Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said today it was a mistake for Hawai'i to post the report saying that says tens of thousands of people could be killed in such specific incidents as the blowing up a chlorine tank, the spreading of pneumonic plague in public restrooms and the infecting of cattle with foot and mouth disease in several places around the country.

The draft copy of the Homeland Security report, called a National Planning Scenario, was posted on the state department's Web site in late November as a way to make it available to the state's first responders, said Maj. Charles Anthony, a spokesman for the Department of Defense, which includes state civil defense.

It included a "comment period" for firemen, police officer, emergency medical workers and hazardous material workers and others to give reaction and make suggestions, he said.

Anthony said the report did not contain any specific information about actual threatened attacks or specific training plans.

"If a document is for official use only, it will be marked for official use only," Anthony said. "There was nothing on this document that was marked official use only. There was nothing marked confidential."

The state removed the report from its Web site late yesterday after Anthony received a call from a New York Times reporter, who called to inform him that a story was to be posted on the newspaper's Web site within hours.

Anthony said the report actually should have been taken down earlier, because the comment period had ended on Jan. 17.

The report, requested by a presidential directive in December 2003, marks Homeland Security efforts to spur state and local authorities into thinking about preventing attacks.

Homeland Security at first believed other states also may have linked to the report on their Web sites, but a further review today showed that not to be the case, said spokesman Brian Roehrkasse.

The department has been working for a year on a National Planning Scenarios plan that outlines a number of plausible attacks — including by nerve gas, anthrax, pneumonic plague and truck bomb.

Homeland Security "has developed a number of scenarios that will aid federal, state and local homeland security officials in developing plans to become more prepared to prevent and respond to an act of terrorism, should it occur," Roehrkasse said.