[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES AGAINST TERRORISM
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,
EMERGING THREATS AND INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 3, 2004
__________
Serial No. 108-150
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DOUG OSE, California DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
RON LEWIS, Kentucky DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
CHRIS CANNON, Utah DIANE E. WATSON, California
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan Maryland
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio Columbia
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas JIM COOPER, Tennessee
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee ------ ------
------ ------ ------
------ ------ BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
(Independent)
Melissa Wojciak, Staff Director
David Marin, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director
Rob Borden, Parliamentarian
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Phil Barnett, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel
Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International
Relations
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio
DAN BURTON, Indiana DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio TOM LANTOS, California
RON LEWIS, Kentucky BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania Maryland
------ ------ JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
------ ------
Ex Officio
TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
Lawrence J. Halloran, Staff Director and Counsel
R. Nicholas Palarino, Senior Policy Advisor
Robert A. Briggs, Clerk
Andrew Su, Minority Professional Staff Member
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on February 3, 2004................................. 1
Statement of:
Kass, Lani, professor of military strategy and operations,
National War College; David H. McIntyre, former dean of
faculty, National Defense University; Randall J. Larsen,
Colonel, USAF (ret), CEO, Homeland Security Associates; and
Frank Cilluffo, associate vice president for homeland
security, the George Washington University................. 78
Yim, Randall A., Managing Director, Homeland Security and
Justice Team, U.S. General Accounting Office............... 6
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Cilluffo, Frank, associate vice president for homeland
security, the George Washington University, prepared
statement of............................................... 141
Kass, Lani, professor of military strategy and operations,
National War College, prepared statement of................ 81
Larsen, Randall J., Colonel, USAF (ret), CEO, Homeland
Security Associates, prepared statement of................. 132
McIntyre, David H., former dean of faculty, National Defense
University, prepared statement of.......................... 115
Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Connecticut, prepared statement of............ 3
Yim, Randall A., Managing Director, Homeland Security and
Justice Team, U.S. General Accounting Office, prepared
statement of............................................... 10
EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES AGAINST TERRORISM
----------
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2004
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats
and International Relations,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:09 a.m., in
room 2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher
Shays (chairman of the subcommittee) Presiding.
Present: Representatives Shays, Turner, Schrock, Murphy,
Ruppersberger and Tierney.
Staff present: Lawrence Halloran, staff director and
counsel; R. Nicholas Palarino, senior policy advisor; Thomas
Costa, professional staff member; Robert A. Briggs, clerk;
Andrew Su, minority professional staff member; and Jean Gosa,
minority assistant clerk.
Mr. Shays. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on
National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations
hearing entitled, ``Effective Strategies Against Terrorism,''
is called to order.
Scientists remind us the plural of anecdote is not data. In
the realm of national security, a similar axiom would hold the
proliferation of counterterrorism strategies does not
necessarily mean we are any safer. Only if those strategies
guide us inexorably and immeasurably toward clearly articulated
goals will they secure our liberty and prosperity against the
threats of a new and dangerous era.
Prior to September 11, 2001, this subcommittee heard
testimony based on the work of the three national commissions
on terrorism--Bremer, Gilmore and Hart-Rudman--citing the lack
of any overarching counterterrorism strategy. Last year,
witnesses told us the Bush administration had succeeded in
filling the strategic void with no less than eight high-level
mission statements on national security, military strategy,
global terrorism, homeland security, weapons of mass
destruction, money laundering, cybersecurity, and critical
infrastructure.
These strategies suggest the need for a post-cold war
security paradigm that replaces containment and mutually
assured destruction with detection, prevention and, at times,
preemptive action to protect the fundamental interests of the
United States. But the multi-dimensional threat of terrorism
demands levels of strategic dynamism, flexibility and
accountability never required to meet the relatively static
Soviet menace. So we asked the General Accounting Office [GAO],
to describe the fundamental characteristics of a coherent
framework; one that clearly states a purpose, assesses risk,
sets goals, defines needed resources, assigns responsibilities,
and integrates implementation.
According to their analysis, current strategies contain
many of these traits to some degree, but do not yet include key
elements, particularly in the area of resource implementation
and coordination to avoid duplication.
Yesterday, the President's proposed budget for the next
fiscal year outlined the near and long-term costs of the war
against terrorism. The strategies under discussion here today
contain the words that are supposed to be driving those numbers
toward achievement of higher level of tangible national goals.
How can those strategies be clear, more concrete, and more
tightly integrated into an inescapably logical whole? How will
we know programs are achieving strategic objectives?
Testimony by GAO and by our second panel of expert
witnesses will help us understand those questions and assess
the strength and weaknesses of current counterterrorism
strategies. We are very grateful for the insight and expertise
they bring to our ongoing oversight, and we look forward to
their testimony.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]
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Mr. Shays. At this time, the Chair would recognize the vice
chairman of the committee, the gentleman from Ohio.
Mr. Turner. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
I just want to continue to appreciate your focus on these
issues, and I look forward to the testimony today.
Mr. Shays. Thank you very much; and the gentleman from
Virginia.
Mr. Schrock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and thank you for
holding this hearing on a most important aspect of national
security. It is indeed a fitting and appropriate way for us to
begin this session.
I also want to thank all of the witnesses for lending their
expertise to this committee's efforts to better understand and
evaluate this matter. That the events of September 11, 2001, in
their scale and audacity were such an unexpected invasion upon
our sense of safety and control of our lives and that a small
number of terrorists could strike such a devastating blow gives
a sense of urgency to our need to distill our security
division.
The National Security Strategy put forth by this
administration in September 2002, is a commendable step in this
effort to focus our military law enforcement and diplomatic
resources to enhancing our security.
Like many members of this committee I still have grave
concerns about our ability to integrate the efforts working to
make this country more secure, particularly with respect to
intelligence gathering and sharing. I am confident that, given
the urgency of the war on terror, we all feel that as a Nation
we will continue to identify our weaknesses and work to improve
and rise to the challenge.
Again, Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing to
advance us toward this goal and to the witnesses for both their
time in testifying and analyzing this important effort.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Schrock, and thank you as well
for your really faithful participation on this committee. I'd
like to align myself with your comments.
I'd ask unanimous consent that all members of the
subcommittee be permitted to place an opening statement in the
record, and without objection so ordered, and that the record
remain open for 3 days for that purpose.
I ask further unanimous consent that all witnesses be
permitted to include their written statements in the record,
and without objection so ordered.
At this time, we will recognize our first panel, comprised
of one individual, Mr. Randall Yim, Managing Director of
Homeland Security and Justice Team, U.S. General Accounting
Office.
Mr. Yim, if you will stand, we will swear you in and then
begin the testimony.
[Witness sworn.]
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
We appreciate your presence here today and the terrific
work that GAO does on so many issues. You and your colleagues
are invaluable to the work of this committee and to the work of
Congress.
With that, what we'll do is we have 5 minutes. We'll roll
it over another 5 minutes.
Is the clock working? OK.
STATEMENT OF RANDALL A. YIM, MANAGING DIRECTOR, HOMELAND
SECURITY AND JUSTICE TEAM, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE
Mr. Yim. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, Vice Chairman Turner, Ranking Member
Kucinich, Mr. Schrock, members of the committee, thank you for
providing GAO with this opportunity to contribute to our
Homeland Security efforts.
We undertook this work at this committee's request to
constructively assist the Congress and the executive agencies
in moving our Nation forward, in sync, in concert, with the
available resources in a balanced, measured, and measurable
manner toward better Homeland Security and national
preparedness.
We hope that our testimony today assists in the evolution
and implementation of national strategies so that Homeland
Security efforts nationwide are clear, sustainable, integrated
into agency governmental and private sector missions, helps in
the difficult decisions in balancing Homeland Security
priorities with other national objectives and ensures
transparency needed for effective oversight and accountability.
In our review, we recognize that the national strategies
are only beginning starting points for other parties developing
more detailed implementation plans; and we recognize that the
true measure of these strategies will be determined through
time as they are implemented by the Federal, State, local and
private international sectors and as Homeland Security actions
are embedded or integrated into ongoing governmental and
private sector missions in sustainable, balanced ways.
Thus, the value of these strategies will be the extent to
which they are useful for and actually used by the responsible
parties to guide their own actions, to make difficult
resourcing decisions and to develop and maintain their assigned
capabilities to respond as expected when needed.
This means that the strategies must be relevant and useful
not only during times of crisis but during prolonged times of
preparedness. The strategies must be useful for all phases of
our Homeland Security efforts, prevention, vulnerability
assessment, reduction response and recovery; and these
strategies should be used not just when an emergency arises,
when there is a danger of panic driven activities, but during
the hopefully increasingly long periods of time when there are
no attacks, no horrific situations that consume our attention.
I recently spoke at a senior commanders' conference for the
Joint Command that includes the military district of
Washington. One of the concerns raised by the senior leaders is
that we must act now to define and coordinate the
responsibilities of the Federal, State and local governments
and the private sector while their memories of September 11 are
still in the forefront before complacency sets in and hampers
our efforts.
Indeed, a survey of about 1,400 private CEOs presented at
the World Economic Forum rates global terrorism only tied for
6th on the list of 11 challenges that these CEOs view to the
biggest threat to their companies.
