Lawmaker says DHS is thwarting cargo screening mandate

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., has charged the Homeland Security Department with appearing to thwart a congressional mandate requiring all cargo to be scanned at foreign ports by 2012 before being shipped to the United States.

A 2007 law required the department to ensure, within five years, that every cargo container is scanned at foreign ports for nuclear weapons and radiological material.

To help meet the mandate, Congress also required the department to establish a test program at three foreign ports to scan cargo.

The department's Customs and Border Protection section, which is responsible for meeting the mandate, expanded the test program to six ports. But Thompson cited a report that CBP recently submitted to Congress identifying challenges in carrying out the mandate.

In the report, CBP said it will focus future scanning efforts on "high-risk trade corridors, which represent the greatest threats to the United States." In a letter Tuesday to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Thompson said "the unilateral decision to ignore the 100 percent scanning mandate runs afoul of the [law] and puts our ports at risk." Thompson said the way the department has implemented the test program has also "significantly damaged our nation's relationship with several key countries and the private sector." He said at least two countries and one port operator have pulled out of the test program because it is not clear if the department plans to implement the scanning requirement.

"Your actions to hinder progress on this vital homeland security initiative are very troubling and may have put at risk our nation's security and the credibility of the American government in the eyes of our international partners," Thompson wrote to Chertoff.

A Homeland Security spokeswoman Wednesday said the department is committed to using a risk-based strategy and multiple layers of security to identify high-risk cargo.

"What I think is missing here is that members of Congress fail to realize that we cannot force foreign governments to do what we want. We must work with them, and we are, on consensus and agreement," she said. "Burning down the forest to save a few trees is not the best way ahead." But at a Senate hearing in June, CBP Deputy Commissioner Jayson Ahern defended the agency's plan to target scanning efforts on high-risk shipments. "Prioritizing deployments in this way will maximize the security benefit that can be achieved with limited departmental funds and ensure that CBP has the capacity to compile, assess, and integrate the additional scan data into its effective, functioning risk-based strategy," he said in testimony to the Senate Commerce Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure Subcommittee.

Ahern said scanning efforts being tested at foreign ports have revealed technological and logistical challenges that illustrate "that the scanning of all U.S.-bound maritime containers in a foreign port is possible on a relatively contained scale." In response to Ahern's testimony, New Jersey Democratic Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez introduced a bill intended to improve security at U.S. ports. The bill would require Homeland Security to create minimum security standards for all containers entering the United States.