As a towering dockside crane hoists a brown metal container from a huge cargo ship at the Vancouver terminal, an intelligence officer shakes his head in concern.

"That there," he says, pointing to the 20-foot-long container, "could be a Trojan Box. There could be a terrorist in it, or even worse, a weapon of mass destruction, and the chances of anyone here discovering it are almost nil."

Since the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, security and intelligence experts have worried that a terrorist network might use the ubiquitous box as a lethal weapon against the United States, and that it might pass through a Canadian port on its way there.

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This chilling scenario is not some far-fetched hypothesis.

Last October, a suspected al-Qaeda operative was discovered at the southern Italian port of Gioia Tauro inside a container. It was bound for Halifax.

The Egyptian-born Canadian was reportedly equipped with a satellite phone, a laptop computer, plans of airports, an aviation mechanic's certificate and security passes for airports in Egypt, Thailand and Canada.

Driving a little farther down the road, the officer points to the control tower and grimaces.

"The man talking to the crane operators and telling them where to place the containers on the dock is a member of the Hells Angels. I bet that makes you feel safe and secure," he says sarcastically.

According to a protected intelligence report by the Organized Crime Agency of British Columbia, Canada's three major seaports -- Halifax, Montreal and Vancouver -- are littered with criminals.

The report identifies five full-fledged members and 43 associates of the Angels working in various positions on Vancouver's docks.

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"Some wear their colours to intimidate," the intelligence officer says. "One member of the Hells Angels is a senior trainer for longshoremen at the Delta Port, the largest container facility on the West Coast and a highly vulnerable target for organized crime and terrorist groups.

"We have also identified members of East European, Indo-Canadian, Colombian, Mexican [and]triad organized-crime syndicates working on the port. It has become a mutually acceptable environment because there is a [lot]of money to be made, so there is no upside to fighting with each other."

The gangs have connections in Halifax, Montreal and numerous American ports.

Today, the real fear for law enforcement is the so-called "unholy alliance" between organized crime and terrorist networks. Organized-crime groups have been known to smuggle drugs, move weapons, provide false travel documents and launder money for terrorists.

Michel Juneau-Katsuya, who heads the Northgate Group, an international company specializing in the field of strategic intelligence and risk assessment, said the alliance has been in place for a long time and "it is something we should be very worried about."

The problem, he stressed, is that Canadian law enforcement has no idea about the extent of that connection. Why? "They never looked at it. There have been no serious studies or investigations conducted by law-enforcement agencies to try to see the connection."

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Mr. Juneau-Katsuya should know. Until he retired two years ago, he was a senior intelligence officer with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. His job as national co-ordinator of the Port of Entry Interdiction Program was to intercept terrorists and foreign intelligence officers before they entered Canada.

A joint organized-crime task force made up of Montreal city police, Quebec provincial police and the RCMP estimates that about 15 per cent of stevedores and 36 per cent of checkers working at the Port of Montreal have criminal records, as do 54 per cent of the employees of an outside firm with the contract to pick up garbage and to service ships on the docks.

One Montreal police officer said when they patrol the port property, "you [can]hear the cellphones start to beep all over the docks."

In Halifax, a police survey of the backgrounds of 500 longshoremen working at the port discovered that 187 had criminal records, while RCMP intelligence shows that "the Hells Angels are the dominant organized-crime organization on port property in Halifax."

Authorities tend to pass the buck when it comes to responsibility for screening out potential criminals.

Chris Badger, vice-president of operations at the Port of Vancouver, said: "Are there people with criminal records on the waterfront? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean they're controlling the waterfront, absolutely not."

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Mr. Badger said that if organized crime was compromising security at Canadian ports "and the police are aware of it, then that's their job. Police don't give us that information. We're a commercial organization that's here to facilitate trade."

Michel Turgeon, a spokesman for the Montreal port, said longshoremen are not port employees. "They are in the Maritime Employees Association. It is not for us to prove whether someone has a criminal record." He said the port authority is not about to ask the union to carry out criminal background checks.

Why not?

"This is a delicate issue," he replied. "Anyway, when you hire someone, you must know exactly what that person has been accused of, and then does it present a threat to the particular job he is doing?"

George Malec, assistant harbourmaster for the Halifax Port Authority, also deferred to the police on the issue of criminals at the port.

Union leaders representing dock workers at all three ports hotly defended the rank and file, arguing that there is no compelling reason for criminal background checks.

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Bob Ashton, president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 500 in Vancouver, said: "I don't see any problem in our port. And do we do criminal background checks? No, we don't. There has to be a reason for a check, and I don't see one."

What port officials and union leaders prefer to talk about are the enhanced security measures that have been put in place since Sept. 11, particularly in the area of perimeter access, gates, fences, cameras and security guards.

These toughened-up measures, they maintain, will keep out potential threats.

On a hot, sunny August afternoon, a reporter tested the improved security measures. He drove onto Vancouver's container terminals without once being stopped by security. During one such drive, no one seemed to take any notice of a car slowly weaving in and out of the labyrinth of stacked containers.

At another container terminal, a burly man in a pickup truck pulled alongside and asked if the driver was lost. He then suggested a quick and easy way off the docks.

"Just go to the gate over there and press the green button. The gate will go up and you're out."

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A police source later identified the helpful dock worker as a known Hells Angels associate.

Told about the ease of access to the Vancouver terminals, Mr. Badger said: "If you'd called us, we could have shown you around and you would have noticed the fences going up, the gates and access control going up. It's not there yet. We're moving ahead as fast as we can. In a year's time, if you're still drifting around on a terminal, then we're not moving fast enough."

Security experts say the moves by port authorities to improve perimeter security are meaningless if the bad guys are already entrenched on the inside.

Senator Colin Kenny, chairman of the standing Senate committee on Canadian security and military preparedness, said his alarm bells began ringing when he heard virtually the same presentations from executives from the three major ports during a briefing before his committee last November.

"They say this is a safe, crime-free port. We run a modern facility. We have an excellent security force. We're very happy with any improvements we've made to our facilities, and anyone will tell you that this is a model operation."

Then came the briefing from the men in uniform.

"They started describing a situation where you sort of expected Karl Malden to appear with Rod Steiger and Marlon Brando. It was sort of On the Waterfront."

What Senate committee members found jarring was the high number of people working on the docks with criminal records.

"In Halifax, the police tell us that 39 per cent of the longshoremen had criminal records. . . . Can you think of any place that four out of 10 of its employees had been in the slammer at one time or other?" Mr. Kenny asked.

Stephen Flynn, a former U.S. Coast Guard commander and a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., described what Senator Kenny's committee experienced as "a schizophrenia you hear between the guys on the ground who see the reality firsthand and the guys who are selling the port.

"I've always marvelled that when you come into ports and talk to the executives, they always say everything is hunky-dory; they've never had a crime in their entire experience," Mr. Flynn said. "But then when you talk to the police, they scare the bejesus out of you about the problems on the ports."

What really frightens Senator Kenny is what terrorist groups are capable of. "Given the size of a nuclear device today, you could slip one into the trunk of a car, put it inside a container and move it anywhere you want," he said.

Ottawa may finally be acknowledging the threat to its ports. Last week, Transport Canada put out a call for an outside consulting expert "to develop a security assessment framework focused on antiterrorism for application to Canada's marine sector."

Mr. Collenette also revealed that an intergovernmental committee "is currently considering a proposal to require all employees who have access to restricted areas on the nation's seaports to undergo a criminal check."