Our Nation must make the necessary steps to improve
Homeland Security now with a sense of urgency. The strategies
must make such improvements even without an immediate emergent
situation.
What did we find?
We found that the national strategies are not required by
executive or legislative mandate to address a single set of
characteristics and, not surprisingly, they contain varying
degrees of detail based upon their scopes and maturity in their
underlying programs.
Further, we found that there is no commonly accepted set of
characteristics used for a national strategy. As a result,
after consulting with numerous sources, GAO developed a set of
desirable characteristics that we believe are critical to
provide effective guidance. These are: a statement of purpose
scope and methodology; second, a problem of risk definition and
assessment; third, identification of goals, subordinate
objectives, activities, and performance measures; fourth,
resource investment and risk management discussions; fifth,
organizational roles responsibilities and coordination; and,
finally, integration and implementation.
We then evaluated the seven national strategies by the
extent to which they contain these key characteristics. The
seven strategies we evaluated were: the National Security
Strategy of the United States, September 2002, publication; the
National Strategy for Homeland Security in July 2002; the
National Strategy for Combating Terrorism in February 2003; the
National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction in
December 2002; the National Strategy for Physical Protection of
Critical Infrastructure and Key Assets, February 2003; the
National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, February 2003; and the
2002 Money Laundering Strategy.
Page 4 of my testimony contains a matrix summarizing the
results of our evaluation, and I'd like to emphasize certain
points on that table. Five of these points are newly published
in September 11 and relate to specific areas of homeland
security and combating terrorism. The other two strategies, the
National Security Strategy and the 2002 Money Laundering
Strategy, were updated from pre-September 11 versions, and only
these two strategies are required by statutes that mandate
specific content elements.
Thus, admittedly the six identified key characteristics and
the evaluation of the extent to which the strategies address
these characteristics have a degree of subjectivity, even
though we at GAO follow consistent and clear criteria during
our evaluation.
Because of this inherent subjectivity, the value of our
analysis lies not in an absolute or stand-alone assessment of
the strategies. That is, we are not attempting to assign an
absolute grade to the strategy but rather a comparative
analysis between and among the strategy. Some are better in our
views than others. Some employ best practices that have
enhanced value to the users.
Our objective is to learn from the best to assist this
Congress in continually evolving these strategies in an
expedited matter.
The strategies generally do not address resourcing risk
management and implementation. Those desired objectives are not
clearly linked to funding and sustainability.
How are we going to pay for homeland security measures, who
should pay, how do we factor in costs--effectiveness? How do we
implement additional homeland security without consequences
such as deleterious impacts upon businesses or civil liberties,
privacy issues; and, second, even where the desirable
characteristics are addressed, the strategies could be
improved.
Of course, while strategies identify goals, subordinate
objectives and specific activities, they generally do not
discuss or identify priorities, milestones or performance
measures that we consider are crucial to effective oversight
and decisionmaking. So let me briefly touch upon those six
characteristics with a specific example.
First, purpose, scope, and methodology. Fundamentally, a
good strategy has to identify what it does and it does not
cover so that the users know what to expect and the right
people are brought together for both development and
implementation.
Importantly, key definitions can provide the clarity
necessary. For example, some of the earlier iterations of the
critical infrastructure protection strategy defined it as
cyberstrategy, as opposed to physical structures. That was
clarified later, as to help the users agree upon a problem to
be addressed in some means to determine priorities. So some
strategies like money strategy focuses on law enforcement,
others on deterrence, others on prevention and response; and
that can sometimes lead to conflicts or tensions between the
agencies because sometimes law enforcement is incompatible with
crime scene response. So it's very difficult. We have to define
problems, set priorities. We have to do it fundamentally on a
risk basis by identifying threats, identifying vulnerabilities
and the cascading impacts, should a threat come to fruition.
The Homeland Security Strategy does have a separate threat
and vulnerability section, but many others do not.
Third one, goals, performance measures. Obviously, we would
like to have a hierarchy of goals to achieve those end-states.
Performance or out-commissioned goals, as opposed to some
of the mistakes we made in the Department of Defense of
prescribing specific solutions, allow responsible parties to
develop integrated approaches and to tailor it to specific
sectors or regions; and they allow us some accountability both
as to the use of funds but also are people capable of assuming
assigned responsibilities once the strategies make those
assignments.
Next category, resource investment and risk management. The
strategy should address cost issues, how much, who's going to
pay, how are we going to pay, the types of resources and
investments associated. I think they all make the logical
assumption that we cannot afford to do everything, so we have
to have some rational risk management approach to do the things
that are best within our available resources to stretch and
leverage our resources. For example, the cyberspace strategy
relies upon market-driven approaches because of rapid changing
technology in that arena. However, on other sectors that don't
move as quickly, bridges or transit, perhaps another strategy
could be employed.
Organizational roles and responsibility is a fundamental
question of who's in charge of not only during times of crisis
but during what I said, times of prolonged preparedness.
Who's in charge. Also, let's us coordinate the activities
among various responsible parties. The Money Laundering
Strategy is a good example. It assigns specific objectives.
And, finally, integration and implementation. We will never
be fully successful in our homeland security strategies if we
continue to see homeland security as a separate cost activity.
We will and should overlap with other national important
strategies. We have to talk about designing in homeland
security up-front at the same time we're talking about
recapitalizing our infrastructure, rather than trying to
retrofit our infrastructure; and I think that these types of
integration will help us strike fundamental balances of the
many important things our citizens are asking the government to
do.
So where do we go from here? I'd like to conclude my oral
comments with a few observations and suggestions.
As I said before, the ultimate test of the strategy will be
determined through time as they're implemented. Are they
useful? Are they actually being used by the parties
responsible?
So it's going to be very responsible for GAO, this
committee, the Congress, the administration, to solicit input
from all responsible parties, State and local, international
and incorporate this to ensure improved preparedness. The
feedback will be to this committee, and obstacles will be
identified that may require legislative action if necessary.
Feedback to the Congress will also allow us to improve our
grant systems and other stimulus and investment programs.
Mechanisms that set performance metrics will really help us
tell if we're getting our money's worth.
Finally, integration and implementation may be enhanced by
national standards that link together these responsible parties
using management and systems principles that are analogous to
some of the very recognized ISO-type management standards that
have been used.
Much has been done, Mr. Chairman; much more needs to be
done; and GAO looks forward to working with this committee.
Thank you.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Yim, for your testimony and for
all your good work.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Yim follows:]
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Mr. Shays. We'll start with Congressman Schrock first; and
then we'll go to you, Mr. Ruppersberger, and then to you, Mr.
Vice Chairman, and then to you, John.
Mr. Schrock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Yim. Fascinating remarks.
I, too, worry about complacency. Every day we get further
away from September 11, I worry more and more.
This is your matrix?
Mr. Yim. Yes, sir.
Mr. Schrock. I was fascinated by those that were mixed,
mediocre, or weak; and that's not good. This certainly needs to
be improved.
I don't know how quick it's going to happen, and the
desired objective is not linked to money. That seems to be the
key to everything up here. It seems we have to put our money
where our objectives are or we're going to pay for it.
I'm going to make a couple comments, and I'm going to let
the second panel know we are going to ask the same questions.
I believe the National Security Strategy is a forward-
looking vision that goes a long way toward reorienting our
Nation toward the post-September 11 world.
I do note as a document focused primarily on international
relations, reorienting military and intelligence capabilities
is only mentioned in a cursory fashion. While a companion
national military strategy has been written, I'm not aware of a
similar national intelligence strategy.
Though there is no doubt in my mind that we possess the
finest military and intelligence capabilities in the world, I
remain uneasy about our ability to evaluate non-traditional and
asymmetric threats and to integrate the many different strains
of intelligence that we gather.
That being said, in your opinion, should we develop a
national intelligence strategy that addresses these perceived
weaknesses; and, if developed, what would you recommend such
strategy address?
You touched on some of that, but I wonder if you could go
into more detail.
Mr. Yim. Yes, that is certainly a key issue. Threat and
risk assessment based on good intelligence is a critical
precursor to setting our priorities and allocating the
resources effectively and cost effectively. While most of our
criteria that we discussed today talked about transparency and
accountability, there will be a need for secrecy in a national
intelligence strategy. On the other hand, more and more people
need to be connected to the intelligence communities that have
not been in the past; and those people are unfamiliar as to who
to call, what expectations on the type of information that they
will receive, the detailed nature of that information. So I
think that makes it all imperative that we have some sort of
national strategy.
Generally, some of the national strategies do discuss
intelligence issues. For example, the National Homeland
Security Strategy has a primary section on intelligence and
warning, talking about building new capabilities through the
information assurance and information infrastructure profession
directorate.
The Combating Terrorism Strategy talks about locating
terrorists in their organization and assessing intelligence
capabilities to gather human and technical intelligence.
The Combating Terrorism Strategy also references this TTIC,
the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, and talks about the
need for intelligence fusion, taking all of the data that's
being gathered by our intelligence community and fusing it into
adequate material. This is in various locations.
Does it need to be brought together? I think that's one of
the various purposes of the Terrorist Threat Integration
Center; and I think our discussion from the State, local and
private sector, they would like a more coordinated way to
receive threat information so they can plan accordingly.
