Hawaii Emergency Management Agency administrator Vern Miyagi has resigned and the unidentified employee said to have pushed the button that dispatched the infamous false alert for a missile threat has been terminated, state officials say.

Governor David Ige, along with the State Adjutant General, Maj. Gen. Joe Logan, and Brig. Gen. (RET) Bruce Oliveira – the internal investigating officer of the false alarm incident on January 13 – met with the media on Tuesday to release the state’s internal incident investigation report. Maj. Gen. Joe Logan announced the personnel actions at the start of the conference.

A key portion of the report takes aim at the performance of the day shift warning officer who sent the false alert, referred to in the state report as Employee 1. The full report can be found here. On page 10:

q. Employee 1 has been a source of concern for the same SWP (State Warning Point) staff for over 10 years. Employee 1’s poor performance has been counseled and documented and the SWP members have stated that they are “not comfortable with Employee 1 as a supervisor, two-man team, or as a part of the SWP in general. He is does not take initiative and has to be directed before he takes action. He is unable to comprehend the situation at hand and has confused real life events and drills on at least two separate occasions.”

r. Employee 1 stated that he/she initiated the real-world CDW. Employee 1 stated he/she did not hearthe announcement, “EXERCISE, EXERClSE, EXERCISE” at the beginning and end of the simulated message. Employee 1 also stated, that he/she did not recognize the callers voice, and heard, “This is not a drill” over the speaker. However, all other SWP members clearly heard, “EXERCISE, EXERCISE, EXERCISE” at the beginning and end of the drill.

s. Employee 5 directed Employee 1 to send out the cancel message. Employee 5 stated that Employee 1 just sat there and didn’t respond. Employee 3 returned to the SWP from starting the time clock and saw Employee 4 and Employee 10 repeatedly get on the HAWAS letting the Counties know that it was just a drill. Employee 2 was on the phone with Employee 6 briefing them on the situation. Employee 5 was alerting the command staff. Employee 1 was sitting and seemed confused. Employee 3 took control of Employee 1’s mouse and sent the cancel message. At no point did Employee 1 assist in the process of correcting the False Alert.

t. Employee 1 has been terminated.

The conduct of “Employee 1” not-withstanding, Brig. Gen. (RET) Bruce Oliveira found a “preponderance of evidence exists that insufficient management controls, poor computer software design, and human factors contributed to the real-world BMA”.

The state shared its findings as the Federal Communications Commission met in an open meeting to discuss its own preliminary report on the matter. James Wiley, the Attorney Advisor in the FCC’s Cybersecurity and Communications Reliability Division, noted that “because we’ve not been able to interview the day shift warning officer who transmitted the false alert, we’re not in a position to fully evaluate the credibility of their assertion that they believed there was an actual missile threat and intentionally sent the live alert.”