Gilmore Commission - Minutes
Panel to Assess the Capabilities for Domestic Response to Terrorist Acts Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction
Washington, D.C.
Tuesday, April 6, 1999
Jim Gilmore is asked to serve as Chairman to Panel
Jim Gilmore
This is a matter of high importance, and I am happy to have the opportunity to participate and make this a success. I look forward to working together to reach a conclusion.
This is an impressive array of people coming together to work on a project. When I first became Governor I felt the need to address this issue. I asked people in the administration to look at the issue because of the sensitive areas (such as the CIA) found in Virginia. There was a conference carried out on behalf of the National Governor's Association on February 2nd, at which point I was asked if I would be interested in chairing this panel.
Terrorism with regard to Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) is becoming a central issue. The World Trade Center, Oklahoma City are examples - we are at a time of maximum danger at this point, also because of current geopolitical issues. It is time a panel like this came together. If we can aid in any way we will have done a great public service. If we cannot prevent attacks we can do as much as possible to ameliorate the consequences - although we cannot prevent everything we have to attempt to deal with the consequences.
The process in the US at the community level has begun. The need for coordination is great as the level of authority is different throughout. Time is of the essence. There is a sense in the Congress that the lack of overarching coordination has been the reason behind the creation of this panel. I praise RAND for coordinating this effort, as it is a well respected and established organization.
Issues like this are not the role of a single level of government, which is evident in this Panel. The issues that we will deal with are:
- Identifying the threat
- Defining acceptable levels of preparedness
- Determining the capabilities of existing programs and the need for consistency, preparedness and training
- Involving a number of stakeholders to increase the possibility of coordination
- Tackling the funding
- Addressing civil liberties - as in the case of the need for quarantine in the case of biological attacks - who has the authority? How do you protect while maintaining civil liberties?
- Emerging potential for cyber crime
I would like to have a panel open to the community - we have a great opportunity to have an impact on the people of this country.
Bruce Hoffman
Bruce introduces RAND personnel Jeff Isaacson, Jennifer Brower, Roger Brown, and Nancy Rizor, Bruce's secretary. Ellen Embrey, representing the ASD for Reserve Affairs, was also introduced. RAND will take care of clearances for participants.
Mission of Panel:
In recent years and since the 1995 Tokyo subway attack, people think that either too little or too much has been said or spent on the subject of WMD. Congress has mandated an assessment by this Panel of what is being done - even when it is too much to arrive at recommendations.
A series of GAO reports has assessed current programs, and there are other reports on the issue as well. RAND's immediate task is the listing of agencies and entities in the US charged with some responsibility on the issue. This report (showing preliminary RAND document on agencies and entities involved) suggests the enormity of getting our arms around what has been already done. Stage one of RAND's role is to provide Panel members with as much information as possible on all aspects of WMD. The Panel is convened not to duplicate efforts. It brings together experts - individual expertise and perspectives to report to Congress on what is being done. In order to be useful we must have a critical perspective to inform the entire debate.
You will find a draft Domestic Terrorism WMD Analytical Support Plan in your packages. From there we take six main issues which will form the basis for the discussion:
- What is the objective if the US domestic preparedness program?
Is it realistic to seal off the US? How is the objective "sold" to the public? - How do we define the threat?
The most common WMD are nuclear. We need to consider chemical and biological attacks and ascertain which is the actual threat. Is this threat equally applied throughout the United States? Are certain areas more vulnerable? - How much funding is enough?
- What are the measures of effectiveness?
- How do we calibrate the dual use potential of funding?
- What is the role of the US military?
We also need to take a look at the psychological effects of a threat on the general public.
This is a possible threat and we need to take a look at what can be done as well as the backlash of such an effort. We need to be careful on how the issue is communicated to the general public.
Governor Gilmore
Framing and shaping the issue will be key. We have a responsibility to minimize damage. We will now ask the panelists to introduce themselves and identify critical issues.
Ellen Gordon
Consolidation of training methodologies is a key issue when addressing first responses. How do we define a threat? We need to look at WMD as something we are going to plan for, with the idea that we need to train and exercise.
Lieutenant General (retired) James Clapper
Flow of intelligence down to the level of the first responders - this deserves some attention.
Patrick Ralston
Sharing of information and intelligence down to the local level. Also, taking a look at the resources available for equipment purchases to match training and exercises. The goal of terrorists is how to limit freedom and we have to take a look at that.
Raymond Downey
I have three points. First, there are numerous programs that seem to be out there and we want to know when it will come down to us - we are concerned about first responses and the operational side of it. Second is the flow of intelligence to first response workers, and the third point is the issue of who is in charge.
