Is Boston doomed?

Part 6

by Michael Crowley

The policy wonks in Washington have long been worrying about superterrorism. Only recently, however, has the ominous drumbeat of terrorist events from Tokyo to Oklahoma pushed this menace up the fret list of influential government officials, from the White House and the Pentagon down to the state level.

Perhaps the most dramatic example of the government's concern is a science-fictionesque outfit called the Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST). NEST was born out of that first, crackpot threat against Boston in April, 1974 (a demand for $200,000 to be dropped off at a house in Allston -- no suspects were ever arrested). Since then, the Las Vegas-based team of nuclear experts, who can be summoned into action with their high-tech vans, helicopters, and airplanes on a few hours' notice, has responded to more than 80 threats around the country. But by the government's own admission, NEST would still have trouble finding, much less disarming, a hidden nuke. In 1994, when the feds staged "Mirage Gold," a mock nuclear-terrorism crisis in New Orleans, NEST was caught cheating.

Other efforts are under way in Washington. The Pentagon is tinkering with technologies like "laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy" to try to detect chemical and biological agents. Pentagon officials were also in Boston recently, part of an effort to create a new superterrorism-response team that will eventually be stationed in about 25 urban areas, including this one.

On a larger scale, however, the push for international safeguards against chemical, biological, and nuclear materials tends to get caught up in petty politics. Last year Bob Dole shot down US ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention -- widely thought to make those weapons harder for terrorists to get -- to score points for his presidential campaign. This year the treaty was ratified only after a long, xenophobic stall by Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Likewise, aid to Russia, even to protect "loose nukes," is opposed by isolationists and right-wingers. Until disaster strikes, there will be no constituency to press the government on these unsatisfyingly intangible goals.

Closer to home, there isn't a lot local officials can do to protect us from a disastrous attack. But should one occur, by all accounts Boston and other major cities will be woefully unprepared.

Not that people aren't thinking about it. In a dramatic terrorism-awareness tape prepared by MEMA, a gruff, camouflage-clad National Guard colonel appears onscreen, glaring at the camera: "A small group of committed radicals," he growls, "may be planning an act so outrageous it is beyond imagination."

But so far Boston, like other major American cities, remains largely unequipped to respond. In a 1995 simulation of a subway gas attack, New York City's response was so pathetic that a follow-up exercise was reportedly canceled by the mayor to avoid embarrassment. Among the faults in the city's response, according a US Senate report: most of the first responders were theoretically "killed" because they were unprepared for the gas, and communications were "abysmal." In a similar exercise in Los Angeles, according to the same report, "doctors literally `threw in the towel,' admitting that they and their facilities were hopelessly contaminated by the injured patients."

As for trying to get out before disaster hits, forget about it. Few cities are as famously difficult to escape as Boston is. Picture the crawling Friday-afternoon traffic on Storrow Drive, the JFK expressway, or the Mass Pike. Then imagine every single car in the city squeezing onto those roads, driven by people in varying states of panic and fear. State officials say that, given enough warning, the city could be evacuated. But most disasters -- from terrorism to earthquake to nuclear accident -- have a rude way of showing up unannounced.

Kathleen O'Toole, secretary of the state's Office of Public Safety, would be in charge of the daunting variety of state and local agencies that would respond to a catastrophe. From her corner office on the 21st floor of the McCormack state office building, where she looks out on downtown Boston and the harbor, O'Toole boasts of a new spirit of vigilance and readiness among city and state officials. In March, for instance, state and local officials held an anti-terrorism conference in Framingham that, O'Toole says, was symbolic of a new spirit of cooperation among agencies with a long history of turf battles. And, earlier this month, Boston was host to one of a nationwide series of hearings on protecting American infrastructure from sabotage. Nevertheless, almost no special new crisis training has been conducted by Boston or Massachusetts officials.

"We will never prevent all of these things from occurring," O'Toole concedes.

Illustrating the point is her office's sweeping view of downtown Boston in all its chaos: jets streaking perilously toward Logan, boats puttering suspiciously around the harbor, trucks lingering ominously by skyscrapers.

Part 7

Michael Crowley can be reached at mcrowley[a]phx.com.