[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14403-14410]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           U.S. INTELLIGENCE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. McHenry). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) 
is recognized for 44 minutes.
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to 
discuss for the next 45 minutes the most important topic that will 
allow us to protect the homeland, provide for the security of the 
American people and our allies and our troops around the world: our 
intelligence.
  Last Thursday, Mr. Speaker, I had a meeting with the very able and 
distinguished chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on 
Intelligence, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra). We discussed 
many things, one of which was a source that I had hoped that we could 
get some information to assist us in understanding the threats in Iraq 
and the Middle East, and especially in regard to Iran.
  I said to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), I am going to 
make a prediction to you. Based on my source, I said, common wisdom 
tells us that the winner of the election in Iran that will take place 
on Friday and Saturday our time will probably be Rafsanjani. He is the 
name that most pundits have said would be the likely winner in a two-
person runoff against the more conservative and not well-known mayor of 
Tehran. But I said to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), based 
on information we had, the election was not going to be close; it will 
be a landslide. But the conservative mayor of Tehran, a relative 
unknown, had been anointed by Ayatollah Homeni in Iran and he would in 
fact win the Iranian election.
  We all saw the results, Mr. Speaker, on Saturday night and Sunday 
morning as, in fact, the mayor of Tehran won the election with a margin 
of 62 to 38 percent, an overwhelming landslide. I raise this issue, Mr. 
Speaker, because good intelligence and good information is the most 
critical tool that we can have over the next several years and decades 
to protect our homeland.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise because information has come to my attention over 
the past several months that is very disturbing. I have learned that, 
in fact, one of our Federal agencies had, in fact, identified the major 
New York cell of Mohamed Atta prior to 9/11; and I have learned, Mr. 
Speaker, that in September of 2000, that Federal agency actually was 
prepared to bring the FBI in and prepared to work with the FBI to take 
down the cell that Mohamed Atta was involved in in New York City, along 
with two of the other terrorists.
  I have also learned, Mr. Speaker, that when that recommendation was 
discussed within that Federal agency, the lawyers in the administration 
at that time said, you cannot pursue contact with the FBI against that 
cell. Mohamed Atta is in the U.S. on a green card, and we are fearful 
of the fallout from the Waco incident. So we did not allow that Federal 
agency to proceed.
  Mr. Speaker, what this now means is that prior to September 11, we 
had employees of the Federal Government in one of our agencies who 
actually identified the Mohamed Atta cell and made a specific 
recommendation to act on that cell, but were denied the ability to go 
forward. Obviously, if we had taken out that cell, 9/11 would not have 
occurred and, certainly, taking out those three principal players in 
that cell would have severely crippled, if not totally stopped, the 
operation that killed 3,000 people in America.
  Tonight, I am going to provide some background to my colleagues, 
because I think this represents a major problem with our intelligence 
that needs to be focused on by the committees of the House and the 
Senate, by the leadership of the House and the Senate, by John 
Negroponte, the new person assigned by President Bush, and a very able 
man, to integrate the 33 classified systems overseen by the 15 Federal 
agencies.
  I want to also start off by praising Porter Goss, the director of the 
CIA. Porter served us extremely well in this body as the chairman of 
the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; and he went over to the 
CIA with an aggressive agenda to change that agency, and he has begun 
that process. We, in this body, need to rally the American people to 
support the efforts brought forward by Porter Goss and to allow John 
Negroponte to undertake perhaps the most difficult task in protecting 
the security of America, a task that will not be easy, given the 
history of our Federal agency system.
  Let me take my colleagues back, Mr. Speaker, to 1999. It was, in 
fact, the spring of 1999 when I was first involved in taking a 
delegation of 10 Members of Congress to Vienna with the support of my 
friend and colleague, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), and with 
the support of the Clinton State Department.

                              {time}  2320

  The 11-member delegation of five Democrats, five Republicans and 
myself, along with the State Department employee, traveled to Vienna to 
meet with five senior leaders of the Russian political parties. Our 
purpose was to try to reach a framework that could allow for a peaceful 
resolution of the war in Kosovo on the terms that the U.S. had desired 
after Ramboullet.
  After securing a military plane, my Russian friends told me they were 
bringing a Serb along with them, a Serb who would be able to understand 
what we were talking about and help us decide and determine whether or 
not Milosevic back in Belgrade would accept any recommendations that we 
would develop. I did not know anything about the Serb. I knew the 
Russians. But I figure I had better ask the CIA what they knew about 
this Serb so I could be better prepared, and to make sure that the Serb 
was not a part of the Milosevic regime, because that would cause myself 
and my colleagues to be in violation of the Hobbs Act because we were 
at war with Serbia at that time.
  So I called George Tenet. I said, Director Tenet, can you give me 
some information about this Serb? His family is evidently well known. I 
need to know whether or not he is a part of the Milosevic regime. I 
need to know any other information you can provide to

[[Page 14404]]

