Investigators Get By Border With "Radioactive Materials"

Reported by ABC News today, "Undercover investigators slipped radioactive material enough to make two small 'dirty bombs' across U.S. borders in Texas and Washington state in a test last year of security at American points of entry.

Radiation alarms at the unidentified sites detected the small amounts of cesium-137, a nuclear material used in industrial gauges. But U.S. customs agents permitted the investigators to enter the United States because they were tricked with counterfeit documents.

The Bush administration said Monday that within 45 days it will give U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents the tools they need to verify such documents in the future."

This goes to show that with all of the strides that have been taken post-9/11 the measures are still inadequate. The system can work, as shown in the report by the GAO, but with forged documents the persons could still cross the border. The government must develop a way to screen not only what is coming in, but who is taking that 'stuff' across the border.

The Bush administration said that they will make new tools available, but it is hard to believe that over five years after 9/11 these tools have not been already made available. If the Bush administration says they can be made available within only 45 days, they should have been given these tools long before this report ever came out. But the good thing that might come out of this is that it will help secure very unstable borders.