Whistleblowers say nation's railroads should be on red alert
San Antonio Business Journal - by Bill Conroy
Over the past several weeks, we as a nation have been on high alert, open to unprecedented incursions into our privacy in the effort to stem the threat of terrorism.
We have been willing to endure luggage searches and long waits at our airports, metal detectors at our borders, and pat downs at our sporting events. All this is being done as part of the united effort to prevent the terrorists from coming to us.
But what if our enemies aren't coming? Instead, what if they are plotting to bring the horror of terror into our communities from remote locations?
That is precisely what former U.S. Customs Service special agent Darlene Fitzgerald-Catalan asserts that we must guard against. Catalan claims further that she has evidence to back up her warnings.
That evidence points to our nation's railroad system.
Catalan, as well as other government whistleblowers, claim that the nation's railcars -- and the system that is used to transport them to every nook and cranny of the country -- can be used by terrorists as weapons to inflict devastating harm on Americans.
Catalan adds that the government must take action now to deal with the threat.
The issue first came to light, according to Catalan, during a major investigation she helped spearhead in the late 1990s. The investigation, she adds, uncovered a narcotics smuggling operation in Southern California that was making use of railcars to move illegal drugs across the Mexican border into the United States.
Catalan claims that higher-up Customs managers mysteriously "torpedoed" her investigation, which she contends linked the smuggling operation to the Arellano-Felix drug cartel in Mexico.
Catalan alleges that in the wake of trying to blow the whistle on the "torpedoed" investigation, she was subjected to retaliation and severe emotional abuse, which included a death threat, that eventually led her to resign from her job in 1999.
"I had seized eight thousand pounds of marijuana and 32 kilos of cocaine in a pressurized rail tanker car," Catalan recounts in a recent statement prepared for the Senate Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation and Federal Services. She adds in the statement that the drugs were shipped into the United States from a rail yard in Guadalajara, Mexico, that "was under the direct control of the infamous Arellano-Felix (drug) cartel.
Catalan's statement was originally submitted to the Senate subcommittee in July in support of proposed amendments to the Whistleblowers Protection Act. Catalan redrafted the statement in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and has sent copies to every U.S. senator, numerous U.S. representatives as well as the Government Accountability Project (GAP) in Washington, D.C. -- which is lobbying in support of reforms to the Whistleblowers Protection Act.
Doug Hartnett, a spokesman for GAP, says Catalan's redrafted statement was submitted to the Senate subcommittee this week.
"This information (concerning the possible use of railcars by terrorists) isn't something that dedicated terrorists committed to blowing something up couldn't figure out on their own," Hartnett says.
By making this information public, the goal is not "to put Xs on our vulnerabilities," but rather to get our government agencies to adjust to the threat, Hartnett explains. "To not do anything for fear of evildoers getting ideas is kind of what put us in the situation we are in. There were people pointing out the lax security at our airports long before the Sept. 11 attacks."
Former Customs special agent Sandy Nunn submitted a similar statement to the Senate subcommittee in July as well. Nunn, who also resigned from her job at Customs in 1999, has joined Catalan in blowing the whistle on the aborted railcar investigation.
"After further investigation, Darlene determined that ... well over 100 of these tanker cars with similar weight characteristics and so forth had passed into the commerce of the United States undetected by inspection and investigators," Nunn says in her statement to the subcommittee. "What was in those tanker cars remains a mystery."
Who's listening?
Over the past two years, Catalan says she and several other current and former Customs employees, including Nunn, have attempted to spur investigations into why the railcar smuggling investigation was shut down. Among the agencies they have contacted are the FBI and the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.
"Seven of us laid this rail operation out to the FBI," Catalan explains. "We made this problem crystal clear in terms of how these railcars can be controlled."
She says, to date, no one in the government has done anything.
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