CIAO DATE: 01/02

Overview of Federal Programs to Enhance State and Local Preparedness for Terrorism with Weapons of Mass Destruction

Over the past five years, the United States has launched an unprecedented series of initiatives to prepare for the possibility of a terrorist attack employing a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) within the United States. These initiatives, originating in Congress, the White House, and Cabinet departments, have resulted in a complex web of programs to improve the preparedness and response capabilities of local, state, and federal agencies by providing specialized equipment, training, and planning assistance. While a debate has raged over the risk posed by terrorist groups seeking to cause mass casualties with chemical, biological, nuclear, or radiological weapons, federal spending on domestic preparedness has climbed steadily despite the lack of consensus on the severity of the threat. From 1997 to 2000, federal spending to prepare for WMD terrorism swelled from roughly $130 million to $1.4 billion, a tenfold increase. Almost one-quarter of the entire domestic preparedness budget, and roughly one-half of federal spending on preparedness and response for WMD terrorism, has been in the form of federal assistance to state and local governments.

Given budget constraints at the state and local levels, the need to allocate available resources to more mundane and immediate problems, the low probability of any single jurisdiction becoming a target of WMD terrorism, and the lack of requisite expertise to address this threat, state and local agencies rely on the federal government for funding, equipment, training, and planning assistance to enhance their preparedness for a WMD terrorist incident. The proliferation of new assistance programs, offices, and special response units at the federal level, driven in large part by bureaucratic politics and congressional earmarks, and the lack of a comprehensive national domestic preparedness strategy have caused considerable confusion at the state and local levels. The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the current federal programs to enhance state and local preparedness for terrorism with weapons of mass destruction. The report describes the origin, purpose, and current status of the major federal domestic preparedness assistance programs.

More than 40 federal agencies have some role in combating domestic or international terrorism.4 Only five, however, have significant programs to assist state and local agencies in preparing for WMD terrorism: the Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). In addition to developing programs to build capacity at the state and local level, DOD, DOJ, the FBI, HHS, and FEMA plus the Department of Energy (DOE), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) control specialized assets that could be called upon to respond to a WMD terrorism incident.5 (Lists of the key response and support assets available to the federal government to assist state and local jurisdictions in responding to such an incident are located in the appendices.6 )