The vast U.S. maritime system contains more than 300 seaports and 3,700 cargo and passenger terminals. These seaports dot not only our seacoasts, but also major lakes and rivers (see fig. 1). Much of the nation’s commercial maritime activities, however, are concentrated in about a dozen major seaports, such as Los Angeles-Long Beach, New York-New Jersey, and Houston. The nation’s seaports are economic engines and a key part of the national defense system. More than 95 percent of the nation’s non-North American foreign trade (and 100 percent of certain commodities, such as foreign oil) arrives by ship. Cargo containers, approximately 7 million of which entered the country in 2002, are central to an efficient transportation network because they can be quickly shifted from ships to trains and trucks and back again. Because of these efficiencies, the U.S. and world economies have become increasingly reliant on cargo containers to transport their goods. With regard to national security, the Departments of Defense and Transportation have designated 17 U.S. seaports as strategic because they are necessary for use in the event of a major military deployment. Thirteen of them are commercial seaports. While the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, did not involve seaports, they called attention to ways in which seaports represent an attractive and vulnerable terrorist target. Various studies have pointed out that significant disruptions could result from a seaport-related attack. For example, the Brookings Institution has estimated that costs associated with U.S. seaport closures resulting from a detonated weapon of mass destruction could amount to $1 trillion. The firm of Booz, Allen, and Hamilton studied the potential cost of discovering an undetonated weapon of mass destruction at a U.S. seaport and placed the cost of a 12-day closure of seaports at approximately $58 billion. An actual closure of seaports along the West Coast occurred for 10 days in 2002 due to a labor dispute. According to one estimate, the cost of this closure to the national economy for the first 5 days was estimated at $4.7 billion and increased exponentially after that. Similarly, if 1 or more of the 17 strategic U.S. seaports (or the ships carrying military supplies) were successfully attacked, not only could massive civilian casualties be sustained and critical infrastructure lost, but the military could also lose precious cargo and time and be forced to rely heavily on already burdened airlift capabilities. Since September 11, 2001, a number of actions have been taken or are underway to address seaport security by a diverse mix of agencies and seaport stakeholders. Federal agencies, such as the Coast Guard, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and TSA, have been tasked with responsibilities and functions intended to make seaports more secure, such as monitoring vessel traffic or inspecting cargo and containers, and procuring new assets such as aircraft and cutters to conduct patrols and respond to threats. In addition to these federal agencies, seaport stakeholders in the private sector and at the state and local levels of government have taken actions to enhance the security of seaports, such as conducting security assessments of infrastructure and vessels operated within the seaports and developing security plans to protect against a terrorist attack. The actions taken by these agencies and stakeholders are primarily aimed at three types of protections: (1) identifying and reducing vulnerabilities of the facilities, infrastructure, and vessels operating in seaports, (2) securing the cargo and commerce flowing through seaports, and (3) developing greater maritime domain awareness through enhanced intelligence, information-sharing capabilities, and assets and technologies. Seaports facilitate the freedom of movement and flow of goods, and in doing so they allow people, cargo, and vessels to transit with relative anonymity. While seaports contain terminals and other facilities where goods bound for import or export are unloaded and loaded, or where people board and disembark cruise ships or ferries, seaports also often contain other infrastructure critical to the nation’s economy and defense, such as military installations, chemical factories, powerplants, and refineries. The combination of assets, access, and anonymity makes for potentially attractive targets. The facilities and vessels in seaports can be vulnerable on many fronts. For example, facilities where containers are transferred between ships and railroad cars or trucks must be able to screen vehicles entering the facility and routinely check cargo for evidence of tampering. Chemical factories and other installations where hazardous materials are present must be able to control access to areas containing dangerous goods or hazardous substances. Vessels, ranging from oil tankers and freighters to tugboats and passenger ferries, must be able to restrict access to certain areas on board the vessel, such as the bridge or other control stations critical to the vessel’s operation. Given the wide range of potential targets, an effective security response includes identifying targets, assessing risks to them, and taking steps to reduce or mitigate these risks. An essential step in this process is to conduct a security or vulnerability assessment. This assessment, which is needed both for the seaport as a whole and for