Gilmore Commission - Minutes

Panel to Assess the Capabilities for Domestic Response
to Terrorist Acts Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction

June 17, 2003
Arlington, VA

Panel Members Present
James Gilmore- Chairman
Mike Freeman
Kathleen O’Brien
A.D. Vickery
Paul Maniscalco
Bill Reno
Ken Shine
George Foresman
Bill Garrison
Jim Greenleaf
John Hathaway
Patty Quinlisk
Jack Marsh
Dallas Jones
Bill Jenaway
Pat Ralston
Jennifer Brower
Mike Wermuth

Other Visitors

Hillary Peck-RAND Staff
Michael Rich-RAND Staff
David Brown-GAO
Scott McMahon-RAND Staff
Roger Molander-RAND Staff
Susan Everingham-RAND Staff
Suzanne Spaulding-RAND Staff

Administrative Remarks

Gilmore: Good morning to everyone. The agenda this morning would call for us to begin by going back to some of our discussion of the Fifth report. We have two pieces that might make a contribution, Jennifer is going to tell us about the research part of it. After Jennifer makes her presentation, we will open the floor of a discussion of the TOPOFF exercise. And then we can return back to the discussion of the Fifth annual report before the Secretary arrives.

Presentation of the Research Plan- Jennifer Brower

Brower: In response to the conference call conversation in March and responding to the continuous goals of the panel, we have come up with a list of ongoing projects and research. (View presentation)

Hathaway: I would just add that Paul McHale said that he is not doing homeland security, he said they are doing homeland defense, so I would add that term to your slide.

Shine: Is the implication, when you say ‘democracy’, that you are going to look at the civil liberties part of it?

Brower: Yes.

Jones: Will the state and local sectors be involved in these initiatives?

Brower: Yes, that is something Mike and I discussed.

Foresman: It seems to be on the issue of communications interoperability, that there are a lot of activities in this area going on and the challenge is what the right structure and strategy for it is. I assume that this is less technical and more process based.

Brower: That is what we are trying to bring out in this slide.

Ralston: We have been working on this for about four years, we have also branched out to a regional effort and gotten information from other states. It’s a major funding issue.

Wermuth: As most of you know the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allocated some funds for an emergency and we will be looking at whether that is enough. We have come to the preliminary conclusion that it probably isn’t enough.

Reno: I would recommend a third bullet that states resources as a major issue. (on communications interoperability slide).

Foresman: This is actually an area where there may need to be government regulation or standards. Do we need a managed operations interoperability? Its not about everyone being able to talk to everyone else, its more about key people being able to talk to other key people. What is the right structure to manage this? We don’t want to spend a whole lot of time doing what everyone else is doing, on the technical side.

Maniscalco: I agree, I think we should let the technologists deal with that aspect but we should stick the flag in the ground and say that there is not one size that fits all.

Jones: We found out very early on, in building out a statewide system, the cost was about $6 billion. Local governments have tremendous investments already in this and what we need is to allow different systems to succeed. We also found that law enforcement can use interoperable channels. It’s a very complex issue but I think our approach should be to acknowledge that there are a lot of systems out there.

Maniscalco: I think there is some creativity here, and I think it goes back to process, what George said.

Gilmore: It feels like there are a lot of different aspects of this all over the map and there is no overarching strategy out there. What are we trying to accomplish here, are we trying to get Richmond talking to Annapolis or are we trying to get unit 1 talking to unit 2 on the opposite side of the trade center? Are there cultural issues here or not? That is one place we could make a recommendation. My question is, is there any sort of cultural resistance to fire people, police and others having interoperability?

Vickery: The answer is yes. There are cultural differences. You can overcome them by assigning frequencies according to function.

Maniscalco: There is a legal aspect to this. There are rules about what you can say over the radio and can’t say over the radio. There are a lot of different issues here.

Gilmore: You could have a system in place to maintain those privacies. When a crisis occurs and when everyone needs to become interoperable, then that system would kick in.

Maniscalco: I am not sure we need the street cop talking to the street fireman. It goes back to what A.D. and George said.

Foresman: Part of where we may want to go is to say very clearly as the funding flows through the states, the state has to make a plan of how they are going to spend that money on technology.

Quinlisk: This is something that people have been talking about and one of the problems I see and when you start talking about this, is public health isn’t really a part of it. We are not used to carrying around radios and stuff like that. And then there are the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) laws that say I go to jail if I say certain things. I don’t really see how all of that is going to play out in a real situation. It’s sort of a different animal and it brings its own problems to the situation.

Shine: Nowhere is this a bigger problem than public health. There has to be some kind of national standards in terms of the capacity of what the system is. Many of the problems that we are dealing with occur in multi-state areas.

Vickery: When there is the need for privacy, you can use encrypted or digital paging so that you accommodate Patty’s concern. If you have that plan in place, you can address the concerns for the different agencies instead of trying to make a plan that accommodates every agency from the get go.

Gilmore: The place where the commission can come into play is to take a look from above and make a recommendation from there.

Jones: One thing we can do is to define communications interoperability. It goes back to the people who need to talk having the ability to talk. It really isn’t everyone being able to talk to everybody. There is a digital element along with the radio frequency stuff that needs to be addressed.

Maniscalco: I caution us because of the emotions of what happened in NY and to ease the blame of technology failing there, I don’t think there has been great probing of what actually went on. We may get a better picture once the litigation is over and this is up for public review. Once the facts come out, we may see that technology didn’t fail us as we think it did.

