[TN-Bird] Re: Ned Brinkley: "Are we vigilant or cowards?" ( CBBT )

  • From: "Wallace Coffey" <jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "TN-birds" <tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 22:52:46 -0400

THE ARTICLE FROM THE WASHINGTON POST (AND THIS NOTE) WAS POSTED TO TN-BIRDS BY: 

Wallace Coffey
Bristol, TN
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Wallace Coffey 
  To: TN-birds 
  Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 10:47 PM
  Subject: Ned Brinkley: "Are we vigilant or cowards?" ( CBBT )


  Birders Flock Together In Quest to Return To Bay Bridge-Tunnel
  In Face of Terrorism Concerns, Nature Lovers Crafted a Strategy

  By Carol Morello
  Washington Post Staff Writer
  Tuesday, June 14, 2005; A01

  CAPE CHARLES, Va. -- Screenwriters and cartoonists often cast
  bird-watchers as timid eccentrics in funny hats with Sibley guides
  sticking out from their safari jackets and binoculars around their
  necks. The perfect disguise for a terrorist, perhaps?

  But serious ornithologists tend to have a bit of Indiana Jones in
  them. Ned Brinkley, for one, has driven into hurricanes looking for
  birds blown off course to unusual places. He has floated through
  swamps searching for evidence that the ivory-billed woodpecker is not
  extinct. And he was not about to knuckle under meekly when he learned
  that officials worried about terrorism were about to ban visitors from
  the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, one of the best birding spots on the
  East Coast.

  Ever since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Americans have grown
  accustomed to probes into their private lives and a great many new
  restrictions. From full-body searches at airport boarding gates to
  barricades around the Capitol, the nation has accepted many intrusive
  and prohibitive security measures as the price of safety.

  Bird-watchers are oddly vulnerable to the new scrutiny. They carry
  binoculars, scopes and cameras. They like to go to such places as
  buffer zones around military bases and nuclear power plants, where
  lots of birds roost. They are sometimes turned in to police by
  suspicious passersby.

  This time, Brinkley and a few cohorts were prepared to fight back.
  Their successful effort to regain access to the bridge islands
  illustrates how it is possible to continue their activities, even in a
  security-conscious age. But it requires concessions that once would
  have been considered extreme. It is a predicament many Americans are
  facing.

  Today, the commission overseeing the span is scheduled to vote on a
  compromise negotiated with the bridge's executive director and head of
  security. Under the plan, scientists and researchers would be allowed
  to go on the islands that connect the bridge once they get a pass,
  renewed annually. Amateur bird-watchers would have to submit to a
  security check several weeks in advance and pay $50 an hour for a
  police escort.

  "Why allow people whose intentions we don't know [to] dictate how our
  lives as Americans, our lives as Virginians, our lives as
  bird-watchers, are restricted?" asked Brinkley, who runs a
  bed-and-breakfast in Cape Charles when he is not leading bird-watching
  tours.

  "It's patriotic to question bureaucratic decisions that impinge on our
  liberties. Are we vigilant or cowards? Are we creative, or passive and
  lazy?"

  Their success also illustrates that bird-watchers have friends in high plac=
  es.

  They conferred with security experts who have worked for places that
  know a thing or two about counterterrorism tactics -- the Pentagon,
  State Department, United Nations, airports and nuclear power plants.
  They boned up on threat scenarios involving biological weapons and
  researched padlocks and high-tech ID cards. They offered to undergo
  criminal background checks and take crime-watch training.

  "At some point, you have to choose between your lifestyle and
  increasing your security," said Tim Travan, a former U.N. weapons
  inspector in Iraq who advised the bird-watchers on counterterrorism
  issues. "If you give up too many civil rights and have too-draconian
  security, what exactly is it you are protecting?"

  The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, a 17.6-mile span that costs $17
  round-trip for a passenger car, connects Virginia's Eastern Shore with
  the mainland at Virginia Beach. The entrance and exit of two tunnels
  in the middle of the bay are secured by small, man-made islands of
  granite boulders. At the southernmost island, there is a restaurant
  and a fishing pier open to the public.

  The three northern islands are popular with bird-watchers. The
  authority that operates the bridge has courted birders with ads in
  premiere ornithological journals. Bird-watchers consider it a special
  place to observe up to 350 species of birds, like being on a ship in
  open water.

