[Senate Hearing 107-562]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 107-562
A REVIEW OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
AND THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
=======================================================================
HEARINGS
before the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JUNE 26 and 27, 2002
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TED STEVENS, Alaska
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
MAX CLELAND, Georgia THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah
JEAN CARNAHAN, Missouri JIM BUNNING, Kentucky
MARK DAYTON, Minnesota PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois
Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Staff Director and Counsel
Susan E. Popper, Counsel
Michael L. Alexander, Professional Staff Member
Richard A. Hertling, Minority Staff Director
William M. Outhier, Minority Chief Counsel
Jayson P. Roehl, Minority Professional Staff Member
Darla D. Cassell, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
------
Opening statement:
Page
Senator Lieberman............................................ 1, 61
Senator Thompson............................................. 3, 63
Senator Akaka................................................ 5, 65
Senator Collins.............................................. 6, 81
Senator Cleland.............................................. 7, 97
Senator Voinovich............................................ 7, 85
Senator Dayton...............................................38, 88
Senator Durbin............................................... 41
Senator Carper............................................... 46
Senator Carnahan............................................. 65
WITNESSES
Wednesday, June 26, 2002
Hon. Ashton B. Carter, Co-Director, Preventive Defense Project,
John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and
Assistant Secretary of Defense (1993-1996), International
Security Policy................................................ 9
Lt. Gen. Patrick M. Hughes, U.S. Army (Ret.), former Director
(1996-1999), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), U.S. Department
of Defense..................................................... 13
Jeffrey H. Smith, former General Counsel (1995-1996), Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA)...................................... 16
Lt. Gen. William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.), former Director
(1985-1988), National Security Agency (NSA).................... 19
William B. Berger, Chief of Police, North Miami Beach, Florida
and President, International Association of Chiefs of Police... 23
Thursday, June 27, 2002
Hon. George J. Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence, Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA)...................................... 67
Hon. Robert S. Mueller, III, Director, Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI)............................................ 70
Hon. William H. Webster, former Director of Central Intelligence
(1987-1991) and former Director (1978-1987), Federal Bureau of
Investigation.................................................. 93
Hon. Bob Graham, a U.S. Senator from the State of Florida and
Chairman, Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Senate........ 106
Hon. Richard C. Shelby, a U.S. Senator from the State of Alabama
and Vice Chairman, Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S.
Senate......................................................... 109
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Berger, Chief William B.:
Testimony.................................................... 23
Prepared statement........................................... 166
Carter, Hon. Ashton B.:
Testimony.................................................... 9
Prepared statement........................................... 125
Graham, Hon. Bob:
Testimony.................................................... 106
Prepared statement with an attachment........................ 191
Hughes, Lt. Gen. Patrick M.:
Testimony.................................................... 13
Prepared statement........................................... 135
Mueller, Hon. Robert S., III:
Testimony.................................................... 70
Prepared statement........................................... 184
Odom, Lt. Gen. William E.:
Testimony.................................................... 19
Prepared statement........................................... 156
Shelby, Hon. Richard C.:
Testimony.................................................... 109
Prepared statement with an attachment........................ 209
Smith, Jeffrey H.:
Testimony.................................................... 16
Prepared statement........................................... 140
Tenet, Hon. George J.:
Testimony.................................................... 67
Prepared statement........................................... 175
Webster, Hon. William H.:
Testimony.................................................... 93
Additional Material Submitted for the Record
June 26, 2002
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), prepared statement........ 221
Richard J. Davis, prepared statement............................. 232
Questions for the Record and responses from:
Hon. Ashton B. Carter........................................ 241
Lt. Gen. Patrick M. Hughes with an attachment................ 242
Jeffrey H. Smith............................................. 256
Lt. Gen. William E. Odom..................................... 259
Chief William B. Berger...................................... 266
June 27, 2002
FBI letter regarding search capabilities of the FBI's Automated
Case Support (ACS) System...................................... 267
Questions for the Record and responses from:
Hon. William H. Webster...................................... 270
Hon. George J. Tenet......................................... 273
Hon. Richard C. Shelby....................................... 278
A REVIEW OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
AND THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
----------
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26, 2002
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:33 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I.
Lieberman, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Lieberman, Akaka, Cleland, Dayton,
Durbin, Carper, Thompson, Stevens, Collins, and Voinovich.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN
Chairman Lieberman. Good morning. The hearing will come to
order. I want to welcome our witnesses.
Today, we are going to hold the second of four hearings
designed to take an intense look at the Homeland Security
reorganization plan proposed by President Bush and how best to
merge it with legislation reported out of this Committee a
little over a month ago. As we create this new Department of
Homeland Security, one of our priorities clearly has to be to
address what was the single biggest security shortcoming of our
government before September 11, and that was the way in which
our government coordinated, or failed to coordinate,
intelligence.
Suffice it to say that a few infamous memos and warnings,
now notorious, and the picture they may have painted if they
had been understood in relationship to one another are now a
perplexing part of American history. And so our challenge is to
build a more focused, more effective, more coordinated
intelligence system that synchronizes information from the
field, analyzes it, converts it, and then turns it into action
that can prevent future attacks against the American people
here at home.
Last week, the Committee was privileged to hear from
Governor Ridge on how the administration's plan and proposal
would coordinate intelligence gathering, analysis, and
implementation. Today, we are going to hear from what might be
called a distinguished alumni group from the Intelligence
Community and the national security community to get the
benefit of their experience and good counsel on the best
solution that we can adopt as part of our new Department of
Homeland Security or related to it.
Tomorrow, we will hear from the Director of the FBI, Robert
Mueller, the Director of the CIA, George Tenet, and Judge
William Webster, who was the former Director of both the CIA
and the FBI, but not simultaneously. We will also hear from the
Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, Senators Graham and Shelby, because their expertise,
including that gained from their current investigations, can
certainly help us craft the most effective legislation.
Our fourth hearing on Friday will explore the President's
proposal to address the problem of weapons of mass destruction
and the relevant science, technology, and public health issues
associated with detecting, protecting against, and combating
these weapons, and particularly the fourth directorate, if I
can call it that, or division, that the President establishes
in his proposal.
With all that in mind, clearly, the part of this
reorganization that has drawn most public attention and most
attention and thoughtful concern, I am pleased to say, by
Members of the Committee is the question of how to bring the
intelligence establishment together with the law enforcement
community to avoid the kind of information breakdown that
appears to have occurred prior to September 11.
The President's proposal to establish an intelligence
analysis clearinghouse within the new Department is a step in
the right direction, although I think we still want to
understand better what is intended and to see if there is a way
we can strengthen the proposal. Under the President's plan, as
I understand it, the Department of Homeland Security would
provide competing analysis, so to speak, but the FBI, CIA, and
a handful of other intelligence agencies would still have
primary responsibility to uncover and prevent specific threats
or conspiracies against the American people. In other words, no
one office would be designated to pull the threads together and
the dimensions of that and how we can focus it most effectively
is something I would be very eager to hear from our witnesses
today.
Our Committee bill proposed a different approach, which I
do not argue on its face is adequate to the threat at this
point, as we better understand it today, either. Primarily at
Senator Graham's urging, we established an anti-terrorism
coordinator in the White House with the statutory and budget
authority to pull the various elements of the anti-terrorism
effort together, and that would include not just the new
Department of Homeland Security, but the Intelligence
Community, law enforcement, and State and Defense Departments,
as well. In short, the coordinator would be in a position to
forge the kinds of relationships that would be necessary to get
the information needed to connect the dots and have a chance of
seeing a picture more clearly.
Today, we welcome the witnesses that are before us to hear
their response to these two ideas and hopefully separate ideas
that they themselves have.
Several people have suggested the creation of a domestic
intelligence agency along the lines of Britain's MI5, which, as
many of you know, works closely with both local police,
Scotland Yard, etc., and the Foreign Intelligence Agency, MI6,
and reports to the Home Secretary. The view of those who
advocate this idea is that the FBI's law enforcement mission
conflicts with the intelligence-related tasks we are going to
increasingly give it, and that it is assuming now after
September 11, and thus, the counter-terrorism functions of the
FBI and CIA would be merged into this new Department. Others
have been troubled by suggestions to break up the FBI, of
course, but also troubled by the civil liberties implications
that are associated with such an agency and we will want to
hear from our witnesses about that.
Our colleague from Pennsylvania, Senator Specter, has
presented another proposal which, in some sense, builds on the
President's proposal, that would create a National Terrorism
Assessment Center within the new Department that would have
authority to direct the CIA, FBI, and other intelligence
agencies to provide it with all information relating to
terrorist threats. That center would pull experienced
intelligence analysts from across the Federal Government to
analyze, coordinate, and disseminate information to law
enforcement agencies and it has an interesting requirement in
it somewhat like the Goldwater-Nichols proposal, that people in
the different intelligence agencies of the government would
have to serve a time in this National Terrorism Assessment
Center as part of their promotional path up.
We are going to hear other ideas today from a superb group
of witnesses. What struck me last week at the first hearing we
held with Governor Ridge and Senators Hart and Rudman is the
really intense desire of Members of the Committee, certainly
across party lines, to figure out the best way to get this job
done, and this job meaning both the new Department of Homeland
Security and particularly this question of coordinating
intelligence and law enforcement. We feel that this is not only
a moment of challenge, but a moment of opportunity, and I think
most of us have not yet found a comfortable place to conclude
our quest, particularly with regard to intelligence and law
enforcement coordination.
So I look forward to this hearing today with confidence
that this distinguished panel of witnesses will help us in that
effort and I thank them very much for being here.
Senator Thompson.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR THOMPSON
Senator Thompson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would ask that
my statement be made a part of the record.
Chairman Lieberman. Without objection.
Senator Thompson. I think that if we were too comfortable
right now in our quest to reach these solutions, we would be
premature. That is the very reason, of course, why we have
these hearings, and I want to compliment you on this array of
witnesses that we have today. I think they are exactly the kind
of people we ought to be talking to as we work our way through
this.
We are dealing primarily today with the intelligence piece.
My own view is that, without a doubt, we will conclude after
our Intelligence Committee hearings, which I am a part of, that
there are deficiencies and inadequacies. I think we have known
that for a long time before September 11. We simply have not
kept up to the new world that we are now living in since the
end of the Cold War. In terms of human intelligence, in terms
of ability to penetrate, we are going to have to do much
better. We have seen major deficiencies in terms of collection,
analysis, and dissemination of intelligence information.
I think the question for us here is to what extent will
this legislation fix that, and to what extent is it designed
to? I tend to think, at this stage of the game, ``very little''
is the answer to both questions. I think, though, that
certainly stands on its own two feet in being beneficial to the
overall problem.
But the intelligence issue, is it really meshed into the
homeland security problem or is it separate? Do we need to do
the Homeland Security organization piece, treat Homeland
Security as a customer of intelligence with the idea of
reforming the Intelligence Communities later so as not to
create confusion and gaps at a sensitive time, or exactly how
do we handle this? Do we set up a separate entity, as you
mentioned, recognizing the distinct nature of the FBI and the
law enforcement mandate that it has, and the fact that
overnight, its top priorities are now things that they spent
relatively very little time on up until now?
So should we keep them in the same Department or put them
in the Homeland Security Department, or put part of them in the
Homeland Security Department, or create a new MI5? If we create
a new MI5, what should it be under, the Justice Department or
the DCI or where? And what difference does it make anyway?
We all have ideas that seem logical to us as to where the
boxes ought to be and who ought to be under where, but we
really need to get down to why. What empirical evidence is
there that one way might work better than another? I think that
is what people like these gentlemen can help us with.
So thank you for being here with us today and I look
forward to their testimony.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Thompson.
[The prepared statement of Senator Thompson follows:]
OPENING PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR THOMPSON
Thank you Mr. Chairman for calling this hearing. I'm glad as we
continue our work on the proposal for a new Homeland Security
Department that we are going to spend a couple of days looking at
intelligence information sharing.
The President's proposal places a great deal of responsibility on
the new Department to sift through information, conduct threat
assessments and vulnerability assessments, to issue warnings, and to
ensure that our critical infrastructure remains safe. This ambitious
mission, together with reform of the Intelligence Community, cannot
succeed, however, unless the Department receives cooperation and all
the information it needs from collection sources such as the FBI and
CIA.
Shortcomings in intelligence collection and analysis must be solved
if the nation's homeland security is genuinely to improve. Even if we
do improve these aspects of intelligence operations, however, we still
confront serious obstacles to getting agencies to share relevant
information with each other. Indeed, some have questioned whether
Congress should reorganize the Intelligence Community as a whole to
improve the sharing of information.
The failure to share intelligence is not a new problem. In fact,
this Committee has seen some of those difficulties first hand. For
example, during the campaign finance investigation, our efforts were
hampered by the failure of the FBI to properly disseminate information
to Congress, and for that matter to the Campaign Financing Task Force
within the Justice Department. This Committee also conducted an
investigation of the Wen Ho Lee matter and Senator Lieberman and I
released a joint report regarding numerous failures within DOJ and the
FBI including some regarding information sharing.
A number of reasons have been given for the problem of information
sharing. Some believe that it is simply not possible for law
enforcement agents, whose training and promotions revolve around
pursuing criminal cases for prosecution, to switch gears and operate as
intelligence analysts. Others believe that because the FBI, CIA, and
the military services all have a different focus that they're not
inclined to talk to each other. Some also believe that our intelligence
agencies are not coordinated very well and often display an inherent
tendency to protect their information in order to protect their
sources.
Whatever the cause for the information-sharing problems that have
existed for many years, we must address them. The good news is that we
are doing so. Obviously, this committee is working on the issue this
week in conjunction with its legislative jurisdiction. Other
committees, most notably the House and Senate Intelligence Committees,
are also examining this issue.
I am looking forward to hearing some different ideas today about
how the new Department could and should work within the Intelligence
Community. I also want to hear the views of our distinguished witnesses
about possibly reorganizing the boxes to put pieces of the FBI in the
new Department, create a new independent intelligence center, or even
an MI5 type model.
I am also looking forward to hearing tomorrow about the ongoing
effort at the FBI to reorganize from within to see if that
reorganization will provide sufficient support to the new Department
and obviate the need to shift portions of the FBI.
While we may act on a Homeland Security Department in the short
term, we will need to keep an eye on how information sharing works in
practice to determine whether more steps need to be taken in the
future. Whatever we do now to create a new Department will not be the
last step, but only the first. Continuous and continuing oversight and
reevaluation must be the new watchword for Congress, and especially
this committee.
We must keep in mind that the establishment of a new Cabinet
Department with an intelligence component will not solve the defects we
observed in connection with the attacks of September 11. Instead,
wholesale reform of our Intelligence Community is desperately needed.
We cannot afford to allow the failures in our collection, analysis, and
dissemination to continue. Our intelligence agencies are the eyes and
ears of this country. If they are malfunctioning, then we will be blind
to potential attack. Clearly, September 11 proved to all of us that our
Intelligence Community has not functioned properly for some time.
Despite numerous warnings, we did not take sufficient action. The
investigative efforts of this Committee and others are the first step
toward fixing our intelligence agencies. We must follow these hearings
with serious reform. This matter is too important to put off any
longer.
Mr. Chairman, you have brought together a number of very
distinguished observers of the current system whose views will greatly
assist Congress in evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the
current system. I look forward to hearing from them.
Chairman Lieberman. Senator Akaka.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good
morning to our witnesses and thank you for joining us today.
I want to commend Chairman Lieberman for his leadership and
guidance in what we are doing. Since September 11 exposed the
strengths and weaknesses of our national security systems, we
have been trying to correct mistakes, trying to strengthen our
weaknesses, and Chairman Lieberman has stepped out on this
issue.
It was appropriate that after hearing from Governor Ridge
and Senators Hart and Rudman last week that we discuss how the
proposed Department of Homeland Security fits into our Nation's
intelligence structure. In hindsight, we must strengthen
existing analytical and information sharing structures and
avoid duplication at the expense of other national security
requirements.
We are facing the most extensive government reorganization
in over 50 years. Yet, the administration's proposal fails to
articulate a long-term vision to guide this new Department.
Moreover, I hope the proposal is not meant to replace the
Homeland Security strategy that Governor Ridge is expected to
release next month.
The Hart-Rudman Commission found that the United States
lacks systems to facilitate timely intelligence sharing. We
must ensure full and active coordination between the
Intelligence Community and this proposed Department. Currently,
representatives from our Intelligence Community serve on the
Central Intelligence Counter-Terrorism Center. We should ask
whether strengthening the CTC and establishing liaisons between
the new Department and the CTC would ensure access to timely
information.
The administration's proposed Department would analyze raw
data and finished reports from many different agencies.
However, the linkage of these previously separate functions
could take years to develop and might create unintended
vulnerabilities. State and local authorities in Hawaii and
throughout the Nation depend on the Federal Government to
collect, analyze, and disseminate information that is timely
and accurate.
I am concerned that the President's proposal does not
include mechanisms for intelligence sharing between the
Department and other Federal agencies, with State and local
authorities. It is critical to establish and promote standards,
intelligence sharing, and to guarantee that the information is
reliable and credible.
Regardless of how we organize the Federal Government, we
cannot meet our intelligence obligations unless we maximize the
talents of those charged with security, and provide sufficient
resources to carry out new Homeland Security missions. As an
example, we must provide training to improve the foreign
language skills of our present Federal workers, and invest in
the next generation of employees to ensure a dedicated and
capable workforce that will contribute to our national
security. We cannot allow the Federal Government to become the
``employer of last resort.''
Learning from September 11, let us move forward to improve
existing structures, coordinate information sharing, and ensure
cooperation among agencies. I see these actions as
opportunities, not challenges, in strengthening our Nation's
security.
Mr. Chairman, I join you in this effort and in thanking our
witnesses for being with us this morning.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Akaka. Senator
Stevens.
Senator Stevens. I yield to Senator Collins.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks. Senator Collins.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLLINS
Senator Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you,
Senator Stevens.
Mr. Chairman, as our hearing last week demonstrated, this
Committee, Congress, and the administration still have a lot of
work to do to create workable legislation establishing a new
Department of Homeland Security. Today, we are considering the
relationship between the new Department and the Intelligence
Community.
This could well be one of the most important and difficult
issues that our Committee wrestles with. If there is not
efficient and adequate information sharing between the new
Department and the existing intelligence agencies, and if there
is not better interagency cooperation, then the reorganization
and creation of a new Department will not be sufficient to
remedy the problems that have been identified as
vulnerabilities in our system.
I look forward to hearing the testimony of our witnesses
today. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Collins.
Senator Cleland, good morning.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CLELAND
Senator Cleland. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, thank you very much for being here.
I feel very strongly about several issues. First of all,
the need for a Homeland Security agency to force coordination,
cooperation, and communication among basic agencies that are in
charge of our homeland defense, like Customs, like the Coast
Guard, like the Border Patrol and other agencies. I am an
original cosponsor of the Homeland Security Agency bill that
came out of this Committee.
I feel strongly about two other issues. First, that the
Secretary of the Homeland Security Agency should be a Cabinet-
level officer, sit in the Cabinet meetings, and be part of that
inner circle.
But the legislation that we reported out has within it a
suggestion that I made, and that is that the head of the
Homeland Security Agency should also sit on the National
Security Council. Why? For access to intelligence, so that
Secretary knows what everybody around the table knows. For me,
that pretty much solves the problem. I think the Secretary of
the Homeland Security agency ought to have access to
information, and access to intelligence. I am not quite sure it
is proper for that agency to be engaged in intelligence
gathering. We are all worried about connecting the dots, but if
you sit on the National Security Council and have access to the
intelligence and know what everybody else around the table
knows, it seems to me that ought to be sufficient.
I would like to get your opinion as we get into the
questions here, but that is the way I solve the access to
intelligence problems and enable the Homeland Secretary to have
the intelligence that he or she needs to do the job.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Cleland. Senator
Voinovich.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
At the last hearing, I mentioned that we can rearrange the
chairs in the new Homeland Security Department, but what really
counts is who is sitting in the chairs, the quality of the
individuals, their skill, their knowledge, and from the point
of view of intelligence sharing, their interpersonal skills
with each other. I am very pleased that Senator Akaka mentioned
the human capital challenges that we have regardless of what we
do in this proposed new Department.
The subject of this hearing is intelligence sharing. But
Mr. Chairman, at our last hearing, we spent most of our time
talking about intelligence sharing and whether it was going to
work or not. It seems to me that all of us should be concerned
about the rash of reports that our Intelligence Community is
deficient in its information sharing.
Last week in the Washington Post, a senior U.S. official
stated, ``We do not share intelligence among agencies. No one
seems to have the authority to make that cooperation happen. We
are very much a Third World country in how we are doing this.''
This is a devastating assessment made by a senior
government official and something, I think, that this Committee
should take seriously. The inability of the government to share
intelligence effectively seems to be rooted in longstanding and
systemic problems, including a history in some agencies to
protect turf rather than work together with other agencies
toward a common goal. This simply cannot continue.
I ask that the rest of my opening statement be inserted in
the record. I am very anxious to hear from our witnesses
because they have got the experience to tell us if these
observations that I just made are correct, and if they are,
what can we do to solve the situation.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Voinovich.
[The prepared statement of Senator Voinovich follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I applaud your leadership in our Committee
to move this issue forward. As you know, the proposed Department of
Homeland Security represents the largest government restructuring in 50
years. Paul Light from The Brookings Institution noted that this effort
``is by far the most sweeping merger of disparate cultures in American
bureaucratic history.'' This is a massive challenge and the stakes are
of the highest order.
Today, however, we are not here to discuss merging the cultures and
activities of 22 separate agencies, but rather how this new Department
will interact with the agencies that handle the most classified and
sensitive national security information and how those agencies can
share information appropriately with the new Department of Homeland
Security.
I would observe, Mr. Chairman, that this is really the second, not
the first, day of hearings on this specific aspect of the proposed
reorganization. Last Thursday, most of the Members of this Committee
focused almost exclusively on the relationship between the proposed
Department and the Intelligence Community. We all seem to agree that
this relationship may determine the success or failure of our efforts
to secure the American homeland.
According to a rash of recent news reports, our Intelligence
Community is deficient in its information sharing. For instance, in
last week's (Tuesday, June 18) Washington Post, a senior U.S. official
stated that `` . . . we don't share intelligence among agencies; no one
seems to have the authority to make that cooperation happen. We are
very much a Third World country in how we are doing this.''
This is a devastating assessment made by a senior government
official, and something this Committee must take seriously. The Federal
Government's inability to share intelligence effectively seems to be
rooted in longstanding and systemic problems, including a history in
some agencies to protect turf rather than work together with other
agencies toward a common goal. This simply cannot continue. As a matter
of national security, we cannot afford to continue policies or
processes that disrupt the flow of information to the people who need
to know and who can make a difference.
Mr. Chairman, countless other Members of Congress have said similar
things regarding intelligence sharing and cooperation in the past, yet
the problem persists. We must make sure this time that we take all the
necessary actions to ensure our security and we will not tolerate petty
jurisdictional or turf considerations.
This means that Congress must provide a solid legislative
foundation for the Department that clearly sets out its roles,
responsibilities, and relationships to the Intelligence Community and
other departments and agencies. There must be strong accountability
mechanisms.
We also must provide adequate resources, including technology and,
above all else, the people needed to get the job done. People who know
how to obtain, organize, analyze and disseminate information
collaboratively and effectively. Human capital, at all levels, will be
key to the success of this Department.
As we conduct this dialogue over the next 2 days, I look forward to
hearing about ways in which we can better organize and manage the FBI,
CIA and other intelligence agencies to ensure that life-saving
information is made available in a timely manner to the Department of
Homeland Security, and not, as we have regrettably seen, days or weeks
after it is too late.
Mr. Chairman, thank you again for your leadership on this issue.
Chairman Lieberman. Gentlemen, thanks very much for being
here. We end up speaking in technical terms sometimes about
this, but as I see the question before all of us, it is to
acknowledge that we are now spending an enormous amount of
money annually to gather all sorts of intelligence, and the
question post-September 11 is how can we most effectively bring
that together to prevent further terrorist attacks before they
occur? Are there other forms of intelligence that we should be
more aggressively collecting now with what we know after
September 11 and after, in fact, the anthrax attacks?
So those are the big questions. I am very grateful that you
are here. We are going to start with the Hon. Ashton Carter,
who was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International
Security Policy from 1993 to 1996, is now Co-Director of The
Preventive Defense Project at the John F. Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard. Thanks, Dr. Carter, very much for being
here.
TESTIMONY OF HON. ASHTON B. CARTER,\1\ CO-DIRECTOR, PREVENTIVE
DEFENSE PROJECT, JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT, HARVARD
UNIVERSITY AND ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE (1993-1996),
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY POLICY
Mr. Carter. Thank you, Senator and Members, for having me
today.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Carter appears in the Appendix on
page 125.
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Chairman Lieberman. Excuse me a second. We have got the
clock set for 5 minutes. Feel free to go a little longer if you
have not--this is the only panel we are going to hear today--if
you do not feel you have had a chance to say your peace.
Mr. Carter. Thank you. I will try to be brief, though,
Senator.
You just mentioned new types of intelligence in connection
with Homeland Security, and that is, in a sense, the theme of
what I would like to say today. I have a written statement
which I would like to enter into the record, if I may.
Chairman Lieberman. It will, along with the other excellent
statements all of you have prepared for us, be entered into the
record.
Mr. Carter. Thank you. The written statement addresses the
overall architecture of the Federal Government for Homeland
Security, including the respective roles of the White House,
OHS, Office of Homeland Security, and the proposed new
Department, DHS.
In my oral comments, I want to focus on several new types
of intelligence, intelligence with a small ``i'', which I mean
very generally to denote information and analysis necessary to
the successful accomplishment of the mission of Homeland
Security over time, but which is not necessarily the
perpetrator-focused, event-focused type of intelligence that we
traditionally associate with the FBI and the CIA.
These types of intelligence, which I would argue the
Department of Homeland Security can usefully devise or invent
or promote and then practice, these are modes of intelligence
that the CIA and the FBI, I would judge, are unlikely to
practice well by themselves, but for which they can provide
useful inputs.
If I may, I would like to take a few moments to recap the
main points of the overall argument I made about the
architecture and then turn to the intelligence question. Just a
few points on the respective missions of the White House and
the Department of Homeland Security. I am moved to do this
because I think that the foundation of the new Department, if
there is a foundation of the new Department, does not make the
role of Tom Ridge or the Office of Homeland Security any less
important. In fact, it probably makes it more important.
Therefore, it is important that we not think of the DHS as
somehow supplanting the Ridge mission. The reason for this is
that while, in everybody's version of the Department of
Homeland Security, it contains much of the Federal structure
that bears upon Homeland Security, it also omits much.
Therefore, the problem of interagency coordination does not go
away. That is something that can only be done in the White
House.
The heart of the Ridge mission, from my point of view, is
not what his charter says, which is to coordinate. Coordination
implies that the Nation has the capabilities it needs to do
Homeland Security. All we need to do is marshal them optimally.
I do not think that is right. I do not think the Nation has
the capabilities it needs. And so if all you have is a come-as-
you-are party where everybody brings whatever history and
tradition and their existing missions happen to have equipped
them with, you are not going to have the capabilities the
Nation needs.
So to my way of thinking, Governor Ridge ought to see his
job far less as one of coordinating what we have than building
what we need, that is, an architect, not a coordinator--an
architect who conceives the investment plan the Nation needs to
make in its own protection over time. That is the heart of his
job and the critical product we require of him is a multi-year,
multi-agency program plan, precisely the kind of program plan
that I think we all wish had informed the preparation of the
fiscal year 2003 budget, which instead is essentially a bubble-
up product rather than a top-down product.
That investment plan, when he makes it, needs to include--
and this is also why this is quintessentially a White House
function, not an agency function--attention to how the
investments on Homeland Security are to be apportioned between
the Federal Government, State and local governments, a question
of fiscal federalism as it applies to Homeland Security.
It is a critical issue. Someone needs to share out the
responsibilities here. There are clearly things that the
Federal Government ought to do in this domain, others that can
be done by State and local government but might need support
from the Federal Government, and others that they will need to
do on their own. And part of the architecture is to establish a
few ground rules for who does what.
That is true also when it comes to the question of public
investment versus private investment. Any of the needed
investments that need to be made in the private sector, are
they to be mandated by government, encouraged by government,
supported by government, or are we going to count on the
insurance industry or the self-interest of corporations to
supply the needed incentives? Once again, that is a whole set
of questions that only an architect can address.
So for all these reasons, I think the White House and the
Ridge office become more important, not less important, the
more serious we get about Homeland Security, and his job is to
be the investment architect, not the coordinator, not the czar.
With respect to the Department of Homeland Security, I
think that is an important ingredient of the architecture. I do
have three concerns about it, though, and let me share them
before turning to the intelligence question.
The first, I have already noted, namely that it is a big
mistake if we allow the Department of Homeland Security to
divert us entirely from the mission of the Office of Homeland
Security or imagine somehow that it is a substitute for a
functioning Ridge office. It is not.
Second, I have seen a lot of government reorganizations,
participated in some in the Department of Defense, and they
have a tendency to be half-done, to be poorly done. Unless this
reorganization is aggressively pursued and whoever has the job
of carrying it out is given the authority to manage it
aggressively and creatively, we could end up worse off than we
are now. Halfway-done reorganizations are the worst of all
possible worlds.
And the third proviso on the Department is I do not think
it is enough for us to ask that the new Department just bring
together things that we are already doing, focus them, and make
them more efficient. I think unless the new Department does new
things that are not done anywhere in the Federal system now, it
is not adding enough value. I would identify two things,
particular things, that are, I would say, to a first order of
approximation not being done at all that need to be done.
The first is these new types of intelligence, to which I
will turn to in a moment.
The second is the science and technology investments, or
inventiveness, as it applies to Homeland Security. We have a
lot of weaknesses as a Nation as we face the era of terrorism.
We are open. We are a relatively soft target in many ways and
we need to look to our strengths. If this Nation has one
strength that has served it well in emergencies in the past, it
has been our inventiveness, and particularly in science and
technology. If we do not bring that to bear on this problem, we
are not taking advantage of one of our key national traits.
The other thing the Department of Homeland Security ought
to do is intelligence with a small ``i'', and let me use a few
minutes to say what I mean by that. There is a lot of debate
going on about whether we should have connected the dots or not
before September 11 and I think some useful insights have
emerged from this debate already. One insight is the danger of
continuing to separate foreign intelligence and domestic
intelligence as rigorously as we have done in the past. Another
is the insight that we need to encourage FBI law enforcement
officials to prevent terrorism and not just to solve the crime
after it has occurred. So these are useful insights.
But most of the debate on intelligence is still what I
would call intelligence with a capital ``I'', that is,
intelligence which conceives of the information at issue as
perpetrator-focused or event-focused. Who are these guys who
might do this to us? What are their intentions? What kind of
act might they be planning? This is obviously pertinent
information, but I think there are some other concepts of
intelligence that are of great potential importance to Homeland
Security which, as I said earlier, at first approximation, are
not currently accomplished anywhere in the Federal Government.
A clear and valuable role for the Department of Homeland
Security would be to develop and practice some of these
intelligence techniques. Among them are red-teaming, what I
call intelligence of means, counter-surveillance, and risk
assessment, and I would like to just define each of those and
give you an example.
I will say parenthetically that these are important and
effective aspects of the intelligence underlying Homeland
Security and they raise very few civil liberties issues by
themselves, and that is another advantage.
Let me start with red-teaming. Most Americans were probably
not shocked--I certainly was not--on September 12 to learn that
we did not have advance information about the dozen or so
individuals living in our midst who plotted and took part in
the airline suicide bombings. I was deeply disturbed to learn,
though, and I think most people I talked to were, that the
government was as heedless of the tactic they used as it was of
who they were. That is, we inspected the airline system for
guns and bombs, not knives, and we thought about people seeking
conveyance to Cuba, not seeking conveyance to the upper floors
of the World Trade Towers.
So a huge gap existed in our airline security system and
they found it before we did. We cannot allow that to happen. We
cannot allow that kind of tactical surprise to happen again,
and to me, that recommends that the Homeland Security effort do
something, red-teaming, which is a standard thing in military
organizations, to have competing red and blue teams.
An experience that I am familiar with was the example of
the development of stealth. In a red team, you try to project
yourself imaginatively into the shoes of the opponent. Think of
what the opponent might do to you and then what counters. Then
you have a blue team which devises counters.
In the stealth program, when we developed the first stealth
aircraft, for example, the Air Force created a red team which
tried to figure out how to see, detect, and shoot down stealth
aircraft, and I am sure some of the people here remember that
well. The blue team was charged to fix the vulnerabilities, and
then we could systematically balance the threat of detection
against the cost and inconvenience of countermeasures.
A comparable red and blue team effort is, to my way of
thinking, a crucial aspect of Homeland Security, as I said,
essentially not done anywhere in the government now except in
bits and pieces--intelligence with a small ``i''.
Another example, intelligence of means. If you think not
about catching the people, but catching the wherewithal of
terrorism, that is a pretty rich field, as well. Remember all
the talk of crop dusters in October? That came from the Atlanta
Olympics experience, within which I also participated, or with
which I was associated, and that is an example where you
surveilled the means of destruction. You do not know who has
the intention of using a crop duster to spread biological
weapons. You do not presume you have that information, but you
are going to watch the crop duster.
We watch fissile material around the world, not well
enough, but we do. That is something, presumably, you will be
discussing on Friday. It has been just a few years that we have
surveilled pathogen cultures. And in the news in the last few
weeks, we have learned that we are not surveilling well enough
radiological sources, surveillance of means.
Counter-surveillance, another concept----
Chairman Lieberman. Forgive me for doing this, but I am
going to ask you to see if you can wind up.
Mr. Carter. I am done. I have got one more example and I am
done, sir.
Chairman Lieberman. Good. Thank you.
Mr. Carter. Counter-surveillance, the best example of that
is what we do at embassies and bases, where, a simplistic
version, you stand on the roof and look for people looking for
you, people driving by more than once, people taking pictures
of architecturally undistinguished aspects of a building. But
counter-surveillance, the point of it is to estimate the
information that a terrorist would need to attack you and then
look for people looking for that information--a very lucrative
form of intelligence with a small ``i''.
And finally, there is risk assessment, which I will not go
into but in the course of which one comes out balancing risks,
figuring out which threats are most likely, most damaging, and
least costly to countermeasure. It is risk assessment that is
the crucial input to the architect's budget plan.
So in summary, if you think about forms of intelligence
with a small ``i'', it is easy to think of some. I have given
some examples. These are things that need to be done. CIA and
FBI information is input to them, but no substitute for them.
Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Dr. Carter, for very fresh and
helpful testimony. I look forward to asking you questions about
it.
Our next witness is General Patrick Hughes, U.S. Army,
Retired, former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency,
and now, I believe, a consultant in the field of security,
generally. General Hughes, thank you for being here.
TESTIMONY OF LT. GEN. PATRICK M. HUGHES,\1\ U.S. ARMY (RET.),
FORMER DIRECTOR (1996-1999), DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (DIA),
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
General Hughes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Thompson,
and other distinguished Senators. I would like to read my
statement because I want to make sure that I make the points
clearly and directly to you.
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\1\ The prepared statement of General Hughes appears in the
Appendix on page 135.
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What we do to secure our Nation must be done both
internally and externally. We should go abroad in the global
context as well as within our Nation's borders and vital
territory to seek out those who would strike us and interdict
them, stop them, dissuade them, provide alternatives to them,
whatever will work short of appeasement, to forestall future
attacks. We cannot afford to absorb the blows that are possible
in the future. As bad as past attacks have been, those events
were not as bad as future attacks may be.
Thus, I am making my comments today with a great sense of
urgency, because in my view, the conditions are, indeed,
urgent.
We have enlarged the battle space by putting forward the
concept of conducting a defensive and sometimes offensive war
on terrorism here in our homeland. To ensure an internally
secure America, we must continue to attend to traditional
threats from nation states and alliances and coalitions and
from new groups that may form against us. We have not reduced
the mission environment, nor have we reduced the possibility
for external conflict merely by preparing for the threat to our
homeland from terrorists and other antagonistic groups. Rather,
we have expanded our requirements.
