Six years after 9/11, America’s second-largest port is still open for terrorist business

PHOTO by RUSS ROCA

I’m a big one for historical remembrances–1066 (William the Conqueror lands on the English coast), 1945 (the atom bomb dropped twice in a single month), and 1977 (premiere of Three’s Company, with the first episode “A Man About the House”–hilarious)–and, so, on the most recent September 11, I drove to the Port of Long Beach to see how the president’s War on Terror is doing.

The answer: not well. Or maybe very well-if you love evildoers who seek to do America harm.

Approaching the port from Ocean Boulevard, I ran across train tracks and drove by rusty cargo containers. But I could not find the port. There was none of the bustle you think of when you think about the places where the sea meets America-no forklifts, no guys with clipboards, no grumpy and profane longshoremen.

And then a semi throwing off nothing but diesel exhaust and the sound of metal grinding against metal rolled past, and as it did-like a theater curtain pulled back quickly to reveal a dramatic scene-the port was there. I was driving toward the shadows of three massive, 15-story cranes backlit by the late-summer sky.

I had found the Port of Long Beach. In fact, I’d been wandering its roads-past its refineries and storage tanks-for some time.

It was Sept. 11, 2007, and there wasn’t a security guard in sight. Except for the guy behind the wheel of the scene-revealing semi, there wasn’t a man or woman at the Port of Long Beach, the source of 40 percent of America’s imports.

Some local officials told me not to worry. Though it was not obvious to me as I stood alone, gaping at the gantry cranes, port officials say that security has always been a top priority at the Port of Long Beach. Before 9/11 the chief concern was theft, and the port has some key advantages in that regard. Container shipping is the first: it’s hard to surreptitiously load and make off with a 60,000-pound steel container. The immensity of port operations is another deterrent: How do you find what you want to steal amid the tens of thousands of containers filled with diapers, alarm clocks, and patio furniture?

But 9/11 and the seemingly constant threat of spectacularly destructive terrorism has completely realigned our understanding of the port’s vulnerabilities. Thieves have three tasks, to get in, get the goods and get out.

Terrorists are different: they just have to get next to something big and vulnerable with a crude bomb made from gasoline and fertilizer-an oil tanker, chemical storage tank, the Gerald Desmond Bridge, a refinery, pipeline, whatever-and blow it up. Then of course there’s the nightmare scenario: the detonation of a nuclear weapon or the dispersal of biological or radiological material. For that, all you need is air space; if your terrorist cadre lacks an organized air force or guided-missile system, you’ll need an alternative means of transporting your bomb.

A shipping container might be just the thing, and 19,900 of them pass through the Port of Long Beach every day.

LISTING TO PORT

There are many good reasons to despise the Port of Long Beach. Along with the Port of Los Angeles, it has chewed up almost 11,000 acres of land and miles of California coastline. It puts our health at risk. (In the middle of one interview a shipping executive asked me where I lived, and when I told him that I was five miles north of the port he responded, “Better get your lungs checked.”) It’s noisy and dirty and has turned the 710 into a potholed, congested nightmare drive. It represents an embarrassing trade deficit and our nation’s declining ability to make anything worth buying or keeping. It is the thin edge of the free trade wedge, and the sucking sound that you hear is the siphoning off of American manufacturing jobs to parts unknown even to most Chinese or Indians. A monument to our mania for cheap labor and goods, the Port of Long Beach owes its preeminence to another greedy impulse: the vast quantity of oil withdrawn over the years from the Wilmington oil field has resulted in dramatic subsidence-the literal collapse of the land itself over its hollowed-out self. If that subsidence has any benefit, it’s this: it’s deepened the seafloor, making room for larger ships.

