[Senate Hearing 107-978]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 107-978
AMERICA STILL UNPREPARED-AMERICA STILL IN DANGER: THE OCTOBER 2002
HART-RUDMAN TERRORISM TASK FORCE REPORT
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, TERRORISM,
AND GOVERNMENT INFORMATION
of the
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
NOVEMBER 14, 2002
__________
Serial No. J-107-111
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
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WASHINGTON : 2003
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COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont, Chairman
EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah
JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware STROM THURMOND, South Carolina
HERBERT KOHL, Wisconsin CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania
RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin JON KYL, Arizona
CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York MIKE DeWINE, Ohio
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas
JOHN EDWARDS, North Carolina MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky
Bruce A. Cohen, Majority Chief Counsel and Staff Director
Sharon Prost, Minority Chief Counsel
Makan Delrahim, Minority Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism, and Government Information
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California, Chairwoman
JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware JON KYL, Arizona
HERBERT KOHL, Wisconsin MIKE DeWINE, Ohio
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama
JOHN EDWARDS, North Carolina MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky
David Hantman, Majority Chief Counsel
Stephen Higgins, Minority Chief Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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STATEMENTS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Page
Cantwell, Hon. Maria, a U.S. Senator from the State of
Washington, prepared statement................................. 36
DeWine, Hon. Mike, a U.S. Senator from the State of Ohio......... 5
Durbin, Hon. Richard J., a U.S. Senator from the State of
Illinois, prepared statement................................... 77
Feinstein, Hon. Dianne, a U.S. Senator from the State of
California..................................................... 1
Hatch, Hon. Orrin G., a U.S. Senator from the State of Utah...... 4
prepared statement........................................... 86
Kyl, Hon. Jon, a U.S. Senator from the State of Arizona.......... 6
Leahy, Hon. Patrick J., a U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont. 7
prepared statement........................................... 100
Sessions, Hon. Jeff, a U.S. Senator from the State of Arizona,
prepared statement............................................. 109
Schumer, Hon. Charles E., a U.S. Senator from the State of New
York........................................................... 5
WITNESSES
Flynn, Stephen E., Member, Independent Terrorism Task Force, and
Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow, National Security Studies,
Council on Foreign Relations, New York, New York............... 14
Larsen Randall J., Director, ANSER Institute for Homeland
Security, Arlington, Virginia.................................. 19
Odeen, Philip A., Chairman, TRW, Inc., and Member, Independent
Terrorism Task Force, Arlington, Virginia...................... 17
Rudman, Warren, Co-Chair, Independent Terrorism Task Force,
Washington, D.C................................................ 9
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Council on Foreign Relations, Independent Terrorism Task Force,
Washington, D.C., report....................................... 39
Flynn, Stephen E., Member, Independent Terrorism Task Force, and
Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow, National Security Studies,
Council on Foreign Relations, New York, New York, prepared
statement...................................................... 81
Kamarck, Elaine, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard
University, statement.......................................... 88
Larsen Randall J., Director, ANSER Institute for Homeland
Security, Arlington, Virginia, prepared statement.............. 93
National Governors Association, Washington, D.C., letter......... 104
National Guard Association of the United States, Washington,
D.C., letter................................................... 106
Odeen, Philip A., Chairman, TRW, Inc., and Member, Independent
Terrorism Task Force, Arlington, Virginia, prepared statement.. 108
AMERICA STILL UNPREPARED-AMERICA STILL IN DANGER: THE OCTOBER 2002
HART-RUDMAN TERRORISM TASK FORCE REPORT
----------
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2002
United States Senate,
Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism,
and Government Information,
Committee on the Judiciary,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:03 p.m., in
room SD-226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Dianne
Feinstein, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Feinstein, Leahy, Schumer, Kyl, Hatch,
and DeWine.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM
THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Chairperson Feinstein. Senator Kyl has indicated he will be
here shortly, but since I have this distinguished panel here, I
thought I might at least start my remarks.
This is going to be the last hearing of this Subcommittee
in this Congress, and probably the last hearing I chair for the
next 2 years. I did want to thank my ranking member, Senator
Kyl, who has really exhibited leadership and cooperation, all
with the highest marks. It has been a great privilege for me to
work with him this Congress, and now I look forward next year
to our positions reversing.
This Subcommittee has held 13 hearings this Congress. That
makes it the most active Subcommittee on the Judiciary
Committee.
I see we are about to be joined by the ranking member, who
will shortly become the Chairman of the full Committee. We are
delighted to welcome you, Senator Hatch.
Senator Hatch. Thank you very much.
Chairperson Feinstein. Perhaps you would take Senator Kyl's
seat until he is able to be here.
A number of the hearings of our Subcommittee resulted in
legislation. I would like particularly to mention the Enhanced
Border Security and Visa Reform Act, and the Public Health
Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness Act. Parts of both of
these bills came right out of this Subcommittee.
Also as a result of Subcommittee hearings, for example,
Senator Kyl and I were able to get the provisions in the
bioterrorism bill establishing strict new security requirements
for labs that handle dangerous pathogens. Those provisions
became law in June.
Many of our meetings were on the need for more coordination
and consolidation of the agencies that combat terrorism, an
issue which is very much on the minds of Members of Congress
this week.
For example, back in April of 2001, we held a hearing on
the report of the United States Commission on National Security
in the 21st Century, more popularly known as the Hart-Rudman
report. At that hearing, we heard testimony from our
distinguished former colleagues, Senator Warren Rudman and Gary
Hart, and I am just delighted that Senator Rudman, who has been
really wonderful in coming to these meetings, is back before
the Subcommittee today.
While some may complain about commission reports gathering
dust on the shelves, there can be no question about the
influence of the original Hart-Rudman report. That report
proposed a new Homeland Security Department that would combine
four Federal agencies--FEMA, the Coast Guard, Customs, and
Border Patrol. Many experts dismissed the idea of creating such
a department as too ambitious and too politically unrealistic.
But right now, Congress seems very close to passing historic
legislation that would combine some 22 Federal agencies, with
about 200,000 Federal employees.
The original Hart-Rudman report was a wake-up call for the
Nation, but one that we actually heard too late. In the report,
the commission warned, and I quote, ``Attacks against American
citizens on American soil, possibly causing heavy casualties,
are likely over the next quarter century,'' end quote. Less
than 6 months after that, a group of Al-Qaeda terrorists killed
almost 3,000 people in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.
Now, Senators Hart and Rudman have joined up with a
distinguished group of former government officials and private
sector leaders to research and write a new report. Members of
this new 17-member Hart-Rudman Task Force include two former
Secretaries of State, two former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, and two Nobel laureates.
The task force report is chilling to read, and its
conclusion is even more disturbing. It reads, and I quote, ``A
year after September 11th, America remains dangerously
unprepared to prevent and respond to a catastrophic terrorist
attack on U.S. soil. In all likelihood, the next attack will
result in even greater casualties and widespread destruction to
American lives and the economy,'' end quote.
To reduce this vulnerability, the task force makes a number
of useful recommendations, focusing particularly on how we can
protect relatively neglected areas of our economic
infrastructure such as seaports, power plants, oil refineries,
railroad, and urban centers.
The task force's conclusion is especially worrying because
it seems more and more likely that America will face a
catastrophic terrorist attack. Both Senator Hatch and I serve
on the Joint Intelligence Committee and we heard the DCI,
George Tenet, come before the Committee just before we broke
and say with a very ominous tone that they are coming at us
again. And we know that the intelligence chatter is up and that
the threat is real and it is serious.
Since September 11, though, the Congress has passed major
anti-terrorism legislation in the areas of law enforcement,
intelligence, aviation security and, as I mentioned previously,
border security and bioterrorism.
Last summer, Senators Kyl, Hutchison, Snowe and I
introduced the Comprehensive Seaport and Container Security Act
of 2002. This legislation would really thoroughly address the
issue of port security from the point that cargo is loaded in a
foreign country to its arrival on land in the United States.
We had hoped to be able to get that included in the
conference report of the seaport security bill that was just
voted on this morning. Although I voted for the bill, as did, I
think, virtually every other member, it is still a very weak
bill. My staff worked with the conference committee on the
legislation, and I am hopeful that we will be able to continue
to work next year. In particular, I look forward to working
with Mr. Thomas in the House in this regard. We must have a
strong seaport security bill, particularly for my State, which
receives about 40 percent of the cargo coming into this
country. If something deadly or radioactive is going to be
smuggled into the United States, the most obvious way is
through our seaports on a container.
In addition, Senators Bond, Leahy and I filed an amendment
to homeland security with respect to creating a successful
National Guard program. And I am delighted that you are here,
Mr. Chairman, or almost-Mr. Chairman, because I think that this
is something hopefully we can work on next year.
It has the support of the National Governors' Association,
and I would like to place their letter in the record at this
time, as well as the letter of the National Guard Association
of the United States, and also the relevant comments from the
United States Commission on National Security for the 21st
Century, again known as the Hart-Rudman Commission. I am
hopeful that this Committee will continue to proceed in this
area.
Something that this report discusses indirectly relates to
legislation that is now sponsored by Senator Jeffords and Bob
Smith. It authorizes $3.5 billion to help State and local
governments buy equipment and improve training for responding
to a terrorist attack, and it passed the Senate Environment
Committee.
One of the things that this panel is going to make clear is
the fact that the States are still left out in the cold. For
example, the task force report has a very significant
recommendation to create a 24-hour center in each of the States
that can be responsible for interoperable communication systems
between various agencies. Then if we were able to get the
National Guard involved, they, who would already be trained to
use such systems, would be able to be a first responder in
certain situations. So there is a lot of work left to be done.
Just before I introduce the panel, I would like to ask the
ranking member of the overall Committee and the future
Chairman, someone whom I greatly respect, Senator Hatch, if he
would like to make some comments.
STATEMENT OF HON. ORRIN G. HATCH, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE
OF UTAH
Senator Hatch. Well, thank you, Madam Chairman, and I
certainly want to welcome all of you here as witnesses here
today.
Madam Chairman, thank you once again for holding this
important hearing on the Hart-Rudman report on terrorism. I
think you and Senator Kyl have shown tremendous leadership in
the areas of terrorism and homeland defense, and you both have
had a tremendous impact in the Senate and throughout the
Congress in this area.
Well before the attacks of September 11, both Senators
focused this Subcommittee's efforts on our Nation's national
security, and I think I speak for all members of the Committee
in commending both of you for your great leadership in this
area.
Let me also take a moment to welcome back to the Senate a
dear friend and former colleague, Senator Rudman.
I am really pleased to see you again, Warren, and I want to
thank you again for devoting your time and energy to the public
in helping to produce this very important report. And I want to
thank the rest of the witnesses for coming down here today to
discuss your thoughts with us.
