Port Security Story Has Lasted Longer Than Most

Feb. 28, 2006 — -- Administration officials are quick to point out as they get grilled by lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the financial pages and newspapers like The Wall Street Journal were reporting on the proposed takeover of operations at U.S. ports by an Arab company back in October.

But that's when it was a financial story. Between October and now the ports deal has morphed into front-page security news and become an allegory for America's preparedness for terrorist nuclear attacks and bigotry against Arabs and Arab countries.

The administration has been on the defense on the port story since last week, and with three congressional hearings today in which the issue will play large and more to come later in the week, the White House is unlikely to take the upper hand anytime soon.

It's hard to come up with anything in the past several years that has united Republicans and Democrats; and this unity against the White House and its decision-making, as much as the actual security concerns, has played a big role in making the port story news.

By any account, the story has built slower than most stories of the moment, and its 15 minutes has lasted longer than most. But in that trite journalistic saying -- it's got legs.

President Bush has maintained that the deal should go through because the United States has to be fair to Arab companies.

"What kind of signal does it send throughout the world if it's OK for a British company to manage the ports but not a company that has been secured, that has been cleared for security purposes, from the Arab world?"

Terrorism experts and the professional employees of security agencies seem to agree in near unanimity that the deal poses no real security threat to the United States beyond the current sorry state of port security.

But the story led evening newscasts all last week and into this week.

Just two weeks ago, several Democratic senators and Republican congressmen from New York talked about the proposed merger between the British public company P&O Ports and DP World, which is owned by the royal family of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Ted Bilkie, the chief operating officer for the company, will answer questions before the Senate Commerce Committee this afternoon.

At one point, the port story was overshadowed by a public tiff in Capitol Hill hearings between former FEMA Director Michael Brown and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff over who was more responsible for the poor federal government showing in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the waterlogging of New Orleans.

It probably would have stayed that way if last Tuesday, while Congress was out of session and lawmakers were in their home districts, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a possible 2008 presidential candidate, had not sent out a surprise paper statement that he would fight the deal.

Suddenly the Republicans turned on one another and the story resonated with members in their home districts. Despite the assurances from terrorism experts, voters are overwhelmingly opposed to the deal. After hurried weekend negotiations between their respective staff members, Frist and Bush came to an agreement that would allow the sale to continue on its March 2 finalization date, but U.S. port operations would be put in a holding company.

Moderate Republicans have joined with Democrats to offer legislation that would put a hold on the sale pending a 45-day review and an extra month for Congress to sign off on the deal. But Frist controls what goes on the Senate floor and when.

This issue has resonated across the political spectrum with liberal and conservative voters.

And so this Fat Tuesday, with the long-term effects of Katrina only just becoming apparent, with thousands still missing from the floods and hurricanes, and thousands more still homeless, when Chertoff appears before a subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee and defends the White House budget, a majority of the tough questions he faces will focus on port security and the process by which DHS signed off on the DP World deal.

Specifically, an internal guard report from Dec. 13, declassified Monday by yet another Senate committee, pointed to "intelligence gaps" that the sale could create.

After a classified briefing on the report, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, told reporters that she is "more convinced than ever that the process [by which DP World was cleared to operate U.S. ports] is flawed." She promised to draft legislation to increase congressional oversight over the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

The committee is chaired by the Treasury Department, and its members represent 11 U.S. agencies, including DHS and the Pentagon. It vets all investments by foreign companies in U.S. companies that could affect national security.

The Coast Guard report never made it to the Department of Homeland Security. And Chertoff found himself explaining why he, as secretary, was unaware of the DP World deal until it became an issue in the press. Neither did Treasury Secretary John Snow know about the deal nor even Bush.

National Intelligence Director John Negroponte is also on the Hill, at a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. In the midst of answering the weighty question: Is Iraq in the midst of civil war and, if not, how are we going to define 'civil war,' he also took questions about the ports deal, which he told senators "raised no red flags."

In addition to the Coast Guard report, Democrats alleged today that similar red flags were raised internally at Customs and Border Patrol but never made it up the DHS chain of command.

Perhaps in a rush to address these allegations of Customs' qualms before the Committee on Foreign Investments approved the DP World port takeover, an additional witness will headline today's commerce hearing, namely, Jayson Ahern, assistant commissioner for field operations, customs and border protection for the Department of Homeland Security.

Ahern will testify before Bilkie.