Hawaii Releases Recording of Botched Missile Alert

The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency released a heavily redacted segment of the internal message [...]

By Daniel S. Levine

The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency released a heavily redacted segment of the internal message that sparked the accidental missile alert on Jan. 13.

Hawaii News Now asked for the recording to be released, as it plays a key part in the missile alert, which sent many Hawaiians into a panic after they received messages about a missile attack.

The warning officer who set off the warning claimed he did not hear the part of the message that says "Exercise, Exercise, Exercise."

The 24-second message begins with a woman's voice repeating the word "exercise" three times. Then, there is a prolonged beep to block out words. Nine seconds in, the voice says, "This is not a drill." That is followed by a much longer peep, then "exercise" is repeated three times again before it ends.

A spokesman for U.S. Pacific Command told the Associated Press it would only release a small portion of the recording because the agency uses almost the same language to issue a real warning for a missile attack.

"Somebody could use that verbiage to compose a message then call the state warning point and try to spoof state warning point into thinking there was a real missile alert," Lt. Col. Charles Anthony told the AP. Anthony added that the recording is not classified, but it includes sensitive information.

Brian Black, Executive Director of the Civil Beat Law Center, told Hawaii News Now that the full recording should be released.

"They're not saying that it's classified," Black said. "They're not saying that's top secret information. All they're saying is the information could be used to fake out the [Department of Defense], and that doesn't seem to be quite enough."

Black also said the portion of the recording released would heavily favor the state in a dispute between the state and the now, fired warnings officer.

The warnings officer who initiated the alert, was fired Jan. 30, USA Today reported at the time. The head of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, Vern Miyagi, resigned and another officer was suspended without pay. Another employee quit before he could be fired.

The warnings officer told Hawaii News Now that someone else picked up the phone and did not hear the "exercise, exercise, exercise" part. The call was put on speaker phone, and he heard "This is not a drill." After that, there were more words that led him to believe a real missile alert was being ordered.

Earlier this week, the Associated Press reported that Hawaii Governor David Ige denied requests to provide documents on the embarrassing incident. The AP reports that his office says it does not have records of phone longs, text messages and calendars related to the incident. Black said the state was not following its own open records laws.

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