Chertoff says Dubai port deal includes safeguards - Yahoo! News

Chertoff says Dubai port deal includes safeguards - Yahoo! News:

"'You can be assured that before a deal is approved we put safeguards in place, assurances in place, that make everybody comfortable that we are where we need to be from a national security viewpoint,' Chertoff said on ABC's 'This Week with George Stephanopoulos.'

But Sen. Lindsey Graham (news, bio, voting record), a South Carolina Republican, said it was a mistake for the administration to approve the sale and called on Congress to investigate it.

'It's unbelievably tone deaf politically at this point in our history, four years after 9/11, to entertain the idea of turning port security over to a company based in the UAE who avows to destroy
Israel,' Graham said on 'Fox News Sunday.'

'I don't think now is the time to outsource major port security to a foreign-based company,' he said.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (news, bio, voting record), a California Democrat, criticized the secrecy of the Bush administration's review and said she would support legislation to block foreign companies from buying port facilities.

'I'm going to support legislation to say 'No more, No way.' We have to have American companies running our own ports ... Our infrastructure is at risk,' she said on CBS's 'Face the Nation.'

Last week, Sens. Robert Menendez of New Jersey and
Hillary Clinton of New York, both Democrats, said they would offer legislation to ban companies owned or controlled by foreign governments from acquiring U.S. port operations.

'No matter what steps the administration claims it has secretly taken, it is an unacceptable risk to turn control of our ports over to a foreign government,' Menendez said in a statement."