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82–307 PDF 2002

HOW EFFECTIVELY ARE FEDERAL, STATE AND

LOCAL GOVERNMENTS WORKING TOGETHER

TO PREPARE 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

MARCH 1, 2002

Serial No. 107–120

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

——— ———

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

DAN MILLER, Florida

DOUG OSE, California

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

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

JUSTIN PAULHAMUS, Clerk

DAVID MCMILLEN, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on March 1, 2002 .............................................................................. 1

Statement of:

Gilbert, Wendell H., Tennessee Department of Veterans Affairs, deputy

to the Governor for Homeland Security; Kenneth Burris, Regional Director, Federal Emergency Management Agency; Philip Thomas, Special Agent in Charge, Memphis field office, Federal Bureau of Investigation; Jayetta Z. Hecker, Director, Physical Infrastructure Issues,

U.S. General Accounting Office; Stanley H. Copeland, director, planning and training, Tennessee Emergency Management Agency; Adjutant General Jackie Wood, Tennessee National Guard; and Allen Craig,

M.D, State epidemiologist, director of Communicable and Environmental Disease Services ............................................................................... 19

Purcell, Bill, mayor, city of Nashville, TN ...................................................... 12

Schaffner, William, M.D., chairman, Department of Preventive Medicine,

professor of infectious diseases, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine; James E. Thacker, director, mayor’s Office of Emergency Management, Nashville, TN; Kenneth H. Turner, chief, Nashville Police Department; Stephen D. Halford, director and chief, Nashville Fire Department; Ian David Jones, M.D., Vanderbilt University Medical Center; James E. Carver, director, Tennessee Valley Authority Police; and

Jim Kulesz, program manager, Systems Engineering and Technology,

Oak Ridge National Laboratory ................................................................... 106

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

Burris, Kenneth, Regional Director, Federal Emergency Management

Agency, prepared statement of .................................................................... 29

Carver, James E., director, Tennessee Valley Authority Police, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 138

Clement, Hon. Bob, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Tennessee:

Letter dated February 28, 2002 ............................................................... 18

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 6

Copeland, Stanley H., director, planning and training, Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, prepared statement of ................................... 80

Craig, Allen, M.D, State epidemiologist, director of Communicable and

Environmental Disease Services, prepared statement of .......................... 96

Gilbert, Wendell H., Tennessee Department of Veterans Affairs, deputy

to the Governor for Homeland Security, prepared statement of ............... 22

Halford, Stephen D., director and chief, Nashville Fire Department, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 122

Hecker, Jayetta Z., Director, Physical Infrastructure Issues, U.S. General

Accounting Office, prepared statement of ................................................... 52

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

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

Jones, Ian David, M.D., Vanderbilt University Medical Center, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 128

Kulesz, Jim, program manager, Systems Engineering and Technology,

Oak Ridge National Laboratory, prepared statement of ........................... 148

Purcell, Bill, mayor, city of Nashville, TN, prepared statement of .............. 15

Schaffner, William, M.D., chairman, Department of Preventive Medicine,

professor of infectious diseases, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, prepared statement of .......................................................................... 109

Thacker, James E., director, mayor’s Office of Emergency Management,

Nashville, TN, prepared statement of ......................................................... 114

Page

IV

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by—Continued

Thomas, Philip, Special Agent in Charge, Memphis field office, Federal

Bureau of Investigation, prepared statement of ......................................... 38

Turner, Kenneth H., chief, Nashville Police Department, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 118

Wood, Adjutant General Jackie, Tennessee National Guard, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 87

(1)

HOW EFFECTIVELY ARE FEDERAL, STATE

AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS WORKING TOGETHER TO PREPARE FOR A BIOLOGICAL,

CHEMICAL OR NUCLEAR ATTACK

FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2002

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY, FINANCIAL

MANAGEMENT AND INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Nashville, TN.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:15 a.m., in the

Wyatt Center Rotunda, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, Hon.

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Horn, Wamp, Clement and Bryant.

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

Bonnie Heald, deputy staff director; and Justin Paulhamus, clerk.

Mr. HORN. A quorum being present, the 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 the soil of the United States. 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 these 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 communication systems and rapid deployment of welltrained 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 Tennessee and the good people of Nashville to know that they can rely

on the system, should the need arise.

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

2

needs of those on the frontlines. 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 look forward to their testimony.

I’m delighted that Bob Clement, who is the U.S. Representative

for Nashville, will be our host. Ed Bryant and Zack Wamp are the

U.S. Representatives in Tennessee and without objection all of

these Members will be members of the subcommittee for the purposes of this hearing.

I now yield the time for an opening statement by Mr. Clement

who is highly respected in Washington and here. I am glad to have

any statement that he would like to put in the record and any

other comments that he might want to make.

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

3

4

Mr. CLEMENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I ask that my statement be accepted into the record as if read.

Mr. HORN. Without objection, it will be exactly that way.

Mr. CLEMENT. Mr. Chairman, it is great having you in Nashville,

TN, Country Music, U.S.A. I might say about Chairman Horn, I

have known him a long time and he is a good, effective Member

of Congress, as a lot of you know, from the great State of California. Congressman Horn has distinguished himself in many ways,

but he is also a former college president like myself. We have three

former college presidents as members of the U.S. House of Representatives now, so when we see each one another in the hallway,

naturally we refer to one another as Mr. President. [Laughter.]

I also want to thank Chancellor Ghee and Chancellor Jacobson,

as well as Mel Bass, being here at Vanderbilt University, such a

great university and internationally renowned. My colleagues, Congressman Zack Wamp from East Tennessee, from Chattanooga,

and Congressman Ed Bryant from West Tennessee. So the entire

State of Tennessee is well represented today. And, Mayor Purcell,

good to see you. I know you are going to be our opening speaker

today. It is great to be here in your city, as well as mine, for this

most important hearing.

It is an important hearing because this hearing has to do with

chemical, biological and nuclear attacks and what is our preparation, what are we doing, or what are we failing to do in order to

ensure the people of Tennessee and this great country are protected. A lot of these variables are uncertainties for the future because we really do not know what to expect. We know with chemical and biological it could impact us and we do not even know what

has happened until after the fact. That is why we need knowledgeable people and people that are truly experts to advise and counsel

us. You are going to hear from many of them today from all over

the State of Tennessee to bring us up to date on what we are doing.

Because we at the Federal level want to do everything humanly

possible to accomplish these goals and objectives. We want to make

sure that the Federal Government is doing its part. Are we or are

we not working together? Do we or do we not have the authority

that is needed at the Federal, state and local level to handle emergencies if they happen. Do we have enough trained, educated people in place in order to get the job done? And also, what about turf

fights? That can always happen at the Federal, State or local levels. Rather than helping other agencies get the job done, we become obstructionists. We don’t want that to happen.

A lot of you also know that the Bush administration has proposed a budget of $37 billion. We are now spending $19 billion on

homeland security. So if we are going to have that big of a jump,

are we going to spend those taxpayer dollars wisely? We need to

ask that question because we know that in the cold war we had

a massive buildup in our defense capability during the cold war

and not all of those dollars were spent wisely. The same thing

could happen with homeland security if we let it happen. That is

why these investigatory hearings that Chairman Horn is having,

not only in Tennessee—and I am proud to be able to say the first

congressional field hearing anywhere in the United States is in

Tennessee, because we are strategically important, are we not?

5

Mr. HORN. Absolutely.

Mr. CLEMENT. Because we border more States, as you know, Mr.

Chairman, than any other State in the United States. We have six

interstate highway systems going throughout our State. We have

got a waterway system, you know, the Tennessee River system, the

Cumberland and the Mississippi River system, we have got TVA,

we have got Oak Ridge. We have all of this in Tennessee. If we

have got all of these assets here, we have got to make sure that

we are doing everything we possibly can for the sake of our people

in Tennessee, and not just for Tennessee, but for this great country.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Bob Clement follows:]

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7

8

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Mr. HORN. Now, Mr. Bryant, if you wish to have an opening

statement we would be glad to have it.

Mr. BRYANT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I used to not speak very

much. That is somewhat unusual for a lawyer, but after being in

Washington, I learned that you never turn down an opportunity to

speak before a crowd of TV cameras and a crowd of people. Mr.

Chairman, I will take just a short-time here. I know we have some

outstanding witnesses to listen to today and there is a great deal

to be learned from them as opposed to what we might have to say

in terms of knowledge.

I do want to welcome you to Tennessee. You have been here before. It is a great State, as Bob Clement says, and I know Zack

Wamp agrees. We may have some disputes among ourselves as to

what part of the State is most beautiful, but I can tell you, we

probably have the main target in West Tennessee for possible terrorism, and that is Graceland. [Laughter.]

That goes to the heart of Tennessee and our Nation as a matter

of fact. But Tennessee and Nashville is especially a hospitable

place and I want to thank all of the folks that have made it out

today, but especially our great mayor of Nashville, Mayor Bill Purcell, who will have some comments here in a few minutes. I want

to tell you, Nashville, I think, is a good choice because it is so representative of the South. We have got so many things here, as we

have across the South, that are important to us, but also important

to a would-be terrorist. So I think this is a good area to hold a

hearing, and what you hear today will be consistent with, I suspect, the rest of the South and probably the Nation as a whole.

Our job in Washington—and one of the things that we are trying

to learn today from these experts down here, the city, county, State

folks, the fire departments, the police departments, the first-responders, those folks; we need to learn how we can best help them.

We do a lot in Washington, mainly surrounding money. Money is

really what drives Washington. How we spend that money is so important in responding to this problem. In looking over the statements, I can give you the preview that what they’re going to tell

us is how we construct this manner of distributing Federal money

to help the State’s money and the local money. This is going to be

the key to our success in battling—in preparing for potential

counter-terrorism.

Also, I will tell you, as I wind down my remarks, that coordination is so important among the Federal folks, the State folks and

the local folks that, as Bob alluded to, the turf battles that sometimes come up. That is going to be very important, as well as coordinating the efforts between the people who are out there trying

to prevent these types of actions happening, as well as coordinating

with the folks that are out there who are responding when bad

things do happen. Through acts of terrorism we see and we learned

very clearly from September 11th that it clearly overlaps very

quickly. We do not have time in some cases to sit down and say

what do we do. So it is going to take coordination among the State,

Federal and local authorities, as well as among the people out

there already in those positions who prevent these things from

happening, as well as who will respond, so there is not any overlapping and we can be most effective.

10

I conclude by telling you that my goal in all of this would be,

when I go out to my town meetings and talk to people, that I do

not sound silly when I tell them that I want them to live a normal

life, yet do it with vigilance. Sometimes that sounds like a mixed

message out there, I am telling them two different things. I think

we all understand that what we are about here is trying to find a

way that we can all work together so we can get back to a normal

life in America, as much as we can, but knowing always that we

are going to have to be vigilant from now—from this day forward.

Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for hosting this hearing. I yield

back the balance of my time.

Mr. HORN. And now we will have the gentleman from the other

part of Tennessee, Mr. Wamp, for an opening statement.

Mr. WAMP. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, want to thank

Chairman Horn for choosing Nashville and our State for the first

field hearing on this most important topic, and Congressman Clement for his leadership and his fairness. I have thoroughly enjoyed

the 71⁄2 years I have had an opportunity to work with you, Congressman. We have a very good working relationship and put the

interest of our State ahead of any other interest together. And, of

course, I admire Congressman Bryant so well. You have got a diversity of experiences here among the members and our respective

committee assignments that I think is helpful, and certainly an excellent slate of witnesses.

Mayor Purcell, I admire you so much. Thank you for being with

us and for hosting us. To our friends here at Vanderbilt University

as well, thank you.

A friend of mine named Oz Guinnes told me not too long ago that

we need to remember that the power to convene is greater than the

power to legislate. That is a profound thought. If you are a Member

of Congress and you recognize that sometimes you should use your

positions to bring people together for a common cause, not just

what bills can we pass to somehow legislate our way out of the

problems that we face. Often times you cannot legislate your way

out of problems, but we can bring people together to talk about solutions that need to be pursued at every level of government, private and public sectors. That is why we are here today.

I am also here today, because we now know what we have always suspected, and that is, reality is more horrible than fiction

can ever be. We saw that on September 11th, and we actually saw

it in other ways following September 11th with the anthrax scare.

It has awakened a new mindset in our country.

I also thought on the way over here of 50 years ago when a famous Tennessee U.S. Senator named Estes Kefauver was holding

field hearings all across America to try to root out crime and stop

the growth of organized crime in our country. History repeats itself

as we begin these field hearings across America to deal with terrorism, which is crime of the worst order in the world today. It is a

generation call to courage that we all face to coordinate, work together, communicate and be brave like never before.

I do come from East Tennessee where we are rich in what these

professionals would call target assets for terrorism. When you

think of Oak Ridge, as Congressman Clement said, or the TVA nuclear facilities, or even the hydropower system in abundant waterVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:58 Oct 29, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00014 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\82307.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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sheds in east Tennessee where we have numerous dams that could

be targeted. We have, though, I think fairly—it would be fair to say

that we have made great preparation in the past on those assets

because the Federal Government has been so involved in East Tennessee with our security. So I come today to learn more about and

help us all pursue solutions to biological and chemical threats because what briefings I’ve had tell me that the biological and chemical threats are actually much greater than the nuclear threats, and

that the damage that could be inflicted from biological and chemical terrorism is much greater than even nuclear terrorism. I think

we need to focus in on these unknown areas, which have not been

focused on enough in recent years. I also want to open by saying

I do not think we can overdo this. We cannot overemphasize the

criticality of the issues that are before us today. We could meet like

this every week and have the best experts we could summon and

we still would not do enough because this is so critical and the timing is so critical.

There are a few lessons learned, even in a micro sense from the

anthrax situation that the Congress itself faced in just how to prepare—not how to totally prevent it from happening, because that

is impossible to totally prevent it from happening. We can help prevent it from happening, but we cannot totally eliminate it. What

we can do is prepare for how we respond better to this incident.

