An Ignoble Experiment

2. FEMA laments slow regulatory process as disaster costs grow

Diplomatic and military officials testified May 15 during a Senate hearing that their agencies have devoted considerable attention and resources to Boko Haram's kidnapping of more than 200 girls in Nigeria.

"Resolving this crisis is now one of the highest priorities of the U.S.government," said Robert Jackson, the State Department's principal deputy assistant secretary for African affairs. He spoke during a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing.

Rescuing the kidnapping victims has become such a high priority for reasons beyond concern over the girls' survival and wellbeing.

"Nigeria's conflict with Boko Haram will not end when these young women are brought home. Consequently, throughout this crisis, our assistance is framed by our broader and long-term policy goal of helping the Nigerians implement a comprehensive response to defeat Boko Haram," Jackson said.

Alice Friend, the Defense Department's principal director for African affairs, said the department has assigned 16 of its personnel exclusively to advising Nigeria's response to the kidnapping. Their areas of expertise include counterterrorism, intelligence, medicine and communications.

Friend also voiced frustration with the Nigerian military's history of human rights violations. The U.S. military is not allowed to assist or train forces that have committed human rights abuses.

"We have struggled a great deal in the past to locate units that we can work with," she said.

For more:
- visit the hearing webpage (prepared testimony and webcast available)

Read more about: DoD, Senate Foreign Relations
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By Zach Rausnitz

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3. Report: DoD rarely revisits list of most serious biological threats

With disaster relief costs climbing into the billions of dollars annually, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has tried to ease regulations and encourage efforts to mitigate damage. But the process moves at a frustratingly slow pace, said FEMA's David Miller during a Senate hearing May 14.

Miller, the head of FEMA's Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration, cited one new rule finalized in April that simply altered a few words in an existing rule. The process that culminated in the final rule lasted about three years, Miller said.

Even then, "that's fast for regulatory review," he told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on emergency management.

Prior to the change, states had to submit updated disaster mitigation plans – their strategies to avoid a cycle of damage, reconstruction and repeated damage – every three years to be eligible for federal grants. Under the revision, states only have to submit updated plans once every five years.

Local and tribal governments already operate on the five-year cycle for revising their plans, so the new rule aligns all levels of government.

Making the simple change required FEMA to conduct analysis of the rule's potential impacts and solicit and respond to public comments.

Only one comment, from an environmental advocacy group, was opposed to the change. The group voiced concern that plans would grow outdated and fail to reflect the latest climate change models.

For more:
- visit the hearing webpage (prepared testimonies and archived webcast available)

By Zach Rausnitz

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4. Study: Major tornadoes more predictable

The Defense Department hasn't followed its own directive to annually update its list of biological agents that pose the greatest threat.

A new Government Accountability Office report says DoD's list of top biological threats, which forms the basis for investments in countermeasures like vaccines and drugs, has only been updated twice since its creation in 2000. A DoD directive says the department should update it annually.

Pentagon officials told auditors they were under the impression that the directive was no longer in effect.

The dearth of updates throws into question whether resources "are being applied toward developing medical countermeasures to respond to the most-serious and likely biological threat agents," the report says. From fiscals 2001 through 2013, the department spent billions of dollars researching and developing medical countermeasures.

In the years that DoD did update the list, it didn't reach out to the department's Chemical and Biological Defense Program and other stakeholders, which the directive also requires, the report says.

The list consists of 19 biological agents, unspecified in the report because they are classified. DoD has countermeasures available for four of them, and countermeasures for several others are considered to be at the advanced stage of the development process.

The Health and Human Services Department has a separate medical countermeasures program to prepare for pandemics and bioterror attacks. The possibility of redundancy among the two departments recently drew concern from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

For more:
- download the report, GAO-14-442 (pdf)

Read more about: DoD, biological weapons
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By Zach Rausnitz

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