[Senate Hearing 110-1036]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 110-1036
WORLD AT RISK: A REPORT FROM THE
COMMISSION ON THE PREVENTION OF
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
PROLIFERATION AND TERRORISM
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
DECEMBER 11, 2008
__________
Available via http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html
Printed for the use of the
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TED STEVENS, Alaska
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico
JON TESTER, Montana JOHN WARNER, Virginia
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire
Michael L. Alexander, Staff Director
Eric P. Andersen, Professional Staff Member
Aaron M. Firoved, Professional Staff Member
Brandon L. Milhorn, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Robert L. Strayer, Minority Director for Homeland Security Affairs
Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk
Patricia R. Hogan, Publications Clerk and GPO Detailee
Laura W. Kilbride, Hearing Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Lieberman............................................ 1
Senator Collins.............................................. 3
Senator Levin................................................ 18
Senator Warner............................................... 22
Senator Akaka................................................ 25
Senator Carper............................................... 27
Senator Coleman.............................................. 30
Senator Nelson (FL).......................................... 33
Senator Thune................................................ 34
Prepared statement:
Senator Voinovich............................................ 43
WITNESSES
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Hon. Bob Graham, Chairman, and Hon. Jim Talent, Vice Chairman,
Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction
Proliferation and Terrorism, accompanied by Hon. Tim Roemer,
Commissioner, and Robin Cleveland, Commissioner, Commission on
the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and
Terrorism...................................................... 5
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Cleveland, Robin:
Testimony.................................................... 13
Prepared statement........................................... 45
Graham, Hon. Bob:
Testimony.................................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 45
Roemer, Hon. Tim:
Testimony.................................................... 9
Prepared statement........................................... 45
Talent, Hon. Jim:
Testimony.................................................... 7
Prepared statement........................................... 45
APPENDIX
``World at Risk, The Report of the Commission on the Prevention
of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism,''
by Bob Graham, Chairman, and Jim Talent, Vice-Chairman......... 58
WORLD AT RISK: A REPORT FROM THE
COMMISSION ON THE PREVENTION OF
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
PROLIFERATION AND TERRORISM
----------
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2008
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:08 a.m., in
room SH-216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I.
Lieberman, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Lieberman, Levin, Akaka, Carper, Pryor,
McCaskill, Collins, Voinovich, Coleman, and Warner.
Also Present: Senators Nelson, Thune, and Martinez.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN
Chairman Lieberman. The hearing will come to order. I would
ask everyone here to take their seats. I thank everyone for
being here. Good morning.
Let me say that the importance of today's hearing is summed
up in the stark opening paragraph of the recently released
report of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass
Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism.
It says, ``Unless the world community acts decisively and
with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of
mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere
in the world by the end of 2013.''
In those 38 words, the Commission compels us to focus our
minds and steel our resolve to confront the deadly, global
threat of Islamist terrorists using weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) against innocent people, and coming as it does such a
short time after terrorists engaged in conventional urban
warfare against innocent people in Mumbai, India. The
Commission's work, warning, and recommendations deserve extra
serious attention.
This Commission was established by the Implementing
Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act, which our Committee
had a primary role in passing in 2007. We are, therefore,
particularly grateful to the Commission and its leadership for
its excellent and timely report, and we welcome this morning
its Chairman and Vice Chairman, our distinguished former
colleagues, Senators Bob Graham and Jim Talent. Two of its
commissioners--our former colleague from the House, a member of
the 9/11 Commission Tim Roemer, and Robin Cleveland whose
governmental experience is too distinguished and long to list,
though she remains very youthful, nonetheless--I thank each of
you, as well as your fellow commissioners and staff members,
for all the hard work that I know went into this insightful and
really gripping report.
I also want to welcome our colleagues from the Senate Armed
Services Committee whom we have invited to join us at this
hearing. There is actually a lot of overlap between the
membership of the two committees. We invited our colleagues to
join us because confronting and dealing with weapons of mass
destruction requires the combined efforts of many departments
and many committees, and none more so than the two that are
represented here at the table this morning.
As I mentioned, we hold this hearing in the wake of last
month's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which originated in
Pakistan. That fact comes as no surprise to members of this
Commission. In fact, your report says clearly, ``Were one to
map terrorism and weapons of mass destruction today, all roads
would intersect in Pakistan.'' But you also note quite
correctly that Pakistan itself has repeatedly been a victim of
the same Islamist terrorism. Most poignantly, in 2007, former
Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated and 20
bystanders killed just 2 weeks before the parliamentary
elections.
The point here is that no one is safe from Islamist
extremism and terrorism because these people have no respect
for national borders, religious identification, or the lives of
innocent people living within those borders. London, Madrid,
Bali, Mumbai, Jerusalem, New York, the Pentagon, and the
Pennsylvania countryside have all suffered grievous losses of
life at the hands of these terrorists. And as brutal and as
blood-stained as their course has been, unfortunately this
Commission's report tells us it can get worse, much worse,
because the terrorists have dedicated themselves to acquiring
weapons of mass destruction so they can murder and destroy on a
scale previously unimagined and unconfronted.
Just last year, the head of the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA), Mohamed El Baradei, said this in the case of
nuclear terrorism, but it applies to all forms of weapons of
mass destruction: ``For an extremist group, there is no concept
of deterrence. If they have it, they will use it.''
In fact, the IAEA handles about 150 cases a year involving
trafficking of nuclear material. Some of that material reported
stolen is never recovered, and some of the material recovered
has never been reported stolen.
The Commission, whose leadership is before us, also found
that biological weapons pose a very real threat--in fact,
according to the Commission, one more likely to materialize
than other forms of WMD attack for reasons that will be
explained by the Commission's representatives during their
testimony. One conclusion I draw from your work is that the
global proliferation of legitimate biotechnology research and
expertise, while so much of a benefit in so many ways, also
creates this problem because that work can be used to create
weapons of mass bioterror. And much of this research takes
place in very poorly secured or, in fact, totally unsecured
facilities.
So the bottom line is that we need a strong homeland and
international response now to protect us from the dangers that
you have described. Your report comes at an opportune moment,
as a new Administration and a new Congress get ready to take a
new look at our Nation's homeland security and our global war
against the terrorists who attacked us on September 11, 2001.
Your range of recommendations provides a truly bipartisan
or nonpartisan road map for the urgent action needed to protect
the American people. And, in fact, I would say that your
recommendations will constitute a centerpiece of this
Committee's agenda and perhaps others' in the coming 111th
Congress. Your report and recommendations, together with the
work our Committee has done previously on WMD terrorism, the
questions we both have raised, and the specter of a WMD
terrorist attack that we have foreseen are not topics that are
pleasant to discuss, but they are real, and it is our
responsibility post-September 11, 2001, to discuss them and act
upon them.
For me, one of the most chilling sentences in the 9/11
Commission Report, which Commissioner Roemer helped to draft
and see through to implementation, was that September 11, 2001,
occurred because of a failure of imagination, which is to say a
failure to imagine that people would do to us what they did on
September 11, 2001. Since then, it has been our urgent
responsibility to imagine the worst, and, frankly, working
together with the 9/11 Commission and others, as well as with
the Administration and Members of the House, this Committee and
other committees have tried to do exactly that. And I take some
satisfaction in believing that is certainly a significant part
of the reason why, thank God, we have not suffered another
terrorist attack. But we live in very dangerous times, as this
Commission has documented once again, and these times call on
us to consider and imagine the worst possibilities and then act
to both prevent them and prepare to respond to them.
Again, I thank the members of this Commission for joining
us today and for your extraordinary work, and at this time I am
pleased to call upon the Ranking Member, Senator Susan Collins.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLLINS
Senator Collins. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The ``World at Risk'' report reinforces the sense of
urgency that this Committee has felt during its many hearings
on deadly threats to the American people--threats that include
terrorists dispersing anthrax spores, detonating a nuclear
device in a major city, or striking with other weapons of mass
destruction.
As the Chairman has indicated, the Commission bluntly
warned that it is ``more likely than not that a weapon of mass
destruction will be used in a terrorist attack sometime by the
end of 2013.'' That warning and the Commission's report are a
call to action. This Committee has created the Department of
Homeland Security, reformed our intelligence agencies,
strengthened the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA),
increased grants for State and local first responders, and
enhanced the security of our seaports and our chemical
facilities. As the Commission observes, however, ``the
terrorists have been active, too,'' and we must continue our
efforts. Nuclear proliferation and advances in biotechnology
have given terrorists new means to carry out their avowed
intention to commit mass murder.
The Commission has laid out three main sources of concern:
The proliferation of nuclear weapons technology, the growing
threat of biological weapons, and the special challenges
relating to Pakistan. Having heard chilling testimony on the
effects of even a suitcase nuclear weapon in a city like New
York or Washington, I share the Commission's deep concern about
nuclear developments in places like North Korea, Iran, and
Pakistan, as well as the challenge of securing nuclear
materials in the former Soviet bloc.
The mental images of nuclear blasts and mushroom clouds are
powerful and frightening. But as the Commission rightly notes,
the more likely threat is from a biological weapon. In contrast
to nuclear weapons, there is a lower technological threshold to
develop and disseminate bio-weapons, access to pathogens is
more widespread, and pathogens are harder to contain. The
spread of biotechnology, the difficulty of detecting such
pathogens, and the terrorists' known interest in bioterrorism
combine to produce an even greater menace. Bio-weapons are
appealing to terrorists in part because we are unlikely to
realize that an attack has occurred before it begins to kill
many of its victims. In the early stages of an anthrax attack,
for example, health care providers are likely to believe that
they are simply seeing an outbreak of flu. That worldwide
security has lagged behind the growth of this threat is
sobering. Even within our own country, the Commission found
that we fail to secure potential biological weapons
effectively.
Thousands of individuals in the United States have access
to dangerous pathogens. Currently there are about 400 research
facilities and nearly 15,000 individuals in the United States
authorized to handle the deadly pathogens on what is called the
``Select Agent List.'' Many other research facilities handle
less strictly controlled, yet still dangerous, pathogens with
little or no regulation.
In addition to the concerns about controls within our own
country, the global security concerns are daunting. There are
certain countries, like Syria, that have never adhered to the
Biological Weapons Convention. There are concerns that other
countries that signed the treaty may, nevertheless, be
violating it.
Beyond these security considerations, there is also more
that our country should be doing to develop effective
countermeasures and vaccines.
As the Chairman has noted, the recent attacks in Mumbai and
Afghanistan have focused the world's attention on another
tinderbox identified by the Commission, and that is the nation
of Pakistan. The confluence of terrorist mindsets, nuclear
capability, and political instability in Pakistan creates
enormous challenges. That country's history of poor control
over its nuclear technology, heightened tensions with its
nuclear-armed neighbor India, and the existence of terrorist
training camps and safe havens are a dangerous combination.
The Commission has offered us 13 key recommendations which
we will hear more about today. We may differ on some of the
details of specific recommendations, but I believe that the
Commission has ably identified the vital threats that our
country faces and has given us a clearly drawn road map toward
improved security against terrorist use of weapons of mass
destruction.
The Commission has produced exactly the kind of independent
analysis that Senator Lieberman and I envisioned when we
included the language creating the WMD Commission as part of
the 2007 homeland security legislation. I commend the
commissioners and their staff for their very valuable
contributions, and I look forward to hearing the testimony this
morning.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Collins.
We will go now to the witnesses. Before we do, I want to
express a little parochial pride from both Committees here. The
Executive Director of the Commission is Evelyn Farkas, who used
to be a staff member for the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The General Counsel for the Commission is Raj De, who used to
be a staff member of the Homeland Security Committee. So this
explains the extraordinary quality of the work product that is
the subject of our hearing today.
I gather that the four of you have decided to divide the
time with approximately 5 minutes each, and, again, I want to
thank you. All of you have been involved in public service for
varying lengths of time. This is really a great service to your
country, and I thank you for it.
Senator Graham, welcome and let us begin with you.
TESTIMONY OF HON. BOB GRAHAM,\1\ CHAIRMAN, AND HON. JIM TALENT,
VICE CHAIRMAN, COMMISSION ON THE PREVENTION OF WEAPONS OF MASS
DESTRUCTION PROLIFERATION AND TERRORISM; ACCOMPANIED BY HON.
TIM ROEMER, COMMISSIONER, AND ROBIN CLEVELAND, COMMISSIONER,
COMMISSION ON THE PREVENTION OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
PROLIFERATION AND TERRORISM
Senator Graham. Thank you very much, Chairman, and thank
you, Senator Collins, and the other members of the two
committees. We appreciate the opportunity--and this is our
first opportunity--to present our report to an official body,
these two committees of the U.S. Senate. Mr. Chairman, we have
provided a written statement for the record. We will each use
our time to summarize and elaborate on that written report.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The combined prepared statement of Mr. Graham and Mr. Talent
appears in the Appendix on page 45.
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Chairman Lieberman. Good.
Senator Graham. You have indicated that our Commission is
the product of your work. You established this Commission and
gave us two principal responsibilities: First was to assess the
current governmental policies to prevent the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction; and, second, to make
recommendations as to how we can enhance our national and
global security. This report is the result of a nine-member--I
would not use the word ``bipartisan''--I would say
``nonpartisan'' Commission, the membership of which was
selected by the leaders of the Senate and the House. Our report
is a unanimous recommendation with the full support of all of
our nine members.
