"Lessons" from Fort Hood

NOPE's business case analyst Fulton Wilcox points us toward an independent study (released Friday by the Department of Defense) of the "lessons learned" from the Fort Hood, TX massacre called Protecting the Force.

Here we've attached Fulton's recap of the report, as it relates to NOPE's objections to proposed unimpeded civilian housing and access at NWS Earle, but the crux of Fulton's analysis is that if we were to overlay the Laurelwood scenario to this report, many of the gaps and "to-do" lists in the Fort Hood study not only apply to Earle, but will be further complicated by the presence of a small civilian town on the base.

It estimated the elapsed time from the first notice to first responders to the disabling of the perpetrator as taking about just under 5 minutes, which is very good response, but enough time for the shooter to kill 13 people and wound many more. Although Secretary of Defense Gates charged the study team with looking at “simultaneous” attacks that matter apparently had to do with separate multiple installations rather than the implications if the Fort Hood shooter had been a team rather than a lone individual.

The report stated that “DoD mandates 100% credential inspection for access to DoD CONUS [Continental United States] installations” (pg.34). It is a significant question as to whether the Laurelwood chain link fence justifies an exception. The study group expressed concern that there was no one “in charge” and suggested that DoD designate a senior DoD person to make policy decisions on such force protection matters (pg. 26).

The report touches on a variety of subjects regarding behavioral signals, but left for future study matters such as how DoD detects incipient dangerous behavior in non-affiliated civilians. It also touches on information sharing and policy – e.g., regarding vehicle registrations, private firearms handling, etc., but again not specifically with respect to entirely non-affiliated civilian residents and visitors.

On of the relevant findings (Finding 4.1) was that DoD’s emergency services are not interoperable across military and local civilian organization. Finding 4.2 was that DoD’s implementation of internal 911 is laggard. Many 911 calls went into the County system, and then had to be relayed back to Fort Hood.

New York-based Epoch Times also gives a well-considered recap of the Fort Hood report.

N.J. military bases heighten security in wake of Fort Hood tragedy, and a brief perspective

I write this afternoon with a heavy heart in the wake of the horrific killings at Fort Hood, TX.

Merely to inform our readers, the McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst base has increased security measures, according to this brief from the Times of Trenton, in the wake of the horrific scene at Fort Hood, Texas. We have yet to learn whether changes have been made in the security protocols at our nearby bases Naval Weapons Station Earle and Fort Monmouth.

NOPE wishes to reiterate heartfelt condolences to all of those witnessed to the tragedy and remind our supporters that local service members at Earle and Fort Monmouth are the fabric of our community and history. My kids share classrooms with kids of those stationed here. Many of the leaders of NOPE either dutifully served in the military or worked at one of the nearby bases, and the thought of a Fort Hood-like incident here in Monmouth County is devastating. We have much to appreciate about our local military presence.

It is unfortunate, but the largely uncovered (by the media) product of NOPE's objection to proposed civilian housing and unimpeded civilian access at NWS Earle has to do with the safety of service members at the base. As difficult as it is to swallow that a military officer would turn a weapon on his brethren is beyond our civilian realm of comprehension, what readers can take from this tragedy locally, perhaps, is that the protection and quality-of-life issues of service members (i.e. good housing and family care, healthcare, e.g. PTSD awareness and rehabilitation) on U.S. military bases needs a much closer, more-urgent look from our legislators and military leaders.

We, Americans, too often take our freedoms for granted, without engaging in matters critical to those behind the lines. Let us not only turn our thoughts to those grieving the Fort Hood killings, but remember to do all that we can locally to assist those who are making enormous sacrifices as members of the U.S. Military.

Sincerely,
Bill Holobowski,
NOPE Chairman

Washington Post: Fort Hood attack 3rd this year targeting military on U.S. soil

It is unfortunate that it took the Fort Hood incident to draw attention and introduce real discussion to the issue of security at U.S. military installations, as evidenced by this Washington Post story on Friday, which rehashes incidents that were given only modest media and political attention and that NOPE has discussed here on this blog ad nauseum (i.e. thwarted attacks on Quantico, Fort Dix, Arkansas Army recruiting center).

