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, there is a problem with joint ventures.
There is a question of what is the principal set of
responsibilities of the people who work there, how do they
think about the problem? I think it is a lesson we learned from
the Goldwater-Nickles Act in the military context. That if you
do not give a sense of jointness, of being on the same mission
to the people who are taking on this task together, they will
still feel they belong to the domestic equivalent of the Army,
Navy, Marines, and the like, that you are not going to get the
kind of coherence and integrated approach that you want. I
think that has been one reason why the CTC has not been as
successful as it should be, and that I think will be replicated
in the new proposal for the TTIC.
Second, I think you have the problem that there is a
disconnect between those people who have operational
responsibility and the analyst. That there is still a lack of
understanding by the analyst of what is needed by the people
who are out there in the field to do their job. Under this
approach, we have lost the sense of connection between
understanding what a border policeman needs to know, what a
State and local official needs to know, what a fireman, what a
doctor needs to know to carry out their job in homeland
security.
The analysts exist in some respects in a vacuum from the
mission. I think that has been a problem. We have used this
device to assure independence but it has also created a
disconnect. I think there are other ways to get the
independence and the check on the quality of the intelligence
without creating the sense of isolation of the analyst from the
broader mission.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Steinberg, do you think that the new
center, if it does come into existence which I believe it will,
should be able to direct the collection of data?
Mr. Steinberg. Irrespective of where it is located, I think
that it is precisely the people who are trying to understand
the problem who can help think about where do they want to fill
in the holes? What are the problems that they see that are not
being attended to? They have a unique ability to see what the
requirements are.
But again, when you think about it in those terms, the
analysts are one set of the community of people who understand
what the requirements are, but so are the users. That is,
again, another reason why I would like to see the connection to
the users because that way you have the full community of
analysts and users together thinking about what the
requirements are, and getting a more focused collection.
Because, for example, in the area of critical
infrastructure, we will now have in the department people who
are looking at the questions of, what are the attacks we are
most worried about? What are the greatest vulnerabilities we
have?
We then need to be able to have them go to the collectors
and say, we are worried about whether the terrorists can attack
a chemical plant, or cause damage at a nuclear facility. They
will understand the problem that needs to be addressed and they
can focus the direction of the collectors to that end.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Smith, what is your view on that?
Should the new center be able to direct the collection of data
or just be a recipient and analysis----
Mr. Smith. I do not believe they should be able to direct
it directly. By that, I mean they should have a key role, and
indeed the leading role, in suggesting what needs to be
collected, but that ultimately the DCI has to decide what are
the priorities of collection. In the intelligence business
there is a lot of competition for scarce assets.
For example, how does one decide how the satellites are
targeted? You cannot have the DCI telling a satellite to
collect on something and have the head of the center telling
that same satellite to collect on something different. That is
the DCI's role.
On the other hand with respect to issues related to
homeland security, clearly this center has to have a very
strong voice.
One other point I think is extremely important. Whether the
center is under the DCI or ultimately moved to Homeland
Security, it is also imperative that the center be able to send
essentially tasking directives to State and local government.
The British model, the MI5 is very good on this. They work with
State and local--in their case all local municipalities, very
directly to say, here are the issues that we are concerned
about. Here are the people we are concerned about. Here are the
organizations we are concerned about. So that the bobby on the
beat in London or Manchester knows what it is that he is
supposed to be looking for. That is something that we do not do
now and that is something that homeland security needs to do in
the future.
Chairman Collins. Senator Pryor.
Senator Pryor. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I just have a few
short questions. This is a fascinating discussion because it
gives us the opportunity to establish something new that
theoretically we could do an extremely good job of setting up
and that could be very beneficial to this country and to the
world. In the discussions and proposals where do the two of you
see major points of weakness in any proposal?
In other words, we talk a lot about who has control over
this and what is the job description of this entity. But what
do the two of you see as the major point of weakness, the one
thing that we need to make sure that we get right, or the one
thing that we will need to work on the most to make sure this
is an effective organization?
Mr. Steinberg. If I could start, I think that in many ways
the challenge we face on homeland security is a little bit like
the challenge we faced at the beginning of the Cold War, at the
end of World War II, when we really had to rethink our national
strategy. That meant both the substance of our strategy--we
developed the doctrine of containment and it had a powerful
impact on the organization of our government and how we----
Senator Pryor. I agree with you on that. I think that is a
good point.
Mr. Steinberg. There is a tremendous temptation to do this
in a piecemeal fashion. It is hard to make big change in
government. You know that, this is the Governmental Affairs
Committee. So the temptation is to make incremental changes. To
say, the FBI should do a little more here, the CIA will do a
little bit more here. There is always resistance. There is
always inertia. There are always costs to change.
I think that what the Congress has done in this area has
really pushed the administration both on the strategy and the
organization to say, think about this as a fresh problem.
Recognize that we really have never thought about the
vulnerability of the United States as a core part of what we
do. It affects our military. It affects our police. It affects
the relationships between State and local government, the
private sector and government. These are profound changes and
we need to have a vision and a strategy that is equal to the
profundity of this change.
Mr. Smith. I agree completely. I mentioned the British a
moment ago. We do not need to necessarily adopt MI5 as the
perfect model but they start and are charged by the Prime
Minister with that very question, what are the threats to the
United Kingdom, whether they originate within the United
Kingdom or outside of the United Kingdom, that will ultimately
manifest themselves within the United Kingdom? It is their
responsibility to figure what to do about them. They collect,
they analyze, and ultimately work with law enforcement
officials to act. The strategy is vitally important.
Another issue that I worry about is confusion and who is in
charge. The issue of the unity of command that I mentioned at
the outset, Mr. Steinberg mentioned Goldwater-Nickles. Congress
made an enormous step forward in linking authority with
responsibility with resources, and that is very important. A
Marine general one time put it more bluntly which is, I want a
designated neck, by which he meant a neck around which I can
get my hands. That is a very useful concept, and as we organize
ourselves we ought to designate necks that the President and
the Congress can get their hands around when things go wrong.
Senator Pryor. Let us talk about MI5 for just a second. I
will be the first to admit that I do not know a lot about MI5,
but you have mentioned it. My perception of MI5, and maybe I am
wrong, is that it is much more integrated than the U.S.
counterpart. Obviously there are differences in Great Britain
and the United States. They have a much smaller geographical
area, a smaller population, and they do not have the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights like we do. So there are
clearly some differences.
But you have mentioned MI5 a couple of times. Is my
perception correct that they are more integrated and, as you
said earlier, the agent on the corner is much more in touch
with the central office than anybody here in the United States?
And is that a good model, and is that what we should shoot for?
Mr. Smith. Let me talk about that for a moment. It has been
my privilege to work with the British over the years so I have
some acquaintance with it. As I say, they begin with this
fundamental question. They report, by the way, to the Home
Secretary so in that sense they fit ultimately with having this
whole function report to the Secretary of Homeland Security.
They develop criteria for collection, they participate in the
process of what is it that British intelligence agencies should
collect, MI5, the military services and so on.
They do not have arrest authority. They are purely a
collection and analytical body. Nor do I think any of us who
favor a domestic security service here, none of us want this
new service to have arrest authority.
Senator Pryor. Right, but then they collect and analyze,
but they also have the authority to disseminate to the proper--
--
Mr. Smith. Absolutely. That is a key point. I do not know
what happened yesterday at Heathrow but my guess is that MI5
was very directly involved in the decisions involving the
security around Heathrow.
They have in each local municipality in the United Kingdom
designated police officers who work with them. They are given
clearances. They are given secure communications. They are
brought to London periodically for briefings on what is going
on. There is a flow of information back and forth between
London and the local police forces with respect to what it is
that MI5 is interested in. So literally then, the bobby on the
beat is informed in turn by this core of people in Manchester
or wherever, Glasgow, on what it is that MI5 is worried about.
He does not have a clearance but he knows what they are looking
for, and he knows then how to report it. He reports it back to
that group which then reports it back to London. It is a two-
way street and it works quite well.
Ultimately then they are very closely tied to the Special
Branch and Scotland Yard, who actually do the police work,
carry out the arrests and ultimately testify in court if need
be. It is not a perfect model and there certainly are frictions
and there are problems there as well, and it cannot be imported
directly here, but I do believe it is worth looking at. As I
say, I am very pleased that there are now serious proposals
here in Congress to consider this.
Senator Pryor. May I ask one more question?
Chairman Collins. Certainly.
Senator Pryor. That is, are both of you advocating that
this joint venture be housed in the Department of Homeland
Security?
Mr. Steinberg. I certainly am. I think it is really
consistent with the idea of, as Jeff said, creating a
responsible authority. I think that the Secretary of Homeland
Security ought to have that role. I am very concerned that we
are having a diffusion of authority. We have a Secretary of
Homeland Security, we have an Office of Homeland Security in
the White House which also has responsibilities in this area.
We are now giving the DCI new responsibilities in this area. It
is the diffusion that concerns me.
Mr. Smith. Senator, I differ with Mr. Steinberg only on
that point. It may be a temporal disagreement. I think for the
moment it does belong under the DCI, in part because he has got
the experience, he has got the manpower to do it, and I think
it makes a lot of sense there. It will be independent and so
on.
I also worry a great deal about the confusion that is
associated with the start-up of Homeland Security. I think we
may be underestimating how difficult this is going to be to do.
So I would leave it there for the moment and, as I say, it may
ultimately be wise to move it to Homeland Security but I think
for the moment it belongs where it is.
Senator Pryor. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator.
Mr. Steinberg, just to follow up on the issue of where the
center should be located. That is an issue on which we have
heard diverse opinions today and I have not yet reached a
conclusion. One of the arguments that I have heard against
locating it in the Department of Homeland Security is that the
department's role is focused on security within the borders of
United States and the center's role is going to be broader than
that. It would be collecting information about terrorist
threats against our embassies or forces abroad, for example.
What is your response to those who would argue that it does
not make sense to put it within the Department of Homeland
Security because the center's focus is so much broader?
Mr. Steinberg. I think that you have to look at the overall
structure of what everyone will be doing in this effort. The
CIA is going to be focused on events abroad and terrorist
threats not only to the United States but terrorist threats to
friendly countries, to stability of countries that are not
friendly, so there will continue to be within the CIA a
responsibility to look at what is going on overseas.
The question is where do you bring it all together, and is
the better balance to bring it together in the context of the
DCI, who is mostly looking overseas, or importing that
information that is being developed by the CIA and other
overseas collectors into an agency who is trying to link that
aspect of the terrorist threat to domestic rules?
