the committee will come to order that going on today was a privilege to be joined by senator bob graham and senator jim talent the chair and vice chair of the commission on the prevention of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism it is disturbing to think that as we meet day america's adversaries seeking weapons of mass destruction that could kill large numbers of our citizens and inflict great harm to our nation but that is reality in two thousand and eight the world at risk report issued by the w m d commission brought into focus the seriousness of the threat and need to confront it with comprehensive homeland security office our law authorized establishment of a bipartisan commission to study the threat that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction pose to our country notably the law directs the commission to give particular attention to federal efforts to secure nuclear materials around the world from terrorist states of concern in the world at risk report the commissioners did not mince words empty threat specifically the commission stated that he believes that unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency it is more likely than not that d will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of two thousand and thirteen the commission concluded that since about logic a weapon can more easily be obtained and used by terrorists than a nuclear weapon the government needs to move more aggressively to limit the political ration about logical weapons and reduce the prospect about terror attacks in january two thousand and ten senators graham and talent issued a report card that assessed the government's progress toward implementing their thirteen recommendations they gave an elf to the federal government for failure to enhance the nation's capabilities for rapid response to prevent biological attacks from inflicting mass casualties another was for a lack of progress on reforming congressional oversight to better address intelligence homeland security and cross cutting twenty first century national security missions giving you extensive credentials senators your insight on what we need to do to fix congressional oversight particularly welcome as you know we are currently working on a bipartisan legislation to improve domestic capabilities to prevent deter detect attribute respond to and recover from debbie empty attacks in general and based on your recommendations biological attacks in particular the gentleman from new jersey must pass quail together with ranking member mr king collaborating on this legislation which should be introduced in the next few weeks and i know it's a new york and new jersey thing but we wish him success this hearing in the testimony we received from senators graham and talent are critical to this effort again i like to thank the commissioners for their leadership and continued commitment to educating us about the w m d threat i'd also like to recognize your staff lay about randy larsen and gigi grove all for working senator talent for the service that they gave to this nation when they served on this side of the building on the other side of the capitol and the service you rendered this nation since leaving  the halls you've done both of you a terrific job i'm very very proud of what you've done as a chairman i want to thank you for yielding time as well as your leadership in what during h r one of the implementing of the nine eleven commission recommendations act which created the w m d commission whose commissioners are before our committee today to talk about what i consider to be a very critical issue the nine eleven commission did a very thorough job of describing the circumstances of the attack on september the eleventh and providing recommendations the zine to guard against future attacks however one area they did not address was h respond to the threat of unconventional weapons including nuclear and biological w m d commission before us today has issued thirteen recommendations and in its report card released this january gave very mixed grades to be kind of the actions we have taken today but they have made one thing very clear that more than eight and a half years after nine eleven we still do not have a comprehensive national strategy to counter the great threat that wm d poses to our nation this is exactly why i'm working with my good friend and counterpart ranking member king to craft bipartisan legislation the weapons of mass destruction prevention and preparedness act of two thousand and ten which we plan to introduce very shortly where work closely with the commission with the commission staff in order to write a bill that has a truly comprehensive approach a logical approach to securing the nation against weapons of mass destruction by looking at all the angles from prevention in deterrence preparedness detection beautician response and finally to recovery it is especially important to note that our legislation concerns all w m c threats but will give special focus of the emerging threat of biological weapons  the region in which the w m d commission gave us a very for great for failing to do enough to prevent a biological attack on our mainland or to be able to respond efficiently and effectively enough in the event of a biological attack the commission highlighted the urgency of this threat when i wrote that terrorists are more likely to be able to obtain and use a biological weapon than a nuclear weapon point out is an issue which is vital to the security of our nation but in many ways nowhere near enough has been done since september eleventh i appreciate hearing today of just for the record point out that we've been asking for this hearing since last september getting our job done so i think what happens in november mr chairman we have to recommit ourselves to making sure that we work to consolidate jurisdiction within this committee and certainly to narrow the jurisdiction because now it's all over the place and really almost makes threats when it comes to weapons of mass destruction obviously radiation dirty bomb nuclear bombs a real threat to our subway system to the cities whether it's in the article patterson nor any of them in that area  es to get this process on the way hopefully get legislation passed the very least will send a strong signal to the administration send a strong signal to the entire federal bureaucracy and also start a real debate in the congress the debate was started at the national level by senator talent senator graham but i don't think we have in the congress are taking it seriously enough that's not the issue it's debated that often it's not the issue it's in the forefront with everything else we talk about whether it's health care whether it's taxes  whatever all of that will be forgotten overnight if there's a biological attack anywhere in our country and the impact will have an economy the impact it will have on the lives of everyday people the devastation will cause will be unprecedented so thank you  this hearing thank i think the spirit on both sides sort of working toward a bipartisan solution bipartisan answers but we can't just debate it forever we can't just talk about each other and i swear we have to get the job done and we can't allow details to stand in the obviously had to come a long way to get here and we really appreciate it senator graham and senator talent the chair and vice chair of the congressionally created commission on the prevention of weapons of mass destruction terrorism senator graham is a former two term governor of florida and served for eighteen years in the united states senate this is combined with twelve years in the florida legislature for a total of thirty years of public service he's recognized for his leadership on issues ranging from health care to intelligence he served a decade on the senate select committee on intelligence including eighteen months as chair in two thousand and one and two thousand and two in addition to his responsibilities associated with the b m d commission work senator graham serves as the chair of the board of over see overseers of the graham center for public service thank you senator graham for being here today and for your service to the country senator jim talent was elected to the missouri house of representatives in one thousand nine hundred four at the age of twenty eight way served eight years at the age of thirty two he was unanimously chosen as minority leader he served in that capacity until one thousand nine hundred two when he was elected to congress to missouri second district senator talent served in the u s house of representatives from  hundred three to two thousand and one during his time in the house then as a talent distinguished himself as a powerful leader on the house armed services committee where he served for eight years from two thousand and two to two thousand and seven he represented the people of missouri in the united states senate while in the senate he distinguished himself as a leader on a number of major committees including the senate armed services committee way service cham and the sea power subcommitte today in addition to his own going to be in the commission work center that talent serves as a distinguished fellow at the heritage foundation thank you senator talent for being here today and for your service to our country without thank you very much mr chairman and we're deeply appreciative of your and congressman king holding this hearing as a critical part of the steps necessary to move us towards a safer america has been an honor to have served for the last two plus years with my good friend senator jim talent i would say if there is an example of bipartisanship on a an important issue it's what we tried to exhibit and i'm pleased that our final report in a commission that was composed of republicans and democrats was unanimous report reflecting a unity of view as to the seriousness of the threat and the steps that should be taken to reduce and as chairman as you said in december of two thousand and eight our commission issued its report called world at risk this the the word world was selected to recognize the fact that this is not a problem that any one country can deal with alone that it is truly a global threat requiring a global response i'll talk about that a little bit later then in january of this year we issued our first report card on what has transpired in the year that passed since the report it was a mixed report card the most negative aspects related to the topic that center town i will particular focus on this morning and that is the potential of a biological attack as the chairman said is our conclusion that it is more likely than not that there will be under current circumstances a weapon of mass destruction use some place on earth by a terrorist group before the end of the year two activities my comments today are going to focus on the issue of urgency we've used the term in the commission report and in our subsequent statements that the is ticking i'm going to suggest this morning that we need to come up with a new metaphor the the impetus for change has got to be stronger than an analog clock slowly moving around the dial we're dealing with a digital clock where the numbers are now spinning it's been over five hundred days since the world at risk was issued there has been some response by the administration and we saw some of that recently in the nuclear summit but this is going to require action at both ends of pennsylvania avenue and i'm pleased that  today this hearing is taking place and i hope that it will jumpstart gress with a congressional response to this issue therefore areas in which i think urgency  is the word of the day and the spinning digital clock first we must construct an effective response to a biological attack unlike a nuclear attack where there is very little you can do in the aftermath it is what you can do in the aftermath of a biological that may both serve as a deterrent and a sufficient reduction of the consequences to take it out of the category of mass destruction we say it is a deterrent based on analysis done by our intelligence community as well as foreign intelligence services that the likely possessor of a biological weapon will have to make a choice where to use that weapon that choice is likely to be determined by where it thinks it can do the most damage have the highest kill rate so if your community is relatively well prepared you will be less likely to be the target of attack in the first place if you appear to be highly vulnerable and a source of high loss of life you become an attractive target so the degree to which you are prepared to respond is a key element in whether you will be a tot