The Problems of Preparedness:
Challenges Facing the U.S. Domestic Preparedness Program
Richard A. Falkenrath
ESDP-2000-05
BCSIA-2000-28 December 2000
CITATION AND REPRODUCTION
This document appears as Discussion Paper 2000-28 of the Belfer Center for Science and International
Affairs and as contribution ESDP-2000-05 of the Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness, a joint
project of the Belfer Center and the Taubman Center for State and Local Government. Comments are
welcome and may be directed to the author in care of the Executive Session on Domestic Session.
This paper may be cited as Richard A. Falkenrath. "The Problems of Preparedness: Challenges Facing
the U.S. Domestic Preparedness Program." BCSIA Discussion Paper 2000-28, ESDP Discussion Paper
ESDP-2000-05, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, December 2000.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard A. Falkenrath is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University. He completed a three-year term as Executive Director of the Kennedy School's
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (BCSIA) in 1998. He is co-director of the Executive
Session on Domestic Preparedness, a DOJ-funded joint project of BCSIA and the Kennedy School
Taubman Center for State and Local Government. He is the author or co-author of Shaping Europe's
Military Order: The Origins and Consequences of the CFE Treaty (1995), Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy:
Containing the Threat of Loose Russian Nuclear Weapons and Fissile Material (1996), America's
Achilles' Heel: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Terrorism and Covert Attack (1998), and numerous
journal articles and chapters of edited volumes. Dr. Falkenrath has been a visiting research fellow at the
German Society of Foreign Affairs (DGAP) in Bonn, as well as a consultant to the U.S. Department of
Defense, the intelligence community, several Congressional offices, the RAND Corporation, and a range
of private companies in the defense sector. He is a member of the Nonproliferation Advisory Panel
(Central Intelligence Agency), International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Council on Foreign
Relations, the American Council on Germany, and the American Economic Association. He holds a Ph.D.
from the Department of War Studies, King's College, London, where he was a British Marshall Scholar,
and is a summa cum laude graduate of Occidental College, Los Angeles, with degrees in economics and
international relations.
The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Belfer
Center for Science and International Affairs, Taubman Center for State and Local Government, Executive
Session on Domestic Preparedness, or Harvard University. Reproduction of this paper is not permitted
without permission of the Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness. To order copies of the paper or
to request permission for reproduction, please contact Rebecca Storo, John F. Kennedy School of
Government, Harvard University, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, phone (617) 495-
1410, fax (617) 496-7024, or email esdp@ksg.harvard.edu.
The Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness is supported by Grant No. 1999-MU-CX-0008 awarded
by the Office for State and Local Domestic Preparedness Support, Office of Justice Programs, U.S.
Department of Justice. The Assistant Attorney General, Office of Justice Programs, coordinates the
activities of the following program offices and bureaus: the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Bureau of
Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention, and the Office for Victims of Crime. Points of view or opinions in this document are those of
the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of
Justice.
The U.S. government is now actively engaged in preparing the nation for highly destructive acts of
terrorism, especially those involving chemical and biological weapons. This effort involves multiple
federal agencies and a wide variety of programs. Collectively known as the "U.S. domestic preparedness
program," these programs are a very recent innovation in American governance. The budget of federal
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) preparedness programs has grown from effectively zero in 1995 to
approximately $1.5 billion in fiscal year 2000.1 This made the U.S. domestic preparedness program one
of the fastest growing federal programs of the late 1990s.
The U.S. domestic preparedness program goes well beyond the modest goal of improving the physical
security of particularly vulnerable or high-value targets that has always been a part of the traditional
counterterrorism formula. Instead, the U.S. domestic preparedness program is motivated by the ambitious
goal of broadly reducing the vulnerability of American society to large, destructive acts of terrorism by
improving a wide range of operational response capabilities across the country, at all levels of
government.2 This effort bears a superficial resemblance to the U.S. civil defense program of the 1950s-
1960s, but is in fact unprecedented in scale and complexity. Because no other nation has embarked on a
comparable terrorism preparedness program, the American experience is unique and instructive.3
Although the U.S. domestic preparedness program is in its early stages, the great difficulty of designing
and implementing the program has already become apparent. The purpose of this paper is to sketch the
general contours and rationale of the U.S. domestic preparedness program, and to identify the most
significant problems of domestic preparedness.4 The first section discusses the program's origins and
evolution. While the basic motivation of the domestic preparedness program has been the perception of a
rising threat, the specifics of the program have been determined not by any guiding strategic concept but
by discrete, uncoordinated legislative appropriations and administrative initiatives. The second section
elaborates on the basic rationale behind the domestic preparedness program, explaining how these highly
1. Although there is some disagreement over exactly what constitutes a "weapon of mass destruction," all definitions
including nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.
2 . For a comprehensive survey of federal domestic preparedness programs, see Gregory Koblentz, "Overview of
Federal Programs to Enhance State and Local Preparedness for Terrorism with Weapons of Mass Destruction,"
Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness Discussion Paper, forthcoming.
3. See Ariel Merari, "Israel's Preparedness for High-Consequence Terrorism," BCSIA Discussion Paper 2000-30,
ESDP Discussion Paper ESDP-2000-02, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, October
2000, and General Accounting Office, Combating Terrorism: How Five Foreign Countries Are Organized to
Combat Terrorism, GAO/NSIAD-00-85, April 2000.
4 The author would like to thank Geoff Chapin, David Grannis, Gregory Koblentz, and Robyn Pangi for their
comments and assistance.
Richard A. Falkenrath
specific domestic policy innovations relate to the national security objective of reducing the threat of
WMD terrorism to America. The third section describes the major policy and management challenges
facing the program.
PROGRAM EVOLUTION
The U.S. domestic preparedness program began after a series of unusually destructive terrorist incidents
in 1993-95 caught the attention of many national security leaders and experts.5 The March 1995 nerve
gas attack in the Tokyo subway was particularly significant, since it demonstrated that terrorist use of
exotic weapons of mass destruction was no longer purely a theoretical possibility. This watershed event
triggered a wide range of analytical and policy activities. Several think tanks began studying this "new"
threat. A handful of leaders in the Congress and their staffs began to look into the issue. Executive
branch agencies quietly began to examine their own capacities to deal with a Tokyo-like incident. A few
leaders of local "first responder" agencies (mainly in New York City and the Washington, D.C., area)
began to argue for improved equipment and training, since many unprepared response personnel were
seriously injured as they tried to help the victims in Tokyo.6 And the media began to run stories on the
issue, many of which were uncritical, sensational, or poorly informed.
The Congress moved more quickly than the executive branch in transforming the rising concern over
WMD terrorism into a practical policy initiative. In June 1995, the White House laid out the basic
contours of federal counterterrorism policy in Presidential Decision Directive 39 (PDD-39), but in
practice this document did little more than clarify certain bureaucratic areas of responsibility.7 PDD-39
called for heightened federal agency efforts in counterterrorism and preparedness, but directed agencies to
fund these programs out of existing budgets and did little to strengthen coordination across these
agencies. At around the same time, and in direct response to the Tokyo nerve gas attack, the U.S. Marine
5. For a somewhat more detailed discussion of the perceptual and conceptual origins of the U.S. domestic
preparedness program, see Richard A. Falkenrath, "Analytic Models and Policy Prescription: Understanding Recent
Innovation in U.S. Counterterrorism," BCSIA Discussion Paper 2000-31, ESDP Discussion Paper ESDP-2000-03,
John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, October 2000.
6. The first of these domestic response teams was the Metropolitan Medical Strike Team (now incorporated in the
Metropolitan Medical Response System) in the Washington metropolitan area, established by the HHS Office of
Emergency Preparedness in July 1995. Additional programs were established in Atlanta, followed by 70 other U.S.
metropolitan areas. See "NDMS/OEP Home Page" at http://ndms.dhhs.gov/.
7. An unclassified summary of PDD-39 is available at http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd39.htm.
2
The Problems of Preparedness
Corps created a new Chemical and Biological Incident Response Force (CBIRF), which consolidated the
bulk of the Corps' existing chemical and biological defense capabilities into a single, deployable unit.8
More significant than PDD-39 or the Marine Corps' new unit was the Defense Against Weapons of Mass
Destruction Act of 1996, better known as the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici amendment, which Congress passed
in September 1996.9 This legislation was the result of a series of hearings held by Senators Sam Nunn
(D-Georgia), Richard Lugar (R-Indiana), and Pete Domenici (R-New Mexico) between late 1995 and
early 1996.10 These hearings highlighted the vulnerability of the United States to various forms of
terrorism as well as the poor state of preparation and coordination in U.S. capabilities for responding to
domestic chemical weapons incidents. The resulting legislation directed that the "Secretary of Defense
shall carry out a program to provide civilian personnel of federal, state, and local agencies with training
and expert advice regarding emergency responses to a use or threatened use of a weapon of mass
destruction or related materials,"11 and made available approximately $100 million in fiscal 1997 for this
purpose.
The current $1-plus billion domestic preparedness program emerged from these modest beginnings. Its
growth has been disorderly. While the underlying motive behind the various parts of the domestic
preparedness program was and remains a shared perception of a rising threat, the specifics of the
program's development have been dominated by the fragmented politics of federal budget process. The
program that took shape was the result of a series of uncoordinated legislative earmarks, which permitted
a succession of relatively minor programmatic initiatives in individual federal agencies. Once established,
these programs became the objects of uneasy collaborations between individual legislators and executive
branch agencies, which allowed the programs to grow to their present proportions. It was, in other words,
a "bottom-up" rather than "top-down" process, with no guiding strategy, concept, or program
architecture. To see this, it is useful to briefly review the history of several different components of the
domestic preparedness program, beginning with the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici program.
8.
More information on CBIRF can be found at "Chemical/Biological Incident Response Force," at
http://www.maxwell.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/CBIRF/cbirf.htm.
9 . The Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction Act was part of the Fiscal Year 1997 Defense Authorization
Act signed on September 23, 1996 (Public Law 104-201).
10. Senate Committee on Governmental Reform, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Global Proliferation of
Weapons of Mass Destruction (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1996).
11. Approximately half of the money was provided to the Department of Defense ($52 million) to conduct training of
state and local first responders while the remainder of the funding was earmarked for the Department of Health and
Human Services ($6.5 million), Department of Justice ($17 million), Federal Emergency Management Agency ($15
million), and Customs ($9 million). See Section 1412 (A) (1), Public Law 104-201.
