The big cargo ships and ships with truck-size containers pull up to docks where no one inspects their contents.
Brawny brown tankers from the Middle East steam into the bay, slide under a drawbridge that bisects the Fore River and tie up by terminals, tanks and a pipeline that carries the oil that heats Montreal.
In warmer weather, cruise ships like the QE2 and the Royal Empress with up to 3,000 tourists lay up at piers on busy Commercial Street, right next to Portland's lively downtown.
For Portland's officials, the scene, at least before Sept. 11, was a point of pride, the sign of a strong economy and a proud maritime heritage. Now it evokes fear and uncertainty. The unscrutinized containers, the bridge, the oil tanks, the dormant but still-radioactive nuclear power plant 42km north of the harbor -- all form a volatile mix in a time of terrorism.
The usual barrier is chain-link fence."It keeps out the honest people," said Paul Merrill, owner of a cargo terminal. "That's what it comes down to." The Port of Portland, Police Chief Michael Chitwood said, "is a tinderbox."
Population center
Remote as it seems on the northeastern ear of the nation, Portland is not particularly exceptional among the nation's 361 seaports. The ports of New York and Miami, Long Beach in California, and Los Angeles are much bigger and busier. Yet like most ports, the one here is near a population center and it is packed with bridges, power plants, and other combustible and hazardous materials.
All that makes ports among the country's greatest points of vulnerability.
Even so, no national plan exists to thwart attacks against them, to respond if one happens or to organize a community afterward. No federal agency regulates seaports the way the Federal Aviation Administration manages airports. They are managed locally, often by the private businesses that use them. All are overseen by a patchwork of agencies, already stretched thin, some monitoring hundreds of ships a day.
Congress
Compared with the attention being given to airline security, security at the ports has gone largely unnoticed, even though they handle 95 percent of the cargo that enters from places other than Canada and Mexico. A bill to tighten seaport security has passed a Senate committee. The full Senate could vote on the bill within two weeks, but the debate has yet to begin in the House of Representatives.
"People in Congress don't have any idea it's a problem," said Senator Ernest Hollings, who is chairman of the Commerce Committee and co-sponsor of the bill with Senator. Bob Graham. "I've got folks who don't have ports in their states. It's hard to get it in front of their heads."
Port officials are aware of various threats, like using a tanker or fuel-loaded cruise liner as a bomb, secreting weapons and explosives in containers, hijacking a ship and ramming it into a nuclear plant on the shores of a river, or infesting a cargo of grain or seeds with a biological weapon.
Given the potential dangers, the security measures in place are far from adequate.
"We're looking for needles in a haystack," said Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the US Customs Service. "And the haystack has doubled." International trade has doubled since 1995 while the number of people to handle inspections has remained roughly constant, he said.
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