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37–361 PDF 2008

S. Hrg. 110–549 

THE MILITARY’S ROLE IN DISASTER RESPONSE: 

PROGRESS SINCE HURRICANE KATRINA 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

JULY 19, 2007 

Available via http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 

( 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

BARACK OBAMA, Illinois 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine 

TED STEVENS, Alaska 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico 

JOHN WARNER, Virginia 

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire 

MICHAEL L. ALEXANDER, Staff Director 

ERIC P. ANDERSEN, Professional Staff Member 

ALISTAIR F.A. READER, Legislative Assistant 

BRANDON L. MILHORN, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

ASHA A. MATHEW, Minority Senior Counsel 

JOHN K. GRANT, Minority Counsel 

TRINA DRIESSNACK TYRER, Chief Clerk 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statements: Page 

Senator Lieberman ........................................................................................... 1 

Senator Collins ................................................................................................. 3 

Senator Stevens ................................................................................................ 23 

WITNESSES 

THURSDAY, JULY 19, 2007 

Peter F. Verga, Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense 

and Americas’ Security Affairs, U.S. Department of Defense .......................... 5 

General Victor E. Renuart, Jr., U.S. Air Force, Commander, North American 

Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command ........................... 7 

Vice Admiral Roger Rufe, U.S. Coast Guard (Ret.), Director, Office of Operations Coordination, U.S. Department of Homeland Security ......................... 10 

Lieutenant General H. Steven Blum, U.S. Army, Chief, National Guard Bureau ....................................................................................................................... 12 

Major General John W. Libby, U.S. Army, Adjutant General, Maine National 

Guard, and Commissioner, Maine Department of Defense, Veterans, and 

Emergency Management ..................................................................................... 14 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Blum, Lieutenant General H. Steven: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 12 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 67 

Libby, Major General John W.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 14 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 75 

Renuart, General Victor E., Jr.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 7 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 48 

Rufe, Vice Admiral Roger: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 10 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 63 

Verga, Peter F.; 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 5 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 31 

APPENDIX 

‘‘Report to the Senate Committee on Armed Services and the House Committee on Armed Services on Department of Defense Civil Support, ’’ April 

2007, submitted by Mr. Verga ............................................................................ 80 

Questions and responses for the Record from: 

Mr. Verga .......................................................................................................... 101 

General Renuart, Jr. ........................................................................................ 112 

Vice Admiral Rufe ............................................................................................ 120 

Lt. General Blum .............................................................................................. 137 

Major General Libby ........................................................................................ 147 

(1) 

THE MILITARY’S ROLE IN DISASTER 

RESPONSE: PROGRESS SINCE 

HURRICANE KATRINA 

THURSDAY, JULY 19, 2007 

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:50 a.m., in room 

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I. Lieberman, Chairman of the Committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Lieberman, Collins, Stevens, and Warner. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Good morning. The hearing will come to 

order. Thanks to everyone, particularly our distinguished panel of 

witnesses, for being here. I am going to start. Senator Collins has 

been unavoidably delayed, but we work so well together. There is 

this kind of extrasensory—thanks. Welcome, Senator Collins. 

Almost 2 years ago, Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed a governmental emergency response system that was shockingly underprepared. Most local, State, and Federal emergency agencies—with a 

few exceptions, like the Coast Guard and the Louisiana Fish and 

Wildlife Service—stumbled while the region drowned. And many 

lives were lost. 

In the immediate aftermath of that disaster, we in the Federal 

Government, and the American people more generally, had to face 

a big, painful question: Why weren’t we better prepared for a disaster that we knew one day was going to happen? 

Today’s hearing, which will focus specifically on the role of our 

Nation’s military in responding to disasters, is an important part 

of this Committee’s ongoing efforts to ensure that we won’t ever 

have to ask that question that we asked after Hurricane Katrina 

again. 

The response of our Nation’s military—both active duty and National Guard—to Hurricane Katrina was ultimately unprecedented 

and very important. More than 70,000 military personnel deployed 

to the Gulf Coast from all across the country, bringing with them 

helicopters, ships, medical support, and logistical capabilities. 

However, as this Committee’s investigation into the aftermath of 

Hurricane Katrina revealed, there were very serious weaknesses in 

planning, preparedness, and coordination within the Department of 

2 

Defense and between the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security. 

In March of this year, the Commission on the National Guard 

and Reserves, tasked by Congress with assessing the role that the 

Department of Defense should play in homeland defense, reached 

this sobering conclusion: 

‘‘Although the current DOD Strategy for Homeland Defense and 

Civil Support states that securing the U.S. homeland is ‘the first 

among many priorities,’ DOD, in fact, has not accepted that this responsibility requires planning, programming, and budgeting for 

civil support missions.’’ 

The Commission made a number of thoughtful recommendations 

to ensure that the active and reserve components of the military, 

the Department of Homeland Security, and the States can respond 

more effectively and seamlessly to a disaster. 

To his credit, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has agreed with 

a majority of those recommendations and directed the Department 

to begin an aggressive implementation schedule to improve the 

military’s ability to provide support after domestic disasters—both 

natural and terrorist. 

We have a very impressive and important group of witnesses 

here today, and I hope that their testimony and answers can help 

us answer three questions. 

First, exactly what should we expect from the military in providing and carrying out the homeland security mission? 

Second, what is the Department of Defense doing to put in place 

the planning, programming, and budgeting necessary to carry out 

that mission? 

And, third, are the Department of Defense and the Department 

of Homeland Security doing everything they can within the current 

structure to ensure an effective, coordinated response to a catastrophic disaster, not just a natural disaster but a catastrophic disaster such as Hurricane Katrina, including a catastrophic terrorist 

attack with weapons of mass destruction? 

The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) issued just 2 days ago 

found that al Qaeda remains intent on conducting and carrying out 

attacks on our homeland, and the NIE ominously warned, ‘‘We assess that al Qaeda will continue to try to acquire and employ chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear material in attacks and 

would not hesitate to use them if it develops what it deems is sufficient capability.’’ 

Are we prepared to prevent and respond to such attacks? 

Well, in April of this year, the Preventive Defense Project of Harvard and Stanford Universities, co-chaired by Ashton Carter and 

William Perry, provided an answer to that question that is not reassuring. The project brought together leading Federal, civilian, 

and military officials, and other experts from other levels of government and the private sector, and asked them a tough question: 

What would our Nation do in the 24 hours following a nuclear attack on a U.S. city? 

The conclusion of Mr. Carter and Mr. Perry is jarring: Policymakers who they questioned in Washington, they found, continue 

to believe that State and local officials will be able to control the 

situation ‘‘the day after’’ a nuclear attack. Yet Mr. Carter and Mr. 

3 

Perry argue, ‘‘as the fiasco after Hurricane Katrina suggests, most 

cities and States will quickly be overwhelmed by the magnitude of 

the humanitarian, law and order, and logistical challenges of responding to a nuclear detonation.’’ The result, they say, ‘‘is a failure to plan realistically.’’ 

Now, that sounds too much like the lack of preparedness that 

contributed so much to the failed response to Hurricane Katrina, 

and I know all of us know that we cannot allow that to happen 

again. That is one big reason why we are holding this hearing 

today with a sense of urgency, why I appreciate the presence of the 

witnesses here, and why I look forward to their responses, not just 

to the questions I pose but to the conclusion of the Carter-Perry 

study. 

Senator Collins. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLLINS 

Senator COLLINS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Every American who witnessed Hurricane Katrina’s assault on 

the Gulf Coast and its aftermath has reason to feel proud of the 

men and women of America’s armed forces. Whether active duty or 

National Guard, our military worked heroically and humanely to 

help rescue victims, maintain order, and provide vital services. 

As Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul McHale told the Committee during our investigation of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, 

the American military response—some 50,000 National Guard 

members and 22,000 active duty troops—was the largest domestic 

deployment since the Civil War. It was indeed a massive effort and 

a vital one for a devastated region and its suffering people. 

As we also learned during our investigation, however, more help 

could have arrived sooner and been used more effectively with better planning, situational awareness, and coordination. Our Committee report on Hurricane Katrina spoke, in fact, of a ‘‘rapid but 

uncoordinated response.’’ 

Most disturbing was the lack of coordination among military 

headquarters in the early stages of the response. As Secretary 

McHale testified, ‘‘National Guard planning, though superbly executed, was not well integrated with the Joint Staff at 

NORTHCOM.’’ The director of operations at Northern Command 

told us that lack of a central overview of the massive State responses to the disaster prevented proper integration of capabilities 

and tasking of units until they arrived in the devastated region, 

and I think the Chairman and I will never forget the testimony of 

Admiral Keating, saying that Northern Command was unaware of 

the breaching of the levees until they read the papers the next 

morning. 

Our Hurricane Katrina investigation also produced seven specific 

recommendations for improving coordination between the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security. The 

Post Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act which we authored implemented several of them. 

I can attest that at least one of our codified recommendations 

has already borne fruit. Each of FEMA’s 10 regional offices now 

has a Defense Coordinating Officer in that region, working directly 

with FEMA. I attended a FEMA exercise in New England this 

4 

spring, and I heard over and over again that this arrangement has 

greatly improved operating relationships and communication. 