Kenneth Shine
I am the President of the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences. The Institute has had a number of activities dealing with the subject. The main issues I see are those linked to biological risks and how do you balance risks associated with agents versus access to them? I am also interested in scenario building a series of different approaches and the extent to which these impact on reliance of current mechanisms. How do we prioritize scenarios?
Bill Jenaway
I come from the perspective of an insurance agent and volunteer local fire Chief in a city that has the largest shopping complex in the nation as well as a nuclear power facility. I look at this as a local issue, if first responders are untrained you will have heavy collateral damage, the second issue is who is in charge, and the third issue is the restoration process - once the incident occurs how fast can people get back to normalcy can impact the pace of restoration.
Q: Governor Gilmore
Are you talking about minimizing the consequences by getting back to normalcy?
A: Bill Jenaway
Yes.
Ellen Embrey
I attend Panel meetings to identify what DoD is doing and to take information discussed back to interagency meetings on WMD terrorism.
James Greeleaf
I see the flow of information to the local level as an issue. This has been a problem because of issues of confidentiality. There is a lot of information up at the Bureau and Agency level, but how much of it reaches lower levels? Also, training issues are important - the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing, we need to take a look at the adequacy of training.
Governor Gilmore
Yes, there is frustration with regard to a sense of responsibility and training out there.
Paul Maniscalco
My focus would be on terrorism, low intensity conflict and acts of war. The medical community is not prepared to deal with possible casualties resulting from an attack. There seems to be a great deal of focus at the level of cities when in fact an attack would be a regional crisis, and failure to share across boundaries will cause further damage. There isn't a cohesive response action - mainly because we do not know who to turn to. Also, I am concerned about the intelligence question and my inability to share information with peers even when there are security clearances.
Major General (retired) William Garrison
Starting with terrorism, do we have a capability to deal with it? I can provide you with all of the mistakes we have made in the past. In terms of issues, the first is to develop a baseline - the capabilities out there are unbelievable. Second, we need to determine what level we will operate at, and third, we need to make sure we don't just contribute to the bumper sticker, instead of identifying and sticking to guiding principles.
Donald Rumsfeld
I would encourage the Panel to read the last chapter on a book on Pearl Harbor that I would be happy to give you information on. Also, I would like us to pick future meeting dates.
Patricia Quinlisk
My background is in public health. My concerns are in the area of the role of public health workers and how quickly are they getting samples of agents being dealt with, especially when they try to identify unannounced agents - we need to know the origin to coordinate a medical response. What happens when someone delivers an agent and first response people are unaware - We need to look at organizing efficiently. Another issue is the risks to smaller areas especially when we look at agricultural terrorism. This could have devastating consequences.
Governor Gilmore
The issue of who is in charge seems to be very important - what is said in the first 20 minutes is key - not understanding who is running the show can have consequences. Another important issue seems to be training and preparedness - things can get chaotic very quickly.
I would like to acknowledge those panelists that were unable to join us at this time.
Bruce Hoffman
I would like to now go over the draft task plan, which represents a first cut to try to operationalize legislation. We might want to rank and prioritize issues and we need to set a meeting date. June is proposed, but before we do that we have some time for a Panel discussion. We welcome revisions, additions and immediate suggestions from panelists who have had time to read ahead.
Donald Rumsfeld
We need to take a look at legal restrictions - for example on the military, as well as jurisdictional issues, I don't see a place in the draft where this can be addressed and it needs to be done early.
Governor Gilmore
Are we talking about geographical jurisdictions?
Donald Rumsfeld
Jurisdictional issues in terms of who is in charge of what.
Kenneth Shine
For instance, what is the role of the CDC - they usually have to be invited to the table to do something.
Patricia Quinlisk
Generally they need an invitation but that may take the form of a phone call.
Donald Rumsfeld
I just don't see a place where that is addressed.
Jennifer Brower
This is an overarching issue. There are legal issues at each of the steps (prevention, consequence management and mitigation). This will be integrated throughout all of the tasks.
Governor Gilmore
I agree.
Patrick Ralston
One example is the case of people who are first on the scene. When the local fire crew arrives they might try to put out a fire and have no information that there might have been an attack. Sharing of information is key, but it might also be a lack of training.
Kenneth Shine
Clean-up must include psychological effects especially in children. In terms of item 3, I am not sure this is the right way to frame it - the idea of one objective and one price is misleading. Also, what are the principles that ought to guide the response - we ought to rely on existing capacity rather than invent new ones. We need to look at those principles to see about consensus to guide a response.
Ellen Gordon
Recovery task and cleanup need to have a leader.
Raymond Downey
I would site as an example the case of New York City, where because of the resources in the city, we did not need help from outside. In the case of Oklahoma, it was a local incident in a Federal building. There was a Federal Response Plan as they were overwhelmed and the coordination effort was a response to a declaration from the Federal government. Local authorities were in charge at the beginning but quickly turned it over.
