Yemen Packages, Stolen Identity Show `Wild West' of Air Cargo
Yemen Packages, Stolen Identity Show ‘Wild West’ of Cargo
Mohammad Huwais/AFP/Getty Images
Yemeni security are seen outside a branch of the US package delivery firm UPS in Sanaa in Yemen.
Yemeni security are seen outside a branch of the US package delivery firm UPS in Sanaa in Yemen. Photographer: Mohammad Huwais/AFP/Getty Images
Bombs sent from Yemen with the use of a stolen identity show how United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp. face a patchwork of cargo screening in developing countries, security specialists said.
UPS and FedEx often use local partners and passenger airlines to ferry packages from nations such as Yemen to sorting centers where the companies’ stricter practices are used, said Walter Beadling, managing partner of Union, New Jersey-based Cargo Security Alliance Inc., which advises shippers.
“The risk is what happens before that package gets into the hands of UPS or FedEx,” Beadling said in an interview. “It’s still the Wild West in some of these places.”
That ratchets up the burden on cargo carriers to verify who shippers are and what their packages contain, especially for items handled by an outside partner and originating in regions with a history of violence, Beadling said. A 22-year-old Yemeni student whose name was used to send the U.S.-bound explosives was a victim of identity theft, officials in that country said.
The chairman of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee asked the Government Accountability Office today to investigate the screening of U.S.-bound cargo. Representative Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said the Yemen shipments were a “grave reminder” of the threats to U.S. transportation.
Working With Investigators
UPS, the world’s biggest package-delivery company, and FedEx, operator of the world’s largest cargo airline, declined to comment on security systems and procedures, and said they are cooperating with investigators.
“Ultimately, FedEx and UPS are responsible for what happens on their own planes and in their own systems, and they’re pretty good at that,” Beadling said. “Nobody will talk about it because they don’t want the public to know, but maybe FedEx or UPS’s own systems caught these packages.”
The explosives found last week were modified printer cartridges placed inside computer printers, which were sent from Yemen’s capital of Sana‘a and addressed to a Chicago synagogue, according to U.S. officials. An airline may have taken one device to a Dubai facility for Memphis, Tennessee-based FedEx.
Qatar Airways Ltd. said Oct. 31 it flew an “explosives” shipment that couldn’t be detected by X-rays or dogs, then said today another carrier may have been involved. An “intelligence tipoff” led to the discovery, Qatar Airways said. The bomb found at a U.K. center for Atlanta-based UPS moved via Cologne, Germany.
High-Risk Shipments
While the Yemen packages may have slipped past some commonly used scanners, carriers can close that gap by targeting high-risk shipments for extra scrutiny, said Brandon Fried, executive director of the Washington-based Airforwarders Association. Yemen is the home of the terrorist group al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
“It’s coming out of Yemen, unknown shippers, going to synagogues in Chicago,” Fried said. “This probably would have been one of the telltale signs.”
While U.S. law requires screening of all cargo carried in bellies of passenger planes, there is no such requirement for air freighters.
Security specialists and industry groups have said such blanket checks would be impossible because of the volume of air shipments. Satish Jindel, president of SJ Consulting Group in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, has estimated that UPS and FedEx move about 20 million pieces a day.
“Cargo originating from countries of interest” should be subjected to immediate screening, U.S. Representatives Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Nita Lowey of New York, both Democrats, said today in a statement urging President Barack Obama to take that step.
Markey said this week he plans to introduce legislation requiring inspections of freight on cargo planes as well as of shipments carried by passenger aircraft.
UPS and FedEx both halted service from Yemen last week, and Germany barred passenger flights and the U.K. restricted package shipments.
To contact the reporters on this story: Mary Jane Credeur in Atlanta at mcredeur@bloomberg.net; Angela Greiling Keane in Washington at agreilingkea@Bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ed Dufner at edufner@bloomberg.net; Larry Liebert at lliebert@bloomberg.net
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