So what's this? Fear mongering? Union Busting? We are safer with the Arabs than Longshoremen?
U.S. attorney’s office charges organized crime along East Coast waterfront
NEW YORK - Justice Department lawyers warned eight months ago that a nefarious element had infiltrated important East Coast ports, but they weren’t talking about terrorists or Arab shipping companies.
They were talking about the mafia.
In a civil suit filed in July, prosecutors accused the International Longshoremen’s Association, the 65,000-member union that supplies labor to ports from Florida to Maine, of being a “vehicle for organized crime” on the waterfront.
Packed with tales of corruption, embezzling and extortion, the complaint accused union executives of being associates of the Genovese and Gambino crime families.
The U.S. attorney’s office asked a judge to seize control of the union, remove its officers and “put an end to the conspiracy among union officials, organized crime figures and others that has plagued some of the nation’s most important ports for decades.”
The allegations, assailed by the union as unjust and untrue, are inching toward trial amid heightened concern over port security.
Recent furor over Arab deal
The recent furor has revolved around the planned purchase of several U.S. shipping terminal operations by a company based in the United Arab Emirates. Critics say Dubai Ports World’s Middle East ownership makes it ripe for infiltration by terrorists.
The company moved to defuse the controversy Thursday by pledging to turn over its American operations to a U.S. company.
But some port security experts say America already has a fifth column, of sorts, at work on its docks: gangsters who have made the piers friendly territory for drug smugglers and cargo thieves.
more....
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10774148
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