By Peter Galuszka
It was curious that Gov. Terry McAuliffe, while emphasizing that the state needs to wean itself from the sweet milk of federal spending, pushed a very interesting government project in the piney woods of Nottoway and three other counties.
In his speech to the 2015 General Assembly on Wednesday, McAuliffe said he was “thrilled to help convince the State Department and the General Services Administration to choose Fort Pickett as the home of the Foreign Affairs Security Training Center, bringing as many as 500 jobs and millions in investment along with it.”
The U.S. State Department has been trying for years to get an adequate training facility for its guards and U.S. embassies and consulates around the world. The U.S. Marines they use are pretty much ceremonial and the deployment of private armies such as the former Blackwater of Moyock, N.C. is fraught with problems as several recent high-profile court trials attest.
The need for well-trained, non-privatized guards was underlined on Sept. 11, 2012 in the bloody siege of the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Last spring, Ft. Pickett, a Virginia Army National Guard base, was chosen for the $461 million Foreign Affairs Security Training Center which will create 1,500 permanent and part-time jobs.
It’s a project both parties can love. Republican U.S. Reps. Randy Forbes and Robert Hurt are smitten as are Democratic U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner and of course, McAuliffe. It may be ironic that the Ft. Pickett site can draw such bipartisan support in Virginia when Republicans beat everyone up so badly, especially former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, over Benghazi. It’s also curious that a national security expense like this goes down so easily with politicians while accepting federal money to expand Medicaid coverage to 400,000 lower income Virginians is such a no-no. Conservatives argue that Medicaid would hurt budget discipline, but won’t this training center do the same?
The State Department says it has 2,000 security people in 160 countries and plans 75 more. They now take a 10-week training course at a military base in West Virginia that includes a local race track that is considered inadequate.
Ft. Pickett is probably a logical site. Its 45,000 plus acres were carved out of several counties during World War II and an airfield was built. During the Cold War (as now) the facility was used for artillery and tank practice since its rolling pine-gum forest somewhat resembled the terrain of Eastern Europe where the real fighting might be.
It had been marked for closure but somehow survived, sustaining the small town of Blackstone where one often sees troops in utilities at the local Hardees or McDonald’s. From time to time, Ft. Pickett hosts special guest trainees such as the Navy SEALS, the Marines, Army rangers and Delta Forces, the FBI, Secret Service, Drug Enforcement and others. I live about 20 miles from the base and from time to time, my house shakes either from artillery shots or helicopters that roar at low altitude. One particularly loud weekend, I looked up the fort’s website to see who was there. It was the Canadian Army shooting up Old Virginny.
There was a rumor going around a couple years ago that Ft. Pickett housed a to-scale mockup of Osama Bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan and that SEALS used it to train before killing him. The story was so juicy that it ended up on the Blackstone Chamber of Commerce Website for a while but I don’t think it is true. It was probably in North Carolina at a CIA base at Harvey Point on Albemarle Sound or at Ft. Bragg.
The State Department facility will be built on 1,500 acres of land and supposedly 10,000 students a year will use it. I can’t understand where they get that number if there are only 2,000 State Department guards, but never mind.
The base used to be fairly open. When my German Shepherd was alive sometimes we’d drive down there to see what was going on. Usually, nothing, but on occasion you’d see helicopters or an Air Force cargo jet practicing takeoffs and landings.
The facility will help the local area but I am sure the old access will be limited. Meanwhile, it’s back to federal money that Virginia loves so well, at least in this case.