This report was developed first by putting together staff--
and I appreciate your recognition of two of our very able staff
members, but also some 20 or more others coming from a wide
range of backgrounds. Scientific, law enforcement, military,
intelligence were all part of the capability that supported
this effort.
Over the duration of the Commission's work, which has been
approximately 6 months, we interviewed over 250 individuals--
academics, scientists, intelligence, military, political--both
in the United States and abroad. The opinions of that broad
array of individuals was very influential on the findings and
recommendations that we bring to you today.
We held eight major Commission meetings, including one
public hearing, and I would like to recognize, if I could, two
people who are with us today who were witnesses at that public
hearing that was held on September 10, 2008, in New York: Carie
Lemack, who many of us know from her great work over many years
representing the families of September 11, 2001; and Matt Bunn,
of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, who was one of the
leading experts on nuclear proliferation and has just completed
this very thoughtful annual report on the status of preventing
nuclear terrorism.
We also augmented those interviews and hearings with
travel. We visited the Sandia National Laboratories in
Albuquerque to learn more about our state of nuclear
preparation and the great support which Sandia gives to the
International Atomic Energy Agency. It is their principal
reservoir of scientific knowledge on nuclear issues, and it is
regularly called upon to assist nations around the world on
these issues.
We also visited the United Kingdom. We visited Vienna, the
home of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Russia. We
were going to visit Pakistan. We had flown from Washington to
Kuwait and were awaiting our flight to Islamabad, when we
received the message that the Marriott Hotel in which we were
going to spend the night had just been bombed. That made this
effort a highly personal one for the members of the Commission,
and it impressed upon us the seriousness of our responsibility.
Mr. Chairman, just briefly, I would like to give the bad
news of our findings, and then my colleagues will give some of
the good news of the ways in which we can aggressively attack
and reduce the probabilities of attack that we find under the
current circumstances.
Our first finding was that the risks that we are facing, in
spite of all that we have done in the Congress and in the
Executive Branch, and at State and local government, our margin
of safety is declining, that we are becoming more vulnerable.
You might ask why. Well, I analogize it to a canoeist who is
canoeing upstream against a powerful current. You may be
canoeing as skillfully and energetically as you can, but you
are losing ground because the resistance that you are facing is
even greater. In many ways, that describes the circumstances
which we are in. Our adversaries are growing more nimble and
effective, and the scene of scientific development,
particularly in the biological area, is making the challenge
greater.
Second, as the Chairman and the Ranking Member have both
stated, the Commission finds that it is more likely than not
that between now and the end of 2013, a weapon of mass
destruction will be used somewhere on the globe. Now, that
statement has received some pushback as being too alarmist. I
might say that the same week we released this report, the
Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Admiral McConnell,
spoke to a group of new congressmen at the Kennedy School and
made almost exactly the same assessment based on his agency's
perspective of what the threat of the use of a weapon of mass
destruction might be. So, as grim as it may be, I believe it is
a credible assessment.
Third, we found that it was more likely that the attack
would be by biological weapons rather than by a nuclear weapon
for the reasons that the Chairman and the Ranking Member have
already mentioned, and which particularly one of our
commissioners, Robin Cleveland, will elaborate upon.
We also found that in terms of intent, the terrorists are
just as intent to use weapons of mass destruction today as they
were almost 20 years ago when Osama bin Laden first attempted
to acquire nuclear material while still living in the Sudan.
That effort to obtain and use has been described by bin Laden
as a ``religious duty'' of al-Qaeda.
So, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, these are
our blunt findings. We have stated it several places in our
report that we think a key to winning this battle is for the
U.S. Government to be open with its people, to understand both
the reality of the situation and the steps that can be taken to
change that reality. We have attempted to carry out that
honesty and directness with the American people and with this
Committee today.
Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. I would like, if I
could, to recognize the very distinguished Vice Chairman and
colleague, Senator Jim Talent. We also have with us today two
other Commission members--former Congressman Tim Roemer and Ms.
Robin Cleveland.
Chairman Lieberman. Senator Talent, welcome. Good to see
you again.
TESTIMONY OF HON. JIM TALENT,\1\ VICE CHAIRMAN, COMMISSION ON
THE PREVENTION OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION PROLIFERATION AND
TERRORISM
Senator Talent. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Senator
Collins. I am going to embarrass Senator Graham just for a
second by saying as difficult as this was--and I did not think
anything would be more difficult, for example, than working on
a Senate Committee and passing complicated legislation; you all
know how difficult that is. This was hard, getting these
strong-minded people to agree on a unanimous basis to a report
that actually said something, and it would not have happened if
not for the leadership of the gentleman to my right. And many
of you know how good he is, and he sure proved it here.
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\1\ The combined prepared statement of Mr. Graham and Mr. Talent
appears in the Appendix on page 45.
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We have two witnesses after me who are going to offer some
comments in some very important areas, so I am going to make
one brief observation about the threat, and then I have starred
about five areas I am going to be very brief with.
It occurred to me in the course of these deliberations that
there are a lot of people, and I think even people in this room
who focus on this a lot, who assume that we cannot really
eventually lose in this conflict with the terrorists because
they are relatively small, transnational conspiracies that do
not even have a national base. But in reflecting on this, I
think we tend to underestimate how formidable they are. The
nature of the world today, the interdependency, globalization,
and information technology, all of that gives them advantages
in warfare and tends to disadvantage traditional First World
powers like the United States. And they see this. I think it is
one of the reasons they are so dangerous. They understand the
world is a matrix of systems, really--financial,
communications, transportation--that we need and rely on, and
they do not need very much, and that are very easy for them to
attack and very hard for us to defend.
Now, one of the capabilities I think they would like to
enhance is their weaponry. They have asymmetric weapons which
are very powerful, but not quite as powerful enough as they
need to really knock us out. And that is the context in which I
think we ought to look at these weapons of mass destruction. If
they are capable of increasing their capabilities by getting
these weapons, and particularly--and this is one of the reasons
we focus on biological attacks--if they get enough of the
weapon material that they can repeat the attack at will, what
Dick Danzig calls ``reloading the bio-weapon,'' so they can hit
an American city and then hit them again 3 weeks later, we can
lose this war. I think they get that, and that is one of the
reasons for our threat evaluation, one of the reasons we have a
5-year limit in it. We think that, and we want everybody to
understand, this is not just important, it is urgent. You know
how the urgent always crowds out the important. This is urgent
and important.
Five comments about the recommendations, and they are
organized in four areas: Biological, nuclear, government
reform, and then the government's role with the citizen.
First, we think a lot of the big problem in the biological
sector stems from the different cultural approach toward this
issue as opposed to nuclear. The nuclear age began with the
explosion of a nuclear weapon, so everybody in nuclear science
got it right away. This science can be abused and used for
destructive purposes.
I think the assumption within the biological research
community, quite understandably, is that this is benign
research, and that is one of the reasons why I think it would
be so good for you all to focus on this early because the very
act of passing legislation--and these are important subjects;
Ms. Cleveland is going to talk about this, changing the
regulatory apparatus. But the very act of passing that
legislation, I think, will raise the visibility of the issue
and help with the underlying cultural change that we need. This
is a case that Congress is a messenger--just as it was with the
intelligence area.
Point two, Pakistan. We focus on Pakistan. I think, Mr.
Chairman, Senator Collins, you guys understand. Everything that
causes us to worry about both terrorism and proliferation in
the context of weapons of mass destruction is centered in
Pakistan. That is just unfortunate. It is the perfect storm.
They are a substantial nuclear power. They are, not willingly,
but they are a terrorist safe haven. They are a recruiting
ground for terrorists, as you know if you have ever talked to
the British. They have an unstable government, which,
therefore, has to focus on its stability rather than on the
things we would like to see them focusing on. And they have a
competition with India which is raising the specter of a
traditional nation-state kind of nuclear stand-off, which is
very dangerous and complicates everything else.
So we recommend continuing a lot of what we have been
doing, eliminating the safe haven, safeguarding the material,
and in addition, using Pakistan as a place where there is first
a really intense effort at using the tools of soft power. And
this means we have to have the tools of soft power, which means
we think that the State Department and the civilian agencies of
foreign policy need to go through the kind of self-analysis,
cultural change, and integration that the military did
beginning 40 or 50 years ago and completed with the Goldwater-
Nichols Act, and that the intelligence agencies have done since
you all passed the legislation. That is point two.
With regard to the nuclear regime, we have a lot of
recommendations there, and I think the basic problem is the
interest in things nuclear around the world. A lot of that
interest is benign in nuclear power, but it is so great that it
is straining the international regime for inspecting and
controlling it. And so the IAEA needs more resources and more
authority.
We have a recommendation about shifting the burden of proof
so that nations--I mean, internationally we all agree that,
where necessary, where there is a good purpose for it, nations
stop acting like the object of depositions, trying to hide
everything they can unless you ask exactly the right question.
And, actually, we shift the burden of proof so they have to be
more forthcoming in trying to prove that they are in
compliance.
Then, finally, I will close so we can get to Mr. Roemer.
One of the things that keeps popping up in our recommendations
and that we kept noticing was the importance of human capital
and the dangers we have in that area. The Chairman talked about
Sandia in New Mexico. They told us down at Sandia Laboratories
that if we do not do something, we are going to fall below the
critical mass that we need in terms of scientific expertise to
make this international nuclear regime work. It turns out the
IAEA gets their expertise from us, and largely down in Sandia,
and the cohort of people who understand this science and have
made it work all these years are all retiring within the next
few years. So intentional and deliberate efforts need to be
made at increasing our human capital in that area. That is
another area this Committee or the ones with appropriate
jurisdiction probably could take on an effort early.
I think I am going to end it with that, Mr. Chairman, and I
know that it is the question section that is probably the most
beneficial, but I appreciate the chance to be with you today.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Senator Talent. That
was excellent.
Congressman Roemer, welcome back. Thanks for your uniquely
extraordinary service post-September 11, 2001.
TESTIMONY OF HON. TIM ROEMER, COMMISSIONER, COMMISSION ON THE
PREVENTION OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION PROLIFERATION AND
TERRORISM
Mr. Roemer. Thank you, Senator, and thank you for the honor
to be before both of these committees. It is always a privilege
to be back in the U.S. Senate, where I had my first job as a
Senate staff member for Senator DeConcini back in the 1980s,
and to see all these able and capable staffers up on the dais
as well, too.
Senator thank you for combining both committees here. I
would like to start with some good news and then some of the
bad news and the trends. The good news is we have people like
Senator Graham and Senator Talent who can work in a bipartisan
way to put forward 13 different recommendations and make our
country safer from a very dangerous and urgent threat.
More good news is that when the 9/11 Commission made 41
different recommendations to begin to try to transform our
government from a Cold War structure to a new 21st Century hot
war, proactive government, the Congress responded, for the most
part. With your leadership, Senator Lieberman, Senator Collins,
and everybody on this Committee, 39 of the 41 recommendations
were passed into law to help transform our government to these
new 21st Century threats from al-Qaeda, from asymmetrical
threats to biological and weapons of mass destruction types of
threats. That is the good news.
We now come out with a report, ``World at Risk,'' \1\ that
talks about trend lines that are very dangerous to the United
States, the threat is growing and our margins of safety are
shrinking, and shrinking very quickly, despite good action by
Congress and the Executive Branch.
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\1\ The report, titled ``World at Risk,'' appears in the Appendix
on page 58.
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Osama bin Laden, months after the attacks on September 11,
2001, said it was not 19 Arab armies or 19 Arab states that
attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. It was 19
post-graduate students who formed cells, penetrated our
country, and killed over 3,000 people.
Now we are starting to hear that bin Laden has been saying
for a long time that it is a religious obligation to create
Hiroshima-type activity on the United States with some kind of
nuclear or biological device. Your religious obligation to
attack the United States. And when we hear from biological
experts that it is not very likely that a terrorist is going to
become a biologist, but it is likely a biologist might become a
terrorist, we are maybe a resume or two away from al-Qaeda
having that biological capability of being able to potentially
weaponize and disseminate very dangerous material against the
United States or our allies. The threat continues to grow, and
grow quickly.
We tried to capture the 9/11 Commission's phrase of ``It
was a failure of imagination.'' We cannot have ``World at
Risk'' be a failure of anticipation. We have anticipated what
is likely to happen over the next 5 or 6 years. It would be a
travesty if we did not take these steps and better protect the
United States.
Senator Talent and Senator Graham so capably and ably led
this Commission in making these recommendations. We were on our
way to Pakistan where so many of the roads to terrorism all
meet, where the cauldron is boiling today: A fragile government
of one of our allies; al-Qaeda and the Taliban metastasizing in
the federally administered tribal areas (FATA); Pakistan
continuing to build new nuclear capabilities; nuclear materials
that we are worried may not be secured well enough in Pakistan;
a Mumbai attack just a week ago that creates heightened tension
between India and Pakistan; and our own intelligence people,
General Michael Hayden and Ambassador Ryan Crocker saying the
most likely threat to the U.S. homeland comes directly
radiating out of the federally administered tribal areas of
Pakistan.
We centered, we really concentrated, and we urgently called
on you to do more with respect to Pakistan. We have suggested
five different steps with regard to Pakistan:
First, that we continue to be very aggressive in going into
the FATA and using our special operations, military, and
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to disrupt al-Qaeda and the
Taliban and not create safe havens in that area.
