2022
Honoring the Frontline
The WHSR Holiday Reception provides an opportunity for us to come together to celebrate another year of serving the homeland. This year, we were joined by CBP, S&T and TSA to honor some of their own for extraordinary contributions.
TSA - Craig Moody and Eric Chin
Administrator David Pekoske joined us to honor two outstanding TSA staff members, TSO Craig Moody and AFSD-S Eric Chin.
DCA - Transportation Security Officer, Craig Moody
IAD - Assistant Federal Security Director – Security Operations, Eric Chin
To those of us who wear the uniform daily it defies the imagination, yet that is exactly what happened recently at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA). TSO Moody located 23 knives in a passenger’s carry-on luggage when it entered the checkpoint’s X-ray machine and alerted the STSO of his find. After a quick review of the image, the STSO removed the bag from the X-ray tunnel for further inspection.
After screening two more bags, Moody encountered a bag with a pair of brass knuckles. “Once I confirmed that was also not a TIP image, I informed the initial responding STSO and a separate STSO on duty of the additional discovery,” said Moody.
Among the items that were pulled from the bag were nine disposable scalpels, eight folding, locking-blade knives, three martial arts throwing knives, one dagger, one switchblade and a pair of brass knuckles. “When passengers have prohibited items among their carry-on items, it slows down the screening process,” said John Busch, DCA Federal Security Director. “Travelers play a role in the efficiency of checkpoint screening by knowing what should and should not be packed in a carry-on bag.”
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Police were alerted and responded to the checkpoint and issued the man a citation.
“Even in the chaotic environment of the screening checkpoint, the TSA officers at our airport do an amazing job every day by keeping dangerous items out of the aircraft cabin,” Busch said. “It’s important to acknowledge them and the significance of their mission.”
Dulles AFSD for Screening, Eric Chin, has had exceptional performance and results in IAD. In particular, he has been instrumental in the Operations Allies Welcome priority by being the CBP and CDC POC after Dulles was identified as a Point of Entry (POE) for Operation Allies Welcome (OAW). Dulles was one of eleven departure airports for resettlement from Safe Havens. Mr. Chin oversaw onsite coordination, partnering with senior officials from DHS, DoS, CDC, and HHS. He coordinated local TSA response to include planeside screening of luggage by TSA K9, and assignment of TSA liaison with NCC, receiving over 5K evacuees. DHS UCG recognized TSA Dulles with an award, “for all of the incredible work done in support of OAW,” with AFSD Chin receiving a personal thanks and OAW coin from the UCG.
Due to AFSD Chin’s contribution to Screening Operations, morale among IAD is one of highest CAT-X airports in the most recent 2020 FEVS. AFSD Chin also developed real time staffing metrics for tracking FTE, which were so effective that as of most recent payroll report, IAD was one of only four CAT-X airports to be within 2% of PP RAP, as well as being green on IAD YTD FTE Burn Snapshot. AFSD Chin personally led development of the Dulles Screening Operations Two-year Strategic Plan based on ADM Intent and TSA Strategy. Additionally, AFSD Chin drove insider threat initiatives such as Operation Stop Gap (OSG), a Dulles developed insider threat initiative that covers 100% of pubic to sterile terminal access points, and Operation Stop Light (OSL), which covers 100% of public to AOA vehicle access gates.
Administrator Pekoske, Eric Chin, and wife Diana.
CBP - Forced Labor Team
Deputy Assistant Executive Commissioner John Leonard honored the Forced Labor Team from CBP for their efforts.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s award-winning forced labor team is comprised of individuals from across the agency, united by a single goal: to eliminate the horrific practice of forced labor from U.S. supply chains. Through their ongoing collaboration, this team has helped improve the living and working conditions of millions of workers globally, while protecting law-abiding American businesses and entrepreneurs from unfair economic competition. Thanks to the incredible contributions from these men and women, CBP is a global leader in the fight against forced labor, setting an international standard for the rest of the world to follow.
U.S. Coast Guard - Joshua Buck
WHSR is so appreciative of Joshua Buck, Chief of Community Relations at the U.S. Coast Guard in his ongoing role to execute the WHSR Coast Guard Industry Academy annually.
2020
Honoring the Frontline
This year for WHSR’s annual Holiday Reception we asked the senior leaders at DHS to honor the frontline workers in their agencies who have been responsible for their most critical needs. During our reception we heard many incredible stories of people in DHS who truly went above and beyond the call of duty in unprecedented circumstances. We are proud to recognize these honorees for their service to our country.
CBP - Officers deployed to Portland, OR
Recognized by Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan
CBP officers and agents were deployed to Portland in direct support of the Presidential Executive Order and the newly established DHS Protecting American Communities Task Force (PACT).
As a law enforcement component under DHS, CBP provided support, as requested, to the Federal Protective Service to protect and secure Federal facilities, persons in Federal facilities, and Federal property.
