"David Pugh" writes:

"John Schilling" wrote in message
...
If the United States believes that you have *already* transferred nuclear
weapons to terrorist, it may indeed be stuck with search-every-container
levels of security for years to come. But you now face a United States
that has no further reason to refrain from retaliating for your having
set such an enduring nuclear threat against it.

Of course in the shadowy world of intelligence it is very difficult to be
certain of anything. You could easily be in the gray area where you think a
bomb might have been transferred but you can't prove it.

If you're being literal about the meter-thick shielding, by the trivial
means of "our agent at port X saw the container being loaded, it broke
the first three cranes that tried to lift it, and the ship took on a
noticeable list before the captain got a chance to shift ballast".

But neither of those tests is effective in the scenario where the goal
merely to get the container ship into port and detonate it there (less than
two mile from the Seattle city center, for example). For real security, you
really want some way of screening the ships before they enter port.

Yes, you do.

Please not that in the described scenario, the screening occurs before
the ships even leave the foreign port from which they will eventually
set sail for an American port.

And this (in a more formal and amicable implementation) is what the
United States is working towards in terms of cargo inspection. You
screen cargo *as it is being loaded*, not when it is buried in the
hold of a freighter somewhere. Just like you screen airline passengers
at the gate, rather than letting them board uninspected and then have
a sky marshal walk the aisles with a handheld metal detector.


--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
* for success" *
*661-718-0955 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *