<DOC>
[108th Congress House Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:96537.wais]
MOVING FROM ``NEED TO KNOW'' TO ``NEED TO SHARE'': A REVIEW OF THE 9/11
COMMISSION'S RECOMMENDATIONS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
AUGUST 3, 2004
__________
Serial No. 108-217
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DOUG OSE, California DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
RON LEWIS, Kentucky DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
CHRIS CANNON, Utah DIANE E. WATSON, California
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan Maryland
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio Columbia
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas JIM COOPER, Tennessee
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio ------
KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
(Independent)
Melissa Wojciak, Staff Director
David Marin, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director
Rob Borden, Parliamentarian
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Phil Barnett, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on August 3, 2004................................... 1
Statement of:
Kerrey, Bob, Commissioner; and John F. Lehman, Commissioner,
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United
States..................................................... 20
Light, Paul C., Robert F. Wagner school of public service,
New York University; Bob Collet, vice president,
engineering, AT&T Government Solutions; Daniel Duff, vice
president, Government Affairs, American Public
Transportation Association; John McCarthy, executive
director, critical infrastructure protection project; and
Jim Dempsey, executive director, Center for Democracy and
Technology................................................. 201
Regenhard, Sally, family member of September 11, 2001 victim;
Beverly Eckert, family member of September 11, 2001 victim;
and Robin Wiener, family member of September 11, 2001
victim..................................................... 111
Walker, David, Comptroller General, Government Accountability
Office..................................................... 156
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Collet, Bob, vice president, engineering, AT&T Government
Solutions, prepared statement of........................... 218
Davis, Chairman Tom, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Virginia, prepared statement of................... 5
Davis, Hon. Danny K., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Illinois, prepared statement of................... 61
Dempsey, Jim, executive director, Center for Democracy and
Technology, prepared statement of.......................... 250
Duff, Daniel, vice president, Government Affairs, American
Public Transportation Association, prepared statement of... 231
Eckert, Beverly, family member of September 11, 2001 victim,
prepared statement of...................................... 122
Harris, Hon. Katherine, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Florida, prepared statement of.................... 97
Kanjorski, Hon. Paul E., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Pennsylvania, prepared statement of........... 19
Kerrey, Bob, Commissioner; and John F. Lehman, Commissioner,
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United
States, prepared statement of.............................. 24
Light, Paul C., Robert F. Wagner school of public service,
New York University, prepared statement of................. 203
Maloney, Hon. Carolyn B., a Representative in Congress from
the State of New York:
Prepared statement of.................................... 46
Prepared statement of Family Steering Committee.......... 134
McCarthy, John, executive director, critical infrastructure
protection project, prepared statement of.................. 243
Miller, Hon. Candice S., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Michigan, prepared statement of............... 68
Platts, Hon. Todd Russell, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Pennsylvania, prepared statement of........... 153
Regenhard, Sally, family member of September 11, 2001 victim,
prepared statement of...................................... 116
Tierney, Hon. John F., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Massachusetts, prepared statement of.............. 147
Walker, David, Comptroller General, Government Accountability
Office, prepared statement of.............................. 160
Watson, Hon. Diane E., a Representative in Congress from the
State of California, prepared statement of................. 106
Waxman, Hon. Henry A., a Representative in Congress from the
State of California, prepared statement of................. 11
Wiener, Robin, family member of September 11, 2001 victim,
prepared statement of...................................... 127
MOVING FROM ``NEED TO KNOW'' TO ``NEED TO SHARE'': A REVIEW OF THE 9/11
COMMISSION'S RECOMMENDATIONS
----------
TUESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2004
House of Representatives,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Tom Davis
(chairman of the committee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Tom Davis, Shays, Ros-Lehtinen,
McHugh, Platts, Schrock, Miller of Michigan, Turner, Carter,
Blackburn, Harris, Waxman, Kanjorski, Maloney, Cummings,
Kucinich, Davis of Illinois, Tierney, Watson, Lynch, Van
Hollen, Ruppersberger, Norton, McCollum.
Staff present: David Marin, deputy staff director/
communications director; Ellen Brown, legislative director and
senior policy counsel; Jennifer Safavian, chief counsel for
oversight and investigations; John Hunter and David Young,
counsels; Robert Borden, counsel/parliamentarian; Robert White,
press secretary; Drew Crockett, deputy director of
communications; John Cuaderes and Victoria Proctor, senior
professional staff members; Mason Alinger, Brian Stout, Jaime
Hjort, Susie Schulte, Shalley Kim, and Brien Beattie,
professional staff members; John Brosnan and Randy Cole, GAO
detailees; Sarah Dorsie, deputy clerk; Allyson Blandford,
office manager; Kristina Sherry, legislative correspondent;
Corinne Zaccagnini, chief information officer; Phil Barnett,
minority staff director; Karen Lightfoot, minority
communications director/senior policy advisor; Anna Laitin,
minority communications and policy assistant; Michelle Ash,
minority senior legislative counsel; Rosalind Parker and David
Rapallo, minority counsels; Earley Green, minority chief clerk;
Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk; and Cecelia Morton,
minority office manager.
Chairman Tom Davis. Good morning.
The committee will come to order. I want to thank everybody
for coming.
We are here today nearly 3 years removed from that terrible
day of September 11th to simultaneously look back and look
forward. We grieve again for the men and women who lost their
lives and pray once more for their loved ones. But it is also a
time to remind ourselves of the important challenges ahead, the
tasks of securing our Nation and eradicating terrorist networks
around the globe.
I want to commend the work of the National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks on the United States, also known as the 9/11
Commission, for its hard work and dedication in issuing its
report on the 2001 terrorist attacks, once again bringing
reforms to the Federal Government and that structure to the
forefront of the homeland security discussion.
Yesterday, the President endorsed the creation of a
Presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed National
Intelligence Director as well as the creation of a National
Counterterrorism Center to coordinate and monitor
counterterrorism efforts. The President's call to action
demonstrated that the administration, like Congress, is working
overtime to move forward with the 9/11 Commission's
recommendations.
The key to success in implementing the Commission's
recommendations is making sure we are not simply repackaging
what we have now. We need to avoid creating another layer of
bureaucracy. We need to align authority with responsibility to
make sure information is reaching all the people that it needs
to reach.
While the creation of a National Intelligence Director and
a National Counterterrorism Center are the most highly
publicized aspects of the Commission's recommendations, this
committee will be focusing on the broad range of
recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission. The National
Intelligence Director will be the subject of considerable
debate in the coming weeks and months, but the Commission's
recommendations regarding border security, information-sharing
data bases, emergency preparedness, homeland security funding
and intergovernmental coordination are at least as important if
not more so than the higher profile recommendations.
We have before us today a diverse group of panelists, from
Commissioners and family members of victims of the World Trade
Center and Pentagon attacks to Federal officials, public policy
experts and industry representatives. The collective expertise
of these witnesses along with the expertise and experience that
exists among members of this committee will no doubt lead to an
interesting and fruitful discussion on the future security of
our Nation. We need to hear from our witnesses which
recommendations they view as most urgent, which they see as
important but dependent on other acts or events and which they
think will require sustained effort over time to achieve. We
need to discuss what is achievable administratively and what
needs congressional action.
The Commission's report and the focus of this hearing are
especially timely given the recent elevation of the threat
advisory levels for the financial sectors of New York, Newark,
and Washington, DC. The news articles about the intelligence
information that led to the elevation suggests the decision was
the result of shared information between the CIA, the FBI, the
National Security Agency, DIA, and other senior military
officials. Even if the intelligence information that the threat
elevation was based on was dated, this type of coordination is
critical to the future security of our homeland, and the
purpose of today's hearing is to discuss whether or not it's
possible to institutionalize this type of interagency
coordination.
As we move forward, today, next week, next month, next
year, we should be encouraged that Congress, frequently through
this committee's oversight, has already laid a sound foundation
on which we must build.
Even before September 11, the committee held hearings on
impediments to information-sharing and analysis. As part of the
Homeland Security Act, we passed legislation aimed at
encouraging the critical infrastructure industry to share
information about vulnerabilities with each other and with the
Government.
Beginning anew today, we need to examine what's preventing
better and more accurate sharing and analysis between Federal
agencies, between Federal, State, and local governments, and
between the private and the public sectors.
How can we overcome those impediments? Is the voluntary
information-sharing mechanism between the private sector and
the Government that we established in 2002 working as we
envisioned?
Unlike much of the debate and press coverage and committee
hearings, we need to be talking about more than just
intelligence information per se. It's not just, ``intelligence
information'' that impacts our ability to prepare for and
respond to terrorist attacks. The realm of information that's
not being adequately shared is not merely the province of the
CIA or the FBI or NSA; nor is it encompassed by the public
sector alone. What about information on public health
coordination between Federal, State and local providers? What
about the fact that the private sector owns and operates 85
percent of the Nation's critical infrastructure?
This committee has also been looking long and hard at
Government organizational challenges. Part and parcel of moving
from a system of need-to-know to need-to-share is the need to
restructure the executive branch to match the 21st century
needs and requirements.
The Commission rightly recognized that we need a Government
better organized than the one that exists today, with its
national security institution designed half a century ago to
win the cold war.
I believe the Commission's report makes the need for
reauthorization of Executive Reorganization Authority all the
more urgent. The absolute, redundant and duplicative nature of
the Federal bureaucracy is the single greatest impediment to
moving from a system of need-to-know to need-to-share.
An editorial in last week's Federal Times framed the issue
well. It said,
Take any mission, say counterterrorism intelligence
gathering and analysis, and divvy it up among a dozen or so
agencies. Then let those agencies set their own goals and
priorities, follow their own standards and practices and decide
their own resources and budgets. What you end up with is a
design for failure.
That's what exists now in Government, not only with
counterterrorism, but with many missions, job training,
combating homelessness, environmental care, food safety
inspection, to name a few.
To take on a mission successfully, there must be a cohesive
strategy, coordination in planning and practices, effective
sharing of information, common priorities and budgeting and
clear direction by a competent, accountable leader.
That's why 18 months ago the Volcker Commission called for
all the Government to be reorganized around distinct mission
areas. As the 9/11 Commission points out, this lack of
leadership and cohesive management also plagues one of the
Government's most pressing missions now, counterterrorism.
The problem of Government ineffectiveness in
counterterrorism and other important missions is not a lack of
solutions. The solutions to effective Government are obvious
and articulated compellingly by both the 9/11 and the Volcker
Commissions.
Let's be clear. I don't think any discussion of impediments
to effective information-sharing can be complete without
discussing the need to reorganize the executive branch. This
committee has held several hearings on the need to reauthorize
Executive Reorganization Authority, which expired in 1984. The
authorities existed off and on for a period of 50 years, giving
Presidents the ability to submit executive branch
reorganization proposals to Congress for a guaranteed up or
down vote without amendment. In doing so, executive branch
reorganizations could come before Congress without getting
buried in congressional committee jurisdictional turf battles
that has spelled the demise of many governmental reorganization
proposals in recent history.
I may take some heat for saying this, but we need to look
no further than deliberations that led to the creation of the
Homeland Security Department for evidence that Congress is not
terribly well-equipped to tackle organizational challenges: Too
much turf; too many egos; far too much time.
The recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission make
reauthorization of this authority all the more urgent. The
obsolete, redundant and duplicative nature of the Federal
bureaucracy is the single greatest impediment to improving
information-sharing. As hearings held by this committee over
the past 2 years have shown, the same problem of poor
organization exist in Federal food safety oversight, Federal
child welfare functions and multiple homeland security
functions.
In our battle to move forward to better protect ourselves,
there are no Republicans or Democrats, only Americans. Talking
to my kids and countless others in northern Virginia, one thing
is clear, a whole generation of Americans will grow up with
September 11 as its most formative experience. This younger
generation is no longer cynical about the idea of ``We, the
people.'' They realize that these attacks were not just on the
people who were killed and injured but also on the very things
that define us as a society--religious freedom, equality,
economic opportunity, and political choice. And this generation
will know that the ruthless will not inherit the Earth.
Without further adieu, I welcome all the witnesses to
today's hearing. I look forward to their testimony.
And I now recognize our distinguished ranking member, Mr.
Waxman.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Tom Davis follows:]
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Mr. Waxman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
This does feel awfully good to sit here. Well, I want to
thank you for holding this hearing. This is a timely and
important hearing. Understanding and acting on the
recommendations of the 9/11 Commission should be an urgent
national priority.
Let me begin by welcoming the family members of the
September 11 victims, those testifying today and the thousands
of family members you represent. Without your resolve, the 9/11
Commission would not have been established and we would never
have learned as much as we now know about the truth of what
happened. And without your commitment, we would not be
considering the Commission's recommendations or even holding
this hearing. Because of you, our Nation will be safer, and we
thank you.
I also want to thank John Lehman and Bob Kerrey who served
on the 9/11 Commission and who will be testifying today. The 9/
11 Commission produced an extraordinarily important report,
with dozens of concrete recommendations for fighting terrorism
and making our Nation safer. And the Commission did so
unanimously, achieving a rare bipartisan consensus. We owe
Secretary Lehman and Senator Kerrey a debt of gratitude. And we
ignore their recommendations at our peril.
The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission are getting
attention right now. In fact, the House has over a dozen
hearings scheduled this month alone. I have been around long
enough to know what is likely to happen next: Without sustained
public pressure, Congress will vacillate, and the
administration will temporize. And we will end up with a pale
shadow of the bold action recommended by the 9/11 Commission.
Indeed, this may already have started to happen. The 9/11
Commission recommended major reforms in our intelligence
agencies. The Commission recommended the creation of a National
Intelligence Director who would be in charge of a new National
Counterterrorism Center. The Commission proposed giving the
National Intelligence Director the authority to wield real
power. The director would control the budgets of the
intelligence agencies and would have direct management
authority over the head of the CIA and other intelligence
agencies. But this doesn't appear to be what President Bush had
in mind. The President yesterday spoke about giving the
National Intelligence Director the authority to coordinate and
monitor the actions of the intelligence agencies, but he made
no mention of giving the intelligence director the authority to
control the intelligence budgets. And he specifically said that
a new intelligence director will not be in, ``the chain of
commands.''
In this city, if you have a fancy title but you are not in
the chain of command and you don't control the budget, you are
a figurehead. And another figurehead is not what the 9/11
Commission recommended and what our Nation needs.
The 9/11 Commission made over 40 concrete recommendations.
Its recommendations cover a wide range of crucial subjects, how
to protect our borders, how to safeguard our transportation
systems, how to support our first responders, how to conduct an
assessment of risks and vulnerabilities. All of these
recommendations are essential. We will be doing the Nation a
grave disservice if we ignore any of them.
Let me give you an example of why I am so concerned about
the fate of the recommendations. The 9/11 Commission warned
about the dangers of weapons of mass destruction getting into
the hands of al Qaeda. Here is a quote from the report, ``Our
report shows that al Qaeda has tried to acquire or make weapons
of mass destruction for at least 10 years. There is no doubt
the United States will be a prime target. Preventing the
proliferation of these weapons warrant a maximum effort by
strengthening counter-proliferation.''
Here is what the Bush administration did last week: It
killed international efforts to strengthen nuclear weapons
inspections. This is a quote from a front-page article in the
Washington Post on Saturday, ``In a significant shift of U.S.
policy, the Bush administration announced this week that it
will oppose provisions for inspections and verification as part
of an international treaty that would ban production of nuclear
weapons materials. An arms control specialist said the change
in U.S. position will dramatically weaken any treaty and make
it harder to prevent nuclear materials from falling into the
hands of terrorism.''
Well, the cynicism is breathtaking. A week after the 9/11
Commission recommendedx greater nonproliferation efforts, the
administration undermines an international nonproliferation
treaty, and then it says it is doing everything possible to
fight terrorism and implement the recommendations of the 9/11
Commission.
Despite their merit, many of the ideas in the report from
the 9/11 Commission have encountered resistance. Nearly 3 years
ago, a bipartisan group of members from this committee urged
the administration to develop a coherent strategy based on a
comprehensive threat and risk assessment. Over 2 years ago,
Representative David Obey, the ranking member of the House
Appropriations Committee, and I wrote the Bush administration
to recommend the creation of a White House office that could
unify the collection and dissemination of intelligence.
Over 1 year ago, Representative Jane Harman, the ranking
member of the House Intelligence Committee, introduced
legislation to establish a National Director of Intelligence.
And over the past year, Representative Jim Turner, the ranking
member of Homeland Security Committee, has repeatedly proposed
initiatives that closely parallel recommendations of the 9/11
Commission.
But all of these suggestions have fallen on deaf ears.
Secretary Ridge never even bothered to respond to the letter
that Mr. Obey and I sent over 2 years ago, in fact,
recommending what we now have before us. It could have been
done 3 years ago. It could have been put into effect 2 years
ago. It could have been effective 1 year ago. We rushed into
creating a Homeland Security Agency, and we ignored the
problems of coordinating the intelligence, which we all knew
from September 11th, was the biggest problem we had.
With so much at stake, we can't let that happen again. The
9/11 Commission has spoken. Now, it is Congress' turn and this
administration to work with us in order to act to make those
recommendations become the law of this country.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Henry A. Waxman follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. I wasn't sure I
was going to get the chair back that easy. But thank you very
much.
I understand our first witnesses are not here yet. So what
I am going to do is--and when we get our commission members
here, we will go immediately. But until that time--Mr. Waxman,
with your concurrence--we will alternate with opening
statements.
And I will go with Mr. Shays, whose subcommittee has led
the way on so many of these issues.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a good day, and
it can be a partisan day.
As the third anniversary of the September 11th attacks
approaches, we finally have a credible, comprehensive picture
of what went so horribly wrong and what needs to be done to
prevent further tragedy. The recommendations of the 9/11
Commission rise from the ashes of Ground Zero to the rubble at
the Pentagon and the wreckage in Pennsylvania, demanding action
by the living in the cause of those who died.
The task of implementing the major reforms outlined by a
unanimous bipartisan commission will not be easy. As the
Commission's vice chair observed, the status quo always has an
entrenched army of defenders. But the September 11th families
that we will hear from today have no patience with apologists
for a system which failed them so totally and so personally,
nor should they. Their status quo changed forever that
September morning. They ask now only that we act quickly to
change the dated structures and flawed practices that
contributed to their profound grief.
Many of the recommendations strike familiar chords. In the
course of 20 hearings on terrorism issues before September
11th, the National Security Subcommittee which I chaired
discussed the need for unified threat assessment, sharper
strategic focus on the real enemy and the need to restructure
Government to meet the threat. Three national commissions--
Bremer, Gilmore, Hart-Rudman--presaged the Commission's call
for structural and operational reforms within and between
levels of Government. Many of these recommendations went
unheeded until it was too late.
It took unimaginable tragedy to bring us to this moment.
Only courage, foresight and imagination will propel our actions
in time to prevent the next calamity. These recommendations
should be a unifying force, a mandate to put past divisions and
biases behind us and heed the lessons so sadly learned.
In closing, I congratulate the 9/11 Commission for a job
extraordinarily well done, and I thank the families for their
courage and determination and love for this country and their
efforts to make sure that life will be different for the next
generation.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you, Mr. Shays.
We will have one more opening statement, and then we will
go right to our panelists. Thank you all for being with us.
Mr. Kanjorski.
Mr. Kanjorski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Ranking Member
Waxman.
I appreciate the opportunity to offer my views at the first
hearing in the House on the final report of the National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.
Late last month, the 9/11 Commission released its much
anticipated final report which examines the circumstances
surrounding the September 11th attacks and provides
recommendations for preventing future terrorist strikes.
This report is the culmination of 19 days of public
hearings, a review of 2\1/2\ million pages of documents,
interviews with 1,200 individuals in 10 countries and public
testimony of 160 witnesses. As we begin our review of the 9/11
report, I would urge my colleagues to consider the
recommendations of the Commission as a whole rather than
identifying a single proposed reform for review or examining
these matters on a piecemeal basis. By focusing only on certain
aspects of the report, we risk losing the overall intent of the
Commission's recommendations. We need to see the forest and the
trees, not either the forest or the trees.
Nevertheless, today's hearing is intended to consider
recommendations of the Commission regarding the creation of a
National Intelligence Director and the formation of the
National Counterterrorist Center within the Executive Office of
the President. These recommendations have already sparked
considerable public debate. On the one hand, the National
Intelligence Director and the National Counterterrorism Center
must have independent budgetary authority and the ability to
make personal changes necessary. In addition, the director must
have the ability to do so without pressure from the
intelligence agencies under its jurisdiction.
On the other hand, placing the center and the director
within the executive office of the President may shift the
intelligence operations closer to the politics within the White
House and may influence the intelligence-gathering system. Such
a result could cause considerable concern for me.
Moreover, I am very troubled by recent press reports that
indicate that the President may unilaterally issue an Executive
order to create the position of National Intelligence Director.
In doing so, no congressional confirmations would be held to
ensure the director is properly vetted. In implementing the
recommendations of the Commission, we must provide the
appropriate checks and balances.
As we begin our review of the recommendations included in
the 9/11 report, we also need to ensure that Congress
adequately addresses these matters in the long term. I have
therefore joined with many of my colleagues in supporting
legislation to extend the 9/11 Commission for 18 months in
order to oversee the implementation of its recommendations. I
would urge the other members of our panel to also support this
bipartisan bill.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Paul E. Kanjorski follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6537.011
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much, Mr. Kanjorski.
We have our panelists with us today.
And let me just thank you on behalf of Mr. Waxman and
myself for your work on this Commission. It is a very important
report. Both of you had long distinguished careers in public
service before you came to this Commission, which I won't
outline now, but we are very pleased to have you with us today.
It's our policy that we swear in members before you
testify. So if you would rise with me and raise your right
hand.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
So Senator Kerrey, I think we will start with you, and then
Secretary Lehman.
And thank you both for being with us.
STATEMENTS OF BOB KERREY, COMMISSIONER; AND JOHN F. LEHMAN,
COMMISSIONER, NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE
UNITED STATES
Mr. Kerrey. Mr. Chairman, right off the bat, I am going to
disobey and have Secretary Lehman lead off, if you don't mind.
I came off vacation as per your request, and he is much better
prepared than I am.
Chairman Tom Davis. That is fine. All right. You don't need
to take your full 5 minutes. So if you just want to be here for
questions, that is fine as well.
Admiral Lehman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We have together submitted a statement for the record. I
won't belabor you with that and re-read it to you. But I would
like to start by thanking all of you for the support that you
have given us, both in bringing us into existence and then
helping us to carry forward our responsibilities.
This has been a remarkable experience for all of us. We are
five Democrats and five Republicans. None of us have been
particularly known as being pussy cats in the past, and we had
our strong views and positions. And through the process of deep
study of these issues and the facts of the investigation, we
have ended up entirely unanimous. Not a single dissent, not a
single additional view and with total unity of purpose. And I
am very pleased to see that this committee is approaching the
issues, our findings and our recommendations, in exactly the
same nonpartisan spirit, with a unified purpose to get these
changes done to make this country safer.
We are very pleased, all of us, with the reaction of the
leaders of Congress, the reaction of Senator Kerry and his
campaign, and the reaction and action of the President in
moving out very smartly to analyze and implement these
recommendations. They are very important. And while the
organizational recommendations are the ones that naturally
attract the most attention, they are not the most important.
The most important are the recommendations that we lead with:
What to do, the strategy, the objectives and priorities that
are needed to win this war against Islamist terrorism.
You will never ensure security by moving around
organization charts. You will never determine human behavior by
trying to design a better organization chart. But it's
unacceptable to have institutions that have evolved since the
Second World War, built over time to deal with the cold war and
its threats, hemmed in with a variety of restrictions and
regulation over time that were appropriate when put in but are
no longer appropriate.
It's time for an entirely new system of providing our
Nation's leaders and the congressional leaders with the
intelligence they need to make wise policy and decisions.
Our recommendations are not a Chinese menu; they are a
whole system. If all of the important elements are not adopted,
it makes it very difficult for the others to succeed.
And one last comment before going to your questions after
hearing Senator Kerrey's comment. I would strongly recommend
these be viewed as a whole and that the powers needed to carry
out these recommendations be enacted as a whole package. And I
am sure that this will result in a far more effective means of
providing intelligence to this Nation going forward if they are
implemented.
Senator Kerrey.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Senator Kerrey.
Mr. Kerrey. Well, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee,
let me first of all say what Secretary Lehman just said, which
was that a remarkable thing happened in this Commission. There
were 10 of us selected by, as you know, elected officials in
the city of Washington, DC, where there is a considerable
amount of partisan strife. And we reached a unanimous
conclusion in spite of that. And I would say, I've scratched my
head and tried to figure out why.
It is in no small measure due to the assistance of the
families who aren't responsible for this legislation but were
present at every single one of our hearings and present with us
in spirit at all of our deliberations, as well as a careful
reading of the narrative. If you read the narrative, and I know
that it is a long narrative including the footnotes. But if you
read the narrative, I believe it will put you in the right
mood. And I think that's what happened to us; we got back in
the mood of that terrible day, and the mood that happened for
60, 90, whatever it was afterwards, days afterwards. And the
Nation and the world truly were united.
I mean, I live in New York City today, and it was
remarkable for me to see the Yankees get cheered at Kaminski
and get cheered at Fenway because--not because people love the
Yankees, but because people felt a unity with New York that was
truly moving. And I think the narrative puts you in that
spirit. The narrative allows you to go back to that terrible
but also wonderful moment when the Nation rallied together.
Of the things that I have noticed in the news that has been
covered--there are several that have not been covered. I
presume that you will have a lot of questions on the structure
of the Government, and a lot of that is dealt with in our
opening statement.
The foundation for what we are talking about, however, is
the belief that this is not a war on terrorism. It really is a
war on, in this case, a narrow and small group of radical
Jihadists that believe that killing infidels is something
that's a good thing to do and believe that the United States of
America is, to use Osama bin Laden's words, the head of the
snake.
And we unanimously conclude that a vigorous and relentless
military and law enforcement effort are going to be necessary.
We unanimously concluded that we are going to have to engage in
the ideas that we have for too long left in the shadows. We
unanimously concluded that we need to also develop an agenda of
hope that the United States of America leads to try to
implement in the world.
Of the five areas of action, again, I know that the
restructuring of the Government is the dominant one. But I call
to your attention, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee,
that there are a number of areas where funding is the problem,
especially border security, especially having to do with these
paper documents that we all carry around called passports.
There are significant vulnerabilities that still remain simply
because the time lines and the implementation of the U.S. Visit
visa program extends all the way out to 2010. There are
management issues that have to be addressed. That's a constant
problem that you, Mr. Chairman, and this committee are
constantly dealing with, with the executive branch.
Third, there is the issue of secrecy. In my strongly held
opinion, secrecy is an enormously difficult problem for us. I
think we over-classify to a fault. But, more importantly for
the Congress, as a consequence of there being secrecy, you do
not have investigative journalists doing the kind of oversight
that you have in every other walk of life when it comes to the
Federal Government. Simply, you don't wake up in the morning
and read the Washington Times and the Washington Post and see
some investigative story that's out there that provokes you to
do oversight. It's not there with our intelligence agencies.
And you need to recognize, I think, the limitations that
imposes upon Congress.
Fourth, there is a number of areas where further
investigation is necessary. Time merely ran out on us. I love
John Kerry; I intend to vote for him. My confidence in him was
shaken when he said that we ought to work for 18 more months.
One of the reasons that I think that came about is that we were
actually--because we had subpoena powers. In this unique
position, we were doing congressional oversight. I would urge
you to think about that and try to come up with an alternative
way to do that on a permanent basis.
I know that Congressman Shays was frustrated in trying to
exert oversight over the intelligence agencies. There is a
rightful place for Congress here, which brings me to my fifth
point: Those things where law--changes in the law are going to
be necessary. I am strongly of the view that what Congress
needs to do is to see this as a moment when you have to push
back on the executive branch. You need more power and
authority.
My first preference is a joint intelligence committee that
is created in law, not by congressional resolution. These
intelligence agencies respect the law and are much less
respectful of congressional resolutions. Second, that law
should say that Congress has to be kept fully and completely
informed, not informed when there are intelligence failures,
but fully and completely informed. In my view, again, because
of secrecy, this committee should be required to report on an
annual basis of the status of our intelligence agencies. There
is no such thing as an operational readiness inspection as
there is with our military. There needs to be some public
declaration of where we are. I believe a joint committee would
be the preferable way for Congress to push back. It is a much
stronger position, Congress versus the executive branch, than
perhaps the executive branch would want. But from my
evaluation, the stronger, the better, the more likely it is
that Congress is going to get the kind of oversight necessary
to make certain that we sustain this effort to strengthen our
intelligence capabilities over the long term.
Mr. Chairman, I think--I don't know if I went 5 minutes or
not.
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Chairman Tom Davis. That's fine. Thank you very much.
Well, let me start the questioning. Let me ask you both
what your views are on the President's announcement yesterday.
The Commission proposed establishing a Senate-confirmed
intelligence director in the White House. The White House
proposed establishing such position outside the White House. We
get into the line of budget control and the like. Do either of
you have a reaction to that?
Admiral Lehman. Well, I think it is a very good start, a
good opening bid. It is a responsible first step to start the
process which, most importantly, I think, in working out the
details, will go on up here in Congress, in your committee, and
in your Senate counterparts.
The rationale for creating a National Intelligence Director
is not based on creating a new layer of bureaucracy. Far from
it. It makes no sense at all, unless it has the power to break
up bureaucratic layers, to remove bureaucratic layers, to
dismantle the vertical stovepipes that make it impossible, in
many cases, for the real sharing of intelligence between
agencies. That's the purpose.
So to carry it out, this National Intelligence Director has
to have hiring and firing power. He has to have not just budget
coordination power but budget and appropriations and
reprogramming power--must have power over the IT protocols that
now provide enormous technological barriers between our
intelligence agencies and the sharing of data and have the
power to bring rationality to the security system of
classification, compartmentalization, declassification,
security clearance granting and background investigations.
Those four powers are essential. Without them, it will become
just another layer.
Mr. Kerrey. I think it's a very good start. I am pleased to
see it begin. I do think that lesson under law--my mic's not
on? Can you hear me now?
I think it is a very good beginning. The President deserves
credit for coming out of the box with endorsement of the NID
and the NCTC. This is not a new argument, especially the NID.
We all who were here during the 1990's remember when the
Aldridge Ames spy case broke, and suddenly, we had a commission
to investigate what went wrong. Les Aspin first and then Harold
Brown chaired that.
They came out with a set of recommendations, and indeed,
Brent Scowcroft at the start of the Bush, the second Bush
administration, did the same thing, evaluated what needed to be
done. And everybody that looks at it comes to the same
conclusion: The person that has the responsibility needs the
authority. And, absent that, they are not going to be able to
get the job done. I mean, it is a fairly simple rule in life,
and it is especially important in Government. And, right now,
the person that has the responsibility, the person that gets
called up to the Hill, the person that gets the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence to do an evaluation and gets kicked
the bejesus out of him, in the House as well, is the Director
of Central Intelligence. But he doesn't have budget authority
or hiring authority. And after Aspen Brown, we tried to get
some of it done, and what happened was that the Department of
Defense and the Armed Services Committee killed us. That's what
happened.
We had to take the Armed Services Defense Authorization
Bill, the Senate Select Committee did, on sequential referral
in order just to get concurrent review. That's what happened.
And for the rest of my time in the Senate, I didn't get a
damned thing out of the Armed Services Committee because it
made them mad, especially the staffers were quite upset with us
for taking that bill on sequential referral. And that's the
fault line.
I know that Secretary Rumsfeld is going to oppose this. If
DOD wins one more time, then next time there's a dust-up and
there's a failure, don't call the Director of Central
Intelligence up here. Kick the crap out of DOD. Because they
are the one with the statutory authority over budget.
Appropriations goes to DOD for national foreign intelligence.
Please don't tell me it's going to deteriorate our capacity to
support the warfighters. We don't touch tactical intelligence
in this recommendation.
So, if it's not done, if DOD and the Armed Services
Committee one more time, then the next time you have a problem,
don't call the Director of Central Intelligence up and blame
them, because they have responsibility but they don't have
either budgetary or personnel authority to be able to get the
job done.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
The recommendations for reorganization in the report focus
largely on the intelligence-related functions, but Senator
Kerrey, let me ask you, wouldn't you agree that we don't
necessarily have to stop there, that the problem goes deeper
than just the intelligence community?
A number of Federal functions out there that are organized
just as haphazard functions, functions that could impact
Homeland Security.
Mr. Kerrey. Yes. I mean, I say, it's sort of the preamble
to the Constitution, we are always trying to be a more perfect
union and not a perfect one. So, if somebody tells me the
Government screwed up, I say, ``Yeah, OK, it screwed up.'' It's
a constant process of trying to make it better, and it is never
a process where you expect that it's going to be perfect.
And, by the way, Mr. Chairman, I have no reason to blow
smoke at you guys and gals here. But this committee can perform
a very important function in providing oversight. I'm going to
underscore, I believe one of the reasons that there's
consideration being given to extending the 9/11 Commission is
we really were doing oversight. People were nervous when we
were showing up. They were afraid, going, ``Oh, my god, what
are they going to say about us?'' Well, they ought to have the
same sort of respect and fear, at times, when you all show up
with your subpoena powers. And it seems to me that tucked in
there is a very important point.
I was on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for 8
years. I was vice chairman under Senator Shelby and under
Senator Specter. I think the committee did good oversight up to
where it could. But it's not created under law. It doesn't have
the kind of authority that it needs to have. It can't demand
full and complete accounting. And there is no investigative
journalism out there digging up stuff that we are missing.
So it seems to me, in this area, there's a real need for
Congress to say: We have to create stronger capability on our
part in order to be able, in this particular area where you
don't have the kind of investigative journalistic oversight,
where you can influence what the executive branch is doing,
regardless of who is President, more than you currently can.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Waxman.
Mr. Waxman. Well, I appreciate the work the two of you and
your fellow members of the Commission have done and your
presentation here today. You both seem passionate that we need
somebody in charge of intelligence. And then you both said you
thought the President's proposal was a good start.
Don't you think we need to get on to doing what we need to
do fast? Because we are going to only be here another month or
two or three; and if we are going to pass a bill, we ought to
pass a really good bill.
Would either of you be satisfied if we passed a bill like
the one the President suggested yesterday? Because he suggested
what we need is to have a director who could coordinate the
budgets--not control them. Let's start with that one. Do you
think that's good enough? I don't think your mic is on.
Admiral Lehman. Well, the devil is in the details. I think
that the fact that, here we are a day after the President
proposed this and you are hard at work preparing to begin to do
this legislation is very encouraging. It is not enough to
coordinate, and I don't think the President really was drawing
the line there at all. I think that in order for him to have
all hands on deck there supporting these initiatives, that he
didn't have to jawbone every one of them into every last detail
of our recommendations. There is time to bring them along, and
you are going to play an essential roll in bringing them along.
So I don't see anything that is contradictory. I think, by
the end of the process, I'm confident that the word coordinate,
while it might still be there, will be subservient to direct in
the executive sense. Because those powers must be given. And I
don't believe the President will oppose them. I think, you
know, unlike the rest of us, he has a whole administration that
he has to kind of herd along and keep consensus in.
Mr. Waxman. I appreciate your optimism about it.
But, Senator Kerrey, what are your views? It seems to me
that, unless the Commission demands that we act and keep in
tact their proposal and not have it watered down and made
ineffective, lest the families of the September 11 victims
continue to press in the next several months, isn't it more
likely than not, from your experience as a Senator, that this
is all going to get watered down into coordinate and the lowest
common denominator to satisfy the bureaucracies that don't want
change?
Mr. Kerrey. Yes.
Mr. Waxman. Well, that was a forthright answer. That seems
to me----
Mr. Kerrey. You gave me the opportunity to go yes or no,
Congressman.
