FISCAL YEAR 2000 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT-DOMESTIC EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS FOR RESPONSE TO THREATS OF TERRORIST USE OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES,

MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE,
Washington, DC, Thursday, March 11, 1999.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:00 p.m. in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Curt Weldon (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CURT WELDON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM PENNSYLVANIA, CHAIRMAN, MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE

Mr. WELDON. The subcommittee will come to order.

Today the Subcommittee on Research and Development meets to receive testimony on our Nation's capacity to respond to the threat of domestic terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction. This is a fifth hearing that our subcommittee has convened since March of 1996 to address the threat posed to the U.S. and its citizens from terrorist use of nuclear, chemical or biological materials, and the need for improvements in the capacities of emergency first responders, and the overall capabilities of Federal, State and local emergency response agencies to respond to and mitigate the effect of such incidents.

In fact, this subcommittee has considered as its highest priority three emerging threats, the first being missile defense, missile proliferation; the second being cyberterrorism, and we had a significant hearing on this, our fourth in this area, last week; and the threat we see imposed by weapons of mass destruction and the use of those weapons in terrorist incidents. In fact, I take great pride that this subcommittee in a bipartisan way has increased funding over the President's request in each of the past four years. This is not a threat that just emerged with the President's speech in January of this year. We have been consistently concerned with this threat since March of 1996, when we first convened our subcommittee to receive testimony on what we saw as an emerging serious threat.

Today the subcommittee will focus on the research and development programs that support the domestic emergency preparedness for response to the threat. We will hear witnesses from the Departments of Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who will discuss their

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agency's research and development programs that support the domestic emergency preparedness program.

In January 1999 the President announced that the budget request for fiscal year 2000 provides $10 billion for government-wide efforts to combat terrorism and protect the Nation's critical infrastructures. Of the $10 billion, $8.6 billion is for combating terrorism, including weapons of mass destruction, and $1.4 billion is for critical infrastructure protection. Of these amounts, $1.385 million is for domestic emergency preparedness activities and $577 million is for research and development of technologies that deter, prevent or mitigate terrorist acts.

According to the report recently received from the Office of Management and Budget, the President's budget request provides a balanced approach to combating terrorism by continuing efforts aimed at conventional terrorist threats and enhancing efforts directed at newly emerging threats involving weapons of mass destruction, and represents an increase in government-wide funding for combating weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, of $666 million from a total of $719 million in fiscal 1998.

The Nation's domestic emergency preparedness program for response to terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction is complex and convoluted. Federal departments and agencies have overlapping responsibilities and programs, congressional committees have overlapping jurisdictions. This results in a confusing picture for State and local agencies and for the local emergency first responders who would be the first on the scene in responding to a terrorist incident or natural disaster.

Similar consideration extended the research and development programs that support domestic emergency preparedness. To address these issues, the Congress in the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 1999 required the President to increase the effectiveness of the domestic emergency preparedness program and to develop a more integrated program of Federal, State, and local levels.

The fiscal year 1998 Omnibus Appropriation Act directed the Attorney General, in consultation with the Secretaries of Defense, State and Treasury and Directors of the FBI, Central Intelligence, to develop a 5-year interagency counterterrorism and technology plan that would serve as a baseline strategy for coordination of national policy and operational capabilities to combat terrorism in the United States and against American interests overseas.

It is hoped that the administration's response to this guidance will result in a more coherent and integrated domestic emergency preparedness program. To this end, the subcommittee is interested in today's hearing in gaining understanding of the plans and programs of the Department of Defense that support the Federal domestic emergency preparedness program, and how those plans and programs are coordinated and integrated with other participating Federal, State, and local agencies and within the DOD. As examples, we will focus on the DOD's research and development program and related research and development programs of the Departments of Energy, Health and Human Services and Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

One of my serious concerns over the past five years has been our focus at the Federal agency level and not involving those first responders, who are the first that will be there in any situation, whether it is terrorism or whether it is a natural incident. And we must understand that those first responders, all 1.2 million of them, represented by 32,000 departments, 85 percent of them are volunteers, have been handling incidents involving materials that we would oftentimes classify as serious materials such as chemical explosions, fires and explosions and hazard material incidents on rail lines, and they have been handling these incidents for 200 years.

We need to understand at the Federal level that oftentimes they understand what needs to be done, and rather than reinventing the wheel for them, we should be there to support their efforts in responding to local incidents at the local level. I think we are finally getting that message across, and I see we are finally getting the response that we should have gotten to support those 32,000 local departments.

I can say at the beginning of this hearing this will continue to be my thrust as long as I am in this Congress, and all the agencies know that, and that will constantly be a question that I ask: What are we doing to support the first responder? Because the first one on the scene will not be a member of the Marine Corps Chemical/ Biological Incident Response Force (CBIRF) team, will not be a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) bureaucrat, will not be a member of the Guard or Reserve. The first responder will be a fire or EMS person or law enforcement person who has to make some very difficult decisions in the first 30 minutes, and we better never lose sight of that fact, and that will be my key thrust in this hearing and throughout my tenure as the chairman of this subcommittee and a Member of this Congress.

