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i 

57–702 2010

[H.A.S.C. No. 111–165] 

INTERAGENCY NATIONAL SECURITY REFORM: PRAGMATIC STEPS TOWARDS A 

MORE INTEGRATED FUTURE 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

JUNE 9, 2010 
(II) 

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

VIC SNYDER, Arkansas, Chairman 

JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania 

GLENN NYE, Virginia 

CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine 

NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts 

ROB WITTMAN, Virginia 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS, Washington 

DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

DREW WALTER, Professional Staff Member 

THOMAS HAWLEY, Professional Staff Member 

TREY HOWARD, Staff Assistant 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS 

2010 

Page 

HEARING: 

Wednesday, June 9, 2010, Interagency National Security Reform: Pragmatic 

Steps Towards a More Integrated Future .......................................................... 1 

APPENDIX: 

Wednesday, June 9, 2010 ........................................................................................ 27 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9, 2010 

INTERAGENCY NATIONAL SECURITY REFORM: PRAGMATIC STEPS 

TOWARDS A MORE INTEGRATED FUTURE 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Snyder, Hon. Vic, a Representative from Arkansas, Chairman, Oversight 

and Investigations Subcommittee ....................................................................... 1 

Wittman, Hon. Rob, a Representative from Virginia, Ranking Member, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee ............................................................. 2 

WITNESSES 

Adams, Dr. Gordon, Distinguished Fellow, The Henry L. Stimson Center, 

and Professor of International Relations, American University ...................... 5 

Locher, James R., III, President and Chief Executive Officer, Project on 

National Security Reform .................................................................................... 3 

Pendleton, John H., Director, Force Structure and Defense Planning Issues, 

Defense Capabilities and Management Team, U.S. Government Accountability Office ......................................................................................................... 9 

Thompson, Dr. James R., Associate Professor and Head, Department of Public 

Administration, University of Illinois–Chicago ................................................. 7 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Adams, Dr. Gordon ........................................................................................... 50 

Locher, James R., III ........................................................................................ 34 

Pendleton, John H. ........................................................................................... 62 

Thompson, Dr. James R. .................................................................................. 59 

Wittman, Hon. Rob ........................................................................................... 31 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.] 

(1) 

INTERAGENCY NATIONAL SECURITY REFORM: PRAGMATIC STEPS TOWARDS A MORE INTEGRATED FUTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE, Washington, DC, Wednesday, June 9, 2010. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:03 p.m., in room 

2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Vic Snyder (chairman 

of the subcommittee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. VIC SNYDER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM ARKANSAS, CHAIRMAN, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

Dr. SNYDER. Welcome to the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing on interagency national security reform. Over 

the past decade, dozens of major government commissions, think 

tanks, and other experts have recommended significant changes to 

better integrate and apply all of the country’s capabilities to national security challenges. The 9/11 Commission, the Hart-Rudman 

Commission, the Hurricane Katrina Lessons Learned Working 

Group—all have cited a lack of interagency coordination as a key 

weakness of our national security system. 

I am pleased to see the administration of President Obama recognize these problems. Secretary Gates, Secretary Clinton, and National Security Adviser Jones also support reform. Most recently, 

President Obama’s National Security Strategy released in May 

highlighted the need for enhanced integration, saying, ‘‘The executive branch must do its part by developing integrated plans and approaches that leverage the capabilities across its departments and 

agencies to deal with the issues we confront. Collaboration across 

the government must guide our actions.’’ 

I commend the President and his team on his leadership and am 

eager to see how he intends to implement this vision. 

But Congress must play its part, too. In fact, Congress must lead 

the way, just as it did with the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. We have been here before. We have seen similar problems; the same inertia against reform. We have also seen 

success as the culture of our military shifted to fully embrace 

jointness as a fundamental operational principle. As with Goldwater-Nichols, interagency national security reform will be a long, 

difficult process. But we must start with practical steps in the right 

direction. And that is what we are here today to discuss—practical 

and realistic near-term steps that we can take to improve interagency coordination and collaboration. 

The witnesses we have today have a variety of professional backgrounds and perspectives, but all are experts on how our inter-
2 

agency national security system works and how it doesn’t. I look 

forward to hearing their recommendations on practical, near-term 

steps the Armed Services Committee and the larger Congress 

should take to improve the system. 

Now I recognize Mr. Wittman for any opening statement. 

STATEMENT OF HON. ROB WITTMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE 

FROM VIRGINIA, RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you so 

much to our witnesses for taking time out to be with us this afternoon. 

I first want to commend Chairman Snyder for calling this hearing. As you know, we addressed the subject of interagency reform 

and the Project on National Security Reform’s [PNSR’s] December, 

2008 report, ‘‘Forging a New Shield,’’ just over a year ago, and in 

that hearing, we heard expert testimony on this vexing issue from 

distinguished experts who offered a range of opinions. We expected 

and welcomed a diversity of views, especially on this committee 

and especially on this topic. 

There seems to be general agreement that we need a better system of coordinating our national security efforts, but not necessarily agreement on how. The nature of the Washington bureaucracy is to maintain the status quo both in the executive and legislative branches. If we are able to institute new structures and processes in the administration and Congress, we can expect those 

processes will remain in place for many years. 

Whatever we do, if anything, has to be carefully considered, and 

we must be sure that national security will be improved by the 

changes because we will live with them for many years. The principle challenges lie in resolving command and budget authorities, 

yet another issue shared by the Congress and the executive branch. 

Last year, I cited the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 as a rare example of recent interagency reform. And while these reforms are 

real, the Congress struggled with how much command authority 

and budget authority to vest in the new Director of National Intelligence [DNI] with apparent consequences to this day. 

I am pleased to see that the PNSR report published as part of 

a follow-up or the follow-up report itself last September entitled 

‘‘Turning Ideas into Action,’’ which does just that—proposes specific 

measures that can be taken to achieve a more cohesive and agile 

national security structure. I am pleased that the principal author 

of both reports is with us today. I appreciate that. I would like to 

have today’s witnesses apply the PNSR suggested structure or 

their own thoughts to a couple of today’s real world problems. 

First of great concern to this subcommittee is the planning, coordinating, and executing of an effective interagency response to 

our national efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. What would you 

do differently? The second and no less urgent but less complex: 

How would you manage the Federal Government’s response to the 

oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? 

I am grateful to have such distinguished witnesses here before 

us today to comment on the PNSR’s work, and I look forward to 

your testimony. 
3 

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wittman can be found in the Appendix on page 31.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Wittman, for your comments today 

and for all you have done on this full committee and subcommittee 

through your time and service here. 

We are pleased today to have four witnesses: Mr. James Locher, 

III, the President and CEO of the Project on National Security Reform; Dr. Gordon Adams, Distinguished Fellow at the Henry L. 

Stimson Center; Dr. James Thompson, Associate Professor and 

Head of the Department of Public Administration, University of Illinois, Chicago; Mr. John Pendleton, Director, Force Structure and 

Defense Planning Issues at U.S. Government Accountability Office. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you all for being here. We will start with Mr. 

Locher and then proceed right on down the line. We will have the 

light system go off. When the red light goes on, that mean five minutes have gone by. We will not hit you or anything, but the sooner 

you wrap up your time after that, the sooner we can get to our 

questions and discussions. 

So, Mr. Locher, we will begin with you. Your opening statements 

will be made part of the record. 

Mr. Locher. 

STATEMENT OF JAMES R. LOCHER III, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF 

EXECUTIVE OFFICER, PROJECT ON NATIONAL SECURITY 

REFORM 

Mr. LOCHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Snyder, 

Ranking Member Wittman, and members of the subcommittee. I 

am delighted to appear before you to testify on national security reform. I want to commend the committee for its leadership on this 

critical issue. It reminds me of this subcommittee’s role in formulating the House’s version of the landmark Goldwater-Nichols Act. 

And I should mention that a current member of the subcommittee, 

Mr. Spratt, was a member of the subcommittee back during the 

Goldwater-Nichols formulation. 

