Foreign
governments must not be allowed to have any form of control of ports of entry
into the United States. The U.S.
Seaports Commission urges Congress to over-turn the internationalist decision of
a secretive, little-known government panel allowing the takeover of six major
seaports by a company owned by the government
of the United Arab Emirates. For
exactly the same reasons, we urge eviction of communist China’s Chinese
Overseas Shipping Company from Pier J at Long Beach, California.
Realistically, Congress should
phase out all foreign ownership of ports over a five year period.
The
assertion by the proponents of the proposed contract that the U.S. government
will handle security at these seaports, is false.
The U.S. Coast Guard and Homeland Security have
regulatory
authority. Companies and ship lines
submit security plans for approval, with occasional inspections. But the actual
implementation
of security procedures is carried out by
the companies themselves, through self-reporting and voluntary compliance.
Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Jeff
Carter reluctantly admitted this to The Washington Times.
Ships
selected for inspection as high risk sometimes sit overnight waiting for
inspectors. So high risk cargo
would sit in the custody of the foreign terminal operator at night, with no one
else monitoring the ship. And foreign executives will have the authority to
wander at will through major U.S. seaports.
Dubai Ports World would have
direct day-to-day management control over harbors less than a mile away from the
wreckage of the World Trade Center in New York City and in busy Baltimore harbor
-- only a 90 minute rented-truck drive from the nation's capital, Washington,
D.C.. As with China’s COSCO
operating
Pier J at Long Beach in Los Angeles harbor, employees of Dubai Ports World
physically inside the United Arab Emirates will have access to all of the United
States’ state-of-the art security procedures for our seaports, as well as all
information about on-going shipments.
The Middle Eastern
government-owned company would know virtually everything important that there is
to know about security systems and procedures we use to protect and safeguard
U.S. seaports. Even if the company
itself is completely honest and sincere, Islamic terrorists could steal U.S.
security plans from out of the company’s headquarters in Dubai, the United
Arab Emirates, coerce or torture information out of Dubai executives inside the
UAE, or have low-level employees photocopy them in Dubai offices.
Islamic terrorists would know exactly how to defeat security at
all
American seaports.
We sharply dispute that the
Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) reviewed this
transaction for dangers to national security.
Senate testimony revealed that
only
one CFIUS meeting on this was ever held.
In government, 30 days is barely enough time to write a final report,
when coordinating 12 different agencies.
After
5 years as a federal bureaucrat, it is apparent that no actual investigation
took place within the 30 day deadline mandated by statute.
CFIUS did not invoke the second, 45 day review period, yet is thoroughly
scrutinizing an Israeli company CheckPoint seeking to buy a small Maryland software
firm. A $6.8 billion transaction
involving the major ports of entry into the U.S. was not taken seriously by the
government of the United States.
Did we forget the
hundreds
of billions of dollars that 9/11 cost the U.S. economy?
One terrorist act involving U.S. seaports
could easily cost the American economy a trillion dollars. As a foundation
of economics, private parties must not shift their costs to the taxpayer.
Seaport security must be paid for by the companies that profit from
international trade at the expense of domestic manufacturers.
This is not anti-Middle
Eastern. The country is shocked to
learn that any foreign
companies control U.S. ports of entry after 9/11.
The U.S. Seaports Commission has been warning for years about Pier J in
Long Beach, California controlled by COSCO, an arm of the Chinese military.
Foreign governments don’t have to actually control U.S. ports of entry
to sell us their products or have “respect” from us.
We are told that Americans are
doing most of the work at the seaports.
Super.
Why not let Americans do
all
the work, and keep the profits here at home?
If Americans are actually running our seaports now, and have the
real-world experience, why would they need a foreign company supervising
Americans? Is the national security
of the United States now for sale to the country with the winning bid?
American firms are fully
qualified to run these ports, even with higher labor costs.
