[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE BOSTON MARATHON BOMBINGS, ONE YEAR ON: A LOOK BACK TO LOOK FORWARD
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
APRIL 9, 2014
__________
Serial No. 113-64
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/
__________
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
Michael T. McCaul, Texas, Chairman
Lamar Smith, Texas Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi
Peter T. King, New York Loretta Sanchez, California
Mike Rogers, Alabama Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas
Paul C. Broun, Georgia Yvette D. Clarke, New York
Candice S. Miller, Michigan, Vice Brian Higgins, New York
Chair Cedric L. Richmond, Louisiana
Patrick Meehan, Pennsylvania William R. Keating, Massachusetts
Jeff Duncan, South Carolina Ron Barber, Arizona
Tom Marino, Pennsylvania Dondald M. Payne, Jr., New Jersey
Jason Chaffetz, Utah Beto O'Rourke, Texas
Steven M. Palazzo, Mississippi Filemon Vela, Texas
Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania Eric Swalwell, California
Richard Hudson, North Carolina Vacancy
Steve Daines, Montana Vacancy
Susan W. Brooks, Indiana
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania
Mark Sanford, South Carolina
Vacancy
Brendan P. Shields, Staff Director
Michael Geffroy, Deputy Staff Director/Chief Counsel
Michael S. Twinchek, Chief Clerk
I. Lanier Avant, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Statements
The Honorable Michael T. McCaul, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Texas, and Chairman, Committee on Homeland
Security:
Oral Statement................................................. 1
Prepared Statement............................................. 3
The Honorable Loretta Sanchez, a Representative in Congress From
the State of California:
Oral Statement................................................. 4
The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Mississippi, and Ranking Member, Committee on
Homeland Security:
Prepared Statement............................................. 6
The Honorable William R. Keating, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Massachusetts................................ 8
Witnesses
Mr. Edward F. Davis III, Former Commissioner, Boston Police
Department, Fellow, John F. Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University:
Oral Statement................................................. 10
Prepared Statement............................................. 12
Mr. Edward P. Deveau, Chief of Police, Watertown Police
Department:
Oral Statement................................................. 14
Prepared Statement............................................. 16
Mr. Jeffrey J. Pugliese, Sergeant, Watertown Police Department:
Oral Statement................................................. 17
Prepared Statement............................................. 18
Mr. Herman ``Dutch'' B. Leonard, Professor of Public Management,
John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University:
Oral Statement................................................. 19
Prepared Statement............................................. 20
Appendix
Questions From Honorable Susan W. Brooks for Herman ``Dutch'' B.
Leonard........................................................ 47
THE BOSTON MARATHON BOMBINGS, ONE YEAR ON: A LOOK BACK TO LOOK FORWARD
----------
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Homeland Security,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:07 a.m., in Room
311, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Michael T. McCaul
[Chairman of the committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives McCaul, King, Broun, Meehan,
Duncan, Chaffetz, Palazzo, Hudson, Brooks, Perry, Sanford,
Sanchez, Clarke, Richmond, Keating, Payne, Vela, and Swalwell.
Chairman McCaul. The Committee on Homeland Security will
come to order.
The committee is meeting today to continue a series of
hearings examining the Boston bombings of April 15, 2013.
Today there will be a memorial service in my home State of
Texas for the Fort Hood shooting that took place on April 2,
2014. So before we would continue this proceeding, I would like
to take a moment of silence to recognize the victims of this
horrific attack.
[Moment of silence.]
Chairman McCaul. I now recognize myself for an opening
statement.
This is a powerful and emotional day for the witnesses and
for me and this committee. It is a time to remember the
anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings, and it is a time
to remember the victims.
I personally remember walking down Boylston Street with
Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis, who is with us here today.
I remember him pointing out to me the trash cans where the
bombs went off, injuring 260 innocent people and killing 3,
including a little 8-year-old boy, in cold blood.
In the middle of the chaos, we also witnessed exceptional
bravery. If not for the heroic acts of the first responders and
Boston citizens who ran towards danger instead of away, many
more could have died.
I remember after the attack the marathoners tying their
shoes together in the hundreds in a memorial out of respect and
out of dedication.
I also remember the Watertown police chief, who is with us
here today as well--and thank you for being here--I remember
him taking me and Congressman Keating on a tour of their once-
quiet neighborhood and seeing the aftermath of the gunfight to
take down two of the biggest terrorists since 9/11.
What happened after that is what heroes are made of.
Tamerlan threw everything he had at these officers, including
pipe bombs, rounds of ammunition, and a pressure-cooker IED.
The Boston bomber was finally subdued after the heroic acts and
efforts of our local law enforcement, who are with us today as
well.
What is not so well-known is that, had it not been for the
efforts of Commissioner Ed Davis and those of the Watertown
police force, our Nation could have been further terrorized.
These terrorists had six more bombs in their car, and they were
on their way to Times Square. If it wasn't for these heroic
acts of bravery, New York City could have been hit again.
We will hear from these brave individuals today for the
first time before Congress.
This committee, through its oversight responsibilities,
conducted a thorough investigation into what happened and what
went wrong. We found that several flags and warnings were
missed. We found that Tamerlan was on the radar of the FBI and
somehow dropped off.
We found that Tamerlan traveled to Dagestan, known for its
Chechen terrorists. This is precisely what the Russian letter
warned our intelligence community and FBI about. He came back
even more radicalized. We also found that, unfortunately,
Customs, FBI, and the intelligence community somehow missed it.
Arrogantly, some U.S. officials said it would not have made a
difference--it would not have made a difference if they had
known about his overseas travels.
We now know that a check of his public social media would
have shown indicators, such as jihadist video postings. His
mosque had seen escalating behavior, as well. It likely would
have been clear that he was becoming more and more of a threat
to the community.
Which takes me to my last point. State and local police
have a strong role in counterterrorism. They know the streets
better than anybody, and they know the local threats. The
Boston PD should have been given more information throughout
the entire process. They must know the terror threats in their
own backyards--they know those. This process, in my judgment,
has to change.
In an effort to do this, 2 weeks ago our committee issued
our report about the Boston Marathon bombings. Over the course
of the year, we held two hearings, had numerous briefings and
engagements, traveled to Boston multiple times, had a
bipartisan staff delegation travel to Moscow. I personally went
to Boston and Moscow with Mr. Keating and spoke with officials
on the ground.
I want to thank the Democrats for their participation in
the investigation and the report, and I am pleased that their
input was reflected in the final report.
Based on the lessons learned, we issued our findings and
recommendations to fix some of the systemic problems that led
to Tamerlan Tsarnaev falling off of our radar. I hope to think,
in a small way, the recommendations we made in this report can
make a difference in preventing the tragedy we saw in Boston
from occurring again in the homeland.
I am pleased to know and to hear and report that both the
FBI and DHS are already constructively implementing the
recommendations of this committee's report, and I commend them
for that. Let us hope that such a tragic event like this never
happens again.
With that, I would now like to recognize the heroes in this
hearing, in this committee room here today, the Watertown
officers, who are with us here today, who were directly
involved in Tamerlan's takedown and being taken off the streets
once and for all: Sergeant Jeff Pugliese, Sergeant John
MacLellan, Officer Joseph Reynolds, Officer Miguel Colon,
Officer Michael Comick, and, of course, Chief Deveau.
Gentlemen, would you please stand and be recognized?
[Applause.]
[The statement of Chairman McCaul follows:]
Statement of Chairman Michael T. McCaul
April 9, 2014
This is a powerful and emotional day for the witnesses, for me, and
this committee. It's a time to remember the anniversary of the Boston
Marathon bombings, and it's a time to remember the victims. I,
personally, remember walking down Boylston Street with Boston Police
Commissioner Ed Davis, who is with us here today. I remember him
pointing out to me the trash cans where the bombs went off, injuring
260 innocent people and killing 3 including a little 8-year-old boy, in
cold blood.
In the middle of chaos, we also witnesses exceptional bravery. If
not for the heroic acts of the first responders and Boston citizens who
ran towards danger instead of away, many more could have died.
I remember after the attack, the marathoners tying their shoes
together in the hundreds in a memorial out of respect and dedication. I
remember the Watertown Police Chief, who is before us today. I remember
him taking Congressman Keating and me on a tour of their once-quiet
neighborhood and seeing the aftermath of the gunfight to take down two
of the biggest terrorists since 9/11.
What happened after that is what heroes are made of. Tamerlan threw
everything he had at these officers including pipe bombs, rounds of
ammunition, and a pressure cooker IED. The Boston Bomber was finally
subdued after the heroic acts and efforts of our local law enforcement,
some of who are with us today.
What is not so well-known is that had it not been for the efforts
of Commissioner Ed Davis and his efforts, and those of the Watertown
police force, our Nation could have been further terrorized. These
terrorists had six more bombs in their car and were on their way to
Times Square. If it wasn't for these heroic acts of bravery New York
City could have been hit again.
We will hear from these brave individuals today for the first time
before Congress. This committee, through its oversight
responsibilities, conducted a thorough investigation into what happened
and what went wrong.
We found that several red flags and warnings were missed. We found
that Tamerlan was on the radar of the FBI and somehow dropped off. We
found that Tamerlan traveled to Dagestan, known for its Chechen
terrorists. This is precisely what the Russian letter warned our
intelligence community and FBI about. He came back even more
radicalized. We also found that unfortunately Customs, FBI, and the IC
somehow missed it. Arrogantly, some U.S. officials said ``It would not
have made a difference'' if they had known about his overseas travel.
We now know that a check of his public social media would have shown
indicators such as Jihadists video postings. His Mosque had seen
escalating behavior as well. It likely would have been clear that he
was becoming more and more of a threat to the community.
Which takes me to me to my last point: State and local police have
a strong role in counterterrorism. They know the streets better than
anybody and they know the local threats. The Boston Police Department
should have been given more information throughout the entire process.
They must know the terror threats in their own backyards. This process
in my judgment has to change.
In an effort to do this, 2 weeks ago our committee issued our
report about the Boston Marathon bombings. Over the course of the year,
we held two hearings; had numerous briefings and engagements; traveled
to Boston multiple times; and had a bipartisan staff delegation travel
to Moscow. I personally went to Boston and Moscow with Mr. Keating and
spoke with officials on the ground. I want to thank the Democrats for
their participation in the investigation and the report, and I'm
pleased that their input was reflected in the final report. Based on
lessons learned, we issued our findings and recommendations to fix some
of the systemic problems that led to Tamerlan Tsarnaev falling off of
our radar.
I hope to think in a small way the recommendations we made in this
report can make a difference in preventing the tragedy we saw in Boston
from occurring again in the homeland. I am pleased to know, to hear,
and to report that both the FBI and DHS are already constructively
implementing the recommendations of this committee's report. Let us
hope that such a tragic event like this never happens again.
Chairman McCaul. The Chairman now recognizes the acting
Ranking Member, Ms. Sanchez.
Ms. Sanchez. I thank the Chairman for holding today's
hearing.
I also extend my condolences to the families of the 4
people killed during last week's shooting at Fort Hood, and
additional prayers are with the 16 people who were injured
during that shooting. I do want to recognize the first-
responder community and medical personnel for their incredible
response to the shooting. As of today, the Joint Terrorism Task
Force does not consider the shooting an act of terrorism.
However, the investigation is still on-going.
I am going to read into the record the comments from our
Ranking Member, Mr. Thompson of Mississippi, which I concur
with.
Incidents like last week's shooting and last year's Boston
Marathon bombing, the focus of today's hearing, remind us of
the importance of our first responders. With that being said, I
again commend the service of our witnesses--former Commissioner
Davis, Chief Deveau, Sergeant Pugliese. I also thank Professor
Leonard for recognizing their courageous efforts in his
research.
Resilience and response are two of the reasons why almost a
year ago the Boston metropolitan area--why almost a year from
ago the Boston metropolitan area remains strong. I wish Mayor
Walsh, president of the Boston Athletic Association Joann
Flaminio, and all the runners and volunteers participating in
the 118th Boston Marathon well as the race commences on the
21st of April of this year.
Even though Boston is standing strong, it would be a
disservice to the community not to take a look back. There are
still unanswered questions about the history of the Tsarnaev
brothers, the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, and we owe it to
the people of Boston and the rest of America to make sure that
the appropriate officials do a thorough review of that
situation.
Last April, the inspectors general of the intelligence
community, Departments of Homeland Security and Justice, and
the Central Intelligence Agency announced a joint investigation
into whether intelligence was properly distributed and acted
upon in the months and the years before the bombings at the
Boston Marathon.
I find it rather unfortunate, however, that the review was
delayed because of the senseless 16-day Government shutdown in
October 2013. Partisan disagreements create serious gaps in
homeland security oversight, and this is just one example of
the myriad of setbacks that the shutdown yielded.
Another development since last year is Attorney General
Holder's January 13 announcement that the United States would
be seeking the death penalty against Tamerlan* Tsarnaev, the
alleged Boston Marathon bomber. He was arrested and indicted,
and I have declared my confidence in his receiving a fair yet
aggressive prosecution in the United States District Court for
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
* See clarification, p. 33.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Chairman, as a former Federal prosecutor, you know
Attorney General Holder's decision to seek the death penalty is
a game-changer. I am sure you are familiar with the intricacies
involved in a capital case.
As I reminded the committee last year, as we fulfill our
Constitutional oversight responsibilities, we must be careful
not to jeopardize a Federal prosecution. This applies in both
the words that we speak to the public as well as the
publications that stem from this committee.
Unfortunately, some of the actions that have extended from
this committee have not been helpful to the Department of
Justice. On March 26, a Majority staff report, endorsed by a
minority of the Members of this committee, was released to the
public. Less than 48 hours after the report's release,
Tsarnaev's defense team filed a motion in the United States
District Court citing this report.
I reemphasize that, as Members of Congress, especially as
Members of the Homeland Security Committee, we are held to a
heightened standard. We are trusted with both Classified and
Unclassified briefings and meetings with the members of the
intelligence community. Therefore, the words that we speak or
we publish about alleged terrorists transcend the halls of this
Congress and are not taken lightly by the public.
Furthermore, this not only applies to events surrounding
Boston but also to other events with pending investigations.
Reaching conclusions before facts are known puts the reputation
of this committee at peril. Thus, we must exercise discretion
in our questioning, in our statements about events, suspects,
and the links to others that may not be in custody.
But in spite of those limitations, Mr. Chairman, we can
still use our platform to have a productive discussion about
the Boston Marathon bombing and act on outstanding matters. For
example, we can and we should discuss the funding given to the
first-responder community.
Last year, at the Committee on Homeland Security's first
hearing on the Boston Marathon bombings, former Commissioner
Davis stated that, without grant funding, ``the response would
have been much less comprehensive than it was.'' Without the
exercises supported through the Urban Areas Security Initiative
funding, there would be more people who died in these attacks.
Professor Leonard's testimony also indicates that this type
of preparedness is what makes first response effective. Sargent
Pugliese is also testifying today that local municipal
governments are not financially equipped to take on the
increasing burden of these catastrophic attacks like Boston.
It is time that we not only listen to the first responders
but that we also take action.
Not only after last year's hearing but also hearings
throughout several Congresses, Members have heard about the
importance of these grant programs and the success stories
involving them. Accordingly, I urge Members to oppose the
administration's proposal to shift focus away from supporting
State and local efforts to develop terrorism-related prevention
and preparedness capabilities by morphing the Homeland Security
Grant Program into an all-hazards grant.
I am not convinced that the administration's underfunded
grant consolidation proposal would provide sufficient support
for first responders across America to build and maintain the
capabilities necessary to respond as effectively as the first
responders in Boston and Watertown did after the bombings last
year.
We learned from 9/11 that it is the local responders that
are there on the scene. I cannot support any grant reform
proposal until I am convinced that it would provide the support
necessary to maintain the terrorism preparedness capabilities
that we have spent building--building now for over a decade.
Also, I agree with the Chairman that we cannot ignore that
information sharing between Federal, State, and local
authorities needs strengthening. Since September 11,
information-sharing silos that the 9/11 Commissioners
recommended be addressed continue to be exposed after tragic
events. We need to work together to develop ways to fix that
problem as soon as possible.
We must also consider the economic cost of terrorism. In
response to the events of September 11, Congress enacted the
Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002. That measure increased
the availability of terrorism risk insurance to at-risk
American businesses by guaranteeing that the Government would
share some of the losses with private insurance should a
terrorist attack occur at a building.
