[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 147 (Thursday, November 14, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10974-S10993]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MARITIME TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ACT OF 2002--CONFERENCE REPORT
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the
Senate will now proceed to the consideration of the conference report
to accompany S. 1214, which the clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:
The committee of conference on the disagreeing votes of the
two Houses on the amendment of the House to the bill (S.
1214), to amend the Merchant Marine Act, 1936, to establish a
program to ensure greater security for United States
seaports, and for other purposes, having met, have agreed
that the Senate recede from its disagreement to the amendment
of the House and agree to the same with an amendment and the
House agree to the same, signed by all conferees on the part
of both Houses.
The Senate proceeded to the consideration of the conference report.
(The conference report is printed in the House proceedings of the
Record of November 13, 2002.)
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, there
will be 60 minutes for debate on the conference report, with the time
to be equally divided and controlled between the chairman and ranking
member of the Commerce Committee.
The Senator from South Carolina is recognized.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, first, I ask for the yeas and nays on
the conference report.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, the American public is most familiar
with airline, highway and rail transportation. But perhaps the most
vulnerable link in our transportation system is the component that few
Americans ever see: our major seaports.
Our 361 sea and river ports handle 95 percent of U.S. international
trade. These ports annually transfer more than 2 billion tons of
freight--often in huge containers from ships that discharge directly
onto trucks and railcars that immediately head onto our highways and
rail systems. But less than 2 percent of those 5 million containers are
ever checked by customs or law enforcement officials.
That is a gaping hole in our national security that must be fixed.
That is why the Senate passed The Port and Maritime Security Act of
2001 in December of 2001 and the House and Senate have filed the
conference report on the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002.
Before discussing the specifics of this conference report, I want to
discuss the vulnerabilities at America's seaports:
Lloyd's List International reported that a NATO country's
intelligence service has identified 20 merchant vessels believed to be
linked to Osama bin Laden. Those vessels are now subject to seizure in
ports all over the world. Some of the vessels are thought to be owned
outright by bin Laden's business interests, while others are on long-
term charter. The Times of London reported that bin Laden used his
ships to import into Kenya the explosives used to destroy the U.S.
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
A suspected member of the al-Quida terrorist network was arrested in
Italy after he tried to stow-away in a shipping container heading to
Toronto. The container was furnished with a bed, a toilet, and its own
power source to operate the heater and recharge batteries. According to
the Toronto Sun, the man also had a global satellite telephone, a
laptop computer, an airline mechanics certificate, and security passes
for airports in Canada, Thailand and Egypt.
In October, a French-flagged tanker was attacked by terrorists in a
manner very similar to the speed boat attack on the USS Cole in 2000.
The attack caused 60,000 tons of oil to be released into the waters off
Yemen and killed one crew member.
These stories really bring home this issue of seaport security.
Except for those of us who live in port cities like Charleston, people
often do not think about their ports--the ports that load industrial
and consumer goods onto trucks and railroad cars heading directly to
their hometowns. But making these ports more secure is vital to
protecting our national security. The destruction that can be
accomplished through security holes at our seaports potentially exceed
any other mode of transportation. And yet we have failed to make
seaport security a priority.
Most Americans would be surprised to discover that until the
provisions in this bill there has been no unified federal plan for
overseeing the security of the international borders at our seaports.
And that's what seaports are: international borders that must be
protected as well as our land borders with Canada and Mexico.
The U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Customs Service are doing an
outstanding job, but they are outgunned. In the year 2000, we imported
5.5 million trailer truckloads of cargo. Due to that volume, the U.S.
Customs Service is only able to inspect between 1 to 2 percent of
containers. In other words, potential terrorists and drug smugglers
have a 98 percent chance of randomly importing illegal and dangerous
materials.
Senator Bob Graham a few years ago convinced President Clinton to
appoint a commission to look at seaport security. At the time, the main
focus of port security was stopping illegal drugs, the smuggling of
people, and cargo theft. While those problems still exist, the new--and
very real--threat of terrorism strikes right at the heart of our
national defense.
The Interagency Commission on Crime and Security at U.S. Seaports
issued a report a year ago that said security at U.S. seaports ``ranges
from poor to fair.'' Let me repeat that: 17 federal agencies reviewed
our port security system and found it in poor shape.
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According to the Commission:
Control of access to the seaport or sensitive areas within
the seaports is often lacking. Practices to restrict or
control the access of vehicles to vessels, cargo receipt and
delivery operations, and passenger processing operations at
seaports are either not present or not consistently enforced,
increasing the risk that violators could quickly remove cargo
or contraband. Many ports do not have identification cards
issued to personnel to restrict access to vehicles, cargo
receipt and delivery operations, and passenger processing
operations.
The report said:
At many seaports, the carrying of firearms is to
restricted, and thus internal conspirators and other
criminals are allowed armed access to cargo vessels and
cruise line terminals. In addition, many seaports rely on
private security personnel who lack the crime prevention and
law enforcement training and capability of regular police
officers.
The report also found that port-related businesses did not know where
to report cargo theft and other crimes, and that federal, state and
local law enforcement agencies responsible for a port's security rarely
meet to coordinate their work.
That is what our legislation does--it creates mechanisms to integrate
all these different security agencies and their efforts to improve the
security of our seaports, and the railways and highways that converge
at our seaports. Our seaport security bill also directly funds more
security officers, more screening equipment, and the building of
important security infrastructure.
Each agency is good at what they do individually. But they will be
even stronger working together, sharing information and tactics, and
coordinating security coverage at our seaports. More teamwork between
these federal, state and local agencies--along with our security
partners in the private sector--will produce a more secure seaport
environment that is stronger than the sum of each agency's individual
efforts. To foster that teamwork, our bill sets up a National Maritime
Security Advisory Committee responsible for coordinating programs to
enhance the security and safety of U.S. seaports.
Most important in the bill are the requirements to implement security
plans that will provide for efficient, coordinated and effective action
to deter and minimize damage from a transportation security incident.
The plans will be developed as a national plan, a regional area plan,
and facility and vessel plans. The National and Area Security Plans
will be developed by the Coast Guard and will be adequate to deter a
transportation security incident to the maximum extent possible. The
facility and vessel plans are for the individual waterfront facilities
and vessels and must be consistent with the federal and area plans. The
Secretary of Transportation will conduct an initial assessment of
vessels and facilities on and near the water. The assessment will
identify those facilities and vessel types that pose a high risk of
being involved in a transportation security incident. These assessments
will identify the vulnerable assets and infrastructure as well as the
threats to those assets and infrastructure.
Within a year the initial assessments will be made, interim security
measures will be implemented, and more detailed assessments will be
conducted, from which vessel and facility security plans will be
devised. These plans will be based on the Coast Guard vulnerability
assessments and security recommendations. The plans will be submitted
to the Coast Guard by port authorities, waterfront facilities, and
vessel operators. All ports, waterfront facilities and vessels are
required to operate under approved security plans that are consistent
with the Federal and Area Security Plans.
To further enhance law enforcement cooperation, we will require the
establishment of Area Security Advisory Committees at each port to
coordinate security plans among all the involved agencies: law
enforcement, intelligence agencies, Customs, Coast Guard, Immigration,
port authorities, shipping companies, and port workers. The bill also
creates new programs to professionally train port security personnel.
Certification and training of maritime security personnel will be
crucial in increasing the professionalism of our federal, state, local,
and private sector security personnel.
To address the immediate risk of terrorist activities at or through
our seaports, the bill directs the Secretary of Transportation to
immediately establish domestic maritime safety and security teams to
respond to terrorist activity, criminal activity, or other threats. The
units will be composed of officers trained in anti-terrorism, drug
interdiction, navigation assistance, and facilitating response to
security threats. I would like to thank Senator Edwards for his work on
this provision. The bill also creates a Sea Marshal program to more
specifically authorize the Coast Guard to board vessels in order to
deter, prevent, or respond to acts of terrorism. These Sea Marshals
will ride along aboard some vessels entering U.S. ports as a deterrent
against hijacking or other criminal activity. I would like to thank
Senator John Kerry and Senator John Breaux for working on the Sea
Marshal initiative. I also commend Senator Breaux for all his work on
seaport security. He is the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Surface
Transportation and Merchant Marine, he has toured throughout the nation
reviewing security at our seaports and has done a yeoman's job helping
to pass this bill.
The bill will require ports to limit access to security-sensitive
areas. Ports also will be required to limit cars and trucks, coordinate
with local and private law enforcement, and develop an evacuation plan.
Port areas will have increased security with specific area within the
port being designated as controlled access where only those with the
appropriate credentials will be allowed. The bill also will require
criminal background checks of employees with access to ocean manifests
or access-controlled areas of a port or terminal. These background
checks are designed to ensure that individuals with access to our
terminals and cargo facilities are not a terrorism security threat. A
system of appeals and waivers will be provided to ensure that port
workers are given full and adequate opportunity to explain mitigating
factors justifying any waiver requests.
This bill will require for the first time that we know more in
advance about the cargo and crew members coming into the United States.
The more we know about a ship's cargo--and where it originated--the
better our Customs agents and other law enforcement officers can target
the most suspicious containers and passengers. I am also pleased that
we established performance standards for the locking and sealing of
containers. It is vitally important that we ensure that shipping
containers are adequately designed and constructed and that we check
that they are securely locked for shipment.
The bill modifies a rulemaking requirement for advanced cargo
information. The original requirement was included in the Senate passed
version of the bill. The rulemaking was then included in the Trade Act,
and S. 1214 makes modifications to the Trade Act to incorporate
additional changes. I would like to thank the Finance Committee for
their cooperative spirit in our effort to enhance cargo security.
Perhaps most importantly, we will give port authorities and local
entities support in implementing and paying the costs of addressing
Coast Guard identified vulnerabilities. We are dealing with an issue of
national security--and we will treat it as such. It would be great if
we could simply declare our ports to be more secure. But it takes money
to make sure these international borders at our seaports are fully
staffed with customs, law enforcement, and immigration personnel. It
takes money to make sure they have modern security equipment, including
the newest scanners to check cargo for the most dangerous materials.
And it takes money to build the physical infrastructure of a secure
port.
For seaport security infrastructure, the bill directly authorizes
amounts sufficient to upgrade security infrastructure such as gates and
fencing, security-related lighting systems, and remote surveillance
systems, equipment such as security vessels and screening equipment. I
had hoped that we would have an agreement on a dedicated funding
mechanism to ensure that state, local and private sector entities that
are required to comply with federal security mandates would have the
necessary funds to aggressively pursue compliance with security
requirements. Unfortunately, I was not able to
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convince all of the conferees that this was the proper course of
action. I was happy that we did reach an agreement to have the
Administration report on how to pay for the federal portion of the
seaport security responsibility. I will be following this very closely
to ensure that we have some sort of agreement to allow for the
aggressive pursuit of a new system of seaport security.
U.S. Customs officers must be able to screen more than just 2 percent
of the cargo coming into our seaports. We cannot expect to screen every
marine container entering the United States, but there must be some
expectation of inspection to deter cargo smugglers. While we spend
billions of dollars on an anti-ballistic missile defense system, we
fail to see perhaps even a greater threat to our national security
coming through our ports. A cargo container can be delivered to
anywhere in the United States for less than $5,000. The enemies of
America can afford $5,000 to import a container of explosive or
hazardous materials much more easily than millions of dollars to launch
a rocket.
Investing in new screening technologies will help human screeners
inspect more cargo, and detect the most dangerous shipments. To
increase the amount of cargo screened, the bill directly grants and
authorizes $90 million in research and development grants to be awarded
to develop methods to increase the ability of the U.S. Customs Service
to inspect merchandise carried on any vessel that will arrive in the
United States; develop equipment to detect nuclear materials; improving
the tags and seals used on shipping containers, including smart sensors
for tracking shipments; and tools to mitigate the consequences of
terrorist attack. The research and development funds are intended to
fund any enhancements that are necessary to enhance technology at U.S.
Seaports.
The destruction that can be accomplished through security holes at
our seaports potentially exceeds any other mode of transportation. We
all know the damage that can be caused by one truck bomb. But one ship
can carry thousands of truck-sized containers filled with hazardous
materials. A hijacked tanker holding 32 million gallons of oil or other
explosive material that is rammed into a port city like Boston, New
York, Miami, Los Angeles or Seattle could potentially kill thousands of
people and destroy many city blocks.
That vulnerability is magnified by the type of facilities along our
coasts and rivers. There are 68 nuclear power plants located along U.S.
waterways. Along the 52-mile Houston Ship Channel, there are 150
chemical plants, storage facilities and oil refineries. The Baltimore
Sun reported that ``within a mile of the Inner Harbor of Baltimore is a
major East Coast import and export hub for a broad range of dry and
liquid chemicals. If ignited, many are capable of producing ferocious
fires, explosions and clouds of noxious fumes--immediately adjacent to
such densely populated row house neighborhoods as Locust Point,
Highlandtown, and Canton.''
Most of the security procedures and infrastructure improvements
contained in our bill have long been practiced at our airports and land
border crossings. But, for some unfathomable reason, we don't take
these preventive steps at our seaports--where most of our cargo
arrives, and where we are most vulnerable.
Our agents at the Mexican border near Tijuana will tear the seats out
of a car to search for drugs--while a crane just up the coast in Los
Angeles lifts thousands of truck-sized cargo containers onto the dock
with no inspection at all.
For the first time we will require federal approval of seaport
security plans, better coordination and training of law enforcement,
more information about cargo, and directly fund more Coast Guard
personnel, U.S. Customs agents and security screening equipment to
protect against crime and terrorism threats.
Prior to September 11, 2001 we already faced security problems at our
seaports related to smuggling, drugs, and cargo theft. But now we face
the even greater threat of terrorism--a threat that requires us to
immediately tighten security at our seaports, the most vulnerable part
of our international border, in the defense of our nation.
This landmark bill also incorporates a Coast Guard authorization
bill--the first Coast Guard authorization bill that has passed Congress
since 1998. The Coast Guard provisions in the bill reflect the
provisions of S. 951, the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2001, which
was reported out of the Commerce Committee last year.
The bill provides increased authorization levels for appropriations
in fiscal year 2003, as well as increased personnel. The bill
authorizes approximately $6 billion for the Coast Guard's total budget
for fiscal year 2003. This is approximately $1 billion higher than the
amount appropriated in the FY 2002 Transportation Appropriations bill,
and is approximately $200 million higher than the $5.8 billion of total
enacted amounts in FY 2002, which includes two supplemental
appropriations.
The bill also increases the maximum end-of-year strength to 45,500
active duty military personnel, up from about 35,500, and includes
personnel incentives.
The authorizations of appropriations in this bill include
$725,000,000 for capital investments, to ensure that the multi-year
Deepwater program and the overhaul of the National Distress and
Response System (NDS), or ``Maritime 911,'' are adequately funded in
2003.
Ensuring that the Coast Guard has sufficient personnel and capital
resources could not come at a more important time. Since the tragic
events of September 11, far greater demands have been placed on the
Coast Guard in the area of homeland security. Traditionally, the Coast
Guard invested only 2 percent of its operating budget into seaport
security; this climbed to over 50 percent of its total operating budget
after September 11. Now, approximately 22 percent of the budget is
envisioned for seaport security.
