S. Hrg. 108-54
CONSOLIDATING INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS:
A REVIEW OF THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSAL
TO CREATE A TERRORIST THREAT
INTEGRATION CENTER
=======================================================================
HEARINGS
before the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 14 AND 26, 2003
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs
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WASHINGTON : 2003
____________________________________________________________________________
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512ÿ091800
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine, Chairman
TED STEVENS, Alaska JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio CARL LEVIN, Michigan
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois MARK DAYTON, Minnesota
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey
RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama MARK PRYOR, Arkansas
Michael D. Bopp, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
David A. Kass, Chief Investigative Counsel
Joyce Rechtschaffen, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Michael A. Alexander, Minority Professional Staff Member
Darla D. Cassell, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
------
Opening statements:
Page
Senator Collins.............................................. 1, 45
Senator Lieberman............................................ 3
Senator Sununu............................................... 5
Senator Lautenberg........................................... 20
Senator Pryor................................................ 23
Senator Akaka............................................... 26, 56
Senator Coleman.............................................. 47
Prepared statement:
Senator Shelby............................................... 74
WITNESSES
Friday, February 14, 2003
Hon. Warren B. Rudman, Co-Chair, U.S. Commission on National
Security/21st Century.......................................... 7
Hon. James S. Gilmore, III, Chairman, Advisory Panel to Assess
the Capabilities for Domestic Response to Terrorism Involving
Weapons of Mass Destruction.................................... 9
James B. Steinberg, Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy
Studies, The Brookings Institution............................. 30
Jeffrey H. Smith, Former General Counsel (1995-1996), Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA)...................................... 33
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
Winston P. Wiley, Associate Director of Central Intelligence for
Homeland Security and Chair, Senior Steering Group............. 48
Pasquale J. D'Amuro, Executive Assistant Director for
Counterterrorism/Counterintelligence, Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI)............................................ 52
Hon. Gordon England, Deputy Secretary, Department of Homeland
Security....................................................... 53
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
D'Amuro, Pasquale J.:
Testimony.................................................... 52
Prepared statement........................................... 117
England, Hon. Gordon:
Testimony.................................................... 53
Gilmore, Hon. James S., III:
Testimony.................................................... 9
Prepared statement........................................... 76
Rudman, Hon. Warren B.:
Testimony.................................................... 7
Smith, Jeffrey H.:
Testimony.................................................... 33
Prepared statement........................................... 100
Steinberg, James B.:
Testimony.................................................... 30
Prepared statement........................................... 95
Wiley, Winston P.:
Testimony.................................................... 48
Prepared statement........................................... 113
Appendix
Response to Senators Levin and Collins transcript request from
Mr. Wiley referred to on page 69............................... 73
Chart entitled ``Primary Agencies Handling Terrorist-Related
Intelligence (With Terrorist Threat Integration Center),''
submitted by Senator Collins................................... 119
Responses to Post-Hearing Questions for the Record from Senator
Akaka for:
Mr. Wiley.................................................... 120
Responses to Post-Hearing Questions for the Record from Senator
Shelby for:
Mr. Wiley.................................................... 127
Hon. England................................................. 133
CONSOLIDATING INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS:
A REVIEW OF THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSAL
TO CREATE A TERRORIST THREAT
INTEGRATION CENTER
----------
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2003
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:32 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Susan M.
Collins, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Collins, Coleman, Sununu, Lieberman,
Akaka, Lautenberg, and Pryor.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS
Chairman Collins. The Committee will come to order.
Good morning. Today the Committee on Governmental Affairs
will review the President's recent proposal to create a new
Terrorist Threat Integration Center. The President's
announcement of this new center is the latest in the series of
actions taken by the administration and by Congress to address
the government's serious failure to analyze and act upon the
intelligence it gathers related to terrorism.
Some of these failures have become well known. For example,
in January 2000 the CIA learned of a meeting of al Qaeda
operatives that was taking place in Malaysia. The CIA knew that
one of the participants in this meeting, Khalid al-Midhar, had
a visa to enter the United States. It failed, however, to list
his name on the terrorist watch list and he entered the country
just 2 weeks later. Al-Midhar returned to Saudi Arabia and in
June 2001 he received yet another U.S. visa. Although 1\1/2\
years had passed, his name was still not on the watch list.
The CIA did not conduct a review of the Malaysian meeting
until August 2001. Following that review it finally placed al-
Midhar on the terrorist watch list. By then, of course, it was
too late. He was already in the United States and within weeks
would participate in the September 11 attacks on our Nation.
Failures such as these were not unique to the CIA. In July
2001, an FBI agent in the Phoenix field office warned his
superiors that Osama bin Laden appeared to be sending some of
his operatives to the United States for flight training. The
agent recommended a number of actions the Bureau should
undertake, but his recommendations were ignored.
One month later, agents in the FBI's Minneapolis field
office detained Zacarias Moussaoui, a former student pilot,
based on suspicions that he was involved in a hijacking plot.
FBI headquarters denied the Minneapolis agents permission to
apply for a court order to search Moussaoui's belongings.
According to the joint inquiry conducted by the Senate and the
House Intelligence Committees, this decision was based on a
faulty understanding of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act.
These are only a few of the most publicized and notable
examples of the government's failure to analyze, share, or act
on critical intelligence information. The Joint Congressional
inquiry into the September 11 attacks lamented that the U.S.
Government does not presently bring together in one place all
terrorism related information from all sources. While the
Counter Terrorist Center does manage overseas operations and
has access to most intelligence community information, it does
not collect terrorism related information from all sources
domestic and foreign.
In addition, the Congressional inquiry found that
information was not sufficiently shared not only between
different intelligence community agencies but also within
individual agencies, and between intelligence and law
enforcement agencies.
Now some steps have been taken to address these problems.
The FBI has begun to place greater emphasis on developing its
analytical capability. It has expanded its joint terrorism task
forces and it is attempting to improve its relationship and
communication with the CIA. More FBI personnel have been
assigned to the CIA's Counter Terrorist Center and more CIA
agents now work at the FBI's Counterterrorism Division.
In addition, Congress took significant action aimed at
improving the analysis and flow of intelligence information by
creating the new Department of Homeland Security. One of the
Department's directorates will be devoted to information
analysis and infrastructure protection.
In addition to these steps, the President has announced
that he believes a new independent entity is needed. The
proposal advanced by the President would create a Terrorist
Threat Integration Center that is the focus of our hearing
today. The center would ensure that intelligence information
from all sources is shared, integrated, and analyzed seamlessly
and then acted upon quickly, to quote the President. The new
center would include staff from the Department of Homeland
Security, the FBI, the CIA, and the Department of Defense.
As of yet, however, we know few details about the proposed
integration center. We have many questions regarding its
structure, the scope of its authority, how it will interact
with other agencies in the intelligence community as well as
law-enforcement agencies, and even where it should be located,
in which department?
I believe that there are three principles that should guide
the center's creation. First, the integration center should not
be duplicative. Many government agencies currently conduct
intelligence analyses. We should be working to combine these
efforts, not duplicate them.
Second, emphasis must be placed on sharing the integration
center's analytical product. Good intelligence collection and
analysis currently exists. Too often, however, the information
does not get to those people who need it in a timely manner or
in a form that is useful. The integration center needs to focus
on sharing its product with other Federal agencies and, equally
important, with appropriate State and local agencies.
Third, the integration center must be structured in a way
that breaks through the bureaucratic barriers that exist still
among intelligence agencies and not hide behind them.
I hope that today's hearing will help the President achieve
those goals. We will review what we now know about the
integration center, and we will ask our very distinguished
witnesses today to discuss the elements that are necessary for
this new entity to be the successful and efficient center that
our President envisions and our country needs.
I would now like to turn to the distinguished Ranking
Member of the Committee, Senator Lieberman, for any opening
remarks that he might have.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LIEBERMAN
Senator Lieberman. Thank you, Madam Chairman, for holding
this hearing, and also for your excellent opening statement.
I consider the topic of the hearing to be one of the more
important offensives, if I can put it that way, in the war
against terrorism, which is the consolidation of information
and intelligence regarding the threats that are received daily
from an array of sources available to our government. The
intelligence disconnect, some of which you described in your
opening statement, Madam Chairman, that in part led to the
September 11 terrorist attacks are an embarrassment that should
never have happened in the first place and we must never allow
to happen again. I appreciate your leadership here in calling
this hearing, the first, I believe, on the President's State of
the Union proposal to overcome some of our intelligence
failures which is, of course, a matter of urgency.
I also want to join you in welcoming our witnesses, Senator
Rudman, particularly, our colleague, our never-ending source of
wisdom, even good humor, who has proven, as my wife keeps
telling me, that one has ample opportunities outside of public
service to continue to serve the public and he has done it
really well.
Governor Gilmore, thank you for being here again. Mr. Smith
and Mr. Steinberg, the same.
I am disappointed that we are not going to hear from an
administration representative today. I gather they could not
make it today, but I am hopeful that we will have the
opportunity soon because we have a lot of questions for them.
We are now in the midst of a Code Orange, as everyone
knows, a high terror alert. That combined with warnings from
the directors of the FBI and CIA that another terrorist attack
might be imminent, perhaps as early as this week, along with
official suggestions that citizens create safe rooms in their
homes and stockpile food and water, has understandably created
widespread anxiety throughout our country. We must take this
moment to allay the fear, but also to galvanize our government
and to motivate all Americans to help make our country safe
again. Creation of an effective intelligence analysis center is
a vital step in that direction.
The disastrous disconnects among our intelligence agencies,
the culture of rivalry rather than cooperation, turf battles
rather than teamwork that have plagued the intelligence
community have been well-documented elsewhere. For some time, a
large number of people inside and outside of Congress have been
advocates for a central location in our government where all
the intelligence collected by the various agencies that make up
the intelligence community, as well as open source information
and information collected by Federal, State, and local law
enforcement agencies can be brought together and analyzed,
synthesized, and shared.
The idea is, in the familiar metaphor, to connect all the
dots to create a full picture so that we have a kind of early
warning on what our adversaries are up to, where they are
planning to strike so that we can stop them before their plans
are carried out.
Last year, as part of the debate on the Homeland Security
bill this Committee approved the creation of such an office. We
were greatly aided in our work by Senator Arlen Specter and by
the co-chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committees, Senator
Richard Shelby and Senator Bob Graham. In fact after
investigating the September 11 attacks, the Senate and House
Intelligence Committees called on Congress and the
administration to use the authority provided in the Homeland
Security Act to establish an all-sources intelligence division
within the Homeland Security Department. And the Intelligence
Committee went on to lay out several criteria for this analysis
center which I will include in the record, Madam Chairman,
rather than reciting here.
We had a bit of a debate during the last session on this.
Our Committee originally proposed something very similar to
what the Intelligence Committee was asking. The administration
originally argued that the Department of Homeland Security's
role here should be limited to analyzing intelligence primarily
to protect critical infrastructure. The final legislation
created a division within the new department that would be a
central location for all threat information. Now I take the
administration's proposal to have created a broad consensus and
common ground that many have been fighting for all along, which
is to create an all-sources intelligence analysis center.