Today's hearing will be conducted as a series of panels. The first panel addresses the Department of Defense perspective, the intra and interagency process for coordinating weapons of mass destruction domestic preparedness, the DOD support program for domestic emergency preparedness and DOD research and development programs that support domestic emergency preparedness.

The second panel will discuss the research and development programs of the Department of Energy, the Department of Health and Human services, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that support the domestic emergency preparedness program. We will then invite all the witnesses back to the table for questions and answers.

We are pleased to have as our witnesses for the first panel Mr. Charlie Cragin, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness; Dr. Delores M. Etter, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Science and Technology; Mr. Raymond Dominguez, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Forces and Resources from the Office of Assistant Secretary of Defense, Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict. Boy, that is a real title. I hope you don't have to put that on your name tag on a regular basis. General John Doesburg, Commander, U.S. Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command. Gentlemen and lady, we welcome you. We look forward to your testimony today.

Before we begin, I want to recognize my distinguished ranking member and good friend from the State of Virginia, and a tireless advocate and leader on these issues, Owen Pickett, for his opening statement.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Curt Weldon can be found in the Appendix on page 205.]

STATEMENT OF HON. OWEN PICKETT, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM VIRGINIA, RANKING MEMBER, MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE

Mr. PICKETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for scheduling this important and timely hearing, and I join you in welcoming our panelists here today. Today's hearing is about a most pressing topic. With terrorist groups publicly threatening American citizens and numerous indications of weapons proliferation around the world, it is extremely important for our Nation to mount an effective deterrence and response capability. When it comes to a matter involving such high potential consequences, we can never be too careful.

Initiating a robust research and development program to deal with chemical, biological and nuclear terrorist threats is certainly a necessary approach for ensuring the safety and well-being of Americans, both at home and abroad. While we are not here to debate the administration's policies associated with the effort to date to combat terrorism, I look forward to a review of research and development programs that offer promise to improve our Nation's response effectiveness.

I am most interested in the work currently under development at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), as well as coordinated interagency research under the direction of both the Technical Support Working Group and the Counterterror Technical Support Program. I am pleased that the administration's budget request includes a substantial increase for these program areas.

I remain most concerned, however, about the apparent shortfalls in our ability to deal with the potential use of biological agents. I am familiar with the few promising anti-bio programs that are in their infancy, and would urge that they receive an added emphasis for fast development and fielding.

Again, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for holding this hearing and look forward to our witnesses' testimony.

Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Mr. Pickett.

In the spirit of the way we conduct these hearings, I will invite my colleagues to ask questions as we go along. Your statements will be entered in the record as they are. We would encourage you to say whatever comments you want. If you want to read parts of your statements, that is fine also, but we want this to be as informal as possible so members can ask questions as they see issues arise that they are concerned about. So I would just encourage you to be as candid and fluent as you would like to be.

With that, it is great to have you back, Charlie. We appreciate all of your good efforts and leadership. Thank you.

STATEMENT OF CHARLES L. CRAGIN, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR PERSONNEL AND READINESS

Secretary CRAGIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a great pleasure to rejoin you again. If my recollection is correct, our last opportunity was in Indianapolis.

Mr. WELDON. It was.

Secretary CRAGIN. And I understand I will be joining some of your fire fighter colleagues on the 21st of April, and we look forward to that discussion as well.

Mr. WELDON. You are always accessible.

Mr. Cragin is referring to a hearing that we held, a field hearing, last year at the largest conference of emergency responders in the country in Indianapolis, Indiana. There are usually 17,000 who attend that hearing, and Mr. Cragin was kind enough to come out, as did others, to give their input directly as to what they thought were their priorities.

More important than attending, you responded to many of their concerns, which I deeply appreciate.

Secretary CRAGIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee. We are pleased on behalf of the Department of Defense, my colleagues, to have this opportunity to report to you on the activities of the department in providing support to our Nation's first responders, the 1.2 million men and women who place themselves on the front lines of America on a daily basis.

My colleagues will shortly discuss in detail the department's WMD research and development efforts and how those efforts are being tailored to give first responders the technology and equipment they need. But let me try in this brief opening statement to summarize the department's overall approach to preparedness with respect to weapons of mass destruction.

Since President Clinton signed Presidential Decision Directive 62 last May, significant advances have taken place in regard to our efforts to support local and State authorities. PDD-62, also known as the Combating Terrorism Directive, highlighted the growing threat of unconventional attacks against the United States. It detailed a new and more systematic method of fighting terrorism here at home, and it brought a program management approach to our national counterterrorism efforts. The directive also established, within the National Security Council, the office of the National_Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-Terrorism to oversee these efforts.

Secretary Cohen, Deputy Secretary Hamre, Attorney General Reno, FEMA Director Witt, and Director Clark at the NSC are thoroughly engaged and are giving the challenges associated with this process their direct and continuing attention. With the interagency coordination process having now been formalized under the auspices of the NSC, multiple subgroups have been formed to implement the guidance provided under PDD-62. This method addresses one of the foremost issues that face an undertaking of this magnitude. It helps ensure a cohesive approach, and for the first. time it fully integrates the Federal effort in support of the State agencies and, most particularly, local first responders.