Control of U.S. Ports

[John_Mace]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

The fact that they voted against Alito is my point: the invested a tremendous amount of energy into the effort to oppose Alito, even making calls from their ski resorts to do so. Seriously, pretty big effort. That’s a battle they picked.

This one isn’t. Perhaps they should’ve–but there’s just so many battles for them to choose from.

Daniel

But this doesn’t make sense if we assume, as you said earlier, that the Dems are motivated by not wanting to appear to be obstroctionist. The Alito confirmation was a highly visible process, and was a lock. Yet they chose to oppose it, even to the point of trying to filibuster. This fed nomination process was largely invisible. Had they blocked it, not one would’ve even noticed. And it Bush tried to make a stink about it, they could very reasonably say the guy was not qualified-- something no one could reasonably say about Alito.

So, I don’t buy the “they don’t want to appear to be obstructionist” argument. The facts don’t support that explanation. I mean, let’s get real here. If you’re teilling me the Dems purposely chose to fight a battle they knew they would lose, and chose not to fight one that they could reasonably have won, then what does that say about them?

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@John Mace

So, I don’t buy the “they don’t want to appear to be obstructionist” argument. The facts don’t support that explanation. I mean, let’s get real here. If you’re teilling me the Dems purposely chose to fight a battle they knew they would lose, and chose not to fight one that they could reasonably have won, then what does that say about them?

What makes you think they could have reasonably won this battle?

At any rate, I’m not especially interested in going too much into this: I was trying to explain why I think they made the decision they made, not trying to say it was a wise decision. If you don’t think I described their motives accurately, that’s cool.

Shodan, you may well be right: there is not, after all, exact balance between the probity of the left and the probity of the right.

Daniel

[RTFirefly]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

What makes you think they could have reasonably won this battle?

I’m sure there was little if any chance. But there comes a time to lose well: to make the point to the public (to the extent that it’s listening) that the only reason X passed, or Y got put in a position of power, was that though your side did everything it could to block X or Y, your side just didn’t have the votes. And if they elect more people of your party, then legislation like X, and appointments like Y, will be dead meat.

In the case of appointments like this one, I don’t think it does the Dems any good to oppose one or two high-profile Brownie clones, while letting lots of others through. But if this fall, they had been able to present a whole list of fuckups that were appointed over their strident objections, it would have been a selling point, IMHO. Not a central one, but a non-trivial supporting issue.

Unfortunately, I’d say it’s already too late for this approach to be used.

[RTFirefly]

Getting back to ports, the WaPo has a couple of major pieces today on PortGate.

This story by Walter Pincus and Paul Blustein (why does Pincus always get buried in the back pages of the front section?) says, among other things:

Administration officials have asserted in recent days that security at U.S. ports is the responsibility of the Coast Guard and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, with the terminal operators responsible for little more than transferring containers from ships to railroad cars and trucks.

That overstates the role government agencies play. “They’ve been saying that customs and the Coast Guard are in charge of security; yes, they’re in charge, but they’re not usually present,” said Carl Bentzel, a former congressional aide who helped write the 2002 act regulating port security.

The private terminal operators are almost always responsible for guarding the area around their facilities, although they must submit their security plans to the Coast Guard, which monitors and inspects them. In some cases, the companies X-ray incoming containers to see whether the contents appear to match the manifest, although customs agents are solely responsible for “intrusive” inspections – that is, opening containers and examining the cargo. That procedure is performed on about 5 percent of containers entering the United States.

The security personnel employed by the terminal companies vary from port to port, but according to several companies, the guards are often supplied by local private security firms.

“The lowest-paying jobs on the waterfront are security people,” said Stephen E. Flynn, a ports expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “But is that a problem for foreign ownership? No. It’s a problem for everybody.”

Shifting ownership from Britain’s P&O to Dubai Ports World would not affect those arrangements at the terminals in question, company officials said. Consider, for example, the situation at the Philadelphia port, where Dubai Ports World would obtain 50 percent control over a local outfit that runs one terminal out of eight leased from the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority.

Robert Palaima, who runs the local company, said yesterday that he hires guards from a union that provides security officers and police guards under a security plan approved by the Coast Guard, which carried out a full-day inspection this week.

Cargo loading and unloading is done by work crews supplied by the International Longshoremen’s Association, which Palaima described as “the most patriotic of unions.” And there would be no changes in the workforce even if the Dubai Ports World takeover goes through, he said, adding: “I am sick and tired of all this uproar. We’re patriots and nothing will change.”

Much more serious, in the view of Petersen and other experts, are gaps in security that have nothing to do with the Dubai takeover.

