Detect Anything That’s Coming into the Country

Host: Deepak Saini, Chief, Media Relations, Science and Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland Security

Guest: John Clemmensen, Biometrics Program Manager, Ports of Entry Project Manager, Office of Mission and Capability Support, Science and Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland Security

[00:00:00] John Clemmensen: They need information to make decisions on, allowing cargo into the country and they need to know if it's a threat on smuggling, whether that's narcotics or other trade violations, or if it's human trafficking, they need to be able to know what's going on, with these shipments that are coming in. And so, this X ray has been a way that this has been accomplished.

[00:00:21] Dave: This is Technologically Speaking, the official podcast for the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate, or S&T as we call it. Join us as we meet the science and technology experts on the frontlines keeping America safe.

[00:00:35] Dee: Hi everyone. Welcome to this episode of Technologically Speaking, I'm your host, Dee Sani. So, we have a very special guest today, John Clemmensen, who wears multiple hats here at S&T. He's a program manager here. He oversees biometrics and also our work with the ports of entry, within our Office of Mission and Capability Support. Welcome, John.

[00:00:58] John Clemmensen: Hey! How are you, Dee?

[00:00:59] Dee: Good. Good.

[00:01:00] John Clemmensen:Thanks for having me.

[00:01:01] Dee: Yeah, great to have you. So, we have a very important project to talk about, which is the Multi Energy Portals Project. It's a huge, significant value that we're providing, Customs and Border Protection, also known as CBP. Can you just dive a little bit into, that need that CBP had, and then how we at S&T kind of approached the need?

[00:01:23] John Clemmensen: Sure. So, the need is information, right? They need information to make decisions on, allowing cargo into the country and they need to know if it's a threat on smuggling, whether that's narcotics or other trade violations, or if it's human trafficking, they need to be able to know what's going on, with this, these shipments that are coming in. And so, this X-ray has been a way that this has been accomplished, but doing X-ray at speed has been the technology advancement that has enabled this MEP Project. And so, I think everyone kind of knows X-rays as, there's a film, you send an X-ray source through, for instance, if you had a broken arm, the doctor would take the picture of the arm and you'd have it on film. Well, in the last 20 years or so, there's been a development of what they called CR now to DR or digital X-ray, and it allows for a real time generation of this image. And this has enabled a lot of new technologies. That S&T has been able to enable, whether it's from, the bomb squads to CBP that are all deploying these new panels that have allowed for the scanning of packages or in this instance, cargo. And what's really impressive about this is the scale and the size of these systems. These are very large systems that allow for X-ray images of these cargo containers, these very large, car containers. I'm sure people have seen them, if not driving down the road on the, these tractor trailers the trains, these large connexes are all coming through the port. Like you said, about a hundred thousand.

[00:02:48] Dee: Every day. That's a lot.

[00:02:51] John Clemmensen: Yeah. And I know in the last six months, I was looking at the stats the other day, the first six months of this year, we did 1.4 million scans, so that's just a ton of scans, a lot of information coming in. And what we've accomplished is the detection of large smuggling, whether it's marijuana or cocaine, fentanyl, all coming into the country, the huge border crisis on that and these machines are a big part of helping to identify that all the way down to, you know, your smaller trade violations, trying to get around tariffs on things like queso or chorizo coming into the country, which is, I think it's a fun anecdotal story from the, um, the agents when we are down there meeting with them, they're talking about, how good these machines are, is that they're finding the drivers smuggling in queso and chorizo in their tractor trailers and, I was confused, being from Philadelphia, I didn't, I was like, what's the appeal? And they said, well, they don't want to pay the tariffs on it. And so, they were saying there's a really good dip that they like to make with the queso and the chorizo. And so, that was a fun experience. We went to a local restaurant and got to try some of that, and it was good, I was like, ah, I see what they're after here. This is tasty stuff.

[00:03:55] Dee: I was going to say, pause the breaks, queso and chorizo. That's so interesting, right? Because in the news, you hear a lot about what you mentioned earlier, right? Things like marijuana, cocaine, fentanyl, obviously, we know is a huge problem that the U.S. is facing, and DHS is doing everything in its power to help curb. Can I ask you as well, would you say that smuggling avocados across the border is something that the CBP agents have kind of noted as well?

[00:04:23] John Clemmensen: Yeah, there's been a lot of articles with avocados and it's the, as I understand it, this is a little out of my purview, but as I understand it, the narcos are buying up avocado farms and smuggling cocaine in avocados, or fentanyl in avocados. Is that the article that you're referring to?

