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CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL EQUIPMENT:

PREPARING FOR A TOXIC BATTLEFIELD

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,

VETERANS AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

OCTOBER 1, 2002

Serial No. 107–232

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

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

DAVE WELDON, Florida

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

C.L. ‘‘BUTCH’’ OTTER, Idaho

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma

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

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

——— ———

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director

DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director

JAMES C. WILSON, Chief Counsel

ROBERT A. BRIGGS, Chief Clerk

PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, VETERANS AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

DAVE WELDON, Florida

C.L. ‘‘BUTCH’’ OTTER, Idaho

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

TOM LANTOS, California

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

EX OFFICIO

DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

LAWRENCE J. HALLORAN, Staff Director and Counsel

J. VINCENT CHASE, Chief Investigator

JASON CHUNG, Clerk

DAVID RAPALLO, Minority Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on October 1, 2002 ............................................................................ 1

Statement of:

Johnson-Winegar, Dr. Anna, Assistant to Secretary of Defense for CBD;

General Stephen Goldfein, Deputy Director, Joint Warfighting Capability Analysis JCS; Major General William L. Bond, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Alt); Michael A. Parker, Deputy to the

Commander, U.S. Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command

[SBCCOM]; and George Allen, Deputy Director, Defense Supply CenterPhiladelphia, Defense Logistics Agency, Department of Defense ............. 74

Schmitz, Joseph E., Inspector General, Office of the Inspector General,

Department of Defense, accompanied by Donald A. Bloomer, Program

Director, Readiness Division, Office of the Inspector General, Department of Defense; and David K. Steensma, Deputy Assistant Inspector

General, Office of the Inspector General, Department of Defense; and

Raymond J. Decker, Director, Defense Capabilities and Management,

U.S. General Accounting Office, accompanied by William W. Cawood,

Assistant Director, Defense Capabilities and Management, U.S. General Accounting Office .................................................................................. 16

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

Allen, George, Deputy Director, Defense Supply Center-Philadelphia, Defense Logistics Agency, Department of Defense, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 118

Bolton, Claude, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics

and Technology and the Army Acquisition Executive, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 93

Decker, Raymond J., Director, Defense Capabilities and Management,

U.S. General Accounting Office, prepared statement of ............................ 31

Goldfein, General Stephen, Deputy Director, Joint Warfighting Capability

Analysis JCS, prepared statement of .......................................................... 86

Johnson-Winegar, Dr. Anna, Assistant to Secretary of Defense for CBD,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 78

Parker, Michael A., Deputy to the Commander, U.S. Army Soldier and

Biological Chemical Command [SBCCOM], prepared statement of ......... 109

Schmitz, Joseph E., Inspector General, Office of the Inspector General,

Department of Defense, prepared statement of ......................................... 20

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

of Connecticut, prepared statement of ........................................................ 4

Watson, Hon. Diane E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of California, prepared statement of ........................................................... 12

(1)

CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL EQUIPMENT:

PREPARING FOR A TOXIC BATTLEFIELD

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2002

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, VETERANS

AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in room

2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Shays

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Shays, Gilman, Platts, Kucinich,

Schakowsky, Tierney, Allen, and Watson.

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

J. Vincent Chase, chief investigator; Dr. R. Nicholas Palarino, senior policy advisor; Jason M. Chung, clerk; Jarrel Price, intern;

David Rapallo, minority counsel; and Earley Green, minority assistant clerk.

Mr. SHAYS. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations hearing entitled Chemical and Biological Equipment: Preparing for a

Toxic Battlefield,’’ is called to order.

In the event U.S. forces are called upon to rid the world of the

grave and growing threat posed by the current Iraqi regime, it

must be assumed those men and women will face chemical and biological weapons.

That prospect compels us to ask, are we ready to fight and prevail on a contaminated battlefield? That question has vexed Pentagon planners and congressional committees since the Persian Gulf

war.

According to the Department of Defense, DOD, after-action analyses, shortcomings in the availability, suitability and durability of

chemical and biological, CB, defense equipment, particularly protective suits and masks, left combat troops avoidably vulnerable to

unconventional attack in Operation Desert Storm.

Despite prolonged and costly efforts to improve CB defense doctrines, tactics and materiel, seemly intractable problems still

plague the effort to defend against chemical and biological weapons

attacks. Research and development remains unfocused and in some

instances duplicative.

Procurements are behind schedule. Due to persistent inventory

management weaknesses, DOD does not always know how many

CB defense items are available, where they are, or when they will

get to the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who need them.

2

Old protective suits are expiring faster than the next generation

suits are being produced, pointing to a potential shortage through

most of this decade.

Compounding the problem, overall inventory visibility remains so

poor, some units have sold new suits on the Internet as excess

while other units are forced to delay critical training because they

can’t get the same suits.

A byzantine management structure wastes time and money and

allows the Army, Navy and Air Force to maintain service-specific

approaches at the expense of a truly joint effort.

Some of these problems are endemic to any BC defense effort.

Protective suits have always been too hot, masks prone to leak, collective protective shelters were deemed inadequate. Decontamination systems required too much water, detectors sounded false

alarms too often, and medical antidotes were not trusted.

These old complaints reflect the harshest reality confronted on

the modern battlefield: There is no absolute immunity to biological

or chemical attack.

Nevertheless, having rightly renounced in-kind retaliation capabilities, the key to CB deterrence is CB defense. U.S. personnel

must be the best equipped and best prepared force on Earth to enable them to survive, fight and win on a chemical and biological

battlefield.

One important lesson learned in the Gulf war should inform our

discussion today. CB defense is a tactical, not a strategic consideration. Contamination avoidance and other force protection capabilities shape how U.S. forces pursue their mission, not whether that

mission is in our national interest.

As one Gulf war analyst put it, having looked into the eyes of

the dragon in the Iraqi desert, military planners cannot rely on nuclear deterrence or mere luck to avoid CB attack. We must constantly reevaluate the threat and reform our defenses against it.

Two years ago this subcommittee heard testimony from the General Accounting Office, GAO, the DOD Inspector General and key

Pentagon officials in the status of the chemical and biological defense program. We told them then that we would invite them back

to describe progress and problems meeting their own performance

goals.

Whether the threat emanates from Iraq, Iran, North Korea or

some national terrorist groups, their answers are of vital importance to our national security.

This open hearing will be followed by a closed session to allow

Members to question our witnesses on classified aspects of the CB

defense program. While I understand the imperative to protect sensitive material, I have been concerned for some time that excessive

classification of information in this area has done unconscionable

damage to reform efforts.

Failure to declassify IG reports on gas mask failures in the Gulf

war era allowed the problem to fester for years behind a bureaucratic fog. The frankest possible discussion of the challenges we

face, short of telegraphing actual vulnerabilities to a potential

enemy, is an essential element of an effective CB defense program.

In that spirit, we welcome our very distinguished witnesses. We

look forward to their testimony, and we thank them from the botVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:00 Aug 05, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\88612.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
3

tom of our hearts for their service to our country during these very

troubled times.

At this time I would recognize my colleague, the very active

member and partner in the work of this committee, the ranking

member, Dennis Kucinich.

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

4

5

6

7

Mr. KUCINICH. I want to thank the Chair for calling this hearing,

and to indicate my willingness to work with you on these issues

that are so important to our national security.

On September 18th, General Myers, the chairman of the Joint

Chiefs of Staff, testified before the Armed Services Committee. He

was asked, under oath, whether the Pentagon was prepared to handle a chemical or biological attack by Iraq.

In response he made the following assertion, ‘‘Obviously our

forces prepare for that, they train for that, and they would be

ready to deal with that type of environment.’’

Today the Inspector General of the Department of Defense and

the U.S. General Accounting Office are issuing independent reports

detailing a host of new and disturbing findings about the inability

of the Department of Defense to protect service members against

chemical and biological attacks.

These reports are not peripheral. They strike at the core of our

servicemen and servicewomen’s ability to carry out their mission,

and these reports were written by two agencies charged with providing independent and unbiased assessments. They also directly

contradict the Department of Defense’s public assertion of confidence.

Now, unfortunately, the American public will never see these reports. The country will not understand the true scope of these problems because the Department of Defense has classified those reports. Now, I can understand on one hand the rationale for classification, not wanting to reveal sensitive vulnerabilities to adversaries, not wanting to place the lives of service members at risk. Those

are important considerations.

But, under the circumstances, in order to protect our servicemen

and servicewomen, we have to look at the flip side of that argument. By denying the American people information that is critical

to the safety of our sons and daughters who serve in the field, the

Department of Defense may be placing servicemen and servicewomen at even greater risk. There are a great number of American

families of servicemen and servicewomen who served this country

during the last war in the Persian Gulf, and they understand,

based on the experience that their loved ones have had with what

is called Gulf War Syndrome.

There are many different circumstances and reasons why people

could have developed the sensitivities that they did. One speculation is that U.S. bombs hit ammunition dumps, which then exploded certain biologicals and chemicals that may have occasioned

contact with our service personnel.

Another is the possibility that such weapons were dispersed. But,

in any event, we know that American servicemen and servicewomen were adversely affected and that they weren’t protected,

and that the Department of Defense has not protected the people

who served during the Gulf war, and there are families that have

been devastated by this.

So we have to come back to the moment and ask what will we

do to protect the servicemen and servicewomen of this country before we get into such a conflict. The American people deserve to

know the true dangers which their sons and daughters could face.

8

And up to now, up to now the Department of Defense has

downplayed those dangers. The Department of Defense wants it

both ways. On one hand it claims that we must take urgent, even

unilateral action against Iraq, because we are told by some, although not conclusively confirmed by the CIA, that Iraq possesses

chemical and biological weapons.

Yet, contrary to the last decade in which Iraq refrained from

using chemical or biological weapons, there is a consensus that if

the United States goes into Iraq with the purpose of regime

change, Saddam Hussein will have nothing to lose by using whatever weapons he may have.

Now, obviously, in this case inspections become of urgent concern. On the other hand, when it comes to the actual dangers our

Armed Forces face, the Department of Defense has not been forthcoming. Administration officials say they are confident they have

enough working protective gear to ensure the safety of our service

members. Well, today the myth is exposed.

The classified reports need to be unclassified. The American people have a right to know the dangers that our young men and

women could face. The American people have a right to know the

preparedness of our military on matters of biological and chemical

weapons conflict. The American people have a right to know whether or not there are serious deficiencies in equipment and inadequate and deficient training.

Now, I am forbidden from discussing the details of classified reports, but I will mention one unclassified example. We know that

many protective suits that would be worn by our men and women

who would serve in combat, many of those protective suits currently are in the field and these suits are defective.

Suits have holes in them. They have tears in the seams. They

cannot protect against a chemical or biological attack. They would

leave vulnerable the men and women out in the field.

Now, although the suit manufacturer is now in prison, hundreds

of thousands of these suits went out into the field. They were given

to service members throughout the world. They were provided to

soldiers in Bosnia, and as of last year the Pentagon, and this is on

the record, this is already known, this is not classified, as of last

year the Pentagon could not account for a quarter of a million of

such suits.

It is public knowledge. The Department of Defense was unable

to recall these suits, because its inventory systems are very poor.

The General Accounting Office reported that several military

suits—several military units were selling brand new protective

suits which cost $200 apiece over the Internet for $3 each.

As a result, there is a real possibility that in the near future a

young man or woman in the Persian Gulf may slip on one of these

protective suits with a false promise of protection.

Now, I am sure that we will hear from the Department of Defense that systems are now in place to avoid such mistakes. However, this is the same department which has dragged its feet in

first identifying the defective suits, the same department that refused to test all of the suits because of cost concerns, and the same

department that refused to separate its inventories when suits in

fact proved defective.

9

I want to thank the chairman for holding this hearing, because

this hearing is about national security. But it is also about whether

we care about our servicemen and servicewomen, and the conditions that we would put them in. I am not going to have any servicemen and servicewomen serving this country, put them in harm’s

way and not make sure that they have every piece of equipment

they need to protect them and to make sure that they can serve

this country.

I thank the Chair.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank the gentleman. We have Mr. Tierney. Mr.

Tierney, thank you for being here. You have been a very active participant on this issue, and have taken a keen interest in this particular hearing. Thank you for coming.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I hope whatever it

is that you have for a cold gets better soon. Sounds like tough

going there.

Mr. Chairman, I think you know from correspondence that I

have had with you and discussions that I have great concern about

the preparedness and the readiness of our troops to engage in the

type of a conflict that may well be met in the Middle East.

And one of the concerns that I think many of us have about a

unilateral preemptive strike without first going through the international bodies and having our allies work with us to try to accomplish the ends of inspections and disarmament and then moving

only as a last resort to a military engagement, a lot of that stems

from recent reports on the Millennium Challenge 2002, which was

warfare simulation exercises that I wrote you about and which

were reported in a recent column in the New York Times, not very

favorably, and they raised great concern.

And I am somewhat concerned also that much of the information

we are going to hear today about relevant factors presumably are

going to come in a classified section of this hearing, and I think

that when we are having a public discussion about what the future

of this country is going to be in terms of going to war or not going

to war and engaging the young men and women of our services, the

public ought to have all of the pertinent information that isn’t truly

in need of classification.

I oftentimes question just why we classify much of the information, because once we get into those classified hearings it seems the

public well should have much of those facts. But the reports of this

simulation, simulated exercise indicate that clearly any action we

have against Iraq wouldn’t be a cake walk, for sure.

The report, and I hope we get to the bottom of this, says that

the war games were fiddled with in ways that raise questions

about whether the government is returning to a Vietnam style over

optimism and myopia.

In fact Paul Van Riper, who is a retired Marine Lieutenant General, who played the enemy’s military commander during these exercises, was quoted as saying, there is an unfortunate culture developing in the American military that maybe should make you

nervous. I don’t see the rich intellectual discussion that we had

after Vietnam, I see mostly slogans, cliches and unreadable materials.

10

And then General Van Riper said the mood reminded him of the

mindset in Vietnam, excessive faith in technology, inadequate appreciation of the fog of war, lack of understanding of the enemy,

and simple hubris. I don’t think we can afford hubris, Mr. Chairman. I think that we have to be absolutely certain that our troops

are prepared, that all of the equipment that we give them to go

into any situation is going to be effective beyond question, and that

we have to make sure that we are ready.

These reported exercises again indicate to us that before the

13,500 people participating in it, before the American forces in

these games even arrived on the scene they were sunk. Much of the

American fleet was sunk. So in order to have the exercise go forward, they just resurrected them and started again. They also indicated that they took away many of the options that we could expect

Saddam Hussein to use and didn’t make them available to the

enemy.

And I understand, as this article indicated, that these are war

games, war simulations, and obviously you want to learn as much

as you can. I think what we need to find out today is are we learning, are we learning from whatever happened in there that was not

good news, and are we going to take whatever action is necessary

to make sure that our troops are properly equipped and well protected, and that we go in a sequence in which we would go in moving forward on these issues of such import, and that we are thoroughly prepared.

So with those comments, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to the

hearing and our witnesses and the testimony.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. If my colleagues would just permit me to

say that when we had the debate on whether or not to go into the

Persian Gulf war, it was a debate in which all Members stated

their views. We tried to get as much information as possible, and

we were very respectful of each other’s positions.

And I appreciate you raising the questions you have. Obviously

it is a bit awkward to have an open hearing and then a declassified

one and then a classified one.

But we decided to go with the open first and push as hard as we

can to know what can be on the record, and then we will leave the

rest for the classified. In other words, we have reversed the order

that we usually do.

And I just want to say that I would have to believe that everyone

cares about obviously making sure our troops are protected. But

there are questions about frankly how well they were protected in

the Persian Gulf as this committee and you all have, both of you

have clearly pointed out.

We have two panels. We have Mr. Joseph Schmitz, Inspector

General, Office of the Inspector General, Department of Defense,

accompanied by Donald A. Bloomer, Program Director, Readiness

Division, Office of the Inspector General, and David K. Steensma,

Deputy Assistant Inspector General, Office of the Inspector General, Department of Defense.

Mr. Schmitz will testify. And then we have, from the GAO, Mr.

Raymond J. Decker, Director of Defense Capabilities and Management, U.S. General Accounting Office, accompanied by Mr. William

11

W. Cawood, Assistant Director of Defense Capabilities and Management, U.S. General Accounting Office.

We will follow this process. You will see the 5-minute light. We

allow you to go on another 5 minutes, but we are not trying to encourage you to fill the full 10 minutes. We would like you to stop

clearly before then.

But if you deem it necessary, the issue is too important, and my

colleagues and I understand that and would want you to be able

to make your points as you need to make them. But we would prefer that they be 5 minutes, and then roll over 5, but clearly not to

10 total.

At this time, let me just take care of some housekeeping. I ask

unanimous consent that all members of the subcommittee be permitted to place an opening statement in the record and that the

record remain open for 3 days for that purpose. Without objection,

so ordered.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Diane E. Watson follows:]

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15

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Mr. SHAYS. 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 would ask the gentlemen who are testifying and

the accompanying testifiers to stand up. If there is anyone else that

may be responding to questions, I would like them to stand up in

this first panel. Are we pretty complete with the 5 of us here?

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. Note for the record our witnesses have responded in

the affirmative.

Mr. Schmitz, we are going to start you off, and then we are going

to go to Mr. Kucinich for the first round of questions, then I will

go and then Mr. Tierney, unless there is another of my colleagues

who comes.

Mr. Schmitz.

STATEMENTS OF JOSEPH E. SCHMITZ, INSPECTOR GENERAL,

OFFICE OF THE INSPECTOR GENERAL, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, ACCOMPANIED BY DONALD A. BLOOMER, PROGRAM

DIRECTOR, READINESS DIVISION, OFFICE OF THE INSPECTOR GENERAL, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE; AND DAVID K.

STEENSMA, DEPUTY ASSISTANT INSPECTOR GENERAL, OFFICE OF THE INSPECTOR GENERAL, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE; AND RAYMOND J. DECKER, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE CAPABILITIES AND MANAGEMENT, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING

OFFICE, ACCOMPANIED BY WILLIAM W. CAWOOD, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, DEFENSE CAPABILITIES AND MANAGEMENT, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE

Mr. SCHMITZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. I am going to make another request. I am sorry to

interrupt you before you just said one word. For some reason, we

don’t have a very good cooling system. I think it is getting a little

better. But our amplification is not so terrific. The silver mic is

what amplifies, the black mic is what is part of C–SPAN, obviously

both are important. Just want you to speak fairly loudly.

Mr. SCHMITZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member

Kucinich, Mr. Tierney.

This is the second opportunity I have had to appear before this

committee, this subcommittee, and I am grateful for the previous

and this opportunity to address your questions regarding the status

of individual protective equipment intended to protect our Armed

Forces from chemical and biological attack.

I share your concerns with respect to the Department’s inventories, quality controls and serviceability of individual protective

equipment.

In our open session I want to present our observations related to

the need for an inventory management tool at the unit level that

contains the essential elements needed for chemical and biological

defense materiel, improvement in readiness reporting and training

challenges.

Let me thank, at the onset, whoever brought this World War I

era Army poster here to the hearing, because it reminds me of the

fact that my own grandfather was gassed by the Germans on a battlefield in France during World War I.

17

I am told—I don’t know for sure whether it was because of a defective gas mask or whether he even had a gas mask, but I am told

that he ultimately died from residual effects of this gas.

This is a vital issue, and I sincerely hope that the audits my office has conducted in this area meaningfully assist this committee,

the Congress, and the warfighters in improving our readiness.

The Department has a very comprehensive program to provide

world class chemical and biological defense capabilities. These capabilities allow the Armed Forces of the United States to survive

and successfully complete their operational missions across the

spectrum of conflicts.

Our Armed Forces must be prepared to execute their missions in

all types of environments, including those that are chemically and

biologically contaminated. The Department must maintain an active, viable chemical and biological defense program in order to

protect its forces.

In his annual report to the President and to Congress, the Secretary of Defense stated that, ‘‘the proliferation of NBC technology,

materiel and expertise has provided potential adversaries with the

means to challenge directly the safety and security of the United

States and its allies and friends.’’

As a result of various reviews, my office has made efforts to address the availability and serviceability of the chemical and biological defense materiel issued to the Armed Forces. Since the last appearance before this subcommittee in June 2000, the Office of the

Inspector General has continued its efforts to ensure that the

chemical and biological defense equipment issued to the Armed

Forces has been adequately maintained and stored and that all

personnel requiring chemical and biological defense equipment

have it and are properly trained to use it.

Two audits we have conducted address issues your invitation letter specifically requested me to discuss, Mr. Chairman. Because the

results of the two audits are classified I will discuss them in closed

session.

Since February 2000, we have visited 287 units in 31 States, one

U.S. territory and nine countries under the command of two unified

commands, eight active duty component commands, four reserve

component commands and the Army and Air National Guard to review their management of chemical and biological defense resources.

The results of our work are based on what we have seen in the

military units most likely to encounter a chemical and biological attack. The problems that we identified in those unit visits can be

corrected. The issues are not insurmountable. Solving the problem

will require a concerted effort at all levels of command in each of

the Services, and in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Some commands such as the U.S. Naval Forces, Central Command, have established vigorous programs to protect personnel

from chemical and biological weapons. Other organizations have

less robust programs that need to be improved. I will discuss those

programs in greater detail later in the closed session.

Limited visibility of chemical and biological defense items as assets remains a problem at the installation or user level because of

the lack of automated inventory tracking systems at that level.

18

Each of the Services maintain their own inventory management

tool. These tools are often augmented at the local installation level

with other tools, usually locally developed or produced that provide

a detailed view of the stocks of chemical and biological defense

equipment.

The tools are systems that should contain, at a minimum, information such as stock number, size, contract number, lot number,

date of manufacture, date of expiration, date of inspection, the individual issued the item, and any service bulletins or recall notices.

There should not be a need to develop inventory management

tools at the installation level. For example, one Navy activity reported to us that they spent $15,000 to develop an Excel spreadsheet, while another Navy activity identified an expenditure of

roughly $100,000 to develop and field their chemical and biological

defense equipment inventory tool.

Although these expenditures might seem small on an individual

basis the fact that commanders identified a need to develop their

own tools should highlight the need for a departmentwide standardized inventory tool.

The Department has worked to standardize other issues related

to chemical and biological defense, and it can do so here as well.

Standardizing an automated inventory management tool would

provide departmentwide benefits. This would not even require developing a new inventory tool, because some of the tools already in

use could be adapted to the other services. For example, the mobility inventory and control accountability system currently used

throughout the Air Force provides a level of detail that units in

each of the Services have identified would aid them in managing

their inventories.

This system is used to maintain control of inventory and can be

used to identify materials on hand that would have been flagged

for inspection because of the service notices or product recalls, such

as the one for defective overgarments.

The system also assists in managing on-hand stocks with an

identified shelf life by tracking lot numbers or dates of manufacture. The question then becomes one of who should be the one to

enforce standardization. We believe the Office of the Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Chemical and Biological Defense

should provide the oversight departmentwide, and should be responsible for initiatives such as this.

We have recommended that the Deputy Assistant develop and

field a DOD standardized inventory management system for all

items of chemical and biological defense. In response to our recommendation, the Deputy Assistant agreed that the Services and

the Defense Logistics Agency have numerous inventory management systems with limited ability to share information.

The Deputy Assistant pointed out the DOD has established a single focus point for gathering and disseminating data for the New

Joint Service Lightweight Integrated Suit Technology ensembles,

and that the Defense Logistics Agency is actively involved in replacing legacy systems with one that will interface with the Services’ systems beginning in 2005.

We have conveyed to the Deputy Assistant that 2005 is too long

to wait. A standard inventory tool at the installation level for

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chemical and biological defense equipment is needed now for the

units to effectively manage their equipment.

The Army can enhance the preparedness of our forces relative to

chemical and biological——

Mr. SHAYS. You need to start thinking about wrapping up here.

Mr. SCHMITZ. I am very close to my conclusions.

Through an improved unit readiness reporting system, the Army

attempted to provide better information on chemical and biological

defense preparedness when they revised their readiness reporting

instruction in November 2001. But additional improvements can

still be made.

As a result of our work with the Army National Guard and Army

Reserve, we recommended the Army revise their instruction for reporting readiness and include reporting of chemical and biological

defense materiel for all Army units. The Army agreed to our recommendation.

Improved reporting of chemical and biological defense readiness

will aid in creating a climate at all Army levels where training and

equipping forces for chemical and biological defense receive higher

levels of attention and resources. I will go into greater detail on the

issue we identified in the units we visited in my testimony for the

closed session.

For this session, I would like to state that each of the Services

has a comprehensive training program that they believe will prepare their personnel to survive and operate in a chemically and

biologically contaminated environment.

I believe that they have put in place the foundation on which

programs can be built that will provide for the protection and survivability of their personnel.

The Marine Corps and Air Force training were more robust than

the Army and the Navy programs. Each of the Services ensures

that all personnel receive chemical and biological defense training

when they enter the service.

Mr. SHAYS. I am sorry, I need to have you stop.

Mr. SCHMITZ. That is fine.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Schmitz follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Let me just clarify for the purposes of our questioning before we get on to Mr. Decker. You didn’t touch on a number

of points that I think are even more significant than what you

talked about, such as the risk factors and so on.

When we start asking questions about your public document, are

you going to be saying to us that some of that information will

have to be behind closed doors?

Mr. SCHMITZ. No. If it is in the public document——

Mr. SHAYS. There are questions about analysis, if A and B equals

something, and C equals B, I just want to make sure that we can

sure pursue those points.

Mr. SCHMITZ. That is precisely why I have two technical experts

sitting on either side of me.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Decker. I would love it if you could be a little

more vivacious. This is going to be a long day. I need some variation in the voice, a little excitement. OK?

Mr. DECKER. I will try, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. All right.

Mr. DECKER. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee. I am

joined today by Mr. Cawood, my expert Assistant Director on these

issues. We are pleased to be here today to discuss the Department

of Defense’s continuing efforts to protect U.S. forces against chemical and biological attack.

DOD believes that it is increasingly likely that an adversary will

use a chemical or biological weapons against U.S. forces to degrade

our super U.S. conventional warfare capabilities, placing service

members’ lives and effective military operations at risk.

Currently more than 20 states or non-state groups either have or

have an interest in acquiring chemical weapons, and approximately

12 countries are believed to have biological warfare programs. Terrorist groups are known to be interested in these weapons.

Therefore, U.S. forces need to be properly trained and equipped

to operate in a chemically and biologically contaminated environment. And, as we have reported, when the threat of chemical and

biological weapons use occurred during the Gulf war, deploying

U.S. forces encountered a wide array of problems, including unsuitable and inadequate supplies of protective equipment, poor training, and unsatisfactory chemical and biological detectors. During

the past 7 years, at the request of Congress, especially this subcommittee, we have examined this important issue and produced

over 30 reports and statements.

While we found that DOD has made some improvements in

equipment training and readiness reporting, we are continuing to

have concerns in each of these areas. In 1996, we issued a major

report that discussed the overall capability of the U.S. forces to

fight and survive in a contaminated environment. We reported that

DOD was slow in responding to lessons learned during the Gulf

war of 1990/1991.

Specifically, early deploying units lacked required equipment

such as chemical detector paper, decontamination kits in sufficient

quantities and protective equipment.

Army and Marine Corps forces remained inadequately trained for

effective chemical and biological defense. Joint exercises included

little or no chemical and biological defense training. Armey medical

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units often lacked chemical and biological defense equipment and

training. Research and development was slower than planned, and

unit reporting on these issues and readiness was unsatisfactory.

We concluded that these issues were persistent and if not addressed will likely result in needless casualties and degradation of

U.S. warfighting capability. We noted that despite DOD’s increased

emphasis on chemical and biological defense, it continued to receive

a lower priority than traditional mission tasks at all levels of command.

Many field commanders told us that they accepted a level of

chemical and biological defense unpreparedness as they tried to

balance priorities and budgets.

In 2000 we looked at this issue again, at the early deploying

forces, and we saw a better picture. We reviewed three Army divisions, two Air Force fighter wings and one Marine Corps expeditionary force and found that most of these units had the required

individual protective equipment necessary, and most detection decontamination equipment. This is a positive.

Officials at the units, however, said that had they shortages, that

the shortages would be filled from stocks held later for later

deployers, were from war reserves, and had not determined whether this solution would satisfy their needs,Nor would it have an impact, a negative impact on the future deployment and our war reserves.

Training continues to be a problem. 1996, the commanders were

not integrating chemical and biological defense in the unit exercises, and the training was not realistic.

For example, Marine Core commanders did not fully integrate

chemical and biological defense in the unit exercises as required by

Marine Corps policy because operating in the protective equipment

is difficult, it is time consuming, it decreases the numbers of essential tasks that can be performed during an exercise, and limits the

offensive capability during these operations.

Officials stated that the chemical and biological defense training

is still being adversely impacted by the shortage of specialists in

these units. We also reported that DOD’s monitoring of the chemical-biological defense readiness in our 1996 report had improved.

By 2000, based on our recommendation, the Joint Chiefs of Staff

directed changes to the status of reports training systems, SORTS,

that will require units to report more clearly on the quantity of

chemical-biological equipment on hand and training readiness.

However, we noted that the changes do not require that units report on the condition of the chemical gear; thus, the reports could

indicate that the unit has the equipment, but it may not be serviceable.

Sir, allow me to focus on a major issue of this hearing; that is

the protective suits that—we have a chart we are going to put up.

Individual protection is a critically important component to overall

chemical and biological defense.

This is the last line of defense for our service members. Like the

DOD IG, we have concluded several recent reviews on this topic.

If I may direct your attention to this chart, which is on my right,

and also on page 10 of the prepared statement, it depicts the number in millions of older BDO suits, dark, and the newer joint servVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:00 Aug 05, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\88612.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ice lightweight integrated suit technology, the JSLIST suits in

white, from 2001 to 2007. The dotted lines represent different requirements.

For instance, the horizontal dashed line is the number of suits

required for two major theater wars, and the dashed line is for 150

percent of one major theater war. Although DOD seems to be moving from the 2 MTW to the 11⁄2 MTW, suit shortages are projected

to escalate in the next few years because the majority of the suits

in the current inventory will end their shelf life and expire by

2007.

And the new suits coming in, the JSLIST, are not entering the

inventory quickly enough to cover the degrading older suits. As a

result, in August 2002, DOD had procured about 1.5 million

JSLIST suits, which had been issued to the military services. This

with the older suits equals about 4.5 million suits. This level is now

barely sufficient to meet the new requirement of 150 percent of one

major theater war.

If the new suit funding and the production do not increase sufficiently to replace the expiring suits, the inventory will drop each

year all of the way out to 2007.

We have testified, and this was covered again by Mr. Kucinich

earlier, about serious deficiencies in inventory management. DOD

IG has done the same. The point that I would make here is that

250,000 suits that were defective are still unaccounted for. We have

not seen evidence that they have been found.

Over the last 7 years, we have highlighted a serious gap between

the priority given chemical and biological defense and the actual

implementation of the program. The Quadrennial Defense Reviews

of 1997 and 2001 identified chem and bio defense as key priorities.

Although the program overall is clearly improved, many of the

problems in the previous report are still unresolved.

Let me focus on the budget. DOD has requested almost $1.4 billion for the chemical and biological defense program 2003. However, it should be noted $400 million of that is for the Office of

Homeland Security bio defense efforts. Despite the emphasis placed

on this program by the Quadrennial Defense Review and statements about the threat of weapons of mass destruction by senior

officials, the program has consistently had difficulty competing

against other service priorities, such as those associated with traditional mission tasks.

Spending on the chem-bio defense program represents one-third

of 1 percent of the defense, the entire defense budget.

In summary, DOD has made many improvements over the years

to defend against and sustain operations in a chemical environment. These gains have been primarily in the areas of equipment,

training and readiness reporting.

DOD has concurred or partially concurred with 36 of our 37 recommendations in our reports. DOD recognizes that management

and organization of the program must improve and has recently

proposed organization and other changes designed to address those

shortcomings. However, a real gap exists between the priority and

emphasis given chemical and biological defense by DOD and the

actual implementation of the program.

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We are concerned that without leadership commitment of the Department to address long-term conditions we have identified, survival of our service members operating in a contaminated environment and the success of our operations are at risk. We would be

pleased to answer any questions the committee may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Decker follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Before calling on Mr. Kucinich, I just

mentioned to Mr. Kucinich that I just wanted to make a few points.

We, after the Gulf war, which I supported, we had men and women

who came back convinced that they were negatively impacted by

their service to our country in the Gulf war and that they were ill.

Eventually we identified about 70,000 men and women who came

home ill, and I became chairman of the Human Resource Committee in 1995, where we had jurisdiction of the Department of Veterans Affairs. We began intense hearings, where Mr. Tierney and Mr.

Kucinich also became involved during the course of the years that

followed.

I want to say on the record that when we talk about this issue,

it is a very sensitive issue, not just in terms of national security,

but it is sensitive to me because I have felt that we have never

really, until recently, had honest answers from the Department of

Defense.

For instance, there were questions of whether our troops were

exposed to chemical weapons. The Department of Defense would

say they were not exposed to offensive chemical weapons. We never

picked up the word, until we had a gentleman who came and testified before our committee and came with a video as they blew up

Kamisiyah, and he had pictures of—videos of blowing up of

Kamisiyah, but also some of the canisters of chemicals and the

shelves of chemicals and the rockets that had chemicals in them

which we blew up.

We announced that we were going to have a hearing on Tuesday

the week before, and DOD announced at 12 o’clock they were going

to have a press conference at 4 o’clock in which they then had a

press conference announcing our troops were exposed to defensive

use of chemicals.

Frankly, we didn’t see much of a difference, but I guess offensive

and defensive was the way that DOD was able to be technically

correct in the answer to our questions. So it made us realize that

we had to dig deeper. During the course of these hearings as well,

we learned that some protective headgear, masks, did not meet the

manufacturer’s specs, they didn’t—35 of one mask didn’t and 45 of

another, approximately 45, were defective brand new in terms of

meeting the level.

It took us about 8 or 9 years to have that report declassified, and

what was troubling to me was that I knew that our troops, during

the course of this time, would potentially be engaged in other combat missions. I knew that there was a real debate in the DOD

about whether these masks would really do the jobs that they required.

Now, I understand that DOD was taking issue with the Inspector

General. I think it was the Inspector General’s report about the viability of these masks. But I just put on the record that every

Member up here has to decide whether or not to send our troops

to war, and we have to live with it.

And for me it becomes particularly sensitive, because I was in

the Peace Corps and a conscientious objector and wasn’t in Vietnam and now I am being asked to decide whether people risk their

lives. And I will say for the record, just so I can get past that point,

I determined during the Gulf war that I had to know what our misVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:00 Aug 05, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00053 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\88612.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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sion was, that I had to know what our strategy was, that I had to

know that we would use all of the fire power necessary.

I first had to know what our national interest was, what our mission, what our strategy, and then know that we would use whatever firepower was necessary to guarantee the success of our mission and also in the end know whether exit policy was total victory

or whether it was something less, and that we would then leave.

I merely mention this because this is a very sensitive issue, and

my colleagues in the part of asking you questions are really trying

to determine, I think, not just whether we should confront Saddam

Hussein, but if we do, what are we asking our military personnel

to do?

And I will just say in conclusion that I hope and pray that if in

fact there are some vulnerabilities to our troops, and they are still

required to go in, that they at least are told their vulnerabilities,

that they are at least told them. Maybe not the general public,

maybe not the enemy, but at least our own people will have no illusions.

I thank my colleagues for the opportunity to just make that

point.

Mr. Kucinich, you have the floor for 10 minutes. And then I will

go to either one of my colleagues, then I will go, and then we will

go back.

Mr. KUCINICH. You know, I think that the Chair is well taken

in his prefatory remarks here. I want to express my appreciation

for them. Because, for me, it gets to the issue of, you know, would

the American people support action against Iraq which could put

their sons and daughters in harm’s way if they knew that there

was a distinct possibility that their sons and daughters could go

into combat with defective gear, with biological and chemical weapon suits that are supposed to protect them that don’t work, that

have holes in them, that have holes in the seams.

I wonder if this isn’t one of the reasons why the Department of

Defense is classifying the information? And as we proceed here

with the questions, Mr. Chairman, I want to say, as the ranking

Democrat on this subcommittee that has oversight over national security, that I am very concerned about the reasons for classification

of information relating to the safety of this protective gear and to

the inability of the Department of Defense to determine where

those quarter of a million, 250,000, defective suits happen to be.

Now, Mr. Chairman, you probably are familiar that yesterday

something remarkable happened at the Pentagon’s briefing room.

Because what they did was to—for years, the media covering the

Pentagon has been asking to see footage of engagements in Iraq’s

Northern and Southern no-fly zones. For years these requests were

denied.

Well, Pentagon officials had said that showing such films would

comprise intelligence, provide the enemy with valuable information

about tactics and technology, worst of all endanger the pilots.

Well, yesterday what happened? The Pentagon showed several of

these films, engagements with Iraqi surface-to-air missiles and

other anti-aircraft. Tapes were suddenly declassified. I am just

wondering if we are not getting here into the politics of classification. There is another element here, too.

51

Now I remember how proud this country was to see the Challenger lift off the pad, and then how horrified we were when it

blew up. And then in the subsequent investigations I remember

distinctly a discussion about concerns that were expressed in circles about these O-rings, about whether there was sufficient protection and whether the O-rings were ready for the launch.

And we know what happened. So are we about to launch a war

against Iraq where our troops are not protected? Now, and one

final note before I get into the questions, Mr. Chairman. You know,

if the Department of Defense is unwilling to be forthcoming on

something so elementary as the safety of protective suits, suits that

would protect our men and women, our sons and daughters, from

a biological or chemical weapons attack, what other areas, what

other areas are we not knowing about? Is this one of the reasons

why some of our most esteemed generals are saying, don’t go there,

we are not ready?

Mr. Schmitz, General Myers testified 2 weeks ago that the military is prepared to fight in a chemical and biological weapons environment, trained for it and ready to deal with it. I would like to

ask you about that.

Based on your investigations, are there specific military units

that are essentially completely unprotected against a potential

chemical or biological attack?

Mr. SCHMITZ. I think my best answer, and I will defer to my

technical experts here, because I have only been on the job for 4

months and most of the audits occurred before I took office, but my

best answer is that we have not concluded in our audit that there

are any completely unprotected units.

There is no such thing as complete protection in these type of

issues. We have identified areas of improvement. But I guess the

straight answer to your question is, no, I think is the way you

phrase it. If you phrased it, are there any completely unprotected

units?

Mr. KUCINICH. Are there any completely unprotected units?

Mr. SCHMITZ. I don’t believe we have identified any such.

Mr. KUCINICH. And did you find specific military units that do

not currently have sufficient protective equipment to meet the minimum requirements established by the services to protect against

a chemical or biological weapons attack?

Mr. SCHMITZ. I think that question gets into the classified discussion. I’ll be perfectly glad to discuss that in detail.

Mr. KUCINICH. Let me ask you again. I want to ask it again, just

it case—you said you think it does, just in case you think it doesn’t.

Did you find specific military units that do not currently have

sufficient protective equipment to meet even minimum requirements to protect against a chemical or biological attack?

Mr. SCHMITZ. I think that question, with all respect, is better for

the closed session.

Mr. KUCINICH. So you’re saying it’s classified and you can’t discuss it?

Mr. SCHMITZ. Yes, sir.

Let me also just clarify one thing. The misuse of the classification system is a serious issue in my view. And I would like to just

say on the record that I classified this report. And the allegation

52

that the DOD is using the classification process—I mean, we go by

the guidelines set by the DOD. This is a very, very serious issue

about protecting the lives of our members of the Armed Forces. But

if you——

Mr. KUCINICH. That’s very interesting. So are you telling me that

we should—are you ready to tell the American people that their

sons and daughters who may go into combat are going to be perfectly safe with the biological and chemical weapons suits that

they’ll be wearing? Are you ready to say that?

Mr. SCHMITZ. What I said is that——

Mr. KUCINICH. Can you answer that question, Mr. Schmitz?

Mr. SCHMITZ. The answer is no, because there is no such thing

as perfect safety in warfare.

Mr. KUCINICH. You gave a no answer to my question. I thank you

for being honest.

Mr. SHAYS. Can I just—the issue is sensitive. I do think a Member should be able to define what—define what no means; otherwise, we would have a distortion.

Mr. KUCINICH. If he wants to say what no means. We’re in a city

where no doesn’t always mean no, and yes doesn’t always mean

yes. So what does your no mean?

Mr. SCHMITZ. I’ll defer to the closed session, and I’ll be glad to

get—be perfectly forthright and allow my technical experts to answer every single question you have, because I believe the American people are entitled to know. But I also take very, very seriously the proper utilization of classification. And if you have, Mr.

Ranking—if you have an a serious allegation that somebody in the

Department of Defense is misusing the classification process——

Mr. KUCINICH. Wait a minute.

Mr. Chairman, this is inappropriate. I didn’t make any allegations.

I’m making statements based on your testimony and you just

told me that you can’t answer the question. And the chairman

came back and said, we want to know what no means. You just

told me and anybody watching that you can’t say what no

means——

Mr. SHAYS. If the gentleman would—no, I don’t think he was

saying, if you had that impression, you wanted a yes or no answer.

He was just qualifying his no answer just so we put it in perspective. That’s all I’m saying.

I would not want to be up where these gentleman are and have

a no or yes answer. I would want to be able to say yes or no and

be able to explain why.

I’d also like to say, if I could, that there is so much information

that is valuable and important on the record, I just want to make

sure we don’t lose the opportunity of getting what can be on the

record on the record, besides also disclosing what can’t be on the

record.

I’m not taking it from the gentleman’s time. I want to say that

I hope that we put on—as much information on the record as we

can. And it’s substantial.

Mr. KUCINICH. I might add, Mr. Chairman, and with the greatest

respect for the Chair, they’re in a difficult position?

You’re in a difficult position?

53

If there’s a single American serviceman or servicewoman who is

out in the field with a defective suit, I think they’re the ones who

are in a difficult position. When you have a quarter million suits

that haven’t been located that are defective, they’re the ones that

could be in a difficult position.

Mr. Schmitz, again, are there specific military units that currently do not meet minimum required levels of training to protect

against a chemical or biological attack?

Mr. SCHMITZ. Mr. Ranking, let me just clarify one thing. I didn’t

mean to provoke an argument. I was actually making an offer——

Mr. KUCINICH. There is no argument here. We’re all hire for

America.

Mr. SCHMITZ. I agree 100 percent. I’m making an offer to you

that if you have a specific allegation about the Department of Defense misusing the classification system, my office is empowered by

statute to look into that as an allegation.

I’m saying I would be glad to consider such an allegation and

look into it. That was a sincere offer to you, Mr. Kucinich, to actually be of service.

Mr. KUCINICH. I take that as an effort—I appreciate your assertion of sincerity. I’m sincerely interested in finding out if there are

any unsafe suits out there that are going to be worn by American

servicemen and women.

Mr. SCHMITZ. That is an issue I’d like to get into, any details

you’d like to get into, in the classified session.

Mr. KUCINICH. See, this is wrong. I just want to say this.

I really find this, Mr. Chairman—that this is wrong. That information that the American people need to know if their sons and

daughters are going to be sent into battle with defective suits, that

ought to be public knowledge. Should we find out after it happens?

Mr. SCHMITZ. Let me say, and I believe this is proper to say in

an open session, our studies, our audits, have found deficiencies. So

the answer to your question generally is yes; the specifics are what

I’m not prepared to get into in an open session because that essentially exposes vulnerabilities. That’s exactly why we have classification.

Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate you giving me this opportunity to ask the questions. And it is a matter of record that we

had a yes answer. And it’s also a matter of record that information

that is classified could bear on the safety of our men and women

in the field.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me say to all the panelists before calling on either Mr. Tierney—or I can go, if you’re ready, Mr. Gilman, I could

go with you, but I’d be happy to have you wait a little longer if you

could wait.

