Coast Guard

12/13/2007 -- WASHINGTON (NNS) -- During a two-hour session before the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Dec. 13, the nation's top Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard leaders testified before members of Congress for the first time since releasing their unified maritime strategy, "The Cooperative Maritime Strategy for 21st Century Seapower."    » read more »

Successful Interagency Maritime Interdiction Forces Smugglers to Extreme Tactics

Dec. 6, 2007 -- WASHINGTON - The Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard announced today a record year for cocaine seizures with 355,755 pounds seized, worth more than $4.7 billion.    » read more »

Successful Maritime Interdiction Forces Smugglers to Extreme Tactics

Dec. 5, 2007 -- WASHINGTON - The U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen will announce the service's record drug seizure year tomorrow at noon at the Coast Guard Headquarters, 2100 Second St., SW, Washington, D.C.    » read more »

Dec. 4, 2007 - WASHINGTON - Today, the U.S. Coast Guard, Integrated Coast Guard Systems, and Lockheed Martin completed the final phase of the $20 million Command, Control, Computers, Communications Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) simulator at Training Center Petaluma in Petaluma, Calif. The completion of this state-of-the-art training suite represents a milestone in the Coast Guard's $24 billion, 25-year modernization and recapitalization plan known as Deepwater.    » read more »

December 4, 2007 -- Washington, D.C. -- Today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-MD), Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Coast Guard & Maritime Transportation, sent the following letter to the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General requesting an immediate investigation of the Coast Guard’s response to the November 7 oil spill in San Francisco Bay, as well as the Coast Guard’s emergency response capabilities in San Francisco Bay.    » read more »

November 29, 2007 -- WASHINGTON - The U.S. Coast Guard National Maritime Center (NMC) reached a milestone in a major restructuring and centralizing project. In December 2007, the NMC will move into a new specially designed credential-production facility in Martinsburg, WV. Since 2005, the NMC has been managing a project to consolidate the functions of 17 independently operating Regional Exam Centers (REC) into one credential-processing facility.    » read more »

Nov. 19, 2007 -- WASHINGTON - A Coast Guard World War II veteran, Marvin J. Perrett, is the 2006 Spirit of Hope award winner.

The award, the Spirit of Hope medal, was presented today during ceremonies at the Pentagon by Army Chief of Staff General George W. Casey, Jr.. to Mr. Perrett's daughter, Melissa Cook of Chicago.    » read more »

Nov. 16, 2007 -- WASHINGTON - The Coast Guard announced today that its Maritime Law Enforcement Academy in Charleston, S.C., received Federal Law Enforcement Training Accreditation November 15, 2007.

"This is a significant step towards standardizing our maritime law enforcement training, and we have an aggressive three-year plan to have six of our courses individually accredited including a yet to be developed law enforcement instructor training course" said Cdr. Mark Wilbert, commander of the Maritime Law Enforcement Academy.    » read more »

November 15, 2007 -- The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced today that in the first year of operation, its biometrics-at-sea program has been a success and accomplished its intended goals. In its first 12 months, the program collected biometric data from 1,368 migrants, prosecuted 90 of those migrants, and helped reduce the flow of illegal migration by nearly 50 percent in the waters between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.    » read more »

NAVAL STATION GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, Nov. 14, 2007 – Three weeks out of every four, Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Daniel Figueroa studies the North Atlantic waters from an HU-25 “Falcon” aircraft, looking for illegal fishing ships and vessels in trouble.

But on a rotational basis, Figueroa and other members of from U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, carry out a distinctly different mission here. The deployed Coast Guardsmen patrol the Windward Pass for boats carrying cargos of drugs or illegal migrants toward U.S. waters.    » read more »

Federal, State and Local Reps to Assess Response

Nov. 14, 2007 -- WASHINGTON - U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen announced today that the Coast Guard has begun a comprehensive review of its response to the Cosco Busan oil spill in San Francisco Bay after the ship allided with the San Francisco Bay Bridge Nov. 7.    » read more »

Nov. 13, 2007 -- WASHINGTON - The Coast Guard Yard in Baltimore, the service's only full-service shipyard, broke ground today on an alternative energy project that will take it "off the grid" for nearly all of its electric and steam power needs. The project is expected to yield the same reduction in greenhouse gases as removing 33,000 cars from the road annually.    » read more »

12 November 2007 -- U.S. prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into a cargo ship crash that caused a massive oil spill in San Francisco last week.

The head of the U.S. Coast Guard, Admiral Thad Allen, told reporters in San Francisco, California, Sunday his agency is working with the U.S. Attorney's office to determine the cause of the crash.

A preliminary Coast Guard investigation found that human error, not mechanical failure, caused the ship to hit a bridge last Wednesday.    » read more »

Nov. 10, 2007 -- WASHINGTON - Coast Guard Commandant Thad W. Allen will visit San Francisco tomorrow to review progress in cleanup efforts in the Cosco Busan oil spill in San Francisco Bay. He will tour affected areas, review progress of the cleanup and meet with local leaders.    » read more »

Asks Coast Guard for briefing on the impact of spill

November 8, 2007 -- Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) today sent the following letter to the U.S. Coast Guard:

November 8, 2007

Admiral Thad W. Allen
Commandant
United States Coast Guard
2100 Second Street, SW
Washington, DC 20593

Dear Admiral Allen,

As I am sure you are aware, yesterday morning at approximately 8:30 a.m. PST, a container ship struck the western span of the Bay Bridge, resulting in an approximately 100 foot gash in the hull and the puncture of a fuel tank.    » read more »