That act is set to sunset this year. According to the RAND
Corporation, allowing this act to expire would harm our
National security. Last year, Mr. Thompson introduced a bill
that would extend the act and add some needed improvements, and
I urge my colleagues to cosponsor that legislation.
Even though it has been almost a year since the bombings,
there have been some game-changing moments, and some ships are
still anchored. As we continue to seek answers, I remind us to
be responsible and to act within our Constitutional boundaries.
The people of Boston are looking for our leadership on this
issue.
I yield back the balance of my time and ask that the full
statement of Ranking Member Thompson be put into the record,
Mr. Chairman.
Chairman McCaul. Without objection, so ordered. I thank the
Ranking Member.
[The statement of Ranking Member Thompson follows:]
Statement of Ranking Member Bennie G. Thompson
April 9, 2014
I want to extend condolences to the families of the 4 people killed
during last week's shooting at Ft. Hood. Additionally, prayers are with
the 16 people who were injured during the shooting. I want to recognize
the first responder community and medical personnel for their
incredible response to the shooting. As of today, the Joint Terrorism
Task Force does not consider the shooting an act of terrorism. However,
the investigation is still on-going.
Incidents like last week's shooting and last year's Boston Marathon
bombing--the focus of today's hearing--remind us of the importance of
first responders. With that being said, I again commend the service of
our witnesses: Former Commissioner Davis, Chief Deveau, and Sergeant
Pugliese. I also thank Professor Leonard for recognizing their
courageous efforts in his research.
Resilience and response are two of the reasons why almost a year
later the Boston metropolitan area remains strong. Hence, I wish Mayor
Walsh, president of the Boston Athletic Association, Joann Flamino, and
all the runners and volunteers participating in the 118th Boston
Marathon well as the race commences on April 21.
Even though Boston is standing strong, it would be a disservice to
the community not to take a look back. There are still unanswered
questions about the history of Tsarnaev brothers--the alleged Boston
Marathon bombers. We owe it to the people of Boston and the rest of
America to make sure that the appropriate officials do a thorough
review of the situation.
Last April, the inspectors general of the intelligence community,
Departments of Homeland Security and Justice and the Central
Intelligence Agency announced a joint investigation into whether
intelligence was properly distributed and acted upon in the months and
years before the bombings at the Boston Marathon. I find it rather
unfortunate; however, that the review was delayed because of the
senseless 16-day Government shut-down in October 2013. Partisan
disagreements create serious gaps in homeland security oversight and
this is just one example of the myriad of setbacks the shut-down
yielded.
Another development since last year is Attorney General Holder's
January 30 announcement that the United States would be seeking the
death penalty against Dzhokar Tsarnaev, the alleged Boston Marathon
bomber. Since Dzhokar Tsarnaev was arrested and indicted, I have
declared my confidence in his receiving a fair, yet aggressive
prosecution in the United States District Court for the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, as a former Federal prosecutor, you know
Attorney General Holder's decision to seek the death penalty against
Tsarnaev was a game-changer. I am sure you are familiar with the
intricacies involved in a capital case. As I reminded the committee
last year, as we fulfill our Constitutional oversight responsibilities,
we must be careful not to jeopardize a Federal prosecution--this
applies to both the words we speak to the public as well as the
publications that stem from our research.
Unfortunately, some of the actions that have extended from by this
committee have not been helpful to the Department of Justice. On March
26, a Majority Staff Report endorsed by a minority of Members of this
committee was released to the public. Less than 48 hours after the
report's release, Dzohkar Tsarnaev's defense team filed a motion in the
United States District Court citing this report. I reemphasize that as
Members of Congress, especially Members of the Homeland Security
Committee, we are held to a heightened standard. We are trusted to have
both Classified and Unclassified briefings and meetings with the
members of intelligence community.
Therefore, the words we speak or publish about an alleged terrorist
transcend the halls of Congress and are not taken lightly by the
public. Furthermore, this not only applies to events surrounding Boston
but also to other events with pending investigation. Reaching
conclusions before facts are known puts the reputation of this
committee in peril. Thus, we must exercise discretion in our
questioning and our statements about events, suspects, and the links to
others that may not be in custody.
In spite of these limitations, Mr. Chairman, we can still use our
platform to have a productive discussion about the Boston Marathon
bombing and act on outstanding matters. For instance, we can and should
discuss the funding given to the first-responder community.
Last year, at the Committee on Homeland Security's first hearing on
the Boston Marathon bombings, former Commissioner Davis stated that
without grant funding, the ``response would have been much less
comprehensive than it was'' and without the exercises supported through
Urban Area Security Initiative funding, ``there would be more people
who had died in these attacks.'' Professor Leonard's testimony also
indicates that this type of preparedness is what made the first
response effective. Sergeant Pugliese is also testifying today that
local municipal governments are not financially equipped to take on the
increasing burden of catastrophic attacks like Boston. It is time that
we not only listen to the first responders but also take action.
Not only after last year's hearing, but also hearings throughout
several Congresses, Members have heard about the importance of these
grant programs and success stories involving them. Accordingly, I urge
Members to oppose the administration's proposal to shift focus away
from supporting State and local efforts to develop terrorism-related
prevention and preparedness capabilities by morphing the Homeland
Security Grant Program into an all hazards grant. I am not convinced
that the administration's underfunded grant consolidation proposal
would provide sufficient support for first responders across America to
build and maintain the capabilities necessary to respond as effectively
as the first responders in Boston and Watertown did after the bombings
last year. I cannot support any grant reform proposal until I am
convinced that it would provide support necessary to maintain the
terrorism-preparedness capabilities we have spent over a decade
building.
Also, I agree with the Chairman that we cannot ignore that
information sharing between Federal, State, and local authorities needs
strengthening. Since September 11, information-sharing silos that the
9/11 Commissioners recommended be addressed continue to be exposed
after tragic events. We need to work together to develop ways to fix
this problem post-haste.
We must also consider the economic costs of terrorism. In response
to the events of September 11, 2001, Congress enacted the Terrorism
Risk Insurance Act of 2002. That measure increased the availability of
terrorism risk insurance to at-risk American businesses by guaranteeing
that the Government would share some of the losses with private
insurers should a terrorist attack occur. That act is set to sunset
this year. According to the RAND corporation, allowing this Act to
expire would harm National security. Last year, I introduced a bill
that would extend the Act and add some needed improvements. I urge my
colleagues to cosponsor this legislation.
Even though it has been almost a year since the bombings, there
have been some game-changing moments, and some ships are still
anchored. As we continue to seek answers, I remind us to be responsible
and act within our Constitutional boundaries. The people of Boston are
looking for our leadership on this issue.
Chairman McCaul. As a former Federal prosecutor, I
understand legal standards very well and would do nothing to
jeopardize the prosecution.
I also, as a Member of Congress, understand our
responsibilities and this committee's responsibilities of
oversight under the Constitution of the United States. As
recently quoted in the Boston Globe, ``This shouldn't be about
Democrats and Republicans. If you can't put that stuff behind
you on an issue like this, then I don't know when you can.'' I
couldn't agree more with the Boston Globe on that statement.
With that, the Chairman now recognizes the gentleman from
Massachusetts, who has had more impact out of this tragedy than
any other Member of this committee, Mr. Keating, to introduce
today's witnesses.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
By way of introduction, I just want to realize, have us all
realize that it is almost a year to the day of April 15, when
we were all shocked, not just in Massachusetts but around the
country, at the news that the lives of four young individuals
were taken and hundreds more were injured in the Boston
Marathon.
If I could, in this introductory period, Mr. Chairman, I
would like us to take a moment to remember and honor the lives
of Krystle Campbell, 29; Sean Collier, 26; Lingzi Lu, 23; and
Martin Richard, 8.
[Moment of silence.]
Mr. Keating. There is no doubt that Boston's handling of
the marathon attack will serve as a model for cities around the
world on how to respond to mass homeland security incidents.
For this reason, it is important to look back and analyze the
steps taken before, during, and after the tragedy.
We are honored today to have before this committee public
safety officials from Boston and Watertown whose actions
directly impeded further damage and loss of lives during the
attack and in the days following. In that regard, all of our
witnesses today can provide unique perspective on the best
methods to increase our Nation's resiliency, adaptability, and
transparency within the homeland security realm.
Our first witness, former Boston Police Commissioner Edward
Davis, is currently with the John F. Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard University. Mr. Davis was appointed by
another great leader during this period, former Boston Mayor
Thomas Menino. In this role, Commissioner Davis led the Boston
Police Department's response to the Boston Marathon bombing on
April 15.
The heroic actions and quick thinking of the men and women
under Mr. Davis' leadership, as well as that of the
Massachusetts National Guard, Boston Fire Department, EMS
services, medical personnel, and, indeed, civilians, led to the
survival of 17 critically injured civilians.
I have known Mr. Davis throughout his 34 years of law
enforcement. He served on the Lowell Police Department, was
named superintendent to that police department in 1994. During
this period, he was recognized for reducing the crime rate in
Lowell quicker than any other superintendent in the United
States of America in cities of over 100,000 residents.
Commissioner, thank you for your service and your service
to the city of Boston, the Commonwealth, and to our country. It
is an honor to have you with us here today, and we look forward
to your testimony.
We also have joining the former commissioner the chief of
police at the Watertown Police Department, Mr. Edward Deveau.
Chief Deveau sits on the executive board of the Massachusetts
Chiefs of Police Association and played a crucial role during
the manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. His leadership made National
headlines when five of his officers found themselves in a
battle that involved both gunfire and homemade explosives on a
small street in Watertown.
Chief Deveau, it is my pleasure to see you again. We are
all grateful for your service and for taking the time out of
your busy marathon training to testify here today.
Finally, Sergeant Jeffrey Pugliese is the second generation
of a Watertown police officer, and he also served in the U.S.
Army. He was born and raised in Watertown.
Having been promoted to sergeant in 1993, he was on the
night shift during the early hours of April 19, 2013, when he
came to the assistance of his fellow officers on Laurel Street.
After a grueling exchange of fire, he came within 6 feet of
Tamerlan Tsarnaev and eventually chased the subject and tackled
him to the ground, leaving him time to rush those hurt in the
scene to the hospital.
Members of this committee had the opportunity to visit the
scene and were able to see just amazing signs of heroism in the
impressions that the bombs and bullets made throughout that
street.
Sergeant, thank you for your incredible service.
Even though I am not introducing him, I want to thank
Professor Dutch Leonard from Harvard University.
If I could, Mr. Chairman, for the record, ask unanimous
consent that the report that Professor Leonard is going to talk
about today be submitted in the record.
Chairman McCaul. Without objection, so ordered.*
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
* The information has been retained in committee files.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Keating. I yield back.
Chairman McCaul. Professor Leonard, thank you for being
here today, as well. The Kennedy School, I guess I am somewhat
of an alumni, being in the fellows program. My best to the
faculty and staff. I know you produced an excellent report and
analysis of the Boston bombing, and I look forward to reading
that and sharing my thoughts with you. Thanks so much for being
here today.
Full written statements of the witnesses will appear in the
record.
The Chairman now recognizes Commissioner Davis for 5
minutes for an opening statement.
STATEMENT OF EDWARD F. DAVIS III, FORMER COMMISSIONER, BOSTON
POLICE DEPARTMENT, FELLOW, JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL OF
GOVERNMENT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Mr. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Thomas,
distinguished Members of the committee. Thank you for inviting
me before you today to once again discuss the events of April
15, 2013, when the Boston Marathon and our Nation came under
attack by a pair of extremist brothers.
Chairman McCaul. Commissioner, I don't believe your mike is
on.
Mr. Davis. Sorry about that.
I came before you last May as commissioner of the Boston
Police Department to offer my insights into the information
sharing that occurred before and during the events of last
April.
I also came to you on behalf of the Boston community and
specifically four people whose voices could no longer be heard
because of the attacks of these cowards. Once again, before I
begin my remarks, I ask you to remember the lives of Martin
Richard, Krystle Campbell, Lu Lingzi, and MIT Police Officer
Sean Collier.
Let my comments today reflect that none of us should ever
forget four lives that were senselessly cut too short by the
events of that week.
Next Tuesday afternoon at 2:50 p.m. will mark the 1-year
anniversary since two pressure-cooker bombs were detonated on
Boylston Street, on a historic stretch of a Boston street that
leads to one of the most inspirational sites an athlete can
view: The finish line of the Boston Marathon.
A lot has changed in that 1 year. For the hundreds of
victims wounded in the attacks, life has been altered. Yet, on
a daily basis, we continue to see and hear the inspirational
stories of those victims--stories like that of Adrianne Haslet-
Davis of Boston, a professional dancer who returned to the
stage last month despite losing part of her left leg in one of
the explosions; or Jeff Bauman of Chelmsford. The iconic image
of him being wheeled away from the devastation by a good
Samaritan is emblazoned in our minds. He just announced he is
engaged and is going to be a new father soon. Or Martin
Richard's sister, Jane, whose recovery has inspired a team of
runners to run on her behalf in this year's marathon. Or the
dozens of nurses and first responders who will be undertaking
their first marathon ever next week in honor of the victims
whose lives they helped save.
There are literally hundreds more stories that I could
share with you. I just want to make sure that none of them are
lost to time as we continue to examine the events that led up
to the attacks and the actions that unfolded in the days and
weeks afterwards.
I also want to speak on behalf of a community, not just the
Boston community or even simply metropolitan Boston, but the
greater community at large. In the year since, as I have
traveled across this country talking about the lessons learned
from this tragedy, I have come to realize that the community
that rallied behind the ``Boston Strong'' mantra numbers in the
millions, because that is how aggrieved our Nation felt after
these attacks on our freedom and the innocents caught in the
path of these explosions.
In the weeks after last April's attack, many questions were
raised about who knew what when and what kind of information
was being shared between law enforcement agencies. I am here to
tell you that throughout the past year the level of interagency
cooperation and information sharing that has occurred between
local, State, and Federal law enforcement agencies has been
critical to ensuring that we found ourselves answers to the
many questions that have been posed.
Within the first few minutes of hearing about the
explosions on Boylston Street, my first phone call was to my
friend and colleague, Rick DesLauriers, at the FBI. He and I
worked side-by-side throughout the ensuing week, and I consider
him a staunch friend and ally. He offered all of the services
of the FBI and other agencies to make sure that we not only
apprehended the terrorists responsible for the crime but also
to ensure that our interagency collaboration affords all of our
agencies the critical amount of information sharing needed for
our organizations to operate at peak efficiency.
What all of us learned that week and in the ensuing 12
months, though, is just how big our community is beyond the
partnerships within the levels of government. Our law
enforcement community is obvious. With me today are some of my
colleagues from the neighboring Watertown Police Department--
and you will hear from those heroes in a minute--the community
where the manhunt came to an end and a community that found its
neighborhoods under siege like never before in our country's
history.
Make no mistake about this: Boston Police, Watertown
Police, none of our agencies could have enjoyed the success we
achieved without the involvement of a much larger community,
one that felt personally victimized by the attacks. That is the
community which has come to be known as ``Boston Strong.''
In the past 12 months, ``Boston Strong'' has been used as a
rallying cry for an indomitable spirit, a sign of resilience
and perseverance. Our hometown baseball team, the Red Sox,
showed its tenacity and found inspiration from its message to
win a World Series. It came to personify our indefatigable
patriotism and commitment to neighbor helping neighbor. In New
England, we didn't just see ``Boston Strong'' as a cliched
hashtag on Twitter; we see it as a proclamation that we stand
together, united in the face of previously unimaginable
atrocities and determined to hold fast to our ideals and basic
tenets of freedom.
``Boston Strong'' became an exclamation by a community that
wants the world to know that it can rally in the face of
adversity and, armed with the necessary information, can work
with its government partners to achieve a safe and desired
outcome to a horrible and senseless act of violence.
When he came to our city a few days after the attacks,
President Obama told the world that Boston will run again, and
he was right. We run to support the dreams and personal
aspirations of every man and woman who will be lacing up their
sneakers to complete the grueling course. We run for the ideals
that this kind of event brings our community together to
celebrate everything that is great about our city, our State,
and our Nation. We run for the men and women and children who
can't be there this year: Krystle Campbell, Lu Lingzi, Martin
Richard, and Officer Sean Collier. All of us--Boston,
Massachusetts; New England; the United States--we run together.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Davis follows:]
Prepared Statement of Edward F. Davis, III
April 9, 2014
Chairman McCaul, Ranking Member Thompson, distinguished Members of
the committee, thank you for inviting me back before you today to once
again discuss the events of April 15, 2013, when the Boston Marathon
and our Nation came under attack by a pair of extremist brothers bent
on challenging our freedom.
