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	<title> - PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT: STRENGTHENING HOMELAND SECURITY BY EXERCISING TERRORISM SCENARIOS</title>
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	[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
	[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]




	PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT:
	STRENGTHENING HOMELAND SECURITY
	BY EXERCISING TERRORISM SCENARIOS

	=======================================================================

	HEARING


	before the

	SELECT COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
	HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

	ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

	SECOND SESSION

	__________

	JUlY 8, 2004

	__________

	Serial No. 108-53

	__________

	Printed for the use of the Select Committee on Homeland Security


	Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/
	index.html

	__________



	U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

	24-733 WASHINGTON : 2005
	_________________________________________________________________
	For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government
	Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free
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	SELECT COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY



	Christopher Cox, California, Chairman

	Jennifer Dunn, Washington Jim Turner, Texas, Ranking Member
	C.W. Bill Young, Florida Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi
	Don Young, Alaska Loretta Sanchez, California
	F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts
	Wisconsin Norman D. Dicks, Washington
	David Dreier, California Barney Frank, Massachusetts
	Duncan Hunter, California Jane Harman, California
	Harold Rogers, Kentucky Benjamin L. Cardin, Maryland
	Sherwood Boehlert, New York Louise McIntosh Slaughter, New
	Joe Barton, Texas York
	Lamar S. Smith, Texas Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon
	Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Nita M. Lowey, New York
	Christopher Shays, Connecticut Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey
	Porter J. Goss, Florida Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of
	Dave Camp, Michigan Columbia
	Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Florida Zoe Lofgren, California
	Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Karen McCarthy, Missouri
	Ernest J. Istook, Jr., Oklahoma Sheila Jackson-Lee, Texas
	Peter T. King, New York Bill Pascrell, Jr., New Jersey
	John Linder, Georgia Donna M. Christensen, U.S. Virgin
	John B. Shadegg, Arizona Islands
	Mark E. Souder, Indiana Bob Etheridge, North Carolina
	Mac Thornberry, Texas Ken Lucas, Kentucky
	Jim Gibbons, Nevada James R. Langevin, Rhode Island
	Kay Granger, Texas Kendrick B. Meek, Florida
	Pete Sessions, Texas Ben Chandler, Kentucky
	John E. Sweeney, New York

	John Gannon, Chief of Staff

	Stephen DeVine, Deputy Staff Director and General Counsel

	Thomas Dilenge, Chief Counsel and Policy Director

	David H. Schanzer, Democrat Staff Director

	Mark T. Magee, Democrat Deputy Staff Director

	Michael S. Twinchek, Chief Clerk

	(II)



	C O N T E N T S

	----------
	Page

	STATEMENTS

	The Honorable Christopher Cox, a Representative in Congress From
	the State of California, and Chairman, Select Committee on
	Homeland Security:
	Oral Statement................................................. 1
	Prepared Statement............................................. 2
	The Honorable Jim Turner, a Representative in Congress From the
	State of Texas, Ranking Member, Select Committee on Homeland
	Security:
	Oral Statement................................................. 2
	Prepared Statement............................................. 4
	The Honorable Robert E. Andrews, a Representative in Congress
	From the State of New Jersey................................... 41
	The Honorable Donna M. Christensen, a Delegate in Congress From
	the U.S. Virgin Islands........................................ 44
	The Honorable Norman D. Dicks, a Representative in Congress From
	the State of Washington........................................ 38
	The Honorable Jennifer Dunn, a Representative in Congress From
	the State of Washington........................................ 5
	The Honorable Jim Gibbons, a Representative in Congress From the
	State of Nevada................................................ 36
	The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress
	From the State of Mississippi.................................. 34

	WITNESSES

	Mr. Thomas O. Mefford, Director, DuPage County Office of Homeland
	Security and Emergency Management State of Illinois:
	Oral Statement................................................. 22
	Prepared Statement............................................. 24

	Ms. C. Suzanne Mencer, Executive Director, Office for State and
	Local Government Coordination and Preparedness, Department of
	Homeland Security:
	Oral Statement................................................. 6
	Prepared Statement............................................. 8

	Accompanied by:
	Mr. Corey D. Gruber, Associate Director, Office for Domestic
	Preparedness, Department of Homeland Security.................. 28

	Mr. Clark S. Kimerer, Deputy Chief of Operations, Seattle Police
	Department, Seattle Washington:
	Oral Statement................................................. 16
	Prepared Statement............................................. 18

	APPENDIX

	Material Submitted for the Record:
	Questions for Ms. C. Suzanne Mencer............................ 47
	Prepared Statement of Advanced Systems Technology, Inc48 <plus-minus>


	PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT:



	STRENGTHENING HOMELAND SECURITY BY EXERCISING TERRORISM SCENARIOS

	----------


	Thursday, July 8, 2004

	House of Representatives,
	Select Committee on Homeland Security,
	Washington, DC.
	The committee met, pursuant to call, at 1:11 p.m., in room
	210, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Cox
	[chairman of the committee] presiding.
	Present: Representatives Cox, Dunn, Camp, Gibbons, Turner,
	Thompson, Dicks, Andrews, Lofgren, McCarthy, Christensen,
	Etheridge, Lucas and Langevin.
	Chairman Cox. Welcome. The Select Committee on Homeland
	Security will come to order. The committee is meeting today to
	examine how terrorism preparedness exercises function in
	strengthening the Federal, State and local government homeland
	security response capabilities.
	In order to allow us to hear from our witnesses more
	quickly, I would ask members to waive or limit the duration of
	oral opening statements. Those who are present within 5 minutes
	of the gavel and waive their opening statements will be
	allotted 3 additional minutes for questioning the panel. If
	members have written statements, they may be included in the
	hearing record.
	As most of you know, this committee recently reported
	H.R.266, the Faster and Smarter Funding For First Responders
	Act. This bill authorizes $3.4 billion annually to aid first
	responders in both preventing and responding to acts of
	terrorism through improved planning, equipment, training and
	exercises. We expect this important bill to be considered on
	the House floor shortly.
	Today, we examine how one part of the grant funds
	authorized by this bill will be used to strengthen our Nation
	through terrorism preparedness exercises. Scenario-based
	training is critical to an effective counterterrorism program
	because the terrorist threat is often not visible. We need to
	remind ourselves through training of how real and enduring this
	threat is, as we were reminded again today by Secretary Ridge.
	The stakes are high.
	In evaluating FEMA's response to the Oklahoma City bombing,
	the General Accounting Office cited a number of unique
	terrorism-related challenges. The arrival agencies on the scene
	weren't coordinated in their times of arrival. There was a
	clear need to better integrate typical law enforcement
	functions, such as preserving the chain of evidence, with
	typical disaster response and recovery functions, such as
	clearing rubble.
	The mission to create a national strategy for terrorism
	preparedness exercises began with President Bush's national
	strategy for homeland security. It was codified in the Homeland
	Security Act, which gave the Department of Homeland Security
	the specific responsibility to coordinate preparedness efforts,
	as well as to work with State and local entities on exercises
	to combat terrorism.
	In response to this mandate, the Department has focused on
	two areas, national programs and State and local programs. The
	national program focuses broadly on the Federal Government's
	response and coordination of Federal, State and local
	resources. For example, the TOPOFF exercise series takes place
	over multiple days and tests the ability of several communities
	to respond to weapons of mass destruction. TOPOFF 2 was
	conducted almost 1 year ago and involved over 20,000
	participants, over 25 Federal, State and local agencies and
	departments and the government of Canada.
	We are fortunate to have with us today key participants in
	the 2003 TOPOFF 2 exercises from both the Chicago and Seattle
	sites. I look forward to hearing the assessments of our
	witnesses on the strengths and weaknesses of the TOPOFF
	exercise.
	TOPOFF 2 cost $16 million, but it provided valuable
	lessons. Agencies were able to rehearse for the first time the
	actions they would take when the homeland security advisory
	system is elevated to red. Should highways be closed? Should
	airports be closed? Who is going to make these decisions? The
	exercise allowed us to see the consequences of making these
	very decisions. Similarly, the original TOPOFF exercise
	revealed difficulties in distributing the strategic national
	stockpile.
	Since then, HHS, DHS, and State and local governments have
	focused on remedying these problems; and we are now better
	prepared to deliver and distribute the stockpile than we were
	before TOPOFF.
	The Department clearly needs a robust terrorism
	preparedness exercise program. It needs a program that is
	coordinated across the Department and is programmed to share
	data and lessons learned with State and local governments and,
	when appropriate, with the private sector. It is our intent to
	codify and expand some of these exercise program elements in
	the committee's first-ever DHS authorization bill.
	We are fortunate today to have representatives from the
	front lines in this terrorism preparedness effort, from the
	Department of Homeland Security, from the Seattle Police
	Department and from the DuPage County Office of Emergency
	Management. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and
	testimony today.

	Prepared Statement of the Honorable Christopher Cox

	As most of you know, this Committee recently reported out H.R.
	3266, The Faster and Smarter Funding for First Responders Act. This
	bill authorizes a $3.4 billion annually to aid first responders in both
	preventing and responding to acts of terrorism--through improved
	planning, equipment, training, and exercises. We expect this important
	bill to be considered on the House floor shortly.
	Today, we examine how one part of the grant funds authorized by
	this bill will be used to strength,en our Nation through terrorism
	preparedness exercises. Scenario-based training is critical to an
	effective counterterrorism program because the terrorist threat is
	often not visible and complacency can easily set in. We need to remind
	ourselves through training of how real and enduring this threat is--as
	we were reminded again this morning by Secretary Ridge. The stakes are
	high. In evaluating FEMA's response to the Oklahoma City bombing, GAO
	cited a number of unique, terrorism-related challenges. The arrival
	agencies on the scene were not coordinated. There was a clear need to
	better integrate typical law enforcement functions, like preserving the
	chain of evidence, with typical disaster response and recovery
	functions, like clearing rubble.
	The mission to create a national strategy for terrorism
	preparedness exercises began with President Bush's National Strategy
	for Homeland Security and was codified in the Homeland Security Act,
	which gave DHS the specific responsibility to coordinate preparedness
	efforts at the Federal level, as well as to work with state and local
	entities on exercises to combat terrorism. In response to this mandate,
	the Department has focused on two areas--national programs and state
	and local programs.
	The National Program focuses broadly on the Federal Government's
	response and coordination of federal, state and local resources. For
	example, the TOPOFF exercise series takes place over multiple days and
	tests the ability of several communities to respond to weapons of mass
	destruction. TOPOFF 2 was conducted almost one year ago, and involved
	over 20,000 participants, and over 25 federal, state, and local
	agencies and departments, and the Canadian Government. We are fortunate
	to have with us today key participants in the 2003 TOPOFF 2 exercises
	from both the Chicago and Seattle sites. I look forward to hearing the
	assessments of our witnesses as to the strengths and weaknesses of the
	TOPOFF exercise.
	TOPOFF 2 cost $16 million, but it provided valuable lessons.
	Agencies were able to rehearse, for the first time, the actions they
	would take when the Homeland Security Advisory System is elevated to
	Red. Should highways be closed? Should airports be closed? Who would
	make these decisions? The exercise allowed us to see the consequences
	of making these very decisions. Similarly, the original TOPOFF exercise
	revealed difficulties in distributing the Strategic National Stockpile.
	Since then, HHS, DHS and state and local governments have focused on
	remedying these problems, and we are now better prepared to deliver and
	distribute the Stockpile than we were before TOPOFF.
	The Department clearly needs a robust terrorism-preparedness
	exercise program. It needs a program that is coordinated across the
	Department and is programmed to share data and lessons learned with
	state and local governments and, when appropriate, with the private
	sector. It is our intent to codify and expand some of these exercise
	program elements in the Committee's first-ever DHS authorization bill.
	We are fortunate today to have representatives from the front lines
	in this terrorism preparedness effort--from the Department of Homeland
	Security, the Seattle Police Department and the DuPage County Office of
	Emergency Management. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and
	testimony today.

	I now recognize the Ranking Member, Jim Turner of Texas,
	for an opening statement.
	Mr. Turner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and welcome to all of
	our witnesses. We look forward to hearing about your experience
	with the TOPOFF exercise series. I think it is very critical
	that we do these kind of exercises, and I know that you will
	have some good reports and information to share with us about
	the exercises that have been conducted to date. There is no
	doubt that effective exercises at all levels of government will
	help us to be prepared in the event of a terrorist attack, and
	I commend you on your efforts and your work in this area.
	There are several issues that I hope you will try to
	address in your comments to us today.
	First, I am concerned about how we develop the scenarios
	for the exercises. Do we rely upon the intelligence
	information, the threat, and the vulnerability assessments that
	our Department of Homeland Security is supposed to be
	preparing? Or do the scenarios come from some other source? If
	we are not using the threat and vulnerability information, it
	seems to me that we are not conducting the exercises that we
	may need to be conducting; and I would like to hear how the
	scenario development process occurs.
	Second, I would like to know a little bit about how the
	Department of Homeland Security measures the effectiveness of
	these exercises. What readiness level are you seeking to
	achieve? How does the conduct of an exercise contribute to our
	State and local governments' overall preparedness? And,
	following an exercise, do the Department and the participating
	State and locality have a clear understanding of what
	additional planning, training, and equipment is necessary to
	prepare that impacted community for that kind of terrorist
	incident?
	Third, I would be interested in knowing if the actual--or
	if the conduct of these exercises has actually led to fixing
	any of the problems that were discovered.
	The exercise I understand we are going to hear about today
	occurred about a year ago, in May of 2003; and it would be
	interesting to know not only how the exercise was carried out
	but, perhaps more importantly, how DHS and the Cities of
	Seattle and Chicago have addressed the shortfalls that were
	uncovered through the exercise.
	It is my understanding that the after action report for
	that exercise revealed that there was little understanding of
	inter--or intra-agency command and control protocols, that many
	exercise players did not fully understand their reporting
	relationships with Federal officials, that a number of major
	pre-existing interagency Federal plans and processes were
	circumvented during the exercise. There were logistical
	difficulties accessing DHS assets and resources, and there was
	a lack of a robust and efficient emergency communications
	infrastructure in the Chicago hospital system that impeded
	response.
	All of those issues seem to be important, and the more
	interesting side of your testimony would be what have we done
	since that exercise to solve those uncovered problems. So I
	would appreciate a description of what lessons we learned and
	how have we responded to them.
	So thank you so much for being here, and we appreciate very
	much the good work that you are doing. Thank you.

	Prepared Statement of Jim Turner

	Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Director Mencer, welcome back. Mr. Mefferd and Mr. Kimmerer,
	welcome to Washington. Thank you all for appearing before the Select
	Committee today, and I look forward to your testimony on the Department
	of Homeland Security's exercise programs, and specifically the TOPOFF
	exercise series.
	The Department of Homeland Security, and particularly the Office
	for Domestic Preparedness, plays a crucial role in preparing our
	country to win the war on terror. It oversees a range of programs to
	prepare our first responders, individually, and our communities, more
	broadly, to prepare for and respond to acts of terrorism. It is
	critical that the job is done right.
	Effective exercises at all levels of government are a key component
	of our terrorism preparedness activities. The Arlington County,
	Virginia Fire Department's after-action report on their response to the
	9-11 attack noted that frequent training and exercises with the Federal
	Bureau of Investigation, the Pentagon, and the Military District of
	Washington made a substantial contribution to their successful response
	operation.
	Therefore, the Department is to be commended for its commitment to
	a robust exercise program, particularly the TOPOFF program, and for the
	efforts it has undertaken to provide state and local governments with
	guidance on developing and conducting exercises.
	However, there are several issues that I would like you to address
	either in your testimony or in response to the Committee's questions.
	First, I am concerned that in the development of exercise
	scenarios, DHS does not utilize threat and vulnerability information to
	guide its choice of either the location of the incident, or the mode of
	terrorist attack. Why don't the TOPOFF exercises focus on what the
	intelligence assessment indicates is a city's highest vulnerability? I
	am afraid that Department's inability to develop a comprehensive threat
	and vulnerability assessment--which has been noted by this Committee on
	numerous occasions--has a significant, negative impact on the conduct
	of your exercise program.
	Second, how is DHS measuring the effectiveness of its exercise
	program? What ``readiness'' level are you seeking to achieve in the
	exercise venues, and how does the conduct of an exercise contribute to
	a state or local government's overall preparedness? Following an
	exercise, do DHS and the participating states and localities have a
	clear understanding of what additional planning, training, and
	equipment are necessary to fully prepare the impacted communities?
	Third, while the actual conduct of exercises is important, it is
	equally important to fix the problems revealed by the exercise. The
	TOPOFF exercise we will hear about today took place over a year ago, in
	May of 2003. At this point, while I am interested in how the exercise
	was carried out, I am much more interested in how both DHS and the
	cities of Seattle and Chicago addressed any shortfalls in their
	response operations. For example, the after-action report for the
	TOPOFF 2 exercises noted the following:
	<bullet> There was little understanding of inter- and intra-
	agency command and control protocols, and many exercise players
	did not fully understand the reporting relationships among
	federal officials;
	<bullet> A number of major, pre-existing interagency federal
	plans and processes were circumvented during the exercise;
	<bullet> There were logistical difficulties accessing DHS
	assets and resources; and
	<bullet> A lack of a robust and efficient emergency
	communications infrastructure in Chicago's hospital system
	impeded response, and resource demands challenged these
	hospitals throughout the exercise.
	I am interested in understanding how you have improved your
	operations since the exercise to assure us, and the nation, that in the
	event of a real terrorist attack, we will not repeat the same mistakes.
	Therefore, I would appreciate a description of how any lessons learned
	from the exercise have been incorporated into either the Department's,
	or your city's, day-to-day policy decisions, and the specific
	corrective actions you have undertaken to remedy any operational
	deficiencies.
	Finally, I am not convinced that the Department is taking full
	advantage of the exercise knowledge and expertise resident in a number
	of its components, such as FEMA and the Coast Guard. These agencies
	were conducting multi-agency, intergovernmental exercises long before
	the Department of Homeland Security was created. I recognize that the
	Office for Domestic Preparedness has been tasked with managing the
	National Exercise Program; however, DHS must begin the process of
	integrating the vast resources under its control to build the most
	effective programs.
	As you can see, I have many questions and concerns about the
	Department's exercise program. I hope that in addition to describing
	your experiences in the TOPOFF 2 exercise, you can directly address the
	questions I have raised. Thank you for being here, and I look forward
	to your testimony.

