On The Waterfront

Steve Kroft Takes A Fresh Look At U.S. Port Security

(CBS) 
But it’s not just port cities that are at risk. In most cases those shipping containers are quickly loaded onto trains and trucks and dispatched inland to practically every town in America. Flynn says it wouldn’t be difficult for a terrorist to track a container with a global positioning system and detonate a weapon hidden inside. In fact, someone could even use a shipping container to smuggle himself into the country.

Italian authorities arrested a man trying to ship himself from Egypt to Canada inside a container. It was equipped with a makeshift bed and enough food and water for the three-week journey. The stowaway was a trained airplane mechanic and he was carrying a laptop computer, a satellite phone, fake credit cards and an airport security pass.

Admiral James Loy, the former Coast Guard commandant and former Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, told 60 Minutes there was evidence that al Qaeda terrorists were already involved in the maritime trades.

Asked if he believes al Qaeda has ships, Loy said, "We are pretty certain that there's some traceability to al Qaeda and, believe me, we are very, very interested in those vessels."

Loy said he believes the terrorist have ships. "Clearly so," he said.

"Then you can't say how many," Kroft asked.

"And I'm not going to tell you how many, no," Loy replied.

The United States believes one of those ships delivered a cargo container filled with explosives that were used in the embassy bombings in East Africa.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said this week that now it is screening 100 percent of the cargo entering U.S. ports, which is reassuring, but according to Steven Flynn, somewhat misleading.

How many of the containers are actually inspected?

"First we gotta get, what's an inspection, all right?" Flynn says. "And, you know, Americans think we're opening up containers like we do the luggage at airports and looking inside. That happens very rarely, like under 1 percent that we open up the car and look inside."

When customs says it screens 100 percent of the cargo, that simply means it scrutinizes the paper work of cargo manifests and of ships headed for the United States, looking for things that might raise a red flag. It could be specific intelligence, or a container from a shipper they have never seen before, or one they have had trouble with in the past. Special attention is paid to unusual items or shipments from countries linked to terrorism.

Kevin McCabe is the chief customs inspector at the combined ports of New York and Newark, the largest container port on the East Coast. He told 60 Minutes that on an average day, six to seven percent of the shipments are singled out for special attention.

"So we're confident that we're doing the percent that gives us the biggest bang for the buck," says McCabe.

At the very least the suspicious containers are checked to see if their seal has been broken, and most are run through a giant X-ray machine, called "Vacis," which can see through the steel walls of containers and outline any differences in density within the shipment, which customs calls an "anomaly."

Asked if he would know a weapon of mass destruction if you saw one, McCabe says, "I'll know an anomaly when I see it and then we'll have to cautiously identify it."

When 60 Minutes was there four years ago, a container was singled out because it originated in the Middle East and because it fit a profile based on intelligence information.

The container had emanated in Oman, went through the Netherlands and then arrived in the port of Newark.

Asked if this was a possible terrorist route, McCabe said, "It could be. Yeah, this is something that we're looking at."

The manifest said only that it was a shipment of food stuffs. But the Vacis machine showed an anomaly. Part of the shipment was heavier than the rest.

They decided they better have a look, so the container was moved to an adjoining warehouse to be searched by hand, a process that can take up to five hours.

As it turns out they did not find a weapon of mass destruction, only cookies. The anomaly the machine detected was the difference in density between fruit-filled tarts and chocolate wafers.