Bomb Parts Slip Past Airport Defenses
Congressional investigators testing U.S. port security smuggled enough radioactive material into the United States last year to make two radiological “dirty” bombs, officials told a Senate panel last month.
In December, undercover teams from the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s audit arm, carried small amounts of cesium-137 — a radioactive material used for cancer therapy, industrial gauges and well-logging — in the trunks of rental cars through border checkpoints in Texas and Washington state, The Washington Post reports.
The material triggered radiation alarms, but the smugglers used false documents to persuade U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspectors to let them through with it.
“These are documents my 20-year-old son could easily develop with a simple Internet search,” said Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), who chaired the hearing into covert nuclear threats before a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee yesterday. “It is a problem when it is tougher to buy cold medicine than it is to acquire enough material to construct a dirty bomb.”
Jayson P. Ahern, an assistant commissioner for field operations for Customs and Border Protection, says U.S. customs officers were unable to confirm the validity of counterfeit Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses presented by testers, but a system will be in place within 30 days to do so.
“All systems worked, and officers appeared to follow our protocols,” Ahern said. “But the bottom line is the material was let in with questionable documents.”
Several House Homeland Security Committee members were alarmed by the report.
“Half-measures will not prevent the next terrorist disaster — we cannot allow half of the contents traveling on passenger planes to go unscreened, as we continue to do today,” Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) says.
The GAO test occurred as the Transportation Security Administration was in the midst of providing explosives-detection training for 18,000 screeners at the nation’s biggest airports. “Certainly, the training had not burned in,” Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Edmund “Kip” Hawley said. Two thousand additional screeners have been trained since.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) adds: “TSA has spent so much time telling people to take off their shoes and belts, that they have missed the bomb-making materials.”
Another recently released GAO report finds port security problems including foreign corruption, technical limitations, poor maintenance and lack of infrastructure compromise detection systems placed overseas by the United States.
Michael Levi, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the 150 microcuries of cesium-137 smuggled by each team would barely cause more than one death from cancer per million people exposed for 30 years.
The GAO also reports that it is “unlikely” the Department of Homeland Security can install 3,034 new-generation radiation detectors by September 2009 as planned at border crossings, ports and mail facilities, and that the $1.2 billion program may incur a $342 million overrun.
