A History of Disorganization

Throughout the 1990s, a number of steps were taken in response to incidents of large-scale terrorism committed during the first half of the decade,3 resulting in legislation and entities that were sometimes duplicative or overlapping.

In 1996, Congress passed the Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction Act, also known as the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici amendment, as part of the National Defense Authorization Act of FY97.4 The Act authorized funding for the Department of Defense (DOD) to initiate a federal program to increase the preparedness of America's first responders to counter WMD terrorist attacks. The Domestic Preparedness Program (DPP) that emerged as a result of this amendment included provisions for grants and direct training for first responders in America's 120 largest cities.

In 1996, Congress also passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act,5 authorizing the Attorney General to provide training and equipment to fire and emergency services departments to combat terrorism. In 1998, Attorney General Janet Reno created the Office for State and Local Domestic Preparedness as part of the Office of Justice Programs to manage the DOJ's increasing responsibility in this area.

In other words, in 1996, Congress effectively assigned two federal agencies nearly the same mission.

In August 1998, Attorney General Reno met with representatives of the first-responder community in a stakeholders conference to discuss federal assistance programs. In response, the Attorney General created the National Domestic Preparedness Office (NDPO) as a hub for an interagency coordination effort.

The participants in the conference recommended that federal WMD assistance be coordinated by a single office. In this capacity, the NDPO does not actually engage in training or funding; it is designed to coordinate federal programs and to make the first-responder community aware of the programs the federal government offers. However, a lack of coordination and insufficient awareness among the entities of the first-responder community continues to plague federal assistance efforts.

Complicating matters further, in 1995, President Bill Clinton assigned FEMA as the lead federal agency for consequence management in the event of a terrorist attack, but Congress gave FEMA only a consultative role in both DOD and DOJ programs. In its presidentially designated role as the nation's primary response agency, FEMA has also instituted a WMD-related grant program and launched a number of educational initiatives through its National Emergency Training Center, which includes the National Fire Academy and Emergency Management Institute.

Additionally, various other federal agencies have become involved in first-responder training for WMD attacks. The Department of Defense, while surrendering the Domestic Preparedness Program, continues to offer a number of programs to support first responders. The Army's Soldier and Biological Chemical Command (SBCOM) continues to host annual field exercises, and the Army Medical Research Institute for Chemical Defense offers chemical weapons-related training programs for health-care providers. The Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, and other agencies also play secondary roles in providing support for first responders.

Because the DOD exhibited little interest in assuming responsibility for training first responders in 1996, Congress included language in the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici amendment that allowed the office to be moved to another agency after two years. In April 2000, President Clinton transferred responsibility for the Domestic Preparedness Program to the Attorney General. This decision was based on budgetary politics rather than any comprehensive strategy, as FEMA was concerned that congressional appropriators would not allocate sufficient funding for the agency to manage the program successfully.6

Attorney General Reno merged the DPP with the Office for State and Local Domestic Preparedness, which by that time was supporting first responders in a manner similar to that of the DOD program mandated under the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici amendment. The program has since been renamed the Office of Domestic Preparedness. In his budget request for FY 2003, President George Bush has asked Congress to move the program to FEMA.

Too Few First Responders Receive Adequate Training

The piecemeal manner in which the federal government's assistance program for first responders was created and expanded across agencies and departments has created a number of problems and shortcomings in the effort to improve the nation's overall preparedness. According to Richard Falkenrath, Senior Director of Policy and Plans at the Office of Homeland Security, "The specifics of the program have been determined not by any guiding strategic concept but by discrete, uncoordinated legislative and appropriations and administrative initiatives."7

As a result, according to Bruce Baughman, Director of FEMA's Office of National Preparedness (ONP), "Even the best prepared states and localities do not possess adequate resources to respond to the full range of terrorist threats."8 In fact, over the past five years, numerous reports have identified problems with the federal effort to train first responders and have called for a reform of the numerous federal assistance programs created to support first responders.

In its third annual report to Congress, the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction (Gilmore Commission), highlighted a number of problems. In its survey of state and local first responders, the commission found that the majority of first responders who participated in federal training programs found them to be beneficial but also noted that the programs were unable to train or equip enough personnel.9

In fact, from 1996 to 1999, the federal government was able to provide WMD response training to only 134,000 of the nation's 9 million first responders.10 Furthermore, only 2 percent of these 134,000 responders received hands-on training with live chemical agents.11 If this deficiency in training continues, far too few of America's first responders will be adequately prepared for the possibility of a terrorist attack utilizing CBRN weapons.

The specific problems that have hampered America's current first-responder training strategy include the following:

• Inadequate information regarding available training programs. Despite the creation of the NDPO more than three years ago, the Gilmore Commission found that one of the primary barriers to first responders' participation in federal training programs was their lack of knowledge about what was offered.12 The Office of Domestic Preparedness guide to federal weapons-of-mass-destruction training programs identifies 24 facilities throughout the country at which federal agencies train first responders for CBRN events.

  Although they provide valuable training, however, these centers are not strategically located, and their programs are not coordinated. The majority of the centers are located on the East Coast, and very few agencies hold classes at common facilities. Furthermore, only one of these facilities--the Center for Domestic Preparedness (CDP) in Anniston, Alabama, which is run by the ODP--offers hands-on training with biological and chemical agents.

• Expensive and inconvenient programs. The Gilmore Commission found that, even when first responders are aware of existing programs, their participation was frequently limited by high costs and the time commitment required. Most classes are conducted during weekday working hours despite the fact that most first responders are volunteers with full-time day jobs. The second Gilmore Commission report pointed out this failing and, citing the value of distance-learning techniques, recommended that training programs be restructured to allow participation by more volunteer responders.

  In fact, a number of on-line, video, CD, and other types of training that do not require the first responder to leave home have been implemented; but while these programs are useful and should be continued, they do not provide the same degree of expertise and experience that specialized, hands-on training provides. To receive this kind of training, first responders must travel to one of a handful of facilities throughout the country.

• Lack of coordination of national programs. For years, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) has been critical of the lack of coordination among federal WMD training programs. The GAO has pointed out that the Department of Defense and Department of Justice in some cases target the same cities while other cities are ignored. It also has cited duplicative programs as a problem; for example, one DOJ course had the same content as the National Fire Academy's.13 The GAO observed that this overlap led to confusion among the state and local first responders whom the various programs were designed to assist.14

  Additionally, overlapping programs use critical time and taxpayers' money inefficiently. Because most programs last only a few days and many first responders make personal sacrifices to receive training, care should be taken to ensure that sessions do not repeat what these public servants already know.

  A 1999 congressionally mandated study by the Department of Justice15 came to many of the same conclusions as the GAO report. The study noted that a lack of coordination in federal assistance programs reduced the programs' effectiveness and increased redundancy. It also called for establishing a central source that first responders could contact regarding federal assistance for WMD preparedness.

Utilizing the National Guard

The National Guard has a critical role to play in training America's first responders. By law and tradition, the Guard connects local communities to the federal government. Units are located in every American community, and they have the capabilities, legal authority, and structure to respond to attacks on the homeland.

The Army National Guard maintains over 3,000 armories throughout the nation, and the Air National Guard has 140 units throughout the United States and its territories. The close relationship between the National Guard and their locales should be leveraged to ensure that local Guard units are prepared to respond to attacks and also to help to train other first responders in their communities.

Currently, the National Guard maintains approximately 30 22-man, mobile Civil Support Teams (WMD-CST), which are trained and equipped to respond to a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) event. These units could provide valuable training to state and local first responders. The Guard also could help state and local authorities understand how to maintain equipment and sustain operations in a CBRN environment and could assist them in planning for medical treatment after an attack (combat triage).

The National Guard's contribution to the first-responder training effort should be coordinated through FEMA. This will ensure that National Guard assets and skills are used in the most efficient way possible. Without comprehensive coordination, the Guard's contribution could simply add to the confusion that already exists. It will be important that, as America's first-response capabilities expand, all programs are centrally coordinated to avoid duplication and expensive inefficiencies.

Training America's First Responders

The Department of Justice currently operates the nation's premier chemical, biological, radiological, and explosive response training facility, the Center for Domestic Preparedness at Fort McClellan in Anniston, Alabama. The CDP, a former Army base and former site of the U.S. Army Chemical School, was closed as a military facility in 1999 as part of the 1995 Base Realignment and Closing (BRAC) process. At that time, its CBRN training facilities were transferred to the ODP. All of the center's programs are designed not only to educate attendees, but also to instruct them on how to teach other first responders as part of the ODP's train-the-trainer program.

The CDP is now the only facility in the nation where first responders can train with and gain firsthand knowledge of chemical agents (specifically, Sarin [GB] and VX nerve agents). However, at peak capacity, it can train only approximately 10,000 responders per year. In 2000, the center was training approximately 2,500 per year and had over 5,000 first responders on its waiting list.

While every person trained at the CDP has the capacity to train additional personnel, the responders who receive a "second-generation" education will not have had the advantage of hands-on training with chemical agents. Clearly, one facility is insufficient to meet the needs of the nation's more than 9 million emergency responders and 4 million health care providers.

Problems Solved

The creation of a national network of regional training centers will help address the primary criticisms of the current regime. Specific areas of concern include the federal government's inadequate training capacity, inaccessible first-responder training facilities, and inefficient training programs. Developing this system will provide the following solutions.

SOLUTION #1: Increase the capacity of the federal government to train America's first responders.
Most important, the national system of training centers will significantly increase the federal government's capacity to train first responders. Although, even at full capacity, the five regional centers would not be able to provide hands-on training for all of America's 9 million first responders, they will facilitate the development of a substantial corps of trainers with experience in handling deadly agents.

This training network will also provide the federal government with the infrastructure to ensure that state and local responder training is sufficient to meet long-term preparedness goals. This is critical given that, as in any other industry, turnover is inevitable within the first-responder community.

SOLUTION #2: Increase access to training facilities.
Regionalizing first-responder training will make facilities more accessible to the first-responder community. Establishing training facilities that are closer to the first responder and scheduling as many sessions as possible on the weekend will make training less of a burden to the responder.

In addition, a combination of on-site training at the centers, local training, distance-learning techniques, and roving and local federal trainers will help the federal government to ensure that the nation's first responders have nearly standardized capabilities.

SOLUTION #3: Increase efficiency.
A system of regionalized, interagency training centers that provide the first-responder community with a "one-stop shop" training center will help eliminate duplicative training courses, minimize administration costs, and decrease the amount of time needed for trainees to reach appropriate skill levels.

These regional centers will also serve as a hub for information about additional training opportunities in the region, thereby addressing the long-standing problem of first responders' lack of knowledge about available training programs. The regional centers will help local first-responder units to develop the most appropriate training strategy to meet their unique needs.

Conclusion

The United States remains vulnerable to terrorism. The September 11 attacks demonstrated all too horribly that there are people who wish to do grave harm to America and that they are fully capable of doing so.

Much has been done recently to prevent further attacks, and more certainly must be done in that regard. However, the American people and their government must recognize that no one can guarantee that the United States will not fall victim to future attacks. Good policy can only decrease the likelihood that future attacks will occur.

Because potential terrorist attacks may include weapons of mass destruction, it is imperative that the United States improve the capabilities of its first responders to mitigate the consequences of such an attack. Doing so will require building on and expanding the federal government's current training facilities. Failing to do so could result in thousands of deaths that could have been prevented.

Michael Scardavilleis Policy Analyst for Homeland Defense and Jack Spenceris Policy Analyst for Defense and National Security in the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies at The Heritage Foundation.