Congressional Record: May 21, 2002 (House)
Page H2820-H2834
DEFENDING PRESIDENT BUSH REGARDING KNOWLEDGE OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001,
THREAT, AND DETAILING UPCOMING TRAVEL TO RUSSIA, UZBEKISTAN, CHINA, AND
NORTH KOREA
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Issa). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon)
is recognized provisionally for half the time remaining until midnight.
Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I take the time this
evening, and thank the Speaker and the staff for bearing with me, to
basically perform two functions.
First of all, I will respond to those critics of President Bush who
have taken unfair shots at him over the 9-11 situation, and will
factually refute what people like the minority leader, the gentleman
from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), have said publicly about this President
somehow not heeding evidence that was provided to him.
I am going to present the true facts of what we could have and should
have done prior to September 11 that I think would have allowed us to
both understand what was about to occur and to have done something
about it.
The second action I am going to discuss this evening is an upcoming
trip that I will be leading to Russia, Uzbekistan, Beijing, China, as
well as Pyongyang, North Korea, the first delegation going into that
country, and Seoul, South Korea, at the end of this week.
Mr. Speaker, let me start out by saying, first of all, in response to
many of the media pundits who have spent the last week or 10 days
criticizing President Bush and have publicly said that he had
indications that should have alerted him to the upcoming attack on the
World Trade Center, nothing could be farther from the truth. The facts
are all in. The data the President got were basically individual
elements provided by individual agencies about potential acts that
might be against our country, nowhere near the immensity of what we
actually saw on September 11.
They were bits of information, like the CIA saying there might be an
attempt to hijack an airplane, but no linkage of that act to an attack
on the Trade Center; or the fact that other agencies were looking at
pilots that were obtaining licenses and had no intention of landing an
airplane. Each of these bits of information, while being provided to
the upper levels of our government, in and of themselves would not lead
anyone to believe that an imminent attack was about to occur on the
Trade Center.
But Mr. Speaker, as I said on September 11 on CNN live at 12 noon
from the roof of a church across from the Capitol, on that day the
government did fail the American people. Now, the President did not
fail the American people, but the government failed the American
people.
I am going to document for our colleagues today, and for the American
public and the media, steps that we took in the years prior to
September 11 when our agencies and the government did not respond. This
started back in the Clinton administration and continued during the
Bush administration.
In fact, Mr. Speaker, during the late 1990s, I chaired the Committee
on Research for our national security, which meant that my job was to
oversee about $38 billion a year that we spend on cutting-edge
technology for the military.
One of those projects that I helped get additional funding for was
the Information Dominant Center that the Army was standing up down at
Fort Belvoir, technically known as the LIWAC. This Land Information
Warfare Assessment Center was designed to monitor on a 24-hour-a-day
basis 7 days a week all of our military classified systems, those
systems used to run the Army. Each of our services was in the process
of standing up an entity like the one that the Army stood up at Fort
Belvoir.
Back in 1997, as I was supporting increased funding for this
capability, I was amazed in two trips that I took to Fort Belvoir that
the Army was not just able to maintain security over their information
systems, but they were able to use new software tools and high-speed
computers to do what is commonly called ``profiling,'' to take vast
amounts of information about the classified and unclassified
information and process it and analyze it so that a picture could be
drawn and a threat could be developed, proliferation could be
monitored.
{time} 2310
Now, this was back in 1997. In fact, I had a chance to use these
capabilities and I think this story, more than any other, underscores
the inabilities of our agencies on September 11 to really understand
the threat that was emerging.
[[Page H2821]]
As you might recall, back in 1997 we had gotten into a war in Kosovo
to remove Milosevic from power. All of Congress was not supportive of
that conflict. In fact, I opposed the initial involvement with
President Clinton by our troops, not because I have supported Milosevic
but because I felt that we did not force Russia or allow Russia to play
a more vibrant role in helping us to get Milosevic out of power.
Two weeks after the bombing campaign started, I started to receive
telephone calls and started to receive e-mails from my Russian
colleagues in the State Duma. People who are senior leaders who called
me and e-mailed me and said we have a real problem. Your policy of
bombing Milosevic and innocent Serbs is causing the Russian people to
lose confidence in what America's real intent is, and you are driving
Russia further away from our country. And I said what do you want me to
do? They said we need you to convince your president that Russia can
help play a role in ending the war and getting Milosevic out of office.
And the Russians told me that they wanted me to go to Belgrade in the
middle of the conflict, that they would arrange a meeting with
Milosevic.
Well, I told them that that was very much undoable because we were in
the middle of a war. We were bombing Serbia at the time. But I asked
them to put that request in writing and they did. Within the next few
days I got a letter on official Duma stationery where the Russians
outlined their desire to take me and a delegation of Members of
Congress to Belgrade, Yugoslavia. They outlined who would come from the
Russian side and they committed that they would have a meeting with
Milosevic personally with a date and time certain. They also agreed to
visit a refugee camp of our choosing so we could show them the damage
that Milosevic had caused innocent people, and they also agreed to
release the three American POWs that were being held hostage.
When the letter came, it also included the name of an individual I
did not know. His name was Dragomir Kric. The Russians had told me that
this individual was very close to Milosevic personally, that the
Russians trusted him, and that he was the guy that would get Milosevic
to agree to the terms to end the hostilities against the Serbian,
Yugoslavian people.
The Russian request I then took to the State Department with my
colleague, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) on the other side.
We had a 1 hour and 30 minute meeting in the Office of Deputy Secretary
of State Strobe Talbott. We outlined for him what the Russians had
requested for us and that we were willing to lead a delegation into
Belgrade in spite of the war going on. Strobe Talbott listened and he
said, I do not think it is a good idea. He said we cannot guarantee
your safety and we do not think Milosevic will do what the Russians say
he will do, and we think he will just use you. So my advice is not to
go, but as citizens in America you can do what you want.
I said that we would not violate the request of our State Department
and would not go. But the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) suggested
that perhaps we should meet the Russians in a neutral city and he
suggested Vienna. Strobe Talbott said that was fine. So I came back to
Capitol Hill and I sent a letter to all 435 members of the House
outlining for them what the Russians had asked, what the administration
response was, and invited every Member of this body to attend a meeting
if they were interested in going with us to Vienna. From the meeting
that we held 1- Members of Congress, 5 Democrats and 5 Republicans,
volunteered to go with me to Vienna to meet with our Russian
counterparts and Mr. Kric.
Now, before we left on that trip I wanted to know something about
Kric so I called the CIA director, George Tennant. I said I do not know
who this guy is. The Russians are convinced that he can give us
information that will allow us to get Milosevic to agree to our terms.
Can you tell me something about him as the director of the CIA?
He called me back the next day and gave me 2 or 3 sentences about
Dragomir Kric and said that they thought he was tied in with the
corruption in Russia but did not know much else about him.
Without telling anyone, Mr. Speaker, I went back to my friends at the
Army Information Dominence Center, and I said can you run me a profile
of a Dragomir Kric and tell me something about him. They ran a profile
and they came back to me with 8 pages of information about this man,
the profile of someone who was very close to Milosevic personally.
With that information, we left on a military plane on a Thursday
afternoon after votes and flew all night to Vienna, arrived on Friday
morning, and began our discussions in the hotel in Vienna with the 11
members of Congress, a State Department representative, the 5 Russians
and Dragomir Kric.
We worked all through Friday into the night and into Saturday. And by
Saturday midday something historic had happened. The Russians had
agreed to the terms that we wanted to end the conflict. The Russians
had agreed to things they had never agreed to. During the time when we
were meeting, Kric was calling back to Belgrade talking to Milosevic on
the phone personally. He would come back in the room and he would tell
us what Milosevic was happy with and what he was not, but we were not
there to negotiate with Milosevic. We were there to get the Russians to
agree with us on an end to the conflict.
By 2 o'clock on Saturday afternoon we reached agreement. It was word
for word read by the Russian and American side and we all signed off on
an end to the war. It was an historic time for us because we thought we
could stop the bombing and stop killing innocent people and get
Milosevic out of power.
Kric immediately left the room and made a phone call. He came back in
the room and said I just talked to Milosevic personally, and he has
assured me that if we go down as a group right now to Belgrade, and I
will hire the bus, and we all go down together, Milosevic will meet
with us, he will agree to this framework which ends his reign. He will
agree to accept international peacekeeping force to disarm the Serbs,
and he will agree to allowing a U.N. or NATO force to bring stability
to this country. And he will also release the 3 POWs that have not been
heard from since they were captured by Milosevic.
Well, that was pretty historic, Mr. Speaker. So my colleagues on the
other side called the White House from Vienna. They get on the White
House operation center phone line and talked to John Podesta, the chief
of staff for the President. And they said we have something that you
have to get to President Clinton immediately. We have negotiated what
we think is the end of the Kosovo war with the Russians, with a
representative of Milosevic agreeing to the terms.
Another representative with us of the State Department called the
State Department operations center and he told them what had
transpired. So he notified both the White House and the State
Department. The State Department said let me talk to Congressman
Weldon. So I got on the phone. On the other end of the line was Steven
Sestanovich who was at that time in charge of the Russia desk at the
State Department.
I outlined for him what had occurred. He said, Curt, this is amazing
but it is above my pay grade. I cannot tell you what to do. Hold on and
I will have someone else call you back. Thirty minutes later, Mr.
Speaker, I got a call from Tom Pickering. Tom Pickering was at that
time number three in the State Department and had been the ambassador
for us to Russia. I had known him in that capacity. He said, Curt, what
is going on? And I explained to him that we had met with the Russians
and Kric. We had reached agreement, and that Milosovic through Kric was
saying that he was prepared to end the war if we went down to Belgrade.
So I said to Tom Pickering, what do you think we should do?
He said, Curt, first of all, we do not trust Milosevic. We do not
think that he will live up to what he is telling you through this guy
Kric; and, furthermore, Curt, I do not even know who Kric is. I never
heard of this guy and how could you believe that somehow he speaks for
Milosevic?
I said, Tom, I did not know Kric either before I came here, but I
know the Russians. They are my friends, and they have convinced me that
he is the
[[Page H2822]]
person that can get Milosevic to do what we want. He said, I do not
think it is a good idea. In fact, let me tell you, the Reverend Jesse
Jackson has been in Belgrade for a week. We have been in constant
communication with him. In fact, he is coming home today. His
delegation has been unsuccessful. They were trying to get the three
POWs released, he said, but their mission has failed.
