Reshaping the Regime
The Coast Guard restructures its forces and reassesses security plans at every U.S. port
By DAVID MUNNS, Assistant Editor
The Coast Guard is recasting its maritime security regime at U.S. ports to bolster security and mitigate potential terrorist threats while limiting the impact of security procedures and restrictions on maritime trade.
To achieve those goals, the service is creating a deployable operations group (DOG), revamping an estimated 3,900 facility security plans, creating a web portal called “Homeport” to foster the coordination of several security efforts, and expanding its “Waterway Watch” program to enlist public involvement in improving the security of the nation’s ports and waterways.
Adm. Thad Allen, Coast Guard commandant, created the DOG in part to restructure the service into a more resilient and flexible force. As it responded to past port emergencies, the Coast Guard was forced to wrest assets and personnel from other essential areas.
Comprising a diverse array of response units and subject matter experts, the DOG would be available for deployment or consultation anywhere in the world without creating volatile shifts of personnel or expertise in other sectors of the Coast Guard.
The DOG will control all of the service’s specialized forces, including tactical law enforcement teams, maritime safety and security teams, port security units, and oil, chemical and biological response teams. Many of the units had been located overseas before Allen assumed command in May, a source told Seapower.
To create the DOG, and otherwise enhance port security, Allen is recalling some of the service’s seasoned experts out of retirement to provide legal expertise that had gone relatively undeveloped since the Cold War.
Rear Adm. J. Timothy Riker, a retired reservist, has been reactivated to bring the DOG to fruition. Initial activation of the unit was scheduled in late October, but the group will not be formally commissioned until July 2007. A year after its commissioning, the group is expected to be fully operational with the command staff based at Coast Guard headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Given the current emphasis on port security and other homeland security tasks, the Coast Guard realized it “had been using reserve forces, and much of the young regular forces, as augmentation for their regular missions of search and rescue and law enforcement, counter-drugs, counter-refugees,” after 9/11, the source said. As a result, the service sometimes lacked the expertise it needed for security tasks.
For example, on Sept. 12, 2001, a day after the terrorist attacks, the Coast Guard struggled to find international legal precedents that would allow the service to tighten access in the event of an emergency at ports in Key West, Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. Coast Guard officials found “they had a tree full of young owls and there were only two people in Florida with a background in port security,” the source said.
As the DOG is being established, the service is revamping the security plans for individual ports, which were created and reviewed in a little over a year after passage of the Maritime Security Act of 2002, which directed the Department of Homeland Security to secure maritime facilities and determine their susceptibility to large-scale acts of terrorism that could cause a large loss of life or economic disruption.
It was “a quick turnaround kind of thing,” said Cmdr. Tina Burke, chief of the Coast Guard’s Domestic Ports Division in the Office of the Port Facility Activities Prevention Directorate. “They were done in bulk at that time to get them into the system and approved so that these facilities and vessels could continue to operate.”
The plans were reviewed by the Marine Safety Center, an adjunct to Coast Guard headquarters, with an implementation deadline of July 2004.
The law mandates a five-year review cycle during which the security plans are reassessed to determine emerging threats and vulnerabilities and standardize mitigation measures. However, Coast Guard officials emphasize that ports are transport hubs and absolute security from all potential threats is not an attainable goal.
“By their very nature, ports are open,” said Burke. “You can’t build a fence around a port and call it secure.”
One of the service’s remedies is to establish security command centers at each port. Some have been designated as prototypes for the development of command centers at other ports.
Additionally, each Coast Guard captain of the port — the individual ultimately responsible for security at each facility — has also been designated a federal maritime security coordinator. Each is responsible for developing an area maritime security plan that takes a broader view of security by including the area surrounding the port and incorporating the views of port stakeholders.
Using the port security plans as a foundation, the captain of each port is to create an area maritime security plan in coordination with state and local law enforcement agencies, harbor masters, Customs and Border Protection, the Transportation Security Administration and the maritime industry operating within the port.
The plans contain specific information necessary to beef up security, Burke said, such as how cargo and persons are to be screened when entering a port, as well as “access control measures” to “make sure people who want access to the facility belong there.”
The area security plans will assess threats to the port and response plans to be implemented at various maritime security (MARSEC) levels, created by federal law and international agreements, with the International Maritime Organization, requiring the Coast Guard to set security levels for the marine industry.
The three-tier MARSEC levels are established by the Coast Guard commandant as a means of communication regarding the scalable security response requisite to threats posed against the ports. As Homeland Security advisory levels and potential threats increase, so do the MARSEC levels and corresponding Coast Guard responses.
MARSEC levels include response activities such as the creation of security zones around particular facilities.
Security level one is the level at which ships and ports normally operate, and is parallel to Homeland Security threat conditions green, blue or yellow — or low, guarded and elevated.
MARSEC level two generally corresponds to Homeland Security advisory level orange, or high. This level may be applied nationwide, but could be pertinent only to a particular region, within a certain maritime industry sector or even to a single port. MARSEC level two results in some temporary degradation in other Coast Guard missions as resources are shifted to deal with the new threat.
When an attack is imminent or has occurred, MARSEC level three, corresponding to Homeland Security threat level red, or severe, is raised. This MARSEC level has never been reached, said Burke, but would “hopefully” be accompanied by sufficient intelligence information to identify a specific number of threatened ports, and diminish disruptions to the flow of commerce elsewhere.
“Port closures or restrictions upon supply chains, the energy sector and public transportation can bring our economy to an abrupt halt,” Allen told guests Aug. 1 at the first maritime recovery symposium sponsored by the Coast Guard in Linthicum Heights, Md. “At a minimum, a major incident will have sizable regional, national and international economic implications. Consequences grow by the hour, by the day.”
To coordinate the response to security alert levels, the Coast Guard has also launched a web portal called Homeport to automate notification processes. Homeport enables port stakeholders to submit and store security plans for approval by the Department of Homeland Security, provides a secure means for port facility operators to view lists of union personnel authorized to access port facilities, and gives maritime security personnel a way to submit personal information to the Transportation Security Administration needed to conduct background screening and credentialing.
There are public and classified areas in Homeport. The persons able to access classified information are vetted by the Coast Guard and are mostly security officers for facilities, vessels and companies, as well as port security partners such as Customs and Border Protection and the Transportation Security Administration.
To further bolster its security operations for transport hubs such as ports and harbors, the Coast Guard is expanding its “Waterway Watch” program, which enlists the support of the boating community and public at large. The program is being designed to give citizens information to recognize and report suspicious activity.
“It’s a force multiplier, giving us a lot more eyes and ears out on the waterfront,” said Burke.
Also in development is the improved and standardized credentialing of port personnel. Transportation Worker Identification Credentials are in “rulemaking” status, meaning that the background checks and identification cards to be issued in the future are being fine-tuned by the Department of Homeland Security.
“The next logical step,” said Allen, “is to take these goals and transform them into a national plan for maritime recovery” in the aftermath of security threat or incident.