I am also pleased to hear that better coordination among planning staffs has been established and that the work advances on the 

15 National Planning Scenarios. Fleshing out these plans, which 

include how we would respond to catastrophes such as earthquakes, pandemic flu, small-scale nuclear attacks, and a toxic industrial accident, is a vital part of preparing an effective response. 

Each of these scenarios could require a major response from DOD 

as well. 

Work by FEMA and DOD to streamline and predefine the ‘‘mission assignment’’ process that caused so many delays during the response to Hurricane Katrina and was so bureaucratic is also another welcome sign of progress. 

As the Committee’s report on the Hurricane Katrina investigation demonstrated, the number and scale of natural and manmade 

threats to our country demanded progress on many fronts. We not 

only need better contingency planning, but a more aggressive, forward-leaning posture as identifiable threats emerge and requests 

for civil support can be anticipated. We need better training, exercising, and communication. And, again, I think there has been 

some real progress in those areas. And we need better protocols for 

handling Emergency Management Assistance Compact requests 

among States, better arrangements for Federal and State command 

and coordination of effort, and greater clarity on balancing a President’s ability to call on National Guard troops to restore order 

while preserving the States’ very important and lead role in responding to natural disasters. 

Because the National Guard is such a vital part of our response 

capability, I am delighted that we have with us today the representative of the State Adjutant Generals to FEMA’s National Advisory Council, and I am particularly proud and delighted that he 

comes from the great State of Maine. Our Adjutant General Bill 

Libby has deep experience in emergency management, and I am 

delighted to welcome all of our witnesses today, but particularly 

General Libby, with whom I have worked very closely. 

The views and issues before us today are matters of considerable 

concern to this Committee because they are literally potentially 

matters of life and death for American citizens. 

Again, I want to thank the Chairman for holding this hearing so 

that we can better assess the progress that has been made since 

Hurricane Katrina, and I am sure our witnesses will help us identify areas where work remains to be done. 

Thank you. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Collins, for that excellent statement. Thanks particularly, among other things, for 

pointing out the pleasure and pride that I share that the recommendations in the FEMA reform legislation that emerged after 

our investigation are now being implemented and that a representative of the Department of Defense is present in each of the 10 regional offices, which should give people around the country a greater sense of security. 

Again, I thank all of you for being here. We have allotted up to 

10 minutes to each of you for your opening statement, and we will 

5 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Verga appears in the Appendix on page 31. 

begin now with Peter Verga, who is the Acting Assistant Secretary 

of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs. 

Good morning. 

TESTIMONY OF PETER F. VERGA,1 ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR HOMELAND DEFENSE AND AMERICAS’ SECURITY AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE 

Mr. VERGA. Chairman Lieberman, Senator Collins, other Members of the Committee, thank you very much for the opportunity 

to appear today. In order to maximize the time we have for questions, I am going to keep my opening remarks very brief and to the 

point, but I would ask that a full statement be made part of the 

record. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Without objection, so ordered. 

Mr. VERGA. The greatest threat in today’s security environment 

is the nexus between transnational terrorism and chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons, as we call it. It was 

highlighted in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). You mentioned in your opening remarks that weapons proliferation does 

pose the greatest threat we have today. 

Unlike our adversaries during the Cold War, terrorist adversaries consider CBRN weapons ‘‘weapons of first resort,’’ not last 

resort. And should they ever acquire such weapons, we can be certain that they will use them against the United States at their very 

first opportunity. 

Our Nation, in cooperation with our international partners, has 

taken the fight to where the terrorists organize, plan, and train to 

keep them from striking Americans at home and abroad. But we 

must also think about and be prepared for that which we hope will 

never happen—that is, the use of such a weapon on American soil. 

And while we must be prepared for such a catastrophic event, at 

the same time we must think about and be prepared for those natural disasters and other emergencies which occur with regularity, 

albeit sometimes with unexpected intensity, as was demonstrated 

during Hurricane Katrina. As has been well documented, in terms 

of people displaced, businesses disrupted, economic effect, Hurricane Katrina was one of the most devastating hurricanes in U.S. 

history. 

The Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are, of course, those agencies responsible for the coordinated U.S. national effort to prepare for, respond 

to, and recover from natural disasters and other events, including 

terrorist CBRN attacks. DOD, at the direction of the President or 

the Secretary of Defense, as appropriate and consistent with the 

law and the imperative to maintain military readiness, provides 

critical consequence management support to civil authorities as 

part of a comprehensive national response. 

With few exceptions, the capabilities and capacities that the Department of Defense can bring to bear in a natural or manmade 

disaster are designed for combat operations and the wartime protection of DOD’s personnel and facilities. For the most part, DOD 

relies on general purpose military forces, dual capability units, or 

6 

1The report submitted by Mr. Verga appears in the Appendix on page 80. 

other existing DOD elements to support civil authorities in domestic consequence management. 

In case of a CBRN incident, such dual capability forces including 

the National Guard Weapons of Mass Destruction-Civil Support 

Teams, National Guard CBRNE Enhanced Response Force Packages, our Joint Task Force Civil Support, the Marine Corps’ Chemical-Biological Incident Response Force, the Army’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal Teams and Technical Escort Units, and the CBRNE 

Consequence Management Response Forces. 

In terms of preparation for natural disasters, the Department 

has acted upon the lessons identified in the White House, Senate, 

and House of Representatives examinations of the response to Hurricane Katrina. I have included in my formal statement for the 

record a copy of the report 1 which was required by the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 on the 

Department’s implementation of the recommendations identified in 

the White House and House of Representatives reports. Examples 

of some of the implementations have already been cited by the 

Chairman and Senator Collins: Close collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in planning and preparing for catastrophic incidents; assignment of a Defense Coordinating Officer 

and Defense Coordinating Element to each of the 10 FEMA regions. 

The Secretary of Defense recently signed and we published an 

execution order providing the commander of U.S. Northern Command—my colleague, General Renuart—with specific forces and resources to employ in case of a hurricane: Installations to be used 

as FEMA mobilization centers, medium and heavy lift helicopters, 

search aircraft, and other capabilities. 

And in coordination with our colleagues at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, we have drafted pre-scripted requests 

for assistance for transportation, communication, debris removal, 

and other types of support. And the Defense Logistics Agency and 

the Federal Emergency Management Agency have entered into a 

Memorandum of Agreement to procure, store, rotate, and provide 

supplies, including meals, health and comfort kits, generators, and 

other types of support. We have also had annual and biannual exercises to ensure readiness and identify potential gaps and weaknesses in our plans and readiness. 

Mr. Chairman, I commend you and the Members of the Committee for your leadership in these important matters, your continued interest, efforts, and support for the Department of Defense in 

the defense of the United States and our ability to support civilian 

authorities here at home. 

I look forward to the opportunity to answer your questions. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Secretary, for a good opening 

statement. 

Am I correct that you are ‘‘Acting’’ because Secretary McHale is 

on military reserve duty in Afghanistan? 

Mr. VERGA. He is, sir. Secretary McHale, who is also a member 

of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, went on active duty last DecemVerDate Aug 31 2005 13:41 Oct 21, 2008 Jkt 037361 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\37361.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
7 

1The prepared statement of General Renuart appears in the Appendix on page 48. 

ber, deployed to Afghanistan. He has just returned back to the 

United States. He will be resuming his duties on August 1. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Give him our thanks and our best regards. 

Mr. VERGA. I will. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. And thank you for sitting in for him. 

Next we have General Victor Renuart, Commander of the North 

American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command. General, glad you are here. I believe this is the first time 

you have testified before the Committee since you have taken over 

this command. I know you come to it with extraordinary experience, and we look forward to working with you and hearing you 

now. 

TESTIMONY OF GENERAL VICTOR E. RENUART, JR.,1 U.S. AIR 

FORCE, COMMANDER, NORTH AMERICAN AEROSPACE DEFENSE COMMAND AND U.S. NORTHERN COMMAND 

General RENUART. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Collins, 

and Members of the Committee, I too am grateful for the opportunity as the new commander of both of those commands—North 

American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM)—to have the opportunity to come 

and talk to you today and answer questions from the Committee 

on a variety of topics relating to our missions. 

As you know, both NORAD and USNORTHCOM have the responsibility for homeland defense operations, conduct of both active 

and National Guard-supported missions to defend the homeland, as 

well as supporting civil authorities during some of the disasters we 

have talked about here. 

In fact, if you look at the events that we have seen in London 

just a few days ago, it reminds us why homeland defense must be 

the highest priority that our Nation gives to its military, and we 

at NORAD and USNORTHCOM stand ready to conduct those missions. 

In the area especially of support to civil authorities during disasters, we have worked very hard since Hurricane Katrina and in response to not only recommendations of the Committee but guidance 

from the Department of Defense to ensure that we are prepared 

and ready for each of the contingencies that are captured not just 

in a Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and High-Yield 

Explosive (CBRNE) event or a hurricane, but also in any one of the 

15 National Planning Scenario events that have been highlighted 

by the government. 

