Combating Terrorism: Observations on the Threat of Chemical and Biological Terrorism. GAO/T-NSIAD-00-50. Washington, D.C.: October 20, 1999. Combating Terrorism: Need for Comprehensive Threat and Risk Combating Terrorism: Issues to Be Resolved to Improve Counterterrorism Operations. GAO/NSIAD-99-135. Washington, D.C.: Combating Terrorism: Observations on Federal Spending to Combat Combating Terrorism: Observations on Crosscutting Issues. Combating Terrorism: Threat and Risk Assessments Can Help Prioritize and Target Program Investments. GAO/NSIAD-98-74. Washington, D.C.: April 9, 1998. Combating Terrorism: Spending on Governmentwide Programs Combating Terrorism: Federal Agencies' Efforts to Implement National Policy and Strategy. GAO/NSIAD-97-254. Washington, D.C.: September 26, 1997. 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The first copy of each printed report is free. Additional copies are $2 each. A check or money order should be made out to the Superintendent of Documents. GAO also accepts VISA and Mastercard. Orders for 100 or more copies mailed to a single address are discounted 25 percent. Orders should be sent to: Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Decker. General Reimer. General REIMER. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the subcommittee. I have submitted a statement for the record, and would ask that be accepted. I would just like to summarize that statement if I could. I am the director of the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism and have been that since April 2000. Prior to that, I served 37 years in the U.S. Army and retired in 1999 as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army. I would like to talk just a little bit about MIPT in terms of what we do and then broaden it a little it bit. MIPT is the third component of the National Memorial in Oklahoma City. And the family members and survivors felt very strongly about having an organization that looked to the future to try to prevent what happened on April 19, 1995 from happening again. And that is our charter and that is what we do. Because of that charter, our focus is on the first responder community. We have been supported by Congress through four different appropriations, which we deeply appreciate. Primarily, we concentrate on five different areas. First is a research program to provide the emergency responders the technology they need to do their job better. One of our projects, Project Responder, is very enthusiastically supported by the Department of Homeland Security and I think has the potential to be the cornerstone for a research development test and evaluation program that needs to be established for the emergency responder community. We have also been involved in training exercises, have supported Dark Winter, one of the co-sponsors of Dark Winter. We took Dark Winter and did a state exercise in Oklahoma called Sooner Spring, which we distributed to all 50 States under Governor Keating's signature and we will look at the runaway train scenario because I think that type of scenario is the thing policymakers need to think about. We have an outreach program primarily focused on a library and a Web page to try and inform the American people of the complex issues involved with domestic terrorism. We, unfortunately, in Oklahoma have too many people who have felt the direct effects of domestic terrorism, but fortunately they are willing to share their experiences and they were very helpful in reaching out to the victims in September 11, and I think that association still remains very strong. Oklahoma City is a great place for a conference. It's a neutral forum area. We are located somewhat in the middle of the United States. But more importantly, as we bring people together in Oklahoma City and talk about the issues involved with domestic terrorism, everyone leaves a little stronger, more committed, more convinced about the importance of the job they are doing because of the National Memorial. And then last is what I call flagship program, it's basically to tie the first responders through the use of the Internet share best practices and lessons learned. There are a lot of good best practices that exist out there, but they are not shared with others, and so information sharing becomes very important. And the idea, if you can share this best practice with others, then everybody gets a little bit better. We can also share lessons learned. We produced a volume called Oklahoma City: Seven Years Later, which captures the lessons learned from Oklahoma City many of you have talked about already, and we will make that available to everybody; in fact, we have already sent that out to every mayor in the United States and it has been downloaded 17,000 times from our Web site, so it is very much available. But we think that by sharing these lessons learned that everybody will get better, and I maintain that's the best way for the Nation to get the best return on our investment. The issue we are dealing with today is a complex issue. And just as Secretary McHale said, President Lincoln indicated we need to do some fresh thinking. The sentence before that, he said: There are the occasion is filled with great difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion. He was absolutely right on both of those accounts. I think the key to this problem is partnership. It's a partnership amongst the Federal, State, and the local levels of government; it's a partnership amongst the private and the public sector; and it's a partnership between the military and civilian responder community. And since the purpose of this committee is looking at the latter, I will confine most of my remaining remarks to that. I believe the National Guard is the key in terms of military support. I think the military does a great job in terms of military support to civilian authority, but I think in this particular area we need "to think anew and act anew" in solving this problem. The reason I believe the National Guard is key is there is a historical precedent. If you go back to the very beginning in the 1600's, the National Guard was established to protect the settlers in the communities. They have had this historical mission of protecting the United States. They have the flexibility, the flexibility to operate under Title X in a Federal control status or in a Title 32, under State controls which gives them an awful lot of flexibility on issues such as posse comitatus. They also have a Guard Net 21, which basically ties together through fiberoptics capabilities most of the United States. And somebody told me and I believe this to be true, at least probably in the high 90 percentile, every person in the United States lives within 50 miles of an armory. So an armory could become the center of the activity. It was already mentioned by Chairman Shays in his opening remarks we need to train the way we are going to fight. We have to fight differently in this war against terrorism, and we need to train differently or else we are not going to be able to operate effectively when the time comes. So it's very important we figure out how we are going to provide military support to civilian authorities when we have a terrorist act. And we know that any terrorist attack will require military support. Finally, I would say that there is a group of people outside of the Beltway that I call the community of the willing, who are working on this problem. And I think part of what we need to do is to leverage those efforts, tie them together in a meaningful way, and see |