Terrorism Risk in Moving Arms by Truck Cited

WASHINGTON —  Army and Navy investigators warned in classified reports prepared last year that thousands of commercial shipments of military munitions--everything from crates of hand grenades to shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles--were “extremely vulnerable” to being hijacked by terrorists.

And, said one official, munitions shipments moving on the nation’s highways are still “a terrorist’s dream.”

The Defense Department’s response to that risk, a low-budget plan to increase the number of munitions shipments protected by armed guards, falls far short of meeting the threat and could even pose a danger to civilians, critics in Congress and elsewhere charge.

Drivers as Guards

The Pentagon plan calls for a tenfold increase in the number of truck shipments protected by armed guards, to 4,000 from 400 annually, effective June 1. But it would permit the truck drivers to be issued guns and counted as guards rather than adding trained security personnel to go along on munitions shipments.

Giving shotguns to civilian truck drivers and telling them to resist hijackers “insofar as humanly possible,” as the Pentagon has put it, will not help security and could endanger innocent people, Rep. Cardiss Collins (D-Ill.), chairman of a House transportation subcommittee, said.

Trucking companies that haul munitions also are unhappy about the directive, but they “don’t have any choice” but to abide by it, an industry spokesman said.

Concern over in-transit security of ammunition, explosives and weapons--especially small missiles and other portable munitions--has risen with the tide of international terrorism, according to documents obtained by The Times. And the secret Army and Navy investigations are finding a problem of alarming dimensions:

--”Commercial transportation of ammunition is extremely vulnerable to theft,” said an Army inspector general’s report last September.

--”Naval ordnance shipments are vulnerable to threats of espionage, terrorism and carelessness,” said a Navy report issued last May.

--”We have become too cavalier” about safeguarding sensitive shipments, the head of the Naval Sea Systems Command said in a memo several months earlier.

At about the same time, the Defense Department’s inspector general found serious security flaws in the method of transporting Stinger missiles, the portable, surface-to-air weapons that President Reagan last week dropped from a proposed arms deal with Saudi Arabia because of congressional concern that they might fall into the hands of Arab terrorists.

Some Armaments Missing

Disclosure of official worries over the vulnerability of munitions shipments follows other revelations of weaknesses in military supply and logistics operations. The Times reported earlier this month, for instance, that the Army cannot account for the apparent disappearance of huge quantities of ammunition and explosives from its far-flung supply system. Last year, The Times gave details of how Iranian agents had illegally tapped into the Navy’s supply system to obtain sophisticated warplane and missile parts for the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s war against Iraq.

The discovery of serious flaws in the munitions transportation system has stirred concern inside the Pentagon, however, because the particular weapons involved are so directly applicable to terrorism and because shipments move across the country in such great numbers.

Stinger missiles and other ready-to-fire missiles and rockets--Hamlet, Redeye, Dragon, LAW, Viper--are grouped in Category 1--munitions so sensitive that commercial shipments must be made under the constant surveillance of armed guards, must have dual drivers with security clearances, and, starting June 1, must be escorted by security vehicles.

Security Called Inadequate

There have been no known instances of terrorists’ hijacking of munitions shipments on America’s highways, but investigators said in a “quick reaction” report dated Dec. 26, 1984, that “in-transit security of ready-to-fire missiles is not adequate.”

The inspectors found that “several drivers and guards were not armed . . . some drivers and guards that were armed with weapons, but no ammunition . . . some drivers and/or guards had no training with their weapons . . . many drivers had no instruction on how to resist a hijacking . . . many drivers had no means of communication; and . . . drivers did not make use of convoy procedures or escort vehicles.”

Pentagon officials said that aggressive action was taken to correct the flaws found 18 months ago. Officials of the Military Traffic Management Command, the agency in charge of shipping “everything from beans and bullets” for all branches of the service, said in interviews that they were moving to strengthen security before the investigators made their reports.

“None of us have our heads in the sand,” Col. George R. Kaine, the command’s chief spokesman, said in reference to the risk of terrorist action.

Three-Way Conferences

“We don’t work in a vacuum,” added Col. Rodger L. Hoff, the command’s deputy chief of staff for safety, security and intelligence. He said that a series of conferences with military and civilian investigators and industry representatives, begun in 1984, has been part of a “continuous evaluation . . . so we could make fixes.”

Nonetheless, problems persist. In March, for instance, when Hoff’s office began covert surveillance of shipments to see if trucking companies were complying with security requirements, it quickly found what he calls a “horror story.”