3
Richard A. Falkenrath
The executive branch did not request that a domestic preparedness program be established in the
Department of Defense. Indeed, the Pentagon and especially the uniformed military did not wish to
assume responsibility for domestic WMD preparedness or response, which is a distraction from the core
mission of war-fighting. The reason the program went to the Defense Department was budgetary politics:
the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici legislation was an amendment to the FY97 defense authorization bill.
Moreover, there was substantial uncommitted funding in the fiscal 1997 defense budget and thus room
for a new small program because the Congress had decided to add on close to $20 billion to the Clinton
administration's defense budget request in 1996.12 Moreover, the Senators had greater confidence in the
Defense Department's ability to implement a novel program of this kind than the civilian agencies, which
lacked the military's substantial resources in chemical and biological defense.
Because of the Pentagon's ambivalence, the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici legislation contained a provision
allowing the President to transfer it to another federal agency in two years. It was assumed in 1996-97
that this agency would be the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This was because the
Nunn-Lugar-Domenici program was essentially preparing local response personnel to manage the
consequences of a chemical weapons terrorist incident, and FEMA was (according to PDD-39) the lead
federal agency for "consequence management." FEMA elected not to take over the program, however,
and again the reason was essentially budgetary politics. FEMA has a much leaner budget than the
Department of Defense ($3.4 billion versus $268 billion in FY2000), with even less discretionary
authority.13 Since the congressional committees that authorize and appropriate FEMA's budget are not
the same as those which created the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici program, the agency feared that if it were to
assume responsibility for the program (an executive branch decision), it would not receive the budgetary
resources needed to implement it (a legislative decision). The result would be a severe drain on FEMA's
limited discretionary resources and, in all likelihood, public criticism for ineffective implementation of an
initiative regarded as important by many national security leaders and commentators. Consequently, and
despite its lead role in coordinating federal consequence management activities, FEMA plays a minor role
in building preparedness across the country.
12 . For the Department of Defense's Fiscal Year 1997 budget request and the budget enacted by Congress, see
http://www.clw.org/milbud.html.
13 . The FEMA budget figure is a request; see "FEMA Asks Congress For $3.4 Billion 2000 Budget," at
http://www.fema.gov/nwz99/99020.htm. The DoD budget is enacted; see Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments, http://www.csbaonline.org/3Defense_Budget/Defense_Budget.htm.
4
The Problems of Preparedness
The final institutional location of the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici program was thus unclear for much of 1997-
98. In 1999, the administration decided to transfer the program to the Department of Justice, effective
October 1, 2000.14 The Department of Justice had in fact long been central to the federal counterterrorism
effort, and PDD-39 confirmed this role by designating DOJ (and within the Department, the FBI) as the
lead federal agency for "crisis management" of terrorist incidents. Unlike the Department of Defense,
however, the Department of Justice and the FBI did not possess extensive specialized resources needed to
conduct or prepare for an effective operational response to an incident of chemical or biological terrorism.
The institutional foci of the FBI and DOJ are to investigate crimes and prosecute crimes, respectively, and
these tasks are entirely different from consequence management. Yet DOJ did possess clear presidential
direction to take a lead role in federal domestic counterterrorism effort, as well as an established
apparatus for providing technical and financial assistance to state and local law enforcement and criminal
justice agencies -- the Office of Justice Programs' Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), with a fiscal 1999
budget of $3.9 billion.
Initially, the Department of Justice and the FBI were only tangentially involved in the Nunn-Lugar-
Domenici project of providing specialized training and equipment to state and local response agencies.
Beginning with the April 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, however, the Department
of Justice began to receive a series of discrete congressional earmarks for specific counterterrorism
projects.15 In fiscal year 1997, the National Institute of Justice received a congressional earmark of $10
million to develop new counterterrorism technologies, while the Bureau of Justice Assistance began a
small training program to equip firefighters and other emergency services personnel in 120 targeted urban
jurisdictions with skills for handling mass disasters.16 The budget of the BJA counterterrorism program
expanded further in fiscal year 1998, when Congress earmarked $17 million for a "Special Equipment and
Training Grant Program" and another $4 for the operation of four major institutions, including Fort
McClellan, a military chemical defense facility that the Pentagon had planned to shut down. To
14. Office of the White House Press Secretary, Memorandum on Emergency Response Assistance Program, "Subject:
Designation of the Attorney General as the Lead Official for the Emergency Response Assistance Program Under
Sections 1412 and 1415 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997 (Public Law 104-201),"
April 6, 2000, http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/4/7/7.text.2.
15. Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, April 24, 1996, Public Law 104-132.
16. Department of Justice, OJP Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1997 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office,
1998), p. 19. The BJA program was called the "Metropolitan Firefighter and Emergency Services National Training
Program for First Responders to Terrorist Incidents." The federal government also provides training for firefighters
and emergency managers through the National Fire Academy and the Emergency Management Institute,
respectively, but these entities are subordinate to FEMA and thus funded by different authorizing and appropriating
subcommittees.
5
Richard A. Falkenrath
accommodate the growing domestic preparedness role of DOJ, a new OJP Office for State and Local
Domestic Preparedness Support was established for the purpose of implementing this program. The
mission of this office was effectively identical to that of the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici program. The FBI's
counterterrorism budget also increased rapidly in the late 1990s.17 In the case of the FBI, however, the
additional funding was directed mainly toward augmenting the internal capabilities of the Bureau.18 The
FBI increased the number of agents assigned to counterterrorism investigations and support functions,
invested in new specialized capabilities such as the Hazardous Materials Response Unit (established in
1996), enhanced analytical capabilities for nuclear, biological, and chemical materials at the FBI
laboratory, and provided specialized WMD training for select FBI special agents. In October 1998, the
Attorney General announced the creation of a new National Domestic Preparedness Office (NDPO)
within the FBI. The office was to be the single point of contact for state and local agencies seeking
federal preparedness assistance.19 The NDPO, lacking both funding from Congress and bureaucratic
clout, has not accomplished this objective.
Like the FBI, the Department of Defense has also invested in developing its own capabilities for
supporting domestic WMD response operations.20 In late 1996, the Secretary of Defense asked the
Defense Science Board to examine the Defense Department's proper role in national efforts to deal with
"transnational threats," including WMD terrorism. The resulting DSB study recommended (inter alia) an
expanded role of the National Guard in this area.21 In March 1998, Secretary of Defense William Cohen
announced the creation of ten special National Guard teams for WMD support; by 2000, the planned
number of such teams had risen to 27.22 The Defense Department has also augmented the Pentagon office
that coordinates military assistance to civilian authorities, and in 1999, established a new command
structure for active duty military units that might deploy in domestic WMD response operations.23
17. The FBI's counterterrorism budget has increased from $256 million in 1995 to $581 million in 1998. General
Accounting Office, Combating Terrorism: FBI's Use of Federal Funds for Counterterrorism-Related Activities (FYs
1995-98), GAO-GGD-99-7, November 1998, p. 2.
18. An exception is the State and Local Bomb Technician Equipment Program at the FBI's Hazardous Devices
School at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama.
19. The decision to create the NDPO was a response to complaints voiced at an August 1998 meeting of federal, state,
and local "stakeholders" in domestic preparedness.
20. The Department of Defense stresses that it will only "support" domestic WMD response operations, and only
when requested to do so by the proper civilian authorities.
21. Defense Science Board, DoD Responses to Transnational Threats (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office,
1997).
22. The teams were initially called RAID teams for "Rapid Assessment and Initial Detection." They were
subsequently renamed Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Teams. Each team consists of 22 soldiers with
special training and equipment. See National Guard Bureau, Enhancing the National Guard's Readiness to Support
6
The Problems of Preparedness
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) involved itself in domestic preparedness activities
even before the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici legislation, but until 1999, lacked the budgetary resources to play
a significant role. In 1995, immediately after the Tokyo subway attack, the Office of Emergency
Preparedness a small office within HHS responsible for coordinating federal medical services in major
disasters began working with the emergency service providers in the metropolitan Washington, D.C.,
area to devise a plan for improving their collective capability for responding to a Tokyo-like incident in
the capital region. The result was the Metropolitan Medical Response System (MMRS) program, which
supported municipal efforts to prepare emergency medical providers for the consequences of a chemical
weapons incident. The MMRS program was a very small program: between 1995 and 1998, the MMRS
program provided 27 cities with grants of $350,000 each. HHS was unable to expand significantly the
MMRS program because of competing traditional demands on the already tight HHS budget, and because
the Department's authorizing and appropriating committees did not allocate funds for the program, as did
the committees for Justice and Defense.
The initial set of federal domestic preparedness programs has been widely criticized for duplication, poor
coordination, and incoherence. Numerous officials, government-chartered commissions, and individual
experts have called for improved coordination at the federal level, and have offered a variety of different
plans. The problem is only partially remediable by the executive branch, however, because most of the
specific components of the domestic preparedness program are controlled by specific legislation, which
the individual agencies are obliged to implement as directed and with the funds provided in each year's
appropriation.24
Emergency Responders in Domestic Chemical and Biological Terrorism Defense, Report to Congress, July 20, 1999
and Prepared Statement of Charles Cragin, Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, Before the
House Committee on Government Reform, National Security, Veterans Affairs, and International Relations
Subcommittee, Hearing on Combating Terrorism: The National Guard Rapid Assessment and Initial Detection
(RAID) Teams, June 23, 1999.
23. The Pentagon office is the Consequence Management Program Integration Office (COMPIO), which is
subordinate to the Director of Military Support (DOMS). The new command structure is the Joint Task Force
Civilian Support (JTF-CS), which is a subordinate command of Joint Forces Command, based in Norfolk, Virginia.
For a more complete review of Defense Department programs in the domestic preparedness area, see Koblentz,
"Overview of Federal Programs to Enhance State and Local Preparedness for Terrorism with Weapons of Mass
Destruction."
