5 December 2008

Chertoff warns about scan-all, special interests

The following is excerpted from the 5 December 2008 edition of the “American Shipper”.

U.S. Homeland Secretary Michael Chertoff reiterated Tuesday that overseas scanning of ocean containers makes sense at high-risk ports, depending on space limitations and foreign government cooperation, but that 100 percent inspections would wreck maritime trade by clogging ports.

"It would be the equivalent of strip-searching every single person who gets on an airplane," he said at a breakfast meeting with reporters sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. "We could do that, but there wouldn't be an airline system, because no one would fly."

A congressional mandate for 100 percent scanning overseas by 2012 is unrealistic "because you can't make every other country do that," he said, according to a transcript of the meeting.

"And when people in Congress go, 'How dare you say you're not going to do 100 percent,' I feel like saying, 'Well what do you want me to do? Promise we'll invade every country that doesn't allow us to scan? They don't answer that question and that's the kind of an argument that I think is not going to be my domain. It will be the next secretary, maybe even the one after that, will have to address that with Congress," Chertoff said.

"I'm not against scanning overseas where practicable, but where practicable, and I want to underscore."

Chertoff said his biggest advice to his successor, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, is to beware of special interests when making decisions…

If security measures for cargo, general aviation, travel documents and the like "don't get done, because individual industries or powerful politicians or lobbyists can stymie them, then at some point when something happens they'll be a conversation about why we didn't get done what we have absolutely foretold is a risk. And that to me … was my challenge and it will be the challenge of all my successors to keep striving forward on this."