Preparedness Training Program that was over at the Department of Defense. So there was almost

Mr. SHAYS. I know why it left DOD. I do know that, but I don't know why you chose to go DOJ instead.

Mr. CRAGIN. Because they were doing the equipment grants. Say, for example, FEMA ended up doing the training. You still have Justice doing the equipping, so you don't have a one-stop shop. Mr. SHAYS. I understand.

Why would not the equipment go to FEMA? It seems to me that that would have been the logical place to put it.

Mr. CRAGIN. That was the wisdom of Congress, Mr. Shays, that the equipment grants programs were in the Department of Justice. Mr. SHAYS. But it is also the wisdom of Congress that the other part was at DOD.

Mr. CRAGIN. But it was the wisdom of Congress that after October 1, 1999, that portion could, in fact, be transferred to the other agency.

Mr. SHAYS. Right, but the question is why didn't we transfer both to FEMA? That is what I am trying to get at. It seems to me that DOJ is basically going to be focused on really the issue of crisis management to prevent a crime and then to punish the criminal. FEMA seems logically to me to be the one that works with local communities, tries to prepare them for the consequence management, and it would seem to me that they should be the ones dealing with the equipment and management and training, et cetera. That is what I am trying to sort out. There may not be a perfect answer, but I would at least like to know.

Mr. MITCHELL. In the instance of the agency administering the training and equipment and other support programs, it is the Office of Justice Programs which is the principal grantmaking agency. It is an operational agency, as the FBI would be, in the crisis management responsibilities. So the mission of OJP is solely to provide a wide variety of training and technical and financial support to State and local governments on a wide range of public safety issues. This is one of many public safety areas in which OJP has an aggressive and very comprehensive relationship with Governors, mayors, elected officials, public safety officials throughout the United States.

Mr. SHAYS. Feel free to jump in.

Mr. TIERNEY. Excuse us going back and forth. We have some of the same curiosity. Doesn't FEMA have the same kind of relationships? FEMA might know that.

Mr. SHAYS. Ms. Light, if you would move the microphone down a little lower.

Ms. LIGHT. Is that better?

Yes, FEMA is responsible for consequence management, and FEMÁ does have an excellent relationship with the emergency management and the fire community because we deal with them very regularly. Just as we deal with those communities, however, the Department of Justice deals very regularly with the law enforcement community, which is also a very essential component, as does the Department of Health and Human Services deal with the health officials that are part of the response also.

Regardless of the department or agency who has lead responsibility, the program is one in which all of the departments and agencies need to continue to work very closely together to make sure that we are meeting the needs of the first responders across the spectrum; emergency management, fire, law enforcement, health and medical personnel. We have been very much a part of that program both at the national level and in delivering it out in the communities, and we will continue to be very much a part of that program as the program is transferred to the Department of Justice. It will do nothing really to diminish our role with respect to consequence management in the aftermath of a disaster. We will still have that lead responsibility, and we will still utilize the Federal response framework for responding to disasters.

Mr. SHAYS. But what makes the question for me, though, is the contact you would have by the equipment and the training is now going to be handled by someone else. You won't have that kind of contact. It seems to me that it would have been logical to develop that relationship because the training for the consequence management is going to be done by someone else, but you are the one that is ultimately going to have to deal with the consequences.

Ms. LIGHT. We will deal with the consequences, but we are very much involved in the delivery of that training. We assisted in the development of that training. In fact, we developed a particular course that met the needs of the local responders, and we will continue to be a part of the delivery of that training even as the program is transferred to the Department of Justice. Every city visit, every training program, every exercise that is associated with that we are a part of and will continue to be a part of.

Mr. SHAYS. That is helpful.

Mr. TIERNEY. What is DOJ going to do?

Ms. LIGHT. Pardon me?

Mr. TIERNEY. What is the Department of Justice going to do with respect to training?

Ms. LIGHT. The training program, Department of Justice, Department of Defense, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, EPA, HHS, and Department of Energy are all integral parts of that training program. When we go out to the cities and deliver that program, all of us are there as a united entity.

Mr. TIERNEY. Under the direction of DOJ?