We plan for, train for, and integrate the military unique capabilities that Mr. Verga mentioned just a moment ago into the overall 

response provided by the Department of Homeland Security, by 

FEMA, and, equally importantly, by the States. Each governor, 

each adjutant general has particular roles. I am pleased to say I 

had a chance to visit Major General Libby and Governor Baldacci 

in Maine just a few weeks ago to talk about this particular element 

of integrating USNORTHCOM capabilities, integrating the National Guard into a force that allows the governor to respond withVerDate Aug 31 2005 13:41 Oct 21, 2008 Jkt 037361 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\37361.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
8 

in his State. And so we have worked very hard to ensure that our 

Federal partners, as well as our State partners, understand that 

our job is to help make them successful. 

One of the most challenging disasters we prepare for is, as we 

have mentioned, the chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, 

high-yield explosive event, again, called CBRNE. Just a few 

months ago in Exercise ARDENT SENTRY, we experienced one of 

those events in an exercise, a 10-kiloton improvised nuclear device 

exploded just outside of Indianapolis. The unified and integrated 

efforts of the Department of Homeland Security, the State of Indiana, the National Guards of not only Indiana but the surrounding 

States, and Title 10 forces from U.S. Northern Command not only 

was impressive to watch but allowed us to really understand and 

acknowledge some of the problems you mentioned, where it is very 

difficult for any one State or any one entity to deal with a disaster 

of that size. But from that we learned how we can become better 

integrated, how we can combine our forces in a way that truly 

takes advantage of the interdependent relationships of each of 

those agencies as we respond to something on that order of magnitude. And that can occur in an accident or intentionally, and so 

we have to be prepared for something similar to chemical explosions that we have had in plants on the East Coast in previous 

years. So whether it is manmade or natural, USNORTHCOM has 

to be prepared to support and respond. 

We have developed specific plans for each of these disasters, and 

we have worked hard with the Federal agencies that we sit here 

with today to ensure that the response is seamless, that the capacity and capabilities flow in time to allow the responders to absorb, 

as well as the public to feel confident that they are getting the 

right support from their State and the Federal Government. 

We have a specific Joint Task Force, our Joint Task Force Civil 

Support, which focuses on weapons of mass destruction response, 

and, in fact, I just installed their new commander yesterday down 

at Fort Monroe. A National Guard officer, Major General Long, is 

eager to help continue to improve and increase the capacity of that 

organization and stand ready to support any of the Federal and 

State agencies that may need it in an event of a disaster. 

I have tried to highlight so far—and I will continue to foot-stomp 

on this as I go through my statement—our teamwork relationship 

with the National Guard, with the Reserves of the various components, and with our Federal agencies is critical to ensuring that the 

response is adequate to the event. 

I would also like to say that we are working closely with international partners in the same regard. USNORTHCOM’s Area of 

Responsibility includes both Canada and Mexico, and we have been 

in close contact with military and civilian agencies in both countries to ensure that a response to a CBRNE event in either country 

could be supported with forces available and unique capabilities 

available from both countries. But we need some assistance. 

There is an act being considered now, the Building Global Partnership Act of 2007, that will allow us to improve the homeland defense and civil support efforts not only of the United States but of 

our neighbors. In fact, that will increase our capacity to respond in 

our border areas for events like the Vancouver 2010 Olympics upVerDate Aug 31 2005 13:41 Oct 21, 2008 Jkt 037361 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\37361.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
9 

coming. We would ask, while not specifically under the purview of 

this Committee, but we would ask the support of the members as 

this is considered in upcoming discussions on the floor. 

Recently, NORAD and USNORTHCOM completed Exercises ARDENT SENTRY and NORTHERN EDGE, as I mentioned. This was 

the largest and most comprehensive set of national-level exercises 

ever undertaken. Our objectives, outlined in my written statement, 

provide an excellent point of departure for our key exercise events. 

While we continue to finalize our lessons learned, it is clear that 

collaboration and communication are the key threads that support 

the important missions of homeland defense and support to civil 

authorities. 

Hurricane preparedness, a focus of this Committee and certainly 

one of all of the agencies represented here, is an important area 

where collaboration, preparation, and communication are critical. 

U.S. Northern Command has made great strides in preparing for 

the 2007 hurricane season. Senator Collins, I appreciate your noting the presence of the Defense Coordinating Officers in each. 

These are post-brigade command Army officers in the grade of colonel with combat experience who understand not only the importance of planning for a difficult operation, but in executing it. I 

think they have all received rave reviews. Our role has been to increase the staff so that they have the muscle in the planning process to allow them to be successful, and we continue to look for ways 

to expand those relationships with the various regions of FEMA. 

Working with the various States, the Department of Homeland 

Security, the National Guard, and our other partners, we have conducted conferences, tabletop exercises, and collaborated routinely to 

ensure we are ready to respond to these natural disasters. We recently exercised our hurricane preparation during Exercise ARDENT SENTRY with a simulated Category 3 hurricane striking 

the New England region, and, in fact, both of your States were represented in that exercise, and I had the opportunity to meet the adjutant generals of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island 

during this discussion. But importantly, we demonstrated the value 

of the Defense Coordinating Officer as well as the integration of 

State Emergency Operations Centers, the Joint Field Office with 

the regional director from FEMA, as well as our Joint Task Force 

Headquarters. What we found is that there are no gaps in command and control, in integration, and in intent. The ability to bring 

those together in a cohesive fashion really was a significant element of progress made since Hurricane Katrina. 

USNORTHCOM continues to work closely with our National 

Guard and reserve components. I am pleased to have my National 

Guard advisor, Major General Rick Nash, here with me today. We 

believe these efforts and initiatives really help us to increase our 

communication, our collaboration, and our cooperation. And we 

have especially worked hard with both FEMA and the Department 

of Homeland Security to strengthen the unity of effort. 

Mr. Chairman, Senator Collins, the men and women of 

USNORTHCOM remained focused on homeland defense, and we 

are prepared to support civil authorities in any activity. Additionally, we seek to be joint in all we do. We use interagency cooperation as much as possible, and we push that with each of our agency 

10 

1The prepared statement of Admiral Rufe appears in the Appendix on page 63. 

partners. And we are not hampered by who is in charge or who 

gets credit. In fact, the guidance we have given to our staff is that 

our role is to make the Federal agencies, the governor of a State, 

and the adjutant general a hero, and they do not need to even 

know that USNORTHCOM is there. We just need to make it succeed. 

Mr. Chairman, Senator Collins, thank you for your time, and I 

look forward to your questions. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much, General Renuart. 

Your testimony was encouraging, and I think we ought not to take 

for granted the transition that has occurred. The Command over 

the decades of the Cold War was really primarily responsible for 

defending the United States from attack from the air, including nuclear attack, from the Soviet Union. And after September 11, you 

took on this additional responsibility of homeland defense, which 

now in some sense is a central responsibility for you. So I appreciate it very much. I know we will have some questions for you. 

Next is Vice Admiral Roger Rufe, retired from the U.S. Coast 

Guard, now coming before us as Director of the Office of Operations 

Coordination at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. I cannot resist saying, if I may paraphrase MacArthur, that it is not 

that you are an old general, but retired admirals of the Coast 

Guard do not fade away. They, fortunately, hang in there and continue to work for us at the Department of Homeland Security, and 

I thank you for taking on this assignment. Admiral, we look forward to your testimony now. 

TESTIMONY OF VICE ADMIRAL ROGER RUFE,1 U.S. COAST 

GUARD (RET.), DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF OPERATIONS COORDINATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY 

Admiral RUFE. Mr. Chairman, Senator Collins, Members of the 

Committee, thank you very much for this opportunity to discuss 

with you the ongoing coordination between DHS and the Department of Defense for catastrophic events. 

My colleagues in their prepared remarks today have, I think, laid 

out in a very complete form the very extensive military support to 

and coordination with the Department of Homeland Security, so I 

am not going to go over that ground with you. I instead would like 

to concentrate my few moments here on the planning aspect of 

what we do with our partners at DOD. Mr. Chairman, both you 

and Senator Collins mentioned that extensively in your opening remarks, and I know it is a particular interest of yours. 

As you know, under the Homeland Security Presidential Directive-5 (HSPD-5), the Secretary is named as the ‘‘principal Federal 

official’’ for domestic incident management, and it also directs the 

Secretary to coordinate the Federal Government’s resources used in 

the response to and recovery from terrorist acts, major disasters, 

or other emergencies. 

The Secretary’s unique interagency responsibilities accentuate 

the importance of interagency planning—the very difficult job, I 

must say, of interagency planning. One of my primary roles in my 

11 

job is to support the Secretary in coordinating our national-level 

strategic interagency planning effort. 

Two of the critical recommendations related to planning from the 

Federal response report to Hurricane Katrina after action was to, 

first, create a permanent planning body within DHS; and, second, 

to develop for the first time a formal planning process that could 

be used to build interagency plans for the 15 national planning scenarios, and we have done both of those things. 

In August of last year, less than a year ago, the Secretary directed the creation of the Interagency Incident Management Planning Team (IMPT), and directed me to oversee their actions in 

planning for the 15 planning scenarios. The mission of the IMPT 

is to provide national-level contingency planning and crisis action 

incident management planning through a collaborative, interagency process. The IMPT’s planning process is designed to be at 

the strategic level, whereas FEMA’s planning responsibility is at 

the operational level, as laid out in the Post Katrina Emergency 

Management Reform Act. 

