Code of CG's Security Team: 'Failure is Not an Option'

By DAVID VERGUN
Associate Editor

Lt. Cdr. Jose L. Rodriguez's heart started beating faster. He had just received a call from Atlantic Area Headquarters in Portsmouth, Va., that set in motion a chain of events--some unexpected and some fraught with peril--that would test his fledgling unit of 104 men and women, Coast Guard Maritime Safety and Security Team 02 (MSST-02), commissioned only three weeks earlier on 16 August 2002.

Rodriguez immediately drove to his base at Coast Guard Training Center Yorktown, Va.--site of the American victory in the Revolutionary War. Within minutes he was at the message center, pulling up the secret message directing him and his unit to deploy immediately to New York City. The mission: to protect the president of the United States, who would be speaking at Ellis Island in three days, on the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

Rodriguez called his operations officer early that morning, directing him to page all MSST-02 personnel notifying them to report for duty immediately. Within a few hours, three MSST planning staff members were in a van driving to New York, where they would make liaison with the captain of the port and ensure adequate fuel, food, berthing, and other basics for the unit, the rest of which would follow close on their heels.

Within five hours of the call from Area, Rodriguez and his unit were traveling west on Interstate 64 in Virginia toward I-95, which would take them north to New York. An unusual convoy it was: five vans and three large Ford 350 and 550 pickup trucks. Each pickup pulled a trailer with a souped-up 38-foot-long deployable pursuit boat. The vans were packed with Coastguardsmen and their machine guns, small arms, ammunition, radios, and other combat gear, as well as charts, life preservers, extra boat motors, repair tools, and other essentials required for water and land operations.

Up to this point, Rodriguez had had little time to ponder the mission and the abilities of the young men and women in his new unit, but once on the road, he reflected.

So far, so good, he thought, pleased that his Coasties and their prepositioned vans, trucks, and gear had been ready to roll without a hitch. Rodriguez mentally calculated how they could reduce response time even further for the next operation.

Everyone in MSST-02 knew that whatever the cost, they had to accomplish their mission. It was their very raison d'être: to stop terrorist attacks at the waterfront when all else had failed. Failure was not an option.

Rodriguez recalled when MSST-02 had stood up following a month of training at Camp Lejeune, a Marine Corps base on the North Carolina coast. Their training had been modeled, in part, on that provided to Coast Guard port security units (PSUs) and law enforcement detachment units (LEDETs), which perform a variety of traditional Coast Guard duties.

PSUs provide harbor defense in overseas environments, and LEDETs enforce counter narcotics laws from U.S.- and foreign-flagged naval ships. The training for MSST-02 had included small-vessel tactics, rules of engagement, weapons handling, and noncompliant boardings. All MSST personnel held at least the rank of petty officer third class--the minimum required for law enforcement duties--and all had come from a variety of other specialties in the Coast Guard. Their average age was 25.

Although the unit was new and its members young, Rodriguez could see the pride and professionalism in the face of each man and woman. He had seen that same determination and esprit in other young men and women whom he had led over the past 23 years--first as an enlisted rescue swimmer/instructor for 10 years and then as a LEDET commander and as an exchange officer, commanding a Marine Corps unit. Yes, MSST-02 had it in them. He was so sure they were ready, in fact, that he was willing to bet his life--and the president's--on it.

MSST-02 was the second of four MSST units created after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. With homeland security as their primary mission, MSST-02 falls under the operational control of the captain of the port in which the unit is working. The MSST sets up and defends a security zone around anything that a captain deems to be a high-value asset, be it a suspicious vessel, a waterside event such as Navy Day in Broward County, Fla., U.S. Navy load-outs, a threat to a bridge or petroleum facility, or in this case, the president of the United States himself. The captain of the port, a Coast Guard captain, has the authority to close a port and to regulate commerce in any way he sees fit to enhance security. MSST-02's area of responsibility is the entire East Coast of the United States.

