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87–890 PDF 2003

HOW EFFECTIVELY IS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

ASSISTING STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS

IN PREPARING FOR A BIOLOGICAL, CHEMICAL

OR NUCLEAR ATTACK?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY,

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT AND

INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

AUGUST 23, 2002

Serial No. 107–226

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

DAVE WELDON, Florida

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

C.L. ‘‘BUTCH’’ OTTER, Idaho

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director

DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director

JAMES C. WILSON, Chief Counsel

ROBERT A. BRIGGS, Chief Clerk

PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY, FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT AND

INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS

STEPHEN HORN, California, Chairman

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

DOUG OSE, California

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

EX OFFICIO

DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

J. RUSSELL GEORGE, Staff Director and Chief Counsel

BONNIE HEALD, Deputy Staff Director

CHRIS BARKLEY, Assistant

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on August 23, 2002 ........................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Bakersky, Peter, executive officer, National Preparedness Division, Region VIII, Federal Emergency Management Agency ................................. 31

Carballido, Raul E., Acting Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau

of Investigation ............................................................................................. 18

Hoffner, Lieutenant Roger E., Arapahoe County officer of emergency

management .................................................................................................. 69

Mencer, Suzanne, executive director, Department of Public Safety, and

director, Homeland Security, State of Colorado ......................................... 13

Miller, Dr. Lisa A., State epidemiologist for bioterrorism, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment ............................................. 40

Posner, Paul L., Managing Director, Federal Budget Issues, Strategic

Issues, U.S. General Accounting Office ....................................................... 81

Sullivan, David B., acting director, Office of Emergency Management,

city of Denver ................................................................................................ 63

Wall, Larry H., president, Colorado Health and Hospital Association ........ 60

Whitney, Major General Mason C., Adjutant General, Colorado National

Guard, and executive director, Colorado Department of Military and

Veterans Affairs ............................................................................................ 8

Wicks, Lieutenant Byron D., Office of Safety Services, Police Division,

city of Englewood .......................................................................................... 79

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Bakersky, Peter, executive officer, National Preparedness Division, Region VIII, Federal Emergency Management Agency, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 33

Carballido, Raul E., Acting Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau

of Investigation, prepared statement of ...................................................... 21

Hoffner, Lieutenant Roger E., Arapahoe County officer of emergency

management, information concerning emergencies in Colorado ............... 73

Horn, Hon. Stephen, a Representative in Congress from the State of

California, prepared statement of ................................................................ 3

Mencer, Suzanne, executive director, Department of Public Safety, and

director, Homeland Security, State of Colorado, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 16

Miller, Dr. Lisa A., State epidemiologist for bioterrorism, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, prepared statement of ..... 42

Posner, Paul L., Managing Director, Federal Budget Issues, Strategic

Issues, U.S. General Accounting Office, prepared statement of ............... 86

Sullivan, David B., acting director, Office of Emergency Management,

city of Denver, prepared statement of ......................................................... 65

Tancredo, Hon. Tom, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Colorado, prepared statement of .................................................................. 5

Udall, Mr. Mark, a Representative in Congress from the State of Colorado, prepared statement of ......................................................................... 6

Wall, Larry H., president, Colorado Health and Hospital Association,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 61

Whitney, Major General Mason C., Adjutant General, Colorado National

Guard, and executive director, Colorado Department of Military and

Veterans Affairs, prepared statement of ..................................................... 11

(1)

HOW EFFECTIVELY IS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ASSISTING STATE AND LOCAL

GOVERNMENTS IN PREPARING FOR A BIOLOGICAL, CHEMICAL OR NUCLEAR ATTACK?

FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 2002

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY, FINANCIAL

MANAGEMENT AND INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Denver, CO.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., at the Jefferson County Municipal Building, 100 Jefferson County Parkway,

Hon. Stephen Horn (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Horn and Tancredo.

Staff present: J. Russell George, staff director, chief counsel;

Dave Bartel, chief of staff; Bonnie Heald, deputy staff director;

Chris Barkley, assistant to the subcommittee; and Michael

Sazonov, staff assistant.

Mr. HORN. A quorum being present, this hearing of the Subcommittee on Government Efficiency, Financial Management and

Intergovernmental Relations will come to order.

On September 11, 2001, the world witnessed the most devastating attacks ever committed on U.S. soil. Despite the damage and

enormous loss of life, the attacks failed to cripple this Nation. To

the contrary, Americans have never been more united in their fundamental belief in freedom and their willingness to protect that

freedom. The diabolical nature of those attacks and then the deadly

release of anthrax sent a loud and clear message to all Americans:

We must be prepared for the unexpected. We must have the mechanisms in place to protect this Nation and its people from further

attempts to cause massive destruction.

The aftermath of September 11th clearly demonstrated the need

for adequate communications systems and rapid deployment of

well-trained emergency personnel. Yet despite billions of dollars in

spending on Federal emergency programs, there remain serious

doubts as to whether the Nation is equipped to handle a massive

chemical, biological or nuclear attack.

Today, the subcommittee will examine how effectively Federal,

State, and local agencies are working together to prepare for such

emergencies. We want those who live in the great State of Colorado

and the good people of cities such as Golden and Denver to know

that they can rely on these systems should the need arise.

2

We are fortunate to have witnesses today whose valuable experience and insight will help the subcommittee better understand the

needs of those on the front lines. We want to hear about their capabilities and their challenges. And we want to know what the Federal Government can do to help. We welcome all of our witnesses

and we look forward to their testimony.

We are very pleased to have with us today as a member of this

subcommittee, and without objection, he will have full rights to

question and also to have his rights, and that’s your own representative, Tom Tancredo. We would like to have an opening statement

from him.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Stephen Horn follows:]

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Mr. TANCREDO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you very

much, for—and thanks to the committee for coming to Colorado to

discuss these issues. I am pleased because of what I have seen up

to this point in time in terms of the way that the State has responded. I am very interested in knowing in more detail exactly

how that coordination and cooperation has taken shape in Colorado, as are you and is the Nation.

I hope that the Federal Government is going to be able to provide

a certain model for this kind of cooperation through the creation

of the homeland defense agency where we, in fact, are attempting

to take those agencies that have a responsibility for homeland defense and not just have them cooperating on an interagency basis,

but having them part of a single agency with a single purpose, one

director, so that everybody seems to be, hopefully, on the same

page.

This is, of course—The proposal has passed the house, and I am

certainly looking forward to it passing in the Senate. I know that

the President has proposed it and is enthusiastically supporting it.

So I think it is, in a way, a good model, at least in terms of the

way he describes it, the way people can work together. We are not

looking for a similar legislatively directed creation of cooperation

here in the State, but I think that we can look at what has happened here and, hopefully, around the country and take some hope

away from this.

We are going to be asking people here who think about the unthinkable, to help us through this process, and give everyone, I

suppose, a feeling of security; not a false sense of security, but a

real sense of security because they know that good people put their

minds together to come up with programs that will work and be

effective. And so I certainly look forward to the testimony today.

And I again want to express my sincere appreciation for you and

the committee to come out here and prepare for this.

[The prepared statements of Hon. Tom Tancredo and Hon. Mark

Udall follow:]

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6

7

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Mr. HORN. Thank you very much. Let me now say how we use

witnesses. We are delighted that you’ve put your heart in providing

us advance statements before the actual hearing, and they have

been very fine. We’ve looked at all of them, and our staff is here

with us. That will become part of a major report with the House

of Representatives.

And so the way we operate is, we have an agenda, you see, we

start here with the adjutant general. We will be swearing all the

witnesses to affirm the oath on the testimony and that will be

amended. But when we call on each, automatically the reporter of

debates puts that statement in the hearing, and so you don’t have

to read it. You can get your own thoughts on it in a summary that

gets to the essence of your written document.

So don’t feel you have to read 10 or 15 minutes. We like it more

in the 5-minute range, and then that’s good for you and us. So we

thank you all for coming and spending your time.

And we will now have you stand and raise your right hand. And

if you have any staff behind you that will also talk in answering

questions, please have them take the oath too. And the clerk will

note and get the names of those, so keep standing back there.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. HORN. Thank you. And the clerk will note that all of them

were in the back there and so forth. Just mark the names.

And we are delighted to open, as we have in other hearings, we

have Major General Mason C. Whitney, Adjutant General of the

Colorado National Guard, a very important portion of how we deal

with preventing and solving the terrorism problem.

So, General, thank you for coming.

STATEMENT OF MAJOR GENERAL MASON C. WHITNEY, ADJUTANT GENERAL, COLORADO NATIONAL GUARD, AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, COLORADO DEPARTMENT OF MILITARY

AND VETERANS AFFAIRS

General WHITNEY. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for this

opportunity to talk to your committee about the Colorado National

Guard and our participation in homeland security. As you are

aware, the Colorado Department of Military and Veterans Affairs

is the State organization that I am responsible for, and that consists of the Colorado National Guard, which is about 5,000 soldiers

and airmen consisting of the Army National Guard and the Air National Guard, as well as the Civil Air Patrol, which is also an important part of our homeland security mission.

Now, that consists of 2,000 volunteers throughout the State of

Colorado in 17 different locations, as well as the Veterans Affairs,

which consists of over 400,000 veterans within the State of Colorado.

Basically, we have two missions within the Colorado National

Guard and, as well, the Civil Air Patrol identifies with those two

missions as well, and they include the State mission of emergency

response and the Federal mission for national defense. Now, in

preparation for those Federal missions, we receive about $135 million per year for the Colorado National Guard from Federal funds

to train and participate in those Federal missions of national deVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:17 Jul 23, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\87890.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
9

fense. The State mission response, we receive about $4.2 million of

State funds to prepare for State emergency response missions.

When September 11th arrived, and the terrorist events that took

place then, we immediately recalled our Air National Guard units

so that they would be prepared to launch F16s and maintain air

supremacy or take care of any kinds of activities that still may be

or may have been prevalent during the missions that we saw that

were accomplished by the terrorists.

So we had, within 15 minutes, two F16s prepared to launch after

the terrorist events on September 11th. And within 30 minutes of

those terrorist events, we had both F16s airborne, and we had all

16 of our F16s at Buckley Air Force Base prepared in case they

were needed.

Along with that, we also had our Army National Guard units recalled that would be providing any kind of security reinforcements

for law enforcement agencies throughout the State. All in all, we

had over 1500 of our air National Guard and Army National Guard

personnel that were at their duty stations within approximately 45

minutes of those terrorist activities.

As you know, we also were called upon to provide airport security in support of the law enforcement organizations that were responsible for the airport security throughout the State of Colorado.

We had over 220 of our soldiers that were on active duty, that were

on State duty with Federal pay, for over 8 months during that period. They provided airport security to over 13 airports throughout

the State of Colorado.

During the time that we have responded to this homeland security mission, we have performed over 4,000 days of State active

duty in response to other State emergencies, such as forest fires

that have been prevalent in the State of Colorado this year. So, as

you can see, it’s been a very busy year so far for the Colorado National Guard.

Now, of course, the Civil Air Patrol has capabilities as well to respond to homeland security missions. Visual reconnaissance

throughout the State, coupled with their search and rescue capabilities, is one of their main missions that they perform within the

State of Colorado.

We have some unique capabilities within the National Guard

also that aid in our homeland security mission, and one of those

unique missions that we have is a Weapons of Mass Destruction

Civil Support Team that consists of 22 full-time, 100 percent federally funded employees of the Colorado Army and Air National

Guard that respond to nuclear, biological, and chemical events

throughout the State, as well as a geographical area that used to

be defined as FEMA Region VIII, but now they’ve redefined those

regions to more accurately—or more adequately deploy other civil

support teams throughout the United States so we have 100 percent coverage with every State.

That team and the teams also, the other 26 teams throughout

the United States, have been extremely busy over the last several

months. They have responded to anthrax precautions that were

taken by local agencies or by the FBI. We’ve also responded to

events that could be considered a chemical liability within the

State. We’ve supported other law enforcement and local responders

10

with that team in terms of exercises, making sure that we are compatible with their operational procedures.

All units of the Colorado Army and Air National Guard are also

trained in every possibility of warfare, and one of those obviously

is chemical warfare, biological warfare, and nuclear warfare. That’s

a matter of their readiness training, so it’s something that comes

second nature to them. So there is response capability within the

entire organization for those type of events.

Sir, that basically summarizes what we’ve done over the last several months in terms of homeland security, in terms of what our

capabilities are.

We also have some challenges ahead, and one of the challenges

we face, I think, is: Is the National Guard properly equipped and

trained to be able to respond to those types of terrorist events that

could happen in the future? That’s something I think that will be

on a major agenda item for our new commander of Northern Command, U.S. Northern Command down at Colorado Springs, General

Ed Eberhart.

Mr. HORN. You might want to spell that.

General WHITNEY. Yes, sir. E-b-e-r-h-a-r-t.

And General Eberhart, obviously, has been in discussions with

the National Guard already about what our role will be with the

homeland security mission within the military, realizing that General Eberhart operates in a Title 10 world, the Title 10 Federal

statutes, and the National Guard operates in the Title 32 world,

which is essentially the State part of the Federal statutes.

Subject to your questions, that’s all I have, sir.

[The prepared statement of General Whitney follows:]

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Mr. HORN. And we will now go to Ms. Mencer. Ms. Mencer is the

executive director, Department of Public Safety, director of Homeland Security, State of Colorado. I assume that is the Governor’s

sort of operation?

Ms. MENCER. That’s correct.

Mr. HORN. Put it all together?

Ms. MENCER. Yes.

STATEMENT OF SUZANNE MENCER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,

DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY, AND DIRECTOR, HOMELAND SECURITY, STATE OF COLORADO

Ms. MENCER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for inviting

me to speak here today.