I came before you last May as commissioner of the Boston Police
Department to offer my insights into the information sharing that
occurred before and during the events of last April. I also came to you
on behalf of the Boston community, and specifically, four people whose
voices could no longer be heard because of the attacks of these
cowards.
Once again, before I begin my remarks, I ask that you remember the
lives of Martin Richard, Krystle Campbell, Lu Lingzi, and MIT Police
Officer Sean Collier. Let my comments today reflect that none of us
should ever forget four lives that were senselessly cut too short by
the events of that week.
Next Tuesday afternoon at 2:50 p.m. we will mark the 1-year
anniversary since two pressure-cooker bombs were detonated on Boylston
Street, on a historic stretch of a Boston Street that leads to one of
the most inspirational sights an athlete can view--the finish line of
the Boston Marathon.
A lot has changed in that 1 year. For the hundreds of victims
wounded in the attacks, life has been altered. Yet on a daily basis, we
continue to see and hear the inspirational stories of those victims--
stories like that of Adrianne Haslet-Davis of Boston, a professional
dancer who returned to the stage last month despite losing part of her
left leg in one of the explosions. Or Jeff Bauman of Chelmsford--the
iconic image of him being wheeled away from the devastation by a Good
Samaritan is emblazoned in our minds. He just announced he's engaged
and is going to be a new father soon. Or Martin Richard's sister Jane,
whose recovery has inspired a team of runners to run on her behalf in
this year's marathon. Or the dozens of nurses and first responders who
will be undertaking their first marathon ever next week, in honor of
the victims whose lives they helped save. There are literally hundreds
more stories that I could share with you. I just want to make sure none
of them are lost to time, as we continue to examine the events that led
up to the attacks and the actions that unfolded in the days and weeks
afterwards.
I also want to speak on behalf of a community. Not just a Boston
community, or even simply Metropolitan Boston, but the greater
community at large. In the year since, as I have travelled across this
country talking about the lessons learned from this tragedy, I have
come to realize the community that rallied behind the Boston Strong
mantra numbers in the millions, because that is how aggrieved our
Nation felt after these attacks on our freedoms and the innocents
caught in the path of those explosions.
In the weeks after last April's attack, many questions were raised
about who knew what when, and what kind of information was being shared
between law enforcement agencies.
I am here to tell you that throughout this past year, the level of
inter-agency cooperation and information sharing that has occurred
between local, State, and Federal law enforcement agencies has been
critical to ensuring that we have found answers to as many questions as
we could pose.
Within the first few minutes of hearing about the explosions on
Boylston Street, my first phone call was to my friend and colleague
Rick Deslauriers at the FBI. He and I worked side-by-side throughout
the ensuing week, and I consider him a staunch friend and ally. He
offered all of the services of the FBI and other agencies to make sure
that we not only apprehended the terrorists responsible for this crime,
but also to ensure that our inter-agency collaboration affords all of
our agencies the critical amount of information sharing needed for our
organizations to operate at peak efficiency.
What all of us learned that week and in the ensuing 12 months,
though, is just how big our community is beyond the partnerships within
the levels of government. Our law enforcement community is obvious.
With me today are some of my colleagues from the neighboring Watertown
Police Department, the community where the manhunt came to an end and a
community that found its neighborhoods under siege like never before in
our country's history.
Make no mistake about this--Boston Police, Watertown police--none
of our agencies could have enjoyed the successes we achieved without
the involvement of a much larger community, one that felt personally
victimized by the attacks. That is the community which has come to be
known as Boston Strong.
In the past 12 months, Boston Strong has been used a rallying cry
for an indomitable spirit, a sign of resilience and perseverance. Our
hometown baseball team, the Red Sox, showed its tenacity and found
inspiration from its message to win a World Series. It came to
personify our indefatigable patriotism and commitment to neighbor
helping neighbor. In New England, we don't just see Boston Strong as a
cliched hashtag on twitter, as see it as a proclamation that we stand
together, united in the face of previously-unimaginable atrocity, and
determined to hold fast to our ideals and basic tenets of freedom.
Boston Strong became an exclamation by a community that wants the world
to know that it can rally in the face of adversity and, armed with the
necessary information, can work with its governmental partners to
achieve a safe and desired outcome to a horrible and senseless act of
violence.
Anyone who has ever visited Boston in the spring, or spent any time
there, you know that the Boston Marathon is the People's Race. This is
a 26.2-mile line that starts in Hopkinton, winds through Ashland,
Framingham, Natick, Wellesley, Newton, and Brookline before ending in
the heart of downtown Boston. And it occurs, appropriately enough, on
Patriots' Day, a State holiday in Massachusetts that helps recognize
the birth of the American Revolution, but has also come to embody our
patriotic love for our community and our country. In New England, you
either watch the marathon, you know somebody who runs it, or you run in
it yourself. I had close friends and colleagues running in last year's
race, many of whom were pressed into immediate service by the
explosions. The marathon is part of our fiber, and an attack on the
institution is an attack on our community as a whole.
This is the same community who waited anxiously as the largest
manhunt in New England history played out over 4 days. When law
enforcement decided to release the photos of the two suspects, we knew
the dissemination of information into the hands of the public would be
one of the most effective ways we could apprehend the individuals we
wanted.
As we saw it play out on Thursday and Friday of that week, when the
suspects took to the run, and began endangering innocents in other
communities, we had to take the unprecedented action of asking more
than half a million people to shelter in place while we search for
these two men, who were throwing bombs at the police officers trying to
catch them.
And for that historic Friday after the marathon, when we asked our
communities to work with us and remain at home to keep the streets
clear so we could do our job, they listened.
They listened because they shared a common goal, of wanting us to
catch the men responsible. They listened because they trusted law
enforcement, and by extension, their Government, to take care of them.
As anyone who has followed my career with the Boston and Lowell
Police Departments knows, I believe in community policing, and the
critical role that our residents play in helping to keep a community
safe. It was relationships built before the marathon attacks that
allowed us to implement such drastic measures, and those relationships
only grew stronger when our communities saw the professional responses
from their police agencies.
Sir Robert Peel was the Conservative Prime Minister of the United
Kingdom in the early 1800s, and helped establish some of the modern
concepts of our Nation's police forces.
It was Peel who said ``The police are the public and the public are
the police--the police being only members of the public who are paid to
give full-time attention duties which are incumbent on every citizen in
the interests of community welfare and existence.''
Nearly 2 centuries later, that basic tenet still holds true today.
Together, we solve problems.
In the case of the multi-agency responses required in the wake of
the attacks, yes, we did identify some areas we could improve upon,
especially in terms of information sharing. But I remain supremely
proud of the work done not just by the first officers, firefighters, or
EMS workers who responded to the attacks, but also by the sea of
yellow-jacketed Boston Marathon volunteers, and the runners who stopped
short of their 26.2-mile goal to help innocent people suffering on the
sidewalks along Boylston Street.
Beyond the successes we have achieved with the cooperation of the
media agencies that cover our agencies, we also learned quickly what a
valuable information tool our social media networks could be to us as
that week unfolded last April. Systems that remain in place a year
later, and allow our agencies to more effectively and more rapidly
communication directly with the men and women we are sworn to serve and
protect.
Next Monday, an historic number of runners will take to the
pavement again to run in the fabled Boston Marathon, and next Monday,
they will be protected by an historic amount of law enforcement
personnel from among a wide swath of agencies, all of whom have been
meeting on a regular basis for months to ensure the safety of everyone
who will be running and watching the event. We are all working
together.
When he came to our city a few days after the attacks, President
Obama told the world that Boston will run again, and he was right.
We run to support the dreams and personal aspirations of every man
and woman who will be lacing up their sneakers to complete the grueling
course.
We run for the ideals that this kind of event brings our community
together to celebrate everything that is great about our city, our
State, and our Nation.
And we run for the men, women, and children who can't be there this
year--Krystle Campbell, Lu Lingzi, Martin Richard, and Officer Sean
Collier.
All of us--Boston, Massachusetts, New England, the United States--
we run together.
Chairman McCaul. Thank you, Commissioner.
The Chairman now recognizes Chief Deveau for an opening
statement.
STATEMENT OF EDWARD P. DEVEAU, CHIEF OF POLICE, WATERTOWN
POLICE DEPARTMENT
Chief Deveau. Chairman McCaul, it is an honor to come
before you and your committee. Thank you for the privilege of
doing that.
I am extremely proud to be here today representing the men
and women of the Watertown Police Department. Our goal has
always been to be the best police department in Massachusetts.
Mr. Chairman, I had the privilege of meeting you and other
Members of your distinguished committee when you traveled to
Boston and Watertown. I want to thank you and your Members who
took the time to learn about how the Watertown Police
Department and the Watertown community responded to the events
of that day.
Before I speak about the actions of the Watertown Police
Department, I would like to give you some background on the
events of last year.
Patriots' Day is a special day in Boston. It is my favorite
weekend of the year. Businesses and schools are closed in
Massachusetts for most people. Spectators line the 26 miles of
the Boston Marathon route from Hopkinton to Boston, cheering on
the elite runners but also the regular people who run--many of
them run for charities. The Boston Red Sox play at 11:00 a.m.,
and, after the game, all the fans walk down to Kenmore Square
and watch the final mile or 2 of the marathon.
You haven't lived in Boston very long if you haven't been a
spectator, a volunteer, or a runner. This year, I will run with
12 of my officers. It is going to be an emotional day for my
officers as we run that route and cross the finish line on
Boylston Street.
The Boston Marathon will be held in less than 2 weeks, and
more people than ever want to be part of it. They want to come
together to celebrate and remember those who died and those who
were injured in last year's explosions. They want to remember
Officer Sean Collier of the MIT Police Department, who was
ambushed and killed before the two brothers headed to
Watertown.
We have all seen what occurred at the finish line of the
marathon on April 19, and Commissioner Davis has spoken about
that and how well and impressive his department responded that
day.
I am here today to talk about the events that occurred in
Watertown in the early morning hours of April 19. That
seemingly quiet overnight shift suddenly turned into a war
zone. For the first time in America, police officers were
attacked with guns and bombs, and it happened on a quiet
backstreet of my community. Those two brothers were trying kill
my police officers and had plans to kill and injure more
innocent people.
The handful of Watertown officers on duty that night acted
heroically and defended Watertown without regard for their own
personal safety. They displayed courage and bravery as they
stubbornly defended our community. Just as in Boston, my
officers were at their very best when confronted with the
biggest challenge of their careers. Their split-second
decisions and actions went far beyond their academy training,
but I can assure you, Mr. Chairman, it will now be taught in
academies across the country.
It has been said before but, as their police chief, I want
to state it again: The actions of my officers saved lives here
in Boston and in New York City.
I want to introduce those officers, and you have already
done that, Mr. Chairman, but, again, I would like to point out
Officer Joe Reynolds, who was the first officer to confront
those two brothers. Had no idea who he was up against. When we
got notified in Watertown, we didn't know it was related to the
Boston bombings, we didn't know it was related to Sean Collier.
Joe stopped that car and was immediately shot on.
John MacLellan, who is sitting behind him, was the next
officer there to come onto that street. Got a round right
through his windshield, glass in his face, and the bullet went
right by his ear. And those two guys continued to fight on that
backstreet of Watertown.
Miguel Colon and Mike Comick showed up shortly after that.
When Officer Colon showed up, he tried to put a spotlight down
the street, and it was immediately shot out. He had trouble
even getting out of his cruiser to help.
You are going to hear from Sergeant Pugliese and all the
heroic things he did.
Mr. Chairman, during these trying days last April, two
individuals attempted to strike fear and take down a city. They
attempted to terrorize us all. In the end, they accomplished
nothing. They will never know what it is--when America gets
knocked down, we pick ourselves up and become even stronger. We
will not be intimidated.
Watertown is stronger, Boston is stronger, and, in my
opinion, the entire country is united and stronger. The
strength and resilience and even defiance is what made Boston
strong. I know if an attack occurs in another city within our
country, they will respond in a similar way.
The Watertown police officers on duty that night stopped
these evil brothers from leaving with a carful of weapons to
carry out their deadly plan. In the following 18 hours, our
entire department of 65 officers was tested and worked around
the clock to keep our community safe. We received unprecedented
support from surrounding police departments and Federal
agencies. As a result, the second Boston bombing suspect was
finally captured.
I want to thank the residents of Watertown for their
patience and cooperation that day and for their continued
support. It truly took an entire community.
Mr. Chairman, when I began my comments today, I mentioned
our goal was to be the best police department in the State, and
I am not sure if we have reached that, but I can tell you one
thing. For 8\1/2\ minutes, we were the best damn police
department in the world.
Mr. Chairman, I conclude my remarks, and I am happy to
answer any questions you and your committee may have. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Chief Deveau follows:]
Prepared Statement of Edward P. Deveau
Chairman McCaul it is an honor to come before the U.S. House of
Representatives Committee on Homeland Security.
I am extremely proud to be here today representing the men and
women of the Watertown, Massachusetts Police Department. Our goal has
always been to be the best police department in the State of
Massachusetts.
Mr. Chairman, I had the privilege of meeting you and the other
Members of your distinguished committee when you traveled to Boston and
Watertown. I want to thank you and your Members who took the time to
learn more about how the Watertown Police Department and the Watertown
community responded to the events of last April.
Before I speak about the actions of the Watertown Police Department
I would like to give you some background on the events of last year:
Patriot's Day is a special day in Boston and my favorite weekend of
the year. Businesses and schools are closed in Massachusetts so most
people have the day off. Spectators line the 26 miles of the Boston
Marathon from Hopkinton to Boston cheering on elite runners from all
around the world, and the regular people, including so many that run
for charities.
The Boston Red Sox play at 11:00 a.m. and after the game all the
fans walk down to Kenmore Square to watch the final mile or 2 of the
marathon. You haven't lived in Boston very long if you haven't been a
spectator, volunteer, or a runner. This year I will run with 12 of my
officers, it will be an emotional moment when we cross the finish line
on Boylston Street.
The Boston Marathon will be held in less than 2 weeks, and more
people than ever want to be a part of it. They want to come together to
celebrate and remember those who died and those who were injured in
last year's explosions. They want to remember Officer Sean Collier of
the MIT Police Department who was ambushed and killed before the two
brothers headed to Watertown.
We have all seen what occurred at the finish line of the Boston
Marathon on April 15 and Commissioner Ed Davis will speak about those
tragic events and the Boston Police Department's impressive response
that day.
I am here today to talk about the events that occurred in Watertown
in the early morning hours of April 19. That seemingly quiet overnight
shift suddenly turned into a war zone. For the first time in America,
police officers were attacked with guns and bombs and it happened on a
quiet backstreet in my community. Those two brothers were trying to
kill my police officers and had plans to kill and injure more innocent
people.
The handful of Watertown officers on duty that night acted
heroically and defended Watertown without regard for their own personal
safety. They displayed courage and bravery as they stubbornly defended
our community. Just as in Boston, my officers were at their very best
when confronted with the biggest challenge of their careers. Their
split-second decisions and actions went far beyond their police academy
training, but I can ensure you it will now be taught in police
academies across the country. It has been said before Mr. Chairman, but
as their police chief I want to state it again, the actions my officers
took saved many more people from being killed and injured.
I want to introduce the officers that have accompanied Sgt.
Pugliese and myself here today. Each of these officers played a key
role in that historic gun battle on Laurel Street.
Mr. Chairman, during those trying day's last April two individuals
attempted to strike fear and take down a city. They attempted to
terrorize us all. In the end they accomplished nothing. What they will
never know is that when America gets knocked down we pick ourselves up
and become even stronger. We will not be intimidated. Watertown is
stronger, Boston is stronger, and in my opinion the entire country is
more united and stronger. The strength, resilience, and defiance is
what made Boston Strong and I know if an attack occurs in any city
within our country they will respond in a similar way.
The Watertown police officers on duty that night stopped these
terrorists from leaving with their car full of weapons to carry out
their next deadly plan. In the following 18 hours our entire department
of 65 officers was tested and worked around the clock to keep our
community safe. We received unprecedented support from surrounding
police departments and Federal agencies. As a result the second Boston
Marathon bombing suspect was finally captured.
