Gilmore Commission - Minutes
Panel to Assess the Capabilities for Domestic
Response
to Terrorist Acts Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction
April 30, 2003
Arlington, VA
Present:
James Gilmore- Chairman
George Foresman
Pat Ralston
Ken Shine
Dallas Jones
Jack Marsh
AD Vickery
Bill Jenaway
Bill Reno
Jim Greenleaf
John Hathaway
John Lombardi
Paul Maniscalco
Bill Garrison
Patty Quinlisk
Mike Freeman
Mike Wermuth
Jennifer Brower
Guests:
Dan Kreske- Gilmore Aide
Suzanne Spaulding- RAND Staff
Hillary Peck- RAND Staff
Scott McMahon- RAND Staff
Erik Johnson- DC First Responder
Opening Remarks
Gilmore: Good morning, this is the first official meeting of our last year of this mission. We have done one telecommunications meeting, of which I took extensive notes. We would anticipate that this is the first meeting of four for the year in which we will complete our work. There is a belief that the work we have done up to this point has constructed the debate on homeland security. I think the reports have been universally acclaimed and are relied upon by members of the government. Of the 79 recommendations we have put forth, 66 have been implemented fully or in part.
Plus we have seen the adoption of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) fusion center. So this commission continues to play a pivotal role in this fifth year. The meeting that was designed for March was to determine what we should do in this closing year and I think it was right to set down the big picture issues. There are two main ideas; the intelligence issue that we will be reviewing here today and the second is how you actually set up a structure that will prepare the country. What is readiness? When I say that in speeches, it gets peoples attention. What needs to be done to fund and equip this readiness? How do we get funds to the right places to do this? I think we can play a role in discussing this. And I think that was the sense of the conference call. What should the nation look like? How much security do we have vis-à-vis our civil liberties? What is it that we want to live like? Do we fall into the pattern that the enemy wants us to or are we going to deal with this and move on and return to ‘normalcy’? You may have a different concept of this or you may have additional comments…we have plenty of time to go over this. Please, the floor is always open to suggestions. We should continue on our normal cross-cutting themes. These themes all feed into these fundamental ideas.
Administrative Remarks
Wermuth: You have a good bit of information in your workbook. We sent out agendas yesterday afternoon. Jerry Bremer will not be with us. Kathy O’Brien won’t be here nor will Hubert Williams. If you take a look at the agenda, you will see some closed pieces of this meeting. We will have our first closed session will be at 11:00 this morning when John Poindexter will be with us. Suzanne will give us her normal stellar briefing during lunch. We thought it would be helpful to have a terrorist threats briefing from Sara Daly after lunch. We will get a quick update from Lois Davis on where the national survey is and discuss the fifth report. We thought it would be useful to get a presentation from the Critical Incidents Analysis group from the University of Virginia (UVA). Tomorrow as you will see from the agenda, we have some closed discussions culminating with a 2:00 PowerPoint presentation from the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and then a short question and answer session with him.
Gilmore: I wanted to mention that Director Mueller wanted to come back on his own.
Greenleaf: He called me at home and asked me to share some of the panel’s opinions on our recommendations. His purpose is to bring us up to date on the changes that have been made since the last time he was here.
Gilmore: The whole FBI/ MI5 discussion is still always hanging around and the debate is ongoing and I think that is why the director wants to come back.
Greenleaf: I was there yesterday and the bureau is spending a tremendous amount of resources defending their position.
Reno: I fully endorse the two points that you made earlier. We might want to look at a pattern of senior officials coming in this year, not their assistants, to brief us on various agencies and work that is done.
Gilmore: I agree with you on that.
Classified Discussion- John Poindexter- Information Technology for Counter-Terrorism
Classified Discussion- Sara Daly- Threat Update
Survey Discussion
Gilmore: We now have Lois Davis on the line from Santa Monica to discuss the progress of the survey.
