FEATURE ARTICLE

December 2004

If Ports Are Attacked, U.S. Lacks Plans to Deal With Aftermath

by Joe Pappalardo

While the United States has established protocols to halt shipping imports in the event of a terrorist strike at a port facility, officials concede there is no existing procedure to handle the hard part-turning it back on.

The lack of a plan indicates the complexities of handling threats against maritime targets, and the government's emphasis on taking care of airline security and monitoring containers over planning a response in the event of a sea-based attack.

Plans involving shipping require input and planning from a collection of domestic agencies, international businesses, local governments and the port operators themselves. Negotiations among these players can be lengthy and complex because there are billions of dollars at stake.

Reactivating shipping after a terrorist incident, and the larger issue of restoring confidence in the shipping system after such an event, has not yet been addressed despite an acknowledgment of its importance, said Adm. James Loy, deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security.

"Can I stand here and say to you that we have it all figured out? No," Loy said in answer to a question posed to him at a maritime security conference. "It is a dramatic challenge . Our thinking includes as much of the aftermath of the God-forbid event as prevention."

The question of how the United States would react to preserve the world's economy if shipping is compromised is scheduled to receive front-burner attention. Elaine Dezenski, deputy assistant secretary for policy and planning at DHS' transportation directorate, told National Defense that there are plans within the department to devote attention to the issue in 2005.

"It's a multi-faceted problem," she said. "It reaches up to the beginning of the supply chain."

The network of shipping is a never-ending conveyor belt of goods into and out of the United States. The world of commerce operates in a just-in-time methodology, whereby goods are rushed to the shelves immediately upon delivery. The supply chain involves a network of air, rail and shipping links, each of which may jam if another shuts down. Any such shutdown could cost billions of dollars a day.

The resumption of shipping also is being used as a tool to get companies interested in complying with new security regimes instituted by the United States and United Nations. This would allow DHS officials to pose the rules to hesitant international players as an incentive to participate, or insurance against a shutdown. "It's got to be tied to the idea that the suppliers that have more stringent requirements . will be the focus of resumption first," said Dezenski.

For international and domestic shipping companies, higher security means higher costs. Those costs are passed along to manufacturers and, ultimately, to consumers. Convincing shippers to enact security is a sensitive issue. However, the cost of doing nothing could be even higher, especially if worldwide shipping shuts down during the aftermath of a terrorist strike.

Dezenski said that there were other financial incentives that would result from added security by appealing the benefits of a secure supply chain. "There is a lot of theft in the cargo arena," she said. "It would probably be a better case to make with business to shore up the chain to track cargo."

Loy said the "impacted players had to be at the table" when the plans are made, and expressed the need for ports to take a lead role in suggesting how the restart should occur. When asked if industry and government were waiting for each other to act first in crafting restart rules, Dezenski said "there's a little bit of that," but that formal and informal liaison organizations were set to discuss the issue.

She said the most formal of DHS efforts is coordinated through the Commercial Operations Advisory Committee, which was created 15 years ago

She said the committee had a "major hand" in crafting two of DHS' diplomatic maritime success stories-the container security initiative and the International Ship and Port Facility Security Code.

CSI installed U.S. customs inspectors in foreign seaports, to screen cargo for risk in association with their foreign counterparts. They also coordinate the application of the "24-hour rule," which requires electronic transmission of advance cargo manifests from U.S.-bound sea carriers a day in advance of loading. The Coast Guard added 500 people to work through its international port security program to ensure that other countries are adhering to international standards in their ports. DHS believes that compliance with this program can be codified into a green light for the resumption of shipping after an incident.

Approximately nine million containers enter the United States each year, a 50 percent increase since 2001. CSI is a thorny issue in diplomatic circles because of the sovereignty issues, and the absence of inspections of containers leaving the United States.

"If we tried to do this 10 years ago, it wouldn't have happened," Loy said. When asked by an audience member if the U.S. would begin to hold its own outbound containers to CSI standards, he said the administration is "open to reciprocal agreements."

The International Ship and Port Security Code (called the ISPS), which also took effect July 1, regulates the shipping and port operations of more than 140 nations. The code was shepherded onto the international stage via the International Maritime Organization, an organ of the United Nations.

Compliance to the ISPS had a deadline in July, after being adopted in December 2002. There was great worry that chaos would strike the sea lanes, but such pessimism has proved unwarranted so far, James Boutilier, special advisor to Canada's pacific fleet commander, wrote in a report released in October.

"There seems some likelihood that fleet operations may have been recalibrated so that non-compliant vessels were placed on routes where the ISPS codes were unlikely to be enforced," according to Boutilier. "There seems to have been very few dire consequences in practice."

Lack of catastrophe does not equate to full success, however. It is estimated that 65 percent of the world's merchant fleet (by tonnage) was compliant by the July deadline. Allegedly poor behavior of Coast Guard boarding parties and the laxity of credentialing and identifying crewmembers have been criticized as weaknesses in the implementation of ISPS.

Loy said that assessing threats to vital infrastructure, including ports and shipping networks, was a cornerstone of DHS' mission, and that the information analysis and infrastructure protection (IAIP) directorate was crucial in the war on terrorism.

"As goes the IAIP, so goes DHS as a success story," he said.

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