and if you are attacked your ability to respond we can reduce the death toll it would be horrendous if a thousand people were killed but it would be a an international disaster if five hundred thousand people were killed which is within the range of estimates of what would happen with a biological attack in a major american city so we have a strong interest in being as prepared as possible and frankly in our report of january we gave the nation not just the federal government but the nation an f in our level of preparedness to respond this is my first call for urgency that this committee has the  responsibility to start an aggressive series of actions that will lead us to a grade to deserve a grade substantially better than an f in our capacity to respond the second area of urgency is showing leadership to the world one of our recommendations is that the united states because of this global nature of biological attack  needs to be a leader in bringing other nations to a high level of response and security of things like schedule one biological agents that next world conference is going to take place in two thousand and eleven we think it's important for the united states to have taken affirmative action before that conference so we will be able to show to the world that we are committed and therefore that they can follow our goals standard of what could be done if we have not taken any action by that conference i think our position to influence other nations will be substantially diluted the third area of urgency the chairman alluded to the fact that i have had some travel difficulties i have been in the middle east and asia much of the last month i think the two most dangerous areas in the world where there's the greatest potential of a transfer from a nation state to a terrorist group of a weapon of mass destruction are the indian pakistan border  and that arc that runs from a ran through syria to israel and then to palestine those in my opinion are the two places in the world that are the most likely to be the first point of attack both of those are driven by longstanding in the tease that go back to just after world war two kashmir in the case of india and pakistan the dispute between israel and the palestinians in the middle east these issues which we have allowed to linger now for six decades are a major threat to the security of the entire world needs to get the strongest attention from the united states and the international community for their resolution there has been no substantial progress on either of those fronts since one thousand nine hundred seventy nine thirty one years ago when the camp david accord was entered into between egypt and israel that's the last major successful effort to deal with those animosities and finally the sense of urgency over the issue that the chairman and the ranking member have discussed and that is this issue of the congress itself congress is not well organized and that is a very passive an  understatement to do what it needs to do on these issues this is been recognized now for almost a decade before nine eleven commission's who were looking at issues of national security came to the conclusion that the congress was not properly organized the nine eleven commission said it again we saturday night our world at risk document i would urge that the nation can be a safer place if this body would take the steps to place accountability and responsibility for these issues clearly in one jurisdiction so that the nation will know where to look to for leadership mr chairman mr ranking member i again appreciate the opportunity to be here my colleague senator talent is going to focus on some of the more specific aspects of our report and we would both then look forward to receiving your questions i would like to also introduce at this time dr gigi grown vaal who has been a major part of the development of gentleman's back some of the talent for as long as you need to explain appreciate that mr chairman yes dr groundball will slip us notes when you ask the hard questions we may just actually refer them to her it's great to be here and recognize your great work on this mr chairman and the ranking member to see old friends the hearing room i know very well to see my friend from missouri mr cleaver here and  ngratulate him on his work on this i'm really pleased to hear about the efforts between mr pascrell mr king and knowing those two personalities and all kidding aside i think that something is going to end up being done so that's very important  i'll just i'm going to make some observations mr chairman and then let you all ask the questions and we can have a dialogue and i think it's important to do that this hearing is really important i'm glad you're holding it it's been my observation over the last two years studying this whole area that while most of the problems are executive in nature we've seen this now for two administrations just the difficulty of getting this big fragmented set of agencies to work together do things much less given the federal issues that and that and that it's important to have top level executive leadership hold people accountable that when congress gets active and people in the agency seeing congress getting active it makes a big difference even if the legislation that you're passing is just basically affirming what the executive is doing in certain areas it shows a level of seriousness and unity and commitment particular when it's done on a bipartisan basis that people through the executive branch take seriously and i think the model for this is probably the intelligence reform act you know when congress went through everything it had to go through to pass that made a big difference within the intelligence community it's not that everything is perfect within the community at all there's no question that least some cultural change a result that has occurred as a result of that so i think it's important you're doing it mr chairman you ask about in the ranking member ask for suggestions we might have about how to remedy the difficult problems we have in the congress regarding oversight so i'll give you a practical response and as a person who served in this body for eight years and in the minority in the majority in the leadership on the backbench is a chairman i mean in a lot of different capacities i think i think the initiative ou come from you all because let's face it you're probably going to be the gaining committee ought to be in my judgment mr chairman if you want a ranking member would talk to get the speaker's blessing obviously going to have to have that and then talk with the majority in the minority leaders maybe get a staff person designated and do all this low visibility i mean the initial stages i would not want surfacing in you know on the hill or anything like you're going to avoid it in the magazines talk to the executive branch people and let them know that they can let their hair down and try and identify the four or five areas where the current fragmented system is causing the biggest problems and maybe begin focusing on those areas and then when you've got an agenda together and maybe three or four ideas for what you could do a bottom and between the two of you you know the house well enough to know going in probably what's possible and what isn't possible then maybe in the in the in the leader's office with  person present they get together the chairman the ranking members and then the key staff people and just begin asking what can be done is there any low hanging fruit in this i mean what steps can be taken so you can begin making some progress don't make the best the enemy of the good i don't know that you need some kind of global solution but just start taking some steps and emphasizing to people the seriousness of this threat i mean if they have not had if these committees of jurisdiction and oversight have not had the briefing on this they need to get the briefing on this this is something that was impressed upon me through our initial deliberations i'm not an intel guy the way this harman is but when i'm when i saw what i saw and i saw people like bob graham and graham allison and wendy sherman and robin cleveland taking as seriously as they took this threat that impresses you this is a major threat and if we're going to make make it a priority to deal with it i mean that means sums a priority it means you're willing to sacrifice other things for it if you can get the people in that room to going in to accept that do this low key and then get them to get the process moving that way it's going to take a major effort mr chairman and i know how busy you all are but i think it's worth doing because not only is fragmented oversight can it be negative in the sense that it impedes the executive but the opportunity cost because good oversight can make a huge difference as those of you on the intel committee know so we're actually i would describe when we did in the report congress his efforts in this to this point have on balance i think been a negative not because the members haven't want to do it but because the system is so screwed up and it could be a big positive so that's just my practical advice and you can take it for what it's worth i do want to say because our report card was not good in the area of bio preparation that we have the two of us i think been pleased personally at the administration's response and particular the president's response personally and i you know our understanding is that he has taken a personal interest in this he is meeting with teams of people particularly in the interest in the area of countermeasure development and that's all to the good but we can't i mean having the president pay personal attention to something you know when you're talking about trying to unify a structural sort of response is not the long term answer because he's just too busy but it's still good that they're responding in that fashion i also want to make a comment that chairman graham talks a lot about the links in the chain of preparedness and that all the links have to be strong if we're going to be prepared for a bio attack and preparation for a bio attack is the key to deterring it because if we're prepared well enough then and if the attack is likely not to be a major success then they're likely not to launch it so this contrast to a nuclear attack this is an area where preparation can actually be prevention if you look at the if you think of the four links in terms of stockpiling the countermeasures distributing the countermeasures detecting having good surveillance and then clean up i think we're showing some signs of life on the stockpiling issue secretary sebelius is conducting review i think they're the distribution side of this as much maligned as it has been of the countermeasures is the area where i think where the furthest not where we need to be but where the further we have a model in place the c r i initiatives with points of dispensing that's more or less locally controlled we're in seventy two cities and then there are overlaying a federal response to the postal service which has been tested in st louis as a matter of fact and and seem to work so at least we have the model in place of the local dispensing sort of settings with a federal overlay we have gone some distance in getting it actually in place and testing it so i mean that that link i think there's a lot of there's a long way we need to go but i think at least we have some idea of what we're doing that to where i think we're we're feeling the most right now is in detection or surveillance and cleanup on the surveillance side of it we have bio watch we have added a number of cities and that's a good idea we've funded a lot of different sort of studies and surveillance system so they keep track of over the counter sales of drugs and that sort of thing but they're not linked together there's no sense and there's no general strategy or sense of priorities with regard to that and we don't have a good enough detection sort of test so we can tell whether somebody sick i mean you get a pregnancy test that valve the point when you're pregnant a matter of minutes right but we we can't test for even for swine flu that quickly much less for some of these other kinds of pathogens so we need those detection tests i mean it's a bad thing when the president ask you know the head of c d c at any given time how many people were sick with those with the h one n one they couldn't told them they can't tell you today with certainty how many people died from that because they were just guessing you all probably had this experience or know people who had this experience you call the doctor up and say well it sounds like it but it's you know