me because we are going to meet with him when we travel to Vienna to 
meet with the Russian leaders to help provide a beginning of a solution 
to end the war in Kosovo.
  He called me back the next day and he gave me a couple of sentences 
and said not to worry, he was not a part of the Milosevic regime. And 
he had strong ties to the Communist Party inside of Moscow and had ties 
to other leaders in the Russian Government. It was not much to go on.
  But at the time, Mr. Speaker, I was chairman of the Defense Research 
Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee. My job was to oversee the 
funding, approximately $40 billion of defense research money on new 
systems and new technologies. And one of the most striking technologies 
was the work being done by the Army's Information Dominance Center at 
Fort Belvoir, formerly known as the LIWA, the Land Information Warfare 
Assessment Center. I had visited the LIWA several times and was 
tremendously impressed with not just the ability to provide security 
for our Army classified systems, but I saw a unique approach to doing 
well beyond that, data mining, data collaboration, using cutting-edge 
software tools like Starlight and Spires, able to do profiling. Having 
plussed-up funding for this facility after talking to George Tenet, I 
called my friends at the Army's Information Dominance Center and said, 
can you do something for me as a favor, off the record? And they said 
sure, Congressman, whatever you like. Would you run me a profile of 
this Serb, for the same reason I had asked the Director of the CIA. 
They said, no problem, Congressman; we will get back to you in a few 
hours. And they did. They gave me 10 pages of information, Mr. Speaker, 
about the Serb and his ties. Now, the information was not vetted but it 
was from a number of sources that the Information Dominance Center was 
able to pull together very quickly. I used that information as we 
traveled to Vienna to understand who we were meeting with. We had those 
meetings for 2 days and my colleagues, my five Republican and five 
Democrat colleagues, worked aggressively to establish a framework that 
would begin the end of the Kosovo war. In fact, it was historic.
  When we returned to Washington several weeks later I was contacted by 
the FBI and they said, Congressman, we would like to debrief you. We 
would like you to tell us what you know about that Serb that you all 
met in Vienna. I said, no problem, I will be happy to do it Monday 
afternoon in my office. The Friday before the Monday, my DC office 
paged me with a 911 page. When I called them they said, you have got to 
call CIA Congressional Affairs immediately, which I did. CIA 
Congressional Affairs said, Congressman Weldon, we are going to fly two 
agents to Philadelphia this evening. They will meet you at the airport, 
at a hotel, at your home, wherever you want to meet them. And I said, I 
am sorry, I cannot do it. It is a weekend. It is a Friday night. I have 
got events already planned. What is the urgency of this meeting? And 
the CIA Congressional Affairs person said well, Congressman, we have 
been tasked by the State Department to brief our Ambassador, who is 
negotiating the final terms to end the war in Kosovo, and he needs to 
know something about this Serb that you met in Vienna. I said, well, 
the FBI has already called me for that. Can we not do it together? And 
finally, after pushing back for 10, 15 minutes, the CIA agreed. And so 
on Monday afternoon in my office I hosted four agents, two FBI and two 
CIA. These agents asked me four pages of questions about the Serb that 
I had met with along with our colleagues in the House.
  When I finished answering all their questions and giving them all of 
the information I had, I said to them, now you know where I got my data 
from, right? And they said, well, you got it from the Russians. I said, 
no. Well, you got it from the Serb. I said, no. I said, before I left 
Washington, before I left my office, I called the Army's Information 
Dominance Center and asked them to do me a favor. They ran a profile 
and gave me 10 pages. The CIA rep and the FBI rep said, what is the 
Army's Information Dominance Center, congressman?
  It was then, Mr. Speaker, that I knew we had a problem; that our 
intelligence systems were not linked together, that the stovepipes were 
so great that we would never be able to deal with emerging 
transnational terrorist threats. So beginning in the spring of 1999, I 
began a process working with the Army, and their subgroup working with 
them, Special Forces Command down in Florida, which had a similar 
capability to develop a national prototype, a prototype that could be 
providing support for the President, the National Security Adviser, and 
all of our policymakers. In fact, working together over a multiweek 
period, we came up with a plan, a document. And Mr. Speaker, I would 
like to place this document in the Record at this point in time.

               National Operations and Analysis Hub: NOAH

       Policy makers' tool for acting against emerging 
     transnational threats and dangers to U.S. national security.
       Policy makers need better decision support tools.
       Policy makers continue to work in a vacuum. Briefings and 
     testimonies are the primary vehicles for transmitting 
     information to leadership.
       The volume of information germane to national issues is 
     expanding so rapidly that policy makers are overwhelmed with 
     data.
       Policy makers need robust situational awareness over 
     growing asymmetric threats to national security.
       Policy makers need an overarching information and 
     intelligence architecture that will quickly assimilate, 
     analyze and display assessments and recommended course of 
     action from many national agencies simultaneously.
       Policy makers need tools to aid them in developing courses 
     of action against threats to U.S. policy, interests, or 
     security.
       Policy makers need virtual communications with one another.
       White House, Congress, Pentagon and at the agency levels 
     should each have centers they can go to and receive, send, 
     share, discuss, and collaborate on assessments before they 
     act.
       National Level Collaboration Solution: NOAH, National 
     Operations and Analysis Hub.
       Tasks supported by NOAH's overarching collaborative 
     environment:
       Provide Multi Issue, Multi-agency Hybrid Picture to White 
     House Situation Room, JCS;
       HUMINT Support;
       Peackeeping Missions;
       Humanitarian Aid;
       Battle Damage Assessment;
       Develop and Leverage new Technologies of important to 
     national security;
       Support Congressional Committees/Hearings;
       Apply Analysis of Foreign Threat to Policy;
       Provide Hybrid Situational Awareness Picture of the Threat;
       Incorprote Industrial Efforts of Interests to the Policy 
     Maker;
       Link academia directly to policy maker; and
       National Emergencies.
       NOAH can leverage existing networks to address diverse 
     issues:
       NOAH's Hub Center if linked to other agency centers 
     electronically;
       Each key agency must prossess a Pod Site and be connected 
     to the NOAH network;
       The Pod can consist of a large screen and appropriate 
     connect for collaboration. Operations Centers can simply be 
     converted into NOAH;
       National Policy makers cannot control agency Pods, agencies 
     must post replicated data on the NOAH system so that sister 
     groups can access data;
       Support multi-level security requirements and can sanitize 
     and ``push'' data to many types of users to many levels;
       NOAH can address National, law enforcement and military 
     needs. The situation will determine the mission;
       Ties policy maker, military and law enforcement together;
       Goals of the NOAH Hub Center is to apply agency operations, 
     strategies analysis, tactical assessments to a course of 
     action for the policy maker; and
       Optimizes group of expertise within each organization--
     experts always on hand regardless of issue.
       NOAH and Pod Site Network:
       Part of national policy creation and execution system;
       Will existing sites and connectivities where available;
       Will share tools available at LIWA IDC so every agency has 
     same tools;
       All agencies will post data on NRO highway in a replicated 
     format sensitive to classification;
       NOAH's Global Network will use NRO System as backbone;
       All centers connect to other centers electronically; and

[[Page 14405]]

       Mechanism for gathering, analyzing, displaying, tailoring, 
     and disseminating all kinds of information quickly at the 
     national level.
       Overview--National Operations and Analysis Hub:
       Center dedicated to National Policy Makers at White House, 
     Congress and National Agencies;
       Provides system of system advanced technological 
     communications environment to harvest, analyze, display data 
     as needed;
       Coordinate and synchronize information among IC, S&T 
     centers, military services;
       Provide near real time situational awareness at the 
     national level;
       Link virtually via a pod site to every participating member 
     agency; and
       Pod sites designed to pull together agency resources on 
     single system of systems.
       NOAH's is staffed by members from participating agencies. 
     The staff has a 24 x 7, high bandwidth, virtual connectivity 
     to experts at agency Pod Sites. This provides decision makers 
     with real-time situational awareness of adversary picture and 
     courses.
       Steps to Achieve NOAH Capability:
       Establish baseline capability by building initial Hub 
     Center and congressional virtual hearing room. Equip White 
     House Situation Room to Collaborate with these sites;
       Staff the Hub Center with two reps from each of the 28 key 
     participating agencies;
       Link up NOAH internal and external collaborative 
     environment;
       Hook in Back up Site for redundancy and begin training on 
     collaborative tools;
       Build the 28 Key Agency Pod Sites along model of the 
     Information Dominance Center at Fort Belvoir, VA;
       Link all Pod Sites to NOAH hub center establish Protocols 
     for Inter-agency data sharing;
       Exercise live ability to retrieve, collate, analyze, 
     display disparate data and provide policy makers course of 
     action analysis at the NOAH Hub Center; and
       Refine procedures and Protocols.
       Agencies Represented in the National Collaborative Center:
       Central Intelligence Agency; Defense Intelligence Agency; 
     National Imagery and Mapping Agency; National Security 
     Agency; National Reconnaissance Office; Defense Threat 
     Reduction Agency; Joint Chiefs of Staff; Army/LIWA; Air 
     Force; Navy; Marine Corps; Joint Counter-Intelligence 
     Assessment Group; ONDCP; and FBI.
       Drug Enforcement Agency; U.S. Customs; National Criminal 
     Investigative Service; National Infrastructure Protection 
     Center; Defense Information Systems Agency; State Department; 
     Five CINCs; Department of Energy; Department of Commerce; 
     Department of the Treasury; Justice Department; Office of the 
     Secretary of Defense; National Military Command Center; and 
     National Joint Military Intelligence Command.
       Elements to be connected to the national collaborative 
     center would include the White House Situation Room, a 
     Congressional Virtual Hearing Room and a possible redundant, 
     or back-up site.

