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A Case of Port Whine Philip V. Brennan With all the hullabaloo and whining about the Dubai Ports World deal, I am beginning to feel a little nostalgia about how U.S ports used to be run. Back in the late '40s, when I was first married, I worked as an investigator for the claims department of the now long-gone Atlantic Gulf and West Indies Shipping Company, once the Ward Line, infamous as the owner of the Morro Castle, which went down in flames off the coast of Asbury Park, N.J., with an appalling number of passenger deaths. For those worried about the kind of people who will be managing operations at six major U.S. ports, it might be instructive for them to learn that it's not a new problem. During the Cold War we faced a nuclear-armed Soviet Union, which was ever busy infiltrating U.S. entities such as labor unions. The labor union that pretty much dominated the ports was the ILO, the International Longshoremen's Organization. It was run by one Harry Bridges, a dedicated communist and instrument of the Soviet Union. To that extent, the USSR had a big behind-the-scenes hand in running our ports. If the ILO went on strike, for example, the ports shut down, the U.S. economy went south and Moscow was ecstatic.
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Working alongside the ILO was the Mob, which all but ran the port of New York and God only knows what other ports. I had an office on the old pier 36, on the North River. Every once in a while I could look out the window and see a body floating in the water – some poor soul who had run afoul of either the ILO or the Mob. Whenever one of our ships came into port, even before it was released from customs quarantine, in absolute violation of federal law, three familiar gentlemen would come aboard, set up a table alongside the paymaster's table, and as crew members picked up their pay envelopes stuffed with cash, they would stop at the table and pay the Mob loan shark what they owed him, plus the "vig" (vigorish, or usurious interest). Standing behind the loan shark were two sinister Mob button men, there to enforce the loan terms should any seaman be rash enough to object. The rare one that did usually ended up floating in the water underneath my window. We called them the "Three Balls," after the pawn shop symbol. They were, on the whole, friendly to non-borrowers. Joe, the loan shark boss, even gave us a pair of sterling silver candelabra for a wedding present. I still have them. We are now faced with a new entity that may or may not end up managing some of the nuts-and-bolts aspects of port operations at six major U.S. ports. This is a different kettle of fish – I don't expect that bodies floating in the East or North rivers or strikes shutting down the ports will be a problem.
The port deal has escalated into an issue so potent it threatens the very future of the Republican Party and the president. It is now on hold for 45 days, and what bothers me about that hiatus is the fact that it absolutely guarantees that the nation will be forced to suffer for a whole six weeks of watching the abominable Senator Charles Schumer rant and rave and engage in port-whining on TV day after miserable day. Looking at the pros and cons of the deal, I am inclined to advise anyone involved in considering it to adopt the public stance of the old-time New York pol who, when asked how he stood on a certain piece of legislation, said that "50 percent of my friends are for it and 50 percent of my friends are against it, and I stand foursquare behind my friends." Of all of the aspects of this heated controversy, one thing stands out: Much of the rhetoric is based on misinformation or outright falsehood. Perhaps the worst is the suggestion that Dubai is somehow allied with al-Qaida or other Islamic fanatics. The governor of New Jersey attacked the deal on those specious grounds without noting that whatever the position of the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) had been, since 9/11 Dubai has been one of our strongest allies in the war on terror. I must admit to being somewhat confused over how much power, if any, the U.A.E. exerts over Dubai Ports World or if DPW can be condemned over the U.A.E.'s activities. Our idiot mainstream media have given the impression that the United Arab Emirates are about to take absolute control of six major U.S ports – despite the fact, as reported by NewsMax.com, that Dubai Ports World will run just a tiny fraction of the terminals at the U.S. ports involved if the deal goes through. Defending the transaction on MSNBC's "Scarborough Country" Monday night, Kim Petersen, president of Seasecure, noted: "There are 300 terminals at those ports. Dubai Ports World is going to handle nine of them." Nine of them! On the other hand, the manner in which this deal has been handled by the administration is simply appalling. David Horowitz put it this way during an interview with me Monday: "it is the stupidest political move that I have seen in my lifetime." Amen. That the serious political implications of the deal never occurred to the officials charged with vetting it boggles the mind. Any aspiring big-city ward politician would have seen it. Failing to run it by leaders in Congress or, for that matter, the American people put the president in a no-win situation. If it goes down, we not only will have slapped a valuable ally in the war on terror in the face but also will have warned every other nation that it does not pay to stick their necks out to help the U.S. If it goes through, it will continue to haunt the president and the GOP, if only because of their ineptitude, and cost them dearly at the polls. As for where I stand on the matter: Half my readers may favor the deal and half may oppose it, and I stand courageously foursquare behind my readers.
Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor & publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee which won statehood for Alaska. He is also a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.
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