Gilmore Commission - Minutes
Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for
Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction
3 September 2003
In room:
James Gilmore- Chairman
John Hathaway
Kathleen O’Brien
Bill Reno
Ken Shine
Mike Freeman
George Foresman
Dallas Jones
Hubert Williams
Ellen Gordon
Pat Ralston
AD Vickery
Mike Freeman
Paul Maniscalco
Mike Wermuth- RAND Staff
Hillary Peck-RAND Staff
On Phone:
Jack Marsh
Bill Jenaway
Scott McMahon- RAND Staff
Jim Greenleaf
Suzanne Spaulding- RAND Staff
Jennifer Brower- RAND Staff
Opening Remarks
Gilmore: Good morning everyone. We are glad to be here in Sacramento, at Dallas’ facility, the California Office of Emergency Services. We have a lot on the agenda today, mostly focused on the state and local levels of our discussion. I want to thank the RAND staff for all their work on this. I also want to thank George Foresman for always going above and beyond the call of duty for this Panel. As a matter of fact, I would like to officially give him the title of vice chairman if no one objects.
Wermuth: There are two changes that need to be made to the agenda. At 10:30 instead of her usual legislative update, Suzanne Spaulding will give us an update of her research on civil liberties. Also at 4:15, we will hear from Ernie Mitchell of the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC). We also have Jeff Isaacson, of RAND here with us. Since the agenda is so full, I propose that we start right away with our first presenter, Bill Webb from the Congressional Fire Services Institute.
Congressional Fire Services Institute Presentation - Bill Webb
Bill Webb: Great to be in Sunny California. Good morning. A copy of my testimony was handed out to each of you so you have it in front of you. See written testimony
Shine: I am concerned about the notion about the application of this principal of improving the basic needs of a whole variety of issues. How do you maximize the potential for interactions?
Foresman: The need issue cannot be argued with. The fire program is one program that is direct federal to local funding source. How do you improve the coordination of funding to ensure that everyone gets complementary funding, not changing the structure?
Webb: At some level within the department, I don’t know if the Office of Domestic Preparedness (ODP) has the manpower to provide the skill level that is need to do this. As far as coordination is concerned, I guess my answer to that would be that the office of state and local preparation plays a role. I am recommending the preservation of the Fire Act.
Jones: One of the concerns I have had on this act is that there is no issue of sustainability. There doesn’t seem to be any follow-up to the program. We usually have general requirements for maintenance and replacement. Is there the ability to replace and maintain the equipment? Is there some sustainability in the program?
Webb: I believe that there is not.
Reno: My company has a contract with FEMA to help them build their planning and budgeting ability. The issue with this legislation to move the grant program to the ODP is not consistent. We have to ask, at a national level, who is responsible for this program? FEMA and the fire academy sit there with hundreds of grants to allocate but without knowing where to put it. I would disagree in principal from moving it out of FEMA. Then you have to ask yourselves who is accountable? I find when I work overseas, as we redesign armies, you hold off on implementing things. Until the ODP is more stable and gets stuff into place, I would hold off on moving things into that body. I am concerned with the $750 million, because it seems to be a more is better situation. My view is that we should support retention of the legislation as it is written. Three years from now, the Secretary might want to change it, because it would be more mature. Fire grants need to be reviewed through the strategic vision of how that can be sustained.
Ralston: I agree that it needs to stay where it is right now.
Webb: One of the messages that I have been toting, is now that you have the system in place, lets see how well it works.
Gilmore: From where I am sitting, I am struggling to figure out if this is pork barreling. Nobody objects to money going to fire preparation. Furthermore, this commission, can easily fall off of our main objective of homeland security in order to request more money for various sectors. What I haven’t heard is what you want the money for? What does the fire community, as a whole, think of as their role in homeland security? I feel like I am missing from this presentation what the fire department’s strategic vision for their role in homeland security is?
Webb: First of all, how do you define homeland security? The role of the fire service in all four of the terrorist attacks in the US, was that they were the first ones on site. First, when the firefighter enters the building, he needs to have communications that allow him to talk to others across the building. When a firefighter responds to an incident of homeland security, he needs to have proper gear, proper communications. That is the most important thing for us. I agree with you about funding, lets target money in the ways that it would help the best. As far as our role goes, we are the first ones in.
Jenaway: Over the years, a couple of dynamics have occurred and people in the fire services have become frustrated by it. A few years ago, the police services were given grants to boost their capabilities. The fire services didn’t get that and didn’t complain but today they are asked to do a lot more than ever before and now they believe that they should get some of that money. The second issue is that the fire service is fully attuned to this grant system and what they are concerned about is that the FEMA grant system would be fused with the homeland security funding system. We are suggesting that we do not mix the two grant systems. Right now, they need money for basic protection of fire fighters, and you are right Dallas, they do not have a sustainability clause in there. Somewhere along the line, we need to make sure that each state is responsible for funding for homeland security and we need to make sure they see a whole picture of homeland security. The funding system is so broken.
Vickery: When that bomb goes off, you do not call an emergency manager to respond. You do not call a health official. You call 911 and get a fire fighter. The Fire Grant Program stipulates clearly that this is not to be used for homeland security. End of discussion. I think there are two tracks here. I think one is the fact that the Fire Grant Program is not a homeland security component.
O’Brien: I think what we are really talking about is the future role of the fire service, how it has evolved over time. I think we ought to think about this in those terms. If we as a nation need the fire service to evolve, then maybe we do want to use federal dollars instead of local dollars. I agree with Bill that we probably do what to use some money to bring this up to certain standards.
Foresman: This was a beneficial conversation that you brought up. The Fire Act program was a pre-September 11th program. How do we achieve a macro strategic structure?
Shine: I think that you cannot talk about an all hazard approach and not include homeland security. I agree with Bill that it is unwise to move this program into ODP, for many reasons. This program requires a strategic plan, which should include that funding is done by specific principals. It would also address some of the issues that have been raised about state and local representation.
Gilmore: You can set this into two categories. You can have a fire that is a regular fire and another that is part of a disaster. It is conventional versus non-conventional. Unless you get yourself into a situation where you have it all thought out, you will have a situation where a fire fighter gets killed. I think this is a great discussion and we need to have more of it but unfortunately our time is up. We now have Admiral Loy, connecting through a video teleconference.
Transportation Security Administration Discussion - Admiral Jim Loy
Wermuth: It is my pleasure to introduce Admiral Loy.
Loy: When it comes to terrorism, clever slogans are not what is going to carry the day. We do need new ideas and clever ideas, but I think some basic ideas will be what carries us through this. I think there are two crucial elements of this vision. If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there. I think a solid strategy is what is missing right now. There is lots of White House strategies and missions floating all over the place. So when we see a mired of pieces of conversation (Patriot Act, etc). I would break out of the prevention piece up front. What they have in mind is better awareness, whether that is connecting the dots as they talked about after 9/11 or something else. In the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), I think this new directorate called Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection (IAIP) will either make it or break it. This notion of taking transportation as a system can be thought of as a matrix.
Commercial Aviation Passenger Screening System (CAPPS 2)- is a limited automated passenger screening system designed to replace CAPSS 1. CAPSS 1 was created in 1996, in pre-9/11 days. The new system will be scalable, flexible, it will be consistent. It is not data mining, it is not profiling, it is not a database. All of those misnomers are scare tactics around the country. Its purpose will be to authenticate the identity of a person who wants to get on an airplane by seeking from that passenger; name, address, phone number and date of birth. And based on proven tactics, we will send electronic signals to a private sector array of databases to authenticate these identities. Armed with that, in the form of a score, they will send back whether this person is or isn’t the person they claim to be. We will perform a risk assessment on each and every one of those passengers. It must be thoughtful of privacy issues. I am an advocate of doing it the right way. We have been talking about now only maintaining that information for a few days, until the itinerary of the trip has been completed. This has changed since January when we thought we would keep that information for 50 years. Probably more than any other system, we have done our homework in response to civil liberties. Those are some quick thoughts on CAPSS 2. Now I can take whatever questions you might have.
Gilmore: The Panel has been in existence for five years now and the way we work things is to be sure that everyone gets to give their two sense to the discussion. And because of this, we believe that we have gotten to the bottom of things better than anyone else.
Ralston: Folks who are on visas, who are not US citizens, will that information be available?
Loy: It is clear that their immigration status will be available to us through that risk assessment. I think in our country Profiling has a certain negative stigma. I like to differentiate profiling with a little p and Profiling with a big P.
Foresman: You are essentially scoring an individual, and once that score is assigned, they are vetted to other government offices. Where do the checks and balances come into this? How do we know that we are only going in to check on those individuals that might actually be a risk?
Loy: There are two elements to the system. One is access and one is scope. We believe the oversight responsibility will be helpful to both of those notions. We are not going to build additional databases, there are already databases that exist that can help us. The privacy community is concerned about the issue of mission creep. And I am also concerned about the same thing.
Gilmore: We appreciate your strategic response to the first issue. An idea of what you know what’s going on around you is appreciated. That is a good concept. The application to CAPSS 2 to it, I think is challenging. In the federal government level we pay a lot of respect to Ben Franklin, but he often sounds like Gladstone. There will be an unawareness of people on the federal level of the fact that they are changing the general life of the average American in order to fulfill these overall Benjamin Franklin goals. Is it part and partial that we have the right to travel from one place to another? If you were going to have a system where you just identify identity, that is one thing. But now you are issuing a score to those who think it is part and partial to have the liberty to travel. You might end up with a guy who has traffic tickets in NYC or you could be right, you might end up with an Eric Rudolph. Let me give you a concept, the diffusion of information. Ten databases dispersed may be comfortable to the American people. So you give your information to the local department store, you give it to the DMV, knowing that they will never interact with each other. But now you are giving them the keys to interact. I am not sure the American people would be comfortable with that.
Loy: It is a radically different society we live in post-9/11. If I have learned anything about the American people, it’s a fact that they expect to keep their rights of travel. If a risk assessment can become a tool to prevent a terrorist event, that is the goal and the focus of this system. The scoring thing is a device, it is not permanent record. It will be purged after the person flies his itinerary. We need to be educationally oriented in the next few weeks. We are trying to keep terrorists and those who associate with terrorists off airplanes.