I think we realized in 1993, after the first bombing of the World

Trade Center, and then after the bombing of the Murrah Building

in 1995, that we needed to refocus our efforts on this issue of terrorism, particularly domestic terrorism, which we, I don’t think,

gave much attention to at all until 1995. I think what we learned

on September 11, 2001, is that our efforts still were not sufficient

to combat this threat, either internationally or domestically.

I have the unique advantage, I guess, of having been in the FBI

for 20 years; 13 of those years I was a counterterrorism and foreign

counterintelligence supervisor, both at FBI headquarters and here

in Denver. So I have that in my background as well, which serves

me well now that I try to look at how to protect the State with not

only sharing intelligence with law enforcement agencies, but also

with looking at plans, preparedness, and response issues as well.

On November 7, the Governor, by executive order, created the

Office of Preparedness and Security in the State. Given our tight

fiscal problems that we are having now, he created this office using

existing resources that the State already had, and focused our efforts in the area of terrorism. To do this, we used my personnel

from the Department of Public Safety, we used—we borrowed one

person from the Department of Health and Environment that specialized in bioterrorism, and we used two people from the Office of

Emergency Management, who have always done a good job at protecting the State in all kinds of all-hazards approaches to disasters.

But their specific tasking has been to look at focusing the State

on preparedness issues of weapons of mass destruction. To do that,

we have divided this office into two areas of focus. One is preparedness, plans, and response. To do that—and this office, by the way,

was signed into law by the Governor after passing the legislature

in this last legislative session in the Colorado legislature, so it became an office permanently in June.

The focus of this office then is twofold. One is for plans, preparedness, and response. To do that, the Governor announced 2

weeks ago that we were dividing the State into seven districts. Six

of those districts are the existing State Patrol districts with one exception, and that is, we carved out the five counties of the metro

area to create the seventh district. We didn’t want the six districts

to be overwhelmed by the key assets that we have up and down

the front range. So we decided to create this seventh district of the

metro area, which we did.

14

These districts will then be coordinated by three individuals: A

major of the State Patrol of that district, an OEM regional planner

that is assigned to that area, and a CBI investigator, agent-incharge. Their responsibility will be to bring to the table everyone

from that district that should have a say in plans and preparedness

issues. They will look to fire chiefs, to police chiefs, to sheriffs.

They will look to health care professionals in that district. They

will look to emergency first responders in that district, and ask for

assistance from the National Guard and FEMA to coordinate what

should the plans be, are the existing plans sufficient. And, indeed,

we already have good plans out there; we don’t want to reinvent

the wheel. Are they sufficient to handle weapons of mass destruction? If not, what additional responses do they need in that area,

and what kind of training and equipment do they need that they

don’t already have? So we’ll be looking at that in each of the districts.

Additionally, we’ll also be looking at developing an intelligence

collection piece. I think when I was in the FBI, sharing of intelligence with local law enforcement agencies consisted of me receiving the information from the sheriffs and chiefs and saying, ‘‘Thank

you.’’ That was about the end of the sharing. I think what—is there

clapping back there?

I think what we’ve learned is that we have to share better. And,

indeed, the FBI created joint terrorism task forces all over the

United States. Denver was one of the first offices to do that. I’m

sure Mr. Carballido will speak more about that. And I’m pleased

to say that we have a Colorado State trooper on the domestic side

of the joint terrorism task force. So we are very lucky to have a

seat at the table.

Unfortunately, the task forces, by necessity, are limited as to

who can be at the task forces. So we need to have a way to better

have the chiefs and the sheriffs and other folks out there that have

intelligence or that see things every day to be able to share that.

So we are going to act as a clearinghouse for this kind of information so that we can then package it and provide it to the FBI if

it rises to the level of an investigative concern. So that’s what we

hope to do.

We do need to break down some barriers among law enforcement

agencies. It is difficult, if you work hard to get information, to then

give it up and share it with other agencies. That’s always been a

problem with law enforcement. So we are looking at ways to try to

break down those barriers because I think what we’ve all learned

since September 11th is we do need to share better, and we are

going to work very hard at doing that.

We applaud the efforts of the Department of Homeland Security

and of Governor Ridge, and the President’s initiative to create this

new department, similar to what we have done here in the State,

taking existing resources, combining them together to focus on this

issue of terrorism. So we very much applaud that.

We are in close contact with the Office of Homeland Security. I

am in biweekly conference calls with them. I just had one yesterday. We share their concerns. They’re divided by FEMA regions.

We are with FEMA Region VIII and X on our conference calls. And

all the States’ homeland security directors are there. So it is an opVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:17 Jul 23, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\87890.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
15

portunity for us to share our concerns, ask our questions, and get

answers at that time, and they’ve been very responsive to all the

questions we’ve had. So we have a good relationship with them.

We also—I go back about every other month to meet with Governor Ridge and his staff. All the homeland security directors do,

and this has been very helpful as well, so that we know where

they’re going, what their direction is, and what kind of information

they can provide to us to better make our system here in Colorado

more functional in working with them. So we are busy on that.

The Governor also created an infrastructure committee 2 weeks

ago, and this will be to bring in the private sectors as well in the

State. We will have at least 13 people at that table, each representing the 13 critical infrastructures as defined by the national security strategy. We will look at those 13 infrastructures and then add

some as well, such as education, to decide things for the State, like

the structure of the threat level system. What does it mean for education if we go up from a Level Yellow, which we are at now, to

a Level Orange? What does it mean—do you send your kid to

school if we go up to a Level Red? Do you ride the light rail if we

are at the red level?

These are the kinds of questions we will ask this committee to

come up with by asking their constituents to come up with the

models that we need to use and then disseminate to the public as

to how we are going to react to this kind of thing. So that way we

will bring in the private sector as well and get input from everyone

because this is indeed a problem that has to be solved by everyone,

not just law enforcement, not just the National Guard, not just

Public Safety, but we have to all work together on this. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Mencer follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Thank you. That’s very helpful. And in the question

period I’m sure we’ll have plenty to check. And we are now having

Raul Carballido, who is the acting special agent-in-charge, Federal

Bureau of Investigation. Is that in the Denver office?

Mr. CARBALLIDO. Yes, sir.

Mr. HORN. Well, we are delighted you and your other people,

starting with Y2K years ago and our jurisdiction over Federal executive computers. And they have been greatly helpful with their

hacking and all the rest of it, and on the lootists and the viral this

or that and sickness here and there in computers; and they’ve really been a great help for private industry as well as for government.

And so thank you for being here.

STATEMENT OF RAUL E. CARBALLIDO, ACTING SPECIAL

AGENT IN CHARGE, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

Mr. CARBALLIDO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning,

Chairman, board members of the subcommittee, and distinguished

members of the Colorado delegation. I value the opportunity to appear before you and discuss terrorism preparedness, including

threats posed by attacks involving weapons of mass destruction, as

well as measures being taken by the FBI and law enforcement

partners to address these threats. The mission of the FBI’s

counterterrorism program is to detect, deter, prevent, and swiftly

respond to terrorist actions that threaten U.S. interests at home or

abroad, and to coordinate those efforts with local, State, Federal,

and foreign entities as appropriate. The Denver field office of the

FBI is responsible for the States of Colorado and Wyoming. The

field office’s headquarters is located in Denver with satellite offices

throughout the States of Colorado and Wyoming.

Enhanced cooperation among law enforcement at all levels is a

significant component of the prevention and investigation of terrorism. This cooperation is most evident in the development of the

Joint Terrorism Task Forces, short JTTF, that now exists in all 56

FBI field offices. These task forces are successful for the integration of resources provided by local, State, and Federal agencies.

The Denver field office, JTTF, was formed in 1996. It is composed of numerous Federal, State, county, and municipal law enforcement agencies. The Denver JTTF also coordinates with the recently created Colorado Office of Preparedness, Security and Fire

Safety to share information on terrorism-related matters. This cooperation is demonstrated through the anticipated sharing of an

analyst who will conduct terrorism-related research and analysis

for the FBI and the Colorado Office of Preparedness, Security and

Fire Safety.

Denver, as you know, Mr. Chairman, is also home to a number

of significant military assets located in Colorado and Wyoming. The

newly established Northern Command, NORTHCOM, is now located at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. On October

1, NORTHCOM, Homeland Security Combatant Command, will become operational. In an effort to facilitate cooperation, coordination, and the sharing of information between the FBI and

NORTHCOM, in issues relative to terrorism activities and other

activities of joint interest, the FBI will assign a full-time, seniorlevel special agent to the command.

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The Denver field office of the FBI has taken a proactive approach

in its preparation for terrorist attacks involving weapons of mass

destruction. In January 1999, Denver field office completed its own

Weapons of Mass Destruction Incident Contingency Plan. This plan

was designed to provide specific guidance for response within the

Denver field office. The plan is updated annually and has been utilized numerous times to resolve weapons of mass destruction

threats or incidents within Colorado and Wyoming.

In addition to the domestic preparedness training that we have

received over the years, we have also provided weapons of mass destruction awareness and response training to numerous law enforcement, fire, emergency medical, emergency management, military and infrastructure agencies and organizations.

The Denver field office has also participated in numerous local,

regional, and national weapons of mass destruction exercise scenarios. We consider our involvement in both training and exercises

to be essential to maintaining and enhancing our relationships

with our local, State, and Federal partners.

In 1996 the FBI established a Hazardous Materials Response

Unit, which is based in Quantico, Virginia. Staffed with subject

matter experts, the unit has provided national and international

assistance in the response to weapons of mass destruction terrorism. In May 2000, the unit certified the Denver field office’s hazardous materials response team. This is one of 17 teams throughout the country and a regional asset for the FBI. This team, which

is comprised of FBI agents specially trained to operate in a contaminated environment, has the capability to respond to a crime

scene where weapons of mass destruction may be present.

We have also participated in the development of local weapons

of mass destruction response plans. An important example of this

is the recent development of a Metropolitan Medical Response Plan

for the Denver Metropolitan area and the ongoing development of

a similar plan for Colorado Springs.

In December 1998, FBI Denver took a leadership role in the establishment of what is known as the Colorado Counterterrorism

Advisory Council. This group, which has met monthly since its inception, includes representatives from a variety of State and Federal agencies who have primary responsibility for response to

weapons of mass destruction issues within the State of Colorado.

The group has also established interagency notification and response protocols which have greatly enhanced our ability to efficiently share information and provide response resources.

Since the deliberate distribution of anthrax in the U.S. mail during December and October 2001, FBI Denver has responded to

more than 800 telephonic requests for assistance concerning potential weapons of mass destruction terrorism, primarily regarding anthrax. In addition, FBI Denver provided field responses to potential

weapons of mass destruction incidents on more than 100 occasions

and opened more than 30 criminal investigations. The ability to

handle this many incidents is a direct result of the partnerships developed among the Federal, State, and local response community,

which included the establishment of efficient operational protocols

and agreements for laboratory testing of chemical, biological, and

radiological agents.

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In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, terrorism represents a continuing

threat to the United States, and as the lead Federal agency for response to a weapons of mass destruction threat or incident, the FBI

must remain prepared to tackle this formidable threat—formidable

challenge, I should say. In order to effectively and efficiently respond to the threat, the Denver field office of the FBI continues to

enhance its counterterrorism program.

Chairman Horn, this concludes my prepared remarks. I would

like to express my appreciation to this subcommittee’s examination

of the issue of counterterrorism preparedness, and I look forward

to responding to any questions. Thank you, sir.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Carballido follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Well, I thank you, gentlemen, and thank you again

for the good presentation. We now move to Peter Bakersky, Director of the Office of National Preparedness, Region VIII, Federal

Emergency Management Agency, otherwise known as FEMA.

STATEMENT OF PETER BAKERSKY, EXECUTIVE OFFICER, NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS DIVISION, REGION VIII, FEDERAL

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY

Mr. BAKERSKY. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. It’s a pleasure for

me to be here to discuss a pressing matter of how FEMA is assisting State and local government to prepare for a potential terrorist

attack involving biological, chemical, or nuclear agents. FEMA is

the Federal agency responsible for leading the Nation in preparing

for, responding to, and recovering from disasters. Our success depends on our ability to organize and lead a community of local,

State, and Federal agencies and volunteer organizations. The Federal Response Plan forms the heart of our management framework

and lays out the process by which interagency groups work together to respond as a cohesive team to all types of disasters. In

response to the terrorist events of 2001, the Federal Response Plan

has proven to be an effective and efficient framework for managing

all phases of disasters and emergencies. The plan is successful because it builds upon existing professional disciplines, expertise, delivery systems, and relationships among the participating agencies.

Much of our success in emergency management can be attributed

to our historically strong working relationship with our State and

local partners. Through our preparedness programs we provide the

financial, technical, planning, training, and exercise support to give

State, local, and tribal governments the capabilities they need to

protect public health, safety, and property both before and after the

disaster strikes.

In meeting the challenges ahead for State and local government,

FEMA’s Office of National Preparedness is becoming more robust.

The mission of the Office of National Preparedness is to provide

leadership in coordinating and facilitating all Federal efforts to assist State and local first responders, as well as emergency management organizations, with planning, training, equipment, and exercises.

FEMA has made the following changes to support this expanded

mission. We have realigned preparedness activities from the Readiness, Recovery, and Response Directorate to the Office of National

Preparedness. We have realigned all training activities into the

U.S. Fire Administration to allow greater coordination between

training for emergency managers and training for the first responders. We have moved the authority for credentialing, training, and

deploying the urban search and rescue teams from the Readiness,

Response, and Recovery Directorate to the U.S. Fire Administration.

We continue to work with all 55 States and Territories and federally recognized Indian tribes and Alaskan native villages to implement our current and other grant programs to assist State, tribal,

and local governments to enhance their capabilities to respond to

all types of hazards and emergencies, such as chemical incidents,

incidents involving radiological substances, and national disasters.

