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Release Date: June 19, 2007
Arlington, Va.
National Small Vessel Security Summit
Rear Admiral Salerno: The Secretary is here. He has a very tight schedule today, so with your indulgence, we would like to have him come and speak to us maybe a little bit earlier than it appears in our schedule. So at this point, I'm going to introduce the Secretary. And we're very fortunate that he is here to be our keynote speaker.
Judge Michael Chertoff was sworn in as the second Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security on February 15th, 2005. He formerly served as United States Circuit Judge for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
Secretary Chertoff was previously confirmed by the Senate to serve in the Bush Administration as Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division at the Department of Justice. As Assistant Attorney General, he helped trace the 9/11 terrorist attacks to the Al Qaeda network, and he worked to increase information sharing within the FBI and with state and local officials.
Before joining the Bush Administration, Secretary Chertoff was a partner in the law firm of Latham & Watkins. From 1994 to 1996, he served as Special Counsel for the U.S. Senate Whitewater Committee.
Prior to that, Secretary Chertoff spent more than a decade as a federal prosecutor, including service as U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, and Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
As United States Attorney, Secretary Chertoff investigated and prosecuted several significant cases of political corruption, organized crime and corporate fraud.
Would you please join me in welcoming the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Honorable Michael Chertoff.
Secretary Chertoff: Thank you very much, Admiral, for that kind introduction. I want to recognize the commandant, Admiral Allen, and I want to welcome all of you to the Small Boat Summit. I assume they're serving you seafood or fish so you can enjoy the product of your own labor.
I know you've had an opportunity to hear from a number of my colleagues. In addition to Admiral Allen, Commissioner Basham of Customs & Border Protection, and Vayl Oxford, who is the Director of our Domestic Nuclear Detection Office.
The reason we are all here and the reason we are pleased to have you here is so that we can have a conversation about what we can do collectively as part of federal, state and local government, as part of the private sector, as the owners and operators of small boat vessels, to better understand the security risks that are associated with small vessels, and to talk about the steps we can take to reduce that risk across the maritime domain, as we continue to protect our nation against the threat of terrorism.
Now I recognize that small vessels are an important part of our economy, and I certainly don't mean to suggest there's an unusual or specific threat to the country coming from small vessels, but we also know that historically terrorists like Al Qaeda have used small vessels to carry out operations. We know they attempted to do so with respect to the USS The Sullivans. They successfully did so with respect to the USS Cole. They did so with respect to a French tanker, so that this is certainly a threat that has some historic legacy.
At the same time that we see the potential threat in small vessels, we recognize that you are also a very powerful asset, because you are the eyes and ears on the water, millions of eyes and ears that give us visibility and situational awareness about potential threats, threats that, by the way, would directly affect your livelihood as well as the welfare of this country.
So your safe operations and your continued operations are actually contributors to maritime security.
Now like all the aspects of our transportation system, the government does not own the people or the things which transport our goods and services around the country. The vast majority of small vessels are owned by individuals and members of the private sector. And that means that you have to work with us and we have to rely upon you in carrying out a joint responsibility to make sure that people who want to do harm to this country do not exploit our freedom of the seas and our maritime domain.
And this issue of dealing with security in the maritime domain is a particular challenge because of the number of vessels that we have on the waters. Over 17 million of these small vessels operate on our waterways. And they range from significant commercial enterprises to passenger ferries, to personal watercraft that are small and only carry a few people.
We also recognize that small vessels are not subject to the same kind of security regulations that apply to larger vessels under the Maritime Transportation Security Act or the International Ship and Port Facilities Security Code. Indeed, currently, small vessel regulations are almost exclusively focused on safety rather than security.
The protective measures required for larger vessels, like automatic identification systems and vessel security plans, which do make sense for large vessels, are not necessarily suited for smaller vessels that are less than 300 gross tons.
So our challenge is how do we find a way to address the security concerns we do have with smaller vessels in a way that doesn't simply treat them like large vessels, but also recognizes that we are no longer operating in an environment where safety is the only concern. Now we're operating in an environment where security is a concern as well.
