The U.S. homeland defense program should include distance-learning
technologies that would allow local, state and federal emergency-response
units to train together, said retired Army Gen. Dennis J. Reimer.
He is the director of the Memorial Institute for the Prevention
of Terrorism.
The institute was founded in the aftermath of the 1995 bombing
of the Murrah Federal Building, in Oklahoma City. It receives congressional
grants and other public funding. For the most part, the organization
focuses on domestic anti-terrorism projects.
“It was the desire of the survivors to have an organization
that would focus on the future,” Reimer said in an interview.
“Our focus has been on research and development projects that
can help the first responders—the policemen, the firemen and
the emergency medical personnel.”
“One of the lessons of Oklahoma City was that any place can
be attacked,” he said. “We are all vulnerable.”
A former chief of staff of the U.S. Army, Reimer was responsible
for carrying out a domestic preparedness program in which U.S. Army
chemical-warfare units trained local authorities on how to deal
with weapons of mass destruction attacks.
The first responders often are too busy to participate in schoolhouse
training and need to be able to train from their home base, Reimer
said. Law-enforcement agencies in the United States have more than
70,000 departments, which makes it difficult to have an integrated
training program.
“More needs to be done in distance training,” Reimer
said. “[We need] to take the training to the departments.”
Most first-responders, he added, do not have an opportunity to attend
two-week courses. “We have to figure out how to make the training
more suited for the target audience,” said Reimer. “More
needs to be done to develop a doctrine, so you can bring together
federal, state and local responders to work together.”
The Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction Act of 1996, known
as the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici Amendment, established guidelines for
the training of first responders in dealing with WMD terrorist incidents.
The U.S. Army was tasked to train first responders in 120 of the
largest cities in the country. Each city received $300,000 from
the Defense Department for personal protection, decontamination
and detection equipment.
That program subsequently was turned over to the Justice Department.
Reimer said the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici program provided valuable training,
but it should be expanded. “You have to get more than just
120 cities.”
Like military commanders who learn decision-making skills using
wargaming technologies, domestic-preparedness officials also should
take advantage of these capabilities, said Reimer. “We need
simulation-based training to train the leaders who have to make
decisions in emergencies.”
Simulations also can be useful in training rescue workers on how
to locate survivors, he added. “We need training at all levels:
decision-maker level and first-responder level.”
In the wake of the September 11 terrorist strikes in New York City
and Washington, D.C., there were numerous reports about threats
of chemical or biological attacks. “WMD always are a possibility
... it’s within the capability of well-trained terrorists,”
Reimer said, “[but] I wouldn’t want to go overboard
on this. ... It’s not an easy thing to pull off a WMD attack.”
The idea of a homeland-defense program is to “mitigate vulnerabilities,”
said William Schneider, chairman of the Defense Science Board, a
Pentagon advisory panel. The U.S. vulnerability against a WMD attack
was the topic of one of the DSB studies released during this past
summer.
Another vulnerability, Schneider told reporters, is the lack of
a missile-defense system. “That is only one of the vulnerabilities
to which we need to attend.”
Before President Bush announced—on September 20—the
creation of a White House Office for Homeland Security, Schneider
said he believed the Defense Department should be the lead agency.
“I’d prefer a model [it’s a personal preference]
that reinforces the agency that is most capable to be able to execute
a particular function,” Schneider said. Several agencies currently
execute homeland defense functions, but the Pentagon is best suited,
he said. “If you look at the nature of this problem, the Department
of Defense is ultimately going to be the 911 [force],” he
said.
“At the end of the day, when the heavy lifting is required,
it’s going to be done by the Department of Defense, and the
Department of Defense has the resources and depth to deal with a
problem of this scope.”
Schneider acknowledged, however, that the Pentagon’s investments
in new technology have been “rather unfocused in relation
to Defense Department needs.” One area that requires immediate
attention and funding is biological defense, he said. “One
of the things that prevent people from investing in bio defense
is that it seems so hard.”
Advances in biotechnology, he said, provide “some basis for
optimism that we can develop the detectors and, by using sophisticated
software, you [can] detect and identify an antidote or vaccine.”
There is no quick fix for the bio-threat, Schneider said. He plans
to recommend to the defense secretary that more funding be allocated
to the development of detectors and vaccines. “Reallocating
resources in the science and technology [budget] is part of the
exercise,” he said. “The bio-industry seems poised for
the type of Moore’s Law type of growth that the information
technology sector enjoyed during the past 40 years.”
In fiscal year 2001, the U.S. federal government spent nearly $10
billion on counter-terrorism programs. About $812 million was allocated
for research and development. Of that amount, $99 million was spent
on vaccines, $97 million on detection and diagnosis technologies,
$28 million on personal protection equipment and $24 million on
decontamination systems.