Terrorism will never bring this country to its knees. It will not. It

will hurt us if it happens again, but how we respond is what we

are here today to address. We have got to do better to prepare for

the response. I thank Senator Frist, as much or more than any person in our State, for the leadership that he has demonstrated in

preparing our public health infrastructure and bringing about legislation for bioterrorism responses at every level because we need

his kind of expertise and leadership in Washington more today

than at any time in the history of our country.

So I am here very encouraged, but also very thirsty to learn and

to cooperate and to participate in a most important process for the

good of not just the United States of America, but the entire free

world. I thank our panel and look forward to a very healthy process

of working together in the future. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. Thank you.

The colleague from Nashville has spoken about college presidents

and we are on a college campus. I should say that there was a

third member, and that was Ray Thornton, the president of the

University of Arkansas and Arkansas State University. Then he

decided to run for Congress, and the paper in the town said Thornton goes to Washington in big World War II type. An old timer was

just crushed because he liked Ray so much, and he came over to

tell Ray—he said ‘‘Well, Ray, why are you leaving us? You live in

that house up there we give you that looks like Mount Vernon and

you make as much as a Member of Congress, why are you leaving

us?’’ And he said, ‘‘I want to get away from politics.’’ [Laughter.]

All university types will understand what I am saying.

Mr. CLEMENT. That is right.

Mr. HORN. OK, we will now have—we will not swear in the

Mayor because we will have him with a greeting here. We are delighted to have the Honorable Bill Purcell, mayor, city of Nashville.

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STATEMENT OF BILL PURCELL, MAYOR, CITY OF NASHVILLE,

TN

Mayor PURCELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To Chairman Horn

and my Congressman, our Congressman, Bob Clement, with whom

we have an outstanding relationship—a collaborative relationship

to Congressman Wamp, who I know has that same relationship

with the new mayor of Chattanooga, Bob Corker, as well as the

mayor and officials of Oak Ridge. That area is so critical to this

discussion today. And to Congressman Ed Bryant, who will soon

after the elections this fall—I am sure after the elections this fall

will be representing a portion of Davidson County, and as a result

of which, I know we will see even more of in the months and years

ahead.

Mr. Chairman, let me first take this opportunity on behalf of all

the people of Nashville to thank you and the Subcommittee on Governmental Efficiency, Financial Management and Intergovernmental Relations here to Nashville for this hearing on the efforts

of local and State governments to prepare for terrorist attacks.

Your interest in bringing these hearings here into the heartland

of America shows a welcome appreciation for the challenges that

local governments face in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. These challenges were spelled out in a survey

issued in January by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. The survey

of 200 cities finds that cities across the country expect to spend

more than an additional $2.6 billion on security between September 11, 2001 and the end of this calendar year.

On September 11th, the city of New York and Washington, DC,

came under a foreign terrorist attack unprecedented in American

history. Although Nashville did not come under attack, all departments of the metropolitan government, many of them represented

here today, immediately began preparations under our comprehensive emergency management plan.

Today you will hear from the leaders of our State and local

homeland security. General Gilbert, who has done an excellent

job—an outstanding job in coordinating between State and local officials across this State and represented our administration well

here, and I believe in Washington as well. Since September 11th,

we have all been engaged in the task of assuring the public safety

of our citizens and assessing our preparedness for potential emergencies and crises.

Within the week after the attack, our Deputy Mayor Bill Phillips

convened a meeting of the Public Safety Department directors to

assess Metro’s initial response and to determine what additional

actions by the various departments of Metro Government were

under consideration or were appropriate.

After a comprehensive review of relevant emergency plans regarding the terrorist attack, it was concluded that the government

of Nashville and Davidson County had been and were well prepared to address terrorist attacks before the events of September

11th, and in subsequent weeks all departments demonstrated an

even improved ability to respond to the terrorist challenge. This is

a protocol that obviously played out in cities, large and small, all

across America in the weeks following. Our review of our preparedness was released November 1st. The report concluded, ‘‘Based on

13

its prior level of preparedness, its response to a devastating tornado strike, its high marks by Federal officials on a chemical disaster exercise and additional preparedness actions taken subsequent

to the September 11th attacks, it clearly appears that Metro government is indeed well prepared to respond to the threat of terrorism.’’

A part of that report that is critical for me to thank you and

other Members of the Congress for was the extent to which the

Federal Government had assisted local governments in the months

and years preceding that attack to review our level of preparedness

and actually cause exercises to occur and then rank and rate those

exercises. That was an enormous benefit to us and our report concluded that was one of the reasons that we were as prepared as

we were, that early Federal support months and years before the

attacks in New York.

This report also highlights the things we have learned since that

time, how we can better prepare for the future includes recommendations for improving our readiness. Some of these recommendations have already been addressed. For example, after increased threats of bioterrorism became apparent, Metro issued

guidelines for receiving anthrax threats. These guidelines have

been shared throughout the government with businesses and posted generally on the Internet.

Since that time, we have also taken further steps to strengthen

our preparedness. At the end of last year our Metro Council approved $2 million in funding for the construction of a temporary

backup training center for E–911. An additional $4.2 million is now

available for the construction of a new police precinct. These were

actions that were planned before the terrorist attacks, but they reflect our resolve to protect the safety of our citizens.

Like most jurisdictions, we have also assumed additional costs

during this time. We were honored this week by the Department

of Defense because the city of Nashville moved quickly to be sure

that all of our employees who might be called to serve would find

that neither their pay nor their benefits were in any way impeded.

Now this is something the Federal Government has been a leader

in, but we attempted, as a local jurisdiction, to be a leader as well

and show other employers, private as well as public, that this is

something we can and must do. This, however, comes at a cost.

When the Nation’s mayors met with President Bush in January—which was an extremely successful meeting from our perspective—he told us that he planned to increase the funding for homeland security for State and local governments. The President made

good on that commitment in his budget, including an additional

$3.5 billion within that larger amount of money that Congressman

Clement talked about a few moments ago for State and local government preparedness efforts. You will hear from Chief Halford,

our police chief, Emmett Turner, Jim Thacker, director of Nashville’s Office of Emergency Management on our response and preparations. With your assistance, I am confident that we will both

win the war against terrorism and strengthen our Nation and community.

Again, thank you Chairman Horn for your leadership, for making

this trip. I suppose, it is indirectly, between your district and your

14

service in Washington, but it was a long trip for you and we greatly

appreciate your work in convening this meeting here. We welcome

your interest and we are ready as a city to discuss these important

matters with you and the other members of the subcommittee.

Thank you very, very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Purcell follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Well thank you very much for your graciousness and

your hospitality, we appreciate it. Mayor, I think you are going to

be able to sit with us for awhile, if you have time? If you do not,

I know you are busy.

Mayor PURCELL. Well actually I will be able to be with you for

a time. Again, my department heads are well represented here.

Today is also, I might add, Mr. Chairman, since you gave me the

opportunity, Read Across America Day. We are celebrating Dr.

Seuss’ birthday and the children of Nashville are reading all across

this city, and then hopefully we will be reading tomorrow the results of this hearing as well. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. Thank you.

We now have panel one. They are in place, and since this is an

investigatory committee, if you would, take the oath.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. HORN. The clerk will note that all seven have taken the

oath.

Mr. CLEMENT. Mr. Chairman, could I submit this letter for the

record from Senator Frist, who could not be here today because of

a conflict? One statement he made in the letter, I think is real appropriate. It is not that we are unprepared for the threat concerning bioterrorism, rather we are under-prepared. I think that is

something that we need to focus upon. And then also, I appreciate

the representatives of Senator Fred Thompson being here today as

well.

Mr. HORN. And do you want those in the record?

Mr. CLEMENT. Yes.

Mr. HORN. Without objection, so ordered.

We will now go to the honorable Wendell H. Gilbert, the Tennessee Department of Veterans Affairs and Deputy to the Governor

for Homeland Security. We are glad to have you here, Mr. Gilbert.

[The information referred to follows:]

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STATEMENTS OF WENDELL H. GILBERT, TENNESSEE DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS, DEPUTY TO THE GOVERNOR

FOR HOMELAND SECURITY; KENNETH BURRIS, REGIONAL

DIRECTOR, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY;

PHILIP THOMAS, SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE, MEMPHIS

FIELD OFFICE, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION;

JAYETTA Z. HECKER, DIRECTOR, PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE ISSUES, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE; STANLEY

H. COPELAND, DIRECTOR, PLANNING AND TRAINING, TENNESSEE EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY; ADJUTANT

GENERAL JACKIE WOOD, TENNESSEE NATIONAL GUARD;

AND ALLEN CRAIG, M.D, STATE EPIDEMIOLOGIST, DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICABLE AND ENVIRONMENTAL DISEASE

SERVICES

Mr. GILBERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the

committee. Mr. Chairman, I am a little bit intimidated here this

morning because Congressman Bryant is my Congressman and he

tends to tell stories about me, stories that are not true. Mr. Chairman, would you make sure that he exercises some restraint this

morning? [Laugher.]

I am currently serving as deputy to Governor Sunquist——

Mr. BRYANT. General Gilbert, could I just make sure that you understand you are under oath. Laughter.]

Mr. GILBERT. Thank you, Congressman, I had forgotten that.

[Laughter.]

Mr. GILBERT. I currently serve as deputy to the Governor for

Homeland Security and I am also commissioner of Veteran Affairs.

Those of you in uniform know you usually have a job description

in the Army that says other duties as assigned, and the Governor

has exercised that particular clause in my job description, I guess.

The Governor has also appointed a Council for Homeland Security, which is made up of those senior members of the State government who would have a part to play in this mission, and several

of the council members are here today. The council has worked diligently to develop a supplemental budget for this year and also a

budget for next year, items that we feel are essential to be plussed

up. Our dilemma is that the State of Tennessee—it appears unless

some new revenue is found, will be in the hole about $350 million

in July and for the following year about $800 million.

Many of the departments who are involved in this mission in

State government have funding that we call over-appropriation.

The Governor realizing that we were going to have a shortfall

began to reduce State budgets several months ago. So some of the

departments that are involved in this mission have an over-appropriation. For example, the Department of Health and Agriculture.

And they have now been authorized by the Governor to spend some

of that money on those vital projects relating to homeland security.

There are several departments that do not have an over-appropriation, including mine and some that are represented here, the National Guard and TEMA does not have an over-appropriation. So

that is the reason I have come forward to ask for a supplemental

from the General Assembly and that is before them at this time.

What we did in the Council for Homeland Security was to establish priority 1 items and priority 2 items. We are only asking now

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for priority 1 items. Priority 1 items are those things we think are

absolutely essential to this mission. We developed a priority 2 category in the event—and I pray that this will not occur, but if a

threat got more serious, then we would already know what those

other improvements are.

We are very encouraged by the President’s 2003 budget. I recognize that there is a need to get funding down to our first-responders on the local level. We also hope that some of that funding can

also come to State governments, because we recognize that we are

not the only State in the Nation that has serious budget problems.

I will tell you that Governor Sunquist is very much hands-on on

this subject, and I have received very, very strong support from all

the members of our council. They always respond, they always do

what I ask and they always participate in a very meaningful way.

I do recognize that one major problem that needs to be addressed

is intelligence at the Federal level. I would urge the committee to

do everything it can to enhance the intelligence capability of this

great Nation, especially vertical intelligence, so that information is

analyzed quickly and sent all the way down to where the rubber

meets the road. That, I think, needs to be plussed up.

Mr. Chairman, you asked me to answer two specific questions.

The first one is: What is the mechanism for disseminating information from your office to the local officials? Our Office of Homeland

Security provides homeland security bulletins. We have already put

out four of those. The bulletins contain a variety of information.

Early on, we put out a bulletin that explained all about anthrax.

A biological threat is something that is fearful. People are afraid

of that, and we feel that if they know more about biological threats

it will take some of the fear away. For example, anthrax is not contagious from one person to another.

Also, the Governor has hosted two—we are planning a third conference call with all county executives, all mayors, all police chiefs,

all sheriffs and all emergency management personnel across the

State. We found those to be particularly helpful. In fact, we are

planning one this month and the Director of FEMA has agreed to

participate in our conference call. Information of an emergency nature is immediately disseminated through law enforcement channels and through our emergency management agency TEMA.

The next question you asked me to answer, Mr. Chairman, was:

Is there someone who has coordinated emergency management

among Tennessee’s VA medical facilities and local hospitals? The

answer to that, Mr. Chairman, is yes. Coordination for hospital

emergency management is done through several channels. During

emergencies, the State Emergency Operation Center at TEMA coordinates all emergency management activities 24-hours a day

through a collection of emergency service coordinators, which includes representation from the Tennessee Department of Health

and VA hospital. The individual spearheading this planning efforts

on a daily basis is Robert L. Ruth, Central District Manager, Emergency Management Strategic Healthcare Group and John D. Phillips, Jr., Management Assistant, Emergency Management Strategic

Health Care Group, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The

VA hospitals in Tennessee are a part of the VA National Medical

Response Network.

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I was also asked to comment about the planning. They are in the

process of putting together a bioterrorism plan for the VA. It is a

work in progress, but they are working diligently on that, Mr.

Chairman.

I want to commend Governor Ridge for the regional conference

calls that are now being conducted every other week. They are very

helpful in obtaining information and allowing us to provide input.

In summary, let me say that we are in desperate need of some Federal funding here in the State of Tennessee for our homeland security mission and we need funding in a variety of areas. We hope

the Congress will approve the President’s budget request for homeland security in a timely way.

We also urge the Congress to approve actions to enhance our intelligence capabilities. We must have timely and meaningful intelligence.

Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, so very much for focusing attention on this very, very vital subject for the future of America.