And we want to make sure we implement our security measures and protocols in the area of small vessels in a way that doesn't fundamentally impair the commercial livelihood and the sheer pleasure of taking small boats out on the waterways and the seas that surround this country.
So this summit is an opportunity for all of us to come together, working in a spirit of collaboration and shared responsibility, to talk about what we can do to enhance protection and develop workable solutions over the short term and the long term.
So as we embark on this discussion, let's talk very specifically about what we're worried about. Well, first and foremost, we're concerned about the use of a small vessel as a conveyance to smuggle weapons, including a weapon of mass destruction, into the United States. Such a weapon could have a devastating consequence for this country.
Now, you know, we've had a lot of discussion about smuggling of weapons of mass destruction over the past couple of years, and there's been a lot of focus on the danger of smuggling a weapon of mass destruction through the maritime domain, but what's been a little bit remarkable to me is, virtually all of this public discussion has occurred in the context of our ports and the concern that someone might put a nuclear device or a dirty bomb or something similar in a container, and that that container might be used to smuggle that bomb into our ports.
And there's no question that that is a real thing to be concerned about. That's why we've invested very heavily in radiation detection equipment. We're going to have almost all of the containers that come into this country, into our seaports, scanned by radiation detection equipment by the end of this calendar year. That's why we're working very hard to gather information so we can target containers and know which ones need to be inspected.
But I have to tell you that if all we do is worry about containers, it's as if we're locking the front door and we're kicking the back door wide open. Because there's also a concern that we have that someone might seek to smuggle a weapon of mass destruction into a seaport or between the seaports, not using a container, but using a commercial vessel, including a vessel that is below 300 gross tons.
So if we're going to take this issue of maritime safety and security seriously, we can't only look at containers. We have to look at the whole range of methods in which someone might smuggle that weapon of mass destruction into the country.
By the way, if you have any doubt about the availability of such vessels for smuggling, I suspect – I suggest you ask yourself how a lot of the drugs that get into this country get smuggled in, because a lot of it does come through the maritime domain, and that's a cautionary fact for us to consider, because we have to worry about things in addition to drugs coming in through the same method.
Apart from the issue of smuggling dangerous items, and we have to also be considering the use of a vessel as being in and of itself a weapon, an improvised explosive device that is waterborne as opposed to land borne in the way we typically see land borne vehicles being used as IEDs in Iraq and other parts of the world.
Again, let's look at the USS Cole and that attack in 2000 shortly before the turn of the year. That was a vivid demonstration of the damage that a waterborne IED carried in a small vessel can inflict on a much larger ship, even a Navy ship. Imagine for yourself the consequences of waterborne IEDs against passenger ships, against tankers, against port facilities themselves. And by the way, consider what that might do to your own vessels and to your own ability to use the ports for your own business and your own pleasure.
So part of this summit is going to include a discussion of case histories involving waterborne attacks and other threats to the maritime domain.
Finally, we have to consider the use of a small vessel to smuggle people into the U.S. Now that's an obvious issue with respect to illegal migrants, and we see that all the time.
It doesn't, you know, take more every couple of days to open up the newspaper and see that someone has tried to smuggle in migrants from other parts of the world using the maritime domain, either sticking them into a container or putting them on a ship and trying to get through our Navy and our Coast Guard to land them on our coast.
Again, a cautionary tale about the need to make sure we are looking at the maritime domain in terms of security for smuggling dangerous people into the country.
So we have all of these possible attack vectors, and the threat of a smaller vessel being a method for bringing in a dangerous person or a dangerous thing along those vectors is something that we are really overdue to consider in a serious and comprehensive way.
So now the question is, having defined the threat, how do we defend against the threat? Well, I'm going to say first of all we have to take into this area the same philosophy of risk management that we take in every other area where we try to secure the homeland.
And risk management means we do not try to construct a system that absolutely guarantees against even the remote possibility of a threat. Because, frankly, to do that is to shut the system down. If we were to try to protect our ports and guarantee against a threat, we'd have to shut the ports or make them unusable.
And likewise, we don't want to make the protection against a small vessel as a method of attack so onerous and burdensome that we destroy your livelihood or your pleasure in using small vessels to pursue a whole variety of different kinds of activities.