Williams: Thank you for your presentation today. There are concerns on the Panel of civil liberties. There is concern here that as we move forward to provide security, we are going to lose some of the freedoms that we currently enjoy. Not only do you suggest a system that is sort of frightening, but it also has the risk of misidentifying an honest red-blooded American who is innocent. And how will they treat Americans that they think are terrorists? How will you legitimize this thing? If we are going to process every person who is entering an airplane or train…it seems to be an overwhelming burden to both the individual and to the system. When you were talking about small p versus big P, I am concerned about how we will ensure that we will not be discriminating against anyone based on religion, creed, race etc..
Loy: You have absolutely the same concerns that I had. The quality of the data is an enormously important issue for us. We have done some design work with the best contractors that are out there. If there is one mistake, and we misidentify someone as a terrorist who is not, we must have the repeal process in place…and we are putting this together. The intention is to go exactly where you want it to go Hubert.
Reno: Thank you very much Admiral Loy. As I was flying out to this meeting, I read an article about training analysts. Its conclusion was that we come from the Christian Judeo thought and we have problems thinking like the enemy. I believe that I have given up many freedoms. I am looking for the freedom to travel safely. I am looking for the freedom for my grandchildren to fly to visit me where they are not afraid of flying. I would like to visit the Pentagon without 4 hours of preparation to get in. And all of this because we do not understand our enemy. I do know that if you fail in your mission and the terrorists were to take out 4-5 planes around the world in the next few hours, our economy and infrastructure would be in disarray.
Loy: Thank you for those thoughts, they are very close to my own. I would like to focus my energy to returning public confidence about traveling safely. There has been a long-standing question of a return to normalcy. This notion of understanding this new enemy is right on target. I can tell you that in the 40’s and 50’s that there were people who were trying to get a hold of who the Soviets were. And now we are doing the same sort of thing with this new enemy. This is our generation’s opportunity to be making judgments along the way about how best to do that, at the same time holding onto public confidence about traveling safely. Whether we like it or not, this teeter-totter of security on one hand and civil liberties on the other is reliant on the economy. I don’t think we will return to normalcy as we understood it on 9/10.
Gordon: Who will own the data on the travel information once it is pulled up? Does the Federal government own it?
Loy: The data we are talking about will be purged and no one will own it. We are going to keep no data, with the singular exception of those who rank in the red category and have some association with terrorism or terrorists. Each time you want to travel, we will start all over again.
Shine: You talked about the travelers advocacy group and appeals mechanisms and so forth, would you consider having some non-agency, civilian oversight? Having some individuals who follow this process over time?
Loy: Absolutely. We will have congressional oversight. And we have an independent body, including plain old citizens, looking out for their own best interests.
Wermuth: In trying to summarize some of the thoughts here. It seems like there is a potential benefit in trying to articulate a distinction between rights and privileges. I make a distinction between constitution rights (speech, equal protection of the law etc) and privileges. There is no constitutional rights to a drivers license. There are restrictions; you have to be able to see, you have the risk of getting it revoked if you drink and drive and so forth. Traveling on an airplane is a privilege…not a right. There are restrictions, money being one. The question becomes, what comes to the level of the constitutional right and what is a privilege?
Loy: You are absolutely right. I am always careful to distinguish between sacrifice and inconvenience. Those notions and the fine line in between them is not an academic discussion, it is about real application to the practicality.
Gilmore: I think we are in a major philosophical discussion after 9/11 and we need to be thinking about these kinds of questions. I think that’s the right thing to do. It is easy to redefine what liberty is in an authoritarian society. I think your program can probably be implemented, depending on how you define it. I think the odds of you implementing this under your current system are unlikely. But maybe it will be. I would like to thank you again for your presentation.
National Emergency Management Association (NEMA) Presentation - Glen Woodbury
Woodbury: See written testimony
Gilmore: This is a very impressive presentation. Can you explain to me, what, if any, structure or organization exists to organize all these difference interest groups, in terms of response? Do you have a formal coordination role?
Woodbury: State and local comprehensive emergency plans exist. Each state is taking a different approach. That is where the debate occurs. NEMA at the national level, is trying to bring together all the national organizations.
Shine: Does it have operational responsibility? A decision authority?
Woodbury: Yes.
Reno: When we were in Indianapolis, I posed this question; if you want to coordinate the resource distribution into the state, should the funds be allocated to the state emergency operations, like Dallas Jones’ operation here? And the answer I got was no, don’t give it to the states. It seems sort of schizophrenic.
Foresman: Operationally almost every state statute says that the fire chief is responsible for the fire service, the police chief is responsible for the police etc…We have created the DHS without really defining what homeland security is. So there is a Jackal and Hyde mentality within DHS. Can you fund directly to local fire departments? The answer is probably yes but there is some fancy footwork involved. DHS is operating with conflict within itself.
Shine: It seems to me on the one hand, there will always be the political side responding to their own constituencies. On the other hand, if you want to see something coordinated, you change the operation laws within the state so that the state doesn’t allow that to happen. It’s not clear to me whether the trend in the states is to do anything about it or not.
Foresman: Well you can’t have a state law that goes against a federal law. Part of this is that it is not articulated well.
Gilmore: I appreciate this presentation a great deal.
O’Brien: When George made the comment that the system works as well as the state works. When I take a look at this presentation, there are many themes that we are repeated over and over again by this commission. We have to recognize that the political system is not going away and we have to acknowledge this.
Civil Liberties Discussion - Suzanne Spaulding
Private Sector Discussion - Mike Armstrong
Armstrong: See written testimony
I would have to say that the relationship between the public sector and private sector is the most important venture right now.
I have three recommendations for the Panel. We hope that you would endorse a relationship between the public and private sectors. This can be done through the National Governors Association (NGA) and the other is through NEMA. I believe the private sector could be a partner with both. The second recommendation is that DHS has a central command of control and that CEO Comlink is involved in that command and control. We would hope that you would endorse the idea that all private companies have a homeland security statute in their charters.
Shine: After 9/11, I heard many complaints in the private sector about the interface between the private sector and the government. I wonder what your assessment is about that part of the partnership. My second question is that in our work, we have had a hard time engaging the corporate world in a homeland security discussion. It has been difficult to mobilize businesses outside of large cities in this dialogue. I am interested in what your experience has been with this.
Armstrong: The two points are good ones. I would like to separate the companies who are really interacting with the public sector from the ones who don’t, because they have something to sell. There is a second agenda that each party has. Getting companies in non-metropolitan areas to sustain homeland security as a priority is a problem. Companies who suffered major disasters like earthquakes or 9/11, I can get them to listen. We have got to make this a priority throughout our society, business community included. And if it is not in front of us and hitting us in the face, they will likely not do anything about it.
Foresman: I would like to focus on the corporate governance issue for a second. We always point to the private sector as the benchmark for public sector activities. Is it going to take regulation to drive corporate America to incorporate these homeland security issues at a macro level? If you read through your testimony, you say that on one hand you need some regulation but on the other hand you don’t want regulation. So which is it? Beyond all the physical dangers that we face, we face economic vulnerabilities as well. What is the right structure in terming the interaction, especially at the state and local level?
Armstrong: You are right, the security system is in one place, the IT is in another and business operations in another. You are right, they have to come together. Our approach is to endorse those principals of corporate governance vis-a-vis homeland security. If we are going to get it done without regulation, there is going to have to be enough pressure on the system.
Foresman: When you talk about homeland security, do you include everything, even a power blackout and anything that involves a disaster?
Armstrong: Yes. We must focus on the business continuity, and that can be disrupted from a fire, a flood, earthquake or terrorist attack. For the local communities around the country to do everything for any incident is going to be tough.
Gilmore: You have focused the most on communications in your presentation today including the ability to communicate amongst each other and with the federal government. Do you believe that communication is the principal function that should be focused on? What do you see is the mission and role of private enterprise in homeland security?
Armstrong: I think the resources of the private sector are invaluable in responding to any kind of event. With leadership and decisiveness, this can be utilized.
Marsh: You have referenced cyber security, can you talk more about this?
Armstrong: We have just organized a taskforce for cyber security. Those of us who have been in the computer industry know that the majority of computer software that is out there today was not written with protection in mind. We need to make the business community even more aware and make sure that the people who make the software know that people will not buy it unless it has protection.
Marsh: Do you think it would be helpful for this Panel to make a recommendation with respect to cyber security?
Armstrong: I think that the commission should not leave that subject silent. But I didn’t come prepared today to think about that question. I can say that in my community we think that a cyber attack is likely.
Vickery: We have grappled with the question about how you can tell how prepared someone is? Is there something from the business community that can help guide us?
Armstrong: Yes, and that is a very good question. I would like to reference the company that I just retired from, AT&T. Back in the 70’s we had an outage that was so bad we promised nothing like it would ever happen again. We put semi trailers all around the country with equipment and organized resources in which to fly to a point of disaster and the trucks would be waiting for us there if anything were to happen. That has evolved now, to not only plan for natural disaster, but to plan for terrorist attacks. AT&T is not the only ones who offer that as a service. IBM also does. Doing a risk assessment of your critical processes is so fundamental and yet we did a study and 1 of 4 businesses has not done a risk assessment in the past few years. And 4 out of 5 that have, have not practiced that risk assessment.
Gilmore: This is very valuable and we appreciate your views. Thanks a lot.
Survey Status Discussion - Lois Davis
Davis: See Power Point Slides
Wermuth: We are getting good responses from those who we usually get good responses from. I am guessing we will have to push hard to get some of the health people to respond. We want to get our response rates back up to what they were in the first round. We want to have a discussion after we get the results in early October.
Foresman: One thing we are going to have to grapple with is if we take some of those comments to include with our report, do we assume that its truth? We want a mechanism that states what the perception versus the reality is. We may want to use fewer comments and get a good sampling of the good, the bad, the ugly, the correct, and the incorrect.
Davis: That is a good point, it is certainly their perceptions.
O’Brien: In the comments, were you literally taking individual comments or are they representative or sort of repeated?
Wermuth: They are verbatim, taken directly from surveys.
Davis: We don’t want to take all of it, but we want to take some key things.
O’Brien: Following that, we might want to present them as a span of perceptions that we find in the survey and say ‘here are some key theme we find again and again.’ Just the breath of perception gives us something.
