Senators Feinstein, Kyl, Hutchison, and Snowe
Introduce New Measure to Protect America's Seaports
August 1, 2002

Washington, DC - U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) today introduced legislation to better protect against terrorist attacks on or through our nation's seaports.

"It is clear that Al Qaeda has plans to attack the United States again, and we know that terrorists may target U.S. seaports," Senator Feinstein said. "The detonation of a nuclear 'suitcase bomb' or radiological 'dirty bomb' at a U.S. seaport could be devastating to our economy and national security. While we cannot inspect every container coming into the United States, we can do a better job devoting our attention to high-risk cargo. We need to act now to help keep terrorists and their weapons out of our country. I believe this bill does just that."

Each year, approximately 16 million shipping containers come into U.S. ports, six million from overseas, but less than two percent are inspected. In total, U.S. ports handle over 800 million tons of cargo valued at approximately $600 billion. Excluding trade with Mexico and Canada, America's ports handle 95 percent of U.S. trade. To date, two of the busiest ports are in California: Los Angeles/ Long Beach and Oakland.

This spring, the FBI received reports that terrorists may be making their way toward Southern California from a Middle Eastern port on merchant ships. In fact, Catalina Island was mentioned as a possible destination for roughly forty Al Qaeda terrorists.

"Since September 11th, the federal government has taken steps to secure our airports and borders, but we still do not have a security plan for the nation's 361 seaports," Senator Feinstein said. "We must act now to prevent a potential terrorist from taking advantage of this vulnerability."

Specifically, the "Comprehensive Seaport and Container Security Act" would (1) push U.S. scrutiny of high-risk shipping containers beyond the nation's borders to intercept dangerous and illegal cargo before it arrives and (2) establish a comprehensive container risk profiling plan to allow U.S. authorities to focus their limited inspection and enforcement capabilities on high-risk cargo.

In addition, the measure would:

  • Designate the director at each U.S. port as the primary authority responsible for security (allowing him or her to delegate to the Captain-of-the-Port). This will enable all parties involved in business at a port to understand who has final say on all security matters.
  • Require the FBI to collect and make available data relating to crime at and affecting seaports. With more data, law enforcement agencies will be able to better identify patterns and weaknesses at particular ports.


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  • Require ports to provide space to the U.S. Customs Service so that the agency is able to use its non-intrusive inspection technology. In many cases, Customs has to keep this technology outside the port and bring it in every day, which prevents some of the best inspection technology (which is not portable) from being used.


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  • Give Customs responsibility of licensing and overseeing regulated intermediaries in the international trade process (these intermediaries handle over 80 percent of all cargo in international trade). Currently, the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission oversees most of these intermediaries, but Customs will have more resources to oversee this regulation.

  • Require shippers bound for U.S. ports to transmit their cargo manifests with more detailed information at least 24 hours prior to departing from a foreign port.


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  • Impose steep monetary sanctions for failure to comply with information filing requirements, including filing incorrect information (the current penalty is only a maximum $1000 or $5000 fine, depending on the offense). The Seaport Commission found that about half of the information on ship manifests was inaccurate.


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  • Require all port employees to have biometric smart identification cards.


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  • Restrict private vehicle access to ports.


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  • Prohibit guns and explosives at ports, except when authorized.


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  • Mandate that radiation detection pagers be issued to each inspector.


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  • Require the Transportation Security Administration to set standards to ensure each port has a secure port perimeter, secure parking facilities, controlled points of access into the port, sufficient lighting, buildings with secure doors and windows and an alarm.


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  • Require all ports to keep sensitive information on the port secure and protected. Such information would include, but not be limited to maps, blueprints, and information on the Internet.


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  • Require the use of high security seals on all containers coming into the U.S.

  • Require that each container to be transported through U.S. ports receive a universal transaction number that could be used to track container movement from origin to destination. Require shippers to have similar universal numbers.

  • Require all empty containers destined for U.S. ports to be secured.


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  • Fund pilot programs to develop high-tech seals and sensors, including those that would provide real-time evidence of container tampering to a monitor at a terminal.

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