Mr. GILMAN. I’d like to make a statement and one question.

Mr. SHAYS. We’ll allow that.

It’s going to be a long day today. I want to assure all our witnesses that I don’t want you to leave that table until you make

sure the record is clear as to your position, and you will be allowed

to make sure that whatever you need to put on the record will be

put on the record. I do not want this open hearing to not put on

as much information as possible.

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So make notes of things that need to be classified, so defined and

so on. I’d be happy to go to you, Mr. Gilman.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. You’re not going to be asking questions, right, yet?

Mr. GILMAN. I have one question.

Mr. SHAYS. You have 10 minutes. Statement and question. You

have 10 minutes.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for conducting this important hearing. And you’ve been conducting a number of important hearings

with regard to our readiness and our ability to respond to any crisis out there.

This is a timely and appropriate hearing to examine the status

of our Department of Defense chemical and biological defense programs. It takes on special importance, given that it now appears

inevitable that we’re going to undertake some major military operations against Iraq in the near future.

The last time American forces went into action against Iraq during the Gulf war in 1991, they faced a battlefield that could be best

described as a toxic soup of chemical and biological hazards. And

while Saddam did not actively use chemical or biological agents

against coalition forces, such weapons that were forward deployed

in a number of cases were destroyed by allied bombardment.

It was several years later that our subcommittee learned that

through the subsequent destruction of these chemical stockpiles

that thousands of coalition troops were exposed to low levels of

resident agents. Moreover, when combined with the haphazard and

disorganized vaccine effort, smoke from the numerous oil well fires,

from natural biological hazards indigenous to the region and exposure to depleted uranium, it was no wonder that thousands of soldiers later found themselves suffering from various ailments and

conditions related to that kind of exposure. I hope we’ve learned

from that lesson.

My concern today is the hazards facing our service members

should we force a confrontation with Saddam Hussein and his military. Facing removal from power, I fear he will have every incentive to use all of the various chemical and biological weapons at his

disposal. While respectful of the effort made by the U.N. weapons

inspectors, I’m in no way confident that they were able to account

for all of Saddam’s weapons before they were forced out in 1998.

Moreover, Saddam Hussein has clearly been busy in building his

weapon armaments in the past 4 years. If this administration decides to commit the necessary force and treasure to overthrow the

present Government of Iraq, a decision that I would fully support,

then it needs to ensure that those forces are prepared to face any

contingency, including a desperate enemy with a history that’s deployed chemical weapons in military operations in the past.

I look forward to hearing additional testimony from our witnesses with regard to these concerns, but let me pose a question

for the panel.

What has the Department of Defense done to improve the availability, the durability and suitability of CB defense equipment

since the 1991 Gulf war?

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And, second, what has the Department of Defense done to ensure

deployed U.S. forces will not experience shortages in CB defense

equipment?

Mr. Schmitz, panel?

Mr. SCHMITZ. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Gilman.

Our audits indicate that each of the services has, in fact, initiated a number of measures both in inventory control and training

in order to improve and to learn on the lessons of the Gulf war.

Mr. GILMAN. Is that your full answer?

Mr. SCHMITZ. Well, I have much more detail in both my classified

and unclassified reports.

Mr. GILMAN. Tell us some more about your unclassified.

Mr. SCHMITZ. If I could, Mr. Gilman, I’d like to defer to the person that actually wrote the report.

Mr. GILMAN. That may be——

Mr. SHAYS. There’s no problem if you ever need one of the experts to respond. You just do it.

Mr. SCHMITZ. OK. Mr. Bloomer, I’d like him to actually address

the question directly. He’s in a much better position.

Mr. BLOOMER. We found that——

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Bloomer, we want that mic a little closer to you.

Let me just say we want the people who know the answer to the

question to answer the question, whoever that is.

Mr. BLOOMER. We found that the services had begun implementing more vigorous training programs. There are still improvements

that can be made, don’t misunderstand me, but where we stand

today versus where we stood at the conclusion of the Gulf war is

much better in terms of the training programs that are in existence

right now.

In terms of equipment availability, they’ve made great strides in

providing equipment.

But, again, there are improvements that can still be made.

Mr. GILMAN. What kind of improvements are still needed?

Mr. BLOOMER. I would defer to the afternoon session, if I may,

for the classified discussion.

Mr. GILMAN. Are you satisfied that the improvements that are

being made are significant? Or are there some pretty serious needs

to be fulfilled?

Mr. BLOOMER. They’ve made significant improvements, but there

are still some needs that need to be fulfilled.

Mr. GILMAN. When did they start making the improvements that

you’re referring to?

Mr. BLOOMER. Well, we’ve been working in this area since 1994,

and we’ve seen them progress each year as we’ve gone through the

process. So it’s been a continuous improvement.

Mr. GILMAN. So working since 1994, you still find that there are

major improvements that have to be made; is that correct?

Mr. BLOOMER. Yes.

Mr. GILMAN. Does anyone else want to comment on my question?

Mr. STEENSMA. Let me say this, sir. One of the things that we

would—is needed, and it’s needed not for just this area, but almost

every area in DOD is, they need constant emphasis at all levels of

command, from the lowest level up to the Secretary of Defense,

that this is going to be the highest priority. And it’s hard for every

56

commander—he has different priorities he has to address every

day, he has different levels of funding that he has available, and

he makes tradeoffs every day.

But those commanders we’ve seen that have taken this on, such

as the naval commander in Bahrain there, gave it the highest level

of emphasis. That’s where we’ve seen the greatest improvements.

Mr. GILMAN. What about other commanders besides the commander at Bahrain? Are they fulfilling your needs?

Mr. STEENSMA. The Central Commander, he wrote us a letter;

Mr. Schmitz mentions in his testimony, he is tremendously interested in this area. He thanked us for the work we’ve done. He put

heavy emphasis on his commanders to improve any areas we found

weaknesses in, and to address it at, I believe he also said, at all

levels of command.

Mr. GILMAN. So were other commanders following that kind of

advice? Are other commanders following that?

Or you pointed out two commanders. What about throughout the

armed services?

Mr. BLOOMER. I would say that throughout the armed services

we’ve seen it receive increased emphasis again as we’ve gone

through the process. Is it at the level that we believe it should be?

There’s still room for improvement. But that has increased emphasis.

Mr. GILMAN. Does that indicate that there are commanders who

are not fulfilling that request? Would any of the panelists answer

that.

Mr. SCHMITZ. Let me just say this is a leadership issue. We have

identified—and frankly, this subcommittee’s hearings have helped

us in bringing this issue to the attention of the leadership in the

Pentagon from the very top to the field commanders. It is one of

those issues that you just continuously have to remind people of because, as Mr. Steensma said, the commanders are always balancing priorities.

So we are very—we in the IG business are very appreciative to

this subcommittee for holding this hearing.

Mr. GILMAN. I appreciate your support of our hearings, but I’m

asking you a question.

Are there other field commanders out there who are not abiding

by the request of the Department?

Mr. SCHMITZ. I would best describe it, Mr. Gilman, as a sliding

scale. We have identified two very stellar commanders who have

taken our——

Mr. GILMAN. I’ve heard about that. What about the other commanders?

Mr. SCHMITZ. There are a myriad of them. We’ve looked at hundreds.

Mr. GILMAN. I realize you’ve got many out there. Are they abiding by the request of the Department to fulfill their preparedness

in this—in the event of any chemical or biological attack?

Mr. SCHMITZ. As we said, many have room for improvement. I

mean, there are some that have done it to better degrees than others. We are continuously focusing the attention of the leadership of

the Pentagon on this subject. We’re grateful because this hearing

helps us do that.

57

Mr. GILMAN. That’s why we’re here. That’s why I’m pressing

these questions upon you, so that we can find out where the lack

of attention is being expressed.

What about the shortages in CB defense equipment?

Mr. SCHMITZ. There is a—there’s actually a good explanation for

that.

Mr. GILMAN. What is that explanation?

Mr. SCHMITZ. It has to do with shelf life and not wanting to have

everything expire at once.

But I will defer again to Mr. Bloomer as the technical expert, let

him explain that to you.

Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Bloomer, what about the shortages in CB defense equipment?

Mr. BLOOMER. If I can talk about the new overgarments.

Mr. GILMAN. First, answer my question. Is there a shortage of

CB defense equipment at the present time?

Mr. BLOOMER. Yes, we have found some items are in shortage.

Mr. GILMAN. What items?

Mr. BLOOMER. If I may, I’d like to answer that this afternoon.

Mr. GILMAN. All right. But there are important items of equipment that are in shortage at the present time?

Mr. BLOOMER. There are items that are in shortage.

Mr. GILMAN. What’s being done to correct that?

Mr. BLOOMER. Services have implemented a number of programs

to find, for example, additional vendors who can produce the items.

We’re trying to cycle the procurement of items, so they don’t all expire at once, so we don’t have shortages.

Mr. GILMAN. Are those shortages being made up at the present

time?

Mr. BLOOMER. The services are working to resolve those shortages.

Mr. GILMAN. But there are still shortages?

Mr. BLOOMER. You—yes.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

I would just like to ask if the very back row in this room, if people are hear how the questions are being answered. I’m seeing nodding of heads.

Mr. Tierney, thank you for letting Mr. Gilman run over his 10

minutes.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we’re all looking

to get some answers here, so I don’t have any difficulty with the

time constraints on that.

Mr. Schmitz, if I might, during your written testimony you indicated that you wanted to state that each of the services has a comprehensive training program that they believe—they believe will

prepare their personnel to survive and operate in a chemically or

biologically contaminated environment.

I believe—that’s you speaking—you believe that they have put in

place the foundation on which programs can be built that will provide for the protection and survivability of their personnel.

I’m led to believe by the phraseology there that they are not yet

beyond the foundational level, and there’s much more work to be

58

done in order for them to put in place some system to protect the

survivability of their personnel. Am I right; they’re a long way between the origins of a plan and the implementation?

Mr. SCHMITZ. As I mentioned, some of the services are more

along that track.

Mr. TIERNEY. The Marine Corps and Air Force are further along

than the Army and the Navy, according to your report. That’s the

next sentence here. How much further along?

Mr. SCHMITZ. I’m going to defer to Dave Steensma.

Mr. STEENSMA. They all have good programs. The Air Force and

Marine Corps, they have definitely put a lot more emphasis onto

it from the leadership level all the way down. And we’ve seen

greater strengths to the way they’ve trained their people, both individually and selectively.

And I think the General Accounting Office mentioned, there’s

challenges doing the collective training which is trying to see how

well somebody can do their job in a chemical environment—because

the suits are hot, it restricts their movements, and things like that.

But I’ll conclude my answer with that, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. Does it concern you—it ought to concern you—that

during the recent war games the Millennium Challenge 2002 they

didn’t get into the kind of exercises that deal with chemical or biological systems of usage?

Mr. STEENSMA. That would be of concern. I’m not familiar with

those games, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, this report—and I haven’t heard it contradicted yet—that we recently had those games, and as part of them,

they withdrew from allowing the so-called enemy or the mock

enemy forces from using chemical or biological agents on that.

Should that concern us that we’re not even prepared to go

through the exercises in an atmosphere that will simulate one that

we might find in Iraq?

Mr. STEENSMA. That would be of concern to me, sir. I do not

know why they didn’t use the chemical and biological—attempt to

use it during the exercise to see what happened in the scenarios

they were running.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Decker, what do you say to that?

Mr. DECKER. Sir, I’ve not evaluated the Millennium 2002 in detail. But it would seem to be—if that is, in fact, true, that they did

not employ chemical/biological as part of that war game—consistent with the comments that we heard from the field in our previous

reports, that this is a very difficult issue to incorporate into your

training.

It’s time-consuming, you have to break out gear and use it, which

means you may violate the integrity of the gear, putting it back

into storage. This is something commanders do not typically like to

do in the field.

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, can either—either of you gentlemen address

the idea of how much we are lacking in the training of our troops

to deal with this kind of a confrontation? Where are we on that?

I know, Mr. Schmitz, you indicated that you thought they’d be

there by 2005 or something on that basis. I think we may be there

a lot sooner than that in reality. So where are we in terms of training our troops?

59

Mr. SCHMITZ. I think it’s fair to say that the senior-most levels

of the Pentagon are focusing each of the services to accelerate their

training so that we are prepared and ready, as best we can be, earlier than when my office got involved. We have made recommendations that they get, you know, their programs in place earlier, and

we believe they’re addressing and accepting our recommendations.

Mr. TIERNEY. Right. So my question to you is, when are—are

they early enough? If this President decides to unilaterally and preemptively go in within the next matter of months, we’re going to

all of a sudden have all the training you need, where you left off

at your report to where we need to be?

Mr. SCHMITZ. Let me say our reports are a snapshot in history.

Based on our reports and the work that went into our reports, I

don’t have any real reason to doubt what General Myers said on

the 1st, with the caveat that our troops are never going to be 100

percent protected or protectable from these type of threats.

Mr. TIERNEY. How about trained?

I’m very concerned that you left some shortages. Here you indicate that they’ve got the foundation on which programs can be

built, but they’re a long distance from actually getting it completed

to the level of protection and survivability of the personnel. And

then we find out they have Millennium Challenge 2002 games recently and don’t even explore that area.

Mr. SCHMITZ. Let me just say this. We didn’t look at Millennium

Challenge 2002, but I know that we’ve had a training exercise in

the Pentagon involving chemical/biological attacks and—I know

that.

Mr. TIERNEY. But it brings me back to Mr. Decker’s point that

they’re telling us, during those training exercises, they have great

difficulties doing what they want to do in the training. They don’t

want to break the integrity of the units, which I understand.

So can the two of you together give us some idea of where we’re

at in terms of their having some training exercises, which you label

as the foundation, but they’re not apparently having them to the

extent that everybody is testifying is comfortable, because they

have a lot of reservations and a lot of things that impede their fullblown training exercises.

Mr. Decker.

Mr. DECKER. I would say that we’re better prepared today than

we were in 1990–91 against a chemical/biological attack. However,

based on the interviews that we did with the units in the field, I

am not convinced that the realism and the degree of training that

has to happen at the unit level all the way up through higher echelons takes place on a regular basis so that, if we go into war, it

will be very easy to do.

Mr. TIERNEY. What about the requirements of the standard set

by each of the military forces themselves in terms of training?

Have they even met those?

Mr. DECKER. We reported several years ago that was not the

case.

Mr. TIERNEY. OK.

Now, Mr. Decker, in your testimony, both written and oral, you

talked at least in passing about those 250,000 suits, protective

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gear. It’s still a situation where you say we can cannot locate

where those 250,000 defective pieces are; is that accurate?

Mr. DECKER. I won’t speak for the Department of Defense, but

we have received no evidence that they have found, clearly found

and identified, located, destroyed those 250,000 suits.

Mr. TIERNEY. So is it possible that some of them are, in fact, in

line to be deployed where we might need them next?

Mr. DECKER. I think that’s possible.

Mr. TIERNEY. Do you know how many of those 250,000; could be

zero, could be 250,000?

Mr. DECKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. You talked in your report about the process for assessing risk in the services, and you said that it was flawed. Would

you go into that in a little bit more detail for us?

How are these services assessing the risk that’s involved here,

and why aren’t we getting a clearer picture?

Mr. DECKER. Sir, allow me to refer to one of the diagrams in the

report. Our record for—statement for the record, it would be page—

individual pieces of gear, page 8. When we identified this risk

issue, you have to assume that when a serviceman goes into combat in a contaminated environment, he’s going to need a complete

ensemble to be able to be safe.

Mr. TIERNEY. You mean the mask?

Mr. DECKER. Mask, overgarment, trousers, and boots primarily.

What we noticed in the Department of Defense annual report to

Congress is that they were reporting at relatively low risk, that

there were adequate supplies in the inventory of the individual

items. But when we looked at those items and where they were in

what services it was clear, if you look at page 8, that some services

had a huge inventory of a particular item and not of another item;

and that if you tried to do the ensemble issue, you’d start realizing

that many of these areas become higher risk.

So we recommended to the Department of Defense, really you

should go back and look at this process, this methodology. If you

want to assess accurately what the risk is to your servicemen,

meaning, will every serviceman and woman have a complete set of

gear, you need to relook at how you calculate that. And initially

there was resistance, but after some discussions, they have accepted that methodology.

Mr. TIERNEY. And what more would have to be done to make

sure that each man or woman has the full, entire ensemble, that

the ensemble was, in fact, in good shape?

Mr. DECKER. There’s actually two issues, sir—serviceability, but

also size. You know, you can use a garment that’s one size too

large, but one size too small probably is not going to work on the

battlefield.

And the issue would be the inventory management system

which—a hearing before this committee in June identified how horrific that process is, that there is not one integrated system

throughout DOD to know where things are, so that the right gear

gets to the right people at the right time. It does not happen. So

you may find in one unit all extra larges, and you may find in another unit no trousers, and you may find masks of different sizes,

61

perhaps not regularly available to fit all of the members of the

right size.

I mean, that is an issue.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Chairman, might I have two more questions to

followup on this?

Mr. Decker, you had a chart up there a little while earlier where

you were showing the number, the amount of gear that was coming

out of service, being retired, wasn’t quite being kept up to with the

amount of gear that was coming on line.

Mr. DECKER. Correct.

Mr. TIERNEY. Are we remedying that situation?

Mr. SHAYS. Could someone put that up.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much. Now, you indicated it would

be 2 major theaters and 11⁄2 major theaters. I assume that the line

between 4 and 5 is where it would be for one major conflict; am

I right?

Mr. DECKER. Actually, the Pentagon uses a 1.5 requirement.

Mr. TIERNEY. But that’s in the 6, right, the No. 6 on the chart?

Mr. DECKER. No, sir that would be a 2. Two major theater wars

would be at the 6; that’s a solid dash line. At the 4.5 would be dash

dot; that would be slightly more than one theater war requirement,

but less than two, 1.5.

Mr. TIERNEY. OK.

Mr. DECKER. That’s where the migration is and that’s based

upon, I assume some, you know, derivation of a new requirement—

instead of two wars, fight one war, but then have a cushion of 0.5.

What we’re showing there, though, is exactly what you said, sir;

the old suits are coming down quicker than the new suits are coming in. We have no information at this time that DOD is going to

remedy that with increased funding and additional suit procurement so that you don’t have this train wreck in the next 5 years.

Mr. TIERNEY. Let me ask each of you gentlemen, how long—if we

expedited all the training that was necessary and put in place all

of the inventory systems that were necessary and procured all of

the equipment, protective gear, etc., that was necessary, how long

would it be before we should be comfortable that our men and

women sent into a conflict where biological and chemical agents

were used would be reasonably safe, or as safe as possible under

those conditions?

Mr. SCHMITZ. Would they at least have the equipment they

should have?

Mr. TIERNEY. Exactly.

Mr. SCHMITZ. That’s a good question.

Mr. TIERNEY. It deserves a good answer.

Mr. SCHMITZ. I’ll try to give my best answer, sir.

I think it’s fair to say that generally the units that are currently

in position, the most likely ones to be sent into harm’s way, are the

best trained and best equipped right now.

Mr. TIERNEY. How many numbers are we talking about there?

Mr. SCHMITZ. You know, we didn’t look at every unit. We didn’t—

our audit method is not to look at every single unit.

Mr. TIERNEY. The ones you looked at that are in that category

are, in your estimate, ready?

Mr. SCHMITZ. What percentage or—what percentage?

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Mr. TIERNEY. I was trying to get to the point of—I’ll let you finish your answer rather than take you off track. Go ahead.

Mr. SCHMITZ. I’m going to defer to the people that actually did

the audit here.

Mr. STEENSMA. I think I know we answered that question specifically in the classified session, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. It’s general enough that I would think the American public would be able to get that answer.

Mr. STEENSMA. I would have to go back to what Mr. Schmitz

said, that overseas we found a lot greater attention to the training,

the equipage of the troops and so on.

Mr. TIERNEY. And? How long would it take for us to assure that

all of the men and women that might be put into a conflict of the

nature that we’re anticipating would be fully protected and fully

trained?

Mr. STEENSMA. I don’t think I could answer that, sir. I would

have to defer to the Department, because they’re the ones who put

priorities on equipping things, buying things and training people.

So I don’t think I could give a specific date.

Mr. TIERNEY. But it’s clear we’re not there at the moment; is that

correct?

Mr. SCHMITZ. Let me answer that question. I think—that was

the——

Mr. TIERNEY. The expert no longer wants to answer the question.

Mr. SCHMITZ. I’ll let Mr. Steensma say what he wants to say.

That was exactly—the premise of your question is, we’re not currently ready?

Mr. TIERNEY. Are we currently ready is the premise of the question. In your estimation, Mr. Schmitz?

Mr. SCHMITZ. We’re never going to be perfectly ready, OK?

Mr. TIERNEY. I understand that. My question is, are we ready,

understanding we’ll never be perfectly ready. You can’t be in

any——

Mr. SCHMITZ. Could we be more ready now? Yes.

Mr. TIERNEY. Do you have an estimate of how long it would take

to be ready to the degree that you would feel comfortable?

Mr. SCHMITZ. You know, there’s an old military adage, if you

wait for the perfect war, you will lose every battle.

Mr. TIERNEY. I’m not talking about waiting for the perfect war.

I don’t think anybody expects the war to be perfect.

One of the problems is, we know it isn’t going to be to be. We

know there are all sorts of unforeseen consequences. But the ones

we can foresee, such as the use of chemical and biological agents

against our men and women, are they trained sufficiently and are

they ready in terms of preparedness of whatever protective gear

they might have at this moment, or should we have it in better

shape?

Mr. SCHMITZ. But you’re asking, with all respect, an operational

question to an independent office that does audits and investigations, and that question is better addressed to the operational commanders.

Mr. TIERNEY. OK.

Mr. SCHMITZ. I mean, it essentially involves an operational

weighing of risks against——

63

Mr. TIERNEY. All right. I accept that. I wanted to ask you.

Mr. Steensma, do you want to answer that with any more specificity?

Mr. STEENSMA. No, I wouldn’t, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Decker.