Mr. Waxman. Well, what about the management authority of
this National Intelligence Director, that the President
suggested that there be no operational responsibilities with
this new counterterrorism center, and they wouldn't have
control over State Department, CIA, FBI, Defense, Homeland
Security, and other agencies. Do you feel that there has to be
more than just control over the budgets but management control
over these other agencies?
Senator Kerrey, why don't we start with you this time?
Senator Kerrey. Well, yes I do. I mean, in this case, I
will align myself with the executive director of the 9/11
Commission who said, in some instances, and this would be one,
it would be better to do nothing.
The NCTC is in response to the observation. The National
Security Council's budget has gotten 50 percent bigger since
September 11, but they are now down to weeds, doing operational
things. They are doing planning. They are doing J-3 work to use
a DOD phrase. And what we envision is to create the NCTC, not
to make it a larger bureaucracy but to enable the National
Security Council to get back to what it is supposed to be
doing, which is the larger policy disputes. And the larger
policy debates are always going to break out between DOD and
the Secretary of State and others in the national security
structure.
So I think, in my view--by the way, on the NID, this has
been studied and studied and studied. So the fault line will
always be between the Department of Defense and the national
foreign intelligence. And the question will be whether or not,
in this particular instance, we can rise to it. And I think
you'll see--not just John and I. I think you will see the 9/11
Commission stay very unified--respectful, Congressmen. I mean,
we have to be respectful of the President. It is an initiative
that he has taken. We have to be respectful of that initiative.
But in that moment of being respectful, point out that, if all
it is is consultative, if all it is is advisory, then you are
better off not doing it. You are better off not taking action
if the action produces another agency that doesn't have real
statutory authority.
Mr. Waxman. I share your concern. And if you look at the
failures in our intelligence, they are really quite
breathtaking. Not only in September 11, where we had some
clues, but we forgot to or we were unable to connect the dots.
But you look at what happened in Iraq, where they were
desperately trying to find evidence, not ignoring evidence, but
trying to find evidence to fit into a preconceived political
notion.
And in the late 1990's, we had the FBI looking for a plot
by the Chinese to interfere with our elections and our
political process at the same time that Hanssen was selling
information to the Russians and endangering our national
security. And the intelligence agencies didn't know about the
underground tests in--if I can just complete my thought, Mr.
Chairman--in India, and the Chalaby debacle.
All these things, it seems to me, cry out for us to enact
the kind of recommendations you have given us so we can put
this intelligence system back into some coherent place.
I urge you all to continue pressing the Congress and the
President to get these reforms enacted.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
Mr. Shays.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
In spite of some of the partisan rhetoric that I know we
are going to be hearing in the weeks and months to come, I
think we are going to get the job done, and I think we are just
by the tone that both of you are setting today. You are not
getting tempted to take political shots at either side, and
your report doesn't, either. And it's almost sacred to me what
you guys have done--and ladies. I mean, it is almost sacred.
And I believe it's going to lead to some great things.
When I look at your recommendations, I wonder what can be
done administratively, what can be done through Executive
order, what can be done through regulation, what can be done
through law, statute, and what can be done or has to be done
through House and Senate rules. And I just want to
parenthetically say, I will not vote for any rule of the House
that doesn't have these reforms next year.
For instance, if we don't create a committee that oversees
the Department of Homeland Security, that has total oversight,
I'm not voting for a rule. And I'm not going to because I
think, if I did, I would be putting my country in danger.
That's basically my mindset.
Tell me, what are the things--I realize this is a package.
But what are the things you want us to do first? Because I
don't think it's all going to come out in one bill. What would
you want to see us do first before anything else?
Admiral Lehman. Well, I would say that the--ironically, the
most important thing to do is to fix the congressional issues,
as you say, the Homeland Security. We strongly endorse a joint
committee on intelligence with appropriating powers. Fix that
first if there has to be a priority, because the rest of the
system that we are recommending will not function properly
without Congress fixing its own committee structure and
jurisdiction.
Next, I would say, enact the joint or the National
Counterterrorism Center and the National Intelligence Director
with the powers that we recommend. Again, our model here is not
a super-consolidated, making one big agency or a new
bureaucracy. The model is the kind of general electorate and
other large successful corporate model, where you have a very
small, powerful CEO at headquarters staff, where you don't try
to micromanage the refrigerator division and the jet engine
division. You give them objectives. You provide them the tools.
If they don't produce or they don't pursue the corporate
policy, you remove the people who are obstructive and replace
them with people that do it. You don't try to run the
operations themselves. That's the model that we are
recommending here.
And it's of a piece. It all goes together. The National
Counterterrorism Center and the other national centers, for
instance, for proliferation that we are recommending all are
enabled by a powerful National Intelligence Director. So it is
of one piece. And those two, if you want symbols, are the most
important.
Mr. Kerrey. Well, I don't know, Congressman. I mean, I
agree with John. I do think, if you can get the congressional
oversight piece done and create a much stronger committee under
law, with much greater enforceable requirements that we
currently have, I think a lot of it's going to take care of
itself, especially since one of the--I strongly believe that
one of the things that's really difficult in democracy is, it
is oftentimes the little things that are most important. So it
may not be a big enough deal for the Times or the Post or
somebody to cover it, and because it passes unanimously, nobody
is going to pay attention to it. But those little differences
oftentimes determine the difference between success and
failure.
The only thing, when it comes to doing things first, that I
would recommend, among the things that I found to be most
helpful in getting in the right mood to--you know, to agree
with John. But, you know, you've got to be in the right mood to
agree with John. And he has to be in an even better mood to
agree with me.
If you read the sentencing statements of the 1997 trial of
Ramzi Youssef, the mastermind of the World Trade Center
bombing, and read the sentencing statement of Judge Duffy in
that trial. There is an ideological fault line there, and
you've got to come to terms with it. And if you don't come to
terms with it, you get it wrong. It's not about a mechanical
response to a mechanical problem. There are ideas that are
being argued on the planet today, and those ideas are gaining
currency and gaining ground in areas that we think that they
shouldn't be gaining currency and gaining ground.
I mean, I would urge you--the report itself is too darn
long to process in a short period of time, but ask your staff
to get the 1997 sentencing statement of Ramzi Youssef and the
sentencing statement of Judge Duffy, because it describes the
fault line and describes where these arguments are.
I've heard people say, ``Well, these guys are all evil-
doers, and they're all cowards.'' Read this statement, and what
you will see is a political argument, distorted, and messed up
and dangerous, but you'll hear a political argument that was
confronted, I think, in the absolute correct way by Judge
Duffy, but you hear it in a way that I think will enable you to
sustain the motivation that you are going to need through all--
you know, all the difficulty of trying to change these laws.
Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Kanjorski.
Mr. Kanjorski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
If I could just ask a few questions about, how you envision
the national director? Is he going to be of Cabinet status, or
is he replaceable and fireable by the President? Does he have a
term of years? How do we make sure that he isn't just a tool,
as perhaps some people have suggested Mr. Tenet became in the
last several years of responding to the needs of the White
House rather than having an independent mind?
Admiral Lehman. Well, we are silent in our recommendations
as to Cabinet membership. I think most of us think that Cabinet
membership is not a particularly good idea. But Cabinet level,
that is, executive level, one, is essential.
Mr. Kanjorski. But would he have a term that is
independent----
Admiral Lehman. No, we have not recommended that he or she
have a specific term, because he will have such power that he
needs to serve at the pleasure of the President. He must be
confirmed by the Senate, must be responsive to the Congress
to----
Mr. Kanjorski. But we would be retreating from the
precedent of the Director of the FBI and the present CIA
Director. They have a term of years.
Admiral Lehman. Well, the CIA Director, I don't believe has
a term of years. The FBI does, and I'm not so sure that's a
successful model to pursue, myself. But we did not address
that. We are silent on the issue of term.
But I would like to follow what underlies your question.
It is essential to keep policy and intelligence separate;
and in the structure that we are recommending that is
maintained in the all-source National Counterintelligence
Center and the other centers for fusing intelligence by
professional analysts, providing the purely objective, as much
as humanly possible, product; and, if you will, the National
Intelligence Director is the person the President holds
responsible for the integrity of this process, to bring forward
to the National Security Council.
I personally think the practice that has grown up in the
past few years of the President requiring that professionals be
brought along for the daily briefing, that he gets to see and
hear the professional analysts who are most expert in the
particular area or subject matter, this provides an ideal setup
for that, where the President will have visibility.
The National Counterterrorist Center Director will be
confirmed by the Senate. He will be known to the President. So
you will not have the danger of a National Intelligence
Director becoming the monopoly source of information to the
President.
Mr. Kanjorski. Mr. Secretary, I am sort of worried. As I
gather, the conclusion of the Commission is that this is a
threat above and beyond what we have imagined it to be, this
fundamental Islamic movement worldwide. I don't have enough
information to make the judgment myself. But we have to balance
that with the Constitution and the preservation of the
Constitution.
The one thing that worried me, I was thinking of the old
NKVD leader in the Soviet Union, Beria, who succeeded to become
prime minister by virtue of the fact that he ran the secret
police.
If we centralize that authority and give them a $40
billion-plus budget to control at will, does that not eschew
the authority that it may become uncontrollable, and the
protection we are doing all this for, to save the Constitution,
may be dissipated?
Admiral Lehman. It is a very legitimate question to raise
and to address, and I think the answer to it is the control
must be exercised by the Congress. That is why we insist that
he or she be confirmed and accountable to and at the beck and
call of the committees of Congress. But it is no different--in
fact, if you compare the powers, the inherent powers of the
Secretary of Defense, compared to this intelligence director,
the intelligence director's pale in comparison to what we have
put into the centralized Secretary of Defense. So we believe it
is manageable. We are recommending other protections of civil
liberties, an oversight board in Justice and so forth, because
these are real, legitimate issues that have to be kept
constant. We can't let the pendulum swing totally over to
security.
Mr. Kanjorski. Some people suggested there may be a
political idea in Congress. If I may extend this, for 6 years
of the last administration, all I did was sit on committees and
in hearings and oversight, but I cannot remember anything in
the last 3 years of oversight. We can't even get subpoenas for
the Defense Department.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
Mr. Schrock.
Mr. Schrock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and, Commissioners,
thank you both for being here. Thanks for taking the politics
out of it. Thanks for being brutally frank. It is most welcome
and most refreshing, I can assure you.
Throughout your report, comparisons are made between the
Joint Chiefs of Staff and the new structure that advocates for
the NID. The Joint Chiefs are used as an example of a
successful joint operations planning agency that is the type of
capability that we hope to instill in our intelligence
community. I don't have the exact numbers, but I know the Joint
Chiefs is very large, numbering in the thousands, and exists as
a separate robust agency that draws on the finest officers from
the various military services.
If this type of capability is desirable, why did the
Commission recommend a modest NID directorate with a relatively
small staff and is just another Presidential adviser? Why not
advocate a more robust capability that can truly steer the
multiple intelligence agencies and make meaningful demands for
their resources and budgets?
The joint duty is currently sought after, you know, a
prestigious assignment for many military officers and a
requirement for promotion to a general or admiral rank. Should
similar joint intelligence analysis and operation and planning
experience be required for promotion above a certain level in
the intelligence community?
Mr. Kerrey. Well, Congressman, I appreciate the question. I
think the recommendations that we are making for the NID, even
though we do envision it being a relatively small agency, has
substantially enhanced powers. We do cross the line and say
that we think that DIA, that NRO, that NGA, that NSA, that
these agencies, the directors, should be recommended by the NID
Director or the NID Secretary. Whatever you end up, they should
have the power to make the recommendation.
Under current law, they have consultative authority, and
that is all. Under current law, the appropriation goes to the
Department of Defense, and we are recommending the
appropriation go to the new Director or Secretary. I mean, it
doesn't take a lot of intelligence to figure this out, but that
will give this Director and this individual a substantial
amount of power and authority.
But I also want to use this as an opportunity to point
out--although I don't want to be filibustering you with my
answer, I did want to point out that, in my case, my vision for
this is not so much that we are creating new structures or a
czar or super-agency but that we really need to be building the
network that allows the person with the question to get in
contact with the person that has the answer.
I would urge you again to read--there is a memorandum for
the record produced by Major General Russel--I think his name
is Honore. I think he was the CINC of NORTHCOM in 2003 when we
did our memorandum for the record.
Basically, what he is saying is we are heading toward a
train wreck of computer interoperability, where the first
responders won't be able to make contact with the person at the
top. And nothing in this whole thing was more painful than
listening to Mohammad Atta say, we have planes. American
Airlines knew it, and the Department of Defense didn't. I mean,
all the way through that day you see this interoperability
problem.
So some of this is not so much giving somebody the
authority but having a vision for a management network that
enables that person that has the question out there, wherever
they are, to get in contact with the person that has the
answer, especially the person who has the answer with the
capability of deploying resources to help that individual solve
their problem.
Admiral Lehman. By the way, your idea of joint tours, that
works so well now after Goldwater-Nichols, is a very good one,
and I hope we will see some language to that effect in the
legislation, which is why we recommend and believe firmly that
the National Intelligence Director has to have personnel
authorities to ensure that kind of thing happens.
Mr. Kerrey. The point that John actually made right after
we did our interview with former President Clinton, that one of
the problems, however, with Goldwater-Nichols, and I have heard
some of the concern about the NID that is sort of on this
point, one of the problems you have with Goldwater-Nichols is
the President is sitting there talking with his Joint Chiefs of
Staff and said what is our options, and you only got one person
in the room today. Twenty years ago you had four people in the
room telling you a range of options. It limits the President's
capabilities. We got down to this. Either we have to invade or
we have to send in T-LANS. There were a lot of options in
between that were never fully considered and I think were
tragic consequences.
Mr. Schrock. In your minds, is it desirable that the term
of this Director overlap different administrations so as to
take advantage of institutional knowledge and experience? I
have heard a lot of members of the services and the service
secretaries--and you were one of those--Mr. Secretary, who said
after 4 years you are just learning the job and then you are
gone. Should it be an 8-year term? What should it be?
Admiral Lehman. My view is that the professionals, the
heads, for instance, of these national centers, should have
long terms, and not necessarily in statute but at least an
accepted policy that it should be at least a 4, maybe a 6-year
term. But I personally do not think--and, again, we, the
Commission, have taken no position on terms. It could work with
terms. It could work without terms. I personally do not think
terms for the most powerful position is a good idea. I think it
must serve at the pleasure of the President.
Mr. Kerrey. I agree with that. The challenge, of course--
Warren Buffett has this great line. He says he likes to buy
companies that an idiot would run, because eventually one will.
Well, you have the same problem. You have to write the law
understanding that every now and then somebody is going to put
a real stinker in there to run the joint. You have to hope that
the body across the way catches enough of it and be able to,
you know, exercise some judgment beyond just ideology.
So I think you have to--I think the NID--if you create an
NID with this kind of power, I think you have to let that
individual serve at the pleasure of the President.
Mr. Schrock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
Mrs. Maloney.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling these
hearings so quickly. It is important, and I thank the
Commission members.
I truly do believe that the 9/11 Commission is an example
of government at its best. We certainly need to act on your
recommendations. We do not have time to wait. The terrorists
are certainly not going to wait for us to be ready.
As one who represents many of the families of September 11,
and some of them are here today to testify, we thank you for
your continued determination. They have expressed their desire
that all of your recommendations be implemented, and they have
stated they will not rest until that happens. They have even
more recommendations, and I look forward to their testimony,
and I certainly support their efforts.
I would like to turn to one of the areas that, Senator
Kerrey, you have spoken about, many, many times, and that is
the high-threat funding formulas.
Secretary Ridge testified at your Commission hearings in
New York City that he believed that our Homeland Security
resources should go, ``Where the threat exists.'' And, clearly,
that is New York City. We are again in the cross hairs of al
Qaeda.
But the administration has never offered a plan to Congress
for actually fixing the homeland funding formulas to keep them
in line with the recommendations of the Commission, that they
be based on threat and risk assessment. Instead, they have
continued in an almost discretionary total way of allocating
these funds. Specifically, in the basic homeland form grant
formula, 60 percent of it is discretionary in the hands of the
administration. Yet they have not allocated that on risk
assessment. I would like to know whether you believe that
should be changed.
Second, they have ballooned the number of high-threat
cities from the original 7 to now over 80, which resulted in
aid to New York City, to give one example--and other high-
threat cities have the same example--it was cut 69 percent,
from $150 million in 2003 to $47 million in 2004.
The fire grant resulted in 9 cents going per capita to New
York, with over $9 in Montana. The basic State grant for New
York is roughly $5 and in Wyoming is over $38.
Just last week, the chairman of the House Select Committee
was getting ready to introduce a bill that was supposed to
provide homeland funding based on risk, but not all of the
details are known. It is not even open to the public yet. But
we know that it goes away from all high-threat funding and
would still guarantee a minimum to each State without the State
needing to justify the need for a minimum or even being high
threat.
So, in your opinion, is that the approach Congress should
be adopting to avoid distributing homeland funds as pork-
barrel, as you have talked about? Would you elaborate on the
work on the committee on high-threat formulas and how the
funding should be distributed?
Mr. Kerrey. Well, Congresswoman, I spent 8 years on the
Senate Appropriations Committee, and I am an advocate of pork.
So I think it is basically 535 people in Congress trying to
figure out how the money is going to be spent. I have argued
strenuously with those who say, well, we ought to do it all by
formula and turn it over to the bureaucrats and let them
decide. So my hands are not clean on this one.
I don't think you are going to change that, and I am not
honestly that familiar with the formula itself. It sounds
like--you go from 8 to 60 cities. It does sound like one of
those mistakes that are so obvious that you probably shouldn't
be doing it.
But my own view on this is unless and until we recognize
that the likelihood of an attack in New York City and northern
Virginia or the Nation's Capital, Washington, DC, again, is
very great, unless you come to terms with that, it is going to
be very difficult to do the right thing.
In my view, the right thing is to create, if possible, a
separate line in DOD and defense appropriations. Because
anybody that is involved with fire effort or police effort, OEM
effort up in the State of New York is doing the Nation's work.
New York City has been attacked twice, there have been at least
two additional attempts that were intercepted, and if the
Nation gets attacked again, it is likely New York City is going
to be attacked.
I just don't think I don't have much confidence--I am not
wildly enthusiastic about getting into the mess of trying to
figure out how to make Congress work better when it comes to
doing appropriations. Therefore, the conclusion I reach is that
what we should consider is creating a separate line in the DOD
authorization so that you recognize right up front that in New
York City it is the frontline of our defense efforts against
terrorists.
Admiral Lehman. If I could just followup on that, that is a
very good point. Because what we lack on today is in the
connectivity among the firemen, policemen and the first
responders and between them and as it escalates up through the
FEMA, through the National Guard, which are going to be needed
to respond in potential attacks in the future, on up into the
military.
This is something where the Department of Defense has
tremendous expertise, has procurement, has technology, has R&D.
Fort Monmouth, NJ, the head of the Army Signal Corps, is just
outside of New York. So this is something I think should be a
Defense Department responsibility, to provide that kind of
support to the first responders in the high-risk cities like
New York.
Mrs. Maloney. Mr. Chairman, I request permission to place
in the record a letter to Congressman Cox urging that the
formula be based on assessment of risk and vulnerabilities, and
also the statement from this important report, which I hope
does not gather dust but is implemented in its entirety, the
statement that Homeland Security should be based, the funding
formula, strictly on assessment of risk and vulnerabilities----
Chairman Tom Davis. Without objection.
Mrs. Maloney [continuing]. And statements of other areas
that are totally within the discretion of the administration
now.
Chairman Tom Davis. Without objection.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney
follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. McHugh.
Mr. McHugh. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Gentleman,
thank you and to your fellow Commissioners for your bipartisan
approach to this very, very important issue.
Obviously, as a New Yorker and as someone who was in New
York City just yesterday, the pain will never go away, nor
should it. As Senator Kerrey said in his comments, this entire
examination has helped remind us of that desperate day and the
emotions we felt.
Just for the record, I listened to Senator Kerrey's
comments about his intention to vote for President. Secretary
Lehman, you are under oath. Who will you vote for for
President?
Admiral Lehman. I am going to vote for President Bush.
Mr. McHugh. The record will reflect it is a tie.
Chairman Tom Davis. That reflects the national polls, by
the way.
Mr. McHugh. Following up, the gentleman from Pennsylvania
made some comments about civil liberties and concerns that many
have expressed. You gentleman are aware that some of your
recommendations--the biometric, national ID card, driver's
license, etc.--has caused some concerns.
Next year, major portions of the Patriot Act are set to
expire. It is going to be very controversial. I happen to
believe that if you had to live under, as a Commission, pre-
Patriot Act, and had to abide by the barriers that existed in
Intel sharing, you probably could not have done your report.
From the perspective of the bill and the need to have a
National Intelligence Director and a counterintelligence
center, that ability to synthesize, how would you comment as to
the efficacy and the need to maintain at least the spirit of
the Patriot Act?
Mr. Kerrey. Well, Congressman, first of all, I think that I
have to declare that anything that has to be called the Patriot
Act, I sort of felt like I probably would have voted against it
without even reading the darn thing. But having examined it--
and I didn't examine it at all until I got on this Commission--
I think it has been misdescribed by both, in many cases,
extreme supporters and extreme opponents.
What we concluded was that if you just put the burden of
proof on the executive branch, don't give the government more
investigative powers than are absolutely necessary, if you can
get in that quiet moment where you say tell me what value added
is occurring here, because if there is value added, there is no
question we have gotten value added in breaking down the walls
and expediting FISA, although with FISA right now we got a
backlog because we don't have enough people to process the
applications.
Just like if you are sitting over there right now working
for the National Geospatial Agency with a Top Secret clearance,
the private sector will pay you $20,000 because there is a 15-
month backlog on security clearances. So there is a number of
areas here it seems to me that the Patriot Act provokes us to
examine, beyond just what the law itself does.
I mean, I think if it is possible to get to that moment
where conservatives that are concerned about excessive
government power and liberals that are concerned about
excessive government power can actually examine the details of
the statute, then I think you will extend those things that
need to be extended and won't extend those things that don't. I
am afraid, based upon my reading of it and my knowledge of it,
which is pretty limited, that is the best I can do.
Admiral Lehman. I would just add I think overall it has
provided a tremendous increase in our security, but, in doing
that, it has raised the specter that in the future there could
be abuses, which is why we have recommended that we set up in
the Justice Department a board of oversight specifically to
protect privacy and civil liberties and so forth.
But its contribution in dismantling ``the wall'' and the
whole criminal justice mentality of no sharing has been
invaluable. So it is important that those essential things be
continued and made permanent and at the same time not losing
sight that civil liberties must always be a consideration.
Mr. Kerrey. Like I say, there will come a day--we may not
be able to imagine it today, there will come a day when the war
on terrorism is sort of back to background noise, 20 years from
now, 25 years from now. You are always going to have terrorism
as a tactic being used by individuals against more powerful
people. There is going to come day when we are going to hear
cases where the Patriot Act is sort of used like RICO, not for
its intended purposes but for other purposes.
I mean, really, I know that there are times when
conservatives that are concerned about the power of the
government and liberals that are concerned about the power of
the government can come together, and that is what I trust the
most, it is that conversation that I trust the most when it
comes to trying to figure out how to get the Patriot Act
reauthorized so it can do what John says, it can add value
where value is being added, but where it is not necessary,
don't extend it.
Again, I don't come here with any very specific
recommendations, but if it really isn't necessary, I urge you
not to extend it.
Mr. McHugh. Thank you both very much. I guess that is the
efficacy of sunsetting.
I would say just, Senator, I would say I suspect a lot of
people voted for and against it without reading it. So,
business as usual.
Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Kucinich.
Mr. Kucinich. Thank you very much.
First of all, I want to thank both gentleman for serving on
the Commission and, for each of you, for your long,
distinguished career in public service, which certainly
informed your work on the Commission.
I want to pick up a little bit from Mr. McHugh and the
question that he raised. I am pleased that the 9/11 Commission
identified civil liberties as an area of major concern. As a
matter of fact, on page 394 of the report, it says, ``While
protecting our homeland, Americans should be mindful of threats
to vital personal and civil liberties. This balancing is no
easy task, but we must constantly strive to keep it right.''
Of course, those of us who are involved in the debates over
the Patriot Act and have worked to pass amendments to it were
guided by the spirit of Ben Franklin, who said, ``Those who
would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.''
Now the Commission, continuing with its recommendations, on
page 395 said that we should ``look across the government at
the actions we are taking to protect ourselves, to ensure that
liberty concerns are appropriately considered.''
You recommend, as Mr. Lehman has mentioned, ``At this time
of increased and consolidated government authority, there
should be a board within the executive branch to oversee
adherence to the guidelines we recommend and the commitment the
government makes to defend our civil liberties.''
Now I have not yet seen, members of the committee, the
administration concur with this recommendation, and I would
dare say that we are really faced with a challenge here, so
that we do not permit fear of terrorism to erode our basic
liberties and thereby undermine the spirit of America itself.
The Commission says, page 395, ``If our liberties are
curtailed, we lose the values we are struggling to defend.''
Part of what we are dealing with is terrorism, and the other
part is fear of terrorism.
Senator Kerrey, you mentioned in your remarks a moment ago
about there is two sides to the question of the Patriot Act,
and we have the Patriot Act, which I opposed, these color-coded
threat systems. You know, Americans are forever wondering, what
does this mean, Code Orange? The CAPS program, total
information awareness, discussions about that, there are real
concerns out there around the country about the potential of
these structures to curtain our essential liberties and whether
or not these structures open the door to manipulation of
information for political purposes.
So I think that, aside from the obvious duty that we have
as Members of Congress taking an oath to defend the
Constitution of the United States, this Commission
recommendation to create a strong board to oversee the
government initiatives and protection of our civil liberties is
something that is absolutely critical and is something we
should consider incorporating possibly in the form of an
amendment.
I would like to ask if either Mr. Kerrey or Mr. Lehman
would like to elaborate on your vision for what could be called
a Federal civil liberty ombudsman, somebody to make sure that
this quality that we have, that is so essential to who we are
as a Nation, is not eroded.
Mr. Kerrey. Well, the idea, Congressman, came actually
from--at least the first time I heard the idea discussed, it
came from a discussion of the detainee policy right after
September 11, where we were unable to ascertain any security
value added from all those detainee efforts and felt that there
was going to be a need, regardless of what the effort was, to
create a force inside the Justice Department that could do this
kind of evaluation in an objective fashion.
I also have to say, if Ben Franklin were around today, if
he had been on this 9/11 Commission and come to terms with
Ramsey Yusef and Osama bin Laden and other guys who sit around
and talk sort of casually about killing hundreds of thousands
of Americans, I do think that he would say, well, wait a
minute, we can't sit around and worry about violating Osama bin
Laden and Ramsey Yusef's civil liberties.
Remember, in 1998 and 1999----
Mr. Kucinich. Senator, with all due respect--this is my
time.
Mr. Kerrey. No, Congressman, I don't need you to say ``with
all due respect'' as you interrupt me.
In 1998 and 1999, we sat around and tried to debate whether
or not we were going to pull the trigger to kill Osama bin
Laden. We had that great debate because we were worried about
collateral damage at the moment he was planning to kill 3,000
Americans, trying to acquire nuclear weapons to kill maybe a
million. It is right in the report.
You have this stark language of us being concerned. I
embrace that concern. I am glad we lead in those areas. I am
glad we have this concern about civil liberties. It needs to be
there. But the enemy has no concern for civil liberties. The
enemy has no concern for the Geneva Convention.
You have to come with that--and I know you do in that
debate--we have to come with that hard-headed attitude, or are
not going to get this thing balanced right. All we are going to
do is score a point to an audience that is apt to be
sympathetic to our viewpoint.
Mr. Kucinich. You did not answer my question with respect
to the balance.
Mr. Kerrey. Well, I answered as best as I can, or as far as
I am going to go today, I guess, Congressman. I mean, where do
you find my answer to be inaccurate?
Mr. Kucinich. How do you protect civil liberties?
Mr. Kerrey. I don't think you protect civil liberties
absolutely. I don't have an absolute civil liberty to speak
freely, to operate freely. I always have to balance what I am
saying against the interests and the rights of another
individual.
So if I am sitting in a mosque somewhere having a
conversation that I think it is a pretty good thing what
happened on September 11, to kill Americans, and I would like
to perhaps support other people who are doing the same sort of
thing, as far as I am concerned, I just forfeited my right, it
seems to me, to not have the government of the United States
interfere with either that conversation or my effort to do so.
So I can't balance it in general, unfortunately. I have to
get to the specific thing that we are talking about in order to
be able to do that balancing.
That is why I say, Congressman, I do think both the
mechanism that we are recommending and the general thing I said
earlier with the Patriot Act, you got to get to that place
where you have both liberals and conservatives who say we don't
want the government to have too much power, because that is, in
the end, what you are dealing with. It is not so much civil
liberties as it is the power of the government to investigate
us without any control over that government, regardless of what
it is you are doing. And I think you need--in our system of
government, I think we need real limitations on what the
government is able to do with individual citizens. At the same
time, we are fighting a war against individuals that don't feel
that way.
Mr. Schrock [presiding]. Ms. Ros-Lehtinen.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thank the gentlemen for your service to our country and
all the Commission members for rising above the political
rhetoric and the bashing and all of the partisanship that goes
on, even as you have heard in this committee. You have produced
a truly bipartisan report that rises above that and honors the
thousands who died on September 11, honors their grieving
family members and also gives hope to our men and women in
uniform throughout the world who are fighting those Islamic
extremists who seek our destruction and who corrupted their
religious teachings in such a distorted way that they can state
that they are killing for their creator.
I wanted to raise two issues that were raised in your
report that is currently being debated in our committee on
International Relations, and we will have you appear before us
in the coming days. These legislative proposals we are putting
forth have to do with the information-sharing component of your
report and the need for executive branch reorganization. I
wanted to ask you if you believe that each agency involved in
counterterrorism efforts should reorganize their own
infrastructure to better integrate and coordinate the
intelligence, the policy, the operational components, and
should each agency essentially have a single dedicated office
or division working exclusively on U.S. counterterrorism policy
that will serve as a point of contact for other U.S. agencies
in the soon to be created terrorism center.
Also, another proposal that we are looking at is your
observation of the Commission that has to do with the need to
transform the system of need-to-know to one of need-to-share.
But there are concerns that increasing the number of
individuals with access to intelligence could jeopardize
sources and methods; and, in turn, that could jeopardize not
only our intelligence gathering capabilities but our
operational response as well. How would you address those
concerns and safeguard against these potential problems?
Thank you.
Admiral Lehman. I will start, if I might, to answer that.
One of the most essential things in reforming our current
structure is to rationalize the current security system, as you
rightly put it, to change from a need-to-know to a need-to-
share culture. That is one more very strong remedy for a
National Intelligence Director who has that power that cuts
across agencies.
Today, too many agencies do all their own classifying, do
all their own background investigations, do all their own
stamping, and when in doubt stamp it one level higher than it
should be. What we are recommending is a cultural change, and
that goes to the first part of your question, should each of
the 15 agencies change, reorganize themselves.
I believe that the only reason for making these
organizational changes is to bring about a cultural change, to
provide an environment in the whole community and in each of
the agencies where people can become innovative, can do the
right thing. Because we have fabulously talented people in each
of these agencies that are kind of in shackles because of the
bureaucratic process.
So if we can change, give the power to somebody at the top
to break up these shackles, to remove these obstacles, then
each of the agency heads will be able to reorganize their own
agencies and bring about a culture of sharing and of putting
proper responsibilities where they belong.
Specifically, in the classification issue, one of the
greatest tyrannies in the classification system is what is
called originator control. If NSA originates a piece of
intelligence, they get to control it, nobody else. If CIA
originates a piece, they get to control it, it is called ORCON.
That has to be totally changed.
We have to have a system where sources and methods are
detached as soon as the intelligence is gathered and then it is
fed into the system of sharing free, so everybody don't have to
maintain this ORCON compartmentalization throughout. That is
why you are getting an idea why we believe this is a whole. It
is not a Chinese menu, these recommendations.
Chairman Tom Davis [presiding]. Thank you.
Mr. Davis.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
want to thank you and the ranking member for convening this
hearing. I also want to thank the witnesses for the tremendous
work you have done as part of the Commission. I want to commend
the family members for the role that they played in bringing
the Commission about.
On Saturday, the Washington Post ran a front-page story
that described a significant policy shift by the Bush
administration. It announced that it will now oppose
inspections and verifications as part of an international
treaty that would ban the production of nuclear weapons.
Senator Kerrey, could you give us your views on this? Is
the administration going in the right direction, the wrong
direction, appropriate direction? What do you think about this?
Mr. Kerrey. I wasn't in town Saturday, so I missed that
story. I am not sure, Congressman, honestly what the
administration is proposing. I do think that the chem/bio
nuclear threat is very real, especially nuclear. It is almost a
question of when, not if, one of these gets used. At the same
time, I must tell you, I think the likelihood of the United
States being attacked by a terrorist using just straight
conventional weapons is a more likely thing.
You all were terrified by a couple of snipers here for a
number of months, and that wasn't weapons of mass destruction.
So it can still be pretty easy for me to go out and get a
couple hundred pounds of C-4 and a time stick and put it
someplace where it would do a lot of damage. There are a lot of
conventional vulnerabilities.
So I don't think that is the question that you asked me,
but it is about as far as I can go to answer your question. I
don't know what the administration proposed.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Let me proceed. The article went on
to say the administration's position will dramatically weaken
any treaty and make it harder to prevent nuclear materials from
falling into the hands of terrorists.
Mr. Lehman, do you have a view on this?
Admiral Lehman. First of all, I do believe that
proliferation efforts have to be redoubled and intensified,
that this really is the most serious long-term threat. I agree
with Bob that the more immediate is conventional but the
catastrophic is in nuclear. So I am a true believer in
nonproliferation, and we are recommending one of the national
centers be a nonproliferation center.
However, I also believe in President Reagan's dictum,
``trust but verify.'' When you are dealing with nuclear
materials, we have found--I mean, I was sent by President
Reagan to try to threaten President Sia of Pakistan not to
proceed with nuclear weapons. I sat right across from him at
dinner, and he looked me straight in the eye, and he said I
give you my word, we are not developing nuclear weapons. And
about 2 years later, they had their first test.
So I used to be, in one incarnation, the Deputy Director of
the Arms Control Agency. I believe in arms control. I believe
in treaties. But they must be verifiable. We cannot take the
words, we cannot trust a toothless international organization
to verify. We have to have an international organization or
national means, such as we developed with the Soviets, that are
intrusive but reliable.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Let me just ask--finally, the
article said that the administration came to its conclusion
because such a system would cost too much. The Commission
report says that preventing proliferation of these weapons
warrants maximum effort by strengthening counterproliferation.
I assume that the Commission felt that the cost would be
warranted if we could prevent further proliferation of these
weapons. Is that your understanding?
Admiral Lehman. The principle, as opposed to its specific--
because I don't think any of us on the Commission addressed
this specific move by the administration--but money spent on
reducing proliferation, regardless of the cost, in my judgment,
if it is effective means it is money well spent.
Mr. Kerrey. It does look from the article that this weakens
verification. Frankly, Congressman, I would want to ask Senator
Nunn what he thought of this or somebody else that steeped
themselves in trying to reduce the threat of nuclear
proliferation.
Indeed, in our discussions, we pointed to the Nunn-Lugar
Act as something that, with the corrections Congress made
through good oversight, is something that needs additional
funding and additional support. So I would seek to deflect your
question to somebody that is more knowledgeable than I. As is
oftentimes the case when I see something on the surface, my
surface reaction would be this is going to weaken our
capability to stop proliferation. I would check it with
somebody more knowledgeable than I.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Danny K. Davis follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Mrs. Miller.