  This document, as you can see, Mr. Speaker, is entitled the NOAH, 
National Operations and Analysis Hub, Policy Makers' Tool for Acting 
Against Emerging Transnational Threats and Dangers to U.S. National 
Security. This 9-page briefing, Mr. Speaker, was put together in the 
spring of 1999.
  I asked the Deputy Secretary of Defense, John Hamre, to take a look 
at this capability. He went down to the LIWA and he came back and he 
said, Congressman, you are right. I agree with you. This capability is 
amazing. It offers unlimited potential. How about sending me a letter 
describing your interest, Congressman?
  So on July 30, 1999, I sent this 3-page letter to Deputy Secretary 
John Hamre, Deputy Secretary of Defense, at his request, talking about 
creating an integrated collaborative center for all of our 
intelligence. I would like to place this letter in the Record at this 
point in time, Mr. Speaker.

                                     House of Representatives,

                                    Washington, DC, July 30, 1999.
     Hon. John Hamre,
     Deputy Secretary of Defense,
     The Pentagon, Washington, DC.
       Dear Dr. Hamre: I believe the time has come to create a 
     central national level entity that can acquire, fuse and 
     anaylze disparate data from many agencies in order to support 
     the policy maker in taking action against threats from 
     terrorism, proliferation, illegal technology diversions, 
     espionage, narcotics, information warfare and cyberterrorism. 
     These challenges are beginning to overlap, thereby blurring 
     their distinction while posing increasing threats to our 
     Nation.
       Before we take action to counter these emerging threats, we 
     must first understand their relationship to one another, 
     their patterns, the people and countries involved, and the 
     level of danger posed to our Nation. The Department of 
     Defense has a unique opportunity to create a centralized 
     national center that can do this for the country. It would be 
     patterned after the Army's Land Information Warfare Activity 
     (LIWA) at Fort Belvoir, but would operate on a much broader 
     scale. This entity would allow for near-time information and 
     analysis to flow to a central fusion center, which I would 
     designate the National Operations Analysis Hub (NOAH). I 
     think this title is fitting, as NOAH will provide a central 
     hub built to protect our nation from the flood of threats.
       NOAH would be comprised of a system of agency-specified 
     mini-centers, or ``pods'' of participating agencies and 
     services associated with growing national security concerns 
     (attachment 1). NOAH would link the policymaker with action 
     recommendations derived from fused information provided by 
     the individual pods. NOAH would provide the automation and 
     connectivity to allow the pods to talk together, share data 
     and perspectives on a given situation in a near real-time, 
     computer-based environment.
       The NOAH center in the Office of the Secretary of Defense 
     would be comprised of representatives from an initial cluster 
     of pod sites to include: CIA, DIA, National Imagery and 
     Mapping Agency (NlMA), NSA, NRO, Defense Threat Reduction 
     Agency (DTSA), JCS, Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, 
     ONDCP, FBI, DEA, Customs, National Criminal Investigative 
     Service (NCIS), National Infrastructure Protection Center. 
     Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), State, the five 
     CINCS, DOE, INS, Commerce. Treasury.
       Elements which would be connected into NOAH would include 
     the White House Situation Room, a Congressional Virtual 
     Hearing Room and a possible redundant (back up) site.
       The benefits of creating a NOAH include:
       For national policy makers, a national collaborative, 
     environment offers situations updates across a variety of 
     issues and offers suggested courses of action, based on 
     analysis, to help government officials make more informed 
     decisions.
       For the Intelligence Community, a national collaborative 
     environment will help end stovepiping and create more robust 
     strategic analyses as well as near real-time support to field 
     operations.
       For military commanders and planners, a national 
     collaborative environment offers full battlefield 
     visualization, threat profiling, robust situational 
     awareness, as well as near real-timer support to special 
     missions such as peacekeeping, humanitarian aid, national 
     emergencies or special operations.
       For law enforcement, a national collaborative environment 
     provides investigative and threat profiling support, and 
     field station situational awareness.
       Along with its system of connected agency pod sites, NOAH 
     would permit the display of collaborative threat profiling 
     and analytical assessments on a large screen. It would be a 
     national level operations and control center with a mission 
     to intergrate various imagery, data and analytical viewpoints 
     for decision-makers in support of national actions. I see 
     NOAH as going beyond the capability of the National Military 
     Command Center (NMCC) and the National Joint Military 
     Intelligence Command (NJMIC), providing recommended courses 
     of action that allow us to effectively meet those emerging 
     challenges from asymmetrical threats in near real-time. Given 
     its mission, I believe that NOAH should reside in the Office 
     of the Secretary of Defense (Attachment 2).
       I am aware of the initiative to link counterintelligence 
     groups throughout the community. I am also aware of the 
     counterterrorism center at the CIA, the new National 
     Infrastructure Protection Center at the FBI, and a new HUMINT 
     special operations center. I have heard of an attempt to 
     connect the Office of Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and OSD 
     assets with federal, state and local law enforcement 
     agencies. I also have seen what the Army has done at LIWA, 
     which has created a foundation for creating a higher-level 
     architecture collaborating all of these efforts. Each of 
     these independent efforts needs to be coordinated at the 
     national level. I believe LIWA has created a model that 
     should be used as a basis for creating the participating 
     agency pod sites.
       I do not expect that establishment of NOAH should exceed 
     $10 million. Each agency involved could set up its own pod to 
     connect with the central NOAH site or to exchange data with 
     any of its participants. Each agency could dedicate monies to 
     establish their own pod site, while the $50 million available 
     in DARPA for related work could be used to establish the NOAH 
     structure immediately.
       The NOAH concept of a national collaborative environment 
     supporting policy and decision-makers mirrors the ideas you 
     have expressed to me in recent discussions, and it is a 
     tangible way to confront the growing assymetrical threats to 
     our nation. I have a number of ideas regarding staffing 
     options and industry collaboration, and would appreciate the 
     opportunity to discuss them with you. Thank you for your 
     consideration. I look forward to hearing from you at your 
     earliest convenience.
           Sincerely,
                                                      Curt Weldon,
                                               Member of Congress.

