History
The JTF was originally activated as Joint Task Force Six (JTF-6) in November 1989 with a purely counterdrug mission. In 2004 it was renamed JTF North and added counter-terrorism to its mission, due in part to the efforts of Major M.W. Robinson, who in his spare time wrote the threat assessments for the Gulf Coast ports and access points available to terror elements operating world wide but could not get senior military officials to adopt changes to the JTF-6 mission. He reasoned the prime threat to port security is the continued storage of foreign containers at port facilities that US Customs is unable to search and clear for numerous reasons, including manpower and Free Trade Zone restrictions. He reported to the Department of Defense that containers stored without controls were a continual threat from terrorist organizations who could store weapons of mass destruction for future use. His efforts sparked congressional debate over what the true mission of JTF-6 should be, border security from foreign terror organizations. In the aftermath of 9/11 and the government scrambled to get copies of his original manuscripts from his prior duty station as the JTF-6 Southwest Area Intelligence Chief in Houston, Texas. Famous former members of Joint Task Force 6 include: General Kevin P. Byrnes, US Army, Ret., JTF-6 Commanding General; Colonel Robert Love, USMC, Ret., and current Senior Executive Service (SES) member to the DoD's Task Force for Business and Stability Operations (TFBSO); Special Forces LTC Eric Buckland, US Army, Ret., and Captain Kirk Harrington, owner of EFMC, LLC.
Read more about this topic: Joint Task Force North
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)