will please come to order good afternoon today we will focus on an issue at the top of this committee's agenda the threat from al qaeda from al qaeda in afghanistan and pakistan we believe that osama bin laden and his  committee's work on this very important subject to our country this is one of the biggest threats that we face and the american people deserve to know about it the committee plans to hold additional hearings on al qaeda both open and closed in the coming c lecturer at the kennedy school of government at harvard university and also a research fellow at university center on law and security he's also the author of numerous books as a special assistant for near east and south asia with the undersecretary of state for political affairs mister accomplished as an intelligence officer also fortunate  plot extremism and hatred for the united states the bulk of our troops are bogged down in iraq pursuing a war of choice against an enemy that did not attack us on nine eleven well over four thousand americans have been killed in safe haven in the pakistan federally administered tribal areas operational lieutenants and its top leadership you know the word al qaeda has the freedom to recruit the freedom to train and the freedom to plot attacks against the united states clearly the threat from al qaeda pakistan border region is real and frankly i'm not confident that this administration has a winning plan to defeat  eliminated the committee appreciates the panel's assistance in helping us to better understand the operational relationship between al qaeda and the taliban in afghanistan and also in pakistan the effect that the war in iraq has had on our efforts  and a revaluation of our strategy in our conflict with thank you all again for joining us here today and i will recognize the ranking member of our committee m for any statement that he may wish to make thank you mr chairman thanks to the witnesses for appearing with us today just hearing today gives us a chance to discuss before the american people the continuing throughout our nation faces not only from qaida but from my perspective the larger threat from radical jihadist terrorism i believe it's beneficial for the american people to hear more about the al qaeda threat i believe it will benefit from having this open hearing but it's a very have information that may be classified or have gotten access to classified information or whatever but in this form they don't have the latitude to talk about it much of what we'll be discussing today will be an incomplete  recognition of what's actually on the record more than six years after nine eleven our nation still seems to be or we now seem to be at a crossroads on the one hand it's clear that our homeland has not been attacked since that tragic fateful day this cannot be called anything other than a success and it is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the men and women of our intelligence community and our of our military on the other hand there's a clear tendency by some one america and in this congress to look at our success over the past several years a cause or excuse to let down our guard his failure to successfully carry out an attack on our homeland as a lack of intent or a lack of capability on the part of al qaeda the reality from my perspective is that al qaeda has well expressed it intent and i believe has the capability to carry out an attack on our soil what they have lacked over the past several years is a free reign to plot in the shadows and to do so without fear of a u s response with our nation and freedom under attack the smoke in the dust still billowing from the ruins of the world trade center president bush huddled with his national security team to discuss what we needed to do what needed to be done protect our nation from another catastrophic attack the president's advisors tol tools and methods the u s intelligence agencies needed to track and combat radical jihadist groups like al qaeda were born many of the highly effective anti terrorist tools that have helped keep this nation safe the terrorist surveillance program the terrorist financing tracking program the high value terrorist detainees program these programs were all braced to congressional leaders including the speaker in fact not a concern was raised until these programs were leaked to the press unfortunately turning them into political fodder instead of the valuable clandestine counterterrorist tools that they were designed to be i have to mention the fact that we are having this hearing today as we're having this hearing our intelligence capability to protect the american people our embassies our embassy personnel troops overseas and our allies continues to erode as senate intelligence chairman jay rockefeller declared on the senate floor in february the quality of the intelligence that we are going to be receiving is going to be degraded it's not enough the jihadist terrorism and ignore the erosion in the tools that the intelligence community says it needs the very same tools that have kept our homeland safe for more than six years since nine eleven we need to strengthen our nation's terror surveillance capabilities by fixing the foreign intelligence surveillance act some of asked why does the united states need to employ tough counterterrorist programs the answer is because the radical jihadist threat did not end with the nine eleven attacks nor did the responsibility the president  congress to protect our nation to listen to the statements of osama bin laden his death it is easy to understand the seriousness of this threat its global implications and the determination of radical jihadists to strike america's homeland osama bin laden declared war against the united states with little fanfare in one thousand nine hundred six when he issued a fatwa that declaration of declaration of war against the americans occupying the land of the two holy places he acted on this whole so called declaration of war with al against the u s embassies in africa in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight u s cole in two thousand bin laden claims parallels between the american presence in iraq and the soviet presence in afghanistan for example according to a strategy document jihadist web site in two thousand and three with guerrilla warfare the americans were defeated in vietnam and they were defeated in afghanistan this is the method that expelled the direct crusader colonialism for most of the muslim lands the purpose of al qaeda terrorist campaign is supposedly to establish osama bin laden's brand of radical islam over what he calls the caliphate a region that invented lod mind cons historic muslim land expanding extending from morocco two thousand and six the reinstatement of islamic rule as the individual duty of every muslim with