The attack —

On Wednesday at 9:11 a.m., a rusty green truck circles around a shopping mall in the center of the city. After two complete passes, the truck pulls up to the delivery entrance at the rear of a mall.

At 9:15 a.m., two young women and a man, each dressed in green coveralls, with green baseball caps bearing the logo of a local plant care company, enter the mall carrying fertilizer spraying tanks. Each one goes to a different level of the mall and begins trimming and attending various plants.

The workers go largely unnoticed by passing shoppers and gradually make their way to the outer edges of the multi-level mall. They set their spray canisters down among some large potted plants — slowly opening the sprayer valves. A fine mist, like that from a hairspray canister, begins to spray out from the nozzles, not onto the plants but into the air above the mall and down onto unsuspecting shoppers.

The terrorists retreat quickly from the area, moving swiftly down the stairway at the rear of the mall and out through the back service doors. They are into their van and gone — vanished into the morning traffic.

The silent mist rains down on shoppers for 15 minutes, then stops. No one is aware of what has happened; no one appears sick; and everyone will go about their business, and eventually to their homes, unaware of the event that has played out this day.

At 11:03 a.m. the three young terrorists quickly pack their bags and equipment into an old blue station wagon and leave their motel. In minutes they are on the interstate heading toward the next city, where tomorrow they will repeat today's scenario.

It will be 48 hours before the first individuals exposed at the mall begin to develop a high fever, headache, chills, body aches and sore throat. As the day progresses, they will develop nausea and vomiting along with sweating and diarrhea. Eventually they begin to seek medical attention from local doctors and hospitals.

By midnight doctors all over the city begin to realize they have some sort of an outbreak on their hands. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, soon establishes the mall shoppers have Tularemia, and were sprayed with the bacteria, Francisella tularensis, a virulent microorganism.

Terrorist attacks historically have been directed at large high-value targets such as military bases, embassies and government or commercial buildings. However, there are indications of a shift by al Qaeda and other extremist groups to begin focusing on so called "soft targets."

These targets, like the shopping mall, are by definition relatively unguarded or difficult to guard effectively. The potential list of soft targets is very large and in addition to shopping malls, includes subways, trains, sporting stadiums, theaters, schools, hospitals, restaurants, entertainment parks, compressed gas and oil storage areas, chemical plants, pharmaceutical companies, and many others.

The list will vary depending upon the make up and size of the city or town. Soft target attacks could be carried out using chemical or biological agents, car or suicide bombs, or dirty bombs.

Conventional targets are considered an attack with the intent of causing the highest number of injuries and deaths. Soft target attacks are also directed at areas where many can be killed or seriously wounded. However, the intent of these attacks also will be to generate terror and create chaos and intimidation within the population.

Imagine the affect on a city if the attack on the mall had been combined with simultaneous attacks at a large hospital and a school. There would be widespread panic and chaos within the city and this would soon spread to surrounding suburban areas.

The majority of car and suicide bomb attacks in Israel, the Middle East and other parts of the world, such as the hotel attack in Bali, have been against soft targets such as market places, restaurants and resort hotels. It is reasonable to assume that if such attacks were to be carried out in this country, they would be directed at similar targets.

In June of this year, a father and son in Lodi, California, were arrested by the FBI and charged with plotting attacks intended to kill Americans.

The 22-year-old son had spent two years in Pakistan in an al Qaeda training camp and returned to the United States with the intent of attacking civilian targets including hospitals and large food stores. The FBI believes these individuals are part of a local terrorist cell and there may be many similar cells across the country.

In the past, sources believed to be close to the inside of the terrorist organizations have claimed they were planning "spectacular attacks" against the United States, and shopping malls were high on their list because they were easy to attack and could result in many casualties.

Schools and colleges are also potential soft targets because they are relatively open and have only modest security forces in place. Colleges go to great lengths to protect students in their dormitories, but classrooms, laboratories and lecture halls are generally open. Anyone carrying a backpack bomb or chemical/biological release device could enter largely unnoticed against the backdrop of other students.

College sporting events with stadiums packed with spectators also are potential targets, although the security at these events is usually tighter. High schools and grammar schools may be potential targets for terrorists attacks — there are more people (children) present in a school than in an average size office building. Not only because large numbers of children could be killed or injured, but also because of the psychological affects that this type of attack would have.

In addition, all schools fly an American flag, a symbolic target in terrorist attacks. Individual acts of domestic terrorism, such as the shooting of students at Columbine High School in Colorado and Red Lake Senior High School in Minnesota, have rocked the citizens of those towns and the entire population of our country. If similar events were inflicted by sources outside of our country, the resulting fear and intimidation would be even greater.

Recently concern over the potential for terrorist groups to poison milk being delivered to school cafeterias has raised public concern over school safety issues.

Every city, large or small, as well as many smaller towns, have industries vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Large gas or oil storage tank farms, chemical plants, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are all potential targets, and most of these have inadequate security to prevent an attack. The recent explosion and fire at the Praxair compressed gas transfer facility in South St. Louis, Missouri, demonstrates the potential devastation that could result from a terrorist bomb at this type of small industrial site.

In 1995 the fanatic religious cult, Aum Shinrikyo, attacked passengers in a Tokyo subway with the chemical nerve agent Sarin. Because they did not use an effective means of dispersing the agent, only 12 people died and less than 100 were seriously injured. However, more than 5,000 people went to hospitals thinking they were exposed.

