Bases more aware of threats, still vulnerable: despite a series of blue-ribbon reports, security policies continue to evolve.

Many U.S. military installations remain just as vulnerable as they were before the 9/11 attacks, despite a heightened awareness of terrorist threats, said security experts.

It would only take one determined suicide bomber, for example, to wreak havoc on a major naval base. A kamikaze truck could ram through the gates, plunge into the water--and detonate a bomb right next to sleeping nuclear submarines, spreading enough radioactivity to pollute large sections of the ocean. "It could be a one-man job," said Richard Marcinko, a former Navy SEAL and now president of a company that specializes in security. He often gets paid to breach security at government facilities and to point out the vulnerabilities.

"At best, what our major installations have done [since September 11] is inconvenience the access, but we have not removed the threat," he told National Defense.

Military officials recognize that they may have let their guard down in the past. "Up into September, there was never a feeling that something would happen here," said a Joint Staff officer from the J-34 anti-terrorism directorate. He requested that he not be quoted by name.

Much of the anti-terrorism and force protection efforts have focused overseas, particularly after the 1996 bombings of the Air Force Khobar Towers barracks in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and the Navy's USS Cole in Yemen two years after that.

After the Khobar Towers attack, then-Secretary of Defense William Perry appointed Army Gen. Wayne Downing, who was head of the Special Operations Command, to survey U.S. bases around the world and recommend ways to improve security and force protection.

In the aftermath of the attack on the USS Cole, then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen commissioned retired Army Gen. William Crouch and retired Navy Adm. Harold Gehman to lead a review of lessons learned from the attack.

The Crouch-Gehman commission came up with 53 recommendations. Among them was the need to have a "unity of effort" throughout the offices and agencies in the Defense Department, and to centralize the resources available to combat terrorism. The commission also advocated "proactive antiterrorism techniques," such as better coordination during the transfer of units between theaters of operation.

The panel said that antiterrorism training should have the same priority as war-fighting training, and resources for human intelligence and signals intelligence should be increased.

Additionally, six Joint Staff groups--called Integrated Vulnerability assessment teams--were established in 1997. They have completed more than 400 antiterrorism/force protection studies at both domestic and overseas installations. The teams also included weapons of mass destruction experts.

According to the J-34 officer, "The recommendations from all those reports have been incorporated into the training tactics and techniques."

Government studies, however, don't provide solutions, said Marcinko. "These commissions [only] write recommendations," but don't have any control over the implementation of any measures.

He noted that the Navy used to have so-called "Red Cell" teams, who went around the world, breaking into military facilities, just to test their vulnerabilities. "The program was cancelled, because it was an embarrassment, the findings were an embarrassment," said Marcinko.

Although many recommendations of the Vulnerability Assessment Teams have been implemented, "I am still concerned that we do not have the most efficient and effective processes to attain information dominance and superiority in this war [on terrorism]," said Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston, head of the U.S. European Command, in his 2003 Posture Statement.

Ralston created a Joint Interagency Coordination Group, to "strengthen the relationship with all government agencies and EUCOM partners on terrorist activities in this theater."

Information Gathering

Last year, he said, EUCOM developed a database called the Joint Risk Assessment Management Program, to capture intelligence, operational and logistical information. It is also supposed to provide threat and vulnerability assessments for forces transiting in the theater. A separate database captures all local EUCOM-reported incidents and actions that might be attributed to terrorist activity.

But Ralston noted that the command is running out of money to keep up the enhanced force protection program. "Adequate resources continue to be a major challenge," he said. USEUCOM received $30.4 million in the fiscal year 2001 emergency supplemental funding, following the September attacks. An additional $5.8 million came from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Combating Terrorism Initiative Fund.

The need to bolster security at U.S. Army installations in Europe has been daunting, because there are often not enough soldiers to stand guard, said Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, head of U.S. Army Europe and 7th Army.

The U.S. Army European theater has about 62,000 troops, with nearly one third of them deployed on combat duty. For many years, USAREUR relied on private guards and contractors to supplement military guards, but, after September 11, the Army had to send over National Guard troops to meet new security requirements.

"We are going to continue to need a physical security presence, especially in those places where soldiers are deployed," Meigs told reporters during a breakfast meeting in Washington, D.C.

Asked whether the demand for National Guard forces would change in the near future, Meigs said probably not, given the "security environment.

