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98–354 PDF 2005

COMBATING TERRORISM: THE 9/11 COMMISSION

RECOMMENDATIONS AND THE NATIONAL

STRATEGIES

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,

EMERGING THREATS AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

SEPTEMBER 22, 2004

Serial No. 108–271

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, EMERGING THREATS AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DAN BURTON, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

TOM LANTOS, California

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

DIANE E. WATSON, California

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

LAWRENCE J. HALLORAN, Staff Director and Counsel

R. NICHOLAS PALARINO, Senior Policy Analyst

ROBERT A. BRIGGS, Clerk

ANDREW SU, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on September 22, 2004 ..................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Gorton, Slade, member, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States; and Richard Ben-Veniste, member, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States .............................. 18

Rabkin, Norman, Managing Director, Homeland Security and Justice

Team, U.S. Government Accountability Office; Raphael Perl, Senior

Policy Analyst, Congressional Research Service; and John V. Parachini,

Senior Policy Analyst, RAND Corp. ............................................................ 54

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Gorton, Slade, member, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States; and Richard Ben-Veniste, member, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States:

Article dated September 7, 2004 .............................................................. 47

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 24

Kucinich, Hon. Dennis J., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Ohio:

New York Times article ............................................................................ 7

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 9

Maloney, Hon. Carolyn B., a Representative in Congress from the State

of New York, prepared statement of ........................................................... 115

Parachini, John V., Senior Policy Analyst, RAND Corp., prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 92

Perl, Raphael, Senior Policy Analyst, Congressional Research Service,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 77

Putnam, Hon. Adam H., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Florida, prepared statement of ................................................................ 16

Rabkin, Norman, Managing Director, Homeland Security and Justice

Team, U.S. Government Accountability Office, prepared statement of ... 57

Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Connecticut, prepared statement of ........................................................ 3

(1)

COMBATING TERRORISM: THE 9/11 COMMISSION RECOMMENDATIONS AND THE NATIONAL STRATEGIES

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2004

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, EMERGING

THREATS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room

2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Shays

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Shays, Kucinich, Turner, Duncan, Putnam, Lynch, Platts, Ruppersberger, Maloney, Tierney, Watson, and

Sanchez.

Staff present: Lawrence Halloran, staff director and counsel; R.

Nicholas Palarino, senior policy advisor; Robert A. Briggs, clerk;

Richard Butcher and Andrew Su, minority professional staff members; and Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk.

Mr. SHAYS. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations

hearing entitled, ‘‘Combating Terrorism: The 9/11 Commission Recommendations and the National Strategies,’’ is called to order.

The final report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks

Upon the United States, referred to as the 9/11 Commission, gave

us the first comprehensive, objective analysis of what went so tragically wrong that day 3 years ago. A unanimous commission called

for reflection and reevaluation, saying that the United States

should consider what to do, the shape and objectives of the strategy. Americans should also consider how to do it, organizing their

government in a different way.

Today, we respond to that call for a dialog in the national strategies and tactics required to meet and defeat the threat of radical

Islamic terrorism. Prior to September 11, 2001, this subcommittee

heard testimony based on the work of the three national commissions on terrorism: the Bremer, Gilmore and Hart Rudman, citing

the need for a dynamic threat assessment, and the lack of any

overarching counterterrorism strategy.

After September 11th, we were told the 2002 National Strategy

for Homeland Security, the 2003 National Strategy to Combat Terrorism, and other high level policy statements addressed the need

for a post-cold war security paradigm that replaced containment

and mutually assured destruction with detection, prevention, and

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at times, preemptive action to protect the national security of the

United States.

The commissioners now ask us to consider whether these strategies adequately reflect the harsh realities and hard choices they

confronted on our behalf. To a large extent, they do. Current policy

and spending guidance mirror many commission recommendations

on disruption of terror networks abroad and protection of Americans at home. But the September 11 panel seeks greater strategic

clarity in characterizing the threat. Terrorism is a tactic, not an

enemy. A war against terror targets an incorporeal emotion.

The commission argues for a strategy based on a realistic assessment of the threat posed by radicals perverting religion, Islamic

whose motivations, goals and capabilities can be estimated, analyzed and countered. Additionally the commission looks for a far

sharper focus on public diplomacy to supplant the toxic ideology of

hatred and death that seeks both global and generation reach.

They believe under-utilization of the so-called soft powers of communication and persuasion leave us without an effective long term

strategy to address the root causes of Islamic terrorists.

The strategy articulates a goal, a desired end state, a long term

objective achieved by artful orchestration of the means and ends of

national power. But in the modern context, against a foe insidiously detached from the civilized norms of statecraft, strategy

must be as much process as product, more verb than noun. The key

to modern security is dynamic strategic thinking, not a static strategic balance. The 9/11 Commission recommendations challenge us

to strive for that new level of strategic vigilance.

We are very grateful for the commission’s work, profoundly

grateful, and for the contribution of the two commission members

testifying today. We look forward to their testimony and that of all

our witnesses.

At this time, the Chair would recognized the distinguished gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Kucinich.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]

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Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to

welcome Senator Gorton and also Richard Ben-Veniste and thank

them for their work and for their commitment to our country.

I want to thank the Chair for calling this hearing and say that

it’s always a welcome opportunity for Congress to hear from members of the 9/11 Commission and to discuss how to implement the

recommendations they put forth in their report. To this point, the

focus of Congress has been on reforming our intelligence community so that the multiple intelligence agencies are finally held responsible for their work.

I’m pleased that this aspect of the commission’s work is being addressed so quickly. The culture of secrecy is far too great in Washington, and if we are to defeat terrorism, then we must learn to

share with and trust one another. We simply cannot allow our security to be weakened by internal disputes and turf battles.

As you know, I have grave concerns about the direction of our

foreign policy, especially the military decisions made by the current

administration. Yet I do fully agree with the documents we are to

discuss today in one important area, that the civil liberties of all

people should be respected. The national strategy on homeland security states that, ‘‘to secure the homeland better, we must link the

vast amounts of knowledge residing within each Government agency while ensuring adequate privacy.’’ It goes on to state, ‘‘We are

a Nation built on the rule of law and we will utilize our laws to

win the war on terrorism while always protecting our civil liberties.’’

The other document we are to discuss today, the National Strategy to Combat Terrorism, concludes by stating in the very last

paragraph, ‘‘The defeat of terrorism is a worthy and necessary goal

in its own right, for ridding the world of terrorism is essential to

a broader purpose. We strive to build an international order where

more countries and peoples are integrated into a world consistent

with the interests and values we share with our partners, values

such as human dignity, rule of law, respect for individual liberties,

open and free economies and religious tolerance. We understand

that a world in which these values are embraced as standards, not

exceptions, will be the best antidote to the spread of terrorism.

This is the world we must build today.’’

The 9/11 Commission’s report also clearly states on page 349 that

the President should ‘‘safeguard the privacy of individuals about

whom information is shared.’’ On the next page of the report, the

commission recommends that there be a board to oversee the commitment the Government makes to defend our civil liberties. That

is one part of the commission’s report which has not garnered

much attention, but which should. Yet unlike the overall of U.S. intelligence which may be enacted by legislation in the near future,

I’ve seen very real little action within the current administration

to implement the recommendation in the commission’s report.

Instead, I see far too many attempts to curtail our civil liberties

at our libraries, our airports, even when we exercise our right to

demonstrate. I see, and for that matter terrorists see, the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay.

Mr. Chairman,

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I would like to submit for the record a lead editorial from Monday’s New York Times entitled ‘‘In Defense of Civil Liberties.’’ This

editorial urges a stronger, more independent, more accountable

civil liberties board than that of the President’s, and which would

truly accomplish what the 9/11 Commission envisioned.

Mr. SHAYS. Without objection.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One of the things

about this editorial, which I hope every Member gets an opportunity to look at, is a quote that every Member should take note

of. It says ‘‘A polarized Congress, wary of being portrayed as soft

on terrorism, is not adequate defense for our constitutional rights.’’

On one hand, I would have to take exception to that as a Member of Congress, but on the other hand, we need to be aware that

these debates sometimes can cause us to throw overboard the very

liberties which we swear to uphold. And I think that the 9/11 Commission’s report says, and this is worthy of considering as I conclude, ‘‘The choice between security and liberty is a false choice, as

nothing is more likely to endanger America’s liberties than the success of a terrorist attack at home. Our history has shown us that

insecurity threatens liberty. Yet if our liberties are curtailed, we

lose the values we are struggling to defend.’’

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to hearing the testimony of the witnesses.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Dennis J. Kucinich follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman. I don’t know if the vice chairman of the subcommittee has a statement. We have Mr. Duncan

as well. Do you have a statement you’d like to make?

Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Chairman, I don’t have a formal statement. I

just want to commend you for how active you are in leading this

subcommittee. I think you’re one of the most thoughtful and hard

working chairmen of any subcommittee that we have in this Congress and calling this hearing this morning is just an example of

that. I want to say how impressed I was with the work of the 9/

11 Commission. I was very impressed with the bipartisan nature

about which, the way in which they went about their duties.

I think one of the problems that we sometimes face is that, nobody who is a real critic of the intelligence agencies ever gets on

the intelligence committees. So no real tough question are ever

really asked until after there is a serious problem. And I have

never asked to sit on an intelligence committee, and I don’t want

to, I prefer to serve on other committees. But that’s something that

I think we need to consider in the future.

But thank you very much for this hearing this morning.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman for his nice comments, and

also to call on the former vice chairman of this subcommittee, Mr.

Putnam.

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will submit my statement for the record, but I do want to echo Mr. Duncan’s comments

that I was honored to serve as your vice chairman when you took

testimony from the Gilmore Commission, from the Hart Rudman

Commission and from the Bremer Commission before Bremer was

a household name. And all of those things took place before September 11, and those commission reports by and large gathered

dust until September 12, 2001.

It’s good to see that this thoughtful commission report is attracting the attention that it deserves and I hope that we will be very

thoughtful and deliberative in taking up their hard thought recommendations. Mr. Chairman, in the interest of time, I’ll submit

the remainder of my statement for the record.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Adam H. Putnam follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman.

I just want to say to our two witnesses before I call on them, just

to thank them for the work that they did on the 9/11 Commission,

but thank them for choosing excellent staff. The staff has been extraordinary. They have written really, I almost think, a sacred report. That’s kind of how I feel about it. I want to also say that the

bottom line to this hearing for me is, this is one of the most interesting hearings I think we can have. Because if we don’t get the

strategy right, everything after that is almost useless.

So at this time, let me recognize the Honorable Slade Gorton,

member, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the

United States; and Mr. Richard Ben-Veniste, member, National

Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. As you

know, we swear in our witnesses. At this time, I would ask you to

rise and swear you in. This is an investigative committee, and all

our witnesses have been sworn in except only one, and that was

Senator Byrd, because I chickened out. [Laughter.]

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

I ask unanimous consent that all members of the subcommittee

be permitted to place an opening statement into the record, and

that the record remain open for 3 days for that purpose. Without

objection, so ordered.

I ask further unanimous consent that all witnesses be permitted

to include their written statements in the record. Without objection, so ordered.

At this time, I don’t want to choose between a Republican and

a Democrat, not with this commission, Senator, you have the floor.

STATEMENTS OF SLADE GORTON, MEMBER, NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED

STATES; AND RICHARD BEN-VENISTE, MEMBER, NATIONAL

COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED

STATES

Senator GORTON. Chairman Shays, Ranking Member Kucinich,

distinguished members of the subcommittee. The Commission is

honored to appear here today. We’re gratified by your deep and

continuing interest in the Commission’s work. We appreciate the

opportunity to discuss with you again some of the commission’s recommendations, particularly some which have not received as much

attention as those involving reform of the structures of the executive branch.

The commission’s findings and recommendations were strongly

endorsed by all commissioners, five Republicans and five Democrats. We share a unity of purpose. We hope that the Congress and

the administration will display the same spirit of bipartisanship as

we collectively seek to make our country and all Americans safer

and more secure.

We begin by reviewing briefly the road we have traveled since

July 22nd, the day the commission presented its report. We believe

we have made important progress. We’re pleased with the overall

direction of the debate. From the outset, we have had statements

of support from the President and from Senator Kerry. We thank

the Congress for the opportunity to explain our work to the ConVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:35 Feb 23, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00022 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98354.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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gress and to the American people. Members of the Commission

have testified at 18 hearings since July 22nd. We’re gratified by

the work of Senators McCain, Collins and Lieberman in support of

our recommendation.

Chairman Shays, we thank you and Representative Maloney for

introducing a bill in the House that speaks to all of the commission’s recommendations. We believe, as you do, that we cannot prevail in the struggle against Islamist terrorism unless we adopt a

comprehensive approach. We welcome the endorsement of the

President and of the House leadership of the idea of a National Intelligence Director and a National Counterterrorism Center. We

want to work closely with both the administration and the Congress in the refinement of our proposals, and work for the adoption

of as many of our recommendations as we can achieve between now

and the adjournment of this Congress.

Mr. Chairman, in response to your letter of invitation, we start

with a few comments about the National Strategy for Combating

Terrorism and the Homeland Security Strategy put forward by the

President. We find them in general terms to be helpful documents.

We make two points about the National Strategy for Combating

Terrorism. First, the President’s strategy places a heavy emphasis

on destroying the terrorist threat. So do we. In our very first recommendation, we state that it must be the policy of the United

States to deny terrorists the ability to establish sanctuaries. To

deny, disrupt and destroy such sanctuaries, we want to work with

friends and allies, if possible, and alone if necessary. We believe

strongly that Bin Ladin and his lieutenants must be captured or

killed and that the al-Qaeda organization must be destroyed.

Second, the President’s strategy speaks of many forms of terrorism. But we concentrate on just one—Islamist terrorism. Moreover,

we identify Islamist terrorism as the leading national security

threat to the United States.

We believe we cannot succeed against terrorism by Islamist extremist groups unless we use all of the elements of national power:

military power, intelligence, covert action, law enforcement, economy policy, foreign aid, homeland defense and diplomacy, both

quiet diplomacy and public diplomacy. If we favor one tool while

neglecting others, we leave ourselves vulnerable and weaken our

national effort. This is not just our view, it is the view of almost

all policymakers.

Secretary Rumsfeld told us that he can’t get the job done with

the military alone. For every terrorist we kill or capture, more rise

up to take their place. He told us the cost-benefit ratio is against

us. Cofer Black told us the CIA alone can’t get the job done either.

For this reason, the Commission made a whole host of recommendations in addition to a recommendation on the use of force.

We are engaged in a struggle against a set of ideas with considerable resonance in the Arab and Muslim worlds. There are tens, if

not hundreds of millions, of Bin Ladin sympathizers in the Arab

and Muslim world. While they may reject violence, they may also

be sympathetic to many elements of Bin Ladin’s message.

We must find a way to reach this great majority of Muslims,

from Morocco to Malaysia. Right now, we are not doing a very good

job. Polls taken in the past year show that the bottom has fallen

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out of support for America in most of the Muslim world. Negative

views of the United States among Muslims, which had been largely

limited to countries in the Middle East, have spread. If we do not

change this dynamic, young Muslims who expect no improvement

in their own lives or societies may well become the wellspring of

support for Bin Ladin.

The President’s strategy touches on these themes concerning the

war of ideas. We believe they need to be given greater emphasis.

We cannot defeat Islamist terrorism if we cannot persuade young

Arabs and Muslims that there is a better course. We must project

a message of hope, a message of support for educational and economic opportunity for them, their children and grandchildren.

The President’s Homeland Security Strategy dates from July

2002. Since that date, the Department of Homeland Security has

been created and many other steps have been taken. We would

concentrate on just two observations about the strategy. They relate in both cases to implementing that strategy.

First, homeland security assistance should be based strictly on

an assessment of risks and vulnerabilities. Assessment of critical

infrastructure vulnerabilities must be completed by the Department of Homeland Security and risk must then be factored in.

Now, in 2004, Washington, DC, and New York City are certainly

at the top of any such list. We must understand the contention that

every State and city needs to have some minimal structure for infrastructure response. But Federal homeland security assistance

should not remain a program of general revenue sharing.

Second, the American people understand that in a free society we

cannot protect everything, everywhere, all the time. But they do expect their Government to make rational decisions about how to allocate limited resources. Since September 11, we have put 90 percent of our transportation dollars against the threat to aviation security, even as we know that there are threats to maritime, rail

and surface transportation.

Despite congressional deadlines, the Transportation Security Administration has developed neither an integrated strategic plan for

the transportation sector nor specific plans for the various modes.

Without such plans, neither the public nor Congress can be assured

we are identifying the highest priority dangers and allocating resources to the most effective security measures. DHS Under Secretary Hutchinson has testified that such plans will be completed

by the end of the year. We believe it important that the Congress

hold DHS to that commitment.

In making decisions about how to allocate limited resources to

defend our vast transportation network, we believe strongly that

TSA must use risk management techniques. This requires that the

Government evaluate the greatest dangers, not only in terms of

terrorist intentions as we understand them, but also taking into

consideration the vulnerabilities of the Nation’s infrastructure and

the consequences of potential attacks.

Mr. Chairman, I’m Richard Ben-Veniste. I want to thank you

and your colleagues for the very kind and generous remarks you

made about the commission’s work, and particularly, with respect

to your recognition of the work performed by our incredible staff.

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Mr. Chairman, I would like to highlight an important part of our

recommendations on the topic of civil liberties. We can report to

you that from the very beginning of the commission’s work, each

commissioner was conscious of the need to make sure that in our

struggle against terrorism we do not compromise the very rights

and liberties that make our system of government and our society

worth defending.

Concern about the civil liberties of American citizens was one of

a number of reasons that the commission rejected the idea of moving domestic intelligence and counterintelligence responsibilities of

that agency and putting them in a new MI–5 type of agency. We

feared that such a new agency, not steeped in the respect for the

rule of law and the constitution that reflects the commitment of career professionals at the FBI and the Justice Department would be

more likely to trample on individual rights.

The commission made three major recommendations with respect

to civil liberties. First, the commission dealt with the critical and

complicated privacy issues that are at the heart of the information

society, and they are at the center of necessary efforts to increase

the amount of information gathered about terrorists. The commission recommends improvements and enhancements in those information gathering abilities and in information sharing. But we also

recognize that with the enhanced flow of information comes a need

to establish guidelines and oversight, to make sure that the privacy

of our citizens and residents is respected and preserved.

We believe, as did the Markle Task Force in its excellent reports,

that we have the ability to gather and share information and protect privacy at the same time. But this requires leadership and coordination in the Executive branch. No one agency can deal with

this problem alone. Instead, we recommend that the President lead

a Government-side effort through OMB and the National Intelligence Director to set common standards for information use

throughout the intelligence community. These standards would

govern the acquisition, accessing, sharing and use of private data

so as to protect individual rights. The same technology that facilitates the gathering and sharing of information can also protect us

from the mis-use of that information.

Second, the commission made observations on the provisions of

the Patriot Act relating to information sharing. The commission

commented on the wall created through judicial rulings and Executive department regulations beginning in the 1890’s that had severely constrained the flow of information acquired through surveillance and under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance ACT,

FISA, from the intelligence side of the FBI to the criminal side of

that agency and to Federal prosecutors.

We believe the provision of the Patriot Act that eliminated the

wall on balance is beneficial. Witnesses were virtually unanimous

in telling us that the provision was extremely helpful to law enforcement and intelligence investigations with little if any adverse

impact on the rights of potential defendants.

However, we did propose a general test to be applied to the consideration of the renewal of other provisions of the Patriot Act. We

believe that principle should also be applied to other legislative and

regulatory proposals that are designed to strengthen our security,

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but which may impinge on individual rights. The test is simple, but

an important one. The burden of proof should be on the proponents

of the measure to establish that the power or authority being

sought would in fact materially enhance national security and that

there will be adequate supervision of the exercise of that power or

authority to ensure the protection of civil liberties. If additional

powers are granted, there must be adequate guidelines and oversight to properly confine their use.

The third recommendation of the commission on civil liberties

flows from the first two. Individual liberties and rights must be

protected in the administration of the significant powers that Congress has granted to the Executive branch agencies to protect national security. A central board should have the responsibility to

oversee adherence to guidelines that are built into these programs

to safeguard those rights and liberties.

We welcome the President’s Executive order of August 27th creating a civil liberties board as a positive first step in the direction

and recognition of the commission’s recommendations. We note,

however, that such a board will be strengthened significantly if it

is created by statute. In addition, it will be strengthened if certain

important refinements in its composition and powers are made.

We do not believe the board should be comprised of administrative officials drawn from the very agencies the board was created

to oversee. Instead, we envisioned a bipartisan board with members appointed directly by the President, with the aim of including

outstanding individuals from outside Government who can provide

a more disinterested perspective on this vital balance. Though the

commission did take an explicit position on this issue, we believe

those members of the board should be Senate-confirmed.

Such a board will also need explicit authority to obtain access to

relevant information, including classified information. Such a board

should also have broad authority to look across the Government at

the actions we are taking to ensure that liberty concerns are appropriately addressed. Last, and importantly, such a board should be

transparent, making regular reports to Congress and the American

public.

Mr. Chairman, such a board of the kind we recommend can be

found in the Collins-Lieberman bill in the Senate, and in the

Shays-Maloney bill introduced in the House. We believe we need a

reorganization of Government that will more effectively and efficiently protect us against terrorism. More specifically, we recommend a strong National Intelligence Director and stronger, more

intrusive measures for border security and transportation security.

But if Government is stronger, so must be the protection for individuals against Government action.

Our history has shown us that insecurity threatens liberty. Yet,

if our liberties are curtailed, we lose the values that we are struggling to defend.

Finally, we want to point out that our recommendations made to

streamline and make more effective the critical role of congressional oversight have received little attention. This is perhaps the

area that has also received the least public debate. Yet unless

greater authorities provided to the Executive branch are matched

by effective oversight by the Congress, the critical balance conVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:35 Feb 23, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98354.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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templated by our constitutional system will fall short of our society’s justifiable expectations.

Mr. Chairman, we would be pleased to answer any questions you

might have.

[The prepared statement of Senator Gorton and Mr. Ben-Veniste

follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. I thank you both very much for your comments.

I’m not going to be asking the first questions. I will go to Mr.

Turner. But I do want to say this to you. The issue of how the

House is organized is probably not going to be settled until January of next year, either with a Democratic Congress or a Republican Congress. But I am going to vote against any rule, be it a Republican or Democratic Congress, that doesn’t incorporate the recommendations of the Commission. Now, there may be some slight

variations as to how that happens, I mean, there might be two

committees that deal with issues of homeland security, because you

take FEMA, it sometimes is involved in the threat of the terrorists,

but it also can be a natural disaster, and there may be slight variations.

But I just want to go on record, I will vote against any rule put

forward by either party that doesn’t incorporate the recommendations of the Commission. It’s absolutely vital. We’re talking about

reorganizing Government and the administration, we’d better do

the same for Congress.

At this time the Chair would recognize, I think what we’re going

to do is a 5-minute round. I’ll be generous with the 5-minute round,

and then we’ll come back a second time, because we have so many

members. I want either member to feel like they can respond to a

question that the other is asked. If that happens, I’ll just go a little

beyond the 5 minutes to the member. Either of our witnesses can

answer the question. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank both

the commissioners for being here today and for the excellent work

of the 9/11 Commission. Certainly the 9/11 Commission’s work has

been very important for our country. You’ve delivered a non-partisan report that has a great to-do list that I think will make our

country safer.

I also appreciate your time in coming to these hearings and participating. This is the sixth 9/11 Commission recommendation hearing that I’ve participated, three that our chairman has led in his

efforts to continue to make certain that this committee is focused

on relevant issues as to how to make America safe in the war on

terror.

One of the aspects of the report and the recommendations that

I have an interest in is the issue, Senator, that you were talking

about, in that beyond intelligence, beyond the issue of military

might, but our efforts in winning the war on ideas. Many times the

war on terrorism is compared to the war on communism and the

cold war. There we had an ideology that claimed to be bringing increased freedom and prosperity to its people. But it fell with the

weight of the reality of what democracy was achieving in the world

while it was not.

Here, with your report having identified, and I think it’s very

helpful that your report took the strong stance of identifying Islamic extremism as really the issue and the tough target that we’re

struggling with, we have ideas that are tied with a religious basis

that talks not only about the reality of today but also a reward in

the afterlife, and a devaluing of not only the lives of others but

even of an individual’s own life. I think that makes it much more

difficult for us in the war of ideas, communism not having been a

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religion, of the reality of its performance and the performance of

democracy and capitalism could be felt and compared.

The report talks about the importance of hope and education and

economics. Certainly we know that specifically with the September

11 terrorists, they were not economically disadvantaged. But certainly in the war on terror, as we try to battle these ideas, our typical model battling those ideas is to work out with exchanges of information and ideas and to work through processes of education of

economics.

I would just like your thoughts as to, who do you think our partners are going to be as we reach out and attempt to do this, how

do you see the process working? Focusing on the issue of the war

of ideas, I’d like your thoughts, as you went through this process

and put this report together, that would be helpful to us.

Mr. SHAYS. Before you respond, let me just say, given that I

think this kind of dialog is important, it’s going to take more than

5 minutes, we’re now going to do 10 minute rounds. I’ve consulted

with Mr. Kucinich, so we’ll do a 5-minute clock and then we’ll trip

it over for another 5 minutes.

Senator GORTON. Mr. Turner, in a very real sense, you incorporated our answer in the question itself, the kind of challenges we

face, the parallels and the lack of parallels between these challenges in the war of ideas to that during the course of the cold war.

