    [Senate Hearing 109-976]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                                                            S. Hrg. 109-976

                      HOMELAND SECURITY: THE NEXT 5 YEARS

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   before the

                                  COMMITTEE ON
                   HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
                              UNITED STATES SENATE

                           ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                               SEPTEMBER 12, 2006

                                   __________

            Available via http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate

                           Printed for the use of the
            Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

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            COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

                       SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine, Chairman
    TED STEVENS, Alaska                  JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
    GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio            CARL LEVIN, Michigan
    NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota              DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
    TOM COBURN, Oklahoma                 THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
    LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island      MARK DAYTON, Minnesota
    ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah              FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey
    PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico         MARK PRYOR, Arkansas
    JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia

                            Allison J. Boyd, Counsel
                          Melvin D. Albritton, Counsel
                Jennifer A. Hemingway, Professional Staff Member
                 Michael L. Alexander, Minority Staff Director
                       Holly A. Idelson, Minority Counsel
                      Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk

                                C O N T E N T S

                                     ------
    Opening statements:
                                                                       Page
        Senator Collins..............................................     1
        Senator Lieberman............................................     3
        Senator Domenici.............................................     5
        Senator Levin................................................     6
        Senator Coleman..............................................     7
        Senator Dayton...............................................     8
        Senator Warner...............................................     9
        Senator Voinovich............................................    10
        Senator Bennett..............................................    12
        Senator Carper...............................................    13
        Senator Lautenberg...........................................    33

                                   WITNESSES
                          Tuesday, September 12, 2006

    Hon. Michael Chertoff, Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland
      Security.......................................................    14
    Leroy D. Baca, Sheriff, Los Angeles County, California...........    40
    Richard A. Falkenrath, Ph.D., Deputy Commissioner for
      Counterterrorism, New York City Police Department..............    44
    Steven N. Simon, Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle
      Eastern Studies, Council on Foreign Relations..................    48
    Daniel B. Prieto, Senior Fellow and Director, Homeland Security
      Center, Reform Institute.......................................    52

                         Alphabetical List of Witnesses

    Baca, Leroy D.:
        Testimony....................................................    40
        Prepared statement...........................................    69
    Chertoff, Hon. Michael:
        Testimony....................................................    14
        Prepared statement...........................................    59
    Falkenrath, Richard A., Ph.D.:
        Testimony....................................................    44
        Prepared statement...........................................    74
    Prieto, Daniel B.:
        Testimony....................................................    52
        Prepared statement...........................................   113
    Simon, Steven N.:
        Testimony....................................................    48
        Prepared statement...........................................   106

                                    APPENDIX

    Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record from:
        Mr. Chertoff.................................................   130
        Mr. Baca.....................................................   202
        Dr. Falkenrath...............................................   208
        Mr. Simon....................................................   212
        Mr. Prieto...................................................   216

                      HOMELAND SECURITY: THE NEXT 5 YEARS

                                  ----------

                          TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2006

                                           U.S. Senate,
                               Committee on Homeland Security
                                      and Governmental Affairs,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:32 a.m., in
    room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Susan M.
    Collins, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
        Present: Senators Collins, Voinovich, Coleman, Bennett,
    Domenici, Warner, Lieberman, Levin, Carper, Dayton, Lautenberg,
    and Pryor.

                 OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS

        Chairman Collins. Good morning. We have a very full agenda
    today with many distinguished witnesses, so I am going to ask
    all of us to abbreviate our opening statements because we have
    a noon vote.
        As the Nation remembers the shock and loss of the attacks
    on our country 5 years ago, the Committee this morning will
    look ahead to assess the homeland security challenges the next
    5 years will bring. Our expert witnesses, from the very top of
    the Department of Homeland Security to the front lines, will
    provide valuable insight into these challenges.
        The morning of September 11, 2001, was one of uncommon
    brilliance here in the United States. In the blink of an eye,
    it was transformed into one of unthinkable horror. Two thousand
    nine hundred ninety-six innocent men, women, and children
    perished. Two of our major cities were under assault, two
    centers of our economic and military power were in flames, as
    was a field in Pennsylvania. To many, it seemed that a new kind
    of war had begun.
        If we had had the discussion that we are having today 5
    years before September 11, 2001, it would have been clear that
    those attacks were not the opening salvo of a new war, but the
    foreseeable escalation of a war that had long been underway.
    Nineteen ninety-six was the year that Ramzi Yousef, while
    awaiting trial for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was
    convicted of a conspiracy to plant bombs on a number of U.S.
    airliners. Nineteen ninety-six was the year of the truck bomb
    attack on Khobar Towers, an attack that specifically targeted
    U.S. military personnel. And, 1996 was the year that Osama bin
    Laden relocated from Sudan to Afghanistan and declared war on
    the United States. The terrorist strategy was evolving to
    direct massive attacks on high-profile American targets, but we
    failed to see it. We failed to perceive that these seemingly
    isolated events were, in fact, tied together.
        That was the failure which the 9/11 Commission referred to
    as a ``failure of imagination.'' How different things might be
    today, 5 years after September 11, 2001, if our imagination had
    been fully engaged 5 years before.
        The fundamental obligation of government is to protect its
    citizens. Today, we will explore a number of questions about
    how government can better protect its citizens. To answer those
    questions, we must first seek to identify the threats we face.
        Terrorism constantly evolves. As the devastating attacks
    around the world prove, terrorists will strike wherever
    opportunity allows and wherever innocent people are the most
    vulnerable. The terrorists' resourcefulness, cunning, and
    patience are exceeded only by their cruelty.
        The recent arrests in Canada and Miami, the attacks on the
    London subway last year, and the thwarted airliner plot in
    Britain have made clear that terrorism masterminds no longer
    have to rely upon operatives imported from abroad to infiltrate
    target nations and carry out attacks. The emerging threat
    appears to be from ``homegrown'' terrorists, much harder to
    detect and not deterred by increased security at our borders.
        I am particularly concerned by the extent to which this
    infection is spread within our State and Federal prisons. The
    Committee will hold a hearing on prison radicalization later
    this month. But we know from cases both abroad and here in the
    United States, with Kevin James, an American now awaiting trial
    who founded an organization based upon his radical
    interpretation of Islam while in prison in California, that the
    new face of terrorism may be born and raised right here in
    America.
        As the terrorist tactics evolve, the overall objective
    remains the same--to cause maximum loss of innocent lives, to
    damage our economy, and to defeat our resolve. As they adapt to
    our strengthened defenses, terrorists continue to pursue ever
    more spectacular and devastating attacks.
        In addition to identifying the most likely threats that we
    face, we must constantly assess and improve our efforts to
    counter them.
        Our efforts during the past 5 years have been substantial.
    We have closed the gap between law enforcement and intelligence
    that the terrorists exploited on September 11. We have created
    the Department of Homeland Security. We have made investments
    in training and equipping our first responders. We have
    strengthened our borders with additional personnel and improved
    technology. We have brought about the most comprehensive
    restructuring of our intelligence community in more than a half
    century.
        These efforts, though, do not describe a task accomplished
    but one underway. Each remains a work in progress, and the
    emerging threats compel us to ask the hard questions about how
    well we have done in the past and whether we are prepared for
    the future.
        Among the questions that I intend to explore today are:
        How can we confront the challenge of homegrown terrorists?
    What resources do State and local law enforcement need to meet
    it? How can we work with the American Muslim community to
    prevent the radicalization of our own citizens?
        What are our greatest vulnerabilities to a chemical,
    biological, or nuclear attack, and how can they be mitigated?
        How can we continue to improve the effectiveness of
    intelligence-gathering capabilities against terrorists while
    protecting the civil liberties of the American people?
        How can we accelerate the development of a common culture
    at DHS and help DHS work more effectively with its State and
    local counterparts in detecting, preventing, and responding to
    acts of terrorism?
        What is the role of the private sector--the business
    community, health, education, and other institutions, as well
    as the public--in strengthening our defenses against terrorism?
        Have we neglected the security of other forms of mass
    transportation in our focus on aviation security?
        How can we use our technological edge more effectively?
    Should interoperable communications be a national priority?
    What other technologies can we better deploy to protect against
    diverse targets?
        From the perspective of the past and present, we must
    imagine the future. September 11, 2001, was a day of profound
    loss, but it was also a day of inspiring courage. The first
    responders and ordinary citizens who rushed into the Twin
    Towers and the Pentagon to save others, the brave souls on
    Flight 93 who gave their lives so that others might live,
    remind us of the greatest asset we bring to bear against this
    challenge--the spirit of the American people.
        Chairman Collins. Senator Lieberman.

                 OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LIEBERMAN

        Senator Lieberman. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.
    Welcome to you, Secretary Chertoff.
        Madam Chairman, I am grateful to you for calling this
    hearing to discuss the state of our homeland security 5 years
    after Islamic terrorists murdered 3,000 innocent Americans and
    shocked the rest of us out of our false post-Cold-War sense of
    security. Yesterday was a day of remembrance and requiem. Today
    we quite properly ask: Where do we want to be in homeland
    security 5 years from today? What can we say, if I may
    personalize it, to the parents of America about what we will do
    in the next 5 years together to be able to guarantee that their
    children's upbringing and lives will be as secure as theirs
    were prior to September 11?
        September 11, 2001, like Pearl Harbor, was a tragedy of
    such enormity that it began a new era in which we understand
    that we are at war with a different kind of enemy and that our
    country, led by the Federal Government, must pull together and
    do better at fulfilling our constitutional responsibility to
    provide for the common defense against this unconventional and
    unprecedented threat. The threat of a terrorist attack at home
    on Americans is as real today as it was 5 years ago. The foiled
    plot to explode airliners heading to the United States from the
    United Kingdom is the most recent and publicly acknowledged
    example.
        But let me say at the outset that just as the threat of a
    terrorist attack is as real today at home as it was 5 years
    ago, we together can say to the American people that they are
    safer than they were on September 11, 2001, although, as we all
    acknowledge, they are not yet as safe as we want them to be.
        We have every reason, as we look back at these 5 years, to
    thank God and to thank all who work each day to protect our
    homeland security that America and Americans have not been
    attacked at home since September 11, 2001. We are thankful that
    a number of terrorist plots have been disrupted through
    increased vigilance at home and cooperative work with our
    allies abroad. And as Chairman Collins has indicated, since
    September 11, we have made historic organizational changes in
    our government to shore up our homeland defenses. These include
    the reorganization of our vast and far-flung security and
    emergency response agencies into the Department of Homeland
    Security, the creation of the 9/11 Commission, the enactment of
    its bold proposals for reform and greater security, and the
    establishment of the Northern Command to focus the Department
    of Defense on homeland as well as international security.
        The point of these changes has been to focus the Federal
    Government's attention on terrorism 24 hours a day, 7 days a
    week with resolve, coordination, and strong leadership to bring
    purpose and effectiveness to the protection of our homeland. As
    I have said, we are clearly safer today because of all that we
    have done together, although there are clearly weak links
    remaining that we must deal with together.
        I know that along the way there have been misgivings and
    some soul searching about the Department of Homeland Security,
    but I do not hear any credible voice saying that we erred in
    creating the Department of Homeland Security. So if the
    Department has not yet fully lived up to all that we in
    Congress hoped it would be, let us resolve today, as we look
    forward to the next 5 years, to work together to make it so.
        Let me say very briefly that the first great challenge that
    the Department has faced is to bring itself together. We gave
    the Department an enormous task to bring together 180,000
    Federal employees from a large number of agencies with
    different cultures and different directions. I quote Warren
    Bennis here, adviser to four Presidents, who said that we need
    ``the capacity to translate vision into reality.'' And that is
    the work of leadership, and it has been a challenge, but I
    believe progress has been made in the time that the Department
    has existed.
        The failure of leadership we saw, without belaboring,
    acutely and tragically in the run-up and aftermath to Hurricane
    Katrina. Mr. Secretary, as you know, the pain and devastation
    that Hurricane Katrina caused and is still causing would be
    even worse if a weapon of mass destruction, a nuclear weapon,
    were to explode in a crowded city, if terrorists were to spray
    a mall with a deadly biological agent, or if a naturally
    occurring virus spread to the level of a pandemic. We are
    looking to you for leadership on these threats. I know that you
    have acted to apply some of the painful lessons learned in
    Hurricane Katrina. You know that we on this Committee have
    tried to do the same through legislative work. The fact is that
    there is more work to be done.
        Second, I continue to believe that we are underfunding some
    of the critical homeland security needs, particularly our first
    responders.
        Mr. Secretary, today I look forward to hearing from you, to
    use Bennis' words, your vision of where this Department is
    going, but also what you intend to do to translate that vision
    into reality and into action. I also welcome and look forward
    to the views of the expert witnesses who will follow.
        The security of the American people is the highest priority
    of our government. The plain fact is, without security, there
    cannot and will not be the life, liberty, and pursuit of
    happiness that our government was formed to secure. So we have
    got to get this right, and we have got to get it right
    together.
        And I close with a thank you to Chairman Collins and the
    other Members of the Committee because, as we look back over
    the last 5 years since September 11, 2001, in a capital city,
    which has become all too partisan, reflexively, on the question
    of homeland security--and there have been moments where this
    has not been totally true, but on balance, as we look back,
    this Committee has acted with a real sense of unity that goes
    well beyond partisanship for the national interest and for
    homeland security. And the legislation that we have reported
    out, that has been adopted by Congress, that has been signed by
    the President, and that I believe today makes the American
    people safer than they would otherwise be is a testament, Madam
    Chairman, to your leadership and to the commitment of all
    Members of the Committee to forget party labels and work
    together as Americans to secure our future against a brutal and
    inhumane enemy.
        I thank the Chairman.
        Senator Collins. Thank you, Senator.
        Senator Domenici has asked to give his statement next
    because he has to leave for another committee that he is
    chairing.
        Senator Domenici.

                 OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DOMENICI

        Senator Domenici. Let me thank you so much and say to the
    other Members, I will take little time. I have to chair the
    Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing wherein we have
    the company involved with the Alaskan spill. That is the issue
    before that committee, and I am chairing it, so I would ask
    that my statement be made a part of the record, Madam Chairman.
        Chairman Collins. Without objection, all statements will
    be.
        Senator Domenici. I would just say to the Secretary, I
    commend you for the work you are doing, and my observation as
    one who works here on the Committee and observes from the
    outside is that things are beginning to gel in the way you
    would like to see them. It is a very difficult job that you
    have taken on, and I know it is not always successful day by
    day. But I want you to know that I always thought you had the
    potential to be a great leader in this job. And I want to
    continue to give you the opportunity to prove what you can do.
        I also look forward to seeing you more and more on the
    science and research part of your endeavor because that is
    absolutely paramount. Some things are happening with our
    National Laboratories that seem to me to bode well for our
    future and send some terribly tough signals to our opposition
    that we are up to finding out what they are doing and we are
    doing something about it. For this I thank you and congratulate
    you.
        I think I will see you in my State at a dedication of an
    R&D facility, which does make me think very highly about your
    capabilities in the future. Thank you.
        Thank you to all of the Senators.
        [The prepared statement of Senator Domenici follows:]

                     PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR DOMENICI

        Madam Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing to discuss the
    Department of Homeland Security's future. Thank you also, Secretary
    Chertoff, for spending time with us today to discuss the future of
    homeland security.
        I want to start by thanking you for taking on the difficult task of
    overseeing the Department of Homeland Security. Your Department is
    young and is tasked with the difficult job of securing our Nation. I
    appreciate your service to America, I have enjoyed working with you
    over the past couple of years, and I look forward to working with you
    in the future.
        It is appropriate that we meet today to discuss homeland security
    since yesterday was the fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001. That
    was a horrific day, and the images and shock are still with us. But I
    believe that since then, we have made significant progress in the
    Global War on Terror and in our efforts to secure America.
        I look forward to hearing about where we have come since
    establishing the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 and where we
    are going in the coming years. I believe our future will include new
    research and development efforts; collaboration with universities,
    industry and national labs; secure borders and ports of entry; and
    state-of-the-art security technologies. This isn't an exhaustive list
    of our homeland security needs, and I look forward to hearing from our
    witnesses on the future of homeland security.
        Thank you, Madam Chairman.

        Senator Collins. Senator Levin.

                   OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LEVIN

        Senator Levin. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and thank you for
    calling this hearing and for the way that you and Senator
    Lieberman have managed to run this Committee on such a
    wonderfully bipartisan and effective basis.
        Immediately following the September 11 attacks, America
    came together as one Nation with one purpose: Protecting our
    country from those who would do us harm. Since that time, we
    have made important progress, such as hardening airplane
    cockpits and federalizing aviation security. Yet 5 years later,
    there are still gaps in our homeland security system that need
    to be closed. The focus of this hearing is to look forward and
    to ask what still needs to be done.
        First, if we are serious about homeland security, we need
    to adequately fund it. Year after year, we have seen
    significant cuts to our vital first responder grant programs.
    One of the areas where we have a significant shortfall is in
    the area of interoperable communications equipment. In the
    Senate, we have voted to establish demonstration projects for
    interoperable communications along Northern and Southern
    borders, but those projects have been dropped in conference. We
    still do not have a dedicated source of funding for
    interoperable communications equipment within the Department of
    Homeland Security, and presumably that means that the
    Administration does not believe that interoperable
    communications are important enough to deserve dedicated
    funding.
        Another major shortfall is in the area of reducing the
    threat of proliferation of fissile materials. The 9/11
    Commission found that the ``greatest danger of another
    catastrophic attack in the United States will materialize if
    the world's most dangerous terrorists acquire the world's most
    dangerous weapons.'' The report went on to state that al-Qaeda
    has tried to acquire or make weapons of mass destruction for at
    least 10 years and that there is no doubt that the United
    States would be a prime target. Preventing the proliferation of
    these weapons warrants a maximum effort by strengthening
    counterproliferation efforts, expanding the Proliferation
    Security Initiative, and supporting the Cooperative Threat
    Reduction Program.
        In the December 2005 follow-up report card, the 9/11
    Commission gave the Administration a grade of D on this
    recommendation, saying that, ``Countering the greatest threat
    to America's security is still not the top national security
    priority of the President and the Congress.''
        We also have great needs, I believe, particular needs in
    the area of developing a consolidated watchlist of persons that
    are suspected of terrorism, where terrorists are identified and
    stopped from entering into the country and moving around our
    country. Five years after the September 11 attack, we still
    have a long way to go, according to the Government
    Accountability Office, in compiling a watchlist that is
    complete, accurate, and available to law enforcement.
        I want to thank Secretary Chertoff for joining us today
    and, again, thank you, Madam Chairman, and our Ranking Member,
    Senator Lieberman. And I hope we can continue to all work
    together to accomplish these important objectives.
        Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Coleman.

