i have an opening statement that i've snipped for the record and i will if you know i must consent just as we have that read in the record and i make a couple of quick comments and mostly want to hear from the panel  very important issue that we're talking about this morning on chemical biological radiological and nuclear preventing those attacks on the united states it's a very complicated issue mainly because so many different people are working on it and trying to make sure we keep that coordinated have a comprehensive strategy that maximizes our resources is a challenge and one that we will always have to work on and something that's very important for this committee and more than anything we on this committee want to make sure that this continues to be a priority with in i know there are a lot of competing interests a lot of competing challenges certainly from afghanistan and pakistan iraq a number of different other issues that it's easy for this to sort of slip a little bit just because it is not happening immediately not happening right now it's a big threat that we want to make sure it never happens and to do that i think we need to constantly work as much as possible to make sure that this stays a high priority for the department of defense and for our entire government and that's the main purpose of our hearing is to get the update this morning where we're at from our witnesses who i will introduce in a moment but first i want a lot of turnover the ranking member really for any opening comments he might add thank you very much mr chairman i appreciate you having this timely hearing i thank the witnesses who are going to testify before sunday that i have a statement that i would also like to have entered into the record but we know that you know ensuring that that d o d can provide a much needed capability really is the reason that we're here today and to hear testimony from g a o and d o d on the military's consequent management capability i would like to ask that as we delve  into this critical and important topic that i'd like to hear comments on the national strategy of the national military strategy to combat weapons of mass destruction which i'm sure we'll hear hear more about and as we noted in this year's defense bill there seems to be a divergence in the application of the concepts contained in their strategy document so i'd like to like to hear your thoughts on what might be lacking what might be effective in our overall plan and organizing to deal with this threat and i look forward to hearing your walking the honorable paul stockton who is the assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and america's security affairs united states department of defense we are joined again also by general victor jean renoir united states air force commander u s north north com a north american aerospace defense command they don't give out short titles pentagon anybody i don't think so welcome mr ayman we'll start with you chairman smith ranking member miller and thank you for inviting me here today and the opportunity to dress you the topic of the hearing is consequence management of chemical biological or radiological nuclear high consequence or high yield explosive biotechnology our top priority at the department is to secure the american people from a range of terrorist threats preventing c v r any taxes at the core of the h s as mission and the reason the department was in fact created so too is ensuring we are prepared to respond for any attack that may occur despite the nation's best efforts consequence management is a critical element in our nation's efforts to ensure that we are resilient in the face of an attack we can be a more resilient nation the more robust we are the more agile we are responding to an attack and the more rapidly we can recover but i want to stress that alongside any discussion for our ability to respond to and recover from an attack biological or nuclear threats because they are particularly of high consequence our best c b r any defense is to put in place national and in some cases international systems consisting of robust prevention protection response and recovery capabilities this is not simply a d h s s responsibility it is a national interest require a comprehensive integrated and layered approach which combines the complete a privilege and resources of many entities across not only the federal government but across levels of society i have detailed these layers in my written statement as secretary napolitano said one of our principal priorities within departments all hazards mission is to ensure that the nation can respond and recover from any incident including terrorist attacks homeland security act of two thousand and two task the a t f with coordinating the federal government's civilian efforts to identify and develop countermeasures to c v r any and other emerging terrorist threats a number of national security and homeland security presidential directives including particularly h s p t five the management of domestic incidents further define the department's roles and responsibilities for consequence management these are there already as are also details in my written statement when we consider nuclear test threats our emphasis must be primarily on preventing an attack because the consequences would be catastrophic as such the nation's first line of defense against a nuclear attack is to ensure the control of nuclear materials and prevent the proliferation of nuclear technologies radiological  weapons cannot be controlled at its source the next layer is to detect an intraday their movement that's where d h s s plays a critical role should these defenses fail however d h s s and its partners must be ready to respond like natural disasters a terrorist nuclear attack would be handled by the primary response arm of the department of homeland security and that's the federal emergency management agency or fema bhima rapidly deploys to a city state and local officials and disaster stricken areas unlike radiological nuclear threats however we face a much different set of challenges with respect to bio biological attacks the emphasis must be on consequence management and ensuring resiliency because prevention is more difficult and there are ways we can save lives