Government Executive - Authors - Joe Fiorill

Energy's radiation-detection center to respond to DHS needs, chief says

Joe Fiorill — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 00:00:00 -0500

The Center for Radiation Detection Materials and Systems, part of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will seek to build on existing Oak Ridge strengths, Director Lynn Boatner said in an interview. The Tennessee center will develop new detection technology and will work to make new technology quickly deployable, he said, by agencies such as Homeland Security's year-old Domestic Nuclear Detection Office.

"We're going to be an organization that hopefully does work for … and with" the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, Boatner said. "We're responding directly to their needs and their requirements."

The Oak Ridge center has already responded to several calls for proposals for new detection projects from the Homeland Security unit, Boatner said. He said the center would focus heavily on making new technology usable quickly.

"One of the things that we're emphasizing in this work is the rapid movement and transfer of new developments and new technology into systems - fieldable systems for application in the field, for monitoring radiation in the areas in which [the center's consumers are] interested," he said.

Post-Sept. 11 worries about a radiological "dirty bomb" attack spurred the creation last year of the Homeland Security detection unit, which the agency describes as "a single accountable organization … to develop the global nuclear detection architecture and acquire and support the deployment of the domestic detection system."

Last month, Oak Ridge announced the creation of its detection center, which it said would "establish ORNL as the nation's central national laboratory for innovation and development in the field of radiation detection materials and systems."

"By virtue of a very long history going back almost to the foundation of the laboratory during World War II," Boatner said this week, "Oak Ridge National Laboratory has built up a really very, very strong component of capabilities, expertise, experience, equipment and so on in the area of materials synthesis and single-crystal growth."

The director said the new center would seek to build on those strengths, which can be avenues to improved detector sensitivity, and to bring into a single unit research and development activities that are now scattered around the Oak Ridge campus. The center now exists as an organizational structure but does not have its own building, a state of affairs Boatner said he would like to change.

"Our ultimate goal, of course, is to have a separate laboratory facility where people are brought together sort of geographically," he said.

"The reason that we decided to do this was to really try to centralize and focus our activities," he said. "This grew out of an increased need for an emphasis on the development of new and improved systems. … Certainly the events of the last few years, I think, have emphasized the need to really have systems that look for and interdict potentially dangerous materials, of which radioactive materials are just one category."

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Mayors seek more federal support for disaster response

Joe Fiorill — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Nagin told reporters at a U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting that he is increasingly satisfied with the amount of resources flowing into his city in the wake of the late-August hurricane but not with the speed of their delivery.

"We need to figure out ways to move faster. The amount of support that's coming out of the federal government is looking a lot better, but it's not moving fast enough," Nagin said.

The widely reported miscommunications and poor coordination among levels of government in responding to Katrina should lead to a revamped response system, the mayor said.

"We need to reorient, redesign, reorganize our national response to these types of disasters," he said. "The circumstances and conditions of this disaster could happen in another way. It could be a terrorist attack."

Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson addressed the mayors late Thursday morning, and other department officials are scheduled to participate on Friday.

In advance of the security discussions, the Conference of Mayors on Thursday circulated a formalized version of a security plan first drafted and released in October, during Washington meetings with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

In the plan, the mayors call for more federal funding for local-level emergency responders and increased federal support to back up mutual-aid agreements among municipalities in a region. Such agreements, they say, become useless if a catastrophe requires each municipality to deploy all its resources in its own jurisdiction.

The mayors also ask that the military no longer be viewed as a "resource of last resort" in disasters, but rather be allowed to intervene immediately in catastrophes. They call for more federal funding for transportation security measures such as weapons of mass destruction detectors, and they urge the federal government to create a system whereby local emergency responders would be notified before highly toxic materials such as chlorine were shipped through their cities.

U.S. Conference of Mayors Vice President Michael Guido said Wednesday that cities need more federal funds for responding to events that could outstrip any local capacity.

"We need to have the resources necessary in order for us to respond," said Guido, the mayor of Dearborn, Mich.

During plenary talks Thursday morning, Seattle's Greg Nickels told fellow mayors that anthrax attacks and smallpox fears have given cities a leg up on planning for a potential avian flu epidemic.

"We've all had a lot of opportunity to work on the idea of preparedness," Nickels said. He called on cities to step up education and planning efforts for large-scale disease outbreaks.

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Panelists say regional DHS offices would help disaster response

Joe Fiorill — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

The department has said it intends in this fiscal year to begin developing a regional structure, an idea long championed by former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Proponents say regional offices would better incorporate state and local officials' needs into the department's plans and would improve coordination of multi-jurisdiction response efforts, which are often ad hoc or uneven.

Experts at a Heritage Foundation discussion agreed that regional offices are needed to aid state and local responders but differed over questions such as whether aspects of the effort should be outsourced to private companies.

"The regional organization must be about one thing only, and that's the deliverance - the assured deliverance - of preparedness for a catastrophic incident," said Computer Sciences Corporation consultant William Moore.

The retired U.S. Army major general said Hurricane Katrina showed that the federal government was ill equipped to step in effectively in a catastrophe large enough to outstrip local capacity.

"Are we better now than we were when Katrina hit? I think the answer is 'not so,'" he said.

Former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese, now a Heritage Foundation fellow, said state and local responders need more help and better coordination systems for catastrophes.

"They feel a lack of connectivity between the federal and the local governments," Meese said, referring to local officials around the country to whom he has spoken.

The two differed over the role of private industry in the effort. Moore said administration of a "regional contingency support system" comprising 10 offices around the country should be contracted out to the private sector, which he said is "more agile" and has "greater resources" than government.

"Industry hasn't been as prominent a player as they ought to be," Moore said. "I would suggest that we outsource - that shakes a lot of people, I know - a lot of support services."

The Federal Emergency Management Agency's existing regional structure, Moore said, proved inadequate during the hurricane and should not now be copied by Homeland Security as a whole. Private contractors would have performed better, he said.

"The current effort won't get the job done when D-Day comes," Moore said.

Meese encouraged using the "lessons learned" from Katrina to "correct the deficiencies" - not start from scratch with a new approach.

"Let's keep it as simple as possible and use what has already worked and build on that," Meese said.

In a paper last week, Meese, Heritage Foundation colleague James Carafano and Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis expert Richard Weitz argued that Homeland Security "should create a regional framework that primarily serves the needs of states, local communities and the private sector."

The National Response Plan and National Incident Management System can "provide the national hub" for the regional network, but Homeland Security "lacks a suitable operational structure to support them," the three wrote. They said the regional network should be placed under an undersecretary for preparedness, bringing together parts of various Homeland Security component agencies and most department grant-making authority.

"The DHS should create a regional framework with the primary aims of enhancing information-sharing and other coordination among the states, the private sector and the DHS headquarters in Washington. The regional offices should not have operational or policy-making responsibilities," they wrote.

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Defense review to focus on handling of irregular threats

Joe Fiorill — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

The department's work on the review, which is an extension of the March 2005 National Defense Strategy, centered on providing the president and military commanders with more options for handling "asymmetric" threats, U.S. Principal Defense Undersecretary for Policy Ryan Henry said.

"It came up with capability sets that are going to move us in that direction," Henry said in a speech organized by the American Enterprise Institute at the Australian Embassy.

Henry said he would provide "themes" but few details of the review since top Pentagon officials have not signed off on a final version. He said the review, which is to be delivered Feb. 6 to Congress, "represents the thinking of the upper level, of the four-stars and senior civilians in the department."

The review, said Henry, will call on the department to reorient capabilities toward threats that are "irregular," "catastrophic" or "disruptive" in nature, and away from the "traditional" threats toward which current capabilities are overly directed.

Such a reorientation, he said, would mean more options for the president in four "fundamental focus areas" -- fighting with allies against terrorists, protecting U.S. soil, dealing with "countries at a strategic crossroads," and preventing states and nonstate entities from obtaining weapons of mass destruction. Those demands require flexible capabilities, Henry said.

"We need to provide them [combatant commanders] more capabilities to guarantee effects," Henry said. "We don't know how we're going to use the force in the future, and so we have to have a capabilities set that will span all reasonable futures."

Offering one example of the new capabilities being discussed, Henry said the Pentagon in the future would "continue to emphasize a robust nuclear capability" but will also rely more on other weapons to support nuclear deterrence.

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Nuclear detection office starts new round of domestic tests

Joe Fiorill — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office this month is conducting its second major series of equipment tests, examining the performance of portable devices in detecting radiation sources ranging from common industrial materials to plutonium.

After testing fixed portal-type monitors in October, the Homeland Security Department office this week began a monthlong series of tests on existing and "next-generation" portable detectors. In particular, the office is trying to learn about the devices' range and their ability to identify various threats.

"A critical component of the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office's program is high-fidelity testing and evaluation using test objects and configurations representative of actual threats," office Director Vayl Oxford said in a release. "Characterization of detection systems will provide for more-educated acquisition and deployment decisions."

Nuclear materials used in the tests will include plutonium and highly enriched uranium, office spokeswoman Tracy Tiell said in an interview this week. The office is testing hand-held, backpack and vehicle-mounted detectors, Tiell said.

"The hand-held and the backpacks will … have a conveyance of material that will go by on the test track in front of these detectors. There are also the mobile units - the vehicles, vans in this case, will drive by a source, whether it's special nuclear material or just a common industrial product," she said.

All detectors being tested this month are of the passive variety, Tiell said. Passive detectors work by sensing radiation emitted naturally by sources, while active detectors externally stimulate radiation.

The tests are being conducted at the office's testing ground within the Energy Department's remote Nevada Test Site.

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House Democrat seeks new terrorist information-sharing unit

Joe Fiorill — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

The new unit would convert classified intelligence into forms usable by state and local officials and would provide a channel by which terrorism information from state and local officials could reach federal authorities. "We must keep state, local and tribal law enforcement in the loop and engaged in law-enforcement intelligence," said the House Homeland Security Committee's top Democrat, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi. "As it is now, they are not being given the information they need when they need it to identify potential terrorists or their methods."

Thompson proposed the new unit last week in a report criticizing information-sharing efforts by the Bush administration since the September 2001 attacks.

The administration, according to the report, has failed to respond adequately to "numerous directives, exhortations and invitations … to develop uniform standards for converting classified information into an unclassified or 'less classified' format" and "to create effective mechanisms … where [state and local] information assets can be shared with the intelligence community."

Last year brought several milestones in the federal effort, among them President Bush's April appointment of John Russack as federal program manager for information sharing.

Russack in November held the first meeting of his council. In House testimony the same month, he acknowledged shortcomings in sharing between federal and nonfederal agencies and vowed to improve the environment.

"We must work together more seamlessly at the federal level in order to better leverage the capabilities that the state, local and tribal entities bring to the counterterrorism effort," he told a Homeland Security Committee subcommittee.

"State, local, tribal and private-sector authorities need more unclassified information and intelligence," Russack added, "and the traditional federal emphasis on producing and disseminating classified information impedes the effective use of that information to support multidisciplinary prevention, response and recovery efforts."

Another development arose last month, when Bush issued a memorandum instructing federal agencies to "leverag[e] ongoing information-sharing efforts" and "promot[e] a culture of information-sharing." The president told the agencies to agree on common standards for sharing information among themselves and a common framework for sharing with state and local agencies.

According to Thompson's report, Russack "has made little progress in harmonizing the disparate approaches to declassification within the" intelligence community, and the guidelines in Bush's memorandum "simply restate the undisputed need" for common information-sharing standards and procedures, "rehashing … obvious challenges" without offering anything "substantive."

To jump-start progress, the Democrat called for creating a Vertical Intelligence Terrorism Analysis Link, modeled after the United Kingdom's Police International Counterterrorism Unit and Joint Terrorism Analysis Center. Those two units, according to the Democratic report, circumvent many obstacles to information sharing by allowing police and intelligence analysts to work side-by-side with a common mission.

The year-old U.S. National Counterterrorism Center is similar to the Joint Terrorism Analysis Center, according to the report, in that the U.S. center "leverages the intelligence capabilities of the CIA, the FBI, the [Homeland Security] Department and other agencies."

"Unlike the JTAC in the U.K., however, the NCTC serves only federal customers and is not in the business of sanitizing intelligence documents for dissemination to state, local or tribal law-enforcement," indicates the report.

The proposed new unit, the report indicates, "would establish law enforcement itself as a main driver of the intelligence products being shared with state, local and tribal authorities by looping front-line officers directly into the intelligence identification, analysis and dissemination process."

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Major metro areas found ineligible for anti-terror grants

Joe Fiorill — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Metropolitan areas as large as Phoenix and San Diego no longer qualify for a major terrorism-preparedness grant program under the Homeland Security Department's new, more "risk-based" eligibility formula.

Homeland Security Tuesday issued a list of 44 regions that may seek a slice of the $765 million available in fiscal 2006 from the Urban Area Security Initiative, which the department said "provides resources for the unique equipment, training, planning and exercise needs of select high-threat urban areas."

Eleven of the 44 regions, however, bore an asterisk indicating they had not been found eligible for the program but could seek funds on a "sustainment" basis. The designation means the metropolitan areas could lose funding entirely in the next fiscal year, according to a footnote.

"We have carried forward 11 cities that were designated last year but not designated this year. We've carried them forward in one bridge year of eligibility," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in a speech yesterday on the program. "That's designed to smooth out the transition and to give these communities an opportunity to make the case that they should get funding for this year."

"I have to be very clear about this," Chertoff added. "The purpose of the UASI program - indeed, the purpose of all Homeland Security funding - is not to generate popularity for the secretary or for the Department of Homeland Security. It is to address the highest priorities driven by an analytic, risk-based process."

The urban areas designated for sustainment funding were regions encompassing Phoenix; Sacramento, Calif.; San Diego; Tampa, Fla.; Louisville, Ky.; Baton Rouge, La.; Omaha, Neb.; Las Vegas; Buffalo, N.Y.; Toledo, Ohio; and Oklahoma City. At the same time, Homeland Security added Orlando and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Memphis, Tenn., as new eligible areas for fiscal 2006.

According to a Homeland Security release, the 11 downgraded regions are "eligible to apply for sustainment funding in fiscal year 2006 to ensure that strategic investments made thus far can be completed and to identify projects that, if funded, would significantly reduce risk." The footnote to the list adds that the regions "will not be eligible for continued funding under the UASI program" if found ineligible for two consecutive years.

Several officials in sustainment-designated regions said they knew little about the meaning of or reasons for the designation, despite what they called repeated efforts to obtain such information from Homeland Security. They said their regions were at risk for a terrorist attack and should be eligible for the federal funding.

"We have no idea what they're talking about," said Phoenix city emergency-management chief Marcus Aurelius, who participates in managing the region's Urban Area Security Initiative programs.

"What the process was and what the folks did in DHS to create this document containing that information, I haven't the foggiest idea," Aurelius said. "They may be intending to send to us some specific guidance that just hasn't arrived yet, and it may become much more clear, but they don't consult us on these things. They just make announcements, and we try to figure out what it means."

Clark County, Nev., Emergency Management Director Jim O'Brien, whose jurisdiction includes Las Vegas, said he obtained some information about the process from Nevada state officials who had participated in a conference call with federal officials.

Like Aurelius, though, O'Brien still described Homeland Security's calculation of eligibility as opaque. Asked whether Clark County had provided the data Homeland Security used in finding Las Vegas area ineligible, he replied, "I don't know. Maybe I did."

O'Brien said federal officials told states, via contractors working on the Urban Area Security Initiative, that the calculation of risk was to be secret. "They're going to calculate the risk piece, and they're not going to tell us [on what basis], and we're going to have to demonstrate the need," he said.

The reported inclusion of nonterrorism risks in Homeland Security's calculations, O'Brien said, might have been a disadvantage for Nevada, where he said there is little risk of hurricanes or tornadoes. The Las Vegas region's importance as a tourist destination, though, creates a significant terror risk, he said.

"We're an international destination and very open and vulnerable, and the economic consequences of an incident here would be destructive of the entire state," he said. "In that regard, I kind of question it."

In his speech announcing the eligibility changes, Chertoff staunchly defended the department's calculations, which he said are becoming more risk-based and more accurate each year.

"UASI funds are not entitlements," the secretary said. "Once you get a UASI designation, it doesn't mean that a city has it for the rest of the decade, or the next 20 years. Each year we have to look afresh at what the risks are. We have to consider changes in consequence, changes in vulnerability and changes in threat. We have to consider the fact that we anticipate that as cities get these funds and they build capabilities, they will actually reduce their vulnerabilities, and over time, that should actually remove some of those cities from the UASI list, if this is working properly."

Homeland Security did not say whether the regions designated for sustainment funding had accomplished such reductions in vulnerability. The department's ineligibility findings illustrated clearly, though, that the risk calculation was not tied directly to population: According to 2000 U.S. census figures, Phoenix and San Diego rank sixth and seventh, respectively, among the most populous U.S. cities, and 14th and 17th among the most populous metropolitan areas.

