MSST 91101: The Coast Guard unit that invented itself

Less than two months after 9/11, Kenneth “Ty” Nagie was looking for a way to keep serving.

The 27-year-old junior officer had been thinking about leaving the Coast Guard before the attacks. Now he was committed to staying, driven by a desire to fight back.

“A friend knew I was interested in the TACLET (Tactical Law Enforcement) program,” Nagie said. “He told me to keep my ear open for something called MSSTs.”

Nobody knew much else. “The only clue was that this was something being created because of 9/11,” he said.

As it turned out, MSSTs stood for Maritime Safety and Security Teams, a new breed of mobile unit the Coast Guard wanted to build to prevent a 9/11-style attack on the water. They needed to move fast, protect ports and ships, enforce tight security zones, and board suspicious vessels before a threat reached American shores.

Because nothing quite like this existed, the first members would have to make it up as they went.

What emerged was more than a quick response to a national crisis. The first unit—MSST 91101 in Seattle—and the three others stood up shortly after it, became testing grounds for brand-new capabilities and helped lay the groundwork for the modern Deployable Specialized Forces the service relies on today.

Starting from scratch 

When Nagie arrived in Seattle as the operations officer on May 1, 2002, there were no boats waiting at the pier. There wasn't even a standalone facility for the unit, just a carved-out corner of an existing building.

“We went very quickly from zero to ‘Oh my God’ speed to set this up,” Nagie said.

The initial crew—about 70 active-duty members and 30 reservists—headed straight to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, for several weeks of relentless training. They drilled on tactical boat maneuvers, close-quarters combat, advanced weapons handling, and small-unit decision-making under stress.

For most, it was a world away from anything they had done in the Coast Guard.

Petty Officer 1st Class Jeffrey Egelston, a boatswain’s mate, had volunteered specifically for the challenge. “I always wanted to be on the newest boat or toy,” he said.

At Camp Lejeune, the team trained alongside U.S. Marines and ran live-fire drills.

“We were dropping grenades off the side of a boat doing cool things that were so out of the box for the Coast Guard,” Egelston said. “It was like nothing I’d ever experienced.”

They learned to drive response boats in ways that completely broke the mold of standard small-boat handling, and they pushed through intensive Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) defense drills.

Through the grit and the pressure of standing up a unit from scratch, they also bonded fast. “We got through it as a crew,” Nagie said.

A different kind of Coast Guard 

Much of the credit for that identity belonged to the commanding officer, Lt. Cmdr. Ramon “Quique” Ortiz. A former Air Force intelligence specialist who later served in the Coast Guard’s Drug Interdiction and Assistance Team.

“He was a natural leader,” said Egelston, recalling how Ortiz stood outside in the pouring rain with the crew rather than taking shelter in the vans. “He was always the last one to come in.”

Ortiz himself had been on the verge of retiring when he watched the second plane fly into the towers from a briefing room at Camp LeJeune, where he was working with the Second Marine Expeditionary Special Operations Training Group.

“I knew then those plans were cut short,” he said.

A couple of months later he and his friend, the late Joe Rodriguez, a rescue diver, learned they would be helping set up a new kind of tactical team. Rodriguez went to Chesapeake Bay, and Ortiz, after consultation with his wife, took Seattle. 

Ortiz knew he had to forge a single unit out of people arriving from wildly different corners of the service. Everyone on the team from storekeepers, and

 “We had to change the mindset so everyone would know that they wouldn’t just be judged on their primary ratings,” he said. “They’d also have to have very specialized skills as part of this crew.”

Machinery technicians (MKs), for example, wouldn’t just be responsible for boat maintenance; they’d also be trained in explosives detection and using underwater and shore-based sensor technology. So, he set the bar high: 4 a.m. wake-ups, four-mile runs, and endless rounds of pushups and sit-ups.

“The suck factor was pretty high sometimes,” said Egelston, who retired as a master chief in 2017 to become a professional musician. “But we embraced it. We came together as a team.”

Ortiz also moved quickly to adapt capabilities scattered throughout the Coast Guard for their specific mission. One afternoon, he sat three then lieutenants down in a break room and handed out assignments on the spot. He told Capt. Mark Kuperman to build the team’s explosive-detection K-9 program. He put Capt. Taylor Lam in charge of shore-side force protection and tasked retired Cmdr. Steven Schultz with creating a tactical dive locker.

“He wanted us to be leaders in parts of the Coast Guard that weren’t quite developed, but he’d heard were coming,” Kuperman said. “All of us just put up our hand and said, ‘I’ll do it.’”

Getting to work 

When MSST 91101 was officially commissioned on July 3, 2002, the team hit the ground running. At that point, Nagie noted, they had only three of their six planned 25-foot Safe Boats and just a few fully qualified crews.

They immediately put them to work. The team ran security patrols across Puget Sound, escorted Washington State ferries, and protected high-value Navy vessels and outbound military cargo ships bound for Iraq and Afghanistan. They carried out intelligence-driven boardings on foreign-flagged ships, searching for hidden operatives or explosives, while divers scanned piers and ship hulls.

Retired Lt. Cmdr. Ed Madura, the executive officer for MSST 91101 who still serves in the Coast Guard Auxiliary in Washington, said the goal was to take what Port Security Units and TACLETs were doing and build a homeland defense shield.

“We were the terrorism prevention unit,” Madura said. “Our primary mission was to be able to recognize and keep the bad guys away from targets.”