                  OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLEMAN

        Senator Coleman. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I agree with
    your comment and that of the Ranking Member that we are safer
    today, but we do live in a much more dangerous world. I just
    want to thank you for this hearing, looking forward 5 years.
    All too often in the Senate, we have focused on yesterday,
    today, and if we are lucky, maybe tomorrow. This is important
    enough to look down to the future.
        A principal responsibility of government, Madam Chairman,
    as you noted, is protecting the citizens and providing for the
    national security. And in this post-September 11 world, Mr.
    Secretary, that is homeland security, your responsibility,
    which is right at the very center. In the past, we suffered
    from a failure of imagination. Today we have to worry about the
    failure to deal with the unimaginable. We have to imagine the
    unimaginable and then figure out a way to deal with it, and
    that is an extraordinary challenge, and the challenges are
    broad--border security, port security, chemical security, just
    to name a few.
        We also must rebuild the confidence of the Department of
    Homeland Security and its ability to respond to disasters both
    natural and manmade. We cannot ignore that and must ensure that
    bureaucracy and red tape don't hinder the ability to integrate
    new technologies. There is great hope with new technologies.
    Senator Domenici talked about that. It is also a key to
    success.
        Finally, we need to remember the lessons of September 11,
    2001, and the decade that preceded it. As the Chairman has
    noted, we cannot rest, we cannot let our guard down, and we
    cannot relent in fighting this battle that history will reveal
    as the battle of our lifetime. And I am confident that with
    strong leadership and a bipartisan effort we will succeed.
        Thank you, Madam Chairman, and I would ask that my full
    statement be entered into the record.
        Chairman Collins. Without objection.
        [The prepared statement of Senator Coleman follows:]

                     PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLEMAN

        I want to thank our distinguished Chairman and Ranking Member for
    holding this important hearing.
        We have the opportunity today to make an assessment of where we
    are, and equally important, where we are going in terms of homeland
    security over the next 5 years. The facts are that today America is
    safer than it was on September 11, 2001. It is a major accomplishment
    that there have not been any successful terrorist attacks on American
    soil in 5 years and this is a testament to the great lengths we have
    gone to protect our citizens both at home and abroad. It is also a
    testament to the strength, vigilance and awareness of the American
    people.
        Additionally, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security
    and the revamping of our intelligence community operations have
    institutionalized and improved the practice of defending our Nation. As
    a result, 15 major terrorist plots against America have been thwarted--
    and those are just the ones that have been disclosed. Countless more
    undisclosed plots are likely to have been thwarted as well. However, we
    face an enemy that is constantly adapting and changing and that only
    has to be right once where we have to get it right 100 percent of the
    time.
        With this in mind, a strategic vision for the future must have some
    built-in flexibility so that we have the ability to change as our
    enemies do. There are certainly many challenges that lie ahead
    including border security, port security and chemical security, just to
    name a few. We must also rebuild the confidence of the American people
    in the Department of Homeland Security's ability to respond to
    disasters both natural and man-made. Ensuring that bureaucracy and red
    tape do not hinder the Department's ability to integrate new
    technologies and ideas to address these issues will be a key to future
    success. Finally, we need to remember the lessons of September 11 and
    the decade that preceded it. We cannot rest. We cannot let our guard
    down. And we cannot relent in fighting this battle that history will
    reveal as the battle of our lifetime.
        I look forward to hearing the testimony from our witnesses today
    and again want to thank the Chairman and Ranking Member for their
    leadership on this issue.

        Senator Collins. Senator Dayton.

                  OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DAYTON

        Senator Dayton. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
        Mr. Secretary, when Minnesotans ask me, as they often do,
    whether we are safer since September 11, I reply that we are
    because of the constant vigilance of yourself and thousands of
    other dedicated men and women in your agency and our Armed
    Services, our intelligence agencies, and so many others. And I
    salute you and all of them for your dedicated efforts.
        That being said, we must continually ask ourselves what can
    we do better, and in August, just last month, I toured parts of
    our Southern border with Mexico in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona,
    and our Northern border with Canada along northern Minnesota.
    On our Southern border, I met with many experienced and
    sophisticated Federal agencies who, frankly, should be heard by
    this Committee and by Congress regarding what is effective and
    what is not for our border security. However, my eyewitness
    experience supports Senator Lieberman's statement that we are
    underfunding our border security efforts.
        For example, in El Paso, Texas, the day before my early
    morning visit that one facility apprehended and detained 269
    people attempting to illegally enter our country. There is a
    fence, which is one of the important barriers to that illegal
    entry, yet still within the city limits that fence inexplicably
    just stops. The reason, I was told, is because the funding had
    run out.
        Along our Northern border, the Federal homeland security
    presence is far more limited, and in long stretches of that
    5,525-mile border, border security is really non-existent.
    Despite increased funding by Congress and a mandate to increase
    the number of Northern border agents during the past 2 years,
    that number of border control agents has reportedly declined
    from 996 to 950. At any one time, only 250 agents are actively
    guarding our Northern border, and local law enforcement
    officials, whose first responder funding in Minnesota has been
    cut to only 40 percent of what it was a year ago, tell me that
    the Federal presence, while the people individually are very
    dedicated, is simply not sufficient to meet the demands. The
    illegal trafficking of people, of narcotics, of, God forbid,
    terrorists, while not as strong a likelihood as along our
    Southern border, and certainly the volume of what they call
    ``economic illegal immigration,'' those coming across the
    country for job purposes, is far less, still the threat is very
    real. And I would commend to you, as others have said, the need
    to increase that Northern border security.
        I would ask respectfully that you and the President--and I
    have written the President, asking for your support of an
    amendment which I had introduced, which was adopted by the
    Senate, which would increase the funding by $44 million for
    Northern border security agents, increase the number by 236,
    which would be a 24-percent increase. That is in the fiscal
    year 2007 Senate appropriations bill that is going to
    conference. I would again respectfully ask for your support and
    that of the Administration. That would be an important first
    step to improving our Northern border security.
        Thank you, Madam Chairman.
        Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Warner.

                  OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR WARNER

        Senator Warner. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. I will
    put my statement into the record, but I do want to join in a
    most sincere way in commending you and Senator Lieberman for
    the strong leadership that you have given this Committee on a
    most critical issue. I do not know of anything more critical
    than our own homeland security. Both of you are members of the
    Armed Services Committee, so you bring that perspective to bear
    on this.
        I also want to commend the President for the manner in
    which he led the Nation yesterday in, I think, very respectful
    ceremonies honoring those who lost their lives and reminding
    America about the enemy we face today is unlike any enemy that
    we have ever faced in the history of this Nation in terms of
    the breadth and the depth and the blind conviction that they
    have to bring destruction to those people in the free nations
    of the world, and most particularly, I suppose, us.
        But I would say also, Secretary Chertoff, you have shown
    strong leadership. You have weathered the storms, and your
    strength of leadership seems to grow daily. And I commend you
    for the manner in which you found time during the summer period
    to travel extensively across this Nation, indeed to my State.
    And I watched you firsthand dealing with those first
    responders, be they policemen or firemen or other people in the
    communities, and struggle with the tough questions put down at
    the grass-roots level. You had the answers. You gave the
    assurances. But you were realistic and honest in your approach
    about how funds are not unlimited, but you are doing the best
    you can to distribute them. So carry on.
        But I would come back to a caution by my good friend,
    Senator Levin. Both of us are concerned about the progress made
    in establishing more robust interoperability of communications,
    and I would hope in your remarks today you would address that.
        I thank the Chairman.
        [The prepared statement of Senator Warner follows:]
                      PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR WARNER
        Madam Chairman, thank you for calling this hearing today and I wish
    to thank our witnesses for their efforts over the past 5 years to help
    make our Nation a more secure place. Much has been done to date at the
    local, State, and Federal levels. The formation of the Department of
    Homeland Security combined dozens of Federal agencies; created new
    agencies and directorates; and established a comprehensive Federal
    mission for the new paradigm of security risks our Nation now faces.
    The 185,000 public servants of DHS are dedicated to their mission to
    protect this country, its people, and its ideals from those who mean to
    do harm.
        We have taken significant steps in critical infrastructure
    protection; enhanced transportation security on land, sea, and air;
    strengthened security at the Nation's borders and ports; reformed our
    intelligence capabilities; and established a stronger coordination of
    effort among the various levels of government.
        But perhaps the single most important change in this country over
    the past 5 years is one that each individual American has experienced
    in his or her heart and mind. It is simply the realization that we are
    not safe from those who mean to do us harm and that we can never again
    rest from the charge to protect our home. Today's enemy is different
    than those of the past. No longer are we dealing with actual
    governments as the primary threat--we must now defend our own cities
    from within.
        I joined this Committee in the 109th Congress because I fervently
    believe that this is a critical time in American history not unlike
    when the branches of the military were combined into one Department of
    Defense in the 1940's. We continue to build the Department of Homeland
    Security to lead efforts to protect the Nation and under the leadership
    of former Secretary Ridge and now Secretary Chertoff we are in good
    hands.
        Five years ago I said that ``our people have suffered in a single
    day our greatest tragedy--yet history will show this to be America's
    finest hour.'' I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today and
    continuing the work before this Committee to enhance the safety and
    security of our entire Nation.

        Senator Collins. Senator Voinovich.

                 OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH

        Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
        First of all, I would like to say this: The question I am
    constantly asked when I am at home in Ohio is, ``With such
    partisanship in Washington, how can Congress accomplish
    anything?'' And I point to this Committee and several other
    committees where bipartisanship is well and alive. And I
    commend you and Senator Lieberman for the terrific leadership
    that you have provided to this Committee. The American people
    should be assured that we are working together on the very
    important homeland security challenges that face our Nation.
        Second, yesterday, I think standing on the steps of the
    Capitol in memory of September 11, 2001, vividly reminded me of
    the serious threats we are facing in the global war on terror,
    and I think most people thank God that we have not had any
    terrorist event here in this country for the last 5 years.
        I am pleased also that the President has finally leveled
    with the American people and indicated that we are at war.
    Osama bin Laden has declared war on us. Our freedom and way of
    life is under attack by Islamic extremists who have distorted
    the Islamic faith and launched jihad against the United States
    and anyone who shares our values. And the American people
    should understand that this is the situation. I sometimes refer
    to it as the ``Fourth World War.'' In other words, this
    struggle is not something that is going to be over by snapping
    our fingers. It is going to be with us now for a long time. I
    would hope that maybe my grandchildren will have this off their
    back, but it is going to take a lot of hard work.
        Our success in the war on terror has much to do with the
    Homeland Security Department, which has been in existence now
    for over 3 years. I think people should understand that it is
    the most formidable management challenge ever undertaken in the
    United States of America: Merging 180,000 people and 22
    disparate departments and programs, and it is not going to be a
    lay-up shot to integrate this new Department. And it is not
    going to be fully accomplished, Secretary Chertoff, during your
    term. The management challenges will continue for quite some
    time, and it will take significant effort and focus to ensure
    that the Department becomes all that we want it to be.
        We must also understand that we cannot guard against every
    security threat imaginable. We need to recognize that we have
    astronomical national debt, and it is the highest percentage of
    our GDP in a long time. We are neglecting the nondefense
    discretionary part of our Federal budget. We have to look at
    the big picture and prioritize based on our limited fiscal
    resources. I don't know how we can continue overspending in
    this country.
        From a fiscal point of view, we simply cannot afford to
    accomplish every objective Congress is seeking to achieve. We
    need more budgetary resources, perhaps even a temporary
    increase in our taxes so that we can afford to address our
    enormous national debt, improve our homeland security
    capabilities, and also continue fighting the wars in
    Afghanistan and Iraq. Secretary Chertoff, constantly Congress
    is telling you, do this, do that. You only have so much money,
    and we need to consider the big picture, the whole budgetary
    perspective, and better prioritize our homeland security
    spending according to risk.
        Secretary Chertoff, today I am also hoping that we can hear
    from you about your strategic plan for the Department. Where
    are you now? Where are you going? How long is it going to take?
    And how can we help you to better do the job that we have asked
    you to do?
        [The prepared statement of Senator Voinovich follows:]

                    PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH

       Yesterday, our Nation observed the fifth anniversary of the tragic
    and violent terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The brutal images
    of September 11 will forever be burned into the minds of the American
    people. My own memories of visiting the Pentagon and being at Ground
    Zero shortly after the attacks will never fade.
        Each anniversary of September 11 renews our national resolve to
    fight the War on Terrorism at home and abroad. The American public
    should be reassured that our Nation is undoubtedly safer, but we must
    remain vigilant, because Osama bin Laden has declared war on us. Our
    freedom and way of life is under attack by Islamic extremists who have
    hijacked the Islamic faith and launched a jihad against the United
    States, Israel, and anyone who shares our values.
        Madam Chairman, thank you for holding this important hearing today
    to evaluate the Federal Government's progress in securing the American
    homeland against future attacks. Five years after September 11, and
    more than 3 years after the creation of the Department of Homeland
    Security, it is appropriate for this Committee to take stock of our
    national homeland security policy and evaluate where we are and where
    we need to be.
        Integral to this discussion is a review of how the Department of
    Homeland Security is coming together as a cohesive entity. As my
    colleagues know, the creation of DHS in 2003 merged 180,000 employees
    from 22 disparate Federal agencies and represented the single largest
    restructuring of the Federal Government since the creation of the
    Department of Defense in 1947.
        Building stronger management capabilities is vital to the success
    of the Department. In order to effectively accomplish its complex
    mission of securing the Nation from terrorism and natural hazards, DHS
    must have an effective management structure with experienced leaders
    who are capable of integrating the many separate departmental
    components and ensuring effective operations and planning.
        I hope today's hearing will also include a thoughtful examination
    of ways we can improve our risk management capabilities. We all agree
    that it is imperative to secure our homeland against terrorism and
    strengthen our response capabilities, but we must also acknowledge that
    this country has finite budgetary resources.
        It is simply not possible for us to guard against every theat--and
    frankly, if we tried to, we would bankrupt our Nation in the process.
    As our national homeland security policy matures, we have to use our
    common sense and begin to prioritize by allocating our limited
    resources based upon risk assessments.
        Secretary Chertoff, thank you for being here and for your service
    to our Nation. I look forward to your testimony regarding the progress
    DHS has made and what I hope will be a candid discussion of the
    challenges the Department continues to face. Thank you, Madam Chairman.

        Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Bennett.

                  OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BENNETT

        Senator Bennett. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
        The war with terrorists did not begin on September 11,
    2001. It was going well before that, just as the Second World
    War did not begin on December 7, 1941. Those were the two dates
    on which Americans became aware of the fact that war was going
    on in the world around them and the two dates on which it came
    home to Americans in a very terrible and terrifying kind of
    way.
        During and after the Second World War, we reorganized our
    resources and our government to deal with the threat that we
    discovered, and we are doing the same thing now, reorganizing
    our government to deal with the threat that we have discovered.
    It was not easy after December 7, 1941, and it has not been
    easy after September 11, 2001, but it is a task that we must be
    about. And, Madam Chairman, you and Senator Lieberman have led
    the way in this Committee.
        Secretary Chertoff, you have the burden of presiding over
    one of the most difficult parts of this reorganization around
    the new realities in the world. You are handling it in a very
    capable fashion, and we appreciate your service. We appreciate
    your dedication to this task and look forward to hearing what
    you have to say.
        Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Carper.

                  OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER

        Senator Carper. Thanks, Madam Chairman. Mr. Secretary, good
    morning.
        I want to start off by thanking Madam Chairman and our
    Ranking Member for holding this hearing this morning. It is
    certainly a timely one.
        Five years ago yesterday, as we all know, the prevention of
    future terrorist attacks like the one that occurred for all
    intents and purposes became the Federal Government's, our
    government's top priority. And it became a top priority for
    State and local governments like my own State of Delaware. And
    as we reflected yesterday on the tragedy that struck us 5 years
    ago, I think it is good that we are also taking the time here
    today to examine the progress that we have made and, in some
    cases, the lack of progress that we have made since that tragic
    day occurred.
        There has been progress in a number of areas. As I travel
    in airplanes, I am reminded, especially coming back from
    Manchester, England, a couple of weeks ago, of our ability to
    respond quickly and to try to tamp down threats that would harm
    many people at once.
        As I visit nuclear power plants--and I have visited several
    around the country--I am reminded I think we are doing a better
    job there in making them more secure.
        As we look at our ports, I think we have done some good. I
    think we can do more in the legislation that we take up today,
    that our Chairman and Ranking Member and Senator Murray have
    worked a whole lot on, but there is a good deal more that we
    can do there. There is a good deal more that we can do with
    respect to rail and transit security, and we have an
    opportunity to consider that in the context of the port
    security bill.
        This Committee has worked long and hard on trying to make
    chemical plants more secure, and I do not know that we will
    have a chance to take that bill up this week, but we need to
    get the bill reported out of Committee almost unanimously and
    get it before the full Senate.
        I look forward to hearing from you, Mr. Chertoff--I always
    do, Mr. Secretary--and from our other witnesses today about the
    successes of the last 5 years but, more importantly, about the
    work that you and your Department need to do and what we need
    to do to support those efforts, and hopefully to improve them.
        For a variety of reasons, whether it be the war in Iraq or
    the continuing standoff between Israel and the Palestinians or
    any number of other grievances, the number of those who wish to
    do us harm is likely growing, and it is important that we get
    this right.
        Thank you.
        Chairman Collins. Thank you.
        We are now very pleased to welcome our first witness today,
    the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael
    Chertoff.

