Ammonium nitrate & U-Hauls? ((shudder)):
usnews.com
Nation & World 11/12/01
Next, bombs on wheels?
Why the nation is ill-prepared to deal with a favorite weapon of terror
BY DAVID WHITMAN
When California Gov. Gray Davis warned last week of a "credible" terrorist threat to blow up some of California's suspension bridges, he pledged that "our goal is to be prepared." But perhaps the most likely method of attack–a truck bomb–should no longer catch anyone altogether by surprise. Vehicular bombs have been deployed in terror-ridden countries around the globe for decades, and the United States has not been immune. In 1993, a handful of Muslim militants indirectly linked to Osama bin Laden's terror network rolled a yellow Ryder rental van loaded with explosives into a garage at the World Trade Center, detonating a bomb that killed six people and injured 1,000 more. Two years later, Timothy McVeigh used a Ryder rental truck laden with explosives to kill 168 people in Oklahoma City. And just three years ago, al Qaeda operatives used truck bombs to kill 224 people in attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Yet for all that terrorists have repeatedly employed trucks as weapons of mass destruction, both the federal government and the U.S. trucking industry have done surprisingly little since the first World Trade Center attack eight years ago to institute antiterrorist precautions. On September 11, motor carriers were about as vulnerable to infiltration or hijackings by terrorists as in 1997, when a presidential commission concluded that government and private sector "contingency plans generally do not exist for responding to a terrorist threat or attack on the transportation infrastructure." Each day, trucks haul hundreds of thousands of loads of deadly chemicals, incendiaries, and explosives down city streets and highways under far looser security restrictions than have long prevailed in commercial aviation. As Duane Acklie, the former chairman of the powerful American Trucking Associations, warns, it is not hard to imagine "a scenario in which a truck driver or motor carrier warehouseman could wreak the same level of destruction as the September 11 perpetrators."
Since September 11, fears about terrorist truckers have grown after law enforcement authorities discovered that at least one alleged associate of bin Laden's, a Boston cab driver named Nabil Al-Marabh, had attended driving school in Dearborn, Mich., and had procured a permit to haul hazardous materials. When FBI agents raided Al-Marabh's previous residence in Detroit, they found two Arab immigrants, Karim Koubriti and Ahmen Hannan, both of whom had attended a Detroit truck driv-ing school last summer, after which Koubriti earned his commercial driver's license. Attorney General John Ashcroft has said the two Detroit men are believed to have had advance knowledge of the September 11 attacks. Meanwhile, an investigation in Pennsylvania that started more than a year before the September 11 attack has also netted 18 Middle Eastern men charged with fraudulently obtaining permits to haul hazardous materials. Those disclosures prompted law enforcement officials and roadside inspectors to check thousands of hazmat trucks traveling near or through major cities and led to the closing of a 40-block area around the U.S. Capitol to trucks larger than 1.25 tons.
Broadening the safety net, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is visiting trucking schools and combing through a federal list of 500,000 drivers with current hazmat privileges. The FBI is checking for people who may be on the government's watch list, have Middle Eastern surnames and immigration violations, or have exhibited suspicious behavior, like paying thousands of dollars in cash to attend trucking school. At the same time, virtually all of the field personnel of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration are now conducting "site sensitivity" visits at hazardous-materials haulers–the agency aims to look at 30,000 of the nation's 50,000 hazmat haulers by the end of January. Meanwhile, the trucking industry itself has boosted security. Many carriers have redone employment background checks on hazmat drivers, especially those of Middle Eastern origin. At the request of the federal government, some companies have rerouted trucks away from downtown areas, instructed drivers to avoid tunnels and bridges if possible, told truckers never to leave their loads unattended or unlocked, and discouraged chatter about loads on CB radio.
So far, terrorists who have used truck bombs on U.S. soil have relied on rental vehicles. But the motor carrier freight system is pocked with loopholes big enough to drive a truck bomb through. In recent years, would-be terrorists would have found it relatively easy to obtain commercial driver's licenses (CDLs) with endorsements to haul hazardous materials, steal trucks containing hazardous cargo, or drive across the Mexican border with a load of deadly explosives and chemicals without any inspection from American authorities.
The size and geographical sweep of the truck hazmat industry make it almost impossible to institute airport-style security checkpoints. Nationwide, truckers transport about 770,000 hazardous-material shipments a day, including some 315,000 petroleum shipments. On just one bridge in the nation's capital, the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, about 600 trucks cross daily bearing hazardous materials. Most hazmat shipments, such as those that contain aerosol sprays or paint, would not make for terrorist weapons. But tens of thousands of trucks carrying toxic chemicals like chlorine gas and ammonia, explosives, radioactive materials, and incendiaries like gasoline and propane could be turned into mobile weapons of mass destruction. By one unofficial estimate, 50,000 gas tankers bound for service stations traverse the roads daily. Their loads range from about 9,200 gallons to 11, 500 gallons of gasoline–roughly the same amount of fuel as in a fully gassed Boeing 757 airliner. Lightly guarded "tank farms" in urban areas, where 50 to 100 preloaded truck tankers may sit awaiting long-haul drivers, are especially vulnerable.
