It’s good to be here with many of the countries that have joined the Proliferation Security Initiative and are part of PSI’s Operational Experts Group—and with members of the airlines industry from around the world for this Air Cargo Workshop. This PSI Conference represents an intersection of military and defense experts, customs and law enforcement experts, and industry experts.

It seems appropriate to meet here in LA—one of the world’s largest and busiest transportation hubs of the United States. In fact, LAX is America’s second busiest airport. Each year, close to 8 million passengers travel through LAX, and down the Freeway—at the port of LA/Long Beach—more than 4 million cargo containers arrive and move into the U.S. That’s about 45 percent of all containers offloaded at U.S. seaports! The port of New York is a distant second.

For historical and commercial reasons, most of our major seaports and airports in the U.S.—and this is true abroad as well—are located in the heart of our most populated urban areas. This is convenient for commerce and travel, but it could spell disaster and possibly death to tens, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of people if a single one of those flights or cargo containers carries a weapon of mass destruction—a nuclear device. A nuclear device detonated above the skies of Los Angeles would be devastating. There are between 16 and 17 million people in the LA basin.

In the post 9-11 era, in this age of global terrorism, one cannot overstate the importance of the Proliferation Security Initiative—a global initiative to intercept assembled nuclear weapons, the fissile material and components needed to assemble them, and the delivery systems, and PSI is needed to keep these materials out of the hands of global terrorists and rogue states.

As you know, President Bush announced PSI over two years ago—in May 2003—in response to growing concern about the proliferation and shipment of weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems. PSI began with 11 countries, and now more than 60 countries have joined the effort to stop, intercept and seize these weapons, and the components to make them, and thereby prevent their proliferation, prevent their falling into the wrong hands.

Plainly stated, the U.S. and the 60 PSI nations must do everything we can to intercept and deny terrorists access to such weapons. We must prevent rogue states from supplying or being supplied with nuclear weapons, or special nuclear materials. But it is not just governments. We are here because the private sector—especially the carriers of cargo—know the supply chain. Because you should play a role in how PSI interceptions are accomplished, whether that’s an oceangoing maritime carrier, or an international air cargo or express carrier.

We have come together today to explore ways we can better secure our airlines—better prevent air cargo from being the means for proliferation of PSI-type materials, or worse yet, be the “delivery system” used by our enemy. We also need to discuss how and when cargo aircraft shipments or aircraft themselves that are carrying or are believed to be carrying PSI-type material are recalled so that a PSI inspection and interception can be effected. How do we do this? You need to tell us.

Does the aircraft need to be diverted or just the package redelivered? Can we rely on you to do so? Do you have the tracking systems to do so?

These are issues United States Customs and Border Protection has been thinking about and doing something about since 9/11. In fact, many of CBP’s initiatives are about preventing, detecting, and intercepting PSI-type materials at our borders and well before they reach our borders. What may well be our last line of defense—our border, our official entry points. And the line of defense before our last line of defense. Think CSI. Think megaports. And with EXPS with the State Department, a line of defense even further back—outbound radiation detection in Russia and in nations neighboring Russia to monitor outbound movements. Nunn-Lugar is itself a first line of defense.

The priority mission of U.S. Customs and Border Protection is to keeping terrorists and terrorist weapons from getting into the country.

So, on a number of different levels, CBP is involved, with others, in stemming the proliferation and movement of PSI materials—and the ultimate PSI weapon.

Customs and other border management agencies in other nations are also becoming sensitive to the need to secure the movement of trade against PSI materials, to make it increasingly difficult to successfully move or transport PSI materials via a legitimate carrier of cargo.

CBP is the frontline border agency of the United States. CBP has the sum total of all border legal authorities—inbound and even outbound and in transit—related to frontline security of our borders and protection of our nation and the American people.

Because CBP is a relatively new federal government agency, created as part of the Homeland Security reorganization two and a half years ago, there may be some in the audience who are not familiar with who we are and what we do, so let me give you a quick, thumbnail sketch of CBP.

CBP brings together all frontline border agencies of the U.S. Government into one border agency. In my view, one of the most important ideas of the Homeland Security reorganization was the creation of one border agency of our government, one agency within the Department of Homeland Security to manage, control and secure our nation’s borders, all its entry points—and between, for all purposes—customs, immigration, agriculture protection, and importantly anti-terrorism.

