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77–229 PDF 2002

PREPARING FOR THE WAR ON TERRORISM

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

SEPTEMBER 20, 2001

Serial No. 107–37

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, Tennessee

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

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

——— ———

———

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

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on September 20, 2001 ..................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Netanyahu, Benjamin, former Prime Minister of Israel ............................... 65

Zinni, General Anthony, U.S. Marines, retired; Dr. Christopher Harmon,

professor, U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College; and Dr.

Jessica Stern, Harvard University .............................................................. 111

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

Barr, Hon. Bob, a Representative in Congress from the State of Georgia,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 45

Burton, Hon. Dan, a Representative in Congress from the State of Indiana, prepared statement of .......................................................................... 53

Harmon, Dr. Christopher, professor, U.S. Marine Corps Command and

Staff College, prepared statement of ........................................................... 113

Lantos, Hon. Tom, a Representative in Congress from the State of California:

Article dated September 19, 2001 ............................................................ 94

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 6

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

of New York, prepared statement of ........................................................... 35

Netanyahu, Benjamin, former Prime Minister of Israel, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 73

Ose, Hon. Doug, a Representative in Congress from the State of California, prepared statement of ........................................................................... 24

Ros-Lehtinen, Hon. Ileana, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Florida, prepared statement of ................................................................ 15

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

of Connecticut, prepared statement of ........................................................ 63

Stern, Dr. Jessica, Harvard University, prepared statement of ................... 127

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

of Calilfornia, prepared statement of .......................................................... 169

Waxman, Hon. Henry A., a Representative in Congress from the State

of California, prepared statement of ........................................................... 59

Weldon, Hon. Dave, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Florida, prepared statement of .................................................................... 32

(1)

PREPARING FOR THE WAR ON TERRORISM

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2001

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 11 a.m., in room 2154,

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dan Burton (chairman of the

committee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Burton, Barr, Gilman, Morella, Shays,

Ros-Lehtinen, Horn, Mica, Tom Davis of Virginia, Ose, Lewis, Jo

Ann Davis of Virginia, Platts, Weldon, Cannon, Putnam, Otter,

Schrock, Duncan, Waxman, Lantos, Owens, Kanjorski, Mink, Sanders, Maloney, Norton, Cummings, Kucinich, Blagojevich, Davis of

Illinois, Tierney, Turner, Schakowsky, Clay, and Watson.

Also present: Representative Jones of North Carolina.

Staff present: Kevin Binger, staff director; Daniel R. Moll, deputy

staff director; James C. Wilson, chief counsel; David A. Kass, deputy chief counsel; Mark Corallo, director of communications; M.

Scott Billingsley, Chad Bungard, John Callendar, Pablo Carrillo,

and Randall Kaplan, counsels; Thomas Bowman and Marc

Chretien, senior counsels; S. Elizabeth Clay, Caroline Katzin, Gil

Macklin, and John Rowe, professional staff members; Robert A.

Briggs, chief clerk; Robin Butler, office manager; Josie Duckett,

deputy communications director; Toni Lightle, legislative assistant;

Leneal Scott, computer systems manager; Danleigh Halfast, assistant to chief counsel; Corinne Zaccagnini, systems administrator;

Michael Layman, staff assistant; Joshua E. Gillespie, deputy chief

clerk; Elizabeth Crane, legislative aide; Phil Schiliro, minority staff

director; Phil Barnett, minority chief counsel; Kristin Amerling and

Michael Yeager, minority deputy chief counsels; David Rapallo, minority counsel; Ellen Rayner, minority chief clerk; Jean Gosa and

Earley Green, minority assistant clerks; Kate Harrington, minority

staff assistant; and Nancy Scola, minority computer information

manager.

Mr. BURTON. Good morning. A quorum being present, the committee will come to order.

Let me start off by saying former Prime Minister Benjamin

Netanyahu is on his way. He probably won’t be here for about 45

minutes or so, so what we are going to do is we are going to go

ahead and start with our opening statements and have that completed and then, when he gets here, we will go right to former

Prime Minister Netanyahu.

2

I ask unanimous consent that all Members’ and witnesses’ written and opening statements be included in the record; and, without

objection, so ordered.

I ask unanimous consent that all articles, exhibits and extraneous or tabular material referred to be included in the record;

and, without objection, so ordered.

Before our opening statements, I also wanted to have the committee fill the vacant chairmanship of the Civil Service and Agency

Organization Subcommittee. As you know, our colleague, Joe Scarborough, retired on September 6th of this year. The vice chairman

of the subcommittee, Dr. David Weldon, has agreed to serve as

chairman of the subcommittee, and we are looking forward to having you chair that subcommittee, Dr. Weldon. Therefore, I ask

unanimous consent that Congressman Weldon be appointed as

chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Service and Agency Organization; and, without objection, so ordered.

We will now start with opening statements, and we will recognize the chairman emeritus of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr.

Gilman.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to thank Chairman Burton for conducting this very timely

hearing. As you know, we had a prior terrorism hearing under Mr.

Shays’ chairmanship in our subcommittee, and I think that was appropriate at that time, and I hope we will take another look at the

testimony of that hearing.

As the dean of New York delegation in my congressional district

adjoining New York City, I personally witnessed the horrible devastation of the recent barbaric terrorist attacks first hand. In my

congressional district just north of New York City, more than 86

Americans are missing, many of whom are firemen and police officers.

While there has been an unprecedented outpouring of charitable

donations by our fellow Americans and our community organizations and our corporations and a tremendous outpouring of volunteer work in both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center and

with the Congress and our Nation standing united in support of

the victims and their families and our President, regrettably, we

are all well aware that on last Tuesday, September 11th, our lives

have changed. Terrorism has become a common enemy of the entire civilized world.

Few world leaders have more experience in dealing with international terrorism than today’s leading witness, former Israeli

Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, and we look forward to his testimony. Before thinking systematically about terrorism, as was current, he wrote the text, Terrorism, How the West Can Win. More

recently, he wrote, ‘‘Fighting Terrorism, How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terrorists.’’ I recommend this book

as good, important reading for our entire committee.

Moreover, Bibi Netanyahu carried on that fight for his own nation and collaterally for the rest of the civilized world when he was

Israeli prime minister.

These recent attacks on our own Nation were targeted, coordinated acts of terrorism and were of a character beyond what Prime

Minister Netanyahu had to deal with. The devastating kind of terVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:55 Mar 20, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77229.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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rorism attack that a well-educated country can plan over the

course of years with the explicit intention of committing suicide

after living in the target country for years is something that is

hard for us to believe, and we have not seen it before.

Our traditional profiles of suicide bombers are no longer reliable.

In fact, even Israelis were recently shocked when an older married

man with children, a Palestinian Israeli citizen, blew himself up in

a marketplace. The fact that suicide bombers are coming from different sectors of society makes it even more difficult to defend

against such attacks, even in the State of Israel.

In a broader sense, I know that neither Israel nor our own Nation is inclined to making our war on terrorism a war between cultures. Not a war between Islam and the West. Nor is this necessarily a war between democracies and nondemocracies. Even people living under authoritarian regimes have the right to be free of

terror, and even authoritarian regimes can be recruited to help

stamp out terrorism. Mr. Netanyahu, I am certain, shares our

views that the appropriate characterization of our struggle is a war

between civilization and barbarianism and not one against my religion or any ethnicity.

We look forward to hearing the witnesses’ thoughts today and

particularly Mr. Netanyahu’s thoughts on how we can reach the

men on the street among whom terrorists operate and encourage

vigilance on their part. How can we deal with the hatred of the

West and what kind of compromises can we accept on our freedom

of movement today and what can we do about the state’s and powerful private sources that provide assistance to terrorist organizations? We look forward to hearing our witnesses today on these

most important topics.

So, again, I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for conducting this very

timely hearing.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Gilman.

I think it is extremely important that the American people really

have a thorough knowledge of what we are up against, and that

is why it is so important that we have these experts here today.

We will pass on Mr. Waxman right now. We will give his opening

statement, along with Mr. Shays, myself a little bit later.

I now recognize the gentleman who knows a little bit about war

firsthand, Mr. Lantos.

Mr. LANTOS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I think it is

important that we hold this hearing today, and you put together

a stellar list of witnesses.

A week ago, Mr. Chairman, our Nation lost its innocence, but it

has found a new sense of unity and purpose. This new sense of

unity comes from the sudden realization that our democratic way

of life is under attack. It must be and it will be defended. This

awakening came at a terrible cost—the devastation of thousands of

innocent American lives and the destruction of our national symbols of strength and prosperity.

It is precisely because we paid such a heavy price for this awakening that it is so valuable. We are at the hinge of history. We can

bemoan the tragedy, or we can draw the appropriate lessons from

it and move forward. I believe it is critical we learn from the tragic

experience, not only to ensure that such events don’t happen again

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but that we take intelligent and thoughtful and sweeping actions

to deal with the crisis.

It is also critical of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s appearance that

we learn from those such as our friend and ally, the State of Israel,

who have been confronting terrorism on a daily basis and who have

succeeded in reconciling security with democracy.

The world is watching, Mr. Chairman, our Nation’s military

preparations and the deliberations here in Congress; and it is asking, is the United States up to the challenge? Are we, the greatest

democracy on Earth, capable of mounting a sustained, costly and

concerted global campaign against international terror?

Mr. Chairman, I am confident that we are. Throughout our history the American people have risen to the challenge of coming together and mobilizing all of our Nation’s strength, our formidable

military might, our dynamic economy and our indomitable spirit,

and we will do so again this time. But in committing to this fight,

Mr. Chairman, let us not delude ourselves. We are embarking on

a costly, painful, difficult struggle like none other in our Nation’s

history. It will demand resolve. It will demand patience, and it will

demand sacrifice.

On the subject of sacrifice, allow me to expand on this a bit. For

many years now we have been conducting military operations with

a firm commitment to have zero casualties. That is a noble goal,

but the events of September 11 demonstrate that debate is now behind us. We will have had probably over 6,000 casualties, and I

think the Vietnam syndrome with respect to casualties will have to

be rethought. Every single American life is precious beyond words,

but it is absurd for a society to tolerate thousands of civilian casualties and still believe, as we did in the Kosovo engagement, that

no military casualties can be accepted. This issue will be a subject

of protracted and serious debate, but those who claim that no casualty is acceptable better talk to the families of the 6,000 innocent

Americans who were casualties just this past week. This debate is

over, and the price we paid is over 6,000 innocent lives. It is a return to the reality of living in a dangerous world.

Mr. Chairman, in this struggle, we are not alone. All Americans

deeply appreciate the many expressions of sympathy and support

from our friends and allies across the globe. We trust that now

these words will be translated into action. I welcome our European

friends’ expressions of sympathy. I look forward to our European

friends’ actions vis-a-vis their policies of trade and investment in

Iran, Libya and elsewhere. We have been debating these issues in

this Congress in a very lonely fashion, and it is long overdue that

our European friends who are so strong in their expressions of condolences should be equally strong in falling in line with respect to

policies.

In this fight against international terrorism there can be no

neutrals. Those who are not with us are against us, and I welcome

the decision of Pakistan in this moment of historic crisis, that they

have chosen to be with us. This will serve them well.

As our military commanders and the brave servicemen and

women they lead prepare to wage war against the perpetrators of

last week’s terrorist strikes, our sights are trained on Osama bin

Laden and his Taliban protectors and with good reason. But I

5

think it is critical that we don’t personalize and trivialize this war.

If Osama bin Laden is turned over tomorrow morning, the international war against terrorism must continue unabated. Defeating

or capturing or eliminating Osama bin Laden will not spell the defeat of terrorism unless we broaden our efforts and eradicate terrorism wherever it lurks. If we personalize and trivialize this

struggle and limit our focus to the perpetrators of these acts, we

may win some battles, but we risk losing the war.

I am encouraged, Mr. Chairman, by the administration’s efforts

to target not just Osama bin Laden but terrorists throughout the

Middle East and beyond. I applaud Secretary Powell’s efforts in the

midst of this week’s war planning to pressure Syria and Lebanon

to surrender Hezbollah terrorists operating in their territories, a

policy I recommended in sanctions legislation that was adopted by

this body by a vote of 216 to 212 just a few months ago. As my

friends will recall, at that time the State Department issued two

letters opposing my amendment. By this week’s action, I welcome

them on board; and I have no doubt that if this amendment would

be up on the floor today it would not squeeze by with a vote of 216

to 212 but we would get well over 400 affirmative votes.

Secretary of State Powell has affirmed the administration’s commitment to eradicate terrorism root and branch, a worthy and necessary goal the American people passionately and seriously support, but in the framing of this struggle, it is critical that we focus

on the forest, not just some of the trees. Osama bin Laden must

go, but so must all the terrorists in the Middle East, in Colombia,

in Indonesia and elsewhere who share the evil goals and operational methods of terrorists.

I thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Lantos.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Tom Lantos follows:]

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7

8

Mr. BURTON. Let me say to my colleagues, because we have an

important schedule here with Mr. Netanyahu, and he ought to be

here in about half an hour, I would like to have our Members limit

their comments to 5 minutes, if it is possible.

Mr. Horn.

Mr. HORN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In defense of terrorism, it is not simply weapons. It is language,

knowledge, writing and getting within the psychology of particular

languages and particular people.

Back in the 1980’s, when Caspar Weinberger was Secretary of

Defense, he made a real point that America is way behind in terms

of educating our students. We do a good job with the military academies but not so much with the civilian side. And the people in

great areas of the world, be it Indonesia, be it Russia, be it the

Middle East, Latin America, so forth, and Weinberger said we have

got to invest money in educating these people in the secondary

schools, even the elementary schools, and we ought to, frankly,

start in kindergarten and first grade in some of these languages,

because at that point it is sort of fun, but when you do it later, the

brain says, gee, I can’t do that. Well, we can do it, and we ought

to put more emphasis on that in the United States.

When this chaos of the last week started, all four networks

talked about an Arabic newspaper in London where columns were

in Arabic, and they wondered why wasn’t somebody looking at that.

I have asked the question of a number of people that should have

known, and they say, oh, well, we just don’t have the Arabic skills

that we ought to have.

So that is part of our problem. We do very well with the Voice

of America, but we don’t do very well in some of our basic intelligence agencies, and we could do a lot better. The Department of

Defense has a marvelous language school at Monterrey, CA. They

do teach people how to read, write, speak in very complicated languages; and I think, Mr. Chairman, that we ought to get from— all of these agencies into this committee and see just where we are

in doing those things. It is a little late now, but maybe it won’t be

late again.

Thank you.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Horn; and we will be talking with

various agencies about making sure the coordination is there.

Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

The events of the past week have had a profound effect on this

Nation and the world. We all saw the events unfold before our eyes

on national television. Our cities, the Nation’s transportation infrastructure, including subways and airports, nuclear power plants,

national monuments and landmarks became and still are vulnerable.

With weapons of mass destruction and biological weaponry, it

has become very clear that there is an increased need to protect

not only the citizens within our borders but also those who defend

our country against outside threats.

With that said, I am pleased that this committee is the first in

Congress to ask the question, how does America prepare for the

war on terrorism?

9

First, I believe we must come to an understanding of what terrorism means. It is defined as the systematic use of terror, and terror is a state of intense fear. America must work hard to combat

this fear.

Then we must ensure that our local firefighters, police departments and emergency medical personnel are properly trained and

have the available supplies to respond in a crisis. As we saw in

New York and at the Pentagon, these groups were the first to respond.

Next, the country must prepare our public health infrastructure.

We must assess the Nation’s long-range capabilities to respond not

only to those weapons that are physically visible and threatening

but also biological and chemical weapons. Are there vaccinations

and antidotes available if the need arises?

Furthermore, America must continue to build coalitions with Nations around the world. The fight against terrorism will be a long

and difficult one, requiring the cooperation of many nations.

Finally, America must stay prepared by being alert. We must

focus on enhancing our national security by ensuring that emergency plans and procedures are set. U.S. citizens and facilities have

been targets for years and will continue to be targets.

This was not just an attack on America but an attack on freedom

and democracy. Not only were Americans affected by the terrorist

attacks but citizens from more than 80 countries worked at the

World Trade Center.

During this crisis, America will be defined by how we react and

respond to terrorism. Our response must be carefully balanced. On

one side, we place our commitment to spare no effort in eradicating

terrorism and punishing those responsible for this heinous crime.

On the other hand, we balance the responsibility to hold true to

our Nation’s principles, to be cognizant of innocent life and to use

military force only when necessary. This is a difficult scale to balance, but I believe that we have a duty to reach the appropriate

equilibrium that justice requires.

We are all living through this day by day and must stand together as Americans. I would urge all Americans not to target

Arab-Americans or Muslims. Racial profiling and hate crimes cannot be tolerated. Tolerance is the glue that has held this diverse

country together.

This is not a war against people from different cultures or who

practice a different religion. This is a war on terrorism. We cannot

trade in our civil rights and liberties.

Again, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for holding this hearing and

yield back the balance.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Cummings.

Mrs. Morella.

Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to

thank you and Ranking Member Waxman for holding the hearing.

Protecting Americans and determining who is responsible for the

tragedy of September 11th have become the most important issues

for every Member of this Congress. I appreciate the quick action by

this committee in raising the issue today.

In many of the comments uttered after the terrible assault, we

heard people note that all of us woke up on September 11th to a

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nightmare, and that couldn’t be more true. But then we found the

nightmare became a reality. Last Tuesday’s attack was the single

most calamitous day in terms of loss of life in our Nation’s history.

And sadly, for many of us, though, the nightmare we spoke of has

worsened. But now we realize just how vulnerable we are. Those

who wish to do us harm are not only willing to sacrifice their lives

but have the resources to wreak terrible violence upon our shores.

We see violence as the means of violence. Therefore, it must be the

focus of this committee, this Congress, this country to do everything possible to prevent another tragedy. Today is the first step.

Among our responses, we should include coordination among

agencies, one office to oversee terrorism in this country. Presently,

we have the FBI, the CIA, FEMA, Department of Transportation,

Department of Defense, all with separate offices to combat terrorism in different ways. We need one office with representatives from

each of the agencies to come up with the cohesive strategy. So, Mr.

Chairman, we have expert witnesses that you have assembled to

detail our present vulnerabilities to terrorism and to describe what

can be done.

We are honored also to expect the arrival of the former prime

minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has both written

about terrorism and unfortunately experienced it.

I look forward to the testimony of all the witnesses in learning

how to best prepare ourselves for the new realities that face us.

The age of innocence is lost. The age of anxiety is upon us.

I yield back the balance of my time; and, again, thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mrs. Morella.

Mr. Owens, do you have an opening statement, sir?

Mr. OWENS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and I would like to commend you for having these hearings.

It is another opportunity for me to thank the Members of Congress and the people of the United States in general for the way

in which they have come to the aid of people of New York and

Washington. We are all mourning together those who died.

We also would like to together salute the bravery of the firemen

and the policemen who went in to rescue people while others were

coming out to safety. Firemen in my district suffered a tremendous

loss in one of the companies, and we of course are struggling to

deal with that in many ways.

I would like to take advantage of this particular forum, however,

to talk about the fact that so many of my constituents have emphasized to me the fact that they would like to hold me as a Member

of Congress responsible for national security, regardless of what

committee I serve on. I have said over and over again, there is a

limited role I play. I am not on the Permanent Select Committee

for Intelligence. I am not on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Certainly I think it is our responsibility, but we play a limited role.

They are saying every Congressman and the institution as a whole

must take greater responsibility for national security.

There are too many comments being made about things that

probably could have been avoided or things that are not being done

that should have been done and should be done rapidly if they are

not being done. People take note of the fact that our intelligence

11

agencies have suffered some tremendous embarrassments. They

tell me. I don’t have to tell them. They read. They remember better

than I do the Aldrich Ames disaster with the CIA when the top

person in charge of counterintelligence with respect to the Soviet

Union is on the payroll, the—Hoffman—the recent FBI top intelligence person, counterespionage person, being found to be on the

payroll of the Soviet Union. They bring up these things and they

say, well, why can’t you tell us if they have taken steps to make

sure this never happens again?

The intelligence community, they know it is kind of an incestuous community, and they don’t like to have open forums and discussions, and not many Members of Congress really discuss those

things that go on there. There are some basic and simple questions

that we can all ask without in any way jeopardizing the security

of the Nation. If the people don’t want to answer them and find

that they are jeopardizing the security and the operations of the intelligence community, they don’t have to answer it.

But basic questions like, how many high-level people do you have

in decisionmaking positions who have background and understand

Islamic culture? Are there people at top places who are making

these decisions who really understand? If they are there, what kind

of resources do they draw on? Is there a think tank? Is there a resource pool that they can steadily draw on of people that are currently monitoring and can really monitor because they understand

the language, they understand the culture, they have background?

These are basics that surely the answer ought to be in the affirmative, but we don’t know until we ask.

What about the language situation? Mr. Horn has just said we

have the school out West who teaches all kinds of languages. I

have no doubt about their ability to do this, but what kind of recruits are they getting? How rapidly are they taking in recruits?

And are we back to the basic problem of education in America

where the pool of young people who are coming out of college who

can tackle some of these positions—because these are positions

that will require a great deal of training. Just as the terrorists

show that they have a great deal of training and education, the

people who are going to be involved in counterterrorism are going

to have to have the same kind of training and education. So we

have the situation where there is a great shortage in every profession in America. Law enforcement is suffering greatly, as is teaching and other areas in recruiting people to go into these professions.

So we need for take a look at the long run—and this is a longterm battle. We all agree. The long-term needs of our education

system in terms of making certain that the pool of people are always there so that you can recruit for doctors, lawyers and other

folks. At the same time, law enforcement, teaching and other professions don’t suffer, that we have the very best that can be made

available.

There was an advertisement on a station in New York a few days

ago by the FBI. They want people who speak Farsi. I said, well,

you know, that is great that they are doing that now. How much

of a deficit do we have in people who speak Farsi that has to be

made up? I am glad that it is being done now, but we should ask

12

the basic questions of, how many people are there being recruited

and what kind of process is there to guarantee that the system is

always in place?

I have served on this committee for a long time. At one point I

served on the Transportation Subcommittee, and we had several

hearings on safety. I am afraid that in the records of those hearings you will find recommendations about airport safety which included guaranteeing that the cockpit is always secure and that nobody can get into it, and I am sure that many other government

reports over the last 10 years have repeated the need for this guarantee with respect to the cockpit. And yet we are now talking

about, yes, this is a good idea. Well, why is it that these things are

not done?

The Federalization of airport safety, the security of our airports

has been recommended on several occasions. I don’t think that violates the private sector’s rights to do certain kinds of things. Some

form of Federalization is needed, and we should go forward.

I just want to repeat what my constituents are saying to me. Security of the Nation, security of the airlines, all aspects of security

is everybody’s job now. They hope that the Congressmen, every

Member, will understand it that way and that the institution will

understand it and all America will understand it. It is all of our

problems, and we should all not be afraid to take part in the dialog

and deliberations to make things better.

Thank you.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Owens.

Ms. Ros-Lehtinen.

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As President Bush has underscored, the terrorist attacks of September 11th were not just against the United States. They were

against freedom and democracy, against the integrity and essence

of our Republic. It was an attack against the free world and the

moral precepts which guide human relations. It was an act of barbarism born of wanton disregard for the value of human life, born

out of a desire to terrorize the global community of nations into

submission.

Those behind these terrible acts sought to change our American

way of life. They hoped that fear would lead to a transformation

of our character and our society. They obviously do not know what

we are made of. Much like the attack on Pearl Harbor, the terrorist

acts of September 11th had served as a catalyst, a call to action,

a demand for the United States to exert our leadership role and to

use all available means to confront this threat.

The United States is being called upon, as it did during the cold

war, to create conditions under which our free and democratic system can live and prosper. As we did during the cold war, we must

take the necessary steps in terms of policy and resources, offensive

and defensive strategies to ensure that this century will see the triumph of freedom and the vindication of our democratic principles,

to ensure that the aftermath of this new war that we have embarked upon is global stability, to ensure that we may again live

without fear.

Fortunately, President Bush and his national security team have

learned this lesson of history. They understand the mistakes of the

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past so we are not condemned to repeat them. They have deciphered the elements leading to our victories over totalitarianism

and tyranny so that we may build upon them.

While the nature or manifestation of the terrorist threats may

differ from any we have encountered in the recent past, the principles of Realist political theory, the tenets outlined in the landmark cold war document now known as NSC–68, and the Reagan

doctrine of peace through strength still hold true.

The President and his advisers understand this reality. President

Bush and his national security team understand that the dream

and the hope of containing the cold war enemy and deterring attacks against U.S. interests was converted into the ‘‘long peace’’

through the implementation of a policy firmly rooted in U.S. military superiority and overwhelming strength.

The United States won the cold war and ensured peace and stability by stating its resolve and demonstrating its commitment to

make good on these threats. Some would argue that when the

United States abandoned this principle in the closing decade of the

last century that instability and new forms of conflict began to

grow.

President Bush and his advisers realize this. They hear the

echoes of the drafters of NSC–68 who underscored that, without superior aggregate military strength, a policy of containment is no

more than a policy of bluff.

Thus, the resources and funding we allocate for the war against

terrorism must match our commitment and our resolve. We may

not be able to deter the suicide bombers and the kamikaze tactics.

However, the threat of unleashing American power in response to

those terrorist attacks will have a sobering effect on those who harbor these terrorists, who provide them with the financial support

and training facilities to execute these attacks.

The military component of our strategy must provide for a flexible but comprehensive response which includes many options available to us in the United States.

Further, the application of the doctrine of peace through strength

to the war on terrorism requires the United States to possess an

extraordinary amount of intelligence, using not just sophisticated

technology but also expanding the human intelligence capabilities.

We must follow every lead and use every method to uncover the

network of individuals, groups and sponsors which have empowered and enabled these terrorists to commit such deplorable acts.

In doing so, we should remember that Realism contends that nation states are engaged in the never-ending struggle to improve or

preserve their relative power position and that in the global system

force is the final arbiter.

Thus, based on this premise, we must look at both emerging

powers who seek to challenge the current global structure and the

U.S. leadership, as well as those declining powers who seek to retard or halt their diminishing role. We must investigate whether

the terrorist acts on the United States were tools employed by a

state or regime to exert its position with its neighbors and of the

world stage. Is the approach of the terrorist groups based on the

same power and political considerations which determine the beVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:55 Mar 20, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77229.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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havior of nation states? What are the geopolitical or strategic objectives of terrorist groups?

