Identity Crisis

ain jacket!" shouts an Army National Guard supply clerk to several dozen Guard members in the 29th Infantry Division's 111th Field Artillery E Battery. His booming voice echoing off the concrete drill hall floor of the Virginia National Guard Armory just outside Richmond sounds like artillery fire. Dozens of Guard members respond by holding up camouflage wet weather gear. The equipment roll call continues. "Sleeping Bag!" "Helmet!" Old T-shirts are traded for new. Missing flashlights are replaced. Lists are checked off. The review seems endless.

These annual inventory checks, known as "showdown inspections," last the better part of two days and are as monotonous as learning to march. But the Guard members seem intent on making sure their gloves fit properly and that fraying helmet chin straps are replaced. Many have been citizen soldiers for more than a decade, but the stakes are higher with this inspection. Last month, President Bush called up these Virginia Guard members to serve in the war on terrorism. "It was a surprise but, of course, it always is," says Army National Guard Capt. Matthew Ritchie, commander of the nearly 100-member unit.

An even bigger surprise is the unit's mission in the ongoing war. Its members have been trained in firing, transporting and maintaining M198 howitzers to support battlefield commanders. But instead of mustering for anti-terrorist duty in Southwest Asia, E Battery has been told to leave its howitzers in Richmond. Its members will spend the next year-maybe two-guarding a federal installation on the East Coast as a homeland security force.

"It's a legitimate mission. Every soldier has to know how to secure his area. Even though it's not our primary mission, it is something we can do," says Ritchie. The E Battery does not normally receive training in guarding facilities and other duties involved in homeland defense, but the unit will spend several weeks this September at Fort Dix, N.J., learning the finer points of checking IDs and patrolling perimeters before being deployed. In some ways, it beats going into battle. "We will get showers every day and three hot meals every day versus eating field rations and getting pretty grubby," Ritchie says. His biggest challenge will be helping the company's soldiers avoid the "Groundhog Day effect"-the sense of losing track of time because they're doing the same job day in and day out. He'll deal with that by regularly rotating his troops in and out of security assignments and offering training and recreation to break up the monotony.

The E Battery's new mission highlights both the opportunities and the challenges facing the National Guard since terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania a year ago. The war on terrorism has given the National Guard new missions and greater credibility with the active-duty military and the public. But, at the same time, it has raised serious questions about which tasks the nation's largest military reserve force should be performing, whether the Guard should be trained and structured as a combat force or a homeland security force, and whether the states or the federal government should oversee Guard operations.

The National Guard is facing an identity crisis.

During the Cold War, National Guard members had a clear mission. They were "weekend warriors" who backed up active-duty personnel and helped mop up after natural disasters when called upon by state governors. That role began to change with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the subsequent downsizing of the active-duty military, and a spike in military peacekeeping missions throughout the 1990s. Guard members have become a quasi-full-time military force regularly called up by the president to patrol no-fly zones in Iraq for as long as six months at a stretch and drive Humvees through the dusty roads of the Balkans on two-year deployments. The Guard's missions have grown as rapidly as new nations have risen and old empires have fallen in the post-Cold War world.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush has mobilized more than 35,000 Army and Air National Guard members to assist in the war on terrorism. The National Guard will not say how many of its members are performing specific missions, but it does say thousands have been serving in homeland security roles, such as flying air patrols over major U.S. cities, guarding federal installations and patrolling the nation's borders with Canada and Mexico. Even more have been on the ground in Southwest Asia working beside active-duty troops tracking down terrorists and maintaining order in Afghanistan.

"We pride ourselves in our flexibility, regardless of whether we are fighting overseas or fighting forest fires. What we have done is reaffirm that the Guard is a responsive and extremely flexible organization," says Maj. Gen. Fred Rees, vice chief of the National Guard Bureau, the Guard's parent organization. However, Rees says, in emergencies, such as those that have necessitated many of the Guard's homeland security deployments since Sept. 11, the Guard is best at simply maintaining the status quo and then handing off such duties as airport and building security to state or local forces.

WHO'S THE BOSS?

The National Guard is not a single military organization, but 54 separate organizations that date back to colonial times and now operate in each state and several U.S. territories. State militias that once raided Indian camps and fired the first shots of the American Revolution are the precursors of today's National Guard, which includes 353,000 Army National Guard members and 106,400 Air Guard members.

The U.S. Constitution spells out unique federal and state roles for America's oldest military organization. The founding fathers envisioned the units that became the National Guard as state military forces that would train and operate under the control of state governors most of the time. However, the framers also laid the legal framework that gives Congress the responsibility for equipping militia units and permits the president to call up citizen soldiers any time to serve under his command as a federal force alongside active-duty military personnel.