The three metropolitan areas added to the eligibility list for fiscal 2006 are considerably less populous than the largest sustainment-designated regions. Orlando ranks 28th and Memphis 44th in population among U.S. metropolitan areas. Fort Lauderdale is part of the No. 12 metropolitan region by population; that census standing, however, is mainly due to the inclusion of Miami and its suburbs in the same region. Homeland Security has found both Fort Lauderdale and Miami eligible for fiscal 2006 grants, as two separate regions.

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DHS urged to re-expand research at animal disease facility

Joe Fiorill — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0500

The Government Accountability Office recommended this week that the Homeland Security Department re-expand the recently narrowed research focus at a key animal-disease facility.

Experts consulted by the auditing office for its report (GAO-06-132) said a heavy focus on foot-and-mouth disease in research at Plum Island Animal Disease Center is wise but that neglecting other diseases could create vulnerabilities.

"Most of the nationally recognized animal-disease experts we interviewed agreed that it may be prudent to divert limited funds from diseases of lesser importance to the U.S. economy, such as African swine fever, to study FMD," the office wrote. "However, all of the experts expressed concerns that focusing research on a single disease makes livestock more vulnerable to diseases that are not being studied to the same extent or, in some cases, at all."

The Agricultural Research Service, an Agriculture Department agency that conducts research at the facility, deems foot-and-mouth the foreign animal disease most likely to be introduced into the U.S. livestock population. The service has in recent years made foot-and-mouth disease its top research priority at Plum Island, cutting back work on classical swine fever and ending work on African swine fever.

Consulted experts said that since disease outbreaks are difficult to predict, it would be prudent to study a wider range of diseases, potentially including Nipah virus and Rift Valley fever. Homeland Security and Agriculture officials told the auditors, however, that work on such diseases - which can affect humans as well as animals - would require more stringent biosecurity measures at Plum Island.

Homeland Security spokesman Brian Doyle said that the department "worked closely with GAO, and we're not averse to their recommendations." He did not rule out a future expansion of the site's research activities.

"If we feel that it is necessary to expand it, or to not focus so heavily on" foot-and-mouth disease, Doyle said, "we'll do whatever is necessary."

Doyle noted that the facility has since its inception focused heavily on foot-and-mouth disease. The research site opened in the early 1950s after foot-and-mouth outbreaks in Mexico and Canada.

"It was founded essentially on that 50 years ago," Doyle said.

With its special biocontainment laboratory, Plum Island "is the only domestic facility where scientists are currently authorized to study live, high-consequence foreign-animal disease agents in large animals," according to the report.

Experts consulted for the report said some of the work at Plum Island could be done elsewhere, freeing the facility's resources for studies of the kind that can be conducted only there. "Work that does not involve the use of a live virus, such as certain aspects of vaccine development, does not require the strict biosafety features of Plum Island," the auditors wrote.

Members of Congress had asked the auditors to review cooperation between the Agriculture and Homeland Security departments on Plum Island, which lies off the eastern tip of Long Island, N.Y. Homeland Security took over the facility from Agriculture in 2003, but two Agriculture agencies - the Agricultural Research Service and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service - continue to conduct research at Plum Island.

The auditing office said Agriculture-Homeland Security cooperation at the site had been "largely successful" since the takeover, with Homeland Security augmenting Agricultural Research Service studies by, for example, "advancing efficacy testing and development of vaccines to enhance the nation's ability to respond to a bioterrorism attack."

The report indicates that "over 40" foreign diseases threaten U.S. livestock. Plum Island's mission, in the words of the report, is to "protect U.S. animal industries and exports from deliberate or accidental introductions of foreign animal diseases." The facility's researchers work on disease detection, vaccination, treatment and training of U.S. veterinary personnel.

Homeland Security plans by 2012 to replace the facility with a new one, which may not be on Plum Island.

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Judge orders U.S. to disclose rail-security documents

Joe Fiorill — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0500

In a case in which the federal government and rail operator CSX are challenging what is effectively a ban on carrying certain toxic materials over D.C. rails, District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered the federal Transportation and Homeland Security departments to go farther than they have in responding to a discovery request for information from the District and the Sierra Club.

"This is a major victory for the city," said D.C. Council member Kathy Patterson, who sponsored the new city law. "It is critical that federal agencies be called to account for their failures to protect this and other at-risk cities, rather than hiding behind the cloak of secrecy."

In adopting the new law, D.C. officials and lawmakers cited concerns that terrorists could blow up trains carrying chlorine, which has been historically used as a chemical weapon, as a way of carrying out a chemical attack without having to procure the chemical agents.

Sullivan earlier this year criticized the federal government's use of a "secret" plan to protect the rails and its refusal to share the plan with D.C. officials.

The judge succeeded in September in obtaining the plan for his own viewing. City officials have not yet been granted access to the plan, but Sullivan's order yesterday requires the federal government to share it with the District, D.C. Attorney General's Office spokeswoman Traci Hughes said today.

Sullivan instructed the United States to conduct "a good-faith search" of files at the Homeland Security and Transportation departments, including the latter's Surface Transportation Board, for additional documents relevant to a D.C.-Sierra Club request to which he had already instructed the federal government to respond.

Sullivan also instructed the federal government to draw up a "detailed log of all documents and information that it seeks to withhold under any claim of privilege (including classification as sensitive security information)." He set Jan. 31 as the deadline by which the federal government must yield the new documents to the city.

The order follows the city's allegation in a Nov. 18 filing that the federal government "unilaterally" and "in defiance of the plain language of the court's order" had decided to disclose only documents involved in making and enforcing a 2003 Transportation Department rule on hazardous materials-transport security.

Sierra Club legal expert Jim Dougherty said the discovery response should have been much broader.

"What we're looking for is anything that they either produced or relied upon when they were making their decision about rerouting," he said.

Until the lawsuit is resolved, the city and railroad company have reached a voluntary agreement under which CSX is rerouting the materials away from at least one of its two lines through the District.

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Group sees some gains in bioterror response, but gaps remain

Joe Fiorill — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0500

After studying federal data, interviewing officials and surveying hospital personnel, the Trust for America's Health said most states possessed no more than half of the benchmark preparedness capabilities that formed the basis for the study.

Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia achieved 5 or fewer of the 10 benchmarks.

"While considerable progress has been achieved in improving America's health-emergency preparedness, the nation is still not adequately prepared for the range of serious threats we face," the organization said in the report.

On the positive side, seven criteria were more often achieved than not. They included sufficient laboratory capabilities for bioterrorism response, displayed by 37 states; enough laboratory scientists to conduct anthrax or plague tests in an outbreak, achieved by 41 states and the District of Columbia; adequate planning for vaccine- and antiviral-distribution priority-setting in a crisis, found present in 34 states and the District of Columbia; and sufficient medical-supply reserves, achieved by 29 states and the district.

Twenty-seven states were deemed to have adequate disease-tracking systems; 35 were called well-prepared for responding to patient surges by distributing some patients to non-health care facilities; and 35 states and the District of Columbia were found to have adequately quick access to expert infection-control consultation in an emergency.

Despite the relative success of these measures, the study found that three of the benchmarks were reached by only a small number of states. Just seven states had been certified to distribute Strategic National Stockpile drugs; 10 were found to have sufficient chemical terrorism-response capabilities, particularly as pertains to human-sample testing; and only two had sufficient plans for inducing health-care personnel to come to work in a crisis.

Places hit by the 2001 airplane attacks or anthrax mailings generally posted better-than-average scores. Virginia scored 8, and New York, New Jersey and Florida each scored 7. Pennsylvania scored a middling 5, however, and Washington, D.C., scored 4.

Joining Virginia with scores of 8, the highest score recorded, were Delaware and South Carolina. Scoring lowest, at 2, were Alabama, Alaska, Iowa and New Hampshire.

The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials today expressed appreciation for the study. The association emphasized preparedness progress made since 2001, saying federal funds will be crucial for continued gains.

"An increase in resources over the past four years has helped state public-health agencies begin to remedy the damage" from previous "decades of neglect," said association President Leah Devlin said in a statement today, "but public-health preparedness - whether for a bioterrorism event, a pandemic or any other public-health emergency - requires a sustained federal commitment, coupled with continued work, funding, testing and oversight at state and local levels."

The study also addressed federal readiness, surveying 20 experts in the field who gave the Bush administration an overall grade of D+ for "public-health and bioterrorism-preparedness performance." The administration performed worst in the area of smallpox vaccination, receiving a grade of D-, and received its highest grade, a C, for its handling of last year's influenza-vaccine shortage.

The Trust for America's Health called for stronger central leadership and clearer accountability in public health, particularly at the Health and Human Services Department and its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It said the government should also improve basic response capabilities, boost funding and work more with the public and press to prepare for public-health emergencies.

