Public Intelligence

Public Intelligence has received a request from FEMA to remove a “For Official Use Only” document regarding the National Level Exercise 2010 (NLE 10), which was scheduled for this coming May. The exercise was to be based on National Planning Scenario 1 which simulates a nuclear detonation in a U.S. city. However, recent political pressure has led to the exercise’s “scaling back” according to the Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and a variety of other publications. At the behest of Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), the exercise’s Nevada events have reportedly been canceled and the FEMA website now shows no mention of NLE 10.

On April 13, 2010, we received a message from Danny Rains who is an investigator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the “Office of Security” requesting the removal of a document entitled “National Level Exercise 2010 (NLE 10) Exercise Overview”. The ten page document, which is described in FEMA’s request as “very sensitive”, consists of approximately 20 PowerPoint slides including the title page and was published nearly seven months ago on August 8, 2009. The document is labeled “For Official Use Only” and is marked as a draft copy. The contents of the brief are basically a calender of potential dates for the exercise and very brief descriptions of some preliminary plans for the exercise. The document has already been seen by a large number of people and has been discussed on a variety of websites and forums, including mirrors in some cases.

Beginning with FY2010 National Level Exercise (NLE) to engage the National Planning Scenario 1-Improvised Nuclear Detonation, the Training Working Group (TWG) has become an integral part of preexercise preparedness. To assist with the exercise preparedness activities, the Training Manual (TM) has been created to attempt to identify training for all levels of response and recovery. The training offered by exercise participants will be captured and indexed in this manual. To accomplish this task, significant participation was necessary from participating Emergency Support Functions (ESF) to build the index and the training aides found in this manual.

# Tier 1 National Level Exercise as per the National Exercise Program
# Domestic Terrorism focused
# Guided by National Planning Scenario #1: Nuclear Detonation
# Fully Integrated with Eagle Horizon 2010 (continuity exercise)