So we want to be balanced. We want to carefully identify where the greatest threats are. We want to understand where our greatest vulnerabilities are, and where the highest and worst consequences of an attack would be.
Then we want to consider what is the most cost-effective way to raise the level of security so as not to impair your fundamental freedom of the seas, but to make sure that you and your loved ones and our whole country are successfully raising the bar to an attack in a way that is going to provide a measurable benefit to security and one that is worth the cost, both in inconvenience and in money, that we're going to have to invest in order to make sure we can protect this country.
We've used this risk-based approach across our entire trade and transportation system, using multiple layers of security, including intelligence work, deployment of people overseas, technology and automated screening. We do this, for example, again, with large commercial vessels and container vessels, using our Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, which is a voluntary system in which people agree to raise the level of security, and then they get certain consideration in terms of the vetting and the inspections that we do.
We rely upon the collection of data on containerized shipments so we can triage and focus on those shipments that are the ones that we need to take the closest look at. And as I've said, we've used automated tools and scanning devices, like radiation portal monitors to make sure that we are getting at least a minimum level of security against the worst kinds of high-consequence attacks.
So this kind of measured approach, cost benefit, focused on the highest risk, using layers of security, and trying to use information and intelligence to be focused, that's the kind of spirit that we want to take into how we elevate security with respect to smaller vessels.
Using these tools, now we want to engage with you in the appropriate strategy and tactics to be employing in your domain with respect to the issue of security.
And as we've done in other areas, we don't want to come to you and say here is an edict from Washington. This is what you have to do. Take it or leave it. We want to do what we've done in other sectors, which is to work in partnership with you, to ask you to help us develop the appropriate security solutions for the small vessel community.
We're here to listen to your ideas, to carefully consider your concerns, to leverage your experience, because you all have a serious investment in your own vessels and the people who work with you, so you have a concern every bit as urgent as ours is to make sure we are securing our seas and our waterways. And we want to understand from you what you think works and what you think doesn't work.
We want you to work with us to think about things like how we can improve our detection and tracking capabilities for WMD with a broader range of vessels, how we can more effectively gather and share data so we can focus and prioritize where our closest inspections ought to be, and how we can improve our ability to respond to an attack if an attack actually occurs.
What are the realistic measures that would enhance our protection but balance our need for freedom of movement, privacy, and economic vitality? What can we learn from you in continually elevating not only the safety but the security of the maritime sector?
I want to underscore, we're here, and we've asked you to come here precisely because we don't believe that wisdom emanates from Washington across the country. We think that wisdom is involved in the collection of your experience and your knowledge so that we can integrate it and work with you collaboratively to disseminate it across this entire country.
I appreciate the time you've taken from your everyday pursuits to attend this summit, to share your thoughts, and to help us take this first very important step in improving security with respect to our smaller vessels and smaller boats.
You're our partners. We have a common interest both economic, but more important, as citizens and as people with loved ones and friends in our communities. Many of you live in ports and are near or on waterways, and therefore, your vulnerabilities are very much what we're talking about protecting. So I think we have a common interest on a personal level as well as on an economic level.
I know we've got a ways to go, and I know there are a lot of different viewpoints within this room. I think even if I were to take a survey of the various interests reflected here, I'd get probably a fair amount of disagreement, even with respect to safety matters. But nevertheless, we can't waste time beginning this discussion, and we can't waste time raising our level of security.
Because I will guarantee you one thing -- the enemy is not wasting time. The enemy is spending every day figuring out how they can get in here and how they can cause damage to us, and again, looking at their track record, because they do tend to return to successful plots.
Remind yourself about the Sullivans. Remind yourself about the Cole. Remind yourself about that French tanker, the Lindbergh. This attack technique is not one that is unknown to terrorists and to Al Qaeda. It is one they have used before. It is one that they will likely use again. Let us work together to make our protections against this as robust as they can be in a way that preserves the traditional freedom of the seas, our economic mobility and our continued pleasure and boating on our oceans and in our waterways.
I'll be happy to take some questions.
Secretary Chertoff: I think we have some people circulating with microphones. Yes? If you tell me who you are, if you have a question, or raise your hand if you want someone to come with a mic.
