White House Rehearses for a Domestic Attack

White House Rehearses for a Domestic Attack
Critics say the 'tabletop exercise,' aimed at testing responses to an IED assault, stokes a state of fear.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek
Updated: 5:24 p.m. ET Feb 23, 2007

Feb. 23, 2007 - The White House is staging a high-level exercise Saturday to test responses to the prospect of a massive domestic terrorist attack involving IEDs (improvised explosive devices)â??the same deadly roadside bombs that have been used by insurgents against the U.S. military in Iraq.

White House homeland security adviser Fran Townsend will preside over a group of senior officialsâ??including Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Director of National Intelligence John (Mike) McConnellâ??as they attempt to deal with the latest nightmarish scenario cooked up by government counterterrorism planners.

As part of the exercise, the officials will be handed a thick binder which lays out a scenario involving simultaneous terror attacks by â??sleeper cellsâ? of 20 to 25 individuals each dispersed in five cities across the country: New York, Washington, Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles. The officials will then be tested on how they direct their respective agencies to respond. â??Weâ??ve designed this to overtax the system, to push the system beyond the breaking point,â? said one senior administration official familiar with planning for the event, who declined to be identified talking about it before it takes place.

While planning for domestic terror attacks is not new, the focus on IEDs in this weekendâ??s exercise seems at least tacit recognition that the wave of such attacks that have been killing soldiers and civilians in Iraq and to a lesser extent Afghanistan could spread to the United States.

The senior administration official played down that concern, saying the scenario is â??not based on any existing or current intelligenceâ? that terrorists are plotting IED attacks inside the U.S. The official noted, however, that both the World Trade Center bombing of 1993 and the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 both involved versions of homemade bombs inside the country. â??This has been a threat for the last 14 years,â? the official said.

But one Democratic lawmaker quickly questioned the need for such elaborate exercises, saying this one seemed more the product of overheated imaginations than real-life threats.

â??Sometimes I have a sense theyâ??re watching too many reruns of â??24',â? said Rep. Jim Moran, a Virginia Democrat who serves on the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee. â??They need to get a grip. We donâ??t have IEDs here. Theyâ??re creating a state of fear beyond what is helpful.â?

The Saturday â??tabletopâ? exercise is the fourth conducted by the White House since December 2005 and which were authorized under a Homeland Security emergency planning directive. The first three involved scenarios involving a pandemic influenza, a smallpox outbreak and a massive hurricane. The excercises â??absolutely helped usâ? to improve government responses to such disasters, the senior official said.

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