[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 23 (Tuesday, February 28, 2006)]
[House]
[Page H418]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             PORT SECURITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Dent). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, for more than a decade I have been 
expressing concern about our ports and our port security. Let me 
explain.
  The United States has signed onto international agreements, consensus 
agreements, where we allow ships to be owned secretly and flagged under 
flags of convenience from countries that barely exist, Liberia, other 
countries, like Malta and Panama, who look at it as a way to make 
money, but care nothing about safety and security. And even they will 
freely admit they do not know who owns these ships.
  Osama bin Laden may own a fleet of freighters. We are not allowed to 
know that, but they can sail into a U.S. port under a Liberian, 
Panamanian, or Maltese flag. That is a concern. We do not know who the 
crews are on these ships.
  After an accident on my coast, where I started investigating the 
credentials of the Filipino captain, I found out that at an 
International Maritime Organization-approved school in the Philippines, 
which has never been visited or inspected, which does not exist; 
anybody, any terrorist, anybody, can buy captain's papers for about 
$2,500 and they are a captain. So if Osama bin Laden owns a ship, a 
terrorist buys fake papers, he is now a captain on that ship.
  Well, but there must be measures to secure the cargo. Well, not 
really. We require a manifest, a piece of paper, or in this day and 
age, an electronic transmission of a list of what is in the containers 
on that ship.
  Now, that is pretty hard to phony up. But then they put these little 
seals on there that a 6-year-old kid could peel off and open up if the 
container has been inspected. It would be too expensive, $1 to $2 per 
container, to have tamper-proof seals. So we cannot have tamper-proof 
seals. So we do not know who owns the ships. We do not know who crews 
the ships, and we do not know what is on the cargo on those ships that 
are coming into U.S. waters.
  Then we have the ``thin blue line,'' the United States Coast Guard. 
Here are the concerns they raised about this UAE deal: The Coast Guard 
said, ``There are many intelligence gaps concerning the potential for 
DPW or PNO assets to support terrorist operations that preclude the 
completion of a thorough threat assessment. The breadth of the 
intelligence gaps also infer potential unknown threats against a large 
number of potential vulnerabilities.''
  But then, when they were backed into a corner and their funding was 
probably threatened by the White House, the Coast Guard said, ``The DP 
World's acquisition of PNO in and of itself does not pose a significant 
threat to U.S. assets in ports in the continental United States.'' 
Notice the qualification. ``In and of itself.''
  The Coast Guard knows that we do not know who owns the ships. The 
Coast Guard knows that we do not know who crews those ships. The Coast 
Guard knows that we do not know what is on those ships. So they are 
saying this is another level of concern, this government which 
supported the Taliban, Mr. Khan and his nuclear proliferation, actually 
controlling the physical facilities. If all that other stuff was taken 
care of, if we knew who owned the ships, if we knew who crewed the 
ships, if we knew exactly what was on the ships, if it was tamper-proof 
sealed, then maybe you could think about this.
  Now, the President says he did not know a thing about it, but he 
knows it was absolutely fine because all his people took care of it. 
You would think that that might have included the Secretary of Defense. 
He says he did not know a thing about it, but he knows it is just fine 
too. And now they say, well, we will have a review for 45 days, but we 
know it is just fine. We just need that time to tell people it is just 
fine.
  This is plain and simple the Bush administration once more putting 
commerce, putting multinational corporate profits ahead of the safety 
and security of the American people. This is about a free trade deal 
they are negotiating with the UAE. This is about our huge and growing 
trade deficit where more and more foreign countries are going to be 
coming back here, buying up critical assets in the United States of 
America, because we have a totally failed trade policy under this 
administration.
  And what do they want to do? They want to do more of it, and now they 
want to allow people to buy terminals in our ports and jeopardize the 
security of the American people.
  Enough is enough. It is time to stop this madness.

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