The lessons of Goldwater-Nichols are instructive on the role Congress must play on national security reform. Goldwater-Nichols has 

been a historic success. It produced the world’s premier joint 

warfighting force. But it must be remembered that entrenched Pentagon interests bitterly opposed this legislation. A 4-year, 241-day 

struggle between the Armed Services Committees and the Department of Defense ensued. The committees used every tool at their 

disposal to pressure, prod, question, and introduce new ideas. National security reform will require even more congressional energy 

to overcome executive branch inertia. Despite its difficulty, national 

security reform is not impossible. 

Again, the Goldwater-Nichols experience is instructive. When 

work on that Act began, 95 percent of the experts predicted it 

would never happen. 

Mr. Chairman, as you mentioned, President Obama’s National 

Security Strategy has reinvigorated the drive to transform the national security system. Let there be no mistake. The strategy’s 

goals cannot be achieved without sweeping transformation. In organizational terms, the strategy calls for, one, a strengthening of na-
4 

tional capacity through a whole-of-government approach; two, updating, balancing and integrating all tools of American power; 

three, broaden the scope of national security; four, emphasizing the 

foundations of national power, sound fiscal policy, education, energy, science and technology, and health; fifth, aligning resources 

with strategy; sixth, taking a longer view; seventh, forming strategic partnerships with organizations outside of government, essentially taking a whole-of-Nation approach. These goals endorse 

many of the ideas that the Project on National Security forum has 

put forth. 

With Congress’s important role in mind, the subcommittee asked 

for testimony on pragmatic, near-term steps that can be taken to 

move forward on national security reform. My written statement 

identifies 10 such steps. I will speak to three important ones. By 

far the most important step would be to require the President to 

submit an implementation plan for the organizational changes prescribed by the new National Security Strategy. Most strategy documents contain a lofty set of goals which go unrealized when there 

is no follow-through. Congress must insist on executive branch attention to the organizational goals that the President established. 

For each of his 23 goals, the President should identify the specific 

reforms that are needed and milestones for their achievement. 

Every year, Congress should ask for a scorecard measuring 

progress towards these reforms and for an updated implementation 

plan. 

The second and related near-term step would be to require the 

Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs to submit 

a plan for achieving the needed organizational capacity of the National Security Staff [NSS], realizing the whole-of-government integrated approach articulated by the National Security Strategy will 

require a significant strengthening of the National Security Staff. 

Today, that staff is under-resourced and institutionally weak. The 

Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, who does 

not even exist in the law, has only an advisory role. 

The National Security Staff has become the most important staff 

in the national security system, if not in the world. This evolution 

has not been properly recognized. The staff totals 230 people; has 

a tiny budget—$8.6 million when General Jones took over; and is 

poorly supported. National security reform needs to start at the top 

of the system with the National Security Staff. 

One of the most, if not the most, important reforms advanced by 

Goldwater-Nichols was joint officer management. By creating incentives, requirements, and standards for joint officers, those provisions significantly improve the performance of joint duty and led to 

creation of a joint culture. Congress acted on the joint officer issue 

because it had concluded, ‘‘For the most part, military officers do 

not want to be assigned to joint duty; are pressured or monitored 

for loyalty by their services while serving on joint assignments; are 

not prepared by either education or experience to perform their 

joint duties; and serve only a relatively short period once they have 

learned their jobs.’’ 

Analyses of the interagency personnel situation reveals similar 

problems. A near-term step with enormous potential would be to 

establish an interagency personnel system to create the proper in-
5 

centives, education, and training for personnel assigned to interagency positions. This reform is being studied on Capitol Hill and 

could begin the major transformation that is needed. 

In conclusion, I, once more, commend Chairman Snyder and 

Ranking Member Wittman for holding this hearing and for searching for pragmatic, near-term steps that would compel the start of 

the bold transformation that the Nation desperately needs. The national security system must be modernized to meet the challenges 

of the 21st century. The task will be monumental, but there is no 

alternative. Without sweeping changes, the Nation will experience 

repeated failures, wasted resources, and continue to decline in 

American standing and influence. We can and must find the resolve and political will to create a modern national security system. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Locher. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Locher can be found in the Appendix on page 34.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Adams. 

STATEMENT OF DR. GORDON ADAMS, DISTINGUISHED FELLOW, THE HENRY L. STIMSON CENTER, AND PROFESSOR OF 

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

Dr. ADAMS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I join Jim Locher in congratulating the subcommittee on having these hearings and the 

Congress in general for beginning over the last few years to take 

this set of issues more seriously I think than has happened in a 

long time. So both Chairman Snyder, Ranking Member Wittman, 

thank you very much for the hearing and the opportunity to talk 

at this hearing. 

I can join in many of the suggestions and recommendations that 

my colleague and friend, Jim Locher, has put before you. I want 

to come at this issue from a slightly different angle and put some 

more fodder in the trough, if you will, for consideration by the Hill. 

The process of reforming agencies and for reforming interagency 

process is enormously hard. If it wasn’t, it would have happened. 

And it hasn’t happened yet. A lot of good effort, including PNSR’s, 

has gone into trying to push all aspects of the system in the direction of reform. We know how hard it is, having seen in recent years 

the experience of such changes as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security [DHS], 

the National Counterterrorism Center [NCTC], all of which have 

had their strengths and obvious weaknesses as instruments of reform in the national security system. So one goes at this issue with 

some caution in terms of the results you can expect from shuffling 

boxes, changing processes, changing committees, and so on. It is 

very difficult. 

To me, the key issue here that I try to identify in my testimony 

is: What is the problem we are trying to solve? Because any set of 

reforms really needs to look at what is it we are trying to solve. 

Not just let’s reform for the sake of reform, but what is the specific 

problem we are tackling, and what is the mission of the United 

States Government and its national security agencies in tackling 

an agenda of reform? 
6 

I would submit to you, as I suggest in my testimony, that one 

of the major reasons that we have this interest and these sets of 

hearings derives from an experience that Ranking Member Wittman mentioned—Afghanistan, but also Iraq. That is to say the performance of the American government in Iraq and in Afghanistan, 

and by relation, Pakistan, as you mentioned. The circumstances of 

those particular cases are quite unique, however. These are cases 

where the United States actually used a major kinetic capacity to 

intervene with the goal of overthrowing a regime inheriting instability, social chaos, economic reconstruction, governance, if you will, 

in those two countries by virtue of our own direct military action 

and ultimately an insurgency designed to oppose the government 

we supported and our own forces in those countries. 

So the reform question that grew out of that set of problems, Iraq 

and Afghanistan, has been defined as the absence of a civilian capacity to deploy alongside U.S. forces on the civilian side of this 

kind of kinetic exercise. If we reform to that case, we run the risk 

of fighting the last post-war. And while there are real problems in 

those cases, and they identify some very interesting ones, we do 

need to ask ourselves, as we approach a reform agenda: Are we 

tackling the right problem if we reform to build that kind of interagency relationship and that kind of capacity. 

So mission, to me, is the key starting point. My testimony posits 

that mission or problem is not so much the invasion, applied civilian capability, and terror. It is governance, which is the absence of 

weakness, fragility, brittleness in governance in key areas of the 

world where our interests are at stake. The key problem, then, is 

the absence of a clear civilian sense of mission in tackling this 

problem, which is primarily a civilian problem. It may be largely 

non-kinetic, preventive, and smaller in nature than the cases of 

Iraq and Afghanistan. 

So the focus of reform needs to be on the civilian agencies and 

capabilities first. Not the interagency first, so much as the capabilities on the civilian side where, as I say in my testimony, we have 

a diaspora of organizations and institutions. We have the absence 

of a strategic planning culture in those agencies and inadequate 

resourcing dollars and people and appropriate training for its people to conduct their responsibilities in fulfilling that mission of governance. 

We have a large imbalance as a consequence between State and 

DOD [the Department of Defense] in resources and culture, which 

has led to an expansion of Defense missions. But that runs the risk 

of every problem looking like Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the key 

issues for the interagency then is how do we restore that balance? 

I suggest in the testimony reforms that can be applied in DOD that 

would both discipline and clarify DOD’s mission in the foreign affairs agencies where we can deal with civilians, capabilities, resources, and training, and in the interagency, where, in particular, 

I would focus on NSC/OMB [National Security Council/Office of 

Management and Budget] coordination, the creation of strategic 

planning capabilities and mission planning oversight. And in the 

Congress I suggest, among other things, a single budget function 

for 150 and 050, to use budget speak, and joint oversight hearings 
7 

in such areas as security assistance, governance, and civilian capabilities. 

The only caveat that I will put in closing, Mr. Chairman, is that 

we be beware of the sin of hubris. That is to say, it is not clear 

that we can or should be responsible for dealing with these kinds 

of problems internationally in every instance, and it is not clear 

that we are always very good at doing it, even building the best 

interagency and agency capabilities to do it. 

With that, I will submit the rest of my testimony for the record 

and look forward to your questions. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Dr. Adams. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Adams can be found in the Appendix on page 50.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Thompson. 

STATEMENT OF DR. JAMES R. THOMPSON, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AND HEAD, DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS–CHICAGO 

Dr. THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and honorable members, for the opportunity to testify here today. About a year ago, 

my colleague, Rob Seidner, who is here today, he and I received a 

grant from the IBM Center for the Business of Government to 

write a report on human capital reforms in the Intelligence Community. The reason we were interested in the Intelligence Community is it was the only example we were aware of in the Federal 

Government of what we call a federated human resource system, 

whereby personnel authorities were shared by the center—in the 

case, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence—and the 

elements or agencies, of which there are about 16. 

The centerpiece of the Intelligence Community human capital reforms was the joint duty program, which was mandated by the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004, and in turn, by the 9/11 Commission, which identified a lack of interagency collaboration as one of 

the causes of the unfortunate events of that day. The joint duty 

program, of course, is modeled after the Goldwater-Nichols program in the armed services, which is why they are considered to 

have been a success. The intent was to break down parochial attitudes among the senior officials within the agencies by having 

them serve time in agencies other than the agency in which they 

spent most of their careers. 

The Intelligence Community also developed a series of other reforms, some of which were in support of the joint duty program. 

For example, one of the concerns was that officials would not participate in joint duty if they felt that their pay and/or promotion 

opportunity would be at risk. So the Intelligence Community spent 

a lot of time developing a common compensation system, which 

they called the National Intelligence Civilian Compensation program. That program includes a pay-for-performance element and 

pay banding, et cetera. That program has been halted temporarily 

at least by the National Defense Authorization Act. A report just 

came out last week from the National Academy on Public Administration which, by and large, gave the program a positive review. So 

it is possible that the community will restart implementation of 

that program. 
8 

The community also developed a common performance management program. That is, officials throughout the community are assessed according to the same performance elements, so that if an 

individual does in fact accept a joint duty assignment in another 

agency, he or she can be assured of having his or her performance 

appraised on the same basic elements regardless of where he or she 

goes. 

Other elements of the Intelligence Community’s reforms included 

a common human resource information system. There is also a 

training component. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has created a National Intelligence University [NIU], and 

there is joint leadership training being provided through the NIU 

to officials who are participating in the joint duty program. I 

should add, by the way, that the joint duty program has been 

phased in and will not be fully effective until October of this year. 

Lessons learned from our research. One is that as a consequence 

of the nature of the authority or lack thereof given the Director of 

National Intelligence, the Intelligence Community went through a 

highly collaborative process to design the joint duty program. A 

downside was it took them a long time to do it, but an upside has 

been that there is very significant buy-in among the agencies into 

the joint duty program, such that it is likely to be sustained over 

time. 

A down side, however, is that it is somewhat vulnerable to having agencies kind of exempt from some of the provisions of their 

program. For example, the agreed-upon policy is that only the DNI 

and the Under Secretary of the Defense for Intelligence can provide 

waivers to the joint duty requirement. However, that is simply in 

the form of what the Intelligence Community calls a treaty among 

the agencies. Legally, any agency head could waive that particular 

provision and decide on his or her own to promote somebody without appropriate joint duty certification. 

So the issue of the authority of the DNI does figure importantly 

in this discussion of how to structure a joint duty program more 

broadly. 

Another important lesson that we had learned was the idea of 

making sure that an infrastructure is in place to support the joint 

duty program. I mentioned the common compensation system that 

the Intelligence Community is trying to put into place to facilitate 

transfers. 

A final observation would be with regard to the Senior Executive 

Service [SES] itself, which is that program was intended to consist 

of a corps of generalists, but has never really achieved that vision. 

It is largely because most of the members of the SES spend most 

of their careers in a single agency. I think that is, in part, a consequence of the fact the SES assignments are made at the Department level. In Britain, in contrast, the senior members of the civil 

service are considered a corporate asset and SES assignments are 

made centrally at the government level. I think there is a lesson 

to be learned both by the government in general but also the national security community as to a possible way of structuring any 

prospective joint duty program across the community, which would 

be to make sure assignments are made centrally rather than by 

each department independently. 
9 

That will conclude my testimony. Thank you. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Dr. Thompson. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Thompson can be found in the 

Appendix on page 59.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Pendleton. 

STATEMENT OF JOHN H. PENDLETON, DIRECTOR, FORCE 

STRUCTURE AND DEFENSE PLANNING ISSUES, DEFENSE CAPABILITIES AND MANAGEMENT TEAM, U.S. GOVERNMENT 

ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

Mr. PENDLETON. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Wittman, and 

members of the subcommittee, thanks for inviting me today to discuss GAO’s [the Government Accountability Office’s] work related 

to interagency collaboration. Given the growing call for better collaboration, we recently published a report that summarized GAO’s 

body of work in this area. Our report cites dozen of examples. Several of those are included in my prepared statement. Let me briefly 

highlight three that illustrate the challenges in working across 

agency boundaries toward common goals. 

First, our work looking at the planning to manage a pandemic 

flu outbreak found that the strategies lacked clarity on who would 

lead efforts—Health and Human Services or Homeland Security. 

Should we have a significant flu outbreak, sorting out who is in 

charge could waste valuable time. Second, the differences in size 

and culture between the Defense Department and the civilian 

agencies create a number of difficulties. DOD dwarfs other agencies. DOD and State literally divide the world up differently and 

they take very different approaches to planning. In the past, DOD 

plans were drawn up in isolation, with interagency consultation 

largely an afterthought. We have made a number of recommendations on this. And to its credit, DOD has begun to take some steps 

toward involving civilian agencies earlier in its planning. 

Third, a failure to connect the dots is often blamed after security 

lapses. This is often ultimately traceable to inadequate information 

sharing. Our recent work on biometrics data; information such as 

fingerprints and images of iris in the eye found that DOD was collecting information in the field in ways that made it incompatible 

with Homeland Security and FBI databases. 

Next, I would like to describe a couple of organizations within 

DOD that have served as laboratories of a sort for refining interagency collaboration. Northern Command [NORTHCOM] and Africa Command [AFRICOM]. Such regional commands are where military efforts are conceived and planned. Both NORTHCOM and 

AFRICOM have missions that require them to work closely with 

other agencies and other nations, both are relatively new, and both 

have faced myriad problems that illustrate the challenges being 

discussed today. Hurricane Katrina made evident to me for 

NORTHCOM to synchronize its efforts with a range of federal, 

state, and local agencies. We recently completed a comprehensive 

examination of NORTHCOM’s efforts to enhance interagency coordination for homeland defense and civil-support missions and 

found a number of gaps still exist. We found, for example, unclear 

roles and responsibilities still exist. DOD’s overarching guidance is 

15-, sometimes 20-years old, and it pre-dates the creation of 
10 

NORTHCOM. This creates a number of problems, not the least of 

which is many of these directives show the Army in charge, which 

they were before NORTHCOM was created. More concerning is 

that NORTHCOM’s own assessments of its capabilities show a 

number of gaps concerned about the ability to share a common 

operational picture or plan in the interagency. 

Looking outside the United States, DOD’s newest combatant 

command is Africa Command. It spotlights how the lines of national security, defense, diplomacy, and especially development are 

becoming more and more blurred. A lot of what AFRICOM does is 

not traditional warfighting. It involves strengthening African military capabilities, helping nations respond to crises, building infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals. Creating a blended command with personnel from other agencies embedded and serving 

and key positions was one of the ways that AFRICOM sought to 

improve collaboration. However, interagency personnel just weren’t 

available in the numbers that DOD had hoped. It was far from 

clear what those personnel would do when they arrived at 

AFRICOM. And possibly most important, it was uncertain to them 

what impact serving at AFRICOM would have on their own careers. 

Finally, let me give you an example how interagency challenges 

can play out on the ground. Our recent work on AFRICOM’s 1,600 

person taskforce in the Horn of Africa region revealed that DOD 

personnel are not always adequately trained to work in Africa, and 

this has resulted in a number of cultural missteps. One example 

that seems small but I think illuminates a larger problem, 

AFRICOM’S taskforce distributed used clothing to local villagers. 

But that offended the Muslims during Ramadan. Had they talked 

to U.S. Embassy, State, and AID, they could have provided guidance on sensitive cultural issues like this. We found a number of 

similar issues. 

Given that the type of work DOD is doing in Africa is different 

from what military personnel are normally trained for, we recommend that AFRICOM develop a program to increase cultural 

awareness and training on working in an interagency environment. 

Such training, not just at AFRICOM, but across DOD and the 

interagency, will become even more important as national security 

issues become increasingly blended across multiple agencies. 

That concludes my statement. I would be happy to take any 

questions. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Pendleton can be found in the 

Appendix on page 62.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you all for your testimony today, and also all 

four of you have a long history of public service in these areas and 

others. We will all put ourselves on the five-minute clock here and 

probably have time for at least a couple of rounds of questions and 

maybe a little bit more. 

One of the challenges that I think, not just us, but anyone who 

looks at this topic has, and doesn’t spend all their time in it as perhaps all of you do, is trying to get a handle around exactly what 

the problem is. 

Mr. Pendleton, I thought your one-paged, bite-size morsel of 

what GAO found when we go right to the one-pager, which we are 
11 

House Members, so we look for the bouillon cubes in these things. 

But, of course, you called your report: The challenges and solutions 

to strengthen interagency collaboration. I am going to ask Mr. 

Locher in a moment if he thinks we should define the goal as being 

more than just collaboration. But you have four problems areas: 

Developing and implementing overarching strategies; creating collaborative organizations, which I think gets to a whole culture of 

different institutions; developing a well-trained workforce; and 

sharing and integrating national security information. 

It seems like that is a construct that I can kind of get my mind 

around. We need a shared strategy; a culture that recognizes collaboration is important; a good workforce; and the ability to share 

information. 

Mr. Locher, do you think that description is at the heart of what 

you all are trying to solve in the work you have done in the last 

several years? 

Mr. LOCHER. Mr. Chairman, I think the things that have been 

mentioned in Mr. Pendleton’s statement cover many things that 

need to be done—the strategy, collaborative organizations, better 

training and education of the workforce, and sharing innovation. 

But if you had foreshadowed this question to me about collaboration, I think in many cases we need a lot more than collaboration. 

We actually need integrated effort. We need to be able to create 

teams well in advance of any sort of crisis that can really formulate 

policy on an integrated basis, that can do strategy on an integrated 

basis, that can figure out planning on an integrated, can figure out 

how we are going to align resources, and then if we actually have 

to conduct an operation, can do so on an integrated basis. 

Dr. SNYDER. So if I understand, what you are saying is you believe there is a difference between integration and collaboration. 

Collaboration implies perhaps two separate organizations that see 

a need to get together maybe on a regular basis, but they are still 

separate organizations. You are talking about somehow they are integrated together and locked in together on a more permanent 

basis. 

How do you respond to Mr. Locher’s comments there, Mr. Pendleton? 

Mr. PENDLETON. When we wrote the paper, the four areas are 

interrelated and describing them as creating collaboration is just a 

construct to try to understand that you have got to start with strategy, you have got to work on the organizations and the people, and 

you have got to teach the individuals how to share information. If 

you turn this another way, over the years, looking at different organizations, what tends to happen to organizations is they start 

out with de-confliction. Just letting each other know what they are 

going to do. Then it hopefully moves up the integration chain. You 

are beginning to coordinate and ultimately you have an integrated 

strategy. 

DOD’s efforts in, I think, the drug wars is a good example of 

something that 20 years ago you heard many of these same concerns being raised. As a young man, I was down in Key West hearing this; DOD had no business and needed to stay in its lane. 

Today, I have got other work going on and you hear a very, very 

different story. This stuff takes time. 
12 

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Adams, you made a comment that Iraq and Afghanistan should not be seen as the motivation of why we need to 

change, which, I think, came from those very public discussions we 

had several years ago from Secretary Gates that there was inadequate civilian personnel available. And I think if I am reading you 

right, your point is that we should not see that as a definition of 

the problem; that, in fact, more likely than not we will have situations where the civilians will be in the lead, where the military 

needs to support them, rather than the military saying we need civilian support? Would you amplify on that, please? 

Dr. ADAMS. I would be happy to, Mr. Chairman. It is a very important question. It goes back to what I was saying at the beginning, what is the problem we are trying to solve, what is the mission we are trying to deliver. A lot of the undertone of the discussion of what we need in the interagency is a discussion of how we 

ought to anticipate and be prepared to intervene in crisis. But crisis means many things. The crisis that we tend to focus on is a 

very large intervention aiming at the use of military force to overthrowing another government where we do inherit an enormous 

problem of governance, one which we have demonstrated we are 

not good at dealing with or takes us a long time. As somebody once 

said, we will find almost all the solutions that are wrong before we 

find the right one. That, however, is not the typical kind of crisis 

that we are likely to come across. Typically, if we are focused on 

this problem of crisis, and that is just one set of where interagency 

has implications—what we are looking at ranges probably at its 

most demanding from the kind of, if you will, stabilization/peacekeeping mission that we did in the 1990s in the Balkans, down to 

humanitarian missions where we are delivering food assistance, 

humanitarian assistance, tents, water bladders, the kind of kit people need to survive in a disaster. 

That is the typical range of issues that we deal with and arguably in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan, the kind of typical issue 

that we are going to want to deal with. Those kinds of problems 

tend, in my mind, to group themselves around a concept of governance. That the issue here is not so much insurgency as it is the 

inability of countries in various strategically important regions of 

the world to actually provide their own stability, their own public 

water, public services, their own social justice, their own legal justice, their own capacity to grow, develop and prosper. Governments 

have difficulties doing that in certain regions of the world. 

Defined that way, the kinetic requirement for what we do in the 

American government arguably is rather small. It is not invisible, 

but it is rather smaller than the kinetic capability we would maintain to do like Iraq or Afghanistan. And it may be quite peripheral 

to the question of how a civilian architecture actually over the longterm plans and deals with strengthening governance in those countries, in those regions, not something arguably the United States 

can do alone. 

I think the National Security Strategy recognizes this, that there 

are international organizations, allies, regional partners, all of 

which can play a role, even private NGOs, nongovernmental organizations, and business that can help deal with this issue of governance. It is an ongoing long-term problem, and arguably the pre-
13 

cursor to any crisis that we are going to face that we need to plan 

for. 

So what I am saying is structuring the interagency to be an anticipatory large crisis manager of the relationship between large kinetic forces and large civilian capability to intervene in or respond 

to a crisis in another country may be, in a sense, overplanning the 

requirement that we are actually going to face. 

So the interagency, to my mind, involves both strengthening, 

particularly the civilian capacities, to deal with those kinds of governance problems and then finding a way in the interagency space 

to relate what the kinetic requirement might be to dealing with a 

particular situation where we are going to intervene. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Wittman, for five minutes. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to go back 

to my original comments and start with Mr. Locher and get your 

thoughts on this. Really, what we are talking about here and all 

the efforts whether it is in Pakistan or Afghanistan or in the Gulf 

is planning, coordinating, and executing efforts among a lot of different agencies and lot of different levels of operations. So let me 

pose this: If you look at Afghanistan, Iraq, and even efforts in Pakistan, are there things that we should be doing differently, and if 

you look at efforts in the Gulf as we see interagency cooperation 

there, what would your suggestion be as to that scenario? Obviously, we are in the beginning stages of that management. But 

looking at those two examples that obviously have attracted a lot 

of attention and are attracting a lot of attention, give me your 

thoughts about what would be done differently in theatre and what 

you would do as far as managing the current operations there in 

the Gulf? 

Mr. LOCHER. A great question, Mr. Wittman. Let me start with 

Afghanistan and Pakistan. It also applies in Iraq. All of our efforts 

there are way too separate in the United States Government. We 

have had more collaboration more recently but we have not had the 

integrated effort that is absolutely required. 

I want to take an example. There is a study that is going to come 

out from the National Defense University about interagency highvalue targeting teams in Iraq, which many people in the military 

believe are more important than the surge. Special operation forces 

were going out and looking for high-value terrorist targets. When 

they did so on their own, they had limited success. There was no 

mechanism to create an interagency team to go off and do this. But 

they recognized that need. And sort of through the force of personalities, the leaders of the special operations teams actually put together an effort that involved 8 or 10 departments and agencies. 

Now that capacity ended up producing tremendous results. It is 

that kind of effort that we need, whether we are talking about the 

oil spill in the Gulf or whether we are talking about operations in 

Pakistan or Afghanistan or in Iraq. And if you think about it, the 

military has taken the approach that we need to be able to operate 

from a regional basis. We have no civilian equivalent to that. 

On the civilian side, we are down at the country-level linked 

straight back to Washington. And so when we are doing Afghanistan-Pakistan issues, you have that difficulty of how you work 

across there. But we don’t have an integrated taskforce. When the 
14 

military goes off, it creates a joint taskforce with unity of command 

to do whatever is necessary. 

Now, in Afghanistan, it is really a political issue. So we need a 

civilian at the top of this chain of command making certain that 

everything we are doing, whether it is political, economic, or military fits into our overall strategy. So it is in that direction that our 

government needs to move. 

Dr. ADAMS. Can I take a crack at that question, Congressman? 

The Afghanistan-Pakistan situation in particular. I am not going to 

sit here as an expert on an oil spill effort that obviously is still underway. But in the Afghanistan-Pakistan situation, my own view 

is that the problem in Afghanistan and Pakistan results less from 

the absence of an integrated capability than it does from two 

issues; one is an inherent lack of attention to the importance of Afghanistan that goes back a number of years. In other words, we 

simply took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan while we focused 

on Iraq. The consequence was we let time slip by that was valuable 

time where we might have conceivably had greater success. 

And secondly, arguably, what I came back to in my testimony, 

which is this is an inherently difficult situation. A better process 

and a better integrated effort still might not be able to resolve the 

challenges that we faced in Afghanistan, which are enormously 

complex and enormously local. So I say about the sin of hubris, it 

is being careful to know that even our best effort may not produce 

a better policy outcome or on that is optimal in terms of what our 

own interests might seek. 

That said, I think in those cases in particular, again, I would not 

argue by extrapolation to other crises, the absence of a focused civilian capacity in some areas is obviously one of the critical factors. 

We might have developed it earlier. We might have applied it earlier if we had focused on Afghanistan to begin with as a problem 

we needed to deal with. But I will hold out the jury in terms of 

our capacity to actually on our own determine the outcome of that 

situation. 

Mr. WITTMAN. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Wittman, I have to say you are looking very refreshed and sounding very intelligent for a man who won a primary election yesterday. Congratulations. 

Mrs. Davis for five minutes. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. Thank you all for being here and discussing interagency with us. I think sometimes people just kind of 

gloss over it when we talk about that. But it is very important, and 

we are here to try and assess where are we and how far you think 

we have come at this point? 

I wonder whether—I think, Dr. Adams, I think you mentioned 

getting to the balance of these issues. And I am wondering can we 

do that without a joint budget? Secretary Clinton mentioned a unified national security budget. She said we have to start looking at 

a national security budget. We can’t look at Defense, State Department, and USAID without Defense overwhelming the combined effort of the other two and without us falling back into the old stovepipes that you have all mentioned that I think are no longer relevant for the challenge of today. So what do you all think? Would 
15 

you support a unified budget and how in the heck would we get 

there? 

Dr. ADAMS. It is an excellent question. I do, in fact, support that 

concept because I think it is important—and this is what I was 

talking about earlier at the National Security Council [NSC] and 

OMB [Office of Management and Budget] level—it is important to 

have the White House taking a good look at all of the instruments 

of statecraft in relationship to each other. As somebody who spent 

five years as the associate director at OMB for national security, 

I can tell you that that did not happen. It was extraordinarily difficult to do at the White House level. And there are two reasons 

why it is difficult. 

One is because there is no systematic way for those two White 

House institutions, OMB and NSC, National Security Staff, to actually formally interact with each other. So the interaction between 

the two is handcrafted at the beginning of every administration 

and then evolves over time. The National Security Council Web site 

still says the OMB director is invited as necessary to NSC principals’ meetings. My view is that is just totally absurd; that the 

people who are in charge of the resources for the White House 

ought to be in every meeting the National Security Council holds 

with respect to any international crisis or international policy situation, because resources and policy are intrinsically linked, and 

those are the tools the White House can use to coordinate. So that 

is one of the difficulties. 

The other difficulty on the White House level is that neither the 

National Security Council nor the Office of Management and Budget have a strategic planning staff of any consequence. That has 

been tried the last couple of administrations and currently—to 

stand up a strategic planning office at NSC. There is minimal capacity and not a staff really trained to the art of strategic planning 

over the long term. OMB, having served there for five years, I can 

tell you also lacks that capacity. You work to an annual budget, a 

daily calendar. The long-term is six months. So actually creating a 

capacity in both organizations and a bridge between the two that 

links them at the hip in every issue is an important part for joining 

this. 

Now the other piece that the White House can do, and I don’t 

believe this requires any particular congressional action except 

agreement that it is a wise thing to do, is that when the President’s budget is transmitted to the Congress, it ought to come with 

a single budget function for the security institutions. That all of 

those institutions ought to be in one budget function at the Budget 

Committee level. This would minimally have the advantage of not 

leaving our foreign policy and civilian funding at the mercy of a 

Budget Committee which inherently will look for ways to cut and 

finds those particular agencies—— 

Mrs. DAVIS. We certainly need to recognize how stovepiped Congress is as well in that regard—— 

Dr. ADAMS. Correct. 

Mrs. DAVIS [continuing]. So it is part of the problem, of course, 

if you look at this issue. I was wondering if anybody else would like 

to weigh in on this. 
16 

Dr. ADAMS. Just the other thought was, I think, along with that 

document there ought to come a document to the Congress which 

is a single security budget justification document that links priorities and missions and capacities and tools. That would have to 

emerge from a joint NSC–OMB process with the agencies that 

would literally look at how these capacities relate to each other and 

why one part supports capabilities and requirements in the other 

part of the budget. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Mr. Locher. 

Mr. LOCHER. Congresswoman, the Project on National Security 

Reform has recommended that there be an integrated national security budget. I think that would be hugely important, and it may 

have to be mandated by the Congress, requiring that the President’s budget in the national security area be presented as an integrated budget. In my written testimony, I had proposed a first step 

of asking the Director of OMB to submit an integrated budget in 

two mission areas: in combating terrorism and in foreign assistance. That would give a start to this to be able to look across the 

entire departments and agencies and for the Congress to look at 

what an integrated budget might look like. But there is a tremendous amount that needs to be done in terms of national security 

budgeting. There is no guidance from the President down to the departments and agencies for their planning or development of their 

budgets. He ought to be able to articulate exactly what outcomes 

and missions he would like them to focus on. So this is an area 

that the Project has spent lots of time working on and hopes to develop further. 

Mrs. DAVIS. I think my time is up. Perhaps I will come back to 

you afterwards. Thank you. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Platts for five minutes. 

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I certainly thank each of 

our witnesses for your testimony, both written and oral, and your 

insights. With the focus being jointness and better coordination and 

collaboration, following the tragic events of 9/11 the Intelligence 

Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 did a number of 

things—the creation of the DNI [Director for National Intelligence], 

the National Counterterrorism Center. I would be interested in 

your perspectives of what has worked or not worked with the National Counterterrorism Center as an example of how we have tried 

to get the interagency coordination focused on a specific threat, terrorist threat. What shall we learn from this operation that is working or what is not working that we should be very aware of in 

going forward and trying to replicate this type of effort in a broader 

sense. 

Mr. Locher, given I am in your county, I understand you are a 

native of Lancaster next door, it is appropriate we allow you to 

start. 

