Stephen Flynn
Go to www.cfr.org/publication.php?id=5730 for his complete testimony.
.S. prosperity-and much of its power-relies on its ready access to global markets. Both the scale and pace at which goods move between markets have exploded in recent years, thanks in no small part to the invention and proliferation of the intermodal container. These ubiquitous boxes-most come in the 40-foot by 8-foot by 8-foot size-have transformed the transfer of cargo from truck, train and ship into the transportation equivalent of connecting Lego blocks. The result has been to increasingly diminish the role of distance for a supplier or a consumer as a constraint in the world marketplace. Ninety percent of the world's freight now moves in containers. Companies like Wal-Mart and General Motors move up to 30 tons of merchandise or parts across the vast Pacific Ocean from Asia to the West Coast for about $1,600. The transatlantic trip runs just over $1,000-which makes the postage stamp seem a bit overpriced.
But the system that underpins the incredibly efficient, reliable and affordable movement of global freight has one glaring shortcoming in the post-9/11 world-it was built without credible safeguards to prevent it from being exploited or targeted by terrorists and criminals. . . .
Thus, for would-be terrorists, the global intermodal container system that is responsible for moving the overwhelming majority of the world's freight satisfies the age-old criteria of opportunity and motive. "Opportunity" flows from, one, the almost complete absence of any security oversight in the loading and transporting of a box from its point of origin to its final destination, and two, the fact that the growing volume and velocity at which containers move around the planet create a daunting needle-in-the-haystack problem for inspectors. Motive is derived from the role that the container now plays in underpinning global supply chains and the likely response by the U.S. government to an attack involving a container. Based on statements by the key officials at U.S. Customs, the Transportation Security Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Department of Transportation, should a container be used as a "poor man's missile," the shipment of all containerized cargo into our ports and across our borders would be halted. As a consequence, a modest investment by a terrorist could yield billions of dollars in losses to the U.S. economy. . . .
If a terrorist were to use a container as a weapon-delivery device, the easiest choice would be high explosives, such as those used in the attack on the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Some form of chemical weapon, perhaps even involving hazardous materials, is another likely scenario. A bioweapon is a less attractive choice for a terrorist because of the challenge of dispersing the agent in a sufficiently concentrated form beyond the area where the explosive device goes off. A "dirty bomb" is the more likely threat versus a nuclear weapon, but all these scenarios are conceivable since the choice of a weapon would not be constrained by any security measures currently in place in our seaports or within the intermodal transportation industry.
This is why [federal] initiatives such as Operation Safe Commerce, the Container Security Initiative, and the Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism are so important. Let's be clear. Right now, none of these initiatives has changed the intermodal transportation environment sufficiently to fundamentally reduce the vulnerability of the cargo container as a means of terrorism. However, all are important stepping-off points for building an effective risk management approach to container security-a foundation that simply did not exist prior to Sept. 11, 2001.