Gilmore Commission - Minutes

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

Arlington, Virginia
7 November 2002

Present:
James Gilmore, Chairman
James Greenleaf
Paul Maniscalco
Bill Reno
Pat Ralston
George Foresman
Ellen Gordon
Hubert Williams
Mike Freeman
Dallas Jones
Jack Marsh
Patty Quinlisk
Ken Shine
A.D. Vickery
Bill Garrison
Jerry Bremer
John Hathaway
John Lombardi
Jennifer Brower
Mike Wermuth

Absent:
Bill Jenaway
Kathleen O’Brien

Guests:
Austin Yamada- RAND Staff
Susan Everingham- RAND Staff
Suzanne Spaulding
Nancy Rizor- RAND Staff
Hillary Peck- RAND Staff
Scott McMahon- RAND Staff

I. Opening Remarks

Gordon (Acting Chairwoman): I would like to call the meeting to order. The Governor has been delayed briefly so he has asked me to get the meeting started for him. We have a new member, Mike Freeman, the LA county fire chief. Welcome. We certainly have a great deal of work in front of us prior to publishing our December 15th report. As I see at this point, we have five categories; Strategy and Structure, Use of the Military, Critical Infrastructure, Agriculture and Health and Medical. Mike tells me that he feels good about what we have done to date. This is our last scheduled meeting before this publication date, at the end of this meeting we may be able to determine if we need another.

II. Administrative Remarks

Wermuth: Behind tab one you have what was intended to be the latest agenda. Right behind is a list of the panel members. Kathy O’Brien and Bill Jenaway had other commitments that they could not get out of and so they are the only two panel members not present. Joe Samuels assumed a new job. We knew this was coming, that is going to keep him so busy that he is going to need to step down at this time. His name will appear on this 4th report as a panel member but he has officially resigned. We are going forward taking steps to replace him. We have some names floating around. Some of the people have appeared before this panel in the past but I would like to make it clear that we have not made a decision at all. We still want to consider people for those positions. We welcome any suggestions from panel members. The International Chiefs of Police (ICP) will send us a nomination but it is not guaranteed that their nomination will get the position. We also want to consider other people. We are still in the process of replacing Jim Clapper. We are down to a short list of three or four candidates and once again that decision has not been made so if you have any recommendations on who could fill that position, please tell us pretty quickly. So that is where we stand on membership at this point.

Back to the agenda. There were four different versions in as many hours yesterday. And now there will be a fifth. The first item is the Legislative Update. We will call on Suzanne Spaulding to tell us about the new situation. We will then start into the Strategy and Structure discussion, perhaps before the chairman even arrives. After the break we will come back to this. We have allotted a lot of time for this. After lunch we will hear from Bill Reno about where things stand with the recommendations that we went through at the last few meetings. At 1:15 p.m., Ken Shine will lead us through a Health and Medical discussion. We will take a break and do Agriculture terrorism, led by Patty Quinlisk. After that we will start to talk about Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP). It is probably a little further behind than the others so it may continue on to tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning, at the beginning of the meeting we will have a discussion on where we stand on a threat update. We decided to have a discussion at the beginning of the report of a more comprehensive threat than we had in the report in 1999. At 10:00 a.m., we will have some visitors from the executive branch to discuss some of the topics that are contained in the Strategy and Structure part of the report. It is highly likely that we will end up going to the classified level. During our working lunch tomorrow we will have reps to talk about TOPOFF II, how exactly it will work. We will get this briefing and then have some discussion about this topic. The one agenda item that got dropped off was scheduled for 1:00 pm tomorrow. Lois Davis, who has been running the interim survey will give us a briefing on the results, as they have been closed at this time. We will weave those results into the various chapters. After Lois, we will go ahead with talking about a media plan, issues and schedules. We are going to talk about what I call the ‘Road Ahead’, to lay some markers down for what we will do for the 5th year. Maybe we can come across some substantive areas initially on what the key areas are for the next year. If any of you are going to be gone during that discussion and you have ideas about what you would want to put into the discussion pass them on to me or Jennifer. Tonight we will break somewhere around 5:00 -5:15 p.m., and then we will have transportation at 6:30 to take us to dinner.

As usual we have a lot of paperwork in the workbooks. Behind tab four there is a lot of information to highlight. We now have a media plan that is quite extensive. If you get a chance, you may want to leaf through that. We will discuss it tomorrow to make sure we are taking care of all things that have to do about media relations. There are some materials about the proposals for the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS). We have resources in the form of copies of the first and third report and we can bring the second report if we need to. We also have copies of the President’s National Strategy from July. Between the resources up here and the information behind tab four, there is plenty of information. Behind tab five is the real meat of what we are doing here. Globally that there is still work to be done in terms of the background materials that will appear in those chapters and harmonizing what is within those chapters. There is likely to be grammar and spelling that needs to be corrected and a better flow between chapters is needed. Don’t worry about that stuff today, we will do this later in our normal tedious way. And of course the panel will get to see the final report in its full form with everything before it is published at least one time. We have, but not yet in your books, assessments that we have been doing on various agencies. They are in the review process so that they can be included in the appendices of the report. They are not yet ready to be released from our RAND standpoint. Behind tab seven we have minutes from the September 30th meeting.

Gordon: Do we intend tomorrow to make a final decision on the focus areas for 2003?

Wermuth: It would help us at the support-staff level to understand what the nature of the ideas are so that we can start to do some of the background work. We have pretty well settled in on a group of topics, meaning the four that we already have (minus the Agriculture terrorism). We don’t see any way not to include those next year. You may decide that there are others that rise to the level of being a major theme for that next report. From that, we at RAND will work over the course of the next few weeks to come back with a proposed research agenda for those topic areas. Based on everything we have heard from the panel, we do intend to conduct another comprehensive survey of state and local agencies, much like the one we did for the 3rd report. It will help to track federal level policies all the way down to the state and local level. And of course we will have to include the private sector in this survey.

Gordon: Suzanne Spaulding is here this morning to give us a legislative update.

Spaulding: This is sort of a political discussion since there is no real legislative action since our last meeting. We know that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) bill and the Terrorism Insurance legislation are still on the table. What makes it interesting is this lame duck phase. The tragic death of Paul Wellstone led to the appointment of an Independent, in the lame duck session no one knows where he will line up.

Bremer: I thought that the Minnesota constitution is clear about certification…that Talon has to be there soon.

Spaulding: If he isn’t there next week, he will be there the next week, giving the Republicans a majority. These are some of the push-pulls of what could come from the lame duck session. The White House is going to make a public push for the DHS to get through during the lame duck session. In addition, Sen. Thompson, who has spent a lot of time on this bill is retiring, so he has motivation to push this through before January. There will be a lot of talk about the DHS bill. There may be some pressure to push this through because of the legacy that will be left behind.

Wermuth: You also have some supplemental material in your binder on the lame duck session. It has some discussion about that Independent from Minnesota and whether he will vote one way or the other. There is no one saying that the DHS is going to be the #1 priority.

Spaulding: And of course there is the question of Louisiana, which will not be determined until Dec. 7. On the Intel bills, there is incentive to try to push this through during the lame duck session and not to leave it for people who did not do the negotiating…it did get bogged down with this notion of an independent council. The other incentive for this bill is, unlike the other Intel committees this bill says that money cannot be spent until it is authorized. There is an extra push for Intel authorization to really get that through by the end of the year. Thompson is leaving, Pat Roberts will take over as chair of the Select Committee of Intelligence in the Senate. His biggest issue is Agro terrorism, being from KS. Jay Rockefeller will be ranking, who expressed real concern about reorganization of domestic intelligence collection. My guess is that we will not see a lot of drastic changes with the Republicans in charge.