That agency is United States Customs and Border Protection, or “CBP.”

Customs and Border Protection has 42,000 employees, about one fourth of all the employees of DHS, and our priority mission is homeland security and that means that our priority mission is preventing terrorists and terrorist weapons from getting into the United States.

No other agency of the U.S. Government has a more important mission than CBP. Because the best way to prevent a terrorist attack in the U.S. is to prevent the terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the United States in the first place. This most certainly includes preventing the successful introduction of a weapon of mass destruction—a nuclear device.

One important point to note is that because CBP is the frontline border agency of the United States, we have broader legal authorities than any other law enforcement agency of the U.S. Government—all the authorities possessed by our legacy agencies, including the authority to detain and question anyone who seeks to cross our borders; the broad customs search authority to search any person, vehicle, aircraft, or cargo shipment without warrant, cause or even suspicion; and the authority to refuse admission to any foreign national who poses a potential terrorist threat.

No one else has these broad law enforcement authorities. No one but CBP.

Now, let me address the threat, and permit me to set this threat in a historic context.

For half of the last century, we lived with the threat of nuclear annihilation. During the 40 plus years of the Cold War, the world teetered on the brink of mass destruction, with thousands of powerful nuclear weapons poised to be delivered on long-range ballistic missiles in a matter of minutes. We lived with such terms as “MAD”—mutually assured destruction—and first strike option.

Churchill called it “a balance of terror.”

In fact, the last half of the 20th century was an extremely dangerous time for the proliferation and potential use of nuclear weapons, but it was also a time when much good work toward controlling the nuclear genie was done. The work of several American presidents and countless diplomats from around the world are memorialized in such international agreements as the Treaty of the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in the late eighties, many thought the days of nuclear threats were largely behind us, yet in many ways, our world has become even more dangerous. The danger came primarily from the availability of 1945-era nuclear technology and the growing number of dangerous sub-state groups, particularly organized criminals, religious fanatics and global terrorist organizations, al Queda and its associated terrorist organizations.

Today’s terrorist threat represents an entirely different kind of terrorism— one that is global in ambition and scope. One that understands and engages in asymmetrical warfare in ways no nation state could. And, 9/11 dramatized the overwhelming importance of ensuring the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons. This has always been important, but in the age of global terrorism, it is absolutely essential.

Our task after 9/11—and here at this conference—is to understand the requirements of non-proliferation security in the post 9/11 era. To find ways to work together to mold an international order and create global systems that are strong enough and connected enough to prevent global terrorists from acquiring or delivering a weapon of mass destruction.

As the President has said, we are at war. It is a war against global terrorism, and our enemy is al Qaeda and al Qaeda associated terrorist organizations—fundamentalist Islamic jidahists who want to turn the clock back and return the world to an Arab-dominated caliphate of ten centuries ago. Al Qaeda wants to exclude all Western influence, and the forces of globalization, democratization and reform from the Arab world.

And, they have recruited and trained fundamentalists, extremist Muslims, and they have—and will—deploy cadres of jihadists in their attempts to carry out large-scale global terrorist attacks to kill innocent civilians, and disrupt the global economy.

But the “sum of all fears,” to use Tom Clancy’s term, is a “nuke-in-a-box,” regardless of whether it’s in a seagoing container cargo, or in air cargo container.

Those containers could easily become bulky missiles—crude, but nevertheless, missile delivery systems, just the same. PSI is part of an anti-missile defense system, if you will.

One does not wish to be an alarmist, but this much is known from open source reporting:

1. Bin Laden has been trying to get his hands on a nuclear device or fissile materials to make one going back six years.
2. He reportedly met with a Pakistani nuclear scientist some years ago, and
3. We now know A. Q. Khan had a price.

The reality is: even if al Qaeda doesn’t have a nuclear weapon now, we must build PSI and a security system to prevent him from obtaining one or the SNM to make one. And we must prevent him from delivering one. Nothing is more important for PSI. Nothing is more important to homeland security, and the security of the global economy.

The consequences are such that, even if the risk is small, we cannot afford to do anything but our utmost to develop the kind of security strategy that protects all modes of transportation from being used as the means to provide these terrorist groups with the ultimate instrument of terror, or from delivering it upon a target. And we know that the United States would be a target. But the consequences would be profoundly felt by all.

