The coast of inspections. (Cover Story).

According to the manifest, the 40-foot container is stuffed with apparel from China. Even though the bill of lading information was supplied to the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection 24 hours before the container was loaded onto the ship in China, the agency's security review has not ended.

After the container has been unloaded at the Port of Los Angeles, Customs orders it pulled from a stack at the marine terminal and trucked to a nearby inspection station. There it's parked while a truck-mounted VACIS inspection device rolls alongside, beaming gamma rays through the container's steel walls. Although no contraband is revealed, there are still consequences. The very fact the container had to be inspected added days and hundreds of dollars of cost to the importing process.

Scenarios such as this have become much more frequent since Sept. 11, 2001. In the wake of the terrorist attacks, Customs has been under intense pressure to inspect more containers at seaports and border crossings. Although Commissioner Robert Bonner has fought off attempts on Capitol Hill to require the agency to physically inspect all incoming containers, calling that a waste of resources, the agency still claims to inspect or scan …