Wermuth: The fundamental point here is that all of this has some implications for the panel at least where we are. You will see a lot of references to the proposed DHS. We are going to stay focused on that right up until the day we publish this report. We will follow the actions in the House and hopefully be as up to date as we can be. If something changes before the 15th of December, we will try to reconcile any changes in the report.

Foresman: We talked about the insurance issue last time, what does that look like with the new situation now? Is it likely that with the changes in the power base in the Senate that major reform of the intelligence committee is or is not likely to reform?

Spaulding: We will have to see how it plays out but my sense is that the types of changes that this group have looked at will be faced with pretty stiff resistance that is going to make it hard for Republican chairmen to push something through when they are going to get resistance from the White House.

Foresman: Irrespective of what Congress may or may not do, it is important that we drill down on this intelligence aspect because if there is another attack then the drive to go too far will be greater.

Reno: I am dealing with the $3.5 million first-responder funding issue. How long would it take to see an improvement in readiness?

Foresman: It would take at least a year. They still have yet to determine if it will be a block grant to the states or channeled down through the states. Congress, when they start the new appropriations will see that the states have done nothing with that money. I think we can inform the national debate that this requires a sustained effort.

Reno: What bothers me is that before the mayor, the fire chief etc…can stand up and say that we are better, it may be the second or third or fourth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. Is there a way to get this packet of funds to the levels that they need to be more effectively?

Foresman: The House version, the Senate version and the White House version of how this money should be spent are all different. There may not be a better time than now to get it done. The mayors and governors are putting quite a bit of pressure on getting this done now.

Shine: I think the issue should be an evaluation and be on the expectations and metrics of each of these areas. I think that this should be a major focus of our discussion. Give people some idea of how to determine the outcomes.

Gordon: I think that what we have yet to determine is what ‘readiness’ is. How will we know if we are there? I think FEMA will attempt to do that by asking each state to do some assessments but that will not answer the question of where we are trying to go.

Ralston: I think this survey that we are going to do next year will help. I think a lot of states have been working on first responder issues but many of them are sitting on budget deficits and are waiting for this grant.

Foresman: We have been one of the few commissions that have looked so closely at the local level. The more fundamental question is, what is going to be the move in Congress because I think the harder part is that Congress is eventually going to be the one who appropriates the funds for the states. Everyone is focused on the current funding cycle and not paying attention to the future funding.

Ralston: $3.5 billion is only a one shot deal, it needs to be more than that.

Brower: You don’t want to just track the money, that is only one aspect of it. We need to determine what it is that is needed to be prepared.

Jones: The federal government still doesn’t have its act together on this terrorism funding, there is no one point of contact for states to deal with. We have this dilemma where we have needs and there is funding but we need to wait until that funding is available.

Gordon: I think that in our Dec. 15th report we need to stress these issues.

Maniscalco: We really need to define ‘readiness’. Before we can make any recommendations we need to define this term. There is fragmentation in the emergency response structures. We need to echo those recommendations that we have made before.

Wermuth: We will be doing that, that is part of that introductory material that will be provided. We will stress things that the panel has said all along and recapture specific recommendations that we already made.

Maniscalco: We are in a dangerous period. The sound bite in the beltway is that money is going out to these levels.

Foresman: The challenge that we find ourselves in is that we don’t know what to do with those implementation plans. I think it would be helpful to reach out to the Office of Homeland Security (OHS) in the White House to determine what the implementation plans for the National Strategy are. We probably need to place it in the larger context of what Congress is going to do. We may be the only ones who are able to pull all the little pieces together.

Wermuth: We are constantly in contact with the OHS. I can tell you that they are thinking about metrics and stuff like that but there are no specific initiatives yet. The implementation plans, especially in the CIP are starting to take some shape and we will monitor all of that right up to the publication of this report. The $3.5 billion is part of the President’s proposal to focus assistance to the state and local levels. As a result of Tuesday’s elections, certainly things are wanting to stay in the Department of Justice instead of moving to FEMA. We are faced with the issue of whether all of the $3.5 billion that currently resides in the Department of Justice will actually even go to FEMA. It goes back to the issue that Dallas brought up, where is this central point where the states and localities can go to go for a point of contact? The DHS will presumably solve some of that. The bigger problem with this issue of DHS, is that so many agencies, particularly the ones to move into the DHS, are simply sitting on a flat line right now. They are not doing anything to help improve this process because they are waiting for this new department. Other than the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) bio-terrorism grant program, which was specific, there seems to have been, from our perspective, relatively nothing new in the process of training, grant programs etc..

Freeman: I think the HHS grants and some of the focus on bio-terrorism is exactly what is needed in this area. As a local first responder, we have spent money from our own budget to make sure we are prepared and we are not even sure if we are prepared because there is no definition of this.

Gordon: I think this issue of readiness really should be included next year.

Ralston: There is a lot of cities out there like LA that have these resources but there are also a lot that do not have these resources and they are just sitting there waiting.

Shine: I hope that in the final report that there is an initial page or so that gives a big picture of where we are and what has happened since 9-11. What we need is a timeline between the ideas and the implementation, show that the time frame has gotten longer instead of shorter. Without placing blame on anyone we should try to assert the need to move on with what our goals are. I would like to see this report getting some media attention for pointing out the fundamental flaws on how the overall system is working.

Gordon: We need to point out the positives of this too, for example the HHS system. Suzanne thanks very much. I think this moves us into the Strategy and Structure discussion well.

III. Strategy and Structure Discussion

Bremer: Let me review for everybody and talk about what we are trying to accomplish in this paper. First, the objective of a good counter-terrorist strategy is to get the terrorist before they get us. In order to do that, we need good intelligence. When we talk about intelligence we are talking about the central issue of counter-terrorism. The motives of terrorists have changed. They now want to kill us in our thousands or millions. The second thing that has changed is that terrorists have been trying to get their hands on weapons of mass destruction, which allows them to carry out their motives. The third thing that is new is that terrorists are living among us. Then the paper tries to say that neither the Executive Branch nor Congress is prepared to face this new threat. In the Executive Branch there is a lack of focus on this fight. This is the major motivation of the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) that we are suggesting. The second thing is that there is a lack of analytical coordination in this area. The third problem is that there is a lack of focused attention being paid to terrorists living within the US. The major recommendation is to better focus the efforts of intelligence gathering within the US. This proposal separates the collection of intelligence from the law enforcement agencies, like every other western nation in the world, like Great Britain. This paper has not changed since it was last circulated and voted on during our last meeting.

Spaulding: (read recommendation one) I think you will find resistance to breaking up existing agencies and pulling them out and putting them into new agencies. They may push for multiple fusion centers given the trend line that we have seen in the last few months. More people are taking responsibility for pulling information together. My gut tells me that that is the way things will go.

Greenleaf: My sense is that some of the existing fusion centers have been expanded. I think I have seen more of that than the creation of new centers.

Spaulding: I don’t see a movement toward regional offices. It is more at a jurisdictional level. It’s early and we will have to see where this goes. There will be new proposals with a new session.

Vickery: A question for Jerry, when we look at a NCTC, how would a relationship between this center and the state and local levels work? Do you envision that there is a local representative for the whole US?

Bremer: If you look at the intelligence level of it, it is likely going to be coming from state and local enforcement. It needs to be from the bottom up as well as from the top down. At least you can have a way to have people who represent a state and local level view here. Once the intelligence is collected and analyzed there needs to be a way to get it back out to the local levels.