Whatever the answers, we must not limit ourselves. As the attacks of September 11th clearly demonstrate, anything and everything is possible. For this reason, our response must include a defensive posture that prepares for the possibility that these new aggressors can obtain nuclear materials and weaponry.

What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their

well-being did not rest exclusively upon the threat of U.S. retaliation? What if we could intercept and destroy these missiles before

they reached American soil and American interests? It will not

happen overnight, but is it not worth every investment necessary

to free the world from this threat?

Former President Ronald Reagan believed that it was worth it.

President Bush knows it is worth every investment. We in Congress should know this as well. That is why, as part of the coordinated U.S. response to these attacks and to the broader threat of

terrorism, the Congress should support the Bush administration’s

missile defense program. Ultimately, it will be the strength of character and the moral fiber of the American people and our unity of

purpose which will help the United States and the free world triumph over evil.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1811, it is impossible to subdue a

people acting with an undivided will. We have that will. The terrorists will soon know this, also.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Mr. Tierney.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and thank you for conducting these hearings this morning.

I want to start just by saying to my colleague, Mr. Owens, that

we took to heart your words a moment ago, and it was with some

pride that I was with 73 men and women from New England who

were the first to respond as assistance from outside the city of New

York. We all suffer for the loss of everybody that was involved in

that act, and their families and their friends and everybody wants

to do as much as they can possibly do. As I say, we are proud that

some from New England got the opportunity at least to go directly

there and contribute in a very direct manner.

When a tragedy like this occurs, I think everyone naturally

wants to know what it is that they can do, and that doesn’t stop

with this body. It is not a sentiment that is entirely alien to the

Members of Congress. We feel the same way, and this particular

committee and the Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans

Affairs and International Realtions in particular has a unique role

to play in making sure that our government works as efficiently as

is possible.

I want to take just a moment to acknowledge my colleague and

chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Realtions, Chris Shays, who, as many of us

will recall, has over the last several years conducted 19 or 20 hearings on related issues alone. He has shown leadership and has

identified in fact that this was a major concern of this country. We

are proud on that subcommittee to work with him in a nonpartisan

way over and over again to address this and try to focus this government and the American people’s attention on what we thought

was in fact the primary risk.

I think there are four things we have to look at here. We have

to look at assessing what the risks to this country are, prioritizing

those matters, coordinating what our response is going to be, and

then allocating the resources and executing our plans to deal with

them.

We have a refreshingly unified outlook of late amongst committee members here, amongst Congress as the whole. We are going

to pursue our affirmative goals, and we are going to avoid accusations of fault. We are being called together to examine the system

of our government and decide how to improve it with respect to the

issues that confront us today.

In hearings in that subcommittee in particular we have heard

the GAO tell us that we don’t have the proper focus and we have

not prioritized the issues relating to terrorism. We have to evaluate

all the actions and all the threats together and in a comprehensive

way. Then we have to address our resources, our spending to

counter those threats in a way that is linked to our priorities. We

haven’t necessarily been doing that.

In 1995, President Clinton issued a Presidential Decision Directive No. 39, and he set forward three goals that we had: reduce our

vulnerabilities, deter terrorist attacks before they occur, respond to

terrorism by preparing for consequences, managing the crises and

prosecuting offenders. Chris Shays and the committee are trying to

focus on those three areas to see where we were, to see what it is

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we had to do and in what order and how we would apply our resources to it and whether or not we were doing an effective job.

We have had legislation filed attempting to address the issue of

how these roles are being coordinated across various agencies of

government, and we continue to try and move in that direction. Obviously, with the events of recent days we will see that this is expedited. It has now come to the full attention of all American people

the concentration that subcommittee has had on this issue.

We have heard numerous witnesses. We have been to a number

of different trials and demonstrations of how it is that we would

respond to these particular types of situations or crises. We have

reviewed the Rudman-Hart Commission’s reports and heard testimony from the members of that Commission and others on the

issue, and now we need to go to work.

When I talk about prioritizing, let me give you an example. You

know, over the past several administrations we have focused on the

national missile defense as being a top priority. I, for one, have opposed that, as have others, based on serious concerns with the

technical feasibility of that proposal. But all of us can understand

certainly the fear of the rogue state ostensibly launching an intercontinental ballistic missile at one of our major cities. The effects,

obviously, would be devastating, and we have to protect against

that threat. But we have to make sure that the technical feasibility

is there before we start spending money wastefully on that. There

is some $8.3 billion next year alone being addressed not just to researching and trying to develop a system but to actually deploying

a system that so far has shown that it cannot work.

In our assessment of priority threats, none of our intelligence

agencies lift that threat above the one of terrorism. So we have to

ask ourselves, why is it that we are projecting $100 billion in that

direction and, according to the Office of Management and Budget,

across all of our various agencies in this government only $10.3 billion to counter all forms of terrorism threats combined?

Now, I do that not because I want to start a political discussion

here but only because I want to start a comprehensive discussion

of policy here. Let us start to focus on those four things. Let’s assess the threats, and then let’s prioritize them in the order that we

need to address. Let’s coordinate and work on legislation that will

allow this government to coordinate responses across all of those

agencies in a comprehensive way, and then let us put together a

plan of execution that will let us apply the resources where they

need to be applied at a particular point in time. That will be the

patriotism that this committee has to work for. That will be the patriotism that this country has to work for, the serious, serious look

at this and the way we go about our business.

I am looking forward to working further with Mr. Shays on the

subcommittee. I am sure our work will be pointed in that direction,

but, as Mr. Owens says, the entire Congress will have to address

legislation that lets us do those four things.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Tierney.

Mr. Mica.

Mr. MICA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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Mr. Chairman, I just want to depart for a second from the regular order and take a moment to recognize the memory of one of our

staffers, Ned Lynch. Ned worked for me and others on the Civil

Service Subcommittee. He fought a courageous battle with cancer.

He died during the recess, and I want to thank the chairman for

his support. He left five children behind; and, Chairman Burton, I

publicly thank you for what you did in support of that family.

Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to remember

Barbara Olson. I lost many friends on Tuesday, September 11th, as

many of you have. Barbara was very special to me. She worked for

this committee as well. Our heartfelt sympathies go to Ted and her

family, and I must say she was a patriot and a dedicated American

right to the very end. So we remember her today.

Mr. Chairman, I also want to thank you for holding this hearing.

It couldn’t be more timely, and it certainly is within our purview

and responsibility as the oversight committee of the House of Representatives.

Obviously, the events of September 11th indicate that we did

have a substantial failure in some of our systems, particularly our

intelligence system. It is incredible to realize that our intelligence

capability could not identify and even today we are having difficulty really gaining the true identity of the terrorists.

It is also difficult that a Federalized system and under the control of our U.S. Embassies and consular officers would issue visas

to the vast majority of those terrorists who entered our country and

used our borders as almost a swinging door to enter, leave, and

have their family come and go, almost at will.

Something has gone wrong, and maybe it is our quest in this

country for political correctness, but we have got to really examine

what went wrong.

There are easy scapegoats. I chair the Aviation Subcommittee of

the House, and I have heard that the Federalization of the screening process is a simple answer. Ladies and gentlemen, the screening process did—those screeners did not fail. Federal regulations

allowed box cutters, and the equipment that has been deployed was

not able to detect the material such as plastic and knives, and that

is partly due to our quest for political correctness. We have machines that have been tested and deployed and then also withdrawn because some said they were invasions of our civil liberties.

So we have the technical capability to correct the screening process.

The rules for screeners—this is the Gore Commission report

which came out September 9, 1996, and some of it was a knee-jerk

reaction to TWA Flight 800, which turned out to be in fact a defect

in the electrical system and fuel tanks aboard the aircraft. We

spent billions of dollars to buy detection devices, and we went off

on various tangents. If they failed, we failed, because we never instituted any measures until the—Congress did not act until 2000

on some of these recommendations. Some of them. Again, not very

prudent, but we did pass the Airport Security Improvement Act of

2000.

As of the week before the incidents of September 11th, here are

the proposed rules by FAA as a real result of this law, which is 4

years after this Commission report. This set of rules for enhancing

screening still isn’t in place. So talk about Federalization. Their

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folks are examples of Federalization having failed, starting again

with intelligence, visa distribution and the screening process.

What must we do? First of all, we have heard that we know what

the recommendations are. We must penetrate the terrorist organizations. We must penetrate their communications. We must penetrate their finances. To do that, the Attorney General has come

forth with several maybe not politically correct but several things

we need to do, and we must adopt the Attorney General’s recommendations.

Additionally, you have heard, and Mr. Horn alluded to it, of the

stunning lack of qualified linguists, the stunning lack of intelligence analysts. We have tons of information. We don’t have the

people who can interpret it or even understand the language that

it has been relayed in.

The problem has been described—and I will conclude with saying

this—as lack of the proper response.

Khobar Towers, I spoke at the graduation of the young man,

Brian McVeigh, in my district. I spoke at his funeral when he was

blown to pieces at Khobar Towers, and we still have no response.

The U.S. Embassy attacks, no response. The USS Cole attack, no

response. Now I should say no meaningful response. What we have

done is retaliate and on a limited basis and not eliminate, and that

is what our goal must be.

So, hopefully, Mr. Chairman and my members of the committee

and Congress will have learned from these expensive lessons and

do a better job.

Thank you. I yield back.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Mica.

Mr. Kucinich.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you very much.

I want to thank the Chair for holding these hearings, and I agree

with my fellow colleagues that we need to support increased efforts

to deal with terrorism. These hearings I think will be productive

in doing that.

I also know that I share with many of my colleagues concern

over the resources that the American people have already spent to

deal with terrorism, vast amounts of money to support intelligence

efforts all around the world. This hearing isn’t the forum to ask the

question, but people still want to know, what do we get for the

money, and why didn’t we have better notification for the money

that we are paying? Because if we are going to now advocate more

resources to fight terrorism, wouldn’t it be good to find out what

the failures of the present system have been? Because, obviously,

there have been failures.

While I appreciate everyone who chooses to serve our country,

whether they are in the uniformed service or they are in the service of the Central Intelligence Agency, I think that we are at a time

when it is going to be very important to establish measures of accountability for those who are in the Central Intelligence Agency

so that when they come before Congress and try to brief us or explain to us what the conditions are that we feel a certain level of

comfort and a certain level of satisfaction in the integrity of the information that we are being given; and I think that every Member

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of Congress knows what I am talking about. I don’t need to elaborate on that any further.

But, moving on, let’s look at what the World Trade Center represented: international cooperation, international communication,

international finance, international spread of democratic values. It

countenances a view of the world as an interconnected whole. What

the World Trade Center has stood as the symbol of, and not just

an important marker in the skyline of our country and of New

York, is this view that the world is together, that we are connected,

that what affects one nation affects us all. Indeed, we know that

60 nations lost brothers and sisters in this tragedy.

The destruction of September 11th has a different message, too,

that we are aware of today. It is a message about American unity,

but it is also a message about world unity to combat terrorism. And

I would say, Mr. Chairman, that what we see in the world uniting

to address the issue of terrorism is basically the precondition for

the end of unilateralism in the United States. Because the United

States, while we have the power and the strength and certainly the

courage to go it alone, we do not need to do so anymore. We have

nations around the world waiting to cooperate with us in addressing the issue of terrorism.

And, the truth be told, we have to have their help. We cannot

do it alone. We need international cooperation in the same way

that the World Trade Center symbolizes international cooperation.

We need to have symmetry in that cooperation in dealing with the

issue of terrorism.

So we must prepare for a new world that has already been unfolding, working cooperatively with all nations for democratic rights

and democratic values, with security sufficient to protect those

rights. In this new world, go-it-alone strategies are insufficient,

which is why my good friend, Mr. Tierney, when he speaks of the

inadequacies of the national missile defense system, his remarks

are well taken.

In the year 2000, annual spending to combat terrorism among

various Federal agencies crept up to just over $10 billion from an

estimated $4 billion at the start of the Clinton administration’s

term. In contrast nearly $60 billion has been spent on a ballistic

missile system since 1983.

Now, nonproliferation treaties have great promise. The ABM

Treaty as a model has great promise for the future, global cooperation on antiterrorism efforts, great promise for the future because

they symbolize a belief that the world while it can be a very dangerous place also holds out hope for cooperation, not just militarily,

but in economics, in the environment, in human rights, in addressing those issues which give terrorists opportunities to gain a hold.

I am confident that the United States has the resources, the

strength, the courage and the intelligence to lead the world in addressing the issues of terrorism. I am hopeful that the United

States will do everything it can to aid those families who have suffered as a result of terrorism, because this Nation certainly needs

a period of healing and the healing is going to take a long time for

those who have lost loved ones. But we have an opportunity to

recreate the world again here, and not just to address terrorism as

it exists, as it must be rooted out, but to look at what it means to

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have the world working together on a problem that vexes all free

people but in a manner that gives us an opportunity to envision a

world where we are working cooperatively for peace.

Thank you very much.

Mr. BURTON. I thank the gentleman. Let me just remind the

members that the reason we have that clock up there is it shows

when their time is expired. I understand everybody has a great

deal of concern about what happened, but we have Mr. Netanyahu

coming and we don’t want to keep him from coming too long or the

other members of the panel who are going to be testifying.

Mr. Ose.

Mr. OSE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I can see the clock from

here and I will be attentive.

In the aftermath of Tuesday’s events, I want to pass my compliments to you and to Mr. Waxman, because what things really

boiled down to was a measure of the leadership on both sides of

our aisle. And the chairmen and the ranking members of the committees on this Hill basically had pushed on their shoulders a tremendous burden. It is a measure of the resilience of our country

that the people who are in positions of leadership from both sides

of the aisle last Tuesday and since were up to the task, and I want

to thank both of you for the roles you played quietly or otherwise.

I thought that it was an affirmation of our system to see the committee chairs and the committee ranking members coalesce as they

did, and I want to thank you both for that.

I want to associate myself with the remarks of Mr. Lantos. I met

Shimon Perez last month and he is a gentleman with what I would

call no illusions about the world as it lays. And I think Mr. Lantos’

remarks this morning reflect to a great degree Mr. Perez’ perspective.

I also want to point out Mr. Owens spoke about accountability

among our voters, people we represent, and he indicated that there

was some degree of distress in his district. Well, there was a degree

of distress in my district too, and I think what the voters ultimately end up looking at is what we do, not what we talk about

but what we do. What we do is post votes pro or con on this or that

issue. One of the things we post votes on is the intelligence authorization bills. Most often they go through on a voice vote, but on occasion they go through on recorded votes, and I think it will be interesting for someone to go back and do the research on who voted

for or against intelligence authorization bills 3 or 4 or 5 years ago

because last Tuesday’s actions were consequences of votes taken 3

or 4 or 5 years ago.

Mr. Chairman, I am going to submit the balance of my statement

for the record. I just thank you and Mr. Waxman for the leadership

you have shown in the last week. I know you guys have differences.

I mean I know you do. But I am just—I have to tell you I am extremely proud to be associated with both of you, particularly in the

last week. So I thank you.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Ose.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Doug Ose follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Ms. Schakowsky.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The horrific acts of

September 11th have deeply affected all of us as a Nation and as

individuals. We find ourselves taking stock of those things that are

really important in our lives. Yesterday I was at the birth of my

fourth grandchild William, and I want his world to be safe like all

other grandparents and parents do. And now we are going to be deciding on the specific actions to take to guarantee our safety and

security in the future, to help a faltering economy that has been

made worse by this terrorist attack and to bring justice to the perpetrators.

As we make those decisions, we must ask one question again and

again: Will this action achieve our goals of safety, security and justice? We need to move cautiously and consider all the consequences. The might of the United States is great and we must

use it carefully and to eliminate terrorist threats, making sure that

those who are responsible, and only those, pay the price. We must

allocate all necessary resources to restore the lost sense of security

that has been such an important part of American life without violating the freedoms that make us proud to be Americans.

Security measures at airports, on airplanes and public buildings

may be irritating but in my view both acceptable and necessary. Intrusions into private communications, however, must be thoughtfully debated and caution taken before we expand the government’s

right to step in. This is a time for Americans to come together, not

to turn on each other. There have been disturbing acts of bigotry

and violence against Muslims, Arab Americans, Sikhs and Jews.

We must all take a strong stand against this in our own communities. Last Sunday I sponsored a solidarity walk in my district

that drew hundreds of people of all races and religions and national origins who joined hands and sang God Bless America. We

should also move quickly to pass the Hate Crimes Protection Act

as an expression of our tolerance as Americans. We need to reevaluate how easily we want potential criminals as well as lawabiding citizens to be able to access firearms, flight training and

other potential tools that can facilitate acts of terror.

We must ensure that those who might endanger our security

never make it inside our borders, but we must never forget that

this country was built by the contribution of immigrants from all

over the world. Many of those who perished at the World Trade

Center and the Pentagon were immigrants or the sons and daughters of immigrants who have come here seeking a better life and

who made this country a better place. We must continue to insist

on an immigration policy that welcomes people who make such valuable contributions to our diversity and our strength.

We must make the proper investments in our public health system so that we can prevent and probably address the threat of bioterrorism.

There are many economic consequences of this disaster. There

are many industries and businesses that have been affected and

may legitimately be coming to the taxpayers for help. But as we

rethink our national funding priorities we must remember that

senior citizens still need relief from the high cost of prescription

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drugs, children still need us to invest in their education. Social Security and Medicare still need to be protected.

In the National Security Subcommittee under the chairmanship

of Chris Shays, we have had many hearings in the last few years

on antiterrorism policy. We have heard from scores of witnesses

and members and have had numerous discussions about the need

to do more in this country to prevent and respond to terrorist attacks.

I am glad today that we have with us experts in the field who

can help us determine appropriate policy responses to recent

events. I want to extend a particularly warm welcome to Benjamin

Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister of Israel, a country that is

a great ally of the United States and one that has the unfortunate

distinction of expertise in responding to terror.

Mr. Netanyahu’s expertise in this field predates his service as

Prime Minister and we are fortunate to have him here with us

today.

Mr. Chairman, we will stand together in this country and with

our allies around the world and all those who consider themselves

civilized, and we will have justice. Thank you.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Ms. Schakowsky. We have a vote on the

floor. What I would like to do is keep moving ahead with our opening statements. Those who want to go ahead and vote can do that

and then come back as quickly as possible. I will remain here in

the chair.

Mr. Weldon, I think are you next.

Mr. WELDON. I believe I am.

Mr. BURTON. If you want to go ahead, and I know you have

something you want to show the panel as well.

Mr. WELDON. Yes, Mr. Chairman. As we all know, commandeering a passenger jetliner and converting it into a weapon of mass

destruction by flying it into an office building filled with civilians

is a terrorist act that we all prior to September 11th would have

never imagined. Nonetheless, today it is the new modus operandi

of a network of radical Islamic fundamentalists who have for years

been able to make the United States their home.

Elements of this terrorist network, what I would call the evil empire of the 21st century, has been operating in the United States

for years. I would like to use the balance of my time to just show

some clips from a video called Jihad in America, and I am going

to be showing or sending a copy of this video to all the Members

of the House and the Senate for them to see. I don’t know if the

staff are able to do this, but I would like to go ahead and show

some of the clips from this video.

Mr. BURTON. I hope everybody will pay particular attention to

this video. I think it is very important.

[Video shown.]

Mr. WELDON. Mr. Chairman, I will just yield back. I am delivering this to every Member. I just want to underscore one important

point of the enemies of these people are not only Israel and United

States but moderate Muslims who oppose their agenda. I would encourage every Member and their staff to view this video in its entirety.

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This video is about 5 years old. But I spoke to the producer of

this video yesterday. He told me they just had another meeting in

July. One of the key radicals just came into the country in July.

INS was trying to keep him out, State Department said go ahead

and let him in. They are using our freedoms to put forward their

agenda, which includes a desire to take away the freedom of

speech, freedom of religion.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Dave Weldon follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. I will be glad to assist you in any way to make sure

every Member gets a copy of that tape so they can look at it.

Mr. Kanjorski.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. After seeing that

tape I would caution Americans everywhere that this is not a war

against Islam. The religion of Islam is very peaceful. There are,

however, fanatics in every religion of the world. To excite the

American people to react against the Islamic religion is a certainty

for defeat for this country.

I would like to raise some important issues with the committee.

This weekend we had several meetings on the Democratic side to

analyze the effects of the attack on the American people from the

standpoint of security. We also discussed the possible negative effects the attack may have on the economy by exacerbating the

slowing of economic growth that existed even before the attack. I

urge that this committee exercise its jurisdiction in every way to

not only facilitate the needs of the executive branch to provide for

the security requirements on the airlines, the transportation field,

and other vital industries but also to anticipate those needs. As a

Nation, we will indeed mobilize but in a different way. It will not

be simply calling up troops. Rather, it will include getting the best

people to reactivate themselves and the various Federal services to

provide the manpower necessary for the security and protection of

the American people.

The second area to facilitate mobilization within the jurisdiction

of this committee is the granting of permission to allow retired

marshals, FBI agents and other law enforcement officials to be reactivated without going through a long process that would delay

their reactivation.

Mr. BURTON. Would the gentleman yield real briefly?

Mr. KANJORSKI. Yes.

Mr. BURTON. I would be happy to cosponsor any legislation necessary to do that because a lot of them would also lose retirement

benefits, and so in this time of tragedy we probably ought to suspend some of those rules. I will be glad to work with you on that.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Very good, Mr. Chairman.

Of utmost importance is the outcome of this battle. America will

win this battle and this war. The economy, however, is probably

the most important element to achieve this goal. As legislation is

being prepared, those of us in Congress must be overly sensitive to

the needs of the airline industry and be certain that we help. We

must also consider helping other major important segments of the

American economy to provide support so that they will not deteriorate further but instead, that they will rebound. Matched with the

strong security protections this government can afford to provide to

the American people, we can allow them the opportunity to display

their courage and patriotism through consumer spending as they

all indicated a willingness to do.

I urge this committee to act as quickly as possible and exercise

extraordinary jurisdictions which it has the right to do in such

emergency situations to facilitate the best response to this attack.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. As I said, Mr. Kanjorski, I would be glad to work

with you on any aspect of the issue you just raised. Mrs. Maloney.

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Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this hearing and for your expressed cooperation. I also want to thank Mr.

Netanyahu for advising us during this time of great need. As a

New Yorker who has been to Ground Zero many times, I have seen

the tremendous need for relief and support because of this tragedy.

And on behalf of many, many New Yorkers I want to thank my colleagues and the President for responding swiftly and substantively

with the $40 billion relief and support package and antiterrorist

initiatives package. Today we will be reviewing how prepared or

unprepared our government was to detect and deter this disaster.

And more importantly, we will be reviewing what we need to do

in the future to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

I join my colleagues in calling for better intelligence, better security in our airports, financial support, the tools to track the financial movement of money for the terrorist organizations. In the past

we have used a variety of diplomatic and economic tools to combat

terrorism. In this instance it did not work. We need a broad coalition around the world, and we especially need the support and participation of peace loving Muslim countries.

Millions of Muslims in our own country and around the world are

appalled by the evil terrorist act of depraved extremists.

I am especially appreciative to Pakistan, which has come forward

with the world community to combat terrorism. Our enemies would

like us to think that we are at war with Islam. Nothing could be

further from the truth. We are at war against terrorism, against

terrorists, against their organizations and support systems, and

any country or organization that harbors and supports them.

Believe me, the tragedy may have broken our hearts but our

spirit is strong and unbroken. We are united as a country behind

our President in whatever needs to be done to make sure this

doesn’t happen again.

Thank you for calling the hearing.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mrs. Maloney.

Mr. Sanders.

Mr. SANDERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I don’t have to repeat many of the important points made by my colleagues over the

morning and I also on behalf of the people of the State of Vermont

want to express my horror at the terrible deed perpetrated on September 11th and the terrible loss of life and offer our condolences

to the loved ones of those who were killed.

As you have heard this morning, Mr. Chairman, clearly I think

we are united in saying that people who commit mass murder have

got to be caught and they have got to be punished and that we

have got to as a Nation working with other nations around the

world do everything that we can to stamp out the horror of international terrorism. Clearly within our own country we have got to

take a hard look at reevaluating our own security systems and I

think make some very monumental changes in that.

I think the only point I would like to add—I came a little bit late

but I haven’t heard it made earlier—is that while we wage the

struggle against international terrorism, we have got to be mindful

of a fact which is very, very distressing to me and I think to the

people of this country and people all over the world, and that is

that for a variety of reasons which we must understand, somebody

like an Osama bin Laden is apparently being regarded as a hero

in various parts of the world. I was just reading in the paper today

that T-shirts with his picture on it and his videotapes are selling

wildly in some parts of the world. People see him as somebody who

is standing up for their rights. I think that as a Nation we have

got to make it very clear to the Muslim people throughout the

world, to poor people throughout the developing world, that international terrorism and gangsters and murderers do not reflect

their interests and should not be supported by them.

On the other hand, as a Nation, as the wealthiest and most powerful Nation in the world, we have got to be mindful about the need

to address many of those terrible economic problems that fester in

developing countries that give rise to support for people like bin

Laden.

There is discussion about military action in Afghanistan, and one

of the problems is the military doesn’t know what to bomb because

this country is so poor, is so desperate that there is virtually nothing there. One-third of the people, adults can’t read. People are

hungry. Girls are not going to school, etc. So I would suggest that

as part of our long-term strategy in dealing with international terrorism, in apprehending, capturing the terrorists and doing everything that we can to prevent other acts of terrorism in this country

or other countries around the world, we have also got to pay attention to the very difficult and long-term issues of how the rest of the

developing world sees us as their friend, somebody who is trying

to provide decent jobs for their people, health care, education, housing, all the things that every human being and every mother and

father in this world wants to see for their children.

We must not allow millions and millions of people to see this

country as their enemy and people like bin Ladin as their allies

and their friends. So it is going to be a long hard struggle. It is

going to have to be fought in many ways. And I just wanted to

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mention that I think that is an additional area that I think we are

going to have to look at.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Sanders.

Mr. Otter.

Mr. OTTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I appreciate you very much calling this meeting. It is too bad we

had a vote because all my colleagues are going to miss these great

words of wisdom to hear from a freshman. But I do appreciate you

calling this meeting.

