Statement for the Record
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
General Michael V. Hayden
Director, Central Intelligence Agency
(as prepared for delivery)
January 11, 2007
Thank you Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee.
The
CIA is at the forefront of our nation's response to many of the
challenges the DNI has just presented to the Committee. The men and
women of the Central Intelligence Agency are indeed central to our
nation's ability to detect, analyze, and warn of the risks and
opportunities we face in an increasingly complex and fluid global
environment.
Today, I will share with
you briefly in open session—and more comprehensively in my classified
Statement for the Record—some of the steps CIA is taking to build on
our unique strengths and to help assure that the United States is able
to meet the security challenges the DNI has described. This Strategic
Intent—as I have discussed with the CIA workforce in recent weeks—is
our roadmap to becoming a more effective organization in fulfilling our
paramount mission: protecting the American people. Its central theme is
integration—operating as a team within our Agency and with our
Intelligence Community colleagues. We must combine our talents
according to what the mission requires.
CIA
must have world-class analysts who are experts in their fields and who
employ rigorous analytic tradecraft in the assessments they provide
policymakers—to include the US Congress. We must have core collectors
who are conversant in the languages and cultures of the countries in
which they serve and who can collect decisive intelligence against the
hardest targets from a variety of platforms.
Our support specialists must have the agility and proficiency to
facilitate our Agency's work anywhere in the world, often on short
notice. And our science and technology officers must always give our
operations an edge our adversaries cannot match. The American people
expect nothing less from us.
Collection
As
the National HUMINT manager, CIA is working to build an integrated
national HUMINT service and working to enhance relationships with
foreign intelligence services while also coordinating the Intelligence
Community's relationships with foreign partners.
Our
focus remains on collecting information that reveals the plans,
intentions and capabilities of our adversaries and provides the basis
for decision and action. It is crucial that we develop and deploy
innovative ways to penetrate the toughest targets. From the perspective
of CIA's collection, globalization is—as the DNI has stated—the
defining characteristic of our age, requiring us to find new ways to
collect key intelligence on the terrorist threat, emerging WMD
proliferation, and volatile regional conflicts.
Counterterrorism
Waging
a global, high-stakes war against al-Qa'ida and other terrorists that
threaten the United States remains a fundamental part of CIA's mission.
We work on our own, with other US Government agencies, and with foreign
liaison partners to target terrorist leaders and cells, disrupt their
plots, sever their financial and logistical links, and roil their
safehavens.
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CIA's
war on terror is coordinated and run from our Counterterrorism Center,
or CTC, and carried out for the most part from our stations and bases
overseas. CTC has both operational and analytic components, and the
fusion of these two is key to success. CTC, moreover, works closely
with the National Counterterrorism Center to assure protection of the
homeland.
CIA's
collection on terrorist targets—particularly human intelligence—has
been steadily improving in both quantity and quality since 9/11.
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Access
to information is a primary factor in an informant's value to us, and
penetrating secretive terrorist organizations is among our greatest
challenges.
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We
have made significant strides in this regard—though I am extremely
concerned about the damage done by rampant leaks in recent years.
Besides setting back our efforts, leaks can and have led to grave
consequences for our assets.
Terrorist
plots and groups are not broken by single reports or sources, and no
detainee knows everything about the compartmented activities of a
group. Painstaking, all-source analysis is crucial to supporting and
driving operations. The work of CTC has been crucial to identifying and
targeting terrorists, vetting assets, and supporting overseas work.
WMD
CIA
also dedicates significant resources to countering the threat posed by
Weapons of Mass Destruction and associated delivery systems.
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We
focus on North Korea and Iran, two states with WMD programs that
threaten regional balances, US interests, and international arms
control mechanisms like the Nonproliferation Treaty.
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We
focus on the WMD and missile programs of Russia and China, which are
large enough to threaten US survival if their political leaderships
decided to reverse themselves and assume a hostile stance.
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We
watch also for signs that other states or non-state actors may be
taking early steps toward acquiring nuclear, biological, or chemical
weapons.
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We also are trying to watch emerging technologies for any that might turn into the WMD of tomorrow.
