War Dogs (14 page)

Because IEDs are typically crudely made, the kinds of explosives used and formed are something of a mixed bag. How much damage they do depends on a variety of elements—where they are placed, how deep into the ground they're buried, how many pounds of explosives are used, if it's freshly made or has been sitting for days, weeks even. The list of mitigating factors is long. But in general, it's believed that in order for someone to
altogether escape the blast of an IED alive they must be at a distance of at least 50 yards. To avoid injury from the resulting shrapnel spray, the safe distance is estimated to be about half a mile.
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On May 25, 2005, the US military launched a new tactical campaign to reduce the number of deaths and injuries caused by IEDs. Called “5-and-25,” it was adapted from the model British forces were already using with success in Northern Ireland. The idea was that when a convoy or patrol stops and dismounts from their vehicles, the first thing a unit does is clear a distance of 5 meters around the vehicle, spanning out until a 25-meter perimeter is cleared. And it should begin with a soldier's first step, for “in addition to bombs striking moving targets, patrols have been hit after being stationary for as little as four minutes.” In the three weeks before the Army officially pushed out the 5-and-25 program, no fewer than 52 US service members were killed in Iraq, many of them by IEDs.
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As the rate of IEDs continued to increase, so did the Pentagon's efforts to counter them.
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In 2006, the Department of Defense created the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO): its sole purpose (and its many billions of dollars in funding) was to combat the IED.
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Over the next few years, JIEDDO would spend upward of $19 billion pursuing numerous technological innovations—from handler sensors to aerial sensors to enhanced optics.
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In 2010 JIEDDO's director, Lieutenant General Michael Oates, gave a report on the organization's progress. After all the money spent, and all the tools developed during those years, Oates said the best detection ability US forces had against the threat of IEDs was a handler and his detection dog.
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Nearly two years later, on a sunny September day in 2012, the man who succeeded Oates as head of JIEDDO, Lieutenant General Michael D. Barbero, addressed the US House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations' Subcommittee of Defense in Washington, DC. In his calm, leaden voice, Barbero reported that the threat would not only persist, but become even more deadly in the future.
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US forces were going to continue to operate in an IED environment; that was, Barbero testified, a reality of twenty-first-century warfare, and the country must prepare accordingly.
Not only had it surpassed artillery as being the greatest killer on the modern battlefield, but “the IED and the networks that employ these asymmetric weapons,” Barbero said, “are here to stay—operationally and here at home.”
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So while the United States may have taken its forces from Iraq and is already drawing down its troops in Afghanistan, the rate of IEDs is expected only to climb in the coming months and years—and not just in these battleground countries. Modern warfare's deadliest weapon is not only here to stay, but there's reason enough to think that the United States is not and will not be immune. In the past 20 years the United States has endured three massively destructive incidents where explosives were used to incite terror and cause mass casualties—in Waco in 1993, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, and the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.

In truth, the battleground of bombs on American soil began many years before. And when it did, there were actually dogs trained to find them, protecting our homeland, even if few people knew about them.

At 11:30 on the morning
of Tuesday, March 7, 1972, an anonymous caller phoned in to the Third Avenue headquarters of Trans World Airlines. The switchboard patched the call through to the secretary of a company executive. The voice on the line directed them to a locker, one of the 25-cent rentals in Kennedy International Airport's TWA terminal. The New York officials who searched the locker found two large Army duffel bags and a note demanding ransom in the amount of $2 million. If it was not paid, the note said, bombs planted on four of the airline's flights would detonate at six-hour intervals. The executive notified TWA security, and so began a 24-hour race against the clock that would set panic to skies and airports all over the world. The airline had thousands of passengers scheduled to fly their nearly 240 planes, and the task of finding the bombs in time seemed nearly impossible.

By the time officials determined the threat was indeed legitimate and put out an international call to all TWA flights for an immediate and mandatory bomb search, a host of planes were already airborne. One of these
flights, a West Coast–bound Boeing 707, was already more than a hundred miles into its nonstop flight to Los Angeles. They'd only been in the air 15 minutes when the pilot, Captain William Motz, came over the intercom to tell the 45 passengers and the seven-person crew that they were headed back to New York, citing mechanical difficulties.

Motz landed the plane and taxied to a remote part of the runway, a good distance from the main hub of the airport. It was ten minutes past noon; if there was a bomb on the plane it was set to go off at 1 p.m. The passengers were hurried off the aircraft. The police, who were already waiting on the tarmac, rushed aboard. With them were two search dogs: Brandy, a German shepherd, and her handler, David Connally, worked the front end of the plane; another police officer worked Sally, a Labrador, toward the back. Inside the cockpit Brandy was nosing her way around a large black case marked “Crew.” It was a nondescript piece of pilot gear, the kind of case that carried a flight manual. But after a few good sniffs, Brandy sank her haunches into a resolved sit. Connally knew they'd found the bomb and he signaled the others. The time was 12:48 p.m.

Detective William F. Schmitt of the police department's bomb squad called for all the officers to get off the plane. He cut into the case and quickly scanned over its contents—what he guessed to be roughly six pounds of plastic C-4 explosives with a fuse rigged to a timer. It was enough, he knew, to rip the plane to shreds. In a fast decision, Schmitt picked up that clunky, ticking case and carried it off the plane and onto the runway, moving quickly away from the crowd of people. Setting down the case on the ground, Schmitt disabled the bomb. The time was 12:55 p.m.