The IMPT’s initial efforts have been to develop national strategic 

level interagency concept plans that address each of the 15 National Planning Scenarios. Each plan developed by the IMPT identifies the actions that individual departments and agencies, including DOD, will take in the event of a given scenario, and they identify the national level commitments in one complete comprehensive 

document. To date, the IMPT has developed draft plans—and I 

stress they are draft plans at this point—to address the 10-kiloton 

improvised nuclear device scenario, the pandemic influenza, radiological dispersal device, major hurricane, and improvised explosive 

device. 

In the effort to put together a planning system that would allow 

us to develop these plans, DHS developed a National Planning and 

Execution System, which we developed with a great deal of support 

from DOD as they are really the only partner in the interagency 

that has a well-developed planning system. And because of that, we 

made sure that our efforts were quite well integrated with the 

planning system that DOD uses called the Joint Planning and Execution System (JOPES). We borrowed extensively—in fact, stole 

shamelessly—from some of the concepts therein and modified it to 

be more appropriate for the interagency and more civilian jargon. 

But it is now a very well accepted planning system. We have now 

trained over 500 members of the interagency in the planning system, so it is now being dispersed and disseminated to our partners 

in the interagency for their use in developing the plans that they 

need to prepare for. 

Once we have these plans on the shelf, in order to improve them, 

modify them, and make them more effective over time, we need to 

validate them through the exercise planning system. General 

Renuart mentioned ARDENT SENTRY. We were very active participants in the ARDENT SENTRY exercise this year, both in the 

hurricane scenario in Rhode Island, as well as the 10-kiloton nuclear device, which gave us the opportunity for the first time to test 

in an exercise this draft plan that we had put together through the 

IMPT. We are now developing a radiological dispersal device (RDD) 

plan that we will have in draft form in time for the TOPOFF 4 exVerDate Aug 31 2005 13:41 Oct 21, 2008 Jkt 037361 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\37361.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
12 

1The prepared statement of General Blum appears in the Appendix on page 67. 

ercise, which will occur in October. It will give us an opportunity 

at that time to test that plan against an RDD-type scenario. 

We have worked very closely with DOD in all these planning efforts. They not only are active participants on the IMPT in terms 

of providing us support, but we also have been engaged with them 

ensuring that the planning they are doing, which, quite frankly, is 

in advance of our planning, is fully integrated for each of the 15 

planning scenarios. 

As you mentioned, I am an old admiral, Mr. Chairman. I retired 

from the Coast Guard in 1999, so I am kind of a Cold War guy, 

and so I relate to what you described as far as the transition in 

the Department of Defense. Since I returned to public service just 

a year ago, I, frankly, have been surprised and actually quite 

heartened by the deep and broad commitment that I have seen 

from all elements of the Department of Defense in protecting the 

homeland and working with the Department of Homeland Security 

and with the interagency. We could not ask for better partners in 

our efforts than our shipmates at DOD. 

I thank you both, Mr. Chairman and Senator Collins, and I look 

forward to your questions. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much, Admiral, and we look 

forward to the question period, too. 

Next we have Lieutenant General Steven Blum, Chief of the National Guard Bureau, who is a familiar face here, one we always 

enjoy having, and we always benefit from your testimony. Welcome. 

TESTIMONY OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL H. STEVEN BLUM,1 U.S. 

ARMY, CHIEF, NATIONAL GUARD BUREAU 

General BLUM. Good morning, Chairman Lieberman, Senator 

Collins, and other Members of the Committee. Thanks for the opportunity to discuss the role of your military in disaster response 

here today. 

Since September 11, 2001, we have all worked very hard to 

transform the National Guard to be better prepared to respond 

here at home in either a homeland defense or support the homeland security role. As you are well aware, on September 11, we had 

zero Joint Force Headquarters, only 10 civil support teams, no 

Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear Enhanced Response 

Force Packages, no critical infrastructure protection assessment 

teams, zero National Guard Reaction Forces that were trained, organized, and equipped to respond on short notice, and zero Computer Emergency Response Teams. Today I am pleased to tell you 

that we have 54 of each of those, 17 enhanced response force packages, and the old civil support teams that were established by Congress that were only 10 on September 11, now today we have 55, 

and hopefully that will grow in the future to 57. 

In addition, we have rebalanced 80,000 jobs in the National 

Guard in the last 5 years to train them from Cold War specialties 

to what we need today in today’s real-world requirements. While 

we have made huge strides in training and exercising with our 

DOD partners, we are still not funded to participate in joint DeVerDate Aug 31 2005 13:41 Oct 21, 2008 Jkt 037361 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\37361.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
13 

partment of Homeland Security exercises. The National Guard in 

the States are funded and trained to go to war, but they are not 

resourced to participate in large-scale homeland security preparation exercises. 

I am honored to testify today with the gentlemen on this panel, 

all of them, from DOD, from NORTHCOM, from DHS, and from 

the States. The post-Katrina relationship between the States, the 

National Guard Bureau, the Department of Defense, the U.S. 

Northern Command, and the Department of Homeland Security 

grows stronger every day. This Committee needs to know that. We 

have worked very hard at it. Today, all of us sitting before you 

have a better understanding of the supported and supporting relationships that are necessary in times of crisis. 

I was the first Chief of Staff at NORTHCOM when it was established, and we all knew then we did not get everything perfect on 

the first attempt. I am extremely encouraged by General Renuart’s 

committed leadership to making the changes that are required as 

problems are identified. There will always be room for improvement. We will never get it perfect. Within the Federal Government, 

though, we need a Department of Homeland Security, a Department of Defense, and a State cooperative planning process. This 

country needs and deserves that. 

We need, at the Federal level, specifically defined requirements 

and measuring metrics so that we can analyze the dual-use military equipment that we use in a homeland defense or homeland security response scenario. We need homeland security resource requests for military equipment to be submitted so that they get visibility here at the Congress. 

We need to train together. We need better visibility on the capabilities of our interagency and intergovernmental partners. Together this group represents a football team that is getting ready 

for the ultimate Super Bowl, and we need to train, exercise, scrimmage, practice, and huddle on a regular basis together. 

Our Nation’s governors have stated their assessment is that their 

National Guard units in the States are underequipped for homeland security missions. As you know, the National Guard today has 

53 percent of their required combat equipment, the dual-use equipment needed in an emergency, on hand here in the United States. 

The ability of each governor, as the commander-in-chief of his or 

her National Guard, to plan and execute for the first response to 

an emergency is absolutely critical and essential to them. Governors know their local emergency capabilities and they know their 

limitations. Capable local response saves time. Saving time results 

in saving lives. 

There are operational models in place that the Federal Government might want to emulate, such as Israel’s military/civil support 

system, the Joint Interagency Task Force South that is in existence, the Incident Command System that our emergency responders use all over our Nation. These are great models that the Federal Government may want to take a look at. 

In Maine, and many States like it, people like Adjutant General 

Bill Libby have full visibility on both their civil and military disaster response capability. General Libby deploys resources in response to his known weak areas. His weak areas are well known 

14 

1The prepared statement of General Libby appears in the Appendix on page 75. 

to him, but we cannot know those intuitively at the national level, 

so we have to rely on local knowledge. 

In the National Guard, we have begun to build a joint capabilities database to fill this gap. National Guard units report their 

readiness to respond to various disaster scenarios, and they can include information on their civil first responder partners. We share 

this information with DOD and U.S. Northern Command and the 

Department of Homeland Security. 

Thank you for your efforts to improve the ability of the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Guard, and the States to work together, and I look forward 

to your questions, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, General. I will wait for the question period, but did you say that the National Guard at this point 

is not funded to participate in the large-scale homeland defense exercises? 

General BLUM. That are conducted by the Department of Homeland Security, yes, sir. They are funded to do the ARDENT SENTRY—— 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. So you were involved in ARDENT SENTRY. 

General BLUM. Very heavily involved. That was probably, in my 

judgment, the finest exercise conducted by DOD and the National 

Guard here domestically to date. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is great. OK, thanks. 

Major General John W. Libby, U.S. Army, Adjutant General, 

Maine National Guard, with the very heavy responsibility of protecting Senator Collins in time of need. We thank you for that, and 

we look forward to your testimony now. 

TESTIMONY OF MAJOR GENERAL JOHN W. LIBBY,1 U.S. ARMY, 

ADJUTANT GENERAL MAINE NATIONAL GUARD, AND COMMISSIONER, MAINE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, VETERANS, 

AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT 

General LIBBY. Chairman Lieberman, Senator Collins, Members 

of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. 

I want to emphasize at the beginning that I am here today representing the State of Maine and the Adjutants General Association of the United States (AGAUS), and my contemporaries 

throughout the country. Although I am a federally recognized and 

U.S. Senate-confirmed general officer, I am here today speaking as 

a State official in State status at State expense and expressing 

issues and interests that reflect the State’s sovereign interests. 

I wear multiple hats in the State of Maine. In addition to being 

a Cabinet-level commissioner on the governor’s staff—my Cabinet, 

by the way, does include emergency management—I am also the 

adjutant general and the governor’s homeland security adviser. 

