The military plans to increase security at recruiting stations and reserve centers, following the shooting rampage in Chattanooga, Tennessee, last week that left five service members dead, two defense officials told NBC News on Monday.
Adm. Bill Gortney, the head of U.S. Northern Command, sent a directive Sunday night identifying measures to be taken, the officials said.
The officials could not discuss the nature of the security measures — but they did say that the measures will not include arming personnel at off-base facilities like the ones attacked in Chattanooga.
The Army chief of staff said last week that recruiters are not armed because of the 1878 law that prevents the military from engaging in domestic law enforcement. He also said it would raise the possibility of accidents.
Asked why Gortney decided to make the changes, one official said that the military is “definitely concerned with homegrown violent extremists,” and that “an additional attack is always possible.”
Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez, 24, opened fire at a recruiting station and a Navy and Marine reserve center on Thursday. Four Marines and a sailor were killed.
The governors of at least six states have ordered National Guardsmen armed, and Florida will move its Guard recruiters from storefronts, like the one attacked in Chattanooga, to armories.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam said Sunday on "Meet the Press" that he would order a review of security at state military facilities.
Police officers, one a member of a “Hercules” team, left, stand guard outside the Times Square Armed Forces Recruiting Station, a day after a gunman killed four Marines in Tennessee in an attack on two military sites, in New York, July 17, 2015. About a dozen uniformed police officers stood outside the famed recruitment center on Friday.MARK KAUZLARICH / The New York Times via Redux Pictures
Jim Miklaszewski
Jim Miklaszewski is the chief Pentagon correspondent for NBC News. On 9/11, he was the first at the scene to report that the Pentagon had been attacked and has since led the network's coverage of the war in Afghanistan.
Since joining NBC in 1985, Miklaszewski was a White House correspondent during the Clinton and Bush administrations, covering President Clinton's transition from Little Rock, his many trips abroad including Moscow and the Middle East and his reelection. He was also an NBC floor reporter at the Democratic and Republican conventions in 1996 and 2000.
In the Bush White House, Miklaszewski reported on the Gulf War with Iraq, summits with Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin and the Bush reelection campaign in 1992.
Miklaszewski has logged considerable foreign experience with battlefront coverage of wars in Lebanon, El Salvador and the Falkland Islands. He also covered the United States air raid on Libya, and the "tanker wars" in the Persian Gulf.
Erin McClam
Erin McClam is a senior writer for NBC News, responsible for reporting, writing and editing general news for NBCNews.com. Prior to joining the site in January 2013, McClam worked at The Associated Press, where he spent 13 years and was most recently financial markets editor. In that role, McClam was responsible for a team of five reporters and a deputy editor that covered the stock and bond markets, financial regulation and the nation's largest banks.
Prior to that role, McClam held a variety of jobs at AP, including being a national correspondent and an original member of its Top Stories Desk editing operation.