“We’ve spent barely $700 million in federal grants to U.S. ports for security, compared with almost $20 billion for aviation security,” Petersen said. “And most important, we are doing an abysmal job in assisting ports in the developing world in improving security to even minimal acceptable standards.”

A bit of something for everyone in there.

One of those paragraphs calls to mind what ralph124c said:

in ports where the longshoremen’s Union is in control, by paying the right people, you could get access to any part of a port.

I know nothing about whether the longshoremen’s union is squeaky-clean, totally corrupt, or somewhere in between. But a cite in support of a claim of such rampant corruption would be preferable.

[rjung]

@Shodan

No, I don’t. And I suspect you would not be able to find any prominent, non-banned conservatives (which I presume you mean by the Usual Suspects) on these boards who have uncritically supported everything Bush has ever done.

<hijack>

I suspect if someone were to come up with such a list, you’d point to one or two instances of said suspects disagreeing with Bush as “evidence” that they don’t support everything Bush has ever done – e.g., the “no true Bushbot” defense.

</hijack>

An item of interest related to this discussion: UAE terminal takeover extends to 21 ports

[Cervaise]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

What makes you think they could have reasonably won this battle?

They wouldn’t, of course, but why does it have to be a battle? Part of being an opposition party, I think (presuming they want to be), is casting the proper vote whether or not they have a chance to prevail. Bush’s appointments are sailing through on 11-0 and 90-10 votes apparently because the Dems, as individuals, don’t want to be on the losing side. I don’t want them to go to the mat over these invisible-functionary positions; I just want them to quietly vote against them so the confirmations are 6-5 and 55-45, or whatever the proportions are at any given time. No need to make a war out of it. Just principled opposition. But apparently that’s too much to ask for.

[jsc1953]

I think the Dems can make hay out of this, regardless of voting record. It isn’t much of a stretch to explain that it’s customary to let a president staff executive branch positions as he wishes, and that the Democrats saved their strongest scrutiny for cabinet-level and SCOTUS nominees. But they can promise that in a Democratic administration, those positions will not be filled with incompetent cronies.

[RTFirefly]

@jsc1953

I think the Dems can make hay out of this, regardless of voting record. It isn’t much of a stretch to explain that it’s customary to let a president staff executive branch positions as he wishes, and that the Democrats saved their strongest scrutiny for cabinet-level and SCOTUS nominees.

I think that might’ve been a viable argument prior to Katrina.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@RTFirefly

I think that might’ve been a viable argument prior to Katrina.

I don’t buy the idea that Dems are voting for the nominees because they like to be on the winning side of issues–that just doesn’t make sense to me. Does anyone know traditionally what votes for midlevel nominees like this look like? Congress has a very strong traditional streak; if such votes are traditionally unanimous, that might explain why these votes were.

Daniel

[eponymous]

RTFirelfy,

Thanks for the update - one of the things that has bugged me about this whole issue is the DPW deal (in and of itself) wouldn’t change anything that isn’t already currently been done vis-a-vis security.

That being said, however, port security has a long way to go before people (especially port security experts) are comfortable that we (the US) are making every effort in ensuring that the ports are secure (along with other critical infrastructure) - a fact that the administration (and some members of Congress) should be rightly criticized for.

[David_Simmons]

@Cervaise

They wouldn’t, of course, but why does it have to be a battle? Part of being an opposition party, I think (presuming they want to be), is casting the proper vote whether or not they have a chance to prevail. Bush’s appointments are sailing through on 11-0 and 90-10 votes apparently because the Dems, as individuals, don’t want to be on the losing side. I don’t want them to go to the mat over these invisible-functionary positions; I just want them to quietly vote against them so the confirmations are 6-5 and 55-45, or whatever the proportions are at any given time. No need to make a war out of it. Just principled opposition. But apparently that’s too much to ask for.

I believe that the custom is to give the President the staff and cabinet he want with a few exceptions, as other have said. Defense, State and maybe Justice might get closer examination than the others.

However when it comes to the Supreme Court or Federal Reserve, those positions are not the President’s staff and they should get scrutiny. If the new Fed Chairman is as bad as some here say then I’m irked that the Democrats didn’t object. But then the Democrats have done a lot to irk me lately. Spineless is the term that comes to mind.

[Cervaise]

@David Simmons

I believe that the custom is to give the President the staff and cabinet he want with a few exceptions, as other have said.

I reserve the right to believe that custom blows goats.

[RTFirefly]

@eponymous

RTFirelfy,

Thanks for the update - one of the things that has bugged me about this whole issue is the DPW deal (in and of itself) wouldn’t change anything that isn’t already currently been done vis-a-vis security.

You’re welcome.

