well, to the white house, we're not going to change this bill. mr. mcconnell: would the senator yield for a question? mr. graham: yes. mr. mcconnell: then am i correct, i would say to my friends from south carolina and new hampshire and arizona, that because of the administration's opposition to a detainee opposition to a detainee treatment provision that wasved approved overwhelmingly in therd aníbal denying everybody in thes senate in opportunity to offer amendments on any subject to the dod authorization bill and will not consider it on the floor ofl the senate for the first time im four decades. >> the minority leader is absolutely right, but i would fm add to my good friend frome -- s kentuckians even more it's not re we' just about us what we are denying as general petraeus and the cia director authorizationit fight the war. uniform pay

what we deny as men and womenita pay raises, health care benefits that they desperately need because the detention policy driven by i think the most liberal people in this country, and 25 out of the 26 senators blessed this package so senatory mcconnell was absolutely right not only does the senate not not have a say abo the way for work on thethe me taking the fight the enemyhe tos didn't have the tools they need legislation and would be ahis tragedy if we couldn't pass this bill which is sound to the core in all areas because the aclu doesn't like what we've done. mi >> senator, if the minority leader would yield for a question as you know, theefense intelligence community to fund the authorization bill for the authorization to operate in of

whether it's the budget or whether policy. its policy, alll compromise to in the majoritylo. leader's refusal to bring this bill to the floor and without of the authorities and respectedusy intelligence bills passed by the house and the senate in thehandd intelligence community is a policies needed as we go forwart in this ever-changing war on a s terrorism, and i would ask thens enator from kentucky if e shia severin his experience in the senate b ever seen any bill ofnt this nature held up and not about to come to the floor because of any single senators refusal to accept the provisions that are in the bill by an overwhelming vote like this.i'me >> mr. president, i'm not sure s who has the floor but i wouldro

say in response to my friendin:u from georgia -- >> we have unanimous consent for a colloquy. ne there may have been exampleso but i am hard-pressed to think p one recently. and the tradition the passing of the defense authorization bill his there forood good reason.ant it's theng most important thing the federal government does, ann the committeeat upon which thehe senator from georgia and arizone and from new hampshire servedr i are the experts on this matter and i find this a truly astonishing. it's consistent with the pattern of around here in recent times.l no amendments, fill up the trees denied the majority and the minority in this case bothmajo f oppo thert majority and the minority the opportunity to have any input on a piece of legislation that determines what we do onim the most important is

responsibility.le this is another example the way the senate hills hee house, and it's extremely ft bad direction for this institution and for the american people. i >> i would like to add as wellci the detainee compromise as senator mccain and i have talked about before is actuallyg the group of individuals we are talking about here are military custodies for members of al qaeda or affiliated groups who are planning an attack against the united states or its cat coalition partners and you think about the category of individuals the most dangerous category of individuals we haves to address that's why we can to the committee that we will become the default would be military custody for the senator wll see. agree

they are rightly so and i agree with them undertaking taking oue members of al qaeda around the world that fall under that category that are out theret ame killing americans and plotting against americans that ouro allies. yet they are objecting to athat provision a detainee provision that would give guidance to our military and intelligenceshld bt leaders that those individuals should be treated with militaryi custody seems to me very doi inconsistent with what they have th been doing in other contexts ani obviouslyvi this is a category f sis we individuals on a bipartisanre te basis we agreed to on theus categories of individuals who should be held in the firstmili. instance in military custody. and i wanted to add that behf of mr. brennan, the majority leader has site on behalf of thee administration as objecting to this provision he doesn't seem in his speech to harvard but hew gave recentlyho appreciate, this

profession and there's actuallyi a national-security waiver instd the provision, so i would ask the administration and mr. berlin in to read theseommit ssssed on a bipartisan basis oni uie committee because this is g such a kdaeync eissue to move fb to give guidance to our militarn but i'm concerned that the administration objections to this are misguided and the haven't read the actualn we arew legislation that we are workings on here. so it is my hope as the majority leader, the minority leader has said that we will move forward e with passing of the critical pieces for our troops because our troops deserve nothing less than to bring this forward tohe the floor because of the pay ve, raises and they deserve to have the everything that is in that bill but also i would ask the of ministration to revisit its its position because it seemst seem

inconsistent with its own have a policies and they don't seem tos have actually read theoverwhelms compromise that was overwhelmingly passed out of the armed services committee. renato >> i thank the senator from new hampshire, and i know that we bt are addressing this issue inolls some depth but i would remind m. colleagues the defense the authorization bill this is the f product of thousands of hours oy work, staff work, hundreds of our of testimony of hearings, a week-long march up of the full committee putting the package together, the faults, the ideas, the recommendations of the adm administration people in and oue of the administration that knowledge and expertise of the thousands of individuals goesof into this most important piece of legislation.rs but for 50 years has been taken,

law by the president of the united states.mall now because of one small provision of this bill the majority leader of the senate at the behest of the white house te has decided that we won't take up above a defense authorizatio. bill for the first time in 50shd years. who i think that the distinguished e republican leader and passed legislation that is vital to the nation's security and the men and women who take part innd ofd preserving it. it's kind of a sad day for this member. >> finally i would ask both the been senator from arizona who's been our leader on the nationalhe defense issues the basis of thir that the administration wants to establish a precedent that they

can capture enemy noncombatants' anywhere in the world in send i them straight into the unitedaru states into an article precourt is that the c brux of this i wod ask my friends? >> i would say to our distinguished republican leader at the isat is what is heart of this is that they want to treat these individuals in o court system otherwise why would you object to a provision onmemb military custody for those who d une membersa of al qaeda who ar planning an attack against thee united states or have attackedso the united states and i would also point out in t that there g waiver in this provision. the only thing i can take from t it is they do want to treat this war as people who are at war ar, with civilians as opposed to whc they are as enemies of thecouldi country.senarom >> can i ask the former attornes

general a question does this non lead inevitably to the direction of a mind set that would say on the battlefield you capture an enemy combatant come and that enemy combatants is inevitably on the way to an article iiihat koret could lead to the ceilingh above that enemy combatants fielead his mirandale rights on the battlefield if hey isn't viewed as an individual who is on the way to the u.s. court under the u.s. law wherep. does it and i ask my friend from new hampshire.e >> i would say there is an the f absolute concern here because that would be the first war inwd the history of the country where we would be treating those thate we capture on the battlefield giving them their rights to our civilian court system, and that? o where do we draw the line ans

would be outrageous to requirenc members of the military and immediately ask deutsch i have to give miranda rights, julyspey have to worry about some of the trial and resentment issues that come from the civilian court system, and that's why in the guidance of the committee on a bipartisan basis that this category of individuals that presumption should be militaryna custody because these arents thw individuals who were enemy war combatants but we are at war with the this fundamentally with inconsistent with what theiduals administration is doing treating these individuals in terms of right wing going after them around a the world and killinght them in certain instances that we wouldn't provide them military custody in the firsto o instance.yriend >> can also point out to myt as friend and my colleagues that ah is the case quite often with

even 2 though the vote was 25-1n deis provision in the senateid i armed services committee we dide provide at the request of theair head of fenestration a waiver for national security so we of state and of nationalquiremeo intelligence we've the requirementsf the of the to detainee issue. such i the secretaries of prince the certification writing that sucht a waiver is a national security interest of the united states so there is a national-security waiver that we have given that t the president of the united states away that he could wave every provision of the about legislation.he spit something i wasn't particularly happy about but in the spirit o. compromise we gave a waiver. mat could i say also ensure i seee floor. yes, they're have been contentious times. contentn last asere was contention last year,l about the the mask "don't ask, s don't tell" and the year before

about thet fact that they addedi the hate crime bill which hadset nothing to do with national security on the bill. but at least weo go ahead and take up and debate ant amend and have the senate act as the american people expect us to end this consideration voting and the president if it is thaty objectionable obviously could veto the bill. but to just say because these few pages right here of the bilf therefore we won't even take upt the bill for the first time in i 50s years in my view was a great disservice to the men and women serving. i thank my friend, the senator d from new hampshire and the minority leader and i yield the floor. >> over guantanamo detainees

policy. following these remarks the majority leader backed off his threat to hold up the bill here's how congressional quarterly reported in remarks on the senate floor tuesday the nevada democrat said he was committed to passing the measure and he said if the voting on it in regular order is the only way to do that then he would accept it. senator reid was responding to the republican demand that the detainee provisions remain in the bill. key republicans have said they are not interested in the democratic proposal to hold a separate vote on the detainee provisions outside of the larger defense policy bill. again that is reporting from ceq earlier today.

>> because i am a businessman which incidentally i am very proud and connected with a large company, the doctrinaires and opposition have attempted to picture me but i was a little before many of those men and i fought for the reform of the theodore roosevelt and woodrow wilson before another roosevelt adopted and distorted the word liberal. >> he was a member of the democratic party for over 20 years switching in 1940 wendell willkie sought and won the republican nomination for president and although he lost the election he left his mark in political history speaking out for civil rights becoming a foreign ambassador for his former opponent franklin roosevelt. wendell willkie is one of the 14 men featured in the c-span weekly series the contenders. live from indiana friday at 8 p.m. eastern.

semidey recent report by the wmd terrorism research center gives the u.s. mostly failing grades on preparedness for a large-scale biological attack for a deadly pandemic. despite spending over $65 billion over the last decade. the senate homeland security committee reviewed the report and heard testimony from the department of homeland security and health and human services and from fbi officials. center joe lieberman of connecticut chairs the committee. this is two and a half hours. >> good morning. the hearing will come to order. thanks to our excellent panel of

witnesses for coming today to discuss this topic, which is our nation's record over the past decade and improving our defenses against a biological attack or a pandemic. today's hearing is part of our ten years after 9/11 series assessing the status of a number of government homeland security operations that were singled out as an adequate or dysfunctional by the 9/11 commission. the impetus for the review today as everyone will remember actually came a week after the 9/11 attack long before there ever was a 9/11 commission. when our already traumatized nation was shaken by the mailing of anthrax spores to the media organizations and to the united states senators all told, five

people died from anthrax inhalation. two of them were postal workers, and one close to my home was a 95-year-old woman from connecticut. 22 others were sickened and thousands including a lot of members of congress and our staff took a course of powerful and a wild sex to ward off possible infection. we remember those days miller of your because one of the letters were sent to senator daschle's office in the part building where my office was and is located. the building was evacuated and closed for months while the team secured it and we were fortunate no additional anthrax was found and no anthrax occurred since the that was likely to remain the case. three years ago the grand talent commission on the prevention of

weapons of mass destruction proliferation and terrorism concluded that a biological weapon is more likely than any other weapon of mass destruction to be used in an attack against our country. the commission predicted such an attack would probably occur somewhere in the world within five years after its report which was three years ago and concluded then that the federal government was not prepared to. just last week the bipartisan wmd research center which was a follow-on to that grand talent wmd commission that the threat of a body of terror attack remains as strong as ever we have no specific credible evidence of what to make clear terrorists are now ploting such a specific attack and the

technological advances are i'm afraid making it easier, faster and cheaper to carry out such an attack so our question today is has the federal government developed the tools we need to respond effectively to a bio terror attack or a naturally occurring pandemic disease to develop and decimate, excuse me, develop and disseminate vaccines and antibiotics and assumed to the medical consequences the would result from such a biological disaster. over the past several years or the past decade we have spent billions of dollars on by yo defense research on strengthening first responder capabilities and on developing new vaccines, virus surveillance

systems and forensic science techniques we have done a lot more than i would say the average american knows we have done to protect other security. these investments in my opinion have made us a nation far more prepared to deal with a biological disaster than we ever have them. just yesterday for example the connecticut children's hospital which is located in hartford i noticed in the news conducted an exercise to test if it could immunize its employees within a 24-hour period with a virus outbreak or a bayh yo terror attacked is just typical of preparedness at the local level which is going on all over the country and is absolutely the key. communities across the country have significantly improved their disaster planning since 2001. but, it is also clear from the reports that have been issued