	Chairman Cox. Thank the gentleman.
	The Chair recognizes the Vice Chairwoman of the full
	committee, Jennifer Dunn of Washington.
	Ms. Dunn. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman; and we are
	delighted that you are here with us today, panel. We look
	forward--having heard bits and pieces of what happens as a
	result of the analysis of TOPOFF--to seeing the big picture in
	your eyes.
	Mr. Chairman, we are especially lucky today to have a local
	official from my hometown and my State of Washington, Deputy
	Chief Clark Kimerer, who is number two at the Seattle Police
	Department, on this panel today; and he will bring a unique
	perspective because he was actually there on the ground in May
	of last year at the TOPOFF 2 exercise. He started at the
	Seattle Police Department in 1983 as an officer; and now, as
	Deputy Chief of Operations, he oversees the Investigation and
	Emergency Preparedness Bureau.
	Chief Kimerer, you recognize some of the people on this
	panel because some of them met with you when we were in town
	for a field hearing last fall; and we appreciate your coming
	back to Washington, D.C., to discuss with us again in more
	detail the perspective of those who were on the ground in
	Seattle the day of TOPOFF 2. We look forward to your testimony.
	With that, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back.
	Chairman Cox. I thank the gentlelady.
	Are there further opening statements?
	If not, I now ask unanimous consent that a video from the
	Department of Homeland Security be shown at this time. Without
	objection, so ordered.
	[Video played.]
	Chairman Cox. That video, of course, reflects what we
	actually conducted as an exercise during TOPOFF 2. It was I
	think quite clearly prepared by the Department of Homeland
	Security and sets the stage for the testimony of our next
	witnesses by providing a visual representation of how exercises
	are designed and conducted.
	We will now hear testimony from our three witnesses; and I
	want to remind our witnesses that, under our committee rules,
	they should strive to limit their opening remarks to 5 minutes.
	Each witness's entire written statement, at full length, will
	appear in the record. We will also allow the entire panel to
	testify before the questioning of any witness.
	Chairman Cox. The Chair now recognizes our first witness,
	Ms. Suzanne Mencer, Executive Director of the Office for State
	and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness of the
	Department of Homeland Security. Miss Mencer, welcome.

	STATEMENT OF C. SUZANNE MENCER

	Ms. Mencer. Thank you very much, Chairman Cox. I appreciate
	the opportunity to be here today.
	It is certainly my pleasure, on behalf of Secretary Ridge,
	to talk about our homeland security exercise programs. I want
	to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and all the members of this
	committee for your ongoing support for the Department of
	Homeland Security, for the Office for Domestic Preparedness and
	for the new consolidated Office of State and Local Government
	Coordination and Preparedness. Congress has long been a
	champion of rigorous exercise programs as an important
	contributor to our Nation's preparedness, and made early and
	critical investments in what have today become very highly
	successful programs.
	Over the past 6 years, SLGCP, which is our very long
	acronym, has supported nearly 400 exercises. We conduct these
	exercises in the firm belief that they are a cornerstone of
	preparedness. Our experience and data show that exercises are a
	practical, efficient and cost-effective way to prepare for
	crises. They test our resilience, identify procedural
	difficulties and provide a plan for corrective actions without
	the penalties that might be incurred in a real crisis. Short of
	an actual incident, exercises provide the ``final test'' for
	our preparedness.
	SLGCP provides exercise support through its Homeland
	Security Exercise and Evaluation Program. Through this program,
	SLGCP State exercise managers and support teams work with
	States, Territories and designated urban areas to help
	establish exercise programs and develop a multi-year exercise
	schedule. On average, States plan about 20 exercises a year.
	In addition, as you know, Mr. Chairman, at the direction of
	Congress, SLGCP has conducted two Top Officials, or TOPOFF,
	national exercises that involved the participation of all key
	personnel who would participate in an actual terrorist event.
	The first exercise in May 2000 was, at the time, the largest
	counterterrorism exercise ever conducted in the United States,
	with over 6,000 participants. The States of New Hampshire and
	Colorado served as our pioneer venues.
	Then, last year, just 2 months after the Department of
	Homeland Security was established, Secretary Ridge personally
	led his team and the Nation through a week-long TOPOFF 2 full-
	scale exercise. Sixteen major exercise activities were
	conducted in the States of Washington and Illinois for 103
	Federal, State, local and international departments and
	agencies. These exercises involved 20,000 domestic and
	international participants, including senior U.S. and Canadian
	government officials.
	Following TOPOFF 2, Secretary Ridge directed my office to
	develop a comprehensive national homeland security exercise
	program. Congress has provided the resources necessary to build
	a program that will ensure that the homeland security community
	is trained, practiced and able to perform its assigned homeland
	security missions.
	Implementation of this program is well under way, including
	the design and development of a third TOPOFF exercise. TOPOFF
	3, which will involve the States of New Jersey and Connecticut
	and the governments of the United Kingdom and Canada, promises
	to be the largest, most productive exercise ever conducted by
	the United States and its allies.
	In addition to direct exercise support, we have also worked
	with our Federal, State and local partners to develop exercise
	policy and doctrine. We have produced a series of manuals and
	compiled hundreds of exercise references that are available
	through a secure but unclassified Web portal we established for
	the homeland security community. We have been hard at work
	evaluating models, simulations and games to identify products
	that meet training and exercise needs when large-scale
	exercises are impractical, and to augment and extend existing
	programs; and we have established a national network of lessons
	learned and best practices for emergency response providers and
	homeland security officials. All this information is available
	through the secure but unclassified Web portal that we
	established for our homeland security community.
	In closing, I would like to provide just one illustration
	of the value of exercises to our Nation's preparedness. On the
	morning of September 11, 2001, one of our exercise teams was in
	New York City, preparing to assist Mayor Giuliani and his team
	to conduct a full-scale bioterrorism exercise that was
	scheduled for the next day. This exercise would have involved
	upwards of 700 police officers and firefighters. On September
	11th, when the City's emergency operations center went down in
	the World Trade Center attack, the exercise venue, Pier 92,
	became the response and recovery nerve center. Mayor Giuliani
	later described what a robust exercise program meant to the
	City. ``We did not anticipate'', he said, ``that airliners
	would be commandeered and turned into guided missiles. But the
	fact that we practiced for other kinds of disasters made us far
	more prepared to handle a catastrophe that nobody envisioned.''
	Let me restate the strong commitment of both Secretary
	Ridge and myself to the support of exercises as a cornerstone
	of America's homeland security preparedness. We look forward to
	continuing to work with you, Mr. Chairman, and members of this
	committee and Congress, to insure that our Nation's first
	responders are fully prepared to protect our home towns and our
	homeland.
	This concludes my statement, and I will be happy to respond
	to any questions that you or members the committee might have.
	And I did bring along Corey Gruber, who was the voice of a lot
	of that video, who lived through both TOPOFF exercises and is
	here to talk about it. Thank you very much.
	Chairman Cox. Thank you very much.
	[The statement of Ms. Mencer follows:]

	Prepared Statement of C. Suzanne Mencer

	Chairman Cox, Congressman Turner, and Members of the Committee, my
	name is Sue Mencer, and I serve as Director of the Department of
	Homeland Security's (DHS) Office for State and Local Government
	Coordination and Preparedness (SLGCP). On behalf of Secretary Ridge, it
	is my pleasure to appear before you today to discuss our homeland
	security exercise programs.
	I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and all the members of the
	Committee, for your ongoing support for the Department and for SLGCP.
	Congress has long been a champion of rigorous exercise programs as an
	important contributor to our nation's preparedness, and made early and
	critical investments in what have become today's highly successful
	programs. You and your colleagues have entrusted us with a great
	responsibility in administering these efforts for the nation, and we
	are meeting that charge with the utmost diligence.
	Mr. Chairman, since its creation in 1998, the Office for Domestic
	Preparedness (ODP), now consolidated with the Office of State and Local
	Government Coordination as the Office of State and Local Government
	Coordination and Preparedness (SLGCP), has provided assistance through
	its preparedness programs to all 50 States, the District of Columbia,
	the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the U.S. territories. By the end
	of Fiscal Year 2004, SLGCP will have provided States and localities
	with more than $8.1 billion in assistance and direct support, trained
	550,000 emergency responders from more than 5,000 jurisdictions and
	directly supported nearly 400 exercises.
	We conduct these exercises in the firm belief that they are a
	cornerstone of preparedness. Our experience and data show that
	exercises are a practical, efficient, and cost-effective way to prepare
	for crises. They test our resilience, identify procedural difficulties,
	and provide a plan for corrective actions to improve capabilities
	without the penalties that might be incurred in a real crisis. They are
	a tangible measure of accountability in the repetitive cycle of
	planning, training, exercising, and assessing our homeland security
	capabilities. Short of an actual incident, they provide the "final
	test" for our preparedness.
	Congress has played a critical role in laying the foundation for
	our current programs. In 1996, Congress authorized the Nunn-Lugar-
	Domenici Domestic Preparedness Program, an unprecedented undertaking
	which provided training, equipment, technical assistance and exercises
	focused on the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction to 120 of
	the nation's largest urban areas. This effort was initially
	administered by the Department of Defense and subsequently transferred
	to our Office. Each city received direct support in the design,
	development, conduct and evaluation of a series of three exercises,
	including a full-scale (or field) exercise. This Program was the
	forerunner for many of our current initiatives.
	Today, SLGCP has organized exercise support for States and
	communities into Eastern, Central, and Western Regions through its
	Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program. States are required
	to adopt the Program for exercises conducted with Federal grant funds.
	State Exercise Managers and support teams are assigned to each Region.
	Exercise Managers conduct Exercise Planning Workshops with States,
	Territories, and designated urban areas to aid in program establishment
	and development of a multi-year exercise schedule. On average, states
	have planned twenty annual exercises.
	Congress has also led the establishment of exercise programs for
	our nation's leaders. In 1999 Congress directed that a Top Officials
	(``TOPOFF'') National Exercise be conducted with the participation ``of
	all key personnel who would participate in an actual terrorist event.''
	The first TOPOFF, a full-scale exercise in May 2000 was, at the time,
	the largest combating terrorism exercise ever conducted in the United
	States. Over 6,000 participants from federal, state and local
	departments and agencies, including Cabinet officials participated. The
	States of New Hampshire and Colorado served as our pioneer venues for
	the first TOPOFF exercise.
	Again thanks to Congress, the second TOPOFF was a tremendous
	advancement. We were provided with additional funding so we could
	design and conduct a full two-year cycle of exercise activities of
	increasing complexity. Sixteen major exercise activities were conducted
	for 103 Federal, State, local and international departments and
	agencies and 20,000 domestic and international participants, including
	senior officials of the USG and Government of Canada. The States of
	Washington and Illinois were our full partners and provided our
	exercise venues. Through the use of distance learning methodologies, we
	were able to broadcast elements of the exercise series to audiences
	across the nation. Secretary Ridge personally led his team and the
	nation through the week-long TOPOFF 2 full-scale exercise just two
	months after the Department of Homeland Security was established. This
	proved to be an invaluable opportunity for the Department and its
	partners across government to train key personnel in their new homeland
	security roles and responsibilities.
	Following TOPOFF 2, Secretary Ridge directed my Office to develop a
	comprehensive national homeland security exercise program. Congress
	provided the resources necessary to build a Program that will ensure
	the homeland security community is trained, practiced and able to
	perform its assigned homeland security missions. We worked with our
	partners across government to develop a Program with four principal
	objectives: (1) To provide senior officials and their organizations
	with the opportunity to periodically train and exercise together,
	identify key policy issues, and refine key incident management
	processes/procedures against the range of probable threats; (2) To
	develop common doctrine and provide annual program planning guidance;
	(3) To establish collaborative management processes, supporting
	systems, and multi-year scheduling; and (4) To formalize a system for
	collecting, reporting, analyzing, interpreting, and disseminating
	qualitative as well as quantitative exercise lessons and exemplary
	practices.
	The importance of a nationally integrated program was reinforced
	when the President issued Homeland Security Presidential Directive/
	HSPD-8, ``National Preparedness,'' in December of last year. HSPD-8
	confirmed the requirement to establish a national program. Our National
	Exercise Program, including the TOPOFF exercise series, will support
	implementation of the National Response Plan and National Incident
	Management System, and the provisions of HSPD-5, issued in February
	2003.
	Program implementation is well underway, including design and
	development of the third in the series of TOPOFF exercises. New Jersey
	and Connecticut will be our host venues, and Washington and Illinois,
	our partners in TOPOFF 2, will serve as their mentors. We will shortly
	announce the venues for TOPOFF 4, and those States will be invited to
	monitor the design, development, conduct and evaluation of TOPOFF 3.
	This mentoring program is designed to transfer knowledge and experience
	among multiple States and communities by leveraging national-level
	exercise participation. In addition, the Governments of the United
	Kingdom and Canada have committed to participation in what promises to
	be the largest, and surely the most productive exercise series ever
	conducted by the United States Government and its allies
	To unify homeland security exercise efforts, we have worked
	diligently with our federal, state and local partners to develop
	exercise policy and doctrine. We have produced a series of manuals that
	are employed by our State and local clients, and have been adopted for
	use by several Federal departments and agencies. These manuals and
	hundreds of exercise references are available through a secure but
	unclassified web portal we established for the homeland security
	community. This portal helps us realize our goal of maximizing the
	reuse of exercise investments and products, and in reducing the man-
	hours required to design and develop exercises. The portal is utilized
	by thousands of federal, state and local exercise planners, and
	provides them with the tools and references that accelerate exercise
	design and development and dramatically enhance our ability to share
	information, including lessons and best practices. Our success with the
	portal has led us to use it as a collaborative workspace for many other
	preparedness initiatives.
	To meet the needs of the millions of first responders that must
	periodically train and exercise together on key action procedures, we
	have been hard at work examining and evaluating models, simulations,
	and games to identify products that meet federal, state, and local
	training and exercise needs when large-scale exercises are impractical,
	and to augment and extend existing programs. The potential benefits
	include increased training and exercise frequency, delivery, realism,
	and lower costs. Two reports commissioned by my Office reviewed nearly
	100 models, simulations and games, and these reports are available to
	federal, state and local users of our Secure Portal.
	The real value of exercises--and a difficult challenge--is in the
	identification and correction of weaknesses in our performance. We have
	established a national network of Lessons Learned and Best Practices
	for emergency response providers and homeland security officials. This
	``Lessons Learned Information Sharing'' system was developed by our
	partners at the Oklahoma Memorial Institute for the Prevention of
	Terrorism, is hosted on our secure but unclassified web portal, and is
	designed to share information necessary to prevent and respond to acts
	of terrorism across all disciplines and communities throughout the
	United States. All users are verified emergency response providers and
	homeland security officials at the local, state, and federal levels. We
	employ strong encryption and active site monitoring to protect all
	information housed on the system. Most importantly, the content is
	validated by homeland security professionals for their peers. The site
	also houses an extensive catalog of after-action reports from exercises
	and actual incidents as well as an updated list of homeland security
	exercises, events, and conferences.
	Today's multimedia presentation will complete the portrait of the
	homeland security community's exercise efforts at every level of
	government--efforts that improve with every exercise. Your committee's
	support of these programs contributes to our readiness every day across
	this great nation.
	In closing, I'd like to offer a premier illustration of the value
	of exercises to our nation's preparedness. In 1997, New York City began
	a rigorous series of exercises focused on the terrorist threat. Our
	office, along with other federal partners, was privileged to assist in
	these efforts. On the morning of September 11th, 2001, one of our
	exercise teams was in New York City preparing to assist Mayor Guiliani
	and his team in conduct of a full-scale bioterrorism exercise scheduled
	for September 12th. This exercise would have involved upwards of 700
	police officers and firefighters. The exercise venue, Pier 92, became
	the alternate City emergency operations center when Tower 7 of the
	Trade Center was made untenable by the attack. Mayor Guiliani later
	described what a robust exercise program meant to the City: ``We did
	not anticipate that airliners would be commandeered and turned into
	guided missiles; but the fact that we practiced for other kinds of
	disasters made us far more prepared to handle a catastrophe that nobody
	envisioned.''
	Let me re-state Secretary Ridge's and my commitment to exercises as
	a cornerstone of America's homeland security preparedness. There are no
	stronger proponents than the President and the Secretary for the
	utility and versatility of exercises in improving domestic incident
	management. This concludes my statement. I will be happy to respond to
	any questions that you and the members of the Committee may have
	following our multimedia presentation. Thank you.
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	Chairman Cox. I want at this point to welcome and introduce
	also Mr. Clark Gruber, who is--or, pardon me, Corey Gruber.
	Clark, I am getting you confused here--Corey Gruber, who is the
	Associate Director of the Office for Domestic Preparedness at
	the Department of Homeland Security. We understand that you are
	not going to present formal testimony but would be pleased to
	respond to members' questions.
	At this time, I would like to introduce Clark Kimerer, who
	is the Deputy Chief of Operations for the Seattle Police
	Department.

