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| Chairs: | Warren B. Rudman Richard Clarke, former national coordinator, National Security Council |
|---|---|
| Director: | Jamie F. Metzl |
Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations Press
Release Date: June 2003
76 pages
ISBN 0876093349
$15.00
Task Force Report No. 47
Written nearly two years after September 11, 2001, this report concludes that the United States is drastically underfunding local emergency responders and remains dangerously unprepared to handle a catastrophic attack on American soil, particularly one involving chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high-impact conventional weapons. If the nation does not take immediate steps to better identify and address the urgent needs of emergency responders, the next terrorist incident could be even more devastating than 9/11.
These are the central findings of the Council-sponsored independent Task Force on Emergency Responders, a blue-ribbon panel of Nobel laureates, U.S. military leaders, former high-level government officials, and other senior experts, led by former Senator Warren B. Rudman and advised by former White House terrorism and cyber-security chief Richard A. Clarke. This report marks the first time that data from emergency responder communities has been brought together to estimate national needs.
The Task Force met with U.S. firefighters, police officers, emergency medical workers, public health providers, and other emergency responders—whose lives depend on the adequacy of their preparedness for another terrorist attack—and asked them what additional programs they truly need to establish a minimum effective response to a catastrophic attack. The shockingly high unbudgeted needs they articulated make clear the importance of closing the gap between current levels of emergency preparedness and minimum essential preparedness levels across the United States. This is a must read for anyone interested in how the United States can, and must, better protect itself.
Warren B. Rudman, partner, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison; former senator, New Hampshire
Charles Graham Boyd,chief executive officer and president, Business Executives for National Security; former deputy commander in chief, U.S. European Command
Richard A. Clarke, senior adviser, Council on Foreign Relations; chairman of Good Harbor Consulting, LLC; former senior White House adviser
William J. Crowe, senior adviser, Global Options; former chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
James Kallstrom, senior executive vice president, MBNA America; former director, Office of Public Security for the State of New York
Joshua Lederberg, president emeritus and Sackler Foundation Scholar, Rockefeller University; Nobel laureate
Donald Marron, chairman, UBS America and chairman, Lightyear Capital
Jamie Metzl, senior fellow and coordinator for Homeland Security Programs, Council on Foreign Relations; former National Security Council aide; former Senate Foreign Relations Committee official
Philip A. Odeen, former chairman, TRW, Inc.
Norman J. Ornstein, resident scholar, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Dennis Reimer, director, Oklahoma City National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism; former chief of staff, U.S. Army
George P. Shultz, Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford distinguished fellow, the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; former secretary of state, secretary of the Treasury, secretary of labor, and director, Office of Management and Budget
Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
David Stern, commissioner, National Basketball Association
Paul Tagliabue, commissioner, National Football League
Harold E. Varmus, president and chief executive officer, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Nobel laureate
John W. Vessey, former chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
William H. Webster, partner, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley and McCloy; former director, Central Intelligence Agency; former director, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Steven Weinberg, director of the Theory Group, University of Texas; Nobel laureate
Mary Jo White, partner and chair of the litigation department, Debevoise and Plimpton; former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
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