There remains a matter of structural disagreement, which I
hope this Committee can consider and shed some light on, and
hopefully extend the consensus. The President, obviously, would
have the new center report to the Director of Central
Intelligence rather than the Secretary of Homeland Security. I
would like, in the weeks ahead for the administration to tell
us how they think, if they do, that this center that they are
proposing differs from the one created by the Homeland Security
Act and why they have chosen to move in this direction rather
than implementing that provision of the act.
It needs to tell us how the so-called TTIC--as an entity
reporting to the Director of Central Intelligence--will
overcome the institutional rivalries to information sharing
that has already hindered the Counter Terrorist Center at the
CIA, and other agencies in the intelligence community--from
becoming truly all-source intelligence analysis centers.
It must answer questions about the center's role, if any,
in the collection of domestic intelligence, and about the
wisdom of expanding the role of the Director of Central
Intelligence in domestic intelligence.
The administration needs to let the Congress know why the
center's director should not be confirmed by the Senate. I am
also interested in understanding what the center's role will be
with respect to disseminating intelligence analysis to other
Federal agencies and to State and local law enforcement, and
how it proposes to collect information from them.
As the witnesses and my colleagues on the panel know,
States local officials complain to each of us that they have
not, up until this time, been kept in the loop by Federal law
enforcement and intelligence agencies. And there are many
questions about the proposed budget of the TTIC; the number of
analysts it will have and the administration's timetable for
getting it up and running.
I know that we have extraordinary witnesses, very able and
experienced who can help us illuminate and answer some of these
questions and as I say, Madam Chairman, I look forward to
discussing them directly with the administration's
representatives at the earliest possible date. But for now I
thank you for holding this hearing and for moving as
expeditiously as you have to examine what is clearly one of the
most important issues we face in the near term in shoring up
our homeland defenses. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator Lieberman. We will be
having a second hearing at which administration witnesses will
be called to testify. I, like you, look forward to hearing more
from them on the details and the answers to the many important
questions that your statement raised.
We are now going to move to our first panel. We are
fortunate this morning to have two extraordinary public
servants who have given a great deal of their time and energy
and thought to analyzing our Nation's intelligence needs. We
are very fortunate to be joined by former Senator Warren
Rudman, and former Governor James Gilmore. I am fighting with
Senator Sununu for the honor of introducing Senator Rudman. I,
too, consider him to be a constituent since he does have a home
in Maine. But I think that your claim, Senator Sununu, probably
goes back further so I will yield to you to introduce Senator
Rudman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SUNUNU
Senator Sununu. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. It is
an honor to serve in the Senate, and despite having served in
the House for 6 years, as a new member of the Senate you come
with some deal of trepidation. We all know that we walk in the
shadows of our predecessors and we are prepared to deal with
that, but it does not change the fact that sitting here in this
Committee room for our first hearing I was a little bit
surprised to hear Senator Rudman's name invoked a half a dozen
times before I even got a chance to talk. And now we have a
hearing scheduled, and of course he's here to provide his
perspective on such an important topic.
But rather than be discomfited by this, I fully understand
the reason. It is an honor to serve in his footsteps but it is
also an honor to be a part of this Committee and to be able to
bring him forward to provide his wealth of experience.
He has served as a Korean War veteran, as Attorney General
for the State of New Hampshire, as a U.S. Senator, and as a
leader of this Committee during an important time in dealing
with questions of intelligence, oversight, and foreign policy,
that being the hearings on Iran-Contra.
He has remained dedicated to public service even, as
Senator Lieberman has pointed out, after leaving the U.S.
Senate. He has been a member of the President's Intelligence
Advisory Board, a winner of the Presidential Gold Medal for his
service, in particular in acting as an adviser and a resource
on questions of intelligence. The reason his perspective has
been so important in that regard is because he has worked with
local law enforcement in the process of gathering and providing
intelligence from that grass roots level.
He has, of course, worked in a great capacity in the U.S.
Senate dealing with Congressional oversight and our role in
understanding how intelligence is gathered and used to provide
for national security. He has served in the executive capacity
as well, offering advice on the consolidation, use of
intelligence, and sharing of intelligence.
I cannot imagine someone who is more qualified to provide
an important perspective on the challenge we now face, but I
also cannot think of a challenge that is greater for the new
Department of Homeland Security. Consolidating our intelligence
resources, breaking down some of the cultural barriers that
have existed to effective intelligence sharing in the past has
been identified by this Committee and by others looking at the
new Department of Homeland Security as one of the premier
challenges this organization will face.
Being able to rely on the expert perspective of Governor
Gilmore and my friend Warren Rudman is essential to us doing
this right the first time. Warren Rudman has been a great
friend to me and a great friend to my family. There is always a
wealth of pride that comes from that kind of a long-standing
personal relationship, but in New Hampshire he is also regarded
as a great citizen and a great public servant and that is why
it is really a pleasure to be able to introduce him here today.
Welcome, Senator Rudman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator Sununu.
Our other panelist, James S. Gilmore, served as Governor of
Virginia from 1998 to 2002. Since 1999, he has been the
chairman of the Congressional advisory commission on terrorism
and weapons of mass destruction, which everyone calls the
Gilmore Commission. In December 2002, the Gilmore Commission
issued its fourth report which focused in part on the creation
of an intelligence fusion center. The Gilmore Commission
recommended the creation of a national Counter Terrorist Center
as a stand-alone agency outside of the FBI, CIA, and DHS. It
also recommended that this entity be an independent agency with
a leader appointed by the President and confirmed by the
Senate.
Gentlemen, I am very grateful to have you join us this
morning. I look forward to hearing your opening statements. I
would ask that you limit them to about 10 minutes and your
longer written statement, if any, will be submitted for the
record without objection.
Senator Rudman, we will start with you. Again, thank you
for being here.
TESTIMONY OF HON. WARREN B. RUDMAN, CO-CHAIR, U.S. COMMISSION
ON NATIONAL SECURITY/21ST CENTURY
Mr. Rudman. Good morning, Madam Chairman, Senator
Lieberman. First, let me thank my friend John Sununu for that
very gracious introduction. I must tell you, though it is very
elevating to be back in this hearing room where I spent so much
time, it is a bit depressing to look at Senator Sununu and
realize that he was 16 years of age when he and his father and
I campaigned against each other in a Republican primary for the
U.S. Senate. That tells me how young he is and how old I am,
and that is a bit depressing.
I am also delighted to see my old friend, Senator
Lautenberg, and glad to meet for the first time, Senator
Coleman.
Madam Chairman, you and the Ranking Member have really
asked a number of questions that are the questions that have to
be answered. I doubt very much either Governor Gilmore and I
can answer all of those questions because, although I am very
familiar with this proposal and how it has come to be, it is
still very much an embryonic proposal. I think one of the
reasons you do not have administration witnesses here today is
they wanted to be prepared to answer those very searching
questions which I think are key.
I think maybe the most important question that you both
referred to in your opening statements is simply this: We are
all very familiar with the Homeland Security Act. Senator Hart
and our commission proposed that department and testified many
times here before the House and the Senate. It finally evolved
in pretty much the shape that we had hoped it would, but I have
never really quite understood how the intelligence function
within the Department of Homeland Security will be discharged.
I am even confounded more with the creation of this new
department, or this new joint venture if you will, which I
fully support, but there has to be some sort of sharp
delineation between the mission of the intelligence unit
mandated by the Congress within the Department of Homeland
Security and this new threat integration center which will be
an all-source, all-agency unit.
If you are not careful you will start having some crosstalk
here between these two agencies, and the last thing you need in
either collection or analysis is not only competition but
confusion. So I hope that when the administration comes here,
and I am sure they will, they will set out for you precisely
what that is. I tried to find out for the last several days by
talking to some of my friends and, frankly, I do not think that
has clearly evolved, and that is understandable. This proposal
was only evolved about a month or so ago, presented by the
President in the State of the Union. I think when you finally
have those witnesses here you will probably get a clear
understanding. But I think that is one of the most important
questions.
When I look back at my 9 years on the President's Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board and chairing the board and looking
at all sorts of all-source, raw, sophisticated, non-
sophisticated, signals and human intel, two things occur to me.
That the massive intelligence that is received by both U.S.
foreign intelligence agencies and the FBI and domestic
intelligence is daunting. The amount of reporting--I sometimes
think we have too much reporting, not not enough.
A good example, for those of you that have had experience
on the Intelligence Committee, or in the Armed Services
Committee, is the amount of information received by the
National Security Agency. The amount of signal intel received
there, and how it gets analyzed, and how it get
compartmentalized, and how it gets separated is truly a
daunting task. Now we are faced with a new issue, which is why
I think this proposal has been made.
We have two distinctly different kinds of intelligence that
this government receives. One, foreign intelligence based on
threats that are non-terrorist, that are state-sponsored as
opposed to non-governmental organizations which are terrorist
organizations such as al Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and many
others. It is very easy, or easier, to target state-sponsored
terrorism, or if you will, state-sponsored military action,
which is what the CIA and the NSA and all the other agencies
have done well over a long period of time.
It is far more difficult to try to direct intelligence,
both signals and human intel, against people who you do not
know who they are sometimes. They do not have an address. We do
not know where they live. We do not know how they are
organized. So first you have to figure that out before you know
how to collect.
So what they are now going to do, from what I understand,
is to take and put together a joint venture, to put it in
corporate terms. This is not going to be a new department or a
new agency. It is going to be a joint venture of the CIA, the
FBI, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security,
and all of the Defense Department intelligence agencies, from
the NSA to the NRO, and all of them. They will be all located
together and their job will be not collection--they will have
nothing to do with collection. They will depend on traditional
collection, foreign from CIA and all of the DOD agencies;
domestic from the FBI, and all of their resources around the
country. What they will do is to analyze in one place and
collect in one place all the reporting on terrorism as opposed
to the myriad of other things that the CIA does.
Now one thing that has to be clearly understood by the
public is that there seems to be an attitude out there that the
CIA and the FBI are only concerned now with terrorism. That is
hardly the case. There are a lot of issues in this world
involving Asia, Europe, involving the Middle East that the CIA
must report to policymakers on important intelligence. So this
is not the only thing they have to do. The problem we have had
is that it has all been amalgamated in one place even though
the Director of the CIA and the Director of the FBI have
labored mightily through the creation of Counter Terrorist
Centers and joint terrorism centers to try to get it
consolidated. Although that has worked, it probably has not
worked well enough, so this proposal is before you.
As I understand this proposal will be a group of
individuals that will be solely charged with being the focal
point for gathering collection, both foreign and domestic, on
all matters of terrorism. Now curiously, although the number is
classified I can tell you this, that the overwhelming amount of
collection on domestic terrorism is collected overseas, which I
think, Madam Chairman and Senator Lieberman, is probably the
reason that the administration has decided, and I think wisely,
that the Director of the CIA should be the person to whom the
head of this new joint venture reports, because they will be
dealing in the main with foreign intelligence. The domestic
intelligence will be collected by the FBI, but since most of
our adversaries in the area of terrorism are located overseas,
although we certainly have some of them in this country, it is
not surprising that the overwhelming amount of intelligence
that is gathered on domestic terrorism is not gathered within
the continental United States, Hawaii, or Alaska. It is
collected in other places.
So I think the structure is good. The problem will be, as
someone once said, the devil is in the details, and I do not
think any of us have enough detail now to be able to comment
with any real accuracy on how it is all going to come together.
