U.S. Plants: Open To Terrorists

From CBS's 60 Minutes:

At one facility in a suburb of Los Angeles, there was an impressive-looking front gate, but if there were security guards out back, we didn't see them. We did find a school, and a day care center less than a mile away.

And in the center of Houston, where a terrorist attack might affect three million people, it looked as if an intruder could simply walk right in.

The person who may know the most about the lack of security is Carl Prine, an investigative reporter at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, who began probing security at chemical plants six months after Sept. 11 -- after companies had been warned by the government that they were potential targets.

“I found almost non-existent security in a lot of places,” says Prine, who visited 60 plants all over the country, including the Chicago, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh and Houston area. “I walked right up to the tanks. There was one plant in Chicago, I simply sat on top of the tank and waved ‘Hello, I'm on your tank.’"

And he did it in broad daylight, wearing his press badge and carrying a camera. He says no one tried to stop him.

“I began to wonder, I mean, what would it take for me to get arrested at one of these plants? Would I have to come in carrying an AK-47? What would it take for someone to say, ‘Why is this guy walking around taking pictures of our tanks,’” says Prine, who told the chemical plants that he had been inside. “That was our policy. We took pictures so that the plants could identify their own weaknesses. And we also took our information to EPA; we took it to the American Chemistry Council.”

But even after his expose ran in the newspaper, Prine was convinced that he could still get back into the same plants again. 60 Minutes asked him if we could tag along one rainy afternoon to see just how close they could get to the most dangerous chemicals at the Neville Chemical Plant outside downtown Pittsburgh.

There was an open gate right in front of the most dangerous chemicals at the plant. We made it in, with plenty of time to find what they were looking for.

“This is anhydrous ammonia. It searches out wet parts of the body. It goes right down your throat, rips out your lungs and also blinds you. It goes right for your eyeballs,” says Prine. “If you were to blow this thing you would probably take out the plant.”

But the most dangerous chemical at this plant was boron triflouride, a deadly, colorless gas with a suffocating odor that attacks mucous membranes and can kill at concentrations as low as 50 PPM.

Thank god I'm getting the hell out of Houston.

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