IS COAST GUARD SINKING?

In the past month, the Coast Guard gave mouth-to-snout resuscitation to a
dog in Texas, airlifted a sick woman from Orlando, Fla., off a cruise ship,
and detained two Iraqis on an oil tanker in the Delaware Bay.

In the Persian Gulf, the Coast Guard secured ports, escorted humanitarian
aid to starving Iraqis, and captured a few fleeing Iraqi sailors who jumped
ship.

Some members of Congress warn that the Coast Guard, whose main assignment
these days is keeping America's 95,000 miles of coastline and waterways
safe from terrorists, is in over its head.

The agency is so underfunded and underequipped that the nation's ports are
vulnerable to a "catastrophic attack," said Sen. Ernest F. Hollings, D-S.C.

"Do we have more business than we have resources? Yes," the Coast Guard
commandant, Adm. Thomas Collins, told a House panel last week. "We have
challenges like never before to do all that America wants us to do."

Not only has the Coast Guard yet to arrest any terrorists on home turf -
the two Iraqi sailors were allowed to leave with their Qatar-flagged tanker
- - but a new report by the General Accounting Office said the war on
terrorism is taking a toll on the war on drugs.

In the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Coast Guard devoted
91,000 "resource hours" - a measurement of equipment used on missions - to
coastal security in the final three months of 2001. The number dropped to
37,000 in the same period last year, but it was still much higher than the
2,400 hours in the 1998 period.

Meanwhile, there was a 60 percent drop in the number of hours spent on drug
interdiction in the final three months of last year compared with the same
period in 1997, according to the GAO, Congress' investigative arm.

"Today, a majority of our tasking is on search and rescue and homeland
security. We may not be focusing our efforts as much on those [other]
missions," said Petty Officer Scott Carr, a Coast Guard spokesman at the
Miami-based 7th District headquarters, which covers the Southeast coast and
the Caribbean.

The Coast Guard received a $1 billion budget increase this year and has an
active-duty force of 39,000, plus more than 4,000 called-up reservists. It
insists it can do it all: Secure almost 400 ports, pick up illegal
immigrants and illegal drugs, stop illegal fish catches, rescue boaters in
distress.

On an average day, the Coast Guard reports, it saves 10 lives, answers 192
distress calls, boards 144 vessels, catches 14 illegal immigrants and
seizes 30 pounds of cocaine.

Since the nation was put on high "orange" alert March 17, the maritime
force has increased its air and sea surveillance by 50 percent, conducting
more than 3,000 patrols. Some units have started using bomb-sniffing dogs.

Recreational boaters along the East Coast this summer will find new
restrictions on where they can go. Certain bridges and tunnels will be
off-limits, and boaters will have to keep well away from cruise ships and
naval vessels.

The Senate last week rejected a Hollings amendment to add $1 billion to
President Bush's war supplemental spending bill to strengthen the Coast
Guard and tighten port security. The vote was along party lines.

The White House said Bush's $75 billion supplemental budget already
includes about $4 billion more for homeland security, including $2 billion
for state and local measures. Bush also announced that starting this
summer, the Coast Guard would receive the first of 700 new patrol boats.

Democrats say the extra money will permit the Coast Guard only to maintain
current security levels.

The Coast Guard is behind schedule conducting basic port-by-port security
assessments. Hollings claims these will not be completed until 2009 under
the current pace of funding.