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American Morning
Customs Commissioner Discusses Anti-terrorism Technology
Aired June 03, 2002 - 08:22 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.
BILL HEMMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The government is taking a rather unusual step, partly in reaction to a new movie, "The Sum of All Fears," a film about a terrorist attack that opened over the weekend. And today the U.S. Customs Service is going to demonstrate some of the high-tech gadgets it is now using to help prevent terrorism.
Jeanne Meserve now this morning in Washington, with a bit of a show-and-tell for us -- Jeanne, good morning.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Bill.
The Customs Service wants to calm the fears created by "Sum of All Fears." And so it has on display here in Washington today some of the technologies it's using.
This big arm over here, this is called a VACUS. This is run over a container and takes a picture of what is inside. If Customs officials find something that raises some suspicions, they can unload the container and run the smaller boxes through this portable van over here. It gives them a better look, with X rays, of what's inside, also equipped with a nuclear detector.
And then they have an array of other tools that they could use to look inside those smaller boxes and get a feel for what they're looking at.
Joining me here today is the man who runs the Customs Service, Robert Bonner.
Thanks a lot for joining us here today.
ROBERT BONNER, U.S. CUSTOMS: Good to see you, Jeanne.
MESERVE: The popular word is that only 1 to 2 percent of containers that come into this country are inspected. If that's the case, how can you catch anything?
BONNER: Well, you know, if you were assuming that Customs was just randomly looking at 1 or 2 or 3 percent of containers, I'd be worried myself. But the fact is that this isn't a random thing. Customs starts off by using risk management principles to take a lot of information it has, including advanced information on almost every container that comes into the United States, and based upon that information identifying the high risk containers, those containers that pose a risk, a security risk to the United States.
And then we screen and inspect those containers using some of this equipment here, the large scale X-ray and gamma ray machine as well as radiation detector devices.
MESERVE: But could the individuals falsify the information that they give to you?
BONNER: Well, of course. I mean but the whole principle of risk targeting is not that they're going to, you're necessarily going to have accurate information. It's to have as much information as possible because what we're looking for is what's unusual, what are the anomalies. That tells us that there's a potential risk and that we need to take a look at that particular container.
MESERVE: Information clearly is key. Is the Customs Service getting the cooperation it needs from other intelligence services to do the job right?
BONNER: Well, we're getting a lot of information, intelligence information, from the CIA and from the FBI and other members of the law enforcement and intelligence community. But it's more than just intelligence we're using here: It is taking information and determining what containers, which shipments, pose a potential risk -- in other words, if there's something unusual about a container or the way it's being shipped -- who's shipping it, the country of origin of that container -- that tells us, look, we're going to take a look at that container.
We don't need to look at every container or 100 percent. But we need to take a look at 100 percent of all of the containers that pose a potential terrorist risk, and that's what we're doing.
MESERVE: The scenario in the movie, a nuclear device coming into this country, it could happen, couldn't it?
BONNER: You know, I'm not sure it could happen, I mean certainly not the scenario posed by that movie. Maybe it could have happened in 1991 when Clancy wrote the novel "Sum of All Fears." But now that the U.S. Customs Service has, first of all, a lot of information that's automated in terms of being able to determine the containers that pose a risk, and we have radiation detector devices and this large-scale equipment to be able to literally take an X-ray image inside a container and determine if there is any problem. I don't think that -- at least I don't think that -- that would have gotten through today.
MESERVE: Great.
Commissioner Bonner, thanks so much for joining us.
BONNER: Thank you, Jeanne.
MESERVE: Bill, back to you.
HEMMER: Good deal, Jeanne, thanks. Jeanne Meserve, live in Washington.
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