[Senate Hearing 107-224]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 107-224
DOMESTIC RESPONSE CAPABILITIES FOR TERRORISM INVOLVING WEAPONS OF MASS
DESTRUCTION
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HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, TERRORISM,
AND GOVERNMENT INFORMATION
of the
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 27, 2001
__________
Serial No. J-107-8
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
_______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
76-917 WASHINGTON : 2002
____________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah, Chairman
STROM THURMOND, South Carolina PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont
CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts
ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
JON KYL, Arizona HERBERT KOHL, Wisconsin
MIKE DeWINE, Ohio DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York
MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington
Sharon Prost, Chief Counsel
Makan Delrahim, Staff Director
Bruce Cohen, Minority Chief Counsel and Staff Director
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Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism, and Government Information
JON KYL, Arizona, Chairman
MIKE DeWINE, Ohio DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky HERBERT KOHL, Wisconsin
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington
Stephen Higgins, Majority Chief Counsel
David Hantman, Minority Chief Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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STATEMENTS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Page
Feinstein, Hon. Dianne, a U.S. Senator from the State of
California..................................................... 33
Kyl, Hon. Jon, a U.S. Senator from the State of Arizona.......... 1
Sessions, Hon. Jeff, a U.S. Senator from the State of Alabama.... 3
WITNESSES
Alexander, Yonah, Senior Fellow and Director, International
Center for Terrorism Studies, Potomac Institute for Policy
Studies, Arlington, VA......................................... 28
Clapper, James, Jr., Lieutenant General, United States Air Force
(Retired), Vice Chairman, Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic
Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass
Destruction, Washington, DC.................................... 5
Cordesman, Anthony H., Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, Center
for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC........ 22
DOMESTIC RESPONSE CAPABILITIES FOR TERRORISM INVOLVING WEAPONS OF MASS
DESTRUCTION
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TUESDAY, MARCH 27, 2001
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism, and
Government Information,
Committee on the Judiciary,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:10 p.m., in
room SD-226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Jon Kyl,
Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Kyl and Feinstein.
STATEMENT OF HON. JON KYL, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF
ARIZONA
Chairman Kyl. The Subcommittee will come to order. I
welcome everyone to this hearing of the Subcommittee of the
Judiciary Committee on Technology, Terrorism, and Government
Information.
By way of apology, let me first say that we had three votes
which delayed the party luncheons, as a result of which some of
the Senators will be late. I am informed that Senator Feinstein
has an additional meeting, and therefore she may be quite a
little bit late. But with that information, I am going to go
ahead because I don't want to keep all of you waiting.
At this hearing today, we are going to examine the findings
of the Congressionally mandated Advisory Panel to Assess
Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons
of Mass Destruction, as presented in its latest report entitled
``Toward a National Strategy for Combating Terrorism.''
At the dawn of this new millennium, the United States faces
new challenges to the security of our Nation, our people, and
interests abroad. We face no peer rival, and our view of the
horizon is no longer clouded by the once ominous threat of
either a large-scale nuclear attack on our homeland or a
massive conventional attack on our European allies.
Yet, the security our citizens both at home and abroad is
threatened. The threat no longer derives from a single source,
but from a myriad of sources, including terrorists
organizations that increasingly see Americans and their
interests as their premier targets.
The means available to terrorist organizations and their
sponsors are potentially more deadly and catastrophic than
ever. We have only to look back to October of last year and the
devastation wrought by two men in a small boat heavily laden
with conventional explosives that maneuvered alongside the USS
Cole. Seventeen American sailors perished, with many others
wounded, and an American war ship was reduced to a crippled
hulk in just a matter of a few seconds.
In the 1990's, 6 people were killed and 1,000 were injured
in bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City. But the
bombers' goal was to topple the twin towers, which would
probably have killed tens of thousands of people. Imagine the
destruction if those responsible for these attacks had been
more technically proficient or if they had had weapons of mass
destruction.
The perpetrators of these attacks do not appear to be
state-sponsored organizations in the classic sense. Recent
reports have strengthened the links between the Cole bombing
and exiled Saudi millionaire Usama Bin Ladin. Although not
state-sponsored in the classic sense, Bin Ladin is dependent
upon a variety of states for asylum and protection of his
assets. The fact that his group is not state-sponsored does not
mean it is less threatening.
According to the Director of the National Security Agency,
Bin Ladin can afford to outfit himself with better and more
sophisticated communications equipment than most of the
agencies of the U.S. Government that might be charged with
countering his efforts.
According to recent foreign press reports, Bin Ladin's
financial empire has enabled his supporters to strengthen their
hold upon the Taliban government of Afghanistan, thereby
eliminating the likelihood of extradition. If Bin Ladin can
afford all of this, someday he may even be able to buy a
nuclear, chemical, or biological weapon and the means to employ
it.
The emergence of terrorist groups that are not state-
sponsored does not mean that nations no longer support
terrorism. For example, Iran continues to be the most active
state sponsor of terrorism. Tehran already has chemical and
biological weapons. In fact, nearly all of the seven nations
that the U.S. identifies as state sponsors of terrorism are
believed to possess weapons of mass destruction of at least
some capability.
Given this state of affairs, what should U.S. strategy be
and how can we effect it? The Panel to Assess Domestic Response
Against Terrorism was quick to realize that the presence of the
word ``Domestic'' in its name did not limit it to the study of
strictly domestic solutions to strictly domestic weaknesses.
The members, representing a broad cross-section of local,
State and Federal expertise, came to the conclusion that much
of the deterrence and prevention of terrorism must begin on
foreign soil, with strong partnerships among our allies and an
equally strong intelligence capability.
The panel made several recommendations aimed at
strengthening our ability to both gather intelligence on
terrorist organizations and share intelligence between agencies
responsible for countering the terrorist threat. The panel also
made numerous recommendations designed to improve the
cooperation between Federal, State and local entities to
enhance our capability to respond to a catastrophic terrorist
attack.
In our first of two panels today, we are pleased to be
joined by Vice Chairman of the Advisory Panel, Lieutenant
General James Clapper, who formerly served as Director of the
Defense Intelligence Agency. The Chairman of the Advisory
Panel, Governor James Gilmore of Virginia, was invited to
attend, but could not be here due to a scheduling conflict.
I might say that we decided to proceed with this hearing
because it is our intention, both Senator Feinstein and myself,
to take as much testimony as we can within a period of just a
few weeks and begin to put together legislation that we can
actually have an opportunity to run this year with an
expectation that we could get it passed. We believe that if we
take the best of the suggestions from this panel and from other
panels that have addressed the same general subject matter and
put them together into a package, we can perhaps begin to
coordinate the efforts much better than they are and at least
add the legislative perspective to it that we think may be
required.
The second panel today includes two of our Nation's
foremost experts on terrorism and national security. Dr.
Anthony Cordesman currently serves as the Distinguished Arleigh
Burke Chair and Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies. He has overseen and participated in a
series of studies on terrorism and asymmetric warfare, and has
a long history as an analyst of national security issues.
Dr. Yonah Alexander is a Senior Fellow at the Potomac
Institute and Director of its International Center for
Terrorism Studies. He is the founder and editor of
``Terrorism,'' an international journal.
I will afford Senator Feinstein the opportunity, if she
arrives, to fit her statement in wherever we are in the
testimony, and any member of the Subcommittee will have an
opportunity to submit their statements for the record.
[The prepared statement of Senator Sessions follows:]
Statement of Hon. Jeff Sessions, a U.S. Senator From the State of
Alabama
I am very glad that Senators Kyl and Feinstein called this hearing
today. This country faces a real threat. I am afraid that the question
about whether a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or cyber-
terrorist attack will happen in the United States is less a question of
whether, than of when. As the anniversary of the most heinous attack in
America history--the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995--draws
near, we remember what terrorism can do to this country. Not only were
lives lost in that attack, but fear was allowed to rule us. That bomb
was very simply constructed--just a bunch of diesel fuel and fertilizer
in a moving van--yet it ripped a building in half, killing 168 people
and wounding many others.
Now, imagine a terrorist walking into an airport or football
stadium or even, God forbid, this building, with a nerve agent like VX.
With an amount less than a drop of water, that terrorist has a weapon
to kill even more people than in Oklahoma City. That would be harder to
detect and even harder to prevent or contain once an attack occurred.
Worse yet, imagine a coordinated attack from all fronts. First, a
computer terrorist sabotages U.S. government and military computers,
shutting down lines of communication and defense. At the same time, he
strikes civil telecommunications and financial services. Topping all
that with a traditional military deployment by a rogue state, America
would have a tremendous and frightening challenge to overcome.
Luckily, this country is already on the ball. Many agencies such as
the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of
the Treasury, the Department of Justice, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the
Public Health Service component, and the Department of Energy have all
taken substantial steps, along with over 50 other organizations
throughout the U.S. Government, to make sure that a domestic terrorist
attack does not occur, and if it does, that we have the best ways to
deal with it. Four different reports, issued by four different groups
looking specially at this problem, have assessed the threat of domestic
terrorism and come up with ideas on how to address that threat. Today's
distinguished panel of witnesses will give us more insight into one of
these reports--the second in a series of RAND reports issued by the
Gilmore Commission.
I agree with all four reports that there is a huge need for greater
coordination between the responsible agencies and between the federal,
state, and local entities responsible for detecting, stopping, and
responding to an attack in their particular community. Each of these
reports presents a possible but slightly different solution to the
problem. However, I think we need to really look hard at whether one of
the four solutions will work best or whether we need a combination of
all four.
I also agree with my colleagues here today, Senators Kyl and
Feinstein, who last session introduced solid legislation aimed at
finding counter terrorism strategies and solutions. This legislation
passed the Senate. The bill takes an important first step towards
solution to this problem.
First, it is important that we keep Syria and Iran on the Foreign
Terrorist Organization list. There are indications that both countries
continue to sponsor terrorist groups with ill will towards the United
States.
Second, the reports and task forces required by this bill will
ensure that we have answers to important questions: (1) how to improve
the guidelines on recruiting terrorist informants to encourage them to
spill the beans on their cohorts ; (2) where research and development
may improve the technologies to combat terrorists on American soil; (3)
how to get the best information disseminated to the agencies dealing
with the problem; (4) what needs to be done to stop existing world-wide
terrorist fund-raising efforts; and (5) how we can improve the
monitoring of domestic sales and lab handling and storage of biological
agents and the equipment needed to use them.
Senator Kyl's and Senator Feinstein's previous bill had the making
of a crucial first step in the war on terrorists. Another fundamental
step in domestic preparedness is the continual need to train first
responders such as fire fighters, police officers, and emergency
medical crews. Since we do not know where an attack using a weapon of
mass destruction (WMD) will occur (it could be the Nation's Capital,
another big urban center, or even in small town America) we need to be
prepared across the Nation. To accomplish that preparedness means we
need to train and equip our civilian responders to the highest standard
possible.
Traditionally, the military has been responsible for dealing with
attacks on the United States. However, the military is not and cannot
be on hand in every community on a 24-hour basis. That's why first
responders are so important.
In my home state of Alabama, we have the nation's only Center for
Domestic Preparedness that trains with the actual chemical and
biological substances that might be used in an attack. Exercises run in
the Chemical Training Facility-identical to the training used by our
military forces at Ft. Leonardwood, Missouri--is the only way to test
how firefighters, policemen, and other first responders will react
under pressure, taking away the fear of the unknown that is present
whenever an invisible hand strikes. Incredibly, this Center -has
already trained 5,000 first responders, but the nation needs to train
many, many more. Politicians of every political persuasion have
recognized the importance of this Center to the overall domestic
preparedness picture. Our former Attorney General, Janet Reno, called
the Center a ``crown jewel'' in testimony before Congressional
Committees.
In conclusion, I want to again thank Senator Kyl and Senator
Feinstein for holding this hearing and for developing legislation that
is an important first step in dealing with the problems.
Chairman Kyl. So with that, let me introduce our first
witness, Lieutenant General Clapper, Vice Chairman of the
Advisory Panel and former Director of the DIA.
General Clapper, welcome. Thank you for taking time to be
here. We will place your full statement in the record and
invite you to make whatever summary remarks you would like to
make at this time.
STATEMENT OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL JAMES CLAPPER, JR., UNITED
STATES AIR FORCE (RETIRED), VICE CHAIRMAN, ADVISORY PANEL TO
ASSESS DOMESTIC RESPONSE CAPABILITIES FOR TERRORISM INVOLVING
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, WASHINGTON, D.C.
General Clapper. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am
very pleased to have this opportunity to speak to you as Vice
Chairman of the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response
Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass
Destruction, less awkwardly known as the Gilmore Commission.
You have asked that we provide testimony today on the
findings and recommendations in our second report, which is the
second of three, and we go out of business at the end of this
year. I will outline those recommendations and will discuss
particularly two of them, one dealing with the need for a
national strategy and the other the need for somebody to be in
charge.
You have also asked that I speak to areas of agreement and
disagreement between the Gilmore Commission and the National
Commission on Terrorism, chaired by former Ambassador L. Paul
Bremer, who I might mention is also a member of the Gilmore
Commission. So we did have fortuitously good cross-over there.
With respect to strategy, it is our belief, our conviction,
after looking at this for a couple of years now that there is,
in fact, no overarching statement of what the United States is
trying to achieve with its program to combat terrorism.
Instead of a national strategy, what we really have is a
loosely coupled set of plans and programs that aim individually
to achieve certain particular preparedness objectives. Senior
U.S. officials have stated that several official broad policy
and planning documents that were published during the prior
administration, such as the Presidential Decision Directives 39
and 62, the Attorney General's 1999 Five-year Interagency Plan,
and the most recent Annual Report to Congress on Combating
Terrorism, taken as a whole constitute a national strategy.
Our view is that these documents describe plans, the
compilation of various programs underway, and some objectives,
but they do not either individually or collectively constitute
a national strategy. As a result, we recommended that the
incoming administration develop such a national strategy by
laying out national goals for combating terrorism focusing on
results--that is, outputs rather than process or inputs.
We made three key assumptions to guide the strategy
development. The first assumption was that local response
entities, meaning law enforcement, fire services, emergency
medical technicians, hospital emergency personnel, public
health officials, and emergency managers, will always be the
first, and conceivably only response.
Second, in the event of a major terrorist attack, however
that is defined, no single political jurisdiction is likely to
be capable of responding to such an attack all by itself
without some outside assistance.
Third, and perhaps most important, we already have existing
emergency response and management capabilities, developed over
many years, for response to natural disasters, disease
outbreaks, and accidents. Those capabilities should be used as
a base for enhancing our domestic capability for response to
terrorist attack.