There could not be a more important subject facing Congress in

a generation or in fact for years to come. It seems more now than

ever that the weight of what our witnesses have to say holds a true

relationship to the direction that we as a committee and as a Nation must take to defend our fellow citizens. For a long time we

have been sheltered from terrorism in the United States, and I

want to thank the chairman for inviting Prime Minister Netanyahu

to share with the United States his experience and knowledge of

dealing with terrorists on a daily basis in Israel. Not long ago, we

could only imagine how the Prime Minister dealt with the terrorists. Unfortunately, today we know too well and understand this

ongoing struggle.

Without question, many causes led to this tragic event of September 11th. While we could spend this and many other hearings

assigning blame, this would be wasted time. Instead, we need to

assess past policies and readiness and do what needs to be done

to decisively fight to win this war on terrorism.

I hope that we as a committee will discover and address the

areas of our national security that not have received adequate

funding. Moreover, we must encourage witnesses here today and in

the future to speak freely about their knowledge of any weakness

and provide recommendations on what we as Congress can do in

aiding in combating this new war on America.

We were told many generations ago, Mr. Chairman, that Americans were warned that each generation would be called upon to

polish, sustain and then improve this great Republic. We were also

told that these occasions would come disguised in many ways. The

events of September 11th have delivered the occasion to this generation. We now have to begin anew the establishment of policies

and enhanced collaboration between agencies and States and businesses and, yes, even Members of Congress of both parties so that

together, working closely with our allies, we will vanquish these

terrorists.

I am hopeful through the testimony today and in the future that

we will be able to shed light on the breakdowns learned from past

mistakes and make sure that the appropriate changes and preparations are instituted into this war.

However, Mr. Chairman, there is equal importance that must be

given to identifying who the terrorists are. We must also identify

who they are not. Terrorists do not share a national, racial, political nor religious DNA. They don’t just look alike.

They are as correctly defined by the testimony we will hear today

of the author, Netanyahu, in his book Terrorism and How the West

Can Win. In defining terrorism he said, the author, ‘‘Terrorism is

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rooted in the political ambitions and design of expansionist states

and the groups that serve them.’’ Again, on the day of the tragedy, in an interview, Mr. Netanyahu

identified terrorists, said they typically misunderstand and underappreciate the resolves of free societies. But amid the smoking

ruins of the Twin Towers you could see the silhouette of the Statue

of Liberty holding the torch of liberty very high and very proud. It

is that flame of liberty that these people want to extinguish.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, I would say that we Americans chose

neither the time nor the place for these events and these devastating events of September 11th, but we must convince those soulless

terrorists who have made their choice known by these acts that

they have once again grossly underestimated the sterling resolve

that historically visits this Nation during our time of need.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Otter.

Ms. Norton.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate how quickly you have

called this hearing. All of us are still, I think, trying to absorb what

war by terror means. I am not yet sure what it means, but I think

I know what terror is. It was spelled out devastatingly for us on

September 11th.

I went last night to the Pentagon and asked to go close to the

building. Members of Congress are going out, and they normally

stand some distance away.

I have lost many constituents. Three children were on the plane

that crashed into the Pentagon, the three teachers with them.

These were honor students who had won a prize from the National

Geographic magazine.

When I went out to the schools yesterday, there were two children whose father cannot bring himself to tell them that the mother naval officer is dead.

I wanted to see the Pentagon. I wanted to understand what it

means for a plane to plow into a building. We have seen from afar

how the great towers of a great city could be taken down, and we

know that there is no city that is a greater target than the Nation’s

Capitol. We feel enormously fortunate that there was no harm done

to this Capitol, to the 2 million people who work here, to the

600,000 people who live here.

But, Mr. Chairman, there is something of a temporary victory in

the closing of National Airport. The hearing you have today is very

important because the closing of National Airport tells us we don’t

even know how to keep the airport of the Nation’s Capitol open.

When you close the airport, you come pretty close to closing the

Nation’s Capitol itself.

We have lots to learn from Israel and other countries. Mr.

Netanyahu you have had the wisdom to invite, and others. Because

the attack of September 11th drives home that we are starting at

the basics. We have got to open National Airport but certainly not

recklessly. We don’t want to fling it open. But we have certainly

got to open it. We can’t let this monument to the terror of September 11th remain much longer.

So I am hoping that the Congress and the administration will

give greater priority to making National Airport perhaps a pilot for

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the rest of the country. Because if we can keep National Airport,

so close to official buildings and monuments and the Congress and

the White House, open, then we can protect any city in the United

States.

I am pleased that the Congress is now moving forthwith. There

was an important aviation hearing. Our airlines must be saved. No

great power can remain a great power if it is left with one airline

or airlines in bankruptcy. I hope that bill will go to the floor no

later than Friday or Monday.

At 2 today I am going to another of my subcommittees to mark

up a bill on domestic preparedness. Fortunately, the Transportation Committee was working on this bill. Our Subcommittee of

Economic Development and Public Buildings was working on this

bill.

I have inserted an amendment to put the District of Columbia

at the table of domestic preparedness. Because if there is an attack

on the District of Columbia, the first responder is the police department of the District of Columbia, the fire department of the District of Columbia. And yet, they knew nothing. There was no communication with them when in fact the attack occurred last Tuesday.

Finally, let me say, Mr. Chairman, that I appreciate what I believe is going on in the administration. I believe that the administration understands that some of the talk we are hearing is not the

kind of talk that a great power can respond to.

We have got to be both strong and delicate. If you have any

doubt about that, look at what is happening in Pakistan. Pakistan

wants to do the right thing, and its leaders have had the guts to

stand up and say they want to do the right thing and to go around

the country and try to indicate to their own people that they want

to do the right thing. Yet, at the same time, there is the same kind

of internal politics in Pakistan that we have here. We saw that

when we refused to turn the Shah over and, as a result, we had

hostages taken.

People have got to deal with the domestic politics and with their

external politics. We have got to help them deal with both. They

have internal divisions.

There are, of course, in Pakistan some of the very same people

out of the very same schools that we had in Afghanistan. So I want

to commend the administration for what I believe is a far more

careful way of approaching this than some of the bombast that I

heard sometimes on the House floor last week and that we are

hearing from the American people. I believe that the President’s

talk this evening offers an important occasion to educate us about

all of the factors that have to be taken into account as we do what

we have to do, and we know what we have to do.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Ms. Norton.

Mr. Putnam.

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As a member of a slightly different generation that has not been

exposed to many of the great wars of the last century, I attempt

to bring a little bit of a different perspective to this debate; and I

approach this debate about war with great humility and respect,

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not having been exposed to the horrors of war that many of those

who served in Congress have. Unlike many of our colleagues, not

having been exposed to Pearl Harbor, not having been a part of

that greatest generation, that World War II generation, not living

through the tumult of the United States during the Vietnam era,

there are many in my generation whose only exposure to the horrors of war was seemingly through the eyes of CNN in a very brief

and fortunately relatively low casualty war in the Persian Gulf.

As we have debated in the Shays subcommittee over the course

of this year on terrorism, we have delved very deeply into the

causes and the impacts and the consequences and our ability to be

prepared and our ability to respond. And that is no longer an esoteric discussion buried in the subcommittee. It is now on the front

page and in the front of the minds of all Americans and the world.

So while it is with great trepidation and humility that we approach this debate about the war, it is an appropriate debate to

have. Because we are now committed. The Nation is resolved to respond to this network of terror that is around the world and in our

own country.

As we approach this debate and we have these very important

discussions about the balance of the American way of life, of the

civil liberties, the freedoms that all of us enjoy and to what extent

we are willing to sacrifice some of those for security, the debate is

about our preparedness, the debate is about the proper use of force,

the debate is about unilateral versus multilateral responses.

We approach those in a very new way. There is no historical

precedent for a war of this magnitude with an enemy that has no

assets and nothing to lose in the traditional sense. We have to go

back to the Indian wars of the American West for a similar comparison of American troops fighting rock by rock, cave by cave, canyon by canyon after this type of a network of an enemy.

I would encourage this committee and this Congress to take into

consideration and not squander the political and the popular will

that is out there for us to make the necessary sacrifice and make

the necessary commitment now and henceforth to eradicate these

networks to the greatest extent possible. This is not the time to be

timid. This is not the time to ask others permission for us to respond to what was an attack on American soil to American civilians. It is our mandate to respond to that attack in the best sense

and in the best way for the United States of America.

I look forward to the debate in this country and in particular

some expertise from our good friend, the former Prime Minister of

Israel.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate you calling this hearing.

I particularly appreciate Chairman Shays of the subcommittee

for the work, the groundbreaking work that he has done in Congress on the terrorist threat.

Mr. BURTON. Thank the gentleman.

Mrs. Mink.

Mrs. MINK. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this hearing

and giving us a specific opportunity to sit and weigh in the very

serious consequences with regard to what happened on September

11th. There is no doubt that we are faced with a national crisis.

There is no doubt that we have to take extreme actions. But there

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is also a considerable amount of knowledge and information that

we need to sort out and ferret out and come to a better understanding of why it was that our intelligence agencies in this country

were not able to learn in advance these terrible things that happened to us on September 11th.

There is a tremendous amount of confusion and certainly a tremendous amount of uncertainty in the body politic. Pick up the

morning paper and see that Waikiki Beach has nary a soul where

it would be wall to wall people on any day during any year of the

past decade. Suddenly, people are so overwhelmed by grief, by a

lack of knowledge and information, about how these things could

have occurred to so many thousands of our people; and I think that

the tragedy has overwhelmed a very, very large percentage of our

people.

It is not that we are immobilized. It is not that we are uncertain

about what we ought to do. We know what we have to do. But the

first thing I think that this committee can elaborate on and help

this Nation to come to an understanding is to engage us in a debate and discussion as to how this happened, what our intelligence

consists of, exactly what these terrorist units are within this country, where they are located, who they are led by and also the worldwide network.

My own situation in Hawaii, we lost eight people, some of whom

are still missing and unreported from the World Trade Center.

Others—I actually have no words to express the depth of my sympathy and condolences to those families because they were on flight

93 that crashed in Pennsylvania. To know of the heroism that must

have been demonstrated on that aircraft, the decisions that were

made undoubtedly to try to take command of that airplane which

ultimately led to its crash—I am convinced that airplane was headed to the Washington, DC, area; and our lives were spared as a

consequence of the heroism expressed and demonstrated by these

passengers.

So every time I think of September 11th and I think of the World

Trade Center, I end up focusing on the sacrifice that these individuals made on flight 93, the end result being that they lost their

lives and others were saved.

And I think in debating what we must do in this kind of circumstance, we know it must take action, but we always have to

think of the presence of necessary facts. Are we being told enough?

Are we acting based upon the best knowledge that our government

can provide us? And are we making every possible assurance that

the basic liberties of our people are not being unduly hampered?

All of us have got to endure enormous inconveniences. That is

not what I am talking about. Inconveniences are temporary. What

we have to safeguard are the basic personal liberties that have

been so much a part of our Nation.

So the burdens upon Congress, Mr. Chairman, are enormous. We

have to understand the threat, need to understand what we must

do and in the process save the fabric of our Nation to make sure

that our liberties are preserved.

I thank the chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank the gentlelady.

The vice chairman of the committee, Mr. Barr.

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Mr. BARR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Even in times such as these, the silliness of some of the media

is unbelievable—and the silliness of some in academia. There is an

article here dated September 15th by Jessica Stern that seems to

indicate that what happened last week, particularly if it turns out

Osama bin Laden is behind this or people like him, that somehow

it is our fault because we didn’t pay enough attention to the humanitarian and refugee needs in Afghanistan, that somehow we

are responsible for this. And I suppose, you know, we will always

have to put up with silly notions like that.

Thank goodness here in this committee, Mr. Chairman, we have

your leadership, not people like Ms. Jessica Stern. You understand

the nature of the problem. You understand the complexities of it.

You understand what needs to be done, as does subcommittee

chairman Chris Shays.

As Members of both sides of the aisle today have indicated and

in the past week other Members have indicated, we certainly understand that there were intelligence failures with which we must

contend with and resolve, but there have been no failures of leadership in this committee or in Mr. Shays’ subcommittee.

You have held a number of hearings focusing on key elements of

the war against terrorism and the terrorist problem out there.

Even though one could say, well, it is better late than never, certainly it is good that people are starting to focus on what you, Mr.

Chairman, and Mr. Shays have been telling Americans and the

rest of us in Congress for so many months.

You also understand, Mr. Chairman, the differences between the

conduct of foreign affairs and the conduct of our domestic affairs

and the problems presented to us. The situation presented to us by

the acts of war committed against us last week present that very

clear dichotomy.

As the gentlelady from Hawaii just indicated and others have

also, how we deal with this problem domestically and internationally is very, very different. Internationally, we want our President

to have maximum flexibility, maximum authority so that he does

not have to worry about reading Miranda rights, he can read them

their last rites. He can take care of this problem the way it needs

to be taken care of without worrying about all of the panoply of

civil liberties that are very important to us and which necessarily

come into play in determining how we address this problem at

home domestically.

The Attorney General has put forward a number of proposals

that we are starting to digest. There are some concerns. There are

some concerns because we have a very carefully crafted Bill of

Rights that we must contend with here in this country domestically

when we address problems of terrorism or other heinous crimes.

We have statutes and case law that have been very carefully crafted over 200 years that we cannot, no matter what foreign crisis we

face, throw out the window and treat cavalierly.

So I and others and I know you, Mr. Chairman, will be taking

a very careful look at these proposals to grant the Federal Government what necessary powers it might need, what necessary

changes there might need to be to domestic laws, very narrowly focused, very narrowly crafted and going no further than our Bill of

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Rights allows and no further than is absolutely essential to fill

gaps in whatever legal armor there might be with which we can

fight and defend ourselves against terrorism, but being very mindful of the fact that we do not want to engage in a wholesale unraveling of the fabric of our Bill of Rights. That would accomplish in

a different way but the net result would be the same as the goal

of the perpetrators of these terrorist acts against us.

So I appreciate, Mr. Chairman, your balanced approach to this.

I appreciate your previous work and the work of Mr. Shays in focusing attention on this and now moving us to the next phase. And

I would ask unanimous consent to include a more expansive statement in the record.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Barr.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Bob Barr follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman; and I join with

other members of this committee in expressing to you our appreciation for the fact that you have had the insight to hold this hearing

and to help us try and sift through, look at, and better understand

what led to these terrorist attacks and also make some assessment

and evaluation of where we are today and where do we go from

here as a Nation.

Since the attack, I have held several town hall meetings, and I

have observed very carefully what people were saying. One of the

things that they were saying is that, while we all express our grief

and our anger and our feelings of despair, one of the things that

we have to do is be cognizant of the fact that what we are looking

for is something more than revenge, that we are not simply seeking

to go and find the culprits, although they must be found and everything in our power must be done to make sure that we find them

and that they are brought to justice.

But, in addition to that, as we try and figure out how do we prevent these occurrences from taking place, we need to look seriously

at our Central Intelligence Agency and all of the intelligence

apparatuses that we have and figure if there are ways to make

them more effective than what they currently are.

And I agree with my colleague from Georgia that while we are

doing that we must make sure that we carefully guard the civil liberties and civil protections that our country has become famous

and known for. That is that each and every person must be protected in a real kind of way.

I have never thought of myself as being any kind of expert on

security, but it appears to me that if we were able to make sure

in terms of transportation that those who were in control of vehicles were absolutely safe and could not be approached, that there

were entry-free, entry-proof doors or access to the cockpits of airplanes or to other vehicles where whoever is in charge of directing

the path could not be molested in any kind of way—then if we

could find detection methodology that would detect even the ingredients that are used for the formulation of explosive devices. That

is, if we could detect bombmaking material through the equipment,

then we could have a certain level of assurance that individuals,

once they had gained access to vehicles, were not able to assemble

something that did not exist as they were going up or as they were

entering.

More importantly than any of that or just as importantly as any

of that, I think we need to chart a course of diplomacy that at all

times is focused on movement toward peace. And I think that

comes as a result of the way in which we interact with others, the

way in which we interact with ourselves, the kind of policies and

programs that we develop for implementation.

Whenever I think of peace I am always reminded of something

that John Kennedy was supposed to have said at one time, and

that is that peace is not found in treaties, covenants and charters

but in the hearts of men. And I would imagine that if he was alive

today he would say ‘‘men and women.’’ And we have to, I think,

continue to move in that direction.

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We have to teach tolerance, we have to teach unity, and we have

to teach equal justice and equal opportunity across the globe.

So, Mr. Chairman, I thank you again for the opportunity for

these hearings and trust that we will find, if not solutions, certainly directions that will make not only America but the world in

which we live a safer place to be. I thank you and yield back the

balance of my time.

Mr. BURTON. Thank the gentleman very much.

We will take a 5-minute break. I would like for everybody to be

back promptly at 1. At that time Mr. Netanyahu will join us, and

we will get started with his part of the hearing.

[Recess.]

Mr. BURTON. The committee will reconvene. We have three statements to conclude the opening statements, and then we’ll go directly to Prime Minister Netanyahu.

For years we watched the turmoil in Israel from a safe distance.

We watched suicide bombers, snipers and car bombs. We saw the

terror, but we didn’t really feel it. It was all happening on the

other side of the world. Even when Americans were targeted, most

of the time it was a long way from home. Twelve Americans were

killed when our Embassies in Africa were bombed. Seventeen sailors were killed on the USS Cole in Yemen. And those were terrible

losses, but they were far from home.

Now that’s over. Today we know that no place is safe. Terrorists

can reach us anyplace. We’re now faced with the greatest challenge

to our safety and security since the end of the cold war. If we’re

going to be successful, it’s going to take the same kind of commitment we had then. At least during the cold war we knew exactly

who the enemy was and where to find them. Our enemies today

are almost invisible. They could be walking among us at any time.

In many ways the fight against terrorism will be much more difficult than the fight against communism.

When Ronald Reagan stood in West Berlin and said, ‘‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,’’ we were on the verge of winning the

cold war, but it didn’t happen overnight. It was the culmination of

a fight that lasted for decades. We invested hundreds of billions of

dollars in a strong deterrent. We lost many lives, but we prevailed.

If we’re going to defeat terrorists like Osama bin Laden, it’s going

to take the same kind of commitment.

One of the things that concerns me is this, and that’s why I

asked the Prime Minister to be with us today. I’m afraid the American people don’t realize how long it might take. They might be

thinking about a quick fix. I think people are hoping that we can

fire a bunch of missiles into Afghanistan, kill Osama bin Laden,

and it will be over with. We tried that before, and it didn’t work.

After our Embassies were bombed in 1998, we fired dozens of

cruise missiles into Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden is still there

hiding in the mountains.

Terrorists are not easy targets. They strike, and then they disappear into the woodwork. And even if we can get to bin Laden,

that’s not going to be the end of it. The State Department lists 28

major foreign terrorist organizations around the world. If we’re

going to defeat the terrorist threat, it’s going to take years. We

need to have the political will to strike hard even when it’s not popVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:55 Mar 20, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00054 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77229.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ular. We may not be able to do it from a distance with missiles.

We have to cutoff their financial support. We have to punish countries that give them safe haven. We have to have much better intelligence than we’ve had in the past. Our intelligence agencies and

law enforcement agencies must do a better job working together.

Most of all, we cannot become complacent. The terrorists won’t, and

they haven’t, and we can’t either.

This is going to be a fight that’s not going to take months. It’s

probably going to take years. The price of freedom is still eternal

vigilance. That’s more than ever true today.

We’re relative newcomers to this fight. We have a lot to learn

about how to fight modern terrorists. While other countries have

lived with terrorists and terrible tragedy, we watch from a distance.

No other country has been confronted by the evils of terrorism

like the State of Israel. Today we’re very fortunate to have with us

someone who has been leading the fight against terrorism most of

his life. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was elected

Israel’s ninth Prime Minister in 1996. Earlier in his career, he

served in the Knesset. He was Deputy Foreign Minister, and he

was Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N. He served his country as an

officer in the elite antiterror unit in the Israeli Defense Forces, and

his brother was tragically killed during the raid on Entebbe.

Mr. Netanyahu is a world-renowned expert on terrorism. He’s

written several books on the subject, and we’re very happy, Mr.

Netanyahu, to have you here with us today.

We’re also going to have a distinguished panel of experts assembled on our second panel, General Anthony Zinni, retired from the

U.S. Marine Corps last fall after 39 years of service. His last assignment was as Commander in Chief of the U.S. Central Command. His command included 25 countries making up the Middle

East and north Africa, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. Until

his retirement, General Zinni was the Pentagon’s top authority in

that region.

Jessica Stern is a professor of public policy at Harvard University. She worked on the National Security Council in the White

House. She’s the author of a book entitled, The Ultimate Terrorist.

Christopher Harmon is a professor of international relations at

the Marine Corps University. His most recent book is entitled, Terrorism Today.

And finally, Dr. Bruce Hoffman is the vice president at the Rand

Corp. He studied terrorism around the world for many years, and

his latest book is entitled, Inside Terrorism. I want to thank them

all for being here today.

We’re going to have many, many questions. We don’t have many

answers. I hope that during the course of our hearing today we can

air some of these issues, and these are things that I think are extremely important to be answered. Mr. Netanyahu can help us

with this.

Are there more terrorists among us waiting to strike again? How

do we dismantle the infrastructure of the terrorist organization? Do

terrorist organizations have access to chemical and biological weapons? And do they have access to small nuclear devices, like those

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which have been missing from some of the arsenals in other parts

of the world?

Before I finish, I want to make one final comment, and that is

I want to thank Mr. Shays for the hard work he’s been doing on

this issue. Many of us are focusing seriously on this issue for the

first time. Mr. Shays has been laboring in the trenches in his subcommittee for years. He’s held, I think, at least, what, 17 hearings

on terrorism, Chris? Seventeen hearings on terrorism and

counterterrorism strategy, domestic preparedness and medical

stockpiles, all of the critical issues that we face. Hopefully this

hearing will build on that record that he’s established, and I look

forward to working with Mr. Shays on this issue in the future.

And with that, that concludes my statement.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Dan Burton follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Mr. Waxman, do you want to make yours?

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you very much.

Mr. Chairman, I want to commend you on your statement, and

thank you for holding this hearing. When any of us think about the

horror, the tragedy of last week, no words can adequately express

how sickened we all are.

Congress is trying to do what we can to respond. We’ve appro- priated $40 billion in emergency relief, and we have given the

President authority to find and punish those who are responsible

for this atrocity, and the President will be addressing a joint session of the Congress of the United States tonight, and I’m looking

forward to hearing what he has to say and to working with him

to address the threat from terrorism.

Terrorism is an incredibly difficult issue to confront. It’s multifaceted. The perpetrators are often anonymous. Their victims are

defenseless men, women and children in an open society like ours.

There are a seemingly endless number of targets and types of

threats, and fighting terrorism is nothing like fighting a conventional war.

No country knows about fighting terrorism as well as Israel. In

the last 5 years alone, Israel has faced over 100 terrorist attacks

that resulted in fatalities, and for this reason, I’m very pleased that

you’ve invited former Prime Minister Netanyahu to testify today,

and I’m very pleased that he has agreed to be here.

I’ve known Prime Minister Netanyahu for a number of years. I

have a very high regard for him. He is a genuine expert on confronting terrorism. I’m looking forward to what he has to say. He

can tell us what he has dealt with on a practical basis as the Prime

Minister of a country which is every day faced with terrorist

threats, but he also has written a number of books on the subject

of terrorism. He has spoken out about a network of terror that includes not just Osama bin Laden, but it also involves Hezbollah,

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, as the chairman pointed out, maybe 28

other groups in this network, and they’re sponsored by countries

such as Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan and other Middle East regimes. They operate worldwide, and a lot of their funding comes

from within—the U.S. operations.

I’m also looking forward to hearing from the experts on our second panel. In assembling the hearing today, the chairman has chosen people who have expertise in some of these areas, and, after

consulting with us, invited them to come and make their presentations to us. All of these witnesses ought to be given respect, even

if a Member might disagree with a part of what they have to say

or all of what they have to say. No witness ought to be attacked

before the witness even has a chance to make a presentation by

any Member of Congress. I think that is completely out of line.

We’re going to look at how our intelligence agencies handle

issues of terrorism in this hearing today. Many experts think there

is insufficient oversight of these agencies. Some are recommending

that we appoint a terrorism czar to oversee all of the decisions

across agency lines. Other experts are critical of our lack of a national strategy for addressing terrorism. The U.S. Commission on

National Security, which is a bipartisan group headed by former

Senators Warren Rudman and Gary Hart, earlier this year reached

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the conclusion, ‘‘Most critically, no overarching strategic framework

guides U.S. national security policymaking or resource allocation.’’ Experts sponsored by RAND and headed by Governor James Gilmore reached a similar finding last December, stating, ‘‘The United

States has no coherent, functional national strategy for combating

terrorism.’’ Other experts were absolutely appalled that our intelligence agencies last week seemed not to have any warning of the

attacks that we suffered. Senator Richard Shelby, who chaired the

Senate Intelligence Committee, for example, said that we experienced a, ‘‘massive intelligence failure.’’ Well, now is not the time just to bemoan the past. It’s also time

to look forward to the future. In a time of crisis, Congress has

learned from our experiences and moved forward, but we’re also

going to be asked to deal quickly with many issues, and we need

to respond to these issues, but we also need to make sure that we

are not stampeded in decisions without careful, thoughtful analysis. And this role of giving an opportunity for airing issues and different points of view is an area where our committee can play a

unique role as the main oversight committee in the Congress.

For example, Congress is considering providing immediate relief

to the airline industry. I’m sympathetic to the airlines’ plight, and

I’m prepared to support providing assistance to this important part

of our economy, but we should be sure that what we’re doing is appropriate and effective. News accounts say that the airline industry

may be facing losses of up to $7 billion this year, $2 billion of

which occurred before last week’s attack. But last Friday on the floor of the House, a relief package of $15 billion, far above the

amount of the reported losses, was presented.

As the committee with primary jurisdiction over the GAO, we

should ask the Comptroller General of the United States, David

Walker, to analyze the airline industry and provide us with independent advice about what is the appropriate Federal response. We

can also make an important contribution if we carefully evaluate

the merits of other proposals, such as those to stimulate our economy. Some are suggesting doing it by tax cuts. Some are suggesting

other means.

