- WASHINGTON (AP) - Every
Customs inspector will be equipped by January with a pocket-sized radiation
detector, but "there are no guarantees" that increased border
security will stop a terrorist from smuggling in a nuclear weapon, the
Customs commissioner said Wednesday.
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- Fears of a terrorist nuclear assault on the United States
have risen since the Sept. 11 jetliner attacks in New York and Washington.
Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner said in an interview with The Associated
Press he knows of no terrorist group trying to smuggle a nuclear device
into the country.
"The question is, `Should we be concerned about it?'" he said.
"This is one of those areas where I don't want to wait and see what
happens."
Since Sept. 11, the Customs Service, the nation's oldest law enforcement
agency, founded in 1789, has shifted its primary mission from detecting
smuggled narcotics to stopping terrorists, possibly with nuclear, chemical
or biological weapons, from getting into the country.
Specifically, Customs has increased security and provided better training
for its inspectors and agents at seaports, airports and border crossings
on land. Customs oversees roughly 300 points of entry into the United States.
The agency also is working with other countries to screen cargo containers
before their shipment into the United States. Under a recent agreement
with Canada, U.S. Customs has put inspectors in Montreal, Halifax and Vancouver
to prescreen cargo headed for the United States. Canadian Customs officials
have inspectors at some U.S. seaports.
Bonner hopes to have similar arrangements worked out with other countries
in the next couple of months, possibly including Singapore, France and
the Netherlands.
With roughly 6 million cargo containers entering U.S. seaports each year,
Bonner said it is critically important to ensure that terrorists don't
use them to smuggle themselves or their weapons into this country.
Still, "there are no guarantees," Bonner said in the interview.
"No system is foolproof."
Bonner, a former federal judge and chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration
in the early 1990s, was sworn in as Customs commissioner on Sept. 24, after
the deadliest terror attacks on U.S. soil.
U.S. intelligence, Bonner said, believes Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror
network is "determined to strike the United States again. ... That
much is clear."
"We don't know if al-Qaida or related terrorist organizations have
a nuclear device," he said.
"What we do know is that for at least the last five or more years
they've attempted to get ... radiological materials to build a nuclear
device. They consulted with a Pakistani scientist or engineer who was involved
in the Pakistani nuclear development," Bonner said. "Certainly
there's been an attempt to get a device."
Although bin Laden claimed on a videotape to have a nuclear device, Bonner
said, "I don't believe him."
About half of Customs' inspectors " 4,000 of them " are now equipped
with pocket-sized radiation detecters. They are in scattered locations
around the country. By January, the other 4,500 Customs inspectors will
get the devices, Bonner said.
Customs also is looking to use more sophisticated scanning and detection
technology at seaports and land crossings.
Even with the shift in its mission, fighting terrorism isn't new to Customs.
The agency was credited with thwarting a terrorist attack before the millennium
celebration.
Customs inspectors stopped an Algerian man at the border at Port Angeles,
Wash., in December 1999 and found more than 100 pounds of explosives in
the trunk of his car. The man had trained in terror camps run by bin Laden.
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- Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved.
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