I think you’ve pointed out quite rightly that in many respects this

is a more difficult challenge. Because in large measure, it is a philosophy that is religiously motivated. And particularly among the

Bin Ladin organization and its offshoots themselves, there is no

distinguishing feature between politics and religion. They end up

being exactly the same thing. Obviously we aren’t going to attempt

to teach religion in any kind of war of ideas.

I think that what we have to do is to encourage those Muslim

societies that have been relatively successful. We can see a high degree of success in Turkey, for example, after some 80 years, and

a philosophy that at least until recently, and to a certain extent at

the present time, separates church and state in a way very much

analogous to the situation we have here.

But we see other societies there that have to a certain extent

been successful literally from Morocco to Malaysia, and the two

countries that we mentioned here, we see progress, as slow as it

may be, even in some of the Arab countries, in the Kuwait that we

liberated. We point out that one of the real problems in those societies, one of the real reasons for this long, centuries-long decline

vis-a-vis the West, is their treatment of women. It is very important for their own progress that women be liberated and be allowed

to live up to the maximum of their potential. That’s taken place to

a greater or lesser extent in some of those countries.

But I think the best thing we can do is to try to share those elements in our society that, outside of religion, have been successful.

I think we need to encourage students to come here to the United

States, to provide some support for those students to see what the

United States is like. That isn’t always successful. Khalid Sheik

Mohammad, the leader, is a graduate of a college here in the

United States. But I think overall we can say that helps.

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But just as we have the Voice of America and the Voice of Free

Europe, we’ve got to be willing to engage in that battle of ideas on

the ground with people who have television sets, with people who

have radios and the like, and to present in their own languages the

kind of hope that freedom, both for individuals and in the economy

and in elections, how that has made lives better here and can make

life better there. There is no one magic formula, there is no one key

to overall success. I think if I were to summarize it, we have to be

our own best selves and share our own best selves with other people who do not live with the degree of open freedom we have.

Mr. TURNER. Commissioner Ben-Veniste.

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. As usual, my friend Slade Gorton has expressed our views eloquently and fully. One thing I would like to

focus on is the issue of education. We make a proposal for an education fund, which would in our view, greatly increase the world

view, a system that is not the kind of educational system exported

by some of our allies, such as the Saudis, for decades, which teaches intolerance and hatred, but rather providing educational opportunities that teach the value of plurality and hope. Mothers

throughout the world will not choose, if given the choice, suicide

over hope.

Mr. TURNER. A followup, since we have additional time, on the

issue of measuring our success, one of the things that is cited in

the report are polls. If you look at polls and the United States

standing in the area now, and you compare them to prior to September 11th, we were doing much better than we are now. Yet we

were attacked. How would you measure our success in the war of

ideas, knowing that the polls don’t necessarily reflect that we’re

winning the war of ideas with potential terrorists?

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. Let me say, Mr. Turner, that the polls prior

to September 11 did not reflect any connection between the attack

by this murderous group of cowards who would kill women and

children to further their ends and the realities of what occurred.

However, if you look at the polls and the wellspring of sympathy

to this country that immediately followed on the September 11 attack, and you compare them with the current situation, the handwriting is clearly on the wall that we are not winning the hearts

and minds——

Mr. TURNER. My time is almost up. Excuse me for a moment. So

you would agree that the polls prior to September 11 would not

have indicated to us that we were imminently being attacked, so

they’re not really a good measurement as to whether we’re being

successful in this war of ideas.

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. The war of ideas was not, in our view, the reason for the attacks of September 11. There is no reasoning with alQaeda, with Bin Ladin, with the wannabees which have sprung up,

not only over the past years, but that existed prior to September

11. Those are not the people who we will focus upon in winning the

war of ideas. We will focus upon people whose minds are open to

a discussion of what is best for their families in the present and

future generations.

We are not winning that war by any objective standards now. We

are killing terrorists, but Bin Ladin and other organizations are recruiting them faster than we can kill them.

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Senator GORTON. The ultimate measurement is right here. It’s

whether or not we prevent attacks on the United States and one

hopes in the rest of the world. In the more narrow of those two

questions, of course, we have been successful since September 11.

Obviously some of the measures we’ve taken have been important.

But no one can conceivably say to you or to the American people

that we’re over the hump, that because we’ve been successful for

a couple or 3 years we’re going to continue to be successful. That’s

the reason for our recommendations at every one of these levels.

But the measurement the American people are primarily interested

in is the measure as to whether or not there’s a repeat.

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. Right. We were successful by that measure

from 1993 to 2001.

Senator GORTON. In the United States.

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. The challenge we have, though, in the United States,

is it’s kind of like the sign that says, shark infested waters and

someone goes swimming there and then gets out and says, see,

there was nothing to be concerned with.

Senator GORTON. That is a good analogy.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Kucinich, you have the floor for 10 minutes.

Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Ben-Veniste, you just made a comment that

said that we’re killing so many terrorists, but more and more keep

coming up. Is that basically what you’re saying?

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. We heard testimony, Mr. Kucinich, from a CIA

expert in terrorism before the last hearing, I believe it was, where

I asked that specific question whether there was any metric by

which his agency could measure the level of recruitment following

the invasion of Iraq. He indicated that there was a substantial increase in recruitment for al-Qaeda.

Mr. KUCINICH. So has terrorism become more of a problem the

more people we kill or the less people we kill?

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. I think the way that we’re looking at this war

in which we are engaged is one in which the war of ideas is almost

equally as important. What are we exporting in this country? What

do people throughout the world and particularly in Muslim countries believe about the United States? And as Senator Gorton has

said earlier, we are not doing enough, we are not doing what we

can to export the heart and soul of what our country is about. People are seeing the export of violence and military might and in

some instances gross violations of our dearly held principles in the

way we have treated individuals overseas.

That has to stop, that has to change in our view. We can do

much better, and we should be able to do much better in exporting

the kinds of ideals about which are proud in this country.

Senator GORTON. We want to emphasize the integration of responses, not one alone. I think perhaps we can identify four levels

of our defenses against terrorism. One is passive, the kind of procedures you must go through when you get on an airplane. Second

is intelligence itself, knowing more or learning more about the

threats against us. Clearly our intelligence agencies failed this

prior to September 11 in that connection. Many of our important

recommendations, including those that have gotten the greatest degree of attention, reflect on that.

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Third is the war of ideas, to try to dry up support for this kind

of activity. And fourth, of course, is to go after the terrorists where

they are, those who cannot be persuaded in any event. We lay out

here in the book what Bin Ladin says, the way Bin Ladin says that

we can get rid of terrorism is to get out of the Middle East, all convert to Islam and end our civilization. That’s not really something

you can negotiate.

Mr. KUCINICH. Let me try to tie a few things here together. I

mentioned earlier the New York Times editorial where they talked

about the polarized Congress. Has anyone ever given any thought

on the commission to the effect of the words that we use in our diplomacy and our policies, the semantic construction? For example,

let’s look at the concept of a ‘‘war’’ on terrorism, or a ‘‘war’’ of ideas.

Has anyone on the commission ever given any thought to the exigent circumstances which are created by those words that we actually may be putting ourselves in polarity, creating the very thing

that we’re seeking to avoid?

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. That’s a very reasonable way of looking at this

in a generic sense, Mr. Kucinich. We looked at it from the standpoint of the conflict of ideologies, whether you call it a war or a

conflict, or a struggle or a competition. It’s something that we recognized we could do better at and we should do better at, because

we have the better argument.

When we talk about a war on terrorism, as Chairman Shays has

said here today, and repeatedly over time, terrorism is a technique.

We are not at war with terrorism any more than we are at war

with tanks or artillery or hand grenades. But we are in a struggle

against a fanatical group of Islamist terrorists, who are organized,

better or worse, over time as you take a snapshot of them. But they

are a formidable adversary. They are opportunistic, they are smart,

they have gamed us, they have studied us. They have been able to

use the very freedoms which make us great to their advantage.

So we need to be smarter, more efficient and more effective about

how we use our tremendous resources to avoid further bloodshed

on our soil, while at the same time, as you and I have said, protecting our civil liberties, which makes us the society we are today.

Senator GORTON. Mr. Kucinich, I think I would divide your question into two and answer the two halves of it differently. I think

you make a good point, when we overuse that word war. In connection with ideas, with this struggle, it’s a competition and the like.

It may be that we can phrase it better.

On the other hand, the struggle of life and death is in fact a war.

Osama Bin Ladin declared war on the United States, and the problem is we didn’t pay any attention to it, even when it was Americans who were being killed overseas. That is a war. There’s no

other way to describe it. It is a war with that group. One of our

goals has to be to make that group as narrow and small as possible

and separate them from the vast majority of people in their own

societies. And that’s a contest. It’s a contest of ideas.

Mr. KUCINICH. Yes. Words matter here, Mr. Chairman, and to

the commissioners. We are in a new environment where we’re

speaking of war against a group as against conflict between nations, which is what we traditionally understood to mean war.

When we use the word war, I would suggest that it spawns not

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only the kind of dichotomies which can lead to an intensification

of conflict but can also create real war. Let me give you an example.

The ‘‘war on terrorism’’ led this Nation to attack Iraq, a nation

that did not attack us. There was no symmetry there in terms of

the concept of war. And then that further helped to create an environment where a rollback of our civil liberties became something

that some in the Government felt was warranted.

So I guess as we move toward this new environment where we

speak of creating a civil liberties board, I still would like to see this

Congress proceed very slowly about creating any kind of changes

that could either institutionalize a diminution of civil liberties, directly or indirectly, advertently or inadvertently, or lock us in to a

condition where we’re basically trapped in a war. It seems to me

that we’re almost in a closed loop here. War on terrorism, war of

ideas, spawning war, cutting back civil liberties, leaving us more

vulnerable to the destruction of our own democracy.

I know the commission is well aware, having looked at the report, of the threat to our liberty that’s at stake here. We just saw

yesterday, Mr. Chairman, there was a change this week, Transportation Security Agency, they’re now frisking people, frisking people

going through airport security. That’s a whole departure from

where we’ve been. Where does this incursion end?

So I think we need to, I’m glad the commission has done its

work, but I see it as a starting point, I might add, not as an end

point, in the work we have to do here. I’d be happy to hear your

response.

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. I agree with your last point. We have made

recommendations, which are in our view, directly responsive to

what we have found over a rather intensive investigation of failures. One of the failures was in our aviation and FAA/NORAD security. The recent instances of searches, although I don’t have the

specifics in mind, may reflect the recommendation that we made

that we have to be more alert to questions of smuggling explosives

onto airplanes. We cannot ignore what happened in Russia. We

cannot ignore the fact that apparently two individuals on separate

flights were able to board aircraft with explosives.

So do we learn from that, what do we learn from that, what

kinds of steps do we have to take? They should be focused. They

should not be generalized, I agree. But we have to be smarter than

we were before. We’ve got to be more efficient. And our recommendations go to that. If we can be, then we can minimize the

greater degree of intrusiveness into our lives.

But we also have to be realistic. These things happen and we

can’t ignore it.

Senator GORTON. Mr. Kucinich, I think our brief answer is, we

don’t believe we’ve made any recommendations that would lead to

the adverse consequences you fear.

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. There must be balance. As we make recommendations to be smarter and more focused, we also make recommendations that there must be countervailing mechanisms to

protect against mission creep, against generalized use of enhanced

authorities that would in fact impinge upon civil liberties in a more

general way.

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Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman. And I’m going to take my 10

minutes now. I know we’ve been joined by Carolyn Maloney and

Mr. Ruppersberger, as well as Mr. Lynch. I want to say that I want

to get you out, Mr. Ben-Veniste, by 12 o’clock, I think that’s your

need. I could spend all day with you folks.

I believe, obviously, if this balance, and first off it’s going to be

interesting to have to relate this balance to the topic at hand,

which is strategies. But obviously with more Government power, it

requires more Government oversight, that’s the bottom line.

Senator GORTON. Absolutely.

Mr. SHAYS. That’s the bottom line. I was going to respond to my

colleague Mr. Kucinich’s point, thank God they’re frisking passengers. I’m not riding on planes if they don’t start to do that on

certain occasions. I’m just not flying. Because the wakeup call we

had were two downed planes in Russia. And we can’t be certain

why they went down, but we believe, and I have seen and all of

us have seen, the type of explosive you can put around your body

that just simply doesn’t show up in any detection.

But I value Mr. Kucinich’s points, and yours as well, Mr. BenVeniste. I went though to make sure that before this hearing

leaves, we also get to talk about the strategies. Because without

the strategies, I don’t know where we go. Because had we done a

proper assessment of the threat, had we done a strategy or strategies before September 11th, had we reorganized our Government to

implement those strategies, we wouldn’t have had a September 11.

I believe that with all my heart and soul. Because the strategies

would have pointed out our weaknesses and it would have done a

lot of other things.

I am absolutely fascinated by the fact that this Commission said

something. I think we called it terrorism because we didn’t want

to offend anyone. It was this corporeal kind of response. And you

all, I know, particularly you Mr. Ben-Veniste, given your focus as

a lawyer for so many years, to even mention the word Islamist, you

must have said, where are we going and what does this say. But

it gives some focus to what we have to protect ourselves from.

