[House Hearing, 106 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
COMBATING TERRORISM: ASSESSING THREATS, RISK MANAGEMENT AND
ESTABLISHING PRIORITIES
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,
VETERANS AFFAIRS, AND INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 26, 2000
__________
Serial No. 106-253
__________
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
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
74-263 WASHINGTON : 2001
_______________________________________________________________________
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing
Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2250
Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland TOM LANTOS, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut ROBERT E. WISE, Jr., West Virginia
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
STEPHEN HORN, California PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
DAVID M. McINTOSH, Indiana ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana DC
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
MARSHALL ``MARK'' SANFORD, South DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
Carolina ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
BOB BARR, Georgia DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
DAN MILLER, Florida JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas JIM TURNER, Texas
LEE TERRY, Nebraska THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois HAROLD E. FORD, Jr., Tennessee
GREG WALDEN, Oregon JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
DOUG OSE, California ------
PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
HELEN CHENOWETH-HAGE, Idaho (Independent)
DAVID VITTER, Louisiana
Kevin Binger, Staff Director
Daniel R. Moll, Deputy Staff Director
James C. Wilson, Chief Counsel
Robert A. Briggs, Clerk
Phil Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs, and International
Relations
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida TOM LANTOS, California
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York ROBERT E. WISE, Jr., West Virginia
JOHN L. MICA, Florida JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
DAVID M. McINTOSH, Indiana THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
MARSHALL ``MARK'' SANFORD, South EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
Carolina BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
LEE TERRY, Nebraska (Independent)
JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
HELEN CHENOWETH-HAGE, Idaho
Ex Officio
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
Lawrence J. Halloran, Staff Director and Counsel
R. Nicholas Palarino, Senior Policy Analyst
Jason Chung, Clerk
David Rapallo, Minority Counsel
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on July 26, 2000.................................... 1
Statement of:
Bremer, Ambassador Paul, chairman, National Commission on
Terrorism; Michael Wermuth, Rand Corp., senior policy
analyst; John Parachini, Monterey Institute of
International Studies, executive director; and W. Seth
Carus, National Defense University, senior research
professor.................................................. 42
Rabkin, Norman, General Accounting Office, Director, National
Security and International Affairs Division, accompanied by
Stephen Caldwell, Assistant Director; and Raphael Perl,
Congressional Research Service, Specialist in International
Affairs.................................................... 5
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Blagojevich, Hon. Rod R., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Illinois, letter dated July 26, 2000.......... 97
Carus, W. Seth, National Defense University, senior research
professor, prepared statement of........................... 82
Parachini, John, Monterey Institute of International Studies,
executive director, prepared statement of.................. 57
Perl, Raphael, Congressional Research Service, Specialist in
International Affairs, prepared statement of............... 25
Rabkin, Norman, General Accounting Office, Director, National
Security and International Affairs Division, prepared
statement of............................................... 7
Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Connecticut, prepared statement of............ 3
Wermuth, Michael, Rand Corp., senior policy analyst, prepared
statement of............................................... 47
COMBATING TERRORISM: ASSESSING THREATS, RISK MANAGEMENT AND
ESTABLISHING PRIORITIES
----------
WEDNESDAY, JULY 26, 2000
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans
Affairs, and International Relations,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1 p.m., in
room 2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher
Shays (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Shays and Blagojevich.
Staff present: Lawrence Halloran, staff director and
counsel; J. Vincent Chase, chief investigator; R. Nicholas
Palarino, senior policy advisor; Thomas Costa, professional
staff member; Jason M. Chung, clerk; David Rapallo, minority
counsel; and Earley Green, minority assistant clerk.
Mr. Shays. The hearing will come to order. Earlier today we
heard testimony in closed session from those familiar with very
specific and very sensitive aspects of the threats posed by
terrorists to U.S. citizens and property at home and abroad.
That information provided some depth and clarity to the
subcommittee's ongoing oversight of governmentwide terrorism
issues.
But terrorism also has a very public face. Using fear and
panic as weapons, terrorists seek to amplify and transform
crimes against humanity into acts of war. The growing and
changing threat of terrorism requires an ongoing public
discussion of the appropriate strategy, priorities and
resources to protect public health and national security.
That discussion brings us here this afternoon. As this
point in the evolution of our post cold war response to the new
realities of a dangerous world, we should have a dynamic,
integrated assessment of the threat posed by foreign and
domestic-origin terrorism. We should have a truly national
strategy to counter the threat. And to implement that strategy,
we should have a clear set of priorities to guide Federal
programs and funding decisions.
But for reasons of bureaucratic Balkanization, program
proliferation, and a tendency to skew threat assessments toward
worst-case scenarios, we still lack those important elements of
a mature, effective policy to combat terrorism. In place of a
national strategy, the administration points to an accumulation
of event driven Presidential decision directives wrapped in a
budget-driven 5-year plan.
Congress has also contributed to the fragmentation and
shifting priorities in counterterrorism programs, responding to
crises with new laws and increased funding, but failing to
reconcile or sustain those efforts over time.
Yesterday, the House passed the Preparedness Against
Terrorism Act of 2000 (H.R. 4210) to elevate and better focus
responsibility for Federal programs to combat terrorism. If
enacted into law, the bill should provide greater structure and
discipline to the $11 billion effort to deter, detect and
respond to terrorism. But any rearrangement of boxes on the
organizational chart will only be effective if those involved
are able to distinguish between theoretical vulnerabilities and
genuine risks, and set clear priorities.
So we asked our witnesses this afternoon to join our public
oversight of these pressing issues. As the administration and
Congress attempt to refine threat and risk assessments,
formulate strategic goals and target program funding, this
subcommittee will continue to rely on their experience and
their insights. We welcome them and look forward to their
testimony, and you have been sworn in because in our closed
door hearing you were all sworn in. So we can just have you
begin.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.002
Mr. Shays. Mr. Rabkin.
STATEMENTS OF NORMAN RABKIN, GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE,
DIRECTOR, NATIONAL SECURITY AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS DIVISION,
ACCOMPANIED BY STEPHEN CALDWELL, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR; AND
RAPHAEL PERL, CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE, SPECIALIST IN
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Rabkin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With me is Steve
Caldwell, who has been responsible for managing much of the GAO
work, examining the Federal efforts to combat terrorism. We are
pleased to be here this afternoon to discuss the use of threat
and risk assessments to help prioritize and focus Federal
resources to combat terrorism. This is an important issue
because over 40 Federal agencies are involved, and the amount
of Federal spending for combating terrorism will rise to $11
billion in the next fiscal year.
I would like to summarize the three main messages of my
statement. The first message concerns the nature of the threat.
How likely is it that a terrorist will use a chemical or
biological weapon against the United States? The subcommittee
was briefed this morning about the intelligence communities
views on the threat Americans face from terrorist groups. When
thinking about the threat, it is important to recognize that
terrorists would face many difficulties using dangerous
chemical or biological materials. First, the required
components of chemical agents and highly infective strains of
biological agents are difficult to obtain.
Second, in most cases, specialized knowledge is required in
the manufacturing process and in improvising an effective
delivery device for most chemical and nearly all biological
agents that would likely be used in terrorist attacks. Finally,
terrorists may have to overcome other obstacles to successfully
launch an attack that would result in mass casualties such as
unfavorable meteorological conditions and personal safety
risks.
Our point is that policymakers should keep these inherent
difficulties in mind when considering how the United States
should act to prepare for and defend against these threats.
Also, intelligence agencies should balance their assessments of
the threat with the discussion of the difficulty in
manufacturing and delivering it.
Our second message is the need to use threat and risk
assessments to help develop a national strategy and help
prioritize and focus program investments to combat terrorism.
Much of the Federal effort to combat terrorism has been based
upon vulnerabilities which are unlimited rather than on an
analysis of credible threats which are limited. Some agencies
have used and are still using worst case scenarios to plan and
develop programs. For example, the Department of Health and
Human Services began to establish a national pharmaceutical and
vaccine stockpile that did not match intelligence agencies
estimates of the more likely agents that terrorists might use.
On the other hand, the Justice Department has started to
develop a national threat and risk assessment. Justice is also
supporting efforts of State and local governments to assess the
threats they may face and the risks inherent in the choices
they have on how to respond to those threats.
I would like to add that we remain concerned about whether
the executive branch will develop a comprehensive national
strategy for combating terrorism. In December, 1998, the
Attorney General issued a 5-year plan that has many of the
features that we would like to see in a national strategy. The
recent update no longer include time lines, relative priorities
or performance measures. In addition, the FBI, through the
National Domestic Preparedness Office and the National Security
Council, are also planning to develop national strategies. We
also have concerns about who is in charge. As you know, in May
1998, Presidential Decision Directive 62 established the
national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection,
and counterterrorism in the National Security Council. However,
H.R. 4210, which passed the House yesterday, will create a
President's council on domestic terrorism preparedness in the
White House with authorities similar to those of a drug czar.
In addition, the Senate Appropriations Committee has proposed
elevating the NPDO to a higher status within the Justice
Department to be headed by an assistant attorney general.
My final message is how other countries allocate resources
and determine funding priorities to combat terrorism. Foreign
countries also face terrorist threats and have to develop
programs and priorities to combat terrorism. In our April 2000
report to the subcommittee, we discussed how five foreign
countries, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Israel, and
Germany, are organized to combat terrorism, including how they
develop programs and direct resources. Our overall conclusions
were that first, foreign officials believed that terrorist
attacks are unlikely for a variety of reasons, including the
reason that terrorists would face in producing and delivering
chemical or biological weapons. Second, because of limited
resources, these foreign governments make funding decisions for
programs to combat terrorism based upon the likelihood of
terrorist activity actually taking place, not on overall
vulnerability to terrorist attacks.
And finally, also due to resource constraints, these
officials said that they maximize their existing capabilities
to address a wide array of threats before they create new
capabilities or programs to respond to such attacks.
Mr. Chairman, this completes my oral statement, and Mr.