Foresman: This misinformation is valuable to show what is working.
Maniscalco: We don’t know context in most cases. When we start to look at the commentary, we don’t know the agenda of the people filling out the surveys.
Davis: The key themes are going to be useful.
Wermuth: We have included in the first and second reports, the verbatim responses, all of them. But we have put a caveat in that says, ‘these are not our recommendations, these are just the comments we have received.’ We will be careful and everyone will have an opportunity to see what is included and what is not. I suggest we continue to include the comments from the survey.
Gilmore: We are conducting a scientific survey and we are going to hold it out as a foundation of the report. Then we have to go through a strenuous analysis to ensure that the results are valid.
Gordon: I didn’t get the timeline process for this survey. Will we have the results in place in November?
Wermuth: Absolutely. All of the analysis will be done and vetted through the sub panel before that meeting.
Reno: On the current response rate; do you predict it will be higher or lower than the 2001 survey?
Davis: I expect lower. If you repeatedly survey a sample, you will get less people responding. Also, I think in post 9/11 days, many of these entities have been over-surveyed in recent times. Luckily they recognize the Gilmore Commission name and spend a little more time on it than other surveys.
Williams: Are the quotes that we do have representative of themes or from individuals?
Davis: I just took whatever surveys had given us comments so far. So what you see is not representative of themes. It is still too early to get a sense of this.
Reno: We market this as a truly scientific survey…isn’t it important to Health and Human Services (HHS) and the fire academy for example, to respond? If I were one of them, I would be writing to get funding for my organization. Should we be writing to the leaders of these entities and tell them this or would it be biased if we did that?
Davis: We had Patty Quinlisk and Ken Shine write to public health officials and I would like to get Paul Maniscalco to do the same for emergency responders. It’s important for them to know that they have a voice on the Gilmore Commission.
Foresman: If you don’t think it would skew things, a rare occurrence will take place the day after tomorrow where stakeholders will be together for a meeting in Seattle, lead by Ellen Gordon.
Fifth Report Research Discussion - Brian Jackson
Jackson: See Power Point Slides
Wermuth: As I understand it, you would come to the conclusion that spectrum allocation is not, by itself, a solution.
Jackson: Spectrum is necessary, but not sufficient. When you coordinate and bring people together, eventually the demand for spectrum will fill up. As you increase the spectrum in some ways, you create more demand for spectrum. More spectrum is not the sole answer to the problem.
Wermuth: Have you considered layered networks, modeled after the military? So that only certain people at each level are allowed to enter certain layers of the communications system.
Jackson: That is one strategy, it is a way of helping to reduce the problem of excess traffic. There are certainly ways of building that into a system.
Jones: Have you considered tactical radio needs? I don’t see the need necessarily for the federal government to plug in. So I don’t understand why you would look at that.
Jackson: In thinking about the inter-operability I was thinking about a large-scale operation. I was thinking about the coordination of the entire operation. When I say national, I don’t mean that the federal government could plug into the system. I meant more that it needed to address problems that are national in scale.
Jones: I think the federal government has some interest in plugging in to this.
Jackson: My national concept was whether there should be some sort of black box where the national officials could plug in if they needed it.
Gordon: Are we just limiting this to radio consciously?
Jackson: That is sort of just where my research took me.
Gordon: I think we might just want to make a statement about data and voice, just so we acknowledge that we know about it, so we don’t look naïve.
Greenleaf: Have you seen any instances where communities are combining their communications through one dispatch center? The issues seem to be more political, unions and so forth.
Jackson: I didn’t look at that particular issue right now. Some of the technical solutions can be put in through a dispatch center. That is certainly one way that this has been put into practice.
Gordon: I don’t think these are strong enough recommendations for us to make. They are no-brainers, everyone knows this. I think we need to look at this a little bit stronger. I think its way to weak.
Jackson: I can take another looks at the recommendations.
Foresman: You might want to look at the terms mandate or regulate in terms of funding.
Maniscalco: What do we expect from interoperability and why? It concerns me that we are avoiding that readiness issue. We haven’t defined readiness and we are dumping money into it. This has got to be requirements driven and it should comply with how we do business on a daily basis. I concur with Ellen, our recommendations have to be narrowly defined and they have to be global.
Jones: There are some fairly good definitions of interoperability that deal with those who need to talk to each other and such. There is no simple solution to this, there are billions of dollars involved and no one is willing to spend the money that is necessary.
Gordon: Would we be too out there to recommend a wireless highway much like the physical highway?
Gilmore: I think you are right Ellen, I think we should recommend something bold. Especially since this is the last year.
Fifth Report Discussion - Bill Rosenau
Rosenau: See Power Point Slides
Gordon: Have we fundamentally accepted the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC)?
Rosenau: I think that TTIC has a lot of issues, but its still very early to judge. It only started on 1 May of this year. I think there are some problems. To be fair, it’s probably too early to tell at this point.
Wermuth: I assume you are actually going to be focusing on that concern.
Rosenau: Absolutely. It is very murky right now, no one has a clear idea of what they are meant to do.
Gordon: I think we need to add one more bullet that deals with a system that engages state and local governments, because TTIC does not do this right now. I think we should add something in our report.
