On April 29th, WorldNetDaily.com published a column dealing with excerpts from Robert Pfriender’s upcoming book, “No Place to Run”. Mr. Pfriender casts a very bright spotlight on much of what our elected officials, and their controlled media, are hiding from us. We’ll just touch upon the remarks he directs at personalities because he doesn’t absolve anyone. Here’s a sampling:

“An awful lot can be said for adequate prevention and professional planning for a disaster. We as a great country rely upon our government and its vast agencies such as FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security to institute programs and procedures to protect us. But it seems these agencies and our elected officials have no clue, or perhaps they just really don’t care about the public or our country’s very survival …

“Time is running very short …

“Today, unfortunately, very few can begin to comprehend what may be about to threaten the very existence of our country. The potential is on a scale so deviant from decent human behavior and so potentially devastating that most people could not visualize this incredible threat …

“This looming national disaster is completely preventable, but our country must act decisively, firmly with resolve and immediately. We must insist that our elected officials and the agencies responsible for our protection and national survival work in the best interest of our country and put in place credible programs, effective and practical procedures, and strong security protocols that will provide ironclad protection from attack and allow for inherent mitigation of the effects of a national disaster, along with rapid recovery in the aftermath …

“I kept reflecting back to … when I had met with a prominent New York congressman urging him once again to take some concrete actions to avert what I and many others had seen as a huge threat to our national survival.

“He had politely listened as his chief of staff jotted down notes detailing what he had remarked as being ‘interesting ideas’ … The meeting lasted all of five minutes and he was off to a photo opportunity for a birthday party at a senior center, oblivious to the danger looming.

“This was not our first meeting. I had been trying to convince many officials to see the enormous and very real danger we were facing for several years already since 9-11. Some listened; none had acted. No one in government could grasp the simple concept that no matter how much money was spent on securing mainland ports, it was wasted. The reason is really rather simple: If a nuke arrives in one of our vulnerable mainland ports, it’s already much too late to do anything about it. It’s like an ICBM that has arrived on its target – next it explodes. It would be impossible to stop it, and you can’t just turn it around and send it away. All the so-called ‘port security’ in the world could not prevent it …

“Five long years after 9-11, our borders are wide open, checked baggage and commercial airline cargo goes completely uninspected aboard passenger flights, thousands of trailer homes desperately needed by victims of Katrina still lie wasted and unused in the mud, first responders lack equipment, and the ludicrous ‘Container Security Initiative’, or CSI, that Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, relies on at foreign ports for ‘container security’ has failed by every measure to provide any protection at all from a nuke arriving and being detonated in one of our mainland ports. This massive blunder and boondoggle should be quickly trashed, yet CBP continues to embrace it, wastes many tens of millions of dollars trying to expand it and refuses to even look at other more credible programs. They choose to leave us defenseless and vulnerable in the name of open, unrestrained trade.

“None of the foreign ports enrolled as part of CSI are in countries that threaten our security, and we cannot and absolutely should not give control to and rely on foreigners to inspect cargo destined for our shores as is now the standard practice. Where is the logic and common sense?

“A ‘virtual screening’ protocol that relies on risk management and not physical inspection of all containers cannot assure that we will find 100 percent of the possible nuclear weapons that may be in one of the 8 or 9 million containers that arrive in our country each year. Without absolute certainty CSI is simply worthless …

“The cavalier civilians at CBP do not understand that we are at war. They have clearly failed to grasp the serious magnitude of the faulty decisions they have made. Their fatally flawed programs, including CSI, threaten the continued existence of our country … It’s clearly a time for change of management at CBP …

“Even the non-partisan investigative and oversight arm of Congress, the General Accountability Office, has nothing but severe criticism of CSI. This is a worthless program that is wasting huge amounts of taxpayer money. It has no redeeming features at all, and relying on it actually makes us more vulnerable.

“No one at the Homeland Security Department has ever been willing to address how a nuclear weapon that has arrived in our port would be neutralized. That’s because it is impossible. So why waste money trying to find such a weapon in the first place after it has arrived at its target destination, ready to detonate? We already know that CSI can’t credibly find a weapon with its extremely poor ‘virtual detection’ scheme …

“But the reality is that they {the elected officials) are just very far removed from understanding these threats to our country. They are politicians, and their only true concern is getting elected every few years. They don’t have the training or expertise to be able to solve these issues, even if they were truly motivated and sincere about wanting to.

“Most officials, including those most outspoken on the issue of ‘port security’ such as Sen. Clinton, D-N.Y., and Schumer, D-N.Y., and Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., did not even bother to reply to my letters or the several copies of the proposals I had sent to them …

“Congressman King, who is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, refers to H.R. 4954 as the most comprehensive port security legislation ever considered by the United States Congress. In reality, this proposed legislation has no provision to inspect containers by American inspectors before they enter our ports, does not address how a container found to be hiding a nuclear weapon inside would be neutralized, nor does it provide any additional safety to our ports or country if such a weapon is detonated upon arrival, even though the stated purpose of the legislation is to ‘harden our ports against attack’. It merely just wastes more taxpayer money on worthless programs like CSI …

“Customs and Border Patrol are clueless. Mark Laria, Customs and Border Protection’s port director for the Norfolk region, recently said, ‘People need to stop worrying about a percentage,’ because all containers that are thought to be risky are thoroughly examined. He said scanning 100 percent of cargo would lead to port congestion and ‘choke the economy’. I wonder how he’ll characterize the effect on the economy after terror nuke attacks on several of our major cities.

“The official in charge of CSI sees his mission primarily as enabling trade, not securing our country. That official, CBP Assistant Commissioner Jason Ahern has been quoted as saying, ‘It makes absolutely no sense for us to screen everything coming into and going out of the country; we need to screen 100 percent of what needs to be screened and let the rest of the cargo go through expeditiously. One hundred percent screening would just choke travel and trade. We’re not out to disrupt business practices.’

“But Mr. Ahern cannot afford to make even one simple mistake in figuring out which box to screen and which not to, because the implications of such a mistake will undoubtedly kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions of our citizens and destroy commerce, our freedoms and our very way of life. But this is exactly what will happen under the current very lax non-inspection program.

“Pushing as many uninspected containers through our vulnerable ports as possible in the name of trade is foolhardy … it could lead to nothing short of mass-murder on an unprecedented scale …

“After such an incident … what longshoreman would want to handle another container? … Clearly, CBP has placed trade over security without any regard to common sense or simple logic, and this needs immediate oversight and change. If Rep. King and Sens. Clinton and Schumer really want to demonstrate their commitment to port security here’s a good chance to start. Otherwise, let’s vote them out of office and put representatives in that understand the real threats to our national survival and who are ready to do something serious about fixing it”…

“Cargo inspections for weapons of mass destruction have absolutely no place at mainland ports and should not be performed there … Even after the ‘Dubai ports deal’… no one in our government has stepped forward to provide any real improvement to inspecting containers offshore …

“The officials and agencies we have relied upon to protect us have failed miserably by any reasonable standard. The fact that there has not yet been a weapon of mass destruction or any other new attack here in America since 9-11 is really very meaningless. It can happen, and it unfortunately will happen, unless we ramp up our defenses and do it fast.”