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We recognize that chemical, biological, and radiological scenarios

will present unique challenges to the first responder community. Of

these types of attacks, we are, in many ways, better prepared for

a chemical attack because such an incident is comparable to a

large-scale hazardous materials incident.

In such an event, the Environment Protection Agency and the

Coast Guard are well connected to local hazardous materials responders, State and Federal agencies, and the chemical industry.

There are systems and plans in place for response to hazardous

materials, systems that are routinely used for both small and

large-scale events. The EPA is also the primary agency for the hazardous materials function of the Federal Response Plan. We are

confident that we would be able to engage the relevant players in

a chemical attack based on the hazardous materials model.

Bioterrorism, however, presents the greater immediate concern.

With a covert release of a biological agent, the first responders will

be hospital staff, medical examiners, private physicians, or animal

control workers instead of the traditional first responders, with

whom we have a long-term relationships.

The Department of Health and Human Services leads the efforts

of the health and medical community to plan and prepare for a national response to a public health emergency and is the critical link

between the health and medical community and the larger Federal

response. The Department of Health and Human Services is also

our primary agency in the Federal Response Plan for health and

medical services.

The Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan has 17 Federal agency signatories, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is

the lead Federal agency for coordinating the overall response, and

FEMA is responsible for coordinating nonradiological support.

Tabletop exercises have been conducted in order to determine

Federal agency resources for responding to a terrorist attack with

a radiological component. In addition, nuclear or radiological threat

posed by improvised nuclear devices and radiological dispersal devices is being evaluated, as well as the preparedness of member departments and agencies to deal with these threats.

It is FEMA’s responsibility to ensure that the national emergency management system is adequate to respond to the consequences of catastrophic emergencies and disasters regardless of

the cause. We rely on our partners at the State and local level.

Without question, they need support to further strengthen their capabilities and their operating capacity.

FEMA must ensure that the national system has the tools to

gather information, set priority, and deploy resources effectively. In

recent years we have made tremendous strides in our efforts to increase cooperation between the various response communities and

now we need to do more.

The creation of the Office of National Preparedness and our emphasis on training, planning, equipment, and exercises, will enable

us to better focus our efforts and will help our Nation become better prepared for the future.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I’ll be available for any questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bakersky follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Thank you. And now we have Dr. Miller, the State

epidemiologist for bioterrorism, Colorado Department of Public

Health and Environment.

STATEMENT OF DR. LISA A. MILLER, STATE EPIDEMIOLOGIST

FOR BIOTERRORISM, COLORADO DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC

HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT

Dr. MILLER. Thank you, and good morning, Mr. Chairman. The

previous speaker, I think, gave me a great lead-in to talk about the

ways that the Federal Government, and specifically the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is aiding both State and

local public health and hospitals to become better prepared to deal

with bioterrorism.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment is

the recipient of two Federal grants recently to help us become better prepared. The first grant I’m going to just touch on briefly is

Colorado’s hospital preparedness grant. And these grant funds are

provided through the Department of Health and Human Services

via the Health Resources and Services Administration, and they’re

intended to upgrade the preparedness of hospitals. This grant was

developed by the department, but there is oversight from a committee, and this committee has a broad range of representation. And

I think that’s a really important point to make.

This is obviously a very complicated area, and I think you’ve gotten the picture just from the few speakers before me that we have

a lot of coordination to do. So to help coordinate this grant, we

have an advisory committee from Veterans Affairs, Indian health

service, from community health agencies, and from private providers, to really give us that additional perspective. The Hospital Preparedness Advisory Committee is led by Mr. Larry Wall, who is

going to give you comments later. So I’m not going to go into any

more detail about that grant, and I’ll let Mr. Wall take that one

further.

The second grant I want to mention briefly is Colorado’s public

health bioterrorism preparedness grant. And this grant is intended

to build public health infrastructure, both at the State public

health level and at the local agency level. This grant is actually

about 3 years old. We started receiving Federal funds in public

health for bioterrorism preparedness in 1999, but recently the Federal Government has increased those funds dramatically, as I’m

sure you’re aware. We went from receiving about $1 million a year

to, this year, $14.6 million.

And I want to point out a couple things about this grant. First

of all, although the grant is called a bioterrorism grant, it really

is intended to help improve the infrastructure of public health so

we can respond not only in the, hopefully, unlikely event of a major

bioterrorism event, but we can respond to everyday emergencies

which we have in public health all the time. We have an example

right now going on. We have a new disease in our country, West

Nile virus. So this is intended really to help us respond to both

that, ‘‘everyday emergency’’ in public health and the other bigger

issue of a bioterrorism event.

Again, in this grant, we both wrote the grant and have oversight

in this grant by a committee. And we wrote the grant with the

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input of both a broad range of State health department individuals

and local health department individuals. And then we have an advisory committee, and that advisory committee is actually made up

of several individuals in this room. Ms. Mencer sits on the advisory

committee. Major General Whitney, Mr. Wall, Mr. Greer and Agent

Airy have been involved in the work of the committee. So, again,

we are trying to really get some coordination between our different

agencies and make sure that the one knows what the other is doing

and has input into those activities.

The grant, as you see in my notes, is divided into six focus areas.

These focus areas are funded separately. They deal with specific

readiness preparations, that is, the writing of the plans, the exercising of those plans, and training. They also deal with surveillance

and epidemiology, which is the ability to detect and respond to an

event quickly. So if there is a bioterrorism event, we will know

about it as soon as possible, and we can control it quickly and prevent spread.

There’s also a laboratory part of this grant that will go specifically to help us upgrade our laboratory capacity so we can better

identify, more quickly identify, agents of bioterrorism at the State

level. We also want to upgrade local laboratory capabilities.

There’s also a section that deals with information technology, obviously an important issue that runs through every part of terrorism prevention and response. And we are dealing not only with actually connecting people and making sure they have good communication technology, but protecting that information and making

sure that our information is secure.

We found out with the anthrax event, I think, that risk communication or the ability of public officials and public health officials

to communicate information quickly and accurately, is very important and can really mean the difference in an event between quick

control and not-so-quick control of an event. We need to make sure

that we have better training in risk communication in our public

health and public official levels so that we can provide information

in the best way possible to the public.

The last area of focus in our grant is training and education. Obviously we have a huge number of not only public health people but

also hospital staff to whom this is a relatively new issue, and we

have a lot of training to do about the issue, about how we respond

to this issue, importantly, how we work with all our different partners here, which public health staff are not as accustomed to working with as it should be, probably. We are getting better at working

with our partners and knowing who those partners are, but that’s

still an area of need to do some training and education in.

My final point that I would make with these funds is that they

are intended to increase our infrastructure in public health. And I

think in order to do that, a 1-year grant is not going to work. We

need to hire personnel and have training that is very long-term.

And to do that well, I think these funds, obviously, need to be

longer than 1 or 2 years to actually improve our infrastructure in

a long-term way. So I thank you for your time and attention, and

I’d be happy to take questions.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Miller follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Well, you’ve done a good job because we hadn’t had

a chance to get into these grants since they have been trickling out

over the last few months, and that’s very helpful.

So now let’s move to the question and answer. What I’m going

to do is have each of us, my colleague and myself, each have 10

minutes for questions and answers. And if there’s still questions

and answers to be had, we will do it again. So we’ll start with my

colleague here. You have 10 minutes.

Mr. TANCREDO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, I’ve got a

couple of things that have come to mind as I listened to the testimony. And I, again, thank you all very much for a clear, concise

presentation.

Major General Whitney, in terms of the new role, the added role,

perhaps I should say it that way, for the Guard and specifically in

the areas that you mentioned in terms of airport security and that

sort of thing, how has that affected, if at all, the morale of the people involved in terms of a change in what they see, I suppose, as

their primary task or role? I mean, you know, other than—I mean,

it seems to me that up to this point in time they saw themselves

in a much more active role in case of an emergency, getting in and

helping people, rescuing people, doing all the things that the Guard

has been so good at doing, rather than standing there, you know,

for hours and hours and hours and hours looking at people walking

past them. And I just wondered how, if anything, that has affected

the actual morale. Do you have any indicator of that?

General WHITNEY. Sir, I can answer that fairly specifically as

well as generally. No. 1, a general answer to the question is that,

of course, we’ve been providing homeland security since 1636

throughout the Nation, so we are not—this is not a mission that

is totally new to us. So we have done these types of things more

than just the national defense mission where you have a soldier

who is well versed in operating field artillery is all at once asked

to come in and provide airport security. A trained military force is

a very capable force in many different missions. Of course they’re

trained in combat arms, and so therefore airport security missions

in support of law enforcement organizations would be something

that would fit within their skill set.

The specific answer to your question, though, how has it affected

the morale of the soldiers who are involved in that mission is, it

hasn’t affected it adversely whatsoever. Actually, it’s been a very

good thing for most of our soldiers with very few exceptions. All of

our soldiers who performed that mission did so with a very, very

positive attitude about representing the U.S. military, specifically

the Colorado National Guard and the U.S. Army, in a very visible

manner in that airport security mission. So they’re very proud to

do that, very proud to stand in their uniforms providing that added

sense of security that would come as a result of their presence.

Mr. TANCREDO. That’s interesting to know. Just as I—Every single week as Mr. Horn, I’m sure, and I are required to do for the

job and fly in and out of Denver twice a week and passing them

each time, I always just thought to myself, ‘‘I wonder if they just

get so damn bored that they can’t stand this anymore.’’ And ‘‘How

do you stay alert?’’ And ‘‘How does it’’—that’s a challenge, I think,

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and God bless the Guard for the good job they do. But it just always made me wonder about that.

Ms. Mencer, the focus of most of the discussion here today was

naturally on the reactive capacity of the State in case of an emergency. But you mentioned something that piqued my curiosity

when you started talking about what I would have categorized, I

suppose, as a preventive activity or responsibility that you may

find in your own—because it’s the office of preparedness, you’re

preparing for something as opposed to trying to prevent it from

happening.

So when you talk about the information sharing and that sort of

thing, I just wonder to what extent do you actually see your role,

the role of your agency, in this other capacity of preventive, and

how specifically does that play out, if at all? What do you do in that

regard?

Ms. MENCER. Well, certainly at the State level we are not involved in investigations concerning terrorism. That would be the

responsibility and purview of the FBI. But I think what we’ve

learned as a Nation is that we need to have a better mechanism

for collecting intelligence and to share it, and we are hoping that

at the State level, by working with the local chiefs and sheriffs, we

can have a mechanism for doing that, for going out and looking for

things that they would have an interest in, and then being able to

disseminate that information to the right people.

We’d like to go beyond that, though, rather than just law enforcement, because I think, as Dr. Miller said, we have a lot of health

workers out there that see things every day. We have a lot of first

responders that arrive on the scene first, and they need to have

some intelligence as well. So we are trying to develop a system

where we can not only disseminate bulletins that come out from

the FBI at a law enforcement level, but the Office of Homeland Security is actually looking at trying to have a tear sheet so that information can be scrubbed and disseminated to first responders as

well, to the health care workers, to the first emergency responders

who come on the scene, to the fire chiefs, so that they have a way

of knowing what’s going on too. So if there is an explosion, they

might know that, gee, we’ve had pipe bombs discovered in other

parts of the State. Maybe it’s a criminal act rather than just a gas

explosion.

So those are the kinds of things we are looking at trying to facilitate. It’s something that we haven’t done well before, we haven’t

done at all in some cases, particularly with first responders. So it’s

a new way of looking at intelligence, and we are hoping to play a

part in that to assist the investigators in their role with looking at

what do we have in this Nation.

Mr. TANCREDO. Well, that’s still sort of the reactive stage which

you’ve just described, how do we react to the event, how quickly

can we get the information to the people that will be there first to

know what they’re dealing with.

But you suggest that this information sharing task that you’ve

been charged with is the primary role of the preventive side of your

activity. And so I guess I’m asking you to be even more specific,

if you could, and exactly, No. 1, is that happening at all today? You

mentioned, I think, that you are looking to ways in which that can

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occur. Is it happening now? Are you facilitating that and to what

extent do you think that we have increased that degree of information sharing as a result of the agency’s existence, your agency’s existence? How much more do you look forward to doing that in that

regard?

Ms. MENCER. Indeed we are doing it today, and we started shortly after the office was formed. Right now we are cobbling together

several different communications systems to disseminate information. So we now use our CCIC, our criminal system that we have

in place, to disseminate bulletins and law enforcement sensitive information. We use the Colorado Law Enforcement Information Network, or CLEIN, to disseminate information as well. We use

RISSNET, which is an Internet-based system to disseminate information. We also use an e-mail system that’s developed by my Director of Fire Safety that disseminates information that isn’t law

enforcement sensitive to fire chiefs and emergency first responders.

So we indeed send this out, and we haven’t done that before. So

that has been something new. We’ve received positive comments

from local law enforcement agencies and from first responders, that

for the first time they’re actually getting some kind of intelligence

information.

So that’s been working well, but we need a better system instead

of trying to use all these different systems, and we are working

with the RISSNET people in a system that the Colorado State Patrol already has in their possession, Dialogic, which is a communicator system. What we found with chiefs and sheriffs is if their

information comes in via the Internet or via their teletype machine

or whatever system they have, they don’t know that it’s there.

There’s no mechanism with their own business practices for the

clerical person when he receives it to say, ‘‘Wow, this is something

significant; the chief needs to see it.’’ So a lot of times it sits there.

So the Dialogic system, if you plug your numbers in, your fax number, your pager, your cell phone, your home number, it automatically begins to call people and says, ‘‘You need to check your fax

machine, your Internet message,’’ whatever. And so then they

know. And it keeps calling them until they respond. So it’s a very

annoying system, but it works.