I’m pleased that Chairman Greenspan has urged that we go slow

in this effort. I think we need sometimes to go slow, sometimes to

move quickly, but at all times to do whatever we’re going to do

with the most careful and thoughtful analysis. Now is the time for

considered bipartisan decisionmaking and national unity. We need

to come together on a bipartisan basis to confront the new challenges and the world—the new world we now face at home and

abroad.

Thank you again, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Waxman.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Henry A. Waxman follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. And finally, Mr. Shays, once again, thanks for all

the hard work you’ve put forth on this issue. Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I’d like to first thank Adam Putnam, the vice

chairman of our subcommittee, and Mr. Kucinich, the ranking

member, and the members on our subcommittee, and then in particular to thank you for your extraordinary support to our committee, and to your vice chairman, Mr. Barr, and to Mr. Waxman for

his support as well.

The cold war is over, and the world is a more dangerous place.

On September 11th, we were forced to view the unimaginable, to

ponder the unthinkable and to face what some among us deem the

inevitable, a mass casualty terrorist attack on American soil. This

episodic, seemingly far-off threat of international terrorism shattered monuments to our economic and military strength, taking

thousands of precious lives and burying forever any illusion that

barbaric scourge could not strike here.

The nature and scope of the terrorist threat have changed. In the

post-cold war world, the rise of radical nationalists, apocalyptic

sects and religious extremists merged with the increasing availability of the technologies of terror: toxic chemicals, biological agents,

nuclear material and computer viruses. Loosely organized but firmly guided by fanatic ideology, terrorism today eschews predictable

political goals in favor of random, increasingly deadly acts of violence against vulnerable civilians.

In this new war, our first task is to define the enemy, to pierce

the distortions and shadowy obscurity that camouflage terrorism.

As the President has indicated, our foe is not just Osama bin

Laden or any terrorist organization, but includes the states that

sponsor terrorists and tolerate the inhumane ideology that animates them.

We can no longer indulge the tidy, familiar mechanics of solving

the crime and punishing individuals when the crime offends humanity and the individuals are actually eager to be martyred. That

approach has been compared to battling malaria by swatting at

mosquitoes. To stop the disease of modern terrorism, the swamp of

explicit and tacit state sponsorship must be drained and disinfected. The threat must be confronted with the same focus, intensity and vigilance with which the terrorists pursue their malignant

cause.

In the course of our subcommittee hearings on terrorism and domestic preparedness issues, we heard the General Accounting Office and other experts call for more frequent, more dynamic and

more broadly based national threat and risk assessments upon

which to base counterterrorism policy. A naive or blurred perception of the threat fragments our defenses and leaves us vulnerable

to the deadly plans we must now assume are being implemented

as we speak. Our national security demands a clear-eyed view of

the threat, a strategic vision to address the threat and a restructured, reformed Federal Government effort to combat terrorism in

all forms.

Our witnesses this afternoon understand the motives and dimensions of the terrorist threat that plagues the world and changed

our Nation that Tuesday morning in September. So we join with

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the President in forging an effective Federal effort to combat terrorism and be prepared to respond to terrorist acts.

All those testifying today bring impressive experience and credentials to our discussion, but none more than former Israeli Prime

Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. We are grateful for his time and

patience, and we value his unique perspective. And we thank all

our witnesses for their participation as well.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you again, Chris, for all the work you’ve

done on this.

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

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Mr. BURTON. Mr. Netanyahu, first of all, I want to publicly apologize for calling you in the middle of the night and waking you up

when you were asleep and asking you to come over here. I forgot

about the time difference, and I think I woke him up at 3 a.m., but

he was very kind, and he realized the gravity of the situation, and

he consented to come over. And I also want to apologize for the

mix-up at the airport today, but thank goodness you’re here, and

we’re all very anxious to hear your testimony. So, Mr. Netanyahu,

proceed.

STATEMENT OF BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, FORMER PRIME

MINISTER OF ISRAEL

Mr. NETANYAHU. Well, thank you.

Chairman Burton, distinguished Representatives, I want to

thank you for inviting me to appear here today. I feel a profound

responsibility addressing you in this hour of peril in the capital of

liberty. What is at stake today is nothing less than the survival of

our civilization. Now, it might have been some who would have

thought a week ago that to talk in these apocalyptic terms about

the battle against international terrorism was to engage in reckless

exaggeration or wild hyperbole. That is no longer the case. I think

each one of us today understands that we are all targets, that our

cities are vulnerable and that our values are hated with an unmatched fanaticism that seeks to destroy our societies and our way

of life.

I am certain that I speak today on behalf of my entire nation

when I say, today we are all Americans, in grief and in defiance.

In grief, because my people have faced the agonizing horrors of terror for many decades, and we feel an instant kinship, an instant

sympathy with both the victims of this tragedy and the great Nation that mourns its fallen brothers and sisters. In defiance, because just as my country continues to fight terrorism in our battle

for survival, I know that America will not cower before this challenge.

I have absolute confidence that if we, the citizens of the free

world, led by President Bush, marshal the enormous reserves of

power at our disposal, if we harness the steely resolve of free peoples, and if we mobilize our collective will, we’ll succeed at eradicating this evil from the face of the Earth.

But to achieve this goal, we must first answer several questions.

First, who is responsible for this terrorist onslaught? Second, why?

What is the motivation behind these attacks? And, third and most

importantly, what must be done to defeat these evil forces?

The first and most crucial thing to understand is this: There is

no international terrorism without the support of sovereign states.

International terrorism simply cannot be sustained for any length

of time without the regimes that aid and abet it, because, as you

well know, terrorists are not suspended in midair. They train, arm,

indoctrinate their killers from within safe havens in the territory

or territories provided by terrorist states. Often these regimes provide the terrorists with money, with operational assistance, with

intelligence, dispatching them to serve as deadly proxies to wage

a hidden war against more powerful enemies, which are very often,

by the way, democracies, and these regimes mount a worldwide

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propaganda campaign to legitimize terror, besmirching its victims,

exculpating its practitioners, as we witnessed in this farcical spectacle in Durban the other week.

I think that to see Iran, Libya and Syria call the United States

and Israel racist countries that abuse human rights, I think even

Orwell could not have imagined such a grotesque world.

Take away all the state support, and the entire scaffolding of

international terrorism will collapse into the dust. The international terrorist network is thus based on regimes, in Iraq, in

Iran, in Syria, in Taliban Afghanistan, Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian

Authority, and several other Arab regimes such as the Sudan.

These regimes are the ones that harbor the terrorist groups;

Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, Hezbollah and others in Syriacontrolled Lebanon, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the recently mobilized Fatah and Tanzim factions in the Palestinian territories, and

sundry other terror organizations based in such capitals as Damascus, Baghdad and Khartoum.

These terrorist states and terror organizations together constitute a terror network whose constituent parts support each other

operationally as well as politically. For example, the Palestinian

groups cooperate closely with Hezbollah, which in turn links them

to Iran and Syria, and to bin Laden. These offshoots of terror also

have affiliates in other sates that have not yet uprooted their presence, such as Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia.

Now, the question is, how did this come about? How did this terror network come into being? The growth of this terror network is

the result of several crucial developments in the last two decades.

Chief among them is the Khomeini revolution, which established a

clerical Islamic state in Iran. This created a sovereign spiritual

base for fomenting a strident Islamic militancy, a militancy that

was often backed by terror.

Equally important was the victory in the Afghan war of the

international mujaheedin brotherhood. I suppose that the only way

I can compare it is to say that the international mujaheedin is to

Islam what the International Brigade was for international communism in the Spanish Civil War. It created an international band

of zealots. In this case, the ranks include Osama bin Laden, who

saw their victory over the Soviet Union as providential proof of the

innate superiority of faithful Muslims over the weak infidel powers.

They believed that even the superior weapons of a superpower

could not withstand their superior will.

To this should be added Saddam Hussein’s escape from destruction at the end of the Gulf war, his dismissal of U.N. monitors, and

his growing confidence that he can soon develop unconventional

weapons to match those of the West.

And finally, the creation of Yasser Arafat’s terror enclave centered in Gaza gave a safe haven to militant Islamic terrorist

groups, such as Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Like their mujaheedin

cousins, they and their colleagues drew inspiration from Israel’s

hasty withdrawal from Lebanon, glorified as a great Moslem victory by the Syrian-backed Hezbollah.

Now, under Arafat’s rule, the Palestinian Islamic terrorist groups

made repeated use of the technique of suicide bombing, going so

far, by the way, as to organize summer camps, for Palestinian chilVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:55 Mar 20, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00070 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77229.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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dren, beginning in kindergarten, to teach them how to become suicide martyrs.

Here is what Arafat’s government-controlled newspaper—he controls every word that appears there. Here is what his newspaper,

his mouthpiece, Al Hayat Al Jadida, said on September 11th, the

very day of the suicide bombing in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, ‘‘The suicide bombers of today are the noble successors of the

Lebanese suicide bombers, who taught the U.S. Marines a tough

lesson in Lebanon. These suicide bombers are the salt of the Earth,

the engines of history. They are the most honorable people among

us.’’

Suicide bombers, so says Arafat’s mouthpiece, are the salt of the

Earth, the engines of history, the most honorable people among us.

Distinguished Representatives, a simple rule prevails here. The

success of terrorists in one part of the terror network emboldens

terrorists throughout the network.

This, then, is the who. Now, then, for the why. Though its separate constituent parts may have local objectives and take part in

local conflicts, the main motivation driving the terror network is an

anti-Western militancy that seeks to achieve nothing less than the

reversal of history. It seeks to roll back the West and install an extreme form of Islam as the dominant power in the world, and it

seeks to do this not by means of its own advancement and

progress, but by destroying the enemy. This hatred is the product

of a seething resentment that has simmered for centuries in a certain part of the Arab and Islamic world.

Now, mind you, most Moslems in the world, including the vast

majority of Moslems in the growing Moslem communities in the

West, are not guided by this interpretation of history, nor are they

moved by its call for a holy war against the West. But some are,

and though their numbers are small compared to the peaceable

majority, they nonetheless constitute a growing hinterland for this

militancy.

Militant Islamists resented the West for pushing back the triumphant march of Islam into the heart of Europe many centuries ago.

Its adherents, believing in the innate superiority of Islam, then suffered a series of shocks when in the last two centuries, beginning

with Napoleon’s invasion in Egypt, by the way, that same hated,

supposedly inferior West came back and penetrated Islamic realms

in north Africa, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. For them,

the mission was clear and defined. The West had to be first pushed

out of these areas. So pro-Western Middle Eastern regimes in

Egypt and Iraq, these monarchies in Libya, were toppled in rapid

succession, including in Iran. And indeed Israel, the Middle East’s

only democracy and its purest manifestation of Western progress

and freedom, must be wiped off the face of the Earth.

Thus, the soldiers of militant Islam do not hate the West because

of Israel. They hate Israel because of the West, because they see

it as an island, an alien island of Western democratic values in a

Moslem-Arab sea; a sea of despotism, of course. That is why they

call Israel the Little Satan, to distinguish it clearly from the country that has always been and will always be the Great Satan, the

United States of America.

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I know that this is not part of normal discourse on TV, where

people think that Israel is guiding Osama bin Laden. Well, nothing

better illustrates the true order of priorities of the militant Islamic

terror than Osama bin Laden’s call for Jihad against the United

States in 1998. He gave as his primary reason for this Jihad not

Israel, not the Palestinians, not the peace process, but, rather, the

very presence of the United States, ‘‘occupying the land of Islam in

the holiest of places.’’ What do you think that is? Jerusalem? Temple Mount? No. ‘‘The Arabian Peninsula,’’ says bin Laden, where

America is, ‘‘plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers and

humiliating its people.’’ Israel, by the way, comes a distant third,

after the, ‘‘continuing aggression against the Iraqi people.’’

So for the bin Ladens of the world, Israel is merely a sideshow.

America is the target. But reestablishing a resurgent Islam requires not just rolling back the West, it requires destroying its

main engine, the United States. And if the United States cannot

be destroyed just now, it can be first humiliated, as in the Tehran

hostage crisis 20 years ago, and then ferociously attacked again

and again until it is brought to its knees. But the ultimate goal remains the same: Destroy America, win eternity.

Now, some of you may find it hard to believe that Islamic militants truly cling to this mad fantasy of destroying America. Make

no mistake about it. They do. And unless they are stopped now,

their attacks will continue and become even more lethal in the future.

The only way I can explain the true dangers of Islamic militancy

is to compare it to another ideology bent on world domination: communism. Both movements pursued irrational goals, but the Communists at least pursued theirs in a rational way. Any time they

had to choose between ideology and their own survival, as in Cuba

or in Berlin, they always backed off and chose survival.

Not so for the Islamic militants. They pursue an irrational ideology irrationally with no apparent regard for human life, neither

their own lives nor the lives of their enemies. The Communists seldom, if ever, produced suicide bombers, while Islamic militancy

produces hordes of them, glorifying them, promising them for their

dastardly deeds a reward in a glorious afterlife.

This highly pathological aspect—I can use no other words—this

highly pathological aspect of Islamic militancy is what makes it so

deadly for mankind. But in 1996, I wrote in my book about fighting

terrorism, I warned about the militant Islamic groups operating in

the West with the support of foreign powers, serving as a new

breed of what I called domestic international terrorists; that is,

basing themselves in America to wage Jihad against America. Such

groups, I wrote then, nullify in large measure the need to have air

power or intercontinental missiles as delivery systems for an Islamic nuclear payload. They, the terrorists, will be the delivery system. In the worst of such scenarios, I wrote, the consequences could

be not a car bomb, but a nuclear bomb in the basement of the

World Trade Center.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, they didn’t use a nuclear bomb. They

used two 150-ton, fully loaded jetliners to wipe out the Twin Towers. But does anyone doubt that given the chance, they will throw

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atom bombs at America and its allies; and perhaps long before

that, they’d employ chemical and biological weapons?

This is the greatest danger facing our common future. Some

states of the terror network already possess chemical and biological

capabilities, and some are feverishly developing nuclear weapons.

Can one rule out the possibility that they will be tempted to use

such weapons openly or secretly through their terror proxies, seemingly with impunity, or that their weapons might fall into the

hands of the terrorist groups they harbor?

We have received a wake-up call from hell. Now the question is

simple: Do we rally to defeat this evil while there is still time, or

do we press a collective snooze button and go back to business as

usual? The time for action is now. Today the terrorists have the

will to destroy us, but they do not have the power. There is no

doubt that we have the power to crush them. Now we must also

show that we have the will to do so, because once any part of the

terror network acquires nuclear weapons, this equation will fundamentally and irrevocably change, and with it the course of

human affairs. This is the historical imperative that now confronts

us all.

And now to my third point. What do we do about it? First, as

President Bush said, we must make no distinction between the terrorists and the states that support them. It is not enough to root

out the terrorists who committed this horrific act of war. We must

dismantle the entire terrorist network. If any part of it remains intact, it will rebuild itself, and the specter of terrorism will reemerge and strike again. Bin Laden, for example, has shuttled over

the last decades from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan to the Sudan

and back again. So we cannot leave any base of this terror network

intact.

To achieve this goal we must first have moral clarity. We must

fight terror wherever and whenever it appears. We must make all

states play by the same rules. We must declare terrorism a crime

against humanity, and we must consider the terrorists enemies of

mankind, to be given no quarter and no consideration for their purported grievances. If we begin to distinguish between acts of terror,

justifying some and repudiating others based on sympathy with

this or that cause, we will lose the world clarity that is so essential

for victory. This clarity is what enabled America and Britain to

wipe out piracy in the 19th century. This is how the allies rooted

out Nazis in the 20th century. They didn’t look for the root cause

of piracy, nor for the root cause of nazism, because they knew that

some acts are evil in and of themselves and do not deserve any consideration or any, ‘‘understanding.’’ They didn’t ask if Hitler was

right about the alleged wrong done to Germany at Versailles. They

left that to the historians. The leaders of the Western Alliance said

something entirely different. They said, nothing justifies nazism,

nothing.

Well, we must be equally clear-cut today. Nothing justifies terrorism, nothing. Terrorism is defined not by the identity of its perpetrators nor by the cause they espouse. Rather, it is defined by

the nature of the act. Terrorism is the deliberate attack on innocent civilians. In this it must be distinguished from legitimate acts

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of war that target combatants and may unintentionally harm civilians.

When the British Royal Air Force bombed the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen in 1944 and one of their bombs unintentionally struck a children’s hospital nearby, that was a tragedy, but

it was not terrorism. When Israel a few weeks ago fired a missile

that killed two Hamas archterrorists, and two Palestinian children

who were playing nearby were tragically struck down, that is not

terrorism, because terrorists do not unintentionally harm civilians.

They deliberately murder, maim and menace civilians, as many as

possible.

No cause, no grievance, no apology can ever justify terrorism.

Terrorism against Americans, against Israelis, against Spaniards,

against Britons, against Russians or anyone else is all part of the

same evil and must be treated as such. It is time to establish a

fixed principle for the international community. Any cause that

uses terrorism to advance its aims will not be rewarded. On the

contrary, it will be punished, severely punished, and placed beyond

the pale.

Ladies and gentlemen, armed with this moral clarity in defining

terrorism, we must possess an equal clarity in fighting it. If we include Iran, Syria and the Palestinian Authority in the coalition to

fight terror, even though they currently harbor, sponsor and dispatch terrorism—as we speak, terrorists struck innocent people,

murdered a woman this morning, from Yasser Arafat’s domain

against Israel. If we include these terrorist regimes in the coalition,

then the alliance against terror will be defeated from within. We

might, perhaps, achieve a short-term objective of destroying one

terrorist fiefdom, but it will preclude the possibility of overall victory. Such a coalition will necessarily melt down because of its own

internal contradictions. We might win a battle, but we will certainly lose the war.

These regimes, like all terrorist states, must be given a forthright demand: Stop terrorism, not temporarily for tactical gains,

stop terrorism permanently, or you will face the wrath of the free

world through harsh and sustained political, economic and military

sanctions.

Now, obviously, some of these regimes today will scramble in fear

and issue platitudes about their opposition to terror, just as Arafat,

Iran and Syria did, while they keep their terror apparatus intact.

Well, we shouldn’t be fooled. These regimes are already on the U.S.

list of states supporting terrorism; and if they’re not, they should

be.

The price of admission for any state into the coalition against

terror must be first to completely dismantle the terrorist infrastructures within their realm. Iran will have to dismantle the

worldwide network of terrorism and incitement based in Tehran.

Syria will have to shut down Hezbollah and a dozen other terrorist

organizations that operate freely in Damascus and in Lebanon.

Arafat will have to crush Hamas and Islamic Jihad, close down

their suicide factories and training grounds, rein in his own Fatah

and Tanzim terrorists and cease the endless incitement of violence.

To win this war, we have to fight on many fronts. Well, the most

obvious one is direct military action against the terrorists themVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:55 Mar 20, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00074 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77229.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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selves. Israel’s policy of preemptively striking at those who seek to

murder its people is, I believe, better understood today and requires no further elaboration.

But there’s no substitute for the key action that we must take:

imposing the most punishing diplomatic, economic and military

sanctions on all terrorist states. To this must be added these measures: Freeze financial assets in the West of terrorist regimes and

organizations. Revise legislation, subject to periodic renewal, to enable better surveillance against organizations inciting violence.

Keep convicted terrorists behind bars. Do not negotiate with terrorists. And train special forces to fight terror. And, not least important, impose sanctions, heavy sanctions, on suppliers of nuclear

technology to terrorist states.

Distinguished Representatives, I’ve had some experience in pursuing all of these courses of action in Israel’s battle against terrorism, and I’ll be glad to elaborate on any of them if you wish, including the sensitive questions surrounding intelligence. But I have to

be clear: Victory over terrorism is not at its most fundamental level

a matter either of law enforcement or intelligence. However important these functions are, they could only reduce the dangers, not

eliminate them. The immediate objective is to end all state support

for and complicity with terror.

If vigorously and continuously challenged, most of these regimes

can be deterred from sponsoring terrorism, but there is a possibility that some will not be deterred, and those may be the ones that

possess weapons of mass destruction. Again, we cannot dismiss the

possibility that a militant terrorist state will use its proxies to

threaten or launch a nuclear attack with a hope of apparent immunity and impunity. Nor can we completely dismiss the possibility

that a militant regime, like its terrorist proxies, will commit collective suicide for the sake of its fanatical ideology. In this case, we

might face not thousands of dead, but hundreds of thousands and

possibly millions.

This is why the United States must do everything in its power

to prevent regimes like Iran and Iraq from developing nuclear

weapons and to disarm them of their weapons of mass destruction.

This is the great mission that now stands before the free world.

That mission must not be watered down to allow certain states to

participate in the coalition that is now being organized. Rather, the

coalition must be built around this mission.

It may be that some will shy away from adopting such an uncompromising stance against terrorism. If some free states choose to

remain on the sidelines, America must be prepared to march forward without them, for there is no substitute for moral and strategic clarity. I believe that if the United States stands on principle,

all democracies will eventually join the war on terrorism. The easy

route may be tempting, but it will not win the day.

On September 11th, I, like everyone else, was glued to a television set, watching the savagery that struck America, but amid

the smoking ruins of the Twin Towers, one could make out the

Statue of Liberty holding high the torch of freedom. It is freedom’s

flame that the terrorists sought to extinguish, but it is that same

torch so proudly held by the United States that can lead the free

world to crush the forces of terror and to secure our tomorrow. It

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is within our power. Let us now make sure that it is within our

will.

[Applause.]

[The prepared statement of Mr. Netanyahu follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. I have to tell you, Mr. Prime Minister, that in the

5 years I’ve been chairman of this committee, it’s the first time I’ve

heard spontaneous applause for a statement by a person who participated in our hearings.

I think you’ve covered everything very, very well, but we do have

a few questions, and I hope you wouldn’t mind answering them.

You indicated in your book that there might be the possibility of

a nuclear device put in the basement of the World Trade Center,

and we had some hearings earlier a couple of years ago about some

briefcase-type nuclear devices about this big that were produced by

the Soviet Union when they were in existence, and by the United

States, and we were told that some of those devices have disappeared, have evaporated. Do you have any information or indication that those devices may have found their way into the terrorist

enclaves?

Mr. NETANYAHU. Not specifically about those devices, but as far

as the general flow of nuclear technology that flows, I regret, primarily from Russia, there is a steady and continuous and unchecked flow of nuclear weapons technology from Russia to Iraq

and to Iran, from the Russian, quote, scientific organizations that

work semi-independently, but under the umbrella of the Russian

Government. I have tried many times, including in conversations

with President Clinton, to—and with some of you, to get a message

sent to Russia to clamp down on this because of the dangers not

only to the United States, but to Russia as well.

There is also ballistic technology that goes—I shouldn’t say technology. Technologists who are onsite in both countries. It’s important to understand that the goals of these countries is to have— they already have ballistic missiles. Iran is more ambitious than

Iraq in terms of the reach. Iraq wants a regional—Iraq is—Saddam

Hussein is a regional bully with great danger if he acquires nuclear

weapons, obviously, enormous danger, and that could happen, according to our defense ministers, within 3 to 5 years.

In the case of Iran, Iran already has missiles that can reach—

overreach Israel, can reach into Europe, but they are working on

a plan, a 10 to 15-year plan, to develop intercontinental missiles

that could reach the eastern seaboard of the United States. They

want to be a global power, and Iran in many ways is not only the

spiritual center of fomenting this strident militancy, it also sees

itself as the physical power to marshal the forces to get the strategic change in historical terms.

So I think it’s important to understand that the terror network

merely facilitates the ambitions of regimes, but those ambitions are

far flung, and they definitely include, without any question, the acquisition of nuclear material, nuclear technology, ballistic technology and possibly the compression of these weapons into smaller

devices. They certainly would be more able to do so, if you’re talking about chemical and biological weapons, because the physics of

it are simpler.

We have had an instance, by the way, in another part of the

world, in Japan, in Tokyo, of sarin gas, which is very deadly and

could kill an untold number. It was apprehended very quickly in

the subways, fortunately apprehended, but you could have had

there a massive catastrophe.

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So terrorists have already used chemical weapons. This is not a

projection into the future. We’ve already been warned. I said we’ve

been given a wake-up call from hell. It’s a variegated hell, and

some of it has already been here and is here.

Mr. BURTON. Regarding the chemical and biological weapons, do

these terrorists states and organizations have these now, or does

the free world have some time to deal with them?

Mr. NETANYAHU. At least three regimes in the Middle East have

chemical and biological weapons. None of them, to the best of my

knowledge, have nuclear weapons, but they are working very hard

to get them and very fast.

Mr. BURTON. And these chemical and biological weapons, they’re

easily transportable?

Mr. NETANYAHU. The chemical and biological weapons are a

great deal simpler to manufacture and to transport than nuclear

weapons.

Mr. BURTON. In these terrorist training camps, are they training

people how to assemble and make these biological and chemical

weapons? I mean, we think we have terrorists, a large number of

them, possibly, in the United States. Would they be capable of

making those?

Mr. NETANYAHU. I cannot tell you in the most recent intelligence,

because I can only talk about things that I was intimate with 2

years ago when I was Prime Minister, but there’s no question that

the terrorist groups around us, bin Laden and others, are seeking

ways to increase, by an order of magnitude, the destructive power

of the weapons—the lethal power of the weapons that they seek to

employ against us, and, therefore, I think you have to expect that

they are perfectly aware of what happened in Japan. They’re perfectly aware of what their supporting regimes have, and they’re

also perfectly aware that it’s not that difficult—certain weapons of

this kind are not that difficult to assemble.

So I think we’ve been warned. We’ve been fairly warned, very

painfully warned, but if bin Laden conceived of this idea of taking

two airplanes, 150-ton airplanes, loaded with fuel and launching

them into the middle of New York and a third one here in Washington, then you have to assume that he’s aware of everything that

we’re talking about and that he’s working on it. I don’t have the

specifics of it, but would any of you assume differently?

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Waxman.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Netanyahu, I, too, have never seen the kind of response to

your statement that we just witnessed, where Members on both

sides of the aisle and the audience gave you an ovation, which was

well deserved. I thought your statement was an outstanding one.

It clarified, if anyone had any doubt, what we’re facing in the world

today. As the President of the United States seeks to pull together

a coalition to fight terrorism, all of our allies must keep clearly in

mind what’s really at stake.

