MR. KAPLAN: I've covered organized crime for a long time, so it wasn't a great leap to start looking at terrorism.

INTERVIEWER: Oh.

MR. KAPLAN: At the same time, I've always had a very political approach to these issues and the way terrorism's been changing is quite fascinating. I mean, if you look at domestic terrorism in the U.S., was it 20, 25 years ago that the threat to the establishment, if you will, came from the far left. Now it's coming from the far right. And you've actually got leftist groups who are monitoring the far right giving information to the FBI. It's a very interesting situation today. So, that's intriguing. And --

INTERVIEWER: As a journalist who's written articles and books on the growing threat of chemical and biological weapons, can you briefly describe what kind of threat these pose to the U.S. public?

MR. KAPLAN: Twenty or thirty years ago, I don't think people thought much of the threat, terrorist threat of biological and chemical weapons, certainly not nuclear weapons used by free lance terrorists. That's changed now with the end of the Cold War and a number of significant events particularly the 1995 assault on the Japanese subway system by a religious sect armed with -- let's try that again. Particularly important was the 1995 assault on the Japanese subway system, the world's largest -- [clears throat] -- I'm having a bad start here.

Okay. Particularly significant was the 1995 nerve gas attack on the Japanese subway system in Tokyo. That really changed the equation. It changed the nature of the game. 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'd need 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. 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. It really is a different ball game now.

INTERVIEWER: So what kind of threat is this to the U.S. itself? And then is it realistic to think that the U.S. could be the subject of an attack in the near future?

MR. KAPLAN: I think it is realistic and we do have to prepare for such an attack. You don't want to get overexcited about it. You need to put it in contrast. You need to measure it against other kinds of threats and it's one of the problems today. Not enough threat assessment is being done. But it is a very real threat as we've seen by the attack on the Japanese subway system. The Japanese cult, Om Supreme Truth used a fairly impure form of nerve gas, yet they still managed to kill 12 people and sent thousands to the hospital. This was a chemical agent that wasn't made particularly well. Now, what happens when people can get ahold of more pure [son]. We're going to have a serious problem on our hands. There is ample evidence that a number of people are trying what the Om cult nearly succeeded in doing, causing mass murder on an unprecedented scale. The FBI has more than 100 cases we've learned involving threats to use weapons of mass destruction by terrorists in the U.S. That's significant. Now a lot of these are cranks. A lot of these are threats that don't pan out. But not all of them. I mean, they have seized laboratories that have chemical and biological agents in them. It's serious stuff.

INTERVIEWER: The Domestic Preparedness Program was set up in 1996 to provide funding for the DoD to enhance the capability of federal, state and local responders in incidents nuclear, biological and chemical terrorism. Now, we're almost 18 months into the program. How do you think it has progressed? Was it too ambitious?

MR. KAPLAN: Right now the Preparedness Program is a mess. There are some serious problems with coordination. There are turf battles. Different agencies are mad at each other. They're fighting for position. 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 will, and there's real money available, so there are various conflicts. And we don't have a terrorism czar. I'm not sure we should have one but right now, it's a rather uncoordinated mess. And until it gets sorted out, our response to a chemical and biological weapons attack is not going to be that efficient. It's going to be very messy.

INTERVIEWER: So what are the program's major weaknesses in your opinion?

MR. KAPLAN: Well, there's 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. To give you an idea, we have -- the acronyms tell a story in and of themselves. In the beginning there was NEST. This was the Energy Department's Nuclear Emergency Search Team. Then the FBI created DEST, the Domestic Emergency Search -- oh, God, I can't remember the acronym -- um -- you don't happen to know it, do you?

INTERVIEWER: No.

MR. KAPLAN: Domestic Emergency -- well, let me take it from the top. 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 has started MEST, 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. The Marine Corps have their own response team. Everybody has their own response team because there is some funding available suddenly and they're fighting over who controls the exercises or who controls the teams, the Army Reserve is mad right now at the National Guard. The FBI is mad at the Secret Service and on it goes. It's the story of money in Washington and the bureaucracy. And the big loser will be the public until this gets sorted out. And we have an official way to deal with this kind of a disaster. The good news is we're starting to do something nationally. The United States has recognized that there's a problem. There is a Presidential decision directive that came out three years ago that states that responding to terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction is the very highest priority of the U.S. government. So that's good, but where do you go from there? By and large, people who study this area believe that our counter terrorism response is quite good. The ability of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to stop terrorists, to defend the United States against terrorist attacks, is indeed good. But what they call consequence management, once the terrorists strike, this needs some work.

INTERVIEWER: Critics of the [inaudible] said that the level of cooperation between federal, state and local responders simply isn't enough at the moment. How do you think this could be changed?

MR. KAPLAN: Geez. I'm just a journalist.

INTERVIEWER: Well, who should -- who do you think should be controlling it if there's all this bureaucracy. Who should be in overall control? Is it right that it's the DoD if it's domestic?

MR. KAPLAN: The role of the -- God, I'm bad today -- the role of the Defense Department is controversial. [clears throat] I apologize.

INTERVIEWER: That's okay. Just take your time.

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 Commotadas] Act which prevents the Pentagon from becoming too involved in domestic life. On the other hand, this is where the resources to deal with this kind of an incident lie. This is where the ability to deal with the chemical or biological weapons attack exist. And we need to make use of those resources certainly. But who is controlling the scene? Is it the FBI? Is it overseas the State Department? We're still sorting out those issues. There are calls for a terrorism czar much like we have a drug czar today, but the drug czar's office is controversial because he doesn't really have power. He doesn't have budget authority. And probably the same thing would happen with the terrorism czar. But there needs to be leadership at the executive level from the White House, from the National Security Council. When I did my report on chemical biological terrorism, we were surprised to find out that the U.S. government does not have a figure for how much we spend on terrorism. Only in the last week has the Office of Management and Budget come out with a figure. It's about 6 1/2 billion dollars a year. This is a national security area. It's a multi-billion dollar area of the budget and we don't even know how much we've been spending. So how can you plan a concerted response to an area like terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. You don't even know how much you're spending.

INTERVIEWER: Thank you. There is a school of thought which says rather than focusing our attention on defense, we should be focusing on prevention through tools like foreign policy and international diplomacy which are more effective at diminishing the threat to American citizens. What do you think of that?

MR. KAPLAN: Counter terrorism strategy and what they call consequence management have their place and we're a little behind the curve in trying to get these -- particularly the consequence management areas implemented. If terrorists struck today we would have a serious problem dealing with those consequences. But certainly you need an integrated response that operates on political and diplomatic levels and economic ones. But we're facing a kind of threat that we really have not had to think about before and it is a quite real threat now. For the first time, you can't have individuals. You can have non-state actors, groups and people who have technical training who have the ability to take out a city. And we've never had to deal with that before. So obviously you want to draw the line at how much authority and reach you want our security and intelligence agencies to have. On the other hand, you do need to be prepared because the world has changed.

INTERVIEWER: I've heard that some people believe that we should be stockpiling enough vaccinations against potential biological agents such as Anthrax for maybe the entire population in the event of an attack. What do you think about this? Is this a policy which should be pursued? Is it realistic?

MR. KAPLAN: Um. One of the proposals that's been put forward is to stockpile vaccines in key areas of the country, vaccines against anthrax, against small pox, things like that. It makes some sense. It might be impractical to try and do this for 270 million Americans. I don't think we have the -- I shouldn't say that -- I don't know what we have. The -- trying to produce that much vaccine presents certain technical problems. And I'm not sure you can reasonably protect the population and again, that's why -- why threat assessment is so important and that's what at the government we hope will buckle down and seriously look at how feasible is it that we're going to have to deal with a massive outbreak of anthrax in the eastern seaboard of the United States. Probably not that feasible. 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. But what we're suggesting is that we do need to be prepared because we're seeing some of these predictions about terrorists and WMD, weapons of mass destruction, starting to come true. So we need to take that seriously. On the other hand I'm not sure we need to inoculate every American with anthrax. That doesn't seem to make so much sense right now.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think America will ever be in an ultimate state of preparedness where we would be able to sit here and think, "I know that if somebody released gas tomorrow, we would be able to deal with it."

MR. KAPLAN: You'll never be ultimately prepared. You're talking about almost apocalyptic weapons. What you can do is create situations to soften and mitigate the consequences. And that's what we're doing. 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 on idea what they were walking into. You have to be prepared when you go into a situation where biological or chemical agents have been released. It's not like fighting a fire. That's why the preparation is so important.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. Do you have anything else you want to add to this?

MS. : Well, if you could elaborate on what you mean by threat assessment.

MR. KAPLAN: I'm not sure I know.

MS. : I mean it's one of those phrases that when you read all this literature, you read consequence management, threat assessment and just cut it apart fro me or just what -- I mean what you envision when you say that.

MR. KAPLAN: Yeah. By threat assessment we mean sitting down and soberly looking at the different threats posed by different kinds of terrorism. How likely is it that we're going to get his with a nuclear terrorist? It's not very likely. In fact, it's the least likely of any of these scenarios that a terrorist will actually get ahold of a nuclear bomb. Now, watch, tomorrow there will be a nuclear weapon aimed at New York. Next is probably a biological weapon. Biological weapons are very hard to make and deliver. One thing we learned from the Om sect is that most of the attempts that they made at committing mass murder failed. They had real problems with delivery systems. So, to that extent there's a fair amount of hype in the publicity of biochemical weapons, weapons of mass destruction. These weapons are a lot harder to get, a lot harder to make and a lot harder to deliver than the media's letting on. And that's the saving grace. And then finally, you have chemical weapons which are -- of the group will probably be easiest. The Om sect in Tokyo actually tried using botulin toxin, a biological weapon, on the subway first and it didn't work. So they turned to the one biochemical weapon they had that did work, a nerve gas, saran, which is actually not a new weapon. It dates back to the late '30s. It was made in Nazi Germany. So, anyway, what we mean by threat assessment is comparing these different areas. How likely is a radiological attack? A chemical attack? A biological attack? How likely is a conventional terrorist attack? That's what's most likely and we'd better be best prepared for that. And then we have to start thinking about these other areas.