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Rocky Flats cleanup contract called model for future federal efforts

Joe Fiorill — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Of particular importance to completing the Rocky Flats project on a tight schedule, said the officials and lawmakers, were financial incentives for speed and performance built into the Energy Department's contract with Kaiser-Hill Co.

"This contract was clearly the flagship in being innovative in this approach," Assistant Energy Secretary James Rispoli said at the Senate Energy and Commerce Committee hearing.

Witnesses drew attention to 1995 estimates that the cleanup would take 70 years and cost $35 billion. The United States contracted with Kaiser-Hill in 2000 to clean up Rocky Flats, and the company declared the project finished last month at a cost of $7 billion.

The cleanup involved removing the site's remaining plutonium, as well as nuclear and other waste; decontaminating and demolishing buildings; and decontaminating groundwater and soil.

"Few believed that they would be alive when the site was finally cleaned up," said Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., speaking as a witness at the hearing.

Kaiser-Hill managers and workers responded to incentives for good work and for keeping on schedule, witnesses said. They stressed the importance of worker "buy-in" - employees' belief in the importance of the job, and their acceptance of cleanup employment as temporary - and of local and state governments' willingness to agree to "accelerated" planning approaches forgoing certain notifications for work that was to be conducted at the plant.

"The community viewed Rocky Flats as a greater asset gone than it did as a job provider," said Kaiser-Hill Chief Executive Officer Nancy Tuor.

The site is now being turned into a wildlife refuge, an approach that has drawn environmentalists' ire because it can mean allowing higher contamination levels to remain than if the site were to be used for purposes such as housing or development.

Tuor said high standards were enforced with the future wildlife-refuge workers in mind. "It has literally been turned from an environmental liability to an asset for the community," she said.

"The site has been returned to the way it was before plutonium production at Rocky Flats began," added Allard, citing radiation levels that now reflect only standard background radiation.

Senators were effusive in praising the job done at Rocky Flats, which Allard called "one of the Department of Energy's greatest achievements." Lawmakers and witnesses said the project should serve as a model for other Energy Department nuclear cleanups, such as those at Hanford in Washington state and Savannah River in South Carolina.

"I am very pleased to hold it up, because it does set forth something that can be done," said committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M.

"I wish you would get a lot more notoriety in the country, because all we hear about is, 'We can't clean up radiation, therefore we should just give up,'" Domenici said.

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Senators blast TSA over rail security efforts

Joe Fiorill — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The security agency has no clear priorities for protecting the rails and has not completed a risk assessment that would guide spending decisions, senators and a Government Accountability Office representative said at a Commerce Committee hearing. Pressed by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to lay out TSA rail security priorities in terms of geography and infrastructure, agency Director Edmund Hawley instead cited general elements of a preparedness program.

Priorities include "information, communications, training, drilling, preparedness," Hawley told McCain. "It's the flexible resources to be able to--" he said before the furious McCain at last cut him off, saying, "I'm very disappointed that you're not being more forthcoming."

Without clearer priorities, McCain said, Congress cannot effectively oversee federal budgets and appropriations for rail security.

"If we're just going to give you a whole bunch of money and say, 'Spend it however you want,' then it doesn't matter," McCain said, "but I don't think we're going to do that."

Fiscal 2006 Homeland Security Department appropriations include about $150 million for rail security programs. Given an overall TSA budget of nearly $4 billion, "That certainly raises questions about whether that's an appropriate amount," GAO Homeland Security and Justice Director Cathleen Berrick said in response to a question from McCain.

To know for sure how much is needed, though, the security agency would have to complete its ongoing risk assessment for U.S. rails, Berrick said. "The first step is the risk assessment to determine how much we need and where do we actually spend the money," she said.

The auditing office released a report last month calling for more federal leadership on rail security.

The large extent to which responsibility for rail security is left to the industry raises concerns on whether the government has enough information and authority to ensure that trains are protected against terrorism, senators said.

Hawley said his agency constantly monitors the companies' security programs and that placing much of the responsibility with the companies is efficient because the firms are "highly motivated" by the probable financial consequences of a major security incident.

Citing the possibility that mass casualties and death could quickly result from a terrorist attack on a rail tanker carrying chlorine or another toxic cargo, local officials have been seeking to restrict shipments of such materials through cities such as Baltimore and Washington.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said an accident that left nine people dead in January in Graniteville, S.C., shows the deadly potential of chlorine, an early chemical weapon.

"What we saw in Graniteville, S.C. - HAZMAT release - now, that has the same effect as a weapon of mass destruction," Lautenberg said.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., added that intelligence indicates rail protection should be a higher priority.

"We know," Boxer said, "because we've had evidence that's shown that the trains are definitely on the al-Qaeda list."

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Local emergency teams resist plain-language radio rules

Joe Fiorill — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 00:00:00 -0400

As of Oct. 1, prospective recipients of federal terrorism grants must show "good-faith efforts" to implement the National Incident Management System, Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman Don Jacks said Thursday. Full compliance with the system is required after a year.

With the "good-faith" deadline approaching, the federal NIMS Integration Center has issued two cautionary bulletins in the past 10 days to response agencies around the country.

"The point is that all responders at all levels use the same organizational structures, terminology, procedures and systems all the time," the center said Aug. 17 in the first of the two bulletins. "The idea is to achieve interoperability among jurisdictions and disciplines."

Created under a 2003 presidential directive on incident response, the new system is often described as the "playbook" for the related National Response Plan. Together, the two documents govern cooperation among different agencies and levels of government in a terrorist attack or other crisis.

Assigning responsibilities to different agencies and laying out common national practices for emergency operations, they replace a hodgepodge of previous plans that officials feared could make it more difficult for agencies to work together across jurisdictions and governmental levels.

In the second of the two recent bulletins, dated Aug. 23, the center addressed the NIMS requirement that emergency responders use "plain language" - rather than traditional "10-codes," such as "10-4" for "message received" - when communicating by radio.

"They've got to get in the habit of saying, 'We have a bank robbery at First and Main,' instead of, 'We've got a 10-40 at First and Main,'" Jacks said.

In the bulletin, the center warned, "Continued resistance to complying with NIMS requirements and [using] plain language will result in the loss of federal preparedness funding." The fiscal 2006 Homeland Security Department budget includes more than $3 billion in assistance to state and local emergency responders.

Police departments are concerned that officers' security could be compromised by speaking in language that suspects can readily understand, said Gene Voegtlin, legislative counsel for the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

"Of all the issues moving forward," Voegtlin said today, "I think this is the one that's going to cause the most consternation."

The integration center acknowledged it "understand[s] that the use of 10-codes is not going to be completely eliminated by October 2006" and that its goal for now is "that good-faith efforts are under way at all levels nationwide to move to plain English for all emergency operations."

Nevertheless, federal officials are making it clear that the eventual goal is the complete elimination of the codes.

"Some reporter asked me just the other day, 'Will the 10-codes just be relegated to movies and Barney Fife?'" Jacks said. "Well, yes."

The police departments say they understand the need to use plain language in interagency operations, but that police should not have to stop using 10-codes in their everyday work.

Washington should consult further with state and local agencies in order to agree on what is required of police, Voegtlin said.

"I think there is confusion about the 10-code issue," Voegtlin said. "If two people look at the same statement, they could see it two different ways."

The codes are addressed in an appendix to the main NIMS document, in a section on how to set up the communications unit of an incident command.

"Codes should not be used for radio communication," the document reads. "A clear spoken message - based on common terminology that avoids misunderstanding in complex and noisy situations - reduces the chances for error."

Although the placement of the requirement appears to support the police departments' contention that common language is required only in interagency crisis operations, the NIMS Integration Center maintains that state and local agencies must implement NIMS requirements in everyday operations in order to be capable of doing so in a catastrophe.

"The first-responder community understands that they have to practice like they play," FEMA spokesman Jacks said, "and, you know, there will be some teaching old dogs new tricks here."

In the first of the two bulletins, which did not specifically address the codes, the integration center warned, "The requirement to adopt and implement NIMS and ICS [the Incident Command System, an aspect of the NIMS approach to managing incidents] means NIMS and ICS for incident management every day." The center said it was responding to "a number of questions recently" about whether the management system could be reserved for use "during major incidents involving federal participation."

"Those who do not train for, exercise and use NIMS and ICS in their day-to-day operations will not be able to integrate their activities into a system they do not know, haven't practiced and don't use," the center said.

Voegtlin said police officers' security in routine situations, though, depends upon using codes. Plain-language radio communications can push suspects within earshot of police radios - those being apprehended by or already in the custody of an officer - to dangerous measures they might not take if they did not understand the radio communication, he said.