after an attack to prevent it from becoming catastrophic the biggest building blocks of the nation's fire defense strategy are to detect to treat to protect people from the attack and to partner with the national center for medical intelligence and finally to a strengthen the public health community at the state and local levels let me conclude by saying that the challenges responding to current high consequence terrorist attacks are real are our top priority will always be to mitigate the risk in the best possible way prevention and consequence management are central elements to r defense and approach that requires continued glad gratian with our federal state and local and international partners we look forward to continuing to strengthen these partnerships in the us to improve our nation's resilience let me also thank the subcommittee for inviting me here today for its support as v h s continues to carry out this important issue thank you i look forward your question thank you very much mr stockton chairman smith ranking member miller distinguished members of the committee thanks for the opportunity to testify today my formal statements been submitted to the record i'd like to make some brief oral remarks now to provide a bit of context for the substance that i put into my prepared statement i want to have  key goal today with the and that is begin a dialogue that i hope will continue for years to come let me say a few words about why i hope that's going to be the case it's my responsibility obviously to faithfully execute the laws but there's much more at stake here that's not nearly enough since well before nine eleven congress has exercised a leading role in the policy realms over which i now have a responsibility as assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and america's security affairs days here and gives me the opportunity to listen to you and learn from your perspectives as i carry out my policy responsibilities in support of the undersecretary for policy the deputy secretary and secretary gates and most importantly as we all work together to help strengthen the security of the united states who say a few words about the importance of the mission missions that we're going to be discussing today the u s government's preeminent national security goal is to prevent said bernie attack on the united states but as david heymann just mentioned and as you did mr chairman in your opening remarks we also have prepared for the eventuality that despite our best prevention efforts our adversaries will succeed in conducting an attack so today as we examine how d o d can best support preparedness first of burnie response keyword that i keep in mind here is that of support d o d s going to be in support of civil in responding to catastrophic natural or manmade disasters when directed by the president or as authorized by the secretary of defense at the federal level this means being in support of v h s and the other lead federal agencies but it's also important to remember that federal civil authorities aren't the only ones who are vital in response and preparedness governors mayors county executives state local contribution of repa and this and response for disasters is absolutely vital to enshrined in our constitution and we take that support role very very seriously at the department of defense something i bought a lot about as an academic and now that i have the honor of serving here something i'm going to continue to take very very seriously let me close by offering a few words of thanks first of all things to all of you for keeping the heat on for creating the position that i now have the privilege to  occupy thank you for the creation of national guard support teams and the many other initiatives on which congress took the lead that i felt strength in the nation secondly i want to take a moment to thank the brave women and men in uniform today who are serving both in far off places like afghanistan and iraq but also here at home whether it's defending our skies in operation noble eagle or whether it's assisting first responders in dealing with fires earthquakes or other natural hazards chairman look for your questions thank you very much general and all i should point out for you i didn't mention this opening we do have a second panel or a second person that's the second panel is a panel of one i questions with you and then move on to the next panel go ahead john well mr chairman good morning it is great to be back with you again i appreciate the support that we've had from from this committee over the years of my  tenure members of the committee i'm particularly pleased to have a chance to join my two colleagues here dr stockton and dr heymann in participating in this in this important opportunity to describe a national capability that's critical to our future it's also an opportunity to say thanks to our young men who are wearing the cloth of our nation both defending the homeland here and deployed as you mentioned earl chairman and mr ranking member in your comments as we begin the hearing as commander of north com i'm assigned two principal missions that of providing for military defense of our homeland against nation state threats and non nation state threats and to support civil authorities when directed with unique d o d capabilities in times of crisis our role in responding to see to a crisis such as an attack involving some burning materials is to provide trained and ready consequence management response forces when requested from most civil authorities as dr stockton mentioned to save lives and help mitigate pain and suffering the specialized response force teams augment the consequence management efforts of state and local first responders of the national guard when called to duty by their governors and other federal agencies we provide complimentary and unique capabilities as a follow on line of defense as it were only when the effects of the the first responders are exceeded i'm sorry the capabilities of the first responders are exceeded our efforts in north com to prepare forces to assist in the aftermath of a suburban event are part of a combined national response framework our collaboration with federal and state partners with governors with the national guard are all key to this home on homeland response response strategy and to our level of preparedness as well we also partner actively and aggressively with our colleagues in the department of homeland security particularly with the federal emergency management agency to prepare for and i stress to prepare for these kinds of events so that we can respond rapidly to to minimize loss of life and property in north com we train hard to ensure our operational readiness and our mission effectiveness in executing this mission are always at the best they could be we cannot delay our ability to defend our nation against any threat we cannot delay our planning efforts to mitigate the threat of an attack on our nation we'll keep up the momentum remain alert and partner with all of our other mission partners to anticipate and prepare for a possible i says we don't have the luxury in the homeland of long term of long lead time in many cases whether it's mother nature or the potential for a terrorist attack the response must be high quality and must be immediate mr chairman thank you for the opportunity to be here today and we look forward to your questions as well thank you very much little will follow the five minute rule in questioning we should have plenty of time so if members have more questions than that we'll go around do do do a second round but i find it best to keep to the five minute rule in terms of moving the conversation forward dr heymann now is start with you in terms of the coordination efforts could you give us a picture of who all you're coordinating basically with in this effort up front at preventing the attacks in the first place what other agencies are principally involved how are those responsibilities divided up and then following up on that i'd be interested to get your perspective on how well that's working and how it could could be better coordinated sure thank you for the question at the centerpiece of principal responsibility of and the department of homeland security the ability to do that starts with our national operation center which continually monitors potential major disasters and i'm sure you're talking here you're talking about here about responding i'm talking about was out as opposed to prevention i do that and i'm interested in prevention as well to go ahead sure on the on the response side on the consequence management declared the department coordinates all of the federal family and the central centerpiece of this is something called the emergency support functions there are fifteen of them and they have various capabilities that are required for responding to a crisis to include communications to include debris removal mass medical care and such the federal the federal family all play a role play roles in each of those support and quick follow up so that one so that for whatever the disaster is even beyond occasionally i miss that initial here but c b r in any even beyond that like if there was a natural disaster but also disease you know we're very concerned about the swine flu and what that's going to be there was a big huge outbreak d h s s would be at the lead of that with with fema as well no matter the disaster in that the different agencies that you plug in depending on what the specific threat is is that that's correct we have a all hazards approach whether it's a natural disaster or a deliberate attack the apartment does take a leadership role in domestic matters of domestic incidents and what about on on each of these separately and i focused on nuclear and biological on nuclear on the prevention side we sort of have a layered defense approach the government looks at controlling nuclear material as a first line of defense so that they don't fall into the hands of those who would seek to do harm there are a number of agencies that are leading that effort the department of energy has a role to play the department sta a role to play the foreign offense has a role to play not luger legislation is one of the governing authorities on protecting us from from materials going does any one of those groups have the traditional state department role within the traditional do you all focusing on this aspect of it on not countered nonproliferation actually who's leading that effort and how is that support group put together so the security initiative which is led by the state department really tries to be an umbrella for including most of these activities as coordinated not just with the federal government but on the international level and and other other  nations contribute to what is a large international effort to stem the spread of nuclear material nuclear weapons i will of follow up on this later on in respect to time a time limit and recognize nation's ability to respond to these type of attacks go through the national response framework and and as i said the domestic incident preparedness concept the distinction between the c v r any attack and other hazards is the notion that they are deliberate and therefore require potentially additional interdiction or attribution as a consequence of that in in those instances  you would have additional work perhaps by the f b i justice department in leadership roles looking at those two particular aspects and dr stockton r n b investments are  the undersecretary of defense for acquisition technology and logistics provides overall oversight to make sure that the priority needs for response are going to be addressed by the research and development community so he's  the lead on the civilian side very important the joint staff also has a joint requirements office for sober chemical biological radiological or nuclear defense is acronyms are going to kill me on some point and  coordination to make sure that from server arms services perspective these are and a requirements are going to be met we also coordinate very closely with our inner agency partners across the spectrum including d h s s but also the department of energy or other federal partners and let me emphasize also that we exercise frequently for these response requirements so we can discover on met needs we can figure out how the ots research and development capabilities can best be harnessed to service or bernie response thanks in general how does north com coordinate intelligence sharing in operational planning