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ST. LOUIS • A sock monkey dressed as a cowboy made his flight to Seattle from St. Louis last week, but his tiny sidearm had to stay behind.

Phyllis McDill May, who sews the dolls for gifts and for sale, said Friday that it seemed extreme for a Transportation Security Administration agent here to confiscate a miniature toy revolver that was so obviously not a real firearm.

“She was doing her job and I understand that,” May said. “But I thought she’d take it out and look at it and see it’s a toy and give it back.”

The TSA’s response: “Under longstanding aircraft security policy, and out of an abundance of caution, realistic replicas of firearms are prohibited in carry-on bags.”

May, 57, who lives in suburban Seattle, thinks the monkey’s gun was not that realistic. It is about two inches long and weighs less than an ounce, she explained. Its trigger and hammer move, but the barrel is solid.

Still, there is a real gun in the same size range. The smallest revolver in the world is the SwissMiniGun, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. It’s 2.2 inches long, 1 centimeter wide and weighs less than an ounce — and a bullet fired from it reportedly can hit a target roughly 525 feet away.

The novelty weapon costs from $5,200 and $48,000, depending on its finish. And it’s illegal to own in the U.S., according to the Swiss manufacturer’s website.

The play gun for the sock monkey, by contrast, cost $2.50 at an online doll-supply store, May said.

She said the encounter Dec. 3 happened as she and her husband passed through security at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, on their way home after visiting family in the Metro East area for Thanksgiving.

She carried a bag with sewing supplies and the beginnings of a monkey she calls Rooster Monkburn, a play on the name Rooster Cogburn, a character played by John Wayne in the 1969 movie “True Grit.”

Rooster wore blue jeans. May planned to finish his shirt and vest during the plane ride.

The TSA agent found the toy revolver in a pocket of a bag, and at one point threatened to call police, May said. The agent told her that if the barrel were pressed against her neck, she wouldn’t know whether it was real or fake.

“I would know it’s a toy,” May said. “We’re not James Bond here.”

Since returning home, May has finished sewing Rooster, and replaced his pistol.

May plans to fly back to St. Louis on Tuesday to celebrate Christmas with family in the O’Fallon-Fairview Heights area, where she grew up. She’ll leave the gun at home, she said. Or at least put it in checked luggage.

Robert Patrick of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
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More air travelers try to bring guns aboard their flights at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport than any other Florida airport, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

The surveillance video exclusively obtained by NBC 6 leaves little doubt about the TSA’s findings. Checkpoint agents who are screening the passengers and their carryon bags intercept the weapons before they can make it aboard.

One passenger tried to make it through with this small caliber weapon and six bullets. It turns out Fort Lauderdale has been the number one place in Florida for passengers trying to get weapons past security checkpoints or on board in their luggage.

“Florida leads the nation in the number of concealed weapons permits that people have. I think that drives the numbers up. Plus, I think more people are carrying on a day-to-day basis,” said Broward Sheriff’s Office Capt.Roy Liddicott.

TSA agents at the airport in Fort Lauderdale said so far this year they’ve found 38 weapons. Last year, they found a total of 43. At the Miami airport, agents have confiscated 30, more than double the number from the previous year.

A review of TSA and local police reports found that all types of people show up ready to fly, while packing heat. Authorities say Broward pastor Edward Brinson brought his loaded .380 Kel-Tec. He had a valid weapons permit and was allowed to fly after taking his gun back to his car, authorities said.

Others, though, end up under arrest, like Atis Clifford. He wound up in jail instead of on his flight to Pittsburgh. Clifford was charged with carrying a concealed weapon, authorities said. There was no flight to Baltimore for Angel Ward either. Police say she had her 25 caliber Colt with six bullets in her carryon bag. She told police she forgot to take it out but was still charged.

“Most people tell us they forgot, but you can still be arrested and we have arrested people in the past,” said Liddicott.

One senior citizen had his vacation ruined when he tried to get to the Bahamas with this Kel-Tec handgun. The TSA saId technology and screeners are working around the clock to make sure the weapons don’t slip through.

NBC 6 reached out to the pastor for comment, but he didn’t want to talk about what happened. The two other people who were arrested say they’re not guilty and have court dates coming up.

While some of the weapons taken come from those making mistakes, the security teams don’t have any room for error in case there is someone out to do real harm.

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(CNN) — The U.S. Park Police is failing to adequately keep track of its firearms, creating an environment in which weapons are vulnerable to theft or misuse, according to a government report released Friday.