24. This problem was also noted in the July 1999 Report of the Commission to Assess the Organization of the Federal
Government to Combat the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction. "Congressional-executive interaction is
complicated by the number of congressional committees that now have oversight and budgetary authority over
proliferation-related programs. Oversight from at least twenty committees heightens the need for coherent,
continuous consultation between the branches." (p. 7)
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Richard A. Falkenrath
In May 1998, in part with these coordination problems in mind, the White House issued PDD-62, entitled
"Protection Against Unconventional Threats to the Homeland and Americans Overseas."25 This
document went beyond its predecessor, PDD-39, by upgrading and enlarging the NSC office responsible
for coordinating federal counterterrorism, domestic preparedness, and critical infrastructure protection
programs.26 Although this office had no formal authority over the budgets or programs of any federal
agency, increased attention and activism by the White House appeared to have produced some
improvement.27 The most important advance had to do with the federal government's efforts to prepare
for terrorism involving biological weapons, which had languished until the White House became seized
with the issue in mid-1998.28
Despite some misleading advertising, the major domestic preparedness programs initiated between 1995
and 1998 were basically directed against the threat of chemical weapons attacks and did not highlight the
unique threats posed by a biological weapons attack. Their emphasis was on providing specialized
training, protective clothing, medicine and other equipment to the response personnel mainly
firefighters, police, and emergency medical technicians who would be called up to secure the "scene"
and rapidly extract, decontaminate, and treat the victims. There were several reasons for this. There was
a tendency to assume that the next WMD terrorist incident would resemble the chemical weapon attack in
Tokyo subway. It is also relatively easy to imagine how the emergency services should respond to
chemical weapons incidents, which have certain similarities to relatively common bombings and
hazardous materials accidents. An operational response to a chemical weapons attack would fit into the
25 An unclassified summary of PDD-62 is available at http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd-62.htm.
26. This office is directed by Richard Clarke, who has been given the new title of "National Coordinator for Security,
Infrastructure Protection and Counter-Terrorism."
27. Furthermore, as a member of the White House staff, the National Coordinator is not accountable to Congress.
This is produced some frustration on Capital Hill, since no one official is unambiguously "in charge" of the
government's domestic preparedness or counterterrorism programs. In the late 1990s, Congress tended to define the
Attorney General as the leading official responsible for the federal government's programs in this area. In 1998, for
instance, Congress required that the Attorney General prepare a "Five-Year Interagency Counter-Terrorism and
Technology Crime Plan," which was submitted to Congress in December 1998. The value of this report is not
obvious, however, because the Department of Justice does not determine or even influence the budgets of other
agencies, and because the Attorney General's plan does appear to be the same as the White House's plan. See Senate
Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and State, The Judiciary, and Related
Agencies, Counterterrorism and Infrastructure Protection (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1999),
pp. 29-31.
28. President Clinton was reportedly motivated, at least in part, by the novel Cobra Event by Richard Preston, which
described a bioterrorism incident in New York City. See Judith Miller and William Broad, "Exercise Finds U.S.
Unable to Handle Germ War Threat," New York Times, April 26, 1998, p. A1. This new initiative was announced
during a speech by President Clinton at the United States Naval Academy Commencement on May 22, 1998.
Available at http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/1998/5/26/18.text.1.
8
The Problems of Preparedness
familiar "lights and sirens" model, with the differences having mainly to do with the greater scale and
toxicity of a chemical weapons incident. Finally, the highly motivated professional leaders of the "first
responder" community were influential in the early design of the federal domestic preparedness programs,
especially the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici program and the assistance programs created by Congress in the
Department of Justice.29
A biological weapons attack would bear little, if any, resemblance to a chemical weapons attack, and
would require an entirely different type of operational response. The key response capabilities in a
biological attack will be the medical care providers, who will be needed on a massive scale to treat
infected populations, and the public-health sector, which may provide the first indication of an attack
through its monitoring of death and illness patterns. Moreover, an act of biological terrorism would have
no necessary temporal or spatial boundaries: the delayed onset of symptoms coupled with the mobility of
citizens means that there will be no obvious "scene" of the attack, and the medical consequences of the
attack may continue for an extended period of time. The nature of biological weapons attacks is not
widely understood, however, because there is almost no historical experience with these weapons. There
is, in other words, no biological analogue to Tokyo.30
Thus, the U.S. domestic preparedness program was not seriously engaged in improving the capabilities
most needed for a biological terrorism response because of a lack of understanding, budgetary politics,
and divided priorities within the executive branch.31 This changed in mid-1998, when White House
intervention proved decisive. Since then, there has been dramatic growth in the budget of the HHS
29. Senate Committee on Governmental Reform, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Global Proliferation of
Weapons of Mass Destruction (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1996).
30. The only modern experience with a large-scale aerosolization of a biological weapon was in 1979 when an
accident at a military facility released anthrax over the city of Sverdlovsk, Russia. See Matthew Meselson, et al.,
"The Sverdlovsk Anthrax Outbreak of 1979," in Joshua Lederberg, ed., Biological Weapons: Limiting the Threat
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), pp. 193-209.
31. The Department of Health and Human Services did not initially attach high priority to preparing for biological
terrorism. The reason is that the United States and, indeed, the world faces many pressing health problems,
virtually all of which are everyday realities rather than worrisome hypothetical scenarios. These prevailing health
problems place great demand on the HHS budget, which is considerably leaner than the budgets of many national
security agencies. In addition, the Congressional committees that determine the HHS budget did not take the
initiative in defining biological weapons preparedness as a national security mission, and hence the responsibility of
other committees. However, once the Clinton administration embraced the threat of biological terrorism and sought
substantial HHS funding for preparedness activities in late 1998, the HHS authorizing and appropriating committees
were willing to meet these requests.
9
Richard A. Falkenrath
biological terrorism program, which is based in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.32 In
fiscal 1999, HHS received a budget of $161 million to begin development of a pharmaceutical stockpile,
to conduct research into new vaccines, and to provide assistance to state and local surveillance systems
and laboratories. This budget rose to $260 million in fiscal 2000. Unlike the original Nunn-Lugar-
Domenici program and the Department of Justice's domestic preparedness program, the HHS program for
biological terrorism preparedness began with a funding request from the executive branch rather than a
Congressional earmark.33
In sum, the U.S. domestic preparedness program is composed of multiple loosely coupled component
programs. The location, size, and character of these individual programs were not determined by an
overarching national strategy. Rather, the programs are the result of the highly fragmented, often chaotic
policy-making and budget-setting process that is familiar to observers of contemporary American
governance. As discussed in greater detail below, the technical requirements of effective domestic
preparedness essentially require specific capability-building programs to be distributed across multiple
different agencies and levels of governments. For this reason, and because each program has a distinct
statutory basis, the overall domestic preparedness program can at best be only loosely coordinated, even
by the White House. This limited coordination has created certain problems and wasted some resources,
but it is not that unusual a situation for a new national function as ambitious and novel as domestic
preparedness for WMD terrorism.
To say that the U.S. domestic preparedness programs did not emerge from an overarching strategy is not,
however, to say that they have no common rationale. This rationale is described in the next section.
RATIONALE OF THE U.S. DOMESTIC PREPAREDNESS PROGRAM
Three aspects of the U.S. domestic preparedness program require a somewhat deeper explanation to
justify the rationale behind the program. First, domestic preparedness focuses on the event that presents
the highest consequences, but is the least likely variety of terrorism to occur. In other words, domestic
preparedness prepares us for WMD terrorism a low probability, high consequence event possibly at
the expense of more likely threats. Second, domestic preparedness is geared toward managing the
32. In December 1998, the CDC established its Biological Preparedness and Readiness Program (BPRP). Prior to
this, CDC was only tangentially involved in domestic preparedness for biological terrorism, with no dedicated office
or budget.
33 President Clinton requested a supplemental appropriation to address the threat of bioterrorism in June 1998. Judith
Miller, "Clinton Seeks Additional $300 Million to Fight Bioterrorism," New York Times, June 9, 1998, p. A16.
10
The Problems of Preparedness
consequences of a biological or chemical weapons attack. This narrow approach to consequence
management ignores other activities such as prevention or deterrence. Third, domestic preparedness
involves federal investments in capability enhancements at the state and local levels.
The U.S. domestic preparedness program has been criticized for focusing on the highest consequence,
lowest probability form of terrorism at the expense of less damaging, but more probable threats like
conventional bombings and hoaxes.34 There are two basic reasons for the emphasis on WMD terrorism in
the domestic preparedness program. The first is that the deficiencies in existing federal, state, and local
capabilities for dealing with more common, conventional forms of terrorism are small compared to the
deficiencies in federal, state, and local WMD response capabilities. As might be expected, the United
States is generally best prepared for more probable, lower consequence forms of terrorism (such as small
bombings, hijackings, and hostage-barricade situations), and least prepared for the less common, higher
consequence forms of terrorism, such as mass-casualty attacks. Second, compared to conventional
terrorism, WMD terrorism is much more likely to be a national security threat. This has to do with the
extremely high potential consequences of WMD. It also has to do with the fact that a domestic WMD
attack might be carried out by a hostile state rather than a non-state actor. All of America's major
international adversaries possess some form of WMD capability, and the United States has national
security interests in reducing its vulnerability to all forms of international aggression, deterrence, or
coercion involving WMD. National security is the unique domain of the federal government, so there is
no reason to expect that state or local governments would take these interests into account.
There are a limited number of practical options for reducing the threat of WMD terrorism that are not
already U.S. government priorities. For this reason, the domestic preparedness program focuses on
managing the consequences of chemical and biological weapons. Nuclear, biological, and chemical
weapons are not easily acquired, and the U.S. government does what it can to make WMD acquisition as
difficult as possible, such as regulating the transfer of hazardous materials from domestic culture
collections, enhancing intelligence capabilities, and tightening import controls. However, despite these
efforts, weapons of mass destruction are unquestionably growing more accessible with the passage of
time. Chemical and biological weapons are a particular problem since the materials and equipment
needed to fabricate them have legitimate civilian applications and are increasingly obtainable. As a free
34. See for example, Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of
Mass Destruction [The Gilmore Commission], First Annual Report to Congress, December 1999,
http://www.rand.org/organization/nsrd/terrpanel/terror.pdf; Jonathan Tucker and Amy Sands, "An Unlikely Threat,"
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, July/August 1999, http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1999/ja99/ja99tucker.html; and
Joseph Pilat, "Apocalypse Now-or Never?" Survival, Winter 1998-1999, pp. 171-175.
11
Richard A. Falkenrath
and open society, the United States is enormously vulnerable to all forms of terrorist violence, especially
in its densely populated urban centers. While the government can and does provide heightened security at
a few particularly important buildings and installations, the vast majority of the country's physical plants
have no significant security. Valued freedoms such as the freedom to move about and to congregate
make it impossible to avoid the large concentrations of civilians that are the most likely target of WMD
terrorism. Likewise, valued restrictions on government powers, particularly internal surveillance,
severely limit the government's ability to prevent terrorist attacks, and there is no obvious way to improve
current deterrence of WMD terrorism. By process of elimination, therefore, a policy-maker interested in
reducing the threat of WMD terrorism is left with trying to reduce the consequences of attack.
