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5 November 2003MEMORANDUM FOR: Mark BittingerBY: JohnR. BrinkerhoffSUBJECT: Civil Emergency Preparedness Before the 911 AttacksThe United States was ill prepared prior to 11 September 2001 for terrorist attacks.Despite obvious prior indicators of terrorist activity and energetic action by a fewindividuals and groups, the Nation was simplynot as ready as it should have been. Howthat situation came to be is an important factor in what we have done since the 911attacks and how we are going to deal with the next attacks.Fortunately, the attacks of 911 were not the worst that could have happened nor are theythe worst that is going to happen. The attacks took place in New York City andArlington Countryboth jurisdictions had better than average plans and preparations.More importantly, although the 911 attacks caused the deaths of 3,000 people, thedamage was limited in area and scope, and there were few long-lasting problemsstemming from the attacks themselves. More damage has been done by the response tothe attacks, including almost bankrupting the aviation industry and setting the precedentof payments to victims that may be unaffordable after a larger attack. Nevertheless, it isimportant to understand not only why we were surprised (which the Commission isdealing with) but also why we were not well prepared to respond.My views of this subject are influenced by may own experience and by extensive inquiryinto the subject of civil emergency preparedness. I was acting Associate Director forNational Preparedness Programs of The Federal Emergency Management Agency fromJune 1981 until June 1983. As such, I was responsible for policy formulation, planning,and program oversight of several national security related programscivil defense,national mobilization, continuity of government, the national Defense stockpile, and civilpreparedness for the full range of emergencies. During that period, I was also theDeputy Executive Secretary of the Emergency Mobilization Preparedness Board (EMPB)that was formed to coordinate civil preparedness activities of the Federal Departmentsand Agencies and prepare and implement a national civil preparedness plan. Later, I wasfrom 1986 to 1992 a consultant to FEMA in various forms. So I was a witness to theevents that affected civil emergency preparedness prior to the 911 Attacks.One of the general problems that existed prior to the 911 Attacks was the reluctance ofboth FEMA appointees and employees to deal with terrorism. I believe that if FEMA haddone its job properly, we would have had a strong anti terrorism program in existenceprior to 911 that might not have prevented the attack but might well have diminished theconsequences of the attacks. I suggest that the Commission follow this line of inquiry inits deliberations. What I believe happened is summarized below to provide a startingpoint for such an inquiry.

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FEMA was formed to integrate several different programs that addressed some part of theoverall problem of mitigating, preparing, responding, and recovering from consequencesof emergencies. Prior to FEMA, five different agencies were involved and variousaspects of emergency management. There was a great deal of overlap and waste. Thenit dawned on people that most of the consequences of emergencies were the sameregardless of the cause. So it made no sense to have at the planning level one set ofpeople deal with earthquakes, another with storms, and yet another deal with floods whenat the local level, the same people would be dealing with all emergencies. The genius ofFEMA was to include in these emergencies the consequences of both natural disastersand intentional act, which included crime, terrorism, war, and nuclear attack. The ideawas that it was necessary to address then entire spectrum of emergencies with a single setof resources that could expand and adapt to deal with whatever emergencies occurred.This was the only way that the Nation could afford at the same time to deal with dailysmall emergencies and remain ready to deal with the less frequent but more seriousemergencies.When I was acting associate director of FEMA from 1981 to 1983, we addressed theentire spectrum of emergencies. While the greatest threat was a massive nuclear attack,this was a high consequence but low probability event, and it was not possible to devotesufficient resources and particularly attention to it to be ready for it all the time. Instead,we paid for key elements to be established that could be justified, funded, and used forsmaller emergencies while also contributed to nuclear attack preparedness. That is, theconcept was to design the national emergency management system in such a way that itcould deal with the routine emergencies and be able to surge to take care of extraordinaryemergencies.There was a significant shift in emphasis from 1980 on. In 1980, our national securitypolicy was based on mutually assured destruction in which each side eschewed defensesand depended on offensive systems to deter an attack. Civil emergency preparednessagainst the nuclear attack was based on a massive "bolt-out-of-the-blue" missile attack.We tried to do what we could to reduce deaths from radioactive fallout. The ReaganAdministration did not like this strategy and tried to add both active (SDI) and passivedefenses (civil defense). At the same time, the nuclear strategists were relying less onmassive attacks and more on counterforce targeting based on warning. By the end of theCold War in 1989, the civil defense program was targeted against smaller attacks thatgave a better chance for increasing the number of survivors.Throughout this period, terrorism was a significant factor. We had been aware ofprevious threats of sabotage and subversion, against which measures had been takenduring World War I and World War II. During the Cold War, we were trying to dealwith Soviet special forces units, possible subversion by communist sympathizers, andterrorist activity by mostly internal threats from domestic groups. Programs forinfrastructure program and key asset protection were an integral pat of the overall civilpreparedness effort. Throughout all of this period, FEMA was the national level policyand planning group for the President and the NSC with respect to what we now callhomeland security. FEMA formulated and coordinated policy and plans, funded grant

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programs to get the states to do what we wanted them to do, and coordinated the actionsof the other Federal agencies through the EMPB. It was a good set up and it worked. Anational civil preparedness plan was approved, federal agency responsibilities wereassigned by executive order, and a series of training sessions and inter-agency exerciseswere used to rehearse what was to be done in the event of various kinds of attacks.In my view, the period from 1981 to 1985 was a high point in national preparedness.Thereafter, internal politics, personal peccadilloes of high officials, and anti-war protestsacted to diminish the civil preparedness program. In the second Reagan Administration,FEMA lost a lot of its clout and was stripped of it policy role. By the time that the ColdWar ended in 1989, the civil preparedness program was not well funded and not verywell organized. Emphasis under FEMA directors Becton and Stickney shifted frommobilization and civil preparedness to natural disaster responsewith the notableexception of the continuity of government program. The Federal Response Plan wasformulated, but this did not stress nuclear attack preparedness and the national securitypreparedness programs (including anti terrorism) were gradually weakened in favor ofemphasizing preparedness for natural disasters. This trend was heightened by theoccurrence of several greater than expected natural disasters that reveals weaknesses inthe FEMA response mechanism.After the Cold War ended in 1989, the Congress and some elements of the BushAdministration moved to do away with major elements of the civil preparednessprogram. The Civil Defense Act was revoked. The Defense Production Act was ignored.The entire apparatus of nuclear attack preparedness was dismantled, except for someelements, such as state and local emergency operations centers, which were retained foruse in responding to natural disasters. When James Lee Witt became director of FEMAfor the Clinton Administration, he did away with the remnants of the nationalpreparedness program directorate and focused the entire attention of FEMA on naturaldisasters. This redirection was supported by Congress. At the same time, the emergencypreparedness offices of the other federal agencies that had flourished earlier were allowedto decay.In the meantime, however, events in the mid-1990s provoked renewed interest in civilemergency preparedness against attacksincluding terrorism. This interest manifesteditself from three sourcescyber warfare, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism.In the 1990s, many people involved in information technology realized that the growingdependence on computers made the United States more vulnerable to attack by hackersand cyber-terrorists. They were particularly worried about the security of networkslinked by computers, most of which were involved in what they termed criticalinfrastructures. So the first impetus for critical infrastructure protection was from thecyber world, but these people soon realized that these networks could be disrupted notonly by hackers and viruses but also by a few terrorists using old-fashioned explosives.This led to a flurry of activity to protect critical infrastructures against the full range ofthreats that resulted in the formation of new group of agencies and groups. This wasgood, but the people involved knew nothing about what had gone on before and built a

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new civil preparedness structure that did not mesh well with the previous structure or thesystems in place at the sate and local level.Another group of people approached the problem from the standpoint of the so-calledweapons of mass destruction (WMD)nuclear, chemical, biological, and radiationweapons. These disparate lethal agents were initially bundled bureaucratically becausetheir use was to be deterred by a nuclear attack. In fact, they are quite different in theireffects and remedies. Strangely, in the enthusiasm to thwart WMD, the initial emphasiswas almost entirely and chemical and biological attacks. Later, the "radiation weapon"was allowed into the fold, and finally the people involved remembered that the greatestdamage would be done by radioactive fallout form a nuclear explosion. These peoplealso tended to ignore the fact that guns and explosives were the munitionsof choice byterrorists.The third group was energized by growing awareness that terrorism posed a grave threatto the United States. This group focused initiallyon state-sponsored terrorism. Then thefocus was People's Wars of National Liberation. Currently, emphasis is on transnationalradical Islamic terrorism. From the viewpoint of the victims, the motives of the terroristsare not very relevant, but the damage they do is the main thing. In their enthusiasm fortheir topic, the terrorism specialists tended to want to create a separate system just forterrorism.So in the critical decade of the 1990s, the United States was starting to revive theinstitutions it had done away with at the end of the Cold War. But there was no singleintegrating mechanism available to the Federal Government to do this properly. Onegroup focused on a particular set of targets, another group on a particular set ofmunitions, and a third group on a particular set of actors. Meanwhile, a fourth grouprepresenting the emergency managers who would have to clean up after any of theseemergencies sat on the sideline preoccupied solely with natural disastersof which therewere numerous in this decade. As a result, national programs to deal with the realities ofthe post-Cold War Era were fragmented and in some case competitive.The lack of a central focus for civil emergency preparedness was, I believe, the singlemost important cause of a general lack of preparedness prior to 911. The proximatecause of the lacuna was the abdication by FEMA of its statutory and regulatory role to bethe integrating mechanism for all kinds of emergencies.Take the matter or training the first responders. These are the local fire fighters, policeofficers, emergency medical technicians, and emergency management professionals whodeal with the consequences of emergencies of all sizes and scopes. As of a result ofFEMA's abdication of its responsibilities to prepare for and response to the full range ofpotential emergencies, the job of training first responders was assigned by default to theDepartment of Defense (DOD) and then the Department of Justice (DOJ). Neither ofthese two agencies was appropriate for this task. Lacking knowledge of emergencymanagement but full of self-confidence, the Department of Defense assumed the firstresponders were ignorant rubes who played checkers outside the firehouse. DOD's

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training efforts were ill advised and not well received by the emergency managementcommunity. When the task was assigned to the Department of Justice, things were betterbut tended to bias toward law enforcement. In the meantime, the excellent training andeducation system of FEMA ignored terrorism and continued to improve preparedness andresponse for natural disasters. Any decent task analysis shows that most of the things thathave to be done in the aftermath of an emergency are the same regardless of cause, butalso that certain types of emergencies require special (often technical) actions as well.The most effective and least costly approach to the training of first responders wouldhave been to expand their task list and mission essential tasks to accommodate the specialcharacteristics of terrorism and WMD. Instead, the new folks on the job tended to teachterrorism as a separate topic. First responder trailing has, however, been a boon to thecontractors who daily promote ever more special courses and methods. The reality is, ofcourse, that the emergency management community is already well trained and has at itsdisposal a highly effective system of local academies, two-year colleges, and now four-year colleges to teach what has to be learned for this subject. All that had to be done wasto add to these existing curricula the additional topic of terrorism, and the job would havebeen done. But FEMA did not see that this was done.Civil emergency preparedness is a lonely and boring business most of the time. It takesnarrow focus and great dedication to prepare for dealing with improbable events that onedoes not want to happen and often does not believe will happen. A few of us preparedfor a nuclear war that was unlikely, and it was difficult to keep our eyes on the missionall the time. Even people who prepare for terrorist attackswhich we all believe arelikelyhave to fight boredom and apathy among those it counts on to be ready. Mostpeople are disinclined to remain on edge for infrequent and unpopular events. Everyone,including even proponents of preparedness, has other things to do that are on tightdeadlines andprovide immediate gratification. Thus, it is unrealistic to expect that all oreven many people in large organizations will devote their efforts to civil emergencypreparedness, for their day-to-day work will drive out thoughts of something that mighthappen sometime in the future. It is possible, however, to have a small group of peoplededicated to civil emergency preparedness all of the time. These people can formulate thepolicies, prepare the plans, preside over budgets, and push the programs that will beactivated and expanded when the time comes to deal with the consequences of rate butdeadly events. They can advocate and integrate so that some degree of readiness to dealwith unlikely events exists.In the decade leading up to the 911 Attacks, there was no high-level anti-terrorismintegrating group of dedicated civil preparedness people in the Federal Government withenough influence to establish a viable program. A few lone voices warning of the dangerof terrorism could not overcome the complacency of the rest. It would have taken aperson with strong ties to the President, a small but dedicated staff, and an effective inter-agency coordination system to have been fully prepared for the 911 Attacks. We had nosuch capability then, and despite heroic efforts we have no such capability now.

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The Relationship of Warning and Response inHomeland SecurityJohn R. BrinkerhoffSenior Contributing Editor to the Journal of Homeland Security

December 2001

As acting associate director for national preparedness of the FederalIEmergency Management Agency (FEMA) from 1981 to 1983, Colonel John R.Brinkerhoff, US Army Retired, was responsible for policy formulation andprogram oversight of the Civil Defense Program, National MobilizationPreparedness Program, Continuity of Government, and the National DefenseStockpile. During that time the United States had a program to Defend America'against a massive nuclear attack as well as attacks by communist agents andspecial forces troops. Colonel Brinkerhoff was also deputy executive secretary of theEmergency Mobilization Preparedness Board (EMPB), the senior level inter-agency forum tocoordinate all aspects of national,preparedness. The EMPB was chaired by the NationalSecurity Advisor and consisted of the deputy secretaries of the departments and the heads ofseveral independent agencies. During the EMPB era, a national plan was prepared andapproved by President Reagan, and actions were taken to implement it.

Prior to joining FEMA, Colonel Brinkerhoff was a career senior executive in the Office of theSecretary of Defense. His last position before leaving OSD o joint FEMA was as acting deputyassistant secretary for reserve affairs. He was also director of manpower programming,director of intergovernmental affairs, and special assistant to the deputy assistant secretary ofdefense for reserve affairs. Before joining the civil service, Mr. Brinkerhoff was an Army officerfor 24 years. He retired in 1974 after 24 years of active commissioned service in a variety oftroop assignments in Korea, Germany, Vietnam, and the United States. While on active dutyhe served two tours on the Army Staff and two tours in OSD. For the past seven years he hasbeen an adjunct research staff member of the Institute for Defense Analyses working on avariety of issues including Homeland Defense.

The coordinated attacks of 11 September 2001 on the World Trade Center towers and thePentagon caught Americans by surprise. The terrorists had strategic surprise because the nationwas not expecting an attack, and they had tactical surprise because the timing, targets, andmethod of attack were unanticipated. Fortunately, we were not entirely unprepared, and localemergency management systems designed to respond to natural disasters, accidents, fires, andcrime responded promptly and well to the attacks. However, our efforts to prevent or defendagainst the 11 September attacks were either nonexistent or ineffective. Wewere too late becausewe ignored warning.Because of the nature of the attacks, the loss of life was limited to those killed by the directeffects of the attacks, and there was no expansion of the affected areas. The secondary effects ofthe attacks-economic recession, disruption of travel and tourism, and loss of innocence-have beenmore widespread than the direct effects. However, the operations of the critical infrastructurenetworks were not seriously disrupted. As bad as they were, the 11 September attacks are not theworst we can expect.

http://www.homelandsecurity.org^ournal/articles/BrinkerhoffJan02.htm 6/4/02