Over the last 30 years, the Heritage Foundation has developed a reputation as an organization that tackles the most challenging public policy issues of the day. Its influence has been profound - the Heritage Foundation's fingerprints can be seen on so many of the important policy innovations of the past several decades.

The Foundation's report on Defending the American Homeland, published last January, carries forward the Heritage tradition. For the report, the Foundation assembled a Task Force composed of a wide array of noted experts - among them, one of my predecessors at Customs, Carol Hallett - to recommend steps the government should take to better defend our homeland. The report contains carefully thought out policy approaches to this issue. I can assure you that I've read it carefully as I have thought about this issue.

And this issue - the issue of improving homeland security - is one that calls us all to action. Protecting our homeland and the American people from international terrorists is - without a doubt - our highest priority as a Nation. It is certainly the highest priority of the U.S. Customs Service. We are, as the President said, at war.

Yet to meet this challenge, we must refocus the great, lumbering bureaucracies of our government, sharpen them, and make them more nimble in order to face down an unprecedented and fluid enemy. The President's announcement of his proposal to create a new Department of Homeland Security is a major step toward that end. In his announcement on June 6th, the President noted that, although we are stronger and better prepared now than we were on the morning of September 11th - and we are - the new Department will help us to be even better.1

The President is right. The new Department will make us more effective, more efficient, and establish clear responsibility and accountability over what is now a fragmented effort, particularly at our borders, to protect our homeland and the American people.

One key element of the President's proposal involves the United States Customs Service. Because of the important border and homeland security functions of the U.S. Customs Service, the President's plan would move the Customs Service, in its entirety and with all of its functions, into the new Department.

The U.S. Customs Service has broader responsibilities at our Nation's borders than any other federal agency. All people, vehicles, and cargo - indeed, everything entering the United States - must be presented to and cleared through U.S. Customs. Customs officers, who have unique and broad border search authority, are stationed at all 301 ports of entry into the U.S., and Customs has a significant overseas presence as well.

Since 9/11, the role of Customs has become more important than ever in its long history, a history that dates back to 1789. Customs is truly on the front lines of the effort to protect America. And protecting our country against the terrorist threat has been our number one priority since the morning of September 11.

I was confirmed as Commissioner on September 19, about a week after the terrorist attacks. During the last ten months, we have developed and implemented a number of initiatives to further our counter-terrorism mission.

For starters, last October I created an Office of Anti-terrorism at Customs to help Customs better focus on the terrorist threat, on the detection technology and training needed to search and detect, for example, weapons of mass destruction.

Some of our actions, such as going to Level One Alert at all ports of entry on the morning of 9/11, are defensive in nature - aimed at preventing terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the United States. But Customs has gone on the offense as well - affirmatively going after the international terrorist organizations, and taking action to prevent them from having the financial wherewithal to carry out attacks.

One of our offensive initiatives, started last October, is Operation Green Quest, a Customs-led multi-agency task force aimed at identifying and disrupting the sources of terrorist financing. With Green Quest, we are bringing together the collective and formidable money-laundering experience and expertise of U.S. Customs Agents in a task force with IRS-CI, U.S. Secret Service, the FBI, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN), and other agencies to deprive terrorist groups of the funding they need to perpetrate terrorist activity in the U.S. or elsewhere in the world. Operation Green Quest has already opened and is working on hundreds of investigations, has aggressively moved against terrorist funding sources, and has led to the seizure of millions of dollars.

With another initiative - Operation Shield America - launched in December, U.S. Customs is working to prevent terrorist organizations from obtaining the weapons, technology, and equipment they need to carry out their terrorist activities, including components and materials needed to put together weapons of mass destruction.

Customs is also hardening our borders and using its targeting systems, its frontline people, and its detection technology to do all we can to make sure that terrorists and terrorist weapons do not enter our country. And Customs is doing this, mindful of the need to ensure that this heightened security does not choke off the flow of trade that is so important to the U.S. economy. We aim to protect American livelihoods as well as American lives.