Ms. LIGHT. Yes, that would be the case. Now, under the direction of DOD, but then under the direction of DOD, yes.

Mr. SHAYS. If the transfer is going to move to DOJ, which it is, why not place everything in the Office of Justice Programs, which already has established State and local relations for administering law enforcement grants and programs?

Mr. MITCHELL. Mr. Chairman, the vast majority, the assistancerelated programs of the Domestic Preparedness Program, the city visit training, the equipment component, training equipment component, the Improved Response Program that deals with enhancing the training for State and local first response benefits will be transferred to the Office of Justice Programs.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. When is this transfer going to begin to take place, and when will it be completed?

Mr. MITCHELL. The initial transition planning and integration will begin this summer as we go out, our staff, the companies, the DOD program personnel, to the initial regional kickoffs for the jurisdictions that will begin the training process, the 20 cities that will begin the process in fiscal year 2000, and then we will increasingly participate. The program is complex, and there is a fairly long time line associated from the first initial contact with the city through the completion of the field exercise and the bio tabletop at the end of this process. So our MOU is quite specific as to the DOJ-DOD coordination on those jurisdictions where there will be a residual activity remaining after the transfer occurs on October 1, 2000.

Mr. SHAYS. What will happen to the existing DOD contracts?

Mr. CRAGIN. The existing DOD contracts will either reach their conclusion as far as the fiscal year applicability is concerned, or they will be transferred to the Department of Justice. That is an issue that we look at on a regular basis because of the fiscal year program. We are going to be budgeting some last-quarter dollars in the preceding fiscal year to get over to the first quarter of the transition year so that there is absolutely no hiatus in the program evolution. From the city's perspective, Mr. Chairman, this will be completely transparent to them.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Thank you.

Mr. Cragin, I think this is also from your statement. You said the Domestic Preparedness Program currently consists of five program elements: One, the city, training the trainer programs. The second one was the annual Federal, State and local-FSL-exercise. I think the third one is the Improved Response Program [IRP]; four, expert assistance; and five, chemical and biological response. What parts of the program will DOD retain, and what parts of the program will DOJ receive of these?

Mr. CRAGIN. As I indicated in my opening statement, we are essentially going to retain the chemical and biological rapid response team. As you know, the legislation required that the Department of Defense establish at least one of those teams. We have established that in fiscal year 1999.

Mr. SHAYS. That is within the marine

Mr. CRAGIN. That is an amalgam of expertise within the Department of Defense. That includes and can utilize, for example, the tech escort units, Chemical and Biological Incident Response Task Force from the Marine Corps. But we have also established, and not up and running yet, and I believe this committee is going to have a hearing to discuss the topic on June 23, what we call rapid assessment and initial detection teams, which will be fielded through the United States to assist State and local authorities in assessing an event in determining exactly what they are dealing with and providing support. So we are going to retain those things. We are also going to retain part of the expert assistance aspects because we have mission requirements for those activities within the Department of Defense.

Mr. SHAYS. As it relates to the trainer program, what part will DOJ assume, and what part will DOD continue?

Mr. CRAGIN. DOJ will assume the entire aspect of that program. That is essentially the guts, so to speak, of the Domestic Prepared

ness Program where they go out, as we have to date, with 58 cities. and about 15,700 first responders, and we train them as trainers so that you get the leveraged capacity of them going forward to train additional personnel.

Mr. SHAYS. When will the FSL Exercise Improvement Response Program be transferred to Justice?

Mr. CRAGIN. That will not be transferred, Mr. Chairman, because by the law the Department of Defense is only required to conduct that for a 5-year period. So 2001 will be the last year of that program, and we have agreed to maintain that as a Department of Defense-led activity. But I echo Ms. Light's comments to you. This is an interagency process. Everybody is collaborative in working this process, and they all participate in the exercise planning as well. Mr. SHAYS. I think that is clear. I think it is important for us to begin to appreciate all of the parts to it, which leads me to ask after 2001, won't the program continue? Won't Congress authorize it up to 2001?