And these seaports of entry are vital to the legitimate national security
interests of the United States. A
“port of entry” historically and legally (and even under the privatization
concepts like OMB Circular A-76) is an inherently governmental function,
reserved to the U.S. government. Yet
these are arms of foreign governments now
controlling or proposed to control U.S. points of entry.
The China Ocean Shipping
Company (COSCO) and Dubai Ports World (DPW) are both companies controlled by and
functioning as, arms of the governments of Communist China and the United Arab
Emerites. A significant number of
the over one million Americans who work at U.S. seaports, will be answering to
their bosses whose strings are pulled in Beijing and Dubai.
In Panama, the entrance/exit
ports are also controlled Communist China.
Li KaShing, the principal stockholder of the supposedly “private”
company that controls the seaports at both ends of the Panama Canal –
Hutchison-Whampoa –– is acknowledged in U.S government files as being an
agent of Communist China. Those
seaports transship containers bound for the United States, and some 17 percent
of all containers coming into U.S. seaports either come through the Panama Canal
or are transshipped through the seaports of the Panama Canal – through a
Communist China dominated firm.
America’s policy encourages
privatization, yet these are all government-controlled
firms. Government control is not
pro-business, contrary to the arguments in favor of the current policy.
It is ludicrous to argue that the only way to get a better price for the
management of our nation’s seaports is to have foreign governments take them
over.
Astonishingly, China’s COSCO controls an expanded Pier J at Long Beach
in Los Angeles Harbor, even after Chinese
Gen. Xiong Guang Kai threatened
to ‘rain nuclear bombs on Los Angeles.’
Should Los Angeles feel secure?
COSCO
is owned 100% by the communist Chinese military, and COSCO ships have been
deployed in Chinese military exercises and are designated as
zhanjian,
or “warship.” Hong Kong’s Ming Pao
newspaper reported that China’s Navy is stepping up its refitting of China’s
COSCO ships for use in war. Just
last summer, yet another Chinese General threatened a nuclear attack against the
U.S. Curiously, the General
did not lose his job…! Delivery
of a nuclear bomb on board a cargo ship would offer no warning and leave no
trace of its Chinese origins after the ship was vaporized.
U.S. Customs caught the Chinese Overseas Shipping Company smuggling 2,000
fully automatic AK-47 assault rifles - destined for Los Angeles street gangs –
aboard The Empress Phoenix.
The guns were manufactured by China’s Poly Technologies, which
is owned and managed by the Chinese government.
Court documents reveal that Poly
Technologies planned to expand their smuggling into the U.S. to
Chinese-made hand grenades, mortars, RPG-7 anti-tank rockets and hand-held
anti-aircraft missiles capable of knocking commercial airliners out of the sky.
The U.S. Seaports
Commission (and its parent organization U.S. Public Policy Council,
originally the U.S. Intelligence Council) have warned about
Communist China's control of vital U.S. seaports for many years.
We have distributed nearly
2 million
copies of 2 books, including China
Doll: Clinton-Gore and the Selling of the Presidency and
Stealth
Invasion by Roger Canfield and various special reports.
We founded the annual Western Conservative Conference to speak
out on this issue, recruiting 35 conservative public policy organizations as
co-sponsors. We will continue
reminding Washington policymakers that the national security of the United
States should not be sold out to campaign contributors or business interests
beholden to Beijing, Dubai or any other foreign country.
We
have documented in meticulous detail how campaign donors influenced U.S. public
policy in the past, and we hope that this influence can be overcome now to
reverse a policy that is not in the national interest of the United States, and
which has our citizens very alarmed.
We call upon both the United
States Senate and House of Representatives to conduct extensive hearings on the
issue of the management of United States seaports and whether foreign owned,
controlled or dominated companies should be allowed to enter into contracts such
as that proposed by Dubai Ports World and the contracts held by the China Ocean
Shipping Company.
The United States Seaport
Commission urges Congress to overturn the proposed contract of Dubai Ports
World, and to remove the presence of the China Ocean Shipping Company from Pier
J in Long Beach, California.