CISA - Geoffrey Hale and Alexis Wales
Recognized by Assistant Director Bob Kolasky
Geoff Hale leads the Election Security Initiative at CISA. Geoff has supported CISA and NPPD’s cybersecurity, risk management, and emergency communications missions since 2010. Over the past four years, Geoff has worked with partners to understand risks to election infrastructure and where CISA’s services can add value to election security. Working at CISA, he has had broad opportunities, from authoring Binding Operational Directives to instigating the War on Pineapple. Geoff is a graduate of the University of Virginia and earned his master’s degree in Systems Engineering from George Washington University.
Ms. Alexis Wales currently serves as the Election Security Mission Manager for CISA. Ms. Wales coordinates and orchestrates CISA’s resources against the #Protect2020 Lines of Effort, ensuring that the near-term tasks are addressed to achieve the long-term strategic goals. Additionally, Ms. Wales ensures that election security efforts align to the changing threat and risk environments, creating a cohesive and comprehensive portfolio of CISA services, offerings, and partnerships to secure the Election.
Ms. Wales also serves as a Deputy Associate Director in the Cybersecurity Division of CISA. Ms. Wales leads the Threat Hunting subdivision, comprised of cyber threat and technical analysts who perform operational and strategic-level analysis to support network defense and resilience across the DHS stakeholder community. Her teams focus on building a common operational picture of current threats to United States networks, detecting cyber incidents, responding to significant incidents, and sharing actionable analysis based on unique security insights.
CWMD - Melissa Harvey
Recognized by Deputy Assistant Secretary Herbert Wolfe
Melissa Cole Harvey, MSPH, BSN, RN, is the Director of Health Systems for Medical Operations within CWMD. In this role she is responsible for providing programmatic vision and oversight for the Department’s Emergency Medical Services and Health Informatics programs. In 2020 much of her time was spent on the COVID-19 response, including a 4-month detail to the HHS/FEMA COVID-19 Healthcare Resilience Taskforce, where she led the Hospital Team. Under her leadership, the Hospital Team accomplished the following:
• Produced the first version of the Hospital Resource Toolkit to provide hospitals with information on surge strategies (space, staff, equipment) and behavioral health resources to enhance resilience among healthcare providers and support staff.
• Developed the Medical Operations Coordination Centers (MOCC) concept and produced the 56-page MOCC toolkit outlining strategies for healthcare organizations to coordinate the even distribution of patients so no single facility becomes overwhelmed. The team also hosted various training webinars for federal, state and local governments, and healthcare organizations.
• Significantly expanded and formalized outreach to hospital stakeholders and associations.
• Partnered with the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Alternate Care Site working group to produce the first version of the alternate care site toolkit.
FEMA - Jerry Thomas, Project Air Bridge
Recognized by Bridget Bean, Senior Official Performing the Duties of Deputy Administrator
Project Air Bridge was created to reduce the time it takes for U.S. medical supply distributors to receive personal protective equipment and other critical supplies into the country for their respective customers. FEMA covered the cost to fly supplies into the U.S. from overseas factories, reducing shipment time from weeks to days.
The Air Bridge Team, composed of transportation movement experts and led by Mr. Jerry Thomas, developed and implemented an international air bridge to rapidly deliver Personal Protective Equipment as part of a historic logistical effort for the U.S. Government in response to the COVID Pandemic.
On March 13, 2020, FEMA was designated the lead coordinating agency for the U.S. Government. The team swiftly set up and flew its first international flight on March 29, 2020.
The program relied on diverting PPE from international sealift delivery, which took over 30 days, into FEMA-coordinated international cargo flights using US and foreign-flagged aircraft --Boeing 747s, 737s, 777s, and Antonov An-124s -- which takes an average of four days.
Previously experienced on only domestic flights, the FEMA Air Bridge team had to learn and adapt quickly to national requirements and standards in Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam on issues ranging from medical export to international customs and tariffs.
The team set up a nightly call with the Department of State, DOD Acquisition, and Underwriter Labs to coordinate and resolve a wide spectrum of transportation challenges related to international cargo movement, PPE exports, customs, acquisition, and authenticity issues.
The team also coordinated closely with six major U.S. medical distributors to ensure their PPE cargo met the intent of their formal agreements with the US Government to transport their commercial PPE cargo on FEMA-funded aircraft. The team communicated daily with the distributors as the delivery priorities were continuously shifting, based on evolving disease activity throughout the nation’s communities.
For all 419 flights, the team tracked aircraft scheduling, departures, arrivals, cargo manifests, and back-end billing. To ensure everyone was kept well-informed on current operations, the team published a daily transportation report, which was sent to over 500 Pandemic responders to improve their decision-making abilities.
The coordinated international cargo flights accelerated the supply chain by reducing delivery timeframes from over 30 days to 4 days to ensure rapid delivery of PPE across the nation.
