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New Port Security Rules Take Effect Sunday

Aired January 31, 2003 - 14:52   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's move on a little bit, talk about the ports and the security there. New rules to beef up security at U.S. ports are supposed to take effect on Sunday. The goal is to protect the waterways and keep terrorists from bringing in dangerous materials.
Let's go to CNN's Jeanne Meserve for the nuts and bolts on all of this. Jeanne, we focus so much on airports. We don't focus on seaports as much. There's a lot of potential, well holes in the dam there, aren't there?

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. A lot of people call it a major vulnerability. What's happening this Sunday is the Customs Service is putting into place something it calls the "24- hour" rule. What it means is this -- shippers and ocean carriers are going to have to provide detailed information about what is inside ocean-going containers 24 hours before they are loaded onto ships headed to the U.S.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT BONNER, COMMISSIONER, U.S. CUSTOMS SERVICE: This rule enables us to analyze the information and identify potential terrorist threats before the vessel sails, not after it arrives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MESERVE: Miles, this is a radical change. Most shippers haven't provided manifests until 48 hours before putting into port, and some didn't provide them until a ship docked, and the manifests were often vague. Consolidators would pack all sorts of items into a container and just describe it on their paperwork as "freight all kinds". Not very useful if you're the Customs Service trying to ferret out dangerous cargo.

Just yesterday Tom Ridge toured one of the nation's biggest ports, Miami, on his first trip as secretary of the new Department of Homeland Security, a reflection of the level of concern about the nation's ports at which more than seven million containers arrived last year from all over the world. The Customs Service is taking a tough line. It says starting Sunday any carrier that fails to submit a manifest 24 hours before loading or submits a manifest with too little information will not be able to off-load in the U.S.

The World Shipping Council says container ship operators have been scrambling to get ready and a spokesman says he expects that by and large cargo will move smoothly, though there may be disruptions at some ports. But we won't know for sure, he says, for a week or maybe more. Miles, back to you.

O'BRIEN: Jeanne, give us a sense of the scale of all this. It's a tremendous task when you start looking at the, I don't know, 300- some-odd ports in the U.S. and the amount of traffic going through them, trying to get a handle on what's coming in is very difficult, isn't it?

MESERVE: Yes, and what they've been trying to do, Miles, with various initiatives that they've undertaken since 9/11 is try and take care of the stuff that they don't think poses a big risk, stuff that's being shipped by, let's say, automakers, big companies, stuff that's being carried by reputable shipping companies.

If they can take care of that sort of cargo, look at those manifests, put those through computers, sort out what might be suspicious cargo, if they can deal with that, then they can concentrate even more time on the smaller proportion of things that are really troublesome that might be coming from smaller shippers that only handle a couple of containers a year and that may come from more dangerous parts of the world. That's the idea, to try and reduce the workload overall to concentrate on the things of most concern.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Jeanne Meserve in Washington watching homeland security for us.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired January 31, 2003 - 14:52   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's move on a little bit, talk about the ports and the security there. New rules to beef up security at U.S. ports are supposed to take effect on Sunday. The goal is to protect the waterways and keep terrorists from bringing in dangerous materials.
Let's go to CNN's Jeanne Meserve for the nuts and bolts on all of this. Jeanne, we focus so much on airports. We don't focus on seaports as much. There's a lot of potential, well holes in the dam there, aren't there?

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. A lot of people call it a major vulnerability. What's happening this Sunday is the Customs Service is putting into place something it calls the "24- hour" rule. What it means is this -- shippers and ocean carriers are going to have to provide detailed information about what is inside ocean-going containers 24 hours before they are loaded onto ships headed to the U.S.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT BONNER, COMMISSIONER, U.S. CUSTOMS SERVICE: This rule enables us to analyze the information and identify potential terrorist threats before the vessel sails, not after it arrives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MESERVE: Miles, this is a radical change. Most shippers haven't provided manifests until 48 hours before putting into port, and some didn't provide them until a ship docked, and the manifests were often vague. Consolidators would pack all sorts of items into a container and just describe it on their paperwork as "freight all kinds". Not very useful if you're the Customs Service trying to ferret out dangerous cargo.

Just yesterday Tom Ridge toured one of the nation's biggest ports, Miami, on his first trip as secretary of the new Department of Homeland Security, a reflection of the level of concern about the nation's ports at which more than seven million containers arrived last year from all over the world. The Customs Service is taking a tough line. It says starting Sunday any carrier that fails to submit a manifest 24 hours before loading or submits a manifest with too little information will not be able to off-load in the U.S.

The World Shipping Council says container ship operators have been scrambling to get ready and a spokesman says he expects that by and large cargo will move smoothly, though there may be disruptions at some ports. But we won't know for sure, he says, for a week or maybe more. Miles, back to you.

O'BRIEN: Jeanne, give us a sense of the scale of all this. It's a tremendous task when you start looking at the, I don't know, 300- some-odd ports in the U.S. and the amount of traffic going through them, trying to get a handle on what's coming in is very difficult, isn't it?

MESERVE: Yes, and what they've been trying to do, Miles, with various initiatives that they've undertaken since 9/11 is try and take care of the stuff that they don't think poses a big risk, stuff that's being shipped by, let's say, automakers, big companies, stuff that's being carried by reputable shipping companies.

If they can take care of that sort of cargo, look at those manifests, put those through computers, sort out what might be suspicious cargo, if they can deal with that, then they can concentrate even more time on the smaller proportion of things that are really troublesome that might be coming from smaller shippers that only handle a couple of containers a year and that may come from more dangerous parts of the world. That's the idea, to try and reduce the workload overall to concentrate on the things of most concern.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Jeanne Meserve in Washington watching homeland security for us.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com