Mrs. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it.
Let me just say to the panelists here how much we certainly
appreciate your dedication to our Nation. You have all had
terrific careers, but I think certainly what you have done with
the 9/11 Commission will be a mark of your careers as well. I
appreciate your coming.
I appreciate our chairman calling this hearing and the
leadership of our Speaker as well. There are a number of
different committees that will be having hearings on this
remarkable report that you brought out. I think it was very
appropriate. I had some consternation about the Congress going
on recess right as you were delivering this remarkable piece of
work, and so I think there are a number of things that our
committee should be looking at with your recommendations.
I am going to go to something that is so almost
ridiculously simple but so fundamental in one of your
recommendations and something I have a little bit of expertise
in as well.
Before I got this job I was a Michigan Secretary of State
and in that my principal responsibilities--one of my principal
responsibilities was serving as the chief motor vehicle
administrator, issuing drivers' licenses, State identification,
etc.
Actually, in your Commission's report, here on page 390 you
have a recommendation ``secure identification should begin in
the United States. The Federal Government should set standards
for the issuance of birth certificates, sources of
identification, such as drivers' licenses,'' etc.
I wonder, during the course of your hearing, as you were
taking testimony there, if you found that there was--at least
it has been my experience that there really has not been a
Federal standard on how we are issuing drivers' licenses or
State ID cards. This I think is the foundation of your
identity.
You have a driver's license, that is how you are going to
enroll into a flight school or get on an airplane or what have
you. Yet all of the various States--there are a number that
have very high secured drivers' licenses, essentially
fraudulent free, but there are still a number of States who are
issuing drivers' licenses, first of all, without requiring any
really good, essential primary documentation as to the identity
of the individual that they are issuing these licenses to, and
I think we have a serious problem with that.
For instance, with commercial drivers' licenses, just
reading this latest terrorist threat, we see that there is
quite a bit of consternation that much of this terrorist threat
could manifest itself in people in trucks, in cars, with bombs.
You have I think the possibility certainly with not having
the kind of secured licensing system that we need to have with
people getting commercial drivers' licenses, for instance, with
hazardous materials endorsements. They are literally using our
own freedoms against us. Yet the technology does exist out
there for us to have not only secure licenses but biometrics,
the retinal scanning, whether or not we would put fingerprints
on licenses.
I think we all have to be very concerned as we use
technology about privacy concerns. At the same time, there
certainly is technology there, and it would seem appropriate,
and as you say in your recommendations here, that the Federal
Government should be issuing Federal standards to the various
States.
Again, I know we are talking about national security
directors, etc., but this is such a fundamental thing that
every American has and needs to have, and I do think the
Federal Government would have a very appropriate role in this.
I am just looking for a little comment from you two individuals
on that.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Candice S. Miller follows:]
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Admiral Lehman. Well, I am very pleased that you single
this out, because I think all of us on the Commission are very
proud of this recommendation, because it came from some very
interesting intellectual disputation on the Commission. Because
there were some of us who were sympathetic to the idea of a
national identity card and others that were very concerned
about the privacy and civil liberties issues.
We believe we came up with what is as near to a perfect
solution as you can with this national standard, because this
is not a national identity card. It keeps in the States the
responsibility for those documents and for the administration
that goes behind that. There will be no national identity card.
Yet it gives all the security benefits that a national identity
card would give. And it does not have to be enforced by the
Federal Government. If there are Federal standards, it becomes
enforced by the insurance industry and by private industry. If
a State doesn't adhere to national standards, insurance rates
are going to be a lot higher.
Similarly, we recommend the adoption of national standards
for building safety and fire codes and so forth. Similarly, the
Federal Government doesn't have to enforce it. It gets enforced
by insurance underwriters and private industry. So we are very
pleased with that and hope it will get enacted.
Mr. Kerrey. I actually would have gone further with the
recommendations. Just for all those folks that are worried that
the national identification card is going to impinge on your
privacy, get rid of your credit cards first, stop using the
public e-mail second, don't travel anymore, third, and then
tell me what the hell you think of it.
I mean, the problem is we have given away so much of our
privacy already without knowing it; and the trouble is, absent
our capacity to in a much more sophisticated way tell who that
small fraction is--there is no more than 1 percent--in fact, it
is less than 1 percent of the 500 million visitors of the
United States of America we believe have criminal intent.
The trouble is, yes, they are slowed down a bit, but it is
the 499 million others that are slowed down that cause us to
basically impose upon ourselves more regulatory costs than we
ought to and more regulatory delays, etc. This is about as far
as we could go on a Commission.
But I will just tell you, on the Democratic side of this
Commission, there was enthusiasm to push this envelope even
further.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Tierney.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Just as the members of the families who are here today and
all they represent have turned their personal pain into public
service, and we thank them for that, I want to add my remarks
to the Commission members, the two people here before us, and
thank them for their public service. You have done a great
public service to the country, and we all appreciate that.
There is no reason in my mind, having looked at all the
exhaustive work the Commission has done to date, that we
couldn't have in place by September 11, 2004, on the
anniversary date, some legislation to move us forward, and I
really hope that this Congress, the majority, takes a direction
on that, and certainly we will work with them to get that done.
In your report, you had a strong desire for a National
Intelligence Director that had control over budgets, the
ability to approve and submit nominations for the heads of
initial agencies, a counterterrorism center that had
responsibility for operational planning. I think all of those
things make absolute sense, but I think they also demand
incredible oversight, which is a point you both made today.
In your report, you give two suggestions of how we might do
that. One is a joint House-Senate committee for intelligence,
and the other, of course, is one committee in each body
designated toward that goal, with combining authorizing and
appropriations powers. What is the preference and why?
Mr. Kerrey. Well, it is most unfortunate, from my
standpoint, you found the two----
Mr. Tierney. Is your mic on, Senator?
Mr. Kerrey. It is, yes. The two people that are the
strongest advocates of a joint committee are sitting before you
today, so when we say what are the preferences, we are going to
leave out the preferences of the other Commissioners as we
respond, because we favor the joint committee.
I favor the joint committee because I think is the
strongest of the options. It gives Congress a stronger play. It
gives Congress the strongest possible play.
If you go back and look at the joint Atomic Energy
Commission model, the critique that was the loudest and
eventually shut it down was that Congress was treading on the
privileges over the executive more than it should.
In this area, where classification is the rule, you don't
know what is going on. Congress has to have a strong committee.
Regardless of which option you pick though, Congressman, I
would make sure it is written into law. Don't do with
congressional resolutions. No matter what the critics of the
CIA will tell you, the men and women who work there follow the
law, and they are just a little less persuaded by a
congressional resolution.
Second, require full and complete accounting. Require that
in the statute. Especially if it is in law, it will be done.
The third thing is. Because it is classified, because you
don't have the oversight, whichever model you pick, require in
law that the committee issue a public report once a year that
is not classified, that lets people know what the status of
these agencies are. Are they funded well enough, where is the
weaknesses, where is the strengths, etc. Get something out
there that is public.
The principal reason I think that Congress may find the
joint committee appealing, however, and it is a very important
one--again, I was on the Appropriations Committee, and I know
that combining authorizing and appropriating--in the Senate,
you could probably get 60 people privately to tell you that is
a great idea. But the only people who are going to vote for it
when it comes to the floor are people who are, A, not a member
of the Appropriations Committee or, B, hope to get something
from the Appropriations Committee for the rest of the time of
their career in the Senate, which is probably less than 10.
So what I believe you can do to accomplish that end is
again in statute require that the committee have representation
from the Foreign Relations Committee, the Armed Services
Committee, Judiciary, and I would say Defense Appropriations as
well.
We have additional language that keeps, as much as
possible, the politics out of it. One of the things I heard
earlier, our Commission had power because we had subpoena
power, and it was real subpoena power. Tom Caine was willing to
use it. We got access to documents, we got movement, we got
things.
This is not a whack on President Bush. President Clinton
probably would have done the same thing. No matter who the
President is, who the executive leadership are, they are going
to say, we have Executive privilege; you can't come and look at
these things.
So that subpoena power and the willingness to use it--if
you have a round in the chamber and they have it on ``safe''
all the time, nobody is going to be afraid of you. So in this
particular case you have to take as much of possible the
politics out of it so that subpoena means something to the
executive branch.
Admiral Lehman. I totally agree with Bob. I am a year older
than he is, so I go all the way back to actually dealing with
the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy when I was on Kissinger's
staff and a Deputy Director of the Arms Control Agency.
It was a powerful committee. It was very searching and
probing, and it got the issues out before the Congress and
provided tremendous guidance to the executive branch. It was
almost a perfect model, in my judgment, of how the equal
partnership between the two branches was. It attracted people
like Mel Price and Scoop Jackson and Craig Hosmer. So I am
equally enthusiastic with that as the proper solution.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Mr. Kerrey. Mr. Chairman, I am going to make a general
point. I appreciate there has been a lot of public attention
putting pressure upon you all to hold hearings during--one of
the most unfortunate names that you all have--the American
people have to refer to a time off as recess. You guys need a
vacation. You need to get away every now and then.
One of the things we discovered is, had more of us read Tom
Clancy, we might have been able to figure this out. Had more of
us read Blackhawk Down or seen the movie, we might have
understood that bin Laden was either directly or indirectly
responsible for shooting down our helicopters on October 3rd
and 4th, 1993.
Part of the problem is that you are so pressed for time,
constantly getting briefings, constantly reading this stuff
coming through your in-boxes, that when we say failure of
imagination, that is what happened to all of us.
So one of the unfortunate things is you have a lot of
pressure to hold these hearings during recess, and God bless
for being able to do it, but take some time off. Rename it a
vacation. Say we need vacation, too. We got to go away and shut
down and throw our cell phones away and our BlackBerries away
and not make contact with anybody other than the fiction that
we are going to take with us and read.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you. You can have as much time as
you need it here. If you want more time, you can have it on
that subject.
Mr. Turner.
Mr. Turner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do want to thank you
for holding this hearing on this important issue, and I want to
thank the family members for their effort to focus on
advocating for issues that will make America safer, and I want
to thank the Commissioners for their effort in putting together
a bipartisan Commission report and their efforts to continue
the recommendations in a bipartisan manner.
One of the questions earlier I think inadvertently
diminished the President's call for a National Intelligence
Director, focusing on the words ``coordinate.'' I just for a
moment for the record wanted to state what the President said.
I have in front of me his statement from that day where he
called for the National Intelligence Director. He said, ``The
National Intelligence Director will serve as the President's
principal intelligence adviser and will oversee and coordinate
the foreign and domestic activities of the intelligence
committee. Under this reorganization, the CIA will be managed
by a separate Director. The National Intelligence Director will
assume the broader responsibility of leading the intelligence
community across our government.
Of course, we all have to wait for the final specifics of
what we are going to receive in that recommendation, but I
didn't want the record to reflect a diminishing of what the
President's efforts were.
Senator Kerrey, twice today in listening to your testimony
you have said things that relate to how I felt in reading the
report.
One, you said that in reading the narrative it will take
you back to where you were that day and give you really the
commitment of moving forward on these issues.
On that day I served as mayor for the city of Dayton. Our
city the prior month had a weapons of mass destruction
terrorist response exercise upon the urging of one our city
commissioners, the late Lloyd Lewis, who thought we in the
community needed to be prepared for this looming threat.
Attorney General John Ashcroft attended that event.
In reading the 9/11 Commission report, I was struck that
your recommendations were very similar to the recommendations
that came out of our Dayton Domestic Preparedness Action Report
on what was needed for our first responders. Those
recommendations were for issues of training, protection,
equipment, intel on the local level, interoperability and
command structure.
I know our chairman of the National Security Subcommittee,
Chris Shays, similarly before the September 11 event had held
hearings on the needs of our first responders.
The second thing that you had said was the issue of the
statement by the terrorists that ``we have planes'' and the
time period within which the Department of Defense was able to
respond, in fact not respond.
Assuming that we put all this intelligence structure
together, intelligence only provides us knowledge, knowledge of
which we have to take some action with, and assuming that a
terrorist event is occurring or unfolding, both our first
responders and our Department of Defense are going to need to
have the resources necessary to be able to protect us and to
work through a crisis.
In looking at the report, it notes that at 8:25 a.m. was
the first notice of the hijacking; at 8:46, F-15s were
scrambled; at 9:25, they were over New York City's air space;
at 9:39, the Pentagon was attacked.
So my two questions relate to if you can comment further
and expound on your issues you saw in the resources and the
needs of our first responders and also, second, on the issue of
our ability for the Department of Defense to have a national
defense system that can respond if we do have intelligence of
an unfolding event.
Mr. Kerrey. Well, you know, first of all, I think there are
significant vulnerabilities that are still here.
As a former mayor of Dayton, you are apt to have a greater
sense of urgency in coming to terms with the training needed to
prepare first responders. You can't just put an ad in the paper
and hire somebody and bring them in and all of a sudden Mary or
Jim or Sue can do the work. They have to be trained. If you
want them to be effective against an effective biological
weapon, they have to be trained to do it. Yet among all the
additional things you have to do is to be able to identify
somebody who can be a suspect or try to deal with the crisis
once it starts going forward. So there is a huge amount of
training that is required.
My experience with law enforcement is it's the one area
that oftentimes gets shorted. It's hard to do. It's hard to
constantly allocate the more money that's necessary for police
and fire, and, in our case in New York, an Office of Emergency
Management Personnel, to keep their skill level up.
Congressman, I really would urge you to look at--and I'm
now trying to pronounce General Honore's name the second time.
I hope I got it right the second time. He produced a memorandum
for the record. He was CINC of NORTHCOM, Commander in Chief of
NORTHCOM at the time, and it's a terrific memo because he's
talking about exactly what you're talking about, I think, which
is the first responder is the first line of defense.
And what I was talking about, when I was talking about this
agony of listening to American Airlines here, where we have
planes, is the issue of computer interoperability. Honore deals
with it very, very passionately and very clearly, that he
believes we're still headed toward a train wreck.
The second individual that I would urge you to talk to, I
would call into your offices, I don't want to recommend you
bring her here to a hearing, that's the last thing I want you
to do, the woman who led our team in the border security, Susan
Ginsburg, because Susan talks passionately and with great
capacity about the shortcomings we have again in training our
personnel so they are prepared to do the job, and talks as well
to Congressman Miller's point earlier that we have significant
vulnerabilities at the border dealing with identification; that
we have significant vulnerabilities still remaining with people
out there having to make a decision that don't get the
intelligence that they need to make a decision on the spur of
the moment.
So the fact that your former mayor of Dayton prepares you
enormously well to help other Members of Congress figure out
what those responders have to do because they are the ones we
are going to rely upon the most to keep the country safe or,
God forbid, to handle the next crisis.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Lynch.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, at the outset I want to thank you and Mr.
Waxman for your promptness in responding to the 9/11 Commission
report.
Commissioner Lehman and Senator Kerrey, I would also like
to thank you again and extend our gratitude, to join the echo
of the chorus up here for the great efforts of your Commission
and yourselves personally on behalf of our country.
Today's hearing offers the first opportunity for the House
of Representatives to review the various proposals, both
structural and policy-oriented, set forth in the 9/11
Commission final report. And I would just like to respectfully
urge my colleagues when weighing these proposals to abide by
the bedrock principles upon which our Nation was founded,
namely our government's responsibility and obligation to ensure
the basic security of our people, as well as maintaining the
delicate system of checks and balances that guarantees our
government's accountability to our people, and also, of course,
a profound commitment to safeguarding the civil liberties that
have come to be inseparable from the American way of life.
To this end, and in consideration of the 9/11 Commission's
recommendations, I think we must dedicate ourselves to devising
a National counterterrorism policy that truly promotes
information sharing and cooperation and, above all,
accountability, as both you gentlemen have testified to today.
And I would agree with others who have noted that the 9/11
Commission, and yourselves in particular, have offered to the
Congress a shining example of what bipartisanship can
accomplish, and that is reflected in your report.
I think all of us here are committed to developing an
effective counterterrorism policy regardless of where those
recommendations may come from, whether it is the Commission or
the Congress or the administration.
And, last, I would be remiss if I did not say to the
families of those loved ones who were lost on September 11 that
we thank you for your persistence and your loyalty and your
dedication throughout this process. You have contributed
greatly to this process, and it is my only hope that the weight
of your sorrow will in some way be lightened by knowing that it
is shared by both your neighbors and your Nation.
My question to the Commissioners is simply this: This
committee has previously investigated goings-on at the FBI in
the Boston office, and we found during that investigation that
there was an institutional, a cultural resistance to
information sharing. We found that intelligence was actually
the currency of career advancement for many of those FBI agents
and supervisors.
Is there one proposal, is there one formulation in your own
minds that will break down that resistance to information
sharing that we have seen at least in the FBI and I believe is
probably prevalent through all of these intelligence agencies?
Admiral Lehman. This was one of the most long-considered
issues that we debated and thought about and took testimony on.
It certainly was a contributing factor to September 11. It is a
deep cultural reality that good law enforcement people do not
share evidence. It is ingrained in their professionalism, and
it is needed in the law enforcement community. That is what
makes it so difficult to blend or to share intelligence
gathering and analysis on the one hand and law enforcement on
the other.
We thought very hard about creating an independent agency,
an independent domestic intelligence agency, on the MI-5 or
some other similar model, like Australia or Canada has. We
ultimately decided not to recommend that, but to recommend
something that, we think, neatly addresses exactly the problem
that you found in Boston and that we found endemic in the
domestic intelligence problem in the FBI. We are recommending a
semiautonomous service within FBI that is protected by the NID;
that has either the Executive Assistant Director for National
Security and for Intelligence perhaps combined in one strong
Deputy Director of FBI that is dual-hatted to both the National
Intelligence Director and to the FBI Director so that we retain
the strengths of the connections of the FBI with the local law
enforcement community, which is one the great gatherers of
domestic intelligence, and we keep the protections of civil
liberties that the Justice Department provides, yet we protect
that intelligence function within FBI from exactly the
dominance of the law enforcement culture of no sharing and of
case development and so forth, rather than this sharing culture
of intelligence analysis.
That is another reason why this is all of a piece. If we
proceed with the National Intelligence Director and do not give
him hiring and firing authority over that FBI Intelligence
Deputy, and give him or her that authority over the budget and
appropriations for the FBI intelligence function, then you have
not really made much difference. You have not brought FBI into
the fusion of our intelligence.
Mr. Kerrey. And may I say, we were very impressed, the
Commission was very impressed, John can shake his head if I'm
wrong, but we were very impressed with the progress that
Director Mueller has made in a relatively short period of time
to change that culture.
Part of the culture is just understandable human nature. I
mean, I don't want to tell you something because I'm afraid
you're going to screw me with it.
Mr. Lynch. Either that or you'll get credit for it.
Mr. Kerrey. Or I won't get credit for it. But there is also
another one that I just--there are times when secrecy doesn't
equal security. There are times when secrecy equals the
opposite. It makes us less secure.
Ninety percent of the foreign policy stuff that we get
today to make decisions that you get today you get from open
sources, and the more we keep these things secret, the less
debate we have. And in my view, the reason we didn't identify
bin Laden as public enemy No. 1 prior to September 11 is we
kept the details about who he was secret. After September 11,
the full story's out there. And 75 percent of what we knew
about bin Laden we knew in 1997, 90 percent we knew in 1999,
and we knew 100 percent by 2001. We kept it secret, and, in my
view, it made it exceptionally difficult to do what we needed
to do to reduce that threat.
Mr. Shays [presiding]. The gentleman's time is up.
Admiral Lehman. One very briefly anecdote.
Mr. Shays. Please be brief.
Admiral Lehman. Very brief.
In the 1993 World Trade Center, the Justice Department had
to turn over to the defense counsel the names of the
coconspirators that intelligence had gathered. It went straight
to bin Laden, but they could not share it with CIA.
Mr. Shays. Amazing. Very interesting, your responses.
At this time the Chair would recognize Judge Carter.
Mr. Carter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, I want to thank
you, like everyone else here, for a really exceptional piece of
work here. Bipartisanism is fantastic in this town, I commend
you for it, and I'm going to treasure this.
I'm going to try to couch questions that I got back home,
and one of the first questions I want to ask you is, we are in
a war on terrorism. Can we lose this war on terrorism? And what
would be the results of losing the war on terrorism for the
American people?
Or even better, what do they expect to win? When would they
say ``we win'' on the war on terrorism? Because the concept of
a war for the American people is not fitting with what we are
doing, and I think your report does fit what we are doing.
Mr. Kerrey. Well, Congressman, first of all, I presume that
home is--help me a little bit. You said when you go back home.
I can tell it is not New Hampshire, but----
Mr. Carter. Well, I'm from Texas, and we take war real
seriously in Texas.
Mr. Kerrey. Well, I mean, the first thing I'd say, Judge,
is a war on terrorism is inappropriately named. Terrorism is a
tactic. It would make as much sense for us to declare war on
zeroes after December 7, 1941. Terrorism is a tactic. It is
used by individuals to try to accomplish some objective. It's
hard to get your head into that, but that's what's going on
here.
And one of the more controversial things we dealt with, and
you'll see it in the report, we used the language we believe
that what we are dealing here with is radical Islamic jihadists
who have made the decision--in this particular case they made
the decision that killing Americans is the most important thing
to do. They have targeted Americans.
Now, they have spread, and they have hit Spaniards in
Madrid, they have gone beyond that, but the thing that made bin
Laden unique was his decision to say, we're not going to try to
destabilize Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or other Muslim nations,
we're going to try to destabilize the United States of America
by taking this tactic right to the head of the snake.
Mr. Carter. So then would you say their purpose is to kill
Americans, which they have declared; and by killing Americans,
make us reach a point where they control policy in this country
by threats or taking actions of terrorism?
Mr. Kerrey. Yes. I think there is a combination of things.
First of all, they say, well, you're all going to go to heaven
and hang out with virgins for eternity. If bin Laden believed
that, he'd be sending his kids, and he's not. So, apparently,
it's a device that works from time to time.
But understand, if you examine terrorism, especially in the
1990's, it's been developed in very sophisticated ways. How do
you disguise explosives on your body, etc? But I believe you
have to go to the ideological argument that underlies it.
That's why I said earlier, to look at the Ramzi Yousef
statement and compare it to--confront it by Judge Duffy's
statement, I think you get the battle right there.
And we can't be unafraid to argue that point, that central
argument that you hear Yousef using in trial. It is wrong, it
is deadly, it's cowardly, put whatever you want on there, but
you've got to get to the argument itself.
In my view, the only way to confront it successfully is to
understand that you may never get to a perfect world where
we're never vulnerable to terrorists. That is not likely to
happen, in my opinion. Second, I think you've got to understand
that vigorous military and law enforcement effort have to be
used.
I had an interesting exchange earlier with Congressman
Kucinich over this thing. Bin Laden doesn't, these guys don't
sit around and say, geez, what about civil liberties and what
about the Geneva Convention and so forth. They've got to be
vigorously pursued and relentlessly pursued, because if they
feel like we're going to apply moral relativism to what they
do, then I think the game is over.
Third, I think we do have to have--whether you call it
diplomacy or debate over the ideas or whatever, we can't just
paper over these arguments. And the last thing, I think the
United States of America has to continue to say that democracy,
that free markets can provide you with an opportunity agenda.
And we have to show it can. Whether that's trade policies or
advocating good safety nets or whatever it is, if democracy
doesn't make life a little bit better for the individuals who
are inside of that democracy, we have a heck of a problem.
And we can't ask our law enforcement and our soldiers,
sailors, airmen, and marines to fight this battle if, for
example in 2006, the farm bill comes up and we say we want
business as usual, just to put it right like I think it is.
Now, that may not sell back down in your congressional district
in Texas, I don't know, but we can't, I think, win this unless
we can honestly say to the world that democracy and free
markets can be a vehicle to make your life a little bit better
regardless of where you live on this planet.
Mr. Carter. Mr. Chairman, may I have just a little bit
extra time?
Mr. Shays. The gentleman's time has run out. Is that OK?
Mr. Carter. All right, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
At this time we would recognize Chris Van Hollen from
Maryland.
Mr. Van Hollen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thank both of you gentlemen for your incredible service
to our country, and I, too, want to thank the families of the
September 11 victims for everything you've done for our country
and making the Commission possible.
Secretary Lehman, I was encouraged by your comment that
your recommendations are not a Chinese menu, and that the devil
is in the details, and I ask that you continue to evaluate
proposals, whether they come out of the White House or the
Congress, in the days ahead to see if they meet that test,
because I don't think it's partisan in any way to ask you to
evaluate those proposals, whether they be out of the White
House or out of the Congress, and I thank you for that.
There's a line in your report on page 406 that says, ``The
most serious disadvantage of the NCTC is the reverse of its
greatest virtue,'' and you go on to say that ``in fighting this
war against Islamic terrorism, we may have to concentrate more
power in a certain entity, but we may concentrate too much
power in one place,'' and, therefore, you call for checks and
balances.
I want to ask both of you gentlemen with respect to your
recommendations and observations for the Congress, because, in
my observation, Congress is very good about telling other
people how to change themselves and reform themselves, but it
does not have as good a track record when it comes to making
reforms of itself.
And, Senator Kerrey, you mentioned the challenges you had
with the Armed Services Committee and others during your
service in the Senate. I'm interested in your advice as to how
you create pressure within this institution to create some of
those changes, No. 1.
No. 2, in addition to the changes you recommended, it
requires the political will of the Congress to exercise that
accountability. And you mentioned the subpoena power you had.
The fact of the matter is, in the last couple of years, the
Congress has not issued any subpoenas with respect to Federal
Government agencies. And it gets to the question--and I don't
mean for this to be partisan because it could happen whether
you had Democrats in control of the White House and the
Congress or Republicans in control of the White House and the
Congress--but the fact of the matter is we need as an
institution, the Congress, to strengthen and see our role as a
coequal branch of government and not necessarily endorse--see
ourselves as someone who is an endorser or cheerleader of all
the policies that come out of the executive branch.
I only mention the subpoena issue because I think it's a
reflection of the fact that Congress has maybe not exercised
its full powers, and I ask for your observations on that.
And the final question I have relates to the other part of
what I see as intelligence failures. You examined intelligence
failures dealing with September 11. We, of course, have a
number of groups that are looking at the issue of weapons of
mass destruction and failures in intelligence, or oversight of
intelligence, or interpretation of intelligence in that regard.
My one concern with some of your recommendations is the very
thing that may have lent yourself to supporting a good response
to the intelligence failures with regard to September 11, I
would ask you gentlemen whether they could exacerbate the
intelligence failures with respect to weapons of mass
destruction in that you would have more homogeneity, more
cookie-cutter approaches if you have one Director; and whether
that would create additional pressures for everyone to salute
and say, yes, sir, we agree with your analysis, instead of
having different centers of analysis.
Admiral Lehman. Well, I'll take the last part of that and
let Bob deal with the first part.
I think that homogeneity is something we absolutely must
get away from. Time and again through our investigation, we
found that group think in the community prevented imaginative
perception of what the real threat was. We think that the
recommendations we are making here, the system that we are
recommending ensures competitive analysis, not homogeneity, not
agreement.
When there are going to be national intelligence estimates,
there need to be dissenting views in those intelligence
estimates when there are, and there usually are. DIA is very
likely to have a differing perspective on some aspects of the
same facts than CIA. And we want to make sure that many senior
leaders, where there is honest differences of perception and
analysis, they get to see them, that it is not an enforced
consensus.
One of the tremendous things about our report is, I am sure
as you read it, this is not a ground-down homogeneity of views.
It is a sharp-edged report with a lot of bold statements and
facts in it, yet we reach unanimity on it. That is what we have
to get, and to do that you have to have someone who ensures
that the environment is such that people aren't afraid to speak
out, that there is entrepreneurial spirit by analysts, and that
there is a willingness to take risks.
Mr. Kerrey. Well, honestly, I forgot what the first part
was.
Mr. Van Hollen. Well, just based on your experience, how
you would propose the Congress go about enforcing your
recommendations? What would you do as a Member of Congress? And
is there an institutional problem when--do you sense that
Congress has in any way lost its ability, its more traditional
role acting as a separate branch of government with respect to
national security oversight?
Mr. Shays. This is a repeat of the same question.
Mr. Kerrey. Yes, based upon my own experience, I think
there is a tendency to yield ground on national security when
ground shouldn't be yielded by Congress. I think, though,
again, to hit the one issue I have talked about several times
in this area, it's even more typical because it's all
classified. I mean, you'll see ferocious debates going on in
the open press about whether or not our military is at the
readiness levels they need to be at. There is no such debate
going on in intel. None.
Earlier, one of the members of this committee made a
reference to the failure to detect the Indian nuclear
detonation. We detected it the year before. We missed it by a
hair the second time. And then you say, wait a minute, Vajpayee
campaigned on a promise to detonate a nuclear weapon. We
shouldn't need the CIA to tell us he's going to do it. He'd
promised to do it, unless we expect in India they don't keep
their promises, or something. I don't know.
Third, find those areas where you're doing good work and do
more of it. As you know, oftentimes it's someone in a position
of power that wants to make the government work better that
you're not going to see them out in the press. Right now in
intel, I think Senator Inouye and Senator Stevens are doing
exceptional oversight on the Defense Appropriations Committee.
They care about the subject matter. You never see it out in the
press. And as a consequence, in this case, I believe that
unless Congress changes the law in intel to create a much, much
stronger committee than you currently have, I think you're
always going to be frustrated.
And the last thing I'd say is that I don't really think
that we should be extended for 18 months. I don't think it
works for us to be extended for 18 months, even if I had 18
months to give to the task, because in many ways we were doing
what now Chairman Shays, who is about ready to gavel me down,
was trying to do with this committee. This committee can do
oversight of the intelligence agencies where you see failure
happening, and I think can be a very substantial force to make
sure that these changes occur.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Senator.
At this time the Chair would recognize Marsha Blackburn
from Tennessee.
Mrs. Blackburn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
your time and patience in being with us today to talk to us. We
appreciate the report and appreciate your working with us
through this.
It is interesting listening to you talk about the need to
fix the committee structure, to fix the vulnerabilities with
immigration, and the importance of not just moving around the
organizational chart, Mr. Lehman, as you had said, the need for
our Intelligence Director or Czar, whatever the name may be, to
have control of the budget, appropriations, of the technology
protocol. And in listening to all of this, I feel that what I'm
hearing you say is that through the decades government has
grown far too bureaucratic, far too unable to respond quickly
or in an effective and efficient manner; that the process is
far too bureaucratic, and that instead of just shifting the
power around and reorganizing, that you feel we need to go
about recreating a different way for government to work. And I
guess in all of this, we are paying a price for underfunding
intelligence through the years.
One of my questions is very similar to some you have had;
how you would envision this agency working without the
traditional constraints of government that we address each day?
I know some of the questions I am going to get from my
district, where much of Fort Campbell is located, is if some of
our military intelligence units would be answering to the
Secretary of Defense or to the intelligence czar. I'm
interested to hear your take on how this would operate without
those traditional constraints of bureaucracy.
Also, Mr. Kerrey, in responding to that, I noticed on page
25 of the executive summary, you talk about the proposed need
for reforms and to speed up the nomination process. And you
have served in the Senate, you have served as vice chairman of
Senate intelligence, and I know that you brought your
background of some of the successes and failures in that
committee to your view on the Commission and used that kind of
as background. And I would like to know how you think that we
could speed up that nomination process, with the rules of the
Senate allowing a single Member to stop the process from moving
forward, and if you had any thoughts on that?
And, Mr. Lehman, if you would first address how you would
approach the structure, and then, Mr. Kerrey, how you think we
can speed the nomination process.
Admiral Lehman. Thank you.
Yes, we are not recommending a structure that would not
have the traditional Constitutional restraints and
congressional oversight, and the committee reorganization is a
major part of that. But it will also be subject to each of the
agencies that make up the intelligence community, their own
inspectors general, their own internal controls, and their own
oversight within the executive branch.
But all good corporations have to regenerate themselves,
have to go through reengineering. What has transformed the
productivity of American industry is constant improvement,
total quality, lean manufacturing, which is a cultural change
that you never leave the organization alone. It is constantly
changing and improving. The government tends not to go through
those kinds of renewings and reengineerings, but when they do,
they have shown--the government has shown that they can create
the same kind of innovation and new energy and new ability to
deal with the modern world, just as corporations can.
That is what we are recommending, a reengineering of the
government process to break up the concrete layers of
bureaucracy that have ossified over the last 60 years, to take
apart the vertical stovepipes that have built up between the
agencies to prevent the sharing. So we are not--we don't see
this either a funding issue. You will look in vain for large
declarations that we have underfunded intelligence over the
years. Certainly there have been periods in the last 10 years
when parts of intelligence, for instance HUMINT, have been very
underfunded, because I'm sure very few of you have been
collared by lobbyists for HUMINT, yet I would be willing to bet
you've all had lobbyists from satellite manufacturers and other
intelligence collection technologies. So there have been gross
imbalances.
As to the service, what we are recommending here--first of
all, the naval intelligence and the service intelligence corps
are among the best in the intelligence community. They have
their own esprit de corps, their own training program, and
their own professionalism. They report to Defense Intelligence
Agency as well as the Chief of Naval Operations, and they, in
turn, report to the--in theory, but not in practice--to the
Director of CIA. Now they will be part of an integrated yet
decentralized intelligence community, each with its pockets of
excellence under a National Intelligence Director.
Mr. Kerrey. Well, I mean, changing the rules in the Senate
having to do with one person being able to put a hold on a
nomination is exceptionally difficult to do. And I think, as
well as almost all the recommendations that we have made in our
report, they are all difficult to do. They all have real
problems and barriers in front of them.
There are areas, for example, in funding, where funding is
the answer. I have dealt with deficits the whole time I was in
the Congress practically, so I understand how difficult it is.
But to look at our border security recommendations, the U.S.-
Visit program, to have it fully implemented by 2010 is just too
darned slow. There are some management weaknesses that have to
be addressed.
There are still some oversight lapses where secrecy is a
barrier. Additional investigation has to occur. We just ran out
of time. We couldn't get to it. And there are some changes in
the law, all of which have problems attached with it. I would
just urge you, again, to get into this narrative.
Nineteen guys hijacked four commercial aircrafts on
September 11 using box cutters and legal knives, and it wasn't
even a close call. All the defenses that were put up against
them, all the security measures that we have in place failed to
prevent them from attacking the United States of America. It
wasn't even close. If you look at the images at Dulles Airport
that were released by, I guess, the lawyer who is bringing a
case against somebody, if you look at those images, we saw
those images and didn't want to put them out there because we
were concerned that it would give away some security issues.
But if you look at those images, you say, my God, it looked
like they could have walked on to practically anything that
morning.
All of us--anybody that was here in the 1990's, we all need
to sort of join hands and walk to the podium and say, we
screwed up, and in that attitude understand we might be doing
it again right now. We presumed we had time, and we were wrong.
Every step of the way we'd say, well, I think I have a little
more time; certainly this can wait until some other time. Maybe
we can get another study or something.
If you find somebody saying, I don't want to yield
privilege, which is what you're talking about with the Senate
rule; I don't want to yield power; this is going to be too
uncomfortable for me; I may no longer be chairman, or whatever,
then you've got an argument where you just have to turn to us,
I think, probably, and say, you guys have to stoke the fire a
little of the public so we can do what we have to do.
Chairman Tom Davis [presiding]. Thank you very much.
Mr. Ruppersberger.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Yes. First, I thank you for your
service, and I want to thank the families also for all that
you've done. I think the country is really learning a lot about
what we need to do, and I want to thank the chairman and the
ranking member for having this hearing right now so we can get
started.
I think when you look at what we need and your
recommendations, both very important, to have a National
Intelligence Director, you have to start at the top. You have
to have one boss. You have to have that boss who will hold
other agencies accountable for their performance. But in order
to do that, you also need budget authority, and I would hope
that the President would listen to these hearings and
understand that this is very important. Just like he is the
boss of the United States of America, we need to have that
focus here.
