REPORT: WEAK RESPONSE TO TERROR DRILL

In the Spring, we told you about the anti-terror exercise Topoff 2, which simulated biological and "dirty bomb" attacks in Chicago and Seattle. And we mentioned some unofficial "lessons learned" from the mock-strikes -- like the fact that quarantines don't seem to work.

Now, an official report on Topoff 2 is emerging, the New York Times reports. And there are more than a few problems with the responses to the simulated terror -- despite the fact that local and federal officials knew what was going to happen beforehand.

A brief, unclassified summary of the report... cited "critical" problems in Seattle in trying to determine where plumes of radiological contamination from a simulated dirty bomb in the city had spread. As a result, officials said, rescue teams were uncertain for hours where they could travel without risking radiation poisoning.

The summary showed that in Chicago, the problems were often more basic, and that the exercise showed that the city and local federal officials lacked an "efficient emergency communications infrastructure" to deal with a terrorism attack — in this case, a simulated attack with pneumonic plague, a deadly and highly contagious biological agent.