Rosenau: I think that is an excellent point.
Shine: I want to answer Ellen’s question….at least I don’t think that TTIC will work. You will not see significant people from either the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) or the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) move over there, so you will lack talent in the TTIC. I don’t see that we can undo TTIC at this point but I would raise the issue that we should urge that in some timely fashion, short of a major catastrophe, that there be careful assessments of TTIC’s performance. I was unimpressed by presentations by the FBI and CIA at our meetings earlier in the year.
Gilmore: Let’s not forget that we recommended a fusion center. The issue here is not the concept but the implementation, is that correct?
Shine: Absolutely.
Wermuth: We said in our recommendation that states and localities be involved in the fusion center and they seem to have completely ignored that so far.
Gilmore: So do we want to set aside a few pages in the report that analyzes the TTIC?
Rosenau: The FBI puts a stress on creating an analytical cadre within the FBI. The people who are going to be assessing the threat will be FBI people, even though they are in TTIC.
Foresman: We ought not to be focused so much on the FBI, CIA and remember that most intelligence is in Defense.
Reno: We have to sure up Human Intelligence.
International Association of Chiefs of Police Discussion - Joe Samuels
Gilmore: The next presentation is on behalf of the IACP, and will be given by our former Panel member, Joe Samuels.
Samuels: See Power Point Slides
There are four core areas that the IACP is involved in right now. First, the whole area of radio spectrum and allocation. The IACP has joined in a coalition and the Nextel Corporation in filing a petition on this issue. We are agitating and lobbying in that regard. If you need some in depth representation on this, I can make our expert available to you. Second, funding. The IACP has a little different take on the funding issue. We have a responsibility as first responders, we cannot walk away from our basic mission of neighborhood safety. We can’t do one or the other, we have to do both. The IACP does not believe that money can be shifted from one pot to the other. The money cannot go entirely to homeland security. Part of our efforts on the hill are to make sure that is understood. Thirdly, information and intelligence is key and critical. We don’t do as good a job as we need to in terms of analyzing, and sharing. Last but not least, is that there is not a lot of outreach with the private sector in terms of terrorism prevention and response.
Freeman: Thank you Chief. You mentioned that over 70% of your respondents feel that they are prepared to prevent terrorism. Do you believe there is a clear understanding of what it takes to prevent terrorism?
Samuels: I do not.
Freeman: There is a low percentage of interaction with the FBI and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), is there a concept of what it will take to increase that interaction?
Samuels: I applaud Director Mueller. I think from that standpoint, he has taken some steps in this. He has created advisory panels with representatives from local governments. But I have to question whether those are really committed.
Foresman: I think one of the best things you folks can do is to inform the DHS. I am interested in why there is a partnership between these public sector entities and Nextel. Does the IACP see these communications issues as a government issue or a private issue? From the standpoint of most law enforcement officers, we are dealing with a large increase of crime. The thought is out there that we are spending money on homeland security at the expense of other incidents like crime. What are your thoughts?
Samuels: I think we have been spoiled and our communities have been spoiled in the last decade. We have seen declining crime rates but there is only so far you can go before you start bottoming out. It’s not so much that the rates are going back up but its that our response to these rates has increased. I would like the commission to meet with Harland McQuin, our expert on radio spectrum issues and he can inform you better.
Shine: Chief, when agencies report that they are not ready to deal with terrorism, how would they know if they were ready? Has your organization attempted to put forth any standards? How do you know if you reach the point when you are prepared?
Samuels: I think its related more to the extent with how we interact with other agencies. If we go solo and don’t collaborate with other agencies, we will never feel prepared. The more we interact, the more we will feel prepared. Multi-agency collaboration is the way to go with this to ensure that communities are safe.
Shine: Could you identify a checklist of ways to be prepared so that if everything is checked off, then an agency would be prepared?
Samuels: I think that’s probably a good suggestion for another survey. I don’t have a matrix, I don’t know if its been done by anyone. I will take that back to our membership.
Jones: Have you gotten together with various agencies to talk about who is doing what or are we going to overlap and have redundancies of ability?
Samuels: I stress collaboration with other agencies. There is a common agenda with funding but we probably have not done as much as we could as far as going up on the Hill together.
Gordon: Has your association taken a position on taking non law enforcement agencies into the fusion of information, for example public health?
Samuels: Frankly, I don’t believe that we have and that is probably an opportunity that we are missing out on.
Gilmore: If you think back to what Mike Armstrong was talking about, all of his recommendations were internal. They had some communications with DHS, but it was all built in. The two points match, he was saying that they were frustrated because they can’t find a way to interact with government. Joe is saying that on the public side, 90% said they don’t interact with the private sector. A potential recommendation for us is to find a bridge between these two sectors.
Maniscalco: Until we have a coherent strategic vision of what the end state is going to look like, you are going to have fragmentation.
Jenaway: The Factory Mutual System recently did a study where they found that 59% of companies were directing their resources on known hazards and not really on terrorism.
Gilmore: So the roundtable got excited and tried to do some things but most of the rest of the private community didn’t follow behind.
Reno: Perhaps the roundtable could look at a concept of support of all hazards response.
Foresman: What is the incentive for the community to do that?
