National efforts to combat terrorism derive from a series of presidential directives going back at least as far as 1986. The previous administration issued a federal strategy for combating terrorism—the Attorney General’s Five-Year Interagency Counterterrorism and Technology Crime Plan—in 1998. The Congress mandated this plan, which was intended to serve as a baseline strategy for coordination of national policy and operational capabilities to combat terrorism both at home and abroad. The Department of Justice said that plan, in combination with several related presidential directives, represented a comprehensive national strategy. The plan identified several high-level goals aimed at preventing and deterring terrorism, maximizing international cooperation to combat terrorism, improving domestic crisis and consequence planning and management, improving state and local capabilities, safeguarding information infrastructure, and leading research and development efforts to enhance counterterrorism capabilities. The plan set forth efforts by the Department of Justice in partnership with other federal agencies to improve readiness to address the terrorist threat. The Department of Justice issued annual updates to the Five-Year Plan in 1999 and 2000, which did not revise the basic plan but tracked agencies’ progress in implementing the original plan. More recently, Justice Department officials told us they are no longer providing annual updates because other interagency plans have been released, as discussed below. In the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, a series of new national strategies were developed and published to help guide U.S. policy. Some of these national strategies are specific to combating terrorism, while others involve terrorism to lesser degrees. Table 1 describes various national strategies related to combating terrorism. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, and the National Strategy for Homeland Security all define terrorism. For example, the National Strategy for Homeland Security characterizes terrorism as “any premeditated, unlawful act dangerous to human life or public welfare that is intended to intimidate or coerce civilian populations or governments.” This description, according to that strategy, captures the core concepts shared by the various definitions of terrorism contained in the U.S. Code, each crafted to achieve a legal standard of specificity and clarity. This description covers kidnappings; hijackings; shootings; conventional bombings; attacks involving chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons; cyber attacks; and any number of other forms of malicious violence. Terrorists can be U.S. citizens or foreigners, acting in concert with others, on their own, or on behalf of a hostile state. Commonly accepted definitions of such terms as terrorism and homeland security help provide assurance that organizational, management, and budgetary decisions are made consistently across the organizations involved in a crosscutting effort. For example, they help guide agencies in organizing and allocating resources and can help promote more effective agency and intergovernmental operations by facilitating communication. A common definition also can help to enforce budget discipline and support more accurate monitoring of expenditures. Without commonly accepted definitions, the potential exists for an uncoordinated approach to combating terrorism caused by duplication of efforts or gaps in coverage, misallocation of resources, and inadequate monitoring of expenditures. We previously recommended that the President direct the Office of Homeland Security to (1) develop a comprehensive, governmentwide definition of homeland security and (2) include the definition in the forthcoming national strategy. Both recommendations were implemented with the publication of the National Strategy for Homeland Security. As we have testified before this subcommittee, an important step in developing sound strategies to combat terrorism is to develop a thorough assessment of the terrorist threat. Intelligence and law enforcement agencies continuously assess the foreign and domestic terrorist threats to the United States. To be considered a threat, a terrorist group must not only exist, but also have the intention and capability to launch attacks. In prior reports, we have recommended that the federal government conduct multidisciplinary and analytically sound threat assessments. Threat assessments are part of a risk management approach that can be used to establish requirements and prioritize program investments. In 1999 we recommended that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conduct a national-level authoritative threat assessment. According to FBI officials, they have recently completed their threat assessment related to our recommendation. We are in the process of reviewing the assessment to determine the extent it is consistent with our recommendation. We hope that such an assessment will be kept up to date and used to further develop and implement the new national strategies related to combating terrorism. Some of the new strategies we reviewed include some assessment of the threat. While some of the new strategies lay out the nature of the threats and the vulnerabilities in detail, others briefly describe the threat in general terms. For example, the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism discusses the nature of the terrorist threat today, including the structure of terrorism, the changing nature of terrorism, the interconnected terrorist organizations, the availability of weapons of mass destruction, and the new global environment. Some strategies describe both the threat of and vulnerability to terrorist attacks. For example, the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace discusses cyberspace threats and vulnerabilities facing