What Americans need, though, is not rhetorical "concessions" to their real concern about security but concrete proposals and money to implement them. There are labor and green angles from which left-wingers can make such proposals:
***** Possibility of Using Trucks for Terror Remains Concern
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
After the terrorist attacks last year, intelligence agencies and experts warned that America's vast fleet of trucks, particularly rigs hauling loads of explosive fuel or toxic chemicals, would be ideal terrorist weapons.
Fresh threats against economic targets and three attacks overseas this year using fuel trucks have convinced security officials that America's trucks pose a greater risk than ever, particularly with aviation security tightened. But little has been done to make trucks safer.
Truck security systems already widely used elsewhere in the world remain novelties here. Truck inspections, although there are more of them, remain rare. Industry groups have started training drivers how to spot possible terrorists but have reached only a few thousand of the country's three million licensed drivers. At many truck stops, idling rigs still sit unattended in unguarded lots.
"We have to consider the trucking industry as a potential target to be misused in a terrorist attack," said George A. Rodriguez, director of cargo security for the Transportation Security Administration.
Congress set tough deadlines and provided billions of dollars to enhance airline security, but except for $500,000 a year for the industry's driver-training course, little money has flowed so far to secure the most dangerous trucks, even though nearly 800,000 loads of hazardous cargo move on American highways each day.
Some trucking companies, operating on tightening margins, say they have held off investing in new security technologies, like tracking devices in use in South America, while they wait for federal rules or money.
Federal action has also been delayed by bureaucratic tangles at the Transportation Department, which has been trying to impose domestic-security duties on divisions dealing with truck safety and hazardous materials management, department officials say. Regulations on truck safety and security equipment are many months away, they say.
Mr. Rodriguez said the size and diversity of the trucking business hampered the effort. "You've got a half-million trucking operations out there," he said. "To come up with some systems that cover all the bases is difficult."
As a result, an array of experts and industry people, including some truckers who haul the hazardous loads, say it is just a matter of time before a deadly load is snatched and put to devastating use.
"A tractor-trailer with the right cargo offers a horrendous weapon," said Richard W. Carr, the vice president for safety and risk management at Quality Distribution Inc., a Tampa, Fla., company.
The company has the country's largest tank-truck fleet, more than 3,200 vehicles in all.
Recent events overseas have raised fresh concerns.
Two taped warnings attributed to Al Qaeda both specified that attacks would target America's economic lifeline. Intelligence officials say this most likely means transportation or finance.
A more ominous sign, experts say, is that fuel-laden trucks have been used three times this year in terrorist attacks. On April 11, a terrorist driving a truck carrying liquefied natural gas ignited his cargo in front of a synagogue on the Tunisian island of Djerba, killing 21 people, mainly German and French tourists. Germany blames Al Qaeda.
In May and August, terrorists remotely triggered bombs attached to Israeli fuel tankers. Neither bomb caused substantial damage, but the incidents signaled a new tactic....
...The vulnerability is illustrated by a continuing crime wave. Truck and cargo theft results in more than $10 billion in annual losses, according to industry officials, and some 1,800 large trucks are stolen each year just in New Jersey....
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/national/20TRUC.html> *****
***** Guards at Nuclear Plants Say They Feel Swamped by a Deluge of Overtime
By MATTHEW L. WALD
COVERT, Mich., Oct. 16 - To increase security after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Palisades nuclear plant here, like plants around the country, sharply increased the number of guards on duty. To do so, it put the guards on 12-hour shifts instead of 8, often six days a week instead of five.
The guards are still on that schedule, and they say it has made them tired, error-prone and cranky. But if they complain, they say, they are threatened with the loss of their jobs or sent for psychiatric evaluation.
Industry regulators and observers say increasing security may have put more guards on duty, but they are less effective.
