got
discouraged with that approach.
But anyhow, we went that way. And so after a while, it just
looked too hard, and we kind of gave up. And so the problem has
not advanced very much from 9/11 to today in terms of detecting
actual nuclear weapons.
So what has changed? And I think that there are five things
that have changed. One is that a decade of development in
nuclear sources and detectors have made much more practical
schemes and automated schemes possible and even affordable, so
that you could now have detector systems that could fit on
ports, transporter vehicles, ships, whatever, and do, if you
will, an inspection of all the things that came through the
port for nuclear weapons.
What that leads to then, in the testimony that I handed in,
it lends to a sort of modular deployment. That is, most stuff
that moves today moves in TEUs, the 20-foot equivalent units
that go on cargo ships now are now in the two TEUs, the 40-foot
units that get racked up between the bulkheads in these big
ships. And happily, if you use neutrons, particularly fast
neutrons, they are very well suited to uniformly candling or
inspecting such containers either in port or in transit. So I
found that very interesting.
The second thing that hit me was a mistake that we made
early on was to ignore countermeasures to the approaches that
we were advancing for detection. We were sort of asked to go
against a friendly adversary, if you will, somebody that made
life easy for us. And that turned out to be not a favor,
because we ignored the fact that there are absorbers, things
like cadmium barium, that are used to control ordinary power
nuclear reactors. They absorb neutrons very efficiently, so
that one-thousandth of an inch of cadmium could knock the
signals from a nuclear weapon down to almost nothing.
But then I realized that fast neutrons, neutrons up at the
energy where they are born, could easily get around these
absorptions and produce big signals, and they were relatively
insensitive to the known countermeasures.
There is the penalty that someone mentioned already. In
radiography, when you are x raying something, most of your x
rays go places that you are not interested in. For instance, in
these big TEUs, if you are looking for a bomb that is maybe 10
centimeters across and the TEU is 3 meters across, only a
fraction, maybe 1 percent of the neutrons actually hit the
weapon to produce a signal and the rest of them act as noise.
So that is a problem that you have to overcome.
But then the third thing, I realized after some thinking
was that in the process of hitting the nuclear core, the
neutrons sort of identify themselves. Instead of being at their
initial energy, they kick out neutrons that have a spectrum all
the way from 10 percent to 90 percent of that of the neutrons
that are incident on them. They are easily identified, so they
can be collected and you can throw away the noise very
efficiently, particularly since the separation in energy of
noise from the source is large and fairly specific and energy
doesn't degrade much in the process of slowing down. Therefore
you don't wind up with too many of the noise neutrons showing
up in your bin where you are expecting your signal.
So those four things made life a lot easier, to the point
where you can do very effective filtering on energy, which
makes up and makes up more than for what you lose initially in
the numbers of neutrons that missed the target. And so overall
you can get signal-to-noise ratios at the appropriate energies,
which are sort of halfway through the slowing-down process,
signal-to-noise ratios of 100 to 1,000 or more, which means
that you can have very confident detection of the nuclear
materials with a very low false-alarm ratio of other materials.
Someone alluded to it in the previous talk, that the tough
thing about x rays is that you never know what is going to be
in one of these shipping containers. It may be axles, it may be
electronics, it may be whatever. And even if you can radiograph
one of these things 1 percent of the time, then you still have
to go through some long screening process or unpacking process
to figure out what the detected object actually was. With a
very high signal-to-noise ratio nuclear signal, you have a
fighting chance of passing everything through without having to
go back and try to sort out what the problem was in the first
place.
So it just seemed to have all of the characteristics that
we were looking for. Even before 9/11, I was on the advisory
committees for U.S. Space, Air Force Space, and North Command
when it was first created, and we were sitting down trying to
figure out how you should parcel out responsibility for
detection.
Neutrons seemed to do everything that we had hoped that the
Coast Guard would be able to do in its charter as the Service
that would detect things before they got to the coast,
eradicate losses and false alarms on the spot, and execute the
first line of defense of the country.
Mr. Hunter [presiding]. That is all right, Doctor. Thanks
for being here. And we will come back to this stuff too.
Dr. Potter, you are recognized. And our next witness is Dr.
Charles ``Gus'' Potter, Distinguished Member of the Technical
Staff for Sandia National Laboratories.
You are recognized.
Mr. Potter. Thank you. Chairman Hunter, Ranking Member
Garamendi, and distinguished members of the Coast Guard, thank
you for the opportunity to testify today on the topic of
preventing and responding to an RDD [radiological dispersal
device] attack. My name is Dr. Charles Potter. I am a systems
analyst and a health physicist from Sandia National
Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and I have specialized
in the RDD threat and radiological nuclear detection
architecture for over the past 5 years.