Mr. DECKER. Mr. Tierney, I’m unable to quantify exactly when

we would be ready. But in closed session, I will discuss two specific

issues that shade my optimism.

Mr. TIERNEY. That shape it or shade it?

Mr. DECKER. Shade.

Mr. TIERNEY. S-H-A-D-E?

Mr. DECKER. Yes, sir, shade my optimism.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Ms. Watson, you have the floor for 10 minutes plus.

Ms. WATSON. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I’d like to submit my opening statement for the record.

Mr. Chairman, I think what we probably have is the wrong panel

here. We have their testimony in writing. I’ve gone through their

written testimony to the extent that it’s accurate, I think that our

questions are answered. And I’ll just repeat very quickly some of

the statements that caught my eye. ‘‘We have continuing concerns

in each of these areas in the supply of chemical protective clothing

and the way it is associated is assessed.’’ ‘‘We believe that the risk

of protective clothing shortages may increase dramatically from

now through at least 2007.’’ ‘‘Serious problems still persist.’’ And,

‘‘We concluded that chemical and biological defense equipment

training and medical problems were persisting, and if not addressed, were likely to result in needless casualties and a degradation of U.S. warfighting capabilities.’’ ‘‘The medical readiness of

some units to conduct operations in a contaminated environment,

therefore remains questionable.’’ And, ‘‘Military service members

may not be able to avoid exposure to chemical and biological agents

and has consequently provided U.S. forces with individual protective equipment.’’

And they go on to conclude, ‘‘But the bottom line is, there are

many needed improvements that still remain to be realized.’’ ‘‘The

service members of our country may be at risk in a contaminated

environment.’’ These are your reports, and I’m just repeating for

the public what you have said in conclusion.

I would think, Mr. Chair, that we need to have the operational

managers in here and find out what is really going on. I appreciate

the testimony from these gentlemen, but I find the way they’re answering these questions nonconclusive, and maybe they don’t have

the information we need.

So I would suggest that we dispense with this hearing and wait

to get into the classified hearing so that when I go back to my constituents, I can give them the truth.

What is very, very bothersome to me is that we’re rushing—

every single day we hear the administration saying, we need to

rush into an attack on Iraq, for we know Saddam Hussein has biological weapons that he has not been afraid to use and has used

them.

64

Are we exposing our men and women at this point to contamination and, subsequently, their children knowing that we cannot protect them?

Now, don’t come back at me with perfection. I’m not asking about

perfection; I’m asking about some risk assessment and are we

ready.

Apparently, you gentlemen cannot answer that question for me

exactly. So my suggestion would be, let’s not waste any more time.

Let’s get operational managers here, and let’s go into the classified

session, and I will take back the truth to my people.

I am not going to support going blindly into warfare in an environment that can cause great bodily harm and our death not only

to this generation, but to subsequent generations. And I don’t need

an answer; it’s just a statement.

Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. I appreciate the gentlelady’s comments.

I think that you all, both the GAO, the Inspectors General are

providing a tremendous opportunity for us to know at least what

we can state on the public record and then the questions that we

need to ask behind closed doors. We would not even be anywhere

along as well as we are with the issue of protective gear had it not

been for the work of your predecessors in the Inspector General’s

Office and the GAO. And I’ll give you an example before I get into

questions.

But what I did when I met with the British and the French and

the Israelis to discuss protective gear in the early 1990’s they

didn’t want American equipment; they wanted their own or they

wanted another country’s.

When I speak with them today, they want our equipment. So we

know we have good equipment. We know—we certainly know it’s

better than what other countries have. And I say that with no reluctance. I think that is, in part, the work that this committee and

you all have done to just keep pushing and pushing and pushing.

But I also feel that both of you have—both the GAO and the Inspectors General have put on the record some very important information that says, we may be ready in certain instances and we

may not be ready in other instances.

I can’t imagine, for instance, that we would be able to amass

700,000 troops and think that they would be protected. It tells me

that given the type of warfare that we may encounter, which would

be potentially chemical or biological, that it’s going to have to be

a different strategy, in part because of the limitations that we have

with our equipment, but also in part because we’re not going to

give Saddam Hussein such a large and tempting target.

But obviously we will also have some dialog with our second

panel in open forum.

Let me ask anyone on the panel, first, to be willing to give me

a little bit of an education as you would define ‘‘readiness versus

risk.’’ I understand from the GAO that your primary focus would

be on risk. Is that correct, Mr. Decker, your contribution to this

panel?

Mr. DECKER. Yes, sir. I think in past reports we——

Mr. SHAYS. When we look at risk, we’re looking at availability,

suitability, and durability, correct?

65

Mr. DECKER. Those would be some of the factors if you talk about

gear.

Mr. SHAYS. One of the contributions that you’re making is that

when we look at whether there’s a high risk or a low risk, when

we just take a certain part of the equipment and isolate it and not

put it as part of the package, that we get a distorted view; is that

correct?

Mr. DECKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. But what I’m also understanding is that it’s not like

we add it all together, and we put it in one chain and we say,

whatever is the weakest link is potentially—if something is a high

risk, then everything is—let me just say a risk, not a high risk. It’s

possible you could put together one part that is a moderate risk

and another part that is a risk, and that can add up to be high

risk, collectively?

Mr. DECKER. Yes, sir. I’ll give you an example.

If you talk about a mask and outer garment, boots, and gloves,

if you had no gloves, you would be at high risk even though you

have four out of the five components.

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

Mr. DECKER. So all of the other ones would be adequately supplied, but if you didn’t have gloves, you’re still at risk, high risk.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m getting at something a little more subtle. That,

to me, is putting it all in a row. You’ve got a weak link, you don’t

have the gloves and the rest is meaningless.

But it’s my information that, in a sense, it’s almost like four

chains down, and maybe if you—if one is pretty vulnerable, the

other three chains can pull you up, but if the other one has a moderate risk or even is a moderate risk, the two together can add up

to be something greater than either one of them individually. Is

that correct?

Mr. DECKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. And so your testimony before this committee is that

the Department of Defense has accepted making sure we look at

the full package as a risk and not isolate it. And so that’s good

news.

But when was that decided?

Mr. DECKER. Sir, since the report that was released in September.

Mr. SHAYS. So this a new process. So we have to go back to the

drawing board, correct?

Mr. DECKER. Correct.

Mr. SHAYS. We have to look at risk again as now under the definition and the process that you’ve defined, correct?

Mr. DECKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. Do we have a sense, when that’s going to be done?

Mr. DECKER. I think the next panel will be able to address that.

Mr. SHAYS. We’ll make sure we ask the next panel.

In terms of readiness, someone speak to the concept of readiness.

I happen to think that if you’ve got risks, you’re not ready; so I’m

mixing the two. You need to give me a little bit of a lesson here.

Who wants to do it?

66

I’m going to have you put the mic nice and close. Now, is the

smile of frustration that I may not get it, or that you’re not sure

you’ll be able to explain it?

Mr. BLOOMER. I’ll attempt.

Mr. SHAYS. If you would put the mic a little closer.

This is my understanding of—I am just trying to appreciate the

concept of readiness. And if you need a little more time to think

of your answer, let me just go to another question.

But before I leave this panel, I want you all to define the concept

of readiness to me. I’m sure the military will. But I’d like to have

some confidence that you can define it.

Do you want to answer the question?

Mr. BLOOMER. Yeah.

I would say that, in attempting to define readiness, it would go

to the core of, is the unit or force able to conduct its mission as it

was intended and planned to be done? Is it in alignment with how

they envision executing their plan?

Now, a lot of factors go into that. Do you have enough people of

the right skill and are they trained?

Mr. SHAYS. Connect it as it relates to the whole issue of chemical

and biological warfare.

Mr. BLOOMER. Another element that would go into it is equipment level. Do have you sufficient quantities of equipment to conduct your mission in any kind of environment, be it chemical or biological or pristine environment?

Mr. SHAYS. It would go to the issue, for instance, if you’re properly trained and so on?

Mr. BLOOMER. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. I felt that the Inspector General was speaking more

to the issue of readiness, as opposed to the issue of risk. In other

words, you could have all your equipment perform well—it’s available, it’s—the suitability is fine, the durability is good—but if you

don’t have enough of it, you’re not ready, correct?

Mr. BLOOMER. I would agree. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. If you haven’t been properly trained, you’re not

ready, correct?

Mr. BLOOMER. Or as ready as you could be.

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

If you don’t know how to put it on, the equipment that may work

very well, if improperly put on, is not going to work, so you are

therefore not ready, correct?

Mr. BLOOMER. Correct.

Mr. SHAYS. If—when we look at chemical/biological defense, we

want to look at contamination avoidance. In other words, if we

don’t have to go into the area, we want to be able to—so we have

to—we might want to avoid it, we need to detect it, we need to

identify it, and we need to locate it, correct?

Mr. BLOOMER. That’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS. In terms of protection, we are concerned about protecting not just the individual, but maybe a facility like a hospital.

And so there’s more than just chemical protection dealing with a

mask and a suit, but also to make sure that we can secure an area

so, for instance, nurses and doctors can work without having to

wear masks; is that correct?

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Mr. BLOOMER. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. And in a decontamination setting we need to be able

to decontaminate equipment that has been exposed to chemicals or

biological agents, and in some cases, the people that have been exposed as well; is that correct?

Mr. BLOOMER. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. So these are very—these are a lot of significant efforts here.

In other words, if you don’t have the detection equipment, you

may have to force yourself to wear equipment that will inhibit your

mission. And it would be a lot easier to know if could you detect

it before you had to put it on; is that correct?

Mr. BLOOMER. Yes, it would be.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Let me just go to the DOD—basically, the IG has talked about

the Defense Logistics Agency, and you believe that 250,000 unaccounted suits that are not properly—are defective were issued,

worn and disposed of, correct?

Mr. SCHMITZ. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. The question is, what is the task required to know

where—in other words, right now, it seems to me, we have to assume that the 250—we’re being asked to assume that the 250 is

no longer in the system, that it was—we used it for training and

we’ve disposed of it.

Tell me how we can get an answer to that question.

And if we can’t get an answer to the question, do we have to

make the assumption that somewhere between zero and 250 suits

are out in on the loose and that it’s kind of like what I would call

Russian roulette, you’ve got one bullet in the barrel and you know

you just have to hope that when you pull the trigger, that bullet

isn’t the one—the bullet isn’t in the chamber when you pull the

trigger.

Is it that kind of problem, or is there a logical way to get at and

be assured that there is no defective equipment in the system?

Mr. SCHMITZ. Let me just say this: This is an age-old problem

and inspectors general have been looking at this problem since the

Revolutionary War. You know——

Mr. KUCINICH. Apparently they haven’t solved it.

Mr. SCHMITZ. Some have been more successful than others.

Mr. SHAYS. And the blame is not on the Inspector General and

the GAO. The issue is, we have known for decades that even during World War I, the DOD had the opportunity to grow and to

learn from its biological potential and chemical warfare opportunities, and we have not learned much. Reports that were done, we

can’t find. So we can go on and on.

The fact that you’re telling me this has been an age-old problem

is significant in one sense, but meaningless in another, because we

are in the day and age when chemical and biological weapons will

be used. So there can be no excuse.

What I’m asking is, you’ve heard the other Members ask the

question about the 250,000 pieces of defective equipment. We can

make an assumption that some are not in the system, but we can’t

make the assumption that all aren’t in the system; is that correct?

Mr. SCHMITZ. That’s right. These are unaccounted for.

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Mr. SHAYS. OK. So we’re being asked on good faith and on some

logic that some of it would have been used. The question I’m asking

is, in a sense—we are asking, have we identified all 250,000 of

them? I think the answer is——

Mr. SCHMITZ. No.

Mr. SHAYS. No.

Now the next question is, is there a way to identify them? And

GAO, Mr. Decker, is there a way to identify? What would it take

to identify?

Mr. DECKER. Based on our experience in trying to do an inventory review of protective equipment, we actually got into boxes to

look at contract numbers, lot numbers, because there was no system device, nothing in the inventory management system that

would provide us that accurate information, and nowhere in the

system that would say exactly where these things were located.

Mr. SHAYS. We don’t know where they’re located, but if we locate

them, can we identify them as bad?

Mr. DECKER. Once have you a contract number and a lot number,

and if it’s identified as defective.

Mr. SHAYS. I appreciate my colleagues. So if we don’t do that, is

it not a fact that we are then telling some members of our military

force that they may have the shell in the chamber?

Mr. CAWOOD. Sir, the military forces have attempted to locate

these sites by a variety of means.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m going to have you tell me that, but I’m just saying right now, if we haven’t identified them and we don’t seem to

be having a program to identify every one of them, isn’t it a fact

that, in essence, some members of the military will be issued faulty

equipment?

Mr. CAWOOD. It is a possibility. It’s not a certainty. Because we

don’t know whether some of those suits may have been used, for

example, in training and that there’s no means to account for

which ones were used in that fashion.

Mr. SHAYS. But now the IG’s testimony was, as recently as April

2002, ‘‘We continued to identify units that had not segregated those

defective garments in their inventories.’’

The bottom line to my question: Is there a way—I’m not saying

that it won’t be expensive, I’m not saying it won’t require a lot of

work, but is there a way to identify every faulty piece of equipment

that was part of that particular manufacturer’s product?

Mr. DECKER. Sir, not without a lot of labor.

Mr. SHAYS. But with labor, it would be possible?

Mr. DECKER. Obviously, if you sighted each suit, which would be

extremely labor intensive, you could probably get to the bottom

line.

Mr. SHAYS. Does anyone from the Inspector General’s Office disagree with that answer?

Mr. STEENSMA. No, we agree with that. It would be labor intensive, because they would have to open numerous boxes, go through

them with the lot numbers and identify them and pull them out.

Mr. SHAYS. Numerous boxes would be?

Mr. STEENSMA. I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands

are out there.

Mr. SHAYS. Millions of boxes?

69

Mr. STEENSMA. I don’t know if it’s millions.

Mr. SHAYS. So the end result is, we are going to be asking some

member of the military, unless they are issued totally new equipment, who go into Iraq—if that happens, we’re going to be asking

them to take a chance that, you know, one chamber has a bullet.

When they pull the trigger you know, they’re the—they’ll pay the

negative result.

So, I guess—let me go to——

Mr. TIERNEY. Just to followup on that, I sense that we’re going

to be told in the next panel that—not to worry about this, that

they’ve accounted for all the suits because they’ve had this training

and they’ve worn them. Is that even remotely possible, that’s the

case?

Mr. DECKER. Sir, I think it’s possible, but I would ask for the evidence.

Mr. TIERNEY. Not verifiable?

Mr. DECKER. No, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Ms. WATSON. May I followup? I had written a question to Mr.

Kucinich that I’ll ask now.

I’m listening very carefully to you gentlemen. I appreciate you

trying to give us frank answers. What I’m surmising from this to

believe is that, no, we do not have protection for every single service personnel that would be required to go into an area that could

be potentially deadly for them.

As in the Vietnam War and the Gulf war, many of our military

personnel came back and stated that they had health conditions

that were strange and alien to them.

Are you gentlemen recommending that as a result of going into

Iraq, our veterans then be given full benefits and care for whatever

might happen to them as a result of biological and chemical warfare? Would that be a recommendation from you, or would that be

a recommendation from the operational managers, or whoever

would be recommending?

Because it seemed like there was some denial that Agent Orange

had an effect on the veterans of Vietnam. It seems that veterans

have struggled for decades to get some recognition of the problems

they faced because of chemical and biological agents.

Mr. SCHMITZ. I think it is a very important question, Ms. Watson.

Ms. WATSON. Whom should I ask?

Mr. SCHMITZ. The Secretary of Veterans Affairs and the Secretary of Defense. And, hopefully, our audits and our reports will

be useful in them reaching that decision.

Ms. WATSON. Thank you. I appreciate that, because I am trying

to get to the right personnel to answer the questions. And listening

to all of you, you have prepared these reports, but you can’t give

us the details, because apparently it is classified.

So in trying to get to the truth and have some accuracy, I appreciate your response.

Mr. SCHMITZ. Thank you.

Mr. BURTON. Let me—Mr. Gilman.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Then we will try to get to the next panel.

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Mr. GILMAN. I am concerned. You are telling us that the defective equipment has not been located, but through additional manpower, we may be able to detect where that defective equipment is.

If that is possible, then what are we doing to undertake that

kind of a procedure?

Mr. STEENSMA. I think you need to ask the next panel and the

Defense Logistics Agency and the services what they are going to

do. I know after the last hearing they put out several messages.

They’ve tried to identify these in the past. The problem we run

into when we are in the field is the word doesn’t always get down

to each individual unit, which could be in the United States or

overseas here.

And it would take a coordinated program by the Department’s logistics people to try to get out and identify and make sure all of

them are pulled.

Mr. GILMAN. Well, Mr. Steensma, why have some units not received the advisories regarding these defective pieces of equipment?

Mr. STEENSMA. Don——

Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Bloomer.

Mr. BLOOMER. I guess the easiest way to explain it would be that

not every unit has a person as part of the unit who is designated

as a chemical and biological professional.

Mr. GILMAN. Wouldn’t that be the responsibility of the commander of the unit?

Mr. BLOOMER. It would be. But a lot of the service notices and

recall notices that come down, come down through the chemical

and biological community. And it filters down that way or it filters

down through supply channels. They don’t always send them to

commanders of the unit.

Mr. GILMAN. So what you are telling us, Mr. Bloomer, is that

there may be some commander or some units that have not received advisories about this defective equipment; is that correct?

Mr. BLOOMER. Yes.

Mr. GILMAN. And, Mr. Schmitz, one of you on the panel has said,

if we utilize more manpower, we can find out where the defective

equipment is. Am I correct?

Mr. SCHMITZ. Mr. Steensma said that. I agree.

Mr. GILMAN. Is that being employed, that method?

Mr. STEENSMA. Not at this time. You would have to ask the next

panel, because they are the ones that have the resources they could

devote to an enterprise such as this.

Mr. GILMAN. So the defective equipment can be detected by utilizing more manpower in order to make certain that our troops,

when they go out on the battlefield are not going to use defective

equipment. Am I correct?

Mr. STEENSMA. I would have to agree with that, sir.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Mr. Kucinich, you have more questions?

Mr. KUCINICH. To Mr. Decker: The—the Defense Logistics Agency has said that they believe the 250,000 unaccounted-for overgarments that were issued that are in question here, the ones that are

defective, that they were worn and disposed of.

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Now, how—how is it that they were able to come to this conclusion? And is this conclusion supported by the facts?

Mr. DECKER. Sir, again, I think Mr. Parker from DLA will be

able to address that more precisely.

But if you recall, back in May 2000——

Mr. KUCINICH. I just want to ask you, is that conclusion supported by the facts? They are asserting that all defective protective

suits have been disposed of. Is that statement supported by the

facts?

Mr. DECKER. Sir, we have not seen evidence that the 250,000 defective suits have been found and disposed of properly.

Mr. KUCINICH. OK. That—I just wanted to make sure that was

on the record.

Now, the Defense Department has agreed that they understated

the risk related to all of the components of the protective suits. Is

that correct?

Mr. DECKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. KUCINICH. This is why they agreed to go back and change

the way they examined these questions. Is that correct?

Mr. DECKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. KUCINICH. Now, my question is this: Does the Defense Department also agree with your conclusion on pages 8 and 9 of your

report, that, in fact, service members are at high risk, not low risk?

That was pages 8 and 9 of the report.

Does the Defense Department also agree with your conclusion

that, in fact, service members are at high risk, not low risk?

Mr. DECKER. Sir, that was our conclusion. We have not served

specific response on that particular point. As to whether they agree

with that, I think that question would be better deferred to them.

However, they did agree that the method of calculating the risk

would be better done if it were done by the entire ensemble rather

than the individual pieces.

Mr. KUCINICH. By the entire ensemble. I quoted General Myers

at the beginning of this hearing, who said the military is prepared.

Based on what you know, Mr. Decker, on what you provided to this

committee, do you agree with that statement?

Mr. DECKER. General Myers’ statement, sir?

Mr. KUCINICH. Do you think there are concerns that ought to

be——

Mr. DECKER. Sir, based on the work that we have done, the reports over the last couple of years about this issue of individual

protective equipment and the deficiencies, the problems, locations,

and—I would have reservations that everything is exactly the way

it should be for any future conflict.

Mr. KUCINICH. Has the military met the basic minimum requirements? Can the military fail to meet the basic military requirements and still protect the troops?

Mr. DECKER. Sir, going back to my chart, you can see where

there are some serious dips below what the requirement is and

what we have on hand today.

Mr. KUCINICH. And if they don’t meet the basic minimum requirements, how are our troops protected at all?

Mr. DECKER. Well, the individual protective equipment, as I indicated, is your last line of defense. If each serviceman and woman

72

who is in a contaminated environment does not have the proper

serviceable gear, than they are at risk.

Mr. KUCINICH. Now, you have in your testimony here, that—you

mentioned the individual pieces, the suit, the mask, the breathing

filters, gloves, boots and hoods, and that there are questions about

the supply, the inventory—could even be questions about safety in

the question of suits.

Then when you look at the ensemble, you get into the possibility

that, you know, this may not all come together. I mean—and here

is what I was thinking. For the moment, let’s not talk about what

is a very grim matter here, preparation of our servicemen and

women for battle.

Let’s say we were talking for a moment about a professional football team that was getting ready for the Super Bowl. And let’s say

that the uniforms provided for this team, to protect them when

they are on the field of play, let’s say players had the wrong sizes.

Some had knee pads, some didn’t. Some had shoulder pads, some

didn’t. Some had hip pads, some didn’t. Some had shoes with

cleats, some didn’t. Some had helmets, and some didn’t, or some

had helmets that were the wrong size.

Now, the team really wouldn’t be ready to play. People would be

asking, well, how could you—you are a Super Bowl team; how in

the world could you be in a condition where you don’t have the

right equipment? You are not ready. How could that be?

Well, let’s say we have the best military in the world. Are they

ready to play in the Super Bowl in the Persian Gulf?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Anyone else before we go to the next

panel? Mr. Decker.