Caldwell and I will be glad to answer your questions.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rabkin follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.003
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.004
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.005
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.006
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.007
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.008
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.009
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.010
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.011
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.012
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.013
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.014
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.015
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.016
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.017
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.018
Mr. Shays. Mr. Perl.
Mr. Perl. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Threat assessment is
integrally linked to dramatic changes taking place in the
global economy and the technology infrastructure. These changes
may influence and affect terrorist goals, tactics,
organizations and weaponry. As the United States grows stronger
economically, militarily and politically, our enemies may be
even more tempted to attack our Nation with asymmetric
weaponry. The evolving threat raises important questions
regarding the structure, organization, preparedness and ability
of governments to respond to a threat that has been
characterized as more difficult, diffuse, and dangerous. We
must ask ourselves, does the way we look at the problem reflect
the real world? The global economy is bringing together
deregulation, trends toward deregulation, open borders and
enhanced movement of people, goods and services. We are
witnessing the spread of democracy, the spread of capitalism
and free trade and global access to information and new
technologies. These trends provide opportunities for the
terrorist as well. This globalization facilitates the ability
of individual terrorist and terrorist groups to operate in a
relatively unregulated environment, and the development of the
world economy and modern communication systems have made it
possible for small groups and even private individuals to fund
terrorism at a level available previously only to States.
Today, many of the advantages historically available to
counterterrorism forces, even those with large resources, are
potentially neutralized by instantaneous secure communications
available to the terrorist through Internet and other
technologies.
Many believe that terrorism is increasingly assuming a
national security dimension. On the other hand, what some have
characterized as a new and growing opportunistic relationship
between terrorism and organized crime could well result in an
increased role for law enforcement and terrorist threat
assessment. A growing concern is that when faced with a growing
number of anonymous terrorist acts, authorities may be unable
to quickly and definitively assign responsibility, therefore,
neutralizing the effectiveness of any potential deterrent
action. Another concern is what are the unintended consequences
of our counterterrorism assumptions and policies. By hardening
military targets and Embassies overseas, U.S. commercial sites
or residential sites may become more likely targets.
Today, simply by implied threats, terrorists can cause the
expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars by governments,
but on the other hand, ignoring threats by groups that have
engaged in terrorism in the past is generally not thought to be
an acceptable policy option. A major challenge facing us is not
to lose the creativity, spontaneity and boldness of individual
agency threat assessments in the dynamics of the interagency
process; but on the other hand, in the interagency process,
relative data and relevant data is reviewed and exchanged and
working relationships among personnel are strengthened and
improved. Some experts have looked to the drug czar model in
seeking to reform government structures to deal with terrorism.
And increasingly, terrorist organizations are looking to the
drug trade for a source of funding.
The Office of National Drug Control Policy, we have heard a
lot about it today, is unique in the Federal bureaucracy and
emerging international and domestic responsibilities and in
providing policy direction to operations through the budget
process. A strong director with a strong personality and strong
backing from a President has been said to command the respect
of a 500-pound gorilla in the interagency community.
Others, however, suggest that the effectiveness of the drug
czar's office in bringing together the diverse elements of the
interagency community is mixed at best. A substantial challenge
lies ahead for the counterterrorism community. A concept may be
increasingly gaining ground to limit the presence of U.S.
personnel at Embassies overseas.
Critical to threat assessment is the need to get smarter,
not just protecting against from threats from outsiders, but
smarter about threats posed by people with legitimate access.
This includes acts of carelessness by insiders. A chain is only
as strong as its weakest link. The need to continue efforts to
enhance our vigilance, to minimize potential threats posed by
outsiders working at Embassies and military installations
overseas is strong.
Critical to threat assessment is a better understanding of
the countries and cultures where foreign terrorists are bred
and operate. Some experts have suggested including know your
money in agency's budgets. This and the establishment of an
interagency counterterrorism reserve contingency fund may
warrant consideration. However, other experts are concerned
about lack of accountability such a fund may offer and the fact
that money may be spent for purposes other than intended. One
of the most important challenges facing the counterterrorism
community is to ensure that our antiterrorism efforts are fully
coordinated. The Oklahoma City bombing and other events have
demonstrated that terrorism is not limited to those areas where
we are prepared for it.
The challenges facing us in assessing threats, allocating
resources, and ensuring an effective congressional role in
counterterrorism policy are complex. But inherent in challenges
are opportunities to bring together the diverse elements of the
counterterrorism community. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Perl.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Perl follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.019
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.020
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.021
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.022
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.023
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.024
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.025
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.026
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.027
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.028
Mr. Shays. When I get back, I am going to ask staff to ask
questions. Unfortunately, I am not allowed to let them do it
while I am not here. I am going to quickly vote and hustle back
here. So we stand in recess.
[Recess.]
Mr. Shays. I will call this hearing to order and I would
like to recognize the committee counsel, Mr. Halloran.
Mr. Halloran. Thank you.
Mr. Rabkin, I want to go through some parts of your written
statement and get you to amplify a little bit. In discussing
the limitations and technical challenges that terrorists might
face in trying to use chemical or biological weapons and
radiological weapons in particular, you said that they are not
often in public statements. Do you find them included in
internal discussions or internal documents?
Mr. Rabkin. A lot of the supporting documentation which is
usually classified contains much more of a discussion of these
reality factors. It is just in some public statements there is
not much qualification given, just that these groups can make
these weapons and are likely to use them.
Mr. Halloran. Is it your judgment that those limitations
are realistically reflected in net threat assessments that are
used, more realistic than in the public statements?
Mr. Rabkin. I am not in a position to say that they made a
net assessment. The net intelligence estimates are a term of
art that means certain things. My understanding is that most of
these qualifications are reflected in those kinds of documents.
Mr. Caldwell. I have one other thing that I want to add.
Our statement says that some officials are not including these
qualifications. In some public statements we have seen them.
The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency before the Senate
Intelligence Committee had some of these kinds of qualifiers in
there, but we don't find them made in statements by DCI and
others, and those hold the most overall weight when people are
assessing the threat of chemical or biological terrorism.
Mr. Halloran. On page 6, you say that you have recently
seen some progress in terms of assessing threat assessment? Can
you amplify that a little more?
Mr. Rabkin. First, on a broad and macro level we
recommended that the Justice Department, through the FBI, do a
net intelligence estimate of the threat from chemical and
biological terrorism domestically, domestic sources to
complement an assessment that had been done by the CIA
regarding that threat from foreign sources. The Justice
Department has started the process for preparing that estimate.
Also, when we talk about risk assessments being done at a
State and local level, the analytical basis for making these
kinds of risk assessments, taking threats and understanding the
vulnerabilities of the assets that are at risk, some of the
countermeasures that are possible and weighing the costs
against the threats, the structure for doing that has been--the
Justice Department has prepared some materials that would be
helpful to State and local governments and are providing those
to the government, so at the State and local levels, the risk
assessments can be done and the funding decisions that come
from them can be more analytically based.
Mr. Halloran. So using that tool, the Justice Department
might prevent local risk assessments from being simply laundry
lists of vulnerabilities?
Mr. Rabkin. That is the hope. Certainly, the structure is
there. How it is being used remains to be seen. As a
coordinator, the Justice Department can help State and local
governments through the use of best practices and not have them
reinvent the wheel. Here is a tool that can be used if they
want to.
Mr. Halloran. The FBI testimony which is not classified,
they gave us an unclassified version of it, describes or
discusses your recommendations and says at one point that a net
or a comprehensive threat assessment such as you recommend
would be inherently too broad based to provide much value.
Instead, the FBI have concentrated on providing more focused
threat assessments for major special events. Do you agree with
that?
Mr. Rabkin. I think there is room for both. What we are
talking about provides broad oversight as to whether the threat
is increasing, whether there are certain aspects of the threat
that are becoming more pronounced than others and can make some
of the more strategic decisions about the level of funding that
Congress ought to be providing, where it is being directed, and
whether there is adequate research and development being
conducted, etc.
On a more operational or tactical level, the FBI is right,
they have to remain up to date, not that these broader
assessments cannot be routinely updated, but as a particular
threat develops for a particular location or a particular
event, I think that the FBI and other intelligence agencies, by
focusing at that level, can deal with that issue. What we were
talking about was much more strategic, and so therefore, I
think there is room for both.
Mr. Halloran. Your statement says in your current work, you
continue to find worst case scenarios are being used to develop
planning capabilities, and one example in your statement was
the selection of items for the pharmaceutical stockpiles. Can
you give us some other examples where worst case scenarios are
driving program planning?
Mr. Caldwell. On the CBRN response teams, we have found
that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has put together
some scenarios to plan which teams and what size and how they
would respond, which is using worst case scenarios, in terms of
mass casualties and things that are not based, in our view, in
terms of validated intelligence, nor the science behind the
threat in terms of some of the difficulties, and whether this
kind of attack would even be feasible. Again, those are
potentially being used to decide which Federal teams need to be
beefed up, and so potentially, where resources would be
developed.
Mr. Halloran. Mr. Perl, in your statement, you talk about
the drug czar model, and you gave two sides of a good argument.
What might be inept about that model when tried to apply to the
terrorism issue?
Mr. Perl. What might be inept in the way that the model
currently exists would be the need for the office to get
ongoing authorization from Congress. There are advantages from
the viewpoint of congressional control, but in terms of the
respect and clout that you have in the interagency community,
there is a concern that this particular institution outside the
community might not be around in a few years, maybe we can
simply wait it out. That would be one problem.
Another potential problem from the perspective you are
asking me to portray would be the drug czar's office, and this
is something good, but on the flip side, it could be a problem.
The drug czar's office has a staff of 124 people plus some
detailees. One of the things that one needs to consider in
making these decisions is how much staff does one need. So, for
example, the current structure in the NSC does not have 123
people working on terrorism.
Now, the size of the budget for the drug czar's office--for
the drug war and the size for the terrorism war is relatively
compatible in terms of numbers. There is not great differences
in terms of resources being committed, and many different
segments of the Federal community are involved and the State
and local communities and international interaction. So lack of
staffing can be a serious problem to the effectiveness of an
office of that type.