And so we are looking at using the money from the U.S. attorney’s office, which they have been provided, and we have requested

some funding to hire a person that will do nothing but operate this

Dialogic system so that we do have a communication effort where

we can alert people that there is a message coming in and they

need to respond to it.

Mr. TANCREDO. And from what agencies are you receiving most

of the information that you are presently then disseminating?

Ms. MENCER. We get information from the FBI on their intelligence bulletins that they disseminate weekly. We also get the

same information——

Mr. TANCREDO. Excuse me. Now, those bulletins would not have

otherwise—let’s assume that your agency didn’t exist for a moment—they would not have otherwise been disseminated?

Ms. MENCER. They do. They are disseminated on our CCIC system, which I think would have occurred anyway. Also the NLET

system, which the FBI uses, and we use that as well.

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Mr. TANCREDO. So that now that is not happening that way; you

sort of have taken over that?

Ms. MENCER. Well, no, they—Do you disseminate on NCIC? I

don’t know if you do or not. I think it’s CBI now.

Mr. CARBALLIDO. Well, we do from headquarters, initially, and

then there’s further dissemination from CCI, and sometimes we

also disseminate from FBI Denver BOLOs, be on the lookout for

this, etc., more specific operational tactical information, and that

goes directly to the local law enforcement agencies.

Mr. TANCREDO. What I’m trying to figure out here is exactly

what the role is in term of this information dissemination for your

agency. And is it truly a coordinating agency or are you just another part of the dissemination picture? I’m not clear on that exactly.

Ms. MENCER. I think it’s both. I think what we’ve done is create

this whole other layer for first responders and for the fire chiefs

that didn’t exist before. And they had no information flow to them

at all. So, you know, that’s something that we’ve created in the new

office and we are trying to enhance. And if the Office of Homeland

Security proceeds with their goal to have that tear sheet, it will be

much facilitated because they’ll provide scrubbed information, if

you will, on the bottom part that we can disseminate to first responders and then the law enforcement sensitive stuff at the top.

So we are hoping that will make our job a lot easier as well.

Mr. TANCREDO. So, so far, it’s mostly sort of—right now would

you consider it to be a top-down information sharing process? You

are not getting information, let’s say, from sheriffs’ departments

that you then—coming up to you that you—I guess it’s not—I don’t

know whether it’s correct to say coming up to or down from, but

are you getting it and are you sharing the information that they

provide to you?

Ms. MENCER. That’s what we need to work on specifically, and

that’s what the seven districts will do, and the CBI component of

the those seven districts will work with the chiefs and the sheriffs

in collecting information that then we can disseminate statewide.

For instance, if District 1 says, you know, we’ve received some information that’s some driver’s licenses have been stolen, and then

we’ll be able to send that out to the seven districts, and we’ll coordinate the intelligence, bring it to the FBI’s attention so that

they can see is this something we need to be concerned about or

not.

So as we work on this process of getting these districts organized

and reaching out to the chiefs and the sheriffs, we’ll have a method

of not only disseminating it from the top down, but then disseminating it from the bottom up, which we need to do and which we

haven’t done very well as a Nation, I don’t think.

Mr. TANCREDO. Well, I appreciate the chairman’s indulgence here

on this because I’m just trying to get a good, clear picture of exactly

what it is that you are charged with doing and how effectively it

has, you know, begun to operate so far and where you think you

want to go with it.

It is confusing because there is this, you know, sort of a generic

application of the word ‘‘dissemination,’’ and we use it a lot, and

we talk about the need for information sharing, and are never sure

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if just the creation of an agency that is supposed to help in that

purpose can actually be that single source or it just becomes another one of the things that people sort of look forward to hearing

from periodically, people sort of down the line from it. And it’s a

challenge, I think, enormous challenge, of course, to figure out exactly what role you’re going to play that isn’t being played by some

other—by the FBI and other Federal agencies.

But let me take it one step further then. To what extent do you

communicate or have communications with other Federal agencies

that have responsibilities for internal security, specifically, let’s

say, the INS, Customs, even more specifically, Border Patrol; perhaps that wouldn’t be the one because, although they do have, of

course, internal security apparatus, to a couple of agents, anyway,

do you have any involvement with them whatsoever?

Ms. MENCER. Well, we are a part of the CTAC, which was mentioned earlier, the counterterrorism committee that meets, the

State patrol, so we do have participation with other Federal agencies on that. I’m in regular communication with ASAC Carballido,

so I speak on a frequent basis with the FBI because I have a relationship with them, obviously, which I think is a good thing at this

point in our Nation’s history, particularly in this State that I do

have that relationship with the Bureau, and I appreciate that.

And we, as a State, I don’t see our role as coordinating with Federal agencies as much as I do with trying to coordinate the local

folks out there. And I think because we in law enforcement are

particularly territorial with the information we collect and receive,

that we do need to begin to share more with sheriffs, sharing with

the chiefs, and chiefs sharing with the sheriffs, and that kind of

thing, and I see the State’s role more as that coordination piece.

There is an inherent distrust, I think, in law enforcement between

local police agencies and the Federal agencies, and I think that is

historic and has been going on for a long time. I don’t think we are

about to change that quickly. But I don’t see the Federal Government being able to come in and do that. I think at a State level

it’s much easier for us to say we all need to work together in this,

and then help with that intelligence piece to provide information

to the FBI. But, as Mr. Carballido and I have discussed, it needs

to go both ways, and the FBI needs to begin to bring things down

as well, and hopefully we’ll act as a conduit for that too.

Mr. TANCREDO. Maybe the creation of the Homeland Security

will help—hopefully that will help in this rather confusing and

sometimes convoluted process.

And the last question I have is for Dr. Miller. There is an agency

I visited sometime ago, and I apologize because it slips my mind,

but it is located at Buckley. It’s unique. Maybe I shouldn’t say

unique, but there may not be more than one or two others around

the Nation. It has the ability to respond immediately to an event,

chemical, biological type of event, and tell the State exactly what

it is with which we are dealing with that particular agent. And I’m

just wondering if—I didn’t hear anything about it, I guess, or any

coordination of activity with that. It seems like it was an enormously—When I visited, I thought to myself, ‘‘God, what a great

asset to have here in Colorado,’’ because I think it’s——

Dr. MILLER. Are you talking about the civil support team?

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Mr. TANCREDO. That’s it.

Dr. MILLER. That’s General Whitney’s. And, actually, we work

very closely with them. If they’re evaluating, say, an anthrax

threat, we are often talking to them. And our lab serves as a confirmatory lab. If their testing showed that they thought they had

some agent, our lab would test it and confirm it. So we are very

familiar with them.

Mr. TANCREDO. General, maybe just to share with the committee

what the responsibility—because I thought that was just so great

when I was there, I thought, you know, this is in Colorado only or

very few States, anyway.

General WHITNEY. Well, no, sir; actually there are 27 teams right

now. We were the very first team organized, very first team certified. We’ve got the best team in the Nation here in Colorado. I’m

not biased as all in that.

Mr. TANCREDO. Tell us exactly what its responsibility is.

General WHITNEY. It’s a team—The designation is Weapons of

Mass Destruction Civil Support Team, and we are team No. 8, is

our designation, because of FEMA Region VIII as to what we were

originally assigned to.

Specifically, they are designed to take this 22-person team to a

site that has been designated as a possible nuclear, biological,

chemical, radioactive, or even a high explosive site, to determine if

there is any type of agent there that requires special protective

measures as well as to mitigate whatever it is that they find. They

have tremendous reach-back capability with a communications

suite, a truck that has every kind of communications gear you can

think of. They have a tremendous capability to analyze on the

scene with a mobile analytical laboratory, which is probably what

you saw when you went out to Buckley.

It’s a one-of-a-kind-in-the-nation capability for this team, obviously, for the 27 teams that have this. So it’s a tremendous asset

for any community to have in place already, but it’s also an asset

that can be deployed anywhere in the Nation, whenever the need

arises.

Mr. TANCREDO. Again, I really appreciate the chairman’s indulgence here.

Mr. HORN. No, I think when you’ve got a good topic, keep going.

Mr. TANCREDO. Well, that’s it. I guess I’d say that the one thing

I remember about that tour is that there was a hope on their part

that there would be a lot more knowledge, general knowledge,

about their existence and about their ability to actually coordinate

than evidently was the case then. They felt that they were somewhat unused, that there was—you know, here we are, this great

thing, and how many people even know, how many even local agencies know that we are there to respond if they have something like

that. So that’s why I kind of wanted to bring it out here, and, hopefully, I don’t know, just get people to be more aware of its existence

which, again, seemed like a great asset.

General WHITNEY. Sir, I’m not sure how long ago you visited the

organization out at Buckley.

Mr. TANCREDO. It could have been a week ago or 2 years ago, in

my mind, I don’t know; they all kind of fall together.

53

General WHITNEY. Within the last 8 months or so, they have

been very active and responded to numerous calls in support of the

FBI as well as local agencies. So I think we have done, I think, a

much better job in advertising their capabilities to all those responders that may require their capability.

Mr. TANCREDO. Thank you, General. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. Let me followup in another way involving Ms. Miller

and Ms. Mencer and also the general, and that is, what do we have

in hospital capacity should there be some attack of biology, chemistry, nuclear, whatever? And I just wonder to what degree and I

guess we will address that in the other panel and get a lot of

knowledge there. But what’s your figure on that?

Dr. MILLER. Well, actually, surge capacity in our hospitals is a

huge issue and there are few empty beds right now, so this is a

major problem in the case of a bioterrorism event or any other

event that requires a lot of hospital beds. And one of the major objectives of this hospital grant is to create regional hospitals that

will serve 500 patients, which is far beyond what we could do

today. So we need to be creative and think of ways and places

where you could actually take care of 500 patients in a region if

you had to.

And people are also looking at ways to increase bed capacity in

the case of an event and working out scenarios for that. I think

probably Mr. Wall could give you a lot more detail about that question, but it’s obviously an issue and one that will be addressed in

the hospital preparedness grant.

Mr. HORN. How about the Veterans Administration, are they involved in these committees and all the rest?

Dr. MILLER. They are.

Mr. HORN. How about it, General, are they at the table when

you’re coordinating things?

General WHITNEY. Sir, we don’t really have an interface with the

Veterans Administration other than our veterans affairs organization we have within the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs. Most of the interface that we have is the same thing that we

have with public safety as well as public health and environment.

So we go to the same meetings that they go to, but we don’t have

a direct interface with them.

Mr. HORN. When we started with the first of these series, it was

in Nashville, Tennessee, and Vanderbilt Medical School and Hospital. And we had various diversions trying to get the rural parts

of Tennessee involved as well as the urban. There is an incident

where you had some strange thing that’s attacked people, and they

don’t quite know what it is yet, and they want to bring it into an

urban hospital and land the helicopter on the roof. We found out

that even with all of the military forts and camps and you name

it in Tennessee, the military helicopters could also sit on the roof.

However there was no communication between them because of the

difference frequencies.

And I’m wondering, General, have we got any feeling around that

we’ve got some frequencies where people can go and involve the

law enforcement very rapidly and so forth? How much of a problem

is that?

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General WHITNEY. Well, that is a significant problem. We have

military frequencies, normally VHF and UHF radios and some FM

radio capability in our military aircraft helicopters, as you talked

to. We have significant Army aviation capability here in the State

of Colorado within our Colorado Army National Guard.

However, we also have the capability to talk to other local responders through a digital trunk radio that has been issued to the

Colorado National Guard, and we can give those to a helicopter

that, say, has to land on the roof of a hospital somewhere if we

need to. OEM has done a very good job, I think, of making sure

that all the State emergency responders can communicate with

each other in that respect.

Mr. HORN. Well, that’s encouraging. I’m also interested in where

we stand with laboratories other than CDC and other than the

State of Colorado. Is there a use for the the various colleges’ and

universities’ laboratories? Also the community colleges and the

high schools if you’re out in a rural situation, because Colorado is

spread out and it’s long miles to get to some of the things that we

ordinary go and just think it’s everywhere as in urban America or

urban Colorado. How do we help the people in the rural part?

Dr. MILLER. That’s a very good question, and the issue of surge

capacity is also a huge issue. It doesn’t take a lot for laboratories

also to become overwhelmed if there’s an event. And one of the

things that we are doing within our bioterrorism grant is trying to

bring all these laboratories together, the hospital laboratories, the

CSU laboratories, the university laboratories. We’ve done a survey

and tried to find out who has the capability, who needs to be

trained in order to understand what tests you can do to rule out

a bioterrorism agent, who needs to be trained about how to handle

these things carefully because, obviously, you do. So that’s a part

of our work, to try and reach out to these other labs.

And we recognize the rural issue too, and that’s why we are trying to increase the capacity in our local health departments, like

Mesa Health Department, Weld Health Department, El Paso; even

though that’s a metro area, they serve a rural area. So we are trying to address that issue.

Mr. HORN. Now, CDC, as I believe, has a certification program

in some of these laboratories. Is there a range of complexity? How

does it work?

Dr. MILLER. Yes, there is a range. There are level A, B, and C

laboratories. The State lab is a level C. That means we can quickly

identify bioterrorism agents using advanced molecular methods.

Level B laboratories have less advanced methods. Level A laboratories are basically clinical labs where they do hospital sorts of

work. At that level lab, really the lowest level lab, they need to be

able to rule out an agent, and say, ‘‘I identified it as X, therefore

I know it’s not anthrax.’’ If they can’t rule it out, they need to know

how to package it and get it to us or get it to a level B laboratory

where further work can be done.

Mr. HORN. Is there an overwhelming feeling yet in the Atlanta

CDC where they’re just overcome with people sending samples in

and all this. And will that get done or will we have to do it in another way by using the States and the localities?