I want to thank the residents of Watertown for their patience and
cooperation that day and for their continuing support. It truly took an
entire community.
Mr. Chairman, when I began my comments today I mentioned our goal
was to be the best police department in our State and I am not sure if
we have accomplished that, but what I do know is that for 8\1/2\
minutes on a back street in Watertown we were the best police
department in the world.
Mr. Chairman, I conclude my remarks and I am happy to try and
answer any questions your committee may have. Thank you.
Chairman McCaul. Thank you, Chief, for that compelling
testimony. You are right, for 8\1/2\ minutes you were the best
police department in the world.
With that, the Chairman now recognizes Sergeant Pugliese
for his testimony.
STATEMENT OF JEFFREY J. PUGLIESE, SERGEANT, WATERTOWN POLICE
DEPARTMENT
Sergeant Pugliese. Good morning. Thank you for inviting me
to speak here this morning.
A little background on myself. I have been a police officer
for 34 years in the Watertown Police Department.
Chairman McCaul. Is the mike on? Can the clerks help with
the microphones at the witness table?
Sergeant Pugliese. Is that better?
Background on myself. Been a police officer for 34 years in
the town of Watertown. Prior to that, I served in the U.S. Army
from 1974 through 1978 in the military police assigned to
Berlin, Germany, in the Berlin Brigade.
What happened that night is, it was just after midnight. I
had finished my work shift when I heard a radio broadcast that
officers from my agency were following an alleged carjacked
vehicle. I knew that the current shift had four patrol officers
and a patrol supervisor on the street that night, and so I
thought I would head up to assist the officers in the event
that it became a pursuit or a foot pursuit or any assistance
was needed.
While en route to the area, I heard another broadcast that
the officers were now taking gunfire from the occupants of the
alleged carjacked vehicle and they were requesting assistance.
When I arrived on the scene, I heard gunfire. I exited my
vehicle, and within moments I heard an explosion. I advanced to
the area where the other officers were taking cover and
returning gunfire.
The suspects were eventually taken into custody. I am not
really at liberty to go into minute detail into the incident,
as one of the suspects is still awaiting trial, but I will
endeavor to answer any questions you may have.
I would like to make note that, in today's ever-changing
environment of violence, local and municipal governments are
not financially equipped to take on the increasing burden of
such hostile actions.
In closing, I would like to say that all of the officers in
the Watertown Police Department, those officers that were there
that night, they are ordinary guys who were put in an
extraordinary situation and performed extraordinarily well.
Once again, thank you for inviting me to speak at this
hearing.
[The prepared statement of Sergeant Pugliese follows:]
Prepared Statement of Jeffrey J. Pugliese
April 9, 2014
Good morning, thank you for inviting me to speak here this morning.
My name is Jeffrey J. Pugliese, I'm a police sergeant with the
Watertown Massachusetts Police Department. I'm a 34-year veteran of the
Department. In addition to my duties as a patrol supervisor, I have
been a department firearms instructor for over 29 years. I am also a
U.S. Army Veteran (1974-1978), serving in the Berlin, Germany as a
military police officer assigned to the Berlin Brigade.
I am here to discuss the events of the early morning hours of April
19, 2013.
It was just after midnight and I had just finished my work shift
when I heard a radio broadcast that officers from my agency were
following an alleged carjacked vehicle. I knew the current shift had
only four patrol officers and a patrol sergeant working, I decided to
drive in that direction in the event any additional assistance would be
needed by the officers.
While en route to the area, I heard another radio broadcast that
officers were now taking gun fire from the occupants of the alleged
carjacked vehicle and they were requesting assistance.
On arrival at the scene, I heard gun fire, I exited my vehicle and
within moments I heard an explosion.
I advanced to the area where other officers were taking cover and
returning gunfire. The suspects were eventually taken into custody.
While I am not at liberty to go into minute details as the incident
is still awaiting trial of one of the suspects, I will endeavor to
answer any questions you may have.
I think it should be noted that in today's ever-changing
environment of violence, local municipal governments are not
financially equipped to take on the increasing burden of such hostile
actions.
In closing, I would like to say that all of the officers involved
in this incident are ordinary men who were put into an extraordinary
situation and performed extraordinarily well.
Once again, thank you for inviting me to speak here this morning.
Chairman McCaul. Thank you, Sergeant. Thanks for your act
of heroism, taking down the biggest terrorists since 9/11. We
appreciate what you did.
The Chairman now recognizes Professor Leonard for 5
minutes.
STATEMENT OF HERMAN ``DUTCH'' B. LEONARD, PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC
MANAGEMENT, JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT, HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
Mr. Leonard. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank Chairman McCaul and Ranking Member Thompson
for inviting me to testify. My thanks also to Congressman
Keating for his tireless work that has brought so much of the
Boston Marathon set of issues to our attention.
I am honored to appear today with three of the genuine
heroes of that week--Commissioner Ed Davis and Chief Ed Deveau
and Sergeant Pugliese--and also to be together with all five of
the Watertown police officers, who gave such a great account of
themselves in that gun battle in those 8 minutes when they were
the best police force in the world. Each of them will tell you
that he is not a hero, but I feel very strongly today and I
think we all know that we are in the company of heroes.
I am Dutch Leonard, the professor and co-director of the
Program on Crisis Leadership at the Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard. For the last year, Arnold Howitt,
Christine Cole, Phil Heymann, and I have been doing research on
the Boston Marathon bombing, supported in part by the
International Centre for Sport Security.
This was a team effort from the beginning, and all of my
colleagues were huge contributors to this. One of my co-
authors, Christine Cole, is here with us today. The views I am
presenting here are our own, not those of Harvard University or
any other organization.
Our work was presented in honor and in memory of those who
lost their lives or suffered grievous injuries in the Boston
Marathon bombing, and it is dedicated to all of those who
helped.
We focused on the issues of command and coordination.
Others on our team are examining issues, as the committee has,
of pre-event intelligence. Our report, entitled ``Why was
Boston Strong?'', was released last week. The title refers to
the local description, already referenced here, ``Boston
Strong,'' of the resilience shown by first responders and by
survivors and by the wider community during that week.
My first message to the committee is about the first-
responder part of ``Boston Strong.'' Incident command works.
The National Incident Management System that this committee
mandated in the Homeland Security Act of 2002, Section 502,
Part 5, is starting to work.
Before NIMS, first responders worked without an effective
multi-agency doctrine of how to combine in incident management.
Too many times, we watched while vitally-needed capabilities
were not effectively deployed but instead were idled by a lack
of ability to coordinate and execute across agencies,
jurisdictional boundaries, and levels of government. NIMS is
now starting to work, and ``Boston Strong'' is a good
illustration of what can be achieved. We believe that the
response in Boston over the course of that week was as good as
one could reasonably have hoped.
So why were people and organizations able to be so
effective? We found three answers.
First, because senior commanders, including Ed Davis and Ed
Deveau, were able to come rapidly together to form an effective
joint command and coordination structure.
Second, that was not due to chance. It resulted from
thousands of hours of joint planning, exercises, and
operations, combining numerous agencies over many years in the
planning for and production of fixed events, some of it funded
through grants from the Homeland Security Department.
Third, other communities can do this too. Any community can
engage in joint planning and execution for any major fixed
event. Paying your dues on good days builds the infrastructure
of interagency familiarity, respect, and trust and has an
immediate payoff. If a bad day ever comes, as it did in Boston,
that infrastructure is literally a life-saver.
Our research also suggested several areas where further
work needs to be done, but if we had to choose just one thing
to improve, it would be to add at the tactical level an
effective doctrine for what we call micro-command, the ability
of people quickly to come together in an organized way. That
would be in parallel to the National Incident Management System
doctrine of macro-command, which allows the senior people to
come together at the strategic level.
My second message today to the committee is about the
community part of resistance to terrorism, which is again on
display this year as my daughter and Chief Deveau and thousands
of others train to run in this year's marathon.
``Boston Strong'' encompasses what everyone did and does to
stand tall and proud in the face of two murderous thugs with
terrorist intent. ``Boston Strong'' is not a form of hubris or
arrogance or naivete. It is a form of pride and defiance and
resilience.
Terrorists, in the end, are few and weak. They could never
defeat us, but we could voluntarily surrender to them, and we
must not. If we cower in fear, if we abandon our commitment to
a free and open society, then we do their work for them. We
cannot defend the American way of life, as these five officers
did that night, by surrendering it.
Preserve, protect, uphold, and defend. ``Boston Strong''
affirms the oath of office. ``Boston Strong'' says that we will
defend the American way of life by continuing to participate in
it. The community part of ``Boston Strong'' is a pretty good
place to start in thinking about what resilience actually looks
like.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Leonard follows:]
Prepared Statement of Herman B. ``Dutch'' Leonard
April 9, 2014
I would like to thank Chairman McCaul and Ranking Member Thompson
for inviting me to testify today, as well as Congressman Keating of
Massachusetts for the tireless work he has done to advance
understanding of the events surrounding the Boston Marathon bombing
that took place during the week of April 15, 2013.
I would also like to say that it is an honor for me to appear on
this panel today with three of the genuine heroes of that week--
Commissioner Ed Davis, Chief Ed Deveau, and Sgt. Jeff Pugliesi. One of
the privileges of doing the research we have been carrying out is that
we have regularly been in the presence of heroes--as I am again, and
indeed as we all are today.
My name is Herman Leonard, known to my friends as ``Dutch.'' I am
the Baker Professor of Public Management at the Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard University, where I am also faculty co-director
of the Program on Crisis Leadership. I am also the Snider Family
Professor of Business Administration and faculty co-chair of the Social
Enterprise Initiative at Harvard Business School.
Over the course of the last year, since the bombs exploded at the
finish line of the Boston Marathon, I have been working together with
Arnold Howitt, who is executive director of the Ash Center for
Democratic Governance and faculty co-director of the Program on Crisis
Leadership, and Christine Cole, who is executive director of Harvard's
Program on Criminal Justice Policy and Management, both at the Kennedy
School, and with Professor Phillip Heymann of Harvard Law School to
understand the sources of the strengths and weaknesses of the response
to the marathon bombing. Our work was supported in part by the
International Centre for Sport Security. In providing this testimony
today, I am appearing as a representative of our research team; the
views I am presenting here are our own, and not those of Harvard
University or any other organization. This was a team effort, and while
I'm providing the testimony today this work is the product of many
hands. (Any errors made here, however, are mine.)
Our work was presented in honor and memory of those who lost their
lives or suffered grievous injuries in the Boston Marathon bombing. It
is dedicated to all of those who helped.
Our work focused on the issues of command within and coordination
among the agencies and organizations involved in the response. Events
like the Marathon bombing create a surge of demands and thereby create
the need for sudden teams--groups of individuals and organizations,
thrown together by circumstance even though they may not have worked
together before, who must, in order to produce the best possible
overall response, work effectively in tandem under conditions of
uncertainty and stress in a rapidly-evolving situation. Our work
concerns the response that began when the bombs exploded. Since we are
seeking to understand and explain the quality of that response, we also
focus on the extensive efforts made in advance to create the conditions
that enabled it. Another part of our research team is examining some of
the issues about pre-event intelligence; that work is not yet complete,
and lies beyond the scope of the report I'm describing today.
We conducted a series of extended interviews, mainly with senior
command officials in the major organizations involved in the response
to the bombing. We also drew extensively on public statements and media
descriptions of the events. Three weeks ago, we convened an ``expert
dialogue,'' gathering about 100 people, including many of the
principals we had interviewed and other participants in the events of
that terrible week, together with senior emergency management officials
and academics from around the United States and from abroad. We spent
an intensive day discussing the events and our proposed
recommendations.
Our report, entitled ``WHY was Boston Strong?,'' was released last
week. Our title references the local description--``Boston Strong''--of
the full spectrum phenomenon of response and resistance and resilience
shown by first responders and by survivors and by the wider community
during that week and since.
I appreciate this opportunity to discuss some of the findings of
our research with you.
I have two simple messages for you today.
The first message is about the first responder part of Boston
Strong that was on display last April.
That message is this: It works! Incident command works! When you
build it in advance and use it in the moment, incident command is
effective. The National Incident Management System is starting to work.
It has been a long time in coming and it is long overdue--but we've
made a lot of progress Nationally, and the events in Boston last year
put that vividly on display.
For something like 50 years, starting in the 1960s and continuing
with greater energy after a devastating fire in California in 1970,
people of goodwill in emergency management sought to develop and
promulgate an effective, unified, coherent doctrine of incident
management so that agencies and organizations that find themselves
having to work together on terrible and dark days can efficiently and
smoothly combine their capabilities and resources. The central purpose
of having a single, unified approach is to enable a sudden team to
produce the best performance reasonably possible given the nature of
the challenge and the capacities that they have available. Too many
times we have watched while vitally needed and clearly existing
capabilities were not marshaled or effectively deployed--but instead
were idled by a lack of ability to organize, coordinate, and execute
across agencies, jurisdictional boundaries, and levels of government.
Finally, Congress--through the House Select Committee on Homeland
Security, the original inception of this committee, in Part 5 of
Section 502 of Public Law 107-296, the Homeland Security Act of 2002--
mandated that the Secretary of Homeland Security build ``a
comprehensive national incident management system with Federal, State,
and local government personnel, agencies, and authorities, to respond
to . . . attacks and disasters.'' In 2004, the Department of Homeland
Security duly issued instructions to those it could command directly
(and created incentives for those it could not) to organize themselves
for emergency response purposes in compliance with the structures and
precepts and procedures of that system. FEMA has since worked to
develop the system further and to help Federal and other agencies
implement the structures, procedures, and training associated with
making this doctrine a practical reality.
This mandate did not immediately succeed in enhancing performance
in multi-agency response to crisis events. In 2006, I gave testimony
before the Senate Homeland Security Committee about Hurricane Katrina;
incident management in the crucial early days of that response had been
only sporadically applied and while it had proved helpful in the areas
where it was used effectively it was clear that we were still a long
way from having a fully operational National Incident Management System
that worked smoothly across agencies of all types and all levels of
government and all jurisdictions.
My first message to you today is that it is now working far better.
Boston Strong is a good illustration of what can be--and, in Boston and
in other communities where significant efforts have been made, has
been--achieved. There is more to do, as I will suggest--but the first
and most important thing to note is that for those communities that
make the effort, creating an integrated incident command process that
will work in the moment is a goal that is demonstratedly within reach.
There were some quite remarkably effective elements of the response
in the aftermath of the bombing in Boston. As an example, the bombs
caused literally dozens of fatal injuries, but, mercifully, there were
only three fatalities on that terrible day. All of the seriously
injured people were removed from the scene within 22 minutes. Every
person who left the scene alive is alive today. The scene was rapidly
secured and swept for additional explosive devices. It was then secured
as a crime scene, collaboratively, using FBI and local and State
assets, and the investigation was launched. Video from private and
public surveillance cameras was quickly collected, additional
photographic evidence (mainly from media and bystanders who volunteered
their photographs and videos) was obtained, and an exhausting search
through the video and photographic evidence began. Meanwhile, the
public was informed by individual agencies and through a series of
organized press conferences.
Taken together, that seems like a very good performance. We can all
point to elements where it could be further improved. But the standard
can't be an unrealistic expectation of perfection. Our question has to
be this: Did the response accomplish what could reasonably have been
expected, given the intrinsic nature of the event itself--the surprise,
the physical and emotional shock, and the inevitable chaos of the
immediate aftermath. We believe that the response in Boston was as good
as one could reasonably have hoped. This then begs explanation, and
forms the basic question of our research: Why were people and
organizations able to provide as effective a response as this was? What
were the strengths of that response, and what enabled them? And where
were the weaknesses--and what can we do to further minimize them? These
were the questions at the heart of our research.
I want to emphasize three elements of our research findings about
where these features of the response ``came from''--that is, what
caused or created them:
First, the core underlying reason for the effectiveness of the
response in the moment was the rapid formation of an effective
command and coordination structure that oversaw and directed
all elements of the response. Senior officials from a wide
range of agencies--Federal, State, local, and private--felt an
immediate need to find one another and join into a concerted
and unified command structure and were then able to do so
reasonably quickly.