Thank you, also, for coming to the great Volunteer State of Tennessee.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gilbert follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Thank you very much. We will have questions after

everybody has made their presentation.

Mr. Ken Burris is the Regional Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That agency goes back to President

Truman and it has had a marvelous evolution in the last decade

or two because of all of the earthquakes in California, floods in

California, floods in the Mississippi. So this is a very important position. So, Mr. Burris, we want to hear from you.

Mr. BURRIS. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. It is indeed a pleasure for me to be here today to discuss the pressing matters of how

FEMA is assisting State and local governments to prepare for potential terrorists attacks 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 upon our ability to organize 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 September 11th, the

Federal Response Plan has proven to be an effective and efficient

framework for managing all of the phases of disaster and emergency operations. The plan is successful because it builds upon the

existing professional disciplines, expertise, delivery systems and relationships among the participating agencies in the Federal Response Plan.

Much of our success in emergency management is attributed to

our historically strong relationship with our State and local partners. Through preparedness programs, we provide financial, technical planning, training and, of course, exercise support to give

State, local and tribal governments the capabilities they need to

protect the public, the public’s health and safety and the property

from both before and after disaster strikes. In meeting the challenges ahead for State and local governments, 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 governments and 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 within our agency. We have realigned the preparedness responsibilities, from our readiness response and recovery directorate

to the Office of National Preparedness.

We have realigned all training activities to the U.S. Fire Administration. This allows greater coordination between the training of

emergency managers and the training of our country’s first-responders.

We have also moved the authority for credentialing, training and

deploying urban search and rescue teams from our Readiness, Response and Recovery Directorate to the U.S. Fire Administration.

We continue to work with all of the 50 States and the territories,

tribal nations and local governments to enhance their capabilities

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to respond to all types of hazards and emergencies such as chemical incidents involving radiological substances and natural disasters.

We recognize that chemical, biological and radiological scenarios

will present unique challenges to our first-responder community. Of

those type of attacks, we are, in many ways, better prepared for

a chemical attack because such an incident is comparable to large

scale hazardous materials incidents. Bioterrorism, however, presents the greater immediate concern. With a covert release of a biochemical or a biological agent, the first-responders will quickly become our hospital staffs, our medical examiners, private physicians

and animal control workers instead of our traditional first-responders with whom we have had a long-term relationship. The Department of Health and Human Services leads this effort of the health

and medical community to plan and prepare for a national response to the public health emergency and is a critical link between the health and medical community in our larger local response.

The Federal Radiological Response Plan which has 17 signatories, of which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is the lead Federal agency for coordinating overall response, with FEMA responsible for coordinating non-radiological support. Tabletop exercises

have been conducted in order to determine agencies and resources

for response to a terrorist attack with a radiological component. In

addition, nuclear and radiological threats posed by improved or improvised nuclear devices and radiological dispersal devices are

being evaluated and the preparedness of member agencies and

local governments is being determined to deal with these threats.

It is FEMA’s responsibility to ensure that the Nation and the

National Emergency Management System is adequate to respond

to the consequences of catastrophic emergencies and disasters regardless of the cost. We rely on the States and our local level partners, and without question, they need to be further strengthened

and supported to increase their operating capacity.

FEMA must ensure that a national system has the tools to gather information, set priorities and deploy resources effectively. In recent years, we have made tremendous strides in our efforts to increase cooperation between the Federal, State and local first-responders, but now we need to do more. Our Office of National Preparedness is emphasizing training, planning, equipment and preparedness that will enable us to better focus our efforts and will

help our Nation become better prepared for the future.

I will be happy to answer any questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Burris follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Thank you.

We next have as a presentation Philip Thomas, Special Agent In

Charge of the Memphis Field Office, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mr. Thomas.

Mr. THOMAS. Good morning Chairman Horn, members of the

subcommittee and distinguished members of the Tennessee delegation. I value the opportunity to appear before you and discuss terrorism preparedness, including threats posed by attacks involving

biological, chemical and nuclear agents, as well as measures being

taken by the FBI and our 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

the U.S.’ national interest at home or abroad and to coordinate

those efforts with local, State, Federal and foreign entities as appropriate. The counterterrorism responsibilities of the FBI include

the investigation of domestic and international terrorism. As events

in the past several years demonstrate, both domestic and international terrorist organizations represent threats within the borders of the United States.

In the interest of time, what I would like to do is basically discuss the three primary issues that I think from an FBI perspective

are most important to the committee. Those are training for

counterterrorism preparedness, the effective use of JTTFs and the

warning systems that the FBI is currently in the process of getting

started or furthering.

The first is counterterrorism preparedness. In the

counterterrorism preparedness area, the FBI’s Knoxville Division,

responsible for the eastern Federal District of Tennessee, has within its territory the Oak Ridge and Sequoia nuclear power facilities.

There are no nuclear facilities in the Memphis Division. There are

research facilities and chemical manufacturers such as Dupont and

the Williams Refinery in Shelby County. Key assets such as lakes,

dams and facilities owned and operated by the TVA are monitored

via cooperation with that agency in cooperation with the FBI.

Counterterrorism preparedness includes field and tabletop exercises which test the ability of the response capability of agencies

who would participate in a disaster involving biological, chemical

and nuclear attack. The Memphis Division has participated in exercises held in Memphis, Nashville and Wilson County. The FBI,

as the lead agency for crisis management, was called upon to implement a plan in coordination with other law enforcement, fire,

emergency and health agencies. The response was reviewed and

critiqued by the Department of Defense and the Department of

Justice.

The most recent joint field exercise was conducted at Adelphia

Coliseum and involved virtually every Federal, State and local

agency including the Red Cross. An instructional film was made

from that exercise and is used in various venues across the United

States. The Memphis Division also participated in a professionally

made film in Nashville which was used to train WMD personnel

throughout the United States. Future training events include a

hazardous materials drill hosted by the Shelby County Emergency

Management Agency in March.

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I would also like to list out some of the training exercises that

we have done in the State of Tennessee in the Memphis Division

since October 1999. No. 1 was measured response. It was a biological exercise conducted at the Memphis Pyramid in October 1999.

Domestic preparedness exercise at Vanderbilt University in September 2000. The Memphis HAZMAT exercise with the Memphis

Fire Department, and a chemical exercise in September 2000. Operation Black Gold, which was a chemical exercise conducted with

several divisions at Baton Rogue, LA in the year 2000. Local emergency planning committee drill, a chemical exercise in Millington,

TN in the year 2000. We also did a West Tennessee domestic terrorism table top, a chemical and biological exercise in Jackson, TN

in May 2001. And last, we did a weapons of mass destruction tabletop exercise involving a biological exercise in Memphis, Tennessee

on September 11, 2001. It was my sad duty to cancel that operation

while it was in progress because of the events in New York. I basically instructed everyone to go back to their agencies and we initiated our command post that day. So I think we have done quite

a bit of training, and there always needs to be more training in

these areas.

The next thing I would like to briefly touch upon are the effective

use of joint terrorism task forces. Cooperation among law enforcement agencies at all levels represents an important component in

comprehensive response to terrorism. This cooperation assumes its

most tangible operational form in joint terrorism task forces that

are currently established in 44 cities across the Nation. These task

forces are particularly well-suited to responding to terrorism because they combine the national and the international investigative

resources of the FBI with the street-level expertise of the local law

enforcement agencies. This cop-to-cop cooperation has proven highly successful in preventing several potential terrorism attacks. We

are in the process here in the Memphis Division of standing up a

joint terrorism task force. It should be operational by the end of

December.

And last, I would like to touch upon the threat warning systems

that the FBI is currently involved with. That would be National

Threat Warning System first implemented in 1989. This system

now reaches all aspects of law enforcement and the intelligence

community. Currently, 60 Federal agencies and their subcomponents receive information via secure teletype through this system.

The messages are also transmitted to all 56 field offices and 44

legal attaches throughout the world. If threat information requires

nationwide unclassified dissemination to all Federal, State and

local law enforcement agencies, the FBI transmits messages

through the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications Systems [NLETS]. We are in the process of enhancing this dissemination of information through the use of the ANSIR program and the

Intraguard program as well.

I see my time has run out. I would just like to conclude by saying

that the FBI cannot conduct terrorism investigations by itself, and

in today’s climate, we depend on cooperation with State, local and

Federal agencies. I am proud to say that here in Tennessee that

cooperation is at a high level. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Thomas follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Well thank you. You did a very good summary. I

would just like to mention one point, on page 6 where it says approximately 900 badges were bought or seized in this various law

enforcement people. I happen to have a bill on that, it is public law

and you could take it to the U.S. attorney and really nail these people.

Mr. THOMAS. Well that will be beneficial, Congressman, because

in Tampa when that person was arrested, he was considered a misdemeanor, and that was a hinderance to the investigation. What

we found out subsequently was, two of the badges were Naval Investigative Service badges that were actually stolen, and that provided us the felony count. So that would be very helpful.

Mr. HORN. Thank you.

Now we have a representative of the General Accounting Office,

which is headed by Comptroller General of the United States. They

work with the legislative branch, and they are our right arm on

every hearing we have and they do wonderful work. The independence of the Comptroller General is very clear. He has got a 15-year

term and he can call them as they see them. So we are delighted

to have JayEtta Z. Hecker, Director, Physical Infrastructure Issues

of the U.S. General Accounting Office. Thank you for coming.

Ms. HECKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am very pleased to be

here this morning and to address this important issue about the

significant threat posed by the highly diffuse and complex issue of

bioterrorism. The key here, as we have heard from everyone, is

how dependent an effective response is on an intergovernmental response. I think the kind of forum that you have established today

and the opportunity to really hear from the range of participants

is a critical first step.

My remarks are based on, as you said, a wide body of GAO work.

We cover virtually every aspect of the government and have been

studying efforts to combat terrorism for over a decade. In fact, we

had a major report issued on September 20th and several of our

staff have testified before your committee on various aspects of that

work. So I am drawing not only on the work that I direct, which

is overseeing FEMA and emergency management, but on the work

of our healthcare group that does bioterrorism work, our military

group that looks at the combating terrorism activity, our justice

group and many others within GAO.

I am also drawing on our on-going work that we are doing for

your subcommittee, which I think is particularly well focused on

the issue that we’re looking at today on the special challenges in

really building effective State, local, Federal and even private partnerships to result in much more effective preparedness.

The highlight is that GAO has long called for and been very concerned about the absence of a real national strategy to combat terrorism. Our focus here is not a Federal strategy, but a national

strategy that, in fact, really fully integrates not only all of the wide

range of Federal agencies that are involved, but the various levels

of government. Basically, my remarks focus on three key areas that

we think have to be part of a national strategy. I might note that,

as I am sure many of you are aware, the President in the 2003

budget has committed Director Ridge to prepare a national strategy, and that is something that now is projected for the June timeVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:58 Oct 29, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00054 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\82307.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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frame. So the remarks that I have focus on some critical criteria

are aspects that we think belong in a national strategy, and it basically covers three areas. The first is addressing the severe fragmentation of roles, not only of the Federal agencies but of the relative roles of different levels of government.

The second point is the essential requirement for performance

standards and accountability. What is preparedness? What does it

amount to? How will we know it when we see it? And finally the

third issue is about designing the most effective strategy using the

full range of tools available to government, that it is not just a

grant, it is not just regulatory approaches. There is really a wide

range of tools and they vary in their effectiveness and some of their

limitations.

Now on the first point about the fragmentation. One area that

we found when looking at bioterrorism was how incredibly complex

the Federal roles were. And on the last page of my testimony—it

is really kind of alarming—there is a pull-out chart that shows you

as of about a year ago the relationships of all of the Federal agencies in having a role in trying to coordinate bioterrorism activities.

It is just mind boggling and it is daunting and it is overwhelming

and it is just pure spaghetti. It really is a very serious matter of

concern. We, in fact, have outstanding recommendations to try to

clarify the Federal roles. Some work we did on bioterrorism, we

found that key agencies, Agriculture, FDA, the Department of

Transportation, were not effectively involved in spite of the fact

that they had very critical roles in bioterrorism.

The second point is about performance and accountability. Given

the large increase in funding that is planned, as well as the compelling need for a truly effective strategy here, it is absolutely essential that we have clear goals and performance measures so that

we are more likely to have a successful effort. Mr. Ridge himself

has said we cannot just throw the money out. We have to have

clear criteria. We have to know what we are getting for it. And

with the kind of major increase in Federal funding, the absence of

these kinds of measures and goals in the past is really a severe

problem that needs to be addressed.

The third issue is about critical tools. The difference in tools is

that they will vary in how effective you can target highest-risk,

how effectively you build shared responsibility, and do not just

have Federal funds supplant State or local activities that already

existed. And also, the tool can make a difference in how effectively

you can track and assess progress.

That concludes the statement and I will be very happy to take

questions.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Hecker follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Thank you.

Our next presenter is Stanley H. Copeland, director, Planning

and Training for the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.

That is the one that reports directly to the Governor, does it not?

Mr. COPELAND. Say again, sir.

Mr. HORN. I say you report directly to the Governor?

Mr. COPELAND. No, sir. My director is Mr. John White. We have

been appointed by the Governor as an administrative agency for

some grant funding, yes, sir.

Mr. HORN. I see.

Mr. COPELAND. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Bob Clement and

members of the subcommittee, if I can, I would like to submit my

written testimony.

Mr. HORN. It is automatic.

Mr. COPELAND. OK, thank you, sir.

Mr. HORN. You will find it in a big thick hearing document.

Mr. COPELAND. Again, I thank the members of this subcommittee

for recognizing the importance of preparing for acts of terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction. TEMA is responsible for directing terrorism consequence management activities and serves as

the central coordination point for the State’s response and coordination with local government and our Federal agencies.