Now, I would like to talk to you about another phase, and
let me ask you this, too. There was a group of members on the
Intelligence Committee that introduced H.R. 4104, that is the
Intelligence Transformation Act, and that was in March. Did you
have a chance to review that?
Admiral Lehman. Yes, we did, and we've had quite a bit of
dialog with the sponsors and the staff, and continue to have.
There were some good ideas, by the way, that have been
incorporated in our recommendations.
Mr. Ruppersberger. And the reason I point that out, that is
an existing bill where I hope, in a nonpartisan way, we can
review the elements in that bill so that we can buildupon that
as you all have in your report.
Now, one of the major issues is the Deputy Director of
National Intelligence. If you look at the way intelligence is
made up, and I think Senator Kerrey referred to this, the
Department of Defense, the majority of the resources go to the
Department of Defense in the intelligence community. Now, if,
in fact, you're going to have the teamwork integration, which
is so necessary to be effective in intelligence, you're going
to have to have the Department of Defense at the table.
And I think this bill, H.R. 4104, created what they call a
dual hat. Let me read to you and see if you agree with this
provision in H.R. 4104. Deputy Director of National
Intelligence. There is a Deputy Director of National
Intelligence who should be appointed by the President, by and
with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Deputy Director
of National Intelligence shall also serve as Under Secretary of
Defense for Intelligence.
Now, in order for us to pull together, we know the power of
the Secretary of Defense, one of the most powerful positions in
the world. When you have that person at the table, and then you
have a Director of National Intelligence without budget
authority, and you have those two together, who is going to
win? Well, I don't know, but I tell you, I'd say the advantage
going in would be with the Secretary of Defense. We need to
pull those groups in together.
Would you be in favor of having a Deputy Director, a dual-
hatted individual as is stated in H.R. 4101, to pull all of the
agencies together so that we have one unit dealing with the
issue of intelligence?
Admiral Lehman. Yes, we support that, but we also support
two other deputies as well. We believe that your proposal for a
deputy that is dual-hatted to the Secretary of Defense and to
the National Intelligence Director is an excellent idea and can
pull together all of the agencies in defense. There also has to
be hiring and firing shared between the National Intelligence
Director and the Secretary of Defense, but that deputy should
not have authority over domestic intelligence. There should be
another equal deputy for domestic intelligence, and that should
be the Deputy Director of FBI, who also should be dual-hatted;
that is, the Deputy Director for Intelligence National Security
should be dual-hatted to both the FBI Director and the National
Intelligence. And the third should be a Deputy for Foreign
Intelligence, and that should be the CIA Director.
So we have taken your idea and added to it the domestic
deputy and the foreign deputy as well, but we think that is
essential.
Mr. Ruppersberger. OK. Getting back to my question, though,
do you think that by having that Deputy Director dual-hatted
with the Department of Defense will deal with the issue when
there could be a conflict or a power grab, so to speak, between
the Secretary of Defense versus intelligence? Do you think that
would be enough to rectify that issue?
Admiral Lehman. It will be enough to ensure that this
dispute gets in front of the President to decide.
Mr. Ruppersberger. OK, and that's what's important.
How about you, Senator Kerrey.
Mr. Kerrey. Well, I agree, so long as the National
Intelligence Director has statutory authority over the
appropriated moneys and has statutory authority over hiring and
firing. Absent that, they simply are going to be too weak, and
we'll be right back where we are today. I mean, you're better
off, in my view, with nothing than creating something that just
adds one more impression that this person has power that they
do not have; one more moment for them to come up and answer
questions from Congress about things over which they have no
responsibility.
Mr. Ruppersberger. OK. I see my red light is on. Thank you.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Kerrey. If I could, Mr. Chairman, can I----
Chairman Tom Davis. Sure.
Mr. Kerrey. I'm going to volunteer either in writing or the
next time I'm persuaded to leave vacation to come down and
testify before the committee, there is one area in this report
that I care deeply about that is not mentioned, and it does
have to do with DOD and CIA, and that is we're recommending
that the authority for covert operations be transferred to DOD.
And if at some point you have questions about that, I think it
is sort of the last step on jointness, and I think the
exercises in Afghanistan and the exercises in Iraq demonstrate
that this is a good move to make. It still gives CIA authority,
but, in my view, it will dramatically improve the quality of
those covert operations.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
Mr. Platts.
Mr. Platts. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Kerrey and Secretary Lehman, appreciate your work
and all your fellow Commissioners and your staff, a daunting
task, and you've done it in remarkable fashion, both in the
broad global strategy you've put forward as well as specific
recommendations.
My colleague talked to you about the standards for a
driver's license. I appreciate that type of detail because it
is something that amazed me when I came to learn that the
majority, I believe, of our States do not require proof of
legal presence in the United States to get a driver's license,
yet it's one of the accepted forms of government ID deeming
you're supposed to be here or allowed to be here. So that type
of specific recommendation, hopefully, will help us move some
legislation that's out there and get some of these standards in
place.
To followup the discussion with the previous Member on the
NID and the personnel authority, in your statements you talk
about NID having personnel and appropriation authority, but
also the Chief of the National Counterterrorism Center. Can you
elaborate how that's going to interact, since the Chief's going
to answer to the NID; how their shared authority over personnel
at these various agencies, how you envision that working?
Admiral Lehman. Well, I think the Pentagon provides a good
example. Standards for promotion and rank in each of the
military services are different. You don't have to fly
airplanes to get promoted in the Army. Each Secretary of the
Department governs the personnel policies, but they have to
conform to Defense Department standards. So you can easily take
an 06 naval captain and assign him to a joint command in an
Army-commanded unit, because there are common personnel
standards to be met that allow that kind of joint assignment.
Now, this is different than detailing, and it's an
important point. Today, for instance, at the TTIC, the
Terrorist Threat Intelligence Center, people are detailed from
all the agencies, but their fitness reports are still being
written by the people back at their home agencies. That is a
huge difference.
When a person is jointly assigned, it's the person who, for
instance, will be running the National Counterterrorism Center
that will write the fitness report and really have a huge
influence on whether that person, from whatever agency they
came from, gets promoted or doesn't get promoted or gets
assigned to a choice billet or doesn't get assigned to it.
Mr. Platts. So more accountability from the staff to the
NID?
Admiral Lehman. But more real clout by the National
Intelligence Director. The key is, currently the CIA Director
has exhortation capability, and people sort of think he has
authority, but he doesn't have authority. So he can say, oh,
let's cross-assign people. But if you don't have the authority
to direct, and if the person being directed doesn't do it, they
get fired and replaced by that NID Directorate. That's what
we're talking about. Big, big difference.
Mr. Platts. One of the other areas you touch on in a broad
sense is more public diplomacy; us doing a better job of kind
of winning the battle on the front with the younger citizens, I
guess, of the Muslim nations.
Is there a specific recommendation? One of your
recommendations says, ``In a broad sense, where Muslim
governments, even those who are friends, do not respect these
principles, the United States must stand for a better future.''
Is there something specific; Saudi Arabia, Egypt, any that
are allies that we should be looking into?
Admiral Lehman. There are two that I want to draw attention
to that I think would have enormous leverage. One is putting
some money into schools in these areas. There is no alternative
for parents in much of Pakistan and the rest of Indonesia, for
instance, the rest of the Muslim world. If they want their
children to have a better future, i.e., to learn to read and
write, they have no alternative but to one of these jihadist
madrassas. We should take the initiative, working with those
governments, and put some money behind it to create schools
that can teach usable skills, and it can be done at a very
relatively low cost.
Another is international broadcasting. It's pathetic the
number of hours that we're on the air to just tell the truth,
in Farsi, in Urdu, and the various dialects of Arabic.
Mr. Platts. On the schools, is one of the challenges we
have that we give a lot of money to the United Nations, but
then that doesn't come back to us as credit to those parents
that the United States is helping their children? Do we need to
do more unilateral partnerships with these nations?
Mr. Kerrey. Well, the context here, and this is how great a
job we've done, we saved a Muslim nation, Kuwait, in 1991. We
saved Muslims in Mogadishu in 1993 from Pakistan, part of a
U.N. peacekeeping force. We saved a Muslim nation, Bosnia, in
1995. We save a Muslim nation, Kosovo, in 1999, and yet you go
do public opinion polling in Muslim nations, and they don't
like us. I mean, that's how lousy a job we've done of
communicating to the Muslim world----
Mr. Platts. And we've just liberated 50 million Muslims in
two nations.
Mr. Kerrey. Exactly.
But there's another issue that I think is important. Look,
when I graduated from high school, back when dinosaurs roamed
the Earth, 75 percent of the people on this planet were living
in nations where democracy wasn't the rule. Now it's just the
opposite. Even in China they're beginning to see democracy at
local levels; not as much as I think they're going to need in
order to deal with their economic challenges, but that's a
separate issue.
We've got to stop, and I hear it sort of creeping back as a
consequence of the problems in Iraq, saying that democracy is
not suited for you, it's a Western idea. You know, Greece is
not in the West, as much as we like to think. It's much closer
to Afghanistan than we are. So we have to stop saying that
democracy only works here.
And we all know, all of us, and those of you who are still
in politics, when I was in politics, the most important thing
is people need to know that democracy is making their lives
just a little bit better and their kids' lives a little better
and their communities a little bit better. It's not very
complicated. And if it isn't, they get really mad, and they
throw you all out of office.
Well, we've got to stop saying, well, I know the Saudis,
every other word from the Saudis is reform these days, and
we've got to stop putting our arm around them and saying, well,
we understand you can't really be democratic because you've got
difficulties here and there and everywhere. We have to stop
doing that, because the people living in Saudi Arabia are mad
because they don't have what we've got, which is the freedom to
be able to throw people out of office when we don't like them.
I'm not suggesting that we have sort of a naive, pie-in-
the-sky attitude that doesn't recognize that for many people
democracy is one vote one time, but I believe that the most
important thing for us in this battle of ideas is to say that
democracy and free markets, as flawed as it is, as difficult as
it is to make it work, is the best way to make your life a
little better, and the life of your kids a little bit better,
and the life of your community a little bit better.
Mr. Platts. I agree 100 percent.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Ms. McCollum.
Ms. McCollum. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to
thank the Commission for the work that they have done. I
learned a lot, either being in my kitchen in the morning
listening to your staff reports and opportunities when I had to
watch the hearings on television. But most importantly, I want
to thank the families. I think because of the families and the
work that you have done, the report that the Commission
generated, that I have been reading again, and that a woman
next to me on an airplane looked at, and I said, you should
read this. She said, oh, I don't know if I'd understand. I said
you should read this, because you will understand it. It is
written in a way that provides a wealth of information, in a
way that every American citizen, every family can benefit from.
So I thank you both for the work product that you have
produced. And she agreed with me. She could read it, she did
understand it, and she is going to buy a copy.
In chapter 12 of the report, you say counterterrorism has
become beyond any doubt the top national security priority for
the United States. The report goes on to say, ``The catastrophe
threat at this moment in history is more specific than just
terrorism. It is a threat posed by Islamic terrorism,
especially the al Qaeda network, its affiliates, and its
ideology.''
The other day, the President was asked the question, in
what way would his new structure, or looking at any new
structure, prevent the kind of intelligence failings that
preceded the war in Iraq? I'm very, very troubled by not having
the type of intelligence failings in Iraq addressed clearly. We
had the intelligence failings in September 11, in Iraq.
The President's answer to me, when asked that question, was
equally troubling, ``And let me just say to you, knowing what I
know today, we still would have gone to Iraq.'' And that is the
end of the President's quote.
Prior to March 2003, would Iraq have been defined a top
national security priority for the United States based on this
report's threat definition? Has the war in Iraq helped protect
American citizens from the threat of Islamic terrorism when
Osama bin Laden, Mr. Omar, and thousands of al Qaeda operatives
remain at large?
How can the Congress and the President use what you have in
place to prevent the intelligence failure of Iraq, because it
was a failure in intelligence for the reasons we did vote, for
some who voted to go to war?
Admiral Lehman. Well, I think that it was a blessing that
the intelligence failures in Iraq were not part of our mandate
and we did not spend a great deal of time on those intelligence
failures, and there is now a Commission studying those. So I
don't feel comfortable testifying as a Commission member on the
first part of your question.
But the second part of the question I feel very comfortable
with, because what I've read in the newspapers and what those
parts of the Iraq issue that have come before our Commission's
investigation, and there are a bit of that, make it very clear
that this is of a piece with the failings we found led up to
September 11; that this is a Balkanized intelligence community
that does not share, that does not have the ability within
itself to prioritize what is important; as one Commissioner
said, unable to distinguish between a bicycle accident and a
train wreck in terms of raw intelligence.
It's remarkably shocking that the senior Members of this
Congress and of this administration first learned of the
Iranian connections from us, not from the intelligence
community. It was we, the 9/11 Commission, that dug this
intelligence out that existed in the intelligence community,
that had been gathered, was sitting there scattered around the
intelligence community. We had to put it together; we, the
Commission. So that is a remarkable fact that just illustrates
that we have a dysfunctional, Balkanized intelligence
establishment today.
And the failures of the intelligence system in Iraq, in
WMD, are entirely of a piece of everything else we have learned
about the dysfunctions of this system.
Mr. Kerrey. Yes, I'll stick with John's answers as well. It
was outside of our envelope, but it does get connected in one
way for me, and that is that among the insights I've taken away
from the experience of being on this Commission is that--and it
is hard to deal with it, but it's true--and that is that for
the United States, the homeland is the planet. And try as you
might to say, no, it's just the continental United States,
Alaska and Hawaii, you're not going to get it done. If you're
trying to deal with border security, or immigration issues, or
whatever you're dealing with, you need the rest of the world to
participate.
When schoolchildren died in a fire in Bombay here a couple
of weeks ago, it felt like it was in my neighborhood. When
Spaniards were killed on March 15th, it felt like it happened
to us. One of the mistakes that we made, in my view, with bin
Laden is as long as he was killing people over there, it wasn't
as big an issue for us as it was when he killed people here.
In January and February 1993, we had the World Trade Center
attack where six Americans were killed, and we had two
Americans killed at CIA headquarters by a guy by the name of
Kasi. We tracked both of those guys down, brought them back to
the United States. They stood trial, and they got justice. But
when it was killing Americans in Somalia, when it was killing
Americans in East Africa, when it was killing Americans at OPM-
SANG in Saudi Arabia, when it was over there, it didn't affect
us as much. We didn't respond like we did when it was here.
And among the things I think Americans are going to have to
get their head into, and it has lots of moving parts, is that
the homeland is the planet. And I understand that imposes upon
us a lot of responsibility, a burden that we perhaps prefer not
to have, but it's our burden, and it comes as a consequence of
our wealth, of our power, and our capability.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Ms. Harris.
Ms. Harris. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Once again, I want to echo what all my colleagues have
said. I want to thank you for your expeditious and timely
handling of such an important issue for the Commission. Thank
you for your service. Thank you for creating a report that may
be one of the most important publications of our age, and
certainly for the relatives of those who were murdered on
September 11. We can't imagine the depth of your sorrow or
pain, but thank you for channeling that loss into something
very positive for a policy for the future and protection of our
country.
I want to revisit the last question just real quickly. I
wanted to clarify something. In all of the reports, sometimes
it's been alleged there was a politicization of some of the
intelligence activities. And I just wanted to make certain that
you did not find that and the report did not reflect that you
found that in your findings?
Admiral Lehman. That is not something that particularly
emerged as a finding of our investigation.
Mr. Kerrey. It is not a finding of the investigation, but
if you ask my personal opinion, I think the idea that somehow
we're going to take politics out of intelligence, you'll fail
to get it done. If I'm afraid of the dark, and you elect me
President, I'm going to bring that fear of the dark into my
policies, and know that I'm going to. I'm just going to.
Whether it's Bill Clinton or George Bush or Ronald Reagan, or
whoever it is, when they come in to be President, the people in
intelligence know what they care about, know what they're
concerned about, and it's going to affect their attitude.
What's necessary is to surround yourself with people who
are really prepared to argue with you vigorously when they
think that you shouldn't be afraid of the dark. That's what you
need; not that you can somehow cause human beings to behave
differently than what human beings are going to behave, which
is they want to make the boss happy.
Ms. Harris. I just wanted to clarify I had not found that
in the report.
The point of my question--and, actually, I have two
questions. One, particularly when you look back at the report
and see your findings that say really basically from the 1980's
the United States--that terrorism had evolved, and it presented
a threat to our government that we weren't really ready to
counter, and yet we've seen one of the largest restructurings
of the Federal Government since the last half century.
The report gives us a broad array of suggestions to
reorganize the government across agencies, cooperation, and
other issues, and the President signaled yesterday that he
wanted to implement some of those through his administrative
Executive orders.
When you look back and understand the urgency of
implementing some of these issues and suggestions, but
understanding the deliberations that are necessary if we're
going to move swiftly, first could you tell us what your three
top recommendations are? What should we do immediately?
And then my second question is more specific. On the CAPS
issue, Senator Kerrey, you have commented in some recent
questions--in the 9/11 report it cited that Mohammad Atta and
several others of the September 11 hijackers had actually been
picked up by CAPS, so that, I guess, technology evidently was
at least partially effective, but we didn't have procedures in
place prior to September 11 for followup.
Now that the Department of Homeland Security has been
working on CAPPS II, which is a much more sophisticated
screening program, but recently they decided to halt that work
because of privacy concerns. And while I'm very concerned about
our privacy, I mean, I am even more concerned about being
attacked by terrorists again.
Do you think that the CAPPS II was overly intrusive of our
privacy, although it was really focused not at all on--it did
not cite race; it really cited travel procedures and
preferences. Do you think that we should continue on with CAPPS
II, and do you think--I mean, just in view of protecting our
homeland security, it seems like it shouldn't be too much to
ask that we could track those. If Amazon.com is allowed to
track buying patterns for consumers, then it seems at the very
least we could track travel preferences and behaviors of those
who might be suspicious.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Katherine Harris follows:]
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Mr. Lehman. I will answer the top three briefly, the easy
ones, and Bob can answer the tough ones.
First, Congress has to reorganize. The reason the massive
changes that Homeland Security were to have brought about have
not been fully realized is that the Secretary of Homeland
Security reports to 88 committees. He spends more than half his
time up here on the Hill, which in itself is not a bad thing,
but it is totally fragmented, and no coherence in the process.
It needs to be fixed. We have already talked at length about
the need for the intelligence oversight to be fixed. So that's
the No. 1.
Second is to recognize the nature of this problem and the
policy recommendations that we are making here on what to do.
Third is to carry out the organizational changes, which
start with the National Counterterrorism Center and the
establishment of the National Intelligence Director and the
dual-hatting of his deputies.
So those are my top three, and I think that reflects the
priorities of the Commission.
Mr. Kerrey. Well, I apologize. I'm not going to be very
helpful because I'm not that familiar with the CAPPS II
findings, whatever it attempted to do. But I do think that it's
worth noting that we had two tremendous successes, human
successes, in preventing people from coming into the United
States and doing bad things. One of them was in your State of
Florida.
And, John, do you remember the name of that individual----
Admiral Lehman. Melendes, Oscar Melendes.
Mr. Kerrey [continuing]. Who made these--and then a woman
up in the State of Washington and the millennium plots,
prevented Ressam from coming across the border.
I mean, fundamentally the problem on September 11 is we
weren't at a heightened state of alert, and we should have
been.
Going back further, we let a guy declare war on us in 1996
and then basically operate with impunity for another half a
dozen years. So--as long as he was killing people over there,
it wasn't as big a problem for us.
But I think, in addition to not being in a state of alert,
the thing I think of when I think of CAPPS, Congresswoman, is
the huge amount of time and resources and effort that it's
going to take to train the men and women that are going to be
necessary to do this work, because, for my money, it's the most
important thing out there. We have 500 million visitors coming
in and out of the United States every year. That's a big
number. And their job is to basically find the needle in the
haystack. And they are not going to find it if they don't
understand what intelligence is, if they don't have access to
that intelligence, if they aren't trained up, etc. I mean, all
of us who have the joy of flying experience this issue every
single time we get on an airplane of coming to the terms with
the fact that the guy may not know exactly what it is that he
is doing, and he is checking you all out and so forth.
So I think you have to get the training done. And, again, I
would urge you to look at the stuff that we had in the border
security, that Susan Ginsburg did for us, because that team got
access to things--my guess is--as John said, my guess is--
talking about the Iran issue, my guess is we got access to
things that you haven't seen when it comes to border security
and weaknesses and vulnerabilities in borders that you haven't
seen today.
Admiral Lehman. CAPPS I worked, as you said. It identified
six of the terrorists that--but people were looking for
explosives, so they were allowed through. CAPPS II is much
better, much more sophisticated. It's not perfect. And
certainly civil liberties have to be protected, but we ought to
get on with it. It's not perfect, but it ought to be
implemented, because to put it on the shelf and suspend it
because of sensitivities seems--we think is not supportable. We
need to get on with it.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Our last questions, Ms. Watson.
Ms. Watson. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I, too, want
to add my thanks with my colleagues to the Commission, the
families and the staff. You have done a yeoman's job. You have
added your wisdom, your experience to the volume of work that I
think will go down in history as a major response.
I am sitting here listening, and I have to be reminded that
we are spending time reorganizing the deck chairs on the
Titanic and rushing swiftly toward the iceberg. We don't even
know what the iceberg is all about. But you reference it, and I
think the most pertinent part of your report appears in chapter
12: What to do in a global strategy. Who is our enemy? You
know, your comments on terrorism, well, where is terrorism? Who
is the enemy? Are they in what location?
I believe they live and work among us. I believe they are
driving those taxicabs here in the District. I believe they are
in our institutions. And I truly believe they are smarter than
we are.
And so I think, because of the work that you have put into
the Commission, that we ought to do the following: We ought to
approve all the recommendations, and the Commission ought to
stay in place as applicable for the rest of this decade.
I also believe that we need to have a report on our risk
assessment.
I also feel very strongly that we need an independent
citizens panel. These families that have worked with you minute
by minute, side by side, including the media, ought to be on an
independent basis, not attached to executive branch or the
congressional branch, so they can act out there in the public
and see that we do the right thing.
We must focus on our global strategy. You said it--both of
you did, but I happen to refer to Senator Kerrey. You know,
terrorism is global, and we live on this globe. That's the only
globe we live on. And unless we understand how they think,
unless we understand the ideology that says they don't practice
what we think, so let's just kill them, we will get nowhere. We
can build great arms, and we can go after their arms. That's
not going to get it.
So, what we have to keep in mind is that we need to
identify the mystic terrorist. We need to have people who look
like them. And that's another thing, we need diversity in the
State Department. We need diversity, people who share some of
the same maybe ethnic background. And we need to get into their
minds. And we need to show that we are a Nation of laws and
that we indeed can share. And that's what you have come up
with. We must share. We must share in this intuition that we
are in. We don't do that. What do you call it, stovepiping? We
are in two little stovepipes, Republicans and Democrats. We are
afraid to offer and share.
So you said we have a tremendous opportunity. And I think
of yin and yang. We have a tremendous opportunity to take this
great tragedy that not only we face, but the world faces and
turn it around. It is going to take a decade or more to do. I
think you ought to be paid because you are not going to be able
to pursue your other careers. You are two fine gentlemen. It is
going to take time, but I don't think you ought to meet daily.
And I think you ought to be seen as the advocates for this plan
that's going to help us survive on this globe.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I will take the comment
if there is time. And may I have permission to submit my
remarks?
Chairman Tom Davis. Without objection, all Members can
submit statements for the record.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Diane E. Watson follows:]
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Ms. Watson. Thank you.
Do you want to stay on forever, Bob? I said at the end of
the decade. I gave them time.
Chairman Tom Davis. I didn't see them jump out of their
seats. But thank you, Ms. Watson, for your comments. Thank you.
And let me just say, I think it has been incredibly
informative. It was a needed dose of reality for Congress. We
get so partisanized and political up here, sometimes we can't
reach a consensus. You did a great job.
Mr. Kerrey. Go on vacation now.
Chairman Tom Davis. You are my cover if anybody says
anything.
Finally, let me just say, you know, five Democrats, five
Republicans from fairly partisan backgrounds coming together in
a nonpolitical atmosphere to reach a consensus on these issues.
I feel confident that we will meet again as expeditiously as
possible, but you both, for yourselves and the Nation as well,
thank you. We thank you for your testimony as well.
Admiral Lehman. Thank you very much.
Mr. Waxman. I also want to extend my gratitude. You have
given us excellent testimony and set good benchmarks for
successful legislation. We are going to do all we can. I think
you have given us the thoughtfulness and the concrete platform
that I think we need. Thank you.
Admiral Lehman. Thank you very much.
Mr. Kerrey. Thank you.
Chairman Tom Davis. We will take a minute recess as we move
to our next panel. We have Beverly Eckert, Sally Regenhard, and
Robin Wiener, who are all family members of September 11. We
appreciate your patience and indeed the leadership you have
shown. Thank you all for being here, and thank you for your
patience. Let's see. We are very excited about having you here
today and your willingness to come forward and testify before
this committee.
It is our policy to swear all witnesses before they
testify. If you will rise with me and raise your right hands
and be sworn.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Chairman Tom Davis. Why don't we start with you, and we'll
move straight on down. Your testimony was submitted. Since your
entire testimony is in here, we can take up to 5 minutes to
read it, and then we'll have some questions.
Let's see. Your entire testimony is in here; you can take
up to 5 minutes to read it, and then we will have some
questions. But, again, I think all of the committee is grateful
for what you have done after September 11, not only with
respect for your losses, but I think some good has come out of
this, and your willingness to step forward and be leaders has
made a difference.
STATEMENTS OF SALLY REGENHARD, FAMILY MEMBER OF SEPTEMBER 11,
2001 VICTIM; BEVERLY ECKERT, FAMILY MEMBER OF SEPTEMBER 11,
2001 VICTIM; AND ROBIN WIENER, FAMILY MEMBER OF SEPTEMBER 11,
2001 VICTIM
Ms. Regenhard. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chairman
Davis, Ranking Member Waxman, Vice Chairman Shays, and members
of the House Committee on Government Reform. It's an honor to
be here today, an honor that I appreciate very much.
My name is Sally Regenhard. I'm the founder and chairperson
of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign. I created this organization
in memory of my son Christian Regenhard, a probationary
firefighter who was lost at the World Trade Center on September
11 with his entire Engine Co. 279, and they remain missing to
this day.
The goals of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign include
advocating for a thorough investigation into the disaster of
the World Trade Center as well as making high-rise buildings
safer in the future through improved building codes, design
practices, and enhanced emergency response procedures and
equipment. Today we would like to discuss some of the findings
and recommendations of the 9/11 report. I would like to focus
on chapter 9 and the some of the recommendations in chapter 12.
Overall, I feel that the 9/11 Commissioners and staff have
provided us with a great amount of detail and analysis about
the emergency response that terrible day. Their extensive text
and notes give us new insights into what went right and what
went terribly wrong that day. They are to be thanked and
congratulated for their superlative and dedicated work, and
they must also be thanked for the respect and honor shown to
the victims and the family members. However, I do feel that
some of the conclusions drawn in chapter 9 are not based upon
actual substantiated facts, but rather upon unsupportable
opinions.
One particular aspect of the report that is quite troubling
to me and to my organization is the discussion relating to the
evacuation orders of the North Tower on pages 322 to 323 of the
report, and the corresponding end note No. 209. It is alleged
that many of the firefighters in the North Tower heard the
message to evacuate, but chose to remain in the building prior
to its collapse. To the contrary. This issue of firefighter
deaths is directly tied to the lack of radio communication
capability in the World Trade Center on September 11. This has
been well documented in the post-September 11 McKinsey Report,
the New York Times, and numerous other publications and
firefighter comments. Yet this theory that firefighters chose
to die has been advanced by some public officials, undoubtedly
hoping to deflect criticism for the inadequacy of the FDNY
radios and for the absence of a functioning incident command
structure in New York City on September 11 which undoubtedly
could have saved so many firefighters' lives, including my
beautiful son Christian.
I take specific exception to the section in the Commission
Report which states, ``In view of these considerations, we
conclude that the technical failure of the FDNY radios, while a
contributing factor, was not the primary cause of the many
firefighter fatalities in the North Tower.''
I and my technical advisers of the Skyscraper Safety
Campaign, which represent a large professional field of fire-
related professionals, have--and communication and evacuation
specialists, have reviewed the substantiating documentation and
have found it lacking. In essence, the report makes a very weak
argument such as, ``It is very possible that at least some of
these firefighters did hear the evacuation order;'' as well as
the most curious statement that firefighters, ``were likely to
have known to evacuate.''
Such statements are not conclusive. Stating that
firefighters refused to evacuate the building for whatever
reason and disobeyed such an important order simply cannot be
confirmed and is a disservice to their memory. These people are
dead. We cannot ask them these questions. The questionable
findings of chapter 9 are based on interviews and transcripts
which the families and the public have no access to. The
information upon which these conclusions were based is
secreted, is suppressed, and this information contains key
knowledge that the families of the victims would like to have.
Myself and other family members here today are part of the
45 percent of family members whose loved ones were never, ever
identified. Not one single piece of DNA was ever found from my
son and for 45 percent of the victims. If this information and
this testimony that these Commission's recommendations and
findings are based upon, I'm asking that this be made public so
that at least we can find out how these very curious
conclusions have come to pass.
I have to say that it may seem that it's not that important
to you, this one aspect of firefighters not obeying orders, but
I must say to you to the families of the firefighters who
perished that day, including myself and the mother of
firefighter Sean Patrick Tallon, who is among the family
members here today, we feel that the lack of radio
communication capability was the primary reason that so many
firefighters died. The fact is, that their equipment betrayed
them at the time that they needed it the most. The fact is well
documented in a new book coauthored by a New York City Fire
Department battalion chief, and this book is called Radio
Silence, FDNY. It provides a history of how these failed radios
got into the hands of the entire New York City Fire Department
on September 11.
Even today, nearly 3 years later, the fire department still
does not have an adequately robust radio system that gives them
the capability to talk in all high-rise buildings in New York
City, in all subways, and in tunnels. This is not just a
firefighter issue, this is an issue of public safety and grave
concern for all, not only in New York City, but in other States
that also can be a target of terrorism, and we don't know how
emergency communication will work.
I call on Congress today to hold hearings into the flawed
September 11 emergency communications system and the fire
department radios of September 11 as well as the failure of the
city of New York to put useful radios into the hands of today's
firefighters. You are the last hope to provide an unbiased
critical review of this significant issue.
Another issue I would like to discuss pertains to the
report's analysis of the incident command system currently
utilized by the city of New York. Just days prior to the 9/11
Commission hearings this past May in New York, the city
announced the creation of a new citywide incident management
system intended to meet impending Federal requirements.
Unfortunately, CIMS is a fundamentally flawed command system in
many respects, including its illogical split of HAZMAT
responses between the NYPD and the FDNY even in the case of a
terrorist attack and the lack of a single clearly designated
incident commander in many emergency responses.
As a New Yorker living in this Nation's No. 1 terrorist
target, I also have grave concerns about the amount of money
flowing to New York City for antiterrorism preparedness. We
should be receiving a much larger piece of the pie, eliminating
the pork-barrel spending of the past. I agree with the 9/11
Commission in its desire to see that a risk and vulnerability
assessment form the baseline for spending. I would further
suggest that the likelihood of an attack play the predominant
role in any risk vulnerability assessment.
Regarding the Commission's recommendations, a review of
chapter 12 reveals that only three recommendations deal with
all of the complex issues that surfaced in New York City and
continue to haunt us to this very day. These three
recommendations can be characterized essentially as mom and
apple pie. They are two broad, and they are lacking the
specificity to deal with the complex issues at hand. I would
have hoped for many more specific recommendations dealing with
each of the communications, incident command, and private
sector emergency preparedness issues raised in this report.
Once again, this is not just about New York City. These
have ramifications for every other State or every other city in
this country which could be a likely target of a terrorist
attack.
For example, the 9/11 Commission should have strongly
critiqued the New York City's incident command system rather
than just stating that, ``emergency response agencies
nationwide should adopt the incident command system.'' With all
due respect to the Commission, most cities and States have
already done this. New York was one of--was the only major city
and the only State in this country which lacked an incident
command structure on September 11. Why not analyze New York
City's current system and detail why it is so flawed rather
than just state, as the Commission stated, that it, ``falls
short of an optimal response plan?'' Clearly, more work is
needed in this area.
In closing, you may have noticed that I am wearing some
medals today. My son earned these medals for obeying orders as
a recon Marine sergeant during his 5 years of distinguished
service in the U.S. Marine Corps before joining the fire
department. When a marine receives an order, he follows it. If
told by a supervisor or superior officer to evacuate the World
Trade Center on September 11, he and others would have done so
if only their radios would have worked. All of these
predominantly young firefighters lost at the World Trade Center
on September 11, with rare exception, would have chosen life if
only they were given the chance. Unfortunately, they and the
rest of the 343 cannot testify before you today. I wear these
medals to defend their honor, and, in doing so, I once again
reiterate the need for congressional hearings into the
communications and radio failures of September 11. I
acknowledge the role of the first responders as far--as part of
the first casualties in this war on terrorism. Please do not
overlook the important problems still facing them today. The
FDNY and the rest of our Nation's emergency personnel are
America's first lines of defense in this country. If they are
not safe and well equipped, how can they protect the public in
case of another terrorist attack? Please help them and honor
those who are gone by giving your attention to this most
important matter. Thank you.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Regenhard follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Ms. Eckert.
Ms. Eckert. Honorable Chairman Davis, distinguished members
of the committee, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Beverly
Eckert. I am appearing here today as a member of the Family
Steering Committee for the 9/11 Commission. We very much
appreciate this opportunity. We understand it is both a
privilege and a responsibility. And we also extend our thanks
to the Commissioners and their staff for their tireless work
and the cogent recommendations which are the focus of today's
hearings. Most of all, we thank the American people for their
interest and support of this process. Hundreds of thousands
have purchased the Commission's report. Tens of millions have
accessed the Commission's Web site to read for themselves the
summary of what went wrong on September 11th, and what we need
to do as a Nation to correct those failings. These astonishing
numbers make it very clear that it can no longer be ``business
as usual'' in Washington. This committee's presence here today
is a testament to that.
There is no recess from terrorism. And because of the
transparent way the Commission operated and the accessibility
of their report in bookstores and on the Internet, ordinary
citizens are now well-informed about the failures of our
national security apparatus. And they are engaging in much-
needed debate about how our government needs to change to
address those failures. This is democracy alive and at work.
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, the roadmap is in
front of you. There are 41 recommendations contained in the 9/
11 Commission report. Neither the Family Steering Committee nor
the American people will let those recommendations suffer the
same fate as those of past commissions. There is no shelf on
which they can be hidden. You and the rest of Congress are very
much in the spotlight, as I am sure you are all keenly aware,
and you will be held accountable by the people for your
actions--or inactions--as will the White House.
To help this oversight--the people's oversight--the Family
Steering Committee will make the progress of legislation,
Executive orders, and agency initiatives available on our Web
site. We will list cosponsors of bills as well as who voted for
and against. Our hope is that legislation will be passed by
unanimous consent after expedited hearings before the end of
this year.
As this process moves forward, we challenge you--election
year notwithstanding--to resist pressures from lobbyists who
might oppose reforms that add cost to their clients'
operations.
In terms of content, we respectfully require that every
bill dealing with these recommendations mandate specific
implementation steps and timetables, to avoid the delays that
characterize the regulatory route. Families who worked so hard
for aviation safety improvements after the Lockerbie tragedy in
1988 understand this need all too well.