Second, that we increase our smart power. Secretary Gates
talks so eloquently in a soon-to-be published article in
Foreign Affairs in January 2009 that we are out of balance
today, that we do not have the balance we need between our
military, our State Department, and our U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) to have non-kinetic forces,
our foreign service, our diplomats, to create an economic surge
in this area, for education and economic opportunities for
Pakistani citizens.
Third, that we try to make sure that we look at ways to
address the etiology of radical Islam and jihadists and try to
dry this up and compete with it. After all, when we were headed
to our hotel in Islamabad and 55 people were killed in
Islamabad, they were Muslim. They were maids, they were cab
drivers, they were people that worked at this hotel. This was
not an attack on the United States. This was an attack on
Pakistan, an attack on Muslims, an attack by al-Qaeda on
Pakistan and their own people. And that is the way we need to
portray this war--not a clash of civilizations, but al-Qaeda
attacking its own citizens without any plan on jobs, on health
care, in addressing some of the grievances in that part of the
world.
Fourth, one of the key areas I think that we had great
discussion on was what to do regionally and international in
this area when we see Kashmir continue to pop up as one of the
key problems. Do we send an envoy into this area? Is this
international engagement between China, the United States,
Pakistan, India, and Russia? How do we bring the right people
together to resolve an area where there could be a
thermonuclear confrontation sometime in the future--as there
already have been threats over the last 10 or 15 years. This is
an urgent area of concern for Congress and the Executive
Branch.
Fifth, I would like to address for just a moment, the
government, our own government--not the Pakistani government
but our government. I mentioned that 39 of the 41
recommendations were passed into law. You took action. You
insisted on Executive Branch reform and the creation of a new
DNI that is working pretty well. You created a new Homeland
Security Department that is not working so well. But you did
not pass reforms to look at yourselves, to reform Congress.
Article I, Section 1 of our Constitution states that the
Legislative Branch is one of the key powers of accountability
and oversight to our people. And to concentrate that oversight
capability and that accountability in our Congress, directly
elected by our people, so that we know what is going on in our
intelligence community and the secret community, so that when
the call is there and recommendations are put forward, it does
not take 3 years to pass legislation, we recommend an
Intelligence Subcommittee on the Appropriations Committee that
can be the power of the purse. And the Speaker of the House has
taken an important step creating a Select Intelligence
Oversight Panel (SIOP), a panel on the House side on the
Appropriations Committee to oversee this. I think the Senate
has an opportunity to act on this.
We have also recommended, Senators, that we do more on
homeland security to focus that oversight and that
accountability so that the new Secretary of Homeland Security,
unlike Mr. Chertoff, does not have to come up here and report
to 88 different committees and subcommittees between the Senate
and the House; and that when you come up with good legislation
to better protect the United States, it does not go to 88
different committees and subcommittees to try to pass
legislation through our bodies. So that is a key reorganization
that we recommend for the U.S. Congress.
We also say in the intelligence community that you
recommended that there might be an office that be created to
oversee WMD. We slightly disagree with that. We say it should
be a person. It should not be confirmed necessarily by the
Senate. It should be appointed with three options by the
President: It could be a deputy in the National Security
Council, it could be run out of the Vice President's office, or
it could be some other person or entity outside of the White
House that would be responsible for WMD every day.
We also recommend combining the Homeland Security Council
and the National Security Council to better streamline
accountability in the White House and not have redundancies
created there. The way you do that is important, and we can
talk more about that in the question and answer period.
Finally, in terms of responsibilities, we have talked about
responsibilities for the President in terms of this new
position that is created. We have talked about congressional
responsibilities. We really think citizens can play an
important role in this effort. We think that can be part of a
checklist, that we work with the Homeland Security Department
and our local law enforcement communities to create the kind of
checklists and participation from our citizenry that really
makes them part of helping in a vigilant way to help protect
this country, with information, with access to the right kind
of family plan should something happen, and with better
information than color codes and duct tape and plastic sheets.
We find people really want good information, even if it is
dangerous or a threat is out there.
We are very pleased, I think, with these 13
recommendations. We hope the Congress will act on these, and we
look forward to working with you and implementing these and not
letting these go by the wayside.
Thank you so much for the time.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Congressman Roemer. As you
know, this Committee tried to convince the Congress to adopt
the recommendation to reform congressional oversight, but that
was not one on which we succeeded. But your Commission report
calls us again to go back into that battle and make some good
arguments for it, and I promise you we will try.
Mr. Roemer. I hope you will keep fighting, Senator.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you.
Ms. Cleveland, thanks for being here.
Senator Talent. Mr. Chairman, I should say that Senator
Graham and I were very pleased to allow Mr. Roemer to address
this subject. [Laughter.]
Mr. Roemer. That is why I was invited.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes, very gracious of you. Thank you.
Ms. Cleveland, please proceed.
TESTIMONY OF ROBIN CLEVELAND, COMMISSIONER, COMMISSION ON THE
PREVENTION OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION PROLIFERATION AND
TERRORISM
Ms. Cleveland. I appreciate being here. I now know how Tom
Brokaw felt when he appeared before our Commission when he said
that he was used to being on the other side of the table, and
so this is a new experience for me.
I would like to start with his testimony before the
Commission because I think we all felt it was very compelling.
He received an anthrax letter, as we know, and in the weeks
after September 11, 2001, described the harrowing experience of
trying to identify what was happening to his two assistants.
One of them broke out in terrible black lesions across her
body, and with all the resources that he had available to him
in terms of access to people, access to money, for 3 weeks he
kept getting wrong diagnoses. He finally sent a biopsy to Fort
Detrick, Maryland, and even there he was told that his
assistant suffered from a brown recluse spider bite. And so it
speaks powerfully, I think, to the lessons that we learned
across the whole biological area in our inquiry.
There were any number of problems, including the fact that
there were multiple entities involved in the supervision of
biological research and regulation, including the Department of
Agriculture (USDA), Department of Health and Human Services
(HHS), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of
Defense, elements of the intelligence community, Food and Drug
Administration (FDA), and Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC). And there are constant turf fights, something
that you all are familiar with, but I was surprised to learn
that CDC and FDA currently are going over who is responsible
for regulating the technical procedures--not the equipment--for
investigating bioterrorism incidents and for determining the
cause of outbreaks of disease. There are not community-wide
standards in the definition of what constitutes a biosecurity
level 3 (BSL-3) lab versus a BSL-4 lab--and if you do not have
common standards in terms of how you operate, you are likely to
end up with gaps and weaknesses in your security system. And it
is not clear who should be setting those standards. Should it
be the Department of Army because they are host for the U.S.
Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases
(USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick? Or should it be the Federal Bureau
of Investigations (FBI), which has far more experience in terms
of security procedures?
So you have too many agencies, too many turf fights, and
unclear oversight entities. There is no single point where you
can go and determine who is the right authority for oversight.
So 7 years later, we struggled with: What is at the heart
of the problem? Why hasn't there been a clearer and more
compelling structure set up to oversee the biological area?
And, in part, it seems to stem from the fact that the need to
protect the country has to be balanced against the
understandable goal of the private sector and academics for
freedom of research, which has certainly produced extraordinary
accomplishments in science and medical miracles. So we
struggled with trying to strike the right balance between
freedom of research and protecting the country, which led us to
several key recommendations.
We think that it is past time for HHS to lead an
interagency review of the Select Agent Program. The Congress in
its wisdom in 2002 added agents to that list, but there has
been no subject review of whether or not the list is
sufficient, whether or not the procedures and reporting
mechanisms in place are doing their job.
We think the Department of Homeland Security should lead a
national effort to develop a strategy on microbial forensics.
The fact that it took 7 years to identify Bruce Ivins as the
alleged culprit in the anthrax case, I think, points clearly to
the fact that we do not have an adequate capability in
microbial forensics and do not have a pathogen library.
We think that HHS and DHS together need to step up efforts
to improve management and security of high-containment labs and
consider how to manage pathogen research at lower-level
facilities. And what that really means is it is key for
Congress to be engaged. I think that is probably one of our
most compelling recommendations.
The only way that we are going to improve oversight,
regulation, and security and safety when it comes to the
biological area is for the life sciences community to step up
to their responsibility and to promote a culture of security
awareness. And I do not think that is going to happen on its
own. I think it is key for Congress to hold hearings and reach
out to the life science community to develop a code of conduct,
hopefully voluntary, but in the absence of a voluntary code,
something that the Congress can prescribe.
Finally, notwithstanding the fact that we are making
efforts in terms of improving security and safety in our labs,
I think the Commission concluded that we cannot do this alone;
that we could have the best procedures in place at our labs,
but with the emerging markets in India, Malaysia, Brazil, and
Pakistan, medical science is advancing across the globe. And so
we urge a convening by the State Department of a biotechnology
powers conference, again, with a view to trying to establish
some kind of international norm or code of conduct when it
comes to security and safety.
And, finally, when it comes to international standards, the
Commission did not endorse a revival of the protocol associated
with the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). We do think
that the BWC itself is essential and is a key establisher of
international norms in terms of transfer of biological weapons,
but we do not think that the effort to revive the protocol
would make sense. We heard from multiple witnesses that the
dual-use nature of much of this material complicates
verification and so would not be a wise course of action.
Finally, the Administration, we concluded, has done a good
job investing on the first priority of consequence management
and taken that important step. But 7 years later, I think we
all felt it was time to step up the effort in terms of
preventing as opposed to protecting against the transfer of
biological agents to hands of people that should not have them.
Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you all. You have laid out the
essence of your report and made some recommendations.
We will now do 6-minute rounds because we have a number of
people here. Senator Collins and I will start, and then we will
ask Senator Levin and Senator Warner from the leadership of the
Armed Services Committee. And then we will go on our
traditional early-bird rule.
Much of your work jumps out at me, but the major
conclusions that draw our attention are that it is more likely
than not that there will be a WMD terrorist attack somewhere in
the world by 2013, 5 years from now; and it is more likely than
not that the attack will be biological. And both of those are
riveting, first, because of the time frame; and, second,
because I think the instinct would be that our minds have been
focused more on a nuclear terrorist attack than a biological
attack. And you have explained why you have reached those
conclusions and also offered some very good suggestions about
what we have to do to prevent such an attack--remember, this
Commission is called the ``Commission on the Prevention.'' We
have spent some time on this Committee and many other places in
our government on response, asking how we respond to a nuclear,
biological, chemical, or radiological attack. But, obviously,
the more critical question is how do we prevent these attacks
from occurring at all.
Let me begin by asking you by what standard did you arrive
at the 2013 date, that is to say, that within 5 years it is
more likely than not that there will be an attack. Senator
Graham?
Senator Graham. Obviously, that is a judgment.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Senator Graham. It was a judgment reached in part by the
wide net that we put out to people that we thought were capable
of having a sound judgment on that. But the events are what is
driving that schedule. Here are some of the things that are
happening.
There is a nuclear race underway in South Asia today among
China, India, and Pakistan. In the not too distant future, it
is quite probable that the third, fourth, and fifth largest
nuclear arsenals in the world will not be held by places like
the United Kingdom or France, but will be held by those three
South Asian states, significantly increasing the tension in the
region and the possibility of proliferation from one of those
sites.
Chairman Lieberman. In other words, all of these are
nuclear powers now, but are expanding their inventory of
nuclear weapons much more rapidly than the other countries.
Senator Graham. And, second, we are in what has been called
the ``nuclear renaissance''; after Chernobyl, there was a long
period where there was virtually no nuclear activity in the
world, particularly in the United States. Now, the world is
becoming reinterested, re-engaged, and the global climate,
which I know is an issue that you are going to be dealing with,
is a factor. Energy is a factor. But it also has the risk of
having this technology and this base of science in the hands of
states that may not have the capability of appropriately
securing it from proliferators. So that is another risk.
But overwhelming those two is the biological risk, dramatic
increases in number of sites, number of scientists, the ease
with which this material can be converted from a benign,
healthy, positive pathogen into a lethal pathogen. And the
possibility of creating new pathogens that are more difficult
to suppress than anthrax, which is the pathogen of choice
today. In a laboratory somewhere in the world, the influenza
strain, which in 1918 killed 40 million people and which has
been extinct for most of the intervening 90 years, has now been
re-created. If that were to get out, there is no defense. And
the death toll of the last century might just be a shadowing of
what it could be in the 21st Century.
Chairman Lieberman. Is part of the reason why the
Commission has decided that a biological attack is more likely
than the other forms of weapons of mass destruction, that it is
both less expensive to convert a biological pathogen into a
weapon; and, second, it is easier to conceal it and, therefore,
to deliver it, for instance, by bringing it into the United
States? Are both of those factors?
Senator Graham. Both of those are factors, and Richard
Danzig, whose name was used earlier, has said that the only
thing that protects us now is a thin wall of the ignorance of
our adversary. And as our adversary, as the scientist becomes
the terrorist, as they gain access to this growing number of
people who are capable of converting good into evil, that makes
us more vulnerable.
Senator Talent. Mr. Chairman, could I have just 30 seconds?
Chairman Lieberman. Go right ahead.
Senator Talent. I have put it this way: Two and two and two
and two make eight. We know they want to get it--we know that--
and that they have tried to get it.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Senator Talent. We know if they get it, they cannot be
deterred, or it is very unlikely we can deter them from using
it. We know it is within their organizational sophistication.
They do not have to move to a new level of organizational
sophistication to get either nuclear or biological material.
And we know that their opportunities to get the material are
growing.
So you put all that together, and it is the conclusion of
all these people we talked to and it is our gut instinct that
this is a near-term risk, which is, I think, very key. It is
not something that is in the intermediate or long term. It is
near term. They are close to it and, hence, the 5-year period.