Jones: In California, we have centers where horizontal information can also be passed on a vertical chain. I view that that type of a structure would be the underpinning of this kind of center.

Foresman: This whole issue of using fusion centers that exist right now still bothers me; everyone has their intelligence piece. But they are all a piece of an intelligence community and all the pieces should be brought together. That should be stressed. Fusion of information and the feed of it up from local, state, federal levels is essential and this has to be a robust system so that it can go back down. During the sniper incident we saw that police stopped the perpetrators about six times before they were actually caught. The fusion piece has to have that two-way flow of information that would have ended the sniper incident earlier.

Gordon: Are we looking at this information sharing for terrorism only? The benefits are far-reaching. Do we take that step and address that as a panel?

Jones: I think this fusion center would be a center for other things as well. Maybe organized crime or drugs. I would look at it more of a holistic approach at all three levels.

Williams: If we have a clear line from the criminal justice system then it will be easier to get passed through Congress. I would be careful about trying to come up with an approach that is going to put everything in one basket. I would separate the function of collection from the function of enforcement.

Greenleaf: I wanted to ask Dallas, how many people in your centers have received security clearance?

Jones: We ensure that at least one person per center has a clearance.

Greenleaf: How are they able to share that kind of information with other people in the task force. There is a lot of frustration out there about this issue. People who have been promised a clearance still have yet to receive it. How do you get information to people who need it?

Bremer: We have a specific recommendation on this in the CIP chapter.

Reno: We read a great deal on the war on terrorism, if we are going to have a NCTC, one of the problems is that there is so much information that it takes too much time to get through it. I recommend that whatever we recommend only looks at counter-terrorism because otherwise it will grow in size and have just too much information to analyze.

Gilmore: Is the issue whether there should be a fusion center, or are we arguing about how it should be structured?

Bremer: I don’t even think that we are arguing. I agree with everyone else, that this center should not include anything other than terrorism.

Foresman: The discussion is on what the right model to move information from the federal level to the localities and states is. We keep focusing the discussion on who needs security clearance, but maybe we should focus on how information can be given that doesn’t even need a clearance.

Greenleaf: Isn’t there a lot of frustration at the state level that this information is just too broad and no one knows what to do with it?

Foresman: I think we need to go through an education system to alert the state and local levels of these issues. There is an assumption that there are reams of stuff that states are not getting. We elect officials to be our leaders and we trust them and we need to communicate that individuals don’t necessarily need a clearance.

Gilmore: Are we using security clearance to replace a communication net? What we are saying is that even if there were more clearances, there needs to be a communications system so that any information can get from one level to the next. Federal authorities do not trust state authorities because they are afraid that they will go straight to the media.

Break

Gilmore: If we can begin again. The agenda calls for us to keep going on the Strategy and Structure discussion. We can vote on that after we hear from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) tomorrow afternoon. Right now we are not even to the collection issue yet. We are still talking about the fusion center. We are on the issue of how it is supposed to work and how it is set up. The floor is still open for further discussion on the fusion center.

Foresman: If we look at the flow of information from one level to another, it may start as a criminal investigation from, say an emergency first responder, like the sniper incident, for example. If something bubbled up that we were looking at as a non-terrorist event and then all the sudden it becomes terrorism, how do we make the leap from one to the other?

Bremer: It might happen at the state level or the local level. It might be that you have people at similar state levels, maybe an FBI member, who can look at it through both channels. The other place it could happen would be the federal level if it were a crime and it was in the law enforcement track. I don’t think there is a structural fix to that except to recognize that it has to be done.

Gilmore: Put another way, terrorism is crime…so won’t the fusion center have this kind of criminal part to it…and then won’t it be tripping over the FBI or local enforcement?

Bremer: This organization’s focus is on criminal activity that is thought to be terrorism. There has to be some capacity at the state or local level that can identify issues that go from criminal to terrorism. I think that both in the fusion center and information gathering you have to be careful that it is purely terrorist focused.

Gilmore: Is there any contest for how this is written now? (none) Okay, then we are going to move on.

Bremer: I briefly gave a conceptual introduction to this chapter. The recommendations on page 5 are exactly the same as last meeting and there was no objection, so I suggest that we move through unless anyone has a large objection. (none)

Gilmore: So we can even defer now to the next topic until tomorrow after we hear from the bureau.

Bremer: I wanted to discuss another recommendation. Should we suggest that other states take a look at the California model of collection of intelligence, because that California Anti-Terrorism Information Center (CATIC) system sounds like a pretty good idea to me.

Gilmore: I think it’s a great idea. It is mentioned in the box on page three.

Foresman: I think your point is well taken, particularly with 23 new governors coming into office next year.

Wermuth: If this is what we decide to do, we will work with the California group and we will outline those systems and put them in the appendix. That will give more information that describe what those systems are and how they work.

Quinlisk: Maybe our recommendation should be focused on the federal government allowing the states to do this so that it is more focused on the federal level and not the state level.

Gilmore: But if we don’t say anything to the states, how do we get them involved? If we don’t even say anything to them then they might not listen.

Reno: One thing that is clear to me is that the main terrorist organizations are beginning to be centralized. A second thing is that there are probably far more cells in the western world than we suspect. It seems that the leadership of al-Qaeda is winding down so that we will see more actions at the state and local level than an attack like 9-11 that is federal. As we make our recommendations, I think we’ve got to focus on the local level and if what I have said is half right then this is even more important. I fully support what Jerry suggested. I would challenge us to ask the question of whether all of our recommendations are fitting with this new model.

Gordon: I agree. I would ask if we think the threat advisory system needs to be built. I don’t know if we said anywhere that someone needs to build this. I think we need to make a recommendation about this.

Bremer: This is in the chapter on CIP.

Wermuth: We can repeat this again. There is nothing wrong with repeating this.

Williams: Resources are simply not there at the state level to establish these centers. Clearly a great deal of thought should be given to the region that the system is going to be established in. I would focus on the federal government’s role in supporting the counter-terrorism effort.

Ralston: I think it is important to provide models, like the California example.

Brower: If you are interested, RAND can do research on the various models.

Foresman: The message is that we need to put the model out there and leave it up to states to decide how to do it themselves. Most of the time it is just better management and leadership that is needed. What we ought to say is that this is what states and communities need to do, but I don’t think we should presuppose to what degree that should be done at. It’s about looking at the enterprise of the state government, the enterprise of grants and funding and the enterprise of preparedness. I think the federal government should provide the model. Organization on the part of the federal family will help states to organize themselves.

Ralston: Just some backup information is needed on these models.

Gilmore: As far as the discussions we had with the California and NY counter-terrorism systems, are they meant to be part of the fusion center? Are these initiatives intended to link in with the fusion center or work independently?

Jones: As I read it, there had to be a two-way street, otherwise it will not work. And there needs to be a linkage.

Bremer: It is clear from the federal level down but not the other way, feeding information back upwards.

Shine: I think the concept of reciprocity is important. It should be a theme that flows all the way through the entire report.

Greenleaf: How they get the information back to the local people and to ensure that it is valid information and important information is necessary. All of the complaining has been about how it is a one-way street. A sheriff wants credit for cooperating because he gets re-elected in a few years but the bureau doesn’t want to give him information because it may go public.

Jones: I think we should make it clear that the federal government has a financial responsibility to these local and state levels. You just can’t have the coordination of information unless you have the financial support to do that. It is not a cheap operation. Without the guy at the bottom this whole effort will fall apart. It is more likely that the local level will be the first to think that something is amiss and then it goes up the chain from there. My problem is saying that the federal government should enable states to do this when I think that we should say that the federal level should financially support these efforts.