I want to highlight some of the attributes of the national
strategy that we outlined in our report. It should be
geographically and functionally comprehensive. It should
address both international and domestic terrorism. That
distinction, heretofore somewhat nice, neat, separate
compartments between domestic and foreign, is gradually
eroding, we believe.
The national strategy should address the full spectrum of
the Nation's efforts against terrorism, to include
intelligence, deterrence, prevention, investigation,
prosecution, preemption, crisis management, and consequence
management. The national strategy should apply to the Nation as
a whole, not just the Federal executive branch, and must
involve States and communities as essential and equal partners.
With respect to the issue of placing someone in charge, it
has been our observation based on a lot of discussion,
briefings, and travel, that many at the State and local levels
perceive the structure and processes at the Federal level for
combating terrorism as uncoordinated, complex, and confusing.
Our first report included a graphic depiction of the
numerous Federal agencies and offices within those agencies
that have responsibilities for combating terrorism. I testified
this morning before a House panel looking at this and they had
extracted the graphics from our first report and had them
displayed in the Committee room, which basically was one
organizational chart after another of all the departments and
agencies who in one way or another, one degree or another are
involved in combating terrorism, a very effective graphic
depiction.
Attempts to create a Federal focal point for coordination
with State and local officials such as the National Domestic
Preparedness Office have been only partially successful.
Moreover, many State and local officials believe that Federal
programs are often created without consulting them. And
confusion often exists even within the Federal bureaucracy. It
is our view that the current coordination structure does not
possess the requisite authority or accountability to make
policy changes and to impose the discipline necessary among the
numerous Federal agencies involved.
So for those and other reasons, we have recommended the
establishment of a senior-level coordination entity in the
Executive Office of the President entitled the National Office
for Combating Terrorism, with responsibility for developing
domestic and international policy, and for coordinating the
program and budget of the Federal Government's activities for
combating terrorism.
The title of the entity is not as important as its
responsibilities and authorities, and I should interject here
since it came up this morning that we had great aversion to the
term ``czar,'' which is often applied perhaps to such a
construct, and we would not choose to use that term.
The responsibilities and functions of this organization
tethered to the President would be forging a national strategy,
and this would be, I think, its first and foremost
responsibility, managing the program and budget by a process of
certifying or decertifying the budgets of the other agencies
and departments involved in combating terrorism.
A subject near and dear to my heart is fostering
intelligence collection, analysis, and most importantly
dissemination particularly and especially to State and local
officials; reviewing plans of State and local authorities to
ensure synchronicity or coordination with the national
strategy; coordinating health and medical programs; directing
research development, test, and evaluation, and developing
national standards; and serving as sort of the one-stop shop,
if you will, for information as a clearinghouse for State and
local officials.
Two other attributes I want to mention are that we feel
this entity or office should have political accountability and
responsibility. The person designed as the focal point to be in
charge for developing a national strategy and for coordinating
Federal programs must have this political accountability and
responsibility. Ergo, our recommendation was that this person
should be appointed by the President and confirmed by the
Senate, and would enjoy Cabinet-level rank.
At the same time, we also would emphasize that this
organization would not have operational control over Federal
agency activities. In other words, the execution would still
remain with the various Government departments and agencies. It
was not our intent in any way that those departments and
agencies should abrogate their responsibilities. What we are
advocating is more coherence, more coordination which would be
brought about by this office for coordination of
counterterrorism.
At the risk of perhaps going where angels fear to tread, I
also wanted to mention the Congress in this. Its intention, I
think, has been helpful, but in a sense the Congress has also
contributed to the executive branch's problems.
Over the past 5 years, there have been half a dozen
Congressional attempts to reorganize the executive branch's
efforts to combat terrorism, all of which failed. None enjoyed
the support of the executive branch. At least 11 full
committees in the Senate and 14 full committees in the House,
as well as their numerous subcommittees, claim to one degree or
another some oversight responsibility for various aspects of
programs for combating terrorism.
Earmarks in appropriations bills created many of the
Federal Government's specific domestic preparedness programs
without authorizing legislation or oversight. The huge
appearing, at least, U.S. budget for combating terrorism is now
laced with such earmarks which have proliferated in the absence
of an executive branch strategy.
The executive branch cannot successfully coordinate its
programs for combating terrorism alone. Congress, we think,
must also better organize itself and exercise much greater
discipline. So we have recommended creation of a joint
committee, or alternatively separate committees in each House
somewhat akin to the construct I am used to, the two
intelligence oversight committees, to pass on executive branch
requests and to oversee execution of programs that it
authorizes.
Obviously, for this to work, other Congressional
authorizing and appropriations committees would have to defer
to the joint or the single Committee in each House. We are not
so naive to think this recommendation is any less difficult
than the executive branch changes that we are proposing, but it
is no less needed.
We also made six specific functional recommendations in the
following areas, and I will simply tick off the subject matter
areas rather than dwelling on them, since there is a detailed
discourse on that in my prepared statement.
The functions we had in mind for this National office would
be to foster the collection of intelligence, assessing threats
and sharing information particularly at the State and local
level; operational coordination, training, equipping,
exercising, overseeing and facilitating health and medical
coordination; research development and promulgation of national
standards; and providing cyber security against terrorism.
You asked, sir, for a discussion of the areas of agreement
and disagreement with the report of the National Commission on
Terrorism which was chaired by Ambassador Jerry Bremer, who, as
I said, is on our panel as well.
First, I would mention that the charters and objectives of
the Bremer Commission and the Gilmore Commission are for the
most part different. The Bremer Commission focused on
international terrorism, while we focused on domestic
preparedness.
There are, nevertheless, many congruent areas between the
two reports. Both agree on the nature of the threat of
international terrorism, including the potential for more
attacks inside the borders of the United States. Both panels
specifically agree that certain measures must be taken to
improve intelligence collection and dissemination on
terrorists, including repealing the 1995 Director of Central
Intelligence guidelines as they apply to recruiting terrorist
informants, reviewing and clarifying the Attorney General's
guidelines on foreign intelligence collection and the
guidelines on general crime racketeering enterprise and
domestic security terrorism investigations, and directing the
Department of Justice Office of Intelligence Policy and Review
not to require a process for initiating actions under the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that are more stringent
than what was actually required by the statute.
Both panels agree that significant improvements must be
made in the ability of intelligence and law enforcement
agencies to collect, analyze, disseminate, and share
information. Both panels agree that there must be a
comprehensive strategy to deal with terrorism.
Both panels agree that the Department of Defense and U.S.
armed forces may have a major role in preventing or responding
to a terrorist attack, especially a major one. We likewise
strongly agree that more planning, coordination, training, and
exercises need to be conducted to prepare for the possibility
of major DoD and military involvement.
The one area, however, on which the two panels disagreed
had to do with the issue of lead agency. The Bremer Commission
asserts that a response to a catastrophic attack may require
the designation of DoD as lead agency. While agree that DoD may
have, and probably would have a major role in such a
cataclysmic event, we believe firmly that the military must
always be directly under civilian control.
I can speak personally that Governor Gilmore feels
personally very strongly about this. This was probably the most
hotly debated and discussed issue in the 2 years of the
existence of our panel. So as a result, we recommended that the
President always designate a Federal civilian agency other than
the Department of Defense as the lead Federal agency.
Many Americans will not draw the technical distinction
between the Department of Defense, the civilian entity, and the
U.S. armed forces, the military entity. Although the Department
of Defense and every major component of the Department has
civilian leaders, the perception will likely be that the
military is in the lead. And in the interest of preserving our
civil liberties, or even dispensing with the risk of
jeopardizing civil liberties, it was our conviction after a lot
of discussion and debate that the lead Federal agency in every
case should be a genuine civilian element.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, Gilmore panel members are
convinced that the recommendations that I have outlined here
briefly are crucial to strengthening the national effort to
combat terrorism. We need a true national strategy and we need
somebody in charge. This is not a partisan political issue. We
have members on our panel who identify with each of the
parties, virtually all the functional constituencies, and at
all governmental levels. This is simply something that we
unanimously agreed that the country needs.
Contemplating the specter of terrorism in this country is a
sobering but critically necessary responsibility of government
officials at all levels and in all branches, as evidenced by
your interest this afternoon. It is truly a national issue that
requires synchronization of our efforts vertically among the
Federal, State and local levels, and horizontally among the
functional constituent stakeholders.
The individual capabilities of all critical elements must
be brought to bear in a much more coherent way than is now the
case. That fundamental tenet underlies our work over the last 2
years. We believe that the most imposing challenge centers on
policy and whether we have the collective fortitude to forge
change both in organization and process.
I would respectfully observe that we have studied the topic
to death and what we need now is action.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement. I would be
pleased to address your questions.
[The prepared statement of General Clapper follows:]
Statement of James Clapper, Jr., Lieutenant General, U.S. Air Force,
Retired, Vice Chairman, Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response
Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction,
Washington, D.C.
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee, I am honored to be here
today. I come before you as the Vice Chairman of the Advisory Panel to
Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons
of Mass Destruction, also known as the ``Gilmore Commission'' (after
its Chairman, Governor James S. Gilmore, III, of Virginia). Thank you
for the opportunity to present the views of the Advisory Panel.
The Advisory Panel was established by Section 1405 of the National
Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999, Public Law 10-261 (H.R.
3616, 105th Congress, 2nd Session) (October 17, 1998). That
Act directed the Advisory Panel to accomplish several specific tasks.
It said:
The panel shall----
1. assess Federal agency efforts to enhance domestic preparedness for
incidents involving weapons of mass destruction;
2. assess the progress of Federal training programs for local emergency
responses to incidents involving weapons of mass destruction;
3. assess deficiencies in programs for response to incidents involving
weapons of mass destruction, including a review of unfunded
communications, equipment, and planning requirements, and the
needs of maritime regions;
4. recommend strategies for ensuring effective coordination with
respect to Federal agency weapons of mass destruction response
efforts, and for ensuring fully effective local response
capabilities for weapons of mass destruction incidents; and
5. assess the appropriate roles of State and local government in
funding effective local response capabilities.
The Act requires the Advisory Panel to report its findings,
conclusions, and recommendations for improving Federal, State, and
local domestic emergency preparedness to respond to incidents involving
weapons of mass destruction to the President and the Congress at three
times during the course of the Advisory Panel's deliberations-on
December 15 in 1999, 2000, and 2001.
Mr. Chairman, you have asked that we provide testimony today on the
findings and their related recommendations contained in the second
report of the Advisory Panel, entitled ``Toward a National Strategy for
Combating Terrorism,'' dated December 15, 2000. I will outline those
recommendations, and will provide a more detailed description on two of
them-one dealing with the need for a national strategy, the other on
the structure of the Executive Branch for dealing with terrorism. You
have also asked that I note the areas of agreement and disagreement
that the Gilmore Commission has with the report of the National
Commission on Terrorism, which was chaired by former Ambassador L. Paul
Bremer.
Principal Findings and Recommendations in the Second Annual Report
a national strategy for combating terrorism
``The United States has no coherent, functional national strategy for
combating terrorism; and the next President should develop and
present to the Congress a national strategy for combating
terrorism within one year of assuming office.''
Mr. Chairman and Members, the Advisory Panel believes that a truly
comprehensive national strategy will contain a high-level statement of
national objectives coupled logically to a statement of the means to be
used to achieve these objectives. Currently, there is no overarching
statement of what the United States is trying to achieve with its
program to combat terrorism. Goals must be expressed in terms of
results, not process. Government officials have, in the past, spoken of
terrorism preparedness goals in terms of program execution. A
comprehensive national strategy will answer the more fundamental and
important question: To what end are these programs being implemented?
Instead of a national strategy, the nation has had a loosely
coupled set of plans and specific programs that aim, individually, to
achieve certain particular preparedness objectives. Senior U.S.
officials have previously stated that several official broad policy and
planning documents that were published in the prior administration-
Presidential Decision Directives 39 and 62, the Attorney General's 1999
Five-Year Interagency Counterterrorism and Technology Crime Plan, and
the most recent Annual Report to Congress on Combating Terrorism \1\--
taken as a whole, constitute a national strategy. These documents
describe plans, the compilation of various programs already under way,
and some objectives; but they do not either individually or
collectively constitute a national strategy.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The Office of Management and Budget, Annual Report to Congress
on Combating Terrorism, Including Defense against Weapons of Mass
Destruction/Domestic Preparedness and Critical Infrastructure
Protection, May 18, 2000.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Although Executive Branch agencies are administering programs
assigned to them in the various pieces of legislation, the Executive
Branch, under the former administration, did not articulate a broad
national strategy that would synchronize the existing programs or
identify future program priorities needed to achieve national
objectives for domestic preparedness for terrorism. Moreover, it is our
view that, given the structure of our national government, only the
Executive Branch can produce such a national strategy.
As a result, we recommended that the incoming Administration begin
the process of developing a national strategy by a thoughtful
articulation of national goals for combating terrorism, focusing on
results rather than process. The structure and specifics of the
national program should derive logically and transparently from the
goals, not the other way around.
BASIC ASSUMPTIONS
The Advisory Panel agreed on several basic assumptions to guide its
approach to strategy development. First, ``local'' response entities-
law enforcement, fire service, emergency medical technicians, hospital
emergency personnel, public health officials, and emergency managers--
will always be the ``first'' and conceivably only response.
Second, in the event of a major terrorist attack, however defined--
number of fatalities or total casualties, the point at which local and
State capabilities are overwhelmed, or some other measure--no single
jurisdiction is likely to be capable of responding to such an attack
without outside assistance. That assumption is critical to
understanding the need for mutual aid agreements and coordinated
operations.
Third--and perhaps most important--there are existing emergency
response and management capabilities, developed over many years, for
responses to natural disasters, disease outbreaks, and accidents. Those
capabilities can and should be used as a base for enhancing our
domestic capability for response to a terrorist attack. We can
strengthen existing capabilities without buying duplicative, cost-
prohibitive new capabilities exclusively dedicated to terrorism.
MAJOR ELEMENTS OF THE NATIONAL STRATEGY
The national strategy should be geographically and functionally
comprehensive. It should address both international and domestic
terrorism. The distinction between terrorism outside the borders of the
United States and terrorist threats domestically is eroding.
International terrorism crosses borders easily and may directly affect
the American homeland. That was evident in the New York World Trade
Center bombing in 1993, and more recently in the activities around the
turn of the century. The terrorist bombings of the U.S. garrison at
Khobar Towers, Saudi Arabia, the two U.S. embassies in East Africa, and
the recent USS Cole incident, also illustrate the reach of terrorists
against U.S. interests and the profound domestic implications they
pose.
