Report from Santa Fe; Annette Sobel

Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by a grant from the members of the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. I'm Lorraine Mills. I'd like to welcome you to this week's report from Santa Fe. Your guest today is just dazzling with degrees and capability. You're going to love her. Brigadier General, Dr. Annette Sobel, Director of the Governor's Office of Homeland Security. Thank you for joining us. Oh, delighted to be here. I was reading your background. I really must tell you, you've worn so many hats and they're all hats that it takes years to earn these acknowledgments. So please tell us about your MD and what you specialized in and your military career and your early, early work with terrorism because you were really on this before the world was aware of it.

So tell us how you came to that. Oh, yeah. Well, as you know, I started out as a physician. I started out very early on in my career, dad who was in the military and he said, you need to grow up. So he said, go join the Army. I was trained as a chemist at the time. I had majored in chemistry and computer science. And they said the Army would be a good place for me to mature. So as I entered the Army, I had a mentor tell me, you know, why don't you go to medical school? I think you'd make a very good physician. And I did that, got residency training and family medicine and subsequently aerospace and hyperbaric medicine and went back in the Army and supported meta-back missions. So and that was the early part of my career. You had mentioned an early remark that your dad had, you were raised with this philosophy just telling me his preventive medicine approach. Oh. Oh, yes.

Well, he was very aware of, I think, as many engineers, very aware of pathogens in the environment, everything super clean and he worked very early on on some of the early flight programs. And he, you know, just said, carry a hanky with you, it'll protect you from any pathogens in your environment and you just need to have that to take care of yourself. So. And I grew up with the opposite training. My mother was a professor of microbiology at SC and anything when we were kids, if it fell on the ground, she said, pick it up and eat it, you've got to keep your resistance up. And here we are, both thriving and doing well. Right. And I think it's somewhere in between, you know, if you have young children, you realize there's a fine line. If they're too young and they're sick all the time, you're sick all the time too. I want to go back to the transition from family practice to aerospace medicine. How did you choose that? Well, what happened is I was flying with a Medevac unit, first of all, UH1 and then transitioning to a Black Hawk unit, the first Medevac unit that flew in Vietnam and actually had been

part of a number of what we call mishap investigations. And I realized there was a lot to this whole thinking process, decision-making, under stress. And I wanted to be in there learning how to better design the aircraft systems, the radar systems, things of that nature. So went back and got training in human factors engineering. Oh my goodness, I've never even heard of human factors engineering. So and then you developed that and then you went back into the Armed Forces and you became a flight, a squadron commander and you flew in F-16, tell us a little more. Well, I trained as a flight surgeon and the flight surgeon doesn't operate in the cockpit, but what you're there is to support the air crew. So I started out as an Army flight surgeon supporting a Medevac unit. I wasn't responsible for all the transports and support to the Fort Bragg community in terms of urgent support to our community.

And then deployed a lot to Central America and supported a number of operations there. And that's how my training began and subsequently went in the Air Force and as an Air Force flight surgeon. And I got involved with a number of units test wing for aircraft and A7, which is an attack unit and then subsequently an F-16 wing here in New Mexico as their senior flight surgeon and the unit commander, the medical unit commander there. What was it like to fly in the F-16? Well, it's a pretty amazing thing. It's one thing to be at the design end of the aircraft, but then to be strapped in and essentially part of the aircraft systems. That's a very different thing. And essentially you feel like you're on a rocket. And there are some people who physiologically probably can't even do that. That's right. And through no fall of their own, it just... Well, that's absolutely right. Uniquely, people who have short necks tend to do very well.

They tolerate high Gs or high gravity environments much better than thin, slender people. I'll be happy to miss out. She did. And women do surprisingly well. And I think it's part of a training effect because you understand how to better regulate blood flow to the brain. And you know all the specific maneuvers that you get trained in, so you don't lose consciousness. So as much as 10 years ago, you had moved from that to your terrorism work, when it was just a bad dream of the planet. How come you chose that? I think I read that you had discovered that some of your family was involved in the Holocaust. And you wanted to prevent anything like that from ever happening again. Would you mind telling us about? Sure. Well, you know, as a child, you're extremely impressionable, and so I was extremely close with my grandfather who did have family members who were gassed as part of the Holocaust. And so he wouldn't talk about it very much, but I knew since I was very close with him

that that was part of his history and our history as a family. And so I learned a great deal just from books and things of that nature. I was always one of these kids who read all the time. And I felt this was just such a horrible atrocity to humanity. I wanted to do my part to counter production and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the future. Of course, I didn't think that at the time. I just, in fact, started out thinking I wanted to be a social worker. Well, you know, evil in whatever shape, you know, and how elaborately developed, you know, it's one step at a time, it's one step at a time. Absolutely. I also read that you used some form of virtual reality in your early bio-terrorism work. Is it classified information? Can you tell us how that works? No, well, we were part of an initial program when I came here to New Mexico. I was very fortunate to get a job with one of the Department of Energy Laboratory, Sandeal