Among my peers, this puts me in a rather unique situation wearing 

all of those hats. 

In my judgment, the place in the United States where the emergency management process is best integrated between military, civilian, and business partners is at State level, and this is a model, 

15 

I think, that this Committee and the Federal Government needs to 

look at more closely. 

There is an emergency management axiom that suggests that all 

disasters are local; therefore, all response is local. And the governors have a sovereign responsibility to carry out in their respective States emergency preparedness, response, and recovery activities in the name of the health and welfare of the citizens of their 

respective States. 

When the resources to manage such events exceed the ability of 

the States, clearly we reach outside the States through mutual aid 

agreements, the Emergency Management Assistance Compact. In 

New England, the New England Governors and the eastern Canadian premiers have signed the International Emergency Management Assistance Compact similar to the Pacific Northwest Compact, which allows us to reach out to international partners. But 

I want to spend the bulk of my time this morning making some observations about the process. 

I believe there is an emerging exchange of information, views, 

and identification of capabilities taking place between DOD, DHS, 

and the States. As has been stated already, Maine was one of several States that General Renuart visited recently. The governor 

and I were immediately impressed by his philosophy, his candor, 

and his understanding of the States’ sovereign roles. He articulated 

clearly his understanding that Federal military resources brought 

to the State would be at the request of, and in support of, the governor. 

We had a very interesting discussion about a term that we obsess about on both sides—‘‘dual-hatted command’’—and frankly 

concluded, the governor and I concluded, and I think the general 

agrees with us, that what we are looking for in Maine and in other 

States, although we can only speak for Maine, in the presence of 

Federal resources is support. 

The governor and I have no issues with Federal troops remaining 

under the command and control of either their normal chain of 

command or a Title 10 cell in the State of Maine. What we are 

looking for is the opportunity to assign tasks, designate missions, 

and give authoritative directions necessary to complete those missions. What we do not want or need in the presence of Federal resources is to direct matters of administration, discipline, logistics, 

internal organization, or unit training. What I am describing is a 

term of art that we call ‘‘operational control,’’ and we look forward 

to continuing that discussion with NORTHCOM. 

General Renuart also articulated and distinguished between his 

understanding and we agree with the need to deploy Federal resources in advance and the need to employ Federal resources at the 

request of the governor. We talked at length on several occasions 

this morning about the valued presence of the Defense Coordinating Officer and the DCE elements at each of the FEMA region 

offices. They are critical. 

We also talked about the fact that in developing a common operational picture, there is a problem right now in that 40-plus States 

are using WebEOC, and that is not a system that is employed universally throughout the emergency management system. 

16 

And, interestingly, from the governor and my standpoint, but encouragingly, the General supports the continued discussion about 

the role of reserve capability that resides in every State with regard to its availability to the governor in the event of a Federal 

declaration. 

General Renuart is continuing the dialogue begun by Admiral 

Keating, and we look forward to the AGAUS Homeland Security 

Subcommittee and meeting with him and his staff at the end of 

this month to continue that discussion. 

From our point of view, if there is a shortfall in the lack of dialogue, it occurs between the States and DHS. And it occurs principally because in many States the TAGs do not find themselves in 

my position where they wear the multiple hats that I wear. And 

I would point out to you a FEMA Region I initiative under the 

leadership of Art Cleaves which I think addresses this problem. Region I convenes quarterly homeland security forums for the regional States. Art includes in those forums the State’s homeland 

security adviser, the State’s adjutant general, and the State’s EMA 

director. I may be the one guy from Maine representing all three 

of those positions, but from Massachusetts, by way of example, 

there are three different people in the room. 

What that forum does in its inclusiveness is it ensures that none 

of those three principal partners at the State level are out of the 

information loop. I think it is a model worth adopting nationwide. 

I would be remiss if I did not commend the Commission on the 

National Guard and Reserve for their recommendation on the establishment of a bipartisan Council of Governors. The issues surrounding a properly layered response to a major disaster are primarily, in my opinion, about communications and coordination, and 

this council will enhance both. 

I would be so bold from the State perspective as to make some 

recommendations to you this morning. 

One, preserve the ability of the State Governors to direct the 

emergency response in their respective States through the repeal 

of Section 1076 of the 2007 Defense Authorization Act. 

Two, reinforce the intent of HSPD–5 which states that the Secretary of Homeland Security is responsible for coordinating the 

Federal resources to prepare for, respond to, and recover from a 

terrorist attack, a major event, or other emergencies. The understanding of that Homeland Security ‘‘Chain of Command’’ at the 

Federal level is critical to communications and coordination. 

Three, accept the Commission on the National Guard and Reserve’s recommendation that the commander or deputy commander 

of NORTHCOM be a National Guard officer, and note that I have 

not said National Guard or Reserve officer. It is our opinion that 

only a National Guard general officer who has risen through the 

ranks of the National Guard can fully understand the concept of 

the governor’s roles and sovereign responsibilities. That is something that I would argue a U.S. Army Reserve officer cannot. 

And, finally, institutionalize NIMS within the DOD educational 

system. It is the language with which we speak at State level in 

responding. 

In conclusion, I would say within the Department of Homeland 

Security there is an organization, FEMA. It is the only organizaVerDate Aug 31 2005 13:41 Oct 21, 2008 Jkt 037361 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\37361.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
17 

tion that speaks efficiently, effectively, and on a daily basis from 

Washington, Maine, to Washington, DC. And I think FEMA needs 

to play a critical, an increased role in interagency coordination. I 

would close by quoting Casey Stengel, and, Senator, I apologize for 

this. Casey said, ‘‘Getting good players is easy. Getting them to 

play together is the hard part.’’ We have great players. 

I thank you for the opportunity to testify, and I look forward to 

answering your questions. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, General. That was excellent. 

Thanks for your suggestions. I presume your apology for quoting 

Casey Stengel, a great manager of the New York Yankees, was directed to Senator Collins, who is a Red Sox fan. 

Senator COLLINS. It was. 

General LIBBY. You are correct, sir. [Laughter.] 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much for the excellent testimony. 

We are going to have 8-minute rounds of questions for the Senators. Let me begin by asking you a question that I am going to 

ask you to give a one-word answer to, yes or no, and then I am 

going to come back with a second one to give you plenty of time 

to elaborate on it. But I want to go to the conclusion that I mentioned in my opening statement that Ashton Carter and Bill Perry 

drew from this Defense Project in which they interviewed a great 

number of Federal civilian, military, and other experts, and the 

conclusion, I will repeat—which they presented with regret—was 

that policymakers in Washington continue to believe that State and 

local officials will be able to control the situation the day after. And 

in this case, of course, they were looking at the day after the extreme catastrophic circumstance of a nuclear attack, but, unfortunately, that is the world in which we live. 

Do each of you agree, from your own perspective, that policymakers in Washington continue to believe that State and local officials are going to be able to control the situation in a catastrophe 

the day after? Mr. Verga. 

Mr. VERGA. No, sir, I do not believe so. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. General Renuart. 

General RENUART. Mr. Chairman, no, I do not believe that. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. OK. I can feel your desire to add to that, 

so I will come back to it. 

Admiral Rufe. 

Admiral RUFE. Nor do I, sir, and I participated in that roundtable, so I would be happy to answer further. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Good. General Blum. 

General BLUM. No, sir, I do not think so, and I think the word 

‘‘control’’ is the problem. I would like to address that. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Good. General Libby. 

General LIBBY. No, sir. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. OK. So let’s come back and let me frame 

this question and give you a little more time. This is the quote that 

I had from the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves, 

in which they said, ‘‘Although the current DOD Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support states that securing the U.S. homeland is ‘the first among many priorities,’ DOD, in fact,’’ they conVerDate Aug 31 2005 13:41 Oct 21, 2008 Jkt 037361 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\37361.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
18 

cluded, ‘‘has not accepted that this responsibility requires planning, 

programming, and budgeting for civil support missions.’’ 

So to turn it into the question that we have on our minds and 

that I can tell you our constituents have on their minds: If we accept the initial assumption, which is that State and locals in a catastrophe are going to be overwhelmed, as they were in Hurricane 

Katrina, are we prepared for a coordinated response from the getgo and specifically from the Department of Defense and Homeland 

Security? Mr. Verga. 

Mr. VERGA. Sir, with regard to the specific recommendation, the 

Commission is correct in that we do not plan, program, and budget 

for support to civil authorities’ missions per se, with a few exceptions, such as weapons of mass destruction civil support teams, 

things like that. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is important, though. That is relevant to the scenario that I was—— 

Mr. VERGA. Yes, sir. And I think that serves the Nation well because, quite candidly, to set up essentially a dual military structure 

that says you are going to have one set of capabilities that are designed, organized, trained, and equipped to operate with the civilian authorities alone and another set of capabilities that are designed for your overseas warfighting missions is sort of a false 

choice. And what we need to be able to do is employ those dual capability units and our general purpose military forces in that coordinated manner that General Renuart spoke about to meet those 

needs that the civilian communities do not have. 