Gilmore: We will be going on to military discussion after lunch.

Break

IV. Use of Military Discussion

Gilmore: We will start again now and take up the issue of the military.

Reno: I would like to thank Mike and his staff for helping on this because I have been overseas. I would like to ask everyone to read this paper carefully. I have gotten a lot of changes from John Hathaway and his staff that deal with specific fixes that we needed to make for actual correctness. I would like to highlight and speak to the recommendations. Last time Pentagon staff briefed us, and we have made some updates since then. I would like to start on the first page and tell you that from the last draft to this draft there has been a lot of background material built into the paper. One issue that I had as I read it, was a need to define national security, homeland security and homeland defense, using the definitions in the Department of Defense (DOD) papers. The first page is just leading up to our recommendations. On the second page, we talk about the role of the defense department in homeland security. We begin to make the point that the use of the military to support civil authorities has been a long tradition in our country. On the bottom of the page, we talk about how formally the use of the military was used as a secondary mission in the support of civil authority. On page three, we document, from the National Strategy, the principal mission that is outlined in that document for the use of military forces. That documents it only for the record. At the very bottom of that paragraph, in quotation we speak to the type of support we provide (Read quote). It is in quotation because we didn’t think this out ourselves. It was already defined. Highlighted in the next paragraph down are the very modest commitments that the active military used to support what I would consider major terrorist events in the past few years, starting with Oklahoma and going on to the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Even in the worst terrorist event, commitment of the National Guard was extensive, but the active guard was very limited. Continuing on, just to point out that the DOD and the military when used, has been used very responsibly if asked. Right at the very top of the next page, once the Assistant Secretary of Defense is appointed, he makes decisions to deploy the military when requested but the he reserves certain rights for himself. You can see these listed on the middle of the page. Moving on to page five, in the top third of the page, you see the mission of Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and the mission that that commander has been assigned to date. I find very comforting that within the general staff, there are 23 full-time Guardsman and when you listen to what they have committed to, he has committed to a full understanding and cooperation with state and local leaderships. He has said that he will be subordinated to a lead federal agency. He has also recognized that intensive training will be required and a liaison provided to pull together all the sects of this system. The rhetoric is along the lines of what we have supported. The bottom of page five talks to the command relationship of NORTHCOM and active duty forces assigned to him. Combatant Command (COCOM) will be directly under his command, as well as work along the Mexican border Operational Command (OPCON). I thought they were under COCOM, is this correct?

McMahon: That is from the slide that we have. I will get that for you.

Reno: When additional active units are committed under Active Command Title 10, they would be placed under the operational control of the combatant commander who wants commitment. If you look at it the NORTHCOM headquarters, staffed in part with National Guard personnel, would be responsible for training and working with state and local staff. And if active forces were committed they would be committed under the combatant commander of NORTHCOM, who would be subordinated under the lead federal agency. Half way down page six, our first recommendation: (read recommendation 1). That should be a natural flow from classical historic command relationships and it would include the National Guard if federalized. It would not include the National Guard if under the control of state authority.

Gordon: I need a clarification of what we need and what we are recommending. Are we saying that they should be homeland defense? We believe that military in the homeland should be involved in all aspects, such as the NORTHCOM mission states…but everything else is leaning toward a response to an attack?

Wermuth: This is where we need to have some definitions up front and right now we only have part of that. There are two major missions of NORTHCOM and the DOD in homeland security; one is homeland defense, defend our homeland against an enemy. This includes detection, prevention etc… for example during the Sept 11 attack when planes were sent toward the plane in Shanksville to defend against an attack. There are other examples where ships were sent out also. The second includes mitigation and is typically called homeland security.

Reno: This needs to be very clearly defined.

Gordon: Should the military on the homeland have a role on intelligence gathering? Is that a role the military has? If we think the answer is no, then we need to be careful on how we articulate this.

Gilmore: Do we agree with role one as stated in the NORTHCOM mission statement? If an al-Qaeda cell gets organized and is going to take action somewhere, does this mean that NORTHCOM will mobilize and take action?

Wermuth: The distinctions are homeland defense and military support to civil authorities and they are all part of homeland security. If this al-Qaeda cell that the chairman was talking about was within the US this would be military support for civil authorities if requested. If this group was coming across the border and attacking border patrol then it would be a defense mission.

Gilmore: I agree with everything in Bill’s presentation, I just want to make sure that it is clearly articulated in this report. All of the sudden I was thinking about a clean chain of control and when you start throwing other pieces into it, it will be a problem.

Reno: We should not prescribe in our document how a commander should respond to an event. What we have to do is let NORTHCOM sort itself out and put it in operational procedures.

Foresman: When we put missiles outside the Pentagon, who are those people working for?

Reno: I don’t know, but when Sept 11 occurred, we didn’t have NORTHCOM, our country hadn’t gone through exercises on how one would respond. If they are put on federal soil it is no problem, if it is not on federal soil then it needs to be determined.

Wermuth: The specific tactical use of those was delegated to the Secretary of Defense. As we articulated, the Secretary of Defense would be tied-in with making these decisions.

Hathaway: The reason we have an Assistant Secretary is to have civilian oversight of the military. That assistant will make those decisions and coordinate with the Secretary.

Reno: At the bottom of page six we have some background for the next recommendation which you have seen a bunch of times (read recommendation page seven). The intent is with the introduction of NORTHCOM and with the requirement of that commander to determine his military requirements to execute a mission; he must understand the requirements of the states and localities. This is why we have the recommendation to have the comprehensive effort among DOD and the states, local and federal levels. This is why the recommendation is there. What that means is that the combatant commander of NORTHCOM would coordinate with the state to determine whatever unique requirements each state would have in the event of an attack.

Ralston: What about federalizing the National Guard?

Reno: All the requirements are not going to be on the plate unless all the states participate. I think we need to recognize that as state capability improves, requirements for NORTHCOM can be reduced. You will have modifications over time. You always have risk because you can’t afford perfection, some of this would be to identify the risk and try to put the resources in to close the gaps.

Gordon: The National Incident Response Plan is just that, a response plan and probably a recovery plan for post-attack. It takes an action of the President to order up these resources. Is this the narrow area focus that we are looking at, the use of the military as defined by the National Response Plan?

Wermuth: If I understand the National Strategy, the National Incident Response Plan will include everything, not just post-attack…prevention and protection included, everything across the spectrum.

Reno: It is comprehensive and continuing.

Brower: There may be things that we always want the military to do because the likelihood of something happening is so low that the state and local people don’t need to devote their resources to preventing it.

Vickery: So what you are asking for is an inventory of what resources are out there so that if there is an event in, say Kansas, you could pull something from North Carolina or somewhere else to help…this is just an inventory right?

Reno: The military needs to know what type of requirements are covered so they know what they need to cover. They would assess their inventory, if they don’t have capability within the region, they would try to get those resources in the future.

Wermuth: Every state will not have the same requirements. One state might say that they have capabilities in one area where another state may have very little resources. You can’t just present an inventory, it needs to be requirements-driven because the inventory list itself may likely never be provided.

Reno: On page seven we talk about National Guard roles and missions, it goes along with material on pages eight and nine. I think we have sufficiently gone over the difference between activating the Guard under state authority or federal authority. The recommendations on page nine and ten (three recommendations read): What these three would do if approved, is that the Secretary of Defense would designate the design select missions under the NORTHCOM combatant commander. Our third recommendation says that given the look at comprehensive requirements for national defense and security, we need to develop certain resources for these gaps. The President could activate the National Guard organization from Ohio to a compact area and employ it there under Title 32 status. It would give more capability to employ National Guard capability regionally, and have it federally funded. I believe that is consistent with what the governors would like to do because they could be retained under the governor’s control if that was specified under the legislation that establishes it.

