The reasons are clear-terrorists planning to trigger a nuclear device hidden in a sea container don't have to guarantee the container makes it through a U.S. port to be certain of its destructive effects; if one of these devices explodes, it can do just as much damage from the deck of a ship temporarily moored outside one of our ports or moving slowing along the U.S. coast. A "dirty bomb" doesn't have to make it all the way into a department store in LA to deliver its murderous payload. Five miles offshore, or anchored for a few hours outside the port of San Diego-it's still a perfect opportunity for terrorists to detonate a radioactive device and establish a "kill zone" extending hundreds of miles inland.

In June 2003, CBP inspectors at the Exodus Command Center at Headquarters and in Portland, Oreg., were scrutinizing the automated data they'd received on cargo aboard the Nordstrand, a ship scheduled to transit Portland on its way from Shanghai, China to El Salvador, in Central America. They noticed something peculiar: the cargo manifest for one container indicated it was carrying frozen trout, but the information the inspectors had on their screens described the shipper as an arms manufacturer in Shanghai, and the recipient as a gun dealer in El Salvador.

Something wasn't right.

CBP inspectors removed the 20-foot container from the ship on June 28-the fact that it wasn't refrigerated confirmed their original suspicions about its contents-and opened it. What they found was a 421,500-dollar cache of weapons: 780 handguns, 950 ammunition magazines, 150 pistol grip shotguns, and some 300 standard pump-action shotguns. When CBP inspectors also discovered that the shipper in China had failed to obtain the permits he needed from the U.S. Department of State to move his cargo on a carrier transiting U.S. ports, they seized the shipment. It was the largest weapons seizure to date by CBP officials in the Pacific-Northwest.

CBP officials indicate the shipment was not linked to a terrorist plan, and "the deal" appears to have been merely a private seller-to-buyer transaction. Still, the fact that the contents of the container were mismarked, and the shipper lacked the U.S. State Department license a legitimate manufacturer would have obtained as a matter-of-fact, begs some important questions.

What is clear, however, is that CBP inspectors are indeed sifting through millions of bytes of automated data about containerized cargo with the proverbial fine tooth comb, paying scrupulous attention to anomalies and discrepancies that might be clues another terrorist attack is on the way. In this case, a shipment of "frozen trout" traveling in an unrefrigerated container turned out to be less of a terrorist threat than originally feared, but something far more sinister than spoiled foodstuff.

CBP inspectors in Portland view the weapons seizure as evidence that both they and CSI are working with maximum effectiveness. At CBP, officials see a continuing and keen dedication to a mission that, for the men and women on the frontlines of the war on terrorism, has lost none of its urgency or purpose.