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Homeland Security Focus Areas
Domestic Counter-terrorism
From the "Congressional Quarterly Homeland Security Daily,"
21 July:
ATF Investigating Large Thefts of Explosive Components
Federal agents are investigating the theft of 1,100 pounds of ammonium
nitrate from construction companies in Colorado and California, the Associated
Press reported Friday. On July 14, eight 50-pound bags of an ammonium
nitrate-based explosive were stolen from the Pike View Quarry near Colorado
Springs, Colo. Either that same day or the day before, 700 pounds of ammonium
nitrate were stolen from a similar business in San Diego County, Calif.,
the AP said. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said
it’s investigating both cases. Ammonium nitrate, a common fertilizer,
forms a potent explosive when combined with fuel oil. It was the key ingredient
in the truck bomb that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building
in Oklahoma City in 1995. - Anjali Cordeiro
Hatfill Trained U.S. Team on Bioweapons
Weapons Expert Had Lost His Security Clearance
By Marilyn W. Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 3, 2003; Page A03
Months after Steven J. Hatfill came under FBI scrutiny in the anthrax
investigation and lost his government security clearance, he played an
important role in training U.S. intelligence agents and Special Forces
for covert missions abroad to search for weapons of mass destruction and
was involved in planning security at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan,
according to documents and interviews with government officials and Hatfill's
associates.
Hatfill trained an elite team from the Defense Intelligence Agency on
ways to search for biological weapons, worked on secret projects with
the Army's Delta Force and sat in on at least one State Department meeting
on embassy security in postwar Afghanistan, according to the sources and
documents. He secured letters of commendation for his work from officials
at the DIA, which gathers military intelligence, and the State Department,
which was trying to add protections to safeguard U.S. diplomats.
The disclosure of Hatfill's work on secret bioweapons projects casts
new light on the government's investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks,
which killed five people and sickened 17 others. Hatfill, 49, has been
labeled a "person of interest" in the anthrax case by Attorney
General John D. Ashcroft, though the scientist and his supporters have
strenuously denied that he had any involvement in the case.
Hatfill was among an exclusive group of biological weapons experts whose
skills attracted the attention of the Pentagon, which needed instructors
as it began to focus seriously on the hunt for bioweapons in Iraq, and
the FBI, which was looking for people able to carry out the anthrax attacks.
Hatfill's involvement with the Pentagon as the anthrax investigation intensified
created tension between the FBI and the Defense Department, sources close
to the investigation said.
Hatfill, who has not been charged, remains under 24-hour FBI surveillance.
Pat Clawson, his friend and spokesman, said yesterday that he cannot discuss
many aspects of Hatfill's government work because they are secret. But
he said many agencies viewed Hatfill as a preeminent bioweapons expert.
"If the facts were known, most Americans would be deeply grateful
to Dr. Hatfill for his service to our nation," he said. "Steve
Hatfill knows nothing about the anthrax attacks. He is a loyal American
and patriot who loves his country."
Hatfill, who once conducted research at the Army labs at Fort Detrick,
Md., played an intimate role in U.S. preparations for the hunt for weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq, designing special equipment and countermeasures
that U.S. teams could use in hostile situations. In one top-secret project,
he even helped design a replica of the mobile biological weapons production
laboratories that the Pentagon believed troops might encounter in Iraq.
Hatfill's work on the mock mobile lab was first revealed in yesterday's
editions of the New York Times.
In March 2002, as the FBI's interest in him intensified, Hatfill led
a training session for the DIA's Chemical and Biological Intelligence
Support Team at Camp Dawson, W.Va., DIA spokesman Don Black said. The
agency was preparing small numbers of agents to be sent to Afghanistan
to relieve agents in the field. It was also training them for possible
deployment to Iraq and other nations suspected of having chemical and
biological stockpiles.
DIA and CIA agents assigned to the weapons hunt work with the 75th Exploitation
Task Force, which searched for weapons in Iraq in recent months.
To facilitate Hatfill's involvement in the training program, the DIA
had to appeal to its training contractor, Science Applications International
Corp. (SAIC), to allow the bioweapons expert, who had been stripped of
his security clearance, to participate, Black said.