So for example, at least for the moment, we do not believe
that Hamas is a threat to the United States. It does not have a
history of either targeting Americans or the United States. We
are still going to have somebody in the CIA who is collecting
on them. But if we keep the responsibility for homeland
security at the CIA, as I believe it will be under this joint
venture, then I think that there is a danger that too much of
this will be focused away from the homeland mission and not
sensitive enough to the needs of the people who are actually
carrying out the mission.
So inevitably you are going to have to make a choice as to
where the balance goes because this will need to be an all-
source center. I think the question is, who is going to pull
out that part of the foreign terrorist intelligence that is
directly related to the homeland and understand best how to
take that foreign intelligence and relate it to threats here?
I believe that on balance, though obviously there is no
perfect answer to this, that the right division is to say, of
course the CIA will still be looking at terrorism abroad but
this new center will still be involved in tasking. I agree with
Jeff, that, when I say that the new domestic security agency
should be involved in tasking, I do not mean that they should
have their hands on the satellite apertures but they should be
tasking the foreign collectors to look into, what al Qaeda is
doing in Afghanistan that may be relevant to the United States.
But I think that the weight of where their focus should be is
to be able to look at the foreign intelligence and see how it
affects threats against us here at home.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Smith, in addition to the argument
that Mr. Steinberg just made, an argument has been made against
locating the new center under the control of the CIA director,
that then the center will just once again become a creature of
the CIA. That you will lose the whole intent of this center.
What is your response to that?
Mr. Smith. It is very much a function of leadership. It is
a question of who is put in charge. It is a question of the
quality of people who are assigned there. There is a risk if it
is housed at Langley that it will take on the character of a
foreign intelligence center.
I think, however, that there will be--the people who are
assigned there from the Bureau or from Homeland Security, or
Customs or Immigration, wherever, will have as their
responsibility to worry about their home agencies. There is no
doubt that George Tenet is personally focused on this to make
it work and to make it work to support Governor Ridge. I think
that as long as that is the case there is some, but not much
risk, that it will be captured by the intrigue of foreign
intelligence. In my judgment, it will remain focused.
Mr. Steinberg. If I could just add, Madam Chairman, I think
obviously there are trade-offs here. The other risk in placing
responsibility under the DCI, is that, as several Members of
the Committee pointed out, as serious as the threat to the
homeland is, we have other things we have to worry about. We
have to worry about weapons of mass destruction. We have to
worry about turmoil abroad. Director Tenet has a lot of
responsibilities, so he cannot afford to wake up every day and
only worry about the homeland.
The advantage of what you have done by creating a Secretary
of Homeland Security is that somebody who can wake up every day
and only think about it. That I think is my worry. I have the
same worry about the FBI. That while I am sure they will try to
do a good job as they move into this area, the question is, do
you want somebody who has to wake up and worry about all of
these things or is this such a central function that you really
do want one person who organizes everything around that
mission?
Chairman Collins. Thank you, both.
Senator Pryor, do you have any further questions you would
like to ask?
Senator Pryor. I do not. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. I want to thank both of you for
testifying before us today. I think this hearing has been very
helpful to hear a variety of views on the new center. We look
forward to also having a second hearing at which administration
witnesses will be testifying as well.
I want to also thank my staff for putting together this
hearing. It is the first hearing on the concept that the
President revealed during his State of the Union address. So
thank you for your assistance and this hearing is now
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:51 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
CONSOLIDATING INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS:
A REVIEW OF THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSAL
TO CREATE A TERRORIST THREAT
INTEGRATION CENTER
----------
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2003
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Susan M.
Collins, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Collins, Coleman, Levin, and Akaka.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS
Chairman Collins. Good morning. The Committee will come to
order. First I want to disclaim any responsibility for the
weather. Even though I am from Maine, I did not bring this
weather with me in any way and I just wanted to make that clear
while we have all these intelligence experts in the room.
Today the Governmental Affairs Committee is holding its
second hearing on the President's proposal to create a
Terrorist Threat Integration Center. We are very pleased to
have a distinguished panel of administration witnesses to
answer the many questions about the mission, structure, and
responsibilities of the new center.
The sharing of intelligence among Federal agencies was a
serious problem long before the horrific attacks of September
11. But it was the terrorist attacks that focused attention on
the serious consequence of inadequate communication and
interagency rivalries. As the lead Federal law enforcement
agency responsible for collecting domestic intelligence,
including terrorism related intelligence, the FBI historically
has focused on investigating and developing criminal cases. At
times the FBI has failed to share critical domestic
intelligence because of concerns that the disclosure of such
information could jeopardize its criminal cases.
As the primary Federal agency responsible for collecting
foreign intelligence related to terrorism, the CIA also has
been hesitant to share information because of concerns that
such disclosures would jeopardize its methods and sources.
The result of these barriers has been that far too often
critical intelligence has not reached those who really need it.
After September 11 it became readily apparent that government
agencies must do a better job analyzing and sharing terrorism
related intelligence. Congress moved toward that goal in 2001
by passing legislation to facilitate the sharing of
intelligence information, and then last year by approving the
Homeland Security Act.
The administration has also taken a number of positive
steps since September 11. The FBI and the CIA have expanded
both their analytical capabilities and their cooperation. But
these changes have not gone far enough. Administration
representatives have stated that information sharing between
the FBI and the CIA still is too often achieved through ``brute
force.'' The President is attempting to address these
impediments to the timely sharing of critical information by
creating the Terrorist Threat Integration Center. Nevertheless,
there are many questions that remain about the implementation
of the administration's plan.
The first and perhaps most fundamental question is, how
will the integration center be an improvement over the existing
intelligence structure? We currently have a Counter Terrorist
Center within the CIA that has access to all government
intelligence relating to terrorism. As CIA Director George
Tenet has noted, the center ``was created to enable the fusion
of all sources of information in a single action-oriented
unit.'' Frankly, that sounds a lot like the proposed
integration center, which raises the obvious question of how
the new center will improve the sharing of intelligence
information among agencies.
A second key question is, what is being done to ensure that
the integration center will streamline and consolidate
intelligence analysis rather than create duplication and
mission confusion. I have prepared a chart \1\ that shows some
of the agencies that are now responsible for collecting and
analyzing terrorism-related intelligence. As you can see, it is
a very confusing picture. Including the integration center in
the chart does not make the picture any less complex. It simply
adds another box. We need to understand how this additional box
will improve the flow of information to the agencies and
individuals that need it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The chart entitled ``Primary Agencies Handling Terrorist-
Related Intelligence (With Terrorist Threat Integration Center)''
appears in the Appendix on page 119.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
A third question concerns the proper location of the new
center. Some experts believe that the Department of Homeland
Security should be the hub of all homeland security activities
including intelligence analysis. By reading the Homeland
Security Act, one could make a compelling case that the new
department was meant to be the fusion center for the analysis
of intelligence relating to homeland security. Should the
integration center therefore be under the control and the
direction of the Secretary of Homeland Security rather than the
Director of Central Intelligence? We would like to obtain a
better understanding of the reasoning behind the
administration's decision and how the integration center will
interact with the new Department of Homeland Security.
Another important question is, how will the center share
appropriate information with State and local authorities, our
front line troops in the war against terrorism? It is one thing
to analyze intelligence information well, but if the people who
need the intelligence do not receive it, then the effort has
been of little use.
Still another key issue is the center's ability to overcome
historic agency resistance to change. There have already been
news reports indicating opposition to the integration center in
both the CIA and the FBI. What is being done to overcome agency
resistance so that it does not undermine the center's core
mission?
Finally, will the integration center adequately address and
safeguard privacy and other legal concerns? The President's
proposal places the Director of the Central Intelligence in
charge of the integration center. In that position he will be
responsible for the analysis of domestic as well as foreign
intelligence. I understand that the administration has reviewed
the legal issues carefully but I want to ensure that the
center's activities will not infringe on the Constitutional
rights of law-abiding Americans.
At last week's hearing we did not hear of any opposition to
the concept of a Terrorist Threat Integration Center, but a
number of questions were raised by Members of this Committee
and by our witnesses concerning the implementation of this
plan. It is my hope that our expert administration witnesses
will help us fully answer those questions today. If the
administration can achieve its stated goals by the creation of
this new center, I believe that the integration center will
usher in important new capabilities in the way that our
government analyzes intelligence and shares it with those who
are responsible for protecting our people and our Nation. But
its success will depend on overcoming formidable historic
barriers to information sharing and cooperation.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today. At this
time I would like to ask the Senator from Minnesota if he has
any opening comments that he would like to make.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLEMAN
Senator Coleman. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I think your
opening statement did a tremendous job of summarizing areas of
concern for a number of us. Just looking at the chart up there
I think the question is, is it going to work, and can you make
it work? And can you make it work, by the way, not just for
those at the top levels but for those at the local level who
have to deal with it at the frontline. I come from the
perspective of a local citizen.
Second, Madam Chairman, let me reiterate the other concern
that you raised in that you have to, we have to make it work,
and you have to make it work in a way that does not infringe
upon the rights and Constitutional protections of privacy of
law-abiding American citizens. So I think those are the
challenges. We need to make this work. We need to work together
to make this work and I look forward to the testimony today.
Chairman Collins. Thank you very much, Senator Coleman.
Your perspective as a mayor will be very helpful as we sort
through how this new center should interact with State and
local law enforcement officials. That is often a challenge
because they do not have security clearances in most cases and
because we do not want to overwhelm the center with responding
to local inquiries, but at the same time there needs to be some
kind of system for sharing essential information and we look
forward to your insights in that regard.
I am very pleased to welcome our distinguished panel of
administration representatives today from the FBI, the CIA, and
the Department of Homeland Security. They are leading their
respective agency's efforts to create the new Terrorist Threat
Integration Center. We understand that the President's proposal
is still under development but we very much appreciate your
sharing your preliminary insights with us today. We are pleased
to be joined by the Hon. Gordon England who is Deputy Secretary
of the Department of Homeland Security, the first deputy
secretary. He previously served as Secretary of the Navy, and
before that had a distinguished career in the private sector at
General Dynamics Corporation.
Pasquale D'Amuro is the Executive Assistant Director for
Counter Terrorism at the FBI. He was appointed by the Director
to be the Executive Assistant Director for Counter Terrorism
and Counter Intelligence in November of last year. He is the
lead FBI official on counterterrorism issues and has had a
distinguished career with the FBI since 1979.
Our third panelist is Winston Wiley, who became the
Associate Director of Central Intelligence for Homeland
Security in May 2002. In this capacity Mr. Wiley is tasked with
ensuring the efficient and timely flow of intelligence in
support of the homeland security effort. He is also the acting
chair of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center Steering
Committee. So I very much appreciate his being with us as well.
I am going to start with Mr. Wiley. I understand that
Secretary England does not have a formal statement; is that
correct, Mr. Secretary?
Mr. England. Yes.
Chairman Collins. So we will start with Mr. Wiley. Thank
you, you may proceed.