Either the food is really good and you can't wait to get to eating or I've answered all your questions.
Admiral Allen: You might want to compare and contrast affiliations.
Secretary Chertoff: Yes. Let me mention something else. Admiral Allen suggests, so you don't feel picked on, that you're not the only sector of our transportation arena that we are looking at doing some new things with.
You know, we are obviously always concerned about the aviation sector and aviation security. We've done a lot with respect to commercial airlines. But another one of the attack methods that we are concerned about is the possibility of somebody smuggling a weapon in, particularly a weapon of mass destruction, using general aviation, flying in from overseas either across the Atlantic or across the Pacific.
So here, too, we are shortly going to be embarking on measures working collaboratively with the general aviation sector to raise the level of security and screening for general aviation as well.
The bottom line of my philosophy is this: if someone says to me, you know, you have the responsibility to secure the house, I'm going to make sure I've checked every single door and every single window. I'm not only going to spend time on the doors and windows that the press happens to single out or that political officials happen to single out, because my job is to raise security through all the methods of entry.
And that's why what we're doing here is something that we're going to replicate with respect to general aviation. It's why we're trying to raise the level of security coming across our land borders. You know, there was a videotape shown on television last night that purportedly came from a terrorist group graduating a class of terrorists, and I was just asked about it a few moments ago.
And someone said to me, what's the lesson you learn from that? The lesson I learn from it is, that the terrorists who are part of Al Qaeda or similar organizations, are making no secret about what they want to do. They are telling us loud and clear in every way they can, they want to cause as much damage to our way of life, to our economy and to our citizens as possible. They are continually looking to find new ways to do that.
They're going to try to find people that they think they can slip-in under the radar screen. They're going to look to find techniques they think we haven't discovered yet. Our responsibility is to stay a step ahead of them.
This is a time when we have to redouble our commitment to securing ourselves, not in a hysterical or paranoid fashion, not in a fashion that says, you know, we're going to guarantee against everything by making it so difficult to move around that we can't enjoy our own lives, but by using a determined, disciplined, cost-effective and risk-balanced approached.
And that's why what we're doing here is something we're going to be doing across a whole lot of sectors of the economy, to make sure that as I've said, all those doors are locked. I still want it to be able to be unlocked and swing open back and forth, but we want to know that we get to make the decision who comes in and who we want to invite into this country, and not have the bad guys make that decision for us.
Again, questions? Okay. I see a question.
Question: I guess somebody has to break the ice. Thank you. . I represent I guess several constituencies. One side I am a member of the Board of the National Marine Manufacturers Association, where we represent the boat manufacturers. On the other side, I'm a boater, a pleasure boater. I'm also on the board of the Baltimore Harbor Security Commission, so I have an involvement in this. And then in civilian life, I'm president of Zodiac of North America, where we support homeland security in the Coast Guard. So I have my feet on several sides of the fence.
So forgive me for being blunt, if I may. Does the department at this point have a proposal or an idea or a direction that they would like all of us to be looking at? I mean, as you indicated, there are a lot of diverging opinions, and perhaps if the department has something that we could start with.
Secretary Chertoff: I appreciate that question. I meant what I said. I think we're here to listen to some of your ideas. But what I think I can do is I can tell you what we're worried about. And that can focus you.
We're worried about how do we build a system so that we can identify threat of smuggling a weapon on a small vessel, particularly one that's going to come from overseas. And then we have to recognize as well that that involves not only a vessel that would travel directly from let's say Europe or Asia across the ocean and come and land at a port or between the ports, but one that might offload its cargo, its dangerous cargo or dangerous people off of our coast, and then smuggle them in.
That's obviously an enormous challenge, because we've been contending with that challenge dealing with the drug trade for obviously decades. But we're talking about some kind of a method that would give us a reasonable degree of visibility about who’s approached from overseas and that would give us some capability to figure out who we need to take a closer look at.
That is the challenge. That is the threat we're worried about. What I'm not able to tell you now because we're really in a listening mode at this point—as opposed to a here's a proposal, we want to hear your reaction mode—is that there's a specific answer we have to that. There are some ideas, and it may have to do with making some adjustments in advance notification when you're coming in from overseas. Maybe we need to lower the threshold a little bit.