[00:04:43] Dee: Yeah, no, I just watched a whole documentary on Netflix about the monarch butterflies that migrate from, Canada and the U.S. down to Mexico. But what's happening is the cartel are clearing out the forest that the monarch butterflies depend on to rest and burning it down so those trees can't grow anymore, and instead they're growing avocados and then smuggling them up across the border.

[00:05:13] John Clemmensen: I think it, it goes to show, while we deployed a technology the threats are always changing and one of the great points of this MEP Project isn't a specific detection device to only a limited threat. It is able to detect anything that's coming into the country. So, they're able to see oh, this is labeled as one thing. Obviously, that's not what's in there because they're able, these agents have such good eyes and they're trained so well that they're able to identify - the manifest says this, this is however, this is what I'm seeing in the X-ray and they're able to say, you know what, these don't match up and refer it to secondary screening. So, these systems are catching all kinds of things, like I said, from chorizo, queso, avocados, up to drugs, to fraudulent products coming into the country.

[00:05:57] Dee: That's so interesting. And so, the Multi Energy Portals Project, right, it sounds like CBP started the acquisition process for this need in about 2018, so about six years ago. And in that time, you and your team were able to deliver five fully operational, M.E.P or “MEP,” systems to three places in Texas, in Arizona, and also in New Mexico, what was that partnership like? Because you had to work with industry and cross collaboration within the government as well. But I'm sure it involved a multi-pronged effort for sure.

[00:06:34] John Clemmensen: It was, and what a story of interdepartmental success working with CBP and having great engagement with them. Having them driving the conversation, giving us good requirements, giving us questions. Hey, this is what we need to know going forward and then be able to work with GSA and DOI to say, how do we accomplish this? How do we work on a port of entry? You have these different stakeholders. GSA owns the land. CBP is a tenant on that land. So, if you're doing construction projects on those ports of entry, you need to work with all those different organizations. And so, we had a good collaboration. We had a very good team working together.

[00:07:13] Dee: Oh nice.

[00:07:14] John Clemmensen: We talk a lot about the technology of the MEP Project and the very specific tool that we're deploying, but there's so much that goes on around it, that CBP and the port director, GSA on pouring concrete to building out the infrastructure for building on sand to making sure that we have the proper footers that, these environments were different from port of entry to different port of entry. And so, we had to make sure that we were taking each location into account. There are different sizes. How do we get the trucks to make sure that they go through this system? So, we had to do a lot of investigation into traffic control and communicating to the drivers on when to go, when to stop, opt out lanes, trying to make sure that there was enough turnaround that if there was an oversized truck that they didn't break the system. So, there was a lot of human engineering of communication and almost like traffic flow, engineering to this project. In addition to just making sure that the technology that we bought, the systems that we bought were deployed and operational and working the way they were supposed to. So, we had a lot of discussions with CBP on, hey, how big is the port and where can we put this? And is there enough room for the trucks to make the turn and straighten out and get into the system without damaging it? Because we don't want the system to keep getting hit by a truck driver. And so, we were doing a lot of work with them to make sure that we did proper space management. And that's one of the biggest lessons learned that's going out to all the other ports.

[00:08:44] Dee: John, it's so great to hear how successful this system is. One of the biggest goals we look at when we're addressing problem sets for our components is helping them increase their performance in the field in terms of efficiency and speed, but also for safety as well, right? So, we're kind of taking a holistic approach to it. Can you kind of dive into why it's important to make sure that we're creating solutions for our components where they can be speedy and safe and efficient all at the same time in the field?

[00:09:22] John Clemmensen: Sure. It's one of the operational goals of these agencies that we work with is to not only provide security, but to provide a, we don't want to provide just security for the sake of security. We need to provide a quick and expedient way for people to enter and exit the country. So, with the MEP Project we're able to provide both speed and security. This isn't too dissimilar to what John Fortune's working on with his Screening at Speed Project through development of different technology and layer technologies, we're able to provide increased security and make it more transparent to the folks coming into and out of the country that it's not as obtrusive in their activities. And so, if they get to come into the country more quickly, they're happier. And if we have better security, then the Homeland's happier. And it's a great meshing of technologies and use of technologies to say that this is going to make, this is going to make our ports of entry more secure and it's going to allow for quicker trade and travel.

[00:10:19] Dee: Yeah, 100%. And it sounds like, so it sounds like there's maybe perhaps now, the system's been signed, sealed, delivered, it's working, it's proving ROI, but you can always make things better. I mean, how many renditions of technology that we use every day do we see right, now we're on iPhone, like 200. But so, it sounds like we're addressing two main challenges now, right? Like big data and human error. Do I have that correct?

