Gilmore Commission - Minutes

Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction'

Arlington, Virginia
Tuesday, November 28, 2000

Present:
The Honorable James Gilmore, Chairman
James Clapper, Vice Chairman
L. Paul Bremer
Raymond Downey
Richard Falkenrath
George Foresman
William Garrison
Ellen Gordon
James Greenleaf
Dallas Jones
Jack Marsh
M. Patricia Quinlisk
Patrick Ralston
Kenneth Shine

Also present:
Ellen Embrey, Department of Defense Representative
Michael Wermuth, RAND project director

Members Absent:
William Jenaway
Paul Maniscalco
Kathleen O'Brien
William Reno
Joseph Samuels
Hubert Williams

Vice Chairman:  Mike has some revised language on the introduction and Chapter 1, and then I thought that we'd have additional discussion on Chapter 1 and go on to Chapter 2. 

General consensus that the new introduction should be the beginning part of the Executive Summary as well as front material in Chapter 1.

Bremer:  On the introduction, I'm concerned that it focuses a little too much on the consequence management rather than preventative.  We need a sentence that the ìgoal of an effective combating terrorism policy is to prevent attack.î

Vice Chairman:  Could everyone look at the revisions to the language on the use of the military?

Shine:  The last paragraph leaves out the necessity for the training and preparation to be on the nature of the relationship between DoD personnel and civilian personnel.  It's fine, but it does not get at the importance of potential relationships between DoD and other civilian entities and this should be addressed.

Bremer:  I will want a footnote or a letter in an appendix to explain my dissent.

Embrey:   On page 42, ìwe recommend that the President designate a federal lead agency other than the DoD in the event of an attack;î it seems like you recommend something that already exists.

Bremer:  I agree with Ellen, the sentence as amended makes no sense. 

Embrey:  Or, you could say that, ìthe Panel believes that there is no circumstance that would warrant the DoD being in the lead.î

Shine:  The reason for re-stating it is because: 1) strengthening the argument; and 2) you are talking about operational control verses planning.

Marsh:  Quite frankly, there is no question in my mind that the President can do whatever he wants, I do not think that he should do that, but he can.

Bremer:  Could you imagine that circumstance?

Bremer:  If you could imagine that the President should designate DoD then it should be exercised.

Jones:  We have the exercises in there.  Jerry you fail to accept the concept that the military can be involved but not in charge. 

Bremer:  My point is directed that the capability goes so far beyond local and state forces, and the President then evokes the National Command Authority.

Foresman:  Why do you think that FEMA would be incapable?  Today, a mayor is going to a governor who is going to go to the President; in your scenario do you imagine these relationships are going to go out the window?

Foresman:  I think the Chairman's position is that one of the things that this Panel CAN do is to recommend to the President that though he has the authority, he shouldn't use it. 

His advisors may recommend he do this and we may want to say ìlook, stop, don't do this, even though you have the authority.î 

Vice Chairman:  Getting back to Chapter 1, we will repeat the introductory, summary language and start that discussion then go on with what we have now.

We need to exorcise the pejorative language does anyone else have specific comments?

Wermuth:  We talked about pulling things from the original introduction and to strengthen this thin chapter. 

Shine:  I like that and would add the basic components of what we think are an appropriate plan and describe those next.

Quinlisk:  We need to make it clear that it does not need to be ìone size fits all.î  And all regions should not be resourced at the same nor given the same type of resources. 

Bremer:  Add, ìmust be able to allocate resources according to their particular needs and requirements.î

Quinlisk:  And you should say that we need to put more resources into multiple-use technology.  For example, the fire truck, which will be used for things other than terrorismÖ especially as we are talking about a bottomless pit of taxpayer money.

Downey:  Would the word ìregionsî be associated with FEMA regions?

Jones:  In CA we have a ìregional approachî but the State is still the single point of contact.  The different now is that the Federal government is going straight to cities, rather than regions.