{time} 2320
What makes you think that you can do something that the Reverend
Jesse Jackson could do? I do not know, Tom. All I am telling you is
what the Russians are saying based upon Kric's taught discussions with
Milosevic. He said I do not think you should go, and I said okay, then
we will not, because we are a Nation of laws and not of people.
I came back to the room where the Members of Congress were seated
with our Russian counterparts. I told them the story, and they
immediately became incensed at me. Kric called me a coward for not
taking a delegation to Belgrade. He said, You just lost a chance to end
the war and bring home your POWs.
I had Members of Congress from both parties telling me they were
going to go on their own, and I said, Oh no, you are not; we came in a
military plane that I acquired; you are going back to America with me.
So the 11 Members of Congress and the Russians and our State
Department official sat down and discussed how we would implement our
plan instead of going to see Milosevic in Belgrade. Kric went out of
the room and came back in after making a phone call, and said, You just
blew it; Milosevic had said you had a chance to end the war, to get him
to publicly accept this agreement and he would release the POWs.
We continued to meet. Two hours later, our Navy escort came into the
room, and he said to the 11 Members of Congress that CNN has just
announced that Milosevic is releasing the POWs to Jesse Jackson's
delegation. Kric told us that Milosevic did not want to keep them
because he was fearful they would be harmed and we would blame him for
their injuries. Even though he did not want to release them to Jesse
Jackson, he did.
To continue the story and make my point, Mr. Speaker, we all came
back home to America. We briefed our colleagues. We briefed the
administration. We presented the framework that we negotiated, and 8
days later, or 2 weeks later, that became the basis of the G-8
agreement to end the war. So our work was fruitful, but something
interesting happened that applies to September 11.
I got a call from the FBI in my office asking my staff to allow two
agents to come over for me to brief them, for me to brief them, on a
fellow named Dragomir Kric. I said, Fine, set it up for Monday
afternoon in my office in the Rayburn Building. I went back to
Pennsylvania, and on the Friday before that Monday, my office paged me
with a 911 page. I called them and they said, You must call CIA
congressional affairs immediately. I did.
The CIA said, Congressman, we are going to fly two agents to
Philadelphia right now. They will meet you at the airport, they will
come to your home, they will come to a hotel, wherever you want to meet
them, but they have to talk to you immediately. I said, What is the
urgency? They said, We have been tasked by the State Department to
brief them on Dragomir Kric and we want you to tell us what you know
about him. I said, Well, the FBI already asked for that information,
why can't we do it together on Monday afternoon?
So that Monday afternoon I had four agents in my office: two CIA
agents, one CI person and two FBI agents. For two hours they grilled me
with four pages of questions about Kric.
I answered all their questions. I told them that there were four Kric
brothers, that they were the owners of the largest banking system in
the former Yugoslavia; that they employed some 60,000 people; that
their bank had tried to finance the sale of an SA-10 from Russia to
Milosevic; that their bank had been involved in a $4 billion German
bond scam; that one of the brothers had financed Milosevic's election;
that the house Milosevic lived in was really their house; that, in
fact, Krics' wives were best of friends with Milosevic's wife; and that
they were the closest people to this leader.
I told them all the information. When I got done, Mr. Speaker, I
said, Now, do you want to know where I got my data from? They said,
Yeah, you got it from the Russians. I said, No. They said, Well, then
you got it from Kric. I said, No. I said, Before I went over there I
had the Army's information dominant center run a profile for me of
Dragomir Kric.
The FBI and the CIA in 1997 said to me, what is the Army's
information dominant center? The FBI and the CIA had no knowledge that
our military was developing a capability that would be able to do
massive data mining of information to allow us to do a profile of a
person or an event that was about to happen.
We took that model, based on that lesson which infuriated me as a
Member of Congress to be asked to brief the CIA and the FBI, and
working with people in the intelligence agencies, I developed a plan.
This plan was to create a national collaborative center.
Back in 1997, Mr. Speaker, the national collaborative center where
there were articles written, published in the media, technical media
here was called the NOAH, N-O-A-H. It stands for National Operations
and Analysis Hub. The function of the NOAH would be to have all 32
Federal agencies that have classified systems have a node of each of
those systems in one central location managed by one of their
employees, and when tasked by the national command authority, the
President or the National Security Council, their data would be entered
into a massive computer using new software tools like STARLITE and
SPIRES and six others that are used by the private sector to do data
mining.
In addition to classified information systems, they would also run
through massive amounts of unclassified data, newspaper stories,
magazine story, TV broadcasts, radio broadcasts. A person cannot do
that manually, but they can do it through high-speed computers, as the
Army did for me in developing the profile of Kric.
We took this plan and we said to the intelligence community, this is
what we need to have to be prepared for threats in the 21st century,
because the threats we are going to see over the next several decades
will not come only from one nation state, they will come from terrorist
organizations. We need to be able to pool all this data together and be
able to profile it, analyze it and then come back with a true picture
of what may be about to occur.
