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PANEL ONE OF THE TENTH HEARING OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON 

TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES

SUBJECT: "LAW ENFORCEMENT AND THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY" 

THOMAS H. KEAN, CHAIR; LEE H. HAMILTON, VICE CHAIR PHILIP D. 

ZELIKOW, COMMISSION EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AND KEVIN SCHEID PRESENT 

STAFF STATEMENT: "THE PERFORMANCE OF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY"

WITNESS: GEORGE TENET, DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE

216 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING

9:03 A.M. EDT, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 2004

MR. KEAN: (Strikes gavel.) Good morning. As chair of the 

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 

I hereby convene our second day of hearings on "Law Enforcement 

and the Intelligence Community." 

And as I did yesterday, I'd like to make two announcements. 

First, for viewers watching this hearing at home, you can obtain 

staff statements at www.911commission.gov. Second, I would ask 

our audience again to please limit your enthusiasms or lack of 

enthusiasms, to be polite to our witnesses, and give our 

commissioners more time to ask their questions and get their 

responses. 

We'll now hear the first staff statement of the day, "The 

Performance of the Intelligence Community." Philip Zelikow and 

Kevin Scheid are the Commission staff who are going to read this 

particular statement. 

MR. ZELIKOW: Members of the Commission, with your help, your 

staff has developed initial findings on the performance of the 

intelligence community against the danger of Islamic extremist 

terrorism before the September 11th attacks on the United

States. These findings may help frame some of the issues for 

this hearing and inform your work. 

In Staff Statement Number 7, we discussed our initial 

findings on the work of the CIA as an instrument of national 

policy in the areas of clandestine and covert action. Today we 

focus on intelligence analysis and warning, the collection of 

intelligence and the overall management of the intelligence 

community before September 11th, 2001. 

This report reflects the results of our work on these issues 

so far. We remain ready to revise our understanding of these 

topics as our work continues. The staff statement represents the 

collective efforts of a number of members of our staff. Kevin 
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Scheid, Lorry Fenner, Gordon Lederman, Lloyd Salvetti and Doug 

MacEachin did much of the investigative work reflected in this 

statement. 

We built upon the very significant work done on this topic in 

2002 by the Congressional Joint Inquiry. 

All the agencies of the intelligence community made the 

necessary documents and witnesses available to us, often with a 

considerable investment of time and effort. 

I'd like to skip over the initial section of the statement 

that explains this creature of our government called the 

“intelligence community” and its relation to terrorism and just 

begin at the top of page 3, where we talk about their analysis 

of a new danger. 

Information comes to intelligence agencies from many sources. 

These sources include the reports from other U.S. government 

agencies such as the State Department, from counterparts in 

foreign security agencies, from human agents, from signals 

intelligence such as communications, from imagery and from open 

sources like foreign newspapers. The CIA was originally created 

in large part to sort through all such sources and offer 

unbiased assessments to the nation's leaders. In other words, 

although the CIA became and remains a principal collector and 

operator in its own right, its first duty was to provide 

integrated analysis. 

Analysis is more than a news report. A tactical analysis 

studies a particular case involving an individual or group as a 

guide to specific operations. Strategic analysis looks beyond 

the particular in order to see patterns, notice gaps, or 

assemble a larger picture on a wider time frame to guide the 

development of national policy. 

Budget cuts in the national foreign intelligence program from 

fiscal years 1990 to 1996, and essentially flat budgets from 

fiscal years 1996 to 2000 -- except for the so-called Gingrich 

supplemental of fiscal year 1999 -- caused significant staffing 

reductions that constrained the numbers and training of 

analysts. Analysis was already a relatively minor part of 

intelligence budgets devoted mainly to collection and 

operations. 

Meanwhile, during the 1990s the rise of round-the-clock news 

shows and the Internet reinforced pressure on the diminishing 
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number of intelligence analysts to pass along fresh reports to 

policymakers at an ever-faster pace, trying to add context or 

supplement what their policy consumers were receiving from the 

media. Many officials told us that the demands of providing 

current intelligence and briefings to more and more consumers, 

both in the executive branch and in Congress, drained scarce 

resources away from systematic, reflective, strategic analysis. 

In the late 1990s, weaknesses in all-source and strategic 

analysis were spotlighted by independent panels critiquing the 

intelligence community's failure to foresee the India-Pakistan 

nuclear weapons tests in 1998 and its limited ability to assess 

the ballistic missile threat to the United States in 1999. 

The first panel was led by Admiral David Jeremiah, the second 

by Donald Rumsfeld. Both panels called attention to the 

dispersal of efforts on too many priorities, declining attention 

to the craft of strategic analysis, budget constraints, 

sophisticated denial and deception efforts by adversaries, and 

security rules that prevented adequate sharing of information. 

We found similar shortcomings with the quality of finished 

intelligence on transnational terrorism prior to 9/11. While we 

now know that al Qaeda was formed in 1988 at the end of the 

Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the intelligence community did 

not describe this organization, at least in documents we have 

seen, until 1999. As late as 1997 the Counterterrorist Center 

characterized Osama Bin Ladin as a financier of terrorism. This 

was at a time when the intelligence community had recently 

received a major input of new information revealing that Bin

Ladin headed his own terrorist organization with its own 

targeting agenda and operational commanders. 

This new information also revealed the previously unknown 

involvement of Bin Ladin's organization in the 1992 attack on 

the Yemen hotel quartering U.S. military personnel and the 1993 

shoot-down of U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters in Somalia, and 

quite possibly in the 1995 Riyadh bombing of the American 

training mission to the Saudi Arabian National Guard. Nor had 

analysts worked through answers to questions about links between 

Bin Ladin and his associates with the bombing of the World Trade 

Center in 1993 and the Manila airlines plot of 1994. 

The most impressive piece of analysis on the emerging 

transnational terrorist threat was the 1995 National 

Intelligence Estimate entitled, "The Foreign Terrorist Threat to

the United States." It judged at the time that: "[T]he most 
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likely threat of an attack in the United States would be from 

transient groupings of individuals similar to those drawn 

together by Ramzi Yousef. Such groupings lack strong 

organization but rather are loose affiliations." 

The NIE warned of terrorist attacks in the United States over 

the following two years. It was updated in 1997. As we mentioned 

in Staff Statement No. 5, by early 1997 the United States had 

received dramatic new information about the organization of al 

Qaeda and its efforts to mount catastrophic attacks against the 

United States. 

The 1997 update failed to reflect this new information. No 

comprehensive National Estimates were subsequently produced on 

terrorism prior to the attacks on 9/11. 

Thousands of particular reports were circulated. A number of 

very good analytical papers were distributed on specific topics, 

such as Bin Ladin's political philosophy, his command of a 

global network; analysis of information from terrorists captured 

in Jordan in December '99; al Qaeda's operational style; and on 

the evolving goals of the international extremist movement. 

Hundreds of articles for morning briefings were prepared for 

the highest officials in the government with titles such as "Bin 

Ladin Threatening to Attack U.S. Aircraft," 1998; "UBL Plans for 

Reprisals Against U.S. Targets, Possibly in U.S.," 1998; 

"Strains Surface Between Taliban and Bin Ladin," 1999; 

"Terrorist Threats to U.S. Interests in Caucasus," '99; "Bin 

Ladin to Exploit Looser Security During Holidays," '99; "Bin 

Ladin Evading Sanctions," 2000; "Bin Ladin's Interest in 

Biological and Radiological Weapons," February 2001; "Taliban 

Holding Firm on Bin Ladin for Now," 2001; "Terrorist Groups Said 

Cooperating on U.S. Hostage Plot," May 2001; and "Bin Ladin

Determined to Strike in U.S.," August 2001. 

Despite such reports, and a 1999 paper on Bin Ladin's command 

structure for al Qaeda, there were no complete authoritative 

portraits of his strategy and the extent of his organization's 

involvement in past terrorist attacks. Nor had the community 

provided an authoritative depiction of his organization's 

relationships with other governments, or the scale of the threat 

his organization posed to the United States. 

A few analysts within the CTC were dedicated to working on 

Bin Ladin. One of them had developed a lengthy, comprehensive 

paper on his organization by 1998. Her supervisor did not 
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consider the paper publishable and broke the topic down into 

four papers assigned to four other available analysts. As an 

indicator of the scarcity of analysts and the press of current 

intelligence reporting work, it took more than two years for two 

of these papers to be published at all. The other two were not 

finished until after 9/11. 

Some officials, including Deputy DCI John McLaughlin, are 

skeptical about the importance of comprehensive estimates. 

McLaughlin has been in charge of the estimate process. He told 

us such estimates are time-consuming to prepare, judgments are 

watered down in negotiations, conclusions may duplicate those 

already circulated in more specific papers, and he and others 

said that key policymakers understood the threat. 

Other officials, however, stress the importance of such 

estimates as a process that surfaces and clarifies 

disagreements. 

Through coordination and vetting views the community comes to 

a collective understanding of the nature of the threat it faces, 

what is known, unknown, and a discussion of how to close these 

gaps. 

Most important, our interviews of senior policymakers in both 

administrations revealed a fundamental uncertainty about how to 

regard the threat posed by Bin Ladin and al Qaeda. After 9/11 

the catastrophic character of this threat seems obvious. It is 

hard now to recapture the old conventional wisdom before 9/11. 

For example, a New York Times investigation in April 1999 sought 

to debunk claims that Bin Ladin was a terrorist leader with the 

headline, "U.S. Hard Put to Find Proof that Bin Ladin Directed 

Attacks." 

The head of analysis at the Counterterrorist Center until 

1999 regarded the Bin Ladin danger as still in the realm of past 

experience, discounting the alarms about a catastrophic threat 

as relating only to the danger of chemical, biological or 

nuclear attack, which he downplayed, referring in 2001 before 

9/11 to the overheated rhetoric on the subject. In other words, 

before the attack we found uncertainty among senior officials 

about whether this was just a new and especially venomous 

version of the ordinary terrorist threat America had lived with 

for decades or was radically new, posing a threat beyond any yet 

experienced. 
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Some pointed out to us that, before 9/11, al Qaeda was 

considered responsible for the deaths of less than 50 Americans, 

all of them overseas. Former officials, including an NSC staffer 

working for Richard Clarke, told us the threat was seen as one 

that could cause hundreds of casualties, not thousands. Such 

differences affect calculations about whether or how to go to 

war. Even officials who acknowledge a vital threat 

intellectually may not be ready to act upon such beliefs at 

great cost or at high risk. 

Therefore, the government experts who believed there was such 

a danger needed a process that could win and acknowledge broad 

support for their views or at least spotlight the areas of 

dispute. Such a process could also prompt action across the 

government. The national estimate process has often played this 

role, and it is sometimes controversial for this very reason. It 

played no role in judging the threat posed by al Qaeda. 

In the Counterterrorist Center, priority was given to 

tactical analysis to support operations. Although the 

Counterterrorist Center formally reports to the DCI, the center 

is effectively embedded in the CIA's Directorate of Operations, 

or was. The center had difficulty attracting talented analysts 

from their traditional billets in the agency's Directorate of 

Intelligence. 

The Counterterrorist Center also was especially vulnerable to 

the pressures that placed reporting ahead of research and 

analysis. Strategic analysis was a luxury that the strained 

cadres of analysts in the center could rarely indulge. 

In late 2000, DCI Tenet recognized the deficiency of 

strategic analysis against al Qaeda. He appointed a senior 

manager to tackle the problem with in the Counterterrorist 

Center. In March 2001, this manager briefed DCI Tenet on 

creating a strategic assessment capability. The CTC established 

a new Strategic Assessments Branch during July 2001. The 

decision to add about 10 analysts to this effort was seen at the 

time as a major bureaucratic victory. The CTC labored to find 

analysts to serve in that office. The new chief of that branch 

reported for duty on September 10th, 2001. 

Warning and the case of aircraft as weapons. Since the Pearl 

Harbor attack of 1941, the intelligence community has devoted 

generations of effort to understanding the problem of warning 

against surprise attack. Rigorous analytic methods were 

developed, focused in particular on the Soviet Union. Several 
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leading practitioners within the intelligence community 

discussed them with us. They have been articulated in many ways, 

but almost all seem to have about four elements in common: one, 

think about how surprise attacks might be launched; two, 

identify telltale indicators connected to the most dangerous 

possibilities; three, where feasible, collect intelligence 

against these indicators; and four, adopt defenses to deflect 

the most dangerous possibilities or at least get more warning. 

Concern about warning issues arising after the end of the 

Gulf War led to a major study conducted for DCI Robert Gates in 

1992 which recommended several measures, including a stronger 

national intelligence officer for warning. We were told that 

these measures languished under Gates' successors. The national 

intelligence officer for warning yielded responsibility to the 

Counterterrorism Center in handling warnings related to a 

terrorist attack. Those responsibilities were passed to an 

Intelligence Community Counterterrorism Board that would issue 

periodic threat advisories. 

With the important exception of al Qaeda efforts in chemical, 

biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons, we did not find 

evidence that this process regularly applied the methods to 

avoid surprise attack that had been so laboriously developed 

over the years. There was, for example, no evident intelligence 

community analysis of the danger of boat bombs before the attack 

on the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000, although expertise about 

such means of attack existed within the community, especially at 

the Office of Naval Intelligence. 

Amid the thousands of threat reports, some mentioned aircraft 

in the years before 9/11. The most prominent hijacking threat 

report came from a foreign government source in late 1998 and 

discussed a plan for hijacking a plane in order to gain hostages 

and bargain for the release of prisoners, such as the "blind 

sheikh." 

As we mentioned yesterday in Staff Statement Number 10, this 

1998 report was the source of the allusion to hijacking in the 

President's Daily Brief article provided to President Bush in 

August 2001. 

Other threat reports mentioned the possibility of using an 

aircraft laden with explosives. Of these the most prominent 

asserted a possible plot to fly an explosives-laden aircraft 

into a U.S. city. This report was circulated in September 1998 

and originated from a source who walked into an American 
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consulate in East Asia. Neither the source's reliability nor the 

information could be corroborated. 

In addition, an Algerian group hijacked an airliner in 1994 

in order to fly it into the Eiffel Tower, but they could not fly 

the plane. There was also in 1994 the private airplane crashing 

into the White House South Lawn. In early 1995, Abdul Hakim 

Murad, Ramzi Yousef's accomplice in the Manila airlines bombing 

plot, told Philippine authorities that he and Yousef had 

discussed flying a plane into CIA headquarters. A 1996 report 

asserted that Iranians were plotting to hijack a Japanese plane 

and crash it in Tel Aviv. 

These past episodes suggest possibilities. Alone, they are 

not warnings. But returning to the four elements mentioned 

above: 

The CTC did not analyze how a hijacked aircraft or other 

explosives-laden aircraft might be used as a weapon. If it had 

done so, it could have identified that a critical obstacle would 

be to find a suicide terrorist able to fly large jet aircraft. 

This had never happened before 9/11. 

The CTC did not develop a set of tell-tale indicators for 

this means of attack. For example, one such indicator might be 

the discovery of terrorists seeking or taking flight training to 

fly large jet aircraft, or seeking to buy advanced flight 

simulators. 

The CTC did not propose, and the intelligence community 

collection management process did not set, collection 

requirements against such tell-tale indicators. Therefore, the 

warning system was not looking for information such as the July 

2001 FBI report of terrorist interest in various kinds of 

aircraft training in Arizona, or the August 2001 arrest of 

Zacarias Moussaoui because of his suspicious behavior in a 

Minnesota flight school. In late August, the Moussaoui arrest 

was briefed to the DCI and other top CIA officials under the 

heading, quote, "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly," close quote. 

The news had no evident effect on warning. 

Neither the intelligence community nor the NSC policy process 

analyzed systemic defenses of aircraft or against suicide 

aircraft. The many threat reports mentioning aircraft were 

passed to the FAA. We discussed the problems at that agency in 

Staff Statements 3 and 4. 
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Richard Clarke told us that he was concerned about this 

threat in the context of protecting the Atlanta Olympics in June 

1996, the White House complex, and the 2001 G-8 summit in Genoa. 

But he attributed his awareness to novels more than any 

warnings from the intelligence community. He did not pursue the 

systemic issues of defending aircraft from suicide hijackers or 

bolstering wider air defenses. 

Let's turn now to the issues of intelligence collection and 

management, and for that, I'd like to ask Kevin Scheid to 

continue. 

MR. SCHEID: Mr. Chairman, the Counterterrorism Center and the 

larger intelligence community tried to understand the emerging 

terrorist threat with their traditional collection methods of 

human source collection, or the use of informants; information 

provided by foreign intelligence services; signals collection, 

or the intercept of communications; and open sources, or the 

systematic collection of print, broadcast and, in the late 

1990s, Internet information. 

Imagery intelligence was extremely valuable for targeting 

cruise missiles, interpreting Predator videos and identifying 

training camps in Afghanistan. This form of intelligence 

collection worked well, but its sustained effectiveness depended 

on cues provided by other sources of intelligence. 

Human source intelligence is conducted by both the CIA and 

the Defense Intelligence Agency, DIA. Gaining access to 

organizations or individuals who have access to terrorist groups 

has proven extremely difficult for both the CIA and the DIA. 

This has led to a heavy reliance on "walk-ins" and on foreign 

intelligence services. 

Often CIA's best sources of information on terrorist 

organizations have been volunteers or "walk-ins," who approach 

U.S. personnel at embassies and other places for a variety of 

reasons. But evaluating these volunteers and walk-ins is a timeconsuming and sometimes risky proposition. The ratio of valuable 

information providers to charlatans, fabricators or double 

agents is about 1 to 10. That is, for every 10 walk-ins, only 

one produces information of value to the intelligence community 

and U.S. policymakers. 
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Yet some of the best sources on al Qaeda during the 1990s 

were walk-ins. One of these individuals, Jamal al Fadl, began 

providing information in 1996 and has testified in open court. 

Foreign security services also played a critical role in 

understanding the terrorist threat. The United States government 

relied and relies today heavily on this assistance. A major 

function of the intelligence community is the development and 

maintenance of these information-sharing relationships, which 

may include expenditures to help the foreign agency improve its 

own capabilities. 

Before 9/11 the U.S. government developed especially helpful 

relationships with several governments in the Middle East and 

Southeast Asia. Where these relationships work, the local 

services have an enormous advantage in collecting intelligence. 

Of course, the quality of these relationships varied. 

The German government provided the U.S. government 

information on an individual named "Marwan" who was acquainted 

with the target of a German investigation. The common first name 

and a phone number in the United Arab Emirates were provided as 

a possible lead in 1999. The CTC pursued this lead for a short 

time, but with the scant information provided, the CTC found 

nothing to provoke a special effort on this lead. The CIA did 

not ask any other agency in the intelligence community for 

assistance. We now know that "Marwan" was Marwan al Shehhi, who 

later piloted United Airlines Flight 175 into the south tower of 

the World Trade Center. He used the UAE telephone number in the 

period prior to the 9/11 attacks. We're continuing to 

investigate this episode. 

We also corroborated that some countries did not support U.S. 

efforts to collect intelligence information on terrorist cells 

in their countries or did not share the American assessments of 

the threat. 

According to a former chief of the CTC, before 9/11 many 

liaison services were "highly skeptical," and, quote, "frankly 

thought we were crazy," close quote. They saw Bin Ladin as more

of an "oddball" than a real terrorist threat. This was 

especially true for some of the European services. 

Most importantly, from our interviews it is clear that the 

community has no comprehensive and integrated foreign liaison 

strategy. Each agency pursues foreign partnerships unilaterally, 
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and has done so for many years with minimal interagency 

coordination. 

Signals intelligence has been another source of terroristrelated information. The United States spends a great deal on 

signals intelligence capabilities. Signals intelligence provides 

global reach through land, air, sea and space-based systems. But 

U.S. capabilities have been challenged by the use of modern 

systems and the operational security practiced by the current 

generation of terrorists. Moreover, serious legal and policy 

challenges arise for foreign intelligence agencies when dealing 

with communications between the United States and foreign 

countries. The National Security Agency is also prohibited from 

collecting intelligence on people residing in the United States, 

whether they are U.S. citizens or not, without a warrant under 

the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Act. 

Signals intelligence is a source of measuring "chatter," 

which is an indicator of terrorist activity. Interpreting 

chatter is difficult. For example, the press reported that the 

Congressional Joint Inquiry was told about intercepted 

communications collected on September 10, 2001, saying "tomorrow 

is zero hour," and about the imminent beginning of "the match." 

Additional information later came to light within the 

intelligence community, however, that suggested this information 

was connected with the opening of the Taliban and al Qaeda 

military offensive in Afghanistan against the Northern Alliance, 

following on the September 9 al Qaeda assassination of the 

Northern Alliance's leader rather than the 9/11 attacks. 

Finally, open sources, the systematic collection of foreign 

media, has always been a bedrock source of information for 

intelligence. Open sources remain important, including among 

terrorist groups that use the media and the Internet to 

communicate leadership guidance. This mission was performed by 

the Foreign Broadcast Information Service. That service has been 

"shredded," as one official put it to us, by budget cuts during 

the 1990s. But by 2001, the FBIS had built a significant 

translation effort for terrorism-related media. The FBIS 

believes its charter bars open source collection of foreign 

language media within the United States. 

The overall management of the intelligence community's 

collection efforts is critical. Beginning in 1999, both 

Assistant DCI for Collection Charles Allen and CTC Director 

Cofer Black devoted significant attention to improving the 

collection of intelligence against the al Qaeda sanctuary in 
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Afghanistan. In Staff Statement No. 7 we mentioned "The Plan" 

developed to energize the recruitment of human agents. 

These efforts complemented ingenious efforts already underway 

to improve the collection of signals intelligence. In these 

SIGINT efforts the CIA relied heavily on its own efforts, 

sometimes working well with NSA, sometimes quarreling. But they 

ultimately failed to achieve an adequate combined effort. 

There were some commendable initiatives. Backed by the White 

House, Assistant DCI Allen worked with military officers in the 

Joint Staff during the spring and summer of 2000 to come up with 

innovative collection ideas. One of these was the Predator drone 

that first flew over Afghanistan in September 2000. 

Strategic collection management depends upon strategic 

analysis to define the baseline of what is known, what is not 

known, and to guide the setting of clear, agreed requirements. 

This process did not occur. Assistant DCI Allen concentrated on 

day-to-day collection challenges with enormous energy and 

dedication. However, there was no comprehensive collection 

strategy to pull human -- pull together human sources, imagery, 

signals intelligence and open sources. Even "The Plan" was 

essentially a CIA plan, not one for the intelligence community 

as a whole. 

Mr. Chairman, I'll move to page 10, towards the bottom. 

DCI Tenet's war. On December 4, 1998 DCI Tenet issued a 

directive to several CIA officials and the DDCI for Community 

Management stating: "We are at war. I want no resources or 

people spared in this effort, either inside CIA or the 

community." Unfortunately, we found the memorandum had little 

overall effect on mobilizing the CIA or the intelligence 

community. 

The memo was addressed only to CIA officials and the Deputy 

DCI for Community Management, Joan Dempsey. She faxed the memo 

to the heads of the major agencies of the intelligence 

community. Almost all our interviewees had never seen the memo 

or only learned of it after 9/11. The NSA director at the time, 

Lieutenant General Kenneth Minihan, told us he believed the memo 

applied only to CIA and not NSA since he had not been informed -

- since he had -- since no one had informed him of any NSA 

shortcomings. On the other hand, CIA officials thought the 

memorandum was intended for the rest of the community, given the 
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fact that they had already been doing all they could and they 

thought that the community needed to pull its weight. 

The episode indicates some of the limitations of the DCI's 

authority over the direction and priorities of the intelligence 

community. Congress attempted to strengthen his authority in 

1996 by creating the positions of deputy DCI for Community 

Management and assistant DCIs for Collection, Analysis and 

Production, and Administration. Perhaps their authority is not 

great enough. Perhaps it is not used enough. The vision of 

central coordination, however, has not been realized. 

The DCI did not develop a management strategy for a war 

against terrorism before 9/11. Such a management strategy would 

define the capabilities -- the capabilities the intelligence 

community must acquire for such a war, from language training to 

collection systems to analysts. Such a management strategy would 

necessarily extend beyond the CTC to the components that feed 

its expertise and support its operations, linked transparently 

to counterterrorism objectives. It would then detail the 

proposed expenditures and organizational changes required to 

implement these capabilities. 

DCI Tenet and the CIA's deputy director for operations told 

us they did have a management strategy for war on terrorism. It 

was called "Rebuilding the CIA." 

They said the CIA as a whole had been badly damaged by prior 

budget constraints and that capability needed to be restored 

across the board. Indeed, the CTC had survived the budget cuts 

with less damage than many other components within the agency. 

By restoring funding across the CIA, a rising tide would lift 

all boats. They also stressed the synergy between improvements 

in every part of the agency and the capabilities that the CTC or 

stations overseas could draw upon in the war on terror. 

As some officials pointed out to us, the trade-off of this 

management approach is that by attempting to rebuild everything, 

the highest priority efforts might get only an average share, 

not maximum support. Further, this approach tended to take 

relatively strong outside support for combating terrorism and 

tried to channel it -- tried to channel this support into 

across-the-board funding increases. Proponents of the 

counterterrorism agenda might be less inclined to loosen the 

purse strings than they would have been if offered a convincing 

counterterrorism budget strategy. The DCI's management strategy 

was also primarily focused on the CIA. 
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DCI Tenet and his predecessors had not developed the 

management and administrative tools to run the intelligence 

community that most federal departments use to monitor and 

rationalize their resources against priorities. The intelligence 

community did not have a financial accounting system, a chief 

financial officer or a comptroller. The CIA had these tools for 

its own operations; the intelligence community did not. Instead, 

to manage the community as a whole, the DCI relied on a variety 

of financial systems maintained by different agencies and 

without standardized definitions for expenditures. 

Lacking a management strategy for the war on terrorism or 

ways to see how funds were being spent across the community, it 

was difficult for DCI Tenet and his aides to develop an overall 

intelligence community budget for the war on terrorism. 

The Administration and Congress relied on supplemental 

appropriations to increase counterterrorism funding. While 

supplementals were a useful one-time plus-up, the DCI was not 

able to build long-term capabilities. 

The community also lacked a common information architecture 

that would help to ensure the integration of counterterrorism 

data across CIA, NSA, DIA, the FBI, and other agencies. In 1998, 

DCI Tenet called for such an integration in his Strategic Intent 

for the Intelligence Community with a vision of greater unity 

and horizontal integration across the community, but the 

intelligence community did not develop a plan to achieve it 

before 9/11. 

Finally, the community had not institutionalized a process 

for learning from its successes and failures. We did not find 

any after- action reviews sponsored by the intelligence 

community after surprise terrorist attacks such as the embassy 

bombings of August 1998 or the U.S.S. Cole attack in October 

2000. The Community participated in inspector-general inquiries 

conducted by individual agencies, but these reviews were 

perceived as fault-finding, without enough constructive emphasis 

on learning lessons and discovering best practices. What we did 

not find was anything between the extremes of no investigation 

at all, and an adversarial inquiry triggered by a public outcry. 

We did not find an institution or culture that provided a safe 

outlet for admitting errors and improving procedures. 

MR. ZELIKOW: In conclusion, our investigation so far has 

found the intelligence community struggling to collect on and 

analyze the phenomena of transnational terrorism through the 
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mid- to late 1990s. While many dedicated officers worked day and 

night for years to piece together the growing body of evidence 

on al Qaeda and to understand the threats, in the end it was not 

enough to gain the advantage before the 9/11 attacks. 

While there were many reports on Bin Ladin and his growing al 

Qaeda organization, there was no comprehensive estimate of the 

enemy either to build consensus or clarify differences. 

With the important exception of attacks with chemical, 

biological, radiological or nuclear weapons, the methods 

developed for decades to warn of surprise attacks were not 

applied to the problem of warning against terrorist attacks. In 

intelligence collection, despite many excellent efforts, there 

was not a comprehensive review of what the community knew, what 

it did not know, followed by the development of a community-wide 

plan to close those gaps. 

The DCI labored within and was accountable for a community of 

loosely associated agencies and departmental offices that lacked 

the incentives to cooperate, collaborate and share information. 

Like his predecessors, he focused his energies on where he could 

add the greatest value, the CIA, which is a fraction of the 

nation's overall intelligence capability. And as a result, the 

question remains: Who is in charge of intelligence? 

(Pause while witness is seated.) 

MR. KEAN: Our first witness today is the Honorable George J. 

Tenet, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. I notice 

he's accompanied by the distinguished deputy director, Mr. John 

McLaughlin. This is Director Tenet's second appearance before us 

in open public session, and we are very pleased with his help 

and pleased again to welcome him. 

Director Tenet, will you please rise and raise your right 

hand? Mr. McLaughlin also, I guess, if you're going to join him. 

Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth and 

nothing but the truth? 

MR. TENET: I do. 

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: I do. 

MR. KEAN: Thank you very much. Please be seated. 
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Director Tenet, if you'd like to proceed with your opening 

remarks. 

MR. TENET: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I welcome the opportunity 

to be here again. 

On March the 24th, I expressed my personal feelings for the 

loss I felt for the families who lost loved ones. 

My colleagues at CIA and throughout our intelligence 

community feel the same sense of loss. That we did not stop 

these attacks haunts all of us to this day. And what we're doing 

here is essential not only because we have to be open and honest 

about the past, but also because we have to be clear-minded 

about the future. 

Mr. Chairman, some context. By the mid-1990s the intelligence 

community was operating with a significant erosion in resources 

and people, and was unable to keep pace with technological 

change. When I became DCI I found a community and a CIA whose 

dollars were declining and whose expertise was ebbing. We lost 

close to 25 percent of our people and billions of dollars in 

capital investment. The pace of technological change challenged 

the National Security Agency's ability to keep up with the 

increasing volume and velocity of modern communications. The 

infrastructure to recruit, train and sustain officers for our 

clandestine services, the nation's human intelligence 

capability, was in disarray. We were not hiring new analysts, 

emphasizing the importance of expertise, or giving the analysts 

the tools they needed. I also found that the threats to the 

nation had not declined or even stabilized, but had grown more 

complex and dangerous. 

The rebuilding of the intelligence community across the board 

became my highest priority. We had to invest in the 

transformation of the National Security Agency to attack modern 

communications. We had to invest in a future imagery 

architecture. We had to overhaul our recruitment, training and 

deployment strategy to rebuild our human intelligence, critical 

to penetrating terrorist cells. And we had to invest in our 

people. And while we were rebuilding across the board, we 

ensured that investments in counterterrorism continued to grow 

while other priorities either stayed flat or were reduced. 

Mr. Chairman, I'm not going to go through what the rest of 

the world looked like. You understand it. 
17

Building our overall capabilities would be instrumental in 

how we positioned ourselves against al Qaeda, its terrorist 

organizations that represented a worldwide network in 68 

countries and operated out of a sanctuary in Afghanistan. We 

also needed an integrated operations and collection plan against 

al Qaeda. We had one. I have previously testified about the 1999 

strategy that we call "The Plan." "The Plan" required that 

collection disciplines be integrated to support worldwide 

collection, and disruption and penetration operations inside 

Afghanistan and other terrorist sanctuaries. 

In 1998, after the East Africa bombings, I directed the 

assistant director of Central Intelligence for Collection to 

ensure that all elements of intelligence in the community had 

the right assets focused on the right problem with respect to al 

Qaeda and Bin Ladin. He convened frequent meetings of the most 

senior collection specialists in the community to develop a 

comprehensive approach to support the Counterterrorism Center's 

operations against Bin Ladin. He told me that, despite progress, 

we needed a sustained, longer-term effort if the community was 

to penetrate deeply into the Afghan sanctuary. 

We established an integrated community collection cell 

focused on tracking al Qaeda leaders, identifying their 

facilities and activities in Afghanistan. The cell, which often 

met daily, included analysts, operations officers, imagery 

officers, and officers from the National Security Agency. We 

used these sessions to drive signals and imagery collection 

against al Qaeda and to build innovative capabilities to target 

Bin Ladin and the al Qaeda organization. We moved to satellite 

to increase our coverage of Afghanistan. 

CIA and NSA designed and employed a clandestine collection 

system inside Afghanistan. The imagery agency intensified its 

efforts across Afghanistan and more imagery analysts were moved 

to cover al Qaeda. The imagery agency gave al Qaeda interests 

and targets its highest priority in the intense daily 

competition for overhead imagery resources. We established an 

integrated community collection cell that focused on tracking al 

Qaeda leaders and identifying and characterizing their 

facilities. When the Predator began flying in the summer of 

2000, we opened it in a fused all-source environment within the 

Counterterrorism Center. All of this collection recognizes the 

primacy of human and technical penetration of the al Qaeda 

leadership and network and the necessity to get inside the 

sanctuary in Afghanistan. 
18

This integration was the context of the plan that we put into 

place in 1999. Between 1999 and 2001 our human agent base 

against terrorist -- the terrorist target grew by over 50 

percent. We ran over 70 sources and sub-sources, 25 of whom 

operated inside of Afghanistan. We received information from 

eight separate Afghan tribal networks. We forged strategic 

relationship consistent with our plan with liaison services 

that, because of their regional access and profile, could 

enhance our reach. They ran their own agents into Afghanistan 

and around the world in response to our tasking. 

The period of early September 2000 to 2001, was also 

characterized by an important increase in our unilateral 

capability. Almost half of these assets and programs in place in 

Afghanistan were developed in the preceding 18 months. By 

September 11th, the map would show that these collection 

programs and human networks were operating throughout

Afghanistan. This array meant that when the military campaign to 

topple the Taliban and destroy al Qaeda began in October, we 

were already on the ground supporting it with a substantial body 

of data and a large stable of assets. 

Mr. Chairman, I've outlined in my statement our analytical 

product. I don't mean to short-shrift it, but I know you want me 

to stay within 10 minutes. I think that there was depth and 

clarity across a range of products and a range of venues. I 

believe that that product got to our policymakers, including the 

most senior policymakers, in many forms. 

How do I assess our performance? The intelligence that we 

provided our senior policymakers about the threat al Qaeda 

posed, its leadership and its operational span across over 60 

countries, and the use of Afghanistan as a sanctuary was clear 

and direct. Warning was well understood, even if the timing and 

method of attacks were not. 

The intelligence community had the right strategy and was 

making the right investments to position itself for the future 

against al Qaeda. We made good progress across intelligence 

disciplines. Disruptions, renditions and sensitive collection 

activities no doubt saved lives. 

However, we never penetrated the 9/11 plot overseas. While we 

positioned ourselves very well, with extensive human and 

technical penetrations, to facilitate the take-down of the 

Afghan sanctuary, we did not discern the specific nature of the 

plot. 
19

We made mistakes. Our failure to watchlist Hazmi and Mihdhar

in a timely manner, or the FBI's inability to find them in the 

narrow window at the time afforded them showed systemic 

weaknesses and the lack of redundancy. There were at least four 

separate terrorist identity databases at State, CIA, the 

Department of Defense and the FBI. None were interoperable or 

broadly accessible. There were dozens of watchlists, many 

haphazardly maintained. There were legal impediments to 

cooperation across the continuum of criminal intelligence 

operations. It was not a secret at all that we understood it, 

but in truth, all of us took little action to create a common 

arena of criminal and intelligence data that we could all 

access. 

Most profoundly, we lacked a government-wide capability to 

integrate foreign and domestic knowledge, data operations and 

analysis. Warning is not good enough without the structure to 

put it into action. 

We all understood Bin Ladin's attempt to strike the homeland, 

but we never translated this knowledge into an effective defense 

of the country. Doing so would have complicated the terrorists' 

calculation of the difficulty in succeeding in a vast, open 

society that, in effect, was unprotected on September 11th. 

During periods of heightened threat, we undertook smart, 

disciplined actions, but ultimately all of us acknowledge that 

we did not have the data, the span of control, the redundancy, 

the fusion or the laws in place to give us the chance to 

compensate for the mistakes that will always be made in any 

human endeavor. 

This is not a clinical excuse. Three thousand people died. It 

was not -- no matter how hard we worked or how desperately we 

tried, it was not enough. The victims and the families of 9/11 

deserve better. 

Mr. Chairman, I've gone into changes that have been made --

the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, other things that we 

have done through, beginning, during and after 9/11 in terms of 

the integration of the community. 

We can talk about those things. 

I wanted to close just on four or five points about the 

future of intelligence and issues that you may want to consider 

as you think ahead to structures you may want to propose. 
20

The first thing I would say is we've spent an enormous amount 

of time and energy transforming our collection, operational and 

analytic capabilities. The first thing I would say to the 

Commission is that the care and nurturing of these capabilities 

is absolutely essential. It will take us another five years to 

have the kind of clandestine service our country needs. There is 

a creative, innovative strategy to get us there that requires 

sustained commitment, leadership and funding. The same can be 

said for our other disciplines. Something has to be said about 

the importance of intelligence and how we look at this 

discipline for the country quite publicly. 

Second, we have created an important paradigm in the way we 

have made changes in the foreign intelligence and law 

enforcement communities, beginning with the Counterterrorism 

Center and evolving through the creation of TTIC, with the 

fusion of all-source data in one place against the critical 

mission area. This approach could serve as a model for the 

intelligence community to organize our most critical missions 

around centers where there is an emphasis on fusion, the flow of 

data, the full integration of analytical and operational 

capabilities. Capabilities are important. The organization 

around missions where those capabilities are fully integrated in 

whatever structure you want to create I think is the way ahead 

in the future, and that's the way we're moving. 

Third, in the foreign intelligence arena, the most important 

relationship, aside from the President, that a DCI has is with 

the secretary of Defense. Rather than focus on a zero-sum game 

of authorities, the focus should be on ensuring that the DCI and 

the secretary of Defense work together on investments tied to 

mission. Why? Because together, the investments that we make 

together in accounts that we don't jointly manage, I believe 

have enormous power when they're synchronized. And the secretary 

of Defense and I have been working just to achieve that. 

Fourth, the DCI has to have an operational and analytical 

span of control that allows him or her to inform the President

authoritatively about covert action and other sensitive 

activities. 

Finally, our oversight committees should begin a systematic 

series of hearings to examine the world we will face over the 

next 20, 30 years, the operational end-state we want to achieve 

in terms of structure, and the statutory changes that may need 

to be made to achieve these objectives. And none may be 
21

required, but I believe some will be. I have no doubt others 

will have other ideas. 

That completes my opening statement, Mr. Chairman. 

MR. KEAN: Thank you very much. 

Questioning this morning will be led by Commissioner Kerrey. 

MR. KERREY: Director Tenet, first of all, before I get into 

the questions, I want to say that I think there's five general 

things that's got to be understood that made the job of being 

director of Central Intelligence in the '90s exceptionally 

difficult. 

The first is that -- and we're going to have to deal with it 

and report that there were significant numbers of Cold War 

residual problems that we had to deal with. 

And I think part of the problem was we were so busy 

celebrating our victory in the Cold War, we didn't pay attention 

to Yugoslavia, we didn't pay attention to the trouble that could 

occur as a consequence in the Middle East, we were struggling to 

figure out how to deal with transitional problems of the former 

Soviet Union, et cetera; and indeed I think Afghanistan is one 

of those Cold War residuals that a lot of us in the 1990s simply 

were not paying enough attention to. 

Secondly, I do think, with great respect to your last 

statement, I do think that you lack authority and have 

substantial responsibilities that aren't matched up. And the 

evidence of that is the last time I checked, I think 35 

congressional committees call you up from time-to-time to ask 

you to testify on a variety of different subjects, which, to say 

the least, sucks up a lot of your time. 

Thirdly, absent political leadership, there's nothing you can 

do. You're providing intelligence; you don't make the decisions. 

Fourthly, I think congressional oversight is exceptionally 

weak, especially on the Senate side. 

Fifthly, let me point out, because some of my questions deal 

with your term prior, that there was a very tough transition. 

John Deutch left in December 1996, Tony Lake was nominated, it 

took forever, I think you were not confirmed till July of 1997. 
22

That was a very, very difficult and very risky transition, in my 

view. 

And lastly, let me say that unlike other DCIs, you probably 

for the rest of your life will be like Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy, 

who was the judge in the World Trade Center case, the Bojinka 

case, you're likely to be -- forever to be a target. In other 

words, you have taken considerable risk beyond what former DCIs 

have done, and I want to thank you for that. 

That said, let me get into some questions. I'm going to first 

talk about the Cole. A lot of our commissioners have asked 

questions about the Cole, Director Tenet. It's been raised 

repeatedly. And my own view is that it goes to the heart of our 

problems of dealing militarily with a significant unconventional 

military challenge. And what's hard for me to come to grip with 

today is why, with the evidence that we had that the attack was 

al Qaeda, and an operative that was connected to the bombings of 

the embassy in Nairobi, why were we so cautious? And why did 

both President Clinton and President Bush -- why couldn't they 

see military alternatives to cruise missiles and basically the 

Normandy invasion? And it seems to me that our failure to 

respond militarily, in particular the presidential directive 

that was put together in 1998 that failed to give the Department 

of Defense primary authority in dealing with al Qaeda and 

terrorism, it seems to me that that contributed substantially to 

our failure to prevent 9/11. 

I'll just give you a chance to respond to that because there 

are several questions tucked in there, but do you think PDD 62 

was a mistake? Do you think that we waited too long to respond 

militarily to an organization that we knew had declared war on 

us and had called to jihad thousands of Islamic men to fight the 

United States of America? 

MR. TENET: Senator, you've talked to all the policymakers. 

And I'm not going to fudge the question. I'm not the 

policymaker. They have to calculate the risks, the geopolitical 

context, what was going on at the time, the nature of the 

Pakistani regime, what Central Asia looked like, whether or not 

force could have been used -- I can't make those decisions. 

I will say -- I will say that -- and I've said publicly --

the most important strategic decision that was ultimately made 

was to take down the sanctuary. When you took down the 

sanctuary, your operational -- your operational opportunities 

increased, intelligence increased, you put the adversary on the 
23

run. It generated an enormous amount of intelligence 

opportunity. It was very helpful. 

MR. KERREY: But we heard yesterday that -- Mr. Pickard tell 

us that Bin Ladin and the Afghan sanctuary -- in those camps he 

was turning out more individuals than we were turning out either 

at the CIA, FBI. And yet, our military leaders, who had --

through both the Clinton and the Bush administration would give 

you all kinds of reasons why the targets weren't sufficient, and 

yet, after we were attacked on 9/11, we deployed those special 

operations in connection with your individuals that were 

enormously effective. It seems to me that we had capability, in 

short, that either didn't get to the attention of the President

-- he didn't know about it -- or for some reason it wasn't used. 

And it seems to me that it would have had a very negative impact 

upon al Qaeda's capability of attacking the United States. 

MR. TENET: Senator Kerrey, I can't take you beyond my 

previous answer. These were tough and difficult policy calls 

that people were making, and I'm just going to have to leave it 

at that. You've heard from all the policymakers. They all 

thought about these issues. They were complicated issues. And 

I'll leave it at that. 

MR. KERREY: Well, let me -- again, in my second line, and 

again, this -- I'm going to focus on a period of time and during 

the transition. So some of this you're going -- your transition, 

so some of this you're going to have to be answering both for 

yourself and perhaps for Director Deutsch as well, or whether 

not the communication came to you. 

But one of the most remarkable things that the staff has 

uncovered, and we heard it -- you heard a piece of it in the 

testimony -- the staff statement -- was that Jamal al Fadl comes 

into court in 2001 and describes what he said when he walked in 

in 1996. What he said was that al Qaeda was a significant 

military force. What he said was that Osama Bin Ladin headed a 

terrorist organization of his own. He said it was an 

organization that was far more than a mechanism to raise money 

for his terrorist financing role. What he said was that this 

organization was intended to be the foundation for an Islamic 

army, and it had declared the United States as its main enemy 

long before the public declaration in August of 1996. What he 

said was that Osama Bin Ladin had sent top leaders of its 

weapons trainers into Somalia to shoot down -- to provide the 

Somalis with the weapons used to shoot down the U.S. helicopters 

and train them in how to use them to accomplish exactly what 
24

they did in October 1993. What he said was that Bin Ladin's 

organization had done the same thing to the Yemeni squad that 

carried out the attack aimed at the United States troop in Aden 

less than a year before. 

And you heard again in the staff statement, we had a National 

Intelligence Assessment in '96 I believe, or '95, and what --

MR. TENET: '95 and '97. 

MR. KERREY: -- and what we got is an update that didn't 

include any of this. What we got was an update that didn't 

include the information that was -- that this individual says in 

court that he delivered to us, and he said it was corroborated. 

So why? Why was it not in the update? Why didn't the President

of the United States and the key policymakers get this 

information? 

MR. TENET: Well, I'm sure -- well, now you're making the 

assumption that because it was not in the National Intelligence 

Estimate this data was not broadly disseminated, explained and 

understood by people at the time, and I believed it was. 

John? 

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: One of the -- I don't recall, Senator, 

whether that particular individual in his testimony was included 

specifically in the '97 update. What I do know is that in the 

staff statement, the staff statement failed to note that in the 

'97 update we included information that Bin Ladin had been

surveilling; people associated with Bin Ladin had been 

surveilling institutions in the United States and that, 

therefore, we concluded the likelihood was growing that he would 

attack in the United States. That was, I think, the most 

significant finding in the '97 NIE. And it was also in this 

period, 1996, that we formed the Bin Ladin Issue Station, so we 

were very focused on this issue. 

MR. TENET: Senator, this is a critical issue. 

MR. KERREY: I think so. 

MR. TENET: No, it's a critical issue. You're making an 

assumption that because it's not in a National Intelligence 

Estimate that the way we were organized to brief people, pass 

product out, talk to them about this, meant that people weren't 

getting this kind of data. That's just not true. 
25

MR. KERREY: But I'm not making that presumption. I'm making, 

first of all, the presumption that the NIE is a foundational 

document that lots of people use and that -- I mean, that's a 

very specific set of information that he said in trial he 

provided to us. And we continue to regard Bin Ladin, you heard 

in the staff statement, we continue to regard him as a 

relatively small threat. I didn't know. I didn't know in 1996 or 

1997 that Bin Ladin was responsible for sending forces down into 

Somalia to shoot down our Black Hawk helicopters. I didn't have 

a sense that this is what he was doing. 

Let me just ask you -- I know that this is your transitional 

moment, so -- this is '96 to '97. Did you ever have a 

conversation with President Clinton where you told him that al 

Qaeda was a substantial military effort, that they were 

responsible for shooting down our helicopters in Mogadishu, that 

there was a substantial military threat to the United States of 

America, that we ought to ramp this guy up to the top of the 

list? 

MR. TENET: Sir, I will go back and look at my -- I didn't 

come prepared with what happened in ‘97 -- I'll go back and look 

at my records, look at the data dissemination, go back through 

the meetings that were held at the time and give you an answer 

to the question. 

MR. KERREY: I say, Director, this is -- the reason I think 

this is central -- because we have heard -- I mean, I've heard a 

series of excuses from Sandy Berger, Bill Cohen, Madeleine 

Albright, Don Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, all kinds of 

rationalizations. And one of the things I've heard over and over 

and over was the American public wouldn't have supported any 

action had we taken action before 9/11. 

Now, I got to tell you, I think if the President of the 

United States of America had come and said that Osama Bin Ladin, 

al Qaeda is responsible for shooting down a Black Hawk 

helicopter in Mogadishu in 1993, I believe that that speech 

would have galvanized the United States of America against Bin

Ladin. And would have prevented -- I think would have given you 

permission to do operations that you didn't have permission to 

do. It would have changed the whole dynamic. 

I mean, I just can't believe that if the President of the 

United States had said that in 1994, '95, '96, whenever -- you 

get the walk- in in '96. If you had done it in '96 or '97, I 
26

just can't believe that public opinion wouldn't have been on his 

side just like that. Don't you think so? 

MR. TENET: Sir, I'll go back and look at it all and come back 

to you. 

MR. KERREY: Well, I mean, it --

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: I might mention in that connection since, 

Senator, you're talking about the extent to which various 

publications in this period included warnings about Bin Ladin

and also his activities and the role of Afghanistan, and so 

forth, I mentioned what I had said earlier about the '97 NIE. In 

2001 there was an NIE, that I don't think your staff statement 

mentions, about Afghanistan. It included an extensive discussion 

of the camp structure, the camp architecture in Afghanistan. It 

noted that the Cole bombers had trained in those camps. It noted 

that Ressam, who had been involved in the Millennium plot, had 

been in those camps. So that's something that was laid out in a 

National Intelligence Estimate --

MR. KERREY: Well --

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: -- and it's -- as the director has pointed 

out, it's a matter of argument whether that galvanizes policy to 

do something or not. 

MR. KERREY: Mr. McLaughlin, I appreciate. We heard -- and now 

that we've seen this August 6th Presidential Daily Briefing, 

after we've seen that August Presidential Daily Briefing, it 

causes me to sort of have serious questions about how these 

daily briefings are organized. 

But my guess is the President has not seen the -- President 

Bush has not seen the information about who al Qaeda was. My 

guess is that President Bush today -- he may just be discovering 

it for the first time, that we knew in 1996 that Bin Ladin was 

responsible for shooting at helicopters in Mogadishu. You know, 

and this is in -- but, you know, this was in the trial in 2001. 

And it doesn't appear to me that he was briefed in transition; 

it doesn't appear to me that that was brought to his attention. 

In other words, I mean, I think even as late as 2001 we were 

describing Bin Ladin as a terrorist, not somebody who had a 

substantial army and substantial capability and a history that 

went back long before 1998. 
27

I mean, do you -- I mean, you -- the President says you meet 

with him practically every day. Did you bring that presentation 

to him? Did you describe, as the walk-in did in 1996, as he 

described in the trial in 2001, did you bring that information 

to the President and say this is an army that's been engaged in 

an effort against the United States of America all the way back 

at least to 1993? 

MR. TENET: Whether I took it back to '93 or not, sir, I don't 

recall. But we certainly walked through al Qaeda, its 

organization, the threat it posed, its previous affiliation with 

bombings and activities over a concerted period of time. But 

I'll go back and look at whether that was specifically raised. I 

don't recall it. 

MR. KERREY: Well, I appreciate it. And I'm going to do 

something I shouldn't do, which is yield back my time before my 

green light -- before my red light goes on. So, Mr. Chairman. 

MR. : Can I have it? 

MR. KEAN: First time you've done that, sir! (Chuckles.) 

Commissioner Lehman. 

MR. LEHMAN: Thank you. 

Director Tenet, I want to join Bob in expressing my real 

admiration for the job you've done. I mean, you are a very 

entrepreneurial, gutsy guy who has worked very, very hard on 

this problem. 

You were one of the few officials who grasped the threat very 

early on, and you were responsible, your leadership, for making 

the agency run faster and jump higher during your Tenet --

during your tenure. And I admire you for that. 

Another one of your virtues is that you're a team player, and 

I think you have resisted the temptation to join in on 

recommendations for changes, because you're part of the 

Administration. 

But last night, I think, things changed a bit, in that the 

President has now endorsed major reforms, institutional reforms. 

And I think that frees you up a little more to answer some 

questions. 
28

First, we've been struck by -- and when I say "we," I mean 

most of the Commissioners and all of the staff -- by a real 

difference between our interaction with FBI and our interaction 

with the agency. The Bureau, while it's been defending various 

actions and issues, has fundamentally admitted they're in an 

agency that is deeply dysfunctional and broken, and make no 

bones about it; whereas the attitude we kind of get from CIA is 

-- and institutionally -- is that, "Hey, you know, we're the 

CIA" -- kind of a smugness and even arrogance towards deep 

reform. 

And I'm not ready for your answer yet -- (chuckles) -- but --

(laughter) -- this is all preamble. (Laughter.) 

(Laughs.) 

MR. TENET: I'm warming up, sir. 

MR. LEHMAN: So -- go ahead. You can interrupt. (Laughs.) 

MR. TENET: No, sir. You're on a roll. 

MR. LEHMAN: But that report that you heard this morning was a 

damning report, not of your actions or the actions of any of the 

really superb and dedicated people that you have, but it was a 

damning evaluation of a system that is broken, that doesn't 

function. 

And all I have to do is re-read the PDB which the agency 

resisted so strongly our declassifying, and the key line is, "We 

have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational 

threat reporting, like the intention of Bin Ladin to hijack U.S. 

aircraft." All the king's horses and all the king's men in the 

CIA could not corroborate what turned out to be true and told 

the President of the United States almost a month before the 

attack that they couldn't corroborate these reports. That's a 

institutional failure. 

And I'm here to tell you -- and I'm sure you've heard it 

before -- there is a train coming down the track. There are 

going to be very real changes made. And you are an invaluable 

part of helping us come to the right conclusions on that. 

So now I have a few questions. First, why shouldn't we have a 

DCI who worries about the community, with the authorities to do 

that, without having to worry about the day-to-day running of 

the CIA? 
29

MR. TENET: Can I get a little preamble time myself? 

(Laughter.) 

MR. LEHMAN: As long as it's on his time. 

MR. TENET: It's on Senator Kerrey's time.

First of all, I want you to know that I have serious issues 

with the staff statement as it was written today. I have serious 

issues about how the DCI's authorities have been used to 

integrate collection, operations. When the staff statement says 

the DCI had no strategic plan to manage the war on terrorism, 

that's flat wrong. When the staff statement says I had no 

program, strategic direction in place to integrate, correlate 

data and move data across the community, that's wrong. 

I just want to say to you that I would like to come back to 

the committee and give you my sense of it, at the same time 

telling you it ain't perfect. And by no stretch of the 

imagination am I going to tell you that I've solved all the 

problems of the community in terms of integrating it and lashing 

it up, but we've made an enormous amount of progress. 

I would tell you also that -- and this is the perspective I 

lived. Nobody else can live what I lived through. I believe that 

if you separate -- if you separate the DCI from troops, from 

operators and analysts, I have a concern about his or her 

effectiveness, his or her connection. Now, you may want to have 

a different structure, you may want to have a different CIA, 

sir, in terms of how you manage it, so there may be some things 

we can do there, but I wouldn't separate -- I wouldn't separate 

the individual from the institution. 

You may manage it differently, because I believe that one of 

the concerns I have is if you create another layer and another 

staff between something that's supposed to provide central 

organization, all source analysis and operations, we've created 

another gap and a distance. 

So I wouldn't design America's intelligence community, 56 

years later, the way the National Security Act designed it. I 

would recognize that the key operational principle is not who is 

in charge of the wire diagrams, but the way data flows is 

integrated between analysis and operations. And in the 21st 

century, technology is your friend, not an enemy. And from a 

security perspective, it also makes your life easier. I would be 

very focused on organizing around missions and ensuring the 
30

capabilities were built but the mission focused and centers 

drove the way we operated against the things that mattered most 

to us in terms of a foreign intelligence target. 

You can structure on top of that, you can lay anything you 

want on top of that, sir, but I think that that integration is 

what's key. And you can figure out the wire diagrams and the 

authorities any way you want, but I would tell you that the 

lesson is, yeah, of course we need more change, of course -- I 

think -- you know, if I can tell you, if I've failed or made a 

mistake, I've been evolutionary in terms of the community. Maybe 

I should have been more revolutionary. I sit back at night and 

look at a war in Iraq, a war on terrorism, conflict in 

Afghanistan and all the things I have to do, and recognize, you 

know, no single human being can do all these things. I 

understand that. So maybe some structure is required. But I 

would also urge the Commission, and I will come back to you 

formally, to take a look at some significant things that have 

happened -- in the management of the community, of our 

resources, of our people, of our collection, of our training, of 

our education -- because they are building blocks that, quite 

frankly, I'm proud of. 

MR. LEHMAN: Well, I think that you're really making my point. 

I think that -- my experience in this town has been there are 

only two things that matter in doing management and oversight 

because everybody makes the same amount of money. You can't give 

bonuses to people, and your hiring and firing is somewhat 

limited. You've got the ability to hire and fire the top people 

if they don't perform and pick the ones that do perform and 

promote the ones that do perform, and you've got appropriations 

power, and neither of those things you have for the 

responsibilities of cross-community. You've wielded them very 

well within your agency, but all you have for cross-agency --

cross- community is exhortation and the power of your logic, 

which has been powerful but not powerful enough against big 

bureaucracy. 

So why shouldn't you -- let's step into my "Alice in 

Wonderland" and you've been detached from CIA. You don't have to 

run it any more. You are now a DCI who is principally seized of 

solving the problems that we have identified and you've 

struggled with for these years. Why shouldn't you have the power 

to hire -- and fire, more importantly -- the head of NSA, the 

head of the FBI intelligence section or a separate MI5, the head 

of the CIA, the head of all of the alphabet soup that are really 

national intelligence assets? Why shouldn't you have that? 
31

MR. TENET: Well, let me talk to you about my "Alice in 

Wonderland" just to talk through this a little bit. 

You could do that, sir, but I want to bring back an issue 

that I think is quite important here. We need to get -- we need 

to understand the relationship between the DCI and the secretary 

of Defense in a very, very fundamental way. Why? You have an 

organizational structure today that basically has three or four 

of the major organizations or combat support organizations. They 

provide tactical support to the military as well as support the 

national intelligence needs. And somehow in the structure that 

you create he must be a partner in designing this framework to 

ensure that we don't miss or don't crack a seam that we're 

trying to build together because he executes tactical and other 

programs that, in effect, add to the power of what the DCI can 

do. But we have to wrestle with that in some way. 

So everybody wants to empower this individual with all kinds 

of powers, and all I'm asking is yeah, should -- could a DCI be 

more powerful, have more executive authority, execute budgets, 

joint personnel policies, you know? The question ultimately is, 

is there a Goldwater-Nichols framework here that works? Is there 

some new framework that we have to put in place? 

All I want to focus on is don't throw the baby out with the 

bathwater. Don't miss the capabilities that have to be grown. 

Don't separate those capabilities from a chain of command that 

can only execute them and then figure out how that mesh works. 

Now, the person you describe probably would survive for about 

20 minutes in terms of what's going on in this town. And you 

probably went a little bit too far. But look, we have to be open 

to thinking like this. You know, I've done it one way -- it 

ain't the perfect way -- and within the structure that I lived 

in. And the power of persuasion and cajoling is absolutely 

important because, you know, at the end of the day, you still 

have to lead. You can have all the authority you want; it may 

not matter. 

So it's a little bit more complicated. But all of it should 

be -- all I'm saying to you, Commissioner, is it should all be 

on the table. 

But before we rush to a judgment, don't we want to know what 

the world's going to look like? Don't we want to understand with 

some precision where you want to end up? And I think you have to 

focus on that fusion of capabilities around mission, first and 
32

foremost, and then decide the rest. It will flow from there. The 

power of forcing that collaboration in and of itself breaks down 

the walls. 

MR. LEHMAN: Well, I agree that the people and the 

personalities are the most important of all. But for instance, 

no matter how forceful you are, you have been unable -- and no 

one without the real authority over appropriations could sort 

out the chaos of our security system, our background 

investigations, our classification system -- no one can do that 

without power. 

The networking -- Goldwater-Nichols is not one of my favorite 

pieces of legislation, but one of the things that it really 

achieved, which is a tremendous improvement, is forcing the --

and giving the CINCs the ability to force the ability to the 

services to work together. For instance, Special Operations 

forces operated off aircraft carriers. They could never do that 

before because there was an authority that could force the 

commonality, the protocols, if you will. Like everybody in the 

commercial world uses the Internet protocols. There are no 

protocols for the intelligence community for sharing. This is an 

IT problem, it's a deep, embedded functional problem throughout 

the community for common protocols for information. That is 

really an issue of appropriations being cut on the Hill or not 

being allocated within the agencies to do it. We heard testimony 

from the FBI who wanted to do that kind of thing and still 

hasn't done it because of the appropriations. 

So why shouldn't you, as the new DCI, have that 

appropriations authority at the top level, not -- one of the bad 

things about Goldwater-Nichols is that it's increased the layers 

of bureaucracy at the center. We don't want that. 

MR. TENET: No, we don't. 

MR. LEHMAN: But the GE and other good company model, where 

you have a very small, powerful staff at the center, and 

execution done in the departments, is the model that is 

beginning to take shape in our mind. What do you think of that? 

MR. TENET: It's a good model, sir. I mean, the power -- the 

power -- the smaller the staffs, the more power you have over 

execution, the better off you're going to be at the end of the 

day with real metrics and power to move people and data as you 

need to to achieve better execution, is a smart way to think 

about this discipline for the future. 
33

MR. LEHMAN: Now, I said this train is coming down the track, 

and you used the word revolution rather than evolution. And I 

think that's a perfect way for people to understand this. You've 

done a terrific job in the evolutionary change, but it's clearly 

not been enough. Revolution is coming. How do you do revolution 

without losing sight of the business that you're in? You can't 

take your eye off the ball. Do you think this can be done in a 

rational way? 

MR. TENET: Frankly, my personal view is that you really do 

need an outside group engagement, recommendations to come 

forward. I think it's -- people like me and John and people 

working in the business can certainly inform. I've got a group 

now I put together on revolutionary change in the intelligence 

community -- and ideas that are flowing to me. I think you need 

something established to come back to you, react to you, push 

you and prod you and get you out of your skin and your daily 

responsibilities to get this done in the right way. I think it's 

hard when you're sitting -- I mean, the day I retire I'll be a 

great person to sit on one of these things. But -- (laughter) --

and I'd love to do it. But I think that the important thing is 

it's very hard for people when they're sitting in the inbox and 

the crisis of the day to be reflective. And occasionally I have 

reflective thoughts -- it's not often enough -- to deal with the 

problem like this. 

I think you've got to separate the current group to allow --

we can give you the data, give you our experience and talk to 

you about -- but I think you almost need a separate group of 

people who have been around this. But you also need people who 

have revolutionary ideas about technology and how it works, and 

a new mindset, because the people you're recruiting aren't 30-

year veterans anymore. You're attracting a whole new labor force 

that doesn't remember the Cold War. And they expect a structure 

that's going to be more agile and mobile and more 

technologically proficient. So we've got take this in a 

different direction. 

The only thing I -- I have to keep coming back to a point. My 

worst nightmare is that somebody's going to show up and say all 

that human investment is wrong, all that technical investment is 

wrong. Where we've positioned ourselves has to be sustained, 

creatively and innovatively, and I think you've got a way ahead 

in that regard that's quite impressive. And once people lose 

sight of where the country needs to be -- the starts and fits 

and cycles that this community has gone through has to stop, you 

know. Let's get budgeting on a two- or three-year cycle. Let's 
34

allow us to build programs in depth. Let's really look at basic 

expenditures over the course of time. Let's put the metrics in 

place. But I tell you, you can't build this community in fits 

and starts. It won't happen. And the country will suffer. And 

you know, this I think is a debate that has to be joined quite 

publicly. 

Everybody talks about military capability, or law enforcement 

capability. Well, we sit behind the green door. And for the bang 

for the buck, the American taxpayer gets a hell of a lot for 

what we give them. 

And you know, we had to find a way to talk to the American 

people about it as well, because I think they'd be supportive. 

MR. LEHMAN: Well, I had the preamble. I guess I ought to let 

you have the closing peroration. Thank you. That's very helpful. 

MR. TENET: Thank you, sir. 

MR. KEAN: Thank you. 

I just have a couple of questions, if I could. First of all, 

I'd like to say in many ways how much I admire you, how much I 

admire you in a town that's as polarized as I've ever seen it, 

you're the only high official who has managed to get the 

confidence of two presidents, and I think that's very much to 

your credit, sir. 

The -- I'm waiting -- I will wait anxiously -- the staff 

statement is an indictment, in many ways, of the agency. I await 

your answer to some of those things in the staff statement. 

I also recognize it is an agency which was devastated earlier 

by, in many cases, I think, mistaken critics in the Congress, 

mistaken or otherwise. A lot of good people left. It was very 

hard to rebuild the agency. You were unable to recruit on most 

of the good campuses in this country for a number of years. 

But when you tell me to -- you said it the second time now --

five years to rebuild, I wonder whether we have five years. And 

that's what -- when you say five years to rebuild the agency, 

that worries me a little bit. 

MR. TENET: No, five more years to rebuild the clandestine 

service. Well, sir, you know, you have an infrastructure, you 

have a recruiting framework, you have a quality control, you 
35

have a student- to-faculty ratio, and you have a big pipeline. 

We built all of that in to make sure we can get this done. 

Nobody was paying attention to the plumbing. It's not sexy. You 

got to pay attention to the plumbing. 

And the bottom line is, to do this right, to build the 

platforms and access and cover and technology that we need --

it's budgeted for; the President has recognized it -- it's going 

to take another five years to build the clandestine service the 

way the human intelligence capability of this country needs to 

be run. That's just the fact, from my perspective. We've made an 

enormous amount of progress in the first five years because we 

had a plan. We had a rhyme. We had a reason. We had a 

discipline. And I don't think people appreciate that the way 

they should. 

