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By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 2, 1999; Page A4

The U.S. government has poured more than $2 billion in emergency funds into counterterrorism since bombs devastated two American embassies in East Africa five months ago, hardening buildings, bolstering security forces and buying the latest in counterterrorist technology.

The State Department is coating embassy windows all over the world with protective film to guard against flying glass shards the next time bombs go off.

The Federal Aviation Administration is buying sophisticated CAT scan equipment for airports to find explosives in suitcases.

The Pentagon is setting up National Guard rapid-response teams in 10 states from coast to coast.

The Justice Department is doling out equipment and training grants so local fire departments are ready for chemical or biological attacks.

The FBI is preparing for takeoff in its own Gulfstream 5 ultra-long-range business jet, able to fly teams of agents to terrorist incidents around the world on a moment's notice.

And the intelligence agencies – well, they refuse to say what they are doing with $350 million in classified funds. But one source with access to their budget said most of the money has been earmarked for eavesdropping and communications equipment easily trained on terrorist cells.

With President Clinton promising $10 billion for counterterrorism in the budget proposal sent to Congress yesterday, his priorities – deterrence, prevention and preparedness – are already evident as dozens of agencies and hundreds of federal employees implement spending plans devised immediately after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

"The counterterrorism area has just mushroomed," a senior Justice Department official said in a recent interview. "It's on everybody's radar screen. And the whole issue of coordination among agencies is really a big deal around here. People are talking to each other – and there really has been quite a lot appropriated."

The $2.1 billion in supplemental funds, boosting overall government spending on counterterrorism this fiscal year to more than $8.5 billion, went a long way toward rectifying the failure of insight and the failure of funds on which the Africa bombings were blamed, said David G. Carpenter, assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security.

The State Department alone received $1.4 billion to rebuild the embassies destroyed last year in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, relocate eight other vulnerable embassies, upgrade buildings and security equipment at 250 other embassies and consulates, hire 1,000 new embassy guards and deploy 200 more diplomatic security agents. Clinton, meanwhile, has included $250 million in his new budget to continue those initiatives in coming years.

The single most important initiative, Carpenter said, has been the decision to hire 200 new diplomatic security agents, added to the current force of 850. "What we have overseas is security programs, and programs need to be run by professionals," he explained. "It's very difficult to start up a program and walk away from it – and expect it to run."

In addition, a commission headed by retired Adm. William J. Crowe that looked into the bombings singled out one area for repeated criticism – aircraft support.

The first Foreign Emergency Support Teams from Washington to Kenya experienced delays of 13 hours and did not arrive in Nairobi until 40 hours after the bombings, the commission found. While one team departed within six hours, its military aircraft broke down in Rota, Spain, and caused a 15-hour delay before a backup could arrive, the commission found. Another team bound for Dar es Salaam was delayed from taking off for 24 hours because, with the military's designated plane already headed for Nairobi, a substitute could not be found, the commission said.

Another Air Force plane loaded with additional support personnel broke down in Sicily two days after the bombings and was delayed for eight hours. And when a unit of so-called FAST Marines was dispatched from Nairobi to Bahrain to help guard the embassy there, their plane broke down as well.

The government's response: $120.5 million in the emergency supplemental appropriation to buy three Gulfstream 5 jets, capable of flying 6,500 miles at speeds up to Mach .885. The FBI is to have dedicated use of one of the jets to respond to terrorist emergencies and the Federal Emergency Management Agency is to use another, U.S. officials said. They said they could not comment on what agency would have use of the third.

While the FBI does not need "a fleet of aircraft," Watson said, contingency planners decided after the embassy bombings that it did need a dedicated plane to respond to terrorist incidents, overseas kidnappings and so-called "renditions" in which U.S. officials must pick up terrorist suspects in foreign countries and fly them back to the U.S., often on extremely short notice.

But probably no single provision in the supplemental appropriation illustrates the government's rapidly growing commitment to counterterrorism than a domestic preparedness grant program run by the Justice Department for training and equipping local fire departments to respond to terrorist attacks.

Two years ago, the program did not exist. Last year, $12 million was appropriated. This year, it is $135 million. And next year? The budget released yesterday includes $171 million, an increase of almost 27 percent.