As you know, the Department of Homeland Security will
require appropriate legislation to give it a charter and
authority and responsibility in the context of the U.S.
Intelligence Community. In that same context, the Department
will require Presidential authorities in writing and detailed
written descriptions of its responsibilities and functions.
Ideally, these documentary efforts should match and reinforce.
Standing up the intelligence element of the Department of
Homeland Security is not a zero-sum effort. Additional people
and money must be allocated for this undertaking. The
Department of Homeland Security should have a senior official
appointed to do the work of intelligence included in its
structure. The people who actually do the work of intelligence
in the Department of Homeland Security should be the best and
we should give them the best tools to work with. This will cost
money and will strain limited human and technical resources.
The key to the success of the people that do the work of
intelligence is access to information. Intelligence sharing
across the Intelligence Community, Federal, State, and local,
is vital. Without open and expeditious sharing of intelligence,
I believe this endeavor will fail.
The Department of Homeland Security should not separately
develop or field sensors, sources, methods, or collection
capabilities apart from the existing U.S. Intelligence
Community or relevant elements of law enforcement,
counterintelligence, and security. However, it should have the
power and authority to use existing or developed capabilities
in partnership with those who have primary responsibility for
the capability.
The Department of Homeland Security should participate
directly in Intelligence Community collection management.
The Department of Homeland Security should have the
requisite processing, analytic, and production capacity
necessary to the task at hand.
In our Intelligence Community, we currently have an
inadequate capability to process, analyze, prepare in
contextual and technical forms that make sense, and deliver
cogent intelligence to users as soon as possible so that the
time-dependent operational demands for the intelligence are
met. In order to fix this inadequacy, this requires a very
advanced set of automation and telecommunications capabilities,
the best analytic tools we can acquire, and the best people we
can coax to do this demanding work.
Intelligence support for countering terrorism in the
context of Homeland Security is akin to searching out criminals
who are planning to act and interdicting them before they act,
more than it is about the physical kinds of intelligence
directed against established nation states or alliance
opponents in conventional or even unconventional warfare.
Understanding this construct seems critical to the work of
intelligence support, since it is much different than the
typical military context. This is, indeed, different and
requires a different approach to achieve success.
Warning times will be very short. Evidence of an impending
act may be slim. The number of people involved can be
comparatively small, and clarity is unlikely since
extraordinary measures will be taken to conceal what is being
planned or attempted. The threat may be so acute that we must
act very rapidly.
Invasive human and technical presence inside the planning,
decision, action, and support loops of the compartmented
opponents we are faced with seems vital. While this reinforces
my view of the importance of human intelligence, it also
reinforces the fact that technical intelligence of all kinds,
appropriately targeted and focused, can provide important
assistance and insight.
We have, in my view, failed to do the right things in the
past. These failures include an inadequate human intelligence
gathering capability, an unwillingness to engage in risky
operations, and a flawed set of recruiting, training,
supporting, and training systems for intelligence
professionals. For the security of our homeland, we have to fix
this set of problems.
Every possible type of intelligence endeavor must be
applied concurrently and synergistically in an all-source
collection and all-source analytic environment so that no stone
goes unturned, no opportunity is missed, and no venomous snake
is left alive unless it suits our purpose. The Department of
Homeland Security must have, internal to its structure, an
adequate all-source management and performance capability.
One of the most demanding tasks for the Department of
Homeland Security is to warn the citizens of the United States
of an impending threat. Setting up an effective, efficient, and
dependable Homeland Security warning system is quite different,
since the nature of the threat, time, space and place, and
tempo of activity are so different. Solving this problem is
already challenging and will become more difficult as time
passes. The indications and warning system needs our best
effort.
We should not allow the open publication and public
compromise of vital details of intelligence activities which,
when they are compromised, give some advantage to our
opponents. On the other hand, appropriate authorities must have
full access to the workings of the Homeland Security
intelligence structure so that they can exercise the kind of
oversight, policy control, and enforcement and accountability
that we all know we need. We need to find some form of balance
between these concepts.
When one looks out at the future threat, notably the threat
from rogue elements with weapons with mass effects, and adds to
it the possibilities embodied in new science and new
technology, then I believe we should generate an exceptional
and urgent response to these threats.
In speaking to you today, it is my fervent hope that some
idea or thought will help to better secure our Nation. Thank
you very much.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, General. That was a very
helpful statement.
Next, we are going to hear from Jeffrey Smith, former
General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency and now a
partner at the law firm of Arnold and Porter.
TESTIMONY OF JEFFREY H. SMITH,\1\ FORMER GENERAL COUNSEL (1995-
1996), CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (CIA)
Mr. Smith. Mr. Chairman, thank you. It is a pleasure to be
here and appear before this Committee to discuss generally the
issue of Homeland Security and in particular one of the most
important questions, how to improve the collection, analysis,
and dissemination of intelligence.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Smith appears in the Appendix on
page 140.
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In my judgment, I agree with Senator Thompson. It is
probably premature to reach final conclusions about what went
wrong and how to fix it until the Intelligence Committees
complete their review, but we can begin to ask some questions
now.
Let me talk just for a couple of minutes about intelligence
broadly and then focus on some specific issues related to this.
In my view, it is an oversimplification to say that the failure
to predict to prevent the attack was caused solely by the lack
of cooperation between the FBI and the CIA. Intelligence,
whether it be domestic or foreign, is far more than just
sharing information and connecting the dots. My colleagues have
talked about this a bit, but good intelligence depends on many
factors--understanding what the consumer of intelligence needs,
and what we are able to collect, and what we are not able to
collect.
General Hughes mentioned the need to take risk,
particularly in the clandestine service. One cannot say too
strongly that clandestine officers of the CIA must know that we
expect them to take risks and know that we will back them up
when the going gets tough, and candidly, we have not done that
perhaps as often as we ought to have.
It is also imperative in my judgment that the analyst and
the collector work together closely. The collector needs to
understand what he is supposed to collect and the analyst needs
to understand what the collector can and cannot collect. The
analyst also needs to understand the texture in which it was
collected to know what kind of weight that ought to be assigned
to a particular scrap of information.
Another fundamental question is whether it is possible to
have a single agency responsible for both law enforcement and
intelligence. Over time, we have discovered how hard that is,
and frankly, I am almost of the view that we should separate
the two. I think we need to look very hard at that, and I want
to talk about that in a moment. The CIA and FBI have done a
much better job of working together in the last few years, but
there are still gaps.
Finally on this broad issue, Mr. Chairman, I agree with the
comments of General Hughes. I am sure General Odom will talk
about this. The imperative to have the very best information
technology available to our Intelligence Community. We have
discovered that the FBI, particularly, is lagging. NSA has made
a major investment. We have a lot of genius in this country in
industry and academia, but we need to do a better job of
reaching out to them and finding ways for the government to
work with them to find the very best information technology.
Let me turn then briefly to some issues particularly raised
by the Department of Homeland Security. The administration's
proposal would make Homeland Security a customer of the
Intelligence Community. I think that is correct. The specifics
are still vague and need to be worked out. There are some
things that are not clear to me, obviously, but that is one the
things this hearing will get at.
In my view, the Homeland Security Department needs an
intelligence function. It needs an element within the
Department that can perform analysis and can disseminate that
analysis to the rest of the government. There are a couple of
pretty good examples, I think, of where other departments have
an intelligence function embedded within them that carries out
this role. INR in the Department of State, for example. Maybe
even a better example is the Office of Net Assessment in the
Secretary of Defense, whose job it is to take intelligence
reports from various parts of the U.S. Government and then line
that up with what we are facing, what the opposition has, and
then try to reach some sort of net conclusion about how our
forces would do in a particular battle or particular conflict
with armed forces of that country.
That is essentially what Homeland Security is going to be
asked to do, to take intelligence information collected by the
Intelligence Community and then produce an analysis that also
incorporates what they understand to be the vulnerabilities
about the United States.
Having said that, I do not believe it would be a good idea
to create within Homeland Security a competing intelligence
center to the CIA. In my judgment, the Counter-Terrorist Center
at CIA and the FBI should be combined into a single center. I
would pull the analytical function out of the Bureau and create
a single Counter-Terrorist Center under the DCI. Clearly, FBI
officers, officers from other elements of the government need
to be there, but I am not in favor of having a lot of competing
centers around town.
I also believe the time has come to consider the creation
of a domestic security service. We most frequently think of MI5
as an example. They are, in my judgment, a first-rate service.
They are able to work, as you said, Mr. Chairman, with MI6, the
external service. They are also able to work with Scotland Yard
and Special Branch, not only in London, but scattered around
the country, the United Kingdom, and I think we have a great
deal to learn from them. They do not have arrest authority. I
do not believe that if we were to create a security service, I
do not believe they should have arrest authority.
As to where it is housed, Senator Thompson mentioned the
two obvious choices, the DCI or the Attorney General. My
inclination is to make them under the DCI, but a strong case
can be made that they ought to be under the Attorney General.
Regardless of where it is housed, the director of the new
service ought to have direct access to the President, and I
think that if we were to do this, the director of the security
service ought to be a career government civil servant, perhaps
with a fixed term like the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who
also, of course, has direct access to the President.
I am also intrigued with the suggestion that a couple of
people have made, including recently Senator Feinstein and
others, that we ought to separate the Director of Central
Intelligence from his duties as the head of the CIA and to
create a true Director of National Intelligence. This is highly
controversial, but it does seem to me to have considerable
appeal. One way of looking at it would be to think a little bit
of the new Director of National Intelligence as analogous to
the Secretary of Defense with greater powers and that the
various pieces of the Intelligence Community would have a
relationship to him in a way similar to that that the military
departments have with the Secretary of Defense. As I say, that
is controversial, but I think it is worth thinking about.
Clearly, if we were to set up a domestic security service,
a great deal of thought would necessarily be given to
protecting civil liberties. In my judgment, that is certainly
doable, and I have a few particular suggestions to how that
might be done.
I do have just one final thought, Mr. Chairman, about the
proposal made by the administration and the issue of access by
the Secretary of Homeland Security to information. The
administration's proposal lays out a fairly complicated
structure where there are three different categories of
information and the Secretary gets all of this and some of that
and a little bit of this, but only if the President agrees. I
can envision some of my successors sitting around a table
arguing, well, is this in Column A or Column B and does he get
it or not get it?
My suggestion is to simply have a statute that says the
head of each Federal agency is required by law to keep the
Secretary of Homeland Security, ``fully and currently
informed'' on all intelligence or other data in the possession
of that agency that is relevant to the Secretary's
responsibilities, unless otherwise directed by the President.
The ``fully and currently informed'' language is one that we
are all familiar with. It is used in U.S. statutes a number of
places. It is the operating principle under which the DCI is
supposed to keep the Congress fully and currently informed. I
would turn it around and just put the burden on individual
agencies to keep the Secretary fully and currently informed
unless the President says otherwise.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to your questions.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Mr. Smith. That was very
interesting.
There was a lot of discussion with Governor Ridge about the
provision in the President's proposal which seemed to require
the President to give approval before so-called raw data, raw
intelligence, could be given to the Department of Homeland
Security. There was some suggestion that might have been to get
around an existing legal prohibition. Do you have any
understanding of what that might be?
Mr. Smith. No. The only concern about that, Mr. Chairman,
is to protect particularly sensitive, in my judgment,
particularly sensitive sources and operations. But my judgment
is that, in my experience, in most instances when a Cabinet
secretary asks the Director of Central Intelligence those kind
of detailed questions, they are answered. So I am not quite
sure what the legal basis would be for the administration's
proposal.
Chairman Lieberman. OK. Thanks very much.
Now we go to General William Odom, U.S. Army, Retired,
former Director of the National Security Agency, now at the
Hudson Institute, and I am proud to say, part of the year
teaches at Yale University. General Odom.
TESTIMONY OF LT. GEN. WILLIAM E. ODOM,\1\ U.S. ARMY (RET.),
FORMER DIRECTOR (1985-1988), NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY (NSA)
General Odom. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is an honor to be
here to testify before you. I have decided in the name of time
to condense my remarks considerably, particularly in light of
the comments that you and others have made on the Committee. I
think an interaction directed towards specific questions may be
more useful, now that I am better aware of where you are in
this process.
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\1\ The prepared statement of General Odom appears in the Appendix
on page 156.
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As general comments, I would just make the following
points: The issue of whether or not we should have the agency,
is an open-and-shut argument. If we do not make the changes, we
cannot really improve anything. If we make a new Department, we
at least create the possibility to make effective changes.
Right now, we are organized in ways that prevent progress.
I would also say there is another factor you should keep in
mind. It is improper to focus only on terrorism. This Homeland
Security agency is very much needed for the drug war, for
immigration, for contraband trade and other kind of things. It
has uses that have not gotten much attention, but which needs
attention. So you should think broader than just dealing with
terrorism.
I would also say that terrorism cannot be defeated. It is
not an enemy, it is a tactic. We often can be confused, if we
do not keep that clear in mind and realize that we are after
specific enemies.
To explain why the present organizing arrangement cannot
work, I will take an example from my own experience in the
Intelligence Community--supporting the drug war. Assume, we
receive intelligence that a big drug shipment is coming out of
Country X somewhere across the ocean. The first problem I had
in distributing the information was deciding to whom do I give
it? Do I give it to DEA? Do I give it to Customs? Do I give it
to the FBI? Do I give it to the Coast Guard? Do I give it to
all of them?
The second point, do they have the secure facilities and
the trained and cleared people to receive it and not misuse it
so that we either lose the sources because the information is
disclosed in a way it should not be, or it is used in a way
that prevents prosecution after they have taken action on it?
Another problem you have then is the competition among
agencies to use intelligence. The DEA will probably want to
make the bust in the foreign country. The Coast Guard will want
to make it at sea. Customs will want to make it at the port.
The FBI will want to make it internally. I have seen that
competition lead to no action with very good intelligence. So I
do not care what you do to fix intelligence. Until you have
somebody who can orchestrate the arrest and preventive
operations under one head, rather than across Cabinet
departments, I do not see how much progress can be made.
The second example, if you have had experience with
procuring modern IT systems within the U.S. Government, you
will discover that Cabinet departments cannot even make their
own sub-departments by the same IT systems and use the same
security systems. But at least in principle, a Cabinet official
ought to be able to make his department interoperable. If he is
trying to create a common IT system in several small agencies
in eight or nine different departments, the prospects of any
success on this approach is zero.
So I would just say to Senator Thompson, your questions are
right about what we are going to get out of this. I do not have
a perfect solution for this, but I do believe you cannot make
any significant progress without some major regrouping agencies
with responsibilities for border controls.
Let me say in ending, that if you look at the history of
these agencies, they go back to the 18th and 19th Centuries. We
have not had a restructuring of them the whole of the 20th
Century. And when they were established, you could not have
expected the people who created them to have anticipated the
needs of the 20th Century, much less the 21st Century. So it
seems to me it is very compelling that we reorganize as soon as
possible, and I do not think you will get it right the first
time. They did not get the National Security Act for the
Defense Department right the first time. The Congress has
amended it several times. I think that will be the case with
homeland security, that is the basis for my argument to go
ahead, do the best you can, solve as many of these problems now
as possible, and later with trial and error and experience you
can improve it.
My second point is intelligence. In dealing with that, I do
believe that the issue of intelligence reform and the issue of
intelligence for Homeland Security have to be separate issues.
Intelligence is just not one thing. There are several functions
in intelligence. There is the collection. There is the
processing and analysis. And then there is the distribution to
people who use it, act on it. The model that has developed to
some degree in the Intelligence Community, a model which is
very deeply rooted in the military organizations, separate
collection from analysis. Every commander from a battalion on
up has an analysis section on his staff to produce intelligence
particularized for his uses. They all draw collected
intelligence from any sources, some from higher echelons, some
from organic collection capabilities.
As we have developed more complicated and technical means
for collection, we have learned that we can allow every one of
those analytic elements to subscribe to the national collection
systems, to receive distribution. That model is most advanced
in NSA because it had the advantage of having a big
communication system. We need a national system of the same
kind for imagery and in human intelligence. There is no reason
to not give raw intelligence to users at very low levels and
let them put it together. I am weary of this talk about central
organizations, groups that are going to be clearinghouses and
the centers, the real analytic efforts for counterterrorism
information. They will ensure that all useful intelligence gets
blocked or delayed, that it does not go to people who need it
fast enough, and that the particular analysis is not done in a
way that is tailored for local use. You can have it both ways--
central analysis and local analysis of raw intelligence.
It can have the central analysis, but all of these subunits
within the Homeland Security Department will need to be able to
subscribe to NSA, to the National Imaging Agency, to our HUMINT
services and get particularized delivery instantly. Then,
analytic centers can produce intelligence that is not so time
sensitive. We have to be organized to do several of those
things, so no one particular solution here fully addresses the
question.
Chairman Lieberman. I was just going to ask, you would
include the new Department of Homeland Security as a recipient
immediately of such information?
General Odom. Absolutely. Let me explain something. There
may be problems with classification here, but I think I can say
this in the open without much concern. And you might want to
get the National Security Agency to brief you on the
distribution system.
There are many agencies in this U.S. Government that are
getting direct and instant service all the time. They have
their own analytical systems within. Jeffrey Smith just
mentioned the State Department with its I&R. State's regional
bureaus get direct feed from INR, and beyond that, they receive
raw intelligence from various agencies.
Now, the Defense Department pays for most of this, and
sometimes the military services get upset about whether these
national level agencies using soldiers, sailors, airmen, and
marines as part of the workforce, give their intelligence away
to these non-military uses. But in practice that has not been a
problem. It has been very successful. We know how to do that,
but we must first be organized and wired properly for it. There
are structural issues within the Intelligence Community that
prevent it from providing such support as well as it could
today.
Now, let me move to another point about intelligence that I
see Homeland Security facing. An ordinary infantry battalion,
it sends out patrols, gets information about the enemy. These
are not ``intelligence collectors of intelligence.'' They are
just ordinary combat units, but the information has
intelligence value. Police on the street, are not known as
``intelligence agents,'' but they pick up all sorts of
information. The Homeland Security Department, with all its
organizations deployed around the borders, will have access to
massive amounts of this kind of intelligence. They have got to
learn how to report it, analyze it, get it back, and use it.
That is a problem the military deals with all the time. It is a
problem the State Department should deal with in using its
ordinary non-intelligence reporting from embassies properly.
Such information may turn out in some cases to be as much or
more important than anything the CIA or other agencies can
provide. I think that is terribly difficult to achieve. The
promise is always great. There is no perfect solution,
organizational solution, to making that work well, but there is
a big source of intelligence to be gotten there.
The final point. I support what I think you mean by MI5
solution, but the MI5 model is somewhat misleading. MI5 cannot
assert itself inside other intelligence agencies. It is by
itself, and it ends up in competition with these others
agencies. I made a proposal in an intelligence reform study,
written in 1997, to create a National Counterintelligence
Service and to take the counterintelligence/counterterrorism
responsibility, that is intelligence against terrorists, away
from the FBI, to put this new organization in the Intelligence
Community as a separate agency, and to give it operational
authority to look into the counterintelligence operations in
Army, Navy, Air Force, also in CIA. At present there is no one
in the U.S. Government who can give the President a
comprehensive intelligence picture, a counterintelligence
picture across the board. What is the overall view of every
hostile intelligence service working against us or
counterterrorism? The FBI has its view. The services have their
view. The CIA has its view. The reason we have been penetrated
many times in the past is that foreign intelligence services
know how to go through these gaps between these agencies. They
are not going to share information across agencies unless you
have somebody with responsibility and authority to provide the
comprehensive picture, but not necessarily to do the services'
counterintelligence job or the CIA's counterintelligence job,
or the FBI's criminal intelligence job. But it must put
together the whole picture, and it must have a certain amount
of operational responsibility for it. It must be the national
manager of this particular intelligence discipline.
It should have congressional oversight, and I also think it
should have a special court overseeing it. I would have a court
because I am very concerned about my rights and the violation
of them by such an organization. Perhaps the FISA Court could
serve this purpose, but Mr. Smith would know more about the
FISA Court.
But let me end my remarks there. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Very interesting testimony. We will
come back and ask some questions.
Final witness is Chief William Berger, Chief of Police of
North Miami Beach, Florida, President of the International
Association of Chiefs of Police. Obviously, as evidenced in our
Committee bill, and there is some language similar in the
President's bill, the relationship between the Federal
Government's new Department of Homeland Security, and State,
county and local officials is a very critical factor, certainly
in terms of first responders, in the role of first responders.
But the question we raise today is--and General Odom's
comments lead right into it--is how can we better take
advantage of the hundreds of thousands of police officers, for
instance out there across America, who every day are observing
or having contact with people or situations that might have
significance in a National Homeland Security effort, to make
sure it is fed in directly to them and that they receive
information back from the Homeland Security Agency as well.
So, Chief Berger, we welcome you and look forward to your
testimony now.
TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM B. BERGER,\1\ CHIEF OF POLICE, NORTH MIAMI
BEACH, FLORIDA AND PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF
CHIEFS OF POLICE
Chief Berger. Thank you, sir. Chairman Lieberman, Senator
Thompson, Members of the Committee and a special hello to
Senator Max Cleland, who I had the honor of testifying for back
in December.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Berger appears in the Appendix on
page 166.
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I am honored to be here and represent the International
Association of Chiefs of Police, a 20,000 member representing
law enforcement executives worldwide, created in 1894. At the
onset, I would like to express my thanks to the Committee for
recognizing the needs for the views of not only IACP but law
enforcement in general. The structure of the proposed
Department of Homeland Security and its relationship with State
and local law enforcement community is imperative. It is my
belief that the ability of the Department of Homeland Security
to work effectively with law enforcement agencies around the
country is crucial to the ultimate success or failure in its
mission in protecting the citizens of this country and its
communities. There can be no doubt that cooperation and
coordination and information sharing between Federal agencies
and State and local counterparts is absolutely critical to the
ability to prevent future terrorist attacks.
For these reasons the IACP has gone on record in supporting
the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. It is our
belief that the proposed Department, by uniting numerous
Federal agencies that are tasked with protecting the safety of
our Nation into one organization will significantly improve the
ability of these agencies to share information and coordinate
activities within each other. However, a successful Homeland
Security strategy cannot focus solely on the roles, capacities
or needs of the Federal agencies. It must also ensure that
State and local law enforcement agencies are an integral
partner in this effort.
In our society an enormous degree of responsibility and
authority for public security is delegated to local government,
particularly to police agencies. As the September 11 attacks
demonstrated, the local police and other public safety
personnel were often the first responders to this terrorist
attack. However, the role of State and local law enforcement
agencies is not limited to just responding to terrorist
attacks. These agencies can play a vital role in the
investigation and most importantly the prevention of future
terrorist attacks.
Across the United States there are more than 16,000 law
enforcement agencies. These represent and employ 700,000
employees who daily patrol our State highways, the streets of
our cities, its towns, and as a result have an intimate
knowledge of the communities that they serve and have developed
close relationships with the citizens that they protect. These
relationships provide State and local law enforcement agencies
with the ability to track down information related to possible
terrorist information. Often State and local agencies can
accomplish these tasks in a more effective and timely fashion
than many times their Federal counterparts who may be
unfamiliar with that particular community or its citizens.
In addition police officers on every-day patrol making
traffic stops, answering calls for service, performing
community policing activities and interacting with citizens
can, if properly trained, as mentioned, in what to look for and
what questions to ask can be a tremendous source of information
and intelligence for local, State and Federal Homeland Security
personnel.
However, in order to make use of this capacity, it is vital
that the Federal, State and local law enforcement agencies
develop an effective and comprehensive system for timely
sharing, analysis and dissemination of important intelligence
information. The IACP believes that failure to develop such a
system in the absence of guidance to law enforcement agencies
on how intelligence data can be gathered, analyzed, shared, and
utilized is a threat to public safety which must be addressed.
Therefore, as the legislation to create the Department of
Homeland Security is considered and finalize, the IACP urges
Congress to take steps necessary to promote intelligence-led
policing and the information exchanged between law enforcement
agencies. For example, the IACP has identified several barriers
that currently hinder the effective exchange of information
between Federal, State and local law enforcement agencies. It
is our belief that these critical barriers must be addressed if
we are to truly create an agency of intelligence gathering and
intelligence sharing. They are:
1. The absence of a nationally coordinated process for
intelligence generation and sharing. While substantial
information sharing has somewhat occurred in some of the
localities, there is no coordinated national process, and
therefore much potential useful intelligence is never developed
or is not shared. In addition, there is little focus on the
local officer that recognizes their role as an intelligence-
generating source in sharing, or which trains local officers to
be part of this intelligence-sharing system. As a result, much
of the Nation's capacity for improved intelligence generation
and sharing system goes unused.
2. The structure of law enforcement and Intelligence
Communities. Unfortunately, the structure and organization of
law enforcement and intelligence agencies, either real or
perceived, can lead to organizational incentives against
intelligence sharing and even anti-sharing cultures. At best
the lack of communications between the number of intelligence
agencies means that individuals in one agency may not even
imagine that others would find their intelligence data useful.
At worst, this diffused intelligence gathering structure
creates a ``us versus them'' mentality that stands in the way
of productive collection.
3. Federal, State and local and tribal laws and policies
that prevent intelligence gathering is a third area. By
specifying who may have access to certain kinds of information,
these policies and laws restrict the access to some of the very
institutions and individuals who might be best able to use this
intelligence for the promotion of public safety. The current
laws and policies that guide the classification of intelligence
information and an individual's clearance to view data are one
example. Others include financial privacy acts, electronic
communications policies and of course fraud laws.
4. The inaccessibility and/or incompatibility of
technologies to support intelligence sharing. While a variety
of systems support intelligence sharing or at least the
information sharing, not all law enforcement agencies have
access to these systems. Most operate on a membership basis,
which means some agencies may find them too expensive to join
while others may not see the value to joining the organization.
In addition, the systems that do exist such as Regional
Information Sharing Systems, the RISS System, the National Law
Enforcement Telecommunications System, NLETS, and the Anti Drug
Network, and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, are not
well-integrated and relatively archaic in terms of their
capacities to provide information.
In addition, addressing these barriers to effective
information sharing, it is critically important that the
Department of Homeland Security be designed in a manner that
will ensure that State and local law enforcement agencies are
fully incorporated as an integral partner in all aspects of the
Department's operation. This means that the Department must go
beyond simple notification and consultation with State and
local law enforcement agencies, and instead, it should adopt an
organizational culture that views State and local law
enforcement officers and other public safety officials as
critical and an integral part of this war against terrorism.
The Department must ensure that State and local law enforcement
agencies have representatives within the Department with the
authority to guarantee that capabilities of local law
enforcement agencies are accurately represented and their needs
are addressed.
In conclusion, as State and local law enforcement agencies
modify their traditional crime fighting and crime prevention
mission to encompass antiterrorism, they will need assistance
from Federal Government to cover the increased burden placed on
their agencies by this new training and the equipment needs as
well as the cost of assuming these additional Homeland Security
duties.
In conclusion, I would just like to state my belief that
over the past few months we have had some limited successes in
overcoming many of the artificial walls that have sometimes
divided us, but there is still a tremendous amount of work that
has to be done. It is my belief that the proposed Department of
Homeland Security, if designed properly and led in the fashion
that emphasizes the critical role of State and local
enforcement agencies will dramatically improve the
communication and inter-agency and intergovernmental
cooperation that is so crucial to the success of our mission of
protecting our communities and the citizens that we serve
I thank you and I await your questions.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Chief Berger, for a very
constructive forthright statement. I support the tone entirely
of what you said.
Each of the Members will have a 7-minute round of
questions. Thank you. It has been excellent testimony.
Let me see if I can focus in on what our mission is on this
Committee. I do not think it is our mission to, at this point,
reorganize the entire intelligence apparatus of the government.
In fact, the Intelligence Committees are working on their
investigations and they may have some broader recommendations,
but clearly it is our responsibility to, as we create this new
Department of Homeland Security (and perhaps some office within
the White House) to do the best we can to improve the
collection, analysis, coordination, and dissemination of
information.
So let me see if I can draw from the testimony, am I
correct in saying that each of you feels that there should be a
division, a section or office within the new Department of
Homeland Security that has the right to receive data throughout
the intelligence and law enforcement communities and has the
capacity to analyze and disseminate it. Is that a baseline that
we all----
General Odom. Absolutely. Anything less is probably
inadequate.
Chairman Lieberman. OK. Then the next question is, and just
to clarify for me--yes, sir. Go ahead, General.
General Odom. Not just one point, many points within this
agency.
Chairman Lieberman. Why many?
General Odom. Because you will find time sensitive
requirements to have the ability to receive it out in various
parts of the country. It will not just be at the Department
headquarters.
Chairman Lieberman. But do you not want it coming into one
place eventually so that there is not a danger again, to use--
--
General Odom. You want it going into all those places
simultaneously.
Chairman Lieberman. Then the second question, which is, as
I hear you, I do not believe any of you have recommended--you
correct me--that the new Department of Homeland Security itself
should have the capacity to collect information. I add a caveat
to that. Some of the agencies that we are talking about putting
into Homeland Security such as Customs, Border Patrol, and
Critical Infrastructure Protection Agencies, they themselves
will be sources of intelligence. And that is not the CIA, FBI,
etc., so they will collect that.
But beyond that, would any of you recommend that the agency
itself have the capacity do collection of intelligence as we
know it? General Hughes.
General Hughes. My view is that your question has been
answered in a way by your postulation. Some of the agencies
that will be included in the Department of Homeland Security,
at least in the initial concept, already collect intelligence,
and they should continue those missions and activities that
they have been given in the past.
An example would be port security intelligence collection
by the U.S. Coast Guard, which would continue and become part
of the Homeland Security effort. Another example might be
police intelligence collected at the very local level as the
Chief has mentioned here, and then would be fed into the larger
system. That kind of information collection should continue.
I do believe, as I have cited and stated in my testimony,
technical collection systems that are already in the hands of
responsible authorities should be put to work for this agency.
Duplication and redundancy is not appropriate.
Chairman Lieberman. Give me an example what you are
thinking about.
General Hughes. Aerial surveillance done by the Department
of Defense, using aircraft in the atmospheric environment, or
national technical means being used to surveil a particular
place on the earth. Here in the United States, along our
contiguous borders, associated islands, and other lands, and
the sea. Whatever the requirement is, we should not have a
Homeland Security group that goes off to build a new satellite
or buy a new airplane. They should use the preexisting
capability.
Chairman Lieberman. Absolutely. Dr. Carter.
Mr. Carter. I agree with everything General Hughes just
said about duplication, but I think it would be a mistake to
limit the agency to the forms of intelligence information
collected already by its constituent parts. One of the purposes
of bringing those constituent parts together is to focus them
on Homeland Security as opposed to the other missions that they
now accomplish. Inevitably that will require refocusing their
organic intelligence efforts.
Second, as I tried to indicate, there is information we
just do not collect now at all that is germane. Some of it can
be pretty mundane, but for example, the culture types for
dangerous pathogens for either animals or plants. So to support
the intelligence with a small ``i'' that I was pointing to, we
are going to have to develop new kinds of information to
support this new mission. It is inevitable this Department will
do it. It should not overlap the old stuff, but it will be new
stuff. And so to try to limit it at the beginning and say it
does not collect or assemble information, I think, is a
terrible mistake.
Chairman Lieberman. I guess my question is, maybe to
clarify it and perhaps to state it in a caricature, none of you
is recommending that the new Department ought to be able to
hire agents similar to the CIA or the FBI to go out and
infiltrate groups or collect information. Am I correct that no
one is recommending that?
Mr. Smith, you want to say something, then General Odom,
and then I think my time will be up.
Mr. Smith. Very briefly. I want to associate with what
everybody has said, but add to it one of the keys is to try to
find a way to ask people on the street, the Customs official,
the local police officer, what is it that the Nation cares
about? What is it that we want you to keep your lookout for?
The British have a way of passing down the chain of command
to the local bobby-on-the-beat what it is that they ought to be
looking for in their neighborhoods, and that ultimately feeds
back into MI5 and MI6. We need to find some system here where,
as Mr. Carter says, the little ``i'' is identified so that
people will know what it is that is in their domain that is
important at the national level that they ought to report up
the chain of command.
Chairman Lieberman. General Odom.
General Odom. I think your point is absolutely right, and I
want to underscore that your assumption is right.
Chairman Lieberman. Which is about not hiring----
General Odom. Acquiring new big collection agencies or
systems.
The issues that are being raised here, that Mr. Carter and
Jeff Smith have raised, about what they need to collect, can be
handled in the present system very effectively. Let me try to
explain. The Intelligence Community is designed at the DCI
level to respond to these kinds of changes.
Take television. Intelligence is a little like the news
business. It has customers; it collects information; it puts on
programs and people watch them. If they do not watch, programs
are dropped. You will see the changes, depending on markets,
patterns, etc. The Intelligence Community has a mechanism,
which it sometimes uses poorly in this regard, but which it can
use effectively, and it uses effectively in some cases. There
is a process of asking for requirements. All the departments of
the government are asked what intelligence requirements they
have. This Department would have its claim on the Intelligence
Community like the State Department, Defense Department, the
Energy Department, any other. Then the DCI has to prioritize
requirements according to the users' demands, and issue them to
the various collection agencies.
I will give you an example of how this works. Back when we
discovered a Soviet brigade in Cuba in the Carter
Administration, we woke up to the fact that we did not have
adequate collection in the Caribbean area. We had essentially
neglected that area for the past 20 years. So all kinds of
collection capabilities that had once been there, no longer
operates. We had to go through a process of changing our
capability to supply new intelligence markets. That is going to
be the case with Homeland Security. We do not need a
reorganization to do that. We need the DCI and the people who
use intelligence asking for the right intelligence and issuing
the right instructions to get the present system to respond
effectively.
Chairman Lieberman. I ask the indulgence of my colleagues.
I want to ask a quick question and receive a quick answer,
which is: Would you also give the Secretary of Homeland
Security the power not just to receive raw data and then
analyze material, but to give a task to the active intelligence
agency, to say, in other words, ``We need to know about Topic
B.'' He has to be able to----
General Odom. He has to have that. He cannot just be
passive. If he becomes a customer in the Intelligence
Community, that goes with becoming a customer. He should be
able to put his requirements in on a non-time sensitive annual
basis. The DCI then justifies his budget based on how the
Intelligence Community can collect for these changing
requirements.
Then there is another problem here, and that is time
sensitive collection requirements. Homeland Security uses need
to be looped in so that when they get timely intelligence in a
fast-moving situation, so they can override to regular cycle to
get rapid intelligence response. These will have problems
there. Which department is at the head of the queue? There may
be two or three agencies demanding to be at the head of the
queue. The President will have to prioritize, and the DCI is
the agent to do it. It happens in the Defense Department all
the time. The European Command wants priority over the Central
Command. Their officers get all upset, and you have to explain
to them that it is not the Intelligence Community's choice.
Their quarrel is with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the
Secretary of Defense. They say they want Central Command to
have priority. There is a system for regulating priorities. It
is not always done effectively.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you. You are a great panel,
appreciate it.
Senator Thompson.
Senator Thompson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
General Odom, to follow up on that a little bit, it looks
like we are all talking in terms of Homeland Security being a
new agency and being a customer and what that involves, but I
get the impression that you are always saying basically what we
need to do is use the existing system, do a better job of
collecting from all the different sources, and do a better job
of disseminating it.
I do think that what is envisioned with this new Department
is that it is, as far as intelligence and acting on
intelligence in order to protect the country, it is viewed as
somewhat of a super agency, that it is not just another agency
out there, another customer to get in line, whether it is--
wherever it is in that line. But the idea is to create
something where it all comes together. And we get into the
issue of the dot connecting that we all talk about, and we all
know that that is rather simplistic because the dots are in a
sea of dots before you can even try to connect them, and we
realize we need better analysis. But from thinking in terms of
what we need to do in this particular piece of legislation and
what we need to leave for other endeavors, I am wondering
whether--it seems like the issue comes down to who brings all
this together? Some might think that this new Department is
supposed to be that entity, it is supposed to have its own
analytical capabilities. I do not know where they are going to
get the analysts, but they are supposed to have their own
analytical capabilities and pull all this information from all
these different sources that we are talking about.