[00:10:46] John Clemmensen: You do. Yeah, that is the big challenge is the more scans you have right now, it requires more agents to, to view and vet those scans. So, you are developing a big data problem, but there are solutions there. And as CBP works on this, collecting that data, it certainly opens up the possibility for future development on how can we take out human error? How can we improve efficiency and looking at that logistics train of the system being scanned, the cargo being scanned, coming into the country, and then vetted by an agent and then communicated to the interviewing agent with the port of entry agent dealing with the truck driver, they want to give them a go, no go decision as quickly as possible. And so, the quicker that the scans can be vetted, the quicker commerce can continue. So that is certainly an opportunity. And I'm sure CBP is already looking into how can they leverage big data analytics to make that more efficient.

[00:11:43] Dee: Is there anything else on the horizon for this project that you're working on?

[00:11:49] John Clemmensen: Like you said, this project has been a big success. And at this point, we are transitioning it to CBP. CBP is already off and running. They were recently able to award, I believe it was about a half billion dollars to buy 124 systems, the goal of these MEP systems. And the most recent one I saw a news release from earlier this week that they're now operational at Laredo on all entry ports. And so that is a win. That's what we like to see as a return on an investment at S&T is that we were able to test and vet a system and it was deployed by CBP and that transition is just a great success story.

[00:12:25] Dee: Oh, definitely. Would you say, if you look back at your entire career so far, would this be one of your top projects that you're the most proud of?

[00:12:35] John Clemmensen: Absolutely. This is something to be proud of, it’s a good collaboration between multiple federal organizations that have resulted in a large and successful procurement. That's, as I said, making the border more secure and also enabling trade and travel.

[00:12:50] Dee: Career wise, what kind of carved the path to lead you down to S&T?

[00:12:55] John Clemmensen: Yeah, it's a winding path. So, as I mentioned, I wanted to be an engineer, went to Virginia Tech, got really into robotics, did my graduate work on robotic control systems, but then I had an interesting opportunity, when I was graduating, I was offered the opportunity to go work for Department of Energy out in Las Vegas for the remote sensing laboratory doing work with the EOD community, Explosive Ordnance Disposal.

[00:13:19] Dee: Oh nice.

[00:13:21] John: So, I went out there for about three years and then I got the opportunity to deploy with a DOD DITRA team to Germany for a year and got some operational experience got to work with operational teams. And I think that was pretty important in my development as an engineer, previously sitting in a lab, windowless lab, working on different projects, trying to develop tools, you have a certain mindset about engineering development and use cases. And then when you get to go out in the field and work with these end users, you see how, see how they're getting used. You see the operational use cases and some of the constraints that they have when they're trying to use it. So, when I went back to Las Vegas after my stint in Germany, and then I got the opportunity to work with the Department of Energy's NEST team, which brought me out to D.C. and I did that for a number of years, which was, more operationally focused, working with, nuclear emergency response. I went to work for industry for about five or six years, supporting DoD and DHS S&T. And that's kind of what brought me more into the S&T sphere as I got to work with the First Responders Resource Group, worked with Byung Hee Kim, on her Red Ops.

[00:14:29] Dee: Oh, she’s great.

[00:14:30] John: Yeah, I listened to your episode with her. That was great. Such good work over there, really working with a great community and getting to see that grow from working with the bomb squads, right?

[00:14:39] Dee: It sounds, not only did you jump around the map, Vegas and Germany can't be any more different. Did you happen to have a favorite of one or the other?

[00:14:50] John Clemmensen: Not particularly. No, I enjoyed them both for what they are. Like you said, they're both very different and they both have their pros and their cons. So, it was just great to get to experience both of those. Being a Philly guy both of those were very different than growing up in Philadelphia and what a cool experience to live in Las Vegas and get to live in Germany.

[00:15:07] Dee: Anytime anyone brings up Philly, I automatically think of our editorial content manager, Stacey Levitt, who is, the brainchild for this podcast, by the way. And so, she's a huge Eagles fan and we'll get to that later as well. With your diverse skill set and background, it sounds like you also went from, working in the public sector to private to back to public. What was that experience like?

[00:15:30] John Clemmensen: They are run differently. At least they have different primary goals. But I think for me the goal has always been the same, and that has been to make the public safety has always been kind of like the linchpin of whether I'm in the private sector or public sector that I'm trying to deliver. And that's what drew me back from public or from private to public was wanting to get my hands more directly on the projects that we were working with, kind of seeing the effect that the program managers I was have work with in a positive way, wanting to replicate that and do what they were doing, it was the goal there, right? If, oh man, look at the good work that they're doing. How can I also get involved? How can I do good work like that and make an impact like they are?