Gilmore: I have had a lot of people talk to me about tactical communications. A lot of people have been preying on their congressmen about this issue. Technically, a lot of scientists and inventors are trying to sell their products so that a fireman can talk to a police officer and maybe we could make a recommendation about how that isn’t helpful. It seems that there is insignificant spectrum. This is a very complicated matter. Mike has suggested that we put together a sub committee to help Jennifer and RAND to do this research. Paul Maniscalco, Bill Jenaway, Dallas Jones and Mike Freeman will serve on the sub panel.

Foresman: Everyone has a little piece of this and we need to find the macro piece.

Gilmore: My sense is that if there is an attack, this is all going to be overloaded. So the issue is how to create reliability. Interoperability is fine but if it isn’t reliable, what is the difference?

Maniscalco: We really need to deal with spectrum. That is like putting a band-aid over a cancer scar.

Shine: Identify the problem and define it before you even get into these issues.

Brower: And this gets back to what we said yesterday, that most of the industry in this area is private.

Gilmore: I want the staff to understand that because of the money in it, this has raced ahead over the last few years. There is a lot of sophistication out there and it is going to be a lot of reading to determine what is and isn’t there.

Brower: You are right, spectrum is not the only answer, neither is the technology part of it. We also need to look at the short term versus the longer term. This discussion has been extremely helpful.

Gilmore: I think Ken Shine is right, that the best that we can hope to do is to identify and define the problem. It is going to be a lot of work.

Foresman: I think the other part of it goes back to our discussion yesterday; what is the acceptable level of risk that we are willing to take? What is the cost benefit? Maybe we take this the same way we take security as a whole and say we will never achieve 100% interoperability. Instead we find the balance between capability and resources available.

Jones: There is a lot of technology out there but it’s a conflict. How are the states going to tie together? There is a lot out there as solutions and really it should be a bottom up solution, not a top down. We don’t have the money to just start a new system.

Brower: We will also have the survey to look at a lot of these issues.

Shine: I just want to be careful how we assess the DHS, it is only been standing since March. I don’t think people will be able to take our analysis of how they are achieving their objectives seriously if it has only existed for three or six months.

Brower: Part of this is matrix for achieving their success.

Reno: I would pick up on Ken Shine’s point. We start out with a concept of the strategic vision and that would be a source document to shape the nation’s agenda. As we hang bells and whistles on this, it takes away from our main goal. So, I agree with Ken Shine, I don’t really think this should be a major part of the report.

Brower: I haven’t seen a lot on the systems in place, there are a lot of words out there about working with the state and local levels but not a lot is actually being done.

Gilmore: You are going through a report of all the areas that you are going to focus on in your research right? I think we should let her go through this and we will have time to double back later. If it is the wish of the panel not to add something about DHS, so be it. I think if we draft a report that tells what DHS isn’t doing, we are going to get people to turn their noses up at us. But if we say what they have done right and then point out what is missing, people will be more willing to listen to us. It may not be right, like Ken Shine said to asses them after 3 months. But there has been a lot of time since 2000 when we dreamed this up and it really, lets be honest, has been set up since last December.

Shine: DHS is a central feature, I just don’t think you can talk about it ‘achieving its objectives’ but what you can say is that it is working toward these goals that fit with our strategic vision. This is a central portion of how we are getting to our strategic vision.

Gilmore: Any time you are talking about a current operation of the US government, it is going to be touchy.

Molander: The importance is the strategic vision and this is a vehicle to achieve this but I understand the fact that it might be too early to judge.

Vickery: We are talking about the safety and security of this country, you are right that they should be ready to do this. We need to stay out of the political fray and stay with the facts. I am not getting the sense that the state and locals are being heard. We have a mission and responsibility to shake it a little bit because we are talking about the safety and security of the United States. We have an obligation of honestly rating what is happening right now, not four years from now.

Greenleaf: I think they really are struggling in implementing the process. When I went to a conference a few weeks ago with police chiefs, the two speakers from DHS spent their whole time apologizing for not being able to answer the questions.

Gilmore: This commission understood the bureaucratic challenges that this new department would go through.

Brower: I wanted to ask if there are any strategic issues in the health and medical area?

Quinlisk: I think it would be nice to actually address terror in and of itself. We get involved in the incident and don’t deal with the terror issue. The whole point of blowing up a plane is not to destroy the plane but to create terror. A lot of the committees like us cannot get their arms around that. This goes back to the briefing we had last time on community shielding. I feel like this might be something that should at least be mentioned in the report.

Gilmore: I think it would be reasonable to put something in about the definition of what terrorism is meant to do. I think that is valid and could be a preface to part of our report.

Brower: I will work with Patty about this psychological issue.

Shine: One question I have is whether the commission would be interested in doing a reprise look at the smallpox vaccination and the response to SARS. I think that for example, the smallpox vaccination goes to the question of unfounded mandates, it’s about believability and organizational issues. Maybe a page or so about lessons learned about those issues would be useful.

Quinlisk: It would be interesting to see the economic impact of the people’s response to the incidents. I think we could say that the airline industry was impacted, not by the planes that were flown into the trade center, but because of the way people reacted to that attack.

Foresman: When you look at the governmental pieces of it, it is only about 15% of the infrastructure. The rest is in the private hands. And we spend a lot of time on that governmental piece and maybe its time to start looking or bring to the table some of these private sector issues. We should at least carve out what the major issues are.

Gilmore: My hope was to get Mike Armstrong, the chairman of Comcast in here for this meeting but I couldn’t do it. We will try to get him in here to discuss this issue.

Brower: I think broadly raising the issue is good. The overarching question is how do we make the overall community more robust? Obviously the people of Israel are affected differently than we are when there is a terror attack. And this was done through education and a sense of a return to normalcy.

Gilmore: On the one hand private enterprise wants no regulation of any kind. On the other hand the companies are crying out for guidance for what they should do in terms of homeland security. They don’t want regulation but regulation would give them a roadmap.

Quinlisk: I don’t think we should just acknowledge that terrorism has an economic impact, but go beyond that and state some plans of how that can be limited. It needs to be done at the consumer level as well.

Shine: Where would the guidance come from? DHS?

Gilmore: For sure. This panel has alluded many times to a pro-regulatory type of system, a sort of interactive process.

Foresman: I think where the national debate is going to emerge is what should the government fund the private sector like you did in the 50’s and 60’s? Is there going to be a more incentive-based system, through tax breaks for those that take steps to improve their security?

Jones: Doesn’t that speak right to the heart of threat assessment? Until you develop a scale, a risk assessment and bring that to the private sector, we won’t see any measures being taken. No one is saying how likely each threat is.

O’Brien: If I am a risk, and that is shared with the public, how are you going to compensate me?

Brower: That will come up in the burden sharing research.

Molander: Some of the problems are the psychological reactions that Patty was talking about. The whole issue of how big the problem is, is something that needs a lot of work.

Foresman: How do you model a public reaction if there is no real incident? I think there is this idea that there will be a panic and mass chaos in the event of an incident but that rarely happens.

Quinlisk: I don’t think that is what we are talking about, I think we are talking more about the panic that drives one not to get on a plane after 9-11 and so on. Instead of just saying that the psychological stuff is too hard, someone has to go out there and address the whole issue of terror.

Gilmore: I think this is simple, we have been discussing what a return to normalcy is. You can’t get on with the normal life of the country as long as people think that we will reach pure security as long as you keep throwing money in the pot. I think that is not reality and yet that is the world we live in now.

Brower: Right, the government is changing at every level and at the same time they are going out and trying to tell everyone that everything is okay.

Gilmore: That’s right, it is a schizophrenic outlook. We are living in a dichotomy.

Hathaway: We had two guys with a gun who held the DC area hostage for a few weeks here. You want to talk about a major motivational change, look at the sniper suspects. They shut down the city with one gun.

Foresman: Conventional law enforcement wisdom is that you shouldn’t address the public in fear of encouraging the criminal. But is that right?

Hathaway: I think that is a good example of how a terrorist can affect a community. People didn’t even pump their gas.

Ralston: That is why a couple suicide bombers could have such an impact.

Quinlisk: There is research about how to get people somewhat prepared, psychologically. If we could do that with the public, then the repercussions of an attack could be minimized. And right now I don’t hear anyone in the public saying this outright.

Foresman: I think we are so focused on the right now that we are missing the strategic long-term recovery. And this includes psychological stability. We are going to find that there has been very little done on this.

Vickery: I am with Patty right down the line. There is no system to prepare our customers for a terrorist incident. I hope in 20 years there will be programs for children to prepare them for terrorist incidents. We taught them ‘stop, drop and roll’ and now its time to teach them about the new threat. I think that is an enormous strategic goal. Right now we are not focusing on the customers.

O’Brien: I think we all know that when individuals get information on what they can do to minimize their own risk, and I think this is what A.D. was talking about, we are really changing our culture from a culture of fear to a culture of preparedness.

Marsh: We may never get where we want to go. Even during the cold war when we were facing the risk of nuclear attack, we still could not get programs through that really prepared the country the way it should have been.

Shine: I think its about a free society, not only having to do with civil liberties, but also the sense that you can move around and operate in a free environment. But balancing what is reasonable and not reasonable is the biggest challenge. When 45,000 people buy masks for anthrax when they have virtually no risk of being infected we have a problem. All I am arguing is that it is the inappropriate response that we need to educate people about. I would suggest that that would be at least a subtitle to our report- we want a sustained vigilance.

Jenaway: Last year FEMA released money for two training programs, both a stay-in place system and also a training program. I am not sure the money has ever been spent, but it was released. Maybe we could look at things like this. As far as the private sector goes, unless they see a direct threat to themselves, they won’t take any action.

Brower: One last issue is that of R&D that was brought up in the conference call.

Wermuth: We will include some aspect of that in the section on the DHS. I think the question is whether we want to be broader than that or not?

Gilmore: Once again the states are going to be asked to come up with a strategic plan. Everyone with a great idea is coming into the DHS and trying to sell them technologies. No one knows what is best, so you are seeing anecdotal grants that work in the short term but they don’t help the strategic vision.

Maniscalco: Are we going to try to provide an assessment of duplication of efforts?

Brower: One thing that I learned is that there is duplication and unnecessary duplication.

Ralston: The amount of people out there selling things is just phenomenal.

Gilmore: That is right.

Shine: There is a lot we can say about R&D, but this commission’s responsibility is domestic preparedness. The defect is that the R&D agenda is not being driven by local responders needs. I think what we need to focus on is first; the necessity for having a clear understanding of what the needs of local responders are and second; a process by which a common group of responders can identify whether they should be buying a particular product from a particular vendor. I don’t think we need to do an in depth analysis of this because that is not what we were chartered to do.

Brower: I don’t think local responders are used to expressing their needs in a way so that government officials and researchers can understand what they really need.

Foresman: Maybe the problem is that the research and developers need to understand the first responders. We haven’t mentioned anything about Congress in this discussion, which I think is interesting because they seem to be setting the agenda in that area. I think we need to focus on the more macro issues, like Ken Shine said. What are the issues? How are we going about fixing those issues? And we need to define what the structure for R&D should be.