The United States Government and many of our foreign
partners have been working for more than a decade to reduce the
risk of a successful radiological dispersal device attack. From
an engineering standpoint, we define risk as a combination of
the likelihood of the attack--that is, the degree at which an
adversary has the intent, capability, and materials required--
and the consequence of the attack. The RDD threat is a very
complex and a multidimensional problem, and the U.S. Government
has designed and implemented a variety of programs, based on
scientific studies by Sandia National Laboratories and others,
to reduce the likelihood of an RDD attack in terms of reducing
the availability of material for exploitation, as well as
identifying and impeding probable pathways from device to
target.
However, the scientific understanding of the cost, time
needed to clean up, and psychological effects of an RDD event
are less well understood. No comprehensive standard has been
established regarding what radiation limits would constitute a
successful cleanup. Publications and released documentation
written by the Al Qaeda organization indicate their
understanding of the public unsettlement and possible economic
consequences from an RDD attack. Dhiren Barot in 2006, Jose
Padilla in 2007, and Glendon Crawford in August of this year
were each convicted of attempting to develop and use a dirty
bomb in New York City, Chicago, and elsewhere.
RDDs can be developed by a spectrum of adversaries from a
relatively low capability lone wolf, such as these three
individuals, to a highly capable and technically competent
adversary, such as Aum Shinrikyo, who perpetrated the
coordinated sarin attacks on the Tokyo subway system in 1995.
The more technically capable an adversary is, the more likely
they would be to find ways to spread the radioactive material
over larger areas and at higher radioactive levels.
Since the 2000 UCLA [University of California, Los Angeles]
study on RDD risk at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach,
many policies, programs, and systems have addressed the threat
likelihood. This includes NRC [U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission] regulations for source security, the DOE
[Department of Energy] Office of Radiological Security's
domestic and foreign programs on radiological source security
and recovery, and the DHS Domestic Nuclear Detection Office's
Global Nuclear Detection Architecture to identify radioactive
material outside of regulatory control. If a device is located
prior to detonation, multiagency teams now exist for rapid
response.
RDDs are unlikely to result in large immediate health
effects beyond those caused by the explosive blast, although
there may be some long-term effects to more exposed
individuals. However, depending on the radionuclide involved,
the economic consequences could be considerable.
If the radionuclide is difficult to remove from surfaces,
as some are, the contaminated area could be off limits for
months or even years. This would result in businesses within
those areas being effectively shuttered and residents being
relocated, semipermanently or permanently, while costly
decontamination efforts are undertaken. Additionally, there
would be interdependencies in the quarantined area between the
residents and the businesses they patronize.
Since there is no comprehensive policy or standard for
post-cleanup radiation levels, it is difficult to estimate the
cost that would be directly associated with decontamination.
In summary, the RDD risk is real and multifaceted, and the
U.S. Government has implemented a number of programs to
increase the security of U.S. radiological materials and
increase the difficulty of illicit movement of those materials,
resulting in a reduced likelihood of an RDD attack. However,
there is still significant uncertainty in our understanding of
the costs that would accrue after such an event.
The development of policies and technical capabilities for
effective cleanup to allow for resumption of normal operations
following an RDD attack would constitute an important element
of the multidimensional integrated solution for addressing the
RDD threat.
Thank you.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you, Dr. Potter. And you actually gave 30
seconds back from Dr. Canavan.
The next witness is Mr. Joe Lawless, the chairman of the
Security Committee for the American Association of Port
Authorities.
You are recognized.
Mr. Lawless. Thank you, Chairman Hunter, Ranking Member
Garamendi, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. My
name is Joseph Lawless. I am the director of maritime security
at the Massachusetts Port Authority in Boston. I am here today
on behalf of the American Association of Port Authorities,
where I chair the Security Committee.
AAPA is the unified and collective voice of the seaport
industry in the Americas. AAPA empowers port authorities,
maritime industry partners, and service providers to serve
their global customers and create economic and social value for
their communities. Our activities, resources, and partnerships
connect, inform, and unify seaport leaders and maritime
professionals in all segments of the industry around the
Western Hemisphere.
Security is our top priority for all of our members, and
this testimony I am giving today is on behalf of our U.S.
members.
