Boston Globe October 17, 2002
Army plane joins sniper hunt
By Fred Kaplan and Lyle Denniston
The next time the sniper who has terrorized the Washington, D.C., area strikes, law enforcement officials could zoom in on him from above with the help of the Army's powerful RC-7 surveillance aircraft.
In a rare move, the Pentagon joined with local police and federal agents trying to track down the elusive sniper, who has killed nine people and wounded two others over the past two weeks. But some question whether that assistance crosses the line restricting the military from domestic law enforcement.
Eugene R. Fidell, a Washington attorney who is an expert on military law, said the Posse Comitatus Act reflects ''a basic value of American political life - that law enforcement is for the police, not the Army.''
The RC-7 Airborne Reconnaissance Low plane contains a high-resolution, zoom-lens camera that takes pictures for miles in all directions. When crew members onboard receive word of another sniper attack, they can aim the camera toward the area of the incident, and instantaneously transmit images - video or photographs - to receivers on the ground.
The RC-7, which can stay in the air for eight to 10 hours, is marked to resemble a small civilian plane - so much so that when one took part in the Haiti peacekeeping operation in 1994, Caribbean charter pilots thought it was a new competitor in the sky.
The Army has seven of these planes - four in the US Southern Command, mainly to monitor narcotics trafficking, and three in South Korea to detect troop movements around the demilitarized zone.
Pentagon officials are not saying how many RC-7s will be redeployed to Washington for the sniper manhunt. Publicly, they do not even acknowledge the type of planes to be used. However, military specialists say two planes should be enough for round-the-clock patrols - one on duty in the air, the other to go up when the first comes down for refueling.
The plane is crammed with $17 million worth of the latest infrared sensors, synthetic aperture radars, signals-intelligence interceptors, and moving-target-indicator displays.
Yet the cameras - and not these other sophisticated devices - are why the planes were chosen for this mission. ''There's a lot of capabilities in this aircraft,'' said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a private military-research firm. ''But they're not going to help you find a white van.''
Some published reports suggested that the infrared sensor, which detects sudden eruptions of heat, might detect the flash of a rifle muzzle. Pike called this claim ''nonsense.'' A military officer who is familiar with the technology, but asked not to be identified, agreed. A heat-detecting sensor, especially a mile or so away, could not distinguish a rifle shot from an exhaust pipe's smoke.
The plane's radar-controlled moving-target-indicator displays a vast area on a map, with red dots indicating vehicles moving toward the area beneath the plane, green dots indicating those moving away.
However, Pike said, ''That's good for telling you whether the North Korean Army is crossing the DMZ. It can help you track traffic patterns on 395. It can tell the difference between a van and an 18-wheeler. But that's about it.''
The communications interceptors are also irrelevant to the sniper mission: There is no indication that the sniper is in radio contact with anyone, and if he were, the RC-7 crews would have no way of knowing his frequency.
The military officer, who requested anonymity, agreed with this analysis. ''These are multifunction airplanes. Not all the technology onboard is necessarily useful on a particular operation.''
He agreed that the main value of the RC-7 in this situation is its camera, its rapid data transmission, and its endurance.
Pentagon officials are leery of talking about the operation, in part, because the Posse Comitatus Act, signed in 1878, forbids the use of the US military ''to execute the laws.'' In recent years, revisions to the law have allowed the military to assist civilian law enforcement agencies, especially in combating drug smuggling.
The Bush administration has also evinced an interest in devising a greater role for the military in its homeland-security policies.
Even so, these new laws restrict the military to ''passive'' roles in their assistance - providing vessels, aircraft, intelligence, or technical aid. By proclaiming that the FBI is leading this mission - with civilian agents onboard the planes, directing the surveillance and communicating with other civilian authorities on the ground - the military can say its role is ''passive.''
The American Civil Liberties Union questioned the propriety of US military involvement in the investigation and said it would monitor the use of the RC-7s.
Legal analysts yesterday disagreed over the legality of the military's participation in the sniper hunt.
Fidell noted that Defense Department regulations explicitly prohibit the direct use of military personnel ''for surveillance or pursuit of individuals.'' He doubted this language ''can be reconciled'' with using military planes - flown by military personnel - to chase sniper suspects.
However, Gene Healy, a specialist on military law at the Cato Institute who is usually critical of moves to expand the military into domestic security, said the decision was proper.
Lower courts have ruled that the military is barred only from, ''active policing - soldiers laying hands on citizens.'' The law would be violated, he said, if a team of Delta Force counter-snipers joined the manhunt. Sending in military surveillance planes to join the pursuit, Healy said, ''seems to me removed from the core of the Posse Comitatus Act.''
This is not the first time these issues have been raised. About 10,000 US troops were used to reinforce protection at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. In 1993, Army Delta tanks were brought in for the final assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. RC-7 airplanes flew over Waco as well.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