Gilmore: One place in Jennifer’s briefing that we blew by was the civil liberties issue. And that goes beyond whether the Patriot Act is working or not. Patriot 2 is lurking around too. In addition to that, we need to focus on the role of NORTHCOM and what it thinks it is going to do. I was intrigued by John Hathaway’s careful line between homeland defense and homeland security.

Hathaway: Homeland defense includes defense issues and support for that defense. That is all homeland defense.

Gilmore: I think the principal issue with civil liberties is the rise of technology. It’s the issue that we are able to learn about people and their private lives and take away some of their liberty. A lot of the R&D that we see is surveillance R&D. For example, lots of companies are trying to sell national ID cards. I think this issue is a large body of discussion, not just the narrow view of the Patriot Act.

Jones: I think there is also the trend for local and state policing agencies to get involved in surveillance and that could be a problem. That needs to be monitored very closely at the local level.

Shine: How do we articulate the dimensions of it? Where do we draw the line? For example, you brought up the national ID card. We all have licenses and passports that are virtually the same thing. I have a concern more about the money, monitoring how people are spending etc. How do you articulate the concern? Do you have a way of articulating the phenomenon of ‘this far but no further?’

Gilmore: No, I don’t know how you draw that line.

Marsh: I think it’s appropriate that we do address that. Last time we heard from Poindexter who told us about total information awareness. This is a direct child of some legislation on the Hill called the Widen Act. We keep drifting away from cyber but it is the information infrastructure of the terrorist and I think we need to keep that on the agenda here.

Gilmore: In terms of it being their vehicle for an attack or in terms of gathering information?

Marsh: Both.

Quinlisk: On the opposite end of the spectrum, one of the problems that we are having are the new HIPPA laws. I have a concern that we might miss something because of these laws.

Shine: The central message is the need to articulate this balance of freedoms to individual liberties and to things that are necessary. I think framing that is going to be a challenge. If and when a Patriot 2 comes along, how can we help them make these privacy decisions?

Gilmore: I don’t know how to address this issue right now. What is the best way to write something that is constructive?

Shine: I noticed that you mentioned Israel in your presentation and maybe it would be helpful to look at these other cultures.

Gilmore: The concern I have had is what is the right balance. That implies that rights are flexible and I don’t think that is the case. Rights are not malleable. It is not that if you need more security, you diminish rights and when we are secure again, the rights come back. This is a profound difficulty.

Wermuth: We will try to articulate this more in a philosophical manner. There are certain basic rights and freedoms that are inherent. How far do you go in the privileges side before they bump up against the rights? For example, the constitution does not give you the right to ride a plane. That is not an explicit right. Just like there is no right to a driver’s license, it is a privilege. Those are the kinds of things we want to explore. Clearly monitoring telephone calls without necessary cause is against the basic constitutional rights. These are the kinds of lines we need to explore.

Marsh: We are talking about rights and there is another dimension of this that I call conveniences. I think we are moving toward a lot more inconveniences that exceed the benefit of risks. The example is our nation’s capital; it is a virtual citadel. You can’t go to the Capitol building anymore; you need a pass, you need an escort. You can’t go where you used to gain access. We have moved to security measures that limit people’s movement. What we have done by taking away access to places like the Department of the Interior etc. is to allow the civil servant to believe that he is more important than the average citizen.

Shine: I wonder if we should frame it in the context that a victory for terrorism is a mocked diminution of our movement and our privacy. Therefore every step that is taken to protect us from terrorism should be taken into consideration and see if it gives in to this goal of the terrorist. So in essence, they are winning the battle. I think we might want to articulate this in our report.

Reno: Wouldn’t we describe in our vision the outcome of all the things we are talking about? We describe the outcome so that the systems would function effectively. Aren’t we going to be forced to discuss and reach conclusions on privacy so that we establish and define what privacy is? At least we would have a model so that all 500 congressmen can either agree or disagree.

Brower: That is what Roger and I are coming up with.

Shine: What is that vision? In one or two sentences?

Reno: In one of our earlier meetings we talked about the fundamental need to ensure that the American people have the confidence in their government to protect them. American people have grown up in a culture where they have been taught about free enterprise but when it comes to terrorism we are now relying on the government to protect us. And if you do this you have to deal with the fact that you are going to give up some rights in order to get these protections. It will never be perfect but it will be adequate. The new normalcy will be a little different from the past normalcy because there will be concerns always. The strategy has to condition us to understand that. I see, for example changes in the military. This is why I made the comments earlier about the bells and whistles. In my view, in the debate that shapes the next decade, I would like to see our report quoted in international forums, as this is the way it should be done. I would like to see it quoted in the Congress. And so how do you bring focus that would keep the debate and shape the debate that I am envisioning?

Gilmore: I think it is very difficult because everything we have talked about this morning is the day in and day out issues of the nation. And this is much more philosophical.

Molander: This is exactly the right conversation. This panel creating a straw man for discussion is exactly what we want to do. If you don’t do it, who will? There is not enough focus on where we want to get to.

Spaulding: I do think that this commission has the ability to alter the debate greatly. And I agree with what we have always dealt with and balance is the focus of this. We need to look at a cost balance analysis. In articulating the costs, you get a lot better discussion than viewing it as simply a balance. The one thing you have not touched on yet is the treatment of non-US persons.

Gilmore: And people of US citizenry as well. If someone here is transferring money from a foreign country, is that something that should be looked at? And that has virtually no cost, so would that go into your cost analysis?

Spaulding: There are costs to that. There are also more real, traditional costs associated with things like that.