Unlike virtually all other weapon types, biological and chemical weapons have physical effects that can
be substantially mitigated by a prompt and appropriate operational response. In the case of a chemical
weapon, this response involves decontamination and medical treatment. The effects of biological
weapons can be treated medically, but a key variable in the efficacy of this treatment will be the
promptness and accuracy of diagnosis, which means that biological preparedness also requires
enhancements in epidemiological surveillance systems.35 The immediate physical effects of a nuclear
weapon on a human being cannot be substantially mitigated; hence, the U.S. domestic preparedness
program has not focused on managing the consequences of a nuclear incident.36 There is, however, a
substantial opportunity to reduce the country's vulnerability to chemical and biological terrorism by
developing the specific response capabilities needed to mitigate the weapons' physical effects. The U.S.
domestic preparedness program has sought to exploit this opportunity.
The domestic preparedness program focuses on enhancing the operational capabilities of state and local
agencies, a relatively unusual task for a federal program, especially a national security program. The
reasons are essentially scale, leveraging, and the tenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution. A terrorist
attack can occur in any place, at any time, without warning. There is simply no way the federal
government can maintain the necessary operational capabilities across the breadth of the United States,
particularly for a category of incidents as uncommon as WMD terrorism. This problem is especially
35. See Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Biological and Chemical Terrorism: Strategic Plan for
Preparedness and Response," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, April 21, 2000; and Chemical and Biological
Arms Control Institute and Center for Strategic and International Studies, Contagion and Conflict: Health as a
Global Security Challenge (Washington, DC: CSIS, 2000).
36. A partial exception to this is the system of radiological emergency response plans that the United States has
developed for the regions around its nuclear power plants. See Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) website,
http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/AEOD/ER/index.html.
12
The Problems of Preparedness
acute when damage-limiting opportunities are greatest at the early stages of the incident, as is often the
case with chemical weapons. In addition, state and local agencies already possess many of the operational
systems such as police and fire departments, HAZMAT teams, emergency medical services, emergency
management, and public health agencies upon which the nation's current preparedness for terrorism and
other disasters depends. For reasons of efficiency and practicality, several important components of the
U.S. domestic preparedness program seek to leverage these existing state and local resources.37
Lastly, federalism, as practiced in the United States, gives the states extensive rights and responsibilities
vis-à-vis the federal government for most specific activities that fall under the rubric of "consequence
management." An act of terrorism may simultaneously be many things: a national security threat, a
diplomatic incident, a public health emergency, a local disaster, a criminal case, etc. Responsibilities for
dealing with these different aspects of a terrorist incident are distributed across the federal, state, and local
agencies in a manner determined by American constitutional history and political experience. Insofar as
consequence management of WMD terrorism is conceived as a subset of all-hazard emergency
management, the role of the federal government is essentially to assist and support state governments,
which have primary responsibility of maintaining order and disaster relief within their borders. This basic
division of labor is embodied in the legislative cornerstone of U.S. disaster management, the Stafford
Act.38
POLICY AND MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES OF DOMESTIC PREPAREDNESS
Although domestic preparedness is a relatively new program, it has already become clear that the
domestic preparedness program is not at all a straightforward government initiative and faces multiple
challenges. The program has been extensively criticized by the General Accounting Office, for example,
for redundancy, lack of a clear problem definition, and poor oversight and coordination.39 The GAO
37. One of the unresolved issues in the U.S. domestic preparedness program is the extent to which it should be
integrated into existing, all-hazard emergency management systems, or should be developed as a separate, parallel
system. As discussed below, the latter approach is bureaucratically simpler than the former but will probably result
in capabilities that will be harder to sustain and that yield fewer benefits in preparing for other more common or
naturally occurring emergencies.
38. The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5121 et seq.).
39 See for example: General Accounting Office, Combating Terrorism: Spending on Governmentwide Programs
Requires Better Management and Coordination, NSIAD-98-39, December 1997; General Accounting Office,
Combating Terrorism: Opportunities To Improve Domestic Preparedness Program Focus and Efficiency, NSIAD-
99-3, November 12, 1998; General Accounting Office, Combating Terrorism: Issues to Be Resolved to Improve
Counterterrorism Operations, NSIAD-99-135, May 13, 1999; General Accounting Office, Combating Terrorism:
Need to Eliminate Duplicate Federal Weapons of Mass Destruction Training, NSIAD-00-64, March 21, 2000.
13
Richard A. Falkenrath
makes a common mistake, however, in assuming that the reason for the difficulties facing the domestic
preparedness program is primarily the absence of sufficiently clear and rigorous analysis by the
participating executive agencies. In fact, the reasons have to do with the nature of the threat (a technically
novel, high-consequence, low-probability attack against a vast and highly vulnerable country; the peculiar
origins of the program (individual Congressional earmarks without benefit of a top-down strategic plan);
and the structure of American governance (multiple institutions and layers of government sharing
powers). This combination of factors makes domestic preparedness not only an exceptionally difficult
governmental function, but also an especially interesting one.
The purpose of this section is to identify precisely the problems before the U.S. domestic preparedness
program. There are six:
1. To define the desired end-state and a metric for measuring progress;
2. To cope with the program's enormous technical and institutional complexity;
3. To reduce the uncertainties of real-life response;
4. To manage the legal dimensions of preparedness;
5. To sustain the achievements of the program over time; and
6. To leverage the program to fulfill multiple government priorities.
A description of these challenges has a certain intrinsic value to the academic study of governance in
general, but its real use is to help clarify practical problems for the purpose of finding viable solutions,
and to allow other nations that may emulate the United States in pursuing domestic preparedness
programs of their own to anticipate the problems that they will confront.
1. Defining the Desired End-State and a Metric for Measuring Progress
The specific objectives of the U.S. domestic preparedness program, to the extent that it has them at all,
have been determined by the bureaucratic requirement to execute a particular legislative mandate, rather
than by any sort of broad national determination of just how well prepared the United States should be for
terrorism.40 This is not surprising given that the program originated not from individual legislative
40 For example, the requirement to train responders in the nation's 120 largest cities originated not in the Nunn-
Lugar-Domenici legislation, but in the now defunct Senior Interagency Coordination Group (SICG). SICG was
established to facilitate coordination among Federal agencies involved in providing domestic preparedness support
to state and local governments. The number 120 was based on population and geographic criteria (two smaller cities
were added because of their distance from Federal response assets). See Department of Defense, Domestic
Preparedness Program in the Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction, May 1997, pp. 2, 11-12; House
Committee on National Security, Subcommittee on Military Research and Development, The Federal Response to
14
The Problems of Preparedness
earmarks rather than from a strategic plan, which would clearly define the aims of the program, and lay
out the means to achieve them. The early policy debates over the domestic preparedness program were
marked only by widespread agreement that the existing level of U.S. preparedness was too low and
needed to be improved. There was virtually no discussion of what level of preparedness the United States
should strive toward, save the occasional warning that perfect preparedness and hence invulnerability
was unobtainable. For the purposes of starting the domestic preparedness program, this simple emphasis
on beginning the process of improvement in preparedness was sufficient.
This lack of broad but measurable objectives is unsustainable. It deprives policy-makers of the
information they need to make rational resource allocations, and renders program managers unable to
measure genuine progress. It also suggests endlessly escalating program expenditures, since there is no
logical end point to a process whose only goal is to improve from current standing.
To address this problem, the government should develop a new statistical index of preparedness,
incorporating a range of different variables, such as quantitative measures of special equipment, training
programs, and medicines, as well as professional subjective assessments of the quality of local response
capabilities, infrastructure, plans, readiness, and performance in exercises. This index should go well
beyond the current rudimentary milestones of program implementation e.g., X amount of training and
equipment provided to Y cities and seek to capture and condense meaningful indicators of how well a
particular city or region could actually respond to a serious chemical or biological weapons incident. An
index of this kind would allow the government to measure the preparedness of different parts of the
country in a consistent and comparable way, providing a reasonable baseline against which to measure
progress.41 It would also allow policy-makers to specify meaningfully an end-state toward which the
program should strive. And it would allow managers to evaluate the incremental impact of their
programs.
An index of this kind would, of course, only be a statistical proxy for the intangible societal quality we
call "preparedness." The term has no agreed definition. Nor can it. Properly conceived, preparedness
has meaning only in specific contexts specifically, in the aftermath of an incident, for it is a measure of
Domestic Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Status of the Department of Defense Support
Program (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1998), pp. 31-32.
41. If developed, an index of this kind would have to be classified so as to avoid calling attention to the country's
most vulnerable cities.
15
Richard A. Falkenrath
how well one was prepared to deal with the incident that actually happened. Thus the country's
preparedness for terrorism can vary enormously with the organizations that become involved and with the
nature of the attack, its location, the type of weapon used, and the amount of warning time.
As a byproduct of establishing a desired end-state for the domestic preparedness program, the government
will also implicitly establish the society's residual level of risk and vulnerability. This is not unlike
public health or safety regulations, in which the government simultaneously determines a level of risk to
health that it is willing to tolerate.42 Conscious decisions to allow risk of harm are politically dangerous
because of the possibility of extreme outcomes, which, although unlikely, do extensive and highly visible
harm to a concentrated population. Yet a studied decision of exactly this sort is essential for sound public
management for the simple reason that risk abatement is costly. Reasonable limits must be established
because society cannot invest endlessly in reducing the various risks it faces. This is especially true when
the measures needed to reduce a particular risk involve not only financial outlays but curtailed freedoms,
as is the case with counterterrorism and domestic preparedness. The tradeoffs for higher levels of
protection against, and preparedness for, terrorism are not only an expense but also an inconvenience that
may threaten or appear to threaten peace of mind, aesthetics, public symbolism, personal privacy, and
freedom of movement. This is an abstract idea for the nation as a whole, but it is readily apparent at
specific facilities and events. For example, the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games made a
conscious decision not to search bags at the entry points to Centennial Park, against the recommendation
of the security services, because it believed that such a step would undermine the atmosphere it wished to
create at this venue. If it had decided differently, the small pipe bombe that killed two and injured over
100 people on July 27, 1996 may well have been prevented.43
Finally, the ultimate measure of success for a country's counterterrorism program of which domestic
preparedness is a subset is the absence of a major terrorist incident. But the lack of terrorist attacks
does not mean that preparedness was perfect: it could mean that potential terrorists were deterred,
preempted, or persuaded to pursue their aims with non-terroristic means. Conversely, a major act of
chemical or biological terrorism might overcome a wholly reasonable and well-implemented
preparedness program and result in extensive casualties. Ideally, then, the domestic preparedness
42. Examples include Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) assessments of levels of harmful molecules in the air
or drinking water, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards on workplace threats to
employee health, and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)/ National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)
airplane safety regulations.
43. John Buntin, "Security Preparations for the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games," (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard
University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, November 1999).