So tell me a little of that debate, a little bit more of that debate

that took forward in the commission. I want to at least have a little

more sense of why in the end you were willing to say, it’s Islamist

terrorists.

Senator GORTON. We debated considerably over that specific

phrase, Mr. Chairman. I think you can see in our report the way

in which we attempted to balance it.

It is clearly a form of terrorism motivated by a combination, a

marriage of religion and politics that has a long and regrettable

history. It didn’t begin with Bin Ladin himself. It is totally intolerant of any kind of dissent. Mr. Ben-Veniste mentioned one of its

parents in the Wahabi form of Islam and Saudi Arabia itself exported to a number of other parts of the world. And it was like

drinking from a fire hydrant to read all the materials we had, not

just on the facts of September 11 itself, but to try to learn the motivations, where it came from and the like.

It was in doing that we came up with this distinction and this

dual road to dealing with it. The road that the philosophy itself,

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the activists themselves are utterly irreconcilable, there’s no way to

negotiate with them or reach a common ground or an accommodation. And in that case, it is a war. They have declared war against

us and they have proved it, they have killed now hundreds and

thousands of Americans as an element in that war. And a lack of

response didn’t slow them down, it simply encouraged them.

But on the other hand, we recognize this is distinct, it’s a minority within those societies. And we have to do everything we can in

this struggle or contest of ideas to say that a philosophy that promises you nothing but death and destruction is not one a majority

of those people want. We want to help them and to help the progressive elements in those societies to build open, free and democratic places in which to live.

Mr. SHAYS. Before you respond, Mr. Ben-Veniste, in your footnote, which is on page 562, it says, ‘‘What to Do, A Global Strategy,’’ you say, ‘‘Islamist terrorism is an immediate derivative of

Islamism. The term distinguishes itself from Islamic by the fact

that the latter refers to a religion and a culture in existence over

a millennium, whereas the first is a political-religious phenomenon

linked to the great events of the 20th century.’’ I guess what I

would love is for you to just tell us in response to anything else

you want to respond to in the question, how do we make sure that

people see the distinction.

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. Well, we have to reemphasize the fact that our

struggle is not with one of the great religions of our time. We are

not engaged in a struggle or war or competition with the Muslim

religion. And we need to make that abundantly clear. We are dealing with, as you have quite correctly read, an outgrowth, a small

offshoot which combines religious fanaticism of the most virulent

type with a political agenda that is willing to use attacks which

seem to fly in the face of the teachings of the Muslim religion in

terms of attacks against innocent men, women and children who

are non-combatants.

So this use of terror tactics by a virulent political offshoot of a

religious fundamentalist belief, we’re not in a struggle with fundamentalism by any means. But when people mis-use religion and

tie it to a political agenda that directly threatens us, then we must

respond.

Senator GORTON. Mr. Chairman, you do a better job with our report than we do ourselves.

Mr. SHAYS. That’s good staff work.

Senator GORTON. You’re absolutely right, that footnote was the

source of the distinctions that we make. Norton has just published

a hard back copy of this that finally has an index. I must say, I

found it difficult going around the country often to find the places

I wanted to find in the original one. This one is a lot better.

Mr. SHAYS. I’ll make sure I get that as well, because that will

be helpful. Let me just quickly make reference to the fact, we have

a National Security Strategy in the United States. We also have it

divided into the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism and

the National Strategy for Homeland Security. One is offense, the

National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, and one appears a little bit more to be defense, the National Strategy for Homeland Security.

38

Do you feel comfortable that the National Security Strategy of

the United States and the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism and the National Strategy for Combating Homeland Security

are integrated? Is there a sense that you have that we need to do

better? It seemed to me that you kind of reinforced these strategies. It may be we don’t have enough time to have you really respond to this in any depth. But do you have any reactions to these

three strategies, the overall national strategy and then the one

dealing with terrorism and the one dealing with homeland security?

Senator GORTON. I think we testified to that in our formal testimony here, stating that we think these administration initiatives

are appropriate and have moved in the right direction. I don’t

think, we’ve also said we don’t think that they have emphasized

sufficiently this outreach of ideas about which we’ve spoken, and

that we don’t feel that they are complete yet by any stretch of the

imagination, even within their own terms. It’s one of the reasons

that we asked Congress to pass legislation on restructuring our intelligence agencies and the like.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask you this. Do you think, then, we need a

new counter-terrorism strategy? That’s kind of the bottom line. And

we even call it terrorism, which makes me wonder. Do you want

to respond to that?

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. We do believe that there needs to be greater

integration between offense and defense. That’s why we have focused on the shortcomings which, as you have pointed out, may

well have prevented September 11, had we realized them sooner

and had we taken efforts to correct those shortcomings sooner.

That’s why we make broad recommendations, with respect to a national intelligence director with authority to coordinate the intelligence agencies, 15 or so, who have information, both offense and

defense, and make it a much more seamless and comprehensive effort by one team, the American people team, not credit to one agency, not owning intelligence by one agency or another but an obligation to share for the common good.

We recognize that the events of September 11 have pointed us

inexorably to fixing what was wrong. That’s what we need to do,

and that’s why we need to go as far as we have recommended in

a comprehensive strategy, Mr. Chairman, to address those needs.

I think you’re quite right.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

We’ve been joined by Mr. Tierney and Ms. Watson. We decided

we would do 10 minutes when there were four of us and there are

more. But I think we can get it done pretty well.

Mr. Platts, I’m just going to say that you can jump in any time,

because you haven’t asked for the 10-minute time. I intend to go

to Mr. Lynch unless you want to jump in.

Mr. PLATTS. I’ll defer to Mr. Lynch.

Mr. SHAYS. OK, let’s do Mr. Lynch. Thank you.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your good

work and also of the ranking member. I want to thank the commissioners for helping Congress and this Nation deal with our issue

of how to develop a national strategy to deal with terrorism.

39

I want to ask two questions and try to stay within the time limit.

I’m going to deal with one issue that is of a more domestic issue

for us, and then I’m going to switch to sort of a global issue. I can’t

help but notice that prior to September 11th, if you visited any

international airport outside of the United States, whether it be

Leonardo da Vinci Airport in Rome or Heathrow in London or Ben

GUrion Airport in Israel, you already saw that heavy military presence, they were sort of combating terrorism far before we were. Yet

when you flew around, domestically in the United States, we had

none of that. It was wide open.

I’m concerned about a trend I see globally, and that is, over the

last 10 or 12 years we’ve seen repeated attacks on rail systems

around the globe. We’ve seen the Algerian terrorists in Paris, we’ve

seen the Chechyan rebels for 10 years attacking the subway system

in Moscow. We’ve seen what happened in Madrid, Spain most recently and the transportation systems in Israel are continually subject to attack.

My concern is that, in your September 11 recommendations you

talk about focusing on the neglected areas of our transportation

systems in this country. We’ve spent about $8 billion on aviation

security. We’ve spent less than one-tenth of 1 percent of that on

rail security, even though we have five times as many people who

travel in this country every day by rail than do by air.

My first question is, do you think that the way we’re handling

this right now is consistent with the recommendations of the 9/11

Commission? Do you think we need to change that, and what

would those recommendations for change be? I know you have to

keep it general, otherwise we’d have a whole series of these volumes. But if I could get your thoughts on that.

Senator GORTON. The short answer to your question is no. If on

all of your transportation security 90 percent of the money and effort is going into one mode, that’s not an appropriate balance.

You’ve mentioned rail, there is also of course maritime that is vitally important. And we didn’t study or become experts on particular methodologies to make transportation modes safer. That was

beyond our charge, it was beyond our staff. What we did do and

point out is, there does need to be a greater balance and we need

to look at these others and we need to come up with techniques

that provide them a greater degree of security.

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. I agree completely with Senator Gorton’s observations. Quite clearly, we point out the fact that the greater attention needs to be paid to other areas. We are a target-rich environment. We can have attacks occur on any number of vulnerable

targets which would cause great loss of life. Obviously because we

have seen the use of airplanes as missiles, we focused on that, and

I think not inappropriately. A train has to stay on its tracks, an

airplane can fly anywhere and becomes essentially a hijacked

weapon of mass destruction. And therefore, it is appropriate that

we pay attention to the potential for the hijacking and suicide use

of airplanes, now that with terrible consequences this has occurred.

Whether we could have taken steps in advance of September 11

is behind us. We now need to focus on the future. And you are

quite right, sir, in focusing on the example of what has occurred

in other societies, allies of ours who have suffered attacks to their

40

rail systems. Senator Gorton is correct that we need greater attention paid to shipping. So we make the recommendation that we not

put all eggs in one basket.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you. My last question, and it’s tougher, this

morning there was an article in the New York Times. I thought it

was illustrative of our problem. It reported of a military parade

that occurred in Tehran, Iran last Tuesday. And at the parade,

President Mohammad Khatami said that even though Iran was

going forward with its nuclear program, that it was devoted to

peaceful use, and that Khatami was saying that there was no need

for us to fear and that it was for producing energy.

Meanwhile, in the background behind him in the parade there

were these Shahab III missiles, capable of reaching Israel. What’s

especially troubling is on the side of the missiles themselves were

banners. One banner said, Crush America, and the next banner

said, Wipe Israel Off The Face Of The Map. We’re in a tough spot

here, the President is, everyone is.

Based on what we hear some leaders saying in the Middle East,

but what we see them doing, presents a tremendous dilemma. It’s

what I’m worrying about this morning, and wondering, you know,

I’m very, very grateful, as is everyone on this committee and in

Congress for your willingness to devote your energies and your special talents toward helping us with this problem. But I’d like your

thoughts on that particular dilemma.

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. Well, let me say, Mr. Lynch, that I share your

concerns. The words of our former President Ronald Reagan come

to mind with respect to Mr. Khatami’s statements, ‘‘Trust but verify.’’ With respect to what we can do, we must through our international collaborative alliances make sure that there is proper inspection and that nuclear programs not be mis-used for the purpose of creating weapons grade nuclear materials which can be

used against us or our allies. I don’t see getting into the weeds here

today on anything more specific than to recognize that this is indeed a major issue that reasserts itself in post-cold war politics,

geopolitics.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you.

Senator GORTON. The challenge of Iran is a major challenge. We

weren’t the Iran Commission, we were the 9/11 Commission.

[Laughter.]

We did not become experts on every element of foreign policy. We

did, however, make this statement: ‘‘The magnitude of the threat

demands that preventing the proliferation of these weapons warrants a maximum effort on the part of the U.S. Government. We

recommend expanding the membership and resources of the proliferation security initiative and doing all that we can do support

the cooperative threat reduction program to secure control over nuclear materials, so that they do not become loose nukes.’’

That doesn’t tell you how to respond specifically to Iran. It’s a

major challenge you have in the Congress of the United States. To

be honest with you, we have had to concentrate on our specific

mandate that you gave us here in Congress, and to get back to urging, expressing the strongest possible hope that the Congress this

year, in these next 2 or 3 weeks, can take significant action toward

adopting those recommendations.

41

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Senator. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Platts.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I again appreciate both

of our witnesses here today, your participation but especially your

work on the commission. As a Nation, we’re all indebted to you and

your fellow commission members.

I was hoping as we move forward and the consensus about a national intelligence director is evolving and following much of your

recommendation if you could expand on your thoughts on the

breadth of that authority and the responsibility of the NID and

specifically with regard to the current entities under the Secretary

of Defense and how the impact could be on the chain of command

within the military.

Senator GORTON. Way back in the late 1940’s when the Congress

created the CIA, it in theory made the CIA director the head of all

intelligence activities. But it gave that director no authority over

the budget beyond the CIA’s immediate budget itself, and no authority over personnel. And as you know, it has turned out that 80

percent or more of the budget for intelligence in a very broad sense

is controlled by the Department of Defense through many of its

agencies.

We found that one of the principal failures leading up to September 11 was the lack of communication among various intelligence

agencies, even with that wall within the FBI, but certainly among

the various agencies themselves, and our system failed. We start

with the proposition that the system that we had was a miserable

failure. And we have twin recommendations in the area that you’re

speaking to, a national counterterrorism center and a national intelligence director.

We feel very strongly that national intelligence director must

have broad authority over budget and at least over senior personnel. If not, if you just create a shell of a national intelligence director, you’ve just added one more person, one more box in that organizational chart. I think if we’ve learned anything since 1947, it is

that if someone is going to have that title, they had really better

have the authority to do it.

Now, at the same time the Department of Defense and our

armed services obviously live on intelligence. The way that it has

come out I think in the Shays bill and certainly in what Senators

Collins and Lieberman are doing is a distinction between the direct

day to day military intelligence, which stays there with those

armed services and what is defined as strategic intelligence. Nor is

the Department of Defense kept totally out of the ladder by any

means. But we do think it’s important to have one focus for tasking

and one focus, one place where the individual in charge has the authority to demand a sharing and then to task where there are

empty spots, where we haven’t looked.