It’s an ugly, godforsaken, sprawling mess, but the Port of Long Beach is also magnificent, the way Chicago is magnificent in the Carl Sandburg poem (”Hog Butcher for the World/Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat/Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler”). From the Vincent Thomas, the entire complex looks like a giant Social Realist painting, the heart and soul of modern commerce. Coincidentally, it has all the problems that those epic paintings and heroic poses gloss over: it is a post-Soviet landscape of cracked concrete, rusting metal, gravel, grime-covered storage tanks and oil-soaked earth, surrounded on all sides by a polluted ocean.

Which is why so few of us ever venture there.

PHOTO by RUSS ROCA

BULL’S AYE-AYE

But if you had significant grievances with the United States and wanted to make a point, you could hardly do better than to target the Port of Long Beach. It’s the second-busiest port in the United States (Los Angeles is first), moving more cargo containers than the 10 busiest East Coast ports combined-including New York and New Jersey-and it’s the No. 12 container port in the world. Last year the port handled the equivalent of 7.3 million containers (end to end, about 156,000 miles) and 85 million metric tons of cargo, numbers that are supposed to triple over the next 15 years. Seventy percent of this country’s container traffic from Asia moves through Long Beach, 43 percent of all container traffic into the U.S.

What else? Over half of California’s oil supply comes into the state by way of the Bay of San Pedro.

Big-name leaseholders include Hanjin Shipping Co., Morton Salt Co., British Petroleum, Shell Oil, Weyerhaeuser and Toyota. Stand on Signal Hill and you can just make out commuter bridges, cruise ships packed with vacationers, railroads, and public roadways that extend deep into the port.

An attack of any considerable size could damage infrastructure, wreak havoc on the local and national economy, and destabilize world markets. And when I say “considerable,” I don’t mean enormous: The 2002 shutdown of the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles cost upwards of $19 billion. A low-tech but coordinated attack at the port-a guy with the aforementioned truck full of fertilizer, or perhaps three crude conventional explosives slapped to a bridge support, gypsum refinery and a container-could shut down the port for days or weeks. Anything more organized or destructive-say, similar explosions at roughly the same time in the Port of Seattle-could close every port in the country. The length of closure and costs to the world economy rise in lockstep with the seriousness of the attack.

COME TO JESUS
You don’t have to imagine what that attack might accomplish. Last year’s RAND report “Considering the Effects of a Catastrophic Terrorist Attack” offers in-depth descriptions of the short- and long-term effects of the detonation of a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb hidden in a container and shipped to the Port of Long Beach. It’s a harrowing study: if the blast and firestorm fail to kill every single resident of our city, then fallout and a complete breakdown of civil society should finish the job.

It’d be comforting to dismiss this as fear mongering. But the report’s introduction is unequivocal: analysts consider the Long Beach scenario “quite plausible,” in part because a powerful 10-kiloton explosion can be produced “with a relatively crude unboosted design.” One analysis concludes that “a terrorist who can get a nuclear device into a container is virtually assured of achieving at least a dockside detonation.” A congressional report concludes that placement of such a device would primarily depend on an “ability to infiltrate, bribe, or otherwise work around local security.”

“Local security”? Like I said, on September 11, 2007, I didn’t see much of it.

On that day, I wandered through the port for an hour, exploring access roads and odd little dead ends. I could reach out and touch the pipes of refineries. A pair of wire cutters, the courage to jog across a highway and a dark purpose is all that someone else might need to enter the container lots; with wire cutters alone I’d have had access to power lines and bridge supports, many of which are in isolated corners of the port. I saw only one patrol car. Most berth entrances are guarded, but you would be mistaken if you imagined anything particularly elaborate; nothing like entering Camp Pendleton, for example, where guys with rifles stare you down, question you closely, check your license and search your car. In many cases I saw only a length of chain link fence and a small guard shack with a hand-stenciled sign reading “Drivers must show ID.” I didn’t see many gates, and where I did vehicles were waved through after a quick word with the guard. No barrier seemed substantial enough to prevent a determined driver from simply rolling in.