The Coast Guard has unique missions not covered by any other federal
agency. It has the primary responsibility of enforcing U.S. fisheries
laws, carrying out drug interdiction at sea, search and rescue
operations, and protecting the marine environment against pollution.
With the new responsibilities for port security, combined with the
traditional role the Coast Guard plays in other mission areas, it is
critically important that the Coast Guard has a vision for how to
achieve the ``new normalcy,'' wherein it carries out all of its
traditional and new missions, as well as the means to ensure its
ability to carry out such functions.
This bill requires the Coast Guard to examine and report to Congress
its expenditures by mission area before and after September 11, and the
level of funding need to fulfill the Coast Guard's additional
responsibilities. The bill also requires the Coast Guard to provide a
strategic plan to Congress identifying mission targets for 2003, 2004
and 2005 and the specific steps necessary to achieve those targets.
Even prior to 9/11, there were serious concerns about the Coast
Guard's ability to carry out its core missions. For example, the Coast
Guard's 30-year-old National Distress and Response System (NDS), also
known as ``Maritime 911,'' is breaking down, and has 88 gaps in its
geographical area of coverage. Failure to retain experienced crew has
plagued the Coast Guard for years. The lack of experienced personnel
has resulted in tragedy, with unanswered calls for help leading to the
loss of lives at sea. In 1997, all four passengers of the sailboat
Morning Dew, three of them children, drowned outside of Charleston
Harbor as a result of a failed search and rescue system.
The bill requires the Coast Guard to establish and implement
standards for the safe operation of all search and rescue facilities.
These include standards for the length of time an individual may serve
on watch, and acquisition of equipment to achieve safety in the
interim, as the entire system is upgraded.
Since the events of September 11, our demands on the Coast Guard have
risen dramatically. We must ensure that the Coast Guard is equipped
with all of the tools and resources that it needs to protect our
seaports, and to carry out all of its traditional missions. I am
pleased that we have reached a successful result in the Conference with
the House, and that by enacting a Port Security bill, we will at the
same time be
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passing a Coast Guard authorization bill this year.
Mr. President, the morning news reports that Osama bin Laden is alive
and well and al-Qaida operates. Four years ago, we started working on
this measure, because it was just prior to that time that one of al-
Qaida's tankers pulled into Mombassa, the port at Kenya, and the
terrorist crew jumped off and blew up the embassy at Nairobi and then
Dar Es Salaam's embassy in Tanzania. Lloyds of London reports Osama bin
Laden has actual ownership of some 10 oil tankers, and he has control
of some other 10 cargo tankers.
I point this out because it is the real threat. Yes, we have maybe a
hijacking threat, but the real threat now, as we see it develop, is
with respect to our seaports. That is why we started in the committee,
some 4 years ago, with respect to seaport security.
Only, last year in Italy we found a suspected al-Qaida terrorist
network was operating, coming in through containers. There are some 5
million containers that come into the United States of America each
year with 2 billion tons of freight. Only 2 percent of those containers
are inspected at this time.
But that one particular suspected terrorist had a bed and a toilet;
he had his own power source and everything else like that ready to
operate. He could just as easily have come, and may have, unbeknownst
to us, into the United States of America.
But let's go right to just last month, the oil tanker off of Yemen,
the French tanker with some 60,000 tons of oil. As they blew up the USS
Cole, they blew up this particular tanker. One can easily foresee that
a regular tanker could come up the Delaware River with a suicidal al-
Qaida group in operation or in control, where they throw the captain
overboard and run it right into an oil tank farm there in Philadelphia,
blowing the whole thing up, closing down the eastern seaboard.
So we worked very hard on this legislation. I commend the Senate
itself because it was last year at this time, and both sides of the
aisle, under the leadership and working with my distinguished
colleague, Senator McCain--the soon-to-be chairman again--we worked and
unanimously reported out a port security bill from our Commerce
Committee. We passed it in the Senate 100 to 0.
It languished on the House side for some months. And it was in June
that they finally passed it. And we have been with the staff.
I must emphasize the outstanding work of our staff in this particular
regard. We worked all summer long. We thank particularly our colleague
Mr. Oberstar who worked with us as diligently as he could. In any
event, now we have the conference report. It is not complete in the
sense that it is not funded. We provide in here certain sums as is
necessary to be reported to us in the Congress within 6 months.
We tried to get funding. The Senate had approved a user fee. They
called it a tax, and we had some effort over the summer working it out
to make sure it was a user fee. Then they said it was an origination
problem. Thereupon we said: All right. Just take the conference report.
You introduce it. We are not proud of its origin particularly. And you
put it in, and we will approve it on the Senate side. So that caused a
great delay, but now it's ready to go.
The Maritime Transportation Security Act will provide for the first
time a national system for securing our maritime borders. Heretofore,
we have known every plane that approaches the continental limits of the
United States. They have transponders. We have the radar. We track
them. But we couldn't tell what ship was coming, when it was coming, or
how. We moved some weather satellites to repair that particular
deficiency. We now know, with the Coast Guard working overtime, of the
ships approaching. But we now have a secure system for our maritime
borders.
We have to first ask that the Secretary of Transportation conduct an
assessment of all vessels and facilities on or near the water and
identify the risks of being involved in an incident. Then we develop a
port and area security plan.
Let me emphasize, you have the Coast Guard. You have Customs. You
have DEA. You have local law enforcement. You have the Immigration and
Naturalization Service. When everybody is in charge, nobody is in
charge. Under the present law, the captain of the port is in charge. We
haven't changed that, but we have given him assistance.
We have the Coast Guard authorization bill also in this particular
conference report, increasing the Coast Guard amounts and
authorizations some $1 billion this fiscal year 2003 over 2002. So we
are beginning now to upgrade the wherewithal of the Coast Guard itself
that has been doing an outstanding job.
The plans are based on the Coast Guard security recommendations,
which they will make within 1 year, of all ports, facilities, and
vessels determined to be vulnerable. They then have the local port
security committees, which will coordinate the Federal, State, and
local and private enforcement efforts.
We have been doing this, I know in the ports of Charleston and
several others on the eastern seaboard. They have just been awaiting
this legislation to make sure we are working in lockstep with the
Federal requirements. But then when I say they have to have the private
efforts, think about it. If you went down to the Rio Grande, to the
border, and to the State of Arizona and told a rancher down there: Wait
a minute, there are some illegal immigrants coming across the border in
the nighttime, and what you have to do is not only put a barbed wire
enclosure around your particular ranch, but you have to turn the lights
on at night and everything else like that, this is a private ranch, he
would look at you and laugh. He would say: What are you talking about?
That is what we are doing with respect to many of the ports that are
operated privately. The Danes operate the Port of New York; the Chinese
operate the Long Beach Port; the union operates the Seattle Port; the
State of South Carolina operates our ports. So you can see this
particular task has to be a comprehensive and coordinated effort.
We then develop secure areas in the ports as part of the security
plans. That is approved by the Department of Transportation. There is a
grant program here of allocations to the different ports authority, the
size, the threat, and whatever else is there. There is $90 million in
research grants to be awarded to develop the methods to increase the
ability of the U.S. Customs to inspect the merchandise. There is a $33
million program intended for the development of security training.
There is an established maritime intelligence system to work with
this new Department of Homeland Security. They have to take all of this
information, not just from the FBI, CIA, NSA, and Secret Service, but
the DEA in large measure furnishes intelligence.
We will have transponders on the various vessels coming in. Within
that year, we will have a certified system of transportation that is a
secure system of transportation allowing for secure maritime borders.
They will have to be screened prior to entry.
The transportation oversight board will establish a security program
to develop the secure areas as well as the standards. People working in
those secure areas will be required to have background checks. Not
everybody coming there delivering the Cokes for the Coke machine or
whatever will need it, but there will be secure areas, and people
working in them will have to have background checks. We have
established a sea marshal program that the maritime folks have wanted
for quite a while.
We have an assessment of the foreign antiterrorism measure. And let
me commend Mr. Bonner, the Director of Customs, who has already gone
overseas and coordinated this. What we are doing is establishing
assessment and check methods and secure methods for the ports of the
cargo being loaded into the containers before they leave, let's say,
the Port of London. We are going to have to do the same things to
facilitate delivery when it comes into the United States.
I emphasize the Coast Guard authorization bill. We haven't had one
since 1998. We have been struggling with that. But now everybody has in
their minds front and center the Coast Guard, the magnificent job it
has been doing, even as it has been understaffed and underfunded. We
are going to build that up.
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I yield such time as is necessary to the distinguished Senator from
Arizona.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, let me start by, once again, thanking
Chairman Hollings for his leadership in addressing identified safety
and security problems at our Nation's seaports. I applaud his
leadership and steadfastness as we finally bring this important piece
of legislation to completion.
The conference report we are considering today is an important step
forward and will provide both the guidance and funding authorization
needed to improve maritime and port security. It is past time to send
this legislation to the President for his signature.
The old adage, ``a chain is only as strong as its weakest link,'' is
very true when it comes to securing our homeland. Today, our Nation's
seaports remain a weak link in border security. This conference
agreement will go a long way in strengthening that link.
Both the Hart-Rudman Report on Homeland Security and the Interagency
Commission on Crime and Seaport Security found our seaports to be
vulnerable to crime and terrorism. While there is no way to make our
Nation's seaports completely crime free and impenetrable to terrorist
attacks, this conference report will undoubtably advance port security
and help strengthen overall national security.
The report by the Interagency Commission on Crime and Seaport
Security, also known as the Graham Commission, in recognition of
Senator Graham's efforts to establish such a commission,was a catalyst
2 years ago for the Commerce Committee's initial efforts to address
crime and security issues at our Nation's seaports.
The committee held a number of hearings in Washington focused on
seaport security issues and the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation
and Merchant Marine also held field hearings on the west coast in
Seattle, WA, and Portland, OR, and on the southeast and gulf coast in
Port Everglades, FL, New Orleans, LA, Houston, TX, and Charleston, SC.
The input from numerous witnesses contributed significantly to the
development of this agreement.
As I have mentioned many times during the past year, it is widely
reported that transportation systems are the target of 40 percent of
terrorist attacks worldwide. This conference agreement would provide
for increased security at our Nation's seaports, helping to reduce
crime and protect vessels and vital transportation infrastructure from
terrorist attacks.
The conference agreement includes a number of important provisions.
It requires coordination among the many entities that play a role in
security at our Nation's seaports and on our navigable waterways,
including the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, and the many other
Federal, State, local, and private agencies. It directs these entities
to work together to establish security plans aimed at decreasing
vulnerabilities and reducing threats to our ports and maritime
transportation system. These plans will help define specific
responsibilities and secure our seaports.
The conference agreement also requires the Secretary to establish
incident response plans that explain the role of each agency and how
their efforts are to be coordinated in the event of an attack on our
Nation's maritime transportation system. In addition to providing
guidance on how to respond in the event of an attack, it is expected
the detailed planning called for in the agreement will help deter
terrorist attacks and other criminal acts aimed at our seaports.
The conference agreement further requires the Secretary to establish
a grant program to provide much needed funding to ports and facilities
to help defray the compliance costs associated with both area and
facility security plans. The Secretary will also be required to
establish a program to provide grants to look at new and existing
technologies that can be used to better secure and protect our Nation's
maritime transportation system.
The conference agreement takes into account not only the wide range
of threats and crimes surrounding our seaports, but also the unique
nature of our ports. A ``one-size-fits-all'' approach will not work.
The planning process established in the conference agreement requires
the Secretary to consider the fact that our Nation's seaports are
complex and diverse in both geography and infrastructure.
While there are still many questions regarding how far we must go to
secure our ports and waterways, I am confident that the compromise
reached with our House colleagues will create a safer and more secure
maritime transportation system in the United States and allow the flow
of commerce to continue.
Mr. President, this conference agreement also includes the provisions
from our Coast Guard authorization. The Coast Guard has been operating
without an authorization since 1998, and the resources and personnel
benefits provided in this measure for the men and women serving in the
Coast Guard are long overdue.
This agreement authorizes funding for the Coast Guard for fiscal year
2003 at the levels requested by the President for six accounts: one,
operation and maintenance expenses; two, acquisition, construction, and
improvement of facilities and equipment, AC&I; three, research,
development, testing, and evaluation, RDT&E; four, retirement pay;
five, environmental compliance and restoration; and six, alteration or
removal of bridges. It also authorizes end-of-year military strength
and training loads to ensure that the Coast Guard will have the
flexibility to respond to its ever growing missions.
The provisions from the Coast Guard authorization bill include
numerous measures which will improve the Coast Guard's ability to
recruit, reward, and retain high-quality personnel. The conference
agreement addresses various Coast Guard personnel management issues
such as promotions, retention, housing authorities, and education,
along with measures that grant the Coast Guard parity with its
Department of Defense counterparts.
Additionally, this legislation provides a number of changes to U.S.
maritime laws and Coast Guard authorities such as extending the time
for recreational vessel recalls, and increasing penalties for negligent
vessel operations. This bill also provides much needed advance funding
authority for the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund which will allow the
Coast Guard to better respond to the ever increasing costs of
environmental cleanups.
In closing, Mr. President, I want to commend the conferees for their
work to reach a compromise on this important legislation. I urge my
colleagues to support final passage of this legislation.
Again, I thank Senator Hollings for his dedicated and deeply involved
work on this legislation, including conduct of field hearings
throughout the United States, including the important port of
Charleston, SC.
Mr. President, I know the Senator from Texas, Mrs. Hutchison, wishes
to speak on the conference report. I yield the floor.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Momentarily our distinguished colleague from Florida
will speak. It was Senator Graham of Florida who persuaded President
Clinton to appoint the investigating commission with respect to seaport
security.
I wish to add a couple comments with respect to the Coast Guard
authorization. As I have stated, it is the first authorization since
1998, and it increases the Coast Guard budget $1 billion, with 10,000
additional active duty military personnel. They have been understaffed.
I know of a tragic situation of search and rescue that did not work in
Charleston, SC, my backyard. There are provisions in this legislation
so we have adequate personnel manpower there.
The Coast Guard is to examine and report to Congress its expenditures
and missions by September of next year. We want to get in lockstep as
they increase their effort from 2 percent of the budget to some 22
percent of the budget with respect to seaport security.
I can point out many other provisions, but I will yield such time as
is necessary to the distinguished Senator from Florida.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Florida is
recognized.
Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, first, I wish to extend my congratulations
to the Senator from South Carolina and the Senator from Arizona, who
have
[[Page S10979]]
been working on this issue for many months and have carried the
position of the Senate in the conference committee. I commend you for
the success we have achieved today and for the battles we both
recognize will be required in the future in order to fully realize the
goals of this legislation.
Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the Senator.
Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I am very pleased to rise in support of
the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002.
This legislation will secure one of our Nation's greatest
vulnerabilities, our seaports.
This bill not only ensures that our ports remain a driving force in
the American economy, it also commences the closing of the floodgates
of vulnerability to the terrorist threat to American seaports.
Mr. President, there is much work that remains to be done.
For this legislation to be effective, it must have a predictable and
sustained funding source for the agencies tasked with maintaining the
security of our maritime borders.
It was in December of 2001, almost a year ago, that the Senate
unanimously passed a comprehensive seaport security bill. The House of
Representatives passed its own version in June of 2002. This
legislation has been in conference for 4 months. Valuable time has been
passing while an important part of our homeland economy, as well as our
homeland security and the Nation's 360 seaports, have remained
extremely vulnerable.