My sense is that they have staged it about right. They are
going to start small, and they believe they have anywhere from
a 2 to a 4-year time line to get it fully functional, although
it will be functioning as early as later this year. It will
have representatives from the Bureau, from the Agency, State,
and all of the DOD agencies. Their information technology will
be unique in that it will connect with everyone else that is in
this business. The Department of Homeland Security will do some
collection through the Coast Guard, through the INS, or through
the Border Patrol. It will also, I expect, report in to this
unit.
So I think that all I will say in this opening statement is
that there are more questions right now than there are answers.
I think the concept is very sound. I think we need a single
place, not located at the FBI or the CIA, but a group of people
from various parts of this government who form a team to
analyze the kind of information that the Chairman referred to,
which may have slipped through the cracks in the past. I think
it is a sound proposal and I support it, but there are a lot of
questions you are going to have to ask when you get the
administration before you.
Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator Rudman. Governor
Gilmore.
TESTIMONY OF HON. JAMES S. GILMORE, III,\1\ CHAIRMAN, ADVISORY
PANEL TO ASSESS THE CAPABILITIES FOR DOMESTIC RESPONSE TO
TERRORISM INVOLVING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
Mr. Gilmore. Thank you, Madam Chairman, Senator Lieberman,
and Members of the U.S. Senate. Thank you for the opportunity
to be here to carry out our advisory function on your behalf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Gilmore appears in the Appendix
on page 76.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am the chairman of the advisory panel to assess domestic
response capabilities with terrorism involving weapons of mass
destruction. This is a panel that was created by law, by
statute of the U.S. Congress at the initiation of the U.S.
Congress.
It was initiated by Congressman Curt Weldon, who saw the
need for this, and then it was concurred with by the U.S.
Senate as we moved forward. This discussion went forward at the
end of 1998. The commission was stood up in January 1999. I was
approached as Governor of Virginia and asked whether I would
chair the commission. It is staffed by the Rand Corporation.
The commission is now and has been in the past made up not by
people from inside the Beltway, but instead the Congress in its
wisdom decided to set up a committee that was different. The
advisory panel that we have is heavy on fire, police, rescue,
emergency services, health care, epidemiologists, including
retired general officers and people from the intelligence
community. So it is a bit of a different mix.
In the first year that we met, in the year 1999 we did a
threat assessment, and by statute every year we report on
December 15 every year to the Congress and to the President. In
that year, December 15, 1999, our first report was a threat
assessment. We assessed the question of a genuine threat of
weapons of mass destruction in the United States, and considerd
at the end of the day that it was much less likely that those
weapons could be acquired and delivered in the homeland than a
conventional attack. We believed that a conventional attack of
major proportions was much more probable.
But we also refused to rule out the possibility of weapons
of mass destruction as we had basically a 3-year commission and
wanted to explore it further. We did say that we thought there
was a need for a national strategy.
In the second year when we reported in December 15, 2000 we
did probably our most important policy work. At that time we
reminded all authorities there needed to be a national
strategy. We proposed the creation of a national office in the
Office of the President to create such a national strategy. We
defined that national strategy as not being Federal, but
instead being Federal, State, and local all together.
We were concerned about the issues of intelligence. At that
time we recommended tossing out the rule that said that the CIA
could not recruit bad guys overseas as being a fairly
ridiculous rule. We recommended and pointed out the concern
about stovepiping and the fact that intelligence was not being
shared laterally across Federal agencies, and was absolutely
not being shared vertically between Federal, State, and local
authorities.
In the third year, our closing year, we focused on certain
areas where we thought the national strategy could be furthered
by the work of the advisory panel, and that included health
care, the concern about border controls, the use of Federal and
locals, the use of the military and areas like that.
Now we were basically done about the first week of
September and sent the report off to the printer and got ready
to go out of business a little early in October when the
September 11 attack occurred. At the time, the Congress
extended our commission 2 years. So we have finished our fourth
report in December 15 of this year. This is our fourth report
which we have submitted to the members of the Congress, the
Senate and the House, and to the President.
In this fourth report we go over a number of key issues. My
admonition to the panel has been to try to stay ahead of this
debate so that we could be of useful advice to the Senate and
to the House. I think we have done that. I think we have stayed
ahead of the debate as we have gone along.
I might point out several crosscutting issues in the fourth
report that I want to emphasize. Of all of our analysis, the
crosscutting issues we have tried to emphasize is the
importance of the civil liberties of the American people,
because we are deeply concerned that we will overreact and fix
problems structurally in such a way that we will imply dangers
to the civil liberties of the American people.
The second is the importance and the value of the State and
local authorities, their need for funding, financing,
strategizing, and exercising.
The third is the implications of the private sector and the
fact that most critical infrastructure is in the hands of the
private sector, and the need to find a method by which the
private sector is drawn in.
And then fourth, intelligence, and the concern of all these
crosscutting issues.
Senators and Madam Chairman, the fourth report focuses on a
broad range of areas. These are comprehensive reports, each of
them that have come forward. They are extensive and detailed in
a broad range of areas as I have laid out. The fourth report--I
will just focus for a moment on the National Counter Terrorist
Center that we proposed.
On the intelligence section of this commission's report we
expressed and focused our attention on the intelligence area.
We saw a need for a fusion center. We have recommended it as
the National Counter Terrorist Center. We called it the NCTC.
Everybody in Washington has acronyms. That was ours. We
recommended December 15 of this past year that there needed to
be a fusion center to draw together information.
The President announced in his State of the Union address
the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), which seems to
be a parallel concept. We congratulate the President on his
initiative. We believed in our recommendation that it needs to
be a stand-alone agency. We spent the better part of the year
discussing the issue of whether it should be in the Department
of Homeland Security or in another agency. We recommended that
it be in no other agency or department; that it be a stand-
alone agency, an independent agency like the EPA or FEMA or the
General Services Administration.
We recommended that the head of it be with the advice and
the consent of the Senate. This parallels the recommendation
that we had on the Office of Homeland Security in the year 2000
where we recommended that it be at the advice and consent of
the Senate in order to make the national legislature a full
partner in all of these processes in the Executive Branch.
We recommend that it not be in the Department of Homeland
Security because the customers of this new agency, this new
fusion center will not just be the Department of Homeland
Security, but in addition, the Department of Justice, the
Health and Human Services, Departments of Defense, State, and
Agriculture. We believed that this structure of independence
would make it a better and honest broker than having it in one
particular department.
We see the need for the States and localities to be tied
in, and that this creates a vehicle for the fusion of
information with the States and locals also, which is, by the
way, where a broad mass of the information on law enforcement
issues across this country is located. The Federal Government
is poorer if they do not have the benefit of that information,
and the States and locals are surely poorer if they do not have
the benefit of the national collection information that is at
the Federal level.
The information we have is that it is still not a two-way
street in terms of information going up and down the line
between Federal, States, and locals but it is improving. In
fact I had a meeting with Admiral Abbott, the President's
homeland security adviser and they are instituting processes to
facilitate that type of information.
Ladies and gentlemen of the Senate, within our commission
this is not controversial. This was, other than the fact that
we debated some of the structural issues, the creation of a
fusion center was easy; not a controversial proposal. I will
not dwell on it, but I will point out that our commission, on
the other hand, addressed the issue of the collection function,
the gathering of counterintelligence information in the
homeland. This was highly controversial within our commission.
That debate is set out in its entirety in the report.
There was a strong debate about whether or not to rely on
the FBI to continue this counterintelligence function or
whether a new organization should be set up. The debate was
quite intense, quite a long discussion. I personally believe
that we should require the FBI to carry out this function in
its most effective way and hold them strictly accountable and
build on their processes. That view was rejected by the
commission. The commission has instead recommended very
strongly that there be a new agency for the collection function
here in the United States; a separate organization. I can
discuss that in more detail as necessary, though it is not
strictly, Madam Chairman, the subject of your discussion today.
We did in our report recommend that the Congress must
concentrate its oversight function. That it is too disparate.
We have been saying it for years and continue to say it. We
believe that the oversight function for this fusion center
should be concentrated in the Intelligence Committees of the
two houses.
We do see this as different from some of the other
proposals that are similar that have come forward. Senators
Graham and Edwards have each suggested a fusion center also,
although I believe they place it within the Department of
Justice. Also there have been some suggestions that the
intelligence gathering organization would look like the British
MI5. We believe that while it is a similar concept, the
American system probably would not tolerate a British
organization quite like that.
We believe the Department of Homeland Security should have
the authority to directly levee intelligence requirements on
this new fusion center. That is our recommendation. And we
recommend that the Senate and House strongly urge or require
the Attorney General to gather together all legal authorities
in this country, which at this point are disparate and confused
and misunderstood in broad measure, in order to make sure that
everybody knows what everybody is doing and what they should
and should not do, so we make sure that we protect the
liberties of the American people.
That I think, Senator, sums up your official advisory
panel's recommendations. We are here at all times, naturally,
at your disposal to continue to provide advice and counsel.
Chairman Collins. Thank you very much, Governor.
I was very pleased to hear your emphasis on protecting the
civil liberties of the American people as we seek to have that
organizational structure that will allow us to do a better job
of connecting the dots. The administration is not planning to
submit legislation to create the new center. Do you think it
would be advisable for Congress to legislatively create the
center in order to have the kinds of legal protections to
ensure that civil liberties are not infringed upon?
Mr. Gilmore. It would depend upon the way that the Senate
and the House decided that they wished to define this. It is
clear the administration believes that they have the
administrative authority to, as Senator Rudman says, to create
a joint venture and bring these organizations together. I
suspect that what is at work here is an effort to try and
experiment with this, and to draw together the people into one
located place, as opposed to going into a legislative process
at the beginning, which then at that point involves a great
deal of bureaucracy and setting structures into place by
statute. My suspicion at this point and belief is that the
administration thinks that they would like to try it
administratively, see how well it works. Then I would think at
that point the option would be open to the President and the
Congress to more institutionalize it by statute.
Chairman Collins. You mentioned in your testimony that you
did not think that this new entity should be part of the
Department of Homeland Security because DHS will be a customer
of it. You also said the commission recommended that it be a
separate entity. What do you think of the President's plan to
have the entity reporting directly to the CIA Director.
Mr. Gilmore. That is a very interesting concept. I have
been trying to analyze that as I have thought about it and I am
aware of the Senate's concern about it.
I believe that the commission's feeling would be that we
strongly approve of the separation of the CIA's function and to
not try to turn them into a domestic intelligence gathering
organization. I do not know though that the reporting to the
Director of Central Intelligence, who I think at the inception
of his position was designed to be a gatherer of information in
one place, would necessarily cross that line. Just because the
Director of Central Intelligence is aware or is in a
supervisory capacity for the fusion center does not necessarily
mean that would then implicate the CIA with activities within
the homeland.
But there is, of course, this outstanding issue of how do
you gather counterintelligence information in the homeland. But
I do not think there is any proposal that the CIA should cross
that line, but I do not think that reporting to the Director of
Central Intelligence would cross that line.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
Senator Rudman, you are very familiar with the Counter
Terrorist Center that already exists within the CIA, and
indeed, last year at a hearing Director Tenet described the
Counter Terrorist Center as being created to ``enable the
fusion of all sources of information in a single action-
oriented unit.'' Do you see the President's proposal for a
Terrorist Threat Integration Center as duplicating the work
that is already being done at the Counter Terrorist Center at
the CIA, or do you see it as adding value and an improvement
over what we have?