MR. KEAN: Probably the most important criticism -- one of the 

most important criticisms made of the whole intelligence 

apparatus is, you don't talk to each other, or haven't in the 

past, and its lack of communication. 

I guess specifically I'd like to ask what actions are being 

taken now to make sure, for instance, that the FBI's legal 

attaches and the CIA's station chiefs at least are working in 

tandem? 

MR. TENET: Well, Mr. Chairman, it's interesting. Back five or 

six years ago, when the FBI first started to go overseas in big 

numbers, the first thing that Louis Freeh and I sat down and 

decided was that we were going to start having training, 

conferences and interaction between the chiefs of station and 

the legats. And it's migrated over the course of time. And I 

think if you go overseas and talk to my chief of stations and 

our legats around the world, you will an intimacy and an 

understanding about the responsibilities and roles that is the 

basis of interaction and communication from senior levels, the 

way we train and the way we talk to each other. 

So I know that there was a lot that wasn't right about 

communication, but I'll tell you the first thing I did with 

Director Freeh is, every quarter we sat down with the senior 

management of the FBI and the CIA. 

Every year, four times we sat down and looked through common 

problems how we could work through them: operations, 

investigations, how we could train better and work better 

together. And that started as soon as I became director. 
36

Now what we needed and have worked on consistently -- and 

doing that all has to be migrated down to training and education 

at the earliest levels of people's career, cross-training. We're 

going to have an FBI special agent come through our clandestine 

training course for the first time in history in the next 

running of that course. It's important because we need to give 

them more training and insight about intelligence operations. We

went over there and helped them -- are helping them build their 

analytical capability. We're trying to help them build the 

reports cadre. Their communications architecture is something 

Bob has to fix himself to ensure that that communication is 

fulsome across lines. 

I would also say that the implication of the intelligence 

community can't talk to each other is wrong. There is 

architecture, data flow and movement of data across our agencies 

every single day. Building that bridge with the law enforcement 

community, as the Terrorist Threat Integration Center will do --

when you have FBI case files, our operational files, domestic 

databases sitting in one place -- is exactly the model that will 

succeed, but the data has to show up. 

MR. KEAN: Let's -- you are very good at building 

relationships with your colleagues in government. There's no 

question about that, but one of your successors might not be. 

Who has responsibility if there's a dispute, for instance, 

between the two agencies regarding the best strategic -- best 

strategy, let's say, against a particular enemy? And do people 

in the field understand how those disputes are resolved? 

MR. TENET: Well, the way it operates today, deputy chief of 

our Counterterrorism Center is a senior FBI official. There are 

over 20 FBI officers who sit in my center today. We have 

officers over there. I've invited the committee to come out to 

sit through a 5:00 meeting. We have real operational issues that 

we put on the table. We have now an American division inside of 

CTC that basically talks to the Bureau about how do we best 

manage this case, what's the data that we seek, what's the 

operational strategy that we should employ? And we're fusing 

that in a very real way. 

Now, when the Counterterrorism Center and the 

Counterterrorism Division and TTIC all go to one building, the 

image you should have is not you walk into the building and the 

CIA goes right, the FBI goes left and TTIC sits on the throne. 

The image you should have is that Bob and I are going to sit 

down and figure out what are the integrative structures across 
37

those lines that will create the kind of operational fusion that 

we need so that we're fully informed about how best to proceed 

in a specific case. That's the future of the cooperation. 

MR. KEAN: Thank you, sir. 

Commissioner Ben-Veniste. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Good morning, Director Tenet. 

MR. TENET: Good morning, Commissioner. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Let me first say that I have enormous 

respect for your dedication and the dedication of CIA officers 

who I have met in their desire to complete the mission. 

The people at Alex Station -- and that has come out earlier, 

that name has come out earlier in these hearings, not by us --

who I have interacted with are heroes and dedicated individuals 

who I sense died that day on September 11th in a way that many 

Americans did, but perhaps more particularly because of their 

efforts over a long period of time to deal with these committed, 

brutal, inhuman enemies of the United States. 

I want to talk about the PDB briefly. I think the individual 

who produced this PDB and her supervisor are entitled to a debt 

of gratitude for attempting to bring to the attention of the 

President of the United States the possibility -- given all the 

information we knew -- that despite indications leading to the 

notion that this incredible threat level that we were 

experiencing in the summer of 2001, leading to the horrific, 

dramatic, horrendous -- whatever adjective you want to use, 

because there were many employed -- spectacular attack by Bin

Ladin, might well occur in the United States to me is 

extraordinary. She was prescient. She was right. 

The biggest word I saw in the PDB, aside from the title, was 

the word "nevertheless," leading the second paragraph, secondto-last paragraph. And that is despite the fact that the 

information could not have been corroborated regarding the use 

of the hijacking of airplanes, she said, "Nevertheless, FBI 

information since that time indicates a pattern of suspicious 

activity in this country consistent with preparation for 

hijackings or other forms of attack." And then goes on to talk 

about FBI efforts. 
38

Now, obviously, she did not get the best information from the 

FBI, but she got what she could. We know that the director of 

the FBI at that time did not get the PDB information and was not 

contacted, nor was the attorney general, to pulse the FBI to get 

all of the information currently extant. 

You had indicated, when we last spoke -- and I reminded you 

of the information sent to our commission by CIA, which was 

commenting on our staff statement before your testimony, which 

was derived from the statement made to us privately by Dr. Rice 

who said that this PDB was prepared at the President's request. 

At that time, on March the 19th, you said to us, "The author of 

this piece, and others familiar with it, say they have no 

information to suggest that this piece was written in response 

to a question from the President. We do not know who reported 

that to the Commission, but we do not believe it's accurate. The 

information we have is that it was prompted by an idea from 

another CIA employee." 

Subsequently, you wrote to us, "The PDB article was in 

response to a series of events. Throughout the spring and summer 

the President was shown a number of pieces outlining 

intelligence indicating that al Qaeda was planning a large 

attack. During these discussions, the President raised questions 

about whether the intelligence pointed to threats inside the 

United States. Although there was no formal tasking, the 

President's questions were discussed at a PDB planning session. 

At that time it was decided to do a piece laying out what we 

knew about Osama Bin Ladin's interest in striking inside the 

United States. 

When this item was presented in the PDB on August 6th, with 

Dr. Rice present, the briefer introduced the piece by referring 

to the President's earlier questions. In summary, although the 

August 6th PDB piece was technically self-initiated, it was 

prompted by the President's questions and interest." 

Now -- incidentally, Dr. Rice has testified she was not 

present. 

MR. TENET: She was not present. We were in error --

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Okay. Let me talk about the issue of planes 

as weapons. 

MR. HAMILTON: The gentleman's time has expired. (Laughter.) 
39

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Boy, that was a fast 10 minutes. 

MR. HAMILTON: It was quite a preamble. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Well, it was only five. May I --

MR. HAMILTON: Do you have questions? 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Yes, I do, if I may. 

MR. HAMILTON: Go ahead and ask your questions. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Let me just follow up on this one area --

although I have several. 

The G-8 planning, which I think the G-8 occurred in July of 

2001. 

MR. TENET: That's correct. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: We know that the Italians closed the 

airspace over Genoa, and indeed they closed it over Naples for 

the pre- planning session, and then over Genoa. I don't think 

that was noise control. I think that had to do more with a 

threat of a use of airplanes used by suicide pilots. But even a 

couple of months before September 11th, we know that there was a 

planning session by NORAD where military officials considered a 

scenario in which a hijacked foreign commercial airliner flew 

into the Pentagon. Months before. And so people clearly were 

thinking about this possibility. 

You had information in August that came from the FBI 

regarding an Islamic jihadist in the United States named 

Zacarias Moussaoui, who had been in a flight school in Minnesota 

and he had been trying to learn to fly a 747, despite the fact 

he had absolutely no background in aviation, he could not 

explain a bank account of 30-odd-thousand dollars deposited in 

cash, he could not explain his presence in the United States, he 

could not explain why he was trying to learn to fly a 747. 

Now, this information came to you via the FBI because the FBI 

could not, in their interpretation, use the information to get a 

warrant to search Moussaoui's computer, et cetera, under FISA 

according to their thinking. 

So they looked to CIA to get that information. The FISA court 

protects against improper prosecution, violating laws with 
40

respect to the potential of prosecuting this man. My question is 

this --

MR. HAMILTON: Mr. -- go ahead --

MR. BEN-VENISTE: My question is this: Given the threat level, 

given the knowledge about planes as weapons, given the fact of

Moussaoui's arrest, why was it that you didn't put the question 

of prosecuting Moussaoui to the side and go after the 

information, which may well have led to unraveling this plot? 

MR. TENET: I'd have to go back and look at all the -- when 

we've talked in private session, we wanted to come back to 

Moussaoui. I have not gone back and reviewed all of that data at 

the time as to why I would make a decision to forego 

prosecution. It's not a call I could make, but I --

Commissioner, I want to go back and prepare and look at all of 

the things that were on the table at the time. And I'd be happy 

to sit down with the Commission and walk through everything that 

was happening at the time. And I'm not trying to duck, but we 

need to sit down and go through this. And we've said we would 

when we last --

MR. BEN-VENISTE: And I'll tell you parenthetically, the FBI 

agent was criticized for going directly to the CIA, instead of 

going and running this through headquarters, which would have 

taken even more time. 

MR. HAMILTON: Mr. Roemer. 

MR. ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Vice Chairman. 

Nice to see you, Mr. Tenet. I want to just say on behalf of 

the Commission that there probably is nobody that we've 

interviewed that has been as generous with his time and as 

helpful to the 9/11 Commission as you. And we very much 

appreciate that time and that attention and your expertise. 

I want to try to ask as many questions as Mr. Kerrey, BenVeniste and Lehman put together in my five minutes and see if 

you can help me by giving me some short answers, Mr. Tenet. 

MR. TENET: Depends on the questions, but go ahead, sir. 

(Laughter.) 

MR. ROEMER: Let's see. In the Woodward book, you say 

immediately upon learning of the 9/11 attacks that it's al 
41

Qaeda, and you mention somebody in a flight school. I assume 

that's Moussaoui. Is that correct? 

MR. TENET: These are words attributed to me. I don't recall 

that piece of it. But I know I got up immediately and said it's 

got to be al Qaeda. 

MR. ROEMER: And you have the information at that point on 

Moussaoui? 

MR. TENET: Yes, I was briefed on Moussaoui in late August. 

MR. ROEMER: August what? 

MR. TENET: I believe it's the 23rd or the 24th. 

MR. ROEMER: August 23rd or 24th. Is Mr. Pavitt or Mr. 

McLaughlin briefed on that as well? 

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Yes, sir. I was briefed I think several days 

before. 

MR. ROEMER: Before the --

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: The director was out of town. I heard it 

first in a very abbreviated manner and then I think the director 

was briefed in a periodic update. 

MR. ROEMER: What was the date that you were briefed? 

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: I can't recall. 

MR. ROEMER: Middle of August? August 15th? Earlier? 

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: No. I just don't recall. It was some time in 

August. It was just a couple of days before the director. 

MR. ROEMER: Now, do you all share this information then with 

other people at CTC and FBI and other places? What do you do 

with this information? 

MR. TENET: I believe that the context of the information --

and again, I've got to go back and review all of this carefully 

-- the context of this information is that it came to us from 

one of our domestic field stations who was asked to provide some 

assistance in dealing with this FISA request. 
42

So that's the context it came to us. And I believe in that 

time period we immediately tried to undertake a way to figure 

out how to help the FBI get data and deal with this particular 

problem. But I'd really want to go back and check records. 

MR. ROEMER: With this interesting, curious, fascinating piece 

of data, do share this data at the September 4th principals' 

meeting with other people in the room at that point, when you're 

discussing this policy that has taken seven months to make its 

way through the process on al Qaeda? 

MR. TENET: It wasn't discussed at the principals' meeting, 

since we're having a separate agenda. My assumption at the time 

was, Mr. Roemer, that this was something that would be laid down 

in front of the CSG and people working this at the time. 

MR. ROEMER: Why would you assume that that would be --

MR. TENET: Because all terrorist --

MR. ROEMER: Why not bring it up to the principals? This is 

the first principals' meeting in seven months on terrorism. Why 

wouldn't that be something that you would think would be

interesting to this discussion? 

MR. TENET: The nature of the discussion we had that morning 

was on the Predator, how we would fly it, whether we would --

MR. ROEMER: But it's an overall policy discussion about al 

Qaeda and how we fight al Qaeda --

MR. TENET: Well, it just wasn't -- for whatever reason, all I 

can tell you is, it wasn't the appropriate place. I just can't 

take you any farther than that. 

MR. ROEMER: Would it -- made any difference if you had 

mentioned -- did you ever mention it, for instance, to the 

President -- you're briefing the President from August 6th on --

MR. TENET: I didn't see the President. I was not in briefings 

with him during this time. He was on vacation. I was here. 

MR. ROEMER: You didn't see the President between August 6th, 

2001, and September 10th? 

MR. TENET: Well, no, but before -- saw him after Labor Day, 

to be sure. 
43

MR. ROEMER: So you saw him September 4th, at the principals' 

meeting. 

MR. TENET: He was not at the principals' meeting. 

MR. ROEMER: Well, you don't see him --

MR. TENET: Condoleezza Rice -- I saw him in this time frame, 

to be sure. 

MR. ROEMER: Okay. I'm just confused. You see him on August 

6th with the PDB. 

MR. TENET: No, I do not, sir. I'm not there. 

MR. ROEMER: Okay. You're not the -- when do you see him in 

August? 

MR. TENET: I don't believe I do. 

MR. ROEMER: You don't see the President of the United States 

once in the month of August? 

MR. TENET: He's in Texas, and I'm either here or on leave for 

some of that time. So I'm not here. 

MR. ROEMER: So who's briefing him on the PDBs? 

MR. TENET: The briefer himself. We have a presidential 

briefer. 

MR. ROEMER: So -- but you never get on the phone or in any 

kind of conference with him to talk, at this level of high 

chatter and huge warnings during the spring and summer, to talk 

to him, through the whole month of August?

MR. TENET: Talked to -- we talked to him directly throughout 

the spring and early summer, almost every day --

MR. ROEMER: But not in August? 

MR. TENET: In this time period, I'm not talking to him, no. 

(Pause.) 

MR. ROEMER: Does he ever say to Dr. Rice or somebody else, "I 

want to talk to Tenet; Tenet is the guy that knows this
44

situation, has been briefing me all through the spring and the 

summer; Tenet understands this stuff; his hair's been on fire; 

he's been worried about this stuff"? Is that ever asked, or are 

you ever called on to --

MR. TENET: I don't have a recollection of being called, Mr. 

Roemer, but I'm sure that if I wanted to make a phone call 

because I had my hair on fire, I would have picked up the phone 

and talked to the President. 

MR. ROEMER: It was just never made? 

MR. TENET: No. 

MR. ROEMER: Last question, and I'll be quick. On the NSC 

staff, Mr. Clarke is there for a long period of time. People 

have various opinions of Mr. Clarke. There is a great deal of 

turnover on the NSC staff from 2001 on. Is that correct? Mr. 

Clarke resigns or moves on in 2001; General Downing, General 

Gordon, Fran Townsend -- is that correct, the lineup of people? 

How does that impact your ability to get information and 

communicate with the CSG, if at all? 

MR. TENET: I don't believe that it does because there's a 

standing structure in place. Somebody else may be running it, 

but my understanding is it continues to work the way it always 

has. 

MR. ROEMER: Despite the importance of personal relationships 

-- you are one of the best in this town at --

MR. TENET: Well, I don't go to the CSG myself, but I think if 

we talk to our people I think our people will say we continue to 

go to these meetings and provide data. 

MR. ROEMER: But you talked extensively with Dick Clarke is my 

understanding. 

MR. TENET: Well, I don't know if "extensively" is correct. 

MR. ROEMER: Okay. Often? 

MR. TENET: Well, you know, I don't know how often in that 

time period. I mean, there were phone calls, but I can't tell 

you it was "extensive" during this time period. 
45

MR. ROEMER: Okay. Thank you, and thank you for helping me 

with the questions. 

MR. TENET: Thank you. 

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Thompson. 

MR. THOMPSON: Mr. Director, I'm going to try one more time on 

the PDB of August 6th, then I'm going to stop talking about it 

because sometimes when the PDB is read here or on television 

stations it's only sort of half read. So I'd like to read the 

whole sentence, if I can. 

On the first page of the PDB -- and you'll grant me, I 

suspect, that almost all of the information in the PDB relates 

to the period 1998 or 1999, three years before September 11th. 

Is that correct? 

MR. TENET: Most of the data is in this time period. And the 

second page, as you know, is more current data as the result of 

the specific walk-in that comes in that there is -- the CSG held 

on May 15th or May 16th, and then there's this specific data 

about surveillance in New York. So there's -- most of it at the 

front end is historical in nature, or it's background is what I 

call it, older data, and then you flip the page and you get to 

more current data. 

MR. THOMPSON: Okay. 

Near the bottom of the first page, it said "Al Qaeda members 

-- including some who are U.S. citizens -- have resided in or 

traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently 

maintains a support structure that could aid attacks." If we are 

to credit Tom Pickard's testimony yesterday, the 9/11 plotters 

in fact did not turn to any group of supporters within the 

United States to aid their attacks. Is that correct? 

MR. TENET: I think, to the best of our knowledge, that's 

true. 

MR. THOMPSON: Okay. 

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: What the analyst was thinking about there was 

the fact that some of the defendants in the East Africa bombing 

trial had resided in the United States at one point in their 

past. 
46

MR. THOMPSON: Right. 

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: So she was connecting dots, if you will. 

MR. THOMPSON: Right. 

Last paragraph on that page: "We have not been able to 

corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such 

as that from a service in 1998" -- three years earlier --

"saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain 

the release of 'Blind Sheik'" or "other U.S.-held extremists." 

And that turned out not to have anything to do with September 

11th. 

Is that right? 

MR. TENET: And the concept of corroboration, of course, is --

Commissioner Lehman -- is did you get another piece of HUMINT, 

did you get another piece of SIGINT, is there a walk-in that's 

come in to tell you the same plot? So corroboration is, is do 

you have more than one source, and is it valid? So that's what 

we meant by corroboration. 

MR. THOMPSON: At the top of the second page: "Nevertheless, 

FBI information" -- so this is something coming to you from the 

FBI, not yourself generated -- "since that time indicates 

patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with 

preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks." But the 

only reference here is, "including recent surveillance of 

federal buildings in New York," which turned out to be, 

according to the FBI, Yemeni tourists. Is that right? 

MR. TENET: That's what we've been told, yes. 

MR. THOMPSON: "The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full 

field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers Bin

Ladin- related." 

FBI testimony here yesterday sort of downplayed the notion 

that there were 70 full field investigations going on because, 

they said, each person being looked at constituted a separate 

full field investigation, something that was sort of news to us 

on the panel yesterday. 

MR. TENET: I'd have to leave it to the director this 

afternoon to clarify whether the number is correct or incorrect. 
47

MR. THOMPSON: Okay. On page eight of your prepared statement, 

Mr. Director, you say, "Fourth, the DCI has to have an 

operational and analytical span of control that allows him or 

her to inform the President authoritatively about covert action 

and other very sensitive activities." 

What does that mean? 

MR. TENET: It means to me that there are a range of 

activities; the President grants authorities for the director of 

-- you pick whatever you want him to be -- that I believe that 

that person has to be intimately tied to the Directorate of 

Operations carrying out that covert action, and has to have an 

ability to understand other sensitive collection and other 

activities with some intimacy to be able to tell the President

authoritatively not only how you're operating, but what the 

risks are, what the political down sides are. Somebody has to be 

responsible and tied to the people who are carrying out those 

activities, is what I meant. 

MR. THOMPSON: And we don't have that now? 

MR. TENET: No, we do. We do. You have it in the form of the 

current DCI. 

MR. THOMPSON: You? 

MR. TENET: Yes. 

MR. THOMPSON: Okay. And we should not change that, in your 

view? 

MR. TENET: Well, I think it's something you need to think 

about quite carefully. I wouldn't. 

MR. THOMPSON: Okay. 

MR. TENET: You can -- you can -- again, as I came back, you 

can restructure the way I'm structured, but I would not take 

that kind of line authority from a person that has a direct 

report to the President, who also has a chain of command to the 

people that are executing these operations. 

MR. THOMPSON: Is there any reason why the domestic 

intelligence functions of the FBI could not be placed under the 

CIA? 
48

MR. TENET: Lots of good historical reasons, lots of privacy 

reasons, lots -- just lots of reasons, sir. (Laughter.) I think 

that this is -- this is not appropriate. I would not want to be 

in a position where the DCI, given our statutory framework, our 

laws, our privacy, our history, I don't think it's appropriate. 

MR. THOMPSON: Why is --

MR. KEAN: This is the last question, Commissioner. 

MR. THOMPSON: Why is privacy more of a concern under the CIA 

than it would be under the FBI? 

MR. TENET: Well, sir, since -- I don't want to be flip about 

this -- since we operate almost extensively in an overseas 

environment, we operate with a certain degree of impunity with 

regards to other countries' laws. Since we're operating 

clandestinely and collecting clandestinely, and we're not going 

to a judge to tap somebody's -- whatever we're doing, or 

launching surveillance, it's a different context for us. 

MR. THOMPSON: Mm-hmm. But you could do what the FBI does now, 

right? 

MR. TENET: Probably not, sir. 

MR. THOMPSON: Couldn't. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Director. 

MR. TENET: Not with the criminal arrest, legal and other 

things; that is not something that I think we are competent to 

undertake in the current structure. 

MR. THOMPSON: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Gorelick. 

MR. GORELICK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And Mr. Tenet, welcome back. You've given us a great deal of 

your time, and we very much appreciate it. 

It's very important, I think, for us to understand your roles 

as both director of Central Intelligence and as head of the CIA, 

both before 9/11 and afterwards. So let me ask you just two sets 

of questions. 
49

You have gone to great lengths to say to us that you are not 

a policymaker. Is that right? That you don't play a policymaking 

role. 

MR. TENET: Yes, that's my belief. 

MS. GORELICK: Yet when Dr. Rice was testifying before us 

about the summer of threat, what she says is that there was 

indeed an intensity across the government, she says, coming from 

the top because the President was meeting with the director of 

Central Intelligence. And so my question, just to be very clear 

about it, is you don't have any authority currently -- and maybe 

ever, if you have your druthers -- over the FBI, do you? 

MR. TENET: (Chuckles.) No. 

MS. GORELICK: And you don't have any authority over the 

Department of Justice, do you? 

MR. TENET: No. 

MS. GORELICK: Or the FAA; is that correct? 

MR. TENET: Correct. 

MS. GORELICK: And in fact, though your folks briefed the 

attorney general, you did not instruct any of these other 

agencies to do anything after your briefings; is that correct? 

MR. TENET: That's correct. I believe that the data that we 

provide in the context of the CSG and the structure then informs 

actions that people are going to take. 

MS. GORELICK: Right. So your principal role is to inform and 

have that information on its own generate whatever activities 

within their domain. 

MR. TENET: Yeah. Now, from to time, particularly in the 

foreign environment, when we're going to deal with a foreign 

leader, you know, I may cross the line because of my knowledge 

of the individual or previous conversations, and so you're asked 

a question in that regard. So, you know --

MS. GORELICK: Everyone -- right. And we know about the role 

you played in Middle East peace and so forth. And we appreciate 

that. 
50

MR. TENET: So there's occasionally --

MS. GORELICK: But in this context, there was nothing 

emanating, no operational activities outside of the intelligence 

domain emanating from your briefings or instructions that you 

carried. 

MR. TENET: I'm sorry, I don't understand the question. 

MS. GORELICK: Okay. You've answered my question. 

MR. TENET: Okay. 

MS. GORELICK: I want to go on to the policy question. 

MR. TENET: Okay. 

MS. GORELICK: Looking to the future, you had a very 

interesting exchange with brother Lehman about what you might or 

might not be open to advising us to do as a country to 

restructure the way in which we are organized in the 

intelligence community, bearing in mind that 80 percent of the 

intelligence resources now reside outside -- at least 80 percent 

-- outside your span of control. 

Now, in the spring of '01, the President of the United 

States, much to his credit, asked you in NSPD-5, in a 

presidential order, to stand up an outside group to look at the 

structure of the intelligence community. And he asked Brent 

Scowcroft to -- the former national security advisor and current 

head of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board --

to lead that effort. And that report came in, I believe, in late 

'01, or maybe it was turn of the year. But not long after 9/11. 

Brent Scowcroft has briefed us on his recommendations and, in 

fact, we now have a copy of his report. 

And so I would like to ask you very specifically, if I can, 

and not to pin you down to definitive proposals, but really to 

ask you your view on some of these ideas, which were never 

implemented. One, he says, it's very important to have a 

separate appropriation that goes directly to the director of 

Central of Intelligence, for the CIA, the NSA, the other offices 

that currently reside over at the Department of Defense, so that 

you have the ability to direct that activity. Do you think that 

is a good idea or a bad idea? 

MR. TENET: I'm not certain. 
51

MS. GORELICK: Okay. How about that the director of Central 

Intelligence have the ability to hire and fire the heads of 

those agencies? 

MR. TENET: Look, I'm not -- look, let's put all the cards on 

the table here. Okay? I talked about a relationship with the 

secretary of Defense that I really believe in. Okay? And you 

know, this is the kind of issue he and I have to sit down, sort 

out and talk about. And I -- you know, and I'll come back and we 

can talk about it. I just think, you know, I am sitting in the 

middle of a structure. I do have a relationship with the 

secretary. I care about it a great deal. And I haven't reflected 

on all of these ideas. You have questions and I just need a bit 

more time to think about where I am. 

MS. GORELICK: I think that's fair enough. And we were all 

just hoping that since the President had indicated a new 

openness to change, maybe you were a little more liberated to 

talk about it now. And if this is not the right time, we'll be 

happy to hear from you in whatever way you would like to get 

back to us. But we do have some very good work product created 

by people that --

MR. TENET: And I'd be pleased to do that. 

MS. GORELICK: -- do meet the description of an outside group 

of thoughtful people. And we would very much like your views on 

it. 

MR. TENET: And I would appreciate it. 

MS. GORELICK: Thank you very much. 

MR. TENET: Thank you. 

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Fielding. 

MR. FIELDING: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Director, thank you for coming back. You know, you've been 

called an evolutionary. I think we all also appreciate the 

terrific job that you did candidly as a rehabilitator, which you 

had to do before you could become an evolutionary. And we're 

just trying to figure out where the revolutionary phase of this 

comes in. 
52

But understand that there are criticisms that could be 

leveled and there are a lot of probing questions, and the reason 

for that is the obvious reason: we've had a terrific 

intelligence failure, and it gets worse as we probe a little 

deeper and learn more about it. And to get back to Commissioner 

Lehman's train coming down the track, we also at this phase want 

to make sure that when we get there we don't have a -- we don't 

create a train wreck, if you will, ourselves. So we need your 

advice and we need your guidance to the extent that you're 

comfortable giving it to us. 

There is a great deal of concern, and I understand from your 

testimony today that you really don't share with us the concern 

of wearing the hat of DCI and running the CIA because we wonder, 

with your enthusiasm, how you can do both. 

MR. TENET: Well, I might structure the CIA a bit differently. 

I might have a different span of control. If I -- for example, 

if you were going to organize the community around these mission 

centers, I might have a separate deputy to handle that piece. I 

might create a new structure for me in terms of inside this 

organization. There are ways to do this in terms of its 

reorganization. I could do that without statute, by the way, 

unless we had a bigger piece. So I'm not averse to the idea. I'm 

saying that there may be structural ways to do this smarter once 

you think about what end state you want to achieve is all I'm 

saying. 

MR. FIELDING: Well, no, I appreciate that clarification 

because I had misunderstood. 

Now let me throw you into the pool a little more since we're 

probing for ideas. Would it assist you now -- as DCI and in 

charge, if you will, of the intelligence community, would it 

assist you if the FBI's domestic intelligence function was 

separate from its investigative and its law enforcement and 

prosecutorial function? 

MR. TENET: I don't believe so, and I'll tell you why. First 

of all, I would say the first thing that's important -- and Bob 

Mueller will talk about this this afternoon; I'm not going to go 

into the changes and how he thinks about this -- we've been 

running operations with the FBI against targets for 30 years in 

terms of their tradecraft and how they operate with us and how 

we jointly recruit people. This is well known and well 

understood between us. 
53

Where he's trying to take the organization is to put a 

primacy -- particularly in the terrorism arena, put a primacy on 

the intelligence-gathering aspect of it and put the prosecution 

of it behind. I think he would also argue that the prosecutorial 

power may actually have a benefit in terms of his ability to 

recruit someone, in terms of an enticement, an enhancement or 

how you talk to somebody. 

But I think that the way to do this is to keep that together 

and then grow within the FBI a separate kind of officer with a 

separate kind of training and a separate kind of career path 

where the intelligence mission is not divorced from the 

prosecutorial mission, but is something, you know, you can grow 

in quite a different way. I mean, the devil is all in the 

recruiting, the training, the promotion precepts and how you 

reward that individual for the work is really where you're going 

to make hay here. But I wouldn't separate it. 

MR. FIELDING: And do you think that the culture is amenable 

to that in the FBI? 

MR. TENET: Well, I know the director's amendable to it, and I 

know the director's working on it. And I think if you look at --

yes, I think the answer is yes, I think the institution 

understands that this is absolutely essential. 

MR. FIELDING: Thank you. Let me just ask one other question. 

In your March testimony, you called al Qaeda a learning 

organization. And obviously, we know that DOD has got rigorous 

lessons-learned projects on everything that they do, and it 

improves their performance. I don't sense that the intelligence 

community has that kind of a lessons-learned across the board. 

What steps can you take to accomplish that? 

MR. TENET: Sir, I think we do it a bit differently than the 

defense structure does. I mean -- John, you may want to comment 

on this since you've been around a while. I'll let you comment. 

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: I think you'll find in the defense structure, 

as you know, sir, that they have a formalized process. In the 

intelligence business, because it's so fast-moving and so 

iterative, I would call our lessons-learned process more of an 

iterative one. We're constantly reevaluating what we do. We're 

constantly looking at efforts we've had under way and asking 

ourselves, "Why did that work? Why didn't this work?" So it 

isn't as formalized, it isn't done by panels, although on 
54

occasion we do commission a group within the agency to step back 

--

MR. TENET: Or outside. 

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: -- and look at -- as, for example, we are on 

some of our Iraq work now. We're doing, for six months, an 

extensive, in-depth look at every single source we used, and we 

are developing lessons from it. 

In the terrorism arena, because it's been such a fast-paced 

fight, and really a war -- I think as Cofer Black made the point 

yesterday, that we've literally been at war on this problem for 

years -- the lessons learned have been incorporated into our 

daily activity, much you do in the middle of a battle, much the 

way you do on the battlefield. 

MR. FIELDING: I understand that. But sometimes memories shape 

as time passes. And that's the reason I would urge that you 

reconsider that. 

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Not to say -- I wouldn't suggest to you for a 

moment that this is perfect or that there aren't things we could 

do better on this score. But I'm just suggesting that we have a 

different rhythm and pattern than the military on this. 

MR. FIELDING: Okay. Thank you, thank you both very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

MR. KEAN: Senator Gorton. 

MR. GORTON: Mr. Tenet, we're here, of course, because of a 

massive intelligence failure. But you point out at the very 

beginning of your testimony that you had -- that there were 

other challenges facing the United States, and you list four: 

China/Taiwan, North Korea, India/Pakistan, and the Balkans. 

In those cases, just for balance here, do you believe that 

you supplied your two presidents with accurate enough and 

complete enough intelligence so that they were enabled to make 

wise policy decisions in those four arenas? 

MR. TENET: In each case, I would tell you -- for example, the 

Balkan crisis obviously was a different crisis, because you were 

supporting military operations. You know, without getting into 

all the targets here, each of these particular cases, if you 
55

separate the conflict, have different gaps in knowledge that we 

constantly seek to close, and I don't want to do a net 

assessment in front of you. So depending on the question, 

performance is going to be plus or minus. 

MR. GORTON: Well --

MR. TENET: But I think we did well, but you know, on a --

MR. GORTON: I wanted to give you an opportunity to answer 

yes, and you've given me a qualified yes. 

MR. TENET: Yes. Well, but to be honest, because it's not 

perfect across the board while you're building capability and 

closing gaps, but --

MR. GORTON: Now I want to go -- and I'm going to -- with my 

limited time, I'm going to ask you three questions in one 

speech, and I hope you can remember each of them and answer each 

of them. But they have to deal with the last page of your 

testimony, in which you make five recommendations. And they 

relate to number two, number three and number four, which I may 

say, editorially, seem to me to be perfect Beltway 

recommendations. The rhetoric is impressive, and the actual 

policy advice is practically zero, at least as far as I'm 

concerned. 