activities with other d o d organizations and with other agencies in  response to mr millet even like to jump back before the event to talk about that because i think it also gets to your quote both of your questions about prevention this partnership in intelligence sharing is critical to prevention of these kinds of events we have an active role to play each day as a member of the national counterterrorism center and united states special operations command have invested intelligence and operations analysts to to sit in these organizations each day looking to reach into that network of proliferator and potential users of a weapon of mass effect for terrorist technical capability of some parties to take advantage of to use and then maybe to weaponize some of these kinds of of agents or nuclear materials so that partnership with both law enforcement and with the intelligence communities has allowed us to become much more proactive ahead of one of these events certainly when an event occurs if it were to occur again d o d has a supporting role but a very key supporting role for example the f b i has the responsibility for the recapture and recovery of nuclear material that may have been stolen we provide very significant support to the f b i in fact of exercise that in their last spring ardent sentry exercise we work very closely with f b i on the attribution any an event like this becomes a crime scene to a degree and it's important for the f b i and other law enforcement agencies to be able to capture the evidence so that we can begin to attribute so this inner agency partnership is one that is critical to our success and we play a very active role on the day to day basis with  mr mr stock and you began by by addressing yourself to the to the chairman and ranking member and the distinguished members and i found myself wondering whether or not you were talking with me as well the kind of doubt that  this is just slightly off topic but it would be helpful to me to have your thoughts on the value of preparedness for these kinds of problems of  having secure power on base on military bases scattered throughout the united states the house version of the bill at my request the this year's authorization bill at my request has a explore the possibility of public private partnership partnerships that would both enhance the independence and security function that military bases can provide with secure power nuclear plants that are hardened against various attacks e m p comes to mind and what benefit that provides us during katrina it seems to me that it would be nice to have some secure power plants in that region that was just not w power was knocked out for days at a time  thank you congressman marshall it's especially important question for me to address because in my responsibilities as assistant secretary defense i'm also responsible for defense critical infrastructure protection and ensuring the ability of the united states military to execute it's core missions and if there's no power it's very difficult to do so in fact it would be catastrophic in terms of our ability to execute our core missions so ensuring they realize military power through the bulk power system through a backup power systems that would deal with the eventualities the their natural catastrophes or potentially attacks on that power system that's a priority and i want to thank you for calling everybody's attention to it that you and your colleagues about this year and in years past in terms of the particular ways in which best providing for the reliability the flow of power to the department of fence facilities and also as you pointed out finding ways of leveraging such investments so they benefit the civilian economy as well especially because so much of the department of defense depends on our private sector for the execution of our core missions i think it's terrific to look for the dual advantages of investment in terms of in particular how to accomplish this goal of reliability and resilience in the flow of power i don't yet have a lot of expertise on that issue but i sure do welcome the attention that you and your colleagues are helping to focus on this issue which is absolutely vital for our ability to assure the execution of d o d missions as the language now stands  i don't know that it encourages us to think about this particular aspect think it does but in any event i would hope that perhaps you could add your voice within d encouraging deity to be thinking about these kinds of benefits associated with independent secure power on our military installations i will do so as her thank you thank you thank mr thank you mr kline thank you mr chairman thank  gentlemen for being here and for your testimony in addressing our questions i'm still sort of grappling and i think all of us are at one level or another with the fundamental question of who's in charge i know when i was out general visiting with your predecessor admiral keating in north camas very impressed by the sort of inner agency presence that was there and plans that were developed are being developed i mean put on the shelf i'm sure they're all completed and ready to go now but the question is still sort of troubling dr heymann you said at one time there are a number of agencies leading that effort and the chairman sort of followed up and said well who really in the lead because if there are a number of agencies leading i would argue that nobody is really leading there's nobody in charge in the case of the d o d assets gosh we have a lot of them and that's a pretty good thing i suppose we have the national guard weapons of mass destruction civil support teams a national guard to burn enhanced response force packages the d o d s of bernie consequence management response force  the joint task force civil support program and again we always have these title ten sort of questions why don't we one of these forces federal and one of the state one of the work for the governor when do they work work for the general and looking and particularly at this a bernie consequence management response force which is fundamentally pretty large force when you put it all together i'm looking at the notes here frankly prepared by the quite excellent staff that point out that originally these suburban consequence