Mr. Speaker, this was in 1997. I briefed John Hamre. Dr. John Hamre
was then the Deputy Secretary of Defense. I said, John, you have got to
go down to Fort Belvoir and see this facility; it is amazing. He went
down twice. He called me back and he said, Curt, it is amazing what
they are doing there. This profiling worked, and they could do it
because unofficially some other secret lines were running through Fort
Belvoir that the Army could unofficially access. So it really was an
official process.
He said, But you know, Curt, I cannot get to where you want to go
because the CIA and the FBI will not cooperate and neither will the
other agencies. He said, So I have a suggestion for you. Why do you not
host a meeting in your office? I will come and you invite my
counterparts at the FBI and the CIA.
So, Mr. Speaker, in my office, in 1998, I had the Deputy Secretary of
Defense, the Deputy Director of the CIA and the Deputy Director of the
FBI, four of us met for 1 hour. We briefed them on the NOAH. We talked
about the need for a national collaborative center, national data
fusion center; and the response was, We do not need to do that right
now, we are doing our own systems in our own agencies; so thank you for
your recommendations, and we are trying to share but not the way you
want because that is too bold. That is too aggressive. This was 1998,
Mr. Speaker.
Not satisfied with that, we held hearings. We did briefings for our
colleagues; and in two consecutive defense bills, I put language in the
bill that basically said the Defense Department and our intelligence
agencies had to create a national collaborative center. So it became a
part of the law; but Mr. Speaker, the agencies refused. They
[[Page H2823]]
said we do not need to do that, we do our job very well.
Each of them does their job very well, but the problem is the threats
in the 21st century will be seen from a number of different sources. It
may be information coming from the Customs Department or from the
Defense Intelligence Agency or from the NSA or from the CIA or the FBI
or Commerce, State and Justice, all of which have classified systems;
or it may come from some public statements in articles in other
countries. We can only have the capability to understand all of that if
we have a national fusion center.
{time} 2230
We did not have that capability before September 11. That is why I
stood up on September 11, at 12 p.m. in the afternoon and said, ``Today
our government failed the American people.'' Because, Mr. Speaker, we
knew what we should have done. We knew what we could have done. And we
did not do it.
In fact, Mr. Speaker, I firmly believe that if we would have
implemented the NOAH, which John Hamre offered to pay for with DOD
dollars, back when we first recommended it, I am convinced we could
have stopped or known about and prevented September 11 from ever
happening.
Let me give an example. CIA information on terrorism, combined with
what the FBI knew about training pilots and open-source information on
remarks by al Qaeda, would have helped the intelligence community and
enforcement agencies focus better on the threat. For example, in August
of 2000, an al Qaeda member had been interviewed by an Italian
newspaper and reported that al Qaeda was training kamikaze pilots. The
intelligence community and enforcement agencies, however, do not read
open-source information. Yes, they read all the classified stuff, but
this interview in 2000 was in an open-source newspaper account in
Italy.
If we would have had a fusion center, all of that data would have
been processed, and in very real quick time, through massive high-speed
computers, and we would have seen the linkages between what was
occurring. But with each agency doing its own thing, it is impossible
to see the linkages. And that is why when President Bush before
September 11 got a bit of information from the CIA and a bit from the
FBI, and something else, and nothing from open sources, there is no way
he could have foretold what was about to occur.
If we would have had the NOAH in place, an idea that was developed
with the intelligence community, an idea that was briefed to the FBI,
briefed to the CIA and briefed to the Defense Department, I think we
could have done something to prevent al Qaeda.
In fact, Mr. Speaker, there is another interesting development that
occurred. After the Army showed the capability of the LIWAC model at
Ft. Belvoir, other services began to take interest. Special forces
command down in Florida contacted the Army and said, hey, we hear you
are doing some neat things. We want to build a mini version of what you
are doing down at our headquarters.
I did not find out about this until October of 2001, after the attack
on the trade center. A year before, special forces command developed
their own mini version of a data processing or collaborative center
with very limited capabilities. But what they did, Mr. Speaker, they
did a profile of al Qaeda 1 year before 9-11.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Issa). The gentleman from Pennsylvania
(Mr. Weldon) is recognized to continue until midnight.
Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, here is the chart, the
unclassified chart of what special forces command had 1 year before 9-
11. Interesting. The entire al Qaeda network is identified in a graphic
chart with all the linkages to all the terrorist groups around the
world.
In fact, Mr. Speaker, I was told by the folks who developed the
capability for special forces command that this chart and the briefing
that was supposed to be given to General Shelton, Chairman of our Joint
Chiefs, had a recommendation to take out 5 cells of bin Laden's
network. Mr. Speaker, this was 1 year before 9-11. This was not during
President Bush's administration. This occurred in the fall of the
remaining term of President Bill Clinton.
The key question I have been trying to get at is why was this 3-hour
briefing, which I also got, I got General Holland to bring his briefers
up from Florida with special forces, I went in the Pentagon, went in
the tank, and they gave me the briefing, as much as they could give me,
because part of it is being used for our operational plan, why was that
3-hour briefing with the recommendations to take out 5 cells of bin
Laden's network condensed down to a 1-hour brief when it was given to
General Hugh Shelton in January of 2001? And why were the
recommendations to take out 5 cells not followed up on? That is the
question we should get answered, Mr. Speaker.
