Gilmore Commission - Minutes

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

Arlington, VA
Tuesday, June 19, 2001

Present:
The Honorable James Gilmore, Chairman
William Garrison
Bill Jenaway
James Greenleaf
Jack Marsh
Kenneth Shine
George Foresman
Kathleen O'Brien
William Reno
Patrick Ralston
L. Paul Bremer
Patricia Quinlisk
Ellen Gordan
Paul Maniscalco

Also present:
Ellen Embrey
Mike Wermuth

Members Absent:
James Clapper, Vice-Chairman
Dallas Jones
Raymond Downey
Joseph Samuels
Hubert Williams

I. Opening Remarks

Chairman. Good morning. Let me recognize Jim Thomson, the President of RAND.

Wermuth. Now please turn to the outline of the border security chapter. The Border Security Sub-panel laid out this outline for the consideration of the panel. The theme of a "lack of prioritization and focus" is the same as from our Second Annual Report. The conclusions and recommendation constitute the meat of this chapter.

We discovered that there are still major ports where the Coast Guard is not part of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force process. They need to be fully integrated into that process, no matter who leads that effort.

Steven Flynn's recommendations taken by the sub panel: 1) heightened security measures, especially in regards to manifest systems and provide incentives through an "easy trade lane;" 2) provide tax credits for industries that use smart containers or tags. The goal is to engage the private sector.

Currently the Coast Guard has the authority to search any U.S flag vessel, but the border security committee believes that for those vessels that the majority ownership is U.S we should extend the Coast Guard's authority to search these. There is also a specific recommendation to coordinate processes and protocols with Mexico and Canada.

Greenleaf. The basic consensus was that we had definitive information to work with and so that we could bring these recommendations together easier.

Garrison. There is an international aspect in that other countries in Africa and former USSR states are trying to improve their borders and would like some help. They are asking for technologies and training. I think this is something that we might consider.

Bremer. What is the relationship between these recommendations and our National Office? We should group these recommendations accordingly.

Chairman. I think it goes to an even broader issue. My mind was already leaping to the fact that the Coast Guard needs to be involved in the National Office in an advisory role at least. But we need to find out who is going to be doing this type of coordination - besides the budget and planning coordination?

Shine. This will come up as we talk about health and medicine. I think we need an organizational diagram of this office and fit in Advisory Boards. In other words, we need to represent how each of these activities relate to the NOTC and where the private, local and state input is into each of these areas.

Maniscalco. What alarms me the most is that we sat in some outstanding briefings and yet they didn't know what the other was doing. We need to force them to integrate with each other and with State and locals and hold their feet to the fire. They are certainly not sharing information with State and locals, who they are counting on to be their back up.

Shine. What is the last chapter of this report? Why can't the last chapter be what the challenge is: the role of the NOCT in the context of what the government says?

Chairman. With this topic [border security] , we are engaged exclusively with prevention. The second topic is, of course, response.

Gordan. We have spoken about a knowledge-management mechanism and need for them to have the same information; can technology do this?

Foresman. Yes and there are processes and procedures in place but they are not coordinated at the macro level.

Shine. Information is not necessarily communication which is not necessarily coordination.

Chairman. I think we should make this coordination issue as the last chapter.

Chairman. This could explode as time goes on, if it gets too big does it become Hart- Rudman?

Wermuth. No, because we are not striping the operational piece from the agencies.

O'Brien. I do not think this "last" chapter should attempt to spell out the future and how everything is going to operate. I think the "action" is then e.g. real time intelligence. If the outcome is to change the operation and functionality, then we need to say that.

Bremer. We have been keeping this office so pure, what about if it had it's own budget for exercises?

Chairman. You are shifting power to that guy.

Bremer. I'm thinking more along the line of seed money for research and development.

Wermuth. Or maybe integrationÖ

Bremer. Exactly, but tightly coordinated.

II. Public Health and Medical Subpanel

Shine. We think the most important problem is the complexity of the system, including it as an isolated system and it's relationship with say, law enforcement. In dealing with acute and follow-on care and potentially a large number of individuals - flooding -- gets again to the issue of the capacity of the hospital system to deal with these issues.

Another part of the problem is that the notion of daily requirements for care makes it difficult to focus on the less likely events. Also the complexity of the mechanisms for the accreditation and training and education process are different.

We are also concerned with the continuing lack of training and standards in this community and the impact and stress that such an event might cause. Ellen and I were speaking last night about a plane crash and the necessity of bringing in a number of people to deal with that.

