Feds want boaters' help in detecting terrorists

WASHINGTON — As boating season approaches — Opening Day is Saturday in Seattle — the Bush administration wants to enlist the country's 80 million recreational boaters to help reduce the chances that a small boat could be used in a terror attack.

According to an April 23 intelligence assessment, "The use of a small boat as a weapon is likely to remain al-Qaida's weapon of choice in the maritime environment, given its ease in arming and deploying, low cost, and record of success."

While the United States, so far, has been spared this type of strike, terrorists have used small boats to attack in other countries.

To reduce the potential for such an attack in the United States, the Department of Homeland Security — which includes the Coast Guard — has developed a new strategy intended to increase security by enhancing safety standards.

Today, officials will announce the plan, which asks states to develop and enforce safety standards for recreational boaters and asks them to look for and report suspicious behavior on the water — much like a neighborhood-watch program.

The United States has spent billions of dollars constructing elaborate defenses against the monster cargo ships that could be used by terrorists.

The millions of humble dinghies, fishing boats and smaller cargo ships that ply 95,000 miles of U.S. coastline and inland waterways are not nationally regulated as they buzz around ports, oil tankers, power plants and other potential terrorist targets.

"When that oil tanker is coming from the Middle East, we know everything about it before it gets here," said John Fetterman, deputy chief of Maine's marine patrol. But when it comes to small boats, he said, "nobody knows a lot about them."

Officials point to the USS Cole bombing as an example. That 2000 attack killed 17 U.S. sailors in Yemen when terrorists rammed a dinghy packed with explosives into the destroyer.

"There is no intelligence right now that there's a credible risk" of this type of attack, says Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen. "But the vulnerability is there."

Initially the government considered creating a federal license for recreational-boat operators, but that informal proposal was immediately shot down by boating organizations. Coast Guard and homeland-security officials have toured the country to sound out the boating industry and its enthusiasts.

While the government insists there will be no federal license, the strategy suggests the government consider registering and regulating recreational boats.

There are about 18 million small boats in the country, contributing to a $39.5 billion industry, according to a 2006 estimate from the National Marine Manufacturers Association.

Fetterman and his officers regularly get intelligence reports about unknown or unrecognized boaters taking pictures of a bridge or measurements of a dam. But he says there just aren't enough officers on the water to address every report.

But Allen says the boater that is on the water every weekend knows where people fish and knows when a boat near a piece of critical infrastructure looks out of place.

"The small-boat community is not the problem," he said. But he added that with this strategy, they would be part of the solution.

The only way to police the waterfront, says maritime security expert Stephen Flynn, "is to get as many of the participants who are part of that community to be essentially on your side."

Flynn, a fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, says treating boaters as allies rather than as a threat will go a long way.

The government has taken tentative first steps to secure the waterways, but at a much slower pace than the effort aimed at large container ships.

Small boats are not the top terrorist threat facing the United States, officials say. But the nation shouldn't wait to be attacked, said Vayl Oxford, the head of homeland security's Domestic Nuclear Detection Office. "We just cannot allow ourselves to get to the point where we're managing consequences," he said.

Oxford's office is leading two pilot programs that train and arm harbor patrols with portable radiological and nuclear-detection equipment, starting with the Puget Sound area. A similar program for San Diego is in the planning stages.

Many local departments have been concerned with the small-boat threat. The New York Police Department has scuba teams and marine units equipped with radiation detection that patrol its waters. But few departments across the country have similar resources.

That is why the strategy is intended to create a layered defense that would create a national federal standard to operate a boat, Allen says.

The Coast Guard will work with states to establish minimum safety standards and ways to enforce the new rules. That may include requiring boat operators to have a copy of the safety certification on board with them and a piece of identification that links them to the certificate. That's important, security officials say, because there now is no uniform requirement for pleasure boaters to have identification on board with them on the water.

The government defines small boats as any vessel under 300 tons.