A week before the session began, the SAIC had fired Hatfill amid mounting
concern over the FBI's scrutiny of him. But after the DIA's request, the
SAIC agreed to allow Hatfill to volunteer in the training program, a Hatfill
associate said.
The DIA was so pleased by Hatfill's performance in the specialized training
that division leader Esteban Rodriguez wrote a letter of commendation
on his behalf to managers at the SAIC. In the letter, dated May 1, 2002,
Rodriguez said that Hatfill "consistently displayed unsurpassed technical
expertise, unique resourcefulness, total dedication and consummate professionalism.
I wish to express my most sincere gratitude to this ultimate biological
weapons expert."
Hatfill also secured a letter praising his work for the State Department's
Diplomatic Security Service. That letter referred to a "counter-measures
program" Hatfill developed for State Department personnel who might
encounter biological weapons threats. In another effort with the State
Department, Hatfill sat in on one meeting about embassy security in the
spring of 2002 but was not sent to Afghanistan on an official mission,
said a spokesman for the Diplomatic Security Service.
Black said that "there is nothing to indicate that the FBI objected"
to Hatfill's role in the secret training course. FBI spokeswoman Debbie
Weierman said the bureau would not comment on Hatfill's work for government
agencies.
But other sources said the Pentagon's insistence on using Hatfill as
an instructor even as the FBI intensified its investigation of him angered
and puzzled some agents on the case. In the summer of 2002, when it was
ready for delivery to Fort Bragg, N.C., the FBI demanded to search the
mock mobile laboratory for evidence that it could have been used to prepare
the anthrax used in the mailings. The searches found nothing, sources
familiar with the events said.
While instructing government agents, Hatfill also was undergoing his
own specialized training to go to Iraq as a biological weapons inspector
for the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission
(UNMOVIC). A medical doctor who once conducted virology research at the
U.S. Army Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Hatfill
was on the U.N. inspection roster but was never deployed to participate
in the weapons hunt.
As an employee of the SAIC, stationed in McLean and in Joppa, Md., Hatfill
worked partly as a bioweapons and counterterrorism trainer who designed
realistic scenarios that could be used to prepare troops, government inspectors
and first responders for encounters with biological and chemical agents.
A more sensitive part of his job was working with defense and intelligence
agencies to design equipment and countermeasures that could be used in
an encounter with weapons of mass destruction.
One of Hatfill's most intriguing projects at the SAIC was his design
of the mock mobile lab, which was assembled for training of the Delta
Force, a commando unit of the U.S. Special Forces based at Fort Bragg.
The nonfunctional lab was built on an 18-wheel trailer and fitted with
a fermenter and other specialized equipment.
Hatfill planned the equipment, designed the interior layout and stored
construction materials in a warehouse before building began, said a source
who has seen the vehicle.
In its investigation, the FBI has traced all of the materials ordered
for the lab by Hatfill and others at the SAIC, the source said.
The trailer, known at the SAIC as the "can," was under construction
in late 2001 at a shop in Frederick, where Hatfill once lived in an apartment
near Fort Detrick.
The FBI recently completed a search of a one-acre pond in that area,
where it had previously found equipment that some investigators believe
could have been used to prepare the letters containing the anthrax bacteria.
Col. Bill Darley, a spokesman for the U.S. Special Operations Command
in Tampa, said that Hatfill also designed a fixed or "static"
nonfunctional bioweapons lab for use in training Special Forces in an
unspecified location in the western United States.
Darley said he could not discuss details of how these labs have been
used in training. The programs, he said, are at the heart of the "dark
tactics, techniques and procedures" used to prepare troops for missions
abroad.
Staff writer Tom Jackman contributed to this report.
July 2, 2003
Subject of Anthrax Inquiry Tied to Anti-Germ Training
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
This article was reported and written by William J. Broad, David Johnston
and Judith Miller.
Three years ago, the United States began a secret project to train Special
Operations units to detect and disarm mobile germ factories of the sort
that Iraq and some other countries were suspected of building, according
to administration officials and experts in germ weaponry.
The heart of the effort, these officials said, was a covert plan to construct
a mobile germ plant, real in all its parts but never actually "plugged
in" to make weapons. In the months before the war against Iraq, American
commandos trained on this factory.