Reno: This all can be done with essentially no changes done to personal liberties. I work in countries where there are citizen databases in order to control the population. I think we could have a national ID system with the point of view of efficiency, not because of terrorism. I would oppose giving up individual freedoms that we have today because of terrorism.

Shine: One of the strategic visions is one where Americans feel that they are safe from internal and external threats while at the same time maintaining their civil liberties and freedoms.

Gilmore: Why don’t we move on to a Hill report from Suzanne.

Spaulding: I didn’t think I was going to have a lot to talk about but the full committee mark up in the house will take place today on the bill that Paul sent around this week. It’s my understanding that there will be no earmarks in this appropriations legislation on the house side for homeland security R&D. The defense authorization bill has already been enacted. There are a couple provisions in there that you might want to look at. DoD is making funds available for state and locals to purchase equipments through them. They will go out and sort of catalogue what is out there and acceptable and they can be purchased through a procurement officer.

Wermuth: This is an implementation of a recommendation that the panel made in the second report.

Spaulding: The designated procurement official will be at DoD. There is a provision for allowing the governor of the state to try to coordinate these procurements. There are also some reports that are required to come out soon that will be interesting to you. I have copies of all of these provisions if you would like them. Intel authorization bills are also moving through. The Senate intel bill includes a provision on background investigations. The bioshield act is moving forward this week with markups. This bill had to be marked up by no less than 4 committees. Only the House has an authorizing committee. The role of DHS is very much a live issue in the Congress. There is not a consensus of exactly what the role of the DHS really is, especially the role of DHS in facilitating the two-way flow of information between the public and private sectors. Congress is debating a number of bills looking at the critical infrastructure.

Gilmore: The DoD is seeking to be able to use the reserves in all hazards situations. The Congress said ‘no, instead we will allow you to use the reserve for terrorism.’ That is like night and day.

Hathaway: You will see that we can already use them for ‘catastrophic’ terrorist incidents.

Gilmore: Thank you Suzanne. We now have the Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge here to present his vision to us. I have chaired this commission over the last 5 years, I will give you a brief overview of our staff. (Introduction of panel members). This gives you a feel for a history and background of who we have been and who we are now. I informed the Secretary of how we are looking forward and I believe he may have some insight to share with us about it.

Presentation of Tom Ridge, Secretary of Homeland Security Department

Ridge: Thank you for the invitation to join you this afternoon. What I would like to do is briefly talk to you about the department and try to tie it in with some of the themes that I believe you are discussing today and your final product. It’s better off that this is a monologue and a conversation. The interesting challenge we have is that we actually need to take part of the old structure and turn it into a 21st century entity. But now there are some new units as well. We have to take the old and make them better but also to create these new entities. The old you can understand very well, the INS etc. Some of these old systems are a particular challenge, especially the INS. As we look forward, we are looking for the kind of America where people want to become citizens, despite the risk of dealing with the terrorism. What is it that we want to put forth as America despite the fact that terrorism will probably never go away. I believe that many employees of my department believe that what they are involved in is bigger than anyone ever thought. We have the challenge to make the old better. But we also have the new, the science and technology team, the weapons of mass destruction units, and information analysis infrastructure protection. We have some wonderful opportunities to weave the old with the new. Fundamental through all of that, there are several objectives that we have long term. Longer term, as we ramp up, we do it in a way to ensure that we pay the same attention to privacy, civil liberties and freedoms. As we do these other things to enhance security, we need to be sure we are not stepping on the toes of the constitution or other freedoms. We don’t want to create a system where liberties are chipped away slowly and no one ever notices it until it is too late. We see that as a long-term responsibility of the new department.

The communications piece is critical, the relationship with the journalists and media being a large part of that. They have a role that is critical. They have protections in the first amendment and they will continue to be provocative. I also think there is a need to develop another relationship with the media in order to disseminating critical information in a way that is not editorialized or dramatized. There are things America needs to know. Right now it’s all about ratings, the inclination is to get news out the door, even if it is not the full truth. We can’t do that. Again, we are looking longer-term here. It doesn’t mean that the media will have a different role in the long-term than it always has. It’s just a different relationship.
How we handle long-term intelligence collection is another issue we are still working on. We are still struggling to secure and analyze information in the appropriate way. The Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) is a great step in their effort but there are some culture shock issues. It will not be accomplished overnight. The whole idea around the TTIC is to have analysts that can not only collect the information but advice on what to do.

Another long-term issue is how we want the economy to look. Do we want terrorist attacks to be a means to re-regulate the economy? We know that terrorists want to use our economic tools as weapons. We recognize that a lot of this has to do with the private sector. We don’t have enough money to possibly treat every sector like we did the airline sector. At some point the private sector is going to have to step up and take responsibility for their share of the economy. We haven’t sorted out who does what yet. When we look long term we have to decide who has fiscal responsibility for what portion of the sustenance of an incident. We have yet to decide as a country, politically, who is going to pay for what. If we ask a mayor to put more guards at a tunnel, they shouldn’t have to bear the burden of our decision, but we haven’t yet come to grips with that.

It’s a tremendous operation that this new department employs. I see it as an opportunity to reshape government and how it relates to our partners, state and locals. I envision a time where the Secretary and all the under secretaries only deal with budgets, strategic thinking and salaries, but the actual day-to-day functions is down to the state and local levels- so that our outreach is not Washington-central but is local. We need to empower folks at the local level so that we can be quick and agile because that is what the enemy is. We need to be aggressive and complete but mindful of who we are protecting. We shouldn’t abandon 200+ years of Constitutional history in our pursuit of security.

