Helath and Human Services gives thier briefing.

Students listen to the final reports.

Homeland Security reports to the Senior Staff.

The feedback.

Tuesday, July 11th
Washington, DC

This just in, there has been an outbreak of human to human transmission of the H5N1 or bird flu in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Relax, although not actually happening this was the situation called “PANDEMIC FURY” that our students were presented with at the National Defense University. This is a group that operates and is staffed by the US department of State. They research, develop, plan, and facilitate various national and international disaster scenarios designed to help those engaging in the activity to better utilize inter agency cooperation among various governmental departments. They use their findings to help design more efficient and useful plans to deal with emergencies. They are very realistic and although the NDU sternly states that there is no attribution to any official government policy or opinion the people usually participating in these scenarios have some influence over policy. The usual “students” are members of Congress, grad schools of international policy, and agency representatives. These activities are called “strategic gaming”. Here is a link to the history of “war gaming”. The students loved the hands on nature of the day. They received intelligence memos and briefings, presented to various agencies, and then made recommendations to “Senior Staff” and were questioned on their recommendations. The professors of the NDU played the role of Director of Homeland Security, Secretary of State, and the Vice President of the United States. The students had about 30 pages of prep work to do the previous couple days in order to be prepared for the scenario and what specific agency and role at the agency that they had to play. The four departments were Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, State Department, and Department of Defense. Many of the students stated that this was of their most interesting activities thus far.

After dinner the students heard from Robert Muse, esq. who helped prepare the congressional report, “Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared”. It was interesting to hear the failings of the inter agency cooperation and overall lack of coordination. The students were acutely aware o theses struggles based on their activities of the morning and afternoon.