Fitting In

n March 1, 2003, after 36 years in the Transportation Department, the Coast Guard became part of the new Homeland Security Department. Congress had sought to preserve the Coast Guard's traditional non-homeland security missions and the resources for them by prohibiting the service from being fully merged into the new department. Instead of being assigned to a functional directorate like most of the department's component agencies, the Coast Guard remained a stand-alone organization reporting directly to the secretary. But the efforts of legislators to preserve the Coast Guard's multimission status probably will have just the opposite result. Eventually, the Coast Guard may be forced to merge fully into a directorate, and may end up having to transfer most of its non-homeland security missions to other agencies.

Like most federal agencies, the Homeland Security Department is organized along functional lines. A principal reason for establishing the department was to assure unity of effort by placing under one roof all the agencies with the functional responsibility for protecting our maritime and land borders, transportation systems and critical infrastructure, and for coordinating responses to homeland security emergencies. These agencies present a common face on our borders. The department has five major directorates: Border and Transportation Security; Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection; Emergency Preparedness and Response; Science and Technology; and Management.

Alongside these neat functional units sits the Coast Guard. But unlike them and, in fact, unlike most government agencies, the Coast Guard isn't organized around a single set of similar services, processes and programs. Rather, the Coast Guard conducts maritime safety, security, law enforcement, regulatory, defense and environmental functions. In its capstone doctrinal publication, "Coast Guard Publication-1," the Coast Guard refers to its multifunctional character as "multimission." But multimission has become a Coast Guard mantra-an unexamined orthodoxy-rather than a principle that has been rigorously and objectively analyzed, studied and articulated.

In truth, the Coast Guard is multimission in just the same sense as any other emergency response agency. For example, while the main function of the Navy is defense and the main function of a county police department is law enforcement, both conduct other missions. The Navy carries out search-and-rescue, humanitarian relief and law enforcement work. The police provide initial medical aid to accident victims, drug awareness education in the schools, and after-school athletic programs. The Coast Guard is different, however, because it shares federal maritime functions in the air and on land with other agencies.

During the 2002 debates about moving the Coast Guard to Homeland Security, some in Congress expressed concern that moving the service would reduce its focus on what they described as its "traditional" missions-those not directly related to homeland security, such as search and rescue, fisheries law enforcement, and marine environmental protection, among others. To protect the Coast Guard's multifunctional status and to prevent reshuffling of its mission priorities in favor of homeland security, the statute establishing the new department:

• Directed that the Coast Guard remain a distinct entity and report directly to the secretary.
• Prohibited the transfer of Coast Guard authorities, functions, personnel and assets to any Homeland Security directorate.
• Directed the secretary of Homeland Security not to make any substantial or significant change to the capabilities of the Coast Guard in order to carry out non-homeland security missions.
• Designated the Coast Guard's 11 major missions as either "non-homeland security" or "homeland security."

According to Adm. James Loy, Coast Guard commandant from 1998 to 2002, roughly one-third of Coast Guard missions supported Transportation, one-third supported the Defense Department, and one-third supported the Justice Department. Transportation is focused largely on ensuring fast, safe, efficient, accessible and convenient transportation systems, so aviation, highway, transit and railway issues dominate the department's attention.

Coast Guard missions and issues never were at the center of the department's concerns, and Transportation seldom directly oversaw Coast Guard operations. The Coast Guard's lack of alignment with Transportation was evidenced by the service's eviction from the departmental headquarters in downtown Washington and removal to the former Railroad Retirement Board building in the backwater of Buzzards Point.

MAKING THE TEAM

For the first time since 1945, when it was last subsumed-temporarily into the Navy-the Coast Guard is part of a department that aligns with its functions. Two-thirds of the Coast Guard's missions are in security, defense and law enforcement, which closely match the core function of the Homeland Security Department. But merely moving the Coast Guard to Homeland Security will not necessarily foster integration and coordination. Instead, it could promote duplication and redundancy and undermine unity of effort, unless the Coast Guard loses its autonomy and is fully moored within a directorate.

