National Level Exercise 2009 (NLE 09) is taking place in the US. Scheduled to run from July 27 to July 31, 2009, NLE 09 is the first major exercise conducted by the United States government to focus exclusively on terrorism prevention and protection, as opposed to incident response and recovery.
According to FEMA, NLE 09 is designated as a Tier I National Level Exercise. Tier I exercises (formerly known as the Top Officials exercise series or TOPOFF) are conducted annually in accordance with the National Exercise Program (NEP), which serves as the US's overarching exercise program for planning, organizing, conducting and evaluating national level exercises. The NEP was established to provide the US government, at all levels, exercise opportunities to prepare for catastrophic crises ranging from terrorism to natural disasters.
NLE 09 is a White House directed, Congressionally-mandated exercise that includes the participation of all appropriate federal department and agency senior officials, their deputies, staff and key operational elements. Representatives from Australia, Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom are also taking part.