Remarks by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and DNDO Director Vayl Oxford at a Press Conference to Announce Spectroscopic Portal (ASP) Program Contracts

Release Date: 07/14/06 00:00:00

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
Contact: 202-282-8010
July 14, 2006

Secretary Chertoff:  Good afternoon, everybody on this very hot day here in Washington, D.C.  I have with me Vayl Oxford, who is the director of our Domestic Nuclear Detection Office.  

As I think I have said previously, the single biggest threat we worry about, in terms of protecting this country and securing the homeland, is the threat of a weapon of mass destruction.  And at the very top of the scale is a nuclear device or a radiological device.  

So a great deal of our effort, particularly in the last year, has been to accelerate the research on and the deployment of a next generation radiation-detection technology that will allow us to detect and intercept a possible nuclear bomb or radiological bomb more quickly, more efficiently, and more accurately than the current generation of detection equipment.  

Today, we’re announcing contract awards for that next generation of detection equipment, the Advanced Spectroscopic Portal Program.  Vayl Oxford will get into the details with you, but I want to give you an overview of what we’re going to do.  

Right now, what we do through our Radiation Detection Program is use various kinds of fixed- and mobile- detection equipment to read radioactive emanations from containers, cargo, other things of that sort.  One of the problems we have is the rate of false positives: detecting what may be naturally occurring radiation or legitimate radiation, and having then to figure out whether this is something that we ought to be worried about or not.  

What this next generation of detection equipment is going to let us do is make those determinations much more precisely, much more easily, and much more quickly.  So we will have fewer false positives.  We’ll be able to screen even more of the container cargo and the other cargo through this system than we do now, and we’ll be able to do it with even less of an impact on the time it takes to move through the system.  

We’ve begun to order the first 80 of what will be 1,400 of these advanced detection equipment immediately.  And we look forward to starting to deploy the first sets of this second-generation, radiological detection equipment this autumn.  We’re going to begin the deployment in the New York-New Jersey seaport area.  And we’re then going to roll it out in a number of different seaports and land-ports across the country.

I want to put this in a little bit of perspective before Vayl speaks to you.  By the end of this year, we are going to have close to 90 percent of all containers that come into the United States, by sea or by land, screened through radiation portal-detection equipment.  By next year, it will be close to 100 percent.  That is a real, measurable, and powerful step forward in protecting this country against the very worst kind of threat that we all are concerned about.  

But I also want to say that we are now looking in our strategy to go beyond the question of securing our borders, to look at the issue of how do we secure the interior:  How do we protect cities, major urban areas in this country from a nuclear or a radiological bomb that was fabricated inside the country?  How do we prevent someone from getting a hold of radioactive material in the U.S., making a dirty bomb, and then trying to detonate it in New York, or Chicago, or Los Angeles?

And to address that next level of concern, we are unveiling our Securing the Cities Initiative, which is a program to see how we can deploy this kind of detection equipment, not only at seaports and ports of entry by land, but in cities and around cities, so we could detect a truck coming into a city with a dirty bomb, even if it didn’t cross an international border.

And we are currently working with the city of New York, with the police department and Vayl’s office, to begin the process of planning and deploying a pilot of this Securing the Cities system of internal radiation-detection equipment, so we can move to this comprehensive coverage of protection against nuclear threats.  That, I think, is one of the highest priorities for this Department and for this administration.

So, with that, I’m going to let Vayl give you a little bit more detail.  Then I’ll take a few questions.  Vayl.  

Mr. Oxford: Thank you, Mr. Secretary, and good afternoon, everyone.  I’m happy to announce today the contract awards for the Advanced Spectroscopic Portal Program, total contract value among the three vendors $1.15 billion.  The contract is designed to be a base year with research-and-development money, followed by four years for acquisition of the various systems.  

As the Secretary said, this gives us a significant improvement in capability by allowing us to distinguish between threat and non-threat materials, thereby also reducing the operational load with our operational partners, such as Customs and Border Protection, by reducing the false-positive rates that we currently have with some of our existing systems.  