every land occupied by infidels some of asserted and i expect we'll hear this a lot from the other side that the radical jihadist threat in iraq is very limited or unreal and that the us should withdraw to focus on the so called real war on terror which some claim is confined to afghanistan in the fata in pakistan i can't help but wonder if those who are focused on forcing our withdrawal from iraq would be more comfortable with us invading a sovereign nuclear armed nation as challenging as our relationship with pakistan has been at times it is also true that pakistan has helped us capture more al qaeda terrorists than any other nation others here today will say that the only reason al in iraq is because we are there but this ignores the fact that al qaeda like a moth drawn to a flame will attack american our people anywhere they can i refer you again to the al qaeda led attacks against our embassies in africa and against the cole this point of view also ignores then was unequivocal two thousand and four statement that baghdad is the capital of the caliphate in july two thousand and five details for stage plan for iraq in a letter to the now deceased head of territory in iraq the third stage extend the jihad way to the secular countries neighboring iraq and the fourth stage with what came before the clash with israel because israel was established only to only to challenge any new islamic dozens of countries including china canada sweden india the philippines thailand serbia and in the past month alone al qaeda allegedly as tempted to unsuccessful mortar attacks against our embassy and embassy personnel in the yemen our nation  stands at a crossroad in the choices we make in the days and months ahead are more than about this administration or even the next they are about the future of our great nation security of her people mr chairman thank you for having us here and i look forward to the hearings that we'll be scheduling in the the mess that's been created over the course of the last six seven years but the greater challenge i think is the one that calls on all of us to work collectively together to make sure that we have given the professionals charged with our national security the tools to keep the same time balancing the rights that we all enjoy as americans because if we if we somehow don't have a balanced effort then the terrorists will will have won i think all of us are pledged to do that i think all of us are pledged to continue to work jointly together both with this administration with the time that remains for it and also in the new administration to make sure that future generations are proud of the efforts that all of us making t about them not everybody in this room those statements very repetitive kill the jews kill americans kill muslims who disagree with us etc but in fact many of the statements have specific instructions and i'll give you three examples the law has made it official qaeda policy to attack the saudi oil industry because he has a narrative narrative about the united states that we can be bankrupted by the actions of al qaeda one of the reasons that we had an attack in two thousand and six on the most important oil facility in the well the  months pakistan is now suffering the largest epidemic of suicide attacks in pakistani history in the past year and there are many other examples so finding bin laden ayman al zawahiri is orders of magnitude more important than finding the other  poorly understood by both the british press and the british government at the beginning as a bunch of self starting radicalized guys who got together and launched the attack as we know more about the attack to the lead suicide attackers trained with package with al qaeda in pakistan two of them are these videotapes  base on the afghan pakistan border broadly what's going on in britain right now you know from the public statements of john evans the head of m i five the two thousand people in britain they were got a serious national security threats many of whom have links  qaida in pakistan four hundred thousand british citizens there's a pakistan every year on a completely legitimate trip because british pakistanis zero point zero one percent of them hook up with a kashmiri militant group or al qaeda that's forty people with training the other as resurgence of what's going on in afghanistan in my view the senior leadership of the taliban and al qaida logically and tactically if you look at the suicide attacks in afghanistan they only really took off after they saw how effective they were in iraq there were almost no suicide attacks in afghanistan in two thousand and one two thousand and two two thousand and three twenty seven in two thousand and five hundred thirty nine in two thousand and six progressing in number and that's because al qaeda has learned from the iraq and the taliban have learned from the narrative that we're a paper tiger that narrative is based on vietnam and mogadishu and two it helps our strategy much more importantly they want to regroup and get out of safe haven whatever drawdowns we do must be taken in to take this into account and these are a group this is a group that takes information operations very seriously i'll be more seriously than we do so that's a snapshot of where al qaeda is today given that snapshot what can they do in the future i'm not going to discuss chicken little scenarios like nuclear weapons but i think west investor confidence it wouldn't be a weapon of mass disruption destruction would be a weapon of mass disruption nonetheless it would seem the nine eleven style event likewise bringing down a commercial jet would have a very nasty effect on global terrorism and aviation i believe it all kind of  type united states is extremely constrained looking for in that in the next five years the reason i say that look at the planes plot of the summer of two thousand and six this was al qaida is fifth anniversary celebration as it were nine eleven the planes thought it was very interesting the planes the plan to bring down as many as six american airliners is interesting for two reasons for us will they selected the hardest target imaginable commercial aviation they're not interested in talking to more in malls are interested in attacking new york los angeles d c commercial aviation they decided to do it in britain wanted to slightly different place my running out of time by the way some quick ideas about what we should do about this i think one of the christmas critical things we can do is create a universal database  iraq we're looking at the afghan insurgency in afghanistan but we need to think about globally we need to look at the interconnections we need to find who are the clerics who are disproportionately inciting young men to go to the jihad this would be useful not only from an