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Dr. MILLER. I think during the anthrax event that was definitely

the case. Laboratories were overrun. And people are definitely trying to figure out how to avoid that if we have another threat like

that. And one of the things we need to do is work closely with the

FBI, and we did that in Colorado. We need to make sure we have

good threat assessment and that our laboratories are only used

when there’s a credible threat.

Some States didn’t do that; they allowed every specimen under

the sun into their labs, which is dangerous, first of all, because

those specimens weren’t screened well, but it also used up their capacities so that they couldn’t respond if there had been a credible

threat. So I think we actually did that pretty well in Colorado. We

were not completely incapacitated during the anthrax event, and

we want to continue to maintain that kind of policy and work closely with the FBI to do that.

Mr. HORN. Do you agree, gentlemen from FEMA and the FBI, on

this?

Mr. CARBALLIDO. I agree wholeheartedly. The protocols that we

set in place and worked very hard on were instrumental in the

screening process, absolutely.

Mr. HORN. Has that been done around the Nation or is it just

Colorado that’s doing it?

Mr. CARBALLIDO. It has been done in many places but not everywhere.

Mr. HORN. Because of your protocols which you’re very strong on,

I come from Los Angeles County. We have had protocols, compacts,

contracts, whatever you want to call it, for law enforcement, for fire

enforcement, all of that, so we can help each other even if it’s 500

miles north in the Santa Clara Valley or Central Valley and up to

Stockton so where they need help. So do we have a lot of that here

in Colorado?

You’ve got the big city here. And what about with the terrible

things that have happened in a lot of these States, and one of them

is Colorado, in terms of the fires and all, which puts tremendous

pressures on trying to get something done. What do you hear on

that and what do you think about it?

Mr. CARBALLIDO. We were not involved in the fire issue, sir.

That, we were not involved in.

Mr. BAKERSKY. The protocols that we have in place for support

from other Federal agencies, other State agencies. As far as the

FEMA Region VIII, because of western-type climate, you know,

large concentration in small areas of population, a lot of the protocols for mutual aid have been in place. A good example that we

had, we actually tested most of our protocols during the Olympics

in Utah. We brought in all of our resources, not just Federal assets,

but also additional State assets, using the protocols—like Dr. Miller was mentioning the anthrax—that were actually used during

some of the anthrax scares, during the Olympics.

So I think in this region we are fairly fortunate because of some

of the activities that we’ve had. We’ve had the protocols in place

between the law enforcement, between the emergency management

agencies. Like with the Pope’s visit, the G8 visit, the Olympics. So

we’ve had a lot of real-world events that helped develop this partnership between Federal/State/local, not only in the law enforceVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:17 Jul 23, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00059 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\87890.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ment side of the house, but also in the emergency management/

public safety side of the house. So they’ve been tested and they

work fairly well. And a lot of our protocols are basically prototypes

for some of the rest of the Nation, and also the activities that we

did in the Olympics are now prototypes for other agencies throughout the United States.

Mr. HORN. Some people in other States have said there’s just too

much money being spent on planning rather than providing necessary equipment and training for those on the front lines of emergency response.

Can you give us a feeling of what’s happening there? Is it just

planning or are we getting the goods so people can do their job, be

they a first, second, or third responder? FBI? FEMA? Anybody else

want to take it?

Mr. CARBALLIDO. I would simply say that planning is also paramount. I don’t know if there’s a balance between equipment and

planning in place, but planning cannot be underestimated. We exercise the plans, and I think that’s why we were successful in responding to the anthrax threat, which was major, as you well

know. So I really don’t know if there’s a balance that exists in Colorado between equipment, training, and planning, but planning is

paramount.

Mr. BAKERSKY. One of the things we looking at with the new

grant process is just not the planning, but the planning also includes equipment. When we are saying planning for equipment, we

are looking as the interoperability of the equipment. We want to

make sure that we have a standard. That’s what we are trying to

do with the new grant process is setting up a standard. Resource

typing, so that if you request a certain thing from another area,

you’re getting the same. Some of the problems that you have in

equipment, even on September 11th, things just as easy as hose

thread. You had on Staten Island——

Mr. TANCREDO. As what?

Mr. BAKERSKY. Hose thread, thread on the end of a hose. The

Staten Island Fire Department does not have hose that can be connected to New York City hydrants. So what they’re trying to do—

So you have the planning in equipment, but what you’re trying to

do is provide a standardization of equipment that could be used

throughout the United States. A good example——

Mr. HORN. That’s fascinating to me. These were borough differences of the five boroughs or so?

Mr. BAKERSKY. Yes, sir.

Mr. HORN. We do know Staten Island is different.

Mr. BAKERSKY. Yes, sir. I’m from New York originally, so——

Mr. HORN. And they didn’t know about that until the problems

came?

Mr. BAKERSKY. Probably not because they really did not—New

York City being such a large organization, they didn’t have mutual

aid compacts in place. When you have a fire department of 18,000

individuals, they’ve never had an event that was beyond the scope

of their capability, that they could not handle it with their own internal structures. September 11th came down and it did raise some

issues.

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There’s other examples you could use, like scuba gear. You can

go from one end of the country to another end of the country and

the regulator on scuba gear is the same. You go to the fire fighting

community and MSCA and 3M and SCBA equipment all might be

different threads. So that’s one of the things we are looking at besides the equipment, to have the planning to be sure that you have

the interoperability of the equipment that can be used in response

to an event.

Mr. HORN. Well, I’m glad you mentioned that because that’s

news to us. But you never would hear it in most places in America

anyhow unless you’ve seen it there.

Any other little things like interoperability not happening? Or do

you all have interoperability in Colorado? You’re either sick of

hearing it or is it done? And are there still gulfs somewhere that

aren’t getting treated?

Ms. MENCER. Mr. Chairman, I also serve on the national task

force for interoperability as well.

Mr. HORN. Boy, am I going to follow you around.

Ms. MENCER. In my spare time I do that. And I’m happy to report, after listening to the other States that are represented on

that task force, that we are far and away above many other States

with our interoperability issues, and I think that’s due directly

probably to Columbine, which emphasized to us that we needed to

be interoperable.

We have the digital trunk radio system in the State. We have

been progressing through different sectors of the State to accomplish that. Unfortunately, our funding was stopped this year because of our fiscal problems again. But once we get our funding reestablished, we’ll continue with our progressing across the State

with getting our DTR capabilities up. But, as you know, it was just

announced earlier this week, Senator Campbell effected this system that will be like a patch system for different radio systems so

that those areas of the State that are not interoperable, they will

be able to use this system to patch through and get them connected. So that is not a long-term solution to the problem of interoperability but is a short-term fix until we can get the digital trunk

radio system up all over the State. So we are working very hard

at that, and we have made great progress at that in the last couple

of years.

Mr. CARBALLIDO. If I may add, Mr. Chairman, we also have a

similar piece of equipment that we obtained—we were one of a

number of offices in the FBI—from our research facility that accomplishes the same purpose, and this was done after Columbine

as well.

Mr. HORN. Now, how much does this cost in terms of those that

have equipment and need to be changed? And when the Federal

Government gives a grant out, do you think they ought to say and

demand it, that if you’re going to use the taxpayers’ money, it

ought to be the right way, and figure out what are you going to

do with the equipment that is not doing very well? How do you

handle that?

Ms. MENCER. Mr. Chairman, this national task force is looking

to make statements to bring forward to the Office of Homeland SeVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:17 Jul 23, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00061 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\87890.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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curity, to the President, stating what they believe are the best

practices as far as interoperability goes.

I was amazed to learn when I attended my first meeting of this

task force that some States don’t even see the need for interoperability, which I think is amazing. But, of course, most States

haven’t had a Columbine incident to reinforce the necessity of this.

I think they will be coming forth with the statement encouraging

that all States go to some level of interoperability, 800 megahertz,

700 megahertz, whatever it happens to be for that State. I think

we will see all States coming on board with this eventually. But,

again, I think Colorado is far ahead of that curve, and I’m happy

that it is.

But it is a continuing issue. I think the Office of Homeland Security is looking at earmarking some funds particularly for interoperability, and that may be what we need as a State to continue with

our progress with getting the other sectors up in line. So I’m hopeful that we’ll see some funding in that regard.

Mr. HORN. Well, that’s good because there’s been some concern

about the department created, that they haven’t gone for standards

against which one can then know we’ve done something right or we

haven’t. And so we are going to urge that a little bit and give it

a nod.

There’s a number of questions we have here that we might want

to use for you. And let me just say, if you had 30 seconds with the

President of the United States, went into his office, what would you

say to President Bush is the most important thing on dealing with

terrorism?

Let’s just go down the line. General?

General WHITNEY. Well, sir, I guess as it relates to my specific

mission area, I would ask him how we could implement new equipment, new training, and new parts of our organization in order to

be able to meet the challenges of this terrorist threat.

Mr. HORN. How about it, Ms. Mencer?

Ms. MENCER. Well, I would first compliment him, I think, on

what he’s attempting to do with the Department of Homeland Security. I think focusing existing resources is what we need to do.

And I think the resources are there, the capabilities are there. We

need to have a place to focus those, and I think he’s doing that,

as we’ve tried to do in the State as well.

Mr. CARBALLIDO. Mr. Chairman, I think I would ask the President for a great deal of money and technology that exists presently

to create data bases throughout the country that could better coordinate all the information that we all receive at the various levels, to better connect the dots and improve on our intelligence base,

because for us that is the key to prevention and to be in a proactive

posture so that we don’t have to involve ourselves in crisis management.

Mr. HORN. Mr. Bakersky.

Mr. BAKERSKY. I would stress that we continue the initiatives

that were started with the fiscal year 2002, supplemental fiscal

year 2003, providing resources, both monetary and personnel resources, to States and locals, which basically are the first responders. They’re the individuals that are going to be putting their—everything on the line. When we have an incident, we have to make

59

sure that we have funding streams in the initiatives that are started and maintained for the next 3, 4, 5, 6, however many years it

takes.

Mr. HORN. Dr. Miller.

Dr. MILLER. I would panic, first of all, but——

Mr. HORN. No, you wouldn’t. He’s a really friendly guy.

Dr. MILLER. He does seem like a really friendly guy.

I would echo some of those comments, and I would stress that

this is really a new role for public health. And if we are really

going to develop this capacity in public health to respond to bioterrorism and to be part of emergency plans, we need long-term infrastructure support.

And I would also try and frame public health as part of the first

responder community. I think it’s easier to understand that way

that we also need to be prepared to be first responders, and that’s

a new role.

Mr. HORN. Very good. Any more thoughts?

Mr. TANCREDO. Nothing more. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Very,

very interesting.

Mr. HORN. And we have with us the General Accounting Office,

and at the end of the next panel. We bring them here because

we’ve got over 50 blue books already, and it’s very worthwhile material, if you don’t have it, and I would hope GAO would send it

to all of you. And we ask them, what haven’t we done? Where are

the openings that we don’t know what we are talking about? And

then go back to it. So that will come up after the next panel.

So you’ve done a wonderful job, all of you. And I think Colorado

seems to be in good hands. So we will now move to panel 2.

[Recess.]

Mr. HORN. Recess is over. And before we begin with Panel 2,

there is a statement, a very fine statement, by Representative

Mark Udall, and I would like the reporter to put that following the

Horn and Tancredo statements at the beginning of the thing. We’ll

put Mr. Udall’s in as it is, and she will give it to you.

I just want to make sure everybody is here. We’ve got Mr. Wall,

Mr. Sullivan, Lieutenant Hoffner, Lieutenant Wicks, and Mr.

Posner, so you know this procedure. Since it is an investigative

committee, if you have any staff to support you, have them take

the oath so I don’t have to do it in the middle of the areas. So if

you’ll raise your right hand.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. HORN. The five witnesses have affirmed the oath, and we

will begin with Mr. Wall. If some of you haven’t been here in the

first session, we were going right down the line in order. And as

we call your name, your whole, full written statement is automatically put in to the report, so you don’t have to give every word in

it, but we would like to have you give us 5 minutes or so, or maybe

10 sometimes, if it’s that wonderful, and we would like you to give

us the summary of it, and then we can get into the question period

at the end, and we’ll do that in each case. We’ve looked at the documents; they’ve been very good.

And so we’ll start right now then with Larry H. Wall, president

of the Colorado Health and Hospital Association.

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STATEMENT OF LARRY H. WALL, PRESIDENT, COLORADO

HEALTH AND HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION

Mr. WALL. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here. In addition to my responsibilities as president of

a hospital association, I’m also a member of the Governor’s Epidemic Emergency Response Committee, and I chair the Hospital

Preparedness Advisory Committee. I appreciate the opportunity to

testify before you this morning.

September 11th has obviously created a new world for all of us,

and that includes hospitals. Hospitals as first-line responders have

always been the foundation of a response to the medical needs of

patients, be they personal or as a result of natural disasters or flu

epidemics.

Historically, the resources of the hospital system have been adequate to meet the needs. The potential use of weapons of mass destruction and bioterror agents, however, results in the need for a

whole new level of preparedness. There are at least eight areas

that need to be addressed. One, communication and notification,

and we’ve heard a lot about that already this morning. Communication for hospitals is as critical as it is for other organizations

and agencies. Disease surveillance and reporting and laboratory

identification. That was referred to earlier as part of the intelligence network, which I think is an important issue. Personal protective equipment. Facility enhancements. Decontamination facilities. Medical, surgical, and pharmaceutical supplies. Training and

drills. And mental health resources. At this particular point the resources are not adequate to address all of these needs.

Just to use a very simple example, the 2-year HRSA allocation

for Colorado is approximately $4.5 million, or roughly $70,000 per

hospital. The estimated cost to address the communication issue

alone is in the neighborhood of $3.5 to $3.7 million, leaving little

for the remaining seven areas of need.