Having reviewed the Hart-Rudman report, I am intrigued by
many of the recommendations it makes. In particular, let me
focus on two specific recommendations. First, the Hart-Rudman
report emphasizes the immediate need to create the Department
of Homeland Security. Our President and the American people
have made it abundantly clear that we need to enact this long-
stalled legislation to create the new Department of Homeland
Security.
I am encouraged by recent reports and efforts to move this
legislation, and I fully expect that the Senate will soon join
the House in passing this important legislation so that the
President can sign it and get started on creating this new and
vitally important agency. As I have said before, this issue
cannot fall prey to partisan politics. Our country's security
and the safety of our people depend on enacting this
legislation.
Second, the Hart-Rudman report notes that 650,000 State and
local police officials continue to operate in a virtual
intelligence vacuum without meaningful access to critical
intelligence information.
In previous hearings before the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, I have indicated my concerns about the absence of
effective intelligence-sharing. The PATRIOT Act was a giant
step forward in breaking down barriers to intelligence-sharing
among law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and it was
negotiated right here at the table our witnesses are sitting
at.
Yet, in my view, there is still more to do in this area.
Specifically, there are existing restrictions on law
enforcement's ability to share critical information with State
and local law enforcement, as well as foreign law enforcement
agencies, all of whom can play and may play a very important
role in our united fight against terrorism.
I look forward to hearing from today's witnesses on the
Hart-Rudman report, and other matters as well. This hearing is
a good place to start and listen to viewpoints on this subject.
We all have a common goal to protect our Nation from the
devastating threat of terrorism. The devil, as usual, is in the
details and I am well aware of the fact that there are a myriad
of different opinions on this issue, as there are on other
issues of great weight and importance. But, of course, some
opinions are more persuasive than others, and I feel privileged
to be here today to listen to some of the most distinguished
and knowledgeable people on this subject.
Again, I want to thank all of you who are testifying today,
and I certainly want to thank you, Madam Chairman. I think you
have done a terrific job on this Subcommittee. I have watched
you over the years and I think you do a terrific job on the
Committee as a whole and I just feel very honored to be able to
work with you.
[The prepared statement of Senator Hatch appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairperson Feinstein. Thank you very much, Senator Hatch.
We are also joined by Senator Schumer and DeWine. Following
the early bird rule, I will go to Senator DeWine next and then
you, Senator Schumer.
STATEMENT OF HON. MIKE DEWINE, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF
OHIO
Senator DeWine. I will be very brief. I just want to thank
you for holding this hearing. Through your service on this
Committee, as well as your service on the Intelligence
Committee, I think you well understand the importance of this
report, and I am just looking forward to hearing the panelists'
comments.
I am particularly interested in the report's
recommendations in regard to the National Guard, and I will be
anxious to hear Senator Rudman's comments as well as our other
panelists. We are looking forward to that very much.
Thank you.
Chairperson Feinstein. Thanks, Senator.
Senator Schumer.
STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES E. SCHUMER, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF NEW YORK
Senator Schumer. Thank you, and I want to thank you, Madam
Chairperson, for the job you are doing on this Subcommittee,
which has been terrific. Thank you for that.
I want to thank our panelists, and particularly I want to
come to thank Senator Rudman and Senator Hart for the report
that they issued. You are really the Paul Reveres of this
rather sorry situation, in my judgment, in terms of homeland
security.
I think, as a whole, our Nation is doing an excellent job
in fighting the war on terrorism overseas, and I have been
generally supportive of that war. But at the same time, as good
a job as we are doing focusing on the danger that terrorism
presents overseas, we are doing a poor job on homeland
security, an unbelievably poor job, in my judgment, given the
dangers that we face.
Let me tell you a few little points here that I am
concerned with. To me, one of the great dangers we face--and
your report, Senator Rudman, brought it out--is that a nuclear
weapon could be smuggled into this country on one of the large
containers that come by the thousands into our ports and over
our Mexican and Canadian borders, covered by trucks.
Senator Warner and I have put together legislation that
would allow our scientists to create a detection device. Right
now, you can't detect it; you can with a Geiger counter, but
you can't go on each container. A Geiger counter only works
three feet away from the radioactive source. But we could
develop such a device.
We put the legislation in, and $250 million, a small cost,
it seems to me, to deal with such a great danger. We can't get
that legislation passed because in both the port security bill
which just passed and in the homeland security bill, there is a
rule that nothing can cost money.
Well, you can't fight the war on domestic terrorism unless
you are going to spend some dollars, and we are not. Whether it
is the ports or rail or cyber terrorism or any of these other
places, there are gaping holes in our security. Now, no one
expects them to be fixed overnight, but we are not even making
a start on them.
Your report and that of Senator Hart, Senator Rudman, has
really alerted the Nation, and I would just hate to think that,
God forbid, there would be another terrorist incident and then
we would all say why didn't we heed the admonitions in that
report.
There are so many areas where we are doing virtually
nothing. We either don't have the will, or more importantly--it
is an anomaly to me why we are willing to spend $40, $60, $80,
$100 billion to fight terrorism overseas--again, I have been
supportive of that--and not willing to spend $2 or $3 billion
to support the war here at home.
So I thank you for having this hearing, Madam Chairperson.
I think it is crucial.
And I want to thank you, Senator Rudman, for sending out
the warning, and my message to you is please don't stop. This
Nation needs to be alerted to the danger and this Government
better get on the stick and start dealing with the danger--
something we are not doing now.
Thank you, Madam Chairperson.
Chairperson Feinstein. Thanks very much, Senator Schumer.
I would now like to turn to our ranking member. We are
joined by Senator Kyl.
Before recognizing you, I just want to thank you. I
couldn't have a better colleague, a better ranking member.
Hopefully, when our positions will switch, we will be able to
continue as we have. You indeed have been quite wonderful and I
am very appreciative of that.
STATEMENT OF HON. JON KYL, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF
ARIZONA
Senator Kyl. Thank you very much, Senator Feinstein. I have
to echo the comments.
I hope that those of you in the audience who are not
familiar with this Subcommittee will appreciate the fact that
for 8 years now, Senator Feinstein and I have gone back and
forth as Chairman and ranking member of this Subcommittee in a
seamless effort, I believe, to try to do our very best to try
to deal with the kinds of problems that are identified, among
other things, by this report.
We will continue to do that, irrespective of which party
happens to be in the majority, and that is one of the great
things about the time that I have been able to serve here in
the U.S. Senate. These are trying times, important times, with
big problems in front of us, and this Committee has a
responsibility to understand everything we can.
Fortunately, we have a very prestigious panel in front of
us here, and therefore I will put my statement in the record
and look forward to hearing from the people whom we can here to
learn from.
Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.
Chairperson Feinstein. Thanks very much, Senator Kyl.
We are also joined by the Chairman of the Judiciary
Committee, and I want to thank you for being here today and I
want to thank you for your leadership, and would like to turn
it over to you.
STATEMENT OF HON. PATRICK J. LEAHY, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF VERMONT
Chairman Leahy. Well, thank you, Senator Feinstein. I want
to thank you and Senator Kyl for having this hearing. When you
first raised this with me a couple of weeks ago, the idea of
having the hearing, I thought it made a great deal of sense.
I know a number of the people who are here, and I might
just say as a personal matter I served with Warren Rudman. We
were the twins across the river, and when you speak of
bipartisan work, I cannot think of a single issue that involved
that part of our country that we didn't work together on, and a
whole lot of other issues that we worked very closely on,
national security matters, some of which, as Senator Rudman
knows, I can't discuss here in this open hearing. But I think
we accomplished a lot because it was never an issue of
partisanship.
I would tell one story, which was one time on an attack
submarine, Los Angeles class--and if any of you have ever been
on one of those, the controls for the submarine are right in
the center. There is the accounting tower and the periscope,
and the controls are there in the center and it is like an
airplane.
Senator Rudman is a very accomplished pilot, and they were
going to let each one of us take turns, with one of the pilots
in the co-pilot's seat, to actually make this move underwater.
And I turned to the skipper and I said, ``Skipper, Senator
Rudman has bet me $50 that I cannot do a barrel roll with
this.''
Now, it was at that point I realized that those trained by
the legendary Admiral Rickover were not picked for their
immediate sense of humor, and both Warren and I had to tell
them immediately that we were joking. The rest of the reason
for our being there, though, was a matter of significance and I
appreciate that.
I could say the same about Gary Hart. Senator Rudman and
Senator Hart have done far greater service to this country than
most people in this country know and that most people have not
yet reflected on. I wish more would. Your report shows a
pragmatic, clear-headed approach, one devoid completely of
politics, but one that reflects only one overall interest, and
that is the security of our country.
Warren, you and Gary--I have always been proud of the fact
that I served with both of you. But as an American, I couldn't
be more proud of what you have done in this.
Senator Feinstein, you and Senator Kyl do that kind of
service in having the hearing and I commend both of you.
I would like to just mention three key suggestions. The
report makes important recommendations on how we help first
responders in our rural and urban communities plan and train.
This is extremely important. We made progress when we
established domestic preparedness grants in the USA PATRIOT
Act. So far, there is only one such center. We need to do
better.
We have authorized several new centers in the Department of
Justice Authorization Act that the President signed a couple of
weeks ago. Whether it is urban areas or rural areas, each face
different issues. In rural areas, I have got to tell you we
really need help. The report recommends that the National Guard
be better equipped to deal with the domestic defense mission
and help first responders. That is absolutely so. We have to
give them the equipment to do it.
Second, I agree with the recommendations in the report that
we need to improve our border security, particularly with our
largest trading partner, Canada. In the PATRIOT Act, we called
for the tripling of border security agents and the deployment
of enhanced security technology. That is very important, and I
hope everybody reads that part especially.
And then, last, increased information-sharing. We have got
to get better in cooperation. Senator Rudman was attorney
general of his State and I was State's Attorney in mine. One of
the things I hear over and over again in this Committee is we
need better sharing.
We saw it in the early part of the sniper rampage here in
Washington, D.C., and the efforts to start sharing, and
realized the inadequacies we have here. Fortunately, things
started to come together and somebody has been charged now. But
we have got to make sure we have the ability to share real,
timely information.
Madam Chair, in the interest of time I am going to put the
rest of my statement in the record, but I wanted to make those
points. And I did want to commend my good friend from New
Hampshire, Senator Rudman. I wanted to commend what he and
Senator Hart have done, and all of the rest of you, I hasten to
add, but I served with both of them. And you have to understand
this is a matter where they used to be very lonely voices in
the Senate dining room and in the closed meetings and in the
cloak rooms long before September 11th, saying wake up.
[The prepared statement of Senator Leahy appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairperson Feinstein. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. I
appreciate that.
I would like to begin now and introduce our four
distinguished panelists. We very much appreciate your being
here, and I will begin with Senator Rudman.
