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Miscommunication between the U.S. military and local police that led to the recent death of a soldier in North Carolina is a symptom of a deeper problem. Poor communication between military and civilian defense officials, and between federal and local authorities, is a threat to the United States' homeland defense network.
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One soldier training to become a U.S. Army Green Beret was killed and another injured in rural North Carolina on Feb. 23, when a local sheriff's deputy mistakenly shot them during a 19-day Army training mission. A similar training simulation last fall in South Carolina also went awry, raising questions about the level of communication between military and civilian security authorities.
Those cases are examples of a much larger challenge the United States faces as it seeks to develop a viable homeland defense network. A hodge-podge of federal, state and local authorities work under some basic assumptions about communication and cooperation that will continue to hamper the identification and investigation of terrorist threats.
No defense is impenetrable. But without vast and permanent improvements in communication protocols and capabilities, the United States will continue to have holes in its domestic security apparatus large enough to drive a truck-bomb through.
The North Carolina case boils down to a communication failure. The soldiers, who were posing as civilians, apparently believed that the Moore County sheriff's deputy who pulled their pickup over on a rural road was participating in the simulation. One soldier rushed the officer. Unaware of the simulation and believing his life to be in danger, the officer used pepper spray and then opened fire on the men.
Though such training exercises have taken place in the area for decades and are understood by local residents, a Moore County Sheriff's Department official said his office was not notified of the particulars of the operation or that anything would be taking place that day. Officials from Fort Bragg – where the Army Special Forces Operations command is based – said that county authorities were not informed of the exercise because the military didn't think the department would be involved, the Associated Press reported Feb. 26.
This is not the first time that a Fort Bragg training simulation has gone wrong due to poor communication. On the evening of Sept. 14, the Army launched a mock attack against Duke Energy Co.'s Catawba Nuclear Power Plant on the border between North and South Carolina. The simulation included soldiers rappelling from helicopters and small-arms fire near the plant, the Raleigh News and Observer reported.
Residents who saw several helicopters flying low toward the plant called police, who informed state security officials. When the county emergency-operations center and air-traffic control were unable to reach the helicopters by radio, two F-16s scrambled from Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina. By midnight, eight state and federal agencies, including the FBI, were looking into the scare. After nine hours of uncertainty, the FBI told local officials that the plant was not under attack and that the suspicious activity was part of a military exercise.
According to a North Carolina Emergency Management report, the Defense Department failed to notify state officials in both North and South Carolina, as well as local police and utility authorities. Duke Energy apparently was left in the dark as well.
Both incidents point to a larger problem: poor communication and coordination between military, federal, state and local authorities.
As the country mobilizes its civil defense, local and state officials have sounded a general outcry about inadequate cooperation and communication from their federal counterparts. Their complaints include the multiplicity and redundancy of federal agencies and an unwillingness by federal authorities, especially the FBI, to share vital intelligence.
"Part of the frustration we're hearing from our sheriffs around the country is that the information's moving up, but it's not coming down," Javier Gonzales, a county commissioner in New Mexico and president of the National Association of Counties, told the U.S. Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on Dec. 11. A state official from Tennessee told the committee that inefficiencies resulting from myriad levels of federal security clearances are also a major hindrance for state and local officials. Communication is further hampered by issues of technical operability, such as a limited radio spectrum available for public safety use.
Furthermore, state governors have criticized the vague nature of threat advisories and the lack of protocol for passing information along to state and local authorities. This is not solely a problem of information flowing down from military and federal levels. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge first informed the nation's 50 governors before he publicly issued a non-specific terrorist threat warning in late November, but in many cases, that information was not forwarded to local authorities. New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial told the Senate committee hearing Dec. 11, he found out about the warning when Ridge appeared on television.
Finally, there are barriers within the culture of law enforcement itself, which has always been territorial and applies a need-to-know standard for passing on information. This is reinforced in federal law enforcement and military intelligence by concerns that sharing information with state or local officials could breach national security.
However, in this new security reality, authorities will have a much more difficult time properly judging that need-to-know threshold. Without constant sharing of information, small but important linkages from different sources will go unnoticed. A failure to share sensitive information with the right authorities in a timely manner could prevent the interdiction of a possible threat.
Al-Qaida has yet to strike again on U.S. soil, perhaps because security sweeps have succeeded in limiting the organization's operations. However, patience is a cornerstone of al-Qaida's methodology. Its pattern is to spread out attacks, waiting long enough for its targets to lower their defenses. The United States must avoid such complacency and instead use that time to strengthen its homeland defense capabilities – especially on the front end, where communication and cooperation can lead to prevention.
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