NORFOLK, Va., Feb. 8 (UPI) -- America Unguarded: How far off is homeland security?
Editor's note: President Bush, in his budget released this week, calls for $38 billion to protect homeland security -- an issue that was literally not on the radar until four hijacked airplanes changed America's priorities forever on Sept. 11. But where are the real gaps in homeland security, and what will it take to plug them?
This 10-part series by United Press International takes you from a Coast Guard ship looking for explosive cargo in the Atlantic off Virginia, to the rivers and bridges and wild frontier that make Canada suddenly a more important security front than Mexico. In between, the series looks at security innovations, political uncertainties, the new face of the immigration debate, holes in financial security, and the economic consequences if checkpoints against terror become chokepoints against trade.
The series' principal reporters are White House Bureau Chief Nicholas M. Horrock and
Congressional Bureau Chief Mark Benjamin, with reporting by UPI Science Editor Dee Ann Divis and writer Charles Choi; Chief Economics Correspondent Ian Campbell and Washington Reporter Kathy Gambrell.
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The 500-foot cargo ship has slowed almost to a dead stop 15 miles off of Norfolk in the choppy gray Atlantic. Flying an Italian flag, her last port of call was Bermuda and she wants to head up into the Chesapeake Bay into the heart of Baltimore. Her hull is fully loaded with chemicals, including phosphoric acid, weighing her down into the sea so that just a slim line of her bright orange hull drifts slowly up and down above the frigid, 5-foot swells.
Cmdr. Kevin Quigley, commanding officer of the 270-foot U.S. Coast Guard ship Harriet Lane has pulled his ship up alongside, keeping the freighter about 1,000 yards off the Harriet Lane's starboard quarter where she waits under a slow, bone-chilling drizzle.
The 42-year-old commander has 20 years of experience in the Coast Guard.
He has ordered that the boarding take place in the open sea, so he has enough room to maneuver if he has to.
Boarding Team Charlie, an eight-member crew of men and women trained to board potentially dangerous vessels, has gathered on the Harriet Lane's helicopter flight deck. They are lined up against the port side railings wearing bright orange foul weather gear, pointing their 9-millimeter pistols out to sea and checking ammunition in synchronized movements according to the barked commands of their team leader, Lt. j.g. Heywood Silcox.
Before Sept. 11, the cargo ship would be just another vessel heading toward Norfolk. After Sept. 11, she has to be considered a floating bomb.
"He's got a lot of chemicals on board. We are going to take a close look, for obvious reasons," Silcox says of the cargo ship. "There are a lot of targets around here," he says, gesturing back towards the Atlantic seaboard and the planned path of the ship, which is scheduled to cruise past countless gray Navy cruisers lined up at the docks in Norfolk, past the Chesapeake Bay Bridge humming with traffic and up into Baltimore, only 30 miles northeast of Washington.
Just months ago, the Harriet Lane might have been off the coast of Central America, prowling for drug runners or tiny vessels smuggling refugees toward the Florida shores. But she has been reassigned, along with most of the Coast Guard, as the government has pulled out the stops in a scramble to protect 95,000 miles of coastline and the country's 20 largest ports. Those 20 ports handle more than 95 percent of U.S. international trade, moving $737 billion in cargo a year, and creating the ballast that keeps the economy afloat.
The federal government has spent decades mostly trying to facilitate the free flow of trade and ensure that goods and services can flow quickly and easily in and out of the United States largely unmolested. U.S. officials readily acknowledge, for example, that those efforts have led to a situation where customs officials probably inspect only two out of every 100 cargo containers that arrive in U.S. ports, a statistic that has galvanized debate over port security inside and outside the U.S. government.
Officials from the White House Office of Homeland Security now identify ports as pressing security vulnerabilities. That office is busy preparing a major report for delivery to the president early this year that will include a series of recommendations designed to revolutionize port security, officials in that office confirm.
In the meantime, the Coast Guard and Navy have dramatically changed their mission to prevent some threats from even reaching those ports. Homeland security operations now make up nearly 60 percent of all Coast Guard operations, as opposed to around 2 percent before Sept. 11, according to the White House.
On Jan. 10, the Navy announced that it would dispatch 13 Cyclone-Class coastal patrol ships to the Coast Guard to help with the new mission, "Operation Noble Eagle," the government's name for military activities to improve homeland security. The 170-foot Navy ships, designed for use in coordination with Special Operations forces, have joined ships such as the Harriet Lane chasing down and boarding countless vessels as they come toward the United States.
Coast Guard officials acknowledge, however, they cannot possibly board and search every cargo ship before it unloads in the United States and are only creating a first line of defense.
Since Sept. 11, the Coast Guard has boarded 1,792 "high interest" vessels on the open seas in what Coast Guard officials said is the biggest port security operation since World War II. But that is only a fraction of the 51,000 arrivals in U.S. ports each year.