And let me just say this. I want any of you to speak out on anything that you think the record is not clear on, or any question you

wished we had asked that we didn’t ask. I want it on the record.

So if there is anything you want to put on the record, please do

it. If there is any need to clarify the record, let’s do it and do it

now, OK?

Mr. Decker, do you have something?

Mr. DECKER. Yes, Chairman Shays. I want to mention that GAO

does not have classification authority, that is received by the executive branch agencies that review our work. And I have to note that

in the area of chem/bio defense and force protection, we were experiencing lengthy classification reviews by the Department of Defense.

In many cases, our final draft products which we send to the Department for comment, using unclassified material and sources, are

becoming classified.

Like the DOD IG, I believe it is critical that we protect our products and prevent exposure of vulnerabilities, and there is a way

that can be done, which is called sanitization, meaning taking specific details out.

However, we are experiencing, in some cases, up to 2 months’

delay in issuing a report while it goes through this very uncertain

classification review process. And I would like to see the Department of Defense address that issue, to be able to provide a speedy

73

classification review so that we can provide the information that

the Congress needs.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Any other comment from our panel?

I would like to put one comment on the table here. This was,

when we had a hearing on June 19th—excuse me, when we had

a hearing in April 1997, we had Air Force Major Michael Donnelly,

testify before our committee. He suffered from the progressive debilitating effects of ALS, or what we call Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

Major Donnelly recounted a now all-too-familiar litany of official refusals to connect his illness with his military service.

He was a once-robust fighter pilot, sat before us in a wheelchair,

his body racked by the effects of the disease, but he spoke with

arching eloquence from a heart undamaged by his plight, declaring,

‘‘I am not the enemy.’’ This veteran of 44 combat missions in the

Gulf war described the shock and disappointment of having to confront a fatal disease and his own government’s cold incuriosity

about the cause of his illness.

Now, he believed that ALS was triggered or accelerated by wartime exposures, including organic phosphate pesticides; and for

many years that possibility was dismissed or ignored. Recently, the

Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs have acknowledged

that he, in fact, may have suffered this illness because of his duty

and service.

But this is the key point. When asked if he would go to war

again, knowing what would befall him, Michael Donnelly did not

hesitate 1 second before saying yes. And so I want it on the record.

I believe that most men and women in the force, even if they

knew about their vulnerabilities, would still choose to serve our

country and engage whatever enemy in battle. We would just like

to make sure that, one, first, that it is never a fair fight, that they

always have the advantage; and two, that they never have any illusions about what can defend them or not. And Mr. Donnelly, I

think, stands as a memorable moment for this committee.

I am prepared to go on to the next panel. I thank you. I thank

sincerely the work of the IG and all of your people, the work of the

Inspector General and GAO. It is—you do a wonderful service for

the men and women in uniform and for the eventual success of

whatever undertaking we choose. So thank you very much, and we

will get to our next panel.

I appreciate this Panel Two, its patience and its listening to

Panel One. We have Dr. Anna Johnson-Winegar, Assistant to the

Secretary of Defense for CBD, Department of Defense; General Stephen Goldfein, Deputy Director, Joint Warfare Capability Analysis,

JCS, Department of Defense; Major General William L. Bond, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army, Department of Defense;

Mr. Michael A Parker, Deputy to the Commander U.S. Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command; and Mr. George Allen,

Deputy Director, Defense Supply Center-Philadelphia, Defense Logistics Agency, Department of Defense.

If they would come, and we will swear you in, so you might want

to stay standing. Sorry it is such a cramped table there.

Is there any one else who may testify, as well, that might assist

you? If there is the possibility, I would just as soon have them

sworn so you—if you think that anyone else may want to. Anyone?

74

OK, seeing none, if you would just raise your hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. Note for the record our witnesses have responded in

the affirmative.

And I would also like to note for the record that all of you are

accomplished people in your field of work, you have served, you are

serving our country well, you have served our country well; and we

consider it an honor to have you before the committee.

We obviously have some questions that we would like to ask you.

And I think you know the spirit in which we ask those questions.

So we are going to go to the 5-minute, if you make your statement,

Dr. Winegar—I apologize for not saying your name correctly.

Thank you for your patience in that regard.

We will go with Dr. Winegar, General Goldfein, General Bond,

Mr. Parker and then Mr. Allen. We will go in that order, OK? And

we have a 5-minute trip-over. We prefer that you don’t take the full

10 minutes, but whatever you think that you need.

STATEMENTS OF DR. ANNA JOHNSON-WINEGAR, ASSISTANT

TO SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR CBD; GENERAL STEPHEN

GOLDFEIN, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, JOINT WARFIGHTING CAPABILITY ANALYSIS JCS; MAJOR GENERAL WILLIAM L. BOND,

OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE ARMY (ALT);

MICHAEL A. PARKER, DEPUTY TO THE COMMANDER, U.S.

ARMY SOLDIER AND BIOLOGICAL CHEMICAL COMMAND

[SBCCOM]; AND GEORGE ALLEN, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, DEFENSE SUPPLY CENTER-PHILADELPHIA, DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and distinguished committee members. I am honored to appear before you

again to address some of your concerns about the Department’s

chemical and biological defense program.

I am Anna Johnson-Winegar. I serve as the Deputy Assistant to

the Secretary of Defense for Chemical and Biological Defense. I

would like to focus my remarks today on improvements to the management and oversight process for the Department’s Chemical and

Biological Defense Program.

As a result of several initiatives subsequent to my last testimony,

the Department has made progress in improving areas that are of

interest to your subcommittee; and we will continue to see improvements as recent decisions are implemented over the next few

months. Along with me today are other representatives from DOD

who will speak to their particular area of expertise.

In order to address some of the problems related to the acquisition of chemical and biological defense systems identified during

Operation Desert Storm, the Department’s Chemical and Biological

Defense Program was established in 1994. This law mandates, as

you know, the coordination and integration of all Department of

Defense chemical and biological programs under the oversight of a

single office. Under this program, the individual services submit

their budget requests under one defense-wide account, separate

from their service accounts. In addition, we submit an annual report to the Congress concerning all aspects of the Chemical and Biological Defense Program.

75

Following the Defense reform initiative in 1997, the position of

Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Chemical and Biological Defense was left vacant, and my office was placed under

the Director of Defense Research and Engineering.

In November 2001, the Senate confirmed Dr. Dale Klein to fill

the position of ATSD NCB, and subsequently, my office was moved

from DDR&E and now reports to Dr. Klein. This reorganization, I

believe, has increased the priority and emphasis of chem/bio defense within the Department.

This increased attention also led to the increase in size of my office staff from only two to now nine permanent positions, plus additional supporting resources. To ensure a focused effort in the area

of homeland defense, the Deputy Secretary of Defense directed the

establishment of a consequence management program integration

office and directed that the functions previously performed by that

office be institutionalized throughout the Department. And in February 2001, they further directed that research, development and

acquisition of that equipment be responsible—be dealt the responsibility to be delegated to my office.

As a result of that funding to complete the modernization of the

weapons of mass destruction, civil support teams are now part of

the Chem/Bio Defense Program. Also, due to the increased visibility and importance of chemical/biological defense within the Department, the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, Mr. Pete Aldridge, in May 2001, implemented increased departmental oversight of this program by formally designating the chem/bio defense program as an acquisition

Category 1(d) program.

This designation raises the priority and visibility of the chem/bio

defense program within the Department and identifies the program

as a major defense acquisition program. This landmark decision

provides oversight by senior department officials over this critical

and national asset.

Other recent changes have significantly affected the security environment and the requirements of the chem/bio, defense program.

As mentioned earlier today, the QDR of September 2001 changed

the basic force structure to support major theater wars, giving

greater emphasis on smaller regional conflicts. The services are

evaluating the impact of this changed force structure on system requirements.

Second, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent anthrax letter attacks have increased the potential roles

and missions for the Department of Defense in supporting homeland security.

Funding for defense against the potentially devastating threat of

chemical and biological attacks post-September 11 was added from

the Defense Emergency Response Fund and Title IX of the Defense

Appropriations Act of 2002, which has allowed the DOD to procure

critical defense capabilities and to energize the research base to address the most critical deficiencies in this key area.

Another management change recently approached by the Joint

Requirements Oversight Council is the creation of a Joint Requirements Office for Chemical, Biological Radiological and Nuclear Defense. General Goldfein will address more details regarding that.

76

Another key management change is the very recent approval of

a Joint Program Executive Office for the Chemical and Biological

Defense Program, in a memorandum signed by Mr. Aldridge on the

19th of September. The criticality and importance of an integrated

and viable program to the Nation has increased significantly, and

the visibility of chemical and biological defense within all government agencies has increased far beyond the scope of the program

originally established in 1994.

The program must be visionary, able to respond quickly to

warfighter and national security needs, and be streamlined with

authority and accountability. The JPEO will supersede the existing

management structure. The JPEO will report through the Army acquisition executive to the Defense acquisition executive.

Mr. Aldridge will continue to serve as the single Milestone Decision Authority for the Chemical and Biological Defense Program.

This streamlines the acquisition process, and in support of the

USD(AT&L) responsibilities, Dr. Dale Klein will establish and

chair a permanent overarching integrated product team consisting

of representatives from the military services, the joint staff, and

the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

The Army will continue to serve as the Executive Agent for the

Joint Service Chemical and Biological Defense Program. Major

General Bond and Mr. Parker will detail key aspects of the acquisition program with emphasis on individual protective equipment.

Consumable NBC defense items and maintenance of fielded

items are managed by the services and the Defense Logistics Agency in accordance with their Title X responsibilities. Information on

the logistical status of the services’ chemical and biological defense

equipment is included in our annual report to the Congress.

The most recent annual report implemented GAO recommendations to list items on contract separately from those that are actual

on hand. We feel this gives a more accurate picture of the logistics

readiness for U.S. forces. However, the annual report only provides

a snapshot in time of the overall readiness of U.S. forces. Mr.

George Allen, from DLA, will address more issues related to logistics and inventory management.

In conclusion, as I have outlined, I feel there have been significant changes in the management and oversight structures of the

Chemical and Biological Defense Program over the past 2 years. Do

I believe everything is perfect? Of course not. But do I believe everything is better than it was? Absolutely, yes.

The Department has made significant improvements in the decades since Desert Storm. We have made improvements over the

past 2 years alone to improve the priority and importance of protecting our service members against chemical and biological

threats. These changes have streamlined the oversight process and

improved Joint Service coordination. They will also enhance the

linkage between requirements and fielded capabilities. These

changes are still in the process of being implemented and will continue to yield improvements.

I want to assure this subcommittee that the Department views

chemical/biological defense as one of our highest priorities, and we

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remain committed to continued efforts to improve our program, to

assure the best possible defense for our men and women who will

face the threat posed by chemical and biological agents.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson-Winegar follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. General Goldfein.

General GOLDFEIN. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Kucinich, members of the

committee, approximately 2 years ago the chairman of the Joint

Chiefs of Staff established a Joint Requirements Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Defense within the J–8 directorate of the joint staff.

The chairman’s guidance included a specific charter, a manning

document and an implementation plan for this Joint Requirements

Office. I am assigned the additional duty to serve as the Director

of the JRO. Coincidentally, today is our first official day as on organization.

The remainder of my statement describes our organizational vision and objective as we look forward, which I request be inserted

into the record.

Mr. SHAYS. That will be inserted into the record.

[The prepared statement of General Goldfein follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. General Bond.

General BOND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the subcommittee, for this opportunity to discuss the Chemical and Biological Defense Program.

I am the Deputy for Systems Management and Horizontal Technical Integration, reporting throughout the Army Acquisition Executive to the Secretary of the Army; and as you requested, I would

like to describe at the macro level the processes we use in the defense acquisition system to take a requirement or a technology and

turn it into a tangible, reliable, sustainable product that supports

the warfighter.

I am here today representing the Honorable Claude Bolton, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology and the Army Acquisition Executive. I respectfully request

that his written statement be made part of the record for today’s

hearing.

Before I get into the details, let me put Mr. Bolton’s and my bottom line up front. The Army’s intent is to make sure our fighting

men and women have the world’s best chemical/biological defense.

Mr. Chairman, you and your committee and other Members of

Congress have expressed concern over our chemical and biological

defense capabilities. You have challenged us to move out with all

dispatch to attain the needed capabilities, and we have accepted

that challenge.

I’ve spent over 32 years in military services, from warfighting

units and staff positions. My tours of fighting forces in Germany,

Korea and here in the United States taught me firsthand that

when our military is in harm’s way, our soldiers, airmen, sailors

and Marines need and deserve the very best we can provide them.

It is my earnest hope that chemical and biological weapons will

never be used. However, history dampens that hope. Therefore, we

are attacking the task of developing and fielding needed chemical/

biological defense capabilities with a sense of urgency and a determination to overcome any bureaucratic obstacles that may remain.

The very lives of our fighting forces and our fellow citizens are

at stake. With that in mind, I will do all I can do to make sure

we are ready to meet our chemical and biological challenges that

we may encounter in the modern battlefield.

To begin, I need to describe the roles of three key people in the

acquisition process. The first is the Milestone Decision Authority or

MDA. The MDA is often the Defense or the Army Acquisition Executive, depending on the dollar value of the program. This is the

person responsible for the decisions allowing a program to enter or

proceed into the next life cycle phase.

The next person with a critical role in the process is the Program

Executive Officer or PEO. The PEO for Chemical and Biological

Defense executes jointly the life cycle research, development, procurement and deployment of major end items of chemical and biological defense equipment. The mission is accomplished by maintaining continuous and effective communication with our

warfighters. Each of the military services, the research, development, test and evaluation community, the Office of the Secretary

of Defense; and of course, Congress, who have oversight responsibility, are involved.

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The third key person is the Program or Project Manager. The PM

is responsible for the day-to-day activities of the program and directs the concepts, designs, development, production, and initial deployment of our defense systems within the approved limits of cost,

schedule and performance. The PM ensures the warfighter requirements are met efficiently and effectively in the shortest possible

time.

As a result of our OSD-led review of the Chemical and Biological

Defense Program management, the Defense Acquisition Executive

directed implementation of a revised management concept that will

effectively use all three individuals discussed above.

The Army is in the process of working with DOD components on

the details of this implementation. But our intent is to structure

a management organization that works. I have pledged to the DAE

that we will assist in developing a management plan that will

clearly define the roles and responsibility of all involved.

In addition, we will assist in developing organization metrics,

which are few in number, simple to understand, and reportable to

the DAE on a regular basis. These metrics will show the effectiveness and the efficiency of the organization and provide real data

upon which to recognize and make organizational adjustments in

the future, if needed.

With the organizational concept in place, let me briefly discuss

some of the responsibilities and processes we will use to get the

products to the warfighter. Each of the specific commodity areas

has a corresponding Program Management Office, or PMO, and respective programs fall under their area of responsibility.

The PEO and the PM use the Defense Acquisition System on a

daily basis to execute their responsibilities. The principles that govern this process encourage innovation, flexibility, tailoring, continuous improvement of the acquisition system itself. This process is intended to provide effective product transition from science and

technology through development and production to fielding and

sustainment. Validated, time-phased requirements allow for an evolutionary program acquisition.

Advanced technologies are integrated into producible systems

and deployed in the shortest possible time. The DOD acquisition

management framework, as shown on the right here—and you each

should have a copy here, which was distributed earlier. As requested by the subcommittee, I will now walk through you the defense acquisition life cycle.

The cycle is a continuum of phases. The phases are Pre-Systems

Acquisition, Systems Acquisition, and Sustainment. The MDA can

allow a program to enter an acquisition life cycle at any phase, in

accordance with the technical maturity and acceptable risk.

The program life cycle starts with a validated user’s needs statement or operational requirements document or a mission need

statement. The requirements generation process manages the generation and validity of—validation of this need, based on capabilities required, and in some cases, a specific threat to be countered.

Concurrently, as part of the Pre-Systems Acquisition Phase, the

PM begins identifying promising technologies in the Department’s

laboratories and research centers, as well as in academia and from

commercial sources. Entrance into the Systems Acquisition Phase

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indicates that the user and the developer have agreed on a design

concept and a technical approach, and the MDA has approved the

acquisition approach.

During this phase, the PM reduces the program risk and ensures

the program is mature enough for productions. The PM evaluates,

and if necessary, reduces integration and manufacturing risks, designs for producibility and ensures operational supportability, affordability and interoperability. The system also undergoes rigorous testing and evaluation during this phase.

The final phase is the Sustainment phase, which begins when

the support performance requirements are achieved and when the

system is sustainable in the most cost-effective manner for its entire life cycle. At this point, management of the system transitions

to the service system command or the defense logistics agency.

But the program doesn’t stop there. At end of its useful life, the

PM ensures that the system is demilitarized and disposed of in accordance with legal and regulatory requirements. The acquisition

cycle is continuous. As the field identifies improvement or modifications, or as new requirements are identified by the user through

an evolving concept of operation or emerging doctrine, or as advances in technology surface and changes in the threat develop, we

are able to insert the required material improvements and manage

them in appropriate portion of the acquisition life cycle.

We have continued to refine our process of the metrics or objective measures of effectiveness we will use in getting the best equipment available into the hands of our warfighter.

In summary, we are committed to providing our soldiers, sailors,

airmen and Marines the best technology and equipment at the

right place at the right time and at the right cost.

This concludes my opening remarks. I am pleased to answer any

questions from the members of the subcommittee.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bolton follows:]

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Mr. GILMAN [presiding]. Mr. Parker, will you proceed?

Mr. PARKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, committee members. My

name is Michael Parker. I am the Deputy Commander of the U.S.

Army Soldier Biological and Chemical Command.

My boss, Major General John Doesburg, has a number of responsibilities in the Chemical and Biological Defense Program, two of

major significance to your hearing today; that is, he heads a group

of component service general officers who are responsible for the

planning, programming, and budgeting for the materiel, that is, the

equipment which is developed under and procured under the

Chemical and Biological Defense Program; and he has the laboratory structure which provides the technology and the engineering

support to the project managers that were outlined in Major General Bond’s discussion of the acquisition process.

I would like to just touch on about a half-dozen of over 150

projects and work packages that encompass the Chemical and Biological Defense Program as far as equipment and technology development.

These six focus on the issue today that this committee is pursuing today of individual protection. The Joint Service Protective

Mask is a current development mask to replace the fielded M–40

mask and the MCU–2P. It is a significant improvement over the

field mask, providing a much lighter mask, a better fit factor, a

larger lens to improve visibility and compatibility with weapons

systems, significantly reduced breathing resistance to reduce the

burden on the soldier, sailor, airman, Marine who would wear this

in a combat environment.

It also considers observations by this panel or this committee,

many of the audit agencies and one of our own internal Army and

other service reviews in the area of reducing the burden on preventive maintenance in the field environment. The design is such that

it is much more robust and will reduce the burden on the user to

continually maintain the equipment. It will also replace all of the

ground masks, such that the services will have a single mask, reducing the total ownership costs and logistics burden. We anticipate an initial fielding of that mask in about fiscal year 2006.

The next item is the Joint Service Chemical Environment Survivability Mask, which is a mask that the combatant commanders and

field forces have asked for, which is designed to provide a capability in a reduced threat environment. The individual protective

equipment that is fielded now is designed against a maximum

threat. There are many conditions where the threat is present, but

the concentration of chemical and biological agents would be much

reduced.

This piece of equipment is designed for a—to be a single-use

item, capable of protecting for a short duration at a significantly

reduced burden. We anticipate fielding that in the 2005 timeframe.

The Joint Service Aircrew Mask will be a standard mask for

high-performance aircraft, replacing a number of masks that are

fielded, primarily between the Air Force and the Navy. It will be

fully compatible with all of the high-G, high-pressure systems that

are on high-performance aircraft, also reducing to a single mask to

reduce the logistics burden. We anticipate fielding it in the 2006

timeframe.

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The Joint Service Mask Leakage Tester is a system that will be

able to test masks to production standards in a small compact piece

of equipment that will be man portable and will be much easier to

take to the field, to conduct that operation in the field. We anticipate fielding that in the 2003 timeframe.

The Joint Service Protective Aircrew Ensemble is an extension of

the lightweight suit technology program to create a suit specifically

oriented toward aircrews and the environment that they have to

operate in. That will also be a 2005 fielding.

The Joint Service Lightweight Integrated Suit Technology ensemble, which has been discussed somewhat today, is a program of

a continuous nature where new materials will be continually introduced in the ensemble to reduce the burden, the heat stress, the

weight of the suit, improve performance such as launderability,

wear and tear, replace the current series of three gloves with a single set of gloves—that type of continuous improvement. It will also

be compatible with the maintained capability of the new General

Purpose Mask.

One of the additional challenges which we continuously introduce

into equipment is the recognition that we are facing threats, or our

forces will face threats, in the field beyond the traditional chemical

warfare agents and biological warfare agents. Toxic industrial

chemicals can be diverted and can present a challenge to our field

forces if purposefully employed, or if released as a collateral effect

as we operate in urban terrain where there are maybe large chemical plants or storage of chemical materials that are industrial in

nature, but nonetheless very toxic. We are expanding the protection capability of all of our fielded systems to deal with these toxic

and industrial chemicals.

With that, let me summarize and be open for your questions.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Parker.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Parker follows:]

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Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Allen.

Mr. ALLEN. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Kucinich, distinguished Members. I am George Allen, representing Vice Admiral

Keith Lippert, who is Director of the Defense Logistics Agency.

I appreciate the opportunity to come before this committee to address your concerns concerning individual protective equipment

and supplies used against a chem/bio attack.

Mr. GILMAN. Can you bring the microphone closer to you, please?

Go ahead.

Mr. ALLEN. I have submitted a written statement for the record,

which I would like submitted.

Mr. GILMAN. It will be accepted for the record.

Mr. ALLEN. In your invitation to testify, you requested that we

address the progress we have made with respect to equipment inventories, quality controls, serviceability for the battle dress overgarment and the JSLIST suit in particular.

You also asked that we address or focus on the effect of management, proper maintenance, ready availability and the on-hand status of both the equipment and supplies. And in response to these

questions, I hope to make three very, very important points to this

committee.