        TESTIMONY OF HON. MICHAEL CHERTOFF,\1\ SECRETARY, U.S.
                    DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

        Secretary Chertoff. Chairman Collins, Ranking Member
    Lieberman, Members of the Committee, it is a real pleasure for
    me to appear before you today, the day after the fifth
    anniversary of September 11, 2001, to talk about where we have
    come over the last 5 years and, perhaps even more important,
    what our vision is and our strategy is for the next 5 years.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The prepared statement of Secretary Chertoff appears in the
    Appendix on page 59.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Every time we have a ceremony recalling the events of
    September 11, 2001, I am reminded of some new way in which it
    touched each of us, not only in our professional capacities,
    but in our personal capacities.
        Yesterday, as part of my commemoration of September 11, I
    was in Bayonne, New Jersey, and present at the unveiling of the
    sculpture given by the Russian people to commemorate the event.
    I was with Senator Lautenberg from the Committee and former
    President Clinton and a number of other people. And as we laid
    the flowers down at the base of the monument at the conclusion
    of the ceremony, I found the name of a college classmate whose
    name I had never seen on the rolls of the lost of September 11.
    And it was a reminder of the fact that the pain of September 11
    continues to touch us even 5 years after the event.
        But it is also an opportunity to renew our dedication and
    our unity of purpose. I agree with what everybody here has
    said. The area of homeland security is one that stands above
    the normal division of differences that sometimes characterizes
    what goes on in our political system. It has always been a
    pleasure for me to work with this Committee because, not only
    as a group but individually, you have each afforded me wise,
    dispassionate counsel and always recall that whatever our
    disagreements, there is a far more central unity of vision that
    we all have about what we need to do. And so I am delighted to
    be able to appear at this very momentous time to recall where
    we have been and see where we are going.
        I would say there is one dynamic that is the most important
    in setting our strategy and our agenda going forward, and that
    is a recognition that we have to be realistic about what we
    expect and about what we do. We do have limits, and we do have
    choices to make, and it falls to me in my job most often to
    have to make a judgment about how to allocate priorities among
    those choices.
        Our limit is not only financial, although that is clearly a
    limit, and to understand that, one need look no further than
    bin Laden himself, who said soon after September 11 he wanted
    to bankrupt us. He understood that one tool he had in waging
    war against the United States was to drive us crazy into
    bankruptcy trying to defend ourselves against every conceivable
    threat.
        But, in addition, we have to bound ourselves with other
    limits. We do not want to break the very systems we are trying
    to protect. We do not want to destroy our way of life trying to
    save it. We do not want to undercut our economy trying to
    protect our economy. And we do not want to destroy our civil
    liberties and our freedoms in order to make ourselves safer. So
    it falls to us in all of these respects to seek balance and
    realism about what we can expect, what we promised the American
    people.
        Let me say that I have divided the task into five general
    buckets, and I will tell you very briefly--and I would ask that
    my full statement be made part of the record.
        Chairman Collins. Without objection.
        Secretary Chertoff [continuing]. Where we have gone and
    where we intend to go on each of these five buckets.
        The first of these is keeping bad people out of the
    country. This was a central recommendation of the 9/11
    Commission. The good news is we do have integrated terrorist
    watchlists which do enable us to identify the names of bad
    people who are trying to get into the country. We have also
    fully deployed our biometric US-VISIT Program, which captures
    two fingerprints from every non-American who enters the United
    States and allows us to check them against our databases. That
    has kept out a lot of bad people.
        Between our ports of entry, we have committed to doubling
    the number of Border Patrol by the end of 2008. We have
    committed to building additional fencing and additional
    tactical infrastructure. And we are within 2 weeks about to
    unroll a strategic technological initiative with respect to the
    border that will put sensors and unmanned aerial vehicles and
    other high-tech tools in place to leverage our capabilities and
    the hard work of our Border Patrol.
        We have more we can do. The great challenge, I think, for
    the next 5 years is not keeping out the known terrorist. It is
    keeping out the unknown terrorist, the unidentified terrorist.
    And we have two programs underway that will let us do that.
        The first is we need to be able to take passenger name
    record information, which is information that the airlines
    capture or travel agents capture, and we need to be able to run
    that against our databases, against telephone numbers and
    credit cards that we have already identified as connected to
    terrorist activity. As we sit here, we have the capability to
    do that. There is one restriction. The Europeans, up until
    recently, had restrained our ability to use the information we
    got from airlines flying from Europe to the United States by
    limiting the way we could apply that against our databases. We
    are now in a position where I think we will have an opportunity
    to talk to the Europeans about modifying those restrictions.
    Clearly, we need to respect the interest and privacy, but I can
    tell you from my personal experience after September 11, we
    used some of that very data to track down the connections of
    the 19 hijackers in the days immediately following September
    11. I was involved in doing that personally. And one of the
    lessons I learned was this: I would much rather track down the
    terrorists before the bombs hit than after the bombs hit. And
    we need to move forward with this.
        Second, we are going to start deploying this fall the
    capability to read 10 prints and not just two prints from
    foreigners entering the United States. The ability to go to a
    10-print system will give us a capability we have not had up to
    now, which is we can screen all of those prints against latent
    fingerprints picked up in the battlefields all over the world,
    in safe houses and off of bomb fragments. It will mean that
    once this is fully deployed, hopefully with the next couple of
    years, anybody who has ever been in a safe house or built a
    bomb is going to have to wonder whether we are going to catch
    them when they cross our border.
        The second area is screening cargo. Here again I am pleased
    to say that by the end of this year, we will have 80 percent of
    the containers that come into the United States going through
    radiation portal monitors, and by next year we are going to be
    at close to 100 percent.
        Our next vision is to take this overseas, and I know
    Senator Coleman had suggested I go to Hong Kong. I have looked
    at the process they have in place there, which is an integrated
    system for not only screening for radiation but putting
    containers through X-rays. And we are currently working very
    actively with a number of foreign ports to begin deploying a
    system like that over the next couple of years as well.
        The third area is infrastructure protection. I am pleased
    to say we have done a tremendous amount to improve aviation
    security, as underscored most recently by the events of last
    August. That includes, contrary to some misinformation that has
    been put out in the media, that we do have a unified watchlist,
    the no-fly list that captures all the people whose identities
    we know about that we want to keep off airplanes. But we also
    have more work to do with respect to other sectors of transit.
        I am pleased to say that next month, in October, I
    anticipate that the Department of Transportation and my
    Department will roll out additional and new regulatory measures
    that will strengthen our ability to control and protect
    hazardous inhalation materials that travel by rail. I can also
    say that we have done quite a bit to strengthen our screening
    of air cargo. One hundred percent of the packages that are
    presented to the airlines by individuals to be put in the cargo
    holds of passenger planes are now going to be screened through
    baggage explosive detecting equipment. And we are working with
    freight consolidators to increase the amount of screening we do
    of their freight as well as to insist that they have a trusted
    traveler program.
        The fourth bucket is information sharing. Under the
    leadership of the DNI, we have done a tremendous amount to
    improve the collection and sharing of intelligence. I agree
    with the observations made here, and I think to be made by the
    next panel, that we need now to work more closely with State
    and locals in opening up a broad channel of exchange of
    information. Ambassador McNamara, who is working for Ambassador
    Negroponte, has been working closely with my chief intelligence
    officer and the FBI to put such a model in place, and we are
    already beginning, by embedding our analysts into the field,
    working with local authorities in fusion centers from Los
    Angeles to New York, and that program I think has a great deal
    of hope and a great deal of promise in terms of our ability to
    build a degree of integration vertically that will match what
    we now have horizontally.
        Finally, let me talk a little bit about response, in
    particular, the question of interoperability. That, of course,
    was a central lesson of September 11. The good news is we
    actually now have technology that will permit first responders
    and people from different jurisdictions to talk with one
    another even though they operate radios on different
    frequencies. These devices are called ``gateways,'' and I have
    seen them operate, and they do, in fact, work. That is not to
    say that we do not want to progress to the next level of
    technology, which will be a broader ability to use
    interoperability with different kinds of data that will require
    us to make some tough decisions about how we use the next stage
    of digital communications equipment. But it also means that the
    real challenge now is a challenge of leadership. These agencies
    have to agree on common rules of the road about how they are
    going to talk to one another, what codes they are going to use
    to describe events, who is going to talk to whom, what is the
    language that is going to be used, and what are the rules of
    the road.
        This is not, frankly, a technology issue. This is an issue
    of having community leaders come to an agreement. Some
    communities have done it. We have a lot of interoperability in
    the National Capital Region. Los Angeles County has
    interoperability, and they have reached these agreements. Some
    communities have not done that yet, and we have to guide them
    in doing that, and we plan to be doing that this year.
        Let me conclude by identifying three areas where I think
    Congress can act this fall to dramatically enhance our ability
    to continue to build on the progress we have made.
        The first is in the area of chemical security. This
    Committee has done a lot of work on chemical security. It is an
    urgent issue. One of the great remaining threat vectors for
    this country is the possibility of somebody attacking our
    chemical infrastructure and creating an inhalation hazard. We
    partly regulate this now through our ability to regulate the
    ports and through the regulation that we are going to be
    putting out with respect to rail transit in the next month. But
    there remains a gap, and legislation that is currently in
    Congress that would address that gap is urgently needed. And I
    would really request that Congress act on it this month.
        Second is port security. I recognize there is legislation
    on the floor now. It would institutionalize and strengthen many
    of the measures we are currently taking. We have worked with
    this Committee on port security. We commend it for its work
    again. This would be a tremendous contribution to put into
    effect this month.
        And, finally, with respect to the area of immigration, we
    continue to believe it is important to have a comprehensive
    plan to address the issue of immigration if we are really going
    to solve the problem at the border.
        There are also some short-term things that can be done. We
    have recognized the Senate has enacted $1.8 billion in
    additional funding as part of the Department of Defense
    supplemental, which would be addressed to strengthening some of
    what we do in border enforcement. I have also urged again and
    again that Congress act to dissolve the Orantes injunction,
    which is hampering our ability to remove people from El
    Salvador based upon a court order that arises from a civil war
    that has long ended. Steps like these taking this forward would
    be of major assistance to us in accomplishing the ambitious
    but, nevertheless, achievable goals that we have set for
    ourselves.
        Chairman Collins. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for an
    excellent statement.
        You emphasized in your statement the actions that you have
    taken or will be taking to strengthen border security, which is
    certainly a goal that I share. But since September 11, the
    majority of terrorist attacks overseas have been executed by
    homegrown terrorists. In fact, as Richard Falkenrath will point
    out on our next panel, ``Since September 11, 2001, most
    terrorists plots and attacks perpetrated worldwide have been
    conceived, planned, and executed by individuals who are part of
    the local population and who have had only limited, if any,
    transnational linkages to terrorist organizations abroad.''
        The NYPD as well as the L.A. Sheriff's Department have gone
    to great lengths to establish and deploy counterterrorism units
    in order to protect their regions against the threat of
    homegrown terrorism. How much emphasis is the Department
    placing on this emerging threat?
        Secretary Chertoff. Chairman Collins, we are putting a lot
    of emphasis on that threat. We recognize, of course, that the
    high-consequence threat--the weapon of mass destruction--is
    still largely a threat that is international in character. But,
    nevertheless, as demonstrated by what happened in London in
    2005, the homegrown threat is serious. We are doing several
    things.
        First of all, we are working with communities like New York
    and Los Angeles to help them build fusion centers. We opened
    one in Los Angeles a few months ago, and that is a way of
    integrating local intelligence gathering with our Federal
    effort so that we can have a two-way flow of information.
        The second thing we are doing is we are particularly
    focused on prisons. I have met with corrections authorities in
    New York State and California, where we have, obviously,
    significant prison populations, to make sure that our
    intelligence folks are working with their corrections folks at
    a State level as well as a Federal level to identify threats
    within the prison system, which history tells us is a fertile
    breeding ground for extreme groups. And, obviously, prisons are
    also populated by people who tend to have a willingness to
    commit acts of violence.
        The third thing is we are working hard to understand how it
    is that homegrown groups get radicalized and become
    operational. This country has a natural advantage in the way
    its society operates that has apparently made us much less
    susceptible than some countries in Western Europe. But it
    requires that we continue to pay attention to what causes
    radicalization, that we continue to embrace our Muslim co-
    citizens, we continue to emphasize the importance of not
    allowing ethnic prejudice to creep into what we do, so that we
    tamp down on any tendencies in our own society that might, in
    fact, replicate what we have sadly seen overseas.
        Chairman Collins. If you talk to State and local law
    enforcement officials, over and over again they point to the
    need for interoperable communications equipment. You have
    mentioned today that they, too, need to step up to the plate
    and establish common standards, but there is another obstacle,
    and that is funding. It is very expensive to establish
    interoperable communications, and yet many of us think that
    doing so should be a national priority.
        Some of us have suggested designating 25 percent of the
    homeland security grant money for interoperable communications
    equipment. Would the Department support dedicated funding to
    achieve a nationwide goal of interoperable communications so
    that our first responders will no longer be hampered in their
    ability to communicate during a disaster? This was one of the
    lessons from the attacks on our country 5 years ago, but it is
    a lesson that we saw once again in the response to Hurricane
    Katrina when within the various parishes in New Orleans the
    equipment was not compatible.
        Secretary Chertoff. Well, we have put hundreds of millions
    of dollars into grant programs for this kind of equipment, and
    in principle, I think, making sure that our homeland security
    funds are significantly dedicated to this kind of equipment is
    worthwhile.
        But I do have to say this: Often when I push on this issue,
    what I see is the problem is we cannot get agreement about what
    equipment to buy. And perhaps the answer is we will at some
    point have to simply mandate that this is the equipment you
    must buy and you are not going to get money for anything else.
        But I would hesitate to dedicate a huge amount of money up
    front without the input of the localities themselves to make a
    determination of what they feel they need and how far they have
    come and what the remaining gaps are.
        I will say that we are planning by the end of this year to
    have done a careful study with each of the communities of
    exactly what their shortfalls are with interoperability. And
    once we have that done, we may be able to give you a much more
    specific answer about what funding needs are required.
        Chairman Collins. But hasn't the Department been working on
    common standards? It is my understanding that the Federal
    Government has been working to develop consensus-based
    equipment standards for 15 years, and now that responsibility
    is hosted in DHS. So isn't an answer to that problem for the
    Department to conclude its work and issue the consensus-based
    standards?
        Secretary Chertoff. It is, and one thing we are going to do
    is, as we look at the new digital equipment, we are--and I have
    actually mandated that we do come up with a standard about the
    specifications on the digital equipment. One thing I want to
    make sure of when we do it is that we do not unintentionally
    lock in a particular proprietary form of communication that
    gives somebody a monopoly. So we may require that a condition
    of being designated is that you become open source and you make
    the proprietary technology available to others so we can have a
    competitive system.
        So I do agree that is something we need to get done. That
    is to get to the next level. What I do want to emphasize,
    though, is as we speak at this moment, there is bridging
    technology that achieves interoperability, and that is
    available. And if something were to happen tomorrow, that is
    out there. What needs to be done is those communities that have
    not finished making their arrangements have to reach an
    agreement.
        Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Lieberman.
        Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Madam Chairman. Thanks again,
    Secretary.
        You spoke at the outset of your statement, I think
    understandably, about the fact that we have to be realistic and
    we cannot do it all. And then you listed the five buckets, some
    of which imply an intensity of threat, seriousness of threat,
    and a lot of which understandably are priorities of methods for
    combating threats.
        So I wanted to ask you, as we look forward to the next 5
    years, if you could address the question of risk in a somewhat
    different manner, which is what you believe the biggest
    security risks are that America will face here at home, and
    let's focus for a moment at first on terrorism. Obviously, we
    face the continuing threat of a natural disaster like Hurricane
    Katrina, but I am thinking about the terrorists. As you order
    the ways in which terrorists may attempt to attack us, what is
    the priority list?
        Secretary Chertoff. Risk is composed of three things:
    Threat, vulnerability, and consequence. And, frankly, I put the
    most weight on consequence because threat and vulnerability
    change, consequence rarely does.
        The high-consequence event that is the biggest risk is a
    weapon of mass destruction. A nuclear bomb, of course, is at
    the end of the scale. A biological attack, even a serious
    radiological attack, would have very powerful effects on our
    entire country.
        The good news is at least in terms of a nuclear bomb, the
    likelihood of that happening, the threat in terms of
    capability, is low at this point. On the other hand, I have no
    reason to believe that threat is going to diminish over time,
    and I do have reason to believe it is going to increase over
    time.
        Senator Lieberman. So would you put that at the top of the
    list?
        Secretary Chertoff. I would put that at the top
    particularly because we need to be making the investments now
    against the day 5 years from now when that threat does become
    more likely.
        Senator Lieberman. And the investments are in prevention or
    response?
        Secretary Chertoff. Well, they have got to be in
    everything, but I have to say with a nuclear bomb, prevention
    has to come first because there is no way a response to a
    nuclear attack is going to be anything but inadequate in terms
    of the lives lost and the damage done.
        Senator Lieberman. Right. So let me ask you to take a
    moment and now relate your five buckets to what you have stated
    is the number one terrorist concern you would have, which is a
    WMD attack, particularly a nuclear attack. How do we prevent
    it?
        Secretary Chertoff. Screening bad things out. A critical
    element of what we have to do is keep out dangerous things from
    the country, and that is why I put radioactive material at the
    top of the list.
        Now, that has to begin, as Senator Levin said, overseas.
    The President signed an agreement with President Putin during
    the G-8 to be much more aggressive in terms of our overseas
    efforts to intercept this material.
        From the homeland standpoint, eventually we want to make
    sure that even before a container is loaded into a ship, we are
    screening it for the possibility of radioactive material. We
    also, by the way, will have by the end of next year radiation
    portal monitors at each of our land ports of entry.
        Senator Lieberman. Right.
        Secretary Chertoff. So that ring around the country is step
    one.
        Step two is what we call the ``Securing the Cities
    Initiative.'' We anticipate over the next 2 years putting money
    into and deploying radiation detection systems around at least
    one major city, the city of New York, and two other cities yet
    to be selected, the idea being that we will then build on that
    to have a network of radiation detection equipment inside the
    country itself. So that is one bucket.
        Another bucket is intelligence. The DNI, Ambassador
    Negroponte, is very focused on counterproliferation. Much of
    our collection activity is aimed at determining whether there
    are people out there building the capabilities to develop
    nuclear weapons.
        Senator Lieberman. Right.
        Secretary Chertoff. So enhancing that is a second issue.
        A third issue is response, and whether it be a radiological
    bomb or it be a biological attack, we have to have the
    capability to come up with an antidote or a vaccine. And the
    good news is with respect to many of these threats, we have the
    antidote. We also need to be able to distribute it, and much of
    the planning that we see, for example, in the avian flu area is
    also a way of planning for how we would do a mass distribution
    with respect to other kinds of biological vectors.
        I can also tell you that we have deployed in a significant
    number of cities biological detection equipment which goes off
    when there is an ambient indication of a biological measure
    because that enables us to respond more quickly.
        So those are three areas in which we respond to that high-
    consequence event.
        Senator Lieberman. How about the prevention of the movement
    of chemical and biological materials into the country in place
    for an attack? In other words, we are focused, understandably,
    on trying to detect the coming of a nuclear weapon. I
    understand this is different because you could put together
    chemical and biological means for an attack within the United
    States. What systems do we have to prevent that? Intelligence
    obviously is one. If we can know what is coming and break it
    before it gets here, that obviously is the best way to do it.
        Secretary Chertoff. I think the challenge with biological
    and chemical is that there is plenty of stuff inside the
    country. You do not need to bring it in.
        Senator Lieberman. Yes.
        Secretary Chertoff. And we saw in the Oklahoma City bombing
    that ammonium nitrate could be a powerful weapon.
        Now, we do regulate, particularly with respect to
    biological hazards, we do some regulation with respect to the
    way in which it is made available to the public. But there are
    some kinds of chemicals and some kinds of biological agents
    that occur in nature, and if someone had the wherewithal, they
    could simply take something that occurs on a farm, like anthrax
    on a farm or foot-and-mouth disease on a farm, and they could,
    if they had the know-how, culture it to make it weaponized.
        So there the focus has got to be--we cannot keep it out of
    the country. We have got to focus on intelligence. We have got
    to focus on rapid detection capability so that if there is an
    outbreak, we can move quickly in order to tamp it down. And
    that is an area, frankly, where our ability to distribute
    vaccines or antidotes quickly is really our principal method of
    defense.
        Senator Lieberman. OK. My time is up. So, clearly, the No.
    1 threat is a weapon of mass destruction.
        Secretary Chertoff. In terms of consequence.
        Senator Lieberman. Chemical, biological, or nuclear, in
    terms of consequences. I would like to come back, unless
    someone else asks you about it, how you rate--and I won't ask
    you for an answer now--the threat of an improvised explosive
    device here. Obviously, these are being used elsewhere around
    the world by terrorists.
        Thanks from your answer, and it guides us in prioritizing
    our own work with you to try to prevent and protect and respond
    to that number one concern that you have. Thank you.
        Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Coleman.
        Senator Coleman. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
        I want to follow up on Senator Lieberman's questioning
    about the No. 1 threat being a nuclear weapon, nuclear
    material, and the ability to bring it in through cargo, through
    our ports. I think we deal with about 11 million containers
    entering the country every year, and we have had discussions--
    and I appreciate your taking the personal effort, Mr.
    Secretary, to go to Hong Kong to take a look at that system.
        One of the nice things about this Committee with the
    leadership of the Chairman and the Ranking Member is I think we
    have done a pretty good job putting partisan politics aside and
    trying to figure out what is the best thing to do. And I am a
    bit concerned with the politicization of kind of the fear of
    something getting in there. The Washington Post has an
    editorial today where they talk about mandating 100 percent
    screening, and they use the phrase, ``The `inspect all
    containers' mantra is a red herring that exploits Americans'
    fears about what might slip through in order to score political
    points . . . ''
        Let me talk to you a little bit about that. The screening
    of nuclear radiation that you talk about, 100 percent, that is
    in our country, those are in our ports.
        Secretary Chertoff. Correct. And I want to be careful to
    use the word ``scanning'' because what we do is we put them
    through scanners, and that is in our ports.
        Senator Coleman. All right. But the ideal situation, of
    course, is to get them outside because clearly if a device
    comes in and it were to be in Long Beach, New York, or
    Savannah, wherever it is, New Jersey, it would have a
    devastating impact on not just people but commerce, and it
    would be very disruptive. So ideally we want to do the
    screening out, and then set up--we have our CSI, Container
    Security Initiative. We have the pilot project looking at the
    Hong Kong system. But Hong Kong, as you and I know, Mr.
    Secretary--I think it is two lanes out of 40 that does 100
    percent. And now there are proposals that say we need to do all
    cargo within 3 years or 4 years.
        Can you respond? Again, I want to push you on this really
    hard, but tell us what is it that we can do, and even on an
    accelerated pace, what can we accomplish in this area?
        Secretary Chertoff. I think, first of all, the biggest
    constraint--there are two constraints on our ability to operate
    overseas. One is, of course, there has to be enough physical
    room to put these devices in place without significantly
    slowing up the flow of the containers. And I think you are
    quite right, Senator, in pointing out that each port is going
    to be different, and their capacity to manage the throughput is
    going to depend on the nature of the port.
        The second issue, frankly, is the willingness of foreign
    governments to cooperate, which we do not control, because when
    containers go through the system that we are proposing to start
    to deploy, when they hit a red light, some of the containers
    have got to be pulled out and have got to be opened. You have
    got to inspect it. And the authority to do that lies with
    foreign governments. We work with them, but it is their
    authority that we use to open the containers.
        They rightly worry about the burden on their own customs
    officials in terms of whether they have the manpower and the
    capacity to do that. So I cannot tell you that within 3 or 4
    years we can fully deploy a system of having everything, every
    container overseas go through a dual scanning system before it
    gets on a ship because I cannot predict that foreign
    governments will agree, I cannot predict that every port is
    going to be configured in a way to allow that to happen. And I
    would hate to have Congress pass something that would suggest
    to the American people that there is a solution that is
    completely pie in the sky.
        Senator Coleman. But we can tell the American people that
    every single container--every single container--is undergoing a