Like I said, I think that piece has something for everyone. It points out that we’ve done very little about port security in the wake of 9/11, and that needs to be addressed, whoever the port operator is.

But it also points out that on a day-to-day basis, the port operator oversees port security as presently constituted, though they get some Pinkertons or whatever to actually do the work. (Which scares the fuck out of me; I was a Pinkerton for a few months in my ‘just graduated from college, WTF do I do now’ period.) I think security run by low-paid security guards would be open to manipulation, whoever was running the port; but the threat would be even greater if the people running the port wanted to game the system. Which is why I think it’s important to verify exactly who’s reviewed this deal.

I’m glad we’re finally shedding some light on the Bush Admin failures to address port security. Four and a half years after 9/11, they’ve got no excuse. But what will it take to do the same thing for security at chemical plants, at nuclear plants, of air cargo, of toxic chemical shipments by rail and truck, etc.?

[RTFirefly]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

I don’t buy the idea that Dems are voting for the nominees because they like to be on the winning side of issues–that just doesn’t make sense to me. Does anyone know traditionally what votes for midlevel nominees like this look like? Congress has a very strong traditional streak; if such votes are traditionally unanimous, that might explain why these votes were.

Daniel

I think you’ve got a point there: the Congressional Dems are used to operating in a world where the President’s choices were traditionall given great deference. But they were also used to operating in a world where one or two minor agencies were ‘turkey farms’ where you’d appoint people to as political payoffs if they weren’t owed anything like an ambassadorship, but appointees across the government as a whole would usually be competent administrators, regardless of ideology.

The Bushies have been willing to appoint turkeys to any number of important sub-Cabinet positions, and to at least one Cabinet position, IMHO (I’m thinking Chertoff, here). The Dems might be slow to respond due to tradition, but that will hardly count as a recommendation in the eyes of the body politic.

[RTFirefly]

Yep, I occasionally read The Corner.

There is a clean way to handle things such as the port operations, and it still astonishes me that it wasn’t done properly. It’s been done thusly for many years, actually many decades:

1. Create an American company to handle the matter (if foreigners wish to buy in, or even buy it, that’s ok);
2. Wall off the foreign investors/owners. They are silent partners. They have no say in the actual operation;
3. Create a “classified Board” composed of people with security clearances and experience in sensitive matters;
4. Appoint a CEO and other top executives with experience and clearances.

We do this all the time with, say, foreigners who want to buy companies that manufacture parts for weapons sytems, etc. It seems the obvious solution here. Dubai would get prestige and whatever profits are generated. Americans run the thing and guarantee, so far as is possible, security. Looks like a win/win solution. For that matter, we should have done the same sort of thing with the British owners, and we should do the same thing with the Chinese and others who now have access to all kinds of potentially dangerous information thanks to their buy-ins.

That makes perfect sense to me, right down to details like “we should have done the same sort of thing with the British owners.” Operation of our ports is a security-related matter, no matter how you cut it. It should be in American hands, one way or another. The only reason why foreign ownership of our port operators was no big deal before now was that essentially nobody knew about it before now. This is the sort of thing we would have known about, by about four years ago, if this country had done the sort of thoroughgoing security review it should have done in the wake of 9/11, instead of the Administration going, “Oh look…Iraq!” as Rove cooperated with the chemical industry in making sure that they didn’t have to do additional security:

One stark example was the White House’s blockade of a Ridge-supported plan to secure large chemical plants. After Sept. 11, Whitman had worked with Ridge on a modest effort to require high-risk plants – especially the 123 factories where a toxic release could endanger at least 1 million people – to enhance security. But industry groups warned Bush political adviser Karl Rove that giving new regulatory power to the Environmental Protection Agency would be a disaster.

“We have a similar set of concerns,” Rove wrote to the president of BP Amoco Chemical Co.

In an interagency meeting shortly before DHS’s birth, White House budget official Philip J. Perry, who also happens to be Cheney’s son-in-law, declared the Ridge-Whitman plan dead.

“Tom and I would just throw our hands up in frustration over that issue,” Whitman recalled.

And not just that issue. Whitman said that Ridge was often stymied inside the White House: “He got gazumped a couple of times.”

Wonder what else Ridge was ‘gazumped’ on. Port security? Nuclear power plants? Air cargo? Who knows.

[mudnducs]

@rjung

It’s all about the croneyism?

It is rather telling that Bush is threatening to veto any bill which derails the sale; what is so urgent about this giveaway that he’s willing to finally exercise a veto to ensure it goes through?

Could it be that he truly IS looking down the road for America? That he truly IS trying to build good business relationships in the middle east based on something other than oil? That his long term plan for self rule in the middle east entails some capitalitstic tendencies and it’s attendant stability?

