A Washington, D.C.-based bomb squad practiced one of its most sensitive tasks -- defusing a simulated nuclear device -- at the Port of Anchorage this week, local FBI officials said Wednesday.
According to a statement from the FBI's Anchorage office, the bureau's elite Counter-Improvised Explosive Devices Section chose Anchorage for its latest exercise because its primary disposal team had been "wanting to practice their response in a winter environment."
Anchorage-based bureau spokeswoman Staci Feger-Pellessier said Wednesday that the two-day logistical exercise began with a "deployment of forces" Monday. The simulated bomb response began early Tuesday morning and continued until about 9 p.m. that evening.
Deirdre Fike, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Anchorage office, said in the statement that the port was the "perfect location" for the exercise. In addition to bureau and port officials, the exercise involved members of the federal departments of Defense and Energy, as well as Anchorage Police Department officers.
"From the very beginning, officials from the Port of Anchorage were incredibly accommodating in helping us with this training." Fike said. "An incident involving a weapon of mass destruction would require an immediate combined response with our federal, state and local partners. Training, like the exercise earlier this week, allows us to build upon our already strong partnerships."
Stuart Greydanus, the port's facility security officer, said the exercise was conducted some distance from the port proper, with no disruption to routine operations.
"The exercise occurred on the north backlands of the port, the very north end," Greydanus said. "It wasn't near any commercial activity at the port."
Port officials had minimal involvement with the exercise, which involved a device transported to nearby Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson and placed within a standard shipping container.
"Their training device was flown in onto JBER -- it was trucked down the haul road from JBER directly onto the port," Greydanus said. "Basically, we provided them a 20-foot container to stage their device in the container."
While all FBI regional offices, including Anchorage's, have a minimum of two certified bomb disposal technicians on staff, Feger-Pellessier said they have various specialties short of WMDs. The C-IEDS team deployed from the nation's capital is a one-of-a-kind squad, much like the bureau's dedicated Hostage Rescue Team.
"This is the best of the best of the best," Feger-Pellessier said.
Under federal law, the FBI is the primary agency for responding to nuclear devices or weapons of mass destruction on American soil. Although the national team would be called in if any actual nuclear device were found in Alaska, locally based FBI technicians -- supported by other agencies -- remain among the initial responders to any incident involving a bomb.
"As a first-tier response of a local office, our bomb techs are trained to handle that," Feger-Pellessier said. "We have to be prepared, no matter where a suspicious device is found -- no matter whether that be the remote areas of Alaska or in downtown Anchorage, we have to be prepared when it is found."
Feger-Pellessier declined to discuss details of the exercise, citing the need to deny terrorists potentially useful information. She did say that the bureau's bomb-disposal procedures generally involve four steps: locating a device, clearing and securing the area, assessing the threat posed by the device, then rendering it safe.
This week's exercise didn't include a simulated public-affairs component, covering the potential dissemination of details or evacuation orders in connection with the incident. According to the FBI, a decision to release any information about an actual weapon of mass destruction in an urban area -- an unprecedented situation in U.S. history -- would be made far beyond the Anchorage office.
"This office is not the one that would be making that ultimate call," Feger-Pellessier said. "How that call would be made would come from the highest level of many different agencies."
In the long term, Feger-Pellessier said, exercises like Tuesday's help maintain the FBI's readiness to perform its primary duty.
"Our priority and mission is to keep America and its citizens safe from any form of attack," Feger-Pellessier said.