	STATEMENT OF CLARK S. KIMERER

	Mr. Kimerer. Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the
	select committee on Homeland Security, thank you for inviting
	me to speak with you today. Washington State is proud to have
	two Congress people serving on this important committee,
	Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn and Congressman Norm Dicks. We
	appreciate your continued support to look after the Homeland
	Security needs of the City of Seattle and of the State of
	Washington.
	It is an honor for me to be asked to share with you my
	reflections on the TOPOFF exercise series. It is particularly
	gratifying to note your commendable interest in the
	observations of a local police professional. We must never lose
	sight of the fact that, for most Americans, their homeland is
	defined as the specific geography where they live and work,
	raise their kids, go to school and enjoy their friends, their
	family and their leisure.
	On May 12 of last year, the City of Seattle was rocked by a
	detonation of a radiological dispersal device, otherwise known
	as a dirty bomb, exploded by international terrorist
	operatives, creating a mass casualty crisis. For the whole of
	this 36-hour continuous crisis, City of Seattle Mayor Greg
	Nickels, Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske, the Fire Chief, and the
	head of public health presided over the City's Emergency
	Operations Center and provided continuous communication and
	engagement with the citizens of Seattle via the media. The
	entire architecture of the Federal response under the
	Department of Homeland Security was shoulder to shoulder with
	us during this event.
	Of course, what I have just recounted was the
	congressionally conceived TOPOFF 2 exercise. No one was
	actually hurt or killed, the terrorist cell did not actually
	penetrate our defenses and harm our citizens, and at the
	conclusion of the exercise we went about the invaluable
	enterprise of analysis and improvement, rather than the tragic
	activity of mourning.
	My observations today about TOPOFF 2 will be decidedly
	local and influenced by police officer sensibility. If asked to
	characterize my perspective, I will describe it as coming from
	the lofty vantage of being at ground level.
	Why was this exercise so important and, in my estimation,
	so successful? Its value for me is measured in four basic
	dimensions.
	First, an exercise tests and contributes to the evolution
	of doctrine, policies and plans. It is one thing to develop
	plans and policies as a matter of academic abstraction. It is
	quite another to test them in the real world, take real time
	movements of people on the ground. When all of this is set in
	motion, our doctrines and policies will be thoroughly tested
	and, as a consequence, will grow in clarity and precision. The
	TOPOFF 2 exercise series helped illuminate these critical
	needs, and together we have worked diligently to address them.
	The Department of Homeland Security's recent work on the
	National Incident Management System, or NIMS, is right on point
	to address the major deficiencies we identified in TOPOFF 2.
	But I want to emphasize again that we are only as good as we
	are clear and precise in our doctrines and policies, and
	exercises help us attain that clarity and precision.
	Second, an exercise provides an opportunity for the
	practical development of technical skills and expertise. Every
	one of the officers, firefighters, emergency room nurses and
	doctors, public health workers and the myriad others who were
	deployed during TOPOFF 2 gained real-world experience and
	practice in dealing with a crisis whose reach exceeded our
	grasp. This included real-world fatigue, real-world mandates to
	be innovative and creative, real-world mistakes. This is the
	gold standard of exercises. But we could not have undertaken it
	were it not for the financial support that enabled us to stage
	this exercise.
	We have day jobs, 850,000 calls a year. We cannot take
	officers off the street to train them. It has to be off duty.
	So for us the TOPOFF series and, more to the point I am going
	to make next, the UASI grant process is invaluable. It is truly
	a Godsend.
	I want to comment on UASI at this juncture. My observation
	is very straightforward. The UASI grant process has been vital
	to our jurisdictions, our local, state and regional
	jurisdictions. Without UASI support, cities like Seattle would
	be literally unable to equip, train and provide technological
	support to our first responders.
	But we are approaching a point in the evolution of the UASI
	process where the limitations and prohibition regarding the
	hiring of full-time equivalents or personnel is becoming a
	critical priority of many chiefs. You see, in addition to
	technology, equipment and training, the capital and commodity
	we need most is people. We need to have the flexibility to
	invest in the most important capital asset of all, namely
	personnel.
	Third, exercises in general and TOPOFF in particular
	provide--indeed require--a comprehensive after action
	assessment and evaluation process and report. This transforms
	our localized experience into an enduring, relevant and
	universal benefit that we can share among all of our first
	responder agencies at all levels of government. The Department
	of Homeland Security--and my friend, Corey Gruber--calls this
	``bankable learning.''
	I propose that the key planners and players responsible for
	our exercises should have the chance to regularly convene with
	the exercise evaluators and assessors in an attempt to measure
	the growth of policy and strategy and in turn contribute to the
	national discussion and our collective expertise to prevent and
	respond to acts of terror.
	Fourth, finally, and most important, an exercise like
	TOPOFF builds relationships and creates lines of communication.
	Our discussions around TOPOFF were candid, honest, open and
	productive. Now I know who to call, and the voice in
	Washington, D.C., is likely someone with whom I have
	established a professional relationship and vice versa. In my
	view, this is one of the most profound benefits of committing
	to any multijurisdictional exercise and TOPOFF 2 specifically.
	I will close with one final thought. I contend that for any
	of these programs and initiatives to be successful they need to
	be designed and managed in large measure by the State and local
	first responders and active law enforcement, fire and police
	professionals who will use them. It is tempting but I believe
	misguided to look inside the Beltway for decisions that affect
	Seattle or Austin or Miami. Secretary Ridge, I know, shares
	this value. We are on track to make it a reality. But people
	like me need to constantly remind those that have much too much
	work to do of the importance of the local perspective in the
	design of our national strategy for response.
	It has been an honor and a privilege for me to be able to
	share these observations with the committee. We are all part of
	the same coalition of concern and dedication, and together I
	know we will protect the citizens we serve and the freedoms
	that define our Nation. Thank you.
	Chairman Cox. Thank you, Chief Kimerer.
	[The statement of Mr. Kimerer follows:]

	Prepared Statement of Clark S. Kimerer

	Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Turner, Distinguished Members of the
	Select Committee on Homeland Security, thank you for inviting me to
	speak with you today. Washington State is proud to have two members
	serving on this important committee--Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn and
	Congressman Norm Dicks. We appreciate their continued attention to the
	homeland security needs of the City of Seattle and the residents of the
	State of Washington.
	On May 12th of last year, the City of Seattle was rocked by the
	detonation of a radiological dispersal device, otherwise known as a
	``dirty bomb'', exploded by international terrorist operatives,
	creating a mass casualty situation, a plume of radioactive debris
	enshrouding a significant part of Seattle's civic center, and the
	contamination of police and firefighters who, with willful disregard
	for their own safety, rushed into this scene of destruction to care for
	the injured. For the next 36 hours, over 3700 men and women from
	Seattle, King County, the State of Washington, the Department of
	Homeland Security, the FBI, FEMA, the nation of Canada, local and
	national departments of public health, the academic community, and many
	others--including our partners from the private sector--worked together
	to contain and neutralize the damage; rescue, triage, decontaminate and
	treat victims; investigate the crime scene; and reassure a shaken
	public that we were doing everything possible to protect their sacred
	interests: Their own security and safety, that of their children and
	loved ones, and--at the same time--the freedoms that define this
	nation.
	For the whole of this 36-hour crisis, City of Seattle Mayor Greg
	Nickels presided over the city's Emergency Operations Center, and
	provided continuous communication and engagement with the citizens of
	Seattle via the media. The Chief of Police, the Fire Chief, the
	Director of Public Health, the Director of FEMA Region 10, and the
	Department of Homeland Security Principal Federal Official (PFO), among
	others, worked in support of the Mayor to address the crisis. At the
	same time, nearly identical scenarios were being played out in the
	office of the King County Executive, and in the office of the Governor
	of the State of Washington. In Vancouver, British Columbia and the
	capital city of Ottawa, top officials from Canada worked to both
	protect the interests of their citizens, as well as offer assistance to
	the US. Then, in the midst of our crisis, a second attack was launched.
	Twenty-four hours into our response to the explosion in Seattle, the
	same terrorist group released tpneumonic plague bacillus in Illinois,
	infecting citizens in Chicago and its five surrounding counties. As in
	Seattle, the Mayor of Chicago, the executives of the impacted counties,
	the Governor of the State of Illinois, and the Department of Homeland
	Security worked together to address the crisis unfolding before them.
	And, finally, here in the other Washington, the response and support
	architecture of the Federal government, under the organizational
	structure of the Department of Homeland Security, was engaged and
	operational during the whole of the Seattle and Illinois crises. I have
	it on good authority that the Secretary got about as much sleep as the
	rest of us during the second week of May, 2003.
	Of course, what I have just recounted was the congressionally
	conceived TOPOFF 2 exercise. No one was actually hurt or killed. The
	terrorist cell did not actually penetrate our defenses and harm our
	citizens. And at the conclusion of the exercise, we went about the
	invaluable enterprise of analysis and improvement, rather than the
	tragic activity of mourning.
	It is an honor and privilege to be asked to share with you my
	reflections on the TOPOFF exercise series, as well as the value of
	exercising terrorism scenarios generally. It is particularly gratifying
	to note your commendable interest in the analysis and observations of
	local police, fire and emergency services professionals. I know this
	commitment is shared as a priority by the Secretary. We are, after all,
	the first responders to virtually every disaster and emergency either
	presented by nature, or conceived by the malignant misuse of the human
	intellect. The impressive machine of Federal support almost invariably
	follows the efforts of local, regional and state response. Local
	police, fire, public health and emergency services workers are and
	always will remain the first to respond and the last to leave. We do
	not have a national police force, like Canada, nor even a unified,
	governing jurisdictional construct like Great Britain. Our nation
	defines itself by local, community-based governance, particularly as
	concerns police and emergency services. In times of crisis, our
	citizens look for aid and reassurance from the President and Congress,
	and at the same time, to their elected Mayor, local police and fire
	chiefs, County Executive, and Governor. As we design exercises to
	improve our capacity to respond to terrorism, as we develop and refine
	homeland security doctrine to define essential responses and actions,
	we must never lose sight of the fact that most Americans define their
	``homeland'' as--first and foremost--the specific geography where they
	live and work, raise their kids, go to school, and enjoy their friends,
	family and leisure.
	The balance of my comments will be my reflections on key lessons
	learned from TOPOFF 2; the profound value of exercises generally, both
	large and small; and, finally, what we need to build on based upon the
	insights gleaned from TOPOFF and other recent scenarios and
	simulations. I will also explore with you two related issues of great
	concern to my colleagues in the Major Cities, namely the need to have
	the latitude to hire personnel, and to keep focused upon threat-based
	assessments at the municipal and regional first responder level. My
	observations will be decidedly local and influenced by a police
	officer's sensibility. If asked to characterize my perspective, I would
	describe it as ``low altitude,'' or--more to the point--generated from
	the lofty vantage of being at ground level.
	Perhaps the most immediate and significant characteristic of the
	TOPOFF 2 exercise is symbolized by its very name: TOPOFF, which is
	shorthand for Top Officials. A few moments ago, I described that during
	the TOPOFF field exercise in May 2003, we saw the total engagement and
	focused participation of Seattle Mayor Nickels, the King County
	Executive, Washington Governor Locke, Mayor Daley, the elected
	Executives representing five counties surrounding Chicago, the Governor
	of Illinois, top officials in Canada, Secretary Ridge and the whole of
	the leadership of DHS, members of the Cabinet, and the office of the
	President himself. I know that members of Congress, and this committee
	in particular, were part of this unparalleled coalition of engagement
	and concern. This level of exercise play was truly groundbreaking, both
	as an opportunity for evaluation and assessment of our gaps and needs,
	as well as for its statement of the commitment we have made to the war
	against terrorism.
	Why was this exercise so important and, in my estimation, so
	successful? I contend that exercises of any scale--from the monumental,
	like TOPOFF 2 and the upcoming TOPOFF 3, to the focused and specific,
	like a 4-hour tabletop scenario--are immensely valuable. Their value is
	measured in four basic dimensions:
	First, an exercise tests and contributes to the evolution of
	doctrine, policies and plans. It is one thing to develop a vision of
	crisis and consequence management as a matter of academic abstraction;
	it is quite another to test doctrine and policies in real world, real
	time movement of people on the ground. Every time we individually or
	nationally undertake a field exercise, we have an opportunity to re-
	think and further clarify our basic principles. What is the role of a
	national alert system? What is the priority of the Incident Command
	System for first responders? Where do jurisdictions begin and end? What
	is the role of the private sector and business community in both crisis
	and consequence management? How do we organize joint public
	information, crisis communications, and who is the messenger? Who
	leads, who follows, who facilitates? During TOPOFF 2, over eight
	hundred Seattle firefighters and police officers moved on the ground
	for 36 continuous hours to rescue the injured, evaluate and contain the
	damage, extricate victims from collapsed structures, implement Incident
	Command, establish interoperable communications, investigate the crime,
	reassure the public, coordinate the integration of local, state and
	federal emergency services leaders; when all of this is set in motion,
	our doctrines and policies will be thoroughly tested, and, as a
	consequence, will grow in clarity and evolve in precision.
	In TOPOFF 2, it became clear that we have more work to do to
	further clarify our national, state and local doctrines. From my
	perspective, we need to use exercises like TOPOFF 2 to unify first
	responders in applying the Incident Command System, or ICS.
	We need to clearly articulate our focus upon local, regional and
	state capacities, based upon threat assessment, population densities,
	and critical infrastructure. We need to practice the integration of
	mutual aid, and the arrival of federal support and coordination into
	field command and command post operations. We need to have a precise
	and efficient organization for public information, joint crisis
	communications, with due regard for the jurisdictional responsibilities
	of the elected leaders of impacted communities.
	The TOPOFF 2 exercise helped illuminate these critical needs, and
	together we have worked diligently to address them. The Department of
	Homeland Security's work on the National Incident Management System (or
	NIMS), the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP),
	HSPD 5 and 8, the National Response Plan, and the recent Universal Task
	List work group that I sit on, are right on point to address the gaps
	and needs illuminated by TOPOFF 2. And in TOPOFF 3, all of these
	lessons learned have been integrated into the design of the next set of
	scenarios. I have the privilege of being one of the TOPOFF 3 mentors,
	and am solidly impressed by the design of the upcoming exercise series.
	But I want to emphasize that we are only as good as we are clear and
	precise in doctrine and policy, and we must create a sustainable
	process of learning to hone and refine our doctrinal principles and
	priorities. I believe that Aristotle captured this mandate: If you
	really know something, you can say it, and say it clearly and
	precisely. Exercises immensely help us to this end.
	Second, an exercise provides and opportunity for the practical
	development of technical skills and expertise. In some ways, this is
	self-evident. Every one of the officers, firefighters, emergency room
	nurses and doctors, public health workers, ambulance technicians,
	utility and public works professionals, and the myriad others deployed
	during TOPOFF 2 gained real world experience and practice in dealing
	with a crisis whose reach exceeded our grasp. This included real world
	fatigue, real world mandates to be flexible and innovative, and real
	world mistakes. Many of the TOPOFF 2 participants in Seattle were at
	the beginning of 20--and 30-year careers. Imagine a long tenure in
	emergency services marked by progressively more difficult and complex
	exposure to scenarios, played out in times of calm, and with the
	opportunity for reflection and improvement. This is our gold standard.
	But it is near impossible for most municipal, county or state fire or
	police agencies--including Seattle--to undertake a major exercise and
	meets its day-to-day requirements for emergency response. Were it not
	for the financial support we received to stage TOPOFF 2, we could not
	have taken resources away from the street and 911 responsibilities.
	Consider this: In Seattle last year, the police department responded to
	850,000 911 calls. A quarter million of these calls required one, two
	or multiple police officers to physically respond. On top of that,
	these same police officers self-initiated stops, arrests or other
	official actions 170,000 times. Over 20,000 adults and juveniles were
	arrested and booked into jail, and another 6500 were cited or summoned.
	On the one hand, it is precisely this day-to-day experience that makes
	the local jurisdictions expert in first response and emergency
	management. We do it all the time. What better resource to help define
	the national doctrine, strategy and exercise plan. But on the other
	hand, it is precisely this burden of work that precludes us from being
	able to create a TOPOFF 2 on our own. When we train, it is almost
	always during off-duty times, resulting in overtime and other
	exceptional financial and personnel impacts. But, in the view of this
	operations chief and 20-year veteran of policing, it is worth every
	penny.
	It is appropriate at this juncture to comment on the UASI grant
	process. My observation is very straightforward. The UASI grant process
	has been vital. Without UASI support, cities like Seattle would have
	unable to equip, train and provide technological support to our first
	responders. It would have taken us ten years to approach a percentage
	of the progress we have made under UASI in just the last 12 months.
	This progress has all been in areas directly supportive of our mission
	to prevent, detect, deter and mitigate acts of terrorism, specifically
	personal protective and detection equipment, maritime, port and
	transportation protection, interoperable communications, and other
	programs that protect our citizens. We are fast approaching a point in
	the evolution of the UASI process that many chiefs and elected
	officials around the county are confronting:
	The limitations and prohibitions on hiring FTEs from grant sources
	like UASI is becoming a priority concern, for this reason: In addition
	to technology equipment and training, the capital and commodity we are
	most in need of is people. Expert, dedicated, competent people to
	assist us in planning, intelligence, technical and scientific
	processes, computer and communications technology--including the
	emerging threat of cyber terrorism--and, quite simply, to help us
	manage the equipment and systems we are receiving from the UASI
	process. We know the difficulties that inhere in grant funding
	personnel positions. We know that creating an on-going obligation for
	staff beyond the life of a grant is problematic. But I am confident
	that there is a middle ground, and that we can structure positions that
	have set terms and sunset provisions to meet our need to have the
	flexibility to invest in the most important capital asset of all,
	namely personnel.
	Third, exercises in general and TOPOFF in particular provide--
	indeed, require--a comprehensive after action assessment and evaluation
	process and report. We call these ``lessons learned,'' and, in a real
	sense, this process may be the reason to undertake an exercise in the
	first place. As I mentioned above, TOPOFF 2 provided an opportunity to
	test and refine our doctrines and policies, and explore real world,
	practical deployments with our regional, state and federal partners as
	we jointly confronted a series of devastating terrorist attacks. But
	what transforms our localized experience into an enduring, relevant and
	universal benefit is the sharing of our insights in a sustainable and
	secure system that can be accessed by all police, fire and emergency
	services professionals. The Department of Homeland Security has called
	this ``bankable learning.'' The process of integrating the architecture
	of data collection, evaluation and assessment and sharing of lessons
	learned must begin at the same time an exercise is conceived. This did
	not happen in TOPOFF 2; it is a principle component of TOPOFF 3. I
	commend DHS for their resolve to take this key element of exercise
	management and elevating its priority for future scenarios. In the end,
	this is the basic reason to commit to the expense, risk and personnel
	impacts of an exercise at all: To grow, improve, evolve and share
	insights to benefit all emergency workers, in the same manner that a
	rising tide lifts all boats.
	For my part, I believe we have more work to do in evaluating the
	TOPOFF 2 experience. I would like to see an after action process that
	regularly revisits and provides opportunity for thoroughgoing follow-up
	on the lessons we learned. One year, two years, even five years
	following an exercise like TOPOFF should be the occasions to
	systematically compare our insights against changes in policy,
	doctrine, first response, consequence management, and training. The key
	leaders and planners responsible for an exercise should have the chance
	to convene with the exercise evaluators and assessors, in an attempt to
	measure the growth of policy and strategy, and in turn, contribute to
	the national discussion and our collective expertise to prevent and
	respond to acts of terror and disasters generally. This is truly
	``bankable learning,'' and is a priority I know we share with the
	Department of Homeland Security.
	Fourth, finally, and most important, an exercise like TOPOFF builds
	relationships and creates lines of communication. In the end, it really
	is all about relationships. In the year leading up to the Full Field
	Exercise, I participated in a series of TOPOFF seminars that explored
	public information, direction and control, management of an RDD and
	plague attack, jurisdictional responsibilities and prerogatives; in
	short, the whole gamut of response challenges that will be present in
	the event of a real attack. These discussions were candid, honest, open
	and productive. The Department of Homeland Security heard from me and
	my colleagues that we will be successful in direct proportion to the
	level that local first responders are consulted and listened to; and I
	heard and saw that DHS was comprised of smart, dedicated people who
	were trying their best to address a huge task in a short time to thwart
	an implacable and malignant adversary (and listen to state and local
	jurisdictions at the same time) I remain impressed. I commend their
	efforts. And now, I know who to call, and the voice in Washington DC is
	likely someone with whom I have established a professional
	relationship. And vice versa. The exact dimensions of how important it
	is to create these relationships is difficult to quantify. In my view,
	this is one of the most profound benefits of committing to any multi-
	jurisdictional exercise, and TOPOFF 2 specifically.
	Now, during the exercise itself, it wasn't always perfect. There
	were not a few false starts, though none that interfered with the work
	being done in the field. I found that the Principal Federal Official
	(PFO) system worked very well, and I was surprised and gratified to see
	a minimum of ``creeping jurisdictions'' at play. In the end, I believe
	that DHS was eminently respectful of the role of local government and
	its first responders, and tailored its role to support, assist, engage
	the federal system and its myriad responsibilities, and prepare for
	transitions of jurisdiction following the resolution of the mass
	casualty incident by Seattle police, fire and emergency services
	professionals.
	As we look ahead, I can conceptualize a roadmap based in part upon
	my previous comments. The first element is the continued support of
	exercises and scenarios at the federal, state and local level, with
	emphasis on interjurisdictional coordination and mutual aid. A
	progressive continuum of exercise formats and media--from elementary to
	highly advanced--should be our ultimate goal. The Department of
	Homeland Security is pursuing this objective with rigor and energy.
	Programs involving distance learning, computer-aided models,
	simulations and games, formats for tabletop, limited and full field
	exercises and specialized scenarios and topics--cyber terrorism being
	one example--would find a ready audience. At the heart of this
	curriculum, I believe, must be use of the incident command system. Now,
	returning to a central theme of my remarks, I contend that for any of
	these programs to be truly successful, they need to be designed and
	managed in large measure by the state and local first responders and
	active law enforcement and fire professionals who will use them. The
	second element, then, is a redoubled commitment to ensure that
	doctrine, policy and exercise design is a matter for state and local
	input and expertise. It is tempting to look inside the beltway for
	decisions that affect Seattle or Austin or Des Moines. Having said
	this, I know that the Secretary is committed to a full partnership with
	the many state and local experts who make up the first responder
	community. The third element is an expanded program of after-action
	analysis, appropriately secured but accessible to all professionals
	within the federal, state and local emergency response community. This
	program should include regular updates and opportunities for
	interaction with evaluators and assessors, and should ideally be
	presented in a standard format designed by the professionals who will
	use the information. The fourth element is to maximize the occasions
	for interaction at all levels, and to build relationships and lines of
	communication forged in times of calm, that will endure in times of
	crisis.
	It is an honor and a privilege for me to be able to share these
	observations with the committee. We are all a part of the same
	coalition of concern and dedication, and together I know that we will
	protect the citizens we serve, and the freedoms that define our nation