intelligence point of view but also from a policy point of view because it was a study we should say the governments of pakistan and saudi arabia why so many of these suicide attackers are coming from it's this particular cleric in this particular mosque is producing a disproportionate number of the suicide attackers and we're not saying this just of government and there is much that i don't know now in terms of current privileged information beyond that which is openly available or particular insight into the methodology currently being employed so i haven't come here today to provide you with new information what i hope i can do is to provide you a certain a judgment and perspective based on many years as a practitioner in this area and i hope that that will be of use to you in your very important oversight role in questioning and testing assumptions and in challenging current practice in countering terrorism i should point out further that i am a very strong personal believer in vigorous  more so now that i'm no longer be subject to it with regard to osama bin laden here we are six plus years after nine eleven and the man remains at large and is as peter pointed out that is a very serious state of affairs it is important that we affect his capture although i think we may differ on the degree to which it is important but i do quite frankly i'm not terribly surprised that he is still at large tracking down bin laden is going to be very very difficult most of us who claim some expertise in this area as peter has already pointed out believe that he is most likely hiding now in pakistan in the federally administered tribal areas i suspect somewhere north of the  very very difficult area it's mountainous it is it is fractured both demographically and anthropologically it is a very hostile area not only to us as outsiders but even to other pakistanis were not from that area  is location an area actually is a guess and for all we know he may be hiding in an apartment in karachi for all that i know but what i think is almost certain is that where ever he is he is keeping a very low profile i doubt that he is moving at all the number of individuals who are directly knowledgeable of his whereabouts i suspect is extremely small and as peter is already pointed out it is certain that he and his confederates are using very careful and very disciplined trade craft in controlling his communications whether it's by videotape or audiotape or otherwise i would point out that eric rudolph the american terrorist responsible  for the attack on the olympics in atlanta and a number of other attacks bombing attacks in the united states managed to remain at large for over five years in the mountains of north carolina despite the fact that he was at the top of the f b i wanted list there was a million dollar bounty on his head and they were very active efforts both official and non official to effect his capture bin laden has a great many a great many advantages over eric rudolph given where he is where you he's hiding and  the capabilities are there at his disposal so again i'm not terribly surprised at all that he has not been captured and quite frankly i think that it is quite likely that he is going to remain at large for an indefinite period of time in terms of methodologies that one might employ to effect  capture well there are great many things that have been done that could presumably be done but i think that they fall into broad categories when i would i would call a network based approach since bin laden does communicate at least to some degree the theory is that there is some sort of a human chain that extends from him to others outside the immediate area where he is hiding and that if you were to capture an individual somewhere in that chain and interrogate that individual that you could then trace the chain back to bin laden there are two very obvious problems with this the first is that you've got to capture someone in that chain alive is most likely that the individuals who were who have even indirect knowledge of the network that's being employed by bin laden in order to communicate or in the federally administered tribal areas we have not captured anyone alive in the federally administer areas for quite some time there have been a number of terrorist who have met their demise there but they have all been the victims of lethal strikes they haven't been captured those close to them haven't been captured and we haven't been able to recover their material either documents or  electronic media so that's a real problem secondly even if we were to capture one of these individuals as peter said the trade craft that is being employed i suspect is probably not terribly sophisticated infect effect what we would call non personal communications so that there are fire breaks in that human chain leading back to bin lot and again it would require a mistake a breakdown in discipline on their part in order for assumes that wherever bin laden is hiding there must be some result an anomaly if he's hiding in a compound somewhere in a remote area of northern pakistan presumably there are outsiders who occasionally travel into that area in order to effect communications with bin of not consistent with a number of people who are known to be there none of those indicators would be in any way definitive but if you had one of the more of those indicators that would be an indication that you want to follow it vigorously with some sort of a local investigation in order to do that however given the adam eyes nature of the areas in which bin laden is most likely hiding you would have to have a great number a great many informants any one of which would only be able to  cover a very small localized area you can't do that for all of northern pakistan what you could perhaps do is to set some priorities of areas that you would particularly want to look at and i think that there are some criteria that you could set forward which are the areas that you particularly want to look at hard and then would have to move about very rigorously and systematically to identify and recruit informants in each of those areas a very very difficult time intensive manpower intensive i don't say that it can't be done but even if you did everything right you would also have to be very lucky i think this exceeds in the end but even when we're talking about a local informant an investigation based approach that has the further problem associated with it that it is it would largely be unrelated to the larger effort to kill or capture otherwise neutralize senior members of al qaida who are hiding in the safe haven in the northwest frontier i might differ a little bit from peter in that is important is i concede the effort to locate to capture or otherwise eliminate bin laden and zawahiri is i think it is