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Gilmore Commission - Minutes
Panel to Assess the Capabilities for Domestic Response
to Terrorist Acts Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction
Arlington, VA
Monday, August 27, 2001
Present:
The Honorable James Gilmore, Chairman
James Greenleaf
Jack Marsh
George Foresman
Kathleen O'Brien
William Reno
Patrick Ralston
Patricia Quinlisk
Ellen Gordan
Dallas Jones
Paul Maniscalco
Raymond Downey
Joseph Samuels
Hubert Williams
Also present:
Ellen Embrey
Mike Wermuth
Members Absent:
William Garrison
L. Paul Bremer
Bill Jenaway
Kenneth Shine
I. Presentation by David Tubbs, Salt Lake City Olympics
Williams. That Utah statute that authorized officers from other departments, does this statute cover liability?
Tubbs. Yes and I can get you a copy of that.
Williams. Have you established priority threats?
Tubbs. My biggest concern is weather and traffic. We have set up an intelligence center that involves state and local authorities and they monitor what is going on. A lot of the "anarchists" are on the Internet.
Jones. Looking at the numbers, you are going to have more federal personnel than locals during the event. Are you co-locating the agencies in one center?
Tubbs. Yes, we have a command center and everything is co-located. Unlike Atlanta, we are one elevator floor away and I have TS clearances for certain law enforcement personnel so that has been beneficial so we can share information.
Quinlisk. Could you say something on the public health and medical planning?
Tubbs. They are not part of UOPSC and neither is the Department of Transportation. I get around this by meeting with them as much as I can and they are involved.
Quinlisk. What kinds of preparations are being made?
Tubbs. The epidemiologists is working with law enforcement and they have done some things on their own.
Greenleaf. Is the ambulance service private?
Tubbs. Yes, by state law. So it has been interesting to get a private service involved.
Maniscalco. How do you work around the fiscal issues, especially with regards to surge capacity?
Tubbs. We have been fortunate because we have had ambulances donated to us and then the people in the state can purchase them at a discounted cost.
Embrey. What about visiting dignitaries or countries?
Tubbs. One of the biggest issues with Vice President Cheney's speech was - why couldn't people bring guns to see the Vice President? Weapons will not be allowed inside the venue. I meet with all of these delegations and they know that this will be strictly enforced.
Foresman. I assume that you guys have a fairly robust training initiative, how are you going to address the funding to carry all of the personnel from preparatory and operations phase? Is there a standard curriculum?
Tubbs. We started out with 28 committees determining what needed to be done in specific areas. Each committee is responsible for training in a specific area. There is 2 days of training before the Olympics for people coming from the outside. The first day is Olympics 101 and the second day is venue-specific. We are still in heavy-duty discussions on spending. We pay overtime up to 96 hours for a three-week position and 96 hours to backfill that position. It is difficult to control because venues handle it differently, so we are asking for estimates. We have federal and state funding and the Olympic Committee has committed to paying the overflow.
Reno. What is the role of the State TAG?
Tubbs. He has been very involved.
Quinlisk. If you had felt that a biological weapon was truly a threat, what would you have done with the health and medical communities?
Tubbs. I would have included them in the committees.
Gordan. So if you need to do massive coordination with public health, do you have someone on board who has expertise?
Jones. Do you have a metropolitan strike team on site?
Tubbs. No that I know of… we've been told, "you will get it when you need it."
Jones. How many people are you expecting?
Tubbs. We are looking at an additional 100,000 visitors on a daily basis, not including the athletes and volunteers.
Wermuth. We are concerned with the description of crisis versus consequence management. Have you received guidance on definitions or how the determination will be made or a handoff between FBI and FEMA?
Tubbs. PDD 62 is a planning tool, but once the crisis occurs we'll just see. But I do not think it has been clarified as to who is going to do what and when. It becomes difficult to do.
Quinlisk. We have discussed intelligence with no-traditional partners. Who within the public health system will you share say, bio-intelligence, with?
Tubbs. It would be cleaned and sanitized to give to the public health.
Quinlisk. Do you think that's best?
Tubbs. I haven't ever really thought about it, I can ask. It's obviously based on need-to-know.
Quinlisk. My point is that in the past we are used to information shared between agencies, but some people might not be traditional partners because these people might need this information.
II. State and Local Response Sub-Panel - National Survey Data Presentation
Maniscalco. We meet on 6 August 2001 in Santa Monica. We had full participation of the members. I'd like to thank all of their members for their continued support. There is a lot of information that we have had to deal with, so thanks for your diligence. First this is groundbreaking work that we are doing here. The results are not surprising, but significant and compelling. They are providing definition to readiness and the ability of state and locals to respond to incidents. The projects that we have made in our previous reports cannot longer be dismissed as anecdotal and this gives us greater standing in our recommendations. This information does not exist in any other report to date. In your books you will find the basic template or outline as our chapter for the report. I feel confident that this is consistent with our high standards of research in our other reports. RAND, also, and its staff have been real troopers.
Quinlisk. A lot of these questions address the "awareness" rather than the reality.
Maniscalco. But that is important. We know that there is inadequate education at local level and there is an urban bias.
O'Brien. If we think the risk is greatest where the people are, is there a problem with having the program more urban than rural?