Labs, in New Mexico. And hooked up with several colleagues who were very forward-thinking, and we designed a system of virtual reality system that now is fairly routinely used and has been furthered by the entertainment industry. And what we did, we designed the first system that was funded by DARPA Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania, and it was a system to train multiple first responders in how to respond to an attack due to bio-terrorism. At the time, it was several years ahead of its time. And there was interest, but people said, well, this is a very unlikely thing. We'll never have to worry about something like anthrax or smallpox. So unfortunately, the program stopped, but fortunately, it laid the technical groundwork for a lot of work that's going on right now. And in your spare time, you learned Arabic?

Well, actually, that was not entirely correct. I learned Hebrew. As a child, I learned to read and speak Hebrew. But after the article came out about me learning Arabic, now I have Arabic tapes, and I'm trying to learn very quickly. Oh, yes, but then there's a problem with the alphabet. Yes, yes. So spoken Arabic is going to be a little easier, I think, than the calligraphic forms. Exactly. Well, Hebrew is hard enough, bless your heart. So let us move to the actual office, then, of Homeland Security, and what your charge is. And I know that it was established in, when was it, November 2000? It cracked. November of last year. Yes. By the governor, in order to somehow integrate all of the efforts that were made to protect our citizens. Right. So tell us how big the office is. I think you've got a half a million dollar budget, and what your mission statement might be, your vision.

Yes. Okay. Well, the office is, as you understand, it's a part of a larger national effort, establishing of the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Ridge, required that there needed to be a local and state component in order to more effectively serve the communities. And so our office is really one in which is intended to be an integrative function. So to work with all the traditional functions, such as law enforcement, public safety, emergency preparedness, things of that nature, and to work with things such as health, agriculture, all these other information operations, these other components of government to assure that we have the right level of preparedness. So we work on the policy piece, the preparation, the early warning side that is tightly coupled into the operation side, which is public safety. You have been described as the glue that keeps all these separate and autonomous agencies

working together. Your predecessor, our first director of Homeland Security, Arielle Sockert from Farmington, had done a wonderful job getting it set up and is a very gifted man. But we always wondered how anyone could possibly handle the jurisdictional things that would come up. These are autonomous units used to operating on their own. And yet we so need some of the things that you've done that the police would have the same frequency to talk to each other on, that they'd have the same software to make criminal checks. I mean, some of this is very simple stuff, but it must have been very hard to superimpose this on these autonomous agencies. Tell us how you did it and how it's going. Yeah. Well, I think a lot of it gets down to interpersonal relationships and trusts that are built. And I have spent most of my career finding out that no matter how much technical knowledge I have, unless I can explain what I'm trying to do to my counterparts, I'm not going to get anywhere.

So what I'm really trying to do is build building blocks across the different departments under the governor to assure that we have an integrated program here in New Mexico and regionally in the regional Southwest region. So well, and as you've indicated, one of our top priorities is in collaboration with public safety to build what we call a 911 interoperable communications network. And this is one that can help law enforcement ranchers on the border communicate also with the other border states in the U.S. and potentially with our Mexican counterparts to avoid encounter terrorist activities. Well, this leads me to something I've been intrigued with. Board of security. You have so many areas you've got agro-terrorism, which will come back to cyber security. You've got the borders, but since borders are up, tell me how you're operating with our colleagues on the other side of the border and what your mission is in terms of border security. Okay.

Well, we're very fortunate here in New Mexico. Our governor is the chair for the Border Governors Conference. And several months ago, I attended and asked it many of the other key players throughout the state, the Border Governors Conference in Chihuahua. And there we began a lot of the dialogue under what New Mexico co-chairs with Mexico are border security work table. And under that work table, we have an agreement with the four U.S. border states and six Mexican states to cooperate in a number of areas that affect counterterrorism and law enforcement assurance across the borders. So under this, we've begun a number of different activities. One has to do with weapons of mass destruction, awareness, and sharing data and protocols across the borders. So what is everyone looking for, you know, I mean, it used to be drugs and now is it weapons components? Is it persons that are on a list of possible terrorists? What is the focus on?