A key initiative to improve security, but one that facilitates trade is the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism. On April 16, together with Secretary O'Neill, Governor Ridge, and many CEOs of major U.S. importers, I announced the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, or "C-TPAT." C-TPAT is a unique partnership between Customs and the trade community - U.S. Importers, carriers, customs brokers, and others to improve security along the entire supply chain, while expediting the flow of legitimate commerce into the United States.

Under C-TPAT, companies have committed to improving the security of their shipments and the security of the supply chain from foreign loading docks to the U.S. border and seaports. Those companies that meet security standards will be given the "fast lane" through our land border crossings, and through our seaports.

C-TPAT is a program through which businesses win and most importantly, the American people win. The program has already made great progress. To date - just 3 months after we announced the program - nearly 300 companies, (as of last Friday the exact number was 274), have signed up to participate in C-TPAT. We are continuing to roll out C-TPAT to new constituencies, beyond U.S. Importers In fact, today, I am pleased to announce, we are rolling out C-TPAT to carriers - this includes air, land, and sea carriers.

The U.S. Customs Service has also united with Canada and with Mexico to respond to the new post-9/11 reality. With both countries, we are working together to tackle the challenge of improving security at the border while simultaneously expediting legitimate trade. Under the leadership of Governor Ridge, we have entered into "Smart Border" agreements with both countries that involve a number of actions to improve information exchange and adopt benchmarked security measures that will reduce the terrorist threat to most of the North American continent. Here, again, the aim here is to ensure both free and secure trade - with security efforts and inspections focused on high-risk commerce, and the fast lane given to commerce and people that do not pose a risk.

For example, one of the actions under the Smart Border Accord that we (U.S. Customs and INS) have implemented with Canada, is the NEXUS program. This is a program to enroll people who cross the land border between the United States and Canada who apply, who provide information and fingerprints, who are run against crime and terrorist indices of both countries, and who are personally interviewed by U.S. And Canadian Customs. If accepted into the program - and only those judged to pose no risk are accepted - they are issued a proximity card, or SMART card. When they approach the border POE, they wave their card and their information and photo shows up at the entry booth. They get waved right through. No stop for Customs or immigration purposes. It works both ways.

Are we just talking about this? No. It has been agreed to. In June, it was started at a major crossing point - Blaine, Washington. NEXUS will be expanded to Detroit and Buffalo this Fall.

We are also pushing our "zone of security" outward - beyond North America - through the Container Security Initiative, or CSI.

Approximately 90% of all cargo moves by container, most of it stacked dozens of stories high on huge transport ships. Over 100 million cargo containers are transported between the world's seaports each year, constituting the most important component of global trade. Nearly 6 million cargo containers arrive at U.S. seaports annually; 5.7 million last year, to be more exact.

Unfortunately, as a number of experts have pointed out, experts like Steve Flynn, the threat that international terrorists may attempt to use a cargo container to conceal or smuggle a terrorist weapon, including a nuclear device or a radiological weapon, is a real one. Some of you may recall that last October, Italian authorities found an individual, an Egyptian national, concealed inside a shipping container bound for Halifax, Canada.

With CSI, the U.S. Customs Service is entering into partnerships with other governments to identify high-risk cargo containers and to pre-screen those containers at the foreign ports before they are shipped to our ports. Pre-screened cargo from foreign CSI ports will not have to be screened again when it reaches U.S. ports.

The four core elements of the CSI program are:

• First, identify high-risk containers;
• Second, prescreen containers before they are shipped;
• Third, use technology to prescreen high-risk containers; and
• Fourth, use smarter, more secure containers.

Using large scale x-ray and gamma ray machines and radiation detection devices to quickly screen outbound containers, you can run a container through inspection in about 90 seconds.

By the way, this technology, which U.S. Customs uses to screen high-risk containers is not just for discovering illegal drugs - these machines are equally good for discovering even lead-shielded nuclear and radiological materials, or even people illegally concealed in containers.

Although we know that we cannot search 100% of the cargo containers that enter the U.S., we are using risk management and targeting principles to identify and inspect every container that poses a potential terrorist risk - either here or, preferably, before it leaves the foreign port.

