Border guards trained to halt deadly shipments: both high-tech devices and sharp instincts are needed to combat smugglers.

• Author: Fein, Geoff S.

At a facility near the remote Hanford nuclear waste site in eastern Washington, U.S. border guards are acquiring the skills to thwart smugglers.

Armed with a wealth of information, the latest technologies, and their own intuition, agents are learning how to uncover illegal shipments of hazardous materials.

The International Border Security Training program, held at the Hazardous Materials Management and Emergency Response (HAMMER) facility in Richland, Wash., is designed to familiarize border guards with the parts used to manufacture and smuggle nuclear, biological and chemical materials and to stop the illegal export of similar technology.

The course grew out of Congress' concern over Russia's ability to keep track of its supply of radioactive material. Legislators came up with funding to train international border guards for that purpose.

The first class of students, from Hungary and Slovakia, began the program shortly after the HAMMER facility opened in 1997. Since then, 15 countries, including Russia, Estonia, Georgia, Armenia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Ukraine and Bulgaria, have sent officials for training.

About 400 foreign guards have graduated from the program.

Instructors say the training pays off. Although they would not discuss the specifics of any confiscation of radioactive material, they said there have been numerous seizures. Bulgarians, said one instructor, have been the most active in stopping the export of smuggled goods.

In May 2002, at the urging of the National Nuclear Security Administration's Second Line of Defense program, training at HAMMER was expanded to include U.S. border personnel. Since then, about 425 U.S. border guards have gone through the course.

As of October, the program will run twice a month, offering training to twice as many border guards as before.

Anything that can be done to make it easier for border guards to find smuggled goods helps, said William Cliff, program manager of the International Border Security National Security Directorate.

Cliff is the lead instructor for the three-day program.

Border guards have a difficult task, he said. "You have to believe that smugglers are very smart too. They have a lot of money and they can do a lot of things."

Some of the things smugglers have done to hide illicit cargo include building fake walls and floors inside semi-trucks. Other methods are much simpler.

For example, placing paraffin wax around plutonium prevents the detection of gamma rays and neutrons, making it difficult for border guards to find. Even small components used in the manufacturing of nuclear reactors can be shipped alongside scrap metal.

Cmdr. Tommey Meyers was the first U.S. Coast Guardsman to go through the three-day training. He said the quality of information, especially having to do with radiation detection, was "second to none."

"It's very comprehensive," he said.

Meyers will report back to Coast Guard officials about the program. Eventually, a Coast Guard training analysis group will attend the course to see if it meets the service's training objectives, Meyers said.

"We have a working group looking at how we can help inspectors who might encounter radiation out there," he said. "We'll evaluate future attendance by the Coast Guard."

The Coast Guard has been inspecting ships as part of its regular duties, Meyers said. "We've done container inspections and port security for years."

The training did give Meyers an opportunity to see first hand the variety of detectors currently available. The Coast Guard's equipment is old, he said.

"We just awarded a contract for detectors," Meyers said. "It's different equipment than what U.S. Customs has. They [are] way ahead of the game."

Sometimes, however, technology can't always spot questionable shipments. Oftentimes, it's a keen eye and an inquisitive mind that...