Regarding the weekend Los Angeles Times story on a simulated terrorism exercise with public officials at the paper's offices...

Frankly, the L.A. Times terrorist exercise article was an absolute joke from start to finish. It read like an internal flack was assigned to cover a company seminar and then wrote about it for the corporate newsletter. The idea of having Janet Clayton as the "media advisor" for a panel of law enforcement officials dealing with an unfolding terrorist event was ludicrous, classic LA Times self-promotion.

Realistically, the agency PIO's and maybe even some outside spinsters (like Sitrick & Co.) would be advising the officials during any crisis. While it stands that they may give the same advice Clayton did (and the cops would mull over it in the same fashion), that advice would be coming from a place less concerned with Clayton's extremely earnest (and high school newspaperish) viewpoint trumpeting the public's right to know, and more strictly from a tactical viewpoint in the carefully considered spin-control estimation of the government officials.

An editor at the LA Times would be invited into such a scenario as quickly as you, me and Dupree would be. Further, the neatly tied up solution — all terrorists quickly arrested and any lingering threat quickly dispersed by law enforcement without the implementation of additional burdensome restrctions at airports, hospitals, movie theaters, restaurants, shopping malls et. al. is almost as laughable as the entire meeting hosted at Spring Street.

Peter Sierra