By Calvin Biesecker
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano yesterday appeared to back off further from a congressional mandate that 100 percent of sea-going cargo bound for the United States first be electronically scanned for potential threats before departing from an overseas port.
Last year, Napolitano and other Department of Homeland Security officials told Congress that meeting the 2012 deadline set forth in the 2007 9/11 Commission Implementation Act would unlikely be met (Defense Daily, April 2, Feb. 26, 2009). At that time, she and officials from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) mentioned a range of obstacles including funding, technology, political, environmental and legal issues that stand in the way of meeting the screening mandate.
However, she told the House Homeland Security Committee yesterday that “I would like to address if 100 percent [screening] is the way to go now that other things have occurred” in the past three years. The other things include additional data elements that importers are required to submit CBP to better allow it to identify high risk shipments, electronic records sharing and prior notice of arrival by ships destined to enter U.S. waters, she said.
Napolitano’s remarks were in response to questions from Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the committee, who wanted to a better understanding on why DHS believes the 2012 deadline won’t be met. He noted that CBP’s FY ’11 budget request related to overseas scanning of U.S.-bound maritime cargo is cut 48 percent from FY ’10 levels.
Napolitano said that previous deployments of screening technology coupled with the build out of other risk assessment programs, such as the 10-2 importer security filing, means that “we can achieve the necessary screening” of inbound cargo. Napolitano’s views on the risk-based approach to screening basically mirror those of her processor, Michael Chertoff.
Congress required CBP to establish screening pilot programs at several overseas ports to scan U.S.-bound cargo with radiation portal monitors to check for potential nuclear threats and with large non-intrusive inspection systems to peer inside a container to verify that its contents match the cargo manifest.
Those pilot projects have been ongoing at five ports but challenges such as “buy-in” from host governments, equipment downtime and various operational and safety concerns are leading CBP to close three of the pilots, according to the agency’s budget documents sent to Congress last month. Still, CBP said it will continue to test new technology and try to “find solutions to these complex challenges.”
CBP is also requesting a $50.7 million cut in an ongoing and well established container security program known as the Container Security Initiative, in which agency and overseas port officials work together to screen high risk cargo before it leaves for the United States. The CSI request in FY ’11 is $101 million.
In its budget request, CBP says that the CSI program supports border security as part of a layered defense but is not essential to the agency’s core missions that can be done at the border. Instead, “As the CSI program matures, CBP will shift from placing U.S. personnel overseas (part of the initial CSI operating protocols) to a more technological approach, relying on remote targeting from the National Targeting Center-Cargo and remote examinations and image analysis, and greater reciprocal examination relationships with host governments,” the agency says in its budget justification documents. This maturing allows CBP to relocate personnel and certain other resources back to U.S. ports, it says.
Thompson said that he wants more direction from Napolitano on the direction DHS plans to take regarding the overseas screening mandate.
Also on the international front, Napolitano said that airborne cargo bound for the United States will all be screened aboard passenger planes before the end of this year. Congress had established an August 2010 deadline for 100 percent of all cargo shipped aboard passenger planes–whether departing from a U.S. airport or from an international airport headed to the U.S.–be screened for explosives prior to departure.
Napolitano said that the deadline will be met for cargo originating in the United States but that it will be a few months longer before the international portion of the deadline is met. It had been unclear when DHS expected to achieve full screening of U.S.-bound cargo.