I’m whipped. I didn’t get home until near nine last night and getting up early enough to churn out the electronic version of the daily fish-wrapper is kicking my butt. I stagger through the ritual of making the coffee and filling the fry pan with something or other. I ate so late that I am not hungry. The news is grim this morning.

Terrorism is an irritating endemic illness and we have another outbreak this morning. The Bad Guys have demonstrated that they are still around, despite our best efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. I suppose the lesson is that we should invade our allies instead. Vicki Barker tells me that ten Americans are dead in Saudi, so it looks like al Qaida is expending what’s left of their military might in an attempt to slaughter us before we beat them to the punch and withdraw from the land of the holy shrines of Mecca and Medina. The BBC reports there are between 40 and fifty injured. The total looks to be about half of those that were killed at Khobar Tower. The targets were gated residential compounds, so we are down to targets that are relatively soft and protected mostly by some metal bars. I am singularly unimpressed, and marvel somewhat at the timing. I wonder if it was intentional that they struck while we were kicking off a major homeland security drill?

I have been on the edge of my seat for so long waiting for them to try it again that despite the loss of life, it is something less than a Palestinian belt-bomb attack. The hallmarks are there, the coordination and multiple targets, but rally sort of pathetic. That is the best they can do in their own country? I am so busy chasing my own tail here that maybe it is the difference in magnitude of our exercise and theirs that leaves me unimpressed.

Our exercise was on CNN just as the car bombs were being packed and last prayers were being said in Riyadh by the murderers. Our little drill is a $16 million dollar effort called Top Officials 2, the second in a series of congressionally mandated, presidentially led exercises to demonstrate how we will respond to the use of weapons of mass destruction here in the Homeland. After a year of planning, and total knowledge of the script by all parties concerned, the exercise lurched into motion yesterday.

We have fully activated the high-tech Secretary’s Command Center, filled it up with representatives from the Blood Banks and the Administrations of Health Resource Support (HRSA) and Substance Abuse and Mental Health (SAMSA). Organizations I had never heard of before, though their resources are extensive, and others I had known before, including NORTHCOM and OSD and the Centers for Disease Control. Most of the players are in the uniform of the Public Health Service, which is to say that they look just like Naval officers except they are not. I mean they really are beasts of a different stripe altogether, thought the insignia of rank and the color of the khaki is just the same. It is very disconcerting, thinking you are dealing with one culture and finding you are interacting with something else altogether. The ribbons are different, for openers, though you can find many who had active duty time in the military if you scrutinize their left breast closely. At least some of them have a clue. I had a chat with the Surgeon General. He looks great in whites, trim and elegant, and his ribbons start with the Bronze Star. He certainly has as much of a clue as any SG since C. Everett Koop had the job. I won’t even mention what the commissioned corps thought about the ones in the Clinton Administration.

The TopOff scenario is not written by the intelligence community. It is not designed to be plausible. It is all scripted, there is no surprise, and the warning in the exercise messages is clear and unambiguous. It is like nothing you have ever seen in a career in the real world. At noon local time in Seattle you might have seen some Seattle fireman with a donut in one hand and a torch in the other setting fire to some abandoned cars and buses, simulating the aftermath of the detonation of a large bomb. There are some According to the Master Event Scenario List, pronounced “Measles,” the first responder community does not discover that it was a radiological device packed with cesium. We stole a copy of the Measles long ago, operating on the principle that if you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying. The Department didn’t look very good in the original TopOff exercise, and we are determined to make it look like we are awake, alert and ready in this one. I think you are going to get your money’s worth on this. There just aren’t enough donuts for everyone.

The central issue in the response problem is to figure out that part of it, determine where the plume of radioactive dust went, how many people were under it and how to measure and remediate it. There are some key decisions. Do you tell people to go with their instincts, panic and run from the area? Or do you tell them calmly to stay where they are, close the windows, and wait for the omnipresent rain of the Pacific Northwest to wash the contamination away?

Anyhow, that is the Seattle problem. In the other half of the exercise, the Measles tell us that the same simulated terrorist group sprayed plague bacillus in several locations in Chicagoland. The problem with a biologic attack is that there is no immediate effect, no flash and bang. You don’t find out you have been hit until people show up at the ER displaying symptoms. Surveillance and detection are the read-and-butter of the CDC, working with State and Local health officials, and we will work with sixty-six hospitals across the region to deal with thousands of simulated cases of the plague. The Measles tell us that will happen late today, figuring it out. We will have dozens of volunteers who will actually show up at the hospitals and stress the system. Tomorrow is the focus day on the Department, and our Secretary is going to showcase our capability to respond. So there is all the concomitant stress you can handle down at the shop.

It is enough to make me almost forget that I have to wear a uniform today, since my exit appointment with the separations people over at Anacostia is this morning. I will wear whites, since the season has changed, and it could very well be the last time I am intentionally in the appropriate uniform of the day. It would be bittersweet, if I had time to think about it, but I don’t think I do. Maybe later. I am not sure I am going to have a retirement, though at some point the drinks will very definitely be on me.

In addition to that non-scripted event we understand that the anit-WTO wackos are going to come out of the woodwork today in Seattle. That is city is a hotbed of lunacy, and activists have been reported videotaping the firemen and the paramedics for future reference. They have a certain sickness, the loonies do, and it is definitely not the Measles. There is word that May 13 is “Bomb Day” in the Pacific Northwest and we may have some things going on that are not on the Master Event Scenario List. Like our Saudi buddies, there may be something unexpected out there today.

I would hate for our realistic exercise to get confused by something actually surprising.

Copyright 2003 Vic Socotra