STATEMENT OF WINSTON P. WILEY,\1\ ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL
INTELLIGENCE FOR HOMELAND SECURITY AND CHAIR, SENIOR STEERING
GROUP
Mr. Wiley. Thank you, Madam Chairman and Senator Coleman.
Let me begin by saying that the statement that I have and that
I have submitted for the record is not just my statement. It is
a joint statement that we have all participated in pulling
together. Indeed, the effort to put together a response to the
President's charge to come up with a threat integration center
was, from the beginning, seen as a joint effort. The senior
steering group, the members of whom are at the table and
sitting behind me, saw this as a joint effort and have created
an institution that we think represents that. So as I go
through these remarks do not think of them just as coming from
the Director of Central Intelligence. They, in fact, represent
the views of all of us in this effort.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Wiley appears in the Appendix on
page 113.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Turning to that, let me say a little bit about how we got
here. When the Director charged us with going forward with
putting some real meat on the bones of the proposal we knew
that the key agencies needed to be involved, and that was the
CIA, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security. But the
Department of Defense, the Department of State, and the Office
of Management and Budget would also need to play a role. So
they represented the core steering group and all of those are
here. You have introduced those at the table. John Brennan is
the Deputy Executive Director from the Central Intelligence
Agency. He represented the CIA while I represented the Director
in his community capacity. Cofer Black is the Ambassador at
Large and Special Assistant to Secretary Powell for
counterterrorism at the Department of State. And Rich Haver
from the Department of Defense is with us, and Steve McMillan
from OMB.
Again, integration and partnership in the sense of joint
venture is what we had in mind from the beginning. The hard
work of putting together the proposal was done by subject
matter experts from all these agencies and beyond. They
reported back to us, and we proposed formally up through the
DCI and our respective principals to the President, and that
was accepted.
Let me go through some of the points that are in the
statement that we have prepared without going actually to the
trouble of reading it all into the record. The first has to do
with the mission and structure and gets at one of the questions
that you had. The goal really is the full integration of U.S.
Government terrorist threat-related information and analysis.
Bringing together both the foreign intelligence that is
collected overseas and what we call the foreign intelligence
that is collected domestically by the Bureau and others, so
that it is fused and looked at in a comprehensive fashion.
The structure is designed to ensure rapid and unfettered
sharing of relevant information across department lines. We
keep using the term joint venture because we feel the TTIC
needs to be an institution that has parts of all of the holders
of information in that component. The objective is to create
value added efficiencies in analyzing the full array of
terrorist threat-related information.
You used the term brute force earlier, which is a fair
characterization. But what we have to acknowledge is that brute
force is exercised every day, and very diligently and carefully
by officers of the Central Intelligence Agency, other parts of
the TTIC, and the members of the FBI. We do make it work, but
we need to make it work better and we need to institutionalize
some of the things that are today being done simply because
people are so diligent and careful to get them done.
TTIC, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, will be
composed of elements from the Department of Homeland Security,
from the FBI's counter terrorist division, from the Counter
Terrorist Center at CIA, as well as elements of the Department
of Defense, DIA, JITF-CT, NSA, NIMA, and other agencies that
have a stake in what TTIC will do. The State Department is a
good example of that. TTIC will combine the terrorist threat-
related information in a way to provide a more focused and
comprehensive government counterterrorist intelligence effort
in defining the threat.
I have mentioned that among the most important features for
TTIC is unfettered access to all information, all intelligence
information, whether it is from raw reports to finished
analytic assessments. That is essential in order to be able to
pull the work together and has been clearly reflected in the
discussions that led up to the Homeland Security Act as well as
the other discussions post-September 11. TTIC will need to
provide all-source threat assessments both to the national
leadership and, as Senator Coleman said, to the broader
homeland security community which certainly includes State and
local as well as private sector officials, and finding the ways
to do that in the appropriate formats is one of the key
missions.
TTIC will also oversee a national counterterrorism tasking
and requirements system. Intelligence, in order to work,
fundamentally has to begin with a requirements process that
identifies the key questions that collectors have to go collect
against. That information is brought back, assessed, analyzed,
distributed and then balanced against those requirements. We
talk about an intelligence cycle, but it begins at its heart
with a requirements system and TTIC will play a key role in
organizing that on the counterterrorist homeland security side.
Finally, another key responsibility will be to maintain a
database of known and suspected terrorists that is accessible
at the Federal and non-Federal level with appropriate controls
and security clearances, and bringing the various databases
that exist today in various places together into a centralized
capability.
The principal objective, and again it gets back to your
first question is that TTIC needs to close the gaps that
separate the analysis of foreign source and domestic source
terrorist threat information and ensure optimum support of the
wide range of customers for homeland security information,
those at the Federal level as well as those in the State, local
and private sectors.
Let me turn to a second point that is addressed in the
statement. TTIC cannot reach its full end-state capabilities
overnight. We need, obviously, to grow and we need to grow as
quickly as we can. But we also need to grow in a way that does
not smother the effort by being over-ambitious in its initial
days. Stand-up will occur by May 1. It will focus on
integrating terrorist threat-related information and pick up
some of the responsibilities that are today exercised jointly
between the FBI and the CTC. One of those is the preparation of
a daily threat matrix that you have heard about. Situation
reports, updates on threats, and interagency terrorist threat
warnings, picking up those responsibilities from the various
government agencies is critical.
As soon as possible thereafter, TTIC should become the
principal gateway for policymaker requests for assessments
about terrorist threats. As it grows in capability, and what we
see is an incremental growth as we move towards its ultimate
full strength that I will talk about, TTIC would stock and
maintain the database of known and suspected terrorists that I
talked about. It will be producing the current intelligence and
terrorist threat-related assessment, drawing on resources not
just in TTIC but in the various agencies that are contributors
to TTIC but are maintaining some inherent capability of their
own. TTIC will be able to reach back into its parent agencies
to provide it with an instantaneous surge capability that draws
on the strength of a wide range of agencies.
What we are trying to do is make sure that we build on what
works. We do not want to undo things that are working well, and
that is especially true when it comes to the integration of the
work of collectors of information and the analysts, whether
that is at the CIA or in the Intelligence Community or at the
FBI. That is happening today. We want to build on that and make
sure that there is a better fusing across the domestic and
foreign side.
When TTIC reaches its full end-strength capability it will
be collocated with the CIA--the DCI's--Counter Terrorist Center
and with the FBI's Counter Terrorism Division in a building
that has yet to be acquired but that we are actively working
on. Prior to that, TTIC--while it is not a CIA organization, it
is an organization that reports to the DCI in his capacity as
Director of Central Intelligence--will be located on the CIA
compound, as are other independent Intelligence Community
entities today. So we are sensitive to not creating it as a CIA
organization, but the smartest place to build the interim
capability is in space that we have at the CIA.
Let me talk about the command structure quickly. The
director of TTIC needs to be a senior, very senior U.S.
Government official who reports directly to the DCI in his
statutory capacity as head of the Intelligence Community. He
would be appointed by the director in consultation with the
other partners in pulling together the TTIC. The director of
TTIC will have the final review and approval authority for all
of the intelligence that is prepared by TTIC. For national
level analysis that is produced outside of TTIC, our
expectation is that the director of TTIC will play a role in
coordinating that, recognizing that agencies may do some
departmental work just as is done today across the Intelligence
Community.
I mentioned information access and the criticality of that.
TTIC as an organization must have access to the full array of
terrorist threat-related information within the U.S.
Government. We can do that consistent with all the necessary
protections and working smart by making sure that individual
members of TTIC have access to information they need to do
their work while the organization as a whole, and the
leadership of the organization, have access to information that
is comparable to what the head of CTC at CIA and the head of
the Counter Terrorist Division at FBI has. So we think we can
work both the necessary sharing within the organization and do
the necessary work of protecting the most sensitive
information.
Critical to making this work is a robust information
technology base, one that will be particularly vigorous in the
collocated end-state when CTC, CTD, and TTIC are located
together. They all need to be able to draw on their own
information bases, but we need to be able to bring that
information together in the TTIC environment and share it in
ways that allow us to do the most detailed analysis, use the
most modern tools, and have the most aggressive sharing
mechanisms available to us.
I would close with a thought about the work of TTIC just as
you did. It is a work in progress. In fact if we do it right,
TTIC will always be work in progress. It needs to start small.
It needs to grow quickly. But we need not to be locked into
particular institutional solutions. Rather with our eye on the
ball, what we are trying to do is make sure that we have the
best mechanisms in place to provide threat information to our
national leadership and to the American people. We will be
making adjustments as we go along based on what we think works
rather than tell you today that we have the perfect plan that
takes us from here out to the year 2010.
With those thoughts, let me close and I think my friend Pat
D'Amuro has some comments that he may want to share.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Mr. Wiley. Mr. D'Amuro.
STATEMENT OF PASQUALE J. D'AMURO,\1\ EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT
DIRECTOR FOR COUNTERTERRORISM/COUNTERINTELLIGENCE, FEDERAL
BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI)
Mr. D'Amuro. Thank you, Madam Chairman and Senator Coleman.
Thank you for the opportunity to add just a few short comments
from the statement I have with respect to Mr. Wiley's efforts
with the steering committee.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. D'Amuro appears in the Appendix
on page 117.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
As we know, President Bush recently emphasized during a
speech at FBI headquarters that the FBI has no greater mission,
no greater priority than preventing the next terrorist act in
America. We strongly support the formation of the TTIC and we
are proud to be a partner with both the CIA, Homeland Security,
and all the other participating agencies.
The FBI's experience in conducting complex criminal and
terrorist investigations has shown that analysts are most
effective when they are in constant and close communication
with the investigators. For this reason we strongly support and
look forward to the expeditious implementation of plans to
collocate not only the TTIC but the FBI Counter Terrorism
Division and the CIA Counterterrorism Center along with the
Department of Homeland Security.
As you know, the FBI has established 66 joint terrorist
task forces in the field offices around the country as well as
a national joint terrorism center at FBI headquarters. The
JTTF's partner FBI personnel with hundreds of investigators
from Federal, State, and local agencies. These partnerships
provide an effective and efficient mechanism to collect
domestic intelligence crucial to preventing the next attack
domestically. The fusion of this domestic and international
threat intelligence is critically important for the FBI to
complete its mission of preventing the next and future attacks
domestically.
The FBI views the TTIC as an important resource. The TTIC
will not only provide all-source integrated analysis to the FBI
but also to the officials in State and local law enforcement
who are essential partners in the fight against terrorism. We
recognize that the two-way flow of information between Federal
and local law enforcement is necessary to continuously sharpen
both the collection and the analysis of threat-related
information. Once again, the 66 JTTFs across the country
provide an effective channel to share the TTIC analytical
products with our partners in State and local law enforcement.