The current allocation of dollars, while it is very much appreciated, is really inadequate to meet the needs with regard to hospital preparedness. I think it’s important to understand, however,

that the public can certainly be assured that hospitals will be as

prepared as they possibly can within the constraints of the available resources. Neither Congress nor the American public should

assume that at the current level of Federal funding that hospitals

will be fully prepared to handle the outcome of a significant event.

We are significantly ahead of where we were on September 11th,

and progress on preparedness will continue to be made. But more

funding is needed if hospitals are to meet what I believe are the

preparedness expectations of Congress and the American public.

I want to thank you for the opportunity to testify, and I’ll certainly be happy to address specific questions with regard to hospital issues, some of which were raised in the earlier testimony.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wall follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Thank you very much, Mr. Wall. We now have David

B. Sullivan, acting director, Office of Emergency Management for

the city of Denver.

STATEMENT OF DAVID B. SULLIVAN, ACTING DIRECTOR,

OFFICE OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, CITY OF DENVER

Mr. SULLIVAN. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to

speak to you today. The events of September 11, 2001 have greatly

exacerbated the threat to this country from terrorist attacks.

Congress’s willingness to provide leadership, direction, and funding

to support our preparedness efforts has been greatly appreciated.

We at the local level are thankful for the support we’ve received

from Congress and the administration. Our efforts in Denver began

prior to September 11th with the Nunn-Lugar-Dominici legislation.

The equipment, training, and support we have received through

that program has greatly enhanced our preparedness; however,

there is still a great deal of work to be done. The $3.5 billion allocated for first responders in the President’s

homeland security strategy is truly needed, and we applaud the efforts of the administration and Congress, but there are some concerns. First and foremost is the competitive nature of the grant

process that pits local first responders against each other for the

Federal funds. This has been a problem in the past with the Department of Justice grants and continues to be troublesome.

Terrorism events will tax the full resources of local jurisdictions,

States, and the Federal Government. We must be prepared to respond in a comprehensive manner utilizing all resources available.

The burden for response lies squarely on local jurisdictions. State

and local Federal resources are sometimes hours or days away. The

capability of the initial response is what will save lives. Rather

than fund specific first responders, funding should be made available through local jurisdictions to provide for all their needs rather

than preidentified disciplines. The breakdown of the funding in the

homeland security strategy identifies how the moneys will be distributed. The distribution is similar to past DOJ programs in that

only 9 percent of the $37 billion allocated for homeland defense will

go to local jurisdictions. Of the moneys going to the States for passthrough funding, 25 percent will remain at the State level for

whatever requirements the States determine. However, the 75 percent passed through to local jurisdictions are predetermined, fitting

into defined categories of planning, equipment, training, and exercises. Amounts are predetermined for each category and the State

determines priorities. Unfortunately, each jurisdiction’s different,

with different threat levels, different levels of preparation, and different resource needs. As such they should be given the same opportunity the States have in determining how the moneys are utilized.

Emergency management, by its very nature, must integrate and

collaborate with all the players involved on issues of domestic preparedness. Funding is required not only to provide initial resources, but also to create an infrastructure of domestic preparedness that will be a long-term integrated component of the day-today operations of an emergency management system. Federal support for local emergency management programs have slowly eroded

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over the past 15 years to the point where many emergency management programs have either been dissolved or incorporated into

other supplemental responsibilities of another municipal agency or

department. Local emergency management programs have always

been the forgotten stepchild of other public safety agencies in terms

of funding and authority. While the various and numerous Federal

agencies have provided grants to traditional first responders, there

has not been funding directed to support local emergency management agencies. Federal funds to build, maintain, or improve local

emergency operation centers ended nearly 10 years ago, and there

are little or no local funds to pay for capital improvements to such

centers. If local communities are truly expected to be the first line

of protection in the new homeland defense system, they must be

properly equipped to facilitate efficient and effective decisionmaking in an adequate emergency operations center. Funds are

needed to immediately—funds are needed immediately to upgrade

and establish a full functional EOC in each community.

While we at the local level support the enhancement of homeland

security on a national level, we must never lose sight of the normal

day-to-day emergencies and disasters that affect and could potentially devastate our communities. Attention and resources for

floods, tornadoes, winter storms, wildfires, and other natural technological hazards must not be diminished at the expense of today’s

hot topic of weapons after mass destruction and homeland security.

As local emergency managers, we stand ready to assist by coordinating the planning, training, and resources of our jurisdictions in

developing comprehensive readiness programs. We look to you for

assistance in developing these programs, recognizing the critical coordination role that local and emergency managers play in developing readiness programs. We do not operate as single disciplines

when preparing for or responding to natural disasters, and we certainly should not do so within the arena of terrorism.

Again, I thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Sullivan follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Thank you, Mr. Sullivan. Lieutenant Roger E.

Hoffner, Arapahoe County officer of emergency management. Glad

to have you.

STATEMENT OF LIEUTENANT ROGER E. HOFFNER, ARAPAHOE

COUNTY OFFICER OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT

Mr. HOFFNER. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. I apologize I don’t have a prepared presentation. I was under the understanding that my sheriff was going to be presenting this morning,

so I bowed to him.

What I’d like to do is—and what Dave Sullivan said, I agree to

wholeheartedly. The emergency managers in the metropolitan area

work very closely together, and what he said is right on track. I’d

like to say a little bit about where I came from before I get to

where we are and where we are going.

In 1996 I became the emergency manager for the county. Before

that I was a deputy for over 15 years. And up to that point the only

thing I knew and was aware of is what the responsibilities were

for our response on the street to those everyday calls. I had no understanding or very little about incident command. I had very little

understanding about preparedness for big disasters, none of that.

And when I took the emergency management position, I found out

that the job was probably more massive than I ever imagined, and

it’s more massive than I still imagine. I have never had a job that

I haven’t been able to master in 6 months to a year, and I’ve been

doing this for 61⁄2 years, and there are days I still feel lost. It’s an

incredible job.

In 1998 I had an opportunity to go to an exercise sponsored by

the Department of Energy in Las Vegas. It was then that I started

learning about PPE, personal protective equipment. They talked

about the Quick Masks that every capital police officer in D.C. was

wearing on their belt. I took that back and decided to do a grant

to try to get gas masks. Because if we look in most of our police

cars, they’d be lucky if they had an old military gas mask that’s

a false sense of security; they have nothing.

So with that money I applied for, $45,000, I got 400 gas masks.

And the other thing that went with that is I tried to find out from

government what was the best thing I could get for my money. And

they all said, ‘‘Well, now, we could give you a list of things, but we

can’t tell you which one because that’s a conflict of interest.’’ Well,

I found that very frustrating because I wanted to spend the best

money that I could, get the most I could out of it, and be able to

protect my people. So I did my own research and I bought 400

masks with the best chem/bio filter they had and distributed it to

our people in Arapahoe County, but I was still 1,000 gas masks

short of what I needed. When we started——

Mr. HORN. What do you have now?

Mr. HOFFNER. Right now I have about 850 bags out there, and

that’s where I’m going to go to. One of the things that we started

with, where we really picked up our information, is the federally

funded Top-Off 2000 exercise that came to Denver with the biological release. I was involved in that from the beginning with the

planning phase, up through the incident command, and with the

hot wash at the end to do a critique on.

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A lot of people thought that was a failure. I thought it was an

incredible success because what we did was we learned and we

learned and we learned some more. And one of the big things we

learned was that we don’t have a good communication system. And

we never worked that closely with the department of health, with

hospitals, and we have no communications with them. We learned

an awful lot from that and we are building on it. And when Aurora

had the Nunn-Lugar money come down to do their exercises, one

of the last ones they did about 4 months ago was almost identical

to Top-Off, and the responses we had to that showed me that it’s

working, that people were working together, that we were talking

about communications, that we were talking about our response,

we were talking about mass distribution of medical aid to people.

So it’s working. That money was very well spent.

The MMRS, the Metropolitan Medical Response System, was another grant that came down, and Aurora and Denver both were cities of that. And with Aurora getting the last one, we’ve had incredible response about making sure that money went to good use. We

put stockpiles of supplies, Mark 1s and medical supplies for first

responders to an incident. A major success, I think, for our front

range.

And that other money that we used is—I had an opportunity to

take our county back to Emmitsburg, Maryland, to the Emergency

Managers Institute for an integrated emergency management exercise in the November 2000. They were all leaders of our county, all

taken care of by Federal funds. That brought us together. There

were people there I didn’t think they could be in the same room,

and as a matter of fact, when it came down to it, they worked very

well together. So I’ve had the opportunity to meet with that group

and followup every 3 to 6 months with followup meetings, with

training, with tabletops, with that kind of thing, and that has been

incredible. All federally funded money. Again, a success.

But then I get to the money that came down for 1999, 2000,

2001, and my image, when I think about New York City, is, sure,

I see the plane going into the building, but my biggest image is seeing those cops and firemen with handkerchiefs tied around their

faces and gagging and coughing and can’t breathe.

So what I did with that money when it came down, Arapahoe

and Douglas Counties did a regional application. I got—$352,000 is

what was targeted for us. And I had in my mind that I wanted to

put together some kind of first responder bag for these first responders, for the cops that are going to be out there first. We needed to take care of them.

When September 11th happened, my money was sitting someplace between here and who knows where. So I asked the Office

of Emergency Management, the State, if they would request

$113,000 to be expedited so I could get those bags together as

quickly as possible. And they did that. And with that 113,000, I put

805 bags together, which included a chemical/bio mask, a chem

suit, goggles, three different kinds of gloves, a decontamination kit,

eyewash, earplugs, disposable mask, and put it all in a canvas bag

that they could carry in their car. I assigned one of those to 805

cops. Still short, but I picked the primary, most probable officers

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that would respond and said, how many do we need? And I gave

them out. They were very well received.

The only problem that comes up is we have a question about

training. How do we meet OSHA standards? Well, reaching out to

my resources that I have met over the last 6 years and my contacts, I had a meeting 2 days ago with Tri-County Health and with

three representatives from National Jewish Hospital. They came

up with a plan to implement training to include medical, limitations, and fit tests, which are the three primary things for OSHA.

They’re going to do a proposal to me. They’re going to do it on

a very reasonable fee, and I’m going to include that in the grant,

and it’s going to cover every person that received a mask. And we

are going to be able to take those and be able not to have—and one

of the reasons why I went with this is, it’s multifaceted; we can use

them for the WMD event. But we can also use them for that everyday thing that happens, the turned-over tanker, with a meth lab,

or whatever that they’re doing perimeters on, to protect themselves. Some protection. They have nothing.

The next round of money that’s coming now, we are hoping to get somewhere around $500,000, which I’m going to try to get probably

another 1,000 bags put together to cover every cop in two counties.

And now I’ve added one of the rural counties, Elbert County, into

it because they pretty much have nothing. And I thought, well,

being big brother, we can help them out. So we are going to bring

them in, and I’m going to make sure every cop gets it.

The extra money that we’ve had with that—we call it extra because it’s just in addition to that—is that our HAZMAT teams and

our fire departments have been reinforced with detection equipment, with decon equipment, and personal protection equipment.

And although we have not met every need that we would like to

have, we have far exceeded—and I can’t even imagine how far

we’ve exceeded—over 1996 when I started.

So, yeah, we could use more money. We could use more money

all the time, and there’s other things we could do. But with the

money we’ve had, we’ve come a long way.

We talked about interoperability with radio systems; that was

one of the comments that was made earlier, the interoperability of

communication systems. What they do is they plug in a radio and

it allows them to talk to each other. But if there’s no control on

who gets on those radios, there’s going to be such mass chaos that

you won’t be able to communicate, but you’ve got one frequency

now or maybe two.

The other question we need to deal with is the incident command

system, to have that somehow supported by Federal Government

down to the State level that says that, yeah, we strongly suggest

that everyone uses the incident command system, which includes

a communications plan within that system. So that we know that

when you have this one frequency, the only person talking on it is

a commander, and everybody else talks with other frequencies

within their own department. And we can do that. But I think if

we don’t have that communication, we are going to be lost, just like

we were with Columbine.

And on the grants, real quickly, I agree with Dave that when

these grants come in, it’s hard to look at a grant when we say we

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need communications and the grant is telling me that we need to

spend $500,000 on needs assessment. We know what the needs are;

we don’t need to have somebody tell us that we need to do a needs

assessment.

Mr. HORN. This is—which agency made that statement?

Mr. HOFFNER. Which one?

Mr. HORN. On the one that you would have to do a needs assessment.

Mr. HOFFNER. That comes down on a lot of grants. They have

areas that say specifically you have to spend this much money on,

and we are saying, ‘‘No, we’d like to spend it on this.’’ And they

say, ‘‘No, our guidelines are there.’’ And what I’d like to see is be

able to—like Mr. Sullivan said, is to be able to have those grants

so they’re a little more open. And the new one coming down has

a little more latitude to it. And it’s going to allow us to be able to

do a little more approach to exact needs of our local agencies, and

I think that’s critical.

And I’ll shut up except for questions. Thank you.

Mr. HORN. Very interesting.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Lieutenant Wicks, Office of Safety Services, Police Division, city of Englewood.

STATEMENT OF LIEUTENANT BYRON D. WICKS, OFFICE OF

SAFETY SERVICES, POLICE DIVISION, CITY OF ENGLEWOOD

Mr. WICKS. Yes, sir. The Department of Safety Services for the

city of Englewood incorporates fire and police as well as building

codes and code enforcement. So when I speak, I speak both from

the fire and police perspective.