Mr. Rudman. Madam Chairman, I think it is a broadening of
that concept by bringing more people into it in larger numbers.
That is essentially, as I understand it, unless it has changed
in the last year, FBI, CIA, and a few other people. This
involves a lot more than that. This involves those two agencies
plus a number of other places such as State, such as all of the
DOD agencies which are not all contained there now. So I think
it is a broadening.
My understanding is that they are going to try to co-locate
that with this new TTIC. That is my understanding, because they
believe that the functions will be complementary. I agree with
Governor Gilmore when he said that they are working their way
through to find out how this will finally look. It well may be
that a year or two from now you might want to create a whole
separate unit.
I think right now the administration feels, because of the
criticality of the information we are trying to put together,
that we ought to take the corporate model and have a joint
venture, or if you will, take the model of DOD when they have
got an action that is going to take place in a place that
requires Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force and put
together a joint task force to accomplish a particular mission.
I think that is the concept here. So, no, I do not think it is
a duplication. I think it is a broadening and probably an
improvement.
I want to make just one comment that is kind of tangential
to your question. I understand the Gilmore Commission's
position. It is a terrific report and I have followed their
work very closely. I think you have got to think long and hard
when you start separating collection from analysis. That's the
problem I had with their proposal. There have been debates
within the Gilmore Commission about that. I do not know how Jim
personally feels about that, but as we go down the line here we
know that the TTIC will do no collection. We know collection
will stay exactly where it is now.
The question then becomes, if you were to legislate and
create a separate unit with a Cabinet-confirmed officer for a
national threat integration department, the problem I have with
that is, and knowing this government as I know it, at that
point they are separated from the people who do their
collection. I just wonder, knowing what we know over the last
20 years, how much attention the FBI and the CIA pay to people,
who even though they are mandated by law to do a particular
job, are not part of their own team. The advantage of the joint
venture is that you have got everyone there in line authority
to the people who run the key agency.
So it is an interesting proposal. I think you would have to
give a lot of thought to separating collection.
I also agree totally, we ought not to change the law upon
the CIA's authority and its lack of authority in terms of
collecting against U.S. citizens. We ought to keep that just
the way it is.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, both. We are doing 6-minute
rounds and my time has expired so I will call on Senator
Lieberman.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thanks again
to both of you.
Let me read you both a statement from the New York Times
which I believe was on the day after the President made this
proposal. The Times article quoted an unnamed administration
official as stating that while the information sharing between
the FBI, CIA, and other intelligence agencies has gotten
better--and here is the quote--``it has been by brute force.''
You both have had some experience in this and maybe the
first question seems like a naive one but I think we ought to
put it on the table. What is the problem here? Why do the
intelligence and law enforcement communities have trouble
cooperating in something so critical? And apparently even still
after the horror of September 11, why do we need brute force to
get them to do it?
I hesitate to repeat rumors you read in the media but one
of the news magazines published a story that the original plan
for the Terrorism Threat Integration Center was to announce
that there would be co-location of FBI and CIA personnel,
apparently out at Langley. And then both objected. So for now
that has been--I do not know if that is true--held in abeyance.
But talk to us a little bit about the human--not the human
intelligence but the human problems, the cultural problems that
we face to get this job done, because it is so critical.
Senator Rudman.
Mr. Rudman. That is an excellent question, Senator
Lieberman, and the answer is fairly complicated. Let me say
what it is not. I do not believe from my experience, now which
goes over a 20-year period dealing very intimately with these
two groups of people, that this is a matter of obstinacy or
stubbornness or turf. I think these people are patriotic, hard-
working Americans who are trying to get their job done.
Senator Lieberman. Agreed.
Mr. Rudman. So I do not think that they are saying, I am
not going to share this with the FBI because I won't get credit
for it or vice versa.
I think the problem is far more significant, and no one has
yet figured out how to deal with it, although I think this new
agency, this joint venture if you will, might help.
The FBI and the CIA have total different missions. Until
September 11, if you were to do a pie chart of the
responsibilities of the FBI you would have a narrow sliver that
would be counterterrorism or counterespionage, which they did
very well during World War II. The big part of it would be law
enforcement. Several thousand statutes comprise the U.S.
criminal code, passed by this Congress, and the FBI is the
primary enforcer of those laws. So their mission, in their own
minds until that date was to investigate, go before grand
juries with U.S. Attorneys, get indictments, and help in
prosecution. When you look at all the corporate scandal over
the last 2 years, who is it that is doing all the
investigating? It is the FBI, and well they should. So that is
their mindset.
The CIA, on the other hand, has a far different mindset.
Their mindset is, even if they are aware of crimes being
committed, their job is not to go out and ``prevent crime in
the short-term.'' Sometimes that would be counterproductive to
getting the kind of the intelligence you want by connecting the
dots, if you will, and connecting the people. So the agency
would prefer to take a lot of time to get off the information
to help protect infrastructure and people, whereas the FBI as
soon as they have got enough information they want to go to a
grand jury and get an indictment. So that is a very basic
difference.
Now I think equally important, part of the problem has been
the inability of these two agencies, which I have personal
knowledge of, to share information. My point being that if the
information is in drawer A at the FBI and drawer B at the CIA
and information ought to come together, the information
technology has not allowed it to come together. With all due
respect, I would say to the Chairman that although I fully
agree there were oversights, I would like someone to go back
and look at the reporting for the month before and the month--
for 2 months before, 60-days reporting on terrorism at the FBI
and the CIA. I would be willing to hazard a guess, Madam
Chairman, there were thousands of reports. The problem was, how
do you pick out the right ones. I mean, 20/20 hindsight is
great. Now we look afterwards and we say, sure, they should
have looked at it. But what were they looking at? How much
paper were they looking at?
Senator Lieberman. I think this may be one of the more
interesting activities and findings of the September 11
commission.
Mr. Rudman. I think it is key and I hope they will look at
that. But I would answer your collective question that if
anything will help, this will help. They will all be together.
They will be sharing the same information from their respective
agencies. So that would be my answer.
Senator Lieberman. Governor Gilmore, my time is running
out. I would just like to ask you a related question based on
your experience here which is, particularly in light of the
proposal for the new Terrorism Threat Integration Center under
the DCI, whether you think it is time to separate the Director
of Central Intelligence from the Central Intelligence Agency?
In other words, to create a separate DCI and then a separate
head of CIA under that person? Whether that will, in any
measure, contribute to the evenhandedness of the DCI, or the
perception of it, which will help to bring these two
communities together better.
Mr. Gilmore. We know, Senator, there has been some
suggestion of there being an intelligence czar actually set
aside and put in the Cabinet separately. We have not, in our
commission, addressed the issue of whether the Director of
Central Intelligence should be separated out from the CIA. I
think that would be a dramatic change which I do not think that
certainly as an individual would want to recommend or that the
commission would want to recommend.
I do want to rifle-shot in on your question to Senator
Rudman. You basically suggested that by brute force some of
these people have come together. I do want to share with you
several things. The commission has spent a lot of time on that
topic, and we do believe that it is primarily cultural. It is
based upon the long-standing tradition that knowledge is power.
If you have got it, you have more influence than if you do not.
That there is a fear of the violation of security, and in fact
serious legal problems if there is a violation of security.
I was asked a few moments ago what I thought the
administration was doing and I answered that. But that is not
the same thing as what the commission has recommended. The
commission has recommended there be a separate agency
established, a separate agency institutionalized in order to be
a fusion center.
We think also that there is good faith by all people but we
do believe absolutely that there are turf battles and that
there are cultural challenges back and forth between people
fundamentally. We believe that there are cultural, historical
difficulties that have been set up that we are trying to find
an institutionalized way of overcoming. We think the fusion
center is a clear way of doing that.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you, both. Thanks, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Sununu.
Senator Sununu. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
I want to talk a little bit more about the practical
limitations, the practical hurdles in not just setting up this
organization but overcoming some of the obstacles that Senator
Lieberman just spoke about in getting information shared.
I want to talk about the personnel, the practical question
of who these people are, and where they come from. There are a
number of different options but one is obviously to staff the
integration center with personnel from FBI counterterrorism,
from CIA counterterrorism. The other choice would be to have an
independent staff that works only for the integration center
and doesn't rotate back and forth between intelligence
organizations and the integration center. I would like each of
you to talk a little bit about which kind of an approach you
think might be better: Permanent staff or a rotating staff, and
why. Senator Rudman.
Mr. Rudman. The current plan, of course, is to bring in
people from their current positions at all of these agencies
who have the analytical skills and experience to analyze data.
Now frankly, it takes so long to get someone to know how to do
that and to do it well that I do not think there is much
choice. There is no other place in the government.
Now as to the real--underlying your question is the issue
of independence and I think that is a very interesting
question. Over the long run, if you could evolve into a group
of analysts who essentially resided there for their entire
careers that would probably be, in my view, much better. But
you cannot do that right away, but maybe over a 5- or 10-year
period you can.
If they are going to get this thing stood up in the next
year to at least have some function they are going to have to
get some fairly experienced analysts from the Bureau, from
State, mainly from the Agency, who are used to looking at
masses of data, correlating it, and being able to reach
intelligence conclusions.
Senator Sununu. You want a system though where those
individuals, even after a long period of time, 5 or 10 years,
at some point return back to the Bureau or to Central
Intelligence. Does that foster a stronger relationship, or do
you simply want them to spend their career at the integration
center knowing full well that you have got to work to make sure
that the ties, and relationships between the integration center
and the collection organizations remain strong?
Mr. Rudman. My personal view is that there is a certain
advantage to have people come from their parent agency and go
spend a few years doing something else at another place, or
similar work in another place, then go back to their agency. I
think it tends to give people a better idea--a good example
would be the Congressional fellows you have here. I know I had
several that spent several years up here from various agencies.
They went back to their agency with a far better understanding
of the U.S. Congress and we had a better understanding of what
they did. So I think there are advantages to that.
Senator Sununu. Governor Gilmore.
Mr. Gilmore. The position of the commission is it should be
a separate agency. That it should have its own analysts. They
should be employees of the new agency and that is where their
institution should be. There is a big challenge here, a
cultural challenge that the commission has devoted all of its 4
years to trying to address. This particular function that we
are describing here, intelligence analysts on the
counterterrorism side, has not been the historic career path in
the FBI. This has been very influential in the thinking of the
commission, particularly this year as it has gone on. It is a
big challenge to try to break the institutional boundaries. To
loan them would not be our recommendation.
To devote them, to send them over there is our
recommendation. The question we addressed as a practical matter
is, how do you set something like this up on day one? How do
you do that? You do not just do a standing start and bring in
analysts and train them from the very beginning. You go to the
places where the analysts exist and they have been trained,
particularly the CIA which has made in fact its profession to
do this work through its history. But to bring people from the
other agencies as well, and to form them into one place, but to
not loan them, but to make them part of that new permanent
staff.
Senator Sununu. Thank you. A second area that concerns me
is a practical argument, I think a very practical one, that has
been made against or raised as a concern when setting up new
intelligence organizations, but also a concern that has been
put forward when the question of sharing information comes up.
Senator Rudman, you talked about the two drawers, information
systems. You need a system or a process, whether it is
technology-based or not, to actually get people to share that
information.