actually much more important in the near term that we continue the effort to kill or capture senior lieutenants who unlike bin laden probably unlike are directly involved in the effort to launch terrorist attacks across the border in afghanistan in western europe and perhaps much farther afield that's a very broad topic and perhaps we'll get into it in the in the q and a portion i would just make two broad points here one is that what we're trying to do in the federally administered tribal areas is too broad things too broad objectives and they work in direct conflict with one another the first is that we're trying to kill or capture senior terrorists who are engaged in plotting against us at the same time we're trying to deny them safe haven in that area progress against one of those objectives works directly against our efforts in the other respects and vice versa the second broad point that i would make is that the only way that we're really going to get an arm around this problem of whether we're going to make anything like permanent progress is to deny the fata as a safe haven for bin laden for bin laden for al qaida and for related extremists and i believe that the only way that we're going to do that is to a long term counterinsurgency effort that will be multifaceted it will be as much economic and political as it will be military and intelligence based it will be something that can really only effectively be done by the pakistanis but once we've convinced them that they must do it then it will require a great deal of vigorous support on the part of the united states and a very long term commitment to sustain that effort with regard to the much broader literally global struggle against al qaida again that's a very very broad topic i would just like to just press three points there the first is that i agree with peter that it is absolutely vital that we sustain the progress that has been made and in fact a further improvement in the situation with regard to al qaida in iraq it would be tremendously dangerous absolutely on the effectiveness of our allies in the war on terror we don't tend to think so much about it in terms of resources we don't tend to focus on it nearly as much but we would be essentially dead in the water were it not for the bigger separates of our allies and i think that therefore capacity building is an extremely important part of our international program that is often relatively overlooked the third has to do with the war of ideas this whole issue of whether we are creating more terrorists than in fact we are killing and capturing i believe that currently we are and then unless there is affective engagement in the so called war of ideas we're not going to turn a corner on that i don't think that we've engaged in that battle at all i think that to the extent that we have thought about it our thoughts have been confused and however i think that the keys to progress in that area are into areas that frankly should be great national strengths of ours the first is a commitment to justice and the second is a commitment to democracy and with that i will live in my state thank you  targets as has been done several weeks ago as far as the hunt for bin laden my belief is that if we look at bin laden certainly the pinnacle of his organization as  reconstituted itself with new leaders taking part in replacing two thirds of the leadership that had been taken out either killed or captured since nine eleven and some good news circumstances of his death but at least that's one more one more major leader that's taken out now having said that al qaeda is both an organization again really constituting lots of respect what's happening in europe in terms of the plots that have occurred in denmark in the u k in madrid and most recently in germany and germany was quite interesting because the simply a group of young muslims in belgium not in belgium but in the netherlands who basically said we're going to kill anybody who freedom of speech to be a fundamental human right we don't silence people with whom we disagree because their ideas are offensive or disturbing we believe that when such ideas are openly debated on their own weight and attract followers the fact of the matter is that there has been a reconstitution we look at the larger picture what are we facing this hearing is supposed to focus on al qaeda but my contention is and in my testimony half of  franchises in the united states or in canada or in london that attach themselves to al qaeda but it's my basic contention that we cannot decouple from the larger battle member of the clinton administration who i worked with combat in terrorism back in the ninety's richard clarke's testimony in two thousand and three that the issue of terrorist financing in the u s is a fundamental example of the shared infrastructure  it's imperative that we look at the larger problem of radical islamic ideology which al qaeda exploits and propagate but also is propagated by a host of other organizations that were derived from the same parent parental organization the muslim brotherhood as you probably are aware in the holy land foundation trial that was held last fall in texas more than one hundred thousand documents were released that were probably the most important national security documents released in the last thirty years and in those documents they revealed the extent to which the muslim brotherhood itself had implanted itself on american within american borders with the same intent but to do it internally that is to carry out an internal jihad from within a civilizational jihad they called it to sabotage and subvert u s democracy from within i call this almost the stealth jihad on one hand you have open attacks which we recognize as terrorist attacks and then you have infiltration asian intelligence organizations one only has to look at in pakistan how much they have been compromised historically and how they are still compromised and unwilling to admit that they have far more knowledge about where bin laden's likelihood whereabouts are or they have admitted publicly i believe we cannot afford to basically isolate the problem only  syrian muslim and she has spoken out against radical islam on television on al jazeera of all places and has debated even the spiritual leader of the muslim brotherhood who  american now has gone into hiding on our own volition without the protection of the f b i because of the threats stemming from the larger radiological confrontation by radical islam thank you m by first we know that al qaeda attacked us on nine eleven and we as some of you have indicated we know we've made some significant  globally against western countries nonetheless seven years later al qaeda is still able to recruit they're still able to full the taliban revealed that al qaida internally