it's not work you're not in a high priority enough group to bring you in and test you to make certain whether you had it and that was a that was a pandemic we had six months notice from so we've got problems with surveillance and the clean up we've recently commissioned recently funded a study on this we have total fragmentation on this environmental cleanup important because we can clean up quickly and get people back into an affected area it's a huge really important response and think about this from the standpoint of let's just take new york and that's a city most people use you get an attack you're going to have your initial impact with people getting sick and dying and then the problem is you just can't have half a new york that people can't go back into for six months because you're trying to clean it up and i just think we're nowhere on that we've again the typical fragmentation h h s e p a u s d a has a piece of this with not one of the research adequately and there's a lack of training and guidance for the first responders they don't know what to do and how to clean up and this would seem to be an area where we could build a federal reservoir of influence of understanding and expertise that we could be very flexible with so we have a long way to go one other observation and there's a mentality that i think that you all as leaders need to adopt as you approach these issues one of them is the urgency of it it's hard it's  easy to grasp it intellectually it's hard to make it a working reality in your day to day operations and decision is just hard because it's hard to conceptualize some like this some of you have lived on in the intelligence committee for years the scene is harmon up there are more adjusted your point of view to this but it's hard to do keep communicating the urgency of the threat and then in terms of structuring solution solutions i believe a partnership rather than adversarial model with all the different agencies and federal and state local organizations is the right one so you include rather than x clued in terms of groups of people so share the intel with the public health people unless you really can empower rather than regulate like with the labs and i think you all have that approach in this bill and support rather than punish through we want people to take the initiative we want people to make decisions we want people to go out and do things in response to this and they know that you are going to back them up and obviously it's revealing but nonetheless there are troubling that we are still only where we are not where we need to be and i thank you for your testimony and now recognize accent of gray and this question as it relates to the two thousand and thirteen prediction if you would tell us a little bit about how you arrived at that say statistical estimate we interviewed over one hundred fifty experts in the united states states and elsewhere on this issue we studied the literature  commission itself had some people who've spent a lifetime such as graham allison on this matter so we present it as our best judgment based on all of the above as to the time frame within which we're operating i mention that i have recently returned from a trip to asia and the middle east and nothing that i learned in that trip caused me to feel likelihood that that date will be the date by which a weapon of mass destruction will be used by a terrorist the likelihood of that is higher than we thought it was in december of two thousand and this is not something that we can say oh it's terrible but it's a generation from now it's not we know they're trying to get this stuff if it's their strategy it's political raiding all over the world so it's getting easier and easier for them to get it  if they get it and they hit a major city not necessarily the united states from their perspective you know they went so it's everything we saw emphasizes the short term working through right now so much of the things you've identified might charge to must pass coil is to make sure that  irregardless of how controversial cross jurisdictional responsibility it might appear it's the right thing to do and so therefore understanding that it's the right thing to do jurisdictional challenges that have prevented things from going forward and do it because it's in the best interests of not just this country but the world that we become that leader in this arena to that extent about the world leadership is your belief that if we took that step we make a better argument  only our friends enemies around the world that it's the right thing to do but it's difficult to make that argument without setting the predicate at home yes i think the fact that congress would take what anyone in politics recognizes as a difficult step because it's changing jurisdictions and areas of power and influence a critical  legislative body that would symbolically send a very powerful signal that that america was taking this matter with the urgency that it deserves but i think it would be the actual product that would come as a result of that reorganization that would be even more influence if the united states could go to that conference in two thousand and eleven having passed legislation that provided some new standards  for security of high risk pathogens and you have some very good provisions in your plume unary draft of the legislation to that effect that would that would allow us to say to malaysia and to brazil and to these other countries that have significant capability to develop and weaponize biological weapons and i'm not picking on those two countries as being likely candidates but if we could say to them look this is what we've done to secure our laboratories so they'll be less susceptible to being invaded by the bad people who'd like to get access to these materials i think our case would be stronger conversely if the facts are that we've known about this now for a decade or more it's been considered an urgent matter for a couple of years and we've done zero then what is what is our moral authority to try to get anybody else  strengthen their domestic situation so that talent i would agree with and particularly given the fact that this is something that other governments to want this kind of an attack to happen this is not a situation where there really are different ultimate agendas that are being concealed here and i think they don't allow out of potential partners out there so i think setting an example is important and we should say there's a lot of good activity go going on are so even though we're making progress their lead is growing and a lot of that is just because the nature of this kind of conflict and weaponry favors them i mean it's easier  it's it's they're able to attack very vulnerable areas that are hard for us to defend and that we depend on a lot more than they do that's the nature of asymmetric weapons and this is the ultimate asymmetric weapon so short answer is yeah i think it's a very important model calling to make sure i got a copy of her letter talking about the multitude of committees that she had to testify before i totally did not totally raise that and we're going to continue to raise it so let me focus i could  on biological weapons i think if you want the average member of congress he spoke about the thinking of radiation with a can of dirty bombs the average american certainly and it's hard to get people focused on the issue of a biological weapon and having been here on september eleventh i remember afterwards we were asking issues you have to deal with but just generally for instance in your dealings with the intelligence community do you feel that they are sufficiently alert to this and sufficiently concerned i think the answer is they have certainly given this a high priority in the prepared testimony however i inserted a statement to the effect that this potential of a nation state developing weapons of mass destruction capability specifically biological and then sharing it with a linked terrorist organization such as iran and syria have had a long time relationship with hezbollah pakistan for many years has had a close relationship with the taliban that that represents  the ultimate threat because the nation state gets to have some degree of deniable involvement in the matter and point its finger at its surrogate that is actually carrying out the operation i think that this situation is accelerating and that our intelligence agencies need to given it an even higher priority than that which they have given it from a terrorist organization is the greatest threat that we confront that they have to deal with the problem is cultural and it goes back beyond just the intel community when people think of w m d they usually think of other things and we've had whole establishment so people for generations have grown up understanding that nuclear material can be put to bad use but the the idea that that genetic material or or or pathogens could be put to bad use is much newer and so they all tend to respond a little bit slower it's just they don't have the same high level of cultural awareness as a community of these issues and so you get things like the fusion centers and we mention this in our testimony where you know the local fusion centers where everybody supposed to come together and share intel and all the rest of it the public health except in a few cities that have really pushed hard like yours the public health community hasn't got the clearance so they can participate i don't think from what we've seen the intel agencies don't keep good enough track of just open source for and public health information that could be really important docs they ought to have there to connect there's issues with workforce they may not have enough people in the workforce who really understand bio issues plenty of people understand nuclear issues so it's but it's i don't want to point a finger and say that person doesn't care or isn't doing their job because they all really do care it's a cultural issue and culture takes a little debate with the homeland security budget i doubt if this would even come up if you hadn't brought it to our attention and i obviously we're talking about you mentioned half a million lives that we lost so in those two issues the intensity with law enforcement also with the department homeland security itself was only one tenth as put into the medical countermeasures i think that is a perfect example of what happens when you don't have clarity of responsibility in terms of congressional jurisdiction there should be a place in each of the two houses of congress which wakes up every morning asking the question what can we do today to make our response to a biological attack stronger both in terms of substantive legislation and advocacy before the appropriations committee that number is the number which the the university of pittsburgh has a major center located in baltimore that is probably the the nation's premier medical energy on bioterrorism and it has calculated that in order to have an adequate supply of the eight  for for the eight pathogens that the department of homeland security has identified as the most likely to be used in a weaponized form and to have that adequate supply within five years which is outside the window of the two thousand and thirteen prediction of course that it would take approximately three point four billion dollars each year for the next five years to get there the budget that congress approved last year was approximately ten percent or roughly three hundred million three hundred million dollars is a lot of money but it means that we either are determining that we're only going to prepare for one tenth of the amount of of therapeutics that will be required or we're going to take fifty years to get there neither of which i think is an acceptable response to the american people it's important that some place in congress knows this issue and is the virulent advocate for remediation i certainly would agree with that and again i think bob's point about oversight is important here like when the stimulus bill went through this one a great opportunity to fund this program and there's not like somebody brought this up with mr robey and he said oh i don't want to fund counter measures right it just it clearly i know how the system works bob knows for some reason this was on the table because you all would have funded it or you would have looked at it maybe stafford looked at and said well well we've thought about it and we don't want to fund because we don't think the structure is right and we need to find you would have had and an intelligent response just was there was nobody there at that point who is raising this and that is that's the