He was a United States Senator for 12 years and served on
several Committees, including Intelligence, Appropriations, and
Governmental Affairs. He has been very active since leaving the
Senate. He serves as Chairman of the President's Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board and as vice Chairman of the
Commission on Roles and Capabilities of the United States
Intelligence Community.
He has been the recipient of numerous awards in honor of
his years of devoted public service, including the Department
of Defense's Distinguished Service Medal, which is the agency's
highest civilian award.
If I might, I will just introduce the other three at this
time and then we can just go right down the line.
Our next witness will be Stephen Flynn. He is the Jeane
Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the
Council on Foreign Relations. He is a former commander of the
Coast Guard and his experience deals directly with homeland
security missions. He is the former director of the Office of
Global Issues at the National Security Council. Dr. Flynn has
been very helpful to my staff in a collaborative effort to
create comprehensive seaport security legislation, and your
expertise, I want you to know, is very, very valued.
Mr. Philip Odeen is the Chairman of TRW, Incorporated, and
a member of the board of directors. In addition to his nearly
30 years in the private sector, he has built an impressive
record in the public sector as well. He served as Principal
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, and later led the
defense and arms control staff for then-National Security
Advisor Henry Kissinger.
He was also selected by former Secretary of Defense William
Cohen in 1997 to chair the National Defense Panel. He is
currently a member and former vice Chairman of the Defense
Science Board, as well as a member of the Chief of Naval
Operations Executive Panel.
Colonel Randy Larsen is an ANSER vice president and the
director of the Institute of Homeland Security. Colonel Larsen
is an expert on the issue of homeland security, having studied,
written, and taught extensively on asymmetric and biological
warfare and the 21st century challenges to homeland security.
He has served as a government advisor to the Defense Science
Board, and he was the co-developer of the nationally acclaimed
Dark Winter exercise. That exercise simulated a major
bioterrorism outbreak in the United States. Colonel Larsen
retired after 32 years of service in the Army and Air Force,
and has been awarded numerous military decorations for his
service.
Those are our panelists, and now we will begin with the
distinguished former Senator and someone who is always--every
time we have asked, he has come to this Subcommittee, and I
want you to know how grateful we are, Senator Rudman.
STATEMENT OF WARREN RUDMAN, CO-CHAIR, INDEPENDENT TERRORISM
TASK FORCE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Senator Rudman. Madam Chairman, Senator Kyl, soon-to-be-
chairman Hatch, Chairman Leahy, Senator Schumer, and my good
friend Mike DeWine, I am privileged to be here. I know better
than most the burdens that you bear, and they are substantial.
The 435 members of the House, the 100 members of the U.S.
Senate, and the President of the United States and his Cabinet
have in their hands the security, the safety, and the well-
being of 250 million Americans. It is not easy and there are
varying views, but I must say to you, Madam Chairman, that this
Committee has been seamless in its approach to this issue.
I could never tell who was a Democrat and who was a
Republican. This Committee has truly done wonderful work, and I
can tell you that the United States Commission on National
Security, which I was honored to co-chair with Gary Hart, has
recognized that, as well as the work of other Committees in the
Senate and the House that have tried valiantly to address the
issue.
I want to address just a few of the comments made in
opening statements. I would say to Senator Hatch that we
rejoice--the 14 members of the National Security Study
Commission who spent 3 years of our lives on that report and
recommended essentially the structure that eventually became
the legislation rejoice that it is finally going to become law.
Let the past be the past. Why did the delays happen? They
happened. The important thing is it is now going to become law,
and I must say that nothing is more important than integrating
the 43 agencies and divisions of agencies into a cohesive unit
under strong leadership to start to organize homeland security.
Senator Schumer, I would agree with you that a lot that
should have been done has not been done. I have looked at this
for a long time. I think the administration reacted very
rapidly with the appointment of Tom Ridge. I am very familiar
with what they are doing, and I must say that they have done a
great deal. I think the Congress has done a great deal. The
PATRIOT Act was an important piece of legislation. Other
legislation was important.
I understand, being on the Appropriations Committee, how
difficult these issues are in a time of scarce resources. But I
think that although there is certainly some truth to what you
say, I would tell you that what we say in this report that
essentially if you take an aircraft carrier steaming at 30
knots and you try to turn it around, it takes a little time to
get that done.
This has been a tough assignment because until September
11, in spite of not only our report but other reports, people
did not take seriously the fact that the great Pacific and
Atlantic Oceans no longer protected us from adversaries that
presented an asymmetric threat to anything that we had ever
looked at.
So I just wanted to make those comments to some of the
statements made here. By the way, thank you all for your
gracious personal comments. I watch what you all do with great
interest, no regret, but with great interest.
I want to just add to Senator Feinstein's introduction of
the panel that, in addition to those that she mentioned, we
also had, of course, Bill Webster, former head of the FBI and
the CIA. We had a number of scientists and academics and a
number of very prominent businessmen.
The genesis of this panel is very interesting. All of you
know, I know, are familiar with Les Gelb or know him
personally. Les was on the originally Hart-Rudman commission
and about two-and-a-half months ago he called me and said, you
know, it is now more than a year later; a lot has been done,
but let's pick six or seven key issues and see if we can get
everybody's attention.
Well, we surely got everybody's attention. This got more
coverage by a factor of 10,000 than the original report which
was 3 years in the making. And so what you see before you is
our prioritization of what we think is absolutely vital to get
done, and to get done soon.
I must say that I have been very pleased with the reception
of this latest report. Without naming names, I will tell you
that I have received calls from six of the highest-ranking
people in this administration thanking us for the work that we
did. That pleases us because it means that they are looking at
it, and they are.
I have received invitations from a number of the Cabinet
agencies to look at what they are doing. And, of course, I have
accepted those because to the extent that we can add anything,
we will.
I want to thank Commander Flynn, who was a major resource
on the original Hart-Rudman. He was then an active Coast Guard
officer and was on temporary duty to, I believe, the council at
the time. And we borrowed him and he did enormous work, and he
staffed this for us. This was put together in about a 9-week
period because we had so much to work on and so many things on
which to base our work.
I know Commander Flynn has a substantial statement to read.
Mine is informal. Let me just highlight a few things that I
think you have talked about in your opening statements and I
think are absolutely critical.
It is absolutely essential that the Judiciary Committee and
the Intelligence Committees get together with the FBI and the
CIA and find a way to filter out sources and methods and be
sure that important information gets to the chiefs of police,
whether it be in Barry, Vermont, or Syracuse, New York, or
Cleveland or Salt Lake City or Phoenix.
I was in Cleveland on Tuesday night and spoke to a large
audience at Baldwin-Wallace College, and then in the morning to
a large business group in Cleveland. And I will tell you,
Senator DeWine, something I am sure you know. The people of
this country are very concerned; they are very concerned. And
wherever I go, people are waiting for visible action, which I
know will start to happen soon with the creation of this
department.
Recommendation one: There must be more intelligence-
sharing. You know that. There are ways to do that without
compromising sources and methods. Those of us who have been on
the Intelligence Committee know how that is done. I don't
subscribe to the notion that we need a new MI5, along the
British model. I think that will simply postpone action. I
think we have got the resources, we have got the collection, we
have got the people. Now, it is a question of focusing their
mission.
Second, with all of the screeners at the airports--and some
will disagree with this--I think if it had been a port attack
on September 11, we would have put all the money into the
ports. However, it wasn't, so we are putting something like
$200 million a month, a delta above the normal expenditure,
into airport security.
With all due respect, with the scarcity of funds, there are
so many things that have to get done that I question whether
that is a wise expenditure of resources. Not that we shouldn't
have secure airports, but we seem to be putting all of the
money into the TSA and very little into other places which are
absolutely critical.
Next, something that you all know. New York City was very
fortunate. It has an extraordinary fire and police department--
they are huge on a per capita basis--and marvelous emergency
medical response. They were prepared to do many things. I
wonder whether or not we could say that about most American
cities. In fact, I have looked at numbers and I think the
answer is probably it would not be up to the standards that New
York City exhibited on 9/11.
What do we do about that? We know that these people need
training in chemical and biological response. We know that they
need equipment. We know that the health agencies need vaccines
and equipment. I would submit to you that we are talking about
a small amount of money, to take maybe the 100 largest cities
in America and some of the States that are small, but at least
you could centralize it, and start doing some training of these
people.
Now, I know that that is supposed to happen when FEMA
becomes part of the new Department of Homeland Security. But I
hope the money is appropriated for it because we have just
appropriated $349 billion for a Defense budget. And I fully
support that, I always have. It is important. But with all due
respect, the President has said that we are fighting two wars,
one overseas and one at home. And it seems that we ought to be
able to find resources to do what is basic to the defense of
our population.
I want to talk about energy and infrastructure generally.
Right now, based on the most current information that we have,
America's energy resources, our computer networks with our
financial system, and our transportation systems are not where
they ought to be. It will take a good deal of Federal
intervention and a private-public sector partnership to get it
done.
We have recommended how to get it done. We hope that people
take that seriously because you could do enormous damage to
this country by shutting down our ports, our energy supply, our
banking system, or our communications system. And all of that
is vulnerable today. Although work is being done, in our
opinion, it is not being done rapidly enough.
The National Guard. The original Hart-Rudman report made
the following conjecture: We talk about forward deployment in
the cold war. We had troops and equipment forward-deployed all
over the world. We have the best-trained, best-disciplined
first responders forward-deployed all over America. They are
the National Guard men and women, citizen soldiers, who have
equipment, transportation, communications, and skills.
Their primary mission is to aid the combat forces in time
of war overseas. We believe they should have a dual mission,
and we have got substantial agreement from many people on that
subject. We believe they ought to have a mission of homeland
security, with each unit trained in a different kind of
discipline. That could be done in the next year.
So if, in fact, we had another event, let's say in New
England, let's say in the State of Connecticut, you have Guard
from Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Rhode Island and
Connecticut who could converge on the scene and give the local
responders the kind of help they need. Not to do that with that
kind of a force in place is a terrible waste of resources. They
train a great deal. Their training ought to concentrate for the
next year on homeland security.
Finally, the other point that I just want to make is that
we cannot overlook--and I address this, I think, as much to
Senator Hatch as anyone, soon to be the Chair of the full
Committee. We have heard from many people in the private sector
who really want to work more closely together in some of the
infrastructure problems that we know exist and that are
outlined in the report. They are worried about antitrust laws
and they are worried about the Freedom of Information Act.
They don't want their corporate secrets, if you will, which
are legitimate, to be disclosed, if you will, because they are
working with the Government in a public-private partnership.
They don't want to be the subject of a public or private
antitrust action because they are working with their biggest
competitors to provide infrastructure protection. So I would
commend to you that there are ways to fix that, and I would
hope that the full Committee of the appropriate Subcommittee
would look at that in the near future.