I’d like to announce the winners of the three contracts for you today.  Again, these are the one-year base contract with four-year options.  They are the Raytheon Company, from Massachusetts; the Thermo Electron Company, from Santa Fe, New Mexico; and finally, Canberra Industries, in Connecticut.  Thermo and Raytheon Company will base their designs on what we call sodium-iodide technology, while Canberra Industries will focus on high-purity germanium technology.

The priority for the first year, as the Secretary says, is to get units out immediately.  We are ordering 80 units initially into New York container terminal.  We’re also taking some out to our permanent test bed in the Nevada test site for follow-on testing, as well as -- starting early in this calendar year, we’ll begin deploying these systems to Customs and Border Protection into the secondary screening locations.  

I would like to also point out that advanced software is part of the key aspects of this program.  Part of the selection process was to look at intellectual property rights associated with each of these systems.  The government will lead a team of these contractors as well as our national experts at the laboratories to constantly improve the software within these systems, giving us improved capabilities over time.  And we will then commission these for primary screening at Customs and Border locations, based on their priorities and high volume.  

One final note that I would like to add to this is, besides the deployment plans that we have with Customs and Border Protection, we’ll also be deploying these systems in conjunction with the DOE Mega-ports Program.  Through these contracts, DOE will be acquiring systems for their deployments overseas.  So, again, we think this is fulfilling a major capabilities gap that we have today, and reducing the risk of nuclear and radiological threats.  Thank you.  

Secretary Chertoff:  All right.  We’ll take some questions.  Yes.

Question:  Is it evenly divided between the three companies on the amount of money, the amount of contract they’re having?  And are they supplying a third each of the --

Mr. Oxford: The R&D program is split pretty close to one-third each, but as we get into the acquisition totals, it will be based on need and the deployment strategy we have in place, which is not necessarily one-third, one-third, one-third in that case.  

Question:  How much do these units cost per unit and how does that cost compare to the existing technology?

Mr. Oxford:  The sodium-iodide systems are roughly $350,000 compared to what we’re spending now at about $180,000 per unit.  The high-purity germanium systems will be a little bit more expensive, and we will have to go through some follow-on development with them to find out what their unit costs ultimately will be.  

Question:  What approximately do you think that they are right now?

Mr. Oxford: Probably in the $500,000 to $600,000 range.  

Question: Mr. Secretary, could you explain a little more about the Securing the Cities Initiative?  I mean, how would that work?  Would you have portals as vehicles are going through tunnels, or how would that work?

Secretary Chertoff: Well, I think that’s exactly what we were trying to determine, using this pilot program.  We’re going to look at what are the ways in which we could best capture a detection of radioactive material coming in, without impeding the flow of traffic or disrupting the way in which our commerce operates.  That means we want to see how we can integrate it with existing systems.  In fact, for example, the city uses to screen vehicles, commercial vehicles coming in.  We want to look at the range that one of these detection systems would have in terms of the broad reach.  

And of course it’s very important to make sure we don’t have false positives.  There’s a lot of naturally occurring radioactivity; we don’t want to set the red flag up every time someone moves a shipment of perfectly respectable granite into the city.  So these are all the questions we’re going to answer as we go through the process of working with New York to deploy this pilot program.  

Question: So what’s the time period for the pilot?

Secretary Chertoff: We’re actually working on the planning now.  Vayl, I don’t know if you want to amplify a little bit.  

Mr. Oxford:  We’ve actually been launching this over the course of the last few months.  I have a team in New York City today, working with the officials up there.  But this will become a regional issue.  It’ll be the city plus it’s regional partners, because we want to make sure we try to keep the material out of the high-risk regions.  So we’ll be working with the New York officials, along with the states of Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, et cetera, as part of this initiative.

Question:  You don’t know the time frame for that?

Mr. Oxford: We’re doing it now.  

Question: What would be the time frame for actual deployment on a more national basis of this kind of -- how far out is this with the move from a pilot to conceptually, what would be the range or periods, do you think?

Mr. Oxford: Well, clearly, that will be based on the successes we have in New York City, but part of the analytical work that is being done for New York City in terms of where would we like detectors, what kind would they be, how much would it cost; will it be able to immediately extrapolate that during the latter parts of ’06 and FY 07 to other cities of priority?  