We have heard some discussion here today by you and others
of creating perhaps a new kind of entity, an MI5 type entity
that would not be part of Homeland Security, but perhaps as a
connector of the dots, perhaps as a repository. Perhaps that
would be where all of the information would come together, and
then that analysis would be handed over to the new Department.
Can we dig in here a little bit deeper in terms of our analysis
of how this Department ought to be structured? What should we
try to do and not do in this particular piece of legislation?
What should the Intelligence Component be with regard to
Homeland Security and what should it not be? How does it fit in
the overall framework, in the overall scheme of enhancing our
intelligence capabilities in order to better protect ourselves?
General Odom. I think you have raised two questions here
and mixed them a bit, and I would like to separate them. Your
initial remarks seem to me to be asking the question, if
Homeland Security is not being asked to do too much. I think
there is a danger in this regard. If you want a single agency
in charge of everything about security in the United States,
you will have to rewrite the Constitution. We are a Federal
system. And the demand for a central authority to do everything
all the time will run into limits caused by federalism. And I
am happy they are there. Personally, I would prefer the Federal
system the way it is.
There is what I would call a minimum alternative
reorganization, and that is not so much a Homeland Security
Department as a ``border control department.'' Responsibilities
on the border are the most fragmented, and that is where the
first problems start.
If you look back in 1979 and 1980, there was a proposal
sent to the Hill by the President's Reorganization Project to
create a border management agency. This is not a new issue.
There were many arguments made for consolidation at the time.
It would be a more manageable reorganization if you could
shrink it a bit in that regard. The more agencies you throw in,
the harder it is going to be to integrate them, the longer it
is going to take. But I can see some good arguments for most
every function included in the present bill. I am impressed
with the comprehension where the administration's analysis.
Senator Thompson. Let me get some other views on it. Mr.
Smith, is this a question of who connects the dots or how do
you see this Department coming together?
Mr. Smith. In my judgment, Senator, the bill that creates
the Department of Homeland Security ought to assign an
intelligence function to that Department along the lines that
we have been discussing here. I would make it responsible for
the production and analysis of intelligence that relates to
Homeland Security, and they should be given the primacy for
that function within the government. I think it is a separate
question as to whether or not there ought to be an MI5, and as
I said, I am inclined to do that, but nevertheless, the
Department has to have that function. That would not supplant
the Counterterrorist Center. The Counterterrorist Center, at
least in my mind, would still continue to function in the
Intelligence Community and provide analysis, threat analysis to
the Department of Homeland Security, which would then take that
analysis to do its own analysis on top of that would be focused
very much on what does the Mayor of Miami need to worry about
based on what we know about the situation in Miami.
Senator Thompson. So the Department would be fully and
currently informed, to use your words, and there are separate
issues out there as to how we might best make sure that they
are fully and currently reformed. So we need to make changes
within the CIA or the FBI or perhaps consolidate the
counterterrorism centers. Perhaps create an MI5 type entity.
Those would all be things that would help this new Department
become more fully and currently informed. Is that a good way of
looking at it analytically?
Mr. Smith. Yes.
Senator Thompson. Let me ask, in the brief time I have
here, one more question. Dr. Carter, you mentioned all of these
things that you felt, the White House should do. You mentioned
the plan that needs to come forth, and the first time I have
ever seen anybody get into some of the analysis that you have
done there, the things that are going to be needed is very
impressive. But I was sitting here wondering, why cannot the
new Secretary do practically all of these things, as opposed to
that being done out of the White House?
Mr. Carter. The new Secretary can do some of the things
that Governor Ridge has been trying to do, which presumably is
one of the reasons why Governor Ridge wanted to create the new
Department. The new Department gathers up some of the pieces of
the Federal structure, but there will still be pieces outside
of it. We have been talking about some of them--the FBI, and
the CIA. There is the Department of Defense, which we have not
discussed yet today which is in the area of biological,
nuclear, force protection, and so forth, a big player. So there
will be big players that will not be underneath this new
Cabinet Secretary, and the question remains, how do the
departments of the Federal Government--they have been
reshuffled, there has been some consolidation--the question
remains, who is going to make them all work together? That is a
quintessential White House function. We cannot wriggle off that
hook.
Senator Thompson. Well, I understand that, and that was one
of the discussions we had here in the Committee as to whether
or not it was a good idea even to have a Department in light of
the fact that certain very important players could not be
brought inside it, so you are going to need a coordinating
function anyway. But you lay out your ideas for an investment
plan and infrastructure evaluation of vulnerabilities,
countermeasures, intelligence analysis, science and technology,
and how new intelligence means and methods should come about.
It sounds to me that those responsibilities should be in the
domain of the Secretary, and the coordinating function could be
left to the White House.
Mr. Carter. Exactly. The border, the emergency response,
the science and technology part, which we have not discussed
yet today, but about which the National Academy of Sciences
issued a report yesterday I was privileged to be part of the
NAS Committee and I commend to your attention. And the
intelligence piece, big ``I'', small ``i'' we have been
discussing today. Those are appropriate parts of the
Department. If we set up the Department right and we
aggressively put it together, they will do those jobs well, but
somebody has still got to sit atop all that and decide where
the money goes, so that over 5 years, 10 years, the Nation
makes the investments in its own protection that we all know we
have got to make.
Senator Thompson. Thank you very much.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Senator Thompson.
Senator Cleland.
Senator Cleland. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Two Casey Stengel quotes come to mind. First, in his last
year of coaching he coached the New York Mets, a brand new
team, and the ball was being dropped in center field and errors
were being made, and at one point he got frustrated and stepped
out of the dugout and said, ``Does anybody here know how to
play this game?''
I mean sitting here hearing after hearing, both on the
Armed Services Committee and the Governmental Affairs Committee
here, I sense a sense of frustration in my own view of this
thing. I begin to wonder, does anybody here know how to play
this game? The truth of the matter is I know that there are
great people in this business, world class people, which leads
to the second Casey Stengel quote, that: ``It is easy to get
the players, it is tough to get them to play together.''
And I think we have got great players. I think we are down
to how to get them to play together. And the Homeland Security
challenge, the challenge is how to get them to play together.
When Sam Nunn headed a mock effort put on by Johns Hopkins with
a mock attack of smallpox, he mentioned that he got very
frustrated after a few days in this mock attack with,
``bureaucracy,'' people playing together. And then the other
thing he said was, ``You never know what you do not know.''
That goes to the intelligence piece it seems to me.
I would like to focus, General Odom, on a quote that you
had which I thought was quite interesting in terms of getting
people to play together. How at the national level of
intelligence gathering do we get people to play together? You
said: ``There is no one in government who can give the
President an overall view of counterintelligence''--I think
that was your word--``no comprehensive picture to put it all
together, no king of this particular discipline.''
Is that what we are searching for here? Are we looking for
a king or a czar or a quarterback of national intelligence? Are
we looking for a director of national intelligence to relate to
all the intelligence, the vast elements of the intelligence
team, and to get the team to play together so that data is
collected and analyzed properly, and it then comes up to a
central point and then properly disseminated to the lowest
level that needs to know? What are we looking for here? We are
obviously searching for something. In your opinion, what is it?
General Odom. The quote you just read does not apply to all
intelligence. It applies only to counterintelligence.
Counterintelligence is information about other people's
intelligence activities. That is not all intelligence. It is
increasingly including terrorist penetrations and activities
too. What I am saying is that part of the Intelligence
Community dealing with the counterintelligence, which gives you
the intelligence which you use to find spies and keep yourself
secure, as opposed to finding enemies that you can attack, that
is fragmented, and we do need somebody both to pull it
together. My design for it is getting CIA, the services and
that organization to play together under a director of
counterintelligence. And I think with certain authorities he
can be an effective coach.
As far as getting the other parts of the Intelligence
Community for many other kinds of intelligence support
together, there are problems, but if you look at how fragmented
it could be compared to the CIA, the rest of the Intelligence
Community is in reasonably good shape. So that would be my
answer on that.
And if you are talking about intelligence support for this
Homeland Security, the intelligence it needs, then you want to
be able to have a comprehensive counterintelligence picture.
You also want other kinds of intelligence coming there. They
need to be able to subscribe to every intelligence news service
available.
Senator Cleland. There is actual legislation that creates a
Homeland Security Agency. It is out of this Committee. We voted
for it in a bipartisan way. It is on the floor of the Senate,
and the connectivity or the interface between that Homeland
Security Agency and the Intelligence Community, however
organized, is that this Committee chose to put the head of the
Homeland Security Agency on the National Security Council. Is
that a good idea, bad idea, no fix, good fix, or bad fix?
General Odom. That is a very good idea, and not just the
intelligence purposes. Sure, it gives him some access to
intelligence. He can get that without NSC membership, but it is
important for him to be there for the coordination among all
National Security agencies. If you put too many chiefs of
coordination around the White House, pretty soon the President
cannot manage them all. I think this Homeland Security ought to
be a coordination problem for the National Security Council. It
is part of security. The Defense Department is part of it. The
State Department is part of it. So the coordinating function,
to me, lies within the NSC. You have seen the struggle to try
to get an NSC equivalent to handle economic policy. You have
seen the problem with counter drugs. So I think there is a
danger of putting too many big coordinators up there at the
White House and not using the one institution that has a lot of
experience in this kind of coordination.
Senator Cleland. And that was another question, that in
terms of the recommendation, shall we say, to leave the White
House Office of Homeland Security in existence, are we moving
in a direction to create the domestic counterpart to the
National Security Affairs Advisor? I mean there is a National
Security Affairs Advisor. Are we going to create another
domestic Security Affairs Advisor that is interfacing with the
Cabinet Secretary? You know I begin to wonder. It seems to me
that it would be cleaner, since part of the challenge is
coordination, cooperation and communication, it would be
cleaner to have a Secretary of a Homeland Security Agency that
gave us a chance to start doing some things right, getting the
players to play together and putting that individual on the
National Security Council with access to what everybody else
knows. And I think that is basically the posture of this
legislation that came out of this Committee.
Yes, sir, Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith. Senator, I want to agree with that. In my
judgment, there should not be another competing coordinating
czar in the White House that is subject to the advice and
consent of the Senate for that job. I would leave the President
free to structure his arrangements the way he chooses. I think
that putting the new Secretary on the National Security Council
is a good idea. That machinery is excellent. It works well. I
would try to use that machinery and I would not set up a
competing Senate advise and consent person in the White House.
I know that is Senator Graham's initiative, and I am reluctant
to disagree with him, but I think your approach is better.
Senator Cleland. Yes, sir, Mr. Carter.
Mr. Carter. The National Security Council is a good model
for doing something that is different from what we are looking
for from Ridge, and therefore the National Security Council is
not the answer. The National Security Council is a policy
coordination body. It gets the agencies involved with national
security together and they agree on the policy, essentially on
a piece of paper.
What we need in this phase of Homeland Security is an
architect, somebody who puts an investment plan together. The
NSC does not do programs, they do not do budgets. I can tell
you from the Department of Defense's point of view that our
program, $379 billion worth of it is not touched by the
National Security Council. It has been that way since the
Eisenhower Administration. The NSC is a policy coordination
body. If you go up there, they have lots of gifted people, and
I have the highest respect for them, but they are not program
people, they are policy people. So to have given, which the
President wisely did not do when September 11 occurred, say to
the National Security Council, ``You do it.'' He found someone
else, and for some period of years we need that someone else.
Now, I do not like to call him a czar because you know what
they say about czars--the old joke about how the barons ignore
them and eventually the peasants kill them. And I do not like
to call him a coordinator because I said that is not what he is
supposed to do, coordinate what we have. He is supposed to
build what we do not have.
But that is different from what the NSC does and one is
mistaking an architect for a coordinator if one uses the NSC
model.
Senator Cleland. So who is in charge here? I mean what is
going on?
General Odom. I must say I think Dr. Carter is misleading
us here a little. The NSC does have an effect on budgets in the
Defense Department, at least they did when I was in that
organization, and we did it through OMB. OMB is pulled into the
NSC activities and OMB right now ends up being the organization
that coordinates the budgets. And, Dr. Carter, I do not think
you could say that OMB does not have any influence on the
Defense Department's policy.
Mr. Carter. Yes, but OMB is not the NSC. It is OMB, not the
NSC.
General Odom. If the President wants the OMB to take the
guidance that is devised in NSC and implement it in budgets, he
can do that. So the kind of coordination you are talking about
that transcends this Department, there is machinery to do that
in the White House if the President wants to do it. If you can
put a czar there and if he does not want him to do it, it will
not make any difference.
Senator Cleland. Mr. Chairman, my time is up. Fascinating
panel, and I wish we could just go all afternoon and into the
morning.
Chairman Lieberman. I agree.
Senator Cleland. This is great testimony. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Cleland, and I thank
the members of the panel. Our search for truth is aided by the
gentlemanly cross fire that we have just heard occur.
Mr. Smith. I have decided that it is better to be a baron
than a czar. [Laughter.]
Chairman Lieberman. Senator Voinovich.
Senator Voinovich. I am still trying to get this
straightened out. The Director of the Central Intelligence
Agency is supposed to be coordinating the intelligence
situation abroad and at home. Is that the individual that is
supposed to keep track of all of the agencies that are
collecting information, both domestically and abroad?
General Odom. He is responsible for two things. He is
responsible for program development. In other words, every
activity that is known as part of a national foreign
intelligence program has to have its program bill approved
through the DCI. He can say, ``You get less money or more money
in your request to Congress.'' And then of course OMB has to
sign off on it. And the other thing he has the power to do is
to task them to collect and disseminate information. So those
are his two major powers. And he also has the capability under
him to generate nationally coordinated intelligence that is not
a mere departmental view.
Senator Voinovich. So that individual should know of all
the agencies in the government that collect information and
ascertain whether or not there is duplication and whether or
not there are any holes in terms of gathering this information;
is that correct?
General Odom. The Director of Central Intelligence has that
responsibility. The Director of CIA does not. The Director of
CIA is a different man, I mean a different hat. Traditionally,
we have only had one individual wear both of those hats.
Senator Voinovich. Well, the issue is should that
responsibility, in your opinion, be transferred to this new
Department?
General Odom. No, it would remain with the Director of
Central intelligence. The Defense Department is the major user
of intelligence. He does more for the Defense Department than
anybody else, but he is not in the Defense Department.
Senator Voinovich. Well, then what role would this new
Department have in terms of--you all talk about collection
management----
General Odom. It is going to be a user.
Senator Voinovich. What is collection management?
General Odom. Well, collection management means, in jargon
inside the Intelligence Community, it means registering
requests for collection, and somebody decides what collection
agency is assigned to get the answer. So the Homeland Security
Department, certainly would be hopeless if it does not have the
right to make these demands for intelligence, which then the
Director of Central Intelligence tasks the various collection
capabilities to get the answers and deliver them back to this
Homeland Security Department.
General Hughes. If I could just comment here, I am very
frustrated over this conversation since only part of it is
right. The Director of Central Intelligence does have the kind
of oversight authority that General Odom has just commented on.
But he has difficulty exercising not only the program
management but the operational oversight of intelligence
gathering activities because there are competitors to him, the
director of other intelligence agencies and indeed the heads of
departments. For example, we are talking here about making a
departmental level, Cabinet level officer, which would be on a
par with the Director of Central Intelligence, if not slightly
above that person. It depends on the administration and the way
that the DCI is viewed. But this is not a line and block chart
kind of issue. This is about relationships, presidential
authorities, demands that are made and made in light of legal
and procedural constructs. To illustrate this problem,
collection management is a common issue across the Intelligence
Community, and here it is in a nutshell. I tell appropriate
authorities in the government, according to disciplines and
responsibilities and functions, what I need in the way of
information, and in collection management system that request
goes, in a pervasive way, throughout the government and
ostensibly information that is asked for is returned.
Senator Voinovich. First of all, somebody has to decide
what information we need right straight across the board.
Somebody has to figure that one out.
General Hughes. That is right.
Senator Voinovich. Then the next issue is who gets it?
General Hughes. That sort of is figured out. Who is it?
There is not one person, nor can there be. Each agency, each
function, each group has to decide what it needs for its own
responsibilities and requirements, and these will vary from
organization to organization, depending upon what it is they
want to do. One simple example would be that the military and
the civilian side of our government have different
requirements.
Senator Voinovich. But somebody said earlier, Mr. Carter, I
think, you are talking about the issue of foreign intelligence,
and domestic intelligence and how foreign intelligence has to
have a larger impact today on domestic intelligence because we
are dealing with terrorism. From a managerial point of view,
somebody has to decide what information we need. Then the
intelligence agencies need to collect the information. Once
that information is gathered, we need to know what it is and
whether or not there is duplication, for example, or a hole in
our knowledge.
The issue is: Where is that managed, in this new Department
or in the White House?
Mr. Carter. I think that is a crucial point and the answer
is in the Department. The experts on what information is needed
are not the Intelligence Community. The Intelligence Community
is the expert on supplying the information needed. It is the
Department of Defense that decides what we need from
intelligence to support operations and acquisition. Likewise,
it will be the Department of Homeland Security, which is the
expert on what information we need for Homeland Security.
Now, I would contend that at the moment there are no
experts in the Federal Government on what we need for Homeland
Security. That is why we are setting up a new Department and--
--
Senator Voinovich. But that person on the domestic side
would be in the Department of Homeland Security. That would be
the person that would look out and say----
Mr. Carter. And he would say to the Intelligence Community,
``This is what I need.''
Senator Voinovich. And then get that.
The next issue is the analytical aspect. You are saying you
need to have that in the Homeland Security Department, some
really smart people that can take the information that is
coming in and analyze it; is that right, that should be there?
Mr. Carter. I would say if I may, much of it will be
analyzed in the Department of Homeland Security because they
will be the ones who know what the template is that they are
trying to fit the dots into, just like it is the military that
needs to take information from the Intelligence Community and
then interpret it for operational purposes or procurement
purposes. But the Intelligence Community will need to do some
of its own analysis within its own confines, and so some
information will be sent as finished intelligence, and some of
it will be sent as inputs to finished intelligence that is
produced in the Department rather than in the Intelligence
Community.
Senator Voinovich. Now, the third issue, information comes
in, we analyze it, and then we disseminate it. And you think
that is another function that----
Mr. Carter. Absolutely.
Senator Voinovich. How do you get this information out to
the right people as quickly as possible?
General Hughes. If I could just comment, sir, first of all,
Mr. Carter had adequately and correctly described these
functions. But, it is an important point for me to make. I
think it may have been made already. That is why you need the
very best people, and you need to start out with very
experienced people in the collection management system, in the
analytic system and the production system and in the
dissemination system for Homeland Security. You cannot begin
this process with neophytes or completely new people who do not
have an experience level to know where to go to get the right
information, how to couch it, how to put it in right context
and how to put it out.
We are talking, by the way, about an entirely new
dissemination construct because some of this information is
going to have to go, if we are to do our job right, to
recipients who do not have a historical record of receiving
such information. That is especially true at the State and
local police level, and I would argue, at the governance level
in the towns, municipalities and States around the country.
This is different. It is new, but the origins or the grounding
of it probably should be set in experience and history, to some
degree. So we have kind of got to play off the best of both
worlds.
Once, again, my last point to you, sir, the quality of the
people here is vital.
Senator Voinovich. Am I finished with my time?
Chairman Lieberman. You are, but----
Senator Voinovich. We have the president of the chiefs of
police association, and we are all talking about the future,
but most people are concerned about what is happening now. I
have been told by several people in the FBI that these task
forces that the FBI has set up on the local level to work with
local police departments and sheriffs offices and so forth have
been significantly better than anything that anyone has ever
seen before. Chief Berger, would you comment on whether or not
you have seen any marked difference between before and after
September 11, in terms of information sharing and cooperation?
Chief Berger. Those are mixed reviews. Some communities
have had some outstanding efforts, but I would say that the
majority have not yet, that it has not filtered down to every
community within this country.
Senator Voinovich. Who should be in charge of making sure
that happens? Would you say that is a function of the new
Homeland Security Department?
Chief Berger. As far as the Bureau, I think that is the
Director of the FBI. I think that is his sole responsibility to
make sure that these joint task forces dealing with the FBI
are, in fact, working cooperatively with every local law
enforcement agency in this country, and that includes
everyone--sheriffs, State people and local police.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Voinovich. Senator
Dayton.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DAYTON
Senator Dayton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith, your comment about preferring to be a baron than
a czar reminded me of when I worked in the seventies for then-
Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota. There was the saying then
that Northern Senators run for President. Southern Senators are
smarter. They become committee chairmen.
Take that admonition to heart, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Very kind of you. Thank you.
[Laughter.]
Senator Thompson. But sometimes they do not last very long.
[Laughter.]
Senator Dayton. As I said at the previous hearing, my
experience with government reorganization was in the Executive
Branch of the State of Minnesota, so much smaller entities and
numbers of people, but my experience there has been that
reorganization of departments involves a short-term greater
dysfunction, and then hopefully out of that a better function
for the future, a better organization for the future alignment
and better equipped.
So, if that is the case, and given that none of you are
sort of overwhelming in your--and I share your view--confidence
in government's ability to manage these huge systems
efficiently, to be undertaking this task of reorganization at a
time of national urgency and another shoe dropping from another
national emergency, I think we are moving into necessary, but
unchartered, and maybe even some turbulent, conditions. So I
think it is essential we do it right.
And you used the word ``architect,'' Mr. Carter, and I
think that is a very interesting concept, both from the
standpoint of somebody in that role and carrying this out, but
also I think in terms of this Committee and Congress because we
will not carry this out, but we can, by our design of this, I
think facilitate the architect carrying it out or we can I
think get in the way.
I am leading to my question. I want us to do it right. I
want to see us create the opportunity for a genuine
reorganization and not just a reshuffling of the deck and
having people who are going to be performing the same tasks,
the same functions. I know that all of the institutional forces
that will weigh in day after day, once this entity falls out of
the front page of the paper, are going to be preserving the
status quo and preserving domains, and fiefdoms, and the like.
So how do we do our part to make this, give it the best
chance to be true reorganization, rather than reshuffling? I
will ask that of each of you.
Mr. Carter. There is, as I understand it, being prepared by
the administration as part of its submission, a management
package that goes with its particular concept of the
Department, but which could accompany any concept of the
Department, including the one that this Committee has
considered.
It is a management package which ensures that the Cabinet
Secretary in the new Department really has the authority to get
the job done. That is a very important package, from my point
of view.
Senator Dayton. What does that authority consist of, in
your view?
Mr. Carter. The ability to move people, to sort sheep from
goats in the Federal service, to break ground and build
buildings, and sell Federal land and buy Federal land. All of
these things sound very mundane, but it is a big deal.
You have a very cogent concern, which is that every
department head who 2 months ago was mainly concerned with
doing the job of homeland security is now spending half of his
or her day figuring out where they fit in the new Department of
Homeland Security.
The Office of Homeland Security in the White House is
mainly spending its time trying to set up the Department of
Homeland Security, rather than being the architect. So we are
all getting diverted, and there is a risk there, and we
certainly hope the reward is big at the end.
Senator Dayton. There is a hierarchy of human behavior,
Darwinian, that applies in these situations organizationally.
The first is you are concerned about your individual
survival. So you have got 170,000 people wondering, ``Do I,
individually, have a job and the like?''
Second, then, as you say, basic needs, organization, ``Do I
have a desk? Where am I in the hierarchy?''
And then you get to the realm of possibly interacting
effectively with your fellow humans. So it is a big shift.
Mr. Carter. I commend to your attention this management
package, and I hope it is supported and maybe strengthened by
this Committee.
Senator Dayton. Does anybody else want to comment on this?
Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith. One of the things that struck me, Senator, when
I read the administration's proposal was the words they used to
describe the functions assigned to the various officers. For
one thing, it struck me as odd that the language just says the
Secretary is the head of the Department. The specific
responsibilities are then assigned to the various under
secretaries, and the words that are used are not, as a former
government lawyer, not very clear, and they do not give a lot
of authority.
The under secretary--who is responsible for what we have
been talking about here, intelligence--receives and analyzes,
he assesses, he integrates, he develops. You do not get down to
any real action verbs until the very last one, which is take or
seeking to effect necessary measures. Now I do not know what
that means, but when you contrast that to the language that the
DCI has, he approves things, he promotes things, he protects
things, he eliminates things, he is the head of the
Intelligence Community. Just the tone of language struck me as
quite different.
So one thing that one might think about is doing some of
the things that we did in the Goldwater-Nichols Act, when I was
working up here, was Congress gave very specific authority to
individuals and held them accountable. To use a Marine term,
they were ``designated necks''; that is to say, a neck you get
your hands around. I think that this draft submitted by the
White House does not do that.
Senator Dayton. Yes, sir?
General Hughes. I would just like to add I think it is a
very important observation. In my testimony I made the point
that the two--the legislative bodies chartering and authorizing
of this Department and the executive departments giving it
authorities and responsibilities--should be matched and should
be, hopefully, synergistic and reinforcing.
That has not, in my experience, always been the case in the
past when we have tried these reorganizations. If you can do
anything to assist that, I know that the people who do the
work, after the documentary effort has been completed, would
greatly appreciate it if they do not have built-in frictions
and competitions to work with.
My last point is that the intelligence officer in charge of
the intelligence function in the Department of Homeland
Security is probably going to have to have within the context
of the Intelligence Community, because it is different, some
separate and distinct authorities and responsibilities. That
also requires the same kind of focused attention.
Senator Dayton. Mr. Odom.
General Odom. I want to emphasize what Dr. Carter said
about having control over personnel, resources, etc., and even
organizational structure within. Look at what happened in the
National Security Act in 1947. It was supposed to be a
unification act, it was a proliferation act. We ended up with
four departments instead of one.
This could turn out to be a multiplication of departments
if you leave each one of these with authorities that the
Secretary cannot really override, force personnel changes,
budget changes, and those sorts of things.
Senator Dayton. That leads me to the next question.
What I hear from local law enforcement and local government
people in Minnesota is very much not even mixed; it is that
they do not feel they are being communicated with, and they are
given these added burdens. They are certainly having added
costs imposed on them without being part of this front-line
team.
We talk about consolidation with this Department. I am
concerned that we are looking at something that is going to be
increasing fragmentation, at least at that highest level. I saw
today in the Washington Times the headline or the story that
the Department of Defense now wants an intelligence czar, and
that request has been sent to Congress. I still delude myself
every day that I am a member of Congress. I have a lot of
experience with the Executive Branch telling me otherwise, but
even being on the Armed Services Committee I sort of thought
that maybe that would be something that I might be apprised of
other than--I could subscribe to the Washington Times in the
State of Minnesota and get my information.
It seems to me everybody is going to try to grab a bigger
role, and they are going to grab theirs, and you have got the
CIA and the FBI, these two major players, and others as well,
who are not part of this at all.
I will start with you, Chief Berger, from the vantage point
of a local government, front-line person. I see an increasingly
bewildering array of who is in charge, who do I go to, who do I
look to for information, and also who do we look to for
accountability.
Chief Berger. Certainly, from an outsider's standpoint, I
do not see a team. I do not see a combination of, as we
mentioned before, we have got tremendous people in high places
and individual efforts, but I do not see a team effort.
One of the things that used to bother me greatly in my 28
years of experience in law enforcement, when I was a commander
of a Robbery Unit in the Miami Police Department, we used to
always hear the Federal people say we will get back to you, and
that never happened. That needs to happen.
Again, I think that, certainly, at the local level and
those sheriffs and police chiefs that are talking to you, I
have been in the field. I have been to Tennessee, I have been
to Mississippi, I have been to the heartland, and this same
type of response is coming, also. Give me a plan, any plan.
So far, we are all anticipating--we are team players--we
realize how important this is, but I guess there is just a
frustration of when is it going to happen and let us see it
happen. And every day goes by, and when I hear statements like
we are going to have a terrorist attack, it is not if we are
going to, it is when, and it drives us crazy because a lot of
the emphasis is in response, and certainly we will be there,
God forbid if it ever happens, but we have to be proactive too.
Proactive means trying to prevent it from ever happening.
Senator Dayton. Mr. Chairman, I see my time is up. Does
anybody else want to respond briefly on this issue of
consolidation versus fragmentation? Any advice?
[No response.]
Senator Dayton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Senator Dayton.
Senator Durbin.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DURBIN
Senator Durbin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the
panel.
I am a Member of this Committee, as well as the Judiciary
Committee, and the Intelligence Committee, so I am getting a
steady diet of conversation about this topic and trying to
learn. I am humbled by the fact that I am an attorney by
education, with a liberal arts background, who scrupulously
avoided every course that had the word ``management'' in its
title.
So here I am talking about management of the Federal
Government, reorganization of the Federal Government and trying
to learn as we go along. But I did take a few history courses,
and some of them have helped me to try to put what we are doing
in some historic perspective.
In 1939, our scientists discovered nuclear fission.
President Franklin Roosevelt created something called a Uranium
Committee to look into the possibility of using this new
scientific discovery for military purposes. According to
historic reports, it did not get very far until December 7,
1941. Once attacked, a different mentality descended on
Washington, DC. In August 1942, the President made an historic
decision. He placed a project under the U.S. Army control,
totally reorganized the Uranium Committee. It was called the
Manhattan Engineer District, the official name. It came to be
known as the Manhattan Project.
Here is the point that I find most interesting. The
Manhattan Engineer District project's commanding officer,
General Leslie R. Groves, was given almost unlimited power to
call upon the military, industrial, and scientific resources of
the Nation. He organized and spent about $2 billion in those
dollars--$20 billion today--to build four bombs that ultimately
brought the war to an end, over a period of time working in
Tennessee and other States.
The reason I bring this up is that I want to step away from
the box charts for a minute and address one particular aspect
of intelligence, successful intelligence gathering, processing
and sharing. This is a long intro, but there will be a question
at the end, I guarantee you.
Six years ago, Congress said to the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, we require you, we mandate that you set
up a system to record the exit of any visa holder in the United
States so that we can try to, at any given time, know the
inventory of people with visas in the United States--6 years
ago. The Inspector General for the Department of Justice
reported to us 2 weeks ago in the Judiciary Committee they are
literally years away, years away from being able to do that.
Congress, 3 years ago, said to the INS and the FBI, we
notice that you are both collecting fingerprints. Is it
possible to merge your databases of fingerprints so there is
one common source--3 years ago. Still not done. Still years
away.
Three weeks ago, the Department of Justice said, we think
there are about 30 million visa holders in this country. We are
going to start collecting photographs and fingerprints
selectively from these people coming into the United States on
visa for the purpose of intelligence gathering.
What do you think the likelihood is that we are going to do
that any time soon? I sit here and look at what we have been
through and believe that we are deluding ourselves into
believing that we have the information technology capability to
deal with the war on terrorism, and I see it every day, as the
Director of the FBI tells us, that they still have not quite
reached the level where they have something called ``word
search.'' Do you know any computer that does not have word
search anywhere in America? Well, they have got them at the
FBI. That is what they have.
So here is what I am getting to. If we are going to combine
the intelligence resources and gathering of the Department of
Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Justice,
and a new Department of Homeland Security, would it not be just
common sense for us to establish a Manhattan Project when it
comes to information technology, so that they can all converse
with one another, share information and try to make the job
more effective so that Chief Berger and his operations at the
State and local level can deal with it as well?
I listen to all of this conversation about reorganization,
and I still come back to those basic things. If we do not have
computers that work at the FBI, and if they cannot communicate
with the INS, how is this going to be done? I know some of you
have alluded to this information technology in your testimony,
and I appreciate any comments or response that you might have.
General Hughes. I will be happy to start.
First, your characterization of this problem is, in my
view, right, but it is not about the technology. The technology
to do the things that you are talking about wanting to do is
present and available. It is about parochial interests,
managing and constructing the technology for their own
purposes, as opposed to the synergistic larger effect of
mission support across the government.
I, personally, have observed this over many years. I have
not only argued--I have made the same argument you are making,
but I have written about it and published it inside the
government and outside the government.
May I just close by saying that I agree with you that a
Manhattan Project for future technologies, especially
information technologies, would be a good idea. I support it.
Senator Durbin. Who would you put in charge of that?
General Hughes. I, personally, would probably form an
organization out of the scientific and technical structures of
the National Reconnaissance Agency Office and perhaps a couple
of other organizations in academia, the national laboratories
and others. I would try to achieve out of this phenomenal
expertise that we do have around the country a focused effort,
Manhattan Project-style, for a few years to achieve concrete
goals applying technology to real problems, one of which is the
distribution and interaction of information.
But may I just say, sir, it is not about technology. It is
about the management of that technology and the policy in which
that technology is applied. We have hamstrung some
technological capabilities because we protect turf, we have
parochial interests, we do not have a broader vision.
Senator Durbin. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I might say that I am working on legislation
with our staff here on the Committee to try to pursue this and
to try to determine who should be on top of this Manhattan-type
Project. Sadly, as I reflect on it, it could be called the
Lower Manhattan Project from the World Trade Center and what we
went through. But it just strikes me that we ought to be making
this part of our conversation about reorganization.
I do not know if any other members of the panel would like
to comment. Mr. Carter.
Mr. Carter. I just want to second what you said. The state
of government information systems is a metaphor for the state
of government management, in my opinion. It is not a technical
question. It is related to how poorly we manage in Federal
public function compared to private functions.
Without burdening the new head of this agency too much, it
would be nice if this new founding--our first new founding of
an executive department of substantial scale for 40 years or
whatever the right number is--was a poster child of how to do
it right and not a poster child of how to do it wrong, and that
is not going to happen automatically. This management angle,
management package that goes with the who is in what boxes and
what are they supposed to do package is absolutely crucial.
Senator Thompson. Mr. Chairman, could I comment on that?
Chairman Lieberman. Please.
Senator Thompson. I think that is so important what Senator
Durbin was getting into, and it is something this Committee
over the years has dealt with, and it is something that is
important for us all to really understand. It is that we are
trying to set up perhaps one of the most important departments
in government and to be a well-oiled, efficient, smooth-running
machine that gives us information vital to our protection.
In the midst of a management mess, the most crucial things
to the success of this legislation are things in which we are
abysmal in as a government. They are all on the GAO high-risk
list--information technology, financial management, human
capital management, overlap, and duplication. All of the things
that are so vital to this are things that we are awful at.
Unsuccessfully, we have spent billions of dollars in the IRS
alone trying to get a workable information technology system.
But we think that we are going to pass this bill and solve that
problem, which we are not. The stakes are much higher here than
they are with the IRS.
Chairman Lieberman. I agree with you, Senator Thompson.
I appreciate, Senator Durbin, the work that you have been
doing with the staff. In our Committee bill, we had an Office
of Science and Technology, and it may be a very good step
forward to broaden that, to strengthen it. It could be on a
parallel with DARPA in the Defense Department, which has played
such a constructive part in stimulating technological
development, incidently, with extraordinary nondefense
commercial overlaps or expressions, but also really led to the
generation of weapons that won not only the Cold War, but the
Gulf War, and most recently the war in Afghanistan.
This is one of our great strengths. And you are absolutely
right, we have not organized it and focused it to produce the
kind of homeland security in this case that we need.
Thank you.
Senator Durbin. Thank you very much. I would just say, Mr.
Chairman--and I thank Senator Thompson as well--thank God there
were no subsequent attacks of that scale since September 11.
Had there been attacks on December 11 and March 11, I think the
substance and pace of this conversation would be a lot
different.
There was a wartime mentality after Pearl Harbor that said
stop talking, stop delegating, let's get it done. We are going
to give responsibility and extraordinary powers to the people
to achieve that.
I hope that we will reach that level soon in this
conversation.
Chairman Lieberman. That really is our purpose. It is a
very good point, and of course part of that is an expression of
the fact that this is a different kind of war. The troops are
not out there visibly on the field contending, confronting one
another, although we know, in most unconventional ways, for
instance, by the arrest of somebody trying to come into the
country or the occasional release of a tape from al Qaeda, that
they are very much still out there, and we have to have that
same sense of urgency.
Senator Dayton. I think, again, this is this
reconceptualizing of our mission.
Mr. Odom, you made the comment or he made the comment of
the fact that terrorism is a tactic, it is not an entity per
se, and certainly it is not a country as an enemy.