At the same time, people in the drug czar's office would
argue for more flexibility in staffing, that Congress currently
on the appropriations process has put a limit of 124 people,
and each additional full-time employee slot needs authorization
from Congress. So from the perspective of people in an office
of that type, they would like usually to have more flexibility.
Of course, from the viewpoint of congressional oversight, this
enables the Congress to control the size of the office and
influences kind of its growth.
Mr. Halloran. Your work on foreign government or foreign
approaches to this problem, did you find a more--in any
instances, a more comprehensive order or unified threat
assessment process than you found here?
Mr. Rabkin. The answer is no.
Mr. Caldwell. The answer is no. I think when we talked to
countries about how they came up with their decisions in terms
of leveraging existing resources rather than creating new
programs and capabilities, some of that process might have gone
into their decisions on other areas. For example, they make
decisions that they had robust disaster management assets in
place or robust hazardous materials, emergency response
capabilities, and perhaps because they had already made those
types of investments, they decided that those were the ones
that they would then leverage to deal with the terrorist
involving chemical or biological materials.
Mr. Halloran. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. Thank you. We are joined by Mr. Blagojevich, but
I would like counsel to ask questions on this side. David
Rapallo has some questions.
Mr. Rapallo. Mr. Rabkin, on the importance of a threat and
risk assessment, it is comprehensive and includes threats to
national, international and military resources. Is it your
position that any prioritization or any attempt by the
administration to put programs in order based on the funding
levels is flawed without this type of assessment?
Mr. Rabkin. I wouldn't say that it is flawed, but I think
it could benefit any decisionmaking process on where additional
dollars are going or would help--would be helped by having this
kind of an assessment. It would also be helpful over time, as
threat changed or as the overall risk threat level changed, it
would be helpful in identifying whether the funding level
needed to change accordingly.
Mr. Rapallo. Would any proposed change that the
administration suggests not be as comprehensive?
Mr. Rabkin. I would say until we have a comprehensive
assessment which would better guide, and until we have a
national strategy in place that would better guide some of
these resource decisions, I don't think that it is wise just to
suspend making those decisions. The government has to do what
it feels best, the agencies are in a position, although it may
not be well coordinated and focused on a commonly accepted
goal, but at least they are moving forward in some fashion. I
don't think that it would be responsible just to stop that and
wait until we got a strategy, a plan, or better assessment.
Mr. Rapallo. One of the later panelists has in his written
testimony a quote by CIA Director George Tenet before the
Senate, saying chemical and biological weapons pose arguably
the most daunting challenge for intelligence collections and
analysis. There are and will remain significant gaps in our
knowledge. As I have said before, Tenet said before, there is
continued and growing risk of surprise.
I am wondering is a comprehensive threat and risk analysis
with threats to national, international and military targets
even possible? And if it is, would that lose too much detail to
be useful?
Mr. Rabkin. I think it becomes a question of defining how
much detail is going to be in it, but I think it would be
possible. It would seem to me to be a compilation of what is
known about that threat that Mr. Tenet was talking about. That
kind of information is very helpful in making this kind of an
analysis and assessment.
As they fill in the gaps, as they get more--as the
intelligence community gets and analyzes more information about
this and learns more about it, they can use that for the
assessment to better direct the efforts and resources of the
rest of the executive branch.
Mr. Rapallo. Mr. Perl, do you have any thoughts on this
that you would like to add?
Mr. Perl. No.
Mr. Rapallo. One thing that we don't complete a threat and
risk assessment for is to identify duplication. Do you see any
duplicative efforts as far as intelligence gathering and that
sort of thing related to what we heard this morning?
Mr. Rabkin. I don't have any evidence of duplication. We
have not looked at whether the intelligence community is
duplicating efforts in their data gathering and analysis
activities. We have noted duplication in other areas, first
responder training, for example, and have reported to this
committee on that. But not on the intelligence side.
Mr. Perl. You previous question on whether I have any
thoughts, that is, on the previous panels this morning, the
issue of the need for flexibility was raised. The variability
of the threat, the changing nature of it and the need for
flexibility in our response. And one of the concerns is that if
one does long-term planning, there will always be a certain
amount of disconnect between real immediate threats and the
long-term planning. So whatever the process is, there has to
be--it would be important to build in a process of periodic
review and some flexibility in the way funds can be shifted.
Mr. Rapallo. You don't think that exists with the working
groups within the NSC structure?
Mr. Perl. Budget cycles tends to be a little bit longer.
The working groups have the ability to move things around, but
now when there are shortfalls, what happens is that the process
is usually, or hopefully from the agency perspective, made up
by the supplemental appropriations process. To some degree, I
am not suggesting that agencies wouldn't take actions in the
national interest because they may not have the funding for it,
but whenever agencies take actions, funding is a consideration.
Mr. Rapallo. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. Gentlemen, I would like to just throw out one
type of threat. Please tell me how it fits into the overall
response to terrorism and that is, the military's determination
that they need to immunize all military personnel with anthrax.
Would a comprehensive sense of what our threat is get us to be
able to put that in some focus?
Mr. Rabkin. The policy decision that Secretary Cohen made
to require that all military personnel be immunized against
anthrax was based on the military context, the likelihood that
military troops would be involved in a situation where state
enemies would use anthrax as a biological weapon. And that the
only viable alternative, the only viable option for them to use
was vaccination; that because of the detection period and the
kind of time that takes place and the delay in recognizing
symptoms, that that was the only solution.
The more information that DOD has about who has anthrax and
who is in terms of state enemies and who is likely to use it
provides more justification or more information upon which that
policy can be reviewed. Similarly, other information about the
safety and efficacy of the vaccine and the administration
period, the troubles that the manufacturer is having providing
an adequate supply of the vaccine, all of these bits of
information that were not available when the original decision
was made, can also be useful in revisiting the decision. So I
think as most policy decisions, just about any policy decision,
the more information you have, the more you can reflect on
whether it is an appropriate decision and whether it needs
revisiting.
Mr. Shays. Does anyone else want to respond before I
followup?
Mr. Perl. I agree, basically it is a question of the
probability and the reality of anthrax being employed, and this
is a decision that the Secretary of Defense has made. I am not
qualified to make that decision. But if it is a high
probability, logically, it would seem that U.S. troops should
be vaccinated because this is a very contagious disease.
Mr. Shay. That is my followup. Is the vaccine a modern
vaccine or a 1950's vaccine, and can we reproduce it to cover
all of our troops. But it gets into that fact that we have
civilians and to what extent should civilians who are in these
theaters be vaccinated. I am just trying to get a sense of how
a master focus on the threat, a master plan focus on the
threat, integrates the response that the military has to have
and the whole argument that the military has to respond to it,
that this is a biological agent that can be produced by a
terrorist in those theaters. For instance, the State Department
people, do we require State Department people to take this
vaccine?
Mr. Perl. Not to my knowledge.
Mr. Rabkin. It is voluntary at the State Department.
Mr. Shays. I am trying to get a sense in your judgment of
how we integrate what the military sees versus--and the threat
to their own military personnel versus all other Americans.
Mr. Rabkin. If we talk about the model that the Department
of Defense used to make the decision, they assess likelihood
that the threat would be used, the consequences if it were
used, they looked at alternatives, is there any alternative
available that could be used other than a vaccine to allow the
troops to survive such an attack and be effective, and the
decision was made back in 1997, I think, based on information
and assumptions at that time.
Mr. Shays. And they left out some very important aspects.
They left out the aspect whether they should proceed with an
older generation vaccine or develop a new one. They left out
whether they should do a vaccine where they knew they could
have supply, and the reason that I am asking is not to critique
the Department of Defense, but to understand if a comprehensive
threat analysis would lead us into the same mistake or whether
we would have been spared the mistake the military has made.
The military has made a mistake. They have approximately 1
month's supply to 6 months, depending on to what extent they
use it.
I am asking, in your judgment, a comprehensive analysis of
the need and a coordinated effort would have enabled us to, in
responding to terrorism, come to a different response or to
take into consideration things that the military left out?
Mr. Rabkin. I am not ready to agree that the military made
a mistake when it passed the policy. There certainly have been
problems in implementing the policy in terms of securing a
continuous supply of the vaccine to be able to administer it as
it was intended.
Mr. Shays. Let me ask you not to--I'm not trying to make a
major point. You are not prepared to say that they made a
mistake, because you don't have the knowledge, or that you have
the knowledge but just don't know what the conclusion is. Is
this something that you have any--do you have significant
expertise on this issue?
Mr. Rabkin. GAO has done some work on this issue, both in
terms of the safety and efficacy of the vaccine as well as the
administration of the program, and I am speaking from that
basis, the work that we have done.
We have not reached the conclusion, Mr. Chairman, that the
Department of Defense made a mistake in adopting the policy
that it did. We have reached conclusions about--there are
unanswered questions about the safety and efficacy of the
vaccine. There were improvements needed in education of the
troops about the vaccine, about adverse reporting--reporting of
adverse reactions to the vaccine, etc.
But in the context of the threat and risk assessment, I
think that if you apply the model that we are talking about of
a threat and risk assessment and risk management to the
specific issue of military troops facing a potential biological
or anthrax threat in a combat situation, I can see how the
decision was made. And that model was used and we may not agree
with the way that the decision was made and the assumptions.
Mr. Shays. I guess my problem, in my judgment, after having
countless hearings on this issue, whatever model they used, was
a flawed model, in my judgment. I am not saying that GAO has
made that determination. I just wanted to know if the model
that we will use for the civilian world will be a bit
different, and in response to terrorism, because they are
running out and they may not get a supply for a year plus. They
are having a facility produce this that has to be solely
dedicated to produce this, because it is a 1950's vaccine, so
they can't produce anything else in that plant or certainly
that area than this 1950's vaccine. I get the sense of your
response.
Mr. Perl. You raise a very interesting question. I am not
an expert on chemical and biological warfare per se, but an
important issue here is to what degree does military threat
analysis input get factored into the health community's
decision whether or not to issue vaccines nationwide.
Mr. Shays. Right. Or to what extent is there the likelihood
that anthrax will be introduced into this country and what
obligation do we have to deal with that in this country, and
are we preparing for that?