My current assignment is as the investigations bureau commander. And before I get started, I want to make note that we are

the benefactor of Lieutenant Hoffner’s initiative and project. And

we have, I believe, about 76 of those 805 bags that Lieutenant

Hoffner’s agency has donated to us, and we appreciate that.

Right after October or in October 2001, shortly after the September tragedy, my director appointed me czar of the Englewood Office

of Preparedness and Security, as he called it, and Lieutenant

Hoffner’s been in this business for 6 years and if he feels confused;

I’ve been in it for about 10 months and I know I am. So my perspective is definitely one from the operator’s point of view, and

that’s based on 27 years of law enforcement experience, 31 years

as a commissioned officer in the Marine Corps in which I was always assigned to operational billets. So as Lieutenant Hoffner indicates, operations at the level that we deal with is critical.

The two points that I want to bring up, and you’re going to hear

a lot of this, if you haven’t already, is, first, the issue of interoperability. I know it’s a hot topic, but if we don’t have it, we are lost.

And as sort of a subset to that issue of interoperability, I include

communications, obviously, and that is definitely a problem, planning, and commonality in terms of response.

There isn’t that much difference in a typical response that agencies in a suburban area would have. It’s not to say that one size

is going to fit all, but with minor modifications, it would be about

a 95 percent solution. But when we are on one page and Arapahoe

County’s on another, even if we can talk to each other, we are not

going to function well enough to do the job correctly the first time.

Which brings up the issue of exercises, both interagency and

intra-agency exercises. And along with that, it would be nice if

there was some standard, if you will, if Arapahoe County and Englewood had an exercise that maybe the State would say, ‘‘This is

the way we want to go,’’ so we have a common direction, a common

focus, not just for our two agencies, but all agencies in the State

of Colorado.

And then the second point I want to just address very quickly,

and Roger virtually said everything I was going to say: As a grant

administrator, funding issues are always an issue. One, obviously,

is the amount of Federal funding in terms of grants, but maybe

even more important than that, and Roger addressed this, is the

fact that, one, how is it going to be spent? We recognize our own

strengths and we also recognize our areas of need better than anybody else does.

Second of all is the form the grant comes in and the complexity

that we have to deal with in terms of reporting what we’ve done

with the moneys. Some grants, as a grant administrator, we will

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not accept, we will not apply for, because it’s so difficult, it’s so

painful as an organization to account for that money, we simply

won’t do it we will not take any grants from the COPS program.

Mr. HORN. Did you ever have money from the COPS?

Mr. WICKS. Yes, we did, and we were audited, and it was incredibly painful, and it was just too difficult to prove what they were

asking us to prove.

Mr. HORN. Well, you also had the problem of the localities and

the cities of having to go out and add some people to their law enforcement, either their fire or for police and the sheriff’s office, and

that would be—got you out on a string there, and the Federal Government money suddenly comes off. And I don’t know how much

that was a factor in saying that—that program happened to be my

law which was merged into it, because I wanted people just like

you, a Marine, when you’re retired from the military, I thought it

was a good thing to do that because we needed police people. This

was back in 1992–93, and so I was curious about what the problem

was there with COPS. I do know there was a lot of bias as to the

politics of it. That isn’t unusual, but a little more than one.

Mr. WICKS. Well, we only spent about half our money and tried

to give it back. That is impossible, to give back money on a grant.

I mean, we couldn’t spend it, we couldn’t give it back. It was very

burdensome. So right now the only grants that we will apply for

are the block grants. And, quite frankly, I like the format of block

grants because we get to choose the area in which we spend it, a

one-page justification for the expenditures, and show them a receipt.

Mr. HORN. Well, I agree with you. I was a big advocate, beating

the drums, long before I got into Congress in terms of revenue

sharing, and that way the localities were much more able to figure

out the needs than somebody sitting in Washington. That’s my approach to it. There’s the revenue sharing.

Mr. WICKS. And the last thing Roger brought up as well is we

are one of the few police departments that uses the incident command system. Apparently Arapahoe County does. We use it because in safety services we combine with fire. Almost all fire departments use them but very few police departments. It’s a great

system, and it would be nice if the State agencies in the State of

Colorado were like those in California where they all use the incident command system. They’re all talking the same language and

we all understand the responsibilities and jobs in a collective endeavor.

And with that, I’ll rest.

Mr. HORN. That’s very helpful, and we’ll go in and do a few more

things.

And now we have Paul L. Posner, Managing Director of Federal

Budget Issues, Strategic Issues, U.S. General Accounting Office.

Some of you, I think, are well known by it, and that is headed by

the Comptroller General of the United States, currently Dave

Walker, first-rate person, who believes in management and believes in people working together and all the rest. And he’s got a

15-year appointment, and nobody can fuss around with him, including the President and the Congress, which is a pretty good

deal. He deserves it, and he’s doing a great job.

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And so we’ve asked Mr. Posner to tell us what’s missing and

what haven’t we got into that we should have gotten into. And if

we’ve got something that isn’t working right, we throw it over to

him because we like his little blue books. There’s about 50 blue

books they’ve put out, by the way, on terrorism; isn’t that right,

easily 50?

Mr. POSNER. Probably more, but easily 50, yeah.

STATEMENT OF PAUL L. POSNER, MANAGING DIRECTOR, FEDERAL BUDGET ISSUES, STRATEGIC ISSUES, U.S. GENERAL

ACCOUNTING OFFICE

Mr. POSNER. Well, thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here, and it’s

a pleasure to hear the other testimonies such compelling ways

showing that our Federal system is still vital. It reminds us at

Washington how valiant the efforts have been out here, and when

we craft new Federal responses, we better be sure that we support

and don’t kill that kind of initiative and passion.

We are realizing slowly that this challenge is beyond the capacity

of any one level of government, including Washington, and it

means that what we do here involves a national not a Federal response. It means it has to be collaborative, partnerial in nature.

We have over 40 Federal agencies involved in this problem, 22 of

which are going to be consolidated into the Department of Homeland Security, and there’s still going to be a significant number of

agencies not in this department, I might add. We have State governments from which we’ve heard, local governments, special districts; we have 87,000 units of those. We have private players who

are critical in addressing this problem, and somehow we all have

to figure out a way to integrate and overcome the stovepipes that

have traditionally, at least at the Federal level, and are used to

having these. I started my career with the New York City budget

office and was familiar with stovepipes in city government as well.

One of the things that’s so critical we’ve heard, particularly after

September 11th, is the statement with regard to the first responders, and that’s obviously a critical role. We’ve heard a lot about

that, how you’re better preparing yourself. But throughout the

whole range of this problem, State and local governments are critical. But the last panel brought that up very well that even in counterintelligence and counterterrorism efforts, State and local governments are really critical players because we at the Federal level

don’t have the resources that you do. There are 650,000 police officers in this country, and it’s dawning on Federal agencies that to

respond to the kind of threat we are facing, they have to get into

the community and have those kinds of information—they need to

better find a way to tap the kind of information that you have and

the resources you have. And that’s why the INS is starting to contract with local police departments to chase down visa overstayers

because their staffs simply aren’t enough to do the job.

It’s true for critical infrastructure. How do we protect critical infrastructure? The Federal Government doesn’t own much and

doesn’t do much on its own. The critical infrastructure—the roads,

the highways, the transit facilities, the ports in this country, the

drinking water—are all really owned by State and local governments and private sector. And so how we can kind of figure out a

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way to mobilize a response on a national level is absolutely critical

to solving this problem. And the dilemma for any local official, having been one myself at one time, is that you have really a lot of

different players involved with these things. You don’t control

much, but, you sure are accountable for almost everything. And so

that’s why, you know, it’s important that we help you better address those kinds of issues.

I will say that there are shifts going on right now in the way

we—and we’ve heard here at the local level some of the important

initiatives going on. At the Federal level, we all, of course, know

about the President’s proposed a Department of Homeland Security. The House has passed a bill largely following his proposal.

The Senate has a somewhat different bill that has not yet passed.

We are awaiting a resolution of that this fall. We believe at GAO

that is a promising first step, a necessary but not sufficient step.

It’s important to get all the relevant players, for example, border

security, get it together. Does that mean they’ll all really work together? No. That’s why putting them into a department is probably

the first of a maybe 10-year journey before we really achieve the

kind of harmonization and integration that we need. In the bill, for

example, the Customs Service still has autonomy with regard to

submitting its budget directly to Congress, notwithstanding the

new department. So there are forces that still are going to be very

difficult to address as the department, if we get a department, tries

to bring some more cohesion to this.

Grants is one of the real important tools that we think the department will use and consolidation of grants is important. And

you all have experienced the Department of Justice and FEMA and

the Public Health Service and a variety of other separate funding

streams coming down with different requirements, and we kind of

dump it in your lap, and you’ve got to figure out how to bring them

together. The Federal Government can do a better job of bringing

some cohesion to that up front and providing some national goals,

but giving you flexibility in how you address them.

So those are some of the challenges that we are starting to move

to, but we’ve also seen some significant shifts already, not even

passing the statute yet, in long-standing roles and relationships between these levels of government. National defense was historically

a national responsibility, a Federal responsibility. Fire and police

were historically a local responsibility. What this crisis is bringing

to light is that defense is increasingly a local responsibility, protecting the Nation from this kind of insidious attack. And that, in

fact, local police and how you work together is a national level interest. So we are bringing more of these kinds of levels that used

to be separate together in some way, and the key is how can we

do it in a way that both provides accountability to achieve some national expectations but gives flexibility to avoid a one-size-fits-all.

For example, when you look at what’s in the offing right now,

what’s on the table, we have a new law that Congress passed requiring local drinking water systems to do vulnerability assessments and develop protection plans with some Federal money. We

have a new Coast Guard regime that’s putting a new Federal responsibility over the ports; that used to be a State and local responsibility. The Coast Guards requiring plans in 55 major ports. Fire

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services are again going to get a lot of Federal help but also probably some Federal standards. Communications, historically, we’ve

heard, is a fairly fragmented thing. Every State and every community does it somewhat differently. The Office of Homeland Security’s plans say that as a condition for Federal grants, local and

State governments are going to try to achieve some greater interoperability, some national standards coming down in that arena.

For the motor vehicles issue every State has a separate Department of Motor Vehicles. We are now seeing national proposals coming from Congress and the President to nationalize that responsibility, to get States to provide better secure documents when they

issue driver’s licenses so that we don’t have terrorists able to counterfeit these kinds of documents. So there’s going to be greater national pressures building on local services. The question is, how can

we do it in a way that accommodates both national and local roles?

We’ve also seen State and local roles changing, and that’s one of

the issues when we talk about what’s missing here. One of the

things we’ve been doing is we’ve been going out, and we’ve seen,

as jurisdictions within metropolitan regions attempting to work together more closely. Bringing together partners across a community as widespread as the Denver Metropolitan area is not an easy

challenge. Every metropolitan area has tens, or hundreds in some

cases, of governments, special purpose and others, that are responsible to their own constituencies. How to bring some harmonization

together is always a challenge.

And so as we look down from the Federal angle, we see some of

these problems are clearly local, some of them seem to be State,

when the States can provide leadership, and some of them might

best be done on a regional basis. And we’ve seen, as we visited, a

lot of this starting to happen on its own. Mutual aid agreements

historically have been in place. The public health networks are improving. And we are seeing a lot more here in Denver and other

areas of regional efforts to promote better sharing and promote

more economy of scale in how we provide for this expertise we

need. But more, clearly, can be done in that regard, and it’s historically very difficult to get communities, whether in the Washington

area or New York area, to really collaborate with one another. And

that’s the kind of thing that we need to promote.

And we look at critical infrastructure areas, and we also see a

lot of fragmentation there. Take, for example, airports. Airports

have a patchwork quilt of different players responsible for security.

We have TSA now responsible once you go through the gate. We

have local and State governments responsible for the perimeter.

We have the National Guard that comes in from time to time. We

have the FAA that has responsibility. The airlines have responsibilities. So when we look at the safety of airlines and airline travel, we have a lot of players. And it’s not clear to anyone that this

has really been sorted out.

The same thing goes for something like food safety. You take the

distribution chain and you have, you know, from the farm to the

processor to the retail establishment to the grocery store or the restaurant, very different governmental roles and responsibilities for

each stage of that process. The farmer is pretty much on their own.

We have some kind of State roles there. When you get to the procVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:17 Jul 23, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00087 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\87890.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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essing plants, why, there you have two different Federal agencies:

The Agriculture Department responsible for meat and poultry, and

the FDA responsible for pretty much everything else. We don’t

have any Federal standards; we have voluntary standards that

those agencies have put out for that phase of the distribution process. When we get to the restaurants, that’s totally State and local.

So what the President’s homeland security plan suggested, and

I think this is a useful thing to think about, is having a national

strategy for each one of these critical infrastructure areas so that

we would at least have a way to agree as a Nation whether we are

comfortable and whether those roles and responsibilities are appropriate.

Given all these different players, it’s really important to have

clear goals and measures as we craft national strategies—what we

are trying to achieve. How much security is enough, and how will

we know it when we get there? The presence or absence of a terrorist event is not an acceptable performance measure. We want at

national levels to make more of these investments. The quid pro

quo is, I think, we are going to want to see some demonstrable

changes in the results, in the outcomes. What are we getting by

way of approved protection? Are there ways to measure it? Can we

get every one of the systems to subscribe to those measures?

Finally, we’ve heard a lot of discussion, rightly so, about assistance, and we need to think more clearly at the national level about

how we are going to get this done. Because, clearly, every hearing

we do and every time we go to the local level, needs are incredibly

large and always outrun the funding available. I’m reminded that

the congressional budget office on Tuesday is going to issue their

latest deficit update for the Federal Government; $160 billion deficit in 2002.