Now, we do not have intelligence already that says 2013--
and I do not think that was accidental--shortly after we said
this Admiral McConnell basically confirmed it to the Kennedy
School.
Chairman Lieberman. I appreciate what you have said, and if
we combine it with what we saw in Mumbai a few weeks ago, which
seemed to me to be a new chapter in terrorist activity,
creating what one commentator, Walid Phares, has called ``urban
jihad,'' and contemplate that kind of terrorist activity in a
city not just being the use of firearms and explosives but
biological weapons, you can imagine with horror the
multiplication of the panic, which was clearly a major aim of
the terrorists in Mumbai.
Senator Talent. Biological material is easier to weaponize
and easier to reload.
Chairman Lieberman. Right. Thank you. My time is up.
Senator Collins.
Senator Collins. Thank you. Senator Talent, let me pick up
on this discussion on biological weapons. Your report raises a
lot of concerns about the lax or absent regulation of
biological labs, and I was astounded in reading your report
that there were 15,000 employees working at these labs in our
country with, in some cases, very light regulation.
When we passed a chemical plant security bill 2 years ago,
we required a risk assessment of virtually all chemical plants
in this country, and then DHS was in charge of reviewing these
risk assessments and coming up with a risk-based security plan
working with the private sector. So there was a risk-based
system of regulation.
Do you think that is the kind of regulatory scheme that we
should be looking at imposing on these biological labs?
Senator Talent. I am going to defer, with your permission,
Senator, to Robin Cleveland because she has really studied
that. I would just say that I agree with your concern, and the
15,000 employees, as I understand it, are just the ones working
in the labs that we regulate, which are the ones that get
Federal funds. If you do not get Federal funds, you are not
regulated at all. If you do, you are regulated by three
different agencies, at least three, including USDA and CDC, so
it is a major issue.
I would just say I think that is one way we could go.
Personally, I would not want to individualize too much because
I think you can use a categorical approach, but certainly some
kind of regulation based on an intelligent assessment of the
risk would make a lot of sense.
Senator Collins. Ms. Cleveland, I would like you to address
that, but I also want you to address the issue of who the
regulator should be, because that is a major issue.
Ms. Cleveland. It is.
Senator Collins. When you look at the current system, the
CDC is regulating certain labs that deal with human pathogens,
and then you have the Department of Agriculture regulating
those dealing with plant or animal pathogens. The fact is that
while both are very concerned about health and safety, neither
the CDC nor the Department of Agriculture brings a homeland
security perspective to the regulations. So that, too, is of
great concern, and it also leads to inconsistent levels of
regulation.
Ms. Cleveland. You have identified the problem that we
tackled. I think there is a third area, which is that there are
pathogens and agents that fall in between that both CDC and the
Department of Agriculture have concerns about because they jump
species. They go from animals to humans. So you have an
emerging area where no agency essentially is in charge.
I think I would agree that a risk-based approach is the
right approach. I think the key is going to be to engage with
Homeland Security and in turn with the life sciences community,
because none of this is going to happen unless there is
cooperation on that front. And I agree with Senator Talent that
the risk-based approach is one option, but the key is having
one point of contact and one set of security rules, safety
rules, and a governing institution, in part so that folks
working in the labs know who to go to, to get guidance in terms
of what the standards for research should be.
Senator Collins. You also mentioned the possibility of a
voluntary code, and I have a lot of reservations about that
approach based on what we saw with chemical plant security.
Sure, you have some great companies who adopt excellent
practices, but then you have the outliers who do not. And it is
not really fair to rely on a voluntary system which may result
in competitive disadvantages as well. So this is an area where
I personally believe that we need to have a mandatory regime,
but one that works, where the Federal Government works with the
private labs as well as with the government-funded labs, to
come up with a very workable regulatory scheme. And I continue
to think also that when you have agencies involved that have
very different missions and whose missions are not homeland
security, you are not going to have the regulation have as its
mission the homeland security perspective. So this is an area
that I hope our Committee will look at.
In my time that is remaining, let me also ask for your
advice. It is not just regulating the control of the pathogens
or the security of the site. It is also vetting individuals who
work there as your term of a ``biologist becoming a terrorist''
suggests and as the Bruce Ivins case is a clarion call for
action, where there were all these warning signs, and yet he
maintained his access to these pathogens.
So what are your recommendations in that area?
Ms. Cleveland. Again, I think that the most--can I comment
just first on the voluntary code. I think the reason the
Commission endorsed the concept of some kind of voluntary code
is because that has not been tried yet, and I think it is
important to engage in good faith with the life sciences
community, because I think there are many willing and
interested parties. There has been some extraordinarily good
work at the University of Maryland on what a code of conduct
might look like, and I think it is an important first step in
terms of, as I said, engaging in good faith with the life
sciences community. But I think inevitably there will need to
be some kind of mandatory rules and regulations. The key then
will be, of course, trying to figure out how to engage our
global partners to assure that they, too, support those
standards because we do not want to disadvantage the U.S.
medical or life sciences communities.
On the question of vetting and procedures, I think first
and foremost an entity has to be established to be in charge. I
do not know if it should be the FBI, that they should be
responsible for all vetting, and then follow-up investigations,
whether or not in the case of Fort Detrick it was the Army that
was responsible for supervision of security procedures. Just as
there is when you apply for a Federal Government job, there is
one entity now responsible for background investigations and
follow-up. I think the Commission felt strongly that there
ought to be one entity in charge of supervision of this area
and to start at that point.
Senator Collins. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Senator Collins.
Senator Levin, we welcome you in your dual-hatted capacity,
as a senior Member of this Committee and Chairman of the Senate
Armed Services Committee.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LEVIN
Senator Levin. Thank you, Chairman Lieberman and Senator
Collins. Thank you for holding this hearing. Thanks for
inviting the Members of the Armed Services Committee, who are
not dual-hatted, to join us here this morning. We were planning
on having our own hearing, but given the time constraints and
the fact that we have so many members on both committees, we
thought this would be a more efficient way to have the
Commission before us, for us to welcome our former colleagues,
Senator Graham and Senator Talent, and other members of the
Commission for the tremendous job that you have done, to thank
you and thank your staff, because we know how important staff
members are in all of this work.
Let me start by raising the question of our relationship
with Russia, and I think that relationship is going to require
a lot more attention in a positive way. It has had a lot of
attention in a negative way. But it is going to need a lot of
attention positively for many reasons, and I think this is one
of them.
The U.S. bilateral effort with Russia to reduce the threat
of WMD has always been a bedrock of the U.S.-Russian
relationship, and there have been a number of significant
accomplishments there. Now, I am not sure which of you or how
many of your staff have traveled to Russia, but I know there
has been some travel. And you have had discussions with senior
military and government officials, and I am wondering what
conclusions or insights in particular you can share with us
about our future relationship with Russia, our cooperative
relationship, which is so essential to address the WMD
proliferation issue and terrorism generally and to try to
further reduce stockpiles of nuclear weapons. So, Mr. Chairman,
maybe you could start on that.
Senator Graham. We did travel and spent 4 days in Russia. I
was, frankly, a little surprised that we got visas because this
was shortly after the Russian invasion of Georgia and all the
tension that came out of that.
We not only received visas, we received a surprisingly
constructive and hospitable reception. This was a common theme.
The United States and Russia are two great powers. They are
going to exist on this planet for a long time. There will be
some good periods, and there will be some bad periods. But
there is one thing that we share in common. Over 95 percent of
the nuclear material on the globe is in our control, one of
these two countries. We have a responsibility to the world to
see that they are properly secure. These cannot become part of
the transitory disputes between our two countries.
We went to our Department of Energy, Secretary Bodman and
our representatives who are in Russia monitoring Russian
compliance, and they said that on the ground that statement was
being realized, that, in fact, there had been no diminution in
the Russian effort to secure their materials. We found that to
be very encouraging.
So our recommendation is that we continue to recognize the
primacy of security of nuclear weapons in our relationship and
that we do some things that would tell the world that we are
serious about this.
As two examples, a number of the agreements that were
entered into after the end of the Cold War are about to expire.
Some of them require that renewal negotiations start several
years before the treaty is going to expire. We think that we
should take the initiative in restarting those negotiations to
indicate that we think--the relationship may change. It is not
going to be as much of the United States providing money for
the Soviet Union's benefit, it will be more of a partnership, a
relationship of two equals, but that the relationship be
established is very important.
Another area that I might say I am personally very
interested in is I visited Pakistan in 2002, and I was struck
with the fact that their Joint Chiefs of Staff said that we
have virtually no relationship with the Indians analogous to
what you had with the Soviet Union during the Cold War,
relationships to try to avoid an accidental launch or an
overreaction to an unintended, potentially provocative event.
I think that the United States and Russia could play a
great service to the world if they could go to India and
Pakistan and say, ``Look, we have 40 years of experience with
how you do this, and we would like to share that experience and
maybe encourage you to develop some similar protocols,'' so
that what may well soon be the fourth and fifth largest nuclear
powers in the world will have that degree of additional
security in how they are managing these terrific sources of
destruction.
Senator Levin. Did you reach any conclusions about the
IAEA, particularly in terms of the adequacy of funding of the
IAEA?
Senator Graham. Yes, we found that the funding is
inadequate, that their job has multiplied by several factors in
the last 25 years without any commensurate increase in
resources, and that actually the level of surveillance at
individual plants around the world is lower today than it was
25 years ago. And we are facing this nuclear renaissance where
there will be many more plants. Also, a lot of the increased
funding that they have gotten have been for specific projects
not in their base budget. So it has been difficult for them to
plan, to hire the scientists, build the labs that are going to
be required in this enlarged nuclear age when there is not an
assured, reliable funding base.
So I think, again, this is an area in which the United
States should take leadership in analyzing what is going to be
required, what we want for our own safety the IAEA to be able
to do and step forward with the support and resources to make
that happen.
Senator Levin. Thank you.
Mr. Roemer. Senator, can I jump in at the end of Senator
Graham's remarks?
Chairman Lieberman. Go ahead.
Mr. Roemer. We had several meetings in Moscow over a
significant number of days, and after we talked about Georgia
and the United States' profound disappointment there and after
we talked about human rights issues and after both sides were
able to express their grievances and their concerns, we found
that there was a great deal of commonality and interest in
working together on counterproliferation initiatives.
We outline in our report ways to strengthen the
Proliferation Security Initiative. We talk about extending the
essential verification and monitoring provisions of the
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. We talk about the role of
encouraging China, Pakistan, and India to announce a moratorium
on the production of fissile materials and reduce their
existing nuclear stockpiles.
But we also found, in addition to five or six things of
common interest and where we could develop some joint
initiatives, when we talked to a couple different generals that
we had meetings with about their own threat, Chechnya, they
quickly go back to the Beslan attacks in their school, where
their schoolchildren were attacked by terrorists. And so they
have a real common interest here, despite other disagreements
in the world, to work together with us on this terrorism
proliferation issue. And the more we can propose new
initiatives to work with them and outline these issues and have
the congressional oversight do it, the new Administration can
initiate these things, and you can follow through on your
oversight committees. We need meetings with the U.S. Ambassador
to Russia and the Russian Ambassador to the U.S., and to stress
this partnership with other meetings with China and Pakistan, I
think we are going to find that this is a real area of
productive joint initiative in the future.
Senator Levin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Senator Levin.
Ms. Cleveland. Just one thing on the IAEA resource issue, I
would be remiss if I did not say that I think there was
consensus on the question of increased resources, but it ought
to be performance based. And I think there are real concerns
about the management of the institution. And so in my former
capacity of not desiring to create unfunded mandates, I think
that performance standard is critical.
Chairman Lieberman. Senator Graham.
Senator Graham. Mr. Chairman, Commissioner Roemer I know is
going to have to leave shortly, and I know he regrets that
necessity. So I would suggest if anyone has a question that
they would like to direct to Mr. Roemer, if they might do so
soon.
Mr. Roemer. I apologize. I have an event at the Center for
National Policy that I am hosting with Ambassador Thomas
Pickering and the author of ``Victory on the Potomac,'' who
helped organize the successful efforts on the Goldwater-Nichols
Act, and we are trying to look at ways to get this intergration
in our foreign policy arena and our national security. So we
are having an event at the center at noon, and I have to excuse
myself for that.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Mr. Roemer. We understand
completely, and I think we will ask Members who have questions
for you to file them with you in writing.
Mr. Roemer. Thank you, Senator.
Chairman Lieberman. I just want to say very briefly,
because Senator Graham said something about how important it
would be for Pakistan and India to develop the kind of high-
level communications about their nuclear systems that we have
had with the Russians. I was in New Delhi and Islamabad last
week, and what was apparent to all of us--and probably to
anybody who was not there--is that the terrorist attack in
Mumbai was not solely or even primarily an expression of the
classic jihadist goals. It probably had a specific aim here,
which was to disrupt--I do not want to overstate it--the
improving relations between Pakistan and India, particularly
since President Zardari took office. In fact, it was perhaps
intended to disrupt the increasing cooperation between the
United States, Pakistan, and Afghanistan with regard to
striking at terrorist basis in the federally administered
tribal areas.
So it just reminds us of the way in which non-state actors
using conventional or unconventional weapons of mass
destruction can not only carry out fanatical ideological aims,
but also can actually influence and sometimes control the
behavior of state actors. Of course, I hope that we can get
back on the trail that you, Senator Graham, have suggested.
