The New York Times
September 18, 2001

All of a Sudden, a Jittery Nation of Checkpoints
By TIMOTHY EGAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/18/national/18REAC.html

With National Guard reservists guarding dams and utilities, Coast Guard cutters holding up normal vessel traffic in major ports and public gatherings shadowed by patrols in the air and bomb-sniffing dogs on the ground, a swell of homeland defense not seen since World War II rose across the nation yesterday in response to last week's terrorist attacks.

At the forefront of the new defense measures are Coast Guard patrols and Army and Air Force reservists with a mission to look within the United States for signs of terror. The patrols are searching commercial and recreational boats, flying missions over major cities and helping police the borders.

"We have been violated in a way that the continental United States has never before seen," said John Goheen, a spokesman for the National Guard Association, "and the response is a new kind of homeland defense."

All nuclear power plants and most hydroelectric dams are operating with their highest levels of security, with beefed-up patrols. Seventeen members of the National Guard were deployed yesterday to security checkpoints at Hoover Dam, replacing Interior Department guards that have been at the checkpoints since the attacks in New York and at the Pentagon on Tuesday.

Throughout the country, new protections for transportation and food supplies have been put in place. In Kansas, state authorities debated whether to institute procedures to prevent "bioterrorism," or the threat to contaminate livestock or crops with lethal pathogens.

Nine germ warfare National Guard units, in their first deployment ever, have been sent to select locations. The routines of public life at concerts, baseball games, offices and synagogues at the start of the Jewish High Holy Days are now subject in many cases to the same kind of security as airports. Backpacks, knives and weapons of any sort are forbidden in many public places. Major League Baseball banned parking within 100 feet of stadiums and ordered more uniformed officers, pregame inspections of stadiums and inspections of deliveries.

Fans who attend the University of Nebraska-Rice football game in Nebraska on Thursday, the first major college game since the attacks, will be told not to even approach the stadium with bags, containers, umbrellas or coolers. Coolers will also be banned at Nascar events.

While major office buildings began screening packages, mail and visitors, few took as drastic a step as one taken by the John Hancock Observatory, in Boston. Officials closed the observatory, on the 60th floor of the company's main tower.

"Every year, more than 400,000 people, virtually all of them unknown to us, visit the observatory," said John Heavey, director of security for Hancock. "Unfortunately, once they are inside, it is very difficult to control or limit their access to other parts of the building."

The Coast Guard, which closed New York Harbor to recreational boats again yesterday, is boarding commercial vessels before allowing them into major ports, and it is stopping small boats, too. These measures, part of a call on Sunday by Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta to activate reservist port security units in American harbors, also establish a 500-yard security zone around Navy ships.

"We have never done these kinds of security measures, to this extent, any time in our history," said Gary Rives, a Coast Guard spokesman in New York. Coast Guard officials have authorized the new steps to be in place for at least nine months.

Boat traffic was somewhat more normal yesterday in Boston Harbor, which was closed on Sunday while the Coast Guard swept the port and piers for bombs. The Coast Guard had received two bomb threats, officials said. The closing kept two luxury ocean liners, the Queen Elizabeth 2 and the Caronia, waiting outside the harbor.

In San Diego Harbor, officials have boarded and searched more than 300 vessels since the attacks, the Coast Guard said. Most of those boats were recreational.

In Texas, the Port of Corpus Christi, the gateway to large petrochemical refineries, has "doubled the watch," said John LaRue, the port authority's executive director.

"Where we had one person stationed at a particular location, we put two," he said. "We've added people where we didn't have them."

Governors and mayors around the country have taken steps to review emergency procedures and reinforce security. The New York Legislature passed a bill today modestly extending wiretapping rules in cases of suspected terrorists.

For now, the public seems to be accepting the new restrictions on work and travel.

"Two weeks ago, if you'd have suggested some of these measures, people would have said to stop acting like Big Brother," said Timothy Dimoff, owner of a corporate security company in Akron, Ohio. "Now, it's, `How fast can you do it?' "

Mr. Dimoff said he had been deluged with requests by companies looking to overhaul their security.

Despite the new security, some restrictions were lifted yesterday. The Federal Aviation Administration allowed commercial airlines to resume carrying mail and cargo. Also, the agency allowed small crop dusters to return to the skies.

In Chicago, home of the nation's second-busiest airport, the public seemed edgy about all the new police and military presence.

"People are panicking and doing things they normally would not do," Officer Matthew Jackson of the Chicago police said, telling of a case in which the police were called to remove three people who were so frightened that they had locked themselves in an airport restroom.

"The bottom line," he said, "is people need to understand you can no longer come and go as you please."

Welcome to the begining of the police state USA.  We don't need big brother, we need freedom to win this battle.  If our government would trust its citizens to defend the homeland, it could do its job outside of america.
c-rock

We must have some ammount of security measures but6 I honestly don't/can't tell you how much is too little and how much is too much.  Yes I value my freedom but I understand the need.

sgtar15

What is in your pocket? Tweezers?  Sorry that is contraband, please deposit it in this trash can, the nail file too.  [rolleyes]

I think I'm going to start carrying a 2' 2x4 around when everything else is banned.  Or a nice cane.  

[img]www.standandfight.com/img/tshirts/large/Benjamin_Franklin_Series_001.jpg[/img]

Go to f&^*ing hell, Offr. Jackson. If you want to live in a dictatorship, Osama bin-Laden will welcome you with open arms.

I wanna retch. We are not stupid zoo animals in a well-appointed cage, we are free human beings.

Don't Chicago cops have to swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, or do they just swear a personal oath of allegiance to whichever Mayor Daley is in power?

People have to understand that they can no longer come and go as they please???  

Sorry, but I'll have to disagree with Officer Jackson on this point.  This is the United States of America and people can damn well come and go as they please!  In light of this anti-Constitutional and un-American statement so graciously offered by Officer Jackson, I think somebody needs to rip the badge off his chest and provide him with a one way plane ticket out of O'Hare direct to Beijing.  Then he can work for a government that encourages its officers to think like that and he can spew BS like that till his heart's content!

Although we must rally to secure our nation and freedom from enemies overseas, let us not for one second let our guard down to those who threaten these very same things from within.