Changing Course

n a beautiful, mid-October day, the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Chinook patrols New York Harbor. The 87-foot ship, cruising at a top speed of 24 knots, monitors a three-mile stretch between the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. The 10-member crew conducts routine, random boardings of recreational and commercial vessels. No specific type of ship is singled out. The boarding teams are looking for any suspicious activity-or objects. They check the accuracy of manifests and personnel records. The Chinook comes to a stop near the Statue of Liberty. It rests there for about half an hour. The crew surveys the area. Despite the glaring hole in the city's skyline, it seems like a relatively normal day on the cutter.

As the ship turns around and makes its way toward the bridge, the crew is relaxed. Commanding Officer Joe Vealencis leans back in his chair with his feet up. He's reading former Secretary of State James Baker's book, The Politics of Diplomacy. Other crew members sip sodas and take verbal jabs at one another, behaving like a band of brothers. They are young and spirited. Vealencis is only 25 and a couple of the crew members are barely out of their teens. Brad Mathis, who handles chef duties, among others, whets the crew's appetite by telling them that flank steak is today's lunch.

But in an instant, everything changes. Mark Stauffer, the ship's pilot and executive petty officer, raises a set of binoculars and focuses on a glimmering object at the base of the bridge.

"What have you got, XPO?" Vealencis asks Stauffer, putting down his book and rising from his seat.

Stauffer reports seeing an object parked next to Fort Wadsworth at the base of the bridge. It's a black Ford Explorer, and it's not supposed to be there. The area is closed to the public. Stauffer spots two people walking away from the vehicle. Vealencis radios the Coast Guard station on Staten Island. He turns to the crew and calmly calls out an order: "Make preparations for setting off the small boat. Chief, bring along a rifle."

The $5 million Chinook is a new class of cutter. Like all cutters in its class, the Chinook carries a small boat, which is used to ferry boarding teams. The Chinook's small boat is stowed in and launched from the rear of the ship. Older cutters in the fleet must use cranes to lower boats from the side. That can take several minutes. For the Chinook it takes just seconds. Three crew members climb aboard. The small boat then heads toward the fort. Those remaining on the Chinook keep an eye on other parts of the bridge as well as passing ships. After checking the coastline, the crew lands on shore to investigate the area. The Ford Explorer has left the scene.

"It's probably nothing," says Vealencis. "But this is our mission. We are here to protect these waters and the bridge. I can't take the chance and ignore it." The Chinook is eerily quiet. Intensity fills the cabin as the crew members grab binoculars and look toward the fort. "We know it's not playtime anymore," says Vealencis.

The small boat returns and its chief, Jon Wiedeman, briefs Vealencis on the mission. No suspicious objects. No people. Nothing. The Chinook resumes its normal patrol. Except that in the wake of Sept. 11, nothing is truly normal anymore. In fact, on a normal day the Chinook would not be anywhere near the Verrazano Narrows Bridge or even New York Harbor, for that matter. It would be patrolling the George's Bank, a shoal larger than Massachusetts that stretches from Cape Cod to the southern tip of Nova Scotia. The Chinook's home is New London, Conn. The crew usually enforces the nation's fishery laws, conducts routine safety inspections of fishing and recreational boats and participates in search and rescue operations.

The New Normalcy

Like many Coast Guard cutters, the Chinook changed course after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. Homeland security is now Job 1. Starting Monday, Oct. 15, the Chinook joined an expanded homeland security detail in New York Harbor. By Friday, Oct. 19, the Chinook had logged 87 hours on patrol. Under normal circumstances, the Chinook logs about 300 patrol hours every three months. The ship was scheduled to go ashore Saturday, Oct. 20, to refuel and restock supplies. Vealencis also hoped to let the crew "get some real sleep." They were expected back on duty Sunday. Then, they were to head back to New London, but most crew members predicted the cutter would return to New York soon.

"I don't know if we will ever go back to just counting fish," says Stauffer. "I foresee us doing a rotation where we do fishery for a short period of time and then do port security the next week."

The Chinook is not alone in curtailing its normal mission. As of late October, 55 cutters, 42 aircraft and hundreds of small boats had been diverted from other duties and assigned to patrol domestic ports and coastlines. As a result, the Coast Guard was doing just 10 percent of the fishery missions and 25 percent of the counter-drug missions it conducted before Sept. 11. Some tasks, such as intercepting illegal immigrants, were zeroed out.

