Administration ends largest counterterrorism exercise ever

The administration will spend four to six months analyzing the results of the largest counterterrorism exercise in the nation's history before releasing formal results, officials from the Homeland Security Department said Friday.

The TOPOFF 3 exercise, which ended Friday, tested the ability of participants from 27 federal agencies, state and local governments, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations and other countries to prevent and respond to simulated terrorist attacks.

A DHS official told Government Executive the exercise did not reveal "glaring weaknesses that put the country in immediate harm in the near future."

Final results and recommendations will take up to six months to process, other senior DHS officials told reporters Friday. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declined to discuss any preliminary findings.

The $16 million exercise took two years of planning and consisted of a simulated biological attack in New Jersey and a near simultaneous chemical attack in Connecticut, along with a mock subway bombing in London.

The exercise began in March as chatter about upcoming attacks began to filter into intelligence channels. Part of the exercise was aimed at determining whether intelligence and law enforcement agencies could disrupt some plots. On that front, agencies succeeded in preventing a couple of attacks.

Other attacks, however, were not preventable in order that the government could test response and recovery efforts. Those attacks and the ensuing responses were carried out over the last week.

The exercise was designed to push the nation's counterterrorism plans and systems to the limit.

"You stress the system to the point at which it comes to failure or actually exceeds failure," DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said in announcing the exercise earlier this week. "So we expect failure, because we're actually going to be seeking to push to failure, and that is, in our judgment, the best way to get a 'lessons learned' from what we do here over the next week, and what we've, in fact, done over the last few months."

The scare of a biological attack occurred, however, as TOPOFF 3 was being conducted when possible anthrax was discovered at Defense Department mail facilities. The incident turned out to be a false alarm, but the Pentagon since has been criticized for failing to respond in a timely manner and notify other agencies.

Leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Thursday asked the Government Accountability Office to review Defense's procedures for responding to a bioterror incident and to recommend any changes.

The DHS officials said they did not examine the anthrax scare as part of TOPOFF 3, or make adjustments to the exercise based on that scare.