To be functionally comprehensive, the national strategy should
address the full spectrum of the nation's efforts against terrorism:
intelligence, deterrence, prevention, investigation, prosecution,
preemption, crisis management, and consequence management. Our nation's
highest goal must be the deterrence and prevention of terrorism. The
United States cannot, however, prevent all terrorist attacks. When
deterrence and prevention fail, the nation must respond effectively to
terrorism, whether to resolve an ongoing incident, mitigate its
consequences, identify the perpetrators, and prosecute or retaliate as
appropriate. The national strategy should deal with all aspects of
combating terrorism and must carefully weigh their relative importance
for the purpose of allocating resources among them.
The national strategy should apply to the nation as a whole, not
just the Federal Executive Branch. The Federal government should lead a
strategic planning process that involves States and communities as
essential and equal partners.
The national strategy must be appropriately resourced, by all
levels of government, to provide a reasonable opportunity to achieve
its successful implementation. At the Federal level, that will require
a closer relationship between the Executive and Legislative Branches.
Nationally, that will require better coordination with State and local
governments.
ARTICULATING THE END STATE: NATIONAL GOALS
The first step in developing a coherent national strategy is for
the Executive Branch to define some meaningful, measurable expression
of what it is trying to achieve in combating terrorism. The Federal
government's goals have previously been expressed primarily in terms of
program execution. Administrative measurements alone do not foster
effective management of a national program.
The national strategy must express preparedness goals in terms of
an ``end state'' toward which the program strives. Since there exists
no ready-made measurement of a country's preparedness for terrorism,
especially domestically, the Executive Branch must develop objective
measurements for its program to combat terrorism, to track its
progress, to determine priorities and appropriate funding levels, and
to know when the desired ``end state'' has been achieved.
The nation's strategy for combating terrorism requires results-
based goals for three reasons. First, the programs need an end-state
goal. Elected and appointed officials from Federal, State, and local
governments must be able to allocate resources to specific geographic
regions according to requirements of that region. Resources should be
allocated to achieve that broadest application for all emergency and
disaster needs, consistent with preparedness goals. That approach is
fundamental to the principles of building on existing systems and to
achieving the maximum possible multipurpose capability.
Second, programs for combating terrorism need accountability.
Legislators and public officials, especially elected ones, must have
some reliable, systematic way of assessing the extent to which their
efforts and taxpayers' money are producing effective results. The
performance and results of programs for combating terrorism are
currently assessed almost solely according to anecdote. The only
concrete measure available at the moment is the dispersal of Federal
funds-a process measurement that does not achieve effective strategic
management.
Third, programs for combating terrorism need clear priorities. It
is impossible to set priorities without first defining results-based
objectives. The essence of any coherent strategy is a clear statement
of priorities that can be translated into specific policy and
programmatic initiatives. Priorities are the transmission mechanism
that connects ends to means.
FOSTERING THE MEANS OF STRATEGY: PROGRAM STRUCTURE AND PRIORITIES
Setting priorities is essential in any strategy, but priorities
require clear, resultsbased objectives. With some meaningful sense of
objectives, it will be possible to develop coherent priorities and an
appropriate set of policy prescriptions. For instance, should the
nation seek a different level of preparedness for large urban centers
than for rural areas? What should be the relative importance of
preparing for conventional terrorism, radiological incidents, chemical
weapons, biological weapons, or cyber attacks? Should the nation seek
to improve its preparedness more against the types of attacks that are
most likely to occur, such as conventional terrorist bombings or the
use of industrial chemicals, or for those that are most damaging but
less likely to occur, such as nuclear weapons or military-grade
chemical or biological weapons? With respect to biological weapons,
which pathogens deserve priority? Should the emphasis be on smallscale
contamination attacks as opposed to large-scale aerosol releases of the
worst pathogen types, such as anthrax, plague, and smallpox? What is
the relative priority for allocating resources to protect critical
infrastructure, especially from cyber attacks?
The answers to these and other questions have important
implications for the allocation of resources for training, equipment
acquisition, exercises, research and development, pharmaceutical
stockpiles, vaccination programs, and response plans. A coherent
national strategy would provide clarity to the allocation of resources
across the full range of possible activities to combat terrorism. To
date, these critical resource allocation decisions have been made in an
ad hoc manner and without reference to meaningful national goals.
We cannot stress strongly enough that the strategy must be truly
national in character-not just Federal. The approach to the domestic
part of the national strategy should, therefore, be ``bottom up,''
developed in close coordination with local, State, and other Federal
entities.
Mr. Chairman, for those and other reasons, we believe that it is
time to craft a national strategy for combating terrorism to guide our
efforts-one that will give our citizens a level of assurance that we
have a good plan for dealing with the issue; one that will provide
State and local governments with some direction that will help them
make decisions that will contribute to the overall national effort; one
that will let our potential adversaries know, in no uncertain terms,
how serious we are.
THE NATIONAL OFFICE FOR COMBATING TERRORISM
``The United States has no coherent, functional national strategy for
combating terrorism; and the next President should develop and
present to the Congress a national strategy for combating
terrorism within one year of assuming office.''
To many at the State and local levels, the structure and process at
the Federal level for combating terrorism appear uncoordinated,
complex, and confusing. Our first report included a graphical depiction
of the numerous Federal agencies and offices within those agencies that
have responsibilities for combating terrorism. I have provided
additional copies of those charts to the Members of the subcommittee as
one way of illustrating the level of complexity.
Attempts to create a Federal focal point for coordination with
State and local officials--such as the National Domestic Preparedness
Office--have been only partially successful. Moreover, many State and
local officials believe that Federal programs intended to assist at
their levels are often created and implemented without consulting them.
Confusion often exists even within the Federal bureaucracy. The current
coordination structure does not possess the requisite authority or
accountability to make policy changes and to impose the discipline
necessary among the numerous Federal agencies involved.
For those and other reasons, we recommended the establishment of a
senior level coordination entity in the Executive Office of the
President, entitled the ``National Office for Combating Terrorism,''
with the responsibility for developing domestic and international
policy and for coordinating the program and budget of the Federal
government's activities for combating terrorism. The title of the
entity is not as important as its responsibilities, the functions that
it will be called upon to perform, and the structure and authorities
that we believe, at a minimum, such an entity must have.
RESPONSIBILITIES AND FUNCTIONS
1. National Strategy. Foremost will be the responsibility to
develop the comprehensive national strategy described above. That
strategy must be approved by the President and updated annually.
2. Program and Budget. A concurrent responsibility of the National
Office for Combating Terrorism will be to work within the Executive
Branch and with the Congress to ensure that sufficient resources are
allocated to support the execution of the national strategy. The U.S.
strategy for deterrence, prevention, preparedness, and response for
terrorists acts outside the United States, developed under the
leadership of the Department of State, is comprehensive and, for the
most part, appropriately resourced. It is on the domestic front that
much additional effort and coordination will be required. The Executive
should provide comprehensive information to the Congress to consider in
the deliberative authorization and appropriations processes. In
addition to a comprehensive strategy document, supporting budget
information should include a complete description and justification for
each program, coupled with current and proposed out-year expenditures.
3. Intelligence Coordination and Analysis. We recommended that the
National Office for Combating Terrorism provide coordination and
advocacy for both foreign and domestic terrorism-related intelligence
activities, including the development of national net assessments of
terrorist threats. A critical task will be to develop, in concert with
the Intelligence Community--including its Federal law enforcement
components--policies and plans for the dissemination of intelligence
and other pertinent information on terrorist threats to designated
entities at all levels of government--local, State, and Federal. To
oversee that activity, we recommended that an Assistant Director for
Intelligence in the National Office direct the intelligence function
for Combating Terrorism, who should be ``dual-hatted'' as the National
Intelligence Officer (NIO) for Combating Terrorism at the National
Intelligence Council. That Assistant Director/NIO and staff would be
responsible for compiling terrorism intelligence products from the
various agencies, for providing national-level threat assessments for
inclusion in the national strategy, and for producing composite or
``fused'' products for dissemination to designated Federal, State, and
local entities, as appropriate. That person will serve as focal point
for developing policy for combating terrorism intelligence matters,
keeping the policymaking and operational aspects of intelligence
collection and analysis separate. The Assistant Director will also be
the logical interface with the intelligence oversight committees of the
Congress. It is, in our view, important to have a senior-level position
created for this purpose. To assist in this intelligence function, we
also recommended the establishment of a ``Council to Coordinate
Intelligence for Combating Terrorism,'' to provide strategic direction
for intelligence collection and analysis, as well as a clearance
mechanism for product dissemination and other related activities. It
should consist of the heads of the various Intelligence Community
entities and State and local representatives who have been granted
appropriate security clearance.
4. Plans Review. We recommended that the National Office for
Combating Terrorism be given authority to review State and geographical
area strategic plans, and at the request of State entities, review
local plans or programs for combating terrorism, for consistency with
the national strategy. That review will allow the National Office to
identify gaps and deficiencies in Federal programs.
5. Proposals for Change. We recommended that the National Office
for Combating Terrorism have authority to propose new Federal programs
or changes to existing programs, including Federal statutory or
regulatory authority.
6. Domestic Preparedness Programs. The National Office should
direct the coordination of Federal programs designed to assist response
entities at the local and State levels, especially in the areas of
``crisis'' and ``consequence'' planning, training, exercises, and
equipment programs for combating terrorism. The national strategy that
the National Office should develop-in coordination with State and local
stakeholders-must provide strategic direction and priorities for
programs and activities in each of these areas.
7. Health and Medical Programs. Much remains to be done in the
coordination and enhancement of Federal health and medical programs for
combating terrorism and for coordination among public health officials,
public and private hospitals, pre-hospital emergency medical service
(EMS) entities, and the emergency management communities. The National
Office should provide direction for the establishment of national
education programs for the health and medical disciplines, for the
development of national standards for health and medical response to
terrorism, and for clarifying various legal and regulatory authority
for health and medical response.
8. Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E), and
National Standards. The National Office should have the responsibility
for coordinating programs in these two areas. The national strategy
should provide direction and priorities for RDT&E for combating
terrorism. We believe that the Federal government has primary
responsibility for combating terrorism RDT&E. Moreover, we have
essentially no nationally recognized standards in such areas as
personal protective equipment, detection equipment, and laboratory
protocols and techniques.
9. Clearinghouse Function. We recommended that the National Office
for Combating Terrorism serve as the information clearinghouse and
central Federal point of contact for State and local entities. It is
difficult for local jurisdictions and State agencies, even those with
experience in complex Federal programs, to navigate the maze of the
Federal structure. The National Office for Combating Terrorism should
assume that role and serve as the ``one-stop shop'' for providing
advice and assistance on Federal programs for training, planning,
exercises, equipment, reporting, and other information of value to
local and State entities.
STRUCTURE AND AUTHORITY
1. Political Accountability and Responsibility. The person
designated as the focal point for developing a national strategy and
for coordinating Federal programs for combating terrorism must have
political accountability and responsibility. That person should be
vested with sufficient authority to accomplish the purposes for which
the office is created and should be the senior point of contact of the
Executive Branch with the Congress. For these reasons, we recommended
that the President appoint and the Senate confirm the Director of the
National Office for Combating Terrorism, who should serve in a
``cabinet-level'' position.
2. Program and Budget Authority. The National Office for Combating
Terrorism should have sufficient budget authority and programmatic
oversight to influence the resource allocation process and ensure
program compatibility. That authority should include the responsibility
to conduct a full review of Federal agency programs and budgets, to
ensure compliance with the programmatic and funding priorities
established in the approved national strategy, and to eliminate
conflicts and unnecessary duplication among agencies. That authority
should also include a structured certification/decertification process
to formally ``decertify'' all or part of an agency's budget as
noncompliant with the national strategy. A decertification would
require the agency to revise its budget to make it compliant or,
alternatively, to allow the agency head to appeal the decertification
decision to the President. This limited authority would not give the
Director of the National Office the power to ``veto'' all or part of
any agency's budget, or the authority to redirect funds within an
agency or among agencies.
3. Multidisciplinary Staffing. The National Office for Combating
Terrorism should have full-time multidisciplinary expertise, with
representation from each of the Federal agencies with responsibilities
for combating terrorism, and with resident State and local expertise.
For programs with a domestic focus, the National Office for Combating
Terrorism must have sufficient resources to employ persons with State
and local expertise and from each of the response disciplines.
4. No Operational Control. While the National Office for Combating
Terrorism should be vested with specific program coordination and
budget authority, it is not our intention that it have ``operational''
control over various Federal agency activities. We recommended that the
National Office for Combating Terrorism not be ``in charge'' of
response operations in the event of a terrorist attack. The National
Office should provide a coordinating function and disseminate
intelligence and other critical information. Mr. Chairman, I should
note at this point that the word ``czar'' is inappropriate to describe
this office. The Director of this office should not be empowered to
order any Federal agency to undertake any specific activity. With few
exceptions, we recommended that existing programs remain in the
agencies in which they currently reside. One notable exception will be
the functions of the National Domestic Preparedness Office (NDPO),
currently housed in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The new office
should subsume all of the intended functions of the NDPO-coordination,
information clearinghouse, advice and assistance to State and local
entities. The National Office for Combating Terrorism should also
assume many of the interagency coordination functions currently managed
by the National Security Council office of the National Coordinator for
Security, Counterterrorism, and Infrastructure Protection. For example,
the responsibility for coordination of certain functions related to
combating terrorism-Assistance to State and Local Authorities, Research
and Development, Contingency Planning and Exercises, and Legislative
and Legal Issues, among others-will devolve to the National Office for
Combating Terrorism. We also recommended that the National Office for
Combating Terrorism absorb certain entities as adjuncts to its office,
such as the Interagency Board for Equipment Standardization and
InterOperability.
5. Advisory Board for Domestic Programs. To assist in providing
broad strategic guidance and to serve as part of the approval process
for the domestic portion of strategy, plans, and programs of the
National Office for Combating Terrorism, we recommended the
establishment of a national ``Advisory Board for Domestic Programs.''
That Board should include one or more sitting State governors, mayors
of several U.S. cities, the heads of several major professional
organizations, and a few nationally recognized terrorism subject matter
experts, as well as senior officials from relevant Federal agencies.
The President and the Congress should each appoint members to this
board.
ALTERNATIVES CONSIDERED
Mr. Chairman, the members of the Advisory Panel considered a number
of alternatives to our recommendation for a National Office of the type
that I have described, before coming to the unanimous conclusion that
the path we chose was by far the best of the alternatives. Among others
considered by the panel was a new Deputy Attorney General, an
``enhanced'' Federal Emergency Management Agency, the possibility of
some other Federal agency, or simply trying to improve upon the status
quo. I will be pleased to answer questions from Members about our
rationale for discounting those alternatives.