The line you gave which left a real impression on me is that intelligence and law enforcement surely can help reduce the violence,

but they’re not an answer unless we stop the terrorist network

from operating and stop those countries that are supporting it.

Israel, however, is way ahead of the United States in dealing on

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a tactical basis, on a day-to-day basis, with terrorism. What do you

suggest to us; from your own experience in Israel. If terrorism is

a fact of life, how do we deal with it on that day-to-day basis? What

recommendations would you make to us?

Mr. NETANYAHU. Congressman Waxman, I’d say first that Israel

has been living under bouts of terrorism, but indeed it’s been bouts,

because we’ve had the ability to stop terrorism from certain corners

for specified periods. For example, we had state-supported terrorism from Nasser’s Egypt, and we took very decisive action against

not only merely the individual terrorist, but against Nasser’s regime, and the punishing power of those military actions stopped

terrorism from Egypt years before we had a peace process or let

alone a peace treaty with Egypt.

The same is true of terrorists that implanted themselves from

Jordan in the 1970’s. We struck very, very strongly against them,

and King Hussein, who was also concerned that they would topple

his regime, took action against them, and that was the end of it.

So we had no terrorism from Jordan many years before we had a

peace process with Jordan or a peace treaty with Jordan.

And during my own tenure, we were able to reduce the terrorism

not only from 100 percent to zero, but practically to zero. The terror rate dropped very precipitously, because I made it clear to

Arafat that I would take very, very strong action under the policy

of reciprocity against his regime, and I think he considered that his

regime might be in danger of tottering. So the terror dropped almost to nothing. In fact, we had a record number of tourists and

record number of growth in the economy and, by the way, record

economic prosperity in the Palestinian areas, because there was no

terrorism. We didn’t close our job markets with the Palestinians,

so they were having nightclubs in Ramallah and you name it.

So it is perfectly possible to deter most of these regimes. It is important—and I add it again parenthetically, because I think it is

not a parenthetical remark—it is not clear that deterrence alone

will work for some of the main players in this terror network.

Now, the question you asked about Israel’s experience, I think

the domestic day-to-day experience, I think the role of leadership

is to educate the public to withstand precisely as Congressman

Burton said, a sustained battle. This is a war. It is not a single

skirmish, and it requires that the citizens of a free society in a certain sense see themselves as soldiers in the same war. They have

to be prepared to absorb the pain, even the casualties. They have

to have this moral outrage in them but not to crumble when those

attacks take place. They have to be prepared to muster their will

and resolve to see it through the long haul for victory, nothing

short of victory.

I must say that what I see in the United States, what I see in

the city of New York, what I see in the leadership provided by

President Bush and Mayor Giuliani and may I say what I see in

this city from all of you is that kind of resolve. I think that is what

has to be repeated again and again. This has been Israel’s experience. No one in Israel will back off and surrender to terrorism. No

one in America will back off and surrender to terrorism. I am sure

of that.

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Mr. WAXMAN. As the President puts together this international

coalition, we know that some of our European allies have been cooperative with terrorist regimes because it was in their economic

interest to do so. We know there are going to be not democracies

but some of the so-called modern Arab countries that are going to

say to the United States if only the United States would put pressure on Israel to accommodate the Palestinians that would help

them be part of the coalition.

What would you tell the President of the United States when he

hears these kinds of claims from our allies, or when those who

would claim to be our allies put these conditions in their place?

Mr. NETANYAHU. Well, I think this is fundamentally wrong on

every count. Yasser Arafat has been called Israel’s Osama bin

Laden. But there is a difference between the two. You see, Osama

bin Laden wants to destroy America. Yasser Arafat is more modest

in his goals: He just wants to destroy Israel. That is why he founded the PLO in 1964, the Organization for the Liberation of Palestine. 1964. That is 3 years before the Six Day War. What was

the Palestine that he set out to liberate? Couldn’t have been the

West Bank, that was in Arab hands. Couldn’t have been Gaza, that

was in Arab hands, too. Couldn’t have been East Jerusalem, that

was in Arab hands. The Palestine that he set out to liberate was

in fact Israel; that is, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem and so on. And

that goal has not changed.

Many hoped, I think out of good will and good intentions, that

he had changed his goals when he entered the Oslo process. But

I think those hopes have been dashed in this city not far from here

in the Camp David conference just a year ago when he was offered

everything he says in the West that he wants; namely a West Bank

state with half of Jerusalem as its capital. He always says that, he

or his spokesmen and spokeswomen. When they come to the West,

they say this is what we want. Of course when he was offered it,

he chucked. He threw it out. He said that’s not what I want. What

I want is the ability to flood Israel with millions of Palestinians,

effectively bringing about the end of Israel.

So it is important to understand that what he says in Arabic to

his people is very different from what he and his spokesmen say

in English to America or to the Western media. He in Arabic tells

them very clearly he is not looking for a state next to Israel, he

is looking for a state instead of Israel. He is willing to back that

with what he calls the armed struggle, which is another word for

terrorism. That is what he does.

In other words, Arafat is not an engine for peace, is not a partner

for peace. He is in fact, I would say, pursuing the illegitimate goal

of policide, the destruction of a state, using the illegitimate means

of terror.

Now in this he is not different from the others except he has got

exceptional PR. Exceptional PR. He has got a lot of people bamboozled. But all you have to do is read those quotes just like the

one I read from the organs of the press that he controls, glorifying

suicide bombers, hatred against the West, his own appointed mufti,

Palestinian appointed mufti. In Jerusalem on the Temple he said

just a few weeks ago we will paint the White House black. And you

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know what he meant by that, he didn’t mean a coat of paint. And

so on. This goes on and on and on.

Now, you may say, well, these are things that are said like the

newspaper quote that I gave you. It is a free press there. That reminds me of a play of Tom Stoppard I once saw in which an Idi

Amin like dictator struts across the stage and he boasts we have

a relatively free press in my country. And someone asks him what’s

that? And he says, it’s a press run freely by my relatives. Well,

Arafat has a relatively free press, too. Every word, every image,

every picture that he shows on that television on the radio he controls.

Now, admittedly he is now scrambling to distance himself from

this bombing. But the joyous celebration that broke out in Palestine, joyous, couldn’t hide it in the beginning, people were celebrating all over the place, well, then they started terrorizing the

news media, using terror to hide the terror.

I have here an AP cable, APTN. ‘‘APTN regrets that the clients

are unable to use the 35 seconds of the Ramallah march showing

one protester carrying a picture of Osama bin Laden. This material

was shot by a Channel 9 Australian crew who have now withdrawn

their permission for APTN to use it. They say that their decision

has been taken on, quote, safety grounds. This is 4 days ago.

He is terrorizing people to hide the terror. Then he goes on to

donate blood for America. Did you see that? Donate blood for America. This is the father of modern terrorism. This is the man who

invented—first, we had the bombing of airplanes. He did. He

bombed American aircraft in the Jordanian desert. He murdered

American diplomats in Khartoum and elsewhere. He hijacked people, killed people, killed innocent people. Taken them hostage. Murdering Americans as recently as a week ago, 2 weeks ago in the

bombings in Jerusalem, American citizens. He has shed an awful

lot of American blood. And now he is donating blood to America.

Well, I think in the long history of hypocrisy, and it is a very

long history, this surely has to top the list. So I don’t think anyone

should be fooled. We have here a classic component of the terror

network. Now we are waiting for a cease-fire. Cease-fires are very,

very welcome. I hope we have them because people stop getting

killed. But if you asked your research department, Mr. Chairman,

to have a printout of all the cease-fires that Arafat has violated,

it would stretch all of Pennsylvania Avenue. And the question you

really need to see is not a tactical cessation of terror but a complete

dismantling of the terror infrastructure, and indeed a complete disavowal, a formal disavowal of all those aspects of the Palestinian

creed that effectively calls for Israel’s destruction like the demand

for the so-called right of return, and so on.

I say that because the assumption that some of our European

colleagues have, that if they give Arafat and his terrorist regime,

with the goal of destroying Israel, if they give him the hills above

Tel Aviv, that he will stop is absurd. He not only will not stop, just

as he has used any territory that he has received to continue to

wage the unchanging goal, he will continue from there as well.

What must be done is exactly the opposite. What must be done is

to stand before Arafat and say enough is enough. Terror is not

going to be tolerated anywhere for real or imaginary purposes or

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grievances. You are practicing terror, you will get no support. You

will get sanctions. If Israel has to take action to defend itself, we

will support it. Terror will stop in a very, very short time.

And that is the lesson that has to be taught not only to Arafat

but to everyone. And the battle against terrorism has to be universal. Terrorism is indivisible in its pernicious effects, and the war

against terrorism has to be indivisible. It cannot be that the Palestinian terrorists are OK, but the Basque terrorists are not. It

cannot be that the Kurdish terrorists are bad, but the terrorists

that fight for them in another part of the world are good. Terrorism

is always bad whether it is Palestinian or anyone else’s and it must

be treated as such. I think that is the message that the Europeans

have to place before Arafat and the entire world. If they don’t, terror will come back to haunt them as surely as the light of day.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Prime Minister, when you addressed Congress it

was one of the most refreshing statements before Congress, and

your statement here is extraordinary as well. I would hope that

every Member of Congress will get to read it and everyone in the

administration as well.

Mr. NETANYAHU. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. When you were before Mr. Hume in an interview you

said some of what you said today, ‘‘The terrorists today have the

will to destroy us, but they don’t have the power. We have the

power to eradicate them but must now show that we have the will.

This is the test of time.’’ I want to ask you how will we know when we have destroyed the

terrorist network? I mean, I don’t know how you ever know.

Mr. NETANYAHU. Well, you know if you monitor what is happening inside the regimes. You know if the regimes take action—for

example, simple test in Syria: There are a dozen, I think, maybe

I’m wrong, maybe it is 15, but more than a dozen. I haven’t counted them recently. They keep growing. There are over a dozen offices, formal offices, with addresses of terror organizations. They

operate there.

Mr. SHAYS. So when they go that is an indication?

Mr. NETANYAHU. Well, closing them down is a minimal, it is not

the only indication. But the fact they are there operating with impunity, with the support of the regime, is one thing that you can

demand to stop. You can also know through other means whether

there is—you know, there is only a cosmetic action and not a real

action. It is possible we know. It is not that we don’t know. Our

joint intelligence capabilities know very well. What we don’t do is

we don’t call the bluff often. I think it is time that the U.S. Congress places everyone, including Arafat’s terrorist groups that are

carrying out terrorism today, the Tanzine, or the Fatah—I’m

sorry—Yasser Arafat’s own group, claimed responsibility for murdering a mother. Today.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask you another question if I could while I

still have time. The Mossad is universally recognized as one of the

best, if not the best intelligence organization. What could we learn

from this intelligence organization? What could the United States

learn? Not the information in it but how they get their information

and so on.

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Mr. NETANYAHU. Congressman Shays, I am going to be naturally

reticent about this subject, but I want to say that the nature of terrorism is such that even though you need to bolster intelligence,

even though we need to bolster the sharing of intelligence between

us, we often don’t do that because of the concern of burning out

sources. Although I think that the sharing between some countries,

America and Britain, United States and Israel, and a few others,

is exceptional, there is more certainly that we can do in the realm

of intelligence. But the nature of terrorism is such that it is a war

by proxy, it is a war by stealth that regimes use primarily.

So you cannot anticipate every single action nor could you always

find it. This is the nature of the beast. What you have to do is go

back to the home base. It is like, you know, trying to intercept the

kamikazi pilot or sinking the aircraft carrier. You certainly want

to intercept the kamikazi pilot but what you really want to do is

get the carriers, sink the carriers, and you will probably get rid of

this problem.

Mr. SHAYS. One of your strong messages seems to be, and tell me

if I am hearing you right, that if we get the terrorist states we basically pull apart the terrorist organizations. So would one of the

indications be that we see a major toppling of some terrorist states?

Mr. NETANYAHU. Well, I want to define the problem. I am not

sure that it is appropriate here to define the exact solution. There

is a balance, depending on effectiveness, between deterrence and

other actions that have to be taken in case deterrence fails. One

thing that is absolutely clear because of the enormous dangers inherent now in this terror network and its coupling with unconventional weapons, we cannot leave this network intact. How to make

sure that it is neutralized will be, I would say, apportioned by the

nature of the regimes and their response to the measures, the punishments that are meted out to them. But I think the important

thing is to dismantle the regime before it dismantles us; that is,

dismantle the network before it dismantles it. Neutralize it or dismantle it. I cannot tell you right now which is which because there

is a sequence of actions that can be taking place over time. And

I am sure there are very smart people and very concerned people

in this city who are now thinking precisely about those questions.

What I can tell you is that I would definitely not think that it

is a one shot action. Suppose you get rid of bin Ladin, which you

should—and, by the way, dispense with the legalisms. I mean dispense with the legalisms. This is an act of war. This guy just sent

almost 2 dozen killers to wipe out thousands of Americans. This is

not a court of law. This is an act of war. You don’t go into the middle of a war and say let me try this—general, let me have enough

proof that this general produced this particular action against us

and only when we have this judicial proof will we take action

against him. Get rid of these legalisms. We are not talking about

American citizens. We are not talking about action in your own

country. We are talking about something beyond your borders.

We in Israel make that clear distinction. When it comes to Israeli

citizens, all the rules of law subject to our reviews and our laws

apply. But when it comes outside of our borders, this is what we

have governments for. This is what we have a Prime Minister for.

This is what you have a President for, a Commander in Chief for.

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And unless you give that power, the terrorist will always hide behind this so-called lack of sufficient proof. It is not a court of law.

It is a field of war, and it must be done.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Lantos.

Mr. LANTOS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to commend you

for holding this hearing, for inviting our distinguished guest. I

want to commend you for one of the most powerful statements I

have heard as a Member of Congress. This is not an inappropriate

time, Mr. Prime Minister, to pay a moment’s tribute to your brother, who is the symbol of the international fight against terrorism.

On July 4, 1976, he gave his life in that struggle and he will stand

as the singular example of human sacrifice in defense of freedom

and liberty and the need to fight international terrorism.

I very much hope that the speech writers who are preparing tonight’s address of the President that he will give to a joint session

of Congress have been listening to your comments, because your

comments are now in the public domain, there is no copyright, and

I hope many of these thoughts will find their way into the President’s speech at 9 this evening.

It has been stated many times, Prime Minister, that September

11 was a wakeup call. Well, I think it was a little more than a

wakeup call. It probably provided us, all of us, with a moment that

we can describe as a hinge of history, because the dialog, the focus,

the attention is so different today than it was just 2 short weeks

ago. This is as true of the Congress as it is of the country, as it

is of many of our allies.

It was also a wakeup call for our own Department of State. Earlier I mentioned, Mr. Prime Minister, that some months ago I introduced a piece of legislation calling for the Government of Lebanon to secure its entire border with Israel, not allowing Hezbollah

to engage in cross border terrorist raids. The Department of State

saw fit just a few months ago to send two letters to all of my colleagues urging them to oppose my amendment and not to vote for

it. It passed by the narrowest of margins, 216 to 212. And I so

strongly welcome the new attitude of the Department of State and

I ask unanimous consent, Mr. Chairman, that yesterday’s Wall

Street Journal article entitled, ‘‘U.S. Presses Lebanon on Suspects:

Bush Seeks Action on Hezbollah,’’ be inserted into the record.

Mr. BURTON. Without objection.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. LANTOS. What we now have, Mr. Prime Minister, is the Department of State at long last calling on Damascus and Beirut to

put an end to all terrorist activities, something that just a few

months ago our own Department of State was fighting. This I think

is an index of the seismic change that occurred a week ago Tuesday

which I think will focus our attention for many coming years on

this issue.

It was not long ago that many in our government at the highest

levels were issuing pious calls for restraints when Israel struck

back at terrorists. I remember one specific instance when a terrorist chief was with surgical accuracy terminated by an Israeli helicopter pilot and the Department of State was calling piously for restraint. Just imagine what an American pilot would get in the form

of decorations if he would find Osama and put an end to him in

his cave someplace. He would get the Congressional Medal of

Honor in record time.

Now, I would like to ask you to comment on two concepts, Mr.

Prime Minister. The first one relates to the issue of why the international terrorist movement hates us so much. Many argue that

they hate us for our policies. It is my judgment that they don’t hate

us for what we do, but they hate us for what we are. We are open,

tolerant, accepting of others, and this is diametrically opposed to

what the fanatic terrorists believe in and for which they clearly are

prepared to sacrifice their lives.

The second issue I would like you to comment on relates to a

statement by the President of Pakistan. I very much welcome the

fact that Pakistan at long last has chosen to stand with the civilized world and not with the barbarism of the Taliban. I publicly

want to commend the President of Pakistan for his action. Yet in

his statement he offered a caution; namely, that India and Israel

not be part of the coalition. And I find it so outrageous that a military dictator should tell the two democracies which in many ways

have been the most severely subjected to international terrorism to

stay away.

Isn’t it long overdue that we not only tell all the countries of this

world that the time to choose is here, not just in terms of actions,

but also in terms of moral and intellectual clarity? I think it would

be outrageous if Syria would be invited to join the international

struggle against international terrorism while India and Israel and

perhaps other democracies would be excluded. I would be grateful

for your comments.

Mr. NETANYAHU. Thank you very much, Congressman Lantos,

and thank you, too, for your kind words about my late brother. He

fell in the war against terrorism. But it is interesting that even

though he devoted all of his adult life—he fell at the age of 30;

from the age of 18, with the exception of a short stint in Harvard,

he had been in the Army fighting terrorism—he never viewed the

problem as strictly a military one. He viewed it centrally as a political and moral one because of the confusion that existed in the democracies that allowed terrorist regimes and terrorist organizations

to grow and expand their activity. And I agreed with him completely and devoted a good part of my adult life to making that

clear. I know you and so many others in this committee have taken

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tics as in South Africa and in Durban, where the American delegation did the right thing.

Why do the Islamic militant terrorists hate us so much? It is a

collective us. I tell you it is a collective us in the sense if Belgium

were in the Middle East or Holland were in the Middle East instead of Israel, the same thing would still be there. And if Israel,

by the way, didn’t exist, the same thing would be there. This is

centuries, centuries of antipathy of a particular virulent strain of

Islam, to distinguish from the vast majority that does not recognize

modernity. What it especially rejects is the idea of plurality and individual choice. It is a very rigid conception of life, I think a very

forlorn and dark one. But it cannot tolerate the idea that we are

having this conversation right now, that we can have genuine disagreements, that we can have a genuine parliament. That is why

they have these farcical parliaments in Tripoli or in the Sudan, but

they are not real parliaments because what they want to have is

a certain uniformity. They reject our respect for life, for individual

rights. They reject our conception of personal choice in the way we

dress and the way we educate our children and our choice of music

and art—choices I should say.

It is a completely different world outlook, and therefore you are

absolutely right when they say that they hate the West, not for

what it does, but for what it is. It is a fundamentally opposed view

of the way human life and civilization should be constructed. And

make no mistake about it, ours is better. Ours is right. Theirs is

wrong. That is why they use barbaric methods to try to stamp out

ours. They cannot stand free competition. They cannot stand free

choice on the international scene or in their own societies. That is

why they are closed, because they know just given the choice—just

give the choice to the citizens of Iran, you know what they will

choose.

I once said to the head of the CIA that the best way to induce

a change in Iran was not standard CIA tactics but to get very, very

strong transponders and to beam into Tehran Beverly Hills 90210

and Melrose Place and all that stuff because—I don’t think it is

high art, but it is its uses, because this is subversive stuff. What

it does is it gives the young people in particular the ability to see

a different life, that they could have a nice house, a nice car, nice

clothes and so on. And this is precisely the kind of competition that

these militants not only want to avoid but hate so much. They

want their uniform idea based on, again, many centuries of a slithering and simmering hate.

I think this has been written about perhaps most profoundly and

cogently by Professor Bernard Lewis. There are others. There are

Arab writers like Professor Fouad Ajami at Johns Hopkins and a

number of other Arab professors whose books I have read who have

written about this probably more honestly and more courageously

than any Western writer that I can cite. So it is absolutely correct.

They hate us for what we are in the first instance, not for what

we do. I cannot add a single thing to what you said about Pakistan.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Prime Minister, you have heard from the ranking member of the International Relations Committee. Now I recognize the former chairman of the committee, Mr. Gilman.

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Mr. GILMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and, Mr.

Former Prime Minister, we welcome you to our committee. Thank

you for taking the time and the trouble to travel so far, and again

we apologize for the State Department’s inability to meet a leading

member of another state.

We hope that you will continue to be a leading member throughout the world. We hope you will have the opportunity to meet with

our President before you go back to recite to him the same things

you have recited to our committee.

Mr. Netanyahu, what do you think is the most important initiative that our Nation should now undertake in our war against terrorism? What is the most significant thing we can do right now?

Mr. NETANYAHU. It should form a coalition of those democracies

that are willing to take on an uncompromising battle against terrorism everywhere and especially against the terrorist regimes that

make international terrorism possible. This coalition could consider

both military and economic as well as diplomatic actions against

these offending states. The nature of this action could go so far as

to military engagement and military punishment. It can go short

of that, depending on the response of these regimes and how quickly and how comprehensively they dismantle the terrorist apparatus

within them. This is the first thing that has to be done.

The second thing is until the scaffolding collapses to intercept as

many of the terrorists organizations, especially those now that

have already dispatched killers en route to our societies, and root

them out. Root them out means to eliminate them, to kill them if

necessary, with no consideration for undue legalisms if they are

citizens, foreign citizens and not U.S. citizens.

Mr. GILMAN. You mentioned some of the countries that are harboring terrorism. Who do you feel are the most active supporters

of terrorism? Who are the greatest threat to us in harboring terrorists?

Mr. NETANYAHU. Congressman Gilman, there is a distinction I

think should be made between many countries in which now terrorist cells exist in the West. Including in the West, Europe has militant Islamic centers just dotted throughout the continent. America

too. These terrorists have taken and made use of the freedom of democracies to work against democracies. But invariably they all

come back to a handful of regimes in the Middle East from which

the headquarters are launched.

It is very difficult, very difficult to sustain a terror effort when

you don’t have this international—these bases, these home bases.

Invariably, free societies are able to—this you may be happy to

hear—free societies faced with terrorism that does not have an

international base can almost always, not always but almost always, root out such terrorists. So, for example, in Germany they

rooted out the Red Army, their Red Army. In Italy they rooted out

the Brigada Rosa. In France they eliminated the Action Directe,

and so on.

By the way, some of that was made possible because of the fall

of communism. So the Eastern European communist countries that

were, basically the havens collapsed. Even though this action took

place before they collapsed they were already weak, they were already exposed. Merely exposing them and putting the sanctions on

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them worked. We have the power, the enormous technical power of

surveillance against groups that don’t have foreign support. Eventually you can overcome them.

Now the question is what do we do about civil liberties. Well, I

think that the experience of Israel and Britain and Italy and Germany and others, all vibrant democratic societies, have shown that

as they were fighting terrorism they were able to maintain their

guard and vigil to protect civil liberties. Usually there is an oscillation. The pendulum oscillates between tougher measures in times

of crisis to reduced measures in times of tranquility. And obviously

the pendulum has to shift now. If it doesn’t shift we are in trouble.

But as it shifts, the responsibility of Congressmen, of parliamentarians like you, provide alongside the judiciary the necessary oversight on domestic actions.

So I am very confident in the power of democracies, certainly the

power of the American democracy, the greatest democracy of them

all, to toughen up domestic measures against the groups here without endangering American democracy.

But again it will not suffice. So you have to go back to the regimes. Who are the regimes? Again I listed them. They are very

clear. They are Iran, Iraq, Taliban of Afghanistan, the Palestinian

enclave headed by Arafat, the Sudan. This is the nexus. Syria of

course. This is the nexus of countries that operate openly without

even any need to disguise the basis for these terrorist organizations. And again there are subsidiary countries that themselves

have simply not taken action to root out these pockets. They have

taken some action.

Some of them have not taken any action. Egypt has taken some

action, but it still has a very large and very active offshoot of terrorism there. Saudi Arabia has been a haven for financing and

other activities. They think they would buy them off. They don’t

buy them off. You know, they support the Taliban, probably not

only the Taliban. OK, but they don’t buy them off. I don’t think

they do it with a view that the Taliban would attack the United

States or that bin Laden would attack the United States. They

think they will purchase immunity, but they don’t.

So we have to be very clear. I think you have to take varying degrees of action between sanctions and deterrence and much tougher

action depending on——

Mr. GILMAN. Just one last query.

Mr. SHAYS [presiding]. May I interrupt the gentleman. I would

extend that courtesy to you, given Mr. Lantos’ long extension, but

I have members who have said they would like us to keep more on

time, so a quick question with a short answer would be appreciated.

Mr. NETANYAHU. Maybe I will give some shorter answers.

Mr. SHAYS. Your answers are excellent, sir. You answer the way

you want.

Mr. GILMAN. Should we be treating Mr. Arafat as a terrorist in

our dealing?

Mr. NETANYAHU. He is a terrorist. Treat him as such.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Tierney.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you for your testimony and coming over

today. I think we all appreciated hearing your comments on that.

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For one thing I can tell you that you have re-enforced what has

been my understanding for some time that our greatest fear, if we

were to take a look and assess our threats and prioritize, you

know, them in terms of risk, that we certainly are more at risk for

the type of event that happened on September 11th or, as you stated earlier, from somebody carrying over some sort of nuclear device

and detonating it here than we are in spending hundreds of billions

of dollars on a national defense system that hasn’t been shown it

can work yet on that basis.

So I look at the programs we have, like the nonnuclear program,

in trying to prevent nuclear materials and nuclear technology from

coming from Russia and out. And I wonder what you think about

that program and what else we might do to try to prevent that type

of dissemination of technology as well as materials from Russia or

other countries.

Mr. NETANYAHU. Well, I think that there were some initiatives

in Congress about taking action, Congressman, against regimes or

governments that allow the diffusion of nuclear and ballistic technology from their midst. I have to say I won’t shock you when I

tell you that I am not a communist and never was.

Mr. TIERNEY. That is tomorrow’s headline.