Gordon:  I do not support us making the point that urban areas should receive more resources than rural areas.  What is the point we are making with these questions?

Vice Chairman:  These are the questions we are trying to answer.

Gordon:  I would accept a ìdifferent level or preparednessî rather than a ìhigher level.î

 -- Break --

Vice Chairman:  I'd like to get into Chapter 2, which deals with getting the federal house in order and talks to the Executive Branch. 

Marsh:  We do talk about the inaccuracies of the federal system, but we don't talk about States and local responders. 

Are there inaccuracies in the other systems rather than the federal government?

Vice Chairman:  We have not done a functional, detailed analysis of States.  What we have done is tried to capture State and locals in chapter 3.  Our survey is designed to get into the specifics.

Marsh:  We need to cite that so that it is clearly apparent that we have not overlooked it.

Vice Chairman:  We could say that we have looked at the horizontal capacity of State and local responders.

Shine:  I have a couple of suggestions.  First we should have an organizational diagram so that we can understand what we are doing.

Also, we talk about ìlead agenciesî in our report, and here we get into ìlead agenciesî in crisis and consequence management; we should have a description of what constitutes ìlead agencies.î

Vice Chairman:  We need someone to look at the needs in their entiretyÖ and this office should have the benefit of all of the available intelligence and information that affects this ìterrorismî picture like what is done in the Drug Office.

Shine:  So oversight does NOT imply management?

Vice Chairman:  No, not really, it is really more of an advocate position. 

Shine:  Doesn't oversight imply ìoversee what I do?î

Foresman:  I think this man then has the potential to direct threat assessment.

Garrison:  We shouldn't use oversight, just because it is a nasty word.

Embrey:  You should say that one of the most important things for this office is to work with intelligence agencies to give pertinent agency to State and locals.

Vice Chairman:  Do you want to list the agencies or something?  The way that this would actually work, the person would work with the DCI and his staff.  So we could add to develop ìin coordination with the DCI.î

Jones:  The point is that this office is in charge of disseminating the information to the State and local responders.

Vice Chairman:  Let's add a ìwhich includes the DCI.î

Shine:  I have a question on certification/decertification - is this a model? 

Vice Chairman:  Yes, the Drug Czar used this once on the DoD.

Jones:  Do we want them reviewing local plans?

Vice Chairman:  This is a good point.  Is it your preference that any interaction should always come through the senior planner at the State level?

Jones:  One of the problems is how do you make determinations with municipalities.  Resource allocation and other disparities can be a problem. 

I do not think we need to run local plans through the federal level, but the States should have them too to make sure they meet requirements.

Ralston:  I can see with too many local plans, you might get a bottleneck.

Foresman:  And I think the word ìstrategicî is important, because you do want to get into the business of approving operational plans.

Vice Chairman:  What if the State of New York wanted this entity to look over the operational plan for NYC. 

Gordon:  I think we should keep it far away from operational planning, like George.

Vice Chairman:  Does that impact the ability of this National Office to assess readiness?

Gordon:  No.

Foresman:  Currently as it is written now, it is a state responsibility, at best, the coordination and measurement will be at the State level.

Greenleaf:  Does the NDPO have this requirement? 

Jones: No.  FEMA does.

Foresman:  Yes, this was the problem with NDPO, they could not decide between the operational and management plans.

Bremer:  We have suggested an ACTIVE responsibility to look at plans regionally, rather than just waiting for States to submit their plans and ask for help.

Vice Chairman:  I would want to error in favor of flexibility and let the National Office decide this role.

Jones:  Leave in review State strategic plans but only local at the State request.

Vice Chairman:  The proposed fix is ìshould reviewî and move ìrequest of the State local plans.î

Embrey:  One of the things that the federal executive branch has struggled with is not knowing where the gaps are so they can build the capability to fill those gaps.  So will this group offer this information to shape the federal program as well as helping state and local responders?

Foresman:  So the requirements to State and local plans should identify the gaps and then guide the Federal plans.