Mr. LOCHER. Thank you, sir. 

The Project on National Security Reform has studied a part of 

the National Counterterrorism Center, the Directorate for Strategic 

Operational Planning, and I think while we understand that part 

of it best, the lessons there apply across all of the National 

Counterterrorism Center. 
17 

In that directorate, there is not sufficient authority for it to conduct its responsibilities. There is lots of ambiguity with respect to 

the roles of other departments and agencies. The President really 

needs to issue an executive order that clarifies the responsibilities. 

Now that the National Counterterrorism Center and the Directorate for Strategic Operational Planning have been created, what 

is the responsibility of the State Department compared to this, and 

what is the responsibility of the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA]? 

We have the problem that often when the Directorate for Strategic Operational Planning is doing its work, State and CIA do not 

participate. 15 or 16 departments and agencies need to play there. 

We also have the challenge of personnel; how are people recruited to go there from the departments and agencies? How are 

they rewarded afterwards? I can tell you when it was created, lots 

of people went there with enthusiasm because they saw the opportunity that was presented by this organizational innovation. And 

both NCTC and the Directorate for Strategic Operational Planning 

are really organizational innovations, but they were formed imperfectly by the Congress. 

But as I was mentioning, people went out there for two-year details from departments and agencies. The military really rewarded 

the people that went there. My understanding is in civilian departments and agencies, they did not. But this is an area where we 

need a human capital system to give us the kinds of skills that are 

required. 

This directorate is really an extension of the National Security 

Staff. The National Security Staff is way too busy to be able to do 

strategy and to be able to do linking of resources with strategy, to 

do planning. This work could be done in subordinate organizations, 

such as the Directorate for Strategic Operational Planning, but 

that institutional relationship needs to be clarified, because it is 

now all personality-dependent. 

But the challenge the Congress had in the legislation was to balance between the authority of a central figure, the Director of the 

National Counterterrorism Center or the Director of National Intelligence, and the continued independence of the components, the 16 

departments and agencies who have intelligence capabilities or 

play in the combating terrorism world. 

In my view, the Congress did not find the right balance. There 

needs to be some strengthening. But the first step could be taken 

by the President through an executive order. 

Mr. PLATTS. So the DNI having a more clear command and authority over Navy personnel, or whoever is within that center, no 

matter what agency they come from? 

Mr. LOCHER. Well, in terms of this particular center, the National Counterterrorism Center, the director there does not have 

authority over personnel matters. He also has no authority over 

budgeting. So his authority is somewhat limited. It is a coalition 

of the willing, and every once in a while that coalition can be put 

together, and when it is, it can produce some powerful answers for 

the United States. But it is very difficult to do, and because it is 

only a coalition, he has to be very careful as to how he tries to 

exert any authority he has. 
18 

Dr. ADAMS. Let me try to address this issue you raised, Mr. 

Platts, from a different direction, but complementary, I think, to 

what Jim Locher had to say. 

The National Implementation Plan which emerged from the division that Mr. Locher referred to is probably the most ambitious exercise that we have studied at attempting to bring a coordinated 

approach to strategy and guidance to agencies. There has rarely 

been a more forward-thrusted interagency deliberate and conscious 

and statutorily demanded exercise at interagency coordination than 

the National Implementation Plan. 

While an awful lot of that is classified, that was not an unqualified success. Part of the reason that I think it was not an unqualified success lies in part in some of the staffing issues that Jim 

Locher referred to. Part of it lies in the weaknesses that I was noting earlier in the White House, that at the White House level National Security Staff and OMB, the amount of time and commitment to the National Implementation Plan was extremely thin, 

very small at the NSC level, with it ending up being the Deputy 

National Security Adviser pushing the effort forward, and NCTC 

was not an NSS agency so it had to be done by an act of will. And 

OMB had two examiners dealing with the budgetary consequences 

of the National Implementation Plan, both of whom had full-time 

jobs, assignments to other agencies that they were responsible for 

coordinating. 

What that meant was you got a very elaborate plan with, as I 

understand it, 500 or 600 different taskings to agencies to coordinate counterterrorism policy across agencies, no capacity at the National Security Council staff to follow through on whether those 

were actually done, and no capacity at the Office of Management 

and Budget in the White House to follow through and find out if 

agencies had actually put resources behind the tasking that had 

been handed to the agencies. 

So the consequence of that, I think, was instructive as to how difficult it is without adequate staffing and resourcing at the White 

House level to make sure this followed through. NCTC, in my judgment, was probably the wrong place to focus the leadership of the 

effort because of that. It was just too weakly backed up at the 

White House level. 

Mr. PLATTS. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Platts. 

We will go a second round here. I think we are going to have 

votes sometime in the next 10 to 30 minutes or so. We will try to 

get through another round before then. 

Mr. Locher, in your statement you talked about the National Security Advisor having a total staff of 230 people, and in your words, 

a tiny budget of $8.6 million when General Jones took over. You 

referred to it as, you say the National Security Staff has become 

the most important staff in the national security system, if not in 

the world, and you suggest, I think, a substantial increase in staffing and authority and budget. 

How do you resolve this question? We have had this discussion 

before with Michelle Flournoy back when she was a think-tanker, 

as to the National Security Advisor. Congress doesn’t have much 

oversight over the National Security Advisor. That is the Presi-
19 

dent’s, I don’t know if I want to say personal advisor, but we can’t 

call in the National Security Advisor and say why did you spend 

that money there, why did you use this person there, what did this 

person say to you? Let’s see your records. 

So you are asking the Congress to substantially increase the 

staff, authority, and scope of the job of the National Security Advisor, when, in fact, we don’t have any oversight authority. 

Comment on that issue, please. 

Mr. LOCHER. Well, in our project, this was a major issue. The 

President has an adviser. He is the Assistant to the President for 

National Security Affairs, but he is known as an adviser because 

that is the limit of his role. We argue in the project that what the 

President needs today is he needs a national security manager, 

somebody who can make this system decisive, integrated, focused 

on national missions and outcomes; make it act quickly in an integrated fashion. We think the position should exist in law. It does 

not now, but it should exist in law, and have the Congress specify 

what the duties of the position are. 

If you think about it, there would have to be a considerable discussion of whether this position should be confirmed by the Senate. 

Our project did not come down and make a decision on that issue, 

but it will have to be debated. 

One of the things that we know is in today’s world, it is a wholeof-government approach, and we have argued that the Congress 

needs the ability to take such an approach. It needs to be able to 

work in more than the committee stovepipes. It needs to be able 

to be up there at the level where it can oversee the entire national 

security system. And there will have to be some mechanism created 

in Congress to do that. We proposed a Select Committee on National Security. 

Dr. SNYDER. I understand that issue. But I am talking specifically about the issue of National Security Advisor. 

Mr. LOCHER. The reason I raised this is because right now the 

only person in the executive branch who can talk to the Congress 

more broadly is the National Security Advisor. When you hear from 

departmental secretaries or agency heads, you are hearing it from 

their perspective. 

There needs to be much more of a dialogue between the National 

Security Advisor, whatever his title and position is, and the Congress, because the really important issues today are the issues that 

are out there in that interagency space, they are issues that cut 

across. And there is currently no opportunity for a dialogue because 

the National Security Advisor is seen as only an assistant to the 

President and does not appear before the Congress. This is an issue 

that will have to be addressed. We may not have thought through 

all of the dimensions of this issue, but it produces a void today. 

Dr. SNYDER. I agree with that. And it creates an issue of let’s 

suppose you go to it being a confirmable position that we can call 

him up here to testify and have General Jones sitting here, and 

then do you get into the line of authority issues where essentially 

the Secretary of State reports to the national security manager, 

who reports to the President, and then you have, at some point, the 

President say I need a confidential adviser; I can call in and have 

these discussions and make my will known without having that 
20 

person called before the Congress, so I will have the national security assistant. 

I don’t know. I think that is how this all came about. I do think 

it is an ongoing issue though, and it is one, I think, that will need 

to be resolved if the Congress were to follow the direction you suggest, which is a substantial increase in budget and authority and 

staffing for the National Security Advisor, because right now it is 

something we don’t have the ability to provide the kind of oversight 

I think most Members of Congress would like to. 

Mr. PENDLETON. I would like to weigh in on it, if I could. 

Dr. SNYDER. Sure. 

Mr. PENDLETON. I would like to confirm your concern about oversight. The NSS is pretty opaque to us at GAO. We occasionally 

meet with the staff. They are very busy and pretty small, and it 

is sometimes an issue. I have a job going on now for the House 

Committee on Oversight and Government Reform looking at antipiracy efforts, and we have been trying for several months to get 

a meeting to talk to the NSS staff about what they are doing to 

coordinate the efforts across the government, and we never seem 

to get it scheduled. 

So I think working through those oversight issues so we can do 

our job for you, but also so the Congress can take a look at what 

is happening there, would be very, very important. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you. 

Mr. Wittman. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to maybe 

go from a little bit different direction on the question that you 

asked, and we will go to Mr. Locher. 

It seems to me the paradigms that a couple of agencies use here 

differ. If you look at the Department of Defense, they look at setting up regional commands and doing things on a regional basis. 

Then you look at State Department, and the State Department 

does them on a country-by-country basis. There is a lot of discussion back and forth about which model is the best, which one is 

most effective, which one is most inclusive in trying to coordinate 

efforts across the spectrum. 

How would you suggest resolving those differences? We have 

such crossover today with these agencies that are dealing with 

these issues and we see what is happening around the world, Afghanistan with the provincial reconstruction teams [PRTs], with 

the integration of different agencies there. 

How do you resolve the differences between how DOD puts their 

paradigm in place on that regional basis and the Department of 

State that does it on a country-by-country basis? 

Mr. LOCHER. Mr. Wittman, there is some good news in this regard because in the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act, there was a provision added on the floor, I think by 

Congressman Langevin and Congresswoman Shea-Porter, about a 

common map. It requires the President to do a study of how we are 

organized differently in the departments and agencies that have 

international responsibilities. 

Right now, each department and agency has been able to define 

the geographic boundaries to suit its needs, and in an earlier era, 

that was fine. Today it is an integrated effort. It is a whole-of-gov-
21 

ernment approach. And if we allow those boundaries to be different, it just creates more difficulty in working the issues. 

So I think this is a great provision. When General Jones took 

over as the National Security Advisor, he indicated this is one of 

the things he would like to see so that how he is organized at the 

National Security Staff is also how the rest of the government is 

organized. 

So there is a great start on this. I am hoping that this provision 

will remain, that this report will come from the President explaining both the benefits of doing it plus any downsides of organizing 

the same. 

Dr. ADAMS. Could I address that question, Congressman, as well? 

I like to make a distinction here between how you look at the world 

in terms of policy and how you look at the world in terms of execution or implementation. 

At the level of policy and at the level of resourcing, which I will 

combine together, if you will, with policy, clearly the State Department is not adequately, how shall I say, structured and empowered 

internally to deal at the regional level the way it should, and that 

is a critical issue at State. 

My own of view of this, just to give you one example, is the budget capacity that is in the hands of EUR/ACE [the Office of the Coordinator of U.S. Assistance to Europe and Eurasia], which is the 

assistance office inside EUR, regional bureau at State, is very capacitated, very empowered, to be a regionally focused budget planning mechanism dealing with assistance to Eastern Europe and the 

former Soviet Union and has worked very closely with the Congress. It has done a remarkable job. In resourcing and planning 

terms, EUR is probably the best practice at the State Department. 

The falloff from that, even through NEA [the Bureau of Near 

Eastern Affairs] and into the African Bureau or South Asia or 

Southeast Asia or Pacific, is all considerable falloff. They are not 

empowered to think policy at the regional level. They are not empowered to think resources at the regional level, unlike EUR/ACE, 

which is the outstanding example at the State Department. 

So in policy and resourcing terms, it makes a lot of sense, even 

if you find the right way to draw the map, to empower those offices 

in the State Department with capacities both for policymaking and 

for resourcing budget decisions that they do not now have. 

It is different when you come to implementation. I am much less 

concerned about whether there is a country focus or a regional 

focus when it comes to moving forces, applying them in the field, 

having diplomats and chiefs of mission responsible in the implementation side on security assistance programs and economic assistance programs. I think all of that, provided you sufficiently empower the chief of mission authority at the country level on the implementation side, works reasonably well and can work reasonably 

well. But the policy/budgetary/resourcing side at State Department 

needs to be more greatly empowered and reinforced than it has 

been. None of them but EUR/ACE have a budget office. None of 

them are looked to in the policy sense. 

The other caveat I would put on it is to be very careful in the 

Defense Department-side model as well. It is not so clear in policy 

terms that DOD policy is any more authoritative in policy terms 
22 

at the regional level than the regional bureaus at State. We have 

a slight apples-and-oranges issue here, because the DOD offices 

that look like they are active and good implementers and policymakers are actually the COCOMs [combatant commands], and 

COCOMs are not policymakers. They behave like they are sometimes, but they are not, in fact, policymakers. They are policy implementers. 

So a close look I think needs to be taken at the COCOM structure as well to make sure that they, as it were, stay in their lane 

while policy and resource are on the civilian side and equally empowered in both institutions. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mrs. Davis for five minutes. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. 

Dr. Thompson, perhaps you can enlighten us a little bit. You 

studied the Intelligence Community and human capital reforms 

over the last five years. So what did we specifically learn from that 

that can be applied here and I guess really that which cannot? I 

mean, looking at the obstacles. And in the remaining time, probably there won’t be much, one of the concerns I have, and I am 

probably not going to get back to ask this question, is how do we 

really translate this for the American people? 

We are struggling right now, we know that, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, but particularly Afghanistan, in terms of trying to establish and talk through the long-term efforts that are necessary 

for progress. We are talking about human capital and capacity 

building and all those kinds of things. 

So how is it that we are able to talk through some of these efforts in a way that makes sense, and perhaps people might even 

want to support and not be frightened by in terms of a long-term 

effort itself? Dr. Thompson? 

Dr. THOMPSON. Well, our interest was primarily in the human 

capital area, which is somewhat more narrow than some of these 

other topics that have been discussed here. But some of the same 

issues are the same. 

For example, Mr. Locher mentioned the issue of the authority of 

the DNI, which has figured centrally in the whole effort by the Intelligence Community to deal with these human capital reforms. 

And I mentioned the example earlier of the issue of waivers, the 

joint duty certification, which is the agencies collectively agree to 

a program whereby waivers could only be granted by the DNI and 

the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. 

However, that is simply in the form of an agreement, and legally 

any agency head could, on his or her own, simply decide to promote 

somebody to a senior position without joint duty certification, 

which would kind of abrogate the treaty, and, to a substantial extent, the program itself. 

So I think the issue that Dr. Locher mentioned of providing the 

DNI with some greater degree of authority over the agencies would 

help. It doesn’t have to be dramatic, but even an incremental 

change in authority would substantially, how shall we say it, put 

some teeth in the program that aren’t there right now. 

It is remarkable—the program has achieved remarkable success, 

given the lack of authority on the part of the DNI, simply by virtue 
23 

of the collaborative nature of the process they have gone through. 

But I would describe the program as somewhat at risk by virtue 

of this kind of lack of ability to kind of weigh in in certain circumstances. 

Plus the other thing, it has been highly contingent on personalities, which is that the people that went to this process all kind of 

bought in, but since then there has been a lot of turnover at the 

agency head, at the DNI level, at the chief human capital officer 

level, which has also kind of destroyed some of the collective or 

collaborativeness that has developed over time. 

So I would describe the program as vulnerable and somewhat at 

risk in that regard. 

With regard to the broader question of how to communicate this 

to the American people, it is not an item that I have given a lot 

of thought to, so I would have to contemplate that more. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. Anybody else want to tackle that? 

Dr. ADAMS. Let me take a crack at the communicating it to the 

American people, but I am afraid it is going to underline very much 

what Dr. Thompson had to say. 

I look at this particularly with respect to our investment in civilian capacity, as you gathered from my original testimony and my 

comments. And while it is staggeringly easy to communicate to the 

American people how much time and resources and people and investment we should put in on the military side of our national security structure, communicating successfully about the time, level 

of effort, people, and resources that need to be put on the civilian 

side has proven enormously difficult. 

Really I think it is a question of helping people understand that 

the civilian long-term investment has as much, if not more, payoff 

than the military investment that we are making, because especially to pursue some of the reforms that many of us have recommended, the investments that are being made are in the capacity to strengthen governance in various areas of the world that are 

of strategic concern to us. 

That isn’t going to happen via an AFRICOM or COCOM type of 

arrangement. It is going to happen, and here a lot of the problem 

is human resources, it is going to happen if we recruit, train, crossassign the way Mr. Locher is talking about, incentivize, promote 

our civilian personnel, so they are, in fact, empowered to do programmatic work and to focus on this long-term governance issue. 

We really have to focus the institutions. Getting the American 

people to understand that that long-term investment is in our security interests is the challenge that every Secretary of State has had 

since the year ‘‘zot’’ in trying to justify their budget request. That 

is the hard bridge to get over to the American people. It is even 

a hard bridge to get over to the Congress. Why should we put 

money here, when it is very hard to see the near-term payoff? 

Mrs. DAVIS. We work a little on short term. 

I was going to ask, Mr. Pendleton, in your looking at the right 

people and right jobs, would you agree? That is a big problem, partly because it is more long-term rather than short-term. 

Mr. PENDLETON. When we distilled all these reports, you know, 

you put them in a thing and shake them and see what comes out, 

it usually comes out to people in the long run. 
24 

I would like to just comment a bit and tell a little bit more about 

the story of AFRICOM. I think it is telling. 

Originally they hoped they would have a lot of participation from 

State and AID, and it ended up being a couple dozen, which is 

similar to what the other COCOMs have, because DOD just absolutely dwarfs the other agencies. AFRICOM is a year-and-a-half 

old. There are 4,300 people working for them in Germany and Italy 

and down in Djibouti. I don’t know how many people State has in 

Africa, but that is a lot of folks doing planning and thinking. So 

one of the things the national security budget would do, for example, is bring that out in pretty sharp relief. If you put DHS and 

State together, they are about one-tenth the size of DOD, and that 

in itself is telling. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Platts, last but not least. 

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just adding on to Congresswoman Davis about people, you know, when I have interacted 

out in Afghanistan and Iraq and examples of the country teams 

with the ambassadors and being able to come into any country and 

in a pretty good timeframe get a very good sense of what is going 

on from that country team, it is very effective, I guess. And then 

with PRTs, I have seen the same, especially in Afghanistan in 

some of the early years in my visits there. 

But I think in all those instances, it was people and their ability, 

kind of at the operations level just to say hey, we have got a job 

to do, let’s find a way to get it done, and they make it work. When 

we get to the strategic level it gets more and more tough to have 

that success. 

With the people issue being one of the questions, and this might 

be Mr. Pendleton and Dr. Thompson, it is my understanding DNI 

is trying to promote interagency knowledge and cooperation, and 

with this program, Civilian Joint Duty Program, how you see that 

moving forward and I guess the effectiveness of it, and is it something we should look to as a model elsewhere to try to implement? 

Dr. THOMPSON. The answer is yes, but a cautious yes, which is 

the real crunch will come this October 1st when, according to the 

program that they have agreed to, one cannot be promoted to a 

senior level within the Intelligence Community without joint duty 

certification. So if everybody adheres to that agreement that they 

thus far have, then I think you can describe the program as a success. But that is really going to be crunch time within the Intelligence Community. 

Mr. PLATTS. Where they actually back that up. 

Dr. THOMPSON. Right. But to date, from everybody we have 

talked to, I think the program is considered a substantial success. 

All the agencies seem to have bought in. There is active participation by the officers themselves. There is joint leadership training 

programs just gearing up. So as of now, I would describe it as a 

success. 

Mr. PENDLETON. Nothing to add. 

Dr. ADAMS. Just one thought on that, Congressman. I would say 

that probably one of the most revolutionary consequences of Goldwater-Nichols for the Department of Defense has been checking the 

joint box. That in order to move ahead, you have to have done that. 
25 

I think over time, I don’t know whether Jim would agree with 

it, but I imagine he would, it has had revolutionary impact on the 

way across services the senior officers now respond to their responsibilities. 

What could very easily be done in the Department of State is to 

make a similar requirement for a foreign service officer in the Department of State, that it is a requirement to have done interagency duty as part of your promotional package. It does not now 

exist, and it is my understanding of the Foreign Service Act of 1980 

that it is permissive, that the Department itself could do that without the requirement for any congressional action. Over time, I 

think it would have a revolutionary impact similarly in the foreign 

service structure. 

Mr. LOCHER. I think the joint officer provisions of GoldwaterNichols have been a huge success. They have created the right incentives. They have built the joint structure. You can go out to a 

combatant command where you have people in five different uniforms, and they are focused on what is the national mission. We 

are lacking that in the interagency. 

This committee last year took the initiative to require a study of 

an interagency personnel system, a career development and management, and that contract on that is going to be led by the Department of Defense. The Project today submitted a proposal on 

that, so we are hoping to do that. But that would be a huge step. 

In my testimony I recommended that this would be a near term 

step that the Congress could take. It could have the same dramatic 

changes by creating a different set of incentives for people in the 

interagency space. 

Mr. PLATTS. As one who has the privilege of representing the 

Army War College and is up there a lot, and as we have had tremendous hearings and the Chairman and Ranking Member’s great 

leadership on professional military education and that jointness aspect of it, I certainly see when I am at the war college, when it is 

not just Army officers, but Navy, Air Force, Marine, civilian, Department of State, and then role-playing for them in some of their 

strategic exercises, how that joint approach, you know, is so important and ultimately critical when they get out into the implementation of that strategic leadership that they are developing. 

Dr. ADAMS. I just did a presentation for one of the elite units at 

Carlisle on the subject, and, of course, it is a purposely impressive 

bunch of people. I have said many times the State Department 

needs to look at this element of their human resource development 

seriously. 

The Foreign Service Institute [FSI] does a lot of great work, but 

it does it at the entry level. It is insufficiently interagency. They 

don’t follow through at mid-career. They really ought to be focusing 

right through a career and right through an interagency approach 

to that career at FSI in the training and education. State doesn’t 

do it anywhere as well as the Defense Department or the services 

do it. 

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you. 
26 

Mr. Locher, I had one quick question for you. In your statement 

today, you say that there is no single sweeping package that will 

be adopted and somehow we do reform once and forever. 

My recollection is when you came out with your 800-page report 

a couple of years ago, that, in fact, you all did advocate that there 

be very sweeping reform, I don’t think you said one sweeping package, but you did say you pretty much need to take the whole package or don’t do it. 

Has this been kind of an evolution of your thinking in this whole 

issue of reform with this national security system? 

Mr. LOCHER. Well, Mr. Chairman, maybe we did not communicate our intention well enough. When we did ‘‘Forging a New 

Shield,’’ we were looking to study the entire system. Even at that 

time we knew it would be a 10-year undertaking. 

We had gotten smarter on the ideas of implementation over the 

past year as we have worked with 10 or 12 agencies, and we have 

gotten a sense of how gradual the changes will have to be. And 

that is why I proposed this idea of a roadmap that gave us a sense 

of the sequencing of actions. 

Now, we do see that at some point in time, the Congress will 

need to pass a new National Security Act. We have started by trying to identify to the administration what can be done under existing authority, and a tremendous amount can be done under existing authority. But at some point in time, we are going to identify 

authority that the President does not currently have to operate in 

the new ways that the challenges of today and tomorrow will demand. 

So, in my testimony, I also talk about this roadmap which 

showed the path to legislation. But our 800-page report did not 

suggest that all of that would occur at one time. We understood 

that maybe we were not successful in communicating it. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Wittman, any further questions? 

Mrs. Davis, anything further? 

Mr. Platts, anything further? 

Thank you all for being here. I don’t think we have solved the 

problem today, but I think the job this subcommittee has played in 

the last two or three years is to keep reminding us all that there 

is a problem out there that needs to be scratched at, and your all’s 

work today and in the past and the future is part of that discussion. Thank you all. 

We are adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 2:30 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 
A P P E N D I X 

JUNE 9, 2010 

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