July 26, 2004 Since Sept. 11, 2001 the U.S. Has spent more than $500 million to make America’s seaports more secure. Sound like a lot? It isn’t. That’s about what the U.S. spends in Iraq in four days, notes STEPHEN FLYNN, whose new book on homeland security, America the Vulnerable, concludes that the U.S. is scandalously unprepared for the next terrorist attack. Why? Because it still doesn’t see protecting the homeland as a priority. Flynn a retired U.S. Coast Guard commander and a senior fellow at the council on Foreign Relations, says our leaders harbor the delusion that the real fight against terrorism is overseas. In the meantime, the U.S. has made scant progress in protecting its own infrastructure. Having spent years visiting American’s high-risk targets, Flynn offers a damning assessment and some solutions as well. ADAPTED FROM: AMERICA THE VULNERABLE: HOW OUR GOVERNMENT IS FAILING TO PROTECT US FROM TERRORISM. BY STEPHEN FLYNN. © 2004 BY STEPHEN FLYNN PUBLISHED BY HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS    BIOWEAPONS: LOCALLY UNPREPARED THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS PUTTING IN PLACE A SYSTEM CALLED BioWatch, which involves installing and monitoring a nation wide set of air sensors to check for the presence of smallpox, anthrax and other pathogens. The Federal Government is also in the early stages of developing a public-health surveillance system built on monitoring the health databases of eight major cities for signs of disease outbreak. Finally, the Strategic National Stockpile has been boosted so adequate medications can be rushed to designated sites within 12 hours. These are positive steps, but as with so may of our homeland-security efforts, they come with too few resources to address the need. Surveillance systems should be up and running in all our major metropolitan areas.    Americans are always on the move. If a biological weapon is released in an urban area that is not being monitored, a contagious disease could spread into multiple states before the first alarm is sounded. Even if a bio-attack is detected early and the federal stockpile of medications is shipped to the airport of the targeted city right away, out troubles are still not over. According to a study of emergency response to a hypothetical anthrax attack, completed in 2003 by operations researches Lawrence Wein, David Craft and Edward Kaplan, the release of just 2 lbs of weapons-grade anthrax dispersed into the air from a tall building in an American city could result in more than 120,000 deaths. The reason for this huge death toll is that the distribution of antibiotics at “street level” would be slow to treat victims early enough, and once people developed symptoms, they would overwhelm the capabilities of medical facilities. These findings were confirmed in a classified exercise run by the Federal Government in the fall of 2003. (continued below...)

WHY WE NEED TO ACT NOW OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS, I HAVE TRAVELD ACROSS AMERICA speaking to audiences candidly about our national state of insecurity. Initially I approached the enterprise with some trepidation, given that my message was unsettling. But it became clear that people want to hear the facts, however alarming. Even more encouraging has been the extent to which everyday people have expressed their sincere desire to be helpful in some way. This attitude stands in marked contrast to the sense of skepticism, even resignation, with which the general public has greeted the periodic raising and lowering of the terror-alert levels. Especially worrisome is the extent to which the public appears willing to second-guess official directives. According to a Columbia University study released in August 2003, 90% of Americans polled said they would not evacuate their homes in time of crisis based only on a government order to do so. Public-health officials are increasingly worried that weak public confidence in official guidance will undermine their efforts to carry out mass vaccinations and impose quarantines in the face not only of bioterrorist attacks but also of outbreaks of SARS and other naturally occurring diseases. Washington should be working overtime to stem this erosion in public trust. But the government’s tendency to deal behind closed doors with all security matters is only fueling the problem. Former Senator Warren Rudman, who co-chaired the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, predicts “there will be hell to pay” when the quiet decisions to postpone the response to known vulnerabilities become public knowledge in the aftermath of the next attack. Americans will be rightfully enraged to learn that senior officials were aware of the threat but had concluded that putting adequate safeguards in place to protect their citizens was too difficult or too expensive and then hid from the electorate both the reality of the danger and the decision not to do much about it.    Stephen Flynn, author of America the Vulnerable

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