In addition, I would very much support efforts to enhance and 

increase the capabilities in the civilian communities. You have 

noted the Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support. That 

actually has three tenets to it: A concept of lead, support, and enable—things in which the Department of Defense will clearly be in 

the lead, the air defense of the country against air attack, for example, the military defense of the country against military threats. 

Supporting civil authorities with capabilities that we have that 

they need that are not appropriate to be invested in the civilian 

community. There is no need for the civilian community to have extensive ability to do aerial reconnaissance, for example, or to do 

space-based things, communications, for example. 

The other is that enable concept, and that is where we take capabilities the Department of Defense has or capacities, quite honestly, 

talents, plans, procedures, and then enable our civilian partners, 

such as helping Department of Homeland Security with their operational planning system, translating the Joint Operational Planning System into a civilian equivalent. And that is, I think, where 

we need to place our greatest emphasis. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. OK. General Renuart, Senator Collins 

made reference to something we found in our investigation of Hurricane Katrina, but Admiral Keating, your predecessor, was not directly involved initially in the response to Hurricane Katrina. As 

I recall, Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England watched 

what was happening on TV and acted just because of that kind of 

informal public notice in order to get Northern Command involved. 

So are we better prepared now for a quick response by our military in the case of a local catastrophe in the United States? 

19 

General RENUART. Mr. Chairman, absolutely we are, and I say 

that without any doubt. We have spent a great deal of time working through our Defense Coordinating Officers but, more importantly, working directly with the States that, for example, in the 

case of the hurricanes are likely to be affected by these storms, 

working directly with their Adjutants General, with their State 

emergency management directors, and with the governors themselves, to ensure that we understand where they do have 

vulnerabilities and gaps. 

The National Guard Bureau has a great stoplight chart that can 

show you by level of hurricane, as the hurricanes become more intense, where the States begin to have shortfalls. Our role is to plan 

for those shortfalls and to be prepared to fill in those gaps, not 

when they call for the response but to be prepared prior. 

Mr. Verga mentioned the Secretary signed out an order in the 

last couple months that is giving me authority to mobilize and deploy a substantial force, not just necessarily of a standing brigade 

combat team but, rather, tailored kinds of capability—the ability to 

do reconnaissance of a damaged area, communications capability so 

that we do not have a repeat of the gaps in communication and the 

inability for first responders at the State level and military responders and assistants to communicate. 

The ability during the exercises that I have mentioned for us to 

integrate command and control capabilities, it is not an issue of 

who is in command but, rather, how do we get all of those nodes 

to talk to each other. 

Finally, as Mr. Verga mentioned, we really have spent a lot of 

money since Hurricane Katrina and really in recognition of the importance of these national planning scenarios to train, fund, and 

equip teams at the State, at the regional, and at the Federal level 

to respond to a CBRNE event. So I am much more comfortable, and 

I think if Admiral Tim Keating were sitting here today, he would 

give you the same answer. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Good. Admiral, from the DHS perspective? 

Admiral RUFE. Yes, sir. Just to go back a little bit to the CarterPerry report, I participated in that roundtable, and I do not think 

that was the conclusion that I drew from it. It was the conclusion, 

I think, of the people around that table that clearly an event of 

that nature would overwhelm State and locals even in a city as 

well prepared as New York and that there needed to be a strong 

and immediate Federal response to that. But, more importantly, I 

think it recognized the fact that no matter how well prepared we 

are—and we still have much to do—an event that horrific in terms 

of the number of dead, the number of people irradiated, the extent 

of radiation contamination, which would leave a large area uninhabitable for an extended period of time, and on and on, that the 

emphasis ought to be placed certainly on preparing for such an 

event but, more importantly, on preventing such an event. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Yes, absolutely. Obviously, we have spent 

a lot of time, including on this Committee—I appreciate your mentioning it—on both the work that your Department of Homeland 

Security does and the Director of National Intelligence does, along 

with other parts of our government, obviously DOD, to prevent 

20 

these attacks from occurring. So we are focused here—and it is important to point that out—on the response. 

General Blum and General Libby, do you have a word or two 

from the perspective that you have, which is more uniquely a State 

perspective? 

General BLUM. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The question 

that I wanted to respond to was the words ‘‘control the situation.’’ 

There is no State or local government that is equipped and prepared to deal with the type of event that you describe. You are 

talking about a nuclear detonation in a large-population area. It 

will absolutely require all of the elements of this Nation’s power to 

respond in a support role to the constitutionally established civilian 

governance that exists or survives that event. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. And, quickly, of course. 

General BLUM. Absolutely. It has to be immediate, and that requires preplanning and pre-thinking. The type of exercises that we 

conducted in Indianapolis take us a far, far, giant step forward in 

being better prepared. We are not fully prepared, but I will tell you 

we are far better prepared today than we were just several months 

ago, and dramatically better prepared than we were 5 years ago. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. And, obviously, you are speaking from the 

perspective of the National Guard. 

General BLUM. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I am speaking from the perspective of the National Guard, but the National Guard as a player 

on a team with the Department of Defense, the U.S. Northern 

Command, the Department of Homeland Security, and the States. 

From my position on the team, the team is far better prepared. Are 

we fully prepared? No. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. General Libby. 

General LIBBY. Yes, sir, thank you. I do not disagree with anything I have heard, and I would simply say that I do not think any 

of us at State level anticipated, prior to Hurricane Katrina, that a 

State would be overwhelmed as quickly as Louisiana was. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Right. 

General LIBBY. And I would tell you that all of us now take seriously that one part of our responsibilities to our governors is to 

prepare them for the eventuality that a State may be overwhelmed. 

I think that is where we are focusing our attention right now. 

Clearly, the response to that and the protocols that will direct that 

response are being developed above us. But I think our obligation 

at the State level is to prepare each one of these politicians who 

are our governors for the reality that the State can be overwhelmed, and they need to be prepared to deal with that, and the 

protocols are in place. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Very important. Thank you. That is the 

critical point that is hard for some people to understand. We are 

distinguishing here between a natural disaster, which can have significant adverse effect—a normal hurricane or a tornado—and, on 

the other hand, a catastrophic disaster, which was what Hurricane 

Katrina was. Again, we need to have these discussions about a 

WMD attack against the United States here in this kind of session 

in a rational way. We are in a very different place, of course, than 

we have been before, and it is not a place any of us want to be, 

but that is where we are, as the National Intelligence Estimate 

21 

said yesterday. So one can imagine even a WMD attack that would 

be controllable in a local area, but you can imagine others, such as 

a nuclear attack, that would be catastrophic and would totally 

overwhelm State and local and where all of you are going to be 

very important. Thank you very much for those answers. 

Senator Collins. 

Senator COLLINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General Blum, in January you testified before the Commission 

on the National Guard and Reserves, and you said, ‘‘Eighty-eight 

percent of the forces that are back here in the United States’’—this 

is after having been deployed—‘‘are very poorly equipped today in 

the Army National Guard.’’ 

A GAO report that was also released in January found that most 

State National Guard leaders had also expressed concerns about 

having sufficient equipment to respond effectively to a large-scale 

disaster, whether natural or manmade. 

What is your assessment today of whether the National Guard 

has sufficient resources to provide adequate support to civil authorities in the event of another catastrophic event like Hurricane 

Katrina? 

General BLUM. Senator, let me put it to you this way: If it is a 

predictable event, we have enough equipment in the United States 

to move it and preposition it with advance notice, both in the National Guard and then if I do not have it in the National Guard, 

I can get it from the other elements of DOD. In a predictable event, 

I can do that, as we have done in preparation for this hurricane 

season that we are in right now. 

All the Coastal States from Maine to Texas have predetermined 

requirements of the equipment that they do not have. In Maine, for 

example, General Libby has requirements if a hurricane were to hit 

the coast of Maine. He knows what he has and he knows what he 

needs. We know where it is coming from, and that is the chart to 

which General Renuart alluded. 

The fact that he knows about the chart and the Department of 

Defense knows about the chart and the Department of Homeland 

Security knows about the chart, and the States built the charts, is 

very important. That did not exist 4 years ago. In a predictable 

event, we can make do with not having enough equipment because 

we can move it around. 

In a no-notice event, we are at risk, and we are at significant 

risk. In the kind of event that Chairman Lieberman is describing, 

we would be at great risk. 

Senator COLLINS. I appreciate that assessment. 

General Libby, General Blum mentioned a database that the National Guard Bureau has developed of 10 key areas of capabilities 

for missions that the National Guard would be called upon to perform in the event of a disaster, such as transportation, logistics, 

and security. And the intent, if I understand it correctly, of this 

database is to show which States are mission ready in each of the 

10 areas. The database also requires each of the TAGs to report on 

mission readiness not only for the National Guard units but also 

for other State agencies, such as medical or HAZMAT capabilities. 

Now, you are in a unique situation because you wear all those 

hats in Maine, but that is not the case in most States. Do you 

22 

think this database is a feasible, realistic, and accurate description 

of the capabilities for other States? 

General LIBBY. Yes, I do, Senator, because, again, it is being developed at State level, and despite the fact we are organized 

uniquely from State to State, the development of that database, 

while it might be an action of the TAG because it involves looking 

at Department of Transportation, marine resources, inland fisheries and wildlife, and the like, takes place in what we call the 

emergency response team level at State level. So I am satisfied 

that occurs. 

