Massive terror exercise in works

About 8,500 people will take part in the largest homeland security exercise in U.S. history starting May 12, government officials announced. A simulated "dirty bomb" explosion in Seattle and a biological attack in Chicago will unfold over five days.

The exercise will cost about $16-million and involve more than 100 federal, state and local agencies, the American Red Cross and Canadian government agencies and organizations. Federal officials said the exercise is designed to test the response to widely dispersed, almost simultaneous terrorist attacks using weapons of mass destruction.

"We want to be able to test strategies, responses and protocols," Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said in an interview with the Washington Post. "When you simulate people and technologies interacting, you learn a lot about your response capabilities."

This will be the second homeland security exercise staged by the government. The first occurred in 2000 in Denver and involved a mock germ warfare attack. News accounts at the time described a chaotic response to the fictional event, with government agencies jostling for control while critical decisions were delayed amid 100-person telephone conference calls.

WASHINGTON - A prominent FBI science witness told federal investigators that his lab colleagues had performed shoddy work in the Timothy McVeigh case, then abruptly retracted several statements before appearing as a prosecution witness at trial, a transcript shows.

FBI explosives expert Steven Burmeister, who since has become the FBI lab's chief of scientific analysis, initiated a meeting Dec. 19, 1996, with the Justice Department inspector general to whom he made the original allegations 18 months earlier.

"There are several statements in the interview I would like to clarify or correct," Burmeister told the investigators in a taped interview. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the transcript.

After receiving a Miranda warning about his constitutional rights, Burmeister proceeded for 68 pages of the transcript to correct or retract earlier statements he made that colleagues who worked on the bombing evidence did not use proper techniques or were unqualified to do some of the tests they performed.

FBI officials defended Burmeister, saying he was under no pressure to change any testimony to help the McVeigh prosecution.

CAPSIZED BOAT SEARCH: A body was found Sunday in Long Island Sound, and tests were planned to determine whether it was one of four teenagers who disappeared in January after a late-night boat trip. Police said the body was clothed but had no other details.

Police divers have searched the sound since the body of one of the four teens, 17-year-old Max Guarino, was found April 25.

"CLUB 50' BURNS DOWN: The historic "Club 50" recreation center at Camp Roberts, a former Army base in California where hundreds of thousands of soldiers trained during World War II and the Korean War, burned to the ground early Sunday, a base official said. No one was injured and the fire's cause wasn't known, Lt. Col. Charles Kimmel said.

DORMITORY FIRE: A female student who had what appeared to be stab wounds was pulled from a dormitory fire Sunday at Western Kentucky University. Authorities were investigating to determine if it was deliberately set, the state fire marshal's office said. The victim, identified by family members as Katie Autry, was in critical condition at Vanderbilt University Hospital in Nashville, Tenn., about 60 miles south of Bowling Green, Ky., a university spokesman said.

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