Wermuth: This new authority would not provide the National Guard to the President; the governors would have to allow the National Guard to be used in federal control. This would simply provide a mechanism for federal funding for the Guard to be used in this capability. This means that the Guard could be used in situations that go above state events. The governors would have to agree to it, they could withdraw from that at any point. It would be an additional mechanism to use the National Guard with funding from the federal level.

Gordon: Is it the funding issue that we are trying to solve? What else is driving us to make this recommendation?

Reno: The funding is an issue. This would place an organized entity to be paid by the federal government but still be controlled by the governors.

Gordon: The coordination between two or three different states takes place between the governors; they currently have the authority to move Guardsmen from one place to the other. The only issues are funding, right?

Wermuth: One issue is what these people can do. If there was an issue that rose to a federal level, under the current situation you can ask the governors to help, like last September or you can implement Presidential Authority. Then it brings those people into federal status for the duration of the event. When you do that, you take them out of one system for pay and allowance and put them into another. If you left them in a Title 32 status, then the governments could substitute people and resources. If you have someone who cannot leave their job for long periods of time then the governor could rotate people or do what they need to do. If you do it like this then you have a lot more authority on who goes where.

Reno: It gets to the issue of paying for people and keeping people out of federal status. And on the state compact basis, dealing with cross-state boundaries. In the third recommendation, specialized units are designed and trained for missions that are unique to homeland security and homeland defense.

Williams: The concern that I have is this special trained unit functioning at, say an airport, is far different than an actual field worker in cities and the issue for me is the degree to which the work of the Guard would be coordinated and the level of authority that would exist. Would the Guard supersede the local authority? How can the Guard and the police communicate? If you put them together, then you break up this structural integrity of a Guard unit. I think this can end up with more problems than we think. A culture shock occurs when you throw the Guards into a law enforcement area. This is a serious matter that needs to be thought through greatly.

Shine: I thought that Ellen argued that no matter where a Guardsman was placed they would still be under the jurisdiction of the governor of the state.

Wermuth: In terms of the funding, where is the impetus for the Congress to simply just give more funds to the Guard? The attempt was to justify more funding for the Guard by tying it to more state interests.

Shine: Can’t you fix that by saying that when a governor calls up the Guard for certain missions, the federal government funds that?

Foresman: The relationship in Title 32 status should not be with NORTHCOM, it should be with state relationship. We need to figure out at the macro level how NORTHCOM coordinates with the state level. We have an inequitable way of treating the guardsmen whether in Title 32 or Title 10.

Marsh: People are not aware that the Guard is made of 40-50% of former veterans…most are police enforcement veterans. They have exceptional backgrounds and they are more educated than the average law enforcement officer.

Reno: The third recommendation in this group (page 10-reads recommendation) the purpose of this is to have specific units designed for certain missions. The governors would activate the Guard, so we recommend that there is a set of capabilities so that once activated they had some larger picture to fit into.

Williams: I am suggesting that if in fact we had a special unit that was trained, what would they be trained for? How would you prepare them to deal with the varied types of problems that terrorist bring up? What troubles me about the recommendation is the special training…if they are trained, the Guard will be doing work that is very similar to what is already being done at the civil level. And I wonder if they will really be trained to the extent where they would be an asset to the civil authorities. What kind of training would be involved?

Jones: Had we utilized the mutual aid system during the LA riots we could have reacted 24-hours quicker, but instead it got politicized and it took much longer to get the Guards in there. This has been documented since then. We have a list of where we use our Guards often but there are some red areas where we could use more help. One size doesn’t fit all; we need to have the states work with the Guard to determine what the needs are, not the other way around.

Reno: You have never had a combatant commander responsible for this before. There has never been a systematic way of doing this.

Gilmore: (read recommendation page nine). Doesn’t this call for new authority to the President, to employ, not to pay for but to employ? Does this recommendation mean that the President is going to have new authority under Title 32?

Wermuth: The intention is that the governors can opt out of that if they want to. The President wouldn’t be telling states what to do exclusively.

Shine: What is the problem that this recommendation is designed to solve?

Wermuth: The operation at the airports last September for example. To avoid the ad hoc nature of what happened last year. To provide some coordination ahead of time so that everyone understands how things will be funded and coordinated ahead of time. When the Guard was deployed last year, there was no standardization about the rules of how they carried weapons, for example.

Hathaway: This can’t fix this. It was still up to the governors to put up the resources. Some didn’t even put up Guardsmen in that case, some put up law enforcement officers.

Reno: We will take this section, rewrite it, make it clearer and come back with an email at a later time.

Gordon: The cost of doing it could be pushed back to the state. Every time we take a National Guard person and put them into a special unit, we are taking away from the local first responder capabilities. We have to be careful that we are not working against ourselves. Every time I see that the Guard will be used, I cringe because I see what happens when you take Guardsmen from the local community.

Shine: The problem as I understand it includes standards. It is not clear that this proposal solves that problem. It is not just the president having the authority with governors and such, it deals with a deeper problem.

Gilmore: Should we deal with this tomorrow?

Williams: One of the core concerns that I have is that there is no vehicle for the Guard to work as backup support for the first responders at the scene. If there was some way to establish the Guard’s role as a backup to local police and their training was designed in that way, it would alleviate a lot of my concern. I am worried about the line between civil and federal authority. I am worried about general statements that can be taken in many different interpretations after it is recommended.

Break

V. Health and Medical Discussion

Shine: What I would like to do is start on page one of the draft and start with a mild modification of the language. We just met in sub-panel a few days ago and we have yet to edit this draft. I need to change the very first sentence to read “a review of HHS has shown that its anti-terrorism focus is primarily and not exclusively bio-terrorism…” I would like to introduce a recommendation that is not seen here but that A.D. Vickery has reminded us of and is a wise recommendation. In our third report from this committee, we said that overall emergency preparedness should include public health. Public health principals should be part of training. This recommendation, which we wrote this morning, is that it is important that if we have a biological incident that communications should be understood by the public health community. We would like to add that particular recommendation.

Jones: Does that mean that Metropolitan Medical response System (MMRS) is the last in the federal to local connection? Are you saying integrated into the emergency response?

Shine: We mean at all levels of the system, that they ought to understand the principals of emergency response. It is about crossover and training so that people understand the interfaces.

Foresman: Is HHS getting so focused on a bio event that they are not focusing on other things? The money is behind bio because everyone is scared of that…how holistic is this?

Shine: Not as holistic as we would like. Highest priority has been given to bio-terrorism and we think that exercises need to be more holistic, including chemical and radiological events for example.

Foresman: I think HHS has been the one shining example of how money can be taken from the federal level and get it out to the local and state levels.

Quinlisk: I think when all the money started coming out for terrorism in general; some of the focus was on bio-terrorism because it was the piece of the system that had been the least focused on. I don’t think we should criticize this but say something like it worked at the time but now we need to make our goals broader and focus on other things.

Gordon: We have to be careful that we don’t allow states to all the sudden use terrorism dollars to fix problems that are not terrorism related.

