Pentagon completes 'playbooks' for terrorism scenarios
The Defense Department has completed a set of "playbooks" outlining how government authorities should deal with a variety of terrorist and other scenarios involving weapons of mass destruction and mass casualties, according to a senior Pentagon official.
Stephen Younger, director of the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency, said yesterday the series of response plans-first ordered during the Clinton administration-have been approved and are being circulated among key government agencies.
The playbooks are designed to "identify the hard problems" in dealing with a catastrophic terrorist attack, he told a nuclear, chemical, and biological defense conference sponsored by Aviation Week.
Some of these problems include deciding which agency would have the authority to order a quarantine in the event of a biological attack, what happens when conflicting orders are given in the immediate aftermath of an attack, or whether the National Guard, likely to be called in to help restore order, can make law enforcement decisions.
Younger, said the high probability that terrorists will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in future attacks makes adequate preparations essential.
"You have to exercise, exercise, exercise," he said, referring to the need for government agencies, at the federal and local level, to continuously conduct dry runs of a variety of potential terrorist scenarios inside the United States and abroad.
A successful attack with weapons of mass destruction, he said, would be a "civilization-changing" event.
Younger believes the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction is distinctly different for the military and civilian populations.
In military terms, nuclear weapons pose the greatest threat, Younger said, because no effective defenses remain once a nuclear bomb is detonated in a city or on the battlefield. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate equalizer for a conventionally weaker adversary such as Iraq or North Korea that is seeking to challenge U.S. military primacy, or for groups such as al-Qaeda seeking to defeat U.S. military power.
He expressed his personal belief that in the event of a U.S. military attack, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would unleash his arsenal of weapons against invading U.S. troops. "They will" use chemical or biological weapons on the battlefield, he said.
Domestically, Younger says he worries more about a chemical or biological attack than a nuclear attack. First, he believes that despite widespread security concerns at former Soviet nuclear weapons and facilities, a nuclear weapon is still extremely difficult to acquire or develop. Moreover, terrorists lack the state infrastructure historically required to build a nuclear weapon, he added.
But chemical and biological weapons are much more widely available to potential terrorists seeking to strike U.S. domestic targets, he said.
He cited the unsolved anthrax attacks as an example. "This is someone who knows how to make anthrax as well as it can be made," he said of the sophistication of the spores and the mail delivery system. It took "great skill" to make and deploy it in a form that resulted in an "explosion" of anthrax spores when the tainted envelopes were opened.
"It was not made in someone's basement," he said. Asked if there might have been a state sponsor of the anthrax attacks, Younger said, "We simply don't know."
With the proliferation of high-speed desktop computers, developing deadly pathogens will only become easier for nonstate actors such as terrorist groups, Younger said.
On the chemical threat, Younger said the transport of chemicals throughout the United States on a daily basis could be an attractive way for terrorists to acquire WMD materials. For example, he noted that the deadly chemical phosgene-used in a variety of industrial activities-is shipped in 100-ton quantities. "I worry about that," he said.
He said he worries the least, however, about a radiation dispersal device, or dirty bomb, because it would largely cause panic and economic dislocation rather than a large number of casualties. "They are weapons of terror."
For the most part, terrorists have not yet unleashed weapons of mass destruction. Younger said some experts believe terrorists have not done so because violent personalities seek the immediate explosive effect of a conventional attack, while others believe they do not want to alienate their constituency.
Younger believes, however, they have not been used because groups such as al-Qaeda are mounting attacks on an ascending scale of violence. The organization strives to make each attack more violent and cause more casualties. Weapons of mass destruction are the next step on that scale, he warned.
Weapons of mass destruction are "the greatest threat to the national security of the United States," he said.