The Fort Hood massacre notwithstanding, the separate civilian break-ins at Washington's Kitsap Naval base and North Carolina's Fort Bragg should be enough to get the Department of Navy to recognize that its civilian housing plan at NWS Earle is an utter travesty that threatens to a) compromise the base's own security and b) the safety of the base's workers, and that deserves political and media beyond the local publications to bring to light the seemingly laissez-faire attitude of the broader U.S. military that it can protect its own bases. The unfortunate incidents of the past 7-10 days would suggest otherwise.

Extremely heavy hearts in wake of Fort Hood killings

Our thoughts, prayers and condolences must go out to the families of the victims of the horrific scene that has unfolded at Fort Hood, Texas, where gunmen in military uniforms, opened fired on bystanders, killing 11 and wounding 31 others. We turn your attention to the national media coverage of this sad story.

Background checks and counterterrorism

It is impossible for NOPE to sift through the thousands of news articles, commentary and opinions about the senseless Fort Hood massacre for something objective, but this article from the November 14 Houston Chronicle touches upon two topics relevant to our objection to the Department of Navy's plan to rent the Laurelwood homes on Naval Weapons Station Earle to civilians by next year: background checks (i.e. military readiness) and coordination between U.S. intelligence services.

Those new to NOPE's case may be shocked to find that the Navy is willing to create an unimpeded (i.e. no main gate, no background checks to residents and any visitors) access road to the 300 Laurelwood homes within NWS Earle's fenceline, simply as an out to a bad "privatized" housing contract from the 1980s. This not only comes as an unfunded mandate to New Jersey's taxpayers and local citizenry, but also will severely compromise the base's mission and the quality of life for active military and contractors residing in other homes inside NWS Earle.

The point being...no matter where you stand in the aftermath of Fort Hood, it is clear to the humble constituents of NOPE (and in the Houston Chronicle's piece about the U.S. Army) that, somehow, the security of the U.S. Military's own bases appears secondary to military decision-makers, and that our nation's counterterrorism efforts may need a fresh perspective. For, how else could you explain the preposterous notion of opening underutilized military housing on an active, secure and strategically significant Naval munitions storage facility to anyone that can merely pay the rent?

80 days and counting...(and two quick briefs)

The expiration of the Department of Navy's in-lease on Laurelwood housing and proposed conversion to civilian housing for the next 30 years is only 80 days away. NOPE continues to monitor any permit applications from the DoN and its developer, Laurelwood Homes, LLC, but has no new information beyond the Dec. 23 letter we blogged about January 23 and remains confident that the DoN-Laurelwood will relent to some kind of buyout compromise.

Meanwhile, we expect Tinton Falls Borough Council to vote on a resolution tonight in support of S762-A2014, the state's proposed cost-benefits study into the Laurelwood civilian housing plan at NWS Earle and its impact to NJ taxpayers. NOPE is optimistic about passage of the resolution, which is nothing more than an endorsement of Senator Beck's proposal in the Statehouse to study the merits of the DoN plan. As we have long railed, the DoN purposely omitted financial data and security cost ramifications of the plan from the Laurelwood EIS, and NJ taxpayers deserve to know how big an unfunded mandate they face as a result of the DoN's insistence on pursuing an extremely hazardous plan.

Finally, an interesting anecdote from California...where the Los Angeles times reports that the Navy has put an end to a free ferry service for the 130 or so sailors and civilian contractors who commute daily from mainland San Diego to North Island Naval Air Station. (Cali subsidizing the ~$150k annual cost as a means to ease road congestion around the Coronado base, which reportedly hosts about 35,000 employees.)

From our perspective, it is just interesting - bordering on laughable - that in the wake of the Fort Hood massacre that the DoN sees a such huge threat from a commuter ferry and cancelled a service used largely by its own employees, citing security concerns, but has no problems creating unimpeded access to NWS Earle, an 11,000-acre base that houses 300 bunkers of high-powered U.S. weapons stockpiles. On the one hand the DoN is making it harder on its own to get onto a Navy base (North Island), whereas here at Earle, the DoN is opening its arms so wide to anyone that chooses to traverse its property and visit Laurelwood as often as possible.

Anyone else out there following this logic?! We welcome your comments here.

Man busted with weapons arsenal, maps of U.S. military base

As NOPE has always preferred facts over fear mongering, this story should make the Department of Navy question its sanity before willingly opening Naval Weapons Station Earle to unimpeded civilian access and to civilian tenants who can pony up a monthly rent check for a Laurelwood townhome on the base, presumably come September.