Shine: But there are enormous opportunities for overlap. For example, surge capacity for people, communications, and media relations. Having good systems in place for biological events does have a spillover to other areas. We do have to be careful of this notion that on one hand we need to improve the infrastructure in this area but on the other it is not a slush fund for fixing other problems. Let me try to take us through these recommendations. The first, on page one. What we found from Wasserman’s work is that $1 billion is about the right amount each year to make change. It was also likely that an investment of $5 billion over 5 years would be appropriate. So we recommend this one…(read recommendation on page one). Having programs that would provide resources over a multi-year period would be valuable. We did want to make a fundamental statement that the current investment seems to make sense, that more coming faster would not necessarily make a difference.

Freeman: When we say metrics should be put into place, does that mean next year or another time?

Shine: We haven’t put a stipulation on time. That’s why I suggest that next year we look more at timeframes. We were reluctant to put a specific date on it. We thought that was a good subject for next year. (read recommendation on top of page two). I want to emphasize continue to fund. These networks have been valuable, they have been experimented on, and there are some elegant syndromic systems. At least the experiments are going on about how to increase communications.

Quinlisk: One of the other things we talked about was that one-way information wouldn’t work…that is why we said that communications had to be a complete circle. We probably need to have within that the concept of integration and that there are bits and pieces of different communications systems all over the place. We want something that is less fragmented.

Shine: This is a system that is very fragmented, as a background; just know that this is a problem. In the middle of the second page, (read recommendation on page two, middle of page). The purpose of this one is again that we do not believe you can tell if the system works unless you exercise it. The best way to recognize if something works is to exercise it, and there have not been enough resources to do these exercises. We are not recommending how often they are done or how they are done; we are recommending that funds be provided for these exercises.

Gordon: DHS could have a lead role in making this funding happen.

Shine: It is entirely appropriate that DHS could take over this role. That is a good suggestion. At the top of page three (read recommendation page three). Our concern is that what we don’t need is a proliferation of more response teams, we do need a better training for those teams and clearer articulation as to the coordination of these teams.

Jones: The concern that I have on the proliferation of teams is that now it is sort of like the FEMA urban search and rescue missions. It would seem that by the proliferation of these teams there need to be a single point of contact for all of them. If you are a recipient, there is no problem but if your teams are going out of your state, then the coordination on a larger state is needed. The logistical support needs to be coordinated.

Shine: That should be the DHS responsibility don’t you think?

Gordon: I think it is the system-wide plan that needs to be coordinated.

Bremer: I am keeping a list of what I think are overarching theories. Many of these fall into this list.

Brower: It also seems that in a lot of instances the state level is being left out of the decision-making process and that should be included in the preface. The state has a better idea of what is going on in their states and their resources.

Quinlisk: That is bigger than what we have here.

Vickery: With HHS and their response teams, what I am aware of are MMRS’. If the feds are paying money to MMRS’, I would be interested in knowing that. What you are dealing with is a bunch of people who want to help and they are being used. You don’t have a core of professionals.

Jones: They become a federal asset, even if they are volunteers.

Brower: If you can feed us exact wording so we can put it in to the chapters, which would be great. You can do that electronically or after the meeting.

Shine: The next recommendation is about surge capacity. We have learned through discussions that we need to think more creatively about what ‘beds’ mean. What we really need are not full-stage mash hospitals but beds for the purposes of, for example people with infectious disease. States have come up with innovative approaches to what ‘beds’ mean and we need to come up with a template for these ideas. (read recommendation middle page three). One of the biggest issues here is the role of nursing homes because many of the contingency plans is that sick patients would be moved into nursing homes. Nursing homes have problems getting people to go to work because they are worried about having these infectious diseases coming to their workplace.

Foresman: The only issue is that while they are looking at bed capacity, should they also look at putting people in hospitals with the professional care?

Shine: The radiological emergency is the classic example. This would not take place at a hospital. We will elaborate on that. The Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) has been consulted, and Veteran facilities have been considered.

Gordon: I think there is another track with the DVA. Perhaps this should be specified in the recommendation.

Shine: This effort should be coordinated with other agencies like DVA and DOD and should be added to the language.

Ralston: What about private clinics that have outpatient beds and such?

Shine: Individual states are developing plans that include all of those and we need to get states to coordinate these resources. Yes, there are outpatient clinics, there is the DVA, there are professional nursing home facilities. At the bottom of page three is a recommendation about research (read recommendation bottom page three). The intent of this recommendation is that the National Institute of Health (NIH) has historically been a peer review organization and in these areas there are short term questions that require investigation. Research should be included in the NIH portfolio. For example, research on applied public health. I would add to enhance synergies and reduce duplication. We are worried about this area, the fact is that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has so much money they don’t have incentive to talk to anyone else.

Bremer: This recommendation does not start with a noun. If you look at the President’s proposal, I think whether we support the idea of a national academy of sciences or whether you take the President’s bill, which has an undersecretary, it seems that there should be DHS in here somewhere. I would give them the responsibility. State that ‘DHS should…’

Shine: On the bottom of page four (read recommendations bottom of page four). Our intent was to say that you need a legal framework, we did recognize in the text that this sort of thing has happened. On the second recommendation at the bottom of the page, we address under what legal authority a public health authority has to share information in the case where someone might have a disease caused by terrorism.

Bremer: Can we recognize the principals that the Congress should work off of? I know we don’t write the bill. From a medical public health view, we could list some of the circumstances when this would need to be done.

Shine: The next item, I have already made reference to (read recommendation on bottom page four-top of page five).

Gordon: I would propose that we include animal health in there too.

Shine: Yes, good.

Vickery: I think we need to include Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and fire services. We are already left out of so much we don’t want to be left out of this too.

Shine: I would say ‘medical health including emergency responders’.

Gordon: I have a concern that we would support the release of medical information to enforcement in certain situation. Law enforcement officials should not have the right to look at medical records, I don’t care what the situation.

Shine: Maybe we should add the word ‘appropriate’.

Brower: Maybe like the NCTC it could only be used for terrorism and terrorism related issues.

Vickery: Maybe the name isn’t important. You can keep the confidentiality, I just need to know that there is a threat to public health. I don’t need a name or any other information.

Quinlisk: This can already be done. Where do you draw the line?

Gilmore: Can we just take Jim’s suggestion that we give information as necessary?

Shine: ‘Should develop lawful strategies…while respecting civil rights’. Say something like that. We use the fusion center only as the sharing of information related to terrorism.

Quinlisk: It needs to go both directions.

Shine: The next item is on page five, this will be identical to Jerry’s recommendation. (read recommendation page five). We can do better with the language of this, what we are trying to get across here is that the DHHS needs an ongoing strategy of how to communicate with people in the event of something like a West Nile outbreak. The department needs a better strategy for this point of view.

Bremer: I think we need to say what differs from this and the National Strategy. I think the difference is in the National Strategy they are talking post-event, we are talking about an all encompassing pre and post-attack.

Shine: By emergency we don’t just mean terrorism.

Jones: You might put in the word ‘coordinated’.

Quinlisk: Hopefully a strategy would imply coordination.

Shine: (read recommendation bottom of page five). There is some work in this area, but not very much. There have been some recent reports about counseling people after events, showing that counseling has made people worse. We think this requires some research and there will be opportunities to do this. It would have been nice to have something in place in time for the sniper situation.

Greenleaf: Why the special focus on bio and agriculture?

Quinlisk: There is a difference between biological and an ongoing unrelenting stress when you don’t know when it will be over. There is a lot of focus on after a bombing, but there is no research about the psychological effects of an ongoing event when people don’t know when it is going to end.

Greenleaf: I would say that instead of ‘biological.’

Shine: We were biased when saying bio and agriculture because they have a longer-term effect.

Gordon: We really need to keep sight of this issue because it hasn’t been addressed very much at all. Maybe next year we should deal with this more.

