Hearing of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee - Security of our Nation's Seaports

Interview

Hearing of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee - Security of our Nation's Seaports

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SEN. OLYMPIA J. SNOWE (R-ME): Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you for conducting this hearing today, which is obviously a critical issue to our nation because port security remains a, you know, our greatest terrorist vulnerability.

And I know that this committee has held numerous hearings over the years to follow-up and to explore the gaps in port security and measuring the progress that we've made and trying to identify ways in which we can, you know, build upon the, you know, the effectiveness of those programs that are working but also, to make sure that we do everything we can to aggressively pursue closing the remaining gaps.

And I know we've made progress, I know it's identified mission and I appreciated the GAO's report because I think it does give us, I think, a snapshot of where we stand today and obviously I'm deeply concerned that we haven't been able to implement the transportation worker identification program.

I mean that is certainly lagging and secondly the -- you know, implementation of standardized inspections and scanning of containers, which has also been very -- is critical to port security.

So, I want to begin a review Admiral Pekoske on several of these issues. Obviously the GAO has said that the Coast Guard remains resource-challenged in a number of areas, one of which of course, is on inspections as well.

And I would like to follow up with you to ask you exactly, what is the status of the number of inspectors which you are currently training? I know in 2006 you had 82 inspectors, we provided an additional $15 million to help expedite the training.

I gather that's lagging at this point and we have a the double inspection requirement, both for domestic inspections and international facilities, and I understand that that has really not been implemented to the extent that it should be in meeting our commitment for inspections, both domestically as well as with international ports.

So, can you tell us today, exactly where the Coast Guard stands, and the number of inspectors? Two, how many are being trained? And three, on the inspections, how many inspections have been conducted, how many need to be conducted and how you are going to meet the commitment with the new requirements under law?

ADM. PEKOSKE: Senator, thanks for the question, now I will answer it in two ways. I will talk about our domestic inspections first if that is okay, and then I will talk about international inspections.

Domestically, the SAFE Port Act requires us to do one regularly scheduled inspection of every facility. There is roughly 3200 facilities and then one unannounced inspection. So, the Act requires two inspections per year.

We have roughly almost 400 inspectors to be able to do that. We appreciate the Congress' support of additional inspectors to bring us up to a higher level, additional about 90 inspectors over the past year.

That inspection level is adequate to conduct the one announced, one unannounced inspection of all the MPSA facilities that the SAFE Port Act has.

As an example, in 2007 with 3200 facilities domestically, we've done over 7200 inspections. So we are well on pace to actually exceed the requirement in 2007 domestically.

Internationally, we have a smaller cadre of international inspectors, under 100 people, roughly 80 people, that travel to the foreign ports, the 140 foreign ports. Senator, they have inspected already a 108 of those 140, so roughly 80 percent.

And they will have all 140 complete by March of 2008. So I can say that will be good progress and they will come back with some very, very good results. We intent to, actually exceed the requirements for the SAFE Port Act.

SAFE Port Act requires that we visit every country every three years. Senator, we plan to visit them every two years. Because particularly at the early stages, this is a global system in providing that presence and that recurring training and plus that assessment is very important for us.

And so inspection-wise, we're in reasonably good shape. One of the things we're doing as well, Senator is the Commandant had a -- an opportunity to speak before the Propeller Club, a couple of weeks ago, and he talked about our overall inspection program within the Coast Guard.

And he made a couple of important points. One is that we need to stabilize, internally for the Coast Guard, our inspection workforce, more so that we past in the past, so that the expertise, thus developed stays in the inspection program.

And we also need to increase the number of civilian employees we have in that inspection program, so that the military rotation system doesn't cause the level of turn that it currently does. And so, we will have more civilians, predominantly still military but -- and even with the military we are going to try to manage the rotation process so that the expertise stays resident.

SEN. SNOWE: So you are comfortable with the number of inspectors that you currently have, to meet the requirements both domestically and internationally?

You are saying 300 that are fully trained at this point?

ADM. PEKOSKE: Yes ma'am.

SEN. SNOWE: It is interesting Mr. Caldwell, you -- I would like to have you address this question as well, because I know, in GAO you addressed that particular question in saying that GAO -- that the Coast Guard was resource-challenged and, you know, meeting the requirement of training these inspectors.

Are you comfortable with what Admiral Pekoske is now saying?

MR. CALDWELL: Let me try to address both, the overseas first, then the domestic.

In terms of overseas, the Coast Guard -- big problem is that this is a new program. So, they train these people for the inspectors, to do this program, and now they are all kind of toward the end of their rotation.