According to the Star-Ledger, a U.S. Navy deserter named Lloyd Woodson was arrested in Branchburg yesterday with a "trove of high-powered weapons, including a grenade launcher and two assault rifles, along with maps of a U.S. military base and civilian neighborhood," plus a night scope and police scanner, and clad in a bulletproof vest. CNN has picked up this story as well.

The FBI, according to NJ.com, finds no terrorism link with Mr. Woodson, and the maps found evidently are of a base outside New Jersey, but the obvious association to NOPE's objections to unimpeded civilian housing and access to Earle is that any crackpot with a checking account, and perhaps bad intentions, will soon live inside a Naval weapons station, posing a significant threat to servicemembers or the weapons base's mission at large for the next 30 years and our own security.

Interestingly, the DoN's stance throughout this process has been don't worry...we can handle it (civilian housing on a fully functional munitions depot), but in light of yesterday's arrest, combined with the Fort Hood massacre, the Fort Dix arrests, the break-in of a nuclear armaments base (Kitsap) in Washington, and well-publicized and thwarted homegrown terror attacks against military personal (Quantico, Arkansas recruiting center), we are left shaking our heads as to why the Department of Navy is so eager to turn Earle into a potential haven for disturbance.

Area residents might want to start calling their legislators and contact Naval Weapons Station Earle (732.866.2171) and start asking for themselves - "why does the U.S. Navy want to expose itself and us to obvious danger?"

Diana takes one for the team

NOPE Communications Director Diana Piotrowski once again hit the nail on the head in this Letter to the Editor of the Asbury Park Press, published Tuesday.

The funny thing about the APP is the peanut gallery "In Your Voice" commentary that follows such news articles and opinion pieces. More often than not, the comments are vitrioloic and ill-informed, so it is best for readers to take them with a grain of salt.

To be sure, everyone is entitled to free speech (a right defended by the same people we're battling), but it is laughable how outsiders to NOPE's cause view this as some sort of pitched class or anti-housing battle, which it is not, or some kind of Colts Neck-only effort (the homes are there, but the base is spread across a half-dozen towns). NOPE has thousands of supporters throughout Monmouth County and backing all the way up to the U.S. Senate.

The root of NOPE's effort is to convince the Department of Navy that cutting a hole in the security fencing and paving a free-for-all civilian access road through the base to a cluster of mostly empty homes (which the Navy should not have built in the first place) on an active weapons dump is not the best for base, local and service-member security post 9-11, but is also fiscally irresponsible -- just go and ask Senators Menendez and Lautenberg, Representatives Smith and Holt, state and local legislators across the board. We calculate the unfunded mandate on local and N.J. taxpayers at $500 million...at the least.

The Laurelwood housing issue at Weapons Station Earle cannot be viewed in a vacuum. There are many issues that make this extremely complex - even so for NOPE's core volunteer leaders that have spent two years and thousands of hours picking this issue apart. So it is unfair to put any weight in anonymous, blog-type attacks from ill-informed aggressors who would rather complain aloud than actually step up and do something for the benefit of his or her community. Renting homes to anyone smack dab in the middle of a weapons dump is no benefit to anyone and is, in light of Diana's reference to the Kitsap-Bangor break-in (and implicit reference to the Fort Hood massacre), a total recipe for disaster.

Explaining the "privatization" in NOPE

Those new to our grassroots group's objections to the Department of Navy's plan to unimpededly open Laurelwood "privatized" housing within the perimeter of Weapons Station Earle to civilians later this year may wonder why the heck NOPE opposes "privatization" at the 11,000-acre Monmouth County base that spans Colts Neck, Tinton Falls, Howell and Middletown.

To be sure, the 300 two- to four-bedroom Laurelwood townhomes (originally built for Navy dependents' use from 1988-2010) at NWS Earle are already "privatized," built in the late 1980s by contractor Laurelwood Homes, LLC predecessor "Dick Fischer Development #3." In essence, "privatization" refers to the Department of Defense's shift to private contractors to build and manage military housing, usually in 50-year stretches for each development. (This practice continues today under so-called PPV, or public-private ventures, started in 1996 after the U.S. quickly realized that Section 801 housing - Laurelwood's classification - was an utter disaster for the Military's housing construction needs. To be sure, this August 2008 report from the DoD Inspector General delves into 801 housing, and sheds light on potential civilian housing at Fort Hood...and unfortunately we know what has happened there...)