Davis: I believe that in your workbook that you have a briefing of mine. As you know this is going to be the final survey that we will be doing and is the third wave of surveys to see what is going on at the state and local levels for preparedness. We will be doing an in-depth survey that looks at issues of emergency preparedness planning and also looks at the federal level. What are they looking at for the federal government to provide? What participation have they done since 9-11? What are they hoping that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will do for them? And what is the potential impact of this? We will also be adding some new topics and greater detail on what they are doing with training and equipping first responders since 9-11. We will look at what kind of training they are doing and how they are resourcing these activities. We will be sending this survey to the original respondents from the original survey and the results will be available for the fifth report.
Wermuth: Our original target population was about 1400 and we got a response of about 1000, is that right? Is there any reason to believe that we should expect more, less or the same as last time?
Davis: We are hoping that enough time has elapsed so that it won’t impact this. We will also enclose a synopsis of the Gilmore commission work and will illustrate how their responses are creating an impact with the commission.
Brower: In addition to showing them how they have contributed to the panel’s work we might want to include how the panel’s work has influenced policy. So that they can see how much it matters.
Davis: Good point, we will work with Gilmore to develop a cover letter that will try to illustrate that point- that this isn’t just another survey.
Maniscalco: Do we expect to get any useful data from DHS since it has been standing less than 6 months anyway?
Davis: What we are going to focus on in that section is what their expectations are from the new department. What should the department be doing instead of what they have done up to this point.
Jones: I think this will help bring out how confusing everything is now. There is no one point of contact, and the new department is supposed to be just this.
Gilmore: Remember we are an advisory panel. And remember that we want to find out how we can advise how to get resources from the national level to the states and local, and I think the survey will help this.
Reno: Is the survey asking the set of questions that will allow us to answer those questions that the Chairman just brought up?
Gilmore: They are not sure that the questions that you will be asking on the survey will get to what we want to answer.
Shine: Will there be a place in this that says are you better prepared to deal with Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) than you were before 9-11? In other words this would focus less on the bar graphs and more on how much they are actually prepared.
Davis: That is a good point.
Quinlisk: Not only are they more prepared but what helped them get there? Was it DHS or something else?
Davis: Another good point
Maniscalco: I spent a considerable amount of time going through the 4th report again and some of the issues that we identified we put in narrative statements from these responders. Our goal was to achieve that greater specificity. We are going to have to figure out how to review the questions as a panel and try to draw a narrative response.
Brower: Probably tomorrow we can talk more about the research that RAND can do to support this last report. There may need to be some case studies that go along with the survey. What good does it do to have the capability to deal with WMD if the first responders can’t continue to solve the problems they were dealing with originally?
Davis: We will include a question or two about specificity; we have been working on that.
Gilmore: At the risk of micromanaging, I see no reason why the whole panel shouldn’t look at a draft of the survey before it goes out.
Wermuth: Can we make a target to get this into the field? If it goes out on June 2, then our timelines are short. The drafts will be quick and the sub panel will have to okay this by mid-may, it will have to be revised and then go out to the full panel about 20 May.
Gilmore: Can we just have the sub panel okay this instead of the full panel?
Shine: Send it out to everyone and if the panel members feel like commenting, they can. If not, they can ignore it.
Gilmore: Mike’s point is that this has to be turned around quickly.
Davis: I think the draft will be ready to be reviewed in beginning of May. We will get it out as soon as possible.
Maniscalco: Can you send the rough copy to the sub panel so we can help with it?
Davis: Yes, that would be my preference.
Wermuth: As soon as you have a good copy of this, send it to everyone. The sub panel can make revisions as can anyone who wants to.
Brower: At the March conference call, we handed out topics for the survey and we will have that copied again and give it out tomorrow.
Davis: We will have ten different versions that are tailored for different groups. The version you will see is geared to first responders. There will be a different one for public health etc…
Wermuth: Lets say that the universe of questions is about 80? What percentage of those are sector specific?
Davis: About 25%
Wermuth: Whatever it is, send out the first group. Send out the sector specific questions to everyone in waves as you finish them. And the panel members will realize that the core questions will be for everyone. It doesn’t matter how we break it, we want the full panel to address everything.
Ralston: As far as states are concerned, we have been arguing over this operational awareness level. I think it’s important to look at how you get training down to all levels.