  Secretary Hamre was interested and he told me, Congressman, I will 
even

[[Page 14406]]

pay the bill. The Defense Department will provide the funding for this. 
And I do not care where they put it, Congressman. It could be at the 
White House, it could be at the NSC, wherever it is most appropriate, 
but I will pay the bill. But, Congressman, the problem is not with me 
or the money. You have got to convince the CIA and the FBI that this is 
something they want to pursue.
  In fact, he wrote me a letter, Mr. Speaker, dated October 21, 1999: 
``Dear Congressman Weldon, I wholeheartedly agree that combating 
asymmetrical threats challenging national security requires a 
collaborative interagency approach as suggested in your concept of the 
National Operations Analysis Hub. We are actively engaged in assessing 
how the department should leverage ongoing activities and develop a 
long-term strategy along these lines. I will keep you apprised of our 
progress. I would be happy to meet with you on the subject.''
  And then he puts a personal comment on the note that I will read. 
``Sir, this is a mealy-mouth response because no one wants to commit to 
a LIWA-based solution. You know I am very impressed by LIWA and see 
them involved in a range of activities. I would like to get together 
with you to review some of our thinking when you have time. John.''
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to place this in the Record. 

                                  Deputy Secretary of Defense,

                                 Washington, DC, October 21, 1999.
     Hon. Curt Weldon,
     House of Representatives,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Congressman Weldon: I wholeheartedly agree that 
     combatting the asymmetrical threats challenging National 
     Security requires a collaborative, inter-agency approach, as 
     suggested in your concept of the National Operations Analysis 
     Hub. We are actively engaged in assessing how the Department 
     should leverage ongoing activities and develop a long-term 
     strategy along these lines.
       I will keep you apprised of our progress, and I would be 
     happy to meet with you on this subject.
           Sincerely,
                                                    John J. Harme.

                              {time}  2330

  Mr. Speaker, that was in October of 1999 at John Hamre's suggestion 
on November 4 of 1999, almost 2 years before 9/11. I had John Hamre and 
the representatives of the CIA and the FBI in my office. And at John 
Hamre's suggestion, we went through the 9-page briefing to create an 
overarching national collaborative center. When I finished the briefing 
which had been prepared for me with our intelligence officials off the 
record, the CIA said, Congressman Weldon, that is all well and good, 
but we really do not need that capability. It is not necessary. We are 
doing something called CI-21; and, therefore, we do not need to pursue 
that multi-system approach that you have outlined where we bring in all 
of these other classified systems.
  I was very unhappy with that response because I knew full well the 
Army and our special forces commands were using that capability at that 
very moment in a special project against al Qaeda.
  So, Mr. Speaker, in 1999 and in 2000 and in 2001, I put language in 
each of our defense bills calling for the creation of a national 
collaborative center to bring together our disparate intelligence 
capabilities and systems for 3 consecutive years. And, in fact, one of 
those bills required a response by the CIA as to why this system had 
not been put into place.
  But in the meantime, on November 12, 1999, the Defense Information 
and Electronics Report published an article about the need for a 
massive intelligence network for shared threat information. On April of 
2000, Signal Magazine did another story on a fusion center concept 
taking root as we kept pushing this process.
  Mr. Speaker, the following are both of these articles:

                            [Nov. 12, 1997]

               Defense Information and Electronics Report


   WELDON: DOD NEEDS MASSIVE INTELLIGENCE NETWORK FOR SHARED THREAT 
                              INFORMATION

       Senior Pentagon officials are mulling over an idea proposed 
     by Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) that would link classified and 
     unclassified documents in a massive intelligence 
     clearinghouse that could be accessed by 33 federal agencies--
     a concept similar in some ways to one floated by DOD 
     intelligence officials but with significantly fewer players 
     involved.
       ``Our problem with intelligence is that we're stove-
     pipped,'' said Weldon, chairman of the House Armed Services 
     military research and development subcommittee, during a Nov. 
     8 interview. ``Each agency has its own way of collecting data 
     and analyzing it, but they don't share that information with 
     other agencies. The need is to have a better system of 
     analyzing and fusing data sets across agencies and services--
     certainly within the Pentagon and the military, but my 
     opinion is that we have to go further than that.''
       Weldon first proposed the concept of a ``National 
     Operations Analysis Hub'' to Deputy Defense Secretary John 
     Hamre last July, although the congressman said he kept his 
     initiative quiet until a stronger plan could be developed.
       The Pentagon-funded network of agencies would be operated 
     by DOD. According to Weldon, it would pull together large 
     amounts of information to produce intelligence profiles of 
     people, regions and national security threats, such as 
     information warfare and cyber-terrorism.
       ``The NOAH concept of a national collaborative environment 
     supporting policy and decision-makers mirrors the ideas you 
     have expressed to me in recent discussions, and it is a 
     tangible way to confront the growing asymmetrical threats to 
     our nation.'' Weldon wrote in his July 30 letter to Hamre.
       The NOAH concept, however, was not wholeheartedly embraced 
     by Hamre, who met with Weldon last summer and told the 
     congressman his suggested use of the Army's Land Information 
     Warfare Activity at Ft. Belvoir, VA, as a model for NOAH, 
     would never stick.
       Because LIWA is already short of resources, the Army is 
     apprehensive about taking on any new tasks, Hamre told 
     Weldon.
       Weldon, in a July 21 letter to Hamre, also urged the 
     Pentagon to support additional future funding for LIWA, 
     citing critical budget shortfalls that he said have kept the 
     agency from fulfilling a barrage of requests for intelligence 
     files from Army commanders (Defense Information and 
     Electronics Report, July 30, p1).
       ``There's massive amounts of data out there, and you have 
     to be able to analyze it and create ways to focus on that 
     data so its relevant to whatever you're interested in,'' he 
     said this week about his support for LIWA. ``Well the Army 
     has already done that.''
       While Weldon continues to push for NOAH to be patterned 
     after LIWA, he sees it operating on a much larger scale. 
     Impressed by its ability to pull together huge amounts of 
     both unclassified and classified data, Weldon noted LIWA's 
     Information Dominance Center can create in-depth profiles 
     that could be useful to the CIA, FBI and the White House. Yet 
     most federal agencies don't even know LIWA exists, he added.
       ``Right now the military is limited to [its] own sources of 
     information,'' Weldon said. ``And in the 21st century, a 
     terrorist group is more than likely going to be involved with 
     terrorist nations. So the boundaries are crossed all the 
     time. We don't have any way to share that and get beyond the 
     stove-pipping.''
       Meanwhile, officials within the Defense Department's 
     intelligence community have been considering another way to 
     amass intelligence information through a concept called the 
     Joint Counter-intelligence Assessment Group. A DOD 
     spokeswoman said proponents of the idea, for now, are 
     unwilling to disclose details about it. She was also unable 
     to say whether a formal proposal to Hamre had been made yet.
       In Weldon's July 30 letter to Hamre, however, Weldon 
     alludes to an ongoing ``initiative to link 
     counterintelligence groups throughout the community.''
       ``I have heard of an attempt to connect the Office of Drug 
     Control Policy (ONDCP) and [Office of the Secretary of 
     Defense] assets with federal, state and local law enforcement 
     agencies,'' Weldon wrote. However, Weldon said in the 
     interview he believes JCAG is simply more ``stove-pipping.''
       ``I also have seen what the Army has done at LIWA, which 
     has created a foundation for creating a higher-level 
     architecture collaborating all of these efforts,'' his July 
     letter states.
       NOAH would link together almost every federal agency with 
     intelligence capabilities, including the National Security 
     Agency, the Nation Imagery and Mapping Agency, the Energy 
     Department, the CIA and the FBI. Both Congress and the White 
     House would be offered a ``node'' for briefing capabilities, 
     meaning intelligence agencies could detail situations on 
     terrorist attacks or wartime scenarios.
       ``It's mainly for policymakers, the White House decision 
     makers, the State Department, military, and military 
     leaders,'' he said.
       Although information sharing among the intelligence 
     community has yet to be formalized through NOAH or JCAG or a 
     similar system, military officials have said they need some 
     kind of linked access capability.