Question:  You don’t have detectors up now in New York City, just to be clear, or do you?

Mr. Oxford: We’ve had some in pilot testing, but this will an exaggerated or an enlarged architecture.  

Question:  Given that there are so many ways in and out of most cities, wouldn’t this be more threat-based and you’d use mobile systems, in all likelihood, and bring them in, as opposed to permanent structures all over the place, all over the country?

Mr. Oxford: The analytical work that’s going on right now would model the various threat pathways into the high-risk areas to include rail, maritime, the roadway analysis.  We’ll then identify the kinds of detectors, and it will be a mix of fixed systems and mobile systems.  

Question:  Let’s first talk about how difficult it is to detect HEU that’s shielded.  Is this new system much more effective doing that?  What is the probability of detecting shielding HEU coming through?  

Mr. Oxford: We actually recommend a combination of these passive detection systems that enable you to detect unshielded and lightly shielded systems.  We also have a separate program that we’ll be making a major announcement in the next few weeks -- an advanced radiography program that gets us to the shielded problem.  But it takes a combination of technologies to do that.  

Question: So this can’t detect shielded --

Mr. Oxford:  This goes through lightly shielded material.

Question: Just lightly?

Mr. Oxford:  Yes.

Question:  Mr. Secretary, you said at the end of the year, 90 percent of containers will be screened, and the end of next year close to --

Secretary Chertoff: About 80, a little less than 90 percent by the end of this year, sea and land together, containers coming in will be going through radiation portal detection.  By the end of next year, it will be close to 100 percent.  

Question:  But will that be with this new technology that has the low --

Secretary Chertoff:  No, we’re going to roll this technology out.  We will in some cases retrofit existing monitors with this technology, or we may put this technology where we currently don’t have monitors, but we’re going to continue to use the old technology, and we will, over time, eventually move to the next level.  

Question: Any kind of estimation or estimate on when you might be able to totally phase out the old technology with the new technology?

Mr. Oxford:  Let me explain that a little bit.  The deployment strategy we have in place with CBP is based on the volumes at each of these locations.  In some cases, we will retain existing technology at low volume locations.  CBP and its operational workload can now sustain the secondary inspections that are necessary.  

This was done on a basis of capability and cost.  If we revert entirely to next generation’s systems, the total price tag would have been about $3.5 billion.  By working a capability and cost arrangement, it’s about a $1.4 billion overall deployment strategy.  We’re able to save the country money while retaining operational capability.  

Question: Is that out of the ’06 money, or is this part of the ’07 --

Mr. Oxford:  It’s a multi-year effort.  

Question:  You said the 80 was the first of, I think, 1400 units, so when will the 1400 units be in place, do you expect?

Mr. Oxford:  We would expect to be finishing most of this initial, what we call the Joint Deployment Plan, with CBP in the 2010, 2011 basis.  

Question:  When you say “unit”, can you describe the unit, the equipment, what it does?

Mr. Oxford:  Perfect timing.  Shown here on the left is a typical arrangement at Otay Mesa in California.  This is a typical, fixed-portal arrangement.  

If we could go to the next chart, what we’ll also be acquiring through this system, this is what a POE construct looks like.  This looks like San Ysidro, if I recall.  Again, I think we have 24 lanes there.  In the case of POEs, we’ll probably retain the current generation versus next generation.  

If we could, go to the next one.  But this program will also start looking at a variety of variants, separate from just the fixed portal.  As shown here, in the lower left, there is a straddle (phonetic) carrier there that will be exploring with CBP for operations around seaports.  

Next.  And there’s another example of how that could be done with multiple containers as we move in and around seaports.  And on the next chart -- that’s it?  

We’ll also be looking at rail configurations because right now, because of the false-alarm rates, we’re not screening along railways.  

Question:  Conceptually, how many units would you need in order to do this urban program nationally?  I mean what is the universe of possible units that you would need?

Mr. Oxford:  I couldn’t give you that number right now.  I know that the current roadway analysis in and around New York City suggests, if you go out 50 to 70 miles, to keep the weapon from getting close it takes something like 150 different checkpoints.  So we’d have to be looking at how far out do the New York officials and the state officials want to start employing this technology.  

