[Morgeruat]

linkie

The $75 million, three-year study by the Homeland Security Department included inspections at a New Jersey cargo terminal involved in the dispute over a Dubai company's now-abandoned bid to take over significant operations at six major U.S. ports. The previously undisclosed results from the study found that cargo containers can be opened secretly during shipment to add or remove items without alerting U.S. authorities, according to government documents marked "sensitive security information" and obtained by The Associated Press. The study found serious lapses by private companies at foreign and American ports, aboard ships, and on trucks and trains "that would enable unmanifested materials or weapons of mass destruction to be introduced into the supply chain."

The full article has more, but this is what I wanted to point out, and has been one of my major apprehensions with the deal, as good a job as Customs, and the Coast Guard do, they can't inspect every container, or even 1/5th of the containers coming into the country, and in fact seem to base their inspections on cargo manifests (wouldn't take long to find out what types of cargo are most frequently checked, and smuggle things into other less frequently checked containers).