Samuels: The CEO, if he or she decides that this is going to be a priority for their company, we will work with them. But that is a corporate decision made at the highest level. But until that is made, this will not be a priority.
Williams: The business roundtable said that collaboration is important. The key thing to be effective against terrorism is that there must be improved collaboration and that police chiefs will have to be involved in that.
O’Brien: Mike Armstrong said he was just completing his seventeenth move. Someone who has moved seventeen times probably doesn’t have a close relationship with his local police chief. On the other hand he is chair of the business roundtable.
Gilmore: The business roundtable is made up of CEOs, which is pretty high on the food chain. It really is more the plant manager at the local level that should be collaborating with the police chief.
Jones: That’s right, it isn’t as important for a high CEO to deal with this homeland security. There is a disconnect; it needs to be ground up and not top down. Where the dialogue is most important should be identified.
Maniscalco: We don’t want to lose site of the corporate side of this. It also has to flow down, where the CEO’s tell the lower level employees to work with the fire and police chiefs. It needs to move both directions.
Foresman: 85% of businesses are 25 employees or less. How do they interact with the public system? There is a level of responsibility to the business community at large. We might want to put on the table that there needs to be an organizational structure for those small businesses.
Fifth Report Discussion - Seth Jones
Seth Jones: See Power Point Slides
Wermuth: Let me make a suggestion. It’s not so much that ODP and Emergency Preparedness and Response (EP&R) themselves need to be combined...but more that the grant programs need to be combined. The funds get put into a single grant making entity. So that funding for fires and terrorism activities end up in a single office. And then you can establish priorities within that office.
Maniscalco: We are shifting around everything and its difficult enough to find things now, why move things again?
Foresman: We should be articulating the attribute.
Reno: I agree with the recommendation. You have political issues, but if you look at the undersecretary for preparedness and response, he has the obligation to be prepared for all hazards, and he includes terrorism in this. Here you have a case where ODP is controlling all the money that supports the training and preparedness for EP&R in one place. The historical stovepipes and nuances make it extremely difficult to collaborate. Until you can change the cultural beliefs, it is going to be difficult. I support the recommendation.
Gordon: I would agree to a certain extent. We need to weigh in on whether or not the programs are duplicated. ODP is outdoing other entities because they have the money and we need to call them out on that. And we need to call them on the cultural shift that needs to take place.
Hathaway: Let me give you a history of ODP….it was set up in 1996, it is set for weapons of mass destruction (WMD), not terrorism. It was not set up as an anti-terrorist entity. It has federal funding. It was under Justice and now it is going to DHS. Everything is tied up into ODP. The funding from congress is for WMD.
Vickery: It started off for the state and local level.
Jones: We have to make a statement once and for all that it is all-hazards. Whether a person starts a fire or a lightening strike starts a fire, they both have the same end result. It doesn’t really have anything to do with them being hazards. We need to combine them so that they are down in the structure.
Reno: I personally have seen an improvement in EP&R. There are still a lot of issues, that I have mentioned that will prevent the long-term maturity, but I see movement in the right direction. There is only so much change that an organization can take at one time.
Foresman: I want to add to that, this would really be a recommendation to Congress, not to the White House. We need to look at political appointees but more importantly we need to see that emergency preparedness is all hazards and they need to stop micromanaging the process. But we need to let the appropriations be managed by the agency. What you have right now are 500 people in the Congress trying to manage the state and local levels of preparedness.
Seth Jones: I think that the major points are that a distinction between terrorism and natural disasters is a false distinction. And separating functions based on that false distinction is wrong. Maybe we should say that because it is a false distinction, then it makes no sense to artificially have grants and assistance in DHS areas. And it might be helpful to combine grants into one specific area. That might be a way to cut into that.
Gordon: Make sure you look at the grant programs that are in the other branches. We want to make sure we are not just picking on one area.
O’Brien: Instead of saying it’s a false distinction, maybe we should say it’s a misleading distinction.
Wermuth: I suggest that we come back to that particular issue in the future. One point too, in that first bullet there, the TTIC doesn’t belong to the CIA, it belongs to the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). That is more than semantics. It is not a CIA entity. In this case it might be a distinction without a difference because of where it is located.
Gilmore: We pointed out a long time ago that if agencies like the Coast Guard are put into the DHS, then the roles that are not homeland security would be in an odd place.
Shine: I think a lot of this depends on how we frame this section of the report. He has looked at Coast Guard in depth but there are certainly other things to look at. I wonder if we should have a section on DHS that first of all looks at some of our earlier recommendations. Then to go on and say, ‘a department has been established, it is still in transition, some of the concerns that we had about such a department are reflected in the following ways.’ And then our recommendations would be over the next couple of years, so that it has an overall long-term thrust.
Reno: We need to be careful about pointing to the Coast Guard. The problems of the Coast Guard are slowly getting solved. We shouldn’t come on too strong on the problems of the Coast Guard.
Gilmore: Are they getting new resources because of their function in homeland security?
Seth Jones: They have gotten an increase in funding but the concern is what they are using that funding for. One thing I didn’t mention is that the Coast Guard has been involved in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have been putting resources into military operations. There is a that they need to think about rebalancing efforts for traditional missions.
