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American Morning

Target: Terrorism - Bioterrorism Possibilities and Problems

Aired October 02, 2001 - 09:17   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Several experts on terrorism are waving warning flags. They're saying a biological weapons attack on the United States.

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(on camera): And critics say the U.S. government and health care system are woefully unprepared for it. One of those is Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating, who participated in a biological weapons attack exercise called Dark Winter. We told you a little bit about it just about an half an hour ago. He joins me from Oklahoma City. Governor, thanks for being with us.

GOVERNOR FRANK KEATING, OKLAHOMA: Sure, Miles. Hi. How are you?

O'BRIEN: Good, good. We talked to Senator Nunn. He played the president. You got to play yourself.

GOV. KEATING: If I weren't Republican I would vote for him. He was a very effective president in that exercise.

O'BRIEN: He had some interesting insights on the whole thing. What was your take on it? Was it as much of failure as has been reported?

GOV. KEATING: Well, Miles the challenge for us at the state and local level is to have the federal government recognize that the first responders -- the firefighters, rescue workers, police officers, national guard -- will be state and local people. So, we have to have the intelligence to know what's coming. And if a smallpox attack, for example, is something that is in the quiver, that's a possibility and not a remote possibility, but a possibility, then we need to train for it and have the vaccines, be able to recognize it and Dark Winter really suggested to us that, if in fact smallpox is a potential attack source, most doctors, most nurses, certainly those trained in the last 25 years don't recognize it -- wouldn't know what it was.

And there is no treatment. And we have very little vaccine available for -- for example police and firefighters and rescue workers would have to be vaccinated to work in an environment like that. So, our big need really is -- is not to exaggerate or our big challenge is not to exaggerate the potential of a small pox attack but to have the intelligence community tell us what realistic. Is it an airplane in building; is it small pox or whatever? We're trained for floods and tornadoes and gunshot wounds, but we don't know anything about this.

O'BRIEN: You know, let's back up a just a little bit, for folk who maybe didn't hear Senator Nunn talking about this. If you could just lay out briefly is scenario and what happened as you sort of gamed this out at Andrews Air Force Base back in June.

GOV. KEATING: Well, the scenario was a small pox attack on my city. Oklahoma City. Then later an attack on Atlanta and Philadelphia. And, of course the reaction of the federal government, state government, local government to that smallpox attack. Because smallpox has been eradicated, from the world really, since 1980, very few people recognize what it was. And, because we only have some 12 million vaccines available for a population of 200-plus million, there was an argument over, "well, should the military get it or doctors and nurses get it?" And it really disintegrated rather badly to be honest.

Now, is small pox a realistic threat? Probably not, but the fact is that we at state and local level, in that exercise, because we have first responsibility and probably most of the responsibility to make things happen correctly, for the public, need to have the intelligence in advance to know what to prepare for so we can stockpile and train. Something that certainly, unfortunately, is not in existence as it should be today.

O'BRIEN: Just a quick question. When you went into this conference, did you have any idea what lie -- lay ahead for you? Did they tip anything off or was it a blank slate?

GOV. KEATING: It was pretty well a blank slate. And the response, of course, was typical. The -- much of the media had a rather patronizing attitude about the media below. My comment was that people in Philadelphia, Atlanta, And Oklahoma City will get news from the local media to which one of the national people said well that's too bad. That's worrisome.

The military, of course, wanted immediately to talk about retaliation. I wanted to talk about rescue and recovery because I had a responsibility, for example, to save my people -- at least to try to. So I shut the airports, closed the highways in and out of the state, and made sure that everybody coming in -- coming in or out were vaccinated against small pox. To which President Nunn said what gave you authority to do that. I said well I just did it.

So, these are all things that need to be practiced and practiced and practiced to prepare for, either a real or imagined threat. And something that is not being done in sufficient numbers and to sufficient detail at this juncture.

O'BRIEN: Boy, and that really kind of hits the nub of the issue, when you're in these kind of real-time scenarios -- the relationship between the federal response and the local response. Oftentimes these agencies don't mesh very well. The feds tend come in in a heavy- handed manner, try to tell localities what to do. At the same time, the federal government may be the only entity that has the big picture, if you will. How do you reconcile those two competing interests, if you will?

GOV. KEATING: That's why I think President Bush absolutely correct in creating that Homeland Security Office and placing Tom Ridge in charge. Because these are the issues that have to be discussed, debated and resolved right now. What has the CIA been doing since the end of the Cold War? Where is this intelligence being assembled, if it is at all? Can it, should it, must it be shared with state and local authorities, so that we can avoid these kinds of problems in the future. For example, the FBI, and I'm an ex-FBI agent, is in the business of investigating crime after it occurs, but really isn't in the business of preventing crime. That's a cultural issue that has to be addressed.

Certainly, doctors and nurses need to be trained for realistic scenarios. Is smallpox one of those? I don't know, but the intelligence community is the community that has to tell us whether that's so or not, so we can train what is realistic and not which is merely fanciful.

O'BRIEN: Frank Keating is the governor of Oklahoma. We thank you for your time this morning.

GOV. KEATING: Sure, Miles. Thank you very much

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