I am pleased a final agreement has been reached and the bill is
completed and it will soon go to the President for his signature.
To quote the Florida Ports Council:
Seaport security must be addressed in a comprehensive,
intelligent, practical manner by the Federal Government--now,
not in 2004 or 2006, or 2008.
The security of our borders is a national responsibility.
No matter how good our State processes and practices are--
without the Federal Government requiring realistic security
plans and standards--the public domain will remain at risk.
I am pleased we are doing that today and starting to fulfill our
Federal responsibilities.
We live not only in a democracy but also in a nation that allows its
citizens and visitors the freedom to travel throughout our great
country.
The United States thrives on global trade and global travel.
But support for democracy and freedom must go hand-in-hand with
strong protection of our maritime borders.
Fortunately, our seaports have not yet been attacked. Fortunately, as
of today, one of those container cargoes, 16,000 of which arrive at
America's seaports every day, has not been used as the means by which a
weapon of mass destruction will be delivered within the United States.
This means instead of looking at the security of America's seaports
through the rearview mirror, as we have been doing since the events
affecting airlines and airports as a result of September 11, 2001, we
are looking at seaport security through the windshield, albeit a foggy
windshield. We not only have a responsibility but an opportunity to
take steps to avoid the head-on collision at America's seaports that
has not yet occurred.
Since September 11, there has been a lot of discussion about
connecting the dots, what could have been pieced together, the things
we should have seen before that tragic day. And, like 9/11, information
about our seaports presents a disturbing array of dots. But from these,
there is a clear pattern of vulnerability at our seaports and the cargo
containers which they deliver.
Many of these dots are available only in classified form, which are
not disclosed for national security reasons. But there are many
instances of security breaches at seaports that have been publicly
disclosed--in open sources--that paint a stunning portrait of our
maritime vulnerabilities. Weekly, I read newspaper accounts of
stowaways and narcotics arriving in our country, and of security lapses
at our ports.
I have several articles I would like to bring to the attention of my
colleagues, and I ask unanimous consent that they be printed in their
entirety in the Record immediately following my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. GRAHAM. On May 13, 2001, Fox News and the Associated Press
reported that 25 Islamic extremists, hidden on commercial freighters as
stowaways, illegally entered the United States. These individuals
reportedly entered the United States through four seaports in Miami;
Port Everglades, Fort Lauderdale; Savannah; and Long Beach. Where have
these men gone and, more importantly, what are their intentions?
The Washington Times, in a January 22, 2002, article entitled
``Seaports Seen as Terrorist Target,'' reported al-Qaida ``shipped arms
and bomb-making materials via Osama bin Laden's covertly owned
freighters.'' These explosives were later used to blow up the U.S.
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
What if these ships were making port calls at a port in the United
States of America?
Further, in a front page article dated February 26, 2002, USA Today
reported that in October of 2001, a month after 9/11, port authorities
in Italy opened a suspicious container and found an Egyptian-born
Canadian person, equipped with a satellite phone, laptop, false credit
cards, and security passes for airports in Egypt, Thailand, and Canada.
What if this container and person made a successful, undetected entry
into the United States?
On June 16, 2002, the Washington Post reported that three men
captured by CIA and Morrocan authorities told interrogators they
escaped Afghanistan and came to Morocco on a mission to use bomb-laden
speedboats for suicide attacks on U.S. and British warcrafts in the
Strait of Gibraltar.
On October 6, 2002, the French-flagged supertanker Limberg was
attacked and holed by a small boat packed with explosives, possibly a
remote-controlled boat, off the coast of Yemen. This attack is now
widely believed to be the work of al-Qaida operatives.
Yemen is, of course, the same location as the USS Cole bombing of 2
years earlier.
On October 29, 2002, as seen on national television, a 50-foot
coastal freighter with 234 Haitians and 2 Dominicans landed close to
Miami, in Biscayne Bay, Florida. How did this boat manage to get so
close to a major American city? This vessel was not detected by the
Coast Guard until the last few hours of its voyage.
Finally, less than 2 weeks ago, November 4, 2002, The Houston
Chronicle reported 23 stowaways to Honduras who were captured at the
port, 16 on the barge and 7 more who had tried to swim ashore.
Mr. President, the current assessment from the U.S. intelligence
community is that 19 of the 35 State Department-designated foreign
terrorist organizations have access to maritime conveyances, or are
directly associated with maritime terrorism.
Since 1991, there have been 131 maritime attacks. This includes 19
ship hijackings, bombings, armed attacks, or kidnappings in the 4-year
period between January 1996 and December of 2000.
Clearly, both our seaports and maritime borders and their
vulnerability to terrorists remain a primary U.S. security concern.
In 1998, I asked former President Bill Clinton to establish a Federal
commission to evaluate both the nature and extent of crime in our
seaports. I have become aware of the extensive and expanding use of
seaports for a variety of criminal activities.
In response to this request, President Clinton established the
Interagency Commission on Crime and Security in U.S. Seaports on April
27, 1999.
The three distinguished cochairs of the commission were Raymond
Kelly, then commissioner of the U.S. Customs Service, now head of the
New York City police department; James Robinson, then assistant
Attorney General; and Clyde Hart, then administrator of the Maritime
Administration.
In October of 2000, the commission issued its final report. This
report outlined many of the common security problems that were
unearthed at U.S. seaports. The commission made 20 findings and
included recommendations to respond to these threats. Our seaport
security bill addresses many of them directly.
For example; the Commission reported a ``need for a more
comprehensive and definitive statement of the
[[Page S10980]]
specific federal responsibilities,'' including the ``lead agencies'' of
Customs for international cargo and Coast Guard for seaport security.
Our seaport security bill provides new authorities for both of these
agencies.
The Commission also noted that:
Comprehensive interagency crime threat assessments * * *
currently are not conducted at seaports and that the federal
government should establish baseline vulnerability and threat
assessments for terrorism at U.S. seaports.
The seaport security bill requires the Coast Guard to survey all
ports, prioritize them, and then conduct detailed port and vessel type
vulnerability assessments.
The Commission called for a ``comprehensive initiative to improve
cargo import procedures,'' noting that ``vessel manifest information,
import and export, is sometimes deficient'' and ``is more easily
utilized * * * if it is received in electronic data formats before the
arrival of the vessel.''
The seaport security bill requires vessel and cargo data to be
submitted in advance and in a format to be prescribed by the Secretary
of Transportation.
The Commission was concerned that ``no minimum security standards or
guidelines exist for seaports and their facilities.''
The seaport security bill would require security standards and
provide federal grants for these improvements.
These are but a few of the many vital provisions in this seaport
security bill.
On September 11, 2001, four commercial airliners were hijacked and
turned into weapons of mass destruction, crashing into three symbols of
American strength. The fourth airliner was destined for yet another
symbol of American strength but for the courageous passengers and crew
who intervened. We were not able to prevent these hijackings before
they happened.
After that tragic day, Congress quickly responded and introduced the
Aviation Security Act on September 24. It was signed into law on
November 19, 2001. This law requires safer cockpits, air marshals,
Federal oversight of all the airport security operations, advanced
anti-hijacking training for all flight crews, establishment of a
security fee, and background checks for flight school students.
On September 21, 2001, 10 days after the attack, Congress approved a
relief package for the airline industry. This included $5 billion of
immediate cash infusion for U.S. air carriers and $10 billion in loan
guarantees.
We responded because we had been hit. The challenge of this
legislation is: Are we prepared to respond before we are assaulted?
I believe we are beginning to answer that question in the affirmative
with the adoption of this legislation.
The threat to our seaports is urgent and real. When a cargo container
arrives on our shores, it is quickly loaded into a truck or a train,
leaving all Americans, not just those who are located close to a
seaport, vulnerable to a security lapse which occurs at the seaport
because the seaport is the last point at which that container can
reasonably be checked and evaluated to determine if it represents a
threat to the American people.
While our bill is a step in the right direction, we must fully commit
to our seaports as we have to our airports, which includes a steady
stream of funding.
As my colleagues may be aware, the primary reason this seaport
security bill was in conference for 4 months was the inability of
Members to reach agreement on how to fund these security measures. So
what we are passing today is essentially an authorization bill. We are
providing the basic architecture of the security, but the challenge to
provide the plumbing and the electrical systems that will bring this
architecture to life is yet to be faced.
My preference was to pass a bill which would have contained that
plumbing and electrical system in the form of user fees, as we have
already done for airports and airlines, giving our ports an immediate
influx of money to quickly address the security lapses that have been
identified.
Why is this so important? If we do not have a dedicated stream of
user-generated revenue, our commitment to seaport security may be
viewed as temporary and piecemeal.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time reserved for the Senator from South
Carolina has expired. The Senator from Arizona controls the balance of
the time.
The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Eighteen and a half minutes.
Mr. GRAHAM. I ask the Senator from Arizona for a minute to close.
Mr. McCAIN. Certainly. I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Florida.
Mr. GRAHAM. As chairman of the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, over the past 2 years, I have worked with the committee
on a 5-year plan of enhancing technology and human skills within the
intelligence community.
It is our expectation that these investments will yield rich
dividends in the intelligence community, to understand the terrorist
threat to our Nation, better inform decisionmakers on policies that can
defend against these threats, and take direct action against the
terrorists.
It should be no different at our Nation's seaports. Investing in
security along our maritime borders is as vital as investing in our
intelligence capabilities or our Nation's airports. But I am troubled
by the prospects. The administration has shown no willingness to
request any funding for our seaports.
The administration's fiscal year 2002 and 2003 budgets contained no
funding for seaport security. To date, all funding for enhancing
security at our seaports has been as a result of congressional action
on supplemental appropriation bills.
Illustrative of this gap between congressional funding and the
administration's funding is the fact that only $93 million was
available from the Transportation Security Administration for over $700
million of seaport security grant requests.
While this funding has aided some ports, comprehensive security
improvements for all ports will cost significantly more.
Based on a survey of just 52 large ports by the American Association
of Port Authorities, the improvement costs totaled over $2.2 billion.
In addition, the United States needs a consistent policy on how much
of the additional security costs are the responsibility of the
Government and how much by industry and its consumers. We need to
fairly apply this policy across all parts of the industries and
economy.
Ultimately, it should be similar to our approach, and response to,
the aviation industry. Undoubtedly, funding security improvements at
our ports must be a major task and priority for the 108th Congress.
Seaports are an important economic engine. They are the major gateway
to America for cargo and consumer goods.
Annually, the U.S. marine transportation system handles 2 billion
tons of freight, 3 billion tons of oil, and 7 million cruise ship
passengers. Over 800 ships make more than 22,000 port visits per year
in the United States.
One terrorist incident at a seaport could impact an entire coast or
the entire economy of the United States. The financial impact of the
closing of our seaports would be devastating.
As reported last September in USA Today and numerous other
publications, the closure of 29 seaports on the west coast due to labor
issues reportedly cost $1 billion a day.
I ask my colleagues, what would happen if we had to close all of our
361 seaports? Factories and plants would quickly be out of parts and be
forced to shut down. Commodity hoarding would begin and prices would
rise. The stock market would undoubtedly be shaken. Energy and oil
prices would rocket upwards.
On April 1, 2002, Business Week magazine observed that ``if a
disruption at one of the country's 361 ports leads the U.S. Government
to shut them down the way it grounded air traffic in September, it
would bring some $2 billion a day in seaborne trade to a dead stop and
instantly cripple the domestic economy.''
The issue of seaport security is not going away.
Foreign trade accounts for over one-fourth of the total U.S. gross
domestic product.
According to the U.S. Coast Guard, by 2020, one-third of all
container ships
[[Page S10981]]
will be massive vessels termed ``mega-ships,'' oil imports will
increase to two-thirds of our consumption, and liquefied natural gas
imports will increase by nine-fold.
The Customs Service estimates that by 2020 the volume of imported
cargo will more than double.
While we have passed this important bill, we now have a
responsibility to finding funding for these need security improvements.
I urge my colleagues to make the security of our ports a priority and
to pass, and later fund, this legislation.
We must not leave our maritime industry vulnerable to the potential
use by a terrorist organization. The possibilities are horrific: The
possibility of major loss of life, the possibility of major economic
damage, or the possibility of the delivery of a weapon of mass
destruction.
We have take the first steps forward in aviation. Why would we leave
our seaports and the maritime industry behind? The action that we take
today is a beginning.
For this beginning to realize its promise of substantially enhanced
security at America's seaports, within the flood tide of cargo
containers that arrive each day, further action is required.
Working with the House of Representatives, it is my hope that, early
in 2003, we will take the next step, providing a permanent and
sufficient funding source for today's legislation.
An appropriate place to start the discussion is using the model of
airports and aviation security, where funding is provided by the
industry and its customers and the general public.
The President will recommend in his budget for 2004 what he considers
the appropriate level for seaport security.
I urge him to be more forthcoming than in the last two budget
submissions.
With the President's level of general revenue support, the Congress
will be in a better position to determine what level of user fee will
give Americans assurance of security at our Nation's seaports.
We understand the threat and the horrible outcomes from terrorism so
much better than 1 year ago.
After the terrorist attacks, Congress took quick action to
restructure our aviation security program, in order to better protect
our country and prevent another attack.
We need to strengthen our seaports, with the same intensity
demonstrated at our airports. We must guard our maritime borders
against obvious weaknesses and their potential use as a terrorist
target.
Our seaports are a vital national asset.
I close by saying we have work to do, and the primary focus of that
work is going to be to arrive at a sustainable, reliable funding source
for these important security measures. We will have an early indication
of what portion of this the President is going to recommend be paid
through general tax revenue when we see his budget for the year 2004.
This legislation also requires the President, within 6 months of
enactment, to submit a funding proposal on a permanent basis to the
Congress. It is my hope that funding proposal will use as its starting
point what we have already done for the airline industry where we have
made some decisions as to how much of the security costs should be
borne by general taxpayers and how much should be borne by the users
and the industry. It seems to me we should strive to have a parity and
balance of allocation of financial responsibility across our
transportation systems. If we are committed, as the action today
indicates, to providing security for our seaports before they are
attacked and will not await a 9/11 to arrive at a city in the United
States through a cargo container with a weapon of mass destruction,
which 48 hours earlier had come through a seaport, if we are committed
to security without having to be awakened through an assault, then we
should also be committed to recognize this is not going to be cheap and
it is not going to be a temporary commitment. It will be expensive and
it will be sustained and we should provide the revenue to meet those
realities.
Exhibit 1
[From USA Today, Feb. 26, 2002]
Shipping Containers Could Hide Threat to U.S.
(By Fred Bayles)
Charleston, S.C.--The odd noises that came from the 40-foot
shipping container at Gioia Tauro, Italy, harbor in October
demonstrated the danger facing officials at ports around the
world. When port authorities opened the suspect container,
they found Amir, Farid Rizk, 43, an Egyptian-born Canadian
equipped with satellite phone, laptop, false credit cards and
security passes for airports in Egypt, Thailand and Canada.
Officials charged Rizk with terrorism but later released
him after his lawyers argued he was fleeing religious and
legal persecution in Egypt and was not a terrorist.
Rizk's choice of transportation highlighted a security
problem that has troubled U.S. officials since well before
Sept. 11.
