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By R.V. Baugus

Major General John Doesburg is in charge of eight chemical weapons storage sites in the United States. He has a budget of $1.6 billion to help him do whatever is necessary to protect the citizens of the country. In running the Soldier and Biological Chemical Command for the Department of Defense, his uniform is bedecked with enough medals that you know any nearby placed magnet would literally draw the Major General to it.

But unfortunately no amount of military might, medals and money can defeat a war on terrorism if the nation’s citizens are not attuned to their surroundings. That lesson was painfully brought home on September 11, and any repeat is going to be partly a result of just how much attention people are paying to their surroundings, believes Doesburg.

“We’ve done a much better job across the country,” Doesburg said in an exclusive interview prior to the International Crowd Management Conference. “You see it most visibly in airports. The things that we should have been doing all along are things that we are now doing with a great degree of clarity.

“You also see it in the simple things, such as the security folks who work at grocery stores. Now they don’t just walk around and talk. They walk around and look at people. It’s being attentive and looking for those things that are out of the norm. It’s important that we’ve done that, but it’s more important that we maintain that level of vigilance. We’ve always said that we’re a secure country. We just need to make sure that we keep it that way.”

Doesburg applauded the efforts of facility managers who have increased the security at their venues by more closely searching entering patrons.

“We look for circumstances that can disrupt major venues,” he said. “Actually, we’ve always had some set criteria that identified possible disruptions, which I really can’t elaborate on. But things have changed now. What we have to do is broaden our horizons at our venues and pay close attention to those ‘odd things,’ things like improvised explosive devices and weapons of mass destruction. We can’t protect against 100 percent of the things that these adversaries can do 100 percent of the time, but if we’re attentive we can sure make it very difficult for them.”

Doesburg recounted attending a Baltimore Orioles’ baseball game at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. As at stadiums across the country, post-September 11 meant severe restrictions on what fans can and can’t bring into public assembly venues.

“Someone in front of me in the line was upset because coolers can no longer be brought in,” he said. “You can still bring food in, but it has to be in a plastic bag. The person asked me why that was important. I said that it was because everything can be seen in a plastic bag. I said, ‘Wouldn’t you prefer they can see what you’re bringing in, and wouldn’t you prefer to see what others are bringing in?’ That kind of ended that.”

Doesburg said that the issue of civil liberties is one that the government must be careful in balancing for its citizens. Today’s bag search can easily become tomorrow’s civil rights lawsuit. Fortunately, the general mood on the street is that many not only expect to be searched, but want to be searched.

“The public realizes today that it’s important we have more controls than we had in the past,” said Doesburg. “When I say ‘we’ I’m referring to the United States as a whole. But all of us have to be concerned about how far we take it, because one of the codes out there says that we a free nation. That freedom is based on a number of things—documents, appealings and ways of life.”

Doesburg said that one of his biggest worries is that as the months go by since the terrorist attacks an aura of complacency settles over the country. That, he warned, could be extremely dangerous.

“The possibility is always there to revert back to a sense of false security,” he said. “I think all of us have to be attuned to that fact. In my own estimation, that time will be about four months from now. We’ll all step back and say, ‘We weathered the major holidays and the major events. We’ve weathered the Olympics and so now everything is okay.

“ I think that we as a nation need to step back from that kind of attitude and say, ‘But does it make us more secure?’ Part of that is going to be the President, the Congress and the press making sure that we in the United States don’t forget about the events of the 11th of September and those that followed like the anthrax scares. The fact that things went well in Afghanistan doesn’t change the fact that there are still terrorists throughout the world who have no moral reason not to do the same thing again.”

And that, he said, was the reason he was in San Diego. Doesburg wanted to be able to tell facility managers, security personnel, fire and law enforcement agency representatives about their role in helping to protect the country.

“The people who are here play a critical position by sharing with us anything suspicious or out of the ordinary,” he said. “These people are already on the scene or will be among the first to arrive on the scene. What they can share goes a long way in helping us formulate a lot of what we do.”

No, Doesburg said, finding the bad guys will not always be an exact science, if it’s a science at all. More often than not, it’s going to go back to that premise of attentiveness.

“We are at an important time in our country,” he said. “We’re facing potential adversaries who have no moral code. They don’t have a vision that says it’s important to attack militaries or whatever you want to think of. They actually believe that by attacking the people of the United States that they can achieve their goals, or at least make themselves well known for what it is that they stand for. We need to be aware of that. We don’t need to be afraid of it, but we do need to be aware of it. If we’re aware and attentive, I think what we’ll find is that they can’t reach their goals. What happened on the 11th of September is that we weren’t attentive. We weren’t cognizant of those things that were happening. It’s made the world a different place.”

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