management response forces were to be assigned to u s north com and now they're being allocated to north com so again it's a question of who's in charge when and i wonder in general if you could talk about why that change in the impact it might have is it lessen your ability to influence these forces to make sure to train and prepare it could you could you address that change for me please yes sir happy to and thank you for the question important to no that the forces you described the the civil support teams the surfie and that acronym and then the consequence management response force are not designed to be standalone forces but really are designed to integrate with each other as the size of the event grows very small events and we have technically suburban events occur almost every day in our country and those small civil support teams travel out on behalf of the governor to do the assessment and identification of the agent and begin to recommend initial mitigation actions and and those are done if you will under the command of the first local first responder that fire chief that police chief the mayor as the event is seen to be more significant the governor has the ability to pull in that that large next larger team the surfie those are guardsmen in state active duty status they could also be in title thirty two funding but still under the command of the governor to provide sort of the next layer of muscle if the event grows and then finally if there is need for and i must add all at the same time these military forces are being employed that fema and v h f v h s have similarly configured civilian first responders so this is this becomes additive as we see the significance of the event occur finally if if we approach a catastrophic type of event we talked about nuclear but but there could be other types the this this consequence management response force which is fairly robust could come in then to provide sustainability over longer periods of time for larger casualties for a broader event the command if you will of those  state forces rests with the governor and continues to do that both the federal military and the federal civilian responders come at the request of the governor really to support the needs of that state but bring  capability that the governor does not have in his quiver if you will those military forces stay under the command of u s northern command and they are there in support of those lead agencies federal and state agencies so command is not ever a question it is how you integrate the control in the execution of those operations on the ground to your specific question of assigned versus allocated sorry i'm long winded sometimes m commander would like all of their forces assigned to them we're in a very busy time in our nation right now and we are using forces in many met with many ways and in some cases ways they were not originally designed for and so we've  secretary and the chairman have adjusted this assignment process to something called allocated with operational control the bottom line is it allows me to get access to those forces as when i need them it allows me to have training and readiness oversight of them it allows me to make an input on funding for them if funding is an issue but they can also be used they are not technically assigned to me for the administrative process i have no difficulty with that today and given the circumstances that we have with the demands on our forces it's appropriate to continue that but that's maybe it's a nuance difference in the assignment versus the integrating them fully into what homeland security and others are doing when if you could comment on the progress of that then your thoughts on the g a o report but just a very quickly sir the geos the g a o is has a  is fair to say that the progress is is mixed in certain areas we have done a great deal of work in partnership with the h s on each of those planning scenarios what's the integrated planning system that we are now using as the as the benchmark has been in existence formally for just about a year and a half and so we're still building some momentum in that regard having said that secretary invested in in in in significant ways in creating that planning capacity within d h s s that can partner with the odeon these areas and i'm actually very comfortable that we've made great progress over the last year in  particular to begin to complete actually a number of those plans and i think we're well on the road to complete the remainder in a very short period of time let me support what general run yard and just said but also emphasize that across the board where looking for opportunities and acting on them to strengthening the planning process to build integration and that's true not only within the federal family but with our state and local partners as well the integrated planning system is a key vehicle for this is i p s perfect now no just standing it up we are looking forward to making improvements but we have to respect partners at d h s and building on the foundation that we currently have today and doing more to integrate and complete the process that's now underway as one of the specific question about the response size of this long been a frustrating certainly was present in nine eleven was also present in katrina that when a large scale disaster like this hits the communications the ability through cell phones walkie talkies the system and there have been a number of technologies out there that attempt to prioritize  this aware of a couple of them basically set up so that in an emergency you can instantly get your you know the people who need to be able to communicate with each other will have priority will be able to do that in that they will also be interested just in e any one of you would like to give an update on that actually i can ask you back to you on that when i do i am familiar with the prioritization and there is a system in place to prioritize communicate communications during a crisis which the department has let on and there are also additionally in order to restore communications we have put in place pre authorized contracts to ensure that  mean pick a random city denver you know if there's a big huge incident there are all the key players in that area you know linked