Yeah. Well, a lot of it has to do with what I referenced earlier, one of my roles really is early warning. And terrorism is something that is quite decentralized. So often you don't know exactly what you're looking for, but you know it's probably out there that needle in the haystack of information that's coming in. What we try and do is work closely with law enforcement to, for instance, counter the traditional criminal activities, recognizing that many of these activities have an infrastructure that leverages many funds, many other sources of funding that can support terrorist activities. So our philosophy is that we don't just specifically hone in on terrorist activities. We hone in on the entire criminal element that may actually enable terrorism. Another form of terrorism that I frankly am fascinated with and please tell me about agro-terrorism. Mm-hmm. Yes.

As you know, Lorraine, one of the things that enables terrorists is attacks on our economy in the U.S. and also undermining in the public confidence to respond in a crisis. And in the U.S., we're so used to having clean water, clean food, reliable sources of these things that we don't think twice about these things. And yet, in cooperation, again, with the Secretary of Agriculture here in New Mexico, Milagonzales, we've begun a number of different initiatives for tracking potential contaminants to food and to food processing and also to work to shore up some of the sentinel surveillance so that early warning of disease outbreaks, and that's in cooperation with Department of Health. Anthrax, what's happening with anthrax? We know that the major national issue with anthrax was never resolved and leaves everyone kind of scratching their head. Is that one of the main issues that we're looking at and what else?

Hofenmouth, are there any other ones that there are people need to worry about? Yeah. Well, first of all, I'd like to say, I'd prefer to say to the public, let's not worry. First, invest our energy in situation awareness, in education, and particularly educating across the board from our schools on through all of our academic institutions. And that's the first cornerstone in preparedness is really educating the public of what they need to be aware of. As you know, the anthrax investigation is still underway. It hasn't been conclusive. It's still of concern, but we think in the U.S. government, some of the high-risk areas, for instance, mail sorting systems, we've dealt with in a very rational way. We now irradiate much of the mail that comes through, and there's much more awareness in terms of protective equipment that needs to be issued to personnel and mail sorting systems. So we're trying to focus our energies on above the line as opposed to below the line.

And by that, I mean, before an event, we focus our energies in preparedness, awareness, and training. And what does public health have to do with that? Because people have to know what to look for. It's even like the West Nile, which is not a terrorism issue, but people had to learn what the symptoms were and learn how not to get it. And there was a vast public education campaign going on. And continuing, and I know, for instance, if we look historically, things such as plague, influenza, have had devastating effects, and these have been naturally occurring. So the philosophy is that infectious diseases, and what we call emerging pathogens, new diseases, for instance, honor virus here in the Desert Southwest, was one we're very familiar with, are things that we need to approach from the standpoint of creating a more robust public health infrastructure. Because by countering these traditional threats to public health, we also deal with most

of our bioterrorist agents. And SARS would be another one. SARS is, again, a very good example, yes, and I think it's a very good example of something that we've all become increasingly aware of, is that diseases do not respect geographic boundaries. They do not respect economic parts of our society. Everyone is equally susceptible. And speaking of boundaries, it seems to me in a way your work is to go where there are no geographic boundaries and where there are no boundaries inter- departmental. Your job is to apply this paradigm for how things work without those little walls and jarring full stops, you know? So I must tell you, you really have your work cut out for you. Well, I think of myself and as the rainmaker, I'm trying to make rain to create a very good productive environment for all these different departments, agencies, not only to

share information, but to share important projects that we don't replicate other activities that are out there. So particularly in the intelligence arena, you need to get the word out to all the people so that all the horses are going in the same direction. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Now, another area that is under your jurisdiction is cyber security. Well, we've all been amazed at how that can hit all of us with some of these cyber viruses. And so what can you tell us about that? Well, I can tell you that in New Mexico here, it's not only under me, it's also in cooperation with the chief information officer here in New Mexico, but there are a number of initiatives. The first thing in terms of cyber is not only attacks to electronic systems, but also use of these systems as a means of proliferating misinformation. So there are two ways to look at it. Back in 1997, I was part of something called Defense Science Board, which reports directly to the Secretary of Defense.