Second, none of that was due to chance--it resulted from literally
tens of thousands of hours of joint work, planning, exercises,
and operations combining numerous agencies over many years in
the planning for and production of fixed events ranging from
the Democratic National Convention in 2004 (an event that got
particularly attentive focus because it was the first National
political convention after 9/11) to the Boston Marathon to the
July 4 concert and fireworks on the Esplanade to Patriots and
Red Sox and Bruins and Celtics victory parades. Each of those
events provided an opportunity--and opportunity that was
taken--to practice the process of planning and doing things
together. This built knowledge of one another's assumptions and
priorities and procedures, fostering understanding and mutual
respect of individual and organizational competence and
capabilities across agencies. This was the infrastructure that
enabled command and coordination to be established quickly and
to function effectively after the bombs exploded.
Third, others can do this, too. To be sure, some of the features
that contributed to the effectiveness of the response in Boston
were unique to Boston. Boston has eight Level I trauma centers,
for example, and by happenstance they are arrayed in every
direction around the area where the bombs went off, so the
injured could be transported in many different directions,
reducing congestion among emergency vehicles. Some other
elements were unique to the moment--for example, the fact that
the marathon takes place on a State holiday, when hospitals are
open and fully staffed, but are not doing elective surgery,
meant that dozens of operating rooms were immediately
available. A shift change was underway at the time of the
bombing, which increased availability of skilled hands when
they were needed. So there were elements of good fortune that
reduced the terrible consequences on that awful day. But most
of what made the response as effective as it was can be
undertaken by other communities as readily and as well as it
was by Boston. Any community can engage in joint planning
across its agencies for any major fixed event--from a high
school football victory parade to a Fourth of July celebration.
Any community can find opportunities to engage in joint
planning with other jurisdictions, and with other levels of
government--both Federal and State.
On a good day, joint planning and practicing inter-agency
coordination--and carrying that out through an incident command
structure--is helpful in making events go more smoothly. Paying
your dues on the good days by building the infrastructure of
interagency familiarity, respect, knowledge, and trust thus has
an immediate pay-off--and if a bad day ever comes, that
infrastructure is literally a life-saver.
The single most important lesson of our research is that routine
and constant practice and use of incident command is one of the best
investments a community can make in its present well-being and against
any future dark day that might arise.
That said, there are still some things about the command and
coordination processes that need some additional work. Our research
suggested three areas where further work needs to be done on the
development and implementation of incident command:
(1) Distinguishing between strategy/policy issues and tactical/
operational issues.--In a crisis situation, some of the issues
raise policy questions that should be answered by elected
political leaders, while other issues are more tactical and
operational. Incident management is largely silent on the
establishment of processes and procedures for identifying and
separating these issues and getting appropriate resolution of
them. NIMS focuses almost exclusively on the resolution of
tactical issues and on organizing processes for carrying out
the indicated operations once the issues have been decided.
More attention needs to be devoted in the doctrine to making
this distinction, to developing training to help officials
practice the distinction, and to building an appropriate
structure for interaction between policy makers and operational
leaders. This interaction generally worked well in Boston, but
not because of the doctrine. In fact, Boston's experience may
provide some guidance about what the doctrine should say. For
example, the decision to issue a shelter-in-place request was
appropriately framed as a policy issue by operational
commanders and was put to political leaders for resolution, and
this may provide a good illustration of the kind of process of
issue identification and resolution that needs to be addressed
in the doctrine. It is imperative for NIMS to provide more
guidance about the process by which tactical commanders should
work in conjunction with an appropriate process for decision
making by elected leaders. Both have important but different
roles to play, and NIMS currently lacks systematic ways to help
these two groups each to stay within their own designated
``lane.''
(2) Helping senior operational commanders resist being pulled
unduly toward tactical decision making and away from advising
political leaders on strategic issues.--Related to the
challenge of distinguishing policy questions from tactical
issues, the natural flow of work in incident management
structures tends to exert a strong pull on the senior
commanders of operational agencies toward being involved in
tactical decision making--at precisely the moment when they are
also needed to help frame and provide advice to political
leaders about more strategic issues. Illustratively, during the
Monday afternoon discussions at the unified command at the
Westin Copley Hotel, the Governor asked everyone to put their
phones down. The phones represented the pull on the senior
operational leaders (by their subordinates) toward engagement
with the (many and important!) tactical issues; the Governor
wanted their attention to advise him on the (fewer, but even
more important!) strategic issues. The attention of senior
operational officials is a key resource for both tactical and
strategic issues, so we need to develop better doctrine and
associated training about how to focus and parse their
concentration.
(3) Developing more effective processes for quickly establishing
``micro-command'' at the tactical level.--While coordination,
cooperation, and command among the senior leadership of the
agencies involved was very strong during the week of April 15
in Boston, better doctrine and training need to be developed to
produce similar results when lower-level officials from
different agencies encounter one another in the midst of
tactical challenges--as occurred in Watertown in the early
morning hours of April 19 and then again later that evening. By
virtue of doctrine and years of joint planning and practice and
work on multi-agency events, the senior leaders of the relevant
organizations for the most part knew one another personally and
had knowledge of and confidence in each other's capabilities--
and they were able rapidly to form unified commands, both on
Monday afternoon and again in Watertown in the early hours of
Friday morning. Individual police officers arriving from other
jurisdictions at the scene of the gunfight at Dexter and Laurel
Streets Watertown had none of those advantages to help them
form a coordinating structure. We need better doctrine,
procedures, training, and practice to aid in the more rapid
development of a command structure among people from different
agencies arriving more or less independently and not under a
pre-existing overarching command structure. We refer to this as
the problem of establishing ``micro-command,'' and dealing with
this requires that the doctrine that is now working well to
coordinate agencies at the senior level needs to be cascaded
downward so that it functions at any level where the agencies
may encounter one another.
The problem of micro-command needs a bit of further explanation.
The issue is illustrated by the difference between what happened within
the Watertown Police Department (including both officers and
dispatchers), on the one hand, and what happened with arriving officers
from other jurisdictions, on the other, at the scene of the gunfight at
Dexter and Laurel streets. Watertown officers were first on the scene;
they knew each other, knew their command structure, were in direct
radio contact with one another, recognized each other's voices, and had
good situational awareness about where they were, where their
assailants were, and what the street map around them looked like. As a
result, they were able to coordinate their actions against their
assailants and moved against them in a way that, considering the
circumstances--they were being fired upon and having explosive devices
thrown at them--seems to have been both coherent and largely effective.
Their assailants arrived in Watertown armed with a semi-automatic
handgun and enough ammunition to reload it at least once and with a
collection of explosive devices; at the end of the confrontation with
Watertown police, one was dead and though the other temporarily escaped
and may still have been dangerous, he was no longer armed when he fled
the scene. As a result of the ``micro-command'' structure they
automatically brought with them to the scene by virtue of being from
the same department, the Watertown Police Department officers engaged
their assailants in an organized and effective way and coordinated well
with the WPD dispatch team.
Arriving officers from other jurisdictions, by contrast, did not
know one another, did not know the surrounding area, did not have their
own command structure present to help organize or guide them, and did
not find nor did they immediately form a command structure that could
help deploy them effectively. They were, in effect, forced to act on
more or less uncoordinated individual initiative. To some extent, this
is inevitable in the early moments of an intense and confusing
engagement when people from different jurisdictions show up to help.
And, to the credit of those present, micro-command was eventually
established at the various sites in Watertown where significant police
actions took place (of which there were several). In general, however,
it required the arrival of very senior officers before the others
present were able to recognize and to accept command. Some of these
events involved crossfire situations that endangered fellow officers
and nearby residents, so the need to develop an approach that will
minimize such circumstances in the future is urgent.
Let me now turn to my second message today, about the community
part of resistance to terrorism that was on display last year in Boston
and is on display this year as my daughter and Chief Deveau and
thousands of others train to run in this year's marathon--and yet more
thousands of others prepare to make the event both smooth and safe. It
is about the community's part in ``Boston Strong''--the local
description that encompasses what everyone from first responders to
bystanders to community members did to stand tall and proud in the face
of two murderous thugs with terrorist intent.
Boston Strong is not a form of hubris or arrogance or naivete--but
a form of pride and defiance and resilience.
Terrorists are, in the end, few and weak--which is, of course, why
they choose the methods they use. We are many, and large, and strong.
We could never be defeated by them--but we could voluntarily surrender
to them . . . and we must not. If we cower in fear, if we abandon our
commitment to a free and open society, then we do their work for them.
We cannot defend the American way of life--which, importantly, includes
our liberties--by surrendering that way of life.
In every generation since our predecessors stood on the Lexington
Green and at Old North Bridge in my hometown of Concord,
Massachusetts--indeed, since their predecessors came ashore at
Jamestown and at Plymouth--men and women have fought and some have bled
and some have died to defend the American way of life. In the last
century and a half--until 9/11--nearly all of that took place on
foreign soil, and the Americans defending our way of life were mostly
men and women in uniform. In an age where terrorism is an occasional
fact of modern life, some of the battlefields are, unfortunately, now
in the homeland and so the ``soldiers'' in that conflict now sometimes
include ordinary Americans going about their daily lives. Resilience--
psychological resilience by ordinary Americans in the face of the
threat, and even in the face of casualties--therefore has to be seen as
a core part of our defense strategy against terrorism.
Preserve, protect, uphold, and defend--Boston Strong affirms the
oath of office. Boston Strong says that we will defend the American way
of life by continuing to participate in it.
The community part of Boston Strong is a pretty good place to start
in thinking about what resilience looks like--and perhaps about how to
build it.
Our full report contains more detail about the events and further
discussion of the key implications and lessons about the challenges of
organizing and operating command and coordination in events like this.
For purposes of my testimony here, let me now enumerate more completely
the main recommendations from our research:
strategic command
Senior leaders should participate in a unified command at
the strategic level and avoid being pulled back into making
tactical decisions and directly overseeing basic operations.--
While some engagement with rapidly evolving tactical matters is
necessary, top commanders should concentrate on working with
their peers in other organizations to establish an integrated,
cross-agency, policy perspective that looks at the big picture
context and a longer time frame.
The management of intra-organizational, tactical matters
should be undertaken by the next tier of institutional leaders,
who should be carefully prepared in advance through training,
exercises, and actual experience to assume these
responsibilities during crises.
To help ensure leaders' strategic focus and opportunity for
effective coordination with peers, contingency plans for fixed
events like the marathon should provide for well-equipped,
secure facilities for top commanders to work together in the
event of an emergency.--This command post should be close to
but separate from the location of subordinates who manage
tactical operations.
Organizations must develop sufficient depth of leadership so
that they can rotate personnel regularly during extended
events; otherwise, they will inevitably falter from fatigue.--
By Friday evening, many of the people managing the overall
event had been awake for 36 or more hours and, more generally,
had been sleep-deprived since Monday's bombing. Both they and
their deputies had been more than fully deployed throughout the
event, leaving no unused (rested) capacity in the system.
Failure to provide for sufficient downtime for senior officials
inevitably degrades their judgment, ability to comprehend
information, and performance of even normal tasks. Allowing for
regular rotation requires creating more personnel depth in
these leadership positions.
Senior leaders should not to be unduly exposed to the
enormous flow of raw information, lest their attention be
diverted from strategic issues and problems.--In an event with
24/7 news and social media saturation, there is an enormous
amount of information circulating at any given time, much of
which is misleading or wrong. This stream of data needs to be
filtered and organized for top-level leaders so they can
concentrate on interpretation and strategic issues.
tactical/local command
Response organizations must develop procedures and practices
to better control ``self-deployment'' by individual personnel
to the scene of emergency action.--Dangerous situations that
threatened both responders and bystanders developed at the
scene of the Thursday night shootout and Friday apprehension of
the second suspect in Watertown, in part because of an overload
of individual public safety officers operating as individuals
rather than in disciplined units.
Public safety organizations should develop improved
doctrine, better training, and practice through exercises to
ensure effective ``micro-command'' in crises.--While officers
typically look for command authority when operating at a scene
with groups from their own agencies, they are less likely to do
so when they have deployed as individuals and arrive at an
emergency site on their own. Except for situations when near-
instantaneous action is required to preserve life, doctrine
should be developed and officers should be trained to look for
authority at a scene of mass action, even if command is taken
by someone from another organization.
Improved discipline and training is needed to control
weapons fire when public safety officers from many
organizations are present.--Control over fields of fire and
authorization to fire is another critical micro-command issue
in any rapidly-evolving, high-stress, emotion-laden event. It
is dramatically more complicated when a ``sudden team'' of
people from different agencies are thrown together under
circumstances where there is no pre-determined command
structure.
Improved protocols and control systems for parking emergency
vehicles at an actual or potential emergency site must be
developed and effectively communicated/emphasized to officers
by dispatchers and on-scene commanders during an event to
prevent obstruction of further movement that may be required.
In complex, multi-agency events, teams of responders in the
field should be structured to take advantage of both the local
knowledge of conditions that the ``home'' organization
possesses and the quantity and specialized resources that
outside reinforcements can bring.
public communication
Maintaining regular and open communication with the public--
through traditional and social media--should be a high priority
for senior officials, even when confidential investigations are
on-going.--When accurate, frequent, official communications
were absent, news and social media filled the gap, sometimes
with speculation and misinformation. Development of protocols
for crisis communication, incorporating utilization of social
media, should be part of the planning for fixed events. This
should include improving practices for dispelling widely-
disseminated, inaccurate information or rumors.
Systems for coordinating and communicating information to
families of individuals missing or injured in a crisis need to
be improved, perhaps including revision of HIPAA rules
governing the release of personal information about patients
receiving care during public safety emergencies.
preparation for future crises
Robust development, practice, exercise, and application of
incident management processes and skills (codified in the NIMS
system) greatly enhance the ability of emergency responders to
operate in complex, multi-organizational, cross-jurisdictional
crises.--The great value of common systems and the
understanding that these produce among responders who have
never previously met or worked together should not be under-
estimated. They can literally be life-savers for responders and
others at a crisis scene.
``Fixed'' or planned events can be effective platforms for
practicing incident management skills even when no emergency
occurs, and they are highly useful if emergency contingencies
materialize at a fixed event as happened at and after the 2013
Boston Marathon.--Skills honed at such events can also prepare
responders and response organizations to perform more
effectively even in ``no notice'' emergencies that may occur at
other times.
Because coordinating multiple agencies and disciplines will
be particularly difficult in ``no notice'' events, senior
commanders should:
Themselves form a unified command structure to make
decisions and implement them,
Identify a separate staging area to which deploying
individuals and organizations should report and await
before undertaking field operations,
Establish protocols for the formation of ``sudden'' teams
composed of individuals from different organizations that
may not have previously worked together.
Community resilience should be systematically developed and
celebrated.--In the face of the bombing, Boston showed
strength, resilience, even defiance--and these were key drivers
of the overall outcomes that is, of ``Boston Strong.'' These
qualities are latent in many communities in the United States
and elsewhere. Celebrating examples of community resilience--
both local examples and from farther afield--may help to
cultivate a culture of confidence and self-reliance.
These are the central lessons that we have drawn from this
difficult experience--from which we, with others emerge with a
combination of sorrow and pride and resolve.
So let me close where I opened: I thank the committee for the
opportunity to present the findings of our report, I commend the
committee for its historic role in mandating the platform from which
the first responder's part of Boston Strong sprang, and I offer the
community part of Boston Strong as a positive model of the
psychological resilience that is an essential part of the successful
defense of the American way of life in a sometimes-threatening modern
world.
I look forward to your questions.
Chairman McCaul. Thank you, Professor.
Let me just say, we were all--on that day, we were all
citizens of Boston that day. The way Boston, the people
responded with resilience, with strength, was truly inspiring,
I think, to the Nation. I am wearing my ``Boston Strong'' pin
to show my support and solidarity, as well. So thank you for
that.
The Chairman now recognizes himself for 5 minutes.
Commissioner Davis, welcome back.
Mr. Davis. Thank you.
Chairman McCaul. You know, it has been almost a year, as we
come up on the anniversary. You know, they say a man's true
character is tested in a time of crisis. Sir, your character
really shined. You were a true leader. You were a calming
influence for the Nation, a comforting influence for the
Nation, in a very dangerous time of crisis. I can't think of a
better man at a better time than you, sir.
Mr. Davis. That is very kind of you. I had a great team,
Mr. Chairman.
Chairman McCaul. I know I speak for all of us on this
committee to say how much respect not only we have but the
Nation for your service and your dedication. You will be
remembered for a very long time for that.
You and I have talked quite a bit since that tragic day.
Your response efforts were heroic and brought an end to these
terrorists who were on their way to Times Square.
