The nine-page unclassified National Security Presidential Directive 41/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 13 provides a strategy designed to coordinate federal, state and local governmental efforts with those of the private sector to protect ports and secure container cargos, while maintaining surveillance over U.S. territorial waters.

The directive, entitled “Maritime Security Policy,” is designed to “integrate and leverage” existing federal policies and programs, such as the Container Security Initiative, the Proliferation Security Initiative and Operation Safe Commerce, “while ensuring inter-agency alignment and focus,” according to sources familiar with the document.

“It is mostly a document looking how these efforts are coordinated,” said one policymaker who has seen the plan.

The new directive specifically requires the development by the Department of Homeland Security, in consultation with what it called key industry stakeholders, of “minimum federal standards” for maritime recovery operations, as well as “comprehensive” recovery standards for national infrastructure and a plan to complement those national preparedness goals and standards already set forth in a previous national security directive.

The Departments of Defense, State, Treasury, Interior, Commerce and Transportation will also have a role in the recovery standards initiative, according to these sources.

The lack of policy regarding maritime recovery has been a key complaint from industry leaders, who have said recently that they were still in the dark about who would be in charge in the ports in the event of a terrorist attack.

The presidential mandate also included other policy actions, including requirements:

· To create a Maritime Security Policy Coordinating Committee to review existing inter-agency practices, coordination and execution of U.S. policies and strategies and to recommend improvements;

· To develop a National Strategy for Maritime Security in an inter-agency process, under the direction of the secretaries of defense and homeland security, that “builds on current efforts and capitalizes on existing strategies, tools, and resources.”

· To design, under the direction of a new senior steering group for maritime domain awareness co-chaired by representatives of the secretaries of defense and homeland security, enhanced capabilities to identify threats “as distant from our shores as possible.”

· To develop a plan for global marine intelligence integration to utilize current capabilities in order to integrate all available intelligence on a global basis on the “location, identity, and operational capabilities and intentions of potential threats to U.S. interests.”

(Participating agencies include the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, the CIA, the FBI and the National Counter-terrorism .)

· To coordinate international outreach efforts, under the direction of the Secretary of State.

· To create a domestic outreach engagement plan, under the direction of the Homeland Security Secretary and the Attorney General, to ensure that the interests of state and local governments, as well as the private sector, are taken into account in the development and implementation of federal maritime security policies.

· To develop a “comprehensive” National Maritime Response Plan, under the direction of the secretaries of defense and homeland security in coordination with the Attorney General, reflective of lead agency roles and responsibilities in responding to threats in the maritime domain.

(The maritime plan, in which the Departments of State, Transportation and Commerce will also have a role, is to supplement the National Response Plan required under Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5, and to complement critical infrastructure plans and domestic all-hazards preparedness goals and structures found in HSPD7 and HSPD8, respectively.)

The NSPD 41/HSPD 13 also directs the development of recommendations for improvements in national and international regulatory policy governing all private vessels, with DHS spearheading that part of the directive as well, with the participation of the Departments of Defense, State, Commerce and Transportation, as well as the U.S. Trade Representative.

Finally, the directive also calls for the creation of a comprehensive maritime supply chain security plan; another effort headed by DHS. 

On Thursday, outgoing Department of Homeland Security Secretary James M. Loy said in Washington that the department had made the presidential directive a top priority.

“I certainly recognize that of all things the president considers providing a directive on, when he chooses one, it’s pretty important and we better be about the business of doing it,” Loy told the daily Congressional Quarterly/Homeland Security after his speech.

Loy did not divulge the contents of the presidential order at that time.

The Administration’s decision to issue the national security directive was first reported Nov. 17 in Port Security News. Well-placed sources say that Administration plans to trumpet promulgation of the final document after Christmas were put on hold following the news of the devastating South Asia tsunami.

DHS began contacting leaders with the shipping industry last month to canvas their views on cargo security that were to be incorporated into the final document. 

Announcement that the presidential decision directive had been signed last month was accompanied by new warnings about possible terrorist attacks involving seaports.

On Thursday, Robert C. Bonner, commissioner of the Department of Homeland Security’s Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, noted that, “for historical reasons, most U.S. seaports tend to be located in the middle of some of our nation’s largest urban areas—New York, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and Seattle.

“A 40-foot container loaded with ammonium nitrate would create a huge blast—10 to 20 times that of the Oklahoma City bombing,” Bonner added in a speech before a trade organization in Washington, D.C. “But the ‘sum of all fears’ is a ‘nuke-in-the-box.’

“One does not wish to be an alarmist, but this much is known: Bin Laden has been trying to get his hands on a nuclear device, or fissile materials to make one, for at least six years,” Bonner said. “He reportedly met with Pakistani nuclear scientists some years ago.” 

Martin Edwin Andersen can be reached via Mick_Andersen@portsecuritynews.com

Copyright © 2005 Port Security News

Port Security News is a trademark of USCongress.org.