Boston Herald December 27, 2005
Anti-terror flaws seen nationwide
By Kevin Rothstein
Security experts panned the ambulance delays and communications snafus that marred a major Hub anti-terrorism drill but said the rest of the nation is just as unprepared.
“That’s not rocket science, that’s checklist, and you do have to wonder why it is that four years after 9/11 it took them that long to realize that their checklist was defective,” said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org.
The Herald reported yesterday on weaknesses exposed during “Operation Atlas,” a series of drills that culminated in a June 4 simulated jet hijacking. Among the problems: Passengers were bused off the tarmac without being medically evaluated, private ambulances were delayed in gaining access to the airport and equipment problems prevented Boston and state police from fully communicating with each other and command units and control confusion.
Pike and other experts interviewed yesterday said the findings were unfortunate but not surprising, given the inadequate state of readiness across the country.
“Just about anywhere you look you’re going to find bewilderingly obvious things that haven’t been rectified. It just doesn’t make any sense. You sort of feel like Sept. 11 was a wakeup call and then everybody went back to sleep,” Pike said.
“These problems are not specific to the authorities in Boston. These are the same kinds of problems that occur in all these kinds of exercises that take place across the country,” said Fred Burton, a former US counterterrorism expert.
Burton added that private ambulances should be screened because al-Qaeda has eyed ambulances to launch secondary terror strikes.
© Copyright 2005, Boston Herald