MR. TENET: Well, I wrote them, sir, so I appreciate that. 

MR. GORTON: The second -- yeah, the second of those starts 

with that wonderful line "we have created an important 

paradigm," which scares me at the beginning. But it has to do 

with the reorganization of a mission of fusing intelligence 

information and speaks about the Counterterrorist Center and the 

creation of TTIC. 

So the portion of the question is, do you mean in this 

statement that we now have a very good structure for this 

fusion, and we simply need to perfect it, personally, in the way 

in which you answered a question to the chairman of the 

Commission, or do you think that the structure still needs to be 

changed in one respect or another? 

Now I'm going to finish this, because the light will go off. 

The third -- yeah -- your number three has to do with this 

relationship about which you've been asked previously, between 
56

the DCI and the secretary of Defense. And I'd like you to tell 

me just a little bit more about whether you feel that the 

present structure is a workable structure really simply 

depending on the relationship between the DCI and the secretary 

of Defense, or whether you think that there could significantly 

be structural changes there, but you just don't want to talk to 

them about them now, because you're getting along pretty well 

with Rumsfeld, and you want to be on the same page when you make 

such a recommendation. 

And then the fourth one really troubles me. In the fourth 

one, you say the DCI has to have an operational and analytical 

span of control that allows him or her to inform the President

authoritatively about covert action and other very sensitive 

activities. Does that mean that prior to 9/11 or post-9/11, you 

do not believe that you could authoritatively advise the 

President about covert action and sensitive activities? 

MR. TENET: Let's work backwards. No, the answer, of course I 

did. I'm trying to say in a future model. What I don't want you 

to do is separate those functions from an individual. That's all 

I'm trying to say to you. 

MR. GORTON: Okay. So just let it alone. 

MR. TENET: Yeah. Create whatever structure you want; just 

don't separate that span of control, because something will 

break. That's all I'm trying to tell you. 

MR. GORTON: Okay. 

MR. TENET: With regard to the second one, yeah, the 

relationship is absolutely the essential component of what makes 

this work. The creationship of a structure at the Department of 

Defense that Don has put in place, to build a tactical program 

and mesh it with a national program is quite substantive and 

important. 

And the other thing I'll say to you is nobody cares more 

about intelligence than this secretary of Defense. Is it in 

large part a relationship issue? The answer is yes. Can you 

count on that relationship in the future? The answer is no. So 

you need to think about it in structural terms. 

The first question is, the structure is a good one because 

it's up and running, is going to mature, and you've got the 

right principles in place. Now we have to populate it and move 
57

it, but it's in the right place. The most important thing about 

its success is we need to make sure that the domestic data shows 

up. 

That's the most important thing, because unless you have all 

the data in one place, you can't talk about competitive 

analysis, you can't talk about red-teaming, it all has to be 

there. So the most important thing that has to happen is that 

architecture to ensure that the data shows up. And we need to 

keep pressure to make sure that happens. Otherwise, you're going 

to have a lot of data and no left hand to meet the right hand. 

MR. GORTON: Thank you. Those were all precise and 

enlightening answers. 

MR. KEAN: One final question, Commissioner Ben-Veniste has 

asked, and told me he can do it in 30 seconds. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: I never said that. (Laughter.) But I do have 

one question, Mr. Director. 

First, the Commission was provided with the SEIBs, the Senior 

Intelligence -- Executive Intelligence Brief, and I want to 

refer to the one of August 7, 2001. And I want to compare it to 

the PDBs, and particularly the PDB of August the 6th, 2001. 

Let me just tell you that the information, in comparison, has 

deleted from the SEIB -- in the sentence, "Al Qaeda members, 

including some who are U.S. citizens, have resided or traveled 

to the U.S. for years and the group apparently maintains a 

support structure," the words "that could aid in attacks" 

doesn't appear in the SEIB, nor does the final two paragraphs of 

the PDB, which contain all of the updated and current 

information. 

Now, the attorney general of the United States testified 

yesterday that he was out of the loop, did not receive the PDBs, 

but he did receive the SEIB, as did other Cabinet officials who 

have responsibility for law enforcement, such as Customs, INS 

and so forth. 

Can you tell us who it was that makes the decision to send 

material on to the other executives who do not get the PDBs? 

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Commissioner, the -- it's a little difficult 

to reconstruct all of that looking back, but in talking to 

people about it, a couple of factors on the table here. The SEIB 
58

was a very new publication at that time. We were still 

developing the rules for how to do it. I think the first 

omission you mentioned I'm guessing was probably an editorial 

change by someone on the staff who was shortening the article 

for the SEIB. The latter changes that you referred to -- the 

rule that we were using at the time was that information we did 

not have written documentation for, which in this case some of 

that information fell into that category --

MR. BEN-VENISTE: But others --

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: -- because the analyst had gotten it on the 

phone from her FBI colleague, we didn't put in the SEIB unless 

we had written documentation. And other information we didn't 

put in if it had an operational content; that is, there was an 

ongoing operational matter, as there was in the case of the 

call-in in Dubai, where we were aggressively following up, 

trying to find this person. And those are essentially the 

reasons that we -- sometimes we will also not include 

information if there's a law enforcement dimension to it that 

could be affected by disseminating it widely. But a mix of 

reasons like that was behind it, and the decision is made in our 

Directorate of Intelligence, where these publications are put 

together. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

MR. KEAN: Thank you, Commissioner. 

Director Tenet, Mr. McLaughlin, thank you again for your 

cooperation. Thank you for all your help today. 

MR. TENET: Thanks. 
59

PANEL II OF THE TENTH HEARING OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON 

TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES

SUBJECT: "LAW ENFORCEMENT AND THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY" THOMAS 

H. KEAN, CHAIR; LEE H. HAMILTON, VICE CHAIR

WITNESSES: JOHN BRENNAN, DIRECTOR, TERRORIST THREAT INTEGRATION 

CENTER; LIEUTENANT GENERAL PATRICK HUGHES, DHS ASSISTANT 

SECRETARY FOR INFORMATION ANALYSIS; JOHN PISTOLE, FBI EXECUTIVE 

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR COUNTERTERRORISM AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE; 

JAMES PAVITT, CIA DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS

216 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING

11:22 A.M. EDT, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 2004 

MR. KEAN: We call the hearing back to order. 

I will now introduce the panel that will over the course of 

the next two hours discuss with us ways in which the United 

States can prevent future attacks inside its borders. 

The panel will consist of Mr. John O. Brennan, director of 

the Terrorist Threat Integration Center; Lieutenant General 

Patrick M. Hughes, assistant secretary for Information Analysis 

at the Department of Homeland Security; Mr. John S. Pistole, 

executive assistant director for Counterterrorism and 

Counterintelligence at the FBI; and Mr. James L. Pavitt, deputy 

director of Operations at the CIA. 

Welcome, all. 

Gentlemen, would you rise and raise your hands, please? 

Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth and 

nothing but the truth? 

WITNESSES: I do. 

MR. KEAN: Gentlemen, your prepared statements will be entered 

into the record in full. We would ask you to summarize your 

opening remarks, and in the interest of time, we'd ask you to 

hold your opening remarks as close as possible to five minutes, 

so we can proceed as fast as possible to questions. 

Mr. Brennan, are you going to first, sir? 

MR. BRENNAN: Thank you. 
60

Good morning, Chairman Kean, Vice Chairman Hamilton and 

commission members. 

I welcome the opportunity to represent the men and women from 

throughout the government who have joined forces in an 

unprecedented manner in the new Terrorist Threat Integration 

Center, or TTIC. 

As members of the Commission and the American public well 

know, the scourge of international terrorism poses a serious 

threat to U.S. interests, both at home and abroad. More 

terrorist attacks are in the planning stages, and U.S. lives and 

property are being actively targeted by al Qaeda and other 

terrorist organizations. 

We learned some painful lessons on September 11th, 2001. We 

learned that while we had developed a wide array of U.S. 

government counterterrorism capabilities and accrued a vast 

amount of information about those who would do us harm, we 

lacked a government-wide ability to integrate knowledge, 

expertise, mission, data systems and capabilities, which are the 

critical weapons in the fight against terrorism. 

It is only through such integration of effort that we will be 

able to prevent future 9/11s. 

A key objective of the U.S. government's counterterrorism 

strategy today is to ensure that all agencies and departments 

involved in the fight against terrorism share threat information 

and finished analyses that can be used to prevent terrorist 

attacks. At the direction of the President, TTIC began its 

mission May 1st, 2003, specifically to achieve this objective. 

TTIC represents a new way of optimizing the U.S. government's 

knowledge and formidable capabilities in the fight against 

terrorism. For the first time in our history, a multi-agency 

entity has access to information systems and databases spanning 

the intelligence, law enforcement, homeland security, diplomatic 

and military communities that contain information related to the 

threat of international terrorism. This unprecedented access 

allows us to gain a comprehensive understanding of terrorist 

threats to U.S. interests, and most importantly, to provide this 

information and related analysis to those responsible for 

detecting, disrupting, deterring and defending against terrorist 

attacks. 
61

A key objective of TTIC is to develop an integrated 

information technology architecture so that sophisticated 

analytic tools and search capabilities can be applied to the 

many terabytes of data available to the federal government. We 

must be able to cross-check these different data sets in a

manner that identifies terrorists and their supporters before 

they reach our shores, or when they emerge within our midsts. 

Simply put, we need to create new knowledge from existing 

information. 

There exists within the TTIC joint venture real-time 

collaboration among analysts who sit side by side sharing 

information and connecting the scattered pieces of the terrorism 

puzzle. These partners include not only the FBI, CIA and the 

Departments of State, Defense, and Homeland Security, but also 

other federal agencies and departments, currently including the 

Capitol Police, the Department of Energy and the Nuclear 

Regulatory Commission. The integration of perspectives from 

multiple agencies and departments represented in TTIC is serving 

as a force multiplier in the fight against terrorism. 

On a strategic level, TTIC provides the President and key 

Cabinet officials a daily analytic product on the most serious 

terrorist threats and related terrorism information that serves 

as a common foundation for decision-making regarding the actions 

necessary to disrupt terrorist plans. Threat information 

analyses are also transformed into alerts and advisories to 

better prepare the nation, as well as to warn of potential 

terrorist attacks. 

TTIC also is actively working to ensure that terrorist threat 

information and finished analyses are disseminated to those who 

play a role in protecting U.S. interests at home and abroad. 

TTIC is working with the Department of Homeland Security, the 

FBI, the intelligence community to fulfill the statutory 

obligations related to information sharing. Specifically, TTIC 

sponsors a Top Secret website that has in excess of 3.5 million 

terrorism-related documents, at various levels of 

classification, from the intelligence, law enforcement, homeland 

security, diplomatic and military communities. 

The website currently is available to over 2,600 users at 

every major federal department and agency involved in 

counterterrorism activities. 

TTIC is also responsible for integrating and maintaining a 

single repository of all U.S. government international terrorist 
62

identities information. To date, TTIC has approximately 100,000 

known or suspected international terrorist identities 

catalogued, including U.S. persons engaged in international 

terrorism. This information is provided to the FBI-administered 

Terrorist Screening Center, which ensures that front-line law 

enforcement officers, consular officials, and immigration and 

border personnel identify individuals known or suspected to be 

terrorists before or even after they enter the United States. 

I cannot tell you that all of these efforts have enjoyed 

smooth sailing, as there are many challenges associated with 

crafting a new national terrorism analysis and information 

sharing framework to better protect this nation. We need to 

implement this revolutionary concept in a thoughtful and 

evolutionary fashion, as I believe we cannot afford to have the 

global war on terrorism adversely affected by dislocations. My 

colleagues and I have a special obligation to continue the task 

of implementing a national counterterrorism strategy that 

maximizes the security and safety of all Americans. 

In my personal opinion, the organizational and informationsharing status quo that existed on September 11th, 2001 was 

inadequate to safeguard America. While significant progress has 

been made since then, I believe that we as a government are not 

optimally configured to deal with the terrorist threat. And as a 

nation, there is more that we can do to orchestrate our 

collective efforts. 

This commission, with its studied and comprehensive review of 

the events and factors that resulted in the tragedies of 

September 11th, is well suited to take a look at how the 

eclectic parts of the national counterterrorism effort fit 

together, and whether we need to adopt new and better ways to 

organize ourselves, which I believe is the case. 

Thank you. 

MR. KEAN: General Hughes. 

GEN. HUGHES: Good morning, Chairman Kean, Vice Chairman 

Hamilton, and distinguished members of the Commission. I hope 

you can hear me better now. (Chuckles.) I am privileged to 

appear before you today to discuss the role of the Office of 

Information Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security as 

well as IA's role in the intelligence community. 
63

I was present at the Pentagon minutes after the plane struck, 

and I saw once again something I have become all too familiar 

with over the years: a violent outcome of a terrorist attack 

against unwarned and unprotected people. Co-workers, soldiers, 

all lay in the wreckage. The damage was done. I am at my place 

of work at the Department of Homeland Security in part because 

of that experience. 

On 17 November, 2003, I became a direct part of this 

department's effort when I took the job of assistant secretary 

for information analysis, part of the Information Analysis and 

Infrastructure Protection Directorate. 

The philosophical underpinning of IA, Information Analysis, 

is to provide the connectivity, the integration, the 

communication, the coordination, the collaboration and the 

professional intelligence work necessary to accomplish the 

missions of and the products and capabilities necessary for the 

customers and the leadership of DHS, the Department of Homeland 

Security. Simply put, we perform the intelligence work of the 

department. I am privileged to lead that effort. 

The Office of Information Analysis is unique in its ability 

to communicate timely and cogent threat products to our 

customers. We're responsible for accessing and analyzing the 

entire array of intelligence relating to threats against the 

homeland, and making that information useful to responders; 

state, local and tribal authorities; and to the private sector. 

We also provide the full range of intelligence support to the 

secretary and deputy secretary, to other DHS leadership and to 

all DHS components. 

Additionally, IA ensures that the best intelligence 

information informs the application of the Homeland Security 

Advisory System. 

We have made tremendous progress. The dedication and devotion 

of duty of those persons who do the work of intelligence at DHS 

is, in my view, unparalleled. However, not every position is 

filled. Not every capability is we need is present. But we are 

working hard to acquire what we need to do the job. 

A brief note about the threat:

It is real. Terrorists are obviously at work around the 

world. We continue to receive substantial information concerning 
64

terrorist intent to strike us again in our homeland. As we 

approach the period of our national political process and the 

many associated events, it is my view that we are entering of 

period of significant risk, perceived by those who would strike 

us as an opportunity to tear our societal and cultural fabric. 

We who do the work of intelligence and law enforcement must 

persevere and provide insight and knowledge to those who lead 

and decide. 

We are on course with our partners and colleagues to continue 

to achieve. We are fully connected to the U.S. intelligence 

community and well-informed. We are integrated into the workings 

of the domestic security structure. We are integrated with law 

enforcement. 

We have working analysts poring over the arcane and esoteric 

detail of intelligence and law enforcement, reporting -- to 

discover the hidden patterns and concealed threads of terrorist 

activity and the manifestation of other threats to America from 

crime with national security implications and from other 

threatening conditions that come our way. 

We have a great sense of purpose, and we have embarked on 

what has never been done before with regard to information 

fusion to understand fully the threat and the conditions extant 

in the new normal context of our homeland. The pre-9/11 attacks; 

the December 2003, February 2004 period of heightened concern; 

the recent attack in Madrid; planned but largely interdicted 

attacks elsewhere; and the fact of biological attack here in the 

United States combine to form this new normal condition of 

constant possibility that we cannot ignore. At the same time, we 

are -- I am most mindful of the need to protect the 

constitutional liberties of our citizens, and to preserve and 

defend our Constitution and our way of life. In the end, we are 

-- I am focused on defeating the terrorists before they can 

strike again. 

This conclude my oral statement, Mr. Chairman. I'd also like 

to say hello to Senator Bob Kerrey, a personal friend of mine. 

Good day, sir. 

MR. KEAN: Mr. Pistole. 

MR. PISTOLE: Chairman Kean, Vice Chairman Hamilton, members 

of the Commission, it is my privilege and honor to be here 

before you this morning. 
65

I would like to start off by addressing a question that arose 

yesterday concerning the 70 individuals who were under 

investigation by the FBI that was mentioned in the August 6th, 

2001 Presidential Daily Brief. We've gone back to look at those 

numbers, and just to provide a little bit of clarity about that 

at the outset, there were actually 67 actual investigations 

ongoing. The PDB said approximately 70 and it turned out to be 

67. Of those, there are a number that are still ongoing 

investigations, obviously no links to 9/11. But there are a 

number of individuals still under investigation. 

Twelve of those investigations were closed because it was 

determined there were no ties to al Qaeda or other Sunni 

extremists. Four were closed because individuals were arrested 

on INS violations; they were out of status. Two of the subjects, 

who are well known in the East Africa bombings, were indicted 

and arrested. One was charged with a non-terrorism fraud 

violation; basically money laundering, financial crime. Six 

subjects moved abroad, and we coordinated with the CIA and the 

foreign liaison services to then track them. One was an 

unidentified subject. We were never able to get additional 

information, and that case was closed. And then two subjects 

died, which leaves the total of 67. So just to try to provide a 

little bit of clarity on that and to address any questions you 

may have about that later. 

I want to take a moment just to thank you for the opportunity 

to speak on behalf of the dedicated men and women of the FBI, 

who are working around the clock around the globe to combat 

terrorism, and also to our intelligence community and law 

enforcement partners both here in the U.S. and around the world 

that we work closely with. I also want to take a moment to thank 

the Commission for the extensive work that has been done thus 

far, some of the clarity that's been brought to the issues pre9/11 and post-9/11. 

To the victims and family members that suffer as a result of 

the horrific attacks of September 11th and all acts of 

terrorism, the FBI has been heartened by your gratitude and also 

mindful of your criticism. And it is in the spirit of both of 

those aspects that we look forward to move forward. A process of 

considered review has not only begun, but we have engaged in an 

unprecedented transformation since 9/11. Today the FBI is in the 

best position we've ever been to fulfill its highest priority, 

that of protecting the U.S. from terrorist attack. 
66

The FBI obviously applies a multi-faceted strategy, employing 

its over 28,000 employees to combat terrorism. The FBI is 

positioned in a way that we can exploit the inherent nexus 

between terrorism and the crimes that are committed in pursuit 

of terrorism. We know that to be of value, intelligence must be 

collected, exploited and shared. The FBI's ability to deploy 

anywhere in the U.S., or if requested, worldwide, at a moment's 

notice has proven invaluable in providing us with an 

understanding of the tradecraft of terrorism. 

Since September 11th, the FBI and our partners have 

investigated over 4,000 threats to the U.S., and the number of 

active FBI investigations into potential terrorist activity in 

the U.S. has grown dramatically. Working with our partners, 

we've also disrupted terrorist activities on multiple occasions 

inside the U.S., primarily focusing on terrorist financing 

operations in support of terrorist activity. 

In order to achieve these successes on the war on terror, 

we've transformed the FBI's counterterrorism efforts from one 

that excelled in the evidence collection and prosecution of 

matters to one that is primarily focused on intelligence, while 

maintaining the prosecutive options. We've integrated our 

criminal and counterterrorism efforts with our intelligence 

aspects, which you'll hear more about this afternoon from 

Director Mueller and Executive Assistant Director Baginski. I'd 

like to touch on a few of the highlights of those changes from 

an operational perspective. 

We have played a key role in either creating or help create a 

number of different entities which are in furtherance of the 

counterterrorism effort. First, the Foreign Terrorist Tracking 

Task Force; second, the Terrorist Screening Center; third, the 

National Joint Terrorism Task Force. Obviously, we've heard from 

John Brennan, and the FBI has committed significant resources to 

the Terrorism Threat Integration Center. 

We established flying squads within the FBI, highly mobile 

teams with specialized expertise in counterterrorism language 

and analysis. We established the Counterterrorism Watch, CT 

Watch, a 24-hour clearinghouse for terrorist threats and 

intelligence within the FBI. 

We established the Communication Exploitation Section, the 

Document Exploitation Unit, which is gleaning information from 

millions of documents that have been accumulated worldwide. 
67

We established the interagency Terrorist Financing Operations 

Section, which is devoted entirely to the financial aspects of 

terrorism investigations and liaison with financial services 

industry. Since September the 11th, the FBI and partners have 

frozen millions of dollars in financial assets of the 

organizations that support terrorism worldwide. 

We crafted and promulgated to all of our 56 field offices the 

Model Counterterrorism Investigative Strategy, which is the 

blueprint for conducting intelligence-driven, intelligencefocused investigations. All international terrorism 

investigations conducted by the FBI now follow this prescribed 

approach. 

Before September 11th, due to limitations of the legal law, 

which we've heard a lot about, intelligence agents and criminal 

agents working on the same terrorist subject were not able to 

share information in a productive way. A number of shortcomings 

have been addressed. In short, we were fighting terrorism with 

one hand tied behind our back. 

The PATRIOT Act, as we've heard, and the FISA court of review 

decision have eliminated that wall and enabled unprecedented 

information-sharing not only within the FBI but with all of our 

partners. 

In addition to those activities, we have disseminated 

thousands of information intelligence reports to the 

intelligence community and state and local law enforcement, 

where permissible. We established the FBI Intelligence Bulletin, 

which is disseminated weekly to more than 17,000 state and local 

police departments around the U.S. and to 60 federal agencies. 

Many of these bulletins are joint publications with the 

Department of Homeland Security. 

We've shifted 480 agents to the counterterrorism effort. 

Thanks to bipartisan congressional support, the FBI 

counterterrorism program has experienced a 99 percent increase 

in total personnel and 101 percent increase in total funding 

since 9/11. 

MR. KEAN: You want to wind it up. We're going a little bit 

over. 

MR. PISTOLE: Yes, sir. 
68

We centralized program management at FBI headquarters, which 

allows us to transcend the territorial boundaries which we have 

experienced. 

In conclusions -- in conclusion, I'd just like to state that 

there's been a fundamental paradigm shift in the FBI since 9/11, 

not just in counterterrorism but in all investigative 

activities, recognizing the significance of integrating all FBI 

resources toward the 9/11 priority. 

With that, I will conclude. Thank you, sir. 

MR. KEAN: Mr. Pavitt? 

MR. PAVITT: Good morning. It's a privilege for me to be here 

before the Commission on an issue of such incredible, vital 

importance to our nation. 

By virtue of my position in the CIA, I am not a public 

person. Indeed, in the history of the CIA, no one in my position 

has ever testified publicly before. 

And like my colleagues here at the table, I'm a public 

servant, dedicated to defending the security of our nation. The 

last five years of my 30-year career in intelligence, I've had 

the honor of leading a unique organization, the Directorate of 

Operations, known to some of you as the clandestine service of 

America. 

I'm remarkably proud of this extraordinary group of dedicated 

professionals, their commitment and their accomplishments. Many 

of the men and women of my organization operate abroad in 

dangerous locales and always in secret. They cannot publicly 

appear before this commission. I'm here to represent all of 

them. 

The threat posed by terrorists prior to 9/11 was unambiguous. 

The threat was not just outlined in sensitive intelligence 

documents. Two highly regarded commissions, the Bremer 

Commission, the Hart-Rudman Commission, were prophetic in laying 

out in unclassified context the terrorist threats that we faced, 

including the possibility of terrorists inflicting mass 

casualties both overseas and on American soil. 

Two and a half years ago, that adversary shattered the sense 

of security the people of this country have come to cherish. We 

fought this enemy through the 1990s, but it was the tragedy of 
69

September 11th that unified and focused this country and allowed 

us to counter this threat as never before.

The damage to al Qaeda since that tragedy has been striking:

the pre- 9/11 al Qaeda leadership, almost gone; Bin Ladin and 

Zawahiri, in hiding; clandestine operations at the heart of some 

of the most dramatic takedowns of the al Qaeda organization; 

covert action, working hand in glove with the U.S. military to 

oust the Taliban and al Qaeda from Afghanistan, in an 

intelligence and military partnership that already is seen as a 

model. 

I will answer all the questions you have today. But my first 

responsibility here is to look at where we are in this campaign 

and to give you a sense of where we are headed. As you know, I 

cannot publicly describe our operations in any detail. But I can 

give you, I hope, a clear sense of how we see things at this 

time, and how we want to chart the next steps forward. 

As I paint this picture, I want to return to a few themes. 

One, working with partners here and abroad, we are in the midst 

of inflicting irrevocable damage on the al Qaeda organization. 

Two, al Qaeda has poisoned an international movement with an 

ideology that is fueling attacks from Madrid to Manila. Our 

mission will not end as long as members of this broad movement 

see the killing of innocents as an acceptable cost of achieving 

their ends. Three, the demise of Bin Ladin and al-Zawahiri will 

be a signpost, not a turning point. All of us -- you, me, the 

American people perhaps watching today -- must realize that this 

is a war with no clear end in sight. 

Let me turn to where we are, by taking a step back for a 

moment. Think back to October 2001, and imagine what you would 

have said if someone had described the following future to you: 

Taliban and al Qaeda, essentially ousted from Afghanistan; 

international recognition of new leadership in Afghanistan with 

a political process in place; periodic times of heightened 

alerts in this country, but no further attacks on our soil; 

about three-quarters of the al Qaeda leadership gone; a 

worldwide coalition of partners, dozens and dozens, cooperating 

in a global behind-the-scenes war of massive, indeed 

unprecedented, proportions. 

Despite all we have left to do, the vision I just described 

is as real today as it was unimaginable even 30 months ago. The 

clandestine service I lead is at the heart of some of this 

transformation. Men and women who are committed to helping their 
70

countrymen gain some -- regained some of the sense of security, 

the American way that was so tested in these past few years. 

Where does this lead us today? Where does it leave us in this 

campaign? 

This adversary is hurt, but by no means, though, through. I 

think al Qaeda was surprised by the ferocity of our reaction to 

September 11. They had no coherent escape plan from Afghanistan. 

They fled, east into and through Pakistan, and west into and 

beyond Iran. They tried to reconstitute a command structure and 

they failed. 

Pakistani cities are no longer a hub of senior leadership 

plotting, cleared of senior leaders by clandestine operations in 

partnership with Pakistan and its courageous leader President 

Musharraf. Iran detained many of the leaders who fled west. As 

these leadership nodes eroded, the operational cells they 

directed or inspired -- in North America, the Arabian Peninsula 

and Southeast Asia -- coiled to strike back. And they did, in 

Bali, Saudi Arabia, East Africa, Morocco and elsewhere, at an 

operational pace that was no less intense after September 11th 

than it was before. 

But our operations, in concert with our partners, are gaining 

ground against the core of al Qaeda. Again, for a second, look 

back. Two-and-a-half years ago we would have listed our top 

concerns: Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Southeast Asia. And we remain 

concerned about extremists operating in those areas. But today, 

for example, almost every senior target is gone in Yemen, killed 

or captured. 

We have targeted leadership through smart operations, human 

sources and joint work with partners. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, 

Abu Zubaydah, Hambali, Nashiri, all senior al Qaeda leaders or 

associates, all taken down directly as a result of human source 

operations that is a fuel for our successes today. 

Complimenting these classic clandestine operations is a 

covert action capability that became critically important twoand-a-half years ago. My officers remain in the field in 

Afghanistan today, providing the intelligence eyes that are 

helping to drive the operations of our military partners. This 

capability did not appear overnight. Remember, our ability to 

move quickly in Afghanistan, one of the most successful covert 

actions ever, grew out of the strategic decision we made in the 
71

late 1990s to maintain a relationship with the Northern 

Alliance. 

The Washington end of this story today is no less vibrant. 

Visit my building. Let me tell you what you will see. On covert 

action, interaction and coordination with the U.S. military, 

that is not just regular; it is daily, every single working day. 

We talk with military field operators daily. And Pentagon 

civilian and military officers sit in our Counterterrorist 

Center, privy to any operational detail we discuss. 

You would see the same cooperation with law enforcement. On 

any given day, some 20 full-time FBI officers sit in our 

Counterterrorist Center. They know our operations and they know 

our human agents. We still need to learn how to continue 

improving this partnership, but we started learning well before 

September 11th when we first posted a senior FBI officer as one 

of the deputy directors in the center. We can and we will do 

better still. 

People outside this circle have access to what we know, 

including information about our operations. We provide our 

backbone database, a highly sensitive combination of 

intelligence reporting and operational detail, to officers 

across the community who are sitting in the Terrorist Threat 

Integration Center. We have a large cadre of officers whose sole 

job now is to disseminate intelligence information to the 

intelligence community and beyond. 

MR. KEAN: You're wrapping up, right, Mr. Pavitt? 

MR. PAVITT: Yes sir.

Well, let me wrap up by simply making a personal comment. 

Seated behind me are family members of the victims of the 

terrible attacks. I told you that I represented the men and 

women of the Directorate of Operations, those people who cannot 

be with me today, who cannot come before a camera and have their 

faces shown if they're going to do their jobs. But I want 

everyone to know, and I particularly want the families to know, 

that those men and women were working ceaselessly, day in and 

day out, in a frenetic pace that I personally observed, doing 

all they could to stop what we knew was coming. We extend to all 

of the family members our genuine and our heartfelt condolences 

for the extraordinary loss that this nation and they suffered on 

the 11th. 
72

We sounded an alarm. We knew the threat was lethal, 

unambiguous, and we knew it was coming at us. We put our hearts 

and our souls into disrupting and preventing those attacks. We 

did all we knew how to do, and we failed. We are committed to 

doing everything we can do, as intelligence officers, as 

Americans, and to work with this commission, to ensure that we 

do our best to never let that failure happen again. In my 

business there is no perfection, but we will do everything we 

can to be as perfect as we can. 

Thank you. 

MR. KEAN: Thank you, sir. 

The questioning will be led by Commissioner Fielding. 

MR. FIELDING: Good morning, gentlemen, and thank you all for 

being here. Thank you for the introductory remarks and your 

prepared statements. 

Your panel represents the heads of the key intelligencegathering offices of the United States government and of the 

intelligence community, and you're responsible for collecting, 

analyzing, warning and operations against terrorism. And you 

know, we had a chart prepared, and if you look at the chart it 

tries to compare -- they all start with the President and then 

down to your level. It seems fraught, to me, with the 

opportunity for duplication, replication and redundancy. 

And we've all been in the government long enough to know how 

easy that can happen. And obviously, that's a deterioration, 

that's a waste of time, that's a waste of effort. So our concern 

is that any reformation of the process post-9/11 must avoid the 

pitfalls that we've all seen too much in the past. 

So, what I'd like to do, just so we can all kind of sort out 

where you are, is see who is responsible -- which entity is 

responsible for which function so we can talk this out and see 

if there is an apparent overlapping or what there is. The real 

question: Is the system better than we had before, or is it just 

different? Will it work, or will it just cause confusion and mix 

the message and mess the message? And what fine-tuning might be 

needed as we talk, and as you've been into this for periods of 

time, and what fine-tuning do you see that might be useful? I 

mean, we've got this new word now -- fusion. But is it fusion or 

is it confusion? That's what we really have to figure out. 
73

So, to inform us, I'd like to ask you all to go through kind 

of a grim drill, if you will. Let me -- let's presuppose that 

your office is operating in 2001 the way it's operating today. 

And let's say that the Phoenix memo surfaces. So it would come 

from the FBI. Okay, would you lead off and tell me what you 

would -- with the configuration, with the function -- and we've 

got to be bluntly honest today, because as we walk through this, 

let's find out if there's duplication, let's find out if there's 

any holes. 

So would you start, sir, and then each of you take a crack at 

this. 

MR. : Yes --

MR. : Yes -- I'm sorry. Excuse me. I'm sorry. No, John, I'm 

sorry. 

(Laughter.) 

MR. : He's been reading your mail. He has your information. 

(Laughter.) 

MR. : I thought you pointed at me, Commissioner. 

MR. PISTOLE: Well, in regards to your first part of the 

question, does the system work, I think clearly there is an 

agreement and understanding that the 84 Joint Terrorism Task 

Forces around the country are the operational arm of the U.S. 

government when it comes to the investigation of international 

terrorism within the U.S. 

So given that confine where, for example, there's 38 

different agencies that participate in the National Joint 

Terrorism Task Force, and over 4,200 federal, state and local 

police officers and members of the intelligence community that 

are part of those task forces, there is a much better system now 

for the sharing of information at the grassroots level, out in 

the field where it counts, and then feeding that information 

back into the constituent agencies as represented on those Joint 

Terrorism Task Forces. 