Vice Chairman:  What we have agreed is to move this task and move it up front.

Foresman:  I'm not sure that we want to move the NDPO into the Office.  For example, NDPO got into response guides for responding to chemical/ biological terrorism.  Do we want to get to a detailed level of staffing?  Or should it make sure that other federal agencies are performing their role effectively?

Wermuth:  ìClearinghouseî doesn't necessarily mean produce or mail, but it is a collection and dissemination point.

Embrey:  So it is more than a clearinghouse?

Vice Chairman:  Let's move on to Chapter 3.  This is the cross-hatching State and local and functional discourse.

 Embrey:  You could even incorporate Patricia's concept of the broader issue of functional enhancements.

Quinlisk:  Those that have other functions should be given more weight.

Jones:  Don't forget some of the trade-offs.  For example, a bomb squad is necessary but may only be for terrorism.

Bremer: I think that paragraph captures it.

Quinlisk:  I think that the focus is on the first responders' ability to detect chemical/biological attacks and the CDC is working on laboratory detection.

I do not hear improving public health and hospitals' and laboratories' ability to detect chemical/biological attacks.

Vice Chairman:  We are trying to figure out if a foreign government is engaging in producing or purchasing chemical or biological weapons.

Quinlisk:  If I didn't get it, then we need to clarify it later, so that it does not imply first responder techniques.

Quinlisk:  On of the medical communities biggest concerns, the predictive value of a test or a sensor will have far more false positives than true positives. 

I do not where it belongs, but it is a critical element.  If you are talking about placing sensors, you are going to get far more false positives.

Vice Chairman:  And yes, the intelligence community is very aware of this problem.  I would suggest that we put whatever clarifying language in the medical discourse later.

Vice Chairman:  What should we say?

Quinlisk:  How are we supposed to respond to false positives?  I'm not just talking about diagnosis you are still going to have false positives.

Shine: Patty, this would be useful in the public health and medical, but not necessarily here.  Why don't you give Mike some language there?

Vice Chairman:  Moving onÖ

Bremer:  I think this is kind-of a wease-ly recommendation.  The point is that the FBI has to get ìwarrantî and the OIPR reviews these requests.  What has happened is that the OIPR is requiring a higher level than the law; basically the OIPR is substituting its judgments over the judgments of the courts. 

Greenleaf:  It's a two-edged sword, because once it then gets to the courts, the FBI is never over-turned because their standards are so much higher.

Greenleaf:  Does anyone complain that this hinders their investigations?

Bremer:  I just think we should tell them to just do it, rather than setting up a panel.  I would recommend that the AG instruct OIPR to not go further than the law requires.

Quinlisk:  When you are talking about improving forensic capability, what exactly are we recommending here?

Vice Chairman:  We want the Office to promote the research and development of forensics technology.

Foresman:  We need to recognize that our current laboratories are used in a non-law enforcement setting.

Quinlisk:  That needs to be stated.   If we are going to rely on these labs to do this type of follow up they need the resources and training to do that.

Embrey:  How many of your recommendations meet the dual-purpose standards?

Foresman:  Almost all of them.

Embrey:  Somewhere you should set the stage that the broad program has a set of requirements that the States and the localities are the primary implementers and there is another set where the Federal government has the primary responsibility.

Gordon:  Do we want to broaden the FRP to include terrorism?  In this context, in the FRP they only talk about response to terrorism and recover from the incident?

Bremer:  What are we trying to deal with here?

Wermuth:  Well there is not a single-source document.

Bremer:  We need a problem statement that says that at the beginning of the document.

 -- Break ñ

Chairman:  Introduction of Jim Thompson, President of RAND

Chairman:  Mike what do you have?

Wermuth:  I have some language on the military.

Chairman:  I have read this and I think that the language accommodates my concern.

Falkenrath:  On the substantive issue, I am comfortable with this, but I want to think about it a bit more.