Senator Collins and I wanted to hold this hearing as
quickly as we could after your excellent 9/11 Commission
Report. I think we had a secondary subconscious aim, which was
to have one more hearing at which we could have the honor of
the presence of John Warner. With that, I am honored to call on
Senator Warner.
OPENING TESTIMONY OF SENATOR WARNER
Senator Warner. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I
commend you and the Ranking Member and my distinguished
colleague Senator Levin for having this hearing. I am
delighted. I guess this is my last appearance in 216 times on
this side of the dias, and then maybe after 2 years I can get
on the other side. But I have a hiatus to fill under the
current laws.
Commissioner Roemer, I do appreciate your reference to the
old days on the Intelligence Committee with Senator DeConcini.
I was Vice Chairman, I think. Was that during the period you
were there?
Mr. Roemer. Yes, sir, and I neglected to mention how
instrumental you were----
Senator Warner. No, that is all right. I just wanted to----
Mr. Roemer [continuing]. In helping to pass the Goldwater-
Nichols Act.
Senator Warner. Do not worry about any neglect. I have
received more than my share of references to the past.
I am a believer in the work of commissions, and they serve
a very important advisory role to the Executive and Legislative
Branches and to inform the public. And I wish to commend each
of you individually for a job well done.
I simply want to ask a question, too, on process because
undoubtedly the new Administration will reflect on the use of
commissions. Do you feel that the Federal Executive Branch
responded fully and adequately to your several requests for
information and discussions at various levels?
Senator Graham. Senator, let me say how much the Nation has
been honored and benefited by your service. We wish you well.
Senator Warner. Well, I thank you, Commissioner Graham.
Senator Graham. And I doubt that there is going to be a 2-
year hiatus in your----
Senator Warner. The law requires that. Otherwise, I go to
prison. [Laughter.]
Senator Graham. But there certainly are lawful ways in
which you can----
Senator Warner. Well, I am not sure. I have studied this
law at great length, and I believe at my age it really is not
good for my health to be in prison. [Laughter.]
Senator Graham. We submitted our report to President Bush,
Vice President Cheney, and other members of the current
Administration, and while some might interpret some of our
observations, particularly the one that we are losing ground to
our adversaries, as being negative, I think there was a general
recognition that is true not because of our inactivity but
because the game has stepped up another notch, and we have got
to do likewise.
We also submitted it to our former colleague, Senator
Biden, on behalf of the new Administration, and he pointed out
that Senator Obama has already, for instance, committed to
establishing a position within the Executive Branch that will
have singular responsibility for the oversight of these issues
and, without making any specific commitments, indicated a
general support for the thrust of the recommendations that we
have. And we submitted our report to the leadership in the
House and the Senate.
Senator Warner. I saw all the entries in this well-prepared
dossier.
Senator Talent. Senator, I would say that we received good
cooperation. I understood your question to be did they
cooperate with us?
Senator Warner. Yes.
Senator Talent. And I think they did. In fact, I would
really say the cooperation was very good. There were the usual
issues once we got our clearances, those of us who needed it,
about how many could go in and see this classified thing and
that.
Senator Warner. On the whole, you think it was----
Senator Talent. I do, and I think that everybody we dealt
with--and we worked with congressional bodies, also, as well as
third parties--wished us well. We put this, I think, in the
Executive Summary. Really, we are trying to reassure the
American people that we did not encounter anybody in any agency
obviously of either party in either branch of government who
did not want the government of the United States to succeed in
stopping weapons of mass destruction. I mean, everybody is
working very hard to achieve that goal, and I think there was
good cooperation.
Senator Warner. Do the other two Commissioners likewise
feel that is the case?
Mr. Roemer. I would agree with the Chairman and Senator
Talent, Senator Warner. But on to your larger question about
commissions in general, which you said you generally support,
as you probably know the history of these commissions, I
believe, our first President created the first commission and
picked average citizens to help advise him on what happened
after the Whiskey Rebellion and what he should do about it. And
there were a couple people that recommended what he should do
as a response to that rebellion, and I believe he took their
advice. So the first one was fairly successful.
We have had commissions on war, on race relations, on
intelligence gathering, and on the September 11, 2001, attacks,
and I think generally commissions can serve a very important,
worthwhile, and earnest purpose. But I also think that they can
be overdone, and Congress can begin to punt some of its
responsibilities to outside commissions when Congress itself
needs to concentrate on its own oversight, accountability, and
reorganization.
So I think there is a balance to be achieved here in the
future. I may be talking myself out of future jobs, Senator
Warner, and never be on a commission again. But I think that we
might be tipping the balance here and creating too many of
these commissions. And the hard work of oversight and making
our government accountable, of knowing what is going on in the
Executive Branch, holding them accountable and being
responsible to our citizenry is a key job done in our
committees.
As Richard Fenno, the scholar on committees, said, ``The
work of Congress is the work of its committees.'' And that
includes oversight.
Senator Warner. Ms. Cleveland, do you have any view?
Ms. Cleveland. I concur. We got full cooperation.
Senator Warner. Good.
Ms. Cleveland. I think we met with more than 200 staffers
and various agencies, and they were very frank, I think, in
their assessment of some of the challenges they face.
Senator Warner. As I have stated, you did a remarkable job
in a short time.
To what extent have any of the entities of the Federal
Government, particularly the DNI, come back and commented on
your report? And if so, how do those comments then become
incorporated in such reports as are made permanent?
Senator Graham. Senator, our report was issued on December
3, 2008, so it has been just a bit over a week. To my
knowledge, there has been no formal comment by any agency. I
mentioned the one statement that Admiral McConnell made,
which----
Senator Warner. Yes, I have read that.
Senator Graham [continuing]. Seemed to be parallel with our
assessment of the risk. Our report is our report. It is now
bound. In fact, if I could give a commercial, it is being
printed by Vantage Books and will be sold broadly. The proceeds
that would normally be the author's royalty will go to a U.S.
foundation which is working to build schools and hospitals in
Pakistan, which we think underscores the centrality of that
country in accomplishing our objective of avoiding
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Senator Warner. Senator Graham, just on process again,
obviously you had to get into classified material. I think you
mentioned that. But you elected not to file a classified annex
to your report. If so, for what reason did you decide not to do
that?
Senator Graham. First, we did submit the report to the
appropriate agencies for clearance.
Senator Warner. I am not suggesting that, but there is
obviously some material you unearthed in your hard work that
would be of advice to both the Executive and Legislative
Branches in the nature of classified observations.
Senator Graham. At this point it was our feeling that the
essential message that we wanted to convey and the supporting
rationale and documentation for that position could be conveyed
in the declassified form and be available to all the American
people as well as decision makers.
Senator Talent. I just confirmed with staff, because
Senator Graham and I talked about this late in the stages, we
did not think that there was enough that relied upon classified
material for us to have to do that, Senator. And we ended up
not having to do that.
Senator Warner. Thank you very much. I thank the Chairman
and Ranking Member.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you very much, Senator Warner.
Let me now indicate for the information of the Members here
what the early-bird order suggests, and obviously we can only
call on people if they are here: Senators Akaka, Voinovich,
Carper, Coleman, McCaskill, Nelson, Martinez, Thune, and Pryor.
Senator Akaka.
OPENING TESTIMONY OF SENATOR AKAKA
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I would
like to thank you and Senator Collins for holding this hearing
today. And I want to also welcome our Senators here, Bob Graham
and Jim Talent, and also Tim Roemer and Robin Cleveland, and
along with your welcome is a welcome to other Commissioners, as
well as staff. Thank you for your efforts in completing this
report, ``World at Risk.'' \1\ And I share your concerns that
WMD proliferation and terrorism are critical national security
issues.
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\1\ The report, titled ``World at Risk,'' appears in the Appendix
on page 58.
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I want to be a little more specific in asking you this
question. The Commission recommends building a national
security workforce for the 21st Century with the related goal
of creating a culture of interagency collaboration,
flexibility, and innovation. And along with this in your
report, you focus on WMD proliferation and terrorism, and you
have highlighted the need for improved government operations as
well as improved coordination throughout government to counter
these threats and strengthen our national security workforce.
In terms of creating this culture, can you name which
departments and agencies would benefit in particular from
greater participation in these joint duty programs?
Senator Talent. Thanks for your question, Senator, and for
spotlighting a really important part of the report. It is one
of the reasons I mentioned it in my very brief summary.
I would say everybody benefits because it is agency-wide,
but the ones who, I think, were the most concerned were
probably the intelligence agencies, their ability to analyze
data and continue to promote a joint culture. One of the good-
news stories of this report is the progress that has been made
within the intelligence community in accomplishing culture
change, operating in a more synergistic fashion along the lines
of a Goldwater-Nichols model in the military. But to do it,
they have got to increase joint curriculum, joint education
within the service. They have to continue to recruit
effectively and step up their efforts to recruit among the
right national communities, people who can analyze this data.
And then, second, the labs were very concerned, Sandia was
very concerned that if something specific is not done, long-
term type of recruiting of people into those kinds of sciences,
they are not going to be able to continue providing the
expertise that they provide across all agencies. As you know,
Senator, a huge number of agencies contract with the labs in
various kinds of purposes. And if they do not have this
ability, they are not going to be able to provide the needs for
our government, much less international organizations like the
IAEA.
Senator Akaka. This report references the need for more
individuals with language skills in the Federal Government. As
you may know, I have been a strong advocate for the need for a
more comprehensive approach to increase language education and
training in order to grow the number of qualified applicants
and ensure that the current gap in language skills does not
expand.
What do you believe are the most significant challenges to
recruiting and training individuals in these skills?
Senator Graham. Well, first, I think we do not have today a
pipeline that is manageable to give us some confidence that
there will be those follow-on personnel to carry out important
national missions. Contrast the civilian side of the government
with the military. The military not only has military
academies, but also in many universities and colleges, Reserve
Officer Training Corps (ROTC) programs, so that the Army, Navy,
and Air Force can tell what their flow of young officers will
be and can plan to carry out their missions based on that human
capital. We do not have that in other areas.
I will say I have personally been interested in
establishing a very similar process for the intelligence
community where we could bring young people in at a university
level, have them study for 3, 4, or 5 years these difficult
strategic languages, as well as study some of the science that
the intelligence community will need so that it, like the
military, will have an assured source of new personnel. I think
that is one idea that could be expanded to substantially
accomplish overcoming the concerns that you have expressed.
Senator Talent. If I could add very briefly, Senator, to
that, there are some practical issues involved that you keep
running into. The kind of people we want are highly skilled
people who have a lot of opportunities in a lot of areas, and
it just takes a lot longer for the government to hire them.
They have to go through the security clearances and the rest of
it. These are individuals getting out of a post-graduate
course; they cannot wait around for 14 or 15 months to find out
whether they get a job or whether they will be able to go to
work.
So we have to balance better the need for the security
clearances and all the things the government does before it
hires people with the need for speed as well so that we can
continue to recruit the best people.
Senator Graham. And if I could just add another element to
that, today there are groups of Americans who in many ways
represent the most immediate source of assistance who have been
largely excluded, particularly from the intelligence community,
and those are persons of Middle Eastern background. It is very
difficult for a young person, let us say, from an Iranian
ancestry to get into the intelligence agencies. A large part of
that has to do with the clearance process that puts a lot of
emphasis on your family background. It is hard to get access to
the family if the family is in Iran, and it is not unlikely
that you have an uncle or some family member who may be holding
a position that raises some concern.
I think another benefit of a program like the military's
ROTC is that these young people would be under very personal,
close surveillance for 4 years, and you could make a judgment
as to their reliability more based on your assessment of their
character than what their family may be doing back in their
home countries.
Senator Akaka. Let me finally comment that I believe there
is a need for a comprehensive strategy that needs to be
developed regarding critical language skills, and I take it
that you also believe that, and I hope we can move in that
direction.
Mr. Chairman, I have a full statement that I would like to
be included in the record.
Chairman Lieberman. Without objection, it will be included
in the record.
[The prepared statement of Senator Akaka follows:]
OPENING PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA
I would like to thank Senator Lieberman for holding this hearing
today. I also want to welcome Senators Bob Graham and Jim Talent, along
with Commissioners Tim Roemer and Robin Cleveland, and thank them,
along with the other commissioners and staff, for their efforts in
completing this report. I share your concerns that weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) proliferation and terrorism are critical national
security threats.
Your report comes at a crucial time. Tensions between India and
Pakistan remain high in the wake of the horrific terrorist attacks in
Mumbai. We must not forget that both countries have nuclear weapons and
both are beneficiaries of new nuclear trade agreements with major
powers. At the non-state actor level, al-Qaeda has not disavowed its
desire to obtain weapons of mass destruction. History suggests that
terrorists often attempt attacks shortly before or after governmental
transitions, and the Department of Homeland Security is preparing for
its first-ever presidential transition. These are challenging times.
Along with your report's focus on WMD proliferation and terrorism,
you highlighted the need for improved government operations and the
vital role of the citizen. The report asserts that we must improve
coordination throughout our government to counter these threats and
strengthen our national security workforce. I have long maintained that
we cannot counter national security threats, including WMD
proliferation and terrorism, without a workforce that has the full
range of language, cultural, scientific, and technical capabilities. In
addition, we must ensure that we openly and honestly inform citizens
about the threats facing them and what role they can play in our
Nation's homeland security.