the United States. It lays out the threats and vulnerabilities as a five-level problem—home user/small business, large enterprises, critical sectors and/or infrastructures, national issues and vulnerabilities, and global. Also, the National Strategy for the Physical Protection of Critical Infrastructures and Key Assets and the National Strategy for Homeland Security discuss both the threat and vulnerability of a terrorist attack. Other strategies we reviewed only briefly described the threat or simply defined the threat in general terms. For example, the National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction defined the threat, while the National Money Laundering Strategy provided limited discussion about the nature and extent of the threat. Now I will discuss the key topics that the subcommittee wants to address in this hearing, starting with the question of whether the new national strategies form a cohesive and comprehensive framework. While it will take some time for us to fully answer this question, we view the new strategies, and the framework they provide, as a positive step. The new strategies show cohesion in that they are organized in a hierarchy, share common themes, and cross-reference each other. In addition, the collective strategies are more comprehensive than the single strategy they generally replace because they include more detailed functions and more players. In our analysis, we found specific indicators that the strategies form a cohesive framework. For the purpose of this testimony, we are defining cohesiveness as the extent that the strategies have some hierarchy, share common themes, and link to each other. Regarding a hierarchy among strategies, I would like to again reference our July 2000 testimony. At that time, we stated that there should be one national strategy to combat terrorism with additional planning guidance (e.g., for specific functions) under the one strategy in a clear hierarchy. While the administration has not taken that exact path, its approach is similar. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America provides the overarching strategy related to national security as a whole, including terrorism. The National Strategy for Homeland Security and the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism provide, respectively, the more specific strategies related to combating terrorism at home and overseas. This differs from what we had envisioned in that there are two top-level strategies dedicated to terrorism instead of one. However, this approach is consistent with our earlier views because the two strategies cover separate topics—the first covers defensive domestic issues and the second covers offensive overseas issues. The other strategies provide further levels of detail on the specific functions related to military operations, money laundering, weapons of mass destruction, cyber security, and protection of physical infrastructure. Our interpretation of the hierarchy among strategies is somewhat different from how the administration has presented it. According to the administration, the National Security Strategy of the United States of America and the National Strategy for Homeland Security are top-level strategies that together address U.S. security both overseas and domestically. According to the administration, these two strategies establish a framework that takes precedence over all other national strategies, plans, and programs. However, we do not view the hierarchy as that absolute because some strategies contain independent elements that do not overlap with the other strategies. For an example of the latter, both the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace and the National Money Laundering Strategy include some domestic criminal elements not associated with national security or terrorism. Further, the National Drug Control Strategy has relatively little overlap with these other strategies. Figure 1 is an attempt to display graphically how some of these national strategies fit into a hierarchy and overlap. Within the hierarchy of strategies, more detailed functional strategies might be useful, as illustrated by the National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction. In our August 2002, report on the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration’s research and development (R&D) program, we recommended that the Office of Homeland Security clarify that agency’s Nonproliferation and Verification R&D Program’s role in relation to other agencies conducting counterterrorism R&D and to achieve an appropriate balance between short-term and long-term research. We also reported that there is a conflict among Department of Energy laboratories between short- versus long-term research and that this conflict has created a gap in which the most important immediate needs of users, or highest risks, are in some cases going unaddressed in favor of an advanced technology that only can be delivered over the long term. The National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction addresses our concerns, in part, by noting that the new Counterproliferation Technology Coordination Committee will act to improve interagency coordination of U.S. government counterproliferation research and development efforts. The committee is expected to assist in identifying gaps and overlaps in existing programs and in examining options for future investment strategies. The various strategies also show cohesion by sharing common themes. For example, nearly all of the strategies contain either goals or objectives relating to strengthening international relationships and cooperation and strengthening intelligence gathering and analysis capabilities, while just over half of the strategies contain either goals or objectives relevant to the strengthening of capabilities to deter, prevent, and respond to weapons of mass destruction.