In 1999, our Nation’s Governors were asked by the then U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to designate a single agency to coordinate U.S. Department of Justice’s State domestic preparedness

equipment grant programs. Our Governor, Don Sundquist, appointed our agency, TEMA to administer that program. That was

a 3-year program that provided funding to the State for acquisition

of equipment, for the completion of a capability and needs assessment and a 3-year statewide domestic preparedness strategy.

The State of Tennessee conducted that assessment in all 95 counties of our State. The results of that assessment revealed that

many of the counties in our State lacked proper planning for acts

of terrorism. Our agency partnered with those local governments to

correct those deficiencies. I am now glad to say, sir, that every

county currently has a basic emergency operation plan as well as

a terrorism incident annex incorporated for that response. These

plans are an initial effort on our part and local government on

which improvements will be made on a regular basis through lessons learned and the conducting of exercise.

I would also like to say in reference to exercises that we do numerous exercises with our Federal agencies and partners to include

the Department of Energy as well as TVA and our fixed nuclear

facilities in regards to our response.

Also included in the assessment, we identified deficiencies in our

responders’ levels of training. Local government identified some

66,000 responders across our State that needed some level of training, whether it be at the basic awareness level or whether it would

be at more advanced levels of training to include operational technician level type training.

Some of this training is being addressed through programs provided by the Department of Justice, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as State agencies. However, there is currently insufficient funding at the State and local level to meet

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these training needs as identified in the assessment within a reasonable period of time.

They also identified equipment that they had to respond on

hand, as well as those equipment that was needed to enhance their

current capabilities. We identified some $65 million worth of equipment across our State in support of that. Thus far, current appropriations have provided for approximately 6 percent of that need.

To move on, currently there are no funds available to address

maintenance issues for the money that is currently being spent,

and within a very few years that is going to become a substantial

problem. In addition to maintenance, we have the issues of shelf

life for certain items of equipment that responders need. The replacement of those items will also need funding. So we basically

would like to request that these issues be included in future funding for the WMD programs. A lack of flexibility in the current programs for the spending of money within the authorized equipment

list provide by the Department of Justice is of current concern with

our State. For example, I can buy a local fire fighter a Level A suit

in a volunteer fire department, but we cannot use the money to

purchase turnout gear, which is essential to his every-day response.

Those are issues that we would like to have addressed, and continue to address with the Department of Justice.

In closing, I would say that our Federal partners from FEMA

also provide funding for our agency. Those dollars pay salaries and

benefits and other expenses for emergency management personnel

assigned exclusively for those preparedness activities. Over the

past several years local jurisdictional demands upon the State have

increased in regards to planning, training and management of exercises; however, there has been no increase in fundings to support

those efforts.

In summary, coordination of consequence management preparedness and response for the State of Tennessee should continue to

have as its point of contact the Tennessee Emergency Management

Agency. By requiring this continuity, the Federal Government can

ensure accountability and proper coordination of its efforts in addressing these critical issues regarding terrorism.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Copeland follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Thank you very much.

Major General Jackie Wood, head of the Tennessee National

Guard is our next presenter.

General WOOD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My testimony today

will be in three parts. I will address how we are structured in the

State, our mission in the State and our issues and concern.

The Military Department has three major divisions. They are the

Air National Guard, which is dispersed in our four major metropolitan areas. Our Army National Guard which is in 77 of the 95

counties and actually touches every city and hamlet throughout our

State. And the Department of TEMA, which is our emergency management, which is spread into three grand divisions of the State

and has personnel in offices in the three divisions. Our strength

throughout the military side is 90 percent plus.

The unique thing about my department is that we have two missions, sir. Our Federal mission is to provide the President and the

Secretary of Defense with units capable of performing their wartime mission. Our State mission is to provide the Governor of Tennessee with units capable of performing missions in accordance

with the Tennessee Emergency Response plan. And I submit to

you, sir, Tennessee is the overall sixth largest National Guard

State in the Nation.

As we sit here today, we have men and women from the Tennessee National Guard deployed throughout the world. I would like

to submit to you that as of just a couple of weeks after September

11th of last year, we deployed units to different parts of the country. They are involved in the operation Noble Eagle and operation

Enduring Freedom. We provided airport security here, sir, in our

State at our six major metropolitan airports. It consisted of 128

personnel. We also provide guard and security support to other facilities throughout the State, and the number of people involved in

that were approximately 65 people.

As I said, Tennessee Emergency Management is a department of

ours. For your information, sir, last year they answered and had

action on over 2,038 calls for assistance. Our homeland security

issues that you are here discussing today, sir, to ask about—No. 1,

we were awarded in November a civil support team to the State

of Tennessee. This would be the 33rd State to have these teams.

I know that the Department of Defense and the Department of the

Army’s hope is to have one in each State. This is a 22-member

team that will be federally funded, equipped and trained to assist

in the response to whether it is a natural disaster or a man-made

act of terrorism.

We have, concerns regarding the States medical assets. In the

1990’s, in the right-sizing of the Army, the decision was made to

take out many of the medical units from the Army National Guard.

We feel this is a critical subject to look at in an effort to provide

the type of support for a response should we have a disaster.

Another item along this line, sir, is aircraft modernization.

Should we have a disaster or a terrorism act, rapid evacuation is

of most importance. It would be essential to not only move the people out of these areas, but to move the right equipment and the

right personnel in.

This concludes my testimony subject to your questions.

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Mr. HORN. Let me just ask you, on page 3, this is not a question

in a formal sense. But I see New York, Texas, and California all

have blue in it and I do not know if the Tennessee National Guard

is deciding to invade those three States or—— General WOOD. Sir, along with the national border defense, we

have put people on our northern border along Kentucky and, sir,

we also have some dispersed along the Alabama and Mississippi

borders. [Laughter.]

Mr. HORN. Well the Confederates were after our gold in California. It might still be there. But is that a relationship to the Guard

here on say going to Korea should something break out in Korea?

General WOOD. These things, sir, would be a part of our Federal

mission. We do have units within the State, both Army and Air,

that would be for national defense, that could be deployed to any

country in the world. And as I said, last year we had units deployed in approximately 36 different countries. So in planning for

homeland security, which has been a Guard mission since the mid1600’s, since the Massachusetts Bay Colony, we also have to consider the men and women that may be deployed, and at some point

in time the decision may have to be made, do you send them over

there or do you keep some here for the emergency. Does that answer your question, sir?

Mr. HORN. Thank you.

General WOOD. Thank you, sir.

Mr. HORN. Although I am still not clear on that blue color.

[Laughter.]

[The prepared statement of General Wood follows:]

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Mr. HORN. OK, we now have the last presenter on panel one and

that is Dr. Allen Craig, the State epidemiologist, director of Communicable and Environmental Disease Services, Tennessee Department of Health. I think you have done a number of things for us

in Washington. So please give us your presentation.

Dr. CRAIG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the subcommittee for the opportunity to testify today.

In my role as State epidemiologist, I oversee bioterrorism preparedness and response for the Tennessee Department of Health

and support similar activities in regional and local health departments throughout the State.

The Tennessee Department of Health began planning for potential bioterrorist attack in 1998. The events of September 11th and

the anthrax cases that followed made that planning effort come

into focus and pointed out many areas for improvement. It also

pointed out significant deficits in the public health system.

The public health infrastructure in the United States has been

gradually declining for many years. As many communicable and

vaccine preventable diseases decline in incidence, it has been increasingly difficult to convince policymakers of the need to maintain a strong public health infrastructure. One specific example of

the deterioration of the infrastructure is the current use of an old

DOS-based computer program to report communicable diseases to

the CDC from State health departments. E-mail and Internet access has been introduced only recently in many health departments

and rapid access for emergencies does not exist in many rural

health departments. As more and more patients are enrolled in

managed care organizations, laboratory testing normally performed

at the State public health laboratory has moved to the private laboratory with the consequence that public health laboratory staffing

is decreased. Many public health laboratories are not computerized

and rely on handwritten reports. There is virtually no surge capacity for large-scale emergencies. Most medium-sized cites do not

have trained epidemiologists to respond to outbreaks.

The events of last fall, particularly the anthrax cases and the

multiple possible anthrax exposures highlighted these infrastructure defects. In Tennessee our public health system was stretched

to its maximum capacity and we did not have a single case of anthrax or a positive environmental specimen. In our public health

laboratory we tested over 1,000 environmental specimens for anthrax. Since our State laboratory was not computerized, we faced

an enormous information management challenge. The microbiology

staff worked 16-hour shifts 7 days a week to keep up. This experience pointed out a critical need for additional laboratorians to provide surge capacity. It also brought home the urgent need for a

computerized laboratory information system.

Epidemiologists, public health nurses and health officials and

virtually everyone available was pressed into service to answer

questions from the public, providers and media about the anthrax

cases. Many public health staff worked with law enforcement at

the scene of suspicious powder incidents to assess the risk to the

public. Several clinical cases required further investigation to rule

out anthrax or other bioterrorist agents.

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A major challenge we faced was communication. We had reasonably good e-mail and fax systems in place to communicate with key

regional and large city health departments. We had no means of

rapidly communicating with the 89 smaller rural county health departments across the State. Another challenge was reaching physicians with important information about the outbreak. We did not

have e-mail addresses for most of the State’s practicing physicians.

We were able to reach some through their professional organizations and in one case, the professional society spent the time and

effort to send out a packet of information by mail. It arrived 3 to

4 days later, which was an unacceptably long delay when recommendations were changes on an hourly or daily basis.

The support of the Federal Government, particularly the CDC

has been tremendous. At the height of the anthrax outbreak, we

spoke with CDC on an almost daily basis to obtain new information

and assistance in evaluating possible cases of anthrax. The individual staff was supportive and well informed. The major problem we

had with the CDC was the slowness in obtaining alerts about new

cases or recommendations because of the process of clearance that

required senior staff approval before posting emergency alerts by email or on the CDC’s Web site. We were in the awkward position

of learning about the first case of inhalational anthrax and other

important developments from CNN before the emergency notification system reached us.

As we look ahead, I can tell we have learned from our experience

and taken stock of our system-wide shortcomings. We have restarted our bioterrorism planning in earnest. Federal funding has

been a key resource in this effort. Since 1999, it has allowed us to

substantially upgrade our laboratory testing capacity. We have

used this new expertise and equipment to train many hospital laboratories in Tennessee on how to identify and safely handle bioterrorism specimens. This Federal funding and the anticipation of

receiving substantial new funding this year for public health and

hospital preparedness is an exciting development that will allow us

to move forward in some key activities. Perhaps more importantly,

it will allow us to begin the process of rebuilding a robust public

health infrastructure that will be able to withstand any new infectious outbreak that comes our way.

As we plan for the future, what is critical to Tennessee and all

State health departments is the sustainability of funding for bioterrorism. To make these new readiness activities a success as

measured by fundamentally upgrading the U.S. Public Health System and the local and State level, this funding must continue beyond the current crisis. To this end, we are pleased with the President’s fiscal year 2003 budget which includes a continuation of the

current level of funding. If Congress approves this level of funding,

it will allow Tennessee and other States to hire and train qualified

epidemiologists and laboratorians to respond to the next bioterrorist attack or unexplained outbreak.

We appreciate the support of Congress as we work together at

the Federal, State and local level in this preparedness effort.

Thank you again for the opportunity to address this committee and

for your interest in this important topic. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Craig follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Thank you very much and we will now move to questioning. We will start with Mr. Clement, your U.S. Representative

in this area and there will be a 5-minute limit on my colleagues,

including myself, so that we can get through getting everybody into

the area.

So, the gentleman from Tennessee.

Mr. CLEMENT. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. Hecker, I will start with you first. You rightly point out that

homeland security policy is dispersed among 40 Federal agencies.

In a perfect world, how would you organize an effective homeland

security plan?

Ms. HECKER. Start with an easy question, huh?

Mr. CLEMENT. Yeah.

Ms. HECKER. Well, we think a positive step certainly was the creation of the Office of Homeland Security and the task now is really

to, as I said, the first thing is clarify the roles and responsibilities.

As that chart shows, there is a designated lead for consequence and

crisis management. But the lack of clarity below that in terms of

the relationships and the lead responsibilities really need further

clarification. An important place to start is actually the relationship between the Office of Homeland Security and the office the

President created within FEMA called the Office of National Preparedness. The mission statements are close to identical, so it

starts at the top, to get some clarity of the mission, and again, the

second point that I had in terms of getting clarity of the standard.

That is something that really is missing. Until we have greater

agreement, first at the Federal level or perhaps not even first, but

at a national level of what preparedness is, because we know with

the kind of threats we are facing, there is not one quick answer

that this is what it is.

Mr. CLEMENT. Well, as you know, I am one of those that think

that the time is coming when homeland security should be a Cabinet level position rather than a directorship, whereby they have

some real authority. I think that might apply to the State of Tennessee as well, when that time comes—do we or do we not have

the authority to get the job done or are we putting someone in a

title position without the authority to fulfill the mission.

What I want to ask of the FBI and Mr. Thomas, in your testimony you discuss the FBI’s joint terrorism task forces that have

been established in 44 cities. The goal is to increase that number

to 56. These are good programs and participants are highly, rightly

required to have security clearances. But numerous police chiefs

have complained that their officers who work on the JTTFs cannot

share the intelligence they obtain with anyone in the department,

including the chief because they do not have the appropriate security clearances. Has there been any effort to correct this problem?

Mr. THOMAS. Yes, there has. There has been an effort to——

Mr. CLEMENT. Get your microphone over there.

Mr. THOMAS [continuing]. Increase the number of clearances

given to the chiefs in the various departments. What we are in the

process of doing here in Tennessee, all the chiefs of the major cities

and major departments are getting secret level clearances that we

are conducting the background investigations and they will be getting the raw intelligence that we are getting. That should take care

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of that problem. The Director of TBI is in the process of getting a

top secret clearance, which requires the full background. But we

are in the process of getting the various chiefs the requisite clearances.

