MULTIAGENCY SECURITY CONTINGENCY PLANNING: Mutual Support Against the \"High Threat\"

As those of you who've spent any time in the armed forces will, I'm sure, recall, the military has a simple, basic approach to any form of presentation: tell'em what you're going to tell'em, then tell'em, then tell'em what you told'em. This formula is considered applicable to every audience from basic trainees to colonels at the War College. Tc-day, however, I'm ^oing -to-vary from that tried-and-true dictum. I'm going to begin my discussion of high-threat contingency planning by telling you what I'm not going to tell you. I'm not going to tell you that terrorism is out there, trashing the public peace and bludgeoning the public consciousness. I'm not going to paint lurid pictures of KGB manipulation of antinuclear protest groups, and I'm not going to thunder stentorian warnings that \"IT CAN HAPPEN HERE.\" Anyone with more than a passing interest in current events has already worked out such conclusions for himself or herself. It is not my objective here to reiterate the obvious. It is my objective to suggest a process that can materially enhance a critical facility's capacity for detecting, deterring, or if need be, defeating attacks from the higher end of the threat spectrum. This process systematically identifies those proactive and reactive measures required to address threat scenarios beyond the capabilities of in situ security resources. It then establishes implementing procedures which optimally utilize and integrate the considerable array of total onsite and offsite security, intelligence, and tactical response forces available. In my discussion, I will of course draw on my own experience in contingency planning. Aspects of that experience which are relevant to our discussion today include planning for incident response at the U.S. Bullion Repository at Fort Knox, KY, and, more recently, at the Strategic Petroleum Reserve sites in Louisiana and Texas.