Two days later I returned, this time for two hours. My driving couldn’t have been more suspicious. I wandered the little roads and deserted, tank-filled lots that honeycomb the port. I circled structures multiple times, stopped in the middle of roads and backed up to take photos of things that I had just passed. I didn’t see a single patrol car. Finally, I drove into an enormous lot and slowly circled a cluster of towering cement silos. The sheer scale of port structures frequently transfixes me, so I didn’t immediately realize that I had rolled to a stop directly in front of a large opening at the base of one of the silos. A few cars and trucks were parked next to the opening-what looked like a garage door-but everyone seemed to be inside. I was only 40 yards away and could have surprised everyone by driving right in. My nearness to the silo rattled me; throughout the port there are signs warning of constant video surveillance. I was certain that security cars would roll up, scream to a stop and that men in black would interrogate me. So I left quickly, heart pounding. Fifteen minutes later I was back home, feeling lucky.

Over the next six weeks I returned to the port three more times. Each time I stayed longer, strayed farther, and became more brazen with my camera. And I was never stopped.

I spoke with one port official (who is not connected with security operations), who extended everyday wishful thinking to disturbing lengths.

“Say you went in and blew something up,” he offered. “Say you’ve killed a million Barbie dolls. The thing about the terrorists is, would they ever really want to attack us here? So they wipe out a bunch of iPods . . . . Would that have the impact that it would if they went into a Starbucks and killed 20 people?”

Despite that breezy calculation, tremendous resources go into port security. Port security officials say they’re engaged in a constant cycle of brainstorming, “gap analysis” and fundraising. Yes, fundraising: the port has invested approximately $21 million of its own money into improving security, but the bulk of security funding-$51 million-has come from the U.S. government, and a grant application was required for every single penny. (When asked about the grant process, port Security Director Cosmo Perrone groaned, “Oh, my God,” like a man with a bad headache.)

The money has gone toward the purchase of Advanced Spectroscopic radiation scanners and video-equipped submersibles. A $21 million security command center is under construction on Pier F, where it will serve as security headquarters and help to coordinate the efforts of the U.S. Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection, Port Harbor Patrol, the fire department and the Los Angeles and Long Beach police departments.

There’s more–plans for a more sophisticated underwater surveillance system using fixed and mobile sonar devices, and plans to integrate security and traffic management as well as coordinate the data provided by a host of sensoring devices, including cameras, radar and sonar. Every incoming container is scanned by hand or with sophisticated scanning portals; containers deemed high risk are manually inspected. This is to say nothing of ambitious national security programs such as the Container Security Initiative. CSI seeks to implement cargo screening–conducted by American officers-at the point of origin, long before cargo reaches the U.S. There are 58 operational CSI ports, the majority of them in Europe. Strengthening the waterside perimeter and monitoring access by recreational boaters remains a major concern–no one has forgotten the USS Cole–but one that Perrone has designated a top priority and plans to mitigate in partnership with the Coast Guard. And Perrone has considerable latitude to make security modifications on the ground, as he sees fit.

But there are gaps. The handful of port security officials who are privy to intelligence data have undergone security clearances, and many other port employees go through a background check before being hired. But background checks are not required of dockworkers, who are considered independent contractors or are the employees of leaseholders and are not, strictly speaking, employees of the port.

Each shipping company has its own terminal and most of these companies monitor them closely; it would be difficult to breach those systems: they actually check IDs. But there’s a gap here, too: Customs and Coast Guard patrols of various sizes are always present in terminals and along the coast–that is, on the water. But on land, the security is lax, as I learned firsthand. The Long Beach Police Department and the Harbor Patrol run just six patrol cars in the port at any given time. And with so many agencies collaborating on security, interoperable communications–the ability of security partners to communicate on a common system–is an elusive necessity.

PHOTO by RUSS ROCA

NONE IF BY LAND
So how safe is the port? That depends on the importance you assign to having a secure perimeter.

Ocean-side attacks dominate the imaginations of security officials everywhere, so national goals for port security have focused on two scenarios to the near exclusion of all others: the importation of a container bomb, and the collision of a tanker and an explosives-laden ship.

