03 December 2001

U.S. Coast Guard to Push Maritime Borders Off Shore

Washington -- The U.S. Coast Guard would like to push off shore as many border control activities as possible, an agency official says.

Captain Tony Regalbuto, chief of the agency's office of waterways management policy and planning, said that after the September 11 terrorist attacks, "we would prefer to intercept illegitimate people and cargo on the high seas."

"Once they get into a U.S. port, it might be too late to act," he said.

But Regalbuto said in a December 3 interview that this approach requires international cooperation.

"So we are working with the International Maritime Organization [IMO] trying to ensure that other countries keep the proper level of security in their ports," he said.

IMO is a United Nations agency dealing with issues related to maritime transportation.

Regalbuto said that intercepting terrorist threats before potential perpetrators enter the United States entails better and more accurate information about the vessel, including who owns and operates it, well in advance of the ship's arrival to a U.S. seaport.

The U.S. Coast Guard requires notification about a ship, its cargo and crews 96 hours in advance of its arrival. In the future, the vessels' owners and operators should be able to file one electronic report that meets the needs of all federal agencies, Regalbuto said. He emphasized that ship ownership information is particularly important.

"Osama Bin Laden or other terrorists may be operating some merchant ships so we have to have ability to see who actually owns or operates ships," Regalbuto said.

Since September 11, he said, the U.S. Coast Guard has been trying to identify cargo that can be used as a weapon of mass destruction to inspect ships carrying such cargo before they enter U.S. ports.

In some ports, Regalbuto said, the Coast Guard has been experimenting with sea marshals, highly trained agency officers who escort such high-risk ships to the pier. One of the major security challenges for both the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Customs Service is freight containers, Regalbuto said. About 17 million containers per year enter the United States through seaports, and only 2 percent are inspected by Customs, according to press reports.

"This is an opportunity for criminal activities; terrorists can use containers to ship weapons of mass destruction or people," Regalbuto said.

One recent proposal to prevent terrorist activity involves the use of electronic seals for container shipments so that both the federal agencies and people engaged in trade would know if the shipment was opened or tampered with after leaving an overseas facility.

Moreover, the U.S. Customs Service announced that it is planning to install additional inspection equipment and looking for new technology to better detect weapons of mass destruction.

Shifting to passenger traffic, Regalbuto said that since 1986 cruise lines have operated with high security standards, requiring a security officer on board of each cruise ship and security training for all crew members.

They have introduced even stricter security procedures, he said, after September 11. The new measures include screening of all passenger baggage, carry-on luggage, ship stores, and cargo as well as higher levels of screening of passenger identification.

But Regalbuto said that some security positions within cruise lines may still not suffice for the current heightened level of security and might need to be modeled after the new aviation transportation industry security regime.

"We are considering recommending to the secretary of transportation that he looks at federalizing screening positions at cruise terminals as well," he said.

Considering that 95 percent of foreign goods enter the United States through seaports, Regalbuto said, the need to balance security and trade concerns is even more challenging than ensuring cruise passenger security.

The U.S. Customs Service has recently proposed allowing importers to move their goods more quickly across U.S. borders in exchange for establishing a secure shipping network all the way from a manufacturing facility overseas to a U.S. port.

The U.S. Coast Guard wants to achieve similar goals by introducing a risk-based management of ship and cargo inspections, he said. Ships arriving from overseas ports with a sufficient level of security would be subject to only random inspections while those coming from other, less secure destinations would be inspected more thoroughly, Regalbuto said.

"Based on historic data, we may even prevent from entering our ports vessels from countries with a track record of especially poor security," Regalbuto said.

The agency has also started doing a port vulnerability assessment and asked Coast Guard captains of the ports to identify "high-risk, high-vulnerability, high-consequence critical infrastructure," he said.

With help from the owners and operators of the facilities and local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, "we want to prevent critical infrastructure such as nuclear power plants or refineries located near waterways or ports from being attacked," Regalbuto said.

Regalbuto said that protecting U.S. ports and waterways against terrorists should not be incompatible with drug enforcement, although the agency's efforts in the latter area were reduced by about 75 percent following September 11. He said that the agency has actually made a connection between drug enforcement and ability to detect terrorist activities because of the proven links between the two.

"So we put together strategies that require a multi-layer approach while waiting for additional resources," Regalbuto said.