Byron Dorgan: “I will be very brief. I come from a landlocked State. We don't have a seaport in North Dakota. But I have taken the time…”

“I will be very brief. I come from a landlocked State. We don't have a seaport in North Dakota. But I have taken the time to review some of the activities of seaports and learned a bit about seaports and related that to the issue of security in this new age of terrorism. I come today to support the amendment offered by my colleague from West Virginia. He has been relentless over some long period of time, being very concerned about seaport security. Let me also commend Senator Gregg as well for his work on the underlying legislation and also for his support of the amendment of Senator Byrd. I recall going to a seaport and being shown containers that come in, I believe between 5.5 and 6 million containers, stacked on ships that arrive at the shores of the United States. Then they are put on wheels and they are trucked around the country. I asked the question, How many of these containers are inspected? The answer at that point was around 3 percent. I believe now it is something just over 5 percent. They were showing me, at this particular seaport, a container they had opened. It turned out to be a refrigerated container with frozen broccoli from Poland, and it had in it giant bags of frozen broccoli from Poland. I said, ``What is in the middle of the container? I see you opened the back end and ripped open some bags, and there is frozen broccoli in this container. Is there anything in the middle of these bags?'' ``That we don't know. We haven't unloaded it.…”