But we're very much still in a mode where we're asking you the question. You know your business. You know what the vulnerabilities are. There's probably—who knows better than you do how someone can smuggle something in and where the dangers are.
So, I think that's what the purpose of this summit is, for us to start that collaborative process.
Yes? Behind you, over there.
Question: Good morning, Mr. Secretary. On a larger, higher scale, when you talk about smuggling and the international involvement. We've heard about piracy this morning and some of the maritime concerns there. At the highest level of the department, do you feel like international conventions such as the International Convention on the Law of the Seas, are effective tools in helping us fight both domestically and then providing a leading role internationally in our homeland security?
Secretary Chertoff: Without getting into a specific – discussion of a specific convention or treaty, the maritime domain happens to be one of those areas along with aviation where international cooperation is really a must.
The failure to have international cooperation on security and safety creates seams in which people who are dangerous, either criminals or terrorists, can operate. So there's no question that whether it be through, you know, the process of having conventions or whether it be through the process of having our international shipping and port security codes and raising the level of security at ports around the world, that's got to be the cornerstone of our strategy.
In the end, actually, the best defense of this country's maritime domain is a global defense. If we stop people from loading a weapon at the point of departure, we don't have to worry about the point of arrival. That's why we do a fair amount of international outreach.
I was overseas last year in Asia. We're trying to push our radiation detection equipment out into foreign ports, which obviously requires international cooperation. So that's a big part of our strategy.
Yes?
Question: I'd like to ask you, I know that part of the purpose of all this is to try to identify boats that may be a threat and then to check them out more closely. Are you comfortable that the Coast Guard has enough boats and people to really do that job?
Secretary Chertoff: Well, first of all, the good news is the Coast Guard is well led, well equipped, but also not alone. We have, through the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, we've been able to leverage Coast Guard assets by adding Customs and Border Protection assets.
You know, our Customs and Border Protection officials also have boats, assets and people. And by working together with the Coast Guard and actually sharing responsibility, doing these either jointly or cross-training, which we've done in a number of ports, we've actually been able to expand the assets that are available to do coastal protection and protection of our ports in the area between the ports. So that's the first part.
And, of course, the Navy is a great partner as well. And, you know, people think of the Navy obviously in the traditional role of, you know, fighting great battles at sea, but actually, the Navy is also a tremendous partner of ours in helping us protect our maritime boundaries against the possibility of an incursion. They have vessels, they have air assets as well.
So we're leveraging across the entirety of the tools of national maritime power. There is an integrated maritime strategy which Admiral Allen is working on, together with his counterparts at the Navy, and it's that ability to integrate all of these tools that gets us I think the kind of resources that we need to do this job.
But it is a challenging job. And that's why we need individuals to be part of this as well, because you are millions of eyes and ears. And if you see something and you know to notify us, that is every bit as important in our security as when we tell people riding on a train to notify the police if they see a dangerous package.
Question: I operate a little ferry boat on the lower Mississippi River. We've all watched since 9/11 the massive amounts of federal money that have been spent in the aviation industry and as a result of MTSA.
Is there an opportunity here and is it perhaps—for a small businessman little dollars count. We've all seen other projects being funded about the nation in our ports with enhanced security that is federal money, and some of us, including myself, have been recipients of little grants. Is that trend going to continue, and is this industry going to be the next focus for that federal pipeline?
Secretary Chertoff: Well, I will say to you that as part of our transit security grant programs, we have been funding and giving significant grants to ferries. Not surprisingly, they tend to be ferries at the highest-risk places, meaning the highest amount of traffic, and the greatest vulnerabilities.
But we have a variety of programs for protecting infrastructure. The money almost always winds up going through the state first. We don't do a lot of grants to private people as well. But there also is in-kind assistance we can give working with the Coast Guard, guidance and things of that sort, similar to what we're doing with other sectors of the economy. Because, the idea is to raise the level of security for everybody.
Rear Admiral Salerno: Mr. Secretary, I'm getting the look from your staff that you need to get on to your next pressing engagement.
Sir, I want to thank you for making the time to be with us today.
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This page was last reviewed/modified on June 19, 2007.