Let me conclude by simply making two observations. No. 1, I
have heard a great deal about prevention and a great deal about
intelligence that, if it was only good enough, it could
prevent. Well, it can prevent something, but it cannot prevent
everything.
Anyone who is familiar with U.S. intelligence or MI5 or MI6
or the KGB and their whole history will know that they are very
good at predicting force structure and general intentions and
very poor at predicting with certainty what will happen where
it will happen. If it were any better, we wouldn't have had the
Battle of the Bulge, we wouldn't have had Kuwait, and we
certainly wouldn't have had Pearl Harbor.
So for those who want to put all of their eggs in the
intelligence basket and figure that is going to fix it,
frankly, to use an old Vermont expression, that is whistling in
the cemetery. It just won't happen. I told a group the other
day that in baseball if you bat .500, you are in the Hall of
Fame. In intelligence, if you bat .750, you are a loser. And we
are going to lose, so we have got to buildup the response side
of this equation and understand that that is where it really
counts.
Finally, Madam Chairman and members of the Committee, I
served in this place long enough to know that if you had an
intelligence report that was absolutely certain that a city in
the United States would be the target of a biologic attack on a
certain date in February in the year 2003, I have no doubt
whatsoever that the local community, the Governor of that
State, that legislature, this Congress, and this President
would do whatever it took to get ready for that. It would spend
whatever money it took; it would do everything to protect this
Nation's citizens. My question is a very simple one: Why do we
have to wait for that to happen? And I hope we don't.
Thank you.
Chairperson Feinstein. Thank you very much, Senator, and
thank you for your care, concern, and most particularly for
your talent. We really appreciate it.
Dr. Flynn.
STATEMENT OF STEPHEN E. FLYNN, MEMBER, INDEPENDENT TERRORISM
TASK FORCE AND JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK SENIOR FELLOW, NATIONAL
SECURITY STUDIES, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, NEW YORK, NEW
YORK
Mr. Flynn. Thank you, Madam Chairperson. It is a real honor
to be here today, Senator Kyl, Chairman Leahy, soon to be
Chairman Hatch, Senator DeWine, and Senator Schumer. I can't
express our thanks enough for how quickly you assembled this
hearing to respond to the report that I had the privilege to
direct with this very distinguished group of Americans who
served--of course, the Co-Chair, Senator Rudman, who is such an
extraordinary American, and also with us today, Mr. Phil Odeen.
Senator Rudman has touched upon many of the key findings of
the report and I don't think I need to review them here for
you, as I know you have looked through them. I just hope I can
submit my written testimony for the record, and also if we
might include the report itself, which is fairly brief, into
the record.
Chairperson Feinstein. If I may, would you go into your
concept of the States' 24-hour-a-day centers and how you see
those operating?
Mr. Flynn. Absolutely. I just wanted to make a few opening
statements and then I will speak directly to that.
I just want to reiterate what Senator Rudman has said and,
of course, what the President has said, that we are a nation at
war and we need to fight this war both overseas and at home.
Clearly, our task force believes that we need to be acting on a
war-time footing here at home, and frankly our view is that we
are not.
In trying to assess where we are post-9/11, we obviously
tried, as we reviewed here--and we do give enormous credit for
the work that has been done by this body, by the President, and
by Governors and mayors throughout this land. But we have to
parallel our assessment about how much progress we make against
the threat, and I would like to speak for just a moment about
that threat.
September 11th, if our adversaries didn't know it, taught
them something, two key things: one, that we are open as a
society and largely unprotected. But, second, they also
indicated the enormous disruptive potential you get from
engaging in catastrophic terrorism as a means of warfare.
In my view, what we saw on September 11 is how warfare will
be conducted against the United States for the foreseeable
future. We must accept that. There is value to doing this
because it is not just that we are such a target-rich society,
but it is that when you engage in this form of warfare, we do
unto ourselves a great deal of disruption. As long as that
incentive persists and these vulnerabilities persist, I fear
that we will continue to be targeted in this kind of way.
The second issue we have to be cognizant of, of course, is
that Al-Qaeda is back and up and running. We certainly have
heard an ample amount news of this, of course, just in the
headlines today. I know the Director of Intelligence, George
Tenet, spoke before the Intelligence Committee not so long and
stated that it is unambiguous as far as he is concerned. And I
know everybody in this room knows that Directors of Central
Intelligence rarely say things are unambiguous, and I think we
need to take that very, very seriously.
The third fact of our modern life right now that I think
led our group to be concerned that we are at a time of
especially great danger is the fact that we are poised clearly
to go to war with Iraq. And the nature of this adversary should
give us great pause because he is not going to accept a Swiss
villa with a pension as an exit strategy. He does have access
to weapons of mass destruction, and we don't know what kind
entirely here, and he may well have good links to Al-Qaeda,
which again is operational.
The efforts we have made to date to improve our homeland
security simply have not yet gathered enough traction. That is
not a blame on anybody; it is just simply the reality. As
Senator Rudman said, you can't turn a great nation of this size
and complexity on a dime.
We are in this tenuous window where, as we embark on that
overseas effort, our homeland remains extremely exposed, and
there may be some incentive for our adversary, again knowing
the benefits one gets from this warfare, which is the mass
disruption you achieve, to pursue this line of line of attack.
So this should not be a nation that should be complacent. This
is a nation that should be very focused on both the need to
deal with terrorism overseas, but clearly to deal with our
tremendous vulnerabilities here at home.
Let me speak directly to this issue of local and State law
enforcement--potentially 650,000 eyes and ears that routinely
stop folks for speeding or pick up things along the course of
doing their duties, as we expect them to do out in our
communities, that give them pause. They do not know whether or
not that hunch they may have is, in fact, something that should
worry them because these folks are here intent to kill us in
large numbers or topple critical parts of our infrastructure.
There is no means for routinely accessing the intelligence
data bases of just the watch lists. We are not talking about
getting into the nitty-gritty of source or methods. We are
talking about a red light/green light. Should I hold this guy
until the feds want to come and pick him up or do I let him go
with a traffic ticket and come back to court three from now,
and so forth?
They don't have that routine means. There is not an ability
to punch, as they do into a local computer in the car, to say
is this somebody I should hold? Now, there is a number that can
be reached, but frankly if you call that number on a weekend,
you are likely to get the INS up in Burlington, Vermont. Mr.
Chairman, I am afraid you will probably get a voice mail.
Chairman Leahy. No, you won't. In fact, in all likelihood--
and this has happened on days at three o'clock in the morning.
I remember one time at three o'clock in the morning, on a
Sunday morning when we had just had a 14-inch snowfall, they
were there; they were answering the phone.
Mr. Flynn. The real challenge is not to take on INS at all.
Chairman Leahy. I just wanted you to know I was listening.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Flynn. Absolutely. They work well in Vermont in the
snow.
The reality is that we are not resourced to take a routine
call, and patrolmen on the streets know that. And without the
mechanics, basically, that knowledge that if I pick up a phone,
I am going to get a voice who can give me a yes or no answer
right away, that becomes collective knowledge out there and
they don't act on that.
So what we suggest is a 24-hour center each State
maintains, and it may, in fact, parallel along the U.S.
Attorneys' offices. Obviously, we need to make sure that we
distribute the workload here, but basically a precinct has a
hotline 24/7 to the key agencies that can tell them up, down,
or indifferent here. It is the kind of thing we tried to put in
the report here that we think can be done right away. It can be
done with limited investment of resources.
Another key point we have to say that we picked up from so
many States and localities is they have to balance the budget
at the end of the year and this has not been a great year for
State revenues. And the fact of the matter is resources have
got to come at the Federal level to make this stuff move
forward if we are going to get it to happen in a hurry. That is
a critical, I think, set of issues that we must address if we
are going to deal with these gaping wounds.
So I may conclude these opening comments by going back to
the threat issue here. There is deterrent value in being able
to maintain adequate homeland security. This isn't an act of
fatalism focusing on these threats and vulnerabilities.
The good news is many of the things we do to make our
Nation more secure have also very positive things for lots of
other public goods. The same kind of response capability you
try to put together to deal with a catastrophic terrorist event
helps you deal with a hurricane, helps you deal with an
industrial accident of enormous magnitude.
Our public health care system, we point out here, is
broken. That is a problem because we face increasingly a world
of global disease. We have to manage that. We have huge issues
with regard to agricultural disease. It doesn't necessarily
have to be malicious intent, but the issue of bioterrorism as
directed in the agricultural sector is a huge set of
challenges. We don't have a Centers for Disease Control
equivalent in the agriculture sector. The result is we are apt
to look like a bunch of keystone cops in coping with that kind
of problem.
These are the kinds of threats that are out there that
transcend terrorism. The investment in some of these
capabilities will make us a better Nation, we believe, overall
in handling these. But most important, when our adversaries
know that engaging in these horrific acts does not lead to any
tangible impact on U.S. power, has no real disruptive impact--
they are just pariahs for being a mass murderer or vandal--our
adversaries will reconsider this as a means of warfare.
It is not to say there aren't evil people out there who
will not do this, but as a means of warfare we can chip away at
the incentive by not being such an inviting target. We must
essentially work in parallel with our overseas efforts and our
homeland security efforts if we are truly going to have a
serious war on a terrorism.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Flynn appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairperson Feinstein. Thanks very much, Dr. Flynn. I
appreciate your comments.
Mr. Odeen, welcome.
STATEMENT OF PHILIP A. ODEEN, CHAIRMAN, TRW, INC., AND MEMBER,
INDEPENDENT TERRORISM TASK FORCE, ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA
Mr. Odeen. Well, thank you very much, Madam Chairperson and
members of the Committee. I really want to compliment you on
bringing this issue to the front because it requires attention
and you have done a great thing here in greater attention for
this problem.
I want to thank the council also for sponsoring this
effort. Senators Hart and Rudman did a terrific job and Steve
Flynn did a great job in pulling together a good group and
putting together a hard-hitting, focused, substantive report in
a very, very brief period of time.
As you know, the report covered a number of issues, and a
lot of them have been discussed today so let me just take a few
minutes and focus on two issues that I think are of particular
importance. They are, first of all, the first responder issue,
and, second, the National Guard.
When we think of terrorism, we often think of the Federal
agencies--the FBI, FEMA, the military, and so on. But in
reality, the people who will make the biggest contribution in
any terrorist event are, in fact, those on the local level that
save lives and that help us recover from these events--the
police, the fire, the emergency medical people, and so on.
To a large degree, they are the ones who, if they perform
well, the severity of the incident will be minimized and many,
many lives will be saved. And yet they get relatively little
attention in this overall issue. If we are going to
successfully manage future threats, we simply have to invest,
provide support, training and equipment for the first
responders. Everybody recognizes this, and yet very little has
happened.