16
The Problems of Preparedness
program would then be judged by its ability to reduce damage to citizens, property, or the economy at
large, but this is impossible until there is some reasonable baseline of past performance in similar
consequence management situations.
2. Coping with Enormous Technical and Institutional Complexity
When one examines the problem of domestic preparedness in detail, it quickly becomes apparent that an
effective response involves a very wide range of technical requirements. There is no generic template for
an operational response to WMD terrorism,44 but the major categories of these requirements include the
following:
* Incident command and communications
* Emergency medical treatment
* Decontamination of individuals and facilities
* Security and crowd control
* Arrest and apprehension of perpetrators
* Special weapons and tactics operations
* Evidence preservation and criminal prosecution
* Special weapons disablement and render-safe operations
* Hazardous materials management
* Infectious disease surveillance and control
* Plume analysis
* Mass medical care for victims and "walking well"
* Public affairs
* Mass transportation and logistics
* Legal affairs
Within these broad categories, the specifics of the incident will determine precisely what needs to be
done. For example, communications requirements will depend on the number of agencies responding and
the communications gear they bring with them; required medical treatment and decontamination
procedures will depend on the precise weapon used in the attack. Even without getting into any of the
44. The U.S. government defined two major phases of an operational response to a terrorist incident: "crisis
management" and "consequence management." These labels are inadequate for several reasons, the most important
of which is that there is no clear temporal line between the two phases.
17
Richard A. Falkenrath
details, it is should be clear that a wide range of general-purpose and specialized capabilities will be
required to manage a domestic terrorist attack involving a weapon of mass destruction, and especially to
minimize its effects.
The United States is endowed with many organizations law enforcement agencies, the fire service,
emergency medical teams, public health agencies, the military, private businesses, non-governmental
organizations, etc. which possess an abundance of different practical capabilities. In a real incident of
domestic WMD terrorism, these agencies will be called upon to contribute to the operational response
according to their proximity, relevance, and jurisdiction. The principal goal of the U.S. domestic
preparedness program, therefore, is to enhance those operational capabilities that are both important to the
task of responding to WMD terrorism and deficient in their current form.45 This presents a non-trivial
analytic problem of understanding the relationship between genuine technical requirements and existing
but deficient capabilities, but this problem is present in all mission-oriented government services, and is
relatively familiar to the U.S. national security community.
The most serious challenge to the implementation of the U.S. domestic preparedness program arises from
the fact that even though the program originated and is funded at the federal level, the objectives of the
program cannot be achieved solely by pursuing improvements at the federal level, much less within any
one agency. The nation's existing capabilities relevant to WMD response are distributed widely and
unevenly throughout an extraordinarily complex latticework of :
* functionally organized agencies;
* levels of government (federal, state, county, and local); and
* public, private, and non-governmental actors.
These organizations have distinct interests, budgetary constraints, and legal authority. They are, for the
most part, not hierarchically organized and have overlapping (or even competing) areas of responsibility.
In many cases, these agencies have no history of routine interaction, and sometimes have powerful
institutional interests motivating against cooperation with one another or with a new priority imposed by
the national security wing of the federal government.46
45. See Richard A. Falkenrath, Robert D. Newman, and Bradley A. Thayer, America's Achilles' Heel: Nuclear,
Biological, and Chemical Terrorism and Covert Attack (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1998), pp. 261-336.
46. For further discussion, see Arnold Howitt and Gregory Koblentz, "Organizational Capacity and Coordination:
Obstacles and Opportunities in Preparing for Domestic Terrorism," Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness
Discussion Paper, forthcoming.
18
The Problems of Preparedness
For the federal government to implement the domestic preparedness program, it must work with and
through this profusion of domestic agencies. This is a chaotic realm, one that is utterly alien to the rigid
hierarchies and clean lines of authority so familiar and comforting to the U.S. national security
community. Thus a key challenge for the domestic preparedness program is for its overseers and
managers to understand the unique interaction of technical and institutional factors that governs the
program's implementation. There is a tendency to avoid the institutional complexity of working with
disparate state and local agencies by enacting improvements only in federal capabilities, or only through
established channels with lower level agencies. This temptation should be resisted. To implement the
domestic preparedness program effectively, the federal government should pay as much attention to the
institutional distribution of existing capabilities as it does the technical requirements of response, and
should focus its efforts on improving those capabilities that are most important to response and most
deficient in their current form.
3. Reducing the Uncertainties of Response
It is important to recognize that preparedness is not an end unto itself. It is, rather, the available
intermediate objective. The real goal is to conduct an effective response if and when an act of WMD
terrorism actually occurs. With respect to contingency as uncommon and unfamiliar as WMD terrorism,
there are substantial uncertainties about how prior preparations will translate into actual performance.
The U.S. domestic preparedness program should seek to reduce these uncertainties to their achievable
minimum.
Three broad types of uncertainty seem to be particularly serious obstacles to the domestic preparedness
program, though one can be only modestly confident about the determinants of effective response given
the minimal real-world experience with WMD terrorism. The first is on weapons performance. Compared
to conventional explosives, very few people have a deep understanding of weapons of mass destruction
especially biological weapons, which 144 nations have renounced through their ratification of the 1972
Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. Moreover, the effects of biological weapons and, to a lesser
extent, chemical weapons can be highly unpredictable as they are often sensitive to changes in the
environment, the method of dissemination, and the physical and immunological protection of the victim.47
A deeper understanding of the technical characteristics of these weapons has broad national security
significance, and should be pursued with support of the domestic preparedness program and with
emphasis on the performance of improvised weapons against unprotected civilians in urban areas.
47 See for example, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, The Problem of Chemical and Biological
Warfare, Volume II, CB Weapons Today (New York: Humanities Press, 1973).
19
Richard A. Falkenrath
A second type of uncertainty in domestic response operations is warning time. Warning time is a key
determinant of the readiness and preparation that response agencies are able to achieve before an incident
occurs. The government must prepare for the full range of contingencies from a planned high-risk
event, like the Olympic Games, to a no-notice attack, like the Oklahoma City bombing but should
increase its efforts to acquire early warning of potential WMD terrorist threats and thus reduce the
likelihood of the most demanding no-notice scenarios. This is of course an extremely challenging task,
but it is also vitally important. The U.S. government currently relies on investigations and intelligence
gathering against groups known or believed to present a terrorist threat, which it does systematically and
often quite effectively. What the U.S. government does not do systematically, however, is broad-based
sampling to identify potential threat groups particularly domestic groups that have not already
presented themselves. One possible technique for this (described elsewhere) would be to establish a
system for gathering and processing data on the sale of materials and equipment that could be used to
fabricate an improvised weapon of mass destruction.48
The third and probably most significant form of uncertainty in an operational response to a real incident
of WMD terrorism is the attack's psychological impact. We have essentially no basis on which to predict
how the general public would react to chemical or biological attack within their midst. We do not know
if people will remain calm and do as instructed by the proper authorities, or if they will panic and behave
irrationally.49 This concern also applies to the personnel involved in the response operations, many of
whom will be civilians with no special training in chemical or biological defense. It is, however, self-
evident that the behavior of the public will be a critical determinant of response effectiveness in a major
incident of chemical or biological terrorism. This gives the media great importance in a response, but the
behavior of the many different media outlets that would be attracted to a terrorist act is unpredictable.
Moreover, given the uncertainty about chemical and biological weapons performance noted above, in the
midst of an incident the authorities may not in fact know what they should tell the public to do to mitigate
the overall severity of the event.50 If perceived by the public, this uncertainty may well exacerbate the
48. See Richard A. Falkenrath, Philip B. Heymann, and Matthew S. Meselson, "Investigating CBW Acquisition,"
Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness Discussion Paper, forthcoming.
49. A terrorist event may also cause unexpected departures from normal activities that could hamper response
activities, such as cessation of airline service.
50. For instance, if the authorities cannot define the boundaries of the weapon's effects (usually assumed to be a
plume), or do not correctly understand the physical properties of the weapon's agent, then they will not be able to
tell the public whether they should stay at home or flee.
20
The Problems of Preparedness
public's reactions. The domestic preparedness program should attach high priority to developing some
means of analyzing, modeling, and predicting the reactions of the public in a situation of WMD terrorism,
and to integrating this improved understanding into response plans.
An important technique for reducing the uncertainties of response is to conduct exercises and simulations,
which are already a key part of the domestic preparedness program. The federal government has
sponsored many counterterrorism and consequence management exercises since 1995, and they are
unambiguously valuable. The exercises have revealed critically deficient capabilities, inadequate
response plans, and serious inter-governmental conflicts that would emerge in a real situation. But
exercises are not a panacea to the uncertainties of response. Even the most ambitious counterterrorism
exercise ever staged the TOPOFF Exercise held in May 2000, which simulated a chemical attack in
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a biological attack in Denver, and a radiological attack in Prince George's
County, Maryland and the District of Columbia cannot replicate the confusion, fear and possible panic
that an incident of this magnitude would unleash across the nation.51 The reason is that injecting greater
realism into exercises poses real public safety risks and also would cause unreasonable interruptions of
normal life. Thus, although exercises and simulations should remain an integral part of the domestic
preparedness program, their significance should not be over-estimated.
4. Managing the Legal Dimensions of Preparedness
Preparedness is not simply a function of a nation's operational response capabilities. In democracies, the
legal authority to use these operational capabilities in a manner that is both effective and respectful of a
society's values is also an element of preparedness.52 To date, the U.S. domestic preparedness program
has focused almost exclusively on enhancing the capability aspect of the problem. The only legal aspect
of preparedness that has received any sustained attention has been the role of the military in domestic law
enforcement, which is proscribed by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.53 Despite the frequency with
which the issue of Posse Comitatus has been raised, however, it is not a particularly significant legal issue
for the domestic preparedness program because its restrictions are actually quite narrow, and because
51. For details about TOPOFF, see the website of the Office of State and Local Domestic Preparedness Support which
co-sponsored the exercise: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/osldps/exer_topoff.htm.
52. I am indebted to Philip Heymann for this point.
53. Posse Comitatus Act, 18 U.S.C. Section 1385. For more details, see Charles Doyle, The Posse Comitatus Act &
Related Matters: The Use of the Military to Execute Civilian Law, Congressional Research Service, September 2,
1995.
21
Richard A. Falkenrath
even these restrictions may be waived in emergency if the Attorney General lodges a formal request with
the Secretary of Defense for an expanded military role in support of civilian agencies.54
The more important legal problems facing the domestic preparedness program concern the powers that
the government may want to exercise while managing an on-going domestic incident of WMD terrorism.
