NY/NJ Port Security

Christian Becker (Homeland Security Watch) says the June 19 issue of the New Yorker has a good article on port security in New York and New Jersey: New Yorker story profiles port security in NY/NJ  (June 15) 

The author, William Finnegan, pays special attention to the relationship between organized crime and port security.

The article itself isn't on line.  Becker links to, and has a short extract from, a question and answer session with Finnegan.  Becker's excerpt from the Q&A describes a case in which an Al Qaeda operative tried to develop a relationship with a textile importer, in order to facilitate the delivery of explosives to a US port in a container.

Can a port be considered secure if the Mob has a strong presence in it?    

In a word, no. But the Port of New York and New Jersey is unique in the United States. With the partial exception of Miami, where a number of mobsters moved after a series of prosecutions in New York in the seventies, this is really the only port in the country with a serious Mob problem. Which is not to say that any large port can ever be made entirely secure. Ports are sprawling places, both physically and commercially, with many ways in and out, both on the land side and on the water side, and cargo and people coming and going all the time. International shipping is an open system. The vulnerabilities are essentially endless. But obviously, with all the security headaches already present in any large port, the last thing you want is a powerful criminal syndicate operating on the docks, and the corruption that inevitably comes with that. Also, New York’s is not just any port; it’s the largest by far on the East Coast. Something like forty million people live within a fifty-mile radius of the port. Any disaster, such as a terrorist attack, that closed New York Harbor would have cascading economic effects that are incalculable.

Is it realistic to expect we can increase US security by requiring domestic ownership of shipping terminals: 

A few months ago, there was a great deal of controversy about a Dubai company taking over the management of several American ports, including Newark’s, in New York Harbor. How much does it matter if foreign companies control our ports?       

Foreign-owned corporations run most of the shipping terminals in the United States. That doesn’t mean that the people working at U.S. terminals are all foreigners—quite the contrary—and I’ve never heard of a case in which a U.S. terminal’s foreign owners were accused of any activity, criminal or otherwise, that threatened U.S. national interests. Obviously, it was the fact that Dubai Ports World is an Arab-owned company that set off alarms in the United States. I actually thought the security review of the deal conducted by the federal government sounded cursory and inadequate. But the controversy was not our finest political hour, since xenophobia seemed to be its leading element.

Why can’t American companies simply step in?       

International shipping is a vertically integrated industry. The big steamship lines tend to own large logistics businesses as well as operating their own marine terminals. Also, there is no major American shipping line. The last one was sold to a Singapore company in 1997. So there is really no American player in the global big leagues in this field. There are, of course, American terminal operators—the biggest is based in Seattle—but none with the capacity to take over a great many terminals if, for instance, Congress were to decide that foreign companies could no longer be allowed to operate our marine terminals. Such a decision would close a lot of ports and throw international shipping into chaos. It won’t happen.

Comments

[Sturt]

The big factor not mentioned in Finnegan's article is why it is that the United States has effectively ceded the global shipping business to foreign players: a little piece of protectionism called the Jones Act. The Jones Act reserves US intercoastal shipping solely to US owned, operated, and crewed lines using only US-bukld ships. It dates back to the Civil War. When the US was over 50% of global shipping as it was after WWII this was lucrative. As global trade expanded its value diminished, as did the fortunes of US shippers, who preferred their cosy domestic monopoly to the global market. As a consequence there is no US shipping industry able to operate internationally, and thus US security , the interest supposedly protected by the Jones Act, is arguably weakened. A perfect illustration of the folly of protectionism.