Mr. Rabkin. That is the issue that I think the threat and
risk assessment process and procedures would have to deal with.
Take the information from the intelligence community about what
is the risk to the United States, to the citizens of the United
States for a terrorist attack using anthrax. If and when they
get to the point that they feel that is an imminent, or enough
of a potential that we need to do something about it, then we
start considering alternatives and what is available. What are
some of the countermeasures that are potential, and what are
the costs and efficacy of those countermeasures and those
policy decisions could be made. Maybe we need better
technology.
Mr. Shays. Who would make that decision? I realized in the
process of asking that question I don't know who would make
that decision.
Mr. Rabkin. Under the legislation passed yesterday, it
might be that council on domestic terrorism preparedness,
because part of their responsibility would be to take
information about the threat and to make risk assessments and
to oversee some of the investment decisions that are being
made, and it would have representation from the different
communities, both the intelligence community, the health
response community, the military community. So that might be an
avenue for making that decision.
If you look back at swine flu, for example, and how
decisions were made back in the 1970's on that issue, it is an
interagency--information comes up from the agencies and
decisions are made at the highest level in the executive and
legislative branch.
Mr. Shays. The difference is, one was to respond to a
natural threat versus one that would be responding to a
terrorism threat, and it introduces some major policy
decisions.
Let me ask you, is there anything that you would like to
respond to that we didn't ask? Something that you prepared for
that you think is important for us to know?
Mr. Rabkin. One of the issues that we wanted to get across
was the need for a national strategy.
Mr. Perl. I think the committee has done a wonderful job in
covering the issues.
Mr. Shays. We appreciate you for coming this morning and
this afternoon.
Mr. Rabkin. Thank you for the opportunity to testify.
Mr. Shays. We will move now to the second panel. I call our
second panel, Ambassador Paul Bremer, chairman, National
Commission on Terrorism; former Ambassador at large for
counterterrorism; and Mr. Michael Wermuth, RAND Corp., senior
policy analyst; Mr. John Parachini, Monterey Institute of
International Studies, executive director; and Mr. W. Seth
Carus, National Defense University, senior research professor.
I am going to ask you to stand and I will swear you in.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Shays. Ambassador, go ahead.
STATEMENTS OF AMBASSADOR PAUL BREMER, CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL
COMMISSION ON TERRORISM; MICHAEL WERMUTH, RAND CORP., SENIOR
POLICY ANALYST; JOHN PARACHINI, MONTEREY INSTITUTE OF
INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR; AND W. SETH CARUS,
NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY, SENIOR RESEARCH PROFESSOR
Mr. Bremer. Thank you. The National Commission on Terrorism
delivered its report to Congress and to the President on June
5. We addressed the threat as we saw it, among other things,
and the main point that we made in that report was that the
threat is changing and becoming more serious, and we paid
particular attention to catastrophic terrorism.
I was asked to comment on three areas of interest to this
committee: First, the development of threat assessments;
second, the question of whether it would be valuable to have a
national threat assessment; and then a few words on the budget
process.
On the development of threat assessments, it is obvious
that good intelligence is the very heart of an effective
counterterrorism policy. You can't have a counterterrorism
policy without good intelligence, particularly if you want to
prevent attacks, and we focused on preventing attacks in our
commission. The commission that Governor Gilmore chairs is
looking at dealing with the consequences of attacks. We focused
on prevention.
In no area is intelligence more difficult and more
dangerous and important than terrorism. We examined the Federal
Government's look at intelligence rather in depth, and we had
two concerns, both of which related to the capability and
independence of intelligence analysis.
The first one, Mr. Chairman, was the question of whether or
not the creation of the counterterrorism center at the CIA in
the mid 1980's by putting together people from both the DI side
and the DO side of the agency would, in some way, impinge on
the intelligence side's ability to make objective analysis of
the terrorist threat. There was a concern that by being, in
effect, co-housed with the operations people, the intelligence
people might become either overwhelmed by the tactical
operational demands of the operations side of the
counterterrorism center, or become, in effect, less pure in
their intelligence outlook, that their actual analysis would
become tainted in some way by being associated with the
operations people.
The second concern we looked at was whether it was wise of
the government to disestablish the National Intelligence
Officer for Terrorism which was done in the early 1990's. And
we were concerned----
Mr. Shays. Where did that office----
Mr. Bremer. That office was a member of the National
Intelligence Council [NIC]. It was disestablished in 1991, but
don't quote me on the year.
The concern there was that the issue would lose its place
at the high table of the intelligence community, the NIC, and
would we lose the capability, therefore, to conduct strategic
level analyses of the terrorist threat?
The results of our study was that we believe that the
counterterrorism center at CIA has, in effect, been successful
at integrating the DI side of the House without impinging on
its ability to conduct objective and useful intelligence
analysis of the foreign threat.
In fact, they established a group within the
counterterrorist center, which is dedicated solely to doing
that, and until recently, that group was headed by a person
from another agency, which gives it a good life and some
independence.
On the question of the national intelligence officer, we
talked to all of the consumers around town and found, in fact,
that they were very satisfied with the outcome of the
counterterrorism center at CIA and did not believe, which sort
of surprise me, that we should reestablish a national terrorist
officer. And so we did not recommend that in our commission. We
believed that as long as the CTC core group can keep its
independence, there is no reason to change the setup. We did
make some recommendations relating to how we go about
collecting intelligence aboard and which are somewhat beyond
the area I was requested to talk about today.
Second, would there be value in having a national threat
assessment, the question that you asked this morning and again
this afternoon. We examined the FBI's handling of intelligence
comparable to looking at the CIA's handling of intelligence
abroad, and concluded that the FBI does a good job of
disseminating threat warnings, immediate threat warnings when
they are received. They get these out to the community quickly.
The FBI is less good on understanding and disseminating
more general intelligence relating to the terrorist threat.
Part of this is a cultural issue. The FBI is a law enforcement
agency. Their job, they are trained to make cases, they are
prosecutors and they want to be sure when they collect evidence
as they call, intelligence, as you might otherwise call it,
that they have a good chain of custody over that evidence and
they don't, therefore, have an instinct to share it out.
We made recommendations here also related to the FBI
establishing a cadre of officers who would, in fact,
disseminate that intelligence.
We took note of the repeated suggestions by the GAO over
the past few years that the Department of Justice produce an
integrated national threat assessment. To my knowledge, this
has not been done. I think, Mr. Chairman, that such a threat
assessment could be useful in giving Congress a tool to
evaluate whether the budgets for counterterrorism put forward
by the Federal Government are well considered in light of the
likely threats and not the vulnerabilities. And I recognize the
difficulty of producing such a national assessment, and I know
that the agencies have a preference for doing a sort of rolling
assessment, as you heard this morning, rather than doing--it
seems to me that it is not an either/or question. I think you
basically have to do both. I don't think that there is a
choice.
I think a national assessment would be good if it could be
put together and give a view as to whether the GAO's model is
the right model, but it should not be beyond the wit of man to
figure out how to have a national assessment when, taking off
my chairman's hat at the commission and speaking as a taxpayer,
when I see a budget of $11 billion and rising, as your
colleague used to say, we are getting into real money now. It
seems to me that Congress has a legitimate question to know
whether that money is being well spent.
On funding for counterterrorism, we did not have time, Mr.
Chairman, to look deeply into that $11 billion budget. We did
reach some conclusions about the individual budgets of CIA, FBI
and NSA, which are in our report, but it did seem to us that
the budget process at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue is
pretty flawed. In the executive branch the problem is that the
national coordinator, and I don't know if this is going to be
solved in this legislation that is before the House, the
national coordinator lacks budget authority and political
responsibility, and it seems to me whatever solution there is
to the problem of coordinating a national strategy, it must be
directed by somebody who is politically responsible, therefore
nominated and approved with the advice and consent of the
Senate and somebody who has real budget authority.
Down at this end of Pennsylvania Avenue, congressional
oversight is fragmented among at least 12 committees in both
Houses, so we recommended that both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue
need to get more focused on this. Basically those are my
opening remarks, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
Mr. Wermuth.
Mr. Wermuth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will also be brief,
and I can probably be very brief by simply identifying myself
with your opening remarks and passing to the next witness, and
will likewise address threat assessments and the benefit of
having an integrated threat assessment. I agree with Ambassador
Bremer that the international piece works pretty well. We
should be fairly comfortable that the process works well. You
can argue and sometimes experts do argue with conclusions that
are reached in some of those contexts, but the process is
tested and proven and we can have some comfort in that through
the national intelligence estimate process that is conducted
with the support of the CTC and the Central Intelligence
Agency.
Currency perhaps is another question. Given the fluid and
ambiguous nature of potential threats from terrorists, you may
ask whether the process, perhaps, is too lengthy and too
cumbersome to provide a level of currency as threats may change
from time to time in the international context. And as we have
heard already today, and as I am sure you heard in closed
session this morning, I am certainly not as comfortable about
how that process works on the domestic front.
The FBI has that responsibility. You have already heard
that the FBI is taking some steps to fulfill that
responsibility more effectively, but as Ambassador Bremer has
mentioned and Mr. Rabkin mentioned, they have not gotten there
yet. Likewise, in my written testimony, I used the term
``cultural issue'' in describing perhaps the FBI's full lack of
understanding of how this process works. There are some
collaborative efforts. I think it was probably mentioned in Mr.
Turchie's unclassified testimony about how the FBI, at least,
is swapping fairly senior people with the Central Intelligence
Agency in an effort to learn more about good analytical
processes, best practices, if you will, in trying to craft
threat assessments that are relevant, that are comprehensive
enough to be able to help lead some of the decisions, both in
the executive branch and in the legislative branch, in terms of
priorities and particularly for funding applications. But they
are still not there yet, and I was, likewise, taken by the
paragraph that your counsel mentioned in one of his questions
earlier about the fact that the FBI doesn't believe that a
broad threat assessment will be very useful.
I just happen to disagree with that and agree with Mr.
Rabkin and Ambassador Bremer that you can have both. You can
have a broader assessment that will help guide some of the
broader priorities and resource decisions as well as having the
more operational and tactically focused threat and warning
pieces that would go along with that.