Let me just make a couple of comments on that. First, as
Steve said, the timing is terrible. It comes at a time at which
the States are facing very difficult budget problems. They are
cutting out all kinds of critical functions--education, health
care, and so on. And yet we are asking them to go back and find
more money to invest in the first responders.
In reality, this is not going to happen unless the Federal
Government steps in because they are the one source of funds
that we have at this point in time that can invest in these
capabilities, and we need that kind of support and we need it
very rapidly.
Let me give you a couple of examples of the shortfalls.
First of all, effective protective gear is absolutely critical
in either a chemical or a biological attack, and yet very few
States, cities or counties have this kind of equipment in any
number at all. A recent survey of mayors said 86 percent of
them said they were seriously short of the kind of gear they
needed for a bioterrorism or chemical attack. Only 10 percent
felt reasonably comfortable with the equipment they have today.
And, again, given the fiscal situation, Federal funds are going
to have to be made available if we are going to remedy this
problem in any kind of short period of time.
Second, robust, survivable communications are the most
important infrastructure element for managing any kind of an
attack. We found that out in spades in New York when the
difficulty of communicating was brought out very clearly. State
and local communications are stove-piped, they are vulnerable,
and they are often very obsolete.
Interconnectivity is critical if we are going to cope with
a major, complicated incident such as the one we saw in New
York a year ago. In response to that, a number of States have
plans to significant upgrade their communications systems and
build robust interconnected systems to cover the State, local
and county officials.
Yet, I think in almost every case these plans have been
shelved because of the current crunch on cash, including New
York State, which had a very major plan almost ready to roll
out and has had to defer that. So we have a situation, because
of lack of funds, where we are simply not making any serious
investment in this kind of interconnected communications.
I should point out, Senator DeWine, Ohio is one exception.
You actually have a very robust system, but very few States
have this.
Second, the National Guard. The National Guard plays, as we
have said, an absolutely critical role in all aspects of
homeland security. They are trained, they are disciplined, they
cover virtually every part of the United States. We have 5,500
units scattered across all 50 States. They have equipment that
is of great value in their normal course of events. They have
got trucks, they have got aircraft, they have got
communications, medical equipment, and this can be of
extraordinary value in any kind of emergency such as this.
And they play a unique role. Obviously, they report to the
Governor, as well as to the U.S. military. They are always
well-connected locally with local politicians and government
officials, something that is not true if you bring in military
units from the outside. Finally, they are exempt from the posse
comitatus legislation, so they, in fact, can enforce civil law
in crisis situations. So they do play a key role and will play
a key role.
About 4 years ago, the Defense Science Board did a major
study on homeland security and one of our critical
recommendations was to create civil support units in the
National Guard to handle chemical, biological and radiological
attacks. In response to that, we have now formed 22 of these,
scattered across the country.
This is an important step forward, but, in fact, we need
far more. Our report suggests 66, which would give you one for
every State, plus you would have 2 in larger, more populous
States, Senator Feinstein, California being an obvious example
where you would probably need several. So, again, we need to
have more of these and we need to have them properly trained
and equipped.
If the Guard is going to be more effective more broadly in
its role, it needs more funds and it needs more training and
more focus. As Senator Rudman said, it needs a second priority
mission, and that is homeland security.
A few examples: We should be funding joint exercises with
local agencies to ensure they are ready for a crisis. Only by
doing this do you work out the kinks and the problems that
always emerge when you get involved in a complex operation.
They should be funded to carry out very aggressive ``train
the trainer'' programs. We need training across all these first
responders, and the best way to do it very rapidly is to use
the Guard and to cascade that training down to localities
across the country.
Finally, because of the nature of the Guard, when they work
for the Governor, they don't have job protection and their pay
is often much less than it is if they are on normal military
duty. These are things that should be remedied.
Madam Chairperson, these are just a few thoughts, and again
I want to thank you very much for holding this hearing and
putting focus on this truly critical problem.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Odeen appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairperson Feinstein. Thanks very much, Mr. Odeen. We look
forward to asking you some questions. Thank you.
Colonel Larsen.
STATEMENT OF RANDALL J. LARSEN, DIRECTOR, ANSER INSTITUTE FOR
HOMELAND SECURITY, ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA
Mr. Larsen. Thank you, Madam Chairman and distinguished
members, for inviting the Institute for Homeland Security to
give an assessment of this report.
In 1838, a young Abraham Lincoln commented, quote, ``All
the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined...with a
Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from
the Ohio,or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a
thousand years,'' unquote. That is still true today, but it is
irrelevant, and I am not sure we all quite appreciate that.
It doesn't take a superpower to threaten a superpower. In
fact, it doesn't even take a military force to threaten us
anymore. Small nations, terrorist organizations, and even some
transnational criminal organizations can threaten our homeland
with weapons of incredible destructive and disruptive power.
Most people in this room agree with that statement, so why
should I state the obvious? But if we all really believed it,
and if all the people in Washington, D.C., believe that, why
don't we have a Department of Homeland Security today? Why are
State and local law enforcement officers still operating in a
virtual intelligence vacuum? Why is it that the most dependable
way to deliver a nuclear weapon to the United States is to rent
a shipping container for $1,500 in a Third World nation? And
why is it we are so unprepared for a biological attack?
In September of last year, Vice President Cheney asked me,
what does a biological weapon look like? And I reached in my
pocket and I pulled this out and I said, sir, it looks like
this, and I did just carry this into your office. Now, this is
not harmful, but it is weaponized Bacillus globigii.
Genetically, it is nearly identical to Bacillus anthracis which
causes anthrax, and we know what it did to the Hart Building
last year.
This was produced with equipment bought off the Internet
for under a quarter of a million dollars. This is a weapon of
mass destruction that you don't have to be a superpower to get.
I don't worry about a Timothy McVeigh doing this, but I
certainly worry about Al-Qaeda doing that, and we are not
prepared.
It is a weapon that can be used to frighten us, to disrupt
us, like we saw with the Hart Building last year and the
letters that came in here. Or potentially, with a sophisticated
weapon and a contagious pathogen, it could threaten our
survival.
These are the types of issues raised by this distinguished
and independent task force. We at the institute agree with the
vast majority of their findings. Most importantly, we agree
with the President that we need the creation of the Department
of Homeland Security. Five of the six critical mandates
identified by Senator Hart and Senator Rudman in this report
can best be resolved through the leadership of a Secretary of
Homeland Security and the coordination of their staff.
While we agree that additional funding will likely be
required for the National Guard, we are not ready to endorse
the report's six major recommendations concerning roles and
missions of the National Guard. These citizen soldiers are
already stretched thin in preparing and executing a wide
variety of missions.
We are gratified, but not surprised, that the Guard and
Reserves continue to answer ``can do'' when additional homeland
security missions are identified. But we are concerned that we
are abusing their patriotism. Simply put, we are not convinced
that the National Guard, as currently organized, trained and
equipped, can meet the dual demands of preparing to support the
Department of Defense in fighting major-theater wars and at the
same time be fully prepared to support Governors in a homeland
security role.
We realize that sometimes recommending a commission to
study an issue merely kicks the can down the road. However, in
this case the fundamental changes that may be required for the
National Guard are so significant that a fresh look by an
independent commission focused specifically on this subject is
required.
I want to mention briefly three--and I will add a fourth
additional point to respond to Senator Feinstein's request
about a command center because I recently visited a great one--
additional items.
First, the importance of improving America's preparedness
for a bioattack is mentioned in the report. Dr. Flynn just
mentioned it. We cannot over-emphasize the importance of
rebuilding America's public health infrastructure.
Forty years ago, we had a world-class public health
infrastructure in this country. I am not from the public health
community--32 years in the military--but today I understand
that public health is as important to national security as the
Department of Defense, and I am very concerned with the state
of our State and county and city public health offices.
Second, considerable funds are being spent on training
first responders. We fully support that at the institute.
However, we are not spending any money on executive education
in all the exercises we have run, from Dark Winter to Crimson
Sky, where Senator Roberts played the President of the United
States and we simulated for the Secretary of Agriculture a foot
and mouth disease attack on the United States.
The people who make the important decisions in these
scenarios and in the real world are not firefighters and police
officers. They are senior elected and appointed officials. Who
is educating them? It is all on-the-job training. We have to
have a program.
It is like 1950 again. We haven't created the academic
discipline of national security. That wasn't created until Dr.
Kissinger and others and great schools came along. We don't
have that system today. We think this is a serious deficiency.
Executive education will be the cornerstone of a successful
homeland security program.
Third, we must understand that homeland security requires a
long-term commitment. We had Nunn-Lugar-Domenici, 120 cities.
You mentioned 120 cities. That was a one-time effort. We go out
and train these people, but what is the follow-on program? In
the military, we understand continuation training. These skills
go away if you don't continue the training program. So when you
make a commitment to these programs, it needs to be long-term.
And I add a fourth point, Madam Chairman, because you asked
about this 24-hour operations center. One of the things we
really push at the institute is finding a good example
somewhere and spreading that word around. We don't need to
reinvent the wheel in 50 States.
The State of Iowa has done an incredible system. For 16
years, they have been building their command and control
system. I visited it recently. To me, it is more exotic than
strategic command out at Moffett Air Force Base. It is
certainly more modern. They have 368 connections with video
teleconferencing throughout the State, and I mean it is a
quality of like the ``CBS Evening News.'' It is not some fuzzy
screen--every hospital, private and public, every county seat,
every police department, sheriff's department.
The first time they ever had all 368 hooked up was last
October at the height of the anthrax scare. They brought in
some very senior officials and got all of them up there and
said, this is what an anthrax attack will look like, this is
the first thing you are going to see and here is the State plan
to respond. If you want to see a good example of what that 24-
hour command center looks like, go to Iowa.
To conclude, I concur with a majority of the
recommendations in the report. If I had to pick one critical
concern, it would be lack of preparation for biological
attacks. If I had to pick one thing to add, it would be the
need for executive education. If I had to pick one caution, it
would be the importance of program sustainability. If I had to
pick one key action, it would be establishing a Department of
Homeland Security, with one person given the authority and
resources to make decisions and to hold responsible. If I had
to pick one issue not adequately addressed in the report or the
proposed department or in my remarks, it would be the fusion of
intelligence. That will be a tough nut to crack, but one we can
do.
And one last comment. I know we were talking today about
how we get that information down to one of those 650,000 police
officers on the street. In a recent visit to the New York City
Police Department, I was told about a program called Advanced
Tipoffs. Everything is there they need to make it happen,
except the money.
It is when a police officer pulls you over and goes into
the National Crime Information Center, Advanced Tipoffs will
link them to 17 terrorist watch lists. It won't allow you to
look in there and see exactly what they want them for, but it
will pop that flag up. And that is available today if we have
the money to fund it and move forward.
I can tell you, talking to police officers on the street in
New York City, they would really like to have it. Had we had
that system in July of 2001, Mohamed Atta would probably not
have been let go by that State trooper in Florida.