So we certainly think that progress is being made in the Senate

at this point, and that division is the right direction. And I believe

the Shays-Maloney bill does the same thing.

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. I agree.

42

Mr. PLATTS. And that’s kind of supporting Chairman Shays’ approach, as in the Senate, one in distinguishing between strategic

and theater intelligence——

Senator GORTON. And operational help.

Mr. PLATTS. Within that strategic intelligence, that’s from the

Department of Defense that there be maybe a shared authority between SECDEF and NID over those personnel that it may not be

absolutely one or the other, correct?

Senator GORTON. Yes.

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. Within that narrow area, within that specific

area.

Mr. PLATTS. Right, on strategic intelligence.

The one other area I’ll touch on quickly is the very important

message you’ve conveyed in the commission report and here today

is truly winning the big picture and defeating Islamist terrorism,

not just al-Qaeda specific. And could you expand on how, in winning the ideological battle, any specifics that we should be looking

at, and would that include our relations with nations like Saudi

Arabia in pressure for the Saudis to change how they treat their

own citizens?

Senator GORTON. That is, of course, if that were an easy question

to answer, it would have been answered already. Saudi Arabia has

been a nominal ally and at some level a real ally of the United

States for an extended period of time. But its views on some of this

ideology didn’t really change greatly even after September 11.

It changed very dramatically a year ago last May when it turned

out that the Saudi regime was a target of the very philosophy that

it had created itself. That relationship is better now, but we have

still not persuaded the Saudis to stop exporting, to stop subsidizing

this very intolerant and extremist form of their religion here in the

United States and in many other places in the world. It clearly

should be a goal. Obviously it should also be a goal for countries

like that to liberalize. Saudi Arabia may be the toughest, the most

discriminating against women of all the scales in those societies.

It’s hard for us to figure that you can have a really successful society and engage in that form of discrimination.

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. We’ve had some success, particularly with respect to funding of terrorist organizations from the Saudis since

they were struck on their own soil by terrorists. This will occur to

other countries as time goes on that the threat of this virulent

group of terrorists which seeks to overthrow virtually everyone who

does not share their beliefs will impel them to be more cooperative.

Slade is correct with respect to the export of Wahabism. We would

hope over time that will be moderated. We have recommendations

with respect to competing in the educational arena with that form

of intolerance. But these are longer term efforts that we must pursue, in our view, alongside the more direct and focused attempt to

kill those who have launched attacks against us.

Mr. PLATTS. In winning that battle with the individuals, those

young citizens in Muslim nations that we are not their enemy, but

we are a Nation of good and very humanitarian in nature, we contribute a sizable amount of money to the U.N. to provide humanitarian, whether it be food, health care, education, other forms of assistance in many of these nations. Should we be looking at doing

43

that more directly so that, the U.N. is not loved, that is for sure,

but probably looked more favorably at the aid coming from them

than if it was coming from us directly. Should we be looking at

more direct intervention in even the humanitarian side?

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. I don’t think I am competent to provide an answer to that question. Looking at the simple psychology of human

beings, it is often the case that those who directly hand out aid,

if it’s not done well, will create further resentment. So it is not an

easy question to answer.

But quite clearly, we need to do a much better job of communicating what we are about in this country, what our core values

are. Because fundamentally, a mother raising children in this country shares much more with a mother in any of the Muslim countries that we’re talking about than do those who preach suicide and

violence. That’s what we need to focus on. It’s not going to be something that will occur today or tomorrow or next year. But it is an

objective that we must pursue with a determination and recognition that it is essential that we do so and do so more effectively

than we have in the past.

Mr. PLATTS. Great. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman. I just will quickly, before recognizing Ms. Maloney, point out that we had a hearing on February 3rd regarding effective strategies. We had one of the witnesses, Dr. Lanny Kass, Professor of Military Strategy, National

War College. He had various points he was making, talking about

the end game and what terrorism is and so on. They were just very

helpful comments, why do they hate us and points there. He said

in one of them was why we will win, and the answer was, we can’t

afford to lose, which was an interesting way to put it.

But when he talked about integrated strategy, one of his bullet

points was we need to break fundamental asymmetric symmetry

wherein we need to succeed 100 percent of the time and they need

to be successful only once. It’s kind of an interesting concept. They

only have to be successful once. We have to succeed 100 percent.

Then he said, you don’t start developing strategy from point of failure, you seize the initiative and shape it, which is an interesting

concept as well.

Ms. Maloney, you have the floor for 10 minutes.

Ms. MALONEY. Thank you so much, Chairman Shays, and welcome to both of our panelists. A very special welcome to Mr. Richard Ben-Veniste. I remember your work on the Nazi War Crimes

Disclosure Commission, which oversaw the largest opening of secret government records in the history of our country. You brought

a great dedication to bringing these documents to the American

public and I congratulate you for that work, too.

You’ve done an incredible job, and I hope you continue being a

supporter of implementing the document that you prepared. Mr.

Hamilton and Mr. Kane said that the 41 recommendations were

tied to specific acts that if we corrected them would make America

safer. So many of us are very dedicated to implementing all of your

recommendations, and in that spirit Chris Shays and I introduced

H.R. 5040, which is the same as the McCain-Lieberman bill that

really supports all 41 recommendations. It has been endorsed by

44

the September 11 families and by the two chairs of the committee

and the commissioners. We thank you for that.

We have now well over 40 some sponsors and a caucus meeting

this afternoon with vice chairman Hamilton on how we can work

in a bipartisan way to implement it. Yet I read in the paper today

that the majority has indicated that they will have a new bill on

Friday. No one has seen this bill, but I am told that it’s hundreds

of pages long and it is rumored, this is according to the press, to

have a whole litany of provisions, unrelated provisions that are not

part of the 41 recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

So instead of working off the document that your commission

came forward with, and really your document is the one that we

have been holding hearings on for the past 2 months, this Congress, I congratulate them for working through August, very diligently, on various hearings and oversight. And you gave us an absolute playbook of what needs to be done.

But now we’re told that we’ll have a new base bill, not the base

bill of your recommendations that is filled with non-related items.

So my question is, basically I hope this commission will come forward with common sense and put credibility behind whatever bill

finally goes to the Floor. I think everyone supports combating terrorism, making America safer. The question is, how do you do it.

I’m troubled by the reports that I’m reading, that it is filled with

unrelated items that are not specifically related to the purpose and

recommendations of the commission.

Senator GORTON. Ms. Maloney, we worked hard——

Ms. MALONEY. I know you did.

Senator GORTON [continuing]. For 20 months. When Richard and

I met, I’m not at all sure we knew then that we’d be joined at the

hip, both in the work of the commission and in working on it afterward. But we have, as you know, created a non-profit to keep a

small staff together, and to keep us informed of what’s taking place

here. We have provided comments and what we think is constructive criticism of all of the proposals, including your own, and including the proposal that’s very similar to it that’s now, I think,

being marked up as we speak in the Senate, which seems so far

to be going very much in the direction that the Commission has

recommended.

So you may be assured that we will comment on any new proposal that comes out, long or short. Because it is our goal, it is our

goal and our strong recommendation that the Congress follow the

recommendations of the commission and put into statute those that

are appropriate between now and your adjournment, which is relatively soon. We think it would be a terrible mistake to get through

two different bills in the House and Senate and be unable to reconcile them, and leave until some time in January, leaving us in

the situation in which we find ourselves today. We really want action, we want consistent action. We will examine every proposal

that comes out with that in mind.

Ms. MALONEY. Thank you so much, Senator. In fact, we have put

in a bill to extend the commission. I am so glad you have worked

with a non-profit to support your work.

In line of commenting on various proposals, the commission recommended that the high threat formula be specifically for high

45

threat and not used as pork, that it should be directed to where

the threat is. As a representative of September 11, of New York

City, which in every terrorist report is target No. 1, I think that’s

appropriate and important. I understand you spoke about that

today.

So I’d like to ask you about the Cox bill, which is now before us

that is very well intentioned, yet it continues with a system of

funding all States at a certain amount regardless of whether or not

they have threat at .25. Then it goes up to .45 for States with international borders. And there are some restrictions in it that seem

to me difficult for areas of large populations. For example, it caps

construction projects at $1 million. I would say every construction

project in New York, to either fortify the Port Authority or the rail

or the airports, has been over $1 million. And it seems to be possibly leaner pork, but still pork. Your comments?

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. Well, first of all, let me thank you for your

generous remarks and personal remarks, and commend you for

your leadership with respect to the legislation that made the Nazi

War Crimes Disclosure Act a reality, and for your guidance and

oversight over the many years in which we have labored. We’re

still not finished.

With respect to the Cox bill, I confess that I’m not familiar with

the specifics. It is our understanding that it is again a step in the

right direction, but your characterization of leaner pork may well

be an appropriate one, in that our recommendation is that these

funds be not considered as a general appropriation for each and

every jurisdiction to get some sort of share, but rather be directed

and focused at communities which pose the greatest level of threat.

Ms. MALONEY. Thank you. Any comment, Senator Gorton?

Senator GORTON. I agree with Richard, as usual.

Ms. MALONEY. That’s great. I also would like to place in the

record an editorial on defense of civil liberties.

Mr. SHAYS. That has already been put into the record.

Ms. MALONEY. Oh, it has. OK. But the commission’s report recommended that a board be set up to oversee the Government’s defense of our civil liberties. Although they were good intentions, a

board was appointed by the President that appears not to reflect

the intent of the 9/11 Commission in that it has no subpoena authority, cannot initiate investigations, can conduct meetings behind

closed doors, and unlike strategies we’re discussing today, this

board has no stated mandate, has no obligation to issue any type

of reports and absolutely no independence at all.

I would like to ask both of you to comment on the steps that

have been taken so far and whether you think they’re adequate or

whether they need to be strengthened in this particularly important area of civil liberties.

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. Congresswoman Maloney, I wrote an editorial

myself along with Lance Cole, Professor at Dickinson Law School,

on this very subject, which was published in the New York Times

on the 7th of September. I share your concerns, the commission

shares the concerns that while it is I think helpful that the President has recognized the need for such a civil liberties board, the

proposal from the Whit House does not meet the objectives that led

the commission to make its recommendation.

46

First, with respect to personnel, we believe that the recommendation or the board proposed by the President in his Executive order

of 20 individuals from the very agencies that require oversight does

not solve the problem. We recommend that there be an independent board of persons drawn from the outside community who will

likely be more objective and disinterested in performing the task.

We suggest that it’s a good idea to have ombudsmen in the various agencies who are able to receive complaints and monitor the

way their various agencies are performing, and to bring to the attention of this bipartisan, independent board whose members

should be confirmed by Congress, we believe by the Senate, which

will enhance focus and the importance of such oversight responsibilities. And these ombudsmen will have authorities and the individuals who may come to them will have the protections necessary

for candid revelations that will make such a board effective and

useful.

And finally, if I may say, that board should be transparent. It

should report regularly to Congress and to the American people.

Senator GORTON. Basically we support the board that you have

in Shays-Maloney and that exists in Collins-Lieberman.

Ms. MALONEY. Well, thank you very much, and I request the

chairman to place your article of September 7th into the record.

[The information referred to follows:]

47

48

Ms. MALONEY. My time is up. Actually there is a conflict, there

is a meeting right now in the Financial Services Committee on

which I serve on September 11 recommendations, which is the

story of the day. We’re holding a great deal of meetings and oversight. Thank you both for your work and your dedication.

Senator GORTON. Godspeed. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. At this time I would recognize Mr. Tierney and thank

him for being here, and for all the meetings he’s been here as well.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for your continued work on this. I think that the members of the panel might

agree that Mr. Shays has used his position in the way the oversight committee ought to be used, and it drops into what I’m going

to talk about next.

I want to thank both of you gentlemen for your service to the

country. I know it’s been a sacrifice of your own personal time and

effort and your expertise has been invaluable to all of us. But I also

want to thank your staff, who sits quietly behind you there, but I

know was very instrumental, like staff here are. I think sometimes

we neglect to put in a good word for them.

Senator GORTON. Squirming at times at our answers.

Mr. TIERNEY. Because they couldn’t hook up a direct line in your

ear. [Laughter.]

Let me segway from what Congressman Maloney just talked

about in terms of the fact that she is leaving now to go to another

committee, essentially going to deal with another aspect of the 9/

11 Commission report and homeland security and intelligence. You

make recommendations in the report about the need for strong congressional oversight. And I think you’re right on the money there.

I’m very concerned that while we’re moving ahead a little bit on

trying to implement some of your recommendations, we have a

number of bills that are out there and hopefully going to be considered, and I agree with you, Senator Gorton, considered soon, sooner

rather than later.

I’m very concerned that Congress, particularly the House, hasn’t

yet started down the path of what we’re going to do for oversight.

The recommendations that were made by the committee were that

we should either have one joint committee of the Senate and the

House or one designated committee in the House and one designated committee in the Senate. Would each of you tell me what

your personal preference was?