But in some cases there is an argument raised, we are
concerned about providing this package of information to
another independent group because they may then go out and
compromise methods or sources, or share that information with
someone that we as a different organization might not want them
to share. They might provide it to local law enforcement when
that is not really an appropriate consumer of this information.
That can be willful. You can have organizations that are prone
to leaks. But it could also be a lack of understanding of the
sensitivities.
My question is, in your experience where do those problems
most often occur, are they well-founded, and are there
different parts of an organization that are more likely to leak
information, unfortunately willfully, or simply misapply
information or share information with the wrong customer? Where
might those problems occur in the chain?
Mr. Rudman. The major problem on information sharing over
the years has been the Bureau's deep concern that criminal
investigations would be compromised by furnishing information
outside of the Bureau. And the CIA's great concern, that by
sharing information with the Bureau it might get somehow into
hands inadvertently that would compromise sources and methods.
So there have been cultural reasons. When Jim uses the word
cultural, I agree, but the culture has got some basis in
reality. These are people that have been burned on a number of
occasions.
Now you did something here in the Congress that I thought
was very good last year in the USA Patriot Act. As you probably
recall, the CIA was barred until very recently from keeping
files on Americans. Not only could they not collect on American
citizens, they could not even have access to the information on
Americans. That, thankfully, has been changed. That might have
been fine 30 or 40 years ago but it is not fine now. So now at
least people have access to the same kind of information--this
is on terrorism I am speaking of. But I think the cultures, as
Governor Gilmore points out, they have prevented it. But there
has been a basis for it.
My problem with the fusion, and we have a friendly
disagreement on this, my problem with that is how in the devil
are they going to get the FBI and the CIA to give them all the
information they ought to be giving them when they are not part
of the same organization? You are talking about, I think, a
very steep hill to climb.
Senator Sununu. I see that my time is up but Governor
Gilmore if you want to address the same question, and again in
particular how we set up this organization so that the concern
of the FBI about compromising criminal investigations and the
concern of the CIA regarding sources and methods are best
addressed?
Mr. Gilmore. Warren is right in his analysis of what the
concerns of the FBI and the CIA have been over the years and
remain, in my judgment, to this day. The fusion center is
something new. It is a new device. There is today no formal
coordination body in existence. There are efforts between the
different agencies to find some vehicle by which they share--
they sit in each other's meetings and so on like that.
This is an effort though to break through some of these
bureaucratic boundaries, create a fusion center, and now I want
to come to the main things here. You have got to write the
rules. The rules have to be defined. Everybody has to
understand what the rules of the game are. And then you have to
hold people accountable for whether they are going to do it or
not. There is going to have to be an understanding that
information of this type of sensitive nature is going to have
to be shared. If it is not shared, then there should be
penalties connected with the non-sharing. And if it does not
share and then information does not get fused and as a result
Americans are injured, then there must be penalties or
sanctions connected with all that. The rules have got to be
written.
And furthermore, we have not even talked about the major
barrier, and that is the supreme and total distrust of the
Federal Government authorities for the States and locals. The
idea of sharing sensitive information with a police chief of a
major jurisdiction or the governor of a State is anathema. It
has to be broken through. So far efforts are being made to do
that. Progress is being made, but they are trying to break a
cultural barrier and it is going to require dramatic leadership
at the Executive and Congressional level to make that happen.
Mr. Rudman. Madam Chairman, I want to add, I agree with
Governor Gilmore. One of the things that I would look at if I
were still on this Committee, I know the administration said
lawyers from Justice and the CIA and DOD have all looked at all
of the statutes and say that everything is OK, this will work.
I would want to maybe have a very intensive study done of all
of the statutes that involve the CIA and the FBI on privacy
issues, on sharing issues and other issues, to make sure that
this new center operates under not only the rules, which will
be written, but the laws that exist.
Now it may well be that they are right, that they do not
have a problem with the current laws, but I surely would want
to take another look at that.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Lautenberg.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LAUTENBERG
Senator Lautenberg. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and to my
friend. Senator Rudman said old friend. I would say friend of
long-standing because the rest is apparent. It's nice to see
Governor Gilmore here. We met on TV a couple of times, had some
fun.
Senator Rudman comes with a remarkable record of confidence
building and leadership from his years in the Senate.
Universally respected and sought after by Senators regardless
of party. The work that you did on your budget initiative
helped us finally get to a point where we had a balanced budget
in 1999.
Mr. Rudman. For a little while anyway.
Senator Lautenberg. A little while felt awful good, but
that is what happens at times. When you sit down and you have a
meal, it feels good and you know later on, maybe we should not
have quite done it that way. But it is a pleasure to see you
here, both of you, having left office formally and being called
upon.
Now I was never called upon to add my service so I decided
I better run again and here I am, and glad to be here and to
try and help solve some of the problems that we are having. The
enormity of problems has grown in these couple years and I do
not think it has anything to do with my departure from regular
service, but the fact is that matters and life have become far
more complicated. The horrible benchmark of September 11 has
left a permanent impact almost no matter what we do.
I wonder, Senator Rudman talked about, described a joint
venture. When I was a CEO of a pretty good-sized company I
liked joint ventures as long as we owned the joint. I think we
have somewhat that problem here in government. To me, the best
way to get an understanding of effective participation with an
agency is the simplest way. I think you have talked about it,
Governor. The fact is that you have to reach into these sources
of trained people. Frankly, I would have hoped that between the
FBI and the CIA that a task force of sorts could have been
created with the authorities as delineated, to get the job
done. Because one of the things that seems to be happening is
we are adding--I do not want to sound critical, but we are
adding acronyms because we are adding organizations and yet we
still have that feeling of discomfort.
I can tell you this, that the kaleidoscope of color that we
use to warn people is just scaring the hell out of a lot of
people. And yet we have an obligation to say, life is not
exactly as it was and you have to be especially careful. But
that muddle of things really worries me because there is no
confidence yet.
I respect the President's initiative here, and to think
that this problem could be solved immediately and create this
giant department, jurisdictions overlapping all of that kind of
thing. I am very involved with the Coast Guard and I was on
Intelligence after Senator Rudman left, and Defense
Subcommittee on Appropriations. There is conscientious
leadership there, but the fact of the matter is that to have
this large safety net with the holes in it that we ultimately
saw is a shocking thing. We cannot go back retroactively to
pre-September 11 and say, should have, could have, would have,
I think that is a dangerous and insignificant review.
But where we are now, still with people wondering who is
where--the fact is that I hear from local law enforcement
people, they are groping for information, searching for ways to
be included in the loop. That has got to be a large part of the
solution to the problem. That is to be able to get this data
out to the communities out to the States so that they feel like
they can do something significant if an alert does come.
So I supported the idea of the integration center, the
fusion as you call it, Governor Gilmore, center where the data
are collected in one place. But I for the life of me still have
a problem trying to figure why we cannot, within the existing
structure, create the mechanism to solve the problem. Should
this be a direct NSA report or something like that? How does it
get to the President? Does the President have at his daily
briefings a review of terrorist activity? Or is it immersed in
this whole melange of things that he has to be concerned about?
So I am not offering much by way of advice except to say
that if we could only get this housed, done within the
structure that we have, trained people, people who have
knowledge and have a place out gathering data, and do it that
way instead of creating a whole new structure because we cannot
get through the bureaucracy.
[The prepared statement of Senator Lautenberg follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR LAUTENBERG
Madam Chairman, I'm glad you recognize the importance of holding a
hearing on the ``Terrorist Threat Integration Center'' (TTIC) the
President has proposed.
Let me first welcome and thank the witnesses for coming today, and
giving us the benefit of their expertise on this issue. Senator Rudman
and Governor Gilmore have provided a great service to the nation. Their
efforts to identify and alert us to terrorist threats and provide
solutions to the vexing problem of defending ourselves from terrorist
attacks are much appreciated.
Jeff Smith and James Steinberg have wide experience in dealing with
our national security agencies and I look forward to hearing their
insights on what this new Terrorist Threat Integration Center's role
should be.
Madam Chairman, I'm disappointed the administration did not send a
representative to inform us about its plans for this new Center. We
need clarity and leadership from the administration on this question
and, with all due respect to the President and Governor Ridge, we are
not getting it.
What do I mean by this?
In the wake of September 11, it rapidly became apparent that an
inability or an unwillingness of the intelligence community to share
information played a role in our inability to prevent the attacks.
There was a reality that there wasn't any single agency responsible
for gathering, analyzing, and disseminating the information in a way to
prevent and counter terrorist attacks.
Many felt the creation of the Homeland Security Department would
solve this problem. The notion was that the President would be briefed
on potential terrorist attacks by the Secretary of the Homeland
Security Department.
Well, we have created the Homeland Security Department. But we
still have the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center. We have the FBI
improving its intelligence capability. And now we have this new
Terrorist Threat Integration Center.
I think that the responsibility for determining the terrorist
intelligence picture is becoming murkier, not clearer. Rather than
reducing the number of agencies and bureaucracies with responsibility
for this problem, they are proliferating: CIA, FBI, CTC, DHS, TTIC,
etc. and so on.
We are not ``connecting the dots,'' we are multiplying them.
I must also express some wonderment about how this whole process is
unfolding. This new Center has been created by the President outside
the Homeland Security law. It would have seemed more logical for the
President just to create this Center or something similar within a
short period following September 11. If this has been an urgent
problem, why did we wait for well over a year to create it? If the only
question involving improving our intelligence processes was to beef up
the CIA's ability to do so, which could have been done shortly after
the September 11 attacks, why did we go through all the trouble and
disruption of creating a new Department of Homeland Security?
Between the proliferating number of agencies and the kaleidoscopic
color scheme of threats, I worry that we are spreading fear and near
panic in the country without materially advancing the protection of the
nation from a terrorist attack or raising the comfort level of our
citizens.
We now have the Homeland Security Department and the TTIC. Since I
doubt we will dis-establish either, we must find a way to make them
work together.
I look forward to hearing from these distinguished witnesses. I
hope they will be able to indicate to us that things are getting better
on this front--and, if they are not getting better, what can we do to
improve the situation.
Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Mr. Rudman. Senator Lautenberg, let me just respond this
way. I think that is what the administration is attempting to
do. Now people may disagree with the form, but what they are
essentially doing is saying we have had analysis of terrorism
within the FBI, we have got analysis within the CIA. Most of
the information that we get is foreign so the CIA is tasked
with evaluating it and doing the analysis. But we have got all
these other parts of the government that pick up bits and
pieces, so rather than try to exhort people within the current
boxes to do what they are doing, put together a joint venture,
if you will, and have it report to the Director of the CIA,
which answers your question, how does the President get
informed? That is how he gets informed. He meets with the
Director of the CIA, I am sure you know, mostly every day. This
will be a major part of his reporting.
Now under Governor Gilmore's plan it would certainly work.
The difference would be that the director of that fusion center
would have a separate reporting line to the President. We do
not have to argue that here, but the concept--the only
difference between the two ideas is one is independent and one
is not. The basic reasoning and the need we all agree on. The
administration has chosen to do it in a so-called joint
venture. My view is that it is better to do that way than to
try to do it within the current structure of the CIA and the
current structure of the FBI, to try to move all of the people
dealing with domestic terrorism based on foreign and domestic
intelligence into one place. That is what the fusion center
proposal was, so we do not really disagree on the need. We only
disagree about the modality.
