Steven Holt: “It is easy to say we can have good clear communication if we have a centralized authority. But, in fact, when terrorism…”

“It is easy to say we can have good clear communication if we have a centralized authority. But, in fact, when terrorism has taken place, it is necessarily a group of individuals from neighboring towns that respond. And so the communication has to be set up in such a way that it flows in from many people, and it flows out to the whole population. And that depends on coordination, and in many cases that exists only in a really sketchy undeveloped form. This legislation would help develop that. The other point that I wanted to make that is so very important, when we talk about the threat assessments, we talk about what might be the targets of terrorism. Well, it is easy for somebody here in Washington in some agency to imagine what are vulnerable sites to attack around the country. But, in fact, it is the people who live in the town; it is the local police who know the town block by block, alley by alley, who are better, who are best able to determine what the vulnerabilities are out there. The gentleman's bill, again, if I may say, our bill gets at that and uses this local talent in identifying the targets of terrorism using the guidelines that are developed nationally.”