GAO Accountability ✶ Integrity * Reliability United States General Accounting Office Washington, D.C. 20548 November 30, 2000 The Honorable Ike Skelton House of Representatives The Honorable Christopher Shays Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs, and International Relations Committee on Government Reform House of Representatives A terrorist act involving a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear agent or weapon presents an array of complex issues to state and local responders. The responders, who may include firefighters, emergency medical service personnel, and hazardous materials technicians, must identify the agent used to rapidly decontaminate victims and apply appropriate medical treatments. They must determine whether the agent has spread beyond the incident site and what actions should be taken to protect other people. They must also be concerned about damage to the physical infrastructure and about coordinating efforts with law enforcement personnel as they conduct their investigation. If the incident overwhelms the capabilities of state and local responders, they may turn to the federal government for assistance. Federal agencies may provide assistance by deploying various response teams. In response to your request, we reviewed federal agency teams that can respond to and help manage the consequences of a domestic terrorist incident involving chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear agents or weapons. This report discusses (1) the characteristics of federal response teams, (2) whether duplication among teams belonging to different agencies exists, (3) the budget requirements process for teams and how the budgets are linked to a national strategy, and (4) initiatives to improve the operational coordination of federal response teams across agency lines. In our review, we defined response teams as groups of personnel and equipment that could deploy to or near an incident site to provide assistance. We focused on teams that assist with consequence management in a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear incident. Consequence management includes efforts to provide medical treatment and emergency services, evacuate people from dangerous areas, and restore government services. To identify the capabilities and characteristics of federal response teams, we reviewed our prior reports, conducted interviews with agency officials, and met with the teams at various locations nationwide. We also observed a national-level combating terrorism exercise, which allowed us to see the capabilities of several response teams in mock terrorist incidents. We also attended several conferences that addressed response teams and terrorism issues. Results in Brief Eight agencies have 24 types of teams that can respond to a terrorist incident involving chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear agents or weapons to assist state and local governments.1 The characteristics of these teams vary. Specifically, teams vary in their size, composition of personnel, equipment, geographical coverage, transportation needs, and response time. Moreover, most federal teams are long-standing and have purposes other than combating terrorism, such as responding to natural disasters, hazardous material spills, and military crises. For example, Department of Defense teams can provide a wide variety of consequence management capabilities in response to a domestic terrorist incident. However, these teams have a primary military role and mission. Even in the absence of a terrorist threat, federal agencies would still need most of their response teams to carry out other missions. Federal response teams do not duplicate one another. Each team has a unique combination of capabilities and functions when it is deployed to a terrorist incident. Moreover, several federal teams have expertise concerning certain types of agents and weapons that could be used in an attack. For example, Department of Energy teams specialize in responding to incidents involving radiological agents or weapons. Because of the differences in the capabilities and expertise of the teams, the type of incident would determine which individual team would be most appropriate to respond. Federal agencies lack a coherent framework to develop and evaluate budget requirements for their response teams. We have noted previously that the federal government lacks a national strategy to guide resource 1 The eight agencies are the Departments of Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs; the Federal Emergency Management Agency; the Environmental Protection Agency; and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. investments for combating terrorism. The Attorney General's interagency plan on counterterrorism and technology crime, in our view, is the current document that most closely resembles a national strategy. However, the plan does not establish or define clearly desired outcomes that the federal government is trying to achieve. Because most federal response teams have multiple missions, federal agencies do not track the resources for their teams based on their roles in combating terrorism. In 1999, the National Security Council and the Office of Management and Budget began a new interagency process for evaluating federal agencies' programs for combating terrorism. The results of this evaluation provided a basis for new combating terrorism budget requests in the President's Budget for fiscal year 2001. This effort gives decisionmakers in the administration and Congress a better picture of the resources federal agencies are devoting to their response capabilities. However, it does not serve as an effective mechanism for allocating funding to the highest priority areas because these areas have not been clearly defined. Two recent interagency activities could improve the operational coordination among federal response teams. First, the Weapons of Mass Destruction Interagency Steering Group, led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is identifying the federal consequence management teams that could be called upon to respond to different terrorist scenarios. Prior to this group's efforts, federal agencies did not engage in this type of planning for a terrorist incident. However, the steering group has not consulted with scientific experts or the intelligence community to assess the realism of the scenarios. According to a Federal Emergency Management Agency official, the scenarios were intended to be worst-case events that would stress the federal response system, and therefore assessing their realism was not a concern. As a result, it is uncertain whether the scenarios can provide a sound analytical basis for developing appropriate federal consequence management responses. Second, response teams continue to participate in various combating terrorism interagency exercises that provide agencies an opportunity to improve the operational coordination of their teams. In May 2000, the federal government sponsored a congressionally mandated national-level combating terrorism field exercise that tested the response and coordination of teams from federal, state, and local government agencies. The exercise represented considerable progress from past interagency exercises because it coordinated consequence as well as crisis management teams in a no-notice realistic field setting. However, no additional exercises of this nature are currently planned. We are recommending that the Attorney General modify the interagency plan on counterterrorism and technology crime to cite desired outcomes that could be used to develop and evaluate budget requirements for agencies and their respective response teams. Additionally, we are recommending that the Director, Federal Emergency Management Agency, take steps to require that the Weapons of Mass Destruction Interagency Steering Group develop realistic scenarios involving chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear agents and weapons with experts in the scientific and intelligence communities. Lastly, we are recommending that the Director, Federal Emergency Management Agency, sponsor periodic national-level consequence management field exercises involving federal, state, and local governments. The Departments of Defense, Energy, Justice, Health and Human Services, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs; the Federal Emergency Management Agency; the Environmental Protection Agency; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; and the Office of Management and Budget provided comments on a draft of this report. Their comments are presented and evaluated at the end of this letter following our recommendations. Background In a domestic terrorist incident, states and local affected governments have the primary responsibility for consequence management. The federal government can help state and local authorities if they lack the capability to respond adequately. Figure 1 shows a federal response team supporting a local government in a training exercise. Figure 1: Federal and Local Responders Participate in a Joint Training Exercise in New York City Shortly after the April 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the President issued Presidential Decision Directive 39, which enumerated responsibilities for federal agencies in combating terrorism, including domestic incidents. In May 1998, the President issued Presidential Decision Directive 62 that further articulated responsibilities for specific agencies. Both directives call for robust, tailored, and rapidly deployable interagency teams to conduct well-coordinated and highly integrated operations. |