At a critical point in our Nation's history, almost 50 years ago,
an agency designed to address the challenges of arms control was
created. In 1999, that agency was eliminated and its functions merged
into the State Department. At the current, critical point in history,
we may need a new agency focused on nonproliferation and arms control
that is designed to meet 21st Century threats. The hearings that I held
earlier this year made it clear that the State Department is not fully
capable of facing these threats. I plan to continue focusing on this
issue during the 111th Congress.
I want to thank again our witnesses for being here today.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Akaka. Senator Carper,
welcome.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER
Senator Carper. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I want to say to our
colleagues, Senator Graham and Senator Talent, it is great to
see you both. Welcome. And Tim Roemer slipped out of the room,
but I served with him in the House and am very much
appreciative of his continued service to our country.
Ms. Cleveland, you are in good company, and they tell me
that they are in good company with you, too. So thank you for
the work that you have done on this.
I have a question first for Senator Graham, maybe a couple
of questions, and then I have a question that I would like to
direct to anyone on the panel who might wish to respond. But I
am especially interested in the part of your report that
focuses on Pakistan and your recommendations there, too.
Senator Graham, my understanding is that you strongly
believe that our country should appoint a special envoy to deal
with India-Pakistan tensions. Was that recommendation actually
included in the report that you have prepared?
Senator Graham. The answer is no.
Senator Carper. Could you talk about that?
Senator Graham. Well, that was part of a general policy
that we wanted to focus our recommendations on goals to be
accomplished and strategic steps necessary to accomplish those
goals. We thought it was inappropriate for us to be at what I
would call the tactical level: First, in many cases it went
beyond our expertise, and us saying it did not add much to the
force of the argument; and, second, that is a decision which
either Congress or a new President or some other responsible
person has, and they should have the latitude to determine what
tactics they want to follow.
I understand that this idea of having a person who
specifically will be focused on our interests in this part of
the world--and we think Pakistan, while there are some things
that are Pakistan-specific, it also has to be dealt with in a
larger regional context. You are not going to bleed off a lot
of the bad feeling between Pakistan and India unless you can
help deal with questions like Kashmir, which has been a 60-year
thorn in the side of that relationship. So whoever performs
this function needs to have a portfolio that is not singularly
Pakistan, but allows the region to be part of the solution to
the problem.
Senator Carper. All right. Let me come back at this just in
a little different way. I appreciate why you did not include it
in your report. But could you explain to us how such an envoy
could be effective given that India has, I think, firmly and
consistently taken a position for a long time that they are not
interested in outside mediation of their disagreements with
Pakistan?
Senator Graham. Well, the landscape is littered with
failures of efforts to have special envoys, and many of those
bodies are in the Middle East. But there also have been
successes. For instance, I think the work that Ambassador
Richard Holbrooke and General Wesley Clark did in Bosnia to try
to defuse that very contentious part of the world and to
stabilize it was very successful and has largely helped keep
the peace in the Balkans. So that would be an example of
effective diplomacy in a very contentious area that may give
you some hope that a similar initiative could be helpful in
Central Asia.
Senator Talent. Senator, on this issue--and we did discuss
this--I did not personally have a dog in that hunt, as we say
back in Mississippi. And I think everybody believes that it is
important to pay very high level attention to Pakistan. How the
President-elect chooses to do that, whether through a special
envoy, which is certainly a possibility--and you see this in
several places in the report where we did not want to presume
to make tactical choices for the President or, for that matter,
for Congress. Where we felt strongly about a position, we said
it, like the WMD Coordinator. I think we all agree with the
thrust of what you are saying, that, look, it needs to be
regional, there needs to be somebody who is senior, who has the
attention of the President and the foreign policy establishment
who is paying attention to that. I do not think anybody here
would disagree with that, for all the reasons you are saying.
Senator Carper. Thank you.
I noticed that the Commission came down in support of the
Bush Administration's decision 5 or 6 years ago to walk away
from the negotiations on an Inspections Protocol to the
Biological Weapons Convention. And I think you also recommended
that the next Administration resist international pressure to
resume negotiations on such a protocol.
Ms. Cleveland, I think you may have addressed this briefly
this morning, but could one or several of you elaborate on why
you think it would be a mistake to try to set up an
international inspections regime for biological weapons and
what steps you recommend instead to reduce the risk of a
biological weapons attack?
Ms. Cleveland. Senator, we heard from a number of people
that had been involved in those negotiations early on, and we
are looking at them with fresh eyes. And I think the concern
was, given the dual-use nature of so much of the material that
we are talking about, it would be virtually impossible to come
up with a credible regime. And rather than tilt at windmills, I
think the sense was that it was more important to come up with
a framework where there would be international adherence to the
norms and standards in the underlying treaty.
I am trying to think if we heard from any witnesses that
actually argued in favor of proceeding with a revival of the
protocol. I think on a bipartisan basis we heard generally that
it would not be a well-advised course. It would be expending an
enormous amount of time to pursue a fleeting possibility.
I think what we learned was that when you had demands
imposed by Iran and some other countries as to what would the
cost be in terms of the verification protocol, they were
suggesting, for example, suspension of all U.S. export controls
in return for establishing a verification regime that the cost
was perceived as too high and probably would not yield the kind
of result we want in terms of access to information.
Senator Carper. All right. Thanks. Senator Graham.
Senator Graham. Let me say as one who came to the
conclusion that is in our report with some reluctance, because
I recognized the importance of having a strong international
convention to govern--biological weapons are distinctly
different than nuclear where we do have an agency, the IAEA,
that does that. There are a definable number of sites around
the world where nuclear material is being produced, used, or
stored. So it is possible to have the list of the addresses of
all those places and have a meaningful set of inspections. With
biological, the number is so enormous and constantly changing
that we felt that you might create false expectations if you
said we were going to have effective international inspection.
What we suggested was that there should be two objectives
now with the biological weapons. One is to get all the
countries that are in this business members of the convention.
There still are a handful of important countries that are not
even members of the Biological Weapons Convention. And then,
second, have a verification regime which is nation-based. I am
now sort of stating my own definition of what that means, but
maybe coming up with some standards of what does a nation have
to have in terms of regulations and enforcement capability to
give the world confidence that their laboratories are not being
used for inappropriate purposes, and then monitor whether the
nation is complying with those standards of regulations and
enforcement capability.
One of the things about biological is it is in everybody's
interest not to let this leak out. No country, no matter how
big or small, wants to be fingered as the contributant to
thousands of people being killed because biological weapons
leaked out of their laboratories into the hands of terrorists.
So we think you can build on that common interest of all the
nations of the world to have an effective verification scheme
that does not overstate what a biological IAEA might be able to
accomplish.
Senator Carper. OK, thanks. My time has expired. Let me
just say again thank you for your continued service and for the
good work that you continue to do for our country. Much
obliged.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Senator Carper.
Next is Senator Coleman. It strikes me I talked about the
various reasons we are holding this hearing. Perhaps one
unconscious one was to give you an opportunity, Senator
Coleman, to focus your considerable talents on something other
than the recount going on in Minnesota. We welcome you to the
meeting and thank you for being here.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLEMAN
Senator Coleman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Actually, this is
a good opportunity to talk to my colleague from Florida about
that when this is all over. But let me say to my colleagues, by
the way, I do thank you for this tremendous continued service.
We use the term ``friends'' in this body sometimes too loosely,
but Senator Talent I consider a dear friend and a great
American, and, Senator Graham, I have always had great respect
for your leadership in this area. And, Ms. Cleveland, you are
obviously in great company.
I want to talk a little bit about the biological threat and
just step back. One of the things that we did in the Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations was look at how easy the
possibilities of obtaining nuclear material were to create a
dirty bomb by setting up a bogus facility. And that is an area
where it is highly regulated. A specific agency has the
responsibility, regulated both on the State and Federal level,
and we have found gaps in the system and were able to set up a
bogus company to get access to material that could be used to
create a dirty bomb. So I look at that area that is regulated,
and then I look at the biological area, and the regulation that
we have is a regulation with a specific select agent list. The
nature of biological materials is that you can create new
agents today that are not on any list. So the first question,
then perhaps to Ms. Cleveland, how easy would it be to create a
bogus BSL-3 lab to get pathogens? Then, if in operation, what
is the capability at the State and Federal level to know that
there is a problem?
Ms. Cleveland. Senator, I do not think you need to create a
bogus lab because I think that the oversight and regulation in
place already presents a risk. With the proliferation of labs
that we have in the United States and the lack of clear
accountability, it does not need to be bogus.
So I think what is important is to establish a single-point
contact in terms of agency oversight and supervise the labs
that we have.
Senator Coleman. And I believe Senator Collins pursued this
area in her question, but the report talks about at times
coordination between DHS and Health and Human Services. You do
not want to look back and said that it did not happen. Is there
a recommendation for a single source where the regulation
should be centered, where the responsibility is so that we are
not caught in a ``he said, she said'' situation?
Ms. Cleveland. I think we all felt that Homeland Security
had the mission to protect the country, and that ought to be
the beginning point. And I think we had a sense in talking to
Governor Napolitano, the designated Secretary, that she was
seized with the urgency of that task. But I think an agency
with the focus of the homeland security mission probably should
be in charge.
Senator Talent. If I could respond to this area, because
you were kind enough to be complimentary toward us, we before
emphasized our recommendations for congressional change, but I
think it is important to look--it is important to emphasize how
hugely effective the role of this Committee and the Congress
will be in this area, more so than if just Executive action is
taken. Probably in theory this could be done by Executive
order. But one of the things we found in talking to the
intelligence community about the intelligence reforms was the
prominence of congressional action in that law in their
thinking. Even the ones who did not like the idea of cultural
jointness and the rest of it kept saying when Congress passed
that law, we knew we had to salute and go on.
So this is an area where if you all follow up, even if
theoretically the President can do it--it is weird, but I think
the Executive Branch people may be more impressed by you all
doing something than an order from the President in this area.
I am sorry to take up your time, but I just----
Senator Coleman. No. My next question would have focused on
that action. This is an area that needs great oversight in a
way that does not diminish the scientific capability or
capacity of folks in research to do the things they do. But
here is an area of great vulnerability, and I presume at the
State level there is not a lot of oversight here.
Ms. Cleveland. You have problems at the Federal, State, and
local level, and you currently have a system in place that
requires voluntary reporting of the transfer of these lethal
pathogens from lab to lab. But as we all know, when you have
voluntary reporting, if it does not happen and there is no
follow-up and accountability in terms of Federal oversight or
congressional oversight, voluntary reporting sometimes falls
between the cracks.
Senator Coleman. I would hope and anticipate that we will
continue to move down this path.
Let me shift gears a little bit. In the area of citizen
response and the things that we can do to facilitate--I think
the report says, ``Quick access to information can save
lives.'' And I have looked at some of the things we have done
in the past, and I think the report talks about it,
recommendations about duct tape and even the color coding level
that we have today, and I am not sure how helpful that is to
most citizens. Who takes the bull by the horns on this one and
really ups the level of citizen awareness of very concrete
steps that can and should be taken, when something like this
happens somewhere, so that the response is one that saves
lives, minimizes the damage, and ameliorates some of the
terrible things that might otherwise follow?
Senator Graham. Well, let me suggest that this Committee
would be an appropriate place to take that leadership. As an
example, let me just suggest areas of citizen involvement.
Every community in this country is going to need to have
the capability to respond particularly to a biological attack.
While our focus is on preventing it, the reality is that is
very difficult to do, and there may be a biological attack. How
well is St. Paul, Hartford, or Portland prepared to deal with
that? I think laying out what are some of the standards that a
community should strive for, what is the gold standard of a
community being prepared for this, so that citizens could then
hold their local officials responsible for that level of
protections.
A second area is that we think that the American people, in
large and in specific groups, need to be better informed. The
question has been raised going back to this anthrax incident of
2001. The FBI carried out that investigation in a very closed
manner. It has been suggested that maybe if they were more open
and had involved more scientists in this process, it would not
have taken 7 years to have found out what the nature of the
attack was. So using the population broadly, but also specific
groups of the population more effectively.
Another area, the British, when we met with Scotland Yard,
MI-5, and MI-6 in London, they said there was no terrorist
attack inside Great Britain that had been aborted without
citizen involvement. They have used their citizens very
effectively as the front line of knowledge of what is going on
in the community.
Now, they have a different history and culture, from World
War II when they were under attack for such a long period of
time, to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) since World War II.
We, fortunately, avoided both of those experiences. So it is
going to be a heavier lift to get U.S. citizens engaged at that
level, but it would certainly be a tremendous asset in our
arsenal of avoiding a weapon of mass destruction if we could do
so.
Senator Talent. And we recommend the Secretary of Homeland
Security take the lead in this public information ``campaign,''
which is maybe the wrong word for it. Actually, when we briefed
the Secretary-designate, she indicated a real eagerness to roll
up her sleeves and get involved in this. And I think it is
natural to come from her. It would vindicate the credibility of
the agency, which was hurt 6 or 7 years ago with the initial
discussions of it. So it ought to come from them.
It is not good that the American public is as unaware of
the nature and potential consequences of a biological attack as
they are. It will just promote panic if something happens. So I
think it is at that level that it ought to occur, and I think
our report says so. And, again, this is an example of why we
were saying that, for the sake of public safety and Congress'
participation in this, it would be good to get a more unified
oversight of that agency so you all can play your role in
making certain that they do what they are supposed to do. And
right now, oversight in that area is not what it ought to be.