	Chairman Cox. Of course, whereas Seattle had to endure a
	radiological attack, the Chicago metropolitan area had to
	endure an attack of bubonic plague; and here to tell us about
	that is Tom Mefferd, who is the Director of the DuPage County
	Office of Homeland Security in the Chicago, Illinois, area.
	Welcome.

	STATEMENT OF THOMAS O. MEFFERD

	Mr. Mefferd. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the
	committee. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss exercise
	issues with you as related to the TOPOFF exercise.
	As has been previously indicated, the State of Illinois and
	the State of Washington, the whole country, if you will,
	participated in the exercises a little over a year ago. While
	it would be real easy to spend some time talking in detail
	about that exercise, I would like to take a step backwards and
	talk about the whole picture that exercise plays or that
	exercising plays in the grander scale of emergency
	preparedness. Preparedness is one of the major functions that
	homeland security and emergency management is built on.
	There is a three-part process, a triangle, if you will, of
	planning, training and exercising; and each of those pieces
	have been mentioned in one way or the other here this
	afternoon. Planning is the foundation under which the whole
	process is built. Planning is the foundation, if you will, that
	allows us to be able to respond to a major emergency or
	disaster. Absent an emergency plan, we have nothing to train to
	and we have nothing to exercise, because we have not thought
	out who is going to do what at what level and how we are going
	to do it. It is critical that an emergency plan exist at the
	local level, at the State level and at the Federal regional
	level, as well as the headquarters level, that clearly
	indicates how we work together.
	There were numerous things that came up in the TOPOFF
	exercise that either required a decision to be made at a local
	level that directly impacted things that were happening here in
	Washington, or there was a decision made here in Washington
	that directly impacted things that happened at the local level.
	We must be able to understand, we must be able to know how our
	counterparts are functioning and thinking at every level of
	government, because as we continue to function in an emergency
	scenario we must work as a team.
	The development of the national response plan and,
	ultimately, NIMS will help us do that. But I caution you, just
	putting a document on the street will not solve the problem.
	The ultimate solution to this problem is the adoption, the
	training and the acceptance on the part of every State and
	every one of our localities of those systems. We must work
	together. We must work in unison if we are going to be able to
	function.
	As we look at the TOPOFF scenario and ultimately any
	terrorist incidents, it is critical again that we have a system
	that is robust, that we have a system that is clearly
	understood at every level of government; and that leads to the
	second part of the triangle, training. As part of TOPOFF, prior
	to the exercises, there was over a year of planning and
	training activities that led us to, ultimately, the skills
	necessary to perform the exercise. That training where we
	brought together local officials and county officials and State
	officials and Federal officials was invaluable.
	Again, it is critical that we all clearly understand how we
	relate to each other. Every person, every agency that has a
	role in the ultimate emergency plan must also participate in
	training if in fact we are to work as a team. Again, as a
	sports team, as any other team works, we must do the same in
	homeland security and emergency management.
	Finally, the third leg of that triangle, exercising. There
	are some basic concepts that I think we forget sometimes in the
	development of exercise, and that is the concept that we must
	crawl before we walk and we must walk before we run.
	In the same fashion, we look at exercising as 80 percent
	training and 20 percent testing. It is important that we
	understand clearly that when we go through an exercise, as we
	did in TOPOFF, that we will make mistakes, that we will
	identify those mistakes and work to solve the problems that
	were identified in the exercise. It is critical that we clearly
	understand that we don't rush out and just do the big
	phenomenal exercise but we also support all of the smaller
	exercises that led up to that. We did, I believe a total of six
	exercises in preparation for the ultimate TOPOFF exercise.
	Additionally, one of the fallacies in exercise design that
	I think we should be aware of is that we should not be afraid
	to make those mistakes. Understandably, if exercises are going
	to be a training environment, we are going to make mistakes
	that may potentially be made public. But those mistakes can be
	fixed through critique. They can be fixed through evaluation
	and planning and retraining.
	There are a number of other specifics, but let me move
	toward conclusion, to touch base on one final component, a
	critical component of the system, as Clark just indicated, with
	the UASI program. That part is personnel. It is critical that,
	as we look at the management infrastructure in this country
	that is responsible to make sure that we have the capability to
	respond not only to an exercise but a full-scale disaster, we
	have to start looking at other areas other than our first
	responders.
	Don't take that wrong. Our first responders have been
	focused as a major part of national attention since September
	11, and they need that continued support. We need to make sure
	our first responders are the best trained, best equipped and
	best prepared. But the issue is there needs to be the command
	and control system that stands behind those first responders
	that is prepared to make the decisions that are necessary.
	The emergency management community, the emergency managers
	themselves, our chief executive officers need to be trained.
	They need to be exercised, and they need to be supported. Our
	infrastructure in communications and interoperability and
	command and control facilities, emergency operating centers
	must be a priority.
	Again, as we look at the support systems for our personnel
	we need to clearly understand in the preparation for TOPOFF
	this was a year-plus activity that put significant strains on
	those agencies that participated. In our government alone, we
	had three full-time personnel, two in our public health
	community, one in my office, that initially were committed on a
	monthly basis to multiday meetings once a month. As we moved
	closer to the exercise, that was almost a full-time commitment.
	If an exercise can put that kind of a strain on a local
	government system, then what would a real emergency do? We need
	the availability of putting additional personnel into our
	command and control system, much as Clark has just indicated.
	In conclusion, again, let me state this. As we look at
	exercises, the benefit to our country, the benefit to our
	communities is immeasurable. Bringing folks together, talking
	together, planning together and working together, there is no
	way to measure that. It is a tremendous benefit.
	But again we must--we must from the Federal level down have
	a commitment to support the overall triangle--planning,
	training and exercising--as an entire package. The continued
	support of Congress, the continued support of the Department of
	Homeland Security is essential to all of us at the local level
	being able to effectively respond and manage a major crisis,
	especially the uniqueness that is there from a terrorism
	scenario. Thank you very much.
	Chairman Cox. Mr. Mefferd, thank you very much for your
	testimony.
	[The statement of Mr. Mefferd follows:]