Senator GORTON. Chairman Shays, earlier during the course of

this hearing, said what I expect is obvious, that in all probability,

this issue wasn’t going to be dealt with definitively this year. We

do feel it very important that it be dealt with definitively at some

point or another. Unlike our recommendations for a national

counterterrorism center and a national intelligence director, we

didn’t say, here’s one way in which to accomplish this goal.

We looked back, we heard a number of people speak to us about

the old Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which seemed to a very

powerful and influential committee in its day. And we found that

an attractive alternative, but not the only alternative.

We did find one of the shortcomings being this total separation,

which certainly I do a lot in the Senate, of oversight authority from

money. And any people on the intelligence committees have exVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:35 Feb 23, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00052 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98354.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
49

pressed frustration in the fact that they worked very hard on these

issues to come up with specific recommendations and can effectively be ignored because they have no power of the purse. That is

done by a committee that doesn’t have nearly the expertise in this

field that, say, the intelligence committees do themselves. Most

dramatically, we looked at the huge number of committees and

subcommittees to which the Department of Homeland Security reports, I think often, derogating from its ability to do the job that

it was set up by statute to do.

My own view is that you can pick one of several courses of action

that concentrates this authority more and that includes people who

are genuinely interested in the oversight function and greatly improve the way in which Congress operates. In this particular case,

we aren’t wedded to a single solution.

Mr. TIERNEY. You don’t have a preference, you’re saying?

Senator GORTON. Pardon?

Mr. TIERNEY. Other members of the commission I’ve asked this

question to had a preference. You personally don’t have a preference?

Senator GORTON. I didn’t serve long enough or go to have remembered that joint committee. I think I personally, I found it fairly

an attractive alternative.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Ben-Veniste.

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. I agree with everything that Slade Gorton has

said. I think some of the things we talked about were an integrated

professional staff, no term limits on membership, the necessity of

developing expertise in this area, being able to ask the right questions, being able to keep one’s eye on the ball is critical to effective

oversight. I too have no specific preference to getting it done right.

But it’s quite clear that there needs to be a consolidation and a reduction in the number of different entities looking at oversight.

But we also take the position that oversight needs to be more effective. The more authorities granted to the executive, the more important oversight becomes and the more critical effective oversight

is to the constitutional balance of powers that we rely upon. It is

absolutely critical that this be done.

Now, we are not naive. We know that this is among the most difficult recommendations we made. And I will tell you candidly that

talking to Members of Congress, present and former, over time,

during our deliberations and inquiries, we learned from them that

they would be unable to do it on their own. It’s not something that

anyone thought could be the product of self-starters in the Congress.

But now, having from this extraneous to the Congress body of individuals who are operating in a bipartisan way, we saw the dramatic need to make these changes. And hopefully, they will be accomplished. Our recommendations are of a piece. They are interdependent and interrelated. If we have greater authorities focusing

on our making the executive more powerful, then we must have

more effective oversight by the Congress.

Mr. TIERNEY. I absolutely agree, and I think many of us do on

that, but that brings me to the next level of this question. I think

it’s almost dangerous to give that kind of authority to the execuVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:35 Feb 23, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00053 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98354.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
50

tive, whoever’s in office, without concomitantly doing something

about oversight at the congressional level.

So Senator, starting with you, because you served here, how do

you see that being done, given the personalities, given the jurisdictions, given the turf that people are going to try to protect? Is this

something we’re going to have to move statutorily and try to get

the larger body to impose it as opposed to going into the rules of

the House or the Senate, or if it’s going to be the rules of the respective bodies, how do you think we get over that hurdle?

Senator GORTON. Oh, boy, that is a real challenge. I hesitate to

advise the House on that. But that is going to be the reform that

will be the most difficult for you. It’s easier for Members of Congress, when I was a member, equally so, to say here are reforms

that ought to be made in the Executive. When you say here are reforms that ought to be made here, you’re always goring someone’s

ox. To concentrate authority in fewer people means to take some

authority away from others. And no human being likes that very

much.

But this is, it was an unprecedented catastrophe that happened

to the United States, and there is no way of looking at it other

than to say that all of our institutions from top to bottom failed

and that we need to do things differently and better. And one simply has to hope that generous feelings of statesmanship will triumph and we will do them better in the future.

Mr. TIERNEY. I assume Mr. Ben-Veniste has the same——

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. I’m just a country lawyer. [Laughter.]

I don’t presume to have answers to this question, except to say

it’s got to be done.

Mr. TIERNEY. Let me move on, then. In your report, you talk

about the fact that we need to confront the U.S.-Saudi relationship.

Do you think, the report is a little bit quiet, I think, on Saudi Arabia, it doesn’t deal with the classified pages that were in Congress’

larger report, it doesn’t talk too much about the fact of a number

of Saudis being allowed to leave this country almost immediately

after the event without thorough FBI examination.

Senator GORTON. Oh, it does deal with that. No, Mr. Tierney, it

very definitely deals with that.

Mr. TIERNEY. You think it does, in detail, Senator?

Senator GORTON. Absolutely, yes.

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, I might respectfully disagree with that in

terms of the depth of it. I was going to ask you, without disrespect

to your work, and I always want to make that clear, do you think

that the committee did an exhaustive job in reviewing the SaudiU.S. relationship, and what do you recommend as ways that the

U.S.-Saudi relationship should be confronted as we move forward?

Senator GORTON. Well, I suppose to one person it is exhaustive

and to another person it is not. This was central to the work of the

9/11 Commission, 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Some

of the philosophy, Bin Ladin is a Saudi, most of his financing that

we could determine came from Saudi sources. We found no governmental sources in that, but simply the way that society operates

through its religiously oriented charities is the way in which this

entire operation was financed. It’s very, very important.

51

We did look as carefully as possible into the Saudis who left

afterwards. And we found nothing out of the ordinary there. The

FBI has told us they looked into every single person that they felt

it was appropriate to look into. There was really nothing more to

be done. We do not, generally speaking, restrict people from leaving

the United States when they are citizens of other countries.

We have found, as I answered, I think, over here——

Mr. SHAYS. Could I just interrupt the gentleman a second?

I just want to make sure that Ms. Watson gets to respond to

questions, and we’re getting to a deadline. Mr. Ben-Veniste, do you

have time to stay? If you could just shorten your answer.

Senator GORTON. The answers is that one of the three countries

we write about in here with respect to our relationships is Saudi

Arabia, because it is important. Cooperation exists in a very good

fashion at some levels, and at not a very good fashion at other levels. It’s a tremendous challenge for us here in the United States

to try to move Saudi Arabia in an appropriate direction. It is certainly one of the most, if not the most important of all the relationships in the Middle East.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman. Ambassador Watson.

Ms. WATSON. Thank you so much. I want to commend you two

gentlemen for the role you have played in gathering all the information and recommending to us a direction. I find it very fine and

profound work. Thank you from a grateful Nation.

I notice that with in your report, you said that you focused on

Islamist terrorism, because it’s the leading national security threat

to the United States. And I support your recommendations 100 percent. My concern is, we talk about the failure of our intelligence

sector. And what we really are talking about are the people within

intelligence, the human capital which is our most valuable asset.

We didn’t see a whole lot of concentration on how these people are

empowered, how they are managed, and what would be the key to

reform.

If we are going to focus on Islamic terrorism, are we not advancing a war against the Islamic world? And should we not get people

who are familiar with the mind set of that particular world and

how they think and how they function and what processes they go

through? How are we going to meet that need if we’re going to

focus on the extreme Islamic terrorists? How do we work with our

human capital? Can you respond?

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. You’ve raised many important and interesting

questions. With respect to the distinction between the Islamist terrorists and the religion of Islam, we make the distinction very carefully and clearly that this country is not at war nor do we oppose

any religions in the world and certainly not the great Muslim religion. We do identify——

Ms. WATSON. May I interrupt you to say that hearing the President, he says we’re at war, and then reading this report and you

say we cannot defeat Islamist terrorism if we cannot persuade

young Arabs and Muslims that there is a better course.

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. Yes.

Ms. WATSON. And really my question is, how do we train, how

do we select the people who work in intelligence so that they can

meet what you have concluded is the path to go?

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Mr. BEN-VENISTE. Quite clearly there are two elements to this.

One element is the people who are working in intelligence on various different levels and the others who are working in connection

with our foreign policy. In both areas, we must obviously have people who have studied and are familiar with the Muslim world. We

make recommendations with respect to increasing human intelligence, this is an area that we found had been neglected over time

at CIA in favor of spending money on hardware. It’s essentially

continuing cold war appropriations or cold war related priorities as

compared with human intelligence. So in our intelligence community we make recommendations both foreign and domestic in connection with our intelligence gathering that we have a greater emphasis on language skills and familiarity with local cultures.

With respect to our foreign policy, we lay out recommendations

where we must do better in convincing Muslims throughout the

world that the way of these fringe groups of terrorists is not the

way that they ought to follow, it doesn’t benefit them. We have

talked here today rather extensively about what will appeal to families throughout the world and find that Muslim mothers throughout the world will have far more in common with American mothers than they will have in common with terrorists who seek only

death, suicide and destruction for their children. So we must make

that case in a better way, and in doing so, we must understand our

target audience better. You’re quit right about that.

Senator GORTON. You may have asked us the most difficult question of all. But first, I do want to make the distinction that the

chairman actually pointed out. We use a term, Islamist terrorism,

that is defined best in that footnote at page 562 that the chairman

laid out, and that makes the distinction between the actual violent

contest in which we find ourselves engaged today and these other

ideas. Clearly, intelligence, human intelligence failed and clearly

we want more sophisticated and knowledgeable people there.

I’m told, I can’t swear to this, that during the entire cold war,

the United States never placed an operative in the Kremlin, for all

the contest and all of the money we spent on it. We had sources

there from time to time, but they were always, they were brave

Russians who were disaffected with it, and most of them paid for

it with their lives. But we never trained someone over in Langley

as an American and got them into the inner sanctum of the Kremlin. It would be wonderful if we could train someone and have them

as the No. 2 assistant of Osama Bin Ladin, but I don’t think we

should hold our breath until that takes place. We’ve got to do that

in other ways.

And Richard described that. Some of it is training and the like

of our people here in the United States. The FBI, we’ve found, in

doing a very good job, I think a better job than the CIA, with respect to terrorism, because it’s saying to its recruits, you’ve got to

learn both law enforcement and terrorism, you’ve got to have assignments in both, you’ve got to learn how to work together. We

want to give you a very productive career in counterintelligence

and in counterterrorism. So we just say, institutionalize what the

FBI has done. The CIA has a longer way to go in that connection,

but it’s got to do a much better and broader job of recruiting than

it’s done in the past.

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Ms. WATSON. If I might finish up, Mr. Chairman, it will take me

just a minute. I think that Lou Stokes, when he was here back in

the 1980’s, initiated a program where they went to the historically

black colleges and they recruited young people and they brought

them into the State Department and they trained them in languages. What occurs to me is that people who look like them ought

to be speaking to them. I think where we really miss the boat is

not identifying people who might have an Arab background or ancestry or something and bringing them in and helping others who

are already with the intelligence, the Department, really understand how people think.

Right now I feel, and what I’m hearing and what’s been said on

the TV today, that this is a Jihad. They feel we are at war against

their religion. And how we change that is going to be very important. We’re going to be fighting this battle for decades to come. I

don’t see an end to it. So I think we have to be real smart and clever. I thank you because you started the thinking. I’m not holding

you responsible for implementing it.

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. Thank you. [Laughter.]

Ms. WATSON. But I just want to raise these issues in the context

of the hearing. You know, we’ve got to start thinking differently,

non-traditionally if we’re ever going to succeed. We can paint a

beautiful picture, and you know, the administration will continue

to say we’re winning. We are not winning, the thing is getting

worse. And have on TV, the yell, the agony of somebody getting

their head sawed off, shows that we’re not nearly finished. I don’t

care how long you talk about it. We’ve got to take action, we’ve got

to train people better to use that human capital if we’re going to

succeed as a Central Intelligence Agency.

Thank you so much for your input, and I just wanted to raise it

as an area that I thought wasn’t given enough attention. Thank

you.

Mr. SHAYS. We’re going to dismiss this panel. I’m going to make

a comment, I’m not asking for the last word, I’m happy to have a

response back. When I saw the yell of the head being cutoff, I

wanted to hear the yell of people in the Islamic world that would

say, this is not Islam. We’re starting to hear it.

But I also want to say, there was a statement made earlier that

I just want to comment on. We are seeing more terrorists today

than before. But we saw more terrorists before September 11th by

inaction as well. So I think that needs to be put in the mix. I would

like to just ask this one last question, I don’t think it requires a

long answer.

One question is, why don’t we allow the GAO to assist with oversight of the intel community and for instance, our committee technically had jurisdiction, technically has jurisdiction of the intelligence community. But when we wanted to have hearings, the CIA

would always, for instance, get a permission slip from the Committee on Intelligence that they did not need to attend. They also, the

GAO continually has resistance when they look at things relating

to the intelligence community.

