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National Communications System
Volume IV, Number 13

Addressing the Issues Domestic Terrorism and Homeland Defense

Testimony of Mary Lou Leary, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Office Of Justice Programs before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee On Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management, Committee on Transportation And Infrastructure, Washington, D.C., May 9, 2001.

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee.

My name is Mary Lou Leary and I am the Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP). On behalf of the Department, I wish to thank you for this opportunity to discuss the critical issue of preparing our Nation to better respond to incidents of domestic terrorism, including incidents involving weapons of mass destruction.

Addressing the issue of terrorism, including the issues of domestic terrorism and homeland defense, is a principal priority of the President and the Attorney General. Both firmly believe that one of the Nation’s most fundamental responsibilities is to protect its citizens, both at home and abroad, from terrorist attacks. And to do that, both are committed to ensuring that the Federal Government has a comprehensive, coordinated, and unified strategy to counter and respond to these threats, as well as to ensure that adequate resources are available to support these efforts.

Equally important is their commitment to state and local jurisdictions, to state and local emergency response agencies and the men and women who serve in them, and to the American people, that the Federal Government will work with them as partners to protect lives and ensure public safety.

Included in that partnership is the Federal Government’s commitment to assist state and local jurisdictions prepare for such incidents, and if such incidents should occur, to help ensure that they respond effectively. A critical point is that if such an incident were to occur in an American community, it will be that community’s emergency response agencies and public officials, who will be called upon to respond, manage, and mitigate the incident during its crucial initial hours.

During much of the last decade, Mr. Chairman, the Department has focused an increasingly greater amount of resources on responding to both domestic and overseas terrorism. Much of the Department’s efforts have been devoted to planning and coordinating activities with other Federal agencies, and working increasingly more closely with state and local jurisdictions.

As you are aware, much of the Federal coordination is done through the National Security Council, including its various sub-groups such as its Policy Coordinating Committee on Counter-Terrorism and National Preparedness. And, since 1998, the Department has been the lead agency for developing and updating on a yearly basis, the Five-Year Interagency Counter-Terrorism and Technology Plan - or more simply, the Five-Year Plan.

Also since 1998, the Office of Justice Programs has played an increasingly greater role in the Department’s homeland defense efforts based on the need to work closer and better with state and local jurisdictions and the emergency response community.

As you know, Mr. Chairman, the Office of Justice Programs is the Justice Department component responsible for working directly with state and local jurisdictions, agencies, public officials, and various public service disciplines in a wide-range of public safety areas including the preparation and response to incidents of domestic terrorism. In carrying out this mission, OJP is dedicated to working as partners with states, counties, cities and other municipalities to provide them with the resources and assistance required to help them do their jobs better. Our goal has always been, and remains, “capacity building.” OJP judges its success by the success of those we work with.

Currently OJP has several offices and a number of specific activities that are assisting American communities better prepare for, and respond to, any act of domestic terrorism that might occur. This includes providing, through OJP’s Office for State and Local Domestic Preparedness Support (OSLDPS), equipment, hands-on training, support for “real-life” situational exercises, and technical assistance to state and local emergency response agencies and public officials.

This includes supporting, through OJP’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and its Office for Science and Technology, research and development activities to provide the emergency response communities with better and improved technologies and equipment. This also includes the efforts of OJP’s Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) to work with state and local communities to approach and plan for the human consequences of terrorist incidents - dealing with the victims and survivors or such events.

More specifically: Since its inception in Fiscal Year 1998, OJP’s Office for State and Local Domestic Preparedness Support has made significant progress working with state and local jurisdictions. This includes:

1. Established a national-scope training development and delivery program for emergency response personnel, public officials and other state and local agencies involved in a terrorist incident response. As part of this effort OSLDPS has established six national training centers under the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium, including the establishment of OJP’s first responder training center, the Center for Domestic Preparedness in Anniston, Alabama. Also as part of this training effort, OSLDPS provides for training to be delivered on-site in local communities, and through various distance learning mechanisms such as closed-circuit television broadcasts and teleconferences. OSLDPS’s training, which serves the needs of police, fire, HAZMAT personnel, state and local emergency management, and state and local public officials, has trained over 60,000 since 1998.
2. Provided equipment grants to all 50 states, the territories and the district of Columbia. During Fiscal Years 1998 and 1999, grants were also provided directly to the Nation’s 157 largest jurisdictions.
3. Implemented a nationwide assessment of WMD threat, risk, response needs and capabilities to provide a means to better target resources. Each state, territory, and the District of Columbia is currently completing this assessment as well as developing individual plans addressing how each will improve its abilities to respond to terrorist incidents.
4. Developed a program to ensure that state and local agencies, together with Federal agencies, are able to test their resources through exercises. At the national level, these included the TOPOFF (Top Officials) Exercises conducted in Fiscal Year 2000, as well as several localized exercises. In all cases, whether a national level or local level exercise, OSLDPS coordinated its activities with other Federal agencies to avoid duplication and to maximize the value of the exercises.
5. OSLDPS is also in the process of completing the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici Domestic Preparedness Program. As you may know, the responsibility for this program was transferred from the Department of Defense to the Department of Justice in Fiscal Year 2000.

Additional progress has been achieved by OJP’s National Institute of Justice, specifically its Office of Science and Technology. This includes:

1. Since 1997, pursuant to the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, NIJ has worked with Federal agencies and private sector groups to supply the emergency response community with improved technologies. NIJ’s research and development activities have included working with both the Departments of Defense and Energy, the Sandia National Laboratory, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and others. NIJ efforts have resulted in advances in a number of technologies including improved communications and detection devices.
2. In cooperation with the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIJ is working in the area of developing safety and performance standards for equipment used by emergency responders when responding to terrorist incidents. Much of this worked in focused on the protective clothing worn by responders when responding to incidents involving chemical and biological agents.

OJP’s Office for Victims of Crime has also made strides in this area as well. For much of the past decade OVC has worked with the families of the victims of the Pan Am Flight 103 attack and the families of the victims of the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. OVC’s goal is to ensure that victims of such attacks receive the care and assistance they require, as well as to develop information to assist other communities across the Nation if such events occur elsewhere.

Mr. Chairman, these are just some of the key highlights of OJP activities. They are however representative of OJP’s broad approach to assisting state and local communities prepare for and respond to incidents of domestic terrorism. This is a task I believe OJP does well and effectively, and these are activities that build on OJP’s 30 years of experience working directly with state and local jurisdiction.

It is important to mention, Mr. Chairman, that in providing this assistance, OJP has actively and consistently consulted and partnered with other Federal agencies to ensure that Federal efforts support and complement one another, to ensure that the Federal “message”, particularly in areas of training, is consistent, to build on the synergy of Federal agencies working together, and, to avoid duplication.

For example, in the development of OJP’s first responder training, OJP has included other Federal agencies such as FEMA, the FBI, HHS and others in reviewing both the development and delivery of training courses. Further, OJP is in the process of working with other Federal agencies involved in providing emergency response training, such as FEMA’s National Fire Academy, to develop a unified selection of courses to not only avoid duplication, but to better inform the emergency response community of available Federal resources.

Another example is the TOPOFF 2000 exercise which involved, aside from several state and local jurisdictions, the cooperation, coordination, and participation of 27 Federal agencies. This included FEMA, our co-chair for TOPOFF.

In conclusion, I want to re-state the Attorney General’s absolute commitment to addressing the issues relating to both overseas and domestic terrorism, to utilizing Federal resources in an effective manner, and to ensuring that state and local jurisdictions have the resources and training required to help protect the lives of our Nation’s people.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my statement. I am happy to answer any question that the Subcommittee may have.

(Courtesy of the U.S. House of Representatives.)


Published for internal information use by the National Communications System. Parenthetical entries are speaker/author notes; bracketed entries are editorial notes. This material is in the public domain and may be reprinted without permission.

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