[00:16:13] Dee: What I really love about your role in this is that you actually worked at CBP before coming to S&T, so I would love for you to just talk me through, I feel like that institutional knowledge you gained there probably better informed you and helped you overall in doing a phenomenal job on this project.

[00:16:33] John Clemmensen: Yes, it was very helpful. So, I came from a border patrol where I was in the PMOD office as a test manager before moving over to S&T as a program manager. And what I got to see was a lot of the issues with major acquisitions that come with risk. And so, at S&T what we can really do, and one of the issues I wanted to address as a program manager is how can I reduce the risk to make acquisition more streamlined for these components? And so, when I was at Border Patrol, we were working heavily on the towers, camp, an acquisition program called the Integrated Systems Towers, IST. And while we were buying a lot of commercial products, the integration and deployment of those tools to the border had a lot of risk on deployment, environmental concerns, and will they all be able to work together? How does that infrastructure, how does that backbone, how does the construction, how do you mitigate all those risks before you make a large acquisition and commit the government to that much money. And so, I brought that mindset to S&T and saying, hey, how can we help these components? How can we look at what their acquisitions are? How can we say? How do you maximize your return on your investment? Can we inform these acquisitions with good, fielded data so that they can shape their statements of work to minimize, change orders to minimize, I'll just keep saying it again to minimize risk in the acquisition?

[00:18:05] Dee: That's so interesting.

[00:18:06] John Clemmensen: So, the MEP was a great example of this, and the MEP Project with S&T started before me. I got to bring it over the finish line. But there was a series of different program managers that were involved with this, that, worked with CBP, that helped develop the requirement, had the vision to see that CBP was going to be making this large acquisition. And so, what we were able to do was make a small procurement and buy five of these systems and deploy to four different AORs or ports of entry. And we were able to test out the configurations, basically bring the scientific method to deploying new equipment at a port of entry. And it's important to note that if you've seen one port of entry, you've only seen one port of entry. There might be 300 different ones. They have 300 different problems. And so, using multiple different ports of entries with different constraints helped inform CBP on what their constraints are going to be with their future acquisitions. So, we started off with a simple control where we put one system in secondary. And so secondary is after the cargo coming into the country has talked with a CBP agent. They, if the CBP agent flags it for secondary, they go off to the secondary screening. And what this did is it allowed CBP to build up some familiarity with the system, build up a little trust in the system. The future systems were deployed preprimary, and this was the overarching goal, and this was where CBP is deploying them currently, and what preprimary does is it allows for a better flow of commerce into the country, and that's really what CBP is trying to do there. They're trying to secure the border, but they're trying to make sure that there is a steady state of trade and travel coming into and out of the country. And so, by scanning these cargo containers before they get to, the agent's now able to make a more informed decision when they're vetting the driver and the cargo coming in.

[00:20:01] Dee: Oh, Okay.

[00:20:02] John Clemmensen: While they are talking to the driver and vetting their credentials in getting ready to permit them in, there's a separate agent who's reviewing the MEP scans and giving a thumbs up, thumbs down, on the cargo coming in. If they give the thumbs down, maybe I shouldn't say thumbs down, but a referral to secondary and that referral to secondary says, okay, we're going to screen this, but the agent now has a higher level of confidence. They have more information when they're making that decision on the referral to secondary. They have the information about the driver. They have the preclearance information and now they have the scan, the MEP scan of the system and they're able to identify, if there's something in there that's not supposed to be there. And it's an information game.

[00:20:43] Dee: So, I'm going to ask just a couple more last questions that are a little bit more personal but safe. So, John, let's start when you were young, now as an adult, you find yourself working for the federal government and serving this awesome mission. But when you were a kid, was there something completely different you wanted to do with your life?

[00:21:01] John Clemmensen: Oh man. I don't think so. As long as I can remember, I was always, playing with Legos, taking things apart, sometimes successfully putting them back together again. Everyone informed me that I was going to be an engineer from an early age. And so that was always my path. I never really questioned it.

[00:21:16] Dee: I loved playing with Legos as a kid myself. And I think adults can watch kids and see how they react to toys or things that really honestly serve a long-term cause where they teach kids how to put things together, how to break things apart, and kind of like the methodology behind that. So that's really awesome to hear that, that, that kind of really drove you when you were a child.

[00:21:40] John Clemmensen: Yeah. And it's something I enjoy sharing with my daughter today, as we build Legos together. And maybe I still can't be hands off, but we collaboratively like to build with the Legos and that's a really enjoyable shared experience.