My question is, did your commission look at this and did you

come up with any recommendation as it relates to GAO?

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Senator GORTON. No, I don’t think we did. I suspect the reason

for that is that they aren’t cleared.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, there are lots of reasons. But they are clear.

Mr. BEN-VENISTE. While we don’t talk directly to GAO, an organization about which I have the utmost respect and confidence, but

we do talk about greater transparency, we talk about the over-classification of materials and we could go on for hours on that subject

alone. But we think Government wide, there has to be a much

greater respect for the fact that we’re all on the same team and

that we need to bring our resources to bear in the most efficient

and effective way possible.

Senator GORTON. And the declassification of at least the top lines

on the intelligence budget we think is long overdue.

Mr. SHAYS. I think that one change would be huge. Because then

our budget becomes a lot more honest. We don’t have to hide things

in a budget. We just have a line for it, and we don’t have to stick

them in other places and give people the impression that we’re

spending more in an area where we may not be spending money.

But I also would say, we had a hearing on this whole issue of

over-classification. The hearing started by saying, we have a 10 to

90 percent over-classification. When we asked the DOD Governmental witness how much over-classification, she said approximately 50 percent, which we appreciated. That was an honesty

that we appreciated. But it’s a huge, huge mistake to over-classify.

We can talk about so many things.

Any last words? OK. Gentlemen, we praise you and we thank

you and we’ll get to our next panel.

We want to welcome our second panel, which consists of Mr. Norman Rabkin, Managing Director of the Homeland Security and

Justice Team, U.S. Government Accountability Office; Mr. Raphael

Perl, Senior Policy Analyst, Congressional Research Service; and

Mr. John V. Parachini, Senior Policy Analyst with the RAND Corp.

Gentlemen, why don’t you stand and I’ll swear you in.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

We evidently have two votes. So what I think we’ll do is just

start, then we’ll go and come back. I really am looking forward to

this panel, thank you very much.

We’ll start with you, Mr. Rabkin.

STATEMENTS OF NORMAN RABKIN, MANAGING DIRECTOR,

HOMELAND SECURITY AND JUSTICE TEAM, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE; RAPHAEL PERL, SENIOR

POLICY ANALYST, CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE;

AND JOHN V. PARACHINI, SENIOR POLICY ANALYST, RAND

CORP.

Mr. RABKIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before the subcommittee today to address three issues of interest: the extent to

which elements of the National Homeland Security and Combating

Terrorism Strategies are aligned with recommendations issued by

the 9/11 Commission; second, the Departments that have key responsibilities for implementing the Homeland Security Strategy;

and third, the challenges that are faced by these key departments

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in assessing their progress toward achieving homeland security objectives.

First I will talk about the connections between the strategies and

the 9/11 Commission recommendations. The Homeland Security

Strategy with a domestic focus sets out a plan to organize Federal,

State and local governments as well as private sector organizations

to accomplish six critical missions. It also identifies 43 major initiatives to be addressed within each of these 6 mission areas. The

Combating Terrorism Strategy with an overseas focus emphasizes

identifying and defusing threats before they reach the borders of

the United States. This strategy seeks to accomplish its goal of reducing the scope of terrorism through 4 strategic goals and 15 subordinate objectives.

The 9/11 Commission report contained 41 recommendations. Our

analysis shows that eight of the recommendations are not aligned

with any of the specific initiatives in the Homeland Security Strategy or with the objectives of the Combating Terrorism Strategy.

These eight recommendations generally pertain to reforming the

intelligence community and congressional oversight of both homeland security and intelligence matters. Because the National Strategies are expected to evolve over time, they can be updated to reflect these recommendations.

The remaining 33 commission recommendations are aligned with

the specific initiatives of the Homeland Security Strategy and the

objectives of the Combating Terrorism Strategy. For example, the

commission recommended that DHS quickly implement a biometric

entry-exit system as part of the screening process for people passing through U.S. ports of entry. It also recommended that DHS design a comprehensive border screening system that could be extended to other countries. These recommendations align with the

Homeland Security Strategies initiative to create smart borders.

As another example, the commission recommended that emergency response agencies nationwide adopt the incident command

system. The Homeland Security Strategy calls for the creation of

a national incident management system.

The second issue is regarding key departments responsible for

implementing the Homeland Security Strategy. Our preliminary

analysis identified six departments as having key roles in implementing the strategy: DHS, DOD, HHS, the Justice Department,

the Energy Department and the State Department. These six departments represent 94 percent of the proposed $47 billion budget

for Homeland Security in fiscal year 2005.

DHS is designated as lead agency for 37 of the 43 initiatives in

that strategy. But many of these initiatives have multiple lead

agencies. For example, DHS, State and Justice each have been designated as a lead agency to create smart borders. In situations like

this, effective coordination among the involved agencies is very important to achieve the expected results. In the forthcoming report

for the subcommittee, we’ll provide much more detailed information

on these departments’ efforts to plan and implement the strategies.

Third, as these departments continue to implement the Homeland Security Strategy, the development of performance standards

and measures will help them assess their progress in implementing

homeland security goals. Once they are established, performance

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measures can be used to determine cost effectiveness of specific initiatives. Development of standards will also provide a means to

measure preparedness and guide resource investments.

We have reported on difficulties the agencies are having in developing a comprehensive set of preparedness standards for assessing

first responder capacities, for identifying gaps in those capacities

and measuring progress in achieving performance goals. We have

also reported similar challenges in developing standards and measures for bioterrorism preparedness in interoperable communications for first responders.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my formal statement. We look forward to providing you with a more detailed report on the plans, activities and challenges regarding those departments involved in the

Homeland Security Strategy. I’ll be pleased to answer questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Rabkin follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. It’s going to be an interesting panel.

Mr. Perl, let’s see if we can get some of what you need to say.

Don’t try to speed it up, if we have to interrupt you in between,

we will. Just do your statement.

Mr. PERL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also have a chart here.

I’d like to state at the onset that the 9/11 Commission report incorporates many of the central elements of the National Strategy

for Homeland Security and the National Strategy for Combating

Terrorism. The commission report additionally contains recommendations for changes in the roles and responsibilities of agencies and Congress. Today I’d like to summarize areas of agreement

and overlap in the two strategies in the 9/11 Commission report

and I’ll conclude with some observations.

Thirteen themes are central to both strategies in the 9/11 Commission report. They are: one, a need for both protective and preemptive action; two, a need to help foreign nations fight terrorism;

three, a need for timely and actionable intelligence and warning;

four, a need for integration of information sharing among governments, across the Federal Government and at State and local levels; five, a need for effective law enforcement cooperation and coordination; six, a need for law enforcement and intelligence coordination, both domestic and foreign; seven, a need to remove barriers

to cooperation between governmental agencies, both domestic and

foreign; eight, a need for an informed citizenry at home and

abroad, this also includes winning hearts and minds; nine, a need

to target, monitor and attack terrorist financing; ten, a need to

track and apprehend terrorists; eleven, a need to combat fraudulent travel documents; twelve, a need to better secure borders, including ports; and thirteen, a need for risk analysis to help assess

threats and prioritize use of resources.

Mr. SHAYS. You know what I think we’ll do? I think we’ll stop

right there, because you’ve gone through that. We have 5 minutes

before we vote. I’m going to suggest that, mine says two votes, others say we have five or six. What we’ll do is I’ll have a staff member here to tell you how many votes we have to take, if you have

20 minutes or whether you have a half hour or 15 minutes or so.

We’re going to recess.

[Recess.]

Mr. SHAYS. The subcommittee will come to order.

Mr. Perl, you still have the floor, and take your time.

Mr. PERL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

So we were talking about these common themes, Mr. Chairman,

and how meeting the objectives of these common themes would

likely benefit our efforts to combat terrorism. But important, however, is not only to state our options to achieve these ends, but also

to ensure that these objectives are feasible, cost effective and

achievable in an acceptable timeframe.

Moreover, I would suggest it is vital to include strategies and

policies to mitigate the conditions that contribute to terrorism in

societies that are incredibly different from our own. We might also

want to consider to what degree our strategies and the Commission’s recommendations focus on the last war and not the ongoing

war of tomorrow. For example, the Commission in its first recommendation stresses the need for identifying and prioritizing terVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:35 Feb 23, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00079 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98354.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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rorist sanctuaries, with a focus on failed states. However, terrorists

are also using politically stable home countries for sanctuary, including western democracies, where they blend into local communities, where their training camps are in civilian housing complexes, and where their bomb factories are in private residences.

Also, although a number of the Commission recommendations

fall within the category of preventing the growth of Islamic extremism, none addresses directly the issue of confronting incitement

to terrorism when promoted, countenanced or facilitated by the action or inaction of nation states. The President talked yesterday in

his U.N. talk about this issue of incitement.

Terrorists clearly demonstrate flexibility to be successful. So arguably, to be successful in combating terrorism, the challenge may

not so much be in creating new organizational relationships, but in

establishing policies and institutional arrangements that can adapt

to change. For just as old organizational structures may be outdated today, new organizational structures and arrangements may

be outdated tomorrow.

And Mr. Chairman, some question whether the push to reform

organizations and implement new polices and programs is a runaway train, gathering momentum but not under control, with increasing impact on civil liberties.

The escalating economic costs of homeland defense has limits. No

sizable nation can afford the costs of fortifying and securing every

square inch of its territory. So as the 9/11 Commission has recommended, both strategy and implementation must wisely

prioritize allocation of resources. And this is the issue of risk analysis, to a certain degree, the last point that I made here.

A point that one of the members of your committee brought up

was the issue of the human factor. While strategies and reform of

governmental structures can accelerate success against global terrorism, many experts see human resource factors as equally critical, including strong national leadership and high quality rank and

file personnel and technology. In this context, the question arises,

to what extent were the failures surrounding September 11 human

rather than organizational failures.

There is concern today that in today’s critical times, full individual and organizational efforts should be focused on combating terrorism and not diverted by a need to adapt to new organizational

structures, responsibilities and roles. But if not now, when? Many

argue that not enough has been accomplished since September 11

to keep pace with the rising threat of terrorism. And many argue

that given the gravity of the threat, changes in organizational

structure, strategy and tactics long overdue must be implemented

without delay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Perl follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Parachini.

Mr. PARACHINI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to put my remarks into a little context here. At the RAND Corp., we recently

conducted an exercise to simulate what might be a strategy session

of the Jihadists and then try to evaluate how our current national

strategy is configured in order to counter that strategy, what might

happen in the future. So that will inform the remarks that I’m

going to make about the 9/11 Commission recommendations as well

as the national strategy documents.

Let me say that the basic message I would want to underscore

here is, I think the institutional recommendations are not nearly

as important as some others. I say that because we are really facing a prolonged global insurgency from a Jihadist movement that

I think the 9/11 Commission has aptly identified as Islamist terrorism. More important in my view are the commission’s recommendations about how we stem or stop the spread of Islamist terrorism.

An important part of that, and the Commission provided a number

of valuable suggestions that were both in the realm of soft power,

both public and private diplomacy. We are not going to be strategic

about stopping this global insurgency unless we somehow stem the

recruits who are coming at us.

So that’s the basic message. I think the institutional recommendations are not nearly as important in the longer strategic

term that we need to be focused than their emphasis on trying to

stem the spread of this problem.

Now, I think the commission does us an enormous service by

really trying to provide a focused characterization of the threat.

This was certainly our experience in the exercise at RAND. We

cannot know how to prioritize and focus our efforts or allocate

funds unless we have some consensus on who we think the adversary is and how they are liable to evolve.

We can have lots of strategy documents that give us blueprints

for doing things, but unless we know what we’re planning against,

we’re just planning in the abstract, or one department and agency

is planning in one direction and another department and agency is

planning in another.

So we have to at least start with a baseline. And this I think the

commission, albeit briefly, did quite nicely, which is they have essentially a three point strategy. They talk about attack Islamist

terrorists, prevent the spread of Islamist terrorism and essentially

defensive measures against terrorist attacks, two offensive strategic thrusts and one defensive.

I think on balance we’re doing pretty good on one offensive, attack the terrorists, and the defensive one. What we’re not doing

very well at is stopping the spread of this phenomenon. Even if Bin

Ladin is captured or killed tomorrow, we already see in somebody

like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi another person up the road who is tangentially linked to al-Qaeda, appeared at al-Qaeda training camps

but actually in Afghanistan had his own camps, competed with Bin

Ladin for recruits.

There will be others who will replace even him, and in medrosses

all around central, south and southeast Asia is the next generation

of what we’re now calling al-Qaeda. But I want to talk about more

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a broader global Jihadist insurgency. That’s what the problem is

that we have to deal with. So in order to deal with that type of

broad, multi-year threat, we have to focus on the objectives and the

programs that get at that longer term problem.

Now, in the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, there is

an interesting chart that essentially shows a network of groups

that start at a national level, go through a regional level and go

up to a global level, essentially talks about transnational terrorist

networks, and that is the nature of the threat today. The national

strategy then articulates that what the end state of the strategy is

is to essentially delink that global network of transnational terrorism and render it unorganized, localized, non-sponsored and rare.