The VA has a charge to store vaccines, but we want to address accessibility, and finally, quarantine and legal issues.

In terms of recommendations, we did think that the AMA and JCHO presentations were compelling. I think that we could conclude that those recommendations ought to be concluded and implemented. The meningitis cases are examples because the system was not managed effectively and responded in an irrational way. We need to make recommendations about training, exercises, simulations that have a variety of circumstances including personal protection for first responders. We need to make sure that there are resources for the laboratory response network, including the skills involved and information sharing.

We also want to look at the NOCT, including the role of an associate director for health and how that individual will relate to this.

Finally, we have been thinking about illuminating the significance of biological issues. These issues tend to be science fiction. Maybe the report should include a 2-page look at anthrax. It could identify some of the issues on how people might create the problem, how to recognize it. This section should also look at the relationship between vaccines and antibiotics and give people a baseline to look at as part of the spectrum.

Chairman. So the appendix would be a protocols and methodology-type section?

Shine. Yes.

Quinlisk. I wanted to talk about meningitis. I think it is an interesting incident that we can learn from.

Chairman. I think this sounds an awful lot like the British example of foot and mouth. They slaughtered animals by the 10,000s. And it was unnecessary. But their hysteria was the same as you just described Ohio. I am fascinated by the over-arching question of who is in charge. And the answer is "nobody" and some guys makes reckless statements and the media has every incentive to cause hysteria.

Quinlisk. You are right. I think the medical community often goes overboard to their clients. So there is over-reaction in the hospitals and normal reaction in the community.

Chairman. So as long as the terrorist creates the hysteria, they have met their objective.

Shine. Are there other issues that you want us to address?

O'Brien. What about military hospital mobilization?

Foresman. I think we rely too heavily on medical military assets. What if they are deployed overseas?

Marsh. I think we would want to familiarize ourselves with the program in the DoD on diseases and look at the problems they had. Identification was the biggest problem that they had and victimization. These are the show-stoppers.

Chairman. Is this a program we want to include?

Marsh. Yes, but it is for the military but not civilians.

Shine. Of course, just because DoD develops something, it could still be applied or changed to apply towards civilians.

Chairman. I myself am very dissatisfied about where we areÖ

Embrey. Of the 120 cities program, there were After Action reports on the biological aspect of terrorism. I would offer them to RAND for evaluation and to come up with trends. I think they will give you some insight.

Shine. Yes I think that one of the aftermaths of the first report was to examine capacity and that issue clearly needs to be addressed. Also public information and incident management should be a key component and Patty's [Quinlisk] example teaches and illustrates this point.

III. Cyber Security Sub-Panel

Marsh. If you look at this issue, it is not going away. The threat is growing.

Maniscalco. Hackers actually got into the power grids in California last week. And last month they got into the healthcare system in the University of Washington.

Foresman. From a structural standpoint, there was a discussion of should this be part of the NOCT or addressed externally?

Chairman. What is critical infrastructure?

Wermuth. Those systems important to the United States for security and the state of the nation: telecommunications, industry capabilities, logistics to move military forces (transportation). It is not necessarily every street and road, but it includes highways. So it is those things important to public safety and private capabilities.

Chairman. What we are discussing in terms of WMD and our response to it? Clearly if they disrupt computer systems we are going to have problems.

Bremer. I am not sure that there is such a thing of cyber-terrorism. But I think we should communicate some principles instead: 1) Public-private cooperation, 2) Robust systems for intelligence gathering and information sharing, 3) Emergency response capabilities identified, 4) Form of training and exercises to validate systems, 5) Good program of R&D on the technologies of attacks and counter-attacks. We are going to have a hard time getting very much deeper. It is too big an issue and it goes way beyond terrorism. But frankly I am not persuaded.

Maniscalco. We have seen people take down the 911 systems in Norway. These companies would rather admit that their CEO is a crack addict that that their computer networks are vulnerable and we are more and more reliant on private communications systems.

Foresman. We do not manage emergencies as effectively for cyber terrorism as for hurricane. The real argument is that we need to have a consistent functional process.

Reno. Personally, I think that this is a big problem. DoD will deal internally with cyber as it effects military operations, but not the economic impact. It is a serious issue, but not a weapon of mass destruction.

Chairman. Does this panel have evidence or examples that terrorists would use this vehicle to harm the United States?

Embrey. There are communication issues that are specifically important to consequence management. If we are making recommendations about information-sharing, the mechanism for doing that and securing it is important in the cyber realm.

Chairman. Let us then refer this back to the cyber sub-panel.

Adjourn