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Coakley promises push for improved homeland security

E-mail|Link|Comments () November 4, 2009 01:36 PM

By Martin Finucane, Globe Staff

Attorney General Martha Coakley is promising to work to improve security at airports, seaports, borders, and nuclear plants and waste sites, if she is elected to the US Senate seat left vacant by the death of long-time Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

Martha Coakley

While Congress has enacted some of the suggestions in the 9/11 Commission report, which outlined steps to improve security after the 2001 attacks, "I believe more work needs to be done to keep America safe," Coakley said in a nine-page white paper on homeland security issued today by her campaign.

Coakley said her experiences as Middlesex district attorney and attorney general had given her a "first-hand understanding of the tools members of law enforcement need to keep Massachusetts and our nation safe."

While pushing for stepped-up security, Coakley said that she would protect civil liberties.

"We must resist security measures that only appear to advance public safety aims, but in actuality, lack the capability of keeping us safe," she said. "We must balance keeping America safe with protecting individual civil rights and liberties."

Noting that Kennedy was a strong advocate for men and women in uniform, Coakley also promised in the plan to protect the troops, both while they're deployed and when they return home. She said she would lead the fight to ensure that more Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan to protect troops from roadside bombs.

She promised to work, too, to ensure that troops who have returned home are provided with transition counseling, are able to access their benefits, their families are able to stay in their homes, and research and treatment are supported for traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Coakley faces three opponents, City Year co-founder Alan Khazei, Celtics co-owner Stephen Pagliuca, and US Representative Michael Capuano in the Dec. 8 primary. State Senator Scott Brown is vying with Jack E. Robinson for the GOP nomination. The final special election is Jan. 19.