Sentinel of the Atlantic

Vice Adm. Vivien Crea cranks up the drug busts as she juggles missions and resources

As commander of the Coast Guard Atlantic Area and Maritime Defense Zone Atlantic, Vice Adm. Vivien S. Crea performs a “constant juggling” act with a growing list of missions and a fleet of ships and planes that continues to deteriorate. Some of her helicopters fly with range and fuel restrictions, and some ships are prone to dead engines and days in dry dock. Nonetheless, Coast Guard cutters in the Caribbean are setting records for drug interdictions, and Crea said the ports on the eastern seaboard are “absolutely” more secure now than before 9/11.

The Coast Guard’s fourth-ranked officer, Crea is responsible for the area from the Rocky Mountains to the Caribbean Sea and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Units under her command typically do 31,500 search-and-rescue missions and intercept more than 41 metric tons of illegal drugs each year. With a force of 27,000, including reservists and civilians, Crea is responsible for the security of some of the nation’s largest ports, including those in New York, New Jersey and Norfolk, Va.

A 32-year veteran of the service, Crea has been commander of the First Coast Guard District in Boston, chief of the Coast Guard’s research and development program, and a military aide to President Ronald Reagan. A Coast Guard aviator, Crea said homeland security is much improved, though she still stays awake at night wondering what terrorist cell “is out there with plans that we don’t know about.”

At her headquarters in Portsmouth, Va., Crea discussed these and other issues with Seapower Editor in Chief Richard C. Barnard.

You are getting great results these days with the interception of drug dealers in the Caribbean. Your numbers are way up. What brought about the improvement?

CREA: We’re working smarter. We have better intelligence and we have an ability to stop the smugglers when we find them, which we did not have previously. We used to just go out and drill holes in the water and the air, and wait for the drug boat to come underneath us. We spent a lot of effort without getting a whole lot of results. And when we found the druggies, we often couldn’t stop them in time. There’s this huge expanse of water out there and we were unable to get surface assets to them before the drug boat made it to shore, lost us or went into another country’s territorial waters.

We’ve now got snipers on our helicopters that are very, very good shots and they can shoot the outboard engines out without harming the crew or the boat. That basically paralyzes the boat until we can get to it and board it. Therefore, we get the drugs, the boat and the people, which leads to more intelligence. Also, we have gotten better with our interagency partners in the United States. We also work very effectively with the Brits and the Dutch down in the Caribbean.

Are we going to see better numbers year after year?

CREA: It’s always an interesting challenge because the druggies also have a lot invested in this. They look for weak points and vulnerabilities. They’re constantly shifting to a more effective way of doing business, and we’re constantly chasing after them, trying to anticipate. So I wouldn’t be so brazen as to say that we’re always going to outdo ourselves. We had a terrific year in 2004, and we’re doing extremely well this year. We’ll continue to keep the pressure on.

Many in the Coast Guard have been very frank about the condition of the fleet — the breached hulls, aircraft with faulty engines and skyrocketing maintenance costs. Does that degrade the performance of units in your command?

CREA: There’s a tremendous impact on our ability to prosecute our mission. I lose deployments. I lose two to three weeks out of patrol. Occasionally, I lose the whole patrol. I have not enough capacity as it is, and when a ship loses an engine or a major system, it has to go in for repair and I lose the presence on the water.

You’re aware of the need to re-engine our small helicopters. Until they’re re-engined, they’re reduced in the fuel load that they’re allowed to carry. They have only an hour-and-a-half of fuel available. They’re very hamstrung in their ability to take off and land on ships in the Caribbean on hot summer days. That means the ships lose their eyes in the sky.

I provide the resources to the rear admiral who’s in charge of the joint interagency task force that does the counterdrug interdiction in the deep Caribbean. I normally provide him two to three ships. Recently, he was down to one ship. He often says he has more intelligence than he has capacity to deal with, so that means some drug smugglers are basically going through scot-free during that time because we couldn’t do anything about it.

All of that sounds pretty serious.

CREA: It is serious. A few weeks ago, we did an interception and boarding on the high seas because a vessel had cargo on it that we were concerned about. The Coast Guard vessel with the boarding team lost one engine and had to depart. It was relieved by another vessel. So I lost the one vessel that had to go back to port to be fixed and the second vessel was no longer doing its mission. It’s constant juggling.

Will there come a day when the Coast Guard does not show up — for a rescue, for example.

CREA: It has happened already. We had a case off the coast of Cape Cod a few months ago. A fishing vessel was sinking and we launched a succession of four aircraft and none was able to get to the scene. We [also used surface assets] but were not able to get there in time to save all those fishermen. One survived and the others perished.

Search and rescue is our highest priority. We do everything to get there, but sometimes you physically can’t. You know, the taxpayer makes the decision; the government makes the decision on how much we’re going to invest into certain responsibilities the government has. And then you make the best risk assessment and use the capabilities as wisely as possible.

What is the state of readiness of the units in the Atlantic area?

CREA: No unit is perfect with all of its systems online, all of its billets filled with the people in them who have gone to all the right schools. There is a constant challenge to ensure that we have the highest state of readiness possible, but it’s not 100 percent. It takes our folks more work to achieve a state of readiness when they are dealing with older physical plants and a vastly growing field of work.

On our aircraft, for example, the maintenance hours per flight hour doubled over the last five years. It takes twice as much work to get one hour of flight out of each aircraft. I’m not uncomfortable with my state of readiness as long as I have the sense that there’s hope in the future to improve our capabilities, knowing that we’ve made the right decisions on how we allocate the resources that we have.