Chairman:  I think that the language is perfect right now.  I don't want to namby-pamby down and leave the door open.

Shine:  I'm comfortable with this.

Bremer:  I'll write something as a footnote.

Ralston:  Didn't the 120 [domestic preparedness training program cities] get bumped up? 

Wermuth:  Some pieces have been bumped up to 157.

Quinlisk:  The 120 piece was directed at first responders, correct?

Downey:  Some people trained health and medical.

Embrey:  The 120 was done on a correlation between population and threat; a higher population had a greater threat.  And then they just ran this until the money ran out.

Ralston:  There has been a lot more done with federal money than what is in here, like direct training.

Wermuth:  I do have that on the appendix on the Department of Justice.

Embrey:  Just in terms of the training programs: DoS, EPA, Energy, DoJ, DoD Ö a nod to these other programs strengthens you case.

Downey:  There are a number of the cities have not been reached and we need to give them continued funding.

Falkenrath:  I didn't see TOPOFF in here.

Wermuth:  I have the TOPOFF comments in an appendix of the report.  We can pull continued exercises up into our recommendations.

Chairman:  And cross-reference to the appendix.

Embrey:  You should note that your panel will be the first to publicly comment on TOPOFF.

Quinlisk:  I have concern that we spend lots of time on catastrophic scenarios and nothing on the scenarios that this Panel feels is more likely.  It would be appropriate to do some training for small more events.

Chairman:  What do you think OKC was? Minor or catastrophic?

Jones:  We are confusing a few issues.  TOPOFF was designed to train top officials.  While the key was that most of the smaller tests were done without the consent of the local and State exercises.  What we need is exercises to test all levels of response for CBRN.

Quinlisk:  Events that are more likely to occurÖ

Embrey:  The exercises that have been happening have routinely excluded the health care community.  I think this is really important for the bio-response.

Chairman:  What about health and medical?

Shine:  We'd like to add a paragraph on laboratories and stipulate several issues with regards to these laboratories. 

We also want to make specific reference in this portion of the document to vaccines and stockpiling; it's in the appendix and we need to pull it out. 

There are also a number of areas where we need to make some additions, for example, with accreditations we need to mention all the accreditation agencies.

Shine:  We need to make the links much more specific that research will strengthen the overall public health and medical infrastructure.

Shine:  I was concerned that if you read the appendices.  We criticize the CDC and identify problems without making any reference to potential solutions.  Why?

Wermuth:  I can only say that we just finished that assessment.  So we have not have time to come up with recommendations and solutions.  I knew it was coming, but it needed to be ready a lot sooner.

Chairman:  The goal is to integrate this into the National Strategy, right?  I feel like this is a separate feature of health rather than massaging it into the National Strategy and National Office.

Falkenrath:  It needs to be hand-in-glove.  If you just leave it to the National Office, they may create a whole separate entity.

Chairman:  Why not put a statement that the goal is to make them a player on the team in coordination with the national strategy?

Vice Chairman:  We should also say that we will do more assessments next year.

Embrey:  What I have learned is that the States have a lot of authority for their public health systems.  A statement in here that the states are the fundamental authority and that whatever federal efforts are done should be done in coordination with them would be useful.

Quinlisk:  The public health community would really like a recommendation of minimum standards and requirements would be very useful so that it could be tied to resources. 

Shine:  I would argue that we are far better off identifying the major issues and say that there is additional data for us to organize and focus on that during the next report.

Quinlisk:  I agree, this one area has the farthest to go.

Chairman:  Is there proper legal authority for quarantine?

Quinlisk:  The point is the law says that States can do whatever to preserve the public health.

Marsh:  I think you are right, this is a State issue.

Gordon:  Can the federal government require quarantine without the States being involved?

Chairman:  This identifies much more complicated issues that we do not have time to address now.

Embrey:  Bottom line is that there are a number of different authorities on the book; the predominate law is that the State makes the call.  It is only when the CDC determines that the biological problem is likely to spread beyond the borders that CDC consults with the governors to say, ìwe need to do something.î This process is complicated and contradictory. 

