A pirate attack in the Gulf of Aden was imminent when the crew of the MV Magellan Star retreated to a secure room, or citadel, on board their ship and sent distress messages. Within 24 hours, U.S. Marines boarded and regained control of the Antigua-Barbuda-flagged container ship without a shot being fired.1 That U.S operation in 2010 was remarkably successful: The Magellan Star crew of 11 was safe, and the Somalis who attacked the vessel were detained.
With nine pirates on board the USS Princeton (CG-59), several U.S. government agencies needed to immediately and collaboratively address the investigative, logistic, and disposition challenges associated with the crime. Issues to be resolved included which agency would lead the investigation, who would prosecute, what regional states should be approached for support, and where the detainees would be held pending those decisions. Timely resolution would require briefings, senior-level discussions, and agreement among several U.S. government agencies.
Ensuring a coordinated response is particularly difficult in the maritime environment where multiple federal agencies may be involved—each having separate authorities, responsibilities, and capabilities. The Maritime Operational Threat Response (MOTR) plan, implemented in 2006, was written to address such challenges and provide federal agencies with a framework for rapid and coordinated responses to threats encountered at sea.2
Putting Diverse Agencies on One Team
The MOTR plan provides guidance and structure for coordination, including response activities conducted by military, law enforcement, investigative, and other agencies. In addition to identifying lead and supporting agencies, the plan also addresses legal issues, response capabilities, asset availability, and authorities. Pertinent information is disseminated, desired outcomes are decided, and agencies then move forward to implement the agreed-on course(s) of action in accordance with their internal procedures. Coordination for national-level issues addressed by the plan unfolds in a realm below the President but above Cabinet departments—a layer of government referred to as “the interagency.”3
The drafters of the MOTR plan recognized the absolute necessity of federal agency alignment and the challenges of integration when multiple agencies are involved. Since implementation, the plan has advanced U.S. policy objectives by providing an interagency coordination process to effectively resolve more than 750 maritime threat events. As reform efforts by the White House and in Congress seek to address the vast and diverse interagency, it is instructive to examine why the MOTR process has been effective, what its limitations are, and whether its maritime-focus has application in other venues.
The plan was used to coordinate multiple national-level decisions following the rescue of the crew on board the Magellan Star. Over a period of several days, secure video teleconferences connected agency command-watch centers and subject-matter experts on three continents, allowing numerous difficult and sensitive issues to be discussed and resolved. Participants included representatives from the Departments of State, Justice, Defense (which included the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, and combatant commands), Transportation, and Homeland Security, as well as the intelligence community and other government agencies. Diplomatic outreach, investigative issues, and public-affairs guidance and posture were addressed.
After completion of an investigation and review by the Department of Justice, and following extensive diplomatic engagement by the Department of State, a regional state accepted the nine pirates for prosecution, where they await trial.
Where C2 = Coordination and Cooperation
The MOTR process has addressed acts of piracy, drug-trafficking, terrorism, port security, illegal fishing, and migrant interdictions, among others. There is no command-and-control relationship in the plan: It is one of unity of effort through mandated coordination and cooperation, a process that has been characterized as “used by all and owned by none.” Agency authorities cannot be supplanted or restricted by another agency, nor can one agency direct or task another.
National-level interagency awareness of the plan is reinforced and secured through near-daily use, frequent training, interagency discussions, and an annual MOTR War Game held at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
The MOTR’s origins lie in Presidential Directive Number 27 (PD 27), signed in 1978, governing nonmilitary incidents involving foreign governments.4 It came about as the result of interagency coordination issues identified in a bungled asylum request at the height of the Cold War.
In November 1970, Lithuanian merchant seaman Simas Kudirka leapt from his Soviet ship to the deck of a U.S. Coast Guard cutter anchored off Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. He wanted to defect. At that time, a well-defined interagency process for responding to such incidents did not exist. Without coordinated national-level guidance, a field-level decision was made to return Kudirka to the Soviets. The response drew international attention and scorn, became front-page news in the United States, and was the subject of eight separate congressional hearings and a presidential review. (For the full story, see “How to [Mis]Handle a Defection,” August 2008 Proceedings.)
PD 27 sought to create “uniform and clearly understood procedures” for responding to non-military incidents that could have an adverse effect on the conduct of U.S. foreign relations. The process was used extensively in the 1980s and 1990s to coordinate the U.S. response to migrants and drug-trafficking by foreign-flagged vessels.
Interagency Expansion
Following 9/11, the interagency expanded to include maritime threats such as piracy and terrorism. The MOTR was one of eight maritime security plans that National Security Presidential Directive 41/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 13 ordered to provide whole-of-government responses to maritime threats. While the PD 27 process was generally consultative (agencies needed to be notified, but their concurrence was not required), over time it became governed by consensus, producing more predictable and far less contentious outcomes. The MOTR affirmed what had become informal interagency practice by compelling coordination.
An essential aspect of the plan is its protocols, a separate document that provides day-to-day operational guidance for specific threats and command-center contact information.5 The protocols also list federal agency representatives to the Current Operations Implementation Team, an informal “board of directors” of the MOTR process. The plan is routinely implemented by commanders and captains (and their civilian equivalents—GS 14/15s), but is flexible to enough to include, when necessary, the Senior Executive Service, admirals, departmental deputy assistants, and ambassadors.