What these legal powers will be is not precisely known because the country has so little real experience
with WMD terrorism, and because the question has not yet been carefully examined by the government or
a qualified non-governmental organization. It is possible, however, to generate a rough list of the legal
authorities that response agencies will want to have through the use of hypothetical simulations and
scenarios. One such heuristic exercise conducted in December 1999 yielded a remarkably long list of
powers that responding agencies might desire in management of a major domestic biological weapons
attack. This list included:
* The authority to impose a state of emergency, including curfew;
* The authority to compel people to remain in one location or move to another, including
temporary detention;
* The authority to use the military for domestic law enforcement, population control, and mass
logistics;
* The authority to seize community or private property, such as hospitals, utilities, medicines,
vehicles, or transit centers, or to compel the production of certain goods;
* The authority to compel individuals to undertake decontamination procedures, take medicines,
or be quarantined;
* The authority to censor and control the media;
* The authority to liberalize standards for conducting searches and seizures;
* The authority to dispose of deceased individuals;
* The authority to compel civilian public servants to work;
* The authority to waive regulatory requirements on the use of certain pharmaceuticals.
Although some of these authorities are already available to government agencies, they are confusingly
arrayed across literally hundreds of often archaic federal and state laws.55 It is also readily apparent that
many of these authorities, even those contained in existing legislation, contradict basic and cherished
principles of American civic life: the freedom of speech and association; the right to privacy; the
54. Emergency Situations Involving Chemical or Biological Weapons of Mass Destruction., 10 U.S.C., Section 382.
55. E.g., quarantine laws date to 19th century. See Laura K. Donohue and Juliette N. Kayyem, "Federalism and the
Battle over Counter-Terrorist Law: State Sovereignty, Criminal Law Enforcement, and National Security,"
Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness Discussion Paper, forthcoming.
22
The Problems of Preparedness
prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures; the freedom of movement; the protections against
detention without criminal basis; the prohibition on government takings without just compensation; and
the federalist principle of state's rights. No reasonable person wishes to sacrifice any of these principles,
but it may be necessary to do so in a real incident if lives are to be saved.
The importance of the legal dimension of domestic preparedness arises from the dilemma this situation
creates for the government officials in charge of response operations. In a real incident of domestic
WMD terrorism, these individuals may be forced to choose between limiting their actions to those that are
unambiguously authorized or going beyond their explicit authority with additional actions that they regard
as necessary for minimizing casualties. In the former case, the risk is that more innocent people will
suffer harm that could have been prevented. In the later case, the risks are that great violence will be done
to basic principles held dear by society as a whole, and that the responsible government officials will be
censured by the public, their superiors, or the courts for taking actions that they regarded at the time as in
the public interest. Managing the legal dimension of domestic preparedness involves reconciling these
risks in advance and in a manner that maximizes the government's ability to mitigate the physical effects
of a real act of WMD terrorism.
It is impossible to predict just how individual government decisions makers would react if confronted
with this choice in a real situation. However, since the U.S. government regards the threat of domestic
WMD terrorism as sufficiently serious to justify major capabilities enhancements, it seems clear that the
government should also be working to eliminate the uncertainty in how these capabilities should be used
in the event of a real attack. In other words, the country should "stockpile authority" as well as capability.
This effort should proceed in several steps as part of the domestic preparedness program. First, the U.S.
government should undertake a systematic analysis of government actions that might be desired in
resolving or managing the consequences of a real domestic incident of WMD terrorism. Second, the
government should determine whether the authority to take these actions is currently available, and if so
where this authority is located (i.e., in federal law or in the law of specific states) and under what
condition it may be exercised. These authorities and their triggering conditions should then be made
consistent across the country through new legislation focused on the exigencies of domestic preparedness.
This new legislation should specify not only the authorities that may be exercised in a real crisis and their
triggering conditions, but also the procedure by which these authorities may be triggered, their maximum
duration, and the procedure by which these authorities available in a major crisis will be rescinded after
the crisis has ended.
23
Richard A. Falkenrath
5. Sustaining
Preparedness
Domestic preparedness for WMD terrorism began to receive strong support from the federal government
in the mid-1990s, but there is a real risk that the improvements put in place during this period will not be
sustained into the future. The equipment purchased with federal dollars may grow obsolete and
inoperable. The training provided with federal support may be forgotten, lost to turnover, or not offered
to successive classes of public servants. The plans developed in federally funded exercises may gradually
grow outdated and forgotten. If the capability enhancements of the domestic preparedness program are
allowed to deteriorate in any of these ways, then the program will be looked back on as a great
squandering of federal resources, even as the country sinks back to lower levels of readiness for WMD
terrorism.
While the federal government has been willing to pay for an initial set of improvements in the specialized
training and equipment available to state and local agencies, it is not at all certain that the federal
domestic preparedness budget will evolve into an on-going support mechanism for the operation and
maintenance of these new capabilities. At some point, the federal decision-makers may cease to perceive
a major threat from WMD terrorism, or may choose to focus their resources solely on developing federal
capabilities, or may regard the federal responsibility to provide domestic preparedness assistance to state
and local agencies as fulfilled. If so, then it will be up to the state and local governments to devote the
necessary budgetary resources to sustain the heightened capabilities that they acquired through federal
largess. Since state and local public agencies operate on tight budgets and have extensive everyday
responsibilities, it is not certain that they will accept on-going responsibility for a set of specialized
capabilities that are of much greater interest to the federal government than to their tax-paying
constituents.56 Domestic preparedness is essentially an expense stream without an equivalent revenue
stream, making it doubtful that state and local governments will be willing to bear the costs associated
with it over the long term.57
Nor is the problem strictly financial. It also has to do with the propensity of individuals and institutions
to neglect capabilities that they use infrequently or that are peripheral to their core mission. For example,
a complicated piece of equipment that can detect the presence of a chemical or biological agent, but
56. This behavior is rational because (a) state and local governments see the federal government as responsible for
national security; and (b) the odds of an attack with the geographic domain of any particular state or local are a small
fraction of the odds of an attack within the vast geographic domain of the federal government.
57. For a discussion of this dynamic, see Arnold Howitt and Gregory Koblentz, "Organizational Capacity and
Coordination: Obstacles and Opportunities in Preparing for Domestic Terrorism," Executive Session on Domestic
Preparedness Discussion Paper, forthcoming.
24
The Problems of Preparedness
nothing else, is unlikely to be used very often by a local firefighter or police officer, and is thus unlikely
to be maintained in good working order. Similarly, a busy public servant like a police officer, firefighter,
emergency medical technician, or public health official is probably less likely to take refresher training
courses in a skill that they doubt they will ever have to use. The vast majority of cities and regions in
America will never experience WMD terrorism of any sort, and public safety officials understand this.
Sustaining the heightened preparedness sought by the federal government is, therefore, a significant
challenge.
A strategy for sustaining preparedness should involve three basic components. First, the federal
government should seek to work out an arrangement with state and local governments ensuring that the
initial capability enhancements provided by the federal government will be sustained into the future. This
should involve some explicit compact, or bargain, perhaps embodied in legislation, among the federal
government and state and local governments on their respective roles and responsibilities for building and
maintaining preparedness. Second, and as part of this compact, the federal government should assume
partial but on-going responsibility for funding the operations and maintenance of domestic preparedness
training, equipment, and procedures in state and local agencies. This is unlikely to be met with great
enthusiasm in Washington, but it is unrealistic to expect state and local governments to provide the
necessary levels of support.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, the federal government should emphasize "dual-use" forms of
assistance. That is, the federal domestic preparedness program should provide strongest support for forms
of technical assistance that simultaneously improve the state and local agencies' ability to deal with
WMD terrorism as well as their everyday responsibilities. The federal government should resist the
temptation to create special systems for terrorism because of its extreme rarity, and should instead
integrate counterterrorism and preparedness programs into the existing all-hazard systems for emergency
management and disaster response. The resources needed to reduce casualties and damage from weapons
of mass destruction should be housed in agencies or organizations that have more commonplace uses for
those skills or technologies, thereby linking terrorist preparedness to everyday operations. Resources
(equipment, manpower, training, coordination) to handle a chemical weapon attack would be maintained
by a hazardous materials unit, and the training to identify a biological attack would reside with existing
25
Richard A. Falkenrath
hospitals and public health officials. This emphasis on dual-use assistance can help ensure that new
capabilities created by the domestic preparedness program are not lost over time.58
6. Leveraging Domestic Preparedness to Fulfill Multiple Government Priorities
It is entirely possible that the new and improved capabilities supported by the domestic preparedness
program will never be used in a real incident of WMD terrorism. This should of course be regarded as a
success, not a failure, since the most important priority of U.S. counterterrorism policy is to prevent
attacks of this kind in the first place. The federal government recognizes the very low probability of an
act of WMD terrorism. Thus, it deliberately links improvements to the domestic preparedness program to
other government priorities. There should, in other words, be a concerted effort to make domestic
preparedness a "no regrets" policy in which improvements to the program are also improvements to the
overall security structure regardless of whether or not WMD is used against the United States.
There are four government priorities that can benefit from an appropriately managed domestic
preparedness program. The first is the public health sector, particularly the systems for dealing with
infectious disease. The United States has allowed its basic public health infrastructure to deteriorate over
the last several decades. U.S. systems for identifying and controlling outbreaks of infectious disease are a
particular weakness, often lacking even rudimentary computer and telecommunications capabilities. The
federal initiative to prepare the country for the threat of biological terrorism presents a significant
opportunity to rebuild and modernize the existing systems for dealing with the far more common and
destructive threat of naturally occurring infectious disease.
Local emergency management is another area that can benefit from domestic preparedness leveraging.
The process of working with the federal government to conduct counterterrorism exercises and to develop
existing or new response capabilities has drawn attention to a number of inter-governmental problems in
major metropolitan areas, and has provided some impetus to resolve these problems. For instance,
through the domestic preparedness program, more people have become aware of the importance of
adhering to a common command and control system in major, multi-jurisdictional operations. The
accepted standard for this is the Incident Command System (ICS), which is already in fairly wide use but
58 . The difficulty in this approach is that WMD preparedness is in some ways fundamentally different than the
everyday activities it is to be paired with, which presents the possibility than such an attack would not be handled in
the emergency manner required. For a more detailed discussion of the possibilities and difficulties with
complementarity, see Arnold Howitt and Gregory Koblentz, "Organizational Capacity and Coordination: Obstacles
and Opportunities in Preparing for Domestic Terrorism," Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness Discussion
Paper, forthcoming.