So we really don't have a fully integrated assessment yet,
one that is seamless from the international into the domestic,
recognizing that there are some restrictions and barriers about
how you do all of that. But we really do need one, in my
opinion, and we can do a better job of it, the government can
do a better job of it, all of the agencies, and, in my view, do
that without infringing on civil liberties, without being
intrusive or overreaching where the agencies are concerned, and
without violating the very clear restrictions on the foreign
intelligence's community ability or restriction prohibitions on
them from collecting intelligence domestically.
As to the Chair's question, is funding to combat terrorism
being properly directed? I am afraid I have to answer that with
a question. How can we tell? You have heard all of the
witnesses say it so far. We don't have a national strategy. We
don't even have a comprehensive Federal piece of a national
strategy, and no amount of touting of Presidential decision
directives or macro budget submission like came up here on May
18th, the Attorney General's 5-year plan, where I am not sure
where that stands now, none of that amounts to a national
strategy. There is no good coordination mechanism. The NDPO,
the National Domestic Preparedness Office, simply has not
worked. It was probably misplaced in the first place, buried
that far down in the structure of the FBI without the kind of
political accountability and authority that they needed. There
is no one in charge. Interagency working group meetings,
endless meetings, is simply not sufficient, in my view, to
resolve the problem.
I know, Mr. Chairman, that you have been frustrated before
in hearings, including one that I attended on March 22nd, where
you asked some senior Federal officials who is in charge, and
you really didn't get a clear answer because it is not clear,
even at the Federal level, who is in charge.
So we need to find a way to get our collective Federal act
together and then provide the national leadership to bring in
the State entities to craft a nationally oriented strategy that
can be used by every response entity everywhere in the country.
Mr. Chairman, with that I will stop. Thank you again for
giving me the opportunity to participate today.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wermuth follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.029
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.030
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.031
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.032
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.033
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.034
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.035
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.036
Mr. Shays. Mr. Parachini.
Mr. Parachini. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening this
hearing. There are a number of things ongoing and have been
ongoing since 1995, and now is an appropriate time to push back
and evaluate what are we doing right and wrong. I think what is
missing from our national discussion on terrorism is a regular
national predecessor. How much is enough remains an open
question.
As one renowned scholar in the terrorism field has noted,
without a firm understanding of the threat based on rigorous
ongoing reviews of an evolving or changing terrorist behavior
and capabilities, continued efforts to address this problem may
prove as ineffective as they are misplaced. So a comprehensive
threat assessment that integrates information on both domestic
and international terrorist threats are a baseline tool.
At the moment, far too much of the government's policy on
terrorism is driven by perceptions of worst case scenarios.
Inordinate attention to vulnerabilities may be skewing
resources in ways that do not effectively add to the
government's efforts to protect our personnel and the
facilities of private businesses and citizens at home or
overseas. Producing a comprehensive and integrated national
threat assessment which takes into account vulnerabilities as
well as the capabilities and motivations of terrorists, will
improve our national understanding of the threat and should
inform the President and the Congress, as they decide upon
investments, in short and long-term programs. Policymakers
prioritize spending and programming emphasis via a variety of
tools, but intelligence is an essential one. The view of the
intelligence community should serve as a critical baseline.
Without a regular comprehensive and integrated threat
assessment of security challenges posed by terrorism,
policymakers will draw conclusions on raw and finished
intelligence that comes across their desks. A regular terrorism
threat assessment will lessen the possibility that long-term
investments in program decisions are made according to the
vicissitudes of raw intelligence and ensure, that at least on a
regular basis, there is an intelligence community benchmark
calibrating that threat.
The OMB annual report on the spending is a useful document,
but it is not a substitute for a national strategy. The various
Presidential decision directives are useful, but in themselves
a collection of documents put together at different times do
not amount to a national strategy. So a national strategy is
needed, and before you can have a national strategy, at least
one of the tools has to be a comprehensive national threat
assessment.
Let me turn to the budget such that I can point out some
elements of the OMB's report that should be improved with a
national threat assessment, and hopefully this committee will
work with the executive branch to improve the dialog on the
U.S. terrorism policy. If you look at the various OMB annual
reports on spending, you will find that the numbers do not
track from year to year. That is one thing of clarification
that would be very valuable, I think, for helping both the
Congress provide adequate oversight to the American people and
scholars like myself to track what the administration is doing,
and it might help the administration keep on track what they
are doing. This is not an easy task. OMB has made a great
effort and the product is sound. It could be better.
When you look at the overall budget figures thinking about
a more thorough threat assessment, one of the things that comes
to my mind about a national strategy is that we need to shift
the emphasis about what we are doing. We are focused too much
in my opinion on the back end of the problem, after an event
has happened, and we need to think about a slight emphasis
toward the front end. How can we prevent and preempt an attack
from ever happening in the first place?
The amount of dollars spent for things at the back end are
more than at the front end. We need to shift the emphasis. I
realize that we always want to hedge against the unexpected of
something that we never want to happen, and lives can be saved
if we are better at responding, but we have gone overboard in
my opinion, because we don't have a good sense of a threat and
we are worried about worst case, and so we spend too much on
the back end, on the after event mop-up, and not enough is
spent on providing the intelligence and law enforcement
resources to try to prevent these events from ever happening in
the first place.
Let me conclude by indicating two things. In the rapid
budget increases that have occurred in the last 3 and 4 years,
it is very hard to evaluate whether budget increases of 300
percent or 500 percent in various programs within department
and agencies are appropriate, out of kilter or out of control.
And at least a common threat assessment on a periodic basis
would help provide a benchmark to help figure that out.
Finally, in the research and development area, which is the
most difficult, because some of the investments that you make
now don't bear fruit for many years into the future, we have
got to have at least some consensus that we are investing in
the right things at this point in time.
And at least some periodic regular national threat
assessment would be a helpful way to ensure that. Thank you,
Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Thank you very much, Mr. Parachini. Your
statement was fairly long. I appreciate you summarizing it. But
it's an excellent statement, and that, of course, as will the
others, be in the record.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Parachini follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.037
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.038
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.039
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.040
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.041
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.042
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.043
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.044
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.045
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.046
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.047
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.048
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.049
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.050
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.051
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.052
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.053
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.054
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.055
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.056
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.057
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.058
Mr. Shays. Mr. Carus.
Mr. Carus. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. Doctor, excuse me. I figure if you're a doctor,
you deserve to be called that.
Mr. Carus. Well, it's an honor to be asked to testify
before your committee.
Mr. Shays. Thank you. It's an honor to have you here.
Mr. Carus. My remarks today will concentrate on the threats
and responses associated with potential terrorist use of
chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons, or, for
convenience, CBRN weapons.
Let me emphasize that the remarks I'm going to make are my
personal views and don't necessarily reflect the views of
either the Department of Defense or the National Defense
University where I work.
Let me extract three of the subjects that I discuss in more
detail in my prepared testimony, first the threat from state
use of CBRN weapons and how it should affect our view of
response efforts; second, the potential for terrorist use of
such weapons; and finally, how we should think about developing
responses in this arena.
First I think it's important to keep in mind that the
primary threat from CBRN weapons comes not from terrorists, but
from hostile states. While there is considerable controversy
about the prospects of terrorist use of such weapons, we know
for certain that hostile states have acquired them, including
several that the United States could face as military
adversaries. For example, North Korea, Iran and Iraq are all
assessed to have offensive biological and chemical weapons
programs. Moreover the Department of Defense now believes that
use of such weapons will be a likely condition of future
warfare. So even if there were no terrorist threat, Defense
would still need to make substantial investments in CBRN
protection and mitigation capabilities.
There are numerous circumstances where it would make sense
for a state to attack or threaten to attack targets within the
territory of the United States. An adversary might attack air
and sea ports of embarkation to prevent the United States from
responding to attacks in distant theaters of operation.
Similarly a hostile state might believe that credible
threats to employ such weapons especially against U.S.
territory could deter the United States from intervening in
their regions, making it safe for them to pursue aggression.
Because of the potential for asymmetric use of these
weapons by state adversaries, threat assessments focused
exclusively on terrorism provide a skewed view of the challenge
and are of little value in determining the appropriate level of
resources required for response. Needed CBRN response
capabilities probably will not change depending on the
character of the perpetrator. A terrorist use of the biological
agent may look identical to a covert release engineered by the
operatives of the state.
Let me now turn to a second issue, which is the threat
posed by terrorist use of CBRN weapons. We must start with the
assumption that our picture of the threat is incomplete and
likely to remain so. The available evidence suggests it is
extremely difficult to collect intelligence on some of these
threats even when state programs are involved. As CIA Director
George Tenet said earlier this year about chemical and
biological weapons, there is a continued and growing risk of
surprise. This reflects the difficult experience we have trying
to uncover Iraq's programs despite highly intrusive
inspections.
For this reason we must recognize that the absence of
evidence is not proof of the absence of threat. Given the
difficulties associated with collection in this arena, we must
expect surprises. Hence the right answer is to develop policies
that do not depend on the ability of the Intelligence Community
to accurately assess what is probably a--what is almost
certainly a low probability, but potentially very high
consequence of that.
My views reflect some of the lessons of the research during
the past few years on the illicit use of biological agents, and
I'll make some specific comments about this. While the
arguments apply to other so-called weapons of mass destruction,
I'll admit they're primarily focused on the problem of
bioterrorism. In terms of thinking about the threat, it's
important to be clear that terrorist groups have shown limited
interest in use of biological weapons, although there may be
slightly more interest today than was true in the past. Thus,
I've been able to identify fewer than 25 terrorist groups that
are known to have shown any interest in biological agents. And
only 751 people have ever been harmed in bioterrorism
incidents.
Second, while most terrorists are not interested in causing
mass indiscriminate casualties, there have been a few
terrorists who did want to kill large numbers of people, and
they were constrained not by moral or political imperatives,
but lacked the technical capabilities to accomplish their
objectives. Thus technical limitations have been the real
barrier of past use of biological agents.