  Until this year, visitor passes were handed out almost casually. A
  mailed or faxed request routinely secured a letter of permission
  granting access to the islands for a year.

  That changed after a risk analysis by the state Department of
  Transportation. It warned that the air-intake buildings providing
  ventilation to the tunnels were prone to sabotage, said Steven M.
  Mondul, state director of the Office of Security and Emergency
  Management. Homeland Security authorized a $1.3 million grant to
  secure the ventilation.

  The report triggered a rethinking of the entire approach to security.
  Last year, 800 letters of permission were handed out to birders who
  provided little more identification than a driver's license. The
  authority concluded that it had not screened visitors well or kept
  tabs on their movements. Allowing the public, even bird-watchers, was
  a potential threat.

  "Everybody knows that post-9/11, we can't do anything like we did
  before," said Clement M. Pruitt, head of the bridge's police force.
  "Anybody who can fly planes into the twin towers can find ways to
  circumvent our rules."

  No one questioned the need for more security on the bridge, located
  just north of the largest Navy base on the East Coast.

  "We believe this is in the top 100, if not the top 20, terrorist
  targets in America," Brinkley said. "We accept their assessment of the
  threat."

  Short of a specific threat, however, many wondered if the ban
  accomplished its intended purpose. Why keep the southernmost island,
  with its restaurant and pier, open to the public? Why allow fishing
  boats to approach? And would a fence around the ventilation buildings
  really keep out a determined terrorist?

  "We've all come to realize we're living in a different world," said
  Mitchell A. Byrd, an ornithologist at the College of William and Mary
  who has been observing birds on the bridge since it opened in 1964.
  "Some of our rights, like the total freedom of movement to do what you
  want to do, are compromised. The issue is, to what purpose?"

  Many wondered what might be sacrificed next.

  "If this would help protect this great land of ours by giving up part
  of a privilege, I would do so willingly," said Alice Wheeley, a real
  estate broker who has been an avid bird-watcher for 40 years. "But you
  kind of wonder, if you give up one privilege, how many more are you
  going to give up, and why?"

  In April, after hundreds of bird-watchers had mailed in objections,
  the bridge authority offered an alternative plan. There would be no
  annual permits; groups would be admitted by prior arrangement. And
  they would have to pay for an off-duty police officer to accompany
  their every step.

  But the birders contended that the advance notice was unworkable.
  Nobody could predict when a hurricane would hit, driving in many
  seabirds rarely seen in Virginia.

  Lucius Kellam III, the bridge authority's interim executive director
  and son of the man for whom the bridge is named, was willing to find a
  compromise.

  "Obviously, it can be done," he said. "The question is, at what cost
  and who pays?"

  With Brinkley in the lead, the birders started researching.

  Byrd called the Surrey nuclear power plant, which birders pass to get
  to a state refuge on Hog Island. Both coming and going, visitors to
  the refuge must stop so guards can check under their hoods.

  Brinkley consulted with J. Christian Kessler, who heads the State
  Department's office dealing with export control and conventional arms
  nonproliferation. He also birds on the bridge.

  "The fact is, certain security is necessary," said Kessler, who passes
  two checkpoints en route to his own office. "On the other hand, we can
  reach a point where the steps we're taking to protect our security
  start to so change the way we live that, in essence, we've permitted
  the terrorists to make us different than we want to be. And to give up
  some of what we valued and made us different and special."

  After a month of imagining ways to thwart a terrorist, Brinkley
  recommended a middle ground replete with security measures, which he
  said was preferable to "handing victories to al Qaeda and other
  terrorist groups without a strong effort to maintain the lives we have
  lived and that we love."

  He suggested that birders get access to the bridge islands by
  submitting to background checks with national law enforcement
  agencies, including the CIA and the FBI; agreeing to vehicle checks
  with undercarriage mirrors and searches by explosives-sniffing dogs
  and Geiger counters; and paying for identity cards that have magnetic
  strips. He further recommended the tunnels be equipped with detection
  devices for chemical and biological agents.

  The birders pronounced themselves grateful for even the limited access.

  Brinkley's only regret is that he could not convince anyone of the
  merits of training bird-watchers to be on the lookout for terrorists.

  "I think there could have been a core of people who would be black
  belt bird-watchers," he said

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