Opinion: Trucking Fights Terrorism

By Martin Rojas

Vice President of Security and Operations

American Trucking Associations

This Opinion piece appears in the April 4 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

Earlier this year, we were once again reminded that the United States continues to face the possibility of a terrorist attack on our soil, a threat that hasn’t abated in the decade since 9/11.

In February, a visiting Saudi Arabian student, Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, was arrested in Lubbock, Texas, and accused of plotting to bomb several locations throughout the state — including the home of former President George W. Bush.

Aldawsari’s arrest and indictment not only may have put an end to these plans but also received extensive media coverage that highlighted the role one trucking company’s vigilance played in foiling an alleged terrorist plot.

The trucking company, Con-way Freight, credited the alertness and security training of its employees in informing law-enforcement organizations about the bomb-making material shipment being held at their location for pickup by the terrorist suspect.

In the barrage of media coverage that followed this incident, a CNBC article caught my attention the day after the arrest. The article began: “In the end, it wasn’t a TSA agent, a Homeland Security operative or an FBI agent who first spotted alleged terror plotter Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari. It was the employees of a private shipping company.”

This story brings home a key principle in our fight against terrorism: We are all in this together.

It’s not solely the responsibility of our security and law-enforcement agencies to prevent these attacks and stop the bad guys. Every individual and company must stay alert and, if something seems suspicious or out of the ordinary, we must trust our instincts and share such information with law enforcement.

Knowledge is power, and there is little doubt that sharing information is perhaps the best and strongest tool we have to prevent future tragedies.

ATA and several of its members have been very active in working with our government counterparts to increase information-sharing efforts and improve them so that the information flows both ways: industry to government and government to industry.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Highway and Motor Carrier Sector Coordinating Council has provided a vehicle to reach out to many government agencies. For example, an employee of ATA member Pitt-Ohio is chairman of an information-sharing effort with the DHS Infrastructure Protection Office.

Other trucking industry representatives are working with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to develop a better understanding of our mutual needs and operating environments. Others participate in national and local initiatives such as the FBI’s InfraGard program.

These growing information-sharing efforts, we hope, are a turning point in how government and industry interact while fighting the threat of terrorism, working as true partners instead of the government’s dictating industry to follow stringent security regulations with the goal of hardening our operations.

This latter approach has resulted in myriad security plans, numerous security training programs and, most burdensome, multiple credentials and background checks, resulting in exceedingly high compliance costs with few, if any, additional security benefits.

Consider, for example, that today 1.8 million Transportation Worker Identification Credentials, better known as TWICs, have been produced at a cost of $132.50 each, while at the same time performing 1.5 million more checks on hazardous-materials drivers at $89 each.

The trucking industry supports strong security initiatives, including background checks, to secure our nation, our assets and our employees. At the same time, we strongly oppose burdensome government regulations that require numerous uncoordinated security plans, training and background checks. DHS was established to improve the coordination of security programs housed in various federal government departments, but this goal has not been achieved if you consider the number of redundant security programs established by the many agencies within DHS.

These redundant programs seem to focus on output rather than outcomes — placing a premium on issuing a large number of credentials but not on whether these multiple credentials will be effective in preventing an attack.

Now that President Obama has ordered federal agencies to review and reduce overlapping and burdensome regulations throughout the federal government, DHS should focus on streamlining its various security programs while focusing more resources on improving information-sharing initiatives.

Which brings me back to my original proposition: To fight terrorism, we all must work together — citizens, industry and government — to defeat the enemy and stop any potential attacks. As was demonstrated in the events in Lubbock, information sharing is a critical component for securing the homeland. In this case, the security training provided by Con-way Freight to its employees paid off handsomely.

This case, together with other examples such as the actions taken by the hot-dog vendor in Times Square who alerted authorities to the smoking SUV and the truck driver who helped to block the escape route of the snipers who terrorized the Washington, D.C., region in 2002, demonstrate that information sharing can be the best tool we have at our disposal to stop terrorists from successfully targeting and attacking us.

American Trucking Associations is a national trade federation for the trucking industry with headquarters in Arlington, Va., and affiliated associations in every state. ATA owns Transport Topics Publishing Group.