That -- that's an operational perspective. 

When it comes to the Phoenix EC -- and I'll start off by 

saying that clearly that should have been pushed more 

aggressively, more vigorously so there would have been a greater 
74

recognition of the possibilities. I think the Commission and the 

American people who are aware of this realize that that was a 

theory that was posited by an astute agent who said, This is a 

possibility. Now, we know that the pilots had already received, 

the four pilots had already received their license by that time. 

The memo came in, and he was looking at schools and universities 

that addressed -- or Middle Eastern males may have been 

conducting flight training through these schools and 

universities. So in that regard it was an excellent theory that 

should have been more vigorously pursued. The system we have in 

place now is a push from each field office to the centralized 

management of FBI headquarters and to the other agencies that 

are represented on the National Joint Terrorism Task Force. That 

push of the information like that comes very quickly now to at 

least my level and then on to the director in a very short 

matter of time through the twice-daily briefings that we provide 

the director in preparation of him to brief the President every 

morning. So, given that push and the operational aspects that we 

have implemented, we are in a much better position to take that 

information. The other side of it is the information technology 

fix, which I believe Director Mueller will address more in more 

expansive mode this afternoon. But given the technology fix that 

is in place in progress in the FBI now, the visibility of that 

Phoenix EC would be global in a very short amount of time as 

opposed to going to one office, for example at the headquarters, 

may be given to New York because they were heading up the al 

Qaeda investigations. There would be global visibility of that, 

and a maximum number of eyes and ears could look at that and 

say, Yeah, that's a good idea, let's do that, let's take a look 

at that and see what we can do with it. 

MR. FIELDING: Okay. But have you taken it outside of your 

organization at that point? 

MR. PISTOLE: Yes. The -- through the JTTF and the visibility 

that everybody on the JTTF has to all those type things. The 

other aspect is the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, where 

that information, non-FBI employees have complete access now to 

-- who are members of TTIC have complete access to all 

counterterrorism matters of the FBI. So even if an FBI employee 

did not pick up on that, there's a redundancy built in that the 

TTIC employees will be able to do that. 

MR. FIELDING: Okay. 

Mr. Pavitt. 
75

MR. PAVITT: Commissioner, we have placed CIA officers from 

the directorate of operations primarily into approximately twothirds of the JTTFs that now exist in the United States. And 

because of that lash-up we're going to have dialogue real time. 

And that dialogue real time will see my officers communicating 

with the FBI and also communicating back with me. 

Since the 11th, as Ambassador Black mentioned yesterday, we 

have seen an incredible infusion of dollars and people to do 

what we're doing. CTC, which is a part of what we do in the 

operations world, is three times larger than it was on the 10th 

of September. In fact, larger still, if you count contractor 

personnel. The CTC budget since 9/11 has increased a thousandfold since the 10th of September. And because of that, instead 

of being only in triage mode -- and we are still, given the 

thrust of what's coming at us, in triage mode -- but we are 

vastly able to make sure that we run everything to ground. 

The director has invited the Commission to come to CIA and to 

sit in one of our 5:00 meetings. Perhaps it's presumptuous on my 

part, but let me invite you as well, because what happens at 

that is the fusion that you talked about. It may look confusing, 

but it is fusion. 

That memo, I am certain, would have surfaced, and it would 

have generated not because it was necessarily really hard, 

source-specific intelligence, but would have generated a very 

energetic discussion. And we would have started doing things 

that we didn't do before. 

MR. FIELDING: Okay. Thank you. 

General Hughes? 

GEN. HUGHES: In the context of your question, sir, I 

represent 180-plus thousand people who are involved in all 

aspects of this activity -- many of them, by the way, 

participating members of the JTTF structure. I represent the 

United States Coast Guard, the United States Secret Service, the 

Transportation Security Agency, the Customs and Border 

Protection Agency, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the 

Federal Protective Service, and the Emergency Preparedness and 

Response Organization, which used to be known as FEMA. 

I would notify all of those intelligence entities relating to 

those organizations immediately, as I do now, of any 

intelligence of interest to them. And in this case, in the case 
76

of the Phoenix memo, that would be passed to them immediately, 

as a matter of intelligence interest. 

I would notify state, local, tribal, major city and privatesector entities, quite often directly, rapidly, by telephone, if 

indeed there was a need for immediate warning. And I would do 

that on occasion unilaterally to the homeland security elements, 

but in almost every case I would now do it in partnership with 

my FBI colleagues. We would do it together, in parallel or 

singularly, as a joint effort. 

I would interact with what is currently my best partner, by 

the way, in this effort, the Terrorism Threat Integration 

Center. They perform a tremendous service, encompassing the 

entire global condition with regard terrorism, a true integrated 

organization that does integrate and fuse intelligence. And that 

synergy did not exist before. It does now. I think I'm 

portraying to you something that does exist now, that can get 

better in the future, as we also evolve into this new form of 

cooperation. 

Last but not least, I have to tell you that I would of course 

do what I'm really in business to do: assist the government, 

assist the government from the local level and the private 

sector to the national level, with my own intelligence

viewpoint, my own analytic view about whatever the intelligence 

says, an independent voice which is newly created. And I think 

that's a source of strength in this community. 

Yes, it can be viewed as duplication or redundancy. In this 

case, I would call it necessary, vital, important and realistic 

redundancy to represent the domestic condition. 

MR. FIELDING: Now, General, that's very helpful, but just to 

follow up -- and anybody else pick this up, too -- at that 

point, when you have that information and you're got this vast 

audience that are your constituents at that point, are you going 

to make a separate analytical judgment as to whether that's 

important, valid, prioritize? Will you make that at that point? 

GEN. HUGHES: Yes, I would. I would give my view in the 

appropriate, professional environment. At some point we would no 

doubt reach conclusion within our community, but I have the 

authority and the right on behalf of my secretary to give my 

view. 
77

MR. PISTOLE: And I would just add to that, Commissioner, that 

the FBI now has a strategic analytic component and ability that 

we did not have prior to 9/11 which should pick that up, but the 

extra set of eyes and ears that would also see that would lend 

to that. 

MR. BRENNAN: Commissioner Fielding? 

MR. FIELDING: Yes, sir. 

MR. BRENNAN: Whenever the FBI moves electrons from the field 

to FBI headquarters, in this case the Phoenix EC or electronic 

communication, TTIC analysts have real-time access to that. We 

don't have to rely on the FBI to push it to us. We have full 

visibility into it. Within TTIC, then, that means that FBI 

analysts, CIA analysts, analysts from the Department of Homeland 

Security, the Transportation Security Administration, and other 

entities represented in TTIC would be able to have read that

memo or will read that memo today, and then will discuss it 

among themselves and then interact with their home organizations 

as appropriate. As Mr. Pavitt said and Mr. Pistole, then also 

there are regular meetings throughout the day to discuss the 

events of the day in terms of what has come in. 

Regarding the analysis of that, right now within the U.S. 

government the TTIC has the primary responsibility for terrorism 

analysis at the national level. Each of the other elements has 

responsibility for doing analysis in support of their respective 

missions and operational requirements. And so, just as General 

Hughes said that DHS would do its analysis to make sure that its 

folks within the broad constituencies of DHS are enabled and 

empowered, they would help to do that within their department. 

But at the national strategic level, TTIC, representing the 

partner agencies, does it on behalf of all of them in an 

integrated, fused fashion. 

MR. FIELDING: Okay. And you still have -- I hope you have 

more than 123 people assigned to you these days. Do you have --

MR. BRENNAN: We have 124. (Laughter.) 

MR. FIELDING: Oh. Oh, good. (Laughter.) 

Let me ask you -- the question across the panel, then. Let's 

say there's a disagreement as to how important this is. Who's 

the final arbiter, or I hope we don't have four arbiters? 
78

MR. BRENNAN: Let me start off, Commissioner. 

First of all, we have 124. We are moving out to our new 

building, co-located with the Counterterrorism Division and 

Counterterrorism Center. At that time we will have several 

hundred. 

When something like this comes in and there has to be an 

assessment done on it, TTIC will work collaboratively with the 

partner agencies, interacting with the analysts and the 

individuals back at the home agencies to put together an 

assessment. 

Maybe it's a daily product. Maybe it's something that takes 

longer than a day. And if there are, in fact, differences of 

view within the community on this issue, those differences will 

be reflected in the product. What we're trying to do with this 

integrated infusion is to not give the policymaker a menu of 

options and different products that are going in so that they 

they have to do the comparison. What we're trying to do is bring 

it together and tell them if there are are differences of view 

within the community. So it provides this one- stop shopping, 

but reflective of the considered opinions and analytic views of 

the broad community. 

MR. FIELDING: General? 

GEN. HUGHES: In my case, I'd like to reflect on the senior 

decision-making groups, the deputies committees, the principals 

committees and the intimate meetings with the President where 

these issues would be taken up. All the views would be aired, I 

believe. But at that level, decisions would have to be made on 

operational response. 

There are always going to be different views in the 

intelligence community of the United States on what one piece of 

information means at any given time. We are a very complex 

organism. But deciding upon it is the province of those leaders 

who are elected and appointed, who are in position to take 

operational response actions on it. And we owe them contrary 

views, alternative ideas. We owe them some clarity. We're trying 

to give it to them. 

And by the way, I think often we do give relative community 

clarity on any given topic. But there are always going to be 

some issues that can be debated. I think that's good. I think 

it's a source of strength for our country. 
79

MR. FIELDING: Mr. Pistole? 

MR. PISTOLE: I believe that in the post-9/11 environment, 

there is an intentionality and focus of work that would preclude 

any inaction on something like that. And in the interagency 

world, to get to your question, I would pick up the phone and 

discuss it with my partners in the other agencies. And thus far, 

in the two years that I've been involved in this, that is the 

way we've been able to resolve things. 

MR. FIELDING: Mr. Pavitt? 

MR. PAVITT: I think given that kind of an issue with the 

Counterterrorist Center, the Office of Terrorist Analysis in CTC 

would, if you will, if it's a controversial issue or one there's 

disagreement on, would mix it up with those with whom they 

should mix it up. My part of that, as the person who runs the 

spy service, would be, if appropriate, to go out and try and 

find more information, seek additional information to help get 

clarity to an issue that might be subject to disagreement. 

MR. FIELDING: Thank you all very much. I see that red light's 

on, but I hope somebody else on the Commission will ask you if 

you have any problems that you really think still do need 

fixing. But thank you all very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Gorelick. 

MS. GORELICK: Thank you. 

And thank you all for being here today. 

We have had described to us an enemy, in al Qaeda and in Bin

Ladin, who is agile and entrepreneurial. And so the question 

that I have tried to ask throughout these hearings is, who is 

our quarterback? 

Who is the person in the U.S. government responsible for 

facing off against this enemy with all the tools that we have 

available? And you are the leaders of the key entities in that 

fight, putting aside the military aspect, for the moment. 

So what I'd like to do is ask each of you, in the time I have 

available to me, one question. Now the question has six parts. 
80

(Laughter.) I'm learning from Slade. (Laughter.) So if you have 

a pen, I would like to have this answered from each of you. 

Are you responsible for: One, developing our strategy against 

al Qaeda? Two, determining what information we need to collect? 

Three, ordering the collection of that information across all 

agencies of our government? Four, collecting and fusing all of 

the information that we have? Five, warning us when there is the 

possibility of a major terrorist attack? And six, running 

coordinated foreign and domestic operations against al Qaeda? 

And maybe we can start with you, Mr. Pavitt, speaking as you 

are for yourself and for the CTC. You can put your pencils down 

and fill in the little blanks. 

MR. PAVITT: Have all six parts. (Laughter.) 

I'm developing -- I'm responsible for developing the 

operational strategy using human agents and technical activities 

that are enabled by human agents. So I have that responsibility 

to devise that strategy. Just so that's -- so I can clarify 

that, that would be different for other parts of the 

intelligence community that might have a different role in that. 

Charlie Allen, for example, might play a role in developing a 

collection strategy across the board. The human part is my 

responsibility. And in point of fact, the Counterterrorist 

Center has developed a strategy for attacking al Qaeda. 

MS. GORELICK: Through human sources. 

MR. PAVITT: Through human sources. Yes, ma'am. Determining 

what info we need to, if you will, disseminate. 

MS. GORELICK: The information you need to collect. 

MR. PAVITT: Need to collect. 

MS. GORELICK: That is, where are the holes, and --

MR. PAVITT: Again, the collections -- the senior collection 

manager, Mr. Allen, would play a critical role in that. I think 

John Brennan would play an important role in that. But so would 

the men and women in CTC who are driving the day-in and day-out 

activity. 

What do we need to collect to defeat al Qaeda? What do we 

need to collect to find where Osama Bin Ladin and al-Zawahiri 
81

are hiding so we can go against them? That would be something 

that we would develop as well. And there, frankly, is a fusion, 

and you have a good many people working on that. And that's a 

good thing, not a bad thing. It may sound like it causes 

confusion, but in my business, the more data we can have and the 

more input we can have helps us get an answer to a tough 

question. 

I can't read number three. 

MS. GORELICK: Can you -- well, I'll help you out here. Can 

you order the collection of data that you don't have within your 

own domain? 

MR. PAVITT: I can certainly request -- I cannot give an -- I 

can't necessarily give an order, which is the same order that 

would carry the same authority that the DCI's order would give, 

but I can go to the National Security Agency and ask for their 

assistance. 

MS. GORELICK: Can you to the FBI and order it and ask it --

MR. PAVITT: I certainly could go to the FBI, and in fact the 

FBI is co-located with us. So we're doing this together, in any 

event. But yes, I could ask for FBI domestic activity to support 

something that we were doing, yes. 

MS. GORELICK: And could you order it? 

MR. PAVITT: Yes. 

MS. GORELICK: You could order the FBI to collect something? 

MR. PAVITT: Well, I could ask. 

MS. GORELICK: Oh, I just --

MR. PAVITT: I wouldn't presume to order John to do anything, 

but I would certainly be able to work with him. 

MS. GORELICK: Just -- I'm just asking --

MR. PAVITT: I cannot give that order, no. If you're asking 

whether, from a bureaucratic point of view, that I can give a 

hard order, no, I cannot. 

MS. GORELICK: Collecting --
82

MR. PAVITT: Collecting and fusing -- we collect aggressively, 

and it is fused, at least in part, in CTC. 

Now what I collect, I also disseminate. I disseminate an 

intelligence report. That goes to a broad array of customers. 

And that's part of my responsibility. It's human intelligence 

that I disseminate. 

The fusing of the intelligence goes to what our analytic 

entity in CTC produces, and then it goes into a variety of other 

forums, where it again is touched and looked at. 

I collect and I fuse operational information. I disseminate 

human intelligence. 

Warning? My intelligence reporting can warn. It can say that 

we are going to be attacked here at the capital at such and such 

a time, such and such a day. That would be a warning. It is an 

intelligence report that I've disseminated. 

Others with responsibility for warning would actually sound 

the alarm throughout the United States government; local, state 

governments. 

And domestic operations -- I am proscribed by law from 

running operations in the United States of America. 

MS. GORELICK: So you would run the foreign, and someone else 

would run the domestic operations against al Qaeda. 

MR. PAVITT: Yes, ma'am. 

Now when -- in close cooperation with the FBI, we are doing 

more, particularly as things have changed post-9/11, to work the 

target across the board. But I do not have either law 

enforcement responsibilities, and I have very clear, unambiguous 

proscriptions on what I can do domestically. 

MS. GORELICK: Thank you. 

Mr. Pistole. 

MR. PISTOLE: Yes. In response to your first question, are we 

responsible for developing strategy, yes, based on the --

identifying and defining what the current threat is in the U.S. 

And we do that through each of our individual 56 field offices, 

which do threat assessments, which then is fed into a national 
83

threat assessment, which we are migrating that in this new 

environment, if you will, to do that collectively with DHS and 

with TTIC. 

But yes, we are -- we do have responsibility in developing 

the strategy for combating --

MS. GORELICK: But just to be clear, you are developing the 

strategy for your own collection --

MR. PISTOLE: Yes. Yes. 

MS. GORELICK: -- and while you communicate with others, 

you're not responsible for the collection as a whole. 

MR. PISTOLE: Correct. 

Second, deciding which information to be collected -- yes, 

with other agencies. And for example, DHS recently just gave us 

our first set of requirements, information they are looking for. 

But yes, we can -- and getting into the third question, then --

in terms of ordering the collection, setting requirements, yes, 

we can clearly set requirements requesting information from 

other agencies, just as the other agencies can do that with us, 

in which they -- DHS has just recently done that with their 

first set of requirements. 

MS. GORELICK: Again, it comes in as a request --

MR. PISTOLE: As a request. 

MS. GORELICK: -- as opposed to an order? 

MR. PISTOLE: Yes. It's a request, but we are -- for example, 

the Homeland Security Act compels us to provide that 

information, just as the National Security Act of '47 does in 

that regard. So yes, it's a request, but it's provided. 

The fourth, collecting and fusing information, clearly we are 

one of the largest collectors of information intelligence and 

evidence, obviously, in the U.S., and we do fuse that with the 

TTIC and with DHS IAIP. So again, it's a collaborative effort, 

but we do have that responsibility for collecting and sharing 

that information. 

Fifth, on the warning, our warning -- the FBI's warning -- is 

primarily to state and local law enforcement, where we have a 
84

95-year history of interaction with state and local law 

enforcement. We provide them information. We do a number of our 

warnings now, if you will, with Department of Homeland Security, 

do collaborative pieces as opposed to individual pieces. But we 

still maintain that relationship, for example, through the 

National Academy and through other entities that have that 

relationship with state and local police. 

On the last question, in terms of running coordinated foreign 

and domestic ops, obviously we don't run foreign ops, but we do 

have responsibility through the JTTFs for running domestic ops. 

And we have a number of undercover operations, a number of joint 

initiatives with the agency, with CTC in terms of trying to do 

things that will infiltrate al Qaeda. 

MS. GORELICK: Thank you. 

Mr. Hughes. 

GEN. HUGHES: Yes. I'm responsible for intelligence strategy, 

not the overall strategy for the Department of Homeland 

Security. I am responsible for determining what intelligence 

collection we undertake. In my view, I would use the word 

managing the collection requirements that we have. 

MS. GORELICK: Again, this is within your own agency? 

GEN. HUGHES: Within the Department of Homeland Security. But 

keep in mind the subordinate agencies of the department also 

have their own intelligence collection capabilities and their 

own authorities, and we work together. But I'm the point of 

central coordination for all of that. I'm responsible for fusing 

this information together. There's no doubt about that. 

MS. GORELICK: Again, within your own agency? 

GEN. HUGHES: Within my own agency. I look to TTIC to do the 

larger fusion process for the United States in large measure 

overseas, but in some significant measure now domestically. And 

all three of us sitting here would have -- all four of us, I 

guess -- but in the case of fusion, we three -- the Terrorism 

Threat Integration Center, the Federal Bureau of Investigation 

and the Department of Homeland Security -- would do that 

together. And I don't think you can identify it as a singular 

activity; it has to be a form of teamwork to come to grips with 

all of the complexity of that. 
85

I'm distinctly responsible for issuing warning in the context 

of intelligence from the Department of Homeland Security for the 

domestic condition. 

MS. GORELICK: Okay. Just so -- I want to hone in on that. 

When you say "distinctly responsible," you mean across the 

government; that you have a responsibility for warning across 

the government about a terrorist threat? 

GEN. HUGHES: I think my secretary actually has that 

responsibility. 

MS. GORELICK: And you support him in that? 

GEN. HUGHES: I'm the intelligence officer who will provide 

him with the information to make the right decisions, to take 

that action. 

MS. GORELICK: Thank you. 

GEN. HUGHES: And last but not least, I do not coordinate 

operations. 

MS. GORELICK: Mr. Brennan. 

MR. BRENNAN: With our 124 officers, we now are --

MS. GORELICK: (Laughs.) 

MR. BRENNAN: -- are in the process of overseeing the overall 

U.S. government analytic strategy vis-à-vis al Qaeda, which is 

an orchestration role since there are many different elements 

within the U.S. government that have an analytic capability. 

For example, we're orchestrating the effort that we have to 

undertake analytically as a government vis-à-vis the upcoming 

Olympics in Greece, as far as what has to be done. So it's an 

orchestration role. 

Regarding determining what information to collect, as well as 

ordering collection, there is the National Intelligence 

Priorities Framework that the intelligence community as a whole 

operates within. For each intelligence area, there is a topic 

manager identified. As Director-TTIC, I am identified as the 

topic manager for the National Intelligence Priorities 

Framework. And so, working with the ADCI for collection and 

others, TTIC drives the collection process in conjunction with 
86

the other elements there. But as the topic manager from the 

analytic perspective, we, in fact, play a leading role in that 

process. 

MS. GORELICK: I just would like a little clarity on this. So 

you are saying that you have the responsibility for determining 

across our government what information we should gather 

together, and tasking people to gather it and bring it back. Is 

that what you're saying? 

MR. BRENNAN: No. What I'm saying is that we are in the 

process of playing a leading role in that as the National 

Intelligence Priorities Framework topic manager on terrorism, 

but working in conjunction with many of the other elements and 

individuals in the U.S. government who have a share of that 

responsibility. So I wouldn't say that I am the one who 

determines exactly what should be collected, where and when. I 

play a role in that process. 

I also, though, and TTIC, chair the Interagency Intelligence 

Committee on Terrorism, the IICT, which is an Interagency group 

beyond the core partner agencies that are represented in TTIC, 

including the non-Title 50 organizations that participate in the 

process, to work with them on a regular basis. And that group 

meets quarterly to look at the priorities that are attached to 

the terrorist groups and the challenges that face the U.S. That 

process at the IICT then is fed into the National Intelligence 

Priorities Framework through the normal collection requirements 

process system. 

Regarding warning. 

MS. GORELICK: Warning, yes. 

MR. BRENNAN: Warning. The IICT has responsibility in the 

intelligence community for issuing various types of warnings: 

advisories, alerts, warnings, issuing assessments. TTIC has 

issued, by itself as well as on behalf of the community, a 

number of different alerts and advisories, but the intelligence 

community responsibility as far as the intelligence community 

function to issue warning alerts, advisories, rests with the 

IICT, and TTIC now has the responsibility. 

As General Hughes said, what he will then do is to work what 

his responsibilities are, to ensure that that alert or advisory 

or warning then is propagated beyond the federal family, beyond 

the intelligence community. Similarly, for overseas, Department 
87

of State takes those alerts and warnings and ensures that they 

are passed then to the appropriate entities. 

MS. GORELICK: This is very helpful. So you have the 

responsibility within TTIC to determine when there should be a 

warning. And then you provide it to the Department of Homeland 

Security and they -- implement the warning? Am I understanding 

that correctly? 

MR. BRENNAN: There is intelligence community warnings, 

alerts, advisories that are issued, and TTIC now has the 

responsibility for doing that, that is correct. And then we 

issue them in partnership with CIA, FBI, DHS, DIA and others. 

They are frequently interagency warnings, community warnings 

that then are used by DHS, FBI and others to then pass that 

warning and to do what they need to do to issue bulletins, 

advisories or whatever that go out to the non-federal family. 

MS. GORELICK: And if you could address the issue of the 

collection of all-source information and the decision of how to 

run coordinated foreign and domestic operations, do you have --

are you our quarterback in either of those places? 

MR. BRENNAN: No, I'm not. I'm on the sidelines there. I don't 

have any operational or collection responsibilities. It was 

determined that TTIC would only have an analytic and 

intelligence fusion function. So the intelligence and 

information that Jim Pavitt's organization and John Pistole's 

organization and Lieutenant General Hughes' organization 

collect, we had a responsibility for putting those pieces 

together of that puzzle, but we do not collect, we do not 

operate. 

MS. GORELICK: And one follow-up question. Can you direct any 

of your colleagues on what needs to be collected? 

MR. BRENNAN: Through the processes that have been 

established, through the national intelligence priorities 

framework, and through the collection requirement system that is 

very well oiled, particularly on the foreign intelligence side, 

we play a role in that, a leading role, and we put our regular 

requirements into that that they then take as collection 

priorities as established by the analytic community. And again, 

TTIC plays a key role in that. 

MS. GORELICK: Thank you very much. 
88

MR. HAMILTON: Mr. Kerrey. 

MR. KERREY: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I want to 

just for the record say, Mr. Chairman, that I think that we 

should just attempt to get from the general counsel of the White 

House a letter saying that this is not a precedent for the DDO 

to appear in public. My stomach's been turning as Mr. Pavitt's 

been answering questions here this afternoon. This is -- this 

should not be a precedent for the DDO to be called before any 

public hearing. And just as we did with the national security 

advisor, the problem is it may become a precedent if we don't 

get some documentation in the record that this is an 

extraordinary situation and it's not to become a precedent for 

the future. 

Second, let me say I would have asked John McLaughlin had --

he answered a question earlier when I was talking about the 

National Intelligence Estimate that was done in 1995. And I'm 

going to ask General Hughes a question about this, because, I'd 

just say, when the court in 2001 in New York heard the testimony 

of this gentleman, Jamal al Fadl, he essentially told them in 

2001 what he told the CIA in 1996. And it never makes it into 

the NIE, the National Intelligence Estimate. John McLaughlin 

said it was modified in 1997, but I don't see ANY of the detail 

that I think is important. It wasn't in the NIE, that Osama Bin

Ladin, as we were told in 1996, was responsible for delivering 

weapons to Somalis in 1993 that may have been responsible for 

shooting down American Blackhawk helicopters? I mean, if the 

President had been told that -- and my guess is President 

Clinton didn't know it. My guess is that President Bush didn't 

know it. I mean, I -- I see that court document, I say, my God, 

we -- that should have been the basis for a Presidential Daily 

Briefing, not the stuff that was in the President Daily Briefing 

-- (laughs) -- on the 6th of August, because it's very 

compelling. And I think it does provide either one of those two 

presidents with the kind of information that they need to go to 

the public and say, We've got to take extraordinary actions. 

I mean, it builds a case of an army that's been very 

effective, not just in 1998, but previously. 

And General Hughes, I want to give you a chance to talk about 

this a bit, because -- I want to say for the record that I also 

had the privilege of watching in December 1995 -- you, when you 

were in charge of the Defense Intelligence Agency, implemented 

an exceptionally difficult treaty, the Dayton Accord, that 

brought peace to Bosnia, a Muslim nation. We stopped the killing 
89

in a Muslim nation, and we did it as a result of -- I don't 

believe we could have done it without the DIA. I do absolutely 

believe that we couldn't have implemented the details of that 

treaty were it not for you and the men and women who worked for 

the DIA. I mean, you and everybody that was working in that shop 

should feel tremendous pride as a consequence. 

But I was struck, when I saw that, of how clear the 

presentations were. How you processed very, very complicated 

data and presented and understood it and then was able to --

were able, as a consequence, to determine whether or not 

everybody was playing by the rules. And I just don't see that, 

coming to the present. I mean, look at this Presidential Daily 

Briefing of August 6th and you say, the top military guy is an 

elected civilian, kind of a busy person! You know? And you look 

at this document. It's not clear. It's confusing. It doesn't 

bring the kind of sharp focus that you did at DIA. And my guess 

is that you are having to do a bit of that now at the Department 

of Homeland Security. 

Just speak -- rather than answer the question, speak about 

what we need to do to help these top civilian leaders acquire 

the information that they need to make better judgments. 

GEN. HUGHES: Well, it's a very good question. And I would 

rather not make reference to the past, 1995-1996 time frame, 

because I'm not prepared to do that today. I'd be happy to 

discuss that later, after some review of the record, if you 

wish. 

But I have an opinion, a personal opinion on this issue of 

the distillation of information -- in kind of pyramid form. The 

base of the information we all hold together is very broad and 

very, what I would call unclear, in its original form as it is 

delivered to us from sources, sensors and methods in the field. 

As it is analyzed and refined and it comes to the attention of 

decision-makers, the information base narrows much like a 

pyramid. 

And hopefully, the essence of our work, of analysis and 

intelligence delivery to the decision-maker, is to get the right 

information into that top of the apex of that information 

pyramid. That's a art as well as a science, and a skill. And I 

think it's wholly dependent on conditions, circumstances, the 

right people in the job, many variables. I don't know how to 

solve that problem with some kind of a magic bumper sticker kind 

of saying. I think it requires constant work on our part. 
90

But I do believe -- I hope I can speak for my intelligence 

colleagues in general, everyone in this business is aware of the 

problem of losing information, a small detail, a piece of 

knowledge here and there, as you move up this information chain, 

which might be, in retrospect, vital and very important. And 

it's possible that that could have happened in the past, and 

it's certainly possible it could happen in the future. But we 

together are acutely aware of that and work to prevent it as 

best we can. 

MR. KERREY: Thank you. 

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Lehman. 

MR. LEHMAN: Thank you. 

I'd like to ask a hypothetical question of Mr. Brennan, and 

then also get Mr. Pistole's answer to it. 

Let us suppose there is a U.S. Attorney in an American city 

who happens to plan to run for political office. Been known to 

happen. And he is conducting a criminal investigation, let us 

say a drug investigation. And in, let us say, an authorized 

wiretap, gets his smoking gun that will get the indictment that 

he seeks, but it happens to be one that shows this target's link 

to al Qaeda. What makes you think you're going to get it before 

he gets the credit by getting his indictment? 

MR. BRENNAN: I would really like John Pistole to address the 

issue about how the -- (laughter) -- how the information would 

be coming, because as I said, TTIC is not a collector. What we 

access is all the information that has been collected by those 

agencies and departments that have been duly authorized to 

collect that information. And so information that is coming out 

of an ongoing case, or whatever, that the Department of Justice 

would be involved in, there are mechanisms in place that we can 

make sure that the FBI and Department of Justice are aware of 

our interest in information. But I would defer to John as far as 

how the FBI, Department of Justice then would make that 

information -- or how it would come up to them. 

MR. LEHMAN: So you have no powers to enforce sharing? In 

other words, if somebody doesn't come to you and give it to you 

from one of the agencies, then you have no --

MR. BRENNAN: As I said, I can look into John Pistole's 

electronic communication databases. Anything that comes in from 
91

the field to FBI headquarters, we have visibility into that when 

it comes in. I don't have to rely on John or somebody at FBI 

headquarters to pass it to us and package it up. We have that 

real-time visibility into it. So if it in fact made its way back 

from that place, that city, to FBI headquarters, and it was 

related to terrorism in any fashion whatsoever, we would in fact 

have the ability to see it. 

MR. LEHMAN: Mr. Pistole. 

MR. PISTOLE: Thank you. It's a dynamic that we deal with 

every day in the course of our investigations. With the focus, 

the shift being to intelligence collection, analysis, 

exploitation and dissemination, a decision is made on a daily 

basis as to which cases should move forward in which arena --

should it be pursued as an intelligence collection, should it 

move into the criminal justice arena? 

The simple answer is, because the attorney general and the 

director discuss these issues every day, they set the tone and 

make the decisions as to which cases will move forward on a 

prosecutive track. 

And so, given the support of the attorney general and, 

obviously, the director to look at everything from an 

intelligence perspective, we have a number of ongoing 

investigations right now that prosecution, even though 

available, is being deferred in lieu of further collection, 

exploitation, analysis and dissemination of the intelligence. 

Obviously, if there's any threat information that comes up, that 

may cause everything to change instantly. If we have the ability 

to pull somebody off the street with some type of criminal 

charge on something else, when they start talking about a 

possible threat, we have that ability, which is the beauty, if 

you will, of having the integrated focus of law enforcement and 

intelligence in one agency. 

MR. LEHMAN: But ultimately it still depends on the altruism 

and judgment of the U.S. attorney running the case as to how

soon he shares that with headquarters. 

MR. PISTOLE: Well, a couple issues on that. The FBI, 

obviously, as the collector of that information, is going to 

have it before the U.S. attorney will, so a U.S. attorney's not 

going to be able to prosecute a case until they get the 

evidence, if you will. The FBI will make a decision in very 

close coordination with the Department of Justice as to what 
92

should be moved forward on a criminal track. We have daily 

meetings with the attorney general, the head of the Criminal 

Division of the Department of Justice, the deputy attorney 

general, myself, the director, the head of the Criminal 

Division. All these people are discussing these very issues on a 

daily basis. Again, that's the dynamic we deal with in a post9/11 environment. 

MR. LEHMAN: But you're describing a process that is 

inherently going to put days, maybe weeks, of delay before it 

comes from the collection in the criminal case to Mr. Brennan's 

attention. 