Contrary to views observe expressed that biological agents
are trivial, easy to employ, it is still extremely difficult to
develop an effective biological agent.
Finally, there is a prospect that some terrorist groups
might acquire more robust capabilities in the future. The
number of people with biological experience is growing, as is
access to appropriate facilities. Moreover a dedicated, well-
financed group might gain access to the needed technology from
a state weapons program.
It is perhaps significant that every country on the list of
state sponsors of terrorism has shown at least some interest in
biological weapons, and some have large and active programs.
These considerations suggest it will be difficult to precisely
delineate the bounds of the threat. While a threat clearly
exists, there's is no way to reliably estimate the
probabilities of use.
Let me conclude by making a few comments about responses
that are influenced by the preceding remarks. I strongly
believe that policymakers, as I said, must be willing to make
decisions regarding investments here, recognizing that they're
not going to be able to have more than a general sense of what
the threat is. As a result, there is a danger that we're going
to spend too little and thus not have the required response
capabilities, or spend too much and thus divert resources from
other underfunded programs. For this reason I strongly believe
that we should emphasize investments that will prove beneficial
even in the absence of a CBRN attack.
A model for such a program is the Epidemic Intelligence
Service, a component of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention that investigates disease outbreaks in support of
State and local governments. The EIS was created 50 years ago
because of concerns that the United States might be subjected
to a biological weapons attack. Since its creation it has never
detected a biological warfare attack on the United States, yet
the EIS more than justifies its existence by contributions to
the Nation's health.
As it happens, much of the investment in CBRN response is
being made in areas where it appears similar benefits will
accrue. For example, CDC's Bioterrorism Preparedness and
Response Program is devoting considerable resources to
enhancing disease surveillance systems in public health
laboratories. Strengthening these components of the public
health infrastructure is certain to have a positive impact on
the national capacity for responding to disease outbreaks. As a
result many of the response investments will provide
significant benefits even in the absence of the terrorism
threat.
In conclusion, let me make two points. First, our response
efforts must reflect the uncertainties that inevitably will
accompany attempts to assess the threat. Second, we should
ensure that our responses will have merit even in the absence
of terrorist attacks, either because they have a positive
impact on the health and well-being of the American people, or
because they address other threats such as state use of CBRN
weapons. We have more confidence in the quality of our threat
assessments. Thank you for your time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Carus follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.059
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.060
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.061
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.062
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.063
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.064
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.065
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.066
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.067
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.068
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.069
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.070
Mr. Blagojevich [presiding]. Thank you very much, Doctor,
and all of you, for coming to testify today. I'd like to begin
by asking Dr. Carus a couple of questions.
Doctor, in our closed session earlier today with the FBI,
they testified that they avoid all-encompassing national threat
and risk assessments because they view them as inherently too
broad-based to be of much practical value.
My question to you is do you believe it would be possible
or of any use at all to attempt a single comprehensive threat
and risk analysis that encompasses all risks to U.S. interests,
whether they be military, international and domestic?
Mr. Carus. I think there clearly is an ability to create
threat assessments that are more encompassing. I do agree with
some of the statements made earlier that that comment reflects
a cultural perspective that comes out of the background of the
Bureau, which is not used to making these sort of broad, all-
encompassing assessments.
I would point out, however, that while in the national
security arena we're much more comfortable with making those
assessments, they're not necessarily silver bullets. I mean, as
one looks at the track record of the Intelligence Community
there assessing foreign threats, the estimates are often wrong
in significant ways. So while they help bound the problem, they
don't solve the difficulties of uncertainties about what really
is happening. And so, you know, as I said, they're not a silver
bullet, but they do at least help bound the problem in a useful
way.
Mr. Blagojevich. OK. Mr. Parachini, Dr. Carus made a point.
Would you like to give us a counterpoint on that?
Mr. Parachini. The one point that I would add is that the
beauty of a communitywide intelligence assessment is that it
forces all the different parts of the community to come to a
common standard. There are some divisions within the community
now on the magnitude of the CBRN threat, and one of the ways to
get a consensus on that is to go through the process of forging
a national threat assessment.
This is a different problem to conduct a national threat
assessment on than it was the Soviet Union in the cold war or
even North Korea's ballistic missile program now. There are not
fixed things that you can look at with a variety of
intelligence assets. It's a very fluid threat, so it's hard to
get a sense about the nature of it. That doesn't mean that you
don't try. That doesn't mean that you don't revisit it. That
doesn't mean that you don't try and craft some standard of
which evidence is to be evaluated.
Mr. Blagojevich. In your initial statement, Mr. Parachini,
you suggest that increasing emphasis should be placed on the
front end of the program through preemption of attacks and
prevention of attacks; less emphasis should be placed on the
back end of the problem with respect to the postattack
consequences of management. How is it that you can make a
proposal like that if the comprehensive threat assessment you
recommend has not been done?
Mr. Parachini. Well, I think there are bits and pieces of a
threat assessment out there. I think the Intelligence Community
has that. We at the institute have been looking into all of the
historically noted cases of chemical and biological weapons
terrorism; interviewing the terrorists, the law enforcement
officials; reading the court record, everything the terrorists
have written. And the magnitude of the threat we get from
looking at the historical record looks different than that
which we read about in the newspapers or hear from some public
officials.
I'm not suggesting that we stop emergency preparedness. I
think that's very important. I'm just suggesting that we try
and have a few more tools such as diplomatic tools, law
enforcement tools, and intelligence tools which cost less, and
that we develop those a little more and not go overboard and
spend so much money that we're having a little trouble keeping
account of on the domestic preparedness side.
I think what Dr. Carus suggested about dual use investments
on the preparedness side are very good, those things which help
contribute to the Nation's public health, for example, but also
give us the ability to address bioterrorism. Those are the
examples of postevent investments that we should be making.
Mr. Blagojevich. Ambassador Bremer, I noticed the Congress
and indeed even this committee did not escape the Commission's
review. Your support--your report suggested that Congress
should reform our system for reviewing and funding
counterterrorism programs. And the point you have raised is a
good one, which is that Congress ultimately has responsibility
for doling out the money, so we should say how we want it spent
and what we want it spent on. How can we organize ourselves
here in the Congress to better execute the mandate you're
suggesting?
Mr. Bremer. Well, we in our Commission made--we sort of
wimped out actually, Congressman. We basically thought it was a
bit presumptuous of us, even though we were a creature of
Congress, to suggest how Congress organize itself. We suggested
it, at least as a first step, that the appropriations
committees in the two Houses of Congress ought to appoint
senior staff members to do some work from both Houses and from
both parties to do some sort of thinking through together about
cross appropriations.
One could also suggest the relevant committees try to hold
joint hearings, but that tends to not get very far up here, in
my experience.
I think what we're really saying is this: The executive
branch, in our view, is not ideally organized to fight
terrorism. To some degree that is Congress's fault because you
have these stovepipes in this town that run from various
committees in Congress to various parts of the Federal--the
executive branch, and those stovepipes tend to channel
responsibility and budget authority particularly along very
narrow lines, whereas if you're going to deal with terrorism as
a national problem, whether it's on the basis of a national
threat assessment or anything else, you're going to have to
start cross-cutting at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Mr. Blagojevich. OK. I will ask Larry Halloran, the
majority counsel, if he has any questions.
Mr. Halloran. Did you want to put this letter in first?
Mr. Blagojevich. Could I do that? Thank you very much,
Larry.
What I would like to do is offer a letter and make this
letter a part of the record. This is a letter that OMB has
asked that we submit for the record to the subcommittee
outlining their role and explaining their budgetary review
process. So I'd like to offer this for the record.
Mr. Halloran. Nobody is going to object.
[The information referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.071
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.072
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.073
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.074
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4263.075
Mr. Blagojevich. I got the gavel here. Nobody here to
object. Oh, there he is. Perfect timing. I'm from Chicago.
That's how we do things.
Mr. Shays [presiding]. Is a dead body going to ask a
question?
Mr. Blagojevich. Not until after he votes. I already asked
him to vote for me.
Mr. Halloran. Mr. Bremer, you said the Commission
recommended--let me paraphrase--in effect that the FBI might
need some sharing lessons. It has been noted in other forums as
well. What--did the Commission come across any circumstances
where the FBI really close-held information that might have
been useful in the response scenario that you're aware of?
Mr. Bremer. We in the Commission did not come across those,
but I've had the personal experience when I was in government
of that happening. And I have to say I think in most cases the
FBI is withholding the information for perfectly legitimate
reasons, which is to protect the integrity of the evidence that
they're collecting to make a case.
Mr. Halloran. That gets to my next point that you made and
I think Mr. Wermuth made in his testimony as well is the
difference between evidence and intelligence, and that the FBI
as lead agency in domestic counterterrorism may not possess the
skill sets necessary to perform the tasks they're being given.
What other limitations besides a certain degree of justified
paranoia does the FBI bring to the job that may hinder them in
doing what they're being asked to do in this field?
Mr. Bremer. Some of the things are very mundane. For
example, when an FBI in a field office in the United States
interviews a terrorist suspect, he fills out a 301
interrogation form. The 301 form stays at the field office. It
almost never comes to headquarters. There's simply no mechanism
for it happening. One would imagine computers that would allow
that to happen in these days and ages.
What we suggested was the FBI basically faces a comparable
problem to the CIA. CIA collects intelligence abroad in which
they must protect the sources and methods, but the intelligence
has to be gotten around to the Intelligence Community and to
decisionmakers. CIA has resolved that problem across the years
by developing a cadre of reports officers. These are
specialized officers in the agency, stationed in the stations
abroad and here at home, whose training and job it is to look
over the intelligence and figure out how to disseminate it, how
to make it clean enough to get out to the community.
FBI does not have a comparable reports officer function,
and we suggest that such a function should be created with a
special cadre in the field offices here, which would begin to
break down the cultural barrier of seeing themselves only as
investigators trying to make cases.
Mr. Halloran. Anyone else want to comment on that?