For a period of time this overloaded the city's medical facilities and resulted in panicky crowds for police and security forces to control. If these terrorists had used an effective delivery system for the chemical agent, the number of dead and injured would have been considerably higher.

As recently as February 2005, in testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Deputy Secretary Admiral James Loy emphasized that the threat of terrorist attacks against soft targets is a main focus of the agency.

The list of soft targets will vary from location to location depending on the size of the community, types of industries, and number of malls, restaurants, entertainment locations and schools. The first step in developing a contingency plan for a soft target attack is to formulate a list of potential targets.

Police are an important element in this list because of their routine coverage of the city and their familiarity with all neighborhoods.

Firefighters and EMS personnel also can provide important input because of their knowledge of the area. Fire and hazmat personnel can offer essential assessments of the hazards at various business locations. A site that might not on the surface appear to be that much of a target may be moved up in priority because of the high hazard nature of materials used there.

Local government, hospital, school and public works departments should be involved in the list identification process as well. Local business groups, unions and chambers of commerce also can provide valuable input in defining targets and assessing their potential for attack.

Once a potential candidate list has been developed, the prioritization step can begin. It is not possible to provide full-time protection to all sites, so it is necessary to identify those sites which present the most likely soft targets based on criteria such as number of people present who might be killed or severely injured, sites that have the highest explosion potential or that might release high levels of hazardous chemicals like chlorine or ammonia, the potential negative impact on the infrastructure and economy of the community, etc.

Telecommunications businesses, TV stations, utilities, power lines and gas pipelines are all sites that may rank high on a city's list. The criteria for prioritizing targets will have to be determined in each location based on local considerations.

For example, a small fuel oil storage facility in a heavily populated city area might have a higher priority than a major natural gas pipeline, if the pipeline runs through a outer area of the city where there are relatively few homes and businesses.

Once a list of soft targets has been identified and the relative priority of sites established, it is necessary to develop a contingency plan to cover additional measures to prevent an attack and to minimize the damage of an attack once it has taken place.

Preventative steps might include increased police or security patrols in and around high-priority sites, installation of additional monitoring and surveillance devices, and educating staff and workers at the site in terrorist identification.

For high-priority sites the development of the plan must involve facility and property managers, first-line managers, and supervisor and security personnel.

Once an attack has taken place, whether with explosive devices, chemical or biological agents, the steps required to contain the event are generally similar. Plans developed by local fire and hazmat teams for handling chemical hazard incidents are a good place to start and may be sufficient to cover the high-priority sites in a given community.

The DHS "National Response Plan" (NRP) is a document that also can serve as a starting point for plan development. The NRP document can be downloaded from the Internet at www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/interapp/editorial/editorial_0566.xml or hard copies can be obtained by calling DHS at (800) 368-6498.

DHS has initiated a training program which includes soft target awareness and is part of an overall series of courses and exercises available to state and local law enforcement through the Office of Domestic Preparedness (ODP) Consortium, a partnership of government agencies and public universities.

Information on courses available through ODP and a course catalog are available online at www.ojp.usdoj.gov/odp/docs/coursecatalog.pdf.

The goal of this effort is the enhancement of state and local capabilities to respond to an incident of terrorism. These courses are free to local law enforcement agencies, the cost being covered by government grants.

Information on applying for these courses and grants is available at the end of the catalog. Other courses are available from the Emergency Management Institute and the National Fire Academy. A listing and information about these and other training classes and exercises is available from DHS at www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/interapp/editorial/editorial_0454.xml

The Noble Training Center in Anniston, Alabama, holds classes for preparing for and managing WMD incidents. This center is a joint effort between the Center for Domestic Preparedness (CDP) and the ODP.

The classes provide training for both technical emergency response personnel and for incident managers. The classes are open to law enforcement and hazmat-certified law enforcement personnel. For information visit www.ojp.usdoj.gov/odp/docs/fs-cdp.htm

Formal training classes are important, but they cannot simulate the panic and confusion that would occur during a real terrorist attack. Mock attack simulation exercises have been carried out in a variety of cities including Seattle; Chicago; Boston; Del Mar, California; and at Princeton University in New Jersey.

These exercises have included attack scenarios employing chemical, biological and radiological (dirty bomb) WMD materials. The purpose of these mock attacks has been to simulate, as near as possible, the conditions in a hands-on, real attack and to understand the response of first responders and the public during such an event.

To set up and successfully carry out an attack simulation requires the cooperation and agreement of a variety of groups within a community. This activity also requires a great amount of effort (manhours), and commitment on the part of participants, as well as costs associated with the event.

However, the exercise, and more importantly the information gained from the critical critique, will provide valuable insights into the strengths and weaknesses of a community's preparedness for such an event.

The Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) is a threat and performance evaluation program sdeveloped to help state and local jurisdictions establish exercise programs.

It contains a range of exercises of varying degrees of complexity and covers the design, development, conduct and evaluation of exercises. The program includes four reference documents that can be downloaded at www.ojp.usdoj.gov/odp/docs/hseep.htm.

Soft target attacks are a part of today's terrorist culture, and preventing mall mishaps is a responsibility law enforcement must be fully prepared for.

Doug Hanson is a Ph.D biochemist and may be reached at dougmh@comcast.net.