Securing our ports and communities from dirty bombs could
not happen without strong partnerships. This means our ongoing
relationships with port authorities, the Federal Government,
specifically the Customs and Border Protection agency, the
United States Coast Guard, the FBI, shippers, port workers, and
State and local law enforcement, who all play a vital role in
identifying threats and combining security resources to
coordinate if a dirty bomb were to arrive on the U.S. shores.
The threat of dirty bombs ending up in the hands of people
who want to cause us harm in this country was underscored
recently by accounts of a disrupted illicit smuggling
operation. It was reported that over the last 5 years there
have been at least four attempts by criminals in Eastern Europe
to sell radioactive materials to Middle Eastern extremists. If
any of these smuggling plots were successful, these radioactive
materials could have been used to construct a dirty bomb that
could be ultimately used against us. The concern is that
terrorists could exploit the maritime transportation system to
convey a dirty bomb into this country.
Stopping dirty bombs before they reach our shores is a
priority, but we must have an effective system of detecting
dirty bombs if they were to make it to our shores. A fully
funded and staffed Customs and Border Protection agency is the
first step in fighting the threat of dirty bombs. CBP officers
meet the ships at all ports of entry to check the manifests and
utilize radiation portal monitors.
CBP and ports rely upon the RPMs to detect dirty bombs in
containerized cargo shipped into this country. RPMs are
detection devices that provide CBP with a passive, nonintrusive
process to screen trucks and other movements of freight for the
presence of nuclear and radiological materials. They are
mandated in the SAFE Port Act of 2006, and the 22 largest ports
by volume must have RPMs and all containers must be screened
for radiation.
Almost 10 years have passed since the RPMs were mandated.
However, a decade into this program questions have been raised
regarding who pays for the maintenance of the RPMs, who is
responsible for paying for new portals during port expansion,
and what is the long-term obligation for the next generation of
RPMs. A DHS inspector general 2013 CBP ``Radiation Portal
Monitors at Seaports'' report states that the initial estimates
of deployed RPMs showed an average useful life expectancy of 10
years.
What we hear repeatedly from our port members is the lack
of clarity in funding and administering the RPM program. It has
become a real hindrance in how we protect our ports. We are
fast coming to the end of the first generation of RPMs' life
expectancy. Ports such as Tampa, Jacksonville, Long Beach, New
York/New Jersey, and Mobile have all reported complicated
discussions with their regional CBP officers on the ongoing
responsibilities related to RPMs.
A recent example is the Port of Jacksonville, where CBP
requested that Jacksonville assume financial responsibility for
the RPM technology sustainment, hardware, software, and
connectivity. This is significant given the complex and
critical nature of these federally owned and currently
maintained systems. Other ports are reporting similar
disruptions in the RPM program. There is too much at stake for
ports and CBP officers to have to engage in policy and funding
negotiations. Congress and the administration must set a clear
path on the RPM program.
RPM detection is a federally mandated program. CBP should
request adequate Federal funding to purchase, install, and
maintain all RPM equipment at ports throughout the United
States. If this is not feasible, then the Department of
Homeland Security should consider the creation of a stand-alone
priority within the FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency]
Port Security Grant Program, titled ``Radiation Detection
Portal Monitors,'' or expand upon the CBRNE [chemical,
biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosives] core
capability to allow ports to request security grant funding in
support of the purchase and installation of radiation detection
portals.
Regarding the Port Security Grant Program, many port
authorities have utilized the Port Security Grant Program to
obtain radiological and nuclear detection equipment. Personal
radiation detection devices that first responders wear on their
belts, isotope identifiers that are used to determine the
source of radiation alarms, and sophisticated backpack
detection devices are some of the items acquired through the
Port Security Grant Program. These items not only supplement
CBP's efforts, but also enhance law enforcement's role in the
Coast Guard's small vessel rad/nuc detection program.
I would urge Congress to restore the funding for the Port
Security Grant Program to its original level and maintain the
Port Security Grant Program as a stand-alone Department of
Homeland Security grant program.
Additionally, we would encourage that whenever possible,
the grants go directly to the ports so that our security
facilities will have the necessary resources to fully implement
their security programs.
In conclusion, we must provide law enforcement agencies,
such as the CBP, and our port security directors with all the
tools and resources necessary to succeed.
I appreciate the opportunity to testify here today, and I
look forward to answering any questions that you might have.
Thank you.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you, Mr. Lawless.
The final witness on the second panel is Dr. Stephen Flynn,
director of the Center for Resilience Studies with Northeastern
University.
You are recognized, Dr. Flynn.
Mr. Flynn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You are going to hear
two back-to-back Boston accents here now coming at you.