It should be noted that several of the chiefs—and it is not in

Tennessee, but I have gotten this from other SACs—also complain

about the application procedure for the clearances and maybe there

is a way we can streamline that, but you cannot have it both ways.

Mr. CLEMENT. OK. And General Gilbert, your role in the State

appears to be similar to Governor Ridge’s role in the Federal Government, some people are concerned that Governor Ridge lacks the

authority to accomplish the daunting task of melding numerous

Federal agencies into a coherent, well-organized response team. Do

you have the authority to accomplish that goal among Tennessee

agencies?

General GILBERT. I am very satisfied with my current role and

position with regard to authority. As I mentioned in my testimony,

I get great cooperation from all the members on our council and we

meet frequently. I get their feedback and we operate as a team.

And also, the Governor himself is a very, very active participant on

the council. So I am satisfied.

I might also add that I am in the process of receiving a top secret

clearance, which I of course used to have when I was in the military, and I have had a lot of people wanting to know if I am in

trouble or not, because this investigation is rather thorough. For

example, I hope they do not ask Congressman Bryant over there,

I may be in trouble. [Laughter.]

But I am very comfortable. It is a good question you asked, sir,

but I am very comfortable with the progress we have made. My

only real dilemma in terms of assuring that we are where we need

to be is to get the General Assembly to move ahead on some funding for us, which I hope will be forthcoming.

Mr. CLEMENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. We will now turn to the other gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Wamp, if you have questions.

Mr. WAMP. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will try to ask three or

four questions in the time we have. For Mr. Burris with FEMA,

talking about people, and I would solicit any of your response to

what can we do short of having additional resources to prepare for

personnel problems when you said your first-responders changed

based on a different line of attack; for instance, biological versus

the traditional responses.

How can we get the people on the ground, and how can we prepare to call on more people to enter the first-responder network?

The personnel problems have to be immense as we prepare for

some event that might happen in the future. What are we doing

and what do we need to do that we are not doing?

Mr. BURRIS. From the fire service side, let me start there, it is

a fairly unique community in that the majority of the first-responders in that arena in our country are volunteer. It is one of the problems of training, having people leave their jobs, not unlike, you

know, what our National Guard faces a lot of times when people

have to leave their work environment to receive that type of training.

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Primary to that is that each State needs to have a comprehensive

plan in what the risk that their State faces, which are unique to

each State, and how that interfaces with the response and the first

response community. That is the reason it is critically important

that we start channeling our grants to prepare local first-responders through our State emergency management agencies. Mr. White,

who is the Tennessee emergency manager sitting in the front row

here, it is his responsibility to see that Tennessee is adequately

prepared in that arena. Now it does little to support his responsibilities when numerous grants go outside of his purview to do just

what we have been trying to do here, which is bolster the first-response community in their efforts to meet his plan and the State

of Tennessee’s plan.

So that is one of the critical issues we have to get ahold of.

Mr. WAMP. You know, I met with the Civil Air Patrol yesterday

which is kind of a volunteer force out there at our command if we

need them. I had a lot of veterans call right after September 11th

and said where can I sign up, what can I do. Well, you know, they

are not going to be called back up, if their age requirements no

longer work. How can we establish a volunteer force of Americans

that can be called into action in the event of a catastrophe in a

State like this? That would seem to me to be some approach that

we might take together.

Mr. BURRIS. We are working on that through the CERT program

that the President brought up, Certified Emergency Response

Teams, which are located in the community, but then again, we

have to support the State in that training initiative. The Federal

Government is not going to actually come out and do that training,

it will be done by the States and we need to support them in providing them the financial resources, the train-the-trainer programs

and course curriculum to get that out. That is important, because

you do not want—in the time of a disaster or an emergency, you

have to have people responding to that have some minimal level of

training that understands what an incident command system and

how they interface in that. So that CERT program will certainly

start that process.

Mr. WAMP. Mr. Copeland, while I have still got time, I want to

get to your question. I understand not only do you serve with

TEMA, but you have got a real high-level background in the military. Without saying things you should not say, what are the greatest threats in our State right now in terms of—not specifically

what somebody could do to hurt us because we do not want to telegraph things—but what should we be the most concerned about?

I heard the FEMA representative, Mr. Burris, kind of list in order

for him, bio and then chem and then nuclear, in that order. But

what do you think the greatest threat is that we need to be preparing for in our State?

Mr. COPELAND. I feel the greatest threat, Congressman, is probably the bio terrorism side of the house. The reason I say that is

because once a biological agent is released, it is uncontrollable,

there is no way we can get it back or go in there to really try to

control that thing. That control and that capability is going to come

through our State health services to make that happen and it is

very time consuming to do that in most cases. So I would say that

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is probably the greatest threat and could very well be the threat

that is going to give us the most fatalities.

Second, I would say that the chemical threat. Our State has a

lot of chemicals that run up and down our State highway system,

as we have already discussed this morning, the number of interstate highways we have in our State, and there are a lot of chemical agents that are in these tankers, rail cars that run through our

State. They too could generate, create substantial casualties if

properly used or released. However, the response, you know, would

be sort of immediate there. We would have a chance to get in there,

even though there may be fatalities, our fire departments,

HAZMAT teams and things could respond and get in there and actually take some sort of action to minimize the fatalities.

Mr. WAMP. The red light is on, but if I could just follow-up and

ask Dr. Craig, if the provisions in the Frist-Kennedy Bill were fully

implemented, would our public health infrastructure be able to deal

with an incident like the one Mr. Copeland talks about?

Dr. CRAIG. I think that the current funding that we are in the

process of receiving right now as part of that legislation will be a

tremendous help to us to build our system. It is going to take years

to rebuild it I think to get to the capacity we need, but I think we

are making—we will make good progress with this additional funding.

Mr. WAMP. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. The gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Bryant, 5 minutes to question the witnesses.

Mr. BRYANT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I have three questions.

I am going to go right down the line rapid fire. If you could answer

yes or no and just a short, maybe 30 second, follow-up, or thereabouts.

Dr. Craig, on the heels of Mr. Wamp’s question, yesterday, I was

in a hearing on healthcare and a doctor testified that because of

lack of insurance and coverage and all that, that we have a lot of

people going to the emergency rooms to get their healthcare. That

is another issue that we need to do a better job on, but he implied

rather directly that because of that, our emergency room facilities

might be over-crowded and not adequately prepared to accept a situation caused by some sort of catastrophic attack as we talked

about. Do you see that as a problem in Tennessee?

Dr. CRAIG. Absolutely. I think that your emergency room capacity as well as hospital bed capacity, will be an issue in a large scale

emergency. Dr. Jones will be testifying in a little while, he can talk

to you more about that because he works in the emergency department but I think that is a definite concern.

Mr. BRYANT. Mr. Copeland, as Mr. Wamp alluded to, you have

got quite a record, you were the NBC advisor to the Delta Force

for about 3 years at Fort Bragg, which is the second best post and

second best unit behind the 101st.

Given that, I heard your testimony to say that maintenance is

being deferred, and I assume that maintenance is going to be a

problem one of these days, is that right? Maintenance on the emergency response equipment is being deferred?

Mr. COPELAND. What I am saying, Congressman, is there is no

funding currently that I am aware of that provides for continued

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maintenance and replacement of equipment that has a shelf life.

For example, some equipment has a shelf life of somewhere between 3 to 5 years, so 3 to 5 years from now, even though we buy

that piece of equipment to support a first-responder, at some point

that piece of equipment is no longer going to be serviceable to respond and go into a Level A environment. So there is no funding

that I am aware of currently being talked about for the replacement of such items, as well as the maintenance of equipment. You

know, equipment breaks, it goes down. I am not aware of any funding or at least addressing any funding that is for that type of maintenance.

Mr. BRYANT. Thank you. Mr. Thomas, as the FBI agent who

heads the office of both Nashville and Memphis and the region in

between, thank you for coming out at my town meeting in Memphis right after this and kind of going over some of the concerns

that the people had.

I want to follow-up on a comment General Gilbert made about

one of the most important things we can have is good intelligence;

and the second part of that with you is that good intelligence be

shared. I know the Director of the FBI indicated that there would

be a better situation there in terms of sharing intelligence and I

know it is not just the FBI, it is other Federal agencies, but we

have to share that intelligence. Do you sense movement there?

Mr. THOMAS. I think there is movement and improvement. I just

had the opportunity of serving as an on-scene commander at the

Salt Lake City Games and I have been in the FBI 28 years and

it was the first time in my career that I saw in our command center screens with NSA information, CIA information and FBI information on three screens with one keyboard per analyst. That was

live-time and up-to-date information. And once again, as an FBI

agent, I was driving a Cadillac out in Salt Lake, it was a $310 million Cadillac that we were driving, but it worked seamlessly and

the cooperation level was there.

I was at a conference when Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke

to us and he basically said all the crap ceased on September 11th

and that is what we saw in Salt Lake. Everybody cooperated, it

might have appeared to be a bowl of spaghetti to outsiders, but it

was a seamless operation and it worked very effectively.

Mr. BRYANT. Well, having been a U.S. attorney who worked with

all the law enforcement agencies, there was a lot of crap going on,

as you say, turf battles throughout. So I am pleased to hear that

and I want to again thank you for coming up and standing up in

front of folks like this answering questions, and very difficult questions, in a very difficult time.

Mr. THOMAS. Thank you.

Mr. BRYANT. Thank you.

Mr. HORN. I have just one question and that is, do any of you

disagree with anybody on the panel, and if so, get your things out

on the record. Anything that you felt counter to?

Mr. THOMAS. Well, I think the comment from GAO about it being

a bowl of spaghetti. I think the lines are confusing when you look

at it from a schematic, but when you actually get into operation,

things fall together and I think every person at this table, every

agency represented in this room shows that we are here to help the

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United States. It is amazing what can be done when you are faced

with a challenge and that is exactly what happened in Salt Lake.

Mr. HORN. Well, that is well put and we will now go to—I am

sorry, I did not see your hand. Go ahead.

Ms. HECKER. I just want to say that this is not our observation

based on the way the chart looks. This is really work that has been

done working with State and local governments and reflecting the

concern that they have had about dealing with the multiplicity of

agencies, the confusion that it has caused, the ambiguity, the overlap. I think one interesting example is all the different agencies all

require preparedness plans or strategies, they have not been coordinated and it is one of the reasons the Justice program, which

actually had some funds available, only four States on September

11th had even bothered to do the plan because it was so complex

and burdensome.

It is true at an operational level that people do their very best

and there is no doubt about that, to try to overcome the problem.

But in fact, there are severe problems, there are dozens of training

programs that are for the same folks and you are never sure, if you

are a State emergency management director, is that good enough

or do I have to send someone to the DOE and the NRC and the

Justice—what is complete. So, there are very severe concerns

which were validated in all of the major—the Gilmore Commission

and all of these other studies. There are problems, they do have to

be resolved. People on the frontlines are doing the best they can,

but there are some problems that really need some streamlining

and clarification.

Mr. HORN. Well put and I am glad you made that point. If there

are no more questions, we will go to panel two. Panel one, if it is

possible to stay here, maybe we will have questions in panel two

that we might like your knowledgable input. There are a few chairs

around. We will get panel two in.

Dr. Schaffner, Mr. Thacker, Mr. Turner, Mr. Halford, Dr. Jones,

Mr. Carter and Mr. Kulesz.

I thank panel two for making your presentations, and if you have

heard me on this, we are an investigatory committee and so, if you

would, please stand and raise your right hands and we will take

the oath.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. HORN. Thank you very much. First, we will note that there

are seven witnesses and they all affirmed the oath. So we will start

with Dr. William Schaffner, chairman, Department of Preventative

Medicine, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University

School of Medicine. Welcome.

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STATEMENTS OF WILLIAM SCHAFFNER, M.D., CHAIRMAN, DEPARTMENT OF PREVENTIVE MEDICINE, PROFESSOR OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF

MEDICINE; JAMES E. THACKER, DIRECTOR, MAYOR’S OFFICE

OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, NASHVILLE, TN; KENNETH

H. TURNER, CHIEF, NASHVILLE POLICE DEPARTMENT; STEPHEN D. HALFORD, DIRECTOR AND CHIEF, NASHVILLE FIRE

DEPARTMENT; IAN DAVID JONES, M.D., VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER; JAMES E. CARVER, DIRECTOR,

TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY POLICE; AND JIM KULESZ,

PROGRAM MANAGER, SYSTEMS ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY, OAK RIDGE NATIONAL LABORATORY

Dr. SCHAFFNER. Good morning.

Mr. HORN. Welcome to your own school. [Laughter.]

Dr. SCHAFFNER. That is always nice.

Members of the committee, good morning, colleagues and guests.

I appreciate the opportunity to be with you today. I am Bill

Schaffner, I am an infectious diseases physician and I chair the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Vanderbilt University

School of Medicine.

My focus is the prevention of communicable diseases, and in that

capacity, I work very closely with colleagues at the Tennessee Department of Health, Dr. Craig and I work very closely together,

and with colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

I have been requested to provide a few observations regarding

the preparation for potential bioterrorism events and my comments

will reflect both our local experience as well as observations from

my contacts and colleagues around the country.

So from the point of view of the local response, what is still needed? I would suggest three things: Coordination, communication and

capacity.

Since September 11th, hospitals in Nashville have worked diligently to create bioterrorism response plans to fit various possible

scenarios and drills have been conducted to test their function. Dr.

Jones will comment on some of this.

However, I liken the current situation to an orchestra where the

strings, horns and tympani are all practicing on their own, separate from each other. The effort continues to be earnest but we still

do not have communicable disease response in Music City. At the

moment, there is little coordination, there is no conductor that will

knit these separate elements together to create a harmonious response to potential communicable disease threats and it will take

a substantial effort by a respected and knowledgeable person to coordinate public health, hospitals, physicians, nurses, emergency

management, etc., in a response to various bioterrorism scenarios.

