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
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Simulated attacks called valuable
Terror exercises exposed flaws in
communications
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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."
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Tribune