I have been at this for about 30 years, first as a Coast
Guard officer, retired from that Service, and now currently at
Northeastern University where with the support of the MacArthur
Foundation I am looking at the growing risk of managing the
threat to our global supply chains via the risk of radioactive
material as well as weapons of mass destruction. So I am
honored to be here today.
Mr. Chairman, it is my assessment that the threat of a
dirty bomb at a U.S. port remains a clear and present danger.
Simply stated, current U.S. efforts are not up to the task of
preventing a determined adversary from exploiting the global
supply system and setting off a dirty bomb in a U.S. port.
If a dirty bomb was set off in a U.S. port it would not be
so much of a weapon of mass destruction as it would be of one
of mass disruption. There would be three immediate consequences
associated with this attack.
First, there would be local deaths and injuries associated
with the blast of the conventional explosives.
Second, there would be the environmental damage and
extremely high cleanup costs. As Dr. Potter was laying out
here, we don't have standards for actually coping with the
aftermath.
And then third, there would be what I call the morning-
after problem. That is, since there would be no way of
determining where the compromise that led to the incident
happened within the security system, we would have sort of two
outcomes. One, the entire supply chain, all the transportation
nodes and providers, would be presumed to be potentially a risk
of potential follow-on attacks. Further, it would call into
question all the existing container port security initiatives
that the first panel talked about here today.
On March 28, 2006, nearly a decade ago, and this is my 29th
time talking about these issues before Congress since 9/11, I
outlined the following hypothetical scenario that had been
informed by my own research as well as the insights provided by
Gary Gilbert, who is the chairman of the Security Committee of
Hutchison Port Holdings, the world's largest terminal operator.
I included in that testimony before the Senate Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations the following scenario.
A container of athletic footwear from a name brand company
is loaded at a manufacturing plant in Surabaya, Indonesia. The
container doors are shut and the mechanical seal is put into
the door pad-eyes. These designer sneakers are destined for
retail stores in malls across America. The container and seal
numbers are recorded at the factory. A local truck driver, in
this case sympathetic to Al Qaeda, picks up the container. On
the way to the port he turns into an alleyway and backs up the
truck at a nondescript warehouse where a small team of
operatives pry loose one of the door hinges to open the
container so they can gain access to the shipment.
Some of the sneakers are removed, and in their place the
operatives load a dirty bomb wrapped in lead shielding, which
will defeat the radiation portal monitoring, and then they
refasten the door. The driver then takes the container, now
loaded with a dirty bomb, to the port of Surabaya, where it is
loaded on a coastal feeder ship carrying about 300 containers
for a voyage to Jakarta. In Jakarta the container is
transferred to an Inter-Asia ship, typically carrying 1,200 to
1,500 containers, to the Port of Singapore or the Port of Hong
Kong. In this case, the ship goes to Hong Kong, where it is
loaded on a super-container ship that carries 5,000 to 8,000
containers for the trans-Pacific voyage.
The container is then off-loaded in Vancouver, British
Columbia. It is then loaded directly on to a Canadian Pacific
railcar, where it is shipped to a rail yard in Chicago. Because
the dirty bomb is shielded in lead, the radiation portals
currently deployed along the U.S.-Canadian border do not detect
it. When the container reaches its distribution center in the
Chicago area, a triggering device attached to the door sets the
bomb off.
Now, this scenario remains as realistic today as it was in
2006, because it exploits a longstanding vulnerability of the
global supply system that still remains unaddressed: The
ability of smugglers to potentially target a containerized
shipment while it is being transported by a local truck from
the factory or logistics center where it originates to the port
where it's loaded aboard a vessel.
Now, once a truck leaves a factory, as a practical matter
there are few controls in place for preventing a shipment from
being diverted before it arrives at a port, particularly if the
driver has been recruited, bribed, or intimidated into
cooperating with a terrorist group intent on placing a dirty
bomb into the container.
The container doors are typically ``secured'' with a
numbered bolt seal that can be purchased in volume for about
$1.50. But even if the bolt seal is left in place, as my
scenario laid out, the door hinges can be removed or the
container's relatively thin-metal skin can be breached so they
can put the bomb in the box.
Now, I speculated that the hypothetical terrorist group
would purposely target a container from a known shipper. I did
this for two reasons. First, it can count on the fact that it
is extremely unlikely that CBP will subject the container to
any physical security as it originated from a well-established
company. We have heard about the risk management system. And if
it has no past record of smuggling, there is virtually no
chance it will hit anybody's radar screen as a container to be
checked.