We also require language in each bill that addresses
funding, and that appropriations with flexible earmarking
promptly follow. We respectfully require that the bills
submitted to Congress be unencumbered by amendments, the
``pork'' that so often is associated with controversial
legislation.
Last, we challenge the House and Senate to work together to
draft complementary bills so that there will be no need for
conferencing behind closed doors.
The reforms needed to build a more secure Nation must not
be derailed. Nearly 3 years have passed since our Nation's
security was catastrophically breached, but not enough has been
done since then to make us safer. During the September 11
hearings, we heard from agency after agency that corrective
measures have been implemented, only to learn from incidents
reported in the news that security lapses are still rampant.
The Commission report speaks of a ``failure of
imagination'' in Washington, a failure to understand the threat
and respond to it. Going forward, we need government officials
who do have imagination, who can implement legislation that's
creative, responsive, and capable of addressing the challenges
and threats of the 21st century.
A National Counterterrorism Center and a Director of
National Intelligence at the helm is at the heart of the
Commission's recommendations. Yesterday the President announced
that he would support these two recommendations, but the DNI
needs to have the necessary management, budget, and
appropriations control. It's a critical element if they are
going to succeed. And also, this control needs to extend to the
Defense Department; otherwise, the effectiveness of the DNI
will be undermined. Be assured that the Family Steering
Committee will be monitoring these important aspects.
The report identifies Congress itself as being
dysfunctional. We therefore call upon each of you to have the
courage to be part of the solution and embrace fundamental
change in the way the congressional committee oversight system
operates.
As in the days preceding the September 11 attacks, the
threat of terrorism is now high. This committee, Congress, and
the President must act with great urgency. Upcoming elections
must not overshadow these initiatives. These recommendations
require your undivided attention. The American people will
accept nothing less.
Whatever the outcome in November, we expect that you, our
representatives, will use your full terms of office
productively. We fully support a special session of Congress to
ensure that the momentum generated by these hearings will
continue. We cannot afford a lame duck session attitude to
legislation still pending after the November elections.
My husband Sean was trapped in the South Tower of the World
Trade Center on September 11th, but he was able to reach me by
phone. When the smoke and flames drew near, and Sean knew he
was going to die, he remained calm, speaking of his love for me
and for his family. I will forever be in awe of the way he
faced his final moments. In the days that followed, I felt
somehow infused with his courage and strength, and that has
help me persevere through these difficult months. So many other
family members were similarly inspired. Despite our private
anguish, we shared a goal: To make this country safer so that
the deaths of 3,000 people would not be meaningless.
Too many of us lost someone we cherished on September 11th.
Too many of us also lost our faith in a government we had
blindly trusted to protect the people we loved. After September
11th, the country reached out to families and asked what they
could do to help us heal. We now have an answer: ``Help us make
these recommendations happen.'' And our question to Congress,
the President, and this committee is, are you willing to
implement reforms before this year has ended and thereby
restore our Nation's faith in its government?
The anniversary of September 11th approaches. What better
way to honor the memory of those who perished than by enacting
legislation this year, which ensures that no other family
member has to experience what we have endured. I hope I never
see the day another widow has to walk in my shoes. The time to
act is now. Thank you.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much, Mrs. Eckert.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Eckert follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Ms. Wiener.
Ms. Wiener. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank
you for inviting us to testify today, and thank you for holding
these hearings. I'm truly honored to be here. My name is Robin
Wiener, and I appear before you as a member of the Family
Steering Committee, a board member of Families of September 11,
and, most importantly, as the sister of Jeffrey Wiener, who was
killed the morning of September 11th while working at his desk
on the 96th floor of Tower One of the World Trade Center.
As tragic as that day was for the victims, their families,
and all of our country, America was united, strongly united,
for months after the attacks. Sadly, that unity eroded quickly
as response to the tragedy became political. In the months
following September 11, 2001, the families began to advocate
for the creation of a commission to investigate the terrorist
attacks, with the goal of making whatever changes would be
necessary to prevent another such attack. The American spirit
that drives us to seek the truth has shown itself in the sales
of the report, a bestseller by anyone's calculation.
Unity and truth are vitally important, Mr. Chairman. They
are very powerful forces, and they are what make this country
strong. As Beverly made clear, the American people are reading
this report closely. They are absorbing the recommendations,
they are watching what you do here today and what you will do
in the weeks and months ahead. And they, along with the
families, will not be pleased if they see the Commission's
recommendations falling by the wayside.
Certainly these hearings are a wonderful start, and I
appreciate that the members of this committee have interrupted
their recess to address the most serious issue facing all
Americans. This type of response gives me hope that we are
going to get things right for the safety and security of all of
our citizens. However, Mr. Chairman, the encouragement that the
families in our country received from the timeliness of these
hearings is tempered by a very real fear. The families and the
American people are expecting Congress and the administration
to act expediently, but without political expediency.
It is important that the implementation of the Commission's
recommendations occur in a timeline that is drawn to protect
America, not to protect incumbents of any party, Democrat or
Republican. It is vital for our Nation that we avoid quick
fixes that are inadequate or incomplete.
We recognize that this puts you, your colleagues, and the
administration in a difficult position. How can you act quickly
to implement the Commission's recommendations without seeming
to make political hay in the process? The solution, in my
opinion, lies in the future of the 9/11 Commission itself.
The families of victims have asked that the Commission be
kept alive to oversee the implementation of its
recommendations. This bipartisan body is uniquely qualified to
monitor implementation and to reassure the American people that
the process is working; that the progress being made by our
elected leaders is furthering our security, and that all of the
recommendations are properly implemented.
Many of the September 11 families have endorsed the
Commission's recommendations as a whole. We hope that you
recognize that all of the recommendations are important, and
all are part of a comprehensive package designed to work in
concert to significantly diminish the terrorist threat facing
our country.
The Commission report deals with issues that go beyond
intelligence czars and counterterrorism centers, issues that
have led the news in recent days. The Commission has important
recommendations that deal with such critical issues as foreign
policy, diplomacy, education, foreign aid, border security,
terrorist financing, economic policy and the like. I implore
you to prioritize, to enact that which can be carried out
immediately, but while also moving forward on recommendations
requiring longer-term discussions.
We, the families, challenge the members of this committee
and all Members of Congress to recognize that the unprecedented
terrorist attacks of September 11th demand an unprecedented
effort on the part of Congress that will require streamlining
the committee process and exceptional coordination between the
House and Senate as well as coordination and communication with
the administration. We challenge you to provide the American
people with a timetable that Congress is prepared to follow to
implement this report. And, last, we challenge you to put aside
turf battles and partisan rivalries and act quickly to do
everything that must be done to reduce our vulnerability to
another terrorist attack. In short, Mr. Chairman, the families
and the entire country are looking to you and your colleagues
to do your work quickly and to do it right, an awesome
responsibly.
You have a wonderful opportunity before you to take a
leadership role, and we commend you for calling this hearing
today. We also commend Congressman Shays and Congresswoman
Maloney for forming a caucus for Members committed to enacting
all of the Commission's recommendations. Hearings like this can
be important, but please demonstrate to the American public
that you are serious in your efforts.
Mr. Chairman, if I could take a personal moment. I was
blessed on November 23rd of last year to become the mother of a
beautiful little girl named Jennifer, named after the uncle she
will never have the good fortune to know. The seriousness by
which you take the job given to you by the 9/11 Commission will
not only honor and create a positive legacy to those 3,000
souls who so tragically lost their lives on September 11, but
will determine whether Jennifer and millions of other children
like her will grow up in a safe, secure, and strong America.
Mr. Chairman, we implore you, please do what is required.
Act smartly and act quickly. The families look forward to
working very closely with you and the rest of the committee,
the rest of Congress, and the administration to do what is
necessary to implement the Commission's recommendations. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Wiener follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Well, thank you all for some very
moving and compelling testimony.
I'm going to start the questioning with Mr. Waxman.
Mr. Waxman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I want to thank the three of you for being here and
giving us your testimony. I know you speak not just for
yourselves, but for others who are in the same circumstances of
having suffered a loss as a result of the attack on September
11th.
We have had the Commission due to a great part because you
have all insisted on it, and now we have those committee's
recommendations.
Ms. Wiener, let me start with you. Secretary Lehman said
that this is not a Chinese menu, these 40 recommendations. He
thought that they ought to be considered as a whole, and we
ought to pass all of these recommendations because they fit
together and they make it work in its totality. Do you agree
with that statement?
Ms. Wiener. Absolutely. I don't believe that you can
cherry-pick the recommendations. They all, as I mentioned in my
testimony, work in concert to deal with the huge problem before
us and must be dealt with as a package.
Mr. Waxman. And, Ms. Eckert, is it the view of the Steering
Committee of victims of September 11 that this be done, this
legislation be done and adopted into law before we leave at the
beginning of October?
Ms. Eckert. Well, we think it should be done during the
terms of office, that the people who are elected right now,
before their term of office is over to the extent that is
possible. We just think you should be productive all the way
through the end of the year. And obviously the election is
going to occupy some of your attention, but we don't want it to
be totally diverted from what you need to do today.
Mr. Waxman. Well, I would hope the fact that we have an
election would be a way to drive us all together and accept
these recommendations. My fear is if it gets kicked over to a
lame duck session or next year, that the sense of urgency will
be dissipated, and that we won't have the driving force that we
now have to enact the legislation in its entirety.
Ms. Eckert. And it's just so important. I mean, the
Commission's set such an incredible example of bipartisanship.
And I think, you know, the committee members of this room have
evidenced that as well. And we need to continue in that, and we
hope that legislation will be enacted before the end of the
year through bipartisan cooperation.
Mr. Waxman. Well, I want to join you in support of exactly
that goal. I think we ought to move forward. I was somewhat
critical in questioning whether President Bush's statements
yesterday reflected that same commitment. The two witnesses
that we had earlier, Secretary Lehman and Senator Kerrey, both
thought it was a good start that the President came out and
endorsed doing something, but I think that--I don't in any way
mean this in a partisan way. I think we have to work together,
not to put something forward that looks like the Commission's
recommendations, but are just as effective; in fact, the very
recommendations of the Commission.
I thank you very much for your testimony, and I look
forward to working with you and my colleagues on both sides of
the aisle to accomplish what needs to be accomplished now and
should have been done much earlier, but we need it now just as
much as we ever did. Thank you so much.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
Mr. Shays.
Mr. Shays. You both make us a bit speechless. You have been
fighting this battle for so long, and your eloquence is still
with you. We have before us a son Christian, a husband Sean,
and a brother Jeff, and you give us some reality to what we
need to be doing.
With that in mind, I know you want this as a package, but
if you told me what was the recommendation you agreed with most
strongly, even if it wasn't the most important, I would like to
know that. I would like to know what was the recommendation
that spoke mostly to your heart and said, yes.
Ms. Eckert. To me, I think the September 11th event could
have been stopped if intelligence had operated more
effectively. So I do believe that there are global issues that
are going to take a long time to implement; but I think right
now, because of the threat, that we really need to address
integration of the intelligence stovepipes, as everybody has
called them. I think that's urgent.
Ms. Wiener. I think for me it's a group of recommendations.
It's the group of recommendations dealing with the global
strategy, and specifically what we need to do in the Muslim
world and the Arab world in order to prevent the future growth
of terrorism. And there was some discussion earlier about the
madrassas, for example, and of all the efforts that--the
recommendations that reflect the efforts that this government
should take to provide economic stability and a better future,
I think, in the Muslim world through education and through
other such efforts. Those are the ones probably that are
closest to my heart.
Ms. Regenhard. I agree with my colleagues in both of their
statements. And the thing that has touched my heart the most is
that chapter 9, and the look at what happened to New York City,
what happened, why 343 firefighters died is most inadequate.
The finding that the radios were not the primary cause of
firefighters' death really flies in the face of so much that we
know, the families know, and that has already been printed.
Also, the end notes, especially 209, contain information
that materially conflicts with what some of the family members
have been told regarding specific units, regarding who heard
what. We are very concerned about this. And what speaks to my
heart is the need for congressional hearings into the entire
communications disaster of September 11.
Mr. Shays. Ms. Regenhard, our committee has held hearings;
the chairman has made sure that we have held hearings on our
whole capacity to communicate and frequencies and equipment
that's necessary. So we are looking at technology and so on.
And he had mentioned to me that he wants us to followup on what
you have requested. But I would like you to--so I would like to
say we hear you.
Ms. Regenhard. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. But I would like to ask you to go beyond just
that area. If you could get the communication issue done, what
would be the thing that then spoke to you most?
Ms. Regenhard. Well, certainly looking at the entire 9/11
Commission report, looking at everything in totality, what
speaks to me most is that there were levels of failure in every
single area of this government, of this country. There was no
one held accountable or responsible for what they did. I feel,
and other families of the victims feel, that their loved ones
died in vain, had a wrongful death without any correction. And
certainly if these recommendations could be enacted very
quickly, that would be something that speaks to me. However----
Mr. Shays. Let me ask you this, my time coming to a close
here. You did not want the report to have any redacted parts to
it. You wanted it to be all. And what I want you to speak to,
if you could, is the recommendation that less things be so-
called intelligence, classified, not available to the public.
Could you all speak to me on that issue quickly?
Ms. Regenhard. Yes. I would like to say that myself, the
families of the victims, and my organization is very, very
shocked to hear that the September 11 emergency tapes that
occurred on September 11 plus the 500 interviews that were done
with the New York City firefighters immediately after September
11, all this information, instead of being disclosed to the
public, instead of being shared with the families, is going to
be secreted and put into the National Archives for a minimum of
25 years. By the time that myself and other families members
are able to find out what really happened to our sons and our
husbands, we will really be perhaps not even in a capacity to
really appreciate or understand it, or certainly not to take
any action. That's one issue.
But only recently, reading the Commission report and
reading the end notes, and realizing that there is information
there that contradicts what the families of the firefighters
have been told--I have just recently learned that even that,
even that information is going to remain secreted and to be put
in the National Archives--I am calling for full disclosure. Why
on Earth, with all the sensitive declassified intelligence
information that has been shared, and we have gained so much
from it, why on Earth would the city of New York, why on Earth
would the 9/11 Commission want to keep any information about
what happened in those buildings, what happened with the
radios, what happened with the communication, why would they
want to keep that secret? I really call for full disclosure of
all this information, of all the testimony so we can really
find out what happened and how can we correct it.
Again, this is not about New York. There is a possibility
of a massive communication failure and radio failure in any
other city in this country. I want to prevent that, and I would
like full disclosure.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mrs. Maloney.
Mrs. Maloney. I would like to thank all the family members
for their testimony and ask unanimous consent to place in the
record a statement by the Family Steering Committee regarding
the President's acceptance of certain recommendations, if
that's possible.
[The information referred to follows:]
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Mrs. Maloney. I would also like to followup on what Ms.
Sally Regenhard was saying. This is a lot of contradiction over
the radios, and I, for one, Mr. Chairman, see absolutely no
reason why we should not look at these tapes and look at this
information, especially since the preceding panel talked about
the need to have dissent, to have all of the information out
there.
To this day some people say the radios worked; some people
say they don't. One leading official in the fire department
told me the other day, ``The radios that did not work on
September 11 still do not work.''
We need to look at this information in order to protect our
citizens and our first responders in other situations.
On a personal note, on September 11 I went to the One Place
Plaza, which was the temporary headquarters for response given
that our headquarters were destroyed on September 11. The one
thing I was asked to do was to get radios, because our radios
do not work. I reached out to Bill Young, chairman of
Appropriations, and he arranged to fly in military radios so
that we could communicate on the mound when we were looking for
survivors.
So I would like to followup on your statement, Ms.
Regenhard. What do you think we would gain from these hearings
that we have not already heard? What benefit would be going
further into exploring what exactly happened and look at all
relevant documents? What would we gain?
Ms. Regenhard. I think the benefit would be, first of all,
that we could get a true accounting of what really happened in
those buildings. What were the factors that led to this demise
of so many first responders; not only firefighters, but police
officers and Port Authority officers? We could examine all the
issues and find out--the relevance to today is we can find out
what has been corrected and what still needs to be corrected.
Without a thorough, comprehensive examination of all the
issues, all the facts, we will never be able to know that we
have corrected the problems.
We cannot let anything remain hidden. There is no reason
for it. We have to have the courage to really see why there was
such a massive failure, and, in doing so, protect not only the
city of New York, but, as I said, the ramifications are across
this country in every State. If there were another catastrophe,
how do we know that emergency fire radios in different States
could work? How do we know? We had so many shortcomings
especially in the 911 system; when people called up, they
wanted to know what should they do, how do they get out of the
building, should they stay, should they go up, should they go
down. There was no system between the Police Department of the
city of New York and the fire department and the 911 emergency
operators.
That cannot be allowed to continue. Every State needs to
have a framework whereby if there is a major catastrophe, and
people are calling and saying, what should I do, it should not
be up to a minimally trained 911 operator who has no input from
the fire department or from the police department or from the
HAZMAT units or the emergency services or environmental
protection. We have to create a better system.
In the past, we said we could never anticipate what
happened. That's very questionable. However, be that as it may,
we can anticipate that more terrorist attacks may be coming.
And another matter that we can look into is to see what
happened in that building and how did that building fail? And
perhaps we can look at strengthening building codes practices,
and think, when we are building, toward blast-resistant and
antiterrorist construction.
Thank you very much.
Mrs. Maloney. I would like to very briefly ask all of the
panelists to comment on how you view the 9/11 Commission should
go forward. Some think it should be privately funded; some
think its responsibility should be assumed by Congress. What do
you see for the future of what has been, I think, a remarkable
example of public service? And I ask all of you to comment.
Ms. Eckert. I agree that they have a continuing role to
educate and to be available for hearings like this one. They
have indicated they themselves would prefer private funding,
and we support them in that. On the other hand, if for some
reason that funding isn't available, I do think that their
role--they do have an important role. And they are not going to
stay together the same way and operate the same way they have
with subpoena power and calling hearings that people have to
attend. I don't think they envision doing that, and neither do
we. But they are an important source of educating the public
and keeping everybody aware and focused, and if it comes to
pass that Congress wants to appropriate money for that
endeavor, that would be fine.
Mrs. Maloney. Ms. Wiener.
Ms. Wiener. I would have to agree with Beverly. And I would
have to say that I would defer to the Commission itself and its
preferences in this regard for private funding. They do play a
critical role in the future to keep this issue alive and make
sure that the recommendations do move forward into action. And
so I would also hope that if for whatever reason private
funding does not materialize, then Congress would step in to
provide the support that's needed.
Ms. Regenhard. I would like to consider perhaps a
combination of private funding and the Federal Government
funding, Congress. And, also, I would like to see funding for
technology for the New York City Fire Department come really
from technology that's available through the Department of
Defense currently. I think--and not only in the New York City
Fire Department, but every major fire department, police
department, and emergency service throughout this country. They
should be able to take advantage of the Department of Defense
technology. It's there. You know, let's use it to protect the
American public, the people that you represent so well.
And I want to thank you, Mrs. Maloney, for your leadership.
I want to thank every single person here for the wonderful job
that you are doing. And we appreciate what you are doing,
because you are helping to protect America. Thank you.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Turner.
Mr. Turner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Regenhard, when you were talking about the issues of
the equipment and the training for both the fire department and
the police department, the response, it was an issue that
perhaps you heard in the first panel that I had raised as an
issue and share with you your concern. I notice in your
testimony, you say review of chapter 12 reveals that only three
recommendations deal with the all complex issues that surfaced
in New York City and continue to haunt us to this day, and that
you would have hoped for more specific recommendations.
My first question, the city of New York had a weapons of
mass destruction/terrorist response exercise a month prior to
September 11th, and what struck me in reading the 9/11 report
is that when I reread the domestic preparedness report of the
exercise that occurred in Dayton and with the September 11
incident being a real incident, they read very similar. In the
city of Dayton's report it says, participants agree that the
amount of information transmitted in and out of the command
post was overwhelming. Fire department engine or truck company
personnel should be trained how to properly support on a joint
command post with the incident command and management, managing
the incident by identifying issues and reminding them to
request necessary resources required for this type of incident.
Participants agreed direct radio communications between fire
department and police department units would have been
beneficial and desirable. Improving interagency incident
communications should be addressed.
All of the recommendations, all of what occurred in an
exercise occurred in the actual incident that we had in
September 11th in New York.
Ms. Regenhard. Yes.
Mr. Turner. And I said earlier that John Ashcroft had
attended the exercise that we had in Dayton. I know that you
have a continuing concern that we are not doing enough in this.
Chairman Shays, the chairman of our national security
subcommittee, has been really pushing on the issue of what we
needed to do for first responders in case all of our efforts on
intelligence still result in our need for our first responders
to be there defending our country. I want to give you another
opportunity to speak on that.
Ms. Regenhard. Yes. I want to say it's really amazing and
both horrifying that this type of procedure exists. The
knowledge is there. You know, it wasn't a matter that New York
City, you know, the technology didn't exist or whatever. The
knowledge was there. What you described was something that was
well known, it was an established procedure. But yet how could
a city like New York, purportedly the greatest city in the
world, how could they not have taken part in any of this
technology, in any of this practice and procedures? How could
we have been left so defenseless, lacking an incident command
structure?
You know that on September 11 the police department did not
and could not communicate with the fire department, so that
the--when the second tower--the police department and the fire
department and the city of New York for decades, I imagine,
have had a turf war. Instead of working together in an incident
command structure under a unified head, at times they actually
engaged in fisticuffs.
This is something that has gone on and on, and it has not
been addressed. It has been a failure of leadership in the city
of New York for quite some time to not bring New York City up
to this level of technology and practice that you described.
I hate to--I am sorry to say this: We have made some
progress since September 11, but I have to tell you the city of
New York still does not have an adequate incident command
structure, and there is no reason for this. We really need to
look at what is happening right now in the city of New York and
what needs to be done to assure that this catastrophe will not
happen again. We have a long way to go.
The other aspect is the radios that you mentioned. The
radios that failed in the World Trade Center attack in 1993
were the same radios that the New York City Fire Department
were sent into the World Trade Center with in 2001. This is an
outrage. I would like you to look into this. How could this
happen? If this could happen in New York City, what is
happening in other States? What is happening in other cities?
Do we have such a failure of responsibility?
You know, I deeply regret the lives of these beautiful
people, these young, beautiful people--there were 97 unmarried
firefighters lost in the World Trade Center. There were 17
probationary firefighters, including my son. And the rest of
the 343 wonderful, beautiful people, military people, Marines,
people who were the salt of the Earth, they met a needless
death because of the failure of emergency preparedness in the
city of New York--lack of incident command structure, lack of a
police department and fire department that were able to work
together, and lack of radios that worked.
This is simple. This is not something that is so beyond the
scope of technology. We should have had it. We need to look at
this. We need to find out how did this happen to this city? How
did this happen?
My son believed in the city of New York. He loved the city
of New York. He loved his country. These are only 3 of 12
medals and awards that he won; and the saddest part is, when I
was looking at these medals closer last night, one of the
medals in the back has three words: ``fidelity, zeal,
obedience.'' My son and those firefighters would have obeyed an
order to leave that building. My son was betrayed by a system
that put him in there with radios that did not work.
My son was a proud Marine. He obeyed orders. He was a
shining example of the best of this country. I want to know why
he was sent into a situation with equipment that did not work,
a hopeless situation. And if I can save the sons and husbands
of other people in the future, that is my goal. That is what I
want to do.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
Mr. Davis, any questions?
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I wanted to thank all three of you for your very well-
thought-out, developed and passionate testimony. Even though
you are not elected officials, you know about timetables, you
know about schedules, and you know about the legislative
process. I think it may have been you, Ms. Eckert, who
indicated that terrorism did not take a recess or did not have
a recess.
While most people that I hear are in agreement that the
recommendations need to be implemented, we are already
beginning to hear some people suggest that there may not be
enough time this year or that maybe the implementation should
occur after the election. It seems to me that we need to move
as expeditiously as is possible in order to put in place as
quickly as we can this set of recommendations.
Do you think that there is--and each of you might respond--
there is actually enough time to do a good review of looking at
the recommendations, going through the process, before the
election in November, rather than after the election?
Ms. Eckert. I do, because, even this position of director
of national intelligence is not new. We are new at this, and we
are trying to learn the ropes and to keep up. But, honestly, as
far as I have heard, this debate has been going on since 1947.
So I think the time for debate on something like that is over.
It failed. We did not have a director of national intelligence,
and therefore the process did not work.
I think if people simply acknowledge you do have the
information. The Commission worked long and hard to compile, to
do these hearings and get testimony, and I know you are going
to hear from some of the same people. It is your responsibility
to do that.
But I want to use the phrase expedited. This is not a real
good example of an expedited hearing, because I know it is
lasting very long. But I think it can be done. I think it can
be done, if there is zeal, energy and commitment.
Ms. Wiener. If I could add to this, we certainly recognize
that a number of the recommendations are longer term. But
longer term does not mean you start later. You still start now.
It just may take a longer amount of time to get them ultimately
implemented.
My fear is if we wait until after the election to start
even discussing some of these other recommendations that we
will never get to them.
There are--looking at the list again--the ones closest to
my heart: Preventing the continued growth of Islamic terrorism,
define the message, stand as an example of moral leadership in
the world--quoting from the report--over an agenda of
opportunity that provides support for economic education and
openness. You can't achieve those by election day. I wish you
could. But certainly the discussion has to begin now or it will
never occur.
So I urge you that when we say all the recommendations have
to be done simultaneously, we are talking for some of the
longer-term ones about at least starting the discussion
simultaneously. Because some of these will certainly require a
certain amount of debate, and they all don't--for some of
these, I recognize it is not just passing a bill. There is work
that has to be done within agencies. There are policy shifts
that have to occur. But, please, I really urge you to start
thinking about them now.
Ms. Regenhard. I have to say again I agree with my
colleagues on their statements. I have to also say that I
really appreciated hearing from Ms. Watson her comments
regarding to keep some of these Commission members involved. I
think it would be a shame to have this wonderful Commission
just go away now and leave it up to agencies and other people
to start reinventing the wheel.
In some way, shape or form, I would like to see people who
have become experts in this arduous process to be part of the
solution now, part of the implementation. Let them guide the
agencies and people whose responsibility it will be to enact it
in some type of way. Keep them connected with it and keep that
momentum.
One of the Congresspersons said something about losing the
momentum, you know? We cannot really lose the momentum, because
so much of life is in the momentum, and we don't have time to
waste to lose it.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. I certainly agree with each of you,
and I want to commend you again for your courage, tenacity and
fortitude and thank you very much for your testimony.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
Mrs. Blackburn.
Mrs. Blackburn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and I thank you for
the extra effort today to bring us here for the hearing.
I thank all of you, each one of you, for taking your time
to come and to talk with us. I appreciate the comments that you
just made about what we need to have the debate, and there will
be policy shifts that we will need, too, that will need to take
place.
I think that we can all agree that the Commission and this
committee agree that information sharing is essential, that
increasing the information sharing is essential; and the report
definitely makes it very clear that has to be increased at all
levels of government, the local, the State and the Federal
Government, if we are going to combat terrorism and the
terrorists that are causing these activities.
It seems like sometimes political decisions allow loopholes
or cause loopholes in that data that is available for sharing.
One of the things we have seen is that the Department of
Homeland Security has made a decision to accept from the U.S.-
Visit border crossing system people entering from Canada and
Mexico, and we already know that al Qaeda is trying to sneak
terrorists in posing as Mexican nationals. I would like to hear
from each one of you if you agree that the U.S.-Visit system
should apply to everybody coming into this country, everyone
that is not a U.S. citizen coming into this country. Because it
seems that we are only going to be able to address the
situation and make some good decisions if we have a complete
data set that we are working from.
I would like to hear from each of you on a response for
that.
Ms. Eckert. I would say--and I am not an expert on that
topic--but I would say that until we have a more effective
system of screening people that we do need to make it
universal. We have, I don't know, 12 million illegals here
already. Clearly, we make it too easy for people to infiltrate.
We need to be able to identify people who are terrorists who
are already here, but clearly we need to stop them before they
enter the country.
We made exceptions before. We had--what was it called--Visa
Express, I believe, that allowed the Saudis--they actually
targeted that system and used it because they knew how easy it
was to get into the United States through that.
So I think that is just an example. We have to learn the
lessons of our mistakes before. So without necessarily
elaborating on any one system, I don't think that we should
have exceptions.
Ms. Wiener. I am not an expert on that system either, but
it would appear to me that we would be better off without
exceptions, and it should be universally applied. But, again, I
do need to state I am certainly no expert on this system.
Ms. Regenhard. I would like to thank you very much for that
question and tell you that the families of the victims have
formed many different groups. One of the groups that was formed
by the families of the victims--and certainly many of us are
members here--is 9/11 Families for a Secure America. This is a
group of people who have lost their loved ones who are working
for the driver's license reform legislation and for the issues
that you just mentioned. And, yes, they agree, we agree, it
should be across the board. We cannot let certain people in and
then not let someone else in and pay the price of the people
who sneak in some way.
We need to really get strict about our border security. We
need, of course, while looking with certainly a sharper eye at
fundamental Islamic militants or people from known terrorist
countries, we certainly have to look with a more critical aye.
However, we need to have strict guidelines across the board,
and whether it is Canada or Mexico or whether it is another
country, yes, we have to have that. Until we can re-refine it
in such a way, we need to really get serious about immigration.
All of these issues that you mentioned today, there were
failures across the board; and if any one of them could have
been, you know, not failed, even one could have stopped it,
that is how I personally feel.
So, yes, we have to get serious about immigration and
drivers' licenses.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Tierney.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think everybody understands the kind of loss that each of
you suffered and other victims suffered can be paralyzing. The
fact that for all of you, you have just turned that pain into
public service, as I mentioned earlier, is beyond commendable.
It is absolutely inspiring, and I hope that you are able to
inspire the prompt action that I think this warrants and
deserves.
One of you mentioned earlier about having a Web site or
something that is going to keep people's feet to the fire, and
I think it is a excellent idea. I commend Chris Shays and Mrs.
Maloney for forming a caucus to support the recommendations.
Just for what it might offer to you as a benchmark on it,
we could certainly have a bill drafted almost immediately with
the help of legislative counsel here that encompasses and
embodies all of the recommendations of this report can be
implemented soon. We could have committee hearings in almost no
time at all.
During the Homeland Security consideration, this committee
met and marked up the bill in one long day, and at least two
other committees with jurisdiction did the same, and then a
select committee that the Speaker put in place held a couple of
days of hearings, and then the matter went to the floor. So
these things can move.
If it goes to the floor for debate, I obviously think we
should have more than the customary 1 hour that sometimes
important matters are given, but it need not go on for weeks or
months.
And if it isn't brought to the floor immediately, there is
a process around here called discharge petition that you all
probably have heard of in another context where we could demand
that somebody file a discharge petition and people sign on
until we get a majority that forces it to the floor, and that
would be where your Web site or whatever would be instructive
to people to see who is for moving this bill and who is not for
moving it. Not certainly who is voting for it or who is voting
against it, because we have to respect people's opinions about
what they feel about the actual legislation, but who is moving
it forward for consideration and debate and deliberation,
during which time it could be amended or amendments could be
offered, and then it could be passed.
This certainly, in my estimation, could be done before the
anniversary date of September 11, 2004, but definitely by the
end of this year, and that is even with time off for other
things.
So if that is any kind of a benchmark to you, I offer it to
you, and we have past examples of how we have moved rather
quickly on things.
Getting aside from some of the particulars on the security
matters, I wanted to ask for your respective opinions about the
broader issue of Islamic terrorism and the comments made in the
report about the fact that we have to move and do something
about that.
What generally has been the reaction of the families with
respect to those statements to talk about offering an agenda of
opportunity that includes support for public education and
economic solution and openness, defining the message and
standing with it, moral leadership in the world and those types
of things? Is the Steering Committee and other families solidly
behind those statements? Do you want to expand on those at all?
Ms. Wiener. Two comments. First of all, on the first point
you made about how quickly you can move, I just want to say
thank you. I hope that happens.
Also, the Family Steering Committee and the families in
general, through our Web site as well as other means, are very
prepared and willing to help you in whatever way we can to help
legislation move through grassroots action. We are certainly
most of us are located in the Northeast corridor. There are
relatives everywhere. We are throughout the country.
Mr. Tierney. Let me just inject, you should know, so it
hopefully gives you some comfort on this, that there have been
bills filed by Members of this Congress, without mentioning the
names, but there have been bills that have been sitting there
for months without yet being moved for hearing or not. So there
are people willing to act on that, and you know who they are,
can find out who they are. But there are certainly vehicles
already filed for parts of this, but I think we can get one
solid vehicle that encompasses it all and move that, too.
Sorry to interrupt you.
Ms. Wiener. I appreciate that, and I think we would very
much welcome an opportunity to sit down with you outside the
hearing process, sit down with you in your offices and talk
about the bills that have been filed and which ones we should
help move. That would be something we would be very anxious to
do.
With regard to your second point or your question, I can't
speak for all the families on that, but I know that there has
been discussion certainly in the Family Steering Committee and
beyond where families are concerned with regard to the issues
raised by the Commission in terms of the global strategy. And
certainly we are concerned not only with protecting our
homeland and doing everything we can to reorganize the debt
shares--I think someone used that term earlier--but we also
need and fully recognize there needs to be significant policy
shifts and actions taken by our government to prevent the
future growth of terrorism. Because, as we have all heard from
the Pew opinion polls and other studies that have been done,
there certainly is not a love for us in the rest of the world
and certainly in that part of the world. If we do nothing about
that the problem becomes even much larger than we can imagine
right now. That failure of imagination the commissioners talked
about I think is only going to grow.
So certainly there is a recognition on the part of a lot of
the families that we need to do something in order to address
that. I use the term ``something'' because something I know I
have been struggling with ever since the Commission came out
with its report is how do you address those things. This is
where a meeting might be helpful. I don't know that it is
simply legislation, because some of these are policy
initiatives. But there are also some very simple things that
the Commission mentioned in terms of additional funding, for
example, for broadcast and TV broadcasts in the Islamic world
to get our message out. The funding of the schools has been
mentioned already several times.
So there are certainly small things that can be done and
large things as well. I think Commissioner Kerrey mentioned
this morning we shouldn't forget those small things. But in
terms of the larger group of recommendations and the concept of
a global strategy, certainly the families, as far as I am
aware, are certainly behind that. When we say all the
recommendations need to be implemented, we certainly include
those recommendations.
Mr. Tierney. I may leave you with the thought that I think
leadership has a great deal to do with that in setting the tone
of the Nation.
Ms. Regenhard. I would like to add, regarding your
question, that we can never forget that fundamentalist Islamic
militants hate us; and their main goal is to destroy this
country. That being said, I favor a multi-disciplinary
approach. In addition to the awareness and the hyper-vigilance
that we must have against our enemies, I also favor a
disciplinary approach of education and many other different
ways to deal with this serious problem.
But these people are in our midst. They proved that on
September 11. The recent terrorist plot or the information that
we found out only yesterday proves these people are here, they
are taking pictures, they are planning, they are here. We have
to do a better job of tracking these people, finding out where
the money is going. We need to do that. That is No. 1.
No. 2 and No. 3 can be the multi-disciplinary approach to
try to change their philosophies and try to stop them from
hating us and trying to kill us.
Ms. Eckert. I have one short comment, and that it is an
overall policy issue. It has to do with our dependence on
foreign oil. I think that we really need some changes in that
regard, because it has caused this country to make unholy
alliances and support corrupt regimes. So I think we can--every
American can address that by fuel consumption. But we can
address it as a Nation by alternative sources of energy.
Mr. Shays [presiding]. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Hon. John F. Tierney follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6537.064
Mr. Shays. At this time, the Chair recognizes Mr. McHugh.
Mr. McHugh. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ladies, let me just add my words of welcome and admiration.
I am in awe of your courage, of how you have taken a tragic
circumstance and made it a positive force in memory of your
lost loved ones.
