"Prearing for the Last Attack," Part Whatever...

A number of times in the past, I have accused the bush administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the Transportation Security Administration, and/or FEMA of "preparing for the last attack," a phrase I swiped from security guru Bruce Schneier.

A recent blog post at the NY Times shows Schneier and I are not alone in this belief. Writing in Jet Lagged, commercial airline pilot Patrick Smith (who also writes Salon's "Ask the Pilot" column), makes the point that the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were successful not because the terrorists were able to smuggle weapons aboard commercial jets, but because the hijackers broke the existing paradigm of hijackings:

In years past, a takeover meant hostage negotiations and standoffs; crews were trained in the concept of “passive resistance.” All of that changed forever the instant American Airlines Flight 11 collided with the north tower. What weapons the 19 men possessed mattered little; the success of their plan relied fundamentally on the element of surprise. And in this respect, their scheme was all but guaranteed not to fail.

Smith continues:

For several reasons — particularly the awareness of passengers and crew — just the opposite is true today. Any hijacker would face a planeload of angry and frightened people ready to fight back. Say what you want of terrorists, they cannot afford to waste time and resources on schemes with a high probability of failure. And thus the September 11th template is all but useless to potential hijackers.

Yet it is this "template" to which DHS and TSA fanatically adhere.

Smith's piece -- which should be another must-read (Gawd, I'm finding a lot of those these days) -- is a thoughtful, detailed analysis of why our current airline security program is destined to fail.

Emergency Preparedness - A Review of the Literature

[Update, 12-01: fixed a couple of formatting errors. I'll have to make my way through Drak Wraith's "HTML for Bloggers" course...]

Note: This is Part One of a multi-part series examining the state of emergency preparedness in the United States, especially as it affects ordinary citizens.

I’ve been bitching a lot recently about DHS (Department of Homeland Security), its subordinate agencies and directorates, and the generally poor state of emergency preparedness. It occurred to me, however, that I might have been alone in those estimations, so I decided to undertake what the academics refer to as “a review of the current literature”, to see what other practitioners had to say.

First, in the current issue of The Internet Journal of Rescue and Disaster Medicine, Eric R. Taylor, Ph.D. (University of Louisiana at Lafayette) examines the two versions of FEMA’s much ballyhooed citizen’s disaster manual, Are You Ready? Both editions – the original, and an updated “In-Depth” version – claim to provide definitive information for citizens in the event of technological or natural disasters. [All emphasis added]

I will follow Taylor’s headings in this article, just in case the reader wants to verify quotes, etc.

From the abstract to Dr. Taylor’s article:

The FEMA document for terrorism preparedness intended for use by the public does not offer useful information the public can use to actively take steps in their own defense and protection against weapons agents that may confront them in an active terrorist attack. The public remains unprepared to act on their own behalf, and by the time official notice of an attack in determined and announced, many people may suffer injury or die for lack of realistic preparation.

This, despite FEMA’s exhortation:

“... don't wait until disaster strikes before you tell the people what to do. Your motto should be the same as the scouts. You want the people to BE PREPARED!”

Introduction

Dr. Taylor asserts that the American populace has been conditioned to that the government can “care for them, defend them, assist them in virtually any phase of social and natural disasters and assaults that come their way”. He adds, however, “It should be painfully clear now that government cannot do so” and that “the primary document advanced by FEMA does a poor job of educating the public on terrorism related preparedness.”

U.S. Terrorism Preparation

Taylor initially discusses the overall terrorism preparedness posture, making the following points:

• “It is the public that is now in need of useful, do-able information for preparing and responding to a terrorist attack, especially WMCD [1]”
• “What is needed is a single source of information written in a form and at a level of technical depth designed for the general public in a single source document from a single federal agency.”

Taylor further cites the testimony of government officials before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearings in February, 2005. Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) addressed al Qaeda’s capability to employ and deliver unconventional weapons, saying, “Because they are easier to employ, we believe terrorists are more likely to use biological agents such as ricin or botulinum toxin or toxic industrial chemicals to cause casualties and attack the psyche of the targeted populations.” This is particularly disturbing in light of the repercussions of several recent haz-mat (hazardous materials) incidents recently, such as the Apex fire or the Graniteville train derailment, both of which resulted in fatalities, wide-spread evacuations, release of toxic chemicals into the atmosphere, and significant property loss.

