24 July 2003

The Four Horsemen

It is a manly sounding name for an exercise, Determined Promise. It implies a vow of great solemnity and is intended, I think, to promote public confidence. It is another in the series of exercises designed to stress and test the ability of a local government to respond to and ameliorate the effects of a terrorist attack. Clarke County, Nevada, is the host to the exercise, and God bless them, they have allowed themselves to be the test-bed for the Department of Defense to exercise in turn its ability to support them.

Which is what brought me to this little town on the high desert. It was a last minute thing, the decision to come. It was important but it never blipped on the radarscope as something that the office needed to put on the calendar. There is so much else going on. We had the huddled discussion late Tuesday about travel on Wednesday. I was the one with the least going on, and I drew the straw. I packed Wednesday morning, hastily and not well, and was on the airplane with time to spare. Headed west and picking up two hours got me in with enough time to make the no-host social that night. I walked into the Officer's Club at the base and was suddenly among those with whom I had served so long. Mostly Battle Dress Uniforms, some flight suits, some Khakis. The unusual club hors d'eourves, meatballs, a bizarre salmon sculpture. It must have been a huge fish, primordial. It was a bit frightening the way it was posed as though it were erupting from a wave, powerful back muscles fully tensed and fully cooked. Scary. The hors d'eourves are not supposed to be frightening. They should lie there and take it like a Swedish meatball should.

I looked out the window of the airplane. It is a Boeing 777, triple luck, but from here I can see only wing and the nacelle of the Pratt and Whitney engine painted rich United Blue. This is one of the transoceanic birds. My seat is a bulkhead and I have one of the moving map displays on the screen which folds out between the seats. I watch the little animated Boeing track across the continent. The computer informs me that outside it is -59 below, we have a slight headwind and we are flying right down the line between Iowa and Missouri. Time-to-destination is !:24, so we will have to scrub off some speed if we are not to perturb the gate schedule at Dulles. The man next to me is blind, and I try to assist him in small ways.

The B-777 is a nice bird with long legs. It has three channels of video entertainment. I am halfway watching the sensitive coming-of-age film about a young Punjabi-English girl called "Bend it like Beckham." She is oppressed by her culture and her family and yet revels in the richness of her heritage. She is enamored of Beckham, the footballer who was just sold from Manchester United to Madrid for millions. His penalty kicks are fierce, he is able to bend the parabola of the ball from his foot to elude the goalkeepers and hence the title of the movie. The young Indian girl wants to do it just like him. Beckham is a fantasy and a one-man industry. He is married to Victoria, who used to be Posh Spice in the Spice Girls. She is a nice bird with long legs. The film rolls on, predictable but slightly droll. I find myself wishing that the two female leads were in fact nascent lovers, which is one of the comedy-of-manners subplots. Instead, all works out and the girls win acceptance for women's athletics and both get scholarships to Santa Clara University in America. They walk off down the jetway at the conclusion, en route a bright new future. I am hoping for the same thing from my walk down the jetway but this trip hasn't shown me that. The conference has left me as cold as the giant salmon centerpiece at the hors d'eouvers table.

I leaned back, watching images of old women in Saris guarding a goal against the determined, dark-skinned girl. High above Missouri, I thought about the cool darkness of the conference room and the tension in the air. The room was filled me lean men in flight suits and camouflage uniforms. And a sprinkling of bureaucrats like me. The local folks from Nevada were dressed comfortably. They had nothing to prove and no secret agendas to act out. The Combatant Commander hosted the conference at a completely unclassified level so that foreign national could attend. He is a four-star officer, head of all the forces in the Continental United States. He has been in this young-person's business for a long time. His hair is close-cropped and silver. He looks like a wolf. He has been given a huge mission, defending us against the unknown, and he is confronted by a body of law that came from the Civil War that prevents the military from taking an active role in police activities. The South remembered the bayonets of the Union troops. Seated next to the wolf is a man in a suit, a plump man whose soft flesh rolls slightly over his collar and whose chin is threatened by his jowls. He wears gold-rimmed glasses and has an ego that surrounds him like a nimbus.

The General started out by thanking us all for coming, as though there were not huge equities and resources at stake. There are Mexicans and Canadians here, also interested in what America is going to do. "I think we should be prepared to do this together" says the General. I'd remind you there is no such thing as a stupid question or a stupid comment...we need this to be a good exercise...partners vertically and horizontally across the agencies and departments...you saw the schedule...we will finish on time. You will not get out late and you will not miss an airplane...Now let's fire away!"

"Thanks, Sir!" said the lean Colonel from the podium. He then gave an update on the exercise scenario. When I heard what they were planning my eyes began to bug out slightly. What had started as an emergency drill in Las Vegas had morphed into something quite extraordinary and national in scope. The concept arose from the desire of Las Vegas to test its response to terrorist incidents. The City drew in the County, Clarke County, to be precise, which drew in the State, which in turn attracted the attention of the Department of Defense. That is a dangerous thing to do, since once the Department is engaged, battalions of steely-eyed action officers will commence the Deliberate Planning Process. With the emphasis on the deliberate.

The Colonel went trough PowerPoint slide after slide. Now the exercise is a multi-level command post and field training event featuring the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, all riding in parallel. Pestilence, fire, storm and war were all planning simultaneous and parallel appearances. There will be a deployment of a major force to the scene, and then the concurrent planning process, hasty and deliberate, deployment and the redeployment of the respective task forces. The Cononel leaned forward into the microphone. "It will all carefully coordinated with the local authorities" he said crisply. "There will be multiple events acted out."

This is a big deal, I thought. Much bigger than I had imagined.

The lesser Generals at the front table squirmed a bit, since in the background is the reality of life in the new century. The Army brigadier in his cammies growled into the table mike that 70% of his service is overseas right now. "We have a real response problem now that the 82nd Airborne is deployed, real world, and we are putting other units on alert which don't normally deploy. Operation Noble Eagle is the driver for this OpTempo." I heard real protest in his voice at the stress the Marines and Army are under. Seventy percent, I thought. Not just most. Almost everyone is deployed.

The lean Colonel nodded at the podium. He continued to march through the vugraphs on the screen at the front of the room. First comes fire. He mentioned the functional components of National Interagency Fire Center would be going to Level Five in support of operations against western wildfires. Despite the resources allocated to the Center, this is a huge sump of manpower. The fire guys asked Defense to provide two squadrons of C-130s configured for water dumping. In real life, Clark County has already activated their Emergency Operations Center for fire response. Consequently, the fire component of this is already in progress.

Then came Pestilence. The Colonel barked "Slide!" to advance the vugraph. The laydown on the bio-terror is that there is an incubation period between the time an agent is released and the symptoms develop. So the scenario has the terrorists delivering biologic agents to the Las Vegas Strip before the beginning of the exercise. This is unsettling. I know the point of the exercise is response, not prevention, but I would prefer to see us stop the terrorists before the aerosol mist of the disaster wafts over the crowd waiting for the Pirate Ship show. In the exercise, the plague victims are going to start showing up at the hospital just as the exercise officially commences.

"Slide!" calls the Colonel and then we see another horseman. This time it is war. The scenario is intended to force critical and non-critical issues in front of the staff and its Commander. It throws in a maritime threat to stress the Coast Guard, and it will continue through the exercise. To stress the North American Air Defense Command and the Alaskan Command, there will be a multi-faceted air threat with credible terrorist threats to the strategic infrastructure threats in the Pacific Northwest. The Colonel calls for another slide.

On this one, in full digital color, the fury of nature arrives in the form of a Category Three hurricane coming ashore in Florida. This is intended, says the Colonel in an aside, to "cause bifurcation of forces and FEMA Region 4 play." It sounded exciting. I leaned forward in my chair to see what might be coming next.

"Slide!" called the Colonel. He then outlined the simulated derailment of a DoD weapons train on a DoD facility. Do you have any idea ho many trucks are driving around our Interstates filled with Mark-82 bombs? I didn't. I only vaguely remembered that there is an Army command entrusted with highway traffic management to get materiel to the coasts. "Slide!" There will be continued consequence management play, said the Colonel, involving response to the derailment, as well as the continued threat to the ports.

"All elements of national defense, all elements of the mission for our command will be exercised" said the Colonel, and the General nodded in agreement. He leaned forward to speak into the microphone on the table in front of him "This is the validation of the concept of operations, the graduation exercise which will validate the effectiveness of this Command." There was impassive agreement from the camouflage and flight suits around the head table.

My head was starting to reel. The Colonel ceded the podium to an earnest briefer who talked about the airline attack in Alaska. His part of the Master Scenario Event List (MSEL, pronounced "measel") included the hijacked airliners, stolen aircraft and the general aviation threat. These measels are intended to exercise the decision chain and serve as a stepping-stone to link to Coast Guard exercises in Alaskan waters. "Slide!" Terrorists lease 3 DC-9s. "Next vugraph!" They fly to Alaska, taking off five minutes apart. "Next vugraph!" They attack the jet fuel storage facility at Anchorage International. One of them can't make it and instead attacks a supertanker in Prince William Sound. "Next vugraph!" Then the third aircraft launches out of Canada, out of Whitehorse. The briefer leans forward with a gleam in his eye. "This is a real Lear jet, which will check in with Anchorage center, claiming he is going to do a touch-and-go. Then he descends out of controlled air space and never checks back in. There will be a real scramble for real fighters. When the aircraft is found, the system will have to determine if there is hostile intent. Remember, the airplane has done nothing bad yet except fail to check in. This phase, he said with a flourish, will include a simulated shoot-down as authorized by the notional Secretary of Defense."

Well, I thought. This is a long way from the good people of Las Vegas trying to find out if their hospital system is ready to take mass casualties from the Strip. I saw the Assistant Secretary begin to preen for his presentation. He walked to the podium and spoke without vugraph support. He cleared his throat and the uniforms all around the horseshoe table looked at him impassively. The Assistant Secretary is in his 40s. The Generals are all in their fifties. I could almost touch the tension. The Assistant Secretary fiddled with his glasses and started out with a brief story, a true one, he says.

A month ago he is having a Saturday morning staff meeting. The Staff took it pretty well, he said depreciatingly. As though he people who were already working seventy hours a week were happy to be there on Saturday, leaving their houses out in the county with glowering spouses and kids in soccer shorts to whisk down to the echoing weekend halls of the Pentagon. Meeting complete, the Assistant Secretary returned to his desk to complete some paperwork, something for which there is no time in the regular workday. There was a coffee cup on desk, half filled with cold dark liquid. The unfortunate officer who is his Chief of Staff, a doughty Marine, came in, picked up the cup and took it away. He brought it back gleaming and dewy. The Assistant Secretary protested that it was not appropriate for a senior officer to clean his cup, since it smacked of personal service. The Marine looked at him phlegmatically.

"No problem, Sir, I had to make a head-call anyway."

I thought about the anecdote, how it was calculated to be self-depreciating and yet showcase how important he was, while poking fun at himself. I thought that I agreed with the Marine. The Assistant Secretary continued. "I got a touch of food poisoning last night." I wondered if it might have been the salmon. Or maybe the residual of what the marine did to his coffee cup. "The good news is that this won't be a long speech."

"It will take an exercise of this magnitude to defeat and mitigate terror..." he began. He began to expand, as if he were an inflatable beach toy. He described his role as the domestic crisis manager for the Department, with oversight over all homeland security issues. He narrowed his eyes and continued. "Small groups of terrorists now have he destructive capability formerly reserved to nation states. The nature of warfare has changed and so has the nature of our defense. The Department's initiatives are good, including the establishment of my office. We are having a profound effect. 9-11 made America an integral part of the terrorist battlefield for the first time. This Command will be the preliminary and premier instrument of the Unified Command Plan." Then he leaned forward and began to read the mission statement, as if the Generals had never heard what they were supposed to do. "You will deter, defend and defeat terrorism within your assigned areas. And if the enemy 'gets into our wire,' this Command will provide support to state and local authorities in the wake of a (tactically) successful terrorist attack."

I was thinking about terrorists in the wire outside, hanging off it like Viet Cong sappers. "Remember that" he said decisively. "We will provide support to other agencies and in a subordinate level. DoD is not a first responder; it is rather the ultimate national safety net."

I could almost hear the music swelling up in the background and the Generals looked on impassively. Civilian control of the military is what this is about, I thought. But God, is this guy a piece of work?

The conference ran on through lunch but agenda items were cut to ensure that the important people all met their airplanes. It was useful to recall that the Commander was traveling, too, so ready or not the Four-star was going to walk to his airplane on time. It was a demonstration of grim military efficiency.

In the wrap-up, the Assistant Secretary quoted Lincoln and I flinched. I don't think Abe would have approached things this way. "War has changed in the last decade." Said the stout man in his dark suit. "We in uniform or in suits have to meet the new challenge. On behalf of the Secretary of Defense I say to the American people that we will be there when you need us...if we have a real world event...we will be there." Then he reminded the General that he was in charge of oversight over the mission and the Command and all the stars and uniforms in the room. I saw the rolling eyes. The Assistant Secretary finished, Saying it was a privilege to have a supervisory role over all of you."

What a pompous toad, I thought.

The General got the last word, since it was his conference. He was brisk, crisp and professional. He said that the ride of the Four Horsemen across the land was going to be the final exam for the establishment of his Command, and that the real benefactors of the exercise would be the American people. He stood, saying that there were other values we need to remember. Exercises like this will allow us to deter and prevent attacks. Applying all the energy we have, intellectual and otherwise. By getting this together, we are doing something worthwhile and establishing relationships that will serve us well in the future. This exercise will help us deter and maintain public confidence, which is not ill-placed and justly earned. Any suggestions you have to improve the exercise, even this late, get them to my Colonel, on a napkin, or any other means. We think being inclusive is important."

He called for last comments and almost everyone was too smart to make any. But there was one smart guy, a civilian, who was in the second row behind the head table. He waved his hand and said "Just one question, General." The room was hushed and people were ready to get moving. "What are the Vegas odds that this is all going to work?" The General smiled, but one of the Clark County officials stated the obvious.

"The odds are always on the House!"

The General laughed and the Assistant Secretary looked nonplussed. For all his oversight responsibility, it was clear that what was going to happen would not be controlled from Washington. The General leaned forward to his microphone. "Travel safe." He said, with a grin. "If something comes up, give us a call."