From your comments, I would think you would probably oppose
the creation of a new department. That is their proposal, and
it is a very sound proposal. But there is room for reasonable
people to disagree.
Mr. Gilmore. A new agency. We did not even recommend the
Department of Homeland Security.
But with respect to, I think the answer that I would want
to provide to you, Senator is this. You have got to identify
the problem. We have taken a lot of time to try to think
through what the problem is, under no pressure from anyone. We
have tried to think about this. The problem is that you just
cannot find a vehicle in the present structure of government in
our Federal system that is in a position to gather together
Federal overseas information, domestic information, human
intelligence, signal intelligence, State, locals, private
people, private enterprise. There just is no vehicle for that.
There is a vehicle for intelligence to be gathered and the
President certainly receives his daily briefing every morning.
There is no doubt about that.
But then as you analyze the problem that we saw in the
past, it is not only that there is no vehicle for gathering up
all that information, but that there are institutional and
cultural barriers to the complete sharing. This is designed to
be a vehicle to overcome those problems. It does not solve all
problems, and it even creates new ones with additional
bureaucracies. But this is the best solution that we can come
up with balancing all the different pressures.
Senator Lautenberg. I thank you both. Madam Chairman, we
are developing our mandate here, and that is, as you said,
write the rules and decide how it ought to be. This is a very
helpful discourse and I thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Pryor.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PRYOR
Senator Pryor. Madam Chairman, thank you. I want the record
to reflect that my father never ran against Senator Rudman. I
am glad he did not. He is glad he did not, but he does send his
greetings. It is good to see you again.
Mr. Rudman. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
Senator Pryor. Let me ask both of you a couple of big
picture questions. How many employees are we talking about
being necessary once the Center is fully operational?
Mr. Rudman. I think it is a better question when you have
the administration witnesses. My understanding is it is going
to be started in phase one with probably under 100, mainly
analytical. They will stage it on the basis, if you grow it too
fast it will not grow as efficiently as it should. My sense is
you are talking hundreds rather than thousands when they
finally get to the final stage of where they want to get, which
on my information is probably 3 to 4 years out.
Senator Pryor. Do you agree with that, Governor?
Mr. Gilmore. Our commission has attempted to lay out what
we think the issues are, the challenges are, and the best
solution. To then place ourselves of the administrative people
who would design the specific number of hirees to do the job,
we have not presumed to do. So the short answer is that we
believe there needs to be a fusion center to gather this
information together, and I am sure that the appropriate
Executive Branch people who would come forward with a proposal
to the Congress would lay out how many people they think they
need to get the job done.
Senator Pryor. Will this joint venture have its own budget
or will the personnel, location, and overhead, be absorbed in
other agencies' budgets?
Mr. Gilmore. We recommend that it has its own budget in
order to continue to provide that type of independence,
Senator. But the question of how you would actually fund it is
an appropriations issue; a proposal from the Executive Branch
and an appropriations issue from the Senate. We would not be
surprised if you were to move funding for the analysis function
from the different agencies into the new agency in order to
begin its funding. But since it is an independent agency we
believe it should have its independent appropriation.
Mr. Rudman. Senator Pryor, the administration's proposal as
I understand it does not require a separate budget because it
is not doing what the Gilmore Commission has recommended with
an agency. It is essentially going to take people who are
currently on the payroll of these various other agencies, co-
locate them in one place, and make contributions to overhead.
Now as a practical matter, although many of them will be
moving to a different location doing the same job and getting
paid the same amount of money, inevitably there will be more
money involved and I assume that will appear in the budget for
the respective agencies who will make a contribution. That is
the way the appropriation process normally works.
Mr. Gilmore. It does however raise an issue. If you co-
locate people in that manner one might ask the analyst who he
works for. I think his answer would be what everybody in the
world would answer, the guy who writes my paycheck is my boss.
Therefore, the fusion center will really not have employees
under this proposal. That will create a management challenge,
but I believe that there is a sense that once identified that
the heads of the CIA and the FBI will be in a position to
provide that management. But I think I have identified the
management challenge to you.
Senator Pryor. I agree, I think it is a challenge. However,
I think we can overcome it. It seems like something we can work
through and work out and come up with a very positive
management structure and accomplish the mission.
I am aware you have a joint venture here where the
employees come from different agencies. I am assuming that the
creation of this center does not relieve the other agencies
from doing their own analysis and making their own
determinations. In other words, they do not cede their
responsibility to this new joint venture. But it is a little
bit redundant, and redundancy in this case may not be a bad
idea because theoretically this new center may be in a superior
position to analyze data coming from a lot of different
sources. Is that the way you understand it, Governor?
Mr. Gilmore. That is a very complicated point. It could
create redundancies. I think that the sense of our commission
is that the primary function for this type of analysis ought to
rest in the fusion center. Now I guess that administratively it
probably does not make sense to deprive the individual agencies
of all ability to analyze information, otherwise how do they
know what to give, and how do they know how to understand what
they are getting. So I think I see that administrative point
and I think that we would concur with that.
But I think we should guard against co-locating equal
amounts of analysis capacity in both places because then the
individual agencies I think would have a tendency to say, who
needs that?
Mr. Rudman. Senator Pryor, that gets back to the Chairman's
position on duplication. My sense is that, although obviously
both the Bureau and the Agency will retain some analytical
ability in the area of terrorism, I think the overwhelming
amount of analysis is going to be done at this new joint
venture, whether it be a joint venture or whether it be a
fusion center. It just seems to me that is what is going to
happen, because you do not have, unfortunately, that many
people who are all that well-trained in this area. You are
going to have to take a lot of them over the next several years
and move them into this new co-located position.
Now you have a practical matter, knowing the way these
places work, since the collection is coming through the eyes
and ears of either the CIA or the FBI, it would be to me almost
incredible if that would not be looked at, put in a sealed
envelope and sent across the city electronically or otherwise.
Obviously, people are going to be aware of it and contribute
some analysis to it.
But that is not really your question. Your question is, is
there going to be major analytical capability still at these
places? I would hope not because then you get into duplication
and then you get into some competition. I would hope this would
be the place where the threat of terrorism and all intelligence
thereto is analyzed.
Mr. Gilmore. Madam Chairman, may I add a point on that?
Chairman Collins. Certainly.
Mr. Gilmore. Because I want to address this issue of
duplication which has emerged. I think that it is important to
keep your eye on the ball. Focus on the issue. The issue is,
what is the problem here? How do we share information? How do
we get this information co-located in such a way that we share
the dots. So that something significant from CIA combined with
something from FBI suddenly has meaning where in the two pieces
it may not. That is the issue.
The fusion center, the President's proposal, all these
things are very much the same proposal. It is just a matter of
administratively how you are going to shape it. They are
intended to address that issue. Therefore, the question is does
duplication become a disqualification of the solution? It does
not. It merely becomes a challenge that has to be worked
through and minimized.
Senator Pryor. I agree with you. I can live with some
duplication if we accomplish the goal we are setting out to
accomplish. The question is always how to do it in the most
efficiently, and effectively manor possible. That is a
challenge that we all wrestle with here every day and I know
you will too.
Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator. Senator Akaka.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA
Senator Akaka. Thank you, very much, Madam Chairman. I
thank you for this opportunity and I welcome Senator Rudman and
Governor Gilmore. Senator Rudman, I knew you when I was in the
House, and I know of your work in the Senate and you have
really served our country well as a Senator, and even after the
Senate.
My concerns have been that we may have too many centers.
The President in his State of the Union speech did add a new
key component though which he called a Terrorist Threat
Integration Center. I can see his intent there, and especially
when we think that we have many centers. Yesterday I met with
Dr. Cambone. He was nominated to a new position in the Defense
Department and that position is undersecretary of intelligence.
Now here is another effort in facing the threats of our
country, not only domestic but foreign threats. So my concern
is there may be too many centers trying to do the same thing.
[The prepared statement of Senator Akaka follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA
Thank you Madam Chairman for organizing today's hearing. I am
pleased that the Committee is continuing to focus on critical issues
relating to our national security.
I am disappointed that the administration could not be with us
today. The President's proposal to establish a Terrorist Threat
Integration Center was one of the key components of his State of the
Union address and the administration has issued several briefing papers
on the concept.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Steve Cambone who
has been nominated to the Defense Department position of Undersecretary
for Intelligence. This is a new position at Defense is one of many
additional efforts underway to improve intelligence management.
I am concerned that there may be too many centers being created to
respond to the same threat. For example, the CIA has its Counter
Terrorism Center--the Defense Intelligence Agency has its counter
terrorism center--the new Department of Homeland Security will have an
Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate--the
Army has an Information Dominance Center--DOD is developing a Total
Information Awareness program--and the FBI has a Counter Terrorism
Division. Now the President proposes a new Terrorist Threat Integration
Center.
When this Committee marked up the Homeland Security bill, I worked
with Senators Lieberman, Levin, and Thompson to craft an intelligence
division to ensure the Department received sufficient information
concerning domestic threats and had the capability of responding to
those threats. Unfortunately, that proposal was later rejected by the
administration. My concern then--and now--was that there would be
duplication of effort in the intelligence arena.
There can be only so many cooks in a kitchen.I think we have
already reached our limit when it comes to analyzing intelligence
information. We have a limited number of qualified intelligence
analysts and a limited number of agents in the field developing
information. Creating numerous centers in Washington--all looking at
the same information--does not mean we will be better prepared for
countering terrorist threats.
We have an esteemed group of experts this morning, including our
former colleague, Senator Rudman. I look forward to their comments on
this subject and I commend our Chairman for holding this hearing.
Senator Akaka. Under the administration's plan, and I would
like to direct this to the Governor, the Director of the CIA
will inform the President about threats, but who is responsible
for ensuring domestic investigation of threats that take place,
and State and local enforcement are kept in the picture?
Governor Gilmore, am I correct in thinking there is currently a
disconnect?
Mr. Gilmore. Yes, Senator, there is a disconnect. I think
that most people have understood that since September 11 as
they have tried to analyze the problem and are trying to find
ways to address that.
Just to touch on your Department of Defense comment just as
a potential for more and more centers trying to do the same
thing. It certainly is contemplated, I think, that this fusion
center, this integration center, or however it is defined or
structured would include people from the Defense Intelligence
Agency, from the Department of Defense as well as from the CIA
and the FBI and hopefully a place also for State and local
people. It is a desire to begin to combine things in a way that
structurally we have never done before.
I might point out, by the way, that I have spoken to some
leaders in law enforcement from some of the major
municipalities of the country and they have indicated that the
FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces are doing some more of that
communication and that they do feel like they are having an
opportunity to work on the same team with that program. So that
seems to be a program that is making some progress in terms of
the collection efforts, in terms of the team for gathering
information.
But at the end of the day I think there is a near virtual
consensus everywhere that there needs to be some type of
integration center or fusion center so that everybody has a
centrally located place to learn all the information gathered
from all the disparate areas as you have described.
Senator Akaka. Senator Rudman, I know because of your
background and experience as a Senator and your participation
in security matters as well, I ask for your assessment and also
your thinking about--and if you can explain to me what you know
about the Terrorist Threat Integration Center that the
President is proposing and whether that would answer my
question, which officially is in charge of bringing together
all foreign intelligence concerning threats inside the United
States and the domestic law enforcement information about
domestic threats and ensuring first that this information is
thoroughly evaluated and that a timely investigation takes
place?
And second, who ensures that local officials who might be
affected by a threat are kept in the picture? I am hoping that
the President's proposal on integration will bring that about.
I was thinking of it in terms of the interagency coordinating
group that would do this. Can you give me your views on that?
Mr. Rudman. I will, Senator Akaka. Thank you for your
gracious comments. I enjoyed our service together.
Let me tell you that I do not think that I necessarily know
the answer to that and I think that is a better question for
the administration witnesses. But I think I know what the
answer will probably be, so on that basis I will tell you what
I believe the answer is but I just do not know for certain.
I am sure that this new threat analysis center will carry
out the function that you are speaking of. I think theirs is
purely analysis. The question then becomes, what happens to
their product? Let us assume that their product produces a
specific threat to Honolulu. The question is, how does the
chief of police of Honolulu and the Governor of Hawaii get to
know this information? That is really your question.
I think there are two answers to that question, or at least
there should be. It is, I believe, now the primary
responsibility of the FBI and the Department of Homeland
Security to coordinate with local communities to make sure that
the kind of information they have not been getting they will be
getting.
It is my understanding that there is currently a program
underway in which the police authorities of major cities are
getting Federal security clearances, which is a very unique new
program. It is not a classified program. It is known. It was
spoken about publicly at a meeting I was at yesterday. So that
there is more ease of passing on that information to people.
For instance, it is hard to believe that when Governor
Gilmore was Governor of Virginia it would have been a Federal
crime for an agent to share certain classified information with
him because he did not have the clearance. Now it certainly
seems to me that the mayor and the chief of police of New York
ought to be able to get classified information. So I think they
are working in that direction but not through this center. I
think those questions are better directed at the FBI and
Governor Ridge to see if they are upping their efforts to get
clearances and find ways----
And finally let me say just one other thing that was
inherently contained in your question. I have long believed
that the balance between protecting sources and methods and
protecting the American people from great harm has to be
rationalized in some way. Where I come out on it is simply
this. I believe that if we have a specific threat, as opposed
to what we have right now, a specific threat based on good
information of a major terrorist action against a particular
city during a particular time frame, that sources and methods
ought to be compromised if necessary to protect that population
from that injury. That is a debate you will have to have within
the community.
Senator Akaka. Governor Gilmore.
Mr. Gilmore. Senator, if I may just add, in my discussions
with Admiral Abbott he has indicated that they in fact are
starting a program where they are beginning to go through the
process of clearing the governors and clearing of major law
enforcement key personnel in the respective States. Then you
begin to put in all the safeguarding rules, all the penalties
for violation of that, all of the training that goes along with
that. I think that it can work and should work.
I think that if a politician in a State, the same thing as
a politician at the Federal level--politicians are politicians,
if they reveal information in order to gain some type of
political advantage and so on, there ought to be penalties
involved with that. I think once you set up this kind of
structure then everybody is going to understand what the rules
are and how they are supposed to adhere to them.
Senator Akaka. Thank you so much for your responses. Thank
you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator.
Before I let this distinguished panel go I just want to
follow up on the issue of how the new center would interact
with State and local law enforcement officials, which both of
you have talked about as well as several of the members of this
panel. Recently in Portland, Maine, for example, the local
police detained a foreign national who was visiting on a
tourist visa who was spotted photographing an oil tank farm on
the Portland waterfront, obviously an action of some concern.
The local police, however, had an extremely difficult time
getting information from the FBI about whether or not this
individual was on any watch list or if his actions were a
matter of concern. So I think we still have long ways to go as
far as information sharing and developing the trust among
various agencies at various levels of government.
Do you think that State and local law enforcement officials
should have direct access to this new center or a way to
somehow tap into information directly? Senator Rudman.
Mr. Rudman. I do not, Senator Collins. I think that the
nature of the information they will be having to compile, their
analysis product based on foreign and domestic intelligence,
cannot be shared on a demand basis. What I do believe is what
you intended in the Department of Homeland Security
legislation. I believe that DHS primarily is going to become
responsible for liaison, both information technology and
verbally, with local law enforcement. I believe that they ought
to be on the front line, and I expect they will have people in
this new center who can pass on to the chief of police of
Portland, Maine that this person is on a watch list and do it
in real time.
But I think that is the way it ought to be done. I think
you have got to limit access to this product. Not limit access
to those who need it, but limit general access to it. Then you
get into some issues that I think would cause a lot of
problems.
Chairman Collins. Governor Gilmore.
Mr. Gilmore. If I understand Senator Rudman, I think that
our commission would disagree. We believe that there ought to
be co-located people, representative people from States and
local organizations to begin to understand the nature of what
is going on in the States. There is a serious cultural problem
here. We identified it years ago. It remains to this day. It is
the inherent feeling of Federal law enforcement authorities
that they are superior.
The reason that they think they are superior is because
they are better funded by the Congress than local law
enforcement agencies are able to be. They have, therefore,
access to more people and more resources. Therefore they think
they are superior.
But that is balanced by the fact that local law enforcement
people are in more places, seeing more things across this
Nation each and every day. Therefore, the Federal authorities
are not superior. They are just different. Therefore,
culturally, things have got to work out in a way that can
harmonize these two things together. I think the recommendation
of our commission would be that the fusion center creates a
vehicle for the gathering together of all the different
organizations. There even should be some facility or some
ability to have an open channel of communication with private
enterprise.
Chairman Collins. I want to thank both of you very much for
your testimony this morning. Both of you have been extremely
generous with your time and your experience and we very much
appreciate your appearing this morning. So thank you, both.
I now would like to call forth our second panel of
witnesses this morning. James Steinberg is the vice president
and director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings
Institution. He served as deputy national security adviser in
the Clinton Administration as well as director of policy
planning staff and deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of
Intelligence and Research at the Department of State.
Jeffrey Smith is a formal general counsel of the CIA and
formal general counsel of the Senate Armed Services Committee
under Senator Nunn. He is now a partner at Arnold and Porter.
We welcome you both here this morning. We very much
appreciate your taking the time to appear. Mr. Steinberg, we
are going to begin with you.
TESTIMONY OF JAMES B. STEINBERG,\1\ VICE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR
OF FOREIGN POLICY STUDIES, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
Mr. Steinberg. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. I very
much appreciate the opportunity to be here, and I commend you
and the Committee on having these hearings because I think this
is one of the most critical topics that we as a Nation face. As
you pointed out, although a number of actions have been taken
concerning homeland security, one area that has not gotten the
degree of attention that I think it deserves is the
organization of our intelligence efforts, so I think this is
very welcome.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Steinberg appears in the Appendix
on page 95.
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I have a longer statement for the record and I will just
summarize a few points for you. As you heard from the previous
panel I think there is a general agreement that there is a need
for greater integration of our efforts to analyze the threat
and the nature of the challenges that we face in the area of
counterterrorism. Where I differ from my distinguished
colleagues who you heard from in the previous panel is that I
believe that this effort should be focused in the Department of
Homeland Security, and I think that is consistent with the
intention of the Congress when it created the department, and
particularly the Office of Intelligence Analysis and
Infrastructure Protection.
As you stated in your opening statement, the House and
Senate joint inquiry into the attacks of September 11 really
demonstrated the problem that we have in terms of bringing
together and sharing information. I will not repeat the quote
that you gave because I think it is exactly to the point of the
challenge that we faced. Before I discuss the specific ways of
how we should respond, it is important to spend a minute
discussing the nature of the intelligence challenge that we
face in dealing with counterterrorism, because only by
understanding the dimensions of the problem can we develop an
appropriate architecture or organizational structure that is
appropriate to the task.
The intelligence challenge in counterterrorism has four key
components. First we need to collect timely, relevant, and in
the best case, actionable information. Second, we need to
collate or bring together the information from the full
spectrum of sources. Third, we need to analyze the information;
as others have said, connect the dots. And finally, we need to
disseminate that information to those who need to act on it,
policymakers, law enforcement officials, the private sector,
and the public in a form that allows them to use that
information to accomplish their mission.
In the fight against terrorism these tasks are far more
difficult in many ways than the intelligence challenge we faced
during the Cold War. Today, terrorists threaten us at home and
abroad. As Senator Rudman observed, they have no fixed
addresses and we only occasionally know their identities or
their targets. Technology and globalization have made it easier
for would-be terrorists to bring dangerous people and weapons
into the United States, and to conceal their activities.
Key information that we need to detect and prevent
terrorist attacks lie in the private sector, at airlines and
flight schools, with operators of chemical plants, and high-
rise buildings, with local police and community doctors, and we
must increasingly count on the private sector and State and
local governments to take the actions necessary to prevent
attacks or deal with their consequences. We need to adopt our
intelligence efforts and the organization of our intelligence
community to meet this radically different challenge.
In your opening statement you identified a number of the
small steps that have been taken today and these are welcome.
But I think that is true that as many of the witnesses and the
Members of the Committee have noticed, that there is a tendency
to focus primarily on the role of the Federal Government in
carrying out these tasks, but in reality we see that there are
a wide variety of actors who are crucial: Foreign governments,
State and local officials, business, and private citizens. They
all have access to information that may be relevant to the
terrorist threat. They have expertise that can help us
transform this raw information into meaningful intelligence.
And perhaps most important, they are the key players who need
to act on this intelligence, to apprehend a suspect, to prepare
public health facilities in the event of an attack, to secure
critical infrastructures, etc.
Now the reason I have stressed the importance of
understanding these different functions is because they provide
key guidance for the critical question of how we should
organize the intelligence efforts. The necessary elements, in
my view are, first, we need a strategy for identifying the
kinds of information we need to collect on threats and
vulnerabilities.
Second, we need a network, a decentralized network designed
to permit sharing of information among the widest possible
group of collectors, analysts, and implementers at all levels
of government, and between government and the private sector.
Third, we need a focal point for bringing all the
information together to be integrated and analyzed.
And fourth, and I think this is extremely important, we
need an accountable organization that assures that the right
information is being collected and the results of collection
and analysis are shared in a timely, usable way with those who
need to act on it.
Judged by these tests, the administration's proposed
Terrorist Threat Integration Center represents a partial step
forward in helping to build a network bringing together foreign
and domestic intelligence collection and a place where this
information can be integrated. But it fails to meet the other
key tests, particularly in developing a structure that will
increase the chances that we will collect the right information
and that will link the collection and analysis to those who are
responsible for taking the necessary actions to prevent
attacks, protect our people and critical infrastructure, and
mitigate the consequences of any attack that might take place.
I think, therefore, in this respect that the Terrorist
Threat Integration Center is a step backwards from the approach
that you adopted in the Homeland Security Act of 2002 creating
the Department of Homeland Security. Yes, we have closed the
seam between foreign and domestic intelligence, and it does
recognize the need to draw on broad expertise. But by placing
the TTIC under the direction of the Director of Central
Intelligence rather than the Secretary of Homeland Security,
and disconnecting it from those with direct responsibility for
safeguarding homeland security, the administration fails to
develop an effective and integrated approach to countering the
terrorist threat to the United States, and risks, as many of
the members of the panel have suggested, creating more
duplication that could harm the homeland security effort.