CONGRESSIONAL ISSUES
``The Congress shares responsibility for the inadequate coordination of
programs to combat terrorism; it should consolidate its
authority over programs for combating terrorism into a Special
Committee for Combating Terrorism--either a joint committee
between the Houses or separate committees in each House--and
Congressional leadership should instruct all other committees
to respect the authority of this new committee and to conform
strictly to authorizing legislation.''
The Congress's strong interest in, and commitment to, U.S. efforts
to combat terrorism is readily apparent. The Congress took the
initiative in 1995 to improve the nation's domestic preparedness
against terrorism. But the Congress has also contributed to the
Executive Branch's problems. Over the past five years, there have been
a halfdozen Congressional attempts to reorganize the Executive Branch's
efforts to combat terrorism, all of which failed. None enjoyed the
support of the Executive Branch. At least 11 full committees in the
Senate and 14 full committees in the House--as well as their numerous
subcommittees--claim oversight or some responsibility for various U.S.
Programs for combating terrorism. Earmarks in appropriations bills
created many of the Federal government's specific domestic preparedness
programs without authorizing legislation or oversight. The rapidly
growing U.S. budget for combating terrorism is now laced with such
earmarks, which have proliferated in the absence of an Executive Branch
strategy. The Executive Branch cannot successfully coordinate its
programs for combating terrorism alone. Congress must better organize
itself and exercise much greater discipline.
The creation of a new joint committee or separate committees in
each House is necessary to improve the nation's efforts to fight
terrorism. The committee should have a substantial standing staff. The
new National Office for Combating Terrorism must establish a close
working relationship with the committee, and propose comprehensive and
coherent programs and budget requests in support of the new national
strategy. The new joint or separate committee should have the authority
to dispose of the Executive Branch request and to oversee the execution
of programs that it authorizes. For this to work, other Congressional
authorizing committees with an interest in programs for combating
terrorism must recognize the concurrent, consolidated authority of the
joint or separate committee; and relevant appropriations committees
must exercise restraint and respect the authorizing legislation of the
new structure. We recognize that this task is no less daunting than the
Executive Branch reorganization that we propose above, but it is no
less needed.
SPECIFIC FUNCTIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS
The focus of the Advisory Panel continues to be on the needs of
local and State response entities. ``Local'' response entities--law
enforcement, fire service, emergency medical technicians, hospital
emergency personnel, public health officials, and emergency managers--
will always be the ``first response,'' and conceivably the only
response. When entities at various levels of government are engaged,
the responsibilities of all entities and lines of authority must be
clear.
1. Collecting Intelligence, Assessing Threats, and Sharing
Information. The National Office for Combating Terrorism should foster
the development of a consolidated all-source analysis and assessment
capability that would provide various response entities as well as
policymakers with continuing analysis of potential threats and broad
threat assessment input into the development of the annual national
strategy. That capability should be augmented by improved human
intelligence collection abroad, more effective domestic activities with
a thorough review of various Federal guidelines, and reasonable
restrictions on acquisition of CBRN precursors or equipment. The
National Office should also foster enhancements in measurement and
signature intelligence, forensics, and indications and warning
capabilities. To promote the broadest possible dissemination of useful,
timely (and if necessary, classified) information, the National Office
should also oversee the development and implementation of a protected,
Internet-based single-source web page system, linking appropriate
sources of information and databases on combating terrorism across all
relevant functional disciplines.
2. Operational Coordination. The National Office for Combating
Terrorism should encourage Governors to designate State emergency
management entities as domestic preparedness focal points for
coordination with the Federal government.
The National Office should identify and promote the establishment
of singlesource, ``all hazards'' planning documents, standardized
Incident Command and Unified Command Systems, and other model programs
for use in the full range of emergency contingencies, including
terrorism. Adherence to these systems should become a requirement of
Federal preparedness assistance.
3. Training, Equipping, and Exercising. The National Office for
Combating Terrorism should develop and manage a comprehensive national
plan for Federal assistance to State and local agencies for training
and equipment and the conduct of exercises, including the promulgation
of standards in each area. The National Office should consult closely
with State and local stakeholders in the development of this national
plan. Federal resources to support the plan should be allocated
according to the goals and objectives specified in the national
strategy, with State and local entities also providing resources to
support its implementation.
4. Health and Medical Considerations. The National Office for
Combating Terrorism should reevaluate the current U.S. approach to
providing public health and medical care in response to acts of
terrorism, especially possible mass casualty incidents and most
particularly bioterrorism. The key issues are insufficient education
and training in terrorism-related subjects, minimum capabilities in
surge capacity and in treatment facilities, and clear standards and
protocols for laboratories and other activities, and vaccine programs.
A robust public health infrastructure is necessary to ensure an
effective response to terrorist attacks, especially those involving
biologic agents. After consultation with public health and medical care
entities, the National Office should oversee the establishment of
financial incentives coupled with standards and certification
requirements that will, over time, encourage the health and medical
sector to build and maintain required capabilities. In addition,
Federal, State, and local governments should clarify legal and
regulatory authorities for quarantine, vaccinations, and other
prescriptive measures.
5. Research and Development, and National Standards. The National
Office for Combating Terrorism should establish a clear set of
priorities for research and development for combating terrorism,
including long-range programs. Priorities for targeted research should
be responder personnel protective equipment; medical surveillance,
identification, and forensics; improved sensor and rapid readout
capability; vaccines and antidotes; and communications
interoperability. The National Office must also coordinate the
development of nationally recognized standards for equipment, training,
and laboratory protocols and techniques, with the ultimate objective
being official certification.
6. Providing Cyber Security Against Terrorism. Cyber attacks inside
the United States could have ``mass disruptive,'' even if not ``mass
destructive'' or ``mass casualty'' consequences. During the coming
year, the Advisory Panel will focus on specific aspects of critical
infrastructure protection (CIP), as they relate to the potential for
terrorist attacks. In our discussions thus far, we have identified
several areas for further deliberation, including CIP policy oversight;
standards; alert, warning, and response; liability and other legal
issues, and CIP research. We will make specific policy recommendations
in our next report.
Areas of Agreement and Disagreement with the Report of The National
Commission on Terrorism
Mr. Chairman, the charters and objectives of the Bremer Commission
and the Gilmore Commission are, for the most part, very different. The
Bremer Commission focused on international terrorism. The Gilmore
Commission's clear mandate is on domestic preparedness-deterring,
preventing, and responding to terrorist incidents inside the borders of
the United States.
There are, nevertheless, several overlapping areas of interest
between the two reports and the attendant findings and recommendations.
Both panels agree on the increasing nature of the threat of
international terrorism, including the potential for more attacks from
international groups inside the borders of the United States.
Both panels specifically agree that certain measures must be taken
to improve intelligence collection and dissemination on terrorists,
including:
Repealing the 1995 Director of Central Intelligence Guidelines
as they apply to recruiting terrorist informants
Reviewing and clarifying, as may be indicated, the Attorney
General's Guidelines on Foreign Intelligence Collection and the
Guidelines on General Crime, Racketeering Enterprise, and
Domestic Security/Terrorism Investigations
Directing the Department of Justice Office of Intelligence
Policy and Review not to require a process for initiating
actions under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that
are more stringent than those required by the statute
Both panels agree that significant improvements must be made in the
ability of intelligence and law enforcement agencies to collect,
analyze, disseminate and share intelligence and other information more
effectively.
Both panels agree that there must be a comprehensive strategy or
plan for dealing with terrorism, including the ways in which both the
Executive Branch and the Congress develop and coordinate program and
budget processes.
Both panels agree in principal that the Department of Defense (DoD)
and U.S. Armed Forces may have a major role in preventing or responding
to a terrorist attack, especially one involving a chemical, biological,
radiological or nuclear device. We likewise strongly agree that
insufficient planning, coordination, training, and exercises have been
developed and implemented for the possibility of major DoD and military
involvement. The one area in which we disagree has to do with ``lead
agency.'' The Bremer Commission suggests that a response to a
catastrophic attack may indicate the designation of DoD as Lead Agency.
While we agree that DoD may have a major role, we firmly believe that
the military must always be directly under civilian control. As a
result, we recommend that the President always designate a Federal
civilian agency other than the Department of Defense (DoD) as the Lead
Federal Agency. Many Americans will not draw the technical distinction
between the Department of Defense-the civilian entity-and the U.S.
Armed Forces-the military entity. Although the Department of Defense
and every major component of that department have civilian leaders, the
perception will likely be that ``the military'' is in the lead. This
recommendation does not ignore the fact that the DoD, through all of
its various agencies-not just the Armed Forces-has enormous resources
and significant capabilities for command, control, communications,
intelligence, logistics, engineer, and medical support and may play a
major role in response to a terrorist attack, especially one with
potentially catastrophic consequences. Those resources can still be
brought to bear but should, in our view, always be subordinated to
another civilian agency.
Summary
Mr. Chairman and Members of the subcommittee, the members of the
Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism
Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction are convinced that the essence of
its recommendations are essential to the national effort to combat
terrorism: the promulgation of a truly national strategy; the
appointment of a senior person at the Federal level who has the
responsibilityimportantly, who can be seen as having the
responsibility-for coordinating our national efforts; improvements in
the way Congress addresses this issues; and the implementation of the
functional recommendations dealing with:
improving intelligence, threats assessments, and information
sharing;
better planning, coordination and operations;
enhanced training, equipping, and exercising;
improving health and medical capabilities;
promoting better research and development and developing
national standards;
enhancing efforts to counter agroterrorism; and
improving cyber security against terrorism.
With the exception of the one dissent on the issue of a lead role
for the military, our recommendations are as firmly unanimous as we
believe that they are reasonable and specific.
This is not a partisan political issue. It is one that goes to the
very heart of public safety and the American way of life. We have
members on our panel who identify with each of the major national
political parties, and represent views across the entire political
spectrum. We urge Members on both sides of the aisle, in both Houses of
the Congress, to work with the Executive Branch to bring some order to
this process and to provide some national leadership and direction to
address this critical issue. Thank you again for this opportunity.
Chairman Kyl. Thank you very much, General. There is so
much that we will get into as we pull pieces out of your report
that we think might help us to legislate in the area.
Let me first of all address something that you said because
I think it is recognized by all of us here in Congress. We have
talked about it, that our failure to organize Congress in a
coherent and focused way on the problem is somewhat a mirror
image of our view that the administration hasn't focused very
well either.
It might be the fact that we have the same kind of
operational issues; that is to say, our appropriations people
are the operational group for funding. The Judiciary Committee,
of which this is a subset, is the operational group with
respect to changing the law and evidentiary gathering or
sharing, and so on. The Intelligence Committee, of which I am a
member, has certain other operational functions.
However, that isn't to suggest that we couldn't create a
select Committee along the lines of the Intelligence Committee
which would pluck people from each of those operational
committees to provide the same kind of oversight that you are
suggesting would be appropriate at the executive level, and I
think that is something that we are going to try to pursue.
Let me just ask you this general question to begin. When
people think of trying to prepare for terrorism, we divide the
issue into two parts; No. 1, preventing it, the intelligence-
gathering, the other kinds of things that we will talk a little
bit more about, and then the aftermath, the response.
As to that second aspect of it, there seems to be a sense,
at least in the people that I have talked to, that while it is
inevitable that there will be terrorist actions here in the
United States, and while we can generally try to prepare at
least the first responders in our largest communities on how
basically to respond to these kinds of emergencies and perhaps
even given them some equipment that would be unique to the
kinds of challenges they might fact, the reality is that the
country is so big, the opportunities so great in so many
different places that it would be impossible to adequately
prepare in every potential community for every potential
threat. Therefore, there seems to be just sort of a general
throwing up of the arms of what can we really do.
How do you respond to that sense of almost a sense that we
really can't do much about it if, in fact, the terrorist event
occurs, except to have some general agency in Washington that
would direct the response of the local entities to the extent
they needed help?
General Clapper. Well, sir, I think there are capabilities
already resident in the Government which can be embellished,
coordinated better, where we can be certainly in a better
posture to respond. I think more can be done from an
intelligence perspective in the context of prevention.
A lot of great work is going on as we speak. I think the
CIA and the FBI--I discussed this earlier today--have made
giant strides in their recognition of the fact that the
jurisdictional boundaries are not always respected by
terrorists.
If, in fact, our ability to detect and preempt an attack
fail, then I think there is more that can be done to respond.
What we have in mind here are exercises, training, equipment,
standards, medical coordination. There is a lot of just sort of
grunt work that if the commitment is made to do it could be
done which would put us in a better posture to respond.
To say that if we spend ``x'' billions of dollars or take
some sort of administrative action, that that will provide an
iron-clad guarantee to the citizenry that we will never be
confronted with a terrorist attack is obviously unrealistic.
But we can certainly do more to posture ourselves to detect the
potential for terrorism, acknowledging the fact that in the
context of terrorism we are always going to be dealing with
ambiguous intelligence, but also be prepared to respond.
Now, the reason this is important, in my view, is because
if we do that, that in itself serves as a form of deterrence.
If we have a capability after the fact, for example, the
forensic capability to determine a return address, to use the
phrase, of a terrorist and the terrorist knows that and that we
will, if we determine who did it, reach out and touch, that has
a very compelling message and, as I say, serves as a deterrent.
So I think there are things we can do to put ourselves in a
better posture, but to say that that will ensure that we are
never attacked, no, sir, we can't do that.
Chairman Kyl. Well, I think there is--I don't want to use
the word a sense of fatalism, which is what I started to say
before, but a sense that while you can train to a certain level
to respond, once it has gotten to that point our abilities are
significantly limited. That is why I tend to focus, plus the
fact that this committee's jurisdiction is more focused on the
prevention side, the intelligence-gathering, the intelligence-
sharing, and so on.
I would like to get to some of your recommendations with
respect to sharing of intelligence which you just alluded to
between the FBI and the CIA. In this country, of course, the
FBI is much more limited in what it can do than the CIA would
be in gathering intelligence abroad, for example, and that puts
some limits on what the FBI feels it can share, particularly if
it has got an ongoing investigation in terms of what it can
share with the CIA or with other agencies.
Would you speak to that and the recommendations of the
panel?
General Clapper. Well, sir, I don't know that I have
anything new and profound and dramatic, other than to endorse
what is already going on. An example is the formation and
organization of the Counterterrorism Center, which is an
intelligence community entity which involves all the
intelligence community agencies, to include the FBI, which is a
structural mechanism to ensure visibility and coordination
between and among the intelligence agencies.
The important thing to me is that I think we have to be
mindful and sensitive to the legal boundaries between the
purview of the FBI in collecting domestic intelligence and the
purview of the intelligence community in collecting and using
foreign intelligence, and the relationship of those two
activities as it applies to protection of our civil liberties,
et cetera.
