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Title: White House Rehearses for a Domestic Attack
Source:
Newsweek
URL Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17302994/site/newsweek/
Published: Feb 23, 2007
Author: Michael Isikoff
Post Date: 2007-02-23 17:53:41 by Eoghan
Keywords: None
Views: 72
Comments: 3
The White House is staging a high-level exercise on Saturday to test responses to the prospect of a massive domestic terrorist attack involving Improvised Explosive Devices or IEDs—the same deadly roadside bombs that have been used by insurgents against the U.S. military in Iraq. White House Homeland Security Advisor Fran Townsend will preside over a group of senior officials—including Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell—as they attempt to deal with the latest nightmarish scenario cooked up by government counterterrorism planners. As part of the exercise, the officials will be handed a thick binder which lays out a scenario involving simultaneous terror attacks by “sleeper cells” of 20 to 25 individuals each dispersed in five cities across the country: New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles. The officials will then be tested on how they direct their respective agencies to respond. “We’ve designed this to overtax the system, to push the system beyond the breaking point,” said one senior administration official familiar with planning for the event, who declined to be identified talking about it before it takes place. While planning for domestic terror attacks is not new, the focus on IEDs in this weekend’s exercise seems at least tacit recognition that the wave of such attacks that have been killing soldiers and civilians in Iraq and to a lesser extent Afghanistan could spread to the United States. The senior administration official played down that concern, saying the scenario is “not based on any existing or current intelligence” that terrorists are plotting IED attacks inside the U.S. The official noted, however, that both the World Trade Center bombing of 1993 and the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 both involved versions of homemade bombs inside the country. “This has been a threat for the last 14 years,” the official said. But one Democratic lawmaker quickly questioned the need for such elaborate exercises, saying this one seemed more the product of overheated imaginations than real-life threats. “Sometimes I have a sense they’re watching too many reruns of ’24,’” said Rep. Jim Moran, a Virginia Democrat who serves on the House Appropriations defense subcommittee. “They need to get a grip. We don’t have IEDs here. They’re creating a state of fear beyond what is helpful.” The Saturday “tabletop” exercise is the fourth conducted by the White House since December 2005 and which were authorized under a Homeland Security Emergency planning directive. The first three involved scenarios involving a pandemic influenza, a smallpox outbreak and a massive hurricane. The excercises “absolutely helped us” to improve government responses to such disasters, the senior official said.
Poster Comment: Greater Buffalo (NY) residents are currently being treated to billboard ads like the one above, thanks to the fact that Bush's Department of Homeland Security seems to have decided to outsource its "war on terror" programming to humorously-named 'humanitarian' organisations like the American Red Cross.
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#1. To: Eoghan, Mekons4, christine, lodwick (#0)
Heads up!
Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is. ~George W. Bush Shit - I read, and re-read this three times, and it's still not from the Onion.
how about a tabletop impeachment exercise?
As part of the exercise, the officials will be handed a thick binder which lays out a scenario involving simultaneous terror attacks by “sleeper cells” of 20 to 25 individuals each dispersed in five cities across the country: New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles.
(About the quote: Speaking on the war in Kosovo.)
#2. To: robin (#1)
#3. To: Eoghan (#0)
The Saturday “tabletop” exercise is the fourth conducted by the White House since December 2005
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