Iraq and Afghanistan
In
both Iraq and Afghanistan, we are working to gather critical
information on terrorism, insurgency, stabilization, nation building,
security issues, foreign relations, and infrastructure on both the
strategic and tactical levels. A priority for our efforts is the
collection of force protection intelligence to support the war fighting
and counterterrorism activities of US and partner forces.
In
Iraq, the insurgency, sectarian violence and the role of external
actors acting against Coalition goals—such as Iran and Syria —remain
key features of the unstable security situation and a major focus of
our collection. In Afghanistan we are working to counter al-Qa'ida,
Taliban, and other anti-coalition militants who threaten the stability
of the Afghan state. We work closely with our military to enhance this
collection in order to provide focused, significant intelligence to the
policymaker.
Open Source
To
meet the challenge of global intelligence coverage that the DNI has
outlined, the CIA is also playing a leading role in exploiting rapidly
expanding open source information. As the executive agent for the DNI
Open Source Center, CIA has elevated both the organizational status and
visibility of the open source discipline, recognizing its unique and
growing contributions to integrated collection and analysis within CIA
and the Intelligence Community at large.
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The OSC collects from and analyzes a host of publicly available sources
worldwide to alert against threats made against the United States and
its citizens and to deliver the most reliable information possible to
inform policymakers, warfighters, and all-source analysts throughout
the government.
Analysis
Mr.
Chairman, the ongoing successes of these collection and other efforts
by the men and women of the CIA are also a foundation for our equally
important analytic mission. Producing timely analysis that provides
insight, warning and opportunity to the President and other
decisionmakers is the foundation of CIA's analytic effort. As the DNI
has made clear in his remarks today, we operate in an unstable and
dangerous world where international terrorism, the rise of new powers,
and the accelerating pace of economic and technological change are
placing strains on the ability of states to govern and increasing the
potential for strategic surprises.
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Our
adversaries in the long war on terrorism are dispersed across the
globe; they are resilient, ruthless, patient and committed to the mass
murder of our citizens.
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The
possession and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction threatens
international stability and the safety of our homeland.
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The rise of China and India and the emergence of new economic “centers” will transform the geopolitical and economic landscape.
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Weak governments, lagging economies, and competition for energy resources will create crises in many regions.
The
complexity and interdependence of these issues demands nothing less
than the very best analysis. To achieve this we are pursuing a number
of initiatives to continue to enhance analytic tradecraft, strengthen
strategic analysis, and expand our analytic outreach.
We
are making major investments in our analytic training. A 16-week course
for all incoming analysts—the Career Analyst Program—has a dozen
modules built around the analytic thinking process, including sessions
on assumptions, framing questions, analytic tools, alternative
analysis, and weighing information.
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The
Sherman Kent School 's 22-week Advanced Analyst Program is designed to
meet the tradecraft needs of experienced analysts. Required courses
focus on critical thinking, writing, briefing, and collection.
We
have also established analytic tradecraft units in the analytic
production offices to promote greater and consistent use of structured
analytic techniques, including alternative analysis. We are developing
a more consistent dialog about research programs with other IC members,
with an eye toward some joint products that can draw on the comparative
strengths of various IC members.
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These
tradecraft cells, as well as the Red Cell, continue to produce
alternative analytic papers designed to challenge conventional wisdom,
lay out plausible alternative scenarios, and re-examine working
assumptions. They work with analysts and with the Sherman Kent School
to help ensure that stretching the analytic spectrum is a routine part
of CIA's analytic work.
CIA's
analysts also routinely engage academics and outside experts to
critique and strengthen our analysis. Analysts organize conferences to
address strategic trends, host academics and other expert speakers, and
attend conferences and other events sponsored by academic associations
and think tanks.
In November, CIA
launched an innovative online presentation of its daily intelligence
publication—the World Intelligence Review (WIRe). The WIRe online
leverages the best of modern web technology to ease access to CIA's
intelligence, provides links to related content, and allows users to
"tag" items in whatever fashion best supports their needs.
Mr.
Chairman and Members of the Committee, in closing, I would like to
affirm that as we pursue our strategic goals and position ourselves to
meet the threats outlined here today, we will remain true to our core
values of service, integrity, and excellence. They are the constants
that reflect the best of our Agency's unique history and
accomplishments. These are the values that have served us well and will
continue to guide us.