Since the early days of the Republic, Congress has enacted laws that govern how the National Guard is managed. When the president calls up the Guard for federal duty under Title 10 of the U.S. Code, its members become part of the active-duty chain of command that extends from battlefield commanders up to the commander in chief. The federal government pays their salaries and each unit's operating costs. Guard members called to active duty by state governors are covered by various state laws, but their expenses often are covered by Congress, which under

Title 32 of the U.S. Code, can provide federal funding to state troops.

Additionally, when the president calls up the Guard, Guard members are covered by the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which bans the use of federal troops as law enforcement personnel. The law was passed after the Civil War due to concerns that Union troops were being used in southern states to enforce local laws. Over the years, the military routinely has invoked Posse Comitatus (Latin for "power of the country") in declining a role in domestic security missions. Guard members called to state duty, including those operating under Title 32, are not covered by the Posse Comitatus Act.

The National Guard has successfully juggled its Title 10 and Title 32 roles-and stayed within the bounds of the Posse Comitatus Act-in responding to a record number of natural disasters and active-duty deployments in recent years. But the Guard's increasing homeland security role since Sept. 11 has created confusion. Serious questions have arisen about how the National Guard should be managed when it operates within U.S. borders. Can Guard members best perform their homeland security duties under state or federal control?

BALANCING ACT

Last fall, President Bush straddled the line, calling on the Guard to provide airport security nationwide. The president asked for 7,000 Guard members to perform airport security duty, but in an unprecedented move, also asked governors to keep the Guard members under their command and promised that the federal government would pay the bill under Title 32. Bush made the unusual request because federalizing troops for airport security would have placed more restrictions on how they could operate.

Washington Gov. Gary Locke says that giving the Guard a federal mission, but keeping it under state control, made it easier to manage airport security operations, which lasted six months. "We consciously used both Army and Air Guard units in order to minimize impact on our units and to preserve a carefully managed capacity for responding to state disasters and emergencies," says Locke. If the troops had been federalized, the state National Guard leaders would have had no say in which units were mobilized, he says.

Air Guard Maj. Gen. Timothy Lowenberg, appointed Washington state's top National Guard leader by Locke, says having state control over the units allowed Guard members to train at armories in their communities and to be deployed at airports close to home. The move not only reduced travel and lodging expenses, but also improved the morale of Guard members who didn't have to leave their families behind to serve on airport assignments.

Locke says using the existing state structure to manage the deployment was much more effective than running the operation through the federal bureaucracy. "As a result of using existing state structure, National Guard members were alerted, activated, trained by the [Federal Aviation Administration] and deployed to airports within five days of the president's request," he says.

However, some states running airport operations have faced criticism that training and operating standards vary widely. New York and Pennsylvania National Guard units were widely ridiculed this spring when it was reported that Guard members at airports there were carrying unloaded weapons. "We don't want any John Waynes," Guard leaders in Pennsylvania told troops when they asked why they could not carry guns, according to a report in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Some National Guard members have complained that working under Title 32 does not offer them the same civil and financial protections, such as preventing employers from firing them while they are deployed, as when they are federalized under Title 10. When working under Title 32, Guard members are paid by the federal government, but they still are covered by state laws, which vary widely. Congress is weighing legislation that would give Guard members deployed under Title 32 for more than 30 days the same protections they would have under Title 10.

Lowenberg and Locke contrast the airport security mission with problems that have beset the National Guard's ongoing effort to help with border security. Earlier this year, the president, under the authority of Title 10, federalized about 1,600 Army National Guard members to help the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Customs Service tighten security along the Mexican and Canadian borders for six months at a cost of about $75 million. The civilian agencies sought the Guard's support because they could not find enough civilian federal law enforcement officers to police the borders.

The White House opted for federalizing the forces because it did not want armed state troops on borders it shares with friendly neighbors. It also believed federal control would lessen the risk of accidental shootings. The decision touched off protests from Congress, governors and the Guard. They argued that Guard members deployed to the border would have no way to defend themselves, because Posse Comitatus Act restrictions would have prevented them from carrying weapons.

After a few months of debate last winter, a compromise was forged that kept the Guard members on the border under federal control, but allowed some members posted at remote border locations to carry weapons for self-defense. All others were ordered to work with armed Customs or INS agents. Defense Department lawyers ruled that having Title 10 troops carry weapons within the United States did not violate Posse Comitatus if the weapons were used only for self-defense. Locke says a better compromise would have been to put the troops under state control. "These federalized soldiers cannot be armed or engaged directly or indirectly in any law enforcement activity, thereby making their deployment to the border of only marginal utility," he says.

According to Lowenberg, armed Washington National Guard members have worked for more than a decade alongside INS and Custom agents under Title 32 to carry out the state's anti-drug efforts along the border with Canada. Now, some of the same Guard members are being told they cannot carry guns. "We've been put in a straitjacket and cannot provide assistance," says Lowenberg, adding that protecting unarmed Guard members has now become a primary mission of INS and Customs agents on the border.

Additionally, he says, deploying troops to the borders took nearly six months, because of the debate over arming them, delays in deciding which troops to call up and the time required to move troops to the border. Under state control, he says, the troops could have been mobilized from states along the border and trained within weeks, as they were for airport security operations.

A LARGER DEBATE

Some observers say the debate over state versus federal control has less to do with effective management than with money. A congressional staffer who follows these issues puts it this way: "The governors argue for more state assets for state missions because [under Title 32] they do not have to pay. But if the state wants them, shouldn't it pay? If the federal government is paying them, why not give them the access to more assets? [The Sept. 11 attacks have] sharpened the debate, but really it has been going on forever."

Rees, the National Guard's No. 2 man at the Pentagon, says there's no doubt that Sept. 11 has heightened the debate over the Guard's Title 10 versus Title 32 responsibilities. The Guard's role in homeland security will continue to evolve and could well lead to more hybrid missions like airport security, in which the Guard executes a federal mission under state control.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is spearheading an effort in Congress to give the National Guard a leading role in homeland defense. On June 26, Lieberman told an audience at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington that, "No part of our military is better suited to aid in providing for the common defense of the homeland than the National Guard. As the national militia, under the direct command of each of the 50 state governors, its core mission naturally extends to homeland defense."

Defense analysts Jack Spencer and Larry Wortzel argued in a recent paper for the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, that the National Guard-with 3,000 Army National Guard armories and 140 Air National Guard units-has the local connections to effectively manage homeland defense. The National Guard's state command-and-control system would provide a built-in management structure, and the Guard is ideally located to provide training to local firefighters, police and other emergency personnel at the local level, they argue. "Significant elements of the National Guard must be focused on homeland security, with a secondary mission of supporting the active forces," the paper states.

Such a shift likely would lead to a wholesale restructuring of the Army National Guard. More than half of the organization consists of front-line combat units that carry out duties that have little to do with homeland security. Like Virginia's E Battery, those troops train regularly for combat operations and spend little time, if any, practicing riot control techniques or security assistance. Less than a quarter of the Army Guard today is organized into the kind of units-such as military police or engineers-most likely to be called up for homeland security duty. "Most of today's Guard remains structured, trained, and equipped to augment and reinforce active-duty troops that serve outside our country. That remains an important role that we need to respect and protect-because we may well need them for that purpose," Lieberman said. "But in the age of terrorism, we also need more talented hands on deck right here, right now."

Lawrence Korb, who oversaw reserve affairs at the Pentagon under the Reagan administration and is now a policy analyst at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, says it makes sense for the Guard to trade in some Abrams tanks for gas masks. But, he says, the National Guard also should hand off some of its civil responsibilities to the active-duty military so that it will not face continual deployments.

Retired Air Guard Maj. Richard Alexander heads the National Guard Association of the United States, a Washington group representing current and former Guard members. Alexander says Sept. 11 will lead to "mutations" of the Guard's existing force structure, but he doesn't think the Guard should become a homeland security force. "The American public does not want the National Guard to become federal law enforcement officers," says Alexander, adding that morale among Guard members would erode if soldiers were told they were not primarily focused on warfighting.

Rees says the Guard will dedicate a "very small percentage" of its forces to such homeland security roles as those performed by its small and highly trained teams that specialize in weapons of mass destruction and civil support. These teams are assigned to 32 states. The Guard is likely to increase its military police units, engineers and other logistics functions as part of a division redesign already under way. But, Rees says, the bulk of the Guard will remain a ready reserve for the military's active forces.

The armed forces also are concerned about attempts to shift the Guard's focus to homeland security and away from its long-standing role augmenting and backing up active-duty personnel. The Army has relied extensively on the Army National Guard to provide logistics, engineering and military police services during its overseas deployments. If the Guard were not available, the Army likely would have to give up front-line soldiers to perform support functions. The Army is loath to give up any of its combat capabilities.

"We see the Guard being dual-missioned; to be able to do the primary warfighting mission, as well as homeland security. We don't see the Guard just having a singular mission of homeland security. They have the capacity to do both, and that's what [the Guard] will continue to do," said Army Gen. John Keane, the service's influential vice chief of staff, in a recent interview with the Defense Writers Group.

The debate will play out in the corridors of the Pentagon and, ultimately, will be decided by Congress and the administration over the next several years. But the Virginia E battery members called up to active duty are hardly concerned about whether they are headed overseas or up Interstate 95.

"It's still a battlefield, it's just at home [but] just as much of a target," says Sgt. Gregory

Heinrich, a surveyor for the unit. "This is just adding to our mission."