Jones: There are something like six different grant programs occurring simultaneously and that system has to be streamlined. It’s been a real problem getting money out to local governments to do what they have to do. You might want to look at that.
Maniscalco: How is the National Incident Management System (NIMS) qualification going to define readiness?
Jones: That initiative is already underway. They have in place the criteria and the process.
Gilmore: Thanks Lois.
Legislative Discussion
Wermuth: Suzanne Spaulding will now brief us on legislative news.
Spaulding: I have some things to hand out that will make this quicker. I was on the Hill meeting with the House intelligence people, and I can tell you that your intelligence issues are all live issues. Revising the issue of a director of national intelligence is still a live issue. And they are also looking at how to translate homeland security to hometown security. They are looking at it through information sharing, how they get information out to the state and local folks. They are discussing more clearances etc… The House has a separate committee for Homeland Security, and the Senate does not. Both have subcommittees of their appropriations committee that deal with this. The House committee is run by John Gannon, but the jurisdiction is really unclear vis-à-vis the other committees. I’ve got lists of the members of the various committees if you are interested. As for their activities, they have already passed supplemental aid for homeland security in the amount of $6.7 billion. The funding in the Office of Domestic Preparedness (ODP) is over $2 billion with 80% for localities and 20% for states. They also then put out a list of funds that have been provided to state and local jurisdictions under the urban security initiative. In terms of what might happen this week or next week, it looks like the Bioshield legislation might move forward. This legislation funds the development of counter-terrorism bio-measures. It is open-ended funding, which is controversial on the Hill right now. It has moved through the Senate and is ready to go to the floor. Another thing that will move this week is legislation to get at the lone-wolf phenomenon. This says if a person is engaged with international criminal activities, you don’t need to show membership in a certain terrorist group to take action. And finally, back to the issue of grants to the first responders. There have been a number of bills that have been introduced in recent times. I won’t go through those unless there are questions.
Reno: I would like to make the point that I was over at the former Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) yesterday and the DHS has issued instructions for the development of a program not unlike Department of Defense (DoD) for a multi-year program. And 2 weeks ago they had to submit their priorities, next they have to define their programs. I looked at all the ‘03 budgets and I noticed that all the grants have been removed. How are they developing the formulas for where the money is distributed? Maybe it’s in the congressional language. I think in the final analysis, we as a panel need to analyze and make recommendations on how the large resources should be distributed. Do we really want this as a grant process?
Foresman: The bottom line is that our communities are doing a great job. The way its been presented is that states and localities aren’t doing this right. We need to articulate that when we look at the collaborated effort of funding, it needs to be a multi-year endeavor. We can’t trust governors to make funding decisions.
Reno: The people don’t trust the states, the states don’t trust the feds but with this amount of money going out, this really says that there has to be a good way to do it. I can’t imagine the bureaucracy that is needed for this.
Jones: When the President stated that he was going to give out over $3 billion, everyone thought it was new money but it turns out that only about a third is actually new money and spread that out across the country and it is not much.
Ralston: Ours is going to be a county-by-county assessment over three years.
Maniscalco: I think the original debate was the taxing structure. Everyone gets their piece of the money before it has actually gotten to the first responder. And I go back to question what is readiness? We define it and then we won’t have to keep throwing money into the wind.
Jones: There was no taxing, none of these grants had a taxing. It was a straight 75-25 split between state and local. There is an urban myth from cities that they are saying that the states are getting all the money and the cities aren’t seeing any of it.
Maniscalco: What about the suburbs?
Quinlisk: In the public health sector, we submitted grants, we got funding and then we started spending the money and then they said oops, we forgot about smallpox, now you have to spend this much and we were forced to reassign money and take it from other places we had already allocated it. Its incredibly frustrating to us to stop everything and take money away and do it all again.
Shine: I would urge us to consider in the fifth report as we do a retrospective, to illustrate principals, which include a whole range of uses around collaboration, for example, relationships between cities, locals and states…and we should lay those out in these principals. Why not give them the kind of guidelines that a congressional oversight committee could look at to point to how well issues are being addressed. I think that Patty’s issue is part of it and Bill Reno’s is part of it. I suggest that we pay a lot of attention to lessons learned, particularly with the funding.