Can you tell me, in terms of lessons learned--and, again, I
don't want this to be a ``gotcha'' exercise. I never intended
it to be that way. But I always think, when something like this
happens, we can always analyze and evaluate and determine what,
if anything, we can do better to make sure that this never
happens again.
Can you tell me, just personally, from your background and
experience from this event and your law enforcement background,
what are the real lessons learned from the Boston bombing?
Mr. Davis. Well, Mr. Chairman, I would like to commend you
for the work that you have done, Congressman Keating and all
the Members of the committee that have reviewed this. I have
taken a good, long look at the report that came out. I think
that the recommendations that are broken down into four
categories in the report are really the best steps to take to
deal with any shortcomings that were identified.
There is nothing in there that can't be accomplished fairly
simply. Those recommendations will cause a more comprehensive
and effective system to protect our Nation to be put in place,
and I think that those should be followed.
Chairman McCaul. Right, I appreciate that. I was, as I said
in my opening statement, pleased to see that the FBI has begun
to implement these recommendations, along with the Department
of Homeland Security. That is oversight, I think, at its best.
Thank you again for your service, sir.
Chief Deveau, you and I have talked about the tragic events
that day but also the acts of heroism on the part of you and
your officers, Sergeant Pugliese, in taking down one of the
biggest terror threats since 9/11.
What I was interested and maybe surprised to find out was
that, once he was taken down, you weren't even quite sure who
this person was and then, after the fact, learned that he was
indeed the Boston bomber.
Can you tell me--and you and I talked about this. You know,
always hindsight is 20/20. But would it make sense to include
local police departments in the Boston community or in any
community, when something like this happens, when a terrorist
attack occurs, after the event occurs, to bring in the local
police departments in the area for briefings and for
participation with the Joint Terrorism Task Force?
Chief Deveau. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Yes, I do think so. I believe that--you know, Watertown is
a 65-man department. You know, Boston has all the resources;
the big cities have that. But Watertown kind of represents most
police departments across the country. We have limited
resources, and it doesn't make sense for us to have somebody at
the JTTF on a full-time basis.
But when something like this happens in my community or in
any community across the country, we need to have access to
that table and be brought into it, be updated, and play a role
there.
I think some of the recommendations that you are making in
your report touch on that. We needed to have a seat right away,
and there were obstacles that we had to do before we could. So
I think there can be improvement. Your committee is helping to
make that happen, so I appreciate it.
Chairman McCaul. I appreciate your insight on that. I think
that that is a potential future recommendation, that local
police departments be brought into these crisis situations so
you can possibly identify the suspect before rather than after
the fact.
But, again, I just want to commend you and Sergeant
Pugliese and all the officers, the four behind you, for one of
the biggest acts of heroism. You are correct; for 8\1/2\
minutes, you were the best police department in the world. I
would still argue that you are a great police department.
Thanks for your great leadership.
Chief Deveau. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman McCaul. My time has expired.
The Chairman now recognizes the Ranking Member, Ms.
Sanchez.
Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Commissioner Davis and Chief, following the September 11
attacks, the Department of Homeland Security developed the
National Incident Management System, NIMS, to improve the
ability of first responders to coordinate multijurisdictional
response efforts. How have Federal grants enabled response
organizations to implement NIMS?
Would reductions to or changes to the structure of our
Federal Homeland Security grant programs, such as UASI, et
cetera--you know, what the administration is suggesting is we
clump everything together in an all-hazards thing and we have
at it, versus the different programs that we have set up. Do
you feel that the approach by the administration is correct?
Would it harm you if we did it that way? Et cetera, et cetera.
Mr. Davis. I can tell you from experience that the
programs, as they are set up, have been very effective. Our
ability to coordinate with other agencies, our ability to train
on the NIMS system and to game it out on tabletops and in real-
life situations when we were dealing with the sports victories
and things like that in Boston, that money all comes from our
Homeland Security grants and UASI funding.
The other thing that we have is the equipment that is
necessary to respond to something like this. Before the UASI
program, our equipment was antiquated and not up to the task.
When we were called to service that day, we had exactly what we
needed to go in and clear the neighborhoods and do the work
that had to be done in Watertown to catch these guys.
So I think the program as it exists works very well.
Ms. Sanchez. Chief.
Chief Deveau. I would agree with the commissioner's
comments. You know, in Watertown, we don't get as much funding
as Boston would, nor should we. But Watertown partners with 50
communities that surround Boston, and----
Ms. Sanchez. So you are in a UASI together, or----
Chief Deveau. Yeah.
Ms. Sanchez. Like, in my area, I have two UASI grant
recipients, Santa Ana and Anaheim, California, two large
cities. But they work through the localized police departments
to make sure that everybody is buying things that everybody can
interoperably use. You know, I don't need a SWAT thing, but if
we need a SWAT situation, you got the right stuff over there.
Is that the way that you do it with your 50 jurisdictions?
Chief Deveau. Well, that is exactly right. It makes no
sense for Watertown to buy SWAT equipment or a vehicle, but it
makes all the sense for Watertown to partner with 50 cities and
towns that surround Boston and team up. So, in my department,
it doesn't make sense for me to have a SWAT team, but it makes
all the sense in the world for us to have a 40-man SWAT team
made of all those communities, to have a rapid response team,
and to have the armored vehicle and the tactical equipment that
we can respond.
So Watertown was able to participate with our Law
Enforcement Council, along with Boston and the State Police and
the National Guard, and participate and be able to protect our
own community. So those grants went a long way.
The training that goes on, you know, you can never prepare
for what happened in Watertown, but training makes police
officers professional. Training, training, training--we need to
do that to be able to perform when we are challenged like we
were in Watertown.
Ms. Sanchez. I think my police departments are very
concerned about all of this being lumped into one line item and
also reduced, by the way. Whenever we consolidate programs into
one line item, we generally also reduce at the same time the
amounts of money available, so that makes it difficult.
Thank you, gentlemen.
I also have a concern about--the Harvard white paper on
Boston Marathon bombings identified communication to the public
as an incredibly important issue. Particularly in the light of
this 24-hour cycle, everybody is trying to put something up,
all the rumors that go, all the things that fly, you know, and
then get repeated and repeated, and America gets scared or is
incensed or whatever goes on--social media, you know, things
that we in the Congress face every day but, for a jurisdiction
that all of a sudden has a real crisis on its hands, can be
difficult.
Can you tell me, what have you done? What did you learn
from that experience? Have you set up different protocols of
how you share information, what you say to the community, what
you say to the public? How have you dealt with that? What are
the lessons that we can learn from that?
Mr. Davis. The Boston Police Department had a significant
presence on social media prior to the event. I don't think you
can have an event and then try to stand up a Twitter or a
Facebook account. You really have to understand how that works.
In the years before the April 15 bombing, we used Twitter
and Facebook to get information out. We don't even do press
releases anymore. We just post it on social media.
Ms. Sanchez. Really?
Mr. Davis. The press monitors our social media account.
What is good about that is that, not only do we speak one-
way, you know, not only can we send information out to the
public and to the media, but a dialogue exists on social media.
So we are actually able to understand how people are----
Ms. Sanchez. Reacting, thinking.
Mr. Davis [continuing]. Reacting to what we are saying and
whether we are getting the real message across that we wanted
to get across.
It is a very, very effective means of getting information
out to people quickly and effectively in a crisis. There was no
cell phone usage--the cell phones shut down at the marathon
because of overuse.
Ms. Sanchez. Yes, we saw that on 9/11 also.
Mr. Davis. Exactly. So we were able to revert to social
media and get messages out to people, for instance, who were
trying to find loved ones after the event to tell them where to
go and what to do.
It is a very, very effective means of communicating with
people and speaking back and forth to them. That dialogue is
really critical.
Ms. Sanchez. Commissioner, and I also want to hear from the
chief if you will indulge me, Mr. Chairman, if the chief will,
and then I have just a little follow-up question to what you
said.
Chief Deveau. I will be brief. I think the Boston Police
Department did an incredible job about getting the news out and
getting reliable information out. I think that when the media
came in, there was so much misinformation and I think people
relied on the Boston Police Department to get it straight on
those 4 days.
In Watertown, we had to notify our residents at 2 o'clock
in the morning to shelter in place, and we had a communication
system where we could put that telephone notification out
encouraging people to shelter in place, notify their neighbors,
and that worked as well.
But Boston really assisted us as the manhunt went on all
day long to make sure the residents in greater Boston were
getting the right information through the social media.
Ms. Sanchez. Just quickly, do you think that other
agencies, other police departments, are as advanced as you are,
Commissioner, and, for example, not even using the traditional
media, but going and putting your press releases out?
Mr. Davis. No, there are very few departments that do that.
But I think it is becoming more and more of a realization among
my colleagues and the major city chiefs that this is something
that they should invest time in.
Ms. Sanchez. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yield back.
Chairman McCaul. I want it associate myself with the
remarks with respect to the response training. I know that the
fall before the bombing that Boston's first responders had an
emergency response training exercise that was funded with
Homeland Security grant dollars, and I know that made a big
difference in saving lives that fateful day.
Mr. Davis. There is no question.
Chairman McCaul. With that, the Chairman now recognizes the
gentleman from New York, Mr. King.
Mr. King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me at the outset
thank you, and Congressman Keating, for the outstanding work
you have done on this report. The time and effort you put into
it really represents to me the very best of what a committee
should be doing, especially when we have such a topic as this,
which can inflame emotions, where there can be distortions. The
fact that the two of you worked so well together in bringing
out this product I think is really a tribute to the two of you,
and I thank you and I am proud to be on the committee with you.
Commissioner Davis and Chief Deveau and Sergeant Pugliese,
I want to commend you for your heroic efforts that week.
Professor Leonard, I want you to know I bring the best wishes
of the FDNY, Chief Pfeiffer in particular, who has worked with
you over the years and thanks to you for all the assistance you
have given to the FDNY.
Commissioner Davis, when we are talking about what was done
that week, first of all, and I am not just here to give tribute
to you, I am a friend of yours, I have great admiration for
you, but I think the calm and the confidence you projected was
absolutely essential. But in addition to that, I thought the
fact that within moments of the bombing happening, how you were
able to call everything into place, securing the site, getting
the ambulances, in other words, everything that had to be done
was done. Chief Deveau, your men, the fact is they had no idea
this was going to happen and you were within minutes involved
in the gun fights for their lives and for the lives of the city
of Boston. So that has to be a tribute to the training that
went on.
How much effort is put into the training every year?
Because obviously you can prepare, but you can't prepare. You
have to have as many contingencies as possible and I guess hope
for the best and then when it happens, all of that can be put
into good use.
So, again, I would just ask the two of you, I guess, how
much training goes on? In the course of a year, how much
training would you put into trying to provide for contingencies
like this?
Chief Deveau. We try to train as much as we can all the
time. I think some of the best training that my department got
with the regional team that I explained about is working with
Boston. Whenever those championship parades or the celebrations
took place, even going back to the Democratic National
Convention that was in Boston a number of years back, we always
worked with them. So that is kind of almost if you will
training in itself, that we go in there and help them. So we
support them.
But we train all the time. Our units train kind-of with
Boston, with the State police, trying to do that. I think, you
know, it kind-of looks like a sports team. A sports team
practices, practices, practices to get it right on game day,
and that is what we need to do. We need to train, train, train
to make sure we are able to do that. Dollars are limited, it is
hard to do, but I think we try to put it in the right ways, the
money that we do get Federally. With Ed Davis' leadership I
think we have done a great job in the greater Boston area in
working together and having that work, and that unified command
of everybody doing it that particular day was based on all the
training that we have done with the cities and towns around
Boston with Boston.
Mr. Davis. So there was a very specific training that
occurred in the year prior to the marathon where we put a
Mumbai-style attack scenario together and we used UASI to fund
a full day--actually it was a couple of days of training. We
took over several different venues in the city and played out
what would happen if there were multiple attacks on the city.
That was the first time we had engaged the medical people
into the training. So that was called Operation Urban Shield.
It was very effective because it got the medical people lined
up with us. When we went to the hospitals and had to take over
some of the emergency rooms because there were potential
suspects there, I think because we had done training with them
before-hand, it went much more smoothly. That same year we had
done a Homeland Security training that came in through DHS, so
two huge trainings in addition to a continual process of
training for our SWAT teams that happens routinely.
Mr. King. Commissioner, if I could ask you, we have already
gone over the issue of the information not being shared before
the event and that has been discussed and is apparently is
being addressed, but also coming from New York I was struck by
the fact that Dzhokhar, when he was being interrogated in the
hospital, that is when it came out about Times Square. But the
NYPD and nobody in New York was told about that by the FBI.
Now, at that time, no one knew that those two brothers were
the only two involved. It could have been a conspiracy and
there could have been others on their way to New York, and yet
New York was not told about it, and Commissioner Kelly first
learned about it 2 or 3 days later and he called me up on the
phone asking why I didn't tell him. I told him I didn't know
anything about it. I don't think anyone knew about it other
than the FBI in Boston.
Going toward the future, what is the protocol if you do
find a possible, additional attack that is being planned?
Should that police department be notified? It could have been
Philadelphia, it could have been anyone along the Atlantic
coast there.
Mr. Davis. I really think that we may be holding this
information too closely in the interests of prosecution or
having justice be the only thing that we think about, because
in addition to justice, there is the issue of public safety and
allowing people to get systems in place if there is a wider
conspiracy.
So I really--you know, our system is so focused on close
hold and maintaining all the evidence for the prosecution. That
is certainly, you know, the right thing to do, but I think that
singular focus must be tempered with the overall safety and
security of the community.
Mr. King. Because for all we knew at that moment there
could have been another attack being planned in another city,
New York, Philadelphia, Trenton, whatever.
Mr. Davis. I understand Commissioner Kelly's concern.
Mr. King. Thank you, commissioner and chief. Let me say
about Chief Deveau, like others on the committee, I was up in
Watertown to find out exactly what happened and not only did he
give me a minute-by-minute briefing, but he stood in the
pouring rain for an hour which was above and beyond the call of
duty. Maybe you can get a line-of-duty disability for that.
Thank you for coming. I thank all the witnesses. Yield
back.
Chairman McCaul. I thank the gentleman.
The Chairman recognizes the gentleman from Massachusetts,
Mr. Keating.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to ask
unanimous consent to clarify for the record in Congressman
Sanchez's statements that it was Dzhokhar Tsarnaev that is the
bomber in Federal custody.
Chairman McCaul. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Like so many other people, I wondered what the motivations
behind the attack were, how it came to be and how it could be
prevented in the future. Because of that, it took me to Russia
two times to try and get some information to see if there was a
link between the North Caucasus region, Dagestan and Chechnya,
and if there was any connection for the motivations of this. In
the course of doing that, I learned that authorities here in
the United States, the FBI and later the CIA, were given
detailed information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev through Russian
security services and pursuing this information back home I did
encounter some frustration with our own Federal agencies in
that regard.
There is a real concern about information sharing across
the board, but there is an obvious multiplier benefit in
sharing information. In the testimony before this committee
this year, we were told that there is roughly 800,000 local
police that could be utilized in this effort, and there is
about 14,000 FBI agents. One of the sensitivities behind the
lack of information sharing, at least I found as a DA, is a
concern that as you spread information even among law
enforcement sources, there could be leaks, and there is that
inhibition.
I would like to ask all of you, to me in your jobs right
now people's lives are in danger and you already hold very
sensitive information that if that information were released in
your own communities, that people could be in danger. So could
you comment on how you have maintained that confidentiality
every day, and how I think there is a greater risk in not
sharing that information with local police authority?
Mr. Davis. Well, since 9/11, police chiefs around the
Nation have received Secret and Top Secret clearances so that
they can be involved in the conversation around these issues,
and the intent of that was to make sure that there was wider
distribution, wider spreading of the type of information that
would be helpful to Ed in Watertown and to myself when I was in
Boston. So I think that the intent is really good and I think
that people have recognized that that should be the way it
works.
But when you are dealing with such large organizations over
a period of time, sustaining change is difficult. That elastic
band tends to pop back to where it was. So besides having good
intentions and having good policies, there has to be a constant
testing of systems to make sure that they are, in fact,
working, and I think that is where we need some work.
Mr. Keating. Chief, did you have a comment?
Chief Deveau. Yes, I would agree. I think depending on what
the intelligence is, it needs to get down to our level. It is
our officers that are on the street that are interacting, and
it is a value added. There could be more information that they
are not aware of that the officers behind me are aware of and
we can share information. I think we have to continue to build
that trust and move forward and use this as an example to get
better.