Such a shipment from a trusted source would be deemed to be
low-risk and as such not identified for an overseas port-of-
loading inspection or an inspection in Vancouver when it is
off-loaded to a U.S. bound train.
Second, by exploiting the container from a known shipper,
the terrorist group can be confident they can generate the
maximum amount of fear that all containers previously viewed
low-risk now be judged as potentially high-risk. Fanned by the
inevitable sensational media coverage, Governors, mayors, and
the American people would place no faith in the entire risk
management regime erected since 9/11.
I want to emphasize that this is why potentially a
thoughtful adversary would put a dirty bomb in a box versus in
a small boat. It is because the goal is not to get the bomb
into the United States, it is to disrupt the global supply
chain system by how we would respond in its aftermath. What we
see here is that if we are suddenly spooked, there is a bomb in
a bomb or there are other bombs in boxes, we basically would
freeze the system to sort it out, not just one port closure,
but almost certainly all port closures.
Then we have a challenge. We can't check the boxes until
they are off-loaded, but the only way we can check them is if
they are off-loaded. This catch-22 translates into ships
queuing up in Anchorage outside our ports.
Overseas you can't just basically freeze the system. You
are not going to send new ships into the U.S. if it is already
backed up. You can't receive new boxes from trains and trucks.
So essentially within 10 days to 2 weeks, the entire global
intermodal transportation system goes into gridlock. The impact
of that is disruption of our global commerce on a huge scale.
So what would we do? The real threat essentially is not so
much the attack or the local harm for the port community, as
significant as that is likely to be. It is the risk of mass
disruption to international commerce that would follow from
such an attack.
So two steps I outline in my testimony. The U.S. Government
needs to shift its interests from one that focuses primarily on
policing U.S.-bound cargo to one that advances the overall
security resilience of the global supply system at large. There
is compelling rationale for doing this. Everybody is signed up
to trying to prevent the proliferation of weapons and materials
around the planet. Specifically, all countries have signed on
to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540 that requires that
nations take actions to detect and intercept outbound shipments
of illicit nuclear and radiological materials. We have the
international rationale. Let's get on with this at a global
scale.
Secondly, the U.S. Government really needs to focus on
enlisting the active participation of private industry that
owns and operates the port terminals and transportation
conveyances that move supply chains. They have a rationale to
do this. This is a significant business continuity enterprise
resilience imperative. As such, the conventional wisdom that
security is basically a public sector responsibility is wrong.
It is primarily a public sector responsibility to work this,
but the private sector has a critical role to play.
The foiled October 2010 bomb plot involving explosives
hidden in printer cartridges shipped from Yemen make the case.
In the aftermath of that we saw the aircargo industry working
with U.S. and European authorities to significantly step up the
scrutiny of aircargo.
The maritime transportation system, in short, is a highly
concentrated system with a few large port terminal operators
and ocean carriers responsible for handling the vast majority
of global cargo. With support from the U.S. Government and
other authorities, these companies could potentially take on a
leadership role for deploying the technologies and tools on a
global scale by providing a near real-time visibility and
accountability for contents and location of all cargo.
What they would need is the means to recover the associated
costs through a fee-for-service requirement that is borne by
importers and exporters. The estimated cost of putting
nonintrusive inspection and terminal operations around the
world ranges from $3 billion to $5 billion. Given that there
are millions of containers moving through, we are talking about
a $10 to $15 per-box cost largely to do this, or less than the
security surcharge I had from flying from Boston to Washington
for this hearing today.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, the risk of an adversary
exploiting the global supply system to import a dirty bomb at a
U.S. port remains clear and present. The disruption that such
an attack would generate goes well beyond the local port. It
would ripple through the entire maritime transportation system.
It would be disastrous for global trade.
Accordingly, the stakes for the United States national
security and economic security could not be higher. There is an
urgent need to significantly bolster and build upon the many
post-9/11 initiatives which aim to improve the security of the
maritime transportation system. In the end, these global
networks require trust to operate. We have got to work on
ensuring we can survive that trust in the event of a dirty bomb
going off in a port.
Thanks so much.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you, Doctor.
And thanks to my colleagues for sticking around too. I am
just going to ask a quick question and then going to pass it
off so everybody else can get a question in before we have to
leave.
Dr. Canavan, I guess the question is this. If you are going
to have a nuclear weapon come in, dirty or not, it is going to
be shielded. If it is not, I would recommend to our enemies
that they shield it, otherwise it will be easier to see. So I
would think that some smart people would shield it. Can you
still see it?