Because 1 year before 9-11, the capability that special forces built
actually identified to us the network of al Qaeda. And they went beyond
that and gave us recommendations where we could take out cells to
eliminate their capability. So for those pundits out there sitting in
their armchairs criticizing President Bush, they have it all wrong.
Facts are a tough thing to refute, and the fact is that back in 1997,
we told the administration at that time what to do. In 1998, we briefed
the agencies. In 1999, we put language in a defense bill. In 2000, we
put language in a defense bill. In 2000, special forces command built
another mini version of that capability. And in 2000 they briefed
General Shelton telling him to take out 5 cells of bin Laden's network.
All of that activity could have prevented or helped to prevent 9-11
from ever occurring. I challenge my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, to review
the facts. I challenge the media to report the truth.
We still do not have a national collaborative center. That capability
still does not exist. We are getting there, but it has been a long
road. I briefed our Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, with the
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton), chairman of the Committee on
Government Reform, about 4 months ago. He agreed with us, but he has
not yet been able to achieve this new interagency collaborative center,
and that is an indictment of our government that the American people
deserve to be outraged over.
We need this kind of capability in the 21st century, because these
bits of pieces of information have to be pieced together, both
classified and unclassified, so that our analysts can get the clear
picture of what may be about to occur against our people and our
friends.
So, Mr. Speaker, I seek to clarify the charges against the President
and to answer them, and I encourage my colleagues to learn more about
the need for a national collaborative center, a national data fusion
center or, as I call it, a national operations and analysis hub.
Mr. Speaker, I will enter into the Record the documentation from as
far back as 1998, 1999, and 2000 with our recommendations to implement
this kind of capability:
of an Office of Transformation within the Office of the
Secretary of Defense to advise the Secretary on--
(1) development of force transformation strategies to
ensure that the military of the future is prepared to
dissuade potential military competitors and, if that fails,
to fight and win decisively across the spectrum of future
conflict;
(2) ensuring a continuous and broadly focused
transformation process;
(3) service and joint acquisition and experimentation
efforts, funding for experimentation efforts, promising
operational concepts and technologies and other
transformation activities, as appropriate; and
(4) development of service and joint operational concepts,
transformation implementation strategies, and risk management
strategies.
(c) Sense of Congress of Funding.--It is the sense of
Congress that the Secretary of Defense should consider
providing funding adequate for sponsoring selective
prototyping efforts, wargames, and studies and analyses and
for appropriate staffing, as recommended by the director of
an Office of Transformation as described in subsection (b).
SEC. 903. REVISED JOINT REPORT ON ESTABLISHMENT OF NATIONAL
COLLABORATIVE INFORMATION ANALYSIS CAPABILITY.
(A) Revised Report.--At the same time as the submission of
the budget for fiscal year 2003 under section 1105 of title
31, United States Code, the Secretary of Defense and the
Director of Central Intelligence shall submit to the
congressional defense committees and the congressional
intelligence committees a revised report assessing
alternatives for the establishment of a national
[[Page H2824]]
collaborative information analysis capability.
(b) Matters Included.--The revised report shall cover the
same matters required to be included in the DOD/CIA report,
except that the alternative architectures assessed in the
revised report shall be limited to architectures that include
the participation of All Federal agencies involved in the
collection of intelligence. The revised report shall also
include a draft of legislation sufficient to carry out the
preferred architecture identified in the revised report.
(c) Officials To Be Consulted.--The revised report shall be
prepared after consultation with all appropriate Federal
officials, including the following:
(1) The Secretary of the Treasury.
(2) The Secretary of Commerce.
(3) The Secretary of State.
(4) The Attorney General.
____
Defense Information and Electronics Report
weldon: dod needs massive intelligence network for shared threat info
Senior Pentagon officials are mulling over an idea proposed
by Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) that would link classified and
unclassified documents in a massive intelligence
clearinghouse that could be accessed by 33 federal agencies--
a concept similar in some ways to one floated by DOD
intelligence officials but with significantly fewer players
involved.
``Our problem with intelligence is that we're stove-
pipped,'' said Weldon, chairman of the House Armed Services
military research and development subcommittee, during a Nov.
8 interview. ``Each agency has its own way of collecting data
and analyzing it, but they don't share that information with
other agencies. The need is to have a better system of
analyzing and fusing data sets across agencies and services--
certainly within the Pentagon and the military, but my
opinion is that we have to go further than that.''
Weldon first proposed the concept of a ``National
Operations Analysis Hub'' to Deputy Defense Secretary John
Hamre last June, although the congressman said he kept his
initiative quiet until a stronger plan could be developed.
The Pentagon-funded network of agencies would be operated
by DOD. According to Weldon, it would pull together large
amounts of information to produce intelligence profiles of
people, regions and national security threats, such as
information warfare and cyber-terrorism.
``The NOAH concept of a national collaborative environment
supporting policy and decision-makers mirrors the ideas you
have expressed to me in recent discussions, and it is a
tangible way to confront the growing asymmetrical threats to
our nation,'' Weldon wrote in his July 30 letter to Hamre.
The NOAH concept, however, was not wholeheartedly embraced
by Hamre, who met with Weldon last summer and told the
congressman his suggested use of the Army's Land Information
Warfare Activity at Ft. Belvoir, VA, as a model for NOAH,
would never stick.
