1

SEVENTH PUBLIC HEARING OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST 

ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES 

SUBJECT: BORDERS, TRANSPORTATION AND MANAGING RISKS 

CHAIRED BY: THOMAS H. KEAN

WITNESSES: PANEL I:

MARY RYAN, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR CONSULAR 

AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF STATE;

DORIS MEISSNER, FORMER COMMISSIONER, IMMIGRATION AND 

NATURALIZATION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE;

PANEL II:

JOSE E. MELENDEZ-PEREZ, INSPECTOR, CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION, 

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY;

PANEL III:

MAURA HARTY, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR CONSULAR AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT 

OF STATE;

RUSSELL E. TRAVERS, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, INFORMATION SHARING AND 

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT DEPARTMENT, TERRORIST THREAT INTEGRATION 

CENTER;

DONNA A. BUCELLA, DIRECTOR, TERRORIST SCREENING CENTER, FEDERAL 

BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION;

PANEL IV:

JAMES ZIGLAR, FORMER COMMISSIONER, IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION 

SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE;

ROBERT C. BONNER, COMMISSIONER, CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION, 

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY;

PETER F. VERGA, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR HOMELAND 

DEFENSE, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

LOCATION: 216 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

TIME: 9:00 A.M. EST
2

DATE: MONDAY, JANUARY 26, 2004

MR. THOMAS H. KEAN: I'd like to call the hearing to order. 

As chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon 

the United States, I hereby convene the seventh public hearing. 

This hearing's going to run over the course of two days, from 

9:00 o'clock to 4:30 around today and tomorrow. We have taken it 

as the topic of today's hearing "Borders, Transportation and 

Managing Risk." Today we're going to focus primarily on border 

security. 

We intend to be covering a lot of ground today. So we can 

get right to business at hand, I'm going to keep these opening 

remarks very brief. I will, however, make just two points before 

we begin. First, we'd like the American people to know that the 

Commission is deep into its work. We and our staff continue to 

work our way through more than two million pages of documents. 

We have interviewed more than 900 people and will be interviewing 

several hundred more before we conclude our work.

We have access to some of the most sensitive information in 

the possession of the United States government. Outstanding 

requests for additional materials that were the subject of 

subpoenas the Commission issued have been resolved. We are 

carrying out our mandate to provide a full and complete account 

of the events of September 11th, 2001 and to recommend ways to 

make the people of our country safer and more secure. We intend 

to write a strong and a creditable report.

Now I want to say just a word about today's hearing. Today 

and tomorrow staff will present facts uncovered in our 

investigation thus far into the events that transpired on 

September 11th, 2001. We believe that what we present today will 

provide new information about the attacks of September 11th. 

What we have learned certainly will impact our investigation and 

impact the final report that we prepare. Today we will hear from 

four panels of witnesses. Two will be proceeded by statements 

from the Commission staff, summarizing what we have learned to 

date about incidents, about which witnesses will testify.

To start, I would now like to recognize Dr. Philip Zelikow, 

the Commission's executive director, who will begin the first 

staff statement. He will be followed by Ms. Susan Ginsburg, who 

directs the part of the investigation that pertains to the 

subject of today's hearing.
3

MR. PHILIP D. ZELIKOW: Members of the Commission, working 

with you we have developed initial findings on how the 

individuals who carried out the 9/11 attacks entered the United 

States. We have also developed initial findings on terrorists 

who failed in their efforts to enter the United States. These 

findings lead us to some tentative judgments on the way the 

United States targets the travel of international terrorists. 

This staff statement represents the collective effort of several 

members of our staff. Susan Ginsburg, Thomas Eldridge and Janice 

Kephart-Roberts did most of the investigative work reflected in 

this statement.

The Commission was able to build upon a large and strong 

body of work carried out by many talented public servants at the 

Department of State, the Central Intelligence Agency, the former 

Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Department of 

Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The 

American people should be proud of the many extraordinary 

professionals now serving them. To the extent we have 

criticisms, they are comments less on the talent available and 

more on how that talent was used. 

As we know from the sizeable illegal traffic across our land 

borders, a terrorist could attempt to bypass legal procedures and 

enter the United States surreptitiously. None of the 9/11 

attackers entered or tried to enter our country this way. So 

today we will focus on the hijackers exploitation of legal entry 

systems. We have handed out a list attached to the statement of 

the names of 9/11 attackers to help you follow our discussion. 

To break down some of al Qaeda's travel problem, view it 

from their perspective. For most international travel, a 

terrorist has to have a passport. To visit some countries, 

terrorists of certain nationalities must obtain a document 

permitting them to visit, a visa. Finally, the terrorist must 

actually enter the country and keep from getting detained or 

deported by immigration or other law enforcement officials. 

Susan Ginsburg, senior counsel to the Commission will begin by 

examining how the hijackers navigated these stages. 

MS. SUSAN GINSBURG: Beginning with passports. Four of the 

hijackers passports have survived in whole or in part. Two were 

recovered from the crash site of United Airlines flight 93 in 

Pennsylvania. These are the passports of Ziad Jarrah and Saeed 

al Ghamdi. One belonged to a hijacker on American Airlines 

flight 11. This is the passport of Satam al Suqami. A passerby 
4

picked it up and gave it to a NYPD detective shortly before the 

World Trade Center towers collapsed. A fourth passport was 

recovered from luggage that did not make it from a Portland 

flight to Boston on to the connecting flight which was American 

Airlines flight 11. This is the passport of Abdul Aziz al Omari. 

In addition to these four, some digital copies of the 

hijackers passports were recovered in post-9/11 operations. Two 

of the passports that have survived, those of Satam al Suqami and 

Abdul Aziz al Omari, were clearly doctored. To avoid getting 

into classified detail, we will just state that these were 

manipulated in a fraudulent manner in ways that have been 

associated with al Qaeda.

Since the passports of 15 of the hijackers did not survive, 

we cannot make firm factual statements about their documents. 

But from what we know about al Qaeda passport practices and other 

information, we believe it is possible that six more of the 

hijackers presented passports that had some of these same clues 

to their association with al Qaeda. Other kinds of passport 

markings can be highly suspicious. To avoid getting into the 

classified details, we will just call these suspicious 

indicators.

Two of the hijackers, Khalid al Mihdhar and Salem al Hazmi 

presented passports that had such suspicious indicators. We know 

now that each of these two hijackers possessed at least two 

passports. All of their known passports had these suspicious 

indicators. We have evidence that three other hijackers, Nawaf 

al Hazmi, Ahmed al Ghamdi and Ahmed al Haznawi may have presented 

passports containing these suspicious indicators. But their 

passports did not survive the attacks so we cannot be sure.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals. There 

were significant security weaknesses in the Saudi government's 

issuance of Saudi passports in the period when the visas to the 

hijackers were issued. Two of the Saudi 9/11 hijackers may have 

obtained their passports legitimately or illegitimately with the 

help of a family member who worked in the passport office. 

We do not yet know the answer to the question whether the 

knowledge of these particular clues existed in the intelligence 

community before 9/11. From the mid 1970s when terrorists began 

to launch attacks in the Middle East and Europe, intelligence and 

border authorities knew that terrorists used forged or altered 

travel documents. By the 1980s the U.S. government had developed 

a Red Book used to guide and train consular, immigration and 
5

customs officers throughout the world on spotting terrorists. It 

included photographs of altered or stolen passports and false 

travel stamps also known as cachets used by terrorists. The 

importance of training border officials on use of the Red Book is 

evident from a U.S. government film entitled "The Threat is 

Real." Here is a brief excerpt.

(Film shown.)

The U.S. government ceased publication of the Red Book by 

1992, in part because it had fallen into the hands of terrorist 

groups. There continued to be a number of government efforts to 

provide information about generic forgery detection and document 

inspection techniques. Before 9/11 the FBI and CIA did know of 

some of the practices employed by al Qaeda. They knew this from 

training manuals recovered in the mid 1990s and from tracking and 

interrogations of al Qaeda operatives. 

Some of this knowledge was revealed in individual criminal 

cases prosecuted in the United States in the 1990s. And yet 

between 1992 and September 11th, 2001 we have not found any signs 

that intelligence, law enforcement or border inspection services 

sought to acquire, develop or disseminate systematic information 

about al Qaeda's or other terrorist groups travel and passport 

practices. Thus, such information was not available to consular, 

immigration or customs officials who examined the hijackers

passports before 9/11.

Now, turning to visas. The State Department is principally 

responsible for administering U.S. immigration laws outside of 

the United States. Consular officers, a branch of our diplomatic 

corps, issue several kinds of visas for visitors and for 

permanent immigrants. In 2000, these diplomats processed about 

10 million applications for visitors’ visas at over 200 posts 

overseas. U.S. law allows nationals of certain countries to 

enter without visas on a reciprocal basis under the Visa Waiver 

Program. None of the 9/11 hijackers however, were nationals of a 

visa waiver country.

Before 9/11 visa applicants provided their passport, a 

photograph and a written application. A State Department 

employee checked the passport and application for any apparent 

questionable features. A consular officer could call the 

applicant in for an interview. The applicant's essential 

information went into a State Department database. The 

information was then checked against a large consular lookout 
6

database called CLASS which included a substantial watchlist of 

known and suspected terrorists, called TIPOFF. 

Our immigration system before 9/11 focused primarily on 

keeping individuals intending to immigrate from improperly 

entering the United States. In the visa process, the most common 

form of fraud is to get a visa to visit the United States as a 

tourist and then stay to work and perhaps become a resident. 

Consular officers concentrated on interviewing visa applicants 

whom they suspected might leave and not return. 

Saudi citizens rarely overstayed their visas or tried to 

work illegally in the United States. The same was true for 

citizens of the United Arab Emirates. So while consular 

officials in both countries always screened applicants in CLASS, 

including TIPOFF, they would not interview them unless there was 

something about the application that seemed problematic. Visa 

applicants from these countries frequently had their applications 

submitted by third party facilitators, like travel agencies. 

In June 2001, the U.S. consular posts in Saudi Arabia 

instituted a third party processing program called Visa Express. 

It required applicants to apply through designated travel 

agencies instead of by mail or in person. The program was 

established in part to try to keep crowds of people from 

congregating outside the posts which was a security risk to the 

posts and to the crowds themselves. We have found no evidence 

that the Visa Express program had any effect on the interview or 

approval rate for Saudi applicants or that it reduced the 

scrutiny given to their applications. It actually lengthened the 

processing time.

With the exception of our consulates in Mexico, biometric 

information like a fingerprint was not routinely collected from 

visa applicants before 9/11. Terrorists therefore could easily 

exploit opportunities for fraud. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the 

chief tactical planner and coordinator of the 9/11 attacks, was 

indicted in 1996 by federal authorities in the southern district 

of New York for his role in earlier terrorist plots. Yet KSM, as 

he is known, obtained a visa to visit the United States on July 

23rd, 2001, about six weeks before the 9/11 attacks. 

Although he is not a Saudi citizen, and we do believe he was 

in Saudi Arabia at the time, he applied for a visa using a Saudi 

passport and an alias, Abdulrahman al Ghamdi. He had someone 

else submit his application, his Saudi passport and a photo 

through the Visa Express program. There is no evidence that he 
7

ever used this visa to enter the United States. Beginning in 

1997, the 19 hijackers submitted 24 applications and received 23 

visas. The pilots acquired most of theirs in the year 2000, the 

other hijackers with two exceptions obtained theirs between the 

fall of 2000 and June 2001. 

Two of the visas were issued in Berlin and two were issued 

in the United Arab Emirates, the rest were issued in Saudi 

Arabia. One of the pilots, Hani Hanjour had an application 

denied in September 2000 for lack of adequate documentation. He 

then produced more evidence in support of his student visa 

application and it was approved. Except for Hanjour, all the 

hijackers sought tourist visas. Of these 24 applications, four 

were destroyed routinely along with other documents before their 

significance was known. 

To our knowledge, State consular officers followed their 

standard operating procedures in every case. They performed a 

name check using their lookout database including the TIPOFF 

watchlist. At the time these people applied for visas, none of 

them, or at least none of the identities given in their 

passports, were in the database. We will say more about this in 

another staff statement later today. 

All 20 of these applications were incomplete in some way, 

with a data field left blank or not answered fully. Such 

omissions were common, the consular officials focused on getting 

the biographical data needed for name checks. They generally did 

not think the omitted items were material to a decision about 

whether to issue the visa. Three of the 19 hijackers submitted 

applications that contained false statements, that could have 

been proven to be false at the time they applied. The 

applications of Hani Hanjour, Saeed al Ghamdi and Khalid Al 

Mihdhar stated that they had not previously applied for a U.S. 

visa, when in fact they had.

In Hanjour's case, the false statement was made in an 

earlier application for a visit in 1997, not his final visa 

application in 2000. Hanjour and Mihdhar also made false 

statements about whether they had previously traveled to the 

United States. Information about these prior applications was 

retrievable at the Jeddah post where each applied. These false 

statements may have been intentional to cover up the applicant's 

travel on old passports to suspect locations, like Afghanistan, 

for terrorist training. 
8

On the other hand these statements may have been 

inadvertent. During this period, Saudi citizens often had their 

applications filled out and submitted by third parties. Most 

importantly, evidence of the prior visas or travel to the United 

States actually would have reduced concern that the applicants 

were intending to immigrate, so consular officers had no good 

reason to deny the visas or travel.

Al Mihdhar's case was uniquely problematical. He had been -

- he had not been entered into the TIPOFF watchlist at the time 

of his second visa application in June 2001. In January 2000, 

the American consulate in Jeddah had been asked about Mihdhar's 

visa status in conjunction with an ongoing urgent terrorist 

intelligence investigation, and confirmed that this al Qaeda 

operative had a U.S. visa. 

When Mihdhar applied again in June 2001, the check against 

the worldwide TIPOFF watchlist took place, but no system then in 

place included a notation of the prior visa status check. 

Neither the investigating agency, nor the post, had made the 

appropriate lookout entry. Thus, in effect, the post could not 

remember relevant suspicions a year and a half earlier about this 

same person who was traveling again with the same biographical 

information. 

At least two of the hijackers were actually interviewed in 

person in connection with their visa applications. Hanjour was 

interviewed twice, Satam al Suqami was apparently interviewed in 

Riyadh. Another hijacker, Ahmed al Nami was apparently 

interviewed briefly, but just to clarify an entry on his 

application. The three consular officers involved have some 

memory of these interviews. All stated that the reasons for 

their interviews had nothing to do with terrorism. They saw 

nothing suspicious. 

At least four individuals implicated in the 9/11 plot tried 

to get visas and failed: Ramzi Binalshibh, Zakariya Essabar, Ali 

Abdul Aziz Ali and Saeed al Ghamdi. This Saeed al Ghamdi is a 

different person from the Saeed al Ghamdi who actually became a 

hijacker. Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni, apparently intended to 

train as a pilot along with his Hamburg friends, Mohamed Atta, 

Marwan al Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah. 

Binalshibh applied for a visa three times in Berlin and once 

in Yemen. He first applied in Berlin on the same day as Atta. 

He was interviewed twice and denied twice. Yemen is a much 

poorer country than Saudi Arabia, Both times consular officers 
9

determined he did not have strong ties to Germany and he might be 

intending to immigrate unlawfully to the United States. 

Binalshibh tried again in Berlin, this time for a student visa, 

to attend aviation school in Florida. He was again denied for 

lack of adequate documentation and failure to show sufficient 

ties to Germany.

Essabar, a Moroccan who may also have intended to be a 

pilot, tried to get a visa in Berlin at least once, and failed 

because he failed to demonstrate sufficient ties to Germany, such 

as a job or family there. Third country visa applicants in 

Berlin were held to significantly higher standards in terms of 

documentation and showing ties with their country of residence, 

than were Saudi and Emirate citizens applying from their own 

countries. 

Ali Abdul Aziz Ali is the nephew of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed 

and was heavily involved in financial and logistical aspects of 

the 9/11 plot. He tried to get a U.S. visa in Dubai about two 

weeks before the attacks. His visa application states that he 

intended to enter the United States on September 4th, 2001 for 

one week. As a Pakistani visa applicant in a third country, he 

would have received greater scrutiny from U.S. officials from the 

start. In any event, it was deemed possible that he intended to 

immigrate, and accordingly he was denied a visa.

Saeed al Ghamdi also known as Jihad al Ghamdi, apparently 

intended to participate in the 9/11 attacks. He is a Saudi, and 

applied for a tourist visa in Jeddah on November 12, 2000, the 

same date as 9/11 hijacker, Ahmed al Haznawi. Haznawi was 

approved, but al Ghamdi was denied after an interview with the 

consular officer because the consular officer believed he was 

intending to immigrate. 

We now turn to exit and -- entry and exit from the United 

States. With a visa, an individual can travel to United States 

port of entry. Upon arrival, the individual must seek admission 

into the United States from an inspector of what used to be 

called the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS, an 

agency whose personnel now form part of the Department of 

Homeland Security. Property being brought into the United States 

is checked by inspectors of the U.S. Customs Service, whose 

personnel are now also part of DHS.

The 19 hijackers entered the United States a total of 33 

times. They arrived through 10 different airports, although --

though more than half came in through Miami, JFK or Newark. A 
10

visitor with a tourist visa was usually admitted for a stay of 

six months. All but two of the hijackers were admitted for such 

stays. Hanjour had a student visa and was admitted for a stay of 

two years, and Suqami sought and was admitted for a stay of only 

20 days. 

The four pilots passed through INS and customs inspection a 

total of 17 times before 9/11. Hanjour came to the United States 

to attend school in three stints during the 1990s. His final 

arrival was in December 2000 through the Cincinnati-Northern 

Kentucky Airport. The three other pilots, Atta, al Shehhi and 

Jarrah initially came in May and June 2000. They arrived for the 

last time between May and August 2001. All made a number of 

trips abroad during their extended stays in the United States.

Of the other 15, only Mihdhar entered the United States left 

and returned. Nawaf al Hazmi arrived in January 2000 with 

Mihdhar and stayed. Al Mihdhar left in June 2000 and returned to 

the United States on July 4th, 2001. Ten of the others came in 

pairs between April and June 2001. Three more arrived through 

Miami on May 28th. The INS inspector usually had about one to 

one and a half minutes to assess the traveler and make a decision 

on admissibility and length of stay. For all the entries, a 

primary U.S. INS inspector -- a primary INS inspector would work 

a lane of incoming travelers and check the people and their 

passports. 

The inspector would try to assess each individuals demeanor. 

No one noted any anomalies in these passports, despite the fact 

that we now believe that at least two, and as many as eight 

showed evidence of fraudulent manipulation. The inspector would 

use the passport data, especially if it was machine readable, and 

Saudi passports were, to check various INS and customs databases. 

The databases would show the person's immigration history 

information as well as terrorist watchlist and criminal history 

information.

Of the five hijackers who entered the United States more 

than once, three of them violated immigration law. Ziad Jarrah 

entered in June 2000 on a tourist visa, and then promptly 

enrolled in flight school for six months. He never filed an 

application to change his immigration status from tourist to 

student. Had the INS known he was out of status, they could have 

denied him entry on any of the three subsequent occasions he 

departed and returned while he was a student.
11

Marwan al Shehhi came in through Newark in late May 2000, 

followed a week later by Mohamed Atta. Both were admitted as 

tourist and soon entered flight school in Florida. In September, 

they did file applications to change their status. Before 9/11, 

regulations allowed tourists to change their status at any time 

so they were in compliance, but both overstayed their periods of 

admission and completed flight school to obtain commercial pilot 

licenses. Atta and al Shehhi then left within a few days of one 

another and returned within a few days of one another in June 

2001 -- January 2001, while their change in visa status from 

tourist to student was still pending.

Atta and al Shehhi did get some attention when both said 

they were coming back to finish flight school. Primary 

inspectors noticed with each that their story clashed with their 

attempt to reenter on tourist visas. The rules required them to 

get proper student visas while they had been overseas, since 

their earlier pending applications for a change of status were 

considered abandoned once they left the United States. Atta and 

Al-Shehhi were each referred by the primary inspectors to 

secondary inspections. 

At secondary, more experienced inspectors could conduct 

longer interviews, check more databases, take fingerprints, 

examine personal property and call on other agencies for help. 

The inspectors involved have stated they do not remember these 

encounters. The reports indicate that both men repeated their 

story about still going to flight school and their pending 

applications for a change of status. The secondary inspectors 

admitted Atta and al Shehhi as tourists. 

Flight 93 hijacker Saeed al Ghamdi was referred to secondary 

immigration inspection when he arrived in late June 2001. He had 

no address on his I-94 form. He spoke little English. He had a 

one-way ticket and about $500. The inspector wondered whether he 

was possibly intending to immigrate. Al Ghamdi convinced the 

inspector that he was a tourist and had enough money. Customs 

officers took a second look at two of the hijackers but then 

admitted them. On Marwan al Shehhi's first entry into the United 

States, a Customs officer referred him to secondary inspection, 

completed the inspection and released him.

In May 2001, Waleed al Shehri and Satam al Suqami departed 

Florida for the Bahamas, but were refused admission. On their 

way back to the United States, a Customs officer conducting a 

pre-clearance in the Bahamas, referred al Shehri to a secondary 

inspection. Customs then released al Shehri to return to the 
12

United States with Suqami. We do know of one success by 

immigration secondary inspection the affected the 9/11 plot. An 

al Qaeda operative, Mohamed al Kahtani arrived at Orlando Airport 

on August 4, 2001. Evidence strongly suggests that Mohamed Atta 

was waiting there to meet him. Kahtani encountered an 

experienced and dedicated inspector, Jose Melendez-Perez, we will 

hear his story later this morning. 

During their stays in the United States, at least six of the 

9/11 hijackers violated immigration laws. We have noted Jarrah's 

failure to adjust his status while he was in flight school and 

the violations by Atta and al Shehhi. Hani Hanjour came in on a 

student visa in December 2000, but then did not attend the 

English language school for which his visa was issue. Nawaf al 

Hazmi overstayed his term of admission by nine months. Suqami 

overstayed his term of admission by four months. None of these 

violations were detected or acted upon by INS inspectors or 

agents.

Two programs might have helped detect such violations. One 

dealt with violations of student status, the other dealt with 

overstays. National security concerns about foreign students are 

not new. By the late 1980s, the INS had established a student 

school system to track students, but the system did not work. 

After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing when it was discovered 

that a participant in the plot had been a student who had 

overstayed his visa, the Department of Justice asked INS to 

devise a better way to track students.

INS officials recommended a new student tracking system and 

a student ID card that used biometric identifiers. In 1996, 

Congress mandated a new system to be installed by 1998 without 

appropriating program funds. The INS scraped together $10 

million and piloted a successful student tracking program in the 

Atlanta area in June 1997 which included a flight school. 

However, advocates of education interests argued that the program 

would be burdensome and costly. 

Upon the order of senior INS management, the project manager 

was replaced. In 1998, INS indefinitely deferred testing of the 

biometric student ID card. The program stalled. Senators 

declared an interest in repealing the 1996 law and sought to 

obstruct further INS funding for it. Thus when Atta and al 

Shehhi lied when questioned about their student status on their 

re-entries in January 2001, and when Hanjour failed to show up 

for the school for which he was issued a visa in December 2000, a 
13

student tracking system was far from available to immigration 

inspectors or agents.

Congress required the attorney general to develop an entryexit system in 1996. The system's purpose was to improve INS's 

ability to address illegal migration and overstays of all types 

of foreign visitors. By 1998 Congress had appropriated about $40 

million to develop the system. Advocates for border communities, 

however, were concerned that an entry-exit system would slow down 

trade. INS officials decided to forgo the system at land borders 

and only to automate the entry process. The automation process 

was not successful. The result was that when hijackers Suqami 

and Nawaf al Hazmi overstayed their visas, the system Congress 

envisaged did not exist.

Moreover, when federal law enforcement authorities realized 

in late 2001 that Mihdhar had entered with Hazmi in January 2000 

at Los Angeles, they could not reliably determine whether or not 

Hazmi was still in the United States along with Mihdhar.

MR. ZELIKOW: In conclusion, the director of the FBI 

testified that, quote, "Each of the hijackers came easily and 

lawfully from abroad." The director of Central Intelligence 

described 17 of the 19 hijackers as, quote, "Clean," close quote. 

We believe the information we have provided today gives the 

Commission the opportunity to reevaluate those statements. Based 

on our evaluation of the hijackers travel documents, the visa 

process, the entries into the United States and the compliance 

with immigration law while the attackers were here, we have a few 

observations.

Considered collectively, the 9/11 hijackers included among 

them known al Qaeda operatives who could have been watchlisted, 

presented passports manipulated in a fraudulent manner, presented 

passports with suspicious indicators of extremism, made 

detectable false statements on their visa applications, were 

pulled out of the travel stream and given greater scrutiny by 

border officials, made false statements to border officials to 

gain entry into the United States and violated immigration laws 

while inside the United States. These circumstances offered 

opportunities to intelligence and law enforcement officials but 

our government did not fully exploit al Qaeda's travel 

vulnerabilities. Why weren't they exploited?

We do not have all the answers. Certainly, neither the 

State Department's consular officers nor the INS's inspectors and 

agents were ever considered full partners in a national 
14

counterterrorism effort. This is exemplified by the Bureau of 

Consular Affairs statement that before 9/11 they were not 

informed by anyone in the State Department or elsewhere that 

Saudi citizens could pose security risks. Nor were the Consular 

Affairs Bureau or INS given the resources to perform an expanded 

mission.

Between 1998 and 2001 visa applications rose by nearly a 

third, an increase of 2.5 million per year. Trained staff did 

not keep pace with the volume increase. In Jeddah and Riyadh, 

for example, each consular officer had responsibility for 

processing on average about 30,000 applications per year and 

routinely interviewed about 200 people per day.

The INS before 9/11 had about 2,000 agents for interior 

enforcement. As long as the top enforcement priorities were 

removal of criminal aliens and prosecution of employers who hired 

illegal aliens, a major counterterrorism effort would not have 

been possible. This is not to pass judgment on immigration 

policy generally. What we can do is highlight those policy 

choices affected counterterrorism efforts before 9/11 and 

potentially affect them today. For our frontline border 

inspection services to have taken a substantially more proactive 

role in counterterrorism, their missions would have had to have 

been considered integral to our national security strategy and 

given commensurate resources. 

Today the level of systematic effort by the intelligence 

community focused on terrorist travel is much greater. But 

terrorist travel intelligence is still seen as a niche effort, 

interesting for specialists but not central to counterterrorism. 

Nor have policy makers fully absorbed the information developed 

by terrorists' mobility specialists. Much remains to be done 

within the United States and internationally on travel and 

identity document security, penalties and enforcement policy with 

respect to document fraud and travel documents screening efforts 

at the borders. 

If we have one conclusion from our work so far, it is that 

disrupting terrorists' mobility globally is at least as important 

as disrupting terrorist finance as an integral part of 

counterterrorism. 

Thank you. 

MR. KEAN: We will now hear from our first panel whose topic 

will be: "The Border Security System Prior to September 11th." 
15

Our first witness will be Ambassador Mary Ryan. Ambassador Ryan 

had a long and distinguished career in the United States Foreign 

Service beginning in 1966. Twice the recipient of the 

Presidential Distinguished Service Award, Ambassador Ryan served 

as assistant secretary of State for Consular Affairs from May 

1993 until July 2002. 

Our second witness will be Doris Meissner. Ms. Meissner 

served the United States government in immigration matters since 

the 1970s in several capacities in the Department of Justice. In 

October 1993, President Clinton appointed Ms. Meissner as INS 

commissioner. She served in that capacity until November 2000. 

Ms. Meissner is currently the senior associate at the Migration 

Policy Institute which she helped found. 

At the hearing today and at all future public hearings, the 

Commission plans to put all witnesses under oath as authorized by 

section 605 of our statute of public laws number 107 through 

3006. So, if I could ask the witnesses please to raise your 

right hand. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole 

truth and nothing but the truth? Thank you.

Ambassador Ryan.

MS. MARY A. RYAN: Mr. Chairman, members of the Commission, 

thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to 

describe the role of the Bureau of Consular Affairs of the 

Department of the State in our nation's border security program. 

My remarks will cover the period from May 1993 until July 2002, 

the years I served as assistant secretary for Consular Affairs. 

I retired from the Department of State in late 2002 after 36 anda-half years as a career foreign service officer, during which I 

served eight presidents: Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, 

Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton and Bush 43. 

In the limited time I have for this oral statement, I have 

three objectives: to give you an overview of the automated 

consular system, to correct a couple of misconceptions about how 

our processes work and I also would like to outline for you the 

budgetary constraints on the Department of State in the 1990s and 

how these constraints impacted the Bureau of Consular Affairs. I 

will describe the improvements made to the lookout systems that 

developed from microfiche in 1993 to the current global system 

that we have today. 

All these systems are designed to assist officers in visa 

adjudication process, in evaluating whether or not to issue a 
16

visa to a foreign applicant. The systems are the Consular Lookout and Support System, or CLASS, TIPOFF, which is a system 

developed and managed in my time in CA by the Department of 

State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Visas Viper was 

created in 1993 designed to obtain intelligence from our 

embassies and consulates abroad as well as other agencies 

operating abroad and the consolidated consular database which 

gives consular officers replicated visa records of all visas 

issued and refused.

These systems contain the names of terrorists, criminal 

aliens and others who should not be admitted to the United 

States. They give consular officers real-time, online name 

checking capability. However, if there is a single point that I 

want to leave with the Commission today, it is that any lookout 

system is only as good as the intelligence it contains and the 

Bureau of Consular Affairs had no intelligence on any of the 19 

terrorists. 

In the 1990s, consular workload increased dramatically. 

Non-immigrant visa applications rose from seven million in 1993 

to 10 million in 2001. We were also processing over 600,000 

immigrant visa applications. U.S. passport demand grew from 3.5 

million in 1993 to seven million in the same timeframe. State 

Department budgets were inadequate for this workload. Because of 

the lack of funding, the department's senior management 

determined not to hire to attrition and to reduce promotion 

significantly into the Senior Foreign Service. These decisions 

had an immediate and very negative effect on consular operations.

The department had generally maintained an intake of junior 

Foreign Service officers of about 200 a year. In the mid-1990s, 

because of the budget shortfalls, junior officer intake numbered 

one year 130, another year 110 and another year 90. Because most 

of the entry level jobs in the Foreign Service are consular, 

consular work was heavily impacted. A huge hole was created at 

the bottom of the Service. At the same time, senior officers 

were being forced out of the Service because they failed to be 

promoted.

Thus simultaneously, there weren't enough junior consular 

officers and there was also a shortage of top level consular 

management. Entry level positions were filled through a variety 

of staffing mechanisms. But many large sections faced a dearth 

of experienced supervisors to train more junior staff. It was an 

extremely difficult period and one that lasted well into the 

1990s.
17

I would now like to describe for you the various lookout 

systems that provide intelligence to consular officers in the 

field. In Fiscal Year 1994, Congress authorized the Department 

of State to charge a fee for machine readable visa applications 

and to keep that money. That was the first time in the 

department's history that we were allowed to keep a fee that we 

collected. It was this funding that permitted the Bureau of 

Consular Affairs to undertake the enhancements to our system.

CLASS is the consular lookout system. In 2001, CLASS 

contained 5.7 million records on aliens, most of which originated 

with the visa application process at our consulates and embassies 

abroad. A variety of federal agencies contribute names to this 

system. INS contributed over a million records including the 

names of deported aliens. DEA contribute over 300,000 and 

Customs some 20,000 from its serious drug violator files. 

Consular Affairs, in turn, provided other agencies through the 

Inter-Agency Border Inspection System over 500,000 lookout 

records. 

TIPOFF is a border security and counterterrorism tool 

developed in 1987 and managed when I was in CA by the Bureau of 

Intelligence and Research in the Department of State. It 

utilizes sensitive intelligence and law enforcement information 

from the CIA, from the FBI and from NSA and overseas posts 

concerning known or suspected terrorists and criminals. TIPOFF's 

objective was to detect these individuals either as they apply 

for visas or as they attempt to pass through U.S., Canadian or 

Australian border entry posts. Data sharing was implemented with 

Canada in 1997 and with Australia in 2000. 

The Bureau of Consular Affairs provided over $7 million to 

help TIPOFF between the years 1995 and 2001. The TIPOFF staff 

reviewed all intelligence reports, overseas post cables and other 

sources of information for the names and biographic data of known 

or suspected terrorists that were then entered into CLASS and INS 

and Customs' IBIS system, the Interagency Border and Inspection 

System.

In 2001, the CLASS database contained over 48,000 such 

records. Visas Viper is an integral part of TIPOFF. 

Intelligence and law enforcement agencies had been reluctant to 

share terrorist information at posts where it was developed. 

However, they professed themselves comfortable with providing 

this information through INR and through TIPOFF. Because the 

Bureau of Consular Affairs was advised that intelligence was
18

flowing to the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, we believed 

that we were getting all such intelligence that they had to 

protect our country. As I noted earlier, even a state of the art 

system like ours is only as good as the intelligence it has in 

it, and we had no intelligence on these 19 terrorists.

Finally, the Consolidated Consular Database is a globalized 

database of visa records. All visa data collected abroad was 

being replicated to the CCD, and by May of 2001, we were able to 

make the Consolidated Consular Database available to all visa 

issuing posts. The photo and details of all visa applicants, 

once only available locally to the post where the application 

originated are now available in real time to all visa offices 

worldwide. Visas can be checked at any point in the process 

against all issued and refused visas worldwide, and consular 

management in Washington now has access to up to the minute 

information about visas around the world. By October 2001, INS 

was able to accept this information and provided it to all the 

ports of entry. All of these systems were designed to protect 

the United States from those who mean us harm.

I'd like to address now some of the distortions that 

appeared in the media after the attacks on our country about visa 

operations in Saudi Arabia. In order to meet existing and new 

demands for visa services, and in the absence of adequate 

financial and personnel resources, the Bureau of Consular Affairs 

developed programs aimed at getting the work done as efficiently 

and effectively as possible. One of these programs was interview 

by exception, and was designed to concentrate scarce resources on 

visa applicants that were problematic. We also developed a 

travel agency referral program whereby carefully vetted travel

agents could submit applications for their clients, who generally 

would not be interviewed. Variations of this program existed 

before my time in the Bureau.

Validation studies were conducted to ensure that the clients 

did return from visits to the United States, and agencies that 

violated any of the rules, or whose clients overstayed in the 

United States, were dropped from the program. The United States 

Embassy in Saudi Arabia developed such a program in 2001, one of 

more than 30 posts with similar programs. It was incorrectly 

alleged that travel agents were deputize to make visa decisions 

when they obviously had a financial interest in seeing that the 

visas were issued to their clients. Nothing could be further 

from the truth.
19

We use such programs in countries with low refusal rates or 

where the applicants had to travel long distances from their 

homes to our embassies and consulates. In every case, the 

applications were checked through CLASS, and CLASS is designed so 

that the visa cannot be printed unless the system is checked, for 

any indication of a program and the consular office was free to 

require the applicant to appear for an interview and the policy 

was never to guarantee issuance.

MR. KEAN: Ambassador, if you could start to wrap up.

MS. RYAN: I'm sorry. We treated Saudis exactly the same as 

we treat all nationalities who need visas from us. About 40 

percent of our international visitors enter the United States 

through the Visa Waiver Program, and those people are not checked 

by State Department consular officials. Everyone else is checked 

and checked carefully through CLASS, through the databases.

To summarize, with all of these systems we need intelligence 

information from the agencies designed to collect it. We had no 

such intelligence information on any of the 19 terrorists.

Thank you for your attention.

MR. KEAN: Ms. Meissner.

MS. DORIS MEISSNER: Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of 

the Commission. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before 

you. I hope to be able to help in any way that I possibly can 

with the important work that you're doing. As you noted in your 

introduction, I had served in the Nixon, Carter, Ford and Reagan 

administrations, so brought some experience to the position of 

commissioner when I entered on duty. I came back in the Clinton 

administration, recognizing some of the challenges that INS faces 

and committed to wide-ranging agency reform.

INS, as you know, has widely divergent areas of 

responsibility that had suffered from a history of neglect by 

administrations and Congresses of both parties. During my time 

at INS that began to change, as serious attention was devoted to 

building the capabilities the agency needed to carry out its 

mission effectively. At the same time, even under the best 

immigration controls, most of the September 11 terrorists would 

still be admitted to the United States today. That is because 

they had no criminal records, no known terrorist connections, and 

had not been identified by intelligence methods for special

scrutiny.
20

The innovation al Qaeda introduced is clean operatives who 

can go through immigration controls undetected. Immigration 

measures are an important tool in the war against terrorism, but 

they are not effective by themselves in identifying terrorists of 

this new type. The immigration system can only set up gateways 

and tracking systems that exclude terrorists about whom the 

United States has some information. And it can enable 

authorities to find clean operatives already in the country if 

new information is provided by intelligence agencies. The 

immigration and the intelligence systems must work together for 

either to be effective.

To that end, the lead domestic security responses to 

terrorism should be strengthened intelligence and analysis, 

compatible information systems and information sharing, and 

vigorous law enforcement and investigations. Improved 

immigration controls and enforcement are needed, and they can 

support good anti-terrorism enforcement, but they are not enough 

by themselves.

Let me first give a brief overview of my tenure. With more 

than 10 million immigrants, the 1990s rank as one of the two 

decades of highest immigration in American history. These 

numbers represent millions of transactions daily, and those 

transactions were made by an agency that suffered from chronic 

overwork, underfunding and outdated practices. Early in 1993, 

three high profile immigration crises occurred in close 

succession. They were the first bombing of the World Trade 

Center, the multiple drownings when a Chinese smuggling ship 

washed ashore off Long Island, and shootings outside the CIA 

headquarters that killed government workers. All three involved 

people applying for political asylum in the United States.

Beginning with fixing this broken asylum system, border 

control became the highest priority for the new administration 

from the outset. During my tenure, the INS budget grew from 

approximately $1.6 billion to $4 billion. Personnel grew from 

about 18,000 to 32,000. With growth at that scale came enormous 

management demands. In addition, Congress enacted a series of 

sweeping new laws, beginning in 1996, that placed ambitious new 

mandates on INS. The 1996 act alone required writing more than 

70 regulation sand training more than 20,000 staff. All 

generated unplanned, sizeable new workloads.

Other major efforts that we faced included successive 

humanitarian emergencies, such as Haitian and Cuban boatlifts, a 
21

tripling of detention capacity, dramatic increases in the removal 

of criminal aliens, and a citizenship backlog reduction program 

that foundered, requiring top to bottom reforms that demanded 

attention for several years. Overall, Congress supported the 

administration in providing increased resources for INS and 

promoting new strategies and technology. Still the public mood 

was one of growing anti-immigration sentiment. The 

administration had basic immigration policy disagreements with 

Congress, the relationship between INS and its congressional 

oversight committees was often contentious. 

Against that backdrop, let me summarize a few items of most 

relevance to counterterrorism. First, border control. The broad 

goal that I set forth for INS was to prevent illegal immigration 

and facilitate legal immigration. Preventing illegal immigration 

incorporated all abuses of the immigration system. We began with 

asylum reform, but we then continued with border control as the 

agency's highest priority during my entire tenure. Our 

definition of the nation's borders was comprehensive: land 

borders with Mexico and Canada, our ports of entry and our 

consulates abroad. The transformations that were the most 

visible occurred along the southwest border. But INS's agenda 

always encompassed a comprehensive view of our borders. That 

meant that ports of entry, POEs, had to be a key element of 

border protection. 

Among the most meaningful changes that we implemented in our 

port of entry operations are inspector staffing increases, 

improvements to the lookout system, data share efforts that 

Ambassador Ryan has described with Consular Affairs, facilitation 

programs that created more secure travel such as INSPASS, which 

was the first use of biometrics, SENTRY, which is electronic 

dedicated commuter lanes at the border, an advanced passenger 

information which is the sharing of manifests from airlines. We 

were able to get 80 percent of airline passengers having been 

checked before they arrived at our ports of entry in the United 

States. All of these things are elaborated in more detail in my 

testimony. 

These improvements have been significant. They have 

strengthened border control and facilitation. But they all 

address issues of admitting people to the country. There has 

never been systematic departure controls from the United States. 

Without them, INS's knowledge of who and how many people have 

left as required and who did not has been incomplete. To meet 

this need, Congress called for an entry-exit system in its 1996 

legislation. INS designed, tested and implemented the front end 
22

of such a system at certain airports but the major stumbling 

block for entry-exit has been the land borders, a problem that 

remains unresolved today.

Next to border control, technology was my highest priority. 

In 1993, less than 20 percent of INS employees had access to any 

automation. When I left, more than 95 percent had a terminal at 

their work station and relied on automated information to carry 

out their tasks. The technology projects beyond those that I 

have described that have a bearing on counterterrorism include 

the following. 

IDENT, this is the system that was created in 1994 for the 

southwest border. It is the automated biometrics system that 

contains a photo and two index finger fingerprints. The 

technology now meets many immigration needs where identity must 

be verified for both enforcement and benefit granting purposes.

New green cards and laser visas. In 1998, INS began 

replacing with a new green card a technology that incorporated 

state-of-the-art security features, including biometrics. The 

technology was also used to produce laser visas which Consular 

Affairs issued to Mexican nationals. The replacement program 

consolidated a large number of documents that INS had 

historically issued and its purpose included reducing misuse and 

counterfeiting of documents.

Foreign student tracking. In response to FBI concerns, INS 

proposed a new student system in 1995. Congress mandated it in 

1996. INS tested a pilot in 1997 and '98 and was on track for 

implementation in 2003 as the legislation required assuming that 

funding issues which were unresolved could get resolved. These 

programs and other technology infusions represented major 

improvements that INS badly needed to be effective. But by the 

late 1990s, appropriations did not keep pace. Numerous 

candidates for new systems development that could yield 

significant continuing improvement had to be kept on hold. 

Nevertheless, it's not databases that catch terrorists. Had 

student tracking, for instance, been in place before 9/11, it's 

still highly unlikely that the terrorist with a student visa who 

did not appear for classes would have been arrested by INS. 

That's because it would take far greater numbers of officers than 

INS has ever had to actually locate and take custody of those who 

have overstayed or who have violated the terms of their visas. 
23

Instead, what good information systems can do is cultivate a 

culture of compliance with our immigration requirements and they 

can provide very useful information that law enforcement needs 

when following investigative leads, including leads in 

counterterrorism investigations.

I see the yellow light is on, so let me say that there are 

other actions that are, of course, outlined in my testimony. 

Among them are serious refocusing of our interior enforcement 

which included focusing on criminal matters that would have 

included terrorism and restructuring of the INS which would have 

been a major effort which we presented to Congress in 1998 and 

which included upgrading and including and incorporating as law 

enforcement our activities at the ports of entry. That too is an 

issue that still remains undone. 

Let me conclude by saying that by 2000 INS had become a 

larger, better, more professional agency especially in the areas 

of its most critical responsibilities. Many of the changes were 

transformational. All constituted critical building blocks for 

properly managing the immigration system in the years ahead. But 

it is my strong conviction that on the issues of 

counterterrorism, the agency's focus and record were where they 

should have been. We understood that our role was to have the 

systems and structures in place to prevent wrongdoers from 

getting into the country. 

We did that by pressing hard for strong comprehensive border 

controls, modern information systems and interagency and 

international coordination. The measures we took and the systems 

we put into place would have identified the 9/11 terrorists, had 

INS known who to be looking for. Moreover, the major technology 

and systemic improvements in immigration control that have been 

made since 9/11 have been to fund and give higher priority to the 

initiatives and the technology that we developed.

Thank you very much.

MR. KEAN: Thank you, Ms. Meissner.

Our questioning today will be led by Commissioner Lehman.

MR. JOHN F. LEHMAN: Thank you. I'd like to begin with a 

question to Ambassador Ryan. Ambassador, as you know, 

historically, the consulates and the consular corps of the 

Department of State from the earliest days of the republic have 

been the outer defenses, the global listening posts and the first 
24

line of defense if you will. And the history certainly of the 

first up to the Second World War was an elite professional 

consulate professional corps. Yet, ironically, as our global 

involvement started to expand rapidly after the war, the consular 

corps and consulates began a long and steady decline, shrinking 

in numbers steadily, shrinking in prestige, gradually becoming a 

kind of an orphan within the Department of State. 

And while I know during your tenure with things like the MRV 

program, you did some very significant things to attempt to do 

more with less or, as you said in one of your interviews, to do 

more with nothing. But I remember one of the first State 

Department issues when I began in the government back in the 

Nixon administration was the closing of a whole range of 

consulates and consolidating. And then when I was secretary of 

the Navy, I was deeply involved in a lot of skirmishing 

throughout my tenure because the Navy is particularly dependent 

on consulates in ports around the world and they were being 

closed at an even greater pace during the Reagan years. 

So my question to you is, while, I know and your testimony 

and your statement outlines some important significant tactical 

efforts that you made to fight what was essentially a rearguard 

battle against personnel cuts and closings and so forth, could 

you give us an idea about what you might have done or what should 

have been done to take a larger view to look at the overall 

steady decline of which your particular tactical problems were a 

part. And what was done to try to reverse this and to 

reinvigorate the consular corps as a line of defense against 

terrorism and, importantly, to get the resources because next to 

the Coast Guard and INS, there probably is no other orphans who 

are underfunded historically as the cone that you headed in 

State? 

Were your obstacles a lack of recognition of the importance? 

Were they budget cutting within the Department of State? Was it 

OMB or was it principally the congressional appropriation that 

kept this inexorable decline going even as the threat increased?

MS. RYAN: Mr. Secretary, we in the Bureau of Consular 

Affairs take our responsibility -- when I was there, took the 

responsibility as the outer ring of border security very, very 

seriously. We were faced with many of the things that you 

describe. In the mid-90s the budgets were completely inadequate, 

and this was before the MRV money, machine readable visa money, 

began to really come in. We just got the authorization in FY 
25

'94. We were charging at that time $20 per machine readable visa 

application, but we did not have that technology worldwide. 

So we didn't have a lot of money and so we were devastated 

by the budget cuts. We were devastated by the lack of junior 

officer intake. I would say that the people that we used in lieu 

of junior officers, who were civil servants on excursion tours, 

they were specialists in other areas of the department, and we 

also hired Foreign Service spouses to do this work. They did a 

fantastic job. But the message that was sent by this to the rest 

of the Department of State was that consular work was really not 

that important, and it was the only cone -- if we call the 

specializations cones -- the only cone where this occurred. All 

other cones were staffed completely by Foreign Service officers.

So we had that problem. I would tell you, sir, that the 

high point of my career was in the Bureau of Consular Affairs, 

serving with people in my bureau, which is a primarily civil 

service bureau, and serving with consular officers worldwide, 

because I really believe they're the finest public servants in 

the government. They take their responsibilities very, very 

seriously. As you heard from the staff, in Jeddah, for example, 

they were interviewing 200 people a day. I interviewed 200 

people a day 30 years ago when I was on Monterrey, Mexico. I can 

tell you how hard that work is and how difficult it is, and how 

worn down you are by the end of the day and how you always have 

people left over that you were not able to reach to interview, 

even though you were working as hard as you can. It's 

demoralizing work for consular officers.

But I would tell you, which I believe with all my heart, 

that they did it to the best of their ability, that they love 

this country, that they're patriots, that they chose government 

service not for the money and not for the prestige, because 

neither exists in the government any more, but they chose it 

because they love this country and they want to serve our country 

and the American people. And I -- despite the fact that these 19 

people exploited our weaknesses, I believe that the consular 

officers around the world and the consular officers who issued to 

these people did their jobs to the best of their ability with the 

knowledge and the tools that they had at the time.

MR. LEHMAN: But my question really is where was the 

problem? Why were you the orphan? Was it prejudice within the 

department or an ignorance within the department. Was it over at 

OMB that all the cutting went on? Or was it in Congress? And 

did you -- I mean, the disparity between the needs and the 
26

mandates you had and the resources you were given is so gross 

that I would have expected you to be raising hell at each of 

these three levels. Did you?

MS. RYAN: I did, sir. We have a program in the Department 

of State called the Bureau Program Plan, which is a way that we 

try to match resources and money. We did very good Bureau 

Program Plans that didn't unfortunately get us the money that we 

needed. I believe that it was the Congress in the mid-1990s that 

cut us. If you remember, in the mid-1990s we had the furlough, 

because I believe that there were people in the Congress who did 

not know that the U.S. government did anything that the American 

people needed or wanted or couldn't get when we were closed.

MR. LEHMAN: And was this in foreign relations or in the 

appropriating process?

MS. RYAN: It's in the appropriations process.

MR. LEHMAN: And did the Intelligence Committees have a say?

MS. RYAN: I don't know, sir, because we didn't ever testify 

before the Intelligence Committee. I certainly didn't. We 

testified before the Appropriations Committee. I testified 

before the Immigrations Subcommittees of the House and Senate. 

We tried higher up than I in the chain of command in the State 

Department, tried to get us the money that we needed, tried to 

get the department the money that we needed. It simply wasn't 

there. Congress had higher priorities or priorities that they 

felt were more significant than funding the State Department.

MR. LEHMAN: Ms. Meissner, I'd like to ask you a similar 

question. You said you got the budget up to $4 billion plus by 

the time you left, but your successor has made a very good case, 

with various specifics, just matching minimal funds to the 

mandates that Congress has provided, and comes up with a figure 

10 times that size. As a similar orphan in a larger department, 

how did you raise hell and at which levels were your biggest 

obstacle? Again, was it Congress, was it OMB and the White 

House, or was it within your own cabinet department?

MS. MEISSNER: Well, Mr. Secretary, I think our 

circumstances during the time that I was there were slightly 

different from a budget standpoint because we were growing very, 

very rapidly. The difficulty with INS, of course, was how fast 

could you grow? I mean, there were years that we were growing 

15, 20 percent a year and we didn't have the infrastructure to 
27

handle the recruiting and the training and the deployment and the 

space. So the difficulty that we had with funding was not so 

much in the early years, support from either the Justice 

Department or the administration or the Congress. 

There was a consensus that the INS needed to grow. The 

difficulty was that the Congress sometimes wanted the growth in 

different ways and in different programs than the Administration 

proposed. And in key areas such as technology, the funding 

really tapered at the time where we needed it to keep expanding, 

because our workforce had expanded so quickly that we were eating 

up the money just with operating the systems that we had, and we 

were not able to continue the new systems development that we 

needed in order to support the workforce.

Now, I've seen Commissioner Ziglar's testimony and I wish I 

had thought of doing an analysis like that. It is entirely 

possible that INS needs to be a $40 billion agency. I can't say 

independently anything about that. I think that the most 

important thing for the growth of an agency like INS is that it 

be steady and balanced and across the board.

Our problem was that the money and the Congress's desire for 

the money was focused almost entirely on the southwest border, 

whereas the case that we made and that the Justice Department and 

the administration supported us on was for an across the board 

distribution of resources, the areas that were not getting the 

money: technology, interior enforcement, and the borders 

comprehensively, which is not simply the southwest border but 

also our ports of entry and the kinds of data and technology 

efforts that needed to take place as between us in Customs and us 

in Consular Affairs, because this has to be a seamlessness. The 

duties are divided among agencies but the people and the 

responsibility for running the immigration system is crosscutting.

MR. LEHMAN: In addition to being orphans, you both have in 

common the fact that your agencies have a dual and some would say 

almost incompatible mission. One is enforcement in each case, 

which is always unpleasant. People don't smile when you enforce. 

And service, helping travelers, facilitating air travel and so 

forth, helping citizens in need abroad. And the criticism of 

both of the cultures of the agencies you headed, and indeed to a 

certain extent of each of your tenures, has been that enforcement 

was seriously neglected or de-emphasized, while service and 

assistance and facilitation was greatly emphasized and that they 

money flowed to the soft helping rather than the hard enforcing, 
28

and specifically on really putting teeth into the denial of visas 

and looking at Visa Express, for instance, looking at things like 

Transit Without Visa that essentially the Consular Corps kind of 

thought this was not really their business or much of a threat. 

That has come through from a good deal of the interviewing we've 

done. Would you care to comment on that, Ambassador?

MS. RYAN: Mr. Secretary, I would agree -- I would disagree 

with that statement. I think that we did balance law enforcement 

and travel facilitation. We poured what money we had into 

improving our lookout systems with CLASS, with TIPOFF, with Visas 

Viper, all of which were designed to get us the information that 

we needed to identify people that we should keep out of the 

country. I don't think travel facilitation and law enforcement 

are opposites. I think they're all part of the whole scheme of 

things, as we were trying to do them.

Visa Express, which I agree -- I mean, I certainly wish that 

it had a different name. It's a very unfortunate name because it 

makes people think that we just issue visas --

MR. LEHMAN: Well, the problem is not that you issue visas, 

it's the fact that some terrorists actually used it from third 

countries to get visas that, had it not been in place, they would 

not have presumably been able to get.

MS. RYAN: No, I don't think that that's really correct, 

because prior to the time of Visa Express, most of the people in 

Saudi Arabia were not interviewed. What happened was that they 

would come -- this was pre-Visa Express. They would come in the 

mornings and they would make their application, they would drop 

off their passports with the application. They would come back 

in the afternoon to pick up their passports. Thus there was --

the waiting rooms in both Riyadh and Jeddah were insufficient for 

the numbers of people who were applying for visas. And so there 

was a great deal of milling around outside of the embassy, both 

in the morning and the afternoon, which was of great concern to 

the regional security officers at both posts because, you know, 

in 2001 we were having intelligence information that there were 

threats against our interests in Saudi Arabia, and in fact, in 

July of 2001 we put out a travel warning on the Arabian Peninsula 

because the threats that we were hearing were so great.

So I don't think that Visa Express changed anything except 

that a third party now received the passports and submitted them 

to us, and eliminated the crowds at the embassy and at the 

consulate. The systems -- the consular systems staff, which 
29

developed CLASS when we had the money through MRV fees, developed 

it so that you could not print a visa without checking the 

system. There was no override to that at all. You had to check 

the system so that a consular officer, no matter how busy or 

overworked or tired or whatever they were, there was no way that 

they could issue a visa without checking the name -- the lookout 

system, CLASS.

So I think that knowing certainly what we did in Consular 

Affairs, prior to September 11th, 2001, we did -- we took every 

step that we could to enforce the law and to be polite.

MR. LEHMAN: I would respectfully disagree with you. I 

don't think the record shows that at all. In some of the 

interviewing of some of your officials that were doing the actual 

consular functions in Saudi Arabia at the time, they said in so 

many words, gosh, if we only knew. If someone had told us that 

Saudi Arabia was a threat. We thought that they were our friends 

and all we were looking for were people who were trying to 

immigrate and we weren't looking for terrorists. Well, hello. I 

mean, did anybody read the newspapers? I mean, there were books. 

The literature was rife with, you know, books like "Among 

the Believers" that catalogued this tremendous proselytizing of 

hatred and of fundamentalism around the world, sourced in Saudi 

Arabia, with many Saudi Arabian institutions and clerics the 

source of it. Yet everybody that we talked to said, "Oh, well, 

Saudi Arabia," as they issued visas, "Saudi Arabia is our friend 

so we don't look for terrorists here. Maybe somewhere else like 

Pakistan," which is the point I was making with one of the 

terrorists, who applied for a visa through -- thanks to the 

changes that were made with Visa Express, from a third country 

that never would have -- he would have gotten much different 

scrutiny, had he not done it into Saudi Arabia. So that is -- I 

don't think the record supports your view.

MS. RYAN: Before September 11th, and I think even after 

September 11th, until now, I think that this government, our 

government, does regard Saudi Arabia as an ally. In the current 

issue of Foreign Affairs, the deputy secretary says that we have 

every confidence in the crown prince of Saudi Arabia to carry out 

the reforms that he's trying to carry out. I mean, that doesn't 

sound like we regard Saudi Arabia as a state sponsor of 

terrorism. It was never so identified before September 11th, it 

was never so identified after September 11th.
30

MR. LEHMAN: But did you only have robots that just take 

what the official State Department characterization is? Don't 

they read the papers? Don't they know that so much of the 

funding, so much of the ideological motivation is sourced there? 

I mean, you know, in fact, after the fact, as you clearly 

demonstrate and affirm, we were told by consular officers that 

there was no change. They felt after the attack, oh, gosh, we 

really screwed up. Fifteen of them were -- we gave visas to 15 

of these guys, there are going to be some big reforms coming, and 

nothing was ever done. Did you ever require -- did you call all 

hands in for an offsite? Did your require after-action reports? 

Did you do a lessons learned on how we're going to do things 

differently?

There was a reason why 15 of them were on Saudi passports, 

and that's because the way you were doing business in Saudi -- I 

mean, you can blame it on the official ostrich view of this 

Department of State perhaps, but these were people that are 

supposed to have personal judgment, education and ability to ask 

the right questions on their own, regardless of what the 

secretary of State happens to be saying.

MS. RYAN: We were dependent on the intelligence of law 

enforcement agencies to give us information on people that they 

believed we should keep out of the country. I don't believe that 

in a visa interview you would ever uncover a terrorist. We are 

dependent on the people whose job it is to develop that kind of 

information. We set up all the consular automated systems that 

we could, designed to get that information. And the system was 

state of the art, is state of the art. It contains a lot of 

names. These people were not known to intelligence or to law 

enforcement. At least 17 of the 19 were not known at all. And 

even if we interviewed everybody, I do not believe that we would 

have uncovered the fact that they were terrorists.

MR. LEHMAN: I think our staff disagrees with that.

But, Ms. Meissner, I don't want to let you off the hook 

here. You, for better or for worse, had a reputation in the --

during your tenure, and we got this from a number of your 

subordinates, that there was a clear culture of de-emphasizing 

enforcement. You deferred, you did not spend the money that was 

appropriated on the student tracking system, the biometrics for 

student tracking. There were stop work orders on it. It was 

never fully implemented. You personally -- you told us during 

your interviews that you personally opposed the entry-exit 

program that was put in and even supported repeal of it. And so 
31

why this bias in both of our frontline outer defenses against 

enforcement?

MS. MEISSNER: I have to disagree with that 

characterization. The enforcement responsibilities of the INS 

have always been its primary responsibilities. And I spent more 

time and effort on the enforcement portfolio at INS than any 

other single thing. I did and do believe that in order to 

enforce the immigration law properly and effectively, it has to 

be done in a balanced way. In other words, the enforcement of 

the law simply done along the southwest border by border patrol 

agents is not sufficient. The entire agency's responsibilities 

have to be done in an integrated and robust fashion. 

The staff statement today is a good example in talking about 

foreign student visas and applications for visa changes. If 

INS's backlogs were up to date the way they should be, you 

wouldn't have to have the kinds of regulations that allow people 

to come on a visitor visa and then apply for a student visa 

because the application for student visa would be timely and the 

information would be available and the regulations that create 

the workarounds wouldn't be required. That kind of work is 

considered facilitation work but it has an extremely important 

impact on our ability to enforce the law properly.

Now, where student tracking is concerned and entry-exit are 

concerned, my difficulties with those programs were not 

difficulties of the basic concept. Student tracking in the first 

place did not have any funding allocated for it. The way that 

student tracking was to take place was through a fee which was 

described in the legislation which was to be collected from the 

foreign student by the schools themselves. There was a great 

deal of objection to that by the schools and by members of 

Congress. And ultimately, that legislative formula was changed 

so that the fee was collected in a different way. 

Notwithstanding that there was no budget for foreign student 

tracking, we took funds, $10 million as the staff statement 

describes, from other automation projects in order to design a 

pilot and test a pilot along the timetable that was set out in 

the legislation. So what we did was work on parallel tracks. We 

moved ahead with the automation planning just as we were 

advocating and working with the Congress on a legislative change 

that would make the funding mechanism be a more sensible one and 

one that all the stakeholders could live with. 
32

Similarly, on entry-exit. On entry-exit, the timetable that 

was set up in the legislation was absolutely undoable. They were 

calling for, in the 1996 law, an entry-exit program to be in 

place by 1998. That could not happen. As I explained, we have 

never had departure controls from this country. We went ahead 

and designed what the front end of a system for entry-exit could 

be, again working on a parallel track with the Congress to try to 

change the timetable in the legislation so that there would be 

the opportunity to design the kind of a system that could 

actually work. 

In fact, on entry-exit, we -- INS itself very early in my 

tenure made a very big effort to publish research that showed 

that 40 percent of the people in the United States who were here 

in an illegal status were here, not because they had come 

improperly across the southwest border, but because they had 

overstayed a visa and that the effort to deal with illegal 

migration to the United States had to be one that dealt with 

ports of entry and with overstays just as it dealt with southwest 

border circumstances. 

But an entry-exit system is a massive system to put into 

place and it continues to be a problem even with the high 

priority that is now being given to it since September 11 because 

we don't have the highway systems, we don't have the set-ups in 

our airports to physically handle people checking out when they 

leave the country. So I think that there -- I don't doubt that 

people that were in the INS have told you what they did and 

mistook -- you know, were mistaken or misunderstood what it is 

that I was trying to do. But what it is that I was trying to do 

was put a balanced system into place so that the parts actually 

could work effectively on both the facilitation and the 

enforcement side because they are mutually supporting. They are 

not contradictory. 

MR. LEHMAN: Thank you. I have one final question and, if 

you could keep your answers brief, we're running a little over 

time. There was a famous quote, when the Berlin Wall fell, from 

an East German worker that said, "You know, our system was based 

on the state pretending to pay us and we pretended to work." 

It's my belief that what has been revealed in our investigations 

is that Congress and a succession of administrations pretended to 

want enforcement of immigration law and your two agencies 

pretended to try to enforce it. 

The gap between the stated purpose of immigration law and 

the execution is so vast that it makes a farce of the whole 
33

concept of rule of law. And so, for instance, today there's 

still -- before 9/11 there were only 2,000 interior enforcers in 

the immigration function. As you rightly complain, how can you 

go check students overstaying their visas with only 2,000 people. 

Today, there is still only 2,000 people. So enforcement, not 

everybody really wants illegals put under a rule of law and 

that's a huge hypocrisy.

So, with that preamble, could you each of you give us, in 25 

words or less, your recommendation on how to fix this lamentable 

situation?

MS. RYAN: I would say, Mr. Secretary, there was no pretence 

on the part of consular officers, either in Washington or abroad, 

on enforcing our immigration laws. It's up to the Administration 

and to the American people to decide what kind of immigration 

laws they want. I think that this country cries out for 

immigration reform but I can assure you that consular officers 

take their responsibilities to enforce the law very, very 

seriously. They do the best they can with the tools they have 

and I think it's an unfair characterization to say that they were 

pretending to enforce the law.

MS. MEISSNER: I would say that, as a country, we are 

ambivalent and always have been ambivalent about what we want out 

of our immigration system and out of our immigration policy. 

Immigration is an area that has -- the pendulum has swung widely 

back and forth over history as between tough enforcement, 

exclusion, discriminatory policies and very permissive, lax 

approaches when it serves our interest. And that remains 

unsettled. That's very different, however, from being in the 

agency and having a set of specific responsibilities and people 

whose work you direct on a day-to-day basis. And where that is 

concerned, I certainly must say that during my tenure we made 

every possible effort to rationalize the system and the political 

ambivalence that continues today.

MR. LEHMAN: Thank you very much.

MR. KEAN: Senator Gorton.

MR. SLADE GORTON: Ms. Meissner, you have, I think, quite 

eloquently outlined dramatic changes in INS and, in contrast with 

Ms. Ryan, at least increasing resources with which to carry out 

its functions. But, looking at it today, would you tell me your 

one or perhaps two highest priorities for additional change with 

an emphasis on what those changes would do to better control or 
34

add a greater ability to control terrorism, which is the function 

of this commission? Let's say, what two changes that are 

realistically possible would provide the greatest degree of 

improvement in meeting that mandate?

MS. MEISSNER: Absolutely and thank you. The two changes 

that I believe are the most critical are, number one, integrated 

information databases that talk to each other. You now have 

immigration functions divided up, fragmented within the 

Department of Homeland Security and you do not have an 

immigration history for every person that comes to the United 

States or is in the United States. Those databases do not talk 

to each other. So not only do you need to continue to invest in 

the kind of technology that gives you a good foreign student 

tracking system and exit-entry and so forth, but those that 

somebody, an immigration officer or a consular officer must be 

able to click into a computer and on a particular person know 

everything, be able to get to everything that the U.S. government 

knows about that individual. That is not the case right now. 

That should have the absolute highest order of importance. It's 

the connective tissue that is missing now with the way that the 

restructuring of the immigration function has taken place.

The second thing is the kind of interagency coordination 

between the frontline agencies and the intelligence community 

that was suggested in the staff statement. The frontline 

agencies are Consular Affairs, the new immigration bureaus, the 

Customs officers, the Department of Agriculture, those entities 

that are in what we used to call -- we're in retail -- we've got 

to open the store every day. And the upstairs agencies, the back 

room agencies, the FBI, the CIA, the intelligence community, 

there has to be the trust and the information sharing that allows 

those frontline officers to do their job in identifying 

wrongdoers.

MR. GORTON: So, if I can summarize, you're saying we need 

the technology to do the job and then we need people who will 

actually do it.

MS. MEISSNER: Well -- and the relationships.

MR. GORTON: Between agencies. Ms. Ryan, you have retired 

from an agency which was losing resources during much of your 

time of responsibility. But, nonetheless, within the ambit of 

what the Department of State does, what would be your two highest 

priorities?
35

MS. RYAN: I share Commissioner Meissner's concern about the 

integration of databases. In, I think it was October of 2001, 

there was created what was called the Foreign Terrorist Tracking 

Task Force which was supposed to merge all the databases in the 

government so that everyone had the same information on everyone 

who was in the various databases. I detailed an officer from the 

Visa Office to that task force to ensure that the information 

that we got was information that we could use. I mean, we can't 

just use a name. We have to have at least a country of birth and 

an approximation of date of birth. Nothing ever happened with 

that and it disappeared. It was disbanded. 

Now there's a new terrorist screening center, something like 

that. I'm not current on all of this because I am no longer in 

the government. But that is the highest priority. I hope that 

this commission can break down the stovepipes that exist between 

agencies of this government, one agency having some information 

and another agency having some information and perhaps another 

agency having no information. There has to be integration of 

these databases so that we all know who the people are that we 

want to keep out of this country.

The other thing that I think is desperately needed is -- I 

would argue for increased consular staffing at posts abroad. 

Interviewing 200 people a day, as we did 30 years ago, we should 

have advanced beyond that. We should not be asking people to 

work like that. And then the third thing, even though you didn't 

ask for a third thing, is that the administration, the Congress, 

the people of this country have to decide what they want in terms 

of immigration. Commissioner Meissner put it very correctly. We 

are very ambivalent, as a nation, about immigration. I don't 

think we can afford to be ambivalent anymore. I think we have to 

decide what we want and then give the people who are charged with 

carrying out that responsibility the tools that they need to do 

their jobs.

MR. GORTON: I want to thank both of you for those cogent 

answers and thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Ben-Veniste.

MR. RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My first 

question is directed to Ms. Ryan. First, I want to express my 

personal gratitude for your long service to the interests of this 

country and recognize the difficulties under which you operated 

during the period most at issue here. However, following up on 

Secretary Lehman's question and looking at the fact that the 
36

terrorists were able to exploit a vulnerability that they 

perceived in the system particularly with respect to Saudi 

passports and visas, I see something of a disconnect in the 

situation as you described it. 

Here, in the summer of '01 and somewhat before, you have 

recognized that a crowd control at the embassy or at the consular 

office, officers in Saudi Arabia posed a problem because of the 

potential harm to individuals from those who meant the United 

States and its interests harm. If we take that just one step 

further, would you agree that the individuals in the Kingdom of 

Saudi Arabia who might pose such a threat to cause harm to 

individuals at or about the embassy would be Saudis rather than 

foreigners? Would you accept that?

MS. RYAN: That the people who mean us harm would be more 

likely to be Saudis than --

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Yes. The people who you are talking about 

who posed a threat to the numbers of individuals who were seeking 

visas in Saudi Arabia must have been largely Saudis.

MS. RYAN: Yes, they were probably largely Saudis although 

there were a lot of third country nationals in Saudi Arabia who 

also applied for visas.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: And I guess, on the issue of the 

disconnect, that Secretary Lehman was talking about, once you 

acknowledge that there is certainly a number of Saudis who might 

be in a position to do us harm through violence against 

individuals at or near our consular offices, it doesn't take a 

whole lot to go to the next step, even without specific 

information from our intelligence agencies, that such individuals 

who mean us harm might in fact wish to come to the United States. 

So the notion, would you not agree, of Saudis not posing a 

particular threat being taken out of that threat matrix really 

doesn't stand up even on the basis of cursory information that 

you had available.

MS. RYAN: I'm not sure I'm following you, I'm sorry.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Saudis mean us harm in Saudi Arabia 

because they might blow up the embassy or harm individuals in the 

vicinity of the embassy but the Saudis who might seek entrance to 

the United States were not considered a problem. 
37

MS. RYAN: Of course, they were considered a problem. They 

required visas. They were checked through our consular lookout 

systems. You know, in the absence of information that someone is 

a threat to the nation, we are dependent on the information that 

we have in our system developed by intelligence and law 

enforcement agencies about people who mean us harm. I don't 

imagine that -- I don't know but I can't imagine that you would 

think that we could on the basis of the fact that some people 

might mean us harm not issue visas to the entire nationality. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: I'm not suggesting that but that then begs 

the question of the usefulness of individual face-to-face 

interviews during periods of increased threat where there is some 

suggestion of potential wrongdoers. And I think we'll hear next 

from a witness who makes that point very explicitly. Let me turn 

to another issue which hasn't, I think, been brought up to this 

point and that is the issue of the use of interpreters by the 

consular service in the visa application process.

It has come to our attention from individuals who have had 

considerable experience that there is a problem, and perhaps a 

widespread problem, with respect to corrupt interpreters who are 

brought into the process because consular officers often in 

certain countries do not have language facility in the native 

language of that country. And therefore the consular office must 

rely upon an interpreter to assist in the visa application 

process and the interview process. Had it come to your attention 

as of the time that you left the service that this was an issue, 

and what, if anything, had been done during your tenure to try to 

correct it?

MS. RYAN: This all goes back to the fact that we don't have 

enough staff and enough money in the State Department. We 

recognize that it's a tremendous advantage if officers, consular 

and otherwise speak the language of the country and don't have to 

depend on interpreters. But we don't have enough people to be 

able to put officers into language training, long-term language 

training, which Arabic would be, or Chinese or Russian or Korean 

or Japanese, because we've never had a person in motion -- we've 

never had enough people to do that. And so that's always a 

concern, that's always a worry that an interpreter might not be 

interpreting accurately. It's one of the handicaps that the 

State Department operates under.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Could I interrupt you for just a moment 

and ask you whether rather in the theoretical you did not have 

some practical and substantial information that in various places 
38

in the world for a relatively small amount of money an 

interpreter could be bribed to provide the answers that the 

consular officer needed to hear in order to approve a visa.

MS. RYAN: I've never heard that about Saudi Arabia.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: I'm not limiting my question to Saudi 

Arabia. At many places throughout the world you had not heard of 

such a problem?

MS. RYAN: If I remember correctly, there was a problem once 

at one post that I knew of at the time where the interpreter was 

not interpreting accurately, and a Foreign Service national, one 

of the locally engaged staff, heard that and advised the officer. 

But that it's a widespread problem, no, I'm not aware of that. I 

was not aware of that.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Thank you.

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Gorelick.

MS. JAMIE S. GORELICK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ambassador Ryan, after 9/11 did you order an after-action 

report to determine how and in what circumstances the hijackers 

got into this country?

MS. RYAN: I sent a retired senior Foreign Service officer 

to Saudi Arabia to look at the operations of the consular 

sections in both Riyadh and Jeddah, and he advised me that they 

had followed all the procedures that we had in place at the time. 

In other words, no one didn't follow the way visas should be 

adjudicated, that they adjudicated the visas correctly, that we 

lacked information.

MS. GORELICK: Did he make a written report to you?

MS. RYAN: Yes, I believe he did. I think he made a written 

report, which should be available to the Commission.

MS. GORELICK: Thank you. The biggest inconsistency on the 

face of it between the staff statement and your view of the 

efficacy of interviews is what I understand you to be saying, is 

if these names had been in the system, we would have found these 

people and prevented them from getting visas, because the name 

would have been in the system. And I take your point. But then 

the question is would you have found out anything had you 
39

interviewed them? Now, I thought you said that you did not think 

an interview of the sort that is contemplated in the visa process 

would determine or provoke a question whether someone was a 

terrorist. Was that your testimony?

MS. RYAN: Yes. In the type of visa interview that we were 

doing when I was in the Bureau of Consular Affairs, it's not a 

law enforcement kind of interview, it's just an interview -- what 

we were basically trying to get at was whether the person was 

likely to remain in the country, in our country, illegally after 

his proposed visit to the United States. If you're doing 200 

interviews a day, you can't spend a lot of time in an interview. 

And what you ask is where are they going to go and whom do they 

know and, you know, why they want to go. 

We always interviewed first-time students because we wanted 

to ensure that their English was sufficient to be able to 

undertake the course of study that they were planning to take and 

that their previous study in their own country had been of the 

type of study that would lead to higher education in the United 

States. It was a very cursory interview. There's also a body of 

thinking that the interpersonal interaction that you have with 

the applicant makes it harder to refuse the applicant because you 

get to know him or her a little bit by your questioning. So I 

think it will be very instructive now that so many more people 

are being interviewed since September 11th, once we have enough 

information about these interviews to see whether the interview 

alone will be able to detect a terrorist.

MS. GORELICK: But certainly there is a statutory obligation 

to assess the visa applicant not just for whether they intend to 

violate in terms of their visa and stay here illegally or 

inappropriately but also to keep out terrorists. Now, the staff 

points out pieces of information which either were omitted from 

the visa application or which presented inconsistencies with data 

that were not on the face of the visa application but which were 

accessible somewhere in the U.S. government. And my question to 

you is whether, had the interviewers, the consular officers, who 

had these materials in front of them, had had access to that 

additional information, whether in that circumstance your view is 

that the interviews could not have produced a negative response 

to the visa application? Because you seem to be saying -- and I 

understand why you might be saying it, but you seem to be saying 

that really unless the name is in the computer, the interview 

element of our scrutiny is really not meaningful, and I'm trying 

to probe that.
40

MS. RYAN: I think that it's unlikely that we would detect a 

terrorist in an interview, in a straightforward interview. There 

is a question on the visa application form which asks the 

applicant whether he or she belongs to a terrorist organization, 

and they always say no. You know, if they understand the 

question they always say no. So, I mean, asking that kind of a 

question in an interview, I mean, I think you would most likely 

get the answer, no, I'm not a terrorist. I mean, I don't see how 

in the interview process, as it was pre-9/11/2001, we would be 

able to have detected these terrorists. I will never know. None 

of us will ever know.

MS. GORELICK: Well, let me just ask one follow-up question 

then. Can you imagine an interview process consistent with the 

nature of the processing that you've got to do with however many 

large numbers of people a consular officer has to interview, can 

you imagine an interview process which would have efficacy in 

preventing terrorists from entering the country?

MS. RYAN: It would have to be a completely different 

interview process from the one that was before September 11th. 

It would have to be a much lengthier interview process. It's 

conceivable that in a much more law enforcement kind of interview 

you would detect a terrorist, but that's something that, you 

know, is for the administration and the Congress and the people 

to decide, whether that's the kind of interviewing that we want. 

It's a risk management issue and that's up to people who make our 

laws to decide that.

MS. GORELICK: Thank you.

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Roemer.

MR. TIMOTHY J. ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to start with just a couple questions to Mary Ryan, 

and appreciate your attendance here at our hearing this morning. 

Certainly it seems that there are a couple of consistent themes 

from the post-9/11 analysis of the attacks on our country on 

September the 11th, 2001 that both the Joint Inquiry of Congress 

and the 9/11 Commission today have concluded that the Consular 

Affairs offices and our INS border were not integral parts of the 

strategy and included in the key meetings to fight the war on 

terrorism prior to 9/11. Would you agree with that?

MS. RYAN: No, sir. I think we always regarded ourselves as 

the outer ring of border security, with all that that means. Our 
41

responsibility was to protect the country, as well as to 

facilitate travel.

MR. ROEMER: Well, that was not the question, Ms. Ryan. The 

question was, and due to your testimony here and the interviews 

that you conducted with our staff, you talk about -- in the 

interview on 9/29/03, you say that you had no direct contact with 

anyone in the FBI prior to 9/11.

MS. RYAN: That's right.

MR. ROEMER: Now, that seems to me that you were not 

integrally part of a national security apparatus to catch and 

detain terrorists that may be coming into our country, especially 

as our system, as you've noted in your testimony, has resource 

problems, has problems with contacts with the FBI, has problems 

communicating or not communicating through stovepipes, yet al 

Qaeda makes travel one of their highest priorities, maybe even 

higher than financing. So there doesn't seem to me to be the 

commensurate allocation of emphasis between our government 

adjusting to what al Qaeda is just about to do or planning to do 

throughout the 1990s and our response. Now, you say that we had 

no knowledge that any of the 19 terrorists were -- we had 

information on them. How do we expect to have information on 

them if you have no contact with the FBI?

MS. RYAN: We were dependent on the FBI's providing 

information to us through TIPOFF and through Visas Viper if they 

had any information.

MR. ROEMER: And how would you characterize their ability to 

provide that information to the TIPOFF program prior to 9/11?

MS. RYAN: I thought prior to 9/11 that they had the 

capability and that they knew about people who were -- who meant 

us harm. I learned after September 11th that they didn't have 

information and that they didn't know about people who mean us 

harm.

MR. ROEMER: Would it surprise you, Ms. Ryan, to learn that 

there were more people in 2001 recommended for the TIPOFF list 

from the press and from a foreign government than from the FBI?

MS. RYAN: Yes, it would surprise me.

MR. ROEMER: It would surprise you. Would it surprise you, 

according to our staff, that the FBI did not have a written 
42

policy on the TIPOFF program for recommending people for that 

list prior to 9/11?

MS. RYAN: When we set up the Visas Viper program in 1993, 

we wanted the information that was developed at post to be given 

to us at post for inclusion in our system. And both the 

intelligence and law enforcement agencies were very reluctant to 

give us the information at post because consular sections are 

unclassified environments, and they were concerned about 

protection of sources and methods. They said that they were 

comfortable with providing the information through the 

intelligence and research bureau, which would then put it into 

TIPOFF. I believed them.

MR. ROEMER: Okay. Well, you believed them, but in an 

interview with the 9/11 Commission staff, you say that you were 

outraged when you learned that government agencies knew things, 

that two hijackers had this information and it was never passed 

onto the TIPOFF program until they already had their visas. Now, 

outraged seems to me not gravely disappointed, not very upset, 

outraged seems to me that you're indicating that mistakes were 

made, that terrible communication failures were part of this.

MS. RYAN: Yes, sir. That's correct.

MR. ROEMER: And please elaborate. We need to fix this 

problem as well. And from your further interviews with the 9/11 

--

MS. RYAN: I'm not sure how --

MR. ROEMER: Excuse me. With your further interviews with 

the 9/11 Commission staff, you go on to say that you don't think 

that this problem has been solved in subsequent meetings post9/11 with the FBI.

MS. RYAN: Shortly after September 11th, my senior staff and 

I met with the senior staff and the DCI, Mr. Tenet, and at that 

meeting we were told that the CIA had passed information on two 

of the terrorists to the FBI in January of 2000.

MR. ROEMER: Ms. Ryan, is this the meeting with George 

Tenet, Cofer Black, George Lannon, Ken Duncan, Wayne Griffith and 

others?

MS. RYAN: Yes, sir.
43

MR. ROEMER: Okay. Thank you.

MS. RYAN: It was at that meeting that we learned that there 

was information in the hands of parts of our government on two of 

the terrorists that was never given to the Bureau of Consular 

Affairs, never given to INR, to the Bureau of Intelligence and 

Research, for inclusion into TIPOFF. So, yes, I was outraged. I 

was furious. I'm still angry about it.

MR. ROEMER: And do you think that this fury and this 

outrage that you express now -- are we going to feel the same way 

if something else happens, if this problem hasn't been solved. 

"After the meeting, however, Ryan said Consular Affairs got more 

information from the CIA but nothing more from the FBI." That's 

your interview.

MS. RYAN: We got --

MR. ROEMER: This is post-9/11.

MS. RYAN: We got tremendous increase in information from 

the CIA. The remedy that we sought to get the information from 

the FBI was from the Congress. And included in the PATRIOT Act 

was the requirement that the FBI give us all of their NCIC-3 

information. So we got an additional eight million records of 

criminal aliens, terrorists, that the FBI had that they had 

refused to give us without the legislation because we were not a 

law enforcement agency.

MR. ROEMER: So finally, Ms. Ryan, how would you categorize 

the pre-9/11 relationship and exchange of information that you 

had with the FBI?

MS. RYAN: It was not sufficient.

MR. ROEMER: Enough to make you furious and outraged after 

9/11?

MS. RYAN: Yes, sir.

MR. ROEMER: And how would you categorize the communication 

that you had with the CIA pre-9/11? 

MS. RYAN: I was --

MR. ROEMER: Outrage? Fury?
44

MS. RYAN: I said at one of the hearings in 2001 that I 

thought 9/11 was the result of either a colossal intelligence 

failure or failure to share information. I think now that it was 

both.

MR. ROEMER: So we don't have a stovepipe problem here, we 

have a steel wall problem here prior to 9/11?

MS. RYAN: We certainly had problems getting information 

that we thought we had, that we believed we had, that we needed 

to protect the country. Now, there were 17 others that didn't 

come to anybody's attention, but two were known about and those 

two we also should have known about.

MR. ROEMER: Finally, so my colleagues can ask some 

questions, you're also quoted in one of your interviews as 

saying, quote, you "have no recollection of having learned about 

Tenet's" -- that's the director of the CIA -- "declaration of war 

in al Qaeda in 1998."

MS. RYAN: No, that's not correct. I knew --

MR. ROEMER: It's not right.

