AUGUSTA – With no publicity, Gov. Angus King has established a Cabinet-level task force to identify what the state needs to do to improve its plans for dealing with a terrorist attack anywhere in Maine.

“I didn’t see the need for an executive order or doing anything formal,” King said, “I felt it was more important to get it going. We have to think about the possibility of a terrorist attack here in Maine.”

The panel, chaired by Maj. Gen. Joseph Tinkham, commissioner of Defense, Veterans and Emergency Management and adjutant general of the Maine Army and Air National Guard, met for the first time this week. In addition to Tinkham, King said representatives of the Department of Public Safety, the Maine State Police, the marine patrol and other state agencies as needed will meet on at least a weekly basis for the foreseeable future.

“We need to assess what we need to do beyond the weapons of mass destruction program we have had under way for the last couple of years,” King said. “I have asked the group to identify what more we need to do and the sources for funding that are available.”

King said the Cabinet-level group would work with the existing task force in the Maine Emergency Management Agency on counterterrorism and with the anti-terrorism task force created last week by the U.S. attorney for Maine, Paula Silsby.

“We need to assess not only what the likely targets are, but figure out what the state needs to do,” King said. “For example, do we need certain kinds of infrastructure in our hospitals that we do not have?”

Maine has been receiving federal funds under a 1996 law that was passed in the aftermath of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and terrorist gas attacks in Japan. Most of the money has gone to training and equipping a 22-man National Guard detachment. Funds also have been provided for planning by the Bureau of Health and for stockpiling some medicines to deal with biological agents.

“As terrible as the attacks were on Sept. 11, it could have been a lot worse,” said Charles Cragin, a former assistant secretary of defense who chaired a panel that warned of potential terrorist attacks on the United States in a 1999 report to Congress. “If they had used a biological agent like anthrax over New York or Washington, the death toll would have been even more horrendous.”

Cragin, a Maine native who now is a lawyer in private practice in Washington, said the training for dealing with potential terrorist attacks with weapons of mass destruction is far from complete across the country. He expects the training will be stepped up and expanded.

Art Cleaves, director of the Maine Emergency Management Agency, said funds have been received from several federal sources. The money has been used mostly for training and planning, but funds will be used shortly to buy equipment for “first responders” who would rush to the scene of a terrorist attack or accident involving hazardous materials.

“We have a federal grant of about $1.5 million for equipment that is needed for those first at a scene,” Cleaves said. “We are setting up eight teams across the state that can respond within an hour.”

The 20-person teams will be cross-trained in dealing with all hazardous materials, from a substance used at a paper plant to a chemical or biological weapon used by a terrorist group. The regional teams will be backed by a 22-person Waterville-based National Guard unit that already has been trained and equipped.

“We are just about to order the Class A suits for the teams,” Cleaves said.

Those suits look like those used by astronauts and have self-contained air supplies designed to protect the users from both chemical and biological threats. They cost about $3,000 each and are only part of the equipment needed to fully equip the teams.

“We do not have the detection equipment we need, but we are not alone,” Cleaves said. “Those purchases are planned for later.”

While many states have yet to start training their teams, Maine already has begun. But Cleaves said Maine, like much of the rest of the country, is not ready for a chemical or biological attack tomorrow.

“And believe me, I think about that every day,” he said.

So does King. He said the task force is needed to make sure efforts are coordinated between state and local agencies, as well as with federal departments and the military.

He said if the group suggests state monies be used to augment the federal expenditures, the Legislature may need to consider such funding in January.

“We need to be ready,” he said. “Terrorists could strike here. We have to realize that terrible possibility.”