Terrorists’ arrests and empty rafts in the Niagara galvanize the U.S. Coast Guard’s ‘sleepy 9th’

By MATT HILBURN, Associate Editor

The 9th Coast Guard District once had the reputation as the “sleepy 9th.” But that changed in the aftermath of 9/11.

Since the terrorist attacks, “we’ve got this entire homeland security issue at play up here in the Great Lakes, and it really sort of dominates our thinking and how we carry out the remainder of our [traditional] missions,” said Rear Adm. Robert J. Papp Jr., who in May 2004 took command of the district — which encompasses the Great Lakes basin that includes Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York.

Those traditional missions include marine safety and search and rescue — there are some 5.4 million recreational boats in the 9th’s area of responsibility — aids to navigation, ice breaking, maritime security and marine inspections, among others.

Easing and ensuring the safe flow of commerce on the Great Lakes also falls to the 9th. According to the Coast Guard, about $1.2 billion worth of goods pass between the United States and Canada daily, much of which is carried by the 165 U.S. and Canadian ships, and more than 550 foreign ships, that navigate the Great Lakes annually.

But 9/11 brought a whole new mission set to the 9th and with it a “drastically” higher operations tempo.

The increase was for good reason, as statistics provided to Seapower by the Coast Guard paint a picture of a potential hotbed of terrorist activity in the region the 9th is responsible for. There have been more than 160 terror-related arrests there since 9/11, according to the Coast Guard. In 2003, the Mackenzie Institute, a Toronto-based independent nonprofit organization that studies issues related to political instability and organized violence, issued a report entitled “Overseas Terrorism in Canada” that claimed 15 recognized terrorist groups have some presence in the Great Lakes area. Papp identifies Toronto and Detroit/Windsor as areas of special concern.

Among those arrested was Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, who was nabbed in Dearborn , Mich. , and charged with providing material support to the terrorist group Hezbollah. Also taken down in the 9th’s area of responsibility was Aref Ahmed, a convicted cigarette smuggler who was apprehended in Buffalo , N.Y. , for allegedly financing the so-called “Lackawanna Six’s” trip to an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in 2001.

According to Papp, Coast Guard seizures of illegal drugs, weapons, cigarettes and alcohol, all potential sources of revenue for terrorist cells, have seen only a  slight uptick, but he speculates that is because of the service’s increased presence.

From October 2002-September 2004, the 9th District seized 31,747 pounds of marijuana, 179,653 marijuana plants, 148,548 cartons of cigarettes, 40,177 cases of liquor, 80 sticks of dynamite and more than 500 weapons.

“We’ve intercepted payments, what are probably payments, hockey bags full of cash,” Papp said. “And since I’ve been up here, there have been millions of dollars in cash intercepted.

“When you start seeing hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars, being recovered, which is probably just a small percentage of what’s going back and forth, that raises my concern.”

What concerns Papp more is the demographic makeup of the nearly 2,000 illegal immigrants the 9th apprehended from October 2002-September 2004.

“Clearly, we have a lot more people coming across our southwest border,” he said. “But the vast majority of those are economic migrants. The migrants that come across the northern border are often from target countries that we’re concerned about.”

Keeping tabs on would-be illegal immigrants is a difficult task in the 9th. The district covers 295,000 square miles of land and water, including 6,700 miles of shoreline and 1,500 miles of international border with Canada . Along this stretch are numerous chokepoints, which the Coast Guard cites as pivotal spots for smuggling of all kinds.

The Coast Guard routinely finds rafts in the Niagara River area, indicating a possible upswing in illegal border crossings. In the winter months, much of the border waters freeze over allowing would-be smugglers or immigrants to simply drive or walk across.

“I could make the case that it’s easier to get into this country in the winter across the ice,” said Papp, who recently was nominated to become Coast Guard chief of staff and for promotion to vice admiral.

While porous borders indicate potential for terrorist activity, the 9th has responded to specific threats. During the 2004 presidential campaign, Cleveland , where the 9th is headquartered, played host to the vice presidential debate. As the debate approached, Papp said, intelligence was received that there could be a terrorist attack.

According to Boatswain’s Mate 2nd Class Jonah Pike, who is stationed at Coast Guard Station Fairport, about an hour east of Cleveland , the intelligence was not that specific.

“Someone heard ‘bomb’ and ‘vice president’ on the radio,” he said. “We had to do 24-hour patrols until the VP had left the area. We didn’t know what we were looking for; we were just boarding every boat that came into Fairport Harbor .”

But it’s not just when VIPs visit that the 9th District has had to increase its operations tempo in the wake of 9/11. Station Fairport sits just down the Lake Erie shoreline from Perry Nuclear Power Station.

According to Pike, fishermen like to congregate around the plant’s outflow, where the warm water attracts fish. Since 9/11, the plant has established a security zone, and fishermen are supposed to stay away.

Pike said Coast Guard personnel from his station patrol the plant at different times of the day or night and go into the security zone to make sure no interlopers are present, and sometimes they respond to specific calls from the plant to check something out, a task made much easier and faster by the RB-S (Response Boat-Small) Homeland Security boat the station received.

