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American Morning

Customs Has Additional Responsibility of Trying to Prevent Terrorists from Bringing in Weapons of Mass Destruction

Aired January 24, 2002 - 07:33   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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Moving back to the issue of Homeland Security now. For years, the U.S. Customs Service has had its hands full with the war against illegal drugs coming into the United States. Now, it has the additional responsibility of trying to prevent terrorists from bringing in weapons of mass destruction, but the Customs Service says it can only inspect a small fraction of cargo containers.

For a look at exactly what they are up against, CNN Homeland Security correspondent Jeanne Meserve joins us now from the Port of Newark, one of the largest seaports on the East Coast -- good morning, Jeanne. What are you up to this morning?

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula. I am here in Port Elizabeth, New Jersey, part of the Port of Newark. One of the acknowledged gaping holes in Homeland Security is containers. An estimated six million of them come into U.S. ports every year. They are used to smuggle drugs. The fear is that terrorists could use them too to bring in weapons of mass destruction or even people.

The Customs Service has been widely criticized for inspecting only about 2 percent of those containers. Customs says the numbers aren't completely accurate, that it uses its computers to filter through manifests and other data and targets suspect containers.

I am right here in a warehouse in Port Elizabeth. This is some of the cargo that the Customs Service wants to take a closer look at, and joining me here today is Ray Pardo, who is a Customs inspector, known as MacGyver for some of the clever gadgetry he has come up with to inspect things.

You have a fiber optic probe here, Ray, and you're going to show us a little something. This is roll of paper.

RAY PARDO, U.S. CUSTOMS INSPECTOR: It's a roll of paper, and the first thing when we examine something. What we're going to examine is we're going to examine the entire -- what's visible to the naked eye, and also what's not visible, so the entire surface. So that's the reason why we have this, because we want to get into the inside core, and we want to look at that.

And what we're going to do is we're going to insert this in here, and we'll turn the light, so we get a little bit of picture. And you can see, we are viewing the entire core in there, and what we're looking for is any anomalies.

MESERVE: And you don't see any here?

PARDO: Nothing...

MESERVE: OK.

PARDO: ... in this one.

MESERVE: But you have another one over here. Let's take a look at that one, so folks can see what it looks like when you do see something a little unusual.

PARDO: Yes, the second roll over here, and as we're going in there, if you look right here. And what you're seeing if you're seeing a difference in the paper there, and when we angle over to the one side, you actually see a gap going right around the bottom here.

MESERVE: Now you found this...

PARDO: That's an anomaly.

MESERVE: You found this with a fiber optic probe. Once you find it, you take another look with some other technology, and let's take a look at that if we could. Here, I know you have to slip that off and take it off. On this roll of paper -- let's walk around the other side and see. You have set up some probes here, right?

PARDO: Right. What we have here is this is an electronic stethoscope, and each one of those six points, the inspector here, Bill Herb (ph), he can switch back and forth through six points. He can amplify the sound, and he's going to be listening. And on the opposite side here, we're going to be hitting it with a pneumatic hammer, and the reason why we're using a pneumatic hammer is we're going to get consistent blows. If you're doing it by hand, you might not be consistent. And he's going to listen for any deviations in sound.

MESERVE: OK. And, Bill, you haven't heard anything unusual there at all. But there was an incidence where you found something unusual.

PARDO: That's right.

MESERVE: Show us what you found over here.

PARDO: It was a roll same as this roll here, and what they had done is they hollowed out the core in the center here. This here would have had another piece on the opposite side there, and then it would have had another 18 to 24 inches of paper wrapped around it.

MESERVE: So it looked just like that.

PARDO: It looked identical to this here. The only difference is that each one of them contained about 350 pounds of cocaine.

MESERVE: That's a lot. And it could have been used to contain something else...

PARDO: Anything else.

MESERVE: ... a mechanical (ph) weapon, a biological weapon, anything like that. Great. Ray, thanks a lot for giving us the demonstration.

The U.S. government is spending a lot of money, Paula, to develop new technologies and deploy them, hoping to get a better handle on exactly what is coming into the United States -- back to you.

ZAHN: Jeanne, that's the first real look we've gotten in how those fiber optic instruments are used -- thanks so much -- appreciate it.

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