absence you see not only does the fragment oversight impede the executive but that's the absence of that means you're not making the contribution that all of us members want to make i mean if somebody if we did tact you which we didn't do for not funding this you'd have gone to your staff and said what in the heck happened why didn't we fund this  d i will say this you all need to watch o m b on this because they're on like autopilot want to defund these programs to fund other things somebody over it o m b has decided that that's a good way to fund some other stuff so watch that in terms of local  sharing his harm and have a better view than i would i think we said in the report we think the f b i is doing a lot better job than it used to in sharing with local groups for there's a long way to go and again this is an area where we have to look at whether there including public health officials and if they look at it in the side for some reason not to ok but let's not just exclude them categorically because we don't think that they're part of the solution thank you very much the jail will now recognize other members for questions they may wish to act the witnesses in accordance with commuter rules and practice our record as members who are present at the time of the hearing based on seniority on the committee alternating between majority minority those members coming in later will be recognized in order to now recognizes the minutes to joe later from california miss h friend hadn't seen that before and bob graham i want to commend you not not only for your friendship and enormous contributions but for your mentorship of me as i served on our intelligence committee when you chaired the senate intelligence committee and for your suburban handling of the joint inquiry on nine eleven which was a bi cameral bipartisan exercise by the congress imagine that seems like a you know as some kind of a an old ancient idea given these partisan times but i thought we were very effective and i thought your leadership was exemplary let me also mention that when your excellent report came out i made some comments about my view which is that we should prepare and not scare the american public i think those comments were construed to mean i was critical of your report i am not critical of your report i applaud your report but i do believe that it is that preparation as as mr talent said is a key to prevention and so i'm glad that you both see it that way let me focus on just a couple issues that concern me enormously  that may offer some keys and just to see if you've thought about them one is for rent six an attribution this is been mentioned in the nuclear case but i also think it would apply in the biological case if we can find out who produced the stuff that was used or if the bad guys know that we will find out and the the country transferring stuff to bad guys knows that we will find out i think that's a huge deterrent and i just want to ask you whether you do and what it is exactly that you think we should do my understanding is that there is a nuclear forensics an attribution act which  was signed fairly recently but it wasn't funded by this administration i would suggest that this is something we should fund and that this could be a very major prevention strategies just want to know what you think i completely agree that if you're going to deter your adversary it's critical that the adversary knows that after the boom you're going to be able to determine from whom that was  dispatched in our report we talk about the importance of of the for forensic aspect to this issue and have urged heightened funding of the nation's efforts both on the nucular as well as the biological side that would be another example of an issue that this committee might give some special attention to see if in fact we are moving towards the capability to be able to identify with sufficient clarity that we could then justify response on nine eleven we knew immediately who was responsible and know october of two thousand and one started this to send a massive military response wants to afghanistan if we had not been able to have made such a quick and internationally accepted determination of who the perpetrator was we would have been unable to have credibly launched that response this is an area i just checked to make certain   good subject for this committee to interest itself in to make certain that they do implement but i completely agree with you're absolutely right from the standpoint of it's a key deterrent if they know we can identify who did it particularly where a nation state is behind it well i think it needs more attention by congress and time is short but let me just commend you again for your your ass for our efforts to reorganize the congress sadly it's true this committee i believe has way too little jurisdiction for the responsibility vested in us and i have been through painful meetings where our chairman has courageously tried to augment our jurisdiction and then he gets jumped by the chairman of other committees who don't want to give anything up most of us are ready to criticize the senate these days for stopping all of our valuable legislation but the one place where the senate has it right is that it has a committee chaired by joe lieberman where susan collins is ranking member that has a lot more jurisdiction than ours and is capable of doing a lot more than we can because of its of its of its larger turf would you agree with that i would agree with that but if i could be so presumptive as to ask you and other members this question when the chairman of the ranking member other members of this committee go to the leadership of the house with this request the reality is there's a degree of perception of self interest you're trying to expand your power by taking it from somebody else what's got to be at the table is the national interest and my question is who the who what entities do you think are capable of presenting that national interest to the leadership of the congress in this case specifically the house of representatives that would give them the the impetus to take the action which we think is so critical for the nation's safety well my time is expired mr chairman and i think it's probably probably a question to you both but i would just say bob that your report and your calls for action in the reports by lee hamilton and tom kane for action this is an unfinished item on the nine eleven agenda and hopefully at some near point a popular i don't think it's something the president would want to mention in a state of the union address but if one be half of the executive branch agencies who have to live with this he made up a personal request at some point i think that that might be helpful if he's just representing the national interest i know  he wants to show comedy to how we operate on this end of pennsylvania avenue i just i've got to believe the leadership wants to do this this isn't a leadership issue i mean it's it's it's the leadership is looking at this and saying it's a it's probably impossible b we have a thousand other things to do see we don't want to go out there and tilt at windmills and end up offending everybody and we get nothing anyway i mean if you talk with the speaker and the leaders of both parties that's probably what they're they'll tell you so as i said some good work sort of beneath the surface to try and figure out what can be done and give them some hope might motivate them well i appreciate everyone's comment and one good part about the discussion is up to this think over one hundred committees and subcommittees have jurisdiction currently and i don't i think it's paralyzing and mr chairman i hope we can work together in a bipartisan way to fix this issue i think with your help and your credibility on the outside helping us i think we can hopefully get there i have two quick questions with the limited time i have ones on the nuclear she once biological in your report you described pakistan as the intersection of nuclear weapons and terrorism i agree with that assessment it's been an issue since the a q khan network very concerned about the security of the nuclear stockpile in pakistan very concerning with iran close by by some reports maybe a year out from developing a nuclear weapon very concerned about their alliance with venezuela with hugo chavez in this hemisphere and with the potential of nuclear material being smuggled in potentially being brought across the border which we know has has some defects i should say it's easy to cross and i think it's still very easy to get this type of material into the united states if you wouldn't and i know you commented on that area of the world being in the most dangerous part of the world not agree with that what are your comments on how we can better protect the nation mentioned we need to start dealing with some of these long simmering issues that have become the flashpoint where this might actually occur if for instance something broke out in  kashmir that reignited the vitriol between india and pakistan that could be an incident that could cause someone to make the decision we don't want to use these weapons  we're going to let our surrogate taliban have access to these weapons and they'll do our dirty work you may have read the story within the last week that there are now suspicions that syria has transferred scud missiles to hezbollah in lebanon that may be that could be a precursor of letting your your surrogate do the dirty work for you so i think one of the things that's very important is that we will that after sixty years we give them the urgency necessary to try to bleed off these long simmering disputes second i think on also on a longer range view the united states needs to see work with our allies to try to better understand the muslim world the judeo christian world represents about one point two billion people the muslim world represents about one point two million people if we leave to our children and grandchildren animosity between these two groups which together  recommendations was to work with india and pakistan to develop some failsafe procedures unlike the united states in the soviet union during the cold war where although we were strong adversaries and had the capability of destroying each other we understood that we didn't want to allow a misstep or an accidental vent to become the the the ignition for such award so we set up the red phone in the oval office and and a whole protocol none of that exists between india and pakistan i felt that this may be an area in which the united states and russia together since we developed these protocols for our own benefit and the world's benefit might work together with india and pakistan to try to get them to develop i was courage that within the last month india and china have started to  i'm also concerned we didn't address in the report border security as such i'm also very concerned about it and i think we do have to as a political establishment be able to separate out the national security aspects of that from the immigration aspects of it and reach an agreement on the national security side of it i think that's that's a concern there's a lot of ways they could try and get it in the country and that's certainly one of them and we're very concerned about iran the report reflects that pakistan just incredibly difficult bob mentioned some of the reasons i would just say a couple of discreet things we're still not where we need to be in terms of the workforce issues within the intelligence community this is something that senator graham just hammers on it correctly we don't have enough people who understand those issues we have recruited effectively enough  just takes so long to hire people in the intel community we can work in particular with india and pakistan on security of pathogens is in the bio area and then one of the point that i made a lot and got in the report because i'm coming from my  side if you if you if you look at the speeches secretary gates he talks all the time about the importance of developing the developing the civilian elements of national power which you call smart power soft power the ability to communicate effectively about american intentions and to help build local grassroots economic and political institutions that are a bulwark against this kind of instability and i personally believe the state department is going to have to and i know secretary clinton i think wants to do this going to have to undergo the kind of cultural anx and reform and development that d o d did with goldwater nichols that the intel community has done so that present has an option you know you all in your campaigns if you've got a party or district where you're not running as well as you like you know you can instruct your consultants to build up your numbers and they'll have a plan but we should have the ability to say you know there's this province of pakistan or people where our goals you know they're misinformed and they're angry at us and the president ought to have the option to say let's go  us every every damn network in the world was here and the well was full of photographers but you know i suspect that we are we are stuck somewhere between chicken little and an ostrich in looking at this issue you brought up pakistan the pew organization did public opinion polls of the united states and pakistan just recently where eighteen percent approve but worse in congress actually in pakistan but we gotta do better with that so we know and president obama gets that report and he'd like to do something about it and who has the detail to do something we have no capability when the government we have better capability has political actors change our numbers than we do to change our numbers and why we don't have that organic capability within any of the civilian agencies are there there  dollar number you're looking at three and a half or five years whenever something like that people of over five years does that include things like a surge capacity for hospitals and i represent a district for example that is the eastern part of pennsylvania that he's part of pennsylvania we have a lot of hospital capability there assuming that you know based on the premise that when you have an attack in an urban area where they do the most damage you know what we're talking about mr pas king's area probably well do we have that surge capacity from your opinion on this or well first the number that i gave which was three point four billion for five years that is for the bioshield program that is where it's going to cost to do the research to determine the most appropriate therapeutic against these pathogens that are most likely to be weaponized and then to produce enough of the material that ninety percent of americans could be treated in the event of a mass attack it does not include the cost of some of the other aspects of building this response such as surge capacity yes i think that is an important issue i served for eighteen years on the veterans committee during a period of time in which we were  dismantling a number of major v a hospitals as the number of veterans was declining many of these were in urban areas big cities like new york  chicago which are the places that are probably most likely to be called upon to have some surge capacity i advocated that we should step back and think about do we really want to dismantle all this capability in the event that that we might wish that we had it available i think that the congress needs to do to give some thought to how are we going to be able to respond if suddenly there are thousands hundreds of thousands of people who are requiring immediate medical attention and it's not going to be very satisfying i think the american people to say that we'll just throw up our hands do nothing  accept that as a as a cost of living in this era of terror and and i think i think it ought to include a link if you want to be careful because they need the money to develop the actual medical countermeasures but a decision making process that was working well might very well go through the following logic might say look a lot of these pathogens attack let's say people's respiratory systems so if we have if we're certain that we have adequate capacity to get them on respirators and we can lengthen their lives that way that gives us greater time than for drugs to be just dispensed and take effect so it ought to be thought of as se as possible i think you hit a really good insight the surge capacity is lated to the medical countermeasure question and the ongoing challenge none of us have complete answers to it is how to deal with this fragmented bureaucracy so that carefully at what she comes up with and we think you should also i agree absolutely and i would echo all my colleagues here the sort of ridiculous requirements d h s s to go through in terms of committee reporting and things like that we should be the belly button in congress for all of this to be to be quite honest i hope if you haven't had the opportunity that you share that with the president also he needs to hear from a couple of credible people who will be on the political process not those of us still in the midst of it well i mean he served he knows what the jurisdictions like and i agree by the way with what is harmon said that it is better one of the few areas where it is better in the senate that it is here i thank you for being with us here today and talking about this issue particularly the concerns about biological attack i assume that you believe that a biological attack would be more likely in say a nuclear attack attack because  it's probably easier to develop or engineer biological pathogens even though it may be easier to contain it and it's easier to prevent obviously a nuclear attack by controlling facade material in the president's been a leader on that issue as have others  and nuclear terrorism and how it's easier to prevent that of course hard a nuclear attack so i soon that that's the the reasoning behind why you feel the biological attack is more likely let's that is certainly part of the reason the difficulty of developing a a nuclear weapon is being demonstrated by iran iran has had some five thousand centrifuges working for several years trying to develop enough highly enriched uranium to actual physical vessel in which that highly enriched uranium was going to be introduced it wouldn't be a matter of months or weeks it could be a matter of days before you could have a weapon that was ready to be you  but the with biological so many of the of those most likely to be weaponized items are from nature itself they don't require much a naturally developing product from dead cows in fact the word anthrax is a russian word that means siberian boil because the first place it was seen was in siberia in to then take that weaponized product and distributed effectively which has been a major impediment for biological weapons witness the failed attempt to use it in a subway  tokyo the department of homeland security feels that those distribution problems have now largely generous all and that in the hands of competent technicians th ere will be the ability to distribute it in a way that will be largely unnoticed until a sufficient number of people have been impacted to have a weapon of mass destruction and that can i also asked you quickly about the dirty bombs radiological attack i mean i often don't refer to that as a weapon of mass destruction but a weapon of mass disruption because it will probably not it may not kill as many people but will certainly be a  attack somewhere in this country well when we when we started the commission off chairman i had to make a decision about what we were going to get into it and not get into the problem is how to say something without trying to say  everything and there actually models developed within the intel community about how when something becomes a weapon of mass destruction and there's like grids you know impact destruction death et did made an executive decision not to go heavily into a radiological weapons and so i just don't know that we're the best one ok that's that's that's fine so you see it more as a weapon of mass disruption as and i mean i agree totally emphasizing bio as well as nuclear and for all the reasons you indicate easier to get easier to weaponize easier to stockpile the only advantage of bio over nuclear is that we can compare for it a lot better contain a little better than nuclear you're right you've got the whole y e got the concepts down right and you're reading a great author on the subject and you'll back my time is up thank you very much mr then and now the chair recognizes for five minutes the gentleman biological attacks i had brought to my attention by some folks from corvallis oregon who are working with dio de that they have developed a capability as have some of their competitors to very quickly take an agent and and develop you know an effective countermeasure vaccine and they've demonstrated the capability i'm in working closely with d o d i mean i guess my question is are we in some places making progress but we're not recognizing them over here because we're so fragmented because the apparently there is a program called transformational medical technologies initiative at the o d which has been working with private sector folks who have come a long way in terms of being able to quickly respond to a diverse range of threads but i'm not sure that homeland security is aware of it or has any capability of digesting this or working with   n one is it's one thing to know what you need to have in order to have an effective therapeutic it's another thing to scale it up quickly to be able to respond to the attack it was  we had six months notice with h one n one and we still had it where we really use an egg that's the problem and but this is a breakthrough technology that these folks have worked with which would not require extensive large factories and those sorts of things  and be rapidly replicated and i think you put your finger on a real strength that we're not taking advantage of you know our diverse country our federal system is a disadvantage in the sense that it's fragmented it's an advantage in the sense we have all these really great people out there thinking about things and doing things in oregon or in the public health system whatever but we don't you know the others don't know about it it's the need for for integration within the system of decision making and this is where you know you all who know the government and years and years mr de fazio i know you do and thinking about how this government operates could maybe think outside the box about practical solutions for solving that problem one of the things bob and i have talked about and we've never put it in an official report and the reason we have is because we get people coming to us just as you do this is you have home district we have this tremendous solution and you saw would be the pick and the right agency and a set up maybe a group of people and this could even be experts from the outside who are sitting on this and just inviting those around the country who have solutions you have to screen a little bit because you know you get people who develop something but who have solutions to some aspect of this preparedness problem is working in some context maybe their local fire protection district picked it up or whatever to bring it to this group which is then connected to all the other parts of the system federal and state and can say hey this is  really a great device for decontamination i think i have just seen decontamination technology out there that could probably solve this problem if we knew the right agency to get it to and whether it's e p a or whatever so thinking i think you put your finger  very important power meant tool here good thing for you who i'm giving you more work now to do to think in terms of how to do this and maybe as this bill moves to put it in there it's a it's an ongoing prostration and i'm sure you had it when you know when you were in the lot of ending a lot of money and we're not getting it to be effective and there's a lot of technologies resident in d o d that are not being used in the rest of the system and we shouldn't blame i'm sitting on another panel that bob was able to escape the independent panel reviewing the quadrennial defense review and we just heard a report from the assistant secretary does homeland for them she's really great and she was talking about they have this resident capabilities but then chain of command issues because the governor to run in the event of the governors want to run the show and how do they do all this stuff it's just this constant problem you run into a fragmentation within the executive branch and between the executive in the state and local and this here in this committee is and is an institutional integrator because everybody respects you believe it or not and people have to listen to you on a certain level so but what you do with that is the challenge one other quick question is just sort of personal you know by both the f b i and the o d as a particularly high threat i've been trying to get the production of this stuff stopped and found some of it if you remember in containers in iraq you know saddam was apparently playing around with it trying to figure out what to do with it maybe and you know i think producing something