One of you said earlier that your loved one died in vain. I
understood the reference, but I think through your work and
through hopefully the work of this Congress and this committee,
we can ensure that on a very important level that doesn't
happen. I know that is a great motivation for you.
As I said, I am in awe of you. Thank you for gracing us
here today.
I think you heard a little bit earlier some of the concerns
about civil liberties. I will say to my colleagues I have found
some of the comments earlier today and pontificating rather
interesting. The fact of the matter is we are going to have a
real struggle in this Congress when we get to issues about
civil liberties, about transgression of those individual
rights.
I think it was pretty well evidenced just a few weeks ago
on the House floor where we had an initiative on the floor that
would have placed sanctions on communities that today are
refusing to deal with the Immigration and Naturalization
Service and Customs and other Federal agencies to get ahold of
this immigration issue. This House, some of my colleagues who
have been most vociferous today in their support of this
blanket initiative, voted that down. I was stunned.
We actually sanctioned in the House communities in this
Nation not dealing with immigration authorities. That is where
we are, and we have to be I think as realistic as these ladies
have been and the surviving families in general about the
challenge.
One of the greatest assets I think I found in the pages of
this report is, as Senator Kerrey said, they identified the
threat. It is Islamic fundamentalists, terrorism, and to call
it anything else in the interest of PC is a huge, huge
disservice. Whether we are talking about the Patriot Act,
whether we are talking about the initiative to identify through
biometrics or others who is coming into this Nation, who is
leaving, etc., we need to get serious about the larger
incentive. To the extent this report lets us do that and get
beyond the political correctness of the moment, I think it is
important.
My simple question to you ladies would be, drawing on your
experiences not just on that terrible day but through this
process, what would you say to the American Civil Liberties
Union, for example, that has already expressed some concerns
about portions of this report, as to the need to step forward
and judiciously but perhaps in different ways choose between
those civil liberties that we all cherish and the laws and the
initiatives contained in this report? Because it is going to be
a question we have to deal with.
Ms. Eckert. I think as long as there are checks and
balances, there is oversight, there is recourse for people,
that it doesn't get out of control. I think some of the
sensitivities about our civil liberties are an extreme
reaction. Let's say for privacy, because we don't have a lot of
privacy. Let's say whether we fly or not, or took a particular
airline flight. I know since I charged this to my credit card
the record is there.
So as a family member who suffered the direct consequences
of lack of security, I tend to want to try the experiment of
going further than we have in terms of information that is
necessary in order to identify suspicious behavior. But, as I
said, I think it is really necessary that there is oversight.
I think another part of the equation I heard at one of the
hearings, someone said we don't need all of this, because we
pretty much know the 75,000 people or so who are suspects, and
we should be focusing on that and not everybody in the entire
country. So I think there is some merit to that.
I just hope that whatever is put into place does it. You
can have too much data, and it is not going to mean anything.
So I think we should focus on those areas where people,
terrorists, are known to utilize, for lack of a better word,
methods and focus there, and I think we need to have protection
of our civil liberties. We already do have that, but if there
are going to be privacy issues that are more in the forefront,
then I think we should strengthen the protections as well.
Mr. McHugh. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. At this time, the Chair would recognize Chris
Van Hollen.
Mr. Van Hollen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We have covered a lot of territory today, and I just wanted
to take my time to first thank you for your powerful and
eloquent testimony and thank you for dedicating yourselves to
doing everything in your power to prevent another September 11
and to prevent other families from suffering the terrible loss
that you have.
My colleague, Mr. Tierney, talked about the potential
timetable in the Congress, and I just want to underscore that
point and also add that the parts of the reform that deal with
congressional oversight can be done even more quickly in the
sense they don't even require any interaction with the
executive branch. We can do that on our own. It affects only
the Congress. It does not necessarily require getting any
testimony or input from the executive branch. Yet I predict
that will be one of the most difficult pieces to put in place,
even though it is totally under control and it is our own
House.
So I ask you as you monitor the situation to make sure you
hold Congress's feet to the fire and not just with respect to
the recommendations that deal with the executive branch but our
own House as well.
I think you know better than anybody that you were the
driving force behind the creation of the 9/11 Commission. There
are many people that did not want to see the Commission
established. If it had not been for your voices, we would not
have the Commission, we would not have the recommendations we
have heard today from the Commission and from all of you.
I think the same may well be true, unfortunately, with
respect to the recommendations of the Commission. Without your
continued driving force behind these recommendations, there is
a real danger, as I know you recognize from your testimony,
that many of them will be left by the wayside.
Even today, you have heard differences, interpretations
about the remarks made by the President yesterday. I am not
going to try and interpret his remarks. I would just ask you in
the days ahead, rather than us debating exactly what he meant,
to make sure you work with us to seek clarification. Because,
as Secretary Lehman said, this is not a Chinese menu. These are
all parts of a whole, and if you take parts of the
recommendation without enacting another part, it really does
upset the balance within them.
So thank you for your testimony. If you have anything to
add with respect to your plans in putting--maintaining public
pressure on the Congress, I would welcome it.
Ms. Wiener. I thank you for your comments, and I want to
assure you that all the families will push you as hard as we
are going to push the President and the executive branch. There
has already been discussion about how critically important
congressional oversight is, and changes in the committee
structure is discussed in the Commission's report. We will be
pushing you as well, we promise.
Ms. Regenhard. I would like to add something regarding the
bills and regarding the procession of this legislation, it
being posted on the Web site and the families during committee
monitoring it. Certainly things such as immigration reform
issues will be one of the types of things that we will be
looking at and who is really supporting this and who is working
against this.
I wanted to say one word about immigration reform. The
families of the victims are certainly concerned with illegal
immigration. We certainly all--I am a child of immigrants
myself. I am a first-generation American. My parents were legal
immigrants to this country. So a lot of times when we speak
about illegal immigration there is really a confusion regarding
what exactly is said.
We are certainly for legal immigration in this country. We
support it. It is a country of immigrants. It will continue to
be so, to our credit. But it is illegal immigration that has to
be monitored, it has to be stopped, if we want to remain safe.
Ms. Eckert. I think people forget we have an incredibly
compassionate immigration policy. We do let an enormous number
of people here legally, and I think we have to keep that in
mind. It is important, and there are some programs--sometimes
there is talk of amnesty as some kind of solution. Before we
consider something like that, I think the public needs to know
that Ramsey Yusef was a beneficiary--he is the World Trade
Center bomber in 1993. He is a beneficiary of amnesty. So any
of these programs have to be dealt with very carefully.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
What we will do is Mr. Platts has agreed to allow Mr. Lynch
to go. I think he has to catch a plane. You have the floor.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and my colleagues.
I want to thank you and all the families who have been
willing to come here and help this committee in its work.
So much of today's testimony from the earlier panel and
yourselves focuses on accountability, and so much of this
report--and it is stunning in its simplicity and directness--
focuses on accountability. Whether it is the accountability
created by intelligence sharing or immigration reform which you
have spoken about, by oversight of the Commission or continuity
of the Commission itself, it is the thread that runs through
all of what you are talking about.
I just wanted to ask you how important whatever we adopt in
the end--and we all hope it is basically what the Commission
has recommended here, but how important is that strain of
accountability in getting the answers that you are looking for,
at trying to find out about your loved ones and their last
hours and in terms of getting some reliability in terms of
every firefighter or every public servant who answers a similar
call? How important is the fact that accountability be in that
plan that we come up with eventually through this legislation?
Ms. Regenhard. I would like to say that certainly
accountability and responsibility are the hallmarks of a
democratic society. In September 11, we have had an absence of
accountability and responsibility, and the people who perished
were pinnacles of accountability and responsibility. They led
lives characterized by that. And yet people who caused their
death, through omission or through commission, there has been
no accountability and responsibility for all the levels, if it
is the INS, the DOT, the CIA, the FBI. Members of our Family
Steering Committee 2 years ago sat in the joint Intelligence
Committee hearings, and we saw the FBI person with the hood on
weeping and saying he tried to tell, he tried to share, people
did not want to listen to him. He begged them and so on and so
forth.
Every time we hear that this plot could have been stopped
in some way, or at least a bump in the road, it is a knife in
the heart of the families.
Yes, accountability and responsibility mean everything to
us, everything, and unless we have that, what is the impetus?
What is going to force people to do their job and to be
responsible?
Yes, I want that. My son lived his life by accountability
and responsibility. He deserves that as a legacy to protect
people in the future.
Ms. Eckert. Well, I don't really know that I can add to
that. The report is replete with a flavor that no one was in
charge, so that the Commission did not make an effort or--I am
sorry, they sidestepped I think for good reasons in order to
focus on the reforms, but names were not named. But I think
that is a one-time pass.
I think we do have to have somebody who is in charge and
who is accountable, and that is why the Director of National
Intelligence position, with authority, is so important, because
with that there will be accountability.
Ms. Wiener. I think what Sally said is key, in that it is
only through accountability that you can ensure that there is
some mechanism that people have an incentive essentially to do
the right thing, because if they do not, they will be held
accountable. So accountability is certainly a key to make sure
that this is not repeated.
Mr. Lynch. I just want to emphasize what Mr. Tierney spoke
of earlier, and that is the good that you can do, the moral
imperative that you have at your command, the passion that you
have, because of what you have gone through. Even though we
talk incessantly about the politics and how things might get
bogged down, there is no politics in the face of that type of
testimony, the testimony that we have heard from you today, and
it will fall away, it will fall away. We need the power of your
passion and your conviction on behalf of your loved ones, and
we need to have that power to help move this process.
Thank you.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman.
The Chair recognizes Mr. Platts.
Mr. Platts. I want to add my words of sympathy to our
witnesses as well as other family members here who have lost
loved ones. As best we try, there is no way we can truly feel
the emotions that you each do. Your courage in being here with
us is certainly commendable, and your ability to take very
personal tragedies and seek to turn them into public good is
remarkable, and that is what you are doing by your persistence
in working with the Commission and being here today and
assuring all of us that you are going to continue to keep the
pressure on.
Because in the earlier panel Representative Van Hollen
asked Senator Kerrey, based on his experience in the Senate,
how can we succeed in transforming this place, Congress, the
House and Senate. And I think the best answer to that question
really is you, because you speak with that personal passion
because it was your loved ones. That is important in overcoming
the innate nature of this institution and its resistance to
change and the turf battles and the unfortunate partisanship.
Your message and your efforts will help us overcome that and
truly embrace these recommendations, embrace the good work of
the Commission and allow us to truly ensure a safer America.
I personally thank you for your efforts. As the father of
two young children who wants them to grow up in a safe and
strong America, what we do with this effort is critical to
their future. So we are looking out not just for the memories
and legacies of your own loved ones but for the loved ones of
all Americans. I commend you for that.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Regenhard. Thank you very much.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Todd Russell Platts
follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6537.068
Mr. Shays. At this time, the Chair would recognize Ms.
Watson.
Ms. Watson. Again, we appreciate and we thank you for your
sincere devotion to all of our causes.
I just wanted to say very quickly, I feel the need to move
very quickly, as you do, and I would hope that you would take
an example of MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which
originated in the capital, Sacramento, CA. Many years ago, a
young girl was killed, and her mother organized a group of
neighbors, and now they are nationwide.
Ms. Eckert, you said that there are relatives all over the
country. What I would like to see is you organize yourself into
chapters around the country and you visit your representatives,
wherever the locations are. You visit and you talk to each and
every one of them about what you as family members, as
Americans, as citizens, would like to have them do to represent
you.
MADD, as you know, is a very effective and instrumental
organization that has been the basis of many of the laws we
have introduced not only in California but across the country.
I see you as being a model for that kind of organization. I
would like you to followup. My staff is going to give you--I
have some more information for the three of you--I will give to
you privately. So we will see you afterwards.
Thank you. I will be leaving shortly. But I hope we can
stay in close touch.
Ms. Eckert. A real quick comment on that, it is funny, we
realize we need to take quick steps. There are 12 of us on this
committee, and we are here for the long haul. But we could use
reinforcements. I think you have made an excellent suggestion,
and we have actually been talking about kind of a subcommittee.
God knows, we don't want to get too bureaucratic, but we do
know that there is a need to, as the Commission is doing,
traveling the country and explaining to people exactly what
this is all about. So it sounds like an excellent suggestion.
Ms. Watson. Some distant cousin on the West Coast of
California could be the surrogate and could visit my office and
the office of our large delegation of 54, their offices
respectively.
Ms. Regenhard. I wanted to say one of the family groups, 9/
11 Families for a Secure America, does visit individual
Congresspeople to advocate for immigration reform and driver's
license reform. It is a difficult job because they are not
always, you know, received the way they would like to be and a
lot of times their goals are misinterpreted. But I think it is
a wonderful idea, and we have to continue to do that. Thank you
very much for that suggestion.
Ms. Wiener. I also want to thank you. Rest assured,
actually, there are a number of family groups out there that we
are all trying to coordinate, and a number of us do maintain
data bases that we have been able to put together of family
members beyond this geographic area and are trying to locate
families throughout the country so that we can be--we are in, I
would imagine, almost every district when you span out to
cousins and uncles and aunts. So we will make sure we fan out
as deep as we can and try to reach everyone.
Ms. Watson. I commend and congratulate you on your efforts,
your compassion. We all share your feelings. I know that
something good is going to come out of this. Thank you very
much.
Mr. Shays. Before we go to our next panel, is there any
last comment, brief comment, you would like to put on the
record?
Ms. Regenhard. Yes. I would like to acknowledge the
firefighter families who have come here today. I would like to
ask them to stand up.
Mr. Shays. Let's have all the families who came stand up.
Ms. Regenhard. As well as the civilian families who joined
us today. Please stand up.
Mr. Shays. You all have been wonderful witnesses. I would
like to give you an opportunity to make closing comments.
Ms. Eckert. Thank you for arranging this, Chairman Davis
and the whole committee, and for hearing us.
I think what I would like you to come away with is not a
sense of just almost why is this happening to me at this
particular time but that you have an opportunity to go down in
history as performing something so noble and so urgent and so
monumental, that you also have an opportunity of going down in
history for doing the right thing. I would like to leave you
with that thought.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
Ms. Wiener. I also wanted to just say thank you. We are so
grateful to you for taking time out of your recess and coming
back.
I also wanted to echo what Beverly said, that you have a
unique opportunity before you; and we ask you to please not
think of yourselves as Democrats or Republicans but to think of
yourselves as Americans and leaders trying to do the right
thing and know that we are here with you standing beside you
and behind you and in front of you, everywhere we need to be,
in order to help you move whatever legislation needs to move
forward. We will be there with you to help in any way we can.
Ms. Regenhard. I would like to thank you also for
everything you are doing, and I would like to end by saying God
bless America. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. Thank you very much. We have many reasons to say
God bless America, and we have a great deal of gratitude for
all three of your testimony and remembrance and the legacy of
your loved ones.
Ms. Eckert, we do know we have a solemn responsibility and
a tremendous opportunity. There would not have been a 9/11
Commission without the work of the families of September 11th.
I know that role continues, and you give us a great deal of
strength and pride in our country. Thank you all very much.
At this time, we will adjourn this panel.
We have two more panels. I am thinking that we will ask
them to join collectively--you know what? I just want to say it
is now almost 3 o'clock. We will have the GAO go separately,
and we will do it that way.
If you would stand, Mr. David Walker, thank you very much
for being here. I will swear you in. It is our policy to swear
witnesses in.
[Witness sworn.]
Mr. Shays. Let me say, Mr. Walker, it is right that you
testify individually. We will have the next panel, and we will
hear them separately. But it is important that your testimony
be singularly focused on. We thank you for coming and thank you
for your patience. You could have asked to speak sooner, and we
appreciate that you waited to hear from the families and to
hear from the Commission.
So, with that, you have the floor. We welcome your
testimony.
STATEMENT OF DAVID WALKER, COMPTROLLER GENERAL, GOVERNMENT
ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Mr. Walker. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chairman, members of the
committee. It is good to be before you to speak to certain
recommendations of the 9/11 Commission report.
As you know, GAO is in the business of trying to help
maximize the government's performance and assure its
accountability for the benefit of the American people.
Mr. Shays. I am going to ask you to start over again and
get that mic closer to you.
Mr. Walker. Is that better?
Mr. Shays. Staff, move that other mic away.
Mr. Walker. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to be with you and
other members to discuss certain aspects of the 9/11 Commission
recommendations at your request.
As you know, GAO is in the business of helping to assure to
maximize the performance of the government and an ensure its
accountability for the benefit of the American people. We
issued over 100 reports on the issue of Homeland Security
before September 11, 2001, and we have issued over 200 since
then, with hundreds of recommendations and almost 100 hearings
before the Congress.
I have been asked to address two issues and would like my
entire statement to be included in the record so I can
summarize, if that is all right, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Yes, and don't feel you have to rush. I should
not say it is getting late. You just take your time and we will
take each issue as it comes.
Mr. Walker. Thank you. I have been asked to address two
issues, basically the need to enhance information sharing and
analysis and also to discuss some of the reorganization and
transformation needs dealing with the intelligence community.
As we all know, yesterday, on August 2, the President asked
the Congress to create a National Intelligence Director
position to be the principal intelligence adviser appointed by
the President with the advice and consent of the Senate and
serving at the pleasure of the President.
He also announced that he will establish an NCTC whose
director would report to the National Intelligence Director and
that this center would build upon the analytic work of the
existing terrorist threat integration center.
These are positive steps. However, it is important to note
there are substantive differences between the President's
proposal and the Commission's recommendations.
With regard to information sharing, there is a continuing,
critical and heightened need for better and more effective and
more comprehensive information sharing. We agree that the
intelligence community needs to move from a culture of need to
know to need to share.
The 9/11 Commission has made observations regarding
information sharing and recommended procedures to provide
incentives for sharing and to create a trusted information
network. Many of the Commission's recommendations address the
need to improve information and intelligence collection sharing
and analysis within the intelligence community itself.
It is important, however, to note that we must not lose
sight of the fact that the purpose of improving information
analysis and sharing is to provide better information not only
throughout the Federal Government but also to State and local
governments, its private sector and to America's citizens so
that collectively we are all better prepared.
I want to make it clear that such information sharing must
protect confidential sources and methods and we do not propose
any changes that would infringe upon those important
protections.
Nonetheless, in order to be successful in this area, the
Federal Government must partner with a variety of
organizations, both domestic and international, in the public
sector, the private sector and the not-for-profit sector. As
you know, Mr. Chairman, GAO has done quite a bit of work in
this area in connection with information sharing, and I have
summarized that in my full statement, but I will move on to the
organization transformation in the interest of time.
With regard to the organization and transformation issues,
on the basis of GAO's work in both the public and the private
sector over many years and in my own fairly extensive change
management experience, it is clear to me that many of the
challenges that the intelligence community faces are similar or
identical to the transformation challenges applicable to many
other Federal agencies, including the GAO.
As I touched on earlier, while the intelligence agencies
are in a different line of businesses than other Federal
agencies, they face the same challenges when it comes to
strategic planning, organizational alignment, budgeting, human
capital strategy, management and information technology,
finances, knowledge management and change management. They are
generic challenges faced by every single agency and government.
The intelligence community for years has said we are
different. In some ways, they are. In most ways, they are not.
For the intelligence community, effectively addressing
these basic business transformation challenges will require
action relating to five key dimensions--namely, structure,
people, process, technology and partnerships. It will also
require a rethinking and cultural transformation in connection
with intelligence activities both in the executive branch and
the Congress.
With regard to the structure dimension, there are many
organizational units within the executive branch and in the
Congress with responsibilities in the intelligence and homeland
security areas. Basic organizational and management principles
dictate that, absent a clear and compelling need for
competition or checks and balances, there is a need to minimize
the number of entities and levels in decisionmaking, oversight
and other related activities.
In addition, irrespective of how many units and levels are
involved, someone has to be in charge of all key planning,
budgeting and operational activities. One person should be
responsible and accountable for all key intelligence activities
within the executive branch, and that person should report
directly to the President. This person must also have
substantive strategic planning, budget, operational integration
and accountability responsibilities and authorities for the
entire intelligence community in order to be effective. If this
person has an out-box but no in-box, we are in trouble.
In addition, this person should be appointed by the
President and confirmed by the Senate in order to help
facilitate success and assure effective oversight.
With regard to the oversight structure of the Congress, the
9/11 Commission noted that there are numerous players involved
in intelligence activities and yet not enough effective
oversight is being done.
With regard to people dimension, any entity is only as good
as its people. As I stated earlier, the intelligence community
is no exception. In fact, they are in the knowledge business.
Believe it or not, Mr. Chairman, there is a tremendous
amount of parallel between the GAO and the intelligence
community. The reason I say that is the intelligence community
is supposed be in the business of getting facts and conducting
professional, objective analysis that is nonpartisan, non-
ideological, fair and balanced. And, in fact, our No. 1
competitor on college campuses today for talent is the CIA and
the FBI. So there are a lot of analogies and a lot of common
denominators that can be shared.
In addition to having the right people and the right tone
at the top, agencies need to develop and execute work force
strategies and plans helping to ensure that they have the right
people with the right skills and the required numbers to
achieve their missions. They also need to align their
institutional unit and individual performance measurement
reward systems in order to effectuate the needed
transformation.
With regard to procession and technology dimensions, steps
need to be taken to streamline and expedite the processes and
integrate the information systems that are needed in order to
expeditiously analyze and effectively disseminate the
tremendous amount of intelligence and other information
available to the intelligence community.
With regard to partnerships, it will take the combined
efforts of many parties crossing many sectors and geopolitical
boundaries over many years to effectively address our Homeland
Security challenges, but we must start immediately.
With regard to the cultural dimension, this is both the
softness and the hardest to deal with. By the softest, I mean
that it involves attitudes and actions of people and entities.
By the hardest, I mean the changing, longstanding cultures can
be a huge challenge, especially if the efforts involve
organizational changes in order to streamline, integrate and
improve related capabilities and abilities and especially if it
involves changing power bases, responsibility and authority,
whether it be in the executive branch or in the legislative
branch.
In conclusion, we at GAO stand ready to constructively
engage with the intelligence community to share our significant
government transformation and management knowledge and
experience in order to help members of the community help
themselves engage in a much-needed and long-overdue
transformation effort. We also stand ready to help the Congress
enhance its oversight activities over the intelligence
community, which in our view represents an essential element of
an effective transformation approach.
In this regard, we have the people with the skills,
experience, knowledge and clearances to make a difference for
the Congress and the country.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would be happy to answer any
questions that you or other Members may have.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Walker.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Walker follows:]
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Mr. Shays. That was an excellent statement. At least for
me, it put in perspective some questions I have.
For instance, you add a director. Aren't you adding a
layer? The message I am hearing from you is a person in charge
could eliminate a lot of layers in the process of running an
agency or in charge of being in charge of a variety of
agencies.
I am interested to know, and I am going to expose my
ignorance here, technically, my subcommittee has jurisdiction
of the intelligence community in Government Reform for
programs, for ways to cut waste, abuse and fraud. But whenever
we want the CIA to testify, they would get a permission slip
from the Intelligence Committee that said they didn't have to
testify. One of the times was we wanted to know how well they
communicated with the FBI. We weren't looking at sources and
methods.
What kind of cooperation does the GAO get from the
intelligence community? Do you have oversight? Are you able to
get in and see what you need to? Is it a constant battle, and
do you usually win those battles?
Mr. Walker. Mr. Chairman, with the exception of certain
accounts and activities, so-called black accounts or funds, GAO
has extensive oversight authority with regard to the
intelligence community.
However, during the past number of years, we have not had
extensive involvement in doing work in the intelligence
community for two reasons: No. 1, tremendous resistance from
the entire intelligence community, which resistance was
manifested in a memo by the then CIA Director in 1994; and,
second, because there has been a lack of request and support
from the intelligence committees to have oversight in this area
for a number of years. This is a problem.
As I mentioned to you before, Mr. Chairman, sources and
methods are one thing. As you acknowledged yourself, you
weren't looking at getting into sources and methods, we aren't
interested in getting into sources and methods, but the fact of
the matter is a vast majority of the challenges that the
intelligence community faces are the same challenges that every
other government agency faces. They need attention. They need
oversight.
Mr. Shays. When I met with Governor Kane and also spoke
with Lee Hamilton, they both expressed concern before the
report had come out with all the documents that were
classified. I think Lee Hamilton was more aware that was
happening, but Governor Kane was astounded at the documents he
read that basically seemed so mundane. And one of their
recommendations is to get rid of some of that so you know what
the jewels are that need to be shared, and this other
information can be out there, digested by a community, a
democracy that doesn't get into sources and methods and so on.
Can you speak to that issue?
Mr. Walker. Well, yes. I think there's no question that we
have to look at the basis for classification. As you know,
right now each agency makes its own decisions with regard to
whether and on what basis to classify information. And there
has been a tendency in the past--as this committee noted in
calling this hearing, there's been a tendency to hoard that
information, and there's been a tendency to only provide it to
those who ``need to know.'' And there's been a cultural barrier
to sharing information, and there's also been a cultural
barrier to providing a reasonable degree of transparency.
Let me state that there is absolutely no question that
sources and methods need to be protected. However, that being
stated, there is a need for additional transparency in this
area. In order for a healthy democracy to work, you need
incentives for people to do the right thing, reasonable
transparency to provide assurance they will because someone is
looking, and appropriate accountability if they do not do the
right thing. And we have work to do in these areas.
Mr. Shays. What would be the benefit if you were able to
see less--if there was more openness and less classified
documents, what would be some of the benefits that would occur
from that, and what are some of the disadvantages by having
classified documents that maybe simply don't need to be
classified?
Mr. Walker. Well, again, recognizing the need to protect
sources and methods, that's of critical importance, and
focusing the classification on that, to protect sources and
methods, that needs to be protected. However, I think we've
seen a tendency for people to classify beyond what is
essential.
Mr. Shays. I'm not asking that question. I want to know
benefit.
Mr. Walker. The benefit? OK, the benefit would be, quite
frankly, that the Congress would be in a much more effective
position to conduct meaningful and constructive oversight.
Right now, the Congress is not in an effective position to do
that, for a lot of reasons, and that's one.
Mr. Shays. My time has come to an end. Let me call on Mrs.
Maloney. You have the floor for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you very much, and welcome.
Mr. Walker, I have here a report that you issued on July 2,
2004 to Jim Turner, who is the ranking member of the Homeland
Security Committee. He asked you to assemble in one place all
of the recommendations to improve the homeland security of our
Nation so that we could assess where we are 3 years after
September 11, and in this report you identify 104
recommendations that you consider key to the agency's ability
to effectively secure homeland security for our Nation. You
have made these recommendations, you compile them over 3 years,
and is that a fair statement, that you have issued this report
with 104 recommendations; is that correct?
Mr. Walker. We have. I don't recall the exact number. I
will say it is my understanding that we've issued over 500
recommendations in total, of which at least 100 remain
outstanding.
Mrs. Maloney. Well, your report states that as of June 28
only 40 of the 104 in this particular report--you may have
issued other reports--but in this particular report there are
104 recommendations, and only 40 of them have been implemented.
That means there are 64 specific recommendations that to date
are unfulfilled but that you and your department consider key
to the homeland security of our country, to protect our people,
our infrastructure; is that correct?
Mr. Walker. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but in
general terms they sound reasonable.
Mrs. Maloney. Well, I'll put it in the record.
Mr. Walker. I'll be happy to do that.
Mrs. Maloney. Has anything changed over the last month
since you issued this report to Congressman Turner with respect
to the status of these recommendations?
Mr. Walker. I have not been given an update, but let me
just assure you that one of the things we do at GAO is when we
make recommendations we actively followup on those
recommendations, because one of our basic success measures is
to what extent do they adopt them and, if so, what benefit
occurs from that.
Mrs. Maloney. Your report states that you issued 12
recommendations to the Information Analysis and Infrastructure
Protection Directorate, and these involve both intelligence-
related functions and infrastructure information. But your
report also states that none of your 12 recommendations to this
office has been implemented. Is that correct?
Mr. Walker. That's my understanding, not fully implemented.
My understanding is that there has been some progress. In some
cases, they have partially implemented but not fully
implemented.
Mrs. Maloney. Your report also states that there are 33
pending recommendations within the Border and Transportation
Security Directorate alone, and your recommendations there are
key to reducing security vulnerabilities and passenger
screening, border security, and ports. What is the status of
these 33 recommendations?
I have them here, and I'm particularly interested in them.
I just want to mention some of them. One is to develop a risk-
based plan that specifically addresses the security of the
Nation's rail infrastructure. Has that been done?
Mr. Walker. To my knowledge, it has not been completed.
Mrs. Maloney. Another one you recommended was to develop a
comprehensive plan for air cargo security. Has that been done?
Mr. Walker. I would have to check to find out. To my
knowledge, it has not been completed.
Mrs. Maloney. And it goes on and on with specific examples.
A great number of these recommendations, especially those
that relate to border security, were reiterated and became part
of the 9/11 Commission report; is that correct?
Mr. Walker. Many of them were incorporated in the 9/11
report; that's correct.
Mrs. Maloney. But you made many, if not all, of the
recommendations before the 9/11 Commission report; is that
correct?
Mr. Walker. In many cases, that is true.
Mrs. Maloney. Well, my question basically is, do you have
any recommendations for how we, as Congress, can help instill a
greater sense of urgency at the Department of Homeland Security
to implement both your recommendations and those of the 9/11
Commission? You outline these in great detail. Many of them are
part of the report. Most of them have not been implemented.
Mr. Walker. Well, I think it's important to note they have
implemented a number of recommendations. We continue to
followup. The Department of Homeland Security has challenges
along a couple of dimensions, one of which is to make sure they
are taking the needed steps to enhance our homeland security.
The other is to try to be able to integrate 22 to 23 different
departments and agencies in what is the largest reorganization
since the establishment of the Defense Department in 1947.
I believe, relating to the subject of today's hearing, that
there are at least four things that need to be done to help in
this regard: No. 1, the adoption of a National Intelligence
Director I think is of critical importance, but it has to be a
substantive position with real responsibilities and authority;
second, the establishment of the NCTC as a way to make progress
in integrating activities, rather than just coordinating
activities; third, to look at congressional reorganization and
to enhance congressional oversight; and, fourth, and frankly
pretty basically, to complete a comprehensive threat and risk
assessment in the area of homeland security and to use that as
a basis to finalize the Department of Homeland Security's
strategic plan for allocation of resources for determination of
performance measures and for effective oversight by the
Congress.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you. Actually, the acting chairman and
I have introduced legislation to actually achieve just that.
My time has expired. Thank you for your report.
Mr. Shays. Thank you. Thank the gentlewoman.
Mr. Schrock, you have the floor.
Mr. Schrock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General Walker, thank you. I agree with everything you
said. But the interesting thing is, we can sit here in these
hearings all day long, but what are we going to do about it?
When the rubber meets the road and we have to stick this voting
card in to vote yes or no, what are we going to do?
You've sort of insinuated, I believe, that we don't have
the ability to take charge of things, and I think you're right.
We've rolled over and played dead. If you don't think so, the
Supreme Court legislates from the bench and the Federal courts
legislate from the bench. They're taking away the
responsibility we have. The way to get some of these people
under control is just to subpoena them and bring them up here
and make them do what we tell them to do, but we haven't done
that, and I think that's why we have a lot of the problems that
we have.
Our borders. What are we going to do about our borders?
Political correctness seems to be the name of the game anymore.
I was only privileged to serve with Congressman Bob Ehrlich a
short time. He is now the Governor of Maryland, and he finally
said, political correctness be damned, we're going to do what's
right for the people of Maryland and people like that.
It's time we get over that sort of stuff, because it is
this political correctness that's getting us in trouble. You'll
hear Members say they are willing to do certain things when
they get on the floor, but political correctness will dictate
otherwise when it comes time to vote, and they won't get things
done.
But we have extremists in this country. We are really in
deep trouble in this country if we don't start listening to
people like you and others and this 9/11 Commission that has
put together this magnificent document. I don't know where we
go from here. I am generally worried and generally concerned
about that. And this committee can sit here all day, but unless
we're willing to take action, strong action, then we will fall
back into the same old trap we were in before.
So I really appreciate your being here and your comments,
because I agree with everything you say. And I don't usually
agree with everything everybody says, but I really agree with
what you're saying.
Mr. Walker. Thank you, Mr. Schrock. If I can comment
briefly----
Mr. Schrock. Yes, please.
Mr. Walker [continuing]. It might be helpful.
First, I think if you look at all the recommendations of
the 9/11 Commission, many of those recommendations don't
require legislation.
Mr. Schrock. That's right.
Mr. Walker. So I think one of the first things that needs
to be done is to go through and analyze which one of those
would require legislation and which one wouldn't.
Mr. Shays. Would the gentleman just yield a second?
Mr. Schrock. Sure.
Mr. Shays. We would like that document. We would like you
to go through and tell us specifically what is an
administrative effort, a regulation, Executive order, law, or a
rule change. That would be very helpful.
Mr. Walker. Mr. Chairman, I will be happy to talk to our
staff and see if we can come up with a first cut as to which
requires legislation versus those that could be done through
executive action.
Mr. Schrock. Mr. Chairman, we might be surprised. There
might be more that can be done without legislation than we
imagine.
Mr. Walker. I think there are quite a few that can be done
without legislation, so we'll do that. That's No. 1.
No. 2, you then are going to have to obviously prioritize
what is most important.
I mentioned four things I felt are critically important. Of
those four things, two require legislation, one requires
congressional action to organize itself and to reinvigorate
oversight, and the other----
Mr. Shays. Can you be specific which ones are which?
Mr. Walker. The two that I mentioned that I think require
legislation would be the creation of the National Intelligence
Director, that position, to make sure it's substantive, to make
sure it meets certain criteria. Certain aspects of the NCTC may
require legislation. For example, the fact that they want to
create the deputies, the deputy positions to have certain
responsibilities. That might require certain legislation.
The third item I talked about was Congress reorganizing
itself and reinvigorating oversight. That would not require
legislation. The Congress could do that on its own.
Mr. Schrock. But will we?
Mr. Walker. That's a good question.
And, last, the need for the Department of Homeland Security
to finalize its comprehensive threat and risk assessment and
its strategic plan. That, obviously, doesn't require
legislation.
So what items require legislation? Realistically, you're
going to have to focus on the most important things first and
to address certain issues on an installment basis. But, in the
final analysis, the Congress has a responsibility to address
all recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and make a conscious
decision as to whether or not it is going to accept them and,
if not, why not.
Mr. Schrock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
Mr. Tierney, you have the floor, if you would like to ask
questions.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Walker, for your usual great testimony and
hard work that you do.
I want to ask you a little about a letter that was actually
sent from this committee to the administration on October 15,
2001. It was a bipartisan letter that then Chairman Dan Burton
and the Ranking Member Henry Waxman, as well as Representative
Shays and the ranking member of the subcommittee Dennis
Kucinich, all signed onto.
It requested the administration to conduct a comprehensive
threat risk and vulnerability assessment, to prioritize our
spending as part of the overall strategy to counterterrorism.
It was based on large part on your agency's work. The basic
idea which you have urged, I know, at numerous hearings on
occasions before September 11 as well as afterwards was that we
don't know whether we're spending correctly on counterterrorism
or Homeland Security efforts until we have a threat risk and
vulnerability assessment. Am I right in making that judgment?
Mr. Walker. That's correct. It's pretty fundamental.
Mr. Tierney. My concern has been and continues to be, as I
think it has been with members on both sides of the aisle on
this particular committee, we never received a response. Today,
nearly 3 years later, the Commission is making the same
recommendations.
When I look at page 428: The Department of Homeland
Security should regularly assess the types of threats the
country faces. Further on page 428: The Department of Defense
should regularly assess the adequacy of the Northern Command
strategies of planning. Page 396: Homeland Security assistance
should be based strictly on an assessment of risks and
vulnerabilities.