Shine:  I want to come back to Jim's idea to put a deputy for health and medical issues in the office.  I think this is a wise suggestion.  As long as we are recommending this office, the public health issue is substantial enough that having a 5^th associate director is a good idea.

Falkenrath:  Here is the counter-argument: then we are leaving the health bureaucracy with no single leadership.  This person will only look at the elements relevant to terrorism, but won't synergize the whole system. 

Quinlisk:  I agree with Richard.  In looking with the four areas already, we are fragmenting this issue by pulling it out.  Rather than having an assistant director, why not have a health/medical liaison that would be invited to all the meetings?

Vice Chairman:  I think that's what we need to do.

Chairman:  I do not want to drift away from chemical and biological diseases to just basic public health.

Falkenrath:  The same system of detection works for emerging infectious diseases as well as bio-terrorism.  It is more than epidemiological surveillance.  The ability to figure out how to treat that is relevant to the global health issue as well as bioterrorism, it is the same knowledge base.

Vice Chairman:  We acknowledge this point.

Shine:  To get closure now on the associate assistant directorÖ

Quinlisk:  Can we put agricultural terrorism in this section as an issue?

Chairman:  Let me add a couple of things, the Guard will respond to the Governor in support of FEMA.  But if the President wants to federalize them, they are subject to DoD.  That is the structure we have, and how it operates today.

Vice Chairman:  Should we have more teams?  Is the 32 now enough?

Embrey:  I think a critical section or a placeholder for the role of the state and how they support their own requirements needs to be here.

Marsh:  I am of the view that we REALLY need to give serious consideration to cyber-terrorism and we need to really highlight it in the report.  Cyber-terrorism has actually developed even since this committee was formed.  PDD-62 was drafted in conjunction with PDD-63, recognizing that a catastrophic incident could be coordinated with a cyber-attack.  We need to get this on an early agenda in the Congress.  We need an emphasis on this at this time.  I think the need is real, the threat is real, and we need to address this now.

Jones:  I think it would be a shame to withdraw.  We should put two pages inÖ and then say we will fully develop our recommendations. 

Vice Chairman:  I would propose that we cut this out before ìpolicy recommendationsî and push it to next year.

Falkenrath:  What are we committed to for next year?

Chairman:  Health, fire, Cyber, EMS

Chairman:  I think we should mention cyber-terrorism in the Executive Summary without giving specific recommendations.

Shine:  Could someone speak to the recommendation to a ìlead RDT&E laboratoryî?

Bremer:  The idea was the President should establish a long-range plan and put it in a National Laboratory, this isn't coming through.

Shine:  I am still not compelled by a lead federal laboratory, the key issue is the plan.

Bremer:  Then who does the planning?

Falkenrath:  The Assistant Director in the new office.

Chairman:  Okay, any other comments?  What about resolving legal issues?

Falkenrath: We need to be disciplined [next year] and only deal with those few issues. Our agenda should be reviewed in advance. 

Shine:  Basically it is what is the infrastructure to fill out that activity.  I like this ideaÖ there are a couple of areas: 1) legal issues; 2) agricultureÖ I would assume that the sub-panels would look at specific federal programs.

Vice Chairman:  My thought is just that the two specific sub-panels should be cyberterrorism and health and medical.

Shine:  I would add a DoD subpanel.

Vice Chairman: So we have those three sub-panels.

Vice Chairman:  We don't want to be re-plowing ground that we have already re-hashed.  I think we've said a lot about the overall federal efforts?

Embrey:  What about RAND reports?

Shine:  Health looks at health and agriculture, DoD looks at DoD, DoJ looks at DoJÖ

Wermuth:  The subpanels need to direct the analytical research you want, rather than us just going out and doing it.

Chairman:  Let's adopt the minutes and than anyone can add an amendment later.

Consensus

Meeting Adjourns.