"The 10-codes actually serve a purpose. They serve a security purpose," he said.

As for the federal position that agencies must "practice like they play," Voegtlin said officers are already accustomed to using plain language and instructed to do so in interagency operations.

"It's not like they talk in 10-codes when they go home," he said. "They have the ability to switch languages or to switch speaking styles."

Voegtlin expressed confidence that a solution would be reached and that no antiterrorism grants would be denied over the use of the codes.

"I think this confusion is just being identified at the moment," he said. "It's just a matter of getting things clarified."

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U.S. ports begin catastrophic terrorist attack drills

Joe Fiorill — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The federal Port Security Training Exercises Program (PortSTEP) brings together government and private-sector officials responsible for maritime transportation and commerce, emergency response and land transit in 40 port districts around the United States. Officials participate in fictitious incident scenarios intended to reflect the terrorist threat environment.

"Everyone was really, really engaged because the scenarios were very realistic" in the San Francisco Bay exercises, Universal Systems and Technology Inc. Vice President for Homeland Security David Holmes said Wednesday.

The company, known as Unitech, was the lead contractor for last week's exercises and will fill that role for most of the exercises scheduled around the country through September 2007. The Coast Guard and Transportation Security Administration are administering the program.

Holmes would not specifically say whether weapons of mass destruction figured in the San Francisco Bay scenarios.

"You certainly have to know what the realities are today, what the challenges are today" in order to design realistic exercises, Holmes said. "What are the events that could shut down, for example, transportation or the shipping industry on the West Coast?"

The 40 sets of exercises are being conducted in seaports and inland ports of various sizes and terrorist threat profiles, ranging from Chicago to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Holmes said exercises would be tailored to the ports' varying situations, potentially involving threats to cruise ships in San Juan or to sea commerce in Long Beach, Calif.

"There are different challenges based upon levels of readiness, levels of resource," he said. "A lot of it is threat-risk-based. As a contractor, we are certainly aware of the Department of Homeland Security's - particularly this secretary's - focus on ensuring that we are spending the resources correctly based upon threat-risk."

The overall goal of the program is to harmonize and improve security efforts among different agencies, companies, transportation modes and regions potentially affected by threats to ports. Last week's participants included city and state emergency management agencies, fire departments, port administrators and land transportation entities, Holmes said.

Federal and contractor officials refused to divulge specific exercise scenarios, but the Transportation Security Administration said last week that "scenarios range from how officials react to discovering a suspect cargo container to an explosion at a seaport rail yard."

"Through these exercises and other programs," Coast Guard port security head Capt. Frank Sturm said last week, "we will be continually testing and evaluating how ready we are to deal with an actual threat to our ports."

For now, the exercises are of the "advanced tabletop" variety, which involves top officials' reacting to specific attack scenarios but not actually deploying emergency personnel and resources in response to the fictitious incident. The Baltimore exercise is set to kick off Wednesday, and the first full-scale, nontabletop exercises will begin about a year from now, Holmes said.

In the two-day San Francisco Bay event, hosted by the California Maritime Academy, such techniques as live fictitious news broadcasts were used to impart realism to the proceedings. Different participants were progressively given different pieces of information.

Holmes said the exercises involved more than 100 participants and yielded valuable insights.

"The notion of testing any plan is to look for ways to improve it," he said. "We learned certain things that we needed to refine."

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Marine Corps prepares to take on WMD-armed adversaries

Joe Fiorill — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Faced with the possibility that neighbors of WMD-equipped U.S. adversaries may be deterred from allowing U.S. land bases on their territory, the Defense Department should draw on the Marines' expertise in attacking directly from the sea, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments Strategic Studies Director Michael Vickers said.

"If we think we have political access problems now, wait till our adversary can shoot nukes at us and neighbors," the former top Pentagon adviser said at the American Enterprise Institute conference.

Vickers said the sea-initiated Marine attacks should be used for "projecting major combat power" against WMD-armed enemies, adding, "and we're running out of non-WMD-equipped adversaries."

Vickers' colleague at the nongovernmental research institute, sea defense analyst Robert Work, said the corps could be used to address nuclear-armed enemies in particular.

"Counterproliferation operations and power-projection operations against a regional nuclear power are increasingly likely" for the Marines, Work said.

In the day's keynote speech, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Michael Hagee said the corps is working toward "erasing the border between sea and land" - beginning to maneuver advancing sea-based troops even before they reach land - in part to adapt to the particular circumstances of fighting WMD-armed enemies.

Hagee said "irregular" combat operations, such as those engaging nonstate fighters, may continue as the norm for some time and that smart and adaptable Marines, not new technology, would be the key to success.

Technology is "not going to solve the chaos. It's not going to solve the uncertainty. It's not going to solve the fog and friction," the commandant said.

Marine Corps Deputy Commandant for Combat Development Lt. Gen. Jim Mattis said the corps is shifting its training and planning emphasis away from "conventional" battle and toward "irregular" situations.

"U.S. dominance of classical war" has "pushed [the] enemy to unconventional war," Mattis said.

"I believe this war may well last for generations at different levels of intensity," he said.

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D.C. train ban remains on hold while other cities efforts advance

Joe Fiorill — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Amid heightened concerns of terrorist threats to rail systems following the recent London attacks, momentum appears to be building in Baltimore and Chicago for legislation to address the possibility of attacks on rail tankers that ban advocates call rolling chemical weapons.

"I'm actually moving forward even harder now," Baltimore City Council member Kenneth Harris said yesterday.

After introducing a proposal in March, Harris has secured a hearing date on the matter, he said: Baltimore's council will consider the ban proposal Sept. 14.

Like the Washington law, Harris' bill and a measure introduced in June in Chicago would create security zones through which shipments of certain chemicals may pass only in rare circumstances.

Several of the chemicals in question, including chlorine, have been historically used as chemical weapons. Former top presidential antiterrorism adviser Richard Falkenrath has said the danger posed by rail tanker is "rivaled only by" nuclear and biological threats and 9/11-style strikes on large buildings. A Naval Research Laboratory study indicates thousands of people could be killed in minutes by the toxins that a tanker attack could release.

The fate of Washington's measure rests with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. That court first rebuffed a bid by rail operator CSX for an injunction to stop enforcement of the ban, then saw its decision reversed by an appeals court and now finds itself with the case again.

Council member Kathy Patterson, who sponsored the bill, said Wednesday that a trial is likely and could take place before the end of the year. In the meantime, the city and CSX have agreed that Washington will not enforce the ban and the company will not transport the chemicals over at least one of its two lines through the city.

Last month, the U.S. Homeland Security Department announced a contract with two security companies for deployment of a new system of cameras, WMD sensors and radio-frequency train identification in Washington - prompting some observers to conclude that the federal government, which supports CSX in its case against the city, expects the shipments to resume.

"That announcement was a clear indication from Homeland Security that they plan to let CSX resume routing through the middle of the capital as soon as the court case is over," Greenpeace Toxics Campaign Legislative Director Rick Hind said yesterday.

Baltimore's Harris said he does not see Washington's legal battle with the rail company as cause for caution on his bill, for which he claims support from 13 of the council's 15 members.

"It hasn't persuaded me to slow down at all," he said.

In the historical railway hub of Chicago, Alderman Ed Smith introduced a bill in June that would affect not one railroad company, as in Washington, but six companies. Smith's office said today that a City Council committee is now considering the bill.

"My concern is that they are accessible to terrorists and that an attack on one of them could be devastating in the same way as New York on Sept. 11," Smith said when he introduced the bill in June.

CSX, which operates in both Baltimore and Chicago, said it is opposed on principle to bans in those cities but has not yet turned its attention to the possibilities for legal action. The company says it is required by law to transport useful but hazardous chemicals and that city bans, which it views as unconstitutional, would force it to undertake rerouting measures of potentially devastating cost.

"We view [the potential rail bans] as all being centered around the same fundamental issue," CSX spokesman Gary Sease said yesterday.

Baltimore and Chicago, he said, "are obviously busy rail points for us, but, at this point, we have not studied the rerouting options that would be required to the degree that we have done so for the District [of Columbia]."

"We have our hands full, of course, with the District and the continuing court case there," Sease said.

Other cities could benefit from Washington's experience as they move forward with rail ban efforts, according to Greenpeace's Hind.

"You learn a lot from the D.C. case," Hind said.

In particular, Hind cited testimony in the case that he said demonstrates that a very small percentage of rail traffic - potentially as little as 5 percent - would be affected by a ban on shipments of the most toxic chemicals. Such numbers, he said, weaken railroads' case that the city measures could bring them serious financial harm.

