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Public needs anti-terrorism training, report says
Monday, 27 November 2000 19:57 (ET)
Public needs anti-terrorism training, report says

By ASHLEY BAKER


WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 (UPI) -- Citing poor coordination between federal, state and local agencies charged with responding to biological, chemical or nuclear weapons attacks, a libertarian think tank said Monday that officials should provide anti-terrorism education, including intelligence on specific threats -- directly to the public.
The lack of any organized program to actively educate the public in matters of nuclear, biological and chemical awareness and preparedness is the Achilles heel of the entire national plan, said the report by the Cato Institute. The government should not withhold useful information.
The federal government spends roughly $10 billion a year training federal, state and local agencies to respond to such attacks, the report estimates. But experts say that bureaucratic turf battles between the dozens of federal agencies involved in disaster assistance have slowed training and drained resources away from local officials.
While citing Israel's distribution of gas masks during the Gulf War to urge the distribution of materials to civilians, the report said similar action in the United States would probably not be workable, given the high cost of needed equipment and the potential for spreading panic.
According to Michael Moodie, president of the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute, the potential destructive power of chemical and biological weapons was largely unknown to the public until March 1995, when release of the nerve agent Sarin in the Tokyo subway killed 12 and injured about 5,000. And because of the complex and ever-changing nature of potential threats, Moodie said no single solution could prevent all attacks.
You can say absolutely that you need training, equipment and infrastructure at all levels to respond to threats, but you also need to understand clearly the challenges inherent in responding to particular threats, said Moodie. There are significant differences between a nuclear, chemical and biological attack. Part of the problem in some of the thinking we've done about responding to (such) attacks is that we have tended to lump all weapons of mass destruction together.
The basic problem is that we are just starting to understand the different attacks that can occur, said Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow for strategic assessment at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. Short of a direct hand from to heaven, there's no clear alternative to slowly evolving programs empirically. It's going to be years before we have really good answers to biological weapons.
In recent congressional testimony, Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet called the spread of weapons of mass destruction and missile technology one of the most important challenges to our country.
We are concerned by increased (weapons and missile) cooperation between rogue states ... and are aware of several instances in which terrorists have contemplated using (chemical or biological) materials, said Tenet.
Among the other changes urged by the Cato report are adapting military anti-terrorism manuals for civilian use and using already-existent state disaster response agencies to instruct other local officials.
While acknowledging the need for better coordination, Bruce Blair, president of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information, said that concerns over a possible chemical, biological or nuclear attack are exaggerated.
I think there's an element of exaggeration in this threat, both in the likelihood of attempts and the consequences should an attack occur, said Blair. Terrorism has declined globally over the last 10 years. I would certainly think this threat would justify better training in the medical community, but I just don't think it warrants actions like widespread inoculation like we're seeing in the military.
Copyright 2000 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

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