"If something happened, these would be basket cases," said Peter Stockton, a security expert who was a special assistant to the secretary of energy in the Clinton administration and now works with the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit group in Washington that recently wrote a report on problems in power plant security. Top officials at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have voiced similar concerns and credit the group for bringing the problem to their attention. Some in the industry, though, blame the commission for not issuing a final rule on higher security standards.
In an interview, one guard at the plant here acknowledged that she "just lost it" at work one day this summer, when confronted near the end of a long shift with ringing telephones, workers knocking on the glass of her booth because their ID cards would not function in the reader and various warning lights flashing. When another guard approached her with a low-priority problem, she cursed at him, shouted and burst into tears, she said.
The guard, who said she feared for her job and did not want her name used, was sent to a local psychologist who reported that "she is stressed by working too much."
The guard complained to the resident inspectors of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the plant here, on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Two days later, a psychologist who had not examined her sent a report to the Wackenhut Corporation, which employs the guards here, that said in addition to "routine work stress," her personal life "may have contributed to this employee having experienced loss of emotional control" and said that unless she improved, "the employee's access should be immediately withdrawn." The guard is armed, and has a pass that allows "unescorted access" to vital areas.
An executive at Wackenhut said the company had never taken retaliatory action but said he could not comment on personnel matters.
Guards here and elsewhere say the stress of long hours has made them more prone to errors like forgetting to lock a door, or leaving keys or weapons unsecured.
At another reactor a few hundred miles away, a guard who asked that he and his plant not be identified said that a few weeks ago, he left out a step in inspecting some material.
The guard, who has been working more than 72 hours a week, said he completed the inspection successfully but forgot to notify the central command post when he finished. Ordered to write a statement explaining his error, he cited "fatigue." The next day, he said, he was sent to a psychologist.
Richard A. Michau, president of the nuclear services division of Wackenhut, the largest security contractor at nuclear plants, said the company had had an increase in errors only because so many guards were new. If a worker declared himself unfit for duty, the company would not make him work, he said.
At Indian Point 2, in Buchanan, N.Y., Bart Wallace, a guard for the last eight years, said: "I work from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. I'm in bed by 7, I'm up at 1 and three hours later I'm walking out the door to go back to work."
"I'm going to work tired, I'm coming home tired, I'm never fully rested and they don't care," said Mr. Wallace, a retired New York City police officer. Overtime was common on the police force, he said, but never for months at a time.
Edward McGaffigan Jr., one of the five members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said overtime was an issue in places that had to make changes to meet rules imposed by the commission after Sept. 11.
"They weren't necessarily staffed to do it," he said. Now, 13 months later, they are still not staffed, he said.
Overtime has always been common at nuclear plants during refueling shut-downs, but those typically last weeks, not months. Mr. McGaffigan said some companies might have deferred hiring because they thought the new security rules would be temporary, but this summer, he said, "we basically told them the levels we are required to staff to isn't going to go down, even if the crisis goes away. They should be hiring in order to meet that new baseline."
Roy P. Zimmerman, the director of the commission's Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response, said that his agency expected more overtime immediately after Sept. 11 but that he was concerned about "excessive" overtime over a long period. Normally, guards should be working 40-hour weeks, he said. His staff is drafting a new rule, to submit to the commissioners, to make that expectation clearer and give guards the stronger protection that plant operators already have, he said.
But Mr. Michau of Wackenhut said the problem was that the commission has not finalized its requirements. "I wish the N.R.C. comes out with a final order, so we can hire the right amount of people," he said. "Is this temporary, or is this going to be permanent?"
Mark P. Findlay, the director of security at the Nuclear Management Company, which operates Palisades and five other reactors, said: "The N.R.C. really hasn't done their job and given us any permanency. We're not getting an awful lot of guidance."
The guard companies have had trouble hiring. At some plants, guards have quit to work at airports, for the new Transportation Security Administration. Many new hires have been rejected after failing drug or alcohol tests, or because of felony convictions. Some, guards say, quit when they realized how much overtime they were facing.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/national/20SAFE.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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