Customs accused of failing to protect against nuclear smuggling

General Accounting Office officials told congressional investigators Thursday that the United States has supplied Russia with more sophisticated radiation detection equipment than the United States uses at its own borders.

GAO said 70 portal radiation monitors supplied by the United States at a cost of $11.2 million have detected 275 cases of radioactive material at Russian borders. The United States has only one of these monitors in use as a pilot program at its border.

In a scathing report prepared for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, GAO drew a picture of U.S. borders vulnerable to nuclear smugglers.

Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Jim Greenwood, R-Pa., expressed dismay that the government will spend $8.3 billion on a missile defense system and perhaps more on a possible war against Iraq, but has not taken steps to secure its own borders against nuclear smugglers.

"Given these stark facts, there is simply no explanation for the federal government's diffuse, ineffective and plodding effort to secure this nation's ports and borders from nuclear terrorism," he said.

Customs Service inspectors who are responsible for border security "are not experts in the interdiction of nuclear devices or in the assessment, procurement, or deployment of systems designed to detect nuclear devices," Greenwood said.

Gary Jones of GAO said Customs Service inspectors use small, personal radiation detectors known as "pagers" that they wear on their belts as primary radiation detectors, but the devices have limited range "and are not designed to detect weapons-usable nuclear material."

The pagers, Jones said, are more effectively used with portal monitors that the Energy Department is supplying to Russia. Customs inspectors use X-ray equipment for small packages, but Customs has only one pilot project using the sophisticated portal monitors to check people and vehicles. It plans to purchase up to 400 portal monitors by the end of fiscal 2003.

Even so, GAO said, equipment evaluation and testing could take several years, and the Customs Service does not have a schedule for deploying the time frame for actually deploying the monitors.

The Energy Department installed 70 portal monitors since 1997 at eight border crossings in Russia-the first of 60 sites where the United States plans to install the monitors. So far, the department told GAO, the monitors have detected 275 cases involving radioactive material, including contaminated scrap metal, irradiated cargo and other materials "that could pose a proliferation concern." The detection has spurred Russia to accelerate its own border security plans, GAO said.

Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner defended his agency against charges of inaction, saying that stopping the smuggling of nuclear materials was his agency's highest priority.