Again, I think where the disconnect in communication occurs is 

that database can be developed and shared upwardly, but in the 

communication that comes down the pipe from DHS in particular, 

if we do not provide a forum—and Art Cleaves is doing that at 

FEMA Region I—where we get those disparate hats into the room 

when one person does not wear them all in the State, that is where 

our communication gaps occur. 

I also need to point out to you that as we have gone through 

transformation in the National Guard, there has been a recognition 

at the National Guard Bureau level that these 10 essential capabilities are, in fact, essential for each governor to carry out his or 

her responsibilities for their citizenry, and there has been a magnificent effort at the National Guard level, as we have gone 

through transformation, to ensure that we all have some piece of 

those essential elements. 

So I am absolutely satisfied that the data that is reflected on 

those charts has been vetted properly at State level. 

Senator COLLINS. Thank you. 

General Libby, General Blum just told us that if there is a catastrophic event that is unpredictable—not a hurricane that you 

know is coming but, for example, a terrorist attack would be an unpredictable event—he believes that we are at significant risk because we have not sufficiently equipped the National Guard to help 

provide the adequate response to civil authorities. 

Is that your assessment for the State of Maine as well? 

General LIBBY. Yes, Senator it is. We spend the bulk of our time 

in Maine, as they do in all of the other 53 States and Territories, 

looking at the risks that we have assessed that the State faces and 

focusing our attention on those risks. They have not included until 

very recently the catastrophic type events that we are talking 

about here this morning, but I am absolutely satisfied that in 

Maine—and I think I can speak for virtually the other 53 States 

and Territories—and concurring entirely with the Chief’s assessment, we are not prepared to deal with those type of catastrophic 

events. 

Senator COLLINS. General Renuart, the Commission on National 

Guard and Reserves in its March report stated that the commander 

of U.S. Northern Command does not sufficiently advocate for the 

full range of civil support requirements affecting the National 

Guard, and the report goes on to say neither do the chiefs or the 

vice chiefs of the Army or the Air Force. 

The Commission went on to say that it had raised this issue repeatedly with witnesses from both the Department of Defense and 

23 

DHS, but that no one person is a real advocate in this area. Could 

you comment on that? 

General RENUART. Senator, I would be happy to, and I appreciate 

that question, and I think at the time of the Commission’s report, 

the statement was accurate. I do not think it is accurate today. 

First, given the additional authority from the Secretary of Defense, the Commander of USNORTHCOM is the advocate for the 

National Guard and the Reserve in the budgeting process within 

the Department of Defense. And as a result, I take the assessments 

that General Blum and the Adjutants General (TAGs) put together 

on the gaps that exist out there in terms of funding for their equipment. And in this budget cycle, I will be carrying them forward in 

my commander’s Integrated Priority List, which is the way that we 

put requirements into the Joint Requirements Board process within the Department of Defense, and compete them for funding. 

Now, the Committee I know is aware that through the work of 

the National Guard Bureau and the Secretary of the Army and the 

Chief of Staff of the Army, in the 2008 to 2013 budget cycle, there 

is a substantial infusion of money into equipping the National 

Guard, some $21 billion over that 5-year period. That will not solve 

all of the issues that we have worked. Our job at USNORTHCOM 

is to look at those unique gaps that exist between what I will call 

traditional warfighting missions and the missions that the governors would ask the National Guard to do to respond to a catastrophic or a natural disaster event in their State. 

We then will take that through the funding process and advocate 

that, whether it is before the Committees or in our normal budgeting process. 

So I think today we have a much clearer process whereby the 

Commander of U.S. Northern Command will be a principal advocate for the National Guard in this process. 

Senator COLLINS. Secretary Verga. 

Mr. VERGA. Thank you, ma’am. I would add to what General 

Renuart said that the U.S. Northern Command, in conjunction 

with our office, is, in fact, leading something we call a ‘‘capabilitiesbased assessment’’ of the homeland defense and civil support missions that the Department might have to undertake. That capabilities-based assessment will, in fact, result in our ability to work 

within the requirement-setting process so that we can, in fact, meet 

those needs that are identified there. 

Senator COLLINS. Thank you. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much, Senator Collins. 

Senator Stevens, glad to have you here this morning. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR STEVENS 

Senator STEVENS. Thank you very much. I am sorry to be late. 

I have come primarily because of a problem that I ran into in 

Alaska. I do not want to get too provincial about this, but our fire 

situation nationally is becoming one of the major natural disasters 

that we all face. I have found that the planes that have been used 

to scoop up water from our lakes and drop it on the fires are now 

non-existent, that they have all been taken out of our State, onefifth the size of the United States. We have more than 60 percent 

24 

of all the timber of the United States in one State. The last two 

planes are in Arizona, I am told, that are available to the system. 

Now, it is not a National Guard problem per se, but I think we 

need to look at developing new strategies to deal with some of 

these emergencies, such as fires. I had occasion to visit with our 

adjutant general, who is a great friend and a very competent man, 

and we talked about the use of helicopters that they have to lift 

the buckets of water. They are not as efficient as the planes used 

to be. Why we have passed up the concept of building a new generation of planes to fight fires I do not know, but we do not have 

any. I am told that these last two are under contract, as a matter 

of fact, not even owned by the Federal Government. 

Admiral Rufe, you and General Renuart and General Blum, I 

have worked closely with all of you over the years on a lot of 

things. So I was surprised to find this problem, that it had not 

been addressed, so far as I can find out, and Arizona now has the 

planes. And it is logical because they are down close to the place 

where more development and more individuals might be affected by 

fires. If I were managing it, I probably would have made the same 

decision, send them where the fires will occur in later summer. Our 

fires, incidentally, occur primarily before the 4th of July. But that 

is because of the storms. They are primarily set off by lightning, 

although this last one was caused by a young man who was sharpening a shovel with a file. We will not go into that, but the difficulty I have is planning ahead. We now have beetle kill in the 

West that has killed so far about one-third of the trees in the national forests, and we expect that to continue to expand. The beetle 

kill is an enormous fuel for fires. 

Is anyone addressing the question of equipment for the National 

Guard to meet emergencies? I do not know if you all have gone into 

that. This is just one instance of the type of equipment. We have 

the total force there equipped for war, but are they equipped for 

national emergencies of this type? Should we have someone make 

a study of the equipment that you all need to meet these new contingencies? I certainly think it is going to be a budget problem. 

What do you think about this? How can we handle this equipment problem, particularly where we have a situation where the 

primary tool for fighting fires—and I am told that was the best tool 

we had, the aircraft—is gone. 

General RENUART. Senator, if I might lead off, that is a great 

question. I appreciate that. I would tell you that you are correct, 

the contract process for that has a smaller footprint than it has 

ever in the past. Of course, that is run and coordinated by the National Interagency Fire Center that is out in the West in the 

United States today. 

While we do not have in the Department of Defense specific airplanes designed for that process, I do have and the Secretary 

signed an execute order (EXORD) that will allow me authority to 

keep six C–130s—in fact, they are based at Peterson Air Force 

Base. I fly with that unit. They are configured with a modular airborne fire fighting system. They are available at the request of the 

National Interagency Fire Center, and they can be deployed anywhere in the country. 

25 

So we have chosen to retain that capability with this unit. That 

particular unit owns 12 airplanes. We have six of the airborne systems, and to this point, the fires have been such that the request 

has not been exercised. However, I have the authority to deploy 

them on a telephone call. 

Senator STEVENS. Well, let me tell you, the fire that I went to 

see this last recess was one that was very interesting because the 

first 2 days, the cost of fighting that fire was very small. It was 

contained. The third day it got away, and the increased cost of that 

fire to the Federal Government and to the State government and 

some of the private owners was horrendous. It increased 40-fold. 

The planes had left Alaska the day before that fire started, and 

where you have those planes, it is going to take at least a day or 

two to get up to where we are. 

Why can’t we work out some regimen with the National Guard 

for emergency use of some of these helicopters and these buckets? 

It will at least be of some use. But, also, why can’t we get a study 

on getting them back into Federal ownership? Those are Canadian 

planes, as I understand it. We are chartering them from Canada 

after their fire season is over. 

Mr. VERGA. Sir, if I may, of course, we work with the Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Forest Service, when we are talking 

about what we do in support of wildland firefighting. It is coordinated, as the General said, through the National Interagency Fire 

Center, which is out in—— 

Senator STEVENS. I understand that, Mr. Secretary, but you 

know how long that takes? That takes 3 days if you are dealing 

with Alaska. In that 3 days, the fire consumes another 80,000 acres 

of timber. 

Mr. VERGA. Yes, sir. With regard to the availability of the National Guard aircraft—helicopters, for example, that would be up in 

Alaska—it is within the authority of all local commanders to include Title 10 forces, or anything, to use DOD resources in support 

of an emergency, to prevent great property damage, save lives, or 

mitigate suffering. We call it the emergency immediate response 

authority. So the local commander of a base, if he has a helicopter 

and it is equipped with—the term is ‘‘Bambi Bucket’’—the buckets 

that scoop up and drop water, has the authority on his own to be 

able to respond. 

