20 DEC, 2003 - 1330 CST The article appended below was published in today's Chicago Tribune. According to the Chciago area hams involved in "Topoff 2", there would have been some bad screw-ups if it were not for amateur radio. 73 - Dick, W9GIG ====================================================================== Simulated attacks called valuable Terror exercises exposed flaws in communications Advertisement By Frank James and Gary Washburn, Tribune staff reporters. Frank James reported from Washington and Gary Washburn from Chicago December 20, 2003 WASHINGTON -- Federal and local officials said Friday that they gleaned useful information from the simulated terrorist attacks on Chicago and Seattle this year, including the need to urgently fix communications flaws that hampered the emergency response. In a briefing with reporters in which they shared tidbits of declassified information from an otherwise classified 250-page report, Department of Homeland Security officials said they were mostly encouraged by the results from the TOPOFF 2 exercises in May. They indicated, however, that the exercises revealed weaknesses in the response network that could have contributed to problems if there had been real attacks with weapons of mass destruction. "It's an important message for the American public [that] we already have in this country a robust emergency response system at the federal, state and local level," said Michael Brown, homeland security undersecretary for domestic preparedness who also is director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "It's not perfect," Brown said. "There are ways to improve it. ... We know there's an enemy out there trying to invent new ways to hurt us. So we're always trying to stay ahead of that game as much as possible. That's the lesson of TOPOFF 2." Chicago Mayor Richard Daley said the city will work to make improvements based on the report. But he said he wasn't displeased by the shortcomings pointed out by the exercise. "That is what it was for," Daley said. "We were supposed to evaluate these and come back and look at it. That's what we're supposed to do." Terrorist `chatter' Friday's briefing came on the first day of Hanukkah, with Christmas only days away. Administration officials said they are concerned about the increased volume of terrorist "chatter" intercepted by U.S. and allied intelligence experts in recent weeks. Such communications have sometimes preceded attacks. There were media reports that New York, Washington and Los Angeles could be targets, but an administration official said there was no credible information pointing to potential attacks in those cities. The official said the administration didn't plan to raise the terrorist threat advisory level, now at yellow, which signifies an elevated risk for terrorist attacks. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, concerns about threats of attacks have grown during the holidays. In discussing last spring's exercise in Chicago, officials said the communications problems were pronounced. For instance, after actors complaining of flu like symptoms began showing up at hospitals, a phone system was overwhelmed at an undisclosed location where officials were trying to monitor the situation. A Homeland Security official said details of precise locations where problems occurred wouldn't be disclosed for fear of providing terrorists with a road map to weak spots in the system. Similarly, because of heavy call volumes, fax machines became tied up. It took two hours instead of a few minutes for officials to send out "blast" faxes disseminating information about the supposed attacks to the 64 hospitals involved in the exercise. Officials had to resort to using three ham radio operators to communicate, Homeland Security Department officials said. Since the exercise, Illinois has launched an initiative to provide hospitals with access to a secure, satellite-based communications system so the institutions could communicate if there were a real crisis. Overall, Chicago got high marks, said Cortez Trotter, executive director of the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communications. "We found out very early on [in the exercise] that we had a communication challenge--I wouldn't say it was a problem--that dealt with our ability to have a direct, secured line of communication" with the Homeland Security Department, Trotter said. "We have rectified the problem." Problems at hospitals The communication problems at hospitals, he said, largely involved hospitals trying to communicate with each another. "The alternative is being able to sit down at computers and receive real-time data over secure e-mail systems," he said. In Seattle, where officials simulated the explosion of a "dirty bomb," which would spread radioactive material across the downtown area, police and firefighters were hampered by the lack of radiation detectors, said Bob Stephens, special assistant to the Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. "We need to get the technology in their hands to make sure they're able to know what kind of harm's way they're being put in," Stephens said. "We're working hard to figure out better ways to do that and less expensive ways to do that." Copyright © 2003, <http://www.chicagotribune.com/>Chicago Tribune