The first truck selected at random for surveillance was carrying Category 1 munitions from the Red River Army Depot in Texas to Camp Pendleton in California. The truck was supposed to be watched at all times by one of its armed drivers but, records show, it was left unattended at two truck stops within a 300-mile stretch on the first day of its westward journey. Both drivers were fired by the trucking company, whose brief suspension from Pentagon contracts was lifted when it instituted security reforms.

There are about 400 shipments of Category 1 munitions annually, and 10 times that many of Category II munitions--which include light automatic weapons, high explosives and phosphorus grenades, anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, plastic explosives, military dynamite and TNT.

Two Drivers on Duty

Category II shipments for several years have been subject to “dual driver protective service”--each truck must have two qualified but unarmed drivers, one of whom must be awake and within 10 feet of the truck at all times. Starting June 1, security of these shipments will be upgraded to “armed guard surveillance service (AGS),” one of the requirements long applied to Category 1 shipments.

The Pentagon directive dated last February defines armed guard surveillance service as “a service that provides two drivers, at least one of whom is armed, to remain with the shipment at all times.”

Rep. Collins complained in a letter to Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger in March that it was a “somewhat bizarre course of action” to allow sensitive munitions to be hauled by “non-cleared drivers with shotguns and instructions to ‘protect their loads’ in the interest of national security.”

Misgivings about the effectiveness of the new directive also were expressed by W. J. Burns, managing director of the Munitions Carriers Conference Inc. “These guys are professional drivers, not law enforcement officers,” Burns said, and they may be unwilling to risk their lives to fight off “a band of terrorists.”

In referring to Pentagon officials who award the contracts for munitions shipments, Burns added: “We’ll go along with what they think best . . . we don’t have any choice. We have to live with these people.”

Nuclear Materials Guarded

Professionally trained guards and drivers, as well as specially built government trucks equipped with elaborate communications gear to keep track of the cargoes, are used for the highly secret shipments of nuclear weapons, which are handled by the Energy Department, not the Pentagon.

Such precautions are considered prohibitively expensive for the 40,000 shipments of all types of military munitions that are made each year. Besides, the Pentagon feels compelled to use commercial trucking firms because, one official said, the law prohibits government competition with private-sector transportation.

According to a veteran Defense Department official, Pentagon procedures for shipping conventional munitions are deliberately intended to “keep a low profile,” apparently in the hope that such shipments will be virtually indistinguishable from other civilian cargoes on the nation’s highways. “It would be counterproductive to have everything move in military convoys,” he said.

But sometimes the movement of conventional munitions becomes very visible. In 1984, the interchange of Interstates 70 and 25 in the heart of Denver was closed for 12 hours, after a truck carrying six torpedoes from Washington state to Connecticut overturned. The torpedoes did not explode and the only people injured were the two truck drivers, but the accident led to a Navy inquiry that produced scathing criticism of procedures governing munitions shipments.

“Naval ordnance has become just another commodity to be transported, and, although grouped with a wide range of ‘hazardous materials,’ it is treated no differently than other commercial goods,” said Vice Adm. E. B. Fowler, now retired as commander of the Naval Sea Systems Command, in a memo endorsing the inquiry’s findings.

“The critical aspects associated with . . . the security of the sophisticated weapons involved have been either lost entirely or badly eroded,” Fowler said.

Stern Army Warning

An even sterner warning came last September, when the Army inspector general declared in a report classified “for official use only” that munitions shipments were “extremely vulnerable” because procedures do “not always provide adequate protection.”

Pentagon records indicate about two dozen instances in the last two years of truck companies being disciplined for offenses such as “abandonment of shipment” or “security service failure” or “loss of classified shipment.”

Officials said that the screening of drivers for Category I shipments was tightened after a Dec. 2, 1982, accident near Los Banos, Calif., involving a truck loaded with 18 surface-to-air missiles.

According to National Transportation Safety Board documents, “the truck driver admitted to drinking alcoholic beverages prior to the accident . . . had been convicted on 14 previous traffic violations . . . was convicted on one count of burglary and two counts of theft of property (and) at the time of the accident, robbery charges were pending.”

As for Category II shipments--such as machine guns, grenades and mines--”we are going to institute some kind of clearance . . . . They (drivers) will come under some kind of scrutiny to ensure they are not felons or foreign nationals,” said Ken Stombaugh, acting deputy director of inland freight for the military command.

Hoff, the security chief, agreed. “It wouldn’t make sense to allow an Iranian national or a Libyan national” to be driving a truck hauling such munitions, he said.