	Prepared Statement of Thomas O. Mefferd

	By way of background, I have been involved in the emergency
	management field since 1971, serving at the municipal, township and
	county government levels. Additionally, I have served in the training
	and education divisions of both state and federal governments. During
	these thirty- three years, I have participated in or developed more
	than 100 exercises ranging from low-level table-top exercises to full-
	scale exercises.
	A little more than one year ago the State of Illinois; City of
	Chicago and its surrounding counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, and Lake;
	the State of Washington; City of Seattle and surrounding counties; and
	the federal governments of the United States and Canada participated in
	the most extensive counter-terrorism exercise ever held in this
	country. This exercise was designed to test the cooperative efforts of
	the local, state, and federal government in responding to, and
	ultimately recovering from, a multi-facetted terrorist attack on the
	country.
	At the outset it may appear appropriate to comment on and critique
	the exercise and its ultimate results. However, it is critical to
	clearly understand the role that exercising plays in the bigger picture
	of emergency preparedness. Preparedness includes three equal but
	interrelated components, including:
	<bullet> Planning
	<bullet> Training
	<bullet> Exercising
	Planning is the foundation on which the triangle rests. Absent an
	emergency plan, there is nothing on which to train and no organization
	to exercise. The key to an effective response and recovery system is
	the development of a comprehensive emergency plan that clearly
	identifies the roles and responsibilities of key departments, agencies,
	and officials, and various levels of government. More importantly, the
	roles, responsibilities, and authorities of all agencies that
	participate must be clearly defined. At the local level, where a mayor
	or county executive provides direct leadership to operating
	departments, the process of ``direction and control'' is relatively
	easy. The higher one looks in government, however, the more convoluted
	things become. With the large number of federal agencies, as well as
	the differences between regional and headquarters organizations, it is
	not always clear how certain decisions are made and how local
	implementation of those decisions occur.
	With the roll out of the new National Response Plan (NRP) and the
	National Incident Management System (NIMS), hopefully many gray areas
	will be eliminated. Critical, however, to the success of these plans
	will be their adoption and integration at the local and state levels.
	The following example, related to the Strategic National Stockpile,
	clearly illustrates how planning must be integrated at all levels of
	government.
	A terrorist organization covertly releases a biological agent
	into a community. In a short period of time many citizens
	become ill and begin to seek medical attention. At the local
	level, emergency medical services (EMS) providers and health
	care professionals attempt to render aid. Reporting
	requirements at the local level alert county health officials
	who realize that something is terribly wrong. Calls are placed
	to state health officials who, in cooperation with county
	officials begin medical surveillance. Notification of the
	Centers for Disease Control follows. Working jointly, local,
	state, and federal officials determine that a biological agent
	has been released which requires the deployment of the
	Strategic National Stockpile (SNS). CDC officials transport the
	nearest push-pack to the state, who in turn receives the
	package and distributes it to the stricken county. County and
	municipal officials open medication dispensing sites and
	provide prophylaxis to exposed individuals and are able to deal
	with the crisis.
	Clearly this scenario identifies separate but interrelated roles
	for municipal, county, state, and federal governments. If any of these
	component pieces do not understand their role then other related
	components do not function, potentially leading to a loss of life, or
	at least significant levels of confusion. While this scenario focuses
	only on public health, consider the ramifications when areas of crisis
	communications, law enforcement investigations, and consequence
	management issues are added.
	The second but equally important part of the triangle is training.
	Once a plan or procedure has been developed, it is critical that
	everyone who will use the plan be instructed in how that plan is to
	function. This includes personnel at all levels of government. As can
	clearly be seen in the example above, there are key roles as well as
	major opportunities for failure at all levels of government. It is
	clear, then, that officials at every level of government clearly
	understand their role as well as those who function at levels both
	above and below them.
	The final part of the triangle is exercising. A mistake often made
	by exercise planners is that a full-scale exercise is the best way to
	test a plan or procedure. A guiding premise to exercise design is that
	you must be able to crawl before you walk, and walk before you run.
	Additionally, exercises can be viewed as 80% training and 20% testing.
	Therefore, lower level table-top and functional exercises should be a
	key part in any exercise program, where participants can ``walk
	through'' procedures and become trained in the proper method of dealing
	with an event. During the TOPOFF program, several lower level exercises
	were held to allow local, state, and federal agencies to work out the
	``bugs'' before tackling the final full-scale exercise. These types of
	multi-level exercises should continue and be expanded as a key
	component of any federal terrorism exercise program. On a daily basis,
	close coordination and cooperation is the exception not the rule.
	Working through problems and resolving issues as part of these
	exercises brings responders and policy makers together and fosters
	closer cooperation which ultimately leads to lives saved.
	A common fault of exercise design, especially in high visibility
	exercises, is a desire to ``not look bad.'' In many exercises,
	important functions are left untested because a perceived weakness may
	be observed, reported on, and made public. Exercises, by their very
	nature, are designed as training tools. It is assumed, if not
	understood, that mistakes are made during training. Making a mistake
	during an exercise is natural and nothing to be ashamed of. During the
	critique process, problems are identified and potential solutions
	found. These problems are then remedied through future planning,
	training, and re-exercising. This cyclical process corrects weaknesses,
	focuses on prior successes, and ultimately builds a stronger system.
	In retrospect, a number of lessons learned from the TOPOFF 2
	exercise should be shared for the benefit of those who will follow and
	to guide the development of future exercises. Highlights of these
	lessons include:
	<bullet> Limit the number of objectives that the exercise will
	try and accomplish. Many departments and agencies often have a
	shopping list of things that they want to test / try in an
	exercise. The more complex the exercise becomes, the greater
	the potential for failure or for participants to become
	disillusioned. Exercise objectives should be realistic for the
	type of scenario being developed.
	<bullet> The exercise can not be everything to everyone. As
	stated above, not every agency may be able to participate in
	every exercise. For example, in a biological scenario, collapse
	search and rescue teams, or hazardous materials response teams
	may not be needed. Again, participation in the exercise should
	be realistic, based on the scenario being developed.
	<bullet> Coordinated multi-jurisdictional decision making must
	be included. During TOPOFF a decision was made in Washington to
	close O'Hare International Airport and suspend passenger rail
	traffic in and out of Chicago, without consultation with the
	City of Chicago, the State of Illinois, or the federal regional
	agencies that were participating. This decision left local
	governments scrambling on how to implement the decision, and
	more importantly, how to re-start operations when the airport
	and rail station were declared safe. This type of coordination
	is essential during a real incident, and now is the time to
	learn how to function.
	<bullet> Future exercises must focus on the weaknesses or
	problem areas discovered in previous exercises. During TOPOFF 1
	a number of problem areas were identified with the Strategic
	National Stockpile. During TOPOFF 2 various federal, state, and
	local agencies worked diligently to work through these issues
	and develop procedures that would ensure effective operations.
	Future exercises should continue to build on the lessons
	learned so that new and better procedures can be developed.
	<bullet> Future exercises should allow continued exploration of
	new and more effective ways to respond and recover. One
	official from the Department of Homeland Security likened the
	TOPOFF exercise to a laboratory. I cannot agree more. While the
	exercise tests knowledge of plans and systems, it also provides
	an opportunity to ``test'' new approaches and provides hands-on
	training to acquaint emergency managers and responders.
	<bullet> Future exercises should explore recovery issues. In
	most exercises, a test of the capability and capacity of
	government and the private sector to effectively respond is
	scripted. Exploration of the issues related to long term
	recovery are often not a key focus. Response exercises often
	become media events where government can visibly demonstrate
	capabilities. Recovery activities, on the other hand, usually
	take place in a command center, hidden from public view, where
	decision making and prioritizing are the key. These activities
	are not very photogenic and therefore don't tell ``the
	preparedness story'' that government wants the public to see.
	While life-saving skills must be constantly honed, it is
	equally important that emergency managers work through the
	problems associated with recovery.
	Finally, it is important that we focus on a critical component,
	common to each of the three phases of preparedness previously
	described. The one common thread to all three phases is the individual
	charged with the responsibility for management of the community's
	preparedness program. This person is the local emergency manager. Since
	September 11, 2001, significant national attention has been given to
	the nation's first responders. Millions of dollars have been spent to
	provide our first responders with the latest in technology and life-
	saving equipment, as it should be. However, little or no money has been
	allocated to upgrading our aging command and control systems, emergency
	operating centers, and more importantly to increasing the support to
	the local officials who are charged with the responsibility for
	managing a major crisis.
	In most communities, across the nation, the position of emergency
	manager is filled by a part-time or volunteer. Even in communities
	where a full time manager exists, staffing levels for this position are
	less than adequate to maintain an effective and robust crisis
	management capability. Preparing for the TOPOFF exercise required
	almost a year of planning and training. In the early phases of
	planning, monthly multi-day meetings occurred. As the date for the
	exercise drew closer, an almost full-time personnel commitment was
	required. In many communities the level of commitment needed to support
	an exercise of this magnitude would not be possible, even though the
	benefits from this type of exercise are enormous. If this level of
	stress is generated by an exercise, then what might be the impact on
	the emergency system created by an actual event?
	In conclusion, the benefits to the nation and our citizens by
	participating in emergency exercises are immeasurable. Exercises allow
	first responders and emergency managers to understand the demands that
	may be placed on their community during a terrorist event or other
	disaster. For any exercise to be effective, however, requires a firm
	commitment to the other two components of the preparedness triangle,
	planning and training.
	Continued support of the emergency preparedness program, as well as
	those who manage that program, by the Department of Homeland Security
	and members of Congress is essential to increasing the level of
	preparedness through the country.