"Politicians who don't want to be insensitive to the needs of business in their community can say, 'Wait a minute. This isn't even 10 percent. This isn't even 5 percent of your business,'" Hind said.

Given such numbers, he said, objections by rail companies are less a reflection of legitimate financial concerns than of a "leave-us-alone, don't-regulate-us attitude."

Patterson said Washington's special status as a federal district - considered, depending on the context, both a city and state - could give it an advantage in seeking a ban that will not be available to other cities.

"I think they will have a more difficult time than the District of Columbia has in enacting and enforcing a law," Patterson said today.

"We are acting in our capacity as a state, which gives us greater leverage in a judicial setting than a city would have," she said. "Secondly, there isn't any community with the exception of Manhattan with a higher risk rating than Washington, D.C."

"That said," Patterson added, "every community should be doing a risk assessment and acting accordingly."

While awaiting the fate of the ban law, Washington council members have begun pursuing other avenues to address the threat.

Patterson and colleague Phil Mendelson introduced a bill in April that would make CSX liable for costs incurred in the District owing to railroad chemical releases or threats against shipments. The bill would also require new inspection and certification processes for hazardous shipments about to pass through the city.

Meanwhile, activists are increasingly focused on action at the federal level. Lawmakers such as Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) have introduced bills to reroute shipments or require new notification procedures, so far without concrete successes.

In a Washington Post commentary this month, Biden expressed grave concern about U.S. rail security.

"The current state of our rail security system is worse than an accident waiting to happen," he wrote. "It is an open invitation to terrorists."

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HHS, DHS officials defend cooperative efforts

Joe Fiorill — Tue, 12 Jul 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The two agencies have distinct responsibilities but also must work together under last year's Project Bioshield law, designed to increase the U.S. supply of countermeasures to biological, chemical and radiological agents, mainly by guaranteeing drug makers a government market for the products.

The state of communication between the agencies on the program is "an absolute disgrace," ranking Democrat Bill Pascrell (N.J.) said this morning at a hearing of the House of Representatives Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Science and Technology.

Officials, however, said the relationship was working well.

"I actually think, in this case, we may be dealing with an exemplary process," said John Vitko, biological countermeasures director for the Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate, when asked by subcommittee Chairman Pete King (R-N.Y.) about the cooperation.

Vitko laid out the steps involved in identifying and eventually procuring countermeasures, which he said entail intense cooperation between the two departments. The process begins with threat assessments of agents by Homeland Security and, if warranted, results in development and acquisition efforts by Health and Human Services.

"Once a material threat determination has been issued" by Homeland Security, he said, "the HHS then assesses the potential public health consequences of the identified agent, determines the need for countermeasures, evaluates the availability of current countermeasures and the possibility of development of new countermeasures" and, if warranted, initiates acquisition processes.

"Throughout this process, DHS works very closely with HHS," Vitko said.

To date, Homeland Security has issued threat-level determinations for anthrax, smallpox, botulinum toxin and radiological and nuclear devices. Vitko said assessments of plague, tularemia, radiological devices and nerve agents would be completed by year's end. At the other end of the process, Health and Human Services has so far awarded contracts for two anthrax vaccines and for pediatric potassium iodide.

"There is an enormous level of cooperation among us," said Stewart Simonson, Health and Human Services' assistant secretary for public health and emergency preparedness. "It's been getting better, and I think it's pretty good right now, frankly."

Simonson added that cooperation would intensify over time, as the priorities for countermeasure work become less clear.

"In many ways, anthrax and smallpox represent the low-hanging fruit for medical countermeasure research, development and acquisition," he said. "There was consensus that these were our highest priorities, and we had countermeasures available or relatively far along in the development pipeline to permit acquisition."

Now, "given an almost endless list of potential threats with finite resources to address them," he said, "prioritization is essential to focus our efforts. We rely heavily on our interagency partner, the Department of Homeland Security, to provide us with a prioritized list of threats along with material threat assessments."

The top Democrat on the full Homeland Security Committee, Bennie Thompson (Miss.), questioned the pace of the countermeasure program, asking why Homeland Security had over the past year issued "only" four material threat determinations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Thompson said, maintains a list of more than 60 agents that Homeland Security must review.

Although the officials did not respond directly to Thompson's presentation of those numbers, Simonson said drug development, approval and production can go only so fast.

"The process of defining required specifications for a countermeasure often reveals few if any candidates in the pipeline," he said. "Basic research and early development efforts, even when robustly funded, often take years before a concept is mature enough for advanced development. The development of medical products … is a complex, lengthy and expensive process."

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GAO: Pentagon largely complying with threat reduction reporting requirements

Joe Fiorill — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The Pentagon's fiscal 2006 report on the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, submitted to Congress in February, complied with all legislative requirements regarding the five-year plan for the program and with three of four requirements regarding funding accountability, the government auditors said.

"The five-year plan addressed the legislative requirements by setting forth funding information for the term of the plan and stating the purpose of those funds," and data the Defense Department provided were confirmed as accurate, GAO International Affairs and Trade Director Joseph Christoff wrote in a letter accompanying the analysis, which was provided in May to members of Congress.

"The accountability section addressed three of the four legislative requirements," Christoff continued. "It (1) discussed the status of contracts and services and the methods used to ensure that CTR aid is used for the purposes intended, (2) determined whether the assistance provided has been used effectively and efficiently and (3) described the audits and examinations planned for the next year."

The Pentagon did not, however, "provide a description of the condition and location of CTR-furnished equipment," Christoff wrote, adding that that information has instead been made available upon request in a new Defense Threat Reduction Agency database.

"When we asked to review the database, DTRA provided it to us in a timely manner," he wrote. The new database, he added, "draws information from a wider variety of sources" and "because of its voluminous nature" was not included by the Defense Department in the actual Cooperative Threat Reduction report.

Christoff told members of Congress in related testimony last week that, since beginning reforms of Cooperative Threat Reduction management in 2003 following several project failures, the Pentagon "has improved its management and internal controls over the CTR program" but "cannot fully mitigate the risks involved in cooperating with CTR recipient governments."

"Reaching agreement on project issues and obtaining necessary access can involve lengthy negotiations" with recipient countries, he said. "For example, after more than 10 years of discussion, Russia and DOD have yet to negotiate an agreement that would allow U.S. personnel access to monitor the loading of the CTR-funded fissile material storage facility at Mayak. Such an agreement would assure DOD that the facility is being used as intended."

Christoff added in the testimony that the department "lacks internal controls that would provide a system for monitoring projects upon their completion and applying lessons learned to future projects. … By conducting final reviews of completed CTR projects and addressing the findings of such reviews, DOD can further improve its current and future management of the program."

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Detectors at sea, new monitor technology eyed in bid to foil nuclear smuggling

Joe Fiorill — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0400

A recent spate of congressional hearings and expert reports has focused new attention on the obstacles to detecting highly enriched uranium, which emits relatively weak radiation and can be effectively shielded with heavy materials such as lead. Critics say portal monitors deployed in recent years at many U.S. ports are not capable of doing their job.

"An abundance of recent evidence suggests that the technology used may not actually meet the needs at hand," Representative Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., said at the joint hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee subcommittees on WMD defense and emergency preparedness.

Difficulties in detecting highly enriched uranium could be mitigated, acting Domestic Nuclear Detection Office head Vayl Oxford said, by resolving a related problem on which critics have also seized: the frequent inability of current detectors to discriminate among radiation sources.

"Recent reports have been published in the media questioning the overall capability of currently deployed detection equipment," Oxford said in a statement delivered to the subcommittees. "Contrary to public perception that detection equipment is not sensitive enough, the actual primary limitation of today's systems is one of discrimination."

"Specifically," he said, "Today's equipment lacks a refined capability to rapidly determine the type of radioactive materials it detects. Operationally, this leads to higher nuisance alarm rates - the number of alarms that must be resolved by further inspection."

Monitor operators, Oxford said, are turning down the sensitivity settings on their equipment, reducing the number of false alarms but also the probability of detecting a nuclear or radiological weapon. Use of new "spectroscopic" technology that is better able to discriminate among various radiation-emitting materials, he said, could allow monitors to operate at higher sensitivities.

To that end, Oxford's office is spearheading an Advanced Spectroscopic Portal program, which has awarded contracts for monitor development to 10 firms. The program plans "late this summer," he said, to test the firms' prototypes against each other at the new Radiological and Nuclear Countermeasures Test and Evaluation Complex, part of the Nevada Test Site. A "limited number of vendors" will then be chosen to begin production, Oxford said.