OK. In the letter from OMB that Mr. Blagojevich put in the
record, with regard to threat assessments, OMB describes this
as an ongoing process based on some cases of competing views of
different analysts, some of whom are witnesses before your
committee today. We believe this approach is preferable to a
formal consensus assessment. Competing assessments of the
terrorist threat are more likely to stimulate the creative
thinking necessary to combat this unconventional national
security challenge.
Do you agree with that?
Mr. Bremer. Well, I actually do agree with the idea of
having--I think you can have both again. I do not agree the
objective of a national threat assessment should be consensus.
There I disagree with Mr. Parachini. I do not think that should
be the objective, because then I think you get pablum, which is
what you basically get out of any group of people if you tell
them they have to agree. But I don't see any reason why you
can't have a national threat assessment where they have
competing views where they are strongly felt.
Mr. Halloran. Anybody else?
Mr. Parachini. In this particular instance there on the
threat, on the biological agents that the various intelligence
portion of the Intelligence Community see as likely, there has
been a division. And there has been--there have been two
agencies that have held different views from other parts of the
community. And so my question to OMB would be, well, when you
see that, then how do you decide to make various spending
decisions based on the split in the community on a key thing?
You just go ahead? Which is what has been done in this
instance. Or--and while I take Ambassador Bremer's point about
the danger of consensus is that you get something that's not
very meaningful, somehow on hard issues you do have to draw
some conclusions. People have to bring their evidence forward,
and there has to be some common agreement on hard problems,
like agents in which we need to respond to in which we're going
to invest billions of dollars in developing vaccines and
antibiotics. Otherwise we're going to make huge investments on
partial intelligence assessments that may or may not be correct
in 10 years' time.
Mr. Bremer. I don't think that's the job of OMB. That is
the job of somebody who's politically responsible to the
Congress and the American people. He or she is going to have to
sit down and look at those splits, and he or she is going to be
held politically responsible to decide, OK, now agency A is
right and agency B is wrong. But that's not the job of staff.
That's not the job of somebody at the NSC who is not
politically responsible. That is the job of somebody who has
budget authority and political accountability up here.
Mr. Carus. May I interject a common on this?
Mr. Shays. Lower your mic, Doctor. Just lower the mic.
Thank you.
Mr. Carus. Because I think an example that John Parachini
mentioned merits a little bit of elaboration. If you think
about whether or not we should invest money in certain kinds of
vaccines, you would come up with a very different answer if you
just looked at the terrorism issue as opposed to just looking
at the broader biological warfare threat issue. If you were
just concerned about terrorists, you probably would say that
smallpox is probably not a very likely threat agent because of
the difficulties of obtaining access to it. But if you shift
the focus and say what is the overall national threat from
states, you would discover that there certainly is at least one
state and probably multiple states, including several that want
to do us harm, that possess smallpox, and therefore, from that
point of view, the fact that we have a deteriorating supply of
smallpox vaccine should be of great concern.
I think if you go across the board, you would discover that
if you broaden the focus from merely terrorism to the broader
issue of potential use of some of these weapons against the
United States either overseas or domestically, that you would
come up with radically different answers about what's
appropriate investment and responses.
Mr. Halloran. I'm not sure I took your point there. Who
else would use them besides terrorists? State sponsors and
individuals?
Mr. Carus. A state might use them. The Soviet Union had, we
were told, SS-18 ICBMs loaded with smallpox. We are told that
other states that may want to prosecute wars against us,
including places like North Korea, perhaps Iraq, perhaps Iran,
may have smallpox. Clearly they have incentives that have
nothing to do with terrorist modalities for using or
threatening to use a weapon of this kind. As a result, clearly
the United States, both in terms of national security and
Department of Defense concerns, as well as the broader
protection of the American people, have a legitimate concern
about the potential use of this particular agent.
Mr. Halloran. Thank you.
Let me ask another point if I can start a little debate
here in terms of the extent to which in this--attempt to kind
of know the unknowable, the--that the past is prologue, that we
can project from what has happened, how many people have been
injured in terrorism in the last 10 years, for example, or how
much--how many have ever been exposed to a biological agent or
at least intentionally to do harm. To what extent should that
inform threat assessments today? Or is it your perception that
it could at least draw us back from worst-case scenarios to
some degree?
Mr. Wermuth. I don't think you'd want to rely exclusively
on historical incidents in forming current threat assessments.
You need to have that perspective because it's an indication of
who has used agents in the past. Aum Shinrikyo, you want to
know about those as a basis for forming some conclusions, but
you wouldn't want to use that as the basis for the overall
threat assessment, because too much is happening from the
technological standpoint, from a biogenetic engineering
standpoint. You can use the historical perspective to help form
some basis for developing the way you conduct threat
assessments perhaps, but you wouldn't want to use them
necessarily, particularly the----
Mr. Halloran. It certainly could be a measure of the
technical difficulty they face. I think we learned more about
the difficulties of biological weapons from the Aum Shinrikyo,
that is, from the potential lethality of a chemical weapons
release in a subway system, did we not?
Mr. Wermuth. No question about it.
Mr. Shays. Would you all comment on the concept of when you
deal with states, deterrence usually has an impact. Does
deterrence have an impact with terrorists?
Mr. Bremer. Mr. Chairman, we looked at this in the
Commission in light of the changing threat because we believe
that the threat is increasing from terrorist groups and less
from direct states acting in terrorism. And I think you're
right to say that in the last 20 years if there has been a
decrease in overt state support for terrorism, it's really the
result of a good comprehensive American leadership in fighting
terrorism and in saying to states it can no longer be a
justified way to conduct yourself in international relations to
practice terrorism.
It's a little hard to find those same levers against these
groups because you can't call back your Ambassador to Usama bin
Ladin. We don't have an ambassador. You can't cutoff exports to
him. We don't knowingly export to him. He's not very likely to
be very moved by even the most eloquently phrased demarche from
the United Nations.
So you really are pushed away from the classic sort of
diplomatic and economic tools that we've used against
terrorists for the last 20 years or so. And you therefore, in
my view, have to pay more attention to intelligence, because
the way you're going to be most effective against that guy is
to know what his plans are, and the way to know what his plans
are is to have a spy in his organization.
That's really the heart of the matter. If you want to save
American lives, you have to get good intelligence on what the
terrorist plans are. They are not likely to be, particularly
the new kind of terrorist, very susceptible to the concept of
punishment by the rule of law, because many of them are living
for, as in Aum Shinrikyo, sort of an apocalyptic view of the
world that is not very susceptible to our kind of reasoning. So
I come back again and again to the need for good intelligence
being the most effective way to fight these new terrorists.
Mr. Wermuth. I would simply add I think there is some
deterrent value in at least exhibiting an ability on behalf of
ourselves as a Nation to respond if a terrorist incident does
occur, that there is some deterrence value there. If it looks
like we're well organized, if it looks like we have a good game
plan, if it looks like we are prepared to react and to
administer justice very swiftly and very surely, I think that
can have a deterrent effect on terrorists even beyond what
Ambassador Bremer has mentioned.
Mr. Shays. Any comments? Part of the reason I ask is that I
find myself at these hearings thinking of a young man who ran
against my predecessor years ago from Princeton who was able to
go to the library and develop a feasible nuclear weapon that
the experts looked at, and then they embargoed his--classified
his basic term paper, but now we can get on the Internet and
get information. And I just wonder if years to come we just--it
won't be absolutely easy to make weapons of mass destruction.
And then I just think of how you deal with the logic of that.
Then I think of Beirut and the bombing of--the total
destruction of the Marine barracks there. That individual was
willing to drive the truck underneath and blow it up and
himself with it.
So I just wonder, deterrence doesn't strike me as being
particularly effective for someone that is willing to kill
themselves. It may be with the people that are sponsoring them.
So I think I'm getting--the bottom line is what I fear is
actually true. We used to respond to terrorism by dealing with
the state-sponsored organizations, and now we don't quite have
that same leverage. Not a pretty thing. So your point is in
dealing with intelligence. Then I think that anyone who is
willing to be a counter--a spy within an organization deserves
the Medal of Honor, totally away from any resource dealing with
crazy people, constantly in fear that he may be found or she
may be found.
Mr. Bremer. Not even the Medal of Honor, but more
importantly he deserves to get American money. The current
arrangement, as you know, Mr. Chairman, as we discovered in our
report, discourages the recruitment of terrorist spies. The
current CIA guidelines discourage the recruitment of terrorist
spies, which we think is a very serious flaw in the current
counterterrorist strategy.
Mr. Shays. It's a bit off subject, but it's certainly
something that's on subject in this committee. Maybe you could
make the point in a little more depth.
Mr. Bremer. Until 1995, when the CIA wanted to recruit an
asset, as they call it, in any field, they had a procedure to
vet that asset involving both the station and, as appropriate,
people in Washington. In 1995, new guidelines were
promulgated----
Mr. Shays. By whom?
Mr. Bremer. By the DCI at that time--which had the effect
of making it much more difficult to recruit any kind of an
asset. We reviewed this rather carefully both in Washington and
in the field with serving agents and with retired agents, with
junior officers and station chiefs, and found that despite what
the CIA says, the fact of the matter is these rules have the
effect of discouraging the recruitment of terrorist spies. So
we recommend that these guidelines be rescinded in respect to
the recruitment of terrorist assets.
Mr. Shays. And?
Mr. Bremer. The CIA has publicly stated that they do not
believe these guidelines have the effect of discouraging
assets.
Now, I have profound respect for the Director of Central
Intelligence, and I have told him what I would say to you to
his face, which is I just think he honestly doesn't know what's
happening out on point where these people are actually being
recruited. The fact of the matter is young case officers are
not encouraged to recruit terrorist spies, and I think that's a
very serious problem.
Mr. Shays. I would agree.
What is the significance of overemphasis on a worst-case
scenario? I mean, it's come up a few times. What are the
distortions that result?
Mr. Parachini. Well, the most likely event that we're
facing is some sort of tactical--actually the Intelligence
Community has consistently said the most likely event is a high
explosive. In the sort of unconventional weapons, the most
likely event is a poisoning. And the consequences that occur
are not in the thousand casualties or hundred casualties,
they're in the tens.