felt under great pressure and it was actually created there was a fair amount of criticism for amongst al qaeda for attacking the united states safe haven in afghanistan under the taliban word i would subscribe to most of what peter has just said i think that when we talk about al qaida as narrowly defined it that organization that was responsible for the attacks on nine eleven has been able to reconstitute itself in the to iran and in the gulf and as a result of that they're sort of moving through the rat lines if you will through pakistan that we were able with our pakistani allies to wrap up a very large number not only of senior al qaeda but also simple fighters were coming out of afghanistan at a certain point they realized that there was an opportunity for them to gain safe haven in the tribal areas and that the first firmly in that area and in this the situation is still persists here today with regard to a qaida in iraq that is a very significant phenomenon it is somewhat different however i think from the narrative that i have just but he was able if you will to establish a franchise and a great benefit to himself and his organization in assuming if you will the al qaida brand and as peter's pointed out that we've seen the same thing replicating itself elsewhere organizations which here too for it have seen themselves as part of a national struggle whether in morocco particularly in algeria in libya and elsewhere now as they have been stymied in their efforts to take over their native magreb whereas before so its mission as islam izing liberating their country algeria now they see themselves quite self consciously as part of a global jihad and i think that's significant we're seeing the same thing now with  much more so than before as part of the same global movement the same is true of the collection of extremist groups within pakistan the price of pakistanis now refer to themselves loosely is to tell about they now again see themselves rather than killing targeting people killing top leaders or interrogating getting our intelligence how could they still do this i think my response would be one that was sort of almost a perfect storm that developed right after nine eleven and one was the incredible fast paced developments of information technology that allowed al qaeda to transmit propaganda as well as communicating turnley without being immigrants had an there were no laws restricting the flow back and forth between europe and pakistan afghanistan and other countries we had supported terrorism so that it was a migration  we're rational they're rational you know we view ourselves to others the same way we do ourselves well it wasn't the case and in fact we ended up empowering the muslim brotherhood and empowering radical islamic groups around the world including groups in the united states into believing somehow that we were very weak in believing that somehow talking to people was the only way we were going to convince them that the free market would produce over the last number of years i think we have an appreciation for how complex that issue is and how difficult it is to get your hands around it and i think in this last question in your opening testimony you talked about  one thing that i agree with you on is their ability to use new technology use the information age and use it to their benefit to drive their message to perhaps provide some direction to where they want these disparate organizations to to move and to get things done i think the other thing that that i believe about al qaeda is that it's a learning organization it adapts as as the riyadh as its reality changes the popular line was to say well you know you need to deal with the palestinian issue because that's what's fueling al qaeda radical jihadism then it's iraq then it's the day to cartoons now it may be builders sometime over the next couple of months as that  and i think you can make a very good argument we need to do more but we need to do more of it quicker the thing that i'd be interested in is your perception of the ability of al qaida al qaeda central as we central isn't that important anymore that radical islam has taken a life of its own and that eliminating bin laden taking care of it's not that big of a deal anymore i think the panel here may disagree with it but i'd  in the united states festival to something called the american dream i grew up in britain i'm not aware of a british dream or any you dream soundly in a country built on immigration like united states is able to integrate its american muslims much better american muslims are better educated than the average american they have higher incomes eleven nine eleven was an incubator really in afghanistan it was as much incubated in hamburg as it was in afghanistan so that is the problem going forward and in some ways you know there are some ultimate stick in there because it's harder to that would be perpetrators and or perpetrators of those acts have been self motivated and self organized these are not individuals who were recruited out of the tribal areas in pakistan and then dispatched into western europe in order to mount these attacks for the most part these are people who came together sort of self consciously if you will as part of a of a community nursing resentments and deciding to do something about it locally where the link qaida has occurred is that they have reached back into a place from which they could get support whether it's ideological support religious instruction technical support financial support back into the afghan pakistan tribal areas and i think that is significant where the impetus where the initiative has come from is significant in the fact that the impetus came from areas far removed from the al qaeda safe haven is very significant is peter has pointed out  that the chances of that sort of plot being hatched in a place like western europe are far greater than a similar thing taking place in the united states number one much larger muslim population and many of the western european countries  much less integration much more perceived cause for for resentment and hatred of the west and fortunately is the case here in the united states doesn't mean that it couldn't happen here in united states but i think that the chances for a much greater in western europe one of the that given the nature of our society given the open society that we want to maintain it necessarily carries with it a much greater risk invulnerability i would say that first of all there's a common narrative in  and by the way that's also the montra of the averted attacks in the united states and i guess i would disagree with with peter who by the way used to work with very closely many years ago  and i would disagree with him on one point that i think that the radicalism in the united states has