In some minds, horrific scenes of mayhem are being played out: A vial filled with disease-causing spores is unleashed in an amusement park. A germ is planted in a food supply. A package of nerve gas is set off among thousands of unsuspecting commuters in a crowded subway.
Those and other scenarios are being dreamed up not by Hollywood directors but by law enforcement authorities around the nation who maintain they are all real possibilities.
President Clinton referred to the concern when in a speech Saturday at Sacramento he depicted a future in which people such as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein– if unchecked–use poison gas and briefcase bombs to terrorize civilians in subways and office buildings.
“I say this not to frighten you,” he told Democratic donors at a luncheon.
Clinton said what is at stake with Iraq is the battle against “organized forces of destruction.” He asked Americans not to think of the current situation as “a replay” of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, where U.S. troops led a multinational coalition to expel Iraqi troops from Kuwait.
“I want you to . . . think of it in terms of the innocent Japanese people who died in the subway when the sarin gas was released,” Clinton said.
The bombings in Atlanta, Oklahoma City and New York; the Tokyo nerve gas attack two years ago; and now the expulsion of United Nations weapons inspectors from Iraq have prompted federal and local agencies to imagine the unfathomable and ask themselves: Are American cities prepared to combat a chemical or biological weapons attack?
Federal officials in recent years have sought to destroy stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq, the former Soviet Union and other countries while intensifying monitoring efforts at borders and airports to ward off assaults that could come from foreign or domestic terrorists.
At home, the FBI has established a Critical Incident Response Group in Quantico, Va., to handle chemical and biological threats and, along with the Pentagon, has stepped up federal cooperation with local officials in cities across the country.
So far, the efforts have paid off in accelerating the response time to potential threats. FBI and local authorities in Washington, D.C., recently were praised for swooping in on a suspicious package at a B’nai B’rith office that was oozing liquid. Though the package contained a threatening letter, the liquid turned out to be harmless.
Still, federal and local authorities concede, most American cities are vulnerable, lacking the equipment and expertise to properly respond to the devastation from a chemical or biological agent.
“I have been asked, `If the Murrah building (the Oklahoma City structure bombed in 1995) had a biological agent, how would we handle it?’ ” said Garry Marrs, Oklahoma City’s fire chief.
“My answer is, `Not very well.’ We are no better prepared to detect or to handle a chemical-biological assault than we were in 1995.”
The type of mayhem depicted in Hollywood movies about the effects of a deliberate introduction of a smallpox virus or sarin gas into an unsuspecting population is not too far-fetched, according to experts.
The Tokyo nerve gas attack offered a glimpse of the devastation. That attack killed 11 people and sickened more than 5,000 others, but the numbers easily could have been higher.
Smallpox, botulin or some other toxin dispersed by a small missile, airplane or even an aerosol spray also could cause great harm.
We’re “extraordinarily vulnerable,” said Harry Brandon, former assistant deputy director at the FBI. “There are some things that you put a drop in one of the water reservoirs around here and it will kill thousands and thousands of people.”
Because of the threat, some on Capitol Hill want to expand the readiness to the public health sector, believing that cities should think about reviving efforts to inoculate against smallpox and other dreaded diseases.
“There is not enough (smallpox) vaccine to immunize everybody, and some in Congress are just starting to talk about the need to develop more vaccines against biological agents,” said Andy Fisher, press secretary for Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), who led a recent effort requiring the Defense Department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to train local firefighters in handling chemical and biological agents.
The major focus is on local fire departments because they, not the FBI or other U.S. agencies, would be the first to respond to a crisis.
Although the Marines and other military forces have special training and equipment to handle such attacks, most fire departments across the country do not. The problem boils down to money as fire departments are often given a low priority from cash-strapped municipalities.
Most “fire and rescue personnel do not have the monitors to detect chemical agents, they do not have the gear to protect themselves and they do not have the proper training,” said Sylin Bynoe, legislative director for the Congressional Fire Services Institute, a Washington-based organization that advocates for firefighters. “Without the necessary tools, fire and rescue personnel will become victims themselves.”
Prompted by recent domestic bombings, Lugar introduced a measure requiring federal agencies to train 120 fire departments and to lend them monitoring devices and protective suits. Critics, however, contend that such training is inadequate, given that there are 35,000 fire departments across the country.
Moreover, these critics say, in borrowing the equipment, fire departments still will be left with the prospect of coming up with $10,000 for a monitoring device and $15,000 for just one protective suit.
“It would be pretty difficult for most fire departments to come up with that kind of money when they are having enough trouble paying for updated fire trucks and hoses,” said Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), who heads a House subcommittee examining the nation’s preparedness in handling chemical or biological attacks.
Weldon believes the U.S.should do more to help. He said he intends to introduce legislation that would establish a training center for firefighters at Texas A&M University.
“The security of our country depends on the local fire people,” Weldon said. “Without our help they are being shortchanged.”