Quinlisk. I agree, obviously the biggest target is in the most concentrated areas. But certain types of weapons - e.g. agricultural - would prefer to go back to a rural area.
Quinlisk. If we bring the urban areas up to a higher area, we want them to be able to help the rural areas. With money, I know some say that they can only be used for cities.
Downey. We do not want to try to develop a model. But I can see recommending regional approaches to certain things. But to tell cities, town and suburbs that they HAVE to develop this is not going to work. Some of us have developed this among ourselves. We should provide references to provide a "best practices" services. Small towns are going to rely on a regional approach and sometimes this does not include money. We need to not dictate policy and procedures.
Ralston. Remember Lisa Gordan Hatherty the "we'll tell you what you need." I remember that was a ridiculous statement from someone who does not know what is going on.
Maniscalco. There are some legislative mandates that tie - as a public manager your hands are tied because the legislation does it on purpose - we cannot truly hold the manager accountable for that. The question becomes that the legislative mandates does not tie the public managers hands. But it fits into a well-defined level of readiness. If we turned around and told Pat that you have to have heightened awareness, we are going to drive her crazy. On the other hand, if we come up with definition and a geographical relationship if you have this threat level than your preferred level of preparedness would be this: it truly comes down to distilling what the threat is and agreeing upon this survey, it is a tool to determine the rudimentary level of readiness.
O'Brien. Some federal money comes with both what and how. I think we want the grant programs to tell us the outcomes and let us determine the "how."
Ralston. In developing these three year strategic plans, each states' assessment is going to be different. Dallas has identified some things and I have identified others. There is just a real mix out there. Leaving it up to the states is the best way to use their resources.
Gordan. Are we saying that we want a recommendation that somebody needs to develop a standard and acceptable level of readiness?
Maniscalco. Until we come up with a definition of what is a level of readiness, what is the baseline?
Gordan. The Panel cannot tackle the issue. Should the national office do that for the state or should states develop it themselves?
Maniscalco. I think there should be a national standard.
Downey. I do not think you can do that. In preparation for us to do that, we evaluate our own capabilities and then we adjust our own needs. But to say that my standard is the same as XXX somewhere is not going to fly. There is a big difference. I think we should look at past history; we can get a feeling for how to adjust to a local level.
Gordan. What have we said in the past?
Wermuth. We said the National Office should develop some levels of readiness. We have said that we should not tell cities of the same level of population that they have to look the same. You need some general measures (plural) of capability that will cause policymakers to identify spots in the countryside that may not have capabilities to respond. You do not dictate equipment and number of people.
Downey. Complying with standards is different than saying what you have across the line. We all agree that there is an awareness level. But we cannot dictate to them and we do not want to be throwing money out there.
Maniscalco. Hospitals may need professional standard practices.
Jones. Where we see this going is that state emergency management agencies do a readiness study through FEMA and some similar process could go through with this National Office.
Maniscalco. But we need to charge the office to do this because it only makes good management sense.
Reno. I want to change focus a bit. As I have been reading the OMB book, a lot of it is buying security guards for what security guards have been doing for years with or without terrorism. So a re-evaluation of all these priorities is necessary.
Another point is that Dallas has HAZMAT teams now, but keeping them current is the real problem. How do you sustain it? To happen in 5-years, 8-years, it is going to happen and all of this will not be sustained. Strategically we need to talk a lot about resource management.
Samuels. One of the findings is that there is a bias towards the cities. Does that reflect a lack of coordination between the cities and counties?
Fricker. I think there is a frustration between counties and such with the 120 Cities Program. The quote said something like, "incidents do not follow arbitrary boundaries."
Gordan. Would you like to start the discussion on where you would like to see the state and locals go?
Maniscalco. I would like the full panel to look through the flow of the outline and then weigh in, that's how I'd like to go with that.
Embrey. Why the focus on NLD training?
Foresman. Well, we wanted to do some comparison between those who received NLD training versus those who did not.
Wermuth. We are not going to exclude anything.
Gordan. When we make recommendations, we need to ask the "so what" question. How is this going to improve the status-quo?
Jones. I think that a lot of people do not realize that there is a turnover in the public safety area. They move on to other occupations and agencies. So when you training 5 people to do training, then that has a longer and lasting effect. We need to incorporate these concepts in the process.
Gordan. Other comments?
Lunch
Schedule and Minutes Adopted by Consensus
Public Comment. See attached testimony submitted for public comment.
Gordan. I did notice that we discussed the mental health issue and impact on first responders, but we need to have a recommendation.
Reno. We learned an important lesson with Hurricane Andrew. With the Red Cross we had to develop an internal group of experts to deal with that. There is an issue with that and certification of the nurses and the mental health workers moving across states. So your point is very well taken so we should highlight the issue of licensing. Maybe Governors can facilitate that.
Chairman. Are we prepared to move onto the cyber issue?
Marsh. Paul Maniscalco has played a key role in assembling this data on terrorism using the world of information. And Dallas Jones probably has more experience in managing state emergency service during disruptions by hackers that have designs against the system. To overlook cyber as a form of terrorism, or as a contribution to achieve other forms of terrorism is a mistake.
How do we address this? In the 19th and 20th century we would have regulated it, but we cannot do that now and it needs some thought.