http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1251/
http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/01013102.htm
http://cryptome.org/nssg3-02.htm
FEMA to Lead in Terrorism Response Efforts
By Vernon Loeb Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, May 8, 2001; 4:48 PM
Vice President Cheney will oversee development of a plan for responding to terrorist attacks in the United States while a new office within the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will coordinate and terrorist response efforts by over 40 federal agencies, the Bush administration announced today.
Testifying at a joint hearing of three Senate committees, FEMA Director Joseph M. Allbaugh said he would soon be establishing an Office of National Preparedness to coordinate federal programs and assist local governments in responding to terrorist attacks involving so-called weapons of mass destruction.
"No government responsibility is more fundamental than protecting the physical safety of its population," Allbaugh told members of the Senate Appropriations, Armed Services and Intelligence Committees. "In today's world, this obligation includes protection against the use of weapons of mass destruction involving nuclear, biological or chemical agents and materials."
President Bush, in a statement, said that "the threat of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons being used against the United States – while not immediate – is very real."
While the Justice Department will remain the lead federal investigative agency in cases involving terrorist attacks and retain responsibility for "crisis management," FEMA will now assume a role previously played by the FBI's National Domestic Preparedness Office for working with local police, fire and emergency management agencies, administration officials said.
Richard A. Clarke, whom the Bush administration has retained on an interim basis as national coordinator of counterterrorism and computer security programs at the National Security Council, has acknowledged that the FBI badly bungled its domestic preparedness mission.
But in choosing to transfer those duties to FEMA, the Bush administration stopped well short of creating a high-level coordinating council in the White House, as called for last year in legislation that was passed unanimously by the House but died in the Senate.
In anointing FEMA as the key domestic preparedness office for major terrorist attacks, the administration also declined, for now, to act on the recommendations of a congressionally mandated commission on national security, which recommended combining the duties of the Coast Guard, Customs Service, FEMA and Border Patrol into a new National Homeland Security Agency.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
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