So, once the program gets in place for a number of years, you'll have more people rotating in and out and people to share that expertise.

I think the training is -- its not just an issue of training with the overseas inspectors, you have to have the right kind of person, I mean they have to be diplomatic and be able to deal with -- in a foreign environment, obviously language skills are every important there.

So, in some ways I think that the toughest nut to crack for the Coast Guard is getting over this hump of replacing almost the entire, you know, first class cadre of inspectors.

In terms of the domestic program, they've trained a lot of people but not -- a lot of them are no longer in inspections. And I think that the problem you have is sometimes people that are assigned as inspections aren't doing inspections.

They have other duties or other duties are assigned. Some of them are legitimate in terms of looking at safety of environmental issues as opposed to security inspections.

But hearing the comment about some civilian employees, I think that could go a long way in terms of, not replacing all of them, but providing more stability within an office

Because within an individual Coast Guard sector, I mean, it is good to have somebody who has been there a number of years to know that this one facility is always a problem.

And like, you know, this is the case with me -- unannounced versus announced inspections, you know, you need to show up on a Friday night, because, you know, I went by there on Friday night, you know, two years ago and there is, you know, the gate's wide open or whatever it is like that.

So, I mean, I think the Coast Guards' should be pretty receptive to the recommendations we are about to make. We actually have a exit conference tomorrow with the Coast Guard where we will talk about potential recommendations, and I think we're satisfied that certainly that progress is being made.

The bigger issue we have is some of the missile data, which is how they crack these things, hasn't been kept consistently by the inspectors, and without cleaning up the data, it's pretty hard for the Coast Guard to make an evaluation of how good the program is working.

For example, could you compare the results of your unannounced inspections to your announced inspections? And Coast Guard just doesn't have the data to do that right now.

SEN. SNOWE: Uh-huh.

ADM. PEKOSKE: Senator, if I could add to that I --?

SEN. SNOWE: Yeah, Admiral.

ADM. PEKOSKE: Mr. Caldwell makes a very good point and we have taken a look at following up on the data that we collect from these inspections, to be able to do just what he stated.

If I could make two other points, we just had all of our International Port Security Liaison Officers; those that do the international inspections are here in Washington for a week conference.

And we talked to them about consistency in their program, the approaches they make to countries, how to conduct the inspections.

And so, this is in the program and it is getting off the ground. We're going to be very careful that we don't have everybody reporting in and then two years or three years later, everybody reporting out. We're going to manage that transition very carefully.

If I could make one of the point with respect to inspections, we've taken a very close look as -- as you know, over the past four of five months, with our marine safety, not the security but the safety inspections.

And we know that we do not have enough resources for those safety inspections, and that inspection capability, when you look in the safety and security issues, goes hand-in-glove.

And so to conduct the safety inspections, we need -- tossed with the advancement of industry we do need more resources for that.

SEN. SNOWE: Uh-huh, I appreciate that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SEN. LAUTENBERG: You have some more?

SEN. SNOWE: Yeah, I have, yeah, just one other question on interagency operational centers.

I understand that the Coast Guard does not yet have a single comprehensive plan. Can you address that, because I think that that is also very critical to get the coordination that is, I think, so essential across this country with respect to the various ports and how they are, you know, integrated?

ADM. PEKOSKE: Yes Senator. And you are exactly correct. What we have done since 9/11 is we have prototyped across the country in five different locations, how you would develop an integrated command, and we've learned an awful lot of lessons from that.

We have a project called "Command 21," part of $261 million project that will begin that process of Integrated Command Centers, kind of does it from a couple of perspectives, that is additional sensors, additional information systems to integrate the sensors and then the facilities, so that when we have an Integrated Command Center, we have a command center where all of our port partners can be with us in the same location if that is possible and if that makes operational sense in the port.

In some ports, that doesn't make operational sense. And example would be the Port of New York and New Jersey where we do need to have some redundancy of command centers due to the complexity in size of that port.

But you are exactly right, this is the concern of ours and as we look at our sectors, this is our number one priority for us, is to get those integrated command centers in place.

SEN. SNOWE: And do you need any additional money for that, needed to the -- I understand it's been $216 million applied?

ADM. PEKOSKE: No. Senator, we need $216 million, we have not had money for that yet.

SEN. SNOWE: You have not had money, yeah, so that is essential?

ADM. PEKOSKE: Yes, ma'am.

SEN. SNOWE: Yeah, okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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