Robert C. Bonner, commissioner of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, Department of Homeland Security addressed the Council on Foreign Relations on the subject of potential terrorist attacks from cargo crates. Work is being done to try to alleviate the threat but this disturbing and ominous discussion has been a concern of mine for some time. Persiding over the procedings was Stepen E. Flynn, author of
America the Vulnerable, where he warns of this threat and offers a stradegy for dealing with it. From the speach:
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When you think about it, the container is the potential Trojan horse of the 21st century. But a container can be used to transport more than just terrorists. A number of national security experts--and I certainly include Steve in this--have pointed out the vulnerability of ocean-going cargo containers to terrorist exploitation. A weapon, by the way, could be obviously concealed inside a container where the container can literally be made into a weapon. A 40-foot container could become a missile that's literally wafted into a U.S. seaport on a container ship and unloaded at one of our ports. For historical reasons, most of the U.S. seaports tend to be located right in the middle of some of our nation's largest urban areas; New York is no exception. All of our cities started off as seaports--New York, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and Seattle.
A Conversation with Commissioner Rob Bonner Question for debate:
With 25,000 containers coming into the United States a day how much of a threat is this to our national security?
Are we doing enough to prevent these containers from becoming a terrorist trojan horse?