Mr. Schrock. I agree.
You said who to call? I think somebody told me there were
47 Federal agencies that did intelligence after September 11.
Nobody would share with anybody, and I think that's a big
problem. God forbid we suggest merge the CIA and FBI together.
There would be a revolt like you've never seen, but it's
coming.
No. 2, the strategies that GAO submitted reporting to this
committee state that--in an unequivocal fashion our national
policies toward a variety of threats from both traditional and
non-traditional actors. Our goals are clearly stated.
As leaders, we have become comfortable with the idea that
the war on terror must be a sustained and lasting effort. We
believe we must not use that fact as an excuse to prolong our
evaluation of our short-term progress. These strategies for the
most part do not include metrics or milestones to be used to
measure our progress.
Question: Should we develop a timeline along which to
assess our progress in implementing these strategies, and what
would you propose as metric suitable for measuring our progress
toward achieving the stated goals and objectives of these
strategies?
Mr. Yim. Yes, I think, sir, that the timelines are
imperative. People do react to timelines.
I think initially when the strategies were developed,
because so much needed to be done and it wasn't clear how we
were going to approach some of these issues, that, in fairness,
some of them did not have timelines.
However, we have seen iterations now. Further documents
come out from our national statutes. We've had firm timelines
imposed by the Congress on baggage screening, for example.
We've had firm deadlines imposed upon the Coast Guard for port
vulnerability assessments. We recently had the administration
issue two Presidential directives, Homeland Security Directives
No. 7 and 8, in December 2003, that assigned firm
responsibilities and tasked the secretaries of the responsible
Cabinet agencies within fixed periods of time to develop
certain strategies, to develop performance metrics. I think
that's clearly what we need.
What Congress has done in certain areas is legislate or
mandate particular timeframes, and I think that may be an
option that could be considered.
One of the dangers is that sometimes that may tie or limit
some of the flexibility, but certainly I think for the Congress
to exert that type of oversight is certainly something that
should be considered, sir.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
Let me just say that we usually go 10 minutes. I think with
so many Members we probably should do a first round of 5
minutes.
I just want to say, for all the Members, the first hearing
we had was a hearing that said we had no real strategies. Now
we have this proliferation of eight strategies; and this
hearing is to kind of evaluate how we're doing on these
strategies and what is, in essence, a good strategy, how do we
determine that.
And at the third hearing we're going to have--I just want
to put it on the record, Mr. Ruppersberger, because you
mentioned it--the third hearing we will have government
witnesses. The administration needs to come and say, OK, we
know we went from none to many and now we're trying to evaluate
them and this is what we're finding. What's your response and
where are we.
Mr Ruppersberger, I recognize you.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Mr. Yim, you stated there was
considerable variation to the extent of the strategies and how
it related to homeland security and terrorism and that all the
strategies identified goals, supported objectives, and other
characteristics. But the strategies generally, from what I'm
hearing from your testimony and correct me if I'm wrong, do not
address resources, investments, and risk management, or
integration, implementation. And even where the characteristics
are addressed, improvements could be made.
For example, while the strategies identify goals, support
objectives and specific activities, they generally do not
address or discuss priorities, milestones, or performance
measures, which is where we want to get, where our goal is; and
the elements are desirable for evaluating progress and
achieving oversight.
Now you stated the strategies range from strong to weak in
defining problems. For example, Homeland Security, Cyberspace
and Critical Infrastructure Strategies were judged to be the
most developed, while National Security Strategy and WMD were
considered to be the most vague and weakest; is that correct?
Mr. Yim. That's correct, sir.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Now do different levels of maturation
and subject expertise really account for all the differences?
Mr. Yim. I think that accounts for some of the differences
but not all of the differences.
The value, as I said, of our analysis is it is comparative
analysis. You could expect the National Security Strategy, the
most top-level strategy, would probably be the most general one
in nature. You would expect the Money Laundering Strategy,
which is targeted for specific agencies--FBI, law enforcement--
that has a long history of criminal activities would be more
definite in defining roles and responsibilities.
Mr. Ruppersberger. WMDs have been around longer than
cyberspace.
Mr. Yim. Yes, and I think that really talks about
counterproliferation, nonproliferation and just management in
very general terms; and it doesn't--is it useful in such
general terms for people that are going to be charged with
implementation of the strategy? I think that's the question
we're raising.
Other strategies like the National Security Strategy, the
Homeland Security Strategy had ways to be specific. They said
who was in charge of specific activities. Perhaps that could be
added to the Weapons of Mass Destruction Strategy. Perhaps
there could be some timelines added to the WMD strategies.
Performance measures? That's perhaps hard to judge.