"What we are doing out here, frankly, is quite random," Quigley admits as he squints through binoculars at the cargo ship off his starboard side. "Certainly, we are not looking at every ship that comes in. We have made no bones about that."
But they do look for anything unusual.
As government officials scramble to come up with new plans to address a clandestine threat that could be hiding in any one of a thousand ship hulls, politically and economically, whatever schemes they devise cannot slow down commerce. According to the Coast Guard, 95 percent of overseas commerce comes into the United States through ports. Maritime industries contribute $742 billion each year to the gross national product.
For security reasons, Coast Guard officials will not disclose the criteria they consider when deciding whether to board and search an incoming vessel.
But Coast Guard intelligence officers do review cargo manifests, crew and passenger lists. Before Sept. 11, ships would send their manifests in only 24 hours before arriving in port. That number has been increased to 96 hours, in part to give Coast Guard intelligence officers time to make their decisions.
For whatever reason, the 500-foot chemical ship has been identified as a potential threat.
Out on the horizon through the freezing mist appears the bow of one of the 170-foot Navy patrol crafts assigned to the Coast Guard. It is the USS Thunderbolt heading to the scene. This will be a joint boarding using the Harriet Lane's Boarding Team Charlie and a Coast Guard crew that has been dispatched to the Thunderbolt for these operations.
The PCs can easily travel in excess of 30 knots and the Thunderbolt comes into focus off of the horizon with shocking speed, as she bashes the 5-foot seas into a spray off her bow.
Aboard the Harriet Lane, Silcox and his team have already spent hours pouring over the cargo manifests and crew lists. The boarding party members have each received their assignments: inspecting passports and crew lists and cross-checking them with the faces of the 21 crew members they expect to meet, inspecting cargo, and investigating engineering spaces and the ship's superstructure. Team members say they go so far as to turn on television sets on boarded vessels, to make sure they have not been hollowed out for use as secret containers. They even inspect nautical charts on the bridge for any clues.
"We look for anything unusual," Silcox says through the drizzle up on the Harriet Lane's helicopter deck.
Built in the 1980s, the Harriet Lane was originally equipped with torpedoes and depth charges to defend against Soviet submarines. But now she has a new mission, one that Quigley says his crew has embraced with particular vigor since Sept. 11.
"They are pretty gung-ho" Quigley says about his boarding party.
Members of Boarding Team Charlie check their weapons once again: pepper spray, batons, handcuffs, inspection mirrors and ion swipes to detect drug residue while they are searching.
Silcox gives the team final instructions.
"Remember, this is not a race," Silcox tells his team. "If you find something, call me and we will go take a look."
They climb one-by-one down a swinging rope ladder to a small rigid-hull inflatable boat. The 150-horsepower engines kick in and they bounce off across the surf.
A bright orange Coast Guard helicopter has arrived from a routine patrol in the area. It circles the freighter several hundred feet up as Boarding Team Charlie climbs the long ladder up into the freighter.
The sleek gray Thunderbolt was built for speed and sits low and dark on the ocean. She has only about an 8-foot draft, which helps make her fast, but she bobs like a cork in the water. Climbing aboard her is like climbing aboard a floating knife after being aboard the Harriet Lane, with her high, white sides and sturdy decks.
Down below, Thunderbolt Capt. Henry Adams is taking a quick coffee break in the ship's cramped galley while a Coast Guard detachment assigned to his ship is busy inspecting the freighter along with Boarding Team Charlie, from the Harriet Lane. His ship was one of the first of the 13 PCs ordered into homeland security duty with the Coast Guard. He sits back in the camouflage uniform suited for special operations and removes his dark Ray Ban sunglasses.
The heavily armed Thunderbolt has already been busy that day escorting a freighter full of natural gas out of the Chesapeake Bay past Norfolk. Escorting cargo ships that would make potent terrorist targets is another duty the Navy and Coast Guard have adopted.
"If that ship were to detonate near downtown Norfolk, it would be a serious event," Adams says of the natural gas freighter.
Three hours later, Boarding Team Charlie is back aboard the Harriet Lane, along with the other crew back on the Thunderbolt. It was a relatively quick inspection in comparison to others that can take as long as 12 hours; regardless, they go on continuously for Coast Guard crews 24 hours a day.
On this day, team members did not like the looks of one cargo compartment.
Bolts on the compartment appeared brand new, as if someone had worked on it recently and they had some trouble getting the crew of the freighter to open it.
But in the end, it held legitimate cargo.
The hectic mission pace for the Coast Guard and Navy has settled some since the weeks following Sept. 11. Navy and Coast Guard officials agree they can probably maintain the current level of ship inspections. But they also agree that means they will neglect many other duties the services are supposed to perform.
"Obviously, there is some other mission loss," Adams says about other duties the Coast Guard and Navy can no longer perform. But he notes the fortunate peace at U.S. ports, at least so far, since the Sept. 11 attacks.
"We must be doing something right," says Adams.
Next: Policies, politics and politicians collide in the scramble to fix homeland security.