"We are certainly going to continue to look at the Guard [for our security needs]. ... I don't know that we are going to try to make that number as small as possible, for the purposes of efficiency," Meigs said. "The money drives the train on this, because you have to pay these guys out of your own budget or some kind of emergency response fund."

Private guards became a necessity at USAREUR, because, at one point, Meigs said, "We had one in six soldiers either going on guard, or coming off." Another reason why contractors frequently are hired for security functions is that it helps keep soldiers training and prepared for combat duty.

U.S. military facilities located on large bases can be more easily closed off from access by trucks, for example, but that is difficult to do when the facilities are mixed with urban civilian populations, Meigs said. "In Heidelberg, in front of our headquarters, there is a big four-lane street. We had to get the city to keep all the trucks off the street," he said.

"We have old World War II posts that we have taken over, which are security challenges, because they are right in the middle of the community," he added. "There is easy access to the headquarters building." Therefore, more soldier guards are needed than normally would be required to protect a traditional military base, where the traffic of vehicles and people can be more tightly controlled.

"We have taken several procedural steps to improve our force-protection posture, through enhanced coalition intelligence and early warning systems, but we must still address physical installation vulnerabiliries," Ralston said. Under-funded projects include strengthening U.S. facilities "against chemical, biological and radiological threats, and mass-casualty producing explosive devices, as well as improving access control features at installation entry points," he said.

Marcinko suggested that current methods of improving security are flawed, because they focus inward. "The natural tendency is for security to be viewed from the headquarters out, to protect the primary mission-headquarters or airfields, intelligence centers-and built concentrically," he said. "No one is concentrating on viewing security from the outside, which is how the bad guys get in.

When it comes to protecting bases, the Defense Department now is emphasizing "layers of security," said the J-34 officer. "As you are trying to get to something, you have to get through security wickets. You have to look at what that threat means to you locally. That determines what measures you need to take. You have to look at what resources you are protecting."

The recommendations from the various reports, he said, are just "very sharp spikes in policy. ... As we go on and refine these, you will see a refining of the scope in our documents and a better clarification to commanders.

"If you have sound procedures, that can solve a lot of your problems," the J-34 officer said. "A lot of places have not followed their own procedures." He compared implementing the recommendations to peeling an onion. "Finding out how one piece works opens up another piece. It's going to take a long time."

The officer also pointed out that much of the technology that the Defense Department would like to buy to improve security is unaffordable. One of the best resources for new technology, he said, is the Technical Support Working Group, a federal interagency panel that focuses on affordable technologies for anti-terrorism.

"We have this tendency to hope that technology would save us, and, honestly, this is bull ... ," said Marcinko. He said he has been able to circumvent high-tech security systems during some of his missions. "A guy like me can move slowly through the grass," he said. Seismic sensors can also be easily disrupted just with the use of a "willow stick" that would fool operations into believing it's an electronics problem.

In places with closed-circuit TVs, he said, "there is one guy sitting and looking at 24 screens. How long can you do that and be alert?" Marcinko asked. The system "may tell you later what happened, but may not help at the time."

Technological advances in optics and the emergence of better sensors for early warning have been helpful, he said.

"We have better ID cards systems for getting into the secure sites," he said. "But for any of those things, there is a defeat. It boils down to the human factors, on how they use the toys and how aware they are."

The military services usually lack enough personnel to train troops in security matters, Marcinko noted. "Every installation needs to have a regular influx of awareness," he said. "Drills on the base to remind people what can happen. There is no nice way to do it. Everybody thinks the other guy is covering. It is hard, because it is a boring job when nothing is really happening."

For example, he said, the Navy has reintroduced small arms training in basic training and boot camp. "They train to shoot on ships, and they are more aware of parameter defense afloat," Marcinko explained.

While training is vital, the key to defeating terrorism is "human intelligence to find out what is going on," Marcinko said. "The best terror defense is to get them at their training centers."

Members of the Al Qaeda organization, which allegedly sponsored the 9/11 attacks, are in 60 countries, he said, and undetected terrorist cells remain in the United States. The U.S. government, however, may not be able to find them, because they lack sufficient intelligence, Marcinko added. "Look at the homeland defense office, look what they have come our with--a color code. ... This is just a slow-moving elephant."