So I think those sensitivities have to be attended to, but
at the same time we need to ensure that the information baton
is not dropped as it is handed off in the case of terrorism
which originates overseas from a foreign source but is reaching
out and touching us domestically in the United States. I think
the mechanisms and the structures and organizations and the
processes that the FBI and CIA have come up with go a long way
toward doing that.
An issue where I think we can improve is in the area of
dissemination. I think there are mechanisms that we can
establish whereby certain State and local officials in certain
conditions should be afforded access to any of this
intelligence if it affects their jurisdiction.
In my active duty days as an intelligence officer, I was
involved in or presided over many, many intelligence exchanges
with our friends and allies. It seems to me if we can build
mechanisms to do that, we can certainly build mechanisms
whereby intelligence can flow to, say, State Governors or the
senior emergency planner in each State or other senior fire,
rescue, et cetera, people who need to have access to that kind
of information. Now, if that entails some sort of a special
classification system or whatever, then that is fine. We should
do that. We have it within our capability and it is strictly
essentially a policy issue.
Another thing I have been a proponent of is capitalizing on
a system I think you may be familiar with, sir, in the
intelligence community called InteLink, which is roughly
analogous to the intelligence community's very own internet. I
have been a proponent for exporting this same kind of thing to
the so-called first responder community on a selected
capability.
One of the recurrent themes that we have heard in our
dialogs with State and local people over the last couple of
years is a hunger or thirst or requirement for threat
information, and we have made some recommendations on how we
think that can be effected. So I think in the areas of
coordination between the two agencies, focusing more on the
analytic capability, and most importantly of all, I think, is
disseminating information, where appropriate, to selected State
and local officials.
Chairman Kyl. Let me just ask you two more questions here,
both related to that. Last year, Senator Feinstein and I both
cosponsored a bill that would have clarified current law
regarding the ability of the FBI and the Justice Department to
share certain criminal wiretap information pertaining to
terrorism with the CIA and other Government agencies.
Did the Commission discover any instances where law
enforcement information was not shared due to legal
interpretations about the FBI and Justice Department's ability
to share information with other Government agencies?
General Clapper. Sir, I can't off the top of my head come
up with specific cases in point. I will tell you, though, that
we heard in the case of the application of the FISA law where
it was the feeling of some that although the requests for FISA
authorizations were not turned down, the bar was set pretty
high for them to even be entered into in the first place. That
is the genesis of the recommendation that I mentioned earlier
in my oral statement about not going beyond the provisions of
what is in the statute.
I might also comment on the DCI guidelines that were
promulgated in about the 1995 timeframe. I was a member of the
Downing Assessment Task Force that investigated the Khobar
Towers bombing in 1996, which parenthetically was an epiphany
experience for in terms of when I actually got religion about
terrorism and what it can do.
I discovered a whole host of both administrative and
legislatively derived restrictions and rules on the kinds of
people who can be recruited to collect information. Each one of
these is well-intended and probably came out of some abuse, at
least as viewed by some, of engaging some nefarious person to
collect information on nefarious activities.
The impact, though, on the collector force, if I could call
it that, is kind of chilling because of this litany of
restrictions that apply to the collection of foreign
intelligence. So the set of recommendations we made about
looking at all these rules and regulations as they pertain to
the collection of information on terrorism--both we and other
panels, particularly Ambassador's panel, have strongly urged
review and in some cases relaxation of some of these
strictures.
Chairman Kyl. Let me just follow up with a question on that
precise point. Former Director Woolsey, a member of that panel,
drew the distinction between recruitment of agents against
another government and recruitment of agents or sources with
respect to terrorism. That commission didn't recommend a
relaxation of the standards as opposed to recruitment against
another government, but with respect to terrorism made the
point that you are dealing with, by definition, a group of
people who have nefarious backgrounds and those restrictions
should be relaxed.
Do you generally concur with that personally and is that
the view of the panel?
General Clapper. Yes, sir, I do, and it is the view of the
panel. I would cartoon this a little bit, but I have said in
other fora that if you want to restrict yourself to the likes
of Mother Teresa and that is who you are going to recruit
information from, then that will certainly shape the kind of
information you get.
We have to be prepared to deal with very nasty, nefarious
people who by definition do bad things. And if we want to have
any hope of gaining insight into what they are doing, then we
are going to have to take the risk that we will, in fact,
engage with some pretty nasty people. So the short answer is
yes.
Chairman Kyl. Did your panel acquire any information which
would be useful to share with us in a closed setting, any
specific examples or specific conversations with people that
would be useful to us that we could talk about?
General Clapper. Yes, sir, we could, and I would recommend,
to take advantage of this dual membership of Ambassador Jerry
Bremer, that he would be involved in those discussions.
Chairman Kyl. I think we would like to call upon you to get
your advice on that because when Senator Feinstein and I put
together our bill at the end of last year, we originally had
that recommendation in the bill and due to opposition from at
least one member of this committee, that provision was dropped.
So I think we need to hone in on that.
There is a lot more I could get into, but I really want to
hear from our second panel, as well, and I don't know when we
are going to be having the next vote. So let me offer an
opportunity for you to add anything else you would like to add
in writing. We will leave the time of this hearing open for,
say, 3 days should you want to do that or should any member of
the Subcommittee wish to ask you a question and have you
respond to it.
I really appreciate your testimony here, and we will be
looking forward to getting back with you and Governor Gilmore
when we begin to put our legislation together.
Thank you very much, General Clapper.
General Clapper. Thank you, sir.
Chairman Kyl. Let me ask our second panel if they would
please come forward.
As I said earlier, our second panel is made up of
distinguished scholars: Dr. Anthony Cordesman, of the Center
for Strategic and International Studies, and Dr. Yonah
Alexander, of the Potomac Institute.
Both of you gentlemen bring a wealth of expertise on the
subject of terrorism and I personally thank you very much for
your willingness to appear before the subcommittee.
Dr. Cordesman, let's begin with you. As I indicated
earlier, we will make your prepared remarks a part of our
record, and if you would like to summarize those remarks
without any time limitation I would be happy to receive that at
this time.
STATEMENT OF ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN, ARLEIGH A. BURKE CHAIR IN
STRATEGY, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Cordesman. Thank you very much, Senator, and I thank
the Subcommittee for the opportunity to testify this afternoon.
I do have some prepared remarks and I appreciate having them
included in the record. I know you have a lot of questions, so
let me begin with a few brief introductory remarks.
In the work that we did on this subject in the CSIS, we
encountered a number of problems that I think you are going to
have to address over the next few years. One was the decoupling
of asymmetric warfare and terrorism. This was much less
apparent in the Department of Defense than in the other
branches of Government, but if you look at the record, you find
again and again the conclusion is drawn that because today's
terrorists are not supported by states, they will not use
biological or nuclear weapons or use advanced technology
effectively in ways which could saturate response capabilities
at the Federal, State, and local level.
But as you mentioned at the beginning of this hearing, we
are also dealing with states like North Korea, Iraq, and Iran,
and there will be more in the future. And I think by sizing so
much of our response effort around terrorists without state
support, we may risk creating a response and intelligence
effort which deals with the wrong threat and perhaps the less
important threat.
This permeates a lot of what goes on in individual civil
agencies. It is striking that we are spending some $11 billion
trying to deal with the threat of counterterrorism on the
record, but when you disaggregate that money, a good $7 billion
of it goes to the physical protection of Federal facilities and
of U.S. military overseas, and the actual budget going into
dealing with counterterrorism is often very limited.
I think one thing that is also striking is the tendency to
freeze our perceptions around today's technology. We do not at
this point in time face a growing threat statistically in terms
of the number of attacks or casualty levels, but we do face a
radical process of technological change.
One aspect of this is attacks on information systems, the
growing vulnerability of a more integrated infrastructure. A
key area is the risk of biotechnology and biological weapons,
which is an area where many countries, and indeed many well-
organized terrorist movements in the future may be able to use
advances in biotechnology or food processing equipment or
pharmaceuticals, to use methods of attack which frankly we are
not even preparing for because the biological threats we deal
with are the ones fundamentally we already understand. We also
face the problem over time that nuclear weapons or nuclear
devices may become more available. We have not really looked at
those risks.
There is another problem that strikes me. It is so easy to
talk about strategy and organization that often we do not look
at the problem of vulnerability. Yet, vulnerability is changing
along with the methods of attack. Our vulnerability in terms of
information systems is one example. Our vulnerabilities in
terms of specific types of biological attack and nuclear attack
is another.
We tend to warn in very broad, generic terms about methods
of attack, but our data on weapons effects often date back to
the early 1970's. In some cases like biological weapons, I can
recognize them because I was then the DRPA program manager for
biological weapons, and it is very disturbing to see them
repeated some 30 years later when at least then we knew how
uncertain and unreliable many of these data were. If we tailor
our response around that kind of planning, we risk providing
the wrong templates and the wrong models at the Federal, State,
and local level.
Last, let me make a point based, I think, on all too much
experience in Washington. I think you yourself can remember
previous calls for strategy and legislation that we needed to
have a national strategy document, and that there should be a
Department of Defense strategy document. Well, those documents
are issued every year. No one knows what they mean, no one uses
them, no one can figure out what their impact is on a single
program or a single area of our budget. We have had a drug
czar, and whether or not that has really shaped effective
programs is, to put it mildly, debatable.
The point I would raise in closing is this: Unless you
really concern yourself about developing effective future-year
programs, program budgets, clear ways to assess the
effectiveness of programs in intelligence, defense, and
response, both in terms of foreign intelligence and the fusion
of law enforcement, we risk doing what we always do in
Washington. We mandate another strategy document; we put
someone in charge of something or we create at least a new
office somewhere in the Federal Government. And 2 years later,
none of us can figure out what we accomplished.
The old routine in Washington that you have to follow the
money is just as important in intelligence, counterterrorism,
and dealing with weapons of mass destruction as it is in any
other area.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cordesman follows:]
Statement of Anthony H. Cordesman, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy,
Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C.
``Terrorism'' is a topic that arouses so much fear and revulsion
that there is a natural tendency to ``cry wolf,'' and to confuse the
potential threat with one that is actually occurring. Similarly, any
discussion of the new threats posed by weapons of mass destruction and
information warfare involves threats that are so serious that there is
an equal tendency to respond like Chicken Little and worry that the sky
is falling.
This scarcely means we should not be worried about terrorism. The
potential threats to our society are all too real. Democratic societies
are inherently vulnerable. They place few controls over their borders,
their citizens, or foreigners who have actually entered their
territory. This is particularly true of the US, and there are many
vulnerable points in our social structure and economy that foreign
governments and extremist movements, domestic extremists and the
mentally ill can attack.
There equally are good reasons to be increasingly concerned about
new forms of asymmetric warfare and terrorism, and the use of new and
more lethal forms of technology.
Yet, there are equally good reasons to be careful about
exaggerating the threat, and being careless about the way we define it.
We can improve intelligence, defense, and response in many ways. We can
anticipate future risks, even if we cannot predict the future. We do,
however, have limited resources and competing priorities, and we face
daunting uncertainties about the nature of the problem terrorism poses
to our security.
Crying Wolf Meets Chicken Little
It is not easy to characterize the threat - at least in
unclassified terms. There are grave weaknesses and shortcomings in the
statistics that the US government makes publicly available on
terrorism. We do not have an adequate picture of the number, type, and
seriousness of domestic incidents, and it is often difficult to
separate out criminal activity, threats, actual action by domestic
terrorists, and the actions of mentally disturbed individuals.
The data the US government publishes on international terrorist
activity also has many defects. Much of it is highly over-aggregated,
and does not provided anything approaching sophisticated pattern
analysis. We stress international terrorism, but ignore largely foreign
domestic violence that may generate terrorism in the future. We tend to
demonize known terrorist groups, but ignore or underplay the capability
of foreign states to conduct covert operations or use proxies to do so.
We exaggerate the existence of foreign networks, such as Usama Bin
Ladin, and understate the risk that individual terrorist elements may
lash out against us in ways we do not expect. Much of our analysis is
grossly ethnocentric: It assumes that we are the key target of attacks
which generally grow out of theater tensions and conflicts where we
become a target--if at all--because of our ties to allies and
peacekeeping missions.
The fact is, however, that if one looks at the recent patterns in
terrorism, the US is no more subject to such attacks today--whether
measured in numbers of incidents or casualties--than in the past. The
net threat also remains a small one in actuarial terms. The word
``terrorism'' may trigger a great emotional reaction, but actual
casualties and losses are almost actuarially insignificant. Far more
people die of traffic accidents on a bad weekend than dies annually of
terrorism.
The idea that the end of the Cold War has somehow created a more
unstable and violent world is a myth. The world is, has always been,
and will remain a violent place. According to the Department of
Defense, there have been some 20-30 serious regional conflicts and
civil wars going on every day of every year since the end of World War
II. We did indeed relate many of these conflicts to the Cold War while
it was going on, but in truth, most such conflicts dragged in the
superpowers and were not caused by them.
With the exception of the Balkans, we do not see new major regional
patterns of violence we can relate to the Cold War. In fact, the end of
the Cold War has simply allowed us to focus on the broad realities of
ongoing global violence rather than a single threat.
We need to be equally careful about exaggerating the new trends in
technological vulnerability. Some of these trends are very real, but
our critical infrastructure has always been vulnerable. Nature and
chance have shown that repeatedly, and studies done back in the 1950s
and 1960s showed how limited attacks--then postulated to be by
attackers like the Soviet Spetsnaz--could cripple our utilities,
paralyze critical military installations, or destroy our continuity of
government. We have always been vulnerable to a truly well-organized
terrorist or covert attack.
The fact that there are real wolves in the world, and that the sky
can fall--at least--to the extent that far more serious damage is
possible than we have ever suffered from in the past--is not a reason
to cry wolf or play the role of chicken little.
The Changing Face of Terrorism and Technology
In saying this, I am all too well aware that no victim of
terrorism, or their loved ones, are going to be consoled by the fact
that they are a relatively small statistic. The political symbolism of
successful terrorist attacks is also often far greater than the
casualties, and even an empty threat can help to undermine the fabric
of social trust upon which our democracy is based.
Equally important, the fact we have not yet encountered an attack
in the US as serious as the strikes on our Embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania, or as potentially threatening as Aum Shinrikyo, is in no way
a guarantee for the future. Rather than exaggerate current threats, we
need to be very conscious of the fact that the nature and seriousness
of the threat can change suddenly and with little warning.
Let me give some specific examples:
At present the US government focuses most of its intelligence
analysis, defense planning and response, around a relatively
narrow definition of terrorism. It focuses on independent
terrorist groups, and not on the threat states can pose in
asymmetric warfare. Yet, it is states that have the most access
to weapons of mass destruction--particularly biological and
nuclear weapons--and which have the most capability to launch
sophistication attacks on our information systems.