Due to “a lackadaisical attitude toward firearms management” by commanders, investigators said they found “credible evidence of conditions that would allow for theft and misuse of firearms, and the ability to conceal the fact if weapons were missing.”

In a force of approximately 640 officers, the report says, hundreds of weapons were not properly accounted for. The auditors also allege that the agency has more than 1,400 extra weapons, including 477 military-style automatic and semiautomatic rifles.

The head of the Park Police officers’ union, Ian Glick, said there are shortcomings in the “antiquated system of weapon tracking,” but public safety was never put in jeopardy.

“None of these weapons were ever seized in a crime, or found on someone who shouldn’t have one,” he said. While the tracking system has its failings, he said, “all the weapons are accounted for. Every weapon, every stick of ammo, everything is accounted for. But it’s not accounted for in the National Park Service weapons inventory computer system.”

The National Park Service declined to respond to Glick’s specific assertion. But it said it has immediately ordered a complete weapons inventory, to address the “significant, systemic firearms management problems” identified in the report.

“I have no tolerance for this management failure,” said Jonathan Jarvis, director of the National Park Service. He pledged to implement the report’s recommendations on record-keeping, and went on to praise the police officers. “The brave men and women of the U.S. Park Police are professionals who put their life on the line every day,” he said, “protecting our parks for millions to enjoy.”

The report cited several examples of mishandling of weapons, including two officers it says brought their rifles home with them. But at least one example has come into dispute.

The audit asserts that a former chief of the Park Police never turned in his handgun, and 10 years after his retirement it was taken from him by an instructor at a qualification course for retired law enforcement officers, who happened to notice the former chief still had government property.

But the former chief, Robert Langston, rejects the claim, saying he never kept a handgun, he never had one taken away, and he was never asked by auditors about the allegation. The first he heard of it was when he got a call from CNN on Friday morning.

“Nobody ever confiscated a gun of mine. I would recall that,” he said. “Where did they get that?”

He said he turned in his weapon when he left government service, and showed CNN his paperwork.

When asked about the contradiction, the inspector general’s office said its report was based on Park Police records, and the discrepancy just shows the extent of the agency’s record-keeping problems. The National Park Service did not respond to an inquiry about the former chief’s paperwork.

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Orlando Fla Sept 22 2013 Florida gun owners are being advised to repack their bags before flying after a recent jump in seized firearms at airports across the state.

Ten handguns were confiscated in less than a week in Fort Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Miami and Orlando with the most recent stopped today in Tampa, according to the federal Transportation Security Administration on Thursday.

“Unpack before packing to be sure you do not have prohibited items such as guns in your carry-on bag,” TSA spokeswoman Sari Koshetz wrote in an email.
Orlando International Airport continues to lead the state with 31 guns seized this year. Fort Lauderdale and Tampa are tied at 29. Others include Miami, 25, Jacksonville, 19, and Palm Beach, 10, records show.

The latest Orlando case was Saturday afternoon when a state concealed-weapon permit holder was arrested trying to board a flight to Minneapolis with a loaded .380-caliber pistol in his carry-on bag, records show.

Gregory Squires, 45, of St. Cloud was charged with carrying a firearm in a place prohibited by law and booked at the Orange County Jail.
Besides the criminal charge, he faces up to $11,000 in federal fines, records show.

The recent gun confiscations include four in four days in Miami and three in four days in Jacksonville.

Passengers on domestic flights are allowed to travel with firearms if they are properly declared, unloaded and cased inside checked luggage. T
SA advises travelers to check local and state gun laws. More information is available at http://www.tsa.gov/traveler-information.

More than 1,500 guns were stopped by TSA officers last year.

More than 1,200 have been stopped this year, according to TSA.

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Federal prosecutors in New Jersey say they’ve busted what could be the biggest credit card hacking fraud in US history, with companies such as NASDAQ, 7-Eleven, and Dow Jones falling prey to an Eastern European criminal gang.

According to the indictment, the gang stole data on up to 160 million credit cards and then sold them on in underground forums so that they could be written onto blank cards and be used to withdraw funds. The losses for just three of the many companies they targeted came to over $300m, according to the authorities.

“This type of crime is the cutting edge. Those who have the expertise and the inclination to break into our computer networks threaten our economic well-being, our privacy, and our national security,” said US Attorney Paul Fishman in a statement.

