June 20, 2002
Homeland Security Is for Real; It’s Not A Masquerade Party
by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor
Many years ago, while stateside in the Army, I and fellow members of my company were often assigned to guard duty over 24-hour periods with rotating work/rest sessions. If we were out in the boonies of Indiantown Gap, PA, guarding ammo storage bunkers, or watching the finance offices, headquarters building, or mess hall food storage, we were carried our Garand rifles and a bayonet, but no ammunition in the guns or on our persons.
When we asked the sergeant of the guard why we were not allowed ammunition, he said that much of our guard duty was “Just for show.”
If we said, “What happens if ‘unfriendlies’ come,” we were told half seriously, “Use your bayonets.”
However, during the daylight hours of our guard assignments, some of us would be assigned to take groups of prisoners from the stockade out for as long as eight hours on work details well removed from the military police. Then we were given a supply of regular ball .30-06 ammo.
It didn’t make a lot of sense to us then. And the whole idea of guards without ammo still doesn’t make sense. We weren’t supposed to defend against criminals bent on stealing ammunition, money, food or important documents. But we were supposed to shoot escaping fellow soldiers whose crimes might only have been being AWOL.
It seemed like a pointless masquerade. The uniform, the M-1 (empty) and the bayonet were intended to scare off people often in remote areas where there wasn’t a soul around, except the sleepy guard.
I managed in those days to learn how to walk completely around a building in the dark fully asleep. I’m not sure how.
These days in American airports, however, elderly guards assigned to prevent screened passengers from leaving and re-entering secured areas have learned to sleep while sitting in wooden folding chairs.
The difference between now and my early Army days is Sept. 11, 2001 and the need to prevent future such terrorist acts. It’s called “Homeland Security” and it’s deadly serious. More failures, false steps, lapses and misunderstandings could lead to further loss of thousands of lives. Homeland security should be in deadly earnest, not a masquerade.
Unfortunately, many state and national leaders don’t seem to recognize that difference.
Marcia Gelbart, a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, recently reported that, for the past seven months, more than 80 National Guard troops, with unloaded sidearms, watched almost 12 million passengers walk through the gates and security checkpoints at Philadelphia International Airport.
Among the most visible responses to the war on terrorism, the soldiers stood ready, dressed in Army fatigues, their 9mm pistols strapped to their sides. The guns were not loaded, but the soldiers did carry loaded magazines on their belts.
Gelbart reported that at 16 airports across Pennsylvania, National Guard troops were banned from patrolling with loaded arms, according to some guardsmen stationed in Philadelphia.
“I don’t mind being in harm’s way, but let me react,” said Staff Sgt. Bill Lawrence, 39, a Montgomery County, PA, mason who was stationed at the Philadelphia airport until the guardsmen left on May 10. With the seconds it would take to remove the magazine from their belt and insert it into the pistol, he said, “we couldn’t protect ourselves.” Or anyone else.
Among 19 states with the nation’s busiest airports, Pennsylvania and New York appeared to be the exception, not the rule, but some states didn’t really answer when asked.
In an Inquirer survey of National Guard units in those states, 12 said their soldiers carried loaded firearms during the airport assignment. Five, including New Jersey, declined comment, citing security concerns, but raising suspicions.
The airport mission was ordered by President Bush, but National Guard troops in each state were under the command and control of their respective governors.
Those states that decided their soldiers should carry loaded arms said doing so was intrinsic to the success of the mission, to be able to defend themselves and the public.
States that decided otherwise said the guardsmen were there mainly to buttress local law enforcement, and they noted they could order the guns loaded at any time.
Officially, the Pennsylvania Department of Military and Veterans Affairs would not comment on whether the state’s National Guard troops carried loaded or unloaded guns.
But four guardsmen—all who remained tight-lipped about their weapon status throughout their assignment at Philadelphia International Airport—decided to speak about their airport mission.
In New York, a National Guard spokesman confirmed that the soldiers’ M-16 rifles had no ammunition in them.
The four Philadelphia soldiers emphasized that the need never arose for any of the soldiers at the airport to pull their sidearms. Nonetheless, if troops were again sent to patrol airports, the four do not want Pennsylvania guardsmen to be in the same position.
“It seemed like they (National Guard officials) were betting nothing would happen,” said one. “But I wouldn’t take that as a precedent for what’s going to happen next time.”
There’s little disagreement about the principal reason gun-toting guardsmen were sent to the nation’s airports—to reassure travelers by a show of security and to provide a physical deterrent to any terrorists or troublemakers.
But carrying unloaded guns in such situations is “ridiculous,” said Douglas R. Laird, a former security director for Northwest Airlines who is now an aviation consultant at BGI International in Washington.
Laird said the notion of National Guard soldiers patrolling with unloaded weapons suggested that there still existed a looming shadow from Kent State, where Ohio guardsmen killed four students during anti-war demonstrations in 1970.
Similarly, one national security expert says the use of unloaded guns raises the larger question of whether the National Guard is the right military force to be deployed at airports.
“It’s clear to me there is no faith from the senior leadership (of the National Guard) that these kids will do the right thing, and that they’re trained to the level they need to be, if they can’t have a magazine in the weapon,” said Phil Anderson, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Whether guns were loaded is not a critical question, said Lawrence Korb, a national security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, according to The Inquirer. What was critical, he said, is that the National Guard achieved its airport mission by “calming people down and giving them the assurance that we were doing something.”
Nuclear Facilities
But airports were not the only place where guardsmen were posted to security with unloaded arms. The Daily Record of York, PA, reported that Pennsylvania National Guard troops patrolling Three Mile Island, Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station and the state’s other nuclear power plants are doing so with unloaded M-16s.
The soldiers carry ammunition, but it is on their belts, said state Rep. Mike Veon (D-Beaver County). With a nuclear plant in his district, Veon is concerned about guardsmen’s arms being loaded.
“It’s a conscious decision that the governor and the adjutant general made,” Veon said. “I don’t understand their philosophy on security, quite frankly.”
Since November, Veon has been trying to get the governor and Adjutant General Maj. Gen. William B. Lynch to change their position on whether the Guards’ guns should be loaded.
“They’re well trained,” Veon said. “Those precious seconds could cost some of them dearly.”
Veon is hoping Gov. Mark Schweiker will change his mind.
“If he doesn’t,” he said, “I think the public will demand it.”
Maybe the public should be demanding a truly serious approach to homeland security. Unarmed National Guardsmen, unarmed pilots, few trained sky marshals. You’d think a Texan would know when someone is all hat and no cattle.
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