Thank you for the time to make my comments, Madam Chair. I
will be happy to answer your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Larsen appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairperson Feinstein. Thank you very much, all four of
you. I think the testimony was excellent and we are very
appreciative.
Let me just begin with the subject of the National Guard.
We drafted legislation, oh, I guess about a year ago to carry
this out, and later my staff went to Senator Lieberman and
Senator Thompson, to the Government Affairs Committee. They
wanted Armed Services staff; to look at it. We could not get
any interest in it by Armed Services staff.
I have it here. We can certainly beef it up a little bit. I
think there is going to have to be some additional work by you
gentlemen and by others on the issue of first responders. The
Guard is already trained and Guard units could receive
additional first responder training. Given the fact that we
really have no adequate defense today against a biological, a
chemical, or a radioactive attack, to me, the National Guard is
the natural one to respond.
So I am trying to inveigle Senator Kyl to get involved in
this, and Senator DeWine, and maybe we will try again next
year. But clearly we are not going to be able to do it unless a
group of experts come together and join us in saying that this
is really the right thing to do, and I hope you will.
My question of any who would like to answer this is how do
you see the concept of the 24-hour command centers meshing with
tipoff type databases--what is your vision? Should we introduce
legislation whereby the Federal Government would offer a match
to State government to establish such centers? Would Governors
do a plan? How do you see this being carried out?
Senator Rudman. Let me respond first because I have given
this a great deal of thought during the pendency of this report
and since it has come out. You know, you can learn from
history, and I am sure you are both familiar--your staffs are
too young to remember, but you will remember that in the--
maybe, Senator Feinstein, you are too young to remember.
Chairperson Feinstein. That was an after-thought, but I
appreciate it anyway.
[Laughter.]
Senator Rudman. As I recall, back in the 1970's, under
President Nixon, we established something called the Law
Enforcement Assistance Administration, the LEAA, and it had
some high moments and some bad moments. There was some
corruption, but overall it did a lot of wonderful work.
Here is what it did: The Congress appropriated ``x'' number
of dollars to that administration. Each of the States set up a
commission to essentially have liaison and links with the LEAA.
Each State made proposals to enhance its criminal justice
system. Those were evaluated and money was allocated to the
States on a formula basis to assure that they could do what
they had to do.
For instance, in the State of New Hampshire two things were
done. I was attorney general at the time and I sat on the group
that had liaison. What we did with it was build at the time one
of the finest communications systems in the country, linking
our local, county and State police forces. We also used a great
deal of the money in the courts, which we were allowed to do.
I would submit to you that there is a plan that might work,
and probably the place it would go would be the Department of
Homeland Security, and maybe FEMA in particular, a program of
funding a number of objectives through overwhelming Federal
money, with some State match to ensure that it got done and got
done promptly.
I think that is a very good system. It worked very well.
Now, there were some abuses in some States, but most people
whom you talk to will tell you the LEAA did a great deal of
good work in their States. I would say that is a good model.
Chairperson Feinstein. Thank you very much.
Anyone else on this?
Mr. Larsen. I will say, Madam Chairman, that the Iowa
system was built exclusively with State funds, something they
are very proud of. Of course, that was built in a period of
time when they had a little bit more money out there, like many
other States.
But we agree with matching funds, and national standards,
we think, are one of the most important things that we have.
They would be interoperable, particularly when we are talking
about contagious pathogens. You know, most Governors and
adjutants general we talk to say disaster are local. We agree
with that when you are talking about tornadoes and hurricanes
and earthquakes. If you are talking about a contagious pathogen
or perhaps a radiological dispersal device, it is a regional
issue. So I think it is very important that there be national
standards and the regional centers are linked.
Chairperson Feinstein. So you are saying set that in the
legislation, the standards?
Mr. Larsen. Absolutely. Of course, the States would love it
if they sent all the money, but we think the matching funds are
very important. But the national standards perhaps are the best
thing that we can get out of the new department. They have to
be interoperable.
Talking to Governor Keating recently, he was talking about
his State police went out and bought new radios. They don't
talk to the Texas State Police. We have got to get past that.
These are going to be regional issues. NYPD and the State of
New York are working with Connecticut and New Jersey. They have
a regional intelligence center up there now where police
reports that come in from New Jersey--people are seeing those
in police departments in Connecticut, too. This regional thing
we are also seeing in public health, so we think that is the
positive direction they are going.
Chairperson Feinstein. Dr. Flynn or Mr. Odeen?
Mr. Flynn. I would just say that my vote is money has to
vote quickly and I think the Federal Government has the means
to turn on the spigot. We are a wealthy nation, we are a nation
at war, and the State and localities are simply just being able
to move in a kind of timely fashion.
The American people were forgiving of their Government
after 9/11. I think they are going to be unforgiving post the
next traumatic event because they are going to wonder what the
heck did you do with the time that was available, when we still
have virtually no major police department in this country that
can talk to its own fire department, never mind county
emergency planners or State police or Federal officials.
I was just in Houston just this past week talking with
people from the mayors and at every Federal level. The Federal
agency folks--INS, Coast Guard, Customs, and so forth--can't
talk with their State counterparts. They can barely talk with
each other. I mean, this just unsatisfactory. We have just got
to move money. This is a nation at war.
Senator Rudman. Could I add just one point to that?
Chairperson Feinstein. Please.
Senator Rudman. If you add up the amount of money that
would be needed to get the first responders the proper chemical
and biological equipment across this country, and add to that
the communications we are talking about--if you add it all up,
in terms of the kind of money that we appropriate every year it
is not a great deal of money. And I would think those are two
very high priorities, because if you don't have the equipment
and you can't communicate, you are going to have a disaster.
Chairperson Feinstein. Would this panel be willing to
prepare a draft of national standards, since you have all
studied this issue?
Senator Rudman. I think we probably could. If you would
like us to, I am sure that we have the resources. Certainly, if
you would like some assistance and for us to give you some
recommendations, I am sure we could.
Chairperson Feinstein. Good.
Senator Rudman. I can't speak for the Colonel.
Mr. Larsen. Absolutely. The institute is for public service
and if that is what you ask for, that is what we will provide.
Senator Rudman. I think we can work together and give you
that, but it is not only standards for the centers, but
standards for the kind of equipment that is needed and the kind
of communications gear, and we have enough expertise to do
that.
Chairperson Feinstein. Excellent.
Senator Kyl.
Senator Kyl. Thank you all for your testimony. It is
enlightening and it takes me back to two very general themes.
One of the themes, Dr. Flynn, is in your testimony you said
something that I hope is not true. I have been saying it isn't
true, but I am not positive. You say we seem to be slipping
back to complacency. I have been impressed with the fact that
over a year now the Nation still seems to be pretty focused and
willing to support what the Government has asked be done.
You haven't seen the same kind of impatience that
ordinarily characterizes Americans. With whatever we do, we
want to get it over with right now. The President said in the
beginning this is going to require a lot of patience, and I
have seen a lot of patience on the part of the American people.
So it bothers me to have you say you are beginning to see
evidence of slipping into complacency, and I would like to have
you talk a little bit more about that because we can't let that
happen, and danger signs that you have observed I would like to
be able to focus on.
I guess, by the way, you could first point to the United
States Congress' inability to pass a Homeland Security
Department bill within a timeframe that the President has
recommended and which some of you have commented on. I mean, I
suppose that is Exhibit A right there, and we are supposed to
represent all of the people.
The second question, though--and this is the one that has
always troubled me, and in every hearing we have had this is
the question I get to. It is impossible in the United States of
America--in fact, probably the only country you could do this
with is North Korea, to really protect against any outside
influences. I mean, we are such an open and dynamic country
that it is literally impossible to protect against any threat.
Now, what terrorists do is to probe for vulnerabilities,
and there are millions of vulnerabilities in this country. So
then they set up a series of priorities of what is not only
vulnerable, but they would get the most bang for the buck in
terms of real terror out of what they do, and so on. And then
they figure out what their target is.
We have to, on the other side, try to imagine what they
might try to do first, second, third, and protect against those
particular vulnerabilities. It is a cat-and-mouse game that to
me is almost impossible for the defense to ever win, which is,
of course, why the President has said--and I suspect all of you
agree--you have got to take the fight to the enemy.
But that is another matter. That is not what you are
focused on doing, and I understand that. You are focused on the
hard stuff, which is, all right, after they have taken the
fight to the enemy, what do we still have to do to protect the
homeland. But it gets to this question of setting priorities.
Now, Senator Rudman, you said, relatively speaking, it
wouldn't be that much money to provide the equipment that would
be necessary to protect against what Colonel Larsen says is
probably the most worrisome thing to him, and that is the
biological threat. And we both naturally say, well, how much
would it cost exactly? Who all would have to be furnished the
gear? What are the standards, as Senator Feinstein asks, and so
on? And that is important information for us to get.
All of this is a long way of asking a question not with
respect to every specific kind of threat, but rather in a more
general way, how do we set the priorities for what we have to
do first, second, and third. Do you base it on what our last
best intelligence tells us is being probed by the enemy? I
mean, is that how you do it?
That is kind of tactical because you get different reports
every month. Well, now, we see them casing petroleum refineries
or we see them casing this or that or the other thing. You
can't possibly protect against everything.
And let me just add a final thought to that. One of you
again--I think, Dr. Flynn, in your testimony you talk about the
airport security. And, Senator Rudman, you said the same thing.
We are focused kind of on the wrong thing. We fight the last
war. Well, we are fighting airport security, but that may well
not be where the terrorists are focused now. Excellent point.
And, Dr. Flynn, you said monitoring based upon risk criteria.
Is that really the risk now, passengers going through being
screened?
I guess that is my question, and maybe the answer is we
don't know. That is why we need to appoint some experts to try
to do that. But is it intelligence-driven, I guess is part of
my question.
Senator Rudman. Let me just take a quick review of that
because, you know, we talked a great deal about the very
question you raise. If you look at these six recommendations,
they are broad recommendations which are designed to prepare
local responders, States and localities, with the ability to
respond to multiple threats.
If there is a terrorist attack, it will either be high
explosives, as we have seen in Israel, Northern Ireland and
other places in the world, or--and I say this with great
reluctance, but it has to be said--chemical, biological, or
nuclear.
So if you look at our report, we are saying here are six
things that are on the response prevention side; that since we
can't tell you where, when, what, how, here are some things you
ought to do that, no matter what happens, you will be better
off than you were yesterday.
Senator Kyl. Dealing with it.
Chairperson Feinstein. Yes.
Mr. Flynn. Let me add that part of that, though, has
deterrent value again. If the sense is that the Nation is going
to capably respond to these incidents, then the value you
expect to get fundamentally impacting on U.S. power is
mitigated. So at least some of our adversaries might reconsider
this, again, as a means of warfare.