Gilmore: Isn’t it interesting that we are putting forth a recommendation that funding should be taken from homeland security and put back into traditional efforts? I don’t necessarily disagree with it.
Shine: All we are saying is that for the function of the Coast Guard, it was not our intent to take resources from one function to another.
Foresman: One of the things we said in the third report is to maintain balanced funding and resources.
Williams: What is our recommendation to them? That down the road they need to reassess their deployment and see if they might need to go back and rebalance their funding?
Seth Jones: If you look at issues of the traditional Coast Guard missions, they are taking cutters away from traditional tasks and having them patrol ports as part of homeland security. So if they are taking resources away from traditional missions, are they doing this in the best way?
Shine: I don’t think that we should spend more time talking about the Coast Guard. A better example is public health. You are making tradeoffs. If you take resources from, for example, sexually transmitted diseases or cancer research, to put it into security issues, you are definitely dealing with a rebalance. Maybe the Coast Guard isn’t an adequate example.
Wermuth: There is one other example that may be more accurate and that is marine safety. That gets closer to the all-hazards approach.
Gordon: We need to talk about the state and local government interface. Does the DHS see them as a partner?
Maniscalco: Are you going to look at assignment of personnel in the Coast Guard? When we talk about rebalance are we talking about reallocation?
Seth Jones: I can definitely do that.
Shine: That is why we have to focus on the functions of DHS and not the Coast Guard specifically.
International Association of Fire Fighters Discussion - Ernie Mitchell
Freeman: I would like to introduce our next presenter, Ernie Mitchell.
Mitchell: See written testimony
Shine: Very nice presentation Chief. You said the fire service needs a clear mission statement from the federal government. Who should create that mission and set those standards and how should it be done?
Mitchell: That is going to happen somehow through the DHS. I would like to participate in that discussion. We need to be at the table and be involved in preparing whatever that outcome is.
Shine: Your point is that local members of the community should participate in these kinds of discussions?
Mitchell: Yes, absolutely.
Foresman: Does the community have to agree to a co-payment or does the department agree to it? Would the fire service be willing to accept national standards on training?
Vickery: In Washington state, we have minimum standards for volunteer and paid fire fighters.
Jenaway: In Pennsylvania, there is no standard.
Foresman: Are we actively engaging local governments?
Mitchell: I know that career departments are responsible to local governments. That is a good issue that needs to be readdressed. We want to be involved in the processes.
Freeman: Just to get a little clarification. It seems that the desire for information communication relates more with intelligence and sharing of critical pre-event information. Is that accurate?
Mitchell: Yes, that is accurate.
Gilmore: Twice today the fire community has come in and basically it has been a pitch for the Fire Act. Why are we talking about this if it doesn’t include homeland security? If the Fire Act continues and everyone is able to get money from the Fire Act, what would you spend it on? What is the hazard that you are preparing for?
Mitchell: First of all, the Fire Act was in existence before Sept. 11th. Part of it is that better preparedness for any event will yield better preparedness for a terrorist event. We have a number of departments across the country that would respond to a typical cause, an explosion or a collapse, for example. Terrorism is creating the same types of incidents that we have been dealing with for years. There is a justification for both tracks of spending. The Fire Act process is finally working and now they want to move it.
Shine: Is there a strategic plan for what that money would accomplish? Part of our concern was that if the Fire Act was going to remain outside ODP, shouldn’t that grant program have some sort of strategic goals?
Mitchell: I think there could be. This ought to be all about safety for the people of the United States. It would seem to me that we would take steps so that if it doesn’t support initiatives for terrorism, then we should take some steps in that direction. I think that some people are trying to respond with nothing to respond. And just to get them up to a level of training and equipment to get them up to a level of mutual aid is a challenge.
Vickery: A fire does not look at the level of training you have to kill you.
Gilmore: Somehow I have an uneasy feeling that what the fire fighter will be responding to in a terrorist incident will be different than anything they have seen before. I suppose you train and prepare for the odd situation.
Foresman: The parallel I would draw is the Pentagon. If that had been a routine building collapse, the services would have been there for 48-72 hours. As it was, they were there for weeks. Where fire departments are going to excel is in that first 48-72 hours.
Shine: Don’t you think the sarin event in the Tokyo subway would be what you are alluding to? There are extremes.
Gilmore: The terrorist is going to create a situation that isn’t normal. What I am hearing from the fire community, is that it doesn’t matter, they want the same money, the same training, and they will deal with whatever comes their way. It worries me that I feel that I am running into some culture within the fire services. And that culture is ‘give us the money, we know how to prepare and we will deal with it.’ And what I would hate to see is the terrorist use that culture and exploit it and kill a bunch of fire fighters. Which they did on 9/11.
Jones: We’re talking about scope and scale.
Mitchell: It is not all the same, terrorism is an additional responsibility. It takes additional equipment, it takes additional training and that is what has been coming through homeland security.
Shine: You can’t have it both ways. You can’t make the dual use argument and then say that the Fire Act money should stay as is.
Freeman: It all goes back to our theme of what readiness is. How will the fire services know when that baseline of readiness is met?
Gilmore: We have had some interesting discussions today but we are out of time. Hopefully we can continue on this tomorrow.
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