In the days following September 11, 2001, the Office of Field Operations (OFO) and the Office of Training and Development (OTD) began planning a course that came to be called Customs Inspection Anti-Terrorism Training (CIA-TT) as one of the major responses to the terrorist attack. In form and format, it will follow last year's successful Inspection & Interaction Skills Enhancement Workshop (I&ISEW) with one important change: this year's training will be eight hours instead of 16. With training time cut in half course developers worked overtime to make sure that every training session focused on and reinforced only the most essential lessons.

Subject matter experts from around the country - inspectors, supervisors, and chief inspectors - came together to help OTD design the CIA-TT and, by extension, define Customs new role. They determined that although the new emphasis on anti-terrorism signals a change in the way Customs views its work, the work itself remains much the same. The techniques of smuggling a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) do not vary from the methods used to smuggle any other contraband - only the consequences are drastically different. The Customs inspection force may be not only the first line of defense, but also the last. Opening the wrong container can be fatal not only for the inspecting officer, but also for those in the immediate vicinity.

Assessing the risk
The CIA-TT course begins with risk assessment and targeting. Just as risk assessment for drug trafficking needs periodic updating, anti-terrorism simply adds screening criteria to existing techniques. How do we recognize terrorists who are trying to blend in? Or a WMD disguised to look like something else? The same way we find traffickers and drugs. CIA-TT provides the basic cues to set off the bells of recognition. Most of all, the course emphasizes that before any hands-on inspection is performed, Customs personnel should ask themselves if there is any reason to think that the package in front of them is linked to terrorism. If they suspect it is, then they should secure and isolate the suspect material. After that, they should call in the experts and specialists who can complete the examination in a safe manner.

What if the port is the target of an attack or the location of a WMD accident? CIA-TT also addresses incident management. The anti-terrorism training inspectors receive includes discussions on the "unthinkable" - how to limit damage and increase the odds of survival until the first responders arrive.

OTD held train the trainer sessions in April 2002. They provided airport/seaport trainers 24 hours of subject matter instruction to deliver the eight-hour course. Around the country, the first classes of CIA-TT were rolled out in ports during May. In June, OTD began orientation for land border inspectors. All training will be completed by the end of the calendar year.

There is too much material, and too little time to transform inspectors into experts in the various fields of intelligence, hazardous materials, and ordnance; however, those specialists are only a phone call away. OFO personnel are the smuggling and border experts and with anti-terrorism training and another layer of screening criteria, inspectors can make the nation secure for all the other experts.

Protect and detect. We can do it.