With All Eyes on Obama, Port of Los Angeles Security Under Control of Chinese President’s Son

(Compiler's note: Must read)

by Judi McLeod

With all eyes on the Big O’s Office of the President-elect, very few know that the Port of Los Angeles – the nation’s largest – is now effectively under the control of the Peoples Republic of China.

The Port has purchased with $1.7 million American tax dollars via a “port security grant” awarded by the U.S. Department of Homeland security, a mobile X-ray scanning system, mounted on a Mack Truck chassis. The scanning system is owned by Nuctech Company Limited, owned outright by Hu Haifeng, the son of Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Sated with their Obama victory, the mainstream media is asleep at the switch, but eagle eye Lou Dobbs is flagging the America public’s attention. See Dobbs on YouTube.

Communist China couldn’t be any closer to America aside from moving its Army right in. Touted as “sophisticated” and “high-energy”, the X-ray scanning machine was manufactured by Nuctech, headquartered in Beijing.

“The bid that included the Nuctech scanner, which was cheaper than rival bids submitted by Smiths Detection, a British company with offices in New Jersey, and Rapiscan Systems, of Torrance, CA, was formally submitted to the port by a small U.S.-based business headquartered in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, known as DULY Research Inc.” (gsnmagazine.com, Oct. 16, 2008).

“We were cognizant of the fact that we were the first port to acquire this Chinese system,” said George Cummings, the port’s director of homeland security. “They were the low bidder and they complied with all the technical requirements.”

If Dobbs is worried, this latest potential breach in security doesn’t bother Cummings: “We don’t have any heartburn about this. We did all the due diligence we had to do. We took it to our board. We’re comfortable with this decision.”

Critics of the transaction, swallowed up by mainstream media focus on the recent presidential election, raise the specter of sensitive X-ray images and cargo manifests being archived on the X-ray scanning system and, perhaps, transmitted via the Internet back to Nuctech in China, or to the Chinese government. Indeed, the mobile system was required to offer that technical capability from the get-go.

The Nuctech set up makes for a more comfortable environment than the ongoing transfer of information passed on to China by industrial spies active in other areas on U.S. and Canadian soil.

Nuctech also conducts business in Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

Setting itself apart from the mainstream media, HDMK, Strategy Communications, Media Public Affairs, an organization that has been engaged in hundreds of high profile public policy battles, is posing some hard-line questions:

Will Nuctech X-ray machines have any direct connection to the U.S. Department of Homeland security computer systems and are there any firewalls in place?

Has Nuctech retained Washington lobbyists to help ease the approval for this unprecedented expenditure of U.S. security funds, and if so, who are they?

Have United States Customs and Border Patrol officials visited Nutech in China to approve or to explore the prospect of purchasing equipment for other port security operations?

If so, who went to China, when?

“If there’s nothing to hide, why won’t Nuctech or DULY Research in Los Angeles (the winner of the contact for the Port of Los Angeles) talk to the media,” asks HDMK’s Trent D. Duffy.

Most significantly, will images taken by Nuctech X-ray machines be portable?

What are the personnel requirements needed to support the Nuctech X-ray machines in terms of operations, maintenance, performance checks, etc., in the Port of Los Angeles?

Have any of these individuals even undergone routine security screening?

Who paid for Port of Los Angeles officials to travel to China to visit Nuctech facilities?

It’s been two years since the Dubai Ports fiasco was last on the public radar screen. During the high profile Dubai Ports debacle, those who opposed the sale of American ports to Dubai, vowed that no foreign government would be permitted to acquire such strategic targets in future.

The Port of Los Angeles is not only one of them, it’s the biggest of the lot.

Got your earplugs turned on, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff?