The target list confusion

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Sep 6, 2004 | by Sean Holstege - Staff Writer

WHAT DO the La Brea Tar Pits and the Golden Gate Bridge have in common?

Both rank on Californias list of 624 potential terrorist targets.

The classified list was obtained and confirmed by sources. Newer blacked-out versions were disclosed under the California Public Records Act.

How California ranked those targets and why it largely ignored the list as it doled out money to protect the public against a terrorist attack is a story of expediency and hip-shot planning.

The Golden States experience strikes at the heart of how Californians define terrorism in the new normal and a lack of clarity about the mission to defend against it.

Then-Gov. Gray Davis, stinging from his indecisive reputation during the energy crisis, acted swiftly after Sept. 11, 2001. Two weeks after the attacks, his administration established the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center.

It was the first state terrorism center in the country.

CATICs guidepost was one of the broadest definitions of terrorism in the country. In Cal-ifornia, terrorism became the threat of a criminal act aimed at coercing a civilian population and influencing the policy of the government, among other similarly vague items.

With that definition, the center set about pigeonholing and ranking possible targets. The state relied on a military assessment method used to evaluate threats in war zones and turned to the California National Guard for advice.Analysts looked at how critical, accessible, recognizable and vulnerable a target was, how quickly it could recuperate and how widespread the attack aftermath would be.

Each factor got a score, and the target with the biggest total score topped the list. In a February 2003 list, nine of the top 10 targets were transportation facilities -- ports, airports and bridges. The other was the tourist icon Disneyland. The 624-target list, which later grew by about 20 sites, featured power, water and transportation facilities, popular tourist destinations, plus key government facilities and tall buildings -- all obvious sites. But CATIC's rankings are littered with quirks. A more recent version contains dozens of errors, such as listing Modesto as a county with two targets. There is no Modesto County. Three Santa Rosa targets are listed in Solano County, when Santa Rosa is actually in Sonoma County, which is missing. The center locates Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Contra Costa County, not Alameda County. The lab is ranked lower than Harris Ranch, the Interstate 5 beef mecca, which in turn is 35 slots above BART's Transbay Tube and 311 positions above Oakland police headquarters. The Port of Humboldt Bay and Alcatraz Island also rank higher than BART's Transbay Tube. The rationale for these rankings hinges on access and vulnerability. The Transbay Tube is hard to reach, while armed guards defend the weapons lab and law enforcement centers. The limited access and existing defenses lower the rankings.

Plenty of quirks

But there are other quirks. A major Los Angeles freeway interchange appears high on the list, but all the other critical interchanges throughout the state are absent. "I wouldn't put much stock in that list. That list is SWAG -- a scientific, wild-assed guess," said George Vinson, the homeland security adviser under Davis and the chief architect of California's counter-terror plans. "It was put together quickly. "Those guys at CATIC were trying to become junior G-men and compete with the FBI," added Vinson, who built a career as a counter-terrorism expert at the bureau's San Francisco office. California attempted what RAND Corp. and Mineta Transportation Institute terrorism expert Brian Jenkins had recommended to presidential commissions for years. He said that three years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack the nation still needs a systematic inventory of threats and vulnerabilities and a strategy to prioritize which targets to protect first. The government started but never finished that work. Before 9/11, the FBI played a pivotal role after President Clinton signed Presidential Decision Directive 63 in 1998. The directive established the National Infrastructure Protection Center and ordered the FBI to fuse the work of federal agencies and private industry to identify targets and threats. By 2003, the new center was to have a plan to protect key facilities. Paula Wendell was tapped to run the center's Key Asset Program. She's now an assistant special agent in charge at the FBI's San Francisco division. Working with top-level federal officials, including former presidential terrorism adviser Richard Clarke, Wendell's team identified 400 key targets in six months. It categorized them into three tiers, based on potential disruption from an attack. In the Bay Area and other metropolises, the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force refined the effort, working with local contacts in law enforcement and key industries, such as power, water and telecommunications. But 9/11 changed everything. The new Department of Homeland Security later took over the role and much of Wendell's staff as it launched into a new undertaking to prioritize "critical infrastructure." The department has increased security on those sites and is working with local agencies to help them with better security, spokeswoman Valerie Smith said. But that view is not universally shared. "All that key asset contingency planning (and) target hardening has all been transferred over to Homeland Security," Wendell said. "We get a lot of requests about how to protect a bridge or a dam. We cannot tell them how to protect their entities. Homeland Security prioritizes targets. We don't." Except Homeland Security doesn't either, according to Jenkins and numerous internal government audits and reports. So the FBI, the agency with the counter-terrorism analysts who sift through leads about plots all day long, has no direct say in what to protect. FBI agents familiar with the work describe a system in which tips and analyses get sent to Washington, with no word back whether anybody acted on, or even got, the information. FBI counter- terrorism agents are in the dark about whether the people protecting local targets get any help at all.