[[Page 14407]]

       Intelligence systems need to be included within the Global 
     Information Grid--the military's vision of a future global 
     network that could be accessed from anywhere in the world, 
     said Brig. Gen. Manlyn Quagliotti, vice director of the Joint 
     Staff's command and control, communications and computers 
     directorate, during a Nov. 5 speech on information assurance 
     at a conference in Arlington, VA.
       ``We need a more integrated strategy, including help from 
     [the Joint Staff's intelligence directorate] with 
     Intelligence reports or warnings of an attack,'' he said.
       Quagliotti said the toughest challenge for achieving 
     ``information superiority'' is the need to unite networks and 
     network managers under one command structure with stronger 
     situational awareness capabilities.
       Part of [the challenge] is the overwhelming amount of 
     information, the ability to access that Information, and the 
     ability to reach back and get that information, which means 
     that networks become more crucial to the warfight'' she said.

    Fusion Center Concept Takes Root As Congressional Interest Waxes

                        [From Signal, Apr. 2000]

       Creation of a national operations and analysis hub is 
     finding grudging acceptance among senior officials in the 
     U.S. national security community. This fresh intelligence 
     mechanism would link federal agencies to provide instant 
     collaborative threat profiling and analytical assessments for 
     use against asymmetrical threats. National policy makers, 
     military commanders and law enforcement agencies would be 
     beneficiaries of the hub's information.
       Prodded by a resolute seven-term Pennsylvania congressman 
     and reminded by recent terrorist and cyberthreat activities, 
     the U.S. Defense Department is rethinking its earlier 
     aversion to the idea, and resistance is beginning to crumble. 
     Funding to establish the national operations and analysis hub 
     (NOAH), which would link 28 federal agencies, is anticipated 
     as a congressional add-on in the Defense Department's new 
     budget. An initial $10 million in funding is likely in fiscal 
     year 2001 from identified research and development accounts.
       Spearheading the formation of NOAH is Rep. Curt Weldon (R-
     PA), chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives National 
     Security Committee's military research and development 
     subcommittee. He emphasizes that challenges facing U.S. 
     leaders are beginning to overlap, blurring distinction and 
     jurisdiction. ``The increasing danger is both domestic and 
     international.''
       Conceptually, NOAH would become a national-level operations 
     and control center with a mission to integrate various 
     imagery, data and analytical viewpoints. The intelligence 
     products would support U.S. actions. ``I see NOAH as going 
     beyond the capability of the National Military Command Center 
     and the National Joint Military Intelligence Command. NOAH 
     would provide recommended courses of action that allow the 
     U.S. to effectively meet emerging challenges in near real 
     time,'' the congressman illustrates.
       ``This central national-level hub would be composed of a 
     system of agency-specified mini centers, or `pods,' of 
     participating agencies and services associated with growing 
     national security concerns,'' Weldon reports. ``NOAH would 
     link the policy with action recommendations derived from 
     fused information provided by the individual pod.'' 
     Automation and connectivity would allow the to talk to each 
     other in a computer-based environment to share data and 
     perspectives on a given situation.
       The congressman believes that NOAH should reside within the 
     Defense Department and is modeling the hub's concept on a 
     U.S. Army organization he closely follows. He says the idea 
     for NOAH comes from officials in several federal agencies. 
     However, it is also based on his own experiences with the 
     U.S. Army's Intelligence and Security Command's (INSCOM's) 
     Land Warfare Information Activity (LIWA) and Information 
     Dominance Center, Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
       Patterned after LIWA (SIGNAL, March, page 31), NOAH would 
     display collaborative threat profiling and analysis with the 
     aid of a variety of electronic tools, the hub would support 
     national actions, Weldon discloses.
       The congressman is conscious of other initiatives such as 
     linking counterintelligence groups throughout the community. 
     He also is aware of the Central Intelligence Agency's, 
     (CIA's) counterterrorism center, the Federal Bureau of 
     Investigation's (FBI's) National Infrastructure Protection 
     Center and a new human intelligence (HUMINT) special 
     operations center, ``We don't need another analytical center. 
     Instead, we need a national-level fusion center that can take 
     already analyzed data and offer courses of action for 
     decision making,'' he insists.
        Weldon's wide experience in dealing with officials from 
     the FBI, CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA) convince 
     him that policy makers are continuing to work in a vacuum. 
     ``Briefings and testimonies are the primary vehicles for 
     transmitting information to leaders. The volume of 
     information germane to national security issues is expanding 
     so rapidly that policy makers are overwhelmed with data,'' he 
     claims.
       Robust situational awareness of asymmetric threats to 
     national security is a key in assisting leaders, Weldon 
     observes. ``Policy makers need an overarching information and 
     intelligence architecture that will quickly assimilate, 
     analyze and display assessments and recommend courses of 
     action for many simultaneous national emergencies,'' he 
     declares. The concept of NOAH also calls for virtual 
     communications among policy makers.
       Weldon's plan is for White House, Congress, Pentagon and 
     agency-level leaders each to have a center where they 
     receive, send, share and collaborate on assessments before 
     they act. He calls NOAH the policy maker's tool. In the 
     collaborative environment, the hub would provide a 
     multiissue, multiagency hybrid picture to the White House 
     situation room and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
       NOAH's concept also includes support for HUMINT and 
     peacekeeping missions along with battle damage assessment. 
     The same system could later help brace congressional 
     committees and hearings. The new capability would allow 
     application of foreign threat analyses to policy, while 
     providing a hybrid situational awareness picture of the 
     threat, Weldon relates. Industrial efforts of interest to the 
     policy maker could be incorporated, and academia also could 
     be directly linked.
       In meetings with high-level FBI, CIA and defense officials, 
     Weldon stressed the need to ``acquire, fuse and analyze 
     disparate data from many agencies in order to support the 
     policy maker's actions against threats from terrorism, 
     [ballistic misile] proliferation, illegal technology 
     diversions, espionage, narcotics [trafficking], information 
     warfare and cyberterrorism.'' He is convinced that current 
     collection and analysis capabilities in various intelligence 
     agencies are stovepiped. ``To some extent, this involves turf 
     protection, but it clearly hinders policy making.''
       Weldon, who was a Russian studies major, offers some of his 
     own recent experiences as examples of why there is a strong 
     need for NOAH. He maintains close contact with a number of 
     Russians and understands their programs and technologies. The 
     congressman is quick to recall vignettes about Russian 
     officials and trips to facilities in the region.
       During the recent U.S. combat action involvement in Kosovo, 
     Weldon was contacted by senior Russian officials.* * *
       Weldon learned from the agents that they were seeking 
     information on Karic to brief the State Department. When he 
     explained that the information came from the Army and LIWA, 
     the CIA and FBI agents had no knowledge of that organization, 
     he confirms. Before his departure for Vienna, the congressman 
     received a six-page LIWA profile of Karic and his family's 
     links to Milosevic.
       ``This is an example of why an organization like NOAH is so 
     critically necessary,'' Weldon contends. ``LIWA's Information 
     Dominance Center provides the best capability we have today 
     in the federal government to assess massive amounts of data 
     and develop profiles. LIWA uses its contacts with other 
     agencies to obtain database information from those systems,'' 
     he explains. ``Some is unclassified and some classified.''
       Weldon cites an ``extraordinary capability by a former CIA 
     and Defense Intelligence Agency official, who is a LIWA 
     profiler, as one of the keys in LIWA's success. She does the 
     profiling and knows where to look and which systems to pull 
     information from in a data mining and extrapolation 
     process,'' he proclaims. ``She makes the system work.''
       Weldon intends to use LIWA's profiling capability as a 
     model for building NOAH. ``My goal is to go beyond service 
     intelligence agencies and integrate all intelligence 
     collection. This must be beyond military intelligence, which 
     is too narrow in scope, to provide a governmmentwide 
     capability. Each agency with a pod linked to NOAH would 
     provide two staff members assigned at the hub, which would 
     operate continuously. Data brought together in ``this cluster 
     would be used for fusion and profiling, which any agency 
     could then request,'' he maintains.
       NOAH would not belong to the Army, which would continue 
     with its own intelligence capabilities as would the other 
     services. There would only be one fusion center, which would 
     handle input from all federal agencies and from open sources, 
     Weldon explains. ``NOAH would handle threats like information 
     operations and examine stability in various regions of the 
     world. We need this ability to respond immediately.'' The 
     congressman adds that he recently was briefed by LIWA on very 
     sensitive, very limited and scary profile information, which 
     he describes as ``potentially explosive.'' In turn, Weldon 
     arranged briefings for the chairman of the House National 
     Security Committee, the Speaker of the House and other key 
     congressional leaders.
       ``But this kind of profiling capability is very limited 
     now. The goal is to have it on a regular basis. The profiling 
     could be used for sensitive technology transfer issues and 
     information about security breaches,'' the congressman 
     allows. LIWA has what he terms the fusion and profiling 
     state-of-the-art capability in the military, ``even beyond 
     the military.'' Weldon is pressing the case for NOAH among 
     leaders in both houses of Congress. ``It is essential that we 
     create a governmentwide capability under very strict 
     controls.''