Vickery: It’s only in America that we argue that people give us money and we don’t know what to do with it…a wonderful country. As a local organization we can clean our own house up a bit so that when the money does come down the pipeline we know what we can do with it.
Shine: Given what you know , what do you identify as the main area that we should present on? What is your view? We should be pursuing some of the things you bring up. Is there a strategic area in which you think we should play a role?
Spaulding: I think some of the areas that present the most opportunity for your recommendations are the ones that are not hardened, for example, critical infrastructure protection. Similarly with the intelligence and the piece that fits into the DHS, it is still up for grabs. I think it is interesting that there are so many first responder grants being introduced recently and even more being introduced daily. There is a lot of attention being paid to this and it really goes to the core of your mission. I would say a third area is the issue of information sharing. That has broad interest on the hill and they are really looking for an answer. In at least one of the bills there is a maintenance of efforts section where they are thinking of ways to get this stuff obligated and spent.
Freeman: In terms of local preparedness and hometown security, there seems to be an absence of what that is. We seem to see money coming and going and all jurisdictions are doing something different with that money. Somewhere, somehow there needs to be a definition of preparedness so that there is some end to this.
Gilmore: We need a more focused national strategy so that this doesn’t seem to be completely pork barrel. I think that is absolutely right Mike.
Wermuth: Tomorrow we have the TOPOFF 2 people coming and if you want to address some of these questions to them, that seems to be the time to do it.
Jones: There is still no long term plan to base needs on. Some states have done that, we have in CA but it still isn’t tight to an end result. Its getting more complicated rather than simpler in a sense. I want to mention something else- there has been a lot of governors and mayors going to DC to ask for money for ‘terrorism’ and the legislators are looking at the fact that all this money is going out for this. When you cut through this it comes down to population, where you have more population, you have a bigger threat. That is where we need to go in the years ahead.
Reno: One of the things we should do is set up a system, we should tell them how it looks and operate but then let them do it.
Freeman: Ridge was in L.A. last week and he met with a group and spoke publicly and said he is looking for a 21st century way to get this money out and he is asking for suggestions.
Greg Saathoff - Shielding Discussion
Gilmore: We are about to have our shielding discussion about bio-terrorism, Mike would you please introduce our guest.
Wermuth: Our speaker is Dr. Greg Saathoff, he is an MD at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine. He is also a conflict resolution specialist with the FBI. Several of us on the panel; Jack Marsh, George Foresman, Suzanne Spaulding and I have worked with Greg with the Critical Incident Analysis Group (CIAG) within UVA. I know the chairman has been invited to speak before them and did last year. We have mutually supported each other and that relationship predates 9-11.
Saathoff: Thank you for inviting me here today. Let me start with an anecdote. For those of you who know Kuwait, you will know that they have an extensive telecommunications sector and a great education. There was one man who discussed the occupation of Kuwait with me. He remembers the day that the Iraqis invaded with tanks and I asked him what he did when he saw that the Iraqis were invading and he said he got dressed and went to work. As he was on his way to work he came face to face with an Iraqi tank and had to turn around and go home. He went home and said to himself ‘you stupid idiot, you saw on TV what was going on and you still went out and confronted it.’ This guy did not panic and you might see that what he did was illogical. I would like to discuss this issue of shielding with you today. Terrorism has a basis in psychology. “Panic in and of itself is becoming the terrorist tool.” The classic picture of panic does not have to occur for a very dangerous situation to take place. We call this shielding because shields protect, they identify individual groups and that is really what is important when we seek a solution. One size does not fit all when protecting oneself. That is why the word shield is one we have chosen to use.
Saathoff Powerpoint Presentation
Marsh: Are you saying stay in your community and don’t leave?
Saathoff: Yes, attempting to flee is exactly what the terrorist wants. Rather than running from the problem, you are really creating the problem. And then you are putting yourself into a situation where you are less able to deal with the crisis from a psychological standpoint.