	Chairman Cox. Mr. Kimerer, Ms. Mencer, and Mr. Gruber,
	thank you for being here as a resource as we dive ahead into
	questions; and thank you for all the work that you all do in
	keeping our Nation safe.
	One of the major questions that Congress is now wrestling
	with as we write legislation is whether or not funding
	terrorism preparedness is in some way different than funding
	preparedness for other hazards that can produce similar
	symptoms. For example, a building can blow up because of a
	natural gas leak. The casualties might be identical to those
	occasioned by an Oklahoma City bombing type attack on the same
	building. Is there a difference when you train in responding to
	terrorism that is manmade and in responding to either acts of
	nature or accidents?
	It is possible, for example, that terrorists could use
	bioweapons. It is also possible that we could actually have an
	outbreak of plague which would be a public health emergency.
	Would there really be a difference in the way that we
	responded? We have varying views about this in Congress, and it
	influences how we put the money into the hands of first
	responders.
	At this point, I want to share with you my own view, which
	is that there are differences and there are similarities, but
	from the standpoint of first responders we only have one first
	responder. We only have one Fire Department, we only have one
	Police Department, and they are not on duty 24/7 waiting for a
	terrorist incident. They are doing a lot of other work in the
	meanwhile. So they have to be prepared to deal with all
	hazards.
	I don't think that is the argument. I think the question
	is, rather, back here in Washington, when we make funds
	available, should there be an additional pot of money available
	that is separate from all hazards money that goes directly to
	terrorism training? Because there are unique aspects of
	terrorism. And when I say training, I mean also terrorism
	preparedness in all of its manifestations, because there are
	differences.
	Facially, it strikes me that there is a difference between
	a hurricane coming through town, which at least when it hits
	has predictable behavior, and the same kind of havoc being
	wreaked by human beings who not only can strike but who can
	plan avoidance in real time. This is a thinking threat, not an
	unreasoning one.
	Likewise, as some of you mentioned in your prepared
	statements, you have to focus on different things when you are
	cleaning up after acts of terror. After the Madrid bombings, we
	wanted to make sure that we gained as much in the way of clues
	to the way terrorists operate as possible, so we went in not
	only to clean up the mess but also to find out exactly how this
	happened. There are chain of evidence and custody of evidence
	issues that law enforcement is, of course, well aware of when
	there is a thinking assault by a human being as against other
	kinds of disasters that at least symptomatically produce the
	same result.
	If you could--and I would address this to all the panel--
	help us with this. Should Congress have separate funding
	available as an incremental addition to what we make available
	for all hazards?
	Miss Mencer, we will begin with you.
	Ms. Mencer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	I think you are absolutely right in your description. It is
	different when you respond to the scene of a terrorist event
	because, as you have described, you are entering into a crime
	scene. So you have to preserve the evidence there. You have to
	worry about intelligence collection, as well, so you can catch
	the people who did it. So it is very different than a hurricane
	or a tornado. So, yes, it has special requirements. It requires
	specialized exercises to deal with it, and specialized training
	and equipment. So that is absolutely correct.
	And, Corey, would you like to add anything to that?
	Mr. Gruber. Yes, ma'am.
	Sir, the very important point that we are talking about is
	a human architect that is adaptive, versus historically what we
	face, which has been morally neutral nonadaptive hazards. When
	we face a human predator, we have the addition of prevention
	activities, deterrence and defeat of that adversary, and
	intelligence collection and gathering. So we believe that, if
	we take a capabilities-based and a scenario-based approach to
	planning for these events, we need to look across the full
	spectrum of the missions that we face as a department, or as a
	Homeland Security community, but we have to focus on the very
	most essential tasks.
	And the Homeland Security Act, and the national strategy
	have told us that prevention is the foremost imperative. So we
	have very much focused our efforts on that significant
	difference from facing seasonal, geographic and nonadaptive
	hazards.
	Chairman Cox. Chief Kimerer.
	Mr. Kimerer. Mr. Chair, the fact is that there are great
	similarities and great and profound differences when looking at
	preparing for terrorism. As Mr. Gruber said, a terrorist act is
	the result of a malignant use of the intellect and has a level
	of aggression and deliberation and strategizing that makes it
	absolutely incomparable to other natural disasters. The fact
	that we do a lot of the same things, of course, is an argument
	for exercising and training and practicing. Implementing
	incident command is somewhat universal. Preparing for the next
	wave of attack or the next part of the stratagem makes the
	whole curricula of exercising for terrorism very unique and
	fairly new to local law enforcement. The consequence
	management, as was mentioned before, has profound implications.
	Case in point, as part of our exercise we had our
	responders preparing for working through both the intelligence
	and the reality of there being a secondary explosion, of there
	being the discovery of a safe house, of things that were
	uncovered and disclosed in the crime scene that might have
	pointed to additional threats in other parts of our region or
	even other parts of the country, like Chicago. It is a unique
	body of wisdom that we need to be working toward in looking at
	and preparing for and responding to detecting and deterring a
	terrorist act.
	Chairman Cox. Director Mefferd.
	Mr. Mefferd. Let me build on the comments that have been
	made. I totally agree with your assessment of two roles. When
	we deal with a natural disaster, you are dealing with an event
	that has very clearly manifested itself. Typically, you will
	have one thing to worry about, and that is the disaster. When
	you are dealing with a terrorism event, one of the things you
	must think about is I, as a first responder, am a target; and
	one of the goals of a terrorist is to try to lure the first
	responder to that scene and now move into a second attack which
	now takes down the first responder.
	But as we set that aside and look at some of the other
	issues, the evidence roles that have been brought up, one of
	the other critical roles today is we have to think about long-
	term public health effects. If we did have a release of a
	biological agent or a chemical agent, again, if we look at a
	typical disaster, we take an individual to the hospital. We
	treat them, we release them, and the whole process maybe takes
	a few days to a week. We are talking about potentially people
	who will be evolving into some kind of a disease or some kind
	of long-term problem months or year later. So records need to
	be kept, and systems need to be built to handle that. Long-term
	epidemiology processes need to be put in place.
	If you will, we are used, in the law enforcement community,
	to work as detectives who look for clues for crime scenes.
	Today, we are looking at medical health professionals who are
	also becoming detectives to try and find out what was released,
	where was it released, how many people were exposed to that
	release.
	And, finally, the whole issue of emergency public
	information. Again, in a tornado, it is real easy to say a
	tornado has gone through. This is where you come to get your
	assistance. This is the shelter area.
	In a biological attack, for example, we have long-range and
	long-reaching public information and community-building types
	of things that we have to look at. How do we make the
	population aware of the fact that the event is over? Is it
	over? How do we make the community aware of the fact that this
	area is safe again? And how do we make--how do we clearly
	identify those issues?
	So certainly there are some uniquenesses--some tremendous
	uniquenesses with the issue of terrorism response and recovery.
	Chairman Cox. Thank you very much.
	The Ranking Member, Mr. Turner, is recognized for
	questions.
	Mr. Turner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	I would like to ask each of you to comment on this
	question. What level of preparedness standard are we working
	toward? And what experience comes out of these exercises that
	helps shed light on what that level of preparedness is? And
	perhaps even more importantly, I would like to have each of you
	tell us whether you think it is important for us to have a
	preparedness standard.
	In the legislation that the Chairman and I have introduced,
	and this committee has reported out, we call for the
	establishment of what we call the essential capabilities of
	preparedness that we think should be established. But I would
	like your comments on whether or not this is an issue of
	importance that we should address.
	Mr. Mefferd. That is a kind of a moving target. Certainly,
	a level of preparedness nationwide is something we should work
	towards. I think one of the problems that we see across the
	board--and I am going to go back to the personnel issue. As we
	look towards establishing a standard, we need to understand who
	is going to be responsible for attaining that standard across
	the country. The typical individual who serves as the emergency
	manager, the person responsible for building that capability
	for coordinating the planning, for bringing those pieces
	together in many cases is a part-time, if not a volunteer,
	individual. Should we then set that standard based on that? And
	I don't believe so.
	I think we need a standard. We need to work towards an
	ultimate goal. As we look at standards in law enforcement, as
	we look at standards in the fire service, the challenges that
	we have to meet today are a moving target. But they are always
	getting better. They are always getting higher. And certainly
	as we look at standards for emergency preparedness, whether it
	is for dealing with the effects of a tornado or a flood or a
	terrorism event, we need a nationwide standard that we can all
	work towards that we can all build upon and try to attain.
	Because I think that is the basis not only on which we build
	our training and our exercises but it also gives us at the
	local level a goal upon which we need to build our budgets and
	build our local programs towards attaining that national
	standard.
	Mr. Kimerer. Ranking Member Turner, September 11 stunned us
	out of a kind of lethargy about the complexities of preparing
	for and responding to the myriad possibilities of both disaster
	and evil in the world. It illuminated for us, as did the TOPOFF
	exercise, the need to greatly expand the frame of reference we
	must acknowledge and build in order to be prepared to respond--
	to prevent, detect, deter and respond. Things like unification
	of intelligence data, making it more accessible, having better
	and more robust data collection around the specific threats
	that materialize in the realm of terrorism, those were things
	that were not pre-occupying concerns of local and regional and
	State law enforcement before September 11 or before we
	undertook these kind of exercises. They contributed to the need
	to have baseline, I guess, standards, for want of a better
	term, but certainly objectives and doctrine and goals that we
	must all acknowledge and all work toward.
	The absence of a national incident command system, which
	some of us have been saying probably should have been in place
	many years ago, was certainly brought home to us and is now a
	priority objective of agencies like mine and, clearly, the
	Department of Homeland Security. That represents an essential
	and kind of universal benchmark and standard that we need to
	aspire to.
	All of this of course, depends upon a kind of collective
	recognition of what is important, of what is essential; and I
	think together we will very shortly come up with what
	represents the basic, essential doctrine we use to determine
	how we take care of our citizens at all levels of government in
	the face of all realities, whether it is an accident of nature
	or the work of an evil intellect bent on destruction.
	Am I answering your question?
	Mr. Turner. I think you are. I think it is going to be very
	difficult to motivate the Congress to adequately fund the needs
	that we have, particularly at the State and local level, unless
	we first establish some essential capabilities that we are
	trying to build. As long as we are just passing out money
	without any measurement of what that money is achieving, I
	think it is going to be very easy for the Congress and the
	administration to simply say, well, this is all we can afford.
	And I think if you define through some logical process, a
	planning process, what it is we are trying to build in this
	country, based upon the real threats and vulnerabilities that
	we face, which is the responsibility, I think of the Department
	under the law to determine, if we don't have any measurements,
	we are not going to get to the end goal and there will be not
	be sufficient political pressure to get us there.
	So I hope all of you will continue to advocate that
	position as we go through this process, like we mandate in the
	legislation that we have reported out of this committee. We
	mandate that the process take place so we will know what we are
	trying to build.
	Mr. Kimerer. Sir, I couldn't agree more; and there are a
	couple of things on point to that.
	First, all of our work has been--
	Ms. Dunn. [Presiding.] If you will be brief.
	Mr. Kimerer. Oh, I am sorry. Two very quick things then.
	We approach our identification on the basis of threat
	assessment, the intel, of risk assessment and risk analysis.
	That is the formula upon which we at the local level and the
	regional and State level are making our decisions.
	And the second is we are proceeding with doctrine which I
	think is right on point, like national incident management to
	further move the ball down the field; and we endorse those
	efforts and are participants in the design of it.
	Ms. Dunn. Thank you very much.
	The gentleman's time has expired.
	Ms. Mencer, can you talk to us a bit about the lessons
	learned from TOPOFF 2? And exactly, as you mentioned, we are
	going into the planning of TOPOFF 3 What is it that you take
	into consideration that you learned from the last set of
	exercises a year ago?
	Ms. Mencer. I would be happy to do that.
	If I could address for a minute the other question, look at
	the moving target, as Mr. Mefferd described, that has been
	assigned to us with Homeland Security Decision Directive 8,
	which talks about how to measure preparedness. We are indeed
	looking at establishing essential tasks and how to develop the
	capabilities needed by communities to address different
	incidents. We will be available to provide an in-depth briefing
	on that, if you wish, as to where we are with that process.
	As to the lessons learned from TOPOFF, I would like to hand
	that over to Corey to address.
	Mr. Gruber. Thank you, Ma'am. We started the exercise when
	we developed the concept with objectives. Objectives are the
	foundation of exercise design. And each objective is an
	expectation of performance. So as we designed the exercise and
	then completed and analyzed that performance, that is what
	allowed us to identify specific lessons. And we had a
	voluminous amount of lessons and hundreds of evaluators across
	the Country who were looking at the performance at each
	exercise venue.
	Out of that, we distilled those down into the reports that
	you have seen that we produced for every participant. We ran a
	series of after-action conferences, both in the venues and at
	the national level, to examine those lessons.
	We have built a secure but unclassified Web portal that has
	a lessons-learned/information-sharing component that has over
	3,000 registrants across the Nation who are using the portal to
	access that information.
	Some of the most important points that we learned out of
	the TOPOFF exercise, I will start with the foremost one, we had
	a Department that was all of roughly 70 days old. And it
	provided us with an unparalleled opportunity to look at our
	roles and responsibilities for all of these disciplines that
	had converged under Homeland Security in a manner that was
	unprecedented. It afforded us a great opportunity, at the very
	start of the exercise, to help to define and literally
	engineer, in the course of the exercise, roles for people like
	principal Federal officials--how, as Clark and Tom have both
	alluded to, we worked together and clarified our
	responsibilities.
	We also learned very important lessons about how we
	understand the impact and the effects of the agents that we
	used in the exercise. As Tom alluded to, how do we get a common
	technical picture of the event that occurred so that we can
	predict the consequences, understand how it impacts our public,
	and make sure we are providing them with the right information?
	As a result of that exercise, we developed an integrated
	emergency communications plan that was actually a result of the
	very first seminar that we did in the exercise series, which
	was focused on public affairs and had 74 public information
	officers from across the Country at it. I'd like to give Tom an
	opportunity to talk about some of the concrete lessons on
	bioterrorism, and perhaps Clark on the radiological. But it was
	a tremendous opportunity to think about the roles and
	responsibilities for the Department.
	Tom?
	Mr. Mefferd. Obviously, the bioterrorism scenario is
	significantly different than the radiological dirty bomb in
	that it did not have any of the--typically, what is used in the
	business--the blood and guts and gore that goes along with a
	typical disaster. All we had was a whole bunch of ambulance
	calls to start it off with. We have learned since the exercise,
	I think, better sharing of information.
	There has been significant work--Mr. Turner talked earlier
	about the issues of communications with our hospitals. In the
	State of Illinois, for example, we are installing as we speak a
	satellite-based communications system that will link our
	primary command post hospitals Statewide. We have a new system
	that the Illinois Department of Public Health has brought
	online to share patient information across the board, so as we
	look at hospital capabilities, bed capabilities and so on and
	so forth, that can be rapidly transmitted to our State Public
	Health Command Center in Springfield.
	We are also working on increased communications
	capabilities to ensure that we have good epidemiology as well
	as the ability to share that epidemiology.
	Another major thing that came out of this exercise was
	really built on TOPOFF 1 the headaches of the Strategic
	National Stockpile. How does it work? How do we bring it into a
	State? And ultimately, how do we get it to the residents that
	need it? In our county alone, we have spent at least now 2.5
	years before TOPOFF as well as since TOPOFF working those
	points. And we anticipate shortly being done with the
	establishment of multiple sites around our county where we can
	treat every man, woman and child in a reasonable amount of time
	to give them the prophylactic drugs that they need in this
	situation. Those are directly a result of the lessons that we
	learned in TOPOFF.
	How do we do it? How do we manage it? How do we make it
	work? You do it one way in an exercise, and then you build on
	those capabilities for real.
	Mr. Kimerer. The last time I was asked to recap the lessons
	learned for Seattle from TOPOFF, 3 hours later people were
	exiting the room. I will not subject you to that.
	We learned hundreds of fixable things right off the bat,
	things that were more logistical in nature, some of which we
	want to remain confidential but involved how to manage a
	command post and have the right equipment and anticipate the
	decon requirements and things like that. To that end alone, if
	nothing else happened in TOPOFF, we would be miles ahead of
	where we were before the exercise. And we have literally
	addressed all but about 5 percent of those small fixable
	things.
	Some of the larger issues, we are working diligently to
	address. We had an issue with plume modeling which got some
	press nationally where there were conflicts in attempting to
	ascertain the degree to which contamination was present in the
	atmosphere. In the end, that did not hamper the field
	operations because the field commanders quite wisely said,
	``Give me the largest plume, and that is what we are going to
	respond to.''
	Since then, there has been a lot of academic work to create
	what is called consensus plume modeling which actually will
	meet that gap. Those kinds of details were really invaluable to
	address, again, in times of calm rather than in times of
	crisis.
	Our focus has been to continue to refine our precision in
	implementing incident command, equipping our first responders
	and dealing with the influx of various interests and needs,
	including what has not really been mentioned today, the
	business community and the private sector, in the redress of a
	critical incident. And that does include coordination with our
	Federal partners and making sure we do not have overlapping
	jurisdictions or what I affectionately refer to as
	jurisdictional creep, which I was gratified to see was not a
	big factor in our experience with TOPOFF 2.
	Ms. Dunn. Thank you very much.
	Thank you all of you.
	Now, I would like to call on Congressman Thompson, who has
	8 minutes for questioning.
	Mr. Thompson. Thank you Madam Chairman.
	And I appreciate the testimony offered today in the
	hearing.
	Ms. Mencer, if either one of the scenarios we heard today
	happened in a community of 10,000, what would the response be?
	Ms. Mencer. Well, you mean, what would the response of the
	Department be or the communities?
	Mr. Thompson. Well, yes.
	Ms. Mencer. All right. Well, I think that we have made
	great strides with every successive TOPOFF, as has been
	described, with better communications and better plans.
	I think, even at the local level, in the smallest
	community, because of the grant process where everyone has to
	communicate what their needs are, what their assessment is of
	their readiness and what equipment they still need, what
	training and exercises they need, they are all talking to each
	other, which we did not really see prior to September 11th. We
	did see this with the individual TOPOFF exercises.
	But now every community in the Nation, and in the
	territories, has been talking about, how do we prepare better
	as a unit, as a community, not just law enforcement, not just
	fire, but working together?
	So I think, all of the lessons that were learned in other
	communities, are being shared across the Country through the
	Web sites that we have up that share best practices. So I think
	it would be a much better response than we would have seen
	prior to September 11th.
	Mr. Thompson. Well, I guess the question is, have you
	conducted any internal review of a scenario in a rural area,
	either one of these situations?
	Mr. Gruber. Sir, we have conducted almost 400 exercises
	across the Country, and they have been in every State and
	territory. And some of those have involved scenarios in rural
	settings. In fact, the very first TOPOFF was done in the State
	of New Hampshire, in a relatively small community, Portsmouth,
	New Hampshire, which is about 25,000 population, and which
	relies very heavily on mutual aid. The event was a chemical
	event, explosively disseminated, and involving hundreds of
	victims. They relied on resources throughout the State and the
	entire region. And that is an important point that the
	Secretary and others have made about emphasizing and
	strengthening mutual aid assistance compacts for communities
	that do not have all the resources available.
	Mr. Thompson. Well, so the comments I get from rural fire
	departments and sheriffs departments and other people about
	having adequate equipment to deal with emergencies and other
	things, is your testimony that that is not the case?
	Mr. Gruber. No, sir, no. We, obviously, know that there is
	great need. We are trying, though, speaking specifically about
	exercises, to encourage very strongly and, in fact, in the
	manuals that we have published and the guidance that goes out
	with the grants, to strongly encourage States to make sure that
	exercises are available to their communities, and then that
	communities participate, not just in isolation but as mutual
	aid, as emergency management assistance compacts, to draw
	resources from where they may not have them organically to that
	setting.
	Mr. Thompson. Well, for my own information, can you provide
	this committee with a State-by-State listing of those
	demonstrations that have gone on?
	Mr. Gruber. Yes, sir, we have that breakdown by exercise,
	by location, by scenario. We would be happy to provide it.
	Mr. Thompson. Ms. Mencer, I do not want to pick on you so
	much, but you know, it is your job. The issue of how we pick
	off--pick the TOPOFF scenarios, I know we are going on to,
	based on your testimony, to Connecticut and New Jersey next. We
	have two Members from New Jersey on the subcommittee, one from
	Connecticut. And I would hope, at some point, you will involve
	them in the exercise. I would shudder to think of you going to
	those two States without at least involving those Members in
	what you do.
	Have there been any communication with any of the Members
	of the committee?
	Ms. Mencer. Well, the process to select the venue sites is
	a long one and a competitive one and one where they volunteer
	to be the sites. So the States themselves were very active
	participants in this selection process and raised their hand to
	do that. And it was a selection process that ensued, and they
	won. But, yes, we will indeed involve them in this as we
	proceed.
	Mr. Thompson. Well, I think that is really important
	because, at some point, just like you have people from Seattle
	here, and I am sure they were intricately involved in what you
	did in Seattle, they ought to be likewise involved in their
	communities. So I would encourage that.
	Ms. Mencer. Absolutely.
	Mr. Thompson. The Presidential Directive 8 has called for a
	multiyear National Homeland Security preparedness plan. Has
	that been done?
	Ms. Mencer. We are in the process, sir, of implementing
	HSPD 8. It is a very complex decision directive. We actually
	have a meeting of the steering committee tomorrow where we are
	bringing in various leaders from all the disciplines that are
	involved with this process. We also have established concept
	teams that look at the essential tasks and capabilities that we
	need to establish as a Nation.
	So we would be happy, since it is a very, very
	comprehensive decision directive, to give you an in-depth
	briefing on that, because it is quite complicated. Yes, we
	would be happy to.
	Mr. Thompson. Now, has the President formally adopted it
	and provided it?
	Ms. Mencer. We have done briefings up to the Secretary
	level. And of course, it is a presidential decision directive,
	so the President is aware of the directive, yes.
	Mr. Thompson. No more questions.
	Ms. Dunn. The Chair yields 5 minutes to the gentleman
	from--where are you from, Jim? Nevada?
	Chairman Gibbons.
	Mr. Gibbons. Yes, I will take Nevada. Ladies and gentlemen,
	thank you very much for your presence here today. Thank you,
	for your testimony, it has been very helpful to us with regard
	to our better understanding of these exercises.
	There are three very brief questions I want to ask, and
	perhaps, I should get them out first and let each and every one
	of you pick one of the three that you want to answer because 5
	minutes isn't enough time to ask this.
	First of all, with relation to focusing on regions, with
	these exercises, to what extent do you incorporate and at what
	point do you incorporate the military inasmuch as there is
	always going to be a jurisdiction who's got the best equipment,
	who's got a better response capability, who should be in charge
	when you are regionalizing that? I am sure that Seattle is a
	big area, but if the National Guard of the State of Washington
	were called in, it obviously would have a capability that
	perhaps the City of Seattle does not have.
	So at what point in these regional exercises do you call in
	your military, your State military and/or Federal Military?
	That is one.
	second, to what extent has public relations within the
	gambit of these exercises affected either the implementation of
	the lessons learned or the exercise itself? And how has public
	relations affected that? It is obviously very critical to have
	the public involved in what is going on, not only for
	confidence but also for just the basic control of what is
	expected out there in terms of the public's need-to-know.
	And finally, the intelligence-sharing aspect is very
	critical to me. I want to know whether or not you feel the
	communities and, especially you, Chief, feel you are getting
	the intelligence you need today to meet the threats and the
	responses to these threats that you are planning for in the
	future. So any one of those three questions. You have 3
	minutes; 1 minute each will be fine.
	Mr. Kimerer. I think the wise person goes first, so you get
	to pick one of the three questions. Let me take the one I think
	you directed to me which has to do with the intelligence
	sharing.
	Thing is, the big frontier, it represents one of the most
	challenging parts of creating the structure of prevention,
	detection, deterrence and response. We are working in our
	region through military nexus it so happens, through LINCS,
	which the Navy is kind of the sponsoring agency for. The model
	seeks to create a data warehouse that is secured and enables
	agencies throughout the region to access the information and
	then, further and more to the point, create a unified
	analytical structure, so that it is not raw data, but data that
	is being processed in a joint fashion.
	That I think is an importable model. It can be used on a