Vickery: As chair of the Inter-Agency Board, and as we develop, how do you see us getting some of that local team input into the DHS?

Ridge: We have tried to have a very aggressive program of outreach to the groups and organizations that represent the first responders. I think the best way to be involved is to be involved at the state level and help set statewide homeland security plans. We have a model that says that the homeland is secure when the hometown is secure. Our goal is to get you involved at the local level. We have representatives that I thought were quite aggressive in getting your input.

Ralston: In Indiana, like most states, the money is allocated based on population. We are trying to get away from that and create a threat matrix for our state. I think it is really important to get away from pure population based funding.

Ridge: I concur. We have had this issue of a barometer being how much is spent and I think we need to move toward how well we are prepared, not how much money is thrown out. I don’t think we will ever get away from the notion that every state gets a little bit of money. We have been trying to come up with a formula that includes more than population density. It could very well be critical infrastructure and threat intelligence. We have to put all of that in an equation. I am not sure we are going to get a formula that will totally get us away from population density, but we are working with the Congress to deal with that.

Jones: Its been said that we are going to approach this with an all hazards scenario, and I don’t see that happening. I see a more intense focus on terrorism and not on the rest of the all hazards approach. I am concerned about this, are you?

Ridge: I see the emergency and preparedness leg as becoming more robust than before. I think it’s engrained at the local level that they will be there in any disaster. Whether it’s a terrorist incident or a natural disaster, it is critical to have one overseer.

Shine: This commission has struggled with the notion of risk. I am talking about the notion of what the American people understand of risk. How do you balance the risk of terrorism versus car accidents, for example? It seems that no matter what we do, we can never be 100% secure. But people seem to believe that if we keep spending, the risk will ultimately get to zero. So how do we ensure that people understand risk and how do we get them thinking about this as a tradeoff? This is a big picture issue for us and I would like your thoughts on this.

Ridge: We have tried to communicate consistently to America that we cannot eliminate the risk. No one better think we can. Somewhere there will be a decision where the Secretary or Congress will say that the cost benefit isn’t as important as putting it elsewhere. It hasn’t happened yet, but it has to at some point. We try to be consistent with our message that we will never eliminate the risk. It is so easy to use the term ‘risk management’ without ever defining it. I think our department is trying to say that our first responsibility is to reduce the risk of a catastrophic event. But again, how do you say something is catastrophic? We don’t have the resources to apply the same level of protection to all areas. We make rational decisions of what to protect. Communicating the risk is the most important thing we need to do. I don’t have an answer at this point but we are working on it.

Foresman: As you look down the road, a lot of success comes to you personally, do you foresee a new iteration of the national strategy that takes a better definition of homeland security and is sustained over the next ten years?

Ridge: Absolutely. Like DoD we are going to be required to submit a five-year budget. So this will force us to look long-term. I think that is a very important planning tool and will drive much of the process. I think we need the budget requirements to push us out that far.

Quinlisk: We spent lots of time and effort on preparation for the terrorist act, but my concern is that we don’t have any plan to deal with terror itself. When people are terrorized they change their behavior and that has tremendous economic effects. How do we harden the American public, knowing that we will never eliminate the terrorist threat, to go back to a normalcy?

Ridge: When we did the TOPOFF exercise, we included a mock communication system as one element of risk communication. But how do we harden ourselves without hardening our hearts and understand that this is permanent condition? I think a lot of it has to do with how we can get a better communication system within the department. We will develop a national communications plan for America. I think we need to get Americans to understand the nature of the enemy. This is part of what I was saying about the new role of the media. The greatest fear is the fear of the unknown. I think it’s going to take time for us to become knowledgeable of the nature of the threat.

Gilmore: We are focused here on a lot of subjects, one of the major areas is how you actually implement a national strategy and how you determine what needs to get down to the localities and the states, how do you know what to buy? There are two theories, one is that the states and localities dream up what they need and send it up to you, the other is that there is a blanket preparedness model and you get resources based on that model. Another is a vendor-based system.

Ridge: I think we would be mindful to choose the vendor-driven response. I think it would really be a combination of all of these. We want the marketplace to drive the system. We now have a science and technology unit so that we can determine what equipment and resources we need based on the threat. So the short answer is that we would use all of these systems.

Marsh: I have found that in my time on the commission that first responders have the expertise to deal with incidents and they feel like they have more of an expertise than those in Washington. I am worried that the mindset of the people who work for you will lead to a federal solution to a local situation.

Ridge: One of our goals is to be able to scrub some of this stuff at the federal level and actually get it down to the local level. We need to do a far better job of communicating with the police or the private sector. I learned long ago that one size doesn’t fit all and we need to insist that things are developed from the ground up. Too many people in this town think the world revolves around Washington, and it doesn’t.

Shine: We have talked about the notion that your national response plan includes a subtitle that portrays that it is all about the state and local level.

Gilmore: We would like to thank the Secretary for coming out today.
Under Tab 7, you will find the minutes from the April/May meeting, do we have a movement to pass? We will leave them open until noon on Friday for corrections. Would anyone like to say anything about the Secretary’s visit?

Foresman: I think the Secretary is very focused on next week and tomorrow and probably hasn’t thought long-term much at all. I think organizationally he is aware of the short falls and we really won’t need to point that out. I think it makes what we are saying even more important.

Gilmore: It is clear that he is being pulled in a lot of different directions. He offered twice to build a bridge between the activities of this commission and his department.

Vickery: No doubt there is a personal commitment but I would ask that we look at the local challenges that come with the state. Somehow DHS has to have a venue like this where you can hear the local community talk about what is happening. Yes, it is coming from the bottom but it needs to be heard from the top. I think Jack Marsh’s comments were right on.

