S. HRG。108-54的巩固情报分析：THE审查的主席的建议来创建恐怖威胁集成中心=======================================================================的政府事务委员会之前，美国听证会SENATE ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION __________ FEBRUARY 14 AND 26, 2003 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs 86-773 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON : 2003 ____________________________________________________________________________ For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512�091800 Fax: (202) 512�092250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402�090001 COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine, Chairman TED STEVENS, Alaska JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio CARL LEVIN, Michigan NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois MARK DAYTON, Minnesota JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama MARK PRYOR, Arkansas Michael D. Bopp, Staff Director and Chief Counsel David A. Kass, Chief Investigative Counsel Joyce Rechtschaffen, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel Michael A. Alexander, Minority Professional Staff Member Darla D. Cassell, Chief Clerk C O N T E N T S ------ Opening statements: Page Senator Collins.............................................. 1, 45 Senator Lieberman............................................ 3 Senator Sununu............................................... 5 Senator Lautenberg........................................... 20 Senator Pryor................................................ 23 Senator Akaka............................................... 26, 56 Senator Coleman.............................................. 47 Prepared statement: Senator Shelby............................................... 74 WITNESSES Friday, February 14, 2003 Hon. Warren B. Rudman, Co-Chair, U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century.......................................... 7 Hon. James S. Gilmore, III, Chairman, Advisory Panel to Assess the Capabilities for Domestic Response to Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction.................................... 9 James B. Steinberg, Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy Studies, The Brookings Institution............................. 30 Jeffrey H. Smith, Former General Counsel (1995-1996), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)...................................... 33 Wednesday, February 26, 2003 Winston P. Wiley, Associate Director of Central Intelligence for Homeland Security and Chair, Senior Steering Group............. 48 Pasquale J. D'Amuro, Executive Assistant Director for Counterterrorism/Counterintelligence, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)............................................ 52 Hon. Gordon England, Deputy Secretary, Department of Homeland Security....................................................... 53 Alphabetical List of Witnesses D'Amuro, Pasquale J.: Testimony.................................................... 52 Prepared statement........................................... 117 England, Hon. Gordon: Testimony.................................................... 53 Gilmore, Hon. James S., III: Testimony.................................................... 9 Prepared statement........................................... 76 Rudman, Hon. Warren B.: Testimony.................................................... 7 Smith, Jeffrey H.: Testimony.................................................... 33 Prepared statement........................................... 100 Steinberg, James B.: Testimony.................................................... 30 Prepared statement........................................... 95 Wiley, Winston P.: Testimony.................................................... 48 Prepared statement........................................... 113 Appendix Response to Senators Levin and Collins transcript request from Mr. Wiley referred to on page 69............................... 73 Chart entitled ``Primary Agencies Handling Terrorist-Related Intelligence (With Terrorist Threat Integration Center),'' submitted by Senator Collins................................... 119 Responses to Post-Hearing Questions for the Record from Senator Akaka for: Mr. Wiley.................................................... 120 Responses to Post-Hearing Questions for the Record from Senator Shelby for: Mr. Wiley.................................................... 127 Hon. England................................................. 133 CONSOLIDATING INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS: A REVIEW OF THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSAL TO CREATE A TERRORIST THREAT INTEGRATION CENTER ---------- FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2003 U.S. Senate, Committee on Governmental Affairs, Washington, DC. The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:32 a.m., in room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Susan M. Collins, Chairman of the Committee, presiding. Present: Senators Collins, Coleman, Sununu, Lieberman, Akaka, Lautenberg, and Pryor. OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS Chairman Collins. The Committee will come to order. Good morning. Today the Committee on Governmental Affairs will review the President's recent proposal to create a new Terrorist Threat Integration Center. The President's announcement of this new center is the latest in the series of actions taken by the administration and by Congress to address the government's serious failure to analyze and act upon the intelligence it gathers related to terrorism. Some of these failures have become well known. For example, in January 2000 the CIA learned of a meeting of al Qaeda operatives that was taking place in Malaysia. The CIA knew that one of the participants in this meeting, Khalid al-Midhar, had a visa to enter the United States. It failed, however, to list his name on the terrorist watch list and he entered the country just 2 weeks later. Al-Midhar returned to Saudi Arabia and in June 2001 he received yet another U.S. visa. Although 1\1/2\ years had passed, his name was still not on the watch list. The CIA did not conduct a review of the Malaysian meeting until August 2001. Following that review it finally placed al- Midhar on the terrorist watch list. By then, of course, it was too late. He was already in the United States and within weeks would participate in the September 11 attacks on our Nation. Failures such as these were not unique to the CIA. In July 2001, an FBI agent in the Phoenix field office warned his superiors that Osama bin Laden appeared to be sending some of his operatives to the United States for flight training. The agent recommended a number of actions the Bureau should undertake, but his recommendations were ignored. One month later, agents in the FBI's Minneapolis field office detained Zacarias Moussaoui, a former student pilot, based on suspicions that he was involved in a hijacking plot. FBI headquarters denied the Minneapolis agents permission to apply for a court order to search Moussaoui's belongings. According to the joint inquiry conducted by the Senate and the House Intelligence Committees, this decision was based on a faulty understanding of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. These are only a few of the most publicized and notable examples of the government's failure to analyze, share, or act on critical intelligence information. The Joint Congressional inquiry into the September 11 attacks lamented that the U.S. Government does not presently bring together in one place all terrorism related information from all sources. While the Counter Terrorist Center does manage overseas operations and has access to most intelligence community information, it does not collect terrorism related information from all sources domestic and foreign. In addition, the Congressional inquiry found that information was not sufficiently shared not only between different intelligence community agencies but also within individual agencies, and between intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Now some steps have been taken to address these problems. The FBI has begun to place greater emphasis on developing its analytical capability. It has expanded its joint terrorism task forces and it is attempting to improve its relationship and communication with the CIA. More FBI personnel have been assigned to the CIA's Counter Terrorist Center and more CIA agents now work at the FBI's Counterterrorism Division. In addition, Congress took significant action aimed at improving the analysis and flow of intelligence information by creating the new Department of Homeland Security. One of the Department's directorates will be devoted to information analysis and infrastructure protection. In addition to these steps, the President has announced that he believes a new independent entity is needed. The proposal advanced by the President would create a Terrorist Threat Integration Center that is the focus of our hearing today. The center would ensure that intelligence information from all sources is shared, integrated, and analyzed seamlessly and then acted upon quickly, to quote the President. The new center would include staff from the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA, and the Department of Defense. As of yet, however, we know few details about the proposed integration center. We have many questions regarding its structure, the scope of its authority, how it will interact with other agencies in the intelligence community as well as law-enforcement agencies, and even where it should be located, in which department? I believe that there are three principles that should guide the center's creation. First, the integration center should not be duplicative. Many government agencies currently conduct intelligence analyses. We should be working to combine these efforts, not duplicate them. Second, emphasis must be placed on sharing the integration center's analytical product. Good intelligence collection and analysis currently exists. Too often, however, the information does not get to those people who need it in a timely manner or in a form that is useful. The integration center needs to focus on sharing its product with other Federal agencies and, equally important, with appropriate State and local agencies. Third, the integration center must be structured in a way that breaks through the bureaucratic barriers that exist still among intelligence agencies and not hide behind them. I hope that today's hearing will help the President achieve those goals. We will review what we now know about the integration center, and we will ask our very distinguished witnesses today to discuss the elements that are necessary for this new entity to be the successful and efficient center that our President envisions and our country needs. I would now like to turn to the distinguished Ranking Member of the Committee, Senator Lieberman, for any opening remarks that he might have. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LIEBERMAN Senator Lieberman. Thank you, Madam Chairman, for holding this hearing, and also for your excellent opening statement. I consider the topic of the hearing to be one of the more important offensives, if I can put it that way, in the war against terrorism, which is the consolidation of information and intelligence regarding the threats that are received daily from an array of sources available to our government. The intelligence disconnect, some of which you described in your opening statement, Madam Chairman, that in part led to the September 11 terrorist attacks are an embarrassment that should never have happened in the first place and we must never allow to happen again. I appreciate your leadership here in calling this hearing, the first, I believe, on the President's State of the Union proposal to overcome some of our intelligence failures which is, of course, a matter of urgency. I also want to join you in welcoming our witnesses, Senator Rudman, particularly, our colleague, our never-ending source of wisdom, even good humor, who has proven, as my wife keeps telling me, that one has ample opportunities outside of public service to continue to serve the public and he has done it really well. Governor Gilmore, thank you for being here again. Mr. Smith and Mr. Steinberg, the same. I am disappointed that we are not going to hear from an administration representative today. I gather they could not make it today, but I am hopeful that we will have the opportunity soon because we have a lot of questions for them. We are now in the midst of a Code Orange, as everyone knows, a high terror alert. That combined with warnings from the directors of the FBI and CIA that another terrorist attack might be imminent, perhaps as early as this week, along with official suggestions that citizens create safe rooms in their homes and stockpile food and water, has understandably created widespread anxiety throughout our country. We must take this moment to allay the fear, but also to galvanize our government and to motivate all Americans to help make our country safe again. Creation of an effective intelligence analysis center is a vital step in that direction. The disastrous disconnects among our intelligence agencies, the culture of rivalry rather than cooperation, turf battles rather than teamwork that have plagued the intelligence community have been well-documented elsewhere. For some time, a large number of people inside and outside of Congress have been advocates for a central location in our government where all the intelligence collected by the various agencies that make up the intelligence community, as well as open source information and information collected by Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies can be brought together and analyzed, synthesized, and shared. The idea is, in the familiar metaphor, to connect all the dots to create a full picture so that we have a kind of early warning on what our adversaries are up to, where they are planning to strike so that we can stop them before their plans are carried out. Last year, as part of the debate on the Homeland Security bill this Committee approved the creation of such an office. We were greatly aided in our work by Senator Arlen Specter and by the co-chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committees, Senator Richard Shelby and Senator Bob Graham. In fact after investigating the September 11 attacks, the Senate and House Intelligence Committees called on Congress and the administration to use the authority provided in the Homeland Security Act to establish an all-sources intelligence division within the Homeland Security Department. And the Intelligence Committee went on to lay out several criteria for this analysis center which I will include in the record, Madam Chairman, rather than reciting here. We had a bit of a debate during the last session on this. Our Committee originally proposed something very similar to what the Intelligence Committee was asking. The administration originally argued that the Department of Homeland Security's role here should be limited to analyzing intelligence primarily to protect critical infrastructure. The final legislation created a division within the new department that would be a central location for all threat information. Now I take the administration's proposal to have created a broad consensus and common ground that many have been fighting for all along, which is to create an all-sources intelligence analysis center. There remains a matter of structural disagreement, which I hope this Committee can consider and shed some light on, and hopefully extend the consensus. The President, obviously, would have the new center report to the Director of Central Intelligence rather than the Secretary of Homeland Security. I would like, in the weeks ahead for the administration to tell us how they think, if they do, that this center that they are proposing differs from the one created by the Homeland Security Act and why they have chosen to move in this direction rather than implementing that provision of the act. It needs to tell us how the so-called TTIC--as an entity reporting to the Director of Central Intelligence--will overcome the institutional rivalries to information sharing that has already hindered the Counter Terrorist Center at the CIA, and other agencies in the intelligence community--from becoming truly all-source intelligence analysis centers. It must answer questions about the center's role, if any, in the collection of domestic intelligence, and about the wisdom of expanding the role of the Director of Central Intelligence in domestic intelligence. The administration needs to let the Congress know why the center's director should not be confirmed by the Senate. I am also interested in understanding what the center's role will be with respect to disseminating intelligence analysis to other Federal agencies and to State and local law enforcement, and how it proposes to collect information from them. As the witnesses and my colleagues on the panel know, States local officials complain to each of us that they have not, up until this time, been kept in the loop by Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. And there are many questions about the proposed budget of the TTIC; the number of analysts it will have and the administration's timetable for getting it up and running. I know that we have extraordinary witnesses, very able and experienced who can help us illuminate and answer some of these questions and as I say, Madam Chairman, I look forward to discussing them directly with the administration's representatives at the earliest possible date. But for now I thank you for holding this hearing and for moving as expeditiously as you have to examine what is clearly one of the most important issues we face in the near term in shoring up our homeland defenses. Thank you. Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator Lieberman. We will be having a second hearing at which administration witnesses will be called to testify. I, like you, look forward to hearing more from them on the details and the answers to the many important questions that your statement raised. We are now going to move to our first panel. We are fortunate this morning to have two extraordinary public servants who have given a great deal of their time and energy and thought to analyzing our Nation's intelligence needs. We are very fortunate to be joined by former Senator Warren Rudman, and former Governor James Gilmore. I am fighting with Senator Sununu for the honor of introducing Senator Rudman. I, too, consider him to be a constituent since he does have a home in Maine. But I think that your claim, Senator Sununu, probably goes back further so I will yield to you to introduce Senator Rudman. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SUNUNU Senator Sununu. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. It is an honor to serve in the Senate, and despite having served in the House for 6 years, as a new member of the Senate you come with some deal of trepidation. We all know that we walk in the shadows of our predecessors and we are prepared to deal with that, but it does not change the fact that sitting here in this Committee room for our first hearing I was a little bit surprised to hear Senator Rudman's name invoked a half a dozen times before I even got a chance to talk. And now we have a hearing scheduled, and of course he's here to provide his perspective on such an important topic. But rather than be discomfited by this, I fully understand the reason. It is an honor to serve in his footsteps but it is also an honor to be a part of this Committee and to be able to bring him forward to provide his wealth of experience. He has served as a Korean War veteran, as Attorney General for the State of New Hampshire, as a U.S. Senator, and as a leader of this Committee during an important time in dealing with questions of intelligence, oversight, and foreign policy, that being the hearings on Iran-Contra. He has remained dedicated to public service even, as Senator Lieberman has pointed out, after leaving the U.S. Senate. He has been a member of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, a winner of the Presidential Gold Medal for his service, in particular in acting as an adviser and a resource on questions of intelligence. The reason his perspective has been so important in that regard is because he has worked with local law enforcement in the process of gathering and providing intelligence from that grass roots level. He has, of course, worked in a great capacity in the U.S. Senate dealing with Congressional oversight and our role in understanding how intelligence is gathered and used to provide for national security. He has served in the executive capacity as well, offering advice on the consolidation, use of intelligence, and sharing of intelligence. I cannot imagine someone who is more qualified to provide an important perspective on the challenge we now face, but I also cannot think of a challenge that is greater for the new Department of Homeland Security. Consolidating our intelligence resources, breaking down some of the cultural barriers that have existed to effective intelligence sharing in the past has been identified by this Committee and by others looking at the new Department of Homeland Security as one of the premier challenges this organization will face. Being able to rely on the expert perspective of Governor Gilmore and my friend Warren Rudman is essential to us doing this right the first time. Warren Rudman has been a great friend to me and a great friend to my family. There is always a wealth of pride that comes from that kind of a long-standing personal relationship, but in New Hampshire he is also regarded as a great citizen and a great public servant and that is why it is really a pleasure to be able to introduce him here today. Welcome, Senator Rudman. Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator Sununu. Our other panelist, James S. Gilmore, served as Governor of Virginia from 1998 to 2002. Since 1999, he has been the chairman of the Congressional advisory commission on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, which everyone calls the Gilmore Commission. In December 2002, the Gilmore Commission issued its fourth report which focused in part on the creation of an intelligence fusion center. The Gilmore Commission recommended the creation of a national Counter Terrorist Center as a stand-alone agency outside of the FBI, CIA, and DHS. It also recommended that this entity be an independent agency with a leader appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Gentlemen, I am very grateful to have you join us this morning. I look forward to hearing your opening statements. I would ask that you limit them to about 10 minutes and your longer written statement, if any, will be submitted for the record without objection. Senator Rudman, we will start with you. Again, thank you for being here. TESTIMONY OF HON. WARREN B. RUDMAN, CO-CHAIR, U.S. COMMISSION ON NATIONAL SECURITY/21ST CENTURY Mr. Rudman. Good morning, Madam Chairman, Senator Lieberman. First, let me thank my friend John Sununu for that very gracious introduction. I must tell you, though it is very elevating to be back in this hearing room where I spent so much time, it is a bit depressing to look at Senator Sununu and realize that he was 16 years of age when he and his father and I campaigned against each other in a Republican primary for the U.S. Senate. That tells me how young he is and how old I am, and that is a bit depressing. I am also delighted to see my old friend, Senator Lautenberg, and glad to meet for the first time, Senator Coleman. Madam Chairman, you and the Ranking Member have really asked a number of questions that are the questions that have to be answered. I doubt very much either Governor Gilmore and I can answer all of those questions because, although I am very familiar with this proposal and how it has come to be, it is still very much an embryonic proposal. I think one of the reasons you do not have administration witnesses here today is they wanted to be prepared to answer those very searching questions which I think are key. I think maybe the most important question that you both referred to in your opening statements is simply this: We are all very familiar with the Homeland Security Act. Senator Hart and our commission proposed that department and testified many times here before the House and the Senate. It finally evolved in pretty much the shape that we had hoped it would, but I have never really quite understood how the intelligence function within the Department of Homeland Security will be discharged. I am even confounded more with the creation of this new department, or this new joint venture if you will, which I fully support, but there has to be some sort of sharp delineation between the mission of the intelligence unit mandated by the Congress within the Department of Homeland Security and this new threat integration center which will be an all-source, all-agency unit. If you are not careful you will start having some crosstalk here between these two agencies, and the last thing you need in either collection or analysis is not only competition but confusion. So I hope that when the administration comes here, and I am sure they will, they will set out for you precisely what that is. I tried to find out for the last several days by talking to some of my friends and, frankly, I do not think that has clearly evolved, and that is understandable. This proposal was only evolved about a month or so ago, presented by the President in the State of the Union. I think when you finally have those witnesses here you will probably get a clear understanding. But I think that is one of the most important questions. When I look back at my 9 years on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and chairing the board and looking at all sorts of all-source, raw, sophisticated, non- sophisticated, signals and human intel, two things occur to me. That the massive intelligence that is received by both U.S. foreign intelligence agencies and the FBI and domestic intelligence is daunting. The amount of reporting--I sometimes think we have too much reporting, not not enough. A good example, for those of you that have had experience on the Intelligence Committee, or in the Armed Services Committee, is the amount of information received by the National Security Agency. The amount of signal intel received there, and how it gets analyzed, and how it get compartmentalized, and how it gets separated is truly a daunting task. Now we are faced with a new issue, which is why I think this proposal has been made. We have two distinctly different kinds of intelligence that this government receives. One, foreign intelligence based on threats that are non-terrorist, that are state-sponsored as opposed to non-governmental organizations which are terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and many others. It is very easy, or easier, to target state-sponsored terrorism, or if you will, state-sponsored military action, which is what the CIA and the NSA and all the other agencies have done well over a long period of time. It is far more difficult to try to direct intelligence, both signals and human intel, against people who you do not know who they are sometimes. They do not have an address. We do not know where they live. We do not know how they are organized. So first you have to figure that out before you know how to collect. So what they are now going to do, from what I understand, is to take and put together a joint venture, to put it in corporate terms. This is not going to be a new department or a new agency. It is going to be a joint venture of the CIA, the FBI, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and all of the Defense Department intelligence agencies, from the NSA to the NRO, and all of them. They will be all located together and their job will be not collection--they will have nothing to do with collection. They will depend on traditional collection, foreign from CIA and all of the DOD agencies; domestic from the FBI, and all of their resources around the country. What they will do is to analyze in one place and collect in one place all the reporting on terrorism as opposed to the myriad of other things that the CIA does. Now one thing that has to be clearly understood by the public is that there seems to be an attitude out there that the CIA and the FBI are only concerned now with terrorism. That is hardly the case. There are a lot of issues in this world involving Asia, Europe, involving the Middle East that the CIA must report to policymakers on important intelligence. So this is not the only thing they have to do. The problem we have had is that it has all been amalgamated in one place even though the Director of the CIA and the Director of the FBI have labored mightily through the creation of Counter Terrorist Centers and joint terrorism centers to try to get it consolidated. Although that has worked, it probably has not worked well enough, so this proposal is before you. As I understand this proposal will be a group of individuals that will be solely charged with being the focal point for gathering collection, both foreign and domestic, on all matters of terrorism. Now curiously, although the number is classified I can tell you this, that the overwhelming amount of collection on domestic terrorism is collected overseas, which I think, Madam Chairman and Senator Lieberman, is probably the reason that the administration has decided, and I think wisely, that the Director of the CIA should be the person to whom the head of this new joint venture reports, because they will be dealing in the main with foreign intelligence. The domestic intelligence will be collected by the FBI, but since most of our adversaries in the area of terrorism are located overseas, although we certainly have some of them in this country, it is not surprising that the overwhelming amount of intelligence that is gathered on domestic terrorism is not gathered within the continental United States, Hawaii, or Alaska. It is collected in other places. So I think the structure is good. The problem will be, as someone once said, the devil is in the details, and I do not think any of us have enough detail now to be able to comment with any real accuracy on how it is all going to come together. My sense is that they have staged it about right. They are going to start small, and they believe they have anywhere from a 2 to a 4-year time line to get it fully functional, although it will be functioning as early as later this year. It will have representatives from the Bureau, from the Agency, State, and all of the DOD agencies. Their information technology will be unique in that it will connect with everyone else that is in this business. The Department of Homeland Security will do some collection through the Coast Guard, through the INS, or through the Border Patrol. It will also, I expect, report in to this unit. So I think that all I will say in this opening statement is that there are more questions right now than there are answers. I think the concept is very sound. I think we need a single place, not located at the FBI or the CIA, but a group of people from various parts of this government who form a team to analyze the kind of information that the Chairman referred to, which may have slipped through the cracks in the past. I think it is a sound proposal and I support it, but there are a lot of questions you are going to have to ask when you get the administration before you. Thank you. Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator Rudman. Governor Gilmore. TESTIMONY OF HON. JAMES S. GILMORE, III,\1\ CHAIRMAN, ADVISORY PANEL TO ASSESS THE CAPABILITIES FOR DOMESTIC RESPONSE TO TERRORISM INVOLVING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION Mr. Gilmore. Thank you, Madam Chairman, Senator Lieberman, and Members of the U.S. Senate. Thank you for the opportunity to be here to carry out our advisory function on your behalf. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Gilmore appears in the Appendix on page 76. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am the chairman of the advisory panel to assess domestic response capabilities with terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction. This is a panel that was created by law, by statute of the U.S. Congress at the initiation of the U.S. Congress. It was initiated by Congressman Curt Weldon, who saw the need for this, and then it was concurred with by the U.S. Senate as we moved forward. This discussion went forward at the end of 1998. The commission was stood up in January 1999. I was approached as Governor of Virginia and asked whether I would chair the commission. It is staffed by the Rand Corporation. The commission is now and has been in the past made up not by people from inside the Beltway, but instead the Congress in its wisdom decided to set up a committee that was different. The advisory panel that we have is heavy on fire, police, rescue, emergency services, health care, epidemiologists, including retired general officers and people from the intelligence community. So it is a bit of a different mix. In the first year that we met, in the year 1999 we did a threat assessment, and by statute every year we report on December 15 every year to the Congress and to the President. In that year, December 15, 1999, our first report was a threat assessment. We assessed the question of a genuine threat of weapons of mass destruction in the United States, and considerd at the end of the day that it was much less likely that those weapons could be acquired and delivered in the homeland than a conventional attack. We believed that a conventional attack of major proportions was much more probable. But we also refused to rule out the possibility of weapons of mass destruction as we had basically a 3-year commission and wanted to explore it further. We did say that we thought there was a need for a national strategy. In the second year when we reported in December 15, 2000 we did probably our most important policy work. At that time we reminded all authorities there needed to be a national strategy. We proposed the creation of a national office in the Office of the President to create such a national strategy. We defined that national strategy as not being Federal, but instead being Federal, State, and local all together. We were concerned about the issues of intelligence. At that time we recommended tossing out the rule that said that the CIA could not recruit bad guys overseas as being a fairly ridiculous rule. We recommended and pointed out the concern about stovepiping and the fact that intelligence was not being shared laterally across Federal agencies, and was absolutely not being shared vertically between Federal, State, and local authorities. In the third year, our closing year, we focused on certain areas where we thought the national strategy could be furthered by the work of the advisory panel, and that included health care, the concern about border controls, the use of Federal and locals, the use of the military and areas like that. Now we were basically done about the first week of September and sent the report off to the printer and got ready to go out of business a little early in October when the September 11 attack occurred. At the time, the Congress extended our commission 2 years. So we have finished our fourth report in December 15 of this year. This is our fourth report which we have submitted to the members of the Congress, the Senate and the House, and to the President. In this fourth report we go over a number of key issues. My admonition to the panel has been to try to stay ahead of this debate so that we could be of useful advice to the Senate and to the House. I think we have done that. I think we have stayed ahead of the debate as we have gone along. I might point out several crosscutting issues in the fourth report that I want to emphasize. Of all of our analysis, the crosscutting issues we have tried to emphasize is the importance of the civil liberties of the American people, because we are deeply concerned that we will overreact and fix problems structurally in such a way that we will imply dangers to the civil liberties of the American people. The second is the importance and the value of the State and local authorities, their need for funding, financing, strategizing, and exercising. The third is the implications of the private sector and the fact that most critical infrastructure is in the hands of the private sector, and the need to find a method by which the private sector is drawn in. And then fourth, intelligence, and the concern of all these crosscutting issues. Senators and Madam Chairman, the fourth report focuses on a broad range of areas. These are comprehensive reports, each of them that have come forward. They are extensive and detailed in a broad range of areas as I have laid out. The fourth report--I will just focus for a moment on the National Counter Terrorist Center that we proposed. On the intelligence section of this commission's report we expressed and focused our attention on the intelligence area. We saw a need for a fusion center. We have recommended it as the National Counter Terrorist Center. We called it the NCTC. Everybody in Washington has acronyms. That was ours. We recommended December 15 of this past year that there needed to be a fusion center to draw together information. The President announced in his State of the Union address the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), which seems to be a parallel concept. We congratulate the President on his initiative. We believed in our recommendation that it needs to be a stand-alone agency. We spent the better part of the year discussing the issue of whether it should be in the Department of Homeland Security or in another agency. We recommended that it be in no other agency or department; that it be a stand- alone agency, an independent agency like the EPA or FEMA or the General Services Administration. We recommended that the head of it be with the advice and the consent of the Senate. This parallels the recommendation that we had on the Office of Homeland Security in the year 2000 where we recommended that it be at the advice and consent of the Senate in order to make the national legislature a full partner in all of these processes in the Executive Branch. We recommend that it not be in the Department of Homeland Security because the customers of this new agency, this new fusion center will not just be the Department of Homeland Security, but in addition, the Department of Justice, the Health and Human Services, Departments of Defense, State, and Agriculture. We believed that this structure of independence would make it a better and honest broker than having it in one particular department. We see the need for the States and localities to be tied in, and that this creates a vehicle for the fusion of information with the States and locals also, which is, by the way, where a broad mass of the information on law enforcement issues across this country is located. The Federal Government is poorer if they do not have the benefit of that information, and the States and locals are surely poorer if they do not have the benefit of the national collection information that is at the Federal level. The information we have is that it is still not a two-way street in terms of information going up and down the line between Federal, States, and locals but it is improving. In fact I had a meeting with Admiral Abbott, the President's homeland security adviser and they are instituting processes to facilitate that type of information. Ladies and gentlemen of the Senate, within our commission this is not controversial. This was, other than the fact that we debated some of the structural issues, the creation of a fusion center was easy; not a controversial proposal. I will not dwell on it, but I will point out that our commission, on the other hand, addressed the issue of the collection function, the gathering of counterintelligence information in the homeland. This was highly controversial within our commission. That debate is set out in its entirety in the report. There was a strong debate about whether or not to rely on the FBI to continue this counterintelligence function or whether a new organization should be set up. The debate was quite intense, quite a long discussion. I personally believe that we should require the FBI to carry out this function in its most effective way and hold them strictly accountable and build on their processes. That view was rejected by the commission. The commission has instead recommended very strongly that there be a new agency for the collection function here in the United States; a separate organization. I can discuss that in more detail as necessary, though it is not strictly, Madam Chairman, the subject of your discussion today. We did in our report recommend that the Congress must concentrate its oversight function. That it is too disparate. We have been saying it for years and continue to say it. We believe that the oversight function for this fusion center should be concentrated in the Intelligence Committees of the two houses. We do see this as different from some of the other proposals that are similar that have come forward. Senators Graham and Edwards have each suggested a fusion center also, although I believe they place it within the Department of Justice. Also there have been some suggestions that the intelligence gathering organization would look like the British MI5. We believe that while it is a similar concept, the American system probably would not tolerate a British organization quite like that. We believe the Department of Homeland Security should have the authority to directly levee intelligence requirements on this new fusion center. That is our recommendation. And we recommend that the Senate and House strongly urge or require the Attorney General to gather together all legal authorities in this country, which at this point are disparate and confused and misunderstood in broad measure, in order to make sure that everybody knows what everybody is doing and what they should and should not do, so we make sure that we protect the liberties of the American people. That I think, Senator, sums up your official advisory panel's recommendations. We are here at all times, naturally, at your disposal to continue to provide advice and counsel. Chairman Collins. Thank you very much, Governor. I was very pleased to hear your emphasis on protecting the civil liberties of the American people as we seek to have that organizational structure that will allow us to do a better job of connecting the dots. The administration is not planning to submit legislation to create the new center. Do you think it would be advisable for Congress to legislatively create the center in order to have the kinds of legal protections to ensure that civil liberties are not infringed upon? Mr. Gilmore. It would depend upon the way that the Senate and the House decided that they wished to define this. It is clear the administration believes that they have the administrative authority to, as Senator Rudman says, to create a joint venture and bring these organizations together. I suspect that what is at work here is an effort to try and experiment with this, and to draw together the people into one located place, as opposed to going into a legislative process at the beginning, which then at that point involves a great deal of bureaucracy and setting structures into place by statute. My suspicion at this point and belief is that the administration thinks that they would like to try it administratively, see how well it works. Then I would think at that point the option would be open to the President and the Congress to more institutionalize it by statute. Chairman Collins. You mentioned in your testimony that you did not think that this new entity should be part of the Department of Homeland Security because DHS will be a customer of it. You also said the commission recommended that it be a separate entity. What do you think of the President's plan to have the entity reporting directly to the CIA Director. Mr. Gilmore. That is a very interesting concept. I have been trying to analyze that as I have thought about it and I am aware of the Senate's concern about it. I believe that the commission's feeling would be that we strongly approve of the separation of the CIA's function and to not try to turn them into a domestic intelligence gathering organization. I do not know though that the reporting to the Director of Central Intelligence, who I think at the inception of his position was designed to be a gatherer of information in one place, would necessarily cross that line. Just because the Director of Central Intelligence is aware or is in a supervisory capacity for the fusion center does not necessarily mean that would then implicate the CIA with activities within the homeland. But there is, of course, this outstanding issue of how do you gather counterintelligence information in the homeland. But I do not think there is any proposal that the CIA should cross that line, but I do not think that reporting to the Director of Central Intelligence would cross that line. Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Rudman, you are very familiar with the Counter Terrorist Center that already exists within the CIA, and indeed, last year at a hearing Director Tenet described the Counter Terrorist Center as being created to ``enable the fusion of all sources of information in a single action- oriented unit.'' Do you see the President's proposal for a Terrorist Threat Integration Center as duplicating the work that is already being done at the Counter Terrorist Center at the CIA, or do you see it as adding value and an improvement over what we have? Mr. Rudman. Madam Chairman, I think it is a broadening of that concept by bringing more people into it in larger numbers. That is essentially, as I understand it, unless it has changed in the last year, FBI, CIA, and a few other people. This involves a lot more than that. This involves those two agencies plus a number of other places such as State, such as all of the DOD agencies which are not all contained there now. So I think it is a broadening. My understanding is that they are going to try to co-locate that with this new TTIC. That is my understanding, because they believe that the functions will be complementary. I agree with Governor Gilmore when he said that they are working their way through to find out how this will finally look. It well may be that a year or two from now you might want to create a whole separate unit. I think right now the administration feels, because of the criticality of the information we are trying to put together, that we ought to take the corporate model and have a joint venture, or if you will, take the model of DOD when they have got an action that is going to take place in a place that requires Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force and put together a joint task force to accomplish a particular mission. I think that is the concept here. So, no, I do not think it is a duplication. I think it is a broadening and probably an improvement. I want to make just one comment that is kind of tangential to your question. I understand the Gilmore Commission's position. It is a terrific report and I have followed their work very closely. I think you have got to think long and hard when you start separating collection from analysis. That's the problem I had with their proposal. There have been debates within the Gilmore Commission about that. I do not know how Jim personally feels about that, but as we go down the line here we know that the TTIC will do no collection. We know collection will stay exactly where it is now. The question then becomes, if you were to legislate and create a separate unit with a Cabinet-confirmed officer for a national threat integration department, the problem I have with that is, and knowing this government as I know it, at that point they are separated from the people who do their collection. I just wonder, knowing what we know over the last 20 years, how much attention the FBI and the CIA pay to people, who even though they are mandated by law to do a particular job, are not part of their own team. The advantage of the joint venture is that you have got everyone there in line authority to the people who run the key agency. So it is an interesting proposal. I think you would have to give a lot of thought to separating collection. I also agree totally, we ought not to change the law upon the CIA's authority and its lack of authority in terms of collecting against U.S. citizens. We ought to keep that just the way it is. Chairman Collins. Thank you, both. We are doing 6-minute rounds and my time has expired so I will call on Senator Lieberman. Senator Lieberman. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thanks again to both of you. Let me read you both a statement from the New York Times which I believe was on the day after the President made this proposal. The Times article quoted an unnamed administration official as stating that while the information sharing between the FBI, CIA, and other intelligence agencies has gotten better--and here is the quote--``it has been by brute force.'' You both have had some experience in this and maybe the first question seems like a naive one but I think we ought to put it on the table. What is the problem here? Why do the intelligence and law enforcement communities have trouble cooperating in something so critical? And apparently even still after the horror of September 11, why do we need brute force to get them to do it? I hesitate to repeat rumors you read in the media but one of the news magazines published a story that the original plan for the Terrorism Threat Integration Center was to announce that there would be co-location of FBI and CIA personnel, apparently out at Langley. And then both objected. So for now that has been--I do not know if that is true--held in abeyance. But talk to us a little bit about the human--not the human intelligence but the human problems, the cultural problems that we face to get this job done, because it is so critical. Senator Rudman. Mr. Rudman. That is an excellent question, Senator Lieberman, and the answer is fairly complicated. Let me say what it is not. I do not believe from my experience, now which goes over a 20-year period dealing very intimately with these two groups of people, that this is a matter of obstinacy or stubbornness or turf. I think these people are patriotic, hard- working Americans who are trying to get their job done. Senator Lieberman. Agreed. Mr. Rudman. So I do not think that they are saying, I am not going to share this with the FBI because I won't get credit for it or vice versa. I think the problem is far more significant, and no one has yet figured out how to deal with it, although I think this new agency, this joint venture if you will, might help. The FBI and the CIA have total different missions. Until September 11, if you were to do a pie chart of the responsibilities of the FBI you would have a narrow sliver that would be counterterrorism or counterespionage, which they did very well during World War II. The big part of it would be law enforcement. Several thousand statutes comprise the U.S. criminal code, passed by this Congress, and the FBI is the primary enforcer of those laws. So their mission, in their own minds until that date was to investigate, go before grand juries with U.S. Attorneys, get indictments, and help in prosecution. When you look at all the corporate scandal over the last 2 years, who is it that is doing all the investigating? It is the FBI, and well they should. So that is their mindset. The CIA, on the other hand, has a far different mindset. Their mindset is, even if they are aware of crimes being committed, their job is not to go out and ``prevent crime in the short-term.'' Sometimes that would be counterproductive to getting the kind of the intelligence you want by connecting the dots, if you will, and connecting the people. So the agency would prefer to take a lot of time to get off the information to help protect infrastructure and people, whereas the FBI as soon as they have got enough information they want to go to a grand jury and get an indictment. So that is a very basic difference. Now I think equally important, part of the problem has been the inability of these two agencies, which I have personal knowledge of, to share information. My point being that if the information is in drawer A at the FBI and drawer B at the CIA and information ought to come together, the information technology has not allowed it to come together. With all due respect, I would say to the Chairman that although I fully agree there were oversights, I would like someone to go back and look at the reporting for the month before and the month-- for 2 months before, 60-days reporting on terrorism at the FBI and the CIA. I would be willing to hazard a guess, Madam Chairman, there were thousands of reports. The problem was, how do you pick out the right ones. I mean, 20/20 hindsight is great. Now we look afterwards and we say, sure, they should have looked at it. But what were they looking at? How much paper were they looking at? Senator Lieberman. I think this may be one of the more interesting activities and findings of the September 11 commission. Mr. Rudman. I think it is key and I hope they will look at that. But I would answer your collective question that if anything will help, this will help. They will all be together. They will be sharing the same information from their respective agencies. So that would be my answer. Senator Lieberman. Governor Gilmore, my time is running out. I would just like to ask you a related question based on your experience here which is, particularly in light of the proposal for the new Terrorism Threat Integration Center under the DCI, whether you think it is time to separate the Director of Central Intelligence from the Central Intelligence Agency? In other words, to create a separate DCI and then a separate head of CIA under that person? Whether that will, in any measure, contribute to the evenhandedness of the DCI, or the perception of it, which will help to bring these two communities together better. Mr. Gilmore. We know, Senator, there has been some suggestion of there being an intelligence czar actually set aside and put in the Cabinet separately. We have not, in our commission, addressed the issue of whether the Director of Central Intelligence should be separated out from the CIA. I think that would be a dramatic change which I do not think that certainly as an individual would want to recommend or that the commission would want to recommend. I do want to rifle-shot in on your question to Senator Rudman. You basically suggested that by brute force some of these people have come together. I do want to share with you several things. The commission has spent a lot of time on that topic, and we do believe that it is primarily cultural. It is based upon the long-standing tradition that knowledge is power. If you have got it, you have more influence than if you do not. That there is a fear of the violation of security, and in fact serious legal problems if there is a violation of security. I was asked a few moments ago what I thought the administration was doing and I answered that. But that is not the same thing as what the commission has recommended. The commission has recommended there be a separate agency established, a separate agency institutionalized in order to be a fusion center. We think also that there is good faith by all people but we do believe absolutely that there are turf battles and that there are cultural challenges back and forth between people fundamentally. We believe that there are cultural, historical difficulties that have been set up that we are trying to find an institutionalized way of overcoming. We think the fusion center is a clear way of doing that. Senator Lieberman. Thank you, both. Thanks, Madam Chairman. Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Sununu. Senator Sununu. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I want to talk a little bit more about the practical limitations, the practical hurdles in not just setting up this organization but overcoming some of the obstacles that Senator Lieberman just spoke about in getting information shared. I want to talk about the personnel, the practical question of who these people are, and where they come from. There are a number of different options but one is obviously to staff the integration center with personnel from FBI counterterrorism, from CIA counterterrorism. The other choice would be to have an independent staff that works only for the integration center and doesn't rotate back and forth between intelligence organizations and the integration center. I would like each of you to talk a little bit about which kind of an approach you think might be better: Permanent staff or a rotating staff, and why. Senator Rudman. Mr. Rudman. The current plan, of course, is to bring in people from their current positions at all of these agencies who have the analytical skills and experience to analyze data. Now frankly, it takes so long to get someone to know how to do that and to do it well that I do not think there is much choice. There is no other place in the government. Now as to the real--underlying your question is the issue of independence and I think that is a very interesting question. Over the long run, if you could evolve into a group of analysts who essentially resided there for their entire careers that would probably be, in my view, much better. But you cannot do that right away, but maybe over a 5- or 10-year period you can. If they are going to get this thing stood up in the next year to at least have some function they are going to have to get some fairly experienced analysts from the Bureau, from State, mainly from the Agency, who are used to looking at masses of data, correlating it, and being able to reach intelligence conclusions. Senator Sununu. You want a system though where those individuals, even after a long period of time, 5 or 10 years, at some point return back to the Bureau or to Central Intelligence. Does that foster a stronger relationship, or do you simply want them to spend their career at the integration center knowing full well that you have got to work to make sure that the ties, and relationships between the integration center and the collection organizations remain strong? Mr. Rudman. My personal view is that there is a certain advantage to have people come from their parent agency and go spend a few years doing something else at another place, or similar work in another place, then go back to their agency. I think it tends to give people a better idea--a good example would be the Congressional fellows you have here. I know I had several that spent several years up here from various agencies. They went back to their agency with a far better understanding of the U.S. Congress and we had a better understanding of what they did. So I think there are advantages to that. Senator Sununu. Governor Gilmore. Mr. Gilmore. The position of the commission is it should be a separate agency. That it should have its own analysts. They should be employees of the new agency and that is where their institution should be. There is a big challenge here, a cultural challenge that the commission has devoted all of its 4 years to trying to address. This particular function that we are describing here, intelligence analysts on the counterterrorism side, has not been the historic career path in the FBI. This has been very influential in the thinking of the commission, particularly this year as it has gone on. It is a big challenge to try to break the institutional boundaries. To loan them would not be our recommendation. To devote them, to send them over there is our recommendation. The question we addressed as a practical matter is, how do you set something like this up on day one? How do you do that? You do not just do a standing start and bring in analysts and train them from the very beginning. You go to the places where the analysts exist and they have been trained, particularly the CIA which has made in fact its profession to do this work through its history. But to bring people from the other agencies as well, and to form them into one place, but to not loan them, but to make them part of that new permanent staff. Senator Sununu. Thank you. A second area that concerns me is a practical argument, I think a very practical one, that has been made against or raised as a concern when setting up new intelligence organizations, but also a concern that has been put forward when the question of sharing information comes up. Senator Rudman, you talked about the two drawers, information systems. You need a system or a process, whether it is technology-based or not, to actually get people to share that information. But in some cases there is an argument raised, we are concerned about providing this package of information to another independent group because they may then go out and compromise methods or sources, or share that information with someone that we as a different organization might not want them to share. They might provide it to local law enforcement when that is not really an appropriate consumer of this information. That can be willful. You can have organizations that are prone to leaks. But it could also be a lack of understanding of the sensitivities. My question is, in your experience where do those problems most often occur, are they well-founded, and are there different parts of an organization that are more likely to leak information, unfortunately willfully, or simply misapply information or share information with the wrong customer? Where might those problems occur in the chain? Mr. Rudman. The major problem on information sharing over the years has been the Bureau's deep concern that criminal investigations would be compromised by furnishing information outside of the Bureau. And the CIA's great concern, that by sharing information with the Bureau it might get somehow into hands inadvertently that would compromise sources and methods. So there have been cultural reasons. When Jim uses the word cultural, I agree, but the culture has got some basis in reality. These are people that have been burned on a number of occasions. Now you did something here in the Congress that I thought was very good last year in the USA Patriot Act. As you probably recall, the CIA was barred until very recently from keeping files on Americans. Not only could they not collect on American citizens, they could not even have access to the information on Americans. That, thankfully, has been changed. That might have been fine 30 or 40 years ago but it is not fine now. So now at least people have access to the same kind of information--this is on terrorism I am speaking of. But I think the cultures, as Governor Gilmore points out, they have prevented it. But there has been a basis for it. My problem with the fusion, and we have a friendly disagreement on this, my problem with that is how in the devil are they going to get the FBI and the CIA to give them all the information they ought to be giving them when they are not part of the same organization? You are talking about, I think, a very steep hill to climb. Senator Sununu. I see that my time is up but Governor Gilmore if you want to address the same question, and again in particular how we set up this organization so that the concern of the FBI about compromising criminal investigations and the concern of the CIA regarding sources and methods are best addressed? Mr. Gilmore. Warren is right in his analysis of what the concerns of the FBI and the CIA have been over the years and remain, in my judgment, to this day. The fusion center is something new. It is a new device. There is today no formal coordination body in existence. There are efforts between the different agencies to find some vehicle by which they share-- they sit in each other's meetings and so on like that. This is an effort though to break through some of these bureaucratic boundaries, create a fusion center, and now I want to come to the main things here. You have got to write the rules. The rules have to be defined. Everybody has to understand what the rules of the game are. And then you have to hold people accountable for whether they are going to do it or not. There is going to have to be an understanding that information of this type of sensitive nature is going to have to be shared. If it is not shared, then there should be penalties connected with the non-sharing. And if it does not share and then information does not get fused and as a result Americans are injured, then there must be penalties or sanctions connected with all that. The rules have got to be written. And furthermore, we have not even talked about the major barrier, and that is the supreme and total distrust of the Federal Government authorities for the States and locals. The idea of sharing sensitive information with a police chief of a major jurisdiction or the governor of a State is anathema. It has to be broken through. So far efforts are being made to do that. Progress is being made, but they are trying to break a cultural barrier and it is going to require dramatic leadership at the Executive and Congressional level to make that happen. Mr. Rudman. Madam Chairman, I want to add, I agree with Governor Gilmore. One of the things that I would look at if I were still on this Committee, I know the administration said lawyers from Justice and the CIA and DOD have all looked at all of the statutes and say that everything is OK, this will work. I would want to maybe have a very intensive study done of all of the statutes that involve the CIA and the FBI on privacy issues, on sharing issues and other issues, to make sure that this new center operates under not only the rules, which will be written, but the laws that exist. Now it may well be that they are right, that they do not have a problem with the current laws, but I surely would want to take another look at that. Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Lautenberg. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LAUTENBERG Senator Lautenberg. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and to my friend. Senator Rudman said old friend. I would say friend of long-standing because the rest is apparent. It's nice to see Governor Gilmore here. We met on TV a couple of times, had some fun. Senator Rudman comes with a remarkable record of confidence building and leadership from his years in the Senate. Universally respected and sought after by Senators regardless of party. The work that you did on your budget initiative helped us finally get to a point where we had a balanced budget in 1999. Mr. Rudman. For a little while anyway. Senator Lautenberg. A little while felt awful good, but that is what happens at times. When you sit down and you have a meal, it feels good and you know later on, maybe we should not have quite done it that way. But it is a pleasure to see you here, both of you, having left office formally and being called upon. Now I was never called upon to add my service so I decided I better run again and here I am, and glad to be here and to try and help solve some of the problems that we are having. The enormity of problems has grown in these couple years and I do not think it has anything to do with my departure from regular service, but the fact is that matters and life have become far more complicated. The horrible benchmark of September 11 has left a permanent impact almost no matter what we do. I wonder, Senator Rudman talked about, described a joint venture. When I was a CEO of a pretty good-sized company I liked joint ventures as long as we owned the joint. I think we have somewhat that problem here in government. To me, the best way to get an understanding of effective participation with an agency is the simplest way. I think you have talked about it, Governor. The fact is that you have to reach into these sources of trained people. Frankly, I would have hoped that between the FBI and the CIA that a task force of sorts could have been created with the authorities as delineated, to get the job done. Because one of the things that seems to be happening is we are adding--I do not want to sound critical, but we are adding acronyms because we are adding organizations and yet we still have that feeling of discomfort. I can tell you this, that the kaleidoscope of color that we use to warn people is just scaring the hell out of a lot of people. And yet we have an obligation to say, life is not exactly as it was and you have to be especially careful. But that muddle of things really worries me because there is no confidence yet. I respect the President's initiative here, and to think that this problem could be solved immediately and create this giant department, jurisdictions overlapping all of that kind of thing. I am very involved with the Coast Guard and I was on Intelligence after Senator Rudman left, and Defense Subcommittee on Appropriations. There is conscientious leadership there, but the fact of the matter is that to have this large safety net with the holes in it that we ultimately saw is a shocking thing. We cannot go back retroactively to pre-September 11 and say, should have, could have, would have, I think that is a dangerous and insignificant review. But where we are now, still with people wondering who is where--the fact is that I hear from local law enforcement people, they are groping for information, searching for ways to be included in the loop. That has got to be a large part of the solution to the problem. That is to be able to get this data out to the communities out to the States so that they feel like they can do something significant if an alert does come. So I supported the idea of the integration center, the fusion as you call it, Governor Gilmore, center where the data are collected in one place. But I for the life of me still have a problem trying to figure why we cannot, within the existing structure, create the mechanism to solve the problem. Should this be a direct NSA report or something like that? How does it get to the President? Does the President have at his daily briefings a review of terrorist activity? Or is it immersed in this whole melange of things that he has to be concerned about? So I am not offering much by way of advice except to say that if we could only get this housed, done within the structure that we have, trained people, people who have knowledge and have a place out gathering data, and do it that way instead of creating a whole new structure because we cannot get through the bureaucracy. [The prepared statement of Senator Lautenberg follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR LAUTENBERG Madam Chairman, I'm glad you recognize the importance of holding a hearing on the ``Terrorist Threat Integration Center'' (TTIC) the President has proposed. Let me first welcome and thank the witnesses for coming today, and giving us the benefit of their expertise on this issue. Senator Rudman and Governor Gilmore have provided a great service to the nation. Their efforts to identify and alert us to terrorist threats and provide solutions to the vexing problem of defending ourselves from terrorist attacks are much appreciated. Jeff Smith and James Steinberg have wide experience in dealing with our national security agencies and I look forward to hearing their insights on what this new Terrorist Threat Integration Center's role should be. Madam Chairman, I'm disappointed the administration did not send a representative to inform us about its plans for this new Center. We need clarity and leadership from the administration on this question and, with all due respect to the President and Governor Ridge, we are not getting it. What do I mean by this? In the wake of September 11, it rapidly became apparent that an inability or an unwillingness of the intelligence community to share information played a role in our inability to prevent the attacks. There was a reality that there wasn't any single agency responsible for gathering, analyzing, and disseminating the information in a way to prevent and counter terrorist attacks. Many felt the creation of the Homeland Security Department would solve this problem. The notion was that the President would be briefed on potential terrorist attacks by the Secretary of the Homeland Security Department. Well, we have created the Homeland Security Department. But we still have the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center. We have the FBI improving its intelligence capability. And now we have this new Terrorist Threat Integration Center. I think that the responsibility for determining the terrorist intelligence picture is becoming murkier, not clearer. Rather than reducing the number of agencies and bureaucracies with responsibility for this problem, they are proliferating: CIA, FBI, CTC, DHS, TTIC, etc. and so on. We are not ``connecting the dots,'' we are multiplying them. I must also express some wonderment about how this whole process is unfolding. This new Center has been created by the President outside the Homeland Security law. It would have seemed more logical for the President just to create this Center or something similar within a short period following September 11. If this has been an urgent problem, why did we wait for well over a year to create it? If the only question involving improving our intelligence processes was to beef up the CIA's ability to do so, which could have been done shortly after the September 11 attacks, why did we go through all the trouble and disruption of creating a new Department of Homeland Security? Between the proliferating number of agencies and the kaleidoscopic color scheme of threats, I worry that we are spreading fear and near panic in the country without materially advancing the protection of the nation from a terrorist attack or raising the comfort level of our citizens. We now have the Homeland Security Department and the TTIC. Since I doubt we will dis-establish either, we must find a way to make them work together. I look forward to hearing from these distinguished witnesses. I hope they will be able to indicate to us that things are getting better on this front--and, if they are not getting better, what can we do to improve the situation. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Mr. Rudman. Senator Lautenberg, let me just respond this way. I think that is what the administration is attempting to do. Now people may disagree with the form, but what they are essentially doing is saying we have had analysis of terrorism within the FBI, we have got analysis within the CIA. Most of the information that we get is foreign so the CIA is tasked with evaluating it and doing the analysis. But we have got all these other parts of the government that pick up bits and pieces, so rather than try to exhort people within the current boxes to do what they are doing, put together a joint venture, if you will, and have it report to the Director of the CIA, which answers your question, how does the President get informed? That is how he gets informed. He meets with the Director of the CIA, I am sure you know, mostly every day. This will be a major part of his reporting. Now under Governor Gilmore's plan it would certainly work. The difference would be that the director of that fusion center would have a separate reporting line to the President. We do not have to argue that here, but the concept--the only difference between the two ideas is one is independent and one is not. The basic reasoning and the need we all agree on. The administration has chosen to do it in a so-called joint venture. My view is that it is better to do that way than to try to do it within the current structure of the CIA and the current structure of the FBI, to try to move all of the people dealing with domestic terrorism based on foreign and domestic intelligence into one place. That is what the fusion center proposal was, so we do not really disagree on the need. We only disagree about the modality. From your comments, I would think you would probably oppose the creation of a new department. That is their proposal, and it is a very sound proposal. But there is room for reasonable people to disagree. Mr. Gilmore. A new agency. We did not even recommend the Department of Homeland Security. But with respect to, I think the answer that I would want to provide to you, Senator is this. You have got to identify the problem. We have taken a lot of time to try to think through what the problem is, under no pressure from anyone. We have tried to think about this. The problem is that you just cannot find a vehicle in the present structure of government in our Federal system that is in a position to gather together Federal overseas information, domestic information, human intelligence, signal intelligence, State, locals, private people, private enterprise. There just is no vehicle for that. There is a vehicle for intelligence to be gathered and the President certainly receives his daily briefing every morning. There is no doubt about that. But then as you analyze the problem that we saw in the past, it is not only that there is no vehicle for gathering up all that information, but that there are institutional and cultural barriers to the complete sharing. This is designed to be a vehicle to overcome those problems. It does not solve all problems, and it even creates new ones with additional bureaucracies. But this is the best solution that we can come up with balancing all the different pressures. Senator Lautenberg. I thank you both. Madam Chairman, we are developing our mandate here, and that is, as you said, write the rules and decide how it ought to be. This is a very helpful discourse and I thank you. Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Pryor. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PRYOR Senator Pryor. Madam Chairman, thank you. I want the record to reflect that my father never ran against Senator Rudman. I am glad he did not. He is glad he did not, but he does send his greetings. It is good to see you again. Mr. Rudman. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Senator Pryor. Let me ask both of you a couple of big picture questions. How many employees are we talking about being necessary once the Center is fully operational? Mr. Rudman. I think it is a better question when you have the administration witnesses. My understanding is it is going to be started in phase one with probably under 100, mainly analytical. They will stage it on the basis, if you grow it too fast it will not grow as efficiently as it should. My sense is you are talking hundreds rather than thousands when they finally get to the final stage of where they want to get, which on my information is probably 3 to 4 years out. Senator Pryor. Do you agree with that, Governor? Mr. Gilmore. Our commission has attempted to lay out what we think the issues are, the challenges are, and the best solution. To then place ourselves of the administrative people who would design the specific number of hirees to do the job, we have not presumed to do. So the short answer is that we believe there needs to be a fusion center to gather this information together, and I am sure that the appropriate Executive Branch people who would come forward with a proposal to the Congress would lay out how many people they think they need to get the job done. Senator Pryor. Will this joint venture have its own budget or will the personnel, location, and overhead, be absorbed in other agencies' budgets? Mr. Gilmore. We recommend that it has its own budget in order to continue to provide that type of independence, Senator. But the question of how you would actually fund it is an appropriations issue; a proposal from the Executive Branch and an appropriations issue from the Senate. We would not be surprised if you were to move funding for the analysis function from the different agencies into the new agency in order to begin its funding. But since it is an independent agency we believe it should have its independent appropriation. Mr. Rudman. Senator Pryor, the administration's proposal as I understand it does not require a separate budget because it is not doing what the Gilmore Commission has recommended with an agency. It is essentially going to take people who are currently on the payroll of these various other agencies, co- locate them in one place, and make contributions to overhead. Now as a practical matter, although many of them will be moving to a different location doing the same job and getting paid the same amount of money, inevitably there will be more money involved and I assume that will appear in the budget for the respective agencies who will make a contribution. That is the way the appropriation process normally works. Mr. Gilmore. It does however raise an issue. If you co- locate people in that manner one might ask the analyst who he works for. I think his answer would be what everybody in the world would answer, the guy who writes my paycheck is my boss. Therefore, the fusion center will really not have employees under this proposal. That will create a management challenge, but I believe that there is a sense that once identified that the heads of the CIA and the FBI will be in a position to provide that management. But I think I have identified the management challenge to you. Senator Pryor. I agree, I think it is a challenge. However, I think we can overcome it. It seems like something we can work through and work out and come up with a very positive management structure and accomplish the mission. I am aware you have a joint venture here where the employees come from different agencies. I am assuming that the creation of this center does not relieve the other agencies from doing their own analysis and making their own determinations. In other words, they do not cede their responsibility to this new joint venture. But it is a little bit redundant, and redundancy in this case may not be a bad idea because theoretically this new center may be in a superior position to analyze data coming from a lot of different sources. Is that the way you understand it, Governor? Mr. Gilmore. That is a very complicated point. It could create redundancies. I think that the sense of our commission is that the primary function for this type of analysis ought to rest in the fusion center. Now I guess that administratively it probably does not make sense to deprive the individual agencies of all ability to analyze information, otherwise how do they know what to give, and how do they know how to understand what they are getting. So I think I see that administrative point and I think that we would concur with that. But I think we should guard against co-locating equal amounts of analysis capacity in both places because then the individual agencies I think would have a tendency to say, who needs that? Mr. Rudman. Senator Pryor, that gets back to the Chairman's position on duplication. My sense is that, although obviously both the Bureau and the Agency will retain some analytical ability in the area of terrorism, I think the overwhelming amount of analysis is going to be done at this new joint venture, whether it be a joint venture or whether it be a fusion center. It just seems to me that is what is going to happen, because you do not have, unfortunately, that many people who are all that well-trained in this area. You are going to have to take a lot of them over the next several years and move them into this new co-located position. Now you have a practical matter, knowing the way these places work, since the collection is coming through the eyes and ears of either the CIA or the FBI, it would be to me almost incredible if that would not be looked at, put in a sealed envelope and sent across the city electronically or otherwise. Obviously, people are going to be aware of it and contribute some analysis to it. But that is not really your question. Your question is, is there going to be major analytical capability still at these places? I would hope not because then you get into duplication and then you get into some competition. I would hope this would be the place where the threat of terrorism and all intelligence thereto is analyzed. Mr. Gilmore. Madam Chairman, may I add a point on that? Chairman Collins. Certainly. Mr. Gilmore. Because I want to address this issue of duplication which has emerged. I think that it is important to keep your eye on the ball. Focus on the issue. The issue is, what is the problem here? How do we share information? How do we get this information co-located in such a way that we share the dots. So that something significant from CIA combined with something from FBI suddenly has meaning where in the two pieces it may not. That is the issue. The fusion center, the President's proposal, all these things are very much the same proposal. It is just a matter of administratively how you are going to shape it. They are intended to address that issue. Therefore, the question is does duplication become a disqualification of the solution? It does not. It merely becomes a challenge that has to be worked through and minimized. Senator Pryor. I agree with you. I can live with some duplication if we accomplish the goal we are setting out to accomplish. The question is always how to do it in the most efficiently, and effectively manor possible. That is a challenge that we all wrestle with here every day and I know you will too. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator. Senator Akaka. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA Senator Akaka. Thank you, very much, Madam Chairman. I thank you for this opportunity and I welcome Senator Rudman and Governor Gilmore. Senator Rudman, I knew you when I was in the House, and I know of your work in the Senate and you have really served our country well as a Senator, and even after the Senate. My concerns have been that we may have too many centers. The President in his State of the Union speech did add a new key component though which he called a Terrorist Threat Integration Center. I can see his intent there, and especially when we think that we have many centers. Yesterday I met with Dr. Cambone. He was nominated to a new position in the Defense Department and that position is undersecretary of intelligence. Now here is another effort in facing the threats of our country, not only domestic but foreign threats. So my concern is there may be too many centers trying to do the same thing. [The prepared statement of Senator Akaka follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA Thank you Madam Chairman for organizing today's hearing. I am pleased that the Committee is continuing to focus on critical issues relating to our national security. I am disappointed that the administration could not be with us today. The President's proposal to establish a Terrorist Threat Integration Center was one of the key components of his State of the Union address and the administration has issued several briefing papers on the concept. Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Steve Cambone who has been nominated to the Defense Department position of Undersecretary for Intelligence. This is a new position at Defense is one of many additional efforts underway to improve intelligence management. I am concerned that there may be too many centers being created to respond to the same threat. For example, the CIA has its Counter Terrorism Center--the Defense Intelligence Agency has its counter terrorism center--the new Department of Homeland Security will have an Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate--the Army has an Information Dominance Center--DOD is developing a Total Information Awareness program--and the FBI has a Counter Terrorism Division. Now the President proposes a new Terrorist Threat Integration Center. When this Committee marked up the Homeland Security bill, I worked with Senators Lieberman, Levin, and Thompson to craft an intelligence division to ensure the Department received sufficient information concerning domestic threats and had the capability of responding to those threats. Unfortunately, that proposal was later rejected by the administration. My concern then--and now--was that there would be duplication of effort in the intelligence arena. There can be only so many cooks in a kitchen.I think we have already reached our limit when it comes to analyzing intelligence information. We have a limited number of qualified intelligence analysts and a limited number of agents in the field developing information. Creating numerous centers in Washington--all looking at the same information--does not mean we will be better prepared for countering terrorist threats. We have an esteemed group of experts this morning, including our former colleague, Senator Rudman. I look forward to their comments on this subject and I commend our Chairman for holding this hearing. Senator Akaka. Under the administration's plan, and I would like to direct this to the Governor, the Director of the CIA will inform the President about threats, but who is responsible for ensuring domestic investigation of threats that take place, and State and local enforcement are kept in the picture? Governor Gilmore, am I correct in thinking there is currently a disconnect? Mr. Gilmore. Yes, Senator, there is a disconnect. I think that most people have understood that since September 11 as they have tried to analyze the problem and are trying to find ways to address that. Just to touch on your Department of Defense comment just as a potential for more and more centers trying to do the same thing. It certainly is contemplated, I think, that this fusion center, this integration center, or however it is defined or structured would include people from the Defense Intelligence Agency, from the Department of Defense as well as from the CIA and the FBI and hopefully a place also for State and local people. It is a desire to begin to combine things in a way that structurally we have never done before. I might point out, by the way, that I have spoken to some leaders in law enforcement from some of the major municipalities of the country and they have indicated that the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces are doing some more of that communication and that they do feel like they are having an opportunity to work on the same team with that program. So that seems to be a program that is making some progress in terms of the collection efforts, in terms of the team for gathering information. But at the end of the day I think there is a near virtual consensus everywhere that there needs to be some type of integration center or fusion center so that everybody has a centrally located place to learn all the information gathered from all the disparate areas as you have described. Senator Akaka. Senator Rudman, I know because of your background and experience as a Senator and your participation in security matters as well, I ask for your assessment and also your thinking about--and if you can explain to me what you know about the Terrorist Threat Integration Center that the President is proposing and whether that would answer my question, which officially is in charge of bringing together all foreign intelligence concerning threats inside the United States and the domestic law enforcement information about domestic threats and ensuring first that this information is thoroughly evaluated and that a timely investigation takes place? And second, who ensures that local officials who might be affected by a threat are kept in the picture? I am hoping that the President's proposal on integration will bring that about. I was thinking of it in terms of the interagency coordinating group that would do this. Can you give me your views on that? Mr. Rudman. I will, Senator Akaka. Thank you for your gracious comments. I enjoyed our service together. Let me tell you that I do not think that I necessarily know the answer to that and I think that is a better question for the administration witnesses. But I think I know what the answer will probably be, so on that basis I will tell you what I believe the answer is but I just do not know for certain. I am sure that this new threat analysis center will carry out the function that you are speaking of. I think theirs is purely analysis. The question then becomes, what happens to their product? Let us assume that their product produces a specific threat to Honolulu. The question is, how does the chief of police of Honolulu and the Governor of Hawaii get to know this information? That is really your question. I think there are two answers to that question, or at least there should be. It is, I believe, now the primary responsibility of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate with local communities to make sure that the kind of information they have not been getting they will be getting. It is my understanding that there is currently a program underway in which the police authorities of major cities are getting Federal security clearances, which is a very unique new program. It is not a classified program. It is known. It was spoken about publicly at a meeting I was at yesterday. So that there is more ease of passing on that information to people. For instance, it is hard to believe that when Governor Gilmore was Governor of Virginia it would have been a Federal crime for an agent to share certain classified information with him because he did not have the clearance. Now it certainly seems to me that the mayor and the chief of police of New York ought to be able to get classified information. So I think they are working in that direction but not through this center. I think those questions are better directed at the FBI and Governor Ridge to see if they are upping their efforts to get clearances and find ways---- And finally let me say just one other thing that was inherently contained in your question. I have long believed that the balance between protecting sources and methods and protecting the American people from great harm has to be rationalized in some way. Where I come out on it is simply this. I believe that if we have a specific threat, as opposed to what we have right now, a specific threat based on good information of a major terrorist action against a particular city during a particular time frame, that sources and methods ought to be compromised if necessary to protect that population from that injury. That is a debate you will have to have within the community. Senator Akaka. Governor Gilmore. Mr. Gilmore. Senator, if I may just add, in my discussions with Admiral Abbott he has indicated that they in fact are starting a program where they are beginning to go through the process of clearing the governors and clearing of major law enforcement key personnel in the respective States. Then you begin to put in all the safeguarding rules, all the penalties for violation of that, all of the training that goes along with that. I think that it can work and should work. I think that if a politician in a State, the same thing as a politician at the Federal level--politicians are politicians, if they reveal information in order to gain some type of political advantage and so on, there ought to be penalties involved with that. I think once you set up this kind of structure then everybody is going to understand what the rules are and how they are supposed to adhere to them. Senator Akaka. Thank you so much for your responses. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator. Before I let this distinguished panel go I just want to follow up on the issue of how the new center would interact with State and local law enforcement officials, which both of you have talked about as well as several of the members of this panel. Recently in Portland, Maine, for example, the local police detained a foreign national who was visiting on a tourist visa who was spotted photographing an oil tank farm on the Portland waterfront, obviously an action of some concern. The local police, however, had an extremely difficult time getting information from the FBI about whether or not this individual was on any watch list or if his actions were a matter of concern. So I think we still have long ways to go as far as information sharing and developing the trust among various agencies at various levels of government. Do you think that State and local law enforcement officials should have direct access to this new center or a way to somehow tap into information directly? Senator Rudman. Mr. Rudman. I do not, Senator Collins. I think that the nature of the information they will be having to compile, their analysis product based on foreign and domestic intelligence, cannot be shared on a demand basis. What I do believe is what you intended in the Department of Homeland Security legislation. I believe that DHS primarily is going to become responsible for liaison, both information technology and verbally, with local law enforcement. I believe that they ought to be on the front line, and I expect they will have people in this new center who can pass on to the chief of police of Portland, Maine that this person is on a watch list and do it in real time. But I think that is the way it ought to be done. I think you have got to limit access to this product. Not limit access to those who need it, but limit general access to it. Then you get into some issues that I think would cause a lot of problems. Chairman Collins. Governor Gilmore. Mr. Gilmore. If I understand Senator Rudman, I think that our commission would disagree. We believe that there ought to be co-located people, representative people from States and local organizations to begin to understand the nature of what is going on in the States. There is a serious cultural problem here. We identified it years ago. It remains to this day. It is the inherent feeling of Federal law enforcement authorities that they are superior. The reason that they think they are superior is because they are better funded by the Congress than local law enforcement agencies are able to be. They have, therefore, access to more people and more resources. Therefore they think they are superior. But that is balanced by the fact that local law enforcement people are in more places, seeing more things across this Nation each and every day. Therefore, the Federal authorities are not superior. They are just different. Therefore, culturally, things have got to work out in a way that can harmonize these two things together. I think the recommendation of our commission would be that the fusion center creates a vehicle for the gathering together of all the different organizations. There even should be some facility or some ability to have an open channel of communication with private enterprise. Chairman Collins. I want to thank both of you very much for your testimony this morning. Both of you have been extremely generous with your time and your experience and we very much appreciate your appearing this morning. So thank you, both. I now would like to call forth our second panel of witnesses this morning. James Steinberg is the vice president and director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. He served as deputy national security adviser in the Clinton Administration as well as director of policy planning staff and deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the Department of State. Jeffrey Smith is a formal general counsel of the CIA and formal general counsel of the Senate Armed Services Committee under Senator Nunn. He is now a partner at Arnold and Porter. We welcome you both here this morning. We very much appreciate your taking the time to appear. Mr. Steinberg, we are going to begin with you. TESTIMONY OF JAMES B. STEINBERG,\1\ VICE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF FOREIGN POLICY STUDIES, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION Mr. Steinberg. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. I very much appreciate the opportunity to be here, and I commend you and the Committee on having these hearings because I think this is one of the most critical topics that we as a Nation face. As you pointed out, although a number of actions have been taken concerning homeland security, one area that has not gotten the degree of attention that I think it deserves is the organization of our intelligence efforts, so I think this is very welcome. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Steinberg appears in the Appendix on page 95. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have a longer statement for the record and I will just summarize a few points for you. As you heard from the previous panel I think there is a general agreement that there is a need for greater integration of our efforts to analyze the threat and the nature of the challenges that we face in the area of counterterrorism. Where I differ from my distinguished colleagues who you heard from in the previous panel is that I believe that this effort should be focused in the Department of Homeland Security, and I think that is consistent with the intention of the Congress when it created the department, and particularly the Office of Intelligence Analysis and Infrastructure Protection. As you stated in your opening statement, the House and Senate joint inquiry into the attacks of September 11 really demonstrated the problem that we have in terms of bringing together and sharing information. I will not repeat the quote that you gave because I think it is exactly to the point of the challenge that we faced. Before I discuss the specific ways of how we should respond, it is important to spend a minute discussing the nature of the intelligence challenge that we face in dealing with counterterrorism, because only by understanding the dimensions of the problem can we develop an appropriate architecture or organizational structure that is appropriate to the task. The intelligence challenge in counterterrorism has four key components. First we need to collect timely, relevant, and in the best case, actionable information. Second, we need to collate or bring together the information from the full spectrum of sources. Third, we need to analyze the information; as others have said, connect the dots. And finally, we need to disseminate that information to those who need to act on it, policymakers, law enforcement officials, the private sector, and the public in a form that allows them to use that information to accomplish their mission. In the fight against terrorism these tasks are far more difficult in many ways than the intelligence challenge we faced during the Cold War. Today, terrorists threaten us at home and abroad. As Senator Rudman observed, they have no fixed addresses and we only occasionally know their identities or their targets. Technology and globalization have made it easier for would-be terrorists to bring dangerous people and weapons into the United States, and to conceal their activities. Key information that we need to detect and prevent terrorist attacks lie in the private sector, at airlines and flight schools, with operators of chemical plants, and high- rise buildings, with local police and community doctors, and we must increasingly count on the private sector and State and local governments to take the actions necessary to prevent attacks or deal with their consequences. We need to adopt our intelligence efforts and the organization of our intelligence community to meet this radically different challenge. In your opening statement you identified a number of the small steps that have been taken today and these are welcome. But I think that is true that as many of the witnesses and the Members of the Committee have noticed, that there is a tendency to focus primarily on the role of the Federal Government in carrying out these tasks, but in reality we see that there are a wide variety of actors who are crucial: Foreign governments, State and local officials, business, and private citizens. They all have access to information that may be relevant to the terrorist threat. They have expertise that can help us transform this raw information into meaningful intelligence. And perhaps most important, they are the key players who need to act on this intelligence, to apprehend a suspect, to prepare public health facilities in the event of an attack, to secure critical infrastructures, etc. Now the reason I have stressed the importance of understanding these different functions is because they provide key guidance for the critical question of how we should organize the intelligence efforts. The necessary elements, in my view are, first, we need a strategy for identifying the kinds of information we need to collect on threats and vulnerabilities. Second, we need a network, a decentralized network designed to permit sharing of information among the widest possible group of collectors, analysts, and implementers at all levels of government, and between government and the private sector. Third, we need a focal point for bringing all the information together to be integrated and analyzed. And fourth, and I think this is extremely important, we need an accountable organization that assures that the right information is being collected and the results of collection and analysis are shared in a timely, usable way with those who need to act on it. Judged by these tests, the administration's proposed Terrorist Threat Integration Center represents a partial step forward in helping to build a network bringing together foreign and domestic intelligence collection and a place where this information can be integrated. But it fails to meet the other key tests, particularly in developing a structure that will increase the chances that we will collect the right information and that will link the collection and analysis to those who are responsible for taking the necessary actions to prevent attacks, protect our people and critical infrastructure, and mitigate the consequences of any attack that might take place. I think, therefore, in this respect that the Terrorist Threat Integration Center is a step backwards from the approach that you adopted in the Homeland Security Act of 2002 creating the Department of Homeland Security. Yes, we have closed the seam between foreign and domestic intelligence, and it does recognize the need to draw on broad expertise. But by placing the TTIC under the direction of the Director of Central Intelligence rather than the Secretary of Homeland Security, and disconnecting it from those with direct responsibility for safeguarding homeland security, the administration fails to develop an effective and integrated approach to countering the terrorist threat to the United States, and risks, as many of the members of the panel have suggested, creating more duplication that could harm the homeland security effort. After all, the Department of Homeland Security was created to be the hub of our homeland security efforts. Unlike any other official, the Secretary of Homeland Security's sole responsibility is to see that the necessary actions are taken to secure our borders, to protect critical infrastructure, to defend against biological, chemical, nuclear, and radiological attacks, and to respond to emergencies that do occur. Importantly, the statute specifically gives the Secretary responsibility for coordinating with State and local officials and with the private sector. So in order to carry out the functions that you gave him in the statute, he has got to be able to link the decisions about what information we collect and what information we share with his responsibility to take the necessary actions. I think that is the important difference between locating this effort in the Department of Homeland Security and making it a separate entity, whether a joint venture or an independent effort. I think the importance of this linkage is most clear in the case of protecting our critical infrastructures. Only by matching analysis of the threat against the analysis of vulnerabilities that the department is responsible for can we know how to prioritize both what intelligence we collect and what protective measures we must take. The synergy created by linking intelligence and collection analysis and operational responsibility can lead to better quality intelligence, more actionable intelligence, and greater incentives for the intelligence to flow to those who need it in a form that they can use. By taking these functions away from the Department of Homeland Security we risk having a secretary and department who have accountability for homeland security but no authority to assure it. In my judgment, this has been the consistent problem in dealing with threats to the homeland with responsibility widely dispersed throughout the Federal Government and that has seriously hampered our efforts. I think there is an important question about maintaining the independence of this analysis. Therefore this fusion center in the Department of Homeland Security should also have the general oversight of the Director of Central Intelligence just as he has oversight over the Department of Intelligence Research at the State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency, etc. But along with this authority that I would give to the Secretary of Homeland Security there is also a responsibility to make sure that this information is collected consistent with fundamental civil liberties, because the homeland security challenge will rely heavily on information collected from the private sector, and from a wide range of domestic activities. Moreover, to carry out the homeland security challenge, vital information will need to be widely disseminated. It will be, therefore, all the more important to develop clear, public guidelines for the acquisition, retention, and dissemination of information, particularly personally identifiable information. Whether the new threat integration center is placed under the authority of the DCI, or as I have suggested under the Secretary of Homeland Security, the long-term acceptability to the American people of our heightened intelligence effort will depend on our ability to demonstrate that we are undertaking these new tasks with due regard for privacy and individual liberty. Formal guidelines subject to public comment and Congressional oversight, and accountable mechanisms to make sure those guidelines are adhered to, are essential to this goal. Thank you for the opportunity to appear today. I look forward to your questions. Chairman Collins. Thank you, Mr. Steinberg. Mr. Smith. TESTIMONY OF JEFFREY H. SMITH,\1\ FORMER GENERAL COUNSEL (1995- 1996), CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (CIA) Mr. Smith. Thank you, Madam Chairman, for inviting me to appear. As with Mr. Steinberg, I have a longer statement that I would like to submit for the record that I will summarize very quickly and we can get to questions. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Smith appears in the Appendix on page 100. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is an extremely important issues. There have been a lot of changes, so I think we might begin by listing a few principles that ought to govern the collection and analysis of intelligence for domestic security. First, there should be a unity of effort and unity of command. Second, there must be clear channels among collectors, analysts, operators, and consumers--the linkages that Jim spoke of. This has to be a two-way channel with information flowing up and down. Third, there has to be a smooth flow of information among other sources of information and between State, local and Federal officials. Fourth, we should avoid overlap between intelligence agencies. The boundaries should be clear but not impervious or rigid, and some competition, as Senator Pryor suggested, can be helpful. Fifth, intelligence analysts must be independent. Indeed, that is why the CIA was created in the first place. Sixth, the analysts and indeed all intelligence activities must be accountable to the political leadership of this country and to the Congress. Seventh, we must take all measures to protect the civil liberties of American citizens. Eighth, any organizational structure can be made to work even if it looks dysfunctional on paper. The keys to success, in my judgment, are good people, strong leadership, and stability. In that regard I am reminded of Norm Augustine's wisdom that sometimes we check on the health of a plant by pulling it up to look at the roots, and that is not a good thing. Finally, an analytical organization is only as good as the information it has to analyze. There was much criticism after September 11 that we had not connected the dots. The major problem is, we just do not have enough dots. I think a renewed emphasis must be placed on collecting more intelligence, especially human intelligence. Now let me turn to a few of the specifics of the President's proposal. It is a good idea and I support both the concept and the proposed implementation of it. However, I believe it is only a first step toward what I believe we ultimately need, which is a viable domestic intelligence service. The Department of Homeland Security clearly needs an intelligence function. I agree with everything that Jim has said about the need to have it linked to ultimately the responsibilities of the Secretary. However, I think for the moment I would leave it under the Director of Central Intelligence until ultimately it would be moved, in my judgment, to a domestic security service that would be part of the Department of Homeland Security. Indeed, as Governor Gilmore said, many people believed after Congress passed the homeland security bill that this function would be housed in the directorate of infrastructure security at Homeland Security. However, the President has decided that it ought to be under the DCI. As I understand the plans of the administration it is to create the TTIC as a fusion center that will ultimately combine the databanks of several agencies including the FBI. It will be a joint venture that will build on the strengths of the current organizations. People will remain employees of their agencies but will be secunded to this center. The recent changes in the Patriot Act now permit wider exchange of information between law enforcement and intelligence agencies and that should make it possible to permit a common database so that the chief of police in Portland could call this center either directly or through Homeland Security. But they have to have access to that information, you are absolutely right. And they ought to produce a common watch list that is available to everybody in the country who needs it. The President's desire, as I understand it, is to try to build on what is already working. The officers who are assigned to this center will be able or are encouraged to have strong ties back to their home agencies including, I am told, even the right to have access to operational traffic within their agency, which is a very important element. At the same time, there will be much confusion as the center is being created. The FBI has been trying to do this, the Department of Homeland Security has been trying to do it, and now we have yet a new center. There will clearly be some confusion and Congress needs to keep an eye on it. I understand, for example, in the President's budget that he has just submitted contains $829 million for DHS's information analysis and infrastructure directorate. Is that money then to stay in Homeland Security or does that somehow get shifted to the intelligence community for this function? Jim and I agree, the intelligence element of homeland security should report directly to the Secretary, and he went through the functions that they need to perform with which I agree and I will not talk about that. Let me talk about a couple of specific questions the Committee has asked me to address. First, I do not believe that there are any unique legal or privacy concerns raised merely because the DCI will now be responsible for the analysis of domestic intelligence. However, I would like to point out to the Committee that under current law the DCI, ``in his capacity as head of the CIA shall have no police, subpoena, or law enforcement powers or internal security functions.'' Two aspects of this are worth dwelling on for just a moment. First, the law draws a distinction between the DCI's role as head of the CIA and as head of the broader intelligence community. This suggests that Congress recognized that as head of the intelligence community he would inevitably have some role in domestic intelligence and law enforcement matters. However, Congress was rightly concerned about the creation of a domestic secret police, and thus barred CIA from having any police or internal security functions. The second clause of this provision, ``shall have no internal security functions'' is also worth a moment's discussion. I have always understood it to mean that the CIA may not play any role in domestic law enforcement other than the collection and analysis of foreign intelligence that may relate to law enforcement or domestic security. Indeed, CIA has done that since its establishment. For example, it collects information relating to espionage directed against the United States, collects information relating to narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and so on. However, as this center is established it would be well to consider carefully the limits of what the DCI and the TTIC will do to be certain that we are comfortable with their roles. Some additional guidelines may be necessary to determine where the line is between intelligence relating to domestic terrorism, which would be legitimate areas for the center to address, and intelligence relating to purely domestic political groups which should be left with the FBI. The center should not, for example, be used to analyze information on domestic political groups such as right wing militia or hate groups. It must continue to follow the existing Attorney General guidelines on such matters as the collection and dissemination of information. I, for one, am comfortable with the President's proposal but I believe vigorous Congressional oversight is needed and perhaps some new guidelines. Finally, Madam Chairman, as this Committee knows, I have been an advocate for some time for creating a domestic security service and I think this is the first step in that direction. I know Senator Edwards introduced a bill yesterday to this effect, Senator Graham has talked about the same thing. I think it is time to seriously give that consideration. Thank you. Chairman Collins. Thank you very much, Mr. Smith. Why don't we start with the point you made last and I would like to ask Mr. Steinberg your judgment on whether or not we should create a domestic intelligence agency? Many of us have concerns about the civil liberties implications of that and I would welcome your judgment. Mr. Steinberg. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I think that the civil liberties issues that we face exist irrespective of where the domestic collection takes place. We have civil liberties issues if the FBI remains the principle domestic security organization or if we have an organization that is separate. On balance, I agree with Jeff Smith that we would be better off with a separate organization. First, because I do believe that a domestic security operation is a very different function than law enforcement. We heard earlier from the early panel about the cultural problems. I think in some respects that if we try to turn the FBI into something which it has not been, we will not get the benefit of what the FBI does well, which is an important law enforcement function, and will begin a new role from a place where they are affected by their traditions. So I think we need a fresh start. I think we need to look at this question, and I think that the advantage of having a separate organization is that we can have a public debate about what the rules are that should govern it. If we were to create such an organization we would be able to have decisions in the statute that created it providing clear guidelines on civil liberties measures, on accountability and the like, and it would allow us to have a fresh debate that I fear we will not have if we simply move the FBI into the domestic security function and away from law enforcement. I think we do have to remember the difficulties that the FBI had in the past when it did play a bigger role in domestic security. So I do not feel that just simply by keeping it in the FBI that we can necessarily address those problems. I think by creating an organization that is focused on the domestic security function you will have an organization that defines its mission as protecting the American people and is organized to do that in the most effective way. Chairman Collins. Mr. Smith, based on your experience at the CIA do you see duplication between the CIA's Counter Terrorist Center and the proposed new integration center? How do they differ? It was my understanding that the Counter Terrorist Center was supposed to conduct all-source analysis and in fact Director Tenet just last year said that it was created to enable the fusion of all courses, the same kind of language that is being used now to justify the creation of the new integration center. Mr. Smith. I agree, Madam Chairman, and I think what will happen here or what should happen is that the current CTC should get much smaller and it should probably focus very much on overseas collection of intelligence and overseas operations. The analytical function currently being done by the CTC should be moved to this new center and combined with the analytical functions of the Bureau, because I do think unless that shift is made there will continue to be overlap and confusion. Chairman Collins. Mr. Steinberg, do you have any thoughts on that? Mr. Steinberg. I think it is a very good question, Madam Chairman, because we have to ask ourselves the question why the CTC has not been as successful as we want it to be, and whether creating an organization which sounds very much like what the CTC was supposed to be would solve the problem. I think that there are two reasons why the CTC has not been successful. First is, as you explored at length with the first panel, there is a problem with joint ventures. There is a question of what is the principal set of responsibilities of the people who work there, how do they think about the problem? I think it is a lesson we learned from the Goldwater-Nickles Act in the military context. That if you do not give a sense of jointness, of being on the same mission to the people who are taking on this task together, they will still feel they belong to the domestic equivalent of the Army, Navy, Marines, and the like, that you are not going to get the kind of coherence and integrated approach that you want. I think that has been one reason why the CTC has not been as successful as it should be, and that I think will be replicated in the new proposal for the TTIC. Second, I think you have the problem that there is a disconnect between those people who have operational responsibility and the analyst. That there is still a lack of understanding by the analyst of what is needed by the people who are out there in the field to do their job. Under this approach, we have lost the sense of connection between understanding what a border policeman needs to know, what a State and local official needs to know, what a fireman, what a doctor needs to know to carry out their job in homeland security. The analysts exist in some respects in a vacuum from the mission. I think that has been a problem. We have used this device to assure independence but it has also created a disconnect. I think there are other ways to get the independence and the check on the quality of the intelligence without creating the sense of isolation of the analyst from the broader mission. Chairman Collins. Mr. Steinberg, do you think that the new center, if it does come into existence which I believe it will, should be able to direct the collection of data? Mr. Steinberg. Irrespective of where it is located, I think that it is precisely the people who are trying to understand the problem who can help think about where do they want to fill in the holes? What are the problems that they see that are not being attended to? They have a unique ability to see what the requirements are. But again, when you think about it in those terms, the analysts are one set of the community of people who understand what the requirements are, but so are the users. That is, again, another reason why I would like to see the connection to the users because that way you have the full community of analysts and users together thinking about what the requirements are, and getting a more focused collection. Because, for example, in the area of critical infrastructure, we will now have in the department people who are looking at the questions of, what are the attacks we are most worried about? What are the greatest vulnerabilities we have? We then need to be able to have them go to the collectors and say, we are worried about whether the terrorists can attack a chemical plant, or cause damage at a nuclear facility. They will understand the problem that needs to be addressed and they can focus the direction of the collectors to that end. Chairman Collins. Mr. Smith, what is your view on that? Should the new center be able to direct the collection of data or just be a recipient and analysis---- Mr. Smith. I do not believe they should be able to direct it directly. By that, I mean they should have a key role, and indeed the leading role, in suggesting what needs to be collected, but that ultimately the DCI has to decide what are the priorities of collection. In the intelligence business there is a lot of competition for scarce assets. For example, how does one decide how the satellites are targeted? You cannot have the DCI telling a satellite to collect on something and have the head of the center telling that same satellite to collect on something different. That is the DCI's role. On the other hand with respect to issues related to homeland security, clearly this center has to have a very strong voice. One other point I think is extremely important. Whether the center is under the DCI or ultimately moved to Homeland Security, it is also imperative that the center be able to send essentially tasking directives to State and local government. The British model, the MI5 is very good on this. They work with State and local--in their case all local municipalities, very directly to say, here are the issues that we are concerned about. Here are the people we are concerned about. Here are the organizations we are concerned about. So that the bobby on the beat in London or Manchester knows what it is that he is supposed to be looking for. That is something that we do not do now and that is something that homeland security needs to do in the future. Chairman Collins. Senator Pryor. Senator Pryor. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I just have a few short questions. This is a fascinating discussion because it gives us the opportunity to establish something new that theoretically we could do an extremely good job of setting up and that could be very beneficial to this country and to the world. In the discussions and proposals where do the two of you see major points of weakness in any proposal? In other words, we talk a lot about who has control over this and what is the job description of this entity. But what do the two of you see as the major point of weakness, the one thing that we need to make sure that we get right, or the one thing that we will need to work on the most to make sure this is an effective organization? Mr. Steinberg. If I could start, I think that in many ways the challenge we face on homeland security is a little bit like the challenge we faced at the beginning of the Cold War, at the end of World War II, when we really had to rethink our national strategy. That meant both the substance of our strategy--we developed the doctrine of containment and it had a powerful impact on the organization of our government and how we---- Senator Pryor. I agree with you on that. I think that is a good point. Mr. Steinberg. There is a tremendous temptation to do this in a piecemeal fashion. It is hard to make big change in government. You know that, this is the Governmental Affairs Committee. So the temptation is to make incremental changes. To say, the FBI should do a little more here, the CIA will do a little bit more here. There is always resistance. There is always inertia. There are always costs to change. I think that what the Congress has done in this area has really pushed the administration both on the strategy and the organization to say, think about this as a fresh problem. Recognize that we really have never thought about the vulnerability of the United States as a core part of what we do. It affects our military. It affects our police. It affects the relationships between State and local government, the private sector and government. These are profound changes and we need to have a vision and a strategy that is equal to the profundity of this change. Mr. Smith. I agree completely. I mentioned the British a moment ago. We do not need to necessarily adopt MI5 as the perfect model but they start and are charged by the Prime Minister with that very question, what are the threats to the United Kingdom, whether they originate within the United Kingdom or outside of the United Kingdom, that will ultimately manifest themselves within the United Kingdom? It is their responsibility to figure what to do about them. They collect, they analyze, and ultimately work with law enforcement officials to act. The strategy is vitally important. Another issue that I worry about is confusion and who is in charge. The issue of the unity of command that I mentioned at the outset, Mr. Steinberg mentioned Goldwater-Nickles. Congress made an enormous step forward in linking authority with responsibility with resources, and that is very important. A Marine general one time put it more bluntly which is, I want a designated neck, by which he meant a neck around which I can get my hands. That is a very useful concept, and as we organize ourselves we ought to designate necks that the President and the Congress can get their hands around when things go wrong. Senator Pryor. Let us talk about MI5 for just a second. I will be the first to admit that I do not know a lot about MI5, but you have mentioned it. My perception of MI5, and maybe I am wrong, is that it is much more integrated than the U.S. counterpart. Obviously there are differences in Great Britain and the United States. They have a much smaller geographical area, a smaller population, and they do not have the Constitution and the Bill of Rights like we do. So there are clearly some differences. But you have mentioned MI5 a couple of times. Is my perception correct that they are more integrated and, as you said earlier, the agent on the corner is much more in touch with the central office than anybody here in the United States? And is that a good model, and is that what we should shoot for? Mr. Smith. Let me talk about that for a moment. It has been my privilege to work with the British over the years so I have some acquaintance with it. As I say, they begin with this fundamental question. They report, by the way, to the Home Secretary so in that sense they fit ultimately with having this whole function report to the Secretary of Homeland Security. They develop criteria for collection, they participate in the process of what is it that British intelligence agencies should collect, MI5, the military services and so on. They do not have arrest authority. They are purely a collection and analytical body. Nor do I think any of us who favor a domestic security service here, none of us want this new service to have arrest authority. Senator Pryor. Right, but then they collect and analyze, but they also have the authority to disseminate to the proper-- -- Mr. Smith. Absolutely. That is a key point. I do not know what happened yesterday at Heathrow but my guess is that MI5 was very directly involved in the decisions involving the security around Heathrow. They have in each local municipality in the United Kingdom designated police officers who work with them. They are given clearances. They are given secure communications. They are brought to London periodically for briefings on what is going on. There is a flow of information back and forth between London and the local police forces with respect to what it is that MI5 is interested in. So literally then, the bobby on the beat is informed in turn by this core of people in Manchester or wherever, Glasgow, on what it is that MI5 is worried about. He does not have a clearance but he knows what they are looking for, and he knows then how to report it. He reports it back to that group which then reports it back to London. It is a two- way street and it works quite well. Ultimately then they are very closely tied to the Special Branch and Scotland Yard, who actually do the police work, carry out the arrests and ultimately testify in court if need be. It is not a perfect model and there certainly are frictions and there are problems there as well, and it cannot be imported directly here, but I do believe it is worth looking at. As I say, I am very pleased that there are now serious proposals here in Congress to consider this. Senator Pryor. May I ask one more question? Chairman Collins. Certainly. Senator Pryor. That is, are both of you advocating that this joint venture be housed in the Department of Homeland Security? Mr. Steinberg. I certainly am. I think it is really consistent with the idea of, as Jeff said, creating a responsible authority. I think that the Secretary of Homeland Security ought to have that role. I am very concerned that we are having a diffusion of authority. We have a Secretary of Homeland Security, we have an Office of Homeland Security in the White House which also has responsibilities in this area. We are now giving the DCI new responsibilities in this area. It is the diffusion that concerns me. Mr. Smith. Senator, I differ with Mr. Steinberg only on that point. It may be a temporal disagreement. I think for the moment it does belong under the DCI, in part because he has got the experience, he has got the manpower to do it, and I think it makes a lot of sense there. It will be independent and so on. I also worry a great deal about the confusion that is associated with the start-up of Homeland Security. I think we may be underestimating how difficult this is going to be to do. So I would leave it there for the moment and, as I say, it may ultimately be wise to move it to Homeland Security but I think for the moment it belongs where it is. Senator Pryor. Thank you. Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator. Mr. Steinberg, just to follow up on the issue of where the center should be located. That is an issue on which we have heard diverse opinions today and I have not yet reached a conclusion. One of the arguments that I have heard against locating it in the Department of Homeland Security is that the department's role is focused on security within the borders of United States and the center's role is going to be broader than that. It would be collecting information about terrorist threats against our embassies or forces abroad, for example. What is your response to those who would argue that it does not make sense to put it within the Department of Homeland Security because the center's focus is so much broader? Mr. Steinberg. I think that you have to look at the overall structure of what everyone will be doing in this effort. The CIA is going to be focused on events abroad and terrorist threats not only to the United States but terrorist threats to friendly countries, to stability of countries that are not friendly, so there will continue to be within the CIA a responsibility to look at what is going on overseas. The question is where do you bring it all together, and is the better balance to bring it together in the context of the DCI, who is mostly looking overseas, or importing that information that is being developed by the CIA and other overseas collectors into an agency who is trying to link that aspect of the terrorist threat to domestic rules? So for example, at least for the moment, we do not believe that Hamas is a threat to the United States. It does not have a history of either targeting Americans or the United States. We are still going to have somebody in the CIA who is collecting on them. But if we keep the responsibility for homeland security at the CIA, as I believe it will be under this joint venture, then I think that there is a danger that too much of this will be focused away from the homeland mission and not sensitive enough to the needs of the people who are actually carrying out the mission. So inevitably you are going to have to make a choice as to where the balance goes because this will need to be an all- source center. I think the question is, who is going to pull out that part of the foreign terrorist intelligence that is directly related to the homeland and understand best how to take that foreign intelligence and relate it to threats here? I believe that on balance, though obviously there is no perfect answer to this, that the right division is to say, of course the CIA will still be looking at terrorism abroad but this new center will still be involved in tasking. I agree with Jeff, that, when I say that the new domestic security agency should be involved in tasking, I do not mean that they should have their hands on the satellite apertures but they should be tasking the foreign collectors to look into, what al Qaeda is doing in Afghanistan that may be relevant to the United States. But I think that the weight of where their focus should be is to be able to look at the foreign intelligence and see how it affects threats against us here at home. Chairman Collins. Mr. Smith, in addition to the argument that Mr. Steinberg just made, an argument has been made against locating the new center under the control of the CIA director, that then the center will just once again become a creature of the CIA. That you will lose the whole intent of this center. What is your response to that? Mr. Smith. It is very much a function of leadership. It is a question of who is put in charge. It is a question of the quality of people who are assigned there. There is a risk if it is housed at Langley that it will take on the character of a foreign intelligence center. I think, however, that there will be--the people who are assigned there from the Bureau or from Homeland Security, or Customs or Immigration, wherever, will have as their responsibility to worry about their home agencies. There is no doubt that George Tenet is personally focused on this to make it work and to make it work to support Governor Ridge. I think that as long as that is the case there is some, but not much risk, that it will be captured by the intrigue of foreign intelligence. In my judgment, it will remain focused. Mr. Steinberg. If I could just add, Madam Chairman, I think obviously there are trade-offs here. The other risk in placing responsibility under the DCI, is that, as several Members of the Committee pointed out, as serious as the threat to the homeland is, we have other things we have to worry about. We have to worry about weapons of mass destruction. We have to worry about turmoil abroad. Director Tenet has a lot of responsibilities, so he cannot afford to wake up every day and only worry about the homeland. The advantage of what you have done by creating a Secretary of Homeland Security is that somebody who can wake up every day and only think about it. That I think is my worry. I have the same worry about the FBI. That while I am sure they will try to do a good job as they move into this area, the question is, do you want somebody who has to wake up and worry about all of these things or is this such a central function that you really do want one person who organizes everything around that mission? Chairman Collins. Thank you, both. Senator Pryor, do you have any further questions you would like to ask? Senator Pryor. I do not. Thank you. Chairman Collins. I want to thank both of you for testifying before us today. I think this hearing has been very helpful to hear a variety of views on the new center. We look forward to also having a second hearing at which administration witnesses will be testifying as well. I want to also thank my staff for putting together this hearing. It is the first hearing on the concept that the President revealed during his State of the Union address. So thank you for your assistance and this hearing is now adjourned. [Whereupon, at 11:51 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.] CONSOLIDATING INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS: A REVIEW OF THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSAL TO CREATE A TERRORIST THREAT INTEGRATION CENTER ---------- WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2003 U.S. Senate, Committee on Governmental Affairs, Washington, DC. The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., in room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Susan M. Collins, Chairman of the Committee, presiding. Present: Senators Collins, Coleman, Levin, and Akaka. OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS Chairman Collins. Good morning. The Committee will come to order. First I want to disclaim any responsibility for the weather. Even though I am from Maine, I did not bring this weather with me in any way and I just wanted to make that clear while we have all these intelligence experts in the room. Today the Governmental Affairs Committee is holding its second hearing on the President's proposal to create a Terrorist Threat Integration Center. We are very pleased to have a distinguished panel of administration witnesses to answer the many questions about the mission, structure, and responsibilities of the new center. The sharing of intelligence among Federal agencies was a serious problem long before the horrific attacks of September 11. But it was the terrorist attacks that focused attention on the serious consequence of inadequate communication and interagency rivalries. As the lead Federal law enforcement agency responsible for collecting domestic intelligence, including terrorism related intelligence, the FBI historically has focused on investigating and developing criminal cases. At times the FBI has failed to share critical domestic intelligence because of concerns that the disclosure of such information could jeopardize its criminal cases. As the primary Federal agency responsible for collecting foreign intelligence related to terrorism, the CIA also has been hesitant to share information because of concerns that such disclosures would jeopardize its methods and sources. The result of these barriers has been that far too often critical intelligence has not reached those who really need it. After September 11 it became readily apparent that government agencies must do a better job analyzing and sharing terrorism related intelligence. Congress moved toward that goal in 2001 by passing legislation to facilitate the sharing of intelligence information, and then last year by approving the Homeland Security Act. The administration has also taken a number of positive steps since September 11. The FBI and the CIA have expanded both their analytical capabilities and their cooperation. But these changes have not gone far enough. Administration representatives have stated that information sharing between the FBI and the CIA still is too often achieved through ``brute force.'' The President is attempting to address these impediments to the timely sharing of critical information by creating the Terrorist Threat Integration Center. Nevertheless, there are many questions that remain about the implementation of the administration's plan. The first and perhaps most fundamental question is, how will the integration center be an improvement over the existing intelligence structure? We currently have a Counter Terrorist Center within the CIA that has access to all government intelligence relating to terrorism. As CIA Director George Tenet has noted, the center ``was created to enable the fusion of all sources of information in a single action-oriented unit.'' Frankly, that sounds a lot like the proposed integration center, which raises the obvious question of how the new center will improve the sharing of intelligence information among agencies. A second key question is, what is being done to ensure that the integration center will streamline and consolidate intelligence analysis rather than create duplication and mission confusion. I have prepared a chart \1\ that shows some of the agencies that are now responsible for collecting and analyzing terrorism-related intelligence. As you can see, it is a very confusing picture. Including the integration center in the chart does not make the picture any less complex. It simply adds another box. We need to understand how this additional box will improve the flow of information to the agencies and individuals that need it. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The chart entitled ``Primary Agencies Handling Terrorist- Related Intelligence (With Terrorist Threat Integration Center)'' appears in the Appendix on page 119. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- A third question concerns the proper location of the new center. Some experts believe that the Department of Homeland Security should be the hub of all homeland security activities including intelligence analysis. By reading the Homeland Security Act, one could make a compelling case that the new department was meant to be the fusion center for the analysis of intelligence relating to homeland security. Should the integration center therefore be under the control and the direction of the Secretary of Homeland Security rather than the Director of Central Intelligence? We would like to obtain a better understanding of the reasoning behind the administration's decision and how the integration center will interact with the new Department of Homeland Security. Another important question is, how will the center share appropriate information with State and local authorities, our front line troops in the war against terrorism? It is one thing to analyze intelligence information well, but if the people who need the intelligence do not receive it, then the effort has been of little use. Still another key issue is the center's ability to overcome historic agency resistance to change. There have already been news reports indicating opposition to the integration center in both the CIA and the FBI. What is being done to overcome agency resistance so that it does not undermine the center's core mission? Finally, will the integration center adequately address and safeguard privacy and other legal concerns? The President's proposal places the Director of the Central Intelligence in charge of the integration center. In that position he will be responsible for the analysis of domestic as well as foreign intelligence. I understand that the administration has reviewed the legal issues carefully but I want to ensure that the center's activities will not infringe on the Constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans. At last week's hearing we did not hear of any opposition to the concept of a Terrorist Threat Integration Center, but a number of questions were raised by Members of this Committee and by our witnesses concerning the implementation of this plan. It is my hope that our expert administration witnesses will help us fully answer those questions today. If the administration can achieve its stated goals by the creation of this new center, I believe that the integration center will usher in important new capabilities in the way that our government analyzes intelligence and shares it with those who are responsible for protecting our people and our Nation. But its success will depend on overcoming formidable historic barriers to information sharing and cooperation. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today. At this time I would like to ask the Senator from Minnesota if he has any opening comments that he would like to make. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLEMAN Senator Coleman. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I think your opening statement did a tremendous job of summarizing areas of concern for a number of us. Just looking at the chart up there I think the question is, is it going to work, and can you make it work? And can you make it work, by the way, not just for those at the top levels but for those at the local level who have to deal with it at the frontline. I come from the perspective of a local citizen. Second, Madam Chairman, let me reiterate the other concern that you raised in that you have to, we have to make it work, and you have to make it work in a way that does not infringe upon the rights and Constitutional protections of privacy of law-abiding American citizens. So I think those are the challenges. We need to make this work. We need to work together to make this work and I look forward to the testimony today. Chairman Collins. Thank you very much, Senator Coleman. Your perspective as a mayor will be very helpful as we sort through how this new center should interact with State and local law enforcement officials. That is often a challenge because they do not have security clearances in most cases and because we do not want to overwhelm the center with responding to local inquiries, but at the same time there needs to be some kind of system for sharing essential information and we look forward to your insights in that regard. I am very pleased to welcome our distinguished panel of administration representatives today from the FBI, the CIA, and the Department of Homeland Security. They are leading their respective agency's efforts to create the new Terrorist Threat Integration Center. We understand that the President's proposal is still under development but we very much appreciate your sharing your preliminary insights with us today. We are pleased to be joined by the Hon. Gordon England who is Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, the first deputy secretary. He previously served as Secretary of the Navy, and before that had a distinguished career in the private sector at General Dynamics Corporation. Pasquale D'Amuro is the Executive Assistant Director for Counter Terrorism at the FBI. He was appointed by the Director to be the Executive Assistant Director for Counter Terrorism and Counter Intelligence in November of last year. He is the lead FBI official on counterterrorism issues and has had a distinguished career with the FBI since 1979. Our third panelist is Winston Wiley, who became the Associate Director of Central Intelligence for Homeland Security in May 2002. In this capacity Mr. Wiley is tasked with ensuring the efficient and timely flow of intelligence in support of the homeland security effort. He is also the acting chair of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center Steering Committee. So I very much appreciate his being with us as well. I am going to start with Mr. Wiley. I understand that Secretary England does not have a formal statement; is that correct, Mr. Secretary? Mr. England. Yes. Chairman Collins. So we will start with Mr. Wiley. Thank you, you may proceed. STATEMENT OF WINSTON P. WILEY,\1\ ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE FOR HOMELAND SECURITY AND CHAIR, SENIOR STEERING GROUP Mr. Wiley. Thank you, Madam Chairman and Senator Coleman. Let me begin by saying that the statement that I have and that I have submitted for the record is not just my statement. It is a joint statement that we have all participated in pulling together. Indeed, the effort to put together a response to the President's charge to come up with a threat integration center was, from the beginning, seen as a joint effort. The senior steering group, the members of whom are at the table and sitting behind me, saw this as a joint effort and have created an institution that we think represents that. So as I go through these remarks do not think of them just as coming from the Director of Central Intelligence. They, in fact, represent the views of all of us in this effort. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Wiley appears in the Appendix on page 113. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Turning to that, let me say a little bit about how we got here. When the Director charged us with going forward with putting some real meat on the bones of the proposal we knew that the key agencies needed to be involved, and that was the CIA, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security. But the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and the Office of Management and Budget would also need to play a role. So they represented the core steering group and all of those are here. You have introduced those at the table. John Brennan is the Deputy Executive Director from the Central Intelligence Agency. He represented the CIA while I represented the Director in his community capacity. Cofer Black is the Ambassador at Large and Special Assistant to Secretary Powell for counterterrorism at the Department of State. And Rich Haver from the Department of Defense is with us, and Steve McMillan from OMB. Again, integration and partnership in the sense of joint venture is what we had in mind from the beginning. The hard work of putting together the proposal was done by subject matter experts from all these agencies and beyond. They reported back to us, and we proposed formally up through the DCI and our respective principals to the President, and that was accepted. Let me go through some of the points that are in the statement that we have prepared without going actually to the trouble of reading it all into the record. The first has to do with the mission and structure and gets at one of the questions that you had. The goal really is the full integration of U.S. Government terrorist threat-related information and analysis. Bringing together both the foreign intelligence that is collected overseas and what we call the foreign intelligence that is collected domestically by the Bureau and others, so that it is fused and looked at in a comprehensive fashion. The structure is designed to ensure rapid and unfettered sharing of relevant information across department lines. We keep using the term joint venture because we feel the TTIC needs to be an institution that has parts of all of the holders of information in that component. The objective is to create value added efficiencies in analyzing the full array of terrorist threat-related information. You used the term brute force earlier, which is a fair characterization. But what we have to acknowledge is that brute force is exercised every day, and very diligently and carefully by officers of the Central Intelligence Agency, other parts of the TTIC, and the members of the FBI. We do make it work, but we need to make it work better and we need to institutionalize some of the things that are today being done simply because people are so diligent and careful to get them done. TTIC, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, will be composed of elements from the Department of Homeland Security, from the FBI's counter terrorist division, from the Counter Terrorist Center at CIA, as well as elements of the Department of Defense, DIA, JITF-CT, NSA, NIMA, and other agencies that have a stake in what TTIC will do. The State Department is a good example of that. TTIC will combine the terrorist threat- related information in a way to provide a more focused and comprehensive government counterterrorist intelligence effort in defining the threat. I have mentioned that among the most important features for TTIC is unfettered access to all information, all intelligence information, whether it is from raw reports to finished analytic assessments. That is essential in order to be able to pull the work together and has been clearly reflected in the discussions that led up to the Homeland Security Act as well as the other discussions post-September 11. TTIC will need to provide all-source threat assessments both to the national leadership and, as Senator Coleman said, to the broader homeland security community which certainly includes State and local as well as private sector officials, and finding the ways to do that in the appropriate formats is one of the key missions. TTIC will also oversee a national counterterrorism tasking and requirements system. Intelligence, in order to work, fundamentally has to begin with a requirements process that identifies the key questions that collectors have to go collect against. That information is brought back, assessed, analyzed, distributed and then balanced against those requirements. We talk about an intelligence cycle, but it begins at its heart with a requirements system and TTIC will play a key role in organizing that on the counterterrorist homeland security side. Finally, another key responsibility will be to maintain a database of known and suspected terrorists that is accessible at the Federal and non-Federal level with appropriate controls and security clearances, and bringing the various databases that exist today in various places together into a centralized capability. The principal objective, and again it gets back to your first question is that TTIC needs to close the gaps that separate the analysis of foreign source and domestic source terrorist threat information and ensure optimum support of the wide range of customers for homeland security information, those at the Federal level as well as those in the State, local and private sectors. Let me turn to a second point that is addressed in the statement. TTIC cannot reach its full end-state capabilities overnight. We need, obviously, to grow and we need to grow as quickly as we can. But we also need to grow in a way that does not smother the effort by being over-ambitious in its initial days. Stand-up will occur by May 1. It will focus on integrating terrorist threat-related information and pick up some of the responsibilities that are today exercised jointly between the FBI and the CTC. One of those is the preparation of a daily threat matrix that you have heard about. Situation reports, updates on threats, and interagency terrorist threat warnings, picking up those responsibilities from the various government agencies is critical. As soon as possible thereafter, TTIC should become the principal gateway for policymaker requests for assessments about terrorist threats. As it grows in capability, and what we see is an incremental growth as we move towards its ultimate full strength that I will talk about, TTIC would stock and maintain the database of known and suspected terrorists that I talked about. It will be producing the current intelligence and terrorist threat-related assessment, drawing on resources not just in TTIC but in the various agencies that are contributors to TTIC but are maintaining some inherent capability of their own. TTIC will be able to reach back into its parent agencies to provide it with an instantaneous surge capability that draws on the strength of a wide range of agencies. What we are trying to do is make sure that we build on what works. We do not want to undo things that are working well, and that is especially true when it comes to the integration of the work of collectors of information and the analysts, whether that is at the CIA or in the Intelligence Community or at the FBI. That is happening today. We want to build on that and make sure that there is a better fusing across the domestic and foreign side. When TTIC reaches its full end-strength capability it will be collocated with the CIA--the DCI's--Counter Terrorist Center and with the FBI's Counter Terrorism Division in a building that has yet to be acquired but that we are actively working on. Prior to that, TTIC--while it is not a CIA organization, it is an organization that reports to the DCI in his capacity as Director of Central Intelligence--will be located on the CIA compound, as are other independent Intelligence Community entities today. So we are sensitive to not creating it as a CIA organization, but the smartest place to build the interim capability is in space that we have at the CIA. Let me talk about the command structure quickly. The director of TTIC needs to be a senior, very senior U.S. Government official who reports directly to the DCI in his statutory capacity as head of the Intelligence Community. He would be appointed by the director in consultation with the other partners in pulling together the TTIC. The director of TTIC will have the final review and approval authority for all of the intelligence that is prepared by TTIC. For national level analysis that is produced outside of TTIC, our expectation is that the director of TTIC will play a role in coordinating that, recognizing that agencies may do some departmental work just as is done today across the Intelligence Community. I mentioned information access and the criticality of that. TTIC as an organization must have access to the full array of terrorist threat-related information within the U.S. Government. We can do that consistent with all the necessary protections and working smart by making sure that individual members of TTIC have access to information they need to do their work while the organization as a whole, and the leadership of the organization, have access to information that is comparable to what the head of CTC at CIA and the head of the Counter Terrorist Division at FBI has. So we think we can work both the necessary sharing within the organization and do the necessary work of protecting the most sensitive information. Critical to making this work is a robust information technology base, one that will be particularly vigorous in the collocated end-state when CTC, CTD, and TTIC are located together. They all need to be able to draw on their own information bases, but we need to be able to bring that information together in the TTIC environment and share it in ways that allow us to do the most detailed analysis, use the most modern tools, and have the most aggressive sharing mechanisms available to us. I would close with a thought about the work of TTIC just as you did. It is a work in progress. In fact if we do it right, TTIC will always be work in progress. It needs to start small. It needs to grow quickly. But we need not to be locked into particular institutional solutions. Rather with our eye on the ball, what we are trying to do is make sure that we have the best mechanisms in place to provide threat information to our national leadership and to the American people. We will be making adjustments as we go along based on what we think works rather than tell you today that we have the perfect plan that takes us from here out to the year 2010. With those thoughts, let me close and I think my friend Pat D'Amuro has some comments that he may want to share. Chairman Collins. Thank you, Mr. Wiley. Mr. D'Amuro. STATEMENT OF PASQUALE J. D'AMURO,\1\ EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR COUNTERTERRORISM/COUNTERINTELLIGENCE, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI) Mr. D'Amuro. Thank you, Madam Chairman and Senator Coleman. Thank you for the opportunity to add just a few short comments from the statement I have with respect to Mr. Wiley's efforts with the steering committee. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. D'Amuro appears in the Appendix on page 117. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- As we know, President Bush recently emphasized during a speech at FBI headquarters that the FBI has no greater mission, no greater priority than preventing the next terrorist act in America. We strongly support the formation of the TTIC and we are proud to be a partner with both the CIA, Homeland Security, and all the other participating agencies. The FBI's experience in conducting complex criminal and terrorist investigations has shown that analysts are most effective when they are in constant and close communication with the investigators. For this reason we strongly support and look forward to the expeditious implementation of plans to collocate not only the TTIC but the FBI Counter Terrorism Division and the CIA Counterterrorism Center along with the Department of Homeland Security. As you know, the FBI has established 66 joint terrorist task forces in the field offices around the country as well as a national joint terrorism center at FBI headquarters. The JTTF's partner FBI personnel with hundreds of investigators from Federal, State, and local agencies. These partnerships provide an effective and efficient mechanism to collect domestic intelligence crucial to preventing the next attack domestically. The fusion of this domestic and international threat intelligence is critically important for the FBI to complete its mission of preventing the next and future attacks domestically. The FBI views the TTIC as an important resource. The TTIC will not only provide all-source integrated analysis to the FBI but also to the officials in State and local law enforcement who are essential partners in the fight against terrorism. We recognize that the two-way flow of information between Federal and local law enforcement is necessary to continuously sharpen both the collection and the analysis of threat-related information. Once again, the 66 JTTFs across the country provide an effective channel to share the TTIC analytical products with our partners in State and local law enforcement. We are committed to working with the Department of Homeland Security to push information and analysis out of the TTIC to all Federal, State, and local agencies. We are expanding our ability to collect, analyze, and disseminate intelligence. The centerpiece of the director's efforts is the establishment of an executive assistant director for intelligence who will have direct authority and responsibility for the FBI's national intelligence program. Specifically, the EAD for intelligence will be responsible for ensuring that the TTIC's reporting requirements are met by all the field offices. Our support of the TTIC will not change our mission, priorities, or operations. In fact, the TTIC will only strengthen our capabilities. The Bureau is uniquely positioned to bring both national security and law enforcement authorities to bear in the war against terrorism. Recently, the ability to develop intelligence on terrorist activities and use law enforcement powers to disrupt them was exemplified in Buffalo, New York where seven al-Qaeda associates and sympathizers were indicted in September 2002 for providing material support to terrorism. Every FBI agent is trained to recognize that along with these broad authorities comes the responsibility to implement them fairly and in accordance with the protections provided by the Constitution. It is important to note that the Bureau's role, and the roles of all TTIC participants, must and will remain consistent with the protections provided by privacy laws, executive orders, Attorney General guidelines, and other relevant legal authorities under the protection of the Constitution to safeguard the civil liberties of the citizens of this country. Again, I will keep this statement short because I know you have a lot of questions, but thank you for allowing me to appear today. Chairman Collins. Thank you very much. Secretary England, do you have anything you would like to add to your colleagues? STATEMENT OF HON. GORDON ENGLAND, DEPUTY SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY Mr. England. Let me just make a comment, Madam Chairman. First of all, I thank Mr. Wiley for all his work with chairing this group that we put together. I will tell you that the TTIC is vitally important to the Department of Homeland Security. We have been part of the effort to create this structure in response to the President's initiative. This is vitally important for us to do our job in the Department of Homeland Security, so you will find us a very significant proponent of this approach; very supportive, and we will work very closely with all the other agencies to make this very successful. In my judgment, this is very important for America, so it has the full support of the Department of Homeland Security and we will be happy to work with you as we fully develop this concept in the coming weeks and months ahead. Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Wiley and Mr. D'Amuro, our government already has a Counter Terrorist Center which is under the supervision of the Director of Central Intelligence, and when you look at the details of the current Counter Terrorist Center and the proposed Terrorist Threat Integration Center they seem, at first analysis, to be quite similar. I quoted Director Tenet's comments that it was supposed to be all sources of intelligence would be analyzed. Both do have access to all sources of government information about terrorism. Both are under the supervision of the Director of Central Intelligence. I believe both have staff from a number of agencies conducting intelligence analysis. In light of those similarities I have two questions. First, in practical terms how will the proposed Terrorist Threat Integration Center be different from the Counter Terrorist Center that already exists on the organization chart \1\ that I showed you? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The chart entitled ``Primary Agencies Handling Terrorist- Related Intelligence (With Terrorist Threat Integration Center)'' appears in the Appendix on page 119. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Second, given the fact that at least at first blush they appear very similar, how will the new center address problems that have plagued our analytical efforts so far? They seem so similar that I am concerned about duplication. And if they are structured in similar ways, how will the new center be an improvement over what we have? I am going to ask a similar question to Mr. D'Amuro. Mr. Wiley. Thank you, Senator. I think that at first blush it is possible to say that the TTIC bears a similarity to the Counter Terrorist Center. But I think that you have to go a step beyond that first level of analysis. I think that what you have in TTIC is a much more vigorous presence of Intelligence Community and law enforcement and DHS employees in a common environment, with reachback capability to their respective agencies, in which all of that information is brought together. CTC does have, and has long had, and will continue to have detailees from other agencies in it. But what we envision in TTIC is a more robust presence and a more explicit set of responsibilities for integrating that flow of domestically collected foreign intelligence, which is growing. The TTIC by itself is not the only change that is going on. The change in collection philosophy and dissemination philosophy--what is going on at the Bureau--Pat D'Amuro can talk about--is instrumental in helping to make TTIC a success. It will increase the amount of domestically collected information about foreign terrorist groups that can be fused. And by bringing the analysts together, having them work literally in a common environment, I think that is a significant step up from where we are today. Chairman Collins. Mr. D'Amuro, the FBI has a counterterrorism division. It is my understanding that is still going to exist when the new center is created. How can we avoid duplication? Mr. D'Amuro. I think that it is important to understand that the TTIC is being created for the fusion of an analytical product with respect to threat information. It is not an operational entity. The counterterrorism division at the FBI headquarters will still maintain its operational role throughout the country as being the lead agency domestically with respect to counterterrorism investigations. If I could just add a few comments to Mr. Wiley's--it is the fusion of that intelligence and the production of one analytical product that I see extremely critically important that we'll be able, through the JTTFs, to disseminate that product to all State and local law enforcement authorities that are part of the JTTF. There is also a program underway at the Bureau to reach out for all the State and local entities that are not members of the JTTF so that we can make sure, not only do we provide them with one fused analytical product, but also tap into their ability to collect information and intelligence which would be critical to preventing the next terrorist act. So while the TTIC is being formed for the fusion of the intelligence product, both CTC will maintain its operational responsibility as well as the FBI maintaining its responsibility for the conduct of intelligence and criminal investigations with respect to counterterrorism. Chairman Collins. Let me follow up on the use of sharing information with State and local law enforcement. You have described a system under which the joint terrorism task force, I guess, would act as an intermediary to distribute information; is that correct? Mr. D'Amuro. What the plan is, is that through the national JTTF at FBI headquarters, that would be the distribution mechanism for the fused analytical product out to all the JTTFs, the 66 JTTFs that are now in existence across the country. In addition to that, we are going to be reaching out to all State and local entities even if they are not permanent members of the JTTFs. So, yes, it will be the mechanism for distribution of that product. Chairman Collins. But what is going to happen in the other direction? The complaints that I hear from police chiefs of our major cities in Maine is that when they are in a state of high alert, as we are now, and they have reason to be concerned--and this happened recently in Portland, Maine where a foreign national was taking photographs of our oil tank farms on the Portland waterfront, and when the police chief tried to get information from the FBI about whether this individual was on the watch list, he had a very difficult time in getting an answer from the FBI. What are we doing in the other direction? I understand when you have a product or information that needs to be shared it will go through the joint terrorism task force. But what does a police chief in Portland, Maine who is concerned about the vulnerabilities of our ports and sees something suspicious, or certainly raising concern, how do we improve the flow of information in the other direction? Mr. D'Amuro. That is the main purpose of the creation of the Office of Intelligence for the Bureau. What the Office of Intelligence will do and what the Bureau has not done in the past is establish intelligence requirements. It will ensure that the field offices are out collecting the intelligence necessary for the protection of this country. Providing information and intelligence with respect to vulnerabilities of various seaports and other infrastructure protection matters will be the mission of Homeland Security. We will provide that information through the executive assistant director, setting those requirements, make sure those requirements are met, and making sure that intelligence is collected in the field. I am unaware of the situation that you mention but that police chief should have been able to get information from the joint terrorism task force, which in that case would have been out of Boston and I believe a resident agency in Portland. That is the way it is supposed to work. That is the vision of how we plan to collect that intelligence and making sure that it gets to the different agencies that it needs to go to. That establishment of the requirements will not be the only mechanism for the Office of Executive Assistant Director for Intelligence. We are also changing the metrics by how we judge our field offices and how we judge and promote executives into the Bureau. They will have requirements for the collection of that intelligence that will be used in their performance appraisals. Chairman Collins. Senator Akaka. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA Senator Akaka. Thank you. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. I am pleased that you are holding this hearing today. We have had a hearing before this that raised some issues and I think we came out of that one being concerned about maybe having too many or creating too many intelligence centers. Senator Rudman at that time expressed concern about confusion in our intelligence analysis and collection. So this hearing will certainly help us, I am sure, to learn more about what we need to do. As I hear your concerns too, the difference between the former structure and the one that we have now is that we have added TTIC to it. Hopefully TTIC will resolve some of these problems. So I am glad that we are having this and may I ask that my statement be placed in the record? Chairman Collins. Without objection. [The prepared statement of Senator Akaka follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA Madam Chairman, the issues raised in the first hearing on the President's proposal to create a Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) were important ones. I am pleased that you are holding this hearing with the administration. At our last hearing, Senator Rudman, one of the witnesses, made the point that we need to be careful to limit the confusion in our intelligence analysis and collection. As I mentioned at that last hearing, I am concerned that we may be creating too many intelligence centers to evaluate the same information and respond to the same threats. For example, the CIA has its Counter Terrorism Center--the Defense Intelligence Agency has its counter terrorism center--the new Department of Homeland Security will have an Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate--the Army has an Information Dominance Center--DOD is developing a Total Information Awareness program--and the FBI has a Counter Terrorism Division. Now the President proposes a new Terrorist Threat Integration Center which apparently will include representatives from all these different centers. Mr. Wiley, in his testimony, will suggest that TTIC is going to have all the information, including raw reports, that other agencies are producing and that it will maintain a database of terrorists accessible to some non-federal officials and entities. This library of terrorist reports will be useful only if it contains accurate information and is available to the people who may need it the most-- local police forces and other first responders. I am concerned that there still appears to be a disconnect between information and the people who need it at the local level. All the reports in the world will not be of any value if no one who needs to know can find them. I am also worried that this system does not provide a mechanism for ensuring investigations are fully carried out. There were numerous times prior to 9-11 when FBI agents reported suspicious activities which have subsequently been linked to those attacks but those reports were not followed up on. I want to know--the American public wants to know--who is responsible? Who is in charge of ensuring that all the intelligence reports are acted upon? Will this new intelligence center resolve that problem or only add to the problem? I look forward to the testimony and hope these questions will finally be resolved. Senator Akaka. Thank you. I am so glad to have our panel this morning, and especially Secretary England. Good to see you, and always good to be with you. Mr. England. Senator, good to be with you. I wish I was with you in your home State today, however. [Laughter.] Senator Akaka. One hundred percent agreement. Secretary England, at our last hearing on this subject Governor Gilmore pointed to the institutional and cultural barriers to intelligence sharing, especially with State and local officials as mentioned by the Chairman. Although I share his concern, I worry that we are creating a multitude of intelligence agencies, all of them performing important functions including sharing information with this new agency TTIC. However, it is still not clear who is responsible for ensuring the proper response to a terrorist threat. So let me pose a scenario to my question. The CIA receives information about a foreign terrorist group that is thinking about targeting cruise ships. The FBI gets information about foreigners with seafaring backgrounds entering the United States for some illegal purpose. The Honolulu Police Department receives reports about suspicious people loitering about or around the port. Question, who is responsible for putting all these bits of information together, instigating an investigation, alerting local officials, and telling the public what it should do? Is it the Director of the CIA, the FBI, or the Secretary for Homeland Security? As you can see, some of the confusion that has resulted, especially from the periodic announcements that we are on high terrorist alert, comes because the public is not certain who is in charge of dealing with these threats. So my question then is, who is responsible for putting all of these bits together? Mr. England. Senator, I believe that is clear to me. With this new Terrorist Threat Integration Center, all the data would come into this one center. The nice thing about this-- this is not a new agency, by the way. This is a center. This is an integration of existing capability that we put together so we can collaborate and exchange data and analyze data jointly to get a best answer from the data sources that we have. So all the data would go into this center. We, the Department of Homeland Security, will have analysts and we will have assessment people in this center. So this is part of Homeland Security. Our responsibility is to relate these threats to our infrastructure. So we will have assessment capability, unique assessment capability that when we see these threats, our people will be aware of critical infrastructure, public and private, throughout America and throughout our territories, etc. That will be our job and our obligation to make those connects, to alert the appropriate people and to put protective measures in place, or respond if we have to. But that will clearly be a responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security working as part of the TTIC with the CIA, the FBI, and the other intelligence agencies. So I believe that the TTIC will provide a capability to do that kind of assessment and to make those kinds of connections. Senator Akaka. Thank you. I see more the need of TTIC as you explain it. Mr. Wiley, you are deputy chief of the CIA's Counter Terrorist Center and I understand that there is discussion about collocating the Terrorist Threat Integration Center with the CIA's Counter Terrorist Center. As you know, the CTC is unique. Operations officers are brought together with an analyst as an integral part of the targeting operation and analytical functions of counterterrorism efforts. The TTIC is not supposed to have an operational function. First, how are you going to maintain operational security with CIA operation staff working together with TTIC personnel? And second, what is the rationale for involving TTIC directly in operations as is now the case in the CIA's CTC? Mr. Wiley. Senator, the Counter Terrorist Center today, as it was when I was in charge of it through December 1997, is an integrated environment that involves our operations officers, technical collection officers from other agencies, and analysts from the Directorate of Intelligence as well as some analysts from other parts of the Intelligence Community. Operational security there has been maintained from the early days of the Center back in the mid-1980's through today by making sure that all those in the Center have access to the information they need to conduct their work, what we call horizontal compartmentalization rather than isolating--the analysts are going to have this slice of information and operators have that slice of information. I believe that same philosophy can and should be extended to TTIC. TTIC itself does not have an operational role and it is important for legal and privacy and chain of command reasons to separate the two. But it is perfectly possible for them to work together in a secure environment with appropriate caveats for access to information. We have done that. We have a 15, 20- year track record now of having done that and I think it can be extended to the TTIC. I think that the same applies in the work that we have seen with the FBI. So I am always concerned about operational security, but I believe we have the experience for dealing with this. Senator Akaka. I am glad we are raising these questions because, if need be, I am sure we will find an answer to some of these questions. Mr. D'Amuro, in your testimony you have indicated that there are now 66 FBI joint terrorism task forces around the country. Are these all up and running, and are they all fully staffed? Do they also include local officials? Mr. D'Amuro. Yes, Senator, I believe--the JTTF is not a new concept to the Bureau. It was created 23 years ago in New York City. At the time a lot of people thought that this was not going to work. It turned out to be visionary. It turned out to be a very effective tool, and the reason it is so effective is by including other Federal, State, and local agencies on the JTTFs. So the 66 JTTFs that I have identified in my testimony are up and running. What we are trying to do is get some critically needed training for them so that they know how all of these JTTFs are supposed to operate. We had, at the time of September 11, I believe it was approximately 26 JTTFs across the country. So by expanding to 66 now you can see the need for training those JTTFs and making sure they understand how they are supposed to operate. They do include State and local participants. We have received over 1,200 requests for security clearances. As of this date I believe we have 936 approved at the secret level and we are working to try to resolve the rest of them. So they are the shining star, the critical piece of the Bureau's counterterrorism mission. It is how we not only fuse intelligence but it also gives us the ability to go out and act upon that intelligence, to be able to disrupt or prevent terrorist acts as you saw, as I mentioned earlier, in Buffalo. Senator Akaka. Thank you. My time has expired. May I just ask a question of Secretary England? Chairman Collins. Certainly. Senator Akaka. Because I mentioned cruise ships, are cruise ships considered part of the critical infrastructure? Mr. England. Senator, I am not sure they are critical infrastructure. They are certainly important in terms of protection. But what we will do as part of our department--keep in mind we have only been in place for a month so far, but one of our functions will be to identify the most critical infrastructure in the country and to prioritize. So that has worked under the Office of Homeland Security, but that will expand greatly under the Department of Homeland Security. So it will be part of the total infrastructure. It will be studied, examined, and prioritized. Senator Akaka. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Chairman Collins. Thank you very much. Senator Coleman. Senator Coleman. Thank you, Madam Chairman. First, a comment directed to Mr. D'Amuro. As a former local elected official I appreciate the work of the JTTFs and believe that they really are a wonderful model and work very well. But my concern is this and I hope you will reflect on it. I think they do a very good job of collecting. You talked about that, of collecting data. I still think there are real challenges in terms of--it is the question that Madam Chairman raised about information getting back to those at the local level. In addition to chiefs of police, there are mayors who are held responsible for knowing what is going on and there is a question about whether they are contained in the security link. Do they have the relevant clearances? What can they be told? So much of what we are talking about depends upon public confidence, and the mayor at the local level is the one who is supposed to know what is going on. If you have a lack of understanding, of someone in the dark at the local level, it undermines public confidence and I think has a very debilitating effect on folks that--moms and dads in our community. So I do hope that we can go back and you can look at how we do a better job connecting with mayors, with folks at the local level, not just in the receipt of the information which we do a very good job now, I believe, of integrating local law enforcement with Federal authorities at the JTTFs. But it is getting it back, and that is still, I think, an honest concern and I would hope that you would reflect on it and figure out some way to deal with it. Secretary England, I appreciate your clarifying so we all understand the TTIC, they are not an agency. It is a center. My question for you was, and I think I heard you respond somewhat, does Homeland Security expect to create its own operational intelligence unit? If it does, how do you then deal with this issue again of duplication? We have the FBI that focuses on the local level. They have an operational unit. We have CIA--have operational units. Are we creating another operational unit in government that will then work with TTIC? Mr. England. Senator, I am not quite sure what you mean by an operational unit. We will have a separate analysis center to interpret the data that takes place outside in the TTIC. So the purpose of the TTIC, I mean, the benefit to us is that we rapidly stand up to a capability where we are part of the TTIC, so we participate. Think of it as part of the Department of Homeland Security, just like it is a part of all the other agencies working together with access to all the data. So we will have all the access that all the other agencies have to intelligence data. We will have some additional analysis people and assessment people that are not in the TTIC that help relate that data to our infrastructure and also, frankly, to be able to discuss it with myself, Secretary Ridge, and other people. Also, by the way, the question about dissemination of data, we do have to have processes in place to make sure that we do disseminate data to State and local first responders, and we are working with FBI in that regard right now. That is a very critical part of this also, to understand what data needs to be passed down throughout America. Senator Coleman. Again, while I strongly support and understand the importance of trying to make sure we have a more efficient sharing of information and analysis of information, I would just again then raise the question, we have FBI out there. They do the analysis. We have CIA out there. Please, please, please let us make sure that we do not create another layer of intelligence analysis. Certainly you and Secretary Ridge need to have information analyzed brought to you so you can respond, but I just raise that concern again. Mr. England. You are absolutely right, sir. I can assure you that--the intent is just the opposite, to make sure we take full utilization of the TTIC. Senator Coleman. Following up then again with the responsibility that you and Secretary Ridge have to analyze--to receive information of the threat analysis and then articulate that to the public, is it the sense that--I am trying to understand its function here. Is the TTIC the agency then that will provide the underlying information and you then take that information and then come to a conclusion that we are at yellow or at orange and here is where we go from here? Mr. England. That will be one of the fundamental analysis base that we will use to assess the threats; that is correct, Senator. So that is the all-source data that will be available to us, and again, to the other agencies. So we will analyze that data, have full access to that data, and we will help assess that data along with the other agencies. We will analyze, but largely we will assess. That is, what is the effect of that data on infrastructure and across America? What is the effect of that data? So when people talk about an analysis center, in my judgment it is really both analysis and assessment. We will do more assessment, less analysis, but we will have analysis people located within the center. Senator Coleman. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Finally, we are entering--these are works in progress. We have entered a strange new world, unfortunately, post-September 11. Though we always like to take pride in our ability to do things the best, and I believe that is true about America, there are certainly other countries that have been dealing with these types of situations longer than we have. For us so often it was looking at foreign terrorist threats and now we have to understand and reflect upon the domestic terrorist threats, and the integration of foreign sources and domestic sources. Are there other models out there? Are there folks, Israel, or some other places that have dealt with this before, that are helping us shape this, or is this simply kind of a whole cloth concept that we have put together? Mr. Wiley from the CIA or anybody on the panel? Mr. Wiley. Senator, there certainly are models and Israel, the United Kingdom, our partners in Western Europe to one degree or another have attempted to do this. No one, I think, has faced quite the challenge that we do in terms of scale; the size, the openness of our society are all things that contribute to a different environment. But both through the Intelligence Community, and I know the law enforcement community, my friend Ambassador Black in his exchanges, we are very much interested in drawing lessons from others and incorporating that in all facets of it, and I am sure the same is true for the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. D'Amuro. I will just add to that, if I could, Senator. We have a very robust liaison program with a lot of different intelligence and law enforcement services across the world. The United States poses a unique situation as Winston has said. We have a Constitution. We operate within the Constitution. I think the beauty of the system that we have, in particular talking about the FBI, is that we have both the intelligence tools and the law enforcement tools in the same bag. I do not mean to go back to Buffalo again but it is a prime example of how we are able--that was a pure intelligence collection operation. When we learned that one individual was overseas, we were able to dispatch individuals to interview this person. And when we learned through that interview that there were legal statements, legal problems with some of the statements that he made, that actual crimes had taken place, the Buffalo division within 24 hours was able to act very quickly and round up those individuals that we had under our intelligence investigation, and get them off the street and prevent a possible terrorist event. So the beauty of having both the intelligence tools and the law enforcement tools in an organization that has operated within the Constitution, I think, is one of the benefits of our systems. Senator Coleman. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator Coleman. Senator Levin. Senator Levin. Thank you, Madam Chairman. My major concern has been and continues to be, where will the principal responsibility for analyzing foreign intelligence rest? This has been a subject that Senator Coleman and I think others have made reference to today, and I believe our Chairman, as a matter of fact, specifically asked that question about the relationship between the CTC and TTIC. I am not satisfied with what I understand the answers were. I am sorry I could not be here to hear them in person but the report of those answers leaves me very unsatisfied. It is a huge problem. There is a lot of information that we received prior to September 11 that was not analyzed, that fell through cracks. If we are going to diffuse responsibility instead of fuse it, we are going to have confusion instead of focused responsibility to analyze--and I use that word precisely--foreign intelligence. Not domestic intelligence yet. I want to talk about intelligence. Now on January 17--and by the way, one other thing: We will be lucky if we do this well once. We have got 17,000 pieces of intelligence coming into the CTC a week; 17,000 pieces of intelligence. The CTC produces 300 outgoing intelligence products a month, and they have got almost 300 analysts. We have got to understand precisely the relationship between TTIC and CTC. We cannot blur that responsibility. We have got to focus it so that we can hold folks accountable if there are failures. Otherwise, CTC will say that was a TTIC responsibility, and TTIC will say that was a CTC responsibility, and we cannot have that situation. I asked Secretary Ridge, on January 17 when he was before the Committee, the following question, will the principal responsibility to analyze foreign intelligence from all sources remain in the CTC? His answer was, that is correct. Now I think the statute itself is unclear on that issue. The homeland security statute is unclear because it creates a new Undersecretary for Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection inside the Homeland Security Department and gives that Undersecretary the responsibility to assess, which is what Deputy Secretary England just made reference to, receive, and analyze law enforcement information, intelligence information and other information from agencies of the Federal Government, State and local government agencies, and to integrate such information in order to identify and assess the nature and scope of the terrorist threats. Given that language, I asked Secretary Ridge whether or not there is then confusion. Where is the principal responsibility to analyze those 17,000 pieces of foreign intelligence that come in every week? Is it going to be CTC or is it going to be Homeland Security? Now I ask the same question about TTIC because now we not only have a CTC which apparently is going to proceed unencumbered that is supposed to analyze all foreign intelligence from all sources, and has FBI sitting there, and has the Coast Guard sitting there, and all the other agencies at the CTC. And now we are going to have Homeland Security that has a statutory responsibility to analyze and now a TTIC responsibility, apparently in the CIA, to analyze what seems to me to be the same information coming from all sources as the CTC is analyzing. We have got to be clear in statute and in practice where this responsibility lies and I repeat what I said, if we do this well once we will be very lucky. This is a huge challenge to put together 17,000 pieces of intelligence a month that come in, and to analyze it, and to connect the dots. The idea that we might do it twice or three times to me is wrong in terms of accountability and it is wrong in terms of responsibility and it is wrong in terms of practicality. Now let me start with you, Deputy Secretary England. Is the principal responsibility to analyze foreign intelligence going to remain in the CTC? Mr. England. Yes, sir. Senator Levin. Then how is that different from the responsibility which we are giving to TTIC to do the analysis of all intelligence, foreign and domestic apparently? How is that different? Mr. England. Senator, we will basically collate resources so that all the data is available in one place. Senator Levin. Is that TTIC or CTC? Mr. England. The TTIC itself will have access to all the source data. Senator Levin. I know they will have access. Who is responsible to analyze all this intelligence coming in? Will it be TTIC or CTC? Mr. England. My judgment is it will be CTC for the foreign intelligence. For domestic intelligence it will be the FBI. But in this facility we will then have people available with access to this data, access to conclusions that we can then analyze further, if necessary, because of data we may know in terms of homeland security, threats to America, whatever. So we would have in that facility access to ask additional questions, understand further, make additional assessments, etc. So it is a resource available for our analysts to be part of it, and also our people to assess that---- Senator Levin. Wait a minute. For our analyst to be--who is our? Mr. England. Department of Homeland Security will have some analysts in this facility, so we can understand the data in terms of our mission, which is to assess that data relative to threats to America. Senator Levin. I understand the assessment and where it belongs and where it is. I just want to be real clear. What you just said is, principal responsibility to analyze information, intelligence relative to foreign intelligence will remain in the CTC; domestic intelligence will remain in the FBI. The reports from both of those entities will come to TTIC to do whatever it wants to do with the reports that come in from both CTC and from FBI; is that correct? Mr. England. That is correct. That is my understanding. Senator Levin. I think that is fine if it is clear, but I think we all have to be real clear now on where that responsibility lies and I would like to see either an executive order, or I would like to see a decision by the agencies involved, a joint decision placing the principal responsibility exactly where you said. And if it is not there, where is it? We cannot have unfocused location of the analysis responsibility of foreign intelligence and domestic intelligence. We cannot blur it. We cannot duplicate it. We will be making a tragic error if we do. Instead of fusing we will be confusing, and I think that is---- Mr. England. Senator, you and I agree on this. This is not an issue at all. I concur completely with your approach. I believe my colleagues do also. That is the approach that we are using for TTIC, so I do not believe we have any disagreement here at all. Senator Levin. TTIC becomes a customer essentially. It has got the ability to do additional analysis, I understand, and it has a right to access anything it wants, I understand. But it is basically a customer of CTC and FBI when it takes the reports of foreign intelligence from CTC, domestic intelligence from FBI, fuses those reports, does whatever it wants with those reports, and then makes its own assessments. If it wants additional analysis it has the power to do additional analysis on its own. It can, I presume, task FBI or CTC to do additional analysis. Mr. England. Yes. Senator Levin. But the principal responsibility is where you just identified. Is that your understanding as well, Mr. D'Amuro? Mr. D'Amuro. Yes, Senator, it is. I will try to explain it real quickly and I know Mr. Wiley may want to jump in on this. The mission of the TTIC is to fuse threat information--to provide one-stop analytical products for threat analysis to law enforcement, the Intelligence Community, everyone. It is an interagency function. All the agencies are at the table to include DOD, Homeland Security, the FBI, and the CIA. They will fuse that product and provide an analytical product with respect to threat analysis. Mr. Wiley. I think Mr. D'Amuro has it exactly right, Senator. I think that, Senator, before you came in I said that one of the things about TTIC is that our intention is to build on those things that have been working well. The close collaboration between collectors and analysts, both within the agency at CIA and between CIA and the FBI, because I think that is one of the things that has been working well. We want to do precisely what you are talking about, is bring the analysis of foreign intelligence, whether it is collected overseas or collected inside the United States, together in a seamless fashion, just as you are saying. TTIC will be in a position--by virtue of having CIA people, FBI people, other Intelligence Community people, DHS people together--in a position to do that. But I cannot be all things on day one, and will have to-- -- Senator Levin. No, not on day one. Is its goal to duplicate CTC? Mr. Wiley. Its goal is not to duplicate CTC. Senator Levin. It is to take the product of CTC and FBI and to then act--to put those products---- Mr. Wiley. Over time, Senator, I believe that a TTIC, if we make it work right, will absorb some of those analytic production responsibilities from CTC and from the FBI to create that single fused product that we have been talking about. Senator Levin. Is that the ultimate goal? Mr. Wiley. Yes, sir, I believe so. Senator Levin. That is different then from what I was just told. Mr. Wiley. I think it should be. Senator Levin. I am not saying it should not. By the way, it is fine with me, so long as it is clear. But now that is very different from what Secretary England said. Mr. England. Senator, it is going to take time for this to evolve. This is still--I mean, we now have, I believe, a working concept, a structure of how we can go forward, greatly improve from where we are today. How this evolves I think is another question. We are a long way to get to that ``evolutionary stage'' and we are going to have--it takes a period of time just to stand up this capability. So while Mr. Wiley may be right, I think there is a lot of discussion before we ever get to that point in time. Mr. Wiley. I agree. Senator Levin. Is TTIC going to be represented at the CTC? Mr. Wiley. It will be cheek by jowl with---- Senator Levin. Will it be sitting at that analytical table with the CTC? We have FBI there. We have Coast Guard there. We have all these agencies, part of CTC, sitting at the table. My specific question is, will Homeland Security and--first, will TTIC be at that table? Mr. Wiley. Yes, sir. Senator Levin. Will Homeland Security be at that table? Mr. Wiley. Yes, sir. And vice versa. The point is that we want to---- Senator Levin. That is fine. Thanks, Madam Chairman. Chairman Collins. You are welcome, Senator Levin. I want to follow up on the issues that Senator Levin just raised. Secretary England, I am trying to get a