DHS CIP Page Update – 12-09-09

DHS recently updated their Critical Infrastructure Protection landing page by adding a new link for the Commercial Facilities Sector Training and Resources page. Normally that page would be of little interest to the chemical security community except that a new page was recently added to that site; the Bomb Making Materials Awareness Program page. Now, ‘bomb making materials’ are obviously chemicals so you can see my interest. According to this new web page the Bomb Making Materials Awareness Program (BMAP) is a national program sponsored by the Office for Bombing Prevention. BMAP is designed to increase public and private sector awareness of homemade explosives (HME), a common terrorist improvised explosive device (IED) tactic. BMAP is designed to assist local law enforcement agencies to engage a wide spectrum of private sector establishments within their jurisdictions that manufacture, distribute, or sell products that contain HME precursor chemicals. Anyone who has been watching the news this fall can see where this is heading. The security cameras that caught the Denver terror suspect buying peroxide containing beauty products are the type thing that this program is trying build-up as a terror prevention measure. The BMAP page currently has links to two posters that they would expect local police to distribute to local commercial chemical distributors and retailers, the BMAP Peroxide Poster and the BMAP Suspicious Behavior Poster. The BMAP program is targeted at partnerships between local police and “a wide spectrum of private sector establishments within their jurisdictions that manufacture, distribute, or sell products that contain HME precursor chemicals”. The program should also include the interactions between Infrastructure Security Compliance Division administering the CFATS program and those covered facilities that produce the HME precursors. As part of the Product Stewardship responsibilities outlined in the Risk-Based Performance Standards Guidance document in RBPS 5 (Metric 5.2) and RBPS (Metric 6.2), covered facilities producing HME precursors should be encouraged to participate in the BMAP program. This participation should certainly include distribution of these two posters, and other program materials mentioned on this page, to their customers that distribute and sell these materials.