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Coast Guard sparks security scare in Washington

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LowRevs

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Reuters Article

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Coast Guard set off a security scare on Friday with a training exercise in the heart of the U.S. capital on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

Police and federal law enforcement officials said the incident on the Potomac River near the Pentagon, was a training exercise and no shots had been fired despite early reports that several rounds had been fired at a suspicious boat.

The Coast Guard said the reports were based on overheard radio calls made over a training frequency.
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The mainstreet media is hysterical and reactionary and is blaming the Coast Guard.

These bozos eavesdropped on a military frequency in the vicinity of the fourteenth street bridge where the President was traversing to the Pentagon to pay his respects to those that died on 9/11. They heard Coast Guard transmissions of a simulated confrontion of a boat that had entered a closed area and reported it to the police who took it as valid enough to tell Reagan National Airport before they verified it. And now they are continuing to blame someone else. I think I heard that CNN made the first report. Fox was reporting it like all the others.

Are they any journalists left? :shock:
 
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Is the media even supposed to be listening to a Coast Guard channel in the first place?
 
Actually, these exercises, in that they occur in navigable waters are reported in the Notice to Mariners and the Broadcast Notice to Mariners. If they had checked they probably would have found it.

It probably was done on an open freq. They would have avoided channel 16 other than the notice and probably done it on 12.
 
LowRevs said:
Reuters Article

The mainstreet media is hysterical and reactionary and is blaming the Coast Guard.

These bozos eavesdropped on a military frequency in the vicinity of the fourteenth street bridge where the President was traversing to the Pentagon to pay his respects to those that died on 9/11. They heard Coast Guard transmissions of a simulated confrontion of a boat that had entered a closed area and reported it to the police who took it as valid enough to tell Reagan National Airport before they verified it. And now they are continuing to blame someone else. I think I heard that CNN made the first report. Fox was reporting it like all the others.

Are they any journalists left? :shock:​
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I agree that the media hysterics are just more evidence of the loss of honest and true journalism in America; but it also begs the question of the people in charge of the Coast Guard thinking that conducting an exercise near the location the President is participating in a memorial to 9-11 victims was a GOOD IDEA?

I mean common people, what rationale is there to defend the stupidity of the people who said; "hey, let's conduct an terrorist exercise on 9-11 near the location where the President will be!"
:doh​
 
Actually I think it's a better time to be doing it.

I don't know for sure but they may have responsibility for security of the river when the President is moving around the city. What better time to do your drills. The Coast Guard did nothing but drive boats on the river which they do all the time. They DID NOT fire any weapons. Someone at CNN overhead something someone said on the radio, saw some boats and called the police. Histeria! Did they think the Coast Guard couldn't handle the notifications?

I checked the Local Notice to Mariners but couldn't find any mention of exercises. Some firewords, lots of aids to navigations discrepancies, fisheries notices but not this exercise. Leads me to believe they were there originally operational in the area, security.

I lived in DC for 4 1/2 years. It was like living on a bullseye, and that was before 9/11/01.

Check out this notice. It will give you an idea of what the Coast Guard actually does.
 
Kandahar said:
Is the media even supposed to be listening to a Coast Guard channel in the first place?
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If the radio communications were to be secret they would have used secure chanels, scrambles, or cryto-graphic methods
 
Sounds like Gibbs got a little upset with CNN:

“Let’s understand that best I can tell there was reporting based on listening to a police scanner that was not verified, and then it was on television and now we’ve raced back to find out that it’s a training exercise. So I think it appears as if a lot of this might have been avoided,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs told reporters that the Coast Guard was holding a news conference to explain the exercise. "Hopefully CNN will go,” Gibbs quipped. "My only caution would be that before we report things like this, checking would be good."
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Story
 
Truth Detector said:
I mean common people, what rationale is there to defend the stupidity of the people who said; "hey, let's conduct an terrorist exercise on 9-11 near the location where the President will be!"
:doh
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Well, they probably hold training exercises somewhere in the country every single day. I doubt it ever even occurred to them that it could get picked up by the media and reported. It seems like the security apparatus wasn't confused by this...only the media.
 
Kandahar said:
Well, they probably hold training exercises somewhere in the country every single day. I doubt it ever even occurred to them that it could get picked up by the media and reported. It seems like the security apparatus wasn't confused by this...only the media.
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There's no probably about it, they do drills every day. With the wide range of responsibilities there's alway something to practice. Patuxent River Station has responsibility, as far as I know, for water security of the bridges the President crosses when he moves around DC. Probably some others agencies too. Yeah, what I'm saying is that if the President is going to cross a bridge in DC the CG is under it. After he crosses, it's only natural to do a drill. Heck, you're already underway and you have to wait until he crosses back. What else is there to do?
 
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