Guard Unready for Terrorism

After three years and $143 million, the National Guard has no anti-terrorism teams ready to respond to nuclear, chemical or biological attacks because of defective safety equipment and poor training, an internal Pentagon review found.

The Pentagon inspector general report said preparedness is so bad that Guard members at one point were given mobile labs with air filters installed backward and gas masks with incompatible parts.

Pentagon officials are “moving as fast as we can” to fix the problems, said Charles L. Cragin, who oversees the National Guard.

Pentagon planners authorized 10 teams in 1998 with a goal that they be ready for duty in 2000. But the National Guard so badly bungled preparations that none met last year’s deadline, the report said.

Many of the problems arose because officials tried to get the teams ready very quickly, Cragin said.

The National Guard units, each with 22 full-time members, are supposed to help local authorities respond to a terrorist attack by identifying what nuclear, chemical or biological agents were used. But Pentagon investigators concluded that defective safety equipment could put team members at risk of succumbing to the very weapons they were meant to identify.

Investigators found that air filters had been installed backward in the teams’ mobile laboratories and team members were given gas masks with parts that were not designed to work together.