    review process.
        Secretary Chertoff. That is correct. Every single container
    is screened in two ways.
        First of all, based on information that we obtain about the
    shipper, the track record, the destination, method of payment,
    and a host of other considerations, and then the high-risk
    containers are physically inspected or run through X-ray
    machines.
        Second, by the end of next year, all containers, once
    they--at least at the point they arrive at our ports, will be
    taken through radiation portal monitors before they leave the
    port. So while not a perfect defense, it is a very good
    defense.
        Senator Coleman. And I keep going back to the former mayor
    in me--and I think we have a number on this panel. There was
    not a partisan way to collect garbage, I just wanted to get it
    done. And I am not going to be satisfied--if foreign countries
    are not cooperating, then we need to do something about that.
    That is not an acceptable excuse for me. Then we need to say
    that they are going to have some consequences. But I just want
    to make sure that we do not get caught up and this become a
    political football. It is too important an issue. And we will
    push you, Mr. Secretary. We do want to see the results of the
    Hong Kong project. Clearly, one of the challenges of Hong Kong
    is that information right now is not integrated into the full
    system. So we have got a lot of data there, but it is not being
    used currently. And so the challenge first becomes to use it,
    to have it integrated into our system, and then to assure the
    American people that, yes, each and every container is being
    reviewed and that we are maximizing and pushing to the limit of
    making sure what we can physically look at without in the end
    doing what Osama bin Laden wanted to do, which is to destroy
    our economy.
        Thank you, Madam Chairman.
        Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Levin.
        Senator Levin. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
        I want to talk to you about the watchlist, Mr. Secretary.
    The Terrorist Screening Center was supposed to have developed a
    system through which screening agencies could directly access
    the database, but this has yet to be completed. That is what
    the GAO says. Is that correct?
        Secretary Chertoff. I can tell you what my understanding
    is. There is a no-fly list that is compiled from individual
    databases maintained by individual agencies, and that list is
    accessible as a single list or as a single database, and that
    is what keeps people off of airplanes.
        At the border, there are a number of different databases
    because different agencies keep information for different
    purposes, but it is possible to access them all immediately
    from the port of entry so that we are capable at our ports of
    entry of screening a list within a matter of moments for
    somebody coming----
        Senator Levin. How many lists are there?
        Secretary Chertoff. I don't know if I can give you an
    answer to that. Probably somewhere between half a dozen and 10,
    depending on how you want to characterize them.
        Senator Levin. Let's say a half a dozen. Why aren't they
    integrated into one watchlist?
        Secretary Chertoff. I think two reasons. First of all,
    there is actually no reason to make them a single list, and
    there are reasons not to make them a single list. The reason we
    do not need to make it a single list is in this day and age it
    is possible to check a name against four or five lists
    simultaneously, with very little loss of time. I mean, it is
    all done in a matter of seconds.
        The downside with merging them, as opposed to integrating
    them, is that they are held for different purposes. For
    example, the FBI has lists of people who are involved with
    criminal behavior or dangerous behavior, which includes
    American citizens. But that is not really of use to the Border
    Patrol in its entirety because we cannot keep American citizens
    out of the country. They have a right to come in. And, in fact,
    privacy advocates generally argue that unnecessarily merging
    lists into one actually raises the risk to privacy.
        Senator Levin. Can a local law enforcement person who
    arrests someone who wants to see if he is on any terrorist list
    access immediately all of the lists?
        Secretary Chertoff. We have now completed phase one of
    merging IDENT and IAFIS, which are the two fingerprint-based
    systems, our system and the FBI's system, and I believe in
    Boston and some other cities, we are now deploying that kind of
    inter----
        Senator Levin. But that local law enforcement person out
    there in most jurisdictions cannot right now access, after they
    arrest somebody, all of the terrorist watchlists?
        Secretary Chertoff. I think that is right. I think they can
    get the information that is pertinent to them through one of
    two portals--either the FBI portal or through this merged
    portal that we are beginning to deploy.
        Senator Levin. So that a law enforcement person who arrests
    somebody or is suspicious of someone can, through two portals,
    punch a button, get all the information that all the agencies
    have that would make this person a suspicious character----
        Secretary Chertoff. I don't know if I can make it ``punch a
    button.'' But in whatever way they access, for example, IAFIS,
    which is the Bureau list, they can access that, and through
    this new program, we are making it available now in some areas
    because we have now begun phase one of merging these two.
        Senator Levin. So that is not yet available in most place?
        Secretary Chertoff. It is not yet fully available, correct.
        Senator Levin. All right. Do we have all the resources to
    make it available?
        Secretary Chertoff. I think the issue is not a money issue.
    I think it is a systems issue, making sure that we can deploy
    it in a way that is not going to create false positives. I
    think we are going to watch phase one, and I think we are on
    track to completing the job in short order.
        Senator Levin. Because I think when you just testified that
    we have a unified watchlist and we have an integrated
    watchlist, it makes it sound a lot more advanced than it really
    is.
        Secretary Chertoff. Well, I want to be clear. I was
    particularly being--I want to focus on, first of all, the TSA
    no-fly list because there seemed--I was reading things in the
    paper today that were suggesting that we do not have a unified
    no-fly list, and I can tell you that is incorrect.
        Senator Levin. That is not what I was referring to, though.
    Let me ask quickly because I only have a minute and a half
    left. How many of the people who were arrested in Britain had
    visas to the United States?
        Secretary Chertoff. Britain does not--under our Visa Waiver
    Program, if you are coming as a tourist, you do not need to
    have a visa to come from the United Kingdom or a couple dozen
    other countries in Europe.
        Senator Levin. So that many of those people had tickets to
    come to the United States?
        Secretary Chertoff. If they were coming--yes, they had
    tickets--well, I would not say many had tickets, and I want to
    be careful about not saying things that are going to create a
    problem for the British case. I don't think they had tickets
    yet, but I think they could have acquired tickets and would not
    have needed visas if they were coming in, allegedly coming in
    as tourists.
        Senator Levin. Now, had the British that had been following
    some of those people for a long time notified us of that fact
    so that they would not get tickets to come to the United
    States?
        Secretary Chertoff. We were made aware in timely fashion of
    the identities of the people. We would have prevented them from
    getting on planes.
        Senator Levin. From getting tickets?
        Secretary Chertoff. I don't know if we would have stopped
    them getting tickets. They would not have gotten on airplanes.
        Senator Levin. All right. So that we have checked through
    all these people and we know that we would have stopped them
    from getting on airplanes?
        Secretary Chertoff. Yes, because we would have had their
    names.
        Senator Levin. We did have their names?
        Secretary Chertoff. Correct. Well, we had the names of many
    of them. I mean, there may have been some that turned up in the
    course of the investigation once the arrests started to get
    made.
        Senator Levin. No, but I mean before that part of the
    investigation----
        Secretary Chertoff. The people that they----
        Senator Levin [continuing]. Began, we had all the names
    that the British had.
        Secretary Chertoff. Correct.
        Senator Levin. OK.
        Secretary Chertoff. Yes.
        Senator Levin. Finally, what percentage of State or local
    first responders would you estimate now have truly
    interoperable communications equipment so that they can
    communicate with State, local, or Federal agencies? Just give
    us a rough perspective.
        Secretary Chertoff. I know the 10 largest cities through
    our Rapid Command Program have what we would call command-level
    interoperability, which means that the agencies and
    jurisdictions in the region can talk to one another at the
    command level.
        I cannot estimate for you in other parts of the country
    because I think a lot of it depends on whether they have
    purchased this gateway equipment, and a lot of it, frankly,
    depends on whether they have built the rules that will allow
    them to talk to one another.
        However, by the end of this year, we will complete a study
    and a survey of the 50 States and the 75 largest urban areas
    precisely to ask them to test what their interoperability is
    and then to come back and tell us what the gaps are.
        Senator Levin. Again, I share what others have said here
    with you that this is the greatest single complaint, I believe,
    that we get from local first responders and law enforcement
    people--the shortage of interoperable equipment. And it is not
    just because they have not worked out the ground rules with
    other jurisdictions. There are many cases that I know of where
    applications have been filed for funding where those ground
    rules have been agreed upon, and yet the funding has not been
    forthcoming. So I do not think that is an adequate response to
    a lack, an obvious lack of interoperable equipment where there
    is a good reason to have interoperable equipment and the ground
    rules have been worked out. And I hope you will pay some
    additional attention to that issue.
        Secretary Chertoff. I will. And when this survey is
    completed, if it turns out, for example, that you have a
    jurisdiction where they have the ground rules and they do not
    have the equipment, we have grant funding available, which we
    will be pleased to make available to get that equipment.
        Senator Levin. Well, it is inadequate, I can assure you.
    Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
        Chairman Collins. Senator Voinovich.
        Senator Voinovich. Yesterday I had a meeting with the
    Jewish community in Cleveland, and it brought home to me
    something that I have been concerned about for a long time, and
    that is the radicalization of our own Muslim population here in
    the United States.
        I just completed a book by Gilles Kepel called ``The War
    for Muslim Minds.'' We have got to recognize that this is a
    different war than we have had before. It has a lot to do with
    the minds of individuals and how do you deal with modernity and
    how do you make sure that you do not have homegrown situations.
        What I would like to know is: What is being done on the
    Federal level to develop the infrastructure of understanding
    and human relations in communities around the United States of
    America to get people together to talk to each other so that we
    do not end up with Muslim xenophobia and folks that heretofore
    have felt integrated in a society feeling that they are not
    part of our society? Kepel in his book says that he believes
    that one of the ways that we need to be successful in Western
    nations is considering how we deal with integrating Muslims
    into our societies. In some countries it has been very
    effective, in others it has not been so good. But what is going
    on at the Federal level? Mr. Secretary, whose job is that?
    Yours? Karen Hughes'? State Department's?
        Secretary Chertoff. Well, I think it began with the
    President saying shortly after September 11 that this was not
    an attack by Muslims and that we should not allow this to draw
    us into characterizing Muslims or people from certain parts of
    the world as being anti-American, that it was an attack by a
    number of ideologues who happened to use the language of Islam.
        It is a shared responsibility in this sense: I mean, we are
    doing a lot of work, some with the academic community, trying
    to understand the psychology of radicalization and trying to
    understand why it is, for example, that there are problems in
    Western Europe that we have not yet had, some of which flow
    from the nature of the societies over there. Part of it is
    simply getting out there and interacting. I mean, I have tried
    on a number of occasions to go out to the Muslim community or
    have them come meet with me to interact with them and speak
    with them. Part of it is recruiting and encouraging Muslim
    Americans to become part of doing public service and working in
    law enforcement and working in intelligence. And we have some
    of them.
        We all recognize that people of all ethnic groups can be
    involved in criminality or terrorism, and it does not condemn
    the ethnic group. What we have got to do is continue to build
    upon those positive aspects of our society that make people----
        Senator Voinovich. Well, there is certainly a Federal
    aspect to this, but I also think the infrastructure of
    understanding and human relations is largely built at the local
    level.
        Secretary Chertoff. It is community-based.
        Senator Voinovich. It is. When I was mayor of Cleveland, we
    had significant tension between our minority community and our
    police department. So we started a dialogue to bring people
    together to talk about it; to enhance communication and build
    ties. And I am really concerned that at the national level,
    there is not any real thought being given to how to work with
    maybe the National League of Cities or the U.S. Conference of
    Mayors to try to get the cities to start to think about how to
    bring people together on this issue. How do we reach out to the
    top Muslim leaders in the United States, identify who they are,
    begin to have a real dialogue with them, and also include the
    Jewish community?
        My other concern on an international level is the
    Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. For 4
    years, I have been trying to get them to make anti-Semitism and
    Muslim xenophobia priorities because that is the underpinning
    of many of the tensions in communities. And I think so often
    what we are doing is preventative, to make sure something does
    not happen. But I think outreach is equally important, and how
    successful we are going to be will depend upon how well we
    start to work at integrating our American Muslim community.
        Secretary Chertoff. Well, I agree with you. Certainly
    internationally, Under Secretary Hughes is very focused on
    this. I know the President is actually focused on this. And,
    domestically, as I say, as we do this research, I think it is a
    very good idea for us to get some of the perspective we
    accumulate out to the cities and the States through the various
    organizations like the NGA and the National League of Cities
    because, I agree, the front line on understanding does lie in
    the local community.
        Senator Voinovich. Well, I would like to work with you on
    that.
        The other thing, and this is a big issue, as you know, we
    have been monitoring DHS management in my Oversight of
    Government Management Subcommittee, and I want you to know that
    I am deeply concerned about the high level of staff turnover
    and vacancies at the Department. This is a particularly serious
    problem at the senior leadership levels. The Committee has been
    aware of vacancies at FEMA. We know about that, Madam Chairman.
    But there are also continued vacancies in the Transportation
    Security Agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs
    and Border Patrol, and the National Cybersecurity Division.
        What are you doing about filling those vacancies? Also, is
    there a long-term strategic management plan in place about what
    needs to be done in the agency? And how long is it going to
    take to get it done?
        Secretary Chertoff. Let me answer both parts of that. The
    issue with respect to turnover is twofold. It is not, by the
    way, restricted to DHS. I mean, the Bureau, the FBI, has had a
    significant amount of turnover in the counterterror area. And I
    will be blunt. It is a hard job. After 3 years, people get
    burned out. They get tired. And, frankly, there is not a lot of
    patting on the back, and that tends to drive people out of the
    agency, too.
        I wish I could hold these people--there are people--I mean,
    sometimes you want to see people go, but sometimes there are
    people you do not want to see go. But you do not have the
    ability, when people get really tired out, to look them in the
    eye and say, ``You have got to keep going.'' It is a real
    sacrifice for some of these jobs.
        We are working very hard to fill these jobs, and we have
    been successful in doing it. It is a cumbersome process. I have
    been particularly frustrated with the ability to fill the
    cybersecurity job. It is hard to compete with the private
    sector. I cannot pay nearly the amount of money you can make in
    Silicon Valley. On top of that, we have laborious and sometimes
    unpleasant background checks, requirements of financial
    divestiture that people sometimes finally say, ``I cannot be
    considered because I am going to be sacrificing the ability to
    put my kids through college.''
        So we have been very lucky in that the number of public-
    spirited people of top talent who we have gotten to join the
    agency during my tenure is extraordinary. We have had people
    like Charlie Allen and Kip Hawley and George Foresman. There
    are other people I would like to consider, but it is hard to
    recruit. We are continuing to work on that.
        On the larger management issue, we do have a strategy to
    implement this kind of a strategic plan for completing the
    integration, which involves not only merging the number of IT
    systems into a single system, finishing the job of having our
    financial systems reduced in number, empowering the chiefs of
    the various business lines to have more authority over their
    counterparts in the individual components, but also bringing a
    career path into fruition that, much as DOD does, actually
    rewards you for activities that are either joint or undertaken
    with other agencies and that has an educational process for the
    senior leadership that will emphasize that, like the Capstone
    or Pinnacle program at the Defense Department.
        I have asked my Deputy actually to work on this, and I am
    envisioning he may come sit with you and give you a little bit
    more granularity about that.
        Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
        Chairman Collins. Senator Dayton.
        Senator Dayton. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I would also
    like to join with others who have complimented you and the
    Ranking Member, Senator Lieberman, for your leadership on this
    and holding this very important hearing.
        Mr. Secretary, I need to, I guess, respectfully disagree
    with what I took to be your presumption that the American
    people are not willing to pay for or we have to posit a choice
    between bankruptcy and the maximum necessary homeland security.
    I think if you posit to the American people do you want realism
    as defined by, at least in Minnesota, a 60-percent reduction in
    funding for its homeland security plan from a year ago, people
    would say, I think almost overwhelmingly, if not unanimously,
    they do not want that kind of less-than-adequate funding. And
    it is hard to assess from the Legislative Branch what is
    sufficiency in funding. That is where we really have to defer
    to you. But I worry that the Office of Management and Budget is
    defining our funding commitment to homeland security rather
    than your or rather than what the imperative is.
        Again, having witnessed firsthand the last month, both the
    Southern border effort and certainly the Northern border, I
    think it is inadequate. I think while certainly progress has
    been made, that progress is insufficient to the risks involved.
    And, again, I think the American people expect from us--not
    perfection, that is impossible, but they expect from us that we
    are going to be doing everything that is feasible as rapidly as
    feasible in order to provide the maximum optimal homeland
    security; and if we are not doing that, I think we need to be
    candid with one another, you and Congress, and then with the
    American people, why it is we are not fiscally capable of
    undertaking that kind of priority.
        Secretary Chertoff. Well, I agree with you it has to be
    optimal, but I think there are several different realities we
    have to recognize. One is you could in theory spend a limitless
    amount of money on security. People can do that in their own
    home. I mean, I could redo my house and buy five locks and buy
    steel doors and buy expensive security systems with sensors.
    There is always more you could do. We all make judgments about
    what the optimal amount is.
        But it is not just a question of spending money. We cannot
    put into effect systems that destroy our ability to operate in
    our way of life. I mean, I could give you--a perfect example is
    the issue of getting on the airplane. Some people argue we
    should ban all hand luggage, walk on with nothing in your
    hands, not even a magazine. That would clearly increase
    security. There would be a high cost to people in doing that--
    not a monetary cost but a personal cost. Business travelers
    would find it very difficult. Mothers would find it difficult.
        So what we wind up doing is we wind up balancing. We wind
    up looking at what is the marginal additional benefit and what
    can we accomplish without requiring that sacrifice.
        We are going to have disagreements about that. Even those
    who are experts have disagreements. But I think the principle
    that there are limits and balance I think is when we disserve
    the American people if we don't emphasize that we are always
    facing choices.
        Senator Dayton. I respect that. I am glad you went to Hong
    Kong. I mean this sincerely. I would prefer you come to
    northern Minnesota and talk with especially the local law
    enforcement officials there and get their perception of what--I
    think the imbalance, at least as it exists up there, is
    decidedly on the side of lack of sufficiency rather than the
    excess, which I agree with you, more is never enough.
        Regarding the interoperability issue, and I am way beyond
    my limited expertise when you talk about something like
    gateways, but that is a problem, again, with the local
    officials in Minnesota. You talk about leadership. If there is
    an expertise that your agency possesses about how to define
    this--because I think it is critical, as you say, that people
    get on the same page before they are spending money to upgrade
    their equipment or buy new equipment and compound the problem
    rather than resolve it, whether there is some kind of national
    conference or State conferences that you could be part of--your
    agency be part of either convening or participating in, I
    certainly, again, would like to convene one of those in
    Minnesota because I think the local officials are starving for
    that kind of understanding, if they do not have it, if it
    exists out there, that expertise, they do not have it. And I
    think to communicate that now, as I say, before we are spending
    more money that is not going to resolve the problem or make it
    worse, it would really be imperative.
        Secretary Chertoff. Well, that is why we are doing this
    study with the States in the 75 large urban areas, precisely to
    pinpoint in a systematic way what the gaps are. And once we get
    that done by the end of the year, I think we can have a much
    more focused discussion with the States and localities about
    what it is they really need and what it is they have to do in
    order to get up to snuff.
        Senator Dayton. Well, I think the time, the urgency of that
    undertaking, if it needs to wait until the end of the year
    until the study is complete, but I hope the beginning of next
    year then your agency could provide that leadership and that
    expertise and get everybody as much as possible, at least show
    them what the page is. If they are not going to get on it, that
    is their responsibility, but at least give them that guidance.
        Thank you, Madam Chairman.
        Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Bennett.
        Senator Bennett. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
        Mr. Secretary, I have to say I am impressed at your
    presentation here this morning, the degree to which you have
    gotten your arms around the problems and catalogued them in a
    way that is very coherent and intelligent. And I come away from
    the hearing with a higher sense of confidence in the level of
    progress that has been made by the Department. We both
    understand it is not where it wants to be, where it needs to
    be, but frankly, in the period of your stewardship, it has
    moved farther than I might have anticipated that it would.
        Most of the concerns that I have had have been talked about
    by those who have questioned you before me, but I want to come
    back to Senator Voinovich's question and focus on one aspect,
    which you raised in your response to Senator Voinovich, and
    that is the Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity and
    Telecommunications. You may remember that I got quite exercised
    about that and urged you to move ahead and was delighted when
    it was created. Now it has been a year since that position was
    created, and it still has not been filled.
        And I hear what you said to Senator Voinovich about the
    difficulty of filling it, but I want to share with you my own
    experience when I have been to Silicon Valley, where the first
    question I was asked was, ``Why hasn't this position been
    filled?'' And my answer was not as completely sophisticated as
    yours, but it was basically the same answer: ``Well, Federal
    salaries compared to Silicon Valley salaries are so low that
    they are having a hard time attracting somebody.'' And I was
    told, ``Senator, we will give you a list of half a dozen people
    who are willing today to give up their Silicon Valley salaries
    to come into government service on a 1-year, 2-year kind of
    mission, if you will, to try to get that thing under control.''
        I don't know if you have been to Silicon Valley. They did
    not give me the list, so I have no names to share with you. But
    have you made that kind of an effort to say, ``All right, we
    understand that this is a fairly significant financial
    sacrifice on your part, but your country needs you and give us
    2 years, step aside from your more highly paid job, step aside
    from your career long enough to sacrifice for your country,''
    and gotten any kind of a response?
        Secretary Chertoff. I have been to Silicon Valley, Senator,
    and first of all, I want to say that I believe we will actually
    be in a position where the President will have somebody to
    nominate in the very near future. But I actually tried to do
    some of that and also reached out through people in the
    Department who have backgrounds working with people in the
    field. I want to be careful not to get specific about people in
    a way that would invade their privacy.
        I would say that it was a combination of challenges. It has
    really been probably the biggest personnel frustration I have
    had since taking this job because I have had extraordinary
    people coming to fill other jobs. This one, it has been a
    combination of not just the money, but many of the people with
    experience face conflict-of-interest issues because the
    technology they would have to pass upon would have been
    technology that they had something to do with, or they have
    divestiture issues, which I frankly--it is hard to argue to
    people--or it is one thing to give up your salary. It is
    another thing to get into a hefty divestiture, particularly if
    you are a comparatively young person. And some of them
    eventually just culturally were--took themselves out of the
    running. We had some false starts, I would say.
        I think we are at the point now where I am hopeful we will
    have this position filled in very short order, but I confess to
    you that filling this job has been really tough.
        Senator Bennett. I understand that, and it may be, Madam
    Chairman, Senator Lieberman, that Senator Voinovich with his
    interest on human capital, we consider amendments to the law
    that say for a specified period of time--that is, if you serve
    for a specific period rather than make a career, there can be a
    waiver for some of the other aspects that you have. In my
    position as Chairman of the Agriculture Subcommittee of
    Appropriations, we run into some of this same sort of thing
    with respect to the FDA because the rules are very firm that
    you cannot be an expert for the FDA if you have any connection
    with this, that, or the other pharmaceutical company. And we
    end up unable to draw on anybody who has any real expertise
    because everybody who has an expertise has someone who is
    willing to pay for it. And we take the automatic assumption
    that if someone on the outside is willing to pay for your
    expertise, you are prima facie corrupt and, therefore, cannot
    work for the government.
        Now, I do not believe that is true. This is as critical a
    position in Homeland Security, as I think Secretary Chertoff
    has made clear, as we can find, and perhaps we ought to
    consider in this area, and maybe some others, passing
    legislation that would say if they come in for a specific
    period of time, they are not going to be in a permanent
    situation, they ought to be allowed a waiver from some of these
    conflict-of-interest circumstances, as long as they are fully
    disclosed and everybody understands all of them, because
    failure to do that leaves us naked in an area that, if I were a
    terrorist, would be my first area of attack on the United
    States right now.
        I think we could have greater devastation shutting down
    some computers, hacking into the capacity--talk about
    interoperability of equipment. If you hack into the network
    that these people are using and shut the network down, the
    equipment could be the best in the world and it does not work.
    And having someone focusing on this with the kind of attention
    that it needs is very critical, and we have gone, frankly,
    longer than we should have to create the position, and now we
    have gone a year without anybody in the position. And I think
    it is something that Congress ought to look at because I
    believe the Secretary has laid out his challenge very
    dramatically to us here this morning.
        Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Lautenberg.

                OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LAUTENBERG

        Senator Lautenberg. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.
        Mr. Secretary, I commend you for the effort and the
    intelligence that you bring to this assignment. It is still
    such an incredibly complicated, gigantic thing that I think
    that despite your efforts and a lot of interest in what is
    taking place, there is still some exposure that we ought to try
    to deal with as quickly as we can.
        Do you believe that 100 percent inspection of cargo would
    be a worthwhile endeavor?
        Secretary Chertoff. I want to define three separate things:
    ``Screening,'' which means identifying through intelligence and
    information what is in the cargo, we do 100 percent.
    ``Scanning,'' running through radiation portal detection
    equipment, we will be close to 100 percent by the end of next
    year. ``Physical inspection''----
        Senator Lautenberg. It currently is 5 percent.
        Secretary Chertoff. No. Running through radiation----
        Senator Lautenberg. Scanning?
        Secretary Chertoff. Scanning through radiation portal
    monitors in our ports will be 80 percent by the end of the year
    and close to 100 percent by the end of next----
        Senator Lautenberg. In our ports. Are you talking about
    cargo containers coming here----
        Secretary Chertoff. Correct.
        Senator Lautenberg [continuing]. Will have already been
    scanned----
        Secretary Chertoff. No. When they arrive, before they leave
    the port, they will have been scanned through radiation portal
    monitors, 80 percent will have been scanned--we will be at 80
    percent by the end of this year and close to 100 percent by the
    end of next year.
        Senator Lautenberg. This is after the container has been
    put down on American soil.
        Secretary Chertoff. Correct. That is correct.
        Senator Lautenberg. And if there is something in there that
    is designed to wreak havoc in our community, would it be a
    little late? It takes some time to get the cargo off the boat
    and----
        Secretary Chertoff. Well, the screening, in terms of
    intelligence-based screening, in terms of what is in the
    container, is something we do--actually a good deal of it we do
    overseas.
        Senator Lautenberg. Yes, I would like to pass that, if you
    do not mind, because screening to me is not really an effective
    way to do it, and I particularly want to focus on the scan
    side.
        Secretary Chertoff. The scanning, some of it we do
    overseas, but the vast majority of it is done once it has
    arrived here. That is why, as I said earlier, I went to Hong
    Kong, we looked at the system they have there, and we are----
        Senator Lautenberg. When did you go, Mr. Secretary?
        Secretary Chertoff. This spring. I think it was March or
    April.
        Senator Lautenberg. This year.
        Secretary Chertoff. And we are working with a number of
    foreign governments now to begin to deploy a system overseas
    that would scan containers before they actually get loaded on
    the ship. The constraint there, as I said earlier, will be
    twofold: It will be making sure that physically they are able
    to do it, given the configuration of the port; and, second, of
    course, the foreign government has to agree because it is their
    port.
        Senator Lautenberg. Do you believe that it can be done? The
    equipment that you saw in Hong Kong, does it work as it is
    suggested, a 2-minute slide-through and a relatively modest
    cost per container?
        Secretary Chertoff. I think it moves quickly, but there are
    some technological barriers. One of them is, depending on the
    nature of the port, sometimes there is background radiation
    that creates a problem. And the second thing is you have to
    have the ability, when you actually do get a red flag, to do a
    timely inspection. The constraint there is whether the foreign
    port has enough inspectors----
        Senator Lautenberg. I am going to interrupt you, as much as
    I hate to do it, because we were friends way before we got
    here. So would it make us safer in any measure, do you think,
    scanning the cargo?
        Secretary Chertoff. Overseas?
        Senator Lautenberg. Yes.
        Secretary Chertoff. Sure, I mean, if we can get it done in
    practical terms and if the foreign governments are supportive,
    that is where we would like to go.
        Senator Lautenberg. Would you think that it is an appealing
    idea--scanning each of 11 million cargo containers entering
    American ports each year is a recipe for crippling our
    manufacturing and commerce, wasting time and money that could
    be better used for other measures, adding little to our
    homeland security? Do you agree with that statement?
        Secretary Chertoff. I want to be real careful because
    people use words in different ways. I think the idea that you
    are going to physically inspect every container is not
    realistic and would, in fact, destroy the entirety of our
    maritime system. I think the ability----
        Senator Lautenberg. Would a nuclear explosion in a cargo
    container destroy our maritime system?
        Secretary Chertoff. It would, Senator, but you could also
    bring a nuclear container through a container on the back of a
    truck coming from Canada. So the logic----
        Senator Lautenberg. So what do we do? Do we just throw up
    our hands----
        Secretary Chertoff. No.
        Senator Lautenberg [continuing]. And say because that could
    happen, why bother?
        Secretary Chertoff. No. Again, what we try to do is we try
    to come up with a risk-based solution, one that raises a
    significant barrier to the risk, but not at the cost of
    destroying that which we are trying to protect.
        I think that a combination of what we are doing with
    radiation scanning here, what we are working with foreign
    governments to do overseas--and I would love to see us do this
    Hong Kong pilot, roll this out overseas, and we are going to be
    doing that over the next few years--I think that is all good,
    and that will really raise the barrier. I do think that 100
    percent physical opening is not realistic.
        Senator Lautenberg. Well, not opening, but, again,
    scanning, if you are looking for radiation, if you are looking
    for explosive materials, and that can be detected promptly.
        I read further from a press report that was handed out by
    this Committee during a press conference before in which it
    declares that 100 percent scanning of cargo containers is a red
    herring, and we say--it says, ``Even if manpower and equipment
    necessary for 100 percent scanning were available, the process
    would impose delays and create massive backlogs at ports.
    Scanning a shipping container takes several minutes. Analyzing
    the scan images can take up to 15 minutes.'' Is that correct?
        Secretary Chertoff. I think, Senator, it is going to depend
    a lot on a number of different things. It is going to depend on
    whether it is a transshipment port, which means you have
    containers coming from Port A to Port B, and then they have to
    be offloaded--that makes it much more difficult and time-
    consuming--as opposed to a port where the containers originate
    in the port and, therefore, they just move through in a single
    line. It depends on the physical structure of the port.
        Senator Lautenberg. But it does not necessarily--you are
    not suggesting that it does simply impose delays, create
    massive backlogs at ports? I mean, do you see our industry and
    our economic activity being destroyed by scanning, attempting
    to scan 100 percent of the cargo that comes in?
        Secretary Chertoff. I understand, Senator, you are trying
    to drive me to give you a yes or no answer.
        Senator Lautenberg. Yes, I would like that.
        Secretary Chertoff. If I am going to be accurate, I cannot
    do it. I have got to tell you it depends a lot on the
    individual port. In some ports, we are probably going to be
    able to do something like 100 percent scanning overseas, and we
    are working to see whether we can get some ports in the next
    couple of years to----
        Senator Lautenberg. I am going to be cut off here very
    soon, but there is a bill on the floor of the Senate in which I
    called for 100 percent scanning of containers and am attempting
    to get that done. The Committee has in turn decided that three
    pilot projects would be enough.
        Mr. Secretary, you and I were at a very important event
    yesterday with citizens typically from our State of New Jersey,
    your State and my State, 700 people died; there still is injury
    that affects the health and well-being of people. A firefighter
    died last week who tried to help in the rescue operation
    because of a lung disease that he contracted.
        So when we talk to those people, we make promises that we
    are going to do everything we can to try to keep them safe. And
    to me, when we start talking about pilots when, in fact, we
    have effective equipment--you say the equipment is effective in
    Hong Kong that you saw?
        Secretary Chertoff. I mean, the pilot was effective, but I
    have to qualify it. There were some constraints in the ability
    to use it in real life, and that is what I do not want to do is
    tell the American public we have got a magic bullet and the
    bullet turns out not to be effective. So, I mean--there is
    promise in----
        Senator Lautenberg. So the alternative to that is tell the
    public we are going to ask you to take some more risk while we
    pursue this debate.
        Secretary Chertoff. Senator, I can say this because we are
    old friends. I confront this argument a lot, and there is
    nothing I would like more than to be able to say, Wow, we have
    a way to make every port in the world scan all the radiation
    overseas. But I cannot do that with a straight face because not
    every port is physically constructed to be able to do that, and
    not every country is willing to do that, and I cannot make
    other countries do things.
        It is like I get in my car or I put my daughter in my car,
    I understand it is not 100 percent safe. If I wanted my
    daughter to be 100 percent safe, I would put a 5-mile-an-hour
    speed limit cap on the car, and it would not go more than 5
    miles an hour. But I do not do that because that is more safety
    than we can afford.
        All of us--we have 40,000 people die every year on the
    highway. That is a guaranteed 40,000 who die. We do not require
    that cars be manufactured to go no more than 5 miles an hour.
    So we do judge this----
        Senator Lautenberg. But we require them to be sober and we
    have red lights and we have other things.
        Secretary Chertoff. That is right.
        Senator Lautenberg. We have other protections, and if we--
    --
        Chairman Collins. The Senator's time has more than expired.
        Senator Lautenberg. And if we inspected one out of 20
    people going into the White House for tours or coming into this
    place, would we feel secure? I don't think so.
        Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.
        Chairman Collins. Senator Carper.
        Senator Carper. Thanks, Madam Chairman, and thank you very
    much for your testimony, Mr. Secretary, and for your responses
    to our questions.
        I want to come back to a point that you made with respect
    to chemical security, an issue that this Committee spent a
    whole lot of time on, and with the leadership of our Chairman
    and Ranking Member, we hammered out a consensus, at least on
    the surface, and reported a bill out--I don't know, was it
    unanimously or----
        Chairman Collins. Unanimously.
        Senator Carper. Unanimously, which was a minor miracle, as
    I recall, a month or two ago.
        Senator Lieberman. A major miracle.
        Senator Carper. There you go.
        There are those who--and I know Senator Lautenberg spent a
    lot of time on this. He cares a lot about this. Senator
    Voinovich, among others. Among the issues that I think keeps us
    apart is the issue of preemption, how we should deal with
    States that have turned to--in the absence of any kind of
    Federal standards or approach, what States would like to do,
    and a handful of States have already passed, I think,
    legislation or are considering it. Many others are debating it.
        What advice would you have? And apparently this is
    something you think is important, the Department, the
    Administration thinks is important. We have got, I think, one
    other Committee, the Environment Committee, on which I serve,
    and I understand there is some jurisdictional wrangling that is
    going on between our Committee and that committee that might
    keep us from taking up the legislation.
        And the other major issue--and correct me if I am wrong,
    Madam Chairman, Senator Lieberman, but I think the other major
    issue might be preemption. There are perhaps others. But a
    little bit of advice would be welcome as to your willingness--
    maybe just, first of all, your willingness as the Secretary to
    work with some of our colleagues on other committees to help
    remove a procedural road block to actually bring chemical
    security to the floor. We have talked about whether or not it
    would be offered as an amendment. The Republican Leader in the
    Senate does not want to waste a lot of time on legislation that
    would get bogged down in a food fight on chemical security. And
    we do not want to spend a whole lot of time on trying to figure
    out what is the right thing to do on preemption, when we are,
    Democrats and Republicans--it is not a partisan issue. It is
    just that people have different views.
        One, your thoughts on how hard you are willing to push to
    try to get something done on chemical security, and
    opportunities, as we do port security legislation this week,
    could be offered as an amendment. I think some folks are
    offering rail security, transit security, which I very much
    support. But rather than give a good testimony, what can you do
    to help us actually get something done this week?
        Secretary Chertoff. Well, I know that we have been working
    very closely with this Committee and other committees on both
    sides of the Capitol on this issue. My desire is to get a
    chemical security bill that gives us the authority to do what
    we are poised to do for that gap area that we do not have the
    authority. And I also do not want to let the perfect be the
    enemy of the good, so what I have told the lawyers who are
    deeply involved in working on this with people on the Hill is
    to focus on what are the essential issues.
        What I am totally unqualified to do is to opine on the ins
    and outs of the legislative process and to give advice as to
    how to best manage through the various committees and the
    various vehicles.
        Senator Carper. Could I interrupt for just a second? I
    spent 8 years as a governor, and I was not supposed to be an
    expert about that stuff either, but I was. And, frankly, you
    have been at this job--you are good. I have a lot of respect
    for you. But you need to have your antenna and your focus on
    that as well.
        When you sit there and you tell us chemical security is a
    major priority of this Department, if you are not prepared to
    weigh in here, roll up your sleeves, and try to get something
    done, it is not as helpful as it might otherwise be.
        Secretary Chertoff. Well, I think we have been doing that,
    and I think we have been up--and I have talked to not just the
    Chairman----
        Senator Carper. If I can interrupt again, Senator Voinovich
    has just come back in. We are talking about chemical security.
    We are talking about jurisdictional disputes here that might
    preclude our getting something done. We are talking about the
    issues of preemption, which I know you have a lot of interest
    in, too. And I am trying to enlist the Secretary's active
    participation in getting some progress here.
        Secretary Chertoff. As I say, I spoke to the Chairman, I
    spoke to the Ranking Member over the last several months, I
    spoke to members of the House leadership, leaders in the House,
    all trying to forge what I thought was a workable compromise
    which would get us the authority to do what we need to do by
    regulation.
        I guess my advice would be to keep it as simple as
    possible, that the more that is laid on something, my
    observation has been, the greater the likelihood it will not
    navigate through the very narrow channel which is available to
    move something like this on. And particularly because what we
    may get in the short term may not be the ideal solution, but it
    will get us a good deal of the way to an ideal solution.
        My weigh-in on this would be let's take the simplest
    vehicle possible, the one with the highest likelihood of
    success in both Houses, and let's try to get that done. And if
    it turns out that we want to add to it later or with the
    experience of time it is inadequate, that is fine. But we
    actually can do a lot now, even with the most bare bones type
    of thing which is out there, and so that is for someone who is
    in the Peanut Gallery, so to speak, that is my coaching.
        Senator Carper. Well, you are not in the Peanut Gallery. We
    are in the car, and these two folks are like--one is driving,
    and the other is riding shotgun, and the rest of the Committee
    is in the back seat. You are not far away.
        Secretary Chertoff. I am in the trunk? [Laughter.]
        Senator Carper. We are going to keep you out of that trunk.
        Chairman Collins. He wants you to be the engine.
        Senator Carper. That is good.
        Chairman Collins. Don't sound surprised.
        Senator Carper. The other thing I wanted to mention, if I
    can, Madam Chairman, to go back to rail security, there are a
    bunch of tunnels that go into New York City. Every day they
    carry, I am told, hundreds of thousands of people in and out of
    New York City. They are submerged. I don't know what body of
    water they go under--the Hudson River or the East River?
        Secretary Chertoff. Hudson River.
        Senator Carper. But they carry a lot of people. I am told
    that if there was an explosion on any one of those commuter
    trains or, for that matter, Amtrak trains, it could not only
    hurt a lot of people on the train, but could actually puncture
    a tunnel, cause flooding into the tunnel, flood that tunnel.
    The water could back into the Penn Station and flood the other
    tunnels as well and create great havoc and loss of life.
        When I look at threats on the rail transit side, that to me
    is like a preeminent threat. You have other threats that
    include tunnels under Washington, DC, and Baltimore. You have a
    lot of bridges between here and New York City and Boston that
    are important as well.
        When you consider transit and rail security in terms of
    actually prioritizing what needs to be done, how do you set
    those priorities? What are the priorities? And how are we doing
    a better job today in rail and transit security than we were a
    couple of years ago? And how do you see us doing even better in
    the next year or two?
        Secretary Chertoff. Well, actually, Senator, that is
    exactly what we do. We looked at exactly the issue you talked
    about. In fact, this past year--in the past, we had looked at
    the issue of rail transit and mass transit in terms of amount
    of trackage, and what we did is we changed that, so now we look
    at trackage underground as opposed to--we tier it. We have
    aboveground, underground, and then underground in tunnels that
    are underwater, of which the third is the highest priority for
    precisely the reason you talk about. And without saying it in
    an open hearing, much of our transit grant decisionmaking this
    last year for the first time was driven precisely by a
    recognition that the consequences of something occurring in a
    tunnel underwater are significantly greater than the same event
    occurring on a stretch of track aboveground. And that is
    exactly the disciplined approach we want to take. We have tried
    to inject, among other things, real science into this process
    now.
        So I would envision that we will continue to push a
    significant amount of the money on a risk basis to precisely
    those elements of the rail infrastructure that have the
    greatest vulnerability.
        Senator Carper. All right. Thanks. The last thing I would
    say, if I may, Madam Chairman, going back to the issue of
    chemical security, I would urge you to be proactive today, this
    week, next week. Thanks very much.
        Chairman Collins. Thank you.
        Mr. Secretary, thank you so much for your testimony here
    today. We obviously could keep you for several more hours, but
    you are in luck that we have several more witnesses. So thank
    you very much for your excellent presentation.
        Senator Lautenberg. Madam Chairman, will the record remain
    open?
        Chairman Collins. The record will stay open for 15 days, as
    it always does, for the submission----
        Senator Lieberman. Madam Chairman, if I may end on a light
    note. Mr. Secretary, I think you made a generationally
    sensitive comment about the Peanut Gallery before. If I
    remember from my youth, that was a term coined during the Howdy
    Doody television show, and I prefer to think of you not as a
    member of the Peanut Gallery but as Buffalo Bob. [Laughter.]
        Secretary Chertoff. I actually thought it was a baseball
    expression from when you were back in the bleachers, but----
        Chairman Collins. I must say this is all completely lost on
    me.
        Senator Lieberman. For obvious reasons. [Laughter.]
        Chairman Collins. Senator Pryor has just arrived, and
    Secretary Chertoff, I want to give him the opportunity, if he
    does want to ask a question.
        Senator Pryor. That is OK.
        Chairman Collins. OK. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
        I am going to call forward both our second and third panels
    in the interest of time. We are very pleased to have such
    distinguished witnesses with us today: Sheriff Leroy Baca and
    Deputy Commissioner Richard Falkenrath, as well as Steven Simon
    and also Daniel Prieto.
        Sheriff Baca is the Sheriff of Los Angeles County and
    commands the largest Sheriff's Department in the United States.
    He is also Director of Homeland Security-Mutual Aid for
    California Region I, which serves 13 million people. I want to
    say that I had the pleasure of meeting the sheriff through
    Representative Jane Harman on two trips to the L.A. area, and I
    was so impressed with the work that he is doing to strengthen
    the region's defenses against terrorism.
        Dr. Richard Falkenrath was named the Deputy Commissioner
    for Counterterrorism in the New York Police Department in July.
    Prior to joining the NYPD, he was a Fellow at The Brookings
    Institution, and from 2001 to 2004, he served on the White
    House staff, including serving as the First Deputy Assistant to
    the President for Homeland Security.
        Steven Simon is Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at
    the Council on Foreign Relations and co-author of the book, The
    Next Attack.
        Daniel Prieto is the Director and Senior Fellow of Homeland
    Security Center at the Reform Institute. Previously, he was the
    Research Director of the Homeland Security Partnership and
    Initiative, as well as a Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School
    of Government at Harvard.
        We welcome all four of our distinguished experts here
    today. I want to apologize to you for your having to wait so
    long. We had a greater attendance than we expected today in
    view of the importance of the issues before us.
        Sheriff Baca, we are going to begin with you.