One of my other responsibilities at the General Accounting Office

is to develop long-range Federal budget forecasts. And given the

aging of our population and the increasing demands of Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, why, our forecast of CBOs say

that at current tax rates, we are going to be able to basically pay

for the elderly and their doctors and that’s about it in 20 years. In

other words, we are quickly running, as the baby boomers retire,

into dire fiscal straits. And so the question is, how do we respond

to these urgent needs in a way that is both effective and economical? And that means we are going to have to think hard about how

to best target these moneys, how to best ensure that we are going

to get something of value for this. How, for example, to ensure that

when we hand money down to local communities and States that

they don’t simply turn around and replace their own money with

our money and cut taxes or put it in some other area. In other

words, we need to prevent fiscal substitution. We need to have reasonable accountability provisions. I know that planning sometimes

can go a little awry. Some kind of, again, assurance of results in

terms of what we are getting for the money is important.

And, finally, there is the question of sustainability. How long

should the Federal Government be involved, and what should be

the Federal versus the State versus the local shares of costs in

these things? So the point is, I think, by and large, we have to figVerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:17 Jul 23, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00088 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\87890.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ure out a way to have a national and not a Federal approach. How

do we balance accountability and flexibility, and how do we do it

in a way that capitalizes on the strengths of each of the levels of

government in forming a real partnership. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Posner follows:]

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Mr. HORN. OK. And let us go back a minute now on a few questions, and then we’ll wrap it up.

Mr. Wall, I was curious as to what degree are the Veterans Administration hospitals and clinics working with your overall association, and what do you feel the VA can do in terms of some of

the things we’ve talked about in terms of the attacks of chemistry,

biology, you name it, and are we prepared for the private, nonprofits, and the VA, and the military hospitals?

Mr. WALL. Several questions there. I’m not sure I have answers

to all of those, but——

Mr. HORN. Are they part of your group?

Mr. WALL. The VA system, at least in Denver, the hospital in

Denver is a member of the association. The other outlying VA hospitals are not members. They are appointed to be represented on

the hospital preparedness advisory committee, but to date I don’t

believe we’ve had a representative attend any of our hospital preparedness advisory committee meetings. With regard to the issue

of capacity that you raised earlier, there was a time in Colorado

when we had approximately 5 beds per 1,000 population. As a result of the changes in the health care economy, we are down today

to about 2 beds per 1,000 population. So the issue of excess capacity is not present any longer, and I think Dr. Miller talked about

surge capacity, and we right now as part of the needs assessment

process are evaluating how many gurneys are available, can beds

be put in hallways, do we have power to be able to do that, and

so on and so forth. So I think the issue of capacity with regard to

application to a significant event is something of a very significant

nature that we need to be very, very concerned about.

For example, most hospitals in Colorado were built in the 1960’s

and 1970’s. We obviously have some that are——

Mr. HORN. Hill-Burton?

Mr. WALL. A lot of Hill-Burton money around the country and

Colorado included. Emergency power needs in the 1960’s and

1970’s were very different than emergency power needs today. I

mean, computers weren’t even a reality back in those days, and

now all of the technology that we have is basically driven by computers. Emergency power was not, in fact, required at that level at

that time. It was basically required to be able to continue a surgery

in an OR, for hall lighting, perhaps for food preparation, but nowhere near to the extent were the power requirements in place in

that time that we have today. So to upgrade capacity in case power

had to be self-sustaining is a very significant issue for most hospitals in the eventuality of an event like this.

Work force capacity is a significant issue today. Even if we had

all of the equipment that we needed, even if we had all the beds

we needed, the question is, where is the work force going to come

from to staff those beds if all of a sudden you had a need for 1,000

new patients in a metropolitan area like Denver? I can tell you

right now the capacity is not there to address an event of that size.

Dr. Miller was talking about the work that we are doing trying

to address this issue on a regional basis where we could take care

of 500 patients. That is a lot of additional patients in a system

which, quite frankly, from a bed capacity point of view, is there

right now.

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So there are some very significant needs out there, and that’s

why I raise the funding issue as important. And clearly the money

is needed for the improvement of the infrastructure for public

health. There’s no question about that. But to put that in context,

the first-year grants to public health were about $14 million in the

State of Colorado. The first-year HRSA grant for hospitals in the

State of Colorado was $1.9 million, a portion of which is utilized

for staff required as part of the grant as well as the cost of the

needs assessment which was part of the grant as well. So we may

net out of that for hospital capability the first year maybe a million

and a half dollars. And I can tell you, that doesn’t begin to scratch

the surface in terms of having hospitals prepared. And the issue of

preparedness is ongoing. It’s not that we get ready for a year and

then we don’t have to be concerned about it. This is going to be an

issue of ongoing concern well into the future, and I think we need

to look at it in a long-term context.

Mr. HORN. I think some of these terrorists will be doing a lot of

mischief, and most hospitals have a separate supply of electricity

and energy, I think I’m right on that, where they have gasoline and

motors, should they ever try to do something like knocking down

the towers and all that. And that will probably happen just as it

did in New York. But the power goes out and all the rest, and what

do we do and what are we doing now to make sure that they can’t

get to the different batteries that are in many hospitals and motors

to generate that energy?

Mr. WALL. I think you have two issues there. Certainly hospitals

have emergency capability. I think my point is that the bulk of that

emergency capability in hospitals is undersized based upon the

power needs of hospitals in the year 2000. And for us to think that

we have the capability on those emergency power systems to run

all of the equipment that we would need in order to respond to an

event like this, I think is not appropriate. It is just not there.

Emergency power capability is critically important.

With regard to the issue of security, hospitals throughout this

country, and certainly in Colorado, have internal security forces in

most cases, although, again, the further outside the metropolitan

area one goes, the more problematic that becomes. But there certainly would be ways, I think, of protecting a hospital from outside

mischief, for the most part. Those generators are tested periodically, and they are available. But, again, it’s a question of the capability of those generation systems that is in question.

Mr. HORN. The first panel, before they went away, we said, if you

could see the President for 30 seconds, what’s the most important

thing you’d tell him?

Mr. WALL. I think there’s probably three things. One is the continued need for ongoing work force development. And sometimes

that may not be viewed as part of preparedness, but the reality is

we can have all the equipment and capacity we need, but if the

work force isn’t there to provide the care, it’s all for naught. So I

think work force development is absolutely essential.

Second, the training of that work force is critical. The issue of

bioterror agents, chemical agents, and weapons of mass destruction

are new things for hospitals to have to deal with. I think—As the

lieutenant said earlier, he’s been in this 6 years and still feels lost

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on occasion, and I think the same is true for health care professionals, although that’s their daily routine. We are talking about a

new and different time and new and different agents, which is

going to require extensive training and ongoing training because of

the turnover of personnel that occurs as well.

And then last, obviously, the equipment needs that we have.

Most hospitals, certainly outside of Metro Denver, do not have individual decontamination capability. There’s very little personal protective equipment available. And, obviously, the key thing we’ve

talked about today is the communications system. And in a State

like Colorado, with our varied geography, communication in nonemergency circumstances is a tremendous challenge, let alone during an emergency where it’s necessary for all first-line responders

and enforcement agencies and incident command centers to all be

able to talk with one another with regard to the management of

that incident. And I can tell you that is a tremendous problem in

the State of Colorado.

Mr. HORN. What do you feel are the human, in terms of personnel, type of issues for the hospitals? Is it the nurse shortage?

Mr. WALL. Nursing is clearly an issue, but in Colorado we also

have shortages of radiologic technologists, laboratory personnel.

Labs have been mentioned a number of times today, and laboratory

personnel are in short supply. And another key profession is that

of pharmacists. We have a significant shortage of pharmacists

throughout the entire country. And if you begin to think about the

distribution of pharmaceutical supplies during an event of this nature, they’re going to be a very key profession in our ability to respond.

Mr. HORN. What about the various scholarships we have had?

Maybe they aren’t enough. We’ve had nursing scholarships from

the Federal Government. We’ve had the GI bill generally after the

Second World War. And what do you think the government should

do about that? Now we are talking about bringing people from the

Philippines and all that, and they’re already here. I mean, they’ve

been here for probably two decades at least. How do you think

you’re going to solve this problem of getting them educated?

Mr. WALL. Well, I think, again, Mr. Chairman, it goes back to

the issue of adequate funding for the training of the health professions. And over the years, I think if you look at the expenditure

for the education of health professionals, it’s progressively become

less and less and less. And I know Congress right now is looking

at a Nursing Reinvestment Act. I think that’s a critical issue, but

not only for nursing, but for the other health professions as well.

We in health care have our own work to do to make health care

an attractive profession for individuals as well. Quite frankly, the

ability to move into the computer sciences where you work 5 days

a week, 8 hours a day, make significant 6-figure incomes, compared

to nursing, where you’re working 7 days a week or you’re at least

available 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, that’s

not very enticing to young people. And I think we need to do some

things about that from the point of health care as well. But we

clearly need to reemphasize the importance of the health care professions at the national level.

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Mr. HORN. Thank you. Mr. Sullivan, if you were in the President’s oval office for 30 seconds, what would you tell him?

Mr. SULLIVAN. I think I’d just sum up my earlier remarks. Additional resources, flexibility in their use, coordination, and the interoperability of communications equipment, and that would be both

the personnel and the technical interoperability. We have a tendency, I think, to focus on solving our communication needs by buying new radio systems. It’s been my experience that a lot of the

communication doesn’t take place because of cultural differences or

blinders, if you will, of the agencies involved. And that’s something

we need to address.

Mr. HORN. So you’ve really got to work with the culture of bureaucracy, bureaucracy by bureaucracy?

Mr. SULLIVAN. Essentially. And the tendency, particularly on the

first responders’ level, to focus in on your particular discipline and

what you’ve been trained to do and not step back and realize that

it’s a broader issue, and you need to communicate with law enforcement, fire, EMS, public health, and those types of things.

Mr. HORN. And with this new department that we have, a lot of

mergers and a lot of corporate mergers have occurred. And when

those come together, there’s often also a problem—just like Customs, 200 years of real help in this country. And same thing with

the Coast Guard. You have a problem, and corporations have

looked at that. And you’ve got to be very fair to those you merge

with so that the one group does not have all the positions. They’ve

got to meld them with the rest of the group and have them all

working together.

Mr. SULLIVAN. Yes, sir. We need to—It’s just a simple process—

I wish it were a simple process—of breaking down barriers. There’s

been a lot of talk today about intelligence sharing. That needs to

happen. We need to break down a lot of the barriers. That isn’t just

a Federal and State problem; it’s a local problem. Law enforcement—and I say that even though the two gentlemen to my left are

armed——

Mr. HOFFNER. I don’t have any bullets.

Mr. SULLIVAN [continuing]. Has been reluctant to share outside

of the law enforcement community. And it’s one thing for the FBI

to send information to State law enforcement and local law enforcement, but if that information doesn’t get distributed out to public

health and EMS and fire and emergency management agencies, it

really doesn’t serve its purpose.

Mr. HORN. Thank you. What would you tell the President, Lieutenant Hoffner?

Mr. HOFFNER. Well, if I had 30 seconds, I’d say it’s really important that we make sure that the Federal Government keeps doing

what they’re doing, but we need not forget who’s going to be the

first responders to that incident, and who’s going to be taking care

of that incident and those people and those victims and those communities for the first 2 or 3 days. And that’s our law enforcement

and fire departments, and we need to make sure that they have the

training and the personal protection equipment to make sure that

they can survive.

Mr. HORN. How about you, what’s your version, Lieutenant?

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Mr. WICKS. Mr. Chairman, I think one of the things I would ask

the president to do is assist the civilian population, if you will, with

training for these critical incident commanders to include community leaders, some of the politicians, you know, kind of in this same

environment, so the community leaders understand the issues that

we as critical incident commanders have to deal with, and we

would all kind of get the global perspective more than that myopic

perspective of this is what I do and there’s no cause and effect out

there, because there is. What I do will have a cause-and-effect and

a ripple effect on a lot of other people and agencies.

Mr. HORN. Mr. Posner, 30 seconds.

Mr. POSNER. Well, I would say the well-intentioned efforts to respond to crises in the past often lead to phenomena that’s been

called ready, fire, aim, and we ought to be better prepared this

time to put management more up front in terms of thinking clearly, what are the tools we are going to use, how are we going to design them, and how we going to deploy managers at the Federal,

State, and local level to really think through how these things are

going to be implemented.

And in that regard, we had a vehicle where these kinds of discussions took place in Washington—the ACIR, the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. It’s been out of business for

a while. And these field hearings are very useful in bringing up

some issues we need to be thinking more systematically about in

Washington, and how can we create a forum to have these kind of

discussions back there.

Mr. HORN. Well, we thank you all. And I think we’ve learned

quite a bit. And it will be a good report with the help of our fine

reporter.

I want to put on the record thanks from the staff, and that includes Mr. Russell George, who is now leaving the subcommittee,

but he’s done a wonderful job over the last 5 or 6 years. And he

is now the inspector general for an agency that—he was given a

nomination and now confirmed by the Senate. And so the lady on

the left here, and your right, is the acting staff director, Bonnie

Heald. We also have the chief of staff in my office, Dave Bartel is

back there. And Chris Barkley is assistant to the subcommittee.

And Bonnie Heald and Chris Barkley and Dave are all on this particular hearing, and we thank them a lot because it meant tough

hours, 2 and 3 in the morning working, this kind of thing.

Michael Sazonov is back in Washington, staff assistant. And here

in Denver we have Dan Kopelman and Adam Roth from Representative Tancredo’s staff. And then Anne Roelofs is the Jefferson

County facilities person, and she got us this wonderful auditorium

here. She hasn’t towed our cars away yet, we think, and she’s a

real worker who knows how to do things. And not least but the

best is here, the court reporter, Stacy Armstrong. So thank you

very much. And with that, we are adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:47 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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