But what about attacks from the opposite side of the port? What about the person who, like me but with bad intentions, meanders into the port with something terrible in the trunk of her car? As conscientious officials add layer upon layer of import supply-chain security features, troubleshooting every possible leg of a container’s journey, are they planning for the individual who simply loads an explosive onto a semi in Wilmington and heads straight to the port on Anaheim? Because, however stringent the security checks imposed on import containers, there’s no similar check on export containers-a worrisome thought considering that outgoing shipments and empty containers sit in container yards for days, even weeks, before being loaded for return to Asia.

HOLES
As someone who had wandered into restricted areas quite by accident, I was astonished by the porous nature of the port. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d been funneled through a designated entrance where someone asked me to state my business or hand over my driver’s license. But I’ve been to 7-Elevens with more security cameras, and I guess I expected the port to have deployed something at least as formal as the guard station at which I’m required to stop anytime I want to take my toddler to the El Dorado Nature Center.

I asked Perrone if there was any anxiety about perimeter security at the port. He was taken aback by the question.

“We have no perimeter,” he said. And then he asked, “You . . . uh . . . Are you familiar with the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles at all?”

I explained that I’ve lived in Long Beach for most of my life.

“Well, you can drive right through the port, can’t you?” he asked.

“Does anyone worry about that?” I asked.

“Of course . . .” he said, trailing off. “You can drive very close to the water, into areas that are very sensitive in the port, simply by being on a highway here.”

Perrone suddenly sounded like a man who worries for a living. “We’re constantly developing mitigation plans for that sort of situation. It’s hard.”

LET ME DRAW YOU A MAP
Amy Zegart is an associate professor at UCLA’s School of Public Affairs who worked on President Bill Clinton’s National Security staff and was a foreign policy advisor to the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign. A Fulbright Scholar, Council on Foreign Relations member, former student of Condoleezza Rice, she’s among the best and brightest where security issues are concerned. I tell her about my trips to the port, and about the relative lack of anxiety among officials there.

There’s just one thing I want to know, I asked her. Is this stuff a problem?

Her voice rose a couple of octaves: “Clearly it’s a problem!”

“To the extent that we are improving cargo container inspections, terrorist groups then seek other soft targets,” she said. “And if the perimeter is not secure at the port, then that makes the entire port complex incredibly soft.”

When I asked Perrone about the feasibility of building a border around the port-the better to manage port access-he explained that doing so would limit port efficiency.

“Considering that we have highways and so forth, what would that lead to?” he asked. And then he answered his own question: “It would lead to a slowdown of movement of goods, and you’d have backups, and this port would suffer greatly.”

And that’s pretty much how Long Beach officialdom sees the matter. They want more security, but they’re responsible for balancing that security with economic necessity. During a conversation with Mayor Bob Foster, I commented that while driving around the port I was most struck by the fact that I was driving around the port. His response:”Well, there’s a lot of commerce going on.”

Assistant director of port communications Art Wong said my port sojourn was of no great moment. “You would have to know where you were going because there is a maze of these boxes,” he told me. “When you say, ‘Anybody can get in,’ yeah, they can, but it’s a lot trickier than it looks.”

It’s a difficult place to find a target, he said. But in my shoulder bag at that moment was an intricate map of the port that detailed access roads, railroad tracks, buildings and storage tanks, helpfully labeled “Mercedes Benz, USA,” “Shell Oil Liquid Bulk Terminal,” “Valero Refinery” and the like. I had found a stack of the maps among the brochures in the waiting area of Wong’s office, but you can also pick one up at your local AAA office.

PHOTO by RUSS ROCA

TWICS ARE FOR KIDS
Both Perrone and Mayor Foster are in favor of creating a “virtual perimeter,” something that would be facilitated by the implementation of Homeland Security’s Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC). TWIC, an experimental program set to test in Long Beach, would provide a tamper-resistant card with biometric data, and according to a DHS press release dated Nov. 17, 2004, TWIC cards were scheduled for distribution at the port three years ago. But to this day TWIC has yet to launch. It should also be noted that according to the DHS release, “many transportation workers must carry a different identification card for each facility they access. A standard TWIC would improve the flow of commerce by eliminating the need for redundant credentials.” In other words, TWIC isn’t designed to create a virtual perimeter, merely to simplify security procedures that are already in place.

