TERROR RESPONSE IS TESTED AT BOSTON'S logan AIRPORT IN 'OPERATION ATLAS'

by Lisa Fleisher, Globe Correspondent  |  June 5, 2005  The Boston Globe

State Police participating in a homeland security drill approached an airliner that had been supposedly hijacked and diverted to Logan International Airport yesterday. (Globe Staff Photo / Wendy Maeda)

Before dawn broke yesterday morning, authorities at Logan International Airport received reports from Paris eerily reminiscent of the plot launched by shoe bomber Richard Reid in 2001: Armed terrorists could be on their way to the United States aboard a hijacked plane. This time, though, it was only part of a drill designed to test emergency response procedures.

By 9 a.m., the ''threat" had been identified as a hijacked plane carrying 140 passengers, and F-15 fighter jets scrambled from Otis Air National Guard Base to force the plane to land at Logan. Over the next few hours, as part of the drill dubbed Operation Atlas, the ''hijackers" detonated a bomb in the cargo area, killed a 14-year-old girl, and threw her body from the plane's rear door.

After negotiations broke off, police stormed the plane and arrested five ''terrorists," sending the ''injured" to at least nine area hospitals.

''We're very satisfied," said Carlo Boccia, Boston's homeland security director. ''We recognized some areas that need to be fine-tuned, but less areas of difficulty than I thought we'd find several months ago when we started this process."

Operation Atlas, which was eight months in the planning and cost $750,000 in federal funds, was one of the largest of its kind, designed to test emergency coordination plans, give a clearer picture of what still needed improvement, and allow personnel at scores of agencies to get to know each other and work as a team, essential in a real emergency.

''It begins with the human factors," Boccia said. ''A crisis is no place to be exchanging business cards and making introductions."

More than 50 federal, state, and local agencies from San Francisco to Paris worked with United Airlines, others in the private sector, and the military until about 2 p.m. A United plane and flight crew, along with 80 volunteer passengers, spent two hours in the air.

''We want to make the mistakes now, rather than make them when, God forbid, an incident occurs," Boccia said.

Officials pinpointed several areas that could be improved. Massachusetts Port Authority Fire Chief Robert J. Donahue said training and casualty processing needed improvements, and both he and Boccia said agency heads need a better way to communicate. A full analysis will not be available for another five to six weeks, Boccia said.

Officials said they took lessons learned during the notorious shoe-bomb incident, which forced a Miami-bound plane from Paris to land in Boston, as well as during last summer's Democratic National Convention, and applied them during Operation Atlas. 

TO READ MORE ABOUT THE Full Scale EXERCISE, CLICK HERE.