Mr. Canavan. Yes, sir, good question. I cover that a little
bit in my testimony. Bombs are not easily shielded from
inspection by neutrons. As I said, if you keep the neutrons
fast enough--that is, with high enough energy--they are not
affected by absorbers. Neutrons can go through a whole ship
without hardly slowing down.
The tricky part is what are called moderators, things that
reduce the energy of the neutrons. If a bomb was packed in a
bunch of moderator material, carbon or something like that that
can slow neutrons, enough of it could slow the neutrons down to
where not enough of them would penetrate into the core to give
you a good nuclear signature. It is not a precise number, but a
foot or so of carbon outside the device might effect that sort
of slowing down.
But there are two things that you have to consider. One is
that by the time you have a few feet of carbon on either side
of the device you block the whole TEU, the container that it is
in, and that in itself would be a signal that someone had tried
to hide it. It is not an easy thing to do.
The other thing is, it is a technical point, but when
neutrons bounce off of a moderator like carbon they produce a
spectrum of bands of energy that are easily detectable. The
spacing of the energy bands are a good indicator of what kind
of moderator the person is using to try to beat you, and the
number of those bands tell you how thick the moderator is.
That is the game that they would play. It is not an easy
game for the adversary. That is all I can say.
Mr. Hunter. There is a company that I know of called
Decision Sciences that actually is able to sense nuclear stuff
inside of really thick lead, but you have to be in their
system, meaning that you can't walk around and scan stuff. It
has got to be within basically one of those drive-through
systems to do this. And it takes more than just a drive
through, it takes a couple of seconds.
Mr. Canavan. Decision Sciences uses muons. They do not
select nuclear material, just mass. Neutrons go through
anything. They particularly like to go through steel and lead.
So ordinary shielding, which is very effective for dirty bombs
and even uranium in its natural state emitting radiation is not
very effective against fast neutrons. Somebody has to really,
really go out of their way with a lot of shielding to try to
knock the signal down. Sorry.
Mr. Hunter. But these handheld detectors, they wouldn't
sense something if it was in carbon or lead. It would take an
actual scanning system to do that, right? The handheld CBP
detectors, they are not going to detect stuff if it is in a
TEU?
Mr. Canavan. Correct. Handheld detectors are defeated by a
modest amount of shielding. The trick with neutron detection is
that you inject a signal which is magnified by the target
itself to a detectable number of neutrons coming back out. And
so you are stimulating very gently the fissile material to
produce a signal that would not be there in the case if you
didn't stimulate it.
Mr. Hunter. And the only way to do that is through one of
these drive-through systems, meaning none of this is going to
happen by a handheld device that someone is holding walking
around or a belt device.
Mr. Canavan. Correct. The spontaneous signal is too weak
for them to detect.
Mr. Hunter. All of this only comes, even the best we can
do, through, like, a drive-through scanning system, right,
where you can spray it with neutrons and then have that read on
the other side, which takes a system.
Mr. Canavan. Neutrons could act in a drive-through, but
they could also operate in other modes discussed below. There
is no free lunch. You do have to produce the neutrons, but
neutrons are not very hard to produce. The trick is knowing
that you have to both put them where you want them and then
collect them in a smart way.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you.
And I am going to yield, because I am out of time. Mr.
Garamendi is recognized.
Mr. Garamendi. Apparently the bottom line on your testimony
is that a compact fast neutron inspection can work. We are not
presently deploying those. Is that correct?
Mr. Canavan. Correct. As I said, we kind of went off on a
tangent that was not very productive. And it has only been
sitting around and scratching my head for a long time sort of
gave me the idea. As Dr. Teller, my old professor, always used
to tell me, the hardest thing about doing something is
unlearning what you thought----
Mr. Garamendi. We are going to move this right along
because we are out of time.
Dr. Potter, you seem to think that domestic steps need to
be taken, cesium chloride specifically?
Mr. Potter. A National Academy study was done, some years
ago now, pointing out the need to protect cesium chloride
sources throughout the United States, yes.
Mr. Garamendi. So you drew our attention to that issue, and
presumably we will avoid dealing with that problem.
Mr. Potter. Uh-huh.
Mr. Garamendi. Which is not a good solution.
And finally, Mr. Lawless, it comes down to money, doesn't
it? Who is going to pay for the detectors, the kind Mr. Canavan
is talking about, domestically with cesium chloride? How much
money do you need to put these detectors and to maintain them?
Mr. Lawless. Well, that is a difficult question to answer.