“This case shows there is a real practical cost because these types of frauds increase the costs of doing business for every American consumer, every day. We cannot be too vigilant and we cannot be too careful.”

The five men – four Russians and a Ukrainian national – were charged with conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to computers and wire fraud, with additional charges that could see four of the five each facing an extra 120 years in prison.

The government alleges that two of the Russians, Vladimir Drinkman, 32, and Alexandr Kalinin, 26, were the group’s hacking team who carried out the penetration of target firms, usually exploiting SQL attacks and then installing trojan software to harvest credit card and personal information from corporate servers.

The two are well known to prosecutors as former associates of cybercrime-kingpin-turned-US-Secret-Service-snitch-turned-recidivist-cyberblagger Albert Gonzalez and are thought to have been the duo behind the successful 2009 hacking of Heartland Payment Systems.

Once the data had been slurped it was passed over to the team’s Russian analyst Roman Kotov, 32, who identified the most valuable credit cards and the ancillary information needed to use the numbers for fraudulent traffic, the government claims.

This was then passed on to Muscovite Dmitriy Smilianets, 29, for resale on undergrounds message boards, with the Ukrainian Mikhail Rytikov, 26, providing the anonymous ISP services to enable the sale.

The gang sold US credit-card data ready to be slapped onto a blank card for around $10 per number, while Canadian cards went for $15, and European cards for $50 per user. The gang sold only to credentialed underground buyers, and offered volume discounts for larger buyers.

Drinkman and Smilianets were arrested in the Netherlands in June 2012 after the Dutch police were tipped off by the US authorities and are currently being extradited to the US for trial. Kalinin, Kotov, and Rytikov are still at large.

“As is evident by this indictment, the Secret Service will continue to apply innovative techniques to successfully investigate and arrest transnational cyber criminals,” said Special Agent in Charge Mottola of the Newark, New Jersey, Field Office.

“While the global nature of cyber-crime continues to have a profound impact on our financial institutions, this case demonstrates the global investigative steps that U.S. Secret Service Special Agents are taking to ensure that criminals will be pursued and prosecuted no matter where they reside.”

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WASHINGTON — In a major ruling on press freedoms, a divided federal appeals court on Friday ruled that James Risen, an author and a reporter for The New York Times, must testify in the criminal trial of a former Central Intelligence Agency official charged with providing him with classified information.

In a 118-page set of opinions, two members of a three-judge panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., ruled that the First Amendment does not protect reporters who receive unauthorized leaks from being forced to testify against the people suspected of leaking to them. A district court judge who had ruled in Mr. Risen’s case had said that it did.

“Clearly, Risen’s direct, firsthand account of the criminal conduct indicted by the grand jury cannot be obtained by alternative means, as Risen is without dispute the only witness who can offer this critical testimony,” wrote Chief Judge William Byrd Traxler Jr., who was joined by Judge Albert Diaz in Friday’s ruling.

Mr. Risen has vowed to go to prison rather than testify about his sources and to carry any appeal as far as the Supreme Court. But some legal specialists said an appeal to the full appeals court was a likely first step. Mr. Risen referred a request to comment to his lawyer, Joel Kurtzberg, who wrote in an e-mail: “We are disappointed by and disagree with the court’s decision. We are currently evaluating our next steps.”

Judge Roger Gregory, the third member of the panel, filed a vigorous dissent, portraying his colleagues’ decision as “sad” and a serious threat to investigative journalism.

“Under the majority’s articulation of the reporter’s privilege, or lack thereof, absent a showing of bad faith by the government, a reporter can always be compelled against her will to reveal her confidential sources in a criminal trial,” he wrote. “The majority exalts the interests of the government while unduly trampling those of the press, and in doing so, severely impinges on the press and the free flow of information in our society.”

Friday’s ruling establishes a precedent that applies only to the Fourth Circuit, but that circuit includes Maryland and Virginia, where most national security agencies like the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency are. As a result, if it stands, it could have a significant impact on investigative journalism about national security matters.

It has long been unclear whether the Constitution protects reporters from being forced to testify against their sources in criminal trials. The principal Supreme Court precedent in that area, which is more than 40 years old, concerns grand jury investigations, not trials, and many legal scholars consider its reasoning to be ambiguous.

“We agree with the decision,” said Peter Carr, a Justice Department spokesman. “We are examining the next steps in the prosecution of this case.”