Mr. NETANYAHU. But I will say that there is one thing that I can

say for Soviet communism, for the Soviet Union, they kept that

technology, ballistic and nuclear technology, under wraps. They

didn’t give it to any of their allies. They always controlled it. They

didn’t let it seep anywhere. One of the consequences of the collapse

of the Soviet Union was that this technology hasn’t actually leaked

out; I mean it flows like a river to these militant regimes and actually for little money. It is not big money. But it is flowing as we

speak.

Now, it is true, as I said, that this could end up giving terrorists

the use of more primitive weapons of mass destruction. Do we really care what the extent of the yield is and how accurate these

weapons are? No, not if they are in the proverbial suitcase. But it

is true that they are developing at the same time missiles. So you

know, the fact that you might die of cholera doesn’t mean that you

have to accept cancer. What I would suggest is that you build defenses against both the terrorist variety and the state terrorist variety that could be employed using ballistic missiles.

You don’t want to be in a position where Iran—and I specifically

say Iran because it is the most advanced in the building of ballistic

missiles. Iran in 10 or 12 years will have, according to their plans,

if they are not stopped, will have a missile that can reach this

building. Now, you can leave it and hope that deterrence will operate. It may, or it may not. And you are not going to have a hermetic defense precisely because as long as this terror network exists they might have other ways of delivering the payload. But I

think we should do everything in our power while we have the time

to do so. I think that is what our people, our peoples, the free peoples of the world, can demand of us, to do everything within our

power while we have the time.

And I would look at all these questions from a fresh perspective,

and I would say there has been a hinge of fate here, there has been

a change. There has been something that forces us to rise above

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the previous divisions that divided us. I say that in Israel because

in Israel, for example, there was a sea change of opinion when

Arafat was exposed as not wanting peace and seeking to destroy

us and all of a sudden it merged into one great united people. I

sense that after this enormous calamity here, enormous catastrophe, that the same is happening. And I would only hope that

spirit animates your deliberations in this Capitol to forge as many

defenses and all the defenses and all the offenses that we can have

while we have the time. We don’t have much time.

Mr. TIERNEY. I thank you for that. Of course I hope we are all

looking at defenses that will actually work and spending money

only on those and testing them before we start building things that

don’t work, which unfortunately has been our history.

Is it your opinion that individual terrorists who up to date have

sort of worked without really acknowledging any particular regime

and regimes that may have let them work within their borders

without saying they are associated with him, do you think that is

going to change? Do you think there is any nation that is going to

overtly state they have a connection with these terrorists? Can you

expect them to work without a return address and sort of stay beneath the radar?

Mr. NETANYAHU. Right now, Congressman Tierney, they will stay

beneath the radar.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Tierney.

Mrs. Morella.

Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you. Mr. Netanyahu, we are honored that

you came today to discuss a situation that we now have in common

with Israel, and during this time of Rosh Hashana we certainly can

feel kindred souls as we always have with Israel.

I am curious about whether my perception of the changing characteristics of terrorism are accurate in your point of view. For instance, it seems to me that now terrorism is manifesting itself with

these small cells, really throughout the world, predominantly in the

countries that you have mentioned, where you have sometimes

pockets of individuals that have very little in common with the

major organization to which they say they are a member. Therefore, it makes it even more difficult to ascertain who they are,

where they are, and what damage they may want to be involved

in for kind of the credibility, the accolades, the prestige they may

get from doing that.

Then compounding the problem, it almost seems as though they

don’t truly have a political goal or focus as such, they have gone

from not so much political or national but maybe a touch of socalled religious, which is certainly not the way we see religion. And

it is almost like violence for the sake of violence, not violence really

for a goal. If this in fact is true, then some of the techniques they

would employ would be even far more dangerous. This could lead

to the chemical, biological warfare. I wondered, have you seen a

change in that regard as change for the worse in the whole concept

of terrorism?

Mr. NETANYAHU. Well, I do see, Congresswoman Morella, a

change for the worst because we see the terrorists have gone from

killing, murdering isolated individuals to mowing down groups

with machine guns to blowing up entire buildings and now blowing

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up huge structures, and the weapons grow increasingly more lethal

and that will continue. But I do think this violence has a goal. If

there is something I want to stress to you today, it is that it is a

very purposeful and not in that sense senseless violence; it is a violence that is aimed at destroying our values and our civilization.

It is fantasy, it is madness, but that is what they do. This is what

they think. That is what they aim at achieving. It is important to

read what they say; it would be equally instructive to read the

inner teachings of untold number of clerics in some of these terrorist states.

All hatred, certainly I can get from the history of my people, the

Jewish people, there never was a great program, a great massacre

of our people that was not preceded by well springs of hate; that

is, by systematic incitement. The Jews were the well poisoners of

the world, the Jews in the Middle Ages were accused of bleeding

to death Christian children and using their blood to bake our

matzos for Passover and sundry other hatreds, hateful lies that

were part of this dissemination of hate.

By the way, this began 500 years before the Christian era in the

Hellenistic world. Always the great massacres of the faithful, so to

speak, were preceded by campaigns of hate and inculcation of hate.

That is much the same case in the kind of massacres that we are

witnessing today. The only reason these massacres are done using

the techniques of terror is that the sources that inspire the hate,

the ideological sources implanted in the terrorist regimes, are simply too weak. The West is too strong. Otherwise it would be much

more out in the open. It is fairly out in the open if you just examine what they say, what they read, what they say to their own people; not what they say in the West when they occasionally speak,

but what they actually say to their own people, and you will see

how this cauldron of hate is constantly boiling over and somebody

is always stoking that fire.

So understand that there is an assault on our civilization. It is

very hard to accept it, and I know that Samuel Huntington’s book

stirred much debate. I must tell you that I read Francis

Fukuyama’s book, The End of History, with a chuckle. I thought

it was actually—I thought it was tongue in cheek. Then I read a

brilliant article, just a brilliant article, I mean brilliantly written,

in a magazine that I occasionally read. It won’t shock you either

when I tell you that it is called Commentary Magazine, and that

article said that—I won’t mention the author, but it said Allah

Fukuyama, that’s it, history is over. Capitalism and democracy

won, its obvious advantages to the life of mankind was proven and

it’s all over. It’s all going to be now downhill. There are not going

to be any more great conflicts and no more surges of wars and violence.

I got very mad. So I called up my old friend Norman Podhoretz—

maybe he was still editor at the time, maybe he was just moving

out—and I said, Norman, how did you allow Commentary to publish this brilliant piece of nonsense? He said, what do you mean?

I said, look, this is militant Islam. It is here. And now with a collapse of communism it has got weapons that they never dreamed

they could get their hands on. And it is coming, those attacks. I

guess it must have been 8 years ago or something like that. He

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said he would have a revised edition. Well, I hope he does one now.

This is not senseless violence. It is purposeful and a purposeful assault on our values and our civilization.

And it is only when we understand that you can mobilize the

greatest democracy of them all, which we are fortunate to have as

leading the world. I think our great fortune is that in the second

half of the 20th century the United States led the world against

Nazism. I am quite confident if the United States had led the world

in the first half of the 20th century things would have turned out

very differently for mankind and for my own people. It so happens

that it didn’t. It so happens that it does now.

I think because of the moral clarity and the basic firmness of the

American people and their ability and their courage—there is a lot

of courage in this, in the citizenry of the United States. I was enormously impressed with the fire fighters. I was enormously impressed with the haunting and moving records of the conversations

of those citizens, ordinary American citizens, on that aircraft headed toward Washington, DC. And as soon as they understood what

it is that this plane was going to do, even though they knew in a

certain sense that they are doomed, they did something that is very

difficult to do. We knew in concentration camps it was very difficult

for people to rise up and act even though they knew. Well, these

people got up, these Americans got up, and they did something absolutely remarkable, and they saved a lot of lives. And they lost

their lives. This is a brave people.

I have no doubt that looking at the truth, seeing the unvarnished

picture, not prettying it up, not rounding the edges but calling it

exactly as it is, the American people, the American President, the

American Congress will rise to the occasion and defeat this evil. It

is a purposeful evil, and we must be determined to wipe it out.

Mr. SHAYS. Ms. Schakowsky, you have the floor.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you so much, Mr. Netanyahu, for being

here today. Let me just say, first of all, that if one purpose of the

despicable act of September 11th was to deter in any way our commitment to freedom and our support for democratic allies like

Israel, then it failed miserably. I am just really gratified with your

saying that today we are all Americans. I am hoping that it is not

just Israel, but all of the civilized world feels that when that attack

occurred that we, all civilizations, we are all Americans and in

grief and defiance. I appreciate that.

Let me ask you this as part of our coalition now against terrorism. If you can, what are the ways that Israel is going to be—what

role do you see Israel playing with us?

Mr. NETANYAHU. Israel has been leading the battle against international terrorism for a long time because we have been on the

front line. We have simply been on the geographic cutting edge,

facing this militancy in geographic terms. So we have had to fight

to stay alive. We have had to roll back the tide of terrorism. And

I think that in this we continue to do so. We have been sharing

our experience, our knowledge and our intelligence with the United

States, and undoubtedly this is being done as we speak. That was

a matter of course.

I can tell you that in my tenure as Prime Minister there was

never a day, I don’t think a single day, in which Israel did not pass

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on to the United States intelligence of substance. And may I say

that it worked the other way around, too. Always. So I think you

have that. But also in times of action, Israel is there. We are if you

will, the Western position, the reliable Western position in the Middle East. We cannot have any coups. We have, as you know, periodic changes of government. People actually vote in the heart of the

Middle East and we change governments, but this doesn’t change.

Israel stands behind America, and I am quite sure and I am happy

to hear from you, Congresswoman, that America will continue to

stand behind Israel. I think that we have to neutralize the terror

attack that comes from that part of the terror network that is directed at us. We can do so pretty much on our own, but we need

your understanding, your understanding in the international scene

and unfortunately until recently your understanding and support

in such forms as the Security Council, which often had supporters

of this very terrorism directed against us, seeking not to punish the

terrorists but Israel that defends itself.

As far as Israel’s role, precise role in the international battle

against terrorism, I believe that is something that should be discussed between the leaders of our two countries, the governments

of our two countries right now, in concrete terms. It is not something that I think would be wise to discuss here except to formulate the principles that I said earlier; namely, that obviously all the

democracies that agree that they must take a stand and fight

against terrorism should be part of that coalition. Others will join

later. Of that I have no doubt. But also that we must ensure that

the terror sponsoring regimes that are not part of this coalition, we

must demand that they dismantle their terrorist apparatus.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Let me ask you this: What are the limits to

our use of force? Are there? For example, would you rule out the

offensive use of nuclear weapons, for instance?

Mr. NETANYAHU. Congresswoman Schakowsky, I don’t think that

we are faced with as powerful an enemy as the Axis powers in

World War II. In other words, it is equally fanatic. There is no difference as far as I am concerned with this militant Islamic terrorism and Nazism. It is, by the way, different from communism, as

I said before. Communism didn’t have an after life to offer the adherents, as you know. Here they not only have an after life but

they use it in a twisted way to reward the most dastardly deeds.

You get this paradise. I won’t describe to you what they are offered

in paradise. We will dispense with that but inquire on your own.

It is quite astounding what they do to these people, and so you

have here this mad fanaticism that like Nazism knows no bounds.

But if I have to compare the power of Nazi Germany and Imperial

Japan with the power of the terrorist networks it is well, well, well

below their power today. Tomorrow it could be different if they acquire nuclear weapons. But today they are much weaker. And

therefore while there has to be a global war of the democracies and

certainly led by the United States, by the democracy, the largest

democracy of them all, the effort that is required is, I would say,

not as encompassing as that previous world war. It does not bring

us to quite those levels if we act today.

If we act today, it is within our power to use means that we have

available and not necessarily all the means we have available. If

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we don’t act today, and they acquire nuclear weapons, then I cannot tell you what will happen. Then the clock will stop. Then something that is unfathomable could happen. Unfathomable. When I

described the bombing of the Trade Center a few years ago, it was

seen as this, you know, rantings of irresponsibility. Every one of us

can imagine what would happen, or maybe we can’t imagine what

would happen if a terrorist state or one of its proxies would drop

nuclear bombs on New York or in Washington. It is not about to

happen, it is not right around the corner. But inexorably it probably will happen. It will happen if we don’t stop it now or it certainly could happen. We have to remove that ‘‘could.’’ I would say this is the main message that I give you today, is

that we could witness horrors that would make the heartbreaking

carnage in New York and not far from here seem pale by comparison. And that is a sober and realistic assessment of where we stand

today. So we don’t require quite the effort that we needed against

Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. But we will require untold efforts if the enemies of freedom acquired nuclear weapons, and we

must not let that happen.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Horn, you are recognized.

Mr. HORN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure

to see you again. Sorry I haven’t been in the questioning before. I

was going to put the question to you. You have Arabs within the

boundaries of Israel that have worked there over the years. There

are Arabs represented in the Knesset.

You go to find Hamas and Arafat, who just plain lie, and they

get this complete misuse of children—and we saw that on the television of the United States when they’re all saying, isn’t it wonderful that the towers are coming down and thousands of people are

going down? And I’m just curious, how are you going to handle that

when you’ve got Arabs, which I’m sure some of them would like to

be within Israel and might well have jobs and professions there,

and how will you handle that to separate the terrorists and the

people that could easily be swayed one way or the other?

Mr. NETANYAHU. Congressman Horn, I think that Israeli democracy, like American democracy, is sufficiently strong to strike a balance between our need for security and our respect for our—all our

citizens, Arab and Jews alike. I think the danger is that when terrorism is unchecked and fanaticism is unchecked, it starts affecting

other populations.

We had a warning signal the other day when an Israeli Arab,

who had been in the Palestinian Arabs—an Israeli Arab citizen had

been in the Palestinian area, which as you know is a separate regime, is not—by the way, you understand that Israel no longer occupies, quote, any Palestinians. 100 percent—maybe I’m wrong— maybe it’s 99.9 percent of the Palestinians are governed by Arafat.

Israel doesn’t govern Ramallah or Gaza or any place else. They

live, for better or worse—some say for worse, but that is not my

point right now—they live under Arafat. We have a dispute about

territories that are empty of Palestinians, the disputed territories.

That is, Arafat controls all the areas where the Palestinian population lives, 100 percent of it.

The areas that are contested in the normal course of diplomatic

negotiations, for example, the ones I had in the Wye River ConVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:55 Mar 20, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00108 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77229.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ference, are the areas which are empty of Palestinians, virtual

uninhabited, but they are replete with historical significance for us

as part of our homeland historically for thousands of years, and

they’re replete with security significance in Israel that would otherwise be 10 miles wide, facing the likes of Syria, Iraq and the entire

eastern militant front.

I stress that point because that problem, as difficult as it is,

would probably have been resolved if it had been a territorial one.

I believe it could be solved if it’s not an existential problem. But

what we’ve discovered in the past few years, virtually all of the

people of Israel, is that the reason the conflict with the Palestinians doesn’t get solved is because it is not a territorial problem but

an existential problem, that is, basic opposition to Israel’s very existence and that is fermented from within the Palestinian areas by

this mentality of, among other things, that prepares suicide bombers.

The Israeli Arab community has been immune to this. The Arab

citizens of Israel for very long were immune to it, but the other day

we had an Israeli Arab who had gone and crossed over to the Palestinian areas, had been inculcated there, came back and became

a suicide bomber. By the way, not a young man. I think 55, 56-

year-old person. And that’s very disturbing. And in fact, it is—I

think it tells you something larger and significant for our battle

against terrorism.

Terrorism and the terrorist militancy has the unfortunate quality

of expanding when it thinks it identifies weakness. And, by the

way, it contracts accordingly. So one of the things we have to do,

we in Israel, you in the United States, all of us together, along with

the rest of the democracies, what we have to do, having now been

faced with the awful horrors of today, of the present and those that

can confront us in the future, what we have to do is, above all,

show strength, show strength.

If we show weakness and vacillation, if we hesitate, if we start—

forgive me, if we start pussyfooting, if we’re not clear about the

complete, absolute rejection of terrorism everywhere and our absolute willingness to take very, very strong action against everyone

who practices terrorism, then the terrorists will continue. If we

don’t take this action, then the terrorists and the Islamic militancy

that backs them up will see this as weak, and if it’s weak, they can

do more and more and more.

The thing that we can do about terrorists is to take action

against their bases. The thing that we can do against Islamic militancy is to show them that this madness that America is weak,

that western civilization is weak and will collapse the way the Soviet rule in Afghanistan collapsed—that is their model they have

in mind. We have to tell them it’s not true. America is strong. The

democracies are strong. Israel is strong. You will never defeat us,

and we will continue to forge a new future for the entire world.

When they understand that, for America, for the other western

countries, for Japan, for Israel, then you will see this danger recede

from without and indeed from within as well.

Mr. SHAYS. I recognize Mrs. Maloney, actually from the city of

New York. Mr. Owens is here, too, from the city of New York.

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Mr. NETANYAHU. Congressman Shays, I must thank you for this

tremendous hospitality, and I’d love to take these questions, and I

will, but I want to say that because of the somewhat tardy arrangement of schedules, I’m going to have to leave shortly. Normally, I

say this in a speech. I say, you can ask me all the questions you

have, but in 3 minutes I’m leaving. It is not 3 minutes, but—— Mr. SHAYS. Give us your time, sir. Do you have 10 more minutes?

Mr. NETANYAHU. Yes, I do, and I apologize for bringing up the

problem of the schedule.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, then we’re going to—Mrs. Maloney, you’re

going to start, and we’ll see about—you have the floor. Let’s get to

it.

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you so much for coming and sharing your

unique experiences. You’ve certainly been at the forefront of studying international terrorism, and thank you for sharing this story of

your brother Yoni who lost his life fighting international terrorism.

I really am concerned about press reports that were in Reuters

and in the L.A. Times that stated that Israeli military intelligence

may have warned the United States 6 weeks ago of the possibility

of a major attack and that Iraq may have provided support and assistance for the September 11th attack. And I’d like to know if you

are familiar with the reports that the Mossad, the intelligence

agency, allegedly to our FBI and CIA that we were, quote, largescale targets, that Americans would be vulnerable. And what, in

your sense, is—why our intelligence, the American intelligence, did

not respond like they have been responding now to this great

threat of terrorism in our own country and soil, and your comments

and your wisdom?

Mr. NETANYAHU. Congresswoman Maloney, I’m familiar with the

press reports, but I couldn’t comment on their accuracy.

Mrs. MALONEY. You cannot comment on it?

Mr. NETANYAHU. I’m simply not in a position to know of the

transfer of intelligence in the last few weeks. I haven’t looked into

that.

Mrs. MALONEY. Could you give us some understanding of what

is the current threat or capability of terrorist organizations, including Osama bin Laden’s group, to use biological and chemical warfare here in the United States, and how are we prepared to counteract this type of terrible attack?

Mr. NETANYAHU. Chemical and biological weapons are by several

orders of magnitude easier to produce than nuclear weapons.

They’re just in a different league altogether. There’s no requirement for very complex engineering and physical—knowledge of

physics and other things that simply are not—do not stand in the

way of producing these weapons, some of which are fairly easy to

assemble. So we have to assume that sooner or later, possibly sooner rather than later, the Osama bin Ladens of the world will get

their hands on this, either by being volitionally offered such weapons by regimes that have them or by—and having the ingenuity to

make them.

If we learn one thing from the experience of this attack, it was

meticulously, rigorously planned as a military act of war, a military

operation par excellence. It was timed with a ghoulish perfection.

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It was done by a mind or minds that are able to overcome the difficulties—eventually are able to overcome, I’m sure, the difficulties

of assembling much more potent weapons.

Mr. SHAYS. Prime minister, we have four more members. They’re

going to try to accommodate you so you get out at 15 after.

Mr. NETANYAHU. I’ll try to accommodate, as I said, with shorter

answers, yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Mica will be recognized, and then we’re going to

go to Mr. Davis and then Mr. Blagojevich and then Mr. Clay.

Mr. MICA. I just have actually two short questions. One you can

answer, if you recall. I was just curious as to how many Israelis

have been killed in terrorist attacks over the last, say, decade.

The other question is, you’re familiar, of course, with your whole

network of dealing with terrorism, and I understand it’s pretty

much—there’s some central control and coordination. You’re probably familiar with the United States’ efforts, and we have some 30

agencies spread out. What would be your advice to us on organization and how we might improve our approach, based on, again,

what you’ve operated—of course, you have a smaller country, been

under great threat. We have a larger country, larger agencies but

sort of a disorganized effort.

Mr. NETANYAHU. Well, the number roughly is about 400 since

the Oslo process began. This was the process that was supposed to

end all terror, and it ended up producing the greatest terror that

we’ve seen. Israel is about 1/60th the population of the United

States, so that would be equal to 24,000 Americans dead in a country that is 6 million strong.

It’s been a very heavy price indeed, but, as you see, Israel stands

strong, and the people are united, just as they’re united in the

United States, to ward off this evil.

As far as the complexity of counterterrorism or intelligence organizations as a whole, this is an interesting problem. If you have

one central repository of intelligence, which you normally should

have, then you run into the risk that additional sources of information or the—I would say additional points of view will be lost by

one conception.

For example, Israel, after the Yom Kippur War, came to the conclusion that it had one fixed conception by the main agent of our

intelligence, and so we actually went around to the other side of

diversifying the intelligence and letting the leaders receive a lot of

our intelligence. I spent at least an hour and a half each day, each

day of the 3 years that I was prime minister, going over raw material of intelligence that came from all the various arms of intelligence just so that they would not be lost.

So I think you have to strike a balance here between the number

of gathering agencies that you have and the sifting of information

upwards. It is a very delicate balance.

I’m not sure I could give you a better formula than the one we

have, but, in any case, I want to tell you that, whatever you do

about intelligence, don’t pin on it the hopes to deliver what it cannot. You know, if you look for a pin in a haystack, it’s gong to be

very hard. It’s much better to remove the haystack, and there are

lots of haystacks of terrorism. Get rid of them as best you can.

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Because looking for the pin—you know, if you play their game,

it’s going to be very hard. It is not quite true that we don’t know

who does it. We do know. Especially we know—we know this. We

know that terrorists can hide, but we know the regimes cannot

hide, and once they know that you know and you’re willing to take

action, you’ll see how quickly the equation changes.

Now, they’re going to threaten you. The minute you take action,

they will threaten you. They will even maybe take action against

you and you’ll have an inevitable exchange of blows and

counterblows. But as they see over time—first of all, your blows are

a lot harder, a lot. As they see over time that you’re prepared to

take out the haystack, they will stop, and if they don’t stop, then

you have to go from deterrence to something else.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Netanyahu, they’re in your hands. You have

three final questioners. They will just ask a question or two, and

then your answers will be to their questions. We have Mr. Davis,

then Mr. Blagojevich and then Mr. Clay, all from Illinois and from

Missouri.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Prime Minister, let me thank you for coming. I know the difficulty that you may have had getting here. I was actually in TelAviv at the time the terrorists struck, and on my way to Dimonia,

meeting with members of the Black Hebrew Israelites. I’ve always

been amazed at the ability of people in the Middle East, both Arabs

and Israelis, to cope with the level of terrorism, violence, constant

threat of violence. We have not experienced that to this level in

this country. We’ve been most fortunate. We’ve not had an actual

war in a long time. None of us have had that experience.

What would you say to the American people, relative to their

ability to cope in this stressful period, as we try to find solutions

and work our way out?

Mr. NETANYAHU. Mr. Davis, I would be as short as I can. Not for

the sake of brevity, but because I think this is the most concise answer I can give you. I would read to them the book of Joshua,

which says, be strong and of good courage, and you shall win the

day. That is what is required today of America and of all free societies.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Well, I would certainly agree and thank

you very much. And I must confess that Joshua is one of my favorites, too.

Mr. NETANYAHU. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Blagojevich.

Mr. BLAGOJEVICH. I’ll make this brief, Mr. Prime Minister.

Just as you were finishing with Congressman Mica’s question, if

you remove the haystack and they still persist—and then you were

interrupted. What were you going to say?

Mr. NETANYAHU. I’m saying you have gradations of action. One

is to deter by the application of sanctions. The second is to actually

go in and take out terrorist bases. The third is to act militarily

against an offending regime and act to the point of dismantling the

regime. This is more or less the gradations that you have.

You have taken that action, for example, in Yugoslavia. You

acted, by the way, without ground force. You induced a change of

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the regime and that stopped the aggressive action and you induced

the change of the regime.

I’m saying that there are a variety of things that you can do, and

whether or not you want to go the whole gamut depends really on

what you’re facing, what kind of behavior results in the action that

you take, and you should monitor that.

And, by the way, you have enough intelligence to monitor that.

It’s much easier to monitor a regime than to monitor one of the foot

soldiers of that regime. It’s a totally different issue. So our intelligence is good enough to address the home base always. It’s good

enough for that.

Mr. BLAGOJEVICH. In your experience, when you address the regime that is harboring the terrorist cell and you’re successful, by

and large—— Mr. NETANYAHU. By and large, yes, by and large, yes.

Mr. BLAGOJEVICH [continuing]. Then you find that the terrorist

activity decreases or—— Mr. NETANYAHU. It stops.

Mr. BLAGOJEVICH. It stops?

Mr. NETANYAHU. Yeah.

Mr. BLAGOJEVICH. Great. Thank you.

Mr. NETANYAHU. There were many instances in which it stopped,

but I think what has happened is that over the last decade—well,

I’ll give you one example of how it stopped, because this is not a

one-shot deal, but all of you are familiar with a form of terrorism

that was totally based on international support and state support

that was eliminated. I had a big argument on this in the 1970’s,

and I would say happily some of the people in this city did the

right policy and eliminated terrorism.

Remember, we used to have airline hijackings as a matter of

course, I mean, every day. Not suicide bombings, every day. A

plane was hijacked here and there, would fly to Libya. It would fly

to Algeria and so on.

The minute you took action against the offending states and they

knew that their citizens couldn’t take off anywhere or they could

suffer much worse actions and did, then it stopped. And until this

last bout of suicide bombers, we had close to 20 years of relative

quiet, relative tranquility in the skies, simply because the home

base of terrorism could not be used to accept the hijackers—or to

launch them. See, the cost was too heavy, so it stopped.

Now we’re faced with a more strident militancy, again, that

seeks to work ostensibly in the shadows. But make no mistake

about it, if you go after the home states, if you apply the measures

that I discussed, you might see an exchange of blows initially, but

you will see a decline, and a rapid one.

Mr. BLAGOJEVICH. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Clay is your last questioner.

