Guard to secure airports King requests aid at border crossings

AUGUSTA – Armed members of the Maine Army National Guard will be sent to the state’s major airports next week, Gov. Angus King said Thursday. The announcement was made in response to President Bush’s request that the nation’s governors post troops at commercial airports as an initial step toward federal control of airline security.

“It’s a limited purpose for a limited duration and it’s certainly a national emergency, I don’t have any question about that,” King said. “The public can react in one of two ways: by pulling back and saying, ‘this makes me nervous,’ or they can be reassured. I would be reassured.”

After a 40-minute telephone conference call Thursday morning with White House officials and other governors from around the country, King said it was clear the president needed the states’ help.

The former governor of Texas, Bush chose to rely on the nation’s governors to immediately beef up security at commercial airports until more stringent federal security plans can be implemented. The deployment of the National Guard by the governors is part of the response by the president to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks when suicide hijackers slammed jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

King and Maj. Gen. Joseph Tinkham, commissioner of Defense, Veterans and Emergency Management and adjutant general of the Maine Army and Air National Guard, said between 25 and 50 members of the guard will be asked to volunteer for the security assignment that could last as long as six months. The federal government will reimburse the costs to the state.

Tinkham said there are no military police among the 4,000 members of the Maine Army National Guard and the Maine Air National Guard and that some training will be necessary before state troops can be deployed. The guard members will be expected to monitor security checkpoints, assist passenger screening and resolve conflicts that might arise.

“The mission as I see it is that we will provide a presence, a show of force if you will, at the sites that currently, and for the next few months, will be staffed by the current contract security personnel which I do not believe are armed,” Tinkham said. “This will bolster their ability to actually protect that site.”

In a roundabout way, Bush essentially federalized the state National Guard by making his request through the nation’s governors. Federal law prevents the president from mobilizing the state National Guard for civilian law enforcement purposes such as airport security. The governor is not encumbered by those restrictions that apply to the president.

Exactly which airports will be affected by the deployment remained unclear late Thursday afternoon. The governor said it seemed likely that the state’s two largest airports, the Portland International Jetport and Bangor International Airport, would be prime candidates for security upgrades. But whether additional security would be needed for the state’s three other commercial facilities in Augusta, Trenton and Presque Isle might not be known until later today.

“We’re awaiting a list from Washington concerning exactly which airports in Maine this will apply to,” King said. “We don’t know whether the smaller airports will be expected to undertake this activity.”

During Thursday’s phone conference, the governor also asked the president to consider a similar National Guard deployment to expedite crossings along Maine’s border with Canada. New and more stringent entry checks at the border since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on Washington and New York are starting to cause backups, he said

King said many travelers are experiencing hour-long delays as they wait to be cleared through U.S. Customs stations. He said the problem is due largely to an insufficient number of federal agents to handle the number of daily border crossings.

“There are significant backup lines and people are having to wait a long time,” King said. “The Border Patrol and Customs Service are basically overwhelmed in terms of the sheer number of people available to do the heightened security checks. It would be very helpful to us and to our neighbors in Canada if we could get some additional assets to those points as quickly as possible.”

King was still awaiting word late Thursday from Washington on whether the state would get federal reimbursement for placing members of the National Guard at the border.