COAST GUARD WOULD LIKE FIT UNDER HOMELAND SECURITY

Adm. Thomas H. Collins was a week into his four-year tour as Coast Guard
commandant when President Bush proposed that the nation's smallest armed
force be moved, along with other agencies responsible for the safety of
Americans, under a new Department of Homeland Security.

"The concept is right on," said Collins, reacting to the most ambitious
reorganization of federal departments in 55 years.

In a June 11 interview, after he and other agency heads had testified
before the House Government Reform Committee, Collins said his staff is
studying the Coast Guard's "migration" 35 years ago from the Treasury
Department to the then-new Department of Transportation. Collins wants to
see what was done right and done wrong, so he can duplicate the former and
avoid the latter.

Deciding where the Coast Guard "fits best" in the executive branch has been
a parlor game at Washington, D.C., headquarters for decades. Return it to
Treasury. No, shift it to the Justice Department. Why not make it part of
the Navy, in peacetime as well as war.

The best fit yet could be under the Department of Homeland Security.

It would be the second-largest federal department, after Defense. The
president suggests the new department have four divisions. The Coast Guard
would be in the Border and Transportation Security Division, along with the
Customs Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and Border
Patrol, and the newly created Transportation Security Administration.

The other three divisions of Homeland Security would focus on emergency
preparedness and response; homeland threats from weapons of mass
destruction; information analysis and infrastructure protection.

To maximize the Coast Guard's effectiveness, Collins told lawmakers:

- -- The Coast Guard must be transferred whole.

- -- It must continue to be "a military, multimission, maritime service" with
close ties to the Navy.

- -- It must keep all current missions, which include port security, maritime
drug interdiction, illegal immigration enforcement, search and rescue,
marine environmental protection, merchant marine safety, boating safety,
aids to navigation, icebreaking and more. "We are in good standing on all
those issues," said Collins, citing recent conversations with Homeland
Security Director Tom Ridge and his staff.

But Collins also cautioned that "the devil is in the details." And with a
multimission service, he said, there are plenty of details to be worked out.

Even before the reorganization announcement, no branch of service had been
changed more by events of Sept. 11 than the Coast Guard. Less than 2
percent of resources, personnel and platforms, were involved in port
security before the deadly attacks. That figure soared to 60 percent in two
days, as cutters, patrol aircraft and small boats "surged" to protect ports
and waterways around the country.

The surge is over. Most cutters and aircraft have returned to other
missions such as counterdrug operations and fishery patrols. But 20 percent
of the Coast Guard's 2003 budget request is earmarked for port security, a
10-fold increase over last year. The Coast Guard, Collins said, "is
rebalancing for a new normalcy."

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Collins called it a change "whose time has come" and said new "security
realities necessitate bold action" to protect Americans. The Department of
Homeland Security "will bring unity of effort and unity of command" to the
goal of preventing further terrorism on U.S. soil.

There are two critical parts to the move, Collins said. One is
organizational and the other is resources. Coast Guard budgets should
continue to growth. Its active force is projected to rise from 36,000 this
year to 42,000 in three years. Even with that, the Coast Guard will
continue to operate by managing risk -- putting limited numbers of people
and platforms against the greatest threats, the most critical missions.

"We could grow multiple fold and we still couldn't handle 95,000 miles of
waterways and 361 ports," Collins said. The private sector has to do more
to protect facilities, he said. Public vigilance also must rise. Meanwhile,
Coast Guard missions have been "restacked," Collins said.

"People have said, This is a new mission for you.' Port Security is not a
new mission. We had more people in World War II on the port security
mission than we have right now in the entire Coast Guard." But he conceded
that "the flame on the burner was turned down real low because of lack of
incidents that would stimulate a focus on that."

More money -- both from a supplemental budget for 2002 and from a
20-percent rise in operating dollars for 2003 -- will help address an
expanded port security mission, Collins said. "There's a lot of investment
in small boats, maritime safety and security teams, additional people at
search and rescue stations, contingency plans for captain of the port
offices, enhanced secure communications for captains of the port offices."

The Sept. 11 tragedy revealed problems with interagency communications.
Coast Guard port security offices, for example, couldn't access the Defense
Department's classified e-mail system.

"Building out that basic set of capabilities is terribly important right
now," said Collins. "And all that is being done."

Wherever its home, Collins said, the Coast Guard will continue to give
taxpayers "an incredible bang for the buck."