that were not prepared for a catastrophic biological incident much better prepared for a smaller wmd biological attack although there are other gaps in our capabilities, which i would like to talk about during this hearing. since 9/11, the congress has created a remarkable number of offices to deal with this terror threat so we haven't set back the advance research development authority known as barta to fund the wmd countermeasures. would you do if there is an outbreak, what do you do if you stop it and protect people has helped him greatly increase our preparedness by delivering medical countermeasures to the national strategic stockpile which now contains millions of doses of small parts of anthrax

vaccine is, post exposure for your picks for anthrax botulism and basic radiation treatments. as a result, our ability to treat victims with medical countermeasures has improved dramatically since 2001. the department of homeland security, the national by yo forensics study found new by yo forensics that dna or biological agents so criminal investigators can pinpoint the source. the obama at ministration is also tightening security at laboratories that use the most dangerous pathogens and those most likely to be capable of being what a nice to. i'm -- weaponized. since 2000 might be of help to facilitate this administration action. the government is also deployed,

and again, i mention this for the benefit and hopefully the new greater sense of security of the public our government has also deployed a network of aerosol sensors called biowatch around the country that is designed to detect anthrax and other agents. new technology is on the horizon there would shorten the amount of time that it takes the sensors to detect a biothreat to read these are significant advances in my opinion in our biodefense but they don't tell the whole story. last week the bipartisan wmd research center concluded, and i quote, although the government efforts have yielded considerable progress over the decade the nation does not yet have adequate by bio response capabilities of a large scale, and i note that large scale

biological event, end of quote. we still, as far as i can determine, lack of the strategy for dispensing the vaccines and antibiotics in a massive crisis. we don't have the ability to track the spread of disease in the real-time through a community or quickly reclaimed the contaminated areas to get people back to their homes and critical infrastructure up and running again. ten years after the anthrax attack of 2001 as far as i can tell we still don't have a modern anthrax vaccine that is more effective than the one developed in the 1950's. medical countermeasures for other chemical biological radiological and nuclear threats have not yet been developed, and tight budgets now have led to an understaffed medical surge forced to respond to the biological attack in the

communities around the country. in effect right now discussions are underway in the congress to eliminate funding for programs that coordinate the overall medical response to a attack such as the metropolitan medical response system, and for the centers that train public officials and emergency response. so the department of homeland security, health and homeland services and the fbi working together in coordination with state and local governments and the private sector have an enormous responsibility to continue to work to increase our capability to protect the public from the biological attacks. this committee has been working with the federal agencies to make sure that they can fulfil that responsibility, and we will continue to work in that direction to make sure they can do so in a way that is ever more effective.

so, the bottom line, as i look back over the ten years we have come a long way and perhaps we will never be as fully protected as we would like to be but we still have a way to go and i would like to focus with the witnesses on both elements of the story. what have we done since 2001 and what are the most pressing needs that we have, so i look forward to the threats of this excellent panel of witnesses today. senator collins, i appreciate you coming. i know you are involved appropriations bill the floor and are probably not going to be able to view it as a very long but thanks for coming by for an opening statement. >> thank you, mr. chairman. it has been a decade since the anthrax attacks that led fight people did and 172nd. since the operation killed anwar al-awlaki, who reportedly sought

poison including cyanide to attack the united states. the new leader of al qaeda had a medical background that raises concerns that he may have even a greater interest in pursuing chemical and biological terrorism. since 2001, more than $65 billion in federal farm this have been invested in by air defense, but progress has been difficult to quantify. with of the growth of new technologies and online road maps come terrorist groups may soon be able to threaten nation states with biological weapons and some countries like syria have never ratified the biological weapons convention.

as the chairman mentioned, senator gramm and former senator, both former senators gramm and talent issued a report in 2008 on the prevention of wmd proliferation and terrorism. they predicted the use of a weapon of mass destruction most likely a biological weapon in a terrorist attack by the year 2013 and him. just last week the issued a report card reading improvements in detection and diagnosis capabilities, medical countermeasure ability and communications. their report card is troubling. while it's shown progress in some areas they found stagnation on medical management and on the development of dispensing of medical countermeasures.

the members of this committee have only to think of our extensive investigation and to the difficult times the administration had in distributing the flu vaccine to respond to the naturally occurring h1n1 outbreak. the administration received from the commission in the areas such as the attribution of even small scale events and the environmental cleanup of the large-scale incidents. that is not acceptable. to safeguard citizens against the terrorism we must have the ability to respond effectively after an attack has occurred but this is no easy matter. we do not yet have the adequate by yo response to a buddy to meet the fundamental expectations during a large-scale attack. the wmd pension and prepare a defense says that senator

lieberman and i introduced in 2009 would have required the establishment of a detailed plan for preventing and responding to such an attack. a biological attack is especially worrisome because we likely would not immediately know that we had been attacked. that's why i remain concerned about the effectiveness of the bio watch program. secretary napolitano has touted this nationwide environmental monitoring system designed to detect the intentional releases of biological agents. but according to the gao, a threat agents may not be identified until more than a day after its release. while the next generation of biowatch technology could bring this down to just four hours, we are not yet certain that this

technology will be viable. in addition to the technological look great, better coordination between the dhs and hhs is necessary to enhance our ability to identify a threat agent quickly and to increase the speed and reliability of attribution so that we can help prevent follow-on attacks. ultimately our best hope in detecting and containing an attack is a low-tech and glamorous but critically important system of the intelligence confined with a robust public health surveillance network. this remains still the most effective system, and we must be careful not to look for technological magic bullets to relieve us of the duty to maintain and strengthen our public health surveillance infrastructure. the gramm tell the commission

also found serious flaws in the security of the biological labs in this country. a gao report in 2009, which i requested, reported alarming deficiencies in the basic parameters at facilities that house the world's most dangerous pathogens like a boy and the smallpox virus. the gao also found that regulatory regulation for the reliance on self policing. i was pleased to hear the chairman said that the administration has taken some steps to improve security at the labs and i look forward to hearing what those are. while security controls must be improved within our own country, global security problems or even more daunting i mentioned syria earlier but the crossroads of

terrorism, proliferation, biology and technology in the volatile countries such as pakistan are also troublesome. a multitude of the federal agency dhs, epa, hhs, cdc and usda and fbi among others all have some responsibilities for the bioterrorism. i will tell you it concerns me that so many different federal entities could be scrambling to respond during and after an attack, and that is of course in addition to the state and local health officials and first responders that are a critical part of the system as well. yet the exhibit branch does not have one agency or one offical that is clearly designated leader all elements of by a defense, especially the

coordination and dissemination to both law enforcement and public health stake holders of critical information. this appears to me to be a major gap in the prevention and response capabilities. if we cannot tell health providers what to look for when there is a potential threat, we can't properly trigger the public health surveillance system that is our best hope for early detection containment and response. we need a leader who can direct the response and eliminate overlap or redundancy. they also have the ability to coordinate across federal agencies and harness the assets and expertise the local government first responders and the private sector. i have to leave to manage a bill on the floor. i can assure the witnesses that

i will follow with great interest on your testimony, and i look forward to reading the q&a. thank you mr. chairman. thank you senator collins. i presume managing the bill. i'm going to make sure to ask the witness is to respond on the question about coordination among the many federal agencies involved here so think you. our first witness is the honorable tara o'toole to read dr. tara o'toole. the -- dr. o'toole was before us in an earlier incarnation as a noted by yo defense expert and practiced at the center for biosecurity of the pittsburgh maryland center is a pleasure to welcome you back as the undersecretary for science and technology and the department of

homeland security and to welcome your testimony at this time. >> thank you mr. chairman. senator collins, senator moran. as you have both already eloquently stated there has been a lot of significant accumulative progress and many of the areas in this complex landscape of biodefense over the past decade, and i would highlight some of the directorates contributions and understanding the threat the detection and the characterization response recovery and contamination of the bio forensics and last but not least the defense in the terrorism which is important even though we have an experience such an event before. as you both noted that the federal level biodefense is an

intense activity. i think the subject represents such year reducible complexity. at some level there is no hope for learning how to coordinate across multiple federal agencies and indeed as you said state and local governments, the private sector health care and public health. in particular, an austere budget environment i think a collaboration among the federal agencies is going to become even more imperative as we try to conserve resources and make sure our priorities are correct. when you see before you today is the beginning of a natural community of the biodefense experts in the government, which we certainly did not have come at least as robust as we do today in 2001 pity i would caution you, however, that some of the budget cuts being

contemplated will do great damage to that community. and if people don't see career paths in biosecurity in this complex maros of the subjects may suffer and so will the federal government expertise in this area in the times to come. finally i want to commend the committee for your continuing interest in this topic. this committee is really one of the only places in the converse that the entire landscape of biodefense is overseeing and examining so this i think is a very important hearing. first of all, what is different since 2001? we have a much better understanding of the risks associated with the specific bio threat agents under particular scenarios. part of this understanding comes from the biothreat risk assessment which is done baiji

annually. we have three of these major probabilistic risk assessments, which are strategic assessments malls which identify and prioritize the relative risk as they say of different agents and serve as the starting point for biodefense, priorities and investment decisions. as it is known also waited devise knowledge gaps that are then pursued by the national biothreat senator and provide a systematic science based framework for asking what if questions. what if it was easy to get ahold of this agent what would that do to the rest and so forth. every other year when we are not doing this elaborate risk assessment, we conduct what are called payload assessments which focus at more detailed evaluation of hypothesis testing for example which the impact on

the producing agents given a range of judgments from the intelligence committee about how easy that might be to accomplish we are also presuming detailed and empirical risk studies on the effect of the leasing of the biological agent or chemical agent in the metro system's. we've done this in boston and in washington using both biological and chemical stimulus to understand what would happen to the structure is under attack and how to recover them quickly. >> what kind of systems are you referring to? >> the boston and the washington metro. >> act will metro transportation. >> subway as you call them. [laughter] >> in the category of the detection and characterization,

as you noted in 2001, once it was recognized that letters containing anthrax had been mailed there was an avalanche of reports of suspicious powers causing thousands of first responder requests and a tsunami of samples being sent to the state labs for analysis. the response is very disorganized, confused, engendered a lot of alarming speculation, and repeated calls and responses that range from building the evacuation's disturbing people who had been in the buildings and washing them down to closing buildings for years at a time. i think the reaction would be different today. s and t has led a working group with the same alphabet, cdc,

fbi, hhs and nist to create the protocol for the rapid resolution of suspicious powder. this guidance basically walks first responders through how to deal with the powder they suspect of being a by allegiant and protecting themselves and also yielding a sampling strategy that would stand up to the reliable testing and persecution if necessary. these are also much more effective and efficient procedures. they are already being used by the fbi in several states, and they are now being incorporated and first responder training curriculum. we are also in the s and t evaluating the feasibility of commercially available technology, which would rapidly test powders in the field to be reliable. these technologies were available in 2001 and were not reliable. there were a lot of false positives that caused a lot of mayhem.

because s and he and others have developed reliable standards for doing the essays of micro biological agents, we can now effectively evaluate these commercial options and tell first responders what works and what doesn't. as senator collins says, the lab response network is critically important to our biodefense. this is state-sponsored that work which would come to them through the first responders. the too are much more organized and capable than they were in 2001. the too are using standardized assets as the developed s and t and the agency, and we are working on technologies that will allow them to search more effectively if we suddenly encountered a large swaths of tests. i will point out however that

the robust important leg of the response is also in peril. we've lost about 50,000 public health staff in the state and local public health agencies deutsch economic pressures. i imagine a final technology to the characterization category that is a devotee is working on. this is an outcome on our work on the metro studies we call to protect. we are concerned that we need to be able to respond faster to the detection, so we are looking at a two-tiered system, first a very fast detector that would automatically trigger the low impact action such as turning off hvac systems and would trigger a slower and reliable protector that would confirm whether or not this is a true

positive. we are also working on other things including advanced diagnostics. we've done a lot of work in the recovery and decontamination he. i would point out the decontamination is an issue mostly with anthrax which is especially party. it may not be an issue with other by yo agents at least not until long term. the dhs along with other agencies in particular are now conducting the studies at the proving ground to find out exactly whether or not and to what extent anthrax would come back up into the air and pose a risk to health after an attack. we've made great progress in the body over in six which is one aspect of the attribution.

i think this is an area where the wmd report cards were a little bit harsh. i would be happy to talk about that, but it is an enormous national capability that we are very proud of. finally, the agrodefense is working for work on the island disease center of the coast of long island. we are very close and in fact in the field trials of the new foot in mouth disease vaccine which would allow us to distinguish animals who were infected from a disease verses those who were vaccinated and the dhs is very committed to building the national facility in manhattan, kansas. a facility with secretary napolitano and i believe is essential for the u.s. agrodefense that is problematic in the budget and i would be

pleased to take questions on that in the q&a. thank you very much. >> thank you, psychiatry o'toole for the excellent beginning. i can't control myself from asking the foot in mouth vaccine that you will make available to the members of conagra's? [laughter] >> it's in the budget, center. [laughter] >> okay. i apologize, really. thank you for laughing quietly. our next witness is the honorable alexander garza, assistant secretary for health affairs and the chief medical officer in the department of homeland security. dr. garza, prior to coming to this position was involved in many aspects include serving in the u.s. military in the battlefield circumstances with great honor and effect. he heads the biodefense effort

at homeland security and runs operational components such as the biological surveillance system mentioned biowatch so we are glad you're back and please proceed with your testimony now. >> thank you. jarman lieberman, ranking member collins and distinguished members of the committee, think you for inviting me to testify before you today. secretary napolitano, in submitting the 2011 progress report, highlighted a number of activities that dhs is instituted to prepare for protecting against biological attacks. the office of health affairs works on several of these efforts, so i welcome the opportunity to discuss these with you. i am pleased as well to testify with my counterparts here from the fbi, hhs and the science and technology directorate. as was mentioned before, it requires a multi dimensional approach if we are to protect the american people. and we very much value the partnerships with these and other federal agencies. the committee is also very familiar with the rules and

responsibilities. we are the principal medical and health authority for the dhs, including acts of terrorism and under the laws it coordinator for the by a defense within the department. these are responsibilities that i take very seriously. as our mission is imperative to the overall mission of the homeland security. it has been mentioned already the risk of the biological agent used as a weapon against the united states as both real and concerning. just last week the bipartisan wmd terrorism research center released its 2011 bioresponse report card stating that the threat of the biological attack was real and growing. furthermore, rapid advances in the biotechnology have lowered the potential barrier once thought to inhibit would be bio terrorists. the anthrax incident of ten years ago although significant was a small scale attack on the casualties. it nonetheless showed one does not necessarily mean a weapon of mass destruction with a weapon

of mass destruction to affect severe consequences and wherever series of learned from this model. the department has made great strides in protecting and preparing the nation to respond to the biological attacks since this incident. we've improved our ability to detect biological agents, mitigate the effect, speed up the recovery and most importantly, save lives. i will discuss the initiatives that instrumental to the body of defense for the nation including biowatch come biosurveillance and planning and exercise efforts. one of the dhs most significant contributions in the defense in the early detection is the proper identification of a attack accelerates to detect the deliver dispense sequence. in time it saves lives. now the biowatch program is a federally managed operated nationwide biomonitoring surveillance system designed to

detect the agents. biowatch is strategically deployed to the high risk metropolitan areas and of the national special security events such as the upcoming apec summit. however biowatch is much more than a machine. it has evolved as a robust and work with federal, state and local individuals that together form the nexus of decision makers in the event of a biological attack. in 2010 that the dhs began testing and evaluating the next generation of the detection systems which we call generation three. the program's goals are to decrease the time the detection to the 46 hours, increase the population coverage and provide a greater cost effectiveness all without losing any accuracy. we are currently in the process of a rigorous and well controlled testing and evaluation program revalidating this technology. early detection through biowatch

is but one element of an overall biosurveillance and situational awareness system. we also manage the national biowatch system a consortium of the federal partners established to detect and monitor biological defense of the national concern. dhs has developed and continues to find an integrated multi disciplinary common bioservile lescol ability to provide the federal government and state and local partners with information and assessment of potential and unfolding biological events. furthermore understanding that all our local, we work directly with state and local public health emergency management and emergency medical service leaders to develop response capabilities for security threats including biological threats. for example, we are expanding local public health participation in the national network of the fusion centers. and together with fema we did a

lot anthrax exercise in the regions. these were designed to help coordinate roles, responsibilities and critical response actions following a wide area of the anthrax attack. last, we coordinate with our federal partners including those at this table on various medical countermeasure issues. these efforts and would the interagency the submit of a federal rapid response capacity and the dhs effort to stockpile medical countermeasures for our personnel which my office has led. as the minister of but a lot of blood samples, dhs has made substantial ljungqvist mengin improvements since of the 2001 amtracs attack and we are much better prepared than we were a decade ago. there are still however remains much work to do in the by a defense going forward. thank you for your time and i look forward to answering whatever questions you may have. thank you, sir. >> thank you, dr. garza for the excellent testimony. next we have dr. nicole lurie,

again to welcome back. we have four doctors on this panel, and it's reassuring. assistant secretary, for preparedness and response the department of health and human services. dr. lurie heads the strategy and planning efforts at the hhs and in that regard, overseas efforts to develop vaccines and therapeutics under the bioshield. thank you for your work and we look forward to your testimony now. >> thank you, mr. chairman, randy member collins, senator moran to read as you heard, i move the secretary for the preparedness response and pleased to talk about the nation's health preparedness for biological defense. as we all know ten years ago on the heels of a world trade center attack we dealt with a anthrax letter we talk about this morning. we were ill-prepared the time to face those attacks today i am pleased to tell you our public

health prepared nasa has made steady and significant progress. with each emergency from hurricanes and tornadoes to a pandemic in an oil spill we have continually improve our planning and operations. we now have strategies in place to coordinate our efforts and build a truly hazzard capabilities from the local to the federal level to ensure that the responses are flexible and can save lives. one area of progress is the medical countermeasure enterprise beginning with surveillance running all the way through to dispensing in evaluating a countermeasure. yet i will be the first to tell you despite the progress hasn't been fast enough. in december, 2009, secretaries sebelius requested a review of the medical countermeasure enterprise to ensure the nation has a forward-looking 21st century system. we've made improvements, many come in response to that review including strengthening surveillance, laboratories and countermeasure distribution plans. critical to the success of the

whole public health emergency medical countermeasure enterprise as an integrated approach to the former government structure to meet you should know that this includes all of the components of hhs, plus the dhs, the va, dod, usda. so it is truly an interagency effort. and all parts now of the chase, to -- hhs work together with companies outside the contract rather than at the end of the pipeline. in this aretas, active partnerships with industries have become really critical, and we've created new opportunities to communicate priorities and help companies especially new ones learn how to work more effectively with us. we've also strengthened our internal process he's making the government and easier partner to work with and i am pleased to report for example we have decreased the time it takes to announce review and award the contract for the broad agency by almost 25% in the last year to under six months.

the medical countermeasure review also per your ties as regulatory science at the fda and proposes innovative partnerships with industry to support the company's and ideas. thanks to the special reserve fund we've procured and stockpiled more critical life-saving countermeasures that at any time in the nation's history, including for smallpox, anthrax, botulism, reading a local nuclear threats as you mentioned. we now have a pipeline of new products including over 80 candidate products that are the potential to transition to the stockpile. and we continue to make progress in the prepared this for the next influenza pandemic. our long-term partnership for example, the first u.s. influence a manufacturing plant will become operational in the next couple of weeks. this plant will expand significantly for search capacity for the pandemic vaccine and could make vaccines for a third novel emerging pathogens in an emergency. last week --

>> excuse me. tell more about that because the committee was so focused on that during the hearings that we held. tell us where it's going to be. this will be the first inside the u.s. now. >> this is the first facility in north carolina and it's the long term partnership. then in addition, we are reviewing applications now for the centers for a chance to development and manufacturing called for in the sector is medical countermeasure review that will provide core services to companies and then additional manufacturing capacity. i don't know where those will be because it is still in the process. islamic it's good to hear during the outbreaks we were concerned we were dependent on the foreign manufacturers and they wouldn't actually feel pressure to give first to their local populations, quite understandable, so that's very

significant. i'm glad to hear that. >> think the progress has been remarkably alike congratulate of congress for funding and our team and partners for pulling it off. .. >> we've also made impressive

strides in our nation in our local and state facilities. there was a time in the not too distant past, in fact, when we had a chance to speak, when getting internet access was a challenge and blast facts was a breakthrough technology. it wasn't very long ago. 20 # 11 has seen a number of disasters managed by state an local partners with limited or no federal assistance. we heard from them this was not possible ten years ago. two tools that under pins are the hospital preparedness program and the state emergency programs aligned for greater efficiency. however, with our continued support and funding for our health and medical systems, the infrastructure will degrade, and, in fact, as you heard from tara, we're seeing this in the loss of almost 50,000 jobs. my fear is that a state and local capacity diminishes, we'll see an increase again, but

furthermore, this puts our nation response capability and community recovery at rirveg. this has to remain a top priority. ultimately, all of our investments and efforts have the same goal, building a resilient nation and saving lyes. we made great strides in the last decade. i'm proud whaf we accomplished in the last two and a half years, but we have miles to go before we sleep. thank you for the opportunity and happy to answer questions you may have. >> thank you. last on the panel, the assistant director at the fbi in charge of the mass destruction. it says a lot that has a very distinguished background as a chemist and worked at the national laboratories now finds himself at the fbi where he's

responsible for investigating suspected cases of terrorism. i'm glad you're here, and please proceed with your testimony. >> thank you, sir. good morning. it's my pleasure to discuss what fbi has done over the last ten years and what we're doing to protect the united states against bioterrorism threats. the fib's number one priority is protect the united states from terrorist attacks and the use of weapons of mass destruction is unacceptable to us. in fact, to clearly common strait our commit and address these issues, the fbi distinguished the directer in 2006 with law enforcement authorities, intelligence, and analysis capabilities and technical subject matter of expertise focused on chemical, nuke nuclear, and compliesive

matters. my mission is mission of the wmd terrorism and proliferation. we have the responsibility to investigate wmd threats and we use our strong response capabilities to collect evidence in contaminated area, provide devices, and command support for critical incidents. further yiefed through products of the community with fbi's efforts and provided through local law enforcement community as well. domestic groups like al-qaeda and its affiliates shown unwaiverring interest in using toxins. it's not unusual for the groups to seek scientists to join the ranks and support the cause. the threats are by identifies points of vulnerability for agent acquisitions, weapon developments, and ultimately, the execution phase. this allows for resources,

prioritization and the security program. we have a well-defined frame work focusing on outreach and indicators. the chj mounts on an effective response to bioterrorism. they may go undetected until victim seeks medical treatment or other key evidences are discovered. as such, the fbi and cdc developed a joint criminal investigation, this is an interactive training program to improve public health and law enforcement efforts to jointly identify investigate intentional or naturally occurring threats. as you mentioned earlier, a recent bioresponse report card published provides and overall negative view of the u.s. accomplishments in bioterrorism readiness. nonetheless, they do highlight that cdc and fbi have made considerable progress in building partnership twine public health and law enforcement that will significantly improve cooperation during an

investigation. i must emphasize that fbi's program in commits bioterrorism is based on con cements much more expansive than leading edge protocols, forensics that are familiar to all. among activities centered on wmd issues, the fbi is keenly focused on safeguarding bilogical organizisms and safekeeping of individuals to these materials. we developed sciences and workshop initiatives to build partnership between the fbi and academic research communities. this initiative improves situational awareness for all apartments and report suspicious activities to prevent emerging national security threats. the fbi is a fellow partner in select agent program with hhs and usda, and this program is designed to safeguard entities that store or conduct research with bilogical agents. this program properly vetting

individuals prior to access against the ten prohib tores defined in the patriot act. the fbi has at least one highly trained special agent in each of the 56 field offices who manages and addresses events. these special agents are known as wmd coordinator. the fbi laboratory can make strong protocols and national relationships with u.s. government components including the bioframes economic center to deal with evidence. bilogical contaminated evidence is evaluated by the response network established by the fbi and cdc. the fbi created the evidence analysis team, a group of highly trained forensic examiners capable of forming analysis on contaminated evidence in the partner laboratories. advancement in science and technology have led to significant progress in

synthetic biology. they established a initiative, a proactive approach to mitigate the risks by explore nation of advancements in this arena. the partnership, we implemented a screening frame work guidance for providers of synthetic double strand dna. this frame work has a notification process for sequence providers to contact their local wmd coordinator, who i mentioned earlier, when encountering alarming orders. science led to the development of an amateur biology movement. this this community, science and biotechnology is pursued at home or shared meeting places. the fbi developed partnership with the amateur biology community to garner collaborations in preventing, detecting, and responding to potential incidents. in short, the fbi is dedicated to protecting our nation and will continue to collaborate with the usda and scientific community to proactively address new threats on the horizons.

since the development of the branch, we identified hundreds of cases with suspicious powders leading to convictions and learnty sentences. thank you for your time, i look forward to answering your question. >> thank you, doctor. we'll do seven minute rounds of questions. senator brown will try to come back from another committee hearing. let me begin -- excuse me, thank you for the work that science and technology then i thought more about the strategic risk assessments and tell us in a little more detail what they show. >> these risk assessments are

models. they are computer models based upon the best scientific data and the judgments of professionals including intelligence community professionals and law enforcement experts that we can find. our models -- all models run are somewhat useful, is the rule of thumb, and the same for vetra. i'm happy to tell you how the agents themselves rank and what scenarios we're most worried about in a k4r5sz mid -- classified session. i can't talk about that now, but what the models produce is information of that sort. what agents really could create a mass casualty situation and under what conditions? it allowings -- it allows you to say, well, 23 i change this variable, for example, if it's impossible to get a bioagent like smallpox -- >> right. >> then that scenario goes away

or is greatly mitigated. what happens if you have medical countermeasures against a certain agent under reasonable expectations of distribution and et -- ethics and so forth. how many lives would you save? you ask questions of the models, probe them, take uncertainties you uncover, investigate those in laboratories, which we do and back in frederick, maryland. they act in practice as the starting point for decisions about which biothreat agents do we need to be most worried about. >> this is a unique function, and the results was strategic risk assessments are then shared across the board in our government and presumably state and local and private sector in terms of what we should work to

develop countermeasures to. >> yes. the last is the concern, and it's further studied in detail. we validate the original assumptions. we make sure there's up-to-date intell, and then the results of that second analysis are forwarded to hhs where they consider them in their own frame work in terms of public health impacts. the results of the -- first of all, the design is an interagency process, and the results are deseminated to the interagency and find their way into an array of activityings from what kind -- activities from what kind of exercise are we going to per sue in terms of decontamination to what kind of measures will we pursue to a myriad of other things.

>> okay, so let me go back to the baseline. i obviously respect and support the conclusion that you don't want to describe this in detail in a public setting, but i take it that generally speaking that the result of those strategic risk assessments is that you continue to consider the threat of a bioterrorist attack to be real. in other words, we're not -- you know, there's a kind of second look here around the 10th anniversary of 9/11 where some people are beginning to say in general, not just in terms of bioterrorism, we have over reacted over the last ten years. >> can i address that directly? >> that's what i'd like you to do. >> the biothreat is real as was said. we know our adversaries are pursuing bilogical weapons.

the potency in the accessibility of these weapons, as you said, will increase. in the 1990s, just as an example of how fast we learn how to manipulate bilogical organism, in the 1990, it took a decade and a billion dollars to decode the human genome. we can now do that for a thousand dollars in about a week. that's only one technique. at the same time, this progress is happening globally, all right? it is not owned by the u.s. government or any government. it's being pursued avidly by huge amounts of capital and biofarmer and fuels and all kinds of places and including amateur biologists and kids interested in distracting dna for fun -- >> yeah. >> similar to the computer revolution that began the i.t. industry, so this is going to proceed a pace, and the appeal

of asse symmetric reps is not going away among terrorist groups or sorch states i would suggest. this threat is going to grow. >> you agree with that, i assume, that for instance, the grand talent commission as you know, they considered bilogical attack to be the most lakely of the -- likely of the various forms of weapons of mass destruction attack because of the relative ease of developing bilogical agents and moving them into the country. do you agree? >> yes, that's correct, sir. in fact, if you look at historical perspectives as well as the current case trend, bilogical cases tend to be the largest portion of our wmd cases that we investigate. many of them tend to be hoaxes, but nonetheless, the cases with

real material tend to be bilogically centered. >> yeah, we have a warning system in the capitol and usually our blackberries or cell phones, and there's actually a remarkable number of occasions where the capitol called to investigate some kind of substance they couldn't identify. thank god every one of them since 2001 has turned out to be benign, but that's, you know, that's not always going to be the case, so, okay, i think from your testimony, do you want to add anything about the reality of the threat? >> i concur with both partners up here. there's such -- tara hit on this earlier, there is such a thing as the curve on how quickly biotechnology is growing, and as i mentioned in the opening statement, this is concerning. she made the analogy to computer

technology. there's a law in computing called moore's law. you increase the capacity of the come pastor, and the price increases. this is steeper than moore's law, and that barrier that would be bioterrorists would have in being able to develop a bilogical weapon is becoming much easier than it was in the past. >> dr. laurie. >> nothing really to add. for some years i participated as a judge in a contest for high school students who did een deemology projects, and what they did was remarkable. in fact, sometimes much more sophisticated than the other modelers i know. if we had such a contest now in the amateur biology sphere, we'd be terrified with what they'd come up with. >> yeah. that's a sufficient warning in itself. i want to come back very briefly, dr. o'toole, evidence

with the war we're in with the terrorists is more critical than it's been in any war because the enemy not striking in a conventional way and not hesitating, but focusing on civilian populations, so i take it that the intelligence community is fully and directly involved, certainly in the strategic risk assessments that your director is doing. >> yes. the intelligence community itself is rethinking its own approach to the biothreat and putting new emphasis on collection techniques and so forth. i would urge all members of congress to get a classified briefing on the by yo threat

from the intelligence community. i think that would be very helpful to by yo security. >> good idea, and i'll ask senator collins, but it might be good for us to do that, for our committee to begin that in a classified setting. okay, let me ask you one more question, and then i'll yield to senator akaka who e welcome here this morning. this relates to senator colin's opening statement which is three agencies, but a lot of agencies clearly involved, and so the question is who is in charge? in other words, who is coordinating the efforts of the federal government involved in training and respond to biodisaster and let me begin

with -- dr. o'toole, do you want to start? >> well, i have to ask in charge of what? i mean, understand the longing for, you know, a strong leader, somebody who can take decisive action in a crisis, and there's an argument for that. i do think that biosecurity is so complex and it involves equities from so many agencies that a coordinator in the white house may be of some use, but i think it is -- the question is to some extent a red herring. in a catastrophic attack, the president's in charge. >> that's what i was going to ask. is there somebody within the white house -- >> yes. >> who takes the key role in coordinating the effort and advising the commander? >> yes, i think that would be within the national security staff, either john brennan or

his deputy, heidiavery, but we all have roles to play intensely. the agency brings strengths as well as liabilities, and as we saw in 2001, you need a lot of very detailed specialized knowledge to have an informed coherent response to these events, and we're going to have more and more of them in this society, like deep water, like fukushima. we're not going to be able to predict in advance what experts we need. we need an agile capacity to assemble and reassemble and we structure the capacities of the u.s. government as needed. that's what we have to learn how to do, and we have to get very first time at that. >> so how -- maybe i'll turn to you dr. lurie, what assurance

can we give the public, particularly in this time of tremendous budgetary stress, that there's not redun redundancy that's not necessary? in other words, if there's not an overlap of public investment because of the many agencies involved in the whole field of preparing for and prevents bioterrorism. >> thank you for that. you know, this scenario where i feel quite comfortable. i think the government structure for the countermeasures enterprise is very robust. it, as i testified, includes high level membership from across the inner agency, so, dr. o'toole and dr. garza both sit on the steering committee as do others. we have pretty full visibility into what people are working on and developing, whether it's in

different hhs components, dod, whether it's in dhs. the good part about that is that we all share expertise and problem solve around it and say if you're doing x, i need to do y instead, or how can, you know, in the case, for example, of fda, how can fda be at the table earlier with a dod issue, for example? so, the coordination, i think, has really grown tremendously over the past couple years, and it's quite robust, so we, going back to your first question for dr. o'toole, we learn from dhs, get information from dhs about what agents are the threat agents. we do our own public health assessment of how those are likely to make people sick and how many people are likely to either get sick or die. we look at the kinds then of products that we need to make to counteract those, and then we work across, and with that, we work across the whole inner

agency, so we want to know how would a product be used before we even go ahead and make. does that make sense. this issue about how we deploy it in the field, for example. in this space, i actually feel quite comfortable that we work very hard to ring redundancy out of the system. in our centers for advanced development, for example, dod sat at the table with us, but research and development together, provide core funding for it, so, again, tremendous opportunities for coordination and collaboration that we've taken full advantage of. i want to go back to your question for a minute also to dr. o'toole about the who is the charge piece -- >> right. >> this capability-based piece is really important, and we have now a number of structures for governance and coordination

across all of us, but i should also point out at the end of the day with each of the emergencies that we have faced whether it was pandemic, whether it was deep water, whether it was the effects of the fukushima crisis, we're all together in the situation room led by national security staff and worked it out, worked through plans and operational responses, and because we work so closely together now day-to-day on stheez issues, that's -- these issues, it's been easy. it's not like you have to corral people to talk. we do that all the time. >> i'll leave it here, but your answers say you work together regularly, and the person in charge is in the national security counsel, probably mr. brennan or his deputy, which that makes as muchceps as anything else. okay. it makes sense, in other words. senator a caw caw, thank you for

being here. >> thank you for for this, and thank you to the witnesses for being here today. i've long been concerned about bilogical attacks, especially against our food and agriculture service system. the difficulty in tracking this loss of recent e. coli outbreak in germany and france reenforces my concerns here. a bioterrorism attack committed anywhere in the world could easily spread to the united states. we must detect and attack early and limit its impact, which is why we need to continue to strengthen, strengthen domestic and overseas surveillance

capabilities. last month, i held a area hearing on how the u.s. would respond to an attack on our food and agricultural systems, and an issue was raised at the hearing was the lack of indicators of emerging threats to food and agriculture within the intelligence community. my question is how are the bureaus' intelligence activities targeting bilogical threats and in particular bilogical threats to u.s. food and agriculture? >> sir, like most intelligence community, what we have is that annual gap review, and

ultimately production of what we call an intelligence requirement. that is based on what we feel has the highest risk associated with it, and the information that we need to know more about that particular item. what we do is to dissemienate that particular gap to our required field offices, we share our concern with the brethrens in the intelligence community, and many instances we work collectively together to push those gaps out for additional collection. the issue of agriculture terrorism and bilogical attacks have been on the forefront of in of our activities, and these gaps have already been december seminated, and we're still requires additional information on many of the items. >> dr. lurie, as you well know,

effective global disease surveillance can provide early warning to public health community or up feck, -- infectious diseases in other countries that could potentially threaten the u.s.. can you please comment on what steps your departments have taken to make sure our nation is aware of possible threats overseas? >> yes. thank you for that question, senator. so in terms of a biosurveillance, in particular the global reach of biosurveillance, most of the work we've done is through the integration center, and in that capacity, we work with many of our federal partners, many of who are seated here today,