That is a useful, I think, definition of where the starting point is

and where the ending point is. My concern is getting from one

point to the other.

The national strategy documents provide blueprints with long

menus of things to do. But it does not give the appropriate guidance in a focused, prioritized fashion. There are a lot of things to

do. Indeed, immediately after September 11, the portfolio management approach was probably a good one, because we had a lot of

holes to fill. Now, 3 years after, we have to figure out how to not

only spend big but actually spend smart. And unless we have a

more focused approach, a more prioritized approach, we won’t be

able to do that.

So one of the ways to get a better handle on prioritization and

focus is to develop metrics that are helpful for gauging our progress

or our falling back, backsliding. This is not an easy task in a global

insurgency. It’s not an easy task in a global insurgency that’s liable

to be longer than 2 years longer than 4 years and longer than 6

years. So we have to think about metrics that take into account

things that we can count in the short term, terrorists killed and

captured, finances frozen, States that drop off of our State sponsored list, foreign terrorist organizations that are no longer on the

foreign terrorist organization because we deem that they are no

longer a terrorist organization. Things that we can clearly identify

and count.

But that is not sufficient. We also have to think about qualitative

longer term metrics like, the United States has not been attacked

in quite some time, and that time is meaningful. Just because we

have not been attacked in the last 3 years is not necessarily indicative of very much, given al-Qaeda’s historical pattern of planning

several years in advance and waiting for the moment to strike.

We have to also be concerned about disrupting their command

and control system. Even though we might take down 30 people,

there may still be the one key person who’s out there. So we have

to think differently about what the metric is, and something more

qualitative in nature may be more valuable.

Let me conclude here by saying, measuring this mestastisizing

global Jihadist movement is not going to be easy, but it is an avenue to accomplishing that greater priority and focus that I think

is needed and that is hard to achieve. Senior leaders in the Government are as you know, Mr. Chairman, and Congressmen, don’t

have a lot of time in the day and there are a lot of things to do.

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And given the long term nature of this problem, we have to hit

a few home runs on a few key issues, and I guess the one that is,

I think, most important that the commission brings our attention

to is stopping the spread of this phenomenon.

Thank you very much. I look forward to your questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Parachini follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you all very much.

Sorry for the interruptions, and we’ll have another interruption.

Do you want to start? I’m happy to have you start, Mr. Tierney.

Why don’t you start?

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we’re both heading in the same direction here, so it’s fine either way with me.

Mr. Rabkin, you made the comment during your opening remarks that you’ve noticed some difficulties in establishing the

standards of first responders. Can you give me sort of a status assessment? I know the chairman has been a leader here in a bipartisan method to try and get some standards established, so that local

responders, even local industries understand where it is they’re

supposed to go, when it goes from yellow to orange, from one color

to another, instead of just running around like chickens with their

heads cutoff doing everything in sight, spending every dime they

have just to try and say they’re doing all they know how to do,

without really knowing whether or not what they’re doing is the

most effective thing.

So can you give me a status report on that, or some suggestions

on how to get there quicker?

Mr. RABKIN. I think you defined some of the problem in your

question. There is a lack of standards as to how prepared they

should be and what they should be prepared for. There is also a

lack of definition of who is a first responder and what the various

colors on the threat advisory mean. The Department of Homeland

Security is making some progress on this, and they’re getting help

from some private sector organizations as well. There is also some

work being done developing performance standards for responding

to emergencies, whether they be caused by terrorists or by natural

causes.

There are plans and strategies and plans within the Department

to incorporate these standards into the programs so that the Department can figure out where the first responder grant funds

should go. The standards would be based on common definitions of

what first responders are supposed to do, what kind of equipment

they need to do it, and how prepared they need to be. So it can be

transferred into the funding decision.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. Parachini, is RAND one of the organizations that the Department of Homeland Security is asking for some advise and counsel?

Mr. PARACHINI. RAND does do some work for the Department of

Homeland Security.

Mr. TIERNEY. Does any of it involve setting up the sort of metric

that you were talking about?

Mr. PARACHINI. No. Not that I am aware of.

Mr. TIERNEY. Have there been published papers or studies done

in terms of expanding or expounding upon what you’ve recommended there?

Mr. PARACHINI. No, and your question is a good one and it points

to what I think is a national deficiency, that we really need to get

much better at understanding how to measure progress in something like this. Quantitative tools are indeed part of it, but we’ve

got to think about other ones. Unfortunately, that means it’s probVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:35 Feb 23, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00114 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98354.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ably a mosaic of different metrics. This problem is not an easy one

to understand, and there will not be an easy balance sheet way to

understand it and whether we’re making progress. That doesn’t

mean we shouldn’t try and we shouldn’t try hard.

Mr. TIERNEY. One of the concerns I have with the Department

of Homeland Security itself is just how well they are coming together. There are 22 odd agencies coming together at a very critical

time when we have so much for them to do and there were some

criticisms at the beginning that it would simply be moving the deck

chairs on the Titanic at that time. Do any of you have a perspective

on how well the Department has done in actually coming together

as a cohesive unit, whether or not we are there?

I read one very critical article recently talking about just the

simple matter of where it’s located, and its offices and how difficult

the physical setup is for people to work in that environment. Are

we really putting together a cohesive Department of Homeland Security? Is there still a lot of fractured relationships going on there?

Are we focused?

Mr. RABKIN. I can try to answer that, Mr. Tierney. Before the

Department was created, we put it on the GAO high risk list, because we knew the difficulty there would be in not only a department putting 22 agencies together, but 22 agencies that bring a lot

of management problems with them, alnd doing it while carrying

out perhaps something that’s the most important mission in the

Government today. We will be revisiting that issue as to whether

they are still at high risk in their transformation and implementation in the Department.

But to answer part of your question, that immediately when they

were put together their first priority was dealing with the mission

and some of these other issues of management and blending departments or the components together dealing with pay systems,

dealing with insignias was of less importance. They have made

progress in identifying what has to be done and starting down that

road, they’ve done a lot of work in financial management and acquisition management, strategic planning, human capital management. It’s a little early to say if they’ve gotten over the hump. But

we’ve pointed out that these kinds of transformations generally

take 5 to 7 years to work themselves out. It would be a little unreasonable to expect them in a year and a half or 2 years, to have

done all that.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Anybody else care to comment on that?

Mr. PERL. I had some thoughts on the issue of metrics. One of

the things that the commission talked about is maybe to include

a little bit more out-of-the-box thinking. And shortfalls exist when

we establish metrics. There are two shortfalls that I see traditionally. No. 1 is that when we look at success, I think it’s important

to include: did we over-react. Because we’re not fighting one decisive victory, we’re fighting an ongoing war or campaign where resources are limited.

So we can have success on a particular issue, but what was the

cost? Did we over-react? I think the key is measured success, not

just success by itself.

And the other issue is, I think it’s important to factor in the terrorist concept of success and not just our concept. To a certain deVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:35 Feb 23, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00115 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98354.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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gree we may be fighting different wars and measuring on different

scales. For example, we may view as success the fact that we have

large numbers of Transportation Security Administration people

now at our airports. But the terrorists may also view that as success, because they’re draining our resources, it costs the country an

enormous amount of money and we’re not putting the resources in

other areas where they may attack.

Another observation is that it seems to me that when we tend

to measure success—and this ties in with what John was saying

about going after al-Qaeda and not trying to go after having better

relations with the Muslim world generally and looking toward the

future—we tend to measure success in tactical terms. And they

tend to measure success in strategic terms. So it’s not easy to do,

and it’s a daunting challenge, but I do think that as part of the

framework that we have for measuring success, these factors are

important.

Mr. TIERNEY. I yield back.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

We have another round of votes, and I think what we’re going

to do is just try to finish here, so I don’t keep you waiting another

half an hour. But that does mean that there might be some questions to the subcommittee. And you all are real experts on this

issue. I’m going to run through some questions real quick, and I’d

love short answers.

Do the 9/11 Commission recommendations constitute a new

counterterrorism strategy for the country?

Mr. RABKIN. I wouldn’t call it a new strategy, but I think it suggests that the current strategy probably needs to be updated and

some of these ideas worked into it.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. That’s helpful.

Mr. Perl.

Mr. PERL. The 9/11 Commission recommendations constitute

some fine tuning of strategy, particularly in terms of money laundering and terrorist financing: a recognition that seizing the money

cannot be the only object. And some fine tuning in terms of emphasis, more emphasis on going after hearts and minds.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Parachini.

Mr. PARACHINI. I think it does account for a new strategy, because it’s a very focused strategy.

Mr. SHAYS. What’s a very focused strategy? The existing or what

they want?

Mr. PARACHINI. The 9/11 Commission strategy. It’s focused on

the adversary and it defines who the adversary is.

Mr. SHAYS. In other words, even that point of just saying, instead

of saying terrorism, it’s Islamist terrorism?

Mr. PARACHINI. Extremely important. A small little word change,

but I think it is extremely important.

Mr. SHAYS. And I think the other members would agree with

that?

Mr. PERL. Yes.

Mr. RABKIN. Yes.

Mr. PERL. But that can also be a pitfall. Because we may not be

focusing enough on other types of terrorism in the future that we’ll

be seeing.

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Mr. SHAYS. And there will be. There will be.

Mr. PARACHINI. I understand that argument, but we don’t see

other terrorist groups rising up to this level of threat to the United

States. There is nothing like this global insurgency out there.

Mr. SHAYS. The communists weren’t our only threat. But Lord

knows, they constituted the bulk of it. And we had a strategy to

deal with that.

Beyond the Federal Government, who needs to be involved in developing strategies to combat terrorism?

Mr. RABKIN. I think it’s important that all the partners in carrying out the strategy have some part in putting the strategy together. This includes the State and local governments, the private

sector, and our international partners, Congress ought to be involved. Certainly the Executive branch has the responsibility to

promulgate the strategy, but others should be involved in the process of pulling it together and updating it.

Mr. PERL. I think we need to involve people with no experience

in terrorism, sociologists, anthropologists, not just the usual gang

of suspects. And also, this is very controversial, so I’ll present it as

an option, one option that might be worth considering would also

be to engage criminals and former terrorists in developing

counterterrorism strategy.

Mr. SHAYS. I hear you. When we have hackers, we invite hackers

to tell us how we can figure them out.

Mr. PARACHINI. Well, there may be many stakeholders. It’s really

the President in a dialog with the Congress, to set a national strategy.

Mr. SHAYS. How should we think about measuring our national

progress? I want it done in non-scientific terms, Mr. Parachini. I

want to understand, how will John Tierney and I know we’re making progress?

Mr. PARACHINI. I think if we see the number of recruits declining

who go into Jihadist groups, that’s a good sign. If we see editorials

in government-owned Arab newspapers condemning the types of

beheadings like we’ve seen recently, that’s progress. If we hear in

mosques all across the Islamic world these types of things being

condemned, that I think is a sign of progress that’s long term,

that’s important, and we’re taking note of. I know we’re taking

great note of the opposite.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Others?

Mr. PERL. I think also of progress in terms of civil liberties, if

people can go to an airport, not have to wait a long time in line

and not go through intrusive inspections or searches, I think that

would be a sign of progress. I also think of progress in terms of the

way the population reacts on a daily basis, is it a fearful population, how do they change their daily lives in terms of terrorism.

In Israel there is something called the fear index that they give,

or government commissions to get a sense of how the population

sees progress.

And also important is progress on the street in other countries.

We tend to address our polices to the elite, terrorists tend to talk

to the street.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m going to respond to your fear issue, because I look

at it both as a negative and a positive. Mr. Rabkin.

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Mr. RABKIN. I think my answer would probably be too technical,

because I think we ought to start with what the goals are and the

organizations that are responsible for carrying it out need to develop those measures. That’s what we ought to be paying attention

to. There ought to be a system of measures. You don’t need 500

measures. There ought to be one or two that each of the organizations is going to be held accountable to. And it would roll up into

the kinds of measures that these gentleman are talking about.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Just the thing with fear, sometimes when

I hear our Secretary of Homeland Security say, we’ve gone to code

yellow, to code orange, we’ve gone to elevated, to high, but just

keep doing everything you ordinarily do, that to me is a false sense

of security. I rebel at that. So I don’t know. When I see a corrupt

government but nobody’s looking at it, and they say, well, it’s an

honest government, that doesn’t mean it’s an honest government

just because they haven’t grabbed at it. So your fear factor, I’m just

responding to it a little bit.

We only have 4 minutes left. This is tragic, for me it is. Is there

any last comment, gentlemen, you would like to put on the record?

Because we could go a lot further. Any last comments, short ones?

Mr. RABKIN. I appreciate your interest, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just say, I think we’re going to get all three

of you back. If I’m back next year, I’m getting the three of you

back. [Laughter.]

Thank you all very much. This hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 1:20 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney follows:]

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