WASHINGTON, May 12 (UPI) -- More than 8,000 officials from more than 120 federal state and local agencies in Seattle, Chicago and Washington Monday began a five-day, $16 million exercise designed to test the nation's readiness to respond to multiple terror attacks that use weapons of mass destruction.
The exercise, simulating a radioactive "dirty bomb" explosion in Seattle and the covert release of a biowarfare agent in Chicago, is being coordinated by the new Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. State Department from an operations center in a hotel in northern Virginia.
The exercise is designed to test the ability of federal, state and local authorities to respond to a two-pronged attack -- described by officials as a plausible scenario -- by a fictional foreign terror group dubbed Glodo, the Group for the Liberation of Orangeland and the Destruction of Others.
Details of more than 800 separate developments -- referred to by the event planners as "stimuli" -- are contained in a 200-page script. Representatives of the 121 federal and other agencies involved -- sitting together in the northern Virginia center -- feed the "stimuli" back to their colleagues, who then react as they would do in a real emergency.
At 3 p.m. EDT Monday, the simulated "dirty bomb" explosion was staged near Tully's Coffee in downtown Seattle. A small explosion kicked the event off, and burning cars and a wrecked bus were employed as props to test the readiness of emergency personnel.
On Tuesday, health officials in Chicago and Vancouver will begin "seeing" the simulated results of the clandestine release over the weekend of aerosolized pneumonic plague microbes in several locations, with a sudden influx of "virtual patients" reporting flu-like symptoms.
Critics have questioned the value of the exercise, pointing out that officials at the state and local level charged with responding already know the nature of the attacks, and have had time to plan and practice their response.
But planners say that many of the details about the attack are being held "close to the vest," and will be injected into the action unexpectedly. Their responses, dubbed "free play" by the planners, will be watched closely.
"That's the performance we want to see," Theodore Macklin, from the Office of Domestic Preparedness in the DHS, told United Press International.
"We're watching the free play very closely," he went on. "Every agency has plans, policies, procedures and protocols to deal with catastrophic events in the United States," he said, but added that some are better prepared than others.
"That's the purpose of the exercise, to find those gaps in planning and policy, fill those gaps now, while we have the opportunity, the luxury if you will of finding out where those gaps exist prior to a real world event."
In Chicago, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will have to interview some of the 1,300 "patients," played by volunteers, to try and work out the type of agent used and the site or sites where it was released.
"Even though they may know (the broad nature of the attack), these players are not going to just, as robots, walk through this exercise," said Michael D. Brown, undersecretary for emergency preparedness and response at the DHS.
"They will test their own systems. ... Observers will try to analyze at what stage did the public health system kick in ... At what point do (health officials) start noticing that they have this sudden influx of (patients with) flu-like (symptoms)."
Participants, even though they know certain details in advance, will have to earn that information in real time, explained Macklin.
"They will work through their epidemiological investigation ... If it takes a certain amount of time to do a diagnosis, then there will be an observer or a controller there that will look at that task and make sure it's performed in accordance with the amount of time it would take."
In Seattle, officials do not know the type or quantity of the radioactive isotope used in the dirty bomb.
"That's the type of information that has to be earned in the free play by the responders," said Macklin.
Planners have also created a number of unexpected events, which officials will learn of only as they unfold, and have to respond to. In Washington, for instance, the police department received reports of rioting demonstrators near the White House.
Officials have also created another wild card in the form of a fake 24-hour news channel, dubbed VNN for Virtual News Network.
"There are certain things that we have not told the participants about, but we can throw in through the Virtual News Network," said Brown. Planners will use VNN to create -- "at least theoretically," Brown stresses -- the kinds of problems that would be caused by the mass panic a real attack would likely provoke.
Officials also will give interviews and make statements to VNN.
"We're going to check on ourselves," said Chad Kolton, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman. "One of the things we want to learn is how well we communicate with the media."
The participants pretending to be reporters are clearly expected to be convincing. Guidelines for journalists covering the exercises ask them to take care to identify themselves as real journalists before speaking to officials or planners.
Brown says that internal communication is also one of the most important things the exercise will test.
"We are testing to see how well we communicate internally within the Department of Homeland Security, how well we communicate with our outside partners ... How do we communicate with the state and local folks ... There is a quite vast array of interoperable communications here that we'll be testing to see how we do," he said.
State and federal government agencies from Canada are taking part in the exercise, and at least one other country, Mexico, is sending observers, according to the State Department.
"What may appear to be a domestic terrorist incident has vast international implications in many different ways," said Thomas Hastings of the department's office for the coordination of counter-terrorism.
The exercise will require officials to consider a wide range of problems, like the impact on international trade, communications and stock markets, as infected Americans travel abroad and start turning up with symptoms at foreign hospitals.
"We're going to see a world wide crisis," bigger than the one provoked by the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, said Hastings.
State Department participants will prepare guidance for embassies overseas about what they should say to the public and to their host governments and advise senior officials how to respond to "stimuli" from other countries, such as the withdrawal of landing rights to U.S. aircraft by nations panicked at news of the plague outbreak.
The exercise will also involve local firms in both Chicago and Seattle.
"A number of private sector organizations have been invited to participate as observers, and their feedback will be sought on how the actions that we take in response will have an impact on them," said Kolton.
Starbucks, for instance, the Seattle-based coffee giant, will be watching, primarily, one employee said, to monitor the process that might result in a decision-making process that would be required to evacuate their headquarters.
Although officials at the DHS, Health and Human Services, and the Justice Department will take place personally, they will not be working round the clock as they would do in reality.
"Everyone in the DHS and I believe the other Cabinet agencies will be playing themselves," DHS spokesman Brian Roehrkasse told UPI. But he said in the White House there will be "several senior officials that will be monitoring the situation and making role playing-type decisions," in place of the president, national security advisor and communications director.
Macklin said the DHS would provide a report card for the nation after the exercise was over, but would have to strike a balance "between reporting the results of the exercise and not providing a road map for the adversary."
He said there would be immediate feedback meetings in all three venues, followed by a conference next month in Washington involving all the principle participants. A full evaluation would be completed by the end of September, he said.
This week's exercise is the culmination of many weeks of preparation, Macklin added. Preliminary exercises in Chicago and Seattle had already helped them refine their emergency response plans, he said.
In an effort to avoid public panic, Seattle residents were warned in the days leading up to the exercise that they might come across police and firefighters dressed in what appear to be space suits going through the motions of checking for radiation from the mock "dirty bomb."
"Residents may see people working in pairs, dressed in hazardous materials suits simulating the collection of environmental samples in these neighborhoods," Mayor Greg Nickels' office said in a statement. "Fliers informing residents and businesses are being distributed in these areas to ensure citizens understand the activities are exercise-related, and no cause for alarm."
Officials said the timing of the exercise was good because the national emergency response apparatus was already under pressure as a result of the tornados that have recently struck the Midwest.
"We could not have timed this better," Brown said, describing it as a great opportunity to assess the structures Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and other officials were putting into place as the new department was being stood up.
TOPOFF2, as the operation is called -- for "top officials" -- is the second congressionally mandated exercise to test the nation's readiness. The first, in May 2000, involved a biological incident in Denver and a chemical one in Portsmouth, N.H. Ridge told reporters last week that valuable lessons were learned from it, including that "multiple control centers, numerous liaisons, and an increasing number of response teams only complicated coordination." He said participants also realized that "threat information and a common threat picture need to be shared in a timely manner."
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(With additional reporting by Hil Anderson)
