turns out this is from 2002 .

The federal government has begun preparing three U.S. cities for large-scale, 10-day terrorism-response exercises scheduled this month.

Beginning sometime between May 7 and May 29, local, state and top level federal authorities will respond to simulated weapons of mass destruction attacks in three cities — Denver, Portsmouth, N.H., and the Washington, D.C.-area.

Denver or Portsmouth will face either a simulated biological or a chemical weapons attack. The D.C. metropolitan area will respond to a radiological attack drill — which could range from simply an exposed container of radioactive material to a small nuclear detonation.

Looking for Realism

The congressionally mandated exercises are intended to examine how well local, state and federal authorities are prepared to respond to and together deal with the consequences of a weapons of mass destruction attack.

“The goal of the exercise is to assess the nation’s crisis consequence management capacity under extraordinarily stressful conditions,” the Department of Justice said in a statement released Thursday.

Specific dates and characteristics of the exercise are being withheld from participants, to make the tests as realistic as possible.

MORE

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=94708&page=1

