The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

DHS Not Honest On Security Matters

by The Hill - 05/04/06 4:41 PM ET

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) asserted that the Department of Homeland Security has not been honest on port security matters during a press briefing today.

Q I’m sure you’ve heard, the Homeland Security Department would say that they do screen 100 percent, they don’t inspect 100 percent of the cargo.

REP. PELOSI: That’s not even true. The Department of Homeland Security doesn’t screen 100 percent. We want this initiative to be 100 percent, and not on our shores. We don’t want these containers coming into our waterways even before they reach a port, to not be screened.
But it is — but that is simply not true. They screen at most 6 percent.

Q They say they inspect 6 percent, but they screen more — they inspect the high risk —
REP. PELOSI: They’re not telling you the truth. They haven’t been honest with the American people about their safety. They’re a department in disarray. Whether it’s about public safety or public health, we have a problem. Democrats have a better way, and Republicans are today missing an opportunity to do what’s right.

Pelosi continued

We should be screening every container that comes into our ports, again, at the port of departure overseas. We should be having protection for our nuclear and chemical plants in our country. Republicans refuse to mandate that to protect their friends in the industry. We should be having — we should be having inspection and screening of the cargo going onto planes, but they won’t do that either. We should buy all the fissile material that exists in the world — it’s possible to do — the fissile material that is out there available to the — on the black market, and that is a finite supply that we can identify and that we can buy, to prevent it from being put into a container to come into our country, and yet they refuse to do that. So they have failed on so many scores. And on the first day of the new Congress, Democrats will pass legislation to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 commission to make America safer.

Tags 9/11 Commission Environment Government History of the United States Nuclear weapon design Politics