And we identified cyber threats as one of the key threats to society. That's the new technological war. And coupled in with things like chemical or biological threats, these can really augment the concern due to these threats immensely. One other thing, you're in charge of all the first responders. I know you have emergency preparedness workshops, and I think you've done some drills of fake disasters. And how is that coming along? Are first responders ready to respond? Well, first of all, before we go organizationally, our office works very closely with Department of Public Safety. So under emergency preparedness, under Secretary Denko and the Assistant Secretary Sines, there's a whole organization, the Emergency Operations Center that we cooperate closely with. I function in an advisory capacity to that group for that low probability high consequence event of chemical, biological, radiologic events.

So we cooperate closely, and I think as a state, we've had a number of exercises that have shown we've come up immensely in that learning curve. I hear that you work many, many hours a week, 80, 90, 100, but of all the things that come across your desk, what is your favorite to deal with? My favorite, I would say right now, is working our relationships with Mexico, because I think this is a priority for our governor, and it's also a means of assuring greater economic growth and stability to the southwest regional area, and hence also helping our nation as a whole in economic development. You've done a lot of traveling, so I know that includes Mexico, but you've just got back from Kazakhstan. Tell us why you went and what it was like. Oh, okay. Well, the Kazakhstan trip was part of a support effort that I was asked before the Operation Iraqi Freedom War by General Franks to help in this whole initiative of countering threats

by finding common areas of interest, and one of these major areas of interest is sentinel surveillance or early warning of disease outbreaks. And we started this initiative in the Middle East, and then had a growing interest in then using these same concepts of getting scientists, engineers, former weaponers together to solve common problems by finding common solutions to these problems. And it's similar to the whole scope of what we call the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program that was started a long time ago. The Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, is that international? It is. It is. And they're not like blocks like NATO and the former Soviet republics, and it's really all nations together. Yeah, it's global. Typically, what we do is start in different regions and develop regional cooperation across boundaries and then move from there, and these are intended to be U.S. initiated programs,

but by no means, or does the U.S. control them, the countries actually develop the programs. Listening to you, it dawns on me, what a fine line you have to do for all of us between the two poles, we have nothing to fear, but fear itself, and anticipating threats and being prepared for them. So tell me a little about your philosophy for walking that fine line between the two. Yes. Well, you know, I'm very fortunate to be grounded in reality. Yes, very. And this happens when you dealt with extremes of life and death, and I think that the thing that everybody needs to realize is that these problems are ones that have solutions. Often those solutions are unconventional solutions, and that means you go out and you get partners who perhaps adversaries or former weaponers in different areas and get them in the same

room and initiate that dialogue. And even though I cannot say to you that there haven't been times that I've been extremely afraid of what I'm doing and things that nature, I feel that there are scientific solutions and there are human solutions, which should be the first emphasis. I know there was a Soviet scientist named, I think, Ken Asubell, who, Alabama, Alabama gets it, I never was good at Russian. But that he brought to us so much information, and there was so much written about him in the New Yorker and daylight in 60 minutes, of what they were doing there, and now do you think that all of that material that they prepared, do you think we have a handle on all of that? Well, again, I've been fortunate to have traveled to Ken's facility where he worked. And I've seen what we've done there, the U.S. and partnering with Russian, the former Soviet Union, and I think we have a very good handle.

We understand the extent and the scale of the problem, and we've systematically developed these cooperative programs to enable our scientists to work side by side with their scientists. Because we really share a common enemy as humanity against disease, and the thought of disease being used against us, you know, it just seems so very wrong, very say, diabolical. Well, you're absolutely right, and I think, you know, across the world, there's always that search for a higher ground and that sense that we need to continue the human species, and these types of initiatives are the way to do that. Well, I am so much more confident about what's going on. I'm so grateful that you've taken the time to be with us today. Is there a last sentence that you'd like to say to our viewers? Oh, I can say, as I am just delighted to be a part of New Mexico's solution, and wherever we can help with the national and international solution, we're here to serve. Well, thank you.

Our guest today has been Brigadier General, Dr. Annette Sobel, who is the Director of the Governor's Office of Homeland Security. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you for taking the time. And I'd like to thank you, our viewers, for taking the time to be with us today on report from Santa Fe. Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by a grant from the members of the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future.