Anyway, NOPE's briefing last Thursday of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the U.S. Congress's investigative resource, led to our discovery of the GAO's May 2009 study (GAO-09-352) on the issue of military housing privatization - one that is worth reading to all members of the general public (in addition to the 2008 IG report).

Although we expect to follow later with a more-detailed thoughts on GAO-09-352 as it relates to the merits of NOPE's objection to civilian housing at Earle, as informants to the public, we would encourage you to spend some time reading this 50-page document for background on the inner workings of the benefits and drawbacks of military housing privatization. It is an interesting case study in how military housing typically works (or does not work). And, as always, we welcome any feedback, commentary and questions here on our NOPE blog.

Interesting Op-Ed in the NY Daily News

In light of the Fort Hood massacre, the Daily News author's argument in an op-ed piece this weekend that "the U.S. owes far better vigilance to the men and women who serve our nation in uniform" applies especially well to the service-members at Naval Weapons Station Earle. This is particularly true as we approach the 100-day deadline for the Department of Navy to blow open a hole in its security fencing to allow for unimpeded access to civilian housing at Earle thru 2040, simply to get out of a bad 1980s privatized housing contract.

The DoN's actions are deplorable, and will only endanger the staff and mission at Earle.

Nearly 10 months of waiting...for this?

Granted, the Laurelwood housing matter is evidently a buyout and teardown agreement (between the Department of Navy and Laurelwood Homes, LLC) away, putting to an end nearly 3 years of hard work by the NOPE grassroots contingency, but the GAO's exhaustive research on the pitfalls of Section 801 on-base housing contracts yielded little numeric fruit in terms of corrective action or data that the U.S. Congress can use to help fix obvious and unforeseen flaws in privatized military housing deals.

GAO Study 11-60, "Military Housing: Installations Need to Share Information on Their Section 801 On-Base Housing Contract", released today, may indeed prove useful in some capacity to legislators, but really the report comes to the conclusion that the DOD should do a better job of sharing relevant info about on-base Section 801 housing contracts between U.S. Military branches. That's it?

In its brief response, the DOD agreed, hitting that grapefruit out of the ballpark!

No comment about the types of unfunded mandates that NOPE uncovered or how civilians at Laurelwood would have cost local towns X amount of dollars over a proposed 30-year civilian rental phase...(other than GAO would not do the calculations, since the Navy had terminated the contract)...

No mention of the Fort Hood massacre as part of its security discussion on 801 housing there, or at other DOD installations...

No citation, or admission from the NWS Earle, that, even after an Inspector General report from January 2009 pointing out stark pitfalls in outsource security monitoring of the base, that security could have been compromised with a 2-mile civilian access road running through its ordnance storage base...

...or (tongue firmly in cheek) that local loudmouths (i.e. NOPE) shed enough light on the Navy's clandestine unfunded mandate to scuttle the deal (instead, they cite difficulty in obtaining road permits from the state and conflicts with Laurelwood Homes, LLC, over the interpretation of the contract as the two reasons for backing out of the civilian-rental phase).

In short, nothing tangible to our case, really.

The GAO gave few data points for Congress to sink its teeth into, along the lines of analysis (whether on the money or off the mark) NOPE provided about the conversion of the military use phase of the Laurelwood contract into the civilian use phase and costs to the DOD and surrounding communities. Nor is there much discussion on the security ramifications of privatized housing, since the report focuses specifically on 7-8 Section 801 developments, half of which are on outpost bases (i.e., in Alaska and South Dakota).

In any event, the GAO was directed to review rental housing on DOD bases and reports on "the cost, potential security risks, and other impacts of transitioning use of Section 801 on-base military family housing to the general public's use," much as Congressman Smith requested a year ago in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010.  However, we found GAO-11-60 thin, unfortunately.

We appreciate the GAO briefing us for a few hours back in January (the officials could not have been nicer, more professional, more communicative or more understanding of our situation), but perhaps we were overambitious in expecting a revealing expose pertaining to Laurelwood housing.  Nonetheless, we would venture a guess that others may find this 42-page document disappointing in terms of hard data that shows that the DOD oftentimes neglects to understand, address or acknowledge local citizens' concerns pertaining to military base housing and the unfunded mandates that could arise and devastate military base neighbors.  Feel free to chime in with your thoughts.