CommunityEditor
09-11-2009, 06:39 PM
WASHINGTON — A routine Coast Guard training exercise set off a panic Friday morning when a member of the public overheard parts of a training drill on a Coast Guard radio channel, Coast Guard officials said.
Whether that person called police — or just the media — is not clear, but Coast Guard officials said there were no shots fired and no suspicious vessel. A CNN report that there were shots fired probably came from a verbalization that service members do during training exercises to simulate gunfire.
“That ‘bang, bang’ was verbalized on the radio,” said Vice Adm. John Currier, chief of staff of the Coast Guard, at a noon news conference. “That’s a normal technique that happens all over the U.S.”
The training exercise, a simulated interdiction of a rogue boater, started at 9:30 a.m. in the vicinity of the 14th Street and Memorial bridges over the Potomac River. The Coast Guard started receiving calls about the exercise at 9:40 a.m., said Cmdr. Ron LaBrec, a Coast Guard spokesman.
The timing set off alarm bells because President Barack Obama was traveling to the Pentagon for a ceremony commemorating the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Currier said that the president was not near the area at the time.
The Coast Guard did not notify the Secret Service, the Metropolitan Police Department or other law enforcement authorities before the training exercise, because it was a “low-profile, normal training exercise” that is done four times a week by Coast Guard Station Washington, Currier said. That particular area of the river is used because they need a “fairly deep channel” for the boats, he said.
Nevertheless, the FBI temporarily “put a ground hold” on a small number of flights at Reagan National Airport until it received notice that there weren’t any problems, Currier said.
Some expressed disappointment that the Coast Guard did not take into account the 9/11 anniversary when deciding whether to go ahead with the exercise. Brian Wise, executive director of Military Families United, said the fact that the Coast Guard was unaware the exercise would cause alarm was “more indicative of this country not understanding the importance of this day.”
“I fully understand their need for training exercises and support that, but I think this could have been planned another day,” said Wise, who heads up the military family advocacy organization. “I think this was probably an oversight that should be corrected for future years.”
Wise said the organization counts relatives of 9/11 victims and soldiers serving overseas as members.
Currier said he was still gathering details of the exercise because it was approved by Coast Guard Sector Baltimore, not headquarters. LaBrec said there were four 25-foot response boats that would have been manned by four-person crews. The boats are equipped with M-60 machine guns.
Currier said he would do “a top-to-bottom review” on whether the Coast Guard should have scheduled a training exercise on 9/11 and the service’s response both to the incident and the press, but he felt no need to apologize for the event. The service members typically announce at the beginning of the broadcast that they are doing a drill, he said.
“No, I’m not going to issue an apology, because what you are seeing here is a normal training exercise,” Currier said. “This was not ad-libbing by anyone involved.”
Article: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/09/coastguard_potomac_exercise_091109w/
Whether that person called police — or just the media — is not clear, but Coast Guard officials said there were no shots fired and no suspicious vessel. A CNN report that there were shots fired probably came from a verbalization that service members do during training exercises to simulate gunfire.
“That ‘bang, bang’ was verbalized on the radio,” said Vice Adm. John Currier, chief of staff of the Coast Guard, at a noon news conference. “That’s a normal technique that happens all over the U.S.”
The training exercise, a simulated interdiction of a rogue boater, started at 9:30 a.m. in the vicinity of the 14th Street and Memorial bridges over the Potomac River. The Coast Guard started receiving calls about the exercise at 9:40 a.m., said Cmdr. Ron LaBrec, a Coast Guard spokesman.
The timing set off alarm bells because President Barack Obama was traveling to the Pentagon for a ceremony commemorating the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Currier said that the president was not near the area at the time.
The Coast Guard did not notify the Secret Service, the Metropolitan Police Department or other law enforcement authorities before the training exercise, because it was a “low-profile, normal training exercise” that is done four times a week by Coast Guard Station Washington, Currier said. That particular area of the river is used because they need a “fairly deep channel” for the boats, he said.
Nevertheless, the FBI temporarily “put a ground hold” on a small number of flights at Reagan National Airport until it received notice that there weren’t any problems, Currier said.
Some expressed disappointment that the Coast Guard did not take into account the 9/11 anniversary when deciding whether to go ahead with the exercise. Brian Wise, executive director of Military Families United, said the fact that the Coast Guard was unaware the exercise would cause alarm was “more indicative of this country not understanding the importance of this day.”
“I fully understand their need for training exercises and support that, but I think this could have been planned another day,” said Wise, who heads up the military family advocacy organization. “I think this was probably an oversight that should be corrected for future years.”
Wise said the organization counts relatives of 9/11 victims and soldiers serving overseas as members.
Currier said he was still gathering details of the exercise because it was approved by Coast Guard Sector Baltimore, not headquarters. LaBrec said there were four 25-foot response boats that would have been manned by four-person crews. The boats are equipped with M-60 machine guns.
Currier said he would do “a top-to-bottom review” on whether the Coast Guard should have scheduled a training exercise on 9/11 and the service’s response both to the incident and the press, but he felt no need to apologize for the event. The service members typically announce at the beginning of the broadcast that they are doing a drill, he said.
“No, I’m not going to issue an apology, because what you are seeing here is a normal training exercise,” Currier said. “This was not ad-libbing by anyone involved.”
Article: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/09/coastguard_potomac_exercise_091109w/