not manifested itself because we have done a much better job of intelligence gathering in terms of preventing attacks but i think the radicalism is pervasive here because the groups that exist here one can see they all are derived not all of them but some of the main quote groups were derived from the muslim brotherhood as revealed in the holy land documents and the mantra and you can hear it when we hear it all the time when we attend their conferences is that there's a war against islam and a canadian intelligence official testified last year that that is the one single motivating  becomes a victim of a becoming too aggressive have these plots more mature and the public much more of the of the evidence then i think the public would be convinced that we have a radical islamic danger in the united states it doesn't mean that the vast majority of muslims supported they don't but there is a radicalization process going on here largely induced by some of the mainstream groups that unfortunately have been considered to people who are being trained or out of the small but they are enough to create these plots under the taliban in afghanistan you're talking about hundreds of people going through training camps at any given moment you're talking about twenty guys all guys  radicalization among some elements of the iraqi population elsewhere in the arab and islamic world we didn't see it in iraq largely because of the climate of repression that existed there once a vacuum was created the baath party january of zero nine we're going to have new leadership in the white house and they have to either one of the democrats are elected they're promising a change of policy in iraq can you fast forward and tell us what you think iraq would look like with a drawdown of american troops and what it would look like what iraq would look  right now they're not doing well but we know that the iraqi army is not going to do better than the u s military against this group as more of an iraqi problem we can guarantee that al qaida it's more of an iraqi military approach has been knocked back on its heels it's on the run and the reason for it is because they were able to show themselves for who and what they are to the mass of the sunni population in western iraq living under al in a place where they actually hold sway is not a pleasant experience and that is the reason why we've had the sunni awakening why that is the sons of iraq have organized themselves and why they've accepted support from the united states so i guess i would say that in the context of any sort of a drawdown from limited time here but likely if we were to leave today they would be worse off they would not be protected as much right mister if we were to leave iraq today with the current shia government and their mixed history on how they treat the sunni would it be reasonable to assume that al qaida would have an advantage by simply playing the gulf government and any failures of their  fairness in order to gain a foothold of support back in the sunni community and other words this is all my questions are very straightforward a lot of people would have you believe a whole bunch of things about iraq the only thing that i'm concerned about today with iraq is if we leave are we better off and some people have tried to say that if we get out of iraq now things will be better specifically the current government as you see it and that has been a public thing today is not a government that s trust or the sunni's believe they get fairness from realistically the strides we've made in the sunni community to get sunni to fight this sunni insurgency of the haida wouldn't that take a tremendous step  far worse the sunni dominated government does not now nor do i think in the near term they are likely this year dominated the shia dominated government is not likely to provide institutional support areas in which there has been radical jihadist activity over the years the hamas funded by iran are sunni they in fact have conducted with  money for a long time a war and insurgency against israel is not correct yes the united states hasn't been there and it has failed we failed all of us have failed to stop it as i see it because in fact the united states has not been able to get the buy in and the actual combating of hamas by the palestinians that no matter how we look at good efforts bad efforts bottom line is the palestinian authority has never been able to effectively attack hamas and israel has been effective only in attacking them but in fact ultimately not eliminating the radicalism is that a fair assessment of what we deal with the palestinian territories today in gaza particularly i'm not an expert in this area but it seems ok in egypt where the muslim brotherhood had its roots and continues to this day would you say that the egyptian government whether we approve or don't approve of their tactics have for the most part been able to contain the activities of muslim brotherhood their growth their export and their terrorist activities recognizing there been some stellar attacks over the years but would you generally say that egypt has at its own expense in its own way with limited help from outside world been able to contain the muslim brotherhood well yes or no because you can make the argument that much of al qaeda is violent stems from the treatment of people like a these are apples and oranges moneywise well the reason i'm going through this line of questioning recognizing that each one of these has a pitfall in some way is as we as the intelligence community in a public hearing vs are often pilot private we're here to talk in a term of policy realistically when we look at all all of the countries and i only went through a smattering of them could've gotten into lebanon and hezbollah isn't our only choice whether it's in iraq or anywhere else in the muslim world our only choice to find a government that will work with us arms a quip a system and not radicalizing further and fight jihadism in each and every one of those countries and we could obviously go to germany and other countries that are not muslim countries and deal with theirs but isn't that ultimately our only choice that whether we have troops in iraq or not we're going to have to be side by side with some iraqi government stopping this and stemming the flow of jihadism from that country isn't that ultimately the only choice america has in not one or two but in dozens of countries not really because it depends on what form of government you're talking about i mean it is not an accident the so many these kinds of these kinds of out of these kinds of societies i appreciate that mr chairman i might just note that what the american president and this congress has been attempting to do in iraq is to make sure that iraq is not an oppressive the house