The tale of the mobile unit provides a glimpse into one of the most secretive
of military and intelligence worlds, that of germ warfare defense. But
here, two stories intersect. The first involves this previously unknown
aspect of the Iraq war. The second involves the investigation into who
sent letters containing anthrax that killed five people in the United
States in late 2001.
Officials familiar with the secret project say that to design an American
version of a mobile germ unit, the government turned to Dr. Steven J.
Hatfill, then a rising star in the world of biological defense but more
recently publicly identified by the Justice Department as "a person
of interest" in the anthrax investigation.
It was unclear why investigators focused on Dr. Hatfill. Officials now
say a major reason he came under suspicion was his work on the mobile
unit.
Dr. Hatfill has been subjected to greater scrutiny than anyone else in
the anthrax investigation, but the government has brought no charges.
He has repeatedly denied any role in the attacks and has said he knows
nothing about anthrax production.
Dr. Hatfill, people close to him say, is proud of his work on the mobile
unit and says it demonstrates his desire to assist the government in biodefense,
even though investigators tried to use his work against him. In any case,
investigators found no evidence suggesting that the plant ever made anthrax,
his friends, government experts and investigators all agree.
The secret trainer is similar to the mobile units that the Bush administration
has accused Iraq of building to produce biological weapons. Neither its
existence nor Dr. Hatfill's work on it has previously been disclosed publicly.
Pat Clawson, Dr. Hatfill's spokesman and friend, said Dr. Hatfill would
not comment on any secret project or any role that he might have played.
Mr. Clawson also declined comment.
Dr. Hatfill helped develop the mobile plant while working for Science
Applications International Corporation, a leading contractor for the Pentagon
and the Central Intelligence Agency, the officials and the experts said.
They said the unit was set up last fall at Fort Bragg, N.C., to help Delta
Force, the Army's elite Special Operations unit, learn what to look for
in Iraq and how to react if it found dangerous mobile gear.
Several people familiar with the Delta Force trailer, including senior
counterterrorism officials, said it was intended solely for training.
They emphasized that its components were not connected and that it could
not have made lethal germs.
Even after the F.B.I. began investigating Dr. Hatfill, the Pentagon continued
to draw on his expertise. But tensions arose between the Justice Department
and the Defense Department over their access to the mobile unit, the weapons
experts said.
The trainer's equipment includes a fermenter, a centrifuge and a mill
for grinding clumps of anthrax into the best size for penetrating human
lungs, these experts said.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, suspecting that components from the
Delta trainer might have been used to make the anthrax mailed in late
2001, examined the unit, officials and experts said. But investigators
found no spores or other evidence linking it to the crime, they said.
The mobile unit is part of the government's secretive effort to develop
germ defenses.
Critics say such biodefense projects often test the limits of the 1975
global ban on germ weapons, which the United States championed.
But the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the anthrax letters only
weeks later prompted the Bush administration to greatly expand the number
of such clandestine projects.
Elisa D. Harris, a Clinton administration arms control official now at
the University of Maryland, said developing a mobile germ trainer would
not violate the treaty. But she questioned the wisdom of it.
"It will raise concerns in other capitals," Dr. Harris said,
"in part because the United States has fought tooth and nail to prevent
the international community from strengthening the germ treaty."
Senior Pentagon officials declined to discuss the mobile unit. An administration
official said the Pentagon had reviewed the unit to ensure legal compliance
with the germ treaty.
The American mobile unit was not a first. About 50 years ago, when the
United States made germ weapons, scientists drew up plans for mobile units
that could produce enough anthrax to kill almost everyone in a large city,
said William C. Patrick III, a former head of product development at Fort
Detrick, Md., then the military's center for developing germ weapons.
The goal, Mr. Patrick said in an interview, was to create a reserve in
case an enemy destroyed the nation's germ factories, in Arkansas and Maryland
at the time.
Over the decades, other countries, including Iraq, have also sought such
mobile gear.
After Iraq lost the 1991 Persian Gulf war and agreed to destroy its unconventional
arms, Iraqi officials told United Nations inspectors that Baghdad had
once considered making mobile germ plants. A United Nations official said
that inspectors "kept that in the back of their minds" while
looking for evidence of mobile germ plants. They found none.