MR. PISTOLE: No, I disagree with that, sir, because he is

still getting the information that is collected. As soon as that 

is collected and put into, obviously, the FBI's system --

MR. LEHMAN: But that's the key; it has to be put into the 

sharing system. 

MR. PISTOLE: True. 

MR. LEHMAN: And U.S. attorneys don't like to share. 

MR. PISTOLE: The U.S. attorneys don't control that aspect of 

it, if you will. And obviously, they are close partners in any 

type of movement, whether it's material support or a material 

witness warrant, whatever it may be. But it is a collection that 

is provided through TTIC, through any number of means, but the 

prosecutorial decision is made at a headquarters level in close 

concert with the U.S. attorneys and our special agents in charge 

of each of the offices. But that's part of the benefit of having 

a centralized, integrated approach to each investigation. 

MR. LEHMAN: Thank you. 

I have one last question of Mr. Pavitt. In 1986, the CTC was 

set up precisely to fuse what was going on in the terrorist 

threat world. On September 11th, what went wrong? 

MR. PAVITT: Well, as I said in my statement, Commissioner, we 

simply failed to uncover the necessary intelligence, penetrate 

al Qaeda at the appropriate level, at the leadership level, to 

stop the attacks. In 1986, I think in truly a bureaucratic, 

raking way, the intelligence community, the CIA in particular, 

looked at something, took a vice presidential commission 

recommendation and created a center. 
93

It caused all sorts of issues. People fought it. People did 

not want to be a part of it. But what it did was merge analyst 

and operator in a way never merged before. It put operational 

traffic in the hands of the analyst. It brought in by 1989 a 

host of people from outside of CIA: FBI, Secret Service, FAA, 

NSA, and many, many others. And it was a very significant step 

forward in doing something against what was perceived in 1986 as 

an extraordinarily important target, better than we were doing 

it. And it set the standard, if you will, and became the model 

for other creations: proliferation, counterintelligence. 

I cannot in public session give you the number, although I 

think, commissioner, you know the number of people we had in CTC 

on the 10th of September: WOEFULLY -- WOEFULLY inadequate to the 

threat that was out there. As I said, it has tripled. It's more 

than tripled, if you count people who are not actually staff 

officers of CIA or other agencies. We're still -- we're still --

struggling to deal with the volume of information that we're 

receiving. There's nobody who would like to be able to answer 

your question more definitively than I just have than me, that 

the reason we failed is because we didn't care, the reason we 

failed is because we weren't working hard, the reason we failed 

is because we were not recruiting spies overseas, the reason we

failed is because we did not have good tactical operations. We 

were doing all those things. But 19 people, as Commissioner 

Fielding has said repeatedly, and I think most appropriately, 

simply beat us, all of us. 

I believe that CTC was the right model. Given its staffing 

today, given the kind of dynamic operations and the kind of 

product that we're producing today -- and I mean analytic 

product as well -- we are making significant headways. The 11th 

was a terrible tragedy. Prior to the 11th, other terrible

tragedies were stopped because of CTC. American lives were 

unambiguously saved because of what they did. 

And let me make sure that I don't just put this on CTC's 

shoulders. CTC is an operational-slash-with analytic capability 

organization. But it is also something which all of my stations 

and bases around the world support. My chief of station in 

country X or country Y is driving counterterrorist operations 

today -- and was prior to the 11th. We tried to put the right 

focus on this. It was an incredibly difficult target. 

Remember that absolutely chilling video that we all saw, with 

Osama Bin Ladin sitting with some of those who murdered our 

citizens, laughing and talking about -- some of those people 
94

that were in the 19 did not know what was going to happen. 

That's not an excuse, sir. It's not an excuse. But it does give 

you some sense of just how damn difficult it was to get in there 

and do it. 

I would like to promise this commission, I'd like to promise 

the people who are listening to what we're saying today that I 

have now in place, because of the largesse of Congress or the 

largesse of the executive, I have in place what's necessary to 

stop this from happening again. I can't say that. I know that we 

have in place vastly better capability, and as a result we will 

do much better. But the threat is absolutely ominous, it's 

constant, it's changing, it's evolving. 

And to make sure that we don't have it happen again is 

something I can't stand before this commission and say I'm able 

to do. 

MR. LEHMAN: Thank you. 

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Ben-Veniste. 

MEMBER OF THE PUBLIC: Sir -- (inaudible) -- I do believe that 

we have the power to stop terrorism by --

MR. KEAN: The committee will stand in recess for a minute 

while the police restore order. 

MEMBER OF THE PUBLIC: (Off mike.) 

MR. KEAN: Mr. Ben-Veniste. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

My question is directed to Mr. Pistole and Mr. Pavitt. And I 

want to return back from the more general to the very specific. 

On October 12th, 2000, the United States warship the Cole was 

attacked, and 17 sailors were killed. Many more were wounded. 

Our staff has shown us that by late December 2001 (sic), there 

was compelling multi-sourced information, collected by our 

intelligence agencies -- FBI and CIA and the NSA and others, 

working cooperatively -- which showed that al Qaeda was 

responsible for the Cole -- late December 2000. 

Our government had previously warned the Taliban government 

in Afghanistan, which was harboring al Qaeda, that we would hold 
95

it responsible for any further attacks by al Qaeda, inasmuch as 

al Qaeda had repeatedly rejected our diplomatic efforts, which, 

as you know, were very wide-ranging and did not rest entirely on 

U.S. efforts but through our friends' efforts as well; 

presumably that we would retaliate militarily against the 

Taliban for al Qaeda's actions, because the Taliban was 

harboring al Qaeda. 

Now yesterday Attorney General Ashcroft was asked, I think by 

my friend Governor Thompson, why we did not retaliate in 

response for the Cole, given the information that we had. 

Attorney General Ashcroft said, in words or substance, that 

while it was clear that operatives of al Qaeda were responsible 

for the Cole attack, there was some issue regarding command and 

control within al Qaeda that did not with some specificity 

indicate that Osama Bin Ladin was responsible for ordering the 

Cole attack. 

Now I'm very disturbed and confused by that answer. 

The Taliban was protecting al Qaeda. Al Qaeda was a large 

organization, as we have heard by this time in late 2000. 

Whether or not there was an issue about command and control, and 

these were some rogue al Qaeda, unbeknownst to Bin Ladin, who 

had operated in secrecy and planned and attacked the Cole, the 

information apparently was not presented by either the FBI or 

CIA to the President of the United States, either President 

Clinton, or if we are to understand what has been said so far, 

to President Bush. Now, how can that be? 

MR. PAVITT: Commissioner, my purpose in being here is to talk 

about the collection that we do in the clandestine service. We 

did collect intelligence on that. What we do with that 

intelligence is disseminate it the way we disseminate 

intelligence in what is called, as you know -- I won't use the 

name; but as we disseminate intelligence. I won't use it 

publicly. And that's what we did. 

There was an analytic churn going on. There was a very high 

standard. But at the end of the day, the question that you ask 

is why something was not done, is a question that I can't answer 

because it was a decision not in my control. It was a policy 

decision. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Clearly you had come to rest by December, 

the end of December 2000, where it was unambiguous that al Qaeda 

was responsible for the Cole. We had taken the position that the 
96

Taliban should expel al Qaeda. If we had responded militarily in 

December or January or February against the Taliban, perhaps 

they would have gotten the message: Expel al Qaeda. 

MR. PAVITT: Commissioner, in terms of what I can testify 

about today, and what I'm here to testify about is what I did, 

which is I produced intelligence and I did disseminate the 

intelligence, such as it was. Some was good, some was not so 

good. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Let me ask Mr. Pistole. 

MR. PISTOLE: Yes, Commissioner. I think the one point that I 

would make is the distinction between what the intelligence said 

in December of 2000, and the point that I think you're getting 

to in terms of the retaliation, was there proof from a criminal 

justice perspective, and honestly that's a different standard. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Did we need proof beyond a reasonable doubt 

to put in a court of law?! Is that what you're saying? 

MR. PISTOLE: That is --

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Is that what the attorney general is saying 

--

MR. PISTOLE: I can't --

MR. BEN-VENISTE: -- that we would not retaliate without proof 

beyond a reasonable doubt that Osama Bin Ladin ordered his 

operatives to attack the Cole before we would deal with the 

Taliban? 

MR. PISTOLE: I obviously can't speak on behalf of the 

attorney general what his intent in his comment. 

The question that I thought you were directing, as to what 

information, what evidence, if you will, did we have to prove 

that, is the way that your question was framed. And clearly, the 

intelligence indicated that Bin Ladin and others -- Badawi, 

Quso, others -- were involved in the Cole. 

The question of retaliation is so far beyond my scope of --

my lane, if you will, I can't address that. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: But we have heard from both presidents --
97

MR. KEAN: This is the last question, Commissioner. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Okay. We have heard from both presidents a 

claim that neither the FBI nor the CIA came to rest and said 

that al Qaeda was responsible. 

And are -- if you're saying that the reason you didn't say 

that to the President is because you didn't have proof beyond a 

reasonable doubt, well, that's news. 

MR. PISTOLE: Absolutely not, sir. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Okay. 

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Roemer? 

MR. ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Welcome. Your testimony has been very helpful to us. Let me 

just replay what somebody said to us yesterday. I don't know if 

you were watching the hearing yesterday. But I think it was Mr. 

Pickard with the FBI who at one point described Ramsi Yousef, 

one of the terrorists that was involved in a couple of the plots 

against the United States, and said that he could speak six 

languages, that he was a double major, a chemical and electrical 

engineer, and that he worked off a(n) encrypted laptop computer. 

That's the kind of adversary, or the kind of enemy, the kind of 

terrorist, the kind of lethal decision making that can go 

against the United States very quickly. 

My question, my first question to you -- let me start with 

you, Mr. Brennan -- is can you send a classified e-mail with an 

attachment directly from your organization to Mr. Hughes'? 

MR. BRENNAN: Yes, I can. 

MR. ROEMER: Can you send it, Mr. Hughes, to the FBI and Mr. 

Pistole? 

GEN. HUGHES: I can, senator, but not with the kind of ease 

that we would like to be able to do in the future. 

MR. ROEMER: What's the problem? With -- is the problem with 

the classification, or a problem with the attachment? 

GEN. HUGHES: It's the technical interface between the 

Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. But we have FBI 
98

liaison officers present in the Department of Homeland Security. 

We would pass it to them, and they would transmit it or receive 

it. It gets to the FBI. Or we would use secure fax. I took your 

question to mean an automatic, direct link, file transfer to 

file transfer. 

MR. ROEMER: Correct. 

GEN. HUGHES: That is not in place, but we anticipate that it 

will be. 

MR. ROEMER: You cannot do that yet. How -- how long will it 

take? 

GEN. HUGHES: I don't know. 

MR. ROEMER: Mr. Pistole, you to Mr. Pavitt or the CIA? 

MR. PISTOLE: Yes. We're still building the infrastructure 

with DHS, but clearly with TTIC or the CIA. 

MR. ROEMER: Mr. Pavitt, can you back over to Mr. Brennan and 

Homeland Security? 

MR. PAVITT: Yes, sir. 

MR. ROEMER: Directly? 

MR. PAVITT: To my knowledge, yes, sir. 

MR. ROEMER: You're positive. 

MR. PAVITT: And if I -- and if I can't go directly, I can go 

directly to TTIC, without question. To DHS, I don't have the 

same level of confidence at this point; to the FBI, without any 

question. 

MR. ROEMER: Okay. Okay. Let me ask you another question with 

respect to technology. Let's say, Mr. Brennan, one of your 

analysts wants to get into a database with a lead on a 

terrorist. 

Can you get directly into Mr. Pistole's database? 

MR. BRENNAN: Yes, I can. 

MR. ROEMER: And can you get into Mr. Hughes' database? 
99

MR. BRENNAN: The databases that we have within TTIC from DHS, 

yes, I have real-time access to those databases. 

MR. ROEMER: And can you get into Mr. Pavitt's? 

MR. BRENNAN: Yes, I can. 

MR. ROEMER: And do you have to do those individually, then? 

Do you have to task each one of them separately? So your analyst 

is saying, "I gotta find something out right away about Ramzi 

Yousef." I've got to go to each one of these databases 

individually. 

MR. BRENNAN: That's an excellent question. Yes, what we have 

to do right now is to do it sequentially as opposed to doing a 

simultaneous search. What we're doing is building the integrated 

architecture that allows us to pulse all of them simultaneously 

so we can bring something up together. 

MR. ROEMER: How long will that take? 

MR. BRENNAN: Good question in terms of how many of those 

databases we want to put together in that federated 

architecture, but over the course of the next year, we're going 

to be building that. Right now we can do it in different --

MR. ROEMER: Because you're the fusion center, right? You 

should be able to do that before anybody, I would hope. 

MR. BRENNAN: Yes. Yes. And we are working with them 

collaboratively to build that type of architecture. It's going 

to be months. 

MR. ROEMER: Last question. Who has the job of compiling and 

holding the government's institutional knowledge and memory of 

what we know about al Qaeda, inside the country and outside the 

country? Who does that? Which one of you? 

MR. PISTOLE: The FBI has the responsibility for inside the 

country. We work collaboratively --

MR. ROEMER: These al Qaeda members don't care. They go 

everywhere. So you do it inside, and you do it outside, Mr. 

Pavitt? 

MR. PAVITT: I don't know whether I have the responsibility, 

Congressman Roemer, but I can tell you that CTC and CIA's 
100

Directorate of Operations and Directorate of Intelligence are 

doing that. I don't know whether I have that responsibility, but 

I know that we are, in fact, doing that. We have a tremendous --

MR. ROEMER: So the first question will have to be who's got 

the responsibility for it, and how do we figure out who has the 

database and how do we connect people up to it. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

MR. KEAN: Thank you very much. 

Commissioner Gorton. 

MR. GORTON: Mr. Pavitt, I am told that you testified to the 

Joint Inquiry and also told privately to our staff that more 

money would not have prevented the 9/11 attacks. Is that 

correct? 

MR. PAVITT: Yes, sir. 

MR. GORTON: On another subject, perhaps starting with you but 

asking each of you to comment on it, let's take the specific 

Mihdhar case. You know, picked up, lost, had a visa to the 

United States, came back here early in 2001; knowledge that he 

was a matter of any interest didn't get to the FBI until August, 

and then got there in a fairly routine, non-emergency fashion. 

If an identical situation took place today, how would it be 

handled differently? How would it have been managed? 

What role would each of you have had in it? Would it have 

been done more efficiently? Might we well have picked him up 

before 9/11? 

And I think probably the greatest burden of that is on you, 

Mr. Pavitt, but I want everyone to comment on it. 

MR. PAVITT: Senator, your second question actually relates 

back to your first. 

MR. GORTON: Okay. 

MR. PAVITT: I do not believe that additional resources, which 

I argued for vigorously to Congressman Roemer and to Senator 

Kerrey and a whole host of other people, I do not believe that 
101

at the end of the day that would have allowed me to have a 

different answer than the one I gave you, which is no. 

However, additional resources, particularly people, 

particularly people, I believe could have had a different impact 

on how the Hazmi and Mihdhar information was handled and dealt 

with. It was a mistake that certain things were not done. It was 

the intention not to make that mistake; it was the intention to 

do the right thing. It was the intention and the understanding 

of those who played, as I believe staff has stated to the 

Commission, that they thought they had done the right thing. But 

they can't, if you will, demonstrate that by producing a piece 

of paper. 

I used the concept of triage in describing some of the things 

we were doing. Back in August of 2001, in CTC alone there were 

19,000 CIA-generated messages -- 19,000, and a handful -- and I 

mean a handful of people dealing with them. Is that something 

we're proud of? Absolutely not. Is it something that contributed 

to the error? Yes, it did. It wasn't done the way we would do it 

today. We have put in safeguards. We have created training 

programs. We have indoctrinated. We are in lockstep with the FBI 

and others in the community on what we need to do when we have 

that kind of information. But at the time it initially surfaced, 

it was a blip on a very, very complex radar screen. Not an 

excuse, again. We actually mounted very sophisticated 

operations, as you know, to figure out what this was. And then 

the next blip came up and the focus wasn't as complete as it 

could have been. 

MR. GORTON: Would the name have gotten to the FBI earlier, 

under your present set of circumstances? 

MR. PAVITT: Absolutely, sir. I believe absolutely. Yes, sir. 

MR. GORTON: All right, Mr. Pistole. 

MR. PISTOLE: Thank you, Commissioner -- Senator. The 

Mihdhar/Hazmi case is a good representative of some of the 

challenges that the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement 

community dealt with prior to 9/11. In one essence, in the sense 

of the interdependence of the agencies upon one another, 

obviously we can't take action until we receive information. But 

it also demonstrates, for example, the inadequate tools that we 

were playing with at the time -- that we dealt with at the time, 

that the PATRIOT Act and FISA court review decisions have 

eliminated. 
102

But, for example, one of the fundamental hallmarks of the 

American legal system is the doctrine of fairness. Obviously, 

defendants are entitled to a fair trial and the right to 

confront their accusers, and things like that. We were not 

playing on a fair playing field at the time. And your staff has 

done an excellent job of detailing some of the challenges that 

the FBI in New York dealt with with the agency in trying to 

share information of an intelligence nature with criminal 

investigators who had perhaps the best information to provide to 

shed light on it. 

It's almost analogous to the military. We would never send 

our men and women of the armed services into combat with 

antiquated weapons or communications systems, yet that's exactly 

what we are doing to the men and women of the CIA trying to 

fight this battle with antiquated rules and techniques. 

So that's the major change since prior to 9/11. 

And then just the integration, as Mr. Pavitt mentioned, of 

personnel, which we had prior to 9/11, but the further 

integration, at an operational and analytical level, between the 

CIA and FBI. 

MR. GORTON: General Hughes, Mr. Brennan, can you can add 

anything to that? 

GEN. HUGHES: Yes. And with regard to things getting better, 

the advent of the Transportation Security Administration and the 

restructuring of the Immigration and Naturalization Service into 

the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau and the Customs 

and Border Protection Bureau, an outgrowth of the old Customs --

U.S. Customs organization, and some features of immigration --

those three new entities, restructured or originated newly, 

would make everything different -- watchlists, screening of 

personnel, eyes on, the US- VISIT program -- any number of 

activities would probably have caught this person coming into 

the United States, with one provisio (sic), and that is that the 

name of the person, generally speaking, would have to be entered 

in the databases and the knowledge bases that we depend upon. 

There is chance that this person might have acted in a way 

that would cause their intercept to occur without that. So I 

don't want to give you a hundred percent categorization that we 

have to have that intelligence in all cases. But generally 

speaking, the changes in the system that have been made since 

9/11 would greatly ensure, I think, that this kind of entry by a 
103

person known to us, like that person generally was, would now be 

intercepted and vectored into screening and interrogation and 

incarceration, hopefully, if that's what they deserved. 

MR. BRENNAN: I agree. There's just been so many changes. In 

addition to redundancy that's been built into CIA, making sure 

that they have the eyes on these pieces of traffic, the Homeland 

Security Presidential Directive 6 of last September that the 

President signed, which overhauled the entire watchlisting and 

screening process, the establishment of the Terrorist Screening 

Center that is administered by the FBI -- it is a much more 

efficient and effective system today than it was in September of 

2001. 

MR. GORTON: Thank you all. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

MR. KEAN: Vice Chairman Hamilton. 

MR. HAMILTON: The chairman runs a tight ship around here, and 

we're at 1:00, so I know we've got to conclude. I've asked if I 

could just ask one thing very quickly. 

Mr. Brennan, there was a sentence in your statement that 

really caught my eye, and I'd just like to give you a chance to 

comment on it briefly, if you would. At the end, you say, when 

you're talking about the organization and the structure, "While 

significant progress has been made since then" -- 9/11 -- "I 

believe that we as a government and as a nation are not yet 

optimally configured to deal with the terrorist threat," end of 

quote. 

That is quite an extraordinary statement coming from an 

Administration witness. And it clearly suggests that you think 

there's a better way to do it, and I'm interested in what you're 

thinking about there. 

MR. BRENNAN: Well, Commissioner, as you were talking with the 

DCI this morning about the potential organization issues, 

structural issues, the intelligence community -- I think this 

commission has raised a number of important issues about the 

fusion and integration capabilities across the U.S. government -

- that maybe we as a government need to take a fresh look at how 

we are organized, because there are so many capabilities across 

the government -- people working very, very hard and the 

structures that have been in place have been in place for the 

past 50 years. 
104

There was mention made of the Goldwater-Nichols model, or the 

GE model, which actually will have integration and fusion at the 

working level. And I think from an intelligence perspective I 

really see every day in TTIC the real force-multiplier effect of 

having the different representatives from the different entities 

across the U.S. government involved in the fight against 

terrorism, co-located and working collaboratively side-by-side. 

I think as we move out to the new building -- TTIC, CTC and CTD 

-- that the two premier elements within the U.S. government, the 

Counterterrorism Center and the Counterterrorism Division, are 

going to find new ways, in fact, to integrate and bring their 

capabilities together. 

What I think what we want to do is take a look at how the 

overall business architecture of the U.S. intelligence community 

is organized, because as we talk about information sharing, 

moving information, if you don't have that business process 

architecture correct, you're not going to get the information 

sharing architecture right. 

MR. HAMILTON: I don't mean to put you on the spot. It's not 

an easy question I've asked you. But perhaps, if you have any 

thoughts that you would like to convey to us privately, I'd be 

very pleased to hear from you about it. Of course that applies 

to any of you. 

Your testimony this morning and now this afternoon is all --

each of you has been very, very helpful to the Commission. We're 

grateful to you. Thank you very much. 

MR. KEAN: I'd like to join my thanks. You all have been 

extraordinarily helpful. Thank you very much both today and for 

help in the past, and perhaps for help in the future, if we have 

some other questions. 

I would ask the audience, as I do every time, please do not 

leave bags or packages on your chairs, because the Capitol 

Police will take them away somewhere. So please take them with 

you. 

Thank you all very much. We'll reconvene at 2:00. 

PANEL THREE OF THE TENTH HEARING OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON 

TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES

SUBJECT: "LAW ENFORCEMENT AND THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY" THOMAS 
105

H. KEAN, CHAIR; LEE H. HAMILTON, VICE CHAIR PHILIP D. ZELIKOW, 

COMMISSION EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AND CHRISTINE HEALEY, SENIOR 

COUNSEL, PRESENT STAFF STATEMENT: "REFORMING LAW ENFORCEMENT, 

COUNTERTERRORISM AND INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION IN THE UNITED 

STATES"

WITNESSES: ROBERT S. MUELLER III, DIRECTOR, FBI MAUREEN 

BAGINSKI, EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR INTELLIGENCE, FBI

216 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING

2:12 P.M. EDT, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 2004

MR. KEAN: (Gavels.) I hereby reconvene this hearing. 

Commission staff will now present its staff statement, 

"Reforming Law Enforcement, Counterterrorism and Intelligence 

Collection in the United States." Staff chairman -- statement 

will be read by Phil Zelikow and Christine Healey. 

MR. ZELIKOW:

Members of the Commission, with your help, your staff has 

developed initial findings to present to the public on the FBI's 

current capacity to detect and prevent terrorist attacks upon 

the United States. This is the statement on the FBI today. These 

findings may help frame some of the issues for this hearing and 

inform the development of your judgments and recommendations. 

This report reflects the results of work so far, and we 

remain ready to revise our understanding as our work continues. 

This staff statement represents the collective effort of a 

number of members of our staff. Peter Rundlet, Christine Healey, 

Lance Cole, Caroline Barnes, and Michael Jacobson did most of 

the work reflected in this statement. 

We were fortunate in being able to build upon strong 

investigative work done by the Congressional Joint Inquiry and 

by the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General. 

We have obtained excellent cooperation from the FBI and the 

Department of Justice, both in Washington and in six FBI field 

offices across the United States. 

It is important for us to emphasize that during the course of 

our investigation we met outstanding FBI and Department of 

Justice employees, including analysts, agents, translators, and 

surveillance specialists, among others, who strive daily to 

overcome great obstacles for little recognition in order to 
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safeguard our country. Their dedication, effort and sacrifice 

are remarkable. 

On September 4, 2001, Robert Mueller became the Director of 

the FBI. Soon after the attacks, Director Mueller began to 

announce and to implement an ambitious series of reforms aimed 

at, in his words, "transforming the Bureau into an intelligence 

agency." The FBI's leadership has set in motion an impressive 

number of potentially significant reforms. We believe the FBI is 

a stronger counterterrorism agency today than it was before 

9/11. 

Most of the proposed reforms are a work in progress. 

Institutional change takes time. In field visits last summer and 

fall, two years after 9/11, we found there was a gap between the 

announced reforms at FBI headquarters and the reality in the 

field. There may have been additional progress since then. 

We divide our discussion of these reforms and the FBI's 

current capacity to detect and prevent terrorist attacks in the 

United States into the following four broad areas, tracking the 

critiques in Staff Statement number 9: management priorities and 

strategy; intelligence collection and processing; strategic 

analysis; and knowledge management. 

Chris? 

MS. HEALEY:

Management Priorities and Strategy. After 9/11, the FBI 

abandoned its former opaque structure of "tiered" priorities in 

favor of a short, clear list of priorities. It made "protecting 

the United States from terrorist attack" the number one 

priority. It downgraded the priority attached to once sacrosanct 

parts of the Bureau's mission, including general crimes and 

narcotics enforcement, which are being left more to state and 

local agencies or the Drug Enforcement Administration. 

FBI leadership also moved quickly to centralize the 

management of the counterterrorism program. This centralization 

represents a shift away from the pre-9/11 "Office of Origin" 

model in which the field office that initiated a case maintained 

control over it. All significant international terrorism cases 

and operations are directed from FBI headquarters. Director 

Mueller explained that "counterterrorism has national and 
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international dimensions that transcend field office territorial 

borders and require centralized coordination to ensure that the 

individual pieces of an investigation can be assembled into a 

coherent picture." 

Director Mueller has also endeavored to transform the 

reactive law enforcement culture of the FBI. In the course of 

announcing reforms in May 2002, Director Mueller said, "What we 

need to do better is to be predictive. We have to be proactive." 

Along with these changes, the FBI has received large 

increases in funding since 2001. Appropriations to the FBI's 

National Security program have nearly doubled between September 

11 and today. The FBI reports that the number of 

counterterrorism agents has increased from about 1,350 on 9/11 

to nearly 2,400 today. It has also increased the number of 

analysts and language translators supporting the 

counterterrorism mission. The FBI has also created a number of 

specialized counterterrorism units at its headquarters. These 

include a unit to analyze electronic and telephone 

communications, a unit to exploit intelligence gleaned from 

documents or computers seized overseas by intelligence agencies, 

a surge capacity to augment local field investigative 

capabilities with specialized personnel, and a section to focus 

on the financial aspects of terrorism investigations. 

Because of Director Mueller's efforts, there is widespread 

understanding that counterterrorism is the FBI's number one 

priority. 

However, many agents in the field were offended by the

director's statements that the FBI needs a new, proactive 

culture. Some agents who had worked counterterrorism cases 

before 9/11 felt prevention had always been part of their 

mission. We also found resistance to running counterterrorism 

cases out of FBI headquarters. Many field agents felt the 

supervisory agents in the Counterterrorism Division at 

headquarters lacked the necessary experience in counterterrorism 

to guide their work. In addition, because the organizational 

chart for the Counterterrorism Division has changed many times 

since 9/11, some field office personnel told us that they no 

longer have any idea who is their primary point of contact at 

headquarters. 

The expertise of agents, analysts, linguists, and 

surveillance personnel contribute to effective counterterrorism 

operations. However, FBI personnel continue to be pulled away 
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from counterterrorism to assist on criminal investigations. At 

present, the FBI attempts to address field office reassignments 

and disruptions primarily through its inspection process. 

Director Mueller believes that while counterterrorism is the 

number one priority, all agents should have training and 

experience in traditional criminal matters. The director expects 

to implement by October a special agent career track that

requires new agents to start at a small FBI office and be 

exposed to each of the FBI's four program areas for their first 

three years. The programs are 

counterterrorism/counterintelligence, cyber, criminal 

investigative, and intelligence. Thereafter, agents will be 

transferred to one of the largest field offices with a primary 

assignment in an area of specialization. The FBI will also 

require agents who seek to be promoted to assistant special 

agent in charge or section chief to have an intelligence officer 

certification. 

Intelligence collection and processing. The FBI is widely 

regarded as one of the best post-event investigative agencies in 

the world. Many outside experts spoke to us about the FBI's 

incredible forensic abilities, as illustrated by the Lockerbie 

case, which enable agents to piece together evidence of a crime. 

The question after 9/11 has been whether the FBI can also 

collect intelligence that will lead to the prevention of 

attacks. 

Director Mueller's articulation of priorities has reached the 

field. FBI personnel consistently told us the current policy is 

that no counterterrorism lead will go unaddressed, no matter how 

minor or far-fetched. They also told us that there should be no 

backlog on translations for international terrorism cases. 

Many agents in the field told us that there is a new 

aggressiveness in pursuing international terrorism cases and a 

new push for agents to recruit more sources and assets. Agents 

are no longer required to open up parallel intelligence and 

criminal cases for each terrorism investigation. The "wall" is 

down. All international terrorism cases are now treated simply 

as counterterrorism investigations. 

The USA PATRIOT Act, passed by Congress approximately six 

weeks after 9/11, provided additional investigative tools and 

has lowered or removed legal hurdles that were widely believed 

to have hindered the FBI's intelligence investigations. The 

Attorney General Guidelines, which set forth the standards and 
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parameters of the FBI's investigative authority, have also been 

changed by Attorney General John Ashcroft. These guidelines now 

allow for greater flexibility in employing investigative 

methods, such as permitting agents to attend public events and 

to search the Internet, including publicly available 

subscription services, before opening an investigation. These 

legal and policy changes have prompted significant public debate 

about the appropriate balance of civil liberties, privacy, and 

security. Many of these issues were addressed during the 

Commission's hearing last December. 

Nearly all FBI personnel we interviewed praised these legal 

and policy changes. When pressed to describe which of the new 

authorities are most helpful to them and how they employ them, 

however, there was much less certainty. In fact, there appears 

to be widespread confusion even among DOJ and FBI personnel over 

what the PATRIOT Act actually allows. Although the FBI has 

revamped and increased its training programs, the FBI's general 

counsel recently conceded that much more training and guidance

must be provided to personnel in the field. 

Many agents in the field told us that although there is now 

less hesitancy in seeking approval for electronic surveillance 

under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, the 

application process nonetheless continues to be long and slow. 

Requests for such approvals are overwhelming the ability of the 

system to process them and to conduct the surveillance. The 

Department of Justice and FBI are attempting to address 

bottlenecks in the process. 

To develop a collection strategy, FBI headquarters has 

recently undertaken an intelligence capabilities survey of field 

office intelligence collection derived from all sources. This 

survey is an appropriate first step in an effort to obtain a 

comprehensive view of the FBI's capability to collect 

intelligence against its investigative priorities and to 

identify the critical gaps in collection. 

Recruitment of sources has increased, but agents recognize 

more sources are needed. Michael Rolince, who at the time was 

acting assistant director of the Washington field office, told 

us that although the FBI knows "ten times" more now about the 

radical Islamic community in his territory than it did before 

9/11, its knowledge is at about 20 on a scale of one to 100. A 

supervisor of an international terrorism squad told us the FBI 

has not adequately reached out to the communities in which it 

should be developing sources. 
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He believes that while agents are complying with the FBI's 

policy that they investigate any lead that comes in, other 

systematic work -- collection work is left undone. There have 

not been many instances in which the FBI has been able to 

recruit an asset to go abroad with specific collection 

requirements. Despite the widespread view that assets and 

informants are the best source of intelligence on where 

potential terrorists are and what they are doing, many agents 

complained to us that the training they received on how to 

recruit, validate and maintain assets was inadequate. 

Another ongoing problem is the shortage of qualified language 

specialists to translate the intercepts. While highest priority 

cases are supposed to be translated within 24 hours, the FBI 

cannot translate all it collects. According to a recent report 

by the Department of Justice inspector general, "the FBI 

shortages of linguists have resulted in thousands of hours of 

audio tapes and pages of written material not being reviewed or 

translated in a timely manner." The choice is between foregoing 

access to potentially relevant conversations and obtaining such 

conversations that remain untranslated. Despite the recent hire 

of 653 new linguists, demand exceeds supply. Shortages of 

translators in languages such as Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, and Pashto 

remain a barrier to the FBI's understanding of the terrorist 

threat. 