After all, the Department of Homeland Security was created
to be the hub of our homeland security efforts. Unlike any
other official, the Secretary of Homeland Security's sole
responsibility is to see that the necessary actions are taken
to secure our borders, to protect critical infrastructure, to
defend against biological, chemical, nuclear, and radiological
attacks, and to respond to emergencies that do occur.
Importantly, the statute specifically gives the Secretary
responsibility for coordinating with State and local officials
and with the private sector. So in order to carry out the
functions that you gave him in the statute, he has got to be
able to link the decisions about what information we collect
and what information we share with his responsibility to take
the necessary actions. I think that is the important difference
between locating this effort in the Department of Homeland
Security and making it a separate entity, whether a joint
venture or an independent effort.
I think the importance of this linkage is most clear in the
case of protecting our critical infrastructures. Only by
matching analysis of the threat against the analysis of
vulnerabilities that the department is responsible for can we
know how to prioritize both what intelligence we collect and
what protective measures we must take. The synergy created by
linking intelligence and collection analysis and operational
responsibility can lead to better quality intelligence, more
actionable intelligence, and greater incentives for the
intelligence to flow to those who need it in a form that they
can use.
By taking these functions away from the Department of
Homeland Security we risk having a secretary and department who
have accountability for homeland security but no authority to
assure it. In my judgment, this has been the consistent problem
in dealing with threats to the homeland with responsibility
widely dispersed throughout the Federal Government and that has
seriously hampered our efforts.
I think there is an important question about maintaining
the independence of this analysis. Therefore this fusion center
in the Department of Homeland Security should also have the
general oversight of the Director of Central Intelligence just
as he has oversight over the Department of Intelligence
Research at the State Department, the Defense Intelligence
Agency, etc.
But along with this authority that I would give to the
Secretary of Homeland Security there is also a responsibility
to make sure that this information is collected consistent with
fundamental civil liberties, because the homeland security
challenge will rely heavily on information collected from the
private sector, and from a wide range of domestic activities.
Moreover, to carry out the homeland security challenge,
vital information will need to be widely disseminated. It will
be, therefore, all the more important to develop clear, public
guidelines for the acquisition, retention, and dissemination of
information, particularly personally identifiable information.
Whether the new threat integration center is placed under
the authority of the DCI, or as I have suggested under the
Secretary of Homeland Security, the long-term acceptability to
the American people of our heightened intelligence effort will
depend on our ability to demonstrate that we are undertaking
these new tasks with due regard for privacy and individual
liberty. Formal guidelines subject to public comment and
Congressional oversight, and accountable mechanisms to make
sure those guidelines are adhered to, are essential to this
goal.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear today. I look
forward to your questions.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Mr. Steinberg. Mr. Smith.
TESTIMONY OF JEFFREY H. SMITH,\1\ FORMER GENERAL COUNSEL (1995-
1996), CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (CIA)
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Madam Chairman, for inviting me to
appear. As with Mr. Steinberg, I have a longer statement that I
would like to submit for the record that I will summarize very
quickly and we can get to questions.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Smith appears in the Appendix on
page 100.
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This is an extremely important issues. There have been a
lot of changes, so I think we might begin by listing a few
principles that ought to govern the collection and analysis of
intelligence for domestic security.
First, there should be a unity of effort and unity of
command.
Second, there must be clear channels among collectors,
analysts, operators, and consumers--the linkages that Jim spoke
of. This has to be a two-way channel with information flowing
up and down.
Third, there has to be a smooth flow of information among
other sources of information and between State, local and
Federal officials.
Fourth, we should avoid overlap between intelligence
agencies. The boundaries should be clear but not impervious or
rigid, and some competition, as Senator Pryor suggested, can be
helpful.
Fifth, intelligence analysts must be independent. Indeed,
that is why the CIA was created in the first place.
Sixth, the analysts and indeed all intelligence activities
must be accountable to the political leadership of this country
and to the Congress.
Seventh, we must take all measures to protect the civil
liberties of American citizens.
Eighth, any organizational structure can be made to work
even if it looks dysfunctional on paper. The keys to success,
in my judgment, are good people, strong leadership, and
stability. In that regard I am reminded of Norm Augustine's
wisdom that sometimes we check on the health of a plant by
pulling it up to look at the roots, and that is not a good
thing.
Finally, an analytical organization is only as good as the
information it has to analyze. There was much criticism after
September 11 that we had not connected the dots. The major
problem is, we just do not have enough dots. I think a renewed
emphasis must be placed on collecting more intelligence,
especially human intelligence.
Now let me turn to a few of the specifics of the
President's proposal. It is a good idea and I support both the
concept and the proposed implementation of it. However, I
believe it is only a first step toward what I believe we
ultimately need, which is a viable domestic intelligence
service. The Department of Homeland Security clearly needs an
intelligence function. I agree with everything that Jim has
said about the need to have it linked to ultimately the
responsibilities of the Secretary. However, I think for the
moment I would leave it under the Director of Central
Intelligence until ultimately it would be moved, in my
judgment, to a domestic security service that would be part of
the Department of Homeland Security.
Indeed, as Governor Gilmore said, many people believed
after Congress passed the homeland security bill that this
function would be housed in the directorate of infrastructure
security at Homeland Security. However, the President has
decided that it ought to be under the DCI. As I understand the
plans of the administration it is to create the TTIC as a
fusion center that will ultimately combine the databanks of
several agencies including the FBI. It will be a joint venture
that will build on the strengths of the current organizations.
People will remain employees of their agencies but will be
secunded to this center.
The recent changes in the Patriot Act now permit wider
exchange of information between law enforcement and
intelligence agencies and that should make it possible to
permit a common database so that the chief of police in
Portland could call this center either directly or through
Homeland Security. But they have to have access to that
information, you are absolutely right. And they ought to
produce a common watch list that is available to everybody in
the country who needs it.
The President's desire, as I understand it, is to try to
build on what is already working. The officers who are assigned
to this center will be able or are encouraged to have strong
ties back to their home agencies including, I am told, even the
right to have access to operational traffic within their
agency, which is a very important element.
At the same time, there will be much confusion as the
center is being created. The FBI has been trying to do this,
the Department of Homeland Security has been trying to do it,
and now we have yet a new center. There will clearly be some
confusion and Congress needs to keep an eye on it. I
understand, for example, in the President's budget that he has
just submitted contains $829 million for DHS's information
analysis and infrastructure directorate. Is that money then to
stay in Homeland Security or does that somehow get shifted to
the intelligence community for this function?
Jim and I agree, the intelligence element of homeland
security should report directly to the Secretary, and he went
through the functions that they need to perform with which I
agree and I will not talk about that.
Let me talk about a couple of specific questions the
Committee has asked me to address. First, I do not believe that
there are any unique legal or privacy concerns raised merely
because the DCI will now be responsible for the analysis of
domestic intelligence.
However, I would like to point out to the Committee that
under current law the DCI, ``in his capacity as head of the CIA
shall have no police, subpoena, or law enforcement powers or
internal security functions.'' Two aspects of this are worth
dwelling on for just a moment.
First, the law draws a distinction between the DCI's role
as head of the CIA and as head of the broader intelligence
community. This suggests that Congress recognized that as head
of the intelligence community he would inevitably have some
role in domestic intelligence and law enforcement matters.
However, Congress was rightly concerned about the creation of a
domestic secret police, and thus barred CIA from having any
police or internal security functions.
The second clause of this provision, ``shall have no
internal security functions'' is also worth a moment's
discussion. I have always understood it to mean that the CIA
may not play any role in domestic law enforcement other than
the collection and analysis of foreign intelligence that may
relate to law enforcement or domestic security. Indeed, CIA has
done that since its establishment.
For example, it collects information relating to espionage
directed against the United States, collects information
relating to narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and so on.
However, as this center is established it would be well to
consider carefully the limits of what the DCI and the TTIC will
do to be certain that we are comfortable with their roles. Some
additional guidelines may be necessary to determine where the
line is between intelligence relating to domestic terrorism,
which would be legitimate areas for the center to address, and
intelligence relating to purely domestic political groups which
should be left with the FBI.
The center should not, for example, be used to analyze
information on domestic political groups such as right wing
militia or hate groups. It must continue to follow the existing
Attorney General guidelines on such matters as the collection
and dissemination of information. I, for one, am comfortable
with the President's proposal but I believe vigorous
Congressional oversight is needed and perhaps some new
guidelines.
Finally, Madam Chairman, as this Committee knows, I have
been an advocate for some time for creating a domestic security
service and I think this is the first step in that direction. I
know Senator Edwards introduced a bill yesterday to this
effect, Senator Graham has talked about the same thing. I think
it is time to seriously give that consideration. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you very much, Mr. Smith.
Why don't we start with the point you made last and I would
like to ask Mr. Steinberg your judgment on whether or not we
should create a domestic intelligence agency? Many of us have
concerns about the civil liberties implications of that and I
would welcome your judgment.
Mr. Steinberg. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I think that the
civil liberties issues that we face exist irrespective of where
the domestic collection takes place. We have civil liberties
issues if the FBI remains the principle domestic security
organization or if we have an organization that is separate. On
balance, I agree with Jeff Smith that we would be better off
with a separate organization. First, because I do believe that
a domestic security operation is a very different function than
law enforcement. We heard earlier from the early panel about
the cultural problems. I think in some respects that if we try
to turn the FBI into something which it has not been, we will
not get the benefit of what the FBI does well, which is an
important law enforcement function, and will begin a new role
from a place where they are affected by their traditions.
So I think we need a fresh start. I think we need to look
at this question, and I think that the advantage of having a
separate organization is that we can have a public debate about
what the rules are that should govern it. If we were to create
such an organization we would be able to have decisions in the
statute that created it providing clear guidelines on civil
liberties measures, on accountability and the like, and it
would allow us to have a fresh debate that I fear we will not
have if we simply move the FBI into the domestic security
function and away from law enforcement.
I think we do have to remember the difficulties that the
FBI had in the past when it did play a bigger role in domestic
security. So I do not feel that just simply by keeping it in
the FBI that we can necessarily address those problems. I think
by creating an organization that is focused on the domestic
security function you will have an organization that defines
its mission as protecting the American people and is organized
to do that in the most effective way.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Smith, based on your experience at
the CIA do you see duplication between the CIA's Counter
Terrorist Center and the proposed new integration center? How
do they differ? It was my understanding that the Counter
Terrorist Center was supposed to conduct all-source analysis
and in fact Director Tenet just last year said that it was
created to enable the fusion of all courses, the same kind of
language that is being used now to justify the creation of the
new integration center.
Mr. Smith. I agree, Madam Chairman, and I think what will
happen here or what should happen is that the current CTC
should get much smaller and it should probably focus very much
on overseas collection of intelligence and overseas operations.
The analytical function currently being done by the CTC should
be moved to this new center and combined with the analytical
functions of the Bureau, because I do think unless that shift
is made there will continue to be overlap and confusion.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Steinberg, do you have any thoughts
on that?
Mr. Steinberg. I think it is a very good question, Madam
Chairman, because we have to ask ourselves the question why the
CTC has not been as successful as we want it to be, and whether
creating an organization which sounds very much like what the
CTC was supposed to be would solve the problem.
I think that there are two reasons why the CTC has not been
successful. First is, as you explored at length with the first
panel, ther