Quinlisk: Thank you for your discussion. One thing I thought I would bring up is that the institute of medicine is looking at the issue of what terror will come about with terrorism. That report will come out in June. A lot of this is in-line with your presentation. One other thing is that it is important to pre-educate. If we wait until something is already going on, no one is going to listen. I think that we can take advantage of the SARS case and try to educate people before something like that happens again. I think in our report we need to say that we need a plan to address this prior to anything actually happening, because that is when people will actually listen.
Saathoff: We published something that looks at this concept through the standpoint of law, political science, and communication and this has been of great interest of people in Hong Kong, China etc… they find this to be really timely. Your comments are well taken.
Vickery: I would look at some other terms; ‘shelter in place’ and ‘area of refuge’, we use them in the fire community. From a public standpoint these terms might be a stronger use of words. You are right on with everything here, these are great public education terms.
Foresman: Let me follow up with that. I think part of the exercise is the fact that some people use one term and others another. One of the challenges is that we don’t have standards on these terms. And I don’t know if shielding is the right or wrong term. I wonder if part of the larger issue is that there should be some standardization in defining terms.
Quinlisk: In public health we look at how many people don’t have the facilities to stay in their house for 10 days. 10 days is a long time and it becomes an administrative nightmare facilitating these people just to mold to the recommendation. If people hear ‘shelter in place’, they are first going to go to school and pick up their kids, then go get grandma, then go to the grocery store and then go home…that is not ‘shelter in place’.
Saathoff: I know that ‘shelter in place’ is important as a foundation. And this is why we call it ‘community shielding’. How do we make the home more comfortable for that amount of time? We are talking about these issues with the private sector so that the private home becomes more comfortable than it ever was before. The concept is vital for the success of shielding but if you don’t call it shielding then how do you think about this mindset?
Shine: Thank you Greg, to take up the Minnesota situation, my recollection was that that was a dramatic failure in communications. Is this correct?
Quinlisk: No that was an Ohio situation. My perception of the Minnesota situation, was that when it first started it was under control and the reaction was correct and then as it went on they couldn’t identify who was at risk and then all the sudden everyone needed the vaccine. It was because of this expanding group of people who were perceived as being at risk. They were vaccinating against the panic as much as the disease.
Saathoff: At the same time, Duluth was also faced with the same incident and they handled it very differently. How government handles it is vital.
Shine: One may want to separate the notion of ‘shelter in place’ as a professional term and ‘community shelter’ differently by figuring out how to get food to people who are staying at home. The third issue is that I am surprised that you focus on biological events so much, they occur over a long period of time. I don’t think that is the situation when people run to get their kids home from school. They do that when there is an acute event, like a dirty bomb. I am just saying that I think the concept is valuable but I am surprised to see it so closely connected to biological incidents.
Saathoff: Those of us who worked on this agree. But in introducing the concept it would be better to be narrow than really broad. When you have a contagious event, the issue of contagion is so significant. We now have this issue of urban bottlenecks where it is impossible to evacuate large areas in short amount of times. We had to come up with some sort of solution to this.
Shine: I would still ask that you give me an example in which that urban congestion occurred. I would argue that that clearly happened when the pentagon was attacked…but that is not a biological event.
Saathoff: I was agreeing with you. This really does make this a viable solution for other events.
Foresman: We had a 72 hour period during the anthrax scare that was a build-up and then we basically had an almost panic and we got the governors and mayors on the media circuit telling everyone the same thing.
Shine: But did you see people fleeing?
Foresman: We did to an extent, yes.
Jones: You need to keep in mind that you need regional and state support. One size doesn’t fit all. A nuclear attack would be different than a fire or flood and we need to make sure that we include them all. The best example is in school if there is a fire alarm they go outside to the fields, if there is a terrorist attack that is the last thing you want them to do.
Quinlisk: I think Ken is right. Community shielding would probably be a broader response in a biological event than anything else. Whenever we teach the public on something, they need to understand that it works for all different events, not just biological or nuclear events but for tornados, floods, fires etc. When we do education we need to combine all the different potential events.