Ms. Cleveland. Can I correct something that I said earlier?
There is a mandatory requirement to report on transfer of a
select group of pathogens. The problem is that there is no
enforcement mechanism. There is no way to determine whether or
not that code, in fact, is being observed.
Senator Coleman. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Coleman. Senator
Bill Nelson.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BILL NELSON, A U.S. SENATOR FROM
THE STATE OF FLORIDA
Senator Nelson. Thank you all for your continued public
service. The Congress has been repeatedly assured by the Bush
Administration that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is safe. What if
the worst took place that you had a fall of the government into
the hands of some terrorist group? Do you all want to comment?
Senator Graham. Well, today the nuclear arsenal in Pakistan
is under the control of the military, as it has been
traditionally, and there are strained relations between the
military and the civilian government. Witness this recent
incident where the civilian government ordered the military
intelligence head to go to Mumbai to help with the
investigation, and then the military reversed those orders and
the intelligence officer stayed home and did not go to India.
So that is an unstable relationship.
I think what would be ideal is if we could work with the
Pakistanis and maybe with the Russians and some other entities
so it is not just a total U.S. operation to try to
internationalize the security of both Pakistan's nuclear
weapons and India's nuclear weapons. That would be a source of
comfort to both of those countries and to the world.
Senator Nelson. Senator Graham, you mentioned earlier most
insightfully that what we need to do, you were building on the
idea of the soft power in Pakistan, and it underscores one of
your recommendations that we need to counter and defeat
extremist ideology in Pakistan, and you said with schools and
hospitals. I agree. Do you want to for the record amplify?
Senator Graham. Well, what I said was that this report that
we have, the royalties for the sale of this book will go to a
U.S. foundation whose purpose is to build schools and hospitals
in Pakistan. We thought that was an appropriate way to
underscore the centrality of Pakistan in responding to the
challenge of proliferation.
Senator Talent has spent a great deal of time thinking
about this issue of the use of soft power generally, but with
Pakistan being the initial point of impact, and I think I will
turn it over to him. But basically I think it says that we
cannot depend just on the sword to achieve our objectives. We
cannot continue to deal with the symptoms of terrorism. We have
to start to understand what are the root causes of terrorism
and where, through soft power and diplomatic, economic, and
human interchanges, we can begin to bleed some of that
extremism out of the system.
Senator Talent. And I think to answer the thrust of your
question, the answer is yes. I think we have a unique time
because there is really a pretty broad consensus, including
within the military, and Secretary Gates, that we need to have
this capability as a government. In addition to the traditional
military and intelligence capability, this is also very
important. This is a full-spectrum type of engagement with the
terrorists.
Now, what we did, Senator, was we took it a little step
further, and we said we just cannot think of it in vague terms
of foreign assistance. Our agencies that do this have to sit
down and ask themselves what capabilities do we need. Just as
the military interact when the improvised explosive devices
(IEDs) started hitting us; they said, OK, we have to be able to
identify the signatures of the bomb makers, and so there are
some capabilities we need, and how do we get that organically?
We need the State Department to do the same thing. What does
this really mean? And we said in the report as a minimum it is
the ability to project targeted, effective messages about our
intentions and to use communications to counter what the
terrorists are saying, and at least in a targeted way--and this
is what you are referring to--help people build local social,
economic, and educational institutions that are a bulwark
against radicalism. We all want to do that, but we do not want
to be in a situation where President Obama says, ``Boy, I
really like that,'' issues a presidential directive, and
nothing happens because nobody has the capability to do it.
And so the same thing you all achieved in the intelligence
community that is going on there now needs really to happen in
the State Department, and we have not briefed Secretary-
designate Hillary Clinton about this. I cannot imagine she
would disagree, and I just think it needs to be a priority.
Senator Nelson. Looking back on the issue, Ms. Cleveland,
of Dr. Ivins being a rogue scientist, what did we learn that we
could use to prevent that kind of action in the future?
Ms. Cleveland. Senator, we did not look specifically at the
Ivins case, I think in part because the Congress has determined
that another commission will take a look at it. We did not
choose to look backwards in terms of specific events. But I
think what we established in looking at management of labs and
anthrax in general as a threat, I think we have come to terms
with the fact that there needs to be improved management and
oversight of the labs. There needs to be some kind of
regulatory body that has specific responsibility for oversight
and establishing security and safety procedures. But we did not
look specifically at the Ivins case.
Senator Nelson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you very much, Senator Nelson.
Senator Thune.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHN THUNE, A U.S. SENATOR FROM
THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA
Senator Thune. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I, too, want to
echo the words of my colleagues and thank you all for lending
your experience and your skill to this very important mission.
Both of you, Senators, and Ms. Cleveland as well are people who
are very accomplished, and I know from personal experience,
having served with Senator Talent on the Armed Services
Committee, the knowledge you have of these issues and the
passion you have for making sure that we are taking the steps
that are necessary to keep our country safe in what is an
increasingly dangerous world. So thank you all for your
efforts, and also I note that I suspect that when you got into
this, you did not realize that you would be putting yourselves
in peril on your trip to Pakistan. That had to have been a
reminder of the dangerous world in which we live. And I think
that your principal finding that we would experience some sort
of an attack in the next 5 years came as a shock to a lot of
people, but also a reminder to us how important it is that we
double down in our efforts to make sure that we prevent that
sort of thing from happening.
I want to follow up on the question that Senator Nelson
raised about Pakistan because your findings did, I think, talk
about the use of soft power initiatives. And, of course, as you
know, a number of things have happened there recently, which
have drawn into question their ability to carry out those types
of initiatives. I am just wondering in terms of current events
in Pakistan that have occurred subsequent to the submission of
your report, do you think that any of the recommendations may
need to be modified to take into account the likelihood that we
may have to deal with Pakistan in terms of it being a failed
state? There is growing belief and consensus that could be the
case. So do you believe that Pakistan is on the brink of
becoming a failed state?
Senator Graham. Well, if I could first comment on your
introductory statement and thank you for your generous remarks,
we do not mean to be the Commission of doom and gloom, because
as we stated, this risk assessment is on the assumption that we
do nothing over the next 5 years. There are many things that
are available to us which will reduce that probability, more
likely than not that it will occur. The challenge is going to
be do we have the will and the wisdom to do so? That will be
something for historians to recount.
As to Pakistan, I remember when President Kennedy made his
announcement that we were going to go to the moon in this
decade and put an American on the moon and bring them safely
back, he said, ``We do this not because it is easy but because
it is hard. It will test our capabilities.'' Well, I would
apply the same thing to the whole issue of bleeding extremism
out of the world, beginning with Pakistan. It is hard, and
probably nothing of the scale that we think is required has
ever been attempted before. So we think it is going to
challenge the imagination and the creativity of the United
States and its leadership as to what are effective strategies
and then it will require the will to implement them.
I will just state one thing that gives me some
encouragement. About 60 years ago then-Vice President Nixon had
a 12-stop visit to Latin America planned. The first two stops
he met insults, vulgarity, and tomatoes. And after two stops,
he terminated the trip and came back home. That probably was
the nadir of U.S. relations in Latin America. Although there
are still rough spots, such as Mr. Chavez in Venezuela, the
general relationship between the United States and our Latin
American neighbors is dramatically improved. I think that a
fundamental reason for that is that over a period of half a
century, thousands of young people from the United States went
to Latin America, and they learned something about that region
not by theory but by actual personal experience. And,
similarly, thousands of young people came from Latin America
particularly to study at our colleges and universities, and
they have now returned home to occupy leadership positions.
That may or may not be a model that has some application
here, but it does say that a hard problem, improving U.S.
relations in the hemisphere, with creativity and commitment can
be, if not solved, substantially mitigated. And I think we have
the same potential in Pakistan and in the Muslim world.
Senator Talent. As you know, Senator, the definition of a
failed state is difficult. People argue over what is and what
is not. There are certain elements that I am concerned
personally--I do not know if the Commission said anything about
this--are present, the instability within certain aspects of
their territory, the fact that, as Senator Graham was
mentioning, the government does not entirely control the
government. And the attack on Mumbai does highlight all of
that.
I do not know how useful it is, though, to conclude they
are a failed state. I think that it presents some of the risks
of that. And this is why we think this is a really good place
to begin applying both the traditional power because we
recommend continuing to be very active in reducing the safe
havens, and then also the smart power or soft power.
And I want to echo something Senator Graham said. We ought
to be saying this to the public. This is hard. I mean, this new
President faces a really difficult task, just like the old
President did. And I do not want the public to think that there
is some silver bullet out there and if everybody up here was
not dumb, we would have found it and shot it a long time ago. I
mean, this is hard. These people are a very formidable enemy,
and they get the strategy of this. And Pakistan is going to be
very difficult. But as Senator Graham said, we just think it
has to be taken on.
Senator Thune. Just one more question, if I might, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Go right ahead.
Senator Thune. That has to do with the particular attention
that the report made regarding biological weapons threats. I
think, too, in terms of those being more likely to be
attainable, it does not seem to translate into as significant a
threat as the threat of a nuclear strike or, for that matter,
some of the conventional weapon strikes. The attack in Mumbai
managed to kill an awful lot of people using conventional
weapons, firearms, explosives, more so than the anthrax attacks
that we experienced here back in 2001.
You are aware from your experience with this institution
some of the constraints that we have to deal with in terms of
finite resources and we have to make some very hard choices
when it comes to allocating homeland security resources. So in
light of the historical record with bioterrorism, should we be
focusing more funding on the biological threat than we already
do when the evidence in terms of the lethality of some of these
conventional attacks have been far more effective and when we
have far more to fear, obviously, from a nuclear strike?
Senator Talent. That is a fair question. I would say yes, I
think you do need to invest the resources, which fortunately--I
do not think it is beyond the ability or the capacity of the
government to come up with that. Here is a scenario that is
very worrisome. The threshold for weaponizing a biological
agent is lower than the threshold for weaponizing nuclear
material. Now, they have the sophistication to do that, too.
But it is lower. Once you isolate the pathogen, it is easier to
get large enough amounts of it to be able to do more than one
weapon. The concern I really have is, they go to the top of the
Sears Tower in Chicago--and I will just say Chicago but it
could be any densely populated area. And they release anthrax,
botulism, or some new agent. You do not even know you have been
attacked until people start going to the hospital 2 or 3 days
later. And by that time, of course, if you were exposed with
the initial one--you do not know where the footprint is going
to be, the wind and the rest of it. And by that time it is too
late to get the ciprofloxacin out, if it is anthrax. So the
initial attack may kill thousands of people, and what is to
keep them from going up in a different building in the same
city 3 weeks later and releasing another one? And if you hit an
American city like that three or four times, there is a point
where you may kill the city. And if they have the demonstrated
capability to do that, what does our government do? Do you
continue to fight against them if they have--we are not saying
this is going to happen. But while we looked at this on
biological weapons, nuclear is harder to weaponize, and if they
get it, it is harder for them to get enough material to do more
than one bomb. I mean, they could again, but it is a little
harder.
So we are not at all downgrading the nuclear threat, and
the attack--a nuclear device that was properly put together
probably would have a bigger initial impact than a biological
one. But for those reasons, I think it is a fair statement of
why we highlighted biological and why we think you should also.
Ms. Cleveland. I think the Commission draws a distinction
between the mass casualties that would be a consequence of a
nuclear event versus the mass consequence of a potential
biological event. It would not take very much in terms of
material to create panic or the economic dislocation we
experienced in the anthrax attack, where there are estimates as
high as $6 billion in terms of economic consequence, and severe
psychological and social consequence as well. So I think you
are right to say the bigger event would be nuclear, but there
is consequence versus casualty.
I think the Administration has invested heavily on the
question of biodefense and on assuring that response to an
event, whether it is biological or nuclear, is robust. I think
what we have tried to focus on is how do you prevent it from
happening in the first instance, and I am not sure that is as
much an investment of resources as it is intellectual and
policy issues. I think that these committees could have a huge
impact in terms of preventing with relatively little in terms
of financial resources involved.
Senator Graham. Without denigrating what has been said
about the importance of this investment for the specific
purpose of avoiding a biological attack, it is also true that
many of the areas of investment to avoid a biological attack or
reduce its severity serve other purposes. As an example, we
learned with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that a
disease that breaks out in one distant part of today's flat
world quickly moves across national borders. So we have an
interest here in the United States and globally, if there is an
outbreak, whether its origin is terrorism or nature, that we
know that it has happened as soon as possible so that we can
try to put a fence around it to keep it from spreading to our
country.
One of our major recommendations is we need to increase the
surveillance capabilities to know that there is something
beyond ordinary influenza happening out there so that we can
respond quickly, whether it is a benign or a violent attack and
confine its consequences and its lethality.
Ms. Cleveland. Senator, there is one other point Senator
Graham raised early on in our review, and I am not sure that
any of us have emphasized it sufficiently. Part of prevention
is blunting a terrorist's presumptions about success. And so to
the extent that we have good consequence management in place,
which I think we concurred we do, and to the extent that we
engage the citizens and the Congress in conveying that we have
effective consequence management, that has the potential to
blunt a terrorist's assumptions about success. And that is key
to prevention.
Senator Thune. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your
indulgence on the time.
Chairman Lieberman. Not at all. Thank you.
Senator Thune. I thank you all very much for your continued
service to our country.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Thune. Important
questions. If the three of you have time, I have a few more
questions. I do not know whether my colleagues do, but just do
one more brief round.