Mr. Keating. I had another question. During the whole
course of this, this committee has tried to really have a
continuum of what happened before with initial information,
what happened during the attack, what happened afterwards, and
I think this committee has done very well to fill in all those
areas. There is an area that I still have questions about, and
I want to learn about this, particularly former Commissioner
Davis could be helpful in this regard, because there is an
area, and I want to see procedurally what was going on, and I
think we could do that without jeopardizing anything frankly at
all.
There was a 60 Minutes segment just recently that was
broadcast nationally about the marathon bombing and the FBI's
response that put into play for that and I learned for the
first time in that segment that the images that ended up being
the images of the suspects, those images were available on
Wednesday. Furthermore, I recall on Wednesday there was a press
conference that was announced for National audience, I believe
at the Boston police station or wherever it was being held and
then at the last minute, that was canceled.
Now, could you shed light on what was the nature of that
press conference being called, and why it was canceled and if
there is some procedure in that period that took place or some
steps to fill in that blank period I have?
Mr. Davis. We did have the photographs on Wednesday and
there was a press conference scheduled, but at that point in
time, the FBI had taken jurisdiction of the case so they were
making the decisions on when the press conferences would be or
not. It was a desire among everyone at the table to be out
front on this as often as possible, but at that particular
juncture, I think there was a decision made somewhere above me
that there would not be a press conference. But that was
between the FBI and the Justice Department people.
Mr. Keating. You don't know the reason behind that?
Mr. Davis. I have no idea.
Mr. Keating. Or what happened in that 24-hour stretch
before that there was another press conference?
Mr. Davis. Right.
Mr. Keating. To me, and thank you for being that candid, to
me that just goes to show one more time that maybe there should
be more information sharing at all times during this too,
because I would have thought whatever that period, whatever was
going on during that period, frankly the Boston police should
have known what was going on.
I will just yield back my time, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate
that.
Chairman McCaul. Thank you, Mr. Keating.
The Chairman recognizes Mr. King for the purposes of
entering a question into the record.
Mr. King. Professor Leonard, the FDNY through Chief
Pfeiffer has just asked me if I would ask this question, if you
could submit the answer in writing. It is important to them.
They have worked on it with you.
You mentioned the idea of micro-command as an issue that
needs to be better addressed in the NIMS system. What exactly
did you mean by that and why is it important? If you could
submit a written answer to that I would be very appreciative.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman McCaul. The Chairman recognizes the gentleman from
Pennsylvania, Mr. Meehan.
Mr. Meehan. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank each and
every one of your distinguished guests for being here today.
Let me just say one thing, in addition to the way you responded
in the past with all of your officers, I know, Sergeant, you
were talking about, and Chief Deveau, you are going to run in
this next marathon, and the idea that it is not just how we
responded in the past but the resolve to demonstrate to those
who want to create terror in our communities that it is not
going to happen, and the idea that the nurses and the officers
and others are going to run 22 miles in a marathon is a
commitment in addition. So thank you for doing that.
Also I want to touch on this thing that Peter mentioned
because I think, and I appreciate the professor's focus on
this, the concept of incident command was really a significant
achievement. I know it is something that is practiced, but as a
former prosecutor, I appreciate that while you were responding,
Chief Davis, you were doing two things. The first and foremost
you were responding to make sure that people who were injured
were safely evacuated, and it was remarkable that within a half
an hour, those people whose lives could have been lost were in
trauma centers being taken care of. But at the same time, you
were securing an incredible crime scene. That is the very
substance of the information that becomes subsequently the
evidence with chain of custody and other kinds of things that
are necessary for the prosecution we are trying to protect. So
I appreciate the concept of chain of command.
But there really are two questions, and Peter asked one of
them, and I would be interested in having the two chiefs and
professor, if you have a moment. When you were making decisions
and in that chain of command, and there were a couple of
different kinds of things. There was a distinction between
policy decisions and procedural decisions. That is where you
get the command structure which includes those of you who know
the policy or the procedures about how to secure a crime scene,
how to keep a community safe, how to respond and put your
officers in.
But there is also questions. You made a determination to
release the photographs of the two individuals. You made a
determination to shut the city down for a period of time, to
secure Watertown, a remarkably courageous political decision.
If you can discuss how you distinguished between the two
and how you worked with sometimes political officials that may
not have the same sort of background. Then you were talking
about, and, Professor, you focused on this micro, and that was
these officers who were responding to the scene. They come, and
the unit in Watertown knows each other, but in small
communities, you know, it could be the next town over, Reading
or Everett or somebody, the officers are coming in and they
don't work with these guys. So how do you create a structure
where people are rushing in to a scene and the concept of being
able to create an effective response? I think we have got
after-action assessments of those kind of things and they are
all good lessons learned.
So if you can talk about that policy piece, chiefs, and,
professor, if you want to take a moment to talk about the issue
of the micro, I think it would be helpful for all of us.
Mr. Davis. The procedural piece, and these are very astute
observations, Congressman, and I appreciate you asking these
questions, the procedural piece was fairly much laid out for us
through our practicing and through our dealing with homicides,
some multiple homicides, that occur in the city day in and day
out. So we are frequently called to the scene where people have
been badly injured, multiple people have been shot. Our first
responsibility is to save lives and get them out as quickly as
possible and get them the medical attention that they need.
But very quickly after that, and it happens very fluidly,
the crime scene gets locked down. This particular crime scene
was complex because there was a distinct possibility that there
was a third device there. So we were not only locking the crime
scene down to preserve evidence, but to preserve the lives of
the first responders. We had everybody leave the scene, leave
the field after we got a perimeter set up until the bomb squad
could go in and do their work. But it becomes very methodical
at that point in time.
So in the 18 minutes it took us to clear the victims, very
quickly after that, a process was put in place, EOD clearing
and then evidence collection, and one of the first things we
did was tell our technical people to start to collect
videotape. That videotape played an important role down the
road.
But as for the policy decisions, Mayor Menino left the
hospital and came to the scene at the command post. He was
joined there by Governor Patrick. So our job as police
officials, myself, the Colonel from the State police, Rick
Deslauriers from the FBI, was to give the political officials
enough information so that they could get information out to
the public and calm fears, but also make decisions around big
political issues like the closing down of the transit system.
Our role was to be advisors. We advised. We told our
elected officials exactly what we had. At the time that the
decision was made to shut down the transit, there were a series
of events that were playing out that gave people the idea that
there could very well be a broader conspiracy with other people
involved.
So there were courageous decisions made, but it was based
on the best information that we had. We provided that to the
elected officials and they did their job.
Mr. Meehan. Professor, my time is up, but maybe you can
jump into that because you have an appreciation for both that
aspect, the policy decisions, as well as the micro piece.
Mr. Leonard. Congressman, like Commissioner Davis, I think
you are focused on the most important question here. My message
is, don't take incident management for granted. It is not an
accident. It takes a lot of work to build and it is incredibly
important.
What is important about it is that it facilitates the
command and coordination across multiple agencies. Inevitably,
the capabilities we need for these big horrible messy events
are going to be in multiple different agencies, and they should
be. The challenge is how to bring those collectively and
creatively together effectively in the moment and that is
harder than it looks. It is not self-executing, and it is not a
natural act for those agencies to do it. So it has to be
practiced in advance.
It has to be worked on and developed. You pointed out all
three levels. So there is the political interface with the
strategic operational. So the Governor and the Mayor
interacting with Commissioner Davis, with Chief Deveau and
other operational officials to figure out are we going to shut
down the city? Are we going to--the release of the photographs
is really a more tactical kind of issue. But that political
issue is enormously important, and the National Incident
Management System is silent on this question of how that is
supposed to work. So that is an area where we need further
work. That is the macro level of command and coordination.
The micro level is what Sergeant Pugliese brought to the
scene because he is naturally part of a system in which there
is command, in which the officers know each other. That is in
contrast to the dozens of other officers who showed up from
many different departments at the same moment or a little bit
thereafter, mostly after the gunfight was over at Dexter and
Laurel. They didn't have a natural tactical command structure,
and we need to work on that. That is what I mean by micro
command.
So we need to work on the continuing coordination and
command at all different levels, remembering this is the most
important asset, and it is not a natural thing to have happen
by itself, and it requires enormous amounts of work and
development and practice ahead of time. We can do this.
But I think for me, the most important lesson of this whole
experience is that any community can do this, but not every
community has done this, and we need to keep at that. Because
Boston is strong and the incident management on display in
Boston shows what can be done, but we shouldn't assume that it
is now universal. We need to keep working on that.
So thank you for asking the question. It is an excellent
question.
Mr. Meehan. Well, before I yield back, I want to say it is
frustrating as a Philadelphia fan to have to realize that you
get all this practice because you have all these victory
parades with Patriots and everybody else.
Mr. Leonard. Win the Series and you can practice too.
Chairman McCaul. The Chairman now recognizes Mr. Payne.
Mr. Payne. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Commissioner Davis and Chief Deveau, the administration is
proposing to consolidate the Homeland Security programs
including UASI and the State Homeland Security Grant Program
into one pool. Based on the testimony heard here and some of
the comments in Ranking Member Thompson's statement, quite a
few of us are concerned about that prospect. Under the
proposal, grantees would no longer be required to dedicate 25
percent of their grant awards to law enforcement and terrorism
prevention.
Do you have concerns about the proposed consolidation in
reference to those grants?
Mr. Davis. Congressman, I do. I think that the program as
it is set up is working very well. I am not briefed in on the
exact idea on the change, but if it results in a reduction in
overall money, I think it is problematic.
Mr. Payne. Right. As Congresswoman Sanchez stated,
sometimes in those consolidations, the amount of the dollars
are drawn down as well, consolidated. So that is a grave
concern to quite a few of us on this committee and throughout
the Congress because we know how those UASI and those grant
programs have been exceptional, especially in an area such as
mine. I am from North New Jersey and I have the Port Authority,
I have the port, the rail, the airport, so the UASI grant has
been phenomenal for us in that area.
Chief Deveau, would you like to make a statement in
reference to that? Because it says it would no longer require
them to dedicate 25 percent of those grants to law enforcement
and terrorism prevention activities, and that is what our
concern is, that money could be deviated for reasons other than
those?
Chief Deveau. Congressman, I agree with the Commissioner. I
think the current system is working and I think Boston is an
example of it working very well. I think it should stay in
place.
Mr. Payne. Okay. I will yield back in the interest of time.
Chairman McCaul. Thank you. We certainly appreciate that.
Thank you, Mr. Payne. The Chairman now recognizes Mr. Swalwell
from California.
Mr. Swalwell. Thank you, Chairman, and thank you to our
witnesses for being here today. I also as my colleagues have
noted stand with Boston and commend you for your work.
Commissioner, you and I spoke before at this hearing and I
pointed out that it was Urban Shield Training that your force
had gone through, first in Alameda County, which I have the
privilege of representing, but also an exercise that you held
yourself.
I wanted to bring to the witnesses' and the committee's
attention that a year later, we still, I believe, face threats
from terrorists, whether abroad or individuals in the United
States, rogue actors who may be influenced by publications on
the web or that they receive and are able to use materials that
are readily available at different stores.
I was disturbed to read and learn in the most recent
edition of al-Qaeda's Arabian Peninsula publication Inspire
there is a picture of a young person sitting in a tram, which
is used at San Francisco's international airport, and the
English translation with this person sitting in the tram says,
``For how long will you live in tension. Instead of just
sitting, having no solution, simply stand up, pack your tools
of destruction, assemble your bomb ready for detonation.''
This is one of the largest international airports in the
world, certainly one of the largest on the West Coast, and
thousands of passengers a day use the tram to connect from our
BART system to the airport. I was wondering if that
publication, in its most recent magazine, brings concern to
you, Commissioner, about threats still existing.
Mr. Davis. Congressman, it is good to see you again and it
does bring concern to me. In the month after the April 15
bombing Inspire magazine had a whole issue devoted to the
Tsarnaev brothers.
This kind of extremist propaganda on the internet, if it is
not countered with something, does tend to create problems for
us. So we actually are talking about this at the Kennedy School
right now trying to get college students engaged in putting
proper information out on the web to really fly in the face of
what these extremists are putting out there as the truth.
But it goes beyond that. When you see that type of a
picture in there, when you read about the attacks on the
infrastructure around the transformers in California that were
sniped at, it is hard to figure what is real and what isn't
real in this area. We need to be vigilant. It is clear that
there is a threat and we need to really be aware of it and do
everything we can as a Nation to stop it from happening.
Mr. Swalwell. Commissioner, knowing that, at least in this
most recent publication that the San Francisco area is depicted
in this al-Qaeda publication, what do you think that would mean
for local law enforcement and Federal law enforcement and what
do you think they would need to do to coordinate efforts with
the resources we provided or resources that you think may, in
the future, need to provided?
Mr. Davis. Well, the great thing about our country,
Congressman, is that each of the police departments has that
responsibility and I am sure the officials in San Francisco are
looking very closely at this threat. But you just need to be
vigilant. That is clearly what needs to happen. I am sure there
are a series of inquiries that are occurring around this and
what can be done to tighten up the system. That would just make
a lot of sense.
Mr. Swalwell. Just to follow up on Mr. Payne's, my
colleague from New Jersey's questioning, is it your position,
Commissioner, that you would prefer a grant system through
Homeland Security that is not consolidated, as is being
proposed? Because as you know, Urban Shield and other exercises
are funded through UASI, a specific grant, and that could be
threatened should consolidation take place.
Mr. Davis. Well, make no mistake, the UASI program works
because it goes right to the cities, and the problem is it gets
watered down when it gets diverted to the State. So, yes, I
think that that is my concern.
Mr. Swalwell. Thank you, Commissioner.
I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman McCaul. The Chairman recognizes Ms. Clarke from
New York.
Ms. Clarke. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I thank
our witnesses for bringing their experience to bear as we sort
of reflect on the response in light of the Boston bombings.
I was a New Yorker, I am a New Yorker and was a member of
the New York City Council during the 9/11 event and had
jurisdiction in the Council over the rebuilding of the FDNY. So
my question really goes to how well we have institutionalized
NIMS and my first question goes to Professor Leonard.
In your report you mentioned the response agencies should
develop procedures and practices to better control self-
deployment, and that is something that we New Yorkers were
keenly aware of in the 9/11 event. Can you provide some best
practices for the types of procedures and how do you suppose
that self-deployment tactics may be warranted in certain
situations to prevent immediately threats of death and
destruction. How do we strike that balance? Is there a
necessity to sort of create some space in the NIMS protocol to
address that?
Mr. Leonard. Thank you, Congresswoman, I think that
question goes exactly to the issue that we were trying to raise
in the report.
Self-deployment did happen in Watertown. There was also a
lot of dispatched--many officers from many other areas were
told that they should go. But when they got there, that didn't
mean that they had any natural command structure to join in
Watertown. So the Watertown Police Department is very organized
in its response.
I think to some extent, self-deployment is inevitable in
some of these circumstances, and it is also not necessarily a
bad thing. So it is not that we are trying to prevent that. The
question is: In the presence of self-deployment, when have you
a bunch of people from different agencies all arriving in a
confused situation, arriving in sequence, because they don't
all get there at the same moment, what should they do? We don't
have a very good doctrine about that.
We have lots of doctrine about how you can organize at the
senior level, and the senior officials who arrived did that.
They arrived in Watertown in the middle of night. Chief Deveau
found Commissioner Davis and several others and they
immediately began to form a command structure at the Watertown
Mall.
At the senior level that is all working. It is at the
tactical level that we don't really have a doctrine, we don't
have training. We can't expect those officers to have known
each other before, but we might be able to develop some
protocols for how they could combine so that we get something a
little bit more organized. The referenced standard for this is
not that they should be able to be like a college drill team in
a half-time show, but maybe we could provide some doctrine so
they could, through training and knowing how to use those
protocols, they could establish a somewhat more organized
response somewhat more quickly.
In Watertown, senior police officials on some of those
incidence scenes were able to eventually get things organized,
but it took a little longer than we might like and I think we
could develop protocols that would help people to do that
faster.
Ms. Clarke. Chief Deveau, from your experience, what would
you take from your experience as to how we can best manage just
the inclination of law enforcement and our first responders to
create--you know, there is an inclination. People are just
going to come knowing what it means to their jurisdiction,
their town, their people, their families. What would you say
would be something that we could move closer to creating to
manage a circumstance like that?