More than 6 million shipping containers arrive here at
Wando Welch yards in Charleston and other U.S. ports
annually. Only 2% are inspected. The rest remain sealed as
they are shipped throughout the country. It would be easy,
some fear, to take a container, stuff it with explosives, a
chemical weapon or a nuclear device and inject it into the
nation's economic bloodstream. Security experts had thought
about the massive flow of unchecked containers before the
attacks on New York and Washington. In the November 2000
issue of Foreign Affairs, Coast Guard Cmdr. Stephen Flynn, a
security expert with the Council on Foreign Relations,
offered this scenario.
Suppose, he wrote, Osama bin Laden loaded a biological
weapon into a container and shipped it through foreign ports
to the USA. The container, unnoticed in the day-to-day bustle
of trade, could then be put on a rail car at Long Beach
destined for Newark, N.J. Somewhere along the 2,800-mile
route, it is detonated.
As bad as the destruction such an attack might cause, the
chaos that would follow could devastate the nation's economy.
The nation's shipping system could shut down, as airports
did after Sept. 11. ``The economic damage would be
incalculable,'' Flynn says. ``It would accomplish what a
terrorist group wants to do, which is to disrupt this
country's economic structure.''
So what can be done? Looking inside each of the 6 million
containers from abroad would disrupt the flow of goods.
Technological solutions, including x-ray machines, are
costly, expensive and not infallible. The answer may lie in
better surveillance at the container's point of origin.
Instead of inspecting every container upon arrival,
sophisticated computer and intelligence systems are being
established to identify suspicious containers before they
leave foreign ports.
``You want to do something that doesn't wait until the
container is offloaded here,'' U.S. Customs Commissioner
Robert Bonner says. ``The big idea is to think about how to
push the border back.''
wando welch
In South Carolina, the blur of movement at the port of
Charleston's Wando Welch Terminal vividly shows the shipping
business's need for speed. Massive cranes lift cargo
containers off merchant ships arriving from around the world.
The containers are stacked like giant Lego pieces across the
237-acre facility.
The activity at this, the nation's third-busiest, container
facility is a tribute to the efficiency of the ``intermodal''
transportation system, which makes possible the quick
transfer of seaborne containers to railcars and trucks
without unloading and reloading their contents. The system
touches every facet of the economy. Each state receives goods
from an average 15 different ports every day, according to
the American Association of Port Authorities.
That is why the industry balks at inspecting every
container coming into the country. Several members of
Congress, including Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., have
proposed such steps.
At the Wando yards, the time a Customs inspector needs to
examine a single container illustrates the challenge. One
container, singled out because its manifest listed a cargo of
``human aids,'' turns out to have been filled with bundles of
used clothing bound from Italy to Bolivia. It took the
inspector and a civilian crew most of the day to offload and
inspect the bundles, then reload the container and send it
back to the shipping yards.
``It would be very difficult to search every container
without severely disrupting the flow of goods,'' Bonner says.
A glimpse of that kind of disruption came in late 1999. The
nation's Western rail system slowed dramatically as it
adjusted to a merger of two railroads, a booming economy and
other factors.
The slowdown created havoc for weeks. Christmas items did
not arrive to stores on time. Perishable goods rotted.
Factories closed because needed parts were delayed.
``It was only temporary, but it created big headaches,''
says John Foertsch, the Southeast operations manager for OOCL
(Orient Overseas Container Line), a major container shipper
based in Hong Kong. ``It's hard to imagine the chaos that
would come if delays like that became the routine.''
technology solutions
Some look to technology as a solution. Last summer, Customs
agents at busier ports began using drive-through mobile X-ray
units that can scan containers as they are driven past a
checkpoint, much like luggage through an airport screening
station.
[[Page S10982]]
Sitting in the cab of such a unit on the Charleston docks,
Customs Inspector Eddie Basham peers at a computer screen
displaying the shadowy interiors of passing containers.
``Tires,'' he says, pointing to a stack of spirals filling
one container. On the next, he notices a dark, irregular
shape and sends it to the side for inspection.
Occasionally, the equipment hits immediate pay dirt.
``There's a few times I've seen people standing in the inside
of a container,'' Basham says. Police took the illegal
immigrants into custody.
Other screening devices are being tested and deployed. In
Norfolk, Va., Virginia International Terminals is installing
radiation detectors on cranes, which will screen each
container as it is offloaded. As of now, Customs agents use
pager-sized radiation monitors that warn of excessive
radiation as they walk by rows of containers. Some estimates
put the cost of equipping all major ports with large scanners
at $5 billion.
better intelligence
Some say the solution would be to inspect all U.S.-bound
containers before they leave a foreign port. But the
difficulty of doing that may be too great.
``No one can argue against vetting cargo before it is
shipped, but you need the political will and resources to do
it,'' says John Hyde, general manager for security with
Maersk Sealand, one of the world's largest shipping
companies. ``When you're talking about putting requirements
on other sovereign nations, you can never be sure of what the
reaction will be.''
Many in industry and government, argue that there is no
need to check each of the thousands of containers that arrive
daily. They note that only 1,000 < less than 1% < of the
450,000 shippers who send cargo to the USA, account for
nearly 60% of all containers shipped to this country. A
majority of containers come from well-known and trusted
companies that make regular weekly runs to U.S. ports. ``It
is impossible to inspect everything, but you don't need to
inspect everything,''Bonner says. ``We are pretty good at
being able to sort out what needs to be inspected.''
To that end, the Coast Guard has joined with Customs, the
Immigration and Naturalization Service and several
intelligence agencies to begin sorting out information about
containers before they arrive. After Sept. 11, the Coast
Guard initiated the Ship Arrival Notification System, the
nation's first centralized database on the movement of cargo
ships.
Before this system, the Coast Guard captain in charge of
security at each port only had to be notified of a shipment
24 hours before a cargo ship was due to arrive. Now that same
information arrives 96 hours in advance at the Coast Guard's
computer center in West Virginia. Information about the ship,
its containers and crew is entered into a database that can
be cross-referenced with immigration, FBI and Customs data.
The database allows many agencies to track the movement of
cargo around the world. Officials hope it will help zero in
on unknown shipping companies or a sudden shift in business
practices or cargoes that makes no sense. ``If a ship leaves
Genoa, Italy with palm oil bound for a port that normally
doesn't import palm oil, you might take a closer look,'' says
Capt. Tony Regalbutto, the Coast Guard's director of port
security.
Flynn sees this as the first step to a system that will
track individual containers as they are loaded overseas and
sent to U.S. ports. ``People have compared this to a needle
in a haystack problem,'' he says. ``But if you develop good
intelligence about what is a threat and what isn't, you get
the information down to a manageable number of targets. ''
____
[From Business Week, Apr. 1, 2002]
Commentary: Freight Transport: Safe From Terror?
(By Lorraine Woellert)
With its heavy traffic and massive chemical-storage tanks,
the Port of Houston would seem a tempting target for
terrorists. Touring the site in January, Senator John Breaux
(D-La.) asked what had been done to protect the 25-mile-long
seaway. A Coast Guard official assured him that the harbor
had been declared a security zone. Breaux was unimpressed.
``That's like putting a `No Trespassing' sign on a nuclear
reactor,'' he said.
In the wake of the September 11 attacks, Washington
scrambled to shore up aviation security with tough new
passenger- and baggage-screening laws and criminal-background
checks on airport workers. But half a year later, U.S. land
and sea borders remain almost as vulnerable as ever.
Lawmakers hot to jump on the homeland-security bandwagon a
few months ago have succumbed to inertia, leaving the
nation's most at-risk transportation systems unprotected.
``There has been a gross lack of focus,'' says Edward
Wytkind, executive director of the AFL-CIO's transportation-
trades division.
Altogether, trains, trucks, and ships move more than $1
trillion worth of freight--about 99% of all U.S. cargo--into
the country every year. Seaports, which handle some $700
billion of that cargo, are the first line of vulnerability.
If a disruption at one of the country's 361 ports leads the
U.S. government to shut them down the way it grounded air
traffic in September, it would bring some $2 billion a day in
seaborne trade to a dead stop and instantly cripple the
domestic economy.
Today, port ``security'' means little more than a few miles
of fencing and the occasional container search. Despite
stepped-up patrols by Coast Guard and Customs agents after
September 11, ships sail freely in and out of the nation's
inland and coastal ports. The network relies on an honor
system: It's up to carriers to announce their arrivals and
disclose their hauls. Federal agents search only about 2% of
the 11 million containers that make their way through the
U.S. maritime system each year--double the pre-September 11
rate but still frighteningly low. ``You have a ship with
7,000 containers on it, and what do we do? Check the
manifest,'' laments Representative Don Young (R-Ala.),
chair of the House Transportation & Infrastructure
Committee, which is working on a port-security bill.
``We're taking containers from Pakistan, and we don't know
what's in them.''
Lawmakers may be indignant, but their efforts to plug
security gaps have been few and ill-fated. In December, the
Senate, led by Commerce Committee Chairman Earnest F.
Hollings (D-S.C.), passed a $4 billion wish list of grants
and loans to buy equipment to search more incoming cargo
containers. Hollings' bill also would toughen hiring
standards by requiring maritime workers to pass a criminal-
background check similar to one imposed on nearly all airport
workers.
However, the idea of eliminating felons from the workforce,
a provision that sailed through Congress as part of an
aviation-security bill last year, has come under fire from
labor, including the Teamsters and the AFL-CIO-affiliated
longshoremen. They say requiring no felony convictions as a
prerequisite to holding a job amounts to double jeopardy for
workers who have already paid their dues to society.
Industry has its own problems with the idea. As a major
player at U.S. ports, the American Trucking Assn. supports
criminal-background checks but fears its members could be
sued by disgruntled job applicants denied work because of
something that showed up on their record. The ATA wants
protection from liability. It also worries that a background
check involving multiple agencies will prove time-consuming
and costly.
In the House, Young has labeled the Hollings measure
``stupid'' because it puts the onus on the U.S. government to
search every incoming vessel instead of forcing overseas
transportation centers such as China and Panama to boost
their own security. But Young's vision has problems of its
own. He is seeking to establish an entirely new cargo-
information tracking system under the Transportation Dept.,
duplicating work already being done by Customs and adding
another layer to the multi-agency bureaucracy that now
regulates container traffic. ``Neither shippers, carriers,
nor the government would be served by competing cargo-
information systems,'' says Christopher L. Koch, president
and CEO of the World Shipping Council in Washington.
Lawmakers--lacking the attention span or the willpower
necessary to sort out freight's complexities--seem inclined
to settle on politically expedient legislation that
emphasizes high-tech gadgetry, spot container searches, and
other piecemeal fixes. Such an approach could derail
container-traffic flow as dramatically as a terrorist attack.
``It would grind the U.S. economy to a halt,'' says Jonathan
Gold, trade-policy director at the International Mass
Retailers Assn.
As Congress treads water, the next-best option is emerging
in the U.N., where the Coast Guard is pushing new
international standards for container inspection, worker
licensing, sea marshals, and a long-overdue system for
tracking ships at sea. It's an ambitious goal, and one that
requires U.S. cooperation. ``If we ask these foreign ports to
put security measures in place, then we have to be prepared
to do the same thing here,'' Fold says. Whether it's
motivated by fear or by shame, Congress must push harder for
secure transportation systems.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. McCAIN. It is my understanding from leadership that the vote is
now going to take place at 11:15. I ask unanimous consent that the
remaining time be equally divided between now and 11:15.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is
so ordered.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Alaska such
time as he may consume.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, the Aviation Security Act of 2001 came in
the immediate wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks and we may
soon send to the President for his signature the bill creating the
Department of Homeland Security. The Maritime and Transportation
Security Act of 2002 is another important piece of national security
legislation that will provide the organizational structure,
coordination and planning needed to safeguard our Nation's ports. I
thank Senator Hollings, Senator McCain and Congressman Don Young for
their tireless efforts to move this legislation through Congress.
[[Page S10983]]
Under the Act, initial vulnerability assessments will be made to
determine vessels and ports that pose a high risk of being involved in
a marine transportation security incident. Attention will be given to
deterring and responding to such incidents, and an overall evaluation
will be provided on the potential threat level of maritime terrorist
attacks.
This port security assessment is imperative for our State of Alaska,
which has roughly one-half the coastline in the United States. Alaska's
economy and quality of life are directly related to the functionality
of it's numerous ports. The majority of our Alaskan communities,
including Juneau our State Capital, are not on the road system and
depend almost exclusively on marine trade for the delivery of basic
goods. A terrorist attack at a port in Alaska, or anywhere on the West
Coast, would cause significant interruptions in maritime service to our
State, greatly affecting our way of life.
In addition, there are several other ports in Alaska vital to Alaska
and the rest of the Nation. This is especially true of the Port of
Valdez, which is the southern terminus of the 800 mile long Trans-
Alaska oil pipeline. Valdez is an important off-loading terminal for
our Nation's domestic energy supply. A terrorist incident here would
impact U.S. oil production, without any question, and have a
devastating effect on Alaska's fisheries. Dutch Harbor is consistently
the top commercial fishing port in America, processing and shipping
product to the rest of the world. Kodiak has the largest Coast Guard
presence in the Nation and the Island of Kodiak has launch facilities
that make it an important staging area for future military and NASA
operations that are vital to our Nation's national missile defense
system.
The Maritime and Transportation Security Act of 2002 also includes
Coast Guard authorization for fiscal year 2003. This is extremely
important for the continued success of the Coast Guard in its ever
evolving and expanding role in securing our Nation's coastal
boundaries.
I commend the chairman and the future chairman of the Commerce
Committee for bringing this bill to the floor, and I support its
immediate passage.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. HOLLINGS. Yes.
Mr. REID. For purposes of notifying Members of the Senate, there has
been a train accident. I hope it is not serious, but we have a couple
of people on the train. We are now in the process of working out a
unanimous consent agreement to have the vote maybe 45 minutes later
than scheduled.
Mr. HOLLINGS. We scheduled the vote for 11 a.m.
Mr. McCAIN. Actually, 11:15.
Mr. REID. It may be later than that.
Mr. HOLLINGS. I yield such time as he may consume to the
distinguished Senator from Louisiana.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana is recognized.
Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, I thank my distinguished chairman of the
Commerce Committee for his involvement and his leadership in bringing
this legislation to the floor, as well as the ranking member of the
Commerce Committee, the Senator from Arizona, and everyone really who
has been involved in this legislation.
Suffice it to say, the conditions in the world, and in the United
States in particular, have changed dramatically since the events of 9/
11. Things we took for granted, things we did not pay a great deal of
attention to, are no longer the status quo. The Commerce Committee, to
the credit of the leadership of our committee and Senator Hollings, had
taken up the concept of making sure our ports were more secure even
before 9/11.
The Commerce Committee in August of 2001, before 9/11, passed a
seaport security bill by a unanimous vote. The committee was clearly on
top of potential problems before 9/11. But certainly after the events
of 9/11 it became clear we needed to do more even than we originally
had done in the legislation.