The ruling was awkwardly timed for the Obama administration.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has portrayed himself as trying to rebalance the department’s approach to leak investigations in response to the furor over its aggressive investigative tactics, like subpoenaing Associated Press reporters’ phone records and portraying a Fox News reporter as a criminal conspirator in order to obtain a warrant for his e-mails.

Last week, Mr. Holder announced new guidelines for leak investigations that significantly tightened the circumstances in which reporters’ records could be obtained. He also reiterated the Obama administration’s proposal to revive legislation to create a federal media shield law that in some cases would allow judges to quash subpoenas for reporters’ testimony, as many states have.

“It’s very disappointing that as we are making such good progress with the attorney general’s office and with Congress, in getting them to recognize the importance of a reporter’s privilege, the Fourth Circuit has taken such a big step backwards,” said Gregg Leslie, the legal defense director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Mr. Risen is a national security reporter for The Times, but the case revolves around material he published in his 2006 book, “State of War,” not in the newspaper. A chapter in the book recounted efforts by the C.I.A. in the Clinton administration to trick Iranian scientists by having a Russian defector give them blueprints for a nuclear triggering device that had been altered with an error. The chapter portrays the operation as reckless and botched in a way that could have helped the Iranians gain accurate information.

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KNOXVILLE, Tennessee (AP) — An 83-year-old nun and two fellow protesters were convicted Wednesday of interfering with national security when they broke into the primary storehouse for bomb-grade uranium in the U.S.

It took the jury about 2 ½ hours to find the three protesters guilty of a charge of interfering with national security and a second charge of damaging federal property.

The trio spent two hours inside the complex, which has had a hand in making, maintaining or dismantling parts of every nuclear weapon in the country’s arsenal. They cut through security fences, hung banners, strung crime-scene tape and hammered off a small chunk of the fortress-like Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility, or HEUMF, inside the most secure part of complex.

Sister Megan Rice, Michael Walli and Greg Boertje-Obed, who testified on their own behalf during their federal trial, said they have no remorse for their actions and were pleased to reach one of the most secure parts of the facility.

Defense attorneys said in closing arguments Wednesday that federal prosecutors had overreached in the charges against the trio because of the embarrassment caused by the break-in.

“The shortcomings in security at one of the most dangerous places on the planet have embarrassed a lot of people,” defense lawyer Francis Lloyd said. “You’re looking at three scapegoats behind me.”

Prosecutor Jeff Theodore was dismissive of claims that the protesters’ actions were beneficial to security.

The head of an agency charged with safeguarding the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile said the breach is “completely unacceptable” and an “important wake-up call.” Neile Miller, acting administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, told a Senate subcommittee Wednesday that officials have taken “decisive action” since the incident, including a new management team and a new defense security chief to oversee all NNSA sites.

Rice said during cross examination that she wished she hadn’t waited so long to stage a protest inside the plant.

“My regret was I waited 70 years,” she said. “It is manufacturing that which can only cause death.”

Rice said she didn’t feel obligated to ask the Catholic bishop in the area for permission to act at Y-12. Challenged by a prosecutor about whether it would have been a courtesy to inform superiors of her plans, Rice responded: “I’ve been guilty of many discourtesies in my life.”

Boertje-Obed explained why they sprayed baby bottles full of human blood on the exterior of the facility.

“The reason for the baby bottles was to represent that the blood of children is spilled by these weapons,” he said.

All three defendants said they felt guided by divine forces in finding their way through the darkness from the perimeter of the plant to the enriched uranium plant without being detected.

Prosecutors argue the act was a serious security breach that continues to disrupt operations at the facility. The intrusion caused the plant to shut down for two weeks as security forces were re-trained and contractors were replaced.

Federal officials have said there was never any danger of the protesters reaching materials that could be detonated on site or used to assemble a dirty bomb, a position stressed by defense attorneys.

The protesters’ attorneys noted that once they refused to plead guilty to trespassing, prosecutors substituted that charge with the sabotage count that increased the maximum prison term from one year to 20 years. The other charge of damaging federal property carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.

The protesters call themselves “Transform Now Plowshares,” a reference to the biblical phrase: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.”

Their actions were lauded by some members of Congress, who said the incursion called attention to flawed security at Y-12, first built as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II that provided enriched uranium for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

The plant makes uranium parts for nuclear warheads, dismantles old weapons and is the nation’s primary storehouse for bomb-grade uranium. The facility enjoys high levels of support in the region, and Oak Ridge has always taken pride in its role in building the atomic bomb, viewing it as crucial to the end of the war.