In addition, language specialists suffer from not being part 

of an integrated intelligence program. During our field visits, 

language specialists told us that their summaries and 

translations are usually not disseminated broadly, not uploaded 

into a searchable database, and not systematically analyzed for 

intelligence value. The individual case agent has the 

responsibility for determining whether the information should be 

disseminated and to whom. Several language specialists expressed 

concern that neither the case agents nor the analysts coordinate 

with them sufficiently. As a result, the language specialists 

often lack the proper context to understand the significance of 

otherwise innocuous references they hear or read. Moreover, we 

have learned that if a language specialist mishandles the 

translation, there are few checks to catch the error. 

Finally, at every office we visited, we heard that there were 

not enough surveillance personnel to cover the requests to 

conduct live physical surveillance of identified terrorist 

suspects. Like the language specialists, surveillance personnel 

are not treated as part of an integrated intelligence program. 

In most cases, their logs are not searchable electronically and 
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they do not meet regularly with case agents to learn about the 

targets and the broader investigation. 

Strategic Analysis. In response to widely recognized 

shortcomings, an Analysis Branch was created in the 

Counterterrorism Division soon after 9/11 with the mission of 

producing strategic assessments of the terrorist threat to the 

United States. The College of Analytic Studies also was created 

at the FBI's Quantico training facility to improve the quality 

of training for new analysts. 

On January 30th, 2003, Director Mueller announced what FBI 

leadership has described as the "centerpiece" of its effort to 

improve intelligence analysis: the establishment of the 

executive assistant director for intelligence. Mueller stated 

that "the directed and purposeful collection and analysis of 

intelligence has not previously been a primary" focus of the 

FBI. The position was created to provide one official with 

direct authority and responsibility for the FBI's national 

intelligence program. The many responsibilities assigned to the 

new executive assistant director fall into four general areas: 

intelligence collection, analysis, dissemination, and 

intelligence program management. 

In April 2003, Director Mueller appointed Maureen Baginski, a 

former executive of the National Security Agency, to this new 

position. Under Baginski, the FBI has embarked on a series of 

proposals designed to integrate intelligence into the FBI's 

operations. She has directed that each field office create a 

centralized intelligence component called the Field Intelligence 

Group. FBI leadership is also striving to professionalize and 

elevate the status of analysts. 

Agents and analysts in the field had heard of these changes. 

But many were still confused by the pace and number of changes 

and are uncertain about their titles and roles. We question 

whether the new intelligence program has enough staff and 

resources to serve as an engine of reform. It is too early to 

judge whether the Field Intelligence Groups will develop into 

the centralized intelligence components they are intended to 

become.

We are concerned whether the qualifications, status, and role 

of most analysts in the field have changed in practice. In the 

past, analysts were often promoted from secretarial and 

administrative positions, and they too often served as catch-all 

support personnel. 
112

We spoke with analysts who were discouraged by the pace of 

reform. Indeed, we heard from many analysts who complain that 

they are able to do little actual analysis because they continue 

to be assigned menial tasks, including covering the phones at 

the reception desk and emptying the office trash bins. As a 

consequence, many of the agents have very low expectations about 

the type of assistance they can get from analysts. Furthermore, 

there appears to be no process for evaluating and reassigning 

unqualified analysts. To retain analysts, the FBI will have to 

provide them with opportunities comparable to those offered by 

other intelligence agencies. 

The FBI reports that its Counterterrorism Analysis Branch at 

headquarters has produced more than 70 strategic assessments. 

The demand for tactical analysis and executive-level briefings, 

however, has made it difficult for senior managers to focus 

their resources sufficiently on strategic analysis. 

Knowledge Management. The terrorist attacks of September 11th 

revealed significant deficiencies in the FBI's informationsharing capabilities and processes both with respect to sharing 

information internally with FBI components, as well as 

externally with intelligence and law enforcement partners at the 

federal, state and local levels. 

While progress has been made in addressing these 

deficiencies, problems remain. 

Information sharing within the FBI. Although there are many 

explanations for the failure to share information internally, 

one of the most common is the FBI's outdated information 

technology, the Automated Case Support system in particular. It 

employs 1980s-era technology that is by all accounts userunfriendly. More troubling, the system cannot be used to store 

or transmit top secret or sensitive compartmented information. 

For a variety of reasons, significant information collected 

by the FBI never gets uploaded into the Automated Case Support 

system, or it gets uploaded long after it is learned. One of the 

reasons for this is the traditional approach to cases, in which 

information is treated as "owned" by the case agent and 

maintained in a paper case file. One official told us that 

headquarters personnel visiting the field have been amazed at 

the information they found in the paper files. 

Agent after agent told us that the primary way information 

gets shared is through personal relationships. There does not 
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appear to be any recognition that this system fails in the 

absence of good personal relationships. 

Some steps to address these ongoing problems have been taken. 

The attempt to centralize control over the field offices has 

been made, in part, to ensure that all of the counterterrorism 

information collected is brought together in one place and 

disseminated. These steps, driven in part by the director's 

responsibility since 9/11 to brief the President daily on 

terrorist threats, have helped get information from the field to 

headquarters. 

However, improvements have been slow. Many current officials 

told us the FBI still does not know what information is in its 

files. Furthermore, the Department of Justice's Inspector 

General reported in December 2003 that the FBI has not 

established adequate policies and procedures for sharing 

intelligence. 

The FBI has had a long-standing plan to upgrade its 

information technology systems. The FBI has upgraded desktop 

terminals, established new networks, and consolidated databases. 

However, the replacement of the antiquated Automated Case 

Support system has been delayed once again. The director 

recently told us that the new Virtual Case File system, which is 

supposed to enhance internal FBI information sharing, should be 

ready by the end of the year. 

Information sharing with the intelligence community. As we 

described yesterday, while top-level officials had frequent 

contacts and exchanges of information, the overall performance 

of the FBI and other intelligence community agencies in sharing 

information was troubled. A tradition of protecting information 

in order to preserve it for trial, concerns about compromising 

sources and methods, the absence of a reports officer function, 

and the lack of sophisticated information technology systems 

have all contributed to the FBI's reputation of being what one 

former NSC official called an information "black hole." 

In July 2002, the FBI created the new National Joint 

Terrorism Task Force at headquarters to "enhance communication, 

coordination and cooperation between federal, state and local 

government agencies." At present, this headquarters task force 

consists of 38 government agencies. Similarly, the FBI has 

increased the number of Joint Terrorism Task Forces, JTTFs, in 

the field from 35 before 9/11 to 84 today, with more than 1,500 

outside representatives participating on a full-time basis. 
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Although the JTTFs vary in size and focus from office to office, 

they are designed to be "force multipliers," pooling the 

expertise from many agencies to assist in the collection and 

sharing of intelligence related to counterterrorism. 

The FBI has also begun to hire and train reports officers. 

Reports officers glean intelligence from case files, briefing 

notes and elsewhere; summarize the information; and format it 

for dissemination to the intelligence and law enforcement 

communities. Although filling these new positions has gone 

slowly -- indeed, none of the field offices we visited had 

permanent reports officers in place at the time of our visits --

the program is now under way. 

The passage of the USA PATRIOT Act also has facilitated 

greater information sharing. The act provides for the sharing of 

intelligence information obtained under FISA with FBI criminal 

agents and Department of Justice prosecutors. The act also 

requires the expeditious disclosure of foreign intelligence 

information acquired during the course of a criminal 

investigation to the director of Central Intelligence. 

Despite all these efforts, it is clear that gaps in 

intelligence sharing still exist. Michael Rolince, the acting 

assistant director of the Office of Intelligence, put it more 

bluntly, "We are kidding ourselves if we think that there is 

seamless integration among all of the agencies." Former acting 

FBI Director Thomas Pickard told us that the most difficult 

thing about information sharing is trying to figure out what 

information will actually be important to someone else. John 

Brennan, the director of the Terrorist Threat Integration 

Center, told us that he is seeing a "cacophony of activities" 

within the intelligence community but no strategy and planning. 

Coordination and collaboration are insufficient, he told us. A

fundamental strategy for joint work, for integration, is key. 

This is a problem neither the FBI nor the CIA nor any other 

agency can solve on its own. We found there is no national 

strategy for sharing information to counter terrorism. 

In the field, JTTF members cannot easily obtain needed 

information from intelligence agencies. They are expected to go 

through FBI and CIA headquarters. For example, the process of 

obtaining name traces from the intelligence community is slow 

and unsatisfactory. 

Compounding the problem of inadequate coordination at the 

field level is the lack of access by field agents to information 
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systems that operate at the top secret level or above. Very few 

field agents or analysts have access to Intelink, a worldwide 

web of information classified at the top secret level. Such 

terminals have to be maintained in Sensitive Compartmented 

Information Facilities, and such spaces in FBI field offices are 

extremely limited. To get access to such systems, for instance, 

many agents and analysts on the New York JTTF have to leave 

their building, cross the street and enter a separate building. 

They must then go to the secure room, which is barely large 

enough to accommodate a few people comfortably. Keep in mind 

that before 9/11, the New York office was the key FBI office 

working on international terrorism. 

Basic connectivity is still a problem for some FBI field 

offices. The then-acting director of the Washington field office 

told us last August that he still could not e-mail anyone at the 

Department of Justice from his desk. He said that the Washington 

field office, which is the second largest field office in the 

country, still has only one Internet terminal on each floor. 

Information sharing with state and local law enforcement. The 

FBI also needs to be able to coordinate effectively with the 

hundreds of thousands of state and local law enforcement 

officers around the country to prevent terrorist attacks. In 

recognition of the need to work better with state and local law 

enforcement, Director Mueller announced the creation of the 

Office of Law Enforcement Coordination in December 2001. The FBI 

also sends an unclassified weekly intelligence bulletin to over 

17,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States. The FBI 

has granted clearances to many police chiefs and other law 

enforcement officials to increase information sharing. 

We spoke with several state and local law enforcement 

officials who told us that the FBI is doing a much better job 

sharing threat- related information. However, the inspector 

general for the Department of Justice found that the reports 

"varied as to content and usefulness." We heard complaints that 

the FBI still needs to share much more operational, case-related 

information. We have been told that the FBI plans to move toward 

a "right to release" approach that would allow for more 

immediate and broader dissemination of intelligence on an 

unclassified basis. 

Central to the effort to coordinate with state and local 

officials is the expansion of the JTTFs that now exist in every 

field office. Indeed, Larry Mefford, the FBI's former executive 

assistant director for counterterrorism and counterintelligence, 
116

called the JTTF structure "the foundation of the Bureau's 

information-sharing efforts." All of the outside representatives 

on the JTTFs have top secret security clearances, just as all 

FBI agents do, and they may pass along certain information to 

their home agencies on a cleared and need-to-know basis. 

We found, however, that the role of agency representatives 

varies from office to office. Information sharing is often ad 

hoc and depends upon the personalities involved. Although the 

representatives bring additional personnel to the FBI, the JTTF 

structure has not produced full cooperation between the FBI and 

state and local law enforcement. 

Most outside representatives on these task forces have an 

understanding of terrorism that is limited to the cases they are 

working on. Thus, they can not reasonably be expected to be the 

conduit for all threat and case information that may be 

important to their home agency. 

One state counterterrorism official told us that only a very 

small percentage of state and local police officers serve on the 

JTTFs and that "important information obtained from these 

national investigations does not reach the officers responsible 

for patrolling the cities, towns, highways, villages, and 

neighborhoods of our country." We heard this concern from other 

state and local counterterrorism officials. As a result, several 

state and local law enforcement agencies have begun to develop 

their own counterterrorism efforts separate and apart from the 

FBI. 

MR. ZELIKOW: Looking ahead. Two-and-a-half years after 9/11, 

it is clear that the FBI is an institution in transition. We 

recognize Director Mueller's genuine attempts to transform the 

FBI into an agency with the capacity to prevent terrorism. He 

has made progress. Important structural challenges remain to be 

addressed in order to improve the flow of information and 

enhance the FBI's counterterrorism effectiveness. These 

challenges include: the relationship between headquarters and 

field offices; the relationship between the FBI, the JTTFs, and 

state and local law enforcement; the place of the FBI in the 

overall intelligence community; and the respective roles -- that 

we heard more about earlier today -- of the FBI, the new 

Department of Homeland Security, and the Terrorist Threat 

Integration Center. 

(Pause.) 
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MR. KEAN: We will now hear from our last panelists. I want to 

bid a very cordial welcome this afternoon to the Honorable 

Robert S. Mueller, director of Federal Bureau of Investigation, 

and Ms. Maureen Baginski, executive assistant director for 

intelligence at the FBI. 

And would you please rise and raise your right hands? 

Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, 

and nothing but the truth? 

WITNESSES: I do. 

MR. KEAN: Please be seated. 

I might say before the director starts that I think I speak 

for the whole commission that really nobody has been more 

cooperative, more available or more helpful than Director 

Mueller. And I just wanted to say that and publicly thank him 

before he starts his testimony. 

Director Mueller. 

MR. MUELLER: Thank you, Chairman Kean, and thank you, Vice 

Chair Hamilton, and members of the Commission for the 

opportunity to spend a few moments with you this afternoon. 

We all understand that you've been given an extremely 

important mission, both to help America understand what happened 

on September 11th and to help us learn from that experience so 

that we may improve our ability to prevent such future acts of 

terrorism. 

The FBI recognizes the importance of your work, and my 

colleagues and I have made every effort to be responsive to your 

requests. 

Let me take a moment before addressing the specifics of the 

FBI's reform efforts to reflect on the losses suffered on 

September 11, 2001. I also want to acknowledge the pain and the 

anguish of the friends and families who were lost that day. And 

I want to assure them that we in the FBI are committed to doing 

everything in our power to ensure that America never again 

suffers such a loss. 

I will say that like so many in this country, the FBI lost 

colleagues on that day. John O'Neill was a retired 
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counterterrorism investigator, one of our best, who had just 

started a new job as head of security for the World Trade 

Center. Lenny Hatton was a special agent assigned to the New 

York field office, a former Marine, a firefighter, an FBI agent. 

On his way to work he went down to help those evacuating the 

buildings, and he was last seen helping one person out the door 

and heading back in upstairs to help another. 

And so it is the memory of the thousands like John O'Neill, 

Lenny Hatton who died that day that inspires us in our resolve 

to defeat terrorism. 

To meet and defeat this threat, the FBI must have several 

critical capabilities. First, we must be intelligence-driven. To 

defeat the terrorists, we must be able to develop intelligence 

about their plans and use that intelligence to disrupt those 

plans. We must be global. And we must have networked information 

technology systems. We need the capacity to manage and share our 

information effectively. And finally, but as important, we must 

remain accountable under the Constitution and the rule of law. 

We must respect civil liberties as we seek to protect the 

American people. 

This is the vision the FBI has been striving towards each day 

since September 11th, but it is also the vision that guided 

Director Freeh and the Bureau prior to September 11th. 

But as you have heard, prior to September 11th there were 

various walls that existed that did prevent much of the 

realization of this vision. The legal walls between intelligence 

and law enforcement operations thankfully have been broken down. 

Those walls handicapped us before September 11th, but they have

now been eliminated. We are now able to fully coordinate 

operations within the Bureau and with the intelligence 

community. And with these changes, we in the Bureau can finally 

take full operational advantage of our dual role as both a law 

enforcement and an intelligence agency. 

We are eliminating the wall that historically stood between 

us and the CIA. The FBI and the CIA started exchanging senior 

personnel in 1996, and we have worked hard to build on that 

effort. Today, the FBI and the CIA are integrated at virtually 

every level of our operation, and this integration will be 

further enhanced later this year when our Counterterrorism 

Division co-locates with the CIA's Counterterrorist Center and 

the Terrorist Threat Integration Center at a new facility in 

Virginia. 
119

We have also worked hard to break down the walls that have, 

at times, hampered coordination with our 750,000 partners in 

state and local law enforcement. We have more than doubled the 

number of Joint Terrorism Task Forces since September 11th. 

Removing these walls has been part of a comprehensive plan to 

strengthen the ability of the FBI to predict and prevent 

terrorism. We developed this plan immediately after the 

September 11th attacks. And with the participation and strong 

support of the Department of Justice and the Attorney General, 

we have been steadily and methodically implementing it ever 

since. 

As you know, this plan encompasses many areas of 

organizational change, from reengineering business practices to 

overhauling our information technology systems. Since you have a 

detailed description of the plan which we have provided to you I 

will not repeat it here today, but I would like to take a moment 

to highlight several of the fundamental steps we have taken 

since September 11th. 

Our first step was to establish the priorities to meet our 

post- 9/11 mission. Starting that morning, protecting the United 

States from another terrorist attack became our overriding 

priority. Every FBI manager understands that he or she must 

devote whatever resources are necessary to address the terrorism 

priority, and that no terrorism lead can go unaddressed. 

The second step was to mobilize our resources to implement 

this new priority. Starting soon after the attacks, we shifted 

substantial manpower and resources to the counterterrorism 

mission. We also established a number of operational units that 

give us new or improved counterterrorism capabilities. 

Another step was to centralize coordination of our 

counterterrorism program. And this centralization, this 

fundamental change has improved our ability to coordinate our 

operations here and abroad, and it has clearly established 

accountability at headquarters for the development and success 

of our Counterterrorism Program. 

As I noted earlier, another critical element of our plan 

since September 11th has been the increased coordination with 

our law enforcement and intelligence partners. We understand 

that we cannot defeat terrorism alone, and we are working hard 

to enhance coordination and information sharing with all of our 

partners. 
120

The last crucial element of our transformation has been to 

develop our strategic analytic capability, while at the same 

time integrating intelligence processes into all of our 

investigative operations. We needed to dramatically expand our 

ability to convert our investigative information into strategic 

intelligence that could guide our operations. And to build that 

capacity, we have been steadily increasing the size and the 

caliber of our analytical corps, and we established an 

intelligence program to manage the intelligence process 

throughout the Bureau. 

And to oversee this effort, last May I appointed Maureen 

Baginski, who is with me today, a 25-year analyst and executive 

from the National Security Agency, to serve as the Bureau's 

first executive assistant director for Intelligence. 

And thanks to the efforts of Maureen and her colleagues in 

the Office of Intelligence, over the last year we have developed 

and issued concepts of operations governing the new intelligence 

process, established the Bureau's first intelligence 

requirements process, established field intelligence groups in 

our field offices, and we are fundamentally revising our 

recruitment, training, career development and evaluations of 

special agents to develop expertise in intelligence work. 

These are some of the highlights of our plan for 

organizational reform, and the pace of change has been steady, 

with the establishment of dozens of new counterterrorism 

components and capabilities since September 11th. It has also 

been productive, with measurable increases since September 11th 

in the number of personnel dedicated to counterterrorism and 

intelligence operations, the quality and the quantity of 

intelligence reports we are producing, and lastly, the use of 

intelligence search authorities and the cultivation of sources -

- two important measures of our enhanced focus on the 

development of intelligence. 

The Bureau is moving steadily in the right direction, and we 

are making progress thanks to the hard work and dedication of 

the men and women of the FBI. They have embraced and implemented 

these counterterrorism and intelligence reforms while continuing 

to shoulder the responsibility to protect America. And they have 

carried out the pressing mandate to prevent further terrorism 

while continuing to work in strict fidelity to the Constitution 

and the rule of law. 
121

And I want to take this opportunity to thank them and their 

families for their sacrifices and for their service to America. 

Mr. Chairman, before I conclude, let me make one last point, 

if I might. I'm sure the question will be asked today as to my 

views on the need to establish a separate domestic intelligence 

agency, so let me address that now. 

I do believe that creating a separate agency to collect 

intelligence in the United States would be a grave mistake. 

Splitting the law enforcement and the intelligence functions 

would leave both agencies fighting the war on terrorism with one 

hand tied behind their backs. The distinct advantage we gain by 

having intelligence and law enforcement together would be lost 

in more layers and greater stovepiping of information, not to 

mention the difficulty of transitioning safely to a new entity 

while terrorists seek to do us harm. 

The FBI's strength has always been, is and will be in the

collection of information. Our weakness has been in the 

integration, analysis and dissemination of that information. And 

we are addressing these weaknesses. Our country has a tremendous 

resource in the FBI. We want to make the FBI better, we want to 

improve it so that we can fulfill our mission to protect 

America. And we look forward to your suggestions on how we might 

improve it. 

Thank you very much for the opportunity to give these 

remarks, Mr. Chairman. 

MR. KEAN: Thank you very much. 

The first questioner will be Commissioner Gorton. 

MR. GORTON: Mr. Mueller, not only have you done a very 

aggressive and, I think, so far a very effective reorganization 

of the FBI, you've done an excellent job in preempting this 

commission and its recommendations by putting a system in place 

which might result in some difficulties in the unwinding. But I 

will ask you in connection with your last point to try to 

imagine that we really were starting all over again without 

existing institutions in this field as to whether or not, you 

know, your ideal in law enforcement and intelligence would be 

the two agencies that we have at the present time, one law 

enforcement and domestic intelligence, and one foreign 

intelligence; two, separate entities, one law enforcement and 

one all intelligence, both domestic and foreign; three, one for 
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each of these; or one in which your foreign and domestic 

intelligence were united together with law enforcement itself. 

MR. MUELLER: Well, let me -- let me start from the premise 

that if you were working on a clean sheet of paper --

MR. GORTON: That's what I would like you to do in this case. 

MR. MUELLER: -- and working on a clean sheet of paper, if we 

go back all of those years and put history behind us. I think 

there are benefits to a separate intelligence organization where 

you have recruiting for intelligence and you focus on 

intelligence. I think that's an argument that we have to give. 

But then you look at the other side. And in order to deter 

attacks in the future, it cannot be one agency, particularly 

when you're looking domestically in the United States, and it's 

not just the FBI. What we have to do is leverage ourselves with 

every police department, state and local law enforcement in 

order to gather the intelligence, the information in our 

communities, have it passed up so that we can be more 

predictive. And what the FBI brings to that intelligence 

gathering capacity is the 56 field offices we have around the 

country, more than 400 satellite offices in just about every one 

of our communities, who have intersected over the years with 

state and local law enforcement in a wide variety of 

undertakings, and develop the relationships that are so 

important to leveraging that throughout the United States. So 

that's number one. 

The second point I would -- I think is very important is to 

reflect upon where we were before September 11th with the wall, 

where you had the divorcing of intelligence and criminal, which 

was often tremendously artificial. And it was -- there are a 

number of contributing factors to that, but that was a fact of 

life before. What we have done since September 11th is broken 

down those walls, broken down that artificial determination of 

whether something's intelligence versus criminal. 

And what you have now is integrated in one agency within the 

United States the ability, looking at it with state and local 

law enforcement, to push the intelligence aspects of any set of 

facts, so long as you can gather more intelligence, identify 

more persons, identify more telephone numbers, identify more 

email address, identify the networks both here in the United 

States. But then, when you have to neutralize that individual, 

in the sense of taking action, we have the ability to take that 

action at the appropriate time, and the decision-maker has all
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those fact in front of them. I think that is tremendously 

important to our effectiveness. 

If you look at the other scenario, that one of them that you 

postulate, and that is, well, should you have a combined 

domestic and foreign intelligence? And I go back to what George 

said this morning, and I think is on mark. One of the things 

that cannot be lost, I do not believe, when we address terrorism 

is the importance of on the one hand protecting our civil 

liberties. We don't want to look down or have historians in the 

future look back at us and say, "Okay, you won the war on 

terrorism, but you sacrificed your civil liberties." We operate 

within the rule of law. The FBI has always been trained of 

operating within the Constitution, understanding the importance 

within the United States of gathering information according to 

predication, according to the guidelines, whether it be the 

attorney general and the statutes and the like. And that is the 

way we operate in the United States, and that is the way we 

should operate in the United States, because we are called upon 

to gather information and intelligence on United States 

citizens. That is far different than what we're able to do 

overseas. 

And we have grown up with two different entities: one for 

overseas collection of information, and one for domestic 

collection of information. And when it comes to collection --

collection of information, I think it is important that we have 

that separation. 

That is not the separation that we need when we come to 

analyzing, integrating that information. And that is where we 

did not have the capacity before September 11th; that is where 

we put up the capacity in TTIC, and we have to improve that 

capacity. 

MR. GORTON: Thank you. I gather I can summarize your answer: 

Even if we were starting all over again, you'd like the present 

division. But we're not starting all over again, and so the 

argument is overwhelming on one side. 

But I want to follow up on one thing that you said about 

recruitment. Now, I'm a young man just having graduated from law 

school, maybe one or two years of experience. But all through my 

youth, you know, I've watched television, and what I really want 

to be is an intelligence agent. That's my real ambition. Why am 

I going to apply to the FBI, where I don't know what my career 

will be after three years, rather than the CIA, where I do? 
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MR. MUELLER: Well, as we build up our specialization -- your 

staff statement described the specialization that we anticipate 

putting into place later this year and beginning of next year --

you will come into the FBI if you want with a background or the 

desire to become an intelligence officer. And if you have the 

aptitude to do it, what we want you to do is understand the full 

scope of what the FBI can do, all of its capabilities, both on 

the criminal side and the intelligence side, so we put you 

through three years in a smaller office. Thereafter, you will 

specialize. You will specialize as an intelligence officer. You 

will have a designation as an intelligence officer. It will be 

the same type of designation that you have as an intelligence 

officer if it's the CIA, the DIA or the NSA. We hope to 

replicate that. 

But let me just go one step further and say that there are 

some persons that would want to come into the FBI and not wear a 

badge and a gun, not be an agent, a sharp individual who comes 

out of a Middle East language studies and wants to direct 

collection, institute requirements. We are building up -- and 

what we hope to do and are doing now is building up our 

analytical capability so that a person can come in as an analyst 

and become an intelligence officer without ever having to wear a 

gun -- or wear a badge and carry a gun. We want those people, we 

want those people within the Bureau, and we want to give them 

the stature that has not always been there in the Bureau. 

MR. GORTON: Now I'd like to move on not to these theories and 

recruitments, but to what you've actually done. Now, granted 

first that you have been a very effective director, and second, 

that you've had the huge inspiration that 9/11 provided for you, 

nevertheless, your predecessors over a period of years created 

first an Office of Intelligence, next a Counterterrorism 

Division and an Investigative Services Division, and next MAXCAP 

05, all of which seemed to be, at least on the surface, simply 

different names for your Office of Intelligence. If those three 

experiments didn't work, why is yours going to work? 

MR. MUELLER: I will tell you, after September 11th and the 

days and weeks and months afterwards, I was looking for a vision 

of how we build up our analytical capability, how we improve our 

analysts corps. I had a strong belief, in talking to analysts, 

in talking to George Tenet, in learning about the intelligence 

community, that for effective analysis, the strategic analysts 

need to be close to the information; that the quality of the 

analysis you get is greatly enhanced with the strategic analysts 
125

being close to the information that they're called upon to 

analyze. 

But I did not have the vision that I needed to say, "Okay, 

where's the Bureau going?" And when I brought Maureen Baginski 

on from the NSA, she came with a vision of where we needed to go 

over a five-year period, and it encompassed not just the 

analysts, but also the translators, the surveillance, the 

development of reports officers, the dissemination of 

information such as we had not had in the past. And what she 

brought, to my thinking, was an understanding and a vision of 

what we could be in the intelligence community. 

The fact of the matter is, prior to September 11th, we did 

not have reports officers. We did not have the function of 

taking the information, stripping off the sources and methods, 

putting it in IIRs and distributing it to the intelligence 

community. Before she came on board, and since she's come on 

board, we have produced more than 2,000 IIRs, which is -- we 

started from scratch. 

We have become, since September 11th, a member of the 

intelligence community in ways that we have not in the past. 

The last point I would make is that we have -- you're 

absolutely right, and persons who talked about it up here before 

-- we have had the law enforcement view of factual patterns. I 

think since September 11th we all in the FBI understand that it 

is a different ball -- we are at war, and that the information 

that in the past we have looked at as the predicate for a case 

for a courtroom is much more than that; it is now information 

that has to be centralized, it has to be integrated, it has to 

be analyzed and it has to be disseminated. Part of that is 

building up the reports officers cadre. 

But back to your point. What is different now is, one, the 

vision we have of where we're going, the CONOPS that we have 

provided to you, and the belief that we can and will put the 

structure in place that will last longer than I'll be there or 

Maureen will be there, but will be the intelligence function in 

the Bureau that was lacking prior to September 11th. 

MR. GORTON: Thank you, Mr. Director. You've talked me out of 

any more questions. (Laughter.) 

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Gorelick. 
126

MS. GORELICK: And your red light just happens to be on! 

(Laughter.) 

MR. GORTON: That's what I meant. (Laughs.) 

MS. GORELICK: (Laughs.) I see. 

Welcome. And thank you again for all the time that you have 

spent with us. It has been well worth it from both our point of 

view and, I suspect, yours, as well. 

One of the observations one might make about the guiding 

principles for some of the changes you've made is to align 

responsibility and capabilities. My question for you -- my first 

question for you is this: You have done that within the FBI, but 

we had a panel just before you of numerous entities with a 

bewildering array of alphabet in front of them, and I asked each 

one of these entities -- from the FBI, the Department of 

Homeland Security, the CIA, the TTIC -- to tell me who is our 

quarterback, who is driving our strategy against al Qaeda, who 

is personally responsible for bringing all the information 

together and getting it from the constituent parts, et cetera. I 

won't go through the questions with you. 

But I do have a question for you, which is, above your pay 

grade, is there someone who is our quarterback against an agile 

and entrepreneurial enemy, who brings together the strategy and 

the capabilities of our country to fight this enemy? 

MR. MUELLER: Yes, I think there is. And I do believe it's the 

NSC and the Homeland Security Council and the staff, for the 

overarching strategy. In other words, the overarching strategy 

against al Qaeda, in my mind, is established at that coordinated 

level, and in much the same way our foreign policy is developed, 

where you have a number of different agencies that have a role, 

whether it be the State Department, the CIA, the Department of 

Defense. And I believe that the strategy is set there. 

Where there -- as a -- is a particular raising of that 

threat, the integration of the information and the taskings is 

there, and that's where we are at this point in time. 

Now, is there another model that might work better? I really 

don't know because I'm not all that familiar with all the 

aspects of the intelligence community. I will tell you that, in 

terms of developing intelligence and then pursuing the tasking, 

certainly domestically I believe that we along with Homeland 
127

Security work closely together to do that, and internationally 

George Tenet has the responsibility and the capability of 

understanding/developing the intelligence and doing the 

taskings. 

And where -- as I pointed out before, where the gaps existed 

before are on the issues where you have a transnational 

intelligence operation. And the importance for us after 

September 11th is to assure that we fill those gaps where there 

is intelligence overseas and intelligence domestically that 

intersects. And we have addressed that problem by establishing 

teams whenever we have that type of information and working it 

jointly, and it has been tremendously effective. Much of it I 

cannot talk about here today, but when we say that there --

substantial numbers of al Qaeda leadership have been detained 

overseas, it is because exactly of that integration, that 

teamwork that we have in those transnational intelligence 

operations. 

And the last point I would make on that is I do not think you 

can underestimate the impact of having us together at Langley --

not in Langley -- out at Tysons Corner will have. Having us in 

the same building with separate collection responsibilities but 

then close to each other and close to TTIC is going to make a 

tremendous difference in terms of solidifying those 

relationships and easing that exchange of information between 

our two components. 

MS. GORELICK: Do you -- are you a member of the National 

Security Council? 

MR. MUELLER: I am a principal for many -- well, I'm generally 

a principal for anything having to do with terrorism and law 

enforcement. I certainly am not a member of the National 

Security Council for military actions, that kind of thing. So I 

--

MS. GORELICK: Are you a member of the Homeland Security 

Council? 

MR. MUELLER: Yes. 

MS. GORELICK: Do you need two councils? 

MR. MUELLER: Yes. 

MS. GORELICK: Because? 
128

MR. MUELLER: Well, because I think when you look at homeland 

security you have something like an anthrax scare. It's very 

important that Governor Thompson be sitting at the table. If 

you're looking at transportation within the United States, it's 

very important that Secretary Mineta be sitting at the table. I 

don't think it's important for those individuals necessarily to 

be sitting at the table when the National Security Council is 

determining what we do vis-à-vis Indonesia or Saudi Arabia or 

Iraq or what have you. So I do believe that there's --

MS. GORELICK: You're not at the table -- I mean, you're not 

at the table when the National Security Council is looking at 

Indonesia or Saudi Arabia either. This is a question for me, I 

think -- and we will ask this of Secretary Ridge, but it -- we 

have heard from a number of, let's say, alums of the Homeland 

Security process that it functions as a third wheel. 

But you think it actually adds value? 

MR. MUELLER: Yes. 

MS. GORELICK: As you know, we had --

MR. MUELLER: Can I just go back and add to that? 

MS. GORELICK: Certainly. 

MR. MUELLER: We have had, as everybody in the country knows, 

a number of threats in the last two-and-a-half years. The threat 

level has been raised. And the Homeland Security Council brings 

together those within the Administration that play some role in 

either gathering the intelligence, analyzing the intelligence, 

and then determining what steps need to be taken as a result of 

that intelligence. And the Homeland Security Council is the 

entity that brings us all together, enables us to make 

decisions, as are made, and make recommendations to the 

President, to the Vice President as to what steps should be 

taken. So I think it is effective and it is necessary and 

useful. 

MS. GORELICK: As I described to the earlier panel, and in our 

staff statement you see that John Brennan, the director of TTIC, 

has said that he is seeing, quote-unquote, a “cacophony of 

activities in the intelligence community, but no strategy and 

planning.”
129

Do you think there is a clarity of roles with regard to all 

of these different centers and coordination entities? Or have we 

created redundancy in the system, or too much redundancy --

there's always some -- too much redundancy in the system? 

MR. MUELLER: I do believe there is some clarity, but I also 

believe there's redundancy. And I do not believe redundancy is 

bad. 

MS. GORELICK: But you think there's not -- I know there 

always has to be some redundancy. Your view is we have just the 

right amount of redundancy? 

MR. MUELLER: Oh, no. We are growing. TTIC is growing. The 

role of TTIC is growing. What is so important about TTIC is, as 

John Brennan testified before, is TTIC has access to all of our 

databases. As he has indicated, ideally what you would want is 

the ability to search across all those databases, and we are 

putting that into place. That will be instrumental in order to 

be able to quickly pull information out of each of those 

databases, with the same common search tools. So we are growing. 

And as we grow there will be tensions, there will be overlap, 

there will be some gray areas. 

I'm not altogether -- I do not altogether believe that is 

bad. Because we can look at something one way, John Brennan's 

people can look at it another way, George's people can look at 

it another way. And I have always found, and perhaps it's the 

lawyer in me, that the debate and the dialogue is not altogether 

bad. 

MS. GORELICK: That's a very helpful answer, and I guess for 

us, we just need to gauge whether the number of voices that 

we're gaining is over-ridden by confusion about who's doing 

what. And I think we will be about that, and we would like your 

thoughts on that for the record as we look at our policy 

recommendations. 

Mo Baginski, may I ask you a question? 

MS. BAGINSKI: Yes, ma'am. 

MS. GORELICK: You are posited as the solution to many 

problems. 

MS. BAGINSKI: (Laughs.) 
130

MS. GORELICK: Many times we have asked the question, How is X 

going to get fixed? Who's going to do Y? And often, very often, 

maybe too often for your comfort level, "Mo Baginski" is the 

answer. 

Now, we have had a number of people appear before us in the 

course or our hearings to say if only they had had enough in the 

way of resources they would have been able to do their job, but 

did we realize how poorly their assets stacked up against the 

mission. And I was going to say, not meaning to put you on the 

spot in front of your boss, but that would be disingenuous --

MS. BAGINSKI: (Laughs.) 

MR. MUELLER: (Laughs.) 

MS. GORELICK: -- meaning to put you on the spot in front of 

your boss, do you currently have the assets you need, and if 

not, what are you doing about it? 

MS. BAGINSKI: Currently no, but let me describe what we are 

doing about it, because in answer to the question that, 

Congressman Gorton, you asked the director, what's different 

this time? The answer that I would give from my experience is 

that instead of intelligence being about a separate organization 

fully staffed, intelligence is actually the job of the entire 

FBI. And so, what I can draw on and what I've been very careful 

to do, Commissioner Gorelick, is not to build a large 

organization that pulls the intelligence capacity out of the 

operational organization. This has all been aimed at integrating 

it, leaving it integrated, and unleashing the capacity that is 

there through policy direction and independent requirements. 

Where I am right now, these are the statistics. I have been 

funded for 155 persons. Sixty-five of those people are in the 

TTIC. So you need to understand that from my office we will also 

be managing our contribution to the TTIC. We made an agreement, 

correct agreement that the FBI would be responsible for tasking 

-- for actually giving the TTIC 20 percent of its government 

work force. So that comes out to 65 people, and thanks to the 

Congress, we got that fully funded. Now, that leaves me -- you 

know, those of you seem to do advanced math, and I'm not going 

to do it, so that's about -- (laughs) -- so we're about at the 

90 level. And where I am is staffed right now at 51 with 

permanent personnel. I have seven TDYers. I have been very, very 

fortunate to get the personal support of George Tenet, Charlie 

Allen and Don Kerr in getting the two senior CIA executives that 
131

are helping me manage. I have also been very fortunate in having 

my boss' support to get funding to bring a group from Mitre and 

a group from Rand in that has brought me the kind of 

intelligence community experience in years, right, that would be 

very difficult for me to replicate in the form of FBI personnel. 

And where we are right now is we have 39 positions remaining to 

be filled -- I know that's right -- 26 of them are in the 

staffing process already. So frankly, I've only got -- I'm 

approaching single-digit fix, and that is largely because the 

whole FBI has supported me in this. 

It is not easy to start an organization from scratch 

anywhere, and we've done well. 

MS. GORELICK: If you get --

MR. KEAN: Last question. 

MS. GORELICK: Yes. If you get what you need, if you get what 

is planned, will you have enough? 

MS. BAGINSKI: I will have enough because intelligence is 

actually going to be done in a distributed way. So as you turn 

the intelligence functions in the field and in the investigative 

divisions against the processes that we've established, we'll be 

okay, Jamie. Yeah. 

MS. GORELICK: Thank you. 

MR. KEAN: Director, I have a couple of questions. I came to 

this job with less knowledge of the intelligence community than 

anybody else at this table. What I've learned has not reassured 

me. It's frightened me a bit, frankly. 

But the reassuring figure in it all is you, because everybody 

I talk to in this town, a town which seems to have a sport in 

basically not liking each other very much -- everybody likes 

you, everybody respects you, everybody has great hopes that 

you're actually going to fix this problem. 

And I guess the decision which I got to make as a 

commissioner here is, can you fix it? Because the FBI is 

absolutely essential to this whole wall we're talking about, and 

if you can't fix it, then we've got to make some recommendations 

and structural changes that may be able to fix it. 
132

And I'll tell you what still worries me. It's things that are 

in our staff report. For instance: “According to a recent report 

by the Department of Justice inspector general, the FBI 

shortages of linguists have resulted in thousands of hours of 

audiotapes and pages of written material not being reviewed or 

translated into a timely manner.”

Another place:

“At every office we visited, we heard there were not enough 

surveillance personnel to cover the request to conduct live 

physical surveillance of identified terrorist suspects.”

Again, “we heard from many analysts who complained they're 

able to do little actual analysis, because they continue to be

assigned menial tasks, including covering the phones at 

reception desks and emptying the office trash bins.”

Again, “agent after agent told us that the primary way 

information gets shared is through personal relationships. There 

does not appear to be any recognition that the system fails in 

the absence of good personal relationships.”

And I guess just one more:

“We found there is no national strategy for sharing 

information to counter terrorism.”

Now that's from our report that was read just prior to your 

appearance, and I guess my question is still: Can you fix it? 

MR. MUELLER: Well, I -- in response to the question, I think 

we can and are fixing what has been wrong with the FBI. And I 

could speak only for the FBI. I don't want to speak any broader 

than that, because I -- we've got to put our house in order, and 

I think we are putting our house in order. 

I will tell you that I think the staff did a very good job in 

their report, but indeed it was a snapshot in time. And it was a 

snapshot in time in six field offices some time ago. 

And I'll tell you that change cannot be done overnight. 

Transitions take time. If you look at those who have transformed 

organizations, governors who have, when they come in, things 

they wish to change, understand you hope to have a vision; you 

put in place the mechanism of executing that vision, but you 

cannot do it overnight. If you look at the IBMs or the GE, the 
133

Gerstner or the Welches, they will tell you there are a number 

of components to transforming an organization. If you look at 

those who study this, they will tell you that it takes time to 

transform an organization. There will be 30 percent that will be 

with you from the outset; there will be 30 percent that are 

there to be persuaded; and there'll be 30 percent that really

resist the change for a variety of reasons. 

I think we're on the right path. In those particulars that 

you mentioned, for instance the linguists, the staff statement 

is accurate in part, but I will tell you, when it comes to 

counterterrorism, counterterrorism interceptions, we prioritize 

that to assure that if there is any counterterrorism 

interception that needs linguist help, it is reviewed within a 

24-hour period. And so yes, we have across the board, hours of 

interceptions that have not been translated. But the fact of the 

matter is, when it comes to a terrorist organization, except in 

those instances where we have a very difficult time with 

particular dialects, it's reviewed within 24 hours. Certainly if 

we've got an investigation that's ongoing that relates to the 

possibility of a threat. 

Surveillance. We are stretched on our surveillance 

capabilities. We have made requests to Congress, and we are 

getting in '04 substantial additional support to do 

surveillance. 

Analysts. We have to do two things. One, we have had to build 

up our analytical capability, but we also have had to 

professionalize the analytical staff and train it. In the days 

shortly after September 11th, we put together and set up a 

college of analytical studies. That has to be improved. We are 

not where we need to be, but we have that in place. 

Information sharing. There are two aspects of that that are 

important. One is the understanding of the necessity to 

disseminate that which we have. I've listened to some of the 

testimony earlier today about when -- I think it was 

Commissioner Lehman, with regard to an investigation, a criminal 

investigation that turns up intelligence information that would 

be useful to the intelligence community. In the past, that would 

not have been disseminated because of the grand jury rules that 

have been set aside by the PATRIOT Act. Today, it would be 

disseminated in an IIR to the intelligence community. That does 

not preclude it for being used in a prosecution, but does give 

that information -- or does disseminate that information to the 

intelligence community. 
134

And so in terms of information sharing, it is the desire to 

share and the capability of sharing. We are still working on the 

information technology in our communications, but we're on the 

road to solving those. 

And I see the red light's on for me as well. 

MR. KEAN: The red light is -- if my colleagues will permit, 

I've got one question from the families, which I would ask, with 

your permission. 

MR. : Certainly. 

MS. GORELICK: That's okay. 

MR. KEAN: Director Mueller, could you please give a brief 

description of the specific threat assessment that led to --

Attorney General Ashcroft to lease a private plane? 

MR. MUELLER: I am -- that occurred before I began my tenure. 

What I know about it is after the fact. I do believe that there 

was a security assessment that was done; it may well not have 

been a specific threat, but a security assessment that led to 

the recommendation that for official travel he utilize a Bureau

plane. 

MR. KEAN: Yeah. I'd like -- I think from the families' point 

of view, we'd like to follow that up. 

MR. MUELLER: I'd be happy to. 

MR. KEAN: Thank you very much. 

Congressman Roemer. 

MR. ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Welcome, Director. Again, nice to see you. And thank you for 

sharing your thoughts with us today. 

I have two very quick questions, which hopefully will elicit 

quick answers, and then a larger one that you can do whatever 

you want with. The quicker questions. I asked Dick Clarke when 

he was up before us some questions about a flight that left the 

country with the Bin Ladin family on it shortly after 9/11. Our 

staff has learned that at least six chartered flights of 
135

primarily Saudi citizens departed the United States in the week 

after 9/11. 

My first question is, did the FBI have a process in place to 

screen passengers on these departing flights? 

MR. MUELLER: I believe I have seen one of the staff 

statements that addresses this particular issue and discusses 

the process we went through in order to screen the flights in

terms of reviewing the names and then interviewing at least a 

number of the passengers. And I believe in my review of that 

staff statement, it was accurate. 

MR. ROEMER: And do you recall, then, if they were run through 

a TIPOFF program? 

MR. MUELLER: I believe that they were -- not only were they 

done at the time in terms of -- again, I'd have to look at the 

staff statement. But I believe that yes, the indices were 

checked, and a subsequent check has been made through the 

Terrorist Screening Center, that is the combination of data of 

terrorist watchlists, and none of the names came up. 

MR. ROEMER: If you could double-check that and see if it was 

TIPOFF of --

MR. MUELLER: Happy to do that, yes. 

MR. ROEMER: -- or see if it was an FBI program that you ran 

those through. 

The second question, then, with regard to these flights is on 

the specific Bin Ladin flight that left September 20th, 2001, a 

counterterrorism FBI official told us that he received 

permission from somebody at the FBI's SIOC headquarters to 

approve that flight. Do you know who that is? 

MR. MUELLER: I do not. We'd have to -- I'd have to get back 

to you on that. 

MR. ROEMER: Can you check that and get that back to me? 

MR. MUELLER: Yes, we'll check that. 

MR. ROEMER: Final question, Mr. Director. I lived through 13 

months of the Joint Inquiry, saw many of the systemic and 

structural mistakes, errors that the FBI had made, and came into 
136

this particular 9/11 Commission very anxious and very, very 

tenacious about seeing a component taken away from the FBI on 

this domestic security threat. I no longer feel that way. I'm 

not sure what the answer is quite yet. 

I have a great deal of confidence in you personally. You will 

leave that job, so the structural and institutional changes you 

make to the FBI will be key to how I decide whether this will be 

something in the FBI or DOJ or a separate entity or an MI5. My 

question to you is the following, and give it your tour de force 

and your passion and convince me and, you know, other people in 

America. With so little confidence right now in the FBI and the 

stakes being so large for the security of the country, why 

should we give the FBI another chance? 

MR. MUELLER: Well, let me just start at the outset and say I 

don't agree with your assumption that the confidence in the FBI 

is so low. If you go around this country, if you go overseas, if 

you go into your communities, if you talk to people, they have a 

tremendous respect and a belief in the capability of the FBI. We 

have changed to meet threats in the past; we will change to meet 

this threat. But I do not believe -- I do not believe -- that 

the American public has lost confidence in the men and women of 

the FBI; to the contrary. I think perhaps if you get outside of 

Washington you will find and in your communities, in your 

cities, in your towns that the FBI has a tremendous amount of 

respect from the community, but also from state and local law 

enforcement. If you go overseas -- and this is a critical 

component of the success -- our success in the future -- you 

will find that our counterparts in whichever country you go to 

has a tremendous respect and affection for the FBI. 

And those relationships will be instrumental in the future 

for protecting the United States from transnational threats. 

I think it would be a tremendous mistake to give short shrift 

to the -- what has been accumulated by the FBI over the years --

the expertise, the professionalism, that which is articulated in 

the staff statement in terms of our capabilities post-event --

and forget what we have done as we go through this process. When 

I think -- and I think what the American people want and I think 

are entitled to is to -- for a look back at the mistakes we 

made, those things we did not do right, which I would freely 

admit. There were things that should have been done better; we 

did not do them better. And I, even though it was on -- you 

know, I started September 4th, feel a tremendous burden, a

guilt, for not having done a better job. I think all of us feel 
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that. But I believe that every one of us, men and women of the 

FBI, and I don't care whether they are agents or analysts or 

support, they have a dedication and a duty to protect the United 

States, and we have spent 12 hours a day since September 11th in 

the execution of that duty. And I think it would be a mistake to 

not give that due consideration as you make your decision. 

If I may -- if I may make one other point, and that is, I 

also went through those 13 months with the Joint Intelligence 

Committee. And there were a series of recommendations that were 

laid out from that committee. I -- it may have been 12. I'm not 

certain of the number. But I think if you go through --

MR. ROEMER: Nineteen. 

MR. MUELLER: Nineteen. If you go through every one of those 

19, you will see that we have made substantial progress on those 

recommendations. It's listed in the report that I have appended 

to my statement. I think if you go down and review each one of 

those 19 recommendations, we have come a long way since those 

recommendations were put out. 

MR. ROEMER: I thank you for the answer. And again, I want to 

underscore that they are needed structural changes. I can't tell 

you how much confidence I personally have in the people and the 

staff and the great personnel at the FBI. You have tremendous 

people working for you. It's the structure and the system and 

making those very tough, difficult changes in this new 

environment. And I think you gave a very strong answer. I thank 

you. 

MR. MUELLER: Thank you. 

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Ben-Veniste. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Good afternoon, Director Mueller, and Ms. 

Baginski. Let me first echo the comments of my colleagues on 

this commission, say how much we appreciate not only the time 

that you've given us, but the interactive nature of our 

relationship with you. You have been responsive to our 

questions, you've come back, sometimes you've come back and 

showed up when you weren't invited. (Laughter.) But we 

appreciate that. 

MR. MUELLER: I -- I don't recall that occurrence. (Laughter.) 
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MR. BEN-VENISTE: Well, that was -- it is a hallmark of, I 

think, the willingness from the top of your agency to be 

responsive to our concerns. 

There's one area I want to put off to the side, and that's 

the area of FBI translators. I understand there are active 

investigations with respect to some of the allegations that have 

been made. I don't want to get into those facts now. I don't 

think it's appropriate. But we do want to follow up with you, 

because it's an important area for us. 

MR. MUELLER: Absolutely. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Let me make an observation first. Having 

worked with the FBI long ago as a federal prosecutor and having 

observed the agency over the years, it is my view that the FBI 

is the finest law enforcement agency in the world, bar none. You 

have in the past been able to operate effectively, once you've 

been focused, on trans-national crime in the area of narcotics 

and narcoterrorism; in the area of Sicilian mafia, Russian mafia 

operating in the United States and operating in other countries 

and interacting from our country and other countries. So I don't 

have a doubt that you can do this. 

With terrorism, it's a different story. Intelligence is far, 

far more important with respect to terrorism, because the end 

result is not dollars, but death. And so intelligence is 

critical. And in this regard, we get into the question that had 

been raised, for example, by my friend and colleague, Senator 

Gorton, where you posit an individual who is graduating from 

college, and you know, this guy may be a brilliant linguist; he 

may be a philosophy student; he may be a chess champion; he may 

look like Niles Crane on Frazier, not like Ephraim Zimbalist 

Jr., okay. He may not want to break down doors. He may be a very 

mild person. The people that we have met at MI-5 who perform 

analytical function don't look like cops. They don't look like 

state troopers. They don't look like your typical FBI agent. But 

they have the brain power. That's not to say the FBI doesn't 

have the brain power in their traditional agents, but these 

people are thinkers, first and foremost. They're analysts. They 

think outside the box. They anticipate. They are 

entrepreneurial. They are of a different caste than the typical 

law enforcement officer. You'll give me that, I take it. 

MR. MUELLER: Yes. 
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MR. BEN-VENISTE: That's the best and shortest answer I've 

gotten in weeks. (Laughter.) 

MR. ROEMER (?): Shortest question. (Laughter.) 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Now, here's the question --

MR. : Yeah, shortest question. 

MR. BEN-VENISTE: And the shortest questioner. (Laughter.) 

Okay. 

My question is based on the fact that no one questions your 

integrity, your purpose, but we know that the FBI is sort of a 

creature which has existed which has perhaps been the most 

bureaucratic agency in all of Washington. It's existed with its 

own culture, protecting itself for a long time against change 

imposed from outside. In the world of post-Bob Mueller, how do 

we know that it's not going to revert back, as it has from timeto-time when other directors have tried to institute change? 

And my question is, under these circumstances, if this 

commission decides that its recommendation will be to allow or 

to recommend that the FBI continue to have its responsibility 

for domestic intelligence, should we not make sure that the 

institutional changes that are made, suggested and are modified 

-- and we may have some modifications, suggestions for you to 

consider -- are not enacted somehow legislatively so that they 

will be protected against the inclination to morph back into an 

old regime? 

MR. MUELLER: Well, let me go back to the point you were 

making that wasn't a question, and that is about the person who 

wishes to come and does not want to wear a badge and carry a 

gun. We want them. We want those analysts. I will tell you, the 

first couple of days after September 11th, I was briefed by, and 

continuously briefed and brought up to date by two of the finest 

analysts I have seen. Every day I am briefed by an analytical 

cadre that is the match of any analysts that you will have at 

any of the other agencies, and I know that because Maureen 

Baginski tells me that. 

And so we want those people, we want those persons who don't 

want to break down doors but want to be the same as what you 

would have in MI5, a targeting officer for instance; a person 

that comes in, brings the intelligence together, and sets the 
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requirements to be filled by the collectors in the field. So we 

want that person. 

As to the question, the last part in terms of how do we 

assure that the changes take hold. We are developing and putting 

into place a different structure for the FBI that reflects this 

particular threat today. My own belief is that as we look to 

2010, we look further in the future, you ask what kind of FBI do 

you want, increasingly the FBI's mission will be to address 

transnational threats because that's where we are the 

intersection between the threat overseas and state and local law 

enforcement. 

We will be doing less state and local law enforcement in our 

cities and more of the transnational -- addressing the 

transnational threats. That means that we need a different type 

of agent population with different skills, and we are building 

to that. We are putting into place the plans not just for where 

we're going to be in 2005, but where we hope to be in 2010. 

Now, if you're looking upon that and you're saying, okay, 

well, how do we know that which you wish to put into place is 

going to stay when you leave, the fact of the matter is we are 

not lacking of oversight. Congress. I am up every other -- I 

don't want to say every other week, but often in front of 

Congress in terms of oversight, in terms of appropriations. It 

is not that we are not subject to scrutiny in terms of what we 

have done and where we are going. And that which is the concern 

of this committee I believe will also and has been the concern 

of Congress. So I believe that there is continuous oversight to 

assure that what we are putting into place is maintained, is 

funded, and will be the FBI of the future. 

MR. HAMILTON: Mr. Lehman. 

MR. LEHMAN: Thank you. 

Director, I'd like to echo the encomiums of my colleagues 

about how good the process has been working with you from the 

first time you got together with us a year-and-a-quarter ago. 

It's been a very -- very much of a two-way dialogue. You've 

clearly listen to us, and you've taught us a good deal. I think 

that, in the spirit of that Socratic process that you've set in 

motion, I'd like to pursue one issue that really does trouble 

me. 
141

I came into this commission -- riding in, as they say, on a 

pumpkin cart from the country -- believing it was a no-brainer 

that we should go to an MI5. And you have given us all a lot to 

think about in that regard, but there's one issue that -- I'm 

particularly sensitive, having wrestled with the culture of the 

admirals for six years, I know the strength, both good and bad, 

of a great tradition and a deeply embedded culture, and the FBI 

has that kind of elite culture, and it's a law enforcement 

culture. 

And time and again we've had witnesses from FBI come before 

us privately and publicly, and they recite the mantra which they 

believe at a certain level, that you have laid out as your 

priority. But you then scratch them and out comes statements 

from more than just a few, like a recent FBI witness who said, 

and I quote, "When we do our intelligence in the FBI, it should 

be forensic intelligence. It should be based on evidence. It 

must be based on fact that will bear the scrutiny of law, that 

can be looked at by a jury and a judge." 

And it's not just one person. We had three witnesses over the 

last two days who in effect echoed the same thing. 

Many of us on the Commission have been hung up on the Cole

case because it's a very interesting case study of how the 

process works, and not unique, because I lived through exactly 

the same thing in 1983 on the Beirut issue. There's an attack. 

Everybody knows who done it. The day it happens, everybody 

knows. When we ask why, then, weren't -- wasn't the President, 

President Clinton, told who done it; why, then, four months 

later, wasn't President Bush told; and the answer we got back 

from three authoritative witnesses was, we had to wait until we 

created the evidence or gathered the evidence that could get an 

indictment. 

Now many of us were incredulous to hear that from three very 

senior officials, but that's what I mean by culture.

It turns out, as the attorney general testified, there wasn't 

a finding as -- and our own staff had found that out a long time 

ago -- till August after the October attack. In the meantime, 

opportunities were lost. 

And I worry that if there isn't some corrective, that the 

culture will time and again suppress the kind of rapid advising 

of decision-makers that is essential in an agile -- against an 

agile opponent. 
142

So I guess my question is if there is some halfway position 

here. If we don't go -- and I'm not sure we might not still 

recommend something like MI5 -- but if we were to go to a 

strengthened DCI or a DNI, a national intelligence coordinator, 

would you think it would be acceptable or wise to adopt the 

practice, for instance, that Mo Baginski's former agency has? 

It's a part of the Defense Department, reports to the secretary 

of Defense, but the DCI has an equal say in hiring the head of 

the intelligence unit and has a say in the firing of the head of 

the intelligence unit. 

So could it be acceptable for that new DCI, empowered DCI, to 

share the role with you of naming the head, firing the head, and 

allocating budget priorities, and agreeing on things like IT 

programs and paradigms? 

So that's my question. 

MR. MUELLER: Okay. Let me, if I could, address a few aspects 

of -- that you talked to. 

With regard to the Cole and a distinction between evidence 

and intelligence, prior to September 11th I believe that much of 

the government was in a law enforcement mindset. We addressed 

terrorism as a law enforcement issue, and consequently, the 

information that we developed would be developed in cases so we 

can indict somebody and bring them back. 

Since September 11th, that has changed dramatically. We all, 

myself included -- I mean, I was a prosecutor before. My natural 

inclination prior to September 11th is look in the courtroom. 

Today I understand the importance of getting information to the 

policymaker so that decisions can be made far outside the ambit 

of a courtroom in order to respond to attacks. 

I would not dismiss, though, the ability and the rigor that 

FBI agents bring to looking at a set of facts. If there's one 

concern I have about intelligence, it is that often there are 

statements made about an uncorroborated source with indirect 

access and then there is a stating of a particular fact. Well, 

to know whether that is well-founded or not, you have to know 

what the motivation of that source is. Were they paid? Do they 

have a grudge? Do they have -- and what we bring to the process 

is an important focus on facts that I do not think should 

necessarily be dismissed. 
143

I know we've talked about the Cole. I do believe it's 

important for us that whenever there is an incident, any 

intelligence that we get, any information on that incident 

automatically ought to go to the CIA, ought to go to the 

President, so they can make decisions as to what to do. An 

example would be the intelligence that had come in on La Belle 

disco bombing back in the 1980s, I think, which gave President 

Reagan sufficient information to undertake an immediate attack. 

We all want to respond quickly. 

And I'll give you one experience that I had when I was 

working on Pan Am 103 and working with the families of Pan Am 

103. There was an intelligence briefing that I received early on 

as to who was responsible for Pan Am 103, and that briefing 

indicated it was a country other than Libya. Now, if the 

President had moved on that briefing, against that country, when 

we come to find out as we scrutinized facts that it was not that 

country but was Libya, we would have done substantial harm not 

only to that country but to our credibility around the world. 

And so I think there has to be a balance between the 

information we get and the foundation of that information. 

The last point on an individual who would be a czar, I would 

say, an intelligence czar, and would have the ability to say yea 

or nay on a person that I wish to bring in to head up 

intelligence. I think one of the strengths of the FBI is its 

independence. Always has been, always will be. The focus on 

facts and taking those facts wherever they lead you, even if 

it's into the White House. I would have some concern about that 

independence being undercut by having an intelligence czar 

having a say over who would fill a particular position in the 

FBI. 

It may well be that the person who fills that intelligence 

position is bringing news to the president, to the White House 

that they do not like to hear. But that is our job. It doesn't 

make any difference whether it's the criminal arena or in the 

intelligence arena. Our job is to give an independent, objective 

assessment of facts, whether it's an intelligence arena or the 

criminal arena. 

MR. LEHMAN: And how about the budgetary? The --

MR. HAMILTON: I believe that when it comes to -- I would have 

to think about the budget and what impact that might have on our 
144

independence. I would have to spend some time thinking about 

that. 

MR. LEHMAN: Thank you very much. 

MR. HAMILTON: Mr. Fielding. 

MR. FIELDING: Thank you, Mr. Vice Chairman. 

Director Mueller and Ms. Baginski, thank you very much. And 

I'll join the accolades heaped upon you by my co-commissioners 

and sincerely mean it. 

Yesterday was not a great day for the FBI in the public's 

mind. And regardless of the outcome of our ultimate decisions, 

and that sort of thing, I think that today is a good day to 

start restoring the public's confidence in what has always been 

a wonderful organization. So I thank you for that. 

Director Mueller, I -- gosh, I would never -- I'm not saying 

you're pollyannish -- (laughs) -- and I certainly wouldn't say 

that -- but I'm concerned. And I'd like your thoughts on this 

whole concept of the centralization of your counterterrorism 

efforts. And the only reason that I'm saying that -- obviously 

yesterday we heard that maybe it isn't anything different, but I 

believe it is. And I think it's a whole different approach and 

it's an approach that makes sense. But I assume that other case 

work is still “office of origin” and that sort of thing for your 

normal prosecutions. 

So given that, there's always a resistance in any 

bureaucracy. We see them come, we them go; this director wants 

to do this, that director wants to come to that, but I'm here. 

And you've got -- your senior people are your field office 

people. You've got them all around the country. And because 

they've been there, they've grown up in that system, they're the 

senior guys. They're the guys that the young guys look up to, 

young women look up to. I mean, because they're the guys. 

They're used to office of origin on everything. And from 

everything we've picked up, headquarters isn't exactly the place 

that a field guy would want to ever even be seen. I mean, this 

is -- they're too -- it's a cultural thing, as John Lehman just 

said; at least that's what it appears to be. So it's 

generational and cultural. And any change is going to take time. 

But I want to know how you're going to accomplish this. I mean, 

we have to gauge, is this really doable and how are you going to 

accomplish it? 
145

MR. MUELLER: I think you're thoughts about that are largely 

accurate, but I'm not certain totally accurate in this day and 

age. 

MR. FIELDING: Maybe it's a generational thing with me, too. 

MR. MUELLER: It may be. (Laughter.) No, I don't mean that. 

I think the Bureau is changing. I'll tell you, the New York 

office did a tremendous job in the 1990s, developed a tremendous 

expertise in addressing al Qaeda. Tremendous agents, some of the 

best agents in the country operated there. One of the things I 

recognized in the wake of September 11th, that I needed that 

expertise down at headquarters; that you have to have and build 

in headquarters a cadre of individuals that are respected in the 

field, or you cannot get the work done. And I have sought to 

bring in and develop in headquarters a cadre of individuals that 

are respected in the field because they've been in the field, 

and respected because, if they had not know al Qaeda before and 

the players, are learning the players. 

What is so important for us in the future is to have the

cadre of individuals a headquarters who understand all of the 

elements of the war against al Qaeda. That means what the CIA is 

doing; what the DIA is doing; what NSA is doing; what we're 

doing internationally with our LEGATs. And what we hope to 

develop over a period of time is that level of expertise in 

headquarters that knows all the players, knows what they've been 

doing; picks up on things, so that it is a central repository of 

information on this particular threat, and a central repository 

on Hezbollah, on Hamas, on the other threats that we may have. 

It will take time. 

But I believe that since September 11th, there has been far 

better interaction between headquarters and the field in 

understanding that there has to be a coordination such as we 

have not seen before, a dissemination of information not only 

through headquarters but throughout the intelligence community, 

and that we have to build up that cadre of individuals. 

It is somewhat generational. I believe, for instance, that 

when we have an important case, we ought to get the best person 

in the FBI on that case, regardless of where they are within the 

organization. To the extent that we need to address a particular 

issue, regardless of where the person may be, in what office, we 

ought to bring that person and put them on the issue. 
146

We are one institution. We have tremendous capabilities. Too 

often, we have had those capabilities located in a particular 

place, and not brought them to bear on the threat. By doing more 

in the way of coordination and management of headquarters, we, I 

believe, leveraging the whole FBI as well as our intersection 

with state and local law enforcement to this particular threat 

in ways we have not before. 

MR. FIELDING: Thank you, sir. Thank you both. 

MR. HAMILTON: Well, the vice chair finds himself in an 

extraordinary situation here. We have run out the number of 

commissioners signaling that they want to ask questions. I'll 

take just a moment to see if there are any further questions. 

The chairman's returning. He may have a question or two. Mr. 

Chairman, I was about ready to adjourn this place. (Laughter.) 

We've run our --

MR. KEAN: (Laughs.) If I'd known that, I would have stayed in 

the back. (Laughter.) 

MR. HAMILTON: (Laughs.) We have exhausted the list, and I'll 

turn it back to you. 

MR. KEAN: Okay. Thank you very much, and all I can say is, 

thank you so much. Thank you for all your cooperation. Thank you 

for all your help. Thank you for your informative session today, 

for both of you. And you know us, we'll be back to you. 

(Laughter.) 

MR. MUELLER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

MR. KEAN: Thank you very, very much. We're now adjourned 

until -- (gavel) -- the next public hearing, which will be, 

when? May? 

MR. : Sometime soon. 

MR. KEAN: See you all May 18th in New York. 

END.
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