We are here today to discuss how we can build a better system for protecting air cargo and our air transportation network.

In my view, we don’t have an adequate system in place right now, at least not a comprehensive system. Last year, PSI met in Copenhagen to talk about maritime cargo security and the interception or interdiction of PSI-type materials on board maritime cargo vessels. We came away from that conference with a better understanding of the logistics of the maritime transportation industry. We are further along, I think, in creating what Secretary Michael Chertoff calls a “security envelope” for our global maritime shipping lanes than we are for commercial air cargo.

After 9/11, CBP, with the help of other nations, many of whom are here today, and with the private industry, developed and implemented a maritime security strategy.

And while I know the air cargo and express couriers industry faces certain unique challenges, not the least of which is the question of “time”—the difference between 6 hours and six days—I believe the maritime strategy is built around principles that can translate, with some adjustments, to security for any mode of transportation—sea, air or land.

So, let me speak to the strategy to secure cargo without unduly impeding or slowing down its movement. A well designed strategy, I believe, can accomplish both goals—what I have called the “twin goals.”

The strategy is based, in part, on the principle of extending our borders, pushing our zone of security outward, so that our actual physical borders are our last line of defense, not our first. The more we can do away from our entry points, the less we have to do at our entry points—all of us—and the borders, and the faster and more efficient we can be in moving cargo through these entry points.

So, an extended border strategy is an important part of a strategy to add security, to prevent introduction or cross border movement of PSI materials, but doing so in ways that do not impede the flow of legitimate cargo.

This strategy is made up of four interrelated initiatives:

• Advanced electronic manifest or waybill information. This is the 24-Hour Rule in the sea cargo context. It is the Trade Act rules for air cargo and other modes.
• Standing up the National Targeting Center, and building our Automated Targeting System to identify cargo shipments posing potential terrorist risks.
• The Container Security Initiative (CSI) for sea cargo containers, and
• The Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) for supply chain security of sea and air cargo, as well as international cargo shipped by commercial truck and rail.

Here’s how these initiatives work for sea cargo:

24-Hour Rule
First, after 9/11, under the 24-Hour and 2002 Trade Act rules, we required advance electronic information to be submitted to U.S. Customs and Border Protection on all cargo containers shipped to—and from—the U.S. This means that on inbound maritime shipments, CBP gets information 24-hours before a shipment departs a foreign seaport for the U.S. This is the 24-Hour Rule.

This gives us a clearer picture of what is heading for the U.S., and we can evaluate the potential risk a container shipment might pose.

We are also requiring advance electronic information on shipments by air. Although this regulation is not fully implemented in the air environment, we require advance manifest data electronically, no later than four hours prior to arrival in the U.S., or if the air cargo flight originates within North America, no later than wheels up. The requirement for advance information is premised on the principle that a risk decision should be made, whenever possible, well before arrival.

We process the advance information through our Automated Targeting Systems to select potential risky air cargo shipments that are subject to NII inspection, x-ray and radiation security inspections upon arrival.

Risk Targeting—ATS
Which takes me to the second part of our strategic paradigm—risk management—that is, evaluating each cargo shipment for risk of terrorist weapon concealment. In order to evaluate the advance electronic information for risk, especially terrorist risk, we have built the Automated Targeting System that is housed at CBP’s National Targeting Center.

Our targeting rule sets are based on strategic intelligence and anomaly analysis or both. In the case of sea containers, we do this evaluation, which produces a risk score, before they are loaded on board vessels headed to U.S. seaports.

If we have tactical intelligence (although rare) that a container is a terrorist threat, as Commissioner I have the authority to issue a “no load” order to the sea carriers, to the steamship lines, and they will not load the container. Where we have CSI, an inspection using NII and radiation detection takes place at the outbound port or at the transshipment port, at Singapore, or Rotterdam, not at the U.S. seaport of arrival.

We have nothing like this for air cargo. We don’t get advance, pre-departure information. Even under our Trade Act rule, we do not receive advance manifest information before departure of air cargo. And we, of course, have no CSI for air cargo. If we had tactical information, regarding PSI material, we could, I believe, effectively give a no load order to an air carrier. We might be able to get foreign customs or security authorities to do an outbound inspection of such air cargo, under Standard Five of the World Customs Organization’s Framework of Standards to Secure and Facilitate Global Trade.

