John Kerry did his very best to make port security a major issue during the presidential campaign. It never generated the attention it deserved, but not for lack of merit.
* The CIA says, “[t]he United States is more likely to be attacked with a weapon of mass destruction smuggled into the country aboard a ship than one delivered by a ballistic missile.” Yet fifty-eight percent of all U.S. cities with ports eligible to receive port security grants reported to the U.S. Conference of Mayors that they had not received funding under the program.
* Nearly seven million cargo containers arrive in America’s 361 ports each year and only 5 percent of those containers are physically inspected. Consequently, even a minor attack on America’s ports could shut down major commerce for a month. Yet Bush’s 2005 budget calls for a 75 percent reduction in port security grant funding over what was proposed for 2004; from $200 million in 2004 to only $46 million in 2005. What’s more, 69 percent of eligible port cities have yet to receive requested port security grant funds.
Now we’re starting to learn more about the scope of the problem. It appears to have something to do with spending money in the wrong places.
The Department of Homeland Security has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to protect ports since Sept. 11 without sufficiently focusing on those that are most vulnerable, a policy that could compromise the nation’s ability to better defend against terrorist attacks, the department’s inspector general has concluded.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars has been invested in redundant lighting systems and unnecessary technical equipment, the audit found, but “the program has not yet achieved its intended results in the form of actual improvement in port security.”
In addition, less than a quarter of the $517 million that the department distributed in grants between June 2002 and December 2003 had been spent as of September 2004, the inspector general found. The report also questioned whether grants allocated for small projects in resort areas and some remote locations should have been considered as critical to national security needs as larger projects at ports that are more vital to the national economy.
I’m no geography major, but it seems DHS would have done a better job if someone over there had a map.
The New York Times report on this explained that DHS port-security money went to six locations in Arkansas, in addition to grants in Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
I’m not suggesting that these states shouldn’t have increased port security, but in looking at a map, I can’t help but notice that Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Tennessee are surrounded by other states — not water. I realize ports can exist along rivers, but shouldn’t most port-security grants focus on states that aren’t completely land-locked?
Former DHS Secretary Tom Ridge was meeting twice a day with Republican campaign pollsters before the election. Maybe if he spent less time with them and more with, say, an atlas, his tenure at the agency wouldn’t have been such a joke.