Back in 2006, before George W. Bush's approval ratings dropped through the basement into somewhere around the fourth circle of hell, it made political sense for the Democrats to attack the Republican administration on cargo security. They were fighting to regain control of Congress and had to show that they, too, were capable of protecting the American people from another terrorist attack. They found themselves an effective--if inaccurate--sound bite in accusing the administration of screening a mere 5 percent of cargo coming into the country.
Like Lyndon Johnson's wildly effective nuclear mushroom ad against Barry Goldwater in 1964, the Democrats of 2006 painted a scary picture of a nuke in a box scenario. What was needed, they asserted, was the screening of all cargo coming into the country--the screening of all air cargo on passenger planes and the actual physical scanning of all maritime cargo. What is baffling, and disturbing, is that many Democrats are still clinging to this politicized message to scare the public.
Now that the 100 percent screening mandate for air cargo has come and gone, the usual suspects are turning their attention to maritime scanning. In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (again) accuses the department of ignoring the will of Congress and not even trying to meet the requirement to scan all cargo coming into the country.
The effort to ignore the ludicrous intent of Congress has been bipartisan, starting with both secretaries under President Bush (Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff) and now Napolitano under President Obama. The reason for trying to ignore the congressional mandate--according to all three secretaries, the thousands and thousands of professional Security officers working in DHS, and most independent security experts--is that it is impossible to meet and, more importantly, less effective than the risk-based, layered security model on which the Department of Homeland Security was founded.
But why let most of the security experts in the world get in the way of the will and superior wisdom of Congress?
In an excellent piece by Rob Margetta of CQ Homeland Security, some congressmen are claiming that the aviation community has met the screening requirement, and that there is no reason the maritime community cannot do the same. This is hardly accurate. The 100 percent requirement went into effect just this month, and it is impossible to tell at this time whether it has been effectively met or what its impact on the air cargo supply chain will be.
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