Your point, Senator Durbin, about INS not being able to
tell us when people are leaving, I am told that there are a
backlog of 4 million applications in that agency. I understand
we have 5 million or maybe more, maybe less, undocumented
people in this country, people that are here illegally every
day, and we do not do anything about it.
So I think September 11 was the worst catastrophe, but
reflecting this massive dysfunction. As you said so very well,
pointing back to previous years where this Congress has
mandated things, that things are not happening and not even in
the realm of happening.
No matter how you want to recast INS as a subdivision of
this Department or whatever, how is any of this going to change
the fact that they are nonperforming this huge task? We are not
going to know anything until they straighten that out or we
figure out how to do that differently.
Senator Voinovich. Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Senator Voinovich.
Senator Voinovich. I would like to follow up on what
Senator Dayton has had to say because we are talking about this
new agency, but it gets back to the incapacities of various
agencies in terms of technology and in terms of human capital.
I began advocating legislation the first year I was here
that would give the civilian side of the Defense Department the
authority to offer early separation and early retirement to
senior employees, and not lose the slots so they could reshape
their workforce to reflect the needs that they have. The
legislation eventually passed and something is happening.
Congressman Davis has introduced the Digital Tech Corps
bill, which would allow private sector information technology
professionals, the dot-com folks, to come work in the Federal
Government for a couple of years.
If we do not really address ourselves to the technology and
human capital problems in these agencies, we are doing our
country a great disservice and lulling ourselves into believing
that somehow this reorganization we are talking about now is
going to solve the problem. It alone is not going to get the
job done.
We must understand that we are going to have to spend more
money on people than we ever have before, and people have not
been given the priority that should have been given to them.
For somebody to say, for example, that the Coast Guard is going
to be able to get the job done without new people, we have to
face things as they really are and not just gloss over them and
think they are going to be taken care.
Senator Lieberman. Senator Carper, you are next.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER
Senator Carper. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
To each of our witnesses, thank you for joining us today. I
have just one question, I think a pretty simple one. Senator
Voinovich and I are old governors, and we always focus on what
is working, and I was never----
Chairman Lieberman. Did you say old governors?
Senator Carper. Old governors, yes.
Chairman Lieberman. I just wanted to clarify that. No
dissent. [Laughter.]
Senator Carper. Was not so much interested in whether ideas
were liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, I was
just interested in what was working, and I know the same was
true with him. I think we will have a pretty good understanding
of what is not working out of what we do here with respect to
these issues because we will have a repetition of the kind of
disaster we experienced in September 11.
My question is, how will we know what we are going to do in
this area is working, not whether it is not working? How will
we know if it is working?
General Hughes. I will start. One way we know is by
success. We do have successes in the Intelligence Community;
some very small ranging from interagency agreements and
cooperative mechanisms to very important successes like
stopping or interdicting hostile activity directed against us.
Without going into the details of that, of course, you as
Senators should know about some of that already in some forums.
You should know about it in great detail. This is an
inappropriate forum to get into some of the specifics but I
think success, apparent, obvious success on the face of it is a
measure of success itself. It sounds like it is saying the same
thing here but you have to look at the event.
There are two other issues, I think, and one is that our
country in broad terms, given unfortunate events, is secure,
has been secure. One can argue there are many gaps, many
shortcomings, many problems. I do not dispute that. But I do
think that there are a large group of people and quite a broad
array of organizations and functions being applied in the
Federal, State and local environment to take care of the people
of this country. You can see successful activities each and
every day and you could observe those and make your own
judgment about them.
The last issue I would make is that I know, and I hope that
you know, and I think most citizens do know that there are many
attempts, many more attempts to attack us, to strike us, to
undermine us, to undercut us, to defeat us, and there have been
over many years, that have been unsuccessful. Some of this may
be chalked up to good luck, but most of it, in my view, is
chalked up to very hard disciplined work by very good people
who are dedicated and devoted to their country.
I am not talking just about the uniformed military. I am
talking about policemen, intelligence officers, and
politicians. I am talking about all of us who in my view, by
the way, do form something of a team, albeit it loosely
organized without jerseys and perhaps no coach. But we
generally kind of know what we are about here, and it seems to
work on a very broad scale.
I would just rest my case that as bad as things are and as
serious as the problems have been, and may indeed be in the
future, we have to look on the margins at the fact that we are
not being defeated broadly across the world. Indeed we are
making a difference.
Senator Carper. Thank you. Yes, sir, General?
General Odom. I do not think there is a general answer to
your question. I think there are some specific answers and I
have heard an idea or two expressed by both you and Senator
Dayton. Take the exit visas, the entry and exit business. If
you finally get that answer you know you have made some
progress. In the issue we were just discussing about IT, there
are practical tests you could go out and do to show whether or
not these agencies can communicate. So you can pick out
particular things to test that will indicate some kind of major
progress, but I do not see an overall measure.
Senator Carper. Thanks. Anyone else? Mr. Carter.
Mr. Carter. It is a very profound question, that is why I
am bobbling here. A way of operationalizing it is, how will we
measure the success of this Department? We cannot measure it
according to whether it eradicates terrorist attempts because I
am afraid they are part of our future because technology is
putting destructive power into smaller and smaller numbers of
hands, and we are all getting more interconnected and
complicated and vulnerable. So this is part of the human story
as far into the future as you can see.
Al Qaeda will be defeated and pass from the historical
scene, but as we sit here today we have another unsolved
terrorist attack from the fall, which as far as we know may not
have been a foreigner at all but one of our own, maybe even a
``cleared'' one of our own. So this is sort of a syndrome of
life and I think it is too much to expect that any
reorganization is going to eradicate it.
I think there are two measures though that one can use. One
is the one that General Hughes referred to, which is we ought
to be able to break up developing plots and be able to exhibit
a pattern of having done that. I think that can be done both
domestically and foreign, but not perfectly.
But second, I think that the government needs to be able to
explain to the public and exhibit through this Department that
it is competent at this job of homeland security in some sort
of general way. Remember, the terrorists in Germany of the
1970's, their objective was to discredit government, to show
that it could not protect the people. We are kind of on the
edge in all these visa fiascoes and so forth of the ability of
the function of protecting the public to be discredited.
I think that if we get our act together and the new
Secretary can exhibit a program of effort that looks competent,
looks robust, looks well-rounded, then if we have another
incident you say, OK, it is going to still happen, but we are
doing a competent job here. Right now I do not think we can
exhibit that competent effort.
Senator Carper. Mr. Chairman, my time has expired. I again
want to thank the witnesses for their responses and for helping
us and our country on a real tough challenge. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Carper, for your
profound questions which undoubtedly are a function of your
age. [Laughter.]
If the members of the panel have the patience, I have a
couple more questions that I would like to ask and take
advantage of your presence.
First, Chief, I wanted to ask you, you gave us some real
straight talk here earlier this morning in your opening
statement about what you identify as barriers that exist to
effective intelligence sharing between local law enforcement
and the Federal Government. I want to give you an opportunity
to just speak a little bit more about, particularly as we
consider this legislation creating a new Homeland Security
Department, what your best thoughts are about how to break down
those barriers and to provide for a much more constructive and
effective role for local law enforcement.
Chief Berger. As I mentioned before and has been mentioned
here, being proactive instead of reactive. Giving us the tools
to go ahead and do the job, to go ahead and effectively measure
threats, and hopefully eliminate those threats before they ever
get to a situation where it is a threat to the actual citizens.
Intelligence gathering is extremely important. I think we
do individually--and that is right down to the smallest
department--do a good job, but we do not talk to each other.
The intelligence that is gathered in Miami is different than is
gathered in Minnesota or it is different in Los Angeles, it is
different in New York. I think that is extremely important.
Even so far as the forms that we collect this data need to be
standardized. I think that is extremely important.
I think that, as I mentioned, the ability for notification.
Again, within our groups we kind of smile and laugh, but we
listen to CNN just as you do to get our notifications. It is
still not taking place on a timely basis.
Security clearances--I know the director of the FBI is very
adamant about trying to provide that. So far I think we have
had about 400 over a couple thousand that were requested. It
takes anywhere from 6 to 8 months supposedly to do these. I
have suggested to him that we have many of the men and women
who serve in law enforcement that are National Academy
graduates, that went through this background check, sometimes
years ago, but could easily be refreshed, in my opinion, and
get these up so that at least if there was some sensitive
information then----
And the local police chief or sheriff does not need to know
what the military movements of al Qaeda or any group. We just
need to know in our community if there is a potential threat,
or if there are individuals in our community that need to be
surveilled. We need to know that and not be, as I said before,
we will get back with you. I think if we could accomplish those
two main----
Chairman Lieberman. How about the other end of it, which is
obviously hundreds--I think you said 700,000 State and local
police officers out there. How do we train them to detect
information, activity by people that may in some sense relate
to homeland security, in a broader sense we are talking of it
here, counter-terrorism, and then feed it into the department
in Washington?
Chief Berger. Again, not showing favoritism, but I know my
State, Florida, Director Tim Moore of the Florida Department of
Law Enforcement came together at the ground level, got together
with the police chiefs, got together with the sheriffs. We have
set together seven geographic areas. So we have reduced the
amount of responsibility from the standpoint that we are all
doing the same thing but it is done in a manageable amount,
that we can get down to the smaller counties and communities
and pass that information on. We need to find out who in fact
are the experts that can talk plain talk, and not talk about
potentials but actually say, this is what we should be doing.
This is how we should be reacting.
We, too, recently had a symposium on smallpox, and
unfortunately due to scheduling, whatever, the benefit of that
was very minimal because we only had maybe a quarter of the
room filled down in the local community. So we need to
invigorate that, to say that on a time basis, this is critical,
these types of things are critical, and try and get it down as
close as we can.
The one area that is extremely--that was touched on here
towards the end by, I think, Senator Dayton, the ability to
analyze information on a technological basis: Extremely
important. I will give you an example. I take great pride, a
couple years ago my department was distinguished by Computing
magazine as 1 of the 10 very best in the entire country. That
is private and public sector. The average age of my IT persons
is 28 years old. When we went to this meeting up at the NBC
building to receive this award there were several large
corporations there and we were talking and he said, how many
people do you have dedicated to IT, and my IT manager said
three. He goes, 300 people, that is amazing. My director says,
no, three.
What I am saying is, the people are there, the ability is
there. We have just got to think outside the box--I know it is
an old cliche--and say, who best can analyze these things? It
may be the private sector to come in and help us to put this
together. But it is extremely important that the tools are
knowledge and training. I have said this publicly, that those
responders, many of them--and I know the chief in Boca Raton--
he used to be my assistant chief--Andy Scott told me that when
they went to the first site, which was the American Media
publication house, that the men and women that entered that
building, of course they had no idea initially what they----
Chairman Lieberman. That was the anthrax case?
Chief Berger. Yes. They had no idea what they were
encountering. Unfortunately, those men and women need to have
the inoculations and the basic training to identify those types
of threats to hopefully save their lives or their potential
lives down the road.
Chairman Lieberman. We really want to work with the
association. If you have any thoughts about how to include at
least statements of goals, policy goals, or to help facilitate
the interaction, Federal and local, we would welcome them.
Chief Berger. Thank you, sir.
Chairman Lieberman. Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith. Senator, I wanted to add just one thought on the
issue of how you get the local policeman on the beat to know
what is important to look for. I have given that a little
thought. It seems to me that there needs to be--one of the
reasons that I am attracted to the idea of creating a domestic
security service is that they ought to have a relationship with
the State and local police in such a way that there are people
at the local level who have security clearances, who have
secure communications, who see a certain amount of intelligence
that is disseminated to them so that they will have a sense of
what is important.
Then there has to be a dialogue in which the Federal
Government says to the State and local people, here are the
issues that we are worried about. We are worried about certain
kinds of pathogens. We are worried about certain kinds of
groups. We are worried about certain nations and certain kinds
of issues. So that the cop on the beat knows what to look for.
Now it is not suggesting that we want the Miami Police to
infiltrate some group that the Federal Government cannot, so
there are some safeguards that have to be included in this. But
there is really--as the chief said we at the Federal level have
done a terrible job of finding a way to work with the State and
local police to have this dialogue that goes up and down which
would make us all more secure.
Chairman Lieberman. That was very helpful. Thank you. My
time is up. That means I am going to have to come back one more
time. Senator Thompson.
Senator Thompson. Dr. Carter, I think you are the
individual who mentioned the management portion of this bill
and how important it is. I agree. I think it is very important.
Part of what it does is gives the Secretary substantial
flexibility to do certain things, including flexibility with
regard to Title V involving personnel type issues. There has
already been expressions of concern by employees' groups. They
want to make sure that their rights are not tampered with, and
nobody loses their job.
I take it none of you at the table really have a dog in
that fight. I would appreciate your objective analysis of just
how important that is because General Hughes mentioned, more
than anything else really having the right people there is
important? Does that not make this management portion, the one
that gives the Secretary flexibility, even flexibility that is
going to step on toes, or maybe especially because it gives
flexibility to step on toes, is that not important?
No one is suggesting, that I know of, that the civil
service system be abrogated, but the way that the bill is
drafted now there is some uncertainty because it just simply
gives the Secretary substantial discretion. What do you think
about that bill in that regard? How important is what this bill
is trying to accomplish? Dr. Carter, we will start with you.
Mr. Carter. I think it is a terribly important, and I have
a dog in the fight in the sense that I am a citizen and I would
like to see this mission get accomplished right. If it is
accomplished like many other Federal reorganizations that I
have been closer to and witnessed, it is not going to make me
feel safer. There are going to be people who are going to have
to either get on board or get out of the way, as the saying
goes. And for some a place will not be found.
So I personally am for a very aggressive form of carrying
this out and for giving the person carrying it out, the new
Cabinet Secretary, as much authority as one can possibly give,
and make this an example of how to manage right in the Federal
Government, not an example of how to manage wrong.
Senator Thompson. General Hughes.
General Hughes. I guess I am in general agreement with
that, but I am mindful of the problem I have some experience
with, commanding an organization made up of civilian and
military people from all over the government. There are many
variations in the civil service in the government, and indeed
in the uniformed services. Not everybody gets paid the same.
Not every personnel structure is graded the same. Not everybody
has the same benefits, even though they do the same work.
I think that a careful approach needs to be taken to assure
that people in the Homeland Security Department are
appropriately rewarded and managed for their service there, but
that's a we-they competitive environment, especially a negative
one, is not somehow the result. So I know that this sounds like
I am supporting you and have a different idea from you, and
perhaps I do. I would just say, please keep that in your mind;
there are differences. It is not all the same between
organizations, and even sub-entities in the government.
Senator Thompson. We have given some organizations in
government greater flexibility. There are flexibilities within
Title V itself, and we have given some departments--the IRS,
for example, greater flexibilities. When an agency gets in
enough trouble, we give them additional flexibility. So it
occurred to somebody somewhere along the line, if that is a
good idea, maybe we ought to do it before agencies get in
trouble.
So what this might turn out to be, I do not know. The
question I guess is, in the legislation how much should we try
to micromanage that, or say what the Secretary can do or cannot
do. I think that balancing you are talking about is what he
will have to do.
General Hughes. Right. I hope you can apply great wisdom to
this because I do believe there is a chance to build in reasons
for friction.
Senator Thompson. Anyone else care to comment on that? Mr.
Smith.
Mr. Smith. Very briefly. To go back to something I said
earlier. I was disappointed in the administration's draft, that
the language was not more clear in terms of power that is given
to the Secretary. I would give the Secretary much more
authority to direct and execute than the current language does.
I think that would go a long way.
I would encourage the Committee also look at other pieces
of government where it has been successful: Goldwater-Nichols,
which built in a variety of incentives to try to accomplish the
objectives. The authority of the Director of Central
Intelligence, some of his extraordinary authorities he has used
well in the procurement realm and in the personnel area, maybe
those could be incorporated.
I think you have to give the Secretary--you really have to
hand him the field marshal's baton and the support to carry it
out.
Senator Thompson. Thank you. General Odom.
General Odom. He has made most of my points. I agree with
everything that has been said here and I would just endorse his
ability to step on some toes in the personnel area. Also, to
step on some toes in procurement areas. He is going to inherit
a group of agencies, each with their own internal procurement
systems, and their approaches, and their own favorite vendors,
and that will be a huge problem to overcome in the IT area,
which we discussed earlier. If he does not have the authority
to over rule them, then I do not think he will succeed.
Senator Thompson. Chief Berger.
Chief Berger. Senator Thompson, unfortunately I have to
leave after this comment because of a plane I have to catch,
but I think the emphasis has got to be domestic. Those men that
were involved on September 11 lived, played, and communicated
within our individual small communities. I think that is so
important to remember.
Senator Thompson. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Thompson.
Chief Berger, thanks for coming up here. Your testimony was
very helpful and we look forward to----
Senator Thompson. Excuse me, Mr. Chairman. Senator Stevens
asked that we submit these five questions for the record
addressed to some of these witnesses. If we could get these
questions to the witnesses, would they be kind enough to
respond to Senator Stevens?
Chairman Lieberman. We definitely will, and we will leave
the record of the hearing open for 2 weeks to allow for time
for the answers to come in.
Chief, thanks for coming up here and we will look forward
to continuing to work with you and the association.
Chief Berger. Thank you very much.
Chairman Lieberman. Senator Dayton.
Senator Dayton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would join with
others in thanking the panel. This has been a very, very
valuable session. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and the Ranking
Member, and your staffs for putting together in 2 weeks, two
excellent hearings.
Before you all had the experience of being high-ranking
officials in various intelligence agencies of the Federal
Government--and I will never be an old governor. I will never
be a former member of one of those entities, so my question is
going to be, help me as an outsider understand what the
mentality or the attitude is that I believe is part of this
unwillingness to share information.
I have been appalled, in my limited experience here for a
year-and-a-half as a member of the Senate, as a member of the
Armed Services Committee, going to so-called classified and top
secret and all this stuff, briefings, of what people think
their--I really think sincerely, almost as you said, General
Hughes, it is their patriotic duty to withhold the most
innocuous of information. The information that literally if you
read the paper that morning or watched the news you would know
walking into a meeting.
There is also a view of some I believe, it is almost like
they believe in democracy philosophically, they just think that
they should be the exception. There is really this, as I say,
kind of a hardened attitude that anyone else who is involved in
this tangentially is almost--like trying to get the Dallas
Cowboys to share their playbook with the Minnesota Vikings. It
is abhorrent, the thought.
So can you help me, if we are going to be structuring a
system, I agree we should have an integrated, state-of-the-art
communications system, information sharing, whatever else
involved. But if we do not somehow crack the culture I am
afraid we are going to be--we have seen the FBI, the Phoenix
office does not communicate with the Minneapolis office. So to
expect they are going to communicate with other agencies or
communicate across these broad departmental fields, I think, is
totally unrealistic, given what we know is current behavior. So
if any of you can help give insight, and apply it to how we
can, again, reorganize?
General Hughes. I will start with a brief explanation of
the construct. I hope I did not say that someone thought it was
their patriotic----
Senator Dayton. No, you said they were very patriotic
individuals, and I agree with you.
General Hughes. Yes, they are. I think this falls into the
category of protecting the information from perceived risk by
providing it to others. The more people you give information
to, the greater the risk of it expiring or being no longer
useful. There is a pretty good reason to believe that is an
accurate perception. The more people that get it, the greater
the chance of it being compromised.
That is especially true in the sensitive intelligence realm
where the sources and methods that are used to collect the
information are at risk merely because the information has been
compromised. That, to a professional intelligence person, is
anathema. We do not want to create that situation. That is part
of it.
Another part of it has to do with policy and roles and
missions. The Director of Central Intelligence produces
intelligence for the President of the United States. The
Director of CIA, who has that mantle too, is the same person,
as was pointed out by General Odom. The Director of the Defense
Intelligence Agency is responsive to the Secretary of Defense.
He is a partner with the Director of Central Intelligence in
doing the all-around mission of providing intelligence to the
uniformed military, and so on. It kind of goes downhill.
At each one of those levels information, and the providing
of information, the mechanism to provide it is akin to a power
structure. Information indeed is power, and the structure to
provide it represents a certain power base. So the black book
that goes into the President is not seen by very many people,
and it may indeed contain some unique intelligence that very
few people get to see, for very good reasons.
Now on the end of an event, when it is discovered that that
information was not provided to everybody and their brother or
sister, there is a lot of criticism over that. But the truth is
that if you provided to everyone in general form you would not
have--the information would not be any good, and the sensors
and sources and methods used to acquire it might be forever
lost. So you have a Hobbs' choice here. We seem to have chosen
to play the information conservation game, for very good
reasons, as opposed to just providing it willy-nilly to
everybody. I think it makes a certain amount of sense.
Senator Dayton. Mr. Smith and Mr. Carter----
General Hughes. I need to make one last point, if you do
not mind.
Senator Dayton. OK.
General Hughes. That is that policy sets broad guidelines
for providing information. The aegis of the information, and
the context of it are not always fully accounted for in this
broad policy. Without managerial intervention and exceptional
activity to make sure the right information gets to the right
people, the broad policy guidance that controls the information
flow is often inadequate.
So I am laying the blame for mistakes, problems, and
inadequacies in the information flow in part at the doorstep of
the leaders who should manage the system, change the policy,
intervene, and directly apply the information where it is
needed, when it is needed. That is a leadership function and it
must be done by leaders.
Senator Dayton. Thank you. Mr. Smith and then----
Mr. Smith. Very briefly, a comment and a suggestion. A
comment: The FBI has particularly difficult problems in this
area because it is currently structured as both a law
enforcement and an intelligence agency, and for purposes of law
enforcement, they must collect and maintain information in a
way that ultimately can be used in court. That has roots in the
Constitution and protection of the rights of defendants, and we
all understand why that information has to be tightly
controlled.
I think we can work a little harder at getting access to
that for reasons of intelligence, but that it is a very real
problem that the Bureau has to face and we need to recognize
that.
With respect to a suggestion, it has been my experience
that when the system works well when red-blooded American men
and women are thrown together with a common cause and from
different parts and told, go achieve a mission. We saw that in
Grenade where things did not work but we figured out a way to
make it work.
When I was at the CIA, John Deutch and Louis Freeh set up a
series of task forces, and it was the first time the FBI and
the CIA had ever done it. We set up a very small group of, I
think, maybe five or six task forces, and we literally put CIA
and FBI people in the same room and said, go after that target,
go after this target. Suddenly the bureau would say, we have a
source in that group. And we would say, tell us the name, but
they would not tell us the name.
They finally would say, OK, it is so-and-so. My God, we
know so-and-so from over here. But it was the simple step of
getting committed officers of the Federal Government focused on
a very real task. Not a theoretical task but a real task.
People find a way to break through these barriers that have
grown up over the years for whatever reason, and get the job
done. That is one of the great features of the American
Government and of the American character, we do get the job
done.
My suggestion is that as you structure this bill, try to
build in some of those incentives, build in cross-assignments.
Goldwater-Nichols, for example, as you know, said that nobody
can become a general flag officer unless they have served in a
joint assignment. As joint assignment, by the way, is a real
joint assignment. So there are things like that that can be
done statutorily, and I encourage the Committee to try to find
some of those and crank them into the bill.
Senator Dayton. Thank you.
Mr. Carter. There is a third reason why intelligence is not
shared, other than the two that I think have correctly been
pointed out here, which are the need to protect the information
for law enforcement or sensitivity purposes and just
bureaucratics, and that is that the provider did not know that
the other guy needed the information. That is an important
point, to my way of thinking.
It gets back to what this Department ought to be. If this
Department does not provide a strong customer pull, then it
will not be serviced with information. Said differently, if you
as a customer of intelligence do not articulate what it is you
need to the Intelligence Community, it does not give it to you.
That is certainly my personal experience. It is a two-way
street. And you need to say this is what I need, and in that
way little ``i,'' good little ``i'' makes good big ``I''
possible. In other words, if you can paint a template, say this
is the template I am looking for, then they can begin to
provide the information.
I am from Philadelphia, and we never saw the night sky in
Philadelphia. Every once in a while somebody will take me out
in the night sky and say, ``Do you see that? There is a horse
with wings.''
And I go, ``Jeez, I do not see a horse with wings.''
If you know you are looking for a horse with wings,
eventually you will see it, but I never would have looked up
and seen a horse with wings in the first place. So somebody
needs to say we are looking for a horse with wings. Then the
dots just might appear.
So we need to know enough about homeland security and the
intelligence requirements of homeland security to articulate
that to the Intelligence Community. Then maybe we will get
something, and that is another job of this Department.
Senator Dayton. Thank you. Mr. Odom.
General Odom. Taking the paradigm that Dr. Carter just
articulated very clearly, if you look at the user side, there
is one thing he can do to make things flow better for him, and
that is to flatter the intelligence suppliers. They do not get
many kudos. When they get them, they become responsive. So it
is not something you can write into legislation, but, a matter
of operational practices. That is what will cause intelligence
to flow.
Senator Dayton. That is a good point. Thank you, all. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Dayton, for some
excellent questions and for your commitment to the work that
the Committee is doing.
A final question/topic, which is the question of the White
House office, and to go back a bit to the debate that you had
before, the Committee's bill included a White House office,
which we called the White House for Combating Terrorism,
because we were concerned that, even after the Department of
Homeland Security was created, nationally, and you had all of
that effort going on together, there were still going to be
parts of the counterterrorism effort, both in terms of homeland
security and foreign security from terrorism that would be
outside of the Department.
So we created the office in the White House which would
include, and frankly in our bill we did not have an effective
intelligence section, coordination section within the
Department, so part of our vision was that might well occur in
the White House office, but it would also bring in the State
Department, the Defense Department, obviously, and perhaps have
impact on other agencies such as the FAA, which was clearly
directly involved in the September 11 matters.
We gave it some power so that, to use your terms, Dr.
Carter, it was both a policy and a program office, which is
that it was charged with working with the Secretaries who were
on it to form a national counterterrorism strategy, but then
the Director of this White House office had budget
certification authority to try to coordinate budgets across the
government related to counterterrorism and to sign-off or
reject them.
The White House proposal, post the President's endorsement
of a new Department, is not clear to us yet. Clearly, they want
to maintain a White House Office of Homeland Security, but at
least insofar as I have seen, they have not told us exactly
what it would do yet if we create the Department.
So I wanted to invite some reactions, first from you. I
know you have testified to this, and your written testimony
gets to it, about having heard some of the cross-fire about the
proposal and having allowed me to give you this brief history,
whether you think, if we do create a strong Department of
Homeland Security with an Intelligence Division in it, as we
have described, whether we still do need the White House
office.
Mr. Carter. I, as I said earlier, Senator, do believe that
we need both. I think your bill had it right. You do not solve
the overall problem of architecture by creating a Department of
Homeland Security. You do find a home for certain functions.
You mentioned the intelligence function, which would not be
appropriately done in the White House anyway, and now you give
it an appropriate home and a focal point for it, but you cannot
get away from the question of the inherently interagency nature
of this mission, the inherently intergovernmental nature of
this mission. Those are things that can only be resolved in the
White House.
I, too, have not been able to get a fix on what the White
House intends about its own White House office.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Carter. I will offer only one more thought. I have
described what it is I think that office needs to do and the
ineradicable need for it. The other comment I will offer is
that you cannot do what I think it needs to do with a handful
of White House staffers, however gifted they are. The program
planning job is a substantial, intellectual, and technical, and
practical sort of task, so that you cannot do it with a few
people out of the hip pocket.
Therefore, I think that, at least for a period of years,
the White House Office of Homeland Security needs an attached
capability, which I think of as like an FFRDC, the National
Academy of Sciences call it a Homeland Security Institute, but
something that gives a little analytical heft to this office.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes.
General Odom. Mr. Smith, General Hughes, have we convinced
you at all of the necessity of such a White House office? I am
happy to hear your arguments against it.
General Odom. When you sit over in the NSC and you need
analytic capability, what you generally do is get it from the
departments, and you have to be skilled at pulling that
analysis out of them. They do not necessarily want to give you
what you want all of the time, but it can be often.
I would just say I do not think if you create something
like this, that you will do a lot of damage, so I would not
worry a great deal about trying to stop it, but I have
difficulty seeing how the National Security Council and this
thing are going to keep from stepping on each other. If it
becomes that kind of a contest, which it will, this terrorism
office will not be very effective, and the National Security
Council will win the struggle.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes.
General Odom. And this is a national security issue. It is
sort of hard to draw the line there. Now a National Academy of
Sciences model, if you need an analytic capability, I had not
really thought of that. That is entirely different.
Chairman Lieberman. Right. Perhaps the question I want to
ask you is whether the National Security Council can play the
coordinating role that we have had in mind for the White House
office for combating terrorism, which is to say to bring in not
just the Department of Homeland Security, but the other
departments that, in fact, do sit on the National Security
Council that are not----
General Odom. They do that all of the time. I mean, foreign
policy, military policy abroad, intelligence policy abroad,
these are as complex as homeland security, and the NSC does
that all of the time between State, Defense.
By the way, the National Security Council seldom meets
without having several other Cabinet agencies present. The
Council can invite any official it wants to attend. Many of
these meetings involve the Attorney General, and the FBI
Director. As I mentioned earlier, when the issue of the money
is in dispute, and the NSC can, but usually does not have much
of an effect on the resource flows. But if they want to pull
the Director of OMB in, and the NSC can get the President to
give new guidance to the Director, then you will start moving
resources around.
Chairman Lieberman. Sure.
Dr. Carter, you would be skeptical about whether the NSC
would have the kind of implementation capacity to do the things
that you have in mind for the White House office and that we
did when we put the bill together.
Mr. Carter. Exactly, and the toes that would be stepped on
by OHS, in my conception, would be OMB. Now that has not
happened so far. OMB has worked with OHS, but to the extent it
is about resources and capability building and not the policy
du jour, which is what the NSC does, it is more like an OMB
function.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Smith and General Hughes, I will give you the last
words.
Mr. Smith. Senator, I wish to associate with General Odom
on this. My concern is that if the Congress directs the
President to create an office, that one President might like it
and use it, the next President may not. My strong view is to
let each President determine how he or she wishes to organize
their Executive Office and line it up in the way that makes the
most sense to them, given the personnel that they have, given
their own leadership style and so on.
My experience is that Congress, over the years, has helped
the President by directing him to create an office, and then it
gets set up, and nobody pays any attention to it.
So I counsel, in a sense, they are both right. Mr. Carter
is right that you have got to have that function, but I would
leave it up to the President.
Second, Mr. Carter mentions the idea of an FFRDC or a
national lab providing some analytical support. I happen to
know that two or three of the national labs--I visited one of
them recently--has focused on this very issue; that is to say,
what can they do to provide the kind of analytical support to
help the Nation prioritize things, understand what is going on
and assign priorities.
There is a lot of exciting work out there, and I think
maybe your staff or maybe even the Members might want to talk
to some of the national labs about some of the things they are
doing.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks. General Hughes.
General Hughes. I would just take a slightly different
approach in terms of functions. I would call the National
Security Council a staff element, and I would say that they
should exercise policy, development and oversight; they should
exercise general oversight, perhaps; they should exercise
National Security Council coordination and interaction; and
they should exercise budgetary review.
Chairman Lieberman. Over the various agencies having to do
with counterterrorism.
General Hughes. Yes. Indeed, they do that now, I think,
over quite a few different agencies, but fed into the National
Security construct selectively. It depends on the
circumstances.
Chairman Lieberman. So you would suggest that we might add
those statutory responsibilities to the NSC?
General Hughes. I do say that the NSC might--well, I think
they already have several of these, in broad, general terms, in
their statute, and I believe that they will apply them to a new
Department unless someone stops them. But the reverse of this
is the operational leadership construct, which the new
Department would automatically assume when it becomes active.
That means that it would be in charge of operational
activities, and it would be in charge of budgetary development
and carrying out the work of the Department.
So I would probably divide the line between leadership and
operational activities, which are normal to all departments of
the government, as far as I know, and a staff oversight
function, a monitoring kind of function, for what would
arguably be a very complex and difficult set of roles and
missions. That is just my view.
My last point on this would be the National Security
Council, interesting term, I am not sure that there is a
National Security Council that does all of the things we
ascribe to it. There are many other committees and groups, and
I would point to something called the Principals Committee and
the Deputies Committees working in the National Security
construct, kind of a larger thought process here, where various
heads of departments or deputy heads of departments come
together to coordinate and interact on a specific issue for a
specific purpose.
That function, with regard to homeland security, should be
described and provided for in legislation, in my view. That is
a very important issue.
Chairman Lieberman. Very interesting.
General Hughes. This is not covered by the umbrella term,
the National Security Council.
Chairman Lieberman. I thank each and every one of you. You
remember the old saying, ``there is no substitute for
experience.'' You four have had it, and you brought it to bear
in a most helpful and constructive way today for this Committee
as we move to create a new Department of Homeland Security and
perhaps a White House office.
I thank you very, very much for your time and your input.
The reward for your good behavior is that we will probably be
bothering you for the next month or so as we construct
legislation to send to the floor.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:50 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A REVIEW OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
AND THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
----------
THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 2002
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:03 p.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I.
Lieberman, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Lieberman, Akaka, Cleland, Carper,
Carnahan, Dayton, Thompson, Collins, and Voinovich.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN
Chairman Lieberman. The hearing will come to order. Good
afternoon and welcome to the third of four hearings this
Governmental Affairs Committee has held on the creation of a
new Department of Homeland Security since the President
endorsed that idea.
Today is the second day of hearings focused specifically on
the relationship between the Intelligence Community and the new
Department, and I am very grateful that the Director of Central
Intelligence and the FBI Director are able to join us to share
their knowledge and their insights, which will assist us
enormously as we pull this legislation together.
We will also hear, after the first panel, from Judge
William Webster, who has had the unique honor of serving as
Director of both the FBI and the CIA. Then, finally, we will
hear from Senators Bob Graham and Richard Shelby, the Chairman
and Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, whose
unique perspectives and experience will similarly improve our
work.
Plainly put, it does appear that the failure of our
intelligence and law enforcement agencies to collect and share
and bring together in one place information prior to September
11 was one of our government's more egregious lapses. We are
not in this chapter of our Committee's work, I want to say
again, going to reorganize the American intelligence and law
enforcement communities and fix all of their problems. That
will happen in other places, and obviously under the leadership
of these two gentlemen within the agencies that they serve.
But on this Committee, we do have a responsibility in
designing a new Department of Homeland Security to guarantee as
best we can that it has the best intelligence on threats to the
American people here at home so that the new Department can
prevent attacks against our people and our homeland.
I am encouraged by Director Mueller's decision to
reevaluate and overhaul the FBI's domestic intelligence
gathering operations. I know that Director Tenet is also at
work in various ways to improve the CIA, and I know that they
are both working more closely together and the agencies are
working more closely together in an organized way since before
September 11. I commend both of you for those efforts.
I want to say that I am increasingly convinced, and the
outstanding group of former intelligence and national security
officials who appeared before the Committee yesterday confirmed
this for me, that a new intelligence structure is needed for
this new Department within the Department. The witnesses agreed
that the new Department must have the authority not only to
receive all terrorism-related information and data, including,
on request, unfettered access to raw intelligence data, but
also the new Secretary of Homeland Security must have the
authority to task the intelligence and law enforcement agencies
to collect information to conduct analyses in areas that the
new Department and the new Secretary believe are critical to
their work of protecting our homeland.
In President Bush's proposal, he does recommend the
creation of an Information Analysis Division, or office within
one of the divisions. It would be different from the picture
that emerged in my mind from the testimony that this Committee
has heard. The President's proposal, I think, envisions a more
passive intelligence role for the Homeland Secretary through
this new Information Analysis Division, focusing predominately,
by some descriptions, on critical infrastructure. It does
contain language that requires the President's approval before
the Secretary of Homeland Security could obtain the raw data
from the intelligence and law enforcement communities, which
troubled many Members of the Committee at our hearing last week
with Governor Ridge.
The President's proposal, leaves the FBI, CIA, and a
handful of other intelligence agencies primarily responsible
for uncovering and preventing terrorist threats on American
soil pretty much as they are, to cooperate with this new
agency, I think, is an important and helpful start, and
frankly, added to this Committee's bill and its work in this
particular area of intelligence gathering.
