US border agents prove no match for nuclear smugglers

Undercover congressional investigators successfully smuggled into the US enough radioactive material to make two dirty bombs, even after it set off alarms on radiation detectors installed at border checkpoints, a new report says.

The test, conducted last December by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), demonstrated the mixed progress by the Department of Homeland Security, among other federal agencies, in trying to prevent terrorists from smuggling radioactive material into the US.

Nationally, at a cost so far of about US$286 million, about 60 percent of all containerized commercial goods entering the US by truck or ship and 77 percent of all private cars are now screened for radioactive material.

But flaws in the inspection procedures and limitations with the equipment mean that nuclear materials may still be able to be sent illegally into the country through seaports or land borders, the study found. And because the program for installing radiation detectors is far behind schedule, many border crossing points, including many seaports, still have no detection equipment, the report says.

"We suffer from a massive blind spot in our cargo security measures," Senator Norm Coleman said in a statement that accompanied the report.

The final report was scheduled to be released yesterday at a Senate hearing.

In the test case, undercover investigators bought a small amount of radioactive material, most likely cesium. Then on Dec. 15, they drove across the border at undisclosed locations from Canada and Mexico, intentionally picking spots where the detection equipment had been installed.

The alarms went off in both locations, and the investigators were pulled aside for questioning. In both cases, they showed the agents from the Customs and Border Protection agency forged import licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, based on an image of the real document they found on the Internet.

The problem, the report says, is that the border agents have no routine way to confirm the validity of import licenses.

David McIntyre, a commission spokesman, disputed the claim by the congressional investigators that the amount of material bought and taken across the border would have been enough to build a dirty bomb (dirty bombs can force long-term evacuation by spreading low-levels of radioactivity across an area after being detonated with a conventional explosive).

But McIntyre said he agreed that customs officials must be able to confirm quickly the validity of import licenses.

The investigation, part of a three-year inquiry by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee into the nation's vulnerability to nuclear smuggling, particularly at ports, found many other weaknesses in the radiation detection campaign.

The primary radiation monitors, which look like a standard tollbooth, cannot distinguish between naturally occurring radiation, sometimes found in ceramic tile or cat litter, and radioactivity in bomb-making substances.

Installation of the screening equipment is running behind schedule, largely because of delays in appropriating money and other problems, the report said.