in to a system that would enable them to communicate with one another in the emergency so  the answer is the answer is yes but the way that that goes forward is both in terms of our public private partnership and our relationship with the private sector that has communications as well as   you know how do we make sure that the people who really need to be on the phone can be is that in place and the other piece of it is more up front you know a lot of different hardware and software systems that are spread out amongst the various different organizations and they may or may not be able to talk to one another i know some cities some counties in my area have bought technology that enables them mainly through software so they don't have to change the hardware software enables them to be able to do that but i'd be interested if you could  we've mentioned earlier we come at the request of the governor and the lead federal agency and so there is a process that would be activated upon an event occurring where the state emergency  manager and the governor would make a determination that the size or consequences of this particular event were large enough that the state and their emergency management assistance partners those emacs partners may not have the capacity  at the same time the governor would go to the president with a request for a does disaster declaration which is you know frees resources to begin to support the state but in terms of north com in particular as soon as the event occurs are we established contact with the adjutant general in the state we have established contact with our fema region director we have a different defense coordinating officer who sits with that fema region director so that we begin to get a sense if this event is growing large enough or rapidly enough that there may be a need for the support what happens and i'm going to ruffle some feathers by asking this question if the governor and the local officials don't get it they absolutely have become overwhelmed as they did with katrina and don't make the call quick enough when mr miller i think the president all ultimately has a responsibility for the nation to to make a determination of the speed at which some a vent is unfolding that's not a north com decision my role is to ensure that if i'm asked all the pieces in place to be supportive so i would defer to the national leadership to make a policy decision on the ability of an individual state that's not really mine to call what we try to do is look at each of the states and in each of the regions to understand where they have shortfalls and limitations in equipment  expertise in planning capacity and then try to help them up front before an event occurs to be as successful as they can how how things unfold under pressure is is really more a national issue to deal with and i understand that you led the answer to your question by saying that the call would be made by the governor and i understand individuals and that's why i wanted to drill them as chairman thank you mr mcintyre but just one question mr chairman can you tell  general in the in specific what kind of exercises have occurred they have tested the consequence management system i know occasionally maybe one city might do some talk about your size but can you tell us specifically what  exercises been done and whether or not they've been done in such a way that they could serve as an example for yet other cities who may not have done them to follow mr mcintyre absolutely and this is an area that i think is not well understood by by many there is a very  detailed and layered exercise program that exercises each of these elements of the consequence management system repeatedly and i'll just give you a couple of examples on behalf of the national guard u s northern command manage the vigilant guard exercise and these are conducted in staged by the national guards of each individual state they are supported by u s northern command with evaluators and certifiers and the and those kinds of folks w specifically look at our consequence management civil support teams and the server piece and each day those are done at the request of the state so they're not a recurring basis but but they each year we conduct about seven or eight of those around the country secondly we have the training and research readiness oversight for the c s t's as well so they actually have a periodic certification exercise that we conduct through u s army north and their consequence management evaluation team the the the follow on piece the large scale piece is the exercise of the so called consequence management response forces in the last year as you know we brought the first one into operational status prior to that operational determination we had a series of small unit to large unit exercises and training programs that that allowed the leaders and allowed the individual soldiers an airman sailors to practice the skills that they would need we then conducted a consolidated command and control exercise so that we had an integrated opportunity to test and evaluate decision makers from headquarters down to the small unit commanders finally twice each year we we have an exercise one called vigilant shield one called arden century which are designed to test some or all elements of the of the consequence management response forces at a deployed location this past year we conducted a no notice a number of no notice deployment exercises so that we tested the ability of each unit to pack up its stuff in some cases to have it prepositioned all ready to move it to airlift heads and then to move to a location where the exercise would occur we've done that twice this year as we approach the new fiscal year we have two large scale exercises for the new consequence management response forces that will come online and we will physically deploy full sea smurf that forty five hundred size forced to a location well away from their home stations to exercise for an extended period of time in a catastrophic event we partnered with the national exercise program the h s leads so that we also get national level policymakers involved in the decision process as we go through these scenarios so i think we've developed a layered and very well thought out exercise program very different from