Foster-who is clearly deeply involved in port security and has been an impressive advocate for increased funding-explained that video surveillance has been “beefed up” dramatically, to an extent that isn’t meant to be obvious to the casual observer. It’s unclear whether that means that on Sept. 11, 2008, you’ll be able to drive right into the port with a camera and work your own reconnaissance, walking around refineries and snapping photos of bridge supports, as I did.

Zegart thinks a hard perimeter is a necessity, and would be both a low cost and highly effective security filter. “More than half of homeland security is really common sense. It’s not so much about big-ticket items or a failure of imagination. It’s really about common sense.”

Would it really be so difficult to construct a perimeter? Perrone and others claim it would be impossible to implement checks on highways that pass through the port. This may or may not be true-and, well, I guess I’d offer any airport in the land as counter-evidence about what Americans will tolerate-but certainly surface street access could be limited to a handful of entrances. Considering the stakes, a 50 percent solution would be well worth the cost of joining and widening a few access lanes, and throwing up comprehensive fencing. This would make other screens possible: shipment manifests are a critical tool in protecting the ports: they are submitted to the port long before a ship ever docks, checked and crosschecked, forming a basis for the risk assessment of imports and the control of the flow of goods. At various stages of the import process shipments are scanned with cameras and electronically compared with manifests. Could incoming truck traffic be similarly analyzed as it moves through designated entrances?

The issue, as always, is the slowdown of goods-balancing commerce and safety is a constant concern. Absolutely everyone I interviewed, from the mayor on down, spoke glowingly of the port, of management’s eagerness to invest heavily in security and implement security initiatives. But as Perrone points out, “Only a few years ago, [the port] saw itself primarily as a real estate company.”

After September 11, that insanely profitable collection of businesses has had to shift its focus from protecting assets and revenue streams to insuring public security. But there is a myopia that seizes government, business and the private citizen-and may very well be the defining trait of man, for all I know-and when we speak of “balancing” profit and safety, worry about airports a great deal more than ports, aim for “virtual perimeters” instead of fencing, and focus all of our security efforts on the ships and coasts but not cars and roads, then myopia may be at work.

Zegart says simply, “To suggest that perimeter security isn’t important is lunacy.”

EPILOGUE

I had explored the port on five different days, and had never been stopped. But I was a wide-eyed white woman in a Toyota sedan, so perhaps I had been spotted by that network of cameras, and thanks to profiling had been deemed harmless.

On Nov. 8 I returned to the port, this time with photographer Russ Roca, who is not wide-eyed, or white, or a woman. We threw caution to the wind: Russ spent 15 minutes photographing bridge supports as trucks and pickups drove past. We wandered down little roads deep into the piers, plants and refineries looming on either side, the air reeking of chemicals. Russ would ask me to pull over in the middle of the road and he would hop out, stroll out into the middle of the road, and photograph power lines and fences and cranes, bold as day, as the cars and trucks rolled by. As far as we knew, we had the run of the place.

One day soon I’ll be taking my son Isaac to the port so that he can watch the cranes lift 20-ton containers, wave at the oil workers eating lunch, and listen to the sound of vibrating steel as trucks cross the Gerald Desmond Bridge right over his head. It’s a marvelous place, and he should see it.

But he will be safer–as will the dock workers and longshoremen and everyone I know–if it is just a little more difficult to pass completely unnoticed through the container yards and petroleum coke storage facilities.

Tags: 9/11, Homeland Security, Long Beach, osama bin laden, Port of Long Beach, PORT OF LOS ANGELES, port security, Rachel Powers, terrorism, trade, War on Terror