WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), a senior member of the Homeland Security Committee, was named to the House-Senate Conference Committee to negotiate a final port security bill and on the House floor delivered the following statement urging that conference committee to adopt stronger measures for nuclear bomb scanning abroad and sealing containers before they depart for U.S. ports.

Rep. Markey has repeatedly offered amendments in Committee and on the House floor to implement 100% scanning of ship containers before they depart for U.S. ports.  Numerous experts have cited that a terrorist attack using a nuclear bomb smuggled into our country through a container ship and into a port is a highly likely occurrence. 

Rep. Markey’s prepared statement is below:

Mr. Speaker, the 9/11 Commission determined that the risk of maritime terrorism is at least as great as, if not greater than, the risk of terrorism involving civilian aviation. We know that Al Qaeda and jihadists around the world seek to inflict the most damage possible on our nation.  And as the National Intelligence Estimate released earlier this week indicates, the War in Iraq has become a “cause celebre” for these terrorists, fueling their hatred for our country.

Harvard University arms control expert Graham Allison has said that “more likely than not” there will be a terrorist attack using a nuclear bomb in our country.  He has described the detonation of a nuclear explosive device in a cargo container in one of our ports as a nightmare scenario for our nation.

And during a speech earlier this month, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said that preventing the introduction and use of weapons of mass destruction has to be the “number one thing we attend to in the years to come.” 

But despite the overwhelming risk of a nuclear bomb detonating in one of our ports – and the devastation such an explosion would cause - the port security bill we are about to finalize during the conference with the Senate does not contain a requirement that 100 percent of the cargo containers are scanned OVERSEAS, before they arrive on our shores.  That’s a hole big enough to drive a cargo container full of nuclear bombs through!  Republicans in the House and Senate opposed efforts to ensure that all cargo containers being loaded onto a boat headed for this country are scanned for NUCLEAR BOMBS that could kill hundreds of thousands of Americans.  It is not hard to imagine how Al Qaeda could exploit our porous port security safeguards:

An Al Qaeda operative gets enough highly enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon from the Former Soviet Union, where thousands of nuclear weapons’ worth of HEU is stored - often with inadequate or no security safeguards.
·         He builds a crude nuclear device after reading instructions he finds on the Internet.
·         He ships it to the U.S. in a cargo container from overseas, and because we scan less than 5 percent of all the U.S.-bound containers before they reach our shores, it is extremely unlikely that the nuclear device inside the container will ever be detected.
·         When the signal is given, the Al Qaeda operative detonates the bomb in one of our ports or cities, killing hundreds of thousands of people and causing devastating economic and environmental damage.

Right now, the Bush Administration relies on paperwork checks of manifests that are supposed to describe the contents of cargo containers to determine which containers to scan for nuclear materials or other dangerous items.   Republicans call these paperwork checks “screening” and assure the American people that there is no need to worry - 100 percent of inbound cargo is being “screened.”  This type of “screening” is like checking the I.D.’s of airline passengers as they wait in line at the security checkpoint and then waving them right through to their flights without making them walk through the metal detector!

If you don’t SCAN, Mr. Speaker, you can’t be SURE.  We must SCAN and SEAL overseas, so we don’t have to DUCK and COVER at home.

For more information, please go to http://markey.house.gov