26
The Problems of Preparedness
is receiving further support from the domestic preparedness program.59 Likewise, most regions already
have mutual aid agreements (which allow public safety agencies, usually fire departments, to respond
across jurisdictional lines), but the domestic preparedness program can play a role in encouraging local
governments that do not have such agreements to sign them. And finally, the domestic preparedness
program, and especially the exercises it conducts, has drawn attention to the fact that response agencies
often have incompatible communications systems, which can be a serious problem in large-scale
operations.60 This problem became more visible as a result of the domestic preparedness program, and in
response the Department of Justice has developed and fielded a new system for integrating the two-way
communications of multiple agencies that otherwise would not be able to talk to one another. Practical
improvements of this sort, which have value across the full range of major emergencies a city might face,
should continue to receive strong support from the domestic preparedness program.
Third, some aspects of the domestic preparedness program may be useful in the conduct of military
operations abroad. The military clearly has a role to play in major domestic response operations to WMD
terrorism, and is in the process of developing its own specialized capabilities for managing chemical and
biological incidents. These capabilities are obviously relevant to the military's core mission of war
fighting, since virtually all of the states against which the U.S. military might be called upon to fight also
possess chemical and/or biological weapons. Thus, as the Department of Defense defines and develops
its contribution of U.S. domestic preparedness, it should do so with an eye toward capabilities that are
sufficiently robust and numerous to also be used in foreign military operations.
Finally, many of the capabilities developed as part of the U.S. domestic preparedness program can and
should be integrated into U.S. plans for providing emergency assistance to foreign governments during
major crises and disasters.61 The United States is the only country in the world that is making a serious,
sustained effort to prepare for domestic incidents of WMD terrorism, especially those involving chemical
or biological weapons. In the event of a major chemical or biological weapons attack somewhere in the
world, the U.S. government will feel strong pressure to offer emergency assistance, especially if the
59. For a description of ICS, see Hank Christen and Paul Maniscalco, The EMS Incident Management System (Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998).
60. The lack of interoperable communications systems caused severe difficulties for law enforcement and emergency
medical teams responding to the shootings at Columbine High School in April 1999. See Jefferson County Sheriff's
Office, Report on the Columbine High School Shootings, April 20, 1999, CD-ROM.
61. The Department of State is the lead federal agency for responding to terrorist incidents outside of the United
States. In the event of such an incident, an interagency Foreign Emergency Support Team (FEST) would be
deployed to manage the crisis. See an unclassified summary of PDD-39 available at
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd39.htm.
27
Richard A. Falkenrath
attack is against an American friend or ally. Moreover, the U.S. national security community is likely to
want to be fully involved in the response to, and investigation of, the foreign attack because it is likely to
assume that a chemical or biological threat to one state could easily become a threat to America. The
agencies involved in the domestic preparedness program should, therefore, accept that the special
capabilities they are developing the trained personnel, special equipment, and stockpiles of medicine
might very well be sent abroad as part of the U.S. assistance, and should plan in advance accordingly.
CONCLUSION
For better or worse, the United States has embarked on a process of preparing itself for WMD terrorism at
home. It will be a long and disorderly process, and it is essentially a no-win proposition. Either there will
be no attack, and the program will seem increasingly nonsensical; or there will be an attack, and the value
of the program will be tested amidst the suffering and terror of innocent people. If there is no attack,
critics of the program will call it wasteful. If there is an attack, these critics will fall instantly silent, but
others will rise up and argue that the program itself and especially the publicity surrounding it is to
blame for giving terrible new ideas to terrorists everywhere. Domestic preparedness emerges from the
dismal politics of very bad things, more closely approximating a societal insurance policy than any of the
familiar practices of governance.
Because of the idiosyncratic legislative origins of the different components of the domestic preparedness
program, the implementation of each program element began immediately and independently of the other
program elements. Thus, the already complex process of building domestic preparedness has been vastly
complicated by the program's institutional and legal entrenchment, which has given particular
organizations and individuals new interests that they are now motivated to defend. Left alone, each
program element will likely make certain discrete improvements in America's preparedness for WMD
terrorism. But the lack of coordination at the federal level will squander resources, perplex the interface
with state and local agencies, and ensure that the whole of America's preparedness remains well less than
the sum of its parts.
The opportunity for immaculate policy design has of course closed with the passage of time. Still, it is
possible to improve efficiency and achieve meaningful forms of success in the domestic preparedness
program by concentrating on the key public management challenges facing the program. These
challenges are: (1) to define the desired end-state and a metric for measuring progress; (2) to reduce the
28
The Problems of Preparedness
uncertainties of real-life response; (3) to cope with the program's enormous technical and institutional
complexity; (4) to manage the legal dimensions of preparedness; (5) to sustain the achievements of the
program over time; and (6) to leverage the program to meet other federal, state, and local priorities.
29
EXECUTIVE SESSION ON DOMESTIC PREPAREDNESS
JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
The John F. Kennedy School of Government and the U.S. Department of Justice have created the
Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness to focus on understanding and improving U.S. preparedness
for domestic terrorism. The Executive Session is a joint project of the Kennedy School's Belfer Center
for Science and International Affairs and Taubman Center for State and Local Government.
The Executive Session convenes a multi-disciplinary task force of leading practitioners from state and
local agencies, senior officials from federal agencies, and academic specialists from Harvard University.
The members bring to the Executive Session extensive policy expertise and operational experience in a
wide range of fields - emergency management, law enforcement, national security, law, fire protection,
the National Guard, public health, emergency medicine, and elected office - that play important roles in
an effective domestic preparedness program. The project combines faculty research, analysis of current
policy issues, field investigations, and case studies of past terrorist incidents and analogous emergency
situations. The Executive Session is expected to meet six times over its three-year term.
Through its research, publications, and the professional activities of its members, the Executive Session
intends to become a major resource for federal, state, and local government officials, congressional
committees, and others interested in preparation for a coordinated response to acts of domestic terrorism.
For more information on the Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness, please contact:
Rebecca Storo, Project Coordinator, Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness
John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: (617) 495-1410, Fax: (617) 496-7024
Email: esdp@ksg.harvard.edu
http://www.esdp.org
BELFER CENTER FOR SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
BCSIA is a vibrant and productive research community at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of
Government. Emphasizing the role of science and technology in the analysis of international affairs and
in the shaping of foreign policy, it is the axis of work on international relations at Harvard University's
John F. Kennedy School of Government. BCSIA has three fundamental issues: to anticipate emerging
international problems, to identify practical solutions, and to galvanize policy-makers into action. These
goals animate the work of all the Center's major programs.
The Center's Director is Graham Allison, former Dean of the Kennedy School. Stephen Nicoloro is
Director of Finance and Operations.
BCSIA's International Security Program (ISP) is the home of the Center's core concern with security
issues. It is directed by Steven E. Miller, who is also Editor-in-Chief of the journal, International
Security.
The Strengthening Democratic Institutions (SDI) project works to catalyze international support for
political and economic transformation in the former Soviet Union. SDI's Director is Graham Allison.
The Science, Technology, and Public Policy (STPP) program emphasizes public policy issues in which
understanding of science, technology and systems of innovation is crucial. John Holdren, the STPP
Director, is an expert in plasma physics, fusion energy technology, energy and resource options, global
environmental problems, impacts of population growth, and international security and arms control.
The Environment and Natural Resources Program (ENRP) is the locus of interdisciplinary research on
environmental policy issues. It is directed by Henry Lee, expert in energy and environment. Robert
Stavins, expert in economics and environmental and resource policy issues, serves as ENRP's faculty
chair.
The heart of the Center is its resident research staff: scholars and public policy practitioners, Kennedy
School faculty members, and a multi-national and inter-disciplinary group of some two dozen pre-
doctoral and post-doctoral research fellows. Their work is enriched by frequent seminars, workshops,
conferences, speeches by international leaders and experts, and discussions with their colleagues from
other Boston-area universities and research institutions and the Center's Harvard faculty affiliates.
Alumni include many past and current government policy-makers.
The Center has an active publication program including the quarterly journal International Security, book
and monograph series, and Discussion Papers. Members of the research staff also contribute frequently to
other leading publications, advise the government, participate in special commissions, brief journalists,
and share research results with both specialists and the public in a wide variety of ways.
BELFER CENTER FOR SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
RECENT DISCUSSION PAPERS
For a complete listing of BCSIA Publications, please visit www.ksg.harvard.edu/bcsia
2000-31 Falkenrath, Richard. "Analytic Models and Policy Prescription: Understanding Recent Innovation
in U.S. Counterterrorism."
2000-30 Merari, Ariel. "Israel's Preparedness for High Consequence Terrorism."
2000-29 Kohnen, Anne. "Responding to the Threat of Agroterrorism: Specific Recommendations for the
United States Department of Agriculture."
2000-28 Falkenrath, Richard. "The Problems of Preparedness: Challenges Facing the U.S. Domestic
Preparedness Program."
2000-25 Jaffe, Adam B., Richard G. Newell, and Robert N. Stavins. "Technological Change and
The Environment."
2000-24 Gupta, Aarti. "Governing Biosafety in India: The Relevance of The Cartagena Protocol."
2000-23 Eckley, Noelle. "From Regional to Global Assessment: Learning from Persistent Organic
Pollutants."
2000-22 Keykhah, Modjeh. "Global Hazards and Catastrophic Risk: Assessments, Practitioners and
Decision Making in Reinsurance."
2000-21 Ogunseitan, Oladele. "Framing Vulnerability: Global Environmental Assessments and the
African Burden of Disease."
2000-20 Betsill, Michele M. "Localizing Global Climate Change: Controlling Greenhouse Gas
Emissions in U.S. Cities."
2000-19 Patt, Anthony. "Communicating Probabilistic Forecasts to Decision Makers: A Case Study
Of Zimbabwe."
2000-18 Lund, David C. "Regional Abrupt Climate Change Assessment in the U.S.: Comparing the
Colorado and Columbia River Basins."
2000-17 Biermann, Frank. "Science as Power in International Environmental Negotiations: Global
Environmental Assessments Between North and South."
2000-16 Krueger, Jonathan. "Information in International Environmental Governance: The Prior
Informed Consent Procedure for Trade in Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides."
2000-15 Stavins, Robert N. "Economic Analysis of Global Climate Change Policy: A Primer."
2000-14 Weeks, Jennifer. "Advice and Consent? The Department of Energy's Site-Specific Advisory
Boards."
2000-13 Yereskovsky, Alexander. "The Global Security Environment and U.S.-Russian Strategic Relations
in the 21st Century: Partners or Rivals?"