Shine: I also was interested in Kathleen O’Brien’s insight as to the regions. He is talking about a significant regional organization and I have questions about that. That is a fundamental government shift. He is talking about significant amounts of people and resources.

O’Brien: When he started talking about regions, it made me think of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Gilmore: Well that isn’t happy.

Jones: The intel that we get from inside is that they will be reduced from the ten FEMA regions to three. They will have their own airplanes and these will be operations that are very forward leaning

Foresman: If they go to a regional model are they going to reorganize the Coast Guard and all the other aspects of the DHS into that same organization?

Hathaway: The Coast Guard is going to stay the way they are at this time.

Brower: I think RAND can do some research and find out what is happening.

Wermuth: I disagree with George. I don’t think that all organizations need to reform to follow the new regional structures. I don’t have a problem with developing different regional boundaries as long as they have the authority to work together. You establish the processes and systems in order to do that.

Maniscalco: But this is an opportunity to sort of make this make some more sense, right now it is almost bizarre. Up to the point of the creation of the DHS, our commission complained about the fragmentation of process and those didn’t go away. They just sort of got thrown together in one drum. I didn’t sense any discussion about de-fragmenting this. I like what we are saying that we have to look forward because there is a lot of wreckage behind us that we probably won’t be able to clean up.

O’Brien: I thought it was very important in our discussion of risk when in response to one of our questions, Secretary Ridge answered that they were focusing on ‘catastrophic events.’ That is very different than an all hazards approach. And he was very clear about that. We didn’t push him on what ‘catastrophic’ meant but he obviously had a threshold.

Jenaway: And that is a lot different than what we are referring to.

Freeman: I don’t know I thought it got to the point that we can’t prepare for everything so instead we work for the big ones. I thought it read up to your point the other day.

Shine: I don’t think they are mutually exclusive. Creating some kind of hierarchy for your investments is not unreasonable but it can occur and create an all hazards approach at the same time.

Gilmore: It seemed more like a statement of general principals.

Freeman: I thought he was setting the stage for us to address some specific recommendations.

Survey Discussion

Brower: On the phone we have Lois Davis, our lead researcher on the survey. We have passed out the latest survey to everyone and we will be referring to it now.

Wermuth: Our intention with this survey is to be far looking. This survey may be a little different than earlier surveys because of this far-reaching goal. You will see that there are questions that are different in the survey that do not allow for a perfect one to one match. Remember that this is a work in progress and if you see anything that you want added, please feel free to do this. We are not asking that we approve the survey today but we do want to get it into the field pretty quickly.

Davis: What I would like to do is give you an overview. We have in the past gained helpful information on planning response. We do have a section that addresses that. A new section addresses how they are resourcing these activities. We also have a section where we will ask them to select a certain type of incident and then give us an example of how they think their organization would react to that incident. Section four is an assessment of federal programs and sort of what they are expecting from the new department. There is a section on security clearances and response to the color system of homeland security. Section six is getting into risk assessment and also the role of the military. And then we follow with organizational questions.

We are open to your guidance

Wermuth: We don’t want you to feel under any pressure to make decisions today. We would like to be in the field soon. Maybe we can bring this to a close at the end of the week, how quickly do you think we could be in the field with the first wave?

Davis: We could probably get it in around June 30. The first wave is fire departments.

Wermuth: That is our target. If you want to provide any input we would ask that you help us follow those guidelines.

Maniscalco: We will take general comments from the panel and take them together into the sub panel.

Shine: Question 36; it is puzzling to me why the timeframe of this one is back a year where most of the other questions refer to 9-11. Also, I think that question might be useful as the last question in the survey.

Davis: We did ask ourselves about question 36, I agree with you that we should change it to 9-11.

Wermuth: Well let’s talk about this; we had a survey last year that asked what they have done since 9-11. Do we want to go back again to 9-11 or go back to the last survey?

Davis: We are going back to the full sample, some of them didn’t participate in the last survey.

Ralston: Federal money just started flowing this year really. So the last year isn’t too bad cause there has been some money.

Wermuth: I guess it is clear that we want it to go all the way back to 9-11.

Hathaway: Because of budget cuts, we should ask better or worse than 9-11? Not just better.

Reno: On page 40, question 82; would the respondents answer this question differently if the term National Guard was there instead of US military? I think yes.

Wermuth: Would you prefer to see one question that says federal military and one that says National Guard?

Reno: Would it be useful for the commission to have a box 8, the issue of quarantine?

Quinlisk: I think that might be interesting to find out, especially in this context.

Hathaway: I would say take out box 6 because most responders will have no idea what you are talking about.

Quinlisk: On the next few questions would it be helpful for the responders to make sure they know that we are including the National Guard?

Reno: Question 84; I am not sure if the information is useful but do we want the number or personnel and the number of leaders? Would that be useful?

O’Brien: Along with the number, do we want the % of their organization that is?

Quinlisk: Then do we want some question that would quantify this? Its not just how many are gone, its how long they are gone, where they have gone etc.? What about a question like, ‘did this have the impact for me to respond to an incident…not at all, somewhat,’ etc.

Ralston: In my jurisdiction we have issues with labor unions, would it be helpful to include them on the survey somewhere?

Quinlisk: On question 87; talking about the special units. Do we want to take into consideration if there are not special units? I know Iowa doesn’t have urban search and rescue team.

Wermuth: Just add other and let them specify.