We are committed to working with the Department of Homeland
Security to push information and analysis out of the TTIC to
all Federal, State, and local agencies.
We are expanding our ability to collect, analyze, and
disseminate intelligence. The centerpiece of the director's
efforts is the establishment of an executive assistant director
for intelligence who will have direct authority and
responsibility for the FBI's national intelligence program.
Specifically, the EAD for intelligence will be responsible for
ensuring that the TTIC's reporting requirements are met by all
the field offices.
Our support of the TTIC will not change our mission,
priorities, or operations. In fact, the TTIC will only
strengthen our capabilities. The Bureau is uniquely positioned
to bring both national security and law enforcement authorities
to bear in the war against terrorism. Recently, the ability to
develop intelligence on terrorist activities and use law
enforcement powers to disrupt them was exemplified in Buffalo,
New York where seven al-Qaeda associates and sympathizers were
indicted in September 2002 for providing material support to
terrorism.
Every FBI agent is trained to recognize that along with
these broad authorities comes the responsibility to implement
them fairly and in accordance with the protections provided by
the Constitution. It is important to note that the Bureau's
role, and the roles of all TTIC participants, must and will
remain consistent with the protections provided by privacy
laws, executive orders, Attorney General guidelines, and other
relevant legal authorities under the protection of the
Constitution to safeguard the civil liberties of the citizens
of this country.
Again, I will keep this statement short because I know you
have a lot of questions, but thank you for allowing me to
appear today.
Chairman Collins. Thank you very much.
Secretary England, do you have anything you would like to
add to your colleagues?
STATEMENT OF HON. GORDON ENGLAND, DEPUTY SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT
OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. England. Let me just make a comment, Madam Chairman.
First of all, I thank Mr. Wiley for all his work with chairing
this group that we put together. I will tell you that the TTIC
is vitally important to the Department of Homeland Security. We
have been part of the effort to create this structure in
response to the President's initiative. This is vitally
important for us to do our job in the Department of Homeland
Security, so you will find us a very significant proponent of
this approach; very supportive, and we will work very closely
with all the other agencies to make this very successful. In my
judgment, this is very important for America, so it has the
full support of the Department of Homeland Security and we will
be happy to work with you as we fully develop this concept in
the coming weeks and months ahead.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
Mr. Wiley and Mr. D'Amuro, our government already has a
Counter Terrorist Center which is under the supervision of the
Director of Central Intelligence, and when you look at the
details of the current Counter Terrorist Center and the
proposed Terrorist Threat Integration Center they seem, at
first analysis, to be quite similar. I quoted Director Tenet's
comments that it was supposed to be all sources of intelligence
would be analyzed. Both do have access to all sources of
government information about terrorism. Both are under the
supervision of the Director of Central Intelligence. I believe
both have staff from a number of agencies conducting
intelligence analysis. In light of those similarities I have
two questions.
First, in practical terms how will the proposed Terrorist
Threat Integration Center be different from the Counter
Terrorist Center that already exists on the organization chart
\1\ that I showed you?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The chart entitled ``Primary Agencies Handling Terrorist-
Related Intelligence (With Terrorist Threat Integration Center)''
appears in the Appendix on page 119.
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Second, given the fact that at least at first blush they
appear very similar, how will the new center address problems
that have plagued our analytical efforts so far? They seem so
similar that I am concerned about duplication. And if they are
structured in similar ways, how will the new center be an
improvement over what we have?
I am going to ask a similar question to Mr. D'Amuro.
Mr. Wiley. Thank you, Senator. I think that at first blush
it is possible to say that the TTIC bears a similarity to the
Counter Terrorist Center. But I think that you have to go a
step beyond that first level of analysis. I think that what you
have in TTIC is a much more vigorous presence of Intelligence
Community and law enforcement and DHS employees in a common
environment, with reachback capability to their respective
agencies, in which all of that information is brought together.
CTC does have, and has long had, and will continue to have
detailees from other agencies in it. But what we envision in
TTIC is a more robust presence and a more explicit set of
responsibilities for integrating that flow of domestically
collected foreign intelligence, which is growing. The TTIC by
itself is not the only change that is going on. The change in
collection philosophy and dissemination philosophy--what is
going on at the Bureau--Pat D'Amuro can talk about--is
instrumental in helping to make TTIC a success. It will
increase the amount of domestically collected information about
foreign terrorist groups that can be fused. And by bringing the
analysts together, having them work literally in a common
environment, I think that is a significant step up from where
we are today.
Chairman Collins. Mr. D'Amuro, the FBI has a
counterterrorism division. It is my understanding that is still
going to exist when the new center is created. How can we avoid
duplication?
Mr. D'Amuro. I think that it is important to understand
that the TTIC is being created for the fusion of an analytical
product with respect to threat information. It is not an
operational entity. The counterterrorism division at the FBI
headquarters will still maintain its operational role
throughout the country as being the lead agency domestically
with respect to counterterrorism investigations.
If I could just add a few comments to Mr. Wiley's--it is
the fusion of that intelligence and the production of one
analytical product that I see extremely critically important
that we'll be able, through the JTTFs, to disseminate that
product to all State and local law enforcement authorities that
are part of the JTTF. There is also a program underway at the
Bureau to reach out for all the State and local entities that
are not members of the JTTF so that we can make sure, not only
do we provide them with one fused analytical product, but also
tap into their ability to collect information and intelligence
which would be critical to preventing the next terrorist act.
So while the TTIC is being formed for the fusion of the
intelligence product, both CTC will maintain its operational
responsibility as well as the FBI maintaining its
responsibility for the conduct of intelligence and criminal
investigations with respect to counterterrorism.
Chairman Collins. Let me follow up on the use of sharing
information with State and local law enforcement. You have
described a system under which the joint terrorism task force,
I guess, would act as an intermediary to distribute
information; is that correct?
Mr. D'Amuro. What the plan is, is that through the national
JTTF at FBI headquarters, that would be the distribution
mechanism for the fused analytical product out to all the
JTTFs, the 66 JTTFs that are now in existence across the
country. In addition to that, we are going to be reaching out
to all State and local entities even if they are not permanent
members of the JTTFs. So, yes, it will be the mechanism for
distribution of that product.
Chairman Collins. But what is going to happen in the other
direction? The complaints that I hear from police chiefs of our
major cities in Maine is that when they are in a state of high
alert, as we are now, and they have reason to be concerned--and
this happened recently in Portland, Maine where a foreign
national was taking photographs of our oil tank farms on the
Portland waterfront, and when the police chief tried to get
information from the FBI about whether this individual was on
the watch list, he had a very difficult time in getting an
answer from the FBI.
What are we doing in the other direction? I understand when
you have a product or information that needs to be shared it
will go through the joint terrorism task force. But what does a
police chief in Portland, Maine who is concerned about the
vulnerabilities of our ports and sees something suspicious, or
certainly raising concern, how do we improve the flow of
information in the other direction?
Mr. D'Amuro. That is the main purpose of the creation of
the Office of Intelligence for the Bureau. What the Office of
Intelligence will do and what the Bureau has not done in the
past is establish intelligence requirements. It will ensure
that the field offices are out collecting the intelligence
necessary for the protection of this country. Providing
information and intelligence with respect to vulnerabilities of
various seaports and other infrastructure protection matters
will be the mission of Homeland Security. We will provide that
information through the executive assistant director, setting
those requirements, make sure those requirements are met, and
making sure that intelligence is collected in the field.
I am unaware of the situation that you mention but that
police chief should have been able to get information from the
joint terrorism task force, which in that case would have been
out of Boston and I believe a resident agency in Portland. That
is the way it is supposed to work. That is the vision of how we
plan to collect that intelligence and making sure that it gets
to the different agencies that it needs to go to. That
establishment of the requirements will not be the only
mechanism for the Office of Executive Assistant Director for
Intelligence. We are also changing the metrics by how we judge
our field offices and how we judge and promote executives into
the Bureau. They will have requirements for the collection of
that intelligence that will be used in their performance
appraisals.
Chairman Collins. Senator Akaka.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA
Senator Akaka. Thank you. Thank you very much, Madam
Chairman. I am pleased that you are holding this hearing today.
We have had a hearing before this that raised some issues and I
think we came out of that one being concerned about maybe
having too many or creating too many intelligence centers.
Senator Rudman at that time expressed concern about confusion
in our intelligence analysis and collection. So this hearing
will certainly help us, I am sure, to learn more about what we
need to do.
As I hear your concerns too, the difference between the
former structure and the one that we have now is that we have
added TTIC to it. Hopefully TTIC will resolve some of these
problems. So I am glad that we are having this and may I ask
that my statement be placed in the record?
Chairman Collins. Without objection.
[The prepared statement of Senator Akaka follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA
Madam Chairman, the issues raised in the first hearing on the
President's proposal to create a Terrorist Threat Integration Center
(TTIC) were important ones. I am pleased that you are holding this
hearing with the administration.
At our last hearing, Senator Rudman, one of the witnesses, made the
point that we need to be careful to limit the confusion in our
intelligence analysis and collection. As I mentioned at that last
hearing, I am concerned that we may be creating too many intelligence
centers to evaluate the same information and respond to the same
threats.
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 which
apparently will include representatives from all these different
centers.
Mr. Wiley, in his testimony, will suggest that TTIC is going to
have all the information, including raw reports, that other agencies
are producing and that it will maintain a database of terrorists
accessible to some non-federal officials and entities. This library of
terrorist reports will be useful only if it contains accurate
information and is available to the people who may need it the most--
local police forces and other first responders.
I am concerned that there still appears to be a disconnect between
information and the people who need it at the local level. All the
reports in the world will not be of any value if no one who needs to
know can find them.
I am also worried that this system does not provide a mechanism for
ensuring investigations are fully carried out. There were numerous
times prior to 9-11 when FBI agents reported suspicious activities
which have subsequently been linked to those attacks but those reports
were not followed up on. I want to know--the American public wants to
know--who is responsible? Who is in charge of ensuring that all the
intelligence reports are acted upon?
Will this new intelligence center resolve that problem or only add
to the problem?
I look forward to the testimony and hope these questions will
finally be resolved.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. I am so glad to have our panel
this morning, and especially Secretary England. Good to see
you, and always good to be with you.
Mr. England. Senator, good to be with you. I wish I was
with you in your home State today, however. [Laughter.]
Senator Akaka. One hundred percent agreement.
Secretary England, at our last hearing on this subject
Governor Gilmore pointed to the institutional and cultural
barriers to intelligence sharing, especially with State and
local officials as mentioned by the Chairman. Although I share
his concern, I worry that we are creating a multitude of
intelligence agencies, all of them performing important
functions including sharing information with this new agency
TTIC. However, it is still not clear who is responsible for
ensuring the proper response to a terrorist threat. So let me
pose a scenario to my question.
