Terror contingency plans
yanked off state Web site

State officials defend the posting
as never marked confidential

A Homeland Security document that catalogs ways terrorists might strike in the United States and that was posted on Hawaii's state Department of Civil Defense Web site for more than three months was not marked confidential, the state's top defense official says.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday it was a mistake for Hawaii to post the report, which said tens of thousands of people could be killed in such specific incidents as the blowing up a chlorine tank, the spreading of pneumonic plague in public restrooms and the infecting of cattle with foot and mouth disease in several places around the country.

State Adjutant General Robert Lee said the Department of Homeland Security had called his office Tuesday and asked that the report be taken off the Web site.

"When they called us and said we shouldn't have done it, we did comply," he said.

But Lee said the information regarding "universal task lists and target capability lists" had been sent to the state via normal e-mail and not labeled secret or classified.

"We got this about six weeks ago. We did not release classified information. The intent of the memo was to get the states to take a look at it so we could share it and be better prepared," Lee said.

Maj. Charles Anthony, a spokesman for the Hawaii Department of Defense, which includes state civil defense, said a New York Times reporter had called late Tuesday to inform him that a story was to be posted on the newspaper's Web site within hours, but it was unclear whether the reporter's call came after the Department of Homeland Security's call to Lee.

The draft copy of the Homeland Security report, called a National Planning Scenario, was posted on the state department's Web site in late November as a way to make it available to the state's first responders, said Anthony.

It included a "comment period" for firemen, police, emergency medical workers and hazardous-material workers and others to give reaction and make suggestions, he said.

Anthony said the report did not contain any specific information about actual threatened attacks or specific training plans.

"If a document is for official use only, it will be marked 'for official use only,'" Anthony said. "There was nothing on this document that was marked 'official use only.' There was nothing marked confidential."

Anthony said the report actually should have been taken down earlier because the comment period ended Jan. 17.

The report, requested by presidential directive in December 2003, marks Homeland Security efforts to spur state and local authorities into thinking about preventing attacks.

Homeland Security at first believed other states also might have linked to the report on their Web sites, but a further review yesterday showed that was not the case, said spokesman Brian Roehrkasse.

The department has been working for a year on a National Planning Scenarios plan that outlines a number of plausible attacks, including by nerve gas, anthrax, pneumonic plague and truck bomb.

Homeland Security "has developed a number of scenarios that will aid federal, state and local homeland security officials in developing plans to become more prepared to prevent and respond to an act of terrorism, should it occur," Roehrkasse said.