MS. RYAN: -- about the war on al Qaeda. Our embassies were 

blown up in 1998. I lost colleagues and friends in Nairobi.

MR. ROEMER: That wasn't my question. My question was not 

the war on al Qaeda, it was the director of the CIA's declaration 

of war on al Qaeda. Were you aware of his memo that was 

circulated at the CIA on the war, or did you learn of that --

MS. RYAN: It was in the --

MR. ROEMER: -- through the newspapers and through the --

MS. RYAN: It was in the media that he had declared war on 

al Qaeda.

MR. ROEMER: So you read about the declaration in the media, 

not through something that was circulated directly from Langley 

or from a government document?

MS. RYAN: Not that I remember. Internally government, no. 

Not that I remember.

MR. ROEMER: Thank you again, Ms. Ryan.
45

MS. RYAN: Thank you, sir.

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Fielding.

MR. FRED F. FIELDING: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to ask both of you some questions about the 

student tracking before we get off the subject. But following up 

on what Commissioner Roemer asked you, Ambassador Ryan, 

historically, probably from the first days of our republic, the 

visa process has been part of the Department of State and it's 

had a long history. And you've had a great deal of experience 

about it. You know, one of the things that we're chartered to do 

is try to figure out not only what mistakes were made but how to 

correct the mistakes of the past. Let me ask you what seems like 

a pretty basic question. Should the visa processing still remain 

in the Department of State?

MS. RYAN: Yes, sir. I think so. I'm very biased about the 

offices in the State Department. I think that the people who 

work in the State Department are the finest public servants in 

the U.S. government today, and so I don't think that moving visas 

to another agency is the answer. I think strengthening the 

information and the intelligence that visa officers have, giving 

them more tools, giving them more staff, more money, those are 

all requirements. But I would hate to see, you know, moving 

people around just to do something, to make the American people 

think that they're safer. I don't believe that they would be any 

safer by moving it to another agency.

MR. FIELDING: Of course, I'm not questioning the 

individuals themselves at this juncture. I'm just questioning 

the functionality of this and the duplicative nature of some of 

the problems that we run into all the time. And so if -- it's 

not to move it away from State and it's not to move it away from 

certain people that are doing it. What I was really asking is, 

is it better served and better integrated into our system by 

moving it elsewhere?

MS. RYAN: I don't think so, sir, no. 

MR. FIELDING: Thank you. Let me go to my original quick 

line of questioning on student tracking. Ms. Meissner, you 

testified that, even if the student tracking system had been in 

place pre-9/11, I understand your testimony is that it's very 

unlikely that there would be any arrest or that anybody would 
46

have picked up someone who had overstayed or had not even 

attended classes because there is a shortage of staff. Am I 

correct in understanding?

MS. MEISSNER: That's correct.

MR. FIELDING: If there are not enough agents available, 

would you have any suggestions to provide to us as to how we 

could involve the education community into assisting the 

government in this regard, either by carrot or stick, by sanction 

if they don't or by incentive to do so? Anything in that regard?

MS. MEISSNER: I think that the education community since 

September 11th does understand that it's an integral part of this 

element of immigration control. The problem with people who fall 

out of status or don't show up for classes, I think, is one where 

you have to essentially do triage in terms of -- or think of it 

that way in terms of your actual ability to arrest those people. 

My own sense is that, if we had a better idea of who, not by 

names, but of a profile of the types of individuals among the 

foreign student population that might be of highest concern for 

national security purposes that you could start there. 

MR. FIELDING: If I may interrupt you for a moment, I mean, 

triage presumes that you can't do everything at once so therefore 

-- but, of course, we're letting these people in so we control 

the numbers of this. But I guess what I'm really looking at is 

you don't need a profile if somebody doesn't show up for class.

MS. MEISSNER: But, let's say, you have about 500,000 

foreign students. So class starts presumably some time during 

the first two weeks in September. Even if you know how many 

people haven't turned up in those two weeks, even if it's one 

half of one percent, it's -- let me do the math -- it's thousands 

of people. So then the question is, even if you had many more 

thousands of investigators to check that out, where would you go 

first? That's what I mean by triage. 

You, it seems to me, have to do one of two things. You 

either have to have a very well developed random check kind of a 

program where whoever doesn't turn up for class, phalanxes of 

people go out and have the information in the data system of 

their addresses and find them. If they didn't turn up for class, 

their address in that data system may very well not be current. 

So right there, you have another set of things that have to 

happen.
47

Or you have a good idea of who the most likely problem 

students are. They're either people that are studying certain 

very sensitive subjects. They are people that are in trade 

schools rather than in graduate schools. They are people who 

come from a particular country or from a particular set of 

countries, are studying certain fields and, you know, have prior 

visa problems. Something that gives you, that narrows the field.

But I would have to tell you that I don't think that the 

thinking has advanced any further than that on how you would do 

this even, as I say, if you did have the thousands of 

investigators because you've got to get to the point where you 

have some sense of what the threat is. That kind of 

communication and that kind of analysis has not taken place in 

the past and my understanding is that it's not taking place 

today.

MR. FIELDING: Not to beat this into the ground but what 

role does the university play? What role does the school play? 

There's a lot of fraud out there and we know it.

MS. MEISSNER: I am assuming that the university is doing 

its job of reporting the data because the only way that you know 

who didn't turn up for class is that the university told you who 

didn't turn up for class through the data system. Now, you know, 

the suggestion -- the implication of your question is that you 

also have to have an ongoing monitoring effort of the 

universities because they are not a one-size-fits-all. Most of 

them are very conscientious, some of them are not and that 

monitoring will have be a parallel effort.

MR. FIELDING: That's for sure. That's something we will 

have to address. 

Ambassador Ryan, on the same subject, in your interview, you 

were aware of this issue and discussed this issue with our staff 

but you also noted that there had been a lot of opposition from 

the education community to the imposition of this tracking system 

in years past. Is that correct?

MS. RYAN: Yes, sir. That was pre-9/11 of course.

MR. FIELDING: I understand that. But could you give us 

some idea of that history, please?

MS. RYAN: Well, as I remember it, when we were talking, we 

at the INS, about how to set up what is now called SEVIS, the 
48

student tracking system, the universities were -- at least the 

universities that made their opinions or positions known -- were 

very opposed to it. They were concerned about issues of academic 

freedom. They were concerned about the fact that they would be 

reporting on students to the government. They were also 

concerned about the fact that there would be a fee involved that 

the student would have to pay and that we were expecting the 

universities to collect that fee and they didn't want to do that. 

Those were what I remember. But again, this was before September 

11th. 

MR. FIELDING: Is that problem solved now? Either of you, 

I'd be curious for your answers.

MS. RYAN: I mean, there may still be philosophical 

objections but it's -- you know, the door is closed.

MR. FIELDING: It's no longer as influential?

MS. RYAN: It's no longer for debate.

MS. MEISSNER: I think one thing that might help you in 

understanding this is that this -- because I would agree with 

Ambassador Ryan's characterization of the debate that was taking 

place during that time. There was a debate not only of concerns 

expressed by the schools. There was a strong feeling among some 

in the Congress that was similar and there was a lot of 

conversation that took place between the government agencies and 

members of committees and others about how intrusive a system 

like this would be and whether it was appropriate. 

One of the things that happened with this particular issue 

is that it was put into the legislation in 1996 at the last 

moment in quite a closed setting and there had been no hearings. 

There had been no public debate so that it was the kind of a 

situation where once the legislation passed, you had the debate 

that typically happens before legislation passes when some of 

these things start to get sorted out and that was the environment 

that we were working in. 

MR. FIELDING: Okay, thank you. Thank you both. Thank you, 

Mr. Chairman.

MR. KEAN: Thank you. I have one question. We saw in the 

staff statement -- I actually saw it in the video of something 

called The Red Book -- and the language sounded very much like 

something we would want to do today. I mean, people were being 
49

alerted very strongly to the threat of terrorism in this country 

and people were being told, "Watch out for these people." What 

happened to the Red Book and did anybody ever consider bringing 

it back?

MS. MEISSNER: I didn't see the video and I don't -- it 

doesn't ring a bell.

MS. RYAN: I was here for the video. I had not heard of the 

Red Book before today. The Office of Fraud Prevention programs 

within the Bureau of Consular Affairs tried to do something 

similar in terms of training, showing officers examples of 

fraudulent passports or fraudulent visas or fraudulent stamps in 

passports, in foreign passports. One of the reasons why we 

developed the database of lost and stolen passports that we did 

develop, but I had not heard of the Red Book and I think it would 

be a very good idea to have something like that where people are 

trained to identify all the kinds of passports, stamps, visas 

that might exist and that might be fraudulently used.

MR. KEAN: Thank you. 

Commissioner Lehman?

MR. LEHMAN: Yes. There are two huge loopholes in 

enforcement that I'd like to get both of your views on. One of 

them has been temporarily suspended, the other is politically 

correct even to mention. Transit Without Visa is one that has 

been temporarily suspended, in both of these loopholes we know 

that terrorists have used them and we must assume they'll 

continue to use them in the future if they remain. 

Transit Without Visa is -- seems to be based on the fact 

that the airlines say, well we don't have any secure transit 

lounges and so therefore we need this system which is a form of 

additional revenue for them. Your former employees in INS say 

that they have been trying for 10 years to get this stopped but 

they've been blocked by airline lobbyists at every turn. In fact 

it was only suspended last August, nearly two years after the 

fact. 

The other huge loophole is the sanctuary system. Deep 

cynicism has been expressed to us by immigration enforcement 

officers about the fact that New York City, L.A. and a number of 

other cities in -- Florida as an example, prohibit their 

enforcement officials from cooperating with Immigration. So much 

so that while the Commission was at Kennedy, a group of illegals 
50

managed to get past Immigration and Customs and were waiting in 

the terminal quite visibly, but the INS or the security people 

said they can't, they're not allowed to go past the Customs Hall 

and the Port Authority Police are not allowed to enforce federal 

laws on immigration.

One would seem that both of these sort of cry out for a 

little bit of attention. Did either of you cry out against 

either of these huge loopholes that terrorists were using?

MS. MEISSNER: Well, let me begin with the Transit Without 

Visa. I think the Transit Without Visa, the way that you 

characterize that is -- I couldn't disagree with that. It is 

now, you know, as you say suspended, I don't know whether it 

should stay suspended or what. Obviously the way that it is a 

loophole needs to be addressed and I don't know whether the best 

way to do that is by maintaining this suspension of the Transit 

Without Visa or combining that and/or with a much more careful 

look as airports are being redesigned to be sure that, indeed 

there are secure lounges. Which ever way it's done, you know, we 

want to be certain, you know, that this is not -- this doesn't 

become a loophole again in the future as attention, you know, 

wanes.

And that is part of, you know, what I refer to as this 

pendulum problem that we have. We have a very difficult time 

just maintaining a steady course on these issues. So that would 

be one where it would be very important to maintain a steady 

course which is close the loophole whichever way is the 

appropriate way to do it.

Now, on state and local law enforcement, state and local law 

enforcement and its cooperation with federal law enforcement is a 

long standing issue in immigration and, you know, in other fields 

of law enforcement as well. But there is a real line between 

federal authority and federal expertise and responsibility to 

enforce the immigration law, and the responsibilities of state 

and local law enforcement. Now, you can resolve and work with 

that by good liaison and good cooperation, but that doesn't 

always exist. 

So I think, you know, as far as I'm concerned the answer 

here is that the federal government has to take the lead in being 

absolutely certain that the working relationships are such that 

state and local law enforcement understands what's taking place, 

but the airport authorities according to the kind of a, you know, 

scenario that you're describing are also involved because people 
51

like that shouldn't be able to leave the customs area so that it 

even becomes a problem for state and local law enforcement. That 

just sounds to me like a kind of a breakdown that can be solved 

administratively that does not -- I'm not sure that it requires -

-

MR. LEHMAN: It's a little hard because the cities that I'm 

talking about actually have written laws against cooperation.

MS. MEISSNER: And those originated -- I mean some of those 

have been around for a very long time. It traditionally -- it 

has not been state and local responsibility, this is federal 

responsibility and it should be done properly by the federal 

government.

MR. LEHMAN: How about treason? They shouldn't enforce 

treason either or selectively choose the ones they feel like 

enforcing? Is that the rule of law?

MS. MEISSNER: Well, but -- no, state and local governments 

don't have the responsibility to enforce immigration law. 

Federal government should do it.

MR. LEHMAN: I mean, that is the most preposterous 

statement I think I've heard all morning.

MS. MEISSNER: Well then, maybe I'm not understanding --

MR. LEHMAN: That local police don't have to enforce 

federal laws, and indeed it's quite all right to have them 

prohibited from enforcing federal laws?

MS. MEISSNER: I'm not sure that they've passed -- my 

understanding is that what they have said is that they will not -

- they will not enforce immigration law and they will not work 

with federal authorities to do so. I mean, is it your 

information that that continues to be the case, post September 

11th?

MR. LEHMAN: Absolutely. It was just reaffirmed in New 

York about three months ago. And nothing's been done by the 

federal government. I mean, they just say, oh well, okay.

MS. MEISSNER: Well --

MR. LEHMAN: I haven't seen any injunctions or court orders 

or cutting off of funds or whatever.
52

MS. MEISSNER: Well, what I can tell you is that we made a 

very aggressive effort during the time that I was at INS to make 

information available to state and local law enforcement so that 

they could determine whether they had somebody who was of 

interest to the federal government. We established a law -- what 

was called a law enforcement support center, which was an 

automated information resource so that -- 24/7 so that state and 

local law enforcement could get help from the federal government 

and information from the federal government. We felt that that 

was the proper way for the two sets of authorities to work 

together, and I think that -- I would still stand by that being a 

proper way and those relationships need to be --

MR. LEHMAN: Service rather than enforcement?

MS. MEISSNER: That's not a contradiction, that is 

communication and coordination and each law enforcement authority 

exercising its authorities in the way that it's been trained to 

do.

MR. LEHMAN: And Ambassador Ryan, did Consular ever get 

involved in these issues? 

MS. RYAN: Not in the sanctuary issue. Transit Without 

Visa, I would agree with Commissioner Meissner that it is -- it 

was a problem. I think that the suspension is a good idea, 

probably should be made permanent. Before September 11th, one of 

the reasons why it was one of the rules that allowed people to do 

this was because airlines, American Airlines profited from people 

coming to the United States to transit the United States to go 

somewhere else. And that was always the reason why we were told 

that, you know, it was something that was just going to have to 

continue. If one could be sure that the airports had secure 

transit lounges --

MR. LEHMAN: Like every other country in the world?

MS. RYAN: Like every other country in the world, or most 

other countries in the world, then I think you could have an 

effective Transit Without Visa program, but I don't think that 

all of our airports have such secure transit lounges, and so then 

it becomes a problem that people could come to the United States 

and get out of the transit lounge and just disappear into the 

country.
53

MR. LEHMAN: Thank you both for your honesty and frankness 

on those.

MS. RYAN: Thank you, sir.

MR. KEAN: Thank you, this has been a very, very useful 

discussion.

MR. KERREY: Mr. Chairman, I've got a couple of questions 

down here.

MR. KEAN: I'm sorry, I didn't know, Senator Kerrey.

MR. KERREY: Well, I just came on board, so. Well, John, I 

can tell you Doris Meissner and I got to know each other very 

well when I was representing the state of Nebraska and there were 

a lot of business interests that did not want to enforce the law 

when it came to people working in meat packing plants in the 

States. I know that she was constantly running against people 

who did in fact put pressure on her not to enforce the law, and 

I'm encouraged that there has been a lot of training going on 

with people trying to get them to understand that the law needs 

to be enforced.

One of the areas of great interest to me is, what I think in 

a remarkable democratic system such as the United States has, 

there is a weakness in transition, a transitional weakness. We 

saw it in 1993 and Ambassador Ryan, you span the full roughly 

nine year period when there were two transitions. In 1993, I 

remember it very well, it was Somalia where mission creep got us 

into a considerable amount of trouble in Mogadishu in October, 

and in my view there's a similar sort of weakness that could be 

at play here. 

And one of the questions I want to ask you begins with this. 

Look, this wasn't just terrorism, this is an Islamist form of 

terrorism. This is a religious based act against the United 

States of America. And you can't -- and part of the problem it 

seems to me is when we lump terrorism all together, it seems to 

me we miss a very important narrative, I think that -- and you 

could really see it after the World Trade Center I bombing. I 

mean there was a significant amount of disdain when Nosair tried 

to get the refund on the Ryder truck and there was a presumption 

these guys couldn't possibly be sufficiently sophisticated to 

carry out a really serious attack against the United States, and 

that was shattered on the 7th of August. And, Ambassador Ryan, I 

have great sympathy for your loss on that day of 1998. 
54

But talk to me. I mean, during that period of time, you've 

got World Trade Center I, not -- this is not Tamil Tigers, this 

is not nationalists who are trying to territory, this was 

basically the beginning of an Islamist attack on the United 

States. And then you've got Mir Kansi open fire at CIA 

headquarters within 30 days of that moment in 1993. And then 

you've got, the big one for me, you've got three of them actually 

in a row, '96,'98 and 2000. And I'd like to know, in both of 

your cases, did you have a sense of increased urgency coming from 

the top? Either from President Clinton, and Berger and your own 

bosses in Justice and in State? Or from President Bush, 

following the declaration that al Qaeda was responsible for the 

USS Cole on October of 2000?

Because unless there's action from the top which occur 

obviously after the 11th, nothing's going to happen. I mean just 

say what among the things that I've acquired thus far in a 

relatively short time of reading the documents, is a surprising 

sense of the sophistication of 19 men plus some others who did in 

fact observe and were able to get visas and passports to come to 

the United States and in spite of the published story to the 

contrary, as you heard staff say, they were fraudulently

manipulated. They came to the United States and as Secretary 

Lehman's pointing out, they broke the law. 

And then we'll hear later in the panel, the observed U.S. 

commercial aircraft and saw additional weaknesses and they 

exploited those weaknesses. So we'll hear this afternoon staff 

say to us that by the spring 2001 there was a high probability 

they were going to be successful. And the question I've got over 

and over here I hear from people asking, well how in the heck did 

that happen? How -- I mean how could they be so successful 

against the United States of America? How could they exploit all 

of these weaknesses? 

Every single point along the way we hear, didn't get enough 

money from the Congress, that was the problem, they didn't 

deliver the right intelligence, I didn't get this, I didn't get 

that, everybody's got, you know, a pretty good case of plausible 

deniability along the line. But did at any point in this point 

moment, take '93 as an example. You were there in 1993, did 

President Clinton say in 1993, after World Trade Center, either 

'93 or '95 after the trial of Ramzi Yousef had made it clear what 

was going on? 
55

Did at any point in that time did you hear from the 

President of the United States through the principal, your 

principal in this case being the secretary of State, that we've 

got to change the way we're doing it? That we're going after 

Islamist extremists, that's who we're going after, it's not 

terrorists, its Islamist extremists and we know where they come 

from?

MS. RYAN: There were a couple of presidential decision 

directives on terrorism, on sharing information, I don't remember 

specifically talk about Islamic terrorists. The intelligence 

that we had, despite World Trade Center I seem to be always 

directed overseas, at our interests over seas.

MR. KERREY: Mir Kansi was not directed overseas --

MS. RYAN: Mir Kansi, is that --

MR. KERREY: -- he was at CIA headquarters, for God's sake.

MS. RYAN: That's correct, that's a single individual.

MR. KERREY: And those 19 airmen at Khobar Towers certainly 

came from the United States of America. They weren't going after 

Saudi citizens in '92.

MS. RYAN: No, but the attacks were abroad, the attacks on 

our embassies were abroad, so Consular Affairs put out all kinds 

of worldwide cautions and public announcements and travel 

warnings to alert Americans to dangers that we saw abroad.

MR. KERREY: How about after the millennium? How about 

after the millennium, I mean, my God, we were afraid the country 

was going to come to an end on New Year's Eve, and we got lucky, 

again as we'll hear later on in our hearings, we got lucky in 

Seattle. I mean, after -- are you saying to me that generally 

speaking that there was no expression from the top either during 

President Clinton's or President Bush's administration, that an 

attack on the United States can occur and one of the points of 

weakness might be the way we're granting visas overseas?

MS. RYAN: Not that I remember, that we were looking 

internally. We were looking at people who might attack us abroad 

--

MR. KERREY: Why, why? Didn't it surprise you today, you 

must -- I mean, it's got to cause you great pain to look at these 
56

visas and passports, I mean, these documents that we put up 

earlier. I mean, doesn't it surprise you that neither President 

Clinton nor President Bush came and said that Islamist extremism 

is a serious threat and we've got to tighten up our consular 

offices or immigration policies in the United States?

MS. RYAN: But we had -- we required visas of Saudis, if 

that's the issue that you're talking about?

MR. KERREY: Oh no, I'm talking specifically the President 

of the United States saying not that terrorism or illegal or 

criminals are a problem, but that Islamist extremism is a 

problem. That that is a threat to the United States of America 

on our own soil?

MS. RYAN: Well, we knew that bin Laden is a threat to the 

United States of America and that he is an Islamic extremist, but 

I would ask you, sir, how would -- I mean, would you not issue to 

everyone who's a Muslim? Would you not issue visas? I mean, how 

would you get at this particular problem in terms of visas other 

than the way I described as we were trying to do?

MR. KERREY: Ambassador, with great respect, that's closing 

the Washington Monument solution, it's a straw man. No, I'm not 

proposing that we not grant visas to all Muslims, I'm merely 

suggesting that it seems to me, that in '93 and again in 2001 

that presidential directives shouldn't have said that terrorism 

is a priority, it should have said that Islamist terrorism is the 

top priority and in neither case does it seems to be that that 

happened.

I mean, in your own words you didn't hear it in '93, you 

didn't hear it in '96, did you hear it in '98? After -- I mean, 

after Dar es Salaam in Nairobi that was a very sophisticated 

military operation.

MS. RYAN: Well, we knew that the CIA director, the 

director of Central Intelligence declared war on al Qaeda and bin 

Laden in '98 as a result of the bombings of our embassies. But 

again we ask you, I mean, Islamic extremism, what would we -- how 

-- I mean, I don't understand how --

MR. KERREY: But we attacked al Qaeda's camps on the 20th 

of August, 1998, and normally in that kind of situation you 

expect a counter attack, you expect something to happen. And I'm 

just asking -- I'd ask either one of you, did after 20 August 

1998 you hear from the President that we're going to alter our 
57

directive and we've got to change the way we're doing business 

issuing visas to people that are suspected Islamic terrorists?

MS. RYAN: No.

MR. KERREY: Was there any change coming from the top, 

either in Immigration or in the Consular Office? Either from the 

secretary of State or from the attorney general?

MS. RYAN: Not that I remember.

MR. KERREY: And I -- first of all -- I lastly join 

everybody else in thanking you for coming. Mr. Chairman, that's 

the end of my questions, I appreciate very much, your coming.

MR. KEAN: Thank you, Senator.

Ambassador, I thank you very, very much for your testimony.

MS. RYAN: Thank you.

MR. KEAN: We now come to our second panel, which we have 

entitled "An Incident in Florida." We have a single witness, 

Jose Melendez-Perez. Mr Melendez-Perez is a 26-year honorable 

veteran of the United States Army and in his 12th year as an 

immigration inspector at Orlando International Airport. Formally 

an employee of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, he is 

now employed by the Department of Homeland Security's Bureau of 

Customs and Border Protection. Would you rise, sir, to take the 

oath?

(Witness sworn.)

Thank you very much, sir. Mr. Melendez-Perez?

MR. JOSE MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Good morning, Mr. Chairman Kean, 

Vice Chairman Hamilton, members of the Commission, thanks for 

letting me speak to you today. Before I begin to relay this 

story of encountering. I had on August 4, 2001 would a Saudi male 

there are two things you should know. Number one, on this day I 

was just doing my job. I'm honored and proud that the work I did 

apparently did help stop a potential hijacker in September 11 

tragedy and I'm honored to be here today.

Two, when I conducted the secondary inspection of the 

subject, I was going on my experience and training in interview 

techniques that I learned primarily in the military, immigration 
58

law and fraud learning in the Immigration and Naturalization 

Service and my years of experience at Orlando International 

Airport of serving and working with Saudi nationals, many of whom 

come with their families through Orlando International on their 

way to Disneyworld. 

On August 4, 2001 I was assigned as a secondary inspection 

officer at the Orlando International Airport. My supervisor at 

the inspection between primary and secondary inspections and on 

this day I was assigned to secondary inspection. At approximately 

17:35 hours I was assigned the case of a Saudi national who had 

arrived on Virgin Atlantic flight 15 from London Gatwick Airport. 

As Saudis coming through Orlando to travel to Disneyworld are 

common, I have plenty of line experience with Saudis.

In this particular case the subject was referred to 

secondary inspection because the primary inspector could not 

communicate with him and his arrival/departure form I-94 and 

custom declaration form C6059-B were not properly completed. I 

first queried the subject's name, date of birth and passport 

number through the computer system with negative results. 

Subject documents appeared to be genuine. A search of the 

subject and his personal belongings were also negative. 

Subject was in IDENT and photographed. In addition a 

complete set of fingerprints was taken on form FD-249. Through 

my INS training and military experience my first impression of 

the subject was that he was a young male, well groomed with short 

hair, thin mustache, black long sleeved shirt, black trousers and 

black shoes. He was about 5'6" and in impeccable shape with 

large shoulders and thin waist, he had a military appearance. 

Upon establishing eye contact he exhibited body language 

that appeared arrogant. In fact, when I first called his name in 

secondary room and matched his name with papers, he had a 

disturbing look. I had the impression of the subject that he had 

knowledge of interview techniques and had military training. 

Upon my initial review of the subject paperwork and documents, I 

noticed that he did not have a return airline ticket or hotel 

reservation. Upon learning that the subject did not speak 

English, at least that is what he want us to believe, I contacted 

an Arabic interpreter from the Department of Justice interpreter 

list.

My first question to the subject through the interpreter, 

why he was not in possession of a return airline ticket, the 

subject became visibly upset and in an arrogant and threatening 
59

manner, which include pointing his finger at my face, stated that 

he did not know where he was going when he departed the United 

States. What first came to mind at this point was the subject 

was a hit man. A hit man doesn't know where he's going because 

if he's caught, that way he doesn't have anything or any 

information to bargain with. My wife said that I was watching 

too much movies -- (laughter).

Subject then continued stating that a friend of his was to 

arrive in United States at a later date and that his friend knew

where he was going. He also stated that his friend will make all 

the arrangements for subject departure. I asked him if he knew 

where his friend was to arrive in the United States and he 

respond that his friend was to arrive in three or four days. I 

asked him the purpose of his trip was and how long he want to 

stay. He responded that he will be vacation and traveling 

through the United States for six days. 

At this point I realized his story did not seem plausible. 

Why would he be vacationing for only six days and he spend half 

of his time waiting for his friend? It became apparent that the 

subject was being less than truthful concerning his true 

intention. At this time I ask him again where he was going to 

stay? He say a hotel. I then told him that without knowledge of 

the English language or a hotel reservation he would have 

difficulty getting around Orlando. He answered that there was 

someone waiting for him upstairs. 

When asked the person's name he changed story and said no 

one was meeting him. He said he was to call someone's home, that 

he would contact someone locally to pick him up. I then asked 

the subject for the person's phone number and name and he refused 

to provide, stating that it was none of my business. He stated 

that it was a personal matter and he did not see any reason for 

me to contact that person. The subject was very hostile 

throughout the entire interview that took approximately one and 

half hours. 

Subject was in possession of $2,800. U.S. dollars and no 

credit card. This amount did not appear sufficient for a six day 

vacation plus a hotel room and a return ticket since one way to 

Dubai where he originated from would cost approximately $2,200. 

When confronted with these facts he responded that his friend was 

going to bring him some money. I then asked why he will bring 

you some money. He reply, " Because he's my friend." I then ask 

how long do you plan to stay or how long do you know this person. 
60

He answer, "Not too long." I don't have any friends who would 

buy a plane ticket for me, I know that fact.

And then I say to myself I would try to place him under oath 

and explain the consequence of giving a false statement and see 

how he respond. He agreed to answer under oath. However, when I 

ask the first question, he say, "I won't answer." The Arabic 

interpreter stated to me something to the effect that something 

is not right. At this point I gave my supervisor a synopsis of 

the case and explained my suspicions that the individual was 

malafide i.e. that his true intent in coming to the United States 

was not clear and he appeared to be very evasive. 

After presenting the case to my supervisor, he felt that 

assistant airport director should be contacted for further 

instructions. Normally second line supervisor such as AAPD are 

not contacted in such matters but because of the fact that we 

have provided no specific ground for removal, higher up 

confirmation was needed. My supervisor then proceeded to call 

the AAPD at home to explain the case and get concurrence for 

removal. After my supervisor presented the fact to the AAPD, he 

then asked to speak directly with me. 

The AAPD asked me numerous questions concerning the case. I 

explained that apart from not having a return ticket and possibly 

not having sufficient funds, the subject appeared to be malafide. 

I further explained to the AAPD that when the subject looked at 

me I felt bone chilling cold effect -- the bottom line, he gave 

me the chills. You would have to be present to understand what 

I'm trying to explain. The AAPD then asked if I had tried to 

place him under oath. I replied that I had tried to place the 

subject under oath, but the subject refused to answer my 

questions. 

The AAPD then stated that under section 235(1)(a)(5) of the 

Immigration Nationality Act, an applicant could be required to 

state under oath any information sought by the immigration 

officer regarding the purposes and intention of the applicant in 

seeking admission to the United States. The AAPD further stated 

that he was convinced from what I have stated and my belief about 

the subject, that the individual was malafide and should be 

allowed to withdraw his application or be set up for expedited 

removal.

I then proceeded to advise the subject that he did not 

appear to be admissible to the United States. He was offered the 

opportunity to voluntarily withdraw his application for 
61

admission. However, at this time he became very upset and stated 

that he wasn't about to pay for a return ticket. I stated to 

him, "No problem. We will place you in a detention facility 

overnight and tomorrow we will make the necessary arrangement to 

get you a plane ticket so you come back where you came from." 

The interpreter stated to him the fact that we were planning to 

place him in a detention facility and then he agreed to withdraw 

and sign his I-275.

Along with another immigration inspector, I escorted the 

subject to his departure gate for his removal. Before boarding 

the aircraft, the subject turned to the other inspector and 

myself and said in English something to the effect, "I'll be 

back." On August 4, 2001, the subject departed via Virgin 

Atlantic flight 16 to London with connection flight to Dubai. 

On September 11th, 2001, while attending a meeting with the 

warden at the Central Florida Processing Center (Department of 

Corrections) concerning the use of their firing range, a 

correction officer came in and advised the warden of the incident 

that just occurred in New York City. As I watched the 

television, I could not help but think of the two cases I 

processed and others concerning Saudi nationals. I immediately 

contacted Orlando Airport. I do not remember which officer I 

spoke with but I asked them to look up the cases and contact the 

FBI agent assigned to the airport. To the best of my knowledge, 

the immigration officers made copies of the August 2001 incident 

and provided the paperwork to the FBI. The FBI have never 

interviewed me. I do not recall ever speaking with Gitmo 

officials, INS headquarters contacted me twice. 

I have no other contact with intelligence or law enforcement 

officials outside of legacy INS. The only government contact I 

have had about this incident came from the September 11th 

Commission this past fall when the border team investigating the 

incident.

MR. KEAN: Thank you very much, sir. 

Commissioner Ben-Veniste.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Thank you for your testimony, Officer 

Melendez. Let me ask whether it is correct that at no point 

during the summer of 2001 did you receive any notification that 

there was a higher danger or threat level of potential terrorists 

coming into the United States.
62

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Which timeframe, sir?

MR. BEN-VENISTE: In the summer of '01 at the same time as 

this incident.

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Not that I recall, sir.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: And in looking back at this matter, had 

you received any information as to whether this individual, Mr. 

Kahtani, had actually been interviewed in connection with his 

visa application to obtain a visa to visit the United States?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: That is negative, sir. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: And that is the case that our staff has 

found no indication that Mr. Kahtani was physically interviewed 

by a consular officer. Let me ask you this, as of August '01, 

when this incident occurred, among the INS inspectors in Orlando, 

was there a recognition, sir, that greater deference would be 

given to a Saudi national than, say, a Mexican or a Jamaican?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Could you rephrase the question?

MR. BEN-VENISTE: That you would be more permissive in 

admitting a Saudi rather than individuals from certain other 

nations?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Well, since I came in the service in 

1992, the consents of the Saudi people was they have to be 

treated with more tact for their nation. You know what I mean. 

That's something that is not inviting. However, any time that a 

new person come on board, basically, that feeling is communicated 

by the more experienced inspectors.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: That if you hassled a Saudi citizen or 

that you took more time up to the point even of permitting entry 

but you gave them more attention that you might catch some kind 

of negative criticism?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: That is correct. Normally, as a matter 

of fact, the day that I was working on this particular incident, 

one of my co-workers stated to me, "You're going to get into 

trouble because you're trying to refuse a Saudi." My answer was, 

"You know, I have to do my job and I cannot use nationality as a 

guidance how to do or conduct my interview or take care of my 

business."
63

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Officer Melendez, let's review the factors 

that you considered on that day with respect to Mr. Kahtani. He 

was a young man of 26 years of age traveling alone whereas the 

vast majority of Saudi visitors to this country who depart at 

Orlando are in family groups.

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: That's correct.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Mr. Kahtani appeared unable to speak or 

understand the English language.

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Correct.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Mr. Kahtani was travelling on a one-way 

ticket and had no good explanation about where he was going once 

he was to depart from the United States.

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: That is correct.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: His physical appearance was that of an 

individual who was very fit and perhaps had military training.

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: That is correct.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: His attitude was strikingly unusual. He 

was arrogant and combative from the start, fixing you with a 

piercing glare and became even more confrontational as the 

interview process proceeded. 

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: That is correct, sir.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: And despite his lack of facility in the 

English language, he had no hotel reservation and gave 

contradictory answers as to who was supposed to have assisted him 

either immediately or within three days of his arrival. 

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: That is correct, sir.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: And, seven, he had insufficient funds to 

spend six days as a tourist in the United States and then to 

purchase a return ticket to Dubai.

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: That is correct.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: And when you asked for reasonable 

information about the identity of the individual who would be 

meeting him or assisting him or the person he would contact back 
64

at home who would arrange for information to be provided about 

the friend who was going to lend him money, he refused to answer.

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: That is correct, sir. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Your interpreter confirmed that there was 

something seriously suspicious about this man.

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: That is affirmative.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: And Mr. Kahtani refused to answer 

questions once you administered an oath.

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: That's correct.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: And on the basis of all these factors, you 

concluded that Kahtani might well be a hit man here in the United 

States to do harm.

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: That is correct.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: And yet, despite all of these factors, 

because you were dealing with a Saudi national, you were not 

certain by any means that your superiors would agree with your 

determination to deny entry.

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: That is correct.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: What was the perception at that time at 

the INS among your colleagues as to whether the supervisors or 

the higher-ups would back up a line officer such as yourself 

under such circumstances?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Well, I think that the difference on 

the supervisor decision to continue on to get higher approval, it 

was based on credibility. I mean, once you establish credibility 

with your subordinates and your superiors and they know when you 

claim something is not right, it's because you really indeed have 

the facts. You know, that's the reason that I think I did make a 

difference and he went along to contact somebody else, high 

echelon supervisor. And sometimes I feel that if the outcome 

could have been the same if somebody else was making the phone 

call. I wish inspector was the one who was doing the secondary 

inspection. That's not taking anything less from my co-workers, 

but would they have pursued the phone call taking in 

consideration that he was a Saudi national.
65

MR. BEN-VENISTE: So the presumption was against the line 

officer, the secondary officer determination that an individual 

of Saudi nationality ought to be refused entry. You had to make 

you case, the burden was on you.

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: That is correct. That is correct.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Now, as we now know, with the benefit of 

investigations subsequent to 9/11, Mohamed Atta, perhaps the 

ringleader of all the terrorists here in the 9/11 plot, was at 

Orlando International Airport on August 4, 2001, the very day 

that Mohamed Kahtani claimed at least in part of his interview 

with you that someone was upstairs to meet him. And we know that 

Mohamed Atta made a telephone call from that location to a 

telephone number associated with the 9/11 plot. On the basis of 

that information, as well as significant additional information 

which we are now not at liberty to discuss in public session, it 

is extremely possible and perhaps probable that Mohamed al 

Kahtani was to be the 20th hijacker.

Based on that premise, and taking into account that the only 

plane commandeered by four hijackers, rather than five, crashed 

before reaching its target, it is entirely plausible to suggest 

that your actions in doing your job efficiently and competently 

may well have contributed to saving the Capitol or the White 

House, and all the people who were in those buildings, those 

monuments to our democracy, from being included in the 

catastrophe of 9/11, and for that we all owe you a debt of thanks 

and gratitude.

(Applause.)

Let me ask you a couple of questions. We are running a bit 

late. With respect to your recommendations that you would make, 

with respect to perhaps training or otherwise empowering 

individuals now in the Department of Homeland Security, where you 

are an officer, what would you recommend that the higher ups here 

from the people on the line every day doing their job?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: I would like to emphasize in training, 

training is extremely important. I don't know what kind of 

training -- interview techniques are there conducted -- are 

conducted at the academy at the present time because it's under a 

new program, but I think that the interview techniques not only 

should address why the person is coming to the United States but 

also should include consequence, and going to another line of 
66

questioning, that when you feel that something is wrong, you can 

go that direction.

I strongly feel that time should not be a factor. You know, 

you've got to take as long as you need to, to complete your job. 

Knowledge is wonderful. We have greater knowledge since 2001, 

however, the human factor has got to be there. The human factor 

has got to be there. The questions have to be asked, the body 

language has to be checked, because by conducting a good 

interview there's a lot you can determine. That sixth sense must 

come to play to make the right decision.

About the round trip tickets, I think that that is something 

that some other countries will not take, i.e. United Kingdom. If 

you go to the United Kingdom without a return ticket, they will 

turn you right around. You won't get in the country. It's only 

one piece of paper, that you are inadmissible. 

Support the supervisor's decision without fear that they are 

going to get in trouble. I mean, we will make some wrong 

decisions. I mean, that's human nature. But they have to 

understand -- everybody in the chain of command has to understand 

that we have to do what we have to do. And you're better off to 

make a wrong decision and send somebody home that didn't have no 

reasons by going home than to admit somebody because we will be 

afraid of the letters and the congressional letters or letters 

from somebody and hamper the inspector and supervisors from 

making the right decision in some locations.

The US-VISIT, we think that is a great program; however, we 

have concerns about the departure portion of it. I mean, being 

(manned just by a machine) how can we determine that this person 

went home. I think that it would be a great tool. We've been 

talking about it for years but by just having that system not 

manned by human beings that we can confirm, I don't think that 

that is the right way to do it. My example for that is that when 

we decline or refuse somebody, we escort the person to the 

aircraft. We sit in the jet-way until that plane push back to 

ensure that the person go home. So we should use the same 

principle when we use in the departure portion of the US-VISIT 

program. I mean, that is my personal opinion. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Now, you are with Customs, the last line 

of formal interception of individuals coming into this country. 

Would you have a recommendation with respect to consular officers 

who are interviewing or who perhaps should be interviewing visa 

applicants in terms of training for and providing techniques for 
67

interviews in order to make determinations on the other end of 

the journey, on the start end of the journey, rather than on the 

very last point at which an individual could be refused entry?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: My recommendation on that regard would 

be that we should receive the same type of training for our 

interviewing techniques and we should know what the consular is 

asking this person abroad so we can continue perhaps in a 

different line of questions to ensure that this person has 

obtained a visa through the proper -- say legally, all right, 

because sometimes we have people that go to the embassy, get 

their visa, and then we have determined through the line of 

question that the visa was obtained through fraud, that the guy 

didn't have what was required in order to obtain that visa. And 

then it would be our job to turn those people back. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: And finally, let me ask you, Officer 

Melendez, about the documentation for one of the hijackers who 

did successfully enter and reenter the United States, Mohamed 

Atta. Our staff has shown you the documents relating to Mr. 

Atta's entry into the United States and had asked for your view 

in hindsight, but trying to put yourself in the present moment 

looking at an individual who presented himself with the documents 

that Mr. Atta presented when he entered the United States in 

2001. And what did you conclude?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Well, based on the guidance from the 

law, the person coming in to be a student, he must be in 

possession of a M-1 or F-1 visa. When he presented himself to 

the primary inspector without the proper documents, that was 

grounds to be recommended refusal. I would have recommended 

refusal to my supervisor. He was not in possession of the right 

visa. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Can you explain that?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Well, the person is coming to the 

United States as a student, must carry an I-20, take it to the 

embassy and get the proper visa. If the person, for example, 

comes to the United States as a prospective student, he will come 

with a B-1 or V-2, B-1 which will be a business, or V-2 will be a 

visitor for pleasure, find a school of his choice, and if he's 

accepted, he will submit a change of his status. When the person 

is in the United States, if the status is approved, the change of 

status is approved, he won't need the visa. He'll only need the 

form the action form that he sent for the service center, and he 

will go ahead and continue his studies.
68

However, once the person departs the United States, if he's 

coming back to resume his studies, he must have the proper visa, 

which means that he must take the I-20 from the particular 

school, go to the embassy and obtain the proper visa. If the 

person fails to do that, then he is not in possession of the 

right visa, so he could be denied entry to the United States.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: So in summary, is it your view that 

because he presented himself with an inappropriate visa, that he 

somehow talked his way into the United States, despite the fact 

that his papers were not in order?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: It is possible. That's my perception 

because he didn't have the document.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: And if Mr. Atta on the spot had said, 

well, never mind about that, let me just come in as a tourist, 

what would have happened with respect to that?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: He presented himself as a student. He 

must have proof that he was a student. He cannot change the 

reason that he's come into the United States after he makes the 

initial presentation to the primary inspector.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Was there any other characteristic about 

Mr. Atta such as his age that would have influenced you?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Well, his age and traveling by himself. 