	national level and represents what I think might emerge as kind
	of the gold standard in organizing this incredibly complicated
	and voluminous issue of intelligence collection, analysis, and
	sharing.
	As far as our communication with DHS on the intelligence
	front through the Joint Terrorism Task Forces, it has been very
	good. I was prepared to say that we still have a lot of
	problems, and of course, we can always be better. You do not
	have to be bad to be better. But I am finding regular
	briefings, regular updates, regular access to my counterparts
	in the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security on issues of
	the moment having to do with intelligence.
	Mr. Gruber. Sir, if I might, I will address the public
	relations question. At the request of the community, in TOPOFF
	2, the very first seminar we conducted was on public relations
	and on emergency public information, because the community felt
	that was the most important issue that we had to struggle with.
	We had 74 public information officers who were involved in that
	exercise at that seminar. To make sure that the public was
	aware, a very important objective was to reassure the public
	about what we were doing. So we took out full-page ads in
	newspapers. We conducted press conferences in the venue. You
	saw a little bit in the video of Secretary Ridge conducting a
	national press conference so that the media could help inform
	the public about this event that was occurring.
	The exercise was covered by over 670 media releases, print
	and press. It had very extensive coverage, as you saw reflected
	in the video. We also had an extensive network of citizen
	volunteers who helped in the exercise, role-played as victims,
	and supported the exercise activity. That was a very important
	component.
	And finally, for future exercises, our Assistant Secretary
	for Public Affairs, Ms. Neely, and her team have been integral
	to the planning process to insure that, both in terms of
	reassuring the public and in terms of designing an exercise
	that accurately reflects the issues related to public
	relations, that that is done effectively and accurately.
	Mr. Mefferd. If I might, let me build on the public
	information and then move into the military for the second. I
	want to indicate one of the things that we really did, that we
	felt worked very well with regard to public information prior
	to the exercise, was a cooperative effort between DHS, which at
	that time was just the FEMA portion. FEMA conducted for the
	Chicago venue an Advanced Public Information Officers Course at
	their national academy in Evansburg. This gave us the
	opportunity to bring together public information officers from
	the City of Chicago, from the outer counties, as well as the
	State of Illinois, to work through one week of hard work,
	learning to work together as a team. And that is one of the
	things that we have tried to keep going since that time.
	From the military side, and just the State military, but
	certainly one of the things that we have in the State of
	Illinois which we are pretty proud of is a seven-part response
	that relates not only to State capabilities but local
	capabilities. From the State capability, the State has built
	something called a State weapons of mass destruction response
	team. A critical component of that response team is the civil
	support team which is part of the National Guard Service. The
	system that we have established in the State of Illinois is
	that any time that there is a weapon of mass destruction or a
	terrorism incident, a call is immediately placed to the State
	Emergency Operating Center, and within 90 minutes tops--again,
	obviously the State of Illinois is a big State--but in 90
	minutes tops, there will be representation on the ground from
	the State Weapons of Mass Destruction Team, including the Civil
	Support Team.
	So we feel they are an integral part of our terrorism
	response, not only for planning but training.
	Ms. Dunn. You did not run over.
	Thank you all for your answers.
	The Chair yields 8 minutes to the gentleman from
	Washington, Mr. Dicks.
	Mr. Dicks. I want to thank all the witnesses today.
	And Clark, good to see you again and appreciate your good
	work out there.
	Let me just ask one thing on communications. There was--as
	I understand--there was a problem between the Seattle Fire
	Department and the Police Department, in terms of
	communications. Has that been fixed since TOPOFF 2 in terms of
	communications interoperability?
	Mr. Kimerer. Yes, actually, we have a pretty good
	infrastructure in actually the whole of the State of Washington
	but particularly King County that supports sharing frequencies
	and allowing for an expansion of our interoperable
	communication as needed.
	Of course, it tends to be a rather expensive proposition,
	but the ability of the Police and Fire Department, as well as
	mutual aid agencies in our region, has increased hundredfold
	immediately before and since TOPOFF& And we look to, you know,
	even broadening that to create a regional or even a Statewide
	network that allows for interoperable communication and
	flexibility in communications.
	We were able to communicate on the basic frequencies. Where
	I think we had some challenges when we started breaking off
	into tactical frequencies, specific taskings, special
	operations things of that kind, the depth that we needed was
	not present. It is now. We still have more to do and more to
	go, but we have certainly addressed a fair number of those
	issues and will continue to work on it as we--
	Mr. Dicks. In your statement, you mentioned doctrine,
	policy and plans. Give me a sense of what this doctrine--I
	mean, is this a doctrine of how to respond to a terrorist
	attack, or is it a doctrine of how to respond to a natural
	disaster? What is the difference here?
	Mr. Kimerer. I can give you an example that exists which is
	probably the best one, rather than making one up. The doctrine
	of, say, incident command says that there are three priorities
	you address, and they are priorities. First, life safety.
	Second, incident stabilization. Third, property conservation.
	As a commander in the field, when I have decisions to make,
	when I have resources that I need to commit, I now have a very
	clear set of principles that tell me what my priorities are and
	where I make the choices.
	Similarly, with something like terrorism, the doctrine of
	importance to stabilize the incident and to contain it and to
	search for additional threats, additional acts of terrorism, is
	very high. It has to be always kept in mind. These are the kind
	of things that a commander--
	Mr. Dicks. That is a terrific answer. Let me ask you this.
	As Ms. Mencer explained, it is a police scene, too, at the same
	time.
	Mr. Kimerer. That is right.
	Mr. Dicks. Where does that fit into this?
	Mr. Kimerer. That is a very good question.
	Mr. Dicks. I would hope it is not the highest.
	Mr. Kimerer. Not the highest. The highest is treating the
	injured and dealing with the mass casualty, and that, too,
	defines how we respond and how we manage the scene. We yield to
	the fire department, who has the priority in dealing with the
	people that need the help. We support them. When we have to
	make a choice between preserving a crime scene and helping
	somebody who is injured, it's an easy choice to make. Those are
	the doctrinal issues that we hope become more and more and more
	clear as time goes on. Exercises help us do it. Some of the
	work that is being done by DHS is helping us.
	But we want everybody in that town of 10,000 to know that
	that is the most important thing, this is the second most
	important, and then, from there, you build policies and plans.
	Mr. Dicks. How did the mayor get along--the mayor was kind
	of running the show, right?
	Mr. Kimerer. Yes, he was.
	Mr. Dicks. And then the Federal Government had its lead
	agency. Was that FEMA?
	Mr. Kimerer. The National Response Plan calls for the
	Principal Federal Official; the PFO was on the ground quickly
	in the incident and was the overall coordinator of the myriad
	Federal assets that were there.
	Mr. Dicks. Who was?
	Mr. Kimerer. Mike Byrne.
	Mr. Dicks. From where?
	Mr. Kimerer. DHS.
	Mr. Dicks. As I understand it, Mr. Gibbons is not here, but
	when we were out at Northern Command and I asked this question,
	which, as a Member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee I
	have been concerned about, when is the military called into
	this, and how would that happen? And I was told that if the
	lead Federal agency feels that there is a requirement for
	military equipment or military personnel, that they would then
	be the person who would communicate with Northern Command, and
	you have got--we have, of course, the National Guard out there
	in the State of Washington, and they have got--what do they
	call it? The Regional Response Team.
	Mr. Kimerer. Uh-huh.
	Mr. Dicks. They would be involved, but there might be
	something beyond that you might need from the military in terms
	of if you were dealing with weapons of mass destruction or
	something like that. Did you guys get into that? Was the
	military called into this thing in any way, shape or form?
	Mr. Kimerer. Military was present from the beginning.
	Mr. Dicks. Was it the National Guard?
	Mr. Kimerer. Both CERT, the National Guard, in fact there
	was NORTHCOM representation.
	Mr. Dicks. They were actually there?
	Mr. Kimerer. Yes. Of course, the issue is, when that switch
	is flipped, what are the conditions and criteria that need to
	be met to engage the military in whole or part?
	Of course, States like Washington have laws about
	activation of the National Guard, and they proceed from
	declarations or proclamations of the governor.
	But having said all of that, the help we received, the
	guidance, the counsel, the prepositioning of potential
	resources that might be needed as the situation unfolded from
	the military was invaluable. And it was well rehearsed, and I
	think it is going to be there for us in the event we do need to
	invoke that.
	Mr. Dicks. How did the Federal-State relationship work? I
	mean, ultimately, you get down to making some decisions. How
	did that decision-making process work?
	Mr. Kimerer. They were just remarkably respectful of us. I
	am not sure what was going on when they were all by themselves.
	No, I think that their posture was facilitation of counsel and
	guidance, of offering support and a position of readiness to
	take over when the jurisdiction needed to change.
	We can't look at these incidents as being, you know,
	defined in a single event, single jurisdiction. When police and
	fire, fire in particular, have resolved a mass casualty
	incident, then you go into the crime scene investigation which
	is an FBI lead, which involves a change in jurisdiction of
	which then we become the support entity. When that is
	resolved--and there may be myriad of other changes in
	jurisdiction and resource allocation between then--we go into
	consequence management, which FEMA has a lead in, and DHS
	obviously has a big role to play.
	That continuum of engagement, I thought, was played out
	pretty well in TOPOFF. It wasn't always pretty. We were doing
	some education along the way. But there was a spirit of
	helpfulness and support that I found to be pretty uninterrupted
	and pretty commendable during the course of the exercise.
	Mr. Dicks. I am told that the hospitals, the health care
	side of this thing was of some concern. Is that right? I mean,
	of having adequate facilities or being able to work with--we
	had a lot of hospitals in the Seattle Puget Sound area.
	Mr. Kimerer. We learned a lot about the public health
	coordination side of the thing. Tom might be the one to ask.
	They got the full meal deal on hospital coordination.
	Mr. Mefferd. As I indicated earlier, one of the big
	problems we had was communication between the hospitals. We
	ramped up and played, if I remember, we had 130 hospitals
	Statewide that played in this exercise. One of the comments I
	have made in my written testimony is the issue of, we have got
	to look at the scope of the exercise, and that is probably one
	of the areas that we went a little farther than we should have.
	And that led to some of our communications problems in the
	exercise.
	As I indicated, one of the things we are currently working
	on in the State of Illinois at this time is the ability to
	communicate Statewide over a satellite-based communications
	system as well as an Internet-based data system tracking beds
	and patients and so forth. So, again, we have learned a lot
	from that exercise to more effectively work as a team.
	But the one problem we get into when we deal with hospitals
	is hospitals are profit-making entities as compared to
	Government-run organizations. As we look at the Government
	operation, we have to look at that a little differently as we
	look at hospitals, and I think we are doing very well with it.
	Mr. Dicks. Thank you.
	Ms. Dunn. Thank you very much, Mr. Dicks.
	Let me just pursue one question that Mr. Dicks asked you,
	chief, and I would like you to respond. And that was the
	question that only the principal Federal official would be able
	to call in the military, NORTHCOM for example. What if there is
	a situation where, a political situation, perhaps, where a
	mayor or public official is the principal officer and does not
	want to give up control of the situation to the extent of
	calling the military? Is there anything there that is
	available, a team of people who can be there and see that it is
	time to call them in and yet they haven't been called in?
	Mr. Kimerer. Well, of course, we are all going to be
	working in a centralized operations context, an operations
	center, which allows, obviously, access to all the key decision
	makers. The mayor can be dealing with the principal Federal
	official directly on issues that may result in some conflict or
	disagreement.
	Of course, the use of the military, probably, I think
	literally has to proceed from a presidential directive, which
	brings it into an entirely different spectrum. I would actually
	be interested in kind of the mechanics of it from Sue and
	Corey's standpoint. But my understanding, the National Response
	Plan provides for that, but only with the appropriate checks
	and balance of it proceeding from a declaration from the Oval
	Office. And in that event, unless there is an exigency, we will
	be governed by, you know, obviously, the Federal requirements
	and the Federal law.
	But I do say, on the other side of it, that nothing would
	be done in a vacuum the way we are structured now. The mayor
	would have, or the governor or the county executive would have,
	free and open opportunity to address the issue with the
	principal Federal official and anybody else that has
	jurisdiction over the matter.
	Ms. Dunn. Good. Thank you very much.
	Let me now call on the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr.
	Andrews, for 8 minutes of questioning.
	Mr. Andrews. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and I appreciate
	the panel's work, and certainly the exercise is very worthy,
	and I have learned a lot by listening to your comments today.
	Thank you.
	I want to pick up on something that Mr. Gibbons and Mr.
	Dicks was talking about, which is this crucial interface
	between military authority and the existing civilian authority
	at the time of an emergency.
	Now, I am assuming that this exercise was designed in such
	a way that you began when the emergency was reported. Is that
	correct? So there wasn't any part of the exercise prior to the
	explosion of the radiological bomb and the detection of the
	first people with the plague. Is that correct?
	Mr. Kimerer. Yes, as far as the full field exercise on May
	12, that is correct. We did have an exercise the week before on
	cyber terrorism which was very interesting.
	Mr. Andrews. One of the things I would suggest is, just in
	terms of the future TOPOFF, that you might want to start the
	process early. In Amman, Jordan, in April of this year, they
	did not have an exercise. They had a real situation where the
	Jordanian secret police uncovered a plot to detonate several
	truck bombs around the U.S. embassy in Amman, Jordan. And the
	reports are they successfully intercepted the attack and
	prevented the deaths of anywhere from 20,000 to 80,000 people.
	I am curious what would happen in our exercise if it began
	earlier. In other words, if you started the clock when there
	was some credible operational intelligence that trucks were on
	the way with a chemical weapon on them. That is when we get the
	answer to how the military fits into this concept.
	You know, one of the intriguing policy and legal questions
	is this Principal Federal Officer--if I am using the correct
	term--if I read the law correctly, can ask for military help,
	certainly, but certainly can't order it. That is something that
	the President of the United States down through the Secretary
	of Defense would have to do, which raises some questions about
	posse comitatus and exceptions to the posse comitatus law.
	It raises a whole host of the questions which were not
	dealt with in this exercise, I understand, about how this all
	relates. If people--I assume people from NORCOM--were people
	from NORCOM present? Northern Command?
	Mr. Kimerer. Yes.
	Mr. Andrews. I am sure they were present because they were
	invited to come and observe, correct?
	Mr. Kimerer. Corey?
	Mr. Gruber. NORCOM and the Secretary of Defense's
	representatives have been involved, and have been involved in
	the design from the beginning of the exercise.
	Mr. Andrews. I understand that, but in real life, they
	wouldn't be sitting there in the police operations center of
	Seattle or Chicago.
	Mr. Gruber. In fact, that would be at the request, again,
	of the mayor, the governor, and then the Federal authorities.
	Mr. Andrews. I think our next scenario needs to start
	sooner, because, you know, really dealing with two problems
	here. It sounds to me you thoroughly vetted the second of the
	two problems, which is what do you do once a disastrous attack
	has occurred, in this case two of them? Who responds? What do
	you do when you are working that through?
	There is another, which is, what do you do in those golden
	moments or hour when you, say, believe an attack is imminent
	and you have operational intelligence that might enable you to
	prevent the attack? What happens then? And I do think it is
	important that the next scenario take that into consideration.
	Obviously, the 9/11 Commission is dealing with that
	question retroactively. They are looking at what happened on
	the morning of 9/11 between the initial attacks on New York and
	the ultimate attack on the Pentagon and the failed attack of
	the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, and they are trying to
	unwind who was doing what, when who was responding to whom,
	when. And that is going to be a useful exercise for us to read
	that.
	But I think it would be more useful to do it, to engage in
	a scenario where we had such a situation and, frankly, to the
	extent possible, within the ground rules of the game scenario,
	to do so under the conditions of surprise.
	I think this is a profoundly important question because you
	have dealt, from what I can tell, rather well with questions of
	Federal versus local and State, and public versus private
	entanglements. And that is what this exercise is about,
	thinking that all through. You had hospitals run by private,
	for-profit and nonprofit corporations. You had local police
	departments and fire departments. You had mayors and Office of
	Emergency Management, the State and county level, and I think
	the fact that you gamed this all through is very, very
	important.
	I think the missing link and one that literally may mean
	the difference between life and death some day is going to be
	how the military fits into this, when, who gets to make the
	decision, who falls into the subordinate chain of command once
	the decision is made and so forth.
	One more question, I read the key after-action issues
	report, and I see that, on page 4, there is the rather
	understandable finding that there were numerous issues directly
	related to lack of command-and-control discipline. The people
	sort of improvised, made things up as they went along and did
	not follow the doctrines as necessarily were supposed to be
	followed. That does not surprise me, and I don't think that is
	in any way scandalous. But I would ask the Department, Ms.
	Mencer, what have you done about it since the finding? If, God
	forbid, we had an incident this afternoon, an attack this
	afternoon, what has changed since this after-action report came
	out?
	Ms. Mencer. What has changed has been mentioned previously,
	that we now have the National Incident Management System, which
	we are training for all over the Nation to make sure that
	communities and essentials are up to speed with how they
	perform in the event of an emergency. So NIMS has been
	instigated, and that is crucial to command and control issues.
	The National Response Plan, of course, is now also in
	effect. As we continue to train up, those two things will
	contribute a great deal to correcting that situation.
	Mr. Andrews. I assume that the focus of the next TOPOFF is
	going to be how well that is working. It is one thing to
	promulgate it in theory and another thing to see it in
	practice. Is there a particular weakness that emerges from the
	analysis of the first exercise in terms of chain of command?
	Mr. Gruber. Sir, I think Clark talked about that
	eloquently, but perhaps a lot of it was that, in fact, we had a
	brand new Department with very significant responsibilities
	that was all of 74 days old. So much of what happened in the
	exercise was concept development and experimentation about
	those roles and responsibilities that have matured
	significantly because, getting back to your original point,
	there have been a host of exercises subsequent to TOPOFF 2 at a
	very senior level, looking very specifically at direction and
	control and how we do that.
	In fact, we have conducted exercises specifically with the
	Department of Defense to look at the points you mentioned
	earlier and to explore those. In the next exercise, we will
	integrate roughly 60 days of pre-incident intelligence activity
	to build on the point that you made.
	Mr. Andrews. I think that is important. And the
	recommendation I would make, to the extent it is feasible, is
	that the exercise start sooner. Perhaps it even start early
	enough that it could be prevented to see how we do under that
	kind of scenario.
	Madam Chairman, thank you very much.
	Ms. Dunn. Thank you very much.
	I yield 8 minutes to the gentlewoman from the Virgin
	Islands, Mrs. Christensen.
	Mrs. Christensen. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and being the
	last one here, a lot of questions have been answered, at least
	in part. And I appreciate your testimonies.
	Deputy Chief Kimerer, I thought, in your opening statement,
	based on my recollection of our trip to Seattle, that you were
	being very diplomatic and generous when you said you would hope
	that the Federal people would recognize that the local people
	have a lot more knowledge of their approximate areas. And in
	response to Congressman Dicks, you seemed to say that the
	relationship between the Feds and the local went very well, and
	they were very supportive.
	But that is not what I remember from my visit. It seemed as
	though the coordination was not there and that, instead of
	relying on the local first responders, sometimes they were
	overstepped.
	Was that really one of the lessons learned?
	And then, I would ask Ms. Mencer, what has the Department
	done--if that is indeed the case that the Department of
	Homeland Security came and they started making some of the
	decisions that probably were best left to the local first
	responders who knew the people, who had been working together,
	who knew the area, if that indeed occurred--what has happened
	to fix that problem?
	Mr. Kimerer. Thank you, Congressman Christensen, for saying
	I am diplomatic. I do not hear that very often.
	The thing I expected to happen, which actually framed the
	way I presented it in my comments, was there would be an awful
	lot of what I refer to as jurisdiction creep, where there would
	be a lack of clarity as to who had that kind of priority or
	primacy of jurisdiction. So my expectations were low.
	I was grateful and pleasantly surprised that, while I am
	sure things were going on behind the scenes to try and resolve
	questions and conflicts, the general posture of the Federal
	official, the Principal Federal Official and the Federal
	agencies was one of helpfulness. Again, it may not have been as
	crystalline as we would have liked.
	Mrs. Christensen. You were pretty upset in their reports
	that they were not--
	Mr. Kimerer. I was focusing my attention on what was going
	on in the field. There were breakdowns in information in the
	field, certainly. I think many of them have been addressed or
	are in the process of being addressed.
	Of course, my priority as a commander, as somebody who has
	been on the ground and who has commanded incidents is, Do I
	have, A, the independence as it were to make decisions and, B,
	do I have the support once I make those decisions?
	Those, I think, were a success story in large measure in
	TOPOFF 2. Where we go from here and where I think kind of was
	the inspiration for my comment was to just simply, you know, be
	vigilant about the inclusion of the local perspective. My
	Department, answers 850,000 calls a year and makes 26,000
	arrests and is responsible for day-to-day policing.
	We have a great body of experience, one that I know Ms.
	Mencer, the Secretary, and Corey Gruber appreciate. But I also
	know that when deadlines are tight and when we have an urgent
	job to do against an implacable foe, sometimes, it is easy to
	just rush into a decision process or a framework or a format.
	So I am trying to be the voice of a reminder to ensure that we
	have the experts and the inclusion we need to make this
	successful.
	Mrs. Christensen. What has happened since that time?
	Because you cannot have any confusion or conflict between who
	is in charge and who is making decisions when you are in real
	time.
	Mr. Kimerer. That is correct. The gentleman that proceeded
	you asked about what we are doing tangibly. I am on a group
	called the Universal Task List Support Group which is
	identifying the essential tasks that every agency needs to do
	within its own limitations to respond to a whole sequence of
	possible terrorist events. That is real, on-the-ground kind of
	work that I think seeks to resolve all potential conflicts in
	times of calm rather than crisis and sets a benchmark for all
	agencies.
	Mrs. Christensen. My time is running really short. Ms.
	Mencer, did you want to comment briefly?
	Ms. Mencer. What I think is interesting about exercises in
	general is that it becomes stressful, just like the actual
	incident would be. And so, because we do not generally hire
	type B personalities to deal with law enforcement and fire, and
	to be Federal officials, when you have an incident like that,
	with the type A personalities who would be in charge, because
	that is what they are trained to do, you do have some conflict
	occasionally.
	With TOPOFF 2 Mike Byrne, who was the Principal Federal
	Official, was actually, in his previous life, a fire chief in
	New York City. So he had a local background and was able to
	relate on the scene, not only from the Federal perspective, but
	from the local one as well.
	Mrs. Christensen. I just hope that there is a standard
	protocol that does not allow for confusion. I understand what
	happens with human beings. But I hope that there is some kind
	of clear guidance.
	Having gone through a couple of disasters when I was not a
	legislator, sometimes we wished they would stay out of our hair
	and out of the way. Is there a role--what is the role that you
	envision for your State legislators and for us? For example, in
	a hurricane, I would be at FEMA headquarters here in their
	command center. How do we make--how do we utilize us optimally
	and not interfere in decision-making?
	Ms. Mencer. I will let Corey answer this as well, but I
	think, at the State level, we have continuity of Government
	operation plans that are in effect in various States so that
	the local legislators know where they are to regroup and how
	they are to maintain their continuity of government. Similarly,
	we need that in the Federal Government, as well, and certainly
	are working towards having a very comprehensive plan to do
	that. You do have an important role to play. I think we saw
	that during President Reagan's funeral, when we had the plane
	over the Capitol and some concern.
	Mrs. Christensen. To me, our immediate impulse is to be
	there where things are going on.
	Ms. Mencer. Right, and we do not want to add to the
	confusion.
	Mrs. Christensen. Where do you want us to be?
	Ms. Mencer. I will ask Corey to step in.
	Mr. Gruber. Ma'am, I think, first and foremost, as you see
	in the lessons from TOPOFF 2, there were very specific issues
	about legal authorities at every level of Government. Perhaps
	where some legal authorities conflicted with one together, for
	example the Stafford Act, and the Public Health Act, it's very
	important that legislators at all levels of Government look at
	those and help to deconflict those so that, when we respond, we
	understand our roles and have the authorities and resources we
	need to do that.
	And then the other role, of course, is adding hearings like
	this that help us bring attention and visibility to the results
	of the exercises so that legislators, again at the State, and
	local level, understand these issues and can act on them.
	Mrs. Christensen. I just, if I could just finish by saying,
	I see that Illinois has really done a great job in dealing with
	the health issues, but I hope that those lessons that they have
	learned become a part of the national way of operating.
	Ms. Dunn. I thank the gentlewoman.
	And thank the panel very much.
	I would like the record to show that the record will remain
	open for 10 days for questions from folks or anything that you
	would like to follow up on, panel.
	Thank you so much for coming back here to testify. It has
	been very helpful to us, I believe, listening to your analysis
	and your good lessons.
	Thank you so much. This hearing is concluded.
	[Whereupon, at 2:58 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]