So we're not saying that each strategy has to be at the
same level, but I think there's significant lessons from each
strategy. And each could be improved, all could be improved, of
course.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Why do you think the administration
really outlined the strategies the way they did?
Mr. Yim. It's hard for me to speculate.
I think one of the reasons some of the strategies are less
specific is that, in certain areas, so much needed to be done
right after September 11 that even general strategies were
useful to mobilize the resources.
We were so lacking in preparedness, despite the Bremer
Commission, Gilmore Commission, Hart-Rudman Commission
recommendations, that immediately after the September 11
attacks just focusing attention on certain key areas was a
useful exercise for the Nation. I think the need to get a
strategy out quickly to mobilize the support was a good goal of
the administration, but we're beyond that now.
We're, as Mr. Schrock indicates, at a danger of
complacency. We need to move toward the implementation stage.
And that means the strategies have to firm up, they have to get
sharper; and until we do that and provide some performance
measurements we're not going to know whether the commitment of
resources is really making it safer.
Mr. Ruppersberger. It could have been because of September
11 that the strategies were hastily written by the
administration, in all fairness to them, because there was none
before that, correct?
Mr. Yim. I really am not----
Mr. Ruppersberger. We're only trying to get to the end
game, and that's the purpose.
Do you feel, though, when we're dealing with strategies in
these issues and especially such national strategies that
before we come out with the strategies that we deal with the
facts and data and get more data to come with a more concrete
strategy than the way it is now?
Mr. Yim. I think that's exactly right, sir.
We do need now to move. When we move with implementation,
it has to be supported with good data. That's not only data on
risks and threats and intelligence data but on our
infrastructure.
Do we really know what our hospital infrastructure is
capable of doing for a SARS attack or an avian bird flu virus?
Do we really know what our power grids can do under certain
situations, not only an attack but a human error that led to
the cascading Northeast blackouts, and how quickly can they
recover if there was an exerted--worm or virus being exerted
into the system?
We need better data. When I was in the Department of
Defense, one of the things that really hindered us in doing our
infrastructure recapitalization was a fundamental lack of data
available. We didn't really know what we owned and what we
controlled, and if you don't know that information--and in many
senses we don't know exactly what the capabilities of the State
and local and private sector are to respond or to be prepared
in certain areas--it's very difficult to develop a strategy and
to implement.
Mr. Ruppersberger. And the local and State issue is a major
issue, also, in bringing them all together?
Mr. Yim. Yes.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
At this time I recognize Mr. Turner.
Mr. Turner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would echo Mr. Schrock's statement with respect to a
national strategy on intelligence. Because certainly in reading
the description of the various strategies, intelligence comes
out in each of them; and as we talk about first responders and
to agencies and, of course, agencies that are responsible for
intelligence gathering, the coordinated effort both in
gathering and dissemination of intelligence is really probably
the most important aspect of our preparedness with respect to
combating terrorism.
You spoke about the issue of the strategies themselves and
the lack of definitive information on the implementation for
agencies and that--really looking at various strategies and the
lanes they're in and how really, going forward, each agency
might implement aspects of them. I'm interested in the
coordination between strategies and agencies, to what extent
the strategies provide guidance or to what extent the agencies
are looking at the various strategies before them, coordinating
their implementation of the strategies or even the agency's
efforts with other agencies.
Mr. Yim. That issue of horizontal integration among the
Federal agencies is critical.
When many Federal agencies look at strategies, they talk
about their obligations under the GPRA-type of requirements.
That's very narrowly agency focused. When we're talking about
the Homeland Security Strategies, we're talking about issues
that cross-cut over and above a particular agency's
jurisdiction. When we are talking about preparedness for a
bioterrorism event, it's not only HHS, it's DHS, it's going to
be Justice, it's going to be DOD, it's going to be a variety of
other agencies. So the key is the strategy would have to cross-
cut the agency jurisdictions.
Do they do that enough? We found mixed results when we talk
about who's in charge. Sometimes they talk about lead agencies,
but sometimes they do not. Sometimes they don't add the time
component. There may be a lead agency for prevention but a
different agency for response or recoverability assessment.
I think it's illustrative to look at the Homeland Security
Presidential Directives that came out in December. I think they
responded to some of the criticisms about the national
strategy, and they were very specific. They said, you,
Secretary of HHS, you, Secretary of DHS, you, Secretary of
Energy, are to do these specific things, and you are to
coordinate your activities in this specific manner, but the
overall lead is ``X.''
I think that is a good example of where we would like some
of these strategies to head, because I think we have to
recognize they cross-cut well beyond the ability of any single
Federal agency and even the Federal Government.
We need to talk about vertical integration. The Feds can't
do it all. State and locals are going to have to do stuff.