The first thing I want to say in regard to Pakistan, having
just come back from there, if there is any piece of
encouragement, it is that every time the Pakistani people get
to vote, they vote for the moderate candidates and against the
extremists. So it is not an inherently extremist country.
Nonetheless, it is obviously under siege from a minority who
are extreme and terrorists, and, unfortunately, there continues
to be evidence that some parts of the government, particularly
the intelligence service, have contacts--and perhaps more than
that--with different terrorist groups. And that is the
challenge.
So I think your recommendation that we really focus on the
soft power but really on a long-term plan of both civil and
military soft power or hard power aid and partnership with
Pakistan is key. Obviously, we have developed an
extraordinarily important bilateral relationship with India. It
is really one of the foundations of our foreign policy. And
both our Indian allies and we have an interest, I think, in
that long-term plan and partnership with both Pakistan and
Afghanistan.
The second thing I want to say by way of some reassurance
to the public--because we are talking about nightmare scenarios
here, and we have to do that--is that I believe that the
intelligence reforms we have adopted over the last several
years can and hopefully will act as a form of prevention, too,
in breaking plots to carry out a biological attack on the
United States.
Let me go to a few questions quickly. We know from our
attempt to keep nuclear devices out of the hands of terrorists
that the source of those often is, of course, nations that have
nuclear capacity. So we have the A.Q. Khan case from Pakistan.
We have the North Koreans proliferating. In your report, you
mention that no nation admits to having a biological weapons
development program, but six nations are suspected of having
one. What are those six nations, to the best of your knowledge?
Senator Graham. This is the final exam.
Senator Talent. Naturally, we could answer that, but since
it is Ms. Cleveland's area, we thought we----
Ms. Cleveland. It is always the hardest questions that come
last.
Chairman Lieberman. Well, I must admit, I think it said
``about a half dozen,'' so I will give you a little leeway
there if you cannot reach six.
Ms. Cleveland. We know that several important countries
remain outside the Biological Weapons Convention, including
Egypt, Israel and Syria. The U.S. State Department has also
expressed concern that some parties to the treaty, such as
Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, may be pursing offensive
biological weapons programs in secret.
Chairman Lieberman. Has there been any international
attempt to try to stop biological weapons proliferation from
those nations?
Ms. Cleveland. I would not want to get into a discussion of
how that might be confirmed. I think that the issue we face
here--and we heard this when we were in Russia--is that there
is enormous sensitivity about protection of medical and science
equities. And so I think the short answer is no, there has not
been a coordinated effort to secure multi-party or global
adherence to the Biological Weapons Convention.
Chairman Lieberman. I have another question regarding
international relations. Is there any other country, for
instance, in Europe, that is doing a better or a different job
than we are at overseeing biological laboratories to prevent
the weaponization of biological pathogens?
Senator Graham. I think the United States is today the
standard of the world. What we are saying is that our standard
needs to be taken up a notch, and then we can use our standard
as the inspiration for other countries or as the example of
what can be done.
So our domestic recommendations not only will help us here
at home, they will also increase our moral suasion with other
countries.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you for that.
Let me ask a final question, which goes to our governmental
affairs jurisdiction as well as homeland security, because you
have called for the Homeland Security Council and the National
Security Council to be merged. And this is an idea that has
been talked about, so your recommendation is significant.
Obviously, there are a number of the risks involved in WMD
prevention that bridge the realms of homeland and national
security. So I wanted to ask you to talk a little bit more
about this. The first concern is will the homeland security
functions of the Homeland Security Council be lost if there is
a merger into the National Security Council?
Senator Graham. That was not our intention or belief.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Senator Graham. In fact, we think like in so many things in
life, if you have multiple entities responsible, then nobody
feels the ultimate accountability for results--we think that
there is some of that--and then just the bureaucratic demands
of working across two agencies which have such similar
responsibility.
Our recommendation is that the National Security Council be
the survivor in that merger and that the National Security
Council possibly have within it a core of individuals led by a
person who would be particularly focused within that context on
the subset of issues that could be described as homeland
security.
Chairman Lieberman. And that person might, for instance, be
a Deputy National Security Adviser. Is that what you are
thinking about?
Senator Graham. Yes, and this is also in the context that
we are also calling for there to be a senior adviser or
coordinator for the President who would focus even more
specifically on this issue of weapons of mass destruction and
the interface with proliferation.
Chairman Lieberman. That was my next question, which is, if
we are going to create a position to oversee WMD prevention,
why not have it be part of the National Security Council as
opposed to being another special adviser to the President?
Senator Graham. Well, my feeling is that the only strength
that this position will have will be the degree to which the
President of the United States resides confidence in the
position. And so with that as a starting premise, we felt that
the President should decide how he would like to organize his
executive team in order to secure a position that he will have
that kind of respect and confidence in.
One thing that came out during the course of our hearings
which concerned a number of us, including myself, was that
there have been a number of instances over the last 20 or 30
years where on one side of the argument was
counterproliferation and on the other side was a geopolitical
or economic objective. In almost all of those stand-offs,
proliferation has lost, and part of the reason is that you have
a Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, or Secretary
of Commerce arguing for the geopolitical and the economic
reasons and someone who is down in the bureaucratic ranks
defending the counterproliferation argument. So we think that
this position needs to be one that is sufficiently attractive
that it will draw someone of gravitas to it who can make the
case against proliferation.
Now, it may be that for good and sufficient reasons, we are
willing to accept an increase in our vulnerability to
proliferation in order to achieve some economic or geopolitical
objective. I think there has not been a sufficient exposition
of what those consequences were when many of these decisions
were made in the past.
Chairman Lieberman. I agree. Very well said. Senator Akaka,
do you have any more questions?
Senator Akaka. Yes. Mr. Chairman, let me ask a final
question. In September, I held a hearing that focused on public
diplomacy reforms. A State Department witness testified that
the current national strategy for public diplomacy was useful,
and that there are three public diplomacy priorities. They are:
Expand education and exchange programs, modernize
communications, and promote the diplomacy of deeds.
How would your recommended new public diplomacy strategy
and its implementation differ from the strategy that is
currently in place?
Senator Talent. I think it is an attempt to make that kind
of thinking more effective, Senator, is what I would say. There
has been a fair amount of activity in this regard within the
State Department and some of the other civilian agencies. But
they are much like where the intelligence community was before
you all passed the bill. They are not looking at it
strategically saying what is the purpose of these capabilities.
I was going to say in response to one of the Chairman's
questions because he was talking about the fact that the vast
majority of the people of Pakistan do not want these extremists
to be controlling things. Now, if we all looked at that as we
might look at a political problem in a campaign--I mean, we had
a whole set of voters who we knew really agreed with us. But
how do we get them to join us in our efforts? I think if we can
create within the State Department and these agencies that
targeted thinking, what is the point of the public diplomacy?
Well, in Pakistan it is to get them to oppose the terrorists
and more actively support the civilized community and what are
we trying to do and what capabilities do we need to achieve
that, which is going to include everything you talked about,
but done in a more intentional way. And we think the kind of
organic reform that you all achieved in the intelligence
community is what we need there. That is what is so significant
about this progress. That bill you passed--and this Committee
is responsible for it--has actually reversed the momentum of
the culture within a set of agencies within the government of
the United States, which a lot of people thought could not be
done.
So it is a long answer, Senator, and one of the reasons we
did not get into specifics is there is a commission report that
has actually just come out, and it is called ``Forging the New
Shield,'' by the Project on National Security Reform, and they
talk a lot about the integrators that they think are going to
be necessary to accomplish what you are talking about.
Senator Akaka. Well, I have other questions, but I may
submit them for the record.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Senator Akaka.
I want to thank the witnesses and, in absentia, Congressman
Roemer. It has been a very important hearing.
Senator Collins and I talked during the hearing, and we
decided this is so urgent, we are going to go ahead and try to
convert a fair amount of your report, particularly the parts
about increasing oversight of the high-containment biological
laboratories, into legislation. In other words, rather than
going through a lengthy process of consulting with
stakeholders, we think it is a better idea to try to force the
issue by drafting legislation based on your recommendations and
then going through the hearing process as soon in the next
Congress as possible. So you have certainly had that effect.
You may know that yesterday Senators Kennedy and Burr
initiated a letter based on one of the recommendations in your
report that I think more than 15 of our colleagues, including
Senator Collins and myself, signed and sent to the bipartisan
Senate leadership urging funding of $900 million in public
health and weapons of mass destruction medical countermeasures,
which is one of the things you called for. So you have done a
great job really remarkably quickly for a commission, for
Washington, and I think we owe it to you to respond in light of
the urgency of the subject matter and your recommendations and
conclusion with similar urgency. So thank you very much.
We are going to keep the record of the hearing open for 15
days if any of you want to submit additional testimony or our
colleagues want to submit questions to you. I cannot resist
saying to you, Senators Graham and Talent, that your presence
and the high quality of your work here reminds us once again
that there is life after the Senate. This is very reassuring.
[Laughter.]
With that, the hearing is adjourned.
Senator Graham. Thank you very much.
[Whereupon, at 12:42 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.
A P P E N D I X
----------
PREPARED OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH
I commend the Commission's efforts and find the recommendations
right on target and timely. The Commission's report serves as a good
reminder that the United States must bolster efforts to develop and
implement policies and projects to combat the threat of a biological or
nuclear attack. Our vigilance and resolve must remain strong in the
face of these enemies, and we will prevail.
Let me quote one of the report's conclusions which resonated with
me: ``There are serious uncertainties about how the government will
replace individuals with highly specialized skills as they retire,
especially in light of the competition for these skills from the
private sector. No concerted effort has yet been made to recruit the
next generation workforce--but without that workforce, our long-term
national security is threatened.''
The report cites Defense Secretary Gates' concern that, ``Half of
our nuclear lab scientists are over 50 years old, and many of those
under 50 have had limited or no involvement in the design and
development of a nuclear weapon. . . . By some estimates, within the
next several years, three-quarters of the workforce in nuclear
engineering and at the national laboratories will reach retirement
age.''
As many of my colleagues on this Committee know that this issue has
been something that I have been concerned about and have worked hard to
find ways to address this issue. My continued work in enacting positive
human capital reform in our intelligence and homeland security agencies
stems back to March 2001, when I chaired a Subcommittee hearing
entitled, ``National Security Implications of the Human Capital
Crisis.'' During the hearing, former Defense Secretary Schlesinger, a
member of the U.S. Commission on National Security in the 21st Century,
testified ``We must take immediate action in the personnel area to
ensure that the United States can meet future challenges . . . fixing
the personnel problem is a precondition for fixing virtually everything
else that needs repair in the institutional edifice of U.S. national
security policy.'' Similarly, the 9/11 Commission concluded, ``We know
that the quality of the people is more important than the quality of
the wiring diagrams. Good people can overcome bad structures. They
should not have to.'' The report from the Commission on the Prevention
of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism serves as a
good reminder that the Federal Government's most valuable resource is
the men and women it employs.
Senator Akaka and I have enacted a number of flexibilities to
provide the government with the tools necessary to put the right people
in the right place at the right time. However, agencies seem to be
struggling to produce the strategic human capital plans necessary to
make appropriate use of existing flexibilities and meet their short and
long term workforce needs.
As Chairman and Ranking on the EPW Clean Air and Nuclear Safety
Subcommittee, Senator Carper and I learned through our oversight
hearings that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was facing the
very same problems. One of the things we did was to include three
pieces of legislation as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005,
authorizing the NRC to take innovative steps to attract both young
talent and retired experts to address the agency's anticipated
shortages in technical capabilities.
Senator Carper and I also held a nuclear energy roundtable with
representatives from organized labor, industry, academia, professional
societies, and government agencies. The roundtable was very productive
as it raised an awareness of the impending shortage of the skilled
workers needed to support the nuclear renaissance. Everyone at the
roundtable agreed that the construction of more than 30 new reactors
over the next 15 to 20 years could present an enormous challenge for
the nuclear industry.
The roundtable resulted in a number of recommendations such as: (1)
use recent retirees as instructors, mentors, and advisors; (2) provide
more flexibility to a younger generation of workers; (3) invest in
training--the philosophy of ``just-in-time'' inventory does not work
with human capital; (4) identify all existing public and private-sector
training programs, and then leverage and fund those that are successful
(e.g., Helmets to Hardhats and the Building Construction Trade
Department's training program); and (5) provide adequate and consistent
funding in science and technology for universities and colleges.
The recently enacted America Competes Act establishes a solid
policy framework for addressing the science, technology, engineering,
and math workforce challenges identified in the National Academies'
report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing
America for a Brighter Economic Future. But we must adequately fund
these programs to make them work.
When Senator Bingaman and I have to fight the Administration each
year to restore Federal funding to support nuclear and engineering
programs at universities across the country, we are not sending the
consistent message.
I also took to heart the Commission's views on Congress's
unwillingness to reform itself in accordance with the 9/11 Commission's
recommendation to provide better and more streamlined oversight of the
Department of Homeland Security. I remember when the Sense of the
Senate that was accepted during this Committee's markup of the 9/11
Commission bill, calling on the Senate to reorganize itself, was
removed from the bill before floor consideration.
I continue to believe that Congress could do a better job if we
were willing to set aside the turf battles and reorganize our own
Committee structure to provide more efficient oversight over homeland
security. I plan to reintroduce the legislation in the 111th Congress
and hope my colleagues will work with me to push forward this much
needed change.
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