The results of the Air Bridge Program and international flights were staggering:
5.1 million N95 respirators
945 million gloves
126 million surgical masks
66 million gowns and related medical items
159 international flights
26 million N-95 equivalent respiratory protection masks
14 million gowns
The PPE cargo obtained from Project Airbridge played a key role in the U.S. Government allocating and moving the critical resources requested across the US to protect the medical front line workers.
The complexity and nationwide scope of the team’s work included a uniquely challenging environment with national level visibility at the cabinet-level and across media outlets and worldwide shortage of PPE. The team’s leadership, professional work, and decisive decision-making was critical in resolving one of the most complex issues the U.S. faced this year.
TSA - COVID Task Force
Recognized by Administrator David Pekoske
In April, the Administrator stood up the Transportation Security Administration Task Force on COVID-19 Resumption of Business Planning to coordinate planning across the agency to address its ability to operate for the foreseeable future with a focus on TSA employee and public health, and to better prepare the agency for the eventual resumption of transportation activity. The Task Force established six Working Groups to address specific areas that had a major impact on TSA and the transportation sector by identifying, coordinating, developing, and implementing initiatives to ensure TSA was quickly and properly responding to current and future needs of the agency in the COVID-19 environment.
The subject-matter experts who made up the working groups are true heroes to the TSA employees who relied upon them to ensure they were kept safe while performing their essential operational functions, and continue to put forth innovative procedures and technological solutions to make their duties less hands-on in the future. The Task Force quickly brought together a coalition of offices and individual experts across the agency to identify and implement innovate and agile solutions across all modes of transportation, most prominently Aviation. Their efforts and rapid response positioned TSA to ensure the health and safety of the its workforce and promote confidence in the safety of the commercial aviation travel. Without their exceptional efforts, selflessness, vigilance, innovative thinking, and dedication the agency would not have provided the outstanding response to the unique challenges presented by COVID-19 that it has.
United States Coast Guard - Sector Miami
Recognized by RADM Pat DeQuattro
1. When the worldwide Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic began to spread in early March of 2020, Sector Miami rapidly assessed the situation and determined the most efficient way in continuing operations while keeping personnel safe was to stand up an Incident Management Team (IMT) dedicated to COVID-19. This IMT rapidly established itself as the information hub for current cases of infection, the safety center for best practices, and current status of foreign vessels entering the ports.
2. Sector Miami coordinated the placement of an Agency Representative (AREP) at the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention Miami Quarantine Station (CDC Miami). In March 2020 CDC Miami was quickly overwhelmed by the volume of air and cruise travelers who needed to be screened at the Miami International Airport. As a result, they lost the ability to effectively communicate policy, procedures, and tactics changes to other members of the Unified Commands. Sector Miami provided a Senior Officer to work at CDC Miami who immediately clarified the role of CDC, provided real-time operational updates to shape arrival and disembarkation operations, and established information sharing processes that drove national-level decision-making until a permanent CG LNO was established at CDC HQ.
3. As nations around the world began to close their ports leaving cruise ships filled with passengers, including American citizens, stranded at sea Sector Miami rose the challenge. A Unified Command of the Coast Guard, Port Partners, CDC, and Florida Health was established to mitigate risk and safely disembark personnel from the displaced cruise ships. Through clear communication, cooperation, and innovative thinking over 80,000 passengers including 2,000 from the highly sensitive VEENDAM, ROTTERDAM, and CORAL " PRINCESS were safely disembarked. This model for assessing vessels and developing a unique plan for each was adopted service-wide and was implemented nationally to great
success.
4. As the need to evacuate personnel from cruise ships in a safe manner became challenging, Sector Miami innovated using the cruise ship tenders to complete Medical Evacuations
(MEDEVACs). The technique was pioneered by offloading 13 critically ill personnel from two COST A vessels on March 26, 2020. This procedure reduced the cross contamination and exposure risk for the Coast Guard and partner agencies while safely transporting critically ill patients to receive superior medical care. This model was adopted as a best practice nationwide.
Photo 1: On 26MAR, Captain Burdian (Commanding Officer of Sector Miami) addressing partner agencies of the Miami Unified Command before 13 crew members from COSTA MAGICA and COSTA FAVOLOSA with respiratory symptoms were transferred to Station Miami Beach and awaiting EMS. A team of more than 50 people from Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, Jackson Health System Memorial Hospital, University of Miami Hospital, U. S. Customs and Border Protection, Port of Miami, and U. S. Coast Guard came together to ensure these mariners were quickly and safely treated.
Photo 2: 26MAR, life boats from COSTA MAGICA and COSTA FAVOLOSA bringing 13 crew members in to Station Miami Beach.
Photo 3: Stock photo of Station Miami Beach conducting escort at Port of Miami.
Photo 4: 26MAR, members from Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, Jackson Health System Memorial Hospital, and University of Miami Hospital conducting initial assessments of the 13 crew members from COSTA MAGICA and COSTA FAVOLOSA at Station Miami Beach before taking them to the hospital.