	A P P E N D I X

	----------


	Material for the Record

	Questions for the Record For C. Suzanne Mencer, From the Honorable Jim
	Turner

	Setting and Running Exercises
	1. How did the Homeland Security Council set its 15 different
	scenarios for measuring readiness, and how do those measures relate to
	the performance standards mandated in HSPD-8? How are those measures
	used to determine the essential capabilities needed by each state and
	local government?
	2. I continue to be concerned that the Department's inability to
	develop a comprehensive threat and vulnerability assessment is having a
	significant, negative impact on the conduct of your exercise program.
	a. Do these major TOPOFF exercises focus on what an intelligence
	assessment says is a city's highest risk? Do the exercises take into
	account a city's specific critical infrastructure vulnerabilities? If
	not, why not?
	b. Was there any reason to think that Seattle is at especially high
	risk for a dirty bomb or Chicago was at higher risk of biological
	weapons attack? Do these major TOPOFF exercises focus on what the
	intelligence and vulnerability assessment say is a city's highest risk?
	c. Will future National-level exercises utilize scenarios that are
	consistent with the specific threats to and vulnerabilities of the
	location(s) conducting the exercise? If not, why not?
	d. What ``preparedness standard'' is used when planning and
	conducting a terrorism exercise? What level of preparedness are we
	training to achieve? Is this level of preparedness based any risk
	assessment?
	3. Homeland Security Presidential Directive 8 calls for a ``multi-
	year national homeland security preparedness-related exercise plan'' to
	be approved by the President. Has that happened? What will that multi-
	year exercise plan look like?
	4. According to the TOPOFF 2 after action report, there were 41
	participating federal agencies. What role did Congress have? Were there
	Members of Congress that played a role in the exercise? If not, how do
	you plan to involve the Legislative Branch in future exercises and/or
	the response to an actual terrorist attack?
	5. How many cyberterrorism exercises have you run as part of the
	National Exercise Program? Have cyber events been included as part of
	any other large scale exercises? Which ones?
	6. Some experts say that these exercises, including TOPOFF 2, are
	unrealistic and don't provide a real estimate of how difficult these
	disasters are to respond to. Many of the people brought in to simulate
	victims or ``worried well'' are well-behaved and calm. Especially in
	the event of a WMD attack, I would expect people to be extremely
	frantic. People might not line up in an orderly fashion to get
	vaccines. How do you build chaos into the system during these exercises
	to see how prepared we are to keep the peace?
	7. If city in my district wants to conduct an exercise, how do they
	engage with ODP? Does a DHS person attend all of these exercises? Who
	does the evaluation and the drawing out of lessons learned?

	Exercise Coordination
	8. What is ODP's role in coordinating exercises that are led by the
	Coast Guard, FEMA, ICE, and other DHS agencies? When different DHS
	agencies are assisting state and local participants in running
	exercises, and how do you ensure that they provide the same technical
	guidance?
	9. The hearing focused on exercises that are conducted to simulate
	potential terrorist attacks and improve our readiness for such events.
	But everyday, there are real-world emergencies and events that also
	highlight areas where we aren't secure enough. I'm interested in how
	the DHS exercise program incorporates these lessons learned, whether
	from firefighters battling wildfires or the Secret Service running
	security for a national convention.
	10. In conducting exercises, there's clearly going to be overlap
	with other federal departments. I assume that an exercise dealing with
	bioterrorism needs to be planned in consultation with HHS. An exercise
	on identifying and dealing with an animal disease has to be coordinated
	with USDA. How does that interagency process work for planning an
	exercise, working through an exercise, and in terms of paying for it?
	Can you provide a specific example?
	11. How does ODP capture the lessons learned from exercises that
	are run by other departments, like HHS or Defense? Are they made part
	of the MIPT (Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism)
	database?
	12. How much cooperation and ``jointness'' is there between DHS and
	DOD in homeland security exercises? Are there formal organizational
	ties between DHS and DOD? At what level? Does DHS participate in DOD
	exercises? To the extent that National Guard and Guard Civil Support
	Teams participate in DHS exercises, how does that work, and are the
	Guardsmen under the Governor's or Secretary of Defense's command?

	TOPOFF 2 After-Action Reports/Lessons Learned
	13. The TOPOFF 2 after-action report for the Emergency Preparedness
	and Response Directorate and the final after-action report from the
	Department as a whole identified numerous issues directly relating to a
	lack of command and control discipline during the exercise.
	Specifically:
	a. There seemed to be little understanding of inter- and intra-
	agency command and control protocols, and many exercise players
	did not fully understand the reporting relationships between
	the FEMA Federal Coordinating Officer, the DHS Principal
	Federal Official, the FEMA Emergency Support Team, and the DHS
	Crisis Action Team.
	b. The report also stated that a number of major, pre-existing
	interagency federal plans' coordination structures and
	processes were circumvented during the exercise.
	What specific corrective actions have been undertaken by DHS to
	address these issues, and can you assure the Committee that we will not
	see the same types of problems in the next TOPOFF exercise.
	14. The reports further noted that there were logistical
	difficulties accessing DHS assets and resources. Specifically, although
	the Strategic National Stockpile was at that time under ``operational
	control'' of DHS, exercise players were confused as to whether approval
	from the Department of Health and Human Services was necessary to
	access stockpile resources. In addition, the report states that ODP's
	pre-positioned equipment program was unavailable for most of the
	exercise.
	Again, what specific corrective actions have been undertaken by DHS
	to address these issues, and can you assure the Committee that we will
	not see the same types of problems in the next TOPOFF exercise.
	15. Finally, the Department's after action report noted that the
	lack of a robust and efficient emergency communications infrastructure
	in Chicago's hospital system was apparent, and that resource demands--
	including short supplies of isolation and negative pressure rooms, as
	well as staff shortages--challenged these hospitals throughout the
	exercise.
	How is DHS working with the Department of Health and Human Services
	to address these critical problems? Can you report on any progress in
	this area?
	16. I understand that ODP is working with the Oklahoma City MIPT
	(Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism) to create a
	database for first responders with lessons learned from exercises. Can
	you tell me how many records there are in that database and how many
	you'd like to have and how many first responders have used it? Are
	lessons from all of the hundreds of exercises you run annually captured
	in the database? How do you notify the first responder community of the
	availability of new data in this database?
	17. Does DHS use the results from these exercises in evaluating
	first responder grant applications? If a city works with ODP in an
	exercise and identifies gaps in its readiness, can ODP capture that
	information when it makes the next round of grants?

	Prepared Statement for the Record of Advanced Systems Technology, Inc.

	Chairman Cox and members of the Committee, practicing through
	exercises and simulations will help all those who must respond in the
	wake of a terrorist attack to perform better in an actual emergency.
	Superior response, achieved through a range of proven exercises and
	simulations, will result in saved lives, minimized damage, and quicker
	recovery. In a post-September 11 world, we cannot take the importance
	of preparedness and training for granted.
	Advanced Systems Technology commends the Committee for recognizing
	this fact and for holding this important hearing. You should know of
	the wide range of computer-based simulation tools that are readily
	available for law enforcement and public safety personnel. And
	simulation exercises have proven to work well in both military and
	civilian sectors.
	Simulation tools range from virtual, immersive simulations that are
	highly functional for first-responder decisionmaking activities, to
	constructive simulations that are highly functional for command-level
	decisionmaking activities, to predictive simulation models that are
	used to predict how particulates or gasses move through the atmosphere.
	Each of these simulation tools has a place in the exercise and
	simulation arena, if we expect all first responders (police, fire,
	emergency medical) at all levels of government (federal, state, local,
	military) to respond most aptly should a terrorist or other catastrophe
	occur on American soil.
	One factor holding up practicing to make perfect involves
	allocation of homeland security funds. Our understanding is that the
	Department of Homeland Security has spent funds to examine several
	simulation tools, but has not yet allowed funds to be allocated to use
	cost-saving computer simulation tools by local and state governments in
	their training or exercise activities. It is important that the DHS
	Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness
	approve computer-based model and simulation tools as a required element
	of emergency-response decisionmaking exercises and training activities
	for all hazards preparation. Otherwise, taxpayer dollars will only be
	spent on expensive exercises that certainly have a place, but should
	not be viewed as the only tool in the preparedness training toolbox.
	With regard to civilian-military interaction and cooperation, many
	successful cross-disciplinary activities have been conducted since the
	events of September 11, 2001. For example, in the National Capital
	Region, three exercises have been conducted with joint cooperation
	among local police, fire, emergency medical services, the U.S.
	Marshal's Service, the U.S. Marine Chemical-Biological Incident
	Response Force (CBIRF), and DHS Federal Protective Service.
	In El Paso, Texas, the Department of Justice sponsored a large
	school safety exercise directed at command-level personnel. It involved
	two schools in different school districts and exercised 21 separate
	school, local, state, federal, and military emergency response
	agencies--this without touching precious first-line resources or
	disrupting school activities.
	Each of these large-scale, multiagency, cross-disciplinary
	exercises was stimulated by the Emergency Preparedness Incident Command
	Simulation (EPiCS) system, a system that is owned and operated by the
	U.S. Army TRADOC Analysis Center. EPiCS is the result of an effort to
	use existing military technology for civilian applications. It is based
	on the U.S. Army's Janus war game program, with state-of-the-art
	visualization tools to enhance environmental realism. EPiCS puts
	decisionmakers from each agency involved in a computer simulation
	exercise to the test in ``real time,'' using their own communications
	equipment. Unlike other programs, this simulation tool integrates on-
	site decisions and results in the likely consequences of such a
	decision. This aids in the learning process, which is why it has proven
	invaluable to crisis managers and their staffs from both civilian and
	military agencies. Command-level training goes hand-in-hand with first-
	responder training. Without one, the other will fail.
	As most experts acknowledge, it is critical to train and exercise
	response agency personnel at all levels. Standards for such training
	are provided by the National Incident Management System and the
	National Response Plan, and measures are provided by the Homeland
	Security Exercise and Evaluation Program. Training and exercising these
	standards can be cost-effective, recorded, and repeatable using
	computer-based models and simulation.
	A sound model for the emergency response community for standards
	training is used by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which conducts
	a series of five exercises in an exercise cycle. This stepping-stone
	sequence focuses on each core element individually and then combines
	these activities into a unified response. The sequence begins with a
	seminar exercise that introduces the overall objectives and procedures.
	Then comes a series of tabletop exercises that progressively involve
	local, state, federal, and military resources. Using the lessons
	learned from these exercises, all agencies thenparticipate in a unified
	command-level exercise that leads to the final full-scale exercise.
	This cycle provides opportunities to discuss, revise, retrain, and
	retest aspects of training without expending valuable resources until
	all the pieces come together for a capstone, full-scale exercise. At
	each step, simulation tools are used and have proven to be valuable,
	effective, and cost-saving.
	Simulation, virtual reality, predictive models, and constructive
	models can and should all play important parts in reducing the cost and
	increasing the value of emergency response and terrorist-related
	training and exercises. Full-scale exercises are even more valuable
	after other types of exercise activities using models and simulation
	tools have been conducted. For instance, the $16 million expended on
	TOPOFF 2 could have been spent more effectively with more robust,
	recorded, and replayable results using computer-based simulation and
	modeling tools. Or the TOPOFF exercise could have been preceded by a
	progression of other sorts of exercises in order to maximize its value.
	This perspective should be considered as the third TOPOFF exercise is
	planned and executed.
	While practice will make perfect where terrorism and emergency
	response is concerned, it is important to keep in mind that large-scale
	exercises--which involve large numbers of personnel, tie up limited
	resources such as fire trucks and helicopters, can disrupt city streets
	and the routines of citizens, and are usually costly--are just one of
	many kinds of exercises and simulations available for this mission. All
	the tools in the toolbox of preparedness training should be employed,
	each one filling a distinct, vital part in preparation for the worst.
	Our nation's enemies will probably not strike in the same manner on
	the same targets each time, but they clearly intend to strike.
	Therefore, first responders across the nation--from the police officer
	on the street to the midlevel commander calling the shots and
	coordinating activities to top officials--all need training, and the
	training they get should be diverse, appropriate, and cost-effective.
	Exercises are important, and computer-based simulations can make them
	better.

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