The very next day a bomb hidden inside another TWA plane in Las Vegas exploded. The plane, which was sitting idle and empty at the time, had been searched, but the bomb in the cockpit had gone undiscovered. No one was injured but a panic ensued. By noon that day, two of the airline's pilots refused to fly, and its business was down 50 percent.
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In response to the bombs and the public concern, a Federal Aviation Administration representative, retired Lieutenant General Benjamin Davis, sat in front of TV cameras and in a grave tone warned that his organization
was now engaged in a “war for the survival of the air transportation industry.”
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By the end of that week President Richard Nixon gave orders to Transportation Secretary John A. Volpe to push into action, early, security measures that were already in development as part of the response to recent hijacking attempts made on American flights. Travelers would now be subjected to mandatory passenger and baggage screenings; airline and cargo facilities would now be off limits to unauthorized personnel. Nixon also ordered the secretary of transportation to create a force that included dogs. That same year, the Federal Aviation Administration started its Detection Canine Team Program.

It was that very program that is responsible for the two bomb dog teams patrolling the terminal in the Colorado Springs airport more than 40 years later: Colorado State police officer Mike Anderson and his dog Cezar, and fellow officer Wayne Strader and his dog Rex. These teams are part of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Bomb Dog Program that started here at this airport in 2005.

There's something about being followed by a big German shepherd and a police officer in uniform that makes my heart skip and my legs twitch with the urge to run. I'm pulling a smooth-gliding and nondescript black carry-on suitcase, possibly the most inconspicuous piece of luggage on the planet. And it's empty, except for the explosives packed inside. Technically speaking I'm not guilty of anything, but I am trying to act as normal as possible because I don't want anything other than the odor of the explosive material to tip off the dog, who's about to make a find on this piece of moving luggage.

I keep walking straight as I feel the dog team about to pass me. The dog's nose is barely a foot away from my suitcase and he's already picked up the scent. His body swivels with intense interest and that alone is enough to signal to his handler that there's something in my bag. The dogs make this find, as well as a series of others that day throughout the airport, without trouble. Anderson is especially happy with Cezar's performance because the dog is getting older and the handler has noticed he's started to slow down. Cezar is as big a dog as Anderson, who stands 6 feet 7 inches, is a man. Unlike military working dogs, Cezar and Rex live at home with their
handlers—their careers together can span as long as the dog's working life. Both of these teams have been partnered together for over six years. Which is why Anderson is sad that Cezar isn't performing like he used to—it means that their work together will have to end.

On this December day in 2011, the terminal at the Colorado Springs airport isn't very crowded, and the few passengers sitting and waiting for their flights to board take great interest in the dogs—some point and smile, curiously, while a few eye the large Cezar warily. That visibility, Officer Strader explains, is a big part of the role they play in keeping the airport secure. Cezar and Rex do their jobs simply by being
on
the job, acting as a visual deterrent and inspiring any would-be criminal to think twice. Most of the time, Rex and Cezar search unattended bags or vehicles left without a driver by the curb. In addition to their post at the airport, they also respond to any bomb threats in the city.

The dog program that was born out of Brandy's heroic find in 1972 evolved under different agencies, and after 9/11 the canine program was transferred to the TSA, which would become part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the following year. It's expanded significantly since. There are now over 900 canine teams working in 120 airports nationwide.

After conducting an analysis of the Customs and Border Protection Canine Program from April 2006 to June 2007, it was determined that the dog teams, while accounting for only 4 percent of overall agents, were responsible for “60% of drug arrests and 40 percent of all other apprehensions in 2007.”
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In other words, this program was a rousing success.

Despite the influx of K-9 security presence in airports and mass transit systems around the country over the last decade, the majority of airports rely almost entirely on scanning machines. So officers Anderson and Strader don't use their dogs to check the majority of the luggage they encounter; it's not part of their job.

Since 9/11, airport security under the TSA has depended heavily on a series of electronic scanners and full-body imaging machines that have stirred controversy over the years, not only for their invasiveness, but also for their ineffectuality. During a July 2011 congressional hearing convened in
front of a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee, House members listened to testimony offered by TSA representatives, the former director of security at Tel Aviv Ben Gurion International Airport, and an inspector with the Amtrak Police Department's K-9 unit, among others, in order to evaluate the current state of US airport security and DHS policies. Subcommittee chairman Congressman Jason Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah, led the inquiry and did not mince words as he kicked off his opening remarks, citing a litany of concerns—chief among them that, since November 2001, there had been 25,000 security breaches at US airports.

From there the hearing unfolded in high drama, especially when explosive-detection dogs were brought into the discussion. Proponents of canine detection teams went head to head with those advocating machines. Among the many issues that were hotly debated: invasion of privacy, the longevity of million-dollar machines that proved ineffectual, and the cost of Alpo.

During the height of this inquiry and testimony, Chaffetz invoked the Pentagon's conclusion, with its $19 billion price tag, that dogs were the best bomb detectors. He then leveled a challenge at TSA assistant administrator John Sammon:

You're suggesting that the whole body imaging machine is a cheaper alternative than using the K-9s. I tell you what, let's do this. I would love to do this. I would love to do this. You take 1,000 people and put them in a room, I will give you 10 whole body imagining [
sic
] machines. You give me 5,000 people in another room and you give me one of [the] dogs, and we will find the bomb before you find your bomb.

That is the problem. There is a better, smarter, safer way to do this. And the TSA is not prioritizing it. And if you look at who those lobbyists were that pushed through those machines, they should be ashamed of themselves, because there is a better way to do this and it is with the K-9s.
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But though there is nothing yet that proves technology has outmatched or outdone a canine's ability to detect odor—especially bomb detection in a
combat arena—or even that they could, scientists and technology developers and their vendors have long tried to re-create and out-design Mother Nature's canine nose. In security or defense settings, groups of private contractors and researchers at universities are racing to do this, at the behest of the military.