But I think from what we have learned from the ongoing
investigations of the Joint Intelligence Committees, from other
Committees of the Congress, even from media disclosures, we now
have to move forward to strengthen the administration's
proposal with regard to an intelligence section in the new
Department of Homeland Security. That includes some very
interesting questions about how best to staff the Homeland
Department's intelligence unit with the most skilled analysts
that would be needed for this kind of work.
So in all of these questions, I know that Director Tenet,
Director Mueller, Judge Webster, Senator Graham, and Senator
Shelby will be able to help us as we formulate an Intelligence
Division within the new Department, particularly one that can
work with the CIA and FBI.
I am confident as we go forward, and yesterday's hearing
deepened my own belief in this regard, that we can find common
legislative ground here. This has not been, at least not yet, a
confrontation with the kind of turf protection that many feared
when the idea of a new department was first brought out, nor
has it been a partisan debate. Thus far, I am very grateful to
the Members of the Committee and proud that our pursuit is to
try to agree on the best possible Department we can with the
strongest powers we can give it to protect the security of the
American people at home.
We will find common legislative ground. In fact, I think we
must. That is perhaps why the divisions and turf protection
that some feared have not happened. I think we must fulfill our
constitutional responsibility to provide for the common defense
as it has been redefined by the events of September 11.
My optimism for the future course of our Committee's work I
base, in no small measure, on the strong cooperative working
relationship I have had with the Committee's Ranking Member,
Senator Fred Thompson, who I would call upon now.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR THOMPSON
Senator Thompson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I must say, as
one who will soon be out of here, I think those Congressional
turf battles are totally unnecessary and you ought to really
resolve those things, next year at the earliest. [Laughter.]
Mr. Chairman, thank you very, very much for those comments
and for this hearing today and inviting our distinguished panel
here. I would ask that my statement be made a part of the
record.
Chairman Lieberman. Without objection.
Senator Thompson. I would just observe that you have laid
out the issues here. We clearly are about a monumental task
here in dealing with this homeland security issue and the new
entity, new Department that we will be forming. We have, right
off the bat, gotten into the realization that a very important
part of what they will be doing is being one of the
government's most important customers for intelligence. How
they get that, the quality of what they get, and how they use
that in order to protect this country is kind of focal to what
we are doing.
We do recognize that many of us think we must do better
with regard to our intelligence gathering, analysis,
dissemination activities and our law enforcement capabilities,
and I think we all recognize some shortcomings in that regard.
You rightfully point out that dealing with all of that is not
part of what we are trying to do, but we must recognize that as
we move forward.
So we are dealing with a massive reorganization involving
possibly 170,000 employees and 22 different agencies on the one
hand. We are recognizing that as we go forward in the future,
we need to address our intelligence and law enforcement
capabilities on the other hand. In the middle, we are trying to
decide how do we bring those two considerations together. So we
are sort of skateboarding while trying to juggle, I guess you
might say, in this massive endeavor. I am sure that is not
beyond the Chairman's capabilities, but I find the prospect a
little daunting.
I think we are off on the right footing. I think we will
get this done, and although America may be working on it for
many years to come and some of its details, I think we are on
the verge of making a really good first step toward making our
Nation a more secure one and I thank you for your efforts in
that regard.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Thompson.
[The prepared statement of Senator Thompson follows:]
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR THOMPSON
I want to welcome our witnesses today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman for
inviting them. The issue of enhanced intelligence to support homeland
security needs is a central one before this Committee. The bill to
propose the President's Department of Homeland Security has as its
first substantive provision the creation of a new intelligence analysis
component.
We discussed the issue of intelligence- information sharing and the
FBI and the CIA extensively, not just in the first part of this hearing
yesterday, but also while Gov. Ridge was here last week. This
discussion obviously could not be complete without hearing from the
Directors of the two agencies represented here.
There is no shortage of opinions regarding the future role of the
new Homeland Security Department in the Intelligence Community.
Complicating this debate is the on-going discussion on how intelligence
information should be collected, analyzed, and disseminated in the
future. While these are two separate issues, we need to address them
both in the near future.
Yesterday, the Committee heard from a number of experts, who
discussed various ideas for reorganizing the Intelligence Community by
combining part of the FBI and CIA into a joint counterterrorism center
or perhaps creating an MI5 type of security service. There has also
been some discussion of moving part or all of the FBI into the new
Homeland Security Department, although I found it interesting that none
of the experts yesterday recommended that course of action, at least at
this time.
As I understand the construct of the Administration's proposal, the
new Department will be a ``customer'' of collection services such as
the FBI and CIA. That naturally raises some concern given the past
dissemination problems in the Federal Government. We are told that the
new initiatives in both the CIA and FBI now underway will result in an
adequate sharing of information with the new Department, and that some
of these other avenues may not be necessary.
Even if we solve the issue of information sharing between agencies,
there are many other issues that confront our intelligence services and
will confront the new Department as well. From the decay of our human
intelligence to the upcoming retirement crisis facing all federal
agencies, the difficulties we confront in reshaping our government to
address the new threat environment are significant.
At the heart of any reform must be changes to the way the
government does business. The President's proposal provides enhanced
flexibility in the personnel, procurement, and property management
areas. It may seem beside the point to touch on these issues today, but
they are as central to what is wrong as intelligence issues. The
inadequacy of information technology systems and the inability of them
to talk within and across agencies will continue to hamper intelligence
operations until we put an end to ``stove piping.'' So I see management
challenges and the need for reform as going hand-in-hand with
intelligence reform.
Mr. Chairman, I look forward to the testimony of our witnesses
today. It would be helpful to the Committee if the witnesses could
discuss their efforts to correct the past problems on information-
sharing and explain how the new Department of Homeland Security will
receive the information that it requires.
I also look forward to the input of Judge Webster from his unique
perspective as a past Director of both of these organizations.
Thank you, again, Mr. Chairman for holding this important hearing.
Chairman Lieberman. What was that, skateboarding and
juggling at the same time? I think we can do it with your help.
The record should note that part of my optimism about our
capacity to bring all this together is that in his previous
life, Senator Thompson in various movies played both the
Director of the CIA and the Director of the FBI, and he played
them with great distinction.
Senator Thompson. And with much greater pay, I must say,
than here. [Laughter.]
Senator Thompson. Than either they or I am receiving at the
present moment.
Chairman Lieberman. Right. So he has been able to
coordinate the work of those two agencies within his own
person, which should give the two of you optimism that you can
do it together.
Mr. Tenet. Is that a straight line for us, Senator?
[Laughter.]
Chairman Lieberman. Senator Carnahan.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARNAHAN
Senator Carnahan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you,
Director Mueller and Director Tenet, for being here with us
today. You both have very demanding jobs. When things go well
in your agencies, they usually go unnoticed. And when things
sometimes go wrong, it is front-page news. So we thank you for
your dedicated service day after day, regardless of the
circumstances.
This Committee has an important task before it, to create
an agency with the mission of protecting our homeland. The task
is more difficult in a world now where borders no longer bind
our enemies. With new technology has come new threats and new
challenges, as well. Trans-national threats require increased
levels of intelligence coordination between those who collect
information and those who use it, between Federal and local
governments, and between the military and law enforcement. With
better coordination, we will prevent our enemies from
exploiting our vulnerabilities.
Our future also depends on a government with the human
capacity and technical systems to identify and analyze
terrorist threats and to act swiftly and with precision to
eradicate them. To do that, our Intelligence Community must be
staffed with the brightest people, equipped with the best
technology. It must have the resources to act upon its mission
and to think as our enemies do, beyond physical and diplomatic
borders.
So with those thoughts in mind, I will later, when the
questioning time comes, be addressing some questions to each of
you. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you very much, Senator Carnahan.
Senator Akaka, good afternoon.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I thank
both of our witnesses in advance for your insights and for
being with us here today. Your being with us give me greater
confidence that we are moving in the right direction. To me,
there are lessons to be learned from mistakes in the past, and
we must apply these lessons to the future.
I know that your agencies will provide the proposed
Homeland Security Department with the access, the participation
and the intelligence it will need to carry out its
responsibilities. Your service to your country is appreciated.
I believe you are doing a great job in refocusing your
agencies' efforts and lending your expertise throughout the
government.
I want to ask the Chairman to place my full statement in
the record.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Akaka.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Senator Akaka follows:]
PREPARED OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA
Timely and accurate intelligence is key to the success of the
proposed Department of Homeland Security. A major problem is how to
ensure that accurate intelligence is received by decisionmakers in time
to do something about it. As we have seen with the investigation of
what was known leading up to the attacks of September 11, a great deal
of information was known about the attackers and their intent, if not
their target. Yet, it was difficult to ensure that intelligence was
provided quickly to the appropriate decisionmakers.
There is a worthwhile distinction here between information and
intelligence. Information is what is received from various sources, for
example human agents or electronic intercepts. Intelligence is what is
derived from evaluating the different information bits. What we want to
do with this new Department is to ensure that all the relevant
information is collated quickly enough that an accurate intelligence
assessment can be sent to the people who need to act on it. What we do
not want to do with this new Department is to create an additional
layer of clearance or interpretation which slows the process of
assessing the information.
Several questions have already been raised over the intelligence
sharing protocols proposed in the Administration's legislation. One
question is the extent of the new Department's access to raw
intelligence. Will the Department be a passive recipient of finished
intelligence reports or will it have access to the raw information
contained in the reports? Certainly sources and methods must be
protected and creating a new Department may exacerbate this by
expanding the number of intelligence users in the Federal Government.
At the same time, the source of information can be useful in its
analysis. According to the Administration's bill, the President will
determine access to the raw information reports. There are legitimate
concerns about whether or not this will ensure timely and adequate
receipt of essential information.
According to a General Accounting Office report, there is no
standard protocol for the sharing of intelligence information between
state, local, and Federal officials. This will be the critical
component in guaranteeing the effectiveness of this new Department.
Much of the information about threats to our nation will come from
local officials who become alert to questionable activities in their
area. This new Department will have to ensure adequate training for
these officials and provide for a prompt communications link.
It is important to note that the new Department will be a
substantial producer of its own intelligence reports. Some of the
agencies envisioned in the new Department, for example the Coast Guard,
the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and Customs, produce
potentially valuable information about potential threats. This
information will need to be evaluated and provided to agencies which
will be outside the purview of the new Department, especially the FBI
and the CIA. This cannot be a one-way street. The Department will
generate information helpful to other departments and we must ensure a
swift process for evaluation and transmission.
Rather than duplicating existing analytical capabilities in the
Department of Homeland Security, we should strengthen the analytical
and information-sharing capabilities we now have. We need to identify
ways to strengthen the structure and capabilities of the CIA's Counter-
Terrorism Center. This includes ensuring that the analytical
capabilities of the Intelligence Community can properly address the
broad range of current and future national security threats.
We need to assess our foreign language and technical skills. Do we
have the appropriate expertise for addressing asymmetric threats?
Legislation that I and other Senators have introduced, S. 1799, the
Homeland Security Education Act, and S. 1800, the Homeland Security
Federal Workforce Education Act, seeks to encourage that we have
adequately trained Federal employees in national security fields.
Governor Ridge has mentioned that we may need to bring intelligence
analysts out of retirement or academia. This is a short-term solution
to a long-term problem and does not ensure that these workers have
backgrounds adequate to meet the challenges posed by new threats. We
need to ensure we have the long-term, in-house analytical capabilities
to evaluate and interpret current and future national security threats.
I want to thank both CIA Director Tenent and FBI Director Mueller
for their service to our country. I am encouraged that we have two such
talented individuals who are willing to serve our nation so ably. Their
experience and dedication will ensure that the problems which we face
will be overcome.
Chairman Lieberman. Again, I thank both of you for being
here. Have you tossed a coin to decide who goes first? The
senior member of the team?
Mr. Mueller. The younger member of the team.
Chairman Lieberman. All right. Director Tenet, you go
first.
TESTIMONY OF HON. GEORGE J. TENET,\1\ DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL
INTELLIGENCE, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (CIA)
Mr. Tenet. Senator, I want to touch on two main areas, how
the new Department fits into the Nation's approach to terrorism
and what the Intelligence Community plans to do to support the
new Department.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Tenet appears in the Appendix on
page 175.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I strongly support the President's proposal. The Nation
very much needs the single focus that this Department will
bring to homeland security. We have a foreign Intelligence
Community and law enforcement agencies, but we have not had a
cohesive body responsible for homeland security. The
President's proposal closes that gap while building bridges
across all three communities.
It is clear that the new Department will not duplicate the
roles of either foreign intelligence or law enforcement. The
new Department will merge under one roof the capability to
assess threats to the homeland, map those threats against our
vulnerabilities, and take action to protect America's key
assets and critical infrastructure.
In addition to ensuring that all domestic agencies respond
in an integrated manner to tactical situations, ensuring a
coherent response to specific threats, the Department will also
have a much more strategic mission that will require a
different kind of analysis, one that has access to both public
and private sector data to ensure that the Nation's
infrastructure is protected. There may well be some overlap and
even some redundancy in evaluating what the Nation's foreign
intelligence and law enforcement communities provide, and this
is welcome.
But in the end, the Department's most important role will
be to translate assessments about evolving terrorist targeting
strategies, training, and doctrine overseas into a system of
protection for the infrastructure of the United States. In
other words, they will review the intelligence we provide and
what Mr. Mueller and the FBI provides and develop an action
plan to counter the threat. It is more than just countering
each threat as it comes up. It is building a coherent,
protective system that provides long-term deterrents.
We often have strategic warning about the imminence of a
threat. We work hard but do not always have the tactical
warning that identifies the actual date, method, and site of an
attack. The new Department will build a protective system based
on our strategic warning that serves to deter or defeat attacks
when we lack tactical warning. As a result, the Nation will
become more systematic, agile, and subtle, matching resources
and strategies smartly to vulnerabilities.
We have learned, Mr. Chairman, one very important historic
lesson. We can no longer race from threat to threat, resolve
it, disrupt it, and then move on. We must also evaluate whether
we have put in place security procedures that prevent
terrorists from returning to the same target years later. Just
because a specific attack does not occur does not mean that
category of targets is no longer of interest to terrorists.
Will this be easy? No. Is it necessary? Absolutely. The
lesson in fighting terrorism is clear. The strategy must be
based on three pillars: First, a continued and relentless
effort to penetrate terrorist groups to steal secrets that can
result in the tactical warning that is often so difficult to
attain, the date, time, place of an attack; second, offensive
action around the world--both unilateral and with our allies,
to disrupt and destroy the terrorists' operational chain of
command and deny them sanctuary anywhere; and third, systematic
security improvements to our country's infrastructure directed
by the Department of Homeland Security that create a more
difficult operating environment for terrorists. The objective
is to increase the costs and risks for terrorists to operate in
the United States, and over time, make those costs and risks
unacceptable to them. If there is no strategic security safety
net at the back end, in the homeland, then we will be left in a
situation where we and the FBI will have to be operationally
flawless, in sports parlance, bat one-thousand every day.
We need to play offense and defense simultaneously. A
strategic security plan that is based on integrated data
sharing and analysis must close the gap between what we and our
law enforcement partners are able to achieve.
Equally important, Mr. Chairman, the Department of Homeland
Security, working with the FBI and the Intelligence Community,
will provide State and local governments and their law
enforcement entities the education and tools to use the
resources at their disposal wisely. This means training and
education that help them understand terrorist practices and
what to look for. This means making priority judgments on what
is most important to protect and how.
Let me turn to how the Intelligence Community will support
this new Department. I see this support in three principal
areas: Information sharing, connectivity, trade-craft
development, education, and training.
Information sharing covers a broad spectrum of activity,
from people to intelligence. Intelligence community experts in
many disciplines already have close working relationships with
many of the offices being brought together in this new
Department. These will continue and will both expand and
deepen.
We are committed to assuring that the new Department
receives all of the relevant terrorist-related data that is
available. This intelligence falls into two very broad and
important categories. Reporting derived from either human or
technical sources--these reports provide the basis for
analytical assessments and are disseminated today directly to
our customers. All-source assessment or finished analyses--
these assessments prepared by intelligence analysts at CIA or
elsewhere in the community include current reporting of
breaking developments as well as longer-range strategic
assessments. In addition to receiving these analyses, the new
Department may, like other customers, commission individual
assessments or even participate in drafting the assessments
themselves.
Information sharing also means locating key people from any
agencies in each other's offices. For example, CIA's
Counterterrorism Center already has 52 detailees from 15
organizations. Since 1996, the Deputy Chief of CTC has been a
senior FBI agent and the FBI's presence in CTC has increased
from 6 to 14 officers since September 11. CIA has sent key
officers to FBI to establish a Counterterrorism Analytic
Center. In each agency, these officers help steer exactly the
right kind of information to their parent agencies. The
Department of Homeland Security will have similar access.
In addition to this crucially important sharing of
information, here are some other steps that we will take to
give our fullest support to the new Department. In every
possible case, we will provide intelligence at the lowest
permissible level of classification, including sensitive but
unclassified. Support to the extended homeland security
audience, especially State, local, and private sector entities,
will benefit from the release of information in this manner,
something we believe should occur.
Databases can also identify and help stop terrorists bent
on entering the United States or causing harm once they get
here. We are examining how best to create and share multi-
agency government-wide database that captures all information
relevant to any of the many watch lists that are currently
managed by a variety of agencies.
We need to make sure that the Department of Homeland
Security and other members of the Intelligence Community are
connected electronically. The Intelligence Community already
has in place the architecture and multiple channels necessary
for sharing intelligence reporting and analysis at all levels
of classification. We will provide the new Department with our
technology and work with them as they develop compatible
systems at their end. This will make it possible for all levels
of the broader homeland security community, Federal, State, and
local, to share the intelligence they need and to collaborate
with one another, as well.
We will help the Department develop the analytical
methodologies, the trade craft, and the techniques they need
based on our own vast experience in assessing foreign
infrastructures. We will help the Department develop training
programs for new analysts and users of intelligence through an
expansion of our own analytical training programs.
This broad-based and dedicated program of support is
founded in large part on work that has been long underway in
the Intelligence Community and our greatly increased efforts
since September 11.
In closing, let me repeat my pledge, Mr. Chairman, on
behalf of the entire community to give our fullest support to
the Department of Homeland Security. We see this support not as
a change of mission but as an expansion of our mission.
Fortunately, we already have underway many of the programs and
processes needed to ensure the highest level of intelligence
support.
Our counterterrorism mission for years has been to
understand, reduce, and disrupt this threat. The new
Department's mission will be to understand and reduce the
Nation's domestic vulnerability. This calls for an intimate and
dynamic partnership between us, as vital a partnership as any
in the U.S. Government. It will not be enough for the
Intelligence Community to treat this new Department as an
important customer. We are committed to bringing the
Intelligence Community into a genuine partnership with the
Department of Homeland Security. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Mr. Tenet.
Mr. Mueller, thanks for being here.
TESTIMONY OF HON. ROBERT S. MUELLER, III,\1\ DIRECTOR, FEDERAL
BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI)
Mr. Mueller. Thank you, Chairman Lieberman and Senator
Thompson and other Members of the Committee. Thank you for
having us here today. The urgency with which this Committee is
addressing the critically important issue of homeland security
is appreciated by all of us who are engaged in this war against
terrorism.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Mueller appears in the Appendix
on page 184.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
September 11 has transformed the Executive Branch, but most
particularly, the FBI. Understanding this basic fact is
essential in evaluating how the FBI fits into the President's
proposal to establish a Department of Homeland Security and
what we will provide to ensure that this new Department gets
from the FBI what it needs to succeed. That is our obligation.
Or to put it more bluntly, the FBI will provide Homeland
Security the access, the participation, and the intelligence
necessary for this new Department to achieve its mission.
Let me back up a little bit and go to the immediate
aftermath of September 11. We began taking a hard look at
ourselves in the FBI to see how we in the FBI could become more
collaborative, more flexible, and more agile. Even before
September 11, we knew we had to fix our antiquated information
infrastructure and also unbridle our agents from overly
burdensome bureaucracy.
Much has changed since then and much more is in the offing.
While I would be glad to discuss the details of what we are
about, our most basic changes complement the homeland security
proposal in very fundamental ways.
Simply put, our focus is now one of prevention, and this
simple notion reflects itself in new priorities, different
resource deployments, a different structure, different hiring
and training, different business practices, and a substantially
different information architecture. More importantly, it is
reflected in how we collect, analyze, and share information.
For example, in the aftermath of the attacks of September
11, more than half our agents were working on identifying the
individual attackers, their international sponsors, and along
with other agencies, taking steps to prevent the next attack.
Today, we are at double the amount of our pre-September 11
commitment. But regardless of what that permanent number
ultimately may be, what is important is that we will apply to
prevention whatever level of resources--indeed, the entire
agency, if necessary--to address the threats at hand, and we
will do so in the context of the current multi-agency effort.
In addition to committing manpower, September 11 has
triggered a wide range of organizational and operational
changes within the Bureau. There are three I would like to
note, the first of which is the expansion of our Joint
Terrorism Task Forces throughout the country. Second is the
creation of a National Joint Terrorism Task Force in
Washington, DC. The third area that I would like to discuss is
the substantial increases in our analytical capacity. All three
are designed to promote better information sharing and will
directly complement and support the new Department.
The Joint Terrorism Task Forces are chaired in 56 regions
of the country by the FBI, and those task forces include
members of other Federal agencies, such as INS, Customs, ATF,
and CIA, as well as State and local law enforcement. Homeland
Security would be included, as well. The importance of these
task forces is that they have transformed a Federal
counterterrorism effort into a national effort creating a force
multiplier effect and, indeed, providing effective real-time
information sharing among the participants.
The national complement to these local or regional task
forces is to be the National Joint Terrorism Task Force. The
National Joint Terrorism Task Force will bring a needed
national perspective and focus to the local task forces. It
will consist of both the FBI as well as eight other agency
detailees and, of course, will include the new Homeland
Security Department. The task force will complement both the
FBI's and the new Department's analytical efforts and the
inclusion of other agencies allows for the real-time sharing of
information at the national level with all of those
participating agencies.
On the analytical side, to be blunt, pre-September 11, our
analyst numbers were woefully inadequate. The effect not only
was inadequate operational support, but also an inability to
finish and timely disseminate intelligence. Thanks to
considerable help from Mr. Tenet and the substantial resources
that Congress is providing, our ability to identify, analyze,
and finish and share intelligence is becoming much improved.
This will very directly help Homeland Security and the CIA, but
equally important, it will give us the actionable intelligence
we need to support our own investigations.
Of equal importance to the FBI putting its own operational
house in order is our relationship with the CIA. Even before
September 11, it was much better than it had been 5 years ago,
but since September 11, it is much better still, although our
challenge is to continually improve, particularly in regard to
information sharing. As you may know, Mr. Tenent and I jointly
brief the President each morning on pending terrorist threats,
and the positive consequences of a more robust relationship
between us are found in FBI agents working at Langley and CIA
officers at FBI headquarters, as Mr. Tenet has already
explained.
We produce a daily threat matrix 7 days a week, jointly. We
exchange briefing material each day, all to ensure that we are
working off a common knowledge base. I would also say that CIA
officers have joined us in several of our Joint Terrorism Task
Forces around the country, and that is going to increase. I
would also expect them to participate, quite obviously, in the
National Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Finally, our legal attaches overseas are working ever more
closely with their CIA counterparts in ways that was
unimaginable before September 11.
I spent a few moments on the FBI's post-September 11
operational characteristics and our relationship with the CIA
for a purpose. My experience since September 11 has only served
to cement in my mind the need for a new Department of Homeland
Security. And although the FBI and the CIA are operating at
higher levels of operational efficiency and connectivity, there
still remains a need for an agency that is committed to
improving, and in some cases building from scratch, a defensive
infrastructure for America and its borders.
Given the daunting challenge that will face Homeland
Security, the question naturally arises as to what intelligence
capability the new Department requires. The FBI's view on this
matter is quite simple: Whatever it needs to properly do its
job. It seems the President's formulation in his proposal
strikes us as the proper formulation. The new Department as a
matter of course will receive all FBI finished intelligence
analysis and such raw intelligence as the President deems that
it needs. Experience also tells me that the participation of
Homeland Security on Joint Terrorism Task Forces, the National
Joint Terrorism Task Force, and with us at FBI headquarters
will prove to be as valuable as anything else we do to ensuring
a common knowledge base.
Further, the proposal complements the reorganization we are
well along in implementing at the FBI and vice-versa. So, for
example, as part of a changing culture, a senior CIA official
participates in my daily case and threat briefings and CIA
officials and analysts are included throughout the FBI's
counterterrorism structure. The reverse is, likewise, true. We
have, as Mr. Tenet pointed out, a number of agents, some in top
positions, over at the CIA. This is to ensure that the CIA sees
what we see and to ensure all information gets acted upon
swiftly. I would expect Homeland Security to be equally
integrated and equally participatory.
Discussions of the FBI's relationship with Homeland
Security have also raised the issue of whether the
Counterterrorism Division of the FBI should be transferred to
the new Department. For the reasons laid out more extensively
in my statement, my view is, no, that that would not be a wise
idea. At the very least, such a move at this critical moment
would disrupt our ongoing battle against terrorism, and as we
all know, al Qaeda is active both abroad and at home. The FBI's
counterterrorism team, intertwined with and supported by the
rest of the FBI and in concert with our colleagues in the CIA,
has a substantial number of open, ongoing counterterrorism
cases that we are working on on a daily basis.
I do believe it would be a mistake to assume that our
counterterrorism efforts are in some way discrete from all
other criminal and counterintelligence work that we do. Often,
plots are disrupted by employing every available Federal
criminal statute, such as credit card fraud, smuggling, health
care fraud, and the like. It will be even harder to separate
that function from our criminal and counterintelligence
informant base should there be a shift of responsibility.
Further, even with our focus on prevention, much within our
counterterrorism effort will always be somewhat criminal in
nature and it is supported by FBI functions, such as its
forensics laboratory, surveillance capabilities, technical
capabilities, 56 major field offices, 400 regional offices, and
44 offices overseas, and all the information collection and
information exploitation that these represent.
We should not forget the FBI's working relationships with
over 16,000 police departments and law enforcement agencies not
only in the United States but also around the world.
And lastly on this point, I think it perhaps prudent to
remember our history and the fact that our domestic
intelligence collection must be grounded in an agency that is
steeped in the constitutional protections afforded our
citizens, and perhaps also it is important to note that it is
under the watchful umbrella of the Department of Justice.
In sum, while the fear is that this new Department will not
get the information it needs, I believe we are doing that which
will ensure that it does and in ways that reflect the practical
realities of information collection and law enforcement. Old
rivalries and outdated equities went by the wayside on
September 11. I believe what we are doing will work, reflects
the most practical arrangement, and I have every expectation
that the President and Congress will monitor this closely to
ensure that it accomplishes that which it is set out to do.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to
make this statement.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Mr. Mueller.
Thank you both for thoughtful, helpful opening statements.
We will now have questions by the Committee and have 7-
minute rounds of questions.
I want to thank you, Mr. Mueller, for what you said at the
end. It complements, of course, what Director Tenet has said
about the extent to which the agencies are cooperating post-
September 11. Pre-September 11, whatever lack of communication
that existed was unacceptable. It becomes intolerably
unacceptable after September 11. The American taxpayers invest
billions of dollars, literally, in the agencies that you
represent. We have a right to expect that you are sharing
information, that you are pooling resources to get the maximum
benefit out of the investment we are making to protect our
security. So I appreciate the steps that the two of you have
taken in that regard since September 11.
I have some other questions that I will come back to,
perhaps, in a second round, if we have one, or later in this
round, but I want to focus in on the Department of Homeland
Security, or whatever we call it, the Intelligence Division of
that Department, and talk about what your responsibilities and
authorities to it should ideally be.
It is clear that it should at least have analytical
capacity with regard to intelligence, and of course, all of
this is to provide the Secretary with the intelligence to allow
him to take steps with others in our government to prevent
terrorist attacks, or other attacks, on our security from
occurring, so that the Intelligence Division would have
analytical capacity to consider both what you are sending it,
the two of you and other agencies, and, in fact, what it gets
from within its own agency. It will, if it goes along the lines
that we are contemplating now, have within it the Border
Patrol, Customs, and all agencies which generate what might be
called, and is, intelligence information.
The second question, then, is: Beyond what you choose to
send it, what else does it have a right to ask of you? And let
me ask you to focus first on this question that perplexed us at
the hearing with Governor Ridge last week, which is that it
appears in the President's bill, he gives the Secretary the
authority to request raw data on certain subjects, but only
with the President's permission. So this struck us as odd, that
you would go from the Secretary up to the White House over to
CIA, FBI, instead of horizontally. Give me your sense of why
that is so and whether it should be so?
Mr. Tenet. First, Senator, let me start with one of the
things you said. It is not a question of what you choose to
send, because the way the system works from the intelligence
side today is you automatically disseminate, push the button,
over 9,000 products every month to this universe of customers
who care about terrorism, from reporting to analyses.
Now, to your question----
Chairman Lieberman. OK, that is an important point.
Mr. Tenet. There is an automatic----
Chairman Lieberman. General Odom talked about that
yesterday from his time at the National Security Agency.
Mr. Tenet. There is an automatic flow of information across
the government in all of these categories of information today,
and indeed, the Office of Homeland Security today is a
recipient of this same kind of information.
Chairman Lieberman. And, naturally, a new Department would
be on the list.
Mr. Tenet. The same----
Chairman Lieberman. Just give us a sense--obviously, I am
not asking for details of particular reports, but what kind of
information flows in that automatically?
Mr. Tenet. Sir, there are, first of all, all your finished
reporting, all your reporting regarding what have human sources
told you, what technical sources have told you, and then the
finished analysis that we basically take all those first two
categories and write finished product. That goes to you, in
addition to the reporting produced by the Defense Intelligence
Agency, the State Department, the regional security offices. So
there is a very rich body of information that flows
automatically to that.
Chairman Lieberman. Distinguish that, for our benefit, from
what we have come to call raw data.
Mr. Tenet. In our business, let me help you think about
that. The raw piece of this data is who is the source and how
did you collect the information. That is the thing you hold on
to in the most rigorous and disciplined of terms.
Now, there may be an instance where you walk in and tell
the Director of Homeland Security that I can tell you
unassailably this is our best reporting source. You can take
his information to the bank. We should immediately launch the
following set of actions. And the Director may say, or the
Secretary will say, ``I would really like to know who the
source is.'' In this instance, this is an issue I would want to
talk to the President about because the system, the way it
works today, we give you so much texture about the source and
their reliability and their access in the context of reporting
that going that extra mile and protecting that holy piece of
information is something we have to do relentlessly.
Chairman Lieberman. So you would say that the necessity to
get Presidential permission only goes to disclosure of the
source, not to the content of the report?
Mr. Tenet. No, sir, because the content is already in the
finished product that the Secretary has received, or in a
specific collection method that you want to protect and
sometimes you disguise.
Chairman Lieberman. Forgive me for interrupting. This is a
point that has come up before at the Committee. There is an
assumption, I think, or an interpretation here that what goes
to the customers of your two agencies is analysis, in other
words, analyzed information rather than the raw information
from which the analysis is drawn. And, therefore, the Secretary
of Homeland Security might in some case want to see the raw
data that was behind the analytical report you sent to him.
Mr. Tenet. In fact, what he sees is two categories of
information. You see the product from the raw--from the meeting
with the asset. You see the product from the transcript of
something that is technically collected and it is all in a
report. It is the facts and nothing but the facts. And then
what you also provide the customer or the Secretary may be a
finished analytical assessment that takes that report and a
number of other reports and puts them together to give him
texture and story about what that single report may mean.
Chairman Lieberman. OK.
Mr. Tenet. He will get both categories.
Chairman Lieberman. Let me allow Mr. Mueller to get in here
now.
Mr. Mueller. Let me talk about a different type of raw
material. If we are investigating an individual, or a group of
individuals, we will get telephone toll records. There will be
bank records we will pull in for financial analysis. There may
be grand jury transcripts. There may be wire transcripts. All
of that, I would consider to be the raw data.
I will tell you that the provisions of the PATRIOT Act that
now allow us to provide to others in the Intelligence Community
grand jury information has opened up a vast category of
information that we now can provide to the Intelligence
Community that we could not before. But what we have not had in
the FBI previously is that capability of taking this
information, extracting the information, and producing reports
for the rest of the community.
And what our new analytical capability will do is extract
from a grand jury transcript, from a wiretap, from what we call
a 302 report of an interview, that information so that we can
do what the Intelligence Community does----
Chairman Lieberman. What they have been doing all along.
Mr. Mueller [continuing]. Which NSA or CIA has been doing
and provide that material to not only the CIA, NSA, but also
Department of Homeland Security in the form of the report.
Chairman Lieberman. Right. With regard to the necessity for
Presidential permission, do you have the same understanding
that Director Tenet does, that the permission would only be
required if you were asked by the Department of Homeland
Security for the source of the information?
Mr. Mueller. I think we can provide to the Director of
Homeland Security 99.9 percent of what they want in terms of
reporting. I can extract from a wiretap transcript that which
is necessary for Homeland Security to look at. If there is an
ongoing operation, for instance, ongoing investigation that is
time sensitive and to disclose individuals' names might hinder
that, and somebody wanted the name and the specifics of it in a
different agency, that is something that I would look at and
might have some concern about and that is where it would go
over, I believe, to the White House, not necessarily directly
up to the President, but to the Homeland Security Advisory.
Chairman Lieberman. Can I ask the indulgence of my fellow
Committee Members? One of the points raised yesterday, and I
think it is particularly with regard to the Office of
Intelligence that you have established, Director Mueller, is to
give the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to task
you to do something. What are we thinking about? He has reason
to be concerned about X port of entry into the United States,
or ABC University, and, therefore, Mr. Director of the FBI, the
Secretary of Homeland Security, and I, request that you send
your agents out to collect information there. I presume you
have no problem with that?
Mr. Mueller. I would not give a blanket ``yes'' to
everything. There may be areas in which it is contrary to our
guidelines, contrary to what we think is constitutional, but
generally, cooperatively, if there is a tasking, of course, we
would try to provide the information that is necessary.
Chairman Lieberman. We may want to give that authority to
this office in the statute, just to make it clear.
Do you want to have a final word?
Mr. Tenet. On tasking, in the normal course of our
exchanges every morning with the senior policy makers, they
will always ask for, ``Can I have more data or more analysis on
the following subject?'' It is a natural occurrence, Senator.
It is just the way we do our business.
Now, you raise an important question about, operationally,
the direction of assets and people overseas. That direction
comes from the President for the national Intelligence
Community and the priorities he sets and the guidance he
provides us. So on operational matters, there are today, in the
way Mr. Mueller and I work this, there are operational matters
that get surfaced when people are looking at how we are
deploying people, but nine out of ten times, they will leave
the operational judgment to us about how to take care of a
specific case or instance. They may have a view, and we inform
them on a series of things that are sensitive and they should
know about, but that operational judgment is usually left to us
because it is operational and requires a professional judgment.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much. My time is definitely
up. Senator Thompson.
Senator Thompson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, we, of course, are not the oversight Committee
for either one of your organizations, but as we indicated
earlier, what you do is relevant to the new organization, so I
would like to discuss with each of you very briefly in the
broadest terms a couple of issues that are very broad-based,
but I think important.
Director Mueller, one of the issues here that you addressed
has to do with whether or not something different should be
done with the counterintelligence part of your operation. Some
people suggest it ought to be brought within the Department of
Homeland Security. Others suggest we need a new MI5-type
organization. I understand your feelings and position on that.
But if we leave it where it is now, I am wondering how you
address those who point out the obvious difficulties that you
have. You are making a major transformation within the FBI.
Your three top priorities that you have now were nowhere near
the top just a few months ago. You are making massive shifts of
personnel from traditional FBI work, such as violent crime,
drugs, and things of that nature, into counterterrorism. We all
understand that.
We had several witnesses at our hearing yesterday, but one
in particular talked about the issue of whether or not the FBI
can perform both its old missions of after-the-fact crime
solving and its new prioritized mission of before-the-fact
activities and whether or not the FBI can perform both missions
effectively. The FBI apparently will have to revamp completely
its investigative approach and require the retraining of many
agents.
Here is what this gentleman said yesterday.
Compartmentalization is required in order to do effective law
enforcement but is anathema to effective intelligence. The
rules that the Bureau must follow for law enforcement
investigations are simply inconsistent with good intelligence.