After about 10 hours on the road, the convoy pulled into Coast Guard Activity New York on Staten Island. They headed past the batteries of Fort Wadsworth, which had guarded the harbor approaches to New York City for two centuries, down to the water of the Narrows beneath the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

The three deployable pursuit boats were lowered into the water, and for the next two days, the coxswains and boat crews cruised around Ellis Island to become familiar with the waters and their surroundings. Communications and intelligence links were established with other security elements, including the president's Secret Service team, federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, other Coast Guard units, and firefighters. Security on land had already been beefed up, and the land element of the MSST-02 team was placed on standby status.

On the evening of 11 September 2002, President Bush arrived on Ellis Island to address the nation in his "Spirit of Freedom Tribute." The MSST's waterborne element circled the island in boats, keeping recreational boaters away and looking for anything vaguely suspicious or threatening.

Everything was going according to plan; that is, until the unexpected happened. The captain of the port notified Rodriguez that radiation had been detected aboard the Liberian-flagged container ship M/V Palermo Senator, which had just entered New York Harbor. The vessel had made stops at several potential terrorism trouble spots, including Egypt, Malaysia, and Singapore.

Rodriguez directed MSST-02's land element to board the vessel, just hours before the president was to speak. A multiagency inspection team accompanied them, and the vessel was ordered back out to sea. For the next five days, MSST-02 combed the vessel, searching for weapons of mass destruction. None were found. It was later determined that a load of tile the vessel had previously carried contained low-level amounts of radiation, raising the count on the radiation detector.

During the boarding, Rodriguez felt especially anxious because his team lacked adequate protective clothing for high-level radiation exposure, and they carried no radiation detectors. He mentally added these concerns to his growing list of lessons learned.

Other items on his list included a need for divers to detect and combat underwater attackers, unmanned underwater surveillance vehicles, bomb-sniffing dogs, and use of HH-60J Jayhawk helicopters for fast roping to vessels instead of clambering up the side of the ship using the age-old Jacob's-ladder method. These and other enhancements to the MSST teams would be added to the team's capabilities within the next year--except for vertical insertion, which is still being considered.

MSST-02 had accomplished its mission. When things go right, Rodriguez thought, there isn't any fanfare or publicity. But if there's a screw-up ... well, better not think about that.

On the way back to Yorktown on the evening of 15 September, Rodriguez felt a great sense of pride for his Coasties. It had been a hairy five days for him and his team, but MSST-02 had demonstrated great vigilance and flexibility, and in dozens of subsequent operations from Boston to Miami, they would prove themselves time and time again.

How, Rodriguez wondered, could the success of his and other MSST teams be measured? Most Americans aren't even aware of the behind-the-scenes work that four tiny MSST teams do to help secure 96,000 miles of coastline and 25,000 miles of navigable waterways. That nothing happened is a measure of success, Rodriguez reasoned.

Postscript

Liberty was not sounded right away upon returning to base. The unit was not dismissed until the vehicles, weapons, and gear had been cleaned and prepositioned for the next operation, which would be soon in coming. For now, Rodriguez congratulated them on a job well done and told them to get some much-needed rest.

Funding for a total of 12 MSST teams--eight new ones and the current four teams based in Seattle, Wash., Houston, Texas, Los Angeles, Calif., and Yorktown, Va.--is in the fiscal year 2004 budget. Plans are to relocate MSST-02 from Yorktown to Chesapeake, Va.

In an address to the World Shipping Council in Washington, D.C., on 17 September 2002, just two days after MSST-02 left New York City, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thomas H. Collins praised MSST-02 and other Coast Guard units that had protected the president and boarded the Palermo Senator. In closing, he remarked: "Failure is not an option."

Rodriguez knows that he and his team will live--or die--by those words. *

Gunnery Sgt. David Vergun (USMC Ret.) is the associate editor of The Military Engineer magazine.