I have the privilege of chairing, under the Commerce Committee, the
Subcommittee on Surface Transportation. At the suggestion of the
chairman, it was determined we should have field hearings around the
United States. We had field hearings in six different port cities in
the country. We had hearings in the chairman's hometown of Charleston,
SC, and the home of the Senator from Texas, the Port of Houston. We had
hearings in the Port of New Orleans. We had hearings in Fort
Lauderdale. We had hearings on the west coast. We had hearings on the
gulf, Atlantic, and Pacific, to learn the conditions of the ports of
the United States regarding security.
We found when everyone is in charge, no one is in charge. In a number
of ports, the sheriff's department was involved in security. In some
ports they had port security police partially in charge. In some areas
they depended totally on the U.S. Coast Guard to do all the work--which
they cannot do. Some had very lax security on the perimeter, on the
shore surrounding the ports.
Every day, literally thousands and thousands of men and women drive
trucks loaded with containers into port facilities. We need to know who
they are. We need to know what their purpose in being there is. We need
to know as much as we can about who comes and who exits these
international ports.
It is very interesting how commerce works. One container can carry as
much as 60,000 pounds of whatever you want to put in it. There are
ships entering our ports and laying alongside the docks containing as
much as 3,000 separate containers on one ship. Each container carried
as much as 60,000 pounds of whatever someone wants to put in them.
The USS Cole had a small vessel pull alongside of it and blow a hole
in the side of it, killing American sailors; one relatively small boat
pulled right alongside the USS Cole, a military naval warship. At the
same time, remember what happened in Oklahoma City. Approximately
15,000 pounds of explosives blew down the Federal Building with drastic
consequences to human life and to the stability of that city, shaking
the confidence of this Nation. One person with 15,000 pounds of
explosives knocked down an entire Federal building.
One container has 60,000 pounds of product that can be put into a
ship that may have 3,000 containers. The potential for damage if a
terrorist wants to target one of the ports of this country by placing
explosives in one of these containers is great.
We had the example of one Egyptian who took a container and
practically made an apartment out of it. He got a container in the
Middle East, had himself equipped with a cell phone, food, a bunk to
sleep in, and literally was transported from the Middle East, through
Italy, destined for Canada, and ultimately to the United States. Who
knows what he was intent on doing? Again, one ship, with 3,000
containers; how do we determine what is in each container?
Some of our large container vessels pull alongside our ports. We saw
in Houston, in the Port of New Orleans at the hearings we held, the
Port of south Louisiana, the Port of Baton Rouge--there are miles and
miles of ports--some of these ports have, right alongside them, a
liquefied natural gas facility. Next to the liquefied natural gas
facility there could be an oil and gas refinery. Imagine the damage
that could occur with one container loaded with explosives in a ship
docked alongside an LNG facility, which is next to an oil and gas
refinery, which may be followed by several other chemical plants. One
container exploding could set off a chain reaction with a great deal of
damage and a great loss of life.
Some of our ports are located in urban areas. The Port of Houston,
the Port of New Orleans, the Port of New York, the Port of New Jersey,
the Port of Fort Lauderdale, the Port of Savannah, the Port of
Charleston they are all located in urban areas. There is a grave
potential for damage.
The point I make is that things have changed since 9/11. A port
manager was asked: How do you secure vessels pulling alongside these
LNG facilities? How do you assure they know what they are doing? How do
you secure the area? This individual said: Well, we have a sign posted
that says ``No Trespassing.'' I doubt a person intent on blowing up a
city or doing grave damage to one of our ports will be deterred by a
sign that says ``No Trespassing.'' They will not pay any attention to
it.
[[Page S10984]]
The fact is we have to have people involved in security. We have to
have people in a chain of command, people who know what they are doing,
who is doing it, and what is the responsibility of each particular
segment of law enforcement operations.
This legislation will help do that. This legislation for the first
time will say every port in the United States of America will have to
develop a comprehensive port security plan. Some of them have plans in
place now, but I don't think they are as comprehensive as they need to
be, and some have almost nothing. A comprehensive port security plan
under the U.S. Coast Guard, working with the local port and local law
enforcement officials, can design a plan that fits a particular port.
What may be necessary in the Port of Savannah may not be necessary in
the Port of Houston. What is necessary in the Port of Houston may not
fit in the Port of Charleston. Each port has to have a plan designed to
meet the needs of that particular area.
Not only do the operations along the water's edge have to be better
secured, the entire facility has to be secured. As I said, we have
literally thousands of incoming and outgoing trucks loaded with
containers. We need to know who those people are bringing in the
containers, what their purpose is. No longer can a port be a tourist
attraction. No longer can someone say let's go to the port and see the
ships. Unfortunately, times have changed. We need better security,
better perimeter protection, better knowledge about the cargo on the
ships, better knowledge of the crew on the ships.
We have transponders on airplanes. We have GPS systems in
automobiles. There is no reason every ship that comes into an American
port will not have a GPS system on it, an identification system on it,
an automatic identification signal that can transport to the port
authorities where that ship is at all times--not just when it comes in,
but when it actually reaches the floor, while it is in port.
Senator Graham, who has been instrumental in helping pass this
legislation, raised at the press conference yesterday the concern about
the vessel that came in from Haiti. That vessel did not just come close
to the U.S. shores, it actually landed on the beaches of Key Biscayne,
FL. As Senator Graham has pointed out, instead of being a group of
refugees, suppose it was a same-sized vessel, loaded with explosives,
with a terrorist who was willing to commit suicide, who instead of
dropping off several hundred refugees had pulled alongside one of the
large buildings in the Port of Miami, or pulled alongside one of the
cruise vessels loaded with passengers, and blew up his vessel and the
vessels surrounding his vessel. That cannot be allowed to happen.
This legislation will help the ports do the job they need to do.
Unfortunately, we do not have any funding other than a grant program to
the local ports. Most of the cost will have to be borne by the U.S.
Coast Guard. I say to Senator Hollings and those on the Appropriations
Committee, it is going to be their great task to make sure we
adequately fund the Coast Guard to carry out those plans, because they
are going to cost more. We have to do a better job. It is going to cost
money. What about the local ports? We talked about a user fee, which I
thought was a better idea, to spread the cost across society. It would
be very small if we did it that way, but that's not part of this bill.
There are local grants that ports can apply for, because it is going to
cost to do the security they need. I am hopeful that program will be
sufficient in order to allow our ports to do the work that is needed.
This is a good piece of legislation. It can go a long way toward
securing U.S. ports, which today are very vulnerable, which today, I
would add, are potential targets. This legislation, when in place, will
go a long way to providing the security of which we can all be proud.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
The Senator from Texas is recognized.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I would first like to thank Senator
Hollings and Senator McCain for helping us get this bill through the
committee. Senator Breaux's remarks were right on target. I hosted
Senator Breaux's hearing in Houston. He toured the Port of Houston with
me. We saw firsthand what some of the problems are.
I have to say, I was very impressed with what the Port of Houston is
doing on its own. Using its own resources, it has beefed up its patrols
and its security guards. Certainly, the Coast Guard is more involved in
checking manifests and the ships that come into the Port of Houston.
But the fact is, the Port of Houston is the largest port in America in
terms of foreign tonnage. It handles more than half of the Nation's
petrochemical capacity. We certainly need Federal funding and support
to make sure a port like this one, which is vulnerable, and presents
such a risk, has a fully implemented security system.
I thank Senator Breaux for coming to see firsthand this great port in
my State, for looking at what they are doing on their own, and then
realizing the need to give them added help through this port security
bill. I am very pleased that we are taking this first step.
Due to the volume of hazardous materials, a terrorist attack in the
Port of Houston could result in the loss of millions of lives. Of
course, it would also interrupt our Nation's energy supplies,
delivering a huge blow to our economy at a time when we certainly
cannot afford any more economic disturbances. However, there are other
ports as well in my State, and smaller ports throughout our Nation.
In my State of Texas we have Corpus Christi, Brownsville, Port
Lavaca, Galveston, Freeport, and Texas City. They each have different
challenges. Some have to safeguard cruise ships. Cruise ships are a
new, burgeoning tourist industry that is working particularly in
Galveston. We are very happy about this, but it means we have to
safeguard these cruise ships by taking similar security measures.
Texas City, on the other hand, faces the security challenge of
screening cargo containers and shipping vessels on a shoestring budget.
We have Brownsville and Corpus Christi that are becoming very important
ports for Central and South American goods coming in. We are very
pleased about that, but they too need security.
So this is a compromise bill. It lays the foundation for a port
security system under the Transportation Security Administration. It
requires security plans for every port, background checks for employees
with access to secure areas, and improved identification technology for
both individuals and vessels traveling in United States waters. The
proposed Homeland Security Department would also be tasked to assess
potential threats presented by security practices at foreign ports, so
that we are able to find out if a foreign port is particularly lax.
Then we would have to take extra steps for ships coming into the United
States from that port, whether it is the port of origin or whether it
is a through-port.
I think those are the steps we need to take. I support this
compromise because certainly it is important to take these immediate
first steps. However, I do not think the bill goes far enough. I am an
original cosponsor, with Senator Feinstein, of the Comprehensive
Seaport and Container Security Act that would provide more resources
and greater emphasis on port security. Our bill requires profiling of
cargo containers and scrutiny of high-risk shippers.
We are not closing the book on port security with the passage of this
compromise bill, but we are taking a major first step. I look forward
to working with Senator McCain, Senator Hollings, Senator Breaux, and
others who are very concerned about the whole port security issue. In
the next session, I look forward to really addressing the container
cargo and other high-risk port needs, and to assure we do not have a
void in our port areas. Senator Stevens was saying the other night that
50 percent of the American people live within 50 miles of a port. That
is a very important statistic. We have to check our ports, our people,
and the goods coming into this country.
I am very pleased we have taken this first step, because what we have
done in aviation certainly has been a huge improvement. Are we finished
with aviation? No, we are not. But are our airports safer today than
they were on 9/10/01? Yes, they are.
[[Page S10985]]
I travel as much as anybody in America, commuting back and forth to
my home State every week. I see a significant difference in the quality
of screening with the new Transportation Authority personnel. They are
trained. They are polite. They are doing their jobs in a professional
way and I am very proud of that. We need to do more and, hopefully, we
are going to address some of the other aviation needs in the very near
future. But right now we are addressing a major area of responsibility
for our country and that is the security of our ports, the people, and
the cargo that comes through our ports.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware is recognized.
Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I will be brief. I came over from my
committee meeting for two reasons. One is to compliment the chairman,
the Senator from South Carolina. Frankly, were it not for his
consistent and persistent efforts on security--port security and, I
might add, rail security--we would not be standing here today. There is
much to say about this legislation and I am not going to take the time
now.
I do want to add one other point. I am sorry many more of my
colleagues, understandably, are in committee meetings right now and are
not here to hear this. We are taking the action that is necessary to
deal with a legitimate and real security concern for America's ports. I
might add there is more traffic up and down the Delaware River into
Philadelphia, with oil traffic in particular, than I think almost any
other place in the country. There are a number of refineries in my
State and in the neighboring State of Pennsylvania and ports in New
Jersey and Pennsylvania and Delaware. So this is very important to us.
But equally important to us is rail security. My friend, the
Presiding Officer, a former Governor, knows about security, what the
CIA indicated. I can publicly indicate it. They indicated the most
likely target is going to be rail. Since 9/11, my friend from South
Carolina passed out very significant rail security legislation--$1.2
billion. It is a clearly documented need and an overwhelming concern,
listed by the CIA as a likely target for terrorists--and we have done
nothing on it. We have done nothing.
I realize it is a bit of a broken record. I have been on the floor
many times speaking to this. But I just say we are going to rue the day
we failed to take the action that has been documented which we need to
take to enhance the security of our rail system.
Let me give you again two examples. Then I will cease. But I want the
Record to show every day we wait, we are putting thousands of lives in
jeopardy. When you say thousands of lives, what are you talking about,
Senator? Right now, as we speak, there are more people in a tunnel on a
train under New York City--at this moment--than there are on five full
747 aircraft. Those tunnels were built at the turn of the century. They
have no escape. They have no lighting. They have no ventilation.
Immediately after the Civil War, the Baltimore tunnel was built for
freight and passengers.
You may remember that a little over a year ago there was a fire in
the Baltimore tunnel--just a regular old fire--no terrorist act. It
shut down Baltimore. In that tunnel, there is nothing. It was cut
through granite in 1869. Nothing has been done to that tunnel. Even its
signal systems are not adequate. We know this. Contracts have already
been let. We already have the design. There is no need for design work.
It has already been done. We could literally start tomorrow.
My friend from South Carolina has documented all of this in his
hearings. He has laid it out in spades. He has made it clear to
everybody. But somehow we just think, OK, rail transportation is not
very much. It is the ultimate stepchild, both in terms of our
transportation network and in terms of security.
It has been over a year since my friend from South Carolina reported
out a $1.2 billion piece of legislation on security. I am not even
talking about Amtrak--just basic security needs. We don't even have
dogs available to sniff luggage in cars. There is nothing. There is
virtually nothing at all.
I just want to say I am not going to be here saying I told you so,
because that would be unfair. But we are making a serious mistake,
totally ignoring what the CIA has publicly pointed out is a targeting
concern, and what everybody knows; that is, the threat of terror and
the richness of the targets available on the rail system.
I am all for this port security bill. I think it is a very positive
step forward. But I just say to my friends we are making a tragic
mistake having held up now for the better part of a year the rail
security legislation that was passed out of committee and for which I
think there is a consensus. We can't get a vote on it. I think it is a
tragic mistake.
Again, this is not in any way suggesting my State is very much
impacted by this port security legislation. We have thousands upon
thousands of containers coming into my little State. We have major
export and import of automobiles coming in the Port of Wilmington. We
are within the shadow of the Port of Philadelphia in Camden. More oil
comes up the Delaware River than I think any other estuary, taking care
of the Delaware Valley where there are over 10 million people.
I am in no way suggesting we shouldn't be doing what we are doing. I
am suggesting we are making a tragic mistake by not acting on rail
security.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may take.
I am very surprised by the comments made by the Senator from
Delaware. The fact is we did pass out a rail security bill. The Senator
from Delaware wanted to add on billions of dollars for all kinds of
assistance to railroads, which has had very little to do with security.
I am all for security. But the Senator from Delaware and I are known
for our differences of opinion about Amtrak and how much of American
tax dollars should be spent on Amtrak. In fact, it has been about $20
billion to $30 billion in the last few years. We are still subsidizing
rail routes to the tune of $200 to $300 per passenger.
But the fact is the reason we don't have a rail security bill is
because of the desire to add on the bill billions and billions that
have nothing to do with rail security.
If the Senator from Delaware wants to pass our version of the bill
which has nothing to do with the additional billions that are the
subject of debate on the transportation bill and other bills, that is
fine. But the reason we are making a tragic mistake here is because we
didn't move forward just rail security. There was a strong desire by
supporters of Amtrak to lard onto it billions of dollars of additional
spending having nothing to do with rail security.
I look forward to working with the Senator from Delaware. They should
be separated. Subsidization forever of Amtrak is not something this
Senator will ever support when we subsidize rail routes, in the case of
a line in Wisconsin--recently terminated, thank God--at $2,000 per
passenger. There is something wrong with the way Amtrak is being
subsidized.
I look forward to working with the Senator from Delaware. But let us
have no doubt as to why rail security didn't pass this floor with this
Senator's endorsement, which is because of the additional billions of
dollars that were going to be added onto it.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, that has nothing to do with rail security.