The CIA receives information about a foreign terrorist
group that is thinking about targeting cruise ships. The FBI
gets information about foreigners with seafaring backgrounds
entering the United States for some illegal purpose. The
Honolulu Police Department receives reports about suspicious
people loitering about or around the port.
Question, who is responsible for putting all these bits of
information together, instigating an investigation, alerting
local officials, and telling the public what it should do? Is
it the Director of the CIA, the FBI, or the Secretary for
Homeland Security? As you can see, some of the confusion that
has resulted, especially from the periodic announcements that
we are on high terrorist alert, comes because the public is not
certain who is in charge of dealing with these threats. So my
question then is, who is responsible for putting all of these
bits together?
Mr. England. Senator, I believe that is clear to me. With
this new Terrorist Threat Integration Center, all the data
would come into this one center. The nice thing about this--
this is not a new agency, by the way. This is a center. This is
an integration of existing capability that we put together so
we can collaborate and exchange data and analyze data jointly
to get a best answer from the data sources that we have. So all
the data would go into this center.
We, the Department of Homeland Security, will have analysts
and we will have assessment people in this center. So this is
part of Homeland Security. Our responsibility is to relate
these threats to our infrastructure. So we will have assessment
capability, unique assessment capability that when we see these
threats, our people will be aware of critical infrastructure,
public and private, throughout America and throughout our
territories, etc. That will be our job and our obligation to
make those connects, to alert the appropriate people and to put
protective measures in place, or respond if we have to. But
that will clearly be a responsibility of the Department of
Homeland Security working as part of the TTIC with the CIA, the
FBI, and the other intelligence agencies.
So I believe that the TTIC will provide a capability to do
that kind of assessment and to make those kinds of connections.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. I see more the need of TTIC as
you explain it.
Mr. Wiley, you are deputy chief of the CIA's Counter
Terrorist Center and I understand that there is discussion
about collocating the Terrorist Threat Integration Center with
the CIA's Counter Terrorist Center. As you know, the CTC is
unique. Operations officers are brought together with an
analyst as an integral part of the targeting operation and
analytical functions of counterterrorism efforts. The TTIC is
not supposed to have an operational function.
First, how are you going to maintain operational security
with CIA operation staff working together with TTIC personnel?
And second, what is the rationale for involving TTIC
directly in operations as is now the case in the CIA's CTC?
Mr. Wiley. Senator, the Counter Terrorist Center today, as
it was when I was in charge of it through December 1997, is an
integrated environment that involves our operations officers,
technical collection officers from other agencies, and analysts
from the Directorate of Intelligence as well as some analysts
from other parts of the Intelligence Community. Operational
security there has been maintained from the early days of the
Center back in the mid-1980's through today by making sure that
all those in the Center have access to the information they
need to conduct their work, what we call horizontal
compartmentalization rather than isolating--the analysts are
going to have this slice of information and operators have that
slice of information.
I believe that same philosophy can and should be extended
to TTIC. TTIC itself does not have an operational role and it
is important for legal and privacy and chain of command reasons
to separate the two. But it is perfectly possible for them to
work together in a secure environment with appropriate caveats
for access to information. We have done that. We have a 15, 20-
year track record now of having done that and I think it can be
extended to the TTIC. I think that the same applies in the work
that we have seen with the FBI.
So I am always concerned about operational security, but I
believe we have the experience for dealing with this.
Senator Akaka. I am glad we are raising these questions
because, if need be, I am sure we will find an answer to some
of these questions.
Mr. D'Amuro, in your testimony you have indicated that
there are now 66 FBI joint terrorism task forces around the
country. Are these all up and running, and are they all fully
staffed? Do they also include local officials?
Mr. D'Amuro. Yes, Senator, I believe--the JTTF is not a new
concept to the Bureau. It was created 23 years ago in New York
City. At the time a lot of people thought that this was not
going to work. It turned out to be visionary. It turned out to
be a very effective tool, and the reason it is so effective is
by including other Federal, State, and local agencies on the
JTTFs. So the 66 JTTFs that I have identified in my testimony
are up and running. What we are trying to do is get some
critically needed training for them so that they know how all
of these JTTFs are supposed to operate.
We had, at the time of September 11, I believe it was
approximately 26 JTTFs across the country. So by expanding to
66 now you can see the need for training those JTTFs and making
sure they understand how they are supposed to operate. They do
include State and local participants. We have received over
1,200 requests for security clearances. As of this date I
believe we have 936 approved at the secret level and we are
working to try to resolve the rest of them.
So they are the shining star, the critical piece of the
Bureau's counterterrorism mission. It is how we not only fuse
intelligence but it also gives us the ability to go out and act
upon that intelligence, to be able to disrupt or prevent
terrorist acts as you saw, as I mentioned earlier, in Buffalo.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. My time has expired. May I just
ask a question of Secretary England?
Chairman Collins. Certainly.
Senator Akaka. Because I mentioned cruise ships, are cruise
ships considered part of the critical infrastructure?
Mr. England. Senator, I am not sure they are critical
infrastructure. They are certainly important in terms of
protection. But what we will do as part of our department--keep
in mind we have only been in place for a month so far, but one
of our functions will be to identify the most critical
infrastructure in the country and to prioritize. So that has
worked under the Office of Homeland Security, but that will
expand greatly under the Department of Homeland Security. So it
will be part of the total infrastructure. It will be studied,
examined, and prioritized.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you very much. Senator Coleman.
Senator Coleman. Thank you, Madam Chairman. First, a
comment directed to Mr. D'Amuro. As a former local elected
official I appreciate the work of the JTTFs and believe that
they really are a wonderful model and work very well. But my
concern is this and I hope you will reflect on it. I think they
do a very good job of collecting. You talked about that, of
collecting data. I still think there are real challenges in
terms of--it is the question that Madam Chairman raised about
information getting back to those at the local level.
In addition to chiefs of police, there are mayors who are
held responsible for knowing what is going on and there is a
question about whether they are contained in the security link.
Do they have the relevant clearances? What can they be told? So
much of what we are talking about depends upon public
confidence, and the mayor at the local level is the one who is
supposed to know what is going on. If you have a lack of
understanding, of someone in the dark at the local level, it
undermines public confidence and I think has a very
debilitating effect on folks that--moms and dads in our
community.
So I do hope that we can go back and you can look at how we
do a better job connecting with mayors, with folks at the local
level, not just in the receipt of the information which we do a
very good job now, I believe, of integrating local law
enforcement with Federal authorities at the JTTFs. But it is
getting it back, and that is still, I think, an honest concern
and I would hope that you would reflect on it and figure out
some way to deal with it.
Secretary England, I appreciate your clarifying so we all
understand the TTIC, they are not an agency. It is a center. My
question for you was, and I think I heard you respond somewhat,
does Homeland Security expect to create its own operational
intelligence unit? If it does, how do you then deal with this
issue again of duplication? We have the FBI that focuses on the
local level. They have an operational unit. We have CIA--have
operational units. Are we creating another operational unit in
government that will then work with TTIC?
Mr. England. Senator, I am not quite sure what you mean by
an operational unit. We will have a separate analysis center to
interpret the data that takes place outside in the TTIC. So the
purpose of the TTIC, I mean, the benefit to us is that we
rapidly stand up to a capability where we are part of the TTIC,
so we participate. Think of it as part of the Department of
Homeland Security, just like it is a part of all the other
agencies working together with access to all the data. So we
will have all the access that all the other agencies have to
intelligence data.
We will have some additional analysis people and assessment
people that are not in the TTIC that help relate that data to
our infrastructure and also, frankly, to be able to discuss it
with myself, Secretary Ridge, and other people.
Also, by the way, the question about dissemination of data,
we do have to have processes in place to make sure that we do
disseminate data to State and local first responders, and we
are working with FBI in that regard right now. That is a very
critical part of this also, to understand what data needs to be
passed down throughout America.
Senator Coleman. Again, while I strongly support and
understand the importance of trying to make sure we have a more
efficient sharing of information and analysis of information, I
would just again then raise the question, we have FBI out
there. They do the analysis. We have CIA out there. Please,
please, please let us make sure that we do not create another
layer of intelligence analysis. Certainly you and Secretary
Ridge need to have information analyzed brought to you so you
can respond, but I just raise that concern again.
Mr. England. You are absolutely right, sir. I can assure
you that--the intent is just the opposite, to make sure we take
full utilization of the TTIC.
Senator Coleman. Following up then again with the
responsibility that you and Secretary Ridge have to analyze--to
receive information of the threat analysis and then articulate
that to the public, is it the sense that--I am trying to
understand its function here. Is the TTIC the agency then that
will provide the underlying information and you then take that
information and then come to a conclusion that we are at yellow
or at orange and here is where we go from here?
Mr. England. That will be one of the fundamental analysis
base that we will use to assess the threats; that is correct,
Senator. So that is the all-source data that will be available
to us, and again, to the other agencies. So we will analyze
that data, have full access to that data, and we will help
assess that data along with the other agencies.
We will analyze, but largely we will assess. That is, what
is the effect of that data on infrastructure and across
America? What is the effect of that data? So when people talk
about an analysis center, in my judgment it is really both
analysis and assessment. We will do more assessment, less
analysis, but we will have analysis people located within the
center.
Senator Coleman. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Finally, we are
entering--these are works in progress. We have entered a
strange new world, unfortunately, post-September 11. Though we
always like to take pride in our ability to do things the best,
and I believe that is true about America, there are certainly
other countries that have been dealing with these types of
situations longer than we have. For us so often it was looking
at foreign terrorist threats and now we have to understand and
reflect upon the domestic terrorist threats, and the
integration of foreign sources and domestic sources. Are there
other models out there? Are there folks, Israel, or some other
places that have dealt with this before, that are helping us
shape this, or is this simply kind of a whole cloth concept
that we have put together? Mr. Wiley from the CIA or anybody on
the panel?
Mr. Wiley. Senator, there certainly are models and Israel,
the United Kingdom, our partners in Western Europe to one
degree or another have attempted to do this. No one, I think,
has faced quite the challenge that we do in terms of scale; the
size, the openness of our society are all things that
contribute to a different environment. But both through the
Intelligence Community, and I know the law enforcement
community, my friend Ambassador Black in his exchanges, we are
very much interested in drawing lessons from others and
incorporating that in all facets of it, and I am sure the same
is true for the Department of Homeland Security.
Mr. D'Amuro. I will just add to that, if I could, Senator.
We have a very robust liaison program with a lot of different
intelligence and law enforcement services across the world. The
United States poses a unique situation as Winston has said. We
have a Constitution. We operate within the Constitution. I
think the beauty of the system that we have, in particular
talking about the FBI, is that we have both the intelligence
tools and the law enforcement tools in the same bag.
I do not mean to go back to Buffalo again but it is a prime
example of how we are able--that was a pure intelligence
collection operation. When we learned that one individual was
overseas, we were able to dispatch individuals to interview
this person. And when we learned through that interview that
there were legal statements, legal problems with some of the
statements that he made, that actual crimes had taken place,
the Buffalo division within 24 hours was able to act very
quickly and round up those individuals that we had under our
intelligence investigation, and get them off the street and
prevent a possible terrorist event.
So the beauty of having both the intelligence tools and the
law enforcement tools in an organization that has operated
within the Constitution, I think, is one of the benefits of our
systems.
Senator Coleman. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator Coleman. Senator
Levin.
Senator Levin. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
My major concern has been and continues to be, where will
the principal responsibility for analyzing foreign intelligence
rest? This has been a subject that Senator Coleman and I think
others have made reference to today, and I believe our
Chairman, as a matter of fact, specifically asked that question
about the relationship between the CTC and TTIC. I am not
satisfied with what I understand the answers were. I am sorry I
could not be here to hear them in person but the report of
those answers leaves me very unsatisfied.
It is a huge problem. There is a lot of information that we
received prior to September 11 that was not analyzed, that fell
through cracks. If we are going to diffuse responsibility
instead of fuse it, we are going to have confusion instead of
focused responsibility to analyze--and I use that word
precisely--foreign intelligence. Not domestic intelligence yet.
I want to talk about intelligence.
Now on January 17--and by the way, one other thing: We will
be lucky if we do this well once. We have got 17,000 pieces of
intelligence coming into the CTC a week; 17,000 pieces of
intelligence. The CTC produces 300 outgoing intelligence
products a month, and they have got almost 300 analysts.
We have got to understand precisely the relationship
between TTIC and CTC. We cannot blur that responsibility. We
have got to focus it so that we can hold folks accountable if
there are failures. Otherwise, CTC will say that was a TTIC
responsibility, and TTIC will say that was a CTC
responsibility, and we cannot have that situation.
I asked Secretary Ridge, on January 17 when he was before
the Committee, the following question, will the principal
responsibility to analyze foreign intelligence from all sources
remain in the CTC? His answer was, that is correct.
Now I think the statute itself is unclear on that issue.
The homeland security statute is unclear because it creates a
new Undersecretary for Information Analysis and Infrastructure
Protection inside the Homeland Security Department and gives
that Undersecretary the responsibility to assess, which is what
Deputy Secretary England just made reference to, receive, and
analyze law enforcement information, intelligence information
and other information from agencies of the Federal Government,
State and local government agencies, and to integrate such
information in order to identify and assess the nature and
scope of the terrorist threats.
Given that language, I asked Secretary Ridge whether or not
there is then confusion. Where is the principal responsibility
to analyze those 17,000 pieces of foreign intelligence that
come in every week? Is it going to be CTC or is it going to be
Homeland Security? Now I ask the same question about TTIC
because now we not only have a CTC which apparently is going to
proceed unencumbered that is supposed to analyze all foreign
intelligence from all sources, and has FBI sitting there, and
has the Coast Guard sitting there, and all the other agencies
at the CTC. And now we are going to have Homeland Security that
has a statutory responsibility to analyze and now a TTIC
responsibility, apparently in the CIA, to analyze what seems to
me to be the same information coming from all sources as the
CTC is analyzing.
We have got to be clear in statute and in practice where
this responsibility lies and I repeat what I said, if we do
this well once we will be very lucky. This is a huge challenge
to put together 17,000 pieces of intelligence a month that come
in, and to analyze it, and to connect the dots. The idea that
we might do it twice or three times to me is wrong in terms of
accountability and it is wrong in terms of responsibility and
it is wrong in terms of practicality.
Now let me start with you, Deputy Secretary England. Is the
principal responsibility to analyze foreign intelligence going
to remain in the CTC?
Mr. England. Yes, sir.
Senator Levin. Then how is that different from the
responsibility which we are giving to TTIC to do the analysis
of all intelligence, foreign and domestic apparently? How is
that different?
Mr. England. Senator, we will basically collate resources
so that all the data is available in one place.
Senator Levin. Is that TTIC or CTC?
Mr. England. The TTIC itself will have access to all the
source data.
Senator Levin. I know they will have access. Who is
responsible to analyze all this intelligence coming in? Will it
be TTIC or CTC?
Mr. England. My judgment is it will be CTC for the foreign
intelligence. For domestic intelligence it will be the FBI. But
in this facility we will then have people available with access
to this data, access to conclusions that we can then analyze
further, if necessary, because of data we may know in terms of
homeland security, threats to America, whatever. So we would
have in that facility access to ask additional questions,
understand further, make additional assessments, etc. So it is
a resource available for our analysts to be part of it, and
also our people to assess that----
Senator Levin. Wait a minute. For our analyst to be--who is
our?
Mr. England. Department of Homeland Security will have some
analysts in this facility, so we can understand the data in
terms of our mission, which is to assess that data relative to
threats to America.
Senator Levin. I understand the assessment and where it
belongs and where it is. I just want to be real clear. What you
just said is, principal responsibility to analyze information,
intelligence relative to foreign intelligence will remain in
the CTC; domestic intelligence will remain in the FBI. The
reports from both of those entities will come to TTIC to do
whatever it wants to do with the reports that come in from both
CTC and from FBI; is that correct?
Mr. England. That is correct. That is my understanding.
Senator Levin. I think that is fine if it is clear, but I
think we all have to be real clear now on where that
responsibility lies and I would like to see either an executive
order, or I would like to see a decision by the agencies
involved, a joint decision placing the principal responsibility
exactly where you said. And if it is not there, where is it? We
cannot have unfocused location of the analysis responsibility
of foreign intelligence and domestic intelligence. We cannot
blur it. We cannot duplicate it. We will be making a tragic
error if we do. Instead of fusing we will be confusing, and I
think that is----
Mr. England. Senator, you and I agree on this. This is not
an issue at all. I concur completely with your approach. I
believe my colleagues do also. That is the approach that we are
using for TTIC, so I do not believe we have any disagreement
here at all.
Senator Levin. TTIC becomes a customer essentially. It has
got the ability to do additional analysis, I understand, and it
has a right to access anything it wants, I understand. But it
is basically a customer of CTC and FBI when it takes the
reports of foreign intelligence from CTC, domestic intelligence
from FBI, fuses those reports, does whatever it wants with
those reports, and then makes its own assessments. If it wants
additional analysis it has the power to do additional analysis
on its own. It can, I presume, task FBI or CTC to do additional
analysis.
Mr. England. Yes.
Senator Levin. But the principal responsibility is where
you just identified. Is that your understanding as well, Mr.
D'Amuro?
Mr. D'Amuro. Yes, Senator, it is. I will try to explain it
real quickly and I know Mr. Wiley may want to jump in on this.
The mission of the TTIC is to fuse threat information--to
provide one-stop analytical products for threat analysis to law
enforcement, the Intelligence Community, everyone. It is an
interagency function. All the agencies are at the table to
include DOD, Homeland Security, the FBI, and the CIA. They will
fuse that product and provide an analytical product with
respect to threat analysis.
Mr. Wiley. I think Mr. D'Amuro has it exactly right,
Senator. I think that, Senator, before you came in I said that
one of the things about TTIC is that our intention is to build
on those things that have been working well. The close
collaboration between collectors and analysts, both within the
agency at CIA and between CIA and the FBI, because I think that
is one of the things that has been working well. We want to do
precisely what you are talking about, is bring the analysis of
foreign intelligence, whether it is collected overseas or
collected inside the United States, together in a seamless
fashion, just as you are saying. TTIC will be in a position--by
virtue of having CIA people, FBI people, other Intelligence
Community people, DHS people together--in a position to do
that. But I cannot be all things on day one, and will have to--
--
Senator Levin. No, not on day one. Is its goal to duplicate
CTC?
Mr. Wiley. Its goal is not to duplicate CTC.
Senator Levin. It is to take the product of CTC and FBI and
to then act--to put those products----
Mr. Wiley. Over time, Senator, I believe that a TTIC, if we
make it work right, will absorb some of those analytic
production responsibilities from CTC and from the FBI to create
that single fused product that we have been talking about.
Senator Levin. Is that the ultimate goal?
Mr. Wiley. Yes, sir, I believe so.
Senator Levin. That is different then from what I was just
told.
Mr. Wiley. I think it should be.
Senator Levin. I am not saying it should not. By the way,
it is fine with me, so long as it is clear. But now that is
very different from what Secretary England said.
Mr. England. Senator, it is going to take time for this to
evolve. This is still--I mean, we now have, I believe, a
working concept, a structure of how we can go forward, greatly
improve from where we are today. How this evolves I think is
another question. We are a long way to get to that
``evolutionary stage'' and we are going to have--it takes a
period of time just to stand up this capability. So while Mr.
Wiley may be right, I think there is a lot of discussion before
we ever get to that point in time.
Mr. Wiley. I agree.
Senator Levin. Is TTIC going to be represented at the CTC?
Mr. Wiley. It will be cheek by jowl with----
Senator Levin. Will it be sitting at that analytical table
with the CTC? We have FBI there. We have Coast Guard there. We
have all these agencies, part of CTC, sitting at the table. My
specific question is, will Homeland Security and--first, will
TTIC be at that table?
Mr. Wiley. Yes, sir.
Senator Levin. Will Homeland Security be at that table?
Mr. Wiley. Yes, sir. And vice versa. The point is that we
want to----
Senator Levin. That is fine.
Thanks, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. You are welcome, Senator Levin. I want to
follow up on the issues that Senator Levin just raised.
Secretary England, I am trying to get a better sense of
what the role of the Information Analysis and Infrastructure
Protection Directorate will be once TTIC is created. Will it
conduct any analysis of raw intelligence or will it merely be a
consumer of analysis that is produced by the new center, the
FBI, and the CIA?
Mr. England. The IA organization, part of the IA
organization, information analysis, will physically be located
in the TTIC. We will have a separate analysis center. An
analysis center will be in the TTIC, and it will have access to
all the data available in the TTIC. Now we will also, in
addition to people who are located in the TTIC, we will have
some number of people who will also do analysis, for the
understanding of the Secretary, myself, etc. I mean, we are not
there. How do you interpret the data, etc.? But we will also
have an assessment group and the assessment group will
determine what the effect of that analysis is, what that means
in terms of our infrastructure; to assess that it in terms of
what you do across America in terms of protection.
So it is both analysis and assessment. But we will have a
separate analysis group, per se. We will also rely on the TTIC
and our representation in TTIC.
Chairman Collins. A related issue here which I raised in my
opening statement is where the new center should be located.
Many would argue that when Congress created the new Information
Analysis Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security it
did so to try to create an intelligence fusion center. One of
the witnesses at our hearing last week, James Steinberg,
recommended that the new center be located at the Department of
Homeland Security. He said the new department is supposed to be
the hub of all homeland defense efforts and that it is the
natural place where the fusion of terrorist analysis should
take place. It is also the one department responsible for
protecting our borders and our critical infrastructure.
I guess I will ask Mr. Wiley this question first and then
go to Secretary England. Why was the decision made to locate
the new center under the supervision of the Director of Central
Intelligence rather than the Secretary of Homeland Security?
Mr. Wiley. Senator, I think that the key feature of having
the threat integration center report directly to the Director
of Central Intelligence is that it is doing precisely the
fusion of intelligence, whether it is foreign intelligence or
domestically collected foreign intelligence and law enforcement
information. The Director of Central Intelligence has a
responsibility for assessment of foreign intelligence, and the
Intelligence Community has the overwhelming share of people
with experience in doing that.
With due respect to Mr. Steinberg, I think that doing the
analysis and assessment part under the leadership of the
Director of Central Intelligence and providing that to the
Department of Homeland Security to merge with the vulnerability
assessments and to have a responsibility for taking action is
the right model. I think that asking the Department also to
take on the intelligence assessment capability as well as the
vulnerability work is asking it to do more than it needs to. I
think that that is the rationale between the two.
Chairman Collins. My concern is, how are we going to
prevent the new center from just becoming a creature of the
CIA? The House Intelligence Committee issued a staff report
that found that oftentimes the DCI intelligence centers,
including the Counter Terrorist Center, become solely CIA
centers. Whenever you locate an agency or a new entity on the
grounds of the CIA, which is the initial plan, and report to
the CIA Director, how is that going to overcome the cultural
differences that have impeded the relationship between the CIA
and the FBI? If it were located in the new Department of
Homeland Security, would that not send the right signal as far
as overcoming these historic barriers?
And if I could just add one thing. In your comments you
referred to the brute force approach to sharing and said it is
working, but it still is requiring brute force.
Mr. Wiley. Just on the brute force issue, whether a new
department is located at DHS, at the CIA, at the FBI, or
anyplace else, if you are collocating people and you are
institutionalizing a process, it will reduce the amount of
brute force that is required. So I do not think the location,
the particular location makes a difference on the issue of
brute force.
I think on the issue of its physical location, in order to
get started quickly you really needed to be, I believe, in one
of two places where there is already a framework of analysts
working the counterterrorism problem to support that. That, in
my view, left it to either the CIA compound or the FBI building
downtown. There you have a framework to be able to get started
quickly.
Institutionally, this chart that you provided us reflects
that the TTIC does not report to the Director in his capacity
as head of the CIA but in his capacity as the head of the
Intelligence Community, as I do, frankly. That itself sets it
apart from CIA. CTC is a center that reports to the DCI through
the Directorate of Operations. This is a direct-report to the
DCI.
Its physical location at the CIA headquarters compound
cannot be denied, but it will not be collocated with CTC, and
there are other non-CIA elements that are resident in that
building: The National Intelligence Council, the Community
Management Staff, large portions of NIMA, the imagery and
mapping agency, are located in that building. Certainly the
majority of the building is a CIA building, but it is not
exclusively a CIA building. While it presents a challenge, I
think strong leadership and the commitment of all of the
partners to put people and contribute to the leadership will
mitigate against that. In the long run, the point of
collocation where CTC, the FBI's Counter Terrorism Division,
and TTIC are collocated in an off-site facility I think
mitigates that problem completely.
Chairman Collins. Secretary England, what is your response
to those experts who believe that this new center would be most
effective if it were located within the new Department of
Homeland Security?
Mr. England. Senator, I would not recommend that. My own
experience with large organizations--first of all, TTIC is for
threat data, so this is threat analysis and the expertise of
threat analysis lies with other agencies, not with the
Department of Homeland Security. We will not be the dominant
organization in the TTIC. We will have equal representation
there.
So while we will be able to participate in some of the
source threat analysis, that is not our key mission. Our key
mission is to make sure that the threats are analyzed
appropriately, that data is available to us, that we can then
do additional analysis if we have to, want to, etc. But it is
to do vulnerability analysis, understand the infrastructure and
how those threats may relate to vulnerability of our
infrastructure and our people across the country.
So I, frankly, think it would be very difficult for the
Department of Homeland Security to take on a task as large as
threat analysis that would come into this center and be able to
assess all that appropriately. That would be a very large
organizational step for us to take, particularly at this time
and probably for years to come. So I, frankly, do not feel that
would be appropriate for us today. I was delighted with this
approach to have this fusion center put in place because it
does enable us to do our mission much better.
So again, as I said in my first comment to you, we endorse
this approach. It makes us an equal player in this arena of
threat analysis. But I certainly do not feel like we could
actually manage that operation.
Chairman Collins. Senator Coleman.
Senator Coleman. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I wanted to
follow up on the questions raised by Madam Chairman and the
distinguished Senator from Michigan.
Secretary England--and by the way, we are all in agreement
here. We want this to work. We want it to be effective. We
understand it is a work in progress. We have got to keep coming
back to that, it is a work in progress, so we are going to need
some flexibility here. But I would question--I understand that
your principal mission is not threat analysis, but I suspect in
Homeland Security that you are going to be taking a lot of
information that is not going to be yours--you are not creating
it. That is why I asked the question about whether you created
an intelligence analyst unit. The answer was, not creating; you
have some folks who will do that but you are not going to
duplicate the work that is done by CTC, you are not going to
duplicate the work that is done by the FBI.
But if your principal function is to fuse this--to take the
information that has been fused, that has come together, and
then to articulate that, take threat analysis, and then to work
with the American public on that to make sure that we are
prepared, that we understand, I would suggest that it would
make sense. My sense is that it would make sense for the
Department of Homeland Security, again not to create a new
analysis, not to say that is your principal function, but to
have the kind of direct access from this unit to then figure
out what you have got to do with it.
If you look at the chart that Madam Chairman established,
laid out before you, I mean organizationally what you have is
TTIC then reporting to the head of the CIA--so there is a step
between all that information that is gathered, at least
structurally, and the Department of Homeland Security. It would
appear to me that there should be a much more direct connection
between you and TTIC.
Mr. England. Senator, we are a full partner in TTIC. TTIC
is part of the Department of Homeland Security, the same as it
is part of all the other agencies. So we are part of TTIC. Some
of our people will physically reside in TTIC. So data does not
go up and across and down. Our information analysis people are
part of TTIC, so we reside in that location. So this is--in
fact, we call this a joint partnership and that is what it is.
It is a joint partnership.
My view is, as long as this partnership works effectively,
and I believe it can work effectively and will work
effectively, who it reports to is not very important frankly.
To take existing structure in place and build it is much easier
than the Department of Homeland Security trying to build a
whole new structure. So this is a partnership. We do have
direct access to all the information and we will be able to do
our job appropriately.
Senator Coleman. Secretary England, again I want to get
back to this concept of work in progress. I appreciate the
comment of who it reports to right now on paper. I do not think
that is very important either, if it does not interfere with
the most effective operation of TTIC and what it is supposed to
do in terms of assessing threats to our country and dealing
with those threats.
I would hope then as we go about our work of bringing these
pieces together and we are doing--again, we are living in this
new world. As we do that, for it to have the flexibility along
the way to say this may work a little better and then to come
back to us at another point in time and say, we figured out a
better way to do it, and this is what we are going to do. So I
want you to have that flexibility. I support that concept and
would hope that you keep that in mind, that you are not tied to
a structure that has been put together very quickly, under
difficult circumstances, and in the end we have got to do the
right thing rather than what we may have thought the right
thing was at another point in time.
Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator. Senator Levin.
Senator Levin. Just one question, Secretary England. You
said that TTIC is part of Homeland Security?
Mr. England. I say it is, I guess, rhetorically. We are
part of--it is a partnership. So when I say it is part of it, I
mean we are there. It is also part of the FBI, it is part of
all the agencies that make it up. It was merely to emphasize
that our people are there along with all the other people who
make this up. So it is indeed a partnership.
Senator Levin. But the head of TTIC is appointed by the
Director of Central Intelligence; is that correct?
Mr. England. Right, with the advice----
Senator Levin. With the advice and so forth of the other
agencies. But it is appointed by the Director of Central
Intelligence, is located at Central Intelligence, and has
people represented from all the other agencies including yours.
Mr. England. Yes.
Senator Levin. That is very much like CTC. It is part of
the CIA, appointed by the Director of the CIA, has
representatives from the Department of Homeland Security, the
FBI, Coast Guard, you name it. It sounds to me that this is
very similar in terms of its structure to the CTC. So I like
the idea of things evolving. That is fine, and it may be over
time that it belongs in a different place. I am less interested
as to where it is, frankly, than that its responsibility is
clear. That to me is the most important thing, and that is my
concern, is that it be clear right off the get-go as to what
its responsibility is, regardless of where it is or where it
ends up 2, 5, or 10 years from now.
I just think there is a lot of work that need to be done to
identify that responsibility to analyze intelligence as to
where that is, because right now statutorily it is in three
places. The analytical responsibility is in three places on
foreign intelligence; CTC, Homeland Security, and now TTIC. I
do not think that is healthy. I think it allows people to, as
we saw before September 11, it will allow people to duck
accountability. There was enough ducking of accountability, in
my judgment, for the failures that existed before September 11.
So I would just ask you--I cannot do this on behalf of the
Committee. Obviously, the Chairman has that exclusive
responsibility, but at least this one Senator would be a lot
more comfortable if somehow or other there was a statement as
to the primary responsibility for analysis of foreign
intelligence, domestic intelligence, as to where that is going
to rest, and what is the relationship of TTIC to those
analyses--and that be in writing.\1\ I just think that there is
some fuzziness here which could be unhealthy.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The response from Mr. Wiley appears in the Appendix on page 73.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chairman Collins. I would second, as the Chairman of the
Committee, Senator Levin's request in this regard. I do think
we need more definition on who is going to do what. The
Department of Homeland Security's underlying law calls for it
to analyze. That is part of the law. So I do believe we need
more definition. I do recognize that the Center is a work in
progress, but I would ask the witnesses to come back to us with
a document that would define with more specificity the
responsibilities of the components and the existing--the
Counter Terrorism Division at the FBI, the Counter Terrorism
Center at the CIA, the Information Analysis Directorate at
Homeland Security. I would like to see more definition in
defining the responsibilities of those three units and how the
new center interacts. The goal is fusion not confusion. But
when I look at the chart and plot the new center in, I am
concerned about duplication, accountability, and
responsibility. So I hope as you further work out the details
of the center you would get back to us.