Normally a person traveling by himself coming to this country 

normally is coming on business. Most of the time persons coming 

by themselves -- I can say a good percentage of the time they 

came with their families when they came to vacation. Remember 

that normally in my case, Orlando International, normally all 

those people are coming to go to the attractions, so that 

automatically would raise a flag if a person has come by himself 

with a V-2 as a visitor. Unless the family is already here, 

because that happened sometimes. A family came a few days prior 

and the person is going to meet his family. But a male traveling 

by himself, no, sir.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Mr. Chairman, I don't have any further 

questions, only because of the time, and I know we have much to 

do, but again, I want to thank Mr. Melendez from all of us and 

for a grateful nation for an individual using his common sense 

and his skills, doing his job in a way that makes us all proud.
69

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Roemer.

MR. ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to join in the salutes and the accolades to you on a 

job well done and a job that's extremely difficult to do on a 

daily and hourly and minute-by-minute basis, especially the good 

detective work in that sense and the common sense that you used 

prior to 9/11. Let me ask you a couple of questions about this 

case in particular, just to try and get a better sense for what 

you were feeling in your heart and your gut. You said that you 

recommended this case and you say in your testimony from Mr. 

Bosch, who was a supervisor to you --

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: That's correct.

MR. ROEMER: And you presented the case to Mr. Bosch and you 

took the suspect into another room, even though his documents 

were clean. What were the top two reasons? What was it that 

really bothered you about this guy? His documents were clean, 

there's no really obvious compelling reason why you might pick 

him out. You've just said to our commissioner that there might 

have even been some pressure on some of the inspectors to not be 

as tough on Saudis. What was it in particular, two things that 

you could, you know, recommend to other people in your job?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Well, number one was the person's 

behavior, okay, the demeanor, the way he was addressing, 

arrogant. Number two, that he was impeccably dressed with a 

military appearance, by spending 26 and a half years in the 

military, wearing short haircut and well, well trimmed moustache 

normally is done in the military. And then the real, real truth 

about the whole issue was that was a gut feeling that something 

wasn't right. The more questions that I asked, the less 

plausible answers that I get -- i.e., you know, why he was going 

to spend three or four days waiting for somebody when he was 

going to be traveling through the United States for six days. I 

mean, that doesn't make any sense, you know. And then every time 

that he come up with one answer, he'd go to another and he'd 

contradict himself, you know, and so evasive. So he rang all the 

whistles, you know, that something wasn't right.

MR. ROEMER: So in order to then take this to the higher 

level and get Mr. Bosch to recommend to Mr. Hernandez, his 

supervisor, who's at home and has the day off and maybe is in 

bed, you then say, I feel strongly enough about this particular 

case. This guy's impeccably dressed. I have a gut sense about 
70

him. Something's not right. I have no facts to base this on but 

something really bothers me about this person. How often is it 

that Mr. Bosch might have said to you in this kind of case, let's 

not get Mr. Hernandez out of bed on his day off. We don't have 

this factually based. This is just your gut sense. As good a 

person as you are, maybe you have the right sense on this one, 

I'm not going to buck this one up. Does that happen very often?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: No, sir. No, sir.

MR. ROEMER: Once you decide that this is even a case not 

based on fact, you can get this bucked up from Mr. Bosch to Mr. 

Hernandez?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Yes, sir. I feel strongly that that's 

the case. I have this in previous incidents, in a few occasions 

when I have similar -- or some kind of same problem and they are 

backing me up and we have been right.

MR. ROEMER: With respect to Mr. Hernandez's conversation 

with you, he asked to get on the phone directly with you?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Yes, sir.

MR. ROEMER: And he agrees with you right away?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Well, he asked me a few questions 

first. You know, I mean, I explained to him the line of 

question, that he didn't have a return ticket, that he said that 

somebody was waiting for him. You know, I just give him a whole 

synopsis of it and then he asked me had I tried to place him 

under oath. And when I said, "Yes, but he refused to answer," 

then he went to understand -- you know, and then when I told him 

that he should be there to see how this guy's behaving, you know, 

I mean, something is not right, that's when he started to -- hey, 

I agree with you. If you're telling me that's the way it is, 

that's the way it is. So when I told -- when he asked me about 

the oath and I told him that he refused to answer, so he says, 

"We got him under 235."

MR. ROEMER: And you're doing all this through interpreter 

when you're asking Mr. Kahtani questions about his cash and who 

he's meeting and he lies about trying to meet somebody, this is 

all through an interpreter where?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: That is correct. Right in the -- what 

we call secondary offices.
71

MR. ROEMER: So this interpreter is sitting with you?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: No, sir, he's on the phone. He's here 

in Washington.

MR. ROEMER: On the telephone?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: We got a speaker phone and that's what 

we do all day interviews when we use interpreters.

MR. ROEMER: And is this awkward at all for you or is this 

communicated pretty quickly when you're doing it through a 

speaker phone?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: We don't have no problems.

MR. ROEMER: Finally, on a question about post-9/11 now, you 

say in your interview with your staff -- the question is "Do you 

have the manpower today to make this work?" And you say, "Well, 

we only have four secondary rooms and that's not enough," meaning 

that these four rooms now in a post-9/11 environment, people are 

a lot more diligent, they're looking for these clues, they're 

picking them up. These rooms fill up very quickly now?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Very quickly. Yes, that's affirmative, 

sir.

MR. ROEMER: And how quickly do they fill up? If you're on 

an average day and your first couple of hours on the job, how 

fast are these secondary rooms filled up?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Well, normally in Orlando International 

we have all the international flights come about the same time. 

They are 747s. Virgin Atlantic have three flights, British 

Airlines have one, and we can fill those things in about 40 

minutes. I mean, sometimes we have even about 20, 25 people just 

waiting to be interviewed for one reason or another.

 MR. ROEMER: You have a long queue then waiting for --

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Yes, sir.

MR. ROEMER: -- the four rooms.

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: We have right now, yes, sir.
72

MR. ROEMER: And is there ever any subtle pressure on you 

not to get that line too long or do you keep --

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: No, sir.

MR. ROEMER: Good.

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: No, sir. All that has changed since 

that day.

MR. ROEMER: And do you need more rooms and more personnel?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Well, that's affirmative. We need more 

space. But my understanding is that they're working on it 

because the new merger with Customs and Border Protection, 

they're going to rearrange the setting of the area.

MR. ROEMER: And split up the rooms or build more?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: I don't have any idea how they're doing 

it but I know that they're building some engineering people for 

the Orlando Greater International Airport personnel and they're 

working on some blueprints.

MR. ROEMER: And finally, last question, has the attitude of 

some deference to the Saudis changed in the post-9/11 

environment?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Yes. Most definitely yes, sir.

MR. ROEMER: Thank you very much and thank you again for a 

job well done. 

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Thank you, sir.

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Lehman.

MR. LEHMAN: Yes, you are a first class professional and you 

did your job. One would have hoped that higher up the chain, 

someone would have said this being two years after -- three years 

after the attacks on the embassies and after the director of CIA 

had declared war on al Qaeda and all of the American lives that 

had been lost in various attacks of the previous decade, that 

someone would have said above your level, "We need to have the 

FBI come in and perhaps CIA to talk to this guy," because your 

initial reaction was valid. He was obviously up to no good. He 

was a Saudi. He was certainly in the prime suspect area. Why 
73

was he just sent back? I'm talking above your level. Why didn't 

somebody call the FBI and say, "You may want to talk to this 

guy"? Is the relationship at the working level good enough 

between FBI and Border Security? Was it then and is it now? Is 

there any relationship between, for instance, your team at 

Orlando and CIA? Is there a way to call them in.

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Yes, sir. Well, the reason that we 

didn't contact the FBI or any other agency at that time, I tell 

you the truth, it never went through our mind. Our main 

intention was to refuse the entry. Just ensure that he didn't 

make the entry into the United States. That was my main concern 

at that time. Number two, I didn't have any grounds as far as 

the 235 which is refusing to answer under oath. So, at that 

time, I believe that we didn't have that mentality, you know, to 

contact the FBI. We didn't have anything. If we had found some 

documents or something that is related to something that would 

incriminate a person, yes, we will have contacted the FBI.

MR. LEHMAN: So the whole framework was one of law 

enforcement and criminality rather than intelligence and policy?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: That is correct, sir. The FBI, we 

have a great relation with them. We always have. I have never 

spoken to them with reference to this particular case but I can 

tell you that they are always in the area. As a matter of fact, 

last couple of days or last couple of weeks, we have some 

incidents in which we had tipped off and both agents have come up 

and show up. I think there is an outstanding relation with them.

MR. LEHMAN: One last question. If everybody in the chain 

in the different agencies involved had been as professional as 

you were, the attack would not have taken place. Yet in the 

statistics, the turnover in the officers now in the new Border 

Control combined agencies is about 15 percent, which is double 

what it is in the rest of the government. At least, it was at 

the time of 9/11. Is your feeling today that people like 

yourself are being retained? Is the morale high? Do people want 

to stay or is there still a sense of frustration that is driving 

good people out? Tell the truth and chain the devil --

(laughter.)

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Well, it is a small problem that we 

have and we're looking forward that that get corrected down the 

line. But we have to understand something. We have three legacy 

units coming to become one and each one have an individual task. 

When you have a large family, you know, you have a family and 
74

then you have a large family at once, then everybody wants to 

have their own share or everybody wants to go their own 

direction. So I foresee that, in the future, you know, it will 

take time, everybody understands that we are one big family now 

and that is coming throughout the whole United States. It going 

to take time to determine if people will have a better morale and 

will want to stay, we'll have to see and wait because right now, 

perception is perhaps this side is getting a large portion of the 

cake versus this portion is getting this less part of the cake 

and I'm going to leave it at that. Okay.

MR. KEAN: Last question, I guess, from the Commission. 

Commissioner Gorelick.

MS. GORELICK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Inspector Melendez, at the time that you had your exchange 

with al Kahtani, Mohamed Atta is in fact upstairs. He is outside 

of your jurisdiction. But he is in that airport, we believe, and 

that airport has security. Local law enforcement has a presence 

there. Would it have been possible at the time under the rules 

that you were operating under at the time for you to call law 

enforcement that was on the other side of the barrier that you 

manned to say there may be someone here that we want to look for 

and talk to?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Normally what we do is when we 

identify that somebody is waiting for somebody, we ask him the 

name of the person and we page him. Or we go and look for that 

person if that person identifies himself, we go and look for that 

person at the main terminal and we ask them the question to 

verify the intent or the reason that the person that they are 

waiting for is coming to the United States. In this case, we 

didn't call anybody because the person didn't want to identify or 

give me the person's name. He only said somebody was waiting for 

him and then when I asked him for the name, he changed his mind, 

No, nobody is waiting for me.

MS. GORELICK: Do you have the authority in these secondary 

interviews to search the person?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Yes, we do.

MS. GORELICK: And did you search Mr. Kahtani?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: You know that I have been asked the 

same question previously. At that time normally what we do when 
75

we have what we call a turnaround which we have aircraft that we 

won't admit, we get a few different officers involved on it. 

Like I was doing the interview and somebody else might check his 

luggage and things like that. We have another officer that does 

the fingerprinting. So I can't state for a fact that we did 

check his luggage. But it's my belief that it was checked but I 

really can't confirm it because I didn't do it myself.

MS. GORELICK: But, in the ordinary course, you had the 

authority to --

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Oh, yes.

MS. GORELICK: -- both search and to reach, again, across 

the barrier to find the person who is supposedly accompanying or 

meeting the person as to whom you have suspicions?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: That is correct. The policy is we 

check the system, we check the luggage, we check the personal 

belongings, we check everything before. Normally, the checking 

of the luggage is very interesting when you don't have anything 

that you can base yourself on. You're looking for additional 

information to --

MS. GORELICK: If the person doesn't respond to the page, 

would you reach out to the security and law enforcement otherwise 

in the airport to apprehend such a person?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: No. Normally what we do is we get the 

airline involved to search for that person that we're looking 

for. But we have never been in a position to get the law 

enforcement officer to arrest somebody. If somebody is in the 

United States, you know, he's here. We concentrate on the people 

making the entry to the United States. That's the one that we 

concentrate on.

MS. GORELICK: Thank you.

MR. KEAN: Thank you very much, Mr. Melendez-Perez.

MR. KERREY: Mr. Chairman, I have one --

MR. KEAN: Yes. Very briefly, Senator Kerrey.

MR. KERREY: I will try and be brief. Officer Melendez, can 

one presume that if this gentleman had been skinny and an unkempt 

moustache and chewed gum and spoke a little English and had a 
76

return trip and plenty of cash and somebody could possibly 

identify him, that he could have gotten through?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: It could have been possible, yes, sir.

MR. KERREY: So do you feel confident relying on the kind of 

remarkable instincts that you showed at the border, relying on 

instinct alone to make sure that somebody who does have hostile 

intent against the United States of America is not getting 

through?

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Yes, sir. I feel like if the primary 

inspector refer because she could not communicate with the 

individual and then it was in my hands to make that decision and 

perhaps the alert was raised because of the way he was dressing 

but perhaps a good line of question will never -- I mean, never 

assume that everything in right. Just go with your gut feelings 

and ask the questions and pass the battle line.

MR. KEAN: Thank you, Mr. Melendez-Perez. Thank you very 

much. You are an honor to your profession, an honor to the 

United States government and thank you very, very much for your 

service to this country.

MR. MELENDEZ-PEREZ: Thank you for the invitation, sir.

MR. KEAN: We will adjourn now until 1:00.

(Lunch recess.)

MR. KEAN: We will now reconvene. Once again we're going 

to begin with a staff statement, introducing Dr. Zelikow.

MR. ZELIKOW: Members of the Commission, working with you 

your staff has developed initial findings on the identification, 

watchlisting and tracking of three individuals who helped carry 

out the 9/11 attacks upon the United States. Those individuals 

are Nawaf al Hazmi, Salem al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar. These 

findings and judgments may help your conduct of today's public 

hearing and inform the development of your recommendations. This 

report reflects the results of our work so far. We remain ready 

to revise our understanding of these topics as our work 

continues.

This staff statement represents the collective effort of a 

number of members of our staff: Douglas MacEachin, Barbara 

Grewe, Susan Ginsburg, Lloyd Salvetti, Alexis Albion, Thomas 
77

Eldridge, Michael Hurley and Lorry Fenner did most of the 

investigative work reflected in this statement.

Our staff was fortunate. We could build upon a substantial 

body of work carried out by the Joint Inquiry organized in 2002 

by the Intelligence Committees of the House and Senate. We also 

relied on some high quality work performed by the National 

Security Agency along with cooperation from the Central 

Intelligence Agency and the Department of State. Again we were 

impressed by the high caliber of the professionals engaged in 

public service.

The Congressional Joint Inquiry highlighted this story as 

one of failed opportunities to put these suspected terrorists on 

a watchlist to prevent them from entering the United States. 

Therefore the lesson learned, as director of Central 

Intelligence, George Tenet put it, was to do a better job of 

putting people on the watchlist to correct what he called, quote, 

"A weakness in our internal training and an inconsistent 

understanding of watchlist thresholds," close quote. We believe 

the portrayal of this story as a watchlisting failure may 

literally be true but we think this label is profoundly 

misleading. 

One: no one can know the might-have-beens, but we do not 

think it is likely that putting the three future hijackers on a 

watchlist would, by itself, have prevented the 9/11 attacks. As 

we pointed out earlier today, al Qaeda adapted to the failure of 

some its operatives to gain entry into the United States. None 

of these three individuals were pilots.

Two: the watchlisting label reinforces the sense that 

watchlisting is a chore off to the side of core intelligence 

work. Of course, everyone rightly acknowledges it is a necessary 

chore, something that busy intelligence officials just have to 

remember to do, yet they did not see it as an integral part of 

their own intelligence work. The opportunity to prevent the 

attacks would not have arisen just from preventing these people 

from entering the United States, it would have come from 

intelligence work that used watchlisting as a tool. 

Three: the watchlisting label also distorts the analysis of 

accountability. It tends to cast a harsh light on whether one or 

two people at headquarters did their job. That focus may be 

unfair. It certainly is too narrow. We suggest instead that the 

watchlisting failure was just one symptom of a larger 

intelligence failure. The failure raises questions for the 
78

Commission about the CIA's and the intelligence community's 

management of transnational intelligence operations. 

We will do what we can to reconstruct this story given the 

appropriate constraints on what can be said about such topics in 

public. The story is detailed, but the details are essential. 

We'll start with the initial lead and the hindsight issue. The 

lead in this case came from the analysis of communications by the 

National Security Agency or NSA. The NSA and the intelligence 

community obtains what it calls signals intelligence or SIGINT. 

Some sources relevant to this case are no longer operational. We 

are therefore able to say a little more about it now without 

disclosing any of the details about the methods used to collect 

such intelligence.

The intelligence community obtained additional sources after 

the embassy bombings in East Africa. These particular sources 

were important. They offered insight into a larger al Qaeda 

network in the Middle East and were linked directly to the East 

Africa bombings. In late 1999, NSA analyzed communications 

associated with a man named Khalid, a man named Nawaf and a man 

named Salem. NSA analysts at the time thought Salem was Nawaf's 

younger brother. They were right.

We now know Nawaf was in Karachi, Pakistan. Khalid was in 

Yemen. Nawaf planned to leave Karachi on January 2nd, 2000 and 

they were making plans to meet in Malaysia. Nawaf planned to 

leave Karachi on January 2nd, important detail. By early on 

December 31st, Pakistani time, U.S. officials in Islamabad, 

Pakistan's capital, were following the situation. At this point 

the relevant working level officials in the intelligence 

community knew little more than this, but they correctly 

concluded that Nawaf and Khalid may be part of, quote, "an 

operational cadre," close quote. And that, quote, "Something 

nefarious might be afoot," close quote. 

We believe every available resource should have been devoted 

to learning who these people were and trying to spot and track 

them. NSA did not think it was its job to initiate this research 

on its own. It saw itself as an agency to support consumers such 

as CIA. It tried to respond energetically to any requests made of 

them, but it tends to wait to be asked. If NSA had been asked to 

try to identify these people, NSA would have started by checking 

its own database of earlier information from these same sources. 

Some of this information had been reported and disseminated 

around the community, some had not. But it was all readily 

accessible in NSA's database.
79

NSA's analysts would promptly have discovered who Nawaf was, 

that his full name was Nawaf al Hazmi and that he was an old 

friend of Khalid. NSA analysts also could then have readily 

inferred that Salem might be named Salem al Hazmi. But NSA was 

not asked to do this work, at least not until much, much later. 

Some might say that such comments display 20/20 hindsight, 

elevating the importance of these reports out of hundreds of 

items. This is a reasonable argument. But in this case, we 

think our critique is fair and not distorted by hindsight. Why? 

At the end of 1999 and in early 2000, the period of the 

Millennium alert, the danger from al Qaeda was, by all accounts, 

the number one national security priority of the United States. 

It was the focus of practically daily meetings by the top 

officials of the government. These particular sources of 

information were especially important ones. Their links to al 

Qaeda were, in the words of one cable, quote, "notorious," close 

quote. They had been linked directly with the East Africa 

embassy attacks. The relevant analysts have told us, that at the 

time these sources were among the very best on al Qaeda.

The intelligence community had reported that Nawaf and 

Khalid were deploying to meet in Kuala Lumpur. Following up on 

intelligence, U.S. officials were active in Yemen and in the 

United Arab Emirates where Khalid would get his connecting 

flight. Other information reinforced the picture of an emerging 

operation of some kind, and Salem's plans to arrive in Yemen 

soon. 

Nawaf, Khalid and now Salem made further arrangements. 

Nawaf made plans to arrive in Malaysia on January 4th. The 

intelligence community thought Nawaf was still in Pakistan and 

was not leaving there until the 4th. Other officials could have 

worked on logical flight itineraries and perhaps realized that 

Nawaf could and probably did keep to his original plan, leaving 

Pakistan for South East Asia on January 2nd. He then planned to, 

and did leave his Asian stopover, probably Singapore, for Kuala 

Lumpur on January 4th. This detail matters because it meant that 

a possible opportunity to check and track Nawaf's departure from 

Pakistan had already been lost.

Officials in Pakistan tried to do this on the 4th, they had 

already missed Nawaf. On January 3rd, both CIA headquarters and 

U.S. officials around the world began springing energetically 

into action. With the information about Khalid's travel 

itinerary, U.S. officials in Yemen, the United Arab Emirates and 
80

Malaysia performed as well as could be hoped. Long standing 

efforts to build relationships with friendly foreign services 

paid dividends. Though they had missed Nawaf, officials had more 

success in tracking Khalid. He was identified as Khalid al 

Mihdhar. His Saudi passport was photocopied. It showed he had a 

visa to visit the United States. 

U.S. officials in Jeddah quickly confirmed that their post 

had issued this visa in April 1999. Khalid al Mihdhar was 

tracked as he arrived at Kuala Lumpur on January 5th. He and 

other Arabs, still unidentified were surveilled as they 

congregated in the Malaysian capital. On January 5th, CIA 

headquarters notified officials around the world that, quote, "We 

need to continue the effort to identify these travelers and their 

activities to determine if there is any true threat posed," 

close quote. The same cable said the FBI had been notified. The 

cable also asserts that Mihdhar's travel documents also were 

given to the FBI.

The weight of available evidence does not support that 

latter assertion. At this point the case was considered 

important enough to mention it in the regular updates on al Qaeda 

being given to the top officials in the U.S. government. On 

January 3rd and 5th, the head of CIA's unit on al Qaeda 

apparently briefed his bosses on these developments as part of 

his regular daily updates. These updates, which included other 

ongoing operational developments, were usually reviewed every day 

by Director Tenet and by the National Security Advisor Sandy 

Berger. On January 5th and 6th, the director of the FBI, Louis 

Freeh, and other top FBI officials were briefed on the operation 

as one of their regular updates and we're told, correctly, that 

CIA was in the lead and that CIA had promised to let FBI know if 

an FBI angle to the case developed.

On January 6th, two of the Arabs being tracked in Malaysia 

left for new destinations, one in Thailand and another in 

Singapore. After the fact, efforts were made to track them. 

U.S. officials in Kuala Lumpur wondered if one of these Arabs was 

the still mysterious Nawaf. Both returned to Kuala Lumpur within 

the next 24 hours, though the authorities did not know it at the 

time. The two individuals apparently were Nawaf al Hazmi and an 

individual now known as Khallad bin Attash. We'll discuss 

Khallad again in a moment. 

On January 7th and then again on January 10, CIA 

headquarters notified the field that it had run searches on the 

names it had so far about this case and said these searches 
81

produced no hits. Headquarters was trying to support the 

operations in the field. The field had given them information 

about people being tracked. Headquarters had checked CIA's own 

database and found nothing. These headquarters officials had 

not checked the databases at NSA or specifically asked NSA to do 

so. 

As mentioned earlier, if NSA had done this job its analysts 

would quickly have identified Nawaf as Nawaf al Hazmi. Someone 

then could have asked the State Department to check that name 

too. State would promptly have found its own record on Nawaf al 

Hazmi. That record would have shown that he too had been issued 

a visa to visit the United States. They would have learned that 

the visa had been issued at the same place, Jeddah, and on almost 

the same day as the one given to Khalid al Mihdhar. But none of 

this was known at the time. 

On January 8th, surveillance reported that three of the 

Arabs under surveillance suddenly left Kuala Lumpur on a short 

flight to Bangkok traveling together. U.S. officials in Kuala 

Lumpur asked U.S. officials in Bangkok for help. The next day, 

headquarters, noticing what was going on and working on a Sunday, 

backed up Kuala Lumpur's message with another message marked 

NIACT immediate. That meant the incoming cable would alert the 

duty officer and ensure that it was read and acted upon 

regardless of the hour. Kuala Lumpur was able to identify one of 

the travelers as Khalid al Mihdhar. 

After the flight left they learned that one of his 

companions had the name al Hazmi. Remember, that the officials 

did not have information that would have allowed them to put that 

last name together with the name they did know about, Nawaf. 

About the third person all they had was part of a name, it was 

part of the name of the alias being used by Khallad bin Attash. 

Khallad is a nickname, the Arabic word for silver, and refers to 

Khallad's artificial leg. Khallad was then traveling under an 

alias. One reason he may have been traveling around East Asia at 

this time is that he may have been helping to plan possibly 

hijackings on aircraft, perhaps in connection with an early idea 

for what would become the 9/11 plot.

Khallad also had completed his work in helping plan the 

destruction of a U.S. warship visiting Yemen, the USS The 

Sullivans. The attack had just failed, unnoticed. The boat 

filled with explosives had sunk. Only the terrorists knew what 

had gone wrong. Almost everything was salvaged and prepared for 

another day. Khallad would later be a principal planner in the 
82

next try nine months later. That was the October 2000 attack on 

another U.S. ship visiting Yemen, the USS Cole, an attack which 

almost sank the warship and did kill 17 American sailors.

Bangkok and beyond. The information came to Bangkok too 

late to track these travelers as they came in. Had authorities 

in Bangkok already been alerted for Khalid al Mihdhar as part of 

a general regional or worldwide alert, they might have tracked 

him coming in. Had they been alerted to look for a possible 

companion named Nawaf, they might have noticed him too and even 

tracked Khallad as well. Instead, the authorities were alerted 

only after Kuala Lumpur sounded the alarm. By that time, the 

travelers had already disappeared into the streets of Bangkok. 

We now know that two other al Qaeda operatives, two in 

addition to the three, then flew to Bangkok to meet with Khallad 

in order to pass him money. Some of this money was reportedly 

given to Hazmi and Mihdhar for their upcoming work in the United 

States. None of this was known at the time. 

On January 12th, the head of the CIA's al Qaeda unit updated 

his bosses that surveillance in Kuala Lumpur was continuing. He 

may not have known that in fact the Arabs had dispersed and the 

tracking was falling apart. U.S. officials in Bangkok 

regretfully reported the bad news on January 13th. The names 

they had were put on a watchlist in Bangkok so that Thai 

authorities might notice if they left the country. U.S. 

intelligence did learn that one of the travelers was using the 

name that was Khallad's alias. Kuala Lumpur promptly asked for 

more information and agreement, quote, "to share that information 

for watchlisting purposes," close quote. There was no apparent 

response and Kuala Lumpur didn't follow through on its own 

watchlisting ideas.

On January 14th, the head of the CIA's al Qaeda unit updated 

his bosses that officials were continuing to track the suspicious 

individuals who had now dispersed to various countries. 

Unfortunately there is no evidence of any tracking efforts 

actually being undertaken by anyone after the Arabs disappeared 

into Bangkok. 

CIA headquarters asked NSA to put al Mihdhar on that 

agency's watchlist which had limited effectiveness. But there 

was no other effort to consider the onward destinations of these 

Arabs and to set up other opportunities to spot them in case the 

screen in Bangkok failed. 
83

Just from the evidence in al Mihdhar's passport, one of 

those possible destinations and interdiction points would 

logically have been the United States. Hence this watchlisting 

effort could have been seen as integral to reviving a faltering 

tracking effort quite apart from the other interests involved. 

Weeks passed. Meanwhile, NSA would occasionally pass new 

information generally of a personal nature associated with 

Khalid, Salem, Salem's brother, Nawaf and perhaps Khallad as 

well. At this time, although the intelligence community did not 

know it, Mihdhar was in San Diego, California.

None of these reports seemed to have jogged renewed 

attention until another matter reminded Kuala Lumpur about the 

case. That post prodded Bangkok a bit in February about what had 

happened with those missing Arabs. A few weeks later, in early 

March 2000, Bangkok responded to Kuala Lumpur's question. It was 

reported that Nawaf al Hazmi, now identified for the first time 

with his full name, had departed on January 15th on a United 

Airlines flight to Los Angeles. We have found no evidence that 

this information was sent to the FBI.

It was further reported that a person under the name Khallad 

was using had departed Thailand for the last time on January 

20th. His destination was Karachi. As for Khalid al Mihdhar, 

his arrival on January 8th had been noted but there was no record 

of his departure. In fact, Mihdhar had been on the United flight 

to Los Angeles with Hazmi on January 15th.

We presume this departure information was obtained back in 

January on the days that these individuals made their departures. 

Because these names were watchlisted with the Thai authorities, 

we cannot yet explain the delay in reporting this news. But 

since nothing particular was done with this information even in 

March, we cannot attribute much significance to this failure 

alone. By March 2000, Mihdhar and Hazmi had already established 

their residence in San Diego. No one knew this at the time 

because no follow-up was done with any of this information until 

much later.

In January 2001, while working on the Cole attack, the CIA 

received information that Khallad had attended the meeting in 

Kuala Lumpur. As Director Tenet testified publicly before the 

joint inquiry, the Kuala Lumpur meeting quote, "took on greater 

significance," close quote, because this information placed the 

Arabs who were there with a known al Qaeda operative. This 

discovery, however, did not lead to any fresh effort to pick up 
84

the trail of Mihdhar and Hazmi. By that time, Mihdhar had left 

the United States and returned to Yemen. But if a retrospective 

of existing information had been conducted at this point, Hazmi 

might have been tracked down in the United States and there would 

still have been time to watchlist Mihdhar before he obtained a 

new United States visa and reentered the United States to join in 

the 9/11 attacks.

Finally, in the summer of 2001, a thoughtful CIA official 

detailed to the FBI, working with an FBI employee detailed to the 

CIA, did some energetic detective work that at last unearthed and 

reexamined these old puzzle pieces. It became apparent that both 

Mihdhar and Hazmi were in the United States. They were 

watchlisted in late August 2001. It was then too late to catch 

Mihdhar before he got another visa and returned to the United 

States to rejoin the operation. 

The connection to Salem al Hazmi, Nawaf's younger brother, 

had never been made. So there was no effort to track his 

movements while in Yemen, watchlist him before he obtained his 

visa or catch him as he entered the United States on a Swiss Air 

flight to New York in June 2001. The search in the United States 

for Nawaf al Hazmi and Mihdhar began. It had gotten off to a 

stuttering, quarrelsome start by September 11th. 

The watchlisting issue. The Department of State initiated 

and sponsored the U.S. government's only pre-9/11 watchlist 

solely dedicated to catching terrorists. This list, called 

TIPOFF, was created in 1987 by an unassuming and enterprising 

public servant named John Arriza who still helps sustain the 

program which is now considerably expanded. The program was 

meant to keep terrorists from getting visas, of course. But as 

the name implies, it also was a system to tip off intelligence 

and law enforcement agencies that a suspected terrorist was 

attempting to come to the United States.

Any overseas post that obtained appropriate derogatory 

information about an individual had been told to enter into 

TIPOFF by sending the appropriate cable. If the State 

Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research saw the 

information, they could and often did take the initiative to add

the individual into TIPOFF. In 2001, the State Department 

provided more source documents for TIPOFF than any other agency, 

more than 2,000. In December 1999, CIA headquarters had repeated 

this guidance to its posts overseas which technically also 

included its al Qaeda unit at headquarters. In 2001, CIA 

provided more than 1,500 source documents for TIPOFF. It was CIA 
85

headquarters that finally nominated Hazmi and Mihdhar for 

inclusion in TIPOFF. 

Sharing of information with the FBI was vital from an 

intelligence perspective, if the individuals were coming into the 

United States. But FBI did not maintain the terrorists 

watchlist. That was the State Department's job. FBI could 

contribute names like everyone else. In 2001, the FBI provided 

about 60 source documents for TIPOFF, fewer than were obtained 

from the public media and a number approximately equivalent to 

the contribution that year from the Australian intelligence 

service. 

It is worth noting that the Federal Aviation 

Administration's own no-fly list was totally independent from 

TIPOFF. Few names were on this no-fly list. So before 9/11, 

adding someone to TIPOFF would not have any particular effect on 

their ability to board a commercial flight inside the United 

States. So, to be specific, adding Hazmi and Mihdhar to TIPOFF 

did not put them on a no-fly list and did not keep them from 

flying on September 11th.

Therefore, in thinking about the question of accountability, 

that potential list tends to expand to everyone. In effect, 

though, this means no one. At the time of the Joint Inquiry 

report, the general assumption was that the responsibility rested 

with some working level official at CIA headquarters. Yet as we 

can see, many of the recipients of those January 2000 cables 

could have done their part. Kuala Lumpur thought about it and so 

on.

That is why we think this issue must be examined from a 

broader perspective, that at the overall management of 

transnational intelligence operations. After all, why would the 

watchlisting make a difference? One purpose would have been to 

turn Hazmi and Mihdhar back when they reached Los Angeles. In 

effect, throwing them back into the sea. That would have served 

one purpose, but it might not have prevented any attacks. 

We think it may be more interesting to consider the 

intelligence mission. Remember why TIPOFF had that name. The 

intelligence mission was why the suspects were tracked in 

Malaysia rather than detained or deported. If the FBI had been 

given the opportunity to monitor Hazmi and Mihdhar in California 

and had been patient for months or a year, then some larger 

results might have been possible, even after Mihdhar left. The 

universe of possibilities expands after Hani Hanjour joined Hazmi 
86

in December 2000, after which the two of them lived in Phoenix 

for several months before driving across the country and linking 

up with other future hijackers in Northern Virginia.

Up to this point, all of these hijackers named so far were 

involved in the hijacking of American Airlines 77, which hit the 

Pentagon. But in Northern Virginia, they linked up with a 

hijacker who had joined the team assigned to United 175, thus 

creating a possible opportunity to penetrate other teams 

associated with the Hamburg cell as well. 

These are difficult what ifs. It is possible that the 

intelligence community might have judged that the risks of 

conducting such a prolonged intelligence operation were too high. 

The risk of losing track of potential terrorists, for example. 

It is possible that the pre-9/11 FBI would not have been judged 

capable of conducting such an operation. 

But surely the intelligence community would have preferred 

to have the chance to make these choices. That is why we see 

this as an intelligence story and a challenge for intelligence

community management, management of a transnational case. In 

trying to second-guess the management of intelligence operations, 

the staff feels humbled as we encounter the experience and hard 

work of so many of the officials we have interviewed, although we 

have some very seasoned intelligence professionals on our staff. 

We have listened hard to what the serving officials have told us, 

as you can see.

These people cared deeply about combating terrorism. They 

have poured much of their life energy into this cause. And we 

believe that many of them were working in a system that was not 

well designed to take full advantage of their accumulated 

talents. From the detail of this case, one can see how hard it 

is for the intelligence community to assemble enough of the 

puzzle pieces gathered by different agencies to make some sense 

from them and then coordinate needed action to collect or to 

disrupt. It is especially hard to do all this in a transnational 

case. 

That was and is a challenge for management. In this case, 

there appears to have been at least two strategic errors in 

management. First, the managers of the case failed to get an 

all-source background analysis of the players, canvassing what 

all agencies might know so they could assemble the best possible 

picture for action. This omission is already evident by the end 

of December 1999.
87

The second strategic error was that the managers of the case 

did not systematically set up ways to track the hijackers as they 

moved in predictable directions. Even if they slipped through 

the net in Bangkok, it was foreseeable that a traveler with a 

U.S. visa in his passport might seek to visit the United States. 

No one had the clear job of ensuring that all the likely routes 

were covered. Who had the job of managing the case to make sure 

these things were done? 

One answer is that everyone had the job. That was the 

perspective the Commission heard in its interview of the CIA's 

deputy director for Operations, James Pavitt. Deputy Director 

Pavitt has been at or near the top of this directorate for about 

six and a half years. He stressed that the responsibility 

resided with all involved. Above all, he stressed the primacy of 

the field. The field had the lead in managing operations. The 

job of headquarters, he stressed, was to support the field and do 

so without delay. If the field asked for information or other 

support, the job of headquarters was to get it, and right away. 

This is a traditional perspective on operations, and 

traditionally it has great merit. It reminded us of the FBI's 

pre-9/11 emphasis on the primacy of their field offices. When 

asked about how this traditional structure would adapt to the 

challenge of managing a transnational case, one that hopped from 

place to place, as this one did, the deputy director argued that 

all involved were responsible for making it work. He underscored 

the responsibility of the particular field location where the 

suspects were being tracked at any given time. On the other 

hand, he also said that the Counterterrorism Center was supposed 

to, quote, "manage all the moving parts," close quote, while what 

happened on the ground was the responsibility of managers in the 

field.

With this background, it is easier to understand why the way 

headquarters handled this case may not have been so unusual. As 

pointed out this morning, travel intelligence was not seen as a 

central concern. Headquarters tended to support and facilitate, 

trying to make sure that everyone was in the loop. From time to 

time, a particular post would push one way or headquarters would 

urge someone to do something, but headquarters never really took 

responsibility for the successful management of this case. Hence 

the managers at headquarters did not realize that the two 

strategic errors cited above had occurred, and they scarcely knew 

that the case had fallen apart.
88

The director of the Counterterrorism Center at the time, 

Cofer Black, recalled to us that this operation was one among 

many and that at the time, quote, "It was considered interesting 

but not heavy water yet," close quote. He recalls the failure to 

get the word to Bangkok fast enough, but has no evident 

recollection of why the case then dissolved unnoticed.

Going the next level down, the director of the al Qaeda unit 

in CIA at the time recalled to us that he did not think it was 

his job to direct what should or should not be done. He did not 

pay attention when the individuals dispersed and things fell 

apart. He would not have expected NSA to do the retrospective 

work in its own database, but he was uncertain of his own 

authority to order them to do it. There was no conscious 

decision to stop the operation after the trail was temporarily 

lost in Bangkok, but he acknowledged that perhaps there had been 

a let down after the extreme tension and long hours in the period 

of the millennium alert.

We believe both Mr. Black and the former al Qaeda unit head 

are capable veterans of the Directorate of Operations, among the 

best the agency has produced. Therefore we find these accounts 

more telling about the system than about the people. In this 

system, no one was managing the effort to ensure seamless 

handoffs of information or develop an overall interagency 

strategy for the operation. 

Such management of transnational operations fully 

integrating all source analysis might require more employees. 

Deputy Director Pavitt told us, as he has told Congress, that he 

does not think the availability of more money would have 

prevented the 9/11 attacks. We are not sure that is right. 

Certainly since 9/11 the application of vast new resources 

within older management models has achieved some significant 

gains, but this story is not just about the past. We wonder 

whether the management of transnational intelligence operations 

has adapted enough to cope with the challenge of the war on 

terrorism.

Today's focus on travel intelligence has spotlighted the 

transnational character of the problem. This particular story is 

especially tragic. But we do not believe this operating style is 

unique to this case. We are not sure that these problems have 

been addressed. We are not sure they are even adequately 

acknowledged as a problem. And in an environment driven by 

reactions to the latest threat report and preoccupied with 
89

immediate operations, clear, accountable and strategic management 

is a challenge. The intelligence community must overcome it. 

Thank you.

MR. KEAN: Thank you very much, Dr. Zelikow.

MR. KERREY: Mr. Chairman, I just want to note for the 

record, we were given this yesterday, I read this last night and 

I feel the same way now. I just want to publicly make it clear 

that I think it's a very good statement but there are many 

conclusions in here that I could not sign off on. And I don't 

want the public to presume that because staff has presented it to 

the Commission that the Commission embraces the conclusions that 

have been reached fully.

MR. KEAN: No, that is correct. These are staff reports, not 

part of the Commission conclusions. 

If we have -- ask the next panel to come forward, please? 

Our next panel is entitled, "Visas and Watchlisting Today." 

Heading it off will be Ambassador Maura Harty, assistant 

secretary for Consular Affairs at the United States Department of 

State. Ms. Harty has formerly served as executive secretary at 

the Department of State and ambassador to Paraguay. The 

ambassador will be followed by Russell E. Travers, associate 

director for Defense Issues at the Terrorist Threat Integration 

Center, known as the TTIC, where he manages TTIC's government 

wide information sharing initiative and the development of the 

USG's terrorist identities database.

Our third witness on this panel will be Donna Bucella, 

director, Terrorist Screening Center at the FBI. Ms. Bucella 

served as United States attorney for the middle district of 

Florida. She received the attorney general's Exceptional Service 

Award for her extraordinary work as a prosecutor in the Oklahoma 

City bombing investigation. She is on detail to the FBI from the 

Transportation Security Administration where she was a southeast 

areas director. If you could all rise please to take the oath?

(Witnesses sworn.)

Ambassador Harty?

MS. HARTY: Mr. Chairman, members of the Commission, I am 

very pleased to be here today with my colleagues from TTIC and

TSC. The fact that we are three testifying here together 

highlights the unprecedented level of cooperation among U.S. 
90

government agencies, aimed at improving border security through 

enhanced information sharing and the fact that we are using new 

approaches to border security to keep ahead of the changing 

threat to our national security.

I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the critical role of 

the visa process in defending our nation's borders and how we 

have strengthened that system in the wake of the tragic events on 

September 11th, 2001. Before I proceed further, however, I want 

to acknowledge the family members of the victims of September 

11th. None of us can know the pain and suffering they have 

endured, but all Americans and people of decency everywhere will 

forever remember the horror and condemn the actions of those who 

inflicted such an outrage on our nation. 

The Department of State together with other U.S. government 

agencies is determined to eliminate potential vulnerabilities to 

terrorist attacks. State's visa work is a vital element in 

providing for our national border security. We have no higher 

responsibility than protecting our citizens and safeguarding our 

country's borders. My goal since I was confirmed as assistant 

secretary of State in November 2002 has been to examine our 

processes from top to bottom to make them as strong a shield 

against terrorists and criminals as we possibly can.

To this end, we have more than doubled the number of entries 

of terrorists and criminals in our lookout database, enhanced our 

data sharing capabilities with other agencies of U.S. government, 

revised our consular officer training, and implemented new 

biometric programs for foreign travelers so that we can 

adjudicate visas in light of these new security threats, while 

continuing to welcome to our shores the visitors, business 

people, students, researchers and immigrants who enrich our 

society by their presence and who contribute to our nation's 

economic well-being.

Now I'd like to provide a bit of detail about these efforts. 

The consular officers of the Foreign Service, who adjudicate 

visas at over 200 embassies and consulates abroad, are truly our 

first line of defense. Through them, our goal is to push the 

very borders of the United States out as far as from our own 

shores as possible, so that we stop a potential terrorist 

overseas. To do so, we must have the best information available 

within the United States government on terrorist threats. I 

cannot overemphasize this point. 
91

One of the most reliable ways to stop those who intend to do 

us harm, is to identify them to consular officers abroad. The 

Department of State, working with other agencies, has made 

significant improvements to our ability to share lookout 

information. Thanks to this new level of collaboration, the data 

holdings in our consular lookout system now total almost 18 

million records of people ineligible or possibly ineligible to 

receive visas. Much more than double what we had prior to 

September 11. Most of the data in our lookout system now derives 

from other agencies, especially those in the law enforcement and 

intelligence communities. 

We have cooperated in this important endeavor by working 

with my colleagues from TTIC and TSC to integrate terrorist 

watchlists from numerous government sources into one centralized 

point of reference for everyone who needs to screen members of 

the public, from the police officer on the beat to the consular 

officer abroad. Together with the Terrorist Threat Integration 

Center, we will rely on TSC to ensure that consular officers have 

access to the information they need to deny visas to known or 

suspected terrorists. 

We are proud that these institutions rest on a foundation 

that the Department of State laid in the form of TIPOFF, a 

pioneering system in the use of classified information for 

screening purposes, created in 1987. The TIPOFF database with 

its approximately 120,000 records is now housed at TTIC. TTIC 

and TSC together will eliminate the stove piping of terrorist 

data and provide a more systematic approach to posting lookouts 

on potential and known terrorists. 

We have also entered into a robust partnership with the 

Department of Homeland Security and worked closely with them on a 

number of initiatives to improve border security. DHS and State 

collaborated on the implementation of the congressionally 

mandated SEVIS system to verify student status and assist in 

student monitoring. We have strengthened procedures following 

revocation of a visa by State, to ensure timely notice to the DHS 

lookout systems.

We are currently engaged with DHS in implementing a 

biometrics program to track the entry and exit of foreign 

visitors by using electronically scanned fingerprints. 

Secretaries Powell and Ridge signed a memorandum of understanding 

in September of 2003 which sets the terms under which officers of 

the two departments will work together in the visa process. We 

at the Bureau of Consular Affairs have undertaken a systematic 
92

review of the visa process since September 11th to identify and 

eliminate vulnerabilities in the system. Our overriding goal has 

been to provide consular officers with the very best tools and 

the best training possible. 

We have made major changes in the consular training course 

by adding four security counterterrorism sessions since 2001, two 

of which deal specifically with counterterrorism. The third is a 

session provided by diplomatic security on visa fraud and 

malfeasance, and a fourth session teaches consular officers how 

to apply the terrorism provisions of the Immigration and 

Nationality Act. 

To improve interviewing at deception detection techniques, 

we contracted outside interviewing experts to develop training 

specifically designed for consular officers. Together we 

developed a module on analytic interviewing which has -- which 

was introduced last November. Our goal is to provide new 

consular officers with the best tools available as they begin 

their critical roles in protecting U.S. border security. The 

interviewing course is also being taught at the consular 

leadership development courses which we conduct each year around 

the world, and in the advanced consular course here in Washington 

to train our mid and senior level officers as well.

After more than a decade of doing more with less, when the 

increasing workload outstripped our resources, we are now hiring 

well above attrition thanks to Secretary Powell's Diplomatic 

Readiness Initiative. The department is establishing 161 new 

consular officer positions for FY '04 and is requesting 123 more 

for 2005. These additional positions will give us the ground 

troops necessary to staff our first line of defense. We have 

established a new worldwide standard for visa interviewing policy 

to comply with the congressional mandate, that we collect 

biometric identifiers and include such in the non-immigrant visa. 

We have implemented new regulations requiring that most visa 

applicants appear for an interview. The following month we begin 

deployment of a congressionally mandated biometric program at 

posts abroad to collect electronically scanned fingerprints of 

all visa applicants. These fingerprints will be matched against 

the Department of Homeland Security's fingerprint database known 

as IDENT. In fact, we are already successfully doing so at three 

posts, and will continue to bring online even more posts just as 

quickly as we can.
93

When visa travelers enter the United States their identity 

will be verified through DHS's U.S. visit program. We are now 

collecting fingerprints at 55 posts overseas. All visa 

adjudicating posts will be online and collecting biometrics by 

the congressionally mandated deadline of October 26th, 2004.

Just as we are committed to the most secure visa 

adjudication process and documentation, the same holds true for 

what I consider to be the world's most valuable document, the 

U.S. passport. We recently completed the systemwide introduction 

of the photo-digitized process for passports. We then moved the 

production of passports issued abroad to our U.S. domestic 

production facilities to take advantage of the significant 

security improvements embodied in what we call the PhotoDig 

process.

We are planning to introduce a new contact-list chip, 

passports to strengthen our ability to link the authorized bearer 

of a passport and its user. The department has also proposed 

implementing a travel document requirement for U.S. citizens 

traveling to those parts of the Western Hemisphere where a 

passport is currently not required and we are engaged in 

discussions on that matter with DHS even as I speak.

We are by no means done. The systematic review is a 

continuing process. Looking ahead now, we are actively working 

on new initiatives to build on what I have just described. In 

2004, we will introduce a new tamper resistant machine readable 

immigrant visa foil to include digitized photo and fingerprints. 

We will complete the worldwide deployment of biometric visa 

capability and we will continue discussions with Canada, Mexico 

and the rest of the international community to expand on 

datashare.

Mr. Chairman and members of the Commission, the terrorist 

attacks of September 11th highlighted as never before the crucial 

role the Department plays in U.S. border security. Our response 

has been energetic and committed to meeting the highest national 

security standards. I want to assure you and especially the 

families of the victims of terrorism that the Department of State 

and its Bureau of Consular Affairs are determined to spare no 

effort to secure our borders against terrorism, criminality, 

illegal migration and to create a visa process in which the 

American people can place their confidence and trust.

Thank you.
94

MR. KEAN: Thank you, Ambassador. 

Who's going next?

Mr. Travers?

RUSSELL E. TRAVERS: Mr. Chairman, members of the 

Commission, I'm pleased to be here today to discuss the role of 

TTIC, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center in the defense of 

our nation's borders. 

As the Commission knows, TTIC was a presidential initiative 

announced at last year's State of the Union address almost 

exactly one year ago. We formally stood up on 1 May, 2003. 

Operating as an interagency joint venture, TTIC currently has 

assignees from 16 separate federal intelligence, law enforcement 

and homeland security organizations. The mission, simply put, is 

to integrate and analyze terrorist threat information collected 

domestically or abroad and to disseminate such information to 

appropriate recipients.

As a part of that mission, TTIC is charged with maintaining 

an up-to-date database of known and suspected terrorists. It is 

that aspect of our mission that I want to discuss today. In 

doing so, I'll briefly elaborate on three points. First, the 

community has corrected previously identified shortcomings 

associated with database and watchlisting support. Second, TTIC 

working with our community partners has a series of initiatives 

to further enhance our support to the newly created Terrorist 

Screening Center. And third, we are making significant progress 

in the critical area of information sharing across the 

government.

First, our progress to date. Over the last two years, the 

intelligence and law enforcement communities have been engaged in 

a comprehensive scrub of historical reporting to ensure that our 

databases are current. Led primarily by CIA, CTC and the FBI, 

this has involved respectively the review of literally millions 

of intelligence cables and previous international terrorism 

cases. The goal is to ensure that anyone who should have been 

watchlisted has been in fact so listed. 

This historical review has been coupled with a significant 

growth in new reporting that has occurred against the terrorism 

target over the past two years. The net effect is that the 

number of records in the TIPOFF terrorist identities database has 

grown from approximately 60,000 in September of '01 to over 
95

120,000 records at the beginning of this year. A similar 

percentage growth has occurred in the number of individuals 

actually watchlisted. These ongoing efforts have been 

supplemented by a significant streamlining of the U.S. 

government's approach to maintaining terrorist identity databases 

and supporting watchlisting.

Homeland Security Presidential Directive 6, signed in 

September of '03, assigns to TTIC and the newly created Terrorist 

Screening Center precise responsibilities. TTIC is required to 

maintain an up-to-date database of known and suspected terrorists 

and to service TSC's single source of terrorist information. The 

one exception to this is for purely domestic terrorism 

information that will be provided by the FBI. 

One particular aspect of HSPD-6 has already been 

implemented. Specifically, the movement of State Department’s 

highly regarded TIPOFF database into TTIC occurred in midNovember and it has been fully operational since. Similarly, we 

are in the midst of receiving data holdings from other federal 

intelligence and law enforcement organizations. We have already 

increased the analytic resources devoted to TIPOFF by a factor of 

four, as we prepare to receive this additional data.

With that description of our progress to date, we also have 

a number of very near-term initiatives tied to HSPD-6 and 

oriented toward enhancing the quality of our support to the 

watchlisting effort. First, we are working with data collectors 

to increase the amount of unclassified data that we can make 

available to the TSC. The more unclassified information we can 

provide, the greater the likelihood of achieving positive matches 

and the lower the possibility of false positives.

Second, we will be receiving additional FBI officers this 

spring and will subsequently be adding to the database records on 

U.S. persons known or appropriately suspected of being involved 

in international terrorism. Third, under HSPD-6 the State 

Department is developing a proposal for enhancing cooperation 

with certain foreign governments to establish access to their 

terrorism screening information. 

And fourth, we have under development and will deploy this 

summer the initial version of a far more powerful database that 

will bring together all the disparate streams of international 

terrorist identities information. Operating with vastly more 

fields, all data will be XML-tagged and will be postured to 
96

incorporate biometrics. Significant program resource growth 

accompanies this initiative.

Mr. Chairman, these initiatives are critically important 

because this is a very hard problem. Despite our best efforts, a 

names-based terrorist identification system has inherent 

limitations. Under any circumstances, the potential for false 

positives is high. With foreign names and particularly with 

Arabic names, the challenges are even greater. For instance, the 

transliteration of Arab names is a very inexact science. 

Spelling can vary and the protocols for which particular names 

are actually used can be difficult for Westerners to understand. 

Couple this with the standard terrorist use of nicknames, 

alias, noms de guerre and increasingly sophisticated forgeries 

and the analytic challenge for the intelligence, law enforcement 

and homeland security community becomes increasingly complex. 

Moreover, we are dealing with an enemy that is focused on 

recruiting Westerners, women and generally, quote unquote, 

"clean" individuals who haven't yet come to our attention.

Finally, as we have seen with the Transit Without Visa 

program, terrorists are always looking to exploit potential 

vulnerabilities that might give them a further edge. For all 

these reasons, the community is leveraging experience to build 

new organizations, develop new methods and techniques and deploy 

advanced technologies and tools that are required to respond to 

this exceptionally difficult challenge. 

That brings me to the third and final issue I want to 

briefly address this afternoon, the subject of information 

sharing. There is no question that TTIC's ability to establish 

and maintain a database of known and suspected terrorists is 

directly related to a free flow of relevant information across 

the government. While there is undoubtedly room for improvement, 

substantial progress has been made since 9/11.

To begin with, a solid legal and policy framework for 

information sharing has been put in place since 2001. The 

PATRIOT Act, the Homeland Security Act, the presidential decision 

to create TTIC, the Information Sharing Memorandum of 

Understanding and HSPD-6 have all played a critical role in 

driving the improvements in sharing terrorism related 

information. 

A few metrics provide a useful comparison. First, we have 

seen a substantial growth in reporting on terrorism and WMD 
97

matters in the last two years, roughly 250 percent. In September 

'01, we received approximately 900 cables per day. In January 

'04, that figure had grown to about 2,200 per day. The second 

useful metric relates to the use of ORCON, originator controlled 

information. This can be a major impediment to the free flow of 

information. In September '01, over 11 percent of all our 

reporting was ORCON. In January '04, that figure had fallen to 

roughly 6 percent.

And the third useful metric relates to the use of tear 

lines, the means by which material that must remain ORCON is 

nevertheless sanitized to allow for further dissemination. From 

September '01 to January '04, tear line utilization increased 

almost by 70 percent in the community. 

Is information sharing fixed? Certainly not, but huge 

strides have been made. Indeed, one reflection of that progress 

can be seen in the ability to electronically access terrorist 

related information. For the past eight months of our existence, 

TTIC has focused on the technical initiatives necessary to 

promote information sharing and in August of last year, we 

launched the TTIC online website. This serves as a means to 

access a broad range of terrorism threat information. This 

highly secure capability can reach virtually the entire structure 

of the federal government boasting over 2,500 users currently in 

the joint worldwide intelligence communication system's top 

secret environment. 

TTIC online reaches traditional intelligence community 

terrorism analytic elements but also the joint terrorism task 

forces, all our military commands and numerous other 

organizations that have a need for terrorism threat information, 

for example, the Departments of Interior and Agriculture.

The success of TTIC Online can be seen by a comparison with 

the analogous capability that existed in 2001. The user base is 

almost six times greater, five times as many organizations 

participate. The average number of document hits per week has 

grown by 400 times, and the total repository of documents has 

grown from one to three million. We anticipate even greater 

success when we deploy a new secret level version on SIPRNET 

later this year. Subsequently, TTIC plans to deploy a sensitive 

but unclassified presence of TTIC Online on the Open Source 

Information System network.

In summary, Mr. Chairman, TTIC continues to work with our 

partners across the government to implement the President's 
98

vision and to ensure that the most accurate data on known and 

suspected terrorists is made available to the TSC and many other 

organizations involved in border security and the war on 

terrorism. I hope you will agree that we have made demonstrable 

progress in both the creation of a single database as well as the 

ongoing effort to share relevant information across the 

government. 

Given the complexity of the analytic problem, as well as the 

challenge of integrating diffuse data sets from a wide range of 

organizations, we undoubtedly had a great deal to do. 

Nevertheless, in our eight months of existence, TTIC has already 

accomplished a great deal, and we have both a sound plan and I 

believe adequate resources for the future. Thank you for the 

opportunity to testify and I look forward to your questions.

MR. KEAN: Thank you, Mr. Travers.

Ms. Bucella.

DONNA A. BUCELLA: Good afternoon, Chairman Kean and members 

of the Commission. Thank you for this opportunity to discuss the 

missions and objectives of the new Terrorist Screening Center. 

The Terrorist Screening Center was created to consolidate 

terrorist watchlists for multiple agencies and provide 24/7 

operational support for all federal, state and local law 

enforcement officers across the country and around the world. 

When fully operational, the TSC will dramatically increase our 

ability to ensure that we are working off the same unified 

comprehensive set of anti-terrorist information. This is an 

enormous task and it requires cooperation and coordination from 

multiple agencies.

Pursuant to the September 16th Homeland Security 

Presidential Directive 6, the FBI administers the TSC with 

support from the intelligence community and the Departments of 

State, Homeland Security and Justice. Each of these agencies 

have representatives assigned to the TSC. The TSC was required 

to begin operations by December 1st. We met that goal and became 

a single coordination point for terrorist screening data. Today 

the TSC has the ability to make the names and identifying 

information of terrorists known to or suspected by the United 

States government accessible to all law enforcement.

We have a system for reviewing whether a known or suspected 

terrorist should be included in or deleted from additional 

screening processes. The TSC's initial capabilities are limited, 
99

due to the need to integrate records ensuring that all data about 

suspected terrorists is accurate. Each agency contributing data 

to the TSC is using its own database. These databases, which 

were created to support the mission of the individual agencies, 

are in many instances their case management systems, not 

terrorist watchlists. By this summer, the TSC will have a single 

consolidated database. And before the end of this year, the TSC 

will have an even more dynamic database, thereby allowing private 

sector agencies and foreign governments to submit a list of 

persons to the United States government to identify possible 

terrorists.

Our database will be continuously updated. The TSC allows 

the consolidation of information currently held by multiple 

agencies and used in different ways to be brought together for a 

single purpose: to help identify and detain potential terrorists. 

The TSC is supplied with information from two avenues. One, all 

international terrorist information from the Terrorist Threat 

Integration Center, TTIC; and two, all domestic terrorist 

information from the FBI. The TSC will then consolidate this 

identifying information from these records and make it accessible 

for queries from state, federal and local agencies.

When a government agency makes a recommendation to include a 

name in our database, it is reviewed and instructions are 

provided as to how an encounter with this individual will be 

handled by a United States government agency. The system is 

tailored to give different instructions, depending on where the 

encounter takes place, either outside, inside or at our borders.

Let me take a moment to describe for you a typical process 

at the border. When a passenger arrives in the United States and 

is a possible match to the TSC record, Customs and Border 

Protection contacts the TSC for assistance in the identification 

process. Taking advantage of its electronic access to all 

information contained in the FBI and TTIC databases, we attempt 

to determine if that person is a positive match. If there is a 

positive match, the TSC telephonically conferences in the FBI's 

counterterrorism watch for specific instructions about what 

appropriate action may be taken. Such specific instructions may 

include arrest, detain or question the individual further. 

In the case of a police inquiry, by querying the National 

Crime Information Center, NCIC, database, which contains an 

instruction to contact the TSC, for the very first time, a local 

police officer who pulls over an individual during a routine 

traffic stop will now know if the person encountered is a known 
100

or suspected terrorist. The TSC contacts the FBI 

counterterrorism watch and simultaneously the watch coordinates 

with the local Joint Terrorism Task Force, who will then assist 

the police officer. The results of that follow-up action is then 

reported back to the originating agency. The TSC will continue 

to facilitate the feedback back to TTIC and other appropriate 

agencies.

We recognize with all these capabilities also comes a 

responsibility to ensure that we continue to protect our civil 

liberties. The TSC has absolutely no independent authority to 

conduct intelligence collection or other operations. In fact, we 

don't collect information at all. We only receive information 

collected by other agencies with a pre-existing authority to do 

so, each with their own policies and procedures to protect 

privacy rights and civil liberties. The handling and use of 

information, including U.S. person information, is governed by 

the same statutory, regulatory and constitutional requirements, 

as if the information was not to be concluded in TSC managed 

database.

Our primary mission is to ensure that terrorist identities 

are located in one place. The structures which are also in place 

also ensure that information about U.S. persons that has been 

determined to be purely domestic information does not go through 

the TTIC but is placed directly into the TSC by the FBI. Also, 

the attorney general has been directed to implement procedures 

and safeguards regarding information about U.S. persons in 

coordination with the other government agencies.

We are also committed to addressing the issues and 

inconveniences arising from the misidentifications of persons 

under previous watchlisting practices. Procedures are in place 

to review and promptly adjust or delete erroneous or outdated 

information, and several such records have already been 

identified and updated or removed. The creation of the TSC marks 

a significant step forward in protecting America's communities 

and families by detecting, disrupting or preempting terrorist 

threats. The TSC builds on the improvements to U.S. watchlist 

capabilities that began following the horrific events of 

September 11th. 

The TSC is already contributing to nationwide efforts to 

keep terrorists out of the United States and locate those who may 

already be in our country. The TSC will be able to fulfill this 

mission more effectively and efficiently after we receive full 

operating capability later this calendar year. I appreciate the 
101

Commission's interest in the TSC's activities and would be happy 

to answer any questions the Commission may have.

MR. KEAN: Thank you very much.

Commissioner Gorelick.

MS. GORELICK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

First of all, let me thank the members of the panel. 

Several of you are known to me and I very much appreciate your 

service to the country. I'd like to make a comment at the 

outset. We heard from the two staff statements that we've heard 

so far today that there were many opportunities to stop the 9/11 

plot, and the focus of those statements has been on, number one, 

lack of communication among the CIA or even within the CIA and 

between it and the FBI, the NSA, the State Department, 

particularly consular affairs.

Second, that there was no systematic mechanism for tracking 

terrorists. And third, and overarching, a failure to think 

strategically about what the terrorists need in order to proceed, 

and particularly how to deprive them of what they needed in the 

way of freedom to travel. And I would like to focus, however 

briefly, on all three of those. You are here to tell us what has 

been fixed, and we very much appreciate the efforts that the 

three of you and your agencies have been making to try to fix a 

number of problems that have been identified.

It is clear that we will have suggestions and ideas about 

elements of what you're doing that remain broken and that could 

be fixed further, but we are quite constrained in talking about 

that in open session, because it's the last thing that we want to 

do, is to provide a roadmap to where the seams still may be that 

could be exploited, if you will. So, I'm going to forbear from 

that and we will follow those conversations in closed sessions.

I'd like to begin with Associate Director Travers. As I 

noted, the salient point I think of the staff statement was that 

we as a government had a failure of strategic management of our 

effort to stop al Qaeda. There wasn't one person who was 

accountable; there wasn't one person who said this is my job, I'm 

the quarterback, here are the assets at my disposal and here's 

how we're going to proceed. 

As you noted, TTIC has been stood up with great fanfare. 

Not every agency gets mentioned in the State of the Union 
102

address, and it is featured as an answer to the question how are 

we better working together today than we were in the past? And 

for that reason I would like to really pursue with you what it is 

that TTIC does and doesn't do. I was very interested in the 

briefing that you gave to our staff in which you're very clear

that TTIC, quote, "Does not engage in collection or operations 

and does not belong to any department or agency." 

And I put that against the statement by the director of the 

CIA's al Qaeda unit, that he didn't think it was his job to 

direct what should be done in the field, and I put that next to 

Pavitt's statement that it was everybody's job. My question to 

you is, is TTIC the answer to that problem? Is it the entity 

that directs or controls the investigation of al Qaeda right now?

MR. TRAVERS: TTIC is an analytic organization and, as you 

accurately quoted, we don't do collection and we don't do 

operations. Those are the province of other parts of the 

government. So we certainly do track al Qaeda and we look at 

plots and the development of those plots and so forth, but there 

is a division of responsibility in terms of the various functions 

that you mentioned.

MS. GORELICK: So you are on the receiving end of other 

agencies efforts and you try to meld them together. Would that 

be a fair description of what you do?

MR. TRAVERS: That is certainly true we can -- where we 

identify intelligence gaps we can levy requirements on the 

collectors to go out and collect information on various gaps that 

we may have on knowledge base, but other than that, yes ma'am. 

MS. GORELICK: Well, to the extent that we are in a war and 

the other side appears to be fairly well coordinated, the 

question is are we as well coordinated and if it isn't TTIC that 

is running operations against al Qaeda, who in our government is 

responsible for making those strategic judgments and directions?

MR. TRAVERS: I mean, I think there are a few objective 

realities out there in terms of the blurring of distinctions 

between foreign and domestic and intel and ops and indeed many 

different parts of the government have got various 

responsibilities for the global war on terrorism. With respect 

to TTIC itself, there is a degree of ambiguity between our 

mission and some other analytic organizations within the 

government, I think it's fair to say that there are -- these are 

being worked through within the government, how much should be 
103

done at the departmental level, how much should be done within 

TTIC. 

I think we have to acknowledge that these are very difficult 

questions that we're dealing with, legacy organizations and 

responsibilities and we are all trying to work them out to the 

whatever the good governance solution is. But I mean it's 

certainly fair to say that there is an ambiguity there.

MS. GORELICK: Thank you for the candor of that response. I 

noticed in your testimony that, as you noted, you are dependent 

upon the constituent agencies to share with you the information 

that they have so that you can get it into your TTIC database, 

which is now the inheritor of TIPOFF and that therefore you can 

then feed the Terrorist Screening Center, and I was quite 

surprised to read that -- in your testimony that to date, only 16 

of the 56 FBI field officers have completed reviews of their --

they data they have extant as to -- in order to take the names 

from their files and provide them to you. Is that a correct 

statement?

MR. TRAVERS: You'd have to check with the FBI to give the 

exact figure. You need to understand that what they've been 

asked to do is to go back 13 years and look at all previous 

international terrorism cases through 1990 and provide us an 

assessment of whether individuals in those cases need to be in 

our database. But it is not a trivial question and I believe 

this -- they've only been working on this for a few months, I 

mean, it came out of HSPD-6. 

MS. GORELICK: So, in other words, prior to a few months ago 

there was not an effort on the part of the FBI to share with the 

government as a whole the information it had in its files about 

terrorists in historical cases?

MR. TRAVERS: Again, the whole issue of U.S. persons data 

being in intelligence community databases was an issue and we 

believe we've clarified that and the HSPD makes it quite clear 

that we're to include appropriate U.S. persons data in our 

database, since that decision and clearly goes back to the 

Patriot Act, and that process is being worked.

MS. GORELICK: Before TIPOFF moved from the State Department 

over to you, it's my understanding that the State Department was 

in fact unable to reach an agreement with the FBI, under which 

the FBI would provide the information in its files, is that 

correct?
104

MR. TRAVERS: I wouldn't be able to answer that question.

MS. GORELICK: Let me turn for a moment to Ambassador Harty. 

You've described additional training that you were undertaking 

for consular officers, and we heard this morning that the 

interview process pre-9/11 was summary, to say the least, and in 

some cases non-existent. When your process is complete for 

consular officers on interviews, how long do you expect an 

interview will take?

MS. HARTY: Thanks for the question, because I think that 

there's a pretty broad answer and a wide range of answers to 

that, as you probably expected me to say. The -- first I'd like 

to say that you're right, as I have briefly detailed, the 

training has changed dramatically for us. We have put an 

emphasis on that interview because we want to be able to drill 

down through an individual's story by asking questions that that 

individual's persona, by the documents they present to us, by the 

way they present themselves, gives us pause and gives rise to 

questions we wouldn't normally be able to ask, or drill down 

through if we were simply looking at a package of papers. 

I've traveled to some probably 25 posts in the time I've 

been on the job, and again and again the officers on the line who 

have a pretty hard job and who are patriots in doing it say they 

prefer to see the people than see the paper. Having said that, 

quite naturally I think it fair to say we would spend 

considerably less time on a 67-year-old Norwegian grandmother 

than we might spend on a 20-year-old young man who had -- no 

story didn't sort of hold water and for whom we had sort of an 

abundance of questions and an abundance of caution. We'll take 

less time with the grandmother and take as much time as we need 

with the individual who gives us pause.

MS. GORELICK: So you expect to have results from these 

interviews?

MS. HARTY: I do.

MS. GORELICK: You do?

MS. HARTY: I do.

MS. GORELICK: If someone comes through a country that's in 

the Visa Waiver Program there is no interview, is that correct?
105

MS. HARTY: That's correct, if they're coming for, sort of 

the needs and bounds of the Visa Waiver Program, that's tourists 

90 days or less. If they're coming for other reasons they're 

students, they're people coming for a longer stay of some sort, 

for business reasons, they in fact have to go through a regular 

visa process.

MS. GORELICK: But if I've applied for a tourist visa --

MS. HARTY: If you're coming to Disneyworld for 10 days, 

yes, you do not need at this point, an interview. 

MS. GORELICK: So there's no interview, and so even today 

there are literally millions of visitors coming to this country 

with no interview process, is that correct?

MS. HARTY: From the 27 visa waiver countries, that's in 

fact true.

MS. GORELICK: Now, as I understand it, the statute that 

permits these countries to remain in the Visa Waiver Program and 

thus all of those visitors to come in without the process that 

you've described and the process that you're trying to enhance, 

conditions their continuation on the country having a biometric 

passport scheme, is that correct?

MS. HARTY: That's right, by October 26, 2004.

MS. GORELICK: And what are the chances of any of those 

countries meeting that deadline? 

MS. HARTY: Very few will make it. Very few at this point 

have indicated to us that they will have an ability to do that. 

In fact, I feel it really necessary to say that the decision on 

what the biometric would be -- the statute gave the decision, if 

you will, to ICAO and that decision was made last May, and so 

those countries have not had that much time to do it. There are 

robust efforts in place to put such programs in place, but most 

will not be ready by October 26, 2004. 

MS. GORELICK: When do you expect them to be ready?

MS. HARTY: It differs from country to country. Some say by 

the end of 2005, most actually -- the larger ones say probably by 

the end of 2005 or early 2006, which means that we'll be able to 

begin issuing but not in the volume that we would like to see, 

certainly.
106

MS. GORELICK: So between now and that time, to the extent 

that people come in without the interview process that you've 

described, that will continue for several more years?

MS. HARTY: Well, they will --

MS. GORELICK: If the statute is extended.

MS. HARTY: Well, until 26 October '04, that is the case. 

But I would like to say as well that, while they do not have the 

visa interview at an embassy, they do in fact have an interview 

at a port of entry, and that is in fact -- an inspector has the 

same information that a consular officer has overseas, access to 

the consular officers CLASS database, access to IBIS, access to 

the same information that we would see during an interview and 

can ask the same kind of questions should the so desire.

The 27 countries in the program have had to face sort of a 

rigorous definition of their own abilities to issue valuable 

documentation. We -- the 27 countries that are in the program 

are in fact in the program because their travelers, it has been 

assessed over the course of time, are a much lower risk than 

others from other countries. So it is a program that has been 

assessed from its very inception and continues to be assessed 

regularly, an obligation that originally belonging to the Justice 

Department now belongs to Department of Homeland Security.

As a matter of fact, since the inception of the program, 

several countries have been bounced because they failed to 

continue to maintain that level of confidence that we have in the 

program in the countries that are participating.

MS. GORELICK: But we know that there are countries like 

Germany and France, just to pick two, or U.K. to pick a third, 

that have active al Qaeda cells operating in them and that yet 

they are under this Visa Waiver Program. What would happen if 

the statutory deadline were really enforced and therefore the 

Visa Waiver Program were to end? What -- could you function?

MS. HARTY: If the statutory deadline were to remain in 

place and countries were unable on an individual basis to 

continue to participate or to comply with the program as it 

exists, we estimate that we would see an approximate 5.3 million 

additional visa interviews that would need to be done. That's --

that would be a daunting, daunting challenge for us, given our 
107

current resources. We would not be able to in fact fulfill those 

obligations to the best -- to the way we would want to do it. 

The GAO wrote about this just a couple of years ago, as they 

talked about the Visa Waiver Program and they in fact estimated 

that for the year 2000, visa waiver travelers spent about $39.6 

billion in this country and that's about 57 percent of overseas 

tourist spending in this country. The GAO also went on to say 

that it would take the State Department between two and four 

years to ramp up to be able to meet the necessary workload. 

Having said that, it would be a difficult management challenge 

for us to have to bridge the gap to hire and train and perhaps 

even build brick and mortar facilities to interview people to 

bridge the gap between the October 26,'04 deadline and the time 

when the countries would be able to come online, because it's not 

really on a toggle switch, they are on a trajectory. They are 

going to continue to try and meet the bounds of that program just 

as quickly as they can, so we are talking about a challenge with 

a, sort of a, you know, finite --

MS. GORELICK: Do U.S. passports meet the conditions that we 

would impose on other countries?

MS. HARTY: U.S. passports do not meet the conditions we 

would impose on other countries, nor are -- nor does the law 

require that. Having said that, we have every expectation that 

reciprocity would be fairly rigorously enforced, and so we have, 

as I sort of briefly mentioned in my opening remarks, we have a 

plan for what we're calling the intelligent passport -- I've got 

a sample of it here. 

The intelligent passport has in the front of it the photo 

digitization process that I originally discussed. I know you 

can't see it from here but I'll happily show it to you later. 

But in the back of it -- in fact we envision it having a contactlist chip embedded in the back of the passport with an antenna, 

so that you could at a port of entry -- at a U.S. port of entry 

or overseas, access this documentation quite rapidly. It would 

have the same information currently as is on the biographic page 

of the passport and it would function not unlike a speed pass at 

a tollbooth, so it would be a very quick process through the 

system. 

MS. GORELICK: But how far off is this in reality?

MS. HARTY: Well, actually I'm glad you asked that question.
108

MS. GORELICK: Like the one you have in your hand?

MS. HARTY: Yeah, the one I have in my hand. We will begin 

by the end of '05 to begin to be able to produce these, but also 

not mass produce them -- we have some procurement issues. Happy 

to talk about that to you. As we try and stay a step ahead of 

the people who would do us harm, in some ways we juggle with the 

difficulties as we have all described with sharing information 

and making current systems talk to each other. We have 

procurement issues too, and the rules of procurement and the 

rules that allow us to access new technology sometimes cause us 

to be very hidebound by processes that we would like to move 

along that much more quickly.

MS. GORELICK: You need to check names against essentially 

the terrorist screening center list, but as I understand it under 

the Condor program you were also required to check any 

essentially Arab males against a list, against an FBI list. Is 

that correct?

MS. HARTY: Yes. Condor was one of -- Condor is one of a 

number of different kinds of name checks we do with other 

agencies, yes.

MS. GORELICK: How many checks have you done to date?

MS. HARTY: Approximately 125,000.

MS. GORELICK: Have you had any hits?

MS. HARTY: We have had a number of hits, but none of them 

resulted in a finding of a terrorist through the running of a 

Condor name check.

MS. GORELICK: And are there -- as I understand it there is 

yet a group of people who have neither been denied nor permitted 

to come in --

MS. HARTY: Yes, that's right.

MS. GORELICK: -- who are in limbo, is that correct?

MS. HARTY: That's also right.

MS. GORELICK: What is your advice to this commission as to 

whether that program should be maintained?
109

MS. HARTY: Thank you for asking. What I would like to do is 

work very, very hard with my colleagues at this table to make 

sure that our systems work just exactly as they have described as 

quickly as they possibly can, at which point I would make a run 

at Condor and say that if all of the information is in fact 

contained in the databases stored at TTIC and TSC, I'm not 

entirely sure and not convinced at all, in fact, that we would 

continue to need to do a separate name check. If it's all in 

there, then it's all in there but I'm reluctant to pull the plug 

until we're up and running as complete and total partners. It's 

a little bit off, but I will not be shy about that -- 125,000 

anythings is a lot and we need to make sure that we're spending 

our resources as appropriately as possible. We could be doing 

something different with that time.

MS. GORELICK: Thank you for that, for that answer. I think

it tells us where we need to go with that. A quick question for 

my former colleague, Donna Bucella who couldn't be a better 

person in a tough job, so I'm very pleased to see that you have 

been tapped for this difficult coalescence of many functions. My 

question for you is this: you are now substituting for a unit at 

the State Department that used to respond to consular officers 

who had someone problematic or potentially problematic in front 

of them, and they could call a fellow colleague in the State 

Department and say what do we do? 

My understanding is that that group provided pretty good 

customer service, that is it made it its business to get it back 

and not leave issues hanging and to coordinate across government 

to make sure that the answers got back to the consular official 

sitting there with a person or a piece of paper. What -- how 

confident are you that moving this service to the FBI which is 

known as an enforcement agency, not a service agency, to return 

to my colleague, Secretary Lehman's theme of this morning, how 

confident are you that the FBI can provide that service to our 

consular officers?

MS. BUCELLA: Well, fortunately those colleagues are now my 

colleagues, because they physically are housed at with the TSC, 

and so there has not been a degradation of service and I know 

that Ambassador Harty and I talked about this when we were 

setting up that as long there was no degradation of service. In 

fact I believe we've been able to enhance the service, and I'll 

tell you why. 

One is many of these agencies, while on the books you know 

how each another operates, but when you see them in action, it's 
110

very, very different. And we have been able to really learn from 

our State Department colleagues, the center that we have access 

to now, we have access to all of the TIPOFF information, for 

example. All of the different assignees, whether they're from the 

Secret Service, the FBI, they have the ability now, because 

they've been trained, to go into the TIPOFF database.

As well, the people from the State Department have access to 

be able to go into FBI's ACS and the text IBIS database, so we 

really are sharing the information and it really is a cooperative 

effort, in that if we find that we need more information or 

different types of information, or for example, if we have the 

reach back authority to go back to the State Department, we could 

actually go back to TTIC and say, we need more information. And 

so, we actually have all the parties that need that information 

to go back and articulate what it is that we need. 

The TSC database is an identities database so we have the 

names, we do not have the background files, but the way we are 

setup we have the accessibility to go back to those files and 

then ask our State Department colleagues, what does this mean? 

And it's right there and it's real-time.

MS. GORELICK: One final question. One of your jobs is to 

make available a tool that local law enforcement can use. There 

are nearly a million law enforcement personnel in this country. 

How are you going to ensure the integrity of that database and 

that a terrorist doesn't figure out a way to pulse the database 

to see if he's in it?

MS. BUCELLA: Right now we've been up in operation for a 

little less than two months. Many of our customers really are 

the state and locals. We don't have a database so we just have 

accessibility, we worry about verification and authentication. 

In developing our database such that state and locals as well as 

other federal agencies can sort of dip in and pull information 

out of our database, we're going to sit down with our colleagues 

from both federal state agencies to figure out what the 

requirements are. We need to have a verification process such 

that the local law enforcement can't call on their cell phone 

because we won't be able to verify that. That are some of the 

requirements we have been talking about, exactly how we 

accomplish that, and in many instances we're going to accomplish 

it as we've done through the NCIC. But again, there are some 

vulnerabilities that we have to address in creating our branded 

database.
111

MS. GORELICK: I'm glad to hear that it's top of mine. 

Thank you very much.

MR. KEAN: Senator Gorton?

MR. GORTON: Each of you has been a part, in the last more 

than two years, of a response to 9/11 in an attempt to 

substantially to improve the ability of the United States to 

anticipate and frustrate future 9/11's and I know each of you 

regards it as a process which is long from being done. But each 

of you has testified to believing that major steps forward have 

been taken. I want to ask each of you to use his or her 

imagination and because you're not collectors to assume that no 

additional information or intelligence were available but that 

all of the reforms that you have participated in had been -- were 

in place on 9/11. Interagency communication among agencies or 

the like, the whole rest of the works. What would you rate our 

chances under those circumstances of having been able to 

frustrate or to prevent 9/11 from taking place?

 MR. TRAVERS: I have absolutely no idea. I listened to the 

staff statement quite closely, recognizing two years ago I didn't 

follow this, I've learned a great deal in the last year plus, of 

the watchlisting challenges that went on. I can only deal with 

the subject from sort of the perspective of an analyst and I've 

listened to sort of the connections and they make sense to me. 

But again, we're talking about thousands of pieces of traffic 

that come across people's desks and they're all trying very hard, 

as the staff suggested, to do their jobs and all it takes is one 

breakable link and you may lose the trail. 

This analysis business is really hard and I am -- I have a 

great deal of sympathy for the argument that dealing with 

transnational issues generally cuts across so many different 

organizations of the intelligence community and indeed the U.S. 

government writ large that I'm not personally convinced that it 

would have made a substantially better chance. I mean, we are 

certainly sharing information and I think that in the context of 

the intelligence community we are training people to do 

watchlisting better and make sure that we get all the names but 

there are, as I suggested in my statement, a lot of ways around 

watchlistings as well, so -- that's all I’ll say.

MS. HARTY: I have to agree with Russ. I also don't have 

any idea and I certainly wouldn't present to you, sir, that 

everything we've done has made us a foolproof operation. But 

speaking not only for my colleagues who are adjudicating visas 
112

every day but for all of the hundreds of people I've met in the 

last two years who have together wrapped their brains around 

these issues and stepped up to the challenges, there isn't a 

person out there that doesn't want every day in every way to make 

it the tightest system possible. 

I do believe that that's the genesis of the kinds of changes 

we've made in the order in which we've made them, to close as 

many vulnerabilities and holes and knit up as many different ways 

as we can. Would it have gotten us to a different place on 

September 11th, I don't know. Like Russ, I listened very 

carefully to Mr. Zelikow's statement and greatly saddened as we 

all were by it and what we could see now, those are teaching 

moments for all of us, we will continue to apply our efforts to 

doing the very best job we can. 

MS. BUCELLA: I, of course, would echo what my colleagues 

have said, but there are too many ifs. I can tell you that I was 

out of the United States government for about a year and when I 

came back, the cooperation, the visible cooperation and the tone 

has totally changed after 9/11. And we have a lot more work to 

do, but we actually have people sitting around the table and 

trying to articulate and go through the processes, not as to what 

they should be doing, but how they actually are operating, and we 

on a daily basis, clearly at my center with the cooperation of 

all of the assignees there, are constantly trying to figure out 

ways of, is there a hole here, how are we not communicating? 

And then we regularly hear, between Maura, Russ and I as 

well as a number of other people in different agencies, meet 

pretty routinely just trying to figure out how can we improve? 

The process will never be over because we'll always look for ways 

to fill the gaps and to improve.

MR. GORTON: So, each of you as a very dedicated public 

servant, was putting his or her full time into the kind of 

challenges that we're facing, can't really tell us whether all of 

the work that you have done and that your colleagues have done, 

would have substantially increased our ability to prevent 9/11 

based on exactly the amount of information we had then? One of 

our challenges, one of the things we're asked to do, is to make a 

determination as to whether or not the system in effect at 9/11, 

you know, should not have been able to do better, and to prevent 

it. 

So you can see the frustration we have, the investment that 

the people of the United States have made in you and I know that 
113

what you're doing is very substantial. But you have no way of 

telling us we would have had a -- even a substantially better 

chance of preventing 9/11 if everything you'd have done had been 

in place then? That's the summary of your answers as well as I 

can understand them. Is that correct?

MR. TRAVERS: Times change, sir. I absolutely believe that 

the interagency model is the right one from the TTIC perspective. 

And I certainly believe that the amount of information sharing is 

just plain good government and the fact that we are bringing all 

these databases together is almost a blinding flash of the 

obvious, frankly. Those are all good things, but I can also tell 

you that terrorists are responding to what we are doing and 

they're getting smarter in their own way and we could talk about 

that at length off line, sir, if you'd like?

MR. GORTON: Well, I thank you very much for your candid 

answers. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. KEAN: Congressman Hamilton?

MR. HAMILTON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We heard a lot this morning about inadequate budgets and a 

lot better jobs could be done if the budgets had been a lot 

larger and so I want to ask each of you, given the 

responsibilities that you have in your particular areas, is your 

budget satisfactory?

MS. HARTY: If I might speak first, sir? Secretary Powell's 

Diplomatic Readiness Initiative has given an ability to hire 

considerably more people than we would have been able to at 

another time, we're delighted by that. The State Department's 

budget this year does envision several different additional ways 

of collecting fees that we could keep and I could use and I would 

-- I'm obviously quite supportive of that budget and hopeful that 

it will bear fruit for us in the way we need it to.

MR. HAMILTON: Is the budget sufficient?

MS. HARTY: Yes, sir.

MR. HAMILTON: Mr. Travers?
114

MR. TRAVERS: I'm not a budget expert, sir. TTIC does not 

have a budget because we are not legislated. And that may be the 

wrong way of saying it, but we are an interagency joint venture 

so as a result we are borrowing people. They are assigned to 

TTIC. I'm a DIA officer. I'm paid by DIA as my assignee 

colleagues are paid by their home organizations. I can certainly 

say that we have a substantial amount of money and feel quite 

comfortable that we're going to bring on our database, for 

example, on time, on schedule.

MR. HAMILTON: Do you believe your resources are sufficient?

MR. TRAVERS: Yes, sir, right now I do for this year, yes.

MR. HAMILTON: Ms. Bucella?

MS. BUCELLA: Yes, TSC also operates by each of the 

different agencies donating money to the TSC. Since we've only 

been in operation about a month and a half, almost two months, we 

have not only the financial aspect comes from all the different 

agencies that are assigned to us, but also my manpower is my two 

deputies. One is from DHS and one is from the State Department, 

and currently under our two month longevity so far, I believe 

that we have adequate funding.

MR. HAMILTON: Ms. Harty, I work at an institution now where 

I deal with a lot of academics. This is kind of the flipside of 

the problem we've been talking about here: we all want to stop 

terrorists coming in. But I hear a lot of anecdotal evidence 

from scientists and from researchers, from students, about how 

tough it is to get into the country. And I know you're very 

familiar with this problem and I know a number of university 

presidents -- the chairman, I think will confirm this -- that are 

deeply worried about the flow of people into the country. 

They're very important to us, of course, that they come in. How 

do you -- what can you tell us about this? We've always got this 

tough problem of balancing openness and security, just a matter 

of hitting the right balance.

MS. HARTY: It certainly is, sir, it's one of the many 

balances we try and strike on a daily basis. Secretary Powell 

describes it as a balance between secure borders and open doors. 

No one in the consular field or in any of our fields will do 

anything ever but put security as job one. And having said that, 

we have a requirement to look at the other side too, and the 

definition of security might in fact be more broad than we 
115

sometimes think. In part, that definition of security I think 

includes the economic security of the nation. 

We have, for instance, an $88 billion travel and tourism 

industry. We have a $12 billion international student industry; 

one out of every seven civilian adults employed in this country 

is employed in some facet of the travel and tourism industry. 

When those young people choose to go somewhere else for their 

education, we lose a generation. I have a colleague who's our 

ambassador in Islamabad, and she told me that this past summer 

some 6,000 students, Pakistani students, opted for studies in the 

United Kingdom. Normally in previous years they'd issue visas to 

about 2,000 students, and I look at that and I say that too is a 

security problem for us. 

When students choose to go somewhere else, they're choosing 

for themselves at that moment in time certainly, they're choosing 

for their younger brothers and sisters, they're probably choosing 

for their children at a later date, they're certainly choosing 

who they want to do business with at a later date when they are 

then sort of leaders in their civic or civil societies. It is a 

concern of ours. Secretary Powell has said since September 11th 

itself, we cannot erect a gate around America that terrorists win 

again. It is however a balance we have to strike. 

When I came into the job there were tremendous backlogs, 

tremendous backlogs mostly engendered by a variety of new name 

checks and a series of systems that could not speak to each 

other. We have whacked that way back in almost all cases. For 

instance, now it's only about 2 percent of all cases worldwide 

that need in fact an additional Washington based name check. 

Over time, as we mentioned, with respect to the Condor program, 

over time when we are completely up and running and feel very 

good about every element of our new partnership with TTIC and 

TSC. Maybe we can trim that down even further. 

At embassies now, any embassy you go to, there are programs 

in place to allow a medical emergency, a student with a valid I20 and a ticking clock, so here she needs to get to their place 

of education, and a business person with an emergency to move to

the front of the line. Out of the 211 visa adjudicating posts 

around the world, only fewer than 30 have more than a 30-day wait 

to get an appointment anyway.

MR. HAMILTON: I don't know what the data is, but I do know 

that there is a very intense feeling in the academic community 

generally that we haven't got the balance struck right yet and 
116

that I hear stories about thousands of students who would 

ordinarily come to the United States are now planning not to come 

to the United States but to go elsewhere. Perhaps not a big deal 

--

MS. HARTY: Oh, sir, excuse me for talking, I think it's a 

terribly big deal. The Institute for International Education, I 

believe, did a report earlier this summer and it in fact 

indicated that the growth rate of foreign students to the United 

States was in fact smaller than anybody wanted or anticipated. 

The overall number of students in the country was still a little 

bit higher than previous years.

MR. HAMILTON: I know you've got a tough problem here. I'm 

glad to know you're sensitive to it. We do indeed want to keep 

terrorists out, but there are an awful lot of good people we want 

to let in.

MS. HARTY: I couldn't agree with you more, sir.

MR. HAMILTON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Fielding?

MR. FIELDING: First, I'd like to thank you all as well, not 

only for your service but for appearing here today, and for the 

candor of some of your answers. They're not exactly always what 

we want to hear, but we do want to hear your candor. My fellow 

commissioners have covered a lot of the ground that I wanted to 

deal with, in particular though we all would yearn to have the 

ability to know not only that there's coordinating body that can 

now assemble all these facts, but there will be a body that can 

connect those dots, to use the overused phrase, so anything that 

anyone can give us, either in these sessions or maybe more 

appropriately, much more appropriately in private sessions, the 

Commission would welcome and would like to extend that charge to 

you, if we could. 

In specific regard to just clearing up a few things, I must 

say, Ms. Bucella, I need your help on something, because good old 

Washington, if there is any way that there's a division of 

responsibility or if there's any power shifting around, there's 

the temptation to duplicate effort and to replicate task. And 

you said that in your testimony, I believe you said it's good 

terrorism information is now in one place. But now, as I 

understand it, TSC checks intelligence that's gathered from

agencies against terrorist watchlists?
117

MS. BUCELLA: What we do is we have the terrorist identities 

information. There is -- it would be the name of the terrorist 

and a few other identifiers. We do not maintain the actual file 

or background information about that. That information is still 

maintained by all the gathering agencies, the originating 

agencies. So what we have is the location of knowing the names 

and identities of the terrorists.

MR. FIELDING: Okay then, bear with me just a little here. 

DHS had a press release and they said that the majority of 

information received from you comes from TTIC. After it's 

assembled and analyzed the information from numerous sources then 

it ends up going to you. Now, if TTIC gathers most of the 

information and was created to bridge the gap we all sense 

between foreign and domestic gathering sources, and you receive 

the information from the FBI and it receives information from the 

FBI as well, why isn't TSC simply located in TTIC? What added 

benefit is achieved by you being located in the FBI? If any.

MS. BUCELLA: I don't know if I have an answer to that, 

since I -- the creation of the TSC came out of HSPD-6. But the 

information that we have comes from two different sources. The 

domestic terrorism information comes from the FBI. That is not 

sitting at TTIC. The international terrorist information goes 

through the TTIC. So there are two trunks of information coming 

in. That information though is again only the identities of 

terrorists that are known and suspected. The background 

information still resides at TTIC. 

MS. GORELICK: Excuse me, if I could just interrupt. When 

you say domestic, you mean non-terrorism related. In other 

words, the FBI's information on terrorists, that is, people who 

are in the United States but have some relationship with 

terrorism would go to TTIC. Is that correct?

MS. BUCELLA: Not if they were abortion bombers or 

something.

MS. GORELICK: No. I'm saying if they were related to 

international terrorists.

MS. BUCELLA: That's correct, yes.

MS. GORELICK: So the only piece -- just to clarify here, 

the only piece that TSC has that TTIC wouldn't have would be what 
118

we call a domestic terrorist, an abortion clinic bomber or the 

Oklahoma City model militia terrorist?

MR. FIELDING: Do you agree? Am I missing something here? 

You see what my question was?

MR. TRAVERS: TTIC is an analytic organization. We have no 

operational function whatsoever so that a decision to -- we will 

nominate to a watchlist but Donna's people will decide whether or 

not it meets the criteria and will put it on the watchlist and 

interact with CT watchlist and so forth. We don't do that. 

MR. FIELDING: Well, okay. 

Ambassador Harty, just let me ask a follow-up question. 

We're dealing unfortunately with what-ifs all the time here. One 

of the areas that really was troublesome in analyzing what's 

happened on 9/11 was the whole visa applicant issue. The 

questioning of applicants in Saudi Arabia has caused problems of 

concern. So I guess, a couple part question to you. Have the 

changes in interview policies since 9/11 changed that as well? 

Are you now interviewing far more these applicants and are there 

any examples you can help us to demonstrate whether this is 

leading to anything positive? 

And the other side of that, I would like to also say, one of 

the major concerns was that people were getting visas without 

really giving fulsome information or even complete information. 

Are you satisfied now that there is a policy and an 

implementation policy that now differs today so that that would 

not happen again under ordinary circumstances?

MS. HARTY: Yes, sir. Thank you for the question. With 

respect to changes in visa interview policy, we, last August, put 

into place a policy that had already, in the immediate aftermath 

of September 11th, begun informally by many, many posts and that 

is we see just about everybody now. The reasons for that or that 

we believe the interview is a useful thing to do, as I said 

earlier, to sort of drill down through a story. The other part 

of this is we have a congressional mandate to collect a biometric 

feature to embed in a non-immigrant visa. And so we are seeing 

people because we are also taking a digital sort of scan of their 

fingerprints. So we are seeing almost everybody. The exceptions 

concord with the exceptions given by DHS at ports of entry, 

younger than 14, older than 79.
119

With respect to your question, whether or not we have 

anything to show for it. You didn't put that way. I will. The 

real truth is when you see people and you can drill down through 

a story, you may not, certainly almost never, if ever, at the end 

of an interview, say, Yep, that was a terrorist. I got him. 

What you do say is what you heard that inspector say earlier 

today. Somebody gives you pause. Somebody, in his words, gives 

you the creeps. Somebody's story doesn't concord with the 

reality. You know, speaking the language and living in that 

country, that somebody doesn't get the right to go to America and 

that's a very useful thing to do in an interview.

MR. FIELDING: Great. Thank you all very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Ben-Veniste.

MR. BEN-VENISTE Thank you and thank you to members of the 

panel for your contribution here today and in working with our 

staff. I have a question first for Mr. Travers. You've 

indicated that there is some ambiguity with respect to the job 

that you're trying to perform at TTIC and the analytic efforts of 

others within the government and you mentioned that some of the 

legacy organizations may not be on board. I would like you to 

elaborate on that if you would be kind enough to do so.

MR. TRAVERS: I didn't mean to imply that there were legacy 

organizations that weren't on board. My point was that you can 

go back in the National Security Act and you've got a whole bunch 

of departments and organizations and agencies that have been 

around a very long while. They have got missions for which they 

need intelligence. We have TTIC that is now extant as an 

interagency joint venture that will try to bring together 

terrorist threat warning material. 

What responsibilities should devolve from some of these 

other organizations to TTIC, what should stay put? I don't 

believe that there is a clear cut answer to that question. There 

is no doubt that CTC needs operational support. There is no 

doubt that the DOD organization needs force protection support 

from its terrorist analytic organization. So there are no bright 

red lines, I think, that allow one to decide this should go 

there, this should stay here. That was my only point. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE Well, I guess the issue we're struggling 

with is what has been frequently called stovepiping or turf or 
120

owning information. There is a natural tendency, at least among 

men, maybe not so much among women -- I'm probably going to get 

in trouble for saying this. I'm glad to see that two of the 

representatives of these agencies now are women who, according to 

others who have studied this subject suggest they are more 

inclined to share information into personal relationships. 

But to be very serious about this, part of the problem has 

been the inability of one agency which develops information to 

provide that information to another agency which did not develop 

it but which may well use it for the common good. That's exactly 

the reason why TTIC was created. The question is whether it's 

functioning as it was intended, whether you're getting the kind 

of cooperation that you ought to get. Would you agree with me 

that the only way in which that function can be made viable is by 

leadership from the very top of the government? Someone has to 

tell the agencies, Look, don't just pay mouth service to this. 

You've got to do it.

MR. TRAVERS: I don't believe that's what's happening, sir. 

I mean, we've had the Information Sharing Memorandum of 

Understanding, for example. Puts a positive duty on 

organizations to share with TTIC information. Again, getting 

back to the notion of legacy systems, we've got architectures out 

there that -- my personal desk has five CPUs under it. I have a 

whole host of organizations piping information to me. We have 

some security policy questions that preclude us from being able 

to do federated search across all those CPUs and so we are having 

to work through those details. 

But I don't -- I won't sit here and suggest that the heart 

is not willing. We have had FBI over the last six months 

bringing FBI Net into our system. As I suggested, they are 

providing for us all this historical data. They're going to 

provide people on our floor, working for Mike Resnick, my 

database guy, to make sure that we're including all of the 

international terrorism individuals that they suspect. So I 

don't think it's a question frankly of a willingness to share 

information.

MR. BEN-VENISTE What about on the follow-up side? You're 

receiving information. You're analyzing it. You have no 

operational capability. But clearly a function of an 

intelligence analytical operation is the ability to direct the 

follow-up or the future collection of intelligence information. 

What is your function and experience with respect to that and is 

that running as smoothly or as vigorously as you would like?
121

MR. TRAVERS: Recognizing that we're still a relatively

young organization, just since last summer, but the -- Charlie 

Allen, the DCI for collection, has placed an individual into TTIC 

to do just exactly that. We have a collection manager in TTIC 

who works on a daily basis with the analyst to ensure that 

collection requirements are being registered with the appropriate 

collector, and we will compete quite well, I'm convinced, against 

all of the other collection requirements that are out there.

MR. BEN-VENISTE So are you saying that it is functioning in 

a way that you are well satisfied with?

MR. TRAVERS: As I said a number of times in my statement, 

we have a long ways to go. The issue of how we bring together 

foreign intelligence collection requirements and domestic 

intelligence collection requirements is new business for this 

government. And so we have not yet fixed that problem, but we 

are certainly working it.

MR. BEN-VENISTE But in terms of your ability to communicate 

your collection needs and the responsiveness of those with whom 

that collection request is charged, is that functioning well or 

is that among the areas in which you are ambivalent in your 

praise?

MR. TRAVERS: On every priority list that this government 

has, terrorism is at the top. And so while I have not -- I 

couldn't sit here and give you examples of how a TTIC 

intelligence collection requirement stacked up against the 

Pacific Command intelligence collection requirement if the 

collector was the same, I can say with a great deal of confidence 

that TTIC would do very well.

MR. BEN-VENISTE Ambassador Harty, let me ask you a question 

that I put early to Mary Ryan, and that is whether you have 

discovered in the course of your service in the consular office 

that there are -- that there is an issue with respect to the 

integrity of translators used in the visa application process in 

various locations throughout the world where you do not have 

native language speakers performing the consular functions.

MS. HARTY: The short answer is no. I do not -- I'm not 

aware of any systemic problem that way. But there are a couple 

of things I'd like to add if I might, sir. First is when I came 

into the job, we sent a cable to all ambassadors all around the 

world and said, please look at the language requirements of every 
122

officer at that embassy, with specific reference to the consular 

section, and make sure that we are sending out language qualified 

officers at the level you believe you ought to have. Number one.

Number two, in those posts where we do in fact use native 

speakers as interpreters, there's a number of anti-fraud, antimalfeasance steps that should and ought to be taken, and I 

believe in most places where there might be an issue or where we 

do have native speakers serving as translators, we do do. And 

that is you rotate them. You avoid all patterns of predictable 

behavior so that any given interpreter today doesn't know which 

officer they're going to work with tomorrow, which window they're 

going to sit at after lunch, and so that you are constantly sort 

of mixing the field so that there isn't any way for anybody to 

really sort of plan who they're going to interview, how they're 

going to interview. 

But I think there's no substitute for training all Foreign 

Service Officers in the languages that they need to do the job. 

They're living in a country. They are simply better when they 

speak that language well to the very best of their abilities.

MR. BEN-VENISTE Let me ask you, if there are no systemic 

problems with regard to the corruption or corruptibility of 

translators, are there anecdotal instances with which you're 

familiar?

MS. HARTY: No, sir. I have to say I'm not. I can 

certainly find out for you. It seems you may know something I 

don't know, but don't have a story.

MR. BEN-VENISTE Well, as I say, we've received anecdotal 

information about it. I'm not suggesting it's systemic. Korea 

is a country which has been mentioned. There are others that 

it's specifically mentioned where for a relatively modest amount 

of money a virtual lock on a visa can be purchased. That's the 

information we've received, and not from people unacquainted with 

the system.

MS. HARTY: I will certainly, sir, look at that. There are 

very few things we take more seriously than malfeasance, and the 

Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the Bureau of Consular Affairs 

since Assistant Secretary Taylor and I came on board have a 

robust partnership in ferreting it out, in exonerating people who 

ought to be exonerated, and in punishing swiftly those who ought 

to be punished.
123

MR. BEN-VENISTE I'm pleased to hear that. Let me just 

finish by asking you whether it is feasible to train consular 

officers in foreign languages of their assignment, given the 

rotation and the fact that they will be moving to other posts.

MS. HARTY: Yes, sir, I think it is. One of the things that 

has also changed are some of the rules as to how much language 

training an officer can get before they go to post. Junior 

officers have five years, during which time -- the first five 

years of their employment is the time that they are under a 

tenure process. In pre-9/11 times it used to be that you could 

only get a certain amount of language training, I think it was 

six months, during the five years, because they wanted to make 

sure that you had an ability to demonstrate how you were going to 

do on the job. 

The Office of Personnel, Foreign Service Institute have 

changed those rules, have moved those meets and bans. We need to 

give people the language they need to do the job. Physical 

presence isn't enough. You have to be able to do the job.

MR. BEN-VENISTE That's encouraging. Thank you.

MR. KEAN: Congressman Roemer, then Senator Kerrey.

MR. ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to go back to Ambassador Harty's initial remarks when 

she opened up our hearing, thank her for acknowledging the very 

valuable contributions that the 9/11 families have made, both to 

this commission and to the type of questions we sometimes ask in 

these open hearings. And I think it's safe to say that we 

probably wouldn't be here as a commission if it weren't for the 

9/11 families' fierce determination and hard work. We certainly 

would not have gotten the funding increase that we requested 

several months ago. 

And I'm hopeful that this commission will forcefully and 

aggressively ask for an extension so that we can complete our 

business, and I'm hopeful that those families will help us in 

that effort to make sure that we can definitively write the 

account of the plot of 9/11 and work in a bipartisan way to make 

recommendations to make this country safer. You acknowledged 

that participation by 9/11 families in your opening statement and 

I want to thank you for that.
124

One of the issues that they've been very interested in has 

been the reports about a plane that left a few days after 9/11

that had a number of Saudis on it that was cleared out of our 

airspace and had members of the bin Laden family. Are any of the 

three of you aware of this? Have you requested after-action 

reports on this planeload of Saudis that left? What do you know 

about it?

MS. HARTY: I'm sorry, Commissioner Roemer, I don't have any 

knowledge of that. I'm happy to try and find out if it's in 

State's purview, but I don't have any knowledge of that.

MR. TRAVERS: Nor do I.

MS. BUCELLA: I don't.

MR. ROEMER: We've heard reports that they left a few days 

after 9/11. There have been even some reports, I don't know if 

they're accurate or not, that this happened on the 15th or 16th. 

I'd be interested in if you could task back to your agencies, if 

you all have asked to interview any of those Saudis that left our 

country a few days after 9/11, whether or not the FBI accompanied 

the people to the plane, to the airport. I'd be interested in 

any after-action reports that your agencies have on this and who 

might have approved the plane leaving U.S. airspace. If you 

could help us with that we would greatly appreciate it.

On a different note, Mr. Travers, with respect to privacy, 

here's an issue that Americans care deeply about. On the one 

hand, we want to make sure that the terrorists are not successful 

in their next attack on America. On the other hand, we greatly 

respect our civil liberties and our civil rights, and we need 

that balance. One of the few people that has lost a job since 

9/11 has been a man by the name of John Poindexter, who started a 

program called Total Information Awareness. 

I know you in your statement addressed advanced analytical 

tools and the role they can play in helping us watchlist people. 

I think that there are some positive things that we might be able 

to ascertain and develop as a result of some of these programs, 

but I also think that we have to be very, very careful what we 

label them and how we work them and task them, and that we 

balance these with the respect for civil rights and civil 

liberties that is firmly enshrined in our documents in this 

country. What if any part is your organization trying to take 

from this initial development of Total Information Awareness and 
125

how can you explain the value of this in a positive way as an 

analytical tool to people watching today?

MR. TRAVERS: The tools themselves, from my perspective, are 

benign. The question is what information streams go into the 

tools and you can envision a number of different cases. On the 

one extreme, we could have our intelligence community databases 

that could be -- the information could be compared to one another 

to look for patterns or linkages that, as I suggested, with in 

excess of 2,000 cables per day plus everything in history, it is 

beyond the realm of reason to think that any intelligence analyst 

by himself or herself would be able to in fact draw linkages. 

Did that phone number match that phone number, or whatever? 

So you do need very powerful tools to do that. My own 

thinking would be that, if you're entirely on the intelligence 

community side, then this really is no problem at all. This is 

all foreign intelligence information that we are passing to 

determine linkages. If you have a linkage with a U.S. person, 

now our ability to query a transactional database, for example, 

from a known --

MR. ROEMER: What's a transactional one?

MR. TRAVERS: Credit card databases or something along those 

lines, we wouldn’t do but we could ask the foreign terrorist 

tracking task force to do that or we could in essence throw it 

over the transom to determine if there's a linkage back to the 

United States and then we could have that data because there's a 

nexus to terrorism. There's a 12333 exception and I think we're 

fine as far as our view of privacy would be.

The hard question gets to be how do you bring together 

databases that have foreign intelligence information but then 

information with U.S. persons that isn't such a transactional 

database. You can't bring those all together because there, 

there is clearly problems with privacy and so what I think large 

numbers of people in the private sector and the government are 

trying to think through is can you anonymize data? Is there a 

way that you can in fact benefit from the power of technology and 

bring together these streams of information but still be 

completely in accord with all the privacy concerns which we 

share? I can all tell you that we're bending over backwards not 

to go too far in that direction. 
126

MR. ROEMER: So the long and short of it is you are trying 

to develop some firewalls to protect those transactional accounts 

--

MR. TRAVERS: Absolutely, yeah.

MR. ROEMER: -- but you are moving in some of the same 

directions that that terrorist awareness program or total 

information program began.

MR. TRAVERS: There are a number of programs that will help 

us do data mining and I talk about data mining in TIA in sort of 

the same general phraseology and certainly the intelligence 

community believes we need to do these things. But right now, 

we're focusing on only using foreign intelligence now trying to 

decide, trying to work with the attorneys to decide how far we 

can go or can't go with respect to U.S. persons data.

MR. ROEMER: Those firewalls are certainly very important to 

this commission and the American people and if you could provide 

in writing for the Commission a more specific and thorough 

listing of the databases and the transactional accounts and the 

program that you're developing, I would appreciate it. 

MR. TRAVERS: Sure.

MR. ROEMER: Thank you, sir.

MR. KEAN: Senator Kerrey and then last questions from 

Secretary Lehman.

MR. KERREY: Mr. Travers, I'm going to come at this question 

that you've been asked in three or four different ways. I'm 

going to try and ask it somewhat differently. But it gets down 

to who do you report to and what kind of accountability do we 

have in the system? If Ambassador Harty issues a visa, if 

somebody out there gets a visa and comes to the United States and 

does something bad, she's going to be up in front of both the 

House and the Senate, Foreign and International Affairs 

Committee. She's going to be up there testifying and asking why 

she isn't resigning, et cetera. The heat will go on her 

immediately. Who do you report to on the other hand? 

It seems like you got a situation where everybody reports to 

their own individual bosses. They come into this center -- you, 

for example, you are a DIA employee. Number one, how do you 

establish the kind of accountability relationships that you need
127

to have in order to be able to -- it's okay, we now know who to 

blame if I got a problem. Who takes responsibility for doing it 

right and who takes responsibility for doing it wrong?

MR. TRAVERS: I'm one of the day-to-day managers with John 

Brennan, the director of TTIC, who responds to the DCI.

MR. KERREY: He reports to DCI?

MR. TRAVERS: Yes, sir.

MR. KERREY: So if there's a mistake either not getting 

somebody on a watchlist who should be on a watchlist or getting 

somebody on a watchlist who doesn't belong on a watchlist, it's 

Director Tenet or the DCI's responsibility for that mistake?

MR. TRAVERS: As I said a couple of times, we are 

interagency. So we bring together information that comes from a 

whole host of organizations within the intelligence community and 

outside the intelligence community and we are partnered with CIA, 

DOD, DHS and FBI.

MR. KERREY: I've heard you say that several times but now 

I'm putting it to you in the form of a question. If a mistake is 

made and somebody is not on a watchlist who should have been or 

somebody is on a watchlist and shouldn't, do we hold Director 

Tenet or the DCI responsible for that?

MR. TRAVERS: I can envision --

MR. KERREY: Do we hold you responsible for it? Do we hold 

DIA responsible for it? Who do we hold responsible for it?

MR. TRAVERS: We are setting a protocol so that 

organizations other than -- the watchlisting support function has 

been largely CIA and State Department in the past. We are 

working with DIA to get all of their names into a database, also 

working with --

MR. KERREY: You're saying you don't know who we hold 

responsible or --

MR. TRAVERS: No, I'm saying that if you can pull the string 

on --

MR. KERREY: I'm trying to get to a question with a yes or 

no as an answer. Do I hold Tenet responsible or not?
128

MR. TRAVERS: I don't think it lends itself, sir, to a yes 

or no question because -- a yes or no answer. You pull the 

string on an individual, he may have been in a DIA IIR and that 

didn't get submitted for watchlisting. So is that the director 

of DIA or is that the DCI? What if it was an FBI TRRS?

MR. KERREY: Do you have any concern about an environment 

where eventually I can pull the string and go into a hundred 

different directions and you don't end up being able to say, 

well, this happened on my watch and therefore I'm responsible for 

it?

MR. TRAVERS: As I suggested earlier on, sir, it is a 

difficult problem. Unless you're going to put the entire 

counterterrorism effort under one individual in the U.S. 

government -- and I don't know how you'd do that because now 

you're picking up Treasury responsibilities and special ops 

functions, this is a matrix managed across the government by a 

lot of different people. And that I think is a fact.

MR. KERREY: I mean, currently do you report to any 

committee in Congress? Do you --

MR. TRAVERS: I believe there are six committees and 17 

subcommittees that claim jurisdiction.

MR. KERREY: For you?

MR. TRAVERS: Yes.

MR. KERREY: And do you report to them? I mean, they hold 

hearings and all that sort of thing on you?

MR. TRAVERS: There are varying degrees of responsiveness 

and I'm now out on my own and I won't go any further than that in 

terms of what we provide to the subcommittees. 

MR. KERREY: Thank you.

MR. KEAN: Secretary Lehman.

MR. LEHMAN: Thank you. I have one question for Ambassador 

Harty. We had an interesting discussion in this morning's panel 

with your predecessor and we talked about what has been at least 

a 30-year decline in Consular Affairs, a steady erosion of 

influence, closing of consulates around the world in every 
129

administration, a shrinking, a diminishment of resources, 

reduction of manpower, the loss of what in many periods was seen 

as an elite professional consular corps and, in my experience, 

which again is in about the middle of that period, a dropping out 

of the assistant secretary from the crucial seventh floor 

meetings. In State, perhaps more than in any other bureaucracy, 

where you sit is where you stand and it was quite evident from 

your predecessor's fairly forthright complaint after 9/11 that 

nobody told her. She didn't have the intelligence. She wasn't 

in the loop and that was exactly what we got from the interviews 

with the officers in Saudi Arabia. Why didn't anybody tell us? 

So where are you today? The reduction of prestige in 

consular function to being an entry level scut work job as 

opposed to a long-term professional elite career, is that being 

restored? Do you sit in the secretary's staff meetings? Are you 

part of the loop? Do you ask for intelligence as opposed to 

waiting to have something be dropped on your desk? Do your 

people feel that you are in the loop, you're a player, that they 

don't have to depend on a cable.

As some of them said, "Well, you know, official doctrine was 

Saudi Arabia was our close friends. So why would we look for a 

terrorist among the Saudi Arabians?" I mean, if you're part of 

what's going on, you think in a broader sense. And I guess, the 

question is, are you raising or have you raised Consular Affairs 

back up to its elite-ness with esprit and reality of being the 

outer defenses of this country?

MS. HARTY: Gosh, I appreciate the question and I could go 

on at some lengths about this, so I thank you for it. I won’t, 

but I'll try and summarize very quickly, sir. It is true that in 

the 1990s there was a great diminution in resources across the 

board at the State Department and the resulting closure of 

consulates abroad affected not only consular functions but every 

other function a consulate might perform. Having said that, I am 

really very pleased and proud to assure you that Secretary Powell 

practically charges me rent. I am there, I am at his meetings. 

I was his executive secretary immediately before taking this job. 

He chose for the first time ever to put a career consular 

officer in the job as assistant secretary for Consular Affairs. 

This is the first time in the history of the Bureau of Consular 

Affairs that a consular officer has actually run it. I think 

that speaks to -- although I respect all of my predecessors who 

have had this job. When you have had 23 years in the field 
130

knowing exactly what the people who work for you know, that helps 

you get the job done.

A quick anecdote if I might about the spirit of the consular 

cone at this point. I just came back about six weeks ago from a 

trip to seven posts in the Middle East, including Baghdad, and 

then ended the trip in London. At each of those posts, one or 

more than one non-consular officer said to me, "Your work has 

meaning. It's where it's happening now. How do we switch into 

the consular cone?" And I've got an e-mail from a guy in 

Jakarta, asked the same thing today.

I think that we have proven that in consular work, what we 

do, among other things, is touch lives. We touch the lives of 

private American citizens every day as we protect and defend them 

overseas. We touch the lives of American citizens who seek and 

need passports from us quickly or in a rather more routine 

fashion.

We also touch the lives of the people who come to the 

embassies who seek to immigrate or seek to visit our country. 

How we treat those people is important because we need 

information from them about whether or not they are legitimate 

travelers to our country. It's also important because even if we 

refuse them a visa, they have a right to a dignified experience 

and we don't have any rights to defile the reputation of the 

United States by not treating them in a cordial fashion.

It is, in fact, very much where things are happening. I 

mentioned Assistant Secretary Taylor a little while ago, who's 

our assistant secretary for Diplomatic Security. He and Cofer 

Black and I are attached at the hip on a regular basis, as are 

various of my counterparts at the Department of Homeland 

Security, and as Donna mentioned earlier, we're in touch all of 

the time. I think it is exactly the time to be in Consular 

Affairs. I think an awful lot of Foreign Service Officers have 

realized that, and we take all comers. It's a time to step up. 

It's a time, frankly, to be a patriot, and we have an awful lot 

of young people who are very interested in doing that.

MR. LEHMAN: Thank you.

MS. HARTY: Thank you, sir.

MR. KEAN: Thank you all very, very much. We appreciate the 

time you took with us today and certainly appreciate your 

government service. 
131

Thank you.

We've come now to our fourth panel. Our first witness will 

be James W. Ziglar Senior, a former commissioner, Immigration and 

Naturalization Service, Department of Justice. He formerly 

served as assistant secretary of the Interior, where he's 

responsible for a successful restructuring of the Bureau of 

Reclamation. 

Following Mr. Ziglar will be Robert C. Bonner, commissioner 

of the U.S. Customs Service since September 20th, 2001. On March 

1st, 2003, Mr. Bonner became the first head of the Bureau of 

Customs and Border Protection in the Department of Homeland 

Security. He is currently responsible for uniting all aspects of 

border activities, including the U.S. Customs Service, 

Immigration inspectors and Border Patrol of legacy INS, and the 

Agricultural inspectors from the Department of Agriculture. He 

previously served as a United States district judge in California 

and the administrator of the DEA.

Our last witness is Peter Verga, principal deputy assistant 

secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense. Immediately following 

September 11th, 2001, Mr. Verga served as a special assistant for 

Homeland Security and director of the Department of Defense 

Homeland Security Task Force. Would you please all rise and 

raise your hand. 

(Witnesses sworn.)

Thank you. Mr. Ziglar, you going first?

MR. JAMES ZIGLAR: Mr. Chairman and members of the 

Commission, I appreciate the invitation to appear today to assist 

in your effort to establish a complete and accurate record of the 

events leading up to September 11th and the actions that were 

taken in the aftermath.

As you know, my first day of commissioner was August the 

6th, 2001, one month and five days before the attacks of 

September 11th. Consequently, I have little to offer in terms of 

your investigation of events occurring before September 11th. In 

my written testimony I have attempted to tell the story of the 

INS' response to September 11th and the story of our efforts to 

improve our performance in the many areas for which we had 

jurisdiction. It's been 14 months since I retired from federal 

service, so I hope you understand that I did not have access to 
132

records or staff in preparing my testimony. I did my best to be 

as thorough as possible with the resources and records and the 

time available. 

When I was first approached about the possibility of taking 

the Commissioners job in March of 2001, it was explained to me 

that the President was looking for someone with management 

experience to fulfill two mandates. These mandates were based 

upon promises that the President had made during the campaign. 

The first was to restructure and reform the INS by separating the 

service and enforcement functions to create more accountability, 

effectiveness and efficiency. The second was to reduce the 

backlog of applications and petitions to an average processing 

time of not more than six months.

When I entered the INS building on August the 6th, 2001, I 

felt a sense of great urgency about moving forward with the 

restructuring. I knew from my experience as an assistant 

secretary of the Interior during the Reagan administration that 

moving quickly in a new job and getting buy-in from employees for 

major change were necessary to success. It worked for me in 

restructuring the Bureau of Reclamation and I had high hopes that 

it would work here.

In my first month in the office, I spent most of my time 

learning about the INS bureaucracy, directing the process of 

creating a restructuring plan, and talking to and with employees 

about the need for fundamental change. In fact, in my first 30 

days, I met with every employee in the Washington area through a 

series of group meetings and question and answer sessions, and I 

used our audio and video communications capacities to reach out 

to those in the field.

The restructuring task force that I put into place within 

the first 48 hours of joining the INS worked diligently through 

the month of August to fashion a restructuring plan that met the 

President's goals and that would rebuild the INS to achieve 

accountability and effectiveness. We drew heavily on the work 

that had been done before, including a good restructuring plan 

that had been proposed by Commissioner Meissner. On September 

the 10th, we delivered our proposed restructuring plan to the 

attorney general. September 11th obviously changed the focus of 

our efforts at the INS. 

From that day on we were engaged in participating in the 

investigation of the events that transpired, we were working to 

prevent any further terrorist attacks, we were developing and 
133

implementing new initiatives to increase our effectiveness, and 

we were actively engaged in hardening our borders to prevent the 

entry of terrorists into the United States. And I use the term 

borders in a very broad sense.

In my written statement I have attempted to give you at 

least a partial summary of the many actions that we took in these 

regards. The events of September 11th itself brought home to me 

just how important it was to continue the process of 

restructuring and reforming the INS. An experience during those 

first hours after the attacks convinced me that I could not take 

my eye off the ball of the restructuring. As I mentioned in my 

written testimony, the INS was responsible for suggesting to the 

attorney general that federal law enforcement agencies should 

provide agents to supplement security at airport checkpoints. 

We offered up 300 border patrol agents as the first 

contingent, and in fact, we had 317 agents on the ground at nine 

airports, beginning within 36 hours of the attacks. When the 

President approved this initiative at the suggestion of the 

attorney general and we set up about mobilizing our agents, it 

came to my attention that the chief of the border patrol was not 

actually in charge of the border patrol. You can imagine my 

amazement at that. But given this reality, it was also obvious 

to me that it would take days or even weeks to work our way 

through the bureaucratic decision making process. I quickly 

suspended the established chain of command, put the border 

control chief in direct command, and we started moving agents to 

the airports immediately.

In April 2002, after finally receiving reprogramming 

authority from the House and Senate Appropriations Committees to 

start the restructuring, the first change I announced as part one 

-- as the first part of phase one was the permanent realignment 

of the border control chain of command to put the chief of the 

border control as its actual operating head. As we were 

preparing to implement phase two of the restructuring, the 

President announced his Homeland Security Department initiative 

and we altered our process to blend in with that initiative. It 

was clear to me that in the now hot war on terrorism, we had to 

simplify and clarify our command and management structure, we had 

to impose accountability and performance standards, and we had to 

upgrade and integrate our technology.

As noted in my written testimony on September the 14th, 

three days after September 11th, I gave clear directions to my 

senior staff that we were not going to drop the ball on 
134

restructuring. On October 3rd we briefed the attorney general on 

the plan and got his signoff to submit it to the White House for 

review. On November the 14th, we submitted it to the Congress. 

What this commission and the American people need to understand 

and appreciate is that the scope of the duties and mandates 

imposed on the INS far exceeded the resources that Congress had 

made available to it for many years. 

Even though the budget of the INS began to increase in the 

early 1990s, primarily to hire more Border Patrol agents for the 

southwest border, things such as interior enforcement, technology 

improvements, integration of information systems, benefits 

processing, adequate expansion of detention and removal 

capabilities and a host of other important functions were the 

subject of neglect, benign and otherwise. Yet even if Congress 

had supported and funded all of the things that should have been 

done, I doubt whether that would have prevented the events of 

September the 11th. The real failure was, in my personal 

opinion, a failure to gather intelligence information, analyze it 

and disseminate it to the points, including especially the INS 

and the Department of State, where it could be used to thwart 

terrorists. 

Since I wasn't part of the pre-September 11th structure, I 

can't speak directly to those issues. However, I have a keen 

grasp of the obvious. And it was abundantly obvious to me that 

September 11th was in most part an intelligence failure. It's 

also obvious to me that the next terrorist attack will be 

prevented by constantly improving our intelligence gathering 

capabilities and the development of modalities for the rapid 

dissemination of usable intelligence information for those on the 

front line.

If our first encounter with a terrorist is when he or she 

comes and shows up at the border and we don't know or suspect 

that he or she is a terrorist, then we've lost the battle. As 

good as the people are who work for Commissioner Bonner at 

Customs and Border Protection, and they are good, they are not 

mind readers. They must have the information and tools necessary 

to make the split-second decisions that we expect of them, and 

they must be thoroughly trained to know exactly what it is 

they're looking for.

In the near-term aftermath of the attacks on September 11th, 

we took a number of important steps, including, among others, the 

identification of the hijackers, which was a process that 

actually went on over several days. It was -- the first process 
135

was just to look at the seating charts on the airplanes, figure 

out who probably they were, check them against entry records, so 

you had a pretty good idea, but from there then you had to 

confirm who it was. And that's where, frankly, as I mentioned in 

my testimony, where I saw the lack of interconnection of our 

information systems, because the actual confirmation of who they 

were was contained in records that were in the records center and 

district offices, things like that. So we really had -- we 

identified them immediately but then we really had to confirm who 

they were.

MR. KEAN: Start to wrap up please, Mr. Ziglar. We're 

running a little long on time.

MR. ZIGLAR: I'm sorry. I beg your indulgence. I have a 

couple of other things I'd love to say.

MR. KEAN: As quick as possible.

MR. ZIGLAR: The assignment of 1,000 of our special agents 

to the FBI. We disseminated departure list, we deployed more 

inspectors to the northern border, we accelerated the existing 

northern border strategy of the Border Patrol and started to move 

toward reaching the 969 Border Patrol agents that we wanted -- or 

we had established as a goal at the northern border. We 

developed what turned out to be exactly 50 potential initiatives 

for the attorney general, and we also put on warp speed the 

development of our information enterprise architecture for the 

INS. And I'm pleased to note that we got that done on my watch.

Perhaps the most important thing we did, though, was to go 

to Threat Level One, which we did in coordination with the 

Customs Service. There are a number of protocols, and I won't go 

through those because I'm trying to wrap it up, sir. Needless to 

say, though, those -- the Threat Level One at the border created 

enormous backups, and we had to work pretty hard -- it's still a 

challenge I think out there -- to try to get those backups down 

to not impede commerce and the flow of people across those 

borders. And we worked I think very cooperatively with the 

Customs Service.

The lessons from this experience for me were, one, we must 

develop surge capacity at the border in order not to have events 

like this have such draconian impacts. And the second is that we 

must move as many functions and inspection functions as far away 

from the border as we possibly can so we don't have this physical 

border problem that we've got. Protecting the American people, 
136

enforcing our immigration laws and protecting our economy are 

extremely important, but when these goals have impact or 

perceived impact on the agendas of various groups, the goals get 

lost in the noise.

Let me give you one example, because I have to take full 

responsibility for this controversy. In March 2002, I propose 

that we should reduce the default period of admission for B-2 

visitors to 30 days form the then existing default period of six 

months. In layman's language, a visitor to the United States is 

usually granted admission for six months' stay unless the 

immigration inspector decides to make it shorter. Generally the 

six month default is what you get when you come in. 

My view was that this length of stay exacerbated the problem 

we had with overstays and that we made it easy for people like 

the 9/11 hijackers to come in and to do their thing for six 

months while we didn't even know where they were. My view was 

that the default period should be 30 days, and if someone had a 

legitimate reason to stay longer, they would present it to the 

inspector and the inspector would give them an extended stay, but 

not exceeding six months. It seemed clear to me that combining 

these tighter controls with an entry-exit system that would tell 

us when they came and went would give us better control over the 

people who came here with an intent to overstay, as well as it 

will put a little tightening on the people who were here with 

evil intent.

The Department of Justice supported my view, and on April 

22nd we proposed those regs. You would have thought that I had 

committed treason. An untold number of congressmen, governors --

no offense, Governor -- mayors and travel industry 

representatives were outraged. The horror stories about people 

having to sell their houses in Florida and came from Canada 

because they could only stay here for 30 days, the stories about 

grandparents not being able to visit their grandchildren because 

they could only stay 30 days, all of these things were blown out 

of proportion. 

There were congressional hearings and even though we plainly 

stated that people would be granted stays longer than 30 days for 

legitimate reasons, the hysteria was rampant. The irony was that 

a lot of the people who were bashing us for being too lax were 

the people that were on our case about this one. I should note 

that those regulations were withdrawn after I retired.
137

In closing, Mr. Chairman, I want to emphasize that our 

priority at the INS during my tenure were focused on improving 

the performance of the agency in the war on terrorism and in the 

enforcement of our immigration laws as well as providing the 

services to which people are entitled under our laws. These 

goals can be achieved through better management structures, 

enhanced employee morale and productivity, obtaining adequate 

resources and vastly improving our information technology 

systems.

The achievement of these goals require patience, hard work 

and political support. The implementation of programs such as 

SEVIS and US-VISIT won't mean much if the whole spectrum of 

things that need to be done is ignored. We can bring our 

immigration system under control consistent with our legacy as a 

nation of immigrants and our dedication to being a free and open 

society. But it will take much work and thoughtful, mature 

analysis and decision-making. 

Thank you.

MR. KEAN: Thank you, sir. 

Mr. Bonner.

MR. ROBERT C. BONNER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members 

of the Commission. It's a pleasure to have a chance to appear 

before the 9/11 Commission and to discuss with you the ways that 

9/11 and the aftermath impacted on the United States Customs, how 

Customs responded to 9/11 and ultimately, the evolution, as Mr. 

Ziglar alluded to, of the creation of the U.S. Customs and Border 

Protection Bureau within a new department of our government.

On the morning of 9/11, I had not been confirmed yet as the 

Commissioner of Customs. I was, I guess, a commissioner 

designate, had a temporary office on the fourth floor of Treasury 

Department and with all the other employees of Treasury, at about 

9:30, 9:35 a.m., I evacuated the Treasury Department and joined 

the then acting secretary of the Treasury, Ken Dam at the Secret 

Service Headquarters Command Center a few blocks away. And, once 

there, I did establish immediately contact with U.S. Customs 

Headquarters at the Ronald Reagan building. 

At about 10:05 a.m. on the morning of September 11th, U.S. 

Customs went to Level 1 alert at all the ports of entry in the 

country and that is the highest level of security alert short of 

actually shutting down the border ports of entry. We did so, as 
138

Commissioner Ziglar indicated, in coordination with the INS. 

Besides going to Level 1 alert, which, by the way, means 

significantly increasing the questioning of people entering the 

United States, passengers, vehicles, as well as the inspection of 

vehicles and cargo, Customs also repositioned some of its Black 

Hawk helicopters from the southern border with Mexico to the 

northeast to aid the recovery efforts.

On the morning of 9/11, through an evaluation of data -- by 

the way, this was the passing through manifest, which U.S. 

Customs was able to access from the airlines -- I would say, 

within about an hour of 9/11 U.S. Customs Office of Intelligence 

had identified the 19 probable hijackers as well as the complete 

list of the passengers on the aircraft. By the way, Customs was 

also struck directly on 9/11. The U.S. Customs cell in New York 

City was located at 6 World Trade Center. It's an eight story 

building that was immediately north of the North Tower and it was 

destroyed, of course, completely when the North Tower fell. 

Fortunately, all 800 Customs employees in New York City that were 

in that building, that worked in that building were unharmed. Of 

course, the loss of our building is nothing in comparison to the 

thousands of people that were murdered on the morning of 9/11.

I was confirmed on September 19th by the Senate and sworn in 

a few days later. Let me just say, first of all, that it was 

very apparent to me and I think many people at U.S. Customs that 

the agency's mission and its future had been dramatically changed 

by what had happened. It certainly was clear to me that our 

priority mission had changed from one of interdiction of illegal 

drugs and trade regulation and the like to a security prevention 

mission and, to put it very plainly and bluntly, preventing 

terrorists or terrorist weapons from entering our country.

We also saw, by the way, after 9/11, on the 12th and 13th 

and 14th, we saw that Level 1 alert was one thing but on the day 

after and the few days after 9/11, we saw wait times go at our 

border ports of entry go jump, particularly at our northern 

border, from about an average of 20 minutes before 9/11 at the 

Ambassador Bridge, for example, from Ontario into Detroit, they 

jumped from 20 minutes to 12 hours overnight. 

So, by September 12th, there was a 12-hour wait time which 

was impacting many of the companies on our side of the borders, 

including auto makers who had just in time inventories. By the 

way, that was across the border. At Buffalo, the bridges over 

Buffalo were also 10- to 12-hour wait times within a day or two 
139

of 9/11 as well as the bridge at Port Huron. So we virtually 

shut down the borders by going to Level 1 alert. 

Suffice it to say -- and I won't go into detail, it's in my 

testimony -- we worked with Governor Engler to get National Guard 

support. We worked -- the inspectors were working 12 or 16 hours 

a day, seven days a week. We TDY’d temporarily duty assigned 

people to the northern ports of entry from as far away as Los 

Angeles. We did everything necessary to both maintain security 

but by September 17th or September 18th, we had gotten the wait 

times down to near where they had been prior to 9/11.

It was also clear to me that, if we were going to be able to 

perform our anti-terrorism mission, that we were going to need to 

have advance information about people and cargo coming into the 

United States. And we did -- just very quickly, there were a 

couple of things that were very important. One was, we did 

obtain legislation, with support of the Administration, in the

Transportation Security Act that mandated for the first time that 

all airlines that were flying passengers into the United States 

from abroad had to -- were required to provide the advance 

passenger information with respect to everybody on that flight 

and also the personal name data with respect to those passengers. 

That was enacted in November of 2001 and we were able to get very 

fast compliance with that law, in part by making it clear to 

airlines that didn't comply with the law that Customs was going 

up to 100 percent inspection of all their passengers arriving at 

JFK and other airports around the country. 

The second thing we did was we also needed advance 

information electronically with respect to cargo shipments coming 

into the country and we promulgated in Customs what's called the 

24-hour rule. But that rule essentially required that Customs be 

given advance information with respect to a complete information 

electronically with respect to all cargo shipments, ocean-going 

cargo shipments that were being shipped to the United States 24 

hours before those cargo containers were loaded on board vessels 

outbound from the foreign ports. Not 24 hours before arrival 

into the U.S., 24 hours before they left the foreign ports for 

the U.S. Similarly, under what's called the Trade Act 

legislation of 2002, we were able to essentially extend these 

advance manifest information on cargo shipments to all other 

modes, commercial trucks, rails, rail shipments and air cargo and 

the like. 

We also, as Mr. Ziglar indicated, realized that we had to 

push our border outward. We had to extend our zone of security 
140

and we did three key things in that direction. One was to create 

in late 2001, November 2001, the Customs Trade Partnership 

Against Terrorism. This was essentially partnering with the 

private sector to get a commitment from them to give increased 

supply chain security literally from the foreign loading docks of 

their vendors to the U.S. borders. 

In an exchange, if they met the security standards that we 

set out, in exchange, we would give those companies -- we call it 

C-TPAT -- expedited processing through the borders of the U.S. 

That started off with just seven companies, seven major importers 

of the U.S. in December 2001. There's over 5,000 companies that 

are now members of the Customs-Trade Partnership Against 

Terrorism and they represent over 40 percent of the volume by 

value of imports into the United States. That's probably the 

largest, and I believe, most successful public-private sector 

partnership that was formed out of the ashes of 9/11.

And then secondly, as an extended border program, we 

implemented the Container Security Initiative. And the Container 

Security Initiative was to recognize that particularly when 

you're talking about the terrorist threat and potential use of a 

container to conceal a terrorist weapon, even -- particularly a 

weapon of mass destruction -- or use the container as a weapon, 

that we needed to do our targeting of cargo containers that we're 

moving for the U.S., and the screening of those containers for at 

least the high-risk containers, the containers that were 

identified as posing a potential terrorist threat at foreign 

seaports. And we proposed in January of 2002 that we start with 

the top 20 foreign ports, which represented almost 70 percent, 

over two-thirds of all the containers coming to the United 

States, and that we implement it at those ports.

And we have been able to implement the Container Security 

Initiative. The countries representing 19 of the top 20 ports 

have agreed to implement CSI, the Container Security Initiative, 

and we have in fact implemented it at 17 foreign ports around the 

world. And we are continuing, by the way, now to expand that to 

other ports that ship significant volumes and are strategically 

located, of cargo containers to the U.S., places like Malaysia.

Let me also just say -- it's in my testimony -- we've had 

some excellent cooperation with Canada and Mexico with respect to 

smarter borders, that is to say borders that add security to both 

the movement of people and the movement of goods across our 

borders, and at the same time do it with respect to some 

initiatives that actually facilitate the flow of legitimate trade 
141

and people. These are programs like the Free and Secure Trade 

Program with Canada, which we've expanded to Mexico, programs 

that we worked on with the INS, the NEXUS program, which we've 

expanded, which is for people who are travelling across our 

border who are willing to give up basically some of their privacy 

to submit an application, pay a small fee, and are vetted through 

the criminal and terrorist indices of both Canada and the United 

States, and are personally interviewed. And if they are 

determined not to pose a terrorist threat or a threat for 

smuggling, they are given a proximity card and can get through 

the border expeditiously.

MR. KEAN: Mr. Bonner, could you start to sum up, please?

MR. BONNER: I will. Those are a few of the initiatives 

that we took as part of U.S. Customs. One of the most important 

initiatives actually was the creation of the Department of 

Homeland Security, and within this new department the Customs and 

Border Protection, which is for the first time unifying all of 

the personnel or agencies that had border responsibilities into 

one border agency to manage and secure the borders of our 

country. We have begun to do that as of March 1, 2003, with the 

stand-up to the department. That is to create what Secretary 

Ridge has called one agency -- one face at the border, which is 

one border agency of the federal government to manage, secure and 

control our borders. 

And I can't tell you how important that is to our 

effectiveness in terms of the terrorist threat. It is 

extraordinarily important to bring together men and women like 

Inspector Melendez, who testified earlier here, a former INS 

inspector, and people like Diana Dean, who was a Customs 

inspector in the state of Washington who was responsible for 

catching Ahmed Ressam, the millennium bomber. 

So let me conclude my remarks with that. Mr. Chairman, 

thank you and the Commission for your indulgence. I'll answer 

any questions you have when we get to question time.

MR. KEAN: Thank you very much.

Mr. Verga.

MR. PETER F. VERGA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of 

the Commission. I appreciate the opportunity to help you with 

your important work and to discuss the Department of Defense role 

in relation to civilian border authorities. My comments today 
142

are distilled from the longer, more detailed written statement I 

have submitted to you, and I would ask that that written 

statement be made a part of the Commission's record.

I am the principal deputy assistant secretary of Defense for 

Homeland Defense, serving under Assistant Secretary Paul McHale 

in the Office of the Secretary. I'm a career member of the 

Senior Executive Service, and at the time of the terrorist 

attacks of September 11th, 2001, I was serving as deputy 

undersecretary of Defense for policy integration. Soon after the 

attacks, Secretary Rumsfeld designated then secretary of the 

Army, Thomas White, to manage the day-to-day execution of 

Homeland Security and Defense activities in the department on a 

temporary basis. And in January of 2002, I was appointed as a 

special assistant for Homeland Security, managing a newly created 

Homeland Security Task Force which served as a temporary bridge 

between the immediate post-9/11 aftermath and the establishment 

of new homeland defense and civil support organizations within 

the department.

To provide the necessary context for my remarks, it's 

important to make the distinction between homeland security and 

homeland defense, and the very different but complementary roles 

of the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland 

Security in those activities. Stated simply, the Defense 

Department provides the military defense of our nation from all 

attacks that originate from abroad, while the Department of 

Homeland Security aims to protect the nation against and prepare 

for acts of terrorism. The Department of Defense has organized 

and prepared, however, at the direction of the President and the 

secretary, to support the Department of Homeland Security's 

mission.

In understanding DOD's activities in relation to the border, 

it's important to understand that there is a nexus with DOD's 

support in the counternarcotics arena and to recall a tragic 

incident in 1997 that had ramifications for how that support is 

executed. The Department of Defense active and Reserve component 

forces and the National Guard have provided a wide variety of 

counternarcotics support to drug law enforcement agencies along 

the southwest border of the United States since 1989, including 

surface and aerial reconnaissance, minor construction in 

establishing tactical observation posts, training, intelligence 

analysis, linguistics support, transportation, and training 

exercises along the border to provide terrain denial.
143

On May 20th of 1997, near the border in the vicinity of 

Redford, Texas, an active duty Marine performing a 

counternarcotics mission tragically killed a U.S. citizen in 

self-defense. Subsequently, DOD concluded that it would no 

longer provide support that would place active and Reserve 

component forces in situations in which confrontations with U.S. 

citizens might occur. National Guard personnel acting in state 

status were, however, permitted to continue to perform ground 

missions. It's also important to underscore that the Homeland 

Security Act of 2002 now gives the secretary of Homeland Security 

the responsibility for the security of our nation's borders. And 

DOD's role in border security is to provide support to those 

civil authorities, again, principally the Department of Homeland 

Security, when appropriate.

I'd now like to respond directly to the four areas of 

interest related to border security that were identified to us by 

the Commission. First, what action did DOD take to secure 

borders immediately after the 9/11 attacks? As detailed in the 

written statement I've submitted, DOD engaged in a number of 

actions to improve homeland defense and provide interim support 

to border authorities immediately following and then in the 

months after the attacks. These included, for example, Operation 

Noble Eagle, which involves air patrols over key domestic 

locations, U.S. Navy ships deployed off the coast, with antiaircraft systems and integrated air defense assets located in the 

National Capital Region, deployment of National Guard troops 

operating under state control but with federal funding to guard 

some 421 airports, and U.S. Navy support for Coast Guard homeland 

security patrols and the mobilization of 1,600 National Guard 

troops along the southern and northern borders to support the 

Customs Service, Immigration and Naturalization Service and the 

Border Patrol in their heightened security postures.

The second area of interest is the strategic role of the 

military in anti-terrorism, including protecting against 

infiltration of the United States by terrorist groups such as al 

Qaeda. DOD defines anti-terrorism as defensive measures to 

reduce vulnerabilities and protect U.S. forces and assets 

worldwide. Anti-terrorism thus represents one element of a 

broader approach to combating terrorism that also includes 

counterterrorism, terrorism consequence management, and 

intelligence support.

The principal focus of DOD's efforts to combat terrorism is 

on bringing the fight to the terrorists abroad through the 

prosecution of the global war on terrorism. The next line of 
144

defense also lies beyond the borders of our nation, where we are 

patrolling the air and maritime avenues of approach to engage 

terrorists before they reach our borders. In this effort, the 

North American Aerospace Defense Command guards, patrols and 

monitors the skies over and around Canada and the United States. 

And similarly, the U.S. Navy mans the sea approaches in 

international waters and works with the U.S. Coast Guard to 

patrol our territorial waters.

Within U.S. borders, the domestic law enforcement community 

is responsible for countering terrorist threats. The Department

of Defense, of course, stands ready to provide assets and 

capabilities in support of those civil authorities consistent 

with U.S. law. 

The third area of interest is the military's role in sharing 

intelligence with border inspection services. DOD policies and 

directives emphasize protection of the constitutional rights and 

privacy of U.S. citizens. In the absence of foreign involvement, 

military intelligence organizations are limited to performing 

non-intelligence functions in domestic support operations. If 

authorized by law to collect foreign intelligence or 

counterintelligence information within the United States, 

military intelligence organizations must do so only in support of 

the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the lead federal agency 

responsible for intelligence collection within the United States.

DOD is a full partner in the Terrorist Threat Integration 

Center which began operations in May 2003 and whose function it 

is to close the seam between analysis of foreign and domestic 

intelligence on terrorism. And additionally, United States 

Northern Command has a well established links of information and 

intelligence sharing on border activities. Primarily through its 

Joint Task Force 6, the North American Aerospace Defense Command 

and the National Guard. 

And similarly the National Guard in most of the 54 states 

and territories supports intelligence analysis efforts of the 

Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of 

Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, Bureau of Customs 

and Border Protection and various federal, state and local task 

forces. DOD is also now installing secure Internet systems in 

many of the high intensity drug trafficking areas intelligence 

centers to facilitate information sharing that has national 

security and homeland security value.
145

The last area of interest I was requested to address is the 

role of the military in civil support in emergency preparedness 

in conjunction with U.S. land and sea border inspection and 

enforcement authorities. As noted earlier, DOD's role vis-à-vis 

border security is to support civil authorities, again primarily 

the Department of Homeland Security, when requested. If the 

President or the secretary of Defense so direct, NORTHCOM will 

lead DOD's response to request for assistance from those lead 

federal agencies for border security operations.

DOD also plays a supporting role through developing and 

maintaining good bilateral federal defense relationships with our 

neighbors. To the south, the U.S. has a positive high level 

relationship with the Mexican military and U.S.-Mexican civil 

cooperation along our shared border is well established. To the 

north, we enjoy a close cooperative relationship with Canada 

across the board, to include the areas of counterterrorism, 

consequence management and aerospace warning and defense.

At the strategic level, the Permanent Joint Board on Defense 

epitomizes our close bilateral ties. At the operational level, 

that long standing North American Aerospace Defense Command is a 

clear illustration of our bi-national commitment to counter 

aerospace threats to North America. In addition, a new binational planning group was established in Colorado Springs in 

December of 2002. That planning group is working to improve 

U.S.-Canada arrangements to defend against maritime threats to 

North American continent and respond to land-based attacks as 

well as civil support operations.

Maritime homeland security is the responsibility of the 

Department of Homeland Security as the lead federal agency, and 

is executed by the U.S. Coast Guard. Again, when directed by the 

President or the secretary of Defense, United States Northern 

Command will respond to requests for assistance to augment Coast 

Guard maritime security operations. The Department of Defense, 

Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard and the U.S. 

Navy are working together to establish a layered approach to 

maritime defense and security. In that same vein, the Department 

of Defense remains involved in supporting Coast Guard in port 

security and maritime domain awareness.

Today we face a challenge that is equal to or greater than 

any we have ever faced before. Once we could readily identify 

and defeat our enemy in conventional warfare. Today we must cope 

not only with the threats produced by proliferation of weapons of 

mass destruction and missile technology among nation-states, but 
146

also with threats posed by individual terrorists and terrorist 

organizations with global reach. The Department of Defense has a 

long tradition of support to civil authorities, including border 

authorities while maintaining its primary mission of fighting and 

winning the nation's wars.

As long as terrorist networks continue to recruit new 

members, plan and execute attacks against U.S. national interests 

and seek out weapons of mass destruction, U.S. military forces 

and other DOD assets will remain engaged. Our goals are to 

thwart terrorist operations, disrupt their plans, destroy their 

networks and deter others who might consider such attacks on our 

nation. U.S. military forces stand ready to defend and protect 

our homeland in overseas and domestic operations. I look forward 

to answering any questions you may have.

MR. KEAN: Thank you all, very much. 

Commissioner Ben-Veniste?

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony 

here today. 

I'd like to start with Mr. Ziglar, if I may. I was 

particularly interested in your analysis of the failures as you 

perceived them that led up to the 9/11 catastrophe. And indeed I 

have made statements from time to time from this vantage point 

about the fact that we had a considerable amount of collected 

intelligence prior to 9/11, but it seems as though our failures 

involved the inability to disseminate and utilize that 

information in a way in which we could interdict those 

individuals who participated in the 9/11 plot. 

And so particularly since I agree with you, I'm very 

interested in that analysis. I'd like to ask you, in the run up 

to September 11th, we have received a great deal of information 

about the type, the quality and the volume of information that 

was being received by our intelligence community, indicating that 

something big was going to happen. Admittedly the emphasis in 

looking at this information was toward an attack on U.S. 

interests on foreign soil, but clearly the intelligence community 

did not and could not and would not rule out the possibility of a 

violent attack on the homeland.

Let me ask you, sir, whether you were advised or to the best 

of your knowledge INS was advised that we were in the summer of 

2001 in a heightened period of alert, with respect to the 
147

possibility of Jihad-est or Islamic fundamentalist terrorist 

activity?

MR. ZIGLAR: The answer, sir, is that I was not briefed or 

advised that there was any particular concern at the time, nor am 

I aware of anyone in our national security unit or intelligence 

folks being aware of that. If they were, I'm not aware of it.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: What makes this particularly troublesome 

is the fact that from June 1, 2001, forward nine, at least nine, 

of the participants in the catastrophe of 9/11 entered into the 

United States. Nine of them came in after June 1, 2001. During 

this period of increased, certainly in the midst of this 

increased volume and quality of potential terrorist activity, and 

nine, at least, came in between April and May. Now, had you been 

a partner, putting aside an equal partner, at least a recipient 

of the kind of information that was setting the hair on fire of 

other people elsewhere in the government because of the dramatic 

nature of this information, what might you have been able to do?

MR. ZIGLAR: Of course, you're asking me a question, a 

hypothetical question because I wasn't there, but if I had known 

we had information about specific individuals and specific 

threats, I think the first thing we would have done immediately 

is to put that information into what was called NAILS --

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Well, let's take that off the table 

because clearly with the exception of two individuals who were 

not watchlisted, there was no specific information that was 

within the databank of the U.S. However, as you have heard this 

morning or maybe you haven't? 

MR. ZIGLAR: I'm sorry, I wasn't here.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: But our staff has developed a very broad

and detailed analysis of the travel documents that were utilized 

as well as the profiles of the individuals, had you been notified 

that you were in a situation -- that we were in a situation of 

high alert during this period, could you have taken steps that 

might have interdicted any of these individuals?

MR. ZIGLAR: Well, I certainly think that the field 

operations people would have put out an alert to all inspectors 

that there is a heightened concern and that we would have 

probably at that point put a whole lot more people into secondary 

for both questioning and inspection of their documents, it would 

seem to me that would be a fundamental thing that you would do. 
148

You would also go out to all the district offices for your 

special agents internally and put out the word that there was a 

high alert, then if you had a name or something that that would 

go to the top of the priority list of people that they would be 

looking for. 

I mean, those would be the normal course of events sort of 

things. We had a national security unit, or have -- I guess we 

still have it, I assume, a national security unit there that was 

responsible for working with the field on particularly national 

security kinds of cases, they would have been activated in a very 

targeted way. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Let me ask you about 9/11 itself and 

immediate aftermath. One of the things that occurred in the 

immediate aftermath was the order from the attorney general to 

take steps with respect to foreign visitors in this country who 

had in one way or another been in violation of their immigration 

status. Let me ask you whether you took a position with respect 

to this program?

MR. ZIGLAR: Yes, sir, I did. I suggested that it needed 

to be targeted to those folks that we had some kind of reasonable 

suspicion to believe might have some kind of connections first 

that we should avoid the appearance of being involved in any kind 

of harassment or sweep or roundup or any of that sort of thing, 

for some very fundamental fairness reasons, but also because I 

thought that it would probably scare the community, that we would 

be looking for to cooperate with us, so I did express that point 

of view.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: You saw a blanket effort to detain 

individuals who were out of status as counterproductive because 

of its general scope?

MR. ZIGLAR: I thought it had the potential of being 

counterproductive, yes, sir. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: And did you express a view with respect 

to its legality?

MR. ZIGLAR: Yes, sir.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Let me read from your statement, at page 

15. "A public record has been established indicating that INS 

personnel, including me, raised questions and concerns about the 

appropriateness of certain policies and practices that were being 
149

pursued by the Department of Justice in the investigation. I 

considered it my duty to raise my hand when I felt that the 

bounds of law were being approached, or where a practice or 

policy was ineffective, ill-advised or violated notions of 

fundamental fairness. I make no apologies for doing what I 

believed to be my duty." 

You go on to say, "We have a long history in our country, 

particularly in times of crisis, of incorrectly assuming that 

there is a clear nexus between immigration and terrorism or 

anarchy. Our public discourse needs to be better informed. This 

commission bears a particular burden in that respect." I agree 

with you. Would you like to elaborate on that point?

MR. ZIGLAR: I think it says what I feel, sir. I'm not 

sure I could elaborate on it.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Can you tell us on the basis of your 

observation of how that policy was carried out, whether there 

were any terrorists or suspected terrorists who were arrested in 

connection with that sweep?

MR. ZIGLAR: I'm not aware of any.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Let me turn to Mr. Bonner, if I may. 

Obviously mindful of what I think Commissioner Gorelick has 

earlier indicated in this day, long day of hearing, that we're 

not going to obviously talk about specific instances where our 

staff or we have perceived holes, in the procedures, practices or 

policies that are now in place, but let me ask you generally with 

respect to container security, which you have brought up in your 

statement. It has been widely discussed that only a very, very 

small percentage of shipping containers coming into this country 

from foreign ports are physically inspected. Can you provide 

some details with respect to that and whether there is a program 

underfoot to increase the physical inspection of shipping 

containers?

MR. BONNER: Be happy to. First of all, there's sort of a 

-- one of the urban myths is that there're 2 percent of the 

containers approximately that come into the U.S. are inspected 

and the reality is, of course, we've been increasing the rate of 

our inspections, but the premise, the underlying premise for our 

inspection is a risk management one. That posits with the right 

strategic intelligence, the right anomaly analysis, the right 

detection equipment, you don't necessarily have to inspect all 

containers coming into the U.S. 
150

If we have to do that, we don't have the resources to do it 

and I think it actually would be rather foolish, a waste of 

resources. But basically I can tell you that if you take all 

cargo shipments which basically would be both trucks and ocean 

going cargo containers, the number is close to 10 percent.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: And if you limited yourself to ocean 

going containers?

MR. BONNER: If you limit it to ocean going containers, 

it's between four and 5 percent, I mean, it goes up and down, it 

varies. But I will hasten to add, as I think you know, Mr. BenVeniste, that the premise here is that we actually get 

information on all containers that come into the United States 

before they arrive. We do an analysis of those containers, we 

select out the ones that we think pose a potential risk for the 

terrorist threat and we screen through both radiation detection 

and large scale imaging equipment 100 percent of those 

containers.

Now, with CSI of course we're doing more and more of that, 

not just on arrival at USC ports, but where we have CSI in place, 

doing it at the outbound ports before they're even loaded on 

board vessels to the U.S.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: So is it fair to say that since 9/11 the 

percentage, the quantity of shipping containers from overseas 

ports have increased? 

MR. BONNER: Yes, unquestionably. Probably in the order of 

doubled or tripled.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: So, pre-9/11 it might have been about 2 

percent and now it's 4 or 5?

MR. BONNER: But by the way, I don't know that it was 2 

percent before 9/11, I mean I don't know where the figure comes 

from.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Well, if it's 4 percent now and it's 

doubled --

MR. BONNER: But I feel confident that it's increased by 

100 percent and I actually think it may well be more than that.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Do you have a goal, a target --
151

MR. BONNER: Yes.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: -- as to the -- where you'd want to be, 

can you share that with us?

MR. BONNER: Yes. The goal is screen and do a security 

inspection for 100 percent of all containers that we identify as 

potentially risky for the terrorist threat, and I believe we are 

doing that, that's the goal and I think we're either doing it or 

close to doing it at ports of arrival into the U.S. and we're now 

through the extended border strategy being able to do that more 

at foreign sea ports before they're shipped to the U.S.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Do I understand you to say that you are 

at your target now?

MR. BONNER: We are -- yes, I think we are at or close to 

our target, which is to say that one thing I didn't mention in my 

testimony for a lack of time is that one of the things we set up 

in October 2001 for the first time in the history of Customs, was 

a national targeting center to target all containers, who also 

gets all the information on arriving passengers too, but all 

containers that are coming to the U.S. and essentially taking 

strategic intelligence and developing targeting rules, there are 

150, 200 targeting rules in the system to score and target for 

potential threat. 

It doesn't mean they are an actual terrorist threat, but 

because of a variety of factors, we have identified those 

containers that pose a potential security threat, terrorist 

threat. And with respect to those, we are, I believe, we are 

screening 100 percent, every one of those we've identified as a 

potential terrorist threat according to our targeting rules that 

have been set up through the targeting center by U.S. Customs. 

By the way, it's a 24/7 watch that takes all this information and 

essentially evaluates it and analyzes it through these rules. 

Now, by the way, we need -- we are a consumer of 

intelligence and it's not just tactical specific intelligence, 

what container or what person may be a terrorist. But we are a 

consumer of strategic intelligence too and so, some of our rules 

are formed by what we get through the intelligence community and 

the FBI to inform us just on how we set our rules. That's the 

methodology. It's a risk management methodology to identify 

every container that poses a potential risk and then make sure 

every container is screened for security purposes. 
152

MR. BEN-VENISTE: I must say that I had the occasion to 

observe border security operation by the Customs service at the 

Niagara Falls U.S.-Canadian crossing and was very impressed with 

the dedication of the individuals who were working there and the 

level of instruction that they had obviously received. Let me 

ask you this. With respect to the inspections that you have 

conducted with respect to both land and sea containers since 

9/11, have you interdicted any containers that would be regarded 

as directed toward terrorist activities in the United States?

MR. BONNER: I can't say that there are any that are 

directly related to terrorist activities. We have interdicted 

containers that have contained automatic weapons. We have 

interdicted containers that contained essentially chemical, antichemical exposure kinds of suits and things like that. But I 

can't say that they're directly connected with terrorism. But I 

can say that the system works. I'd also say, since you were up 

at Niagara, you also saw -- I believe you saw that there are 

portal radiation monitors there for the -- coming across those 

bridges, both trucks and passenger vehicles.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: I did.

MR. BONNER: They didn't exist on 9/11. So we're getting a 

radiation read on every vehicle, truck and passenger vehicle. We 

also have deployed, which didn't exist on 9/11, large scale X-ray 

imaging machines so we can do whole container truck X-rays and 

images which we didn't have on 9/11. We've done that. We've put 

these in place on the northern border and sea ports of the 

country and the like. So --

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Getting a lot of hits on cancer patients 

who --

MR. BONNER: We do get some hits on cancer patients 

occasionally that are in vehicles crossing the Mexican or the 

northern border.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Let me ask you briefly about your 

statement about the day on 9/11 which I found very interesting. 

You say that, on the morning of 9/11, through an evaluation of 

data related to the passenger manifest of the four terrorist 

hijacked aircraft, Customs Office of Intelligence was able to 

identify the likely terrorist hijackers within 45 minutes of the 

attack, Customs forwarded the passenger lists with the names of 
153

the victims and 19 probable hijackers to the FBI and the 

intelligence community. How are your people able to do that?

MR. BONNER: Well, it was pretty simple actually. We were 

able to pull from the airlines the passenger manifest for each of 

the four flights. We ran the manifest through the TECS/IBIS 

system. This is essentially the lookout system that both U.S. 

Customs and INS use but it's maintained by Customs. We ran it 

through the system. Two of the passengers on those aircraft were 

hits for having been entered on the watchlist in August of 2001. 

That was al Mihdhar and I forget the other one's name but they 

were the two people that had gone to Singapore that the CIA had 

identified. But they actually were put on the watchlist in 

August of 2001 by the FBI. So they hit on those two. 

Just using those two hits and taking a look at some other 

basic data about the flight manifest, both in terms of -- I don't 

want to go into a lot of detail -- but where they were seated, 

where they purchased their tickets, you could do just a quick 

link analysis and essentially, I remember I was at Secret Service 

headquarters, as I said, but I would say whether it was 45 

minutes, I don't know but my recollection is that certainly by

11:00 a.m., I'd seen a sheet that essentially identified the 19 

probable hijackers. And in fact, they turned out to be, based 

upon further follow-up in detailed investigation, to be the 19.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Was this more than looking at the two who 

were hits and then checking out the other Arab names?

MR. BONNER: It was partly that, by the way, but it was more 

than that. No, it was seat location, ticket purchase 

information. Again, I am on public record here. I don't want to 

go into exact details since we use some of this information in 

terms of targeting today for potential terrorists. We actually 

use, as I was saying, advance passenger information to identify 

beyond just who's on the watch list by biography to try to do a 

more intelligent job as to who, as the combined immigration 

inspection and Customs inspection, Customs and Border Protection 

who would you ask a few questions to as they're arriving in the 

United States. 

So you're doing more than just looking at a watch list. 

You're looking at a lot of data and trying to figure out who to 

look at, just as in the same way we're looking at what cargo to 

look at by examining a multitude of factors. That is, to some 

extent, strategic intelligence driven. So it was looking at a 

bunch of relational data. Obviously, more refinement of that 
154

occurred later but it was -- it didn't take a lot to do, just 

sort of what I'd say a rudimentary link analysis to identify 

essentially all 19.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: With respect to Mr. Verga, obviously we 

don't have time to go into the -- we could spend the whole day 

certainly or more on each of your areas of expertise. But I'm 

interested in the question of the use of the military within the 

continental United States and in your statement, you indicated 

that there were several statutory exceptions to the Posse 

Comitatus Act, including Public Law 10740, authorizing the 

President utilizing military force to prevent further terrorist 

acts against the nation. And in that regard, I wasn't familiar 

with it but I found that this was a law passed by Congress seven 

days after 9/11 and I'd be interested to hear from you how the 

Department of Defense feels that this is a modification or 

exemption to the Posse Comitatus Act.

MR. VERGA: First, let me stipulate I'm not an attorney and 

I would -- obviously for an official DOD legal reading on any 

interpretation of the law, I would defer to our general counsel. 

My understanding is that the Posse Comitatus Act provides that 

military forces may not be used to enforce civil law except as 

otherwise provided by Congress through the enactment of any other 

legislation. I believe that our view of that particular statute 

is that it was not limited to overseas use of the military forces 

and therefore it could be construed to in fact be an exception to 

the Posse Comitatus law as enacted by Congress. But, as I said, 

I would defer either to a former DOD general counsel who is a 

member of the Commission or to our current general counsel for an 

official reading on this.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: I would ask that, if it were possible, 

something be submitted in writing as to that interpretation.

MR. VERGA: Sure.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: I'm also interested in the mission that 

you've indicated with respect to NORTHCOM. NORTHCOM has, if I 

understand correctly, it has -- and the military has, for some 

time, assisted in the interdiction of narcotics traffic into the 

United States either by plane or vessel. Do you interpret the 

mandate of NORTHCOM now to provide similar assistance with 

respect to anti-terrorist activities?

MR. VERGA: You very correctly state that the Department of 

Defense is by law the lead federal agency for the interdiction of 
155

air and maritime drug traffic into the United States. United 

States Northern Command operates -- part of their subordinate 

elements are Joint Task Force 6, located in El Paso, Texas, which 

orchestrates the military's involvement in that activity, along 

with our joint interagency task forces, east and west, which also 

help work the interagency aspects of it.

There was a recent change in the law which allows the joint 

interagency task forces, previously established for 

counternarcotics use, to be used in the counterterrorist role. 

And we're undertaking that at this time. Now, the question I 

think that arises from that is the active use of military forces 

in interdicting traffic back and forth across the border. And, 

again, that comes to the sort of public policy decision that the 

border control authority for the United States is not the United 

States military but our civilian agencies. We do assist those 

civilian agencies by providing them information or, for example, 

flying helicopter patrols along the southern border and then 

passing that information of what we may observe onto the civilian 

law enforcement agency.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: And do you anticipate that that is a 

function which will also be supplied in connection to 

counterterrorism?

MR. VERGA: I think it's one of those questions of it's 

difficult -- if you identify somebody who's trying to sneak 

across the border, you can't tell why they're trying to sneak 

across, you just know that they are and therefore you pass that 

on to the appropriate authorities. It would be useful in a 

counterterrorist role.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Does NORTHCOM have an intelligence 

capability? Does it have its own intelligence unit?

MR. VERGA: It has its own intelligence analysis capability, 

as do all our Combatant Commands. The J-2 in military jargon is 

the intelligence officer for the command, and they take 

intelligence product and analyze it based on the particular 

command's mission. We collect intelligence only in accordance 

with the applicable laws, which restrict the collection of 

intelligence inside the United States, principally to 

counterintelligence in conjunction with the FBI.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: So if I understand you correctly, the 

Department of Defense interprets its mission on NORTHCOM with 

respect to force protection or any other traditional intelligence 
156

component of a command, such as NORTHCOM if it were outside the 

United States, to restrict the military from the collection 

function.

MR. VERGA: Yeah. From the gathering and collecting of 

intelligence inside the United States, that's correct.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: And it is, however, a customer of 

collected intelligence. Is that correct?

MR. VERGA: That's correct as well.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: In looking at your detailed statement, at 

page 8 you list a pretty good shopping list that goes on to page 

9 of examples of technology transfer specific to the areas of 

border and transportation security, where the Department of 

Defense is making a contribution. Do you anywhere indicate the 

data-mining project that was initiated at DARPA or was then 

brought through this Total Information Awareness which became 

Terrorist Information Awareness under Admiral Poindexter?

MR. VERGA: I did not indicate that in my written statement, 

nor have we passed that technology on to any other agencies as of 

this time. There are two very similar programs, that one which 

is the opportunity to use -- I don't like the term data-mining, 

but data correlation I think is probably a more appropriate term 

-- data correlation techniques to do exactly what the 

Commissioner talked about doing manually post-9/11 but doing it 

in an automated basis. We also have a joint protection 

enterprise network which is a DOD network which we use for force 

protection purposes, which is the ability to exchange relevant 

information among the military commands associated with force 

protection inside the United States.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Was there some -- that program that had 

been initiated in DARPA, is that continuing?

MR. VERGA: The research on that is continuing as of now.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Okay. And if Northern Command is a 

customer for collected intelligence, does that include 

intelligence about U.S. citizens?

MR. VERGA: Only to the extent that it's permitted by law 

for NORTHCOM to have information about U.S. persons. We conduct 

all of our intelligence activities inside the United States or 
157

outside the United States in accordance with the applicable law, 

and there are --

MR. BEN-VENISTE: I understand.