Chief Deveau. Thank you, Congresswoman. I think, first of
all, that you mentioned NIMS and I think NIMS has worked. I
mean, the unified command that we had in Watertown worked very
well. So, as has been pointed out, at the command level, it
worked because we have all been together. Ed Davis and I have
known each other for about 15 years. So when he came walking
down that back street in Watertown in the middle of the night
we ended up being shoulder-to-shoulder for the next 18 hours
and there was complete trust between us. As the other police
commissioners showed up, Colonel Alben from the State police
and everybody like that.
I think there is a little bit of a disconnect when you get
down to another level, when other departments start to show up
from various cities and towns. We don't train currently for
them to start working together. I think we have to go back and
look at that in our academies that when there is somebody of
leadership, there is a sergeant or lieutenant on the street,
regardless of what town or city he is from, he or she, if they
are the highest-ranking person in that area, then they have to
have the knowledge and the ability to take control.
We really don't do that well now, and I think it is one of
the lessons or takeaways that I see in a lot of people that
came to Watertown that we need to do a better job in self-
deployment. We needed those officers, but we needed to work a
little bit quicker together and better together.
Ms. Clarke. Mr. Davis, did you want to add anything to
that?
Mr. Davis. Just briefly, Congresswoman. I think that Ed is
correct that at the micro level, Dutch's observations are
exactly right. More work needs to be done there. We changed our
doctrine after Columbine. Our protocols before Columbine were
to secure the area and wait for the SWAT team to arrive.
Columbine taught us that we don't have that luxury anymore. So
our officers are now trained to put together a contact team and
to go in and address the threat.
What we haven't done is come to the realization that that
contact team may comprise officers from several different
agencies simply because when the call goes out, everybody
responds. So how that team is structured and who is in charge
of that team, that is sort of the nuts and bolts of this, I
think.
Ms. Clarke. I thank you gentlemen and yield back, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman McCaul. Thank you.
The Chairman recognizes Mr. Duncan.
Mr. Duncan. I thank the Chairman for the committee hearing,
for the report and the excellent work the committee did on
that. I will say that I appreciate you bringing up a little
moment of silence for the Fort Hood shooting, and South
Carolina stands with Texas, just as we stood with Boston last
year.
I will say for the record that the Red Sox are my AL team.
I am a Braves and Nats fan, but as Mr. Keating and I talk about
from time to time, I do like the Sox,
One thing, after reading the report, Mr. Chairman, it kept
coming back to me the term ``stovepiping'' and the failure of
sharing information across so many lines that came out after 9/
11 and how glaring that is today. The report points out that
the information was there if the dots were connected, if the
information was shared. I remember the testimony from
Commissioner Davis last year about if the JTTF, your officers
had been informed and would have had the ability to do a little
more research, maybe this tragedy would have been prevented.
So we hear a lot in this committee about lessons learned.
Well, doggone it, I am tired of just learning the lessons. We
have got to start applying those lessons. I mean, if we will do
away with the stovepiping, as a government, as agencies like
the FBI or components of DHS are willing to admit that they are
not a fiefdom and they can't just control that information and
they need to realize they can't be everywhere, nor do we want
law enforcement to be everywhere, but if they will rely on the
Boston police, the Watertown police, the elements in my State,
whether it is the county sheriffs or local city police or
whether it is the State law enforcement division, if that
information can be more readily shared, I believe we could
avert more tragedies.
So, Mr. Chairman, I don't want to sit here a year from now
or 2 years from now and have this same conversation about we
had all the information, we failed to connect the dots and we
failed to let the folks that are closer to the situation let
them know about the potential threats, because Government is
large and Government is cumbersome in its response to a lot of
things. Where the flexibility and true ability lies is on the
ground with the guys that can actually ask the questions of the
people in the local supermarkets or the churches or the
community clubs or the neighborhoods. So I will get off that
rant.
But I will say although there unquestionably has been
significant progress in 13 years since 9/11 on the issues of
the barriers, the walls, the stovepiping and the things that
are inhibiting information sharing, full partnership is
necessary.
So Commissioner Davis, I know you are not in your role as
you were this time last year, but from your perspective could
you share with the committee why you believe these barriers
remain or if they do remain? Or maybe I am off base on that. I
would love to hear your perspective.
Mr. Davis. I think we have come a long way. I think
Director Comey has done a tremendous job. He said all the right
things and done all right things since he has become the new
director to address these issues. I had a conversation with
Chairman McCaul last night. It appears as though we are moving
in the right direction.
But the recommendations that this committee has come up
with are exactly the way we should be going to make this a more
comprehensive system. But if those recommendations aren't put
into a Federal code somewhere, they are simply that,
recommendations. So if the Congress in its wisdom sees these
things as good things, then it should be codified so that the
system has to operate that way. Police agencies at every level
follow the law, and if that is the law, that is what they will
do. So that rubber band snapping back that we talked about a
little earlier, it makes it impossible to do that.
The other thing I want to mention is this is a story of
numbers. If there are less than 20,000 Federal agents, FBI
agents, working on the issue of terrorism, and there are
600,000 local police officers, we are a force multiplier. That
has to be a recognition on the part of all agencies that if we
are going to have a comprehensive--I have had the ability to
work in the United Kingdom and other police agencies in other
countries where there is a system from top to bottom, and that
really should be our model so that everybody is working
together and everybody recognizes this isn't my ball, it
basically is everybody's responsibility.
Mr. Duncan. Let me just ask you, wasn't that the original
purpose of the JTTF?
Mr. Davis. Yes. I think the FBI came 90 yards down the
field by establishing the JTTFs, but I think that there was
some bureaucracy that prevented it to go over the goal line. I
think we are right there right now. Those recommendations push
it over the goal line.
Mr. Duncan. Well, I tell you, I sit in the stands and watch
a lot of football games. I am a former football player and
enjoy the sport. I am glad you used that analogy. But one thing
that frustrates me sitting in the stands is when I see the
coach run the ball up the middle over and over and over and
they are getting a yard, a yard-and-a-half, when maybe around
the outside or throwing a pass, an end-around or something like
that would be more effective. The fans around me are hollering
at the coach, why are you running the ball up the middle again?
So sitting in the stands here and looking at the JTTF
concept, looking at the failures that are pointed out in this
report, I hope the coach, so to speak, reads this. I hope we
don't continue running the ball up the middle and getting that
yard-and-a-half or getting down to the goal line and not being
able to get across. We don't need 99 percent. Those are the
lessons learned. One hundred percent gets us across the goal
line. We learn from those lessons, we apply those lessons and
we keep America safe.
I hope they listen to you. I hope they listen to all you
guys that were involved in this. I hope they will read the
report, the ones that can make the decisions.
Mr. Chairman, you are doing a great job in pointing this
out, laying out the roadmap, and we have, I think, a
responsibility and I think we are doing a good job of telling
the respective agencies where we need to go, laying out the
direction, but not just laying them out, actually cranking the
car up and helping them proceed down that road. So I thank you
for that.
Thank you guys. God bless you. May God bless Massachusetts,
the folks in Boston, all the victims and families, and may God
continue to bless America because America was with Boston that
day.
With that, I will yield back.
Chairman McCaul. Let me just close by saying, having worked
with the Joint Terrorism Task Force, they do good work. It is a
good model. It works 99 percent of the time. We have to be
right 100 percent. In this particular case I think there were
some things that fell through the cracks. But it is our job not
to make people feel bad about that, but see how we can do
better in the future so we don't have one of these events
again.
These one- to two-man operations are very, very difficult
to detect and disrupt. That is the new evolution of both
terrorism, of al-Qaeda, radical extremists, and that is what we
need to stop.
I do, as Commissioner Ed Davis said, I do want to commend
the new FBI director, Comey, for ushering in, I think, a new
era at the FBI, a model of cooperation. I have talked to him
about the State and local cooperation. I think State and locals
are a great force multiplier to an agency that is very
resource-strapped. The locals know the streets. They are the
eyes and ears on the ground and it makes perfect sense. I think
it is indicative that one the first things that Director Comey
did was to bring police chiefs to the table to enter into a
memorandum of understanding with the police chiefs so that the
police chiefs will actually know what their officers are doing
on the JTTFs, because that wasn't happening in this case. That
needs to change.
I think Director Comey's emphasis of that, I know that his
chief of staff is a big State and local fan and I look forward
to, I think, a new era which I think will protect Americans
ultimately and make America safer.
Commissioner Davis, I think your recommendation to codify
these recommendations into law is an excellent idea. Reports
come out all the time, recommendations come out all the time,
but if it is codified and it has the full force and effect of
law, I think that is even stronger. So I commend you for that
recommendation as well.
Just to end, I also want to thank the staff on both sides
of the aisle for all the work they put into this report,
particularly Alan Carroll on my staff, who has worked day in
and day out for a year with all the relevant agencies doing a
great job.
I want to thank Bill Keating, my dear friend from
Massachusetts. This hit home to you. But working together with
you in developing this report, traveling with you to Moscow to
conduct interviews, you and I have been joined at the hip on
this report and I think it is very significant.
But our heart does go out to the Boston community. As we
approach the anniversary of this bombing, this tragedy, I think
it will be a time to remember. It will also be a time to heal.
But it will also be a time of pride, for Boston is strong. So
let me thank the witnesses----
Mr. Keating. Mr. Chairman, if I could.
Chairman McCaul. Yes, Mr. Keating.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I just want to thank the staff. I want to thank you. You
have been to Boston. You traveled every footstep of the way on
these scenes. I want to thank you for your personal
involvement. Congressman King came down to Watertown. This is
very important to our area. It is very important to our country
going forward. I want to thank our brave law enforcement
officers that are here for the work you have done once again. I
will say that moving forward, we have been working in our
office on legislation which we will share with everyone that
will make sure that, you know, some of the positions change, so
you could have someone that is more open to cooperation and
then he could be replaced or she could be replaced by someone
that doesn't share that same.
So I think going forward it is important to get the laws or
the codes changed so that we are not having another report that
just sits on the shelf, because we can't afford to have this
kind of tragedy, and if we can prevent one of them, all our
work will be important.
Again, I turn back and again, thank the Chairman for his
personal involvement in this important issue.
Chairman McCaul. Let me just close by thanking the
officers. You are the true heroes to me and this committee. I
also want to thank you for my Watertown police patch and pin. I
will wear this very proudly.
With that, this hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:51 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
Questions From Hon. Susan W. Brooks for Herman ``Dutch'' B. Leonard
Question 1. Dr. Leonard, you noted in your testimony that, ``Others
can do this too,'' referencing the ability to replicate Boston's
effective response. In the aftermath of the Boston attacks, I held a
hearing in my district to assess Central Indiana's ability to respond
to a mass casualty event. I was pleased to hear in this hearing that,
like in Boston, there has been extensive pre-event coordination between
law enforcement, the fire service, emergency management, and the
medical community. How can we most effectively share these best
practices to help ensure that other jurisdictions are similarly well-
prepared?
Question 2. Dr. Leonard, you mentioned in your written testimony
that during a response effort it is imperative that first responders
and Government officials maintain regular and open communication with
the public and should utilize social media as a platform to reach their
communities. I could not agree with you more. My subcommittee held two
hearings last year that focused on how social media is transforming the
way the Nation responds to and recovers from disasters. A recent survey
showed that after a disaster 1 in 5 survivors contact first responders
through social media. One of the challenges we discussed during these
hearings was the amount of incorrect, misleading, and even malicious
information that is posted on social media sites after a disaster. What
best practices can we share with other first responders and Government
officials to help them validate information posted on social media
websites during a disaster?
Answer. Thank you for the privilege of testifying about the
findings of our research on the Boston Marathon bombings before your
committee. I thought the hearing was well-designed and focused, and I
hope it was helpful to you and your colleagues.
I was honored to be a part of it and to appear with some of the
true heroes of the hour--the other members of the witness panel, and
the Watertown Police Department officers who responded in the early
hours of April 19.
In the aftermath of the hearing, you forwarded two written
questions to me. I fear that the time for me to respond to them is now
past, but hope that these responses may nonetheless still be of some
use to you.
The two questions were forwarded from Congresswoman Brooks. She
asked, first, about how we can most effectively share the best
practices of communities like Boston and her area of Central Indiana
that have undertaken the necessary structural pre-work to build an
architecture for coordinated response across agencies and jurisdictions
under the National Incident Management System.
This is an excellent and important question. As I observed in my
testimony, the fact that multiple agencies and jurisdictions could
quickly come together and coordinate their actions was crucial to the
highly effective performance shown in Boston in the aftermath of the
bombing. None of that ability was an accident; it came from years of
hard work and practice, as well as from the efforts of DHS, mandated in
the basic Homeland Security Act of 2002 (which originated in the House
Select Committee that was the predecessor to the committee that you now
chair). The best practice, as we outlined it, is for communities to
take every available opportunity to practice mutual, coordinated
planning and execution--from planning their Fourth of July celebration
to handling local football games--by using the National Incident
Management System as the basic planning and operational framework for
every significant event in their area.
Congresswoman Brooks' question goes to the issue of how we can get
other communities to do this--since, as I observed, while every
community could do it, not every community has done it. I can't give a
fully satisfactory answer--but I would emphasize that one element of
our strategy for spreading this practice is bringing greater attention
(as we tried to do in our report) to why Boston was able to do as well
as it did during that terrible week. These lessons need to be retold
and repeated. We are taking every opportunity to speak with public
safety officials, political leaders, and community groups about the
importance of this kind of practice and of the building in advance of
the infrastructure of cooperation. We hope that this finding is
something that you and your committee can also help to promulgate.
One device that has been utilized to encourage practicing
coordination, and that I think should continue, is providing grants for
planning and exercises on a multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional,
``regional'' basis. The requirement, under DHS grant programs, to
undertake joint exercises and to form joint plans has been a useful and
effective push in the right direction.
Congresswoman Brooks' second question refers to social media and
inquires about the best practices for using and for verifying the
information flowing through social media channels during crisis events.
Once again, this is a very good question, with no simple answer. One
important element is that the effort to utilize social media
effectively should not begin at the time of the event; the
infrastructure needs to be built well in advance. Public safety
organizations need to build a trusted social media voice and populate
it regularly during ordinary times, developing a collection of
followers who will already be tuned in when a crisis moment breaks. The
Boston Police Department had such an effort before the marathon bombing
event, and many thousands turned to it in the moment; many say it was
the most reliable and accurate source of information about what was
known at any given time. This helped to damp down some of the less-
grounded posts that were circulating from other sources--and this could
only be done during the event because the infrastructure had been built
in advance.
As Congresswoman Brooks observes, one of the great challenges of
operating in an environment drenched in social media--as crisis events
now are--is that many posts from many sources are difficult or
impossible to verify. Most putative eyewitness statements are by actual
eyewitnesses, and most contain at least some accurate data--but some
are complete (and sometimes malicious) fabrications, and even actual
eyewitnesses are often confused about what they saw, so even with the
best of intentions they may be providing highly misleading
characterizations. Even those who are trying their hardest to get and
report accurate information are caught in the inevitable fog of war.
The simple fact is that there is therefore no straightforward and
definitive method for determining which pieces of ``information''
flowing through social media channels are accurate. In general, the
best we can do is to seek confirmation for information that seems
important, and to try to differentiate between confirmed/verified
claims, on the one hand, and unverified posts, on the other. Again,
having a pre-established trusted social media voice for a given agency
with loyal followers who have faith in the intentions and competence of
the organization is critically important. That voice must then be
operated in a way that: (1) Allows it to differentiate as carefully as
possible between verified and unverified information, and that (2)
keeps pace with the flow of information in the event. If all the
official voice can say is that there is no verified information, people
will quickly turn to other social media channels. This means that we
can neither entirely rely upon, nor entirely ignore, the flow of
unverified information in social channels. This is an area where
further research and development is needed, but I believe it will
remain (and indeed will increasingly become) difficult to manage, and
will require operational resources devoted to it in the moment. This
may seem like a diversion of resources that are needed elsewhere, but
managing perceptions and information during events needs to be seen as
a substantive contribution--as much as providing physical assistance.
I hope these observations are helpful to you and the Members of
your committee. I would be happy to elaborate further on any of my
testimony or any of what I have said here, if that would be of use to
you.
Once again, let me thank you for the privilege of appearing before
your committee. If there is anything you think I can do that would help
advance the important work you are doing, I hope you will not hesitate
to let me know.