better sense of what the role of the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate will be once TTIC is created. Will it conduct any analysis of raw intelligence or will it merely be a consumer of analysis that is produced by the new center, the FBI, and the CIA? Mr. England. The IA organization, part of the IA organization, information analysis, will physically be located in the TTIC. We will have a separate analysis center. An analysis center will be in the TTIC, and it will have access to all the data available in the TTIC. Now we will also, in addition to people who are located in the TTIC, we will have some number of people who will also do analysis, for the understanding of the Secretary, myself, etc. I mean, we are not there. How do you interpret the data, etc.? But we will also have an assessment group and the assessment group will determine what the effect of that analysis is, what that means in terms of our infrastructure; to assess that it in terms of what you do across America in terms of protection. So it is both analysis and assessment. But we will have a separate analysis group, per se. We will also rely on the TTIC and our representation in TTIC. Chairman Collins. A related issue here which I raised in my opening statement is where the new center should be located. Many would argue that when Congress created the new Information Analysis Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security it did so to try to create an intelligence fusion center. One of the witnesses at our hearing last week, James Steinberg, recommended that the new center be located at the Department of Homeland Security. He said the new department is supposed to be the hub of all homeland defense efforts and that it is the natural place where the fusion of terrorist analysis should take place. It is also the one department responsible for protecting our borders and our critical infrastructure. I guess I will ask Mr. Wiley this question first and then go to Secretary England. Why was the decision made to locate the new center under the supervision of the Director of Central Intelligence rather than the Secretary of Homeland Security? Mr. Wiley. Senator, I think that the key feature of having the threat integration center report directly to the Director of Central Intelligence is that it is doing precisely the fusion of intelligence, whether it is foreign intelligence or domestically collected foreign intelligence and law enforcement information. The Director of Central Intelligence has a responsibility for assessment of foreign intelligence, and the Intelligence Community has the overwhelming share of people with experience in doing that. With due respect to Mr. Steinberg, I think that doing the analysis and assessment part under the leadership of the Director of Central Intelligence and providing that to the Department of Homeland Security to merge with the vulnerability assessments and to have a responsibility for taking action is the right model. I think that asking the Department also to take on the intelligence assessment capability as well as the vulnerability work is asking it to do more than it needs to. I think that that is the rationale between the two. Chairman Collins. My concern is, how are we going to prevent the new center from just becoming a creature of the CIA? The House Intelligence Committee issued a staff report that found that oftentimes the DCI intelligence centers, including the Counter Terrorist Center, become solely CIA centers. Whenever you locate an agency or a new entity on the grounds of the CIA, which is the initial plan, and report to the CIA Director, how is that going to overcome the cultural differences that have impeded the relationship between the CIA and the FBI? If it were located in the new Department of Homeland Security, would that not send the right signal as far as overcoming these historic barriers? And if I could just add one thing. In your comments you referred to the brute force approach to sharing and said it is working, but it still is requiring brute force. Mr. Wiley. Just on the brute force issue, whether a new department is located at DHS, at the CIA, at the FBI, or anyplace else, if you are collocating people and you are institutionalizing a process, it will reduce the amount of brute force that is required. So I do not think the location, the particular location makes a difference on the issue of brute force. I think on the issue of its physical location, in order to get started quickly you really needed to be, I believe, in one of two places where there is already a framework of analysts working the counterterrorism problem to support that. That, in my view, left it to either the CIA compound or the FBI building downtown. There you have a framework to be able to get started quickly. Institutionally, this chart that you provided us reflects that the TTIC does not report to the Director in his capacity as head of the CIA but in his capacity as the head of the Intelligence Community, as I do, frankly. That itself sets it apart from CIA. CTC is a center that reports to the DCI through the Directorate of Operations. This is a direct-report to the DCI. Its physical location at the CIA headquarters compound cannot be denied, but it will not be collocated with CTC, and there are other non-CIA elements that are resident in that building: The National Intelligence Council, the Community Management Staff, large portions of NIMA, the imagery and mapping agency, are located in that building. Certainly the majority of the building is a CIA building, but it is not exclusively a CIA building. While it presents a challenge, I think strong leadership and the commitment of all of the partners to put people and contribute to the leadership will mitigate against that. In the long run, the point of collocation where CTC, the FBI's Counter Terrorism Division, and TTIC are collocated in an off-site facility I think mitigates that problem completely. Chairman Collins. Secretary England, what is your response to those experts who believe that this new center would be most effective if it were located within the new Department of Homeland Security? Mr. England. Senator, I would not recommend that. My own experience with large organizations--first of all, TTIC is for threat data, so this is threat analysis and the expertise of threat analysis lies with other agencies, not with the Department of Homeland Security. We will not be the dominant organization in the TTIC. We will have equal representation there. So while we will be able to participate in some of the source threat analysis, that is not our key mission. Our key mission is to make sure that the threats are analyzed appropriately, that data is available to us, that we can then do additional analysis if we have to, want to, etc. But it is to do vulnerability analysis, understand the infrastructure and how those threats may relate to vulnerability of our infrastructure and our people across the country. So I, frankly, think it would be very difficult for the Department of Homeland Security to take on a task as large as threat analysis that would come into this center and be able to assess all that appropriately. That would be a very large organizational step for us to take, particularly at this time and probably for years to come. So I, frankly, do not feel that would be appropriate for us today. I was delighted with this approach to have this fusion center put in place because it does enable us to do our mission much better. So again, as I said in my first comment to you, we endorse this approach. It makes us an equal player in this arena of threat analysis. But I certainly do not feel like we could actually manage that operation. Chairman Collins. Senator Coleman. Senator Coleman. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I wanted to follow up on the questions raised by Madam Chairman and the distinguished Senator from Michigan. Secretary England--and by the way, we are all in agreement here. We want this to work. We want it to be effective. We understand it is a work in progress. We have got to keep coming back to that, it is a work in progress, so we are going to need some flexibility here. But I would question--I understand that your principal mission is not threat analysis, but I suspect in Homeland Security that you are going to be taking a lot of information that is not going to be yours--you are not creating it. That is why I asked the question about whether you created an intelligence analyst unit. The answer was, not creating; you have some folks who will do that but you are not going to duplicate the work that is done by CTC, you are not going to duplicate the work that is done by the FBI. But if your principal function is to fuse this--to take the information that has been fused, that has come together, and then to articulate that, take threat analysis, and then to work with the American public on that to make sure that we are prepared, that we understand, I would suggest that it would make sense. My sense is that it would make sense for the Department of Homeland Security, again not to create a new analysis, not to say that is your principal function, but to have the kind of direct access from this unit to then figure out what you have got to do with it. If you look at the chart that Madam Chairman established, laid out before you, I mean organizationally what you have is TTIC then reporting to the head of the CIA--so there is a step between all that information that is gathered, at least structurally, and the Department of Homeland Security. It would appear to me that there should be a much more direct connection between you and TTIC. Mr. England. Senator, we are a full partner in TTIC. TTIC is part of the Department of Homeland Security, the same as it is part of all the other agencies. So we are part of TTIC. Some of our people will physically reside in TTIC. So data does not go up and across and down. Our information analysis people are part of TTIC, so we reside in that location. So this is--in fact, we call this a joint partnership and that is what it is. It is a joint partnership. My view is, as long as this partnership works effectively, and I believe it can work effectively and will work effectively, who it reports to is not very important frankly. To take existing structure in place and build it is much easier than the Department of Homeland Security trying to build a whole new structure. So this is a partnership. We do have direct access to all the information and we will be able to do our job appropriately. Senator Coleman. Secretary England, again I want to get back to this concept of work in progress. I appreciate the comment of who it reports to right now on paper. I do not think that is very important either, if it does not interfere with the most effective operation of TTIC and what it is supposed to do in terms of assessing threats to our country and dealing with those threats. I would hope then as we go about our work of bringing these pieces together and we are doing--again, we are living in this new world. As we do that, for it to have the flexibility along the way to say this may work a little better and then to come back to us at another point in time and say, we figured out a better way to do it, and this is what we are going to do. So I want you to have that flexibility. I support that concept and would hope that you keep that in mind, that you are not tied to a structure that has been put together very quickly, under difficult circumstances, and in the end we have got to do the right thing rather than what we may have thought the right thing was at another point in time. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator. Senator Levin. Senator Levin. Just one question, Secretary England. You said that TTIC is part of Homeland Security? Mr. England. I say it is, I guess, rhetorically. We are part of--it is a partnership. So when I say it is part of it, I mean we are there. It is also part of the FBI, it is part of all the agencies that make it up. It was merely to emphasize that our people are there along with all the other people who make this up. So it is indeed a partnership. Senator Levin. But the head of TTIC is appointed by the Director of Central Intelligence; is that correct? Mr. England. Right, with the advice---- Senator Levin. With the advice and so forth of the other agencies. But it is appointed by the Director of Central Intelligence, is located at Central Intelligence, and has people represented from all the other agencies including yours. Mr. England. Yes. Senator Levin. That is very much like CTC. It is part of the CIA, appointed by the Director of the CIA, has representatives from the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, Coast Guard, you name it. It sounds to me that this is very similar in terms of its structure to the CTC. So I like the idea of things evolving. That is fine, and it may be over time that it belongs in a different place. I am less interested as to where it is, frankly, than that its responsibility is clear. That to me is the most important thing, and that is my concern, is that it be clear right off the get-go as to what its responsibility is, regardless of where it is or where it ends up 2, 5, or 10 years from now. I just think there is a lot of work that need to be done to identify that responsibility to analyze intelligence as to where that is, because right now statutorily it is in three places. The analytical responsibility is in three places on foreign intelligence; CTC, Homeland Security, and now TTIC. I do not think that is healthy. I think it allows people to, as we saw before September 11, it will allow people to duck accountability. There was enough ducking of accountability, in my judgment, for the failures that existed before September 11. So I would just ask you--I cannot do this on behalf of the Committee. Obviously, the Chairman has that exclusive responsibility, but at least this one Senator would be a lot more comfortable if somehow or other there was a statement as to the primary responsibility for analysis of foreign intelligence, domestic intelligence, as to where that is going to rest, and what is the relationship of TTIC to those analyses--and that be in writing.\1\ I just think that there is some fuzziness here which could be unhealthy. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The response from Mr. Wiley appears in the Appendix on page 73. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chairman Collins. I would second, as the Chairman of the Committee, Senator Levin's request in this regard. I do think we need more definition on who is going to do what. The Department of Homeland Security's underlying law calls for it to analyze. That is part of the law. So I do believe we need more definition. I do recognize that the Center is a work in progress, but I would ask the witnesses to come back to us with a document that would define with more specificity the responsibilities of the components and the existing--the Counter Terrorism Division at the FBI, the Counter Terrorism Center at the CIA, the Information Analysis Directorate at Homeland Security. I would like to see more definition in defining the responsibilities of those three units and how the new center interacts. The goal is fusion not confusion. But when I look at the chart and plot the new center in, I am concerned about duplication, accountability, and responsibility. So I hope as you further work out the details of the center you would get back to us. Senator Levin, did you have something more on that? Senator Levin. No. Chairman Collins. Senator Coleman. Senator Coleman. No. Chairman Collins. Before I adjourn the hearing I just want to bring up one final issue that I alluded to in my opening statement, and that is the dangers to privacy rights of combining law enforcement functions with intelligence gathering and analysis. Several, or some of our witnesses at our previous hearing raised the issue of whether this new center poses a threat to privacy rights. We have seen the controversy over the total information awareness program at the Department of Defense. The new center potentially will have access to huge databases of its component agencies--the good news is, for the first time we will be bringing all this information together. The bad news is, for the first time we will be bringing all this information together. Mr. Wiley, as the chair of this working group, how is the group going to ensure that the creation of this new center with its access to unprecedented amounts of information will not infringe upon the privacy rights of law-abiding citizens? Mr. Wiley. Madam Chairman, from the beginning the concerns you have expressed were an explicit part of our discussions in making sure that the lines of responsibility, lines of authority, the separate authority for conducting collection operations, whether overseas or domestic, remain separate from the authorities vested in the TTIC. I can only tell you that from day-one, we will continue at the Agency, at the Bureau, at Homeland Security to make sure that the structures we put together are in compliance with the laws, the executive orders, and sensitive to the issues of making sure that privacy rights and civil rights of law-abiding citizens are not violated. It is a fundamental concern right from the beginning and the very structure of the Center recognizes that by separating it from the operational components of both the FBI and the CIA. Chairman Collins. Mr. D'Amuro. Mr. D'Amuro. Senator, Winston is correct. This is not--the TTIC is focal point for the analysis of information that has been collected. The information that we will be collecting domestically will be overseen by the inspector general from the Department of Justice, it will be overseen by the FISA court. We have numerous Attorney General guidelines and directions that protect the civil liberties of the citizens of this country. The collection process will not change. We will use those guidelines, we will use those laws for our collection domestically. The role of the TTIC is simply the analysis of that collection. It is not an instrument that will go out operationally and collect on its own. Chairman Collins. There is no new collection authority; is that correct? Mr. D'Amuro. That is correct. Chairman Collins. Secretary England. Mr. England. In addition, Senator, let me add, Madam Chairman, that we also have a statutory obligation in terms of privacy. We do have, will have a privacy officer as part of this. That privacy officer will have a role, so we will have at least some degree of oversight to allay those concerns. But I do not believe that there will be a real concern there, but nonetheless, we will have that oversight function within the Department of Homeland Security. If I could add one more thing before we leave? Chairman Collins. Certainly. Mr. England. I know you have a very complex chart here but I would like to comment that there is actually more arrows that belong on this chart, Senator, only because of your comment. It turns out that the source data is available here at the information analysis. It goes directly--the analysis charts. So rather than linking here at the Secretary level, it really does link the IA/IP organization directly with the TTIC. I think perhaps that will clarify some of the issues we discussed earlier. Chairman Collins. Thank you. I want to thank our witnesses for appearing today. Your contributions are very valuable. We look forward to hearing back from you as you continue to refine the President's plan. The record will remain open for 15 days for the submission of any additional questions. I want to thank my staff for its hard work on this series of hearings. This hearing is now adjourned. [Whereupon, at 11:38 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.] A P P E N D I X ---------- RESPONSE TO SENATORS LEVIN AND COLLINS TRANSCRIPT REQUEST FROM MR. WILEY REFERRED TO ON PAGE 69 The Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) is currently working collaboratively across the Federal Government to integrate terrorism information and analysis to provide a comprehensive, all-source-based picture of potential terrorist threats to U.S. interests. In this regard, TTIC works closely with the FBI's Counterterrorism Division, DHS's Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection directorate, the DCI's Counterterrorism Center, and the Defense Intelligence Agency's Joint Intelligence Task Force--Counterterrorism, among others. In fact, all of these organizations are represented in TTIC and work together, on a daily business, to carry out the mission of their parent organization as well as that assigned to TTIC by the President: to enable the full integration of U.S. Government terrorist threat-related information and analysis, collected domestically or abroad. As a relatively new entity, and one that is unique in the Federal constellation, misperceptions are still common. One common misperception is that TTIC is a part of the Central Intelligence Agency. In actual fact, TTIC does not belong to any department or agency. It is a multi-agency joint venture composed of partner organizations including the Departments of Justice/Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security, Defense, and State, and the Central Intelligence Agency. TTIC reports to the Director of Central Intelligence, but in his statutory capacity as the head of the Intelligence Community. TTIC does not engage in any collection activities and it does not engage in operations of any kind. Unlike the FBI's Counterterrorism Division, the DCI's Counterterrorism Center, and the Department of Homeland Security, all of which have an operational or collection element, TTIC is focused on integrating and analyzing terrorist threat-related information collected domestically or abroad. We defer to these other organizations to provide you a full explanation of their roles and responsibilities. While TTIC is still in its infancy, there is tangible evidence of the value of ``jointness,'' as embodied in the TTIC construct, and TTIC is making a difference in the war against terrorism. For example, TTIC analysis has contributed to informed decision making within DHS about the appropriate threat level for the nation. The TTIC-maintained terrorist identities database informs the national watchlisting process and according to the Homeland Security Presidential Directive-6, will soon serve as the single source of international terrorist identities information for the newly established Terrorist Screening Center. In addition, the TTIC-hosted joint information sharing program office is actively implementing the Information Sharing Memorandum of Understanding signed in March 2003 by Attorney General Ashcroft, Secretary Ridge, and the Director of Central Intelligence. Under the auspices of this program office, business processes are being re- engineered to facilitate the flow of information throughout the Federal Government, but in particular, to the Department of Homeland Security. Specific issues being addressed at this time include establishing standards for tear lines, reaching out to non-Intelligence Community Federal departments and agencies, and rethinking reporting standards. As the national approach to combating terrorism and protecting the homeland evolves, TTIC will continue to carry out the mission assigned to it by the President: to enable the full integration of U.S. Government terrorist threat-related information and analysis, collected domestically and abroad--and TTIC will fulfill its mission in full coordination with partner organizations including the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, and the Department of State. We will keep you informed of our progress. PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR SHELBY Thank you Madam Chairman for calling this hearing today to examine the President's proposal to form the Terrorist Threat Information Center (TTIC). I also thank our panel for appearing before the Committee today. As a long time member of Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, I am particularly interested in the subject matter of this hearing. Madam Chairman, as you know, I worked closely last year with the Governmental Affairs Committee to help draft the provisions of the Homeland Security Act crating an intelligence fusion center within the Department of Homeland Security. While the eventual fusion center language signed into law represented a compromise, I felt confident at that time that the United States government had the statutory tools it needed to make our country a safer place. One of the main reasons for this belief is the placement of the fusion center within DHS itself. I have said many times before that the failure of the Central Intelligence Agency and others in the Intelligence Community (IC) to share intelligence information contributed significantly to the government's lack of preparedness for the September 11 attacks. I supported the formation of the independent fusion center located outside of the IC because I believed it would challenge the community's reluctance to share information. Creating a new and improved fusion center within the IC is a good think--because improvements are clearly needed--but I am concerned that if this is all that happens, it may allow the IC's institutional allergy to information sharing to remain unchallenged and the President's vision of a truly ``all-source'' fusion center to remain unfulfilled. If TTIC does not challenge the institutional and cultural barriers to intelligence sharing within the IC, our country will not be safer from the threat of terrorism. During the Homeland Security debate, I and my colleagues spent a considerable amount of time developing the idea of an intelligence fusion center for all government information on terrorist threats. I hope that the intelligence bureaucracies--whose job it will be to implement the President's vision for TTIC--permit the new center to develop into such an organization. Madam Chairman, unfortunately, we have heard little in the way of specific information from the administration about why TTIC is necessary and how it will result in a safer country. Only three months ago, the President signed into law legislation creating the Homeland Security Department, which will house the nation's first truly all- source, government-wide intelligence fusion center. It is unclear to me then why the administration is pushing for the creation of a second intelligence fusion center before the DHS fusion center has even begun operations and had a chance to be evaluated. The new TTIC, I should emphasize, is by no means a bad idea. But I am concerned that, in practice, it will represent not the fulfillment of our broad vision of a ``one-stop shopping'' fusion center, but rather its co-opting by agencies who see real innovations in this regard as a threat to their bureaucratic ``turf.'' The TTIC proposal raises a number of questions. For example, DHS's website states that the department ``will serve as a central hub of intelligence analysis and dissemination, working with agencies throughout the federal government such as the FBI, CIA, NSA, DEA, the Department of Defense and other key intelligence sources.'' How does this mission differ from TTIC's mission? Will the responsibilities of DHS and TTIC overlap? If so, is this the most efficient way to protect our country from terrorism or will it result in needless and wasteful duplication? Also, if TTIC is to be our nation's premier terrorist threat fusion center, how will DHS be able to attract and hire qualified information analysts? Moreover, if TTIC is really supposed to be the center for evaluation all U.S. Government information relevant to terrorist threats, how will it--as part of the Intelligence Community--fulfill this role within the IC's current rules regarding the handling of information related to ``United States persons''? Last, I would be remiss if I did not express my concerns about the President's decision to place TTIC under the supervision of the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). As I have said many times before, I believe Director Tenet has played no small role in worsening the bureaucratic problems--including a powerful institutional resistance to information-sharing--that have long kept our Intelligence Community from being as capable and prepared as Americans desperately need it to be. I question whether the President's vision of a powerful and effective TTIC will be well served by putting this DCI in charge of the premier terrorist threat fusion center in the U.S. Government. Madam Chairman, while I have a number of concerns about TTIC, it should be noted that I am not necessarily opposed to it at this time. I do believe, though, that Congress needs more information in order to evaluate TTIC. It is my understanding that it is the administration's position that Congressional approval is not needed to create TTIC. While this may be legally true, Congress will be involved with TTIC through its oversight responsibilities of the Intelligence Community. Nothing, moreover, prevents Congress from stepping in to structure TTIC by statute, as occurred with the Department of Homeland Security itself. I therefore strongly urge the administration to keep an open line of communication with the relevant congressional communities. I thank you Madam Chairman for the opportunity to address the Committee today and look forward to hearing from our panel. 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