depleted uranium slips through [View All]

[pippin]

" For a second year, U.S. government screeners have failed to detect a shipment of depleted uranium in a container sent by ABCNEWS from overseas as part of a test of security at American ports. . . homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has claimed major improvements in port security, in part because of enhanced vigilance overseas. "So that our borders become the last line of defense, not our first line of defense," Ridge said in a speech last week. He said the United States was increasing security "thousands of miles away, long before a container is first loaded on a ship. . . .But in Jakarta, ABCNEWS producers David Scott and Rhonda Schwartz found that the chest in which they had placed the depleted uranium was never opened or inspected before being sent on to Los Angeles. "
<snip>
If they can't detect that, then they can't detect the real thing," explained Tom Cochran, a nuclear physicist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which lent the material to ABCNEWS for the project.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/Primetime/sept11_uranium030910.html"

so much for security and the "war on terror."

Goodbye Tom Ridge. :hi: