Drills test agencies’ ability to handle terrorist attack

Teams of intelligence and disaster response officials collaborated this week for drills simulating the discovery of, and detonation of, weapons of mass destruction on American soil.

The drills were part of a three-day exercise known as the TOPOFF 4 Command Post Exercise, which was designed to push federal, state and local authorities to their breaking point. One drill made a wide variety of federal agencies pool their resources in a Northern Virginia hotel conference center for days, as they might have to do in the event of an actual terrorist threat. An FBI employee who helped conduct the exercises said they were "designed to cause some failure."

"What you don't want is to have everything go right," said John Miller, the FBI's assistant director of public affairs.

A combination of 4,000 federal, state and local officials from 85 organizations took part in the drills, jointly led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and FBI. Participating agencies included the CIA, Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration, the Homeland Security Department's Domestic Nuclear Detection Office and the State Department.

One drill simulated the discovery of a weapon of mass destruction in Washington, D.C. Another simulated the actual detonation such a weapon in the fictitious town of Landport, Ore., which had an infrastructure similar to that of Portland.

"Folks from Oregon came out and really helped us put on a detailed response," said Bill McNally, the exercise director at DHS' preparedness directorate.

Private sector officials were also called in, McNally said, because much of the infrastructure that would be affected by a massive terrorist attack is private property.

George Foresman, DHS' undersecretary for preparedness, said that he expects soon to be implementing changes based on after-action reports from the exercise. This year's drill, Foresman said, was conducted with the goal of including more regional offices' input.

"We are taking all those lessons learned and making sure they are not simply lessons documented," he said.

Next year, McNally said, "full-scale" exercises will be conducted in Arizona, Guam and Oregon. He said drills are being conducted in part with the aid of lessons learned from prior TOPOFF exercises, as well as from Hurricane Katrina. However, all three drills in this week's exercise involved terrorist attacks as opposed to weather-related disasters.

After test runs, agencies are called upon to offer input and suggestions. McNally said he does not expect every drill to be executed smoothly.

"Failure in an exercise is not a bad thing," he said. "I'd rather sweat in peace than bleed in combat."