CRISIS MANAGEMENT EXERCISE FOR ROME, TURIN, MILAN

UNCLAS ROME 000111 SIPDIS SENSITIVE DEPT FOR FSINFATC, EUR/EX, S/ES-O/CMS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: AEMR AMGT ASEC CA IT CA OCS ACS POSTS FOR RSO SUBJECT: CRISIS MANAGEMENT EXERCISE FOR ROME, TURIN, MILAN REF: A. FSINFATC 02754 ¶B. ROME 003863 Sensitive But Unclassified ¶1. (SBU) On December 14 and 16, Embassy Rome, the Olympic Coordination Office in Turin, and Consulate Milan underwent a coordinated Crisis Management Exercise (CME) facilitated by the Foreign Service Institute's Office of Crisis Management Training. According to FSI, this was the first time a CME of this size and complexity had been attempted with three separate missions participating simultaneously. Mission Italy believes that the exercise was a resounding success with all 3 posts taking away pertinent and applicable lessons learned. It is also our conclusion that the exercise was vital to testing our communications, command and control and emergency response protocols for the Winter Olympic Games being held in Turin February 10-26. Representatives from NGA, FBI, DOE, S/CT, FEST, EUCOM were also present for both the Turin and Rome portions of the exercise. ¶2. (SBU) The CME highlighted the importance of coordination between security, Consular and Public Affairs portfolios and was extremely useful to participants not accustomed to working in a task force environment overseas. The fact that the Rome EAC was able to monitor and communicate directly with Turin and Milan during their "scenarios", proved enormously useful for practicing how Embassy Rome would react and coordinate with Milan and Turin during events in those locations. Of significant value was the exercise in Turin, which allowed the Olympic Security Coordination team to work together through a number of scenarios that would effect every aspect of their operations, from the possibility of requesting a FEST to working with injured and displaced American visitors and the ever voracious international press contingent. This was the first time the OSC team was able to work together on crisis planning and response to simulate working conditions should a crisis take place during the Games, which was beneficial to all. ¶3. (U) Mission Italy would like to thank FSI and particularly, Douglas Kinney, Douglas Treat and Mark Mayfield for their superb job crafting such reality driven scenarios, and guiding us so skillfully through the 2 day exercise. We received positive feedback from all participating agencies and the exercise culminated in extremely useful lessons learned for Milan, Turin and Rome. It is with pleasure that we look forward to our Mission wide CME in the spring. END SPOGLI