That meant training constantly with anyone who had expertise to share. Unit divers worked with Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal technicians. Tactical operators drilled with the Washington State Police and regional FBI SWAT teams.

Along the way, the crew learned a fundamental truth about deterrence: sometimes, simply showing up and being seen was the mission.

Madura remembers how sharp a departure that was from traditional operations. The unit might surround a ferry with patrol boats to prevent a repeat of the USS Cole attack, send a boarding team to inspect a suspicious vessel, or spend hours holding a security perimeter without ever spotting a hostile target.

“It truly was an all-in-one package that could be sent anywhere and do the job,” Madura said.

Bridging cultures 

Bringing the unit together also meant meshing two very different Coast Guard cultures.

Lam came from the tactical law enforcement community, where operations were fast-moving and inherently dangerous. Other members came from marine safety and traditional boat stations, where the work centered on inspections and regulatory compliance. Marine inspectors knew the inner workings of commercial ships and how to shut them down; tactical operators knew how to breach, clear compartments, and fight.

“There was a culture shock at first,” Lam said. “It was an educational 101 process where early on marine inspectors would say, ‘this is how we treat mariners.’ And law enforcement personnel would say, ‘good to know, but we come from a background where people might try to kill you.’”

That blend quickly became one of the unit's greatest strengths. Madura could use his marine-safety background to teach SWAT teams how commercial vessels were engineered, while tactical operators brought back close-quarters techniques learned from regional police units.

Those relationships also opened doors in the community. When the team stood up its first two bomb-sniffing dogs, Chase and Cisco, local and federal agencies were quick to call.

“Everybody was looking for bomb dogs,” Nagie said.

The MSST dispatched its K-9 handlers across the region, often responding within hours. In return, partner agencies granted the Coast Guard access to firing ranges and training grounds it otherwise would have had to build itself.

Yet the new posture brought another kind of cultural adjustment, this time between the Coast Guard and the public it protected.

The small response boats were outfitted with mounted M60 and M240B machine guns, a startling sight in Seattle. Commuters aboard the local ferries began calling in complaints, asking why heavily armed boats were shadowing them.

“People were saying, ‘you’ve gotta take the guns off,’” Nagie said.

The crew knew the weapons were essential to counter a potential fast-boat threat, so they found a middle ground: the guns remained mounted, but crew members stayed off the triggers unless there was an active reason to man them. Even their dark tactical flotation vests prompted complaints from onlookers used to the Coast Guard’s bright orange gear.

It was an unmistakable sign of the times. The team wasn't just learning a new mission; it was rewriting the public’s idea of what the Coast Guard looked like.

The weight of silence 

For all the energy poured into the early months, the crew ran straight into a question no drill could answer: what if nothing happens?

Patrols could feel monotonous. Crews logged countless hours circling the same ferry lanes and watching the same shorelines day after day.

“My father was a game warden,” Egelston said. “When I’d say it was hard to know if we were having an impact, he’d tell me: ‘the fact that there hasn't been anything happening in Seattle is how you know you’re making a difference.’ That helped me.”

Nagie and the team had to learn a whole new definition of success. It was no longer measured by the number of lives pulled from the water or the pounds of contraband seized at sea.  Instead, it was an uneventful shift, an intact port, and a city that stayed safe.

“Are we still in one piece and not glowing in the dark?” Nagie remembered asking.

The quiet could be unsettling, but it kept them focused.

“We were very serious as a command and an organization about the security vision,” Nagie said. “We were very proactive. Nobody, especially right after the events of the year earlier, wanted to fail.”

So they kept training, staying sharp for the call they hoped would never come.

The Coast Guard changed with them 

The first MSSTs were never intended to remain frozen in time. As the mission matured, the capabilities they pioneered evolved across the service.

The specialized force-protection elements inside the early MSSTs eventually helped form the Maritime Security Response Team, taking on high-risk counterterrorism and opposed-boarding operations. Divers moved into dedicated regional dive lockers, while the MSSTs focused their craft on tactical boat operations, waterside security, maritime law enforcement, and explosive-detection canines. Over the years, the teams expanded their reach to include hurricane relief, counterdrug operations, and security for major national events.

Nagie eventually transferred to Coast Guard headquarters, where he served as program manager and helped commission subsequent MSSTs across the country. After retiring, he returned to as a civilian MSRT program manager.

Looking back, he sees those early teams as a turning point for the service.

“It was really a watershed moment,” Nagie said. “The start of a change in how we viewed law enforcement within the organization.”

It also proved what the Coast Guard could accomplish when pushed to build an answer to an emerging threat on the fly.

“It was the greatest feeling to be part of it and have it be my last unit in the Coast Guard,” said Ortiz who retired in 2005. “The team in Seattle had a special magic where I knew I could leave and they had it under control.”  

Still building 

Today, the Coast Guard fields 10 MSSTs with 578 members currently stationed along the nation's coasts and waterways. The gear is newer, the tactics have been refined, and the training pipelines are well established. But the spirit that shaped the very first team remains the same: move fast, train hard, lean on your partners, and stand ready.

At MSST 91101 in Seattle, a plaque listing the original plank owners still hangs in the on the office wall.

Lt. Cmdr. Ellis James, who serves with the unit today, said seeing those names is a daily reminder of the trail those early crews blazed.

“It does make what we’re doing now feel special,” he said.

That may be the proudest legacy of the team that started with little more than an empty room and a blank slate. They were handed a brand-new mission, built it from the ground up, and gave the Coast Guard a foundation it continues to build on today.

-USCG-