Question:  Any idea of the ratio now between false alarms and actual concerns with the current technology?  How many times is kitty litter setting this off compared to something that we really should be concerned about?

Mr. Oxford:  I may want to yield, after the Secretary, to Commissioner Ahern who can give you operational realities from the borders.  

Question:  Congress -- they’re not sure that these systems are going to be better than the current generation of systems.  What measures are you employing to make sure that these are better than the current generation’s?

Mr. Oxford:  I think Congress wanted to make sure that they worked better.  They asked us to do a cost-benefit assessment of the new generation versus the current technology.  We’ve done that; we’ve delivered that report to Congress.  It’s a very clean story that these systems offer us the most cost-effective operational capability that we could deploy.

Question: Mr. Secretary, in the Middle East, it seems that Hezbollah’s  firepower may have been somewhat underestimated.  Are you in any way reassessing the terrorist threat of Hezballah to U.S. interests?

Secretary Chertoff: Every time we see a spike in violence committed by terrorist groups, we obviously, from the standpoint of the homeland, immediately assess whether there is any impact in terms of our posture.  We don’t have any reason at this point to say there’s any specific or credible information that what you’re seeing in the Middle East, as bad as it is, poses any kind of threat to the Homeland.  But we’re in a constant process, obviously, of evaluating capabilities of people who might potentially turn against American interests to see that we’re adequately addressing what their capabilities are.  

I will say one thing, before we close, on a somewhat different subject.  During the course of the past week, there was an effort by Senator Cornyn on the floor of the Senate, as part of the appropriations process, to get legislation enacted by the Senate that would relieve us from the burden of what we call the Orantes Injunction.  And for those who need reminding about what this is, we have committed ourselves to move from this system of catching and releasing people at the border, apprehended coming in illegally, to one of catching, detaining, and removing them.  

We have gotten to 100 percent catch and remove for every population crossing the southern border, the Southwest border, with the exception of one population, and that is Salvadorians.  The reason we have not gotten to a hundred percent in Salvadorians, as I have said repeatedly, is because there’s a 20-year-old court order that limits our ability to remove the people from El Salvador.  That court order was based upon a civil war that existed in El Salvador that has long been over.  And there is now peace and democracy in El Salvador, but the dead hand of this court order is still upon us.  

We were hopeful that Senator Cornyn’s effort to get this Orantes correction into the Senate legislation would work.  We’re obviously disappointed that the Senate didn’t include it in the measure that came out this week, but we’re going to continue to work with members of the Senate and the House to get this very important piece of legislation done.  

It’s really simple.  If we want to control the border and if we want to complete the task of ending catch-and-release, and going to catch-and-remove, we have to untie the hands of the Border Patrol.  And right now, the Border Patrol has its hands tied by rope that was tied 20 years ago, for a reason that no longer exists.  So as a matter of common sense, we ought to be able to cut the cord here and let the Border Patrol do the job that we want them to do.  So we’re going to continue to work with Congress to get this thing done.  

Question:  One question about that.  Can you remind us how significant this is in terms of the percentage of illegals coming across?  I mean, what does this represent?

Secretary Chertoff:  Well, it represents -- probably seven or eight percent of the total illegals are non-Mexicans.  And the only segment of non-Mexicans that are increasing in numbers coming across the border are El Salvadorians.  Every other segment, Hondurans, Guatemalans, we have seen for the first time a seasonal decline in the number of non-Mexicans coming across the border, proving that there is deterrence, proving that as we have moved to catch-and-remove, these groups now are, frankly, giving up coming across the border.  We’ve seen a fairly significant drop.  There’s one area where we’ve seen a rise, and that’s Salvadorians.  In fact, we sometimes see -- and I think, Jay, you can talk about this -- non-Salvadorians pretending to be from El Salvador because they know that this court order exists, and they know that that’s their way to try to cheat the system.  

So I appeal to Congress, help us end this.  Cut the cords.  Free the Border Patrol to do what it has to do efficiently.  

Thanks very much.  

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