The coordinated response to the attack by Somali pirates on the U.S.-flagged MV Maersk Alabama in 2009 represented one of the more high-profile instances of the MOTR’s use. Within hours of the hijacking and subsequent kidnapping of the ship’s master, coordination among senior government officials began over secure videoconferences and continued twice daily for six days. The MOTR process ensured interagency concurrence on desired national outcomes and alignment of response action. A clear example was special operations forces’ dramatic rescue of the Maersk Alabama’s captain, Richard Phillips, in April 2009.
Giving Permanence To the Plan
The successful response to Maersk Alabama was the catalyst for the creation of a permanent office to support the MOTR process. Established in February 2010, the Global MOTR Coordination Center (GMCC) serves as the MOTR’s executive secretariat and national coordinator. The GMCC is funded by the Department of Homeland Security (U.S. Coast Guard) and is accountable to the national-security staff during the handling of active cases.
More than 250 threats/incidents were addressed through the MOTR process in GMCC’s first year, including responding to approximately 100 cases of suspected drug-trafficking (and the seizure of 120,000 pounds of cocaine), intercepting 90 vessels carrying migrants in areas ranging from the Gulf Coast to the Gulf of Aden, the operational resolution of more than a dozen fishing violations, and the disposition of approximately 30 piracy suspects from Somalia.
In that same span the GMCC also
• Conducted more than 25 briefings for Washington-area agencies, combatant commands and service academies
• Provided support for specific maritime issues
• Documented events and began work on a maritime response archive system and database
• Identified several policy issues for resolution by appropriate entities outside the MOTR process.
Growing Need To Work As One
Responding to transnational threats and securing law enforcement, diplomatic, and logistics cooperation across national borders is the new norm. Ensuring U.S. government coordination is crucial to those efforts as solutions are seldom the province of one agency: more than a dozen U.S. agencies have maritime security responsibilities. Several combatant commands have established offices to ensure alignment with the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and State, among others.
The MOTR process could provide a model for other interagency issues, but it has limitations. Use of the process doesn’t guarantee that the desired national outcome will be achieved; the assistance of those outside the federal government frequently is required. Fidelity of information is another challenge, as initial statements/reports aren’t always complete or accurate.
Without command, disagreements will occur, as differing resources, commitments, and prioritizing of action can produce impasses. In the infrequent cases when discussions stall, the issue goes to the national security staff. Still, some parallels exist with other challenges, such as cyber, which could involve multiple entities and include vast coverage areas with global commons concepts.6
Applying the MOTR’s Lessons to the Future
The interagency is based largely on relationships and authorities established more than half a century ago to confront the Cold War threat. Much like the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act transformed the Department of Defense, systemic reorganization of the interagency has consumed considerable attention recently. Several reports by the Project on National Security Reform document interagency challenges and make bold recommendations to realign the government. President Barack Obama remarked in his State of Union address on 25 January that “We shouldn’t just give our people a government that’s more affordable. We should give them a government that’s more competent and more efficient. We can’t win the future with a government of the past.”7
As the interagency process continues to be studied, it is important to examine areas where national-level coordination is currently effective. The MOTR process is not the only construct that brings together multiple agencies to coordinate government actions, but it importantly bridges homeland-security and homeland-defense concerns by incorporating the lessons of the Kudirka case and 40 years of maritime operations since.8 The Government Accountability Office noted in a 2011 report that, “The [MOTR] process is another good example of overcoming cultural barriers; it provides a venue for direct, real-time communication among key decision makers during specific maritime threat events in order to quickly coordinate a national response to maritime threats.”9
The interagency as it exists today will change. Questions going forward include whether a process that relies on coordination and cooperation is preferable to one of command and control and whether the horizontal process used in MOTR has application in nonmaritime threat responses. It will be essential to ensure that the capabilities each agency brings to an issue are retained; that training, education, and professional development are priorities; and that incentives and recognition are provided to those who take interagency assignments. It is unknown whether we’ll see systemic reform or merely refinement. So until agency stovepipes are completely eliminated, plans such as the MOTR—which facilitate expeditious and coordinated national-level responses to threats to U.S. interests—will be integral components of the interagency landscape.
1. See CAPT Alexander Martin, “Evolution of a Ship Takedown,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, November 2010, http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2010-11/evolution-ship-takedown. See also http://www.cusnc.navy.mil/articles/2010/138.html.
2. President George W. Bush signed the final Maritime Operational Threat Response Plan in November 2006. That plan replaced an interim plan from 2005.
3. “Forging a New Shield,” Project on National Security Reform, November 2008, http://pnsr.org/data/files/pnsr%20forging%20a%20new%20shield.pdf
4. Presidential Directive/NSC-27, “Procedures for Dealing with Non-Military Incidents,” 19 January 1978.
5. The protocols, last updated January 2010, are approved by the Maritime Security Interagency Policy Committee.
6. See CDR James Kraska’s examination of cyber challenges in Securing Freedom in the Global Commons, Scott Jasper, ed., (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010).
7. Available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/25/remarks-president-state-union-address.
8. See, for example, Christopher J. Lamb and Edward Marks, “Chief of Mission Authority as a Model for National Security Integration,” Center for Strategic Research, Institute for National Strategic Studies, Strategic Perspectives, No. 2 (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, December 2010), http://www.ndu.edu/inss/docUploaded/INSS%20Strategic%20Perspectives%202_Lamb%20.pdf. See also, GEN Stanley A. McChrystal, “It Takes a Network,” Foreign Policy, March/April 2011.
9. “Homeland Defense: Actions Needed to Improve DOD Planning and Coordination for Maritime Operations,” (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office, 23 June 2011).