First, we will do everything in our power to prevent the outrageous criminal conduct that resulted in the presence of defective

BDOs in our inventories in years past. We have reemphasized the

especially rigorous quality assurance measures in our contracting

for these items. And we continuously monitor the shelf life of all

such items in conjunction with the Program Manager and the military services.

Second, we have significantly improved our visibility of inventory

over these items.

And, finally, we maintain a very close working relationship with

the Program Manager and our customers to ensure as much integration of these items as we can.

The most significant chemical and biological protective items we

have bought on behalf of the services are the BDOs, battle dress

overgarments, the JSLIST suits mentioned by Mr. Parker, and the

chemical gloves, although there are a number of other items. We

store a large number of these items on behalf of the customers in

our depots. We are now able to manage the shelf life of these because we have begun to store these items in lots by their shelf life

expiration date. We plan to expand this capability to managing

these items by specific manufacturing lot as we implement our new

Enterprise Resource Planning System.

The quality assurance and shelf life surveillance provisions that

we have implemented for JSLIST suits, in particular, represent a

significant improvement over those we used for BDOs in years

past. We have expanded the shelf life surveillance provisions to everything that is also in the inventory. We work closely with the

military services and their agents and other agencies in this effort.

We take random samples from every JSLIST lot that is manufactured to undertake further testing and quality control before government acceptance.

The component manufacturers have to provide a certificate of

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tractors. The prime contractors have to inspect those components,

then they have to perform inspections throughout the manufacturing process as part of our contract.

Defense contract management agency quality assurance representatives are part of this process, and we employ independent

labs that provide live agent testing on the end item as opposed to

on the individual pieces of materiel.

Similar procedures are also in place for newly purchased items

and some of the shelf life procedures are in place for items that remain in the inventory. Overall management of individual protective

equipment used for chem/bio defense is really the responsibility of

program management. Oversight is provided by Dr. Winegar, as

she has maintained. We maintain a close working relationship for

the Program Manager in our role of acquiring and warehousing

these items.

Over the past decade, we have provided several million suits to

the military services. There are currently over 4 million suits in

the inventory, according to the Program Manager and as testified

to by GAO. That 4 million suits includes approximately 1.5 million

JSLIST suits, and there are several hundred thousand more

JSLIST suits on contract not yet delivered. In the event of a contingency, we can surge production to 1.4 million suits annually.

Our current replacement requirements for gloves in the aggregate are approximately 1 million pairs annually. We are negotiating contracts with surge capacity of up to 2.5 million pairs of gloves

per year.

Switching to medical supplies, which was mentioned also in your

letter, we use similar processes to work with the DOD and determine requirements and to contract for those medical supplies. We

currently have contract coverage to meet the requirements for all

of the services in the event of a single major theatre of war, and

we are expanding that capability to a larger scenario, should it be

required. These contracts guarantee availability of up to $630 million worth of materiel if we exercise all of the refresh options in

the contract. And as I have said, this is the equivalent to a single

major theatre war.

Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, we are working closely with the

services to ensure integrated management of the chem/bio protective items in a way we were not 2 years ago. We have reemphasized and strengthened our quality assurance measures to ensure

the products comply with technical requirements for the items; and

we monitor the shelf level of all of these items in our inventories

over time.

And, finally, Mr. Chairman, we have made some significant improvements in our visibility of the inventories of these items, and

we are poised to realize much more significant advances as our

agency deploys its new Enterprise Resource Planning System.

Subject to your questions, that concludes my testimony.

Mr. SHAYS [presiding]. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Allen follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. We are going to be calling on Mr. Gilman. I would

just say that one part that I will want you to address is this issue

of who is responsible for inventory. Because, frankly, I felt like you

were just throwing it right back to Dr. Winegar; and I just—I tend

to feel that basically, Mr. Allen, it really rests in your agency.

And just before we ask questions again, really we ask to give a

shape to this panel. We asked Dr. Winegar to be here as the Program Manager of the life cycle as we go through.

We look at you, General Goldfein, as being responsible for the

issue of requirements.

Mr. Bond—General Bond, excuse me—the issue of acquisition.

And the testing and training, Mr. Parker, kind of in your area.

And then the logistics, kind of, in your area, Mr. Allen.

That is kind of how I view this panel; if I am inaccurate about

that, I will need to be straightened out.

And I will also say, General Goldfein, that I was waiting for you

to read in your statement, on page 3, ‘‘Approval of all ACAT 1

ORDs rests with the JROCs.’’ I figured that every two words you

had an acronym, and we only allow two per sentence. So you didn’t

give me the pleasure of interrupting you then.

OK, Mr. Gilman.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to commend

the panel for concentrating on trying to have better inventories and

better quality material. However, this panel, our committee is concerned about testimony we received at our first panel.

In their prepared testimony, GAO stated that the Department of

Defense cannot easily identify, track and locate defective suits because inventory records do not always include contract and lot

numbers. And in May 2000, DOD directed units and depots to locate over some–700,000 defective suits produced by a single manufacturer; and as of July 2002, as many as 250,000 of those suits

remained unaccounted for.

I welcome some comment from all of you.

The DOD IG stated that the Defense Logistics Agency, DLA, reported to the DOD OIG that DLA believed that 250,000 unaccounted-for BDOs were issued, worn and disposed of. DLA also reported that based on repeated messages and advisories and

through incentives to their customers, DLA believed any remaining

defective BDOs were identified and pulled out of serviceable inventories. Once segregated, the defective BDOs were to be used solely

for training.

However, according to the IG, not all units have received that information from higher headquarters; and as recently as April of

this year, the IG continued to identify units that had not segregated the defective BDOs.

Why does DOD continue to have defective BDOs in unit inventories? And why have some of those units not received the

advisories regarding these defective BDOs?

How can DOD ensure defective BDOs are not going to be located

and used in theater as we prepare for hostile action?

Mr. SHAYS. And you will note for the record that Members of

Congress can use acronyms, as many as they want, in a sentence.

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Mr. GILMAN. I want you to know it would be very helpful if you

could give us a summary of all of those acronyms so that we would

be better advised.

But, please, I address that to all of the panel. Who is prepared

to respond to that? You have made extensive comments about the

history of your agencies and how well prepared you were are.

What are we doing about those defective units?

Mr. SHAYS. Do you want to ask each of those three questions

again separately?

Mr. GILMAN. Sure. Why does the DOD continue to have defective

BDOs in their unit inventories? Who would like to venture?

Mr. ALLEN. Sir, I think the best way to answer your question is

to reiterate for you what we have done to attempt to purge inventories.

Mr. GILMAN. I know what you are trying to do. Why are these

defective units still there?

Mr. ALLEN. The inventories would sit out there at the unit level,

as you have noted and as the prior panelists have noted, that are

in the control of the commanders. If the word has not gotten down

to the commanders, if the commanders have not cleared out their

inventories, if they have not taken the incentive to return those

units to us, that would be the reason why there may be——

Mr. GILMAN. Who is responsible for doing that, if not you five

panelists who are in charge of all of this?

Mr. ALLEN. The unit commanders, through their chain of command, are responsible for the inventories within their control, sir.

Mr. GILMAN. But if they are not responding, isn’t that the responsibility of you panelists to make sure that they are responding? You are in charge of inventories; you say you want the troops

to be better prepared, to be fully equipped to go into hostility.

Mr. SHAYS. Will the gentleman suspend a second?

Mr. Allen, but basically the question is directed at you because

you are in charge of the logistics. And we need an answer to the

question of why. It is really not directed, I don’t think, to all of the

panelists here yet, unless you can direct us to someone on this

panel that it should be directed at.

You are in charge of logistics. We need to know why defective

equipment is still out there. And that is the question; he wants to

know why.

Mr. ALLEN. All I can tell you, sir, is that the way the inventory

process works is that we purchase this inventory under the auspices of the Program Manager. We supply it to the unit commanders—not all of it but some of it—we supply it to the unit commanders; at that point, custody of that inventory passes to the unit commanders.

Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Allen, is there some defective equipment now

in the hands of the unit commanders?

Mr. ALLEN. Sir, I cannot say for certain that there is or is not.

We have said what we have tried to do to purge all of the inventory. I cannot give you any better answer than that, sir.

Mr. GILMAN. Why have some units not received the advisories regarding this defective equipment?

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mand. And if the chain of command—if there was a failure of communication there, sir, I do not know how to address that.

Mr. GILMAN. Well, again to the entire panel. If there is defective

equipment out there and if the unit commanders are not trying to

cleanse that defective equipment from their units, don’t you have

some responsibility to make certain that our troops are going to be

out on the battlefield without defective equipment?

And again I address that to the entire panel. You folks are in

charge of providing decent equipment. And you said it in your testimony, your major objective is to make certain that our troops have

the kind of equipment they need.

General BOND. Mr. Gilman, we do take this very seriously. And

I can speak personally from personal experience. But I can also tell

from my current job that the Program Manager, working through

the Defense Logistics Agency, makes inventories, goes out and

checks with the unit commanders, tries to find and identify these

stocks that have not been turned in, tries to make sure that these

bulletins are provided to the commanders.

I think that the Defense Logistics Agency’s incentive programs

have made it to these commanders that are looking for ways in

which to further their capabilities, by turning this in, can acquire

additional resources, is a great way to try to do it, and a help that

the GAO and other audit agencies, even within our own internal

IG ranks, have gone out and tried to identify within these units—

those units which have failed to provide or return these, and turn

in these defective garments.

We will continue to do that. We are not going to give up on it,

Congressman.

Mr. GILMAN. General Bond, we are approaching E-Day here, or

whatever day you want to call it, when we are going to be confronting Iraq. We have 250,000 defective units that are not identified or

found in our inventories.

Aren’t you fellows concerned about that?

General BOND. Yes, sir. And we will continue to work to try to

identify any of those.

I tend to agree with Mr. Allen that most of these, if not all, have

been purged out of the system through the normal training process.

Yes, there are probably—the possibility that some may be lingering

out there. But I would almost guarantee from personal experience

that they would not be in high priority units. They would have to

be in a unit that was not training all of the time, for which those

kind of stocks were not brought up.

Mr. GILMAN. GAO has stated that some of them may be lingering

in the warehouses, but you need some manpower to identify them.

Why aren’t we applying that?

General BOND. The warehouses you would have to discuss with

Mr. Allen.

Mr. GILMAN. Well, Mr. Allen, what do you say about that?

Mr. ALLEN. We have turned in all of the suits that—all the suits

that we have received, we have segregated or are or are in the

process of destroying them, so they cannot fall into the hands of

soldiers who might inadvertently use them, thinking that they

were going to be protected.

The warehouses——

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Mr. SHAYS. Will the gentleman yield?

Why wouldn’t we take those that are defective, clearly mark

them, put a big X on them or whatever, and use them for training?

Why would we destroy them?

Mr. ALLEN. We went through a significant discussion on exactly

that point, sir; and given the sensitivity of those items, we decided

to take the ones which were defective and destroy them so that

there would be no possibility that they would ever, in any way, find

their way into someone’s hands. It was absolutely a conscious decision. It was not made lightly.

Mr. SHAYS. The sad thing about that decision, though, because

you could make it so noticeable that you wouldn’t have to ever fear

they would be used improperly. I am constantly being asked to appropriate more money and to—we, the committee, Members of Congress, to make sure that our troops practice with live ordnance.

We also want to make sure that they practice—I don’t mean

practice—that they train with live ordnance, that they train with

equipment that is the same equipment that they would use in the

battle. And, to me, this is nonsensical, what you just told me, that

they would destroy it.

Mr. ALLEN. Sir, one of—in accordance with that exact thought,

we took the ones that—the suits that were not determined to be

defective, but had been—had expired shelf life. And we do use

those suits for training only; we take them out of their vacuumsealed bags, we mark them very clearly with big black ink ‘‘For

Training Only.’’ But we chose not to do that with the suits which

were determined to be defective, because we simply didn’t want

any possibility that they might be used.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Mr. Gilman.

Mr. GILMAN. What are your comments, then, about GAO’s report

that there is still 250,000 defective pieces of equipment that have

not been identified or found? What is your response to that?

Mr. ALLEN. The response, sir, is that I can reiterate the actions

that we have taken to attempt to identify, to account for——

Mr. GILMAN. Have you accounted for the 250,000?

Mr. ALLEN. We have accounted for 550,000 out of the 800 that

we did issue over the past 10 years. We have not accounted for the

250,000 which were issued and have not been turned in.

Mr. GILMAN. So what are we doing to account for those?

Mr. ALLEN. As recently as last month we provided another notice

to all of the military customers through the military services to

turn those suits in if they had them out there, to screen their inventories again, turn them in. We provided transportation funds

to—for them to utilize so that they could do it at no cost, is one

of the ways that we attempted to incentivize them to turn that material in, should it be found out there.

Mr. GILMAN. I’m asking our entire panel, are you satisfied that

tomorrow, if we go to battle with Iraq, that there would be no defective equipment out on the battlefield?

Mr. ALLEN. I think there’s a very low degree of risk of defective

suits out on the battlefield, sir.

Mr. GILMAN. Despite the fact that you can’t locate 250,000 of

these defective units.

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Mr. ALLEN. That is my assessment, sir.

Mr. GILMAN. I address our other panelists.

What are your thoughts about that? There’s 250,000 defective

pieces of equipment that haven’t been located. Are you assured

that these—that these are not out on the battlefield?

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. I don’t think there is a perfect assurance

if that’s what this committee is looking for.

I’m personally appreciative of the comments that were provided

earlier by the GAO and the DOD IG on the effort that would be

needed to individually account for every single item in the inventory. I cannot tell you this morning whether the DOD is prepared

to undertake that level of assessment or not.

I do share your concern. I would be very upset if an individual

service member were to go into an environment facing chemical

and biological weapons in defective gear. None of us on this panel,

none of us from the Department of Defense would like to face a situation like that.

And I want to assure you that I certainly support the DLA in

their efforts to make an assessment of the inventory, and we will

continue to pursue that until we are satisfied.

Mr. GILMAN. Well, I hope you will. This is an imminent situation

that could happen tomorrow, next week. And yet we have some

250,000 defective suits out there that should be removed from the

hostile area. And I hope that you’re going to find a way to do that.

I direct that to all of the panelists.

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. Sir, I would just like to clarify that the

number is somewhere between zero and 250,000. I don’t know that

any of us today can tell you that there are 250,000 defective suits

anywhere in the——

Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Allen just testified, out of the 800,000 you

found, about 500,000, so it must be in that range.

Any other comments by any of our other panelists with regard

to our query?

If not, my final urgent message is, let’s get rid of these defective

units and not allow our troops to be out on the battlefield with defective body suits.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Gilman.

Mr. Kucinich, you have the floor. I’d like to welcome our two

Members, Ms. Schakowsky and Mr. Allen, who are both welcome.

I know they have been very busy on other things, but happy to

have you here.

Mr. Kucinich.

Mr. KUCINICH. In the testimony by the IG’s office, they said that

the Defense Logistics Agency reported to us that they believe that

the 250,000 unaccounted-for overgarments that are at issue here

were issued, worn and disposed of.

Now Dr. Winegar just said that the number is anywhere from

zero to 250,000.

There’s a contrast here with the IG’s report and the Defense Logistics Agency’s account. Do you want to reconcile it?

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. Sir, I believe that the DLA testimony

was that, of 800,000 items that were determined to be defective,

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they have made a positive accounting for 550,000 of those at this

time.

Is that correct, Mr. Allen?

Mr. ALLEN. Yes, ma’am.

Mr. KUCINICH. I’m asking the questions here. So I would like to

say that we’re on the record saying there are 250,000 unaccountedfor suits. You’re saying it could be anywhere from zero to 250,000,

but it could be 250,000?

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. That’s correct.

Mr. KUCINICH. OK.

At the end of the last panel, Mr. Decker of the GAO said that

the Defense Department had been extremely slow in reviewing

GAO’s work for classification concerns. He said this process has

slowed to the point that sensitive and timely GAO reports that relate directly to this chemical and biological area are being significantly delayed, in some cases, by as much as 2 or 3 months.

So, Doctor, why is the Defense Department slowing and delaying

its review of GAO reports regarding chemical and biological

vulnerabilities?

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. Sir, I’d like to say for the record that I

do not believe the Department is deliberately slowing its review of

any such reports. I think this attests to the fact that we are taking

the issue very seriously and providing a very thorough and very

comprehensive review by many different offices within the Department of Defense. And that does require a certain amount of time

so that each and every individual who brings their own area of expertise to bear on the question does have adequate time to provide

that level of review.

Mr. KUCINICH. Now, the people at this table, the Defense Department’s top experts on chemical and biological dangers, is the cause

of the delays in reviewing the GAO reports, is this the panel that’s

the cause of it?

You want to answer? You could go right down the line, yes or no.

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. Sir, my office is one of many offices

that’s provided an opportunity to review and comment on the GAO

report; and depending on the length and the complexity of that report, as I said, I think it is incumbent upon to us provide our very

best assessments of that.

I hope you’ll appreciate the workload that all of us have and the

care and consideration which we want to give to this report. I can

only speak personally from my own office. I do not have direct control over many other offices in the Department of Defense who do

the security review, who do the intelligence assessment, etc.

Mr. KUCINICH. I’m going to say that your answer is nonresponsive.

Now, this is a serious concern. The GAO is Congress’ investigative arm, and we rely on them to provide us with critical information on vulnerabilities and dangers which the servicemen and

women serving this country face. We depend on them for independent and unbiased reporting.

Now, Mr. Chairman, at the start of the hearing, we heard Mr.

Schmitz, the Inspector General, make an offer to this committee to

investigate any irregularities or improper actions by the Defense

Department in their classification procedure. I mean, in view of the

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fact that we have Mr. Decker stating that the Defense Department’s been extremely slow in reviewing GAO’s work for classification concerns, and since there is a question here of timeliness and

GAO reports that relate directly to chemical and biological preparedness, and since we know they’re being significantly delayed,

and since this panel and the gentlelady have not made a case for

the reason for the delay, and considering the critical nature of this

moment, when this country may well be at the threshold of sending

our men and women into a region where biological and chemical

weapons could be used, it seems to me that this subcommittee

should request that the Inspector General investigate and report on

the claims that the GAO made.

I just want to offer this for the consideration of the Chair and

the members of this committee, because it seems that this is a matter that needs to be pursued.

Now, Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. SHAYS. Four minutes.

Mr. KUCINICH. There is a finding, Doctor, in the GAO’s unclassified report that is particularly troubling. On page 8 they describe

a situation in which the Pentagon is ‘‘understating the real risk,’’

to our service members. Let me ask you a quick series of questions

on this.

First of all, do you concede that the Defense Department has understated the real risk? I’m directing it to Dr. Winegar.

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. I think that you have to put the estimation of the risk in the proper context. And I’d appreciate if could

you read the entire sentence.

Mr. KUCINICH. This is from page 8 of the GAO report.

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. Sir, I was not provided a copy of that report until this morning.

Mr. SHAYS. Excuse me. This is a statement, the report is—this

is the statement of the GAO before us.

Mr. KUCINICH. Since you haven’t been provided with a copy, I’m

going to read from the copy.

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. Sir, I would like to enter into the record

that we did ask for an advance copy of this, so that I could be prepared to answer your questions; and no copy was provided until

this morning.

Mr. KUCINICH. But may I ask, in reply, whether or not it would

be appropriate to ask you to answer questions based on things that

are certainly within your operational knowledge.

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. Certainly.

Mr. KUCINICH. OK.

The GAO said that we reported that the—they’re citing previous

circumstances where they found that the DOD had inaccurately reported the risk in most cases as low. And having reported that the

process for determining risk is fundamentally flawed because, one,

the DOD determines requirements by individual pieces of protective equipment—suits, masks, breathing filters, gloves, boots and

hoods—rather than by the number of complete protective ensembles that can be deployed to the service members; and they go on

to say, No. 2, the process for determining risk combines individual

service requirements and reported inventory data into general catVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:00 Aug 05, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00144 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\88612.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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egories, masking specific critical shortages that affect individual

service readiness.

And he goes on to conclude, had DOD assessed the risk on the

basis of the number of complete ensembles it had available by service, the risk would have risen to ‘‘high’’ for all the services.

So, the question comes again, do you concede that the Department of Defense has understated the real risk?

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. I agree with the GAO’s assessment of

how the risk should be calculated. I also agree that this is the GAO

assessment of what the risk would be if that recalculation were

done.

The Department of Defense is in the process of redoing that calculation ourselves, and I agree that it will probably change from

our previous recommendation.

Mr. KUCINICH. So you’re redoing the calculation?

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. That’s correct.

Mr. KUCINICH. We’re at the threshold possibly of an invasion of

Iraq and the calculations are being redone. That’s fine.

Now do you concede, as the GAO does, that the data the Department has used is fundamentally flawed?

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. No, I do not.

Mr. KUCINICH. Do you concede that the Department has quoting

from the GAO, ‘‘inaccurately reported the risk in most cases as

low?’’

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. That relates to the method that was

used for calculating the risk, and I have already agreed that we

agree now with the GAO on a different way to calculate the risk.

Mr. KUCINICH. That’s fine. Then do you—rather than low risk, do

you agree with the GAO that, in fact, the risk is high?

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. I’m not prepared to say that it’s high.

I’m prepared to say that it is probably different than our original

calculation.

Mr. KUCINICH. So it’s not low.

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. Probably not.

Mr. KUCINICH. And because you know it’s not low, you’re recalculating. Could it be high?

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. It could be.

Mr. KUCINICH. OK. Why does the DOD insist on ignoring the

GAO and making statements like those made by General Myers in

which, obviously, the risk is being understated, the risk to our

servicemen and women is being understated?

Why does the GAO make statements like that, since this is something that is so important? We’re talking about the security of our

men and women.

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. I think that the GAO’s statement relates

to one particular item, and in this particular case we’re talking

about the protective ensemble for chemical/biological defense. Without knowing General Myers’ entire statement and, again, putting

that into the proper context, I believe that the availability and

readiness of chemical/biological protective ensembles is but one

piece of the overall assessment of readiness.