A report by the Department of Energy’s inspector general said Y-12 security failures included broken detection equipment, poor response from security guards and insufficient federal oversight of private contractors running the complex.

For decades, protesters have rallied at the gates of Y-12 around the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Some deliberately trespass or block traffic to provoke arrest and call more attention to their cause. Some years, authorities have tried to deprive them of the notoriety by refusing to prosecute. In previous prosecutions, the stiffest sentence ever meted out was less than a year in prison.

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When President Obama visits Mexico on Thursday, he’ll be talking to a new Mexican leader about what to do with the drug war. They might also want to discuss what to do about that giant telephone eavesdropping system that the U.S. is funding.

For seven years, the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs has funded a sweeping monitoring system for listening and recording private telephone calls in Mexico. Details about the technology are hard to come by, and the State Department and the system’s manufacturer Verint — a company with close ties to Israel — don’t have much to say about it when asked. But a number of contracts handed out over the years have revealed details about how it’s a key part of the means which Mexico and the U.S. fight the cartels.

Called the Mexico Technical Surveillance System, the system allows the Mexican government to “intercept, analyze and use intercepted information from all types of communications systems operating in Mexico,” stated a recently-updated State Department request for proposals. (It was first installed in 2006, according to the document.) It’s capable of pinpointing an intercepted call to a location displayed on a map, link together “intercepted communication” with “graphical display links between events,” along with monitoring in real time and storing up to 25,000 hours of conversations.

The system is also compatible with phone networks including GSM, PSTN, CDMA, TDMA and iDEN — practically all of Mexico’s telephones. An additional capability to monitor packet data over the Prodigy ISP, according to a 2007 contract (.pdf) for $3 million of equipment, gave the Mexican government access to most internet users in the country. The purpose: “Help deter, prevent, and mitigate acts of major federal crimes in Mexico that include narcotics trafficking and terrorism.”

The most recent change to the solicitation was on April 20, but with no additional documentation. Calls to Verint were not returned before deadline. According to Kathryn Pfaff, a spokesperson with the State Department, the 2007 contract was canceled, but she did not comment on last year’s request for proposals. It’s likewise unclear how often Mexico and the U.S. use the system on an day-to-day basis. “Police forces, national security, intelligence and other government agencies can use these solutions independently, holistically or as part of a large-scale system designed to generate evidence and intelligence and to conduct research more efficiently and productively,” states Verint’s Mexico website.

The U.S. has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Mexico, including funding for surveillance planes, helicopters and lots of training. The U.S. has sent contractors and federal agents to help sniff out drug lords. To help out, the 2007 contract described the system as being able to “disseminate timely and accurate, actionable information to each countries respective federal, state, local, private, and international partners.” That includes “real time or playback audio directly to outside Agents phones.”

Last year’s upgrade was significant. The State Department aimed to boost the number of computer workstations from 30 to 107 at “listening posts to be distributed over multiple locations.” No contract was publicly awarded, but the upgrade was to “function seamlessly” with Verint’s existing Windows-based software, the Reliant Monitoring System, with the goal to “thwart and confront criminal and terrorist activity.”

But there are clear signs Mexico is becoming more averse to sharing intelligence. On Tuesday, Mexico’s foreign secretary for North America, Sergio Alcocer, told the Associated Press that all U.S. law enforcement communication with Mexico will shift to a “single window” in the federal Interior Ministry — a big change from the close access U.S. agents had with Mexico’s military services and law enforcement agencies. “The issue before is that there was a lack of coordination because there was not a single entity in the Mexican government that was coordinating all the efforts,” Alcocer told the AP.

Since last year’s election of President Enrique Pena Nieto and the return of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to power — which ruled for 71 years until it was booted from Mexico’s highest office in 2000 — the new (but very old) government has also moved to assert more direct control over the country’s Byzantine array of security ministries. Many were centralized under the Interior Ministry, and the powerful Secretariat of Public Security was abolished and its powers transferred over.

That transfer would — although this is not confirmed — include the eavesdropping gear. But Pena Nieto isn’t going to slam every door.

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BALTIMORE – Special agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) arrested two men in Maryland Wednesday morning after both were indicted on document fraud related charges.