And as incoming chairman of the committee, I will be glad to review
this issue of Amtrak. We will get the GAO up again, and the GAO will
talk about the incredible subsidization of Amtrak which costs American
taxpayers billions and billions of dollars per passenger. That is the
subject of another day of debate.
But to come on this floor and say that we are making a ``tragic
mistake,'' in the words of the Senator from Delaware, by not passing
the rail security bill, I say it is a tragic mistake to add billions of
dollars of pork onto rail security when rail security should have been
the primary and only focus of a rail security bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware is recognized.
Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I agree this is not the moment for debate
on that. Let me respond very briefly.
The bill was $1.2 billion and $900 million was for the tunnels,
period. I don't know where the additional billions of
[[Page S10986]]
dollars come from. OK, $1.2 billion. Subtract $900 million. You are
then talking about $300 million. Of that, the money went to a lot of
things that relate to dogs, sniffers, and a whole range of additional
Amtrak police. We can argue about rail signal systems and other things,
which I think are essential. Let us get the numbers straight. We are
talking about $1.2 billion. Usually what we do when we have billions
like this is we disagree. We at least bring them up and debate them on
the floor. We can't even get the bill brought up and debated on the
floor.
If my friend from Arizona--and he is my friend--is correct about
billions of dollars of subsidization to Amtrak, then I am sure he will
prevail when we talk about a security bill. But I respectfully suggest
that is not the case.
No. 2, this really is for another day. I will just take 2 minutes.
We talk about, for example, the Wisconsin line. We do airports. We
pay $150 million a year. I think we added another $100 million--don't
hold me to that--to go into something like 350 cities where nobody
wants to fly, nobody wants to go. We pay the airlines. We subsidize
them to go into Bemidji, MN. I don't know where they go--places that no
one wants to fly into or out of. We subsidize them with 150 million
bucks. We do that. We just roll over. That is no problem.
At any rate, that is for another day. But in the meantime, I hope we
will at least be able to get to the point where we can debate on the
floor here the rail security legislation and not prevent it from being
discussed on the floor unless we have what individual Members want in a
bill before it even gets to the floor.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican leader is recognized.
Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I would like to briefly speak in support of
this legislation.
I come from a coastal area. When I was in the House of
Representatives, I served on the Merchant Marine and Fisheries
Committee and was a member of the Commerce Committee. I pay close
attention to the maritime industry and what is happening with our ports
and our ships and shipping industry.
I am very pleased to see this legislation has been brought to the
floor. I commend the chairman of the committee, Senator Hollings, and
the ranking member, Senator McCain, as well as others who were involved
in working through some of the difficulties to produce results. Senator
Stevens was involved in that, and Congressman Young on the House side.
I had more than one conversation with Senator Thomas and Senators
Baucus and Grassley.
A lot of people worked to help make the production of this
legislation possible. I must say, I am amazed it took that kind of a
heave because this is such necessary legislation. We probably could
have and should have done it last summer. There is no use reviewing all
of what went into that, but there is no doubt in my mind that we need
to pay attention to port security. That is a place where we could have
vulnerability.
I believe we are making progress in using sophisticated technology to
begin to address those threats, but, still, we need to pay attention to
this area and make sure we are doing all we can to protect the American
people from terrorist attack or exploitation in our ports.
The vast majority of the U.S. international trade flows through our
ports. And I have worried that some enterprising terrorist could put
some very devastating material on a tramp steamer or a boat that would
come into South Carolina, New York, Baltimore, or Pascagoula, MS, and
have a devastating impact on those communities. So we need to think
through this.
Over the past few decades, international and domestic port
transportation systems have responded to ever-increasing volumes of
two-way trade by increasing their efficiency at moving cargo. The
challenge before us, though, is to take steps to find out what is on
those ships, what is in that cargo. We have to look at the port of
demarcation. How do we deal with them on the high seas? How do we make
sure a threat is properly checked into or assessed? What do we do once
they get into the ports?
So this is important legislation. It is not to diminish the threat in
all the areas of transportation. We have to think about and review all
of them: aviation, trucking, automobiles, points of entry on land. But
this is one area in which we need to take action, and that is what the
legislation does.
The administration took immediate steps to increase the security for
our maritime transportation system. The Coast Guard dedicated
increasing resources to protecting our ports. The Customs Service
initiated programs to improve its awareness of all cargo movements into
the United States and to push its inbound cargo screening efforts out
to foreign ports.
The Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002, that we are
considering now, provides new direction to the administration and
additional authority so we can deal with this area in a comprehensive
manner.
The bill establishes a system of national, area, port, and waterfront
facility and vessel security and response planning and involves the
State officials, local officials, and Federal officials and industry
representatives.
The bill improves the authority for the Customs Service to collect
cargo information. It promotes the sharing of intelligence information
among agencies involved in maritime transportation security and close
coordination of security planning and operations among those agencies.
To me, it is unfathomable that they could not do that anyway; that
is, exchange information and get information. This bill will make sure
that authority is there.
The bill establishes a national transportation security card system
to control personnel access to secure maritime terminal areas,
including performing background checks on applicants. Again, I cannot
believe we actually did not already have a system such as this in
place. I hope the administration will, and I urge them to, work closely
with the maritime industry, especially in those sectors with frequent
personnel turnover, such as the inland waterway towing vessel industry,
to address their needs for quick approval of employee access to these
secure areas. We do not want to become another bureaucratic nightmare
and maze of delay, but this system needs to be put in place.
So I do believe this bill will help us to assess the effectiveness of
our antiterrorism measures at foreign ports and to work with those
ports to improve those measures. It will provide additional funds in
this area. It will give the Coast Guard more authority and authorizes
more assistance as they deal with marine safety and the maritime policy
improvements.
So this bill is a good achievement. I am glad we are getting it done.
It may wind up being one of only four or five conference reports on
which we do complete action before we leave at the end of this session,
but this is one of which we should be proud.
I commend the chairman, once again, for being willing to take my
calls and sit down and say: Can't we just work together? We did and we
got the results. So I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. HOLLINGS. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. LOTT. I yield to the Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. HOLLINGS. I was asked at a news conference yesterday, did we
capitulate on account of the elections? I said no. Under Senator Lott's
leadership, we capitulated before the election. You got us together,
and I really thank the Senator on behalf of all of us.
Mr. LOTT. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I yield such time as is necessary to the
Senator from New York.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York is recognized.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I thank our distinguished chairman, our
distinguished now minority leader, and our distinguished ranking member
for this legislation of vital importance to my community of New York,
one of the largest ports in the world.
We all know what the bill does. And all of these things are good
steps forward. I particularly thank Chairman Hollings for his
steadfastness on this bill.
All of us probably would have wanted a little more in this bill, and
in a
[[Page S10987]]
minute I am going to talk about one particular area of importance to
me. But one of our jobs here is not to let the perfect be the enemy of
the good.
We need to do so much in our ports, and this is a good first step.
The idea of assessing what our problems are, the idea of having a
security identification card, background checks, and all of these other
things I think are extremely important in terms of getting the needed
technology because the terrorists are going to look for our most
vulnerable pressure points.
We are doing the job on tightening up air security. I flew in from
New York this morning. I saw the new Federal people there. It is
better. I do not know if it is good enough yet, but it is better. But
with our ports, we have virtually done nothing. This bill is a very
good first step. And, again, I thank our chairman.
I want to talk about one area, and that is, the authorizing language
is in the bill we worked on, but, unfortunately, not all the money is
there to do it. I will try to alert my colleagues to this.
My great nightmare, as I think of how the terrorists would come back
and strike us again--it might be al-Qaida; it might be Iraq; but who
knows, it could be someone else, Chechens, East Timorese--but someone
takes a nuclear weapon and smuggles it into one of the containers that
come into one of our ports over our northern or southern borders and
then detonates it in a huge population area. As horrible as 9/11 was--
and, believe me, I know that horror--this would be much worse.
So we should be doing everything we can to make sure our ports are
secure and to prevent nuclear weapons from being smuggled into our
country, particularly in one of the large containers that come, by the
thousands, to our ports on the east coast and west coast and the
containers that come over our borders.
I have talked to experts, and they have said there is good news. The
good news is that every nuclear device emits gamma rays, and gamma rays
go through almost everything, so they are detectable. Only lead can
stop it. And that can be dealt with by having an x-ray detector there
as well.
The good news, in addition, was that at our national energy labs,
such as Brookhaven and Argonne Forest, have such detection devices that
work 50 or 60 feet away. Unfortunately, the bad news is the only
practical commercial device is a Geiger counter. A Geiger counter works
from 2 or 3 feet away. And it is virtually impossible for us to send
personnel on to every container that comes to our ports or across our
borders and hold that Geiger counter a couple of inches from each of
the scores of crates that are on each container.
As I talked further to these experts, they said, for a relatively
small sum, they could take the radiation detectors that now exist in
our cyclotrons and can detect radiation 50 or 60 feet away and make
them practical; namely, they have to make them smaller because they are
very large, and they have to make them less delicate because they could
bounce around. But imagine if we had such detectors. We could put them
on every crane that loads or unloads a container. We could put them on
every tollbooth that a truck, over the Mexican border or Canadian
border, drives by and prevent a nuclear weapon from coming in. And even
if these terrorists were so sophisticated that they surrounded the bomb
in lead, we put an x ray next to it, and the x ray could detect the
lead, and we know something is up, and we inspect the crate.
I brought this to the attention of my friend from Virginia, Senator
Warner, and we introduced legislation that would do just this. We
worked long and hard to try to get it as part of the homeland security
bill, but that did not happen. But the knight on the white horse in
this area was the chairman from South Carolina because he put the
language that we devised, with some suggestions by the Senator from
Arizona and some by his own folks, in this bill.
We are now authorized to do research to figure out a way to detect
nuclear devices from 50 or 60 or 70 feet away to prevent--God forbid--
somebody from bringing in a device.
There is only one problem. I regret to bring this up, but it is true.
The Senator from South Carolina has made the fight. We need about $250
million to come up with such a device. Unfortunately, only $90 million
is authorized for the entire research and development section of this
bill. This is not a frivolous expenditure. This is not pork. This is
vital to our security.
I am supportive of this bill. I am grateful to the chairman. He made
the fight. I don't care if the Government or the private sector pays
for this; somebody should be paying for this research because we don't
want to wake up one morning and find a device smuggled into our country
when we can stop it. That is the frustrating thing. We can stop it.
This is not one of those things like cancer where we can put billions
of dollars in and hope and pray that research finds a cure and stops
the disease.
We know if we put in the money, these devices, which already exist,
can be practicalized so they can be put on every crane and on every
toll booth where a truck with a container comes over our borders.
I hope when we come back next year--this is hardly a partisan issue;
as I said, it was the Senator from Virginia and myself who spearheaded
this--that we will put new effort into authorizing and appropriating a
few more dollars so the research that needs to be done to make us
nuclear secure is done.
I supported our President's motion for the war on Iraq. One of the
reasons I did was I was afraid that Iraq would develop nuclear weapons
down the road, and we couldn't allow them to do that because they might
be smuggled in here. It is not going to be just Iraq. In our brave new
world, our post-9/11 world, other groups can come up with these
devices. It is our solemn obligation to do everything we can to prevent
them from being smuggled in.
The bill the chairman has sponsored is a great first step. I hope
with his leadership and that of the Senator from Arizona, who made many
suggestions to this part of our bill, that next year we will move
forward to appropriate the necessary dollars to get this done quickly
and make our country safe.
I yield back the time to the Senator from South Carolina.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the Maritime
Transportation Security Act of 2002.
I applaud Senator Hollings, Chairman of the Commerce Committee,
Senator McCain, the Ranking Member, and other members of the Port
Security Conference Committee for their efforts, but I believe this
legislation can best be summed up as ``too little, too late.''
The Senate passed Port Security Legislation last December, yet only
now, almost a year later, is the Congress sending this bill to the
President. Moreover, once this legislation passes, it will be years
before the Department of Transportation and the Department of Homeland
Security implement effective security measures at our 361 seaports.
I would have preferred seeing the Conferees embrace other ideas to
improve port security such as the legislation I introduced with
Senators Kyl, Snowe, and Hutchison. Instead, the Conferees rejected
many proposals on port security and slimmed down the Senate Bill so
that it is now one part security and three parts Coast Guard
authorization language that has nothing to do with security.
I believe Congress ``missed the boat'' with this legislation and
squandered an opportunity to take aggressive action to erect a
formidable barrier at our seaports.
We know ports present optimal targets to terrorists. And we know al-
Qaida operatives are coming after us. As CIA director George Tenet said
recently before the Intelligence Committee, of which I am a member:
``al-Qaida is in an execution phase and intends to strike us both here
and overseas; that's unambiguous as far as I am concerned.''
And this week we learned of a new tape that seems to be by Osama bin
Laden, which made clear al-Qaida intends to go after us again soon.
The October 2002 report by Gary Hart and Warren Rudman demonstrates
that our ports remain especially vulnerable even more than a year after
September 11. The report points out, ``Only the tiniest percentage of
containers, ships, trucks, and trains that enter the United States each
day are subject to
[[Page S10988]]
examination, and a weapon of mass destruction could well be hidden
among this cargo.''
The Hart-Rudman report recommends revising transportation security
because ``the vulnerabilities are greater and the stakes are higher in
the sea and land modes than in commercial aviation. Systems such as
those used in the aviation sector, which start from the assumption that
every passenger and every bag of luggage poses an equal risk, must give
way to more intelligence-driven and layered security approaches that
emphasize prescreening and monitoring based on risk-criteria.''
Since we cannot inspect every ship and every container, I introduced
the ``Comprehensive Seaport and Container Security Act'' earlier this
year to establish a system for container profiling. The Feinstein-Kyl-
Snowe-Hutchison Port Security Bill would also push U.S. security
scrutiny beyond our Nation's borders to intercept cargo before it
arrives near America's shores.
This complements the strategy Customs Commissioner Robert C. Bonner
is in the process of implementing. To prevent a weapon of mass
destruction from getting to the U.S. in the first place, Customs has
entered into formal agreements with a handful of foreign governments to
station U.S. inspectors at ports overseas to profile high risk cargo
and target suspicious shipments for inspection.
The Customs Service is working to put groups of U.S. experts at the
top 20 ports as soon as possible and they are moving at an impressive
pace.
Hitting the 20 port threshold is essential because together, these
ports account for approximately 70 percent of the 5.7 million
containers shipped by sea to the U.S. annually.
We have known for a long time that America's ports needed an
extensive security strategy and upgrade. In the fall of 2000, a
comprehensive report was issued by the ``Interagency Commission on
Crime and Security in U.S. Seaports.'' I testified before the
Commission and I believe the group's report serves as a very thorough
primer on seaport security issues.
While often out of the public eye, ports across the United States are
our nation's economic gateways. Every year U.S. ports handle over 800
million tons of cargo valued at approximately $600 billion. Excluding
trade with Mexico and Canada, America's ports handle 95 percent of U.S.
trade. Two of the busiest ports in the nation are in California, at Los
Angeles / Long Beach and at Oakland.
S. 1214, the Senate-passed bill written by Chairman Hollings and
members of the Commerce Committee, was drafted before the September 11
terrorist attacks to incorporate the recommendations made by the
Interagency Commission into law. While changes were made to this
legislation before the Senate passed it in December of 2001 to focus
more on antiterrorism, I believe the Conferees could have taken more
aggressive action to improve the bill.