Because LIWA is already short of resources, the Army is
apprehensive about taking on any new tasks, Hamre told
Weldon.
Weldon, in a July 21 letter to Hamre, also urged the
Pentagon to support additional future funding for LIWA,
citing critical budget shortfalls that he said have kept the
agency from fulfilling a barrage of requests for intelligence
files from Army commanders (Defense Information and
Electronics Report, July 30, p1).
``There's massive amounts of data out there, and you have
to be able to analyze it and create ways to focus on that
data so its relevant to whatever you're interested in,'' he
said this week about his support for LIWA. ``Well, the Army
has already done that.''
While Weldon continues to push for NOAH to be patterned
after LIWA, he sees it operating on a much larger scale.
Impressed by its ability to pull together huge amounts of
both unclassified and classified data, Weldon noted LIWA's
Information Dominance Center can create in-depth profiles
that could be useful to the CIA, FBI and the White House. Yet
most federal agencies don't even know LIWA exists, he added.
``Right now the military is limited to [its] own sources of
information,'' Weldon said. ``And in the 21st century, a
terrorist group is more than likely going to be involved with
terrorist nations. So the boundaries are crossed all the
time. We don't have any way to share that and get beyond the
stove-pipping.''
Meanwhile, officials within the Defense Department's
intelligence community have been considering another way to
amass intelligence information through a concept called the
Joint Counter-intelligence Assessment Group. A DOD
spokeswoman said proponents of the idea, for now, are
unwilling to disclose details about it. She was also unable
to say whether a formal proposal to Hamre had been made yet.
In Weldon's July 30 letter to Hamre, however, Weldon
alludes to an ongoing, ``initiative to link
counterintelligence groups throughout the community.''
``I have heard of an attempts to connect the Office of Drug
Control Policy (ONDCP) and [Office of the Secretary of
Defense] assets with federal, state and local law enforcement
agencies,'' Weldon wrote.
However, Weldon said in the interview he believes JCAG is
simply more ``stove-pipping.''
`I also have seen what the Army has done at LIWA, which has
created a foundation for creating a higher-level architecture
collaborating all of these efforts,'' his July letter states.
NOAH would link together almost every federal agency with
intelligence capabilities, including the National Security
Agency, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, the Energy
Department, the CIA and the FBI. Both Congress and the White
House would be offered a ``node'' for briefing capabilities,
meaning intelligence agencies could detail situations on
terrorist attacks or wartime scenarios.
``It's mainly for policymakers, the White House
decisionmakers, the State Department, military, and military
leaders,'' he said.
Although information-sharing among the intelligence
community has yet to be formalized through NOAH or JCAG or a
similar system, military officials have said they need some
kind of linked access capability.
Intelligence systems need to be included within the Global
Information Grid--the military's vision of a future global
network that could be accessed from anywhere in the world,
said Brig. Gen. Marilyn Quagliotti, vice director of the
Joint Staff's command, control, communications and computers
directorate, during a Nov. 5 speech on information assurance
at a conference in Arlington, VA.
``We need a more integrated strategy, including help from
[the Joint Staff's intelligence directorate] with
intelligence reports or warnings of an attack,'' she said.
Quagliotti said the toughest challenge for achieving
``information superiority'' is the need to unite networks and
network managers under one command structure with stronger
situational awareness capabilities.
``Part of [the challenge] is the overwhelming amount of
information, the ability to access that Information, and the
ability to reach back and get that information, which means
that networks become more crucial to the warfight,'' she
said.
____
[From Signal, Apr. 2000]
Fusion Center Concept Takes Root As Congressional Interest Waxes
Creation of a national operations and analysis hub is
finding grudging acceptance among senior officials in the
U.S. national security community. This fresh intelligence
mechanism would link federal agencies to provide instant
collaborative threat profiling and analytical assessments for
use against asymmetrical threats. National policy makers,
military commanders and law enforcement agencies would be
beneficiaries of the hub's information.
Prodded by a resolute seven-term Pennsylvania congressman
and reminded by recent terrorist and cyberthreat activities,
the U.S. Defense Department is rethinking its earlier
aversion to the idea, and resistance is beginning to crumble.
Funding to establish the national operations and analysis hub
(NOAH), which would link 28 federal agencies, is anticipated
as a congressional add-on in the Defense Department's new
budget. An initial $10 million in funding is likely in fiscal
year 2001 from identified research and development accounts.
Spearheading the formation of NOAH is Rep. Curt Weldon (R-
PA), chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives National
Security Committee's military research and development
subcommittee. He emphasizes that challenges facing U.S.
leaders are beginning to overlap, blurring distinction and
jurisdiction. ``The increasing danger is both domestic and
international.''
Conceptually, NOAH would become a national-level operations
and control center with a mission to integrate various
imagery, data and analytical viewpoints. The intelligence
products would support U.S. actions. ``I see NOAH as going
beyond the capability of the National Military Command Center
and the National Joint Military Intelligence Command. NOAH
would provide recommended courses of action that allow the
U.S. to effectively meet emerging challenges in near real
time,'' the congressman illustrates.