Law enforcement looks backward to solve a crime that has been
committed. Evidence must be painstakingly gathered and analyzed
and protected from disclosure in order to find and arrest
criminals. The fewest number of people must be given access to
the information, not only to prevent leaks, but also to assure
a fair trial for the defendant. The prosecutors must be able to
comply with the rules of criminal procedure on issues like
discovery and disclosure of information to the defense counsel.
Intelligence, on the other hand, tries to look forward. Its
job is to collect as much information as possible, analyze it,
try to predict what will happen, and disseminate that analysis
to the widest group with a need to know.
So again, you are taking on that burden at a time of
massive transformation and you very candidly acknowledge the
deficiencies and gaps and difficulties that were present before
September 11 within your Department. You are making major
efforts to do something about that.
Do you acknowledge this difficulty, and if so, what is your
answer to those who make those points?
Mr. Mueller. I think those points are somewhat overstated.
I think what we have out there is 11,500 agents who are very
good collectors of information. In the past, 70 percent, not
the counterintelligence side or the counterterrorism side, but
70 percent on the criminal side have looked towards taking the
information that they gather and putting it into a courtroom.
But they are superb collectors of information that can now go
into the intelligence side of the house.
We have had in excess of 6,000 agents immediately after
September 11 pulling together every piece of information in
this country relative to September 11, but most particularly
relevant also to assuring that there would not be a second wave
of attacks and working on prevention. We now have 2,000 agents
who are doing that.
I do not believe there is an agent in the FBI that does not
understand today that part of his or her responsibility is
taking up every piece of information and provide it to the
centralized intelligence database so that it can be used for a
much more predictive approach to prevent the next attack.
Senator Thompson. Let us move, then, from the agent in the
field, the capabilities of the agent and the training that
might be necessary to the organization or the line reporting
part of it, and let me give you a hypothetical situation. I
will ask you how this is going to work and how it might be
different than it would have worked before September 11.
Let us say you have an agent in Phoenix, Arizona, who
reports up the fact that there are some suspicious activities
with regard to an individual with potential al Qaeda
connections. The information is solid, but it is a suspicion.
There is no evidence of a crime. You have got that scenario.
How would that be handled today, and just so it is not turned
into a trick question, I will ask you simultaneously the second
part of that hypothetical situation.
Suppose, in addition to that, you have got information that
this individual was also a suspect in a bank robbery in Phoenix
in order to get money to finance their (al Queda's) operations.
You could pick any kind of Federal crime, but let us just say
it is a serious one, a bank robbery.
You have a before-the-fact scenario that you are all too
familiar with now. Now you have an after-the-fact traditional
FBI scenario. How would that be handled? Where and by whom
would that be reported? To whom? Where would the lines cross
within the agency? How would that be handled?
Mr. Mueller. I will tell you, before September 11, in
Phoenix, what we call electronic communication from Phoenix
would come to headquarters and perhaps, depending on the
circumstances, go elsewhere. Before September 11, we operated
as 56 separate offices.
What we had to do and we are doing, and actually what we
have done is put into place enhanced management collection at
headquarters so that something like the Phoenix memorandum now
would come up through the ranks at headquarters, would go to
our new analytical unit as well as being in the operational
unit, and that portion of the memorandum that relates to the
possibility of terrorists going to flight schools would be
extracted, put into a report, and sent around to the community.
Additionally, the analytical capacity that we did not have
before would look at that and see if there are any other
reports out there relating to flight schools. And as it tasked,
depending on the quality of the technology and how soon we put
in the bank robbery report, it would have picked up the fact
that this individual is also a suspect in the bank robbery.
Senator Thompson. Say the bank robbery memo came in a week
later. The only commonality, as I understand, would be the
name. Would the name do it?
Mr. Mueller. Our current technology, not unless you went
back and made another search for that name 2 weeks later. In
the future, when we have the technology where you could put in
there, OK, you hit on this name on thus-and-so date. If that
name enters the database down the road, that particular agent
or somebody has to be notified, then the technology would kick
it out.
Senator Thompson. My time is up. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Thompson. Senator
Carnahan.
Senator Carnahan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I believe Director Tenet mentioned this earlier, that we
need to develop better interoperability between the networks of
foreign intelligence agencies like the CIA and law enforcement
agencies like the FBI. Since the revelations of the breakdown
in communications between the FBI and the CIA, what efforts
have been made to improve the compatibility of your computer
systems between your agencies?
Mr. Tenet. On our end, Senator, we have in place, as I
mentioned in my statement, we do have a communications
architecture with multiple levels of transition--of
transmission, the most classified information and then lower
levels, and we are hooked up to the FBI and 46 other agencies
and a total of 80 subcomponents of those 46 agencies. So at the
most highly classified level, we disseminate all of the product
I talked to you about to a broad array of individuals and it
will get bigger.
This also is based on the principle of obviously creating
communities of interest using technology, so rather than get
inundated by data, you can carve out of this data stream the
things you, as an analyst at FAA or another agency, are most
interested.
So we have pushed that information out and we are
connected. I think what Bob is building is the connection from
his field to his center so that he will be able to transmit in
the same way and potentially use the exact same network for all
of us to do it in with the same modern technology that connects
everybody.
We have worked a long time on this and have made great
strides and this all started way before September 11 and it has
come to fruition in a very good way for us.
Mr. Mueller. I think from my perspective, I have spent time
over at the CIA. I would say that the CIA is ahead of us in
terms of upgrading its information technology. We are in the
process of upgrading that information technology to allow us to
transmit digitally reports that we would be developing on our
intelligence. But we are not where I want to be.
In the meantime, we are doing it with personnel. Having CIA
individuals in the FBI seeing our information gives us that
connectivity today that I hope to have technologically
tomorrow. So we are doing what I believe is necessary to have
the interchange of information until such time as we can put
into place the technological improvements that are necessary in
the Bureau.
Senator Carnahan. To what extent does your centralized
intelligence database have the capacity to analyze data and to
make links and connections and see patterns?
Mr. Mueller. It does not have any capability for artificial
intelligence. You can query it with basic queries. One of the
deficiencies is if I put my name in, Mueller, M-u-e-l-l-e-r,
you have to put it in explicitly. It will not pull up any
variations, M-u-l-l-e-r, that type of search capability.
We have a basic search capability in our major database,
but it is not what I would want, and we are migrating that
database to a much more modern database that not only will give
us the search capabilities, but also will enable us to exchange
digitally information between ourselves and the Department of
Defense or CIA or the like and we are working on that second
stage of connectivity digitally. But the fact of the matter is
that I have to build up our own capability before I can reach
that second stage.
Senator Carnahan. One final question. Certainly, Americans
are very concerned about their physical safety now, but I do
not think we can ignore some other vulnerabilities we have, as
well. We certainly did a good job with Y2K, but cyber security
is certainly an ongoing concern.
In your estimation, does the Department of Homeland
Security need a special unit that is focused on cyber security,
and what other resources does the Department need in order to
protect the country from cyber attacks?
Mr. Mueller. We have what is called National Infrastructure
Protection Center, NIPC, which has three components. One of the
components is an investigative component. We have agents around
the country who are part of that investigative component and
that, it is anticipated, will stay with the FBI. And in NIPC
are detailees from Department of Defense, Secret Service, the
CIA, all of the community.
There are two other components that are proposed to go over
to Homeland Security, and they are the warning and alert
section as well as the outreach section to private industry.
But in my view, the investigative part of NIPC, that is,
that which requires not only the technical investigation, those
individuals who are computer specialists and know how to use
sniffers to go up the line to determine who has launched a
denial of service attack, that technical capability has to be
coupled with the agent in the field who can go out and
interview the individuals who may have those computers who have
been used for the launch of denial of service attack. And,
consequently, that integration, that investigative integration,
I believe should stay with the FBI. However, the other
components should go with Homeland Security.
Senator Carnahan. Thank you very much.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Carnahan.
And that, in fact, is the proposal, both in the Committee's
bill and the President's bill, I believe, on infrastructure
protection, that the so-called outreach parts of NIPC go to the
new Department.
Mr. Mueller. I believe it is, and the legislation proposed
by the President, I am not certain in the Committee's bill
because originally it was kept together, and I know when the
legislation came up, it did carve out the investigative part of
it. So I am not certain whether it is in the Committee's bill
that way.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks. Senator Collins.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLLINS
Senator Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, I am pleased that both of you have recognized
that we need not only reorganization, but also reform, and that
if we have reorganization without reform, we are not going to
get the job done.
I am interested in how the new Department would deal with
your two agencies on the issue of cyber terrorism. There was a
report in the Washington Post today that suggests that al Qaeda
may be targeting our computer systems, and it goes into some
detail about a flaw in a data transmission standard that the
FBI concluded could have been exploited to halt ``all control
information exchange between the ground and aircraft flight
control systems.''
In the area of a possible cyber attack, how do you see your
two agencies interacting with the new Department? One of my
concerns is, who is on first? Who has the lead? How are we
going to avoid confusion over lines of authority and prime
responsibility in areas that are large, complicated
vulnerabilities? Director Mueller.
Mr. Mueller. There is an investigative piece of any cyber
attack in which you have to determine the originator of the
attack, whether it is an individual or a country or a terrorist
or what have you, and it is an investigative piece that
requires a variety of investigative capabilities. You need the
computer expertise. You also need the investigative expertise
because behind every computer is an individual. And I would
expect us, the FBI through its NIPC center, to provide that
expertise in conjunction with Homeland Security, which would be
looking at and have the expertise in looking at the particular
networks, whether it be the electrical backbone or power plants
or ports or what have you and we would be merged.
One of the items that we contemplate is that when we move
portions of NIPC over to Homeland Security, we would move a
number of FBI agents. We would have FBI agents detailed over to
Homeland Security so that there would be connectivity, as we
have agents back and forth with the CIA. And whenever you have
something like that in this day and age, because the globe is
so small, because it is not just within a State, it is not just
within a region, it is not just within the United States, it
can be global, you have to work with other partners to
accomplish the goal.
I think we would take the investigative lead, but we would
do it jointly, understanding what the vulnerabilities are as
established by the Office of Homeland Security.
Senator Collins. Director Tenet.
Mr. Tenet. I think for the foreign Intelligence Community,
the range of questions that the Director or the Secretary of
Homeland Security would have is what do you understand about
the capabilities of this particular group? Is there State
sponsorship involved? Can you map back to the point of origin
of the attack? What can you tell us about their capabilities,
all of which gets fed in. And the critical piece of analysis
that gets done by Homeland Security is in concert with working
with service providers and companies, what is the specific
vulnerability to the infrastructure of the United States and
how do you fix it?
We can inform you about the tools that are being used, the
intent of the attack, whether there is someone that is bigger
than a terrorist group involved, what the technical
capabilities are, and that gives you the road map for somebody
doing the analysis here out of Homeland Security about this
infrastructure to say, this is how we have to plug the hole.
So, actually, the system works for us quite naturally today
and we will pass all that information over to the new
Secretary.
Senator Collins. Director Mueller, you testified that you
thought that the Counterterrorism Division of the FBI should
not be transferred to the new Department. One of our witnesses
yesterday proposed the consolidation of existing
counterterorrism divisions of both the FBI and the CIA into a
single National Counterintelligence Center that would not go to
the new Department but rather would be under the control of the
Director of Central Intelligence. I would like your opinion of
that proposal.
Mr. Tenet. I think it is a mistake. I think that what we
need, that operational and intelligence and law enforcement
fusion will have to occur between our organizations. As you
operationally work cases and chase people around the world,
somebody has to be responsible for aggregating the domestic
private sector and public sector data to fix the
vulnerabilities that we enunciate or find, and I do not think
you want to reside all of that domestic information in an
intelligence organization. I just think it is a mistake.
Senator Collins. Director Mueller.
Mr. Mueller. Terrorism is something new in this way. Prior
to terrorism, we had intelligence, and the intelligence part of
the FBI would look at Russia or other countries and their
intelligence officers and try to determine where they are and
then the sanction there would be kicking somebody out of the
country, persona non gratis, or opening an espionage case. On
the other hand, you had the criminal side, which was locking up
people who commit crimes.
Terrorism is a hybrid. On the one hand, there are threats
against the national security which require the use of the
intelligence tools, but for terrorism, you also need a
sanction. In other words, what are you going to do with a
person that you have in the country who you believe, and you
have sufficient evidence to believe, is conspiring to commit a
terrorist act? Do you lock them up? You have got to have some
sanction.
In my mind, it is a combination of intelligence and law
enforcement. The sanction may well be, if the person is out of
status, that the person be deported. But then what we have to
do and that which we have not done altogether that well in the
past is when we have somebody who may be deported who is a
potential terrorist, we have to work very closely with the CIA
so we have the pass-off, which is what we have since September
11. If somebody leaves the country and we think they are
important, whether it be worldwide or in the United States or
some particular country, there is a pass-off to the CIA.
Getting back to the original question, I do not believe
that separating our collection ability in the United States
from the law enforcement option makes a great deal of sense.
Senator Collins. Director Mueller, my time has almost
expired, but I want to very quickly ask you one final question.
I understand that the FBI has established what I refer to as
the terrorist watch list. I believe the formal name is the
Project Lookout Watch List, which is intended to make sure that
agencies have access to the same kinds of information on people
who may be seeking access to our country.
In conversations that my staff has had with the State
Department, I have been told that the FBI and the State
Department are still having trouble sharing information because
of database incompatibility. Is that accurate?
Mr. Mueller. I am not certain which particular watch list
we are talking about. I know there is the project for doing
record checks before someone is granted their visa and there
had been some bumps in the road there.
We have a separate watch list that are individuals whom we
wish to be notified if they are picked up, if they are stopped
by a police officer or something, which is separate and apart
from what is done with the State Department. I believe as of
now that the sharing of information between the FBI and the
State Department in terms of doing the record checks has been
evened out and should not be a problem, but I will check on
that.
Senator Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Collins. Senator Akaka.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Director Mueller, the gaps and duplications, that exist
within our Intelligence Community are being addressed in part
through the creation of a single Homeland Security Department.
And as you have testified, the FBI is undergoing a major shift
in mission and priorities. Given your agency's new focus, do
you believe the FBI should have a seat on the National Security
Council along with the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and
Defense?
Mr. Mueller. What in practice happens is to the extent that
the National Security Council is addressing a law enforcement
issue, particularly one that relates to something overseas, we
sit. So I am not certain whether it is necessary to change the
Presidential directive. I am not even certain whether it is
statutory or the Presidential directive establishing the
National Security Council, to assure a seat at the table. The
practicalities of it are to the extent that there is something
that we can be helpful on, we have a seat at the table.
Senator Akaka. Then let me ask you, would you change the
makeup of NSC to include the Director of the Homeland Security
Department?
Mr. Mueller. I can speak as Director of the FBI. On the
National Security Council, I do not think it ought to be
changed. There has never been an occasion where I believe that
law enforcement, whether it be the Attorney General, the Deputy
Attorney General, or myself, has been left out of a meeting in
which law enforcement was a substantial topic.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. Director Tenet, yesterday, the
GAO issued a report on efforts to control the smuggling of
nuclear and radioactive material in foreign countries. The
report noted, ``the current multiple agency approach is not the
most effective way'' for the United States to monitor and
control the movement of materials that could be used in ``dirty
bombs.''
There appears to be agreement since September 11 that the
government's reliance on a multiple agency approach for
security poses significant weaknesses, which is why I support
Senator Lieberman's bill. You note that we need a ``coherent
protective system,'' and I agree. Given your broad range of
experience, are there traps that Congress should avoid in
drafting legislation to create this new Department?
Mr. Tenet. It is an interesting question. I think I would
like to think about that, Senator. I do not have an answer off
the top of my head for that.
Senator Akaka. Director Mueller, how will the reallocation
of the field agents impact State and local law enforcement,
especially since the FBI announced last week that the crime
index rose for the first time in 12 years? I am curious,
because the statistics show that crime in Honolulu rose 4
percent over the past year. Although you have addressed the
importance of the Joint Terrorism Task Forces, I remain
concerned as to how the FBI will balance its traditional law
enforcement functions and its new responsibilities for home
security. Would you comment on that?
Mr. Mueller. Surely. What I proposed is the shifting of 480
agents from other programs to doing counterterrorism after
determining that we needed the permanent shift of 480 agents.
Of those 480, 400 will come from the drug programs, and where
we have 10 or 15 individuals on an OCDETF, Organized Crime Drug
Enforcement Task Force, we will be drawing back to fewer
agents. Where we overlap with the DEA in investigations of
Colombian or Mexican cartels, we will try to eliminate that
overlap. For State and locals, to the extent that we in the
past have been willing to pick up stand-alone methamphetamine
cases, Ecstasy cases, and the like, we probably will not be as
willing to do that in the future.
In terms of violent crime, I am suggesting that we move, I
think, a total of 59 agents, and again, we participate in
violent crime task forces around the country. I believe it is
critically important that to the extent that the FBI can bring
to the table special skills, capabilities to address violent
crime in our communities, we should do so. The 59 agents that
are being reassigned will come off of task forces. Where we had
five or ten agents on a violent crime task force, we will draw
back to maybe five or four, with a lesser number. My
expectation is that, hopefully, that will not cause a
substantial deterioration in our ability to work with State and
locals to address violent crime.
There is one other aspect of it that in my mind is
critically important and that is that when we sit and work with
State and local law enforcement on violent crime task forces or
other task forces, we are developing the relationships that are
critically important, not only in addressing violent crime, but
also addressing terrorism and other threats to our communities.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Chairman, my time is almost up. I have
one more question. Director Mueller, I agree with your
assessment that there needs to be a new level of intelligence
awareness among Federal employees and a willingness on their
part to come forward with information that may assist in the
war against terrorism. However, as Chairman of the Federal
Services Subcommittee and sponsor of legislation to strengthen
the Federal whistleblowers statute, I also know that employees
fear retaliation when disclosing information they have
uncovered.
I would appreciate your insights into how we can ensure
that employees are protected from retaliation when reporting
intelligence concerns to superiors or to Congress. Do you
believe employees in national security positions should be
covered under the Federal Whistleblower Protection Act?
Mr. Mueller. I believe there ought to be strong protection
for whistleblowers. On, I think it was November 6, I sent out a
memorandum to every FBI, whether it be support or agent,
expressing the strong view that whistleblowers will be
protected, that there cannot be any retaliation.
One of the things that I do, to the extent that a person
believes that he or she is a whistleblower, I alert the
Inspector General from the Department of Justice so that is a
separate track in terms of monitoring the fact that the
whistleblower will not be retaliated against, and I think I
have made it clear that in the FBI, we need to embrace
criticism, as hurtful as it may be, and to learn from it. I
believe the message should be a strong one that goes out from
the top to everybody in the organization and that in the
Department of Justice, that the Inspector General gives an
additional assurance that whistleblowers will be protected.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much. My time is expired.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Akaka. Senator
Voinovich.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize for
not being here for the early part of the testimony.
Director Mueller, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch
insisted that if GE businesses were not No. 1 or 2 in global
markets, they would not be part of GE. His point was that you
have to pick just a few priorities and do them extremely well.
Director, I am concerned that the new FBI has too many top
priorities, nine in all, ten if you include the goal of
upgrading the FBI's information technology. Simply stated, I do
not see how the Bureau can do all of them and do them well,
given your workforce and your budget.
As you know from a letter that I sent to you, I have met
with the group that represents your employees and they have
indicated that for almost a dozen years, they have been looking
for a new compensation system that gives them the competitive
wherewithal to keep and attract people at the Bureau, deal with
the problem of retirement in the near future, with one-third of
your people leaving, and then the problem of locational pay,
where some of your agents around the country have to go 60
miles outside of metropolitan areas in order to find someplace
to rent property and so forth.
So in addition to the top three priorities, which are
focused on preventing terrorism and other foreign action
against the United States, while the remainder are more
traditional law enforcement functions, it seems to me that
these functions require different cultures and mindsets. Do you
think it makes sense to place such different missions in the
same agency?
Mr. Mueller. I look at our agents as collectors of
information. Now, that information can be transformed into
evidence that is produced in a trial. That information can be
gathered, put in reports, whether it is interviews or wiretap
tape and surveillances. It does not make any difference whether
it is intelligence or criminal. They are information gatherers,
and I think they do a superb job at it.
What we have to do in the Bureau is to give incentives to
those individuals who are doing counterintelligence and
counterterrorism in new ways. In the past, the measure of
success in the Bureau often is how many arrests have you made?
How many successful prosecutions have you had a hand in? In the
future, that which we have to do to assure that our No. 1 and 2
priorities, counterterorrism and counterintelligence, and the
third one, defending against cyber attacks, become the leading
priorities is to change our reward system to make certain that
those agents who go into those fields understand that it is
appreciated and that those individuals are rewarded.
I think, though, at the bottom line, we are collectors of
information and I think we do it exceptionally well and I do
not believe that, given the priorities, and I think it is a
fairly simple list of priorities, that I think we can handle
it. I will tell you that every 3 to 6 months, I will be looking
at either shifting resources or coming back to Congress and
asking for more resources if I thought we could not handle one
of the priorities.
Senator Voinovich. It has been discussed around here for
years: Do you need a compensation system that is tailored to
the specific needs of the Federal Bureau of Investigation?
Mr. Mueller. I think we could benefit by a compensation
system that would assist us to obtain some of those individuals
that have the skills that are very much appreciated not only in
private industry but in government but are paid substantially
better on the private side of the house.
I will tell you that one of our problems is, as was pointed
out before, is that having people come back to headquarters--
and what you want is the best and the brightest, the leaders to
come back to headquarters to lead the organization, whether it
be in counterterrorism, in counterintelligence, and there is a
disincentive to come back to headquarters because of the price
of housing here and because of----
Senator Voinovich. May I just interrupt you--one of your
best people came from Cleveland.
Mr. Mueller. A number of our best people came from
Cleveland. [Laughter.]
Senator Voinovich. The Committee Members ought to know that
he gets, each month, $26 more in his paycheck since he has
moved to Washington. From Cleveland, Ohio, to Washington, that
is it.
Mr. Mueller. He just came back, Mark, yes.
Senator Voinovich. It is a big job, and $26 more a month,
moving from where he was to Washington, DC, is inadequate.
Mr. Tenet and Mr. Mueller, this government of ours is not
facing up to the reality that to get the best and brightest
people and hold them in government, it is going to require a
whole new look at the way we manage our personnel system. We
cannot continue as we have anymore if we expect to get the
talent that we need to get the job done.
Mr. Mueller, we had the President of the International
Association of Police from North Miami here yesterday. I asked
him about the task forces that you have set up. Now, I have met
with some of your agents and they are talking about their task
forces and how there is great communication back and forth, and
I asked him to give me his appraisal of what was going on. He
said that it was not that good, that maybe there were a couple
of them around the country that were really working well, but
from his perspective, and from his colleagues' perspective, the
kind of information sharing and teamwork that is needed is not
as good as it should be.
I just wondered, have you tried to evaluate whether or not
those task forces that you have set up for the exchange of
information are making a difference and whether they are
working?
Mr. Mueller. Yes. I have talked extensively with State and
local law enforcement around the country. I think there are
some areas when it is not working as well as it should. But I
believe that, generally across the country, I have had
substantial positive responses on the task forces.
The issue of information sharing is frustrating, and there
are two separate issues. The task forces, the joining together
to run down leads, to sit at the same table, to exchange
information on the task forces, I think is going pretty well.
There are spots in the country where it could go better. There
are always, when you have 56 offices around the country, you
will have one or two or maybe more offices where the
relationships are not what they would want to be for a variety
of reasons. But generally, I think it is going fairly well.
The information sharing is frustrating because there is so
much information, some of which is classified, some of which
cannot be shared, and there is always the belief out there that
we have more information than I think we, in fact, do. And I
think if I have heard it once, I have heard it a number of
times, that once we give clearances to a police chief or a
captain in a police department and they see what they have,
they come back and say, gee, I did not need this clearance. You
do not have what I anticipated you had.
But there is a great deal of frustration out there at the
State and local level in terms of the information sharing. I
would agree with that.
Senator Voinovich. The only suggestion I would make is I
would certainly do an evaluation around the country and find
out which ones are really working and then share that
information with the other ones that people feel are not
working.
Mr. Mueller. Good. Will do.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Senator Voinovich follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I commend you and Senator Thompson for
your cooperation during these important hearings. We are truly
fortunate to have two outstanding Members leading our Committee's
examination of the Federal Government's largest restructuring
initiative since the Truman Administration.
Today we continue to examine how the relationship should be
structured between the new Department of Homeland Security and the
Intelligence Community. Yesterday, our Committee received testimony
from witnesses whose professional expertise and background gave us much
to consider as we work on the President's Homeland Security proposal.
I would like to extend a warm greeting to today's distinguished
witnesses, which includes FBI Director Robert Mueller, III, CIA
Director George Tenet, Judge William Webster, Senator Bob Graham and
Senator Richard Shelby.
I am certain this all-star line-up will provide the Committee with
additional insights on what is needed to ensure that the proposed
Department of Homeland Security can interact effectively with our
Intelligence Community to handle national security information with the
utmost care while making sure information is shared with those who need
it to provide for our defense.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Voinovich. Senator
Dayton, you are next.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DAYTON
Senator Dayton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First, gentlemen, I would like to express my appreciation
to both of you for shouldering a magnitude of responsibilities
on behalf of our country. I think only a handful of other
people have to bear these responsibilities, so thank you.
Director Tenet, you said at one point, talking about this
agency and others, that they need to do their jobs effectively
or you have to bat a thousand. You almost have to bat a
thousand anyway. One of the areas that is of primary concern,
and would be a primary responsibility of this new Department,
is immigration and the fact that we have five million, more or
less, undocumented individuals in the country. Obviously, it
makes both of your jobs enormously more difficult, to assess
who is here and who should not be here.
Therefore, do we need this new Department to be doing
something different from what it is doing now, something new
that no one else in government is doing now, or do we need it
to do its existing functions more effectively, or some
combination?
Mr. Mueller. I think we have to do both. In terms of
keeping track of individuals that are within the United States,
the Attorney General announced an initiative several weeks ago
in which we will be keeping better track of certain persons
coming into the United States, but also persons that leave.
One of our big problems is we are so open, so broad, such a
wide open country that we, unlike other countries, lose track
of people once they come within our borders and we are taking
steps to try to assure that does not happen in the future, but
it is going to take a period of time to do a better job of
tracking individuals once they come into the country--these are
visitors to the country--as well as identifying when they leave
the country.
Senator Dayton. Director Tenet.
Mr. Tenet. The only thing I would say--I am not an
immigration expert, but I think this new Department has to look
at visa policies, how they are applied, how people come here,
the number of countries that you can travel from, to the United
States, without a visa. All of these things have to be looked
at coherently because you will never get enough manpower to
track people around the country.
So it is not an issue that I am an expert in, but you need
to think about this in layers from the overseas to the border
to who gets in and you need to think through all of those
systems in place and you need redundancy in understanding who
is here and that is a very difficult question in terms of the
number of people who are out of status at any moment in time,
the rights that they have under the law, the ability you have
to deport people. It is a very complicated picture.
We have always been a country that has accommodated a great
many people and it has been very successful for us and
generations of immigrants have come here. I think we just have
to look at this differently than we ever have to protect
ourselves and I think this new Department will undertake that.
Senator Dayton. I meant the question both specifically and
generally. Let me go back to another part of my question. In
terms of what, if anything, this agency needs to do that is new
or different from before, Director Mueller, you referred to the
mission of the Department as the defensive backbone of the
country. You talked about its function of being preventative
and anticipatory. Is there something outside of what you and
others are doing now that needs to be done.
Mr. Tenet. Sir, the most important new thing that needs to
be done is the systematic assessment of the country's
vulnerabilities without regard to the daily tactical ``chase
the threat.'' There are all kinds of infrastructure targets in
the country, from your air system to your rail system to your
water system.
This group of people who populate this office have to have
a unique ability to work with the private sector and the public
sector to understand what the real vulnerabilities of that
infrastructure are and to design smart, agile ways to protect
it so that you basically increase the odds that you have been
able to deter somebody from conducting a terrorist attack
because the protection is smart.
That is what has not been done and what needs to be done
and that really is the strength of what this Department will
do, in addition to integrating the data and the stream of
information that many domestic agencies collect within the
Department and disseminate it in a way that we can all make
sense out of it.
But the vulnerability assessment and a systemic program of
protection is what the country does not have and that is unique
and different from what the rest of us do for a living every
day.
Senator Dayton. Thank you. You said it more cogently. We
have had excellent hearings, but I do not think I have heard
from anyone so far exactly what the distinction is, so I thank
you.
Going back to the communication or the flow of information,
I am confused. I remember reading or learning in a hearing
months ago about the incompatibility of your respective
information systems and computer systems. Director Tenet, today
you said you push a button and 9,000 customers get disseminated
information, 46 at the top level.
One of my questions about this new Department is whether
they need a state-of-the-art communications system that
integrates their own divisions and can hook into yours or do
you already have that with each other?
Mr. Tenet. We already can communicate with ease and
electronically with all of our national security customers and
with the FBI from us to them, and a large amount of product in
the specific information link I talked to you about was the
most highly classified counterterrorism information that is now
on a secure link with communities of interest so we can push it
all out.
So the Intelligence Community has done this historically
and a Chief Information Officer in the Department of Homeland
Security who aggregates this data and meets us and connects us
is a very important, fundamental building block of making all
of this work.
Senator Dayton. My own view is that we obviously want to do
this right and do it in a way that lays the foundation for a
seamless integration of all these functions and sharing of
data. Do they need what you already have or do you need
something new that is compatible with one another and with
them?
Mr. Tenet. They will need what we have to be certain, and
then we will both need the connections and the data mining
tools to rationalize and make all the relationships out of all
of this data so that it becomes actionable in one way, shape,
or form, and we can be helpful here. We are not Microsoft, but
we are moving in the right direction and have a lot of tools at
our disposal that could be very helpful to this community.
Senator Dayton. I hope you will tell us what you need, at
least in financial terms, or even in functional terms. Mr.
Chairman, I hope that is a key component of what we are going
to be providing.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My time is up.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Dayton. You are
absolutely right.
There is a vote on. Senator Cleland went off to vote. He
wants very much to question the two of you. I think we have 20
minutes until I promised Director Mueller we would let you go,
so this means I am going to get to ask a few more questions
while we wait for Senator Cleland to come back.
One I have is about cooperation with local county and State
law enforcement. It seems to me, and to us, that as we have
gone along here that not only have we post-September 11 focused
new, justifiable, deserved attention on the first responders
locally, but I think we have now got to start thinking of
them--we had the chief of police yesterday, 700,000 State and
local law enforcers around.
So affirmatively, what thoughts do either of you have, and
I suppose this comes particularly to you, Director Mueller,
about how we can train and use them for intelligence to be
provided to the Department of Homeland Security, to you, to
prevent terrorism? Obviously, they are seeing a lot every day.
Mr. Mueller. The principal component in my mind are these
Joint Terrorism Task Forces in each of our communities, and to
the extent that they are not working well, we have to make them
work well because you need a focal point for the leads to come
in and you need a focal point for the intelligence to come in
and you have to have it come in in some way that is consistent,
and if there is word that comes in about a suspicious
character, you then have to have somebody go out. It could be a
local policeman or a local deputy sheriff to find the person,
interview him, do a report, and get it back to a central
location so that you have that intelligence where you need it
in case that name comes up again in the future.
So you have to have some network that includes State and
locals, and the Joint Terrorism Task Forces are the beginnings
of that integration of the Federal Government with the State
and locals in a way that will enable us to capture that
information.
We also have to set up, and have been setting up at
headquarters, liaisons with State and locals. At the Joint
Terrorism Task Force at headquarters, we will have State and
locals involved. We have currently in the investigation two New
York City Police Department detectives who are participatory in
it.
We also have established an office to support local law
enforcement and I have Louis Quijas, who was the police chief
of High Point, North Carolina, as an Assistant Director in
charge of that office. His responsibility is not only just to
be the point of contact for State and local individuals,
including the head of the IACP, Bill Berger, if there are
problems, but also when we have an investigation to sit at the
table and say, this is how you can enlist State and local law
enforcement in your investigation. So both at headquarters and
out in the field----
Chairman Lieberman. So you are thinking about it and you
are working on it.
Mr. Tenet, did you want to add anything?
Mr. Tenet. Yes. It is out of my lane, but one of the
things, and I talked to Mr. Mueller a bit about this, one of
the things I think you have to do at the National Law
Enforcement Center or your training academies is you really
have to build training and education for the State and locals.
What are you looking for? What are the methodologies? How have
they changed their practices?
There is an enormous amount of talent out there and they
are basically wanting to know, how do we use our scarce
resources to help you? So you have to have an education module
someplace, and it will change over time because as your
security gets better, their practices will change and you need
to constantly update that knowledge.
Chairman Lieberman. Director Mueller, let me ask you a
different kind of question. We talked about the change in focus
of the FBI, which we are all demanding of you to focus on
counterterrorism, and intelligence. Particularly, you have set
up the new FBI office and redirected personnel. So I have two
kinds of questions:
One is, should we worry, absent additional funding, about
the FBI's capacity to carry out its traditional law enforcement
functions?
And two, are there any other responsibilities that you have
now that really should be done by somebody else? Forgive me, I
think one that comes to mind is the extraordinary work you do
in interviewing nominees for Federal office. I do not know that
that is the most challenging work to give the people you have
there or whether that could be done by somebody else.
Mr. Mueller. We are looking at each of our responsibilities
to see whether they could be scrubbed, and actually, if you
look at the number of personnel we have doing that, it is very
small.
Chairman Lieberman. That is reassuring.
Mr. Mueller. It is basically Presidential nominees and the
rest is done by contractors. So we have contracted a great deal
of that out and it really would be minimal impact.
There are a number of the areas where Congress has given
the FBI additional jurisdiction. When you look at it, it is
very small numbers that we have and would not make that
tremendous a difference. As you will see, most of the
individuals we are asking to reassign are from the narcotics
area into the counterterrorism area and I have had lengthy--not
lengthy--I would say discussions with Asa Hutchinson in terms
of picking up the slack there and we believe that there will
not be a drop in attention. He is making moves to assure that
there is not. And also, I think State and local law enforcement
will be picking up some of those cases that we in the past had
been responsible for.
Chairman Lieberman. Another question about personnel for
both of you. Our colleague from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter,
has put in a proposal to create a--I believe he calls it a
National Terrorism Intelligence Center, somewhat like the
division within DHS we are talking about. But one of the
proposals he makes in that, and I will state it generally, is
to build on the Goldwater-Nickles model for the military where
you have to have served in a joint command to work your way up
within the military ranks and stars.
So part of this is that the new Department of Homeland
Security would draw its analysts from existing agencies,
including your two, and that we would state in statute that
service in the new Department would be a condition for
promotion within the agencies from which they come. Do you have
a reaction to either or both parts of that?
Mr. Tenet. I do not think you can uniquely build this
institution from our two respective agencies. I think that at
the beginning, we are going to have to help build this, but
they are going to have to hire and train a new analyst and a
different kind of person because of the glaring needs we have
in so many different areas. Simply believing you can take a
couple of hundred CIA or a couple of hundred FBI analysts and
throw them into this, I do not think is the right way to
proceed.
I do think Senator Specter's idea of jointness and terms of
serving in certain positions before promotions is generally a
concept we in the Intelligence Community work on today in terms
of advancement to senior rank, but I would do it a little bit
differently, sir. I think the kind of analysis that is going to
be done at this place is going to be fundamentally different,
require a different kind of person, and at the front end, we
will have to help, but we are going to have to grow that and
migrate people who really are going to develop long-term
expertise there. So I would build it a little bit differently.
Chairman Lieberman. Director Mueller.
Mr. Mueller. I think I would agree pretty much with Mr.
Tenet. I think the advanced military has--you always go in a
staff position before you take over a regiment. You will be
regimental staff, and that works very well in the military.
I do believe, and I am not certain you can transfer that to
the FBI, where we have any number of supervisory positions but
a relatively limited number of liaison positions to, whether it
be CIA or Homeland Security. So you would not get many people
through the ranks if you had to have spent a point in time at
one of those places.