what we had just a few years ago thank you thank you train exercises for sounds like you do certainly with the exercise schedule i hope that the individual training that goes with that is proceeding as well and that you're providing oversight for that for these forces that are not assigned to you  and mr miller asked the question what if the governor or the local authorities simply aren't responding they're incapable or sort of don't understand the magnitude another another way to get at this problem is what if you have an event bernie event that i can think of at least one major city where you might have four or five states involved presumably pennsylvania new jersey perhaps delaware maryland pretty easily you  get four or five states involved instantly who's in charge knots to anybody here is are the protocol or the procedures in place to make that determine presumably the president can be in charge in addition to a governor requesting a stafford act declaration can be to hand we made along a number of different paths one federal agency with quests that if a multiple number federal agencies are involved in the response if the president determines that it is a natural and that an emergency or to an emergency declaration is required states have an interest obviously in declaring a stafford act emergency because it means a federal resources can start to flow to the state and and it's it's a mechanism i think that has worked quite well in terms of how assignments go out as to the department begins crisis management and and consequences response there is a standard mechanism called the mission assignment which goes through these emergency support functions i laid out earlier fifteen different support functions that have basic functionality that is required for really for managing the crisis and reestablishing elements of society things like firefighting mass care housing human services medical surg capacity etc the mission assignment is the vehicle that is used by fema in a stafford act disaster declaration and it gets your response going it goes out to the different agencies that would have the lead  for example the army corps of engineers has the lead on to bring it forward for emergency support in debris removal and they would take to take it from from there same thing for any kind of relationship with the defense department there are mission assignments that go out the secretary of defense reviews them to make sure that does not conflict with the readiness of the forces and we've we've we've operated on that for a number of years mr lamb i don't follow up but just to maybe an example that's very close to home to the i thirty five bridge collapse in memory of them that the process that we describe sounds bureaucratic and in cumbersome in point of fact  within about two hours of governor plenty phone call to secretary of transportation who then went to the president who went to the secretary of defense who came to me we had those navy divers moving within a matter of two hours after that was  complete so the process can work very quickly and we've the difference between katrina and today is we've we've established the relationships among those participating partners those other agencies of government such that we can compress that response time down to hours and minutes as opposed to days we did a spectacular job after katrina of moving seventy two thousand uniformed military to louisiana the challenges we had no plans to integrate them we had equipment for debris removal we need it for rescue operations over here and as these things grow in size and you have multiple states somebody has to be in charge whether it's a  also interested in after a little bit about earlier in general and then your comments on on the level of coordination on that piece is very very complicated things obviously a lot of the prevention of these type of attacks happens overseas with some of the nonproliferation work tracking the terrorist groups who might be inclined to launch such an attack and then a lot of that happens within the u s as well in this north commander preventing those sorts of attacks i'm sure right up top your list of priorities how do you plug in to that entire system of all of the different pieces that are involved with prevention clude ing you know f b i and other aspects of our intelligence community and how satisfied are you in terms of the level of coordination in terms of it's clear who is in charge of what and how coordinated it all is mr chairman again to sort of beat this drum we do this most of these things in support of a federal agency or to defend against a nation state and and so that requires a partnership with with other combatant commands around the world we share intelligence we have a daily counter terrorist intelligence that we use to share information with central command for example on terrorist elements that may be resident in their area of operations and then we work with our intelligence partners to  study the net works the links that might bring them back here to the homeland the partners who sit in that are not just military it is we also have the f b i as i mentioned we have all of the intelligence agencies of our government and we that's an active discussion sharing information but also arguing points back and forth so that we try to make sure we've asked the tough questions of how an event in southwest asia may relate to proliferation may relate to a terrorist threat here in the homeland with the intent being that we can interdict that chain somewhere outside our borders we prevent an attack from occurring here in our country that is not just a d o d effort how we participate in that is through each of these collaborative analysis activities and by raising questions and concerns that i have about a particular element of threat we've talked about suburban events here  bio research protection and security of nuclear materials in other countries i drive my intel team to go out and find that information but that's resident in other agencies of government and that's the kind of be in the united states you know at that point i mean you're there f b i has their homeland security's there but who's the person who would then say i'm managing these resources you're doing this you the federal bureau of