Note that the top "block" begins to disintegrate
before the damaged zone starts to move downward.

Below is a hearing transcript of a congressional hearing.

Notice Joe Allbaugh describes how FEMA would be the lead agency during this exercise to prepare for domestic terrorism. WAS 911 the EXERCISE?

HEIGHT:200%> May 8, 2001, Tuesday

TYPE: COMMITTEE HEARING

LENGTH: 22753 words

COMMITTEE: COMMERCE, JUSTICE, STATE AND JUDICIARY SUBCOMMITTEE, SENATE

HEADLINE: U.S. SENATOR JUDD GREGG (R-NH) HOLDS HEARING ON TERRORISM AND U.S. GOVERNMENT CAPABILITIES (AFTERNOON SESSION)

SPEAKER:

U.S. SENATOR JUDD GREGG (R-NH)

LOCATION: WASHINGTON, D.C.

WITNESSES:

JOSEPH ALLBAUGH, DIRECTOR FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY

JOHN MAGAW, ACTING DEPUTY DIRECTOR FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY

JOHN GORDON ADMINISTRATOR NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION

DR. JOE MAHALEY ACTING DIRECTOR OFFICE OF SECURITY AND EMERGENCY

OPERATIONS DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

RICHARD MESERVE CHAIRMAN NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

BODY:

U.S. SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE: SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMERCE,

JUSTICE, STATE, THE JUDICIARY AND RELATED AGENCIES HOLDS HEARING

ON U.S. GOVERNMENT CAPABILITIES WITH RESPECT TO TERRORISM

(AFTERNOON PANEL)

MAY 8, 2001

SPEAKERS:

U.S. SENATOR JUDD GREGG (R-NH), CHAIRMAN

U.S. SENATOR TED STEVENS (R-AK)

U.S. SENATOR PETE V. DOMENICI (R-NM)

U.S. SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY)

U.S. SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON (R-TX)

U.S. SENATOR BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL (R-CO)

U.S. SENATOR ERNEST F. HOLLINGS (D-SC), RANKING MEMBER

U.S. SENATOR DANIEL K. INOUYE (D-HA)

U.S. SENATOR BARBARA MIKULSKI (D-MD)

U.S. SENATOR PATRICK J. LEAHY (D-VT)

U.S. SENATOR HERB KOHL (D-WI)

U.S. SENATOR PATTY MURRAY (D-WA)

U.S. SENATOR JOHN WARNER (R-VA),

CHAIRMAN, ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE

U.S. SENATOR PAT ROBERTS (R-KS),

CHAIRMAN, EMERGING THREATS SUBCOMMITTEE,

ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE

U.S. SENATOR TED STEVENS (R-AK),

CHAIRMAN, APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE

U.S. SENATOR MARY LANDRIEU (D-LA),

RANKING MEMBER, EMERGING THREATS SUBCOMMITTEE,

ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE

*** Elapsed Time 00:00, Eastern Time 13:32 ***

*

ROBERTS: The subcommittee will be in order. Let me say that Chairman Gregg will return very quickly, and we hope to have also the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee and other senators. And I know Senator Mikulski is here.

And we are delighted to have before this committee the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Mr. Joe Allbaugh.

And, Joe, I want to personally thank you for your immediately response to what happens all too often in Kansas in regards to tornado damage in the community of Hoisington. You were not only there immediately, but the reviews by the local community officials have been very positive. And I want to thank you for that. And I know that's repeated every spring as you go through your obligations and your responsibilities, and you did a very good job.

ALLBAUGH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

ROBERTS: We are here, however, to discuss another topic, and there has been much discussion in regards to the president's statement that he just made at 1, and in addition speculation in regards to a possible executive order; and then, obviously, the announcement of the vice president.

And by the way, just had the opportunity to have lunch with the vice president, who indicated that he will be in charge of a review group and that you will be the facilitator for that effort and that sometime in the fall, then, there will be a more specific plan in regards to the subject of the hearing.

With that, we welcome you to the subcommittee. Please feel free to summarize your remarks. Your entire statement will be made part of the record. Please proceed, sir.

ALLBAUGH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon. And I am honored to be here today.

I am Joe Allbaugh, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. I thank the distinguished committee members for this opportunity to discuss some of the federal terrorism-related activities.

Today, let me note that I'm also joined by John Magaw, acting deputy director of FEMA. Mr. Magaw, as you know, is well-known on Capitol Hill for his expertise and service to our country, and I'm honored that he is here by my side.

I applaud the chairs and the members of this committee and the many committees for their foresight in holding this extraordinary joint hearing to underscore the complexity of this issue, Mr. Chairman. I support your goals of overcoming jurisdictional boundaries, to focus on building a viable and effective national terrorism response capability.

And working with President Bush over the past several months, I'm very aware of his vision for peace and stability in our world. However, we know only too well that there are others here at home and abroad who do not share these ideals.

As the president's director for emergency management, I am also aware of the expectations of our citizens that their government protect their lives and property when an emergency or disaster occurs, whether it be a hurricane, earthquake, tornado, flood, or as the result of an act of terrorism.

No government responsibility is more fundamental than protecting the physical safety of its population. In today's world, this obligation includes protection against the use of weapons of mass destruction involving nuclear, biological, chemical agents or materials.

Sadly, we've already experienced the use of destruction agents in Oklahoma City and New York City. The threat of terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction is real, although we pray that an incident never occurs.

Prudence dictates that we must take measures to defend our nation under any circumstances. Therefore, the United States must be fully prepared to deal effectively with the potential threat and the possible use of such weapons.

In response to the need expressed by many in Congress, governors and state and local officials to better focus our domestic preparedness, this administration is working to address these critical issues.

To this end, President Bush has asked Vice President Cheney to oversee our national effort dealing with the weapons of mass destruction. The president has also directed me to establish the Office of National Preparedness at FEMA, which will serve as a focal point for the coordination and implementation of preparedness and consequence management programs for dealing with the threat of weapons of mass destruction.

ALLBAUGH: This office will work with other agencies and departments to coordinate federal programs and assistance in support of an integrated local, state and federal preparedness and consequence management response capability. This office will work closely with the states and local governments to ensure their input into those programs and activities, as it seeks to improve the quality of federal support for federal, state and local emergency management personnel and first responders.

I am committed to working closely with Attorney General John Ashcroft to ensure that the Department of Justice's lead federal role for crisis management programs and FEMA's lead federal role for consequence management efforts are seamless and thoroughly integrated.

This action by President Bush today will better focus our current policies and ensure that programs and activities are fully coordinated and integrated in support of building the needed preparedness and response capabilities. We are now poised to move forward in a meaningful way, and I look forward to working with each of you in this important undertaking. This is a critical matter, and it will require the commitment of all of us working together to ensure its success.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

ROBERTS: Let me ask you, in regards to clarification, the vice president indicated to me -- we did not have an opportunity, obviously, to discuss this at length -- but that he would be in charge of the review.

ALLBAUGH: That's correct.

ROBERTS: And that we would expect that review to be completed sometime in the fall, I think the month of October was suggested.

ALLBAUGH: October 1 is the target date, sir.

ROBERTS: And that FEMA then would be a support or a facilitator or, if I could use the term, a Grand Central Station clearing house, obviously, trying to cooperate or will cooperate with all of the other agencies involved. By the way, we have 46.

We just had several of the secretaries here, as of this morning.

And that basically FEMA is doing this from the consequence management standpoint, not from the deterrence and detection standpoint. Is that correct?

ALLBAUGH: That's correct, sir.

As you duly noted, we have many agencies that are responsible for a piece of the pie, and we do not have a national cohesive plan at this point.

Coordination facilitation is something that FEMA does very well, as you both know. And I'm proud of that reputation. The employees have worked hard for that reputation. It's a reputation well- deserved.

But I think the thing that we do best is to facilitation and coordinate, and that is something we're going to help the vice president and his task force bring some focus to this desperately needed area.

ROBERTS: Senator Hollings, when we first opened up the hearing this morning, expressed some concern. And I'm not speaking for Senator Hollings, but as I'm trying to paraphrase his concern, as I understood it, was, I think, he was reaching the conclusion that FEMA would be an overarching agency, not only for consequence management, but for detection and deterrence and worried about the disjointed effort that could result, in regard to the Justice Department.

As you know, under Presidential Directive 63, the Justice Department is the lead agency in regards to homeland security. Now, I'm, sort of, repeating myself here, in terms of concerns on the part of some senators.

In addition, there was some concern on the part of some senators and others, and this subject area, as you well know, has come under a great deal of scrutiny and finally some public attention with many different organizations and think tanks and commissions. We've Hart- Rudman. We've had the Bremmer (ph) commission, the Gilmore commission, CSIS study, the RAND Corporation. So we don't lack for people, you know, looking over our shoulder to make sure we're doing the right thing.

And that with FEMA, you are not at a Cabinet level and there are those who think we need some kind of a terrorism czar, if that's the proper word, or a national terrorism agency.

ROBERTS: And I think some may be jumping to a conclusion that is premature, thinking that FEMA would be taking that role. And I want to make it very clear in your testimony that that is not the case, as you see it. Is that correct?

ALLBAUGH: My understanding is that is not the case. We are not a deterrence agency. We're not in the intelligence business. We have no capability of preventing, other than preparing the local responders to the best of our ability.

I think you put your finger on it in ticking off the number of studies that have been done, along with the 46 or 49 agencies that have part of this, that there needs to be some clarity on this issue. To paraphrase a good friend of mine, everyone seems to be bumping into one another, and our job is to facilitate the task force that Vice President Cheney will be calling together.

ROBERTS: So you're facilitating the task force for the vice president. You are not, by executive order or by a decree or by whatever, assuming the over-arching authority that some have said that we needed in regards to some overall agency?

ALLBAUGH: No, sir. To my knowledge, there isn't an executive order. I know that there's one...

ROBERTS: I think I've worn that out. I think I'm splitting the shingle, but it's an important shingle to split in regards to the impression. And that leads me to the chart that the distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee held up, and he held a much bigger chart, and that's way too small, but you and I looked at it, and that's what we're trying to prevent.

Let me be the devil's advocate here in regard to your new role, and that some could say that this is the horse before the cart, that the president in his announcement that you would be the coordinator on behalf of the vice president. What happens if the vice president, as of October, in his review, determines that some other agency best lead this effort rather than FEMA?

ALLBAUGH: Well, my personal opinion is that would be fine. We need to have a leader, and as of right now, we don't have a leader. There is not a well-coordinated, orchestrated national policy or plan. Anecdotal stories come into me all the time, visiting with those at the state and local level, the first responders, there are so many people involved in this arena, they don't know who to go to for guidance and leadership.

Yes, there's a lot of money being thrown at this issue, but we do not have a national plan. And I would urge the members, should they make a decision that -- don't let this fail for lack of support and financial commitment. Often times, we end up with unfunded mandates, and whoever ends up with this responsibility, even though I believe FEMA should have a large role, we need to have a fully funded commitment from Congress.

ROBERTS: Well, let me ask your opinion about that, because I think you've really put your finger on it. There was at least an understanding on the part of some there would be an executive order spelling out in more detail the relationship between the Justice Department, FEMA, DOD, state emergency offices and their plans. But say we get down the road to October 1, and the vice president makes his determination, and obviously gives his proposal to us to consider and others as well.

And say that -- I'm not saying it would happen -- but in regard to consequence management, say that, you know, FEMA would be the agency. What would be your authority or the authority of any lead agency to direct another department and agency to change their budget to match the national plan? If there was an executive order that would have been announced, if, in fact, the language would read "heads of appropriate departments and agencies to the extent as provided by law, shall respond favorably to the request by the Office of National Preparedness for support staff and information to carry out its responsibilities." Then you get into the definition of "respond favorably," and glaringly absent is the word "money" or "budget."

Now, if you were in charge, how are you going to get another agency to spend money on this project if they're having problems by themselves?

ALLBAUGH: Well, my approach...

ROBERTS: This is premature, I understand this, but I'm just asking you a question that I think would be a good one.

ALLBAUGH: Sure, I think it's a legitimate question.

My approach would be initially to sit down with all of those agencies and their respective heads. We all have the same common goal, which is protecting our citizenry. And understanding what the plan is, lay out the plan, get their thoughts, their input, work with OMB and fund this thing properly.

ALLBAUGH: If it's not included in the president's budget, I'd have to go to each individual agency and ask them to be a part of the team. And I can't imagine that they would not willingly participate. We have inter-agency cooperative agreements day-in and day-out all over this city. And I don't see that this would be a stumbling block.

ROBERTS: Well, one of the interesting challenges that we've had, Senator Gregg and myself, and other senators, is that when we were trying to determine -- we were going to ask every person, including yourself, what is your mission, what do you do, and who do you report to? And that is a stated objective and I think every agency is to respond to that in writing. We even thought about having a large chart and somebody was -- some twine like, you know, this chart here, they could climb up on a ladder over there and take the twine from one agency and say who do you report to? Then we thought, we'd end up with a ball of twine and that probably wouldn't work very well.

But basically, we understood that we had a little trouble getting clearance from OMB, from the agencies, to at least share the mission statement of all of these agencies involved, the 46. You know, we're the committee. If that's the case, it seems to me that we're going to have quite a bit of head knocking to do in regard to the budget. Now that's just an opinion of mine.

Let me go to one other then I'm going to yield to the distinguished chairman. I'm an event-oriented kind of guy. I like the TO charts, and all of the -- I made this speech earlier -- and all of the slides and all of the organizational stuff. But when you get into a hearing in the Intelligence Committee or the Armed Services Committee, it's usually as a result of some tragedy. And you think, "My gosh, how could we prevent this again? How did it go wrong?"

And one of the things that's been obvious to me, as I think the Justice Department has indicated, that the governor of the state and the states' emergency plans or the state emergency directors have the primary responsibility. Justice was saying, "OK, here's a standardization with training and with equipment and with you know, criteria. But ultimately, you're responsible."

So when the governor reacts and then I suppose with concurrence, whoever will be eventually in charge, then you would move in regard to consequence management. And it's those first responders -- Senator Mikulski was talking about the first responders at airports. It's those first responders that I'm concerned about.

Now the NRA is going to give some testimony here -- pardon me, the NRC, will give some...

(LAUGHTER)

Or maybe they're the ultimate first responders; I don't know.

(LAUGHTER)

It depends whether there is, you know, an active -- I don't think I'll go there anymore.

But at any rate, the NRC will testify that they have an on-site team. DOD and National Guard has what we call the RAID teams or the CST teams. We have the Red Cross who came into my office and said, "How are we going to get transportation to get enough people there to handle some of the problems we're going to have?"

If, in fact, the RAID teams let the joint forces command know this is a special situation, you could get all sorts of DOD assets in there. And we have FEMA, then we have the governor, then we have the state emergency folks. And I probably left about five or six out.

How on Earth are we -- I mean, who is in charge? How on earth are we going to do this to any degree of consistency and predictability? I know we've had some exercises within the Justice Department, you know, Operation Topoff. But as we go through each one of these exercises, either announced or unannounced, the results have not been particularly good or don't give you much confidence.

Can you shed some light? You have had experience on what happens when there is a tragedy. You're there, there seems to be a clear line of direction and discipline. You know, help me out here for the first responders anywhere in America, the incident has happened, how do we do this better?

ALLBAUGH: Well, basically the Stafford Act and the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000, gives me, the FEMA, the authority to move in on behalf of the president once it has been declared a disaster declaration, to coordinate and facilitate all of those federal assets that are basically at our disposal to direct them, to move them where they need to be. And I think it's real important that a civilian agency is in charge of that. I think that's something that our citizenry would appreciate greatly.

It is true that in order to move this first and foremost, the governors of the states have to ask for the declaration. They are the ones who are ultimately responsible in their respective states. But it's the folks that are the first responders, the police, the fire, the emergency managers who put their lives on the line every day, that I worry most about.

That's why we go out of our way spending some $14 million, $15 million a year training with 42 resident and field courses that we try to train as many people as we possibly can. What is it they actually do? When an incident takes place, they're going to receive, nine times out of 10, a phone call through 911. There needs to be a mechanism and there is a mechanism with the way that we've designed it, how each one of these first responders respond to that particular incident.

I think it's incredibly important that there is a chain of command. We have a chain of command in our military organizations when an incident takes place; there needs to be a chain of command on the civilian side. And based upon the Stafford Act, I report directly to the president of the United States, that's who I work for, even though I work for the American public. That is the person I am accountable to. He empowers, through his declarations, myself and the good employees of FEMA to provide the necessary resources that are called upon.

ROBERTS: Senator Mikulski?

MIKULSKI: Thank you.

Mr. Allbaugh, I just want to do some clarifications here.

MIKULSKI: And, of course, we welcome you and the former director of BATF who we knew so well.

I think there's been a lot of confusion going into the president's announcement today, was he really setting up a new agency?

So let me ask this: President Clinton established something called PDD 39, which was a presidential decision directive establishing who does what in the issue of protecting the American people: primarily for domestic issues, crisis management to the FBI, consequence management to FEMA. Does the president's announcement today essentially dismantle PDD 39, or does PDD 39 continue to stand, subject to your analysis and your overview?

ALLBAUGH: It's the latter, ma'am. PDD 39 will continue until such time that a report is presented to the president, prepared by the vice president and his task force with our support and work on that product.

MIKULSKI: So, for any of these foes or thugs that might be watching us on C-SPAN, we have a framework for dealing with terrorism.

ALLBAUGH: We do, indeed.

MIKULSKI: We want to improve it, we want to make it more efficient and more effective. But let no one mistake, we all know what we're supposed to do.

ALLBAUGH: That is correct. The president wants to bring clarity to this issue in so far as the 46 agencies, but we do know what to do.

MIKULSKI: In the Hart-Rudman Commission on National Security for the 21st Century, one of their recommendations was that the president should propose and Congress should agree to create something called a National Homeland Security Agency with responsibility for planning, coordinating, and integrating various U.S. government activities in homeland security, and FEMA should be the key building block. I'm reading from Hart-Rudman.

Is the president's announcement essentially laying the groundwork for that? And is that the purpose of the review? Or are we getting too far ahead of ourselves?

ALLBAUGH: I think we're getting a little too far ahead of ourselves, quite frankly, on your description, that of Hart-Rudman.

Again, the president's purpose is to bring clarity to this field of 46 agencies that have a piece of the pie. And since we are an agency that facilitates, we will be talking with each one of these agencies, supporting the vice president in his review to make the recommendation to the president of the United States as to what we should do.

MIKULSKI: So what are you then reviewing? Are you also reviewing crisis management as well as consequence management?

ALLBAUGH: There will be a part of reviewing crisis management, how that works, in consultation with the Justice Department.

MIKULSKI: I believe you would certainly do that. But you're going to be working -- you're essentially creating an inter-agency review of what we currently have. Is this...

ALLBAUGH: Yes, ma'am.

MIKULSKI: And the full recommendations for either the new presidential directive or possibly even a new homeland security agency, but we're not there, that's...

ALLBAUGH: Or something else; yes, ma'am, that's the goal.

MIKULSKI: So everybody should chill out right now. Is this...

ALLBAUGH: Relax.

MIKULSKI: Is that kind of it, while you're looking at this?

ALLBAUGH: Yes, ma'am.

MIKULSKI: Well, this is of course, very interesting. And Senator Gregg is the chairman of State, Justice, Commerce, which has essentially the Justice Department; Senator Bond and I, as ranking, of course, have FEMA. And we want to be talking with you as you do your FEMA for what we should even have in place now.

As you do your review, I'd like to just say a few things that should be flashing yellow lights for you to consider. This goes to where FEMA was at the end of the Bush administration and where it is now.

FEMA traditionally -- and it predated President Bush, President Bush I, if I might. But FEMA, civil defense -- in states all over here were old civil defense agencies. They were oriented around nuclear war, and because the threat of nuclear war is so grim and ghoulish, it really wasn't professionalized because they said, "If nuclear war were to hit, there's not very much we're going to do about it."

MIKULSKI: So there was a lack of preparedness. It was often political patronage at state levels, et cetera.

And then when we started to really be hit, like by hurricanes -- Hugo and Andrew specifically -- the people were hit by both a natural disaster and FEMA was a disaster.

We worked on a bipartisan basis to improve FEMA. I really enjoyed both when I chaired and then the leadership of both Senator Garn and Senator Bond, I think we've worked to professionalize FEMA. And I think as you've arrived on the scene, you've seen that.

And we followed four Rs. First of all, we took down this wall. You have a secret part to your agency within the continuity of government, which we don't go through here. But we went to a risk- based strategy -- readiness, meaning preparing people at the local level. Because you're grassroots. You're not top-down. You don't command troops. You have to ask governors to respond, as you know from your work with then-Governor Bush.

Readiness, response and recovery -- so we had four Rs. What are the risks that Americans most face, and get ready for it and have people trained, professionalized, and then response and recovery.

What I don't want us to go back to is a Cold War mentality where we either weren't ready, or we were so busy getting ready for the worst-case scenario we didn't keep continually training our first responders for those things that are most likely to happen, but while they're doing that, be ready for these grim and ghoulish threats to the United States of America.

You see where I'm heading here?

ALLBAUGH: Yes, ma'am.

MIKULSKI: I don't want to change the culture.

ALLBAUGH: Understand.

MIKULSKI: How do you feel about that? I mean, you've come over to FEMA and now you're also facing some possible cuts in preparedness.

ALLBAUGH: Well, in my opinion, preparedness is the key to everything, whether you're talking about tornadoes or flooding or terrorist events. I'm an old Boy Scout, and I believe in the motto, "Be prepared." And the only way we can be prepared is to educate, to train -- particularly those who are the first responders, those who put their lives on the line every day.

And I do not see this creation of the task force or the Office of National Preparedness as moving down the line of thinking that you were just describing, back to the Cold War days. I view it more as a role of bringing clarity to an issue that is somewhat muddied, knowing exactly who's going to be responsible for what, when and where.

And that's something that FEMA does very well: coordinating and facilitating. And that's the way I view it.

MIKULSKI: Well, I believe FEMA is real professionalized, and I offer that only as a flashing yellow light.

One of the advisers to me is the Center for Civilian Defense Against Bioterrorism. It's really based at Johns Hopkins and is led by the former dean of the School of Public Health.

First responder issues: FEMA is used to responding to natural disasters or those that are kind of chemical spills like hazmat-type situations. And bioterrorism: Your first responders are the paramedics, nurses and doctors in ERs, and they're about -- they go down at the same time we're trying to figure out what that is.

I just bring this to your attention, because as you look at this review, I think bioterrorism offers a unique set of challenges because the first responders are different than first responders in natural disasters or in chemical and, God forbid, nuclear, but particularly chemical, because we know how to deal with chemical spills, and if you will, we could quickly gear up.

And I would bring this to your attention. Have you done any homework on this yet?

ALLBAUGH: No, ma'am, not yet, but I will guarantee you we'll make a point of making that a subject that we cover in depth.

MIKULSKI: And I know others are going to ask the questions. In consequence management, of the 46 agencies, 26 agencies -- some of which, not government, are part of the coordination -- I would wonder what your thoughts are now as you've reviewed it even for this year's budget, and how you would currently improve consequence management.

ALLBAUGH: I think there's always room for improvement. The key to improvement in what I've seen in my 82 days at FEMA is a dialogue -- an active dialogue, both among those agencies, as well as our outside partner, the American Red Cross. If it weren't for the American Red Cross when a disaster takes place, quite frankly...

MIKULSKI: That's exactly the agency.

ALLBAUGH: If it weren't for the American Red Cross, we would really be out in left field, quite frankly, until we can move in and mobilize our assets. Again, it gets back to training, dialogue, making sure that those first responders know exactly what to do.

We produce a particular book that deals with hazardous material, nuclear response, biochemical. And this has been distributed among -- we've produced over 57,000 copies.

So every fire truck has one. Every police department has one. They know exactly what to do. And I am thankful that the American Red Cross, quite frankly, here is a copy of it. They put this in their glove compartment.

I don't know of any other agency that has something like this. It has operational concerns. Everything. It has a checklist. And the American Red Cross and the Justice Department has been a partner in this, and I am thankful that the American Red Cross exists.

ROBERTS: Would you pass that up so we might take a look?

ALLBAUGH: Certainly.

MIKULSKI: Mr. Chairman, we've spent a lot of time, first of all, at FEMA on the professionalization and the integration.

MIKULSKI: I hope maybe even when we hold our hearing in Approps that you would want to join us. But you've got a big job, not only what the president's assigned you, but what we're now facing at FEMA to really begin to upgrade. We could take our time now.

But I think one of the things that emerges to my colleagues is the cost of training.

ALLBAUGH: It's very expensive.

MIKULSKI: And the cost of technology to be able to protect the first responders. And then, other threats that are so stealth, like bioterrorism. We'll see a chemical attack. But an outbreak will appear first in human beings and then it'll appear in the people trying to treat the human beings and then it spreads. So we've got some very big issues ahead of us.

And I look forward to working with you, and also identifying specifics like the use of the Emmitsburg Fire Academy, et cetera.

ALLBAUGH: It's a great facility.

MIKULSKI: But the other thing is, Mr. Chairman, it still comes back to what happens on the ground. And I think that's where we need some of our charts, whether it's at an airport, FEMA would be consequence management. What happens at the local level?

And actually, FEMA is the most local of the agencies, because it's national directly to a governor who mobilizes the appropriate resources, whether it National Guard to others with the coordination of the federal. So their consequence management is probably the best in place than crisis management. So we might have to get a chart. I know there's so many details to this.

But I will say this: I'm glad you're doing this, because there are a lot of agencies that bump into each other, and when they do, it's usually when we're halfway through the event. And we've really got to really be prepared and not squander time or squander money.

And I look forward to working with you, as you try to come up with the report to guide the president.

ALLBAUGH: Thank you. I'm now beginning to understand why God gave me big shoulders.

(LAUGHTER)

MIKULSKI: Well, God didn't give me big shoulders, but I hang in there.

ALLBAUGH: Yes, ma'am.

GREGG: Thank you, Senator, and obviously you've touched on a lot of the core issues here. Let me go over a few of them, Director.

First off...

(CROSSTALK)

GREGG: First off, let me say that I think it's excellent that you've taken over the directorship here of FEMA. As the senator from Maryland has said, it's become an agency of huge responsibility and professionalism is in great demand. And I know you'll carry that agency effectively with your leadership and you've got the experience and the background to do it well.

There's a lot of issues that have been raised here about FEMA's role, and obviously it is the core, probably the key player in consequence management. The order of sequence that appears to create confusion, at least in this part of counterterrorist activity -- let me step back.

You can divide counterterrorist activity into three events: intelligence, interdiction and the event.

The first event, obviously, FEMA has no role in the intelligence activity, but there's a lot of confusion in that area and we're going to get into that later in these hearings.

But the second two events is where we seem to be running into a fair amount of overlap and confusion, because interdiction is part of the preparation issue and it's part of the policing function, but it is also part of anticipating the event, and if the event occurs, ends up being part of how the event is physically dealt with on the ground, because you have to arrest whoever caused it or you have to apprehend whoever caused it. So when we get to the event situation, you have preparation to deal with the event, then you have the crisis management of the event, then you have consequences management after the event.

And the role of FEMA in this exercise is very much an issue, obviously the lead agency on consequence. Where does it play a role in crisis? Where does it play a role in preparation?

And I think the concerns which we have is, as you go forward with this evaluation of what the various roles are, that you take into consideration a couple of points.

And the first one is this: We already have in place five major training facilities for first responders. One's in New Mexico, one's in Texas, one's in Louisiana, one's in Alabama, one's in Nevada, and they're all directed at different functions: bombing, nerve gas, fire, general.

They're pretty much under the control either of the military or -- because they're on military locations in some case -- or of the Justice Department.

GREGG: And yet they're training the first responder people who come in for training.

Question number one is: How does FEMA see its view in the future in that community? Is it going to take over the responsibility of managing those, or does that management stay with Justice? And if it stays with Justice, then how does Justice deal with the consequence functions of the training of those folks? That's the first one.

Secondly, this Congress and, specifically, this subcommittee worked very hard to try to create what we called one-stop shopping for the first responders, so that states and local governments and their agencies, whether they are health, fire or police, could call one location at the federal level and get an answer on how they were to deal with an event or prepare for an event. This was called National Domestic Preparedness Office, and it was set up in the Justice Department.

The Justice Department decided it didn't really want the portfolio, I guess, because they just dropped the ball. And then another part of the Justice Department, OLJAP (ph), took over a lot of the responsibility, and that's pretty much where it lays right now. If you've got an issue and you're a local fireman or police officer, then you're going to end up probably getting forwarded to that agency.

Is your National Preparedness Office -- do you see that as a one- stop shopping center to replace NDPO, or is this a separate function from NDPO? And should this concept of one-stop shopping be put in place, and if it should, should it be at FEMA, or should it still reside at the Justice Department? That's the second major question I have.

The third question is: Who has on-site control when the event occurs? Now the governor is supposed to set up a plan and identify the agency that's responsible in the state. They're the first responder group. In New Hampshire, that would be our emergency management director. In many states, it might be the head of the National Guard, the local National Guard general. It depends on what the governor has the most confidence in.

But at some point, the feds arrive. When the feds arrive, the original concept was that the FBI agent would be in charge. But we found out at Topoff that that didn't work. So my question to you is: Who is the fed person that arrives and takes control? Is it FEMA? Is it FBI? Is it ATF? Is it some other agency?

So let's start with those three issues, and I'd like to get you to walk through those. Now, some of them, you may not have formulated a concept yet, and this is, maybe, what you're working on with Vice President Cheney's ideas. But I'd like to get your initial reaction.

ALLBAUGH: Well, to respond to your first question about the training centers, I think that's to be determined, quite frankly. I don't see any reason at this point to move those or move control of those or oversight of those. I think that's a part of what the vice president's task force will be addressing.

With regard to one-stop shopping, I would say that FEMA is probably about the best one-stop shop around because of our relationships with state and local officials. This is a bottom-up outfit, not a top-down outfit. We deal, day in and day out, with those first responders, the emergency managers, assisting them in training programs, assisting them with equipment purchase.

GREGG: I'll accept that for consequence management. How about for crisis management?

ALLBAUGH: We're not involved in crisis management.

GREGG: Yes, but the police officer calls and says, "Hey, listen, there's this guy wondering around town. It looks to me like he's got a serious device that might be something of a threat. We want to organize to respond to that." I mean, he's...

ALLBAUGH: Probably not going to be calling FEMA. He'd probably be calling...

GREGG: But he might be calling Justice, under the present structure.

MIKULSKI: Or the FBI.

ALLBAUGH: Or the FBI.

GREGG: Or the FBI.

ALLBAUGH: Sheriff, state police, might call the governor's office. I don't know.

GREGG: So you're only seeing the one-stop shopping to be preparation for consequence, and you don't see it as being preparation for crisis?

ALLBAUGH: Not at this point. Part of the reason that we want to take five months to review this entire arena is to figure out all of the pieces of the puzzle, not to make any rash decisions, that automatically, "This belongs in FEMA, or this belongs somewhere else." At this point...

GREGG: OK, and the on-site control issue?

ALLBAUGH: The on-site control issue?

GREGG: Federal.

ALLBAUGH: Unless we are invited in or the president declares a disaster, it is the local officials who are in charge of that incident.

GREGG: No, but we're assuming that it's gone beyond that, that the next wave is in the federal...

ALLBAUGH: Well, if the president declares...

GREGG: ... federal activity...

ALLBAUGH: ... appoint and I appoint a federal coordinator officer. And that is the on-site incident commander for all practical purposes, controlling all of the assets, deploying those assets, rearranging those assets, depending upon the type of disaster it is.

GREGG: Well, you may want to, as you do this review with the vice president, review the Topoff exercises, because that's not the way it flowed.

ALLBAUGH: I understand that.

GREGG: In fact, what happened was that a whole variety of federal agencies arrived. They'd had a year to know that they were going to arrive. And then they didn't talk to each other.

(LAUGHTER)

ALLBAUGH: You know, Mr. Chairman, it may be prudent -- Mr. Magaw has been here a while, and I think he was at FEMA during Topoff. He might have a though or two to bring to that. That predates my arrival.

GREGG: We're happy to get thoughts from anyone you think is appropriate.

MIKULSKI: And also, BATF, which...

MAGAW: One of the things that I see happening, Mr. Chairman, here, is that we try to separate consequence and crisis, and you really can't totally do that.

MAGAW: The FBI is in charge of...

GREGG: We aren't trying to separate them; we're trying to coordinate them.

MAGAW: The FBI is in charge of the crisis part of it, but at some point in that crisis, FEMA would also be involved, if we had to pre-position some assets. Just as when the crisis occurs, they're involved in the consequence side, too, because they have an investigation to go on.

So the two people that are really in charge, once that federal team has arrived, is the federal coordinator from FEMA and the appointed head of the FBI unit.

In Portsmouth, there was a confusion. And that's what was so very good about Topoff. There are so many learning points, that it brought to bear exactly what you're talking about and all the committees have talked about.

And that's all that FEMA is trying to do is to become the umbrella, with the 26 or 27 agencies the slats in those umbrellas, bringing it to all one program. Not to mess with Justice's grants. They do grants better than anyone can, let them continue doing their grants and their training, but if their training is duplicating that which DOD is doing or that FEMA is doing, one of them needs to stop doing that part so there isn't duplication and waste of money and ask that unit -- confer with them and ask them to do something else toward the national plan.

GREGG: Well, that's absolutely right. That's what this committee is trying to figure out. And I think it's great that the administration has set up this group and that the vice president is going to share it and that you folks have been tasked to man it. I'm just raising the caveats that we've seen here already, from the little exposure that we've had.

Another major caveat that comes at us is what role should the National Guard play in coming in in consequence management? They were originally at one time tasked to come in with the weapons of mass destruction teams, now they seem to be backing off from that position. But do you see the National Guard role here as being, sort of, the third responder?

ALLBAUGH: I see the National Guard as a part of the overall team. I met not too long ago with the TAG (ph) association. And they explained to me the training and the necessary exercises they've been going through. But they're a little unclear themselves as to what their role is, and I'm hoping...

GREGG: They're very unclear.

ALLBAUGH: I'm hoping and I think the purpose of this exercise with the vice president and his task force is to figure out who has specific duties and responsibilities, who's ultimately responsible. That's the purpose of setting this up.

GREGG: Well, we may do another Topoff...

ROBERTS: Could I...

ALLBAUGH: Not a bad idea. I would encourage that, quite frankly, Mr. Chairman.

ROBERTS: After Chairman Warner is done with his questioning...

WARNER: You go right ahead, I'm listening very carefully.

ROBERTS: In response to the RAID teams or the CST teams -- and we're looking for another acronym by the way, if you want to come up with...

ALLBAUGH: I'm overwhelmed with acronyms right at the moment.

ROBERTS: In the Emerging Threats Subcommittee, which is the authorizing committee, we authorize -- you know, these are the bankers. So it doesn't mean anything until we get their stamp of approval. And we tried to work with COMPIO. COMPIO was the management team in regard to the RAID teams and the National Guard effort. That's been stood down as a result of the inspector general's report which was very critical. We held a hearing as of last week.

And the National Guard expresses optimism. I think they took a bum rap in the press. I think there was a lot of criticism toward the Guard, but if you really look at what happened, they were very aggressive and said, "Yes, we'd like to have this role in keeping with our other roles," but that the management oversight that would have enabled them to perform in a better way was simply not there.

Now that's a DOD problem. And I think we recognize that now. And the National Guard in total is in charge as opposed to this one group.

All right. Now, we hope we can put, you know, Humpty-Dumpty back together again, but the role was within four hours from anywhere, you would have a National Guard team.

Why National Guard? Well, the National Guard works with the first responders, people know them, and they know all the local decision-makers that you have referred to. And while on-site, they would then get in touch with the Joint Forces Command which is the overall entity over all the Armed Services, and say, "All right, we're here. We have linkage. Here's the situation on the ground as we see it. And here, if need be, is the proper help and assistance that anybody within the Department of Defense may have in terms of a unique capability."

Then lastly, as I understand it, it was to offer assistance to the first responders, since they have worked with them in their state capacity, in the state emergency preparedness plan, in the state director and all of that.

MAGAW (?): Well, they were supposed to bring in the chemical and biological expertise.

ROBERTS: Yes. Let me give you an example on that. I'm out in California several years ago with the Marines and their outfit called CBIRF, that's yet another acronym, but they do have capability in that respect that probably is better than any other service. So there is a unique function, as the chairman has pointed out. That team can get there, hopefully, on a very fairly expedited basis.

But the chairman's question is exactly right. If you have all of these entities here, FBI, FEMA, Red Cross, et cetera, et cetera, plus the National Guard, how does that, you know, fit together? Obviously, that's what the vice president is going to look at, what you're going to look at. But what do you think?

Now, you've made some comments in regard to the National Guard -- by the way, they're very eager for this, you know, mission. They're not standing back from it at all. As a matter of fact, they say, "We think we have it solved; we think we can go there from there." And we increased the team up to 32, so they would four hours from anywhere. As a matter of fact, it'll probably be about an hour and a half, depending on what incident that would occur.

I guess my question after my rambling rose, somewhat in defense of the Guard and DOD, what is your comment about that in that you indicated you had some question about their specific duties? And if, what I have described is accurate, is that a positive, is that the best function to make sure that, you know, DOD is involved? Are they the belly button that we want to use?

ALLBAUGH: I'm not sure that's a part of this exercise with the vice president, Senator.

First and foremost, I think we do not say thank you enough to those men and women who wear our country's uniforms, whether they be in the active military or the National Guard. Members of the National Guard are made up of your neighbors down the street, who show up at all hours of the day and night to perform tasks, whether your town of Hoisington. I remember a couple of weeks ago in my visit there were numerous National Guardsmen there. Most of them showed up of their own volition without being called by the governor. So it is something that we should, as a country, say thank you day in and day out to those folks.

I think, given their specific tasks, insofar as the RAID teams, we need to figure out how we better utilize, how we better mobilize with the input from DOD and the National Guard adjutant general. I'm not sure where they fit into the plan. I know what you and Senator Gregg have just enunciated as the goals of the RAID teams originally. I'm not sure how that fits in with the rest of the 46 or 47 agencies. And that's the purpose of the exercise that the vice president will be going through, figuring out exactly what the matrix could look like.

I asked for a matrix yesterday, who's doing what to whom in the area of terrorism and WMD, and to my knowledge, no one's provided me a matrix with their specific responsibility.

ALLBAUGH: We need to figure out what the world looks like insofar as what all the agencies are doing right now and then craft a national strategy, and we don't have that national strategy right now.

GREGG: That's the purpose of these hearings actually.

Senator Warner?

WARNER: I've listened very intently to the chair and the co- chair. This was a chart put together by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. We gave you a copy, did we not? It's right over there. Have you ever seen it before?

ALLBAUGH: I think this is the second time, sir.

WARNER: When was the first?

ALLBAUGH: I think it was my first day on the job, February 16, and I was a little confused as to what that meant.

WARNER: Well, I'm not trying to disparage anybody. You know, we're where we are today, and our president has made a statement today which I'm. sort of. going through with the others here to determine exactly -- I think he's taken a strong initiative, and we're going to give him every bit of support we possibly can.

ALLBAUGH: Thank you.

WARNER: But also, our leader, Senator Lott, and the Democratic leader decided to constitute this panel to work on it as best we can. We're all on a team trying to help out.

But be interested if you could provide for the record, after you've had a chance to work your way through this chart, to the extent that you find it is accurate, and eventually, I would presume, that we will have another chart here, hopefully before October 1. But in any event, that's the goal we're working on.

But I'd like to return to this important dialogue that the two co-chairs have had about who's responsible on the scene. I'm not so sure we should wait until October 1 to thrash out that one point. If we have the tragic misfortune of having an incident and the convergence of a lot of well-intentioned people, federal, state and otherwise, somebody's got to stand up and be the George Patton.

Now, what's the chance of working this out?

ALLBAUGH: Well, let me clarify. I mean, based upon the Stafford Act and the president's declaration, FEMA is the controlling entity at any given incident, once it's been declared. So we are the ones who are ultimately responsible to the president for dispersing those assets, making sure we have the right team players representing all the federal agencies at the table, depending upon what it calls upon.

WARNER: I accept that. But let's turn to our...

ALLBAUGH: So if you're looking for someone who's ultimately responsible, you're probably looking at him right now.

WARNER: Let's turn to our former governor here.

Are you and your 50 colleagues ready to accept the fact that he's on the scene in the respective states, the George Patton commander, and his word is not to be disputed?

GREGG: Well, I think that the way we sensed that it works...

WARNER: Who's the "we"?

GREGG: The committee that I participate in, our subcommittee that has jurisdiction, or at least over Justice and State, the way it allegedly worked on a Topoff was that the governor of the state has said, "All right, this is the person who's in charge in my state," and it's the adjutant general in charge of the National Guard or usually the emergency management director.

When the event occurs, obviously the police and fire and health people arrive, quickly followed by whoever the governor's put in charge. But equally, depending on the type of event, if it's a major event, equally followed by, one suspects, a federal agency, and one suspects that federal agency is probably FBI -- the state office of FBI for that state, pending the decision of the federal government to declare it a crisis when FEMA comes on-site.

That seems to be the scenario, at least that was the way people flowed in. Much as landing on the beaches of Normandy, they come in in waves. And the first wave is the local police, fire and health. The second wave is the state emergency management operations.

GREGG: The third wave is usually going to be a federal law enforcement agency, which is FBI, followed by FEMA if the federal government has made a determination that FEMA is in the role. Is that correct?

ALLBAUGH: Well, that's basically correct. What I would add to that is that we have 10 regional offices. Nine times out of 10, when the state emergency management director or whomever that is, we'll have a person from the regional office there at the same time.

GREGG: OK, so if you arrive at the same time the FBI agent arrives, who's in charge?

ALLBAUGH: Well, if it's a criminal incident...

GREGG: One presumes it's a criminal event; this is a terrorist event.

ALLBAUGH: I would say initially the FBI would be in charge. We're there right beside them, because they're going to need assets as well. And at some point, the event evolves into a consequence management event, and we have to know what they've known, what they've done up to that point of heading it off.

GREGG: See, what happened to Topoff was nobody knew who secured the site. I mean, physically, the bodies were on-site for hours, because they could not make a decision between ATF, FBI, FEMA, which had a minor role in that exercise, in deciding who secured the site. And FBI and law enforcement would not allow the site to be penetrated and used by FEMA until the law enforcement function had been determined. So that's the problem we have. That's your problem, it's our problem, it's everybody's problem.

ALLBAUGH: Could I ask Mr. Magaw to comment on that?

MIKULSKI: Could I -- maybe I have an insight here or observation.

GREGG: Well, actually, it's Senator Warner's time.

WARNER: That's all right.

MIKULSKI: If I could, Senator, to...

WARNER: I'm glad to yield, but let's all go back to the famous immortal words of the secretary of state at the time Ronald Reagan had his tragic misfortune, "I'm in charge here." And that has been disputed over and over again, but we do not have -- you know, the bodies are scattered, the medical teams are there. The FBI is trying to determine, presumably, legal accountability and in an evidence- gathering procedure which I have full respect. But somebody's got to take charge to secure this and stop the spread of the harm and repetition.

ROBERTS: Well, what happened in Denver, if I might intercede, I apologize for interrupting.

WARNER: I yield the floor.

ROBERTS: If you look at the Johns Hopkins review or study of that -- by the way, the folks who took part in that in Denver still don't have a critique. It's been awhile, and at least that's my understanding, that the people who actually participated...

ALLBAUGH: From Topoff?

ROBERTS: Yes, sir.

ALLBAUGH: I'll check into it. That predates me, but I'll figure out who's supposed to be...

ROBERTS: Well, get back to me on that, because I'm not sure that's correct, but that's what I've heard.

ALLBAUGH: I will.

ROBERTS: But what happens to you is that the sheer tragedy of the event overcomes you, more especially in the consequence management field because of the number people involved if there's an anthrax infestation in regard to Denver.

And as it continued to deteriorate, it wasn't so much who was in charge and arguing about it, it was the fact that finally when you got to about day three and they were quarantining people in or out and stopping food supplies from coming in or out and finally figured out what was going on, the people who knew most about it under the banner of self-preservation left and went to the mountains with their families. Now that was the scenario that was projected. Well, that's a hell of a thing. In the meantime, we're sitting around here trying to figure out who the hell's in charge.

And so, it seems to me that sooner or later, you've got the crisis management over here and the FBI involvement on the law enforcement side, but if you look at your first responders and what could happen in this kind of a tragedy, which is usually the case, that sheer event in terms of what happens to you just overcomes everybody.

And the other point I was trying to make here, and what the chairman has pointed out, there is a time equation here. If FEMA's the lead agency responding on the federal level and FEMA doesn't get involved in an incident until the president declares an emergency as requested by the governor, what happens if there is a biological attack, which is what happened in Denver, and it isn't immediately recognized and all of a sudden goes all across the United States? What mechanism is in place to get the federal involvement involved earlier to address these concerns, if, in fact, they could?

Now, you, sir, have had a lot of experience. What's your suggestion here? What do you think.

MAGAW: Well, in the case of bio, you're going to have eight or nine days pass by, sometimes 10, before anybody realizes they have a problem. At that point -- this is the case you talked about in Denver.

MAGAW: By that point, people were in Paris. They were in Asia. They had been in a theater. And what this did was bring to the attention of all of us that we have the problem, and that's what we're trying to address now with the vice president's study.

In terms of Oklahoma City, let me talk about the investigation for a moment, where we were stopped before. At Oklahoma City, clearly when you have people who were still alive in that building, and you had -- and I'm coming from 40 years of law enforcement -- when you have people who are alive in that people, that must be the first -- push that investigation aside, we've got to save lives. And that's what has to be done.

Now, there is a way that without interrupting the search and save for lives, you can also protect some of the evidence and some of the scene. That's one of the reasons that I was asked to come to FEMA, to be able to help FEMA understand and work with the interface with law enforcement, and at the same time, help law enforcement understand that sometimes their investigation cannot be first. It cannot be above the injured, and in most cases it should not be above the dead.

You clear that scene of those first, and you protect the scene as best you can for the evidence. But if you destroy the evidence and kill the case to save one life, that's the most important thing.

WARNER: You know, Mr. Chairman, if I might make an observation, I think that our ad hoc committee is fulfilling its responsibilities and we are working on a subject today which our distinguished panel of witnesses don't have finite answers, and I think...

GREGG: Nor do we.

WARNER: And I think we have sufficiently identified this problem, and really ought to probably move on. I say this most respectfully...

GREGG: I agree.

WARNER: ... because I don't want to inflict any embarrassment.

GREGG: No. I agree with you.

WARNER: The president is making a very bold and clear initiative here and he simply needs time.

GREGG: I think we're just, sort of, raising the visibility of the issue a little bit here.

MIKULSKI: I would concur. I think, though, what we're thinking about is, one, is the prevention, preemption and even termination of an attack, and that is clearly the law enforcement role.

So again, raising the airport issue. It is obvious that law enforcement, and in this case federal law enforcement, I would imagine would be the dominant, on the scene, on the charge to prevent, preempt or terminate a threat.

What we've really been talking about is bombing incidents and chemical incidents. That's where you have simultaneous arrivals of both the law enforcement cadre, as well as the humanitarian cadre. And then that's where they bump into each other.

Then with bioterrorism, there's nothing at which to arrive, because it's dispersed through ERs, et cetera. There is no one site, and then cyber-terrorism is a totally different issue.

But I think we've succeeded in parsing it, but how we're going to put it together, we're going to have to work as, kind of, team USA here.

GREGG: I think what we've succeeded in doing is establishing that we're confused, but that there is a process out there.

MIKULSKI: I have absolute harmony about the confusion.

GREGG: There is a process out there for sugaring this off and reaching a conclusion.

And I would say this much, I think the fact that the president has chosen Mr. Allbaugh to head this exercise up is a very positive step. I happen to think that the only way you're going to effectively address this is if the line of authority comes directly from the president and everybody understands that whoever is speaking is speaking on behalf of the president. There's nobody in this administration who speaks more for the president, as I can attest to from some personal experience, than Mr. Allbaugh. So I think it's a plus to have him.

MIKULSKI: Well, I've experienced that as well.

GREGG: Thank you very much. Appreciate your time.

ALLBAUGH: Thank you.

GREGG: I'm sorry. I didn't see the chairman of the full Appropriations Committee arrive. Did you have any questions?

STEVENS: We've discussed this before, Mr. Chairman. I'm delighted to see you here. Thank you.

WARNER: Let me just say that your predecessor did, I thought, a commendable job.

ALLBAUGH: He did indeed. America owes him a great debt of thanks.

WARNER: He came to my state, and I went with him to disaster areas more than once. And I expect we'll have to do that. But that is a very important function that you perform. When you arrive at the state, you bring home and help.

ALLBAUGH: Yes, sir, I understand that.

WARNER: Thank you.

ALLBAUGH: Thank you.

GREGG: Thank you very much. Appreciate your time.

You've picked a fairly large issue to be involved in.

Now we'll hear from the Honorable John Gordon, who is the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration.

WARNER: Could I say a word of introduction?

GREGG: Absolutely. The chairman of the Armed Services Committee is recognized.

WARNER: Mr. Chairman, I have had the privilege of knowing our next witness quite well. When I was young, there was a phrase, "Now is the time for all good men" -- of course, today -- "good men and women to come to the aid of their country." And this very fine American stepped in to work in the Department of Energy, more specifically with an area which we felt required immediate attention. And by law, he has a term of office.

I certainly hope that you will stay on, General, and I know that you will add significantly to assist our president as we address this important subject. So I join in welcoming you. And again, I certainly thank you for coming to the assistance of this nation some months back, when we had a very serious problem, and you've done well.

GORDON: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

GREGG: The floor is yours, General.

GORDON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the committee.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here today to discuss the Department of Energy and NNSA, National Nuclear Security Administration's role in this very important issue -- this very important problem -- and express the regrets of the secretary, who would have liked to have been here, but I can report that he's a great supporter of both my particular organization, NNSA, which I never want to forget, but much more importantly, is involved in and puts great emphasis on the work that this committee is looking at and that the president is undertaking with the new efforts.

GORDON: And I think it's worth just taking one second, and I'd just like to express my personal appreciation to you, Mr. Chairman, and all of the folks that have set up this effort, because you're spending so much time and putting so much focus on this very important effort, and it's just so important.

It's so difficult to -- I know from my last job -- it's so difficult to detect the preparations of a terrorist cell or an individual. It's so difficult to defend against it, and it's potentially so damaging.

And as WMD-based terrorism or the threat of it grows, the immediate damage can be much worse, and the long-term damage, especially to our nation's psyche and culture, could be particularly damaging.

Because of the relatively short time, Mr. Chairman, I've prepared a fairly lengthy statement that I propose for the record and would like to just, kind of, get into it about what we are doing within DOE and NNSA to fulfill our mission.

Put simply, we at DOE and NNSA do two things to support counterterrorism. First, we protect our own facilities, the nuclear weapons, the material stored in them and transported among them. These are highly visible and extremely high-value targets, and I want to make sure they are very, very hard targets.

And along with this, we must make certain that the weapons or material could not be obtained or used by a terrorist for their own use or for the threat of use. And indeed, Mr. Chairman, we also support other governments in securing and protecting their weapons and material.

And secondly, we provide unique support to a wide range of U.S. government agencies to help them accomplish their counterterrorism mission. We support others with a strong and robust technical base, especially nuclear and radiological areas where we have unique and unmatched capabilities, and we support responders across the range of international, national, state and local agencies.

My point here is that we have limited operational responsibility except as it comes to protecting our sites, our facilities, weapons and materials. But we're an important asset to many in government for everything from advice to analysis and predictions, to development of detection hardware, to training responders and deploying with them to crisis locations.

I would like to give a number of examples of what we do to help prevent terrorism and how we help others respond. First, in the area of prevention, the department and, particularly, NNSA, as I mentioned, tries to make it impossible to successfully attack a nuclear weapon or material storage site. Our goal is to make it an extremely unattractive target.

As a result, we employ some 7,000 dedicated security personnel, over 3,000 who are trained, armed officers, and of these, more than 550 are counterterrorism trained personnel deployed at 11 separate locations, who make up our special response teams. These officers are highly dedicated, highly motivated, trained. They exercise regularly and are often evaluated in force-on-force exercises.

As an example, the 250 federal agents who are responsible for transporting weapons and special materials have a dedicated six-week training program, even though most of them come to us as trained law enforcement officials when they first start. I've met with, ridden with a number of these agents, and I can attest that they're absolutely superb.

And, Mr. Chairman, much of our work with other governments, notably with Russia and other FSU countries, is often thought of as nonproliferation, but this work also contributes to preventing WMD terrorism by strengthening the security and the accountability of weapons and nuclear materials and by eliminating the incentives from WMD experts to turn to other customers for their expertise.

And just one example, we are working with the Russian navy to significantly improve the security of some 4,000 nuclear weapons and several hundred tons of weapon-grade plutonium and uranium.

Some of the most technologically interesting and important work toward prevention occurs in the sensor development work we're doing at our national laboratories. In this work, we draw upon the very considerable expertise of our laboratories, developed initially to support the nuclear programs and to develop a full range of sensors and detectors.

And this work is carefully coordinated and responsive to requirements of the lead agencies and to the responders. But our laboratories are often the first choice of these customers because of the long experience base and the proven ability to operationalize this kind of equipment.

For example, this is the radiation pager that's been heard about in many places and developed by one of our laboratories and is now produced in commercial quantities and is used by the thousands by U.S. Customs at points of entering the United States to help detect attempts to bring in radioactive material.

Experience with nuclear systems also led to a natural expansion into chemical and biological agent detectors, and this effort is focused to support civilian programs that we work in close coordination with the DOD, who has the responsibility for military applications.

And the current emphasis of the interagency work is to develop sensors that could detect the use of a biological agent at a large outdoor event, such as the Super Bowl or Olympics. While we don't have the lead on this, we think we do bring considerable expertise to this.

And here are two other examples of the systems in development. They're small hand-held sensors and analyzers that are simple to use, require relatively little training and offer great potential for early detection.

The first is a biological agent detector that can test for DNA strings, sequences and report in about 15 minutes. It's hand-held, battery operated, readily deployable, twice as fast as current laboratory equipment.

GORDON: Prototypes of these systems are currently being evaluated by DOD, by Centers for Disease Control, by Los Angeles County, Utah Department of Health, University of Maryland and others. And if proven, we will look for a commercial partner for production and make them available to the responders.

The second system is both a chemical and a biological agent detector. A chemical laboratory on a chip that can detect gas chemical signatures or liquid biotoxin signatures with considerable sensitivity, with a time cycle of about three minutes. It's been tested and proven with live agent; more agents, and chemical capabilities are now being added.

GREGG: How much do those cost?

GORDON: They're in the range of a few thousand dollars. I would give you a more considered answer for the record. They would not generally be prohibitively expensive, and it's a bit unknown until you get into manufacturing, but the developers work very clear in mind that this has to be economically affordable.

The sensor work has also lead to some work overseas, which we would call the second line of defense, where we're to work the Russian customs folks to deploy sensors at some of their sites to limit the ability for illicit transiting across the Russian borders.

And then, I would add without getting into any detail in open hearing, a primary customer for much of our work is United States intelligence community. And again, we think we offer highly specialized capabilities to meet specific requirements.

Mr. Chairman, I turn from this technical discussion to a few moments on how we support responders both domestically and internationally.

DOE's emergency response assets, which are unique in the government, are ready to respond to radiological incidences worldwide. Emergency response program maintains several unique assets, each of which possess individual capabilities and equipment that contribute to a mutually supportive environment that deals specifically with nuclear materials, nuclear weapons or terrorist incidents involving nuclear devices or radiation dispersion.

These include the accident response group and their nuclear emergency search teams, called NEST. We have an aerial measuring system, which is a sophisticated aggregation, a state-of-the-art remote sensing and especially equipped non-military aircraft that can perform aerial surveys. Atmospheric release advisory capability, a computer-based emergency preparedness and response predictive capability that's available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Federal Radiological Monitoring and Assessment Center, radiological assistance programs, all again designed to support the responders.

The mainstay of all this work, as it relates primarily to domestic terrorism, is the nuclear emergency search team, or NEST, for incidents involving of literally a malevolent nuclear device, and it consists of several specialized and tailored teams. The search teams and the search augmentation teams, which are based at the Remote Sensing Laboratory in Las Vegas, and these teams deploy with advance hand-held and vehicle-monitored radiological sensors that can covertly search for suspected terrorist device and material, nuclear.

They also have the NEST joint technical operations teams, components which support Department of Defense and Federal Bureau of Investigation explosive ordnance dispersal personnel in rendering safe a nuclear or radiological device. We bring the expertise that backs up these teams.

And we maintain a radiological advisory team, which is, in fact, the command and control element for all these personnel while they're deployed. The senior Energy official on this deployment team reports both to the Department of Energy and to the designated lead federal agency for that particular crisis.

Mr. Chairman, I'll just change views and very briefly mention the Critical Infrastructure Protection Program, where the department has a mandate to help ensure the security and reliability nation's energy infrastructure. In light of this responsibility, the department created the Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection to focus solely on the infrastructure assurance and protection needs of the energy industry and the development of related R&D work.

The primary mission of that office is to work with the national energy secretary in developing the capability required for protecting our infrastructure from attack and from disruption. And that work includes, not only the physical, but also the cyber-components of electric power, oil, gas infrastructures. The interdependency among those components, the interdependencies with the other critical infrastructures.

And then to ensure that we are prepared to work effectively with FEMA to respond quickly and appropriately to any energy emergency that may occur this summer, Secretary Abraham has just recently directed the formation of energy emergency task force within DOE. This effort is under way and begin a series of interactive workshops to focus on infrastructure and interdependencies.

Mr. Chairman, I think I will then spend a few moments on how the community operates and DOE's and NNSA's role within the community.

GORDON: During operational phase, DOE supports the lead federal agency, generally the FBI, the Department of State or FEMA and in certain cases the Department of Defense. We would normally deploy as a member of the FEST team or the DEST team, for example.

In the event of a terrorist incident at a DOE site, the department's armed protective services would provide the initial response. At the onset of the terrorist incident, the department would notify FBI and transition crisis management responsibility of the FBI would transition once they have adequate resources in place and are ready to assume control.

The department also has a series of agreements in place with local law enforcement emergency response to provide emergency support in any instances which require short-term response. We coordinate reasonably well with other agencies with respect to counterterrorism activities, especially in the areas of security standards, protection policy, terrorism incident response planning, operations, exercises and technology development. For example, for protection policy and security standards, we coordinate routinely with NRC and with DOE.

I would suggest that coordination among agencies, from my perspective, from where we sit and what we do, has improved significantly over the past months or year, and let me offer three brief examples.

The department is sponsoring, along with the FBI Weapons of Mass Destruction Unit, a highly successful series of exercises we call Silent Thunder. These exercises familiarize state and local and federal senior management personnel within the government on the emergency response to domestic terrorist incidents that could involve nuclear materials or WMD at a DOE site. The Silent Thunder exercises have been conducted at seven sites. We've trained more than 500 first responders, including FBI senior managers and state and local officials, and we're expanding this series.

Similar field training exercises were conducted with the FBI's Critical Incident Response at Oak Ridge and at the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Second example: DOE has recently sponsored what we've dubbed a radiological detection rodeo at the Nevada test site, and what we've doing there is providing for multiple federal agencies and department the opportunities to come out and test in the field their radiological detection equipment against weapons-grade material and other special materials.

And in this exercise, some 50 pieces of ground vehicle and aircraft detector systems from six agencies were tested in a controlled environment. The results are shared among the agencies and will aid in the understanding of the capabilities and the limitations of the equipment and to direct future R&D efforts. Such programs also expose unplanned duplications of effort. A second event is planned for early next fiscal year.

My last example would be just last month NNSA and DOE, in concert with the FBI, in concert with Customs and the DOD, completed a capability exercise out at Andrews Air Force Base to educate key personnel on the interagency capabilities and the coordination efforts.

The exercise allowed the interagency community to bring together at one location the equipment and the personnel associated with the coordinated response to a WMD event. The exercise demonstrated the unique capabilities of each organization, how they're interrelated and how they're independent. The flow went from detection to search, effects prediction, render safe packaging, all the way to transportation of what you would do with the material for disposition.

And I think the exercise clearly demonstrated the level of coordination that we're beginning to bring among these various agencies, at least on this portion of the work, but it also demonstrated the critical need for continuing dialogue between agencies and departments.

Mr. Chairman, we are hopeful that we could actually stage that event again in a place that's a little more convenient, invite a lot of members to come out, because we really got to see some interesting and very positive capabilities and interact with the very committed, dedicated people from all these agencies who are trying their best to give us a significant degree of protection and response capability.

Mr. Chairman, from my perspective, at least at NNSA, there's been some significant improvements in the coordination of the counterterrorist programs and response capabilities, at least in the nuclear area, from what we can see. And certainly at DOE and at NNSA, we understand our support role to the lead agencies in any of real- world event. We're ready to respond 24-7. We're proud of our ability to protect our own assets, another full-time mission. And we're proud of our ability to offer unique specialized operational detection equipment. The department takes its responsibilities to protect our national security assets in combating terrorism at home very seriously.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for allowing me to appear before you and to represent the secretary today.

GREGG: General, that was a fascinating statement. It covered a lot of ground. I know there's going to be a lot of follow-up questions, too.

Our tradition on this ad hoc committee is to go to the chairman of the two full committees who are participating, because they hold unique positions.

So Chairman Warner or Chairman Stevens?

STEVENS: I just have one question, General.

GORDON: Mr. Chairman?

STEVENS: You've been down there for a while now. Do you perceive a need to try to realign some of these connections between the agencies that have roles in the subjects we're discussing?

You've seen, I assume, the chart that Chairman Warner had this morning, have you?

WARNER: I think he has it on his desk.

GORDON: Is that this?

WARNER: Yes.

GORDON: Someone just handed me this one.

I, kind of, look at it from a from a fairly narrow perspective, Mr. Chairman, and it's maybe unfortunate. But the work that we're doing and the support we're doing, we feel pretty well-connected into the system. And the work we're doing, the development of this equipment such as this, is responding to specific needs.

As I suggested in the statement, I think there's been a significant improvement in the ability of the action responders -- and again, I'll speak relatively narrowly, to the action responders that we work with -- to begin to coordinate in a much better way than they've done before. And I'm not sure I know the reason why it's gotten better, a lot of attention, a lot of hard work by some of the people who joined me today in this hearing.

I think there's a good reason to ask for a sharpness to the nation's efforts; that maybe we can tune that up. And for that reason, I think the initiative announced by the vice president today will help in that regard too. Really, let's put this together at the broadest, broadest perspective, because we actually are going to come out of it in a bit of a defined role.

STEVENS: Well, that announcement today was primarily a reaction to an event that has taken place, as I understand it. Is that your understanding?

It's not any consolidation of the command and control as far as these individual entities are concerned, it's about a preparation...

GORDON: I understand it's to really sit down with the new administration and make sure, you know, to do a top-to-bottom review of how we want to be able to handle such actions as these.

STEVENS: Well, would you have available at your command immediately the names and telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, of people who have the equipment and the know-how to move in on any particular type of disaster that might come about through weapons of mass destruction?

GORDON: We can move in from DOE and NNSA assets. We are cocked, ready to go. I can tell you the telephone number now where I would start it, and the gentleman who runs that for the secretary and I is in the room with us today, General McBroome (ph).

STEVENS: And they would know who has the equipment and the know- how to deal with any particular type of incident you notified them of?

GORDON: With any of the equipment that falls within our category, primarily nuclear with support to the other regions. Yes, sir, our teams are ready. We have teams at the laboratories ready to go. I have an airplane in Albuquerque with the equipment staged, on alert, that could bring our people to the scene in a matter of a very few hours.

STEVENS: That's good news. Thank you.

GREGG: Senator Warner?

WARNER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

General, we've focused here on crisis management, consequent management, first responders and so forth.

I want to spend a little time on what I call plainly as deterrence, in the hopes that we can have in place an organization to deter someone from initiating the use of a weapon of mass destruction.

And I, frankly, talked with General Powell this morning. I think some people think it's a little far-fetched. But we ought to look at almost a NATO-type organization. Now, I'm not talking about massive caches of military equipment prepositioned and all kinds of things, but we bring together everybody in the world who is subject to this type of attack, and strategize how best to deter and to put in place what assets are necessary, to share with each other the knowledge.

WARNER: And I propound this question to you because, in your area of responsibility, particularly with fissionable material which could be employed, that could most likely come from beyond our shores.

And as such, do you see an advantage in trying to structure some type of entity whereby persons with your knowledge and so forth from a number of countries are formally brought together, or have representatives together, so that they can hopefully get early warning of the use of one of these things through intelligence or otherwise, and deter it from happening? Because after all, NATO was successful because it deterred the event that we all postulated could happen from ever happening for 50 years.

GORDON: I'd have to give that a little bit of thought, Mr. Chairman. My initial reaction is that deterrence for some of these individual terrorist cells in particular can be an extremely difficult concept.

WARNER: Oh, I agree with that.

GORDON: And I might think we would push a little harder on prevention and detection than deterrence itself, if I were going to have to decide at least how I was going to invest money among them; that the work that's being done in the community to get a handle on how to predict this, how to get inside those kinds of organizations, how to think about that, is extraordinarily hard, but extraordinarily important.

I'm not certain that all those groups are deterrable in the way we sense, of anything else -- of being deterrable. Now, perhaps some of the larger, more organized groups, certainly that's the case. But deterrence...

WARNER: Of course, state-sponsored...

GORDON: State-sponsored is a very different situation. I would agree with you completely.

WARNER: Yes. But what I'm concerned with is that there are persons with your knowledge and to some extent with your authority in a number of nations -- for example, to what extent do you have knowledge of other nations working on similar detection devices, and on the assumption that if we were formally brought together under some framework, maybe there's a requirement for them to share. Because this is on the open market in our country; what's in the open market in other countries of comparable design?

GORDON: I think that's an excellent idea, Mr. Chairman. We have a number of efforts with a couple of our close friends on working specific technology developments and specific approaches to some of these problems. There may be considerable merit in expanding that.

And the only thing I was entering into discussion with you was whether that's really towards deterrence or whether it's toward prevention and detection. There's great work to be done in sharing technologies, sharing experiences, sharing policy approaches and making it more clear, at least to organized groups or state-sponsored groups, that there is no harbor for them anywhere.

WARNER: Well, I think that sharing has got to be within a formalized structure. As I said, you're an extraordinary person, and should you, for any reason, decide to go on to more lucrative challenges in life, suddenly a lot of your contacts worldwide could be lost that you've established at your own initiative on a one-by-one basis. And your successor would have to pick up and start from the very beginning, presumably, in establishing the contacts and sharing of the knowledge. Whereas if we had some sort of a formalized structure, there could be more continuity.

GORDON: I think that's an excellent idea, Mr. Chairman.

WARNER: And I thank you. I intend to probe it as best I can.

I thank the chair.

GREGG: Senator Landrieu?

LANDRIEU: Secretary Gordon, thank you for your testimony. And I want to just say to my colleagues how much I look forward to working with them in a bipartisan manner to help to provide for the country a system of response that brings our best minds and best technology and best organizational skills to protect as many people -- all the people if we can -- from what we hope never happens, but it most certainly might.

And the difficulty is that it's complicated because we aren't really engaging in an armed battle where we can, for the most part, kind of, frame our attack strategy with just the men and women in uniform under a single command, even though we fight sometimes with our allies.

LANDRIEU: But attack on a home base involves a lot of potential civilian life at jeopardy, as well as trying to coordinate with our local officials. Which is why this whole issue, I think, really deserves the attention based on this report that's come out, that says we're, perhaps, not as organized as we might think we are.

But it's complicated by the fact that there are literally thousands and thousands of local elected officials, local appointed officials, emergency teams that would be there on the scene or wanting to respond in a way that their training would dictate. But it's not as organized as it should be.

And so I really appreciate the leadership and hope we can work in a bipartisan way to have testimony from a variety of different sources in response to the report, in response to the need to have a more coordinated response of these kinds of potential attacks.

So I look forward to it, but my question to you specifically would be, Can you just discuss, based on your testimony, the role of your NES teams in responding to an attack in reference to what the National Guard, WMD, CST teams, and how it would either be overlapping or duplicative in the current framework in which we're operating, which I know is subject to change, which is the purpose of these hearings?

GORDON: The principal role of the NEST and those other teams are, again, going to be in support of the responders, and primarily, in our view, we would think we would in support of the FBI, whoever has local command of that place.

And this is the team. These are the experts. And Chairman Stevens asked about, did I know who they were and where they were going to go. These are the folks who work in our laboratories, in our plants, who are on a short alert string. They have other jobs. They have day jobs. And they would respond in a very limited number of hours and deploy and be available on the site.

And these are the individuals who would either be able to help with the search in some covert ways, because of the detectors and systems they bring with them. Or if there were a device that were discovered, they would be the principal technical advisers to the on- scene commander on how they would attempt to disarm, dismantle or whatever was chosen to be done with that particular device.

So in all of those cases, they're going in, in either a search role or an advisory role. And they are always responsible to the on- scene commander. And most, if not all, situations, that would be the FBI. At least that's how we're planning on them, because in the cases, at least, we're talking about a U.S. response.

LANDRIEU: So you would think, under your understanding of the current response regimen that we have outlined, that these teams would respond to the command of the FBI?

GORDON: Yes, ma'am.

LANDRIEU: On the site?

GORDON: On the site.

LANDRIEU: And so if the FBI didn't want a search to take place in a certain area, they would say, "No search," is that what you're saying?

GORDON: I believe someone needs to be -- there needs to be a commander at the site, and someone needs to be responsible to make the decisions.

LANDRIEU: And it's your understanding that it's the FBI.

GORDON: Yes, ma'am.

LANDRIEU: As opposed to any local person or local entity.

GORDON: It's my understanding -- I'm going to see if I get some help here...

LANDRIEU: OK, thank you.

GORDON: The emergency response -- General McBroome (ph) on the end is nodding "correct." I just don't know the circumstances in which we would not expect the FBI to have control of the site, under today's rules.

LANDRIEU: Under today's rules.

Thank you.

GREGG: Thank you. I appreciate those questions, Senator, because it gets to one of the issues this panel has been focusing on, which is, who is responsible on the site.

At least someone knows. The general seems to have settled that for us to some degree, which is good.

Senator Roberts?

ROBERTS: General Gordon, I owe you a debt of thanks. Ever since we've had your stand-alone National Nuclear Security Administration and you've been in charge of security at the national labs, I don't know of any member of the Intelligence Committee that has had to go out there and land on the tarmac every other month. And I truly appreciate the job you've done in battening down the hatches.

In page three of your testimony, you go through a clear understanding of the fundamental principles of protection.

ROBERTS: And you list one, two, three, four, five, six, I'm not going to do all that, but they made a lot of sense to me. And then you said, "These steps are applicable to all agencies."

Is this a program that is shared by all the other agencies that we've been talking about here, or is this just -- what, DOE? Or...

GORDON: To be honest, Senator, I mean, that's certainly the way we think about the problem. And I think it's applicable broadly, but I didn't intend that as a rule or a regulation.

ROBERTS: Well, it looks like a pretty good matrix to me. I know, you know, DOD has a similar criteria, but I wanted to compliment you on it. I think my distinguished colleague and the ranking member of the Emerging Threats Subcommittee has asked the question I wanted to in regards to the NEST teams.

On page seven, you get into the critical energy infrastructure protection. And you talk about the nation's electrical grid, especially in the Western U.S. And you're talking about the impact of a possible major terrorist attack directed against this fragile, interdependent infrastructure, drastic consequences, and go on to say, "the department is engaged in the study of threats, infrastructure vulnerabilities and ways to protect against, mitigate, respond to, recover from significant disruptions." You mentioned the state of California and the rolling blackouts.

What other agencies are you sharing this with? It seems to me this is not only very topical, but very immediate, more especially with the spring and summer coming on and all of the -- I know the vice president is releasing an energy study, but in regard to security, I'm not sure too many people have focused on the pipeline infrastructure and the consequences of what that would mean.

GORDON: The intent of the critical infrastructure program is to actually work with the sectors, with state and local officials, to think through those kinds of problems. So there's a broad concept that is to try to bring that out into the community and into the sectors.

ROBERTS: And have you done that to any extent to date?

GORDON: Could Dr. Mahaley respond to that question? Dr. Joe Mahaley.

ROBERTS: I think it's a pretty immediate problem. I don't want to delay the hearing, but I think it's pretty important.

MAHALEY: Senator, I'm Joe Mahaley. I'm the acting director of security and emergency operations.

Our Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection does outreach exercises with state and local officials. We just finished one two weeks ago in California called Red Heat. We've done that in...

ROBERTS: Did they pay attention?

MAHALEY: Yes, sir, I think they do pay attention. I was not present during the exercise, so I can't testify to it personally, but I think they realize the vulnerability, they realize the constraints on them right now, and I think they took it very seriously.

ROBERTS: Page nine, General, were you -- did you take part in the Denver exercise with Topoff? Because you're indicating, "Our experts are involved in a broad interagency program to develop sensors that could detect the terrorist use of a biological agent."

We just had FEMA here indicating it would take a week or 10 days for somebody to figure out that it was smallpox or it was anthrax, or it was some kind of a biological attack. If you have the sensors that could detect that pretty fast, and you're not spreading this event all over the world.

GORDON: I don't think we participated in that particular event, Senator. These kinds of sensors are under, sort of, the final development stages now. And we're working hard to be able to do some open-air collection and sampling off of this. But we'll always have to worry about what the false alarm rate is off of that as well, so...

ROBERTS: Do you have adequate funding to get that? I'm not an appropriator, I apologize for this, but...

MAHALEY: We've always had adequate funding.

GORDON: Actually, it's, kind of, hard for me to say this, but, yes, we seem to -- we've been able to fund this part of it pretty well and maintain the priorities.

ROBERTS: But if part of all the questions we've had here, i.e., who's in charge -- well, here are the first responders, who from the federal government arrives? Who's in charge? Who has control? What kind of a time delay would be most serious in regards to a biological attack? Identifying that. What do we do? It seems to me if we have these sensors and they are under the R&D heading, we better get with the program. I can't think of anything more...

GORDON: These are being developed with great transparency in the community.

ROBERTS: That's what you have down there?

GORDON: These are hand-helds that could be used by responders, yes, sir.

ROBERTS: Page 11...

GREGG: May I ask a question?

ROBERTS: Yes, certainly.

GREGG: Could they also be used at ports of entry. I mean, could a Customs agent or even a Coast Guard...

GORDON: They require -- these, at the state we're at, require some knowledge of what you're looking for, yet. They're still not these hugely broadband things that can, sort of, detect everything. And there are some limitations to them at this state of development. The system which can detect, for example, a biological agent needs to be in a liquid form, as opposed to an air form. It's just where we are in the state of development.

What we're doing is for other responders, for other agencies, taking this technology that we've developed and the United States taxpayers paid for over these many years in this treasures of the national laboratories and expanding this capacity out. And again, really, without an operational role, certainly in a biological...

GREGG: Are you accelerating that technology research so there could be more...

GORDON: We've been pushing it pretty hard the last couple of years. We've formed, within NNSA and its laboratories, a chem-bio program that's managed separately, has its conferences and people come together from across the community to work it. But it's an R&D focus.

GREGG: Do you sit down with agencies like FBI and Customs who could really...

GORDON: Yes, sir.

GREGG: ... and get their specs as to what they would need?

GORDON: Yes, sir. It's designed for someone else's use.

GREGG: Sorry.

ROBERTS: No, that was a very good segue.

Page 11, I didn't know this, not that that means anything. But I didn't know this. Seven hundred and twenty-five hits, or incidents, that were directed against the Department of Energy systems by cyber- attacks. We hear a lot about, you know, Moonlight Maze in the Department of Defense and the thousands of attacks on the Pentagon.

You say during one week in April, our cyber-security investigative group detected 725 incidents. And now you are developing cyber-security protection capabilities with the goal of improving department's information, et cetera, et cetera. Are you sharing that with DOD as well?

GORDON: We're closely associated with DOD on all these issues.

ROBERTS: All the federal agencies.

GORDON: And through the National Infrastructure Protection Center -- they're run by the FBI.

We have -- I think our numbers are not significantly different than many other people in terms of how many hits there are. They're not all, you know, malicious state-sponsored attacks. They are -- many of them are hackers coming on or just, sort of, bouncing off the system.

And we've actually -- I think the number that we even detect these numbers shows the seriousness at which we were able to work on these problems.

ROBERTS: One of the concerns we've had at looking at this from the DOD angle is that we wanted to add in private industry as well. They weren't too particularly excited about coming to the Justice Department and revealing, you know, virtually everything that's happening to their company, for a lot of different reasons. And their lawyers were telling them, "Well, maybe you shouldn't do that because of liability issues or loss of public confidence to attract, you know, capital investment." Are you working with any members of private industry?

I think it's obvious that if, in fact, the Pentagon's OK and that the DOE is OK, other federal agencies are OK in terms of a cyber- attack, if you pick up the phone and it's dead, it isn't going to make much difference in terms of some kind of an incident. So, are you participating with any of the consortiums that are involving, you know, private industry, more especially, the high-tech people?

MAHALEY: Senator, part of our...

GREGG: Could you identify yourself for the record?

MAHALEY: Yes, sir, I'm sorry. For the record, it's Joe Mahaley, acting director of security and emergency operations for DOE.

This is one of the prime objectives of our critical infrastructure protection outreach efforts. And you've hit on a very serious problem. Private industry does not want to turn over all of its automated data to the federal government, or give the federal government a gold key into that data.

One of the things we're working on are methods, protocols, if you will, to get the necessary information the government needs to protect their cyber-systems, protect their infrastructure.

One of the techniques we used a few years ago, it was well received, was to take software developed at our national labs to detect hacker intrusions in the networks and, basically, give this software to utility industry companies who have the SCADA networks and let them use that software to protect their networks. The quid pro quo for energy was to get the battle reports, if you will, how effective that software was in detecting those intrusions.

That was a one-way program and industry liked it. Where we could offer them a tool, the information we got back was helpful in developing more advanced tools.

ROBERTS: Does an exercise like Black Ice help you in that regard? I note that you're -- say the Winter Olympics and you're dealing with the security of the critical infrastructures and you name them: energy, telecommunications, transportation, water systems, banking, finance, emergency services, you know, government services. This exercise had over 200 representatives from 65 federal, state and local agencies participating.

ROBERTS: Does that help them, as you work through an exercise like this, and then hopefully, they would understand it's in their best interest to share this valuable data with you without a corresponding concern that...

MAHALEY: The answer is, yes, Senator. It's obviously a trust- building exercise, and the more of these outreach efforts we do, the more confidence we gain.

And I will tell you, it's region by region. We have more success in one region. We invest more time there. The circle builds. Local government brings in more of their industry. I think the recipe is to continue these programs. And I think we'll slowly grow these programs and build the trust.

ROBERTS: Mr. Chairman, I would just make the observation, we're focusing on the 46 federal agencies, but unless we're able to bring in, in a cooperative effort in some fashion -- I know there are a lot of hurdles, as they've indicated here -- energy and telecommunications, transportation, water systems, banking, finance -- all of the essential services in the private sector, if that's under danger and we suffer a domestic incident, all of the agencies -- well, not all of them -- but most of them will be protected, but the individual citizen will not and be denied the essential services, which could lead to chaos, which is the design of the terrorist.

So I think that's a component that's very hard. I know, in DOD, we've had a lot problems in getting these test bed pilot programs. In the first place, the Pentagon doesn't want to spend the money. And in the second place, the people who we are asking to participate are very hesitant to do so. And that is a big problem.

And I thank you very much for your testimony.

GORDON: Thank you, sir.

GREGG: Thank you.

That is a whole other area of inquiry, which is, what is the private sector doing in this area?

General, you obviously -- I'm very impressed with the presentation you've made here today. It's comprehensive. It covers the whole waterfront. It is definitive, which is nice.

So put on your thinking hat, as a person who has held a number of responsible positions, very responsible positions in our government, and tell us what we should do government wide, what are we doing wrong, and what should we be doing to correct, or how can we do a better job? What's your advice and counsel?

GORDON: Well, let me just come off of the wall and tell you, the fact that we can draw this chart is not necessarily bad. The fact that 40 or 46 agencies and organizations are concerned about this problem ought to be the good news in this business.

And as I suggested, at least from the little corner of this part that I occupy and support, the coordination and the inter- relationships have actually significantly improved over the last months or year.

GREGG: That is good news.

GORDON: And again, I'll be cautious about speaking about the whole thing. I know there has been lots of discussion -- I assume you're getting the question to something like, should we have a czar or should we organize some other way?

GREGG: What do we do?

GORDON: My perspective is that in other large problems and organizational issues, czars often don't capture the heart and the soul of the organizations that are actually going to do the work. And the idea that we might should strengthen the NSC role, we might should strengthen the role of the Cabinet secretaries, perhaps led by the vice president, and it goes on, I think, is a better approach to this. Because what I would want to have is, I would want to have the secretaries and undersecretaries personally committed to these programs and have the normal structure of government -- but being assured that it is working properly and fully -- bringing together and bringing the coordination into it.

In my organization, people want to work for this organization and for the secretary, and they don't quite understand it if there's someone else out there.

GORDON: And it's a long way of getting around to it that says, a strong NSC center that brings in the Cabinet members, that brings in the organizations and brings them together with a clear set of goals and steps that need to be taken to ensure some of that coordination, is how I would have tried to approach the problem. Sorry to be so rambling.

GREGG: No, that's excellent. That's actually a very good perspective. You know, I tend to agree with that.

The place that I have problems is, how do we make sure that somebody is still, you know, looking after the barnyard animals? I mean, it just gets -- if there's four or five different agencies, which have significant roles here and overlapping roles, unless you've got a strong NSC, as you suggest, but, you know, it's going to depend on people versus systems against...

GORDON: Yes, sir. I think it's always going to depend on people, though. You've got to get the right people in the right job and they've got to be right, they've got to be committed and they've got to be working for somebody who knows that their success depends upon the success of that program.

I don't think this is an issue that relies itself upon -- technology is a great implementer and it's going to help us in a lot of ways. It's going to help us communicate. It's going to help us detect stuff. But people have to make it work and that means leadership and an organization that's got some sense to it.

ROBERTS: I wanted to add to this because your approach is very similar, or at least is how I read it. We only have -- or I only have three summaries of the various commissions or the studies that have been done on this, Hart-Rudman and the Gilmore panel and the CSIS task force. And what you have stated is largely supportive of the Hart-Rudman approach. I don't know if you knew that or not.

And they've said, "Detailed strategy development and policy integration, resource allocation could be done by the president and the NSC, supported by staff. Accountable departments and agencies to conduct operations and execute strategy. NSC staff, however, to avoid policy-making or operational role, have staff to focus on advising the president, producing the comprehensive strategy." Then they leave it to the other agencies, obviously, FBI, FEMA, et cetera, et cetera, all the people we've had here today.

But the Gilmore panel says, "We need a new White House office and a national office for combating terrorism, and somebody designed similar to the drug czar, like Admiral Rickover or, say, General McCaffrey with the drug war."

CSIS task force says, "No, we need the broad definition of strategy, including the deterrence and nonproliferation, but no central role, because that would be duplicative. We'd have to reinvent the wheel. Strategy and budget for combating terrorism assigned to a Senate-confirmed assistant, however, to the president."

And there are at least four more that I have not really quoted here. And that's where we're wrestling is and what the vice president is going to wrestle with prior to making his recommendation in October.

GREGG: I would simply say that I think your thought process is an excellent contribution to this. And I hope that when the vice president gets his group up and running that you'll ask to serve on that exercise. That would be, I think, very constructive.

Thank you for your time.

GORDON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

GREGG: Now, we're going to hear from Chairman Meserve of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Chairman, thank you for your coming today and we appreciate your taking the time.

We have heard so far from the secretary of treasury, assistant secretary of defense, secretary of state, director of FEMA and national nuclear security administrator.

GREGG: And we appreciate your taking time to participate in these hearings also.

So the floor is your.

MESERVE: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and Senator Roberts.

It is a pleasure to appear before you today to discuss the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's programs related to safeguards and security for NRC-licensed commercial nuclear facilities and certain types of nuclear materials.

I'm joined here at the table by William Kane who is the deputy executive director for operations for reactors.

The NRC has a responsibility to ensure the protection of public health and safety and promote common defense and security in the commercial possession and use of Atomic Energy Act materials. We take that responsibility seriously, and we have promulgated requirements and implemented programs intended to protect NRC-licensed facilities and materials against both radiological sabotage and the theft or diversion of special nuclear material. The commission seeks to ensure protection of these facilities while not posing an unnecessary regulatory burden on our licensees.

NRC activities related to domestic safeguard and security and emergency response can be grouped into four categories: developing and implementing requirements for safeguarding certain types of nuclear facilities and material and inspecting compliance; second, assessing the domestic threat environment and the international environment in so far as it has implications for domestic threats; third, maintaining and coordinating emergency response capabilities; and finally, providing physical security for NRC employees at facilities.

Let me briefly discuss each of these activities. First, safeguarding nuclear facilities: Beginning in the late 1970s, the NRC established requirements to safeguard civilian nuclear power plants and fuel facilities that possess formula quantities of strategic, special nuclear material. The regulations apply a graded approach; that is, greater controls and protection are applied to materials and facilities that might be particularly attractive to an adversary.

The NRC licenses these nuclear facilities and materials, inspects the facilities and materials to ensure adequate protection and compliance with NRC requirements, assesses licensee performance and enforces the regulations.

For example, the NRC requires that power reactors have the capability to defend against design basis threat or DBT. This DBT in general assumes that the adversaries will consist of several well- trained and dedicated individuals with knowledge of the facility and possessing weapons up to and including automatic weapons and specialized equipment, such as incapacitating agents and explosives.

Licensees prepare to respond with careful access controls, physical and defensive barriers, continually manned alarmed command and control stations, armed response teams and specialized training.

NRC oversight includes inspections and force-on-force exercises. These exercises are conducted at all nuclear power facilities utilizing licensee mock adversary forces in order to identify areas for improvement in the physical protection systems.

Threat assessment: The NRC monitors and assesses the threat environment in the United States and abroad. The threat assessment program ensures the continued adequacy of the design basis threat specified in our regulations. Moreover, the NRC maintains a threat assessment capability through continuous liaison with the national intelligence and law enforcement communities, thereby enabling the assessment of any reported threat to a licensee and the capacity to provide timely threat advisory and assessment information to our licensees.

Emergency response: NRC maintains a robust emergency response program, including the capability to respond to a sabotage incident. This is done within the U.S. government interagency crisis and consequent management framework. Most of these capabilities are conducted under the Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan, in coordination with FEMA, the Department of Energy and other federal participants.

NRC's program is designed to assess licensee responses to emergencies and to support local, state and federal authorities in the event of an emergency.

MESERVE: NRC routinely conducts exercises to ensure that these capabilities are maintained, by working with licensees and other responders to ensure a high level of preparedness and capability if an emergency occurs.

NRC also cooperates and assists other agencies, including the FBI, in its lead role in responding to crises associated with acts of sabotage, theft or diversion.

The NRC also seeks to protect critical infrastructure, such as telephone information and other systems essential to agency operations, as well as to support DOE in protecting the nation's electrical power infrastructure.

Additionally, NRC has established a program that will enable it to respond to safety problems involving licensed operations during concerted terrorist acts against the agency. This program seeks to maintain continuity of essential operation and is fully coordinated with other executive branch agencies and departments.

Finally, as to physical security, the NRC protects NRC and personnel through a comprehensive physical and personnel security program. This program includes the continual assessment and adjustment of physical security measures in response to federal government-wide advisories and agency-specific situations.

The commission believes it has been providing adequate attention to terrorism-related issues, although our examination of policy is continuing. In this connection, we do seek certain legislative changes that would strengthen our regulatory program.

These changes include authorizing guards at commission-designated licensed or certified facilities to carry and use firearms to protect property of significance to the common defense and security, making it a federal crime to bring unauthorized weapons and explosives into NRC- licensed facilities, and making federal criminal prohibitions on sabotage applicable to the operation or construction of certain nuclear facilities, such as a nuclear reactor.

In closing, I would like to reiterate that NRC takes very seriously its obligation to ensure adequate protection of the nation's civilian nuclear facilities against domestic acts of sabotage, theft or diversion. We appreciate the opportunity to join you today to discuss our programs.

I would be pleased to answer any questions. Thank you.

GREGG: Thank you.

Do you also do any oversight or assessment of nuclear materials?

MESERVE: Yes, sir. The program I described was one that relates to our power reactors, of which there are 103 operating power reactors in the U.S. We also have a similar program for materials, including particularly the sites that have special nuclear material in them, and there are two fuel facilities, for example, or so-called category one facilities, that have the capacity to respond in the way that I described as to the reactors.

GREGG: How about international material?

MESERVE: International terror?

GREGG: International materials, nuclear materials, do you have any...

MESERVE: Let me respond to that in a couple of ways. That we, of course, don't regulate international facilities. We do have certain licensing authority as to the import and export of materials. The focus of that activity, however, is not terrorism, it's whether it's appropriate for the materials -- going to an appropriate end- user.

We do, in an intelligence sense, with other agencies do monitor threats that might arise from an international context, and we also do have some cooperative programs with other nations as to their protection of nuclear materials.

GREGG: How about the movement of nuclear waste?

MESERVE: Well, we, of course, have a regulatory role with regard to nuclear waste, and there are safeguards and security issues associated with, for example, spent fuel. Typically, those materials are, at the moment, present at the reactor site, and so that their protection of those materials would be encompassed within the protection system that exists for the reactor.

So that there are some issues which the commission is engaging in with regard to protection during transport and events of that type.

MESERVE: But basically the protections of spent fuel are ones that are reactor focused.

ROBERTS: Chairman Meserve, I'm going to quote from a report regarding to your commission's responsibilities the following statement.

"In response to an event that could threaten public health and safety, the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission will promptly send a team from one of its four regional offices to the site. Until the site team is in place, the NRC response will be led from headquarters operation center, where teams of specialists will evaluate the status of critical safety functions and independently evaluate the protective actions recommended by the licensee and implemented by the state and local authorities."

Where is that -- pardon my ignorance -- where is that headquarters operations center?

MESERVE: Our headquarters are in Rockville, Maryland.

ROBERTS: In Rockville.

MESERVE: And we have a dedicated facility in Rockville that we staff immediately upon the occurrence of an event that...

ROBERTS: Senator Mikulski should be here.

MESERVE: We'll invite you all to join us.

ROBERTS: Says, "All communications with the media, state and federal officials, the Congress and the White House will also be coordinated from headquarters operations center." Once the site team is in place, then they would do that.

If this threat to public safety is a result of a terrorist using radioactive material, how well coordinated are you with all the rest of the players we have in the program here today, i.e., the National Guard, FBI, et cetera, et cetera, and the first responders?

MESERVE: Well, the statement you read from describes our stated emergency response, of which a terrorist incident would be a special case. And we have a very close relationships, as a general matter, with FEMA and the state and local responders so that in the event of an event at a nuclear site, of any type, that we have capacity for coordinated response. And we do frequent exercises.

With regard to terrorist incidents, we also have had the benefit of developing close relationships at the working level with the FBI. They assist us not only in the assessment of threat information, some of which might be particular to a given facility, but also engage us in our exercises.

We are going to have an exercise, for example, at a nuclear facility next week that will involve about 200 FBI people, I understand. And will involve the full exercise of our incident response center and our regional team. So they'll probably be total about of 120 NRC employees who will similarly being involved, along with state and local responders.

GREGG: How often do you do those types of practice?

MESERVE: We have full-scale emergency exercises about four times a year. There are exercises that are more limited that are much more frequent than that.

And we have had -- because of the interest we have had in the terrorist possibilities as they arise from nuclear sites, we did have two exercises with the FBI last year and then this major exercise we're going to be having in another week.

ROBERTS: It says here on page five, "NRC routinely conducts exercises to ensure that these capabilities are maintained to render emergency response by working with licensees and other responders to ensure high level of preparedness and capability."

And my question was exactly the same as the distinguished chairman, how many? I guess my question would be, do you think that's enough? Do you need more? Some opposition to a lot of these exercises from cost-benefit standpoint. I'm just wondering, you know, where you think you are on that.

MESERVE: Well, we require -- by rule, we require a biannual exercise at every nuclear site in the country. And that's a -- so that there is full exercise, not only of the NRC, but also who has responsibility -- NRC has responsibility for the on-site response. State and local, FEMA have responsibility off-site.

MESERVE: So I think that frequent exercises are important because of the need for these inter-relations.

We are comfortable that we are doing these exercises at an appropriate frequency. I think that some of our licensees might, on occasion, appreciate they occur a little bit less frequent because they are very burdensome, but in the event of an incident, we need to be prepared.

ROBERTS: I just thought of something, Mr. Chairman. That's probably dangerous.

You say that until the site team is in place, with regard to an event that could threaten public health, "all communications with the media, state and federal officials, the Congress, the White House, will also be coordinated from headquarters operations center."

Well, one of the things that they went through with all of the Topoff exercises -- and I'm guessing with any exercise of this nature -- is, who talks to the press, who is the spokesman? Which also connotes who is in charge.

And you're indicating here, "all communications with the media, state, federal officials, the Congress, the White House, even if they wanted to, will be coordinated from headquarters operation center." I'm not finding fault with that. I mean, somebody's got to stand up and inform the public what the heck's going on, and that's exceedingly important, and that was not done very well with these exercises.

In the first place, nobody wanted to do it.

MESERVE: Let me say that -- the comment, of course, deals with general emergency response.

ROBERTS: Right.

MESERVE: And...

ROBERTS: Well, this is your area. This is your bailiwick. This is your deal.

MESERVE: And let me say that the communications plan is an aspect of emergency response that we prepare for and that we want to make sure that appropriate notifications are made. There are certain obligations that are placed on the licensee, for example, to deal with state and local responders.

We have responsibilities as to certain of the federal players, and we try to coordinate that to make sure that people who are to be informed are informed and informed in a timely fashion. That is an aspect of the drills and, of course, of the occasional event that occurs that is tested, because there is enormous interest in an event that occurs at a nuclear facility. We need to make sure that appropriate people hear at an appropriate time what the circumstances are.

ROBERTS: Well, you've got to do it with the people who have the expertise and the trust and the confidence, it has to be legit or you're going to lose public confidence.

But that's one of the questions I forgot about asking, Mr. Chairman, if, in fact, we were able to designate who's in charge, and that's been rather difficult as of today. One of the questions we could ask is, all right, when this event takes place, who appears before the press? I mean, who's the lead agency that states to the public? Because public awareness and accurate information is exceedingly important. I don't know the answer to that.

GREGG: Most likely the governor.

MESERVE: We do try to provide information. Let me say that I think in an actual event that no doubt the state and local responders would be responding to the press as well. I mean, we don't attempt to tell them, "You cannot talk to the press."

ROBERTS: Well, I think most governors would respond to the press for about 15 seconds and, you know, turn it over to you.

Are you getting enough intelligence support in regard to your liaison? You say the NRC maintains a threat assessment capability through continuous liaison with national intelligence. I know there's an awful lot of collection. We found with the DOD side, however, that in terms of analyzing this we're a little short -- well, we have a lot to do. You happy with that liaison, that assessment?

MESERVE: Let me say that the liaison that occurs is the staff- to-staff level. And I think that the people who do the threat assessment for the NRC are in daily contact with the FBI, with the people in the FBI Weapons of Mass Destruction Operations Unit, for the purpose of getting information that might bear on our licensees.

And, of course, if we pick up information, which typically would be from a licensee, then, of course, that information we immediately relay as well.

We have other interactions with other intelligence agencies, of course, as well, but the principal one with which we work is the FBI.

The commission has a periodic briefing by the staff on what I called in my testimony the design basis threat, where we are provided with information from this unit as to what may have changed over the last six months so that the commission can evaluate whether we want to change the characteristics of the design basis threat, which our licensees are supposed to respond to.

ROBERTS: Well, Chairman Meserve, that has indicated in your statement some recommended legislation. And you've indicated that, passed either one or both Houses of Congress -- no, not both, but, you know, one or the other. And I feel sure that both Senator Gregg and I will do what we can to see that answered in regard to your recommendations.

Thank you for making those recommendations. And thank you for your appearance.

MESERVE: Very glad to be here.

GREGG: Can I just follow up here on the issue of transportation? Assuming that Yucca Mountain comes on line, does that significantly increase the question of how we deal with the terrorist threat?

MESERVE: Well, let me say that there are issues as to transportation that are in people's minds with regard to movement of spent fuel. We, fortunately, have an excellent record in the United States where transport of spent fuel has occurred for many years. There has never been an incident that has arisen in the transport that has caused radiological injury to anybody.

We do have -- and these casks are designed to withstand fire and extensive drops and they're massive devices.

We do have requirements as to the shipment, in order to assure protection, that do involve guards and appropriate notifications to officials and the like to try to address issues that could arise in the movement of that material.

These casks are very robust, and are ones that are designed to deal with all kinds of threats. And that capability would give some capacity to respond to a terrorist threat, of course, as well.

GREGG: So you don't see it as a problem that we're going to be moving this waste to Nevada?

MESERVE: No, we don't.

GREGG: You know, those uniquely terrorist.

MESERVE: We are continuing our evaluation of the packages, as we call them. And there is a package study that is under way. But at the moment, we, fortunately, have a very good record on the movement of spent fuel in this country. And we'd hope that that would continue.

GREGG: Is there anything that you think we should know relative to the organization of the federal government's efforts to address terrorism?

MESERVE: Well, I've been thinking about the comments...

GREGG: In your own bailiwick, but you know, outside your bailiwick.

MESERVE: Understand. You asked that question of John Gordon, so I had heard that and I've been thinking for a minute about that.

We have the benefit of very good working-level relationships with other agencies, particularly FBI, Department of Energy and FEMA. But I could echo the comment, I think, that Mr. Allbaugh made about the need for a national, cohesive plan; that as complicated as the chart was that Senator Warner showed, it does not have NRC as an entity on it.

Our licensees would anticipate if there were an event at a nuclear power plant, that they've been conditioned and work with us very closely as to those events and would expect that the NRC would be on the other end of the phone with them in an event. And we are designated as a lead federal agency in the Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan, which is the plan that governs emergency.

NRC is not mentioned by name in Presidential Decision Directive 39 or 62, or directly in the annexes that implement it. So that does create the possibility for some confusion as to our licensees with regard to responsibilities. And that is something I hope that this exercise will allow to be cleaned up.

GREGG: That's an excellent point and will be made note of. And in fact, if you could, sort of, give us a written statement to that effect.

ROBERTS: What do you want on this? I'll just -- I can draw the box on there now if you want.

MESERVE: I better study it first. Checked it to see where NRC was and we weren't there.

GREGG: I would like to get, sort of, a -- if you could give us a written reflection of how you should have been tied into 39, 62? Any, you know, because obviously your agency does play a critical role and that's why we've asked you to testify today.

MESERVE: Glad to be here.

GREGG: Thank you very much. Appreciate your time.

Now, our next hearing will be tomorrow morning. We'll start with Attorney General Ashcroft at 9:30, followed by Secretary Thompson, HSS, at 10:30, followed by Secretary Evans of Commerce at 11:30. And then in the afternoon we've got three other senior witnesses from the administration. So another full day.

But we greatly appreciate the witnesses today, and thank you for your courtesy.

END

NOTES:

???? - Indicates Speaker Unkown

- Could not make out what was being said.

off mike - Indicates Could not make out what was being said.

PERSON: JUDD ALAN GREGG (93%); TED STEVENS (73%); PAT ROBERTS (69%); BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL (57%); ERNEST F HOLLINGS (57%); MITCH MCCONNELL (57%); KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON (57%); PETE V DOMENICI (57%); DANIEL K INOUYE (56%); PATRICK J LEAHY (56%); HERB KOHL (56%); PATTY MURRAY (56%); BARBARA MIKULSKI (56%); JOHN W WARNER (55%); MARY LANDRIEU (55%);