Like, the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002.

As Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations explained when testifying before Congress on March 20, 2003,

“On October 12, 2001, I had the opportunity to testify before this committee at its first post 9-11 hearing on homeland security. At that time, I asserted that “the economic and societal disruption created by the September 11 attacks has opened Pandora’s box. Future terrorists bent on challenging U.S. power will draw inspiration from the seeming ease at which America could be attacked and they will be encouraged by the mounting costs to the U.S. economy and the public psyche associated with the ad-hoc efforts to restore security following that attack.”

“We cannot afford to be penny-wise and pound foolish in advancing this vital agenda.”

“But the fallout from a terrorist attack on any one of the nation’s major commercial seaports would hardly be a local matter. For instance, should al Qaeda or one of its imitator organizations succeed in sinking a large ship in the Long Beach channel, the auto-dependent southern California will literally run out of gas within two weeks. This is because, as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita highlighted, US petroleum refineries are operating at full throttle and their products are consumed almost as quickly as they are made. If the crude oil shipments stop, so too do the refineries and there is no excess capacity or refined fuels to cope with a long term disruption.”

I won’t copy the entire seven page report for the sake of brevity but the issues you have questioned here have also been addressed.

Of the states that keep applicant histories, it has been found that about 7.3 percent of applicants (Over 96,000) for private security positions were rejected, primarily for having criminal backgrounds.

Over the years, criminals have landed jobs as security guards. Some didn’t go through background checks. Others were subject only to one state’s checks, which didn’t find criminal records in other states. Stories of guards beating, raping and robbing the people they were hired to protect have not only hurt the industry’s image but destroyed any semblance of the feasibility of protecting our seaport and airport here in Broward.

New Jersey Democratic congressman, Rep. Robert Andrews, said, “How much is it worth not to have one criminal guarding a nuclear power plant?”

“This is one area where doing things on the cheap is a really bad idea,” Andrews said.
The New York Daily News reported that security companies hired by the state to protect the Statue of Liberty and other state and military facilities employed hundreds of unlicensed guards, including former convicts.

In Atlanta, federal investigators found that private security guards employed by the federal government to protect four federal buildings were easily duped by undercover investigators.

The investigators were able to talk their way through security without identification and slip weapons into the buildings. In one security breach, an investigator who entered a building with no ID persuaded a security guard to give him a pass and a special access code to enter the building at night.

The security businesses’ own trade group, representing the largest firms, acknowledges the industry as a whole isn’t ready to recognize signs of terrorism and respond to an attack.

“I would have to say no,” said Joseph Ricci, executive director of the National Association of Security Companies, when asked whether most guards are trained to protect the homeland. “Companies that hire private guards began spending more for security after September 11, 2001, but then began cutting back. We’ve become complacent because we haven’t had attacks.”

Nobody knows how private security guards would perform in an actual terrorist attack, but several incidents serve as potential warnings:

• In September 2004, at the Energy Department’s enriched uranium stockpile plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., a force of armed contract guards ran through the dark to confront “intruders” — a team of guards conducting a mock attack. Some guards and outside watchdog groups said there was sufficient confusion to potentially cause an accidental shooting. Bryan Wilkes, an Energy Department spokesman, disputed the account, saying, “No accidental shooting came close to happening.”

• In fall 2005, an envelope with suspicious powder was opened by guards at the Washington headquarters of the Homeland Security Department. The guards carried the substance past the office of Secretary Michael Chertoff, took it outside and then shook it outside Chertoff’s window without evacuating people nearby. The powder turned out to be harmless.

• Since September 2001, guards have been caught napping or playing computer games at nuclear power plants, and one was caught dozing at a federal courthouse. Three security workers were investigated for “inattentiveness” at Three Mile Island in 2005, said Ralph DeSantis, a spokesman for the nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pa., the site in 1979 of the nation’s worst nuclear accident.

• Guards with criminal backgrounds have committed criminal offenses on and off duty in numerous cities.

To close my comments here I would ask anyone who remembers the day September 11th 2001 happened to ask themselves this:

If you lived next door to one of the Critical Infrastructure Ports in this Nation would you roll the dice?

Thank you,

Scott Perrin
Master Steward
Federation of Public Employees