[Measure_for_Measure]

@RTFirefly

Wonder what else Ridge was ‘gazumped’ on. Port security? Nuclear power plants? Air cargo? Who knows.

Apparently, Ridge was also gazumped on “terror alert” adjustments:

Ridge, who resigned Feb. 1, said Tuesday that he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or “high” risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled…
“More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it,” Ridge told reporters.

[hijack]Nice analysis of Congressional traditions, btw.[/hijack]

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

I agree with RTFirefly’s agreement, and say that the same is true for the Singapore controlled ports as well.

I just cannot believe that it is as simple as saying that control of the ports has no relationship or impact on security. For example, the Daily Kos notes that:

The Marine Transportation Security Act of 2002 requires vessels and port facilities to conduct vulnerability assessments and develop security plans including passenger, vehicle and baggage screening procedures; security patrols; establishing restricted areas; personnel identification procedures; access control measures; and/or installation of surveillance equipment.

Under the same law, port facility operators may have access to Coast Guard security incident response plans – that is, they would know how the Coast Guard plans to counter and respond to terrorist attacks.

Surely control and security must intersect in many, many ways. Hey, if they want to invest or become commercially involved in the operations, great - surely there are lots of American dollars bought up by foreign governments with fewer places to spend them - but there needs to be a damn clear firewall regarding security.

The fact that security has clearly been an afterthought for the administration in these matters, especially in a “post 9/11” world, should send shivers through our collective spines.

[RTFirefly]

@UPI

Under the same law, port facility operators may have access to Coast Guard security incident response plans – that is, they would know how the Coast Guard plans to counter and respond to terrorist attacks.

Ho. Lee. Shit.

No, no connection at all between the port operator and port security. None. Zip. Nada. :rolleyes:

Thanks, Hentor, for bringing this article into the discussion. But jeez, between this and Fox News wondering aloud whether all-out civil war in Iraq might not be a good thing, I feel like my head’s exploding. If you should see any stray bits of gray matter over your way, they’ll probably be mine.

That DailyKos diary was based on this UPI story. A more extensive quote:

Port facility operators have a major security responsibility, and one that could be exploited by terrorists if they infiltrate the company, said Joe Muldoon III. Muldoon is an attorney representing Eller & Co., a port facility operator in Florida partnered with M&O in Miami. Eller opposes the Dubai takeover for security reasons.

“The Coast Guard oversees security, and they have the authority to inspect containers if they want and they can look at manifests, but they are really dependent on facility operators to carry out security issues,” Muldoon said.

The Marine Transportation Security Act of 2002 requires vessels and port facilities to conduct vulnerability assessments and develop security plans including passenger, vehicle and baggage screening procedures; security patrols; establishing restricted areas; personnel identification procedures; access control measures; and/or installation of surveillance equipment.

Under the same law, port facility operators may have access to Coast Guard security incident response plans – that is, they would know how the Coast Guard plans to counter and respond to terrorist attacks.

“The concern is that the UAE may be our friend now … but who’s to say that couldn’t change, or they couldn’t be infiltrated. Iran was our big buddy,” said Muldoon.

In a January report, the Council on Foreign Relations pointed out the vulnerability of the shipping security system to terrorist exploitation.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. customs agency requires shippers to follow supply chain security practices. Provided there are no apparent deviations from those practices or intelligence warnings, the shipment is judged low risk and is therefore unlikely to be inspected.

CFR suggests a terrorist event is likely to be a one-time operation on a trusted carrier “precisely because they can count on these shipments entering the U.S. with negligible or no inspection.”

Like you were saying:

The fact that security has clearly been an afterthought for the administration in these matters, especially in a “post 9/11” world, should send shivers through our collective spines.

They’ve made such a big deal about protecting us, and all they’ve really done in the way of actual protection is to hassle us when we travel by airplane. They’ve perpetrated a huge fraud on America. Here’s hoping that it’s finally breaking down. Of course, I’ve hoped that before.

[zenith]

You don’t awaard port operations contracts in secret for all the same reasons you don’t award roads or public building costruction contracts in secret–the public has a right to know and the right to comment in public hearings.

I don’t doubt that pragmatic Arabs can better identify extremist Arabs than can
the CIA or Homeland Security. Security isn’t as big an issue with me as the doing of public business in private(and secret) session.

Did we get the best possible deal, or was this a political payoff? Was the P+O contract before this one–also negotiated secretly–the best deal available at that time or some sort of political payoff?

We deserve to know and shouldn’t accept “Because we say so,” from people who are supposed to be our servants.