We face current potential threats from nations like Iran, Iraq,
Libya, and North Korea. We can face new threats as a result of our
regional alliances and commitments every time a major conflict, crisis,
or peace-keeping activity takes place.
Acts can come in the context of over asymmetric warfare, covert
state-launched attacks, or the use of terrorist and extremist groups as
proxies. Attacks can be made on our allies, our forces and facilities
overseas, on US economic interests, or on our own territory. They can
involve attackers with very different values, escalation ladders and
perceptions and who lash out in a crisis.
This is also one area where the world has really changed since the
end of the Cold War. We have always been a natural target because of
the sheer scale of our global commitments and interest. Now, however,
there is no Soviet Union our potential opponents can turn to, and they
have no way of offsetting our advantage in conventional warfare.
We need to bridge the gap between the way in which the US
government prepares for asymmetric warfare and to deal with the threat
of terrorism--not only in terms of intelligence analysis, but our
defense and response planning for Homeland Defense. We also must
include intelligence analysis of capabilities and not just intentions.
History shows us that the fact that foreign countries and leaders are
deterred, or show restraint today, is no guarantee they will behave the
same way under crisis conditions.
We need to ensure the effective fusion of intelligence community
efforts, military planning, and civil defense and response planning. We
should not leave any gap where the Department of Defense seriously
plans for large-scale nuclear and biological attacks and civil
Departments and Agencies focus on relatively lowlevel conventional
explosives and limited chemical attacks.
We need to be equally careful not to compartment our analysis of
information warfare so that the Department worries about true
information warfare while civil departments and agencies worry about
hacking and cracking at much lower levels of threat.
Finally, we need to consider the full implications of our call for
missile defense, and of our counterproliferation activities. The more
we succeed in blocking overt threats, the more we will drive states
towards finding alternative means of attack. It makes little sense to
close the barn door and leave the windows open.
We need to focus on key areas of technological change. We cannot
yet predict what technical capabilities hostile states, extremists and
movements will acquire over the next 15-25 years. We can, however,
predict that there are several major areas of technological change that
can radically alter the effectiveness of asymmetric and terrorist
attacks and which require care attention from the intelligence
community:
The vulnerability of our critical infrastructure is changing:
Our financial systems, communications systems, utilities, and
transportation nets are far more tightly integrated than in the
past, and we rely far more on national and regional systems,
rather than large autonomous local ones. This reduces
vulnerability in some ways, but increases vulnerability in
others. Systems netting and integration involves shifts in
technology that need careful examination.
Information systems create new vulnerabilities: It is all too
possible to grossly over-exaggerate our dependency on
information systems, their vulnerability, and the difficulty in
finding work-grounds, and reconstituting critical systems. Many
statements are being made that have no real analytic
underpinning and the importance of given systems is poorly
researched. The Internet, in particular, is being glamorized to
the point of absurdity. Nevertheless, information systems have
become part of our critical infrastructure, and virtually
invisible cyberattacks may prove to be more lethal in some
cases than high explosives. New physical methods of attack,
such as EMP weapons, may also be becoming more practical.
Chemical weapons and toxins are changing: It is impossible to
discuss fourth generation chemical weapons in an unclassified
forum, but the threat has been openly raised by Department of
Defense officials. The technology and equipment for older types
of chemical weapons is also proliferating at a civil level and
becoming steadily more available to governments, extremist
movements, and individuals.
Biological weapons are changing: It has been possible to make
dry storable biological weapons with nuclear lethality since at
least the late 1950s. Advances in biotechnology, food
processing equipment, pharmaceuticals, and other dual-use
facilities and technologies are also proliferating at a civil
level and becoming steadily more available to governments,
extremist movements, and individuals. These problems are
compound by the rapid spread of expertise and equipment for
genetic engineering. The end result is that the technology of
attacks on humans, livestock, and crops is becoming steadily
more available, and in forms which not only can be extremely
lethal and/or costly, but difficult to attribute to a given
attacker.
The availability of nuclear weapons may change: It is far too
soon to say that broad changes are taking place in the nuclear
threat. Nevertheless, the break up of the FSU, and
proliferation in India and Pakistan, does create a growing risk
that fissile material may become more available for ``dirty''
and low yield weapons, and the knowledge of how to make crude
nuclear devices, handle the high explosives, provide neutron
initiators, and deal with the complex triggering problems is
also spreading.
The risk from radiological weapons may change: Radiological
weapons have not been particularly attractive options in the
past. There is, however, a steadily growing mass of nuclear
waste, and some studies indicate that the long-term genetic
effects of such weapons may be more serious than their short-
term effects.
The ability to exploit the media and psychological dimension
of new technologies has grown: Far more is involved than body
counts, physical damage, and economic loss. Even the most
limited CBRN or information attack on the US or US targets has
great political and psychological impact both within the US and
overseas. The spread of mass communications, and use of tools
like the Internet and Satellite TV, also increases the impact
of attacks. It is all too easy to exaggerate today's threat in
each of these areas, but it is equally easy to exaggerate the
difficulties that individual terrorist movements and extremists
now face in using such technologies. There is a clear need to
examine how states can use such weapons covertly or through
proxies, and forecast how widely spread each of these threats
is likely to become in the future.
We need to reexamine the problem of vulnerability. We cannot hope
to accurate predict our attacker or their means of attack, but we can
do much to improve our analysis of vulnerability and shape our
intelligence and planning effort around the need to detect threats to
our greatest vulnerabilities. To be specific, there are several areas
of vulnerability that need special attention:
We need to conduct and systematically update our analysis of
the vulnerability of our critical infrastructure, including
financial systems, information systems, communications systems,
utilities, and transportation nets and make sure our
intelligence can focus on potential threats.
We need to reexamine our vulnerability to the chemical threat
in the light of fourth generation weapons, and the growing ease
with which states, extremists, and terrorists can obtain them.
We need to rethink the risk of biological attack: We need to
look beyond the risk of the limited use of crude, long-known
weapons and toxins, and assess the extent to which genetic
weapons are increasing our vulnerabilities. We also need to
look beyond single agent non-infectious attacks on human
beings, and consider multiple agent attacks, infectious
attacks, and/or attacks on our agriculture.
We need to reconsider the cumulative risk of covert or
terrorist nuclear attack: It still seems unlikely that any
state or terrorist movement could both acquire a nuclear device
in the near future, and be willing to take the risk of using
it. The cumulative risk over time, however, is sufficiently
great to justify more analysis of our key vulnerabilities.
It is important to note that the US intelligence community and
Department of Defense is already addressing many of these issues, as is
the National Security Council and a broader federal Homeland defense
effort. At the same time, these are all areas where Congressional
oversight can play a major role in assessing the quality of the
intelligence effort and the broader effort within the Executive Branch.
other problems in intelligence
Let me close with several comments focused on the problem of
intelligence coverage of terrorism and asymmetric warfare. It has been
some years since I was directly involved in intelligence planning and
assessment, but there are some things that never seem to change:
It is far easier to call for strategic warning than to get it,
or get policymakers to, act on it of they do receive it. We can
always improve our analysis of warning indicators. In fact, the
intelligence community does this all the time. We cannot,
however, count on any method of analysis sorting through the
constant ``noise level'' in these indicators and providing
reliable probability analysis or warning. Furthermore, we
cannot count on policymakers reacting.
We should improve our analysis, but no system of warning,
defense, and response can rely on strategic warning. Moreover,
it is my impression that even when the intelligence community
does make improvements, decision-makers choose to ignore
unpopular or expensive warning or demand that the community
free them from the burden of ambiguity and uncertainty.
It is always easy for decision-makers to demand prophecy and
attack intelligence analysis when they don't get it. This may
explain why there are so many calls for improved strategic
warning and so few calls for improved decision-maker response.
It is far easier to call for better HUMINT than it is to get
it. I have listened to three decades of calls for improved
human intelligence. In practice, however, it remains as
underfunded as ever, and partly because it is so difficult to
make cost-effective investments and to be sure they pay off.
Far too often, successes are matters of chance and not of the
scale of effort.
Yes, we should improve HUMINT--where we can show there is a
feasible plan and a cost-effective path for success. However,
calling for improved HUMINT all too often is both a confession
of the severe limits of National Technical Means and a
substitute for serious planning and effort.
New intelligence toys are not new systems, and systems always
have limitations. The other side of this coin is that we
probably face growing limitations in our imagery and signals
intelligence capabilities in many of the areas that affect our
vulnerability to asymmetric warfare and terrorism. These are
not a problem that should be addressed in open testimony, nor
can I claim that my background in these issues is up-to-date.
However, it is far from clear that some of the extremely
expensive improvements we plan in National Technical Means will
really pay off in the areas we are discussing today, or that
some of the new tactical detectors and sensors being developed
are integrated into effective systems. There may well be a need
for independent net intelligence assessment of our probable
future capabilities in these areas.
We need more focus on weaponization, weapons effects, and
different kinds of vulnerability. Proliferation and changes in
information warfare are creating major new challenges in how
the community should assess the weapons available to state and
extremist actors. This is particularly true of biotechnology
and information warfare, but it also involves the risk of
``dirty,'' unsafe, and unpredictable nuclear weapons. Most
weapons effects analysis is badly dated, and related to use
against military targets. Weaponization analysis often does not
address the acute uncertainty that may occur in weapons
effects, and most vulnerability analysis is now dated. The
technical issues of what attackers can , really do, the problem
intelligence may face in characterizing their resources, and
the risk of combinations of new methods of attack--combining
information systems and CBRN attacks, cocktails of biological
weapons, etc. needs more attention.
We need an effective bridge between foreign intelligence and
law enforcement that responds to the scale of the emergency. We
now have a wide range of barriers between foreign intelligence
collection, surveillance of US citizens and activities within
the US, military operations, and law enforcement activities. In
general, these involve useful and necessary protections of
American civil liberties. If, however, the threat rises to the
level of a tangible risk an attack may use effective biological
weapons, use nuclear weapons, or cripple our critical
infrastructure, we need some way to react to a true national
emergency that eliminates as many of these barriers as
possible, and which does so at the state and local level and
not just the federal one. We have long talked about the need
for the ``fusion'' of intelligence and operations in
warfighting. We may well face a similar need in Homeland
defense, and the ``fusion'' of foreign intelligence and law
enforcement activity will be critical.
One final point. Whenever new threats emerge, there is a natural
tendency to call for new organizations, czars, and interagency
structures. It is far easier to say that a new organization is needed
than to get into the nitty gritty of actually having to improve
existing capabilities or develop new ones. A set of problems involving
this many uncertainties and new skills may or may not require new
federal organizations, and new organizations within the intelligence
community,
Ultimately, however, what improving our capability to deal with
terrorism and asymmetric warfare requires most is resources and
improving collection, analysis, and fusion at sophisticated technical
levels. The real issue is one of how to improve depth, give the
community the right perspective, and how to improve ``quality,'' and
not how to change organization or leadership. This requires both
serious planning and a serious program and supporting budget. Changing
the name on the door is almost mindlessly easy, but changing the
capability within is what counts.
Chairman Kyl. Thank you very much.
Dr. Alexander?
STATEMENT OF YONAH ALEXANDER, SENIOR FELLOW AND DIRECTOR,
INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR TERRORISM STUDIES, POTOMAC INSTITUTE
FOR POLICY STUDIES, ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA
Mr. Alexander. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the
opportunity to appear today before this subcommittee. My only
regret is that I don't have a written paper because I was out
of town. But with your permission, I would like to submit a
formal paper at a later date.
Chairman Kyl. Absolutely.
Mr. Alexander. In addition to that, I would like to mention
that as an academician who works at a think tank and at a
university center for terrorism studies, we have a great deal
of publications that we would like to report to you about and
to share with your staff, such as the new publication on Bin
Ladin, on cyber terrorism, on super-terrorism, American
perspectives, and so on and so forth. If we may submit them to
your staff, we would certainly appreciate that.
My intention basically is to make some preliminary remarks
related to the threat and response. I fully agree with Tony
Cordesman on some of the points he made because I think, No. 1,
we have to learn lessons at history and look specifically at
the nature of the threat. Now, we are discussing super-
terrorism, biological, chemical, nuclear, cyber, but I would
like to submit that even a very primitive kind of terrorism
works and it is attractive, it is effective, and achieves a
number of results.
We can go all the way back to the first century or to the
11th and 12th centuries, the Middle East, when they used
primitive methods, but they were able to intimidate the
Crusaders, for example, in the Middle East. So I think there
are some lessons from history that we can take into account.
If we look at the situation today, obviously when we talk
about contemporary terrorism, we talk about the new scale of
violence both in terms of threats and responses. We are
discussing the internationalization and brutalization of modern
terrorism which actually is developing a new age of terrorism
and super-terrorism with very serious implications for
national, regional, and global security concerns.
I would like to underscore specifically about five dangers
that we have to take into account. One danger is to the safety
and welfare and rights of ordinary people. The second danger is
to the stability of the state system the way we know it. The
third is to the health of economic development. The fourth is
to the expansion of democracy, and the fifth perhaps to the
survival of civilization. By that I mean the worst is yet to
come; it is not if, but when. Therefore, ensuring the safety of
the citizens at home and abroad will continue to be every
government's paramount responsibility in the coming years.
If I may look at the calendar of history, I would like to
remind the Chairman and members of the Subcommittee that 30
years ago there was a bombing right here in the U.S. Senate
perpetrated by the Weather Underground. And then 13 years ago,
in Iraq, we found that the Iraqis used chemical weapons against
the Kurds. And 6 years ago, we had a glimpse of the future when
the Aum Shinrikyo used sarin gas in Tokyo.
Now, in 1995 I had the privilege, with my colleague Dr. Ray
Klein from the Center for Strategic and International Studies,
to prepare a study on state-sponsored terrorism for the
Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism, chaired by Senator
Jeremiah Denton. The question arises, what is new, and if you
look at the situation in those days and the situation today, of
course, at that time the Soviet Union perpetrated terrorism.
Today, the Soviet Union is a victim of terrorism, as we have
seen in the past few days.
Nevertheless, I think we cannot dismiss state-sponsored
terrorism in the coming months and years. Although there is a
study of the CIA for the year 2015 indicating that the
involvement of states is going to be reduced, nevertheless we
have to take into account some states that can be labeled as
failure states or states that are being exploited by the
terrorists.
So therefore what I am really suggesting is that we have to
look at both state-sponsored terrorism and sub-state terrorism,
the freelancers, those who are able to initiate terrorism at a
very low cost and cause a great deal of damage to our society.
Therefore, I think the international community, and
particularly under the leadership of the United States, must
take whatever steps are necessary in order to reduce the risks.