In the fall of 1997, Dr. Hatfill, a medical doctor, entered the world
of germ defense by taking a job at Fort Detrick, where he studied protections
against deadly viruses like Ebola. In late 1998, he began working at Science
Applications, a company based in San Diego that has offices in the Virginia
suburbs of Washington. Among other things, it helps the government develop
defenses against germ weapons.
At Science Applications in Virginia, because of an increase in anthrax
hoaxes, Dr. Hatfill helped commission a paper from Mr. Patrick to assess
the risks of spores sent through the mail. The February 1999 paper compared
the probable physical characteristics of anthrax that could be produced
by amateurs with the known traits of American weapon-grade anthrax; it
said nothing about anthrax production.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other senior American officials
have said that in late 1999 a defecting Iraqi chemical engineer told American
officials he had supervised operations at a mobile germ unit, and that
Baghdad was making a fleet of them.
By 2000, the United States appears to have concluded that the rumored
Iraqi mobile plants were probably real.
At his job, Dr. Hatfill took on the mobile trainer project with enthusiasm,
colleagues recalled. At times, one said, he asserted that he was its instigator.
Military officials said that the effort was financed by the Defense Threat
Reduction Agency, an arm of the Pentagon that works to counter biological,
radiological and chemical weapons.
Experts said that Science Applications assigned the project to Dr. Hatfill
and Dr. Joseph F. Soukup, a vice president for biomedical science, who
helped commission the 1999 anthrax report.
Science Applications declined to discuss the project or Dr. Hatfill's
involvement. "It's highly classified," Ron Zollars, a company
spokesman, said. Dr. Soukup did not return phone calls.
To learn about mobile production, Dr. Hatfill again called on Mr. Patrick
and his encyclopedic knowledge, said experts familiar with their work.
Mr. Patrick, who also declined to comment, described the old American
plans in detail, these experts said.
The collaboration, experts said, produced a novel design that demonstrated
a number of ways to multiply viruses and bacteria, including the use of
fermentation, chicken eggs and tissue culture. It was not meant to replicate
Iraqi or American designs but instead to illustrate a range of mobile
biological threats.
In 2000, Dr. Hatfill began gathering parts for the mobile unit, an expert
said. Another quoted Dr. Hatfill as saying he had bought parts for the
Delta trailer long before its construction and stored them in a warehouse.
"It's all the ordering of equipment that in hindsight looks suspicious,"
said a third expert, who is familiar with the secret federal projects
that Dr. Hatfill worked on.
The trainer's construction began in September 2001, one expert said. Dr.
Hatfill supervised it at A.F.W. Fabrication, a metalworking plant on the
outskirts of Frederick, Md. The shop was a mile from Dr. Hatfill's apartment
outside Fort Detrick's main gate.
Although Dr. Hatfill seemed fully engaged in biodefense work, his world
began unraveling. That summer, the C.I.A. had rejected his application
for a high-level intelligence clearance after he failed a polygraph test,
associates and officials said. Then, in September 2001, the anthrax attacks
began and Dr. Hatfill soon found himself under scrutiny.
Science Applications fired him in March 2002. The secret Delta trailer,
a person close to Dr. Hatfill said, was then half built.
Mr. Zollars of Science Applications said Dr. Hatfill did no further work
for the company and received no further pay. Experts familiar with Dr.
Hatfill said he continued to work on the germ trainer. "He was doing
it on his own, using his own money," one recalled.
Later, as the Delta trailer was being hauled to Fort Bragg, F.B.I. agents
and experts pulled it over and thoroughly checked it for anthrax and other
deadly germs.
"The F.B.I. wanted to confiscate it," one expert recalled.
After tense discussions, the Pentagon kept the Delta trailer, which was
set up at Fort Bragg last fall in preparation for the war with Iraq. Experts
said many troops used it in training sessions run at times by Dr. Hatfill
and at other times by Mr. Patrick.
"This is a sensitive thing," Col. Bill Darley, spokesman for
the United States Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., said of the
mobile unit in an interview. He declined to disclose details, other than
to say it was used exclusively for training.
"We are not growing anthrax or botulinum toxin," Colonel Darley
said. "None of this equipment is functional. It looks like - it is
- the real stuff, but it's nonfunctional."
Friends said Dr. Hatfill was deeply committed to following through on
the project because it was for the Special Forces, in which he had tried
to serve while in the Army at Fort Bragg. "I had given my word,"
one friend quoted him as saying. "I wasn't about to break it."
Terror task forces ill-prepared for job, report says
By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON - Critical aspects of the nation's anti-terrorism strategy
lack necessary resources, and law enforcement officials believe the centerpiece
of the effort - a network of 66 federally managed anti-terrorism units
- is "inadequate" to investigate threats, a new report concludes.
The 102-page report from the Justice Department and the Police Executive
Research Forum found that the government's joint terrorism task forces
are understaffed and need important analytical expertise to conduct terrorism
investigations.
State and local law enforcement officials also raised long-standing concerns
that they still were not being fully briefed by federal authorities about
terrorist threats.
"We are more than a year past the terrorist attacks, and I'm not
alone when I say that local law enforcement executives do not feel like
they are in the game," said Massachusetts Public Safety Secretary
Edward Flynn, one of six co-authors of the report now being circulated
among law enforcement authorities.
Flynn, a former police executive in Arlington, Va., said in the report
that local law enforcement "often presumes that federal agencies
are withholding detailed, relevant and important information. We need
to work on issues of mutual trust so that we can share what information
there is, while retaining necessary security and integrity."
Officials first raised the communications problems with the FBI immediately
after the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Police executives said at the time that the FBI was not sharing information
about threats and intelligence gathered in their jurisdictions.
The FBI responded by hiring a police chief to address local law enforcement
concerns. Within a year after the attacks, the bureau also had established
the 66 task forces to investigate regional terrorist threats.
The task forces are managed by FBI field office directors. They draw
their members from local police agencies, state law enforcement and federal
offices.
FBI Director Robert Mueller has described the task forces as "the
heart" of the government's war on terrorism. In a speech last week,
he said the collaboration shows how the bureau was working with local
authorities "as never before."
But the report concluded that often too few local police officers are
assigned to the investigative units because municipal executives believe
they will get "little back from their investment."
"The task forces are the best thing we have going," said Chris
Smecker, the FBI's top agent in North Carolina. "There is a need
for more participation at the local level. But there should be a way for
police departments to be compensated for the officers who are assigned"
to the terrorism units.
Smecker's task force includes 23 members from 16 agencies. Nearly half
are FBI agents. He said lingering communications problems are often due
to the logistics of establishing contacts with large numbers of local
agencies within reach of regional FBI offices.
In North Carolina, for example, there are at least 450 police and sheriff's
departments.
The report also said the sharing of intelligence is complicated by widespread
confusion about how sensitive information should be distributed to police
executives who may not have the security clearances required by the federal
government.
At least some of the communications concerns were expected to be addressed
in elaborate government-sponsored terrorism exercises staged this week
in Seattle and Chicago. In those cities, authorities are testing the emergency
responses to radiological and biological attacks.
Carl Peed, director of the Justice Department's Community Oriented Policing
Services office, said the report sets the tone for how law enforcement
should operate in the aftermath of Sept. 11.
Opposition Slows Implementation of Smallpox Vaccination Plan
In mid-January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
began shipping doses of smallpox vaccine to states, with the goal of having
several hundred thousand emergency health care workers and public health
officials inoculated by late February. However, the program has lost momentum,
and just over 4,200 volunteers had received the vaccine as of 19 February.
Physicians, unsure whether the risk posed by vaccination is warranted
by the threat of a smallpox attack, and unions, concerned that individuals
who experience adverse reactions to the vaccine will not be adequately
compensated by the government, have contributed to the slowdown. The CDC
has put on hold its plans to move the vaccination program ahead to Phase
II, which would involve the inoculation of several million first responders.
Despite the CDC's shipment of 274,000 doses of the smallpox vaccine across
the country, the number of emergency personnel volunteering to receive
it, as well as the number of hospitals and public health agencies supporting
the vaccination plan, has dwindled.
ANALYSIS: Most of the controversy surrounding the smallpox vaccination
plan stems from the fact that a small number of recipients experience
severe side effects. Traditionally, approximately 1 in 1000 recipients
has had a severe adverse reaction, and 1 in 1 million has died. CDC officials
will continue to push the program forward, and expect that the number
of people receiving vaccinations will increase "as hospitals receive
more information and as federal officials resolve outstanding problems,"
AP reported.
