On The Waterfront

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

(CBS) 
The day 60 Minutes visited, almost all the cargo was waved right on through. Flynn thinks the system is a house of cards.

"They're making their best guess about what they think is a high risk material," Flynn says. "And they're inspecting that. But they assume that the other 95 percent has come from trusted shippers, known shippers, you know, name brand companies that they're not involved with terrorism."

Flynn says it's unrealistic to believe that. "If I'm a terrorist and intend on causing mass disruption, I wanna go after a name brand company and I can find a way to do that," he says.

And he gave us a hypothetical.

"A well-known brand name company, has a potentially a factory in Indonesia," says Flynn. "And on the truck that loads the container in Indonesia is driving to the port of Jakarta, on its way gets intercepted. And if somebody offers that truck buyer, driver more money than he's seen in his lifetime to basically go take a long break, they access the container. They put something bad in it. But because it is a trusted shipper, a known player, it gets loaded on the ship, it's offloaded, driven to the heartland, America and something goes very wrong."

Flynn acknowledges that some progress has been made since 60 Minutes first talked to him. Customs and Border Protection now have inspectors in 42 foreign ports, where they can check on cargo before it reaches U.S. shores.

And shipping companies are required to provide U.S. officials with much more information about what is on board. They’ve also begun deploying a new generation of radiation detection equipment, that could help spot a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb. But for the most part, Flynn says port security remains drastically underfunded, with major vulnerabilities largely ignored.

"In Los Angeles and Long Beach today there are 11,000 truck operators who can have access to the port," said Flynn. "And they get into the port by showing a California driver's license. There's no credentialing process. The federal government said we're gonna get a transportation worker identification card. Congress has mandated we have one. We still don't have one."

"So there're no background checks of anybody going in and out of the port?" Kroft asked.

"There's no background checks required for the transportation providers. And there's a lot of other people come into ports, too," says Flynn. "And the people who are at the gate, the cops are still rent-a-cops, basically. And they're the poorest paid workers in the seaport on average. There's no minimum standards. The federal government still has set no national standards for what a private security firm should be if it's protecting this critical national asset. And that's what Americans should be outraged about."

The White House maintains that the Coast Guard and customs are in charge of port security, but protection for most of the facilities, from gate guards to night watchmen, is the responsibility of the port operators, the private companies that run the terminals where cargo is off-loaded and stored.

It's companies like Dubai Ports World, the United Arab Emirates firm that hopes to manage container terminals at six ports on the East Coast, and has caused such a scandal in Congress this past week.

But Stephen Flynn thinks the scandal is not the nationality of owners, but rather the lack of rules and regulations that would govern them.

"Yeah, isn't it outrageous that we're basically delegating this job of policing this critical national asset to a terminal operator without much checking?" said Flynn. "We have one company out here now in the crosshairs. But we have a system wide failure. We are protecting this critical asset with rent-a-cops determined by all private operators, whether they're American owned or foreign owned, without setting the bar very high. That's crazy. And we're doing it without givin' the Coast Guard adequate resources to police it or enough customs agents to make sure that proper inspections are done. Those are the problems that I hope Washington gets around to debating."