Be mindful, biological threats are quite different than chemical

or explosive events, with which our current disaster management

teams have more experience. The paradox is, as we heard already

from panel one, it is the bioterrorism events that rank first. Thus,

the responses to these events are distinctive and we need more

work in that regard. The chemical response model cannot be applied directly to communicable disease scenarios—anthrax has

shown us that.

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Now an essential element of coordination is communication

among hospitals, physicians, nurses, public health workers, etc. Dr.

Meir Oren, a senior official in the Israeli Ministry of Health, visited

Nashville recently and we had the pleasure of meeting with him.

He has major responsibilities for the design and implementation of

Israel’s medical response to terrorist acts. Dr. Oren reinforced the

critical need for a multi-faceted communications network that ties

together a community-wide response. Our community certainly has

communications capacity. However, it is institution specific, partial

and something substantially more sophisticated is needed that

could tie all the elements of the response mechanism together. Dr.

Craig commented about how difficult it is sometimes to reach elements of the total response plan. He mentioned physicians in particular and I would certainly reinforce that.

Once alerted, there must be a trained response capacity. Given

the structure and financing of healthcare in the United States

today, there is only minimal surge capacity in the healthcare system. Regular winter outbreaks of influenza quickly fill up beds and

back up patients in emergency rooms. We have had a very mild influenza season this year. Even so, Vanderbilt Hospital was full to

the brim several times last month. There was not even a major

stress. It will take substantial coordinated planning to create the

capacity to deal with a sudden surge of patients seriously ill with

an infectious disease.

Again, a lesson from anthrax. The mortality from inhalation anthrax was much less than predicted from the older published literature, and that is because hospitals were able to provide sophisticated, modern intensive care—lives were saved. The medical capacity we would need in a bioterrorist event would not be satisfied

simply by housing patients somewhere else with minimal care. Neither the medical community nor the public would find that sufficient today.

Now, perhaps a more subtle aspect of capacity. One often thinks

about large, obvious bioterrorism events that suddenly produce a

large number of patients with severe, unexplained illness. That is

kind of the chemical exposure model—it all happens at once, bingo,

you know you have got a problem. That could happen. However,

with bioterrorism events more likely is what occurred with anthrax. The occurrence of disease will be subtle, mimicking other illnesses, spread out geographically, occurring relatively slowly over

time—a few cases here and there—and then perhaps gathering momentum. Training and coordinating physicians, both in the hospital

and in the community, to recognize unusual infections and to respond appropriately is a task that has begun, but more needs to

be done.

Conversations with colleagues around the country indicate that

these are common themes around the country.

Now a word about the public health infrastructure already mentioned by Dr. Craig. You have heard and will hear more about the

need to rebuild such a public health infrastructure and I endorse

that strongly. The Federal response to bioterrorism will help restore some of that capacity which, while it readies itself to respond

to terrorism, will provide enhanced public health capacity day-today. Indeed, by responding to the usual and to newly emerging

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communicable diseases, the public health system builds expertise

to respond to unusual bioterrorist agents.

In conclusion, let me just say I provide one last point—something

I will call a sobering reality check. In order to attract top people

into these positions as we try to rebuild public health, one must

provide reasonable and competitive salaries as well as genuinely

professional environments. I must say, sadly, it is often the case

that both are lacking. Salaries in many health departments are low

and the working environment is often characterized as bureaucratic rather than professional. Of course, there are many good people in public health today, they are often infused with an extraordinary personal sense of dedication and mission, but we cannot rely

on such dedicated idealism alone to support our country’s response

to bioterrorism. Again, these are circumstances that are common

across the country.

Members of the committee, thank you for coming, for listening,

for responding. Across the country, we have done much; much more

needs to be done and with your help, we will get it done. Thank

you very much.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Schaffner follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Well thank you very much, Dr. Schaffner.

Our next presenter is James E. Thacker, director, mayor’s Office

of Emergency Management, Nashville, TN. Mr. Thacker.

Mr. THACKER. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee,

thank you for inviting me to speak with you today.

I was asked to speak about how the Federal Government is assisting State and local governments in preparation for a potential

terrorist attack involving biological, chemical or nuclear agents.

Since 1998, Nashville has participated with several Federal and

State agencies to strengthen its local capabilities under provisions

of the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici Act. While the Domestic Preparedness

Initiative got off to somewhat of a rocky start from a coordination

standpoint, I have seen a conscious and sustained effort by our

Federal counterparts to smooth out the process. I hope to see improvements in distinguishing responsibilities at all levels of government, allowing us all to work together in a more effective environment.

Work needs to be done to improve the flow of information

throughout the three levels of government. For instance, I hear Director Ridge is working on solving a part of this problem by instituting a state-of-the-art emergency notification system. I would encourage support of such programs to ensure we do not merely learn

important information from the news media, but rather from official sources.

Coordination, cooperation and communication are the most important elements of any emergency response and recovery process.

In Nashville, we have a strong working relationship with our local,

State and Federal agency counterparts. The central theme of planning, training and exercising is to do it together, because we have

found that a basic familiarization with each other is vital to an effective response and recovery from incidents.

In the area of funding, I encourage direct Federal grants. And a

good place to start would be major cities with populations of more

than 500,000. There should be separate funds for States, smaller

U.S. cities and other areas deemed appropriate. Having worked for

both State and local emergency management, I know the needs and

vulnerabilities of the major cities are more vital to homeland security. The needs of State agencies are also vastly different from the

smaller cities, particularly in the area of day-to-day public safety.

I believe cities function most effectively with others of similar

size and common makeup. For example, Nashville has gleaned

helpful information by working with other major cities under the

Metropolitan Medical Response System, a program that is managed

by the U.S. Public Health Office of Emergency Preparedness. We

meet biannually with our program contact from the U.S. Public

Health and exchange this information.

Statewide networking has limited value to us as Memphis is the

only Tennessee city with a comparable size and scope of Nashville.

With the many pass-through grants that give the State a single pot

of money to disseminate at its own discretion, government has effectively created competition for grants that are not necessarily

needs based. If we do not have pre-qualifying criteria attached to

local grant funding, then I testify the system is less effective and

basically destined to flounder.

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Once moneys are awarded, there needs to be more flexible spending requirements. Domestic preparedness funding under the NunnLugar-Domenici Act restricts local spending to pre-specified equipment—personal protective equipment, detection, decontamination,

communication and pharmaceuticals.

In Nashville, additional funds are needed for computers, software, wireless communications and other incident management

tools that are not presently eligible for grant funding.

Increased funding for local search and rescue teams is needed.

While USAR teams were created before homeland security was a

priority, ironically the three major terrorist attacks in the United

States required a significant USAR response. Since minutes mean

lives, all major cities need to have a local capability to perform

USAR rather than having to wait many hours for outside assistance to arrive.

Additional Federal logistics support is needed for the reception

and distribution of CDC push-packs. Due to shipping and cost effectiveness, the pharmaceuticals and other supplies come in bulk

packages that have to be repackaged after local arrival before they

can be used. Technical advisers arrive with 50 tons of medical supplies are to supervise a recommended 300 local workers in the unpacking, repackaging and distribution. It makes more sense for the

Federal Government to send a dedicated, trained work force with

the push-packs to manage these tasks. With proper training and

familiarity with supplies and equipment, they can do the job much

faster and more efficiently. This also avoids placing an additional

burden on the local government resources already stressed by a

major emergency.

In conclusion, I appreciate the work this committee is doing and

the attention that emergency responders are receiving. I know as

we continue to work together, we will make our cities, States and

Nation a safer place.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Thacker follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Thank you. And our next presenter is Emmett H.

Turner, the chief of the Nashville Police Department.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today.

I am very pleased to report that from a law enforcement perspective, Nashville is well ahead of the curve in its terrorism preparedness. Last September, I appointed one of my assistant chiefs to

chair a 10-member committee to ensure that the police department

maintained a high-level of preparedness to respond to any terrorist

act. The committee meets at least monthly and continues to assess

the policies, procedures, training and equipment needs throughout

the department.

We have done a lot since last September. We have surveyed,

evaluated and inventoried our chemical and riot equipment. We

have requested the purchase of additional chemical and riot gear

through the Office of Emergency Management. We have established a primary and secondary catastrophic event staging area for

police personnel.

At the request of the Metro Water Department, we have conducted unannounced security checks at Water Department facilities. The weaknesses we detected were immediately reported to the

Department Director.

We have been conducting joint tabletop exercises on biological

and chemical situations with members of the Metro Fire Department. The events of September 11th clearly illustrate the importance of police and fire departments working closely together to

successfully manage a biological or chemical incident.

We have designated 25 police officers to participate in an Urban

Search and Rescue team. These 25 officers completed their initial

training last month.

We have designated a lieutenant in our Intelligence Division to

be the police department’s representative on the FBI Middle Tennessee Counter-Terrorism Task Force. Over the years, the Metro

Police Department and the FBI have formed a strong working relationship. The two agencies have made information sharing a priority, and I am very pleased with the two-way information flow between our department and the Nashville FBI office. I have heard

that some of my colleagues in other cities have been critical of the

lack of information they are receiving from their Federal offices. I

am very pleased to say that is not the case in Nashville.

Two months ago, our police officers arrested a man who had

pointed an assault rifle in the direction of a Nashville synagogue.

Given all of the circumstances involved in the case, we asked the

Counter-Terrorism Task Force to join in the investigation. Working

together with the FBI and ATF, we wound-up seizing a large number of pipe bombs, hand grenades, firearms, explosive components

and bombmaking material. The suspect in this case is being prosecuted federally. The case illustrates the strong relationship between our department and the Federal law enforcement which, in

the long-run, benefits the safety of Nashville citizens.

Those of us at the local level very much appreciate the Federal

Government’s financial assistance in obtaining equipment and

training to prepare our first-responders for any terrorist attack involving biological or chemical weapons. I do, however, have one

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suggestion to improve the Homeland Security Assistance Program.

While grants available from the Federal Government have been

very important in helping communities purchase personal protective suits and related equipment, we would like to see the grant

criteria broadened to allow the purchase of technology such as satellite phones and computer software. Communication equipment

and computer technology are vital tools necessary to adequately respond to terrorism incidents and should be part of a well-developed

contingency plan.

Again, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you this

morning and we appreciate all that you do for the citizens of Nashville, TN and for this Nation. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Turner follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Thank you. We have now Stephen D. Halford, the director and chief of the Nashville Fire Department.

Mr. HALFORD. Good afternoon. Chairman Horn and honorable

committee members, you have my written statement and I will try

not to read it to you.

Let me first start out by saying that from a fire service perspective, effective Federal funding of front-line fire services should do

two key things. They should better train us and better equip us.

Those are the two main functions that the Federal dollars should

go for.

Let us talk about better training of firefighters for just a moment. We are talking a lot in this Committee and our panelists

about the $3.5 billion that will be earmarked in the Fiscal Year

2003 budget and how those funds will be spent, and that is very

important. But the training of firefighters across the United States

for weapons of mass destruction and nuclear, biological and chemical events has been occurring for the last decade. So it is very important that although these agencies of the Federal Government

that are helping us, they may not be getting any of these particular

funds, they do have budgets and we need to focus on their budgets.

There is a bedrock of training that is going on right now from these

Federal agencies that will remain the bedrock and I ask you to look

at these agencies’ budgets and make sure that their budgets are

properly funded. And the particular agencies that produce the best

results for fire service training for WMD and NBC type incidents

in the United States are the U.S. Fire Administration’s National

Fire Academy, U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agencies,

Emergency Management Institute and the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice programs, Office for State and Local Domestic Preparedness Support. Those three agencies of the Federal Government or actually sub-agencies, are producing very good quality

programs in those areas right now and we need to make sure that

their budgets are well supported, so we urge you to look at their

budgets and see if you think they are, talk to their folks.

The second objective of the Federal dollars in helping the fire

service should be to better equip our firefighters and I think there

are two components of that. One is that there be adequate Federal

dollars, which I think there really is going to be with the $3.5 billion appropriation for all of our first-responders, but we need not

to assume that because there is more money, that money is effective, which indeed has been commented on by several of you this

morning. You have got to ensure that the dollars in order to

achieve the specific goal of equipping our firefighters actually and

directly reach us.

It is also important to ensure that after the appropriation by

Congress, Federal dollars earmarked for equipping us—and when

I say us, I am talking about the fire service, our aspect of it—reach

us promptly.

We are concerned in the fire service about the channeling of the

prospective funds to our fire departments. Now I am talking strictly about any specific appropriations for fiscal year 2003, the $3.5

billion. Those fiscal year 2003 appropriations that are specifically

intended to better equip the fire service, and that is only part of

that $3.5 billion—that is what we are most concerned about.

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We would like for those funds to reach us under the Federal Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program. The Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program, initially known as the Firefighters Investment, Response and Enhancement Act, is only 2 years old and it

was a way to get Federal dollars directly to the departments. The

Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program is the method we would

like to continue to use to get those dollars to us. However, that program has essentially been gutted for fiscal year 2003 because it has

been included in the large Homeland Security. We want to make

sure those dollars come directly to us by way of our local governments which must approve the funds because they are grant

matchers for it. We do not need to reinvent the wheel and have you

distribute funds that are coming to the fire service. The concern is

that the funds are given directly to the States. Technically there

are no State fire departments. We will have to come up with work

programs and submit programs for approval. We would like those

funds to come directly to us.

So in summary, the Federal effectiveness in supporting the Nation’s fire department first-responders can best be achieved by supporting those Federal agencies that train us and those Federal

spending authorizations that directly and expeditiously equip us.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Halford follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Thank you. I particularly appreciate that formula situation.

We now have Dr. Ian David Jones, Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Dr. JONES. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee.

