New Report Reveals Gaps in Port Safety

ByABC News

October 13, 2004, 4:14 PM

Oct. 13, 2004 -- -- A new report from the Homeland Security Inspector General's office reveals that serious questions still remain regarding the prevention of nuclear materials from entering the country, according to Rep. Jim Turner, D-Texas, ranking member of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, who had a classified briefing.

Turner and Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., asked for the report after ABC News successfully shipped 15 pounds of depleted uranium into the country two years in a row. The Inspector General's report will be released to the public on Thursday.

"Improvements are needed in the inspection process to ensure that weapons of mass destruction or other implements of terror do not gain access to the U.S. through oceangoing cargo containers," said the report, which was obtained by ABC News. "The protocols and procedures that [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] officials followed, at the time of the two smuggling incidents, were not adequate to detect the depleted uranium."

"It is hard to see how the government can reassure anyone based on the Inspector General's report," Turner said. The sad state of affairs is that three years after 9/11 it still seems possible to get nuclear material into this country."

In a statement to ABC News, the Department of Homeland Security says it has deployed hundreds of new highly sensitive radiation portals throughout the country, without directly answering the questions Turner says are raised by the Inspector General's report.

"While the equipment and protocols in place at the time of the two smuggling attempts by ABC News could detect highly enriched uranium, they did not detect the harmless depleted uranium. The DHS Inspector General acknowledged in his report, that the equipment and protocols in place today can detect not only highly enriched uranium, but also materials that emit minute amounts of radiation, like bananas and depleted uranium," according to the statement.

The shipment last year originated in Jakarta, Indonesia, an area of known al Qaeda activity.

"Nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists is our number one threat," Turner said.

The test conducted by ABC News used depleted uranium, which is harmless but when shielded replicates the signature of the enriched uranium used in nuclear bombs.

At the time Homeland Security officials maintained that the ABC News test was flawed and that they could have detected the real thing.

"I think you're a news reporter that is trying to carry out a hoax on our inspectors," Homeland Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson had said.

Homeland officials misled the public about how effectively nuclear material can be prevented from entering the country, according to Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who was briefed on the subject.

"It was not accurate that the Department of Homeland Security could have detected the uranium being brought into our country, whether it was depleted uranium or highly enriched uranium," said Markey.

The uranium was packed into a teak trunk in Jakarta, then placed in a shipping container bound for the United States. The uranium remained undetected in its three-week journey across the Pacific to the port of Los Angeles, passing through several supposedly state-of-the-art checkpoints.

"The test that you put to them, which looks to me be a fair test, they failed," said professor Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.

"What indeed is the most likely way that a nuclear weapon would be delivered by a terrorist to the U.S.? The most likely way is in a cargo container in a ship."