like that here in the u s and it and it is still out there in the u s that it's been stockpiled different places it's a real problem significant numbers of people who start with the premise that biological weapons aren't capable of being utilized in a way that would constitute a weapon of mass destruction what we encountered was up until president nixon who terminated the u s development of an often c biological weapons program we probably had the best biological weapons program in the world in the  s and it was enormously effective if you want to get some sense of what was capable of being done fifty years ago you might ask for a briefing on what our own program was and then speculate what fifty years of further scientific engagement with the worst biological materials might have brought us to battle that will keep you up at night another suggestion if because you ought to deal with this issue learn a scenario that's relevant to your districts and when you talk about it goeth run through the scenario because people get it that i mean when i use is st louis we gather on the fourth of july at the riverfront celebrate the holiday get to isolate anthrax turn into a slurry or a powder get a pickup truck put a shell in the several million people in new york killed depending on how effective it is tends to like a third of that it brings it home and brings in us and think how many times people are gathered in new york over the summer for one reason or another it's witnesses for coming today i want to thank you for your service as elected officials thank you for expertise and thank you for your commitment to protect not only americans but the citizens of the world and my question akala follow up on some discussion we've had about the threat of india and pakistan and on a daily basis we're learning more about the threats that are posed by terrorist groups not in the places that covered on the news you know india pakistan afghanistan but other places like yemen has already shown some signs of success on christmas day with the bomber on the aircraft and possibly having some connections with the shootings in my home state of texas at fort hood and i my question to you all is what's the likelihood that the next w n d attack will be from one of these groups that will be forthcoming from them and not work out of our focuses and appreciate your comments on that issue i can't give you a statistical probability of that occurring but i think it's it is certainly within the realm of reality to me one of the most frightening things about what happened on christmas day is that it broke what we had assumed to be a relationship there are about sixty of these regional or sub regional groups that have an affiliation with al qaeda big al qaeda in the caves of pakistan in the past the assumption had been that those affiliate groups were disciplined by big al qaeda and they would not take major operations without approval this situation in december seemed to be a break from that tradition that these regional groups are starting to be self self an issue in their operations if that is in fact the case the level of risk has just gone up significantly because now we don't have a small group of people making decisions we've got a large group of people frequently with a diverse set of motivations behind their actions so whether they end up being the one who delivers the dubby m d or whether it's their their older parent he won't make much difference to the people who are port you can drive a tanker very close to the dow to close to the urban areas it's for our commerce it's the second largest port in our country we've got a huge medical center there which serves the entire region that if you would have a biological attack and take out its capabilities you could have a very very serious situation there and i guess my question is in sort of your studies are you seeing any evidence that the terrorists out there who again been focused on aircraft right now as go get wise and realize you know we can get we can get a tanker you know take on a ship in the port of houston or we can just get something across our borders and our state has the largest border with mexico and you know we can achieve our goals not by folks on aircraft but by folks on these these very i think very easy ways unfortunately to hurt our country and i mean you see in your studies do you see any evidence that the terrorists are actually thinking about that way of coming  an aircraft well i give you another homework assignment i spent three weeks last summer in great britain in large part talking to their intelligence law enforcement political groups as to terrorism in u k they've been dealing with terrorism much longer than than we have one of the things they do is they engage citizens to a much higher level than has been our practice and they told me a story about a citizen who came to an appropriate law enforcement agency and said i think i know how a terrorist would deliver a weapon of mass destruction in london or manchester and birmingham and the answer was they would do it with an ambulance why an ambulance because that's a vehicle that people tend to defer to allowing it to get close to the target before detonation with this lead scotland yard to ask the question do we know where our ambulances are in the u k and they did a survey and were stunned to find out how many were unaccounted for i would suggest you might take as a as a question in your own community is somebody responsible for knowing the whereabouts of all emergency vehicles which might provide the platform for a relatively safe and unimpeded  vehicle of mass destruction so yes i think we've tended to solve yesterday's problem if a fellow named reed gets on an airplane from london to miami and and has something bad in issues the next thing we're doing is having everybody take their shoes off at the airport if somebody as the man did in december has it in his underwear we're now going to take pictures of everybody's underwear we've got to get out of this chasing the past and and take a more futuristic approach asking what are the most likely ways not the ways that have already been shown to be used but that a thoughtful considerate smart adversary would likely choose just a couple of quick comments senator graham said some things that triggered some thinking first of all it's really important that we get a lot of this thinking and intensity level coming from the grassroots and local communities upward in the system you all and used to know if you think about it and you're you're motivated to think about it where these threats might come from better than the f b i is going to know sitting there in washington so this is one of the reasons we do repeat the urgency of the threat keeping in mind what is harman said this is not an attempt to get people to panic at all so people will recognize a threat get past the sense of panic or despair and then just adopted a sort of a working reality in their lives so that people  as they've done in britain as they've done and as i've done to some degree in new york which is a leader in this just people recognize this is part of the world that we have to live and so somebody and you got to be thinking about how could this how could they hit us here differently than they've done it before and the other point i want to mention it's related to this because it's it has to do with community action and preparedness i really want to applaud the draft bill as we understand it because you're raised the subject of making sure first responders and their families have the med kits you mentioned the big hospital you've got there well if those people are working in that hospital if there is some kind of bio attack and they're worried about their families that's what they're going to pay attention to and who can blame them so we need to make certain that this group of people has the commendable countermeasures that they have it for their families at minimum and then you also raise i think a very important issue it's got cv to raise the question of giving med kits out just t general population under what circumstances is that an appropriate thing to do i think you ought to be studying that just particularly in certain high risk cities you know used in new york whatever to what extent do we just say to people you can empower yourself in your family five minutes the gentlewoman from texas miss i'm sorry thank you mr chairman thank you very much for your recognition and for this hearing let me thank the two co chairs in pro senator graham appointed choose me and then pursue the line of questioning that my colleague just engaged in with respect to yemen and other african nations i think we've had this discussion before even as the homeland security committee was being crafted and that is what is the jurisdiction and how do we find a home for national security and anti terrorism efforts on behalf of this nation and allow one entity to be empowered senator graham in your testimony you mentioned the jurisdiction l complexity that we are in and i note that in grading us with a grade that most students don't want to receive and after you have reform congressional oversight to better address the intelligence if you would respond to that along with the question of what i think is crucial is training the next generation of national security experts and i'm going to add another question and then out then i will listen i to i have just come back from yemen and looked at it in two different directions one of course the government's commitment if at all to nonproliferation and i'd like your assessment of that but also the social issues of large numbers of unemployed youth who are obviously already targets for al qaeda recruitment what role do we have to play in that aspect to quash the rightness of those who are there to be engaged in terrorism and what role is saudi saudi arabia playing if you're familiar with them completely closing the border and not themselves dealing with their neighbor in a number of ways of course the nonproliferation and al qaida getting their hands on nuclear materials but also is there another way that saudi can be more involved in what potentially might be happening in yemen and i thank you both for your presence here and soon talent you ma join in on some of those questions that i've asked thank you again well let me take you to picking one of your questions and i'll answer senator kyl like to pick another one and that is this issue of preparing the next generation of national security officers i think this is a very significant issue our in korea and the nine eleven the joint house senate and my pain and our most important single conclusion was that the fundamental lapses that led to led the intelligence community to be blind before nine eleven were found in the quality of people who were involved in their responsibilities the congress i hope after more than five years of  procrastination is about to pass legislation to establish what's been referred to as the intelligence equivalent of the reserve officer training corps for the military where we will have a regular process for the recruitment preparation particularly in areas of science and link languages of the next generation of of our intelligence community leadership  and then a a smooth process for their integration into the community i think that is extremely high importance and i'm pleased that it looks as if it's about to happen you think we're moving fast enough well i think we should have done it five years ago but better late than never finish tell would you take the jurisdictional question about whether or not we have a strong enough i made this point a number of contacts i think you're exactly right to be concerned about it and it takes what ought to be a real positive congressional oversight i'm a believer in congressional oversight because the agencies pay tension when congress gets involved  but it takes what should be a positive and turns it into what i think we all have to admit is a negative i mean there's a reason secretary an apology has contacted the chairman and mr pascoe and mr king to say could you be certain to raise this issue it's not because she because this is because she's hearing from her undersecretaries and assistant secretaries that they're having to spend too much time in too many committees that they ought to be spending doing all this other stuff we're talking about and that's a practical matter and you all know that cabinet secretaries the last thing in the world they want to have to do is get involved with telling congress how to change its internal procedures so she's doing that that means this is a big problem over there and i think a combination of making certain that  the key committee staff people and chairman or ranking members on the committees here have got these threat briefings so they know this is a security the country at stake this is not a fight over a typical oversight issue and then if we can make the problem their problem i was dealing in the congress of it once you get the other person to accept the fact this is a problem i have to participate in solving i can't just be an obstacle to solutions so you think one department should be strengthened with such as homeland security within the executive branch yes and then here in the congress i think a committee should be and it's easy for us to sit here because it ought to be this committee i mean we're not tested like now before judiciary or something where we have to tell him you probably need to give something up  and i agree completely with what you and senator graham were saying about within experts within into intel and me add one comment because it's relevant to your other point in order to get the kind of work force that we need they're going to have to be empowered to move more quickly and setting up this reserve and hiring people and that means we're going to cut down on some of this review you know so that they think about this you get a great i'm graduating from you know you pick at some great school and they have studies in this area and they know it and the cia wants to hire him and now they've got to get go through clearances and this stuff it takes a year well what top notch person is going to sit around for a year waiting to see whether an offer can be made so we're going to have to shorten that procedure time that means there's a possibility some mistakes could get made if you're hiring hundreds of people and i think it's important to chairman that this committee and the intel committee if a mistake occurs that way unless somebody clearly was negligent that you not play gotcha with them don't have a hearing and then hammer on him and would back him up because we're going to have to have some mistakes of comissioner rather than omission thank you thank you very much thank you ms johnson lee for questions and i thank you and i just want to conclude to you mr chairman and say that i think yemen is an important issue for this committee several members have been and i hope the committee will that in here their answer on that but i hope the committee will also have input on that as as we go through the commission rather as we go forward thank you bang the chair now recognizes for five minutes the gentleman from the great state of alabama mr rogers thank you mr chairman and i thank you both for being really good hearing i gree with mr carney it's unfortunate that we don't have the same media attention for what you had to say that we had for the solo he's which was just a joke but i want to obviously first about  uses in a grammar earlier but to miss harman about how we get this jurisdiction as you resolved i think it's going to take people like you who don't have a dog in the fire to help press this issue with the administration with us and she is just it's a real problem as you just said senator talent but i was pleased after the christmas day bombing when lee hamilton was interviewed the next day and this is what the things he mentioned he said it is time for the congress to have the political will to implement that last nine eleven commission recommendation on jurisdiction because we have this diluted focus right now in the house as a result of that i want to talk about rural preparedness and mass evacuation i have the center for domestic parents in my district it's the only possibility in the country to train first responders as to how to to to deal with an attack of mass destruction and it's a great facility one of my concerns as being a member who represents a rural congressional district is that we don't push that training out into rural america because i'm of the opinion that when there is an attack in a major urban area i don't think it's just going to be new york new jersey it could be st louis or it could be birmingham alabama or charlotte north carolina but worst financial hubs of the region these people can be back you waited out in the rural america to get them out of there and while know from florida i know you know missouri it's volunteers that are working in these fire and rescue departments and they can't leave and take two weeks to go to the center for this free training because it can't leave their jobs and they're out of professional firefighter risk so anything that you can do to help let the department know that you think that this is an area and attended to i think would be beneficial please it centered they also have the noble training facility noble hospital which trains as you talked about a few minutes ago that these hospital workers if there's an attack they but their loved ones were trying to deal with that and trying to bring hospital administrators as well as caregivers and in training them as to what's going to be like what the environment going to be like very state of the art but we need more messaging to get that information out that we need more hospitals to recognise that it could be them that had this problem to be the need to be prepared to deal with it but having said that do you think that there's enough being done in the way of preparedness in rural america for the mass evacuations out of an urban center after an attack i guess i am not aware of any comprehensive  planning for that eventuality and so that would lead me to to say that no we have not assessed where these urban populations aftermath of such an attack states like yours and mine which have had some experience with evacuations for hurricanes know what what those circumstances are and they would be much more finger on an important issue and one that i think would be worthy of some further exploration by this committee to heighten the sensitivity of the appropriate federal agencies to this likelihood  i don't know if you all were aware but i taught with mr carney and mr richardson who both here subcommittees in this group in his full committee there's been an effort internally within the department to basically dismantle the office of health affairs which we spent five years configuring to deal exactly with what you're talking about and fortunately in the last couple of weeks apostle paul came in and stopped that effort but it is important that we remember the dead is a critical element of being prepared respond to weapon of mass destruction attack i think we don't know is the question you say are we prepared enough i would answer no but then i would also answer we don't know and you know i i was approached by some people locally in missouri who explained to me that our technology in terms of organizational directories just very simple same service have so the fire protection districts in suburban st louis don't know if there's a disaster what fire trucks or hazmat outfits or diving outfits are available around the state of missouri and there's no easy way to find out except pick up the phone and call the chiefs so we don't know and if you don't know how can you structure a plan where you are engaging is an intelligent plan would probably say well we don't need to train everybody in every rural fire protection outfit about everything but we ought to have some of them trained in some things so they can contribute and help in the event of a disaster in birmingham or whatever we don't know and that's the lack of integration in fragmentation that's such a huge issue so you know failing that yeah you've got to keep these organizations alive so you can keep these folks in the game and i would agree with you on the jurisdiction and let me just i'm sitting here thinking about the ideas we've had and maybe this is not the place to air a plan maybe i should be more secretive about it but if you all had a hearing where you encourage sex during apollo town to testify is the practical consequences and maybe you've already done this and president just privately let her know that even though she takes  flack from some other people for it that he would support her in it and then you guys came up with a resolution for both the caucus the democratic caucus in the republican conference at the beginning of the next where you got up and offered a resolution instructing the leadership and maybe they knew about it beforehand and privately supported you to come up with a solution and put it to the members in both parties and just let them to let them vote on it you know in the context of some publicity and you know do you want to solution to this or not at a certain point the people who are blocking this and i understand that i mean i was i was a committee chairman i was there for the you know i know all that but a certain point i got to say you know what the reason is to we are so frightened to go near that issue and thank you for your encouragement for me i don't have the offer that leader and leader king and myself been talking about this for many many months but now we secretary finally from individual communities and that i think we're moving towards and i'm very pleased that we're going to be working on this legislation that is missing that i would ask your advice on how do we involve the private sector as we move forward and know that it's not own your score card but give us some advice that we might take in as we draw up this legislation and also tell us how you think we're doing on that  lab regulation people are running these high containment labs it's a potential security problem which we recognize in our report it's also the answer to the problem because they're the ones developing the research the lifesaving countermeasures and they need to know that their regulators are not going to treat them like the enemy they're going to partner with them unless they have some reason obviously if you discover some security risk or something and i would say that's the same thing with the businesses that imported export pathogens etc they all all the people leading this we run into want to be part of the solution and so if they're treated as partners if you have negotiated rulemaking if you include them in on this this would include the travel and tourism community you know you don't maybe we should expand more of an international component or should we try and get what we can by focusing domestically so if you just take a look at photos i'd appreciate your input thank you thank you larry king it's always been my belief that if our state and local officials are not an integral part of our homeland security strategy both pointed this out many many times then we have no such thing as homeland security all we have then are some fancy bureaucratic plans because the great majority of our first responders the people who actually help prevent and respond to emergencies are at the state and local level they're there first before the federal government's involvement for anybody's and while they will be the first to be moving that is  exactly why mr king and i made state and local coordination and integral part of weapons of mass destruction legislation both at the preparedness and response level i would like  both to comment on your thoughts on this issue especially in regards to the need for this coordination both before and after a possible weapons of mass destruction attack be it nuclear biological radiological chemical whatever senator graham i could not agree with you more and it is particularly true on the biological aspect because the public health service which is in most areas a combination of state and local responsibility will play such an absolutely central oh that is he response capability we were giving and they have to the nation not to one level of government because we think that the fundamental failure has been the failure to develop a means by which all of the critical elements that are that are actually going to be out there and will make a difference on the ground life or death for people who've been impacted how effectively they will understand their mission be able to execute their mission and not stumble over each other or leave gaps of unprotected people i would agree and i think this is an area mr chairman where we could do a lot informally as between leaders if for example secretary napolitano or the d n i or somebody presented at a national governors association meeting to emphasize the nature of this threat so to say to the governors look you're an integral part of this we're going to recognize that but we need you to make certain that your your office is don't treat this as a business as usual thing this is not an excuse for you to cut your public health spending and hope that you can get federal dollars to replace it so once you get to the top the governors and selves and say there's going to be a national effort you're an important part of it you need to recognize personally and make sure your key people recognize that this has to be reflected in state priorities as well as federal i think that's that's that's that's that's a win for their seat at the table and that but that's informal it's not something you legislate it's just something that as between leaders all occur you pointed out earlier erin we' asked several times that how they approach these particular sensitive urgent issues in england is very different than we approach it here it would seem to make i've come to this conclusion i don't know if my good friend mr long would agree with me that there is a bottom up approach that you're looking at the folks who are on duty in the local level to foster ideas so that they really focus in this is really homeland security i don't one other quick area and then we'll ask mr longdon if he has any questions we've been neglected i think looking at how our vaccination policy plays in our deterrence of the effects of a possible biological attack and you and i both agree i think we do that the next attack will be biological we expected to be between now and two thousand and thirteen our legislation that peter mr king and i've been working on diligently with your able distribution policies guidance and information provided to the public in the light of known biological threats to the united states realizing we can vaccinate everybody against every possible disease i think we should at least let the first responder community volunteer get immunized against those biological agents we've been told pose material threats to the united states that you agree with that in addition to h h s who else do you think should be involved and we doing our vaccine policy is german could i ask your indulgence i'm afraid i have a commitment this afternoon in new york and i have got to catch a plane which is going to leave without me unless i leave fairly soon so i appreciate that very much and i really want to thank you senator graham for your contributions before and now to this nation your service has been impeccable and i want you to catch that trip playing well we're going to be talking as we go along and finishing this bill thank you we look forward to that very much and thank you for your leadership thank you so yeah you put your finger on a real problem if you're chairman and we talked a lot about this i mean we're still making vaccines using chicken eggs i don't know if your staff is informed you actually mr senator graham actually did a video on it which was quite an experience you know we had six months notice with h one n one and we'd have enough vaccines which is like just it's incredible now i think it's very important that we do what you talked about that we make certain the first responder community has whatever medical countermeasures we can come up with to protect them so they feel  secure and can then do their job of protecting the rest of us in the event of an attack you do raise that issue here which is i think you're raising this issue of an issue in your question correctly should be expedited procedures for example with f d a approval to get them these vaccines quicker and you know that's a controversial subject we did that with anthrax and there's been some issues involved with it i think we need a decision making structure where that is an open possibility to be decided on a case by case basis i think it depends on how crucial it is how high risk this population is how much how far along f d a is i think it depends on a series of things but we need a decision making structure so that somebody is capable of saying we need to let this go and do this in this instance with regard to this drug and we don't really have that now we are putting some pretty high hopes in the review that's going on now in the executive branch we think they're energized and i'm certain you and the staff on the committee are watching it so let's see what they come up with is what i would say to you which should be completed pretty quickly so let's see what happens but it's a crucial issue and  you're right we have to have this first responder community protected or they're not going to be able to protect us thank you very much the chair recognizes for five minutes gentleman from california mr long and thank you very much mr chairman i'm sorry i missed a good deal of the proceedings but i speakers so it took me more time than i thought if i had a lot of time i could address each question with a different manner of referring to mr vice president talent there i could call him senator i could reorganizing ourselves and briefly mention opportunity cost lost could you just tell us what you mean by that or the the negative of it is that people in the executive branch have to spend too much time before too many committees subcommittees so that's that's the area we're posit would damage is positively done to what they're trying to do it's not just testifying it's all the preparation of asked money going over it and getting other staff to do it and so forth so you become an obstructive force let's just be not you but the institution and then the positive does not happen because you don't have clear channels of oversight nobody from this authorizing committee was there when the stimulus bill which again forget about what you think of it as economic policy this was an opportunity to fund a lot of this stuff and there and there wasn't anybody there to go to mr robey and his people and jerry lewis and his people and say look you've got to make certain this money's in there because nobody had to claim responsibility whereas had it been a priority you would have had mr skelton there and ranking member there and somebody would have done it and we all know how this place operates if nobody has if everybody has responsibly or something nobody has responsibility and so it just  doesn't get done and you're right to point it out and we're not just saying it because congress is an easy target for commissions like ours i'll say one of the things mr longdon with in this community of bipartisan commissions and i'm sort of operating in this world now there's an increasing sense of reservoir resolution that they're going to keep hitting this institution with this with this issue i mean the political cost to you all of continuing not to do anything is going to go up and i'm on other commissions because everybody is saying it's time for you guys to get with it and again i don't mean you personally i mean as an instance where you should mean us personally because the institution is made up of members and we have found the  proposition that we ought to fix it and fix it right because in response to the threat that you talk about to have congress with institutional prerogatives and protections and procure lism makes no sense whatsoever let me ask you this  what we're talking about a half a million people potentially which which i consider to be a huge attack would be which would be more devastating than any single attack that's ever been made on american soil mr logan they got to understand from their point of view they have a strategy to win this thing  i know it's hard to define them but to use asymmetric weapons to hit us vulnerable points and basically force us to stop resisting whatever it is they want they don't really know so if you hit new york with that let's say and  i don't like to pick new york it could be st louis it could be used to hit him with it and could even be in the west we're sometimes forgotten here but there is something west of the mississippi one of the things they've told us is that the further west you go the l conscious the local leadership is of this unfortunately you might want to check in l a and san francisco place yes it could be l a so you hit a california city with it and then a month later you hit it again and you kill an american city now how long do we continue the struggle against them i mean the last time a weapon of mass destruction was actually used in a war the country it was used against surrender within a week now this is their thinking ok we with ok well then i would just ask you this in any where in your report did you suggest it would be a good national policy for us to say that we would unilaterally decide not to use policy and bob and i are careful not to go outside the four corners of the record even though he and i obviously as individuals have opinions about all this but it's just interesting that we talk about deterrence and we talk about  all prevention and deterrence which means that you prevent the other side from attacking or you deter them from attacking first fifty or sixty years we have had a nuclear deterrent even though i think most of us would agree that we can bring down our stockpile that deterrence has worked fairly well nuclear to nuclear and when you tell me of the devastating impact of a single biological or chemical attack on the united states in my view that's a quibble and to the threat of using a nuclear weapon it is a different weapon but it is a quibbling and i just question whether we ought to then say we will refrain from using a retaliatory weapon that we've had as much as no one knows what the scenario would be so that's why we're just trying to figure out what you think the dimensions are and i just want to make sure we're not exaggerating when we talk about a half a million people that could be lost with a single attack not exaggerating a look i'll take my hat off to the vice chairman and put on the jim talent i don't think we should leave any doubt in our declaratory policy that that is an option that's on the table now whether the changes leave that out or not you know i leave up to you all to decide that's my own opinion one of the things that in communicating about this in the district it's so important i think to get across to community leaders in just average americans  voters is that deterrence in the traditional concept doesn't work against a terrorist because they don't have a national base that you can respond against i mean now you're right if we can assign a national actor if we can use of friends we can figure out then we can them but it may not come that way it may just be al qaeda on their own and what do you do i mean what are you going to blow up it's also difficult when an enemy says that if you kill them you've given them the greatest  immortality that they can have i mean deterrence usually works well with someone who doesn't want to die although i've noticed that most of the leaders of a kind of themselves don't want to die they want all their followers to die it works when you have a clear i mean enemy or other party that you're dealing with when it's bilateral rather than multilateral when you have secure lines of communication so the policy is clear in short when there's a lot of things present that are not present here which is why our and foreign of homeland security does submit a list of pride parties at budget time this was not a priority so we get our you know priorities out of lack here we've got major problems we're more concerned about and i'm saying this is not important but choices had to be made we spent more money quote unquote fixing the border and secondly your point is very well taken about this is not nation to nation we're talking about doesn't necessarily have to be an it hasn't been but homegrown terror is just as ours and we need to take a look at that a lot more closely because that is an issue that we are afraid to talk about literally speaking i want to thank you for your testimony today at cent down having worked with you in the past when you were here i know that you're dedicated to the protection of america the united states of america i know that you and senator  really work put a lot of time in the last couple of years along with your staff members we are trying to work in the spirit with which you provided us and that is why we do not live in a cocoon but rather we're trying to talk to everybody the homeland security staff your staff the nine eleven commission staff professionals in the field in order to come up with legislation that's going to be meaningful and logical so that we do approach this with the six major categories that you laid out and i think it's important i think it's significant and a lot of food for thought today for every one of the members and then someone to come in and go you know how it works right now and a lot more members in the ending but we hope that within her next couple of weeks the bill will be completed and we hope it meets with your approval and so there