Again, it is not a question of recommendations of
committees and commissions. I know that some of us were
involved over the years working with some of these groups.
Nothing is wrong with specific recommendations. The problem is
really implementation of the recommendations, and we have to
move step by step, not dramatically or drastically change the
system.
Therefore, I think every segment of the community can play
a role, not only the Government, not only Congress, but the
community in general. And I refer to the media, I refer to
religious organizations, to the educational structure, and so
forth, and together I think we can defeat the terrorists and
secure our value system.
I will stop here and be open to questions.
Chairman Kyl. Thank you very much.
Both of you have commented on the need to concern ourselves
with cyber attacks, and that seems to me to be a somewhat
overlooked potential threat because it is not just against the
Government, it is not just against our defense and national
security capabilities, but also against the society at large,
which then also has a spillover effect against national
security.
What, in your view, should the U.S. Congress be doing to
enhance our ability to deal with this problem of cyber attack,
especially if we are to, as you say, Dr. Cordesman, size it to
the state-sponsored terrorism threat, because clearly that
would be the ultimate degree of cyber attack even though it
might be coming from some group far smaller than state-
sponsored? What could the Congress do to help begin to prepare
us to deal with this threat?
I will start with you, Dr. Cordesman, and then Dr.
Alexander.
Mr. Cordesman. Let me give one example. In the previous
administration, John Hamre issued a directive in the Department
of Defense that no critical system be hooked up to the
Internet. One of the problems is that we right now are spending
most of our critical infrastructure protection money trying to
protect the software and entry into the systems, not to create
systems which close out outside attack because they are truly
critical. We, in general, do not have adequate standards.
It has become clear, for example, that within the Federal
Government no department as yet can police itself. To the
extent there have been successful audits of cyber defense, they
have been done by the General Accounting Office. And the moment
the General Accounting Office does not repeat the audit, the
department generally goes back to failing to protect its
systems.
But more than that, you do not see an effort to reduce
vulnerability, to ensure that you can reconstitute the system
rapidly, that if there is a really major and successful attack,
there is some alternative. Now, this I suspect is going to
require legislation and regulation. Departments are not going
to spend money that is not appropriated and they are not going
to perform functions with money that is appropriated unless
they are required to.
But the issue, I think, is broader than that. We can't
provide any kind of warning or leak-proof system in cyber
defense, and that means that critical industrial systems also
have to be designed so that their vulnerability is limited,
rather than trying to create firewalls or infinite layers of
defense. There have to be backups. There have to be real
tradeoffs where people understand that there is a liability for
failing to protect these systems.
At present, it is just the reverse. All of the market
forces say that you do the absolute minimum here because there
is no reward. You are not going to get more profit. Nobody is
going to congratulate you until you come under attack, if then.
Even insurance companies really are not regulated to require
effective cyber protection or effective standards be met.
Now, I hate to say that in any area the solution may be
better law and better regulation, but here it is very difficult
to see what market forces lead companies to prepare themselves
unless there is a requirement that this be one of the rules of
business.
Chairman Kyl. So I take from that three basic
recommendations: greater development of separate systems which
are not tied to the Internet, a regulatory environment in which
insurance would drive the hardening of these sites, and an
ability to reconstitute systems immediately, with perhaps some
Federal legislation and appropriate to achieve that.
Mr. Cordesman. Senator, I would add one more. I think it is
absolutely critical that you honestly assess vulnerability. In
a lot of cases today, people confuse the noise level of cyber
attack with something serious, or the fact that cyber crime has
replaced conventional crime is somehow seen as if this was a
national threat. ell, criminals will always be with us, systems
will always fail, and teenagers will always be teenagers.
We have not sorted out real vulnerabilities from the noise
level of technological change. A good example is what happens
every time there is a new virus. Somebody costs it several
hundred million dollars, and this gets into the papers and
everybody repeats the figure. But virtually all the time, when
you really look at it, there was almost no economic cost;
people did business the next day. This gross exaggeration of
low-level threats and indifference to the issue as serious
information warfare is as much of the problem.
Chairman Kyl. Thank you.
Dr. Alexander?
Mr. Alexander. I think fundamentally it is really the
question of perception of the threat, because here we are
talking about the blessing of the Internet to connect the
entire world. On the other hand, unfortunately, it is also a
curse, as we know, used by terrorists as propaganda and
psychological warfare. It is used to communicate messages and
to train people how to make bombs--in fact, one doesn't need to
go to a training camp because he can get all the information on
the Internet--and then for operational missions, as we have
seen time and again.
Now, the question is really now can you strike a balance
between the security concerns and civil liberties. I think this
is a very important issue, and therefore there is a need not
only for Government--we are talking about the role of Congress
or the role of the Pentagon to stop the penetrations, and so on
and so forth--I would like to submit that this is really a
partnership of the Government and industry and academics and
the public in general, because each segment of the community
has a stake in this particular issue.
Again, it comes back to the question of perception because
the American people today, I think, are confused about what is
terrorism. Is it a criminal act? Is it low-intensity conflict?
Is it an asymmetrical threat? Is it all-out war? If it is war,
there are certain legal consequences, and people would be
willing to forgo some civil liberties if the United States is
at war.
So I think the first step is to put our act together in
terms of a coherent definition of what terrorism is and to
communicate that definition to the American public, to our
friends, allies and adversaries, so there should be no mistake
about where the United States stands on terrorism, and then to
deal with the different kinds of threats--the biological, the
chemical, the nuclear, the super. In fact, terrorists are today
discussing even space terrorism. Looking ahead, what can they
do in order to exploit space.
Therefore, I think we have to deal not only with the
technology, but with the psychology and the mind set.
Chairman Kyl. While Senator Feinstein is catching her
breath here, let me just pursue this line of questioning and
then we will join in together, if that is all right.
Let me get a little bit more specific, Dr. Cordesman, about
your recommendation regarding insurance. It has seemed to me
that while the U.S. Government could require that certain
systems be separate and totally apart from the Internet--and,
in fact, some are, and we could encourage perhaps some in
academia or the private sector to develop systems that are
similarly unconnected to the Internet and therefore far less
vulnerable--that there is a great deal of commercial or
industrial or non-governmental activity that nevertheless
affects the Government.
Our transportation grid, our communications system, the
energy grid, the financial systems--all of those things are
interconnected for commercial reasons, and I too have been
concerned about the lack of robustness to these. I had thought
that perhaps losses occasioned by cyber attacks would result in
liability determinations. The evolution of the law would create
the rules. Insurance would provide the enforcement of those
rules--insurance and, of course, legal decisions--and that
would force the robustness.
I am not sure, however, that it would necessarily protect
against the loss to Government, the loss of capability that
would impact on our National security from a governmental point
of view.
How do you see this evolution, and is this the area in
which you see some role for governmental regulation?
Mr. Cordesman. Well, Senator, let me first address the word
``Internet.'' It is very popular, it is a wonderful toy, and it
actually has a great deal of substantive use. But the fact is
most critical systems shouldn't be on the Internet; useful
systems should be. And if useful systems are reconstituted
three or 4 days later, it really doesn't matter very much.
Nobody dies, the economy doesn't fail.
So I think we have to make a clear distinction between
those systems and systems, for example, like the functioning of
the stock market or, as you mentioned, control of air traffic
or major water systems or utility grids, most of which frankly
should be off the Internet in any case.
Now, liability is an issue, but I think waiting for
liability to happen is the kind of process that says you go
into court after the problem has already occurred. So I would
suggest a very narrow focus. I don't think that we need to
regulate the Internet. What we need to do is to identify and
regulate a very narrow range of critical systems, and the
answer may not be the same in each case.
Sometimes it can be liability, sometimes it will have to be
redundancy. In some cases, it will be systems which degrade
gracefully and have backup. But we really don't have an
ordered, structured approach to that problem either within the
Government or within American industry, or for that matter on a
global economic basis yet. And I think we have to begin by
analyzing what is critical to protect and then find the measure
tailored to the system rather than having one solution that
fits all problems.
Chairman Kyl. I appreciate that response.
Mr. Alexander, anything else on that point?
Mr. Alexander. Well, just a footnote. I would say that this
is one area where I think international cooperation is feasible
because it affects everyone, and therefore we have to start
step by step. I know some countries are trying to develop all
kinds of structures to deal with the protection of sensitive
information, for example, and so on. So it is not just a
question of the United States; it is a regional problem and a
global problem. And I think this is one way that I think we can
get consensus.
Chairman Kyl. Thank you very much.
Senator Feinstein has joined us and I will call on her now
to make any kind of statement she would like to make or jump
right in with the questioning of our second panel.
STATEMENT OF HON. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Senator Feinstein. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, very much for
holding the hearing. I think I will just put my statement in
the record, if I may, and ask these questions.
It is my understanding from what I have seen that our
Government has not clearly designated who would be in charge in
responding to a terrorist incident. In a recent GAO report on
counterterrorism policy in Canada, France, Germany, Israel, the
UK, and the U.S., the United States was the only one of these
countries that lacked a clear chain of command in response to a
terrorist incident.
Are you concerned about this, and what should that chain of
command, in your view, be?
Mr. Cordesman. If I may begin, Senator, I think in theory
there is a chain of command. The problem is that it is too
complex. We have a division--
Senator Feinstein. Did you say it is too complex?
Mr. Cordesman. That is right. I mean, basically speaking,
first if it is a low-level incident, to be perfectly honest, we
have so many natural catastrophes and accidents that it isn't a
stress on the system. But if we get a really large-scale
terrorist attack that produces mass casualties, then all of a
sudden the FBI and FEMA are confronted, as Dr. Alexander
mentioned, with an effect close to war.
What happens then? Well, the system is simply not capable
of responding at some central point to the complexity of the
individual case. We have all kinds of lines of responsibility,
but they won't work on a clear or timely basis.
The separation between FEMA, which is understaffed,
underfunded and not equipped to deal with the effects of large-
scale terrorism because it focuses on civil disasters--it
simply is not ready. The FBI confronts the problems of foreign
intelligence and State and local law enforcement, and let me
note that the gaps there are as great as they are between the
CIA and the FBI. It goes to the NSC, where the question of who
is operational has to almost be improvised. If it is a really
serious incident, the President has to be brought in.
You mentioned response. One problem we have never really
addressed is what happens if it is a biological incident,
because the actual responders particularly to multiple
incidents or more than one agent are all tailored to medical
services and biological response. If it is high-explosive, it
may be the National Guard that would be the proper group. If it
is nuclear, biological experts are not the people who would
have to deal with that case.
We really have looked at this in Washington only from the
top. We haven't looked at the consequences of different major
acts of terrorism and how the chain of command and response
would have to adapt.
Let me just give you one simple example. In most places in
the United States, in the winter, most hospital beds are
occupied. Many hospitals are in urban areas. If you have a
biological attack, not only do you immediately cause a total
saturation of local and regional health care, but basically the
attack often will cover the area where the care is supposed to
be provided.
Now, the Federal response to that is going to be to fly in
emergency help to people who are, in general, supposed to meet
that help at the airport. When it is FEMA or the FBI or some
czar that is some czar that is in charge isn't going to help if
that is the scenario.
Senator Feinstein. From your study--let's say a building is
blown up or a bus is blown up--who in the United States is
immediately in charge of that incident, the top person?
Mr. Cordesman. Well, the top person will be almost
invariably, unless it is on a Federal facility, the mayor or
the head of the local jurisdiction who will be responsible for
coordinating local law enforcement, which will treat it as a
criminal act, and for coordinating the emergency response.
If it is on a Federal facility, for example, a military
base, it would be the base commander. There will be all kinds
of legal complications and they are going to spread out along
with the response issues. If it is something like a water
supply, however, which cuts across, say, State or
jurisdictional boundaries, then the issue would be whoever is
in charge of the individual utility or facility.
But ultimately the first response always is local, and in
the real world the authority level or chain of authority is
local until Federal intervention or State intervention is
required.
Senator Feinstein. Well, let me respond. Having served as a
mayor for 9 years in a form of government where the mayor was
essentially in charge of the police department and the fire
department and had the ability to ask for mutual aid, I am not
sure as we go into more sophisticated types of terrorism that
really having a mayor in charge is the best idea.
It seems to me, once an attack happens whatever the scale,
immediately the Federal Government has some responsibility and
there should be somebody there from the Federal Government with
respect to protecting the chain of evidence, and also doing
whatever is necessary to aid in protection of the people. I
don't think you can leave the response to sophisticated
international terrorism in the hands of a mayor. We had talked
before about having a response team that could go into an area.
What would your recommendations be, Dr. Cordesman and Dr.
Alexander?
Mr. Cordesman. Everything depends on the size and nature of
the incident. That ones that you mentioned initially are sort
of conventional terrorism. Indeed, in the Federal Government
planning tends to be for incidents where there are less than
1,000 casualties because that is assumed to be the maximum
worst case for practical planning. If it is biological or
nuclear, of course, the attacks will be far larger.
The moment that this extends beyond a localized single
event, the moment it involves a weapon of mass destruction, you
must be able to bring in Federal authority and law enforcement
and certainly FEMA immediately. At any level involving, I would
think, frankly, a nuclear event or a major biological event, I
don't believe that the Congress will ever properly fund FEMA to
respond and you will be forced to bring in the Department of
Defense.
That means that there must be somebody coordinating a
tailored Federal response, and they have to begin hopefully
within minutes of the ability to characterize the attack. Now,
long before then, if it is international terrorism, one would
have hoped that the kinds of issues discussed earlier, the
cooperation between the CIA and FBI, would have improved to
reduce the risk of incident.
Senator Feinstein. Well, supposing the gentleman that tried
to come across the Canadian border a couple of weeks before New
Year's Eve 1999 was actually able to blow up something
significant in Seattle, Washington, you are saying that that
should be left up to the mayor to handle?
Mr. Cordesman. No, I am not saying it should be left up to
the mayor. You asked what the chain of responsibility was, and
in practice the FBI would come in later. Now, the FBI would not
have here a jurisdictional problem because it is clearly a
foreign terrorist. It might take time to establish that.
Depending on how the local jurisdiction handled the issue,
you might get immediate, smooth cooperation between State,
local, and Federal law enforcement. That is what I think would
happen in any major case. But as you know, there are sometimes
communities where that relationship does not always work out as
it should.
I would hope that the immediate action for any foreign
terrorism would be what is called for under law because the FBI
does have jurisdiction over acts of terrorism if they are
defined as such, an issue which Dr. Alexander raised.
Similarly, FEMA would have responsibility to assist State and
local authorities immediately at the Federal level, depending
on the size of the incident. But the critical issue you have
raised is the size of the incident and what happens when local
capabilities break down.