February 24, 2003
New HHS center stands ready to track bioterror attacks
By Marilyn Werber Serafini, National Journal
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson has wasted no time
in constructing a state-of-the-art command center to handle any bioterrorism
or public health emergency that might arise. In less than 60 days' time,
Thompson finished the job, with the ribbon-cutting on the $3.5 million
center occurring in December.
The center is just across the hall from Thompson's office in the main
HHS building at the foot of Capitol Hill, and it won't require plastic
sheeting and duct tape to keep out germs and chemicals. The center has
a self-contained ventilation system that allows government officials to
take refuge there for an extended period of time, even if the rest of
the building is crawling with anthrax or another harmful chemical or biological
agent.
The center's purpose is to provide timely, accurate information and intelligence
to the secretary so that he can make quick, well-informed decisions about
a public health situation anywhere in the country. Special equipment can
map and display the progression of illness outbreaks.
Tracking is key, Thompson said in an interview just after the center opened.
If, for example, a chemical agent were released in a Minnesota town, officials
at the command center could plug in the location and the weather forecast
and then predict direction and travel time for the toxic plume. HHS could
then advise people in Minnesota about which areas to evacuate and which
hospitals to avoid.
The technology can also track non-terrorism events. It has already been
used in tests to monitor the West Nile virus, the recent pharmaceutical
plant fire in North Carolina, and the December typhoon in Guam. In the
West Nile case, HHS was able to show, county by county, how and when the
disease was spreading and how many people were dying.
The mapping also aids the monitoring of food poisoning cases, Thompson
said. "We can have FDA saying we have this food poisoning in Milwaukee,
and we have a map we can put up on that screen showing the quadrants in
the city, and see how it's spreading." He added, "We can have
the hospitals there. We can have NIH, some of their experts here, and
we can develop a plan right from here with CDC, FDA, and NIH all working
together with one map telling us how to do it."
It's also important for Thompson to be able to quickly locate his resources,
including personnel. The command center keeps tabs on the 50 tons of medical
supplies stashed in secret places throughout the country, and on 8,000
medical responders who are ready to sprint to the site of an emergency.
The technology allows HHS to know the exact locations of its secret pharmaceutical
stockpiles and medical supplies, which are split among 12 sites. "We
can move 50 tons of supplies into any city in America, Alaska, and Hawaii
within seven hours," Thompson said. In December, for example, Thompson
sent a response team to Guam to handle the medical emergency from the
typhoon. Other responders were put on alert. "If we have a crisis,
we want to make damn sure we can call them up and they know what they're
going to do-so we're putting more training in ... putting them on alert,"
he said.
The command center combines various forms of communication-including ground-based
and satellite systems-to ensure that if one fails, a backup is available.
The computers, radios, and telephones in the network can also talk to
one another. The idea is to be able to share information with state and
local entities and with HHS's own relevant, but geographically dispersed,
agencies, including the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.;
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta; and the Food
and Drug Administration in Rockville, Md. In addition, the center has
lines to other federal partners, such as the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, the FBI, and the CIA.
The center houses 26 workstations for Thompson and other top HHS officials,
including the surgeon general. It also has desks for representatives from
the FBI, the CIA, and the Homeland Security Department. HHS says the center
fills the gaps in communication that federal, state, and local agencies
encountered during the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Video conferencing for up to 10 participants is also possible. If a biological
or chemical event occurs in Boston, for example, officials at the command
center can watch the local news reports and use the video-conferencing
tools to hook up the Massachusetts governor, the Boston police chief,
the Homeland Security Department, and various federal agencies (the CDC,
NIH, FDA, FBI, and CIA) and give the participants real-time, interactive
communication. "We've got 10 screens here. We can interact,"
said Thompson.
Nine 60-inch-wide plasma TV screens allow HHS officials to monitor developing
public health emergencies through 4,000 channels across North America.
HHS can also view local television stations from up to 10 cities to monitor
breaking events in different regions.
Normally, the command center is staffed with a few public health officials,
whom Thompson refers to as his army. They keep an eye on trends and resources.
Now, with the heightened terrorist alerts, at least half a dozen HHS workers
are staffing the center. Thompson pops in at least once a day to get updates
and to make sure that his baby is running smoothly.
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