individual vessels and facilities, identifies vulnerabilities in physical structures, personnel protection systems, processes, and other areas that may lead to a security breach. For example, this assessment might reveal weaknesses in an organization’s security systems or unprotected access points such as a facility’s perimeter not being sufficiently lighted or gates not being secured or monitored after hours. After the vulnerabilities are identified, measures can be then be identified that will reduce or mitigate the vulnerabilities when installed or implemented. Most actions to identify and reduce the vulnerabilities within seaports were specifically required by the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002 (MTSA). Passage of MTSA was a major step in establishing a security framework for America’s seaports. This security framework includes assessment of risks, access controls over personnel and facilities, and development and implementation of security plans, among other activities. Table 1 shows some of the actions that have been taken and programs that are in the process of being implemented to carry out this framework. The amount of effort involved in carrying out these actions and implementing these programs has been considerable. For example, after following an aggressive time frame to develop regulations to implement the requirements of MTSA, the Coast Guard reviewed and approved the security plans of the over 3,000 facilities and more than 9,000 vessels that were required to identify their vulnerabilities and take action to reduce them. Six months after July 1, 2004, the date by which the security plans were to be implemented, the Coast Guard reported that it completed on- site inspections of all facilities and thousands of vessels to ensure the plans were being implemented as approved. In addition to its work on the security plans and inspections, the Coast Guard completed security assessments of the nation’s 55 most economically and militarily strategic seaports. While the facilities, vessels, and infrastructure within seaports have vulnerabilities to terrorist attack, the cargoes transiting through seaports also have vulnerabilities that terrorists could exploit. Containers are of particular concern because they can be filled overseas at so many different locations and are transported through complex logistics networks before reaching U.S. seaports. From the time the container is loaded for shipping to the time the container arrives at a seaport, the containers must go through several steps that involve many different participants and many points of transfer. Each of these steps in the supply chain presents its own vulnerabilities that terrorists could take advantage of to place a WMD into a container for shipment to the United States. A report prepared by the National Defense University’s Center for Technology and National Security Policy stated that a container is ideally suited to deliver a WMD or a radiological “dirty bomb.” While there have been no known incidents yet of containers being used to transport WMDs, criminals have exploited containers for other illegal purposes, such as smuggling weapons, people, and illicit substances. Such activities demonstrate the vulnerability of the freight transportation industry and suggest opportunities for further exploitation of containers by criminals, including terrorist groups. In general, the actions taken thus far are aimed at identifying, tracking, and scrutinizing the container cargo shipments moving into the country. Most of these actions are being done by CBP, the DHS agency responsible for protecting the nation’s borders and official ports of entry. CBP uses a layered approach that attempts to focus resources on potentially risky cargo containers while allowing other cargo containers to proceed without disrupting commerce. This approach includes the actions and programs shown in table 2. Several of these actions involve a strategy of moving primary reliance for security away from control systems at U.S. seaports of entry and toward improved controls at points of origin and along the way. The table also shows Operation Safe Commerce, initiated by the private sector and now administered by DHS’s Office of Domestic Preparedness, which employs a similar strategy. This action, in pilot-project form that was initially funded by $58 million appropriated by Congress, is intended to help strengthen the security of cargo as it moves along the international supply chain in containers. In late 2004, the second of two initial phases of the project was concluded. This phase involved identifying the security vulnerabilities of 19 separate supply chains and trying out technologies, such as container seals or sensors, and their integration with governmental policies, logistic processes and procedures that could mitigate those vulnerabilities. The project has received additional funding of $17 million that has been targeted to conduct a third phase in which the best technologies and practices identified in the first two phases will be further tested on a high number of containers for their effectiveness and tamper resistance on three separate supply chains. A report on the best practices identified in the first two phases is expected to be issued in June 2005, and completion of the third phase is expected by October 2006. The other actions taken to enhance the security of cargo and commerce have been substantial.