Millions of boxes are shipped to the U.S. each year, many of those are delivered on passenger flights in which cargo is checked with an electronic system that does not screen for bombs.
A new Bloomberg report reveals that more than nine years after 9/11, less than one percent of the 14.5 million cargo boxes reaching U.S. shores are scanned for nuclear material, according to the federal government.
The Homeland Security Department uses computers to identify possibly dangerous cargo, usually after flights are already en route to the U.S., which is too late.
In 2007, the Bush Administration vowed that every single container entering the U.S. would be scanned for radiological and nuclear bombs by 2012.
However, in 2009 at her first hearing before the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano testified that the 2012 deadline was not going to happen.
Among the major obstacles to meeting the deadline is deploying trained U.S. officials to more than 700 foreign ports to operate scanning equipment.
According to the Bloomberg report, two years after South Korea’s busiest port installed a $3.5 million scanner to check U.S.- bound shipping containers for nuclear weapons, the machine sits idle because truckers will not drive through it due to fears of radiation exposure.
DHS Secretary Napolitano testified that the 2012 deadline for 100 percent inspections will be delayed by at least 2 years. Critics argue that it is not feasible to scan every container that comes into the United States.
Dr. Stephen Flynn, President of the Center for National Policy acknowledged that the system remains very vulnerable. Flynn states “If I were an adversary who wants to cause mass destruction to the global economy, this is the system to target.”
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