Porter Goss, Director of the CIA, said, “al Qaeda is intent on finding ways to circumvent U.S. security enhancements to strike Americans and the Homeland [sic].” As I have pointed out (along with many others), the “security enhancements” to which Goss refers are virtually non-existent. Rail yards full of toxic chemicals are left wide open and unguarded, less than six percent of the freight containers entering the county from overseas are inspected [2], the food chain is virtually defenseless, the public water supply ditto. The screw-ups at TSA can catch nail clippers and shampoo, but manage to miss bombs (fake, thank God) in carry-on luggage.

Nature of the Threat

Taylor posits, however, that “nothing offers a greater long-term hazard and threat on a more likely level of occurrence than bioterrorism….”, adding, “If the technical know-how, or the actual agent samples fall into the wrong hands (such as rogue states and/or through them, terrorists), our safety is seriously compromised by these “artificial” and virulent agents for which no human has any natural resistance and no medical practitioner has the means to fight.”

Unfortunately, we may ourselves be supplying the technical know-how to those who wish us harm. Thousands of international students – many from Muslim countries – study at American universities. Obviously, the vast majority of these students are simply interested in learning and bettering the world as a whole. But there is a small percentage – certainly less than 1% overall – who want to use our knowledge against us (witness Atta and his cohorts taking flight lessons in American flight schools). And don’t think that immigration and border control authorities are doing anything to stem the flow. I used to work for a university police department, and I can tell you from experience, visa control and enforcement is a joke. The federal agencies have neither the manpower nor the budget to effectively track the thousands of alien students, while the universities turn a blind eye in the interests of tuition income.

FEMA’s Public Terrorism Education

In reviewing the first edition of Are You Ready?, Taylor highlights many problems:

• The initial guide “was fraught with brevity that bordered on uselessness for the technological material, especially the terrorism and WMCD It also overlooked more commonly useful items for implementation of its recommendations for action, and in some cases offered potentially hazardous information if carried out by the public.”
• “A comparison of the two different versions reveals the overall inadequacies of the approach FEMA took, and retained in the latest version available to the public.”
• “The Shelter section advised making an emergency toilet if necessary. It suggested sprinkling a household disinfectant such as household bleach into the container to reduce odor and germs. As anyone who has read the label of a bleach bottle (or an ammonia bottle) knows, the warning is quite specific and emphatic: DO NOT MIX BLEACH with AMMONIA. Human urine contains ammonia and will generate more on standing. The bleach added to ammonia- generating materials can produce any one or all of several poisonous chemicals (chlorine, nitrogen trichloride, or hydrazine) depending upon the proportions and concentrations of bleach and urine-based ammonia, mixture temperature and standing time. The recommendation served to replace the obnoxious with the noxious. These poisonous by-products are potent respiratory irritants. This problem is increased by many people utilizing the same receptacle repeatedly over time in a presumably confined, unventilated space. The fumes can build up very quickly.”

The last emphasized portion deserves repeating:

The recommendation served to replace the obnoxious with the noxious.

Back to Taylor’s review of the first edition:

• “The same section of the initial guide also notes that water can be purified by distillation. The means suggested– placing a cup under an inverted lid within a pot of boiling water– seems clumsy, probably hazardous to perform, but certainly inefficient, not to mention energy and time consuming for very meager returns. The last thing those in an emergency situation need is a second or third degree burn from distilling water. Distilling enough water this way for a few people to serve their minimum daily needs is doubtful. If you lose electricity or natural gas through the incident, you can't distill anyway.”

The In-Depth August 2004 Guide

Moving on to the second, “in-depth” 2004 edition, Taylor notes: [Citations omitted]