What I do think we have to do, though, is give credit and
explain to persons through our promotion process that this is a
benefit. Spending time in another agency is beneficial to your
career, as opposed to being detrimental, and that is critically
important to do and that is what we are doing.
Chairman Lieberman. Time is running out. I think I had
better go and vote, with apologies to Senator Cleland, who I do
not see back yet.
I thank both of you. You have been very helpful.
We are on a schedule in the Committee to go to a markup
sometime in the middle of July and we will have drafts early in
July. I want to share them with the two of you and your
Departments, get your feedback, because we want this to work
well. You have helped us a lot today. Thank you very much.
Mr. Tenet. Thank you.
Mr. Mueller. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. I am going to recess the hearing. Judge
Webster, I will be back in a few moments and we shall proceed.
[Recess.]
Chairman Lieberman. The hearing will come back to order. We
have got a smaller but highly select gathering now. The
interest of the Committee in learning and doing right by the
national security needs will be benefited in these next two
panels.
First, Judge William Webster--I am just looking at the
dates--former Director of the FBI from 1978 to 1987, and then
Director of Central Intelligence from 1987 to 1991, an
extraordinary career in public service and a very distinguished
career in private service, as well.
Judge Webster, thanks so much for being here. We welcome
your testimony now and then we look forward to engaging in
dialogue with you.
TESTIMONY OF HON. WILLIAM H. WEBSTER, FORMER DIRECTOR OF
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE (1987-1991), CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
(CIA) AND FORMER DIRECTOR (1978-1987), FEDERAL BUREAU OF
INVESTIGATION (FBI)
Judge Webster. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am
honored to be here. I think you just heard from the experts and
I do not know how much I can add to the insights of the two
directors, but I shall certainly try.
I have been out of town and just got in last night and
consequently did not file either a summary or a statement. I
can in a few sentences, I think, put myself in perspective and
then be responsive to any of the questions that you may wish to
ask.
Chairman Lieberman. Good.
Judge Webster. As you mentioned, I have had the privilege
of serving both as Director of Central Intelligence and as
Director of the FBI and I am currently Vice Chairman of the
President's Advisory Council on Homeland Security, and I am not
sure in which capacity I am supposed to speak, but I do know
that in the case of the latter, I am speaking only for myself
and not for the Council.
I am very supportive of the approach to homeland security
and the creation of a Department for Homeland Security, and I
am also supportive of the President's view that the CIA should
continue to report to him and that the FBI should continue to
serve by reporting through the Department of Justice, for
reasons I would be glad to expand on.
The key, it seems to me, is to look at what the Homeland
Security Department could achieve, and, of course, I know the
Chairman has been active in thinking about those issues. For
too long, I have felt that the various smaller agencies have
been stepchildren in their departments. Many of them are there
by accident, have no real claim to core missions in those
departments. Some have been moved from one Department to the
other, all performing good service, but with no real
relationship to the issue of security and homeland security.
And bringing them together, particularly in the area of
border control and transportation security, seems to me to make
a great deal of sense, where they can be better supported by
resources, better able to coordinate, and better, I think, at
receiving intelligence that should come to them in finished
form and with an analytical capability. So that seems to me to
make a lot of sense.
I have heard various suggestions about carving off various
pieces of the FBI or CIA or having a major intelligence
operational component in Homeland Security. I think those are
neither necessary nor wise. What is needed is to build the
capacity of the FBI and the CIA to work in areas where they had
not previously been required to work because of the
globalization of these threats and the need for intelligence
both from abroad and at home.
That brings me to the last thing that I hope we will have a
chance to talk about and that is, I think, the FBI's technology
served it well as it grew. I recall days when we did
fingerprints by manual inspection and now we can do latent
fingerprints in a matter of minutes. That kind of thing has
been extraordinarily useful to the FBI and they have put it to
good use. But today the FBI's electronic equipment is not
capable, in my view, of dealing with the monumental amount of
intelligence that is coming in, not only of its own creation,
but from other agencies.
Until that issue has been fully addressed and supported,
the FBI's ability to mine or retrieve data coming into its
system in ways that would be specifically useful on a real-time
basis to agencies, particularly Homeland Security, that have
need to know specific things but certainly not others, will be
impeded, and I hope that along with making sure that the agency
and the Bureau are adequately staffed and the Homeland Security
agency is adopted, you will make sure they have the equipment
to keep up with the rapidly changing world.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much for that opening
statement.
Somebody recommended to me a book written about Pearl
Harbor by a woman named Roberta Wohlstetter, who I have met. I
cannot say I have read it, but I understand that one of the
conclusions is that in that time, with commissions and
Congressional investigations looking back at how could this
have happened, one of the answers was the inability of our
government to separate out the relevant information from the
static. Of course, we now generate multiples, probably millions
of times, of what was available at that point.
How should this new Department (assuming that it does not
have operational capacity, but the capacity in its Intelligence
Division to receive all the information that Mr. Mueller and
Mr. Tenet indicated they would get automatically and the power
to task and ask for new information) how does it organize
itself to appropriately analyze and filter out new information?
Judge Webster. The bill, as I understand it, mandates
certain types of information to be provided to the Department,
and that is good. It also makes clear those areas that for
reasons of security should not be passed in raw form unless
specifically authorized by a higher authority.
I make the analogy, and I am not so sure it is a totally
good one, but I think it is worth looking at the INR Division
of the Department of State. They do not collect information.
They get information from their various field offices that are
useful for their purposes that may or may not fall in the
specific definition of intelligence, just as I think the
Homeland Department would receive, in their relationships with
State and local authorities and State and local governments, a
substantial amount of information that could be factored into
their judgments on vulnerabilities, threats, and remedies. But
they have in the State Department an analytical capacity to go
over the material that is supplied to them to see how it
relates to the State Department's responsibilities, and they do
that. I think it is worth looking at as a vehicle.
My understanding is that the Homeland Security Department
would received finished intelligence. By that, it would be
intelligence that reads out on the basis of preliminary
analysis and excluding sources and methods and other things
that should not and need not go out. It would exclude all raw
material that had not been evaluated or confirmed. One of the
problems of the FBI is they have so much information they keep
and retrieve that has not been validated, and because we are
dealing with U.S. citizens and because it only adds to the
burden of finding the needle in the haystack, it should not be
transmitted in that form, in my opinion.
So they get material they could work with. They could
massage it, add to it, form judgments about it, and more
importantly, I think, the legislation would and ought to
provide for them to go back for more, maybe even raw material
on a specific issue if it was important enough to get a true
fix on it.
In that sense, the CIA and the FBI would both be
responsible and accountable for providing that information, as
well as the follow-up information or any that were needed
without a major dump on any particular subject on homeland
security.
Chairman Lieberman. That is a helpful answer. Let me ask
you a very different kind of question, which we did not get
into with our two previous witnesses. In the Committee bill on
this subject, we not only created a Department of Homeland
Security, but as you may know, we created a White House Office
for Combating Terrorism. The thought there was that homeland
security, obviously very critical new function for the
government to carry out, but it was not all of the
counterterrorism effort. Somewhere there ought to be a place
where this all comes together, so we created this office,
accountable to the President, of course, which would include a
representative of the Defense Department, State Department, and
intelligence and law enforcement and perhaps others. What do
you think of that idea?
Judge Webster. I do not have a solid judgment on it. I do
know that the present intention of the President with respect
to the bill that he has offered to you was to retain the
advisor to the President on Homeland Security, similar to the
National Security Advisor, and that he would have the same kind
of access to the other departments of government and the
military and could address these issues much as the National
Security Council addresses them with outside help. Beyond that,
I am not sure how much more detail you have provided or how
much the permanent staff has been provided. I would hope it
would be lean and mean.
Chairman Lieberman. I am going to come back to a different
kind of question here, and I think uniquely from your
experience, having headed both agencies, you may have a
perspective on it. Obviously, we have heard concerns about the
failure of the CIA and the FBI to cooperate with one another.
What are the critiques of setting up a new intelligence
analysis division of the new Department of Homeland Security?
One of the arguments that is made for it is that it creates
competitive analyses, that it may actually contribute to the
lack of cooperation, that it may be just one more center and
that when you have competitive analyses, perhaps there is an
incentive for the component intelligence and law enforcement
communities not to share information because they each want to
do the best analysis.
I spoke to a friend from the United Kingdom who said that
their MI5 really cooperated, and I might say it cooperates
because they seem not to have a history of competition between
the different component agencies. So I wonder if you might give
us a little guidance on that and particularly on whether you
think the new Intelligence Division would create more
competition and less sharing.
Judge Webster. There are a couple of questions in there. I
do not see creating an Intelligence Office in Homeland Security
that collects intelligence as adding to the resolution of
possible competitive analysis and different points of view. I
headed an organization in the Intelligence Community that
produced assessments and we had everyone at the table, all the
military, all the intelligence components, and we often arrived
at different points of view, conclusions, from some of the same
evidence itself and those were reported in the assessments in
ways that it was clear to the consumer of that intelligence
where the differences were and what they might be.
I did not detect in competitive analysis a problem of not
telling somebody something that they needed to know. Moreover,
I really come back to my view that the CIA has its position
with a much broader responsibility than mere homeland security.
The FBI has a much broader responsibility than homeland
security. But both of them over many, many years--FBI even
before there was a CIA--have been working in
counterintelligence and in counterintelligence areas. They need
to work better together.
I must say that in all the years I have watched it, in the
14 years I was involved and the 10 years afterwards, it has
gotten increasingly better. I have heard so much talk about
culture, and I think culture is a state of mind. It may reflect
an attitude or it may reflect the training or the discipline.
There is real commonality here. These are, in my experience,
patriotic Americans who love their country, are not interested
in fame or fortune, and they want, very simply, a safer and a
better world. That is the kind of commonality that ought to
produce cooperation in the supplying of information.
Sometimes they simply have not known what is of interest.
There is a difference between proactive intelligence gathering
and counterintelligence and we work to try to develop that
understanding. What would be of interest to CIA, not just
spreading everything that came in, but what would be of
interest? Tasking devices have been put in place that are very
helpful today. The technology for finding it and the technology
for getting it back to CIA could be improved radically.
Chairman Lieberman. Judge, excuse me, and I thank you. A
vote has gone off. I am going to run over. I am going to yield
to Senator Cleland to carry on and I will come right back.
Judge Webster. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CLELAND
Senator Cleland [presiding]. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I missed the questions of our two previous panelists
because we ran out of time here and I had to go vote and when I
came back, they were gone. I did not want to get caught this
time leaving to vote and missing you. Thank you very much for
your time here and for your public service.
May I just say, in terms of the Intelligence Community, I
have a powerful sense that no one is in charge, but I do not
think I am the only one that has that sense. Yesterday, this
Committee received testimony from the former Director of the
National Security Agency, NSA, Lieutenant General William Odom,
who said there is no one in government who can give the
President an overall view of counterintelligence. There is no
comprehensive picture, no one to put it all together, no king
of this particular discipline.
I think what he was trying to say was that the Intelligence
Community is made up of a number of agencies, many of which
compete with one another budgetarily. Many have different
assignments. They are all called the Intelligence Community,
but nobody at the top is pulling together and connecting the
dots for a decision.
The Chairman mentioned a book in regard to Pearl Harbor. I
think that is the book I read a review of about 8 or 9 months
ago, around December of last year, which talked about the
intelligence failure that led to Pearl Harbor. My father was
stationed at Pearl Harbor after the attack, so I grew up with
that whole legacy of Pearl Harbor and the response of this
country to the attack.
The book basically alleges that what we have, it seems to
me now, is stovepiping of information where one agency has some
information, another agency has a piece of information, another
agency has a piece of information. It was not that we did not
have a sense that there was an impending attack upon Pearl
Harbor, we just did not pull it all together. There was nobody
at the top pulling it together for a decision.
You get the same sense here about September 11, that there
was an FBI office in Phoenix, there was another FBI office in
Minneapolis, and then over here in the NSA there were a couple
of things, and then over in the FBI, and in the CIA there was
something, but nobody was pulling it together.
As someone who has headed up both of these agencies, the
FBI and the CIA, what do you think of Senator Feinstein's
proposal that basically creates a Director of National
Intelligence who, in effect, pulls all of this information
together, has a staff, and is advised also by a National
Intelligence Council of senior analysts from the Intelligence
Community and that, in effect, that individual answers directly
to the President? I just wondered if you felt any need to
reorganize somewhat the Intelligence Community in order to not
only connect the dots at the bottom of the pile, bottom of the
pyramid, but at the top for decisionmakers like the President.
Judge Webster. Senator, I have heard that suggestion
before. It is not a new one. It has been considered from time
to time, and on paper, it seems to have merit.
As Director of Central Intelligence, when that would be
proposed, I would say, what troops will this person have? How
will he be able to make things happen? The Director of Central
Intelligence currently has troops, but he has no control over
the various components of his business outside the CIA. The
report cards are written in the Defense Department, and that,
as you know from your own experience, makes a big difference on
how responsive people are to information.
There is a concerted effort to make sure that information
is properly sent in the right direction. NSA has more than it
can translate every week. They simply lack the total capacity.
The FBI gets a lot of information that it cannot retrieve in an
active, meaningful way because of the equipment that they have.
We are in an age where we are not lacking information, we are
inundated with information.
I am not sure that having a Director of National
Intelligence will achieve that objective. It is possible that
it might improve it, but I am more and more convinced that the
Intelligence Community can, with proper ability to communicate
what they know, do a better job of communicating. I do not at
all believe that we are any longer the victims of cultural
disattachment, rivalry, or distaste.
The two agencies, the FBI and the CIA, like it or not, are
becoming more and more alike. The CIA used to be thought of as
a place that attracted Ivy Leaguers, especially from Yale, and
the FBI was the long gray line at Fordham. Now, both agencies
recruit from over 100 colleges and universities. More and more
cross-fertilization is taking place. You heard this afternoon
the testimony of Director Mueller of the number of CIA analysts
that are in place and the efforts that they are making to have
people put in all places.
I am not sure that one more layer would assure that it
would all come in some neat package that the President would be
able to use, but I certainly agree with you that your nightmare
is that something is going to fall between chairs.
We had this problem as recently as the Gulf War, in terms
of getting the information. Our satellites were downloading
into Riyadh and the military services were unable to promptly
and immediately communicate the intelligence because they were
on different systems. I think that maybe as we get to a more
uniform system that protects the ``need to know'' principle,
that may help.
But I have to tell you that the Director of Central
Intelligence is supposed to be the President's principal
advisor on national intelligence and he ought to be able to
perform that function in the job that he has.
Senator Cleland. In 1947, Harry Truman restructured the
Intelligence Community to create the Director of Central
Intelligence. Is that a misnomer?
Judge Webster. No, it is not. It is arguably a misnomer,
and I know what you are driving at now. His purpose was he did
not want to get his intelligence out of a department of
government that had an agenda. He wanted a place that looked at
intelligence in as neutral a form as it could be and gave the
most objective, considered intelligence that could be
accomplished, utilizing intelligence from all quarters, all-
source intelligence.
His purpose was to try to find one place that was neutral,
and I think it was a good purpose. It was a wise move. But
there is still difficulty in consolidating the intelligence
that comes from the various components, including NSA, and that
needs improvement.
In terrorism, you have several sources. You have the
SIGINT, the Signals Intelligence with the National Security
Agency, which has responsibility for collecting information,
plus any cryptology and translations that come from that
Signals Intelligence, and that is important. You have the CIA's
collecting capabilities from all sources, signals and imagery
and human intelligence, coming from around the world, and you
have the FBI with its agents in place in various parts of the
country attempting to pick up information about threats to our
infrastructure and threats to our national security.
I do not know that having one more person is going to make
it happen any better--one more layer of government is going to
make it any happier. It depends on the President's confidence
in the judgment of his Director of Central Intelligence and----
Senator Cleland. Let us talk about that for a second,
though. Before September 11, the President met apparently
frequently with the head of the CIA, very understandable. Then
when we found that the ball was being dropped big-time between
the FBI and the CIA, even within the FBI, and certainly within
the government, various agencies of the government that had a
piece of the puzzle but nobody at the top was putting it
together. Now the President, I understand, meets frequently
with the CIA, the head of the CIA and the head of the FBI.
Should the President have a class? I mean, should he have the
head of the DIA there? Who else should be in the room?
If nobody is connecting the dots at the top, I guess I
still wonder if we have overcome the stovepiping of
information, the lack of sharing between agencies when there
are a lot of people within the Intelligence Community. It just
seems to me that we are not aggregating it, pulling it
together, collating it, and making sense of it. Somebody up
there at the top is not there. Again, General Odom, that was a
pretty powerful statement by the head of the NSA saying there
is no one in the government who can give the President an
overall view of counterintelligence.
I would like to move on to another question and that is
about the FBI, your familiarity with it. Before September 11,
counterintelligence dealing with terrorism and so forth was
buried pretty much in an agency that was highly law enforcement
oriented. Now, I think Senator Thompson was right on the case.
It does seem to me that the exigencies, the needs of law
enforcement are one thing and the needs of the Intelligence
Community gathering people are, quite frankly, another.
I wonder if you like the idea or do not like the idea of
taking the counterintelligence, or basically the intelligence
functions of the FBI, and separating them out from the FBI, out
from under the law enforcement folks, and making that part of
the Intelligence Community if you have somebody ultimately at
the top that connects the dots and makes that part of the
intelligence input.
Judge Webster. My view is that that is not the way to go. I
would like to explain. That is a very important question and I
think I have had substantial experience in the area and would
like to address it.
In 1980, I made terrorism one of the four top priorities of
the FBI. Before that, it had been foreign counterintelligence,
organized crime, and white collar crime. So it is not a new
thing. We were experiencing 100 terrorist incidents a year, not
of the size or proportion of what we are now experiencing as of
September 11, but serious terrorist incidents, 100 a year.
When we made it our priority and addressed it by gathering
intelligence and applying that to effective law enforcement
methods, we reduced the number of annual terrorist incidents to
about five when I left in 1987, and the next year there were
none, as I recall.
Senator Cleland. May I just interrupt? Unfortunately, our
schedule terrorizes us and I have about 60 seconds to go vote,
and it is the last vote of the day.
Judge Webster. Please, do not let me hold you back.
Senator Cleland. But thank you very much for your service
to our country. Thank you very much for your testimony.
Judge Webster. Thank you.
Senator Cleland. The Committee will stand in recess pending
the call of the Chair. Thank you.
[Recess.]
Chairman Lieberman [presiding]. The hearing will come back
to order.
Judge Webster, thanks so much. Of course, you are a veteran
or previous victim of this Senate schedule, but I thank you for
your patience.
Judge Webster. I understand.
Chairman Lieberman. Let me ask you for a moment to put on
your former hat as the head of the FBI and give us a reaction,
if you would, to the priorities that Director Mueller stated,
the new priorities, and if there is any reason to be concerned,
as I suggested at the end, that they may result in less
capacity to carry out the traditional law enforcement functions
of the FBI.
Judge Webster. Well, I have them before me and there are
some ten of them. I would not be too concerned about the fact
that there were ten. There were three when I came to the FBI in
1978, and as I mentioned while you were out of the room, I made
terrorism one of the four top priorities in 1980. We were very
successful in bringing a focus on that area, reduced the number
of terrorist incidents from 100 a year to five by the time I
left, not of the size and scale of today's capacity for horror,
but very important and serious events that we averted, we
prevented. So I felt that three or four top priorities made
sense.
Here, the director has his priorities in boldface, so he
probably really only has a few more than I did. But No. 10 is
``upgrade technology to successfully perform the FBI's
mission.'' If these are ranked in order, I would put it up to
No. 4, I think, because I do not think the FBI can manage its
responsibilities in the intelligence arena and the law
enforcement arena where national security is involved without
being sure that its technology is successfully upgraded to
perform its mission.
The other ones are all significant. I know less about
combating significant violent crime. That was not a top
priority when I was there, and if we had to find some areas to
draw down on for resources, I would look closely at that one to
see what is in that category that could be just as well managed
by State and local authorities. This is always a challenge.
Abraham Lincoln said that that is the true function of the
Federal Government, to do what State and local cannot do as
well for themselves or cannot do at all.
So I would look at that one. I think the word
``significant'' probably is a limiting factor, but violent
crime, to me, has been something that belongs to the whole law
enforcement community. It is not unique to the FBI's capacities
or abilities. Supporting it in terms of the laboratories, the
Identification Division, the NCIC indexing system and other
matters, behavioral science for serial crimes and so on, are
all very important contributions to State and local law
enforcement. But I am not sure that we ought to be competing
with them at this point.
Beyond that, I do not know that I am really qualified to
comment on the other priorities. I think there is a big
difference between the amount of resources that are required
for individual subjects that are listed in there.
Chairman Lieberman. It is true, is it not, from your
experience at the FBI that some of the kinds of work that we
are asking the Bureau to do now with regard to terrorism has
been done for quite a long time, not only with regard to
terrorism, but with regard to other groups, both criminal and
politically confrontational or threatening groups, that the
Bureau has for quite some time watched or infiltrated, is that
not correct?
Judge Webster. That is correct, Mr. Chairman. The Bureau
has developed, I think, a remarkable capability to conduct
longer-term investigations to get to the top of organizations
who are engaging in one form or another acts hostile to our
country in violation of our laws or our national security. I
think that is all there. They need to keep working at it, but
it is not a new thing.
What may be raising the suggestion of newness is that in a
time of emergency, there may be more interest in disrupting or
preventing a terrorist activity even if it means that the
criminal prosecution is somehow disadvantaged by the techniques
that are used. That is a little different.
On the other hand, I think it is important that No. 5,
protecting civil rights, not be neglected and that this not
ever become an excuse for engaging in activities that have been
condemned in the past and which we are well beyond.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks for that answer.
As you probably heard on the first panel, yesterday, we
heard from Chief Berger from the International Association of
Police Chiefs and we talked with him about how to engage local
law enforcement and several hundred thousand additional eyes
and ears around the country in the carrying out of this new
responsibility, as I mentioned. What advice would you give us
about how best to do that?
Judge Webster. I think a Homeland Security Department is a
good place to enhance not only the relationships that the
Federal authorities have, the Federal law enforcement
authorities have, but also in terms of acquainting State and
local officials with vulnerabilities that they may or may not
be aware of in their areas, infrastructure weaknesses, for
example.
I am acutely aware of the fact that State and local
authorities are usually the first on the scene. They are the
first to respond. Senator Nunn, with whom I was talking
recently, of course, introduced the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici bill to
help with training for people who have that kind of
responsibility. Should we have a weapons of mass destruction
incident, if we have another type of airplane missile bombing
or other types of major--they are the first ones that are going
to be there and there has to be a collaboration, both in
providing them with any known threats or risks in their area or
their geography and also supporting their efforts as quickly as
possible when something of major proportion takes place that
may be outside their capacity.
Chairman Lieberman. I know that one of the reasons you have
spoken against breaking up the FBI and taking its domestic
intelligence function and putting it in this new Department or
a separate agency is that the Justice Department oversight does
provide a kind of protection against civil liberties
violations. Obviously, there are some instances in which the
Bureau has been criticized for that, and I am going back now
over half a century.
My question is, as the Bureau now moves into this new area
with greater devotion of personnel and, in fact, sometimes when
you mention the MI5 comparison, incidentally, one of the great
concerns expressed is civil liberties. Is there anything
additional that we should do to make sure that we are not only
protecting our security, which obviously is primary, but that
we are also not compromising our liberties?
Judge Webster. As you know, MI5 has had problems in the
past on issues of civil liberties.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes.
Judge Webster. I take a certain comfort in the fact that
the FBI has always been in the Department of Justice. It was
created a long time ago with a single sentence in a statute
that said the Attorney General may have a Bureau of
Investigation.
I think that it has served as a shield from oppressive use,
assignments that are not sanctioned in the law or the
Constitution. It has also been, I think, a healthy relationship
because it prevents the possibility of some White House tasking
that goes beyond what would be acceptable treatment of American
citizens.
We have had experiences, as you know, with telephone calls
from the White House saying the White House--I am not talking
about the President--from people in the White House saying that
they would like this done or that done. It is very difficult
for an agency not to be affected by that. I had to deal with
the Iran-Contra issue when I got to CIA. But at the FBI, the
FBI would not accept that kind of tasking because it was
screened through the Department of Justice and the Attorney
General would be the person who would have to take the heat for
saying we cannot do it that way. That is one of the reasons I
like it where it is.
But from an operational sense, terrorism is a continuum.
One objective is to get there before the bomb goes off and to
take the necessary steps to stop it. I mentioned our success in
those years with other different types of a more domestic
nature, although we had Serbians, Croatians, Algerians, a whole
range of people fighting others, carrying on their European
wars in the United States.
But we start with trying to stop it, and that is through
intelligence. That intelligence has to go to the operatives. It
also comes from the field agents in the field who are picking
up on planning operations of that kind. And once it passed the
stage of preventing, we have to deal with it through effective
law enforcement of it. MI5 makes no arrests. It relies on the
local constabulary to do it.
We have a vast resource out in the field of people who have
had counterterrorist training, who have had counterintelligence
training, who are there to help when the emergency arises. I
cannot conceive that the Congress would enact legislation
creating another group of that size to be there when they are
needed, to be there to detect terrorism and to be there to
follow up and minimize the damage and to make the arrests.
So I am more comfortable feeling that is not the way to
improve intelligence sharing. If that is the problem, it should
be addressed in a different way.
While you were away, I spoke too long, perhaps, on my sense
of how cultural differences that may have existed 30 years ago
have really largely evaporated as the agencies become more like
each other, draw from the same pool of colleges and
universities, work more closely together, share in joint
centers, provide, as you heard this afternoon, analysts from
CIA to the FBI, the FBI, I think the present head of the
Counterintelligence Center at the CIA is now headed by an FBI
Special Agent. These things are all to the good.
We cannot tell when something will fall between the cracks
in hindsight that if we had known and if we had known what it
was about, we might have done something about it. I just think
that is not a reason for breaking up the FBI's current
structure and relationship to CIA.
Chairman Lieberman. Let me ask a final question, which has
two parts. The first is personal in sense, which is having had
the extraordinary experience you have had to head both the FBI
and CIA, having been involved in these matters, what was your
reaction when you first heard of them on September 11 when
those events occurred?
And the second part is, putting together all that
experience, is there anything that we are not doing post-
September 11 to raise our guard that you would suggest we
should be doing?
Judge Webster. Well, of course, I was like any other
citizen, going to work when it happened. When the first plane
crashed, I thought, ``Oh, it is another Empire State Building
accident.'' When the second one came as I got to my office, it
was pretty clear that something terrible in the way of a
terrorist purposeful activity was occurring, and then the
Pentagon was hit.
The fact is, as I understand it, there had been some
concern for some time that something was in the wind with the
al Qaeda organization, but no one had a specific clue, a time
or a place or a way, and that is historically the way terrorist
succeed, get a victory on the cheap, because they could choose
it all, how they are going to do it, where they are going to do
it. They operate in cellular form and it is very difficult to
get on the inside unless someone who for various reasons
decides to go over and sell what he knows or does not agree
with the conclusion and wants to head it off, can be found to
get a piece of specific information.
But I suppose we all wonder what we could have done to
prevent it. I am very proud of the way America responded. I am
very proud of the way the President led us, first in compassion
and then with determination to know who was responsible and to
take appropriate action. I am proud of what went on in New York
City, when volunteers and the fire fighters and the police came
and did what they did.
And I have just finished my 65th airplane ride since
September 11 and I am proud of the way Americans are accepting
the burdens of additional security without complaining about
it, and trying to be helpful about it, and so those are the
good feelings.
I have to say, and I think I should say, that the two
pieces of information that are most talked about are the
Phoenix report and the efforts of the Minneapolis Special
Agents in Minnesota to get an appropriate warrant to pursue
their suspicions about an individual. I think close analysis
will show that in all probability, neither of those would have
pointed to the specific activity and the time and the place in
order to be able to prevent it.
Within just a few hours of the explosions, however, the
authorities were able to identify all 19 of the people who were
on those airplanes and knew a good deal about their background.
I am sure that everyone said, why did we not know enough to put
this together? Many of those people themselves did not know
where their objectives or destinations were. It is a typical,
but extraordinarily successful, terrorist undertaking of a
dimension we had never known before. Tom Friedman said it was a
failure of imagination.
I think we now are a good deal less innocent in our feeling
that the homeland is safe and free. We know that will never be
the same again and that we all have to take appropriate steps
to protect ourselves against threats, not only to our citizens
but to our infrastructure. We depend a great deal on
electronics, on computers. The things we live by can be
penetrated and destroyed. It can create enormous problems for
us in the future unless we devote the resources to get a handle
on it ahead of time.
I am a great believer in intelligence, but intelligence
also requires that we know what the problems are and we focus
on where those problems might come from and where they might
go. That is why I think a Homeland Security concept is
particularly good because that is their job, to go out and look
and see. What about the water supplies in various places? How
well are they protected? What could be done to affect other
things? What do we know about the capacity of those who hate us
to come up with weapons of mass destruction and to create
another event? That may be a long way away, but it is certainly
not out of the question. I think it is very likely that, in
time, that will be the kind of attack to make.
We have to be resolute, but I was thinking all along, let
us keep our cool here and let us not either engage in
activities that would make us like the terrorists. We use our
investigative forces and intelligence forces effectively, but
we will not engage in torture. We will not invade Americans
without a proper, supervised basis for it. We will keep the
courts involved. And we will be the kind of people we have
always been that make us what we are. Our value system is what
we are, and that means that we have to support it with our
major skills.
We know a lot about technology. We know how to apply that
to the challenges of the future. We know how to improve and we
need to improve those Federal agencies that depend on their
data systems, their mining systems. The problem with the FBI
right now is that it gets more information than it can retrieve
and use and supply to other people. So we must not hesitate to
be sure that is done. Maybe they need to bring in people who
really are experts in this field. But we have to do those
things, and at the same time be a government under law that
protects democracy and respects human life.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Judge. You continue
to represent the best of our values and a proud tradition of
service to your country and I thank you for the service that
you have given this Committee as we try to chart a course for
the next phase of our homeland security. Thank you very much.
Judge Webster. Thank you. I am honored to be here.
Chairman Lieberman. We appreciate it a lot.
Senator Shelby and Senator Graham are here. I apologize to
my colleagues that perhaps the last vote having occurred has
taken a number of other Members of the Committee. Thanks very
much.
I would give you the option of not going forward, but I am
very anxious to hear your testimony.
Senator Shelby. Mr. Chairman, we want to go forward.
Chairman Lieberman. Good. That sounds like the two of you.
I will circulate your testimony to the Members of the
Committee. I want to suggest that I consider it to be
significant enough that we may want to, sometime after we get
back, just hold a meeting of the Committee at which you come in
and share your considerable experience with us. But anyway, I
thank you for preparing as you have to be here.
Senator Graham, Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, I
call on you now.
TESTIMONY OF HON. BOB GRAHAM,\1\ A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE
OF FLORIDA AND CHAIRMAN, SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE, U.S.
SENATE
Senator Graham. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I would
propose to deliver a somewhat abbreviated version of my remarks
and submit the full statement for the record, if that is
acceptable.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Graham appears in the
Appendix on page 191.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you. It will be done.
Senator Graham. We both appreciate the opportunity to come
at this late hour before the Governmental Affairs Committee to
discuss what we believe to be a critically important subject in
our Nation's future domestic security, and that is the
relationship between the agencies which make up our Nation's
Intelligence Community and the new proposed Department of
Homeland Security.
I want to applaud the leadership which you and other
Members of this Committee, particularly the Ranking Member,
Senator Thompson, for taking up the challenge offered by the
President in his proposal, but not just waiting but really
anticipating and spending much of last year working on
legislation which closely tracks what the President is now
proposing.
I would like to confine my remarks to those relating to
intelligence and homeland security because I am convinced that
sound security policy decisions require timely, relevant
intelligence. I am also certain that nowhere will this prove to
be more true than in the newly named but historically
fundamental area of homeland security. But whatever shape the
new Department takes, its success or failure will in large
measure depend on the quality of intelligence upon which it can
rely.
For now, I would like to focus on three areas where the
intersection of intelligence and the functioning of the new
Department will be particularly important. First, creating an
intelligence analytical capability within the new Department.
It is important to recognize in the beginning that the creation
of a new Department of the size and power contemplated here
will alter the relationship between the Intelligence Community
and its totality of consumers. The new Department will rival
the Department of Defense as the Intelligence Community's
largest and likely most demanding consumer. It is important
that the new Department structure enhances its ability to
function as a smart consumer.
To that end, I am pleased with my initial review of the
second section of the President's proposal, wherein he
establishes an Under Secretary in charge of what will be, in
essence, the Intelligence Processing Center for the new
Department of Homeland Security. It will be this Processing
Center that will assure that the Department decisions are made
with the benefit of all-source intelligence.
Being a good intelligence consumer, it is important to
note, is not limited to knowing how to read finished and, where
appropriate, raw intelligence information. To be a smart
consumer requires an ability to know what more is needed, what
additional intelligence should be collected, how to articulate
the needs of the new Department to those who will be collecting
the information for the new Department in the Intelligence
Community.
The new Department will need to have a seat at the table
when scarce intelligence collection assets are being tasked.
One of the most important decisions that an Intelligence
Community makes, given the fact that whether it is human
intelligence, a particular form of technical collection
capability, or a nascent capacity, all of those are at some
point finite and decisions have to be made as to how and most
effectively to allocate them. This new Department will play an
important role in those decisions.
Mr. Chairman, although Senator Shelby and the members of
the Intelligence Committees of the House and Senate are in the
early stages of our joint inquiry into September 11, after 3
months-plus of staff inquiry and our preliminary closed
hearings, there are some factors which have contributed to the
failures to anticipate and prevent September 11 which are
emerging. Let me mention two of those.
One is inadequate and untimely sharing of information
within the Intelligence Community. A notable example of that is
the example that Judge Webster just referenced, the Phoenix
document, a potentially critical piece of domestically
collected foreign intelligence.
Second is the absence of a single set of eyes to have
analyzed all the bits and pieces of relevant intelligence
information, including open-source material, that which is
available to all the public through the newspapers,
periodicals, television. Examples of this failure to place
before a single set of eyes all of these pieces would again be
the Phoenix document and the Moussouai investigation, that is
the investigation that was originated by the FBI field office
in Minneapolis, and available foreign intelligence in the weeks
and months prior to September 11.
These factors support the idea that an all-source
analytical unit which will fall under the heading of a smart
intelligence consumer is a critical element of this
legislation. This smart consumer must be equipped to function
like an intelligent recipient, with the ability to sort through
large volumes of intelligence information and draw specific
conclusions to inform policy decisions, to be able to ask and
receive intelligence needed to support their functioning, to be
capable of tasking the Intelligence Community to collect
specific information needed for this new agency.
The second area of intelligence and the new Department
relates to the creation of a White House Office for Combating
Terrorism. The creation of the new Department with a scope of
responsibility transcending terrorism and encompassing other
homeland security threats does not obviate the need for a White
House office which is solely focused on terrorism. Such an
office, a National Office for Combating Terrorism, was proposed
in legislation, S. 1449, which I cosponsored with Senator
Feinstein last year and is largely incorporated as Title II of
the Chairman's pending legislation establishing a Department of
Homeland Security. Our efforts drew on a belief that the
fundamental problem was structural. Nobody was in charge and
there was no coherent strategy to combat terrorism. The result:
Disorientation and fragmentation.
Last year within the Intelligence Community, we established
a working group to review all of the reports that had been
conducted on the Intelligence Community, particularly with a
focus on terrorism. An informal memorandum was prepared, dated
June 22, 2001, which offered a prescriptive review of the
current terrorism structure, and Mr. Chairman, I would like to
submit that memo as part of my remarks.
Chairman Lieberman. Without objection.
[The information of Senator Graham follows:]
Senator Graham. It was our feeling that it was important
that there be such a White House Office of Counterterrorism. It
would be small, but with a narrow mission, confined to
terrorism, which would be necessary to complement the larger
missions of the Homeland Security Department. Now, some may
argue that such an office already exists, created by Executive
Order and occupied by Governor Tom Ridge. I personally do not
believe this is adequate and I believe the action of this
Committee in reporting out its previous legislation with Title
II contained therein supported my belief.
