Wes Vernon
Wednesday Oct. 3, 2001

That statement by Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore. summed up the frustration of members of a Senate panel hearing testimony Tuesday on rail and maritime security, in light of the recent terrorist air attacks.

The senators summoned railroad and ship officials to report on their anti-terrorist efforts. Transportation systems are the target of 40 percent of terrorist attacks worldwide, lawmakers noted.

The Senate Subcommittee on Transportation and Merchant Marine grilled the transportation leaders about the lack of luggage inspection on trains and about the adequacy, or lack thereof, of security checks for personnel on cruise chips.

"You don’t [necessarily] know who in the hell they are,” said Committee chairman John Breaux, D-La. in referring to a Panamanian crew authority which had hired up to 1,000 unqualified sailors for cruise lines without making sure they passed adequate security checks.

J. Michael Crye, President of the International Council of Cruise Lines was caught unawares on the Panamanian scandal. However, when reminded that crewmembers of cruise lines are hired from countries around the world, he did assure the senators that the cruise companies make every effort to certify that the people who sign up for those shipboard jobs are who they say they are.

They are subjected to extensive background checks, he testified. Their names are subjected to checks by the INS, Customs, the Coast Guard, and others. The list of employees is widely shared to make certain there are no potential terrorists aboard. Luxury liners hire large crews to wait on passengers. That makes the security checks all the more complex.

Similar assurances on security came from the freight side of shipping in the testimony of Joseph J. Cox, president of the Chamber of Shipping America, though freight vessel crews are considerably smaller.

Vulnerability of ports remains high, the senators complained.

"Be careful when you’re dealing with Panamanians,” Senator Breaux warned.

The lawmakers also inquired about security on the nation’s rails, and heard again that although no airtight totally foolproof system is attainable, there is a maximum effort to make both passenger and freight traffic on the railroads safe.

Chairman Breaux and others asked why anyone can still board a passenger train without having his carry-on or even his checked luggage inspected.

"Why not check baggage on a train, if it’s checked on an airline?” Sen. Earnest "Fritz” Hollings, D-S.C. demanded to know, "You know it’s a good idea,” he said to Admiral James Underwood, the federal Transportation Department’s Director of Intelligence and Security. The admiral pleaded "lack of resources” as one reason.

To the same question, Amtrak President and CEO George Warrington later replied, "The foremost challenge is the relatively open and intermodal nature of the rail passenger system.” Checking the luggage of every passenger could bog down the busiest part so the rail network, he claimed.

"For example,” the rail passenger boss noted, "on an average weekday, New York’s Penn Station handles about 30,000 Amtrak passengers a day. At least 300,000 additional passengers go through the station on the Long Island Railroad and New Jersey Transit [commuter services]. Thousands more use the station to transfer to New York City subways.”

The upshot, the Amtrak boss said, is that there are hundreds of thousands going through that station every day, including commuters carrying their brief cases. Inspecting every single piece of luggage thus becomes problematical, if not impractical.

Penn Station is not unique either, Warrington added. Transportation policy has encouraged an open intermodal environment in virtually every train station in the country. Running a totally closed rail system is "humanly impossible” anywhere in the world, he added, with a few notable exceptions such as the "Chunnel” under the English Channel that connects Great Britain and France.

Although luggage inspection is less practical for railroads than for airlines, rail officials noted it is possible to stop a train from remote control locations. This and other factors make it virtually impossible for terrorists to take over of a train in the same way the airliners were commandeered September 11, they assured the committee.

Since Sept. 11, Amtrak has requested money to upgrade security on its passenger system, including repair of the six 70-year old tunnels serving New York’s Penn Station. NewsMax.com was one of the first outlets to publicize the life-threatening conditions of these structures last year.

Chairman Breaux wanted to know how Amtrak is prepared to deal with a scenario where a terrorist purchases a ticket in an automatic machine, boards an Amtrak train with a package containing a bomb, places it on the train near the engine, then gets off the train just before it departs.

Warrington replied that Amtrak is working on a project to get explosive-detecting devices on board trains. He preferred not to discuss the details in public.

Some of the toughest questioning was reserved for Admiral Underwood.

When he described security coordination efforts among the DOT’s rail, air, highway and maritime agencies, Breaux expressed concern that "people are stumbling over each other” at DOT, with a questionable potential for real progress on solving security problems.

"This dance has been going on for years,” thundered Senator Hollings , "We need you to lead over there and not appoint committees to study and plan, and appoint committees to study and plan. Nobody is helped by any of this.”

Senator Smith said his comment about the impossibility of 100% airtight security, even under a hypothetical police state, was intended to emphasize the need to balance security with efficiency. He cited passengers whose security checks at airports recently took as long as five hours, longer than the flights themselves.

"Be secure, but keep moving,” he advised.

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War on Terrorism