Napolitano reviewing security programs

WASHINGTON, Feb. 17 (UPI) -- Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano says she's ordered a review of the emergency preparedness program that tests the U.S. response to terrorist attacks.

In addition, Napolitano ordered a review of several other programs, including cybersecurity, a strategy for protecting the U.S.-Canadian border and the vulnerability of power plants and other key facilities, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

As Arizona's governor, Napolitano complained in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that the $25 million national exercise in October 2007 was too expensive, too long in planning and "too removed from a real-world scenario."

Emergency planners told the Times they have acted on Napolitano's criticisms by improving coordination with state and local partners in planning a scheduled disaster drill this summer, increasing the frequency of national exercises to annually instead of biennially, cutting costs to encourage wider participation and providing feedback within 90 days to participants on what worked and what didn't.

"Most of them were already on the radar scope in one way, shape or form," Steve Saunders, a retired Army National Guard major general who is an assistant Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator overseeing the national exercise division, said to the Times, "but her letter helped crystallize, I think, some of the things we needed to do."