National Nuclear Security Administration material protection specialist David Huizenga said that "if these tests are successful," the Energy Department's Second Line of Defense program hopes to obtain some of the new portal monitors for use "in secondary inspection locations" at ports abroad. The new portal monitors would be about eight times more expensive than present detectors.

"The potential improvement in sensitivity may or may not be significant," Huizenga said at the hearing. "Until these monitors are completed and tested, it is impossible to know for sure."

Both Huizenga and Oxford also highlighted the potential for using radiography in conjunction with portal detectors to foil attempts at smuggling shielded nuclear material. By adding radiographic detection of very dense objects, officials hope that when shielding prevents them from detecting radiation, they can identify the shielding itself because of its density.

Homeland Security Associates founder Randall Larsen said in an interview Wednesday that such technology driven approaches fundamentally miss the point. He said that given the impossibility of monitoring tens of thousands of miles of U.S. borders, the highest priority should be on securing or detecting materials before they reach the country.

"I think we're still wasting money putting it in seaports," Larsen said. "We're dealing with a thinking enemy. Some people want to put three locks on the front door and leave the back door open."

Checks at Sea Could Detect Low-Rate Radiation

Several witnesses at the hearing endorsed the idea of placing monitors in cargo containers when they begin traveling to the United States. They said the approach could lead to better detection of materials - including highly enriched uranium - that emit radiation at a low rate and, as a result, take time to detect.

The chairman of a recent Defense Science Board task force on detection, Richard Wagner, called such monitoring "a crucially important theme to pursue."

"More attention should be devoted to developing methods of detection at sea," Wagner said at the hearing.

The proposal is one of "several interesting R&D programs exploring new techniques to locate radiological and fissile materials," American Association for the Advancement of Science security technology specialist Benn Tannenbaum testified.

"These detectors take advantage of the 10-day or longer transit time to locate HEU," Tannenbaum said. "This has the additional feature of allowing the interception of dangerous materials before they enter a U.S. port."

Larsen on Wednesday questioned the appropriateness of such plans, citing the large volume of sea commerce bound for the United States - "You know how many ships there are that come in, that cross those 95,000 miles of shoreline?" - and what he called the low likelihood that a nuclear or radiological attacker would choose to attack via shipping container.

"I'd bring it in a cigar boat," he said, adding that only "a very cooperative terrorist" would transport a weapon through a monitored port.

Larsen said spending would be better directed toward securing materials where they lie and that, if more effective detectors are developed, they should first be deployed abroad in hopes of intercepting smuggled materials before they reach the United States.

GAO Points to Poor Coordination

In a summary of recent Government Accountability Office reports on nuclear detection, office Natural Resources and Environment Director Gene Aloise told the subcommittees that a long-standing "lack of effective planning and coordination among" the Homeland Security, Defense, State and Energy departments in developing and deploying detectors "has improved" since the recent issuance of a government-wide plan on the subject.

Still, coordination problems remain. Among a host of examples, Aloise said the State Department has installed "less sophisticated" monitors in foreign countries than have the Energy and Defense departments; that Homeland Security was not sharing the data its monitors generated with most Energy Department laboratories; and that various federal agencies have tested portal monitors without sharing their results with each other.

Aloise added that improper use of monitors both in the United States and elsewhere has hindered effectiveness. Operators of Homeland Security portals in the United States, he said, have allowed vehicles to pass through the monitors at high speeds, turned down detection sensitivity and failed to deploy enough handheld monitors.

Turning to efforts abroad, he said half the portal monitors the United States gave one former Soviet country "were never installed or were not operational," that Bulgaria deployed a U.S.-provided portal "on an unused road that was not expected to be completed for 1 1/2 years" and that State Department radiation detection vans are ineffective in cold weather.

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Critics slam politicians for ineffective antiterror policies

Joe Fiorill — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Current U.S. antiterrorism policy keeps the populace in fear to create support for military action abroad but avoids taking obvious steps that could reduce terrorists' motivation for attacking the United States and bolster WMD response capabilities within the country, said John Tirman, executive director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for International Studies. He spoke during a panel discussion as part of a Campaign for America's Future conference here.

"Is there a significant threat of a terrorist attack against America? We don't know the answer to that question, but a large number of Americans do believe there is such a threat," Tirman said. Liberals should address that threat, he said, but the Democrats offer only "complaints about civil liberties and spending priorities" even though "there are much more fundamental issues at stake that are not being addressed."

While "the ideology of homeland security" at home creates "fear and anxiety" that boost support for war abroad, liberals are missing a chance to "challenge Bush" on his "hypocrisies," Tirman said. In particular, he cited the potential for changes in energy and health policy that he said would both increase domestic security and bring everyday benefits to citizens.

"We have, in terms of national security, the exactly wrong energy system," Tirman said. Reducing dependence on oil and increasing the focus on renewable energy sources and on conservation, he said, could reduce both the risk of attacks on U.S. energy facilities and Washington's motivation to become entangled in the Middle East, which Tirman said increases the threat of anti-U.S. terrorism.

Improving U.S. public health would also make the country more secure, Tirman said. He said health insurance coverage should be expanded and access to doctors and hospitals should be increased to make early detection of emerging diseases more likely. Currently, he said, many in the United States decline to seek treatment when ill because of lacking insurance coverage or concerns about missing work.

"This is not a system optimally designed for early warning of a biological weapons attack," Tirman said.

Columbia University Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs agreed with Tirman that the U.S. populace is kept in fear and argued that if it was better informed it would be less inclined to support military action as the primary response to the terrorist threat.

"They have been hoodwinked into what is the most dangerous possible policy for them and their families," Sachs said.

Former top CIA analyst Ray McGovern added that more wars could be ahead based on exaggerated fears of terrorism and WMD threats - and outright "lies" in the case of Iraq, he said. "When things go sour for the crazies, they are more likely to launch new adventures than they are to change course. ... Iran could be next," McGovern said.

Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel said the Bush administration has brought the country into "an endless battle against terrorism" with important support from "the Democratic establishment."

"We need a realignment of the military budget ... to scrap Cold War programs" and instead fund development, human rights and programs to secure weapons of mass destruction, vanden Heuvel said.

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Homeland Security chief seeks better liability protection for companies

Joe Fiorill — Mon, 02 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The Support Antiterrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies (SAFETY) Act was intended to spur development by limiting companies' liability against lawsuits related to antiterrorism products' use. However, the program has been dogged by complaints that the application process is too onerous and the Homeland Security Department is too slow to approve eligible products for the act's protections.

In a speech in Washington, Chertoff told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that the SAFETY Act is "a resource and an opportunity for us that we have not fully succeeded in exploiting, and I want to tell you here today we are very committed to fully exploiting that."

"If we are to really embrace the kind of technological solutions and services solutions which are out there in the marketplace, we need to be able to afford actors a real opportunity to present those without the fear of undue litigation and unduly high transaction costs that come out of the possibility of lawsuits," Chertoff said.

"I know that there have been issues with the application process. We have addressed some of those," the secretary said. "We're looking more comprehensively at what we can do to make the SAFETY Act program efficient and hospitable, to do the job that Congress intended it to do - which is to create limited liability protection and some safe harbor for those entities that are creating the homeland security solutions of the 21st century - and doing it in a way that's careful but also efficient and embraces the new technology as opposed to pushing it away by setting unduly high barriers."

Among the 14 products listed on a Homeland Security Web site as being fully certified under the SAFETY Act are a Science Applications International Corp. tool to screen vehicles for weapons of mass destruction and other weapons or threats, and a Northrop Grumman biological agent-detection device intended for use in post offices.

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New terrorism response plan takes effect

Joe Fiorill — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0400

The new plan and the closely related National Incident Management System, which officials describe as the playbook for implementing the response plan, replace a patchwork of existing documents. They govern federal assistance to state and city emergency agencies and formally assign responsibilities in times of disaster to different federal agencies.

"The NRP provides the seamless integration of crisis and consequence management as mandated by" a 2003 presidential directive on domestic incident response, National Incident Management System Integration Center acting director Gil Jamieson told a House of Representatives subcommittee yesterday afternoon.

The national plan replaces such prior plans as the Federal Response Plan, the U.S. Government Interagency Domestic Terrorism Concept of Operations and the Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan.

Response agencies yesterday wrapped up a two-month transition period during which they could train personnel and bring existing subsidiary plans into line with the new response plan. More than 100,000 people have taken online training courses for the national plan and incident-management system, Jamieson told a Transportation and Infrastructure Committee subcommittee with jurisdiction over emergency management.

With the end of the training and modification period, Homeland Security began the final stage of National Response Plan setup, in which it is expected to assess plan coordination and protocols.

