SecurityBeat

By Stew Magnuson

MoviePoster Already riding high from the positive public perception of its performances during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Coast Guard will be the beneficiary of another shot of good publicity: a Hollywood movie.

“The Guardian,” starring Kevin Costner and teen heartthrob Ashton Kutcher, is scheduled for release this month and will revolve around the lives of the service’s rescue swimmers, who often dive into dangerous seas to save lives.

It is the first movie to feature the service from beginning to end since the 1958 film, “Onionhead,” a poorly received comedy staring Andy Griffith and Walter Matthau. “The Perfect Storm,” a drama released in 2000 based on the bestselling nonfiction book, also showed the exploits of Coast Guard rescue swimmers, but their story was only a small part of the film.

Chief Warrant Officer Eric Eggen, public affairs officer for the service’s recruiting command, said plans are in the works to use the movie to help fill its ranks.

“We’re still working out what we’re going to do [to use it to help recruiting], but certainly we’re thinking about it,” he told National Defense.

The film has “a few inaccuracies, but that’s Hollywood. We can roll with that,” Eggen said.

In general, the Coast Guard has not had difficulties recruiting, he said. The exceptions are reserve positions, which call for specialized skills in specific posts. During the 2005 hurricanes, the Coast Guard saw a spike in inquiries from those interested in joining. Swimmers were credited with rescuing hundreds of victims during the disasters.

Audience members who are prompted to call their local recruiter will discover that the rescue swimmer course has a reputation for being one of the toughest to pass in all the U.S. military services. About 75 recruits are accepted each year, and roughly half drop out.

Rails Emerge as Top Terrorist Target

First Madrid, then London, and most recently, Bombay.

These recent incidents of train bombings have underscored their value to terrorists as soft targets.

Not to be forgotten is the 1995 release of sarin gas in the Tokyo subway by the doomsday cult, Aum Shinrikyo.

The recent book “The One Percent Doctrine” by author Ron Suskind reports that al-Qaida plotted, then abandoned plans to release cyanide gas in the New York subway.

Almost forgotten is that Aum attempted to use cyanide gas in the weeks following the sarin attack. Members of the cult who were on the run planted a relatively simple device in a men’s restroom only a foot from a ventilation duct that led to a crowded platform at Shinjuku Station, the nation’s busiest passenger hub. The chemical bomb was set up to mix sulfuric acid with sodium cyanide as soon as a flame ate through two condoms packed with the compounds. It was seconds away from spreading a deadly cloud, but station attendants threw water on the flames and avoided a second catastrophe. The two gasses would have produced hydrogen cyanide, the same concoction the Nazis used at their World War II concentration camps.

Nerve gasses, as experts point out, are not easy to manufacture. Aum Shinrikyo amassed millions of dollars in assets, and recruited chemical engineering graduates from Japan’s most prestigious universities to pull off the sarin attack. Even so, the batch of sarin released was diluted and the perpetrators were reduced to punching holes with sharpened umbrella tips in plastic bags to spread it in rush hour subway cars.

The categorization of nerve gas as a weapon of mass destruction makes it an effective tool for terror. The Tokyo attack killed 11, injured hundreds and sent shockwaves through Japanese society, whose populace generally believed the nation to be immune from such attacks.

Explosives, on the other hand, are relatively cheap and easy to obtain. The London and Madrid bombings were said to cost $1,000 and $2,000 respectively. A few weeks after Suskind’s book was released, the FBI alleged that it had foiled a plot by eight overseas operatives to detonate explosives in New York commuter train tunnels beneath the Hudson River. Trains, subways and the Big Apple are clearly still in the terrorists’ sights.

Prepare for ‘Intelligent Video,’ TSA Tells Airports

Intelligent video systems promise to reduce the number of hours security officers spend staring at closed circuit television screens as they scan for threats.

Such systems use sophisticated algorithms to automatically track suspicious movements, and send alerts to operators. For example, it can track a passenger at an airport walking through a restricted area.

The Transportation Security Agency recently cautioned those thinking of refurbishing or building a new airport to be flexible when installing new security systems.

Intelligent video technology is maturing, but it currently comes with a hefty price tag, it said.

“Airports need to carefully weigh the benefits and costs, especially with regard to how these features and capabilities are to be implemented and the downstream support requirements,” the TSA said in its newly released “Recommended Security Guidelines for Airport Planning, Design and Construction.”

The 333-page report comments on everything from perimeter security for new airports to passenger pick-up or loading zones.

