NARRATOR: The 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing shattered the illusion that the United States was invulnerable to an attack within its borders. Now headlines refer to growing dangers that can take out not just a building, but the entire population of a city.

ADM. CARROLL (USN, Ret.): I'm Admiral Eugene Carroll for "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR."

In America we all enjoy the benefits of a free and open society where the right to privacy and respect for the individual are fundamental to our way of life. Now we face the threats of international terrorism and violence by radical groups which clearly require close attention and new protective measures in our communities. Concern for the dangers of chemical and biological weapons generate special needs for the careful preparations.

In addressing these dangers, however, we must be careful that we don't overreact and curtail the freedoms which we prize and would defend. Our program today looks at what our government is doing to see if we are doing the right things to deal with the problems of defense here at home.

SEC. COHEN, Secretary of Defense (Press Club Speech):

"We have a superpower paradox. Because our potential adversaries know they can't win in a conventional challenge to the United States forces, so they're more likely to try unconventional or asymmetrical methods, such as biological or chemical weapons."

NARRATOR: Chemical and biological weapons, the use of poison gas, germs and other deadly toxins as weapons of war. Military experts, political analysts and the president all tell us that chemical and biological weapons have joined nuclear weapons as major threats to the United States. Political spin-doctors refer to "weapons of mass destruction" or "weapons of terror," phrases intended to strike fear in the heart of every American.

Major General George Friel oversees the US Army's Chemical and Biological Defense Command.

GEN. FRIEL: If any nation-state or any terrorist organization would choose to attack the United States anywhere in the world, it would use what we term as the asymmetrical threat. It would bring basically to their battle and to their planning efforts a threat that would be real to the United States. The conventional threat is not real.

NARRATOR: At least 25 countries are known to be developing chemical and biological weapons, but nations are not the only ones attempting to develop such weapons. Terrorists, extreme cults, even crazed individuals both foreign and domestic have the ability to pose a danger to American civilians.

MR. KAPLAN: It really is a different ballgame now.

NARRATOR: David Kaplan is a senior editor with US News & World Report and has written extensively on terrorism.

MR. KAPLAN: What we're seeing is that for the first time, technology and training have become so widespread that ordinary people can gain access to extraordinary weapons.

SEN. KERREY (D-NE) (at congressional hearing):

"Our first reaction when these weapons are discussed is fear and it's a very natural and understandable reaction. But our fear is the terrorist's objective. They want us to panic and they want to be on the news, and we can't let them achieve this objective. Fear produces bad decisions. We must set aside our fear and respond to biological terrorism the way we respond to all threats: With good intelligence, alert law enforcement, scientific research, sound laws and regulations, training and preparation for our first responders and our health care professionals, and education for the rest of us."

NARRATOR: To guard against a possible chemical or biological attack, the Pentagon has introduced a series of initiatives aimed at bolstering domestic preparedness at local, state and federal levels. But as money is continually fed into these programs, has the government realistically assessed the probability of an attack?

For some, pouring more money into the military budget should not be the only course of action to prevent a possible chemical and biological attack against US citizens. They believe that US actions abroad and an interventionist foreign policy breed resentment among those who see the US presence overseas as intrusive in their internal affairs.

RICHARD BETTS (at CATO conference):

"The main source of the potential danger is probably US intervention abroad and the active US global foreign policy role to which we've become accustomed over the last half-century."

NARRATOR: Others argue that while the way we conduct foreign policy may reduce the potential for chemical or biological attack originating outside the US, it would not necessarily reduce the threat from within our borders.

Zach Selden is a chemical and biological weapons expert with Business Executives for National Security.

MR. SELDEN: I think the primary threat that we face from biological weapons is not necessarily from abroad, it's from apocalyptic terrorist groups and it's from domestic groups, which are not affected by US foreign policy.

NARRATOR: Congressman Ike Skelton, a ranking member of the House Committee for National Security, agrees.

REP. SKELTON (D-MO): International diplomacy would not have stopped a Timothy McVeigh from doing what he was convicted of doing in Oklahoma City. Regardless of what we do internationally, I'm convinced there will always be those terrorists that want to get at America.

NARRATOR: International treaties, such as the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, or BWC, are another possible means to prevent the use of biological and chemical weapons. The United States has joined many other nations in signing and ratifying treaties banning the production, stockpiling and use of chemical and biological weapons.

MR. SELDEN: We say the real threat is a terrorist incident. An international convention doesn't really get to that. However, the BWC can reduce the threat from state actors, and that's definitely worth the effort, but we have to be aware of its limits.

NARRATOR: In 1995, the Japanese cult, Aum Shinrinkyo, released sarin gas in the Tokyo subway, killing 12 and injuring thousands.

MR. KAPLAN: That really changed the equation. It changed the nature of the game.

NARRATOR: David Kaplan was living in Tokyo at the time of the attack and is co-author of "The Cult at the End of the World."

MR. KAPLAN: For the first time, we had a group of terrorists, a sophisticated, independent group that was not state-sponsored using weapons of mass destruction against a civilian target. We've never seen that before. We've had security experts warn that this kind of scenario's going to come to pass, but this is the first time it happened. And since then, it's just had kind of a snowballing effect.

NARRATOR: The Tokyo attack prompted President Clinton to issue a president directive, which declared that the "highest priority" should be given to diminishing our vulnerability to a possible chemical or biological attack on the United States. The presidential directive established the US Combat and Terrorism Program, which requires all federal agencies with expertise in chemical and biological defense to coordinate a government inter-agency response.

The State Department leads international counter-terrorist efforts. The Justice Department, acting through the FBI, leads domestic counter-terrorism and crisis management, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, leads disaster response, all with the support of the Defense Department.

GEN. FRIEL: The Department of Defense brings unique capabilities as well as an emergency response capability for chemical and biological weapons. Because for many years after World War I the United States was involved in both the research and development and building those weapons and in developing the capability of defending against them for our armed forces.

NARRATOR: In addition, Congress passed the Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction Act of 1996. This act allocates approximately $50 million annually for the Domestic Preparedness Program. Under this program, the Defense Department is responsible for training emergency responders in the largest 120 US cities to deal with a chemical and biological attack.

Major General George Friel, commander of the US Army Chemical and Biological Defense Command, is responsible for the entire program.

GEN. FRIEL: The training program focusses primarily on adding the differences between what they currently are trained to do and what the city should be capable of doing in handling a chemical and biological attack. So, we're not retraining the emergency responders, but only adding to their current knowledge and capabilities.

NARRATOR: Training is coordinated by a senior inter-agency group comprised of representatives from six federal agencies: The Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Public Health Service, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

REP. SKELTON: Everybody, every agency has a different role to play. The Department of Defense, or instance, is the repository of all the knowledge relating to chemical agents and biological agents. The Health and Human Services is an agency that understands how to treat certain types of people that are infected or exposed. So, everybody has their own proposal to offer in this whole area. And whether it be the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Defense, or the State Department, all of them playing an integral role.

NARRATOR: Military Reserve personnel and federal medical, nuclear, chemical and biological experts train a core group of local emergency responders in each US city.

GEN. FRIEL: Each scenario could be and would be different, based upon the type of agent, the intent of the terrorists, and also emergency response capability of the organizations to prepare. In those that have long-term effects or effects that take hours to days to occur, some assistance can be provided by the federal government. But for those that require immediate response, the first responders in our cities and local communities would be those who would bear the brunt and responsibility for saving the lives.

NARRATOR: In addition to courses, each city receives a training package with literature, videos and $300,000 for training equipment. The sharpest criticism of the Domestic Preparedness Program is that many cities lack the financial resources to buy even the most basic protective gear for local emergency teams.

GEN. FRIEL (at congressional hearing):

"Most cities, large cities cannot afford to buy the equipment and certainly none of the small cities and volunteer fire departments across the country will ever buy this equipment on their own."

NARRATOR: While many local officials request more money from the federal government, questions have been raised on Capitol Hill as to whether financial resources are being allocated properly.

Responding to a request from Congress, the US General Accounting Office issued a report in April 1998 which was highly critical of the Domestic Preparedness Program. The report claimed that the program "...does not utilize any threat or risk assessment in order to define requirements and focus program investments."

MR. KAPLAN: By threat assessment, we mean sitting down and soberly working out the different threats posed by different kinds of terrorism.

NARRATOR: Chemical and biological weapons are considered to be a low-probability, but a high-consequence danger.

MR. KAPLAN: If you look at what's happening in terrorism worldwide and nationally, most attacks are still conventional. Most terrorists still use TNT or ammonium nitrate bombs, these conventional high explosives. They're not using these more exotic chemical and biological weapons.

NARRATOR: The government uses the term "threat assessment" to describe the first step in identifying and evaluating dangers to national security interests, such as protecting the homeland. The assessments include the nature of the attack, the likelihood of a successful attack, and its lethality. According to the General Accounting Office report, the government never actually established that the 120 cities in training are at risk of an attack.

REP. SKELTON: I don't think the threat assessments have been done or done very well for those agencies that have looked at it.

NARRATOR: The General Accounting Office report recommended that if threat assessment was undertaken, it would be cost effective and would help cities get training and select equipment that would provide the greatest benefit. In other words, it would result in a more constructive and focussed training program for each city.

In addition to training local emergency personnel, the Pentagon is one of a number of government agencies creating federal chemical and biological response teams.

MR. KAPLAN: The proliferation of acronyms tells a story in and of itself. In the beginning, you had a response team set up by the Energy Department called NEST, the Nuclear Emergency Search Team. Then the FBI was given control of things domestically to respond to an incident. They started DEST, the Domestic EST. The State Department got foreign control, so they began FEST. Then we have the medical community, it started MESTs, Metropolitan Medical Strike Teams. The Energy Department now wants to start BEST for biological weapons and CEST for chemical weapons. And it goes on and on.

NARRATOR: The military already has specially trained response teams present at major events, including the Atlanta Olympics and the president's State of the Union Address. Believing the active military could be overwhelmed in the event of a chemical and biological attack, Secretary of Defense William Cohen launched a plan in March 1998 to train the National Guard and Reserves in chemical and biological defense.

Beginning in 1999, over 100 response teams will be trained and equipped in detection, reconnaissance, or decontamination of weapons of mass destruction. The core of the new initiative is a $49 million program establishing 10 Rapid Assessment and Initial Detection, or RAID, teams, each with 22 full-time National Guard soldiers. The RAID teams, located throughout the US, would be the first military responders in the event of an attack.

SEC. COHEN (at Press Club Speech):

"This new initiative is going to be the cornerstone of our strategy for preparing America's defense against the possible use of weapons of mass destruction."

NARRATOR: Charles Cragin, Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, oversees the integration of National Guard and Reserve components into chemical and biological defense.

HON. CRAGIN: The beauty of utilizing the Guard and Reserve to be part of this military team is that they have, as the secretary likes to say, location, location, location. They are part of the communities in which they serve. They understand the local infrastructure.

NARRATOR: The new military teams have been created to fill a gap in local capabilities to identify what biological and chemical agent has been used.

HON. CRAGIN: We can't just sent in a canary and see if the canary flies out of the mine. We have to know what we're dealing with. And it was on that basis that we set up the Rapid Assessment and Initial Detection Teams.

NARRATOR: The Defense Department, however, is not the only federal agency claiming to have specialized chemical and biological expertise. The FBI, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Public Health Service are just a few of those seeking their own response capabilities. The fear is that a new biological and chemical bureaucracy is being created within the federal government.

SEN. SMITH:(R) (at congressional hearing):

"I know this is all evolutionary, if you will, as we begin to explore this, but I think the concern that some of us have is that we don't have this thing evolve into a huge bureaucracy that doesn't deal with the individual areas that you may have to respond to."

REP. SKELTON: There are some 43 different agencies either directly or indirectly involved with the terrorist threat and I'm convinced that the left hand does not always know what the right hand is doing.

NARRATOR: Current chemical and biological response efforts are often criticized for duplication of responsibility and a lack of leadership.

MR. KAPLAN: There is not enough coordination. There is no one to say to one agency, "You need to be doing this," and to another, "You should be covering that." We have duplication.

NARRATOR: General Friel disagrees.

GEN. FRIEL: There's nothing wrong with having some duplication, but there would certainly be something wrong with a void. And so, I don't see duplication as being bad.

NARRATOR: With response capabilities spread out among so many agencies, federal efforts are further complicated by the lack of a coherent response strategy directed from the top.

MR. SELDEN: The level of expertise that you would need to cope with this thing is spread out among the federal government, and in order to draw on all of that, you have to bring in all these different agencies. The question is how do you coordinate it and who sits on top.

NARRATOR: In response to growing criticism, President Clinton announced in May 1998 the creation of a new office to coordinate all counter-terrorism efforts, a terrorism "czar." Much like the drug czar, this office would maintain budget authority and oversee all government activity for counter-terrorism in the US.

At present, no one knows how much money is actually spent on all federal programs to deal with the potential threat of chemical and biological terrorism. Each of the over-40 federal agencies involved in counter-terrorist activities has its own separate budget.

MR. KAPLAN: There's a lot of money at stake. You have to look at this bureaucratically. Since the Cold War has ended, terrorism, counter-terrorism is one of the few areas of growth in the budget for a national security issue, so people are rushing to the mill, if you like, and there's real money available.

NARRATOR: Uncovering the total spending on chemical and biological defense is difficult because much of it is classified or lumped within broader categories, such as counter-terrorism or counter-proliferation. In 1998, the Defense Department will spend approximately $150 million on domestic assistance alone. In addition, the Justice Department will pitch in $37 million and the FBI another $52 million. Over five years, the Pentagon will devote nearly half of its $8 billion counter-proliferation budget to chemical and biological defense.

What makes the whole process even more complicated is that no agency is currently required to add up or review funding on a government-wide basis. All of this has resulted in what the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight describes as "not simply an issue of indiscriminate spending and bureaucracy gone awry, it goes to the very heart of the security of our citizens and nation."

Many Americans support the idea of teaching local emergency teams how to respond to a chemical and biological attack.

MAN-on-the-STREET: I think it's advisable to train firemen and police officers and major security people in larger cities in how to deal with the chemical warfare tactics.

WOMAN-on-the-STREET: I think Oklahoma City should have taught us that small towns are not the only -- that can be targets.

MAN-on-the-STREET: Oh, sure, yeah, they ought to be fully trained in this sort of thing. I'd even like to see them carry out a few drills and publicize it, so it puts our mind a little more at east, I think.

MR. KAPLAN: Our fire response teams, our rescue squads, our police departments have no training in this area, and it's good that we acquaint them with what happens with a biochemical or radiological attack. When the Japanese subway was hit with nerve gas, the whole first wave of emergency responders, the firemen who rushed in there became victims themselves because they had no idea what they were walking into.

HON. CRAGIN: One of the problems that we have learned from the experience of others who have been unfortunate enough to have one of these situations befall them -- the one that comes to mind immediately is the gas attack in the Tokyo subway -- was that for several hours they did not even know what they were dealing with. And if you don't know that you've been exposed to a contaminant, and then people are dispersed and they enter a number of different hospitals, for example, you've just contaminated all of those hospitals.

NARRATOR: What is controversial, however, is military intervention in civilian life.

MR. KAPLAN: The role of the Defense Department is a controversial one. How far should the military intervene in civilian affairs? There are things like the Posse Comitatus Act which prevents the Pentagon from becoming too involved in domestic life.

NARRATOR: The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the use of the military "as a police or law enforcement force able to be summoned by civil authorities." It does permit military resources to be used for civilian purposes, including training. But only in an extreme state of emergency does the president have the power to federalize the military for use within the US.

The Justice Department and the Pentagon, very aware of Posse Comitatus, emphasize that the military at most will play a supportive role in local efforts.

HON. CRAGIN: We're not there as, you know, coming up over the hill and saying here we are and we're in charge. We're there to provide support as requested to civilian authorities.

NARRATOR: Once local response capabilities have been exhausted, the governor would utilize state resources before calling in the military.

HON. CRAGIN: National Guard personnel, which have the ability because of the uniqueness of our National Guard to wear a state hat rather than a federal hat at the outset, so that a governor can utilize these teams immediately without having to go through the legal process of federalizing them and having them provided as part of a federal resource.

NARRATOR: Since 1995, the US Government has placed an increased emphasis on domestic defense against weapons of mass destruction. Now, feeling that the US is at a critical point in its chemical and biological defense preparedness, Congress is taking a hard look at current and future domestic response programs.

REP. SKELTON: What we can do is to help coordinate, create laws, create prioritization, create the coordination between agencies, so that they really, should something like this happen, be able to respond correctly, promptly to help American citizens wherever they may be.

NARRATOR: Now is the time to ensure that future preparedness is based on the efficient allocation of money and a better coordinated response.

ADM CARROLL: Fear of the unknown, fear of new dangers is natural. But as you have just learned, fear must not lead to frenzied responses and costly, unfocussed efforts to deal with those fears. Creating an unwieldy tangle of bureaucratic agencies to spend great sums of money without well-defined programs and a plan to meet valid objectives will not make us safer. It will make us poorer and risk unnecessary involvement of military forces in our daily lives. And clearly, we need to prepare to deal with such violence and new dangers here at home, but the time has come to focus our efforts and save some money for American taxpayers in the process.

Until the next time, for "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR," I'm Eugene Carroll.

[Over credits.]

REP. SKELTON: America's a very open country. That's our culture. And we should, of course, be aware of the threat, have those state, local and federal agencies do their very best to prevent and stop any type of terrorist attack, be able to respond, be able to catch those and bring them to justice. That's the best we can do in this wonderful open society that you and I have.