MR. VERGA: There are restrictions on the types of 

information that the Department of Defense can collect or hold on 

U.S. persons. If it's relative to the protection of U.S. 

installations or property, equipment, a criminal investigation or 

a counterintelligence investigation, then military intelligence 

activities could keep and hold that information, otherwise 

they're not permitted to.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Would you agree that the creation of 

NORTHCOM now provides a much broader need in the traditional 

sense for force protection or other intelligence?

MR. VERGA: I don't think it creates any additional need. 

What NORTHCOM and the Northern Command provides is centralized 

command structure to undertake military activities that are 

authorized inside the United States. They have currently only 

command and control type forces or headquarters assigned to them. 

They receive forces on an as needed basis, should they be 

required to come to the assistance of another federal agency in 

response to the consequences of a terrorist attack. But they 

didn't -- it did not create any additional need just by the 

creation of Northern Command. The responsibilities for force 

protection remained where they were before with the services, for 

example, or with Joint Forces Command, which had the forces prior 

to the creation of NORTHCOM.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Thank you very much.

Mr. Hamilton --

MR. HAMILTON: Chair has two more commissioners who want to 

ask questions. Commissioner Gorelick and then Commissioner 

Fielding.

Commissioner Gorelick.

MS. GORELICK: Thank you, Mr. Vice Chairman.

Let me start with you, Mr. Verga, kind of follow up on what 

Mr. Ben-Veniste's been asking about but from a different angle. 

We have what used to be a CINC and now a Combatant Commander for 

every part of the world except the United States. And the 
158

American public I think would find it interesting to know that if 

you have a Combatant Commander for a particular area of the 

world, that person probes the intelligence to see what the 

threats are, does scenario planning against those threats, 

trains, makes sure that troops are trained against those 

missions, exercises against those missions and against those 

threats.

You have given what I expect is a very accurate description 

of what we have by contrast inside the United States. That is 

you are in a support mode to civil authorities basically. You 

have some border security functions, consequence management, of 

course, aerospace warning, but basically you are in service of 

civil authorities that have a command structure that doesn't 

remotely resemble, as we've heard today and certainly before 

this, does not remotely resemble the unitary clear command 

responsibility that a CINC or a Combatant Commander has.

Now, in my experience, had we had such a person here in the 

United States prior to 9/11, that person would have probed the 

intelligence, not necessarily on individual people but on the 

nature of the threats, and might have practiced against that 

scenario and might have, for example, pre-positioned aircraft in 

a different manner than they were indeed pre-positioned. Would 

you agree with that scenario that I've just drawn?

MR. VERGA: Let me just address a couple of things. The 

United States Northern Command, which was created and became 

effective on the 1st of October, 2002, is the command which is 

responsible for the geographic area of the world which includes 

the United States. They have a mission that's divided into two 

parts, the protection of the United States' territory, interests, 

et cetera from external threats and aggression, and to support 

civil authorities as ordered by the President or the secretary of 

Defense.

As part of their first mission, they do, in fact, do exactly 

what you said, analyze intelligence, look at threats, look at the 

positioning of defense forces to deal with those external threats 

and aggression. The difference is that the -- let's take the 

9/11 attack, for example. The prevention of the hijacking of the 

aircraft is, in fact, not the job of the Department of Defense, 

it's the job of now the Department of Homeland Security or the 

Transportation Security Administration.

Dealing with those hijacked aircraft after they had become 

weapons aimed at the United States would in fact be the mission 
159

of the Department of Defense and we position our defense forces 

accordingly. At the time, our defense forces were positioned in 

accordance with the perceived air threat against the United 

States, which was external threats to the United States, so 

therefore we were looking outward, not inward, not looking at 

external threats that manifest themselves internally, if that's 

not an inconsistent statement.

Currently, every single day United States Northern Command 

looks at the available intelligence and then arrays the air 

defense forces in accordance with their estimation of where the 

most probable need might arise. But we still look to the 

civilian agencies to prevent the hijacking of aircraft. The 

obvious last thing that you want to have to do is to shoot down a 

civilian aircraft that had been hijacked. So therefore we would 

expect that no civilian airliner would be allowed to take off if 

there were a doubt that would require us to be better positioned 

to shoot that aircraft down.

MS. GORELICK: All right. So just to be clear, let's talk 

about the pre and post-9/11 environment. Post-9/11, is the 

commander of NORTHCOM, Northern Command, operating as a 

functional equivalent of the Combatant Commanders elsewhere in 

the world in terms of responsibility for assessing the threat, 

ensuring that scenario planning is done against those threats, 

ensuring that troops, et cetera, are trained for missions that 

would meet those threats.

MR. VERGA: That's correct. Consistent with their mission 

statement and also consistent with the fact while he's a 

geographic Combatant Commander like any other, the area of 

operation is, in fact, unique because it contains the government 

of the United States, 54 sovereign states and territories to deal 

with, so it's not exactly the same as being an overseas Combatant 

Commander, but in terms of the mission to defend the United 

States and respond to consequence management requirements, he 

does all those things that you said.

MS. GORELICK: Prior to 9/11, was there any person who had 

that functional equivalent role to assess the intelligence with 

regard to the threats against the United States that might occur 

domestically and to address those scenarios by scenario planning, 

training, pre-positioning of all the means of defense? Was there 

any single person who had that role prior to 9/11?

MR. VERGA: No single one. The responsibility for defense 

was actually divided in two parts. Air defense was the 
160

responsibility of North American Aerospace Defense Command and 

land and maritime defense was the responsibility of Joint Forces 

Command, which was headquartered down at Norfolk, Virginia.

MS. GORELICK: And did they have the same analogue response? 

In other words, for the person who had responsibility for our air 

defenses on that day, was that person charged with understand the 

full panoply of threats to our nation's security from the air, 

addressing scenarios that might arise as suggested by that 

intelligence, and pre-positioning both individuals that were 

appropriately trained and equipment to meet those threats.

MR. VERGA: I would have to answer yes to that question. I 

would also have to qualify that yes by saying that the emphasis 

of the defense activities of the United States at that particular 

time were external. I don't think there was anybody who was, 

again, concentrating on an external threat manifesting itself 

internally to the extent I believe your question implies.

MS. GORELICK: Thank you for that very straightforward 

answer.

Mr. Bonner, a question for you. We have heard that there 

were 33 hijacker entries and two referrals to Customs' secondary 

inspection. And I'd like to address one of them, which was 

Waleed al Shehri, who as I understand it, he was -- there was a 

secondary inspection report that states that a secondary 

inspection was complete and he was not permitted entry into the 

Bahamas and returned to Florida by Bahamian immigration. So my 

question to you is could it be that someone who would be rejected 

by the Bahamian authorities would be accepted by us, and if so, 

under what circumstances and what would we do about it?

MR. BONNER: Well, first of all, I know nothing whatsoever 

of any report you might have with respect to a secondary 

inspection on al Shehri. So there may have been one and it may 

have been INS, it may have been Customs. I have no idea, not 

seen the report, so it gets very speculative. I don't even know 

how to begin to answer that. But if he were a non-immigrant who 

was not otherwise entitled to enter the United States, obviously 

one would hope that he would not have been permitted to enter the 

country. I have no idea -- if, in fact, I have to assume your 

hypothetical because I do not have any knowledge of the fact --

MS. GORELICK: Well, maybe we'll do rather than --
161

MR. BONNER: -- that he was turned down by the Bahamian 

government, I mean, the question would be why was he refused 

entry there? Was it because he required a visa and didn't have 

one? Did he have a proper visa to enter the U.S.? I mean, there 

are two many facts that I just don't have at my command to answer 

that question.

MS. GORELICK: I should not have -- I'm sorry. I should not 

have presumed your familiarity with this, and what I will do is 

ask the staff to review with you what I'm referring to and maybe 

you can give me your comments for the record.

MR. BONNER: I'd be happy to provide a response to you.

MS. GORELICK: Mr. Ziglar, I was struck in reading your 

testimony about how thematically similar it was to Doris 

Meissner's testimony with regard to the development of policy in 

the immigration area and the political environment in which the 

INS has had to function. You refer very strikingly to funding 

inadequacies, to the failure of Congress to respond to your 

restructuring plan, which was a modification or a carrying 

forward in some respects of Commissioner Meissner's restructuring 

plan. You've told the story about what happened to you when you 

tried to make a seemingly modest proposal with regard to the visa 

period. 

And the two elements of what you say and what Commissioner 

Meissner said are really the same. One is that we need as a 

country to have a much more balanced and thoughtful approach to 

immigration. But, in fact, what we have is policy development 

characterized by a highly politicized environment, an agency 

buffeted by both inconsistent knee-jerk pendulum swings of points 

of view and inadequate funding. Now, you've been a student of 

the INS and certainly Doris Meissner has been for decades. Would 

that be a fair characterization of your view of the way in which 

we view immigration policy and the consequences that that might 

have for the security of our nation?

MR. ZIGLAR: I think that's a good characterization of it. 

I've had the opportunity since I left the Commission to be a 

fellow up at the Kennedy School, thinking and talking about this 

issue, then teaching at George Washington Law School in the area. 

And I've had the good fortune for the last year really to be able 

to study the history in very great detail. What we're 

experiencing and what we've experienced in the last decade or two 

decades in immigration is not new. Our schizophrenia or 

ambivalence or whatever word you want to have about it goes back 
162

really literally back to the late 1700s and we have periods 

throughout our history where this has been through.

The one thing that struck me in my study of the history of 

immigration is that the one policy area that the executive and 

the judicial branches give the most deference to is immigration. 

I can't think of, based on my study, any other place where the 

Congress has literally more control of a policy area, from the 

funding to the execution, through the means that Congress can do. 

And so, given an issue like immigration which divides the country 

and has divided it so many times, it's not surprising to me that 

we have been going back and forth and that, you know, you get 

some laws but nobody wants to fund it. Everybody gets a little 

something and, as a result of it, what we end up with is a system 

that doesn't work and sometimes can't be enforced or even if it 

could be enforced, we don't have the resources to do it.

MS. GORELICK: So I take it's your view then is that with 

this high level of deference to the Congress and the highly 

politicized nature of immigration in our body politic that the 

result is an agency less competent, less able to proceed fairly 

and perhaps less able to protect us. Would that be your view?

MR. ZIGLAR: I would take the word "competent" or 

"incompetent" out of that. Sure, we had incompetent people. We 

have incompetent people in the private sector. We have 

incompetent people in other agencies. I worked up here in the 

Senate for many years. We even had some incompetent people up 

here. But the fact is that the folks at the INS are overwhelmed 

and there is a certain fact that when you are overwhelmed that 

just kind of paralyses things at times. So that's the way I 

would characterize it.

MS. GORELICK: I wasn't casting aspersions at all on the 

tens of thousands of very able men and women who have worked in 

the immigration area over the years. I mean, it was my -- one of 

my pleasures to supervise the agency for a period of time when I 

was at the Department of Justice. But I was referring to the 

difficulty of acting competently when you have shifting 

requirements, inadequate funding and fear of retribution when you 

try your job. 

Thank you very much for your comments.

MR. ZIGLAR: Thank you.
163

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Fielding, we are going to make short 

questions and succinct answers because we are running a little 

late on time.

MR. FIELDING: Mr. Chairman, I'll solve this problem. Thank 

you all, first of all, for appearing and also for your past and 

present years of wonderful government service and your service to 

this commission. 

Mr. Bonner, I have a line of questioning about the targeting 

rule that you discussed earlier in regard to identifying 

terrorism threats in container ships. With your indulgence, I'd 

like to discuss that to the staff and we'll complete it that way, 

if that's --

MR. BONNER: That will be fine, Mr. Fielding.

MR. FIELDING: Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. KEAN: Thank you.

Senator Kerrey.

MR. KERREY: You yielded some time to me, I hope. 

Secretary Verga, let me -- earlier in a conversation with 

Commissioner Meissner and Secretary Ryan, I made what I think is 

an accurate point which is that a very significant fraction of 

our response to terrorism in all its forms is connected to our 

concern about Islamist terrorism. Do you share that view? We 

keep using the word "terrorism" as if there is like six different 

flavors and seven different varieties and so forth. It seems to 

me that we're talking about, in terms of what gets us all worked 

up and seriously frightened, is a singular brand of terrorism.

MR. VERGA: I think that's a fair statement. Most of the 

terrorist organizations with global reach could be characterized 

as Islamic fundamental terrorists. That's a fair statement.

MR. KERREY: I'm trying to think of terrorist organizations 

as a global reach. It's not. 

MR. VERGA: Global reach, I'd have to think about. But I 

would agree with that. I can't think of one right off --
164

MR. KERREY: One of the presumptions that I keep hearing --

and all three of you are post-9/11 appointees, so you're off the 

hook. You can look back on this with a little more relief and 

objectivity, I hope. But because it seems to me that one of the 

presumptions that keep surfacing for those of us -- and I was in 

the Senate prior to 9/11 and a lot of that work that we did, it 

seems to me, was inadequate to assess the possibility that the 

homeland was going to be attacked. A lot of the presumptions 

were that simply wasn't a possibility. 

And we heard Secretary Ryan say, she said to me we were 

focused on a potential attack overseas and yet the evidence over 

the past 10 years seems to suggest that that wasn't a good 

presumption, beginning with the World Trade Center action and 

following on with the attack on the CIA and even the attack on 

Khobar Towers was against Americans. Unclear exactly at the time 

who was responsible for what. But certainly the global reach and 

the possibility that the United States of America could be 

attacked should have been a front and center concern of everybody 

that was evaluating that threat.

MR. VERGA: I think that that's fair but I think that the 

evaluation of the type of attack or scope and scale led to the 

conclusion or to the view that prevention of that type of 

activity is primarily law enforcement activity. Since we're 

talking about internal security matters of the United States, we 

have throughout our history made those matters of civilian 

concern and not military concern. And so we, in the Department 

of Defense, would look to the elimination of terrorist activities 

overseas as our way of doing that, in military terminology, 

defense in depth. You know, that's why we pursue the global war 

on terrorism, Iraq, Afghanistan, other locations and turn to the 

civilian law enforcement agencies to deal with activities inside 

the United States.

MR. KERREY: That's actually a second opinion beyond just 

the DOD's responsibilities on the matter. I mean, even though it 

was an international event, we sent the FBI over to investigate 

Khobar. We sent the FBI over to investigate Dar es Salaam and 

Nairobi. We sent the FBI to investigate the Cole as if it was a 

law enforcement case. 

MR. VERGA: We have throughout history dealt with acts of 

terrorism as violations of U.S. law. It is, you know, a sort of 

legalistic burden of proof kind of idea that we had gotten 

ourselves into prior to 9/11 or, even in some cases, post-9/11, 

when you talk about specific acts of terrorism because I think 
165

that's the nature of our society is to turn to legal remedies 

short of war.

MR. KERREY: But the two moments that I think caused us to -

- should have caused us to analyze this threat much differently. 

The first was the East African embassy bombings on the 7th of 

August that necessitated a significant amount of sophistication. 

Earlier I made the point that, if you look at the details of what 

these 19 men did on 11th September, they defeated every defense 

that we had in place, every single on of them. And there is no 

other word that you can put on it other than they defeated us. 

They defeated the INS. They defeated the Department of 

State. They defeated the FAA. They defeated the airlines. 

Every single turn, they defeated and in part, the defense seems 

to be, gee, we thought they were going to hit us over the Middle 

East and it seems to me that both there and take the Bojinka 

plot, which is the other one that I was going to reference, we 

have the airlines and the FAA in here tomorrow to talk to them. 

It seems to me reasonable -- and I seek your educated opinion on 

this, not necessarily your DOD opinion. 

But it seems to me that, at the very least, we should have 

been prepared for a multiple hijacking event and we were not 

prepared for a multiple hijacking event. Once again, we said, 

Well, gee, we didn't think that was going to happen. At some 

point, you run out of patience when people say, I didn't think 

that was going to happen when we were defeated so clearly in 

areas where we shouldn't have been defeated.

MR. VERGA: I can't disagree that they defeated any defenses 

that we had in place and that those defenses were, by evidence, 

inadequate. I think what we have to do is to look at what we're 

doing today, look at what we're doing in the future in order to 

learn from that mistake and not let it happen again.

MR. KERREY: Would you -- I mean, you've got combat 

experience -- you put a perimeter out and a guy falls asleep at 

nine and says, well, we haven't been attacked for months and 

months and months. Why should we worry about it any longer? 

That's not an excuse you would accept if you went out and found 

that somebody out on the perimeter that's providing security 

asleep. And yet that's the defense. There hadn't been a 

hijacking in 10 years. Thus we really didn't have to worry about 

it any longer. Am I thinking in a way that would be consistent 

with the way you would evaluate this?
166

MR. VERGA: Clearly we should have and clearly we didn't, 

but, you know, retrospectively that's an easy conclusion to come 

to. I think based on the information people had available at the 

time, they came to a different conclusion. And I would not be in 

a position -- I was not in a position to make those judgments 

myself and would hesitate to second guess someone. You make a 

judgment based on the best information you have available at the 

time based on your experience and the information that's brought 

to you. Sometimes you come to the right conclusion and sometimes 

you come to the wrong conclusion.

MR. KERREY: But it seems to me that -- I appreciate 

hesitating to second guess, but if I put somebody in charge of 

security and if I put someone in charge of INS and say keep us 

safe, if I put somebody in charge of the Consular Office, if I 

put somebody in charge of the FAA and the airlines and say, 

'whoops, I was looking someplace else.' I mean, I can be 

sympathetic all I want to but at some point I need to say hey, 

you're responsible for this and it doesn't work any longer to say 

'well, you didn't give me the intelligence, I was sitting there 

waiting for it. I didn't realize.' I mean, that's what 

Secretary Lehman was saying earlier. Everybody knew after Dar Es 

Salaam in Nairobi that we were up against an extremely 

sophisticated operation, that the old stuff we were using after 

World Trade Center I, which was these guys aren't very 

sophisticated, thank God we've got people out there that are 

trying to get the deposit back on the Ryder truck, all the stuff, 

the disparaging evaluations that were being done at the time, it 

was clear that that was no longer going to work. 

I'm going to ask Mr. Bonner just one -- I'm going to take 

you off the hook here. I'm going to ask Commissioner Bonner. 

Earlier we had -- and I promise, Mr. Chairman, I'm going to be 

brief on this. Earlier we had a presentation -- it went by very 

quickly -- of documents that these conspirators, these hijackers 

used. It was put out there, the staff are making a case and I 

think a very effective case that the idea that the -- they just 

all came in legally and they're all clean and nothing could have 

been done about it, that's a false idea. That there was 

manipulation of documents and there was also some mistakes that 

were made on our side and one of them had to do with Mohamed Atta 

and I'm going to try on my own to stick this thing in so you can 

see it. 

Can you see that from where you're sitting?

MR. BONNER: I can see it pretty well.
167

MR. KERREY: You can sit where you are Well, maybe you have 

to come over and look at it. What you have here is a visa and 

then a secondary evaluation that was done and the question is 

whether -- I mean, basically what happened here, in the case of 

Mohamed Atta you've got somebody says I'm coming to the United 

States under one kind of a visa while the secondary evaluation 

clearly identified that that's not true. That he's in a flight 

school, that he's applying for a change of status. And the 

question is whether or not the -- I don't know what you call them 

any longer, the single faced person that's INS and Customs --

MR. BONNER: Customs and Border Protection officers or 

inspectors.

MR. KERREY: Do they still have the discretion to make this 

kind of judgment?

MR. BONNER: Yeah, they do but the discretion is pursuant 

to guidance that I've issued, and that is that if there is a --

after a questioning of a person -- we have a right to question 

everybody that's coming into the United States. And after 

questioning if there's a concern about that person for a 

terrorist threat and there is a basis, and there is almost always 

a basis for a non-immigrant, that person is excluded from the 

U.S. That's what Inspector Melendez did, by the way. He did his 

job right. Yes, of course we could do this, and of course 

Mohamed Atta should have been excluded from the United States. 

But it's the beauty of hindsight and that sort of thing. I don't 

want to be -- actually this was handled by INS inspectors at the 

time. 

Commissioner Ziglar has just alluded to the kind of 

pressures that were put on the INS from Congress and others to 

just let people in. But those days are over. I'll tell you that 

right now. We've issued the directions that you've got somebody 

coming in and he did -- he was not entitled to come in because he 

was coming in -- he was changing his status, he had left the 

United States, he was not entitled to come back in the United 

States. And I'm saying that if there was a concern in anybody's 

mind in the Immigration secondary --

MR. KERREY: I'm very impressed with the confidence that 

you're using here, but Khalid Shaikh Mohammed used an alias and 

got in. You're saying that that can't be done today? 
168

MR. BONNER: I think it's a lot more difficult to get -- if 

you're talking about using --

MR. KERREY: Wait a minute, if I could use your own words. 

You said, "a lot more difficult." That's a lot different than 

the absolute certainty that you were using --

MR. BONNER: There is no foolproof system. I'm just saying, 

look, of course we should after -- first of all, I would say you 

would ask some questions of Mohamed Atta. We obviously -- you 

know, this is in hindsight, this is after 9/11, but we have 

instituted as part of CBP's procedures that somebody that is by 

the way identified as potential, could be a potential threat to 

the United States is going to go to get some questions. Very 

often that's going to be in secondary. If you have some concerns 

about them and they can be excluded from the United States, that 

should be done. In this instance he was not entitled, by the 

way, to enter the U.S.

MR. KERREY: Tell me what does this phrase "with hindsight" 

mean? What is that all about? I mean, if you've put me in 

charge of something and I make a mistake can I come and say, "Oh, 

sure, with hindsight you're going to come in here and tell me I 

did something wrong"?

MR. BONNER: I'm not excusing or condoning anything, 

Senator, I want you to understand that. I'm just saying, you 

know, there is some hindsight that's applied here and we ought to 

learn from it and we ought to improve what we do, and we have. 

And I'd be happy to tell you how we've done it.

MR. KERREY: The narrative that concerns me a bit, Mr. 

Commissioner, which has nothing to do with you or any of you 

three gentlemen, it has to do with at moments in time -- the 

watershed for me was 7 August '78 -- at moments in time when we 

should have known that we were at considerable risk to Islamic 

extremists, we didn't -- you didn't get a presidential directive 

driving it down. At the moment in time that the Cole was clearly 

-- sometime early in '01 the information came and said we're 

absolutely certain the Cole attack was done by al Qaeda, Islamic 

extremist terrorism. I know it may not be politically correct 

but that's where it comes from. Yet you earlier, in response to 

Commissioner Ben-Veniste's questioning you said -- I find this 

remarkable -- I mean, you said we can figure out who the 19 were 

in 45 minutes. I mean, that's a shocking thing to hear because 

it basically says that there were simple ways to have prevented 

this from happening and we didn't do it.
169

MR. BONNER: And knowing too -- I mean, that's a very 

important fact that we knew two of them --

MR. KERREY: All right, so what's it take? I run the 

manifest against a lookout and the planes don't take off.

MR. BONNER: Absolutely. Well, and so the question would be 

are you doing that? You bet. Now, if you wanted me to comment 

on something that was done, look, it was wrong. First of all 

this was -- even under the INS regulations at the time, Atta was 

not admissible into the United States because he had left the 

country and he was seeking to change status. Once you leave the 

country you're not entitled to come back in. So he shouldn't 

have been let back in -- and let me just stop there. He 

shouldn't have been let in.

MR. KERREY: Have you been on Crossfire before because 

you're very good at this -- (laughter) -- 

MR. BONNER: Not Crossfire but similar - -

MR. KERREY: But you did say -- in front of 12 men and women 

in a jury, is that what it is? Did you say though and answer in 

the affirmative that INS agents have the discretion today to when 

there's a contradiction in status such as this ---

MR. BONNER: No, in that situation, no, there is no 

discretion because this was not -- this person could not be 

admitted because he was out of status. What I'm saying is in the 

area -- really, what I should have clarified is in the area where 

there is discretion to parole somebody in or admit somebody in, 

that the guidance to the field -- and this is all of the legacy 

Immigration inspectors, legacy Customs inspectors, the guidance 

is that essentially if there is any concern about somebody posing 

a potential terrorist threat you exercise discretion to exclude 

that person from the United States. So I'm not saying there's 

discretion in this case because I believe that still -- the law 

and regulation is that if you're out of status you cannot be 

admitted back in. 

Senator, I don't want to overstate things either. I 

actually almost want to go back and see what the discretion would 

be in this situation, that is to say where somebody was out of 

status because I believe that there ought to be some discretion 

here. I don't think we mindlessly apply laws and regulations. 

So that if this person that was out of status and had applied for 
170

a change status, I don't know -- you know, it's the proverbial 

68-year-old grandmother who doesn't fit any targeting criteria 

for a terrorist and we're satisfied that person isn't a 

terrorist. I don't want to mindlessly exercise some rule that 

just doesn't make any sense. 

What we're trying to do is to have it clear to all the men 

and women on the front line what we're trying to do here, and 

that is our job, as I stated in my testimony, our priority 

mission our priority mission is preventing terrorists and

terrorist weapons from entering the United States. So our job is 

to use our questioning skills -- those skills that Inspector 

Melendez has back here -- to use those skills and make a 

determination and then, if you're concerned about somebody you're 

darn right to exclude them from the country by expedited removal. 

And that's what we do.

So frankly, with respect to would we in a hundred percent of 

the cases in all circumstances not exercise any discretion here, 

I actually don't know. I don't know the answer to that. I'll 

get you the answer. But I believe we ought to have some 

discretion, I just think it ought to be guided in a principled 

way toward essentially the priority mission of homeland security, 

and that's keeping terrorists out.

MR. LEHMAN: But shouldn't there also be some accountability 

as well? I mean, following up on the Senator's theme. I mean, 

the only person that's been disciplined since 9/11 has been John 

Poindexter.

(Applause.)

MR. LEHMAN: Now, I --

MR. BONNER: I think Mary Ryan. She was here this morning. 

I don't know how you characterize that, but I won't characterize 

it.

MR. LEHMAN: Yes. She left, not because she screwed up but 

because she spoke out and said that she didn't get any 

intelligence, as I understand it.

MR. BONNER: There ought to be accountability and that is 

that you do -- I mean, in all circumstances we ought to make 

responsibility and accountability as clear as we possibly can. 

And so another thing -- you know, we have essentially a system 

where if you're going to admit somebody in where you've done this 
171

interview, that has to be recorded. A supervisor does have to 

take a look at it and say that makes sense. But it's in 

accordance with not just the pure question of whether somebody's 

admissible into the United States which was, to some extent, 

going back to Doris Meissner and long before that -- I've been 

around government for 30 years. That was the central question 

INS was asking. That's an important question. But the more 

important question clearly now is: Is this person seeking 

admission to our country a potential terrorist? And using the 

combined Immigration and Customs authority to make that 

determination, as astutely as possible and, if there is a 

concern, make sure that person does not get into our country.

MR. LEHMAN: Just out of curiosity, is Officer Melendez 

today making any more money or is he a higher rank than the 19 of 

his colleagues that let in the terrorists?

(Applause.)

MR. BONNER: Well, he certainly deserves an award and

commendation, but to answer your question, I don't know. I'm 

sure Inspector Melendez will check with me a little bit later on 

this one.

MR. KERREY: I hope so.

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Roemer.

MR. ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. KEAN: We are very late on time, sir.

MR. ROEMER: I realize that. I'll try to be very brief. I 

did want to follow up on one of the Senator's points with respect 

to, with all due respect, it's not so much hindsight looking back 

for us as it is one of really the celebrated successes at the 

Millennium of Customs and INS and Border Patrol working together 

to stop something from happening. Senator Kerrey mentioned the 

turning point being Africa in 1998 and the bombings there.

Well, certainly in the Millennium we have terrorists 

targeting our domestic homeland and more specifically the Los 

Angeles airport. Ressam is trying to get across the border, up 

on the northwest border, and you have a celebrated success at the 

Millennium. You have something that has been widely reported in 

the media when an agent who is doing her job very diligently and 

with some serendipity, discovers what she seems to think might be 
172

some drug problems and, with some combined skills from some other 

people, they look in the trunk and find bomb material and we 

catch somebody that might be coming at us to bomb the LA airport.

Now, we're not talking about specifically airlines as we 

were in the Bojinka plot, we are talking about a domestic threat 

that happened in 1993 at the World Trade Center which they came 

to, it happened outside Langley where there was a shooting, it 

happened in the Landmarks case in New York where terrorists 

wanted to bomb some of our most historic sites up in New York 

City. Why? It's not hindsight. Why is it, why is it that we 

aren't more focused from outside inward to the domestic threat?

MR. BONNER: Well, we definitely are more focused now. I 

mean, the question is why weren't we more focused on 9/11 --

MR. ROEMER: I'm talking about why on September 11th -- why 

aren't we more focused?

MR. BONNER: And look, I'm very aware of, as you know, very 

much aware. There's a Customs inspector, Diana Dean who was 

questioning Ahmed Ressam. Ahmed Ressam was not only an Algerian 

national in Canada illegally but he had gone to terrorist 

training camp, camps run by al Qaeda in Afghanistan. He was to 

link up with some al Qaeda terrorists in the United States to 

assist them to carry out the bombing attack on Los Angeles 

International Airport.

So, yeah, it's one inspector -- cold hit by the way -- just 

like Inspector Melendez. Cold hit by Inspector Dean. No advance 

information, just doing her job. So it is important, by the way, 

to have well trained people doing their job. We obviously want 

to be able to give them more information in terms of who it is 

they need to look at, what they need to look at, to improve our 

chances of preventing terrorists from entering our country to 

carry out attacks. 

So I don't -- by the way, when I said hindsight I don't mean 

that pejoratively. The 9/11 Commission is doing exactly what it 

should be doing: looking at this and trying to figure out what 

we could have done better and what we need to do better and what 

we are doing better. So I don't mean to -- please don't 

interpret that as critical whatsoever.

MR. ROEMER: Senator Kerrey's gone, you can say anything you 

want about him now -- (laughter) --
173

MR. BONNER: Would you tell Senator Kerrey --

MR. ROEMER: We'll see. We'll see how you continue to 

answer these questions. On the training side, you've said that 

these agents did their job without advance knowledge on the 

border to get Ressam. Great example of fortune and training and 

skill and some education and combination of resources coming 

together to catch this person. But we also need strategic and 

tactical information to give them advance warning about our 

borders. There are reports that al Qaeda cells still exist in 

the United States or up in Canada. Where are you getting, 

Commissioner, your strategic and tactical intelligence now? 

Apparently it's not from the CIA.

MR. BONNER: Well, every day actually, before March 1 of 

2003, every day or virtually every working day I did get an 

intelligence briefing in the morning by the CIA.

MR. ROEMER: Up until when?

MR. BONNER: Up until the formation of the Department of 

Homeland Security.

MR. ROEMER: So in March?

MR. BONNER: Yes, on March 1 of this year. And now I am 

getting intelligence information. We have an Office of 

Intelligence within Customs -- now Customs and Border Protection 

-- so we get all of the classified cables come into our SKIF and 

they are reviewed by our people in terms of one question: is 

this going to be helpful to the frontline inspectors at the 

borders to have this information. Now, by the way, if --

MR. ROEMER: Let me just ask a quick question. Are these 

new or newly hired people or are they, as I've experienced with 

debriefings from the CIA, you have some of the most experienced 

people at CIA with the decades of experience. You don't have 

those briefings any more as of March 1. Do you have the newhired and the inexperienced people giving you these briefs now?

MR. BONNER: That was just me personally getting briefings. 

Which is important, by the way.

MR. ROEMER: No, no, I'm just curious as to how we're 

formulating the people that are coming to give us the tactical 

intelligence.
174

MR. BONNER: This is a small cadre of intelligence analysts 

that we had at U.S. Customs. It's smaller now because there was 

a break-off of Customs, but it's a small cadre of intelligence 

analysts that have the highest level of clearances, including SCI 

clearances and they are looking at -- this is just one of the 

mechanisms.

MR. ROEMER: Yes, but this is a new department. Where are 

they from? Are they detailed from another agency?

MR. BONNER: No, these are people -- the people that are 

looking at the classified cables are U.S. Customs and Border 

Protection intelligence analysts as part of our Office of 

Intelligence. It's not the only source where we get information. 

I just want you to know there are about 800 classified cables a 

day. We look at them -- does it have any information, not just 

tactically but strategically important to the border and border 

security. Now, if it does, as I think you know, under the rules, 

we have to go back, as we do, to the originating source to 

declassify that so we can put out an appropriate alert or 

information to the field, and that's what we do. That's why we 

have that note there. 

We are also getting information from the Information 

Analysis Infrastructure -- can't say it -- IAIP -- Information 

Analysis Infrastructure Protection Directorate of the Department 

of Homeland Security which is drawing -- and we put our 

collection requirements up to -- I'm going to call it IA -- and 

it puts them to the intel community and we are actually pulling 

valuable information down that is relevant and related to border 

security through IAIP as a unit within the new Department of 

Homeland Security. You've already heard testimony today on the 

TTIC which is now stood up, I believe, and also the Terrorist 

Screening Center which is to actually develop one master 

terrorist watchlist for our government and the like.

So it's not that we're just getting it from one place. And 

I still, by the way, I do get a weekly briefing typically from 

the CIA and I also get another briefing once or twice a week from 

our own Office of Intelligence myself, just to make sure that we 

understand as best we can everything that's relevant and that we 

are then tasking operationally intelligence driven special 

operations to all the ports of entry in the United States, all 

the legacy Customs and Immigration inspectors who are now CBP 

officers, and to the border patrol.
175

MR. ROEMER: What we just continue to be very worried about 

is that we have these great experienced people out at CIA and new 

people, new hires, less experienced people coming in to new slots 

and new requirements at TTIC and Department of Homeland Security 

and that will be a task-up problem and a training problem and is 

something that I'm sure, Commissioner Bonner, you're 

experiencing. The day has been very long. We've had a great 

series of panels and you've been very helpful. 

Let me conclude with just one last question to Mr. Ziglar. 

According to our staff -- and let me just read you a couple of 

sentences. Here's what might happen at our borders, port of 

entry today. "Today at ports of entry, inspectors swipe machine 

readable passports when they are presented. The computer then 

prompts the inspector to enter the visa type. The computer tells 

the inspector to give the B-1, B-2 applicant six months." Six 

months to stay. The hijacker, Waleed al Shehri, for instance, 

only requested 20 days but was given automatically by the 

computer six months. Do you think that there should be an 

automatic designated length of stay for people coming into this 

country when they're requesting significantly less than that and 

why aren't we addressing this?

MR. ZIGLAR: Congressman, I actually addressed that in my 

opening statement. In fact, I propose that we have a 30-day 

default period when there was ambiguity about how long somebody 

wanted to stay and that we operate on the basis of you come in, 

you say I'm going to be here for two weeks and here's my 

itinerary, and we give you two weeks or we give you three weeks 

or we give you some reasonable period of time, as opposed to just 

by default giving you six months. My view was that six months, 

number one, encourages overstays. They get here, they like it, 

they find a boyfriend or girlfriend -- all these things happen.

Secondly, it certainly gives a lot of time for evil folks to 

come in here and do their thing really undetected. And so I 

thought -- my view was that if we're going to have an entry-exit 

system that will record the comings and goings and we have this 

30 day default period, or we know why you're here and how long 

you're going to be here, that we can match those things up a 

whole lot better and -- not just for terrorism though, 

Congressman, for better control of our borders and better 

enforcement of our immigration laws, because not everybody who 

comes across the border is a terrorist, but there are people that 

come across the border with the intent of staying here because 

they like it. And one of the biggest problems we've got are 

illegal aliens in the country. Forty percent of those are 
176

overstays. And it seems to me that we can deal with that problem 

by not having such a wide open default period of six months. 

That was my view. We published a notice of proposed regulations 

and, boy, did the storm start.

MR. ROEMER: Mr. Ziglar, I actually -- it's been a long day 

but not so long that I didn't listen to your very eloquent 

opening statement. I heard you say that, that you proposed it. 

Congress hasn't listened and haven't done anything about that. 

How can we make your proposal effective?

MR. ZIGLAR: Congressman, Congress doesn't have to do 

anything about that.

MR. ROEMER: So how do we get it by the Executive Branch or 

by permission of somebody -- how do we accomplish what you sought 

out to try to achieve?

MR. ZIGLAR: They've got to convince the Executive Branch to 

do it and then you've got to convince the Executive Branch not to 

bend when Congress threatens them with the ability to cut off 

money or to do all the things that Congress can do to the 

Executive Branch. This does not require legislation. This is a 

regulation function.

MR. LEHMAN: Are you talking about Mr. Executive Branch 

Bonner?

MR. BONNER: I just made a note -- (laughter) --

MR. ROEMER: You've got the right people here today to do 

something about that if they'd listen to that kind of proposal.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. KEAN: Our last question comes from Commissioner BenVeniste.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Mr. Verga, you appear to want to say 

something and I want to say something to you so maybe it's 

possible we're on the same wavelength. In response to a question 

posed by Commissioner Gorelick and then additional questions by 

Senator Kerrey, you indicated that with respect to NORAD, pre9/11 your focus was on the external threat: you were facing the 

wrong direction to be helpful with respect to the suicide 

hijackings of 9/11. But, so that the record is accurate, it is 

not to say that NORAD did not train for the possibility and 
177

practice exercises for the possibility of multiple hijackings 

within the United States territory, isn't that so?

MR. VERGA: That's correct.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: And even going back to the Atlanta 

Olympics, the protection of the airspace over the Olympics, while 

the military was not allowed to get involved, that was a 

considerable issue and something which was given considerable 

attention by other agencies of the government. But from time to 

time over the years, it is correct, is it not, that NORAD 

recognized the potentiality for a domestic hijacking that could 

threaten the continental United States?

MR. VERGA: It is. I can't say with what frequency or how 

often. I just don't have personal knowledge of how often they 

did that but I'm aware they did.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Well, that will be a subject of future 

hearings.

MR. VERGA: What I was going to request, sir, is you asked 

me a question about the Total Information Awareness program, now 

known as Terrorist Information Awareness, I'd like to submit you 

a little bit more for the record. It's a little complicated. 

There was a period of time when the program was suspended by 

Congress. That suspension expired in September of last year and 

we're starting it again. So I'll just give you a little sheet, 

if that's okay, for the record.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: I'd like to get that and I'd like to, if 

you wouldn't mind submitting something in writing with respect to 

allowing us to better understand the intelligence gathering 

function of the NORAD command.

MR. VERGA: Will do.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. KEAN: Thank you all very much, and I want to thank this 

panel. You've been interesting, enlightening and helpful to our 

investigation. Thank you all very, very much. Commissioner 

Hamilton and I, the Vice Chairman and I have brief statement to 

make, at this point we'll adjourn the hearing.

We've learned a lot today. I think we've significantly 

advanced our understandings of the events of 9/11. We've 
178

learned, among other things, that the disruption of terrorist 

travel needs to be a vital part of our counterterrorism strategy. 

It seems before 9/11 that just wasn't central. So work on 

terrorist travel documents languished and older methods for 

training people to spot them were not sustained. So the visa 

system operated without adequate input from national security 

agencies and terrorism was not a major priority in our 

immigration policy or enforcement efforts.

We also learned that the problems with watchlisting and 

tracking potential terrorists go well beyond working level 

failures. As that staff statement pointed out, these problems 

raise issues about responsibility in the senior management of the 

intelligence community. Some of the tragic results in the 9/11 

story were detailed today. We’re concerned about whether the 

management of transnational intelligence has adapted adequately 

to the war on terror that exists right now.

In the past the Immigration and Naturalization Service and 

the Consular Service at the Department of State were not full 

partners in the war on terrorism. Clearly they didn't have 

enough resources to perform their mission. They did not apply 

those resources sufficiently against the counterterrorism 

priority.

We learned that there was an apparent lack of urgency with 

respect to counterterrorism. Senior officials performed their 

duties with dedication to the best of their ability, but the 

world looked very different to them at the time than it does to 

us now. 

MR. HAMILTON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The system of 

course is different now, yet you could hear in the commissioners' 

questions throughout the morning and the afternoon that we are 

still concerned about whether old problems in sharing information 

are being solved or just replaced by new ones. For example, the 

Terrorist Threat Integration Center only coordinates analysis not 

operations. Then we heard the Terrorist Threat Integration 

Center does not sift the information from domestic agencies like 

the FBI, just information from international sources. So the 

domestic/foreign divide takes on a new form. 

In other words, 9/11 is in the past but the questions 

revealed by our analysis of the past remain relevant today. We 

as a government have a profound tendency to fight the last war. 

After the embassy bombings, we improved embassy security. After 

Khobar Towers and USS Cole we improved force protection. We knew 
179

a threat was coming in the summer of 2001, but we thought the 

threat was abroad, not at home. We have a highly reactive system 

in response to specific incidents rather than anticipation. 

We heard today from a highly dedicated professional who 

performed his duty with great professionalism who prevented a 

terrible catastrophe from becoming worse. But we need our 

systems in place that will enable the many dedicated 

professionals in the United States government to maximize their 

ability to make America safer and more secure. 

Thank you.

MR. KEAN: Thank you very much, sir. 

We are now adjourned until 9:00 o'clock tomorrow morning. 

Thank you all very, very much.

END