I would like to give you a flavor of how these issues are being

addressed at our hospital and on a local level. And to do that, I will

divide my testimony into three parts. I want to talk about a situation we faced 6 months ago, the present situation and a description

of the Vanderbilt bioterrorism subplan. And I would also like to

identify some problems that I have identified within our current

system.

Our lack of preparedness to deal with a bioterrorist attack was

made very clear on the morning of October 4, 2001 when an individual who was initially described to us as a terrorist slit the

throat of a Greyhound bus driver near Manchester, TN. The bus

ran off the road, flipped, there were a number of patients who were

killed, a number of patients were brought back to Vanderbilt via

Lifeflight. While the helicopter was en route to Vanderbilt with

these injured patients, we received further information from what

at the time we thought was a credible source that these patients

had been contaminated with a biological agent. Nothing that we

had experienced up to that point had prepared us to deal with the

threat and many of the staff frankly in the ER were very frightened.

On the very same day, the first case of inhalational anthrax was

described by the CDC in Florida. As further cases of anthrax were

reported in other cities, it became clear that the institution was not

prepared to handle the large number of patients who might present

in the event of a bioterrorist attack.

As a result, at Vanderbilt, a committee was formed to draft a

subplan to our Hospital Disaster Plan, which dealt exclusively with

bioterrorism. The goals of this plan were twofold. We wanted to expedite the rapid evaluation and treatment of a large number of individuals who may have been exposed to biological agents and our

goal was arbitrarily 1500 patients per day. And the other part of

our goal was to educate patients, families and staff about biological

agents, their risks of exposure and the potential signs and symptoms connected to that exposure.

As a part of the plan, Vanderbilt created a hospital pharmaceutical stockpile at considerable expense to the hospital, that was

coordinated and dispensed by our hospital pharmacist. We assembled first-line antibiotics enough to treat 5,000 people for 3 days in

the event of an exposure. We assembled stock preparations which

were available on an immediate pre-mixing dosage appropriate for

children and we increased our hospital supply of antidotes, IV antibiotics and IV fluids.

In addition, Vanderbilt has constructed a mass decontamination

facility which is immediately adjacent to our emergency room. This

was actually the first mass decontamination facility in the region

and it was constructed about a year before the events of September

11th. Subsequently, our Veterans Administration Hospital has actually used our plans to construct an identical facility on their campus across the street.

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Our Environmental Health and Safety Office here is also providing ongoing training for emergency room nurses, physicians and

other staff and the appropriate methods for decontamination in the

event of a nuclear, biological or chemical event.

We have concentrated heavily on education here at Vanderbilt.

There are a number of our staff members who were very concerned

and frightened obviously when all this occurred, so as a result, our

Learning Center developed both videotape and written materials

on nuclear, biological and chemical agents that have been taught

to over 5,000 Vanderbilt staff members.

In addition, all staff members who participate in our bioterrorism

drill at Vanderbilt have received advanced training on agents of

bioterrorism and critical stress debriefing techniques.

In the past 2 years at Vanderbilt, we have participated in five

separate drills that have dealt with either biological or chemical

agents. Most recently, in January of this year, we had an internal

drill involving 165 people who were simulated to have been exposed

to anthrax at Nashville Predators hockey game. We have also participated locally, the city’s 10 major hospitals have been coordinating disaster management efforts for over 15 years. As Mr. Thacker

has told us, this is administered by the Office of Emergency Management and supplemented by our MMRS grant which is an integrated program between EMS, police, hospitals and the Nashville

Health Department. This has given us resources for training and

implementation at the EMS level as well as hospital resources for

PPEs, decontamination equipment and antibiotics.

I will tell you from what we have received, it is not enough.

My testimony will conclude actually with identifying problems

that I see within our current system. The No. 1 problem that I see

we are facing today is emergency department over-crowding. There

are times when our emergency department has 15 or 20 patients

waiting in our waiting room and it is absolutely filled to capacity.

The reasons for this are multi-factorial. We are serving as a safety

net for uninsured patients in Tennessee without doctors; we are

serving as a primary care resource because we do not have adequate primary care resources within the public healthcare system;

there is an older, sicker population as the baby boomer generation

ages and there is generally a breakdown in the mental healthcare

system. We also see a number of patients coming in requesting alcohol and drug rehabilitation. Services that we are not used to providing in emergency rooms we are being forced to provide.

We have a huge problem with citywide surge capacity. Right

now, as Dr. Schaffner mentioned, a minor epidemic such as the flu

that we have had this month has closed a number of hospitals in

town. It does not take a lot of imagination to understand what

might happen if 1,000 critically ill patients requiring ICU care

were dumped on the system at the same, as might happen in a bioterrorism event.

We also need to improve our regional communications. This

broke down during the Greyhound bus event and we did not know

what was going on. We have a number of EMS services with their

own communication systems but there is no coordination in the

State for that.

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We need to upgrade our laboratory facilities, as Dr. Craig has

spoken about, and frankly our level of rural preparedness in Tennessee is still very low. It is not possible for the smaller hospitals

to do what we have been able to do at Vanderbilt, because they do

not have the expertise and they do not have the funding. This has

cost Vanderbilt several hundred thousand dollars to put together

and it is impossible for smaller hospitals to do that.

I appreciate the time you have given me this morning. Thank

you very much.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Jones follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Well, thank you, that’s a key segment of anything to

do with terrorism.

We now have James Carver, the director of the Tennessee Valley

Authority Police.

Mr. CARVER. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee. Mr. Chairman, welcome to the Tennessee Valley. I applaud you for holding these hearings and thank you for the opportunity to testify before you here today.

Before I continue, Mr. Chairman, all of TVA would like to wish

you well in your pending retirement from Congress and good luck

in all your future endeavors.

I would also like to thank the members of the Tennessee delegation who are here today—Congressman Wamp, Mr. Bryant. I just

want to thank you and, Mr. Clement, thank you very much for

being here today.

I am pleased to give you an update of the Tennessee Valley Authority security and our ongoing coordination with State and local

governments. As we all know, these two issues are of critical importance to the safety of all Americans. TVA’s preparedness, diligence and coordination of resources are vital to the protection of

citizens from future threats.

I would first like to recognize the importance of the Federal,

State and local agencies here today. Through their assistance and

support, TVA has greatly enhanced its security and emergency preparedness plans. I am confident that as we continue to work together, communications and coordinations at all levels of the government will become stronger—not just here, but across the Nation.

TVA’s mission is to improve the quality of life for residents in the

Tennessee Valley. TVA does this by providing an adequate supply

of affordable and reliable electricity, management of the Tennessee

river system, environmental stewardship and economic development programs. Our goal is to continually strive for excellence in

business performance and public service.

In order to fulfill this mission, TVA operates 49 dams, three nuclear plants and a number of other power production and transmission facilities. Managing the Nation’s fifth largest river system

also requires TVA to balance the demands of the Valley’s water

needs, including water quality protection. These operations require

that TVA have in place specific security measures and emergency

preparedness plans. Those of particular interest today pertain to

water quality and TVA’s nuclear assets.

About 4 million Valley residents depend on the Tennessee River

system for their water supply. This responsibility requires that

TVA constantly monitor water quality for naturally occurring and

non-natural substances. We do this by monitoring water quality at

60 sites year round and reporting results to local officials, as they

need them.

TVA dams are able to impound water, if the containment of a

pollutant is needed. Our emergency procedures ensure that we respond quickly and that we work in close relationship, in partnership with State and local agencies to address those type problems.

TVA has also initiated a dialog with State governments, updating and creating new action plans in the event of biological attack.

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The intent is to strengthen the protection of the water supply and

discuss the capabilities and limitation with each agency represented.

Additionally, TVA coordinates closely with State and local enforcement agencies to provide marine patrols, security on Federal

properties, traffic control and other law enforcement activities. This

cooperation bolsters the law enforcement presence at these key

public health and recreation facilities.

Since September 11th, security of the Nation’s nuclear power assets has been a top priority. TVA’s nuclear security staff has

worked closely with the TVA police, local law enforcement agencies

and emergency officials to further define interfaces and evaluate

new ideas. One of these initiatives included meeting with the National Guard at our nuclear plants to solidify emergency contingency plans. Also, TVA has begun a series of meetings with local

law enforcement agencies for organizing and clarifying responsibilities.

Prior to September 11th, several coordinating points between

TVA and other government agencies were already in place as contingencies for intentional or unintentional nuclear incidents. Examples are the establishment and continuation of emergency preparedness programs and annual emergency exercises. These initiatives specifically state precise actions and steps for both TVA and

other government agencies in emergency circumstances. TVA assists in these situations partially by including technical expertise,

development of field teams, site monitoring and a joint communications center.

In conclusion, the terrorist attacks on America have reinforced

the need of proactive planning between agencies. It is of the utmost

importance for us to coordinate our collective resources. TVA and

other agencies must work together to provide the safest environment for the public as possible, while also continually refining our

ability to respond.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify here today to share

TVA’s security and emergency response measures with you. And I

commend you for your leadership here today.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Carver follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Our last presenter on panel two is Jim Kulesz, the

program manager, systems engineering and technology, Computational Sciences and Engineering Division at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Thank you for coming.

Mr. KULESZ. Thank you. Chairman Horn and distinguished

members of the committee, thank you for inviting me here today

to testify on a topic of how the Federal Government is assisting

State and local governments to prepare for a potential terrorist attack involving biological, chemical or nuclear events.

My name is James J. Kulesz and I lead the effort at Oak Ridge

National Laboratory to develop SensorNet, a strategy to protect the

United States by rapidly deploying a nationwide real-time detection and assessment system of chemical, biological, radiological and

nuclear threats. SensorNet will provide a national operations office

or center with the capability to dispatch informed first responders

within minutes following a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear event.

Dispatched first-responders will know the critical details of the

event to include the exact identification of chemical and biological

agents as well as levels of radiological releases. Not only will firstresponders know the exact location and identification of the threat,

but they will also know the projected route of dispersal in sufficient

time to take corrective action. In the aftermath of such a terrorist

event, the capabilities of SensorNet could save thousands, if not

millions, of lives.

By combining assets from both the government and private sectors, all components for SensorNet presently exist and a nationwide system can be rapidly deployed. In fact, field testing of

SensorNet technology will be conducted in 2 weeks at three locations in the State of Tennessee. And incidentally, General Gilbert

who heads the Tennessee Homeland Security Office, is graciously

allowing us to use his office as a command center during those

tests.

Importantly, a nationwide system can be rapidly deployed because SensorNet’s state-of-the-art sensors and remote telemetry

will be located at existing cellular communicationsites. Presently,

there are more than 30,000 cellular sites in the United States that

have been strategically located, based on population densities to

create the Nation’s wireless telecommunications infrastructure.

Therefore, SensorNet’s ideal deployment template currently exists.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory has developed the Block II

Chemical-Biological Mass Spectrometer [CBMS] for the Department of Defense for use by the military. While continuously sampling the air, the CBMS detects and identifies both known and unknown chemical agents in less than 45 seconds and biological

agents in less than 4 minutes. The CBMS is the only device in the

world that has this proven capability. In addition, sensor technology to rapidly detect the presence of a nuclear release is available and will also be incorporated into the system.

Through remote telemetry, each SensorNet site will communicate

the detection, identification and assessment of a CBRN event to a

National Operations Center within 5 minutes. SensorNet will include software models currently used in all military command centers throughout the world. This software modeling system is called

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Hazard Prediction and Assessment Capability [HPAC]. Following

the detection of a CBRN event by sensors, HPAC will, in real time,

produce a plume model, determine the location and number of exposed people, predict the location and number of exposed people in

the future, if no action is taken, and predict immediate and latent

health effects on the population.

In summary, SensorNet is a strategy to protect the Nation. The

capability to dispatch informed first-responders within minutes following a CBRN event will save lives. This is an issue of the highest

national concern for the Office of Homeland Security and meets the

criteria of the Bioterrorism Preparedness Act of 2001 as well as

other legislation. All components for SensorNet presently exist. We

are in a state of war; there is a national need for the immediate

deployment of SensorNet.

Congressmen, to put the capabilities of SensorNet in perspective,

if a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear event occurred at

the start of my testimony, by now, SensorNet would have provided

first-responders with information to save lives.

Thank you, gentlemen. I welcome your questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kulesz follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Thank you.

I have a question for Mr. James E. Carver, the director, Tennessee Valley Authority Police; and that is this: We all agree that

the emergency management programs must remain a priority in

our government spending programs. Given that, if you could be

granted one wish that would more improve the job you are doing,

what would it be?

Mr. CARVER. Of course, the one wish would be unlimited manpower. That would be what I think all of us could use, is more personnel. But I think the primary thing and the most important wish

I would have is that we can continually work together, as I think

we are here in the State of Tennessee to coordinate our efforts. We

have done that since September, we did that prior to September

11th, in trying to prepare for these type disasters. But I think the

cooperation and coordination that we strive for is, above all, what

we need to continue to pursue.

Mr. HORN. Thank you. I will now give my colleagues 5 minutes

each, and we will start with Mr. Wamp and work our way up.

Mr. WAMP. Thank you. I have two questions, and one may require our GAO professional to come back up.

I am on the Appropriations Committee and we have talked, particularly in the first-responder arena—law enforcement, firefighters—about grants. And with this much new money coming online all at one time, are there ideas of how we can better fund these

programs so that the money gets to the needs in the most effective

way? People have actually used the term ‘‘earmark,’’ today and of

course if you are a member of the Appropriations Committee and

you say earmark, everybody thinks you’re a porkmeister, that you

are trying to earmark moneys just for a parochial interest. But

frankly, earmarking can be a way to actually get the money to the

specific need rather than just throwing it in a big pot and hoping

that it arrives where it needs to.

So I just wonder—I know that we created the firefighter grant program 2 years ago, $100 million, for smaller firefighting efforts

in rural America, and I guess I am looking for ideas or feedback

that might help us direct these resources quicker to where they

need to go.