"There is not a single Coast Guard asset that is being deployed to carry out that very important mission," says Adm. James Loy, Coast Guard commandant. "We have lots of data that some of these missions-migrants and drugs-are very important for national security. This is probably the worst time for us to be standing down counter-drug [efforts], when the profits from the drug trade, whether it is heroin in Afghanistan or cocaine in Columbia, are clearly part of the funding engine for international terrorism."

The Coast Guard's federal partners share Loy's concern. Several have asked him when the Coast Guard will resume normal operations. Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) officials say drug trafficking has slowed since Sept. 11, largely because of increased security at the nation's ports. But once the drug cartels find holes in the system, ONDCP officials expect trafficking to resume. An extended curtailment of Coast Guard activities in this area could hamper efforts to slow the drug trade.

"It is really more the unknown that we have to be worried about," says Dale Jones, head of fishery enforcement at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "What you can never measure is what kind of deterrence you are achieving by having a high level of law enforcement."

At times like these, the Coast Guard's motto-Semper Paratus, or "always ready"-becomes a curse. Ships and crews have multi-mission capabilities, which means they can switch gears quickly to meet the nation's most immediate needs. Invariably, that means some tasks get less attention. It creates a dilemma for Loy, who faces the difficult challenge of defining the "new normalcy" for the Coast Guard. How does he shuffle the deck to give adequate attention to the Coast Guard's myriad missions and at the same time continue to help maintain homeland security?

Loy says the agency cannot sustain the post-Sept. 11 level of activity for long. As he told the Senate subcommittee on oceans, atmosphere and fisheries during an Oct. 11 hearing, there are only two possible solutions-an infusion of resources, or a reduction in what Congress and the American public expect from the Coast Guard. Reduced expectations are unlikely. Committee Chairman Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., expressed concern that the Coast Guard will have trouble returning to its normal level of service in such areas as environmental protection and maritime law enforcement. He and ranking member Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, indicated that they would fight to get the Coast Guard additional resources.

Multi-Tasking

Although it resides in the Transportation Department, only one-third of the Coast Guard's activities are transportation-related-ice breaking, safety inspections, and aiding navigation, which includes maintaining everything from buoys to signal systems. The rest of its missions are spread fairly evenly across the jurisdictions of 11 different agencies, departments and councils. There's maritime law enforcement, drug interdiction, immigration and customs work for the Justice Department. As the fifth branch of the armed services, the Coast Guard works closely with the Navy and the Defense Department. It also helps the Environmental Protection Agency enforce the 1990 Oil Pollution Act and respond to spills.

And the responsibilities keep growing. The Interagency Task Force on U.S. Coast Guard Roles and Missions noted in its February 2000 report that annual demand for seafood could exceed 110 million tons a year by 2020. That puts enormous pressure on the Coast Guard to enforce fishery laws. Oil tanker traffic could double or triple by 2020. Then there's the expected growth in recreational boating-perhaps by as much as 65 percent. "America needs a Coast Guard that can effectively and efficiently carry out the national interests and missions assigned," the interagency task force report said. "Today, the service is struggling to do that."

Even before homeland security took center stage, the Coast Guard was cutting back missions because of insufficient resources. The Chinook, for instance, scaled back its regular patrols of the Georges Bank from 72 hours to 36 hours. Lack of funding also made it difficult for the Chinook to acquire such supplies as fuel and oil filters. The Chinook serves as a reflection of the entire Coast Guard fleet. Doing its part to reduce the size of the federal government, the service trimmed more than $400 million from its budget between 1994 and 1998. Those cuts came at a cost, say Coast Guard officials. Routine maintenance on ships and aircraft was deferred and a large backlog continues.

The cuts have hurt vital missions, according to a Coast Guard source. He points to a September 2001 Transportation Department inspector general's report that found serious deficiencies in the service's small boat search and rescue capabilities. The problems vary from poor maintenance to inadequate staffing and training. The inspector general also was concerned that the Coast Guard has not requested sufficient funding to replace its utility boats, which account for nearly 64 percent of the search and rescue fleet and are nearing the end of their service life.

The Coast Guard also faces a human resources crisis. At the end of 2001, for instance, the service had a shortage of about 358 petty officers. Lacking well-trained, seasoned personnel poses serious problems as the Coast Guard acquires new ships and new technologies, according to JayEtta Hecker, director of physical infrastructure issues at the General Accounting Office.

