Chan's Personal Blog

A little-known congressional power could help the federal government keep the Somali pirates in check — and possibly do it for a discount price.

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and a growing number of national security experts are calling on Congress to consider using letters of marque and reprisal, a power written into the Constitution that allows the United States to hire private citizens to keep international waters safe.

Used heavily during the Revolution and the War of 1812, letters of marque serve as official warrants from the government, allowing privateers to seize or destroy enemies, their loot and their vessels in exchange for bounty money.

The letters also require would-be thrill seekers to post a bond promising to abide by international rules of war.

In a YouTube video earlier this week, Paul suggested lawmakers consider issuing letters, which could relieve American naval ships from being the nation’s primary pirate responders — a free-market solution to make the high seas safer for cargo ships.

“I think if every potential pirate knew this would be the case, they would have second thoughts because they could probably be blown out of the water rather easily if those were the conditions,” Paul said.

Theoretically, hiring bounty hunters would also be a cheaper option.

National security experts estimate that this week’s ship captain rescue by Navy SEALs cost tens of millions, although a Navy spokesman says the military cannot confirm the exact cost of the mission.

Instead, privateers would be incentivized to patrol the ocean looking for key targets — and money would be paid only to the contractor who completed the job.

“If we have 100 American wanna-be Rambos patrolling the seas, it’s probably a good way of getting the job done,” said Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow and security expert Eli Lehrer. “Right now we have a Navy designed mostly to fight other navies. The weapons we have are all excellent, but they may not be the best ones to fight these kinds of pirates. The only cost under letters of marque would be some sort of bounty for the pirates.”

According to Senate historians, Congress hasn’t issued a letter of marquee since the War of 1812, but the Confederate States of America issued them during the Civil War to deliver supplies behind enemy lines. There are also some indications that a letter was granted to a flying band of armed civilians during World War II to operate the Resolute, a Goodyear Blimp used to patrol the ocean for enemy submarines, but the issuance isn’t apparent in the Congressional Record.

If Congress were to revisit the antiquated process, a serious makeover would be required.

In the past, privateers were allowed to keep the ship and treasure they captured in an enemy encounter.

The three Somali pirates thought the American warship was doing them a favour when it offered to tow the drifting lifeboat in which they were holding captain Richard Phillips after it ran out of fuel.

The USS Bainbridge fed out a 200-foot line but as the seas grew more choppy the American sailors hauled the rope in and brought the lifeboat much closer. Sitting in the wake of the US warship's broad beam riding on the tiny craft would have been a lot less rough.

But it also brought pirates within range of three snipers perched on the Bainbridge's stern and made the Somalis more stable targets. When the order came, it took just one shot each from the three sharpshooters to end the five-day stand off and rescue Phillips after he was seized from an American-registered container ship, the Maersk Alabama.

Vice admiral William Gortney, commander of the US fifth fleet, told reporters that US navy special forces were dropped by parachute in to the sea at night close to the Bainbridge and brought on board under cover of dark after President Obama authorised the use of force to free Phillips if his life was in danger.

Gortney said that one of the pirates was seen to be pointing a weapon at the captain's back and the snipers "took it that the pirate was ready to use that weapon". He said that when all three pirates where in their sights "with their heads and shoulders exposed" - two of them emerging from the covered lifeboat while the third could be seen through a window guarding the bound hostage - the sharpshooters opened fire simultaneously hitting each of the pirates in the head.

The navy special forces then hauled themselves along the tow rope to the lifeboat to rescue Phillips.

The Bainbridge would have been relatively stable but the lifeboat was still moving around, and the snipers fired in darkness using night sights. Gortney said that the sharpshooters were able to pick off their targets with a single shot because they were "extremely, extremely well-trained".

The pirates had accepted the US warship's invitation to take a tow as their situation grew increasingly desperate after the Americans refused to discuss paying a $2m ransom for Phillips. The lifeboat ran out of fuel and was adrift in the searing heat. The pirates said they would drop the demand for money and release the US captain in return for their own freedom. The Americans refused that too.

One US official told the Associated Press that negotiations for Phillips release had been "going up and down".

"Discussions would be going well, and then they would get discouraged and real angry," the official said.

The Somalis used a satellite phone to appeal for other pirates to use one of 17 other captured ships to come and rescue them but the presence of the US warship apparently scared them off. Phillips's captors were on their own.

As it was getting dark on Sunday, one of the pirates fired a tracer bullet toward the US warship. Then one of the pirates was seen holding his Kalashnikov so close to Phillips that it appeared to be touching him. The order to kill the pirates was given.

A fourth pirate, believed to be in his late teens, had surrendered earlier by jumping in to a small craft delivering food to the lifeboat.

The rest of the crew of the Maersk Alabama, now docked in Mombassa, cheered the news of their captain's release and called him a hero who had saved their lives after offering himself as a hostage to the pirates in order to get them off the ship.

One crew member, Shane Murphy, told reporters: "We are lucky to be out of it with every one of us alive."

Deliberate sabotage is being blamed for a sizable internet and telephone service outage Thursday in Silicon Valley.

At 1:30 a.m., someone opened a manhole cover on a railroad right-of-way in San Jose, climbed down and cut four AT&T fiber optic cables. A second AT&T cable, and a Sprint cable, were cut in the same manner two hours later, farther north in San Carlos.

Service for Sprint, Verizon and AT&T customers in the southern San Francisco Bay Area has been lost, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Police departments have put more units on the street, because nobody can call 9-1-1.

A much smaller Comcast outage affecting around 4,500 customers in San Jose began at around 1:00 p.m. Pacific time. Spokesman Andrew Johnson says the company is investigating the cause.