Quinlisk: Maybe a whole chapter on this psychological issue next year, because I know there is a lot of studies coming out soon.

Shine: What about non-post traumatic stress syndrome, non-diagnosed but people who still have problems in every day life after an event?

Brower: A RAND study is about to come out about the Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) effects in Britain and we will be handing this out in the next few days.

Quinlisk: After 9-11 they asked people who they went to after the attacks to deal with the stress and mental health was the least used…they went to their priests, their family, friends, etc…

Shine: The next recommendation (read recommendation middle page six). The notion that Intel organizations will increasingly be looking at issues where data arises from surveillance data, we think it would be useful if they had some expertise in helping with analysis, interpreting the results and communicating with public health sector. Some in-house capability would be useful.

Gilmore: Is in-house as important as having a consultant that does this?

Quinlisk: I would assume that there is Intel coming in all the time and someone who wasn’t a public health person wouldn’t recognize if something was out of the ordinary.

Shine: (read recommendation bottom page six). We think there is an importance on distribution of pharmaceuticals. Some states have great systems of distribution of vaccines and drugs. But we believe that exercises are necessary to all states for distribution.

Gordon: We are not giving the system a chance to work, we are criticizing the system without giving it a chance to do what it is supposed to.

Quinlisk: There are certainly other thing that need to be worked on, smallpox is really the only one worked on.

Ralston: Should animal pharmaceuticals be mentioned here?

Quinlisk: How do we get the necessary distribution out to agriculture sector…this should refer back to this in the agriculture chapter.

Gordon: What is the issue here?

Shine: Aside from a distribution plan for smallpox, we are not prepared for other types of distribution.

Gordon: We just got the money to do these other types of distribution plans. I don’t want to say something if it is already being done. Maybe we should hold it until next year.

Foresman: There is already an evaluation about to take place. There are three reports that are due, one at six months, one at 12 months and one at 18 months.

Shine: Wasserman’s interviews indicated that the states were unprepared and uncomfortable with this.

Gordon: I couldn’t do it today, that is correct but it hasn’t been long enough to tell yet.

Shine: The next is (read recommendation top of page seven). Last time we emphasized the need for a plan, since that time there have been Congressional hearings on this issue, especially childhood vaccines. We thought we should reiterate that there should be a strategy for terrorism vaccines but also others. Our emphasis should be on the need to implement the National Strategy.

Bremer: The only additional point I would make would be finding ways to speed up FDA approvals.

Shine: I think your point is well taken and we should have a separate recommendation about this. We may want to take a look at the problems of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval and look at this again next year. It is continuing, we hit it last year. We didn’t hit it this year because the FDA did speed up its progress in the smallpox vaccine work. Delete the next recommendation regarding stockpile. There have been reports that other countries besides the US and Russia have the virus of smallpox. These other states include Iraq and North Korea. This doesn’t change our strategy. (read recommendation 3rd from top of page seven). The incremental part of this is the most important. We would like to see small groups vaccinated first to study the effects. It should be done incrementally and then evaluated. There were a series of hearings around the country about smallpox. At first it was stated that everyone should be vaccinated. Then it was stated that just 10,000 first responders should be vaccinated. Then it was pushed that more should be vaccinated and the number bumped up to 500,000. The important point is that there will be enough vaccines to vaccinate everyone in the country by the end of the year.

Gilmore: This is very timely. We should be prepared to vaccinate everyone but we shouldn’t actually vaccinate them all.

Quinlisk: Most of the public health sector have endorsed the fact that a small limited number of people should be vaccinated first. Most would not endorse vaccination of the entire population. We are not giving a number of how many people should or shouldn’t be vaccinated.

Gilmore: What I want to know is if we are asserting as a panel that an initial limited round of vaccinated first responder is what we want?

Reno: What are the Israelis doing?

Shine: They are vaccinating everyone.

Reno: Are they using the same vaccine as us?

Shine: Yes, essentially.

Reno: Should that influence our recommendation?

Shine: We may or may not get some useful information from them because they are only vaccinating about 5 million people total.

Jones: My concern is not so much smallpox but the other pathogens, like Ebola and other hazards that may or may not be likely. We are focusing too much on some risks and missing others. A more holistic approach on bio-terrorism is needed.

Shine: Part of the problem is that we don’t have enough vaccines for the other hazards. That is why the investment in the NIAID is good because they are working on these vaccines for other agents. The focus on smallpox has been excessive but I do think that people are worried about other agents. The dilemma is that people become excessive. Essentially every health professional would not support mass vaccination. And if the administration goes that way I will be let down.

Gilmore: This concludes the health section.

Break

VI. Agriculture Terrorism Discussion

Quinlisk: We will whip through these really quickly. Agriculture area and food safety areas sometimes overlap and sometimes don’t. I will just go right to the first recommendation on page three (read recommendation top of page three). We are basically saying that we don’t know what the threat is out there or what steps need to be taken. This one basically just says that.

Foresman: One of the issues is that our colleges and universities are doing research on the threat and the information is not getting from these institutions up to someone who can do a broad analysis of what the threat actually is. It seems that we need a better two-way street between these two sects.

Quinlisk: I think you are very right, once an assessment is made, it needs to be shared down to the people who are actually defining the threat. Should we just add something like ‘this information should be shared with the appropriate people’?

Foresman: This information still has to make its way up to a fusion center, there is no one at the federal level paying enough attention to this subject.

Shine: Is there an analysis of what in fact is the risk of introducing a problem with the food supply given the size and scope of the country? I don’t have a sense of what would happen if something was done to the corn in Iowa, what the impact would actually be. Is that part of this kind of assessment?

Maniscalco: Is the threat at the commodity level or the domestic level?

Jones: It is really all the way. Most of the structure of agriculture was set up 50 years ago when you were talking about small farms and is completely outdated today.

Bremer: Basically doing a vulnerability assessment I think this is a good idea. There is a lot of stuff in the public domain about agriculture being done now. This is a good recommendation.

Quinlisk: The second one (read recommendation middle of page three). I think we are getting at the point of the sharing of information.

Gordon: I don’t think our state emergency boards have the resources to do that. We need to ask Congress to take some action to provide for the resources for us to do this. USDA is not resourced properly to do this. I don’t think the SEB is the appropriate place to do this.

Wermuth: Some entity in the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) though?

Foresman: USDA is not the answer, the state has to play a role in this. Its not so much the inspection process but the macro level of state agriculture.

Garrison: The profit margin of this industry is so small. I think there should be some education in this area.

Gilmore: Are we saying that the recommendation is unnecessary?

Quinlisk: I think there is a need for education and training for things to look for, things that need to be told to someone immediately. Just like we need to train doctors to look for smallpox, we need to train people to look for these terrorist diseases and tell them who to inform.

Quinlisk: I think we are okay with the second recommendation about training. The third recommendation (read recommendation bottom of page three). There is no tracking system from the farm to the table.

Reno: Can you just imagine the bureaucracy that is involved in this?

Quinlisk: We are talking about something as simple as the stores writing down what product they have on what day. It is already done for some products, seafood for example. I would much rather someone get sick off of seafood because I can track it at any part of its trip from ocean to table.

Gilmore: It can be done and it is good, but is it pertinent to the terrorism issue that we have? It seems more like an agriculture issue than a terrorism issue.

Quinlisk: I think this is the way to get people sick if you are a terrorist.

Maniscalco: Because of the regulations that already exist, there are already financial burdens on these types of plants.

Bremer: I would be uncomfortable supporting this recommendation. Did the sub-committee estimate how much this would cost? I think this is a major, major cost.

Brower: In Iowa, there is a model tracking system that isn’t very expensive.

