Keeping Watch

Good article in today’s WaPo on a couple of the gents who man the “Freedom Center.”

Every security breach across eight modes of transportation collects and dumps on the Watch Floor. The unmarked building, originally called the Transportation Security Operations Center, opened in August 2003. It responds to threats to mass transit, bridges, railways, vehicles and roads, pipelines, postal and cargo shipping, maritime matters and ports, and, above all, aviation. One minute, a report comes in about a mysterious truck abandoned on railroad tracks in Delaware. The next, a note is discovered on a ferry in North Carolina: There are bombs on this boat. Do not run. Only a warning. The next, a 78-year-old Egyptian woman in a wheelchair is trying to board a plane from Nashville to JFK with $9,800 in cash and eight boxes of razor blades in her bra.

Ever vigilant. And not at all shy of a fight either:

“…Hey, Chuck, what’s the matter, nothing going on?”

“Nothing,” says Chuck, a retired Marine. Chuck has 26 guns in his basement, forearms as thick as thighs and a 105-pound Rottweiler he loves because “I don’t want a rug rat that’s good for 30 yards, if you kick ‘em right.” Every night, as Chuck leaves work, he calls his wife because “who knows who’s watching the building?” They have a code word, “in case there’s trouble. If I use ‘cupcake,’ she calls the police.”

Chuck had served as a master sergeant in counterintelligence. “We’re still fighting the same fight,” says Chuck, who is about to turn 50. “We stand in the breach.” No one will hurt Americans, “not on my watch, not while I’m standing here.”

This has got to be a brutal, thankless job. Anyone who has worked in a COC can tell you how draining it is. And this one surely has the highest pressure of them all. Our side has to be right 100% of the time. My hat’s off to the these guys.

BTW… Speaking of 26 guns in the basement, look for a Gun-Day Sunday post tomorrow on a new acquisition. Hint– it rhymes with “AK.”