      TESTIMONY OF LEROY D. BACA,\1\ SHERIFF, LOS ANGELES COUNTY,
                               CALIFORNIA

        Mr. Baca. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and thank you, Ranking
    Member Senator Lieberman, and Members of the Committee, which I
    know have other things to do, and I realize that time is short.
    I have seven points and six categorical recommendations to
    make, and I would like to say that Los Angeles County is one of
    America's engines for imagination and innovation when it comes
    to public safety in view of this recent responsibility of
    homeland security and terrorism.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Baca appears in the Appendix on
    page 69.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        The first point on the categorical side here is that
    California is a formal mutual aid State. It has been that way
    since 1950. We have a very defined system in law where local
    government is enabled by State support, through counties as
    well, and that the mutual aid system that we use has been well
    in place and time-tested. Whether it comes to earthquakes,
    fires, any incident of disturbances or attacks, emergency
    activities included, we know what to do.
        Second, California sheriffs are mutual aid coordinators,
    which means it is an integral part of the governmental process
    and governance for mutual aid and first responders. In the case
    of California, and Los Angeles County in particular, each
    regional area--and I happen to be in command of Area I, which
    includes two counties, Orange County and Los Angeles County--we
    serve 10 million people and, therefore, organize over 50 police
    departments and over 40 fire departments in whatever we do in a
    mutual aid context. And therein the law enforcement mutual aid
    coordinator, there is a need for us to operate in an area that
    includes multi-level governance. And that is the operating
    interoperable side of how you manage something in that you have
    many governments working together to work at solving a problem.
        The third point I will make is that we had developed a
    Terrorist Early Warning Group System prior to September 11.
    Although more than 5 years have elapsed since the tragedy of
    September 11, we continue to institutionalize the lessons
    learned of that day. We have Federal, State, and local
    partners, and we aggressively pursue ways to integrate our
    disparate agencies into a seamless network of information-
    sharing cooperatives. To understand where the Los Angeles
    County Sheriff's Department is headed, there must be an
    understanding of where we began.
        We formed in 1996 the Terrorism Early Warning (TEW) Group
    System, which analyzes trends and potentials for terror attacks
    within Los Angeles County. The TEW now employs subject matter
    experts from law enforcement, the fire service, public health,
    academia, and the military, all working together to ensure the
    safety of Los Angeles County residents. Representatives from
    the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security also work
    within the TEW to produce high-quality, analytical products
    that are provided to decisionmakers covering a variety of
    subjects related to terrorism.
        The fourth point is our Joint Regional Intelligence Center
    of Southern California that was mentioned earlier. Recognizing
    the value of cooperation between Federal, State, and local
    agencies, leaders from the FBI, the U.S. Attorney General's
    Office, the State Office of Homeland Security, Los Angeles
    Police Department, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's
    Department decided more than 2 years ago to join together and
    create a model for intelligence fusion centers. The vision
    became reality in July 2006 with the grand opening of the Los
    Angeles Joint Regional Intelligence Center and Mr. Chertoff was
    there.
        Using analytical processes developed by the TEW, analysts
    from a variety of agencies and disciplines create an expansive
    view of trends and potentials that could indicate a potential
    terrorist attack. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security was
    also present at this center, and the components of that
    Department, such as Customs and Border Protection, Immigration
    and Customs Enforcement, Transportation Security Agency, and
    the Coast Guard, are contributing personnel to this
    organization. These agencies possess critical information that
    must be synthesized with local products to make the forecast of
    potential threats clear. I strongly encourage the participation
    of any public agency involved in issues of homeland security
    with its local TEW fusion center to do exactly what we are
    doing in Los Angeles.
        Fifth, we have terrorism liaison officers. This is
    necessary to keep the coordination of communication going on an
    ongoing basis.
        Sixth, there is a formal private sector outreach and
    partnership. It is called the Homeland Security Advisory
    Council. It is chaired by Marc Nathanson, founder of Falcon
    Cable Corporation. We have every possible source of the
    business community involved in this, and we work this Committee
    very hard in a partnership with the National Security--it is
    called the Business Executives for National Security (BENS),
    based here in Washington, and therein integrating the private
    sector into our intelligence process. This is a very big part
    of what we do through infrastructure liaison officers. The
    infrastructure liaison program further expands the network of
    trusted agents to include people dedicated to the critical
    infrastructure protection. This addition to our intelligence
    process creates a comprehensive network that provides a better
    opportunity for the prevention, disruption, or mitigation of a
    terrorist attack.
        I wanted to commend Senator Voinovich for his thoughts
    concerning the Muslim American society. We have a formal Muslim
    American outreach and partnership program. Another key
    component to our strategy is our connection to the Muslim
    community through the creation of the Muslim American Homeland
    Security Congress. Consisting of respected leaders from Muslim
    organizations within Southern California, their mission is to
    foster communication, education, and mutual respect between law
    enforcement and the Muslim community. Programs such as our
    Homeland Security Advisory Council and our Muslim American
    Homeland Security Congress are reflective of our belief that
    homeland security is not an issue that can be resolved through
    traditional police practices only.
        This program will be moving itself to Chicago, and I will
    be traveling with its leaders to Detroit, where our largest
    Muslim American ghetto exists, so that we can further empower
    Muslims to speak up in the securing of our homeland mission
    here in the United States, as well as in nations abroad.
        For the next 5 years--and you have heard this, and I will
    just be very brief so the others can speak. What do we do in
    the next 5 years? Well, there are seven things I would like to
    say.
        First is communications, and you have talked about
    interoperability so I do not need to continue to focus on that.
    But it is a gap that needs to be closed. Second, intelligence
    must be shared vertically and horizontally across jurisdictions
    for analysis, investigative, and operational purposes. Those
    are three key components to intelligence: Analysis,
    investigative, and operational purposes.
        The second point is technology as a general subject.
    Surveillance technology needs additional development and
    standards. There are a lot of things going on out there in the
    world of surveillance, but we do need to have better standards
    on a national scale.
        The next point under technology is detection technology, on
    which we heard a significant amount of comment here by the
    Senators and Secretary Chertoff. Detection technology for
    chemical, biological, and radiological applications needs
    additional development as well. I think that is clear.
        The next point is national technology resources need
    further logistical development for regional and national
    application. In other words, I am talking about shared
    classified technology. For example, the Department of Defense
    and the National Intelligence Community have equipment that
    local police do not have, and we would like to see further
    access to that opportunity to use the equipment.
        Finally under the point of technology, research and
    development of new technology should be jointly managed to
    avoid wasteful duplication. This should be managed by a
    national board of volunteer Federal, State, and local
    intelligence and first responder experts.
        My third point on what can we do in the next 5 years is to
    develop a joint forces training center, a system throughout the
    United States. In other words, develop three or more training
    centers on terrorism for Federal, State, and local first
    responders and intelligence first responders of terrorist acts.
    Currently, the California National Guard and the California
    Mutual Aid Region I, which is Los Angeles and Orange Counties,
    are developing this proposal, and we think it can be a model
    for the rest of the Nation.
        My fourth point is international cooperation, training,
    best practices, and personnel exchanges should be expanded. I
    have traveled to Jordan after the Amman bombings. I have
    traveled to London after the bombings there with the train
    stations. I have traveled to Israel. I have been to Turkey
    after the bombings that have occurred there. And this is a very
    critical part of how we all learn about what is going on in
    different parts of the world. Current plans are underway to
    have training in Paris, France, at the Interpol Headquarters
    led by cities and countries that have experienced a terrorist
    attack. I think we should take every major target city in
    America and have those police chiefs and firefighter leaders,
    along with their mutual aid coordinators, go to this conference
    so that they can hear directly from these countries as to how
    they managed the particular terrorist attacks they have
    endured.
        The fifth point is to continue to fund the National
    Terrorism Early Warning Resource Center that partners with
    local and State law enforcement. There are currently 26 local
    terrorist early warning systems in our Nation today. The long-
    range vision and effort is to link more than 50 terrorist early
    warning systems across the country with other local and State
    fusion centers, such as the Joint Regional Intelligence Center
    in Los Angeles.
        Sixth, the Department of Homeland Security's major
    policies--I wish Mr. Chertoff was here, but I have told him
    this before--should be developed in partnership with selected
    experienced local, State, and Federal law enforcement leaders
    in deciding financial, operational, and training policies. The
    UASI grant program is one example where we can improve
    significantly in what we are doing.
        Thank you for listening to my comments. They have been very
    brief in their content. I am talking about unified government,
    unified first responder planning, and I am talking about
    unified leadership, which is what American society wants today
    on this subject of terrorism.
        Thank you very much.
        Chairman Collins. Thank you, Sheriff.
        Mr. Baca. And I have copies of my testimony here.
        Chairman Collins. Thank you. Your full statement will be
    put in the record.
        Dr. Falkenrath.

         TESTIMONY OF RICHARD A. FALKENRATH, PH.D.,\1\ DEPUTY
        COMMISSIONER FOR COUNTERTERRORISM, NEW YORK CITY POLICE
                               DEPARTMENT

        Mr. Falkenrath. Thank you, Madam Chairman. It is always an
    honor to be at this Committee, which did so much important
    legislation in the last 5 years for the country.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Falkenrath appears in the
    Appendix on page 74.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        I want to start by saying a few words about my new job in
    New York City in the New York City Police Department. I think
    as everyone knows, we are the biggest and most densely
    populated city in the country. We have a population of 8
    million people; 40 percent are foreign born. The most diverse,
    ethnically diverse county in America is Queens County. The
    gross metropolitan product of New York City and its surrounding
    areas is $900 billion. That is larger than all but about a
    dozen countries. The New York City Police Department has 52,000
    personnel, a budget of just under $4 billion. That puts it on
    the order, in terms of size, with most armies in the world.
        We have created a Counterterrorism Bureau and dramatically
    expanded the Intelligence Division since September 11. The
    Counterterrorism Bureau I have the privilege of now heading.
    The Intelligence Division is headed for the last 4\1/2\ years
    by a former Deputy Director of Operations of the CIA, backed up
    by a former Deputy Director of Intelligence for the CIA who
    runs our intelligence shop. All together, we have about 1,000
    officers dedicated to counterterrorism and intelligence
    missions and a total budget of on the order of $200 million per
    year.
        We have about 110 to 120 NYPD detectives assigned to the
    Joint Terrorism Task Force at the FBI. They all report to me.
    In addition, we do a very wide range of training and other
    programmatic activities, both for our own people, our partners
    inside the city, other State and local agencies, Federal
    Government agencies, and international agencies from time to
    time.
        We have a cadre of civilian analysts whom we have hired
    since September 11 who are as good as any I saw when I served
    in the White House. They are headed by a Rhodes scholar and
    former Supreme Court clerk. We have an outreach program to the
    private sector.
        The list goes on, and I catalogue this in my prepared
    statement, which I ask be submitted to the record.
        Chairman Collins. Without objection.
        Mr. Falkenrath. The extent of the special events we need to
    handle in New York City is shown this week. Yesterday we had
    the commemoration of September 11. The President of the United
    States was there. Next week, he is coming back, along with 159
    other heads of State. It is the largest, regularly scheduled
    meeting of heads of state in the world, the UN General
    Assembly. We do it every year, have been doing it for 50 years,
    and know how to do it pretty well.
        This is who we are. New York City had to respond after
    September 11 in this way and did. The same could also be said
    in different ways of the other New York City agencies--the Fire
    Department, OEM. They have also stepped up. It just so happens
    that I am the one testifying today.
        A word on the threat. In my testimony, I list 18 recent
    encounters that New York City has had with international
    terrorism in the past 15 years. They have repeatedly targeted
    New York City. That is why we take it so seriously. The most
    recent threat and plot came to light just a couple months ago
    when a leak revealed an extremely sensitive intelligence
    investigation into an ongoing threat against one of our tunnels
    and, in fact, against a critical piece of infrastructure.
        We view the threat to the city as a global phenomenon, and
    hence, we take a global view, which can manifest in our city at
    any moment in almost any way. We do not confine our work and
    our analysis to the five boroughs for which we have direct
    responsibility.
        Globally, clearly on the good side, we have seen a
    reduction in legacy al-Qaeda which attacked us on September 11
    to a fraction of what it was before. This is good. We have also
    seen an improvement in our border security, which has made it
    somewhat more difficult for international terrorists to get
    into the United States to conduct attacks. We do not take any
    comfort from that because the baseline vulnerability was so
    high, but there has been some progress.
        Aside from those two items, though, I would say most of the
    other indicators are bad. We have seen the proliferation of
    extremist Muslim ideology, Muslim militancy, and Salafism,
    which we think is a precursor to terrorism. That proliferation,
    that spread of that ideology has been very well documented
    abroad. A lot of people write about that. They talk about it on
    television. We have observed it, and we have hard evidence of
    it in New York City as well. It has us very worried, and I
    would add, in many surrounding areas, not just in the five
    boroughs.
        The homegrown threat you referenced, Madam Chairman, in
    your question to Secretary Chertoff we are very worried about.
    These are the most common forms of attacks since, and there are
    important implications for how we conduct counterterrorism
    operations if we take the homegrown threat seriously, which I
    will reference. We have seen increasing use of the Internet, of
    course. The threat is very serious. I wake up every morning
    thinking today might well be the day that we get another attack
    in our city.
        Now, recommendations. At your request, we will give a few.
    They will not be confined just to issues of immediate interest
    and concern to NYPD, but I will base them on that.
        First, with respect to Federal counterterrorism, we note
    that the vast preponderance of Federal effort--money spent,
    hours spent by Federal personnel--is international in
    character. It focuses on collecting and countering
    international threats. The domestic counterterrorism effort
    that we have is most powerfully predicated on this
    international effort. Most of the high-profile investigations
    that we have in the United States are begun because of a lead
    that was generated abroad, and those are very important. And
    the FBI has made a huge amount of progress conducting those
    sorts of investigations. We work with them very closely, and we
    now, I am happy to say, have an excellent partnership with the
    FBI for those sorts of investigations.
        We have a problem, however, when you deal with a homegrown
    threat, which has no international connectivity or limited
    international connectivity for which your massive national
    technical collection abroad is unlikely to give you a predicate
    to begin an investigation. Then the question is: How do we find
    out about it in the first place? And there the answer is far
    more likely to be found in the structure of law enforcement-
    driven, local, highly tactical intelligence programs of the
    sort we conduct.
        Second, on information sharing. The Federal Government has
    a plan or a vision for how information sharing is supposed to
    work between Washington and State and local agencies, such as
    my own. We are not sure what it is. There is a lot of different
    information sharing going on. Occasionally it is useful. Mostly
    it is not. The one that is consistently useful is the sharing
    of classified information done in the context of the JTTF. That
    works reasonably well for what it is. We have several hundred
    personnel with top secret security clearances, so we are able
    to handle that. Not all agencies are.
        The important thing I would say here is the Federal
    Government cannot try to control this. If they try to tightly
    control it, if they have one single pipeline to the State and
    local issues, it is sure to fail. And so I hope they do not go
    down that road.
        On the watchlist, a couple questions on this one. I believe
    we have an integrated terrorist watchlist in this country. The
    question is how well do we screen against it and when do we
    screen against it. When we book somebody at NYPD, they are
    always checked against the terrorist watchlist because we do a
    national criminal records check, and that is linked up with the
    TSC watchlist and that is good. There are many other areas,
    though, where we could be screening where we are not. When you
    get on an airplane to fly from New York to Washington, DC, you
    are not screened electronically against a watchlist. Secretary
    Chertoff and others here in Washington need to be working on
    that.
        Critical infrastructure protection. I have a lot to say on
    it. I spend a lot of my time on this now that I am in New York.
    For us, it is very tactical. It is about super-high-value
    targets, and we catalogue them. We have studied them. I have a
    list of what we deem to be the 30 or so most dangerous targets
    in New York City. We guard it carefully, and we work on them to
    try to reduce it.
        What we do will depend on the case. In some cases, we might
    close a street. We might put up a vehicle screening center. We
    might put bollards in. We might work with the real estate
    developer or the owner to enforce better standards in their
    design for blast resistance.
        On this I would say we are pretty much on our own. We do
    not get a lot of help from Washington. If Washington wanted to
    do something, it could set a standard for building codes that
    would include blast resistance and performance standards. There
    is no such thing. And it would get a policy on terrorism risk
    insurance. Right now commercial policies do not insure against
    terrorism risk and, hence, the private sector has no financial
    incentive to take really prudent measures against it. They are
    assuming that the Congress will insure them, that if there is
    an attack, they will just buy them out. So there is no
    terrorism risk insurance anymore. And if you wanted to do
    something, that would make a difference.
        The five last items, and then I will stop. Chemical
    security, you know my views on this. I hope something gets done
    in this Congress and to the President's desk. That would be
    great. As a legislative handicapper, I would have to say the
    odds are long. It is late in the season to be doing this. But
    if it happens, great; otherwise, it is to the 110th Congress.
    We will be disappointed, but we have been disappointed before
    on that.
        I would, however, want to state something on ANFO, ammonium
    nitrate and fuel oil. This is the most common explosive. It was
    the one that was used in Oklahoma City to take down the Alfred
    P. Murrah Federal building. It was procured legally and easily
    by those two bombers, and since then we have done nothing--
    nothing--federally to improve the security of ammonium nitrate
    fertilizer.
        When you combine it with fuel oil and it is sold
    precombined, it is governed by Title 18 criminal codes.
    Separately--they can be easily combined. Separately, they are
    not governed by anything. We conducted a test, a special
    project to go to upstate New York and other areas to buy fuel
    oil and ammonium nitrate fertilizer to build a bomb. We did it
    with no difficulty whatsoever. We got companies, in fact, to
    deliver supplies and materials to Brooklyn, tripping no wires.
    And we built it in a warehouse in the Bronx. All right. Case in
    point. So do not exclude ammonium nitrate from your chemical
    security legislation.
        On mass transit, in a very real way mass transit security
    is New York's security. A couple statistics. In 10 weeks, more
    people ride the New York City subway than ride all airplanes in
    the entire country all year. One-third of all mass transit
    rides in the country are on the New York City mass transit
    system. If you look just at subways, 65 percent of all subway
    rides in this country are in New York City. The terrorists are
    attacking the subway system worldwide. We think that means they
    are likely to come at ours, which is hugely vulnerable. The
    Federal Government has spent $9 for every air passenger in the
    country and 0.6 cents on every mass transit passenger in the
    country. There is something wrong with this, so if government
    were to be able to do a little bit there, it would help.
        We have 2,700 mass transit cops who never come aboveground
    during their duty. They stay underground, and that is their
    whole job, and they do it on their own with no Federal
    assistance to secure that.
        Ports. I think on the port security, I think this town is
    focused on the wrong part of port security. It has been on the
    container security problem. The real problem, in my judgment,
    is what al-Qaeda has done before when they attacked the Cole,
    which is a small, explosive-laden boat brought up against a
    passenger ferry or a critical infrastructure facility, and it
    is security on the water. And there, again, we are doing it
    more or less on our own. The Coast Guard helps out a little
    bit. They are great partners, but they are really not in New
    York harbor. It is mostly done by New Jersey State Police and
    NYPD Harbor Patrol.
        The last thing I will say on grants. We have big problems
    with how the Federal Government has done grants. That is well
    known. I would say six things.
        First, the overall level of grants from the Federal
    Government to the State and local agencies right now nationwide
    is indefensibly low. The President proposed in February 2002
    $3.5 billion. The level now, depending on what comes out of the
    conference report, is going to be about $1.6, $1.7 billion for
    the whole country for the whole year in 2007. That is nearly a
    $2 billion reduction. That is too low, particularly when we are
    spending $10 billion per month in Iraq. It just makes no sense.
        Second, we believe 100 percent of the Federal money should
    be risk-based, just like the 9/11 Commission, which in its
    review of the implementation of its recommendations gave the
    Congress an F on that matter. That is their opinion.
        Third, of the State grants, we think those need to be
    distributed by the governors on the basis of risk, not spread
    around to all the outlying areas as they wish. DHS, when it
    distributes money based on risk, needs to get a comprehensive
    and coherent way of doing it. We don't think they have one now.
        Finally, I would say DHS needs to permit the charging of
    operational expenses that are dedicated to counterterrorism and
    intelligence activities, separate and distinct units, to the
    grants. They do not currently allow that. If you want to buy
    equipment, that is great. If you want to conduct an exercise,
    that is great. If you want to do a study with Booz Allen or
    SAIC, that is great. But if you want to pay for an intelligence
    operative who is working in a high-threat area, in a very
    dangerous area with a lot of Muslim extremism, no, you cannot
    charge that.
        The last thing, I sincerely hope that the Congress does not
    condition the disbursement of Federal grants on city
    confidentiality policies with respect to immigration. This is a
    very divisive issue in this country, immigration, and there is
    an idea in the House markup that you should not give any money
    to any city that prohibits its employees from talking to ICE
    about a person's immigration status. New York City happens to
    prohibit that in some cases. If the House bill became law, by
    definition we would get no money, and this would be a bad idea.
    It does not make any sense to hold the city hostage to the
    country's ongoing dispute about immigration. Thank you for your
    time.
        Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Simon.

    TESTIMONY OF STEVEN N. SIMON,\1\ HASIB J. SABBAGH SENIOR FELLOW
        FOR MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

        Mr. Simon. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I am grateful for the
    opportunity to address the Committee on this vital topic.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Simon appears in the Appendix on
    page 106.
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        My understanding of the Committee's objectives in holding
    this hearing is that witnesses should focus on the future and
    address themselves to issues that might help both Congress and
    the Executive Branch set homeland security priorities. The
    Committee, it seems to me, is doing the right thing.
        I have some very personal reflections on this issue that
    are fairly broad-brush that I would like to share with you. I
    am going to concentrate on three issues in particular.
        First, the importance of cities as terrorist havens and
    terrorist targets. There has been a lot of talk about that in
    these statements, and the talk is well placed. Second, I am
    going to address myself to the continuing significance to many
    jihadists of weapons of mass destruction. And, third, to the
    need to preserve the good will and sense of belonging of
    America's Muslim communities as a matter of national security
    beyond the intrinsic virtues of a cohesive, considerate society
    in which citizens of all creeds can feel at home.
        On urban warfare, the crucial point is that the jihad that
    has evolved since September 11, 2001, has become a war of
    cities. The transition from caves to condos, as one observer
    described the evolution, has been impressive. The relatively
    remote, rural bases that incubated the jihad had strong
    advantages, especially given the importance of social networks
    to the jihad, but municipalities have their own attractions, as
    other witnesses have indicated. They offer anonymity, but also
    community, both of which can confer a kind of cover.
        Urban neighborhoods, with their numberless apartments,
    coffee houses, mosques, and Islamic centers, provide the
    setting for recruitment, clandestine meetings, preparation of
    weapons, and other activities that form the terrorist
    enterprise. They are not subject to Hellfire missile strikes or
    submarine-launched cruise missiles or things like that. Those
    tools will not work against this kind of presence. Think of
    Mohamed Atta's Hamburg or the Leeds of Muhammad Siddique Khan,
    who was the orchestrator of the July 7, 2005 bombings.
        Qualities that favor the jihadists' defensive requirements
    do not tell the whole story. However, the other side is that
    cities are where their targets--both symbolic and of flesh-and-
    blood--are to be found in abundance and proximity.
        New York, as my colleague here has indicated, has shown
    itself to be a crucial target for jihadists. This great city
    was construed by al-Qaeda to be the beating heart of America's
    economy, which bin Laden believed he could cripple; the symbol
    of American arrogance as embodied by the ``looming towers'' of
    the World Trade Center; and the seat, of course, of Jewish
    power, which jihadists believe accounts for the global
    subordination of Muslim interests to America and Israel. It is
    also a teeming city, whose large and densely packed population
    promised the most efficient path to a successful mass attack
    that, from a jihadist standpoint, might even begin to settle
    the score with the United States. There is no reason to think
    that this conviction has weakened. Furthermore, New York City
    proffers the same advantages to the attacker as do all large
    cities.
        The array of targeting opportunities, I might add, in New
    York, as well as in other large cities in the United States,
    particularly Los Angeles, as Sheriff Baca has indicated, is
    quite wide. We can be perversely certain that an attack, when
    it comes, will be the one we least expected, but one can make
    some preliminary judgments. Mass transportation, as has been
    indicated, symbols of authority, financial districts, and, we
    should bear in mind, schools as well, given the importance in
    jihadi propaganda to the depredations that the United States
    has carried out against Muslim children, either directly or
    through Israeli allies.
        Improvised explosive devices like car bombs--the icon of
    urban violence in Iraq and elsewhere--we can expect, as well as
    Palestinian-style backpack bombs.
        Now, the implication of this analysis, I hasten to add, is
    that community policing and extensive video surveillance will
    need to be stepped up. In this kind of urban warfare,
    intelligence is acquired best by those who are most familiar
    with the terrain: Police officers walking their beat. On the
    front line, they get to know their neighborhoods, the residents
    and the shopkeepers, form and cultivate relationships with
    local citizens, and develop a sense of the natural order of
    things and, therefore, of signs that something is out of the
    ordinary or warrants investigation. The pivotal role of local
    law enforcement is reinforced by the incapacity at this time of
    Federal authorities to gather information skillfully,
    discreetly, effectively, and without alienating potential
    sources of intelligence. The FBI, in particular, presently
    lacks the numbers, skills, knowledge base, and orientation to
    contribute.
        This does not mean, as my colleagues here have said, that
    local law enforcement can or should operate in a vacuum,
    especially in light of connections that have been disclosed
    between the self-starter groups in the United Kingdom and al-
    Qaeda figures in Pakistan. On the contrary, local police need
    an umbilical connection to national intelligence agencies in
    order to connect the dots they are collecting on the ground. It
    is worth noting, by the way, that the success of the U.K.
    counterterrorism effort in Northern Ireland was largely due to
    the tight linkages between the local police, national police,
    and Britain's domestic intelligence agency that were forged
    early in the conflict.
        Information sharing, which all parties now claim to be
    essential, has not advanced significantly, and to illustrate
    this point, I will just note that, at most, less than 1 percent
    of the detectives or police officers in the United States have
    security clearances that enable them to receive relevant and
    operational kinds of information from Federal agencies. This is
    a circle that clearly needs to widen.
        The other issue we need to focus on is where the police
    officers who will be collecting these dots I referred to are
    going to come from. In the upcoming Federal budget cycle, the
    COPS program is again under pressure to be cut. This program
    has put more than 100,000 policemen on the street. It is an
    invaluable program for American counterterrorist interests at
    home.
        Very briefly, I wanted to highlight the continuing
    importance to jihadists of weapons of mass destruction. On the
    basis of 10 years of dealing with their documents and
    intelligence about them and so forth, I can guarantee to you
    that they are very interested still in acquiring, deploying,
    and using weapons of mass destruction. This puts a premium on
    consequence management. That is the only aspect of this problem
    I will highlight. It will be essential in the wake of an
    attack, and it will be very difficult to prevent a successful
    attack--that is to say, it will be very difficult to prevent a
    well-planned attack. We must be able to respond at the Federal,
    State, and local levels in lockstep and with the appearance and
    reality of deep, deep competence. This will be essential to
    preserving the fabric of our society in the wake of an attack
    and deterring further attacks.
        In operational terms, what I recommend is that there be a
    single Federal enforceable standard for State and local
    capacities for consequence management. Right now in the United
    States, we are all over the place. The Federal Government needs
    to establish a standard, establish milestones and benchmarks.
    This is not just a matter of appropriating funds, but ensuring
    that cities meet a given standard.
        Finally, the September 11 disaster showed that skilled and
    self-possessed and highly determined attackers could do
    tremendous damage to the homeland without an infrastructure.
    But that is not the only way things work. It is not the
    adversary's sole option. Other approaches do require
    infrastructure, in the shape of cells that may or may not be
    linked to outside networks.
        We have a potential problem in the United States with our
    Muslim citizens. According to recent research, they are
    increasingly choosing not to assimilate into American society.
    They have been under huge pressure since September 11. This is
    having its effect. They are finding solace instead in their
    religious identity. Muslim student associations on college
    campuses are growing rapidly as havens for Muslims who prefer
    not to socialize with non-Muslims, and Muslims are building
    Islamic schools as alternatives to the public school system,
    which is perceived as inhospitable. They are trying to thwart
    media bias by developing their own radio stations and so forth.
        These are telltale signs of a growing problem, and the
    evolving attitudes of non-Muslim Americans toward their Muslim
    compatriots are also likely to spur alienation. According to a
    2006 Gallup poll, a third of Americans admire ``nothing'' about
    the Muslim world, and nearly half of all Americans believe the
    U.S. Government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim
    Americans. This is increasing the pressure on our Muslim
    citizens.
        Now, of course, they have shown no sign of violent protest.
    We really should be sure to keep it that way.
        Now, I have put this issue before the Committee for lack of
    a better place. The challenge outlined here requires leadership
    and a program, yet given the way our government is structured,
    there is no obvious lead agency or Special Assistant to the
    President on the National Security Council or Homeland Security
    Council to formulate a program to provide such leadership.
        We are not the first to face this conundrum. Several years
    ago, in the wake of a Whitehall study showing upwards of 10,000
    al-Qaeda supporters in Great Britain, Her Majesty's government
    tasked the Security Service--MI5--both to dismantle jihadist
    networks and devise a plan to win the hearts and minds of
    Britain's Muslim minority. Ultimately, the Security Service
    balked at the difficult job for which they had no experience or
    clear jurisdiction. We need to do better. Fortunately, unlike
    our sister democracies across the Atlantic, we have time, and I
    urge you not to squander it.
        Thank you.
        Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Prieto.