I think one point the Gilmore Commission has made that is
valuable on this, if you gear all of your preparation to this
catastrophic attack, everything becomes a Federal event, and
State and local resources are probably appropriate for most of
the events that might occur. One.
Two, we might then start to focus too much of our attention
in the first responder world to the agents that are those in
the programs of nation states. That may be appropriate at some
level. We want to take some hedge against that, smallpox and
anthrax. But the more likely thing to occur is for terrorists
in our country or coming to our country to attack easy dual-use
items, to get like tanks of chlorine or phostine or sodium
cyanide, which are dual-use chemicals that are more readily
available. So by doing these worst-case scenarios with these
exotic nation state military program agents, we're focusing on
the wrong thing.
Mr. Shays. OK.
Mr. Parachini. We have to do some focus on it because we
have to take a hedge against it, but we need to shift the
balance.
Mr. Carus. May I add some comment, sir? I think it shows up
in a great many areas if you're not careful about
disaggregating the threat and not merely looking at worst-case
scenarios. If you look at the issue of chemical threats, if the
only focus is on the most lethal of military chemical agents,
the nerve agents, what you lose track of is that the
capabilities for responding to different kinds of chemical
threats differs depending upon who you're looking at.
One of the reasons why I think people have overemphasized
the Department of Defense responses is because they focused on
this small category of military chemical agents, when, in, fact
most Department of Defense units have little or in many cases
no capability for dealing with the broader range of toxic
industrial chemicals. If you focus more on the toxic industrial
chemicals, you discover that the broader-based capabilities of
civilian and hazardous material units, whether they're working
for the Department of Defense or for a local fire department,
become much more salient in terms of understanding the
response.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
I think one area, unless it leads to something else, and
that is the statement was made maybe by you, Mr. Wermuth, that
national strategy is essential, national threat assessment is
part of that. Or maybe it was--I'm not sure which, but it was--
--
Mr. Wermuth. I think it was John Parachini, but I certainly
agree with that.
Mr. Shays. I just want to--this morning's hearing was not
particularly satisfying, and I don't think any of you gentlemen
were there, but the general sense was that I had--that's not
something I can't disclose is there wasn't a buy-in into having
a threat assessment, that that's kind of--it's an ongoing
process, and we evaluate every day and so on.
I get the sense from that, and I want to get you to respond
to that, that each agency in a sense thinks it has their threat
assessment as it relates to them, but they don't get it all
together and try to figure out how their threat assessment
works with other agency threat assessments, and then a more
universal threat assessment.
You all are looking at me like, what, is this guy crazy?
You all were struggling to understand me, but I don't know if I
made the point well.
Mr. Wermuth. I think I understood, and I think there's a
certain amount of validity to that observation. I believe that
whether it's threat assessments or not or whether it's simply
agencies assuming some scenarios and then using those scenarios
to help inform the decisions about plans and resources, therein
does lie the problem. If there is no comprehensive assessment
that has been done that is recognized to be the assessment of
the Federal Government, then agencies are pretty much left on
their own to do whether they call it threat assessments or
simply scenario building for helping to establish programmatics
and the application of resources.
That certainly is going on. I mean, HHS is an example of
that on one hand; FEMA is another example, as you heard from
GAO testimony before we came up here. So that's another good
reason for the integrated threat assessment that has all of the
players involved.
And I just, from my perspective, make one other comment.
You know, there is an obligation, too, for the government,
particularly the national government, the Federal Government,
to inform the American people about what the levels of
threats--and I always use that plural, because there's no
single threat--what the threats are. And without that good
comprehensive threat assessment--right now the American people
are basically informed by the entertainment media and the news
media, if you can tell them apart, with these catastrophic
kinds of events. And if that's not the real situation, then we
ought to do a better job of letting the American people know
what the probabilities of threats are and how they might be
expected to respond in the event that an incident does occur
across an entire spectrum of potential threats.
Mr. Shays. OK.
Mr. Parachini. I might add that the discussion on national
missile defense and the threats we face from the ballistic
missile programs of Iran and North Korea are helpful here.
There have been very different views at different stages in
this debate on the threat we face with missiles. Eventually
there have been a number of communitywide assessments. There
were then special panels and commissions that reviewed those
assessments. I think all of that created a basis that was
helpful for forging a national consensus on what to do, and I
think if indeed we believe this problem is of that magnitude of
a national security threat, then we should go through a similar
process, because I think it benefited our decisions on national
missile defense considerably. Might also benefit our decisions
here.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
Ambassador, when I was thinking of your earlier work as
Ambassador-at-large on terrorism----
Mr. Bremer. Counterterrorism.
Mr. Shays. Counterterrorism. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. So we
don't have such an office.
Mr. Bremer. The President used to make that mistake very
often by introducing me as his expert on terrorism. I'm
counterterrorism.
Mr. Shays. I'm in good company then. Did you quickly
correct him, or were you a little more subtle?
Mr. Bremer. No, sir, I wasn't.
Mr. Shays. Did that just all of a sudden--was that an
office that was created out of the State Department's sensing a
need, or had it existed for a long period of time?
Mr. Bremer. No. It has a long and rather sorry story. There
was an office created in the State Department in 1972 to deal
with terrorism, which was buried down to the bureaucracy. When
Vice President Bush chaired a commission at the President's
request in 1985 to examine how we were structured in the
government to fight terrorism, one of the recommendations of
that commission was that there should be a clear agency
function for State overseas and for Justice in the United
States--that's still with us--and that the State Department
should upgrade the office to an ambassador-at-large position
reporting to the Secretary of State, and that office was then
created. I was honored to be the first and, in fact, only--the
only incumbent, because after the Reagan administration the
office has been progressively downgraded. But in any case,
that's where it comes from.
Mr. Shays. Well, I don't have any other questions. I would
invite you if you had a question that we should have asked or
wish we had asked, I would invite----
Mr. Bremer. May I make one point? It seems to me there are
a couple of things that----
Mr. Shays. Excuse me. You did not have any questions?
Mr. Rapallo. Maybe just one.
Mr. Shays. Let me have you respond, then I'll go to David.
Mr. Bremer. There are a couple of things that, irrespective
of whether there's a national threat assessment, Congress could
do to deal with terrorism. One of them, which we recommended in
our report, is to control biological pathogens better. The
principle should be that biological pathogens in this country
should be as tightly controlled as nuclear agents have been for
the last 50 years. Currently that is not the case.
I don't know where the legislation stands. Maybe one of my
colleagues does now. There is legislation floating around to
make it, in effect, illegal to possess biological pathogens
unless you've got a legitimate need to have them. That is not
against the law right now.
Second we recommended--as many of my colleagues have said,
it's not as easy to make a biological weapon as some people
would lead you to believe. You need very specialized equipment,
you need fancy fermenting equipment, you need aerosol
inhalation chambers, you need cross-flow filtration equipment.
That equipment is now controlled for export by the United
States, but it is not controlled for domestic sale. We
recommended in our report that Congress should look into
controlling that.
It seems to me these are good things to do irrespective of
whether you have a national threat assessment, whether you have
three national threat assessments.
Finally, as Dr. Carus pointed out, it ought to be possible
to look for things which are dual use, and we recommended one,
which is perhaps of interest to you, Mr. Chairman, right now,
which is the question of surveillance by the CDC. You have the
West Nile fever back upon you again in Connecticut. The CDC has
a national surveillance system. It is not modernized. It's not
computerized. And there is virtually no such system overseas.
It seemed to us we would want to know if West Nile fever
was here whether it's here because you got dead crows or
because somebody put it there. We would want to know if there
was an outbreak of ebola that might be coming our way or of
anthrax somewhere else.
There is no international surveillance system. This is
something we have recommended that the Secretary of State and
HHS should look into. These are things which, it seems to me,
are pretty easy to do. They don't cost a lot of money. They're
dual use. They're not dependent on a precise definition of what
the threat is, but they are good things to do. I would just
commend them to your attention Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. It raises the point what committees did you
present your report to?
Mr. Bremer. We actually presented the report to the Speaker
and the Majority Leader. I have testified before a number of
committees in both Houses.
Mr. Shays. Just totally focused on that report? In other
words, the purpose of the hearing was for that report?
Mr. Bremer. Yes, sir.
Mr. Shays. Did you feel it got the kind of dissemination
that you expected? I mean, was it----
Mr. Bremer. It got quite a lot of attention. Some of it was
misdirected by some of the early news reports, but we got a
very good reception, I must say, on both sides of the aisle in
the report in general on all the committees I've been before.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
Any other comment or question that we--question we should
have asked that you needed to respond to or something that you
prepared for that would be eloquent if you shared it with us?
Nothing. OK.
Let me say--and I'm going to recognize David Rapallo--this
has really been an excellent panel. Hopefully we'll be able to
utilize your contribution in the future as well. It's been very
interesting, and your statements were interesting; if not
interesting in every respect, very informative and important
for us to have. I'm talking about the written one. Your verbal
one was very interesting.
Mr. Rapallo. Just one quick followup for Ambassador Bremer.
On the 95 CIA regulations I want to make sure there's a
complete explanation, it didn't just happen in a vacuum. Could
you give just a little description of why they were adopted,
the rationale behind them?
Mr. Bremer. The given rationale was concerns that some
assets who had been engaged by CIA in a country in Central
America had been involved in alleged serious crimes. And there
was a view at that time that the head of the CIA and the DCI,
that this put us at risk by having assets who might have
committed crimes or might have committed human rights
violations. And it was in response to those concerns, as I
understand it, that these guidelines were issued.
Mr. Shays. But the bottom line is you believe it's much
harder to recruit.
Mr. Bremer. The DCI at the time and the DCI today maintain
that the intention of these was not to discourage the
recruitment of hard assets. We say we understand that. We're
not challenging what the intention was, but the effect has been
to discourage it.
Mr. Shays. David asked the question, that's on the record,
but important that you tell us your concern as well. Gentlemen,
very,
very interesting. I appreciate your participation as I did the
panel before yours. Thank you very much, and at this point this
hearing is adjourned.
Thank you for your help as well, Recorder.
[Whereupon, at 3:20 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]