Now, Mr. Walker, you and numerous others at the GAO have
been monitoring the progress of the administration on this. Can
you tell me why this recommendation is still necessary?
Mr. Walker. Well, first, significant progress has been made
in developing threat and risk assessments for certain sectors,
but the Department of Homeland Security has yet to complete a
comprehensive and integrated threat and risk assessment, which
is important, which would also be used to inform a strategic
plan, which would be used as a basis for allocating limited
resources to finding desirable outcomes and holding people
accountable for results both within the executive branch as
well as congressional oversight. So that recommendation is
still outstanding.
As you know, Mr. Tierney, the transformation of the
Department of Homeland Security is on GAO's high-risk list, and
there's good reason for that.
Mr. Tierney. And the reason is?
Mr. Walker. Well, the reason is, because, No. 1, they have
a massive undertaking, including to complete this comprehensive
threat and risk assessment, to do a strategic plan which ends
up making sure that we're focusing on the most important
things, because there's no such thing as zero risk and we have
finite resources; and, second, because they have to integrate
the policies, the systems, the practices of 22-plus agencies
that were not together until within the last 2 years, many of
which, quite frankly, their primary mission was not homeland
security before September 11, 2001, and yet most of which it
either is their primary mission now or clearly a major part of
their mission.
Mr. Tierney. I just asked you that to drive the point home,
more than anything here. This committee, as I said before, is
bipartisan. This is not a partisan statement. The letters that
have gone out, the votes that we've taken, the hearings and
meetings that we've held continue to try to pound home that
point, that we think these priorities have to be set.
Independent commissions--I think of the Bremer Commission,
the Hart-Rudman Commission--have all made the same point, but,
3 years later, we're still waiting for that to be done. So
let's hope that this hearing as well as others, and the
Commission report, may bring that point home and we get
something done on that. Because, frankly, it's really amazing
that Congress has continued to appropriate money and purport to
give direction to different people and they haven't really had
that kind of assessment from which to work.
Let me ask you, from your experience and your observations
as well, the Commission has advised that the Congress
reorganize itself and set up either a joint committee on
intelligence for the House and the Senate or individual
committees within the House and the Senate that have the goal
that the Commission set forth and to have budgetary control and
things of that nature. From your perspective, is there a
preference as to which would work more effectively or better?
Mr. Walker. I hesitate to suggest exactly what the right
answer is for the Congress. I will tell you this. I think
there's absolutely no question that you need to consolidate.
You need to have as few as necessary in order to get the job
done and yet provide important checks and balances.
Let me give you an example to what I mean by that. To the
extent that you have a committee focused on intelligence and
possibly one focused on homeland security, I would respectfully
suggest that when you're dealing with issues like personal
privacy and individual liberty, that they should be in a
different committee, because you probably want checks and
balances between the security and intelligence and those other
issues. They both need to be considered, but you probably want
the checks and balances. So I would say as few committees as
possible.
I think it's interesting to note that within a few days of
the 9/11 Commission issuing its report there are numerous
committees holding hearings. Now, in part that symbolizes the
need to try to consolidate things. On the other hand, in
fairness, I think if you look at the scope of the 9/11
Commission's recommendations, they cover a lot of areas. They
cover foreign policy, they cover a variety of different areas,
and all of those cannot be and should not be consolidated into
one committee, obviously.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Mr. Schrock [presiding]. Thank you.
I know you said, General Walker, you didn't think that--you
didn't want to be so presumptuous as to tell Congress what to
do. I wish you would. As Mr. Tierney said, we appropriate, but
we don't watch over these folks, and we have to get this under
control and under control fast.
Mr. Walker. There's absolutely no question that there needs
to be much more extensive oversight than has been the case, and
we can help the Congress in that regard, but we can do it in a
constructive way. It doesn't have to be adversarial oversight.
Mr. Schrock. Well, I'm not sure I agree with that. A little
brickbat once in a while.
Mr. Turner.
Mr. Turner. Mr. Walker, we have had discussions about the
legislative versus administrative action, but I was wondering
if you could comment on, in reviewing the Commission's report,
what do you consider to be the most important recommendations
and what recommendations, if any, do you disagree with?
Mr. Walker. Well, I have not had an opportunity to analyze
each and every recommendation, so I wouldn't want to say if I
disagreed with any. I agree with many.
The four actions that I mentioned that I believe are
arguably the most important are, No. 1, to create the National
Intelligence Director position and to make it a substantive
position and to make sure that it is consistent with the
criteria that I articulated in my statement; second, to create
this National Counterterrorism Center to be able to integrate
activities of the existing intelligence community without
necessarily restructuring the entities below that; third, to
look at congressional reorganization and invigorate the
oversight activities; and, fourth, for the Department of
Homeland Security to complete its comprehensive threat and risk
assessment, its related strategic plan, which would serve as a
basis to allocate its limited resources and to help enhance
congressional oversight.
So those would be four thoughts.
Mr. Turner. Thank you.
Mr. Schrock. Mr. Kanjorski.
Mr. Kanjorski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Walker, when I visit my district, I often get
questioned on just what we're doing; and listening to your
testimony, we're still drawing up plans and organizational
charts 3 years after the fact. It sort of reminds me of
something that struck me in the Commission's report that on the
President's desk the day of September 11 they had just spent 7
or 8 months reorganizing the administration's new approach to
terrorism.
Would it be reasonable to say that we just may be muscle
bound as a government and incapable of responding to this type
of a threat? Or at least over the last 3 years we haven't
displayed a potential to do that.
Mr. Walker. Candidly, Congressman, as I touched on before,
I believe a lot of the challenges that the Homeland Security
Department and the intelligence community face are challenges
that are faced by virtually every major department and agency
in this government. And to a great extent my experience, having
headed two executive branch agencies and now one legislative
branch agency, is that a large part of government is structured
to focus on challenges that existed and to try to address those
challenges based upon means and methods and management models
that existed in the 1950's and the 1960's. We are in need of a
fundamental review reassessment and reengineering of how we do
business.
Mr. Kanjorski. I understand that, but struggling over the
management in a time of peril, and taking 2\1/2\ or 3 years to
do it strikes me as a pretty slow pace if in fact we're faced
with the threats that we periodically hear from Homeland
Security and from other agencies of the Federal Government.
Seems to me we're in the fourth quarter, the last 2 minutes,
and we're still drawing up the game plan.
Mr. Walker. Well, as you may recall, before September 11,
2001, the GAO had recommended the creation of an Office of
Homeland Security within the President to try to bring together
some of these things. My view is that a lot of the things that
are going to have to happen, that require more fundamental
transformation, are going to take time. To engage in a
fundamental transformation of any organization is a 5 to 7-year
effort at a minimum, no matter whether you're in the public
sector, private sector, or not-for-profit sector.
As a result, that's why I think the idea of having a
National Intelligence Director, trying to move with this NCTC
concept and to do some of the things I talked about are the
most pragmatic and the most meaningful things we can do short
term in order to try to help us get from where we are to where
we need to be, while you can take more time to determine
whether you want to do other things that may take considerably
longer.
Mr. Kanjorski. You talked about resources. Has anybody made
an analysis of the amount of money that will be necessary to
provide border control, shipping control, rail control
protection, etc., for the country? Has that analysis been done?
Mr. Walker. Not to my knowledge.
Mr. Kanjorski. We really don't know then what the cost of
the war on terrorism is?
Mr. Walker. Part of the thing that has to be completed is
to engage in a comprehensive threat and risk assessment,
because there's no such thing as zero risk in today's world,
and yet we have finite resources. So one of the reasons we felt
so strongly to complete that is that it would then be able to
form a discussion and debate within the executive branch and
with the Congress about what should be done and what should be
appropriated.
Mr. Kanjorski. When you say ``finite resources,'' why do
you say that? Do you have any figure on what the war on
terrorism will cost? What will it cost us for Homeland
Security?
Mr. Walker. First, it depends upon how you define homeland
security in determining what the cost is. I guess when I say
finite resources what I mean by that, Congressman, is that we
need to spend whatever we think it takes in order to try to
provide for reasonable security, recognizing we can't do
everything and that we're facing large structural deficits that
are likely to increase in the future.
Mr. Kanjorski. I understand, but this is wartime,
basically----
Mr. Walker. I understand that.
Mr. Kanjorski [continuing]. So we're not necessarily going
to have the best plan, the most efficient plan, but we have to
have a plan, and we have to get on our way to do it.
I mean, is this going to cost $2 trillion or $5 trillion?
Mr. Walker. Until you have the comprehensive threat and
risk assessment and the strategic plan from the Department of
Homeland Security, it is impossible to answer that question.
Mr. Kanjorski. Absolutely impossible?
Mr. Walker. It would be imprudent and inappropriate for me
to answer without knowing that.
Mr. Kanjorski. Well, Senator Kerrey just suggested that
maybe 10 or 20 years from now terrorism would no longer be a
threat. If it's going to take us 7 years to draw up a plan and
then take 5 or 7 years to implement it, maybe we shouldn't do
anything, because the threat may be over by then?
Mr. Walker. Candidly, it shouldn't take that long to draw
up a plan. And when I talk about implementation, there are
things that have been implemented already. I think it's
important to note there are a number of things that have
happened in the last several years. I give several examples in
my testimony. There are other things that can happen quickly.
When I talk about 5 to 7 years, I'm talking about that
being how long it takes in order to effectuate a cultural
transformation in any organization; and it could be IBM, it
could be the Department of Homeland Security, whatever, that's
how long it takes. So what we need to do is to do other actions
that can be done quickly, that move us in the direction we want
to go, recognizing that some of the heavy lifting is going to
take more time if you're talking about cultural transformation.
Mr. Kanjorski. Thank you.
Mr. Schrock. Mr. Ruppersberger.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Well, first, I agree with you, there's
going to be time for transformation, but you have to start. And
I think we have come a long way since September 11.
Unfortunately, we always tend to criticize a lot and put blame,
and we have to stop the blame game and learn from mistakes, set
up the appropriate system that's going to work.
Now, you've been here most of the day and a lot of the
testimony has been about the creation of a National
Intelligence Director, which I feel very strongly that needs to
be done. I think, from a management perspective, you need one
boss, one person that's going to hold all agencies accountable
for their performance. You also need that person, in order to
be able to have really the power to fulfill those obligations,
you need to have fiscal responsibility. We don't need window
dressing. We need results.
I'd like your opinion about whether or not you feel that
the National Intelligence Director should have fiscal authority
and should that person be in the White House, outside the White
House?
A good analogy that I've seen so far is Greenspan. He has
the independence to do what he feels based on his expertise is
right for the country, and yet he does work with the President
and the Congress. So let me have your thoughts on that issue.
Mr. Walker. Well, first, I don't think it would be a good
idea for this person to be in the White House.
Mr. Ruppersberger. And why?
Mr. Walker. Because the White House is comprised of many
very capable and talented individuals who are not just
concerned with policies, they're also concerned with politics.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Good point.
Mr. Walker. And I do not think you want a person to be
physically in the White House, no matter what party controls
the White House, because they are going to be interacting day
in and day out for many hours of the day with people who are
concerned not just with policy but also with politics. That
would be like the Comptroller General of the United States
having an office next to the majority leader or the minority
leader of Congress. I think that would be a mistake, too.
I do think it's important that this person be a
Presidential appointee, Senate confirmed, report to the
President, removable by the President for cause.
Mr. Ruppersberger. What type of term, too, 10-year term?
Mr. Walker. My personal opinion would be is that for the
top person, the National Intelligence Director, no, that they
should be removable by the President. But then, below that, if
that's the person who is going to be responsible and
accountable, you may want to look at the players below that.
You may want to look at the CIA Director, and you may want to
look at some of these others and decide whether or not they
should have term appointments. Because, right now, as you know,
the CIA Director is also the DCI, therefore, the person on the
point in theory, not necessarily in practice, and that is one
of the reasons they do not have a term of appointment.
So I think you could look at that. I think there has to be
solid-line reporting responsibility by key players to the
National Intelligence Director, although they could have to
report to other players as well. They need to have budget
authority. They need to have substantive authority.
As I mentioned before, if all they have is an out-box
suggesting that people do certain things or giving input,
forget it, it won't work. They need to have people reporting to
them, and they need to have substantive authority.
Mr. Ruppersberger. I agree, and this is why I hope the
President or his staff are listening to these hearings. I
really applaud the President for coming out and saying we need
a National Director, because I know he had a lot of advice to
go the other way. But if you're going to do it, you do it
right, and you have to have this person with authority.
Now the other issue that isn't talked about a lot, but I
think it's a major issue here, because we're talking about
integration and teamwork, is the Department of Defense. What
most people don't realize is that over 80 percent of the
intelligence personnel and budget and resources go into the
Department of Defense--that is a lot of people, and that is a
lot of power, and that is a lot of money--and then the CIA and
the FBI and other agencies get the rest.
Now I think it's extremely important that the DOD be at the
table here. There is a bill that a group of us introduced in
April, the Intelligence Transformation Act, which also
recommended that we have the national director. And that
recommendation would be to have a Deputy Director from the
Department of Defense who is dual-hatted. There would be an
under secretary in the Department of Defense but also the
Deputy Director under the National Director of Intelligence.
That way you do have the DOD at the table, and yet when it
comes to intelligence budgeting, they will have input.
Because what I'm concerned about, we know that the
Secretary of Defense is one of the most powerful positions in
the world. Not as powerful as the President, but it's close,
especially when you're at war. Now they have sometimes a
different focus than maybe what intelligence might; and I think
it's extremely important that all the agencies come together,
CIA, FBI, NSA, military coming together.
What is your opinion about having a dual-hatted Deputy
Director for the DOD?
Mr. Walker. Well, first, I think it's critically important
that DOD be part of this. They, as you properly point out,
represent over 80 percent of the resources. Let's face it,
whether you're in the government, the public sector, or the
private sector, whoever controls the people, the money, and the
technology is who you pay attention to. And that's all the more
reason why there has to be substantive responsibility and
authority with regard to those things or else the position
doesn't mean anything with regard to that.
My understanding is the 9/11 Commission is recommending
three deputy directors and that one of which would be the Under
Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. And I think it's also
important that the Congress think about, if you're going to
have this DCI, do you want term appointments for some of the
other players and what are you going to do if an administration
turns over? Who is going to be in charge?
You may have to have a principal deputy, a principal deputy
who, hopefully, would have a term appointment, who then could
be able to provide some continuity in changes between
administrations. And I would be happy to provide additional
information on that.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Just one question. The only thing
about--and whether or not the director themselves--I think it
might be wise--just have your opinion on this and then my time
is up--to have everyone have a term and then they'll be held
accountable at the end of that term to see whether they're
going to be reappointed. It's an accountability factor. So
instead of just saying you have one person that could be there
for life, like Herbert Hoover or someone like that, everyone
has a term.
Mr. Kanjorski. J. Edgar.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Who?
Mr. Kanjorski. J. Edgar Hoover.
Mr. Ruppersberger. What did I say? Herbert Hoover?
Mr. Kanjorski. Herbert Hoover.
Mr. Walker. He only got one term.
Mr. Ruppersberger. He only had one term; right. I don't
want to get into that right now. There are fiscal issues
involved there, too.
But the Hoover issue, I think, is extremely important so
that you do have terms for all the deputies and whatever and
also the director. But then they have to come back for
confirmation, and their performance would be analyzed by
Congress. What do you think of that?
Mr. Walker. I think there are certain positions where
there's strong merit to considering having a Presidential
appointee, Senate confirmation for a term appointment, with a
performance contract geared toward trying to achieve
demonstrable results. Now I think you have to be careful which
ones. Right now, you have that for the FBI Director.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Think it works?
Mr. Walker. I think it works pretty well. I think you could
consider it for other key positions in the intelligence
community, where you're talking about national security, which
would be a nonpartisan issue. This is below the Director for
National Intelligence. You could consider it for the CIA
Director. You could consider it, possibly, for the Under
Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.
But my personal opinion is that, whoever is on the point,
the President has to be comfortable. Whoever it is, the
President has to be comfortable, because that is the person
they are looking to for primary advice and to integrate
different activities and to make sure the right things are
being done and the right people are being held accountable.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Schrock. Thank you, Mr. Ruppersberger.
Thank you, General Walker. Thank you for your indulgence.
Thank you for your patience. Thank you for your testimony. It
really makes a lot of sense. It's just common sense stuff, and
we certainly need to address a lot of things you've talked
about, and I think it's incumbent on this Congress, this
committee, to do that. So thank you very much for being here.
Mr. Walker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Schrock. We'll take about a 5-minute break here while
we set up for the fourth panel.
[Recess.]
Mr. Schrock. We will now move on to our fourth and final
panel. We thank you all for your indulgence as well.
We are happy to have today Mr. Paul Light, who is with the
New York School of Public Service; Mr. Bob Collet, vice
president of engineering, AT&T Government Solutions; Mr. Dan
Duff, vice president of government affairs for the American
Public Transportation Association; Mr. John McCarthy, executive
director of the critical infrastructure protection project--
boy, that's a mouthful, critical infrastructure protection
project--and Jim Dempsey, who is executive director, Center For
Democracy and Technology.
Gentlemen, it is the policy of this committee that all
witnesses be sworn, so if you will please stand and raise your
right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Schrock. Let the record show that all witnesses
answered in the affirmative.
We would ask that you try to hold your testimony to 5
minutes to allow for some questions and answers, and of course
your entire statement will be made part of the record.
We'll start with Dr. Light.
STATEMENTS OF PAUL C. LIGHT, ROBERT F. WAGNER SCHOOL OF PUBLIC
SERVICE, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY; BOB COLLET, VICE PRESIDENT,
ENGINEERING, AT&T GOVERNMENT SOLUTIONS; DANIEL DUFF, VICE
PRESIDENT, GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS, AMERICAN PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION
ASSOCIATION; JOHN MCCARTHY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CRITICAL
INFRASTRUCTURE PROTECTION PROJECT; AND JIM DEMPSEY, EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY
Mr. Light. Thank you for this hearing. Thank you for your
work. We have been here before.
Mr. Schrock. I know you have.
Mr. Light. No, we have.
Mr. Schrock. Yes.
Mr. Light. We've been here on a dozen issues over the last
10 years dealing with duplication, overlap, lack of
communication across Federal agencies. We were here talking
about IRS taxpayer abuse, the nuclear security issue at the
Department of Energy. We've talked about FBI reorganization
several times, homeland security, food safety, you name it.
In my testimony, you will see a reference to these issues
and my support for reorganization authority, properly defined
and properly limited. But I believe that as part of whatever
legislation you produce that you should give the President
authority to be more proactive by way of reorganization than
reactive.
We have heard a lot of testimony today. It is moving and
important. I have heard these recommendations made before in
other commissions. We have on the table, for example, a number
of solutions that we've seen before, some that have worked,
some that have not. We have had czars, some that have been
strong, some that have been not strong. We have had
reorganizations that have worked and some that haven't.
On the issue of the National Intelligence Director, let me
be clear, and off my testimony, that I believe the position
should be separate from the White House. It should be at
executive level one. That is Cabinet-level status. That does
not mean the person has to sit at the Cabinet table. That
individual should have a term of office.
A term of office does not imply you cannot be fired. It is
hortatory in most cases, except for the Comptroller General,
whom we hire for 15 years and hope he will stay. But a term of
office sends a message to the rest of the Federal bureaucracy
that this person is going to be around and the presumption is
in favor of continuity. The President can always fire, the
question being whether you want it to be so strict as to fire
for cause, which is a more extreme measure, or whether you just
want to give the President that authority.
I absolutely strongly encourage you to give the National
Intelligence Director some budget and personnel authority. This
current proposal that's floating around today at least is no
carrot and no stick; and the czar is going to have to have some
authority to make agencies respond, including authority to
require streamlining plans from the agencies that he or she
receives information from.
Let me suggest to this committee as you proceed with your
deliberations that you be proactive so that we're not
revisiting this over and over again in reaction by addressing
reorganization authority, that you deal with the significant
thickening of the bureaucracy that reports to the National
Intelligence Director. It doesn't make any sense to add a new
layer of bureaucracy if we don't delayer the existing agencies.
We've got to do that.
In the 6 years since I last looked at these issues, all of
our intelligence agencies, in fact, all agencies in the Federal
Government, have grown both taller and wider. At the FBI, we've
added an entirely new layer of executive assistant directors.
I'm sure they perform an important service and that the
accountability that came with the new layer was essential. We
also added a chief of staff to the director. You see this at
the CIA, you see it at the NSA, you see the proliferation of
titles. We've got to do something about it. Because it's like
the childhood game of gossip or telephone where we're just
passing information back and forth.
We absolutely must use this opportunity to fix the
Presidential appointments process. What difference will a
National Intelligence Director make if he or she cannot be
nominated and confirmed in a reasonable amount of time? The
average time to get in office for the Bush administration was
8\1/4\ months. That is a long time to wait, especially if we
are in a transformation that's going to take 7 years.
Finally, we have to address the personnel issues embedded
in the Department. I believe you should give the national
director, the intelligence director, the same authorities
embedded in the defense personnel reforms and embedded in the
Homeland Security reforms. I think those are important in terms
of the discipline in the work force at the new agency. It
wouldn't be a bad thing for you to extend those authorities
down into the intelligence community at large as part of
holding people accountable.
I will submit my testimony for the record, and I will await
any questions you might have. Thank you very much for having
me.
Mr. Schrock. Thank you, Dr. Light.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Light follows:]
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Mr. Schrock. Mr. Collet, welcome.
Mr. Collet. Good afternoon. My name is Bob Collet. I'm vice
president of engineering for AT&T's Government Solutions
division. Thank you for inviting us here to discuss AT&T's view
on the need to share critical network infrastructure
information. We applaud the consistent efforts of this
committee to improve the overall infrastructure security of the
Federal Government and the Nation.
At AT&T, we take our responsibility to protect against
information or infrastructure vulnerability very seriously, and
we are constantly updating our network security in response to
ever-changing threats against the network.
Following the tragic events of September 11, we have
meaningfully increased our efforts by deploying new
technologies and infrastructures. For the recent Democratic
convention, for example, we applied what we have done in all
our critical nodes with a location-specific network recovery
strategy in case of terrorist action, and we stationed a
response team in Boston to be ready to implement that plan if
it should be needed. Obviously, we will be doing the same for
the upcoming Republican convention, and we do the same thing
for other high-profile events.
As you know, most of our country's critical infrastructure
is owned and operated by the private sector. Thus, the private
sector does play a role in ensuring the safeguarding of the
infrastructure. Now, while our contribution can't compare to
sacrifices of the first responders, the availability of
telecommunications infrastructure is essential, and we are
concerned about well-meaning but fundamentally unsound
initiatives to collect infrastructure information outside the
methods and procedures that have served our Nation so well in
the past.
In particular, a concern is that critical
telecommunications infrastructure information should not be
collected in multiple places where the information, in its
collected form, would be vulnerable to intrusion. With regard
to telecommunications, this country has a tested, trusted
approach that we should continue to use and optimize. In this
context, let me describe two of these public-private
partnerships.
First, within the Department of Homeland Security, and that
is the National Coordination Center Information Sharing
Analysis Center. The good news for telecommunications is that
this sector has been a leader in forging a public-private
partnership to address infrastructure security. Telecom
carriers have shared information informally with the NCS, or
the National Communication System, since its inception in 1984;
and since March 2000, the NCS's NCC, or National Coordinating
Center, has served as the Information Sharing and Analysis
Center [ISAC], for telecommunications. The participants include
industry and government representatives, including the FCC; and
they gather and share information about threats and
vulnerabilities.
There are three reasons why this is successful. The first
is the government routinely provides specific threat and alert
information to industry representatives. Second, the NCC
Telecom-ISAC has demonstrated an ability to handle corporate
proprietary information and government classified information
in a secured manner. And, third, in times of crisis, they act
as an ombudsman on behalf of industry, helping industry
complete its mission.
So, for example, during September 11, the NCC helped
network providers obtain access to Ground Zero. We have an
atmosphere of trust and cooperation in which industry feels
confident in sharing sensitive information with the government
and with our competitors in times of crisis.
The second institution is another example of the
partnership that has worked and should be a model for any
government industry problem solving, and that is the Network
Reliability and Interoperability Council of the FCC. This was
organized back in 1992. It is a forum where industry,
consumers, and government come together for the sharing of
work-specific issues. A good example of its ability to perform
was during the Y2K. Since then, there has been a focus,
understandably, on homeland security, with teams addressing
both physical and cyberlevel security.
NRIC VII is further enhancing this work. The product is an
extensive set of best practices for service providers, network
operators, and equipment vendors. There are literally hundreds
of best practices that have been developed.
Now, the NRIC also monitors and analyzes information
prepared or received from the public network over the last 10
years. In order for this effort to be successful, it must be
voluntary. This is to encourage the utmost in the sharing of
information and experience. Second, it must be developed by
industry experts that make it. And, third, it must be adaptable
and usable by the country's infrastructure providers, and they
are us.
Now, let me address the issue of safeguarding or sharing
private information.
As a private sector operator of a major part of one of
America's most important critical infrastructures, we clearly
have to safeguard all information about our physical locations,
capabilities, and components of our worldwide infrastructure.
An ongoing major concern of the industry remains the public
dissemination of the availability of critical information who
has a desire to do harm to the national communications network.
Despite these concerns, we have been asked by various well-
meaning government agencies for specific but we consider
extremely sensitive information about capabilities, including
maps, network facilities and infrastructure. Now, in the wrong
hands, the compilation of this critical infrastructure assets
only increases the vulnerability of the telecommunications
infrastructure. So, while well-intentioned, we believe such
requirements would greatly hinder our ability to protect the
survivability and availability of the network.
So in order to ensure that all information provided which
contains critical infrastructure information is protected from
our adversaries through public disclosure, we recommend that it
be routed through one Federal Government agency. We believe
that agency should be the Department of Homeland Security,
because of the very good track record of the NCS.
By initially providing voluntary reporting to the DHS in
the event of a terrorist attack or an act of nature that
affects all major utilities and communications, including the
communications infrastructure, of course, one agency would
maintain the responsibility for leadership in coordinating
restoration efforts. The coordination of a unified response
should result in greater efficiency and effectiveness in the
restoration and recovery process.
Accordingly, we believe the DHS process for administering
the protection of critical infrastructure should continue to
reside with those entities that have the mission to assure
continuous connectivity.
In closing, in this time of elevated terror threat levels,
we must take every step necessary to protect America's
citizens. This committee's work, among its responsibilities to
be responsive to the issues highlighted by the 9/11 Commission,
is to ensure that survivability and security be key features of
the next-generation telecommunications service in the Federal
Government.
We at AT&T are living up to that responsibility in the
fullest manner every day. But, in some cases, a need to know
better protects America than a well-meaning but undefined need
to share. Therefore, we ask that you carefully consider the
security ramifications of wider information sharing as you
proceed in your deliberations.
AT&T would like to thank Chairman Davis and members of this
committee for holding this hearing on this important issue, and
I offer AT&T's assistance in your endeavors on this matter.
Thank you.
Chairman Tom Davis [presiding]. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Collet follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Duff, welcome.
Mr. Duff. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank
you for this opportunity to testify on the 9/11 Commission
report and related issues. We commend the House Committee on
Government Reform for holding this hearing today.
Let me start, if I could, with just a word about my
organization, the American Public Transportation Association,
which is a nonprofit international trade association of over
1,500 public and private member organizations, including
transit systems and commuter rail operations and the businesses
that provide the goods and services to the industry. Some 90
percent of persons using public transportation in the United
States today are served by APTA member systems.
A few background facts about public transportation. Over 9
billion transit trips are taken annually on all modes of
transit service. People use public transportation vehicles over
32 million times each weekday. To put this into perspective,
this is more than 16 times the number of daily travelers aboard
the Nation's domestic airlines. The vast number of Americans
using public transportation each and every day creates ongoing
challenges for enhancing security within our transit
environments.
Since the events of September 11, State and local public
transit agencies, in fact, all State and local entities, have
spent significant sums on police overtime, enhanced planning
and training exercises, and capital improvements related to
security. In response to a recent APTA survey, transit agencies
around the country have identified in excess of $6 billion in
transit security needs.
These include both immediate capital investments and
recurring operating expenses related to security.
In the months following the September 11th terrorist
attacks, transit agencies of all sizes worked to identify where
they might be vulnerable to attacks and increased their
security investment for both operation and capital activities.
The agencies subsequently upgraded and strengthened their
emergency response and security plans and procedures, taking
steps to protect transit infrastructure and patrons and
increase transit security presence.
All transit system buses and trains are equipped with two-
way radio communication systems that are connected to their
respective operations control centers. Many transit systems
have been in the costly process of upgrading these systems to
ensure their reliability.
While many transit agencies are more secure than prior to
September 11th, much more needs to be done. And one of the key
measures that the transit industry recognized it needed to do
was focus on enhanced communications. In that regard, public
transportation is recognized by the Federal Government to be
one of our Nation's critical infrastructures. And APTA is
pleased to have been designated public transportation sector
coordinator by the U.S. Department of Transportation. And in
that capacity, in January 2003, APTA received a $1.2 million
grant from the Federal Transit Administration to establish and
fund a Transit Information Sharing Analysis Center for its
initial 2 years of operations.
This ISAC for public transit provides 24/7 a secure two-way
reporting and analysis structure for the transmission of
critical alerts and advisories. It collects, analyzes and
distributes critical cyber and physical security information
from Government and numerous other sources. These sources
include law enforcement, Government operations centers, the
intelligence community, the U.S. military, academia and others.
Best security practices and plans to eliminate threats,
attacks, vulnerabilities, and countermeasures are drawn upon to
protect the sector's cyber and physical infrastructures.
The public transit ISAC also provides a critical linkage
between the transit industry, the Department of Homeland
Security, the Transportation Security Administration, and the
Department of Transportation, as well as other sources of
security intelligence.
Transit systems are public agencies and rely upon Federal,
State, and local funding. Consequently, the public transit ISAC
is available without cost to all transit systems. There are
currently over 130 transit systems participating in the public
transit ISAC, and these numbers continue to grow. Funding for
this ISAC will, however, end by February 2005. We agree with
the recent GAO report on ISACs where it identified as a
challenge requiring further Federal action the funding of ISAC
operations and activities. APTA has made a request for funding
to continue the public transit ISAC to the Department of
Homeland Security in January of this year, and we currently
await their support of this request. Failure to fund this
project on an ongoing basis would mean that public
transportation systems would be without the very resource that
the Federal Government has encouraged for our Nation's critical
infrastructures.
Let me turn briefly to the 9/11 Commission Report. And with
respect to transportation security, that report recommends that
the U.S. Government identify and evaluate the transportation
assets that need to be protected, set risk-based priorities for
defending them, select the most practical and cost-effective
ways of doing so and then develop a plan, budget and funding to
implement the effort.
I spoke earlier about the needs that we have identified in
the area of $6 billion, and we would urge the Department of
Homeland Security to take up that initiative, because, while we
appreciate the funding that has been made available to date, in
the $100 million range, we think there are much greater needs.
One other final point I would like to make, Mr. Chairman,
is that we also think it would be useful if the Department of
Homeland Security and the Department of Transportation together
worked out a memorandum of understanding to address the roles
of those two agencies in working with public transportation
security. DHS clearly is the lead in that regard, but DOT has
years of experience in working with local public transportation
entities, and DHS should utilize that experience.
Mr. Chairman, we look forward to building on our
cooperative working relationship with the Department of
Homeland Security and Congress to begin to address these needs.
We again thank you and the committee for allowing us to testify
today and your commitment to addressing the security
information needs of our Nation's critical infrastructure.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Duff follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. McCarthy.
Mr. McCarthy. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the
committee. Thank you very much for having me today. I am John
McCarthy, the director of the critical infrastructure
protection project at George Mason University School of Law. I
would like to quickly discuss the project and give you the
context of why our testimony today is relevant.
George Mason about 2 years ago started a program to build
an interdisciplinary program around critical infrastructure.
The guiding principles were interdisciplinary research--to
build an interdisciplinary research curriculum. It would be
multi-institutional, and that the work support the national
agenda. To date, we have sponsored close to 100 researchers
around the Nation, with upwards of 70 schools to do work in the
area of homeland security critical infrastructure protection.
Two programs which are especially relevant to this
discussion today that we have spun off as separate projects and
received separate funding for are as follows: One is the work
we do with the National Capital Region. The Commonwealth of
Virginia, the State of Maryland and the District of Columbia
have pooled their Homeland Security research money and asked
the critical infrastructure project to provide oversight for
their work in the National Capital Region relative to critical
infrastructure protection. So we are operating a consortium of
scholars and researchers from some 10 area universities looking
at vulnerability assessment in the National Capital Region. So
that's looking at the problem from a very local perspective.
Also, we have been asked by the Department of Homeland
Security to, in essence, be the executive directorate for the
sector coordinators in the Information Sharing and Analysis
Centers. Our goal is to build out those private sector
entities, assist them with strategic planning, assist them in
organization and moving the national agenda forward and working
with Homeland Security to make logical connections between the
entities that the private sector has built, some of which have
been articulated here, and what's being built inside the
Department of Homeland Security.
Relative to the 9/11 report, I have a brief comment on
three areas that were raised in the report. First is that our
Nation's decision to consolidate Homeland Security has improved
information sharing in significant ways in the opinion of the
project. DHS has focused and energized on sharing threat
information. In providing a single point of contact, the new
Department is working to provide an efficient way to share
threat analysis and disseminate sensitive information to the
right people at the right place at the right time. I don't want
to sound like a cheerleader, because it's not a perfect system,
and I think you will probably hear testimony relative to this
weekend as an example of some issues.
But the fact is that we have moved significantly from where
we were 3 years ago during September 11 in terms of being able
to disseminate and have discussion simultaneously with an
incident as opposed to after the fact when everyone's either
been left out of the decisionmaking process or improperly
briefed.
A second point is that the committee should consider ways
to involve the private sector in the Government-wide
information-sharing reforms discussed today. This idea was
mentioned by several of the previous panels. While you are
focused on the formation and reformation of the intelligence
community, one critical piece that cannot be left out is all
the work that's being done in the private sector, the ISACs and
the sector coordinator activity and how that can roll up in a
logical way and touch these new entities.
And we at CIP project feel very strongly that this single
point of contact with the private sector right now should
remain with the Department of Homeland Security. So any
mechanisms that are built to connect to this new national
director to the private sector should be through DHS.
And the third point speaks to the technology. We vigorously
applaud the 9/11 Commissioners for promoting the critical role
of technology to this agenda. Within the research project
portion of the CIP element that I mentioned before, we have
invested a great deal in the area of technology balanced with a
look at the business governance, and the economic and the legal
implications of that technology. We've set priority goals at
CIP for looking at developing a comprehensive understanding of
infrastructure vulnerability, developing tools to assess these
vulnerabilities, offering research on complex interdependencies
between the infrastructure's sectors, developing concepts,
metrics and models to support decision allocating resources,
the Homeland Security initiatives, measuring progress and
developing effective systems of public-private partnership that
afford true information sharing.
One key emphasis when you are looking at technology, again,
relative to the intelligence agenda, is this notion of the
amount of data that's out there and building programs that
begin to help the decisionmakers sort. Its biometrics and other
access clearance-type technologies are very important to this,
but the ability to find the needle in the haystack--the data
stream is massive and huge. It's a major paradigm shift in the
intelligence community, and that technology and that focus on
research, I think, is very useful. And we very much support
that agenda at GMU.
One question that I would like to address that was brought
up in some of the previous testimony was the idea of moving the
Commission forward. One project that we sponsored using the CIP
money was an oral history of the President's Commission on
Critical Infrastructure Protection, another feeding commission
into the body of knowledge that's led up to the discussion
today.