Senator Feinstein. I just think in reality, having been
there during a riot, it is very difficult. I happen to believe
there ought to be someone in the Federal Government, that once
a mayor presses a button or makes a phone call and expresses
what kind of an attack it is, can immediately bring onto the
scene whatever Federal reinforcements are available or helpful.
The White Night riot, when the assassin of my predecessor
as mayor and another supervisor was just given a very brief
sentence and there was an explosion in the city and police cars
were being blown up and buildings were being attacked with
rocks, was a very difficult situation. It took a long time to
get everybody together, and then finally I called the Governor
to exercise mutual aid. It all takes time before you know
exactly what you have.
We became much more sophisticated about it after that,
training police, how they work, all the details of it. But it
is a little bit of a lesson to me that if you have, let's say,
the Federal building blown up right next to city hall, you are
into something entirely different and mutual aid isn't going to
help very much. You are going to need immediate reinforcement.
It may be military, it may be FBI. Some of it may be FEMA, but
someone has got to make that decision, and make it quickly.
I am coming to believe that there ought to be someone on a
Federal level that a local jurisdiction is able to consult with
immediately, 24 hours day, that is helpful in making the
decisions as to who is alerted, who is brought in, what the
time line is. I think that would become particularly more
important in a biological or a chemical reaction.
Mr. Alexander, would you like to comment?
Mr. Alexander. Yes. Again, it comes, Senator, to the
question of perception. Because the United States fortunately
was not as victimized as some of the other countries that you
mentioned, usually terrorism was looked upon as an irritant, a
nuisance, something that will go away, very cyclical. So the
culture was not there in terms of the concern of the people.
Today, the situation is changing. As Senator Kyl mentioned,
the United States is really target No. 1 abroad and we have had
terrible tragedies in Oklahoma and elsewhere. So I think the
American people are much more sensitive to the issue of
terrorism, and if the public would try to get involved and
cooperate with Congress on what is needed, what kinds of tools
are necessary to deal with the problem in terms of policies, in
terms of organizational structure, in terms of upgrading
intelligence and strengthening law enforcement, for example,
perhaps, Senator Feinstein, as mayor this wouldn't be your role
to deal with a bioattack. Sometimes, you have to wait a couple
of days before you know you are really under attack.
Therefore, I think what this Subcommittee is doing and
other committees in Congress is extremely useful. As you know,
there are probably 80 Federal agencies involved in different
aspects of terrorism, and therefore certainly it is like an
orchestra without a conductor. I think something has to be done
to coordinate many of these activities. Some work, some don't,
and therefore I think we have to monitor the operations very,
very closely. First, we must assess the nature of the threat in
order to know what kinds of responses are really suitable at
home and abroad.
Senator Feinstein. If you are really going to look at this
as a practical application, every mayor, at least in
California, has different authorities. Some city councils
rotate a city council person as mayor every year. Some are
strong mayors, and some are very weak mayors who just don't
have the control. Some frankly don't have the ability to cope
with a terrorist incident. I think in this country we are wide
open to chaos without the ability to really have somebody who
is able to send out an immediate assessment team, make the
assessment, and set into motion a chain of events.
I am truly of the view, Mr. Chairman, that we really ought
to write a big bill, a real reorganization of counterterrorism
policy. We have been doing this now for 3 years, and we listen
to report after report after report, all of which suggest that
we are really unprepared. Even when we had our classified
briefing a while ago, I didn't come out with a great sense of
confidence that we were ready to respond to a terrorist event.
It seems to me that there is a recommendation somewhere in
this, and I can't remember where it is but I thought it made
sense, and that is that each President really ought to come
forward with a plan as to how the administration would approach
this in terms of a chain of command, an instant response,
emergency provisions, investigative needs, and military
precautions. It might be something that we could request the
administration to do.
Chairman Kyl. I might just note that just before you
arrived, Dr. Cordesman made the point that while planning is
certainly necessary, the tendency might be for yet one more
planning document, one more reorganization, all of which
reshuffles the chairs on the deck. That is my analogy, not his,
but it adds very little value to the response.
I was going to follow up with a question that ties in
directly with what you were just saying. Basically, what you
want is a 911 for any kind of help that might be out there that
the local group isn't immediately able to provide. If it is
clearly a law enforcement kind of an attack and a conventional
explosive blows up a building, the law enforcement people are
going to be on the spot and they are going to be the ones who
take charge. If, all of a sudden, everybody within a 10-block
area is getting really sick from something, the health care
people are going to come in and figure out that there is some
kind of a problem.
But in either event, if there is a 911 number at the
Federal level that people can call to get whatever kind of help
might be available and a general plan at the Federal level, it
seems to me that that is one way of providing whatever kind of
help might be available in a fairly efficient way. But I too
would be skeptical of focusing our attention too much on
reorganization, strategy documents, and the like. I am really
interested in getting beyond that to the value-added components
of dealing with terrorism as well.
A response from either one of you to that comment would be
appreciated.
Mr. Cordesman. Let me give you, I think, a tangible
example. Congress legislated that there be a document provided
by OMB describing the programs that are currently underway. As
far as I know, I have not talked to anybody who has held
hearings on what we are actually spending the money on. It is
$11.7 billion in the last fiscal year; $1.5 billion of it is
dedicated to deal with the effects of weapons of mass
destruction. It is spread out among 17 different groups.
On paper, Senator, for example, there is a Biological
Response Team. The problem is it may have 17 people and 2
doctors in it, and I am not sure that is going to help any city
on the West or East Coast in the event of a biological
incident.
I think that when you talk about organization, it is very
important to have one person in charge, and there have been
proposals putting it in the Office of the Vice President,
having a Cabinet-level official, having someone on the order of
the drug czar, putting the response elements in FEMA, and
strengthening coordination within the FBI. I don't know which
of these the President would prefer, but it is clear that you
not only need someone to call, but somebody who can do
something in response.
My suggestion to you would be that the kind of examination
which is already being made of where the Federal money is going
needs very careful examination to see what really needs to be
fixed. It is fairly obvious, looking at the numbers, that right
now virtually all the money we spend is on improving Federal
buildings and their resistance to high explosives. That is the
one threat on which about $7 billion of the money has been
going.
I think as you look into this you are going to find there
is no long-term planning. Agencies improvise and compete from
year to year. In program after program, they don't know what
they would have to spend to develop a real capability.
Technologies are being funded, but nobody knows what system
they would go into if they worked, whether they would really
deal with the threat of future technology, or what they would
cost to deploy and whether it would be a State, local, or
Federal deployment that would be required.
So we have one organizational study after another trying to
figure out who it is that answers the telephone, but no review
of Congress' traditional function, which is to look at where
the money is really going and whether it is being spent to a
purpose.
Senator Feinstein. I have been brought up to believe that
the primary role of government is to protect the people, and I
really believe that. If I am mayor and something blows up, I
want to maximize every resource I have as fast as I possibly
can.
I really agree with you, Dr. Cordesman. I think that
domestic terrorism is something that is very appropriate to be
part of the portfolio of either a Vice President or a Cabinet
member. When a building has just blown up and the suspicions
are that it is terrorism, I can pick up the phone and say we
have got a major incident on our hands, we need help, we need
it right now. I want a team that can come out and take a look
at this situation, and also help us with A, B, C, D, and E.
Californians pay more than $20 billion in taxes a year that
they don't get back in services. It is not too much to ask that
the Federal Government be able to provide counterterrorism
assistance. Terrorism is increasing in this world, and we ought
to be prepared for it. And to be prepared for it means that
certain people have to be accountable to do certain things.
I have been looking at this for 3 years. It is still
unclear to me of who is really in charge of what, or where as a
mayor I would go to get help. That is not clear; it is not
clear out there anywhere in the United States. I think the time
has come for us to try and make that clear to people.
End of speech.
Mr. Alexander. May I just make another footnote here? I
fully agree with you. I wanted to call you mayor, Senator, in
terms of your experience, and this is life. I mean, someone has
to be on the front line and be able to save lives and minimize
the threat.
But I would like to submit to you that we have to see it in
a broader perspective, not only in terms of what is happening
in the United States but what is happening abroad.
Particularly, I am talking about Americans and American
citizens who are all over the world, as we know, about 10
million of them at a time, and they need protection as well; of
course, the military or the diplomats, and we have seen that.
My concern is that we are not putting that together in
terms of also the international protection. And recalling the
tragedies that American servicemen went through for so many
years, and I have seen some firsthand, I believe that we have
to learn the lessons of the past; that is to say, the State
Department after the attacks on the embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania immediately tried to figure out what could they do to
protect members of the State Department. So they instituted
some measures both at the State Department right here in
Washington as well as at embassies abroad. Then they started
training against weapons of mass destruction, and so forth.
But that particular action did not prevent the terrorists
from attacking the U.S. Destroyer Cole and killing Americans on
the ship. And this really means that there is a need somehow,
No. 1, to strengthen the intelligence capability, the quality,
in terms of human and technological to deal with future threats
to Americans abroad, and also to work with like-minded nations
to coordinate the activities.
For example, Tony mentioned emergency medical preparedness.
Not only in the United States are there not enough beds, but
when we talk about the situation abroad and how to save those
who are injured, if it takes about 12 hours to get some
assistance, then it is too late.
So what I am really suggesting is, Senator, that we have to
see it as a comprehensive threat to the United States. It is
not a nuisance, it is not an irritant. It is a national
security threat, and therefore I think we have to mobilize all
the capabilities and to look at the recommendations--some of
them are really excellent--in terms of responsibility, in terms
of organizational structure, and so on and so forth.
If we are not going to do it, especially the United States
as a super-power, as the leader of the Free World, if I may use
this term, I really believe that we have a special
responsibility to provide the leadership.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much.
Chairman Kyl. Let me just close with this question, since
you raised the issue, Dr. Alexander, and in his written
testimony Dr. Cordesman makes the same point. Obviously, you
would like to try to thwart the terrorist incident in the first
instance. Intelligence is key to that capability, and while we
have some success with signals intelligence, human intelligence
is the primary source of information that enables us to thwart
terrorist attacks.
Incidentally, for those in the audience who might be
interested, we have had testimony each year for I think 3 years
from the Director of the FBI that each year our intelligence
agencies are able to thwart about a dozen major terrorist
attacks through the use of good intelligence. These are very
rarely made public. We know of the attacks that are successful,
but we rarely hear about those that have been prevented through
good intelligence and there are a number of them.
Dr. Cordesman, you specifically testified that human
intelligence is underfunded and that it is critical to this
effort. Why do you think it is so underfunded, and what can we
do?
Since both of us also serve on the Intelligence Committee,
even though that is not directly related to the Judiciary
Committee, the intelligence-sharing questions do arise. In any
event, we are all interested in the subject.
How can we better fund our human intelligence?
Mr. Cordesman. Well, I was saying to one of your staff,
Senator, that several centuries ago I was the Director of
Intelligence Assessment in the Office of the Secretary of
Defense, and the Congress decided it would be a good idea to
recommend an increase in human intelligence resources and 1
year later we were having RIFs.
In general, any time anybody in Congress seems to propose
this--I am not sure there is a cause and effect relationship--
the resources end up mysteriously being cut. So I have to be
very careful about what I say here.
I think frankly you have, in general, a very effective
intelligence community. We always underfund the human dimension
and the analytic dimension, and we always tend to put lots of
money into national technical means. I am not sure there are
any savings to be made in national technical means, and it is
not glamorous to say that you simply give people in the
community more resources to plus-up the capabilities they
already have. But I think that is part of the problem that
everybody wants to reorganize or make it more efficient, but
they don't want to spend more money in a focused way where it
is really needed.
I think, too, you need to be very cautious because human
intelligence, as you know, is often defined as collection; it
is getting more sources overseas. Dr. Alexander mentioned the
need for better international cooperation. There is a need to
put a lot more money into the analysis side, areas like data
mining, areas which get around the unreliability of defectors
and the inability to penetrate inside terrorist nets.
It takes a lot of time to develop a real expert on
terrorism or on any given method of attack. And with new
technologies like biological weapons and other methods, we tend
to put people into growing sections in the community, but if
they are not out or promoted in 3 years, it is a career killer,
and that problem has been going on for decades.
So I think what you need to do is look in-depth at what is
going on inside the intelligence community, figure out
precisely what existing elements can be strengthened, and
ensure that the money really goes to analysis in human
intelligence and not to more managers or more coordination. In
general, I believe the intelligence community is capable of
greatly expanding its capabilities if somebody will be patient
enough and realistic enough to give them the money they need.
Chairman Kyl. I might add that as long as the intelligence
funding is a percentage function of the Defense budget, there
is an inherent arbitrary limitations on what can be devoted to
intelligence-gathering.
Mr. Alexander. If I may, Senator, I think that clearly is a
very important issue. The other issue that I would like to
suggest--and it was raised in some of the commission reports,
the National Commission on Terrorism, Ambassador Bremer, and so
forth--there are certain legal constraints on the capability of
the agencies to function.
If we want them to do the job, we have to give them the
tools to do it within the framework of law, of course. But if
there are too many regulations and constraints even to recruit
someone from a terrorist group to work with us--this is not
someone would like to have dinner with, but nevertheless we
need information and information can save lives. So really this
is the question of the perception of the threat.
I would like to suggest that today, since we do have a
trend of loose international networks like the Bin Ladin
structure that can operate in some 55 countries around the
world and mobilize people in order to strike against the United
States, which is really target No. 1, the intelligence
community, as we know, time and again is the first line of
defense. And if they don't have the tools, it would be similar
to taking away the tools from the police at the local level or
the State level.
So therefore I think the American people have to consider
the nature of the threat and, if the threat is really imminent,
to do whatever is necessary, and particularly to support the
intelligence community.
Chairman Kyl. I thank you very much for those views.
Obviously, some of these comments would perhaps do a little
more good if they were heard by some of our other colleagues
who aren't here. In Senator Feinstein and I, you have two
people who are obviously committed to trying to get some help.
We will try to put together the three different reports
that have been issued within the last 12 months or so, finding
the common areas for recommendations that we can at least agree
upon, and without suggesting that all of this is legislative in
nature, at least pull those things together that do require
some legislative action and put it into a draft bill.
We would like to submit that to you for your review so you
can give us your feedback on whether we are on the right track
from your point of view, and then we are going to try to run
that through the House and Senate this year. If you have any
further recommendations for us, we would be happy to receive
those, as I said at the outset of the hearing. Though we are
not joined by a lot of our colleagues here today, we will share
the information that we can summarize from this hearing with
them in an effort to try to get their support as well.
I very much appreciate your testimony today, and look
forward to your continued evaluation of our product and your
advice as we move forward. Thank you very much.
This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:50 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]