• “The Chemical Threat section of the In-Depth Guide does not even mention the four types of lethal chemical weapons. It does not indicate the relative rapidity of action of one class to another. It does offer a string of signs or symptoms of lethal chemical weapons employment in a terrorist attack. But the string of symptoms are generic, could be in some cases those of allergic responses, and suggests by its manner of presentation that they may all become present. There is no elaboration of any kind to offer agent class specificity. This in what is called an In-Depth guide. And the same cite makes the statement, while potentially lethal, chemical agents are difficult to deliver in lethal concentrations. This is an unjustified generalization that is disarmingly misleading and false. Both the original Guide and the In-Depth Guide state that chemical agents are difficult to produce. This is patently false. Chemical agents were originally made and used in WWI and they were made and used specifically because they were made from exiting industrial chemical precursors, cheap to make and within handling safety considerations, easy to make and use.”
• “The section [on biological threats] refers the reader to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website (www.cdc.gov) for specific information. . . . . Much of the available information is primarily for professionals rather than lay people and may be rather technical for them. The problem with referring readers of the In-Depth guide (hardcopy) to a website is that many people may not have web access.”
• “[E]xposure to levels of chemical agent that may be sublethal to adults may well be lethal to children and pets as lethal dose is body weight dependent (LD50). This of necessity brings into play the need and concern for personal residences decontamination and especially surfaces outside that are frequented by all, especially children and pets. FEMA's In-Depth guide offers no advise on how to deal with this likely problem, much less how to undertake necessary hasty decontamination of residential exterior surfaces and what to use for doing so.”
• “The current FEMA In-Depth guide does avoid the technically overwhelming feature. It also avoids the completeness, the thoroughness, the robustness required of a document purported to be In-Depth….”
• “Many people bought “gas” […] masks as respiratory protection during the anthrax-mail attacks. […] The typical American has no idea of how to assess the appropriateness or serviceability of the mask or the filter elements.”

Perhaps Dr. Taylor’s most telling comment is this:

“After tens of billions of dollars spent on terrorism preparedness, with hundreds of expert chemists, biologists, physicists, and physicians on the government payroll, FEMA's In-Depth Guide is the best the federal government can offer the public? The public may face serious trouble ahead.”

In subsequent parts of this series, we’ll look at what others in the emergency response community have to say about the overall preparedness posture.

---

[1] Taylor prefers the term “weapons of mass casualty and destruction”, over the government’s preferred “WMD” or CBRNE, which stands for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and Explosive.

[2] Anderson, Teresa. “Cargo Security: Containing Cargo Risk” Security Management, Sept, 2005

Early Mornin' Bits 'n' Pieces

Heard a couple of interesting things on NPR this morning on the way in:

• In a story on a terrorism class being held at the Joint Special Operations University, an instructor referred to the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) as "Thousands Standing Around" and as the "Take your Shoes off Agency" (which was really reaching, but quite appropriate).

It's no great secret that I do not hold the TSA in high esteem. They, like the rest of TSA, are still preparing for the last attack, instead of thinking about the next. Certainly, anyone who has spent any time at a major airport since 9-11 can recall all those white-shirted losers standing around looking official (when they're not stealing from passengers, groping a pregnant woman's breasts, or missing [fake] bombs). Just Google "TSA screener arrested" and see what pops up: ten pages of stories. Ten PAGES.

• There was also a story on "faith-based investing", which is, to me, a terrifying concept. One "faith-based investor" said he's not homophobic, he just doesn't want to invest in companies supporting the "homosexual agenda".

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but the only people I've heard using the term "homosexual agenda" are the fundamentalist neocons... who tend to be homophobic to the hilt and/or closted gays: the Ted Haggards, the Mark Foleys, the Ken Mehlmans.

In his (her?) Kos diaries mentioned a few weeks ago, Dogemperor -- a walk-away from a dominionist church -- refers to a "dominionist glossary" (if I can find the link, I'll update this post); I believe "homosexual agenda" was listed as one of the "code phrases" understood by dominionists (and other mouth-breathin', Bible-thumpin', hooker-humpin', sister-marryin', rifle-rack-in-the-pickmup neocon wingnut idjits), and totally missed by others.

One of the local wingnuts here also said there was a "clear correlation between the homosexual agenda and the prevalence of birth control, partial-birth abortions, and sexual immorality".

• The lovely yet talented Mrs 618 was watching C-Span last week, and saw an interview with an author who wrote about "selective literalists" - those whackos who pick and choose certain parts of the Bible (usually from Leviticus) for "literal" interpretation, while completely ignoring passages that don't agree with their preconceived notions of right and wrong. More on this later.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled work day.

TSA Stikes (Out) Again

Part four… this is getting to be like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe*…

I’ve written – disparagingly – about the TSA in the past. The Transportation Security Administration was formed after the 9-11 terrorist attacks to centralize airline passenger screening under Federal auspices, instead of the then-current system of having each airline contract out its screening operations.