Antonio Abraham Cruz-Cruz, 26, a Mexican citizen residing in Adelphi, Md., and Henry Ramos Agustin, 37, a Guatemalan citizen residing in Cambridge, Md., were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges relating to the sale and transfer of fraudulent identification documents. The superseding indictment was returned on March 20 and unsealed Wednesday upon the arrest of the defendants.

“Document fraud poses a threat to national security and puts the security of our communities at risk because it creates a vulnerability that may enable terrorists, criminals and illegal aliens to gain entry to and remain in the United States,” said HSI Baltimore Special Agent in Charge William Winter.

“This investigation resulted in the arrest and indictment of an alleged document mill leader and co-conspirator operating out of Maryland. Homeland Security Investigations will move aggressively to investigate and bring to justice those who potentially compromise the integrity of America’s legal immigration system.”

The 13-count indictment alleges that from Oct. 17, 2012 through Feb. 19, Cruz-Cruz and Agustin conspired to manufacture and transfer fraudulent identification documents. According to the indictment, Cruz-Cruz manufactured documents, including permanent resident cards and social security cards, which he sold to customers, and which he provided to Agustin for sale to customers.

The indictment alleges that the defendants solicited and took orders for false identification documents from customers who provided the defendants with photographs and personal information. Agustin allegedly provided the photographs and personal information to Cruz-Cruz, who manufactured the requested fake documents, which he then delivered to Agustin in exchange for a portion of the sales price. The indictment alleges that Cruz-Cruz sold such manufactured fake documents to his own customers as well.

The defendants face up to 15 years in prison for the conspiracy and for each count of transfer of false identification documents; 10 years in prison for each count of fraud and misuse of immigration documents; five years in prison for each count of social security number fraud and a mandatory two years in prison, consecutive to any other sentence, for aggravated identity theft. An initial appearance and arraignment was held Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. Cruz-Cruz and Agustin are detained pending trial.

The case was investigated by HSI Baltimore and HSI Ocean City with the assistance of the Anne Arundel County Police Department and Baltimore County Police Department.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Tamera L. Fine for the District of Baltimore.

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Darwin naval base went into lockdown early on Friday morning after an armed intruder stole military-issue weapons and tied up a sailor during a raid on a Navy patrol boat.

Police have called the incident a breach of national security.

The ABC understands the break-in at the HMAS Coonawarra base, close to the Darwin central business district, happened about 1am.

It is believed a single intruder armed with a gun and wearing a balaclava boarded the Armidale-class patrol boat Bathurst, which was moored at the base.

A Northern Territory Police spokesman said a crewman on board was assaulted and tied up before the intruder broke into the boat’s armoury.

He said two pump-action shotguns and a dozen 9mm pistols were taken.

An Armidale-class patrol boat would carry a stock of machine guns, assault rifles, shotguns, 9mm pistols and ammunition in its armoury.

Territory police Commander Richard Bryson says it appears the offender appeared to be familiar with the layout of the boat and ADF procedures.

He said a “cache” of weapons appeared to be missing.

He said it was believed no ammunition or magazines for the weapons had been taken.

Commander Richard Bryson of the Crime and Specialist Support Command says an investigation of the incident is being assisted by Australian Defence

Force officers and the Australian Federal Police.

The naval base went into security lockdown, with vehicles being searched and contractors servicing the base turned away.

Authorities later began allowing restricted access to some personnel and contractors as police guarded the entrance to the base.

All patrol boat operations out of the base have been suspended, while all Navy personnel have been told to stand down and not return to work until Monday.

Navy chief Vice Admiral Ray Griggs says he has ordered an investigation of security on RAN ships and bases in light of the break-in.

He says the crew member whose life was threatened is being looked after and the security breach is being investigated.

“That is something that we need to obviously look into very carefully,” he said.

“There is… an investigation underway from a police perspective, but I have also initiated a review of security on board our ships and establishments.”

The Royal Australian Navy bases 10 of its 14 patrol boats in Darwin.

Federal Opposition Defence David Johnston says the break-in shows the Government was wrong to cut ADF spending.

He says $5.5 billion should not have been cut from the Defence budget, and the Opposition would restore the budget to between $28 billion and $30 billion.

“The sort of cuts that have been administered to Defence have to have some sort of effect over time,” he said.

“One of them appears to be a reduction in security in terms in ingress and egress of the base up there in Darwin.”

Security at the Darwin base is largely handled by civilian contractors.

Defence Minister Stephen Smith has declined to comment on the incident.

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