Like C-TPAT, CSI enables us to improve security without slowing the flow of legitimate trade. We believe that both of these initiatives provide what the Heritage Foundation report saw as key to protecting the nation's infrastructure, and I quote: "a more robust means for monitoring [cargo] without interfering with international commerce."2

When I announced CSI earlier this year, I said that we hoped to implement CSI initially at the top 20 ports - the top 20 - in terms of volume of cargo containers shipped to the U.S. That's because these ports account for nearly 70% of all of the containers shipped to U.S. Seaports We do not intend to stop with the top 20 ports, but they are simply the logical place for us to start.

I recently returned from a trip to Europe, and I am pleased to be able to tell you that CSI gained enormous momentum. We signed agreements with the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, to implement CSI at the Ports of Rotterdam, Antwerp, and Le Havre. Singapore has also announced that it will participate in CSI. These are four of the top 20 ports that ship to the United States.

I believe that agreements with other governments, covering more of the major ports are imminent.

Programs like CSI help us push our security efforts beyond our borders. The next logical extension of CSI is to apply the program's principles and methods beyond sea containers to air cargo, and U.S. Customs will look forward to working with the Department of Transportation to develop and implement an Air Cargo Security Initiative to make sure that logical next step is taken.

U.S. Customs, together with the INS, must also focus on the people entering or seeking to enter the U.S. But, as with commerce, I believe that we must do this smartly, focusing efforts on high-risk individuals, and letting travelers who pose no risk, and who are otherwise legally entitled to enter, pass across our borders unimpeded. On the land border - as I discussed - we, U.S. Customs and INS, are doing this through NEXUS with Canada.

But we are taking the next step with regard to air passengers. Drawing on the concept of this NEXUS program, we are now developing an initiative with Canada, called Air NEXUS, that will - through better risk management techniques and pre-screening - improve, secure, and streamline the way international air passengers move through major hub international airports to the U.S.

Air NEXUS makes sense. Increased security should not grind international air travel to a halt, and force all travelers to run gauntlets of long lines and intrusive inspections. In essence, Air NEXUS - like NEXUS at land borders - will involve enrolling individuals, starting with U.S. And Canadian citizens - probably those who frequently fly between our two countries. To make sure they don't present a risk, they will be run through criminal and terrorist indices and be personally interviewed. If there is any doubt, they won't get in. Those admitted to Air NEXUS will be able to speed through U.S. Customs and INS pre-clearance.

With Canada, we will be piloting the use of iris scanning as the biometric identifier. This will be the SMART Card for Air Nexus.

Working with the Canadian government, we will then be using risk management techniques to focus our security efforts on the higher-risk travelers - the Richard Reids of the world - and speed the no-risk travelers through the airport security checkpoints, through customs and immigration, and to their final destinations.

We are able to start such a project with Canada because U.S. Customs and INS already pre-clear passengers departing for the U.S. through all seven international airports in Canada. We certainly will want to explore this concept with other nations, à la CSI, and we will work and coordinate with TSA, INS, and others, as to whether it is feasible to expand Air NEXUS to other foreign hub airports, beyond those in Canada.

The initiatives I have described are just some of the steps the Customs Service has taken, and is in the process of taking, in the aftermath of 9/11. It is remarkable that we have accomplished so much in such a short a time, but there is still much more we must do - much more we must all do. As President Bush said, we are stronger and better prepared than we were 10 months ago, but we can be and we need to be stronger still.

We are fast approaching the one-year anniversary of 9/11. The memories of that day are still vivid for all of us. Indeed, they always will be.

We know we must remain vigilant, as we work together to bolster our homeland security - by developing sound strategies, and by turning those strategies into concrete, workable initiatives. I can tell you that I, and all the men and women of the U.S. Customs Service, are more determined than ever in our mission to protect our borders and keep America safe.

Thank you.

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

1. President George W. Bush, Address on the Proposal to Create a Department of Homeland Security (June 6, 2002).

2. The Heritage Foundation, Defending the American Homeland: A Report of the Heritage Foundation Homeland Security Task Force 25 (Jan. 2002).