Port Security Story Has Lasted Longer Than Most

Feb. 28, 2006 — -- Administration officials are quick to point out as they get grilled by lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the financial pages and newspapers like The Wall Street Journal were reporting on the proposed takeover of operations at U.S. ports by an Arab company back in October.

But that's when it was a financial story. Between October and now the ports deal has morphed into front-page security news and become an allegory for America's preparedness for terrorist nuclear attacks and bigotry against Arabs and Arab countries.

The administration has been on the defense on the port story since last week, and with three congressional hearings today in which the issue will play large and more to come later in the week, the White House is unlikely to take the upper hand anytime soon.

It's hard to come up with anything in the past several years that has united Republicans and Democrats; and this unity against the White House and its decision-making, as much as the actual security concerns, has played a big role in making the port story news.

By any account, the story has built slower than most stories of the moment, and its 15 minutes has lasted longer than most. But in that trite journalistic saying -- it's got legs.

President Bush has maintained that the deal should go through because the United States has to be fair to Arab companies.

"What kind of signal does it send throughout the world if it's OK for a British company to manage the ports but not a company that has been secured, that has been cleared for security purposes, from the Arab world?"

Terrorism experts and the professional employees of security agencies seem to agree in near unanimity that the deal poses no real security threat to the United States beyond the current sorry state of port security.

But the story led evening newscasts all last week and into this week.

Just two weeks ago, several Democratic senators and Republican congressmen from New York talked about the proposed merger between the British public company P&O Ports and DP World, which is owned by the royal family of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Ted Bilkie, the chief operating officer for the company, will answer questions before the Senate Commerce Committee this afternoon.