Leadership Faulted on Bioterror Front

One month after President Clinton issued a plan to improve U.S. preparedness against bioterrorism, top FBI officials warned Wednesday that overlapping agency responsibilities could sow confusion and actually hamper government responses to deadly germ and chemical attacks.

John F. Lewis, assistant FBI director, said that a succession of new antiterrorism laws and initiatives over the last three years has given new responsibilities for defense against germ and chemical attacks to various agencies--including the National Guard, several Pentagon organizations, the Justice Department and the Secret Service.

In a catastrophe, he warned, these agencies could issue conflicting orders to state and local officials, who already are unclear about where to look for leadership.

“You can’t work by committee--you’ve got to have people clearly in charge,” Lewis said in an interview with The Times. “It looks like we’re all over the map on this, and we’ve got to bring it together.”

Alarmed by increasing risks of terrorist attacks, Clinton last month called for a sharp increase in funding for defense against germ and chemical weapons and tried to straighten out the division of labor among federal agencies by appointing an official of the National Security Council to act as “coordinator” of the federal response effort.

Bioterrorism has become an urgent topic in Washington, and no fewer than 29 agencies are involved in efforts to plan a concerted response.

But Lewis’ highly unusual decision to go public with the bureau’s concerns shows that the organization of the federal effort remains controversial with some U.S. officials, as it does with some members of Congress and local authorities.

A senior administration official disputed that there could be confusion of authority.

The two presidential directives signed by Clinton last month on the issue “are crystal clear on who has responsibility for crisis management--and that agency is the FBI,” this official said.

At the Justice Department, an official ascribed the comments of Lewis and other FBI officials to their unhappiness that other agencies have gotten a bigger piece of the action in the fight against the new terror weapons.

The threat is not “confusion,” he said, “it’s unhappiness on the part of the FBI. . . . Now, other people are playing.”

The new civil defense effort grows from increasing concern that biological agents, such as anthrax and smallpox, and chemical weapons could kill or injure tens of thousands of people in an attack on U.S. cities, which are now largely unprotected. Such crises could require far different responses, depending on what kind of “weapons of mass destruction” are used.

The FBI has long had the lead role in anticipating and trying to prevent terrorist attacks and in defusing dangerous situations and gathering evidence for criminal prosecution. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has had primary responsibility for responding to the effects of an incident--coordinating provision of medical care, food and water, transportation and other services.

But FBI officials said they fear that the increasing involvement of other agencies threatens to blur lines of authority that need to be clearly understood by all.

Local officials “are trying to figure out who’s going to be in charge in a crisis,” said Robert M. Blitzer, chief of the FBI’s domestic terrorism section.

In the first hours after an attack, when confusion is likely to run rampant, conflicting orders could make a bad situation worse. “That’s exactly what we’re afraid of,” Blitzer said, spelling out the FBI’s greatest concern.

Lewis and Blitzer praised Richard Clarke, the NSC official who is now playing a lead coordinating role. And they said that they believe federal authorities can respond effectively in such emergencies and expressed confidence that officials will be able to iron out the current difficulties.

Even so, they said, they have deep concerns.

According to several observers, federal officials have made substantial progress in the new counterterrorism effort since 1995, when, in the wake of the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City that took 168 lives, Congress and the administration began moving to improve civil defenses against germ, chemical and nuclear attacks.

The FBI officials’ concerns are shared by others who agree that the rush to bring in more agencies to help address the problem has created confusion.

In congressional testimony on June 2, Chief Luther L. Fincher Jr. of the Charlotte, N.C., Fire Department, said that local authorities badly need clarification on who is in charge of what.

“What are the defined roles for each federal agency? What is the federal ‘911’ number? Who determines what assets are sent?” Fincher asked. “There can be no hesitation or confusion about any of this after an incident occurs.”

Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), who chairs a House subcommittee with responsibility for the issue, said that the FBI officials’ concerns are justified.

“They’re absolutely correct: This has become an area of total confusion,” said Weldon, who has proposed a federal commission to sort out what the roles should be.

There have been various frictions in the last three years over the role that each agency will play in the new counterterrorism plans. Some analysts said that the inter-agency rivalries have been sharpened by the fact that counterterrorism defense is one of the few growth areas of federal spending, and many think that their organization should have a slice of the pie.

Officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, for example, have felt that their agency, with its broad disaster-response capabilities, should have a larger role.

“The issue of command remains a big, grating issue,” said Zachary Selden, a specialist in germ and chemical warfare at Business Executives for National Security, which advocates greater federal efforts. Even so, he said, the federal meetings that are going on regularly these days as part of the counterterrorism effort have been generally harmonious.