Again, the modular airborne firefighting system that General 

Renuart talked about had been procured by the Forest Service and 

are flown on National Guard and Air Force Reserve aircraft, which 

are available for deployment at the direction of the center that is 

coordinating forest fire response throughout the country. 

Senator STEVENS. Mr. Secretary, none of those carry water. You 

are talking about C–130s. They are not going to be capable of carrying water like the old planes we used to scoop up water with. 

And these people have not been trained to fly buckets and trained 

to coordinate with the ground crews to fight fires with those buckets. 

Now, I am saying to you it is nice to say you have got that coordination on the books. I do not think there is a finer commander 

in the country than General Campbell, and he tried his best. The 

difficulty is to get this coordination going while the fire is going on. 

26 

To my best knowledge, there is no current arrangement for training of some of the local National Guard people to work with the 

firefighters to deal with these situations if they occur. 

Second, why should we get down to the point that a Nation this 

size has two planes left that will scoop up the water and dump it 

on the fire, which is the best method of stopping a fire immediately. 

Mr. VERGA. Yes, sir. 

Senator STEVENS. I really cannot accept the fact that you have 

got a lot of things in agreements. If you had them in agreements, 

they did not work in this case. And I do not think they are working 

currently down in the South 48, either. 

Mr. VERGA. I will commit to you, sir—we had a similar situation 

in California about 3 years ago when we ran into the problem with 

a lot of fires out there. I will commit to you to looking into the ability of the military units in Alaska to be coordinating with the 

ground firefighting elements and let’s get that necessary training 

communications to be—— 

Senator STEVENS. Coordinating with what, Mr. Secretary? There 

are not the aircraft there. When are we going to wake up and start 

getting some plans to replace those aircraft? 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. General Blum, do you want to get into 

this? 

General BLUM. Mr. Chairman, not really, but I will do this—— 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Do you want to come to the defense of 

Secretary Verga? 

General BLUM. Well, I think I will just try to bring some perspective to the discussion. What Senator Sevens is saying is true. The 

capability to scoop water is not in the military air capability any 

longer. It is in the civilian contractor world. These are old airplanes. They are operated by civilian companies and under contract 

from various people for firefighting. 

What General Renuart was describing and what we do have in 

the National Guard, and we do make available, Senator, is the 

kits—we have 16 kits that will slide up inside of a C–130. The crew 

must be trained how to operate the kit and maintain the aircraft 

because it is problematic. You have seen that red stuff—— 

Senator STEVENS. General, don’t you have to go back somewhere 

and land to fill those—— 

General BLUM. Absolutely you do. 

Senator STEVENS. With the other ones you just went back to the 

nearest—— 

General BLUM. You went to the lakes. 

Senator STEVENS [continuing]. Water and fought it. 

General BLUM. No question. But what I am trying to tell you, 

Senator, is they do not exist in the U.S. Air Force or the U.S. Army 

today. They are certainly not in the National Guard because we 

only have Army and Air Force equipment. 

What exacerbates what you are describing is that at the time the 

Alaska fires were going on, there were wildfires in 17 other States 

that were competing for the scarce resources that we do have in 

Colorado, Wyoming, California, and North Carolina, and these 

buckets that Secretary Verga is talking about, they literally are 

buckets. They hang under the helicopter, and they are literally a 

27 

bucket on a rope in a more sophisticated manner, but you can drop 

them in a local water source, a lake nearby the fire, but you are 

throwing a bucket of water on an 80,000-acre fire from the helicopter, and it is less than optimal. 

I will make a commitment to call General Campbell, and if there 

is anything not in the fight right now in the country, we will get 

it in the fight in Alaska. 

Senator STEVENS. I am not being totally provincial. I am saying 

I think we should plan to find a way to build some new aircraft 

or at least adapt some aircraft to the old function. One helicopter 

dumping—I do not know how many gallons it can hold, but it really does not do the job that airplane used to do. I am told that if 

we had had those two aircraft, we could have put that fire out in 

2 days. 

General BLUM. And I tend to think you are correct. 

Senator STEVENS. But there are no such airplanes now. 

General BLUM. Well, sir, we are in violent agreement on that. 

Senator STEVENS. Why doesn’t someone come up with a plan and 

a request to build some airplanes or modify some old ones to turn 

them into the scooping type of aircraft? 

General RENUART. Well, Senator, I think that goes back to my 

role advocating for just this kind of capability. I think we have 

committed that we will try to figure this out, and we will return 

back to you or to the Committee and try to give you a sense of how 

we could move forward on this. 

Senator STEVENS. Thank you very much. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Stevens. 

I think Senator Stevens raises a question from a unique local 

perspective which obviously has very serious national implications, 

and in some ways on a slightly different disaster consequence, it 

is exactly what General Blum said earlier, which is that the National Guard is ready to respond to a predictable natural disaster, 

perhaps even one of a catastrophic nature—predictable, I presume 

you mean, General, in the sense that there is a weather forecast 

that is credible that says that a catastrophic hurricane is heading 

somewhere, to the Gulf Coast, let’s say. And the reason that you 

are ready is that you can move resources and personnel—you have 

the time because it is predictable—to wherever the crisis is. But 

the problem is where the National Guard is not ready everywhere 

in the United States for a non-predictable event such as a terrorist 

attack. 

General BLUM. Or even a tornado. A killer tornado going through 

three towns in Iowa, the Governor of Iowa and the adjutant general of Iowa are going to be looking for help from neighboring 

States and surrounding States, no question. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Right. So I think there are two questions. 

One, can we create a system that is ready throughout the country 

for the non-predictable events? Or two, is there a way in which 

USNORTHCOM can be prepared to rapidly supplement local areas 

in the case of a non-predictable event, either natural or terrorist? 

General, do you have a quick answer. 

General RENUART. Mr. Chairman, yes. I think we have through 

the lessons learned with Hurricane Katrina, through the lessons 

we saw in both Exercise ARDENT SENTRY in New England and 

28 

in Indianapolis, we have, if you will, created tiered sets of capability that allow a first responder to get on scene and begin to assess, but very rapidly brings additional State responders, whether 

it is civilian or the National Guard, the Emergency Management 

Assistance Compact that brings in surrounding States, and then at 

the same time, the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA 

are responding from the Federal level to bring the larger muscle 

movements to that. 

Senator I think it would be unfair to characterize that in a nuclear detonation, for example, a terrorist detonation of a nuclear 

weapon, all of us would not be overwhelmed up front. So it is important to realize that you will have that period as you are building 

your response. 

I think I am comfortable in saying that among all of the agencies 

here, we recognize the size of that problem, and we are in the process of building additional capacity that will allow us to shorten sort 

of the period of chaos—— 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. In other words, your goal is not to be 

overwhelmed for long? 

General RENUART. Correct. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I got you. Unfortunately, a vote has gone 

off. This is a very critical question, and it is one that I actually 

would like to see if we can organize some process—Senator Stevens 

said it about his particular question—to determine what we need 

to shorten that gap during which it is going to be hard not to be 

overwhelmed so that we can bring relief to the people as quickly 

as we can. 

Senator Collins has one question, and then, unfortunately, we 

are going to have to adjourn. 

Senator COLLINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General Libby, you, among this panel, are probably the only one 

who realizes that I have never missed a vote, so I am going to ask 

you to be very quick in your response to my question. You talked 

about the fact that there were included some changes in the Insurrection Act at the behest of Senator Warner in the DOD bill, and 

you suggested that be repealed. So let me ask you this question: 

Do you see any need to expand the situations in which the President can deploy Federal troops to a State during a disaster? Or do 

you think that the old law was adequate? 

General LIBBY. I think the governors and the adjutants general 

spoke with one voice on that subject a year ago, and the answer, 

Senator, is the old law was adequate in our collective opinions. 

Senator COLLINS. Thank you. And I want to thank all of our witnesses today for truly terrific testimony. Very helpful. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I agree. I thank you. I thank you for what 

you do every day. I am just looking at the panel, and you are really 

the five people that the Commander-in-Chief is going to turn to on 

a day of a catastrophe in this country, which we hope and pray 

does not come but we know probably will. And the bottom line, my 

reaction to the testimony that you have given today is that we are 

significantly better prepared, certainly than we were on September 

11, but definitely than we were in response to Hurricane Katrina. 

We are going to keep the record open of this hearing for 15 days. 

We have got more to do, and I invite you to be as specific as you 

29 

can in writing to the Committee about what you need from Congress to help you be as prepared as humanly possible. 

INFORMATION SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD FROM GENERAL RENUART 

We would appreciate the Committee’s support of our efforts to integrate most dayto-day operations into a single NORAD and USNORTHCOM Command Center on 

Peterson Air Force Base. Exercise ARDENT-SENTRY—NORTHERN EDGE 2007, 

which is the most complex exercise of this magnitude every undertaken by 

USNORTHCOM and the National Guard Bureau, reinforced that our integration of 

NORAD and USNORTHCOM missions into a single command center is an essential 

element for an effective response to the full spectrum of threats to the United States 

and Canada. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. But in the meantime, I thank you very 

much for being on guard every day for us and for the people of this 

country. The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:11 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

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