The private sector owns 80 percent of the critical
infrastructure. They are going to have to do that, too.
Mr. Turner. You talked about the issue of feedback as
relates to implementation. Is there any presence of a mechanism
for interagency feedback, where one agency who has needs from
another that's not being met has an ability to accept within
their own agency--cause it to be known of the need or the lack
of response or the lack of implementation?
Mr. Yim. We had raised some of our concerns about that.
The Department of Homeland Security has an Interagency
Coordinating Council, and they have that function. They also
have a Homeland Security Advisory Council that includes State
and local and private sector input to the development of their
strategy, but sometimes they have to come up, butt heads,
against other Cabinet agencies.
How do you prioritize homeland security against education
security, energy security, hospital, health care security, and
where are those balancing decisions being made, the
coordination? Of course, in the executive branch, in the White
House, in the Homeland Security Council, perhaps? Is that in
the National Economic Council?
I think that still needs to be better clarified, and the
Congress could provide I think great assistance in the
balancing that needs to be occurring between very many--there
are so many important priorities that this Nation has to
address.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Tierney.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Yim, for your testimony and
your report.
I'm concerned about what I think is an apparent failure to
integrate the strategic decisionmaking between international
and national criteria objectives on that. Would you speak a
little bit to that?
It seems to me we have $10 million going to national
missile defense, we have billions of other dollars going to
weapons platforms that I think will look a little bit back
toward the cold war as opposed to what we are going to do and
only $1 billion in moneys allocated in port security against
the possible introduction of nuclear materials in that manner.
What should we do and how does this stack up in terms of
international and national planning and what can we do to
improve that aspect?
Mr. Yim. I think many of our strategies understandably are
inwardly focused right now because of the immediate response to
September 11, but clearly what we need to talk about is
borderless security.
When we talk about border security, it really is a bit of
an illusion. Our borders are--because of our society are
designed to be free and open, to be easily passable through.
We talk about cybersecurity. There is really no sense of a
border. So if we're talking about borderless security, then we
clearly would need international cooperation; and strategies
need to address that.
Obviously, we need to interdict a dirty bomb or a nuclear
device in a cart or container before it arrives in the Port of
Philadelphia or the Port of Los Angeles, and the only way we
are going to get that is through the international cooperation.
Now some of the strategies address that. The Combating
Terrorism Strategy talks about involving the international
community. The High-Level National Security Strategy talks
about, well, if we're fighting terrorism, we not only need to
defeat the existing terrorism, we have to prevent the growth of
new terrorists by winning the, ``war of ideas.''
Are we doing enough in that arena?
Well, I think some of the international community may be
dismayed that we are taking unilateral actions.
Are our own protocols consistent with their business
models, for example?
I think that is a fundamental purpose of going toward some
type of national standards and using an international systems
type standard organization that specifically factors in the
considerations of the international community and the U.S.
community so that they are compatible.
We depend upon foreign trade and export and import, so we
must need the international cooperation for cargo security. We
depend upon security, so we need the international cooperation
for visas verification and terrorist watch.
So I agree with you, sir, that definitely needs to be a
component of each strategy. I think in this day and age we
really do not have just a homeland security strategy. It really
is a global strategy.
Mr. Tierney. Did you see any evidence in your review of
what's going on of any budgetary planning that cuts across the
international and the national aspects of strategy; in other
words, allocating our resources as between one and the other,
going back to the example that I gave, where it seems entirely
skewed?
Mr. Yim. It's difficult to see that with enough
granularity, because many of the activities deal with
international topics, are dual purpose or multi-purpose
activities. So it's hard to split out this particular funding
for increase in Department of State staff or particular
programs only designed to counterterrorism. They could only be
part of the overseas economic development and economic
assistance programs.
So the answer is yes. If we need to have greater
granularity, it's difficult in the way that the budgets are
submitted to see that direct link between foreign support
budgets and the counterterrorism activities.
Mr. Tierney. Well, would you agree with me that the
prospect of having somebody bring over a dirty bomb in a
container of a ship is probably far more likely than somebody
getting an intercontinental ballistic missile with it targeted
and directed to the United States at this point in time?
Mr. Yim. I'm sure that's correct. I'm sure the experts
behind me would agree with me, also, sir.
Mr. Tierney. So it would seem that we concentrate more on
the former than the latter in terms of how we allocate our
resources. Does that make sense to you.
Mr. Yim. Absolutely. Some risk threat assessment is
required.
Mr. Tierney. And do you see that between international and
other types of threats.
Mr. Yim. Some of the strategies really only peripherally
touch on that; and I think that is an area where we talked
about integration, implementation.
When we talked about integration, it wasn't just in the
United States. It was definitely with the international
community. That was one of the major issues that we flagged
during our review. We definitely need improvement in that area.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Murphy.
