Protecting the Port of Oakland a rising concern

Oakland Tribune, Jan 5, 2004 by Sean Holstege, STAFF WRITER

At Europe's biggest commercial port, hundreds of robot-run trucks and cranes shuttle around stacked rows of freight boxes, making dock workers a rare sight and the town-sized facility one of the most automated, secure ports in the world.

The Dutch port of Maasvlakte, near Rotterdam, and the Port of Oakland share a global urgency to tighten security and stop terrorists from using shipping the same way they perverted commercial aviation.

High on the worry list of potential plots: sneaking a crude radioactive bomb in a cargo box and blowing it up in a city waterfront, or ramming a fuel-laden oil tanker into a crowded wharf, refinery or major bridge.

Yet security measures, even for advanced port facilities such as Rotterdam and Oakland, have lagged far behind the more vis-ible tightening at airports and on aircraft since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror strikes. It's worse around the seven seas.

The United States is leading the rush to plug these holes in the wake of FBI and other government warnings that shipping is at risk.

"There is evidence that the al-Qaida terrorist grouping has taken note of the value and vulnerability of the maritime sector," said Tim Spicer, chairman of Aegis Defense Services, a British security consulting firm.

At the Port of Oakland, preparedness has been a mixed bag.

Oakland, ranked second on California's list of prime terrorist targets, was one of the first ports in the country to develop a security plan and vet it with the Coast Guard.

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta chose the Bay Area soon after Sept. 11 to test the Coast Guard's new Sea Marshal program. Cutters intercept inbound cargo vessels 92 hours before they reach port. Armed Coast Guard teams board those vessels and make sure the crew and its contents are safe and fully accounted for.

It's part of a larger effort to "push back America's borders" across the sea, as Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert Bonner describes it.

He has established a series of measured policies aimed at detecting suspicious cargo as far away from U.S. cities and as early in the supply chain as possible for the 6 million boxes that enter this country each year. Those measures include:

Trade partnerships in which ports, shippers, stevedoring companies and manufacturers around the globe participate in voluntary security improvements, which U.S. customs officials later validate;

Requiring all U.S.-bound vessels to provide electronic cargo manifests 24 hours before departing;

Placing U.S. customs investigators in foreign ports.

Late last year, Bonner announced a "smart box" initiative. Shippers will get speedier clearance if each box of their cargo is secured by a heavy-duty metal seal and an electronic intrusion sensor.

All of these measures have made Oakland safer -- on paper.

On the ground, extra precautions have helped, but physically protecting Oakland's docks has proven an uphill battle.

On the plus side, Oakland was one of the early recipients of a VACIS machine, a truck-mounted device that beams radioactive isotopes though 40-foot boxes to "see" their contents in a matter of seconds. It is used on the most suspicious cargo to find radiation sources and inexplicably bulky objects.

Just before the holidays, Oakland was cleared to become one of the first six ports to receive U-shaped radiation detection portals. At $280,000 a piece, these devices screen boxes passing through every marine terminal.

But there were no assurances how many portals Oakland would get, nor how soon, given that the program to install them nationally would cost an estimated $500 million.

It was the same with three rounds of port security grants. Also last month, Oakland got $1.7 million, a fraction of its $59 million request. Port officials said the grant from the Department of Homeland Security wasn't enough for even the bare bones: proper fences, gates and surveillance equipment.

Bay Area lawmakers complained for the second time in six months.

Back at Rotterdam's port, where 3 million oceangoing containers are loaded or unloaded every year, all the robots in the world can't protect against one inescapable fact: the cargo itself is an attractive terrorist target.

Commercial ships transport 80 percent of the world's traded goods. Security experts warn that a terrorist attack could sink a ship, cripple a port, panic markets and disrupt world trade.

Lloyd's of London, the insurance market, considers an attack on a cruise ship to be "a high likelihood," said Neil Smith, marine manager for the Lloyd's Market Association.

"The only thing that can prevent it ... is intelligence and careful screening of all the unfamiliar vessels coming into your port," said Fer van de Laar, safety manager for the International Association of Ports and Harbors. He conceded terrorists would more likely evade detection by commandeering a ship that was already well- known to a port.

To inflict greater economic damage, terrorists could attack a strategic waterway, such as the Suez or Panama canals, or congested shipping lanes in the straits of Malacca or Gibraltar.