CSI
The third part of our strategy is CSI—the Container Security Initiative—that we proposed in January 2002 by reaching out to partner with other countries.

Specifically, CSI is designed to do three things:

First, evaluate for risk of terrorism all sea containers bound for the U.S.—BEFORE they are loaded at CSI ports.

Second, be a cargo security system that will withstand a terrorist incident and ensure the continued flow of oceangoing cargo through CSI ports to the U.S. should a terrorist attack occur. This is the insurance policy aspect. CSI is a security network that permits rapid recovery, even if the shipping has to be stopped for a short time to assess the nature of the attack and the intelligence surrounding it.

Third, CSI protects the movement of containerized cargo—and indeed, the trade lanes between CSI ports and U.S. seaports—by working with host Customs administrations to inspect all containers identified as posing a potential terrorist risk, before they head toward the U.S.

And CSI also facilitates the movement and predictability of cargo moving from or through a CSI port, since the security inspection done at a CSI port does not need to be done again at the U.S. port of arrival. All containers from CSI ports, then, move faster and more predictably than if they need to be given a security inspection on arrival at U.S. seaports.

Right now, CBP has personnel stationed in 38 of the largest overseas seaports of the world, ports like Rotterdam, Hamburg, Singapore, Shanghai, and Yokohama.

Working with the countries in which these CSI ports are located, we evaluate, identify and inspect high-risk containers at foreign ports before they are loaded on board vessels headed to the U.S. For sea cargo, I believe that the intersection of CSI and PSI are obvious, and twelve of the CSI countries are also PSI countries.

Through CSI, as I said, CBP already has several hundred inspectors, primarily targeters, and some intelligence analysts, as well as some ICE investigators, working with our host nation counterparts in 24 nations—and 38 seaports. There will soon to be 40 CSI ports, as this Fall we will, I expect, make CSI operational in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and Santos, Brazil. Under CSI, we work side-by-side with our partners targeting cargo for weapons of mass destruction. We are able to observe the inspections of x-ray and radiation scans of high risk containers. We have strong relationships with these countries, with our host nation Customs partners, who have the authority to stop, detain, and inspect outbound or transshipped cargo containers at our request. This is an important point.

C-TPAT
And, the fourth initiative is Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism. This is our partnership with the private sector, with major importers, multinationals—even some of the major foreign manufacturers and carriers—in short, it is our partnership with the owners and key participants in the international supply chain.

Under C-TPAT, the private sector companies—think large importers— commit to implement supply chain security criteria—C-TPAT criteria—for the security of their supply chains, literally all the way back to their foreign vendors’ loading docks, and all the way forward to the U.S. ports of arrival. In exchange, we give the goods shipped by certified C-TPAT companies fewer inspections and faster processing through U.S. ports on arrival, seaports, airports or the land border entry points, because their shipments are lower risk.

We began the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism in November 2001 with just seven (7) partners. Today, more than 9,000 companies participate in the C-TPAT program. C-TPAT is, by far, the largest and, I believe, the most successful government-private sector partnership to arise from 9/11.

Our private sector C-TPAT importers help us do something that is beyond CBP’s regulatory authority. We cannot effectively regulate private businesses in foreign countries, but our private partners have the leverage to do so, through purchase orders, and the like, that specify C-TPAT security standards. If an American importer can specify and verify quality standards are met by its overseas suppliers, it can specify that C-TPAT security standards be met. And our C-TPAT partners do that.

Cargo carriers can also engage in best security practices. In fact, I’d like to single out two outstanding members of the airline industry who illustrate what C-TPAT certified companies do for the security of this country. I’m talking about FedEx and UPS, two companies that are helping secure the air courier environment.

At their own cost, they have installed—and use—radiation detection technology in their international air cargo hubs in Asia, Canada, and Europe. Both companies have signed MOUs with CBP to meet the CBP standards regarding technology, training and notification protocols, for radiation detection and resolution of radiation alarms.

They use both Radiation Portal Monitors (RPMs) and handheld units such as radiation isotope identifier devices (RIIDs). The radiation screens that FedEx and UPS conduct support CBP’s efforts to increase our zone of security by screening international air cargo before it is loaded on board cargo aircraft bound for the United States. I applaud their assistance in protecting their company and their customers, their cargo and their airplanes—and most of all, our nation and our citizens.