[00:21:52] Dee: And haven't they changed so much since when we were children? I mean, I remember, squares and rectangles and different colors, but now you've got whole 3D shapes and, a whole lot of other bells and whistles to them now.

[00:22:05] John Clemmensen: Yeah, there are, but maybe I'm a purist, but we keep with the standard blocks. I like the old ones and letting the imagination run. So, we have a lot of just, basic building block Legos and my daughter's pretty young. So, we have, it's really nice to have the Duplos, which are great for the, for the younger kids.

[00:22:20] Dee: I don't want to be stereotypical, but I am going to be a little bit, but what do you think of the Philly cheesesteak?

[00:22:27] John Clemmensen: Aw, huge fan.

[00:22:28] Dee: I am too!

[00:22:30] John Clemmensen: Yeah, and I, some people go with the cheese whiz. I'm not a cheese whiz guy. Give me some good provolone with some grilled onions, maybe throw some green peppers on there. But when it's done it is good stuff.

[00:22:40] Dee: Okay, look, so there's multiple ways things can be done, right? I'm on the West Coast, and one thing we like to, don't be mad, but one thing we like to do is to put really crispy fries and coleslaw in a Philly cheesesteak sandwich. In it. It's so good! Have you done that?

[00:22:57] John Clemmensen: I haven't, but I love both those things. And so, I, you know what, I think that sounds like something I need to try. That sounds good.

[00:23:03] Dee: Yeah. Try it and let me know because it will blow your mind. And so, I mean, look, I think I know the answer. But do you happen to have a favorite football team?

[00:23:14] John Clemmensen: I think there's, if you're from Philadelphia, there's only one football team and the Philadelphia Eagles, you can't be a little bit of an Eagles fan. You're either, uh, you are, or you aren't. And so, growing up watching the Philadelphia Eagles was a treat and getting to watch them beat Tom Brady in the Superbowl is a lifetime experience right there.

[00:23:31] Dee: Oh, I bet! Yeah, the GOAT, of course, right? Maybe not to y'all. But, at the time that we're recording this, it's about a little after mid-July. I understand training camp for the Eagles starts probably, I think we're six days away from that.

[00:23:45] John Clemmensen: It might be. I saw that the first preseason game is, what second week in August, right? So, looking forward to that. Yeah. I'm pretty excited about the Phillies right now, one of the top teams in baseball, they're off on a hot streak. And so, it's a good time to be a Phillies fan, Philadelphia sports team fan in general. Yeah.

[00:24:03] Dee: I was just gonna say that you took the words out of my mouth. It's a good time to be a sports fan in general, and you know what else has made it even more fun to be a sports fan, it's Taylor Swift.

[00:24:12] John Clemmensen: Yeah. As a, as a fan of the New Heights podcast with Jason and Travis, with the sports, and my wife being a Taylor Swift fan, this was a nice merging of worlds and brought some fun conversations to the dinner table.

[00:24:24] Dee: Yeah, that's, that's hilarious. Yeah, so we'll see what this, next season of sports has in store along with anything she's coming out with.

[00:24:34] John Clemmensen: Well, I mean, what two albums this year, I can't imagine she's, she's a busy lady. She's getting a lot done. Did you get to see her in concert?

[00:24:40] Dee: I haven't. I would say that's probably why I'm in her top five, but not one percent. Have you gone with your wife? I know your wife's a diehard Swifty, but have you gone with your wife to one of her concerts?

[00:24:51] John Clemmensen: So, my wife has been, but I haven't. We actually went out, you're in Seattle, I believe is what I heard. So, we went out to Seattle last July with some friends. And so, my wife and her other diehard Swifty fan friend went to the concert. And so, the myself and the other husband, we hung out outside and enjoyed the ambience. And I tell you, it's an electric environment. If you weren't a Swifty before going or being around the concert, it's infectious and it's a lot of great positive energy.

[00:25:19] Dee: Oh, yeah, 100%. I saw a lot of the videos of her, concert here in Seattle. John Clemmensen, it has been such a great opportunity to speak with you and to learn more about your life and also your important work you do at S&T, especially this Multi Energy Portal Project was just such a significant value add to CBP's mission. We're thankful to you for your team and all the hard work that you do. And thank you for making time to talk to me. It's been great having you on. Thanks.

[00:25:49] John Clemmensen: Thanks Dee, this has been great.

[00:25:50] Dave: Thank you for listening to Technologically Speaking. To learn more about what you've heard in this episode, check out the show notes on our website, and follow us on Apple Podcasts and YouTube, and on social media at DHS SciTech. D H S S C I T E C H. Bye!