Budget Crunch

The struggle to sustain multiple missions is nothing new to the Coast Guard or its friends on Capitol Hill. In seven of the last 10 years, the agency asked for and received supplemental funding, but not always enough. Coast Guard officials lament the fact that OMB often trims the agency's funding requests to Congress. OMB and congressional budgeters play a shell game, too. Additional money granted through a supplemental measure sometimes is counted against the following year's budget request.

Part of the problem stems from the fact that the service's funding comes from the Transportation Department's budget while the Coast Guard must cover pay increases passed as part of the Defense Department's budget. The Defense appropriation is often one of the last considered by Congress. Therefore, military pay increases often are not factored into the Coast Guard's budget, and when that happens, the Coast Guard must take money for raises from other areas, such as training and maintenance. Personnel costs account for nearly two-thirds of the service's spending.

Loy says the agency has done everything possible to trim fat. "You show me any other agency in this town that gets done with their American taxpayer dollars what we get done," he says. "We are the ones that between 1994 and 1998 ponied up $400 million and a 4,000-person reduction that has strapped us ever since. I am of the mind that we have reached that margin of decreasing return. I would like to think that we are about as efficient an organization that there is in the federal government. It is time for me to stand on a very tall podium and say that very clearly. If you want us to do more, it is going to cost resources and assets to do more. And we are today being asked to do more in the face of Sept. 11."

Agency watchers believe there may be some room at the edges to improve efficiencies. GAO's Hecker suggests that the agency can consolidate training centers and boat stations, lengthen military rotation periods and reexamine whether some administrative functions can be contracted out. But she is quick to point out that such moves are unlikely to resolve the Coast Guard's resource problems in the face of growing responsibilities.

Where Is Home?

As he struggles to define the new normalcy, Loy must determine exactly where the Coast Guard fits in the grand scheme of homeland security. Some argue that it belongs in a new border patrol agency, as suggested by the Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, also known as the Hart-Rudman commission after its chairmen, former Sens. Gary Hart and Warren Rudman. In its report earlier this year, the commission suggested combining the Coast Guard, Customs Service and Border Patrol into a Cabinet-level Homeland Security Agency. Legislation pending in Congress would accomplish just that, along with making the White House Office of Homeland Security more powerful.

"What we saw in this [proposed] border patrol agency was that you get efficiencies in areas like buying equipment and training," says Pat Pentland, former study group coordinator for the Hart-Rudman commission. "Right now, all these agencies buy separate equipment." He continues, "If you lump the border patrol agencies together, it is easier for the intelligence community to pass along information." Coast Guard officials have yet to embrace the idea. Some worry that moving to a homeland security agency would short-change the service's other missions. Pentland counters that the commission's proposal would not detract from the Coast Guard's other missions, it simply would give them a new home. "At the moment, I think the upheaval would be very detrimental," Loy says. But he is careful to leave the door open to future reorganization.

More important, Loy says, is achieving better coordination with the intelligence community and other homeland security partners. That is easier said than done. The Coast Guard, Customs and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, for example, operate incompatible computer systems. It is virtually impossible for them to maintain a common database on products coming into the nation's ports, according to senior Coast Guard officials.

The problem does not stop there. Security at some foreign ports is virtually nonexistent. Nearly 95 percent of goods entering the country come by sea, yet just 2 percent of ship-borne containers are ever inspected. Kim Peterson, executive director of the Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Maritime Security Council, says the United States has to increase its involvement in assessing foreign ports. Evaluating security at foreign ports falls within the Coast Guard's charter. Yet because of budget and personnel constraints, the agency visits fewer than 10 foreign ports a year. Peterson, whose group represents nearly 65 percent of the world's commercial ocean carrier fleet, including shipping vessels and cruise lines, suggests doing at least 25 audits a year. This could be accomplished by contracting with private sector security companies, at a cost of less than $1 million a year, according to Peterson.

But the Coast Guard has a hard enough time assessing U.S. ports. Loy told the Senate panel that fully evaluating just the 50 busiest of the nation's 361 ports would take at least a year. Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., introduced legislation in July that would, among other things, require the Coast Guard to establish local port security committees and assess security. Since Sept. 11, the bill has been getting more attention on Capitol Hill. A similar measure failed in the last Congress. Coast Guard officials caution that the legislation must be accompanied by funding necessary to carry out its provisions.

"We need more resources and more people," says the Chinook's Vealencis, who might as well be speaking for the entire Coast Guard. "I run my crew very hard and I have to try and keep morale up. I'm hopeful that the current situation brings more awareness to what we do. Something is going to have to loosen up. I'm not willing to put my crew and my ship in harm's way because something breaks down."