The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (BCSIA) Discussion Papers, established in 1991, will be issued on an
irregular basis with three programmatic subseries: International Security; Science, Technology, and Public Policy; and
Environment and Natural Resources. Inquiries and orders may be directed to: Belfer Center for Science and International
Affairs, Publications, Harvard University, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138.
BELFER CENTER FOR SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
RECENT DISCUSSION PAPERS
For a complete listing of BCSIA Publications, please visit www.ksg.harvard.edu/bcsia
2000-12 Clark, William et. Al. "Assessing Vulnerability to Global Environmental Risk."
2000-11 Foster, Charles, H.W. and William B. Meyer, "The Harvard Environmental Regionalism Project."
2000-10 Cash, David. "`In Order to Aid in Diffusing Useful and Practical Information': Cross-scale
Boundary Organizations and Agricultural Extension."
2000-09 Foster, Charles, H.W. et al., "Colloquium on Environmental Regionalism."
2000-08 Lee, Henry and Shashi Kant Verma, "Coal or Gas: The Cost of Cleaner Power in the Midwest."
2000-07 Fischer, Markus, "The Liberal Peace: Ethical, Historical and Philosophical Aspects."
2000-06 Cash, David, "Distributed Assessment Systems: An Emerging Paradigm of Research, Assessment
and Decision-making for Environmental Change."
2000-05 Donohue, Laura K., "Civil Liberties, Terrorism, and Liberal Democracy: Lessons from the United
Kingdom."
2000-04 Golub, Alexander, "Russian Forests for Climate Change Mitigation: An Economic Analysis."
2000-03 Coglianese, Cary, "Policy Implications of Environmental Management Systems."
2000-02 Meyer, William B. and Charles H.W. Foster, "New Deal Regionalism: A Critical Review."
2000-01 Newell, Richard and Robert Stavins, "Abatement-Cost Heterogeneity and Anticipated Savings from
Market-Based Environmental Policies."
R-99-01 Rapporteur's Report. "Workshop on Research and Policy Directions for Carbon Management."
99-20 Rufin, Carlos, "Institutional Change in the Electricity Industry: A Comparison of Four Latin
American Cases."
99-19 Rothenberg, Sandra and David Levy, "Corporate Responses to Climate Change: The Institutional
Dynamics of the Automobile Industry and Climate Change."
99-18 Stavins, Robert, "Experience with Market-Based Environmental Policy Instruments."
99-17 Jaffe, Adam, Richard Newell and Robert Stavins, "Energy-Efficient Technologies and Climate
Change Policies: Issues and Evidence."
99-14 Jung, Wolfgang. "Expert Advice in Global Environmental Decision Making: How Close Should
Science and Policy Get?"
99-13 Levy, David L. and Sandra Rothenberg, "Corporate Strategy and Climate Change: Heterogeneity
and Change in the Global Automobile Industry."
99-12 Biermann, Frank, "Big Science, Small Impacts -- in the South? The Influence of International
Environmental Information Institutions on Policy-Making in India."
The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (BCSIA) Discussion Papers, established in 1991, will be issued on an
irregular basis with three programmatic subseries: International Security; Science, Technology, and Public Policy; and
Environment and Natural Resources. Inquiries and orders may be directed to: Belfer Center for Science and International
Affairs, Publications, Harvard University, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138.
TAUBMAN CENTER FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT
JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
The Taubman Center for State and Local Government focuses on public policy and management in the U.S. federal
system. Through research, participation in the Kennedy School's graduate training and executive education
programs, sponsorship of conferences and workshops, and interaction with policy makers and public managers, the
Center's affiliated faculty and researchers contribute to public deliberations about key domestic policy issues and the
process of governance. While the Center has a particular concern with state and local institutions, it is broadly
interested in domestic policy and intergovernmental relations, including the role of the federal government.
The Center's research program deals with a range of specific policy areas, including urban development and land
use, transportation, environmental protection, education, labor- management relations and public finance. The
Center is also concerned with issues of governance, political and institutional leadership, innovation, and
applications of information and telecommunications technology to public management problems. The Center has
also established an initiative to assist all levels of government in preparing for the threat of domestic terrorism.
The Center makes its research and curriculum materials widely available through various publications, including
books, research monographs, working papers, and case studies. In addition, the Taubman Center sponsors several
special programs:
The Program on Innovations in American Government, a joint undertaking by the Ford Foundation and Harvard
University, seeks to identify creative approaches to difficult public problems. In an annual national competition, the
Innovations program awards grants of $100,000 to 15 innovative federal, state, and local government programs
selected from among more than 1,500 applicants. The program also conducts research and develops teaching case
studies on the process of innovation.
The Program on Education Policy and Governance, a joint initiative of the Taubman Center and Harvard's Center
for American Political Studies, brings together experts on elementary and secondary education with specialists in
governance and public management to examine strategies of educational reform and evaluate important educational
experiments.
The Saguaro Seminar for Civic Engagement in America is dedicated to building new civil institutions and restoring
our stock of civic capital.
The Program on Strategic Computing and Telecommunications in the Public Sector carries out research and
organizes conferences on how information technology can be applied to government problems -- not merely to
enhance efficiency in routine tasks but to produce more basic organizational changes and improve the nature and
quality of services to citizens.
The Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness brings together senior government officials and academic experts
to examine how federal, state, and local agencies can best prepare for terrorist attacks within U.S. borders.
The Program on Labor-Management Relations links union leaders, senior managers and faculty specialists in
identifying promising new approaches to labor management.
The Internet and Conservation Project, an initiative of the Taubman Center with additional support from the
Kennedy School's Environment and Natural Resources Program, is a research and education initiative. The Project
focuses on the constructive and disruptive impacts of new networks on the landscape and biodiversity, as well as on
the conservation community.
TAUBMAN CENTER FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT
RECENT WORKING PAPERS
A complete publications list is available at www.ksg.harvard.edu/taubmancenter/
2000 Donohue, Laura. "Civil Liberties, Terrorism, and Liberal Democracy: Lessons from the United
Kingdom."
2000 Falkenrath, Richard A. "Analytic Models and Policy Prescription: Understanding Recent Innovation in
U.S. Counterterrorism."
2000 Falkenrath, Richard A. "The Problems of Preparedness: Challenges Facing the U.S. Domestic
Preparedness Program."
2000 Harvard Policy Group on Network-Enabled Services and Government. "Eight Imperatives for Leaders
in a Networked World: Guidelines for the 2000 Election and Beyond," $7.
2000 Howell, William G., and Paul E. Peterson. "School Choice in Dayton, Ohio: An Evaluation After One
Year," $5.
2000 Kohnen, Anne. "Responding to the Threat of Agroterrorism: Specific Recommendations for the United
States Department of Agriculture."
2000 Merari, Ariel. "Israel's Preparedness for High Consequence Terrorism."
2000 Stuart, Guy. "Segregation in the Boston Metropolitan Area at the end of the 20th Century," $5.
2000 Weil, David. "Everything Old Is New Again: Regulating Labor Standards in the U.S. Apparel
Industry," $5.
2000 Wolf, Patrick J., Paul E. Peterson and William G. Howell. "School Choice in Washington D.C.: An
Evaluation After One Year," $5.
1999 Barg, Scot N. "Electronic Benefits Transfer: From Local Innovation to National Standard," $5.
1999 Friar, Monica. "Discovering Leadership That Matters: Understanding Variations in State Medicaid
Spending," $6.
1999 Gómez-Ibáñez, José. "The Future of Private Infrastructure: Lessons from the Nationalization of Electric
Utilities in Latin America, 1943-1979," $6.
1999 Gómez-Ibáñez, José. "Commitment and Flexibility: Alternative Strategies for Regulating Natural
Monopoly," $6.
1999 Gómez-Ibáñez, José. "Regulating Coordination: The Promise and Problems of Vertically Unbundling
Private Infrastructure," $6.
1999 Greene, Jay P. "The Racial, Economic, and Religious Context of Parental Choice in Cleveland," $5.
1999 Howitt, Arnold M., and Elizabeth Moore. "Linking Transportation and Air Quality Planning:
Implementation of the Transportation Conformity Regulations in 15 Nonattainment Areas," $15.
Listed are recent working papers by Taubman Center faculty affiliates, fellows, and research staff. A complete
publications list is available at www.ksg.harvard.edu/taubmancenter/. Most of the working papers are available on-
line at www.ksg.harvard.edu/taubmancenter/.
Please send orders and requests for printed materials to the Publications Unit, Taubman Center for State and Local
Government, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. Orders must be prepaid with a check payable to Harvard
University. Prices include third-class postage. For more information, contact the Taubman Center at (617) 495-
2199, via email at taubman@harvard.edu, or via the Center's web page at www.ksg.harvard.edu/taubmancenter/.
TAUBMAN CENTER FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT
RECENT WORKING PAPERS
A complete publications list is available at www.ksg.harvard.edu/taubmancenter/
1999 Kelman, Steven. Implementing for Federal Procurement Reform, 1999. $4.
1999 Kim, Hunmin. "The Process of Innovation in Local Government," $4.
1999 Krim, Robert M., Jean M. Bartunek, Raul Necochea, and Margaret Humphries. "Sensemaking,
Sensegiving, and Leadership in Strategic Organizational Development," $4.
1999 Peterson, Paul E., David Myers and William G. Howell. "An Evaluation of the Horizon Scholarship
Program in the Edgewood Independent School District, San Antonio, Texas: The First Year," $5.
1999 Peterson, Paul E., William G. Howell and Jay P. Greene. "An Evaluation of the Cleveland Voucher
Program After Two Years," $5.
1999 Richmond, Jonathan. "Choices for Mobility Enhancement in the Greenbush Corridor," $8.
1999 Richmond, Jonathan. "A Whole System Approach to Evaluating Urban Transit Investments," $10.
1999 Weil, David. "Valuing the Economic Consequences of Work Injury and Illness: A Comparison of
Methods and Findings," $5.
1999 Weil, David. "Assessing OSHA Performance in the U.S. Construction Industry," $5.
Listed are recent working papers by Taubman Center faculty affiliates, fellows, and research staff. A complete
publications list is available at www.ksg.harvard.edu/taubmancenter/. Most of the working papers are available on-
line at www.ksg.harvard.edu/taubmancenter/.
Please send orders and requests for printed materials to the Publications Unit, Taubman Center for State and Local
Government, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. Orders must be prepaid with a check payable to Harvard
University. Prices include third-class postage. For more information, contact the Taubman Center at (617) 495-
2199, via email at taubman@harvard.edu, or via the Center's web page at www.ksg.harvard.edu/taubmancenter/.