Monday, March 13, 2006
Perhaps the deal to transfer control of operations at six U.S. ports from a British company to one owned by the United Arab Emirates would have been accepted by the American people and Congress if the administration had handled it differently.
We'll never know.
That's because the administration approved the deal after secret deliberations, and, it turned out, President Bush wasn't even aware the decision had been made until after it became public. Yet, as soon as the deal became known, President Bush announced that he stood behind it 100 percent and, indeed, that he was prepared to use the first veto of his administration to preserve it.
It's not surprising that the deal then came under heavy scrutiny and faced fierce opposition. In the end, Congress didn't back down and neither did President Bush. The UAE did. DP World said it would transfer the U.S. port operations that were part of a $6.8 billion purchase of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. to a U.S. buyer. Asking price for the U.S. operations is about $700 million.
The job now is to find a buyer for the operations at ports in New Jersey, New York, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia -- plus lesser dockside activities at 16 other ports in this country.
The job, then, is to rehabilitate strained relations with the UAE.
Mixed messages
The administration maintains that the UAE is an important ally in the global fight against terror. But the UAE also served as an operational and financial base for hijackers in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And it was one of the few countries that gave diplomatic recognition to the Taliban when it took over Afghanistan.
The UAE's past was enough to make Congress wary of the ports deal. Certainly the administration, which has tended to define international relations in us-against-them terms, shouldn't have been surprised.
Regardless of how difficult it might be to rehabilitate the reputation of the United States in Dubai and the reputation of Dubai in the United States, the ports deal has raised a more important question. That is the question of port security in general.
Conversation about whether Dubai could be trusted to provide security on the docks of the ports it operated evolved into discussions about whether anyone is providing the necessary level of security in this post-9/11 world.
The answer appears to be no.
For every dollar spent on airport and airline security, perhaps a dime is spent on port security.
In the early days of the port debate, the administration claimed that DP World would have no security responsibilities in the United States regardless of its ownership. That turned out not to be true, because the terminal operator is responsible for security at its own terminal and the area within the port where cargo is loaded, unloaded or transferred. If the Commerce Secretary didn't know that, and the Commerce Department oversaw the vetting process for the DP World purchase, what does that say about who's minding the store?
Two weeks ago, we wrote that a much closer review of the Dubai Ports World takeover was warranted and that President Bush should be actively engaged. The same could be said now of the need to take a closer look at what is being done -- or not being done -- to keep America safe from terrorists who would use our ports against us.