I would like to cite a few examples to show how this Conference
Report is weaker than the Comprehensive Seaport and Container Security
Act I have introduced.
The Feinstein-Kyl-Snowe-Hutchison port security bill establishes a
comprehensive risk profiling plan for the Customs Service to focus
their limited inspection capabilities on high-risk cargo containers.
However, the only mention of such a plan in the Maritime Security Act
conference report is this paragraph of report language: ``A vessel
screening system which provides shipping intelligence and analysis can
be utilized to identify those vessels requiring close inspection by the
Coast Guard and other agencies. We urge the Coast Guard and port
authorities to include vessel risk profiling in their enhanced security
procedures.''
The Feinstein-Kyl-Snowe-Hutchison port security bill strengthens U.S.
security scrutiny beyond our Nation's borders to monitor and inspect
cargo and containers before they arrive on America's shores.
However, the conferees of this Maritime Transportation Security Act
only required foreign ports to be evaluated and authorized a program
for U.S. officials to train foreign security officers abroad.
The Feinstein-Kyl-Snowe-Hutchison port security bill imposes steep
monetary sanctions and criminal penalties for incorrect cargo manifest
information or failure to comply with filing requirements.
However, the conferees of this Maritime Transportation Security Act
only authorized civil penalties of up to $25,000 for a violation.
The Feinstein-Kyl-Snowe-Hutchison port security bill requires the
Transportation Security Administration to set standards to ensure each
port has a secure perimeter, secure parking facilities, controlled
points of access into the port, sufficient lighting, buildings with
secure doors and windows and an alarm.
However, the conferees of this Maritime Transportation Security Act
only required vulnerability assessments and a National Maritime
Transportation Security Plan.
The Feinstein-Kyl-Snowe-Hutchison port security bill requires the use
of high security seals and electronic tags on all containers coming
into the U.S. and requires empty containers destined for U.S. ports to
be sealed.
However, the conferees of this Maritime Transportation Security Act
only mandated the development of performance standards for seals and
locks on cargo containers.
I have pointed out several areas where I believe the Conferees could
have taken more aggressive steps, but I do want to endorse many of the
security measures in this conference report such as the requirement for
all workers in a secure area of the port to have a transportation
security card and I support the $15 million annual authorization for 5
years to fund research and development efforts.
I thank Senator Hollings, Senator McCain, and other members of the
Commerce Committee for the work they have done on this important issue.
I look forward to continue to work with the chairman and ranking
member of the Commerce Committee to address the threats to our ports. I
believe additional legislation will be essential to follow up on this
security bill. We must be better prepared for a terrorist attack than
we were last year.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to
congratulate Senator Hollings and Senator McCain the Chairman and
Ranking Member of the Commerce Committee for reaching an agreement with
the House on the Maritime Transportation and Security Act of 2002, S.
1214. I am proud to have served as a conferee on this very important
legislation that will significantly improve security in our Nations
seaports. In addition the bill would reauthorize the Coast Guard, a
major component in improving security in our ports and harbors.
As Chairman of the Oceans, Fisheries and Atmosphere Subcommittee, I
had the opportunity to chair an oversight hearing on the Coast Guard's
role in improving maritime security after the terrible attacks of
September 11. As Senators Hollings and McCain well know, even before
September 11, our maritime and port security was in sorry shape.
I wish to thank Chairman Hollings for including three provisions from
S. 1587, the Port Threat and Security Act, which I introduced last year
in order to improve safety and security in our nations ports.
The first provision requires an annual report to the Congress that
would list those nations whose vessels the Coast Guard has found would
pose a risk to our ports, or that have presented our government with
false, partial, or fraudulent information concerning cargo manifests,
crew identity, or registration of the vessel. In addition the report
would identify nations that do not exercise adequate control over their
vessel registration and ownership procedures, particularly with respect
to security issues. We need hard information like this if we are to
force ``flag of convenience'' nations from providing cover to criminals
and terrorists. This is very important as Osama bin Laden has used
flags of convenience to hide his ownership in various international
shipping interests. In 1998, one of bin Laden's cargo freighters
unloaded supplies in Kenya for the suicide bombers who later destroyed
the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Also included from S. 1587, was my proposal on Sea Marshals. Sea
Marshals would be authorized to be used on
[[Page S10989]]
vessels as well as shore facilities both private and public to ensure
safe transportation of high interest vessels into our ports, such as
liquefied natural gas tankers and cruise ships. In Boston we have an
LNG facility in the middle of Boston Harbor. Obviously we need
increased security each time an LNG tanker offloads natural gas. Prior
to September 11 these vessels were escorted by Coast Guard vessels into
the port but no armed guards were present on the vessel. I strongly
believe that having armed personnel, such as sea marshals, on these
high interest vessels is very important and will considerably increase
security in our Nation's ports, including Boston. The ability of
terrorists to board a vessel and cause a deliberate release of LNG or
gasoline for that matter is very real. Sea marshals will make it much
more difficult for this to happen. In addition, this legislation would
require a feasibility study to determine the potential to use other
Federal, State or local law enforcement personnel as well as documented
United States Merchant Marine personnel as sea marshals in the future.
Finally, this legislation includes a provision that would require the
administration to begin a vigorous foreign port threat assessment
program. Inspectors would evaluate the effectiveness of security
practices in both cargo and passenger terminals around the world. This
legislation allows the United States to prohibit any vessel from
entering the United States if the vessel has embarked passengers or
cargo from foreign ports that do not have adequate security measures as
determined by our port threat assessment teams. Last year, inspectors
in Italy checking a container bound for Canada discovered a member of
the al-Qaida terrorist organization hiding in a shipping container
equipped with a bed and makeshift bathroom. The suspect, an Egyptian in
a business suit, had with him a Canadian passport, a laptop computer,
two cell phones, airport maps, security passes for airports in three
countries and a certificate proclaiming him an airplane mechanic. We
simply cannot allow any country to have such poor security such that
terrorists can stow away in a shipping container.
As I mentioned earlier this bill would also reauthorize the Coast
Guard. The events of September 11 resulted in a new normalcy for the
Coast Guard as port security and homeland defense missions rose to the
forefront and our country realized the security shortcomings in our
ports. This legislation recognizes this fact and authorizes nearly $6
billion for the Coast Guard in 2003. Obviously this country needs a
viable and robust Coast Guard to safeguard our ports, and to ensure
that commerce and trade can continue to occur in our ports, safely,
efficiently and most importantly without terrorist incident.
At the same time, the Coast Guard also has unique missions not
covered by any other federal agency. It is the only U.S. military
service with domestic law enforcement authority. It has the primary
responsibility of enforcing U.S. fisheries laws, carrying out drug
interdiction at sea, and protecting the marine environment against
pollution. I want to make it clear that all of these missions are
important. And these traditional missions are suffering from resource
constraints.
This bill would also increase authorization for Coast Guard personnel
from approximately 35,000 today, which is roughly the size of the New
York City Police Department to 45,500 by the end of this fiscal year.
This bill would authorize $4.3 billion for operating expenses in
FY2003. Operating expenses cover all of the various activities of the
Coast Guard, from boater safety and drug interdiction to port security,
and adequate authorization is necessary to ensure that all of these
Coast Guard operations can be carried out effectively.
This bill would also authorize $725 million in FY2003 for
acquisition, construction, and improvement of equipment and facilities.
Most of this funding will be used to fund the Deepwater Project, a long
overdue modernization of the Coast Guard's Deepwater assets. The Coast
Guard is the world's 7th largest navy yet they operate a fleet of ships
that rank 39th in age out of the world's 41 maritime fleets. The Coast
Guard is operating World War II-era cutters in the deepwater
environment to perform crucial environmental protection, national
defense, and law enforcement missions. In addition, Coast Guard
aircraft, which are operated in a maintenance-intensive salt water
environment, are reaching the end of their useful lives as well.
Besides high operating costs, these assets are technologically and
operationally obsolete. The Deepwater program will not only reduce
operational and maintenance costs, but will significantly improve upon
current command and control capabilities in the deepwater environment.
I am delighted to see this program moving forward.
Every day on average, the Coast Guard saves 14 lives, seizes 209
pounds of marijuana and 170 pounds of cocaine, and saves $2.5 million
in property. Through boater safety programs and maintenance of an
extensive network of aids to navigation, the Coast Guard protects
thousands of other people engaged in coastwise trade, commercial
fishing activities, and recreational boating. In addition, the Coast
Guard has a role to play in Homeland Defense. It is vitally important
that we adequately fund and staff all of the missions of the Coast
Guard. This legislation, while not as generous as many of us would
like, is a step in the right direction.
Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the legislation
before the Senate which is designed to overhaul port security in this
Nation. Port security is a national imperative in the wake of September
11. Frankly, I think it is regrettable that it has taken us this long
to get to this point. After all, like aviation security, port security
is national security, and it must now be viewed as such. We have to
assume that every facet of our transportation system remains a target
for terrorism. Last year, we moved swiftly in an effort to close many
of the gaps in our aviation security system, but we still have a long
way to go on port and maritime security.
We cannot underestimate the importance of this issue. A terrorist
attack at a major port could cost countless lives and have a
devastating impact on the national and global economy. As U.S. Customs
Service Commissioner Robert Bonner said recently, ``if terrorists used
a sea container to conceal a weapon of mass destruction and detonated
it on arrival at a port, the impact on global trade and the global
economy could be immediate and devastating--all nations would be
affected.'' At the same time, the 2000 interagency commission report
found the state of security in U.S. seaports generally ranges from poor
to fair.
Remember, our ports link us to the world. They serve a crucial
purpose. They give us access to global markets. Ships carry goods
totaling 95 percent of our foreign trade, excluding that with Canada
and Mexico. Furthermore, the volume of goods passing through our ports
is expected to double in the next 20 years. United States waters also
sustain a $24 billion commercial fishing industry and a $71 billion
recreational and tourism industry.
As a member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and
Transportation and the port security conference committee, I am aware
of the important responsibility we have to turn this situation around.
And we can only achieve this with a comprehensive, exhaustive approach
that recognizes that the entire system is only as strong as its weakest
link.
The conference report before us today represents a multifaceted
approach that runs the gamut and sets the stage for a complete
reevaluation of port security from the ground up. We have an incredible
amount of collective talent and experience in this country, and I hope
that it can all be brought together to effect the kind of changes we
need to fix the deficiencies brought tragically home by 9/11.
First and foremost, it is vital that we ensure that the sum total of
the knowledge and resources of Federal, State, and local governments
are brought to bear to both prevent disasters and respond to them. In
that light, coordination is critical, and the measure before us today
provides for greater coordination in this regard. In the wake of the
September 11 attacks, we saw outstanding responses at the local level,
but these actions were ad hoc--there were no national, standardized
directives that could have been quickly disseminated and uniformly
understood
[[Page S10990]]
and applied--in contrast to the FAA directive to ground all planes,
which was enormously successful.
Well, I do not think there is any doubt we can no longer afford such
a piecemeal approach--if we are talking about our national security,
which we are, we are talking about the need to establish a national
response.
To confront the challenge of terrorism aimed at our maritime sector,
we need better information, better information sharing, and more
coordination. We need to enhance our ability to track cargo, and know
what is being moved, with more inspectors, and improved technology. And
we need stringent international standards, so we stop terrorist plots
before they reach our shores.
Security coordination between Federal, State, and local authorities
has been one of my top priorities in the aftermath of September 11, and
I am pleased that the conference report greatly enhances coordination
with respect to port security. The bill requires comprehensive security
and incident response plans for the Nation's 361 commercial seaports.
It also establishes a national maritime security committee and local
maritime security committees at each local port to better coordinate
efforts and share critical information and intelligence.
I am particularly pleased that the conference report includes
provisions that build on legislation I introduced last fall to require
ships to electronically send their cargo manifests to a port before
gaining clearance to enter. The port security conference report expands
on cargo security measures contained in the Trade Act of 2002 by
requiring that cargo and crew member information be relayed to port
security authorities prior to a cargo carrier's arrival in the United
States. The U.S. Customs Service would determine how far in advance to
require such pre-arrival information.
The bill will also provide grants to local port security authorities,
as well as $15 million annually during fiscal years 2003 through 2008
for research and development grants for port security. I have seen
firsthand how important these port security grants are. In my home
State of Maine, the city of Portland recently received a Federal grant
of $175,000 for port security upgrades. However, the fact is that ports
in Maine and across the country still need additional security-related
funding.
The conference report also addresses the complex issue of access to
secure areas of a port by requiring the Secretary of Transportation to
design a comprehensive credentialing process for port workers. The bill
establishes a national standard for biometric security cards for
transportation workers, and would allow the Secretary to determine
whether an individual posed enough of a security risk to be denied an
identification card.
Finally, as ranking member of the commerce Committee's Subcommittee
on Oceans, Atmosphere, and Fisheries, I am please that this conference
agreement includes provisions from my Coast Guard authorization bill.
The conference report will provide the Coast Guard with the funding and
personnel authorization levels it needs as well as over 30 other
provisions important to the Coast Guard and the maritime community.
This is the first time the Coast Guard has had an authorization bill
since 1998 and it was drafted to provide the Coast Guard with the tools
it needs to operate in our post-September 11 reality.
The legislation provides a 1-year authorization for the Coast Guard
to reflect the agency's changing priorities since September 11,
including authorization for $1 billion in new funding, as President
Bush proposed in Portland, ME in February, and the authority to hire
5,500 new personnel to meet both its new homeland security needs as
well as carry out its other traditional missions.
This bill also includes numerous measures which will improve the
Coast Guard's ability to recruit, reward, and retain high-quality
personnel. It addresses various Coast Guard personnel management and
quality of life issues such as promotions, retention, housing
authorities, and education.
Last year alone, the Coast Guard responded to over 40,000 calls for
assistance, assisted $1.4 billion in property, and saved 3,355 lives.
These brave men and women risk their lives to defend our borders from
drugs, illegal immigrants, and other national security threats. In
2001, the Coast Guard seized a record 132,920 pounds of cocaine and
50,000 pounds of marijuana, preventing these substances from reaching
our streets and playgrounds. they also stopped 4,210 illegal migrants
from reaching our shores. They conducted patrols to protect our vital
fisheries stocks and they responded to over 11,000 pollution incidents.
And in the wake of September 11, the men and women of the Coast Guard
have been working harder than ever in the service's largest peacetime
port security operation since World War II. These operations are all
critical to defending our country, protecting our borders, preserving
our environment, saving lives, and ensuring commerce moves safely
through our waters.
As a conferee on this bill, I am proud of the work we have done, and
that we are sending a strong and meaningful port security bill to the
President. We know full well that the world has changed, and seaport
security cannot be taken for granted. We also know that our
transportation system must be secure if we are to move the Nation
forward, and also ensure that we are in a position of strength to be
able to wage the kind of war necessary to eradicate terrorism.
So I urge all my colleagues to offer a strong show up support for
this important legislation.
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise to express my strong support for the
important agreement that my fellow conferees and I achieved in the
conference on the Port and Maritime Security bill. For many months, our
staffs have worked tirelessly to help us reach an agreement that meets
the needs of security while allowing commerce to flourish. This
bipartisan legislation strikes a good balance between security and
trade, and I'm glad to see that it will be headed for the President's
desk.
