The "new normal." That's the awkward turn of phrase that surfaced after the September 11 attacks to describe how business--and life--will be conducted from here on. For transportation professionals the concept took shape at the U.S. Maritime Security Expo & Conference held in New York City, September 18-19, which is to say it was surreal.

As with pre-9/11 forays of this type, it drew the usual suspects from the trade press and industry. It had the requisite sponsorship of the big maritime guns, in this case MaerskSealand, Evergreen, and the Port of Hamburg, along with a fistful of other maritime specific interests.

The U.S. Customs Service turned out for the panel discussions, as did the information technology mavens and vendor exhibitors. There were even two contraband-sniffing dogs, which alternately snoozed and fetched rubber balls while their trainers waited for potential customers to stroll by.

But, this is what the "new normal" looks like at a post-9/11 maritime security trade conference: clusters of uniformed military and Coast Guard personnel sit alongside career transportation executives; the IT expert talks about weapons of mass destruction; and the luncheon speaker is a former Secretary of the Navy who advocates the uprooting of Saddam Hussein, rebukes the Saudi government and blisters U.S. intelligence-gathering agencies as staggeringly inept. This was at a maritime trade conference.

"The terrorist threat to America takes many forms," Peter Brooks is telling the audience. Brooks is a senior fellow for national security and national defense for the Washington, D.C. think tank The Heritage Foundation. "We can never be sure we got all the bad guys." In short, terrorism is now a permanent fixture in American lives.

He's right. Walk outside the Jacob Javits convention center and everything looks as it did on September 10, 2001. People are moving briskly through the morning rush hour. Stores are opening and Broadway is touting its superb entertainment. Get closer, though, and the "new normal" rears up.

A Broadway hotel contains a memorial to its neighborhood fire station, right next to the brochures offering discounts on show tickets. Then go to one of those shows. Somewhere in the chatter about musical theatre two people talk about what qualifies as an "authentic" 9/11 experience. Being in New York City on that day appears to be a prerequisite. This is what passes for normal conversation in the city these days.

Back inside the Javits center, Admiral Stephen Rochon, director of the new Office of Intelligence and Security, is assuring the audience of 320 people that al Qaeda is indeed training people to attack maritime vessels and they aren't particular about the target--military, commercial or passenger cruise ships will do nicely. As for the form of the assault, it could well be a WMD, or Weapon of Mass Destruction, yet another phrase that bulldozed its way into the popular consciousness in the last year.

Ralph Sheridan, president and CEO of American Science and Engineering, is supplying the tutorial. Sheridan's firm created a new generation of X-ray equipment that captures markedly clear pictures of smuggled goods and people tucked into ocean containers and trucks crossing the border. He knows WMDs the way United Parcel Service knows little brown trucks.

Such weapons are broadly categorized into three types: nuclear (very nasty), chemical (nasty) and biological (not as nasty as you may think). A nuclear weapon, or "dirty bomb" is a radioactive isotope combined with an explosive. Once detonated, such a bomb would put a major U.S. port out of business for six months while it underwent a cleanup of radiation. A major urban location would be out of commission for a year.

A chemical weapon is a simple variation on a hazmat shipment. "In any truck stop in America you have the making of a chemical device," Sheridan said. A chemical weapon is the equivalent of a chemical spill. A biological weapon is more of a "weapon of mass disruption," than destruction, he said. It would not cause mass devastation but would cause fear and panic in the population. An example is tainted produce arriving from overseas.

So which is the bigger problem? It's trade fraud, the practice of fudging on cargo manifests to avoid excise taxes. "Trade fraud creates the pathway for port fraud," Sheridan says, because it involves many different types of supporting crimes, such as bribery, lying and smuggling, that lay the groundwork for a major terrorist assault. By the way, U.S. Customs pegs the rate of manifest inaccuracies, intentional or otherwise, at 48 percent.

After mulling over those statistics, listen to Philip Spinelli, chief of police for the waterfront commission of New York Harbor. His recurring nightmare revolves around good guys who go "bad." Or as he describes them, "People who have a legitimate right to have legal access to a port or facility."

He continues with his idea of a worst-case scenario. "Regardless of how much money you spend in new security procedures, if you have that type of corruption of people who in fact have this legitimate interest to be in the port, they can circumvent all the high-tech knowledge that we've talked about here."

The best defense is a good offense, he asserts. "Our job is to make sure that doesn't happen [because], it's our job to continually pound that beat." In other words, get information at the source. That's the drum everyone is pounding at this conference. The need for good, solid information that comes from people on the ground--then gets passed around.

"This meeting highlights the reality that security is common across all domains. If you don't have agencies working together, then you can't put together the pieces of the puzzle and beat them to the chase," says Yvonne Masakowski, adjunct scientist with the Office of Naval Research.

Masakowski isn't surprised to see uniformed officers milling around. Whether the average American realizes it or not, the U.S. military has been undergoing a dramatic transformation since the end of the Vietnam War, she explains. The move from a conscript to volunteer military was the first volley. Since then, the average U.S. soldier has become more knowledgeable and better trained than at any time in history. The emphasis is on military career, not a brief stint. Military interests now talk of creating "knowledge warriors" whose most lethal weapon is information.

So they come to where the information is, which now includes a maritime trade conference. Another person in attendance was John Lehman, former Secretary of the Navy under President Reagan. His speech has nothing to do with the maritime business or the virtues of seamless supply chains. Rather, it had more to do with drumming up support for the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

"No rational person can doubt that this threat must be removed," he tells the audience over lunch. Lehman predicts Hussein will be looking for other employment by the end of this winter. He than blasts the Saudi Arabian government for fanning anti-Western sentiment in the region and announces that U.S. intelligence gathering capabilities are "broken."

Sitting inside the conference hall, the speech seems "off-message," as a Washington spin-doctor would say. But step outside, where it's still a pristine day in the city and go down to what used to be the Twin Towers. People push baby strollers and practice inline skating where fishing and leisure boats are tied up in a harbor. Everyone tries not to look at the enormous, excavated pit that is just a few yards behind him or her.

"We're in the shadow of the World Trade Center, yet there is tremendous activity. There is a return to life here," said Heidi Endo, a city resident. But just days earlier, at the first-year memorial ceremony, a man stooped down at the site and scooped dirt into a coffee can, Endo recalled. It was all he would have left of the family member who perished there.

"The 'new normal' is that half of the people who lost someone here have nothing to bury because there are no remains," Endo said. "So instead, they're burying their hopes and dreams in a coffee can."

This is what normal looks like, even at a maritime trade conference.