Foresman: This is a solution for a specific piece. Maybe what we ought to do is have USDA take a look at growth, production and transport to the consumer and do a risk analysis and find our Achilles heel.

Brower: Since Sept 11, al-Qaeda have been increasingly aware of the economic effects of some type of attack. It would be easy to put an animal pathogen into the supply because there is a little risk to themselves.

Foresman: Has anyone done an assessment of where our gaps are?

Quinlisk: Most of our recommendations deal with the agriculture side and not the food side so maybe we could focus more on the agriculture side and next year go into the food side more.

Vickery: If there is a focus it needs to be on the producer.

Gilmore: I think what Patty is saying is, lets look at the critical point where we can protect the industry but we don’t have all the details available today. Do we support a place saver issue that says that we acknowledge this issue but we need to do more on it next year?

Quinlisk: (read recommendation middle page four). We need to be able to have some plans together for responding.

Brower: We want to integrate the response into the whole response plan.

Reno: We say USDA should provide funds, should we throughout say Congress should provide funds instead because they are the ones who give out money? Congress needs to provide the USDA with funds.

Quinlisk: (read recommendation bottom page four). This defines who should be the principal in charge of this. So it would be USDA for agriculture if we were to take food out.

Wermuth: Why can’t this stay as it is? We can leave food in and add that FDA would be appropriate in that area.

Quinlisk: We are at the top of page five now. (read recommendation top page five). Basically we are saying that we need the ability to have these things stockpiled and the best way would be to add it on to an already existing agency. It makes sense to use an already existing structure.

Gilmore: I wanted to confirm that this was a genuine response.

Jones: Any animal who has been directly exposed to a disease is killed, others can be inoculated.

Gordon: We don’t vaccinate large stock for FMD currently. I think we need to recognize that we know that.

Gilmore: Do you think the stockpile is a good idea?

Garrison: We already vaccinate, I have no problem with that.

Gordon: The stockpile is a good idea because we don’t have the capability to handle FMD right now.

Quinlisk: The next one (read recommendation middle page five).

Brower: This was the most controversial in the sub panel

Quinlisk: My concern is that the reason that there is only one facility to test for FMD is because they don’t even want the risk that the disease could go off-site. The reason is that in order to do research on this disease the lab has to actually have the live virus. I don’t have trouble with testing all around the country but I have trouble knowing that the FMD could be in live samples all over the country.

Jones: Time and distance are factors in this. We are forced to use F16s to fly samples to that Plum Island lab from California all the way to the east coast because of the timeliness of this. We believe it makes sense to have 2-3 centers across the US to do this sort of testing. I don’t believe it should take 2-3 days to determine if something is affected.

Gilmore: Do I understand it should be one per state?

Quinlisk: I don’t have a problem with testing around the country as long as it doesn’t increase the risk of having the live virus all over.

Foresman: Maybe we should put that in there.

Brower: You don’t want to react after the fact, sort of like the NCTC. Wouldn’t it be better to get the people trained before an attack in a few places than after a FMD outbreak?

Quinlisk: I just want to make sure that the workers have the security not to walk out of the lab and spread this disease.

Wermuth: So we could set the number at four or some other limited number, geographically dispersed.

Reno: If you could design a container and develop a center in, say Tennessee and it would be a one-day turn around through FedEx from all over the country.

Quinlisk: We cannot prepare for every extreme condition. I think saying right now that there needs to be more labs but said in the realm of safety and security for workers is important. (read recommendation bottom page five). Everyone is okay with this, we discussed it before.

Brower: The next recommendation has not been seen by anyone yet, it just came from some discussion in the sub-panel meeting.

Gordon: The Veterinary Medical Assistance Teams (VMAT) idea is good but it can’t be relied on exclusively. We should expand the idea and concept of VMAT teams.

Gilmore: Put it in a paragraph why they need to be expanded.

Quinlisk: (read recommendation bottom page six). We are trying to get around the idea that if you report something right now you might lose your farm because you will not be compensated. A lot of these are reportable through the state system. But there is a concern that if they have to kill all their crop they will not be compensated. (read recommendation top page seven). We should add Congress as the body who would increase funding. Some of the critical people are non-existent.

Shine: You need to determine who the critical people are. The recommendation should be clear as to what you are talking about.

Bremer: I am getting uncomfortable with some of these recommendations. They require a lot of money spent in ways that we are not specifying. This is getting far from our initial goal of weapons of mass destruction. It sounds like we are whining on behalf of the agriculture community. Maybe there are 2-4 recommendations in this chapter that are important. But I think we are going a little too far.

Brower: If you look at the beginning, it explains how important agriculture is to our economy. Maybe it wouldn’t actually take much money.

Bremer: It is a question of perspective. You could make the same argument for telecommunications, but there is a question of perspective and priorities here. We are giving a blank check for spending.

Jones: We should just ask USDA and the agriculture sector to look into these areas.

Foresman: I think all of this material is a good compilation of a lot of different stuff. What we might be better off to do is ask the sub-panel to come up with less recommendations that are really strong as opposed to many.

Brower: Bremer is uncomfortable with the whole chapter. I am asking to go back and do some prioritization of the issues and come up with fewer, stronger recommendations.

Gordon: I would agree with Jerry and scratch most of what we have done, we should come up with two key major recommendations on agro terrorism.

Quinlisk: I think there is room for more than two. Maybe not get into as many details, but there is room for more. Some of the recommendations were modeled after the medical recommendations. They could be pulled back and just have a general recommendation that the agriculture community should look at the medical community.

Bremer: Why don’t we ask the sub-panel to come back tomorrow with a list of the most important recommendations.

Gilmore: I think if we get too far from our field then we will not be taken as anything more than just an advocate for a certain industry. Maybe we should look again at the health and medical recommendations. Its 5:30, where are we on this?

Quinlisk: Maybe we can talk tonight and bring back the major ideas and issues tomorrow. Our sub-panel will meet tomorrow morning at 8am.

Adjournment

November 8, 2002 Minutes

Gilmore Commission - Minutes

Present: James Gilmore, Chairman James Greenleaf Paul Maniscalco Bill Reno Pat Ralston George Foresman Ellen Gordon Hubert Williams Mike Freeman Dallas Jones Jack Marsh Patty Quinlisk Ken Shine A.D. Vickery Bill Garrison Jerry Bremer John Hathaway John Lombardi Jennifer Brower Mike Wermuth

Absent: Bill Jenaway Kathleen O’Brien

Guests: Austin Yamada- RAND Staff Susan Everingham- RAND Staff Suzanne Spaulding Nancy Rizor- RAND Staff Hillary Peck- RAND Staff Scott McMahon- RAND Staff

I. Opening Remarks

II. Administrative Remarks

III. Strategy and Structure Discussion

IV. Use of Military Discussion

V. Health and Medical Discussion

VI. Agriculture Terrorism Discussion

Present:
James Gilmore, Chairman
James Greenleaf
Paul Maniscalco
Bill Reno
Pat Ralston
George Foresman
Ellen Gordon
Hubert Williams
Mike Freeman
Dallas Jones
Jack Marsh
Patty Quinlisk
Ken Shine
A.D. Vickery
Bill Garrison
Jerry Bremer
John Hathaway
John Lombardi
Jennifer Brower
Mike Wermuth

Absent:
Bill Jenaway
Kathleen O’Brien

Guests:
Austin Yamada- RAND Staff
Susan Everingham- RAND Staff
Suzanne Spaulding
Nancy Rizor- RAND Staff
Hillary Peck- RAND Staff
Scott McMahon- RAND Staff