CONTENTS Cragin, Charles, Acting Assistant Secretary for Reserve Affairs, Depart- ment of Defense, accompanied by Major General Roger Shultz, Direc- tor, Army National Guard; Brigadier General Bruce Lawlor, Deputy Director for Military Support, Director, Consequence Management Pro- gram Integration Office, Department of the Army; and Major General John H. Fenimore, Adjutant General, New York Air National Guard Gebicke, Mark, Director, National Security Preparedness Issues, National Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by: Cragin, Charles, Acting Assistant Secretary for Reserve Affairs, Depart- Page Gebicke, Mark, Director, National Security Preparedness Issues, National 7 (III) COMBATING TERRORISM: ROLE OF THE WEDNESDAY, JUNE 23, 1999 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, VETERANS Washington, DC. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in _room 2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Shays (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Representatives Shays, Souder, Terry, Blagojevich, Schakowsky, and Tierney. Also present: Representative Skelton. Staff present: Lawrence J. Halloran, staff director and counsel; J. Vincent Chase, chief investigator; Michele Lang, Robert Newman, and Marcia Sayer, professional staff members; Jason Chung, clerk; David Rapallo, minority counsel; and Earley Green, minority staff assistant. Mr. SHAYS. I'd like to call this hearing to order. Local and State and Federal efforts to combat domestic terrorism are proliferating rapidly. City and county first responders are being trained and equipped to deal with incidents involving nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons of mass destruction. More than 40 Federal departments, agencies, and programs have responsibilities to help detect, deter, and mitigate the effects of terrorist attacks. Next January, 10 National Guard Rapid Assessment and Initial Detection teams, RAID teams, will join the arsenal available to States against the terrorist threat. So we asked the General Accounting Office [GAO], to assess the proposed mission and operational role of the new RAID teams to determine where they will fit in a coordinated, effective, and efficient response to a weapons of mass destruction incident. According to the report released by GAO today, the answer remains disturbingly murky. State and local officials expressed widely varying degrees of confidence that a RAID team would arrive in time to be of real use in the critical early stages of situation assessment and lethal agent detection. Some viewed the RAID team mission as duplicative of growing State and local first-response capabilities. Commenting on the report's findings, the lead Federal agency for consequence management, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, commonly referred to as FEMA, agreed that "new chemical capabilities for the Guard may not be necessary to support Federal (1) operations." GAO recommends a basic reassessment of the RAID team concept before the program is expanded. Others disagree. The Department of Defense [DOD], sees a well-defined role for specially trained National Guard units as an advance element of the overall support the Pentagon will inevitably be called upon to provide. DOD officials view the National Guard RAID teams as critical State-controlled intermediaries between local first responders and other Federal military support arriving later. But we need to be more certain the RAID teams envisioned by DOD do not disrupt the proven response scenarios or duplicate local capabilities. An Oklahoma City council member recently described the confusing jumble of Federal help that arrived 15 hours after the bomb blast as needlessly injecting arguments over bureaucratic turf into the city's efforts to cope with human tragedy. That can't be allowed to happen again. This subcommittee's ongoing examination of Federal efforts against terrorism takes a unique, governmentwide view. Our oversight mission is to help shape an evolving national strategy that matches the response to the threat, coordinates crisis and consequence management at all levels and operates efficiently. Today, we ask if the proposed National Guard RAID teams meet those tests. Our work in this area has been aided immeasurably by Representative Ike Skelton from Missouri, ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee. His long-standing interest and expertise in these issues transcends party and even transcends the sometimes more impenetrable barriers of committee jurisdictions. As the cosponsor of this GAO report and others on the Federal terrorism response, he joins us as a valued partner and ally. And he's welcome by the subcommittee. And at this time I would say that we look forward to our witnesses. I'll be calling them and swearing them in in a second and with Representative Lee Terry's permission, I'll go to Ike Skelton to see if he has a statement and then I'll go to you. Thank you. Mr. SKELTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I will make only a brief comment. I welcome this opportunity to be here. I welcome the opportunity for this hearing. It certainly raises our level of awareness about the problems of implementation for the RAID teams. I personally agree with what we have established in the RAID teams. We-these are new, relatively new concepts and the implementation continues to evolve. Of course, we can all hope against hope that we never have to use them. The reality being what it is, they somewhere along the line may sadly be forced to respond to these incidents, as we have seen already occur in our country. So I look forward to this. I look forward to the testimony of Mr. Cragin and the testimony of the gentleman from the National Guard because that certainly does mean a lot to us in the future safety of our fellow Americans. Thank you so much for allowing me to be with you. Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much for being here. I would now call on a really valued member of this committee, Lee Terry. I would just parenthetically say of all the people who ask questions I find his the most insightful and it's wonderful to have him here. Mr. TERRY. I appreciate that, Mr. Chairman. I have no prepared opening remarks. I spent 8 years on our Omaha City Council and what a lot of you don't know is that we were the bridesmaid to Oklahoma City. Timothy McVeigh spent time in Omaha on videotape in our Federal courthouse of his presence so of course we're concerned. But also just in the general sense of that our local fire and our police are the first responders in any type of a tragedy and whether natural or man made will count on support from the State and from the Federal by way of National Guard involvement and what roles they play is important. Mr. Chairman, as you said, from citing the council member from Oklahoma City, it's our firemen and our police who are going to be on the scene or involved in the investigations initially, and sometimes they could be there for hours. To have a new entity show up no matter how benevolent their involvement could be very disruptive. We need to look through the process and find out a way of enhancing everybody's involvement as opposed to allowing a process to decay in a time of emergency. So that's why these types of hearings are extremely important for the local communities and just the overall safety and well-being of our constituents. I appreciate your holding this hearing. Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much. Before calling on our witnesses, I just ask unanimous consent that all members of the subcommittee be permitted to place an opening statement in the record and that the record remain open 3 days for that purpose and without objection so ordered. I'd ask further unanimous consent that all Members be permitted to include their written statement in the record and without objection so ordered. We would also obviously include Mr. Skelton's statement in the record. Thank you. At this time I would recognize our first panel and it's Mark Gebicke, Director of National Security Preparedness Issues, National Security and International Affairs Division, GAO, General Accounting Office, accompanied by Ann Borseth, who is Senior Evaluator for the GAO in the same division, and Robert Pelletier, Assistant Director in the same division as well. At this time what we do, as I think you know, we swear in all our witnesses. I'd ask you to rise and raise your right hands. [Witnesses sworn.] Mr. SHAYS. Note for the record that all have responded in the affirmative. I think we can have a pretty punctual hearing. This doesn't need to be a long hearing, but it is a truly important hearing; and I'm grateful to have our two panels and obviously our guest of such distinction, Mr. Skelton. So I invite you, Mr. Gebicke, to make a statement. I think you're the only one with a statement and then you'll respond to questions. |