Homeland Security Department leaders will not only determine the Coast Guard's budget, but also will shape day-to-day operations to a degree that Transportation officials never did. Homeland Security is responsible for putting in place an effective, integrated security system to secure our borders and our air, land and sea transportation systems. The Border and Transportation Security Directorate is the focal point for a cohesive, integrated and well-coordinated border and transportation security system that is both comprehensive and mutually supportive. This centralization is intended to eliminate past fragmentation and coordination problems and a hitherto piecemeal approach to homeland security. While it lacks direct oversight of the Coast Guard for securing the maritime borders, the approaches to those borders and the marine transportation system, the directorate still will set integrated national goals and performance measures for homeland security practices affecting all borders and transportation systems.

The directorate's leaders will allocate resources as required by the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act. Many of the agencies that formed the directorate operate boats, aircraft, command and control and intelligence centers, and communication networks. Yet the Coast Guard with its own boats, aircraft, command and intelligence centers, and communication networks remains separate and distinct.

Establishing the Coast Guard as an autonomous agency outside the directorate exacerbates coordination problems and seriously undermines the unity that is required to maintain border and transportation security. In fact, this arrangement directly contravenes Secretary Tom Ridge's slogan-"One Team, One Mission."

OVERLAP, COMPETITION, CHAOS

All three components of the directorate-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection, and TSA-share similar, if not identical, security responsibilities with the Coast Guard. ICE's Air and Marine Operations, for example, is "responsible for protecting the nation's borders and the American people from the smuggling of narcotics, other contraband, and terrorist activity with an integrated and coordinated air and marine interdiction force." To this end, the division is purchasing Bombardier twin-engine turboprop Dash8 aircraft principally for maritime patrol duties. It also is planning to acquire long-range unmanned aerial vehicles for high-endurance patrolling.

The Coast Guard's maritime security role is to "protect America's maritime borders and suppress violations of federal law in the maritime region." In the maritime arena, Air and Marine Operations and the Coast Guard apparently have the same security function, so duplication and inefficiency might be unavoidable. Interestingly, through its Integrated Deepwater System Project, the Coast Guard is buying a variant of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company twin-engine turboprop CASA aircraft for its maritime patrol duties. Thus, the Homeland Security Department will support two air forces flying different planes for the same mission. In addition, ICE's Intelligence Division and the Coast Guard's Intelligence Program both collect, analyze and disseminate intelligence to support border protection and anti-drug operations conducted by Air and Marine Operations as well as the Coast Guard.

The Customs and Border Protection Bureau is integrating command and control at all major U.S. ports of entry, including seaports. These command centers, headed by port directors, plan and oversee security activities relating to entry and departure of cargo and passengers. This initiative is separate from the existing Coast Guard captain-of-the-port command and control structure for seaports. Maintaining two distinct command structures responsible for security at the same seaports contradicts the whole reason the new department was established.

Adding further potential for overlap and redundancy, TSA has statutory responsibility for the security of all transportation systems, including maritime systems. TSA is developing its own intelligence function "to support its transportation customer base with analysis on transportation security and intelligence." But according to the Coast Guard's "Maritime Strategy for Homeland Security," issued in 2002, it is the lead federal agency for maritime homeland security. TSA appears to share with the Coast Guard responsibility for the security of seaports, including facilities, cargo and passengers and could claim primacy in that area. This lack of distinction between Coast Guard and TSA functions promotes competition, duplication and possibly even chaos in an emergency.

PRIVILEGED PLAYER

It is unlikely that the secretary of Homeland Security, to whom the Coast Guard now reports, will have sufficient time to administer the service directly or become immersed in its budgetary and resource issues to the degree required for proper oversight. Moreover, the secretary will not want to administer Coast Guard programs in isolation from those of the Border and Transportation Security Directorate. The secretary cannot effectively determine the Coast Guard's resource, policy and budget priorities for border and transportation security without close coordination with the directorate. Thus, out of necessity, the directorate probably will exercise a large measure of de facto oversight of the Coast Guard's homeland security mission.