This legislation, of which I am an original cosponsor, aims to
protect U.S. ports against terrorist attacks. The safer Oregon's ports
are, the more prosperous they will be. I am also pleased to see that
many programs important to Oregon will continue to thrive. These
programs play a critical role in supporting Oregon's commerce and
ports, which support 1 in 7 jobs in the State. The Maritime Fire Safety
Association on the Lower Columbia will continue its important work
along with the important Coast Guard stations that maintain safety and
manage fisheries for communities on the Columbia River and along
Oregon's coast.
In addition to safeguards for Oregon businesses, I am also pleased
that the agreement recognizes the important environmental laws that
help maintain our State's environmental treasures and will continue to
protect Oregon's ocean and coastal environment.
I especially want to commend Chairman Hollings for his perseverance
on this legislation, and I thank my fellow conferees for their hard
work on this important bill.
Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, today, the Senate will consider and approve
a final agreement on maritime and seaport security. This important
legislation will address critical security issues at America's
seaports, and I rise to applaud the efforts of Chairman Hollings and my
other colleagues who served on the conference committee that brokered
this historic agreement.
Conference negotiations always involve a delicate dance of give-and-
take. In this case, the conferees have been true to the intent and
spirit of the originally passed legislation. They have retained
important improvements, including a requirement that ports develop
terrorism response plans; the creation of a coordinated maritime
intelligence system; and a mandate that the U.S. Department of
Transportation conduct background checks of port workers and require
worker identification cards. As important, the agreement reflects some
of the priorities I advanced in my own port security legislation--
including enhanced requirements for the electronic submission of cargo
information and the development of a uniform system for securing
containers destined for the United States. This legislation, while not
a cure-all, constitutes a substantial improvement over the current
security situation at many of our Nation's ports, and I proudly cast my
vote in favor of it.
[[Page S10991]]
That said, passage of this legislation should not lessen our resolve
to remain vigilant in our efforts to protect America's seaports. Each
year, an estimated 11 million containers worldwide are loaded and
unloaded at least 10 times. The U.S. marine transportation system alone
moves more than 2 billion tons of domestic and international freight
and imports 3.3 billion tons of oil. Surprisingly, notwithstanding the
magnitude of cargo transported by sea, there exists no uniform or
mandatory standards for security at leading facilities, no uniform or
mandatory system of sealing containers, and no independent checks to
ensure that basic safeguards are undertaken.
In order to remedy these gaps in our current security scheme, there
remains much work to be done. As I have suggested, we should
recalibrate our transportation agenda to focus more sequarely on
threats to sea and land. We should adopt stiffer criminal penalties,
including enhanced penalties for noncompliance with certain reporting
requirements; continue to explore policies and technologies that will
ensure container security--shockingly, as an independent task force
recently observed, most containers are now seated with a 50-cent lead
tag--make sure that border agents are trained and equipped to detect
threats like nuclear devices, which would easily be concealed in the
mass of uninspected cargo that enters the United States each day; work
in partnership with the trade community to ensure appropriate data
security; and provide for proper data collection and reporting systems
that capture the magnitude of serious crime at seaports and related
facilities.
Let there be no doubt about it: this legislation provides no reprieve
from our obligation to safeguard the homeland. The task will be
difficult and requires dogged perseverance, but the building blocks are
before us. Moreover, we know what we must do: first, we must have solid
intelligence to identify and track our enemies; second, we must erect
the proper barriers and preventive strategies to keep weapons and other
instruments of destruction out of their hands; third, if those
strategies fail, we must be prepared and able to stop any threat before
it arrives on our shores; and fourth, as a fail-stop measure, we must
have the capacity to detect and destroy any threat that makes its way
to our borders. No matter what your political stripe or special
interest, those basic principles must guide our fundamental strategy.
And this legislation moves us substantially in that direction. I am
committed to continuing to work aggressively on these issues in the
108th Congress and invite my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to
join me.
Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I rise in support of the
Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002. Of all of the important
legislation we have worked on this year to protect our Nation from
further acts of terrorism, I consider this bill to be one of utmost
importance.
Most terrorist attacks around the world target transportation, and
the Nation's 361 seaports, 14 of which are in Florida, are especially
vulnerable. Our seaports are open and exposed to acts of terrorism as
well as to drug trafficking, cargo theft, and especially important to
Florida, the smuggling of illegal immigrants. The fact that many of our
ports are located in and around large urban areas makes the security of
the seaports of paramount importance. The extreme vulnerability of the
urban areas in and around seaports was underscored recently by the
fishing boat that eluded Coast Guard interdiction and arrived just off
the shores of Key Biscayne, FL, carrying a large number of Haitian
immigrants. Had this boat carried terrorists or dangerous cargo, a
tragedy might have occurred.
A terrorist attack at our seaports would produce devastating effects
both in terms of loss of life and in economic disruption. Florida's
seaports play a critical role in our national, State, and local
economies. Florida's seaports are major gateways of commerce for the
flow of goods and passengers along the Nation's and Florida's
transportation corridors of commerce. Florida ranks fourth in the
Nation's total container movements, and is home to four of the major
container ports in the country.
Florida has the top three busiest cruise ports in the world.
Approximately twelve million passengers embarked or disembarked at
Florida seaports during 2001 and approximately 80 percent of those
passengers were U.S. citizens. The security of the Nation's seaports is
crucial to the future of the cruise tourism industry.
Although Florida has the largest international water border in the
continental U.S., and thus the largest Federal maritime domain of any
State in the continental U.S., Florida's seaports receive very limited
Federal law enforcement resources, and no Federal funding for security
infrastructure to provide the security controls necessary to protect
themselves from threats of large-scale terrorism, cargo theft, drug
trafficking, and the smuggling of contraband and aliens. The increased
threat of terrorism at our borders demands that action be taken
immediately.
This legislation lays out important security measures that must be
taken to ensure the safety and security of our seaports. It
significantly increases funding for the Coast Guard to $6 billion in
fiscal year 2003. It also authorizes $90 million in research and
development grants to improve our ability to screen cargo for dangerous
contraband, to detect unauthorized people or goods from entering
through seaports, and to secure access to sensitive areas of our ports.
This bill also mandates the development of standards for training
Federal, State, and private security professionals and provides funding
to carry out that training and education. It also mandates for the
first time, the development by ports, facilities, and vessels, of
comprehensive security and incident response plans.
Unfortunately, the final version of this legislation does not include
a dedicated funding source necessary to carry out the needed security
measures. The grant program it establishes will help fund some of the
security enhancements, but there must be more funding allocated to
individual seaports. Florida has already spent more than $7 million
securing our 14 deepwater seaports. Florida needs more Federal funding
to comply with the mandated security measures of this bill. We must
also ensure that ports that have already spent substantial amounts of
funding on security measures are reimbursed for those improvements.
Without a dedicated funding source, it is hard to see how we will
achieve the high level of security at our seaports envisioned by this
bill.
No one deserves more credit for the passage of this important
legislation than my good friend and colleague Senator Bob Graham. It is
an important step forward to securing our seaports and making our
nation safer. But, as Senator Bob Graham has said, we have much more to
do. I look forward to working with him and my colleagues on the
Commerce Committee to take the next steps in making our seaports safe.
Mr. McCAIN. How much time remains on both sides?
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bingaman). The Senator from South Carolina
controls 17 minutes; the Senator from Arizona, 11\1/2\.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I am glad to yield some of my time to the
Senator from South Carolina, if he needs it.
Mr. HOLLINGS. I appreciate it.
Let me thank the distinguished Senator from New York. He is right as
rain. We did not get adequate funds. That was a struggle over on the
House side. That was the Gordian knot broken by our distinguished
minority leader, Senator Trent Lott. But we are going to have to find
not only the money for the research, we will have to find about $4
billion at least to implement this measure.
I thank the Senator from New York. I particularly thank the Senator
and chairman of our subcommittee, Senator Breaux. We had those six
field hearings. We had the Director of Customs there. We had the
Commandant of the Coast Guard. They were very comprehensive hearings
with limited time. I can tell you now, we saw at one particular port a
Ford pickup truck back out of that container, and another container
that we happened upon had a bunch of mahogany desks from Mexico that we
didn't see at the particular time. But later on up in Delaware, the
Philadelphia area, it was opened up. It was all full of cocaine. So we
made a good raid at one of those hearings.
[[Page S10992]]
Otherwise, the chairman on the House side, Mr. Don Young, and his
ranking member, Jim Oberstar, worked around the clock. They had to feel
like we had over on the Senate side to take care of this with the user
fee. But we just couldn't get the support on the House side. We are
only here on account of the leadership of Chairman Young and
Congressman Oberstar. We had Senator Ted Stevens reconciling a good bit
of the differences from time to time. And in the financial area, we had
Senator Bob Graham and Chairman Chuck Grassley of the Finance Committee
who worked with us.
I think we ought to understand that this, for the first time,
requires a national maritime security plan. As part of the plan, each
regional area would be required to have a security plan. It requires
for the first time ever that all waterfront facilities and vessels have
a security plan that would have to be reviewed and approved by the
Coast Guard. It requires for the first time ever that the Government
will do assessments of security at our ports, and these reports would
be the basis for port security planners. The security requirements will
be implemented instantly after review by the Coast Guard, and the act
would be fully implemented within 1 year.
We have background checks on all of the employees. We have the
development of technology for seaport security, the maritime
intelligence system; that requires tracking of vessels through
satellite legal authority over territorial waters, advanced reporting
requirements for vessels and cargo. And one final word: We did work
with the unions in this particular measure. The White House, the
unions, the Republicans, the Democrats, the House, the Senate worked
out those background checks on union employees. So when we got together
and much has been said that on the homeland security bill that was the
holdup--we worked out a very comprehensive system that was approved by
all and will give security to our port facilities.
I thank the distinguished Senator from Arizona for his courtesy in
yielding and his leadership on this particular measure.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona controls the
remainder of the time.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I want to go back for a moment to the
discussion I had with the Senator from Delware concerning rail
security.
First of all, I agree with the Senator from Delaware. We need
absolutely to pass that legislation, particularly now that we have
acted on airport and port security. Rail security is obviously a very
critical item. My point was that there are two bills: One is S. 1550,
the rail security bill, which provides $1.7 billion, $515 million for
Amtrak systemwide security, and then $998 million for tunnel life
safety projects in New York, Baltimore, and Washington, DC, which comes
up to $998 million, and $254 million for safety and security
improvements.
That bill I supported and worked through the committee and would
support it, even though over 50 percent of it goes for just three
areas: New York, Baltimore, and Washington, DC. But that is where
tunnels that need work are located.
I was referring also to S. 1991, which is the Amtrak reauthorization,
which calls for $4 billion annually and also includes the provisions of
S. 1550. Holds were put on S. 1550. I do not support S. 1991 because it
authorizes as much as $4 billion annually.
The Senator from Delaware always talks about the fact that we
subsidize aviation projects. We do. We do primarily through user fees.
There are no user fees that are imposed on the railways of America and
Amtrak.
I am pleased with some of the actions that have been taken by the new
regime over at Amtrak. The new chairman is doing a much better job in
making some very tough decisions.
I look forward to working with the Senators from Delaware. The junior
Senator from Delaware, Mr. Carper, has been very committed and involved
in the project. I look forward to working with him and Senator
Hollings. A top priority will be, in my view, rail security; we should
pass it.
I want to make it clear I don't believe other extraneous projects
should be associated with it. The Amtrak reauthorization should be
taken up on its merits or demerits. But I hope we can move forward with
S. 1550, the rail security bill. Holds have been put on the bill. It
has received my support, as well as that of the distinguished chairman
of the committee.
The issue of Amtrak rail security is of prime importance. The issue
of the future of Amtrak is also of significant importance--not as
important as that of rail security. I look forward to working with
Senator Hollings and the Senators from Delaware and the members of the
committee, including Senator Breaux, as we try to work through this
whole issue of the future of Amtrak. There are a number of different
kinds of proposals, and Mr. Ken Mead of GAO, under whose
responsibilities Amtrak lies, is one to whom all of us pay a great deal
of attention.
Finally, I again thank Senator Hollings for his leadership on this
very important legislation. I don't think there is any doubt in the
minds of most safety and security experts that port security is an area
of significant vulnerability. We hold no illusions there will be
immediate confidence that we can have security in the airports of
America, but I am confident that the implementation of this
legislation, over time, will provide Americans, to a large extent, with
the security and safety that is necessary in the ports of America.
In some ways, you can argue that the way the ports operate in
America, the challenges are even greater than at the airports, or even
rail security, given the hundreds of thousands of containers that come
through these ports on a daily basis, and how vital they are to the
economy of the United States, as we found out in the slowdown/strike in
the west coast ports recently.
So I again thank all involved. I also thank our friends in the other
body, the House, and also for the involvement of the administration.
Mr. President, I yield whatever remaining time I have to the Senator
from South Carolina.
Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished Senator from Arizona. I am
glad to hear him say we are going to work together on port security and
the reauthorization of Amtrak because that is vital. I think if the
leader here, the Senator from Nevada, and the other side are ready, we
can yield back time and proceed to the vote. I yield back any time I
may have. I thank the Senator from Arizona.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
Mr. REID. The Senator from Arizona and the Senator from South
Carolina yielded back their time. I think it is appropriate to start
the vote a couple minutes early.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. If all time is yielded back, the question is
on agreeing to the conference report. The yeas and nays have been
ordered. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. REID. I announce that the Senator from Hawaii (Mr. Inouye), the
Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Kennedy), the Senator from Louisiana
(Ms. Landrieu), and the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Torricelli) are
necessarily absent.
Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr.
Helms) is necessarily absent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Carper). Are there any other Senators in
the Chamber desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 95, nays 0, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 243 Leg.]
YEAS--95
Akaka
Allard
Allen
Barkley
Baucus
Bayh
Bennett
Biden
Bingaman
Bond
Boxer
Breaux
Brownback
Bunning
Burns
Byrd
Campbell
Cantwell
Carnahan
Carper
Chafee
Cleland
Clinton
Cochran
Collins
Conrad
Corzine
Craig
Crapo
Daschle
Dayton
DeWine
Dodd
Domenici
Dorgan
Durbin
Edwards
Ensign
Enzi
Feingold
Feinstein
Fitzgerald
Frist
Graham
Gramm
Grassley
Gregg
Hagel
Harkin
Hatch
Hollings
Hutchinson
Hutchison
Inhofe
Jeffords
Johnson
Kerry
Kohl
Kyl
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Lincoln
Lott
Lugar
McCain
McConnell
Mikulski
Miller
Murkowski
Murray
Nelson (FL)
Nelson (NE)
Nickles
Reed
Reid
Roberts
Rockefeller
Santorum
Sarbanes
Schumer
Sessions
Shelby
Smith (NH)
[[Page S10993]]
Smith (OR)
Snowe
Specter
Stabenow
Stevens
Thomas
Thompson
Thurmond
Voinovich
Warner
Wyden
NOT VOTING--5
Helms
Inouye
Kennedy
Landrieu
Torricelli
The conference report was agreed to.
Mr. HOLLINGS. I move to reconsider the vote.
Mr. BYRD. I move to lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
____________________