Mr. KUCINICH. One piece is the suit itself, correct?

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. That’s correct.

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Mr. KUCINICH. If there are holes in the suit and tears in the

seams, is that of concern to you?

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. Absolutely.

Mr. KUCINICH. There’s 250,000 of those suits, is that correct, that

are out there?

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. Yes.

Mr. KUCINICH. You don’t know where they are; is that correct?

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. That’s correct.

Mr. KUCINICH. OK. But the DOD has claimed, miraculously, even

though they don’t know where those suits are, that they’ve all been

accounted for, that they’ve all been issued, worn, and disposed of.

So, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your generosity with the time. I

have another set of questions if we get to that point. Thanks.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

We have Mr. Tierney.

Mr. Tierney, you have the floor.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. I’d like to see that my colleagues get

an opportunity to question. I want to be brief.

Which one of you folks would be dealing with training? Would

that be you, Mr. Parker?

Mr. PARKER. Mr. Tierney, I’m really connected with the acquisition side as well. I think of the panel members here, that their current capacities—we’re lacking someone who’s addressed training as

a functional speciality.

Mr. TIERNEY. All right. Certainly cramps one’s style of question,

doesn’t it?

General GOLDFEIN. Perhaps not.

In this Joint Requirements Office that I indicated to you earlier

we have just formed up and are looking forward to new ways of developing requirements for the Department, training falls in a category of activities that we’ll look at. I’d be happy to attempt to follow through, then, with whatever your question is.

Mr. TIERNEY. Let me ask you, I don’t want to put you at a disadvantage on that, but I’m curious to know, in your opinion then,

are you able to make an assessment as to whether or not an adequate number of people have been trained—men and women have

been trained for involvement in a venture that might take to us

Iraq?

General GOLDFEIN. I would not be able to judge that overall picture, sir, but what I can tell you perhaps is a couple of other

points. One relates to Mr. Gilman’s earlier question.

There is a very consistent process of reporting from levels of command all the way down to fairly small units. You’ve heard of the

name, it’s another one of our acronyms, it’s a SORT, status of readiness and training of units. And an item that has been required in

that category now for the past, I believe about 11⁄2 years, has been

the status of the chem/bio defense equipment that a unit has and

the status of the training of the unit.

So I think it would be safe to draw the conclusion that if a unit

reported its status as fully capable, which would include equipment

and training; and if, in fact, a series of units were selected to participate in any activity—the one that you mentioned could be one

of those—and all of them had reported ‘‘ready,’’ then, in fact, everyone who showed up would be prepared to deal with the situation.

143

Mr. TIERNEY. And I guess what I’m getting at is, we’re not quite

sure yet whether everybody that would be asked to show up would

meet that criterion of readiness. That’s what I was getting at, but

I’m not sure you’re able to answer that.

General GOLDFEIN. I’m not able to answer that question.

Mr. TIERNEY. Should we be concerned, General, with the fact we

recently fairly conducted the Millennium Challenge 2002, the warfare scenarios, that mocked the situation that we might expect to

find in a possible war with Iraq, that during those exercises we did

not get involved at all with any lethal biological or chemical agents

or any scenarios under which those would be launched against our

troops in terms of readiness and training? Wouldn’t we expect that

kind of a mock exercise would, in fact, engage in those types of activities so that we could assess our training level and our performance level?

General GOLDFEIN. Yes, sir. I would answer in two ways.

First, I’m not personally familiar with Millennium Challenge, so

it would be improper for me to attempt to judge that. I just don’t

know what was involved in the exercise.

I will tell you from general experience, though, that we never get

everything done in every exercise; but in a collection of exercises,

over time, we get at everything.

It could well be that this particular one was focused for some

reason on some area, and that there is another exercise of great

import that was conducted to cover that subject. And again, I

would speak to my own experience in various combat units.

Mr. TIERNEY. I say this not to engage you necessarily, but just

for the record, because I’m reading off of reports about those exercises that basically indicate that Paul Van Riper, who is the retired

Marine lieutenant general who was playing the Millennium military commander at that time, fully anticipated that he was going

to be able to use them; and he asked to use chemical weapons and

he was refused on that.

And so it seems that, clearly, there was something—at least it

was anticipated that they were trying to do a full exercise of what

might have been met at that point in time and were refused.

I have some concerns of that, but I clearly don’t want to put you

at a disadvantage.

Mr. Chairman, I know I sent a letter to you asking whether or

not we would have the opportunity to question people that might

have been engaged with that exercise. Do you know whether or not

we’re going to be able to do that and when?

Mr. SHAYS. The gentleman has asked the question. I don’t think

in the next month, only because we may be here only 2 weeks and

we already have schedules.

But if you’re asking me, should we have a hearing, absolutely.

I would be prepared, even if I’m in a minority, to have a hearing

next year or this year. When we get back, I’d be happy to work on

a hearing with the gentleman.

Mr. TIERNEY. My only concern is, I certainly would think we

would want to do it sooner rather than later, because we want to

know why people are stopped from exploring those avenues at a

time when we definitely ought to be able to see whether or not

we’re prepared.

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Mr. SHAYS. In terms of two things, we wanted to focus in on the

issues we’re focusing in on now. The people you asked originally

could not come today.

But the bottom line is, you have identified a very logical hearing

for this committee, and I would be happy to work with you to have

one. Obviously, I know the sooner the better. I can just tell you,

though, if I’m not here in the next 2 weeks I’m not going to be here

the next 5 weeks.

Mr. TIERNEY. Just, Mr. Allen, a question on the number of

suits—I don’t want to beat that question to death—the number of

suits that are in our inventory now, protective gear, I thought I

heard you say 1.5 million.

Mr. ALLEN. No. In fact, perhaps I can help clarify the whole issue

of the unaccounted-for suits.

If you go back to 1989, when the first defective suits were produced by a company named Isratex, since that time we have issued

several million suits to the military services for use in Desert

Storm, Bosnia, etc. Of those several million suits that were issued

over that period of time, up to today, 800,000 were Isratex suits.

Of those several million suits, 1.5 million are new JSLIST suits.

Mr. TIERNEY. Are you saying several or seven?

Mr. ALLEN. Several. I’m going to try to step you through the

whole process in an attempt to clarify the issue of where we are

with respect to accountability for suits.

We have issued several million, I would estimate 6 to 8 million

suits over that period of time. Of those several million suits,

800,000 are Isratex suits. Of those several million suits, another

1.5 million were current new JSLIST suits. The balance were other

BDOs by other manufacturers.

There are—we can clearly tell there are about 4 million suits in

the system today. So some millions of suits have been consumed.

Some hundreds of thousands or millions of suits have been consumed since 1989.

Because we went through such a rigorous process on multiple occasions to recall the very specific suits which were found to be defective, and because we know that there have been consumed 3 to

4 million suits over that period of time, we have a relatively high

level of confidence that we have captured the defective Isratex

suits.

The problem that we stand before this committee with is, we cannot account for the Isratex suits on a one-for-one basis. There is—

short of some individual putting their eye on every single suit in

the system today, we would not be able to ever make that statement.

I hope that clarifies what——

Mr. TIERNEY. It helps. I want to thank you, but it still gets us

to the number, of the 800,000 Isratex suits, 250,000 have yet to be

accounted for. And you’re assuming that someplace between zero

and 250,000 have washed out in the general usage of training

and——

Mr. ALLEN. That is exactly correct, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. So 30 to 250,000 leaves us with a pretty high margin, leaves us with anywhere between as high as 16 percent of our

145

suits that are out there, if it’s a whole 250,000. So that would be

pretty dramatic.

It would seem to me that somewhere—Dr. Winegar, probably

starting with you and through Mr. Allen on down—somebody

would have the responsibility to then say, I want those 250,000

suits, and here’s the plan; and move it down there.

So what is the plan to get those 250,000 suits, identify them, and

take them off the shelf?

Mr. ALLEN. At this point, we have repeatedly gone out to the

services through the communications channels and asked for a 100

percent identification of those suits, and we think we have recovered all of them.

Mr. TIERNEY. If you counted them, you’re 250,000 short, so you

know you haven’t got them all. Because I assume you went out and

asked for them, you counted the number you got a response for,

and that’s how you got from the 800,000 down to 250, right?

Mr. ALLEN. If the suits had been consumed, they can’t identify

them to us, they can’t turn them in to us.

Mr. TIERNEY. You have no way of telling whether they’ve been

consumed or not. Your problem is, you don’t know whether the people on the unit level are being responsive or not; you don’t know—

in identifying them, you don’t know if they can. So until those suits

go out by just—by the fact of expiring or something of that nature,

you’re not ever going to be certain.

Mr. ALLEN. We will never be able to make positive identification

unless we can actually put our hands on the 250,000 suits.

Mr. TIERNEY. When would be the last expiration date of those

suits? How long are they anticipated to live?

Mr. ALLEN. Let me think for 1 minute.

The last—the final expiration dates for the suits purchased in

the 1989 contract would be this year or next year; and 2 years

hence for the suits manufactured in the 1992 contract, or 3 years

hence.

Mr. TIERNEY. When the expiration date comes, do you have just

a regular routine with—those suits are then taken off the shelf,

marked training units and moved on?

Mr. ALLEN. Yes, and it’s the same routine we use to identify

suits that we want to recall.

Mr. TIERNEY. So we won’t be certain for a number—for another

several years that we’ve got them all. The only way we’ll be certain

is when that time period comes and you have some certainty that

all of the manufactured suits for those particular years have been

marked ‘‘training,’’ taken off the shelf and used for training only?

Mr. ALLEN. Yes, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. And you have in place now a system where we

thought—I was taking note of Mr. Decker’s chart indicating that

the expiration date seems to be happening at one pace and the replacement rate at another. We have some plan in place, I hope, to

make sure that we get those numbers up.

Can you tell us what that is and what you’re doing?

Mr. ALLEN. Yes. We have a—we’ve done a number of things to

increase the capacity to produce suits. We have added manufacturers and we’ve added—one of the limiters for producing suits is the

liner itself, the lining material. We’ve added—there’s a separate

146

plant now in production, and we’re looking at another manufacturer of that as well in an attempt to increase our production capacity.

We are replacing suits at a rate which today could replace——

Mr. SHAYS. Would the gentleman just yield a second? It’s a timely response. Are these domestic manufacturers or are they overseas?

Mr. ALLEN. The end-item manufacturers are all domestic manufacturers. The liner material itself is originally made by a plant in

Germany, who has established a second plant in the United States;

and we are looking at an additional manufacturer of a comparable

material to establish itself in the United States.

Mr. SHAYS. Are any suits made overseas?

Mr. ALLEN. No suits are made overseas.

Mr. SHAYS. Any materials made overseas?

Mr. ALLEN. Yes, some material made overseas.

Mr. SHAYS. If I hadn’t asked you that second point about suits

and gone to the material, would you have volunteered that the material was made overseas?

Mr. ALLEN. Certainly if it came up in the conversation. I

mean——

Mr. SHAYS. I mean, sometimes we always think that——

Mr. ALLEN. It is not an issue that I have any concern about revealing, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. In this day and age of terrorism, I have a concern

about where they’re made.

Mr. ALLEN. We do too, sir, which is why we’re looking to expand

our industrial capacity to operate solely on our own.

Mr. SHAYS. That’s why it’s pertinent that they are in fact being

made overseas, the material.

The gentleman’s light has been on for a while.

Mr. TIERNEY. One more question.

Dr. Winegar, we talked about the process for assessing risk, and

you agreed that it was somewhat flawed and you were going to

take corrective measures to come up with new risk assessments.

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. That’s correct.

Mr. TIERNEY. When do you think that will be fully implemented,

so you’re able to look at all of—the entire ensemble, as Mr. Decker

was saying, and give us an assessment as whether it’s low risk, no

risk, medium risk or high risk?

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. We’re certainly in the process of doing

that now. It would be no later than when we submit our next annual report to Congress, which would be early February, but hopefully before that.

Mr. TIERNEY. When you say, ‘‘hopefully before that,’’ the end of

this year, or just like January instead of February.

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. Hopefully, by the end of this year.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m going to recognize myself and yield in a second

to Mr. Platts.

One of the previous hearings we had on the whole issue of what

terrorists could do in our ports, both our boat ports and our container ports. We also had a hearing on how we ship our own military hardware overseas; and 90 percent of what we ship goes

147

over—what we send overseas, 90 percent, we learned, goes by nonU.S. carriers, which is of concern.

And that’s—I’m, you know, happy that you’re identifying this

concern as well, wanting to make sure something so important is

made in the United States.

I am wrestling with—before I tell what you I’m wrestling with,

I will go with Mr. Platts. Then I’ll see how much time I can wrestle

with what I have left.

Mr. Platts.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll be brief. I actually

just want to followup Mr. Tierney’s line of questioning with Mr.

Allen.

In trying to get an understanding about this 250,000, if I took

your answer correctly, you’re saying that you don’t have your

hands on this number up to 250,000, but what you have done is,

through the chain of command been informed that every unit that’s

been issued these has checked all of their suits, have not found any

more of the defective manufactured suits?

Mr. ALLEN. That’s correct, sir.

Mr. PLATTS. So you have pursued it?

Mr. ALLEN. Multiple times, sir.

Mr. PLATTS. So the people out with the individual units have

come back, are you able to confirm that every unit has responded

in that, yes, we’ve done the review, personally looked at every—

what type of communication has come back?

Mr. ALLEN. We went out through the military services, and they

would be the ones that would certify or, if you will, hear from all

of their units. As far as we know, all of their units have reported

back to them, according to the information we have been provided

by the military services.

We work through their chain of command.

Mr. PLATTS. Would any other panelists be able to comment further about that aspect of the actual checking of the suits?

General GOLDFEIN. Sir, I’ll give you a personal experience.

I came to this duty having previously been commander of one of

our largest fighter wings. We often received very clear instruction

to search for a particular lot or a particular suit. We very closely

control all of these items, and we had a very straightforward procedure to go through.

Then we had a reporting requirement back, that I referenced earlier to Mr. Tierney’s question. And through that process, we went—

again, I’m speaking from my own experience, but I would be very

comfortable betting that other units operated in exactly the same

way.

Mr. PLATTS. Given that it would be a life-preserving—kind of like

making sure your gun is well cleaned and operating, it would be

something that would be taken very seriously by the people on the

front lines.

General GOLDFEIN. Yes, sir, absolutely.

Again, we exercised—speaking for the wing I commanded, we exercised often. I have countless hours wearing the equipment, days.

And in every exercise we always had a series of inputs that would

force us through this problem.

148

I can recall on the top when the Air Combat Command inspector

inspected my wing, we had at least three times where we were

tasked with a defective something to see if, A, can we recognize we

have a tasking; B, how did we process it; C, how did we get the

young folks out of the wrong stuff and into the right stuff; D, how

did we report it or destroy equipment or pass it where it’s supposed

to be passed.

This is a very routine experience in my experience.

Mr. PLATTS. So back to that typical, normal process, back to DLA

is what you’ve been told by each of the services, they’ve done that

review. And my understanding is, this specific manufacturer’s suit

would be clearly identifiable if a suit was looked at.

Mr. ALLEN. Yes, sir.

Mr. PLATTS. There wouldn’t——

Mr. ALLEN. There would be no question. We identify them by

contract number, so people can easily read the number on the

package and identify that suit.

Mr. PLATTS. Would the suit itself, like if it was——

Mr. ALLEN. Let me—just the suit itself—that’s OK.

The suit itself is vacuum packed. It looks like a miniature green

duffle bag that’s been shrink-wrapped. It’s about so big, about so

big around. And it has the contract number on it, I believe.

Mr. PLATTS. On that individual pack?

Mr. ALLEN. On every pack. So it would be easily identifiable.

Mr. PLATTS. Is it accurate to say, what we’re asking you to account for, the 250,000, is asking you to kind of prove a negative in

the sense of, if they’ve been destroyed, you’ll never be able to prove

you have all 250,000, because if you’ve looked at them, you can say,

we’ve looked at all the ones we have, none of those are in the

250,000 lots that we’re looking for. So the best answer you can give

is that, you know, we’ve proven that they’re not in our possession,

but you can’t prove what happened to them.

Mr. ALLEN. That’s exactly correct, sir.

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

Mr. SHAYS. I think what I’m going to do is have my own full

time. So I consider that Mr. Platts’ time.

And we’ll go right now to Ms. Watson.

Ms. WATSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me

apologize for not being here for this part of the panel. But I am

concerned, from the first panel, about if we are really prepared.

And so let me ask of any one of you that would like to answer,

what can our suits do, and can they protect against the lethal biological weapons that we believe Saddam Hussein has at the current

time? And can we cover the necessary number of troops that will

be there on the ground?

Mr. PARKER. Ms. Watson, the suits are qualified against a requirement document which specifies what the suit or the protective

ensemble has to meet as criteria. That’s driven out of a threat

analysis looking at a broad array of threats.

The threat that Iraq might present is well within the operational

requirement characteristics of the ensemble, whether that’s the

lightweight ensemble or the battle dress overgarment ensemble.

It’s very rigorously tested against it.

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In fact, the criteria were developed against the Soviet Union, a

much more rigorous threat than a country like Iraq could present,

or probably any other country in the world at this point in time.

So I would say emphatically that the suits can—the protective

ensembles can meet or exceed any threat that the Iraqis could

present, when employed by a trained force and properly maintained in the use environment.

The quantity of suits that are available, if you’re speaking specifically against the Iraqi circumstance——

Ms. WATSON. Yes.

Mr. PARKER. The quantities of the suits that are available in the

inventory, given the likely size of the force that has been talked

about—at least in the newspapers, let me put it that way—is more

than enough to deal with the demands of that type of a warfight.

Ms. WATSON. I continue to hear it being said that Saddam Hussein possesses chemicals and biological weapons that are deadly,

and he has used them on his own people. Let me say then, in light

what we heard from the first panel that did risk assessments, there

are 250,000 suits that are missing, and they feel that at this point

there still is risk in terms of the protective suiting.

So let me ask this, is it General Bond?

General BOND. Yes, ma’am.

Ms. WATSON. Let’s just sum up everything we’ve heard this

morning and afternoon. Would you advise the commander in chief

to send our troops today into that highly, shall I say, dangerous

chemical and biological environment that we have been told on a

daily basis is awaiting us?

General BOND. Ma’am, that’s really not my forte right now. But

I can give you my personal belief in knowing from my 32 years of

experience, extensive tours in Korea in dealing with this.

Ms. WATSON. That’s acceptable.

General BOND. I feel we can meet the threat that’s out there

with an acceptable risk. Can we do everything? We’ll never know

whether we’ll be fully prepared. But I know from personal experience, the training that we undergo and the training that we give

our soldiers and what they’re undergoing right now today, as we

prepare for what the likelihood—that we feel that this is one of the

highest criteria categories of training that they’re undergoing, and

that I feel assured, if it was my son or daughter out there, that

they would be protected.

Ms. WATSON. Did we have this technology during the Gulf war?

General BOND. Not to the extent that we have. We’ve made significant progress since the Gulf war from where we are today.

Could we have gone further? Yes.

You know, there are a lot of things we could have done, knowing

what we know today. But my personal experience is, I think—given

the information that we had and the way that we have moved forward, I think in this area of technology and where we’ve made

great strides.

Ms. WATSON. I have to be constantly reminded that many of the

veterans came back concerned of a lowered health condition. I am

recalling the Vietnam veterans and Agent Orange and so on. And

for years, our government denied that these conditions did exist,

and might have been a result of biological and chemical warfare.

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And anyone that would like to answer, are all of you comfortable

with sending our sons and daughters over in this environment with

what we have today?

Mr. PARKER. Ms. Watson, I’ve worn predecessor versions of the

current fielded equipment more than a dozen times in an immediately lethal environment with nerve agent sarin. Older forms of

military equipment, more than a dozen times, in an environment

that would have killed you within minutes. And I am absolutely

confident that the versions we have in the field now are more than

adequate to address the threat, without question.

Ms. WATSON. Could I quote you?

Mr. PARKER. Absolutely.

Ms. WATSON. All right. Because it seems to me that our veterans

had tremendous trouble and are still having trouble, and I would

like my constituents to be assured that—and it will be my constituents that will be on the front line; I guarantee you that—assured

that when they send their sons and daughters, that their sons and

daughters will be well protected, and their offspring in the future.

And we’re finding that this has not been the case in the past.

And for me to support us going in on a preemptive strike, I want

to be sure we’re not putting—we’re already putting our people into

harm’s way, but I want to be sure the side effects of the chemical

and biological warfare will not be the deadly touch.

I will quote you. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. I would like to recognize myself now.

Mr. Allen, I—and, kind of, I’ll consider you bookends here, Ms.

Winegar as well—I view you as being in charge of the entire chemical/biological program of the U.S. Government defense. Is that the

way I should view you?

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. Well, that’s a tremendous responsibility,

and thank you for the compliment. I do have——

Mr. SHAYS. Just give me a short answer. Tell me your responsibility. If you want to define it more narrowly, do it, but fairly

quickly.

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. My responsibility is for research development and acquisition of chemical and biological defensive equipment.

The responsibility for training, etc., is that of the services in accordance with their Title X responsibilities.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Allen seemed to be passing the ball back to you

as it related to inventory. If I heard him properly in his statement,

I think he was saying that was your responsibility.

Is inventory your responsibility?

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. No, sir, I do not consider it my responsibility.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Allen, did I hear you incorrectly.

Mr. ALLEN. I didn’t intend to imply that Ms. Winegar was responsible for inventory. What DLA is responsible for is procurement and distribution of these items of supply; and part of that

procurement is the quality control and where we have——

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just clarify. Distribution means you put is it

somewhere, you give it—in other words, you send it somewhere?

Mr. ALLEN. There are two levels of distribution sir. One level of

distribution is in the DLA warehouses where we maintain equipVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:00 Aug 05, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00154 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\88612.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ment on behalf of the military services, in the DOD supply depos,

if you will.

Mr. SHAYS. DOD?

Mr. ALLEN. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. And that’s your responsibility?

Mr. ALLEN. That is our responsibility. There are—there is—some

portion of this equipment is sent to the deploying services, so that

they can train with it.