where general petraeus stated that there's no light at the end of the tunnel we haven't turned the corner and we've moved the champagne to the back of the refrigerator i think it's important to note that none of these problems are the fault of a very situation with the palestinians to generate a lot of anti western outrage throughout the muslim community and the administration has just recently this administration just recently engaged in  trying to figure out of a peace process for that situation as it ministrations reluctance to encourage a resolution to the israeli palestinian conflict heightened his ability to you can't make peace unless somebody will make peace with you and israel faces a problem that lives in a bad neighborhood and it can't move and mr abbas may have good intentions but he basically even  climate within which terrorists operate the vast majority of the islamic world are moderate they are not inclined or not susceptible themselves to becoming terrorists however i think that many of them are ambivalent many of them who don't have to live under the depredations of al qaida themselves feel fundamentally ambivalent about the fact that it is among the few elements in the islamic world who are who are confronting what they perceive broadly in the islamic world as an enemy the only way that we're going to eliminate al qaida is to is to isolate them and to turn the mass of the islamic population actively against them i don't think you do that in the in the context of a much broader narrative  are americans of american immigrant here who have gone back to pakistan as we saw in the lodi connection to carry out attacks back here when they come back here anybody else any american i is putting it in context i was going to read a couple of things if i can quickly one and you talked about the fact that they talked often about beirut and then we left the u s s cole and how we left yemen all of those things not only just talked about but they use them in recruiting materials we have recruiting materials where they recruited people around the world so we need to put all of this and kind of all happened before nine eleven that they were actively recruiting based on their successes and the fact that they chased us out of places i think is believe they also use the african embassy bombings somalia they list them all but ninety three world trade center they considered that as a successful attack and they use them in recruiting material so this notion that all of a sudden now they're recruiting based on iraq does not put it in a proper context i don't think and i think we're going to make  knowledgeable sesame here we need to see all the facts on the table and i just want to a couple of things this notion or at least the image has been given out today is that there's no terrorism existed in iraq before we got there that is clearly not true it's clearly not  various international n g o s a routine example is found and a staff officer responding to a hussein's authorization of a series of bomb attacks against foreigners staying in hotels in or in the northern region documents indicate that the regime regime's use of terrorism was standard practice although not always successful from one thousand nine hundred one through two thousand and three they said i'm regime regarded inspiring sponsoring directing and executing acts of terrorism as an element of state power under saddam's iraq the iraqi regime used as paramilitary fedayeen saddam training camps to train terrorists for use inside and outside of iraq these are things that we know and are factual in one thousand nine hundred nine the top ten graduates of each city in class were specifically chosen for assignment to london where they were to be ready to conduct operations anywhere in europe a memo specifically states that these trainees are designated for suicide operations one more memo from saddam iraqi intelligence service director to set up operations inside somalia the overlap between bin laden's and saddam's interests in somalia provides a tactical example of the parallel between iraq and radical islam obviously they were working in but their mission was identical at the same time saddam was ordering action in somalia aimed at the american presence osama bin laden was doing exactly the same and i guess my point being and i hope you can flesh this out a little  had had where they had great successes beirut somalia you know the list goes on they were also trying to promote more of that so i don't think it's fair to say well they were down on the ropes and they weren't doing any recruiting and breathed new life and taught  how to recruit none of that really is true and has a long history here of these relationships i mean to a boss of the p l f was found gaining safe haven was the chief sponsor of the laurel of men in baghdad in two thousand and three i mean there's a long connection careful about this can't be handled from an intelligence perspective in isolation it cannot when you loaded up one hundred thirty thousand troops in afghanistan to expect that he wasn't going to do the same kind of things that he was already doing against us in other places around the world afghanistan the fact that iran wouldn't do it because we were just somehow it was a nice war in afghanistan and not a nice war in iraq really doesn't make an intelligence and the notion that you said well gee we if we were to put one hundred thirty thousand troops on the afghan border i'd be really curious to know how you believe that would have in any way impacted operations in the tribal areas and i'd like you to respond to that as well knowing that the pakistani constitution clearly separated those areas out of their own country which is added to our difficulty and i appreciate any response and again i'm just looking for we need to you know it's been very focused today we should put this in the proper context so we understand that terrorism didn't just reinvent itself and automatically appear in iraq with the day we had we set foot on their i'm not worried about radical vegetarians attacking the united states right now but maybe at some point in the future but al qaida is a bit offensive when you number of organizations is a great example they migrated there but the  popular guy so we have to be very careful in our responses in pakistan i think pakistanis are beginning to dimly realize that this is a problem that is blowing back on themselves benazir bhutto after all was the most popular politician in the country she was killed by a taliban  operations that he was involved with or he was aware of that was supported by saddam and they were massive and they were against in terms of planning or even carrying out operations that was carrying out operations in europe against american embassy that was a haven for hordes of terrorists from the palestinian groups the secular palestinian groups  rational the ends justifies the means and be prepared to invade other areas of the world that have similar conditions and clearly that's not that has not been the  nobody is blaming the forces what we are saying is that policy decisions have brought us where we are today and that brings us back to the mess that we're in that's going to be passed on to the next administration and fact that we're going to elect a new president with a new administration that's going to have to refocus our foreign policy do you do each of you because you are experts in  have to say as policymakers that we're going to be afghanistan for a very long time nothing afghans remember we closed our embassy there in eighty nine they think they have a narrative that we're going to leave we're going to be there for fifteen twenty years we're going to be that fifteen or twenty years and idea that they bring people that we have a counterinsurgency training perhaps with a mission very importantly we help them set up some at a counterinsurgency training in pakistan i mentioned the universal database for insurgents terrorists people joining the jihad the clerics i think this sure people buying that kind of material in this country are doing so without the government being aware of it  that the government in pakistan the pakistani people in particular as well as the afghans are fully expecting that that we're going to leave i think that they need to know that we are there for the long term i think that on the pakistani side of the border what we need to have is a  entity of the of the nineteenth century that we can no longer afford i think those areas have to be incorporated into pakistan proper that needs to be committing on the part of the government of pakistan to do that and we need to be there with them for the long term to help them to do that so they can fully incorporate those areas into pakistan and establish centralized government control over those areas in the same way that they do in in karate and and look for with regard to afghanistan there too i think we need to have a long term commitment but there's a big caution there i think that the major part of the fight against a resurgent taliban is being led by u s and nato forces i think that so long as the effort is being led by foreign forces we may win a series of tactical victories but we will not succeed strategically the long term answer in afghanistan has to be afghan led if that means building up and supporting local militias in southern afghanistan in a way that the s has been reluctant to do up until now i would say so be it but it has to be an afghan led solution there finally with regard to iraq i think there are a lot of different ways of getting the cat in the broader context of the u s commitment to iraq i think can be calibrated in different ways but i think that a necessary component of that must be a continued commitment on the part of the united states to support the awakening in a way that  operations in afghanistan and i think congress should encourage them to be much more active and aggressive in carrying out collection and covert operations  m information to actual paramilitary operations in afghanistan number two i think that in pakistan the u s really has to apply the full  pursuit of all of its means of pressure on the new regime to cooperate with us and to give us latitude to go after the high targets that high value targets as well as for them internally to understand that they cannot keep those areas the northwest frontier province a liberation zone for the taliban because it's going to come back to bite them number three i really do believe that that overall we don't teach our counterterrorism there's no counterterrorism doctrine that teaches what the fundamentals of the enemy is all about and that i think is essential and lest we teach them about the muslim brotherhood and teach them about radical islamic theology that envelops all of these regimes and has planted itself in europe and in the united states after all we're here to talk primarily but from franchises or from self activated shells mobilized by the radical islamic theology this had initially been propagated by the muslim brotherhood as early as one hundred twenty eight  of this panel today because i think what you've identified for us one more time is how complex this problem is and potentially how deadly it is how dangerous it is and how complicated i are strong views about how this administration has dealt with things that they've done perhaps correctly the things that they have maybe they could have improved on i think the lesson that we need to walk away from your testimony your you recognize that if you're going to be successful in iraq or afghanistan or pakistan it's going to be have to be very much driven by people in those countries the u s can't impose a solution on iraq we can't impose a solution  learn through this process where we go through this year and where we end up in january is that we embark on that process of getting a bipartisan long term strategy recognizing that we will continue to more tactics  to confront and defeat this threat some of them will be successful some of them will be moderately successful and others may be just a dismal failure because as much as we know there's still a lot that we don't know about how to contain in defeat this kind of threat but i very much appreciate there's not a question in there i just very much appreciate you helping to enlighten this committee and give us your perspective where we are and where we need to go thank you because we do have to work our way through these challenges and it's got to be done on a bipartisan basis and it's got to be done with the next administration in concert i  discussed they could be the most helpful with with the with the limitations that they've imposed but certainly as we look at the long term strategy and the threat that  and all of these types of organizations including the freelancers because i think all of you made reference to the fact that bin laden and al qaeda are given an inspiration to some of these people that are for for their own reasons stuck in a situation that foments that kind of resentment in whatever country whether it's in europe or other parts of the world and that's a very dangerous situation so collectively we need to find a way to work together to understand that it's going to be a costly is to try to eliminate these very dangerous actors because because the threat has really dramatically changed from the cold war days so again thank you all  for your testimony there were some members that wanted to be here but they were in markups and they asked me if it would be possible for them to have some questions for the record and if you will agree to