What are your top operational priorities?

CREA: Homeland security and search and rescue are always at the top. Protecting and saving lives are the top priority. But everything that we do is important. We have to ensure safe navigation or suddenly we go from a prevention mission to a response mission — something runs aground because the [navigational] aid wasn’t operating effectively. Or we have some kind of catastrophic oil spill. That has potential impact on the economy. You have to keep shipping moving while you’re trying to clean that up.

We can’t withdraw from any one mission, nor would we want to. We make a determination almost on a daily basis about what is the most important thing that we do. And we try to program our resources and allocate them far ahead of time. But when something breaks on short notice, it’s a readjustment.

Do you have the people you need and the right skills to carry out your responsibility?

CREA: I would like more capacity. I feel constrained by capacity. I can say that as an operational commander. Without getting that additional capacity, we’re working as best we can. We’ve got wonderful partnerships with other federal agencies, and state and local agencies. We’ve signed [agreements] with five or six states here in the Atlantic area that enable us to use state law enforcement resources to enforce federal jurisdiction. That all helps. We’ve got the Coast Guard auxiliary, which is just a phenomenal volunteer arm of the Coast Guard. We couldn’t do our job without it.

What are your top requirements for equipment and resources over the next two years?

CREA: I want fast, reliable aircraft and ships and boats. I want properly equipped people with the right safety and protective equipment for them to be able to do their missions, and the right sensors and information for them to be able to do their jobs effectively.

Is it frustrating for you personally to continuously deal with the status of the fleet?

CREA: It’s not frustrating. I feel very honored to have the responsibility. I think all us in the Coast Guard feel that way. We’re entrusted with these responsibilities by our citizens. It’s a tremendous privilege. It’s gratifying that we have absolutely incredible people in the Coast Guard that do the very best jobs that they can. They’re very intelligent and make the right decision and they do the job wonderfully.

And then things occur like the bombing in London that cause you to reassess what you’re doing. We do that on a daily basis, in many cases.

London security forces had to deal with suicide bombers. Is the Coast Guard assessing how best to protect major ports against them?

CREA: We’re constantly reassessing that. We’ve been doing it since before 9/11, while recognizing the vulnerability of ports. If ports were fortresses, they would be closed to us. We need access to them in order to facilitate commerce and provide a cheap and effective way of moving things. That creates challenges, obviously. So we’re constantly doing port vulnerability assessments, working with industry on the ships and the facilities to ensure that they’ve got plans on how to increase their security and that they exercise those plans. We’re working with partner [agencies] developing interoperable, joint operations centers to make sure we’ve got the intelligence and that we’re sharing it. There’s an awful lot going on.

Are the ports on the eastern seaboard more secure today than they were in 9/11?

CREA: Absolutely. We’ve done an awful lot of work both within the government — including state and local governments — and with industry and the port authorities. We have [tougher] regulations and we’re building the capability to make those ports a lot more safe. We got better information on what could be on the vessel. People have practiced and exercised together and we’re tremendously more secure now.

What I don’t know is have the threats gotten more ominous? That’s the thing that keeps us awake at night. What cell is out there with plans that we don’t know about?

Can you make a port perfectly secure?

CREA: No, you can’t. You can’t make anything perfect. It’s all risk management. But you can do your best to make it as difficult as possible to penetrate.

Are you happy with the security rankings that your port captains or port units are getting?

CREA: Well, we’re not getting A pluses on everything at all times because the threats change. And it’s up to our government and citizens to determine how much we want to pour into homeland security. If you poured everything into it, you wouldn’t have time or money to do anything else. It’s a constant effort to balance. I feel we’ve made tremendous progress, and we still have a long way to go.

The number of military women in Iraq killed in the course of battle has sparked a renewed debate in Washington about whether the United States should limit the roles of women in uniform. What’s your opinion?

CREA: First, it’s the responsibility and privilege of every citizen to serve his or her country. As a nation, we cannot afford to dismiss or trivialize the contributions of over half of our population. We need the best brains involved in protecting our homeland, and I would be extremely unhappy if the abilities of women to perform in those roles were diminished.

Is there a difference in capabilities?

CREA: We have men that are more capable and less capable than others, and women who are more capable and less capable. That’s the whole issue. Decisions about who should serve and what they should do should be capability driven, not gender driven.

How about the ability to command? In the Atlantic area, you have men and women in command of ships and other units. Is there a difference in the performance of these people?

CREA: Not unless I talk to them on the radio. Some have higher voices than others. Seriously, I’m very, very pleased with the integration of women into the Coast Guard. We don’t have enough women. I’d like to see a lot more. But those are personal decisions of the women, not the personnel decisions of the service. And the women that we do have are performing in every possible job and in every level that we’ve got and doing just incredible work.

The Coast Guard’s retention and recruiting numbers are very high these days. Why?

CREA: Serving in the Coast Guard gives you a tremendous sense of relevance. Nothing beats saving a life; nothing beats prosecuting the drug smuggler; nothing beats protecting our borders. Coast Guard people feel that what they’re doing is very important. They’re gratified that Americans recognize that and it’s just a very fulfilling job.

How do Americans recognize the job the Coast Guard is doing?

CREA: For example, you normally get the sense that things are a little less personal in New York. But people there would see my uniform and cross the street to come over and say “thank you.” It happens in Boston; it happens in Norfolk. People tap you on the shoulder and say, “You’re in the Coast Guard aren’t you? Thanks.”