I would suggest that the Government fund these research
projects, like these drive-through portals, that we would see
that could detect neurons and gamma at the same time. We are
invested at my particular port working with DNDO and a company
to develop a state-of-the-art detection system in the Port of
Boston.
But there is definitely money needed to fund these
programs. There has to be clarity on who is paying for these
systems. They are federally mandated systems. And the ports
believe that the Federal Government should be paying CBP and
DNDO to fund these projects.
Mr. Garamendi. Dr. Flynn is willing to put $10 to $15 on
each container. I assume you have an opinion on that. Yes? No?
Mr. Lawless. Yes.
Mr. Garamendi. All right. And I would just go back to where
I started this, in that we make choices around here, and we are
looking to spend $3.5 billion for a missile defense system for
the east coast to deal with Iran nuclear weapons, which
presumably aren't going to be available for some decades.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Hunter. Thank the gentleman.
Ms. Hahn is recognized.
Ms. Hahn. Thank you.
Dr. Flynn, thank you for being here today. I have followed
your work and read a lot of what you have written. Again, I
represent the Port of Los Angeles and I am always very
concerned. As you said, the Container Security Initiative scans
less than 1 percent of U.S.-bound cargo. Do you believe that
scanning at the point of origin is effective, 100 percent
effective, or should we be investing more in scanning at our
domestic ports?
Mr. Flynn. Well, this is an issue where the stakes are so
high we should be looking at dealing with this across the
board. So relative to where we put resources, this really ranks
right up there, I think, given the consequence we laid out. And
I have spent a good bit of time in the Port of L.A. and Long
Beach and you really get the sense of scale about what is going
on here.
And what the problem would be in this dirty bomb scenario,
where if we spread all that stuff around how would you work in
that port, as well as, of course, neighbors who live in San
Pedro and so forth? This would be a real challenge.
So in the face of this here there is opportunity at the
port of loading, even at the largest terminals, to scan cargo.
Now, what that would do is it should be baked into the terminal
operations. Just as the radiation portals are here even when
you leave the terminal, we would like to ideally have that when
people drive into the terminal. And you can't do it for just
U.S., you have to do it for everything. And that is where there
is counterproliferation value to doing this, because most of
the stuff we worry about proliferation is going not to the
United States, but is going around. And to the extent that is a
national security imperative, trying to get visibility into
what moves through the intermodal transportation system should
be a key.
So let's be clear right now with the numbers: 2013, the
numbers of CBP inspections overseas in the then-58 ports around
the world was 103,000. If you divide that by 365 days and 58
ports, we are talking 5 containers per port, per day are being
examined overseas under the CSI system. OK, it is five a day.
And if you have been to places like Singapore or Shanghai or
others, I mean, it may be up a little bit.
Why is that? It is because the current approach is we are
going to identify the risk and actually go pluck the box and
take it to a Government inspection facility. If you bake it
into the operation of the terminal you would collect this in
real time. It doesn't mean you have to look at images every
time. What you would do is would get those and use your risk-
based approach to do it, but you would have a much greater
degree of confidence about deterring this risk, but also
ultimately finding things when they go wrong to intercept them,
or worse case even isolating the incident afterwards so you
don't shut down the whole system.
So there is just so much that can be done, should be done,
that is not being done.
Ms. Hahn. Thank you. I appreciate the warning. And as you
commented, which I also did in the first panel, was the threat
to our global economy is significant, particularly if something
happened at Long Beach and Los Angeles. We know what that
impact would have on not just our national economy, but the
global economy.
So I was going to ask one more, Dr. Canavan. I mean, I
think the biggest issue that everyone tells me why we can't
have 100 percent scanning is that in some way that would
impede, slow down commerce and we just can't afford that. And
by the way, I do have a bill that would provide grants to two
ports in this country that would voluntarily decide to
implement 100 percent scanning with the technology that we have
available, just to I sort of want to prove everybody wrong,
that actually we can do this and not impede commerce in a way
that would really impact the economy.
But, Dr. Canavan, is there technology, of that that you
spoke about, which one of those technologies could work and
also not impede commerce?
Mr. Canavan. Well, there are two--there is one technology I
talk about and that is interrogation with neutrons. I think it
would fill the requirements that you are setting down there.
There are these big cranes that move containers around. I would
like to put a little source on one leg of the crane and the
detector on the other, so while it is moving them around there
would be plenty of time to inspect them. It does its inspection
in seconds or milliseconds. It is very fast.
