質問は恐怖の練習で上がった

3つの虚構の「汚れた爆弾」が消え、2主要な米国の交通機関動脈を不具にするときワシントン州(AP) -国家は最も大きいテロリズムの練習のために今月下旬に準備している。 AP通信著得られる文書に従う都市そしてグアム。

けれどもこのドリルが始まる一方で、2005で保持される前の国民の練習からの細部はまだ-役人が次の実質の攻撃のために準備するのを助けるように仮定される情報公に解放されることを持っている。

家のメンバーは2005年からの「の後行為」のレポートが公共になぜなされなかったか含んでいる答え水曜日を要求した。 Congress has required the exercise since 2000, but has done little in the way of oversight beyond attending the actual events.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, did not get a direct answer to why it has taken the department two years to finish the after-action report.

“I’m just wondering how much of that information you gleaned is actually current enough to move forward with,” Thompson, D-Miss., told Dennis R. Schrader, a preparedness official at the Department of Homeland Security. Wednesday was Schrader’s 45th day on the job at the department, and he did not have most of the answers lawmakers were seeking on the $25 million exercise.

Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., suggested the department might be hiding something by not releasing the report. “Is it so sensitive because there was a lot of failures in this exercise?” he asked. “You know Katrina wasn’t exactly a home run.”

The fourth Top Officials exercise ― dubbed TOPOFF ― takes place during the week starting Oct. 15. The program costs about $25 million a year and involves the federal government’s highest officials, such as top people from the Defense and Homeland Security departments.

“The challenge with TOPOFF is not the exercise itself. It’s to move as quickly as possible to remedy what perceives to be the problems that are uncovered,” former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said in an interview with AP this week.

Ridge, who launched his own security consulting company on Monday, said he’s a big fan of the TOPOFF exercises. But he said “it’s not acceptable” that the review from the 2005 exercise is still not released publicly.

The House Homeland Security emergency communications, preparedness and response subcommittee was holding a hearing Wednesday on the terrorism exercise program.

This year’s TOPOFF will build on lessons learned from previous exercises, according to the Homeland Security Department, which runs the program. The agency said the Oct. 15-19 exercise would be “the largest and most comprehensive” to date.

According to an internal department briefing of the coming exercise obtained by AP, a dirty bomb will go off at a Cabras power plant in Guam; another dirty bomb will explode on the Steel Bridge in Portland, Ore., impacting major transportation systems, and a third dirty bomb will explode at the intersection of busy routes 101 and 202 near Phoenix.

Local hospitals and law enforcement agencies will be involved in the “attacks” by the dirty bombs, which are conventional explosives that include some radioactive material that would cause contamination over a limited area but not create actual nuclear explosions.

“Lessons learned from the exercise will provide valuable insights to guide future planning for securing the nation against terrorist attacks, disasters and other emergencies,” according to the department’s Web site.

The after action report from TOPOFF 3, which deals with issues that came up in the 2005 exercise, is supposed to identify areas for improvement. That report is still going through internal reviews.

According to a brief summary of the 2005 exercise ― marked For Official Use Only, but obtained by AP ― problems arose when officials realized the federal government’s law for providing assistance does not cover biological incidents.

The exercise involved a mustard gas attack from an improvised explosive device in Connecticut and the release of the pneumonic plague in New Jersey. This caused certain federal disaster programs to be unavailable to some residents suffering from the attack, according to the summary.

A 2005 Homeland Security inspector general report suggested the department start tracking the lessons learned from these exercises.

And a 2006 White House report on Hurricane Katrina criticized the department for not having a system to address and fix the problems discovered in the TOPOFF exercises.

“The most recent Top Officials (TOPOFF) exercise in April 2005 revealed the federal government’s lack of progress in addressing a number of preparedness deficiencies, many of which had been identified in previous exercises,” according to the White House.

Previously, a more detailed version of lessons-learned from TOPOFF 2, held in 2003 was not released to states for security reasons.

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