Maniscalco: If we go back and review the Ohio event, you will see a population movement. It ties into having a confident, effective speaker giving information. If you don’t have this you have people getting into their cars and going to other counties. From a holistic approach I think we integrate the concept that George was talking about, that there is a sequence of events that is institutionalized.
Freeman: Very good concept, while shelter in place is used a lot, it seems to convey a smaller section of the population. When we say community it seems to encompass more of the population. It seems that there are different degrees to community shielding. There may be segments of the community that needs to stay secluded and to say ‘shelter in place’ is sometimes too broad.
Brower: I was wondering if the CIAD has thought about how you provide food? What messages do you provide? What about compensation? Does the government provide compensation to businesses whose employees can’t come to work for 10 days? You mention satellites and cable TV, doesn’t it seem that that only gets to the rich people?
Quinlisk: One thing we know makes people feel better is to give them something to do that makes them feel like they are helping somebody else. We should expand community response to this concept.
Marsh: There are going to be times when you may have to evacuate, and Ken talked about a dirty bomb. Is there significant emphasis on a community that may have to evacuate?
Foresman: The short answer is yes. We think of sheltering as short term and I think that part of the discussion is that when you get into a biological event, it starts to move from short term to long term. A chemical attack is pretty short, about 72 hours but a biological event could be 20 days.
Hathaway: I think this concept works well when you have a small community. But when you talk about large cities where there are multiple airports and foreign citizens, this is an issue that is not addressed. This issue only addresses when people live and work in a small area.
Saathoff: One of the things that we feel strongly about is that for those people who do have the opportunity to shield, it allows law enforcement and first responders to deal with those problems. But how do we minimize extraneous movement so that we can focus our resources on more intensive issues?
Quinlisk: I think this is great but I don’t think that we can ever rely on voluntary compliance. There are people who just couldn’t comply, no matter if they wanted to or not.
Shine: People want to know how they get food, what they should stockpile etc…I think what everyone raised about special populations is important. A certain percentage of the population doesn’t trust public health and doesn’t trust government and to reach these people you need a special person.
Gilmore: I don’t understand how you are going to get people to cooperate with your program. Let me see if I can understand the answer. The answer is that we have to go through a lot of public persuasion? And you have to do this months and years ahead of the incident?
Saathoff: I think one of the things I would like to emphasize is that communities are part of the process in terms of the solution. What do you need as a community? Lets accept the premise that it is important, but then move on to how the government can get what needs to be given to the communities. It is proactive. I don’t think it is merely education. We need to look at our resources and how they can be mobilized in certain ways. It does mean that we will have to look at our resources and figure out how to be able to better deploy them.
Gilmore: I just don’t think you will be able to achieve this except to persuade people before an event that they are better off staying in place.
Brower: We have to communicate why shelter in place is better and not just the fact that the roads are not big enough.
Shine: A lot of people are buying plastic sheeting and duct tape for no reason.
Ralston: Can you really trust the people in charge? That is why education is necessary.
Spaulding: We are trying to move on to the implementation phase, referring to what Jennifer was talking about earlier. But that requires funding and we haven’t gotten any funding.
Quinlisk: The IOM report will have some of that in it.
Brower: How are you reaching out to people right now to at least lay the groundwork?
Closing Remarks
Wermuth: We always give time for public comment and now is the time for that. Do we have anyone who would like to do that?
James Patrick: I am from Edinburg, VA. [Read Public Comment]
Foresman: Thank you for coming over, sometimes we get so focused on the governmental part of it that we forget the part of it that effects the average person. How much time did it take you to find the information you were looking for?
Patrick: About 400 hours. Just on building construction I spent about 200-300 hours. Most of it on the Internet. And it is mostly available indirectly.
Brower: What do you think about the utility of ready.gov? As a citizen?
Patrick: It’s a base. The Israelis have a booklet of what to do in every type of attack, where to go, what to do…its all in one book.
Wermuth: We will meet at 6:30 at the hotel lobby to board the bus. Dinner will begin at 7:30 or thereabouts. We plan to return at 9:30.
Adjournment
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