James Greenleaf
An incident involving WMD will be horrific so that rules relied upon in the past go out the window. We have an opportunity in the Panel to make this not an academic exercise but to make a real contribution. The big issue is who is in charge and how does the military fit into this response.
Raymond Downey
Authorities still had to be in charge.
Governor Gilmore
How long did it take?
Raymond Downey
There was coordination at the local level. With volunteers showing up and the Federal government as well, it took one day to set up.
Governor Gilmore
As Mr. Maniscalco said, it seems that the initial response is key.
Raymond Downey
Yes it is key as we (local responders) are charged with the original response
Paul Maniscalco
The public has inflated confidence on the response model - this is not one of those cases - the concern to me is the biological threat and that we well not know what hits us until the 911 system is overloaded.
We need to work on behavior management - the structure of behavior management when three or four different scenarios are happening with little control, but we have to deal with the consequences.
Patricia Quinlisk
Communication is essential with regard to threats - we have to be able to distinguish between real events and non-real events.
Governor Gilmore to Dr. Quinlisk
In the case of a biological offense, does the CDC have a protocol in place that would trigger warning mechanisms, or is it a local issue?
Patricia Quinlisk
There isn't a system but a basic mechanism that could be improved.
Kenneth Shine
CDC relies on surveillance mechanisms, but it is very uneven throughout the United States. We need to know about local capabilities and how the CDC responds. It is more likely that local officials will know and respond first - CDC does not have the legal mandate to look across borders and this might be necessary as there are many outside virus threats. We need to look at several scenarios.
Donald Rumsfeld
We should think about what we want to end up as in terms of a product. Perhaps we should discuss things we will not do - this will save us a lot of time. Also, development of principles would be useful.
Governor Gilmore
I don't have a pre-disposed plan, and I hope we can be very specific in terms of principles. The Panel is also in a position to drive some level of model planing.
Ellen Embrey
This issue is constantly being discussed across agencies. With scaled response and scaled resources, what is the model of enough resources at the local or state level? How do you know? How much money should be provided to a state, city - there has to be a way to address this as there isn't coordinated planning from the local to the state to the federal government?
Governor Gilmore
If a catastrophe takes place even some of the communication infrastructure will be destroyed. There has to be a way to get to resources.
Bill Jenaway
A set of guiding principles - limited in number - and giving a set of scenarios and how to get to resources, perhaps n the form of a guide book, would be very useful.
Donald Rumsfeld
We might come up with model legislation for the federal government.
Lieutenant General (retired) James Clapper
We need to take a look at other reports as there are agencies committed to the same issue. We need to take a look at this and try not to reinvent the wheel. One policy issue is the firewall between intelligence apparatus. Boundaries do not apply when dealing with transnational threats. This firewall is counter productive and worth exploring. We need to also explore how intelligence gets passed around. There is some knowledge of transnational threats.
Governor Gilmore
The challenge and benefit we have is the capacity to join leadership with experience of first responders so to address the nature of the issue and plan to address issues out of which problems and obstacles will arise - then we can assess cleanup process.
Kenneth Shine
Are there a set of standards with regard to levels of preparedness? Can we define national guidelines, expectations and then tie those to resources? This is a fundamental issue. This group has the opportunity to identify the threat and identify an acceptable level of preparedness and come up with a generality.
Ellen Gordon
We are looking at standards.
Paul Maniscalco
I am concerned about calibrating threat and response. How real is the threat so that we can make balanced and calibrated decisions.
Bruce Hoffman
Because we are running out of time we must move on to other issues. This Panel operates under federal guidelines. Clearances will be issued to maintain some control over what can be issues of national security.
I propose the next meeting take place on June 9th from 10am to 5pm. We will have a working lunch. The meeting will take place in Washington, D.C.
Kenneth Shine
We should get assessment from the intelligence community.
Governor Gilmore
Further comments and thoughts should be sent to myself, or Bruce Hoffman. These will be incorporated into the planning. Using e-mail is fine.
Jennifer Brower
Comments should be sent to me as well as Bruce is often busy, and I will support him in this process. Also, if everyone here will give me their e-mail addresses I will make a list and have an alias so that when messages are sent they will be automatically copied to all Panel members.
Kenneth Shine
Do we want to use a web site for public comment?
Bruce Hoffman
RAND can provide this.
Donald Rumsfeld
We should think of where we want to end up - if we want to end up with a CD-Rom product with a value at multiple levels of society - this needs to be decided at the beginning.
Governor Gilmore
Well, thank you everyone for your participation.
Meeting adjourned at 11:05.