O’Brien: On pages 38 and 41 there are lists of either the type of terrorist incidents that have occurred or the probability of them occurring. I think that maybe we should be adding something to that that is maybe other. I am afraid ‘attacks on critical infrastructure’ maybe be a little too vague.

Davis: We could put ‘please specify’ after critical infrastructure.

O’Brien: I think you might also want arson or incendiary device as a box.

Greenleaf: Question 6; you are talking about task forces…is it necessary to restrict it to since 9-11? I think some are prior to 9-11. I don’t think it needs to be restricted.

Gilmore: If you have any more suggestions, I would suggest that you put it in an email this week. I would like to get back to the TOPOFF discussion now.

Discussion of TOPOFF 2 Exercise

Vickery: First let me address that this was a notice exercise. If we had a no notice exercise, we would be putting people who are our customers at risk while we responded to the exercise. We ended up with seeing that incident commanders cannot be directly involved in the incident. There has to be forward leadership in order to engage. Having the PFO was a big plus, it provided us with direction. If we are going to save lives, we are going to have to insert ourselves into some risk.

Quinlisk: Obviously in this scenario, some of the risk communication had to be between the people actually involved in the incident itself. Maybe when we talk about risk communication in the report we broaden it to include even the responders.

Vickery: The risk was very important to everyone.

Maniscalco: They spent all this money on beepers that tell that there is radiation that sends them running but doesn’t give them a read of the risk at all.

Vickery: You have to do risk benefit analysis, you can’t just evacuate the scene. There were great lessons learned from this exercise. I don’t want to send the message that TOPOFF was a failure. From the local side, we can only be as good as those first few hours and we need to push a lot harder to get where we are supposed to be.

O’Brien: Decision making and execution are terms that we need to remember.

Wermuth: I saw in both places, Seattle and Chicago the merger of the crisis response and consequence management pieces of this. I felt like especially in Seattle there was the effort to be coordinated. One of the lessons that I learned in the biological event is that when the dosages came to cure the outbreak, there were no children’s dosage and it was taking extra time to mix them for children. I felt like it was still a close hold, we don’t want you to know kind of exercise.

Molander: What kind of preparations were done before the exercise? Was there any effort to educate people on what radiation means?

Vickery: The answer is yes, but we didn’t want to pre-load the responder, so we tried to set protocols. But there aren’t any for emergency response. The only protocols that we have are from Chernobyl. The RAD issues didn’t hold us up, it was the communications issues that held us up.

Quinlisk: You get people saying that they want a plan for something very specific and one of the concerns is that even though you have basic concepts and basic plans, if you tried to make a plan for every incident, all we would be doing for the rest of our lives. At what point do you decide that your plan is robust enough and you are done planning?

Jones: Aren’t you talking about a concept of operations versus a plan?

Shine: Once you have a scenario worked out, you end up with a format that is pretty general. There are usually only one or two things that are specific. I think there will be a convergence around those eventually.

Quinlisk: I think that is the way it should go.

Greenleaf: In your opinion, did you think the exercise was worthwhile and cost effective?

Vickery: Absolutely. It would have been more effective if more departments were involved in the planning.

Brower: I was in DC. I think that we got a lot for the money. To exercise all those people for $17 million was reasonable. The modeling was a huge issue in DC. Decision makers do not seem to see how uncertain these models are. Except for an operations center in DC, the use of the military was not really exercised in this exercise. And I think that needs to be worked out. When they do TOPOFF 3, we need to get them involved. I was surprised that there were no leaders from Seattle or Chicago in the Washington operation center. They had very few outside people rating how they did their exercise. I am scared that it will be so sanitized by the time it gets out that it might not do any good.

Reno: I don’t think NORTHCOM was engaged enough.

Jenaway: I was at Health and Human Services (HHS) in DC and I thought that they did a good job displaying the movement of the smallpox across the country. I felt disenchanted with the center here in DC, I thought they were doing a woeful job. People were reading newspapers, there were people walking in and out. I thought it was a waste of time and money there.

Foresman: We are going to capture everyone’s comments. It is 3:30 and officially time to open it up for public comment…anyone? Okay, then we will continue with our discussion of TOPOFF 2.

Maniscalco: It should have been an exercise to engage the public in our process and it became the fodder of late night comedians. I think if we need to do these exercises we should do them correctly. I am not sure logistically we can do this.

Shine: How would you have used it for a better way of education?

Maniscalco: I think we have to develop a relationship with the media that engages the public. I want it to be less of a Hollywood moment and more engaging.

Vickery: The value of the exercise was in the planning.

Reno: The services conduct extraordinary training in their exercises. We can do this with responders too.

Gilmore: The exercise has to exercise the key issues, the fundamental concerns and if it doesn’t, then it is pointless.

Quinlisk: I think the other issue is that there is no way that every municipality can handle every incident that could occur. If we are going to spend all this money, I would like to know, without sanitization, what the lesson learned were. And I don’t think that is going to happen.

Wermuth: My guess is that you will get no value out of any of the official documents from this exercise.

Gilmore: Let me remind you that behind Tab 4, there is a draft outline of the Fifth report. Does anyone have any other issues with this outline? If you believe that this draft outline doesn’t capture what we discussed, I would invite you to send an email to Mike and Jennifer.

Brower: Roger and I would like the opportunity to poll the members on the strategic vision aspect of this report. It will probably appear as an options paper.

Gilmore: This is the last report, keep in mind that this is the last word that the panel has to say.

Greenleaf: Do you think having the meeting in California will effect the ability to get speakers to come before us?

Wermuth: We have gotten word that it isn’t a problem.

Gilmore: Any other issues?

Adjournment