Mr. HALFORD. I would be happy to address that. I think you hit

the nail right on the head. The proof in the pudding is how moneys

are distributed for funding. The Firefighters Assistance Program,

which is 2 years old, the Fire Act, as you said, started out with

$100 million, current fiscal year it is $360 million, and it was targeted to be $900 million in fiscal year 2003. The people who decide

how this money should be distributed to the fire departments—and

that could be local government if it is a paid fire department, but

it could be a volunteer fire department which may not be part of

local government—but in any event, there is consensus by the

International Association of Fire Chiefs, which the paid management of the fire service, the International Association of Firefighters, which is labor organization, and the National Volunteer

Fire Council. And in fact, I have a letter that I will leave with you

today that is signed by all three groups, that we would like to continue any money that is funneled to the fire service, whether it is

through this prospective $3.5 billion, go through that group that

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funnels the money to us, because the group is composed of fire

chiefs and volunteer officers from all over the country, and they decide—they sit and they take grant applications, they review, they

funnel the money directly to us.

Now you should understand that anything that we do to enhance

ourselves before the focus of September 11th better prepares us to

handle all emergencies.

So I think the point that you are inquiring on, and I am just

speaking for the fire service—there are ways that have already

been invented to distribute that funding. The fire service does not

want that going to State governments who then must filter and

distribute. We have got a good method. Any time you get the International Association of Fire Chiefs, Firefighters and Volunteer Fire

Council all together on one issue, you have accomplished something

because we are very passionate people and our groups have some

different ideas, but the whole—the Nation’s fire service is totally

united on distributing these funds through that grant act.

Mr. WAMP. Dr. Schaffner, an example is I am one of the members who have committed to doubling the funding for NIH over a

10-year period of time, and this past year we increased NIH funding by 15 percent—huge single year increase. But I am told that

with a level that is arbitrary, 15 percent, we are still not getting

the money directly to where it needs. I would solicit, not just today,

but in the future, your input on how the moneys can best get to

the specific needs as opposed to an arbitrary dollar figure, we need

this nationwide, as opposed to exactly what do we need, how can

that money really rifle shot in on the need.

Dr. SCHAFFNER. I would just comment that the NIH moneys fund

basic research and Tony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases actually provides a great

deal of guidance about how that money should be spent, and actually we are pretty happy with how that is working.

I would suggest you pay equal attention to how the CDC is funded, because the CDC works directly with State and local health departments and that agency takes the fruits of the research and actually applies it. They are the first line responders and investigators of potential outbreaks of communicable disease and we rely

strongly on that agency to be the strong Federal backbone of our

public health system.

Mr. WAMP. Very important. My time is up, but I want to comment that it is good to hear that there may be some other productive use for those awful 30,000 cell towers that have cropped up all

over our country. And I am also very proud that SensorNet comes

from our State, from our region and that, yet again, we are out on

the cutting edge of breakthroughs that can actually solve the free

world’s problems, especially at this level of high-technology. I tell

my colleagues that I understand that the funding requests to actually meet the national plan is only $10 million, and so we will be

coming to you for funding I think for SensorNet from the Oak

Ridge National Laboratory. But is that not exciting for all Tennesseans to hear of that potential investment that we could make

to help solve this problem.

And with that, the red light is on and I yield back.

Mr. HORN. I thank the gentleman.

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Now Mr. Clement.

Mr. CLEMENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chief Turner, you state that the Nashville Police Department

has conducted unannounced security checks at Water Department

facilities and weaknesses were found. Have these weaknesses been

corrected?

Mr. TURNER. Congressman, to my knowledge, they have been

corrected. Certainly the insufficient security measures that we

found were reported to the Director of the Water Department, and

I feel confident that he has taken the necessary steps to correct

those deficiencies.

Mr. CLEMENT. Dr. Jones, could you explain what you mean by

hospital diversions and surge capacities? Do they occur often? Why

are these diversions increasing and what happens if all hospitals

in a particular region were to go on diversion at the same time,

and has it ever happened?

Dr. JONES. Hospital diversion is when a hospital fills, essentially,

due to a number of reasons. There are either not enough nurses to

staff the hospital or the hospital is physically full of patients, every

bed in that hospital has a patient in it. When that occurs, you request that the EMS services no longer bring you patients by ambulance. If patients still want to come to your facility, they can, but

in order to take some of the pressure off the hospital, we make that

request. That is what diversion is.

There are a number of times in the year that hospitals in this

city, including Vanderbilt, are on diversion. This problem is not as

big as it is in some other cities. We have never had a situation here

where—that I know of—where every hospital has been on diversion

at the same time. But that has happened in other communities.

When that happens, there is really nowhere for the EMS service

who may be carrying critically ill patients, to take them. There are

reports of ambulances driving around cities looking for places to

take patients and there have even been patients who have died

during that. So it is a serious problem.

I do not know if that addresses all of your question or you might

want to—is that OK or do you need a little bit more?

Mr. CLEMENT. No, I think you did.

Dr. JONES. OK.

Mr. CLEMENT. And Dr. Schaffner, I know you commented to

some degree on this, but you present a pretty grim picture of the

Nation’s public health system. Do you see any light at the end of

the tunnel in rebuilding the public health system?

Dr. SCHAFFNER. I think that there has been an awakening of interest and a realization that the public health system needs to be

rebuilt. Dr. Craig told us about some Federal funding that is helping us in Tennessee to rebuild the laboratory capacity. Likewise,

that sort of assistance is needed across the country to rebuild laboratory and communicable disease investigative capacities and the

capacity to respond. That is something we need to work on.

Mr. CLEMENT. OK. And Mr. Carver, you state in your testimony

that military guards assisted you in protecting the substation that

supplies power to Fort Campbell. Is there any arrangement in

place to use either military forces or the National Guard on a

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broader basis to protect TVA facilities in the event of a major attack?

Mr. CARVER. Yes, Congressman, we have worked closely with the

National Guards across the Valley for that very purpose, so that

if we, TVA police, and TVA expends its resources to the point that

there is something imminent or something more disastrous that we

are not expecting to occur this suddenly, then we have contingency

plans to where we can contact and work with the National Guard

across the Valley for their rapid response; yes, sir.

Mr. CLEMENT. Mr. Kulesz, I am really excited about the

SensorNet and its potential in the future.

Mr. KULESZ. Thank you, sir.

Mr. CLEMENT. I want to know more about it. Do other agencies

around the country know of its potential and how it could—— Mr. KULESZ. We are getting the word out now and trying to talk

to as many people as we can in the other agencies to look for funding sources for bits and pieces of SensorNet.

Mr. CLEMENT. Well, I am looking forward to working with you

and Mr. Wamp.

Mr. KULESZ. Thank you, sir.

Mr. CLEMENT. Thank you.

Mr. HORN. The gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Bryant.

Mr. BRYANT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I know that I speak for all my other colleagues here from Tennessee in just thanking you and whoever else helped put these two

outstanding panels together. The very high quality of these folks

makes us all proud here and I very much appreciate it. I think

they have been very informative.

I also want to put in a good plug for TVA. You can tell by the

testimony of Mr. Carver today that we have got a great organization here in the Valley. We in the Valley are very proud of TVA,

they have, without Federal dollars—they do not use Federal money

in their budget—they have been a wonderful asset to this region,

with reliable electricity and inexpensive electricity. And being a

member of a subcommittee that actually is talking about deregulating electricity and being at the table on behalf of TVA and the consumers, you can see the reluctance of many of us to want to talk

about that subject during these times.

But I have two questions back to the subject at hand. One would

be to Dr. Jones, I asked the question with the earlier panel about

the emergency rooms and I think you very clearly have responded

to that question. I would ask you, keeping in mind that I have one

more question that I would like to ask Mr. Kulesz about his equipment, but Dr. Jones, I would ask you, since most of Tennessee

probably would be classified as rural, certainly a lot of my district,

as I go down to Memphis and toward Pickwick and up to Clarksville and over here, with everything in between, much of it is rural.

We have a number of rural hospitals. How do we help these folks

at these hospitals get a grasp on what could happen out there without causing people all surging into the metropolitan areas for their

care? Is there hope?

Dr. JONES. I think there is certainly hope. I would really like to

see the approach taken that we have the major academic medical

centers in Tennessee serve as centers of excellence. We have the

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resources at the bigger hospitals that are affiliated with universities that have teaching staff and residents to formulate these

plans and dispense them to the smaller hospitals. I think what we

need to do—and some of this is actually being done right now

through the THA—is appropriate fundings to the larger hospitals

to form these centers and then have the centers accumulate the

materials and then disperse it throughout the State. Our plan

could be someone else’s plan. We can coordinate how we are going

to take care of this at the small hospitals, we can discuss decontamination, we can use the expertise that we have here, Dr.

Schaffner and others, and let it trickle down to the smaller hospitals.

Mr. BRYANT. Is this concept that we talk about some in Congress—I know I have advocated it and others have—telemedicine,

where bigger hospitals can reach out via telecommunications and

actually help out—— Dr. JONES. Sure. One of the things that we have talked about is

actually putting some of these resources on the internet. Certainly

when we put our bioterrorism subplan together we actually used

a template that was already available on the Internet through

APIC which is an infection control organization, and we have subsequently modified that.

But I think the best way to get this into small facilities certainly

would be through the Internet and on the Web. I mean we have

developed a lot of protocols here, we have actually taken our patient information sheets on a number of agents and translated

them into six languages. So I think we have got a lot of resources

that we could share with other hospitals in the State.

Mr. BRYANT. OK. Mr. Kulesz, I have just a very short question.

Mr. KULESZ. Sure.

Mr. BRYANT. Your equipment, in terms of its ability to detect biological or chemical agents—two questions. Does it work in water as

well as in the air, and No. 2, now much does it cost with a government discount?

Mr. KULESZ. The underlying instrument behind the chemical, biological mass spect is really designed originally for environmental

purposes and it is certified through EPA to do air, water and soil

and has those characteristics. And actually in the implementation,

full deployment of SensorNet, we would look at all media because

obviously that could be a problem.

Cost-wise, as you mass produce these things—and the way this

was designed from the start for Soldier Biological Chemical Command, we are designing a machine that can be mass produced and

as the volume of production goes up, the cost goes down.

Mr. BRYANT. Thank you.

Mr. KULESZ. Sure.

Mr. HORN. Let me ask Ms. Hecker of the General Accounting Office if you have any thoughts on this, as you did with the first

panel, and do you want to make a comment on that?

Ms. HECKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would just add that

I thought the framing that I tried to provide about the critical

issues of the roles and the accountability and the issue of the tools

and approaches of government really have played out in what you

have heard. There are fundamental issues as you deliberate the

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proposals by the administration for the increase in homeland security funding about a tradeoff between flexibility and accountability.

And I think you are hearing the dynamics of that, that on the one

hand there is really a call, an active call for bringing the money

directly to us, fewer strings, less tying of our hands on what we

want to do. On the other hand, there are issues of what are we

going to accomplish, what are the priorities, where are the greatest

needs and what are the greatest risks. So there are really tradeoffs

and the administration proposal has some interesting elements to

it about how the money would be disbursed and we are happy to

work with your committee, the Appropriations Committee on analyzing some of the tradeoffs of the block grant approach and some

of the other tools and the tradeoffs of going through States or direct to communities, because we have some experience with different programs that have worked different ways.

So I think some important issues have been played out and it

was really a wonderful opportunity for the committee to have done

this and brought this dialog so clearly out in the front. Thank you.

Mr. HORN. And I will say to the panel do you have any additional

thoughts after you have heard all this dialog, anything we have

missed?

[No response.]

Mr. HORN. Well, good, it shows all my three questioners here

have done a great job.

I want to thank all of you for taking your time. I think this is

very important and we are going to see around the country if Nashville should be the standard, why we will need to see who is the

standard west of the Mississippi. [Laughter.]

I want to thank the following staff that have been involved with

this very fine hearing, and that is J. Russell George, staff director

and chief counsel to the Subcommittee on Government Efficiency,

Financial Management and Intergovernmental Relations. Mr.

George is right behind me.

Bonnie Heald had a lot to do with putting the pieces together for

this hearing and she is the deputy staff director.

And we have a new member of our staff, Justin Paulhamus,

clerk.

And from Atlanta came Bill Warren to be the court reporter and

we are glad to have you here again.

Then the following people from the Tennessee delegation and the

Vanderbilt University: Caroline Nielson is the chief of staff to Congressman Bob Clement; and Helen Hardin, chief of staff to Congressman Zach Wamp. Paulina Madaris, scheduler to Congressman

Zach Wamp, Polly Walker, Scheduler to Congressman Ed Bryant

and Mel Bass, director of Federal affairs for Vanderbilt University

in the Washington office. Colette Barrett of Vanderbilt here and

Brian Smokler, Vanderbilt University also. It is a lovely place to

have this hearing. I wish we had them all across the country, but

Vanderbilt is a great university and we are glad to be here. And

a lot of people have helped on this and I know a lot of your staffs

have helped on this.

So my colleague who is very eloquent wants a 30 second——

Mr. CLEMENT. That is all I ask for.

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I just want to thank the chairman again and his wonderful staff,

Bonnie and Russell and Justin, and I want to thank my staff too.

You mentioned Caroline Nielson but also Court Rolleson and

Christie Ray, Bill Mason, Jason Spain and all of them for helping

coordinate this. I want to thank the witnesses, this was most helpful and I assure you we will take it back to Washington, DC, and

study it and evaluate it and try to do something with it.

And thank you all in the audience today for being here. This is

a most important hearing and as we mentioned earlier, this is the

first of many that Chairman Horn will have over the country and

I thank my colleagues again for being here and participating in

such an active way.

Mr. HORN. Thank you all and have a nice week.

[Whereupon, the meeting was adjourned at 1:07 p.m.]

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