IF BY SFA

摘要

Scanning the slate-gray waters of San Francisco Bay on an overcast spring day I spot more eider ducks and gulls than barges or ships. We're patrolling past Alca-traz in a 41-foot Coast Guard utility boat that's almost as old as its blue-eyed 30-year-old coxswain, Chuck Ashmore. Ironically, this old workhorse, with its aging marine radio and soon-to-be-installed Vietnam-era. 60-caliber machine gun, is on the cutting edge of a revolution in homeland―or, I should say, home water―security. Long the threadbare cousin of the Navy and Marines, the Coast Guard has transformed its mission since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Then, just 2 percent of Coast Guard resources were directed at security; the agency was primarily focused on enforcing fishing quotas, catching drug smugglers and marine polluters, and rescuing distressed boaters. But in the immediate wake of the attacks, 2,900 reservists were called up to augment the agency's 35,000 active officers, and security work commandeered 58 percent of the agency's resources.