But getting at this issue of how much security is enough
and where do we get it, why I focus so heavily on the issue of
ports and containers is going back to what happened on
September 11. We had two airplanes from Massachusetts fly into
New York City, and obviously one ended up in Washington. But we
responded by grounding all aviation, closing our seaports, and
effectively sealing our borders with Canada and with Mexico.
We did what no nation could expect to accomplish against a
superpower; we imposed an economic blockade on our own economy.
That was what an adversary would look to accomplish. Why did we
have to do that? Because we had no means to filter the bad from
the good in that heightened threat environment. We had to stop
the world to sort it out.
Now, with planes, it took us 3 days to go through every
single plane to verify there were no more terrorists or means
of terrorism on them. And yet, on our seaports and borders we
opened it back up, not because the threat went away or because
we were more secure, but because we did the arithmetic that it
was too costly to keep it closed, so a sufficient security
largely that when you have an incident, you can contain the
incident.
A single container today used in a horrific act of terror--
it is different from an industrial accident. If you had an
industrial accident with a single refinery, you would say that
is an isolated event. If you had it in a container which is so
ubiquitous it moves 90 percent of all general cargo--6.5
million by sea, 11.5 trucks carry them across our land borders,
2.2 million by rail--and you say, wait a second, what is the
baseline security that means another one of these isn't going
to go up, the answer right now there is no standard for who
gets to load what into them. There is no standard with regard
to security on who gets to carry them.
If we even had hard intelligence that one is being used,
that we had human intelligence that told us part of the Al-
Qaeda network just loaded a weapon of mass destruction in this
container and it is left on a lorry heading down the street,
and the President convened his national security team and said
where is the box, the response right now would likely be it
could be coming into Vancouver or Seattle or Tacoma or L.A. or
Long Beach or Oakland-San Francisco, coming through the canal
or any one of our ports.
The only tool again would be to turn off the system to sort
it out. So a sufficient security that when you have an
incident--one is there is a credible baseline that people can
look to and say, all right, you are managing this, you are not
just giving away this core public good, safety and security,
for the benefits that the system provides.
Second, you need the ability to do forensics after the
fact. Is this just one event? You know, if we could identify it
came from Karachi, we probably wouldn't have to close the
Ambassador Bridge for incoming GM parts coming from Ontario.
But if we don't know, we are apt to have to do that for an
extended period of time.
So what the people who have built us this intermodal
revolution will tell you is they gave us a low-cost, efficient,
reliable system that allows us to move around the planet at
incredible economic benefit to this country, but we never put
security into the system. It was presumed to raise costs,
undermine efficiency, and undermine reliability.
So we are in a world with increasingly integrated,
sophisticated, concentrated networks where no security is put
in, and what we now must be in the business of doing is
retrofitting it in. The good news is they are also dynamic
systems and they provide an opportunity for us to put security
in at the outset. Just like we built safety into the aviation
industry and safety in the chemical industry, we just now must
build security into these same industries.
Senator Rudman. I would want to add on that point that
Commissioner Bonner deserves a great deal of credit for his
recent initiatives. Some of them are very controversial. Some
of them came from the original Hart-Rudman report. Frankly,
Commander Flynn drafted that section to start doing more of the
inspection not at the point of debarkation, but the point of
embarkation, to put Customs people overseas so we start to find
out who is loading these containers.
There has been a great hue and cry from some of our trading
partners that it is going to slow up commerce, but I must say
that the Commissioner, whom I have talked to on a number of
occasions and looked at what they are doing--they are starting
to try to do this, but this is a very daunting task. It will
not happen overnight.
Mr. Larsen. Senator Kyl, I agree with what Dr. Flynn has to
say about a delivery system of ports. But if we made all of
those containers completely secure, I can still come in the
country, walk across the border, drive across the border, or
fly in with this.
At the institute, the model that we look at is where do we
spend our money. We can't protect everything. What threatens us
the most? I remember Governor Gilmore and his initial
commission sort of looked at the high-probability/low-
consequence car bombs. The first Hart-Rudman report, I think,
was more focused on the low-probability/high-consequence, and I
think that is where we have to spend our limited national
resources, is those things that can threaten our survival.
Even when you look at 9/11, a terrible tragedy for the
families, the friends, 3,000 people died. In 2001, 6,000 people
died of food poisoning in this country. 7,800 people died
because they didn't take proper precautions in the sunlight and
they got skin cancer. So we can't defend against everything,
but those things that can threaten the survival of our Nation,
threaten our economy--we saw in the Dark Winter exercise 2,000
people died in the 22 days of that exercise. Senator Nunn
played the President.
Chairperson Feinstein. Was that the smallpox one?
Mr. Larsen. That was smallpox. Jim Woolsey played the CIA
Director, Bill Sessions the FBI Director, a very distinguished
panel. And it was so different. We had some of the greatest
national security leaders sitting around that table and they
said they didn't know what questions to ask.
It is so much different than a bomb coming in in a shipping
container or an airplane crashing into a building. This is
someone bringing an epidemic to America, and the people that
respond are those public health officers. I just returned from
3 days in Philadelphia with the 103d conference of the American
Public Health Association.
I have a minor mistake I would like to correct in my
statement that I submitted where I said it was funded, this
report I saw, by the Centers for Disease Control. People from
the Centers for Disease Control participated, but it was
actually funded by the Department of Justice.
They went out and looked at 2,200 city and county public
health offices and they gave them grades like a university; 100
to 90 is an A, 89 to 80 is a B. Seventy-four percent of them
flunked being prepared under 20 criteria they established for
responding to a biological attack. These are your front-line
troops now, OK? Seventy-four percent of this Nation's city and
county public health officers are not prepared to respond. To
me, that is a threat to national security, a serious threat,
and that is where we have to focus our attention.
Chairperson Feinstein. Thank you.
Senator DeWine.
Senator DeWine. Thank you, Madam Chairman. This has been
very interesting, very good testimony.
I would like to turn back, if I could, to the issue of the
National Guard. The National Guard certainly is a great
resource and it is a resource that we need to better utilize in
regard to preparing and then responding to this war on
terrorism. I don't think anybody doubts that. But there is a
question of if they are doing that, what are they not doing?
And I think the Colonel raised that issue.
We currently in Ohio have members of the National Guard in
northwest Ohio helping clean up and deal with the aftermath of
a number of very deadly tornadoes. I am sure that every State
that got hit has Guardsmen doing that. When we have floods on
the Ohio River, our members of the National Guard are down
there. And I have been down there with them, and I am sure that
Senator Rudman has been with his Guard as well in different
tragedies. We currently in Ohio have members of the National
Guard in the Middle East and in Bosnia.
So I would like maybe if we could have a little more
discussion, and maybe start with Senator Rudman, about if they
are doing this, Senator, and they have this new dual
responsibility, how do we in a sense pay for it, not just with
dollars, but within the question of their time and their
resources?
Senator Rudman. Senator DeWine, let me say that I don't
disagree with the predicate of your question, or for that
matter with Colonel Larsen's concern. But let me simply lay out
the way we looked at it and try to answer your question
specifically.
The Guard people that I know are very proud of their combat
mission. Factually, in the world we live in today, that combat
mission is probably not apt to be called on in the foreseeable.
That is not what we are facing. Certainly, they were called up
for Desert Storm and they could get called up for a war in
Iraq, but the call-ups are relatively few and far between, for
which we are all thankful.
Meanwhile, they train for that mission. No matter what
their unit is--artillery, military intelligence, hospital,
military government--they train for that mission. All we are
saying is they should get some dual training, and that dual
training should be provided by skilled people provided by the
Pentagon and by other Federal agencies to train them in some
other skills that they have equipment and general training and
discipline to deal with.
Now, how do you pay for that? Frankly, I think you have to
pay for it with increased appropriations for the Guard because
they are our greatest human resource right now, other than the
650,000 first responders, that we have, and they are located in
all the right places.
I want to say just one other thing. I have talked to a
number of Guard people around the country and they came up with
something that I never even thought of, nor did our commission
think of. They believe it will be a boon to recruiting, and the
reason they believe it will be a boon to recruiting is because
a lot of young people today--and I have talked to many; I
talked to many in your State on Tuesday night at a wonderful
college outside of Cleveland.
And it is interesting in talking to young, college-age
students that they all, no matter what they say, usually have
one question in common: ``What can I do to help? I mean, I feel
so helpless. The President says we are all in this war
together. OK, so what would you like me to do?'' And, of
course, nobody has an answer.
Many Guard people have told me that they believe it will
aid in recruiting, and maybe we have to expand Guard units in
some places. I don't disagree that they are right now probably
overworked in many ways, but we are facing a major crisis in
this country. It would be a terrible thing if we had a major
incident of a weapon of mass destruction in a Midwestern State
and there were 100 Guard units within 50 miles of that location
who unfortunately weren't trained to do anything that could be
helpful. That is our point, although we certainly agree with
Colonel Larsen and with you that there are issues here. But we
think the overriding issue is homeland security.
Senator DeWine. Well, I appreciate your response. It seems
to me as we look at this whole matrix of how we put this
together, we clearly do need a cadre of people with very
specific expertise who can move in a general geographical area.
You probably can't afford to have those people in every
community, but you need to be able to surge them into that area
within a short period of time, and I think, Senator, your point
is very well taken.
Our Guard in Ohio and every other State is set up to surge
very quickly. You know, they are set up to go to the Ohio River
very quickly. They are set up to go to Van Wert, Ohio, very
quickly if they have to go to Van Wert, Ohio.
Colonel?
Mr. Larsen. Go right ahead. Go ahead.
Mr. Odeen. I think this has been a difficult issue for the
Army and the Guard for a number of years, but I think it is
changing. For a long time, as Warren said, they saw their
combat mission as the critical thing they were doing, but that
is really not true anymore.
We have transformed the active-duty military; we are in the
process of transforming it. Heavy armored divisions and things
like that just simply have a lot less of a role these days. The
Guard and the Reserve that are actively involved with the Army
day in and day out are not the guys driving tanks. They are
people with medical, civil affairs, military police, these
kinds of skills that are extraordinarily valuable in
Afghanistan and Bosnia and places like this, but they are a
relatively small part of the organization.
Doing this well, I don't believe, is a significant
diversion of their capabilities. To have 66 or 70 or 80 of
these weapons of mass destruction response teams, we are
talking about a few thousand people. The numbers are small and
you can make those available.
The other good thing about it is many of the units we have
in the Guard today have equipment that is absolutely perfectly
designed for responding to these things, but they have to have
training and they have to have people that know how to
coordinate and manage these things. But the trucks and the
cargo aircraft they have and the engineering equipment is very
useful and very relevant, but it takes planning, it takes
training, it takes coordination.
This is not, I don't believe, a significant diversion of
the capabilities of the National Guard. As Warren said, I think
they will respond, and respond positively, and I believe it
will be very good for their support in their communities, as
well, knowing they have this capability.