[[Page 14408]]

       Weldon adds that establishing NOAH is not a funding issue; 
     it is a jurisdictional issue. ``Some agencies don't want to 
     tear down their stovepipes. Yet, information on a drug lord, 
     as an example, could be vitally important to help combat 
     terrorism.'' He makes a point that too often, federal 
     agencies overlap each other in their efforts to collect 
     intelligence against these threats, or they fail to pool 
     their resources and share vital information. ``This 
     redundancy of effort and confusion of jurisdiction only 
     inhibits our nation's capabilities,'' he offers.
       NOAH would provide high-bandwidth, virtual connectivity to 
     experts at agency pod sites. Protocols for interagency data 
     sharing would be established and refined in links to all pod 
     sites. The ability to retrieve, collate, analyze and display 
     data would be exercised to provide possible courses of 
     action. A backup site would be established for redundancy, 
     and training would begin on collaborative tools as soon as it 
     is activated.
       The hub system would become part of the national policy 
     creation and execution system. The tools available at LIWA 
     would be shared so that every agency would have the same 
     tools. Weldon explains that all agencies would post data on 
     the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) highway in a 
     replicated format sensitive to classification. NOAH's global 
     network would use the NRO system as a backbone.
       NOAH optimizes groups of expertise within each 
     organization--experts who are always on hand regardless of 
     the issue. This approach ties strategic analysis and tactical 
     assessment to a course of action. ``Before the U.S. can take 
     action against emerging threats, we must first understand 
     their relationship to one another, their patterns, the people 
     and countries involved and the level of danger posed to our 
     nation,'' Weldon say's ``That is where NOAH begins.''--CAR

  So we have pushed the process, Mr. Speaker. We pushed it in 
legislation passed by this Congress 3 years in a row. I pushed it 
publicly in magazine articles, in newspapers, in speeches before 
intelligence symposiums and agency briefings; but the CIA continued to 
balk.
  In fact, Mr. Speaker, I have one of the report languages from H.R. 
5408, the conference report printed October 6, 2000, the section 
entitled ``Joint Report on Establishment of a National Collaborative 
Information Analysis Capability.''
  That section is as follows:

       Joint report on establishment of national collaborative 
     information analysis capability (sec. 933)
       The House bill contained a provision (sec. 905) that would: 
     (1) require the Secretary of Defense and the Director of 
     Central Intelligence to prepare a joint report assessing 
     alternatives for the establishment of a national 
     collaborative information analysis capability; (2) require 
     the Secretary of Defense to complete the data mining, 
     profiling, and analysis capability of the Army's Land 
     Information Warfare Activity; and (3) restrict funds to 
     establish, support, or implement a data mining and analysis 
     capability until such a capability is specifically authorized 
     by law.
       The Senate amendment contained no similar provision.
       The Senate recedes with an amendment that would: (1) 
     require the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central 
     Intelligence to prepare a joint report assessing alternatives 
     for the establishment of a national collaborative information 
     analysis capability; and (2) require the Secretary of Defense 
     to complete the data mining, profiling, and analysis 
     capability of the Army's Land Information Warfare Activity. 
     The amendment would not restrict funds, but would require the 
     Secretary to make appropriate use of such capability to 
     provide support to appropriate national defense components.

  Mr. Speaker, to push this process, a report came back from the CIA 
dated May 1, 2001, just a few short months before 9/11. And I will read 
one sentence in this report in the summary: ``A single overarching 
collaborative solution addressing the totality of mission requirements 
is not practical.''
  In other words, the CIA said, We cannot create what the Department of 
Defense already has. Now, Mr. Speaker, the Department of Defense and 
the Army and our special forces commands already had this capability, 
and they were using it in 1999 and 2000. I knew they were using it, but 
was not quite sure of the extent of the use until 2 weeks after 9/11.
  Mr. Speaker, exactly 2 weeks after 
9/11 where I lost some very good friends, Ray Downey, the chief of all 
rescue for the New York City Fire Department and one of my best 
friends, was the chief of all rescue at Ground Zero when the first 
tower came down. It was Ray Downey who had taken me through the Trade 
Center in 1993 when bin Laden hit us the first time. It was Ray Downey 
who convinced me in the late 1990s to introduce legislation, eventually 
becoming law, to create a commission to make recommendations to prepare 
for the next terrorist threat.
  My legislation was passed, became law, and created what is now known 
as the Gilmore Commission, chaired by Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore. 
Ray Downey was one of those commissioners. The Gilmore Commission and 
Ray Downey gave us three reports before 9/11 of recommendations of 
things we should be doing to prepare for the next terrorist attack. And 
they gave us those three reports before 9/11 occurred. In fact, almost 
40 percent of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission were actual 
recommendations of the Gilmore Commission. But because the attack had 
not occurred, it did not get as much visibility.
  On September 11, Ray Downey was killed. I brought his wife and five 
kids to my district 1 month after 9/11, and 40,000 of my constituents 
came out to honor Ray as an American hero at a parade ending at our 
county park.
  We also lost one of my neighbors, Mr. Speaker, a fellow graduate of 
Westchester University, Michael Horrocks who served our Nation in the 
Navy, was a pilot on one of the planes that was commandeered on 
September 11. Michael left behind a young wife, a teacher in my 
district, and two young children in the Rose Tree Media School 
District. In fact, we built a playground in Michael's honor at the 
school of the two children.
  Mr. Speaker, September 11 touched all of us; 3,700 of us were wiped 
out. Two weeks after 9/11, my friends from the Army's Information 
Dominance Center in cooperation with special ops brought me a chart. 
This chart, Mr. Speaker, this chart. Two weeks after 
9/11, I took the basic information in this chart down to the White 
House. I had asked for a meeting with Steve Hadley, who at that time 
was Deputy National Security Advisor. The chart was smaller. It was 2 
feet by 3 feet, but the same information was in the center.
  Steve Hadley looked at the chart and said, Congressman, where did you 
get that chart from? I said, I got it from the military. I said, This 
is the process; this is the result of the process that I was pitching 
since 1999 to our government to implement, but the CIA kept saying we 
do not need it.
  Steve Hadley said, Congressman, I am going to take this chart, and I 
am going to show it to the man. The man that he meant, Mr. Speaker, was 
the President of the United States. I said, Mr. Hadley, you mean you 
have not seen something like this before from the CIA, this chart of al 
Qaeda worldwide and in the U.S.? And he said, No, Congressman. So I 
gave him the chart.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, what is interesting in this chart of al Qaeda, and 
you cannot see this from a distance, but right here in the center is 
the name of the leader of the New York cell. And that name is very 
familiar to the people of America. That name is Mohammed Atta, the 
leader of the 9/11 attack against us. So prior to 9/11, this military 
system that the CIA said we did not need and could not do actually gave 
us the information that identified Mohammed Atta's cell in New York. 
And with Mohammed Atta they identified two of the other terrorists with 
them.
  But I learned something new, Mr. Speaker, over the past several weeks 
and months. I have talked to some of the military intelligence officers 
who produced this document, who worked on this effort. And I found 
something out very startling, Mr. Speaker. Not only did our military 
identify the Mohammed Atta cell; our military made a recommendation in 
September of 2000 to bring the FBI in to take out that cell, the cell 
of Mohammed Atta. So now, Mr. Speaker, for the first time I can tell 
our colleagues that one of our agencies not only identified the New 
York cell of Mohammed Atta and two of the terrorists, but actually made 
a recommendation to bring the FBI in to take out that cell. And they 
made that recommendation because Madeleine Albright had declared that 
al Qaeda, an international terrorist organization, and the military 
units involved here

[[Page 14409]]

felt they had jurisdiction to go to the FBI.
  Why, then, did they not proceed? That is a question that needs to be 
answered, Mr. Speaker. I have to ask, Mr. Speaker, with all the good 
work that the 9/11 Commission did, why is there nothing in their report 
about able danger? Why is there no mention of the work that able danger 
did against al Qaeda? Why is there no mention, Mr. Speaker, of a 
recommendation in September of 2000 to take out Mohammed Atta's cell 
which would have detained three of the terrorists who struck us?

                              {time}  1140

  Those are questions, Mr. Speaker, that need to be answered.
  Last week, I asked the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), the 
chairman of the Committee on Armed Services, my good friend, and the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), the chairman of the Permanent 
Select Committee on Intelligence, my good friend, who I have the 
highest respect for both of these individuals, to allow us to proceed 
with an investigation that has not yet been brought forward to the 
American people and our colleagues in this body.
  We need to know, Mr. Speaker, why those recommendations, if they, in 
fact, occurred, as my intelligence military friends told me that they 
occurred, why were they stopped. Now, Mr. Speaker, I have been told 
informally that they were stopped because the lawyers at that time in 
2000 told them that Mohamed Atta had a green card and they could not go 
after someone with a green card.
  I have also been told, Mr. Speaker, that it was because of the fear 
of the lawyers of the fallout that had occurred on the Waco attack in 
Texas just a short time earlier. Mr. Speaker, if that is, in fact, the 
case, that is an outrage and a scandal. If our reason for not going 
after the Mohamed Atta cell was because of the fear of the fallout from 
Waco, then someone needs to answer some questions.
  The bottom line process in all of this, Mr. Speaker, is that this 
capability, which the CIA said we did not need, which the CIA said was 
not necessary, which was, in fact, being used by the military, both the 
Army and Special Forces command did something the CIA did not do. It 
identified the key cell of Mohamed Atta prior to 9/11, and it actually 
gave us a suggestion to deal with that cell. Mr. Speaker, this story 
needs to be investigated. This information needs to be pursued.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, in spite of the CIA's refusal to implement a 
national collaborative center, thank goodness our President did 
respond, and in January of 2003, standing in this very chamber, in the 
State of the Union speech, he announced the TTIC, the Terrorism Threat 
Integration Center. Mr. Speaker, the TTIC is identical to the NOAH, no 
different, same concept, same design, linkage together in one location 
of all 33 classified systems.
  But, Mr. Speaker, we proposed that in 1999, 2 years prior to 9/11. 
The administration put it into place in January of 2003. That is the 
same capability that the CIA said we do not need that, Congressman; we 
cannot do that, Congressman; we have better ways to assess emerging 
threats. TTIC has now been reformed. It is now known as the NCTC, the 
National Counterterrorism Center, but Mr. Speaker, I still have 
concerns, and I rise this evening to express those concerns.
  This capability was produced in 1999 and 2000 by the IDC, the 
Information Dominant Center. I asked them to update me on al Qaeda, to 
show me what they can do today at the IDC. This, Mr. Speaker, is al 
Qaeda today. It is obviously impossible for anyone watching our 
television monitor to see what is on this chart. I have had this chart 
magnified by a large factor and have large copies in my office.
  Each of these little individual people are cells of al Qaeda, are 
groups of al Qaeda, clusters of al Qaeda around the world. In fact, 
Mohamed Atta's cell is identified in this chart. This chart, Mr. 
Speaker, was prepared through the national collaborative efforts of our 
IDC, using, Mr. Speaker, open source data. That chart was produced with 
open source data.
  What troubles me, Mr. Speaker, is in talking to my friends in the 
defense community who work with the NCTC, I have learned that quite 
possibly the NCTC cannot duplicate this capability. That is a question 
I plan to get answered this week because we have a very new and very 
capable leader of the NCTC that hopefully will tell me I am wrong, that 
they can produce this kind of capability to understand a threat group 
like al Qaeda.
  I rise tonight, Mr. Speaker, to raise the importance of intelligence 
collaboration. We can never allow ourselves to return back to the days 
prior to 9/11, to the days where individual agencies or individual 
agencies that think that they have all of the answers in providing 
security for our country and intelligence for our agencies and our 
policy-makers. Mr. Speaker, we can never return to the days of 1999 and 
2000, and I hope this is not the case today, but back in those days 
where the agency bureaucrats were fighting with each other over who 
would take credit for the best information. Let me read a couple of 
excerpts, Mr. Speaker.
  Back in 1999, when I was pushing the CIA to establish this 
collaborative capability and our military was actually using that 
capability, focusing on emerging threats like al Qaeda, this 
conversation went back and forth, Mr. Speaker, September 1999. This is, 
by the way, written from military intelligence officers, a summary of 
notes to me.
  At the military's inception, the CIA drags its feet and limits its 
support to the effort. In an off-the-record conversation between the 
DCI and the CIA representative to this military unit, a man that I will 
call Dave and our military intelligence officer explains that even 
though he understands the military's effort is against the global 
infrastructure of al Qaeda, he tells me that the CIA will, and I quote, 
never provide the best information on al Qaeda, end quote. Why would 
they not do that? Because of the effort that they were taking as part 
of a finding they had on bin Laden himself and if the military's 
project was successful it would, quote, steal their thunder. Steal the 
CIA's thunder.
  Dave went on to say that short of the CINC, General so and so, 
calling the Director, George Tenet, directly, the CIA would never 
provide the best information to the military on al Qaeda. To my 
knowledge, that information was never provided.
  Mr. Speaker, never again can America allow intelligence bureaucrats 
to argue back and forth over who is going to steal whose thunder, that 
you heaven forbid would want to embarrass the CIA because a military 
intelligence unit got information that is supposed to be under their 
authority and jurisdiction.
  Mr. Speaker, I am not going to read all these pages, but this 
classified information that I have to back up what I have given in 
unclassified format, will be provided and has been provided for the 
chairman of our intelligence oversight committee and our armed services 
oversight committee.
  Again, I have to ask the question, why did the 9/11 Commission not 
investigate this entire situation? Why did the 9/11 Commission not ask 
the question about the military's recommendation against the Mohamed 
Atta cell? Why did the 9/11 Commission not document the internal 
battles and disputes between agency personnel going after the same 
terrorist organization al Qaeda?
  If we are truly going to have an understanding of the need to reform 
our intelligence system, then we have to be honest with the American 
people about the past.

                              {time}  2350

  Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight because I am very troubled by what I have 
seen and by what I have heard. I have interviewed and talked to some 
very brave military intelligence officers who, back in 1999 and 2000, 
were involved in protecting America. They knew what we needed, and they 
were trying to do it. As I have read to you, there were some in other 
agencies, especially the CIA and some in DIA, who were saying you 
cannot do that, that is not your area.

[[Page 14410]]

That is our area. You cannot steal our thunder. That is our job, not 
your job.
  Never again, Mr. Speaker, can we allow agency bureaucrats to argue 
over who is going to get the credit for solving the next attack or 
planned attack against us. I do not rise tonight, Mr. Speaker, to 
embarrass anyone. I rise tonight because of my own frustration. We knew 
6 years ago what direction we had to go. The agency said we do not need 
that, Congressman, we know better than the Congress. Trust us.
  Thank goodness President Bush put that system in place when he took 
office. If we had had that system in 1999 and 2000, which the military 
had already developed as a prototype, and if we had followed the lead 
of the military entity that identified the al Qaeda cell of Mohamed 
Atta, then perhaps, Mr. Speaker, 9/11 would never have occurred. 
Certainly taking out the Mohamed Atta cell and two of the terrorists 
that were with him, would have had a profound positive impact in 
shutting down the major plan against us that moved forward on September 
11, 2001.
  Mr. Speaker, I have placed these documents in the Record because I 
want our colleagues to have a chance to read them. I want our 
colleagues to see the facts and the information, and I want to support 
our very capable chairman, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) 
and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) as they move forward 
with an investigation.
  We have to ask the question, why have these issues not been brought 
forth before this day? I had my Chief of Staff call the 9/11 Commission 
staff and ask the question: Why did you not mention Able Danger in your 
report? The Deputy Chief of Staff said, well, we looked at it, but we 
did not want to go down that direction.
  So the question, Mr. Speaker, is why did they not want to go down 
that direction? Where will that lead us? Why do we not want to see the 
answers to the questions I have raised tonight? Who made the decision 
to tell our military not to pursue Mohamed Atta? Who made the decision 
that said that we are fearful of the fallout from Waco politically?
  Were those decisions made by lawyers? Were they made by policymakers? 
Who within the administration in 2000 was responsible for those 
actions? This body and the American people need to know.

                          ____________________