     TESTIMONY OF DANIEL B. PRIETO,\1\ SENIOR FELLOW AND DIRECTOR,
               HOMELAND SECURITY CENTER, REFORM INSTITUTE

        Mr. Prieto. Thank you very much, Chairman Collins and
    distinguished Members of the Committee on Homeland Security and
    Governmental Affairs.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Prieto appears in the Appendix on
    page 113.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        My name is Daniel Prieto. I am Director of the Homeland
    Security Center at the Reform Institute. I want to thank you
    for inviting me to testify before you today on the topic of
    ``Homeland Security: The Next 5 Years.''
        At the 5-year anniversary of September 11, the question is
    unavoidable: Is it safe? Dustin Hoffman's answer to that
    question in the 1976 movie ``The Marathon Man'' was
    alternately, ``Yes,'' ``No,'' and ``It depends.'' The same is
    true when it comes to homeland security. For every area of
    progress, significant gaps and vulnerabilities remain.
        In many ways we are safer. Members of the Committee and the
    previous speakers have outlined many areas where we have made
    progress. But in many ways we are not safer. Five years from
    now, there are five areas where we need to make significant
    progress.
        One, we have not fully engaged our citizens and captains of
    industry to protect America.
        Two, we lack a national consensus on priorities, and our
    supposed strategies are not strategic enough. As a result, it
    seems that we are perennially reacting to the latest threat.
        Three, DHS struggles to meet the expectations that
    accompanied its creation. Management is key.
        Four, as the Nation that invented Silicon Valley, the
    Internet, and companies like Microsoft and Google, we are the
    technology envy of the world, but the government cannot seem to
    get it right when it comes to important homeland security
    technology projects.
        And, five, information sharing is very much a work in
    progress, and, in particular, on controversial data-mining
    programs, we are forcing the trade-off of liberty for security
    in an unnecessarily zero-sum game.
        To start out on the first point, we need to engage society
    better, both citizens and the private sector. The inaugural
    National Strategy for Homeland Security argued that ``the
    Administration's approach to homeland security is based on the
    principles of shared responsibility and partnership with the
    Congress, State and local governments, the private sector, and
    the American people.'' While that sentiment was and is correct,
    we have failed to execute on it. We have done too little to
    engage and educate the public. Too many policymakers tend to
    view the general public not as a source of strength, but as
    either victims or prone to panic. Too many officials fear that
    too much information provided to the public will either
    frighten them or aid our enemies.
        This discussion should end. The more informed and self-
    reliant we are when the next attack or disaster strikes, the
    better off we will be. The United States will win the war on
    terrorism not by force of arms alone, but by the resolve and
    resiliency of its citizens.
        Brian Jenkins of the RAND Corporation puts it best in his
    new book, Unconquerable Nation: ``We need to aggressively
    educate the public through all media, in the classrooms, at
    town halls, in civic meetings, through professional
    organizations, and in volunteer groups. . . . The basic course
    should include how to deal with the spectrum of threats we
    face, from `dirty bombs' to natural epidemics, with the
    emphasis on sound, easy-to-understand science aimed at
    dispelling mythology and inoculating the community against
    alarming rumors and panic.''
        In addition to educating the public, we need to get to a
    point where public-private partnership for homeland security is
    more reality than rhetoric. Five years after September 11, the
    capabilities, assets, and good will of the private sector to
    bolster our homeland security remain largely untapped.
        Second, homeland security needs to move from tactics toward
    doctrine, especially when it comes to preparedness and on
    critical infrastructure. While many security strategy documents
    have been produced since 2001, most of them are largely
    documents about tactics, methods, and processes. As such, they
    fail to articulate the strategy and doctrine which can guide
    implementation and provide goals with which programs can be
    measured. This is particularly true, as I mentioned before, in
    the areas of preparedness and critical infrastructure.
        On preparedness, we need to create a homeland security
    doctrine that takes a lesson from U.S. military doctrine. If
    our armed forces through much of the last 50 years had to be
    ready to fight two simultaneous wars in different theaters,
    then DHS, the National Guard, NORTHCOM, and State, local, and
    other Federal authorities should be prepared to confront two to
    three simultaneous large-scale homeland security events of the
    kind envisioned by the 15 DHS National Planning Scenarios.
        In support of such doctrine, I see the creation of National
    Guard Special Forces providing specialized and regionally based
    training against the 15 DHS National Planning Scenarios for the
    National Guard. Additionally, it would make sense for NORTHCOM
    to have their own dedicated resources. They are currently only
    allocated 1,000 permanent personnel and $70 million on a total
    DOD budget of $400 billion and 1.4 million active-duty
    personnel.
        On critical infrastructure, we need a strategy that finally
    makes tough choices about priorities. We have fallen into a
    certain political correctness about critical infrastructure as
    if all sectors--computers versus cows versus chemicals--pose
    equal risks. They do not. Some sectors are more important than
    others. In my view, this Committee is doing a very good job
    looking at those priorities because, in my view, the priorities
    are chemical facilities, transportation with an increased focus
    on mass transit and hazmat transport in addition to airplanes,
    and energy, including oil, gas, and the electric grid.
        As a number of the other speakers have mentioned as well,
    it is obviously extremely important to focus on regional
    concentrations of critical infrastructure as well.
        Bills in Congress are rightly seeking to give DHS authority
    over chemical security. At the same time, authorities should
    not stop there. Congress needs to give DHS clear authority over
    security activities at any infrastructure sites that threaten
    large-scale casualties or are critical to the functioning of
    the U.S. economy regardless of sector. For example, DHS should
    have authority to regulate critical energy infrastructure sites
    in order to mitigate known vulnerabilities in the electric
    grid.
        DHS also needs to display better leadership on critical
    infrastructure. First, DHS assumed that the market would
    provide sufficient incentives for companies to adequately
    protect critical infrastructure. That has not happened. Now DHS
    has sharply curtailed protective efforts and is now acting
    largely as a coordinator for the efforts of other agencies.
    This is a mistake.
        Third, security investments can help the overall health of
    America's decaying infrastructure. The American Society of
    Civil Engineers recently graded American infrastructure with
    the grade of D. We need to do better. Security investments can
    make infrastructure healthier, and we need to use all of the
    policy tools at our disposal. I have argued repeatedly for the
    use of greater tax incentives to increase investment in
    critical infrastructure where the private sector is not doing
    enough.
        Third, we need DHS to be a respected and successful
    organization, and to do that, we need to dramatically
    strengthen DHS management.
        The birth of DHS has not been easy. For its successes, it
    has suffered significant failures and missteps, which in my
    view have seriously damaged its credibility. Hurricane Katrina
    was its lowest moment, but it has been beset by a number of
    public missteps on a host of other topics. Due to
    ineffectiveness or immaturity, DHS has increasingly diminished,
    spun off, or shed responsibilities in such areas as
    intelligence and information fusion, critical infrastructure
    protection, and post-disaster housing and health. In the most
    recent Federal personnel survey, DHS employees ranked their
    organization at or near the bottom of nearly every measure of
    effectiveness. Other Departments--Justice, State, the
    Department of Defense--too often do not view DHS as a peer
    organization.
        DHS is falling behind, and the window of opportunity to get
    things right may be closing. DHS risks becoming what I call
    ``the DMV of the Federal Government''--widely viewed as
    inefficient and ineffective. If DHS fails to create synergies
    among the many entities it inherited and to mature into a more
    effective organization, we will be worse off as a country.
        I present these facts about DHS not as an indictment. Many
    of the problems were to be expected in a merger integration
    exercise as large and complex as this. My point in raising them
    is to urge this Committee to do all it can to shepherd the
    maturation of DHS. It may be necessary to read between the
    lines when senior DHS officials state that they have all the
    resources and capabilities they need--rosy scenarios which may
    be born of political expediency or pride. To the extent that
    DHS's shortcomings stem from under-resourced or structurally
    weak management, it is essential to not just punish or withhold
    money, but to address the root of the problem by helping
    strengthen management capability and accountability for the
    long term.
        To improve DHS management, key CxO level positions must be
    given greater power and more resources. The Chief Financial
    Officer, the Chief Information Officer, and the Chief
    Procurement Officer continue to lack effective department-wide
    purview and authority. Some changes implemented by Secretary
    Chertoff have helped, in particular, the creation of a Policy
    Office and an Office of Strategic Plans, as well as increasing
    the power of the Deputy Secretary. But an organizational chart
    that has 22 separate divisions reporting directly to the Deputy
    Secretary while failing to fully leverage the CxO positions
    does not make sense. Management control and integration of DHS,
    in my view, remain far too weak.
        Fourth, get technology right. America, as I said, is the
    envy of the world when it comes to technology, but too many
    homeland security projects since September 11 have stumbled,
    from the FBI's virtual case file management to DHS's Homeland
    Security Information Network to border security systems.
        To keep the country safe, we need to make serious and
    sustained efforts to improve how the government deals with
    technology.
        Fifth, and then I will close, we need to develop rules for
    the use of consumer and company data for counterterrorism. In
    May 2006, it was revealed that the NSA was augmenting domestic
    surveillance with large-scale data analysis of consumer
    telephone toll records. That revelation was only the latest
    instance of government efforts to use data-mining and other
    data analysis techniques in the war on terror. There is an
    ongoing controversy over the government's use of private sector
    and consumer data for counterterrorism purposes. Many of these
    programs have raised little controversy. Other ones--DOD's TIA
    and TSA's Secure Flight--have raised concerns and public outcry
    and were shut down by Congress.
        The growth in data analysis efforts marks the recognition
    of a simple truth: Our spies are not well suited to address the
    jihadist terrorist threat. At the same time, government
    programs that analyze commercial data are imperfect and risk
    wrongful entrapment of innocent citizens along with legitimate
    terrorists. That risk is magnified by the fact that the laws
    governing these programs are unclear.
        We need to move beyond an environment where it seems
    different Executive Branch agencies are simply experimenting
    with large-scale data analysis techniques to see what works and
    what they can get away with. In the next 5 years, we need to
    move past experimentation and develop comprehensive
    legislation, guidelines, and rules to govern the growing use of
    consumer and company data in the fight against terrorism.
        Within the next 5 years, Balkanized rules for the
    government's use of company and consumer data need to be
    addressed. Any attempt to harmonize those rules should focus on
    the full life cycle of data: Procurement, receipt, storage,
    use, ability to combine with other data, sharing within the
    government and outside of the government, encryption,
    anonymization, dispute, and redress.
        Clear and consistent rules to govern this activity are
    needed so that Americans do not feel that the only relationship
    between civil liberties and security is a zero-sum game.
        In conclusion, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, has
    said that we always overestimate the change that will occur in
    5 years and underestimate the change that will occur in 10
    years. While we have made progress on homeland security in the
    first 5 years, many of us are frustrated by the pace of change.
    In the next 5 years, we have the opportunity and the duty to
    make America safer and more secure. Five years from now, I hope
    that we have exceeded our own lofty expectations.
        Chairman Collins. Thank you.
        I want to thank all of you for excellent testimony.
    Unfortunately, we have a vote underway that started at 12:10,
    so I am just going to ask one question and then submit our
    additional questions to the record. But our having to
    abbreviate the hearing in no way diminishes our gratitude to
    each of you for coming here today and sharing your expertise.
        Sheriff Baca, my question is for you. I mentioned in my
    opening statement my concern about homegrown terrorists. If we
    increase border security but do not deal with the increasing
    efforts to radicalize Muslim citizens of our country, we are
    going to face a very serious threat.
        You have mentioned an initiative that you have undertaken
    which seems to me to put you far ahead of the Federal
    Government in coming up with a strategy to engage leaders of
    the Muslim community, and I commend you for that. And I am very
    pleased to learn that you are sharing your efforts with other
    cities, such as Detroit. I think that is terrific.
        One area of particular concern to me is the conversion and
    then in some cases radicalization of prison inmates, and we are
    holding a hearing on that issue next week. Could you share with
    us any thoughts you have on strategies to be used to try to
    prevent the radicalization of prison inmates? And do you have
    anything underway in that regard specifically focusing on
    prisons?
        Mr. Baca. Currently the California Department of
    Corrections is aware of an incident that occurred in the city
    of Torrance, which is in Los Angeles County, where inmates from
    the State prison system became radicalized. One, upon release,
    expanded that radicalization to some local community people who
    were not from Muslim nations, but one in particular, however,
    was a Pakistani national who came here and became an American.
        At that point, they engaged in bank robberies and were
    looking to fund themselves to attempt some attacks on targets
    that they had identified within the county. Fortunately, we
    intercepted them in the commission of the crimes, and then
    through search warrants, we were able to find out the in-depth
    nature of their plan.
        Thus, what we have done in California is to alert ourselves
    because the county jail system that I also manage feeds 40
    percent of the State prisoners into the State system. So we
    have intelligence officers in our local jails as well as in the
    State jails, working closely with ``those inmates who have
    leanings toward radical thinking.''
        Chairman Collins. I think there is so much we can learn
    from the L.A. experience, the New York experience, and from our
    two other expert witnesses. In many ways, our larger cities are
    ahead of us at the Federal level in identifying these threats
    and coming up with successful strategies. And that is why it
    disturbs me, Sheriff, to hear, because you and I have talked
    about this before, that DHS is still not tapping into the
    expertise as much as it should when it develops its own
    policies and procedures, and that is something we are going to
    need to push the Department on. I think that is so important.
    And I know you stand ready to help.
        Senator Voinovich.
        Senator Voinovich. Thank you. I am going to follow you. It
    would be very interesting to me to get your observations about
    what the Federal Government is or is not doing in terms of this
    radicalization of the Muslim population in the United States of
    America.
        Dr. Falkenrath, you have mentioned that you see it in New
    York City. Mr. Simon, you have said that you see it. And the
    issue is: What role should the Federal Government play? Who
    should be playing it? And then what models are available around
    the country to try to bring the communities together so that we
    have something that we can try to replicate in other places?
        Mr. Baca. If I may, Senator Voinovich, I was very pleased
    when you made your very strong and appropriate comments about
    your thoughts concerning what Muslim Americans and the
    radicalization issues are in the world and, of course, here.
    Homegrown terrorists are something that we concern ourselves
    with.
        After the bombings in London last year, I came back from
    visiting with the Commissioner of Police and understood clearly
    that we would have to do something more than what we are doing
    now. So I got a hold of the Muslim American leaders in Los
    Angeles County, Shura Council President, which is the president
    of all the mosques, all mosques are nonprofits, got a hold of
    religious leaders. And at the time there was a fatwa that had
    occurred earlier, a few months earlier, from Canada and the
    United States of religious leaders that were Muslims, as well
    as scholars, who said that the Islamic belief and the Koran
    does not authorize and sanction suicide bombers, criminal
    terrorists, and the like.
        We have formed, therefore, the nucleus for what is a formal
    nonprofit called the Muslim American Homeland Security
    Congress, and on the executive board are students from our
    local universities, women, leaders of mosques, scholars, and
    people who are active business people in the Muslim community.
    And I would say that, in deference to my friend to the left of
    me, I don't think that American Muslims are uninterested in
    participating with all of us in protecting our Nation. I think
    they have not organized themselves yet, and this Muslim
    American Homeland Security Congress is the first step through
    that organization. We will go to Detroit, as I mentioned. We
    will go to New York. We will go to Chicago. And we will go
    anywhere in the United States to further the regionalization of
    this national effort. The principal goals are to educate Muslim
    families as to what are the trends of radicalization within the
    home itself. In the London experience, many of those that were
    captured, their families were actually in some form of denial,
    in some form of disbelief that their children were not really a
    part of these terrorist attacks, when, in fact, they were. So
    the self within the family, the educational process within the
    family is a very high priority of this Congress, and also its
    mission is to work closely with law enforcement, to work
    closely with local government leaders, and to not have their
    schools--and we have three Muslim American schools in Los
    Angeles County--be viewed as separatist efforts, which they are
    not. We have Armenian schools. We have French schools. We have
    various ethnic schools. And they are not viewed in the same
    fashion.
        I can say, finally, that all of us, myself in particular,
    since Los Angeles County--and I do want to say Los Angeles
    County has 10 million people. It is the largest county in the
    United States, and we claim to be, like New York, the most
    diverse part of the United States. But we are just going to
    stay at a tie. And I have traveled to Jordan and met with King
    Abdullah. I have traveled to Pakistan and met with President
    Musharraf. I have traveled and met with the leaders of the
    justice system in Turkey, and I have seen what they have done
    in response to the bombing attacks that they have experienced.
    All three of these are Muslim nations.
        What you are suggesting, I am following, and I commend you
    for your vision on this issue because I have heard how
    passionately you feel. American Muslims are patriotic to
    America, and that is why they are here. The radicals that are
    roaming about who are going to seize the moment and think they
    can ride themselves up on the secrecy of some kind of a cover
    is what we have to go after. Those are the needles in the
    haystack, as far as I am concerned, and that should be one of
    the top priorities of the Department of Homeland Security.
        Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
        Chairman Collins. Thank you so much for your testimony
    today. It was very valuable to us, and I very much appreciate
    your time.
        The hearing record will remain open for 15 days for the
    submission of additional questions. All those great questions
    that we unfortunately do not get an opportunity to ask you
    today we will submit for the record.
        Thank you again for sharing your expertise and for your
    commitment to this issue. This hearing is now adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 12:33 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

                                A P P E N D I X

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