Senator DeWine. Colonel?
Mr. Larsen. My staff and I thought very carefully as we
worded this to say that this was one area that we weren't ready
to endorse from the Committee, but it didn't say we disagreed
with it. We think it is more complex when you think about it.
They are front-line troops and I am worried about abusing them.
In my last command as a military officer, I had 1,000
people working for me. I had a specific mission to do. We were
organized, trained, and equipped for that mission, and that was
what we focused our time on. So now I am a commander of a
National Guard unit and I have 1,000 people. I am organized,
trained, and equipped to go fight a war in southwest Asia. I
have 2 weeks in the summer and 1 weekend a month, and it is
very, very difficult to be prepared for that.
And now you are going to give me another mission. Well, we
have some of the skills and the training and some of the
discipline or whatever, but it is a different mission. And I
think that maybe--and this is why we need to look at this--we
may want to have more of a commitment to where that National
Guard is organized, trained, and equipped to help that Governor
in what he needs.
Madam Chairman, if you were the Governor of California,
what would you want to have, F-16s and M-1 tanks in your Guard
unit, or would you rather have transportation, medical units,
communications, and military police? I know which one I would
want. So I think it just needs to be looked at.
In the Top-Off exercise in Denver, in May of 2000, they
simulated a plague attack. The Federal Government did their
job. That push-pack, 94,400 pounds of antibiotics, arrived on
that 747 freighter. The Federal Government said, we have done
our job, Denver, and now you have 48 hours to get 2 million
people little bags of antibiotics to protect them from plague.
So I don't need 19-year-old kids that can do a hundred
push-ups and fire expert with an M-16. My 77-year-old mother
could have helped do that. That is why I think if we had this
sort of commission to look at this, volunteers would be a great
help to us. We don't have to pay for the National Guard.
Organizations like the Rotary Club--and I am not a
Rotarian, but I think they do wonderful work around the world
in public health areas. Volunteer organizations in this country
could do a lot of the things we need for critical responses.
There are certain things we could get from DoD and from the
National Guard. I think we need to sit down and look at it
seriously. I don't think the changes we need to make are on the
margin. I think we are looking at some fundamental changes in
the 21st century.
Mr. Flynn. If I might just add one more, which is former
Secretary of State Warren Christopher participated in our
panel, as well, and he pointed out, of course, a situation we
are worried about and was part of our matrix in looking at this
issue.
You recall the riots of the late 1960's where we draw on
the National Guard to do it and they just simply weren't
trained to cope in that kind of circumstance. It was not the
kind of situation we want the National Guard in. The President
has asked every single Governor to develop a homeland security
plan for his State. Every single Governor is planning on
drawing on his National Guard capability to respond to the
contingencies that are developing. We don't want the National
Guard to show up and not be able to deliver when we have these
events. That is the reality we are in right now and we have to
find some ways to work through this.
I certainly agree that I think this is really an issue that
probably needs the commission. Give it a very short time fuse
to really lay out the issues, but a mandate that we address
this squarely is so essential.
Mr. Larsen. Just one last comment, ma'am. When is the most
likely time we are going to have a major attack on our
homeland? Probably when we are at war somewhere else. How many
of those National Guard troops are really going to be
available?
I talked to some folks about a year ago from the Rhode
Island National Guard. They were special forces units. We
really need those in this war that has been going on in
Afghanistan. They were deploying to Afghanistan. Now, the
Governor of Rhode Island is sitting there thinking ``I am going
to use the National Guard if we have a big crisis.'' Sorry,
they are in Afghanistan.
Senator Rudman. I would just make one observation to
disagree with that particular comment. I have looked at the
identification and mission and training of most of the Guard
units in the country back during Hart-Rudman. I would agree
with Colonel Larsen that those units which are armor, heavy
infantry, mechanized infantry, airborne, special forces--
probably, you might give them some dual training.
I am talking about the majority of those Guard units which
are transportation, communications, military government,
military police, military intelligence. There are a lot of
units which do not have what I call primary combat missions. I
think that obviously some of these units probably will not get
into this matrix, but I believe that you can distinguish
between the two.
Chairperson Feinstein. And if I may for a moment, you can
do double training for some troops. The people who are trained
in the heavy mechanized and the special forces would stay with
that. For others, you would add a homeland security mission.
My belief is that the opposition to this comes from the
Pentagon and they don't want the mixed mission, so to speak.
And yet the Guard already has such a mission. As Mr. Odeen
pointed out in his remarks, 22 civil support teams trained to
respond to a weapon of mass destruction, and this number is
going to grow.
Mr. Odeen. I hope so, yes, absolutely.
Chairperson Feinstein. So I think it would be possible to
enhance the Guards homeland security mission if we wanted to do
it.
Senator DeWine. Well, it certainly is a very interesting
question. My time is up, but I think the discussion we got from
the panel was a very excellent one.
Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Senator Kyl. Just on that point, I would note that some of
the very first units called were the very units that Senator
Rudman was talking about--the police, the communications. In
Bosnia and in Kosovo, it was not the heavy mechanized. It was
exactly the kind units that might receive this kind of
training.
And, yes, you are right. It is the military that objects.
They got whipsawed back about 12 years ago when I was on the
House Armed Services Committee. The big decision was made that
we would have folks back home who, when the whistle blew, could
go into combat. That way, we didn't need as many active units.
And so that is the direction we went.
Now that the whistle has blown and some of them have had to
go, we have all kinds objections from employers, from families,
from Governors who say, wait a minute, we want this help back
home. There is always a tug and a pull, which is why we are
going to need to continue to talk to you folks and think this
thing through and get your recommendations because there is
just no simple answer, obviously.
Chairperson Feinstein. We structured our amendment to the
homeland security legislation, which hopefully will become a
bill in the next Congress, after the counter-drug mission of
the Guard. So they currently do have another mission, as well.
I think the point that was made out here is that they are in
the right places and that they can be trained. Once trained,
you can call upon them when you need them.
Mr. Larsen. And it is not always a zero-sum game, is the
problem. If you activate a particular unit, what are you taking
out of that community? There are a lot of police officers that
are also National Guardsmen. We found that in Dark Winter when
Senator Nunn said let's activate all the reserve medical units.
How many doctors are you taking out of hospitals, and
nurses out of hospitals that are already--and it turns out the
Pentagon doesn't have that in a computer data base we can look
at. If you activate a unit that is a medical battalion in
Pittsburgh, what do you do to the hospitals in Pittsburgh? We
need that information. That is why I say I think this is
something that needs to be studied very specifically and in a
very quick time span.
Mr. Flynn. Let me just add, in Houston, again, if we do a
rollout, do a major sealift operation to a war contingency plan
here, the Coast Guard and the few limited resources that are
trying to protect that channel and all the critical
infrastructure, which is the bulk of our energy supplies for
our Nation, will be drawn away to do escorts for those rollout
things.
The Department of Defense is fully expecting that the Coast
Guard will be providing that force protection capability during
those rollouts. That will leave nothing left over for that
other critical vulnerability. So these are the kinds of
conversations that we have not had.
I think that is why it is so important to get the
Department of Homeland Security on board and running, because
that kind of issue will then be rising to the top. It is not an
agency head trying to struggle with it in a morass. It will be
something that you get some policy resolution on.
Chairperson Feinstein. Any other questions, Senator Kyl,
Senator DeWine?
Senator Kyl. Madam Chairman, I just look forward to
continuing to work. We keep saying, well, could you come back
one more time and could you keep giving us information? But I
really appreciate the effort of everyone here. Your staff, I
know, has worked very hard as well, and I do look forward to
continuing to get your advice. It is very helpful.
Chairperson Feinstein. It has been requested and the price
is right, so we expect to get some standards.
Senator DeWine. Madam Chairman, one last comment, and I am
not going to ask for a response today. But one of the things I
found interesting, Senator Rudman, was your recommendation in
regard to looking at the antitrust exemptions for private
companies. I would like to look at that as far as what actually
the need is.
As you know, Senator Kohl is currently the Chairman of the
Subcommittee. I am the ranking Republican on the Subcommittee.
It is possible that in January I will still be there and I will
be the Chairman. So that is something that we will want to work
with you on.
Senator Rudman. We would very much like to give you some
material on that. We don't think it will be very controversial
because it really will be doing something that the Government
is going to mandate them to do. So we will get something to
you.
Senator DeWine. We look forward to working with you on
that.
Senator Rudman. And I want to say to the Chairman--you
asked a question, how much would it cost? I did a quick
calculation. For instance, if you wanted to give chemical-
biological protection equipment to every one of those
responders, all 650,000 of them, it would cost about $500
million. Well, that is a lot of money in one sense, but it
isn't in another sense. Besides, that is not what you would do.
You would have a certain number of units in each community that
would be equipped. They would be a response unit.
So we are not talking the kind of dollars that would we are
talking when we talk about a defense budget or an entitlement
program. I mean, to buy that kind of equipment, communications
equipment, we are talking several billion dollars, but we are
not talking about the kind of mega numbers.
When I was on the Appropriations Committee, I always used
to remember Everett Dirksen's great line, except I changed it
from a million to a billion. A billion here, a billion there,
eventually it adds up to real money. Well, the fact is that $2
to $3 billion in homeland security, properly spent, would give
this Nation a terrific amount of preparation for what we are
literally naked right now facing these threats, which is what
the Colonel has said. It is what Phil Odeen has said. It is
what we believe. I know that is a hard sell, but it will be a
lot harder sell if something happens and we are not prepared.
Chairperson Feinstein. There is a bill that has just come
out of the Environment Committee that authorizes $3.5 billion
for first responders.
Senator Rudman. Madam Chairman, I had a lot of experience
with authorization. It is the appropriation I care about.
Chairperson Feinstein. I know.
Mr. Flynn. If I may, just one final thing, which is
security is always a curve of diminishing returns. To get that
hundred percent is an exponentially lot of effort and energy.
The first 70 percent often is affordable. The key is to build
layers of 70-percents that gets you within the mix.
We are focused on single-point security that we want 100
percent that always looks prohibitively costly and that will
fail, likely. It is changing the mentality that it is either/
or, no sense trying because we can't get a hundred percent, to
realizing that there is relatively low-lying fruit.
And if there is anything that we try to identify in this
group, it is, in the scheme of our threat and vulnerabilities,
relatively low-cost investments can be done quickly and can
make us an order of magnitude more secure. This is a difference
between potentially hundreds of American lives lost and tens of
thousands, and that should be clearly something we would be
willing to invest in.
Chairperson Feinstein. Absolutely. Thank you, gentlemen,
very, very much. Very good panel. We are very grateful.
I would like to put in the record a statement by Dr. Elaine
Kamarck and the Hart-Rudman Task Force Report.
Thank you, and the hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:50 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Submissions for the record follow.]
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