Mr. CLAY. Mr. Chairman, very quickly.

Mr. Netanyahu, in Israel it seems like terrorism is a fact of life.

Can we expect suicide bombers here in this country, and is there

any way to end this for Americans to fight it?

Mr. NETANYAHU. Suicide bombers are only the tip of the iceberg.

There is a system that is manned by people, who by the way generally don’t want to die. They want to live in order to kill another

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day. So there is a whole system that prepares the suicide, that

takes care of its family, that arms them, that plots the attack.

We in Israel, for example, see them giving them TNT, taking

them to the target, preparing them mentally, psychologically for

this, giving all sorts of promises, theological promises to them

about the afterlife and so on. So there’s a whole network, a whole

system behind this, just as there is a whole system behind this.

And that system, again, is not—at this point, at least—suicidal. It

wants to—at least it wants to dispatch more and more. It wants

to live to kill. So I think that—and it is based on the states that

give shelter to the system. So you have to go to the base of the pyramid and not only to the top.

Can you expect more suicide bombers? You have to, if you’re logical, because it’s still out there. It’s still out there. It’s not finished.

Whether or not they will strike, I don’t know, but I’m sure—this

is just a guess—I’m guessing that whoever planned this anticipated—must have anticipated—must have anticipated today that

the United States will respond and probably has in the cartridge,

so to speak, more attacks.

That is there. That we have to—you have to realistically assume

that. Although I have no information whatsoever about that specifically at this time, but I can say that over time they cannot reload

the cartridge without states. They just cannot do that. Now, they

can shoot what they have, but they cannot overtime reload the

magazine. And that is what really is expected to take away the capacity, to launch terrorists over time, and that can only be done if,

in addition to the terrorist organizations, you target the states that

support them.

I want to thank you, Mr. Shays, and I want to thank each of you,

Congresswomen and Congressmen, for giving me this opportunity

to speak to you. It’s a great honor, and I appreciate it. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Prime Minister, we want you to be safe, and

there are many of us—I’m certainly one of them—who considers

you, frankly, the Winston Churchill of our times. Thank you for

being here.

Mr. NETANYAHU. Thank you very much.

Mr. SHAYS. We’ll have, like, 3 or 4 minutes just to enable the

Prime Minister to say good-bye to people, and then we will call our

next—so we’ll have just a slight recess of 3 to 5 minutes.

[Recess.]

Mr. SHAYS. I’d like to call the hearing to order. I’d like to welcome General Anthony Zinni, Dr. Christopher Harmon, Dr. Jessica

Stern to our panel. I’m going to ask all three of you to stand. We

do—if you’re a former Prime Minister of a country, we probably

won’t swear you in, but why don’t you move over, Dr. Stern, and

raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. I would note for the record that all of our witnesses

have responded in the affirmative. And please be seated.

Let me say to you that you won’t have the latitude that the

Prime Minister had, but we don’t have a lot of members here, so

that gives us a little more latitude.

We have a 5-minute clock. We roll it over 5 minutes, but, after

10, we would stop you. The clock is right in front, that little light

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that will be green, and it goes to—but, at any rate, you have a total

of 10 minutes, but 5 is the first time it goes through.

All right. Welcome. General, we’ll start with you.

STATEMENTS OF GENERAL ANTHONY ZINNI, U.S. MARINES,

RETIRED; DR. CHRISTOPHER HARMON, PROFESSOR, U.S. MARINE CORPS COMMAND AND STAFF COLLEGE; AND DR. JESSICA STERN, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

General ZINNI. Well, Mr. Chairman, I will dispense with an opening statement. I think the questions will bring out all the points

I’d like to bring out. So I’ll defer to my colleagues.

Mr. SHAYS. Dr. Harmon, we do want a testimony if you’d like to

give it, so don’t be reluctant.

Mr. HARMON. Thank you. I’m very honored to be here with you

today.

I’m a professor of international relations——

Mr. SHAYS. We’re going to have you pull the mic a lot closer.

Move that in front.

Mr. HARMON. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I’m a professor of international relations. I work for the Marines,

but I think really I’ve been asked here, and I’m coming here to

speak, as an individual scholar and author of a book on terrorism.

I think that Americans now are very well aware of how varied

a phenomenon terrorism is. They understand that some of it’s been

rooted here in our country. Some of it’s born overseas and stays

there. Some of it’s transnational, and that’s the main problem with

September 11th.

We do seem to be facing something like a militant Muslim international. It’s not precisely like the Bolshevik international of the

1920’s or 1930’s, because its motivations are different and so is its

degree of centralization. But it is akin, I would say, to the less formal coalition of international Communist groups of the 1960’s and

1970’s and 1980’s. That is, a coalition of front groups, terrorists,

radical states and some powerful central governments.

This new militant Muslim international is wide in its appeal and

global in its operations. It seems feverish in its faith. It is profoundly angry at its enemies and, of course, those begin not with

Americans but with moderate Arab regimes and others. And it

seems well versed in ideology. It’s versed in ideology, not mere momentary heat or inspiration. It’s so combative that some within it

defy all sense of self-preservation, and it’s well-financed, well-educated and so forth.

Let me add a few words about some of those.

Religion should be a source of enlightenment and soothing spirits, but, in some cases, it’s been twisted into blood lust. If we think

about the 1993 case that precedes the recent tragedy of September,

we remember Sheik Abd al-Rahman, who arrived here from Egypt

and the Sudan, who put together a multinational coalition of persons and did all the damage they could to the city of New York.

Militarized religion was one of the motives there. Ramzi Yousef

said himself his group that did that act in 1993 was an ‘‘international movement concerned with affairs of the world’s Islamic

armed movement.’’

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A second major problem is our foreign policy—not for me but for

those who perpetrate these acts. We can read the charter of

Hamas, which almost no one does. We can look at the new training

manual of the bin Laden organization, which is called, Military

Studies in the Jihad Against Tyrants, and we can see the way in

which our foreign policy is damned by these groups.

One of the 1993 New York City bombers, Nidal Ayyad, sent a letter explaining his motives, ‘‘the American people are responsible for

the actions of their government . . .’’ and so, ‘‘Americans will be

the targets of our operations.’’

A third major feature is the willingness of these groups to kill

a large number of civilians. That’s true of the Algerian group,

Armed Islamic Group, it’s true of Hamas, which means Islamic Resistance Movement. It’s true of Osama bin Laden, who tells us as

much in his 1998 fatwa, which explicitly threatens all Americans,

both military and civilian. And to go back to the 1993 case in New

York, one of the plotters there said his purpose was, to, ‘‘demoralize

the enemies of Allah by destroying and blowing up the pillars of

their civilization.’’

On the operational level, these groups are remarkably mobile.

They have very fine communications sometimes. They use everything from couriers with computer disks, to cell phones, to

encrypted data on the Internet, to flight on airplanes and transit.

Many men have been available to do bin Laden’s work in many different places. They operate well in Europe, which is rich, which has

many media outlets, which is generous to them and gentle in most

of its immigration laws.

Now, they use a cell structure which has never been better explained publicly than in the famous film, ‘‘The Battle of Algiers,’’

in which is shown the way in which a clandestine organization can

form and operate and, while never impenetrable, reduce some of its

counterintelligence problems.

This front has been well funded. I admire Judith Miller’s work

in the New York Times and some of the others who have looked

into the financing of the Muslim militant movement.

And the last point I want to make is of sovereign states, so much

dwelled upon by the Prime Minister. This movement is extremely

diverse, and it does have state backers. They include Afghanistan

and Pakistan, but they also have included Iran and the Sudan.

Iran doesn’t really like the Taliban. There may be some inclusion

by of Iraq. Certainly there are some independent operators, like

those who showed up in Bosnia quite unrequested.

There are differences within this movement. It encompasses

Sunni versus Shia, or Sunni and Shia. It encompasses Iran and

Libya. It includes the Palestinians of Hamas, but also the Lebanese

of Hezbollah. I think there is, therefore, an evident movement

which requires our attention; and I would agree with what Representative Lantos said this morning, which is that if bin Laden

goes away or is done away with, that will only be the beginning

of the effort that’s required.

Thank you, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Dr. Harmon.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Harmon follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Dr. Stern. Put it nice and close to you.

You’ll have to bring it closer than that. Thank you.

Ms. STERN. Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the

committee, it is a great honor to be able to appear before you today

to discuss this important subject. Let me begin by expressing my

deep sorrow to the victims and families impacted by the tragic

events of September 11th. My thoughts are with them.

Mr. Chairman, a war on terrorism must be fought on many

fronts, using every tool at government’s disposal—diplomacy, intelligence, and when we identify the perpetrators, military strikes.

But force is not nearly enough. Our goal should be to drain the

swamps where extremists thrive, and that implies a combination of

measures: stopping the flow of money to these groups, intelligence

cooperation and military force. But most importantly, it implies understanding that failed and failing states are important sanctuaries, as well as sources of recruits for extremist movements.

When we talk about Pearl Harbor, we should also be thinking of

the Marshall Plan.

Several surprising facts about bin Laden’s group came to light

during the trials of the men informed in the 1998 attack against

U.S. Embassies in Africa, and those facts reveal how well-organized, sophisticated and elusive a network we’re up against. Government officials estimate that bin Laden’s organization has thousands of operatives who are active or suspected to be active in 34

countries, including in the United States.

But the threat doesn’t come from bin Laden’s group alone. Many

groups, such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Algerian Islamic

Group, are closely affiliated with al Qaeda. They train at his camps

and carry out bin Laden’s objectives. Bin Laden is probably correct

that if the U.S. Government kills him, hundreds of Osamas are

prepared to take his place. The al Qaeda and others like it that I’ve

studied have wings that handle finance, documents, public relations and intelligence. They run businesses. They conduct surveillance of enemy targets. They cultivate journalists to ensure favorable coverage in the press.

And by the way, they also cultivate me. They have sophisticated

Web sites for both fundraising and recruiting. Clerics teach

operatives that killing civilians is allowed.

Like any conventional business, the group includes both skilled

and unskilled labor and money can be an important component. A

former Sudanese member of al Qaeda, Jamal Ahmed Al-Fadl, said

that he was paid a monthly salary of $500, while Egypt’s members

made up to three times as much. When he asked bin Laden, why

are the Egyptian members making so much more money, bin

Laden responded, well, they have passports and other job opportunities. In other words, bin Laden is paying these guys the opportunity costs for their time, like a CEO.

Like other business managers, bin Laden also needed to recruit

unskilled labor. K.K. Mohamed, for example, received no monetary

compensation for his efforts, which involved acquiring a truck and

acquiring explosives; and given his role in the Embassy bombing in

Tanzania, he’ll spend the rest of his life in jail.

But the group also reported undergoing training in engineering

and to pilot planes. One talked about purchasing the plane with a

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goal of transporting equipment, including Stinger missiles from Peshawar to Khartoum.

This group, and others like it that I have studied, has thought

carefully about evading law enforcement detection. And if you’re interested in that, I urge you to take a look at that manual—I won’t

go into details—the manual that Dr. Harmon just mentioned.

The most important aspect of training militants is, actually,

mental training. It takes relatively little time and effort to learn

to fly a plane; many people can do that. But training someone mentally to carry out suicide mass casualty attacks is more difficult.

The Taliban were actually born out of extremist madrassahs in

Pakistan. These schools function as orphanages. Families that cannot afford to feed their children send them to these schools where—

send them to these schools where they are educated, but also fed

and housed. Madrassahs I have visited have children from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Chechnya, Kuwait, Mongolia, Nepal,

Russia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. This helps to

give us a sense of what we’re talking about here. In a school that

purportedly offered a broad curriculum, a teacher I questioned

could not multiply 7 times 8.

Pakistan is prepared to assist the international coalition on the

basis of principle. It does not expect a quid pro quo according to

its officials. But, still, now would be a good time to offer assistance

because it is in U.S. national security interests to do so. If we inadvertently turn Pakistan into a second Afghanistan, the results

would be disastrous not only for India, but for the entire world.

How can we help Pakistan? Pakistan has long been seeking market access for its textiles. Opening our markets would translate

into $300 to $400 million according to the Pakistani Embassy,

which could make a crucial difference to Pakistan’s economy. We

should also be considering debt relief.

We need to help Pakistan especially in the areas of health care

and education. It may even make sense to make some of these efforts visible. The extremists groups that I interview are unlikely to

change their minds, but we can reduce their ability to mobilize others, and that is really critical.

We need to think about how to undermine these groups’ appeal.

Islam strictly prohibits targeting innocent civilians. Religious scholars need to get out the message, loud and clear, that bin Laden’s

version of Islam is a grotesque distortion of their faith. Those scholars should be speaking out, not just in America, but all over the

world.

Finally, we have to learn to dictate less and listen more, as Joseph Nye argues in a forthcoming book on America’s soft power.

We have a stake in the welfare of other peoples and need to devote

a much higher priority to health, education and economic development, or new Osamas will continue to arise.

I have some additional material that I would like to give you for

the record.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Stern follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. I’m going to recognize our chairman first, but I will

tell you the question I’m ultimately going to ask, so if the others

of you could think about it when the chairman is asking his questions, I’d like to know where you would agree and disagree with

what you heard the Prime Minister say and what you would emphasize about what he said and so on.

So I’m just looking for the extremes—where you really strongly

agree, where you would possibly disagree and where you would put

the emphasis on what he said, because he said a lot. I think you

all know that. And maybe that’s one reason, General, why you’re

a man of few words at this moment.

But, Mr. Chairman, you have as much time as you’d like to consume.

Mr. BURTON. I’ll try not to abuse the privilege, Mr. Chairman.

Let me just start off by saying, as I understand it, Dr. Stern,

you’re saying that there ought to be some kind of a Marshall Plan

up front for allies like Pakistan, so that we can dissuade some of

the people who might be swayed by economic matters to joining the

terrorists?

Ms. STERN. Well, I think that we really ought to be helping Pakistan educate its youth. I think that those madrassahs are an important component of the Jihad International Inc., and what else

we’ve got to be doing initially before we go forward is—it does seem

to me that Pakistan is ready to assist us, and, therefore, we have

to have that Marshall Plan. We would need to develop that Marshall Plan right now. It’s not that we need to pour money into

Pakistan instantly, but we need to be ready. We don’t want to turn

Pakistan into Afghanistan. It’s a real danger.

Mr. BURTON. So you think we ought to start moving that direction right away?

Ms. STERN. We ought to start planning it.

Mr. BURTON. OK.

General, you worked with Pakistan, and you were with them, I

guess, during the problems we had in Somalia. You were the commander in chief of CENTCOM at that time. What was your assessment of the Pakistanis in that conflict?

General ZINNI. Well, they were truly heroic. The Pakistanis suffered—I think it was 135 killed, more than any other force. When

we were bringing in coalition partners and, of course, trying to give

coalition partners some of the tough duty, like the city of

Mogadishu or some of the difficult outlying areas, Pakistani brigade voluntarily took on the heart of the city, and they paid a big

price for it.

I also commanded the force that covered the withdrawal of the

U.N. Forces, and the Pakistani brigades were the last ones on the

beach, except for our forces. We conducted nine tactical maneuvers,

all at night, extremely difficult, passage of lines, release in place;

doing it with an ally that doesn’t even operate under the same doctrine is extremely difficult. They were highly professional, and

they’re greatly appreciative of what we did.

I would also say, Congressman, that after the millennium bombings or alleged preparations for attack were in Jordan, the Jordanians coughed up a number of terrorists ready to attack a number of civilians, and we picked up the terrorists trying to come

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through the Canadian border to LAX. I was asked, because of my

relationship with General Musharraf, to call him and ask him to

apprehend the leaders of this effort who were identified as being

in Pakistan along the Afghan border. He said, Of course, and he

immediately apprehended them all.

I was then asked to call him again to ask if he would allow our

lawful and other agencies to have access to them, and he said, of

course, send them right away.

I was then asked to call him again and see if he would give up

computer disks and other things that were confiscated, and he said,

Of course.

To make a long story short, I have asked to make five calls and

he delivered under everyone of them. He wasn’t under pressure

and he knew he wasn’t going to get anything for this. As a matter

of fact, I said, this ought to be motivation for us to improve our relations. He said, I don’t want anything for this. He said, it’s the

right thing to do.

So that’s been the kind of individual he’s been. He leans toward

the West. I think he wants more Western influence. His No. 1 concern in his army is that 70 percent of his officers have not been

outside of Pakistan. Traditionally, it’s been an international officer

corps, educated offshore in many of our institutions, but now cutoff

from that; and he worries about an army that has to turn inward

and the influences of extremists.

I think he’s someone that we should help, as Dr. Stern says, and

the country, not because we get something out of it, because as Dr.

Stern says, we can’t afford a Pakistan that becomes another Afghanistan.

Mr. BURTON. Very good.

Let me just ask one more question. I see the red light came on,

and I appreciate the generosity of the chairman.

One of the questions that has not been asked, and I’m not sure

you’ll want to answer this question in open forum, but I’d like to

pose it to you anyhow, and that is, I think—I can’t remember

whether it was Dr. Harmon or Dr. Stern commented about a truckload of Stinger missiles.

Was it you, Dr. Harmon?

Mr. HARMON. It was Dr. Stern.

Mr. BURTON. And the concern I have is the Stinger missiles are

shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles that can bring down a plane.

Do these terrorists have these kinds of weapons or access to

them, and should we be concerned about that right now here in the

United States?

General ZINNI. We have had reports that the terrorists do have

Stinger missiles or their equivalent, Soviet model, I believe it’s SA–

7. As a matter of fact, as I mentioned, when we covered the withdrawal of the U.N. Forces out of Somalia, rumors of Stinger-like

missiles caused us to have to do an all-surface. In other words, we

had to withdraw the entire force by sea for fear of bringing in

heavy-lift air and the problems around Mogadishu airport.

Obviously, during the Afghan war, the Afghans were provided

with surface-to-air hand-held missiles, and there’s been an attempt

to account for all of those. I’ve never seen anything that absolutely

confirmed, but I would strongly believe that they have those misVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:55 Mar 20, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00157 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77229.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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siles, or have access, or could certainly buy them on the weapons

market.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll have some more

questions later.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

At this time the Chair would recognize Mr. Waxman.

Dr. Harmon, I want you to put your mic a little closer. Move

that, if you would, and get it a little closer.

Mr. Waxman, you have the floor for at least 10 minutes and

more if you need it.

Mr. WAXMAN. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want

to greet the three witnesses and apologize that I wasn’t here for

your testimony, but I had a conflict that I had to attend to.

This is probably the most important issue before us I think, far

above any other. There are all the other issues that are still pending, like what do we do with energy and electricity deregulation,

what do we do with compensating health providers and things like

that.

We heard from former Prime Minister Netanyahu. I don’t know

if you were here to hear what he had to say, but he described the

need to have a clear policy of sanctioning any state that allowed

terrorism to operate within its borders, or gave support to terrorism.

Now, he made a convincing case that terrorism, which is the intentional attack on innocent civilians, should not be acceptable

under any circumstance. But how practical is such a policy as we

now try to bring together a broad international coalition to deal

with this problem and to strike back at those who attacked us last

week?

General Zinni, do you have any views on that?

General ZINNI. Well, I think there’s the obvious problem of one

man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. You’re going to

run into that. Certainly not in the case of Osama bin Laden. I

think you’ll find very few people who describe him as a freedom

fighter or the kind of terrorist that we’re talking about, that Dr.

Stern, Dr. Harmon mentioned, who are directly informed in these

sorts of activities.

But if it becomes a blanket policy, I think it’s going to be difficult

on the fringes as we get into areas where it’s unclear as to who is

a terrorist or how we define them. I do think the Prime Minister’s

statement about terrorism as an attack on innocent civilians is not

acceptable in any case, and I do think we ought to——

Mr. WAXMAN. Terrorism is unacceptable, not his statement is unacceptable.

Mr. ZINNI. No. Terrorism is unacceptable; I’m sorry—that we

should sanction any country that advocates or condones attacks on

innocent civilians as a means of responding to whatever their political problems are.

Mr. WAXMAN. Dr. Harmon, did you want to comment?

Mr. HARMON. May I add something?

I think that sanctioning states which harbor terrorist groups is

quite practical for at least a couple of reasons. One is that all traditional law and modern international law, to the limited degree I

understand them, bar a state from allowing its territory to be used

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as a refuge and as a base for operations against foreign states.

Since that’s a bedrock principle of international law and our U.S.

foreign policy, I think we should use it and rely on it and push others to live up to it. And I think the Prime Minister’s arguments do

point in that direction.

The second thing, as to this notion of just how well we can recognize terrorism, I was struck in 1997, December and also in 1994,

at two great summit meetings involving many dozens of Arab

states, that they published the most extreme condemnations of terrorism, especially the kind committed in the name of Islam.

I think Americans have heard so many commentators talk about

the difference between real Muslim faith and Muslim militancy

that would kill innocent people, that I think we understand that,

and think we can rely on it. I think we can turn to a moderate

Arab state and make every reasonable insistence that they help us

in fighting terrorism. It’s in their interest as much as ours.

Hosni Mubarek went to Addis Ababa on a state visit in 1995 and

was nearly murdered by terrorists who came from the Sudan. It

was completely reasonable that Egypt, after that, was infuriated by

Sudanese behavior. It was reasonable that the United States and

Egypt both joined in sponsoring sanctions in the U.N. against the

Sudan, which I think have had some effect; and so I think it is

practical, and I think it must be pursued.

Mr. WAXMAN. We’re now trying to bring together an international coalition to fight terrorism. I think the President is doing

exactly the right thing, and I certainly support him. But prior to

this time, we were resisting some international efforts—for example, the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972 which prohibits the

development and stockpiling of biological weapons for 6 years. Negotiations have been ongoing to add to the treaty a protocol containing provisions that will allow inspectors to obtain information

about and go to sites of expected biological weapons production, development or use.

Earlier this year, the United States rejected this protocol and

failed to offer an alternative proposal.

In addition, the U.N. is in the process of negotiating a treaty to

counter small arms proliferation. In these negotiations, the U.S.

has been supporting civilian ownership of military weapons in trying to block proposed restrictions on trading arms with rebel

groups.

Do you think that we ought to change course and support the Biological Weapons Convention to be expanded to allow inspectors to

proceed to get this information, and do you think we ought to reverse course and work within the U.N. in trying to negotiate a

treaty to counter small arms proliferation?

Do any of you have any comments on those two areas?

Ms. STERN. I think what we’ve learned in the last week is that

this is very much a globalized world, and there is a dark side to

globalization, and that we need other countries to help us fight a

variety of threats, not just terrorism, but also reemerging antibiotic-resistant disease. There are going to be certain kinds of

threats that we can absolutely not fight alone.

I think that certainly the Bush administration should put forward some kind of alternative if it can’t accept the Biological WeapVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:55 Mar 20, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00159 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77229.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ons Convention itself. I understand that there are some kinds of

experiments, which seem to be reasonable experiments, ongoing in

what our adversaries might have planned for us in the area of biological warfare, and it’s understandable that we would want to— not to reveal exactly what is going on. So we need to come up with

a good alternative.

The bottom line, I think you’re absolutely right, is that we cannot

go it alone. In a way, we are declining, our power is declining. We

need the world; that’s become very, very clear.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you very much. I appreciate your testimony

and your answer to my questions, and I wanted to say to you, Dr.

Stern—I don’t know if you were here or where—one of our colleagues I thought was very unfair to you, and I just want to apologize on behalf of the overwhelming majority of this committee that,

I’m sure, disagreed with a Member of Congress acting in such an

unprofessional way.

Ms. STERN. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Platts, you have the floor. You’ve been very patient, and you are a very valued member of our Subcommittee on

National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Realtions.

Thank you for staying and being here.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just one question for the

panel.

Given your knowledge of the broad issue of terrorism, in this region in particular, and how we’re clearly looking to Pakistan to be

of assistance—and we’re aware of their assistance in the past, General, and appreciate your insights into that assistance. Earlier,

with the Prime Minister, there were some questions regarding how

we build the coalition against terrorism and the issues of Israel

and India being included in that terrorism and how that affects the

coalition, and our ability to stay united and go forward.

And I’d welcome your comments on both of those nations being

included in the coalition.

General ZINNI. I would echo what Dr. Harmon said. This threat

affects Islamic countries as well as non-Islamic countries.

If you look at the bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Muslims were killed. In the case of Dar es Salaam, 11 Tanzanians were

killed. 10 were Muslim. It’s obviously destroyed countries, made

them incapable or failed states, the cases of Afghanistan, Somalia.

We have countries out there that have tried to turn this around.

Yemen is a good example. Yemen has a lot of problems, but Yemen

asked for help. They asked for help in intelligence sharing, in

training counterterrorism forces, in helping develop a coast guard,

a border security force. We were involved, in my time there, in trying—because it was in our interest—to also help them secure their

borders and not become a transit point for terrorists.

Unfortunately, the Cole was bombed in their harbor, and it set

us back a considerable way and even brought questions from Congress about why we should even do this. Well, I think now those

questions are pretty well answered.

I’d like to just make one statement about—most of the things

that have been said here have to do with what I would call ‘‘the

first phase’’ of this. The first phase is, get better intelligence, fuse

it better, go after the money, get the leadership, take care of the

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infrastructure and take it down. We may need some legal help in

terms of computer network attack and information operations,

changing some of our own laws.

There will be military action. It should be done in the appropriate way with the appropriate targets.

All that is short-term, tactical first phase.

You have a second phase that really, I think, gets to your question, Congressman. What do we do after that? We can leave a lot

of broken china in this region, a lot of people that will not understand our motivations and intentions. Eventually you have to ask

the question, how do we get at the center of gravity of this problem, radicalized young men who are willing to destroy things for

this?

How do they get there? It isn’t just religious fanaticism that suddenly struck them. That’s the rationale, and that’s the means by

which they’re cultivated. But there are economic and political problems; there are cultural conflicts out there that we need to work

to resolve. It’s in our interest and the interest of those in the region.

Those members of the coalition, beyond Israel and beyond India,

I think basically the Islamic countries, will join us in this, but they

want a long-term commitment and they will want us to help them

address these issues that go beyond just the immediate tactical attacks or fixes that we need to do.

Mr. PLATTS. Would either of the other panelists like to address

it as well?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate all three of our panelists being here today and giving their time; and, certainly, your

leadership and the full committee chairman’s leadership on this

issue.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Platts.

You are all very gracious to allow one member to proceed, but

I have a number of questions, and I consider you a phenomenal resource. I would like you to tell me where you agree the most with

the Prime Minister, or where you might have been a little uneasy,

if you were at all; and what would you have wanted to emphasize

about what he said?

And, General, I’ll start with you.

General ZINNI. I didn’t find anything in particular that I would

disagree with.

I understand we have a strong relationship with democracies

around the world, and we have special relationships with countries,

but I think it’s clear to us that the coalition that we need to build,

what we need in the international community to fight this, has to

be broad; and we have to make sure that what we do includes

countries that may not be democracies, countries that may be

struggling toward democracies, even countries that have a lot of

problems that need to be fixed and need to perform a lot better to

measure up to our standards and to receive our support. Because

the immediate problem is dealing with this.

As I mentioned, the first phase of this problem is to eliminate

this cancer that’s out there, but then in the second phase to eliminate the causes.

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I don’t want my son facing this. He’s a second lieutenant in the

Marine Corps, by the way. But we will create generational problems if we only go at the tactics of this, if we only view this as a

war, if we only view this as attacks.

Dr. Stern mentioned the Marshall Plan. General Marshall defeated Nazi Germany and then found a way to make sure we didn’t

face that again. Douglas MacArthur certainly helped in the defeat

of Japan and then made decisions on rehabilitating Japan, to bring

it around to where we never had to face that again. As distasteful

as that seems now, as much as that runs against our emotions at

this moment, when we finish the job of getting Osama bin Laden

and breaking his network and destroying other terrorist networks—which I’m convinced we can do; we now have the will and

the popular support, unfortunately through this tragic incident,

that we hadn’t had before. But we need to take it that step further,

and we need to prevent the conditions that allow this to grow, from

happening again. We are the only power left in the world that can

cause this not to become a future problem.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m going to pursue a question with you before we

ask the others to respond to the same question.

It seems to me that the Prime Minister was giving us a recipe

that makes it easier for us to fight terrorism and to have our—and

to use our military, because he’s making it very clear we have to

hold the harboring states accountable as if they committed the act,

instead of—in that sense, we’re not looking for the needle in the

haystack. I mean, we know it’s there. We know who the leaders

are, and we hold them accountable.

Tell me, though, what that means.

General ZINNI. I’ve been in this business for 18 years. I was the

Marine Corps’s counterterrorism officer, appointed after the Beirut

bombs. Every time you tried to generate the resources or the attention to deal with this issue, you never really could get everything

you felt you needed.

I think we’re going to find in the intelligence community, for example, we’re woefully inadequate in the number of analysts, in the

fusion center, in the kinds of things we need to bring that together.

The comment would always be that more Americans die from bee

stings each year than they do from terrorists. Well, that’s not true

anymore. We’ve crossed into a new era, and I think that we have

now, unfortunately because of this tragedy, the public support and

the political will to do something.

Any nation-state that promotes, supports or condones terrorism,

we must consider it as an act of war against us, and we must go

after that nation-state and, I believe, remove the regimes that advocate this, that support it or direct it. In that sense, I completely

agree with the Prime Minister.

I think there are going to be nonstate entities that are going to

require a different approach, and of course, Osama bin Laden is

the classic case, where they do have the wherewithal, the financing, the network, the support structure to do things that only nation-states were able to do just a short time ago.

There is going to be a third category of nations, incapable and

failed states that are used and abused. They are not going to look

pretty. They are going to be states where maybe in some cases, the

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government is supportive of the kinds of things we want to do, but

there is mixed reactions from the population. We push the governments very hard, we could lose the state. So we are going to have

to be very careful how we handle that category of state. We have

to help them out of this more as in many ways and we have to help

them come out when they make the hard decisions in ways that

their people can see they benefited from making the right decision.

So we have to look at those three categories, Mr. Chairman.

States that fully condone it and we have to go after them as we

would any nation that has committed an act of war upon us.

Non state actors. This is going to be the strange new war, the

war of computer network attack, of high degree of intelligence, of

selected military strikes, of all the things you have heard testimony

about.

And then the third category, failed or incapable states that will

need our help. I would give one caution in that third area, because

I have lived this when I attempted to do the engagement in my region. We have a number of people in this body who honestly believe, as they should very strongly, about certain principles. And

when they look at these nation states, they see a principle that

isn’t fully the way they would like it to be, be it human rights, non

proliferation, democratization. Because of this one flaw or one

fault, we totally become incapable or we become prohibited from

engaging in any way.

I conducted military to military connections with countries that

I was turned off because their police committed a humanitarian or

human rights violation. The military people that were clean told

me how does this affect me. I am trying to do the right thing. This

happened right after an incident in New York. How does it affect

you in the military? I made the case back here that I often felt like

someone charged to provide medical assistance, but the patient had

to be completely healthy to qualify. We are going to have to change

the rules a little bit and understand that we have a long way to

go with some of these nations. It may not be perfect but we have

got to help them along the road or they will degenerate into what

Dr. Stern and Dr. Harmon have described here, especially in cases

like Pakistan and Yemen and other places.

Mr. SHAYS. Sir, you almost accomplished the impossible. Behind

you are two Marines that haven’t cracked a smile all day and they

almost started to smile.

General ZINNI. And they haven’t been ordered to, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. I will have you think about it now, that is, I thought

human intelligence required us to be in the various countries we

are not at and I saw the conflict of our treating these countries as

enemies, and yet we need to be good diplomats or military people,

our businessmen and women to interact, to learn things. But you

seem to suggest that, you know, we were woefully inadequate on

human intelligence by not maybe having analysts. So I need you

to come back to that to flesh that a little better. Dr. Harmon, Dr.

Stern, one of you would respond to the thing you agreed most with

Mr. Netanyahu and maybe the area have you some caution.

Mr. HARMON. I would like to reply. Thank you. Benjamin

Netanyahu help set the terms for debate on forcible

counterterrorism in the mid 1980’s when this was such an imporVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:55 Mar 20, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00163 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77229.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tant issue. His first book appeared, and everyone in the building—

and I had the privilege of having a small desk in a distant part

of the building—everyone here was struck by the intelligence of the

book, by its emphasis on clear thinking and good logic and its insistence that morals play a role in this debate, that it is not just

a question of morale, but of the fact that in democrat societies, a

moral position is part of morale. He did, in short, a great duty with

his publications.

And his last word today, if I recall correctly, was an emphasis

on will. I think that as our distance from September 11th grows,

that will be something we all really need to remember.

I would like to underscore General Zinni’s emphasis that certain

threats we face don’t necessarily have a good home address, that

there are failed states, there are individuals that need dealing with

in ways that we can’t only take through capitals, state capitals in

these cases.

Let me mention something that is sort of controversial. The

United States strategy has included for years the matter of forcible

rendition in the case of an individual who may be stateless, like

Osama bin Laden’s case, or a narco-trafficker or something who is

abroad from his own country, they have used a combination of law

and force to seize these people, bring them here for trial. There is

no reason that this country can’t contemplate careful and intelligent use of force in a military vein while also doing far more of

that kind of thing, such as forcible rendition. All administrations,

Democrat and Republican, have done it. Our courts uphold it. If we

are willing particularly to use lethal force, if need be, when the

case demands it, this is a very practical thing we can do in the difficult war, in the difficult world between war and peace that

counterterrorism involves.

And so, that is an attempt to—reasonable countries can deal

with particular individuals of the kind that General Zinni was discussing in that way. Otherwise, I think that the Prime Minister’s

testimony is a good lesson for Americans and something well worth

retaining.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Dr. Stern.

Ms. STERN. I would just like to talk a little bit about what I have

seen about how some of these groups raise money.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask you this though, could you first respond

to what you comment on Mr. Netanyahu’s.

Ms. STERN. Yeah. It is closely related because I think that—what

I want to emphasize is that these groups don’t really need states

for—they need states, obviously they have to live somewhere; they

are not going to live on Mars. But they are getting a lot of what

they need from other entities than states. And I think it is very important to realize how they are doing that. They are wealthy individuals, and I want to talk about the Jihadi groups that I have

interviewed in Pakistan. You will see something similar in other

parts of the world.

Mr. SHAYS. May I ask you parenthetically, if you continue to

interview people who are potential terrorists, are you put in the

awkward position of being able to say what you need to say?

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Ms. STERN. Actually, I have already published. They don’t really

like what I publish and I probably will not be able to continue

doing this kind of research.

Mr. SHAYS. I would like to have you back a few more times.

Ms. STERN. I think my husband doesn’t want me going back.

Mr. SHAYS. That is a good sign. It must mean he loves you.

Ms. STERN. Right. I don’t think I am about to tell you anything.

Mr. SHAYS. If your husband wanted you back, I think you need

to consult someone.

Ms. STERN. Well, I will just put——

Mr. SHAYS. For the record, the two Marines smiled for the second

time.

Ms. STERN. I think it is very important to realize that there are

wealthy individuals around the world that are supporting these

movements. And governments may be able to control them, but we

have to pressure those governments a lot more.

Mr. SHAYS. So that implies the Swiss or whomever that don’t

harbor terrorists, if they are enabling someone to be harbored and

they are aware of it in any way, they need to step forward.

Ms. STERN. That is right. I think that may be a good way of saying this is—we should be going after terrorism enablers, and obviously we are not going to impose sanctions on every terrorism enabler.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. What else would you like me to know?

Ms. STERN. There is a lot of money. There is a lot of money in

this world, the Jihadi world. Without going into details, since it obviously makes you nervous, I will say on my behalf, and thank you

very much, I will say that one group, for example, told me they had

so much money they didn’t know what to do with it. They are also

getting donations in kind of these groups are donating operatives

for particular operations. So groups are acting together. They are

loaning operatives to one another. That is another way—I mean,

there a way that is another—you can think of that as a kind of

support for the group that really has nothing to do with states.

Mr. SHAYS. General, maybe you could respond to the issue of

human intelligence. You heard the assumption I made. How would

you respond?

General ZINNI. I think there is two issues regarding intelligence.

I am sure more, but two issues that jump out at me, Mr. Chairman, one is human intelligence. I can’t remember a testimony that

I gave as a commander in chief where, when asked what my deficiencies were, especially in intelligence, that I didn’t say it was the

lack of human intelligence.

Mr. SHAYS. The question, though, is how is that curable?

General ZINNI. It is curable but not in the short term. It takes

a long time to buildup a network and it takes resources and money,

and it obviously takes the authority, the legal basis for it in some

cases, which may not be there now as a result of some legislation.

To buildup the kind——

Mr. SHAYS. So we are not speaking in tongues here, are you referring to legislation that says we can’t deal with bad people?

General ZINNI. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. You would knock that out quick.

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General ZINNI. I think in this case we have to. I would be careful.

I wouldn’t advocate blanket authority to do things. I think certainly oversight is necessary. I wouldn’t want that as an American

citizen. But I do think we have to look carefully. This is a new and

different kind of war. How many times have we heard that? It is

going to require tactics some times that require us to take measures like that in order to get the intelligence.

But the intelligence problem doesn’t stop there. We will find out

in this, I am afraid that there were bits and pieces out there, that

if somebody could have pulled it together we might have seen this

coming. I think that in the intelligence world the terms that always

used is fusion.

After the Beirut bombings of the Marine barracks, we created a

terrorist fusion center here, interagency in Washington. And everything regarding terrorism, any report, any call-in, any information

we received went in there. And they were given the proper resources, the proper number of people and analysts so they could

quickly turn it around and put the pieces of that puzzle together.

I am concerned about, at least at first blush, what I see that the

INS had a bit of information, the FBI may have had a bit, the CIA,

whoever. How is this coming together? Do they have the resources

in people, in money, to turn this around? In the intelligence area

it is collection, it is processing and analysis and it is quick dissemination so you can act.

I lived in an AOR, an area of responsibility that had Osama bin

Laden and many other terrorists for 4 years. And we tried to protect our forces. 99.9 percent of the times we were successful. There

were times when we weren’t, or our State Department wasn’t or

NGO’s weren’t or our businessmen weren’t or our tourists were not.

The only way we can counter that to be better is to have the intelligence. And it is going to require a big investment, I think, to get

us there.

Mr. SHAYS. In one way, I am encouraged because I have been

going under the assumption that we couldn’t do some of this

human intelligence because we certainly weren’t there and didn’t

have the network. The sad news is maybe this information was

available and we didn’t have the people to analyze it and to collect

it all and analyze it and make the process of knowing what it said,

which is sad but that seems to me to be something we can remedy

pretty quickly.

General ZINNI. I think so. And I think we need to question the

intelligence community about what their needs are to make this

happen. I should add one other point, and that is intelligence sharing. The program is very difficult in a formal sense because obviously we have to vet nations in their ability to handle the intelligence. But I do think we need to make the connections as soon

as possible. And in some cases, we may actually have to waive

some of the obviously important bureaucratic things that we put in

to protect information in order to get access. The best information

I ever received is when I sat down over tea with the intelligence

chief of some nation who gave me his views of things. That was the

best intelligence.

Mr. SHAYS. But the implication is you got to be there.

General ZINNI. Yes. Absolutely.

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Mr. SHAYS. One of the things that I have been impressed with

in my travels overseas for the work in any national security subcommittee is the amazing contacts that our military personnel that

all branches have overseas with very powerful military people in

those other countries. And I think I learned more almost from

those interagencies where our military invited me to meet the military personnel of France, Great Britain or other countries than I

have learned, frankly, from briefings that I have had in my own

country.

General ZINNI. I agree, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. It is very impressive. This is a book that, by the way,

whenever I ask one witness a question, I am happy to give you an

idea. I am going to limit myself to 10 to 15 more minutes because

I could go on for hours, but—unless I care to go on longer, then I

will just use that authority. So the point is if you have a comment

to a question I asked the General, I am happy to have you jump

in, either one of you.

This is from the Department of Health and Human Services and

it is fiscal year 2002 to fiscal year 2006 plan for combating bioterrorism. And it said, ‘‘During the year that small pox was eradicated, the Soviet government embarked on an ambitious program

to grow smallpox in large quantities and adapted for use in bombs

in intercontinental ballistic missiles. The successfulness of that

project has the U.S. very concerned about the intentional use additionally.’’ Then it says, ‘‘the WHO, the World Health Organization,

has expressed concerns that smallpox might be freeze-dried to retain virulence for prolonged periods. The technology and intellectual capacity exists for a well-funded, highly motivated terrorist

group to mount such an attack.’’ That’s just you know from our

own HHS. Does that surprise any of the three of you?

General ZINNI. It doesn’t surprise me. It is in line with all the

intelligence reporting I saw while on active duty.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Harmon.

Mr. HARMON. It is my understanding that it does not take much

sophistication to make a small biological weapon which could be

useful in a terrorism case. There is a major new study of considerable interest of some of the cases in which either chemical or biological weapons have been tried. It is edited by Jonathan Tucker

and done by MIT press recently. And some of the major cases have

been studied about American groups, foreign groups, attempting to

use and make weapons of mass production. The general conclusion,

and then Dr. Stern, I think, contributed to that, so she will doubtless want to comment. I think the general conclusion could be two

things: one is that they haven’t come as close as people feared to

success; but on the other hand, it is evident that they sure are trying. And I think all of us——

Mr. SHAYS. You don’t have any doubt given that they were willing to destroy potentially the lives of 50,000 people that they would

be hesitant at all.

Mr. HARMON. The kinds of groups we are discussing today don’t,

I think, hesitate on that basis. 25 years ago, Mr. Chairman, there

was a strong argument advanced that particularly with nuclear

weapons, that terrorists don’t want lots of bodies, they want lots

of attention. The author of that line of argument, and it is a fine

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article, has backed off a little bit. He did a new version of his own.

He is a—— Mr. SHAYS. Before Tuesday or after Tuesday.

Mr. HARMON. This was before. About a year ago, he published a

new examination of that issue. He said essentially I hope it is still

true that they won’t go to weapons of mass destruction but I am

less sure than I used to be. I think Aum Shinrikyo’s activities in

Tokyo should divest us of any hope we have that they are unwilling

to work with this kind of material to try to make it effective. We

have been somewhat lucky, frankly, so far, that some of these cases

have not worked out for the groups which—— Mr. SHAYS. The terrorists developed a new smart bomb. They

just got on a plane and they became the guiding guidance systems,

and they were just willing to blow themselves up in the process.

So we know if they haven’t handled, how do they expose the general public to a biological or chemical agent without hurting themselves? We can learn now that they may not care.

Ms. STERN. I would like to add something to here. I think it is

very important to point out that very few groups are interested in

mass casualty attacks, but the kind of group we would be worried

about would be of the sort that we have now seen. And regarding

your question about smallpox, I did contribute to that volume that

was just referred to, actually I wrote a couple chapters in that MIT

press book, and one of the individuals that I have studied extensively is a guy named Larry Harris, who had actually successfully

acquired Yersinia pestis from the American Type Culture Collection. That is the bacterium that causes bubonic plague. With smallpox, if someone acquires it, we are in trouble.

Mr. SHAYS. We have about 24 million doses—12 million doses,

and I hope we are starting to make more of them. General, I am

going to kind of see if I can end up in this area. It seems to me— first off, in terms of I hope we don’t look for blame right now, because I have never known our country in a type of crisis when to

get it right. But it seems to me that it is almost unfair to affix

blame on anyone right now. Because everybody was shouting and

later we are—we can say later that person shouted and that person

shouted and that person shouted, but there were so many others

who were warning things too. It would seem to me is part of our

problem is knowing which shout to listen to. It may be that we can

go back and say they should have known this or they should have

known this or they should have known this. But then what was the

environment that it came in? I mean, you know what I am trying

to express.

General ZINNI. Yes. I couldn’t agree more Mr. Chairman. You

know, in recent years I have seen us punish good people. We have

ended careers of fine military officers because they were 99.9 percent perfect. And there was a moment when there was a vulnerability, there was a pattern set that they weren’t aware of, an attack came at them from a direction they didn’t expect. And we have

a tendency to frankly, immediately look inward and find accountability becomes the main issue. I think we ought to think about lessons learned as the main issue.

There is probably enough blame to go around for everyone. And

all agencies and many people that tried their best but didn’t quite

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get it 100 percent perfect. I testified before this body and the other

body many times on terrorism and made the same statement. I

made it in 1996 when I was first appointed. We are being stalked

every minute of every day. Someone is waiting for us to make a

mistake to let down our guard. It is hard to ask our military, for

example, to be completely 100 percent dedicated to force protection.

If they did, they wouldn’t accomplish their mission.

For example, I had hundreds of people in my region responsible

to me for security assistance. They had to be out and about on their

own in order to do their job. They had to expose themselves to danger. We ask commanders to carry out missions, like enforcing the

sanctions against Iraq that are in positions and bases and places

and have to do things that expose themselves.

Sometimes the mission becomes all consuming and sometimes

the emphasis on force protection drops just a little bit. And it hurt

me deeply to see that we were fast to punish and fast to look for

accountability and fast to look for blame. And I would emphasize

that is not the important part right now. It is to get the lessons

learned and to fix the mistakes that we maybe have made, or the

places where we have had gaps.

Mr. SHAYS. This relates to that. If your military forces are on

alert constantly, how do we expect them to maintain operational

capability?

General ZINNI. That is an excellent point. We have four threat

conditions. Let me give you an example, Mr. Chairman. I had 25

countries for which I was responsible for American military involvement, influence, presence. Of those 25 countries, 24 in my entire time as a commander in chief and deputy commander in chief,

4 years, 24 were in a terrorist threat condition all the time. The

only one that wasn’t was the Sea Shell Island. Every other one was

not even just in the minimum threat conditions, but one of the two

higher threat conditions.

What that means is we ask our troops to be at this high state

of alert when more intelligence comes in, when another threat

comes in, one more reliable, one more specific, there is nothing left

to ratchet up to. And the troops frankly can be worn down by that.

There is no place to go. It is easy to cover yourself by constantly

keeping them in that state of alert. If you do, you punish the

troops. Many times I granted waivers or I made exceptions or I

took the risk as the commander to ease it down because I knew my

troops needed it. You can’t keep them at that highest state of alert

full time.

Mr. SHAYS. I had an opportunity, in my capacity as chairman, to

land on the Theodore Roosevelt and stay there for a night. I was

astounded at this. I mean it is a city with an airport on top of it.

Basically run average age, 19-year-olds. And I was in awe. I even

get teary eyed just thinking about it. I was in awe of what each

of them did. But these are very young people as well. And the description of all the various countries that we may have to hold accountable and the implications of that are quite mind boggling,

frankly.

I will end with this area, Dr. Harmon. And maybe Dr. Stern, and

maybe General as well. We can’t eliminate the fact that the media

will become a platform for terrorists, especially after an attack.

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What should we do to make the media less of an unaware participant?

Mr. HARMON. I think it is a superb question, Mr. Chairman. The

other day one of the newspapers in the midst of a story about our

current difficulties referred to the political offensive against terrorism by saying that the diplomatic effort includes reaching out to

such countries as Cuba and Sudan with which the United States

has had adversarial relationships.

What a simple little line which hides so much. The story of the

1990’s was a story of amazing involvement by Sudan in terrorism

worldwide and bin Ladin himself was there for about 5 years as his

base. So that statement, which seems so objective and so simple,

in fact, covers over many truths. And I think that the skill, therefore, of the reporters who are really good, who try to dig seriously

and report honestly is even more impressive. Because that kind of

blandishment leaves the typical reader, who doesn’t know the

Sudan well, with a sense that jeez, bilateral relations are tough between Khartoum and Washington. That just doesn’t begin to tell

the story. I guess one reason I mentioned Judith Miller of the New

York Times, or I could mention Tim Weiner of the same paper or

Steve Emerson, who help produce the film, some of which was

shown here earlier—these are journalists who really do first-rate

work, and they are out there. And so mention of them is helpful.

And I think that the U.S. Government’s published position carefully put together by the State Department year after year and

published in April, deserves good attention. I think our media

should not assume that what one angry sheik says is the equal of

what State puts together in this town with a great deal of honest

work, with a great deal of weighing of intelligence after a great

deal of deliberation about the verbiage.

And so the challenge I think for the people, for the citizens who

don’t—who are not experts in these areas, is to understand the

truth. Because it takes us back to this issue of will. Sudan deserved strong measures during the 1990’s when the Al-Turabi regime was in charge. You would never know that from some of the

newspaper coverage of the Sudan.

Ms. STERN. I would also like to say a few words. I think we need

to be very aware that our rhetoric can actually make a big difference. Words like ‘‘crusade’’ imply a war against Islam and make

Muslims everywhere feel threatened. We need to remember that

after the victims and their families, the other victims most hard hit

by these attacks are peace-loving Muslims around the world. I

think that you can do a public service by making clear that this

is not a war against Islam. This is not a crusade, that Muslims are

critically important Americans and that attacking them at a time

like this is not only a violation of law, a violation of ethics, but also

counterproductive. So you can use the media.

Mr. SHAYS. Those of us who have been here for 14 years remember legislation we had to vote on dealing with the incarceration of

our Japanese citizens and we were all ashamed of that. So hopefully we will remember that in terms of our own real life experience and practice what we preached.

Is there any question that you would have liked me to ask that

you would have liked to answer?

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General ZINNI. If I could, Mr. Chairman, I would like to address

one issue. It is sort of related to your last question. Last night

there was a TV show that implied that justification for this act was

based on the missile strikes in 1998. And I go back now to the

point about the media. And I think it is important that we understand and we don’t let the American people believe that was the

case. In February 1998 Osama bin Laden put out his fatwa, his religious edict that says American citizens, civilians should be killed

not just military, not just diplomats, but all Americans. It followed

up about a month later where his council ratified that and put it

out as a declaration and we were following this.

Immediately after that, in 1998, about a month later, he made

a statement about acquiring, ‘‘an Islamic nuclear bomb,’’ that it

was, it should be their principal effort. They had a right to it and

they should use it. He then attacked the Embassies in Nairobi and

Dar es Salaam. He killed over 200 innocent Kenyans and Tanzanians, most of them Muslims. He killed 12 Americans. He killed

three of my people at central command. We had intelligence reports

that he was planning other attacks, very specific very reliable intelligence reports. As we will find in this business, there aren’t good

targets. There isn’t the infrastructure you have in a nation state.

There isn’t a military force. There isn’t a capital. It is hard to find

things to attack. We had some intelligence.

We knew of some camps, a terrorist camp doesn’t offer you much.

It is remote. There are many facilities. We had to make a choice.

There was a possibility that you could take the shot and get something. There was a possibility that even Osama bin Laden and his

leadership might be there. But we couldn’t bank on it. Or not take

the shot and let it pass and suffer another attack. The best we

could hope for is that we at least send a message that we can reach

you behind those hills. We took the shot.

And I concurred in it. I mean, I was the commander in chief that

launched the missiles. When directed, I felt it was the right thing

to do. I had no illusions that we were going to score a great victory

or hit anything. But to believe that this was the cause of this incident where these people were in place well before that ready to do

this or we had no right to take that shot, based on the event that

had happened just months before I think is erroneous. But we had

media people that allowed that one-sided version to come out. I

have no doubt that the American people certainly would not be deceived by that. But that may give rationalization and a sense of

justification to those that are on the edge out there that suddenly

are horrified what happened, and maybe are going to rethink their

sympathies. That is why I think sometimes the sensationalism is

out of order.

Having said that, I don’t believe we should police the press. I

think the first amendment is one of our strengths. Truth hurts

these evildoers more than anything else. We just have to ask them

to be responsible in their reporting.

Mr. SHAYS. I think that is a very nice way to end up. And I

thank all of you. Just hold on 1 second. Before I ask unanimous

consent, that the prepared statement of Dr. Bruce Hoffman of the

Rand Corp. and a September 9th article from the Wall Street Journal entitled, ‘‘U.S. Presses Lebanon On Suspects’’ that Mr. Lantos

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wanted to be inserted into the hearing record, that both be inserted

into the record. And obviously without objection so ordered.

I would just say that to the three of you, you were very patient

in waiting. It is important that you testify before this committee.

It is important that my staff and other staff hear what you had to

say as well as members. And I consider all three of you having

made a valuable contribution to the work of our committee. I thank

you very deeply. This hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 4:40 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

[The prepared statement of Hon. Diane E. Watson and additional

information submitted for the hearing record follow:]

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