Mr. CRAGIN. I am going to let Mr. Mitchell respond to the question of the program, but I want to emphasize the Federal, State and local annual exercise aspect expires at the end of 5 years. The rest of the program continues.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just say, you are going to be having an exercise this year in New York City?

Mr. CRAGIN. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. That will involve how much; over what period of time will that exercise take place? I am sure that you are planning for it now, but is that a 1-day event? Is it a 5-day event?

Mr. CRAGIN. I am not sure about the specific days. It will be more than a day, I can tell you that.

Mr. SHAYS. Actually, I can get into that issue later, that is a little off subject. I will try to make a point to be there if I can.

Mr. CRAGIN. We would be happy to provide your staff with all of the necessary information.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Mr. Mitchell.

Mr. MITCHELL. Mr. Chairman, we fully intend to take the program as exists and through the interagency process that we are engaging in now to determine what would be the next phase of the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici Domestic Preparedness Training Program, recognizing that 120 municipalities, while a large part populationwise of the country, there are areas of the country, 12 States, where there has been no program activity at all.

So we are going to look at the requirements and also look at some of the ways that we can improve the delivery of that, hopefully over the next few years, to have a more objective means of targeting not only the Domestic Preparedness Program training, but equipment and others on something other than population, which gets to the needs assessment and the other activities that are under way now, which hopefully will give us a broader range of criteria and something more substantive to base targeting of training equipment on other than population, certainly to address the support in those 12 States where there has been no NunnLugar-Domenici or OJP involvement.

Mr. SHAYS. When you do this training exercise, you invite community leaders from other areas to witness and participate? There has got to be an answer yes, because I see a nodding of the head in the audience.

Mr. CRAGIN. I don't want to say that I anticipated the question, but I happen to be reading an after-action report on a domestic preparedness training session that was done out in Oakland, CA. It was 1 of the 120 cities. This is the student demographics that they report. Students were selected by the local jurisdiction and represented several key responder disciplines, major disciplines, firefighters, law enforcement, emergency medical service and hospital care providers. Other students included representatives from the Federal Aviation Agency; Federal Bureau of Investigation; U.S. Air Force; U.S. Army Reserve; and the U.S. Department of Energy; California Army National Guard; California Office of Emergency Services and the California EMS Authority; Alameda County Fire; Contra Costa County Health; OES and sheriff, cities of Alameda, Berkeley, Hayward, Livermore, Pleasanton, Newark, Presidio of Monterrey, Richmond, Salinas, San Francisco, San Leandro, San Rafael and Emeryville; city of Oakland Public Works and Office of Emergency Services; American Medical Response; Bay Area Rapid Transit; Lawrence Livermore National Lab; Oakland Coliseum; Port of Oakland; and Stanford University.

Mr. SHAYS. So the answer is yes?

Mr. CRAGIN. The answer is yes.

Mr. SHAYS. DOD has said, Mr. Cragin, that it will retain control of the chemical-biological rapid response team. But my question is to Mrs. Martinez. Does FBI have or plan to have any WMD rapid response teams of its own?

Mrs. MARTINEZ. In the way of rapid response teams, I would say we are offering training to the technician level HAZMAT in each of our offices-excuse me, in 10 of our offices. Operations level has been met in the remaining 41. I would offer that this largely has to do with the event of collecting evidence in a contaminated crime scene as opposed to moving in to do that job that would otherwise be done by State and local HAZMAT professionals. We feel there will be a teaming and concerted training effort for sustainment of certification between the local offices and the local fire and HAZMAT teams, not to replace, though, the other teams. Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

Let me just ask a question here of counsel.

Thank you.

Mr. Tierney.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. Mitchell, the testimony indicated that under the current program there are 120 cities designated to receive training and equipment loans. Prior to the announcement of the proposed transfer, GAO criticized the Department of Defense for delivering the Domestic Preparedness Program to cities rather than larger metropolitan areas that GAO said would have greatly increased the coverage. Does the DOJ plan to change that geographic methodology for determining which places receive training and equipment?

Mr. MITCHELL. Congressman, we certainly concur that there is limited utility in focusing on a single hub city where under existing