The other approach would be to mount the source and
detector on the bulkheads of the ship, sort of one per
canister, so that you could keep track of what happens to that
canister the whole time it is out at sea.
I think you could do that, but I haven't proved it, ma'am.
I have tried to show that the physics is OK.
Ms. Hahn. Thank you very much.
Mr. Hunter. Ms. Brownley is recognized.
Ms. Brownley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, Dr. Flynn, your points and your testimony I think were
well taken, that it is not an attack just on U.S. soil, but an
attack on trade and interrupting goods movement in our country.
And I am just wondering if you have very specific
recommendations for how individual ports and the businesses
within those ports can really prepare for--or prepare for a
contingency plan in the event that we did have an attack, and
also specific recommendations for governmental agencies and
what they should be doing for contingency as well.
Mr. Flynn. I mean, I really applaud the question and the
focus, because unless we assume that this is a zero chance that
this will happen that we will have a nuclear event, we should
have a plan. That is something we can do. It is not a huge cost
issue. It is a heavy coordination issue and a collaboration
issue.
The core challenge is that, as I also laid out in my
testimony, this is a global system sort of running on steroids.
And so if you disrupt it at any point, increasingly it cascades
across the system. So it is a lot of choreography.
Right now the U.S. Government has no plan for how to deal
with this beyond the U.S. borders. There is a global strategy
the President put out. I think it is the world's thinnest
strategy, it is four and a half pages. It basically says we
should have a plan, but nobody actually has executed on that.
And thinking through that, so some specifics. Clearly it is
raising the awareness about what this event would look like and
then mechanics about, OK, how do we deal with the immediacy of
the dirty bomb? What is safe? I mean, this is something a
community can't solve because the U.S. Government has to set
what standards are for safety in terms of putting people back
into that community.
But the coordination is really heavily between the industry
that runs the system and the port authorities and the local
authorities and the governmental authorities who manage the
system. There we have very limited visibility about how it
works. And what makes this, I think, a unique and challenging
issue for critical infrastructure, the maritime transportation
system, is that 90-plus percent of it is internationally owned,
it is not U.S.-owned, and we have to coordinate therefore with
those key players.
But the opportunity is, it is a concentrated industry.
There are roughly five terminal operators that move about 80
percent of all the goods to the United States. They are in
ports all over the world. You don't have to go to 180 nations,
you go to 5 companies. There are basically 20 ocean carriers
that matter. You can work with 20 CEOs.
What we have been doing is looking at this as a Government-
to-Government issue or local government issue when it really is
an international private system that we have to have a
capability.
In our financial meltdown in 2008 we had central bankers
who could manage the morning after. It was messy, but we had a
system. We have no such system for managing a major disruptive
event, and that is something that I think transcends anything
that these agencies who are here this morning their job is to
do, but it is a high order national security and economic
security issue for us to wrestle with.
Ms. Brownley. And you had mentioned that we should be
listening to industry and businesses clearly in terms of what
they believe are the right--what is the right direction and the
right plans for contingency. And do you have any idea what
they, I guess, would suggest? I mean, in the earlier testimony
they said if we had an incident we would just--industry would
just respond and that would be the contingency plan.
Mr. Flynn. Well, I have worked closely on that and I have
talked to the CEOs of the largest terminal operators. If there
is a plan, they are willing to engage on the plan. This is a
business continuity issue for them. If there is a cost-recovery
mechanism for deploying equipment, they are willing to do that.
I had two colleagues and I that work out of the Wharton
School looking at two choices, the one we have right now where
we would select a box out of a container and send it to be
inspected at very small percentages or one where you scan all
of them. The terminal operator we worked with said, ``It is
easier for me to scan them all then for you to come into my
yard, packed six high, and grab two to get the one and take it
around.''
So in some places it turns out doing more is easier. The
economics work better. OK? And in other places, in sleepier,
slower places, you are probably not going to have that same
level of buy-in and then you probably use a different approach.
I mean, there is not going to be a one-size-fits-all. But when
you have a conversation with industry it comes out a lot
different than maybe the one you have when you do a Government-
to-Government one.
And here it is an engineering problem, it is an operational
problem with some technical complexity. But it is not
insoluble. We should not be throwing our hands up in the air
and going let's just hope it never happens. Shame on us when it
does happen.
Ms. Brownley. Thank you very much.
And I will yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Hunter. I thank the gentlelady.
We have run out of Members. By the way, this was not a bad
showing for today. Usually it is just me and John sitting here.
So at least we had some people.
But thank you very much for what you all do for the country
and for industry and thanks for being here.
With that, the hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:28 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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