Mr. Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and thank you, Mr.
Yim.
Mr. Yim. Thank you.
Mr. Murphy. On the issues of intelligence and coordination
intelligence, certainly within intelligence agencies one of the
things they also must protect is horizontal and vertical
distribution of information in order to keep information
secret; and yet you have to know when to distribute it
horizontally and vertically in order to allow other persons to
act on that.
Part of Homeland Security is to try to coordinate the
efforts of FDICA, NCICA, NSA, etc. Of course, what is becoming
clear in the news, too, is that many times we have--or in the
last decade or so there's been depletion of perhaps agents or
other folks who were able to gather active information,
completely wiping out our ability from Asia, the continent of
Africa and many areas in the Middle East; and we will suffer
the consequences of that depletion for a while because we have
not had eyes and ears on the ground. We have been relying on
troop movements when we should have been looking at
individuals.
Given that integration of information, one of the things I
look at on a local level is the question of where do we stand
now in terms of getting accurate information to all the folks
who are really seen as the first and last responders on the
ground--the police, the fire, the hospitals--in being able to
deal with these and to have accurate information. Because I
think, as we see flights canceled from Europe, as we see alerts
go up and down, we certainly don't want to have the public
become compliant and unresponsive, which would only increase
our risk, but, nonetheless, we want to make sure that they have
trust and faith in information coming through.
Where do we stand, in your assessment, on accurate
information being gathered and accurate information being
disseminated such as not to lead to complacency?
Mr. Yim. I think that's a very common concern that we hear
voiced to us from the State and local sector, the lack of
detailed information that would allow them to stay specific
actions. I mean, they have been critical of the color code, the
terrorist threat advisory system, in being too non-specific,
that they've asked for more region specific or sector specific
information. They've pointed out that they don't need to
compromise sources and methods, that the cop on the street
doesn't need to know how the information was gathered but only
whether you want me to look up or down under the bridge, etc.,
on the roadways, to take effective action.
I think one of the additional concerns would be that people
are unfamiliar with the intelligence community and the nature
of the information that's being generated. They may lack the
capabilities to analyze, certainly analyze, the raw data. So
the information I think not only has to be a mechanism to
provide it. They have to do some analysis to the type of
information that will be provided, information that isn't going
to require training to be able to analyze but information that
could be actionable by a fire department chief, by a mayor, by
a sheriff.
I think we are going to overcome it; and, in fact, people
are going to get flooded with the data they will receive. The
key will be an analysis of the data, synthesis of it, to the
extent it is useful.
Mr. Murphy. Where do we stand in the timeline of reaching
that goal?
Mr. Yim. I think that has been one of the most common
concerns of any--not any but one of the primary areas for
additional attention and in setting some timelines for putting
a plan, putting some metrics, as to what is being pumped out,
getting feedback loops from State and local as to what
information is most useful to them, what information they don't
need. I think if we got that feedback we can overcome some of
the sources and methods.
Mr. Murphy. Are we weeks or months away from reaching that
goal?
Mr. Yim. I'm not sure I'm in a position to say, sir. I wish
I could. On many of these areas, I think we're more--certainly,
it's more a long term than it is a short term.
Mr. Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. I was telling Mr. Ruppersberger that I'm happy
I'm not in school, being tested on this; and yet I have a bit
of guilt because this is so important. As one of our witnesses
is going to say later, ready, fire, aim; and that's kind of
what we did when we had the three commissions before us.
They said there is a threat, you need to know the threat,
you need to develop the strategy, you need to organize your
government. It would clearly--and this is what Mr. Tierney,
frankly, on this committee has argued more than anyone else,
what's their strategy?
What I am having a hard time wrestling with, and I'll kind
of share some of my ignorance, which I do more often than I'd
like, but when I look at the matrix, I look at seven
strategies, national strategies, and I look at the national
security.
Do you have that in front of you?
Mr. Yim. Yes, sir.
Mr. Shays. I'm going to quickly run them down.
National Security is NSC; Homeland Security, DHS, Combating
Terrorism, NSC; Weapons of Mass Destruction, NSC; Physical
Infrastructure, DHS; Secure Cyberspace, DHS; and Money
Laundering, Treasury?
Mr. Yim. Yes, sir.
Mr. Shays. Now what I'm also learning from this is only
National Security and Money Laundering were strategies we had
developed before September 11.
Mr. Yim. Yes, sir, that's correct.
Mr. Shays. And what I have a sense is--yes?
Mr. Yim. I think there had been iterations of strategies.
They were only published--five of the strategies were published
post-September 11. Only National Security and Money Laundering
were actually published in this format prior to September 11.
Mