DoD Helps Hometown USA Confront Terrorism
By Linda D. Kozaryn
American Forces Press Service
ASHINGTON
— Until Timothy McVeigh detonated a 5,000-pound truck bomb in Oklahoma
City in 1995, most Americans probably believed terrorist attacks only
happened on foreign soil.
Yes, there'd been an earlier blast at New York's World Trade Center in
1993, but for many it didn't hit home with the same impact. The brutal
deaths of 168 innocent men, women and children at Oklahoma City woke up
America.
 Washington Air National Guard Tech. Sgt. Jane Bonner (left) and Sgt. 1st Class Charles Smith dissassemble an air regulator during air re-breather training at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Eric Wedeking Click for high resolution |
In the event that terrorists strike, DoD
is considering ways to best support civil authorities in the event of
terrorist attacks involving nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. "Looking
at history, there is no weapon that has ever been developed that man has
failed to use," Berkowsky said.
Contrary to some critics' view that defense officials and the mediahave
hyped the threat, she said, DoD and the media share a responsibility for
educating the public, "but we must address it in a balanced and responsible
manner.
"John Q. Public may not be having nightmares about biological terrorism,
but the national command authority must be focused on those things that
are a high risk to a large number of the population," she said. Berkowsky
is the Pentagon's civil support liaison to the National Security Council
and other federal agencies.
In the past year, she noted, U.S. authorities responded
to more than 200 threats involving chemical-biological agents such as
anthrax that turned out to be hoaxes. However, there have been credible
threats, she said, and they're not limited to state-sponsored terrorists.
"We've seen loners, free-lancers and militia organizations trying
to get their hands on bubonic plague and other toxins. The technology
is out there; it's on the Internet," she stressed. "It's in
people's minds, and many people have the capability to do these things."
America's undisputed military might has forced potential adversaries to
employ terrorist tactics, Berkowsky said. "Because of the strength
we've demonstrated on the battlefield, adversaries are going to attempt
to strike at our perceived soft underbelly, which is our domestic population,"
she said.
This fact has led to what Berkowsky termed "evolutionary initiatives"
within the Defense Department. Pentagon leaders recently adjusted the
military command structure to better support federal, state and local
government agencies during incidents involving weapons of mass destruction.
Military and civilian authorities have begun to share expertise and to
link resources to better respond to a range of possible scenarios.
"It's difficult to talk about specific scenarios," she pointed
out. "You walk a fine line in not wanting to give ideas to terrorists
and potential adversaries about the kinds of things that you're considering.
"Suffice it to say that we are necessarily thinking about biological
scenarios — using both infectious and noninfectious agents —
and radiological and chemical scenarios," Berkowsky said. She added
that U.S. government officials, led by the Department of Agriculture,
are focusing on "agro-terrorism," where an adversary attacks the
nation's food and water supply.
"We are contemplating possibilities in each of these arenas and what
we, as a department, need to do to plan and prepare for each," she
said.
Up until 1995, the American public generally seemed to accept terrorism
as a common occurrence — in other countries. Kidnappings, hijackings,
machine gun slayings, car bombs and suicide bombers had taken their toll
on the world stage for years. With a few exceptions — the 1993 bombing
at New York's World Trade Center, the 1980 blast at the Statue of Liberty
and the 1975 blast at La Guardia Airport — terrorist attacks happened
outside the United States.
But then events occurred that changed the magnitude of the threat when
terrorists introducing a new type of weapon in their arsenal. In March
1995, Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese religious cult, unleashed Sarin gas in
Tokyo's subway, killing 12 and injuring more than 5,000.
Berkowsky said the attack spotlighted the fact that terrorists, in this
case religious extremists, could get their hands on weapons of mass destruction
and had the will to use them. Civil authorities' problems are magnified
even further, she said, because some of these weapons are relatively easy
to make and deliver.
April 19, 1995, just a month after the Tokyo crisis, McVeigh and his cronies
ripped open America's heartland by destroying the Murrah Federal Building
in Oklahoma City. The bomb blast forever shattered the nation's sense
of immunity.
In June 1996, 19 American service members died at the hands of foreign
terrorists who exploded an estimated 20,000-pound truck bomb at Khobar
Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Hundreds more were injured in the blast
that sheared off the face of the high-rise barracks. As a result, military
officials dramatically beefed up force protection measures worldwide.
After Tokyo, Oklahoma City and Khobar Towers, no one at home or abroad
could ignore the dire threat of terrorism. Like it or not, it was now
clear that the United States was vulnerable — but whose job was it
to counter the threat?
Traditionally, Berkowsky said, people see the active duty forces deployed
abroad for foreign contingencies and supported by the National Guard and
Reserve. In the case of domestic terrorism, the National Guard and Reservists
would be on the front lines, supported by the active duty components.
The military has unique technical and operational capabilities to help
civil authorities deal with the threat, she said.
"Whether it be because of our experience in the Gulf or the threat
on the Korean Peninsula, DoD has long-standing experience with a variety
of equipment and technology," she said. "We also have a lot
of technical experts in our chemical and biological defense labs."
DoD also has large-scale logistics, transportation and communications
assets. "The military is really the only organization that has the
ability to get tents for 10,000 people from Point A to Point B,"
Berkowsky said.
To assist local law enforcement and emergency response officials, Congress
directed DoD to share its expertise and resources. DoD responded with
its Domestic Preparedness Program in 1996, implemented by the Army, to
train local officials, firefighters, police and emergency medical teams
and other "first responders" in 120 metropolitan areas.
To date, Berkowsky said, defense officials have trained more than 20,000
first responders in more than 75 cities. DoD is preparing to turn this
program over to the Department of Justice, which now shares responsibility
for training civilian authorities with the Federal Emergency Management
Agency.
Next, DoD officials created a new command structure to support domestic
defense. Because DoD's primary mission is war fighting outside the continental
United States, Berkowsky said, the department was not organized in a way
to best consolidate its assets to support national requirements at home.
In April 1999, Cohen and Deputy Secretary John J. Hamre asked Berkowsky
to look at this problem at the policy level. The defense leaders sought
to coordinate and integrate DoD's civil support efforts and enable the
department to speak with one voice.
"The secretary and the deputy secretary, the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff and the president all had the same vision at about the
same time that civil support is an absolutely critical element that the
government needed to focus on," she said.
As a result, DoD's 1999 Unified Command Plan set up a new unit at the
Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va. The Joint Task Force for Civil Support
was formed as the command element responsible for planning and preparing
for domestic contingencies involving weapons of mass destruction. Brig.
Gen. Bruce M. Lawlor, an Army National Guardsman from Vermont, commands
the task force.
In the past, DoD's Directorate of Military Support, known as DOMS, under
the Army Secretary as executive agent, coordinated DoD's support in times
of national emergencies. Upon request, active duty and reserve personnel
pitched in during fires, floods, and hurricanes. In considering the terrorist
threat and the possibility of mass casualties, Berkowsky said, DoD officials
sought a new approach.
"Traditionally," she said, "military officials waited until
they had requests from other federal agencies for this kind of unit or
this kind of support. But for the kinds of contingencies that we were
contemplating, we really needed to be a little bit more proactive.
"We needed to think more holistically about the kinds of assets DoD
could bring to bear," she continued. DoD wanted to ensure that first
responders understood the unique capabilities DoD has to offer and that
DoD officials prepared contingency plans.
"If you look at the case of the L.A. riots, for example," Berkowsky said,
"you had a general officer who was plucked to lead the joint task force
out there because he was geographically desirable, not because he had
ever prepared for a domestic contingency requiring troops in the streets.
He was planning for some contingency in the Pacific."
While the Directorate of Military Support will continue to respond to
fires, floods and other natural disasters, Berkowsky said, Lawlor's civil
support task force would only become involved in contingencies where state
and local capabilities are absolutely overwhelmed.
Berkowsky said DoD's current efforts are no longer aimed solely at deterring
and preventing crises. "We're presuming that we will have some events,
and therefore, we need to think about managing the consequences," she
said." If requested by the president or by
civil authorities, we as a department have a tremendous contribution to
make domestically.
"If something were to happen," she said,"the task force
would deploy and coordinate the DoD assets that would flow in support
of the FBI or the Federal Emergency Management Agency." DoD would
not be in charge — the military would play a supporting role, she
emphasized.
DoD has set up 10 National Guard teams to rapidly deploy to contingency
sites to assist local authorities. The teams remain state assets until
they are federalized, Berkowsky noted. At first labeled Rapid Assessment
and Initial Detection or "RAID" teams, DoD officials recently
changed the name to "Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Teams."
"The first 10 teams are going to be located in the 10 FEMA regions
around the country," Berkowsky said. "They will have special
communications gear that will help promote interoperability among firefighters,
the police and other first responders."
Defense officials expect these civil support teams to be fully trained
and certified by spring 2000. DoD is applying $30 million of the additional
funds provided by Congress in fiscal 2000 to set up 17 more teams. Ultimately,
all 27 teams will support the entire U.S. population.
Initially, defense officials dubbed the overall program "homeland
defense," then acknowledge this could create a misperception of an
implied military takeover, Berkowsky said. Defense officials recently
changed the program name to "civil support" which "conveys much more of
the role that we legitimately have in this regard," she said.
Civil libertarians criticized the civil support initiative, Berkowsky
pointed out. She said they feared DoD "was out to take over"
and that the military would trample people's civil liberties, as depicted
in such movies as 1999's "The Siege." In that suspense thriller,
a terrorist threat in New York City leads an overzealous military commander
to enforce martial law and to forcibly and indiscriminately detain Arab
Americans as suspects.
DoD's objective is "quite to the contrary" of this fictionalized
view, Berkowsky stressed. "Putting a National Guardsman in charge
of this unit is our way of demonstrating an exquisite attention to civil
liberties and an attempt to protect them. This builds a bridge to the
civilian community — civil authorities can see there is an unequivocal
chain up to the secretary of defense."
DoD leaders wanted to ensure the task force commander understood the national
chain of command and was completely aware of the legal constraints of
operating in U.S. territory, she said. Under the Posse Comitatus Act,
for instance, military personnel are prohibited from being used for law
enforcement within the United States, Berkowsky noted.
DoD officials also wanted to ensure the commander was a person familiar
and comfortable with supporting FBI and FEMA counterparts, as well as
state and local authorities.
"When we first started down this path, it seemed the military was
the only game in town, but first responders have made substantial progress
over the last couple of years," Berkowsky said. "Civilian authorities
and other federal departments have expanded their capabilities and are
making a robust effort to determine what each brings to the table.
"We have a responsibility as government officials to be wise stewards
of the money we've been given," she continued. "We must constantly
look to ensure our capabilities are not duplicative or overlapping of
those in any other agency or department."
Berkowsky said she believes the federal government's overall goal should
be to provide first responders with as much capability as possible during
those first critical minutes, hours and days after an incident.
"By giving them the training and equipment they need and helping
them develop their capabilities, we reduce the likelihood that DoD and
other agencies would be called in to assist" she said. "Though,
certainly, I have no doubt that we would be there if requested."