At first, I was in favor of the concept. Having been in the security profession for 25 years, I was well-aware of the realities of airline security. With the much-publicized financial woes of many of the airlines, it was inevitable that “loss-centers” like security would be shorted in favor of federally-mandated programs like maintenance or “profit centers” like maintaining flight frequencies. For most airlines, the purchasing department, not security experts, were in charge of selecting a security contractor to provide screening services. Since the purchasing people usually had little or no knowledge of security (other than having to wear their ID badges at work), it wasn’t surprising that most bids were awarded solely on the basis of cost. The problem is that security services should not be purchased on the basis of the lowest bid: you get what you pay for. If an airline receives bids from two security contractors, one at $15.00 per man-hour and the other at $20.00, the airline would usually go for the $15-an-hour company. Usually, one-half of the per-man-hour cost is the salary for the employee, while the other half is corporate overhead (recruiting, uniforms, background checks, benefits administration, etc.) and profit. This means the winning company pays its employees about $7.50 per hour, while the losing company pays $10.00. Do you think maybe you might get a higher-caliber person for $10 than you would for $7.50?

One of the biggest problems with the contract security industry is that in order to maintain “reasonable” profits, the companies have to minimize expenses… and the expenses that tend to be minimized are salaries for the line officers, training, equipment, and benefits (corporate bigwigs, of course, get excellent salaries and bennies). This, in turn, leads to high employee turn-over. Industry figures I’ve seen indicate a 400% annual turnover in rank-and-file staff. Yes, 400% annually… that means a completely new work force every three months. Of course, it’s not quite that bad – some people leave company A to work for company B, move onto C and so on, but this constant turn-over increases the employer’s costs, which results in even less money available for salaries for the troops. The artificially-low pay scales resulted in two types of employees: part-timers (whose main loyalty, obviously, was to their full-time job, which was usually not security-related) and those who could not get better jobs (like flipping burgers at McDonalds). Either way, the public suffered, even if they didn’t realize it.

Additionally, the lack of standardized training requirements – hell, the lack of any training requirements in many states – led to tremendously unqualified people performing critical functions. Often, screeners would have – at most – an hour or two of training, with just the most basic rudiments of what they were seeing on the screen. The screeners – because of their insufficient training – often could not distinguish between objects that pose a legitimate threat and those that don’t.

That’s why I was so hopeful about TSA in the early days. A Federal takeover of screening would have relieved the airlines of one significant expense (thereby hopefully allowing them to devote that money to maintenance), while at the same time providing screeners with a living wage (originally, the annual wage for entry-level screeners was to be about $40k), and allowing realistic system-wide training standards.

Of course, as is always the case with BushCo initiatives, the idea didn’t quite work out that way. First, the feds cut the pay scales back, almost to the pittance the private-sector screeners were making (about $17K, and try living on that!). Then, the feds removed many employment safeguards, like Civil Service protections, the right to engage in collective bargaining, and so on.

As a result, we have seen several hundred TSA screeners arrested and charged with stealing from airline passengers, both in the security screening lines, and from checked baggage. We’ve seen complaints of other illegal behaviors, including alcohol and drug use at work, harassment, racial profiling, and so on. We’ve seen arrogance coupled with incompetence, and stupidity coupled with authority.

Now, the GAO – Government Accountability Office – has compiled a classified report showing that federal investigators were able to carry bomb-making materials past screeners at 21 airports. Even when investigators deliberately triggered extra screening precautions, no one discovered the materials.

Recipes for homemade bombs are readily available on the Internet, and the ingredients are all available over the counter, so it’s not like this is some far-fetched scenario.

With the advent of hardened cockpit doors, and (admittedly) half-assed screening at check-in, experts say that explosives are now the biggest threat from terrorists targeting airliners.

But the screeners can’t spot the materials, even in extra-scrutiny situations. Yet these are the same people who can find a pair of toenail clippers in a woman’s carry-on suitcase.

Security expert Bruce Schneier, whom I’ve quoted before, points out that TSA and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, spend most of their time “preparing for the last attack”: after 9-11, all emphasis was on aircraft security; after the Madrid and London bombings, emphasis shifted to commuter transit.

For some bizarre reason, TSA and DHS seem to be unable to think outside the box; they’ve expressed little interest in securing segments of the critical infrastructure that have not yet been attacked, but that have obvious and well-publicized security short-comings, like chemical and power plants. Nor has there been a concerted effort to prepare for a possible (or, some say, inevitable) bird flu outbreak, other than the Department of Health and Human Services advising Americans to stockpile canned tuna and powdered milk (the “duct tape and plastic sheeting” school of emergency preparedness). And of course we all know how well another DHS component, FEMA, fared in responding to Hurricane Katrina.

Part of the problem with DHS is the tendency to concentrate on the “sexier” parts of their mandate, like terrorism, and neglect the more mundane aspects like disaster preparedness. It is this misplaced emphasis that eliminated FEMA as a separate Cabinet-level agency, that gutted the training and preparedness activities, and directly resulted in such fiascos as Katrina.