It is important that this office within the White House
bring to bear the power and legitimacy that only the
Legislative Branch can provide and do so by creating such an
office by statute. It is equally important that such an office
be subject to the oversight of Congress and invested with real
budget authority. Although much smaller in size and scope than
the contemplated Department of Homeland Security, a National
Office for Combating Terrorism is an essential component of a
workable plan to reorganize our homeland security efforts and
should be created in the same legislation.
Finally, I believe that the events of September 11 compel a
reexamination of the scope, methodology, and limitations
governing domestic collection of terrorism-related
intelligence. When, where, and under what circumstances should
the government collect intelligence about the activities of
U.S. citizens or lawful visitors to our Nation? What techniques
should they use? What techniques should be prohibited? Is the
present government structure in which the FBI is primarily
responsible for collection of intelligence, foreign and
domestic, within the United States, adequate to our needs?
Should we enhance our domestic collection capabilities, and if
so, how?
Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that we make no mistake about
this third issue. It is a very tough subject. It will require
serious consideration of the balance of deeply held principles
of civil liberty and privacy in relation to the need to protect
our Nation.
Thus, I was pleased that the President's plan and the
Chairman's pending bill do not attempt to resolve these issues.
Rather, they create new institutions which are designed to
effectively lead our Nation as we debate and resolve these
fundamental issues of civil rights, privacy, and domestic
intelligence collection. By deferring what is likely to be a
contentious and challenging debate, we can avoid mixing two
apparently similar but quite different issues, how to organize
to fight terrorism, and once organized, under what rules should
we conduct that fight.
Further, by proceeding first to organizational legislation,
the Congress will be in a position to wait, and I hope find
informed judgment from the results of the Joint Inquiry into
the events of September 11. Our purpose is to answer the
questions of what happened, why it happened, and what could we
do to reduce the prospects of it occurring in the future? I
would hope that our suggestions on those three questions would
help inform this Committee and our colleagues as to the
appropriate method and means by which to balance these
interests of national security and personal privacy and rights.
Armed with this analysis and aided by what will then be a
new Department's ability to focus and drive the debate, I
believe we can address such questions consistent with our
Nation's traditions and beliefs. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Senator Graham, for a
very thoughtful, very helpful statement.
Senator Shelby, Vice Chair, colleague, welcome.
TESTIMONY OF HON. RICHARD C. SHELBY,\1\ A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF ALABAMA AND VICE CHAIRMAN, SELECT COMMITTEE ON
INTELLIGENCE, U.S. SENATE
Senator Shelby. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I hope you will
indulge me for a few minutes. I know it is a long day here.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Shelby appears in the
Appendix on page 209.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chairman Lieberman. No, this is very----
Senator Shelby. I believe, as Senator Graham does--and we
have talked with you privately about this--that the
intelligence component of homeland security is the key to
homeland security.
Chairman Lieberman. Absolutely.
Senator Shelby. I want to thank you for allowing us to
address this Committee today. I believe Senator Graham and I
would love to meet with other Members that are not here as we
crystallize, or as you crystallize, this legislation.
Chairman Lieberman. Good. We will do that.
Senator Shelby. As I have pointed out many times, Mr.
Chairman, as all of us have pointed out, more Americans were
killed by terrorists on September 11, 2001, than died in
Japan's infamous sneak attack upon Pearl Harbor on December 7,
1941. I think it is both necessary and fitting that we do
everything in our power to ensure that the United States never
again suffers such a catastrophe, a third Pearl Harbor. For
this reason, I support, Mr. Chairman, the creation of a
Department of Homeland Security, as you do.
As in so many important endeavors involving legislation,
the devil is always in the details. We also know all too well
that legislation alone cannot meet all the challenges that we
will face. One of the biggest risks we face in the world of
intelligence collection, I believe, is risk aversion. Our
intelligence bureaucracies have, over time, become averse for
the most part to risk taking, partly because of internal
institutional pressures and partly because of external
criticisms. No bill, Mr. Chairman, rule, or regulation can
reverse that.
What we can do is address an immediate need. To do so, we
need to create a new Department, but it is important that we
create it right--as you said, Mr. Chairman, many times--and
that in creating it, that we do not simply replicate the
mistakes of the past.
Accordingly, Mr. Chairman, I am grateful for the
opportunity to discuss the intelligence aspects of homeland
security, a topic with which I have been greatly concerned and
closely involved for the past 8 years on the Senate
Intelligence Committee, serving as Chairman and currently as
Vice Chairman.
In introducing his legislative proposal for a Department of
Homeland Security--after yours had been introduced, Mr.
Chairman--President Bush declared that the top priority of the
Department will be preventing future attacks. This emphasis is
picked up in the text of his legislative proposal itself, which
stresses in Section 101(b) that the primary mission of the
Department of Homeland Security will be to prevent terrorist
attacks within the United States.
As the President's proposal recognizes, this fundamental
mission highlights the importance of intelligence. First among
the list of the new Department's primary responsibilities,
according to the proposed legislation, the President's proposal
lists the crucial function of conducting information analysis
related to terrorist threats. The intelligence function is
absolutely central, Mr. Chairman, to the President's proposal
and to yours, as it should be. It is, therefore, Mr. Chairman,
doubly important that we get, the intelligence aspects of the
Department right.
The President in his proposal assigns appropriate emphasis
to ensuring that this intelligence function is carried out
properly by making the Information Analysis and Infrastructure
Protection Office the first of the new Department's key
components. If done right, Mr. Chairman, the creation of such a
national-level center for true all-source intelligence fusion
of terrorist-related threat information would be of huge value.
Most Americans would probably be surprised, Mr. Chairman,
to know that even 9 months--yes, 9 months--after the terrorist
attacks of September 11, there is today no Federal official,
not a single one, Mr. Chairman, to whom the President can turn
to ask the simple question, ``What do we know about current
terrorist threats against our homeland?'' No one person or
entity has meaningful access to all such information the
government possesses. No one really knows what we know, and no
one is even in a position to go to find out. This state of
affairs is deplorable and must end.
In the wake of a well-publicized series of significant
intelligence failures, Mr. Chairman, including the failure to
prevent the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the
failure to prevent the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia
in 1996, the failure to anticipate the Indian nuclear tests in
1998, the failure to prevent the bombing of our embassies in
Africa that same year, the accidental bombing of the Chinese
embassy in 1999, the failure to prevent the attack on the
U.S.S. Cole, and, of course, the failure to prevent the attacks
of September 11, there has been no shortage, as you know, of
proposals to reform the U.S. Intelligence Community.
Most of them have involved, as you know, Mr. Chairman,
variations on the theme of empowering the Director of Central
Intelligence, the DCI, to exercise more real power within the
mostly Defense Department-owned Intelligence Community. Other
proposals, such as one floated this week, would empower the
Pentagon by creating an Under Secretary of Defense for
Intelligence. All of them, Mr. Chairman, so far have gone
nowhere. When such ideas do not flounder upon the rocks of
interdepartmental rivalry and what the military calls rice bowl
politics, they simply fail to elicit much interest from an
Intelligence Community that even to this day insists that
nothing is fundamentally wrong.
Too often, Mr. Chairman, serious reform proposals have been
dismissed as a bridge too far by administration after
administration and Congress after Congress and have simply
fallen by the wayside. While very modest attempts at reform
have been enacted, they have been ignored by succeeding
administrations and openly defied by our current Director of
Central Intelligence.
With this in mind, last year, Senator Graham and I asked
our Committee's Technical Advisory Group, or TAG, to undertake
its own look at these issues. The TAG Group, the Technical
Advisory Group, is a group of prominent scientists and
technologists that volunteer their services to advise the
Intelligence Committee on very difficult technical and program
management issues. We worked with them over several months on
these matters and we came to some interesting conclusions. I
beg your indulgence for a few minutes more.
Chairman Lieberman. Please.
Senator Shelby. Rather than rest our hopes for reform upon
plans destined to run headlong, Mr. Chairman, into vested
interests wedded to the current interdepartmental division of
intelligence resources, or to be smothered by pained
indifference from holdover bureaucrats satisfied by the status
quo, the TAG Group proposed instead that the President create
something entirely new: A small, agile, elite organization with
the President's personal support dedicated wholly and single-
minded to conducting fusion analysis. This organization would
draw upon all the information available to the Federal
Government and use the resulting knowledge to achieve a single
clear goal: Dismantling and destroying terrorist groups that
threaten the United States. This, we hoped, might allow
meaningful reform to take place without initially, Mr.
Chairman, having to upset entrenched bureaucratic apple carts.
We proposed, in effect, an intelligence-related version of
the Manhattan Project that would take place, to some extent,
outside the traditional chains of command and networks of
vested interests. We suggested an approach modeled on the movie
catch phrase, ``If you build it, they will come.'' If this new
venture were successful, its progress would breed further
successes, we thought, by gradually attracting resources and
support from elsewhere, and perhaps, Mr. Chairman, by
stimulating the intelligence bureaucracies to do more to reform
themselves even when faced with the success of an alternative
model. The private sector refers to this process as creative
destruction.
After the terrorist attacks on September 11, we felt that
it was time to present this proposal to the White House. If the
mass murder of 3,000 Americans could not drive meaningful
reform in our Intelligence Community, we reasoned, what could?
Accordingly, Senator Graham, the Chairman, and I brought our
TAG team to meet with Governor Ridge at the White House on
November 29 of last year. We met with the Governor with these
distinguished scientists for about 90 minutes and talked in
detail about our plan for the creation for the first time, Mr.
Chairman, of a truly all-source national-level intelligence
analytical agency dedicated to knowing and assessing everything
that our government knows about terrorist threats.
I think I can speak for Senator Graham as well as for my
staff and the distinguished members of our technical advisory
group in saying we are pleased that President Bush has seen fit
to propose the creation of just such an organization within the
Department of Security, a little different from the bill that
you initially introduced, which is a working model, but which
neglects the intelligence function, and nowhere provides the
new Department with a centralized threat assessment entity
capable of making up for the Intelligence Community's
longstanding failure to provide government-wide one-stop
shopping for terrorist threat information and analysis.
The President's proposal puts terrorism-related
intelligence front and center, making it the foundation of all
other protective measures. I applaud the President's wisdom,
Mr. Chairman, in making information analysis such a central
focus of the plan. It is central. It is the linchpin.
It is in that vein that I would now like to offer a few
constructive criticisms of the President's proposal. Precisely,
Mr. Chairman, because the intelligence function is vital to
every aspect of interagency coordination and planning for
homeland security, we must ensure that these aspects of the
President's plan are structured properly and that they do not,
as I said earlier, simply replicate past mistakes.
In this regard, I would like to point out that under
Section 203 of the President's bill, the Secretary of Homeland
Security would have only limited access to information
collected by the Intelligence Community and law enforcement
agencies. Section 203 provides that the Secretary would be
entitled only, ``to all finished reports, assessments, and
analytical information related to threats of terrorism in the
United States.'' Unlike information relating to infrastructure
or other vulnerabilities to terrorist attack, to all of which
the Secretary would be given access whether or not such
information has been analyzed, information on terrorist threats
themselves would be available, Mr. Chairman, only to the
Department of Homeland Security in the form of what is known as
finished intelligence. That is a very important point here.
Under Section 203, the Secretary may obtain the underlying
``raw information'' only with other agencies' permission or
when the President specifically provides for its transmission
to the new Department. This is troubling. To my eyes, these
limitations are unacceptable and seem designed to keep the new
Office of Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection
dependent, Mr. Chairman, upon the good will of the Intelligence
Community and law enforcement agencies and hostage to their
perhaps incompletely informed or self-interested judgment about
what the Homeland Security analysts really need to know.
Already, we understand that the Director of Central
Intelligence, Mr. Tenet, has no intention of providing raw
intelligence data to Homeland Security intelligence analysts.
As he sees it, they should be content to receive only finished
reports, that is, to get no deeper access to Intelligence
Community databases than we do in Congress as we receive the
community's periodic intelligence products.
To agree to such limitations, Mr. Chairman, would be, in my
view, a grave mistake. In the information technology world, we
are on the verge of dramatic new breakthroughs in data mining
capabilities that are giving ordinary analysts an extraordinary
ability not just to search, but to analyze and to understand
enormous quantities of data from a vast array of different data
sources. The cutting edge of intelligence analysis, Mr.
Chairman, in other words, is likely to be in crunching massive
amounts of data on a genuinely all-source basis, drawing upon
multiple data streams in ways never before possible, and
certainly in ways that are not being done today.
However, as long as we have no one in a position to see all
the many data streams that exist within the Federal Government
today, must less those that may also exist in the State and
local arena and in the thriving information economy of the
private sector, all of these rapidly advancing analytical tools
will be of little use. Already, it has been one of our
frustrations at the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to
see the degree to which even agencies that acknowledge the
importance of interagency electronic information sharing are
each independently pursuing separate answers to this problem.
Even their responses to the problem of agency-specific
stovepipes are often themselves stovepipe of responses.
The DCI's own initiative to create an Intelligence
Community-wide ``Intelligence Community System for Information
Sharing'' depends wholly upon the agencies deciding, Mr.
Chairman, what information they think other agencies' analysts
need to know. Every agency will be charged with populating its
own ``shared space'' that will be searchable by cleared and
accredited online users. No outsider, it seems, would ever have
access on an agency's real databases.
Without some modification, Mr. Chairman, to the President's
Homeland Security proposal and to the DCI's refusal to consider
providing raw information to the new Department, this
initiative runs the risk of replicating and institutionalizing
these limitations.
The exciting part about the new Department is precisely,
Mr. Chairman, that it offers the prospect of getting beyond or
above bureaucratic stovepipes in the ways we imagined for the
anti-terrorist project we discussed with Governor Ridge last
November. Rather than having every agency decide for itself
what every other agency needs to know about its own information
holdings, we need, I believe, to create an institution that
finally has real visibility into all government information on
terrorist threats.
The President's proposal for a Homeland Security
Information Analysis Office has the potential to be that
organization and to rise above bureaucratic business as usual,
but its access cannot be limited, Mr. Chairman, just to what
the agency heads decide it should have. In my view, Mr.
Chairman, the President's proposal can and should be improved
by giving the Secretary of Homeland Security access to
essentially all information related to terrorist threats, and
including raw data that is in the possession of any government
agency. Homeland Security intelligence analysts should be free
to data-mine agency holdings in order to undertake true all-
source intelligence fusion.
Senator Specter has offered an amendment that would help
fill this hole in the President's otherwise very promising
proposal by creating a National Terrorism Assessment Center
with the authority to direct the CIA, FBI, and other Federal
agencies to provide it with all intelligence and information
relating to threats of terrorism. As I see it, Mr. Chairman,
Senator Specter is clearly thinking the right thoughts,
although I believe it would be a mistake to duplicate
analytical functions by creating a new center within or
parallel to the Homeland Security Information Analysis office.
Personally, I think the soundest step would be to apply the
concept of unfettered information access to the Department of
Homeland Security. Section 203 of the President's proposal
should be modified, I believe, to allow for the creation of an
information architecture that will enable Department analysts
to seek and obtain whatever information they deem necessary to
understand and thwart terrorist threats against the United
States.
The only qualifier on this authority, I believe, would be
to provide that such transmittals must occur pursuant to some
kind of agreement or memorandum of understanding with the DCI
regarding security procedures for handling classified
information, and with the Attorney General with respect to
handling ``U.S. person'' information and protected law
enforcement information pursuant to applicable law.
Provided, Mr. Chairman--and I know I am going on, but this,
I think, is important--provided that the new Department's
intelligence functions----
Chairman Lieberman. You are doing well.
Senator Shelby. Thank you--were also subjected to
appropriate intelligence by Congress, the United States would
then be well on the way to creating, Mr. Chairman, for the
first time, a genuinely all-source national analysis
organization devoted to combating the threat of terrorism in
the United States.
Naturally, the Department of Homeland Security, including
its intelligence function, will require close Congressional
scrutiny and oversight as it is created. Whatever the final
information access rules end up providing, it will be
necessary, I believe, Mr. Chairman, to ensure that appropriate
agreements are worked out between the agencies involved and
that personnel are properly trained and equipped to implement
them.
In the bureaucracy such as our Intelligence Community, this
can be no small task. As you may recall, we put mandatory
sharing provisions in Title IX of the USA PATRIOT Act, but
today, 8 months after the President signed the Act into law,
procedures for implementing such sharing are still being
negotiated between the Attorney General and the Director of
Central Intelligence. The detailed procedures for information
sharing with the new Department of Homeland Security will
likely require very close Congressional attention.
Another of my concerns relates to the important of ensuring
that the Department's Information Analysis and Infrastructure
Protection Office maintains an appropriate balance within its
own ranks. Under the President's proposal, that office will
require an infrastructure protection constellation from a
number of existing Federal agencies whose entities are being
transferred en masse to the new Department.
The information analysis side of the office, however, will
apparently have to be built up largely from scratch. It will
not require specific analytical offices from other agencies
within the Federal system but will rather have to be grown
within the Department. Mr. Chairman, if this is done right,
this could be a great strength, allowing the Department of
Homeland Security to build its own elite analytical cadre,
largely independent of the institutional biases and
bureaucratic mindsets of the existing Intelligence Community.
Careful attention over time, not to mention Congressional
oversight, will be needed.
This process may involve growing pains, and the fledgling
organization may also need to be nurtured and protected against
its bureaucratic rivals and others who may not wish it to
succeed.
For the most part, I have no other serious concerns about
the President's proposal. I would only note that under 710 of
the President's bill, the Secretary would have the power to
terminate any Inspector General investigation that he felt to
be inappropriate, providing only that he provides notice of
this termination to the Speaker of the House and the President
of the Senate. Given the important role, Mr. Chairman, that
Inspectors General play in our system of legal and policy
oversight and the important domestic security role of the new
Department, I would think this provision to be too limiting and
I hope you will take a good look at it. Even if the Secretary
could derail investigations, I would think it imperative that
notice of such a decision, also be given to the appropriate
Congressional committees of jurisdiction.
I would like to emphasize that while I believe, Mr.
Chairman, that the President's proposal for a terrorism-focused
information analysis function within the Department of Homeland
Security is a vital step forward, its creation alone will not
solve--will not solve--the intelligence problems affecting our
country and which we and our House counterparts are working on
today as part of our inquiry. We must not forget, Mr. Chairman,
that we will have a large intelligence bureaucracy that will
not be part of the new Department and that the Department's
important analytical functions will have no chance of
succeeding if the information collection system that feeds it
remains broken.
Furthermore, the new Department's system will focus upon
domestic terrorist threats, leaving the whole universe of
foreign intelligence unreformed. The President has noted that
his proposal for the Department will ``complement the reforms
on intelligence gathering and information sharing already
underway at the FBI and CIA.''
While I believe the FBI is doing a commendable job at this
point trying to reform itself, the CIA, I believe, has not yet
even considered significant changes. Indeed, as its leadership
has repeatedly indicated in testimony before our Committee, the
CIA's response to September 11 has mostly been to insist that
it is on the right track and that Congress should simply give
it more money and personnel with which to continue doing more
of the same. As I have said elsewhere, I think that response is
inadequate and that we can do much better.
Finally, I would like to make a brief comment about the
analysis of information that already exists in the private
sector. This is another area that our TAG group has emphasized
in our internal discussions of intelligence reform. The private
sector collects and maintains vast amounts of information that
would be of enormous use to intelligence analysts seeking to
track terrorists.
Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your indulgence here this
afternoon and I believe some of these proposals would help
improve this legislation.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Senator Shelby.
That was very helpful, very interesting, both of you. If
you have got a few moments, I would like to ask a few
questions----
Senator Shelby. Absolutely.
Chairman Lieberman [continuing]. Then I would really want
to follow up and bring you back to the full Committee because
you have clarified some history for me. You have given some
texture and focus to some of the parts of the bills that we are
considering, and you have raised some questions in my mind.
I am fascinated by that TAG experience. You know, it did
strike me as I looked at the proposal in the President's bill
for this information analysis section--we will probably give it
a bigger title, separate it--and as I have listened to the
testimony over the last week--this is the third of four
hearings, today--that if we do this right, and I think you said
it at the end----
Senator Shelby. We have got to do it right.
Chairman Lieberman. We will do it right--it will be the one
place in the Federal Government where all the information comes
together so that, as you said, Senator Shelby, the President
can ask the Secretary of Homeland Security what is the threat,
what is going on.
Now, it leaves open, obviously, the question of whether
there should be another such fusion center or some other kind
of reorganization for the rest of the world for the
counterterorrism threat, and I presume as I listen to both of
you that is a question that your joint investigation may be
considering and may be recommending on at the conclusion.
Senator Graham.
Senator Graham. Yes. There have been a half-dozen or more
reports on the state of the Intelligence Community, several of
them specifically, and in some cases almost prophetically,
focusing on the threat of terrorism. Almost every one of those
reports has recommended some greater centralization of
capability over our foreign intelligence collection, analysis,
and dissemination function.
What we are talking about here is a different issue, and
that is intelligence which is collected to understand
activities and threats inside the homeland of the United
States. I believe the basic principle of the President's plan,
which is not to create a new collection agency but rather to
rely on those that already exist with one caveat, but do create
a new analytical capability where all of the information that
is currently being collected plus, I hope, law enforcement
information being collected at the State and local level will
flow into this single set of human eyes. As I indicate, it was
the failure to get collected information before a single set or
at least a coordinated group of eyes which in a preliminary way
appears to be one of the major flaws that contributed to
September 11.
The caveat that I had is the issue of the domestic
collection of domestic intelligence. Right now, that is, to the
degree we carry it out, a function of the FBI. I personally
would recommend, and I believe this is consistent with the
President's proposal and with your earlier legislation, that
issue does not have to be resolved in this Department of
Homeland Security legislation and would be better held, not
forever, but maybe for 6 to 12 months when we could look at
that knowing what the structure of the Department of Homeland
Security will be, maybe informed by some of the information
that our inquiry is going to develop, because it raises the
thorniest of issues of civil rights, privacy, where it should
be located.
There seems to be an initial feeling that the FBI is the
proper place and it may well be, but a number of other
countries whose intelligence systems we tend to admire, such as
the British, most Europeans, the Israelis, place domestic
intelligence collection in a different agency than either their
domestic law enforcement or their foreign intelligence
collection, and there are some good reasons why so many other
nations have separated that particularly sensitive function of
domestic intelligence collection.
Chairman Lieberman. I agree with you. Let me just say
before I yield to Senator Shelby, that question goes beyond
what we should tackle in this chapter. I think we want to set
up a Department of Homeland Security. I want to come back and
talk to you a little bit about the White House office, and we
want to create in it this intelligence analytical capacity. I
like the idea of a fusion center.
I take it that at this point, both of you would say that
the Intelligence Division of the new Department should not have
collection capability or be given operational intelligence
capability, right? It is possible that somebody would come back
after your work is done and decide that there ought to be a new
domestic intelligence center and one of the places one might
place it is in the Department of Homeland Security. But that
goes beyond what I intend to have our Committee consider at
this point.
Senator Shelby. Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes, sir.
Senator Shelby. If I could just comment on the TAG Group,
the Technical Advisory Group that Senator Graham and I know has
helped our Committee so much. If you and some of your people on
the Committee of jurisdiction here on creating this legislation
would like to talk with them about this, I think you would find
it very helpful. They were the same group that predicted NSA
was going to go down--it was way behind--if we did not really
do a lot of things to modernize the NSA. Nobody believed that;
everybody was in denial. Sure enough, about a year and a half
later, this happened.
They are into what is best for America. They have the
processing power, you might say, to understand these issues. I
think you would be impressed with the group, as Senator Graham
and I have. They know this issue. What do you think, Senator
Graham?
Chairman Lieberman. Yes. It sounds like we could benefit
from such a gathering and we will pursue that.
Senator Shelby. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. I appreciated, Senator Shelby, what you
said about Section 203. It has troubled us, too. We have been
asking questions about it. In some ways, it seems to give more
authority in gathering information related to the vulnerability
of critical infrastructure than to terrorism generally, which
seems to suggest a limited focus, and so certainly my hope and
intention is to try to strengthen the language that we put into
the bill about the Intelligence Division----
Senator Shelby. Absolutely.
Chairman Lieberman [continuing]. And as soon as we get some
drafts, we would like to share it with you. Have you looked at
it?
Senator Shelby. We would like that.
Chairman Lieberman. Senator Graham, your work clearly
inspired and, in fact, expressed the sections of our Committee
bill that created the White House Office for Combating
Terrorism, and as I understood it, and you have stated it again
today, homeland security is one important function but it is
not all of combating terrorism. We have got State, Defense,
etc.
The White House now, although it has not clearly stated
what it wants to do with the office Governor Ridge now
occupies, wants to continue it, but with the focus still on
homeland security, as I understand it, instead of a broader
focus on combating terrorism.
The other criticism that we heard yesterday from some of
the witnesses we had, veterans of the national security/
Intelligence Community was that, Lord knows, the last thing the
White House needs is another office. Perhaps, if anything,
well, the National Security Council does this. Maybe you should
just put the Secretary of Homeland Security on the NSC, which,
in fact, our bill does, and that will do it.
I am still quite interested in this office and still think
it has a unique function. I wanted to give you a chance for the
record here today to respond to some of those comments or
criticisms on our proposal.
Senator Graham. I think it is interesting that you have
raised the National Security Council. As you know, the National
Security Council is a statutory body created in the National
Security Act of 1947, which was the same act or was part of a
companion group of acts which collectively created the
Department of Defense, created the modern intelligence agency,
the CIA and its counterparts. All were results of that
legislation.
What the National Security Council and its chief advisor
represent is two things. One, an awareness of the fact that in
a complex government such as ours, you are unlikely to be able
to place in one Department, the singular responsibility for
major national issues, such as national security and now such
as homeland security.
Ms. Rice told me, Dr. Rice, that she deals primarily with
the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the
Intelligence Community, and often, but not as frequently, with
the Treasury Department. Those are her main clients. So her
first job is to coordinate those clients so that they are all
operating in a focused way in America's national security
interest.
The section function that she performs is as the principal
advisor to the President on national security. If the President
wants to know what is the current state of Indian-Pakistani
relations, we have had a quiet 30 days, does it look as if this
period of tension is over, she is the person that he turns to.
She tasks all of these clients that she has to develop her
recommendation to the President.
I think those two functions basically describe what this
new Office of Counterterrorism would be. Even with the creation
of the Department of Homeland Security, there are still
important parts of the National Government that will be
involved in countering terrorism. The Defense Department, and
particularly with the creation of the new Northern Command,
which for the first time will put a command of the Defense
Department inside the homeland of the United States, the State
Department will have important functions. The Department of
Justice, certainly FBI, Immigration and Naturalization Service,
to mention two, will have a lot to do with Homeland Security,
and again, the Treasury Department through its economic and
financial controls mechanism will be an important part of a
comprehensive counterterrorism program.
So I think we need to have someone on the domestic level
who does what Dr. Rice is doing on the foreign policy national
security level is still there, and again, a person whom the
President has confidence who can be his closest advisor on the
panoply of issues and relationships that will be involved in an
effective counterterrorism strategy.
Chairman Lieberman. In some ways, your answer fits some
pieces of testimony that we had yesterday from Dr. Ash Carter,
who very strongly supports an office in the White House but
sees it not just as a planning office but as a programming
office. As he kept saying: ``Not just the architect but the
builder to continue to build a national anti-terrorism program,
including homeland security.'' So it is hard to know exactly
how the administration will respond at this point because I
think they are particularly--let me ask you this specific
question.
I know that in the early iteration of the Committee bill,
they were particularly troubled about the accountability of the
office to the Congress and the need for advice and consent
confirmation. I know in the opening statement you said you
still thought that was an important part of it. Your feeling
about that has not diminished in the context of creating a
Department of Homeland Security, I take it.
Senator Graham. If anything, the Department of Homeland
Security both as a symbol of the elevated importance of this
issue, I think it will be helpful. I mentioned that the person
who would head this agency would have a client base of maybe
five or six Federal agencies. But for the creation of the
Department of Homeland Security, they would have a client base
of about 15 to 20 Federal agencies. So the creation of the
Department does not obviate, in my judgment, the need for a
White House office focused specifically on counterterrorism. It
does corral into one big place that is a new corral and several
older corrals the capability of actually conducting an
effective counterterrorism activity.
I, just as Dr. Rice does not command any troops or assign
ambassadors or conduct economic policy but rather works through
the agencies that have that as their responsibility, I would
see that as the manner in which the head of the Office of
Counterterrorism would operate.
I did indicate in my remarks that I believe that the
Director should have some budgetary control, maybe in this
point drawing from some of the experience of the Counter-Drug
Office, where the Director of that office has the ability to,
the word ``veto'' may be a little too strong, but almost that
strong, if he feels that one of those operational agencies is
not allocating resources either sufficient or properly directed
to carry out the function of counternarcotics. I think this
office ought to have some similar budget capability vis-a-vis
the various Departments that will be involved in
counterterrorism to be certain that the strategic plan is being
implemented in terms of resource flows.
Chairman Lieberman. Well said. In fact, we have given the
White House Office Director exactly that responsibility, that
same budget certification authority.
Senator Shelby, please, and then I have a specific question
I want to ask.
Senator Shelby. I just wanted to comment that I subscribe
to everything Senator Graham has been saying here. But I
believe, Mr. Chairman, that you and Senator Thompson, the
Ranking Republican and former Chairman of the Committee, have
an historic opportunity to fashion a piece of legislation that
will really help bring security to this country in our fight
against terrorism. But the key, I want to point out again--the
linchpin, the brain of this whole Homeland Security operation
for security--is going to center around the intelligence
component, make no mistake about it.
Chairman Lieberman. I agree.
Senator Shelby. I know you are very involved in it, you
understand it, and you will work towards doing that and doing
it right.
Chairman Lieberman. I appreciate your saying it. I feel
like this is one of the most important things that Senator
Thompson----
Senator Shelby. That you might do while you are here in the
Senate.
Chairman Lieberman. Absolutely. Let me ask you a question
that came up today in our discussion with Director Tenet and it
goes to some of the concerns you expressed about the authority
of the Secretary of Homeland Security as proposed to request
information, to get raw data, and this, for us, very puzzling
requirement that there be approval of the President at
different points for the Department to receive that data. It is
very unusual, as I said earlier, that the Secretary of Homeland
Security should have to go up to the White House to get
information over there.
Now, Mr. Tenet said at one point, that he interpreted raw
data to mean the disclosure of sources and methods, not
content. In other words, in my mind, and I think a lot of the
Members of the Committee, both parties, we were seeing raw data
as raw data as compared to in an analysis.
Senator Shelby. Right. I agree with your interpretation of
that, but I want to say again, and I have a lot of respect for
a lot of the people that toil in the law enforcement agencies
and in the Intelligence Community. They have served this
country, well overall. But there are just too many obstacles,
as Senator Graham talks about, in the way of sharing of
information.
If this Homeland Security bill is going to work and is
going to be meaningful, they are going to have to have all the
intelligence they need, and not just what people want to give
them. And if they have a piece of interesting intelligence and
say, ``Oh, let us look behind that, let us see what is really
there,'' they ought to have the ability to go find out. They
ought to have people well trained to do this.
And I think that is what our TAG Group had in mind.
Otherwise, we are wasting our time, we are going to waste our
money, we are going to waste our effort, and America is not
going to be safe.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you. I agree. Incidentally, I
agree with you on the Inspector General--and I appreciate your
making the point.
Senator Graham, maybe I will ask you a last question and
let both of you go. Help me to understand a little more your
third point of the three points.
Senator Graham. Well, the third point is that the question,
will we need a different domestic intelligence collection
capability than the one we have today through the FBI?
Chairman Lieberman. This is that question, OK.
Senator Graham. That raises the issue of for what purposes
will it be different than it is today? Who will be the targets?
What will be the methods that will be legally available to this
agency? And where should it be housed in the family of Federal
agencies?
I personally feel those may end up being some of the most
contentious issues that will have to be faced in the full
establishment of the Department and its intelligence component,
and I do not believe that that is so integral. This is not, to
use an analogy to architecture, this is not like installing the
heating and air conditioning system in a house, which has to be
put in at the time the house is under construction or you are
going to have to tear it down to put it in later. This is more
like putting the interior decoration into the house. You can do
that after all the construction is over. I would suggest, let
us get the building completed and then we will come back and
have the national debate over domestic intelligence gathering.
Chairman Lieberman. I agree with you. I think that is well
said. We do not need to do that now and I also think that it is
so controversial that it might delay and obstruct the passage
and creation of the new Department.
For now, as I hear both of you, and I think it is very
reassuring to hear you. Not only have you sort of filled in
some blanks, but encouraged me in the direction that I
personally, and I think other Members of the Committee are
going, that what we are trying to create here, to use a term
that you used somewhere where I was with you, Senator Graham,
and I reused it, I must admit, without giving you credit for
it----
Senator Graham. Hmm---- [Laughter.]
Chairman Lieberman [continuing]. We want this Intelligence
Division or office in the new Department to be an aggressive
customer.
Senator Shelby. Agile, too.
Chairman Lieberman. And agile, right.
Senator Graham. And demanding, too.
Chairman Lieberman. There you go. No, I agree. So for now,
we have all agreed it does not require operational or
collection capability, and that is for another day, determined
by your work and others, and----
Senator Shelby. Mr. Chairman. I do not mean to interrupt
you, and especially not the Chairman of this Committee. It has
occurred to me--the Phoenix memo just comes to mind and the
Minnesota Moussouai case, which we all know probably too much
about--that if you had had an all-source analysis center, it
might have picked up that memo from the FBI in Phoenix and
then, 4 or 5 weeks later, become aware of the FBI situation at
the flying school in Minnesota with the FISA. If they put that
together, bells may start to ring----
Chairman Lieberman. Sure.
Senator Shelby [continuing]. If the information is in the
right place.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Senator Shelby. If you were to tie that together with the
information regarding a couple of the September 11 terrorists
who, I believe, were in Malaysia----
Chairman Lieberman. Yes.
Senator Shelby. You put all of that together, and you have
got more than a little piece of intelligence. This is what has
not happened in the past and this is what we are hoping--if we
can create, or you can create, the right piece of legislation
and it is not choked off by the other agencies--we might be
able to do differently in the future.
Chairman Lieberman. Well said. Incidentally, a few times in
our hearings, people have analogized what we are trying to do
to the INR office at the State Department. I am seeing this as
much more independent, much more aggressive, agile, and
demanding as a consumer of intelligence information.
Senator Graham. If I could just extend what Senator Shelby
just said, we talk about stovepipes. I think of these
stovepipes as being three yards long in a vertical sense. The
top 36 inches is labeled ``collection.'' The middle 36 inches
is labeled ``analysis.'' And the bottom 36 inches is labeled
``dissemination.'' Right now, we have three-yard-long
stovepipes. It does not get disseminated until it goes through
all three parts of it and then it goes out.
What we essentially are doing is bringing an acetylene
torch to this stovepipe and we are cutting it at the 36-inch
level. We are keeping the stovepipe for purposes of collection,
and there are some, I think, good reasons for doing that. But
then once it comes through collection, it then goes to a
totally different entity, this newly created analytical
capacity in the Department of Homeland Security.
I think that will avoid some of the problems of the three-
yard-long stovepipe, which include, first, an attitude that if
I collected the information, it is better information than
anybody else collected. Second, there is a certain tendency to
degrade open source information as compared to secretly
collected information. And then third is the tendency to not
want to share the information that I have collected and
analyzed with other people.
I think if you can separate collection from the analytical
and dissemination function, which this legislation does, you
will essentially have dealt with all three of those constraints
on the current system.
Senator Shelby. Well said.
Chairman Lieberman. Well said is right. I thank you both. I
sometimes surprise people outside of the Senate when I say that
I often learn more from my colleagues in the Senate than from
anyone else, and I appreciate your testimony.
Senator Shelby. We also learn from you.
Senator Graham. Yes. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Hear, hear. I am going to ask you--you
see, the reward for such a performance is that we are going to
ask you back for an encore. We will work with our staffs to
arrange an appropriate date to bring the whole Committee
together for a meeting the week we come back. In the meantime,
I thank you very much. I wish you a good recess.
Senator Graham. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 5:07 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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