Border agents let in makings of "dirty bomb"

Border agents let in makings of "dirty bomb"
The Associated Press ^ | Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Undercover investigators slipped radioactive material — enough to make two small "dirty bombs" — across U.S. borders in Texas and Washington state in a test last year of security at American points of entry.

Radiation alarms at the unidentified sites detected the small amounts of cesium-137, a nuclear material used in industrial gauges. But U.S. Customs agents permitted the investigators to enter the United States because they were tricked with counterfeit documents.

The Bush administration said Monday that within 45 days it will give U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents the tools they need to verify such documents in the future.

The Government Accountability Office's (GAO) report, the subject of a Senate hearing today, said detection equipment used by U.S. Customs agents to screen people, vehicles and cargo for radioactive substances appeared to work as designed.

But the investigation, carried out simultaneously at both border crossings in December 2005, also identified potential security holes that terrorists might be able to exploit to sneak nuclear materials into the United States.

"This operation demonstrated that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is stuck in a pre-9/11 mindset in a post-9/11 world and must modernize its procedures," Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., said Monday in a statement.

The NRC, which is in charge of overseeing nuclear-reactor and nuclear-substance safety, challenged that notion.

"Security has been of prime importance for us on the materials front and the power-plant front since 9/11," commission spokesman David McIntyre said.

The head of the Homeland Security Department's Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, Vayl Oxford, said the substance could have been used in a radiological weapon with limited effects.

A Senate Homeland Security subcommittee, which Coleman leads, released details of the investigation and two GAO reports on radiation detectors and port security before hearings on the issues this week.

To test security at U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada, GAO investigators represented themselves as employees of a fake company. When stopped, they presented counterfeit shipping papers and NRC documents that allegedly permitted them to receive, acquire, possess and transfer radioactive substances.

Investigators found that Customs agents weren't able to check whether a person caught with radioactive materials was permitted to possess the materials under a government-issued license.

"Unless nuclear smugglers in possession of faked license documents raised suspicions in some other way, CBP officers could follow agency guidelines yet unwittingly allow them to enter the country with their illegal nuclear cargo," a report said

Jayson Ahern, the assistant customs commissioner for field operations, said a system for Customs agents to confirm the authenticity of government licenses will be in place within 45 days.

False radiation alarms are common — sometimes occurring more than 100 times a day — although the GAO said inspectors generally do a good job distinguishing nuisance alarms from actual ones.

In another development:

An executive with a Dubai-owned company withdrew his nomination as head of the agency that oversees ports.

President Bush in January nominated David Sanborn, DP World's director of operations for Europe and Latin America, to head the Maritime Administration.

Shortly after the nomination, DP World's planned purchase of a company that runs operations at six major U.S. ports became the center of a political controversy.