Homeland Security official Corey Gruber briefed the subcommittee on an interim National Preparedness Goal, the result of another post-Sept. 11 directive from President Bush.

The goal is a standard for response capabilities by which agencies at different levels of government can measure their readiness and Washington can prioritize its spending. Among its top priorities are weapons of mass destruction detection and response, sharing of information among agencies, interoperability of communications equipment and hospital surge capacity.

The goal's March 31 release "represents the first major step in transforming the way the nation plans, trains, exercises, allocates resources and develops capabilities to prevent and respond to terrorist attacks, major disasters and other emergencies," said Gruber, policy initiatives and analysis director in the department's Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness.

"The interim goal identifies measurable targets and priorities to guide the nation's planning and provides a systematic, capabilities-based approach for determining how prepared we are, how prepared we need to be and how we should prioritize efforts to close the gap," Gruber said.

Subcommittee Chairman Bill Shuster, R-Pa., and senior Democrat Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., pressed Gruber on whether disaster scenarios that were considered in defining the response-capability goals were too heavily tilted toward natural disasters. International Fire Chiefs Association representative John Buckman, though, leveled the opposite complaint, expressing concern that planning scenarios had focused too heavily on terrorism.

Gruber said the priorities defined in the goal applied to terrorist attacks as well as to natural disasters.

The plan is scheduled to be finalized on Oct. 1.

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D.C. train ban challenge could hinge on 1970 rail safety law

Joe Fiorill — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Presiding over a U.S. District Court hearing on rail operator CSX's request for a preliminary injunction to block implementation of the city law, Judge Emmet Sullivan focused on provisions of the 1970 Federal Rail Safety Act that could be construed to allow legislation like Washington's in cases where the federal government has not addressed the threat in question.

"What drove the city council to this point, I assume, because I'm hearing it again and again, is the perceived inaction of the federal government," said Sullivan, who said he would deliver a decision on the injunction request by April 8.

The judge opened the hearing by citing Jan. 26 congressional testimony in which former top presidential antiterrorism adviser Richard Falkenrath said "toxic-by-inhalation industrial chemicals" are "acutely vulnerable and almost uniquely dangerous."

"The federal government has made no material reduction in the inherent vulnerability of hazardous chemicals targets inside the United States," Falkenrath said at the January hearing. He said the "poorly secured chemicals … in some cases are identical to the chemical weapons used in World War I" and "present a mass casualty terrorist potential rivaled only by improvised nuclear devices, certain acts of bioterrorism and the collapse of large, occupied buildings."

Sullivan returned often Wednesday to Falkenrath's testimony, challenging attorneys for CSX to contradict the analysis by providing evidence of federal protections that could render the city ban invalid. CSX and federal government attorneys described in general terms a confidential security plan developed cooperatively by railroads and the United States, but Sullivan repeatedly proclaimed himself unsatisfied by what he called a "secret" plan that no one in the courtroom appeared to have seen.

"I'm astounded that I'm not getting an answer to what this plan does to address that very dramatic hypothetical situation" of an attack on a hazardous materials tanker in central Washington, Sullivan said. Lawyers for the United States, which is supporting CSX's request to have the ban overturned, said the plan could be made available to Sullivan but not necessarily to lawyers for the city.

The rail cars at issue pass within blocks of the U.S. Capitol, the National Mall and other key federal sites, and a rupture could result in a toxic cloud that a U.S. Naval Research Laboratory scientist has estimated could claim thousands of lives within minutes. Press reports indicated early this month that a confidential Homeland Security Department report mistakenly posted for a brief time on a Hawaii state Web site makes reference to a chlorine tank explosion as a potential terrorist attack scenario.

Attorneys for CSX focused Wednesday on the possibility that the Washington law could trigger a series of similar laws across the country, rendering train shipment of hazardous materials all but impossible. In their initial complaint to the court, they wrote that the Washington measure "invites other local jurisdictions to enact copycat legislation which could, by crazy-quilt coverage, bring to a halt the interstate shipment of critically important materials throughout the United States of America."

Asked Wednesday by Sullivan why CSX "hasn't … just made a policy decision that D.C. is uniquely situated and that no hazardous materials are going to be transported through the city," attorney Irvin Nathan, representing the rail company, replied, "This is not a unique situation. Every major city believes that its citizens are important, and they are."

"It cannot be up to every city council across the country to make its determination as to whether the federal government is doing enough, and especially enough for it," Nathan said. Similar laws "have been proposed" in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Baltimore, he said, "and their eyes are on this court."

D.C. Attorney General's Office lawyer Robert Utiger retorted that future ban attempts in other cities should stand or fall on their own merits. He suggested that rails in some cities might not pass through densely populated areas as they do in Washington, making similar legislation inappropriate in such locales.

Baltimore City Council member Kenneth Harris, who was chief sponsor of a ban bill introduced March 14, said this week in an interview that he was waiting to see what fate awaited the Washington bill in Sullivan's courtroom before deciding how to proceed in his city.

Contacted before Wednesday's District Court hearing, Harris said he expected to call council hearings on his bill for next month. He said at least 12 of the council's 15 members support the ban and that City Solicitor Ralph Tyler had given him no indication the mayor would oppose the measure.

"When you're talking about public safety … I've got to do what's best for the city of Baltimore," Harris said.

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Port discussion moves beyond containers

Joe Fiorill — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0500

The United States has done a good job of addressing the shipping-container threat across the supply chain, but other potentially devastating scenarios - the sinking of a cruise vessel at a strategic location to paralyze river commerce, for example - have gone comparatively unnoticed, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Christopher Cox, R-Calif., told reporters by telephone after a hearing of the panel in Vicksburg, Miss.

"Everybody's talking about security for containers," Inland Rivers, Ports and Terminals Association Executive Director Deirdre McGowan said when interviewed separately by telephone after testifying at the hearing. "Of course, I was audacious enough to say that the Cole was not attacked by a container."

The U.S.S. Cole was attacked by an explosive-laden terrorist craft in October 2000 the port of Aden, Yemen.

McGowan said inland ports do not get the attention that ocean ports receive even though the former can be more vulnerable, since they tend to be longer. "They just don't have the visibility that the ocean ports do," she said.

About 4 percent of federal port security grant money goes for inland ports, McGowan said. She called for a renewed commitment to inland ports, including for use as test grounds for new technologies and new approaches to port security.

Cox and McGowan both stressed the importance of basing port security funding on risk. "All of our terrorism preparedness grants should be risk-based," Cox said.

Although McGowan acknowledged that high-profile threats such as radiological weapons are not as applicable to inland ports as ocean ports, she called for a greater focus on conventional weapons that could have a serious economic effect on river commerce.

She offered the example of the port of Pittsburgh - potentially vulnerable to a container carrying radiation, she said, "but how likely is that?"

"Is this really where we should put our resources?" she asked.

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National security exercises test lawmakers

Joe Fiorill — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Members of the House Homeland Security Committee went to Wye River, Md., Monday and Tuesday to participate in the two separate tabletop exercises, which were chosen to represent what committee Chairman Christopher Cox, R-Calif., called Wednesday, the two "most serious" threats to national security.

Unlike a chemical or radiological strike, Cox told reporters in a telephone press conference, a nuclear or biological attack could be a "civilization-buster" bringing about drastic, long-term changes in the very nature of the country attacked. He said the thorny problems raised by the Wye River exercises confirmed the panelists' belief that preventing such attacks should be their top priority.

"The greatest priority now is to prevent a nuclear or biological attack from ever happening," Cox said. "A nuclear or biological event is the clearest example of why homeland security must continue to push our borders out."

The nuclear scenario involved a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb detonated at Grand Central Station after having been trucked there in a lead-sealed container. Cox said several "radical al-Qaeda terrorist groups" claimed responsibility in the exercise, and initial casualty reports indicated 500,000 dead with a dramatic rise still expected.

In playing out the nuclear scenario on the first day of their retreat, the House members focused on emergency response, health care, financial markets, prevention of further such attacks, cooperation with allies and the use of intelligence, according to Cox.

The retreat's second day featured a smallpox and anthrax exercise modeled after the high-profile, U.S.-European exercise conducted last month, known as Atlantic Storm.

The exercise involved a smallpox attack, for which al Qaeda claimed responsibility, in the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Turkey. The latter invoked the North Atlantic Treaty's Article 5, in which NATO members pledge to respond to any attack on one member as if it were an attack against them all. Cox said a subsequent anthrax attack also figured in the exercise.

During the bioterrorism exercise, legislators discussed the roles of international organizations, allocation of limited medical resources, public information and general infectious disease containment, Cox said.

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