Mr. SHAYS. I hear you.

Mr. ALLEN. They can deploy with it, etc. And that portion of the

supplies is the responsibility of the military services.

Mr. SHAYS. So it your statement that none of the 250,000 potential defective gear is in any of your warehouses?

Mr. ALLEN. That’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS. So now what you’re basically saying to us is that

you’ve sent it out into the field. Is it your responsibility to try to

locate it?

Mr. ALLEN. We, in conjunction with the program manager, have

attempted to locate all——

Mr. SHAYS. That’s not what I asked. I didn’t ask that what you’ve

attempted to. I just want someone to take ownership.

You know, in my office, if two people take ownership, no one has

ownership. I always make sure that someone has ownership.

I found your statement in the beginning and your answers to the

first questions alarming, and I wanted to jump in; and now I’ve

waited my chance. I felt you were very cavalier in your answers,

and now I’m trying to understand why it seems so cavalier.

I’ll also say something to you. I come with a bias. I come with

a bias that says, you know—I would say to my dad, you know, I

just didn’t remember, you know; and he would tell me, remember

to be home at a certain time. He said, Well, I’ll give you a little

incentive; if you don’t get home by 10 tomorrow, you can’t go out

of this house for a month.

Now, you know what? That was an incentive. I didn’t say I

couldn’t remember the next time. I made sure I remembered.

I’m trying to figure out who’s responsible and who can provide

the incentive. For instance, this may seem extreme, but if I happen

to feel, and others happen to feel, that defective suits are potentially endangering our troops; and we then spread the word out to

the field, and the field ignores us, what happens if you said, You’ll

be court-martialed if you ignore it? Would the field ignore you

then? No.

I mean, that’s pretty extreme, but we were court-martialing people because they didn’t want to take anthrax even though they felt

it would potentially harm them. So we were willing to be pretty

strong when we wanted to be. So we had this incentive, this system

of trying to provide rewards.

I guess what I’m having a hard time understanding is, if you

have dangerous equipment out there, you want to know where it

is and you want it out of there. Now—so I want to know, do you

take ownership of the responsibility to make sure we can get this

defective equipment?

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Mr. ALLEN. Sir, before I answer that I have to apologize if I gave

you the impression that I was being cavalier. That was absolutely

not my intent. I take this very seriously.

I would tell you that 34 years ago, I went in the service, and the

chemical suits we wore were ponchos—not very protective. On top

of that, though, I would tell you that DLA is not responsible for

equipment that is owned by the military services. And once we give

equipment to the military services and they use it for training or

they use it for deployment——

Mr. SHAYS. Who is not responsible, again?

Mr. ALLEN. Defense Logistics Agency is not responsible for military equipment that is owned by the military services.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. So tell me who is.

Mr. ALLEN. The military services are responsible for equipment

they purchase to use to execute their mission, as part of their Title

X responsibilities.

Mr. SHAYS. So I’m going to know that, by the book, that’s true

and I accept that. But the bottom line is, you want to make sure

they get good equipment, correct?

Mr. ALLEN. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. So you, or partly you, your agency, were partly responsible for giving them defective equipment?

Mr. ALLEN. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. So there’s got to be some kind of responsibility that,

my God, we gave——

Mr. ALLEN. Yes, sir, there is.

Mr. SHAYS. So I’m going to accept the fact that while technically

you don’t have responsibility, you have to feel that you have some

obligation here to try to take care of this problem.

Mr. ALLEN. That’s correct, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

What I’m trying to then understand is, did your answer in the

beginning just stem from the frustrations of not feeling as a civilian that you’re getting the respect from the military folk that you

need in order to have them pay attention to these notices?

Mr. ALLEN. No, sir. Again, I obviously conveyed an impression to

you that was not intended on my part and apologize for that. My

answer in the beginning was an attempt to explain that what we

are responsible for is the procurement and distribution of these

items of supply, and that where we do store it on behalf of the military services——

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just say I will qualify it and see if you agree.

Your responsibility is to make sure that they get equipment that

is supposed to do the job as requested by the military, as designed

by the military, and as created by the manufacturer; and that is

your obligation. In other words, not just to get them equipment,

but to give them equipment that works, correct?

Mr. ALLEN. Yes, sir that is our job.

Mr. SHAYS. In this case, the system failed.

Mr. ALLEN. With Isratex, that’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS. It failed. It totally failed. And we had 800,000 suits

and we’d identified, you know, 550,000. We have 250,000 to go.

Now, admittedly they are the battle dress overgarment, and I’ll get

into the question of what equipment we send into the Middle East,

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but I just want to know, isn’t it fair for me to accept that if you

are responsible for making sure that good equipment, and in the

end, maybe your predecessor, or two predecessors ago, didn’t make

sure that happened, for whatever reason, that you have an obligation to do everything to make sure that you relocate that bad

equipment and get it out of the system?

Mr. ALLEN. That is our obligation, and I think we have gone

through extraordinary steps to try to meet that obligation on repeated instances, sir, to include last month, because the fund site

that was used to provide the transportation accounts to return any

deficient equipment, they might have found had expired. We, on

our own, went out again to renew that fund site to again take in

another opportunity to remind them to check their equipment and

make sure it was not part of the Isratex equipment, and return it

to us if it was so done, and return it to us at no cost to them—

in fact for replacement. We’ve done as much as we could do to

incentivize——

Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask this: In cases like the no-cost—I think

that’s good, everyone is looking at their bottom line, but in my

mind would be, my God, this is bad equipment. It could endanger

our troops. If I was in the military, I would think you wouldn’t

need any incentive. You just need the command to make sure that

people down a little further know.

Mr. Allen, I’d be happy to have you ask questions if you would

like and take my time. I don’t want you to feel you have to leave.

Mr. ALLEN OF MAINE. I do have to leave, but I don’t mind. I’ve

given a question to Jan Schakowsky. She can handle it for me.

Mr. SHAYS. With regard to the joint list, we have the battle dress

overgarment and in there are potentially zero to 250—obviously,

it’s going to be less than 250,000, but it could be 100,000 it could

be 50,000, it could be 20,000.

We want to make sure—even if it’s 2,000, we want to make sure

it’s zero, because we don’t want 2,000 going into the Middle East.

My understanding is that the Joint Service Lightweight Integrated

Service Technology suits that we have, we wanted 4 million, and

we’ve got how many now.

Mr. ALLEN. We have 150—I’m sorry 1,000,500 suits in our possession, another 800,000 suits on order, currently being manufactured.

Mr. SHAYS. I would think that someone would want to ascertain

and say, with all commitment—and I would like to think that

somebody would have been given the permission to say what would

have to be the truth—whatever these 1,500 really high technology

suits that other countries want to use, wherever they are in the

field, we would collect them and make sure that they will be the

only ones used in the Middle East. I would like to think that.

Would that be illogical for me to make an assumption that

should happen?

Ms. JOHNSON-WINEGAR. No, sir. I think that’s a perfectly valid

assumption, as we plan for these times of contingencies, that we

can readjust the inventory, if you will, and move existing suits

from units that won’t need them to those that will.

Mr. SHAYS. One of the things that I think this committee should

do is, we should contact the Department of Defense and have an

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ironclad agreement that none of the battle dress overgarments will

be used, and any that are used we are certain are not part of the

250,000 defective equipment.

I would think that would be like a no-brainer for us.

And, Mr. Allen, do you want to say something?

Mr. ALLEN. No, I certainly understand that perspective. I would

agree with that perspective.

Mr. SHAYS. One last question: Do we have the capability, if we

need—we had 700,000 troops; I don’t think we would have that

many in Iraq this time, if in fact we do go in, but do we have the

capability to bring together 500,000 of these suits?

Mr. ALLEN. One of the improvements we have made since our

last hearing on this subject is, absolutely we have the capability to

identify the suits. In fact, within the DLA warehouses we have

more than 500,000 of these suits we’re storing on behalf of the

services, so we could put our hands on those specific suits and

make sure those were the ones that were issued. We have established some positive controls since the Isratexes were sent to the

field.

Mr. SHAYS. I would like to think that you would take ownership

of the fact that you have these in your possession and you would

want to make sure that these are the only suits that get out, unless

I don’t know something and the battle dress overgarment has a

function that the JSLIST doesn’t that is needed. But if the Joint

List suit is going to do the job, I would think that’s the only suit

that would be there.

Mr. ALLEN. The JSLIST suit would be the one of choice in all

likelihood, and that would be the one we would issue, unless there

were specifically instructed to do otherwise, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you for your patience, Ms. Schakowsky. You

could have 10 minutes’ time, whatever.

Mr. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you. I want to thank the chairman for

so relentlessly pursuing this issue, which has become heightened in

its importance given the fact that we actually may be in a state of

war, though I hope that can be avoided.

I have been, not only as a member of this committee, participating in hearings like this, but also as the ranking Democrat on the

Government Efficiency Subcommittee. I want to quote you something that was said by a licensed practical nurse that’s been in Afghanistan. This was a quote from a Los Angeles Times article. He

says if Hussein used chemical or biological weapons, ‘‘he’d be an

idiot,’’ said Staff Sergeant John Hughes, a 38-year-old licensed

practical nurse, who returned from a 7-month stint in Afghanistan

in mid-July. ‘‘I don’t think it would be a problem. It’s something

that the infantry trains on all the time.’’

It is with that sort of confidence that our enlisted men and

women have that they would be going into harm’s way in danger

of biological and chemical weapons. But I want to tell you, after sitting in these hearings, both this subcommittee and my subcommittee, and hearing essentially the Keystone Cops way that we’ve been

handling inventory and these defective suits, I would hate for our

men and women in the armed services to know about that, because

this would damage their attitude.

155

And I want to talk to you about a couple of things that I still

have been hearing that don’t—that still don’t give me confidence.

You said, Mr. Allen, that we know the contract and lot numbers

and so we can find these suits. And yet the GAO stated that the

DOD could not easily identify, track and locate defective suits because inventory records do not always include contract and lot

numbers.

Are they mistaken or are you?

Mr. ALLEN. What the GAO and the IG correctly identified is that,

at the unit level, there is not a consistent inventory management

system. And one of the IG’s findings and recommendations to this

panel and the DOD was to establish an inventory management system at the unit level that included all that information.

At the wholesale level we do have that information, so we are

able to maintain those controls at that level.

At the unit level what they’re talking about oftentimes is that

many posts, camps and stations that are training in a regular environment, in some cases they’re talking about gear-gets on a ship

at sea as people deploy with gear, because they may need it while

they’re deployed. And it’s at that level where the lack of an inventory management system is.

Mr. SCHAKOWSKY. Not only an inventory management system,

but according to the Inspector General, not all units received the

information from their higher headquarters about the suits. And as

recently as April 2002, the IG continued to identify units that had

not segregated those defective BDOs in their inventories; is that

so?

Mr. ALLEN. I can’t question the IG’s findings. We were not given

that report until yesterday afternoon. I’d like to have the specifics

of that, so that we could followup with that to determine if something happened in our procedures and our processes; we can make

the corrections for the future. I was not aware of that until yesterday afternoon.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. But a few minutes ago you asserted that we

did. I think that it is at least important that we acknowledge the

problem fully in order to be able to correct it.

Just a few minutes ago you asserted that, in fact, all of these

units had been informed and that we are going to be able to find

these suits. So, please, I hope you will be making sure that every

single unit is aware of them.

The issue of inventory control, even on the new suits. We had

testimony, I think it was in the Government Efficiency Subcommittee, that inventory control ranged from having information on a

computer system to having it on erase boards. And you know how

long-lasting that is. So the question of even being able to identify

where the 1.2 million or however many working suits that we have

seems to be a problem, and yet you seem very confident that we

could call up the necessary number of suits, that we know where

they are,and I don’t feel as confident.

You know, if we are talking about erase boards, who knows

where they could be? And you are talking about on ship. What are

we doing to centralize and reform this inventory control system so

that we really do know where they are?

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Mr. SHAYS. Before the gentleman answers, I just want to, for the

record, point out that was our hearing on inventory control in

June; and we used, as an example, the suits. We used as an example the very issue we are doing right now.

So it is kind of like we are doing the reverse. First, we did inventory and then talked about the suits. Now we are talking about the

suits and talking about inventory.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. I think Government Efficiency, though, also

looked at inventory control, not just regarding the defective suits

but now the new suits, knowing where they are.

Mr. SHAYS. Right. And the hearing was on the pathetic nature

of how we keep inventory on a whole host of issues, not just the

suits.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Right. So what are we doing to make sure that

we know where the good ones are?

Mr. ALLEN. Based on the last hearing a couple of years ago, the

program manager and the military services took responsibility to—

and in part being driven by the committee here—to establish and

report annually on the inventory status of those suits. That is a

manual process at some part at this point. In some part, it is automated. I must make a distinction between the wholesale level inventory management and the visibility and the automation level

that we have at the DLA and at the Army level, from the inventory

management capability at the unit level.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. But isn’t that what we care about? Isn’t it at

the unit level that we fight a war?

Mr. ALLEN. We keep suits and can supply suits at both levels.

So, yes, we care about unit level. But we also care about at the—

the wholesale level. And we do have much better capability, which

we are expanding.

I believe during the June hearing that the program manager, Mr.

Bryce, outlined a test program he was going to institute to get visibility of suits as they pass to an operating level unit within the

Marines Corps.

He also testified, and it was part of my written record, that we

are establishing an enterprise resource planning system which we

will make available to link to all of the services’ inventory records

as a way to get a handle on the inventory from top to bottom. We

are not there yet.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. So we are doing annual testing?

Mr. ALLEN. We are doing annual reporting, some portion of

which is manual.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Does this kind of system apply to other inventory, or now you are just responding to the committee’s—both subcommittees’ focus on suits?

Mr. ALLEN. No. This kind of system would apply to all inventories, eventually. But one of the issues is that suits are probably—

chemical protective gear is more important perhaps at this point

than some other equipment which might not be so life protecting.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Well, let me ask you about the extent to which

they are life protecting. I understand that the Navy SEALs are

concerned because the suits don’t work if there is saltwater on

them. Is that the case?

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Mr. ALLEN. One of the operating requirements for these suits,

the JSLIST suit, was to operate in a salt mist environment. If you

immerse it in saltwater, no, it does not protect if there is immersion. But it does protect in a normal operating environment at sea

where it is raining or it is misting.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Are you concerned that in the Gulf Region

that this might put some of our people at least in harm’s way if

it is not—if saltwater itself—not mist, but water—would make the

suits ineffective?

Mr. ALLEN. I don’t believe the JSLIST suits would ever be used

by SEALs in their saltwater mission environment. The SEALs—

when you are referring to the SEALs, they are operating underwater; and the JSLIST suits were not intended for use underwater.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. So you are not concerned that the saltwater

issue is a problem?

Mr. ALLEN. The services did not make that a requirement for—

one of the technical requirements for the suit.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. OK.

Mr. ALLEN. They built the requirement based upon the threat

that they expected to face.

Mr. SHAYS. Really, General Goldfein, this is your—you basically

try to determine what you need; and, General Bond, you try to determine how you make it. So couldn’t both of you also answer that

question?

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. That would be helpful.

General BOND. Well, it would be interesting to find out what the

Navy and the special operation forces had requested to support the

Seal’s mission in this endeavor. The JSLIST suits were never intended for this. They may have a special purpose one, or this may

be a new evolving requirement for which we are now going to get

a requirement. We will supersede through—while we wait it

through the formal process, to now find a way to satisfy this one.

There are mechanisms, I think, that science and technology—

that we have that would allow us to have a suit that could withstand this.

Mr. PARKER. There is a specific undergarment which is designed

for the special operating forces, including the SEALs, which has a

rather extraordinary range of applications and extremely severe operating environments, which would be suitable for the, you know,

the use that I think you are intimating in your questioning. That

is available to the SEALs.

The JSLIST was never intended for that type of an operating environment.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Do you all feel confident that we know where

enough of the non-defective suits are right now so that they can be

immediately put to use in a combat situation in Iraq?

Mr. ALLEN. Unequivocally, yes.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. You are certain that none of the defective

suits would end up being used in that way?

Mr. ALLEN. When you ask me if I am certain, I cannot be unequivocal about that. I have a high degree of confidence that there

would be no defective suits utilized for a number of reasons, partly

because of what we have been through to identify and cull out the

defective suits;partly because of what the chairman mentioned,

158

which would be the CINCs would want to use the new suits. And

we know we can identify those suits.

So, unequivocally, we could equip the force that is envisioned

today with good suits and knowing, with virtual assurety, that they

are all good suits.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. I just have to say that I think, addressing

some of these incredible inefficiencies at this late date, while it is

important that we do it, would really astound most Americans, I

think, the fact that we don’t have a better handle on something as

basic as these protective suits.

But I am happy to hear that even though it is so late that we

are trying to get a handle on it and that at the next hearing we

will have a full report about where these 250,000 defective suits

are and that we have an inventory system capable of tracking all

of these lifesaving, at the very least, equipment that our young

men and women need.

Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

I ask just the indulgence of the committee to ask two questions

that we have. We prepared questions beforehand, and usually they

are covered by different members, but these two questions haven’t

been to our satisfaction. We want them on the record, so whether

I am chairman a year from now or someone else, another party or

whatever, we have this on the record so we can have a benchmark.

I think really, General Goldfein, it may be in your area.

I would ask, how will the establishment of the Joint Program Executive Office improve the CB defense requirement process?

General GOLDFEIN. That is—the way you stated the question,

Mr. Chairman, is a bit of a mixture in sort of the way we

describe——

Mr. SHAYS. OK. I am going to ask you another question, and you

decide which one you want to answer first and whether you want

to.

How will the establishment of a Joint Program Executive Office

improve the CB material acquisition process?

General GOLDFEIN. Yes, sir. I am going to defer to General Bond

on the Joint Program Executive, because that would be his business. I would, however, if I can help, I will answer on the requirements side. I will make a couple of comments.

First of all, having a counterpart, a Joint Program Executive to

match with me as a Director for Joint Requirements is a good

thing. We should work—we should be joined at the hip. We should

work hand in hand. In other words, I should do the work to establish the requirement. For example, earlier the comment was made

about SEAL equipment. It there was a need, I should have a good

system that will bring that need my attention.

I would then hand that responsibility to the Program Executive

and ask that he go forward and, for example, purchase an item.

And I am making this overly simple.

Mr. SHAYS. Sure. I understand.

General GOLDFEIN. We should work closely hand in hand. I

should be aware whether or not he accomplished that task, because

then I know whether that requirement has been met.

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So I guess my answer to your question would be that the Joint

Program Executive, from my perspective, is the requirements person, is an important office, an important advantage, and the two

of us should work—and we intend to—hand in hand.

I would prefer to defer to General Bond with regard to the specifics of that office.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

General BOND. Mr. Chairman, in my prior job for the last 2 years

I was on the requirements and was the counterpart for the Army

that worked up through the JROC process to validate requirements.

It was not with malice aforethought that the chief or the Secretary moved me to this position now where I now take the requirements and now have responsibility for delivering actual performance.

In that venue, the issue that General Goldfein Talks about is

really clear, because we need to work very closely. He identifies requirements. I need then to tell him what really technology, along

with Mr. Parker, is really achievable within the timeframes that

they want. We don’t want to set the bar too high, for which then

our soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen are waiting and waiting

for that out there.

But at the same time, he wants to challenge us to make sure

that we get the best possible capability out there for soldiers. We

need to do that in a joined-at-the-hip manner, in which we make

sure that we get the best capability out there. So we are going to

work this together and will continue to do that in the future.

Mr. SHAYS. And it is not that way right now?

General GOLDFEIN. That is correct, Mr. Chairman. That is why

the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics collectively arrived at a position

that said we need to come up to a better way, which is what generated this office I indicated to you earlier which we have just

started.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. That is very helpful information.

Is there anything in this public part of this hearing that you

want to put on the record?

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Chairman, I didn’t do justice to Mr. Allen’s questions. Could I ask them briefly?

Mr. SHAYS. Absolutely.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you.

It is my understanding that after 5 years—I think this is an old

rule not a new rule—suits are supposed to be tested for defects annually; is that correct?

Mr. ALLEN. I think what you are referring to is the shelf-life extension program. We have a joint shelf-life extension program on

all chemical equipment, and we set the timing on each piece of

equipment differently.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Have you been doing that annual——

Mr. ALLEN. For suits at—the 5th year we test it for shelf-life extension, and we test it again at——

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Have you been doing the 5 year?

Mr. ALLEN. Yes. I think it is 5, 9, 12 and 14 year. We extend it

up to 14 years if it passes the tests.

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Allen’s question was, does the Pentagon

have the paperwork demonstrating that it has conducted annual

testing on all suits that have extended past their recommended

shelf life?

Mr. ALLEN. Yes, we do. Especially since 2 years ago. We really—

we really tightened up that process as a result of some problems

that we experienced 2 years ago and partly as a result of this committee’s hearing then.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. I just want to make sure, since we are

trying to be precise here. So we tightened up a system where we

didn’t have it. So there may have been some in the past where we

weren’t doing it. And your response to the question for Mr.

Schakowsky, on behalf of Representative Allen, is that from this—

from a period of 2 years ago on, you have started this paperwork.

Mr. ALLEN. No, I wasn’t clear. We also did the testing. I don’t

know that the documentation was as clean and as proper as it is

now.

And one of the reasons we did that, sir, is so that we could provide some assurance that there would be no defective suits going

to any soldiers. And we—we do that according to all equipment at

this point.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Let me ask, is there anything else that anyone

wants to put on the record in this open hearing?

We are going to adjourn. We are going to start sharp at 25 after.

It gives about 13 minutes if you want to quickly—on the basement

level there is—I think you can get something to eat, if you wanted

to just get something to drink, and we will resume the hearing at

the other site behind closed doors that——

You all are sworn in. It is just a continuation;and, frankly, we

may just put all of you together so we can have an interactive dialog.

But it will be by 25 after at the next site.

This hearing is adjourned until 2:25.

[Whereupon, at 2:10 p.m., the subcommittee recessed, to reconvene in closed session.]

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