“It used to take us 20 minutes to get over there,” said Pike. “Since then, they’ve given us this homeland security boat, and we’re there in a hurry.”

Papp said the addition of the RB-Ss to the 9th is “perfect for the type of security operations we do up here and also helping in carrying out the traditional missions.”

RB-Ss are not the only upgrade the 9th is receiving. According to Papp, the biggest benefit the 9th will reap from the Deepwater multibillion dollar program to upgrade the Coast Guard’s assets is improving the district’s helicopter fleet.

“The only aircraft we fly up here in the 9th are the HH-65 Dolphins and, quite frankly, we’re on the end of the line,” he said. “Getting the Charlie model up here will give us increased speed, increased endurance and a much more capable aircraft than we currently have in the Bravo model.”

Still, both air stations in the 9th are in Michigan , one in Detroit , and the other in Traverse City , making reaching the extremes of the district’s boundaries a challenge.

“At the eastern end, I’ve got a little bit of support from the Canadians [because] they have an air station up in Ontario ,” Papp said. “At the western edge of Lake Superior , we’ve really got no coverage.”

Papp did say that if the 9th goes into an enhanced security posture, as happened during the vice presidential debate, it can bring in C-130s and other airborne sensors that will help cover the international boundary.

Given the permeable border, the huge area of responsibility, limited air assets, the amount of smuggling and the standard Coast Guard missions, the once “sleepy 9th” has a full plate, all of which it has to accomplish with about 2,200 active-duty Coast Guard members — up about 400 since 9/11.

Under Papp’s tenure, however, the 9th has enlisted a strong ally to enhance its homeland security mission: Canada .

“I think we’ve always had a good working relationship with the Canadians in terms of our traditional Coast Guard missions,” said Papp. “We have agreements in place, even memorandums of understanding, that allow us to conduct icebreaking together. We share aids to navigation responsibilities up here, and, of course, we share duties for search and rescue.”

Law enforcement, however, was another matter given sovereignty concerns and Canadian unease with weapons carriage.

To demonstrate how the international border is used by criminals, Papp points to a photo of a boat the Coast Guard was chasing that was able to make it to Canadian waters without being captured. The driver of the boat is gleefully “flipping the bird” at his pursuers. At that point, shooting the photo was about all the U.S. Coast Guard could do.

“I would say prior to 9/11 we were in this static equilibrium of understanding each other and understanding that we just don’t carry out [law enforcement] missions across the border,” Papp said.

A major initiative begun by Papp is the “Shiprider” program, which allows U.S. Coast Guardsmen to ride Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) boats and RCMP members to ride on Coast Guard boats. This, he said, would allow both sides to continue “hot pursuits” over the territorial waters. It’s similar to agreements that already exist in the Caribbean , where the Coast Guard and another country routinely ride on one another’s boats.

A “Shiprider” proof of concept was done last summer. That went well enough that it was tried again for the Super Bowl this past February. Still, each of these joint exercises must be meticulously planned and negotiated with five Canadian agencies and then finally get ironed out between the state departments of each country.

“I’m hopeful that at some point in the future, it will become routine matter of fact that’s the way we do business up here rather than having to go through and gain consensus on each individual operation,” Papp said.

Chief Superintendent Mike Cabana, director general for border integrity with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, would also like to see something like “Shiprider” become a normal way of doing business on the Great Lakes .

“This is new territory,” he said. “The laws that are in place were not put in place with cross-border law enforcement in mind.”

Cabana added that the Canadian government is currently working on a legal framework that would address “impediments” to working more closely with the U.S. Coast Guard, such as sovereignty, governance, oversight and other issues. The Canadian parliament would have to approve any changes in the law, and Cabana said he hopes that will happen in 2007.

Papp said it won’t be possible for every Coast Guard ship to host RCMP members and vice-versa, but he hopes to be able to do it randomly so that “evil-doers” do not know when and where the Coast Guard would have the capability to pursue suspects into Canadian waters.

While “Shiprider” helps address some of the law enforcement concerns, it is just the latest among several initiatives with Canada that should make border vigilance on the waterways tighter.

The Joint Initial Verification Team, for example, has combined U.S. and Canadian maritime inspection processes. Prior to its establishment, foreign vessels entering the Great Lakes underwent Canadian inspection in Montreal , and then U.S. inspections in Massena , N.Y.

Early in Papp’s tenure as commanding officer, he got the Canadians to agree to an experiment in which U.S. Coast Guard members perform U.S. inspections in Montreal to see if there was greater efficiency in the ability to inspect vessels before they enter U.S. waters.

“Sure enough, as we approached the end of the 30 days, they invited us to stay throughout the end of the shipping season,” he said. “And then throughout the winter we got into negotiations, and they invited us back for the entire next shipping season.”

Negotiations are still under way for the 2006 season.

Also, the Coast Guard has established a presence at the Maritime Security Operations Center in Halifax , Nova Scotia , which is run by the Canadian Navy. According to Papp, that will serve to provide better intelligence on ships about to enter the Canadian/U.S. waterways.

“There is a very good recognition that we have security concerns and that we have to take this seriously up here,” Papp said. “[We’re] no longer working hard for only nine months.”