And one of the key lessons that we learned in analyzing
that previous commission's work was that the commission, almost
immediately after it reported out--and the result of that was
the signing of Presidential Decision Directive 63--the
commission was disbanded, and there was very little interaction
between the entities that took over to implement the findings
of the commission and the former commissioners.
And one major theme that's come out of our preliminary
study and the oral history is that you should not let that
happen. And I think I heard that message loud and clear, and I
hope that was recognized by the committee.
And one final point, while outside the scope of the CIP
project and my testimony today, I'm sure I will be asked, in
terms of the National Intelligence Directorate and the
formation of that, based on my prior Government experience, I
strongly support my colleagues and the suggestions today that
it should be outside the White House, but for another kind of
reasoning. And it goes back to a prior life as a Coast Guard
officer and a commanding officer of a ship, the notion that the
CO never stands watch. When you put a critical function like
that intelligence integrator into the White House, you are, in
essence, co-locating that person with the President. And it's
an extension of the CO's authority. The CO should be standing
back and watching and managing and having activity develop and
be able to step in when problems arise. And when that's co-
located in the White House, I don't think that can happen. And
if a problem does arise, it puts it at the foot of the
President as opposed to out in the Departments where
operational decisions should be made.
Thank you very much for the opportunity.
[The prepared statement of Mr. McCarthy follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Dempsey.
Mr. Dempsey. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the
committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today at
this first hearing in the House of Representatives on the
recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. It's a privilege to sit
here at this table following the commissioners, Secretary
Lehman and Senator Kerrey, and the families of the survivors.
To both the commissioners and the families, our Nation owes a
debt of gratitude for their dedication and commitment and
insight.
There are three issues confronting the President and the
Congress, today and in the coming weeks, that I would like to
address. The first question is how can we better share
intelligence information, law enforcement information, at all
levels of Government in order to prevent terrorism? Important
progress has been made since September 11 to improve
information sharing, but still we do not have a decentralized
dynamic network for the sharing of information. Still there are
technological barriers as well as institutional barriers.
The Markle Foundation has a Task Force on National Security
in the Information Age. This task force has been in existence
now for 3 years. It is made up on a bipartisan basis of experts
with national security backgrounds from the Carter, the first
Bush administration, the Reagan administration, and the Clinton
administration, and experts from the technology and privacy
fields. They've issued two reports. The most recent one was in
December of last year, ``Creating a Trusted Information Network
for Homeland Security.'' They spell out in that report how,
using off-the-shelf technology, it is possible to build a
network to better share information. The tools are available.
It's based upon write-to-release. It's based upon federated
searches across agencies. It's a system that promotes
horizontal sharing of information and downward sharing of
information as well as the stovepiped and upward sharing of
information. It is based upon writing reports to be disclosed,
for using tear lines to protect sources and methods.
We need to get on with building this network. There are
steps that we can take beginning immediately with establishing
directories and pointers so that at least we know what we know,
and so that we can find out who has the information.
The second question confronting the President and this
Congress is who should be in charge of the information and
intelligence sharing and analysis effort? Now, with the
recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and with the decision of
the President yesterday, that question has been answered to
some extent. If we establish and move forward as the President
has said he will with the director of national intelligence,
there are many important questions to be addressed, including
eliminating duplication and correcting or clarifying the lines
of authority between existing analysis centers. But, certainly,
a key part of the role of the director of national intelligence
should be the answering of those questions.
The third question is how to do this while protecting the
privacy and the civil liberties of ordinary citizens. Now, the
9/11 Commission was 100 percent clear that we can and must
address this threat of terrorism consistent with our civil
liberties. They called for an enhanced system of checks and
balances to protect precious liberties that are vital to our
way of life.
The Gilmore Commission chaired by former Virginia Governor
Gilmore reached the same conclusion. The TAPAC--the Technology
and Privacy Advisory Committee appointed by Secretary Rumsfeld
also stressed the importance of protecting privacy, as did the
Markle Task Force.
Part of the answer is in the technologies themselves,
anonymization technologies that will minimize the amount of
information that is collected, quality control measures,
auditing trails to make sure that information is not being
abused or misused or compromised, and also the policies. The
wall is now down; no one is proposing re-erecting it.
Intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies are sharing
information as they never did before. The Government agencies
have broad collection authority. There is really not any
information that the Government does not have the legal
authority to get. But the Privacy Act and our other rules are
outdated, and the guidelines have not been put in place for
this new information-sharing environment.
And these guidelines need not tie the hands of
investigators and law enforcement and intelligence officials.
In fact, the guidelines can empower the officials as well as
constrain them by telling them what is permissible and what
they are authorized to do. We will need oversight, both
congressional and in the executive branch. This Congress was
wise in creating a privacy officer and a civil rights and civil
liberties officer when it created the Department of Homeland
Security. Similar mechanisms need to be created for the new
information-sharing structures. At the end of the day, the
oversight and accountability mechanisms will benefit both
national security and civil liberties. Well implemented
accountability need not impede intelligence operations. Checks
and balances result in clear lines of responsibility, well-
allocated resources, protection against abuse, and the ability
to evaluate and correct past mistakes.
As this committee moves forward to implement the
recommendations of the 9/11 committee, the Center for Democracy
and Technology and the members of the Markle Task Force are at
your disposal to work with you and move forward in achieving
our shared goals. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Dempsey follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Let me just thank all of you for being
patient, staying with us today. This testimony is important as
we contemplate where we go from here as a committee and as a
Congress.
Let me start the questioning with you, Mr. Light. You are
no stranger to this committee. In addition to the other
elements, you hit on two major themes in your testimony: One,
that there are too many layers of bureaucracy in our Federal
Government; and two, that Congress needs to reauthorize
Executive Reorganization Authority.
To me, these two issues seem to be intertwined. Will you
agree that much of the bureaucracy comes from congressional
micromanagement and that reorganization authority would be one
way to try to diminish some of the micromanagement and free
Congress to focus on broader policy goals?
Mr. Light. I agree, absolutely, with the second. The
layering of Government, this thickening that I talk about is
like Kudzu; it grows from many sources. Some of it's
micromanagement. Some of it's perfectly legitimate expansion
due to congressional decisions and executive decisions on
policy priorities. Some, as you know, from your hearings on the
Civil Service system, reflect backdoor pay raises. And, you
know, it's like the stalagmites and stalactites problems. Some
of it drips down; some of it rises up.
You need a mechanism that the President can take hold of to
attack it. You have to be persistent about it. And I believe
that reorganization authority properly constrained to allow
congressional action on an expedited timetable is an
appropriate device for constraining it. It's the kind of thing
that grows unless you check it.
Chairman Tom Davis. And the separation of powers is no way
to do that? Is it because it's difficult once the Federal
program gets created? I mean, there is nothing closer to
eternal life, it seems to me.
Mr. Light. Well, you need to make agencies pay a price for
each new layer they create. We don't do that in the Government.
The private sector does. There is a price to be paid on the
profit line. So you have to be diligent about tracking it. And
I think that requires a strong executive authority. And, also,
the credible threat that you are going to do something about it
as you see the layering occur.
Chairman Tom Davis. Your testimony explains that there were
long gaps in the management during the administration change,
creating an environment where intelligence and information is
either lost or misinterpreted or you lose some history. What
steps need to be taken to ensure that the appointment process
runs smoothly and within a reasonable timeframe to prevent
these types of problems?
Mr. Light. Well, there is a perfectly reasonable first step
that's already been drafted out. Your professional staff was
involved in it on the other side. We could make enormous
progress from simply streamlining the forms that we have our
appointees fill out, by making them all electronically
available, by populating information across forms. We could get
the Senate and the White House to agree on some simple
technological fixes and, in doing so, lead them toward the kind
of compact that would allow for some tight rules regarding
movement of nominations forward.
It makes no sense again to create a National Intelligence
Directorate if it's going to take you 8\1/2\ months to get
somebody in that position and if the turnover is 18 to 24
months, if people are only staying that long. And so that's why
I think a term of office encourages the kind of presumption in
favor of at least staying long enough to make an impact. But
there are some very easy fixes that I would attach to whatever
legislation you push out here. And, of course, the 9/11
Commission made recommendations on the appointments process.
Chairman Tom Davis. Let me ask the other panelists.
Currently, the private sector really collects the information
about critical infrastructure vulnerabilities and threats
through the ISACs. Last week, GAO issued a report on critical
infrastructure protection which found that this system's
ineffective, because the private sector is concerned its
information being shared with Government will be made public,
and that has a lot of ramifications from business liability. Do
all of you share that concern? Mr. Collet, I'll start with you,
from AT&T's perspective, and move straight on down.
Mr. Collet. Sure. As I mentioned, we have been working with
the Department of Homeland Security and the NCS since its
inception, when it was organized under the White House. And
during those years we have continuously shared information with
the Federal Government. It's a very good relationship. I am
unaware of any deficiency that we have in what we report to the
NCS within DHS. So perhaps our industry is blessed, because,
since 1984, we have had the equivalent of an ISAC, and over the
years a level of trust and confidence has developed for both
parties.
So today, as telecommunications expands to include things
like wireless and satellite and other media besides wireline, I
think the scope of what they do will be expanded a bit. But it
seems to be a good working model, and perhaps all that we need
to do there is continue working with what we have because it
has a very good track record.
Chairman Tom Davis. Any other panelists want to address
that?
Mr. Duff. Just a quick point, Mr. Chairman. The public
transit ISAC is a little bit different. I think it is one of
the few that is in the public domain. Most of the members of
that ISAC are public bodies, and we are protected by a
provision in the Patriot Act that preempts any State's Sunshine
Laws. So there is an element of protection there that makes our
members feel comfortable in sharing information, and many of
them have joined up with it.
Mr. McCarthy. Yes, sir. In working with virtually all the
ISACs and the emerging ISACs, along with DHS, what you are
hearing is three or four different business models, the NCS
being a well-established, close relationship between the
Government and private sector. What's behind that, when you go
back historically is a very significant amount of Government
funding, along with private sector contribution, and a firm
commitment on both sides.
You flip all the way over the financial sector, and their's
is a totally private sector entity without Government
interaction. And then there is everything in between, and
people trying to pick.
So the issue is much more--trying to pick one as the model
is very difficult to do. The information sharing issue is, in
my mind, radically changing as we move from the PDD 63
environment where the ISACs were the brain child and generated
from out of the original President's commission, and now we are
in the Homeland Security HSPD 7 model where there is money on
the table with significant funding. With that comes
responsibility and accountability back.
So that's a challenge that both the private sector and the
Government have to work through relative to this. If the
Government is putting money on the table to fund ISACs or
pieces of ISACs or sector coordinator activity, what kind of
responsibility and information sharing comes back from that? I
think that's a key question that I see out there for both
parties.
Chairman Tom Davis. OK.
Mr. Dempsey. Mr. Chairman, I'm not familiar with the GAO
study you mentioned. I'm surprised a little bit by it. Speaking
just for CDT, I thought that the FOIA issue was taken care of
in the legislation that was passed. I have to say, quite
honestly, that CDT was skeptical that FOIA exemption was
necessary or that it needed to be as broadly drafted as it was.
But now that's in place, and it's in place in a very broad
fashion. If there is not sufficient information sharing still
going on, then we need to look elsewhere for the cause of that.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Kanjorski.
Mr. Kanjorski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. McCarthy, when you were testifying--I now came to the
realization why the unemployment hasn't moved up. Apparently,
we are hiring an awful lot of people to do a lot of thinking
and writing a lot of articles. It seems all our entities have
to go out there and come up with these plans that we are
talking about.
You heard earlier testimony today about--from Mr. Walker--
this may take 5 to 7 years to come up with a structured plan of
how to handle the war on terrorism? Do you have any experiences
at the table that could short-circuit that and get us on our
way? It struck me that the terrorists, for $500,000 and 19 men
killed 3,000 Americans and drove right through the strongest
Nation in the world in a relatively short period of time,
several years. Why in the world such a sophisticated Nation as
this has to struggle so hard to get a plan and policy together
to meet the challenge?
I was just commenting to one of the reporters who asked me
the question, I think General Eisenhower planned and put
together and implemented the invasion of Normandy in 18 months,
and the Manhattan Project less than 18 years. Have we become so
muscle bound as a country and as a Government that we are not
capable of re-instituting some of our institutions to be able
to meet this threat? What seems to be the problem?
Mr. Dempsey. Congressman, if I could venture to answer
that. I don't think it takes that long. I think we have to all
recognize and appreciate that very important strides have been
made since September 11 in improving information sharing and
increasing cooperation between law enforcement and intelligence
agencies. The President said it. The 9/11 Commission said it:
We are safer, but we are not safe.
Mr. Kanjorski. Well, I think they say that. But if you get
out in the country and you talk to the first responders, they
are going to tell you they don't have any damned equipment to
handle any biological attack, chemical attack. They have no
training. They don't have the vehicles.
Mr. Dempsey. Well, the State and local piece is often the
most overlooked piece of this on the information-sharing side
as well as the preparedness side.
Mr. Kanjorski. Well, that's what bothers me. I mean, that's
where the people are going to die out there on the street. They
are not going to die in the Capitol here, or maybe a few of us
will. But the ones we are worried about are out there on the
street, and the first responders of them, and they haven't
heard any of the--I think I talked to Tom Ridge the other day.
And a minimal amount of the Homeland Security money is starting
to trickle out through the various established State entities.
Mr. Dempsey. Well, I won't comment upon the equipment issue
because that's not really my area of expertise.
But on the information-sharing piece, we heard today from
both the commissioners as well as from members of the committee
the concern about the fact that, in the past, so much
information was tightly held, for a variety of reasons, both
good and bad.
Mr. Kanjorski. Information is power.
Mr. Dempsey. But we have the opportunity now to move to a
situation, as the title of the hearing is, of need to share and
of write to release, and breaking down some of the rigid
classification systems.
Mr. Kanjorski. You heard some of the testimony earlier. It
disturbed me, this movement to put somebody in the White House.
I agree with all of you saying, if you put it in the White
House, God forbid, you may have the next dictatorship in the
United States if you do that. And I'm not just talking about
this White House. I'm talking about any White House, putting an
intelligence person who controls that much information and
money in a political home such as the White House.
It just seems to me--I'm not old enough to remember when J.
Edgar Hoover was hired, but I know there was a great threat of
prohibition and criminality in this country, and they took this
young kid from wherever he came from, and they started the FBI,
the first Federal Bureau of Investigation. And, by God, by the
time it got to Lyndon Johnson, they couldn't fire him because
he had a book on everybody, not only those who lived in the
White House but everybody up here on Capitol Hill. And if he
lived to have been 200, he would still be the Director of the
FBI.
And we are talking, right here and now, this great fear of
terrorism, throw away all the protections, all prior
experiences, get a czar in place, give him all the power, all
the money, and, hopefully, this great white knight, whoever he
is, will not be ambitious politically or otherwise. I mean, I
don't hear anybody talking about if we put all this power and
all this money in one person's hands, where are our protections
that he literally couldn't become a dictator and the very thing
we are trying to save, democracy, he could take away of from
us?
Mr. Dempsey. Congressman, the thrust of my testimony is
that director and the other structures that we are creating
need to be subject to oversight, checks and balances, and
internal and external auditing. There is no choice that we have
other than to create a web of controls and checks and balances
and mechanisms of accountability. This committee and this
Congress have a role in that. The other two branches of
Government do as well.
Mr. Shays. I want to give Mr. Schrock a chance to ask some
questions. Thanks.
Mr. Schrock.
Mr. Schrock. That was going pretty well, I thought.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I believe the point that the 9/11 Commission Report makes
about the inherent weakness of an identification system that
relies solely on paper-based identification such as the
passport is certainly thought-provoking. And I'm a supporter of
efforts to develop a biometric-based method of identification,
because I believe that it has multiple benefits, including
reduction and reducing the burden on security screeners in a
variety of settings and in making identity theft and fraud a
lot more difficult. I believe that we can achieve a workable
and secure biometric-based system that is practical and
affordable.
And I am also aware that there is great potential for
infringing upon civil liberties which we've heard a lot about
today. But I just cannot accept that, as a Nation, with all the
dedicated people in Government and private industry, and with
all the organizations dedicated to protecting civil liberties,
that we cannot come up with a workable solution that makes us
more secure in our homes and workplace and in our civil rights.
I would like to get your thoughts on what you believe the
greatest challenges are in achieving a system of biometric-
based identification similar to what the Commission recommends,
any of you.
Mr. McCarthy. Individual acceptance. I think it boils down
to the individual accepting it. You can go back to the
implementation of any technology. Go back to seafaring. For
many years, you look at the pictures in the museums, and you
see this beautiful ship with four or three huge masts with
sails and smokestacks, because the sailors would not accept the
fact that those boilers are going to take me--get me under way.
All the stories about the people not using the ATM machines
when it first came out, that it's going to steal your money
instead of giving the money back. It's acceptance on the part
of the people. And I'm not sure, no matter what kind of time
lines directed or driven or pushed, that's ever going to
change.
Mr. Duff. And reliability?
Mr. McCarthy. And the reliability of it.
Mr. Collet. I also think we have contemporary examples to
look at. I think, just a few years ago, people were concerned
about shopping over the Internet because they were concerned
about identity theft or security. And now, people are buying
over the Internet all the time. So there was a tipping point
that was reached in which it became very commercially viable
and attractive, and you know, e-commerce is doing very well now
because of that. The same thing might be true for cell phones.
Mr. Schrock. So time? It's just timing and education and
understanding and trying to accept something that they are not
used to then?
Mr. Collet. True. And clearly, I'm sure when you use your
computer either at home or in the office you have to log in
every time to every particular application that you use, and
that's inconvenient. I think a biometric system may be coming
sooner than people think from the commercial sector because it
will make commerce easier. It will make office automation
easier. It will make life more pleasant. I think a lot of
people will go for it.
Mr. Schrock. Dr. Light.
Mr. Light. Well, I think that Chapter 12 of the 9/11 report
is quite detailed and quite important and has received almost
no attention whatsoever. We have been focused on the
intelligence czar and appropriately so. But you have to talk
with your Appropriations Committee chairs, subcommittee chairs
about injecting some money into this effort.
I talked to the people at DHS, and they are telling me that
they are being nickel-and-dimed to death, and they don't have
access to the dollars they need. Now, I'm not saying you have
to double their budget, but, you know, we are at a point where
you may need to raise the budget and also allow the Department
to hire more people. Much as we hate bureaucracy and big
Government and so forth, it may mean that we have to inject
some more resources into the effort.
Mr. Dempsey. Congressman, if I could.
Mr. Schrock. Yes, sir.
Mr. Dempsey. As Mr. Light said, the recommendations of the
Commission on biometric identification and screening are some
of its most important and detailed recommendations.
At the same time, the Commission also notes that there are
very important and very difficult unanswered questions about
moving forward. They recommend what has, I think, become the
accepted path, which is strengthening the State driver's
license. The Center for Democracy and Technology last year
issued a report looking at practices at the State DMVs, and
they have a serious security problem. They have people getting
officially issued but fraudulently obtained State driver's
licenses. They have people breaking into DMVs and stealing the
machines and stealing the blank cards and then being able to
mass produce their own very authentic-looking, biometrically
based ID cards. They obviously have a corruption problem in a
decentralized system where one employee can earn some money on
the side.
The National Academy of Science issued a report a couple of
years ago on IDs, and the title of it was something like,
``Harder Than You Think.'' The process of issuing, on a massive
basis, an ID card, not a national ID card but improving
biometrics, even using the State driver's license, is hard.
The Government is working through DHS with the U.S. Visit
Program to establish a biometric entry-exit visa system under
the U.S. Visit Program. That is beginning, 500 million visitors
a year. It's only been partly implemented. I think we need to
learn from some of the lessons there.
The Center for Democracy and Technology and the Heritage
Foundation--which you might think of as one organization on the
left of the political spectrum and one on the right of the
political spectrum--we recently issued a joint report, one of
several joint reports that we have issued on information
technology issues. We recently issued a report on biometrics,
laying out some of the concerns and factors that need to be
taken into account both on the privacy side as well as on the
security side.
Mr. Schrock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman.
I will have a number of questions that--I want you to know
that sometimes the last panel--it's the end of the day, we seem
to talk a little more softly and so on. But I learned some of
my most interesting information from the panel sometimes that
goes last. So I am eager to ask you all a few questions.
I want to know--and you don't have to go in any particular
order. But I want you to basically tell me the following: What
do you think was the most important proposal? What do you think
was the least most important, or maybe a proposal that you
frankly don't like? And I want you to tell me where you think
the hardest challenge will be.
So the first thing, just talk about the proposal that you
like the most in this, the thing that you are happy to see in
the report. And I'm going to say to you up front, and it may be
evident, I think they did a hell of a good job. And I think
it's almost inspired, inspired in this sense: I feel like they
had a higher calling. I think they all of a sudden said, wait a
second, we are out too much. We are politicizing. This can
crash. And then I think Senator Kerrey, when he described, when
they talked about the events, it kind of woke them up. That's
the feeling I get. So I view this as a very important work, and
I want to treat it with the importance it deserves.
Tell me what you think was the most important
recommendation or one or two of the most important. Who wants
to go first?
Mr. Duff. Mr. Chairman, I can say that, from our
perspective, from the public transportation industry's
perspective, on page 391, the Commission Report talks about the
need for a forward-looking strategic plan system, systemically
analyzing assets and risks and recommending that the U.S.
Government identify and evaluate the transportation assets that
need to be protected, set risk-based priorities for defending
them, select the most practical and cost-effective ways of
doing so, and then develop a planned budget and funding for
them. So from the perspective of my industry, we felt that was
very important.
Mr. Shays. And that would be out of the Department of
Homeland Security?
Mr. Duff. That's correct.
Mr. Shays. And your testimony is that, if it's happening,
it's really in the infant stages?
Mr. Duff. If it's happening--we have critical
transportation needs that we have brought before the
Department, and they have begun to look at those, but we think
they are not looked at in a really comprehensive way. I think
they need to look at all aspects of transportation and, as the
report says, analyze them and determine what is the best way to
proceed in terms of an overall plan.
Mr. Shays. So you were happy to see that in the reports?
Some other comments?
Mr. McCarthy. Sir, mine is actually combined. My favorite
is my least. It has the most problems or issues. And that's the
standard of care for the private sector. I think that the--it
talked about the lack of a private sector standard deemed
principal factor and lack of private sector preparedness, and
they mentioned the number of standards that they endorsed.
I think that the adoption of a standards-based view of
implementation of Homeland Security is the way to go. Where the
report I don't think went far enough is that one standard
doesn't fit all even across critical infrastructures and even
within a critical infrastructure.
Mr. Shays. Give me an illustration.
Mr. McCarthy. A chemical plant. OK? The security of a
chemical plant. If you have a chemical plant that's located in
a totally isolated area away from a population, you need
minimal security. Somebody should not be able to walk on to
that plant freely, etc. All the horror stories you hear.
However, do you need the same level of care relative to a
potential terrorist attack, a physical assault or a cyber
assault on that plant when the plant is located in a populated
area?
Mr. Shays. I believe we have like 123 plants that could
impact a million people each. Is that not the statistic? In
other words, there are a number of chemical plants that are in
the heart of urban areas.
Mr. McCarthy. Right.
Mr. Shays. And if they were attacked, the outcome would be
horrific.
Mr. McCarthy. And I think this is where the GAO is going
with the risk-based view of if you have limited resources to
invest in chemical plant security, you have to have a
differentiation. If the standard--if a single standard calls
for the same level of protection across all of them, one or the
other, and where that also lacks in the area of standards is
the idea of what picks up. And we have even, I think heard some
of the reference in the testimony--previous testimony of
insurance and tax incentive. Well, you know, there isn't in
many areas relative to security----
Mr. Shays. You're telling me a little more than I want to
know right now. I want to know what is the proposal that you
like the most.
Mr. McCarthy. It was the implementation of a standard. It
needs to be refined.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Dempsey.
Mr. Dempsey. The most important were two-fold, really. One
is the endorsement of the SHARE network concept and
specifically citing the Markle Foundation Task Force. Coupled
with that, on pages 393 and following of the report, a very,
very strong endorsement of civil liberties protection, and of
the need for checks and balances, and in Chapter 13, the
recommendations for stronger congressional oversight.
Speaking just personally from a civil liberties
perspective, I don't see anything that I would per se oppose in
that report from a civil liberties perspective. The thing that
is going to be hardest and is going to pose the greatest
challenges----
Mr. Shays. We'll come back to greatest challenges.
Mr. Dempsey. OK.
Mr. Shays. The thing that you were most happy to see in the
report, Mr. Collet?
Mr. Collet. I also agree that----
Mr. Shays. Your mic is--you have a terrible mic.
Mr. Collet. Is that better now?
Mr. Shays. Yes.
Mr. Collet. I also agree that it's the shared network
concept. Five years ago, none of this would have been possible.
But with the development of virtualization across network
layers and information technology, it is now very doable and
achievable. So, as a network company, we find that very
attractive.
You are asking, what is it that we didn't like? And I would
have to say, perhaps, maybe an overemphasis on the need to know
versus the need to share. You know, as I mentioned in my
testimony, we're concerned about the proliferation----
Mr. Shays. We'll get back to the one you disliked the most.
Yes, sir.
Mr. Light. Before this committee and this chamber, I think
you need to remember one statistic that just continues to echo
for me. On September 11th, half--half of the 164 senior Senate-
confirmed jobs were either vacant or occupied by an individual
with less than 1 month on the job. We were so vulnerable
because of the lack of leadership at that point.
For me, before this body, I think you have to focus on the
transition process and the Presidential appointments process.
It's a disaster. And we are so vulnerable in the first 6 to 9
to 12 months of a new administration; it's shocking.
Mr. Shays. I hear you. And what's interesting is, I think,
this is one thing that will probably escape the attention of a
lot of people.
Mr. Light. You can't let it happen. I mean, I have been on
the staff on both the House and the Senate side, and sometimes,
House people will say, ``Well, you know, the appointments
process is really the Senate's business.'' You know, the White
House and Senate struggle.
But, you know what? We have been unable after 3\1/2\ years
of very hard work to convince our colleagues in the Senate to
move forward on this issue. If not you, it's just not going to
happen. You have the distance perhaps to argue favorably for
action on improving the appointments process.
Mr. Shays. Fascinating.
One of the things that I would like each of you to suggest
is, my subcommittee, National Security Subcommittee, Emerging
Threats and International Relations Committee, is going to have
two hearings at the end of this month. We want to take a part
of the bill that we think won't get the attention that it might
get from others. In other words, there are some wonderful big
fat crumbs that will fall from the table of some more important
committees. And we want to identify those, and that may be one.
Tell me the thing that concerns you the most about the
report. Not which is the hardest to pass, but the thing that,
you know, you look at and say, gosh. I mean, I will tell you
the one that concerned me, just to give you an example of where
I'm coming from, the concept that somehow the White House would
have operational responsibility. And I'm not sure I'm being
fair to the Commission, but that was the one area that I
thought, you know, it just had too much the feeling of
Watergate and people in the White House and power to--well, you
get the gist. What are the areas that might have concerned the
five of you?
Mr. McCarthy. One area, and it speaks to the organizational
piece, not necessarily the intelligence, but the broader
strategic organizational piece. And that is building into this
a--just that, a view that's beyond the immediate threat out to
the next 6 months. How do you build into the organizations a
longer view? In DOD, you have two kind of activities going on
simultaneously. One is that immediate activity to support the
needs----
Mr. Shays. I want to follow you, this is an important part.
But does that relate to the report? Was there something in the
report that was in there that you disagreed with, or are you
talking about something that wasn't----
Mr. McCarthy. It's something that belonged--it needed more
emphasis in the report. There are subtleties in there.
To give you an example. In critical infrastructure, if you
look at the organizational structure for Australia, for
instance, for their CIP, and you compare our IAIP to what
Australia has, they have a piece built into it that's called
the Futures Group. Their sole responsibility is to be removed
from the immediate day-to-day activity of working with the
private sector, trying to build the alliance and trying to move
the agenda forward. And their view is to look at, what will the
economic environment look like? What will the threat
environment look like? And then, how do you need to adjust all
the mechanisms in the Government to respond?
Mr. Shays. That's interesting. You broke out of my box a
little bit, and we're thinking of something that wasn't being
addressed that concerned you. So, something that was addressed
that you didn't like or something that wasn't addressed that
should have been there.
Any others?
Mr. Dempsey. At CDT, we are most concerned about the border
screening and the broader screening questions. Not because of
any anything that's wrong in the report, but just because of
how hard these issues are.
The report does not mention the question of watch lists,
CAPPS II, in a way, or the airline passenger screening system
in a way is dependent upon watch lists. The FBI has the
Terrorist Screening Center. We have 14 agencies developing
watch lists coordinated by the TSC, Terrorist Screening Center
at the FBI. Completely unanswered are questions of data
quality, how someone gets on the list, how they get off the
list, how they respond if they are denied a job based upon
screening.
Mr. Shays. So when Senator Kerrey spoke, and I'm saying
yes, you are saying, uh, oh.
Mr. Dempsey. I'm saying----
Mr. Shays. I mean, I was cheering when he spoke, inside.
Mr. Dempsey. Well, we already have a border screening
system through the visa process.
Mr. Shays. That doesn't work.
Mr. Dempsey. We have an airline passenger screening system.
We have various employment screening systems for a variety of
sensitive jobs. All of those have gaps. All have limitations.
There are efforts under way to try to improve them, and the
Commission recommends the linking together of those various
screening systems into what they call a comprehensive screening
system.
I think, inevitably, we are moving that direction, but the
issues that the report highlights of due process, of how you
identify people----
Mr. Shays. I hear you. You have some deep concerns about
that.
Mr. Dempsey. Crucial issues that concern us.
Mr. Shays. And I hear you.
Some others. Yes, Mr. Duff.
Mr. Duff. This may be similar to Mr. McCarthy, and I'll be
brief. But it's the issue of the roles--clarification of the
roles and responsibilities of agencies. You have this huge new
Department of Homeland Security, and yet you still have the
U.S. Department of Transportation with somewhat overlapping
roles and responsibilities. Isn't there some way to clarify
that and make it clear which Department is responsible for
what?
Mr. Shays. OK. So, but is that--so your concern is that
they didn't address it deeply enough?
Mr. Duff. That's correct.
Mr. Shays. OK.
Mr. Collet.
Mr. Collet. We have no concerns.
Mr. Shays. OK.
Mr. Light. I have a big fat target for you.
Mr. Shays. OK.
Mr. Light. And a concern.
The target is the current structure of the intelligence
community, which was pretty much left off the table.
Mr. Shays. Right.
Mr. Light. We are up against a highly agile adversary, a
networked adversary, and in many ways, we are trying to defeat
him with a smokestack, to mix our metaphor.
Mr. Shays. I would like to pursue that point.
Mr. Light. Well, just the point that, at the subcommittee
level, you need to take a look at what needs to happen in the
intelligence community to speed information to the National
Intelligence Directorate. It's the issue that the comptroller
general was talking about, about a full outbox with no inbox.
And I think that the intelligence community has gotten a pass
on its basic organizational structure.
Mr. Shays. All of you have spoken about your concerns.
Let me tell you my concern and have you react to it. My
concern is that you have--and since there is hardly anyone
here, I can say this now. But you have an Armed Services
Committee, in my judgment, that's captive to the military. You
have various committees in Congress that develop these
relationships.
I have a belief that the Intelligence Committee was a
captive of the intelligence community in some ways. But I don't
know how they were captive, but I didn't feel they were in
control. And the reason I can speak about that is that this is
the committee that has 360 degrees jurisdiction. My
subcommittee oversees the Defense Department. Again, we kind of
pick the crumbs from what's not done by the Defense, the Armed
Services Committee. But we are not in the same--a four star
means a lot to me, but it doesn't mean quite the same thing to
the members of the committee. And we don't necessarily feel we
have the same--well, I had better be careful there.
What I'm trying to say is that we don't have those same
relationships that--and so I feel like we are freer to be a
little more aggressive. And what's surprised me about this is
that, frankly, if the intelligence agency didn't succeed, the
Intelligence Committee of Congress didn't succeed. And yet we
are saying we want to make them more powerful and give them
more responsibility. And that's kind of the thing I'm wrestling
with. I'm wrestling with, when we wanted to have a hearing, as
I mentioned earlier, the Intelligence Committee gave the CIA
permission so they didn't have to participate. And I went up to
the chairman and complained about it, and it was just, you
know, that's the way it was.
And so I'm wondering how we get a better handle on the
intelligence community if we are basically empowering only one
committee of Congress to have oversight with no judgment on
whether they are doing their job or any other committee to kind
of pick up the crumbs that they may not see falling from the
table. Any reaction to that? If not, I will just take my last
question. OK.
Tell me the thing you think is most difficult to achieve.
The thing that you think is, ``Good luck, ain't going to
happen, or, if it happens, I will be amazed.'' Do you think
most of this report will be incorporated? Let me put it this
way, do you think most of this report will be adopted? And, if
not, what are the parts that you think will most likely not be
adopted?
Mr. Light. I think we are right now at the beginning of the
process, and we saw yesterday with the President's proposal a
process of dilution that happens in politics. The proposal now
on the table would create the weakest agency out of the gate
that I've seen in terms of a response to a problem like this.
By my view, the proposed National Intelligence Directorate
would be so weak, it might as well be located in Baltimore.
That's a tough statement, but it's just the way it is.
Mr. McCarthy. We have a pattern here of too many massive
parts in play. Immediate reaction: Form TSA. Forget about DOT.
Now you have to deal with TSA. TSA started to feel growing
pains. We shifted it to form the Department of Homeland
Security. And you talk to the guys at DOT, and they are--TSA,
and they are kind of rambling around. Now the shift is going to
be into intelligence. We just keep doing this, and in the
process, we leave a path of starting to implement massive
change without the follow-through, without the piercing follow-
through that's needed both from the oversight side and within,
how do you align this up in the executive branch, budget,
people, the whole 9 yards? None of the foundation's been laid.
Mr. Shays. OK. Some other points?
Mr. Dempsey. Congressman, I don't know if it is the
hardest, but one of the hardest things will be making sure that
this director of national intelligence does not merely serve
the President. I think one of the initial problems that the
TTIC faced and to some extent still faces is there is such a
premium placed on moving information up to the President and
getting your little nugget or your piece of analysis in front
of the President. The President isn't going to be the one who
prevents the next terrorist attack. It's going to be some alert
Customs officer or some TSA screener at an airport. The goal
has to be to push that information down and out to all levels
of Government and to allow people who are on the frontlines--to
have that information.
Mr. Shays. That's an important point to make. Just tell me
the hardest thing that we are going to--in this report to--I'm
making an assumption that you basically support the
recommendations of this Commission. I mean, for the most part,
you do. What is the part that you think--what concerns that you
have expressed, what do you think is not going to happen
because it's just going to be too difficult or there won't be
the kind of attention to it? I mean, your point was very valid.
Mr. Dempsey. This is one that I see is a very hard thing to
legislate in the first place, hard to accomplish.
Mr. Shays. Anybody else?
Now we are going to close up here. You don't want to--Mr.
Collet?
Mr. Collet. I really don't have much of an opinion on it.
Mr. Shays. Why don't you turn your mic on?
Mr. Collet. I am sorry. Perhaps the most difficult thing
will be finding the money for the budget. It is as simple as
that.
Mr. Shays. Anybody want to make a last comment before we
close up?
Mr. McCarthy. Not just finding the money but allocating it,
making those hard decisions about how you allocate it across
the transportation sector, for example. That will be very
difficult, and that is why we support the idea of a strategic
plan to do just that.
Mr. Shays. OK. It is going to be an interesting fall, isn't
it?
Gentleman, thank you for all your good work, and thank you
for spending your whole day with us.
If there are no further comments, we will adjourn.
[Whereupon, at 5 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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