Countering Terrorism
On September 11, 2001, terrorist agents commandeered four separate commercial U.S.
jetliners, crashing two of them into the twin towers of the Word Trade Center in New York
City and a third into a side of the Pentagon building in Washington, DC. Over 3,000 lives
were lost in this one event, and the economic, social, and political impacts of these events
are still being felt today. You have probably seen many of their effects first hand, including
the creation of a new Presidential cabinet position entitled ‘‘Homeland Security,’’ increased
security at major airports, and stricter controls over immigration and visitor passages into
the United States (and many other countries as well).
Case-in-Point 1.5 Operation Safe Commerce (OSC) is an initiative by the federal government
to thwart terrorists wishing to use innocent commercial cargo to transport weapons
or dangerous chemicals through West Coast ports. The major thrust of OSC is to enhance
security along the entire supply chain of a ship’s cargo. Besides using ‘‘smart seals’’ to guard
against tampering with shipping containers while in transit, OSC also focuses on standardizing
computerized documentation such as bills of lading that will help government officials identify
pallets from ‘‘countries of interest.’’5