Moreover, in 2002, UPS developed and implemented a software program [called Target Search] to assist CBP officials to be able to select and inspect shipments that pose a potential risk arriving at Worldport, UPS’s largest international air hub in Louisville. FedEx also assists because it too has sophisticated automated tracking systems.

These systems provide electronic information to CBP officials so that we can effectively target and select shipments for inspection ahead of time, thereby expediting the customs clearance process.

Technology
Another important part of our strategy, a part that undergirds many of our efforts, is the vast improvement of detection technology at our ports of entry.

Shortly after 9/11, we began expanding our NII equipment. We have quadrupled the number of large-scale whole container, whole truck, x-ray-type imaging machines. We are adding the best available detection technology at our ports of entry to better detect nuclear and radiological weapons, including, starting in May 2002, installing highly sensitive radiation portal monitors (RPMs) at our sea and land ports of entry.

All of these initiatives I’ve described work together to better secure our country from terrorists and terrorist weapons, and not one of these initiatives existed before 9/11.

Over the next two days, I challenge all of us to think outside the box, to consider what security measures are already in place—such as CSI and C-TPAT and those I’ve described—that can be used to support PSI and can better secure air cargo against PSI-type materials. How can we better use cargo tracking systems to stop, interdict, and recall PSI suspect shipments in the most effective manner and before they reach their intended destinations. It is better to redeliver one package for inspection than divert an entire aircraft, is it not?

I challenge all of us to consider scenarios that might arise. Not “anything-is-possible” scenarios, but ones that are well within the realm of plausibility.

Of course, the movement of sufficient fissile material to create a crude nuclear device, such as a gun bomb, is a scenario that we must be able to deal with and intercept. Private sector carriers can help us locate and redeliver it, if it is moving by air or ocean carrier. They might, as is the case with FedEx and UPS, even help us detect it.

There is a special problem that needs to be addressed: An actual nuclear device that is destined for the wrong hands. That is a special issue of enormous potential consequence. It absolutely cannot be loaded on board a carrier. How do we prevent that?

But consider these other scenarios.

What if a polystyrene package, no bigger than an egg carton, contained a dozen “cold cathode tubes.” Each tube is the size of a dime and looks like a transistor from the 1960’s. This package is being sent to an apartment in Europe.

What if there was a cardboard box weighing 10 kg, measuring less than a half meter in diameter marked “test equipment”—a gimbal-mounted compass—being sent to a holding company in a free-port in Asia.

What if there were 4 5-liter plastic containers, filled with a clear liquid, packaged in a cardboard box, marked organophosphates, being shipped to a university research facility in the Middle East.

All these things may seem fairly innocuous.

The first shipment is manifested as cathode tubes, but is actually 12 cold cathode tubes, or “Krytrons.” Krytrons are also referred to in the business as “nuclear triggers,” and while they have dual uses, they are the mechanisms used to trigger nuclear weapons.

The second shipment is manifested as “test equipment,” but is a gimbal-mounted compass, more specifically, a “gyro-astro” compass. Add this feature to a rocket and you can navigate in space by using stars or satellites. This piece of equipment is what adds the name “intercontinental” to the front end of ballistic missile.

The third package manifested as organophosphates, a class of compounds used in pesticides, is actually sarin. Sarin, or GB as it is also known, is, of course, a form of nerve gas, used by a terrorist religious cult in the Tokyo subway in 1995.

All of these things can easily be transported via air cargo. All of these things pose a real threat to our potential security—and the security of other nations, including the 60 nations that have joined with us in the PSI. And, all of these risks can be targeted by the Proliferation Security Initiative.

For more than half a century, the United States has been the pioneer in nuclear technology, in efforts to share it for peaceful purposes, and in international efforts to control it.

The nuclear proliferation problems we face today are much like those of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, because they were all created by the genius of the human intellect. And unfortunately, like the Frankenstein monster, unless we find a way to live with our inventions—and keep them out of the hands of those who would do us harm—they have the potential to do great damage. And change our world in ways that could make 9/11 pale by comparison.

For this very important reason, we can give nothing but our best efforts to devise an international security system that will thwart our enemies, and PSI is an essential effort to engage the international community in this worthy and noble goal.

* Commissioner Bonner reserves the right to edit his written remarks during his oral presentation and to speak extemporaneously. His actual remarks, as given, therefore, may vary somewhat from the written text.