Bush to visit Port of Baltimore
President Bush is scheduled to visit the Port of Baltimore today. The primary purpose of the visit is a speech calling on Congress to extend provisions of the Patriot Act, which gave law enforcement and intelligence agencies more powers to fight terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Bush will also use the visit to highlight the government’s efforts to bolster port security, according to the Baltimore Sun. He will see a demonstration of the Eagle mobile container scanning system that is supposedly able to penetrate a foot of steel. U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert Bonner visited Baltimore on June 2 to publicly unveil the system, which has been used to inspect containers at the Seagirt Container Terminal since December.