The same misplaced emphasis has resulted in allegedly professional screeners who needlessly risk our lives and who can’t successfully perform their job functions.

___

* For those who aren't familiar with the series, it is a five-volume comedic/science fiction trilogy by the late Douglas Adams.

More on NOLA, Part II

Maureen Dowd's op-ed piece in Saturday's Times is well worth reading, as is Frank Rich's piece today.

There's also an article on how Katrina has affected the NO Police Dept: at least two officers (one an aid to the Superintendent) have committed suicide; others have abandoned their posts and fled. As a former cop, I can't tell you how distressing that piece of information was. To me, it shows that the police in NO have accepted these "facts":

• They're on their own, and nobody's going to help them
• The system they have sworn to uphold and defend has abandoned them
• It was time to put their own safety and the safety of their loved ones ahead of the system that has betrayed them
  

Now, no one goes into law enforcement for the money... all in all, cops get paid about 10% of their true worth to society (same with firefighters and EMS personnel). Nor do people enter these fields for the snazzy uniforms (generally polyester, which is hot in the summer, cold in the winter and always, but always, looks crappy). No, people go into emergency services because they want to "try to make a difference", they want to make society safer, better, more productive. Try to imagine what these cops must have experienced for them to decide to flee.

The cops in NYC on 9-11 (and also the FDNY and EMS, the Port Authority staff, and hundreds or thousands of others) stood their ground, doing what they had sworn to do. How many died in that effort? 343 firefighters, and hundreds of law enforcement officers (local, state and Federal).

Why didn't they flee?

Easy. They knew help was on the way. Thousands of volunteers -- many trained, most not -- were already heading for New York, even before the towers fell. The next day, there was a measurable Federal presence (aside from Twig with his bullhorn).

In New Orleans, though, it was different. They were left on their own for five days, days in which Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin were begging for help. Five days in which people were dying, the city was dying... and no one came.

The disaster in NYC covered a few square blocks; in New Orleans, the entire city was under water. NYC was able to call for assistance from New Jersey, Connecticut, and the rest of the Northeast. New Orleans couldn't: the entire deep South had been clobbered (after all, New Orleans is 'the big story' but there are also Biloxi, Gulfport and countless smaller communities). The Twin Towers tragedy affected the whole world, that's true, but -- for the most part -- the emergency workers knew their loved ones were safe somewhere else. The cops and firefighters and EMS workers in New Orleans knew their loved ones were trapped, or missing... or dead.

And they knew no one cared.

Sure, the locals pitched in and helped the best they could. Even the communities virtually destroyed by Katrina tried to help each other. But where were the Feds?

FEMA was gutted under Bush's insane privatization policies, their training and mitigation mandates transferred to other parts of DHS or to the private sector. Millions of dollars in levee improvements were dropped, in favor of paying for Bush's war of choice in Iraq. A third of the National Guard troops from the affected areas -- troops that would have been available for search and rescue, security, fire fighting -- and half their equipment was halfway around the globe, defending Halliburton's right to make obscene profits.

DHS itself was concentrating exclusively on terrorism, to the exclusion of all other disasters in their purview. As security expert Bruce Schneier put it (several times), they were 'preparing for the last attack'. FEMA's own experts considered a breach of the levees to be one of the three most likely disasters facing the US... and the most costly, in terms of lives and dollars.

The Feds don't care.

Evacuation from New Orleans was tough, granted. How in hell do you move 450,000 people quickly and safely? But for the Feds to say, "we're sending 500 buses"?!? Mayor Nagin was right when he said the Feds should nationalize Greyhound and send their entire fleet. And there's a report that refugees from the Hyatt in New Orleans were moved to the head of the evacuation line at one point; yeah, I can understand the comments that 'rich whites are more important than poor blacks'. And I can understand -- and sympathize with -- rapper Kanye West's statement (on the NBC concert) that Bush "doesn't care about black people".

And where does DHS Secretary Chertoff get off claiming he "didn't know" there were 20,000 evacuees in the Superdome and 25,00 at the Convention Center? For Christ's sake, it's his job to know.

The Feds don't care.

Denny Hastert says we should bulldoze New Orleans instead of rebuilding they city.

Bush turns the worst disaster in American history into a comedy sketch: "I can't wait to sit on Trent Lott's porch".

The Feds don't care.