In part, the hazmat industry has been slow to institute antiterrorist precautions because tighter security measures have run counter to the traditional concerns of motor carriers and government regulators. Officials at departments of motor vehicles usually seek to make the licensing process more customer-friendly, so people can avoid waiting in long lines and find truck driving jobs with a minimum of Big Brother-like inquiries. At the federal and state level, regulators have concentrated on reducing truck accidents and inadvertent releases of hazardous materials, rather than obstructing terrorists from deliberately detonating explosives or releasing toxic chemicals. Trucking companies now run checks of drivers' motor vehicle rec-ords and employment histories. But the carriers cannot check applicants against the state department's terrorist watch list, the immigration service's records, or the national criminal database. Dave Osiecki, vice president of safety and operations at the American Trucking Associations for the past four years, didn't even know that the federal government had a watch list until after September 11. "If the trucking industry had been aware there was a watch list," he says, "I'm sure we would acted on it."
Obtaining a commercial driver's license through standard or illicit means is not all that difficult. The 18 Middle Eastern men charged in September with fraudulently obtaining CDLs and hazardous-material permits in Pennsylvania are only the most recent examples of abuses in the licensing process. In Illinois and Florida, the CDL program has been rocked in recent years by scandals in which corrupt state examiners and private testers hired by the states accepted bribes to pass hundreds of drivers on the CDL tests.
In Illinois, which retested more than 1,000 truckers with suspect CDLs, some 450 drivers had their CDLs revoked. In Florida, some applicants who didn't speak English cheated on the written portion of the CDL tests by relying on a "translator" who would signal the correct answers. Applicants were allowed to use an interpreter even if the written exam was available in their native tongue–and in Florida, foreign-language speakers could take the written test in Spanish, Russian, and Polish. Both states have since banned the use of translators. But Joseph Clapp, the new head of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, says that the use of interpreters elsewhere remains "a vulnerability that has to be addressed."
Most truckers, of course, obtain their CDLs without scamming the system. But the CDL–and the subsequent hazmat permit that Al-Marabh secured–can be acquired with relative ease. Al-Marabh got his CDL and hazardous-materials endorsement just three days after he started trucking school. Many CDL holders learn to drive a truck by taking a few lessons from a relative or prep for the written test with a mail-order course since no certified schooling or training is required for a CDL. Michael O'Connell, executive director of the Commercial Vehicle Training Association, a trade group that represents privately funded truck driving schools, points out that even cosmetologists generally have to go to a certified school. "The worst thing a cosmetologist can do is give a customer a bad haircut,'' he says. "Shouldn't it be necessary to give certified training to a driver before you stick him behind the wheel of an 80,000 pound truck?"
Adding a permit to haul hazardous materials to the CDL is even simpler than obtaining the basic trucker's license. In many states, the test for a hazardous-materials endorsement consists of little more than a 10-question, multiple-choice quiz, and trucking companies often show drivers a one-hour video to prep them for the test. "I could give you a study guide," O'Connell says, "spoon-feed you the information, and an hour later you could pass the test."
A terrorist who didn't want to bother with a commercial driver's license could take a shortcut by stealing a tanker or a trailer loaded with explosives or dangerous chemicals. The trucking industry loses $10 billion to $12 billion annually in cargo theft, and drivers are not well prepared to stop hijackings. Weary drivers who stop for coffee, a piece of pie, or to gas up often leave their rigs unattended. "While a driver is resting, it wouldn't be very difficult to hijack their equipment," says Keith Gleason, director of the tank haul division of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. At present, the U.S. Department of Transportation has no 24-hour reporting service, such as a toll-free hotline, that motor carriers could use to report thefts and notify state police and FBI that a terrorist in an 18-wheeler might be on the loose.
Even without staging a hijacking, terrorists could sneak a truck loaded with toxic chemicals or explosives into the United States by two other routes: They could cross at the Mexican border, or they could take advantage of a loophole in federal regulations that allows for the undeclared intrastate shipment of ammonium nitrate, the fertilizer that McVeigh used in a bomb to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah building. Since September 11, U.S. Customs has started searching all trucks at the Mexican and Canadian border. But last year, 80,000 trucks made 4.5 million northbound crossings into the United States from Mexico with little scrutiny–federal and state officials inspected the trucks just 2 percent of the time. The ammonium nitrate loophole stems from the farm lobby's desire to transport fertilizer within state borders with few restrictions. A 1997 DOT regulation allows agricultural motor carriers to transport up to 16,094 pounds of ammonium nitrate–four times the amount McVeigh used–without placarding the contents of the vehicle.
The sheer scope of the nation's highways and freight system will prevent lawmakers and motor carriers from ever eliminating the threat of terrorist trucks. But several steps under consideration by industry and Congress could reduce risks. DOT has repeatedly failed to issue congressionally mandated regulations that would require commercial drivers to have a biometric or unique form of identification, such as a thumbprint or retina scan. Other technological innovations, like panic buttons on board or electronic devices that disable vehicles, would make trucks more secure, too. A number of large motor carriers have installed global positioning system transponders in their fleet and have command centers that almost resemble war rooms, where they can track the exact location of each truck and communicate with drivers by E-mail.
Still, Congress may well face a backlash from the trucking industry if lawmakers seek to require new security devices. Tens of thousands of mom and pop trucking operations in the country simply can't afford the pricey new technology. For the moment, neither taxpayers nor motor carriers seem prepared just yet to shoulder the steep bill for the technological revolution that might one day thwart terror in a truck. |