Intelligent video systems are part of the rapidly evolving field of surveillance technology. The problem is that new airports are designed years in advance. The technology may come online before then, so operators would be wise to install infrastructure that would allow for older closed circuit systems to be swapped out as the new generation of sensors becomes cost-effective.

While the TSA did not specifically endorse intelligent video systems for airports, it pointed out that the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency is pursing the automated scene understanding program, which is sinking millions of research dollars into such concepts.

U.S. Unprepared for Bio-Catastrophes, Reports Say

Whether the threat to the nation’s health comes from naturally occurring diseases or a deliberate attack from biological weapons of mass destruction, the United States is woefully unprepared, a pair of recent reports suggested.

There are lots of plans on paper to respond to such threats, but words on paper don’t translate into capabilities, said the authors of “Biosecurity: A Comprehensive Action Plan,” produced by the Center for American Progress.

Since 9/11, the United States has spent $30 billion to counter both naturally occurring pandemics and bio-weapons attacks. Most of these funds have gone toward the stockpiling of vaccines, the report noted

The infrastructure for stopping the spread of diseases is the problem, the report said. In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the federal government has emphasized that it will only play a support role in the event of an outbreak. It will be up to the approximately 3,000 local, county, city, state and tribal governments to detect and respond to such incidents.

“Unfortunately, the reality is that they cannot,” the report said. Only seven states and four cities have the capability to administer stockpiled vaccines, the report said.

One problem is that the two communities concerned with bio-attacks and naturally occurring infectious diseases have been working in a stovepipe manner for decades, the report said. It recommended the two communities pool their resources and create an “all hazards approach” to tackling such emergencies.

Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, rejected the notion that the two communities are working separately. In meetings at the CDC, the two sides are “always both at the table,” she told National Defense.

A second report produced by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies suggested that a hospital might be the last place to go in the event of a devastating pandemic. Its report, “Hospital-Based Emergency Care: At the Breaking Point,” said emergency rooms on a normal day are overcrowded and face staff shortages.

A pandemic affecting 20 percent of the population would overwhelm the system, the CAP report added. Doctors and nurses would inevitably be among those infected, thus exacerbating the crisis.

The Institute of Medicine report criticized the hospital bio preparedness program grants for being underfunded. A typical hospital receives $5,000 to $10,000 per year from the Department of Health and Human Services-administered program, which is not enough to equip one medical care room, it said.

“Due to this lack of funding, few hospital and EMS personnel have received even minimal training in how to prepare for and respond to a disaster,” the report said.

Countries Frustrated by U.S. Visa Waiver Program

There is a long wait for countries wanting to join the privileged few whose citizens do not need to obtain a visa to enter the United States for business or pleasure.

No country has been added to the visa waiver program since 1999, and after 9/11, the requirements only grew tougher.

The wait is not unlike the one found outside U.S. consulates in such countries as South Korea and Poland, where applicants must stand outside in the heat, rain or cold for an opportunity to be interviewed by an official who has the power to reject applications.

The visa waiver program allows citizens of approved countries to arrive at a U.S. port of entry and receive a stamp in their passport good for a 90-day visit, without the $100 fee or a long application process in their home country.

The hold up for the hopeful nations is mostly a matter of security, said Stewart Baker, assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security. For a nation to qualify, it must offer a reciprocal visa to U.S. citizens, have a less than 3 percent rejection rate for those applying for visas in-country and adhere to the “law enforcement and national security interests of the United States,” he said at a Heritage Foundation briefing.

The last qualification is vague, Baker admitted. It is a “sore point” for the approximately two dozen countries waiting to join the program, most of them from Eastern Europe.

“We have undertaken recently to be much more specific about this,” Baker said. “We have to find a way through these security issues.”

James Jay Carafano, senior research fellow at the foundation, said adding countries to the list, if done with security in mind, strengthens cultural, economic and defense ties. Countries that are actively sharing information on travelers with the goal of preventing terrorism should be allowed to join on a probationary basis, he said.

Poland, South Korea, the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Slovak Republic and India are all good candidates, he said.

Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., has offered an amendment to the Comprehensive Immigration and Reform Act of 2006 that would allow a two-year probationary visa waiver to countries that have contributed troops to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Other amendments specify that only European Union nations could join. Under these requirements, only Poland would qualify, Carafano noted.

Nevertheless, Carafano predicted that Congress will not take action to loosen up the requirements any time soon. The mood in the House is to “build walls rather than take them down,” he said.

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