Shipping industry not thrilled with cargo security

Pressure from shipping companies that feared extra cost and delivery delays kept obvious security gaps open despite the fact that officials knew for decades that air-cargo provided terrorists a way to sneak bombs onto planes.

Intelligence officials around the world narrowly thwarted an al-Qaida mail bomb plot last month, intercepting two explosive packages shipped from Yemen via UPS and FedEx.

But it was a tip from Saudi intelligence, not cargo screening, that turned up the bombs before they could take down airplanes.

Empty toner cartridges -- some packed with explosives -- were loaded on U.S.-bound flight without X-ray screening, U.S. officials said.

The scare is prompting a rethinking of air-cargo security. On Monday the administration of President Barack Obama announced new cargo rules banning freight out of Yemen and Somalia. It also restricted the shipment of printer and toner cartridges weighing more than a pound on all passenger flights and some cargo flights.

However, overall cargo security rules were unchanged, and the chances of that happening seem slim. Lobbying by the multibillion-dollar freight industry has helped kill past efforts to impose tough rules.

In 2004, when the Transportation Security Administration considered requiring screening for all packages on all flights, the Cargo Airline Association downplayed a terrorist threat. It argued to the administration of President George W. Bush that slowing down shipping for inspections would jeopardize the shipping industry and the world's economy.

"As a practical matter, all-cargo aircraft operators today are permitted to accept freight from all persons and entities all over the world, including unknown shippers, precisely because of the lack of any credible threat to all-cargo aircraft," the agency was told by the association, whose members included FedEx, UPS and other shippers.

"TSA believes that a requirement to inspect every piece of cargo could result in an unworkable cost of more than $650 million" in the first year, the agency wrote in 2004. The government wanted security, TSA said, "without undue hardship on the affected stakeholders."

The United States requires that all packages be screened before being loaded onto passenger flights originating in the the country. But there's no such requirement enforced for all cargo loaded onto U.S.-bound international passenger flights or on cargo-only flights, such as UPS and FedEx planes.

Jetliner bombings in the 1970s and the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 led the United States to examine cargo security long before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington made counterterrorism measures a top priority.

Those efforts came in fits and starts. For example, the Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. Postal Service once had such a poor relationship that neither agency carried out its part of a mail security agreement reached in 1979 after a mail bomb blew up on an American Airlines flight, congressional investigators reported in 1994.

In 2007, a coalition of more than a dozen business groups lobbied against requiring close inspections of packages, arguing in a letter to then Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) that applying the same rules to passenger baggage and air cargo would set "an unachievable standard."

Only in August, nine years after 9/11, did the United States require that all cargo be screened on U.S. passenger flights. That rule drew heavy lobbying from airlines, air cargo carriers and trade groups.

They devoted at least $32 million last year and $28 million so far this year to lobbying in Washington on that and other matters.

The air transportation industry, meanwhile, donated at least $8.3 million to congressional candidates in the recent election cycle, split almost evenly between Democrats and Republicans, an analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics found.

The TSA, carrying out a 2007 law requiring the screening of all cargo on passenger planes within three years, decided that starting last August it would mandate the screening of cargo on passenger planes loaded in the United States. It said its rule wouldn't apply to cargo placed on U.S.-bound passenger flights overseas, or to cargo-only flights.

In exempting cargo loaded onto passenger flights outside the United States from the August requirement, the agency said it would work with other countries to try to standardize screening requirements and apply "risk assessment" to cargo headed for the United States.

That decision drew praise from the International Air Cargo Association, whose members include FedEx, UPS and other major shippers.

The industry has long contended that requiring the careful inspection of every package would cost too much and take too long. Its companies want to be able to screen items quickly and they want the government to bear as much of the cost as possible.

Monday's announcement of new cargo rules came after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano held a conference call last Wednesday with cargo industry giants FedEx, UPS, German-based shipper Deutsche Post DHL AG and Netherlands-based TNT. On the call, Napolitano "underscored her commitment to partnering with the shipping industry to strengthen cargo security," her agency said.

The air cargo industry isn't short of political connections.

FedEx spent $19 million lobbying from January through September alone; its chief executive, Frederick W. Smith, raised campaign money for Republican President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama's 2008 GOP rival, Sen. John McCain.

FedEx and UPS have served on various federal agency advisory panels over the years, and the head of the Cargo Airline Association has been part of an aviation security advisory committee. Association lobbyist Gina Ronzello used to work for the U.S. Transportation Department's inspector general, with a focus on aviation issues, and was a congressional aide. A Bush administration Customs and Border Protection official, Michael Mullen, lobbied last year for the Express Association of America, whose members included FedEx, UPS, DHL and TNT.

--- Online: Transportation Security Administration: http://www.tsa.gov/