``This central national-level hub would be composed of a
system of agency-specified mini centers, or `pods,' of
participating agencies and services associated with growing
national security concerns,'' Weldon reports. ``NOAH would
link the policy maker with action recommendations derived
from fused information provided by the individual pod.''
Automation and connectivity would allow the pods to talk to
each other in a computer-based environment to share data and
perspectives on a given situation.
The congressman believes that NOAH should reside within the
Defense Department and is modeling the hub's concept on a
U.S. Army organization he closely follows. He says the idea
for NOAH comes from officials in several federal agencies.
However, it is also based on his own experiences with the
U.S. Army's Intelligence and Security Command's (INSCOM's)
Land Warfare Information Activity (LIWA) and Information
Dominance Center, Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
Patterned after LIWA, (SIGNAL, March, page 31), NOAH would
display collaborative threat profiling and analysis. With the
aid of a variety of electronic tools, the hub would support
national actions, Weldon discloses.
The congressman is conscious of other initiatives such as
linking counterintelligence groups throughout the community.
He also
[[Page H2825]]
is aware of the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA's)
counterterrorism center, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation's (FBI's) National Infrastructure Protection
Center and a new human intelligence (HUMNIT) special
operations center. ``We don't need another analytical center.
Instead, we need a national-level fusion center that can take
already analyzed data and offer courses of action for
decision making,'' he insists.
Weldon's wide experience in dealing with officials from the
FBI, CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA) convince him
that policy makers are continuing to work in a vacuum.
``Briefings and testimonies are the primary vehicles for
transmitting information to leaders. The volume of
information germane to national security issues is expanding
so rapidly that policy makers are overwhelmed with data,'' he
claims.
Robust situational awareness of asymmetric threats to
national security is a key in assisting leaders, Weldon
observes. ``Policy makers need an overarching information and
intelligence architecture that will quickly assimilate,
analyze and display assessments and recommend courses of
action for many simultaneous national emergencies,'' he
declares. The concept of NOAH also calls for virtual
communications among policy makers.
Weldon's plan is for White House, Congress, Pentagon and
agency-level leaders each to have a center where they
receive, send, share and collaborate on assessments before
they act. He calls NOAH the policy maker's tool. In the
collaborative environment, the hub would provide a
multiissue, multiagency hybrid picture to the White House
situation room and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
NOAH's concept also includes support for HUMINT and
peacekeeping missions along with battle damage assessment.
The same system could later help brace congressional
committees and hearings. The new capability would allow
application of foreign threat analyses to policy, while
providing a hybrid situational awareness picture of the
threat, Weldon relates. Industrial efforts of interest to the
policy maker could be incorporated, and academia also could
be directly linked.
In meetings with high-level FBI, CIA and defense officials,
Weldon stressed the need to ``acquire, fuse and analyze
disparate data from many agencies in order to support the
policy maker's actions against threats from terrorism,
[ballistic missile] proliferation, illegal technology
diversions, espionage, narcotics [trafficking], information
warfare and cyberterrorism.'' He is convinced that current
collection and analysis capabilities in various intelligence
agencies are stovepiped. ``To some extent, this involves turf
protection, but it clearly hinders policy making.''
Weldon, who was a Russian studies major, offers some of his
own recent experiences as examples of why there is a strong
need for NOAH. He maintains close contact with a number of
Russians and understands their programs and technologies. The
congressman is quick to recall vignettes about Russian
officials and trips to facilities in the region.
During the recent U.S. combat action involvement in Kosovo,
Weldon was contacted by senior Russian officials. Clamoring
for Russia to be involved in the peace process they claimed
that otherwise upcoming elections could go to the communists.
The Russians proposed a Belgrade meeting with Weldon,
congressional colleagues, key Serbian officials and possibly
Yugoslave President Slobodan Milosevic.
After the first meeting with key officials from the
departments of State and Defense and the CIA, Weldon and
other members of Congress went to Vienna, Austria. The State
Department objected to a meeting in Belgrade, suggesting
instead a neutral site. Before the departure, the Russians
informed Weldon that Dragomir Karic, a member of a powerful
and wealthy Kosovo family, would attend the meeting. Karic's
brother was a member of the Milosevic regime.
At the end of the Vienna meeting, the Russians and Karic
told Weldon that if he would accompany them to Belgrade,
Milosevic was prepared to meet with them and publicly embrace
a peace agreement concept reached during the Vienna meeting.
The agreement would have directly involved Russia in the
peace process. A diplomatic official with the U.S. delegation
telephoned Washington, D.C., and the State Department
objected to the Belgrade trip. The congressman and his
colleagues returned home.
As soon as he arrived in Washington, D.C., the FBI
telephoned to request a meeting with Weldon to gather details
on Karic. It was clear, Weldon reports, they had very little
information on him or his family. The following day, the CIA
telephoned the congressman and asked for a meeting ``about
Karic.'' Instead, the congressman proposed a joint meeting
with CIA and FBI agents in his office. Two officials from
each agency attended with a list of questions.
Weldon learned from the agents that they were seeking
information on Karic to brief the State Department. When he
explained that the information came from the Army and LIWA,
the CIA and FBI agents had no knowledge of that organization,
he confirms. Before his departure for Vienna, the congressman
received a six-page LIWA profile of Karic and his family's
links to Milosevic.
``This is an example of why an organization like NOAH is so
critically necessary,'' Weldon contends. ``LIWA's Information
Dominance Center provides the best capability we have today
in the federal government to assess massive amounts of data
and develop profiles. LIWA uses it contacts with other
agencies to obtain database information from those systems,''
he explains. ``Some is unclassified and some classified.''
Weldon cites an ``extraordinary capability by a former CIA
and Defense Intelligence Agency official, who is a LIWA
profiler, as one of the keys in LIWA's success. She does the
profiling and knows where to look and which systems to pull
information from in a data mining and extrapolation
process,'' he proclaims. ``She makes the system work,''
Weldon intends to use LIWA's profiling capability as a
model for building NOAH. ``My goal is to go beyond service
intelligence agencies and integrate all intelligence
collection. This must be beyond military intelligence, which
is too narrow in scope, to provide a governmentwide
capability. Each agency with a pod linked to NOAH would
provide two staff members assigned at the hub, which would
operate continuously. Data brought together in ``this cluster
would be used for fusion and profiling, Which any agency
could then request,'' he maintains.
NOAH would not belong to the Army, which would continue
with its own intelligence capabilities as would the other
services. There would only be one fusion center, which would
handle input from all federal agencies and from open sources.
Weldon explains. ``NOAH would handle threats like information
operations and examine stability in various regions of the
world. We need this ability to respond immediately.'' The
congressman adds that he recently was briefed by LIWA on very
sensitive, very limited and scary profile information, which
he describes as ``potentially explosive.'' In turn, Weldon
arranged briefings for the chairman of the House National
Security Committee, the Speaker of the House and other key
congressional leaders.
``But this kind of profiling capability is very limited
now. The goal is to have it on a regular basis. The profiling
could be used for sensitive technology transfer issues and
information about security breaches,'' the congressman
allows. LIWA has what he terms the fusion and profiling
state-of-the-art capability in the military, ``even beyond
the military.'' Weldon is pressing the case for NOAH among
the leaders in both houses of Congress, ``It is essential
that we create a govenmentwide capability under very strict
controls.''
Weldon adds that establishing NOAH is not a funding issue;
it is a jurisdictional issue. ``Some agencies don't want to
tear down their stovepipes. Yet, information on a drug lord,
as an example, could be vitally important to help combat
terrorism.'' He makes a point that too often, federal
agencies overlap each other in their efforts to collect
intelligence against these threats, or they fail to pool
their resources and share vital information. ``This
redundancy of effort and confusion of jurisdiction only
inhibits our nation's capabilities,'' he offers.
NOAH would provide high-bandwidth, virtual connectivity to
experts to agency pod sites. Protocols for interagency data
sharing would be established and refined in links to all pod
sites. The ability to retrieve, collate, analyze and display
data would be exercised to provide possible courses of
action. A backup site would be established for redundancy,
and training would begin on collaborative tools as soon as it
is activated.
This hub system would become part of the national policy
creation and execution system. The tools available at LIWA
would be shared so that every agency would have the same
tools. Weldon explains that all agencies would post data on
the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) highway in a
replicated format sensitive to classification. NOAH's global
network would use the NRO system as a backbone.
NOAH optimizes groups of expertise within each
organization--experts who are always on hand regardless of
the issue. This approach ties strategic analysis and tactical
assessment to a course of action.``Before the U.S. can take
action against emerging threats, we must first understand
their relationship to one another, their patterns, the people
and countries involved and the level of danger posed to our
nation,'' Weldon says, ``That is where NOAH begins.''
____
Steps To Achieve NOAH Capability
Establish baseline capability by building initial Hub
Center and congressional virtual hearing room. Equip White
House Situation Room to Collaborate with these sites.
Staff the Hub Center with two reps from each of the 28 key
participating agencies.
Link up NOAH internal and external collaborative
environment.
Hook in Back up Site for redundancy and begin training on
collaborative tools.
Build the 28 Key Agency Pod Sites along model of the
Information Dominance Center at Fort Belvoir, VA.
Link all Pod Sites to NOAH hub center.
Establish Protocols for Inter-agency data sharing.
Exercise live ability to retrieve, collate, analyze,
display disparate data and provide policy makers course of
action analysis at the NOAH Hub Center.
Refine procedures and Protocols.
____
Agencies Represented in the National Collaborative Center
Central Intelligence Agency
Defense Intelligence Agency
National Imagery and Mapping Agency
National Security Agency
[[Page H2826]]
National Reconnaissance Office
Defense Threat Reduction Agency
Joint Chiefs of Staff
Army/LIWA
Air Force
Navy
Marine Corps
Joint Counter-Intelligence Assessment Group
ONDCP
FBI
Drug Enforcement Agency
U.S. Customs
National Criminal Investigative Service
National Infrastructure Protection Center
Defense Information Systems Agency
State Department
Five CINCs
Department of Energy
Department of Commerce
Department of the Treasury
Justice Department
Office of the Secretary of Defense
National Military Command Center
National Joint Military Intelligence Command
Elements to be connected to the national collaborative
center would include the White House Situation Room, a
Congressional Virtual Hearing Room and a possible redundant,
or back-up site.
[...]