Senator Levin, did you have something more on that?
Senator Levin. No.
Chairman Collins. Senator Coleman.
Senator Coleman. No.
Chairman Collins. Before I adjourn the hearing I just want
to bring up one final issue that I alluded to in my opening
statement, and that is the dangers to privacy rights of
combining law enforcement functions with intelligence gathering
and analysis. Several, or some of our witnesses at our previous
hearing raised the issue of whether this new center poses a
threat to privacy rights. We have seen the controversy over the
total information awareness program at the Department of
Defense. The new center potentially will have access to huge
databases of its component agencies--the good news is, for the
first time we will be bringing all this information together.
The bad news is, for the first time we will be bringing all
this information together.
Mr. Wiley, as the chair of this working group, how is the
group going to ensure that the creation of this new center with
its access to unprecedented amounts of information will not
infringe upon the privacy rights of law-abiding citizens?
Mr. Wiley. Madam Chairman, from the beginning the concerns
you have expressed were an explicit part of our discussions in
making sure that the lines of responsibility, lines of
authority, the separate authority for conducting collection
operations, whether overseas or domestic, remain separate from
the authorities vested in the TTIC. I can only tell you that
from day-one, we will continue at the Agency, at the Bureau, at
Homeland Security to make sure that the structures we put
together are in compliance with the laws, the executive orders,
and sensitive to the issues of making sure that privacy rights
and civil rights of law-abiding citizens are not violated. It
is a fundamental concern right from the beginning and the very
structure of the Center recognizes that by separating it from
the operational components of both the FBI and the CIA.
Chairman Collins. Mr. D'Amuro.
Mr. D'Amuro. Senator, Winston is correct. This is not--the
TTIC is focal point for the analysis of information that has
been collected. The information that we will be collecting
domestically will be overseen by the inspector general from the
Department of Justice, it will be overseen by the FISA court.
We have numerous Attorney General guidelines and directions
that protect the civil liberties of the citizens of this
country. The collection process will not change. We will use
those guidelines, we will use those laws for our collection
domestically. The role of the TTIC is simply the analysis of
that collection. It is not an instrument that will go out
operationally and collect on its own.
Chairman Collins. There is no new collection authority; is
that correct?
Mr. D'Amuro. That is correct.
Chairman Collins. Secretary England.
Mr. England. In addition, Senator, let me add, Madam
Chairman, that we also have a statutory obligation in terms of
privacy. We do have, will have a privacy officer as part of
this. That privacy officer will have a role, so we will have at
least some degree of oversight to allay those concerns. But I
do not believe that there will be a real concern there, but
nonetheless, we will have that oversight function within the
Department of Homeland Security.
If I could add one more thing before we leave?
Chairman Collins. Certainly.
Mr. England. I know you have a very complex chart here but
I would like to comment that there is actually more arrows that
belong on this chart, Senator, only because of your comment. It
turns out that the source data is available here at the
information analysis. It goes directly--the analysis charts. So
rather than linking here at the Secretary level, it really does
link the IA/IP organization directly with the TTIC. I think
perhaps that will clarify some of the issues we discussed
earlier.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. I want to thank our witnesses
for appearing today. Your contributions are very valuable. We
look forward to hearing back from you as you continue to refine
the President's plan.
The record will remain open for 15 days for the submission
of any additional questions. I want to thank my staff for its
hard work on this series of hearings. This hearing is now
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:38 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
RESPONSE TO SENATORS LEVIN AND COLLINS TRANSCRIPT REQUEST FROM MR.
WILEY REFERRED TO ON PAGE 69
The Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) is currently working
collaboratively across the Federal Government to integrate terrorism
information and analysis to provide a comprehensive, all-source-based
picture of potential terrorist threats to U.S. interests. In this
regard, TTIC works closely with the FBI's Counterterrorism Division,
DHS's Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection directorate,
the DCI's Counterterrorism Center, and the Defense Intelligence
Agency's Joint Intelligence Task Force--Counterterrorism, among others.
In fact, all of these organizations are represented in TTIC and work
together, on a daily business, to carry out the mission of their parent
organization as well as that assigned to TTIC by the President: to
enable the full integration of U.S. Government terrorist threat-related
information and analysis, collected domestically or abroad.
As a relatively new entity, and one that is unique in the Federal
constellation, misperceptions are still common. One common
misperception is that TTIC is a part of the Central Intelligence
Agency. In actual fact, TTIC does not belong to any department or
agency. It is a multi-agency joint venture composed of partner
organizations including the Departments of Justice/Federal Bureau of
Investigation, Homeland Security, Defense, and State, and the Central
Intelligence Agency. TTIC reports to the Director of Central
Intelligence, but in his statutory capacity as the head of the
Intelligence Community. TTIC does not engage in any collection
activities and it does not engage in operations of any kind. Unlike the
FBI's Counterterrorism Division, the DCI's Counterterrorism Center, and
the Department of Homeland Security, all of which have an operational
or collection element, TTIC is focused on integrating and analyzing
terrorist threat-related information collected domestically or abroad.
We defer to these other organizations to provide you a full explanation
of their roles and responsibilities.
While TTIC is still in its infancy, there is tangible evidence of
the value of ``jointness,'' as embodied in the TTIC construct, and TTIC
is making a difference in the war against terrorism. For example, TTIC
analysis has contributed to informed decision making within DHS about
the appropriate threat level for the nation. The TTIC-maintained
terrorist identities database informs the national watchlisting process
and according to the Homeland Security Presidential Directive-6, will
soon serve as the single source of international terrorist identities
information for the newly established Terrorist Screening Center. In
addition, the TTIC-hosted joint information sharing program office is
actively implementing the Information Sharing Memorandum of
Understanding signed in March 2003 by Attorney General Ashcroft,
Secretary Ridge, and the Director of Central Intelligence. Under the
auspices of this program office, business processes are being re-
engineered to facilitate the flow of information throughout the Federal
Government, but in particular, to the Department of Homeland Security.
Specific issues being addressed at this time include establishing
standards for tear lines, reaching out to non-Intelligence Community
Federal departments and agencies, and rethinking reporting standards.
As the national approach to combating terrorism and protecting the
homeland evolves, TTIC will continue to carry out the mission assigned
to it by the President: to enable the full integration of U.S.
Government terrorist threat-related information and analysis, collected
domestically and abroad--and TTIC will fulfill its mission in full
coordination with partner organizations including the Department of
Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central
Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, and the Department of
State. We will keep you informed of our progress.
PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR SHELBY
Thank you Madam Chairman for calling this hearing today to examine
the President's proposal to form the Terrorist Threat Information
Center (TTIC). I also thank our panel for appearing before the
Committee today. As a long time member of Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, I am particularly interested in the subject matter of
this hearing.
Madam Chairman, as you know, I worked closely last year with the
Governmental Affairs Committee to help draft the provisions of the
Homeland Security Act crating an intelligence fusion center within the
Department of Homeland Security. While the eventual fusion center
language signed into law represented a compromise, I felt confident at
that time that the United States government had the statutory tools it
needed to make our country a safer place.
One of the main reasons for this belief is the placement of the
fusion center within DHS itself. I have said many times before that the
failure of the Central Intelligence Agency and others in the
Intelligence Community (IC) to share intelligence information
contributed significantly to the government's lack of preparedness for
the September 11 attacks. I supported the formation of the independent
fusion center located outside of the IC because I believed it would
challenge the community's reluctance to share information. Creating a
new and improved fusion center within the IC is a good think--because
improvements are clearly needed--but I am concerned that if this is all
that happens, it may allow the IC's institutional allergy to
information sharing to remain unchallenged and the President's vision
of a truly ``all-source'' fusion center to remain unfulfilled.
If TTIC does not challenge the institutional and cultural barriers
to intelligence sharing within the IC, our country will not be safer
from the threat of terrorism. During the Homeland Security debate, I
and my colleagues spent a considerable amount of time developing the
idea of an intelligence fusion center for all government information on
terrorist threats. I hope that the intelligence bureaucracies--whose
job it will be to implement the President's vision for TTIC--permit the
new center to develop into such an organization.
Madam Chairman, unfortunately, we have heard little in the way of
specific information from the administration about why TTIC is
necessary and how it will result in a safer country. Only three months
ago, the President signed into law legislation creating the Homeland
Security Department, which will house the nation's first truly all-
source, government-wide intelligence fusion center. It is unclear to me
then why the administration is pushing for the creation of a second
intelligence fusion center before the DHS fusion center has even begun
operations and had a chance to be evaluated. The new TTIC, I should
emphasize, is by no means a bad idea. But I am concerned that, in
practice, it will represent not the fulfillment of our broad vision of
a ``one-stop shopping'' fusion center, but rather its co-opting by
agencies who see real innovations in this regard as a threat to their
bureaucratic ``turf.''
The TTIC proposal raises a number of questions. For example, DHS's
website states that the department ``will serve as a central hub of
intelligence analysis and dissemination, working with agencies
throughout the federal government such as the FBI, CIA, NSA, DEA, the
Department of Defense and other key intelligence sources.'' How does
this mission differ from TTIC's mission? Will the responsibilities of
DHS and TTIC overlap? If so, is this the most efficient way to protect
our country from terrorism or will it result in needless and wasteful
duplication? Also, if TTIC is to be our nation's premier terrorist
threat fusion center, how will DHS be able to attract and hire
qualified information analysts? Moreover, if TTIC is really supposed to
be the center for evaluation all U.S. Government information relevant
to terrorist threats, how will it--as part of the Intelligence
Community--fulfill this role within the IC's current rules regarding
the handling of information related to ``United States persons''?
Last, I would be remiss if I did not express my concerns about the
President's decision to place TTIC under the supervision of the
Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). As I have said many times
before, I believe Director Tenet has played no small role in worsening
the bureaucratic problems--including a powerful institutional
resistance to information-sharing--that have long kept our Intelligence
Community from being as capable and prepared as Americans desperately
need it to be. I question whether the President's vision of a powerful
and effective TTIC will be well served by putting this DCI in charge of
the premier terrorist threat fusion center in the U.S. Government.
Madam Chairman, while I have a number of concerns about TTIC, it
should be noted that I am not necessarily opposed to it at this time. I
do believe, though, that Congress needs more information in order to
evaluate TTIC. It is my understanding that it is the administration's
position that Congressional approval is not needed to create TTIC.
While this may be legally true, Congress will be involved with TTIC
through its oversight responsibilities of the Intelligence Community.
Nothing, moreover, prevents Congress from stepping in to structure TTIC
by statute, as occurred with the Department of Homeland Security
itself. I therefore strongly urge the administration to keep an open
line of communication with the relevant congressional communities.
I thank you Madam Chairman for the opportunity to address the
Committee today and look forward to hearing from our panel.
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