How Secure Are U.S. Borders?

Sept. 11, 2003 — -- For a second year, U.S. government screeners have failed to detect a shipment of depleted uranium in a container sent by ABCNEWS from overseas as part of a test of security at American ports.

"I think this is a case in point which established the soft underbelly of national security and homeland defense in the United States," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who has been urging the Bush administration to do more to enhance port security.

The ABCNEWS test was criticized by officials at the Department of Homeland Security, who assigned agents in at least four cities to investigate ABC personnel and news sources involved.

"I think you're a news reporter that is trying to carry out a hoax on our inspectors," Undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security Asa Hutchinson told Brian Ross, ABCNEWS' chief investigative correspondent, for a report to be broadcast tonight on World News Tonight and PrimeTime Thursday.

The ABCNEWS project involved a shipment to Los Angeles of just under 15 pounds of depleted uranium, a harmless substance that is legal to import into the United States. The uranium, in a steel pipe with a lead lining, was placed in a suitcase for the shipment.

"If they can't detect that, then they can't detect the real thing," explained Tom Cochran, a nuclear physicist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which lent the material to ABCNEWS for the project.

Cochran said the highly enriched uranium used for nuclear weapons would, with slightly thicker shielding, give off a signature similar to depleted uranium in the screening devices currently being used by homeland security officials at American ports.

Chest Never Opened in Jakarta

The ABCNEWS suitcase containing the uranium was placed in a teak trunk along with other furniture put in a container in Jakarta, Indonesia, a city considered by U.S. authorities to be one of the most active al Qaeda hot spots in the world. The container was shipped to Los Angeles in late July, just one week before the bombing of the Jakarta Marriott Hotel that killed 12 people.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has claimed major improvements in port security, in part because of enhanced vigilance overseas. "So that our borders become the last line of defense, not our first line of defense," Ridge said in a speech last week. He said the United States was increasing security "thousands of miles away, long before a container is first loaded on a ship."