investigation has the lead responsibility but just partners with that we partner with that the o d has some unique technical capabilities that are exercised in support of that so we have worked out those relationships and procedures ahead of the event and in this particular exercise we actually live deployed the f b i team the d o d teams from home station to wyoming to conduct this exercise in real time so very positive experience and the commanding control communications all work very very well so i think we're forcing ourselves to practice those scenarios and make them realistic and ultimate i think that is what works best as integration is getting to know each other and working together through various collaborative processes and there's a lot of different ways to do that but that's critical i have nothing further out as you well so any further questions for this panel thank you very much for your testimony really appreciate you coming here to directly once you once were cleared out here and you have your sea director and rodel andersen who is the analyst in charge on the work that we've been doing for the committee on the bernie consequence management capabilities that today i'd like to submit our testimony statement for the record please and i have a oral summary to present at this time mr chairman ranking member miller distinguished members of the subcommittee i'm pleased to be here before you today to discuss the preliminary results of our work on efforts to provide c b r any or some burney consequence management support to civilian authorities in the event of a catastrophic incident the two thousand and seven national strategy for homeland security highlighted the continued threat posed to the united states by potential terrorists use of weapons of mass destruction and the need for a comprehensive capability to deal with the consequences of the burnie attack a catastrophic sobranie event within the united states would require a unified i had a whole of government national response and would be a tremendous challenge beauty plays a support role including providing capability is needed to save lives alleviate hardship and suffering and minimize property damage caused by the event north com is to lead the military operation and direct support of another federal agency most often see my duty as set its own goal of having forces ready to respond to multiple mass casualty sobranie incidents and has created significant capabilities that could be used to work federal sobrante response our work for this subcommittee has focused on to the following questions one to what extent our duty's plans and capabilities to respond to suburban incidents in the homeland immigrated with other federal government agencies plans to to what extent has beauty planned for and structured its force to provide any consequence management assistance three how well prepared are do you do you see some of their missions and for you have funding plans in place for the c smart that are linked to requirements for specialized capabilities first our work has shown you do you have its own consequence management plans in place for more than a decade capabilities and third faces challenges in forcing the seas marse because of competition from overseas missions and the use of the guard and reserves compound in these challenges is the fact that starting in october two thousand response he will have less direct authority to control domestic deployment availability to manage day to day training and to monitor the readiness of the units responsible for carrying out the mission third our work has shown that in the last year has taken many actions to improve the readiness of units that were assigned to this he smiled but the cease mark could be limited in its ability to successfully conduct operation because it does not conduct realistic full force field training to confirm the unit's readiness to assume the mission or to deploy quickly and again conflicting priorities between the caesar mark mission and the overseas deployment impacts some units mission preparation and unit cohesion basically the training and force rotation problems we've identified in our work have prevented d o d from providing the kind of stability to the cease morass that would allow the units to identified total program requirements have not been completed and its approach to providing program funding has been fragmented and is not subject to central oversight for example the initial cease mark that was established in october two thousand and eight does not have fully defined funding requirements for the necessary dedicated resources to effectively carry out the sea smart missions in an integrated and consistent manner while duty officials have told us they're in the process of developing essential equipment requirements they have not been fully identified and funded we identified cases in which units purchased their mission a quick meant and have funded see smart related training activities from global war comp they have the resources but it's complicated and they haven't worked their way through exactly how to set up the mersin assigned responsibilities which would that be well it could be a combination because these are  no single centralized point that kind of is responsible for hovering over and watching the total amount of funding that goes to that make up the system so there's no sort of budget are offices in the policy office responsible for those kind of things also for consequence management civil support they all have a responsibility directly involved in providing for those forces but there is no direct one that's not really a unit it's a number of individual units that spans all services there are some civilian agencies that provide some of the resources as well as the national guard and reserve and to bring this force gather integrated manner to respond in a quick manner there needs to be more opportunities for them to train together generally that the training plan leaders who are in charge of the various units the actual tactical training for the units who would actually be underground fighting the support that hasn't quite caught it yet and hopefully in the future they can get the participation that this again appreciate your work and we'll certainly stay in touch we are