U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told lawmakers Wednesday that her department cannot meet the 2012 deadline for screening all cargo entering the United States for radiological and nuclear materials. At her first hearing before the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, Napolitano said the 2012 deadline set by Congress is not going to happen. “To do 100 percent screening requires agreements with many countries,” she said, echoing the position taken by officials in the former Bush administration. A law passed by Congress in 2007 requires the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to screen all cargo headed for the United States by 2012. About 11.5 million containers enter the United States each year. Supporters of the 100 percent screening policy say that knowing what is inside cargo containers could prevent a terrorist disaster. Among the major obstacles to meeting the deadline is deploying trained U.S. officials to more than 700 foreign ports to operate scanning equipment, Napolitano said, but she added that DHS currently screens nearly all cargo containers considered suspicious. Customs officials compare cargo screening with how a medical technician operates x-ray equipment—a trained eye looking for signs of suspicious contents. There currently is no technology that allows a computer to do all the screening.