including the fda, usda, hhs, and others, dod, who actually has a fairly substantial global reach in biosurveillance due to their deployment activities, and so we work with them to bring that information together into one place where we can take a look at the data to be sure there's no signals coming out that would impart something of concern to the united states. i think we work very well with our partners at hhs, dod, and others to make sure that we're not missing anything and to make sure we're covering the different aspects of biosurveillance. >> uh-huh. >> i will maybe add to that that cdc in particular has a very robust global disease detection program, it is one of the who coordinating centers for in

influenza and has subject matter all over the world in help building capacity in countries building surveillance, working on reporting, having the relationships that give you the earlier heads up that something is coming, and they have also very much strengthened laboratory capacity in that regard. in addition, we work through a number of organizations, the global health security initiative, which has a constellation of a number of developed countries is actually meeting here next week, and we do a lot of work and coordination with them around surveillance, preparedness, and response. similarly, the international health regulations, promulgated by the who, and are regulations we support and work through and a lot of our efforts to strengthen surveillance in

countries around the world are also in support of these international health regulations, and finally, just because got here late and didn't have an opportunity to hear more discussion about this, we also have to remember that novel infectious diseases know no borders, and can arise anywhere. we saw with h1n1 can arise in this hemisphere. we lost about 50,000 jobs in local and state health in this country, many in the surveillance area, and so we have to be really careful to have our guard up, our surveillance networking up really in every community and all over the world. >> thank you. >> dr. garza, customs and border protection is primarily associated with its mission to prevent terrorists, drugs, and

unauthorized individuals from entering the united states. too often, the agency's important mission of protecting american agriculture from the accidental or deliberate introduction of these diseases or pests is overlooked. i venture legislation that would elevate the agriculture mission in cbp to match the significant bilogical threats approaching our borders. do you believe that enhancing, i guess, cultural inspection operations will improve our nation's biodefenses? >> well, i certainly -- i can't speak for cbp, but i certainly feel you're correct if there's an increase in that inspection capacity that will increase our

preparedness for bio defense for the nation. there's many aspects of bio defense that i think get overlooked somehow in their one-off effects on how they provide added deterrence or added protection, even outside of the bio defense world, the technologies and the information that we get from these different activities absolutely improve different sectors of both the u.s. government, but also in our homeland security posture, so i absolutely think that if we improve that, that posture, that it will pay dividends for the biothreat. >> thank you. mr. chairman, may i ask another question here?

>> pose a direct threat to hiewm health. how are you departments working with veterinarians and animal health communities to ensure early and rapid detection of disease outbreaks? ms. o'toole? >> senator, we operate the animal center ave the coast of long island, and among other things, we train veterinarians in the recognition and diagnosis. they are working on dig not tick tests for these diseases that are not endeemic to our shores including tests we can identification to rapidly screen a lot of animals in the field.

you know, i think your concern about agro-terrorism and agriculture security is well-founded. i mean, agro-defense really 1 the stepchild of bio security. i would argue that the country is under investing in agricultural defense, and we need to make sure that we have the strategic plan going forward. i will repeat, i think we should build the national bio agro facility in kansas if we do not have such a facility, we 4r not be economic -- we will not be economically competitive in this field or maintain scientific dominance in the field or have the capability to respond to an animal disease if one occurs through natural causes or deliberate attack. >> dr. garza? >> yes, senator, and i think that's an excellent question, and i completely agree with

dr. o'toole, and what she just stated. within my office, there's the ag, food, and vet branch led by a group of veterinarian, and they do a couple things within homelands security. first, they lead a working group that spans crease the different components on all of these food, ag, and veterinarian issues. in addition, we brought customs in border protection into our information cycle, our national bio surveillance cycle to share the information with the effects on animals and plants and things like this. cbp is currently performs risk-base the -- risk-based inspections, and i know from reading from newspaper articles in the last week, the challenges they've had, and you're an advocate for improving that service, and i certainly applaud that, but it's something the department of homeland security takes very seriously. we work with federal partners,

infrastructure protection director, and with many other people in the private sector to try to improve that sort of capability. >> thank you. dr. lurie? >> sure. thanks. you know, your question is important for a whole host of reasons, including as we've just talked about, agro-terrorism, but also because so many, n., a per pond rains of diseases comes one way or another from animals, so our vigilance in the area is particularly important. i think many of our federal agencies, certainly my office, cdc, fda, our strategic information office, ect., all employee a number of animal health professionals, both to help with the situational awareness, sets of issues, and to look at areas where there are

synergies. not only are there tremendous synergies in surveillance, some of the things dr. o'toole talked about, ect., but some of the synergies in the countermeasure development area where many of the same techniques, platforms, mechanismings for making countermeasures, making vaccines, for example, in humans and animals are shared, and that we need to really work hard to exploit those kinds of defense synergies as well, so, in addition to the sur valance areas, there's a countermeasure development sphere that's so important. >> thank you. >> thank you, there are activities that are multifold in this area. number one. fbi really accomplished all of its tasks through its field offices. every year, we have a large symposium called international symposium in terrorism where we

bring some of the largest manufacturers to the symposium as well as local field office, wmd coordinators to make sure there's sufficient interactions between folks working the field as well as the major producers. we work with u.s. da -- usda to make sure their awareness of potential outbreaks as well as working with cattle ranchers and farmers across the u.s. as a point of interaction, many of the work is.name through partner agencies, but we want to make sure our involvement is clearly beneficial to both parties there, and lastly, our wmd coordinators in the field offices are responsible with more than one contact, all those points of interest, and that's a requirement, sir. >> thank you very much. >> thank you, senator akaka, thank you very much for your questions. let me just ask a couple more

questions because we have another panel we want to get on to. i want to get a reaction from you, each of you quickly, to the bipartisan wmd terrorism research cementer report -- center report, which was generally positive about progress in the area of biodefense, but essentially said that we're not prepared to handle a large bilogical bio disaster whether it's an attack or naturally occurring disaster. since i've imn calling on dr. o'toole first all the time. dr. majidi, give a quick response if there's truth to that. >> i'm not sure what the definition of a large bio scale disaster because in my book, while five individuals were killed by the attack, the

response required to deal with that so-called signal scale was quite tremendous from a usg perspective. >> that's true, the anthrax attack you're talking about, right? >> the financial aspects was substantial in that cation, and from that perspective while the scale is perceived as large or small, the overall consequence management are significant in totality, so -- >> are we prepared? >> sir, i don't think we will ever be prepared for a pandemic and an incredibly large scale. i don't know if any country -- >> large scale attack? pandemic or large scale attack? >> exactly. >> well, i think the point you make, the anthrax attacks of 2001 were in a comparative sense relatively small. it caused enormous dislocation.

>> absolutely. >> and, of course, psychological fear throughout the country, and that's quite different from the kind of metro, in terms of subways, modeling that you've done. dr. lurie, what do you think of what the bipartisan senator said? >> well, one area is -- sorry, one area in which they recognize progress is in the area of communications. >> but -- >> i want to highlight that because bringing the public along and having them have confidence in what the government is doing to help mitigate the effects of such an attack is absolutely critical. >> how about communications during a crisis? >> communications during crisis, i think, has gotten orders of magnitude better. >> yeah. >> we have a lot of planning, preprepared work -- >> right. >> and mechanisms -- >> that's important. that's one of the things the committee learned most about a response to a wmd attacks and a

nuclear attack that the ability to commune case with them, to tell them what -- ewen kate -- communicate with people, tell them what to do, the message may be get out of the house and run, which may be the worse thing to do, and we're better prepared to communicate to the public; right? >> absolutely. the good news first. i think their observations, particularly, about the major large scale attacks are what have made us focus number one in the medical counter measures area in shifting to the nimble, flexible capacity to make counter measures quickly against something we've never seen before, all work in speed in getting a vaccine, and to have that surge manufacturing capacity we talkedded -- talked about holly springs being the start of that, but being

quick in terms an emergency, and huge amounts of work going on in that sphere, and we place a lot of emphasis on the distribution and administration of those medical counter measures being sure that we have a much faster capability to do that and that we're able to support with additional personnel, communities that need additional personnel support, and may be overrealmed. i think we made progress there. we're not all the way there particularly because every community is little bit different. again, it's the capabilities and nimble, adaptable plans that have to be put in place. finally, remiss again if i didn't point out our ability to respond on the counter measure side and have a counter measure on time is very much tied to our ability to detect early, and that early warning, early detection surveillance components that all departments are working on so hard. >> okay. dr. garza, how about the ready for a relatively small incident,

not ready for a major take, bilogical attack. >> right. i would agree, i agree with everything said so far, but especially agree with dr. majidi where it doesn't take a lot to cause a disruption in society. we saw examples of this in the past in the 2001 attacks, but also as recently as fukushima where the country was basically completed of potassium iodine within a week, and so if you use that as a model for what would happen in a deliberate bilogical attack, you can understand the sort of rush to counter measures that would happen, not just within the area that was affected, but i think nationwide, and that's something we really need to consider is that -- and that's where the communication strategy plays a large part on how we would deal with this. secondly, i'm -- i guess i'm somewhat pleased nothing went down in the report, so at least

we're not flighting back. i think we improved a lot on issues such as surveillance and detection, and so i'm pleased with that. one of the things mentioned up here a couple of times is the capacity of the health care industry, though, to be able to withstand a large scale attack, i think, is very troubling, and i can just tell you from being an er physician, i have trouble hand 8ing the emergency -- handling the emergency department every day just on a regular workload. if we take the minnesota case from a couple months ago, a person who had a case of inhalation an trax, and the amount of resources it took to keep that one person alive, intensive care, multiple physicians, multiple medications, and take that with a large scale attack, the health care industry is overwhelmed quickly. the paradigm for health care

industry is just in time care, so there's little surge capacity capability. >> okay. that obviously in a difficult time in our economy, but nonetheless, high on the list of things we need to try to do better at. dr. o'toole? >> well, no, we're not ready for a global catastrophe involve k -- involving a deadly pathogen, what it may be. president obama called for this in the international effort of surveillance and management of infectious disease, whatever the origin of the plague. in government, one is for us to focus on actionable priorityies, and if i had a magic wand, i'd wish for three things.

although alex's wish for less vulnerabilities and more surge capacity all across the board in terms of response communities 1 a good start. we know that communication has impriewfd, and we -- improved, and we also know from past experience that the community's expectations of what they ought to be doing of what might happen is very, very important. there's recent research showing having a single person assigned to outreach with the community can make a big difference in terms of resilience and response. we have to fund those people and make sure every state, local health department has somebody whose job is to do that. that could have a big, big impact. we talk about it, but we most lee wave our hands at resilience thus far. i also think that having rapid veteran points of -- even points

of care saying you're infected, you're not, particularly at scale is critically important. the technology for this exists. there's wondrous technology that might be just within reach that would be even better. we have to build diagnostic tests. timely, i would just give -- offer caution on the interagency process and the complexity of bye owe defense -- biodefense. i do believe we've made significant implemental progress over the past decade, but the interagency process is inherently show -- slow and cautious. that might be the right approach when we don't know what we're doing and don't want to make missteps and husband limited resources. on the other hand, i think this is an area where the threat is growing, where the consequences are potentially so dire that the

united states of america ought to make a few big bets and think about in what areas could we invest where we leap ahead and make a huge difference? i mean, having a way to rapidly make medicines and vaccines to surge, to do that cheaply and with availability would change the world. we ought to think about that. creating a bio surveillance system rather than talking about starting with electronic links between public health and hospitals would make a big difference. if we leave it to the interagency and biodefense is continuously peanut buttered against hard working agencies, we're not going to make any leap aheads, and that worries me. >> well, that's a good challenging note to end this on. do you have any more questions

for this panel, senator akaka? do you want to ask more questions? >> i'm good. >> okay. thanks for your testimony, your testimony today, and just -- thanks for your service and your testimony today. putting it all together, we've come a long way, and in this case, even a small bilogical, relatively small bilogical incident can have enormous effects, and when you put that together with what we all acknowledge is all the evidence we've got of the work of our enemies, and then of people who, as we found out in the an trax case, apparently a researcher uses these pathogens for hostile purposes. this is really something to be concerned about, and as we look at the list of priorities, you know, as you know in a big open free country such as ours, and we want it especially to stay

that way, it's very hard to protect against all attacks, but if you started to list the probabilities with consequences, i would say that this is an area that's bio dpefs that really m -- defense that really comes to the top of my priority list. i thank you for what you're doing, and we continue to working further with you to get more and more secure. thank you for being here. we'll call the second panel now. dr. thomas, dr. robert cadley, and dr. jeff levy. so this means we have a total of five md's and two ph.d.es -- ph.d.'s testifying here today. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> thanks to the three of you for being here and for your patience as we listened to the first panel. our first witness today is dr. thomas, chief executive officer and directer of the center for bio security at the university of pittsburgh medical center, one of the founding members, served as its deputy director, chief operating officer. whatever happened to the first director? >> [inaudible] >> that's good. and i know you were recently named chair of the board of

scientific counselors to cdc's office of public health preparedness and response. thank you for being here, and welcome your testimony if your mic is not on, give it a push. >> great, thank you. mr. chairman, members of the committee, thank you for the chance to speak today about preparedness, ten years after the an trax attacks. i'm the director of upmc, and as you asked, i'll focus my testimony on biosurveillance and other issues raised in the recent center report, cross roads in bio security. potential threats to the u.s., potential bilogical threats to the u.s. are serious. we can face a new flu pandemic that kills like h5n 1-rbgs, or a virus that spreads through the world quickly, or another bilogical weapon. the anthrax letters of 2001 were as shocking as they were where a

very small case of use of weapon, i tacks in the future could affect extruer their amounts of people -- extraordinary amounts of people. the effect of a leal bilogical agent could place at risk the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. the unmedicated consequences of such event could overwhelm the public health capabilities causing an untold number of deaths. one of the most important components of defense against threats 1 the development of medical counter measures. dhs has issued 12 material threat determinations for top threats to the american public. counter measures for just three of those have so far received the majority of funding in advanced development and procurement. here are my suggestions for making more fro depress in the future -- progress in the future of counter development. first, convey specific priorities predicted budget

requirements, and time lines for delivering them. right now it is not clear from the outside what the top priority products are, how long it takes to develop them, or how much it will cost. for each priority product to be developed, it needs to be clear what extent its development requires more basic science versus more advanced development, and the funding for the work should be allocated accordingly. if specific problems are the -- if specific regulatory problems are the problem, funding should be directed to the fda to resolve them. when decisions made to purchase a counter measure, an explanation should be provided to the public that explains the choice and the quantity and the way it's used in crisis. recent strategic plans places priorities on multiuse platforms. we absolutely do need to develop multiuse plat tomorrows and broad spectrum products in the

long term, but we have to make sure expectations are not undually raced in the short term. there's few expermits who think a -- experts who think a shift like this is likely in the short term. in the short term, we need very applies, very directed advanced development of products dressing the greatest material threats to the country. we should certainly stretch biosecurity resources in the smartest, possible ways, for example, by extending shelf life of products already in the stockpile, wherever possible. by investigating the feasibility of shortening the course of antiby yachtics for viers diseases that we -- various diseases that we might be exposed to, and by having studies to help us vaccinate more people while decreasing costs. finally, in the realm of count measures, there's not enough funding compared to basic science funding in the mission, and barta has a small fraction of what a small company would

have required to make a small number of the same products. the fund will be depleted this year, and without that, we coapt get new products to be procured. there's counter measures for the first time this year, but this program's budget was reduced to $19 million in the senate and 0 in the house. its work is set back if the fda got that budget allocation. biosurveillance a another area of preparedness. there's gains, but work to be done. surveillance is too slow to discover or keep up with fast moving epidemics. a few recommendations to improve it. first, a small portion of the $18 billion now going into electronic health record incentive programs should be moved to public health in order to allow them to be able to process and ablize information related to outbreakings. we should also improve laboratory reporting, all

notifiable diseases should be reported from the lab to health departments and continue to be transmitted throughout the course of outbreak. that doesn't happen now, although all in public health agree it's a top priority. finally as was said, place higher priority on rapid diagnostics. ..

declined by 27% since 2005 with a cut of more than $100 million in the fy ten alone. if the proposed cuts take place in this year's prepared misfud prepared this efforts around the country will suffer for example the cuts would diminish or eliminate the to prepare for the nuclear or a logical terms of. the ad bostick per gun-free emerging infectious diseases, the chemical laboratory response program the network and all of the academic center from public health from the country which is the only cdc external funding for preparedness research. i think this would be a loss for the country into the urge congress to consider reversing the funding cuts at our plan. some conclusion in the country has made strides in the preparedness of the last ten years of detailed them in my written testimony. some of them i should say but a lot of work remains to be done.

i hope the committee and its colleagues working on the reauthorization bill now in the senate and house will ensure we continue to make progress in the time ahead. thank you. >> thank you, doctor. there's some provocative and interesting ideas. i will come back to questions. was a career officer position in the air force thank you for your service also served in the number of senior positions at the white house, senator depravity since and now is a bye zero defense consultants industry and government agencies as most recent though government position was assistant to the president and senior director for by a defense policy on the homeland security council. we are grateful you are here and welcome the testimony now. >> the red herring is the way to

start off maybe today's comments. i would like to thank members of the committee as well as staff and testify before you today. one thing to put in the historical context the efforts to prepare the country for bioterrorism predated 9/11 in fact was the progress we have today is a testimony to three consecutive presidential administrations and several congresses in tandem basically between the executive and legislative branches establishing policies, passing vital authorizing legislation and appropriating funds over the last years and so i would note your leadership in this area during my tenure on the hill working with chuck in terms of looking at by you shield as last stabbing a feeble father of the legislation that ultimately passed but it was in the by partisanship over the period of

time the improvements in the state and local emergency service and public health preparedness and research indolent and procurement measures and improved hospital responded preparedness to aid despite the progress i think it's been discussed far from being prepared i think the point in the question you made earlier about the difference being the smaller or larger attack i think is worthy of noting in a wide scale destruction and devastation and quite frankly one of the leaders you didn't have today taking with the current director of the fda basically identified back in 2005 the material of one and will been putting the era after the world trade center there would be a large number of casualties in those as they fell >> it was chilling. >> when you get to these environments and the remarks of the former national counterterrorism sector michael

liter and he described his concern about the bioterrorism when he left as the director in july 2011 was the potential from the threat from al qaeda particularly in the arabian peninsula was very real and the most likely were simple forms of chemical or biological weapons attacks rather than the nuclear attack. i am reminded a day looking at the papers as i look at the casualties from the young americans who died in the e3 record afghanistan at to understand we can continue to be at war with these individuals and groups who intend on using these weapons and i think it's worthy to note you already commented on the grand cordon we have a long way to go but have covered a lot of ground in terms of some of the specific capabilities. but that would be digitized to the major obstacles and one critical missing ingredient and the beating about this is it doesn't cost a lot of money. the first we have to overcome is the difference between bioterrorism, biowarfare and the disease panamax.

quite frankly mother nature is not a sinking enemy on grievous harm to the country killing of citizens undermining the government or destroying our way of life. mother nature doesn't develop resistant to the current stockpiles of antibiotics would disseminate and high doses resulting in the rapid onset and more clinical portions in the nature. mother nature doesn't target and military force to undermine the capabilities or civilian population to protect the national interest and certainly mother nature doesn't use biological agents to achieve the legal equivalent of nuclear weapons. increasing the greater role for the federal government inherent to the constitution responding particularly from the deliberate biological threats. not all disasters or local a biological attack is just that, on the nation and the federal government supporting assistant state local authorities and

finally i firmly believe the missing critical ingredient in the sauce that continued progress with success appears is leadership and the finding of the 2010 national alliance defense science report to the secretary of hhs as well as the three principal recommendations from the grand report card. without strong leadership that emanates from the white house and propagated to the federal department and state and local authorities no amount of money would make as sufficiently prepared and we saw those leaders on the first panel here today. the white house has already demonstrated such leadership since the nuclear proliferation and cyberattack combat biological weapons can kill more than sap fiber attacks and easier to develop as you know than the nuclear weapons. without the visible concern of the capable people of this administration. white house involvement is essential to insure the departments and agencies live up to their interagency obligations

on a national response remark and emergency support functions. to highlight two of them in particular the role of the art of defense and the va in the response to the surge capacity for example those have not been entirely optimized. the leadership is not only the requisite and for the executive branch and as you know, sir, congress has a vital leadership role as well. congress can and has effectively advanced preparedness to the legislative initiatives in on the appropriations and understand, sir, your committee is considering legislation to implement the bill created by your colleagues in the house and understand your efforts in the health and education labor committee the pandemic hazards act aging the commerce committee. hopefully congress will pass one or ideally both bills before the end of this session. finally offer one last observation and thought. agreed issued useful to stand there frankly abstract to the

grim reality they represent. the military position served into conflicts, desert storm and iraq, the freedom to the grades don't matter. combat is a past failed test and simply stated accepting the of great means many americans -- this is not only acceptable but as public servants we wouldn't be doing our duty if we didn't do everything in power to protect our citizens from this risk. i look forward to your questions. thank you. >> net dr. kadlec, we have questions we will come back to. it's dr. jeffrey levi, executive director of the trust for america's health in january this year president obama appointed dr. levi to the advisory group on prevention, promotion and

felt the need that he was appointed the chair of that group also a professor of health policy at gw university school of public health where his research is focused on hiv/aids and medicaid and integrating the public health delivery system. an impressive resume and thanks for being here today. >> thank you mr. sherman and i'm grateful for the opportunity to testify before the committee on the progress and challenges we face on the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the nation. i'm going to focus on the public health will and crucial, which is crucial in emergency preparedness and response. health departments perform the surveillance that detects the first case is an outbreak, laboratory tests the sample and public workers coordinate medical response to communicate to the public and distribute vaccines or drugs help save

lives. the attacks were a week call for the investment on public health preparedness and over the last decade we have made progress meeting this responsibility. unfortunately it seems we have hit the snooze button because it is threatened by the recent tax cuts to the state and local level and we could face a sad irony if another attack were to occur today we may be better prepared than we were ten years ago but possibly not as well-prepared as three years ago. last month's trust for america house with the robert johnson foundation released a report remembering 9/11 and public health vital role in the national defence. developing this report we learned public health amounts to an extraordinary response to these events despite limited familiarity with bioterrorism and decades of underfunding have left it with a deficit and technology work force and training. for example, in 2001 there wasn't a clear public health response system in place for handling unexpected emergencies. much of the response most

developed on of fly. the the crushing demand for information and recommendations that have not been prepared in advance. public health risk to the occasion. the laboratory response network which is now an interpol piece of the buy a watch program tested 360,000 environmental samples and clinical specimens over an extended period. cdc provided national surveillance, laboratory diagnostic support, treatment recommendations and advice on the exposure prophylactics. the public health helped by putting science first and risk communications. since fiscal 2003 congress has invested over $12 billion in state and local public health preparedness, hospital preparedness and state and local pandemic capacities. this has led to tremendous progress in our ability to prepare for and respond to an emergency. now we recognize bioterrorism and emergency preparedness are in trouble to the will of public

health and public health is in trouble to disaster preparedness and response to the we've developed a rapid response capabilities so health impacts are considered and mitigated from day one of an emergency. unfortunately, these improvements cannot be maintained with one time investments. training of the public health work force must be on going, vaccines and antiviral send a strategic national stockpile are expiring. technology is completely becoming outdated and health departments need predictable funding to operate laboratories to respond to emergencies and investigate outbreaks yet fertile support has been cut by 37% since fiscal 2005. the test of the federal levels have been matched or exceeded the state and local levels as a result of a worry deeply as to my colleagues on the front line of public health agencies that are the capacity to respond to a new emergency would be severely diminished in the near future these are not just to purchase supplies and equipment, they are

about the people central to an effective public health response where major public health emergency to occur today, even to the demand of the pandemic h1n1 there might not be enough workers to effectively respond. 44,000 state and local health positions were lost since 2005. we simply cannot hire and train the 21st century public health emergency work force after an attack occurs. there's one silver lining here. since the creation of the prevention of the health fund we have over $60 million in the lab capacity across the country at the state and local level but that is also at risk and if we lose that money as well we will be in even worse shape. we also need to fundamentally rethink how we do surveillance. for emergencies and routine public health issues. the have been billed one disease or crisis at a time resulting in archaic and static silos of information. the particular challenge in the field of preparedness is we

don't necessarily know in advance what we will need to know to the most comprehensive approach to the data collection as needed by the nation's transition to a little flighty systems and electronic of records at the core and the previous witnesses the degree to which public health needs to be at the table and the development of the implementation of the policies or else they will not help us in the area of preparedness. our report found the united states takes a band-aid approach to public health preparedness as new emergencies and concerns emerged and the tension shift resources are diverted from one pressing priority to another leading other ongoing areas to unaddressed. i am encouraged to see the committee is taking the threat seriously and i think you again for the opportunity to be here today and look forward to your questions. >> i was really struck by one line from your testimony which is the effective funding cuts

which i quote the sad irony is another anthrax attack occurred today we would be better prepared than ten years ago, but possibly not as well prepared as three years ago, and this is part of the affect of the budget deficit crisis we've gotten ourselves into. we have to be very mindful. in going to ask you at the beginning what you think to be an interesting idea mentioned which is to at least in part to ameliorate the problem with regard to a surge in the need for the public health surge in response to a biodisaster or bioattack being prepared to utilize personnel from the department of defense or the va. >> i think that he was referring to health care personnel and

certainly -- that is certainly appropriate and i think there are plans on the table on how well they've been exercised and over questions but they are committed to doing that kind of collaborative work. that is once we've identified what is going on, but my concern with the personnel is the day-to-day health capacities so detecting and identifying the pathogen, communicating with the public, disseminating the countermeasures, those are the things for the core public health measures. if we would lose we've lost 42,000 workers we've lost the people trained it requires a special expertise that is exercised over and over again that we keep improving. that capacity is dramatically diminished compared to three or four years ago and if it seems to be on the table now go forward it will even be worse i wish i could be interesting about that in the short run it's hard to be hopefully.

even in the stress that we are under now in terms of our budget, not only evin but particularly now this should force us to make priority judgments and by any number of standards to me it is part of the constitutional responsibility to provide for the common defense. dr. inglesby, you pointed out something that does not enough awareness that it is a fact over the last ten years the federal government has made significant progress building on progress before and developing such as vaccines and therapeutics to anthrax, smallpox and botulism. but as you point out, those are

just three of the 12th agents that the department of homeland security identifies as representing immaterial threat and that doesn't even include the emerging threats of some one manipulating substances for instance in a laboratory. so i want to ask first of if you would accept the rationale behind the listing of these 12 and whether you think the privatization of the medical countermeasures that is on behalf of the federal government is clear enough. >> i do think the material threat determination process is very rigorous. i thought as an outsider might seem a couple of these processes is played through and i've been very impressed with the rigor and the science.

the details of the specific order right now i think is not public so i can't comment on that but in general it is a rigorous process and like what is done in other parts of the government, you site requirements and the government react accordingly and set the requirements as scientifically and vigorously as possible. so, i feel it is the right place to start coming to start with actual requirements that there is an agreement on the government and work backwards from that. islamic in the countermeasure review to the health and human services release last year they pointed out in number of things that they are going to do to improve the development of the medical countermeasures such as including particularly the one that the doctor talked about quitting the government manufacturing centers and strategic investment firms as well as moving to the products that address multiple threats

and finally to streamline the fda regulation. give us your reaction to those recommendations and how would you prioritize those which do you think of first and most hope of making progress more rapid progress. >> starting with the last i think there's total agreement in and out of government the fda needed more resources and a lot more behind its program and it's gotten it in the past year so i think there was a really important development. there was also a part of that review that said there should be more integration between the various parts of government. dnih, cdc, and i think that's very important. when we have a requirement on the table, had we sort out exactly which required in the realm of basic science didn't relate to the development and to what is going to go in the

stockpile of its regulatory problems, i think it is a very important part of the strategy. with regards to the center for innovation and development, i certainly believe in the principle behind the program coming and we were supportive of that for a number of years that this is being discussed. in the principle it is a way to engage large farda which would be great for the country. it's probably crucial to get the talent of the large pharma and consolidate the cost and reduce the cost and concentrate expertise and in principle i think it was a way to foster innovation. i don't know how it will play out. i have to say in terms of making my conflicts available to your committee might of the institution was a potential competitor for that program and decided not to compete. certainly favored its regional principles and we will have to see how it mends.

>> let me bring this to a really creative and he had an idea which i thought was a great idea what we do to get the big pharmaceutical companies into this because it is not a naturally attractive market. so talk to the idea and we might put it forward to say to big pharma if you allow the medical countermeasure that hhs determines to pass as a threshold than we give you the go ahead with it and give you the right to choose an ira of drugs you've got and extend the patent for two years.

>> it was as if we sound the trumpet for battle in the generic drug manufacturers came marching with a great force over the years and killed the i'm not saying it's the only idea out there and it created an attempt i wonder with the passage of the years whether you have any of your thoughts about how to make sure we develop the medical countermeasures beginning with the other agents at the department said we have to worry about. >> thank you. i certainly was around during the time of the wild card to and certainly do remember i think if you remarks but the issue isn't about the role of big pharma and their interests and appetite to be involved seems to cover two

areas. one is the issue of risk and quite frankly the other one is an issue of profit. obviously the wild card was an incentive on the profit side and there has been much think to address the risk side subject to the public readiness and preparedness act which helped to deal with life devotee so in some ways that iran has been lowered. the of a part of the risk is the technological risk and if you will i think the government is going and appropriately so chongging to establish that these opportunities for the big and small pharma to get involved in places where the pro development of the new technologies that could be used for the bigler defense -- biodefendant applicability and the insurance the fda would consider these as only commercial but national security viable technology approaches it certainly there. the question is whether that is enough and quite frankly i think we still face challenges with the pharma they don't view the

profit as to be somewhat limited. i don't know if we will ever get over that but i do believe in some ways engaging them in terms of opportunities where they can expand their technology staff and dever the risk of development on the platform technologies goes a long way and there may be other sweeteners involved subject to some of the drug status that can be given to the by a defense -- biodefense measures. it's a difficult balance to get them at the table. another is the evolution and natural evolution of the big pharma blockbusters but they seem to be kind of going away looking for smaller products. so in some ways there may be in a landscape i would say don't give up the wild card just yet. [laughter] >> okay. but the reality is that if we

were attacked by one of those nine other biological agents we don't really have medical countermeasures now, do we? >> i think the answer is that the pipeline has been focused deliberately on some of the highest -- but the sequencing of other things for example other threats on the list haven't given the recognition or the resources. >> did you want to add something, doctor? >> i was just going to agree with what you just said. that other to get our attention and some of those -- am i right -- are not complicated to make to bring together. >> well i think any drug or vaccine is complicated. the threat. >> sorry, the threat. >> some of the things on the

list, all of those agents are available in the world to acquire and many of them are causing outbreaks in the bible in any given month. >> dr. garza was kind enough to stay so there's always a danger inherent in that. i'm going to quote something from your testimony -- dr. o'toole is here, too -- and asked the witnesses for the response. dr. garza indicated in his testimony that following some kinds of biological attacks ideally we would need to detect treatments in as little as one or two days minnick. i wanted to ask you and i should ask dr. garza, too, whether the the best of your knowledge there is a city for instance that is

able to meet this expectation for the attack for even just one of the biological threats that we face. dr. levi, do you know? >> i can't answer that with specificity but i think it speaks to the incredible the importance of the not losing more of our public health force because you can't create this kind of pop up capacity. >> anybody -- >> i think there's still a lot of doubt and concern about it. during my tenure in the white house in late 2008 we had serious concerns to note president obama's finding it sick if ordered into thousand nine kind of mobilizing the federal assets to help assist in that effort particularly the will of the u.s. postal service, the department of defense as well as using other federal employees and other agencies to respond in this way. one of the challenges quite frankly, one is, if you will, the tyranny of the time is created by one, if you will, the natural epidemiology of the

disease, and i highlighted this in high doses that basically change the period of some of these diseases to appear much faster. the second issue is what will be the public demand and outcry because you can imagine the cnn moment when this becomes first realized an attack has happened either through a biological detection or the first case to put incredible demand on the system for these antibiotics and protective measures. so the sooner the better, and quite frankly, it is clear that they were probably not fast enough yet. >> dr. garza, the audience participation here, do you want to respond and to the question is there any city or metropolitan area to meet the standard of that you raised? >> there has been tremendous worked that has been done with the cdc as well as the federal

agency trying to develop the capacity. dr. kadlec is entirely correct on the challenges to getting the medical countermeasures out to the population but we view it as a multi disciplined approach say you have for instance the postal model trying to engage the private sector to be involved as part of the executive order the president directed his administration to develop ways of dispensing countermeasures to essential people, so it's a multi dimensional approach to this problem. >> because we're focused on the postal service take a minute and tell us where we are on the exploration of using this remarkable network of the postal service to help in terms of

biodefense. >> yes, sir, to my knowledge they run most of the programs to do this. the program that has been developed and is the most widely known as the one in minneapolis if i believe correctly there are three or four other cities exporting the options or have developed plans to use the postal option. but again i would emphasize it is one part of a multilayer approach albeit an important one, but it has to be thought of as a multi layer approach. >> to be specific we are looking at the postal men and women delivering vaccines for instance or distributing vaccines. >> they would be distributing medical countermeasures of antibiotics. they would be delivering antibiotics to the population homes. >> i think that's important to continue to explore. >> to put a fine point on that because the cities in line to

basically follow minneapolis, san diego, boston, philadelphia, their readiness initiative to do so, so it is again as dr. garza said part of the approach but they really represent a first strike capability which in 12 hours could basically disseminate the lead in the supply of residence within 12 hours. speed the postal service is a real financial trouble part of what we are trying to do happen to come under the jurisdiction of this committee one of the ways it and look to capitalize on the unique national network as you probably know they use the u.s. postal service for the last mile of delivery and lowercase is where it doesn't pay for the very successful companies to do so, and in the same way, this is on the

excessing network, which as you say can develop and deliver antibiotics in a crisis very quickly. dr. inglesby, you made a really interesting suggestion i want to ask you it begins with the affected in the so-called stimulus act, the american recovery act of 2009, there is inappropriate $18 billion -- appropriated $18 billion for the improved modernization of health records of general description, so you're suggesting today, and i assume again this is all about priorities, that some part of that ought to be reallocated to this particular problem. such talk in a little more detail about what you have in

mind. >> right now there is an outbreak in d.c.. the altar park that is going to be asked to figure out what is going on and has to walk over and phone somebody to try to go through the medical records one by one on paper, and this new program holds out the hope you can connect health departments and clinical outpatient offices or in patient in the hospital. in an electronic way people from their desk at the health department can try to actually go in and understand what is happening in the hospital or clinic automatically and analyze it and figure of the patterns going on in the hospital of the new outbreak. the $18 billion is set up to provide incentives to the hospitals and to the doctors to develop electronic of records and there's a series of criteria laid out to get that money if we changed even modified a few of those criteria a little bit to say they have to be able to be

read by public health departments in crisis that we could use a little bit of that money to help solve a very big divide between public health and clinical medicine we have a meeting about this recently in our center and public health officials to see this happening are under -- are upset about it because there hasn't been a dollar provided. the cdc which not health records are being created. public health is basically on the sidelines. they don't have any money to build their own all i.t. systems to receive it. they don't of any incentive to connect any database management capacity, so a little bit of money can go a long way. >> excellent idea. >> i think it's important to think about the money that is being invested for electronic health records in the context of the health reform is certainly a critical piece and the system that we are designing is responsive to public health needs as well. but i do think i would also add that we do have a free seat capacity in the question as well

which is whether existing infrastructure and a lot of departments even with those requirements would be allowed to receive and properly analyze, and i think that standard setting and training issue for public health agencies, and i think i would add we spend just in the core work of cdc and the money they spend from the states a lot of money on public health surveillance. that money, the whole system needs to be redesigned and the redesigning of the system we may actually find the capacity and the resources to do a lot of the things that are needed on the prepared this site as well. >> there's a very constructive suggestions and we will see if the city can move them into the system. a final question, in your testimony you put a lot of emphasis on the leadership and i agree with you so it's always a critical component. sometimes overlooked because we

did focus on the details of what you want to do and forget the leadership. so, is there a criticism? do you think that we lack effective leadership in this by a defense -- biodefense area right now? >> to use a football analogy we have a lot of great assistant coaches. you saw a bunch of them here. the question is where is the head coach? in ensuring not to make a rhetorical statement about this but as i did, in my tenure of the white house be at and the a chicken around this issue particularly the political level with these familiarity with that i think there are many in the white house who are experts on nuclear issues certainly the pressing issues around cyber warfare and attacks on the economy have driven in a different way. this is one area but quite frankly needs a similar kind of

leadership to do so. i think dr. o'toole identified some of these now. that's very important. but literally, you have to have someone 24/7 whose only job is having lived and breathed it after a per call with:where you can basically go into those meetings and fight to ensure that they don't necessarily recommend your program because they don't understand the national security component to it. a quick example which is in the recent budget alignment where omb went through to basically a variety of different accounts clearly the homeland security national security were held aside but health programs are not and quite frankly the biodefense program particularly with omb is buried within cms and medicare and medicaid and all that of your stuff. in some ways it takes a greater hair cut and maybe some of the other programs simply the

recognition isn't there. this small amount of money even though it's about $7 million is like any of your billion dollar created to health and other related programs. and that is the challenge that you have and unless you have someone at that level to advocate and educate and literally bring people kicking and screaming to the meetings to the agency to ensure they understood the equities to the country and national security. >> so, you are talking about not somebody for instance in the department of homeland security but somebody in the white house presumably in the national secure council who would be designated as the person in charge of by biodefense to get terrorist point i think the fact that if you have the right consolation of leaders across the interagency the white house level will subject to the

integration of the medical countermeasure portfolio or the issue of basically leveraging the department of defense or the va to make the medical capabilities available in case the surge of security or medical countermeasure this edition of the postal service. those are things sometimes best done at the level above that. but you need all what it did you can't just have some of it. >> okay. i think that we have taken enough of your time and have to go to another meeting. it's been a very constructive hearing. the first panel was excellent. you build on the first panel with a very good suggestions i think will guide the committee as to where we can try to be supportive. i appreciate your testimony of all the work you do in this area very much. we are going to keep the record of the hearing opened for 15 days for any additional questions or statements.

with that i think you again, and the hearing is adjourned. >> [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations]

today the senate environment and public works committee reviewed the government response to this year's floods and efforts to mitigate floods damage. they heard from lawmakers representing states affected by major floods as well as officials from the army corps of

engineers. this is two hours and 40 minutes. >> the committee shall come to order. we are very pleased to have a number of colleagues from of the committee here today. i think it just shows how important our work is dealing and preventing floods. i apologize the ranking member and i are doing some work in a very important issue of public works, so if there's a little bit of diversion, please understand. what we decided would be that we would make a very brief opening statements, senator inhofe and dhaka, three minutes each, and then we would start with the members in order of seniority with senator grassley dillinger, then a senator conrad, senator roberts if he is here, senator

johnson, senator nelson. then on panel to we have senator soon come senator blood, senator carnahan, so that is the plan. very quickly, today's hearing will examine how the nation's flood control systems responded to the flooding event of 2011. we need to take a hard look at the response and see where we can improve our response. i welcome all of the distinguished witnesses that will help give the committee a picture of what happened, what worked, what didn't work. i appreciate the assistant secretary of the karni dorcy for joining with three core jurisdictions. major general michael walsh from mississippi valley, brigadier general john mcmahon from the northwest division and colonel christopher larsen with of the north atlantic division. i also welcome all of the local witnesses who made a trip to d.c. who will bring a very important perspective to us and

of course i welcome our senate colleague whose unprecedented how many colleagues are here today. and it's -- that's been to move us forward as we look at how to write a new water resources development act. as you know because of the earmarks controversy we have to change the way we do this bill. i want to give good news to those who are here. senator inhofe and i working with our staff are figuring out how to move forward, and we will work with all of you, senator, so that you feel comfortable we can meet the needs of your state and still managed to avoid the pitfalls of the dreaded word earmark just for the record speaking from myself, my own view is i believe we know what is best for our state and i am a person who believes we should continue doing those legislative priorities that have been given the name earmark but we are not going to get into that today. we are going to find a way to

fund and meet the requirements of the senate so we will be moving forward. the nation's flood control require continued investment and improvement, today's hearing will help us understand how we are better prepared for future flood defense. this is a bipartisan as is the hi label so i know we can work together and no one makes the seven better frankly them my good friend, senator inhofe i'm happy to call on him. >> thank you madam chairman. i do agree with that. although oklahoma is not experiencing the same impact of our colleagues, the two panelists before us. the ripple affect of the mississippi river flood yvette impacted constituents back home. one of the best kept secrets around as we of oklahoma are navigable. people don't know that. we have a navigation way that camel the wheel and touch my father in law who's a strong

democrat in the state legislature passed the author in the bill that established all of that. so, we have always been involved in that, and of course anything that affects the navigation system affects us. the court is still preparing assessments of the damage as well as formulating estimates that will repair the flood control infrastructure and madame chair i do have a lengthy statement i just want to have as part of the record, but i want to say that we are both anxious to tackle two major events one is the transportation reauthorization and the other and i have to say this also coming back from memory i was the only conservative the vote against the earmark than recognizing that when you don't do earmarks or don't do your appropriation authorization article 1 section 9 of the constitution tells us to do, then automatically the president

does that. and the president doesn't know what our needs are in oklahoma. i'm not sure he's ever been to oklahoma. with that, thank you for having this committee hearing. >> i will let that one go. here's where we are. if members can make three minutes opening and then that's what we're going to ask all of our senators to do. >> we have one member that wanted to be here but he can't so i ask his statement -- >> we will put it in the record at the appropriate place. >> senator cardin, your next and at some point i have to hand you the gavel deutsch to my scheduled but we are so thrilled to check the appropriate subcommittee on water. >> thank you for calling this hearing a think it is an extremely important hearing and i want to hear from our colleagues who've experienced firsthand the incredible challenge we've had on flooding this year so very interested in hearing from the panel and i ask consent that my entire statement be made a part of the record. but i want to share very quickly with my colleagues the

effectiveness of the control issues in the coast of maryland that work very well during these storms we've invested a lot of resources into protecting the oceanfront and ocean city maryland, and we have invested money but it's paid off big time and we saw that during these past two storms, and we have record levels of rainfall. we had to evacuate, but the amount of damage was kept to a minimum because of the investments that we made on the sand replenishment and the dunes. i might also say that the sesto, river was in danger of severe flooding but once again the management system worked well so madame chair i put my entire statement in the record and i look for to the witness is

particularly we have the engineer for the town of ocean city to testify on the leader panel as to the value we received from the precautionary work that was done to protect ocean city. >> thank you, senator. senator johanns. >> madame chair, let me start with this, thank you for holding this very important hearing today. this is the date for bipartisanship, in fact it started back in july when the 14 senators, all 14 senators along the missouri river sent a hearing requesting and i think the chair and the ranking member for honoring the request. i probably won't soon forget this spring when it became clear to me that nebraska ins would soon be dealing with a flood of

historic proportions. we have seen reports of large snowpack on the rocky mountains and across the great plains, but then in the last two weeks of may several states in the river basin experience rainfall at 200, 300 come and even 400% above average. the total runoff for 2011 is projected to reach almost 230% of the normal level and far exceed the 2007 record of the 49 million acres. now no doubt about it this presented an immense challenge for the army corps personnel as they try to deal with this situation. i do want to express my gratitude to the federal and state employees who spent countless hours combating the flood waters. but it seems clear to me that the river management system did not work and that is why we are

here today, granted the snowpack and the rainfall that caused the flood was no doubt about it exceptional, but we must not figure out what changes must be made to protect people's forms, their livelihood, their homes. only the last few weeks as a matter of fact that some people even got back to their homes because they had been underwater we could not have expected the court to completely mitigate the effect of the floods. it just wasn't humanly possible. but it is appropriate to ask what data was available that could have been used to alleviate the pressure on the flood control systems earlier this year to the extent it is feasible we should also consider that there is a need for updates to the master manual procedures in in the annual operating plan. i will wrap up my comments today by expressing my concern that

not withstanding but the enormous problems we have had over the last year it looks like we're headed into another very difficult situation in the year ahead with no changes being made, so i appreciate hearing, madame chair and i look forward to the witness' testimony. >> thank you, senator. senator alexander. >> thanks, madam share. i also appreciate hearing and welcome our colleagues and those who are testifying. my top priority is to make -- to do all i can to help the federal government participate in repairing the island near memphis as well as other damage near the lake county which is the beginning of for the mississippi river comes down along tennessee because the longer we wait to do that, the more we endanger the creation of jobs in the region at a time when unemployment is more than

9%. that's my major goal. like the other states represented here, we have had some huge floods the last two years. the reason why so many senators are here is the mississippi river and tributary flood project is the largest flood control project in the world and we've had these two phenomenal the events. in 2010 and 2011. in tennessee it was a thousand year flood and in 2010, and then in 2011 the core of engineers fought this what for 47 straight days. the mayor is here from memphis to talk about what happened there and the importance of the work on the island but i want to complement the mayor and the leadership of shelby county and memphis for their preparedness. i haven't seen a more effective organization in a long time that worked hard to avoid the damage rather than to just clean up

after its. we hope to focus on this hearing on other things we can do to prevent a future damage, and i would say to the corps of engineers the work it did during the flooding even 2011 insofar as what we saw in tennessee was a very good job. after 2010, my emphasis to the corps of engineers, particularly for the floating around nashville was to see if we could find a way to take the federal agencies and mechem were warnings about floods as effective as about tornadoes. you can turn on the television and see that tornado coming down your road in 13 minutes. we can't quite do that with rising water but the tornado warnings were greatly improved by cooperation from agencies over the last ten or 12 years i think we should work with the weather service and the army corps and other agencies to see if we can let the cities and towns and people of the mississippi river and other

areas no when flood waters are coming. i thank you, madam chair and i look forward to hearing. >> centers, we are now ready to hear your voice is and perspectives, so we will start with senator grassley. each of you will have three minutes. go ahead. >> thank you, senator boxer, senator inhofe for your leadership in this area and holding a very important hearing that's because of the devastation from the missouri river flood of 2011 i'm going to put a long statement in the record and summarize very quickly. if you know the history of the op flood projects they were for flood control. over the course of several decades, a corps manual has been put forward that was finalized in 2006 that would probably try

to manage the river for the federal reasons beyond flood control, for recreation, irrigation, municipal water and environmental reasons and for commerce. it took about ten to 15 years to develop that manual that manages the river, and the kunkel structures. it seems to me that from the devastation that has happened this year you have to have a revision of the manual to put more emphasis upon flood control, the original purpose of the structure in the first place. and since it took a decade or more to develop the manual that now governs, we've got to have been just a few months a revision of that manual that puts emphasis upon flood control. it's pretty difficult to blame to the core for what went wrong when they have so many