The amount of media attention he's received made me a bit hesitant to interview Commander Stephen Flynn, the senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of America the Vulnerable, a book that unabashedly exposes the shortcomings of the country's current homeland security efforts.

Quite frankly, I didn't feel comfortable using the pages of LM to further an agenda that's been labeled by many as "alarmist." But after learning more about Flynn's 20 years in the Coast Guard, his work on the Hart-Rudman Commission, and his intelligence-community connections, I realized that his frontline experience offers a solid foundation for his criticisms.

It also affords him the intellectual clout to propose a blueprint for a more effective approach to securing the world's containerized transportation system. So I gave him a call to ask for his thoughts on how our readers could tighten the security of their global supply chains. What I found on the other end of the line was not a government-bashing bully intent on selling books, but an insightful scholar-turned-evangelist whose sermon on the concept of a "layered" worldwide container security system instantly earned my interest.

Flynn's proposal revolves around five "layers" of security measures. No single step in his plan would be enough to do the whole job, he says. Any single-point security measure, in fact, will have diminishing returns and eventually will fail. "You become complacent and your adversary figures it out," he says. "If you want to lock a door, that deters about 60 percent of the thieves. You move to a steel door, and eventually the guy will go through the window."

That's why Flynn advocates using several security measures to take advantage of the law of probability. "If I have five 60-percent solutions set up as a network, then I get a 99 percent effective rate," he says. "The cost of five 60-percent solutions can be less than taking any one or two and trying to get them to 80 percent."

We scheduled an hour for the interview, but it quickly turned to two. Flynn spoke about his days in the Coast Guard chasing drug smugglers, then detailed his frustrations following his stint on the Hart-Rudman Commission. Hearing that background gave me a clearer picture of what's driving his work today.

Before you jump to conclusions about his agenda, I urge you to read both the article that begins on Page 47 and my complete interview. You'll find the full transcript at www.logisticsmgmt.com/security.

Flynn is uniquely positioned to influence national security. I guarantee that what he has to say will not only challenge your ideas about security in the future, but will also make you re-think what you are doing to protect your supply chain today.