TERRORIST ATTACKS MEAN MORE SECURITY WORK FOR ALREADY-STRAPPED COAST GUARD

WASHINGTON -- The Coast Guard has been stretched to the breaking point
after last month's terrorist attacks, raising questions about whether it
can fulfill its traditional law enforcement and rescue duties.

Since Sept. 11, the Coast Guard has been pressed into a more active and
visible security role, patrolling ports, escorting cargo ships under
suspension bridges and placing armed guards on cruise ships. Some Coast
Guard Investigative Service special agents even are serving as air marshals
aboard U.S. commercial flights.

Manpower and equipment have been diverted from other Coast Guard duties,
including search-and-rescue missions, intercepting illegal immigrants,
stopping drug traffic and catching fish poachers.

"Obviously, if you're moving significant numbers of personnel to port
security, other critical functions like search and rescue and drug
interdiction are going to suffer," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman
of the Commerce, Science and Transportation's subcommittee on oceans and
fisheries, which has jurisdiction over the Coast Guard.

Coast Guard officials acknowledge they're spread thin but say they're
making do by focusing on problem areas and getting help elsewhere. For
instance, the 35,000 volunteer members of the Coast Guard auxiliary aren't
allowed to do law enforcement work but are staffing search-and-rescue
stations to help stranded boaters, swimmers or fishermen.

"We're trying to coordinate and work smart," said Cmdr. Jim McPherson, a
spokesman.

Even before the attacks there was evidence the Coast Guard was pressed. A
report was undertaken by the Transportation Department's inspector general
before Sept. 11 but released this week. It found that Coast Guard search
and rescue stations lack crews and equipment, forcing some guardsmen to
work 84-hour weeks and sail in vessels that do not undergo routine inspections.

Earlier this year, the Coast Guard had to withdraw from Yemen after six
months of duty because of funding shortages. Teams from a special Port
Security Unit had been dispatched there after an explosive-laden skiff
piloted by suicide bombers blew up next to the USS Cole last October,
killing 17 U.S. sailors.

The Coast Guard estimates its new security duties are costing an additional
$1 million a day. It hasn't yet come up with an estimate for Congress on
how much money will be needed to cover its new role in homeland security,
if it continues.

The Coast Guard already has gotten about $18 million of the $40 billion in
emergency spending approved by Congress to respond to the Sept. 11 attacks,
and expects to get another $300 million from that pot.

"There's no mystery to the solution," said Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass.,
who last weekend reviewed the Coast Guard's port security operations in
Boston. "We need to decide what we want the Coast Guard to do, then decide
how -- not whether -- to foot the bill."

The Coast Guard is responsible for law enforcement and rescues along the
95,000 miles of U.S. coastline. Since the attacks it's embarked on the
largest port security operation since World War II. It is doing so with a
force of about 35,000 people -- less than a sixth its World War II size.

The Coast Guard won't say how much of its major equipment has been devoted
to the new task. But it's a large chunk, including 55 cutters, 42 aircraft,
hundreds of smaller boats and thousands of personnel, including nearly a
third of its 8,000 reservists.

Some of those reservists are serving in six 145-member Port Security Units,
four of which have been deployed to Boston, New York, Seattle and Long
Beach/Los Angeles.

The Coast Guard has stopped hundreds of ships over the past three weeks for
inspection -- over 600 alone in New York Harbor, near the site of the World
Trade Center attacks. On the Potomac River near Washington, the Coast Guard
has searched about 140 boats, compared to zero during the same three-week
period last year.

Armed teams are present on the bridge and in the engine rooms of cruise
ships as they leave and enter Miami and Hawaiian ports. Every commercial
boat that goes under San Francisco's Golden Gate and New York's
Verrazano-Narrows bridges gets a Coast Guard escort, and oil tankers moving
through Valdez, Alaska, are under surveillance.

John Bastek, a retired Coast Guard captain now working as a lobbyist on
maritime issues, said many Coast Guard personnel are young, inexperienced
and ill-prepared for anti-terrorism work.

"The kids that are on the boats in New York harbor right now are really
poorly trained," he said. "They're anxious as hell to do the job, and they
will do it, but they're not always trained."

McPherson acknowledged that many boats now on patrol have personnel with
just a year or two of experience. But others in the elite Port Security
Units have done overseas rotations and get specialized training under live
fire conditions at the Marine Corps' Camp Lejeune, N.C.