Overseeing the Coast Guard will prove awkward and eventually too difficult under this organizational structure. For example, it's not hard to predict the questions Congress will ask when assessing the supposedly different roles of the Coast Guard and Air and Marine Operations: Why does DHS have two air forces and two boat fleets? If the Coast Guard-Navy national fleet policy to coordinate and integrate maritime forces is applicable to the Homeland Security and Defense departments, why isn't a similar policy applicable to the Coast Guard and the Border and Transportation Security Directorate in DHS? Why isn't there a single Homeland Security command and control structure for the entire nation? Why the duplication?

In addition to suffering legislators' wrath, the Coast Guard could well experience organizational and cultural psychological resistance throughout DHS, but especially among the Border and Transportation Security agencies. They already view the Coast Guard not as part of the team, but as a privileged player with its own special rules.

Reporting directly to the secretary and with significantly more access, autonomy and latitude for intradepartmental maneuvering than its sister agencies, the Coast Guard effectively enjoys a position that allows it to coordinate with, as opposed to obeying, the directorate's undersecretary. Such an arrangement does not foster unified effort and could promote competitiveness among agencies for resources. The Coast Guard runs the risk of being labeled "a bunch of fancy Dans," as Army Gen. Omar Bradley called the Navy when it opposed joining the Defense Department in the late 1940s.

DROPPING ANCHOR

The Coast Guard needs to truly drop anchor in its new department. The same logic used to bring together the key agencies that form the Border and Transportation Security Directorate should be used to determine which of the Coast Guard's 11 missions are aligned with core Homeland Security Department responsibilities and which fit more closely with other agencies' missions. Congress already designated the 11 missions as either homeland security or non-homeland security. By their very definition, the six non-homeland security missions are likely candidates for transfer.

However, two of the six-living marine resources protection and search and rescue-should not be transferred. Both follow the same common sequence of priorities as the five core homeland security missions: observe, detect and identify unusual maritime incidents; investigate those of special interest; and then provide appropriate responses. Thus, the Coast Guard can conduct all these missions with the same assets. Furthermore, marine resources protection is a law enforcement mission and belongs in the homeland security category. Additionally, the increased emphasis on ocean surveillance and maritime intelligence needed to protect the homeland will greatly benefit search and rescue and marine resources protection.

The four remaining non-homeland security missions-marine safety, aids to navigation, marine environmental protection, and ice operations-are logical candidates for transfer. The marine safety mission, except for the legal authorities that allow the Coast Guard to impose security zones, to open or close seaport access and to take other related actions should be transferred in large part back to Transportation, which has safety responsibilities for all modes of transport, except maritime. Transportation's Maritime Administration could conduct all safety inspections of commercial and merchant ships and license merchant marine personnel and document merchant ships, outsourcing some of that work to the American Bureau of Shipping, a self-regulating, nonprofit ship classification agency. The National Transportation Safety Board could conduct all marine safety investigations since it already investigates all aircraft, rail, bus and truck accidents.

Marine environmental protection should go to the Environmental Protection Agency. The aids to navigation mission, along with domestic ice-breaking, should be transferred to the Army Corps of Engineers, where these missions could for the most part be outsourced to commercial firms using former Coast Guard cutters. Polar ice operations could be handled by the Military Sealift Command. Along with the missions and cutters, the Coast Guard should transfer appropriate funds and personnel.

Failure to fully merge the Coast Guard into the Homeland Security Department will spawn significant pushback and ultimately prove unworkable. Remaining outside the Border and Transportation Security Directorate might preserve the Coast Guard's multimission status in the short run, but the natural progression of events and business will draw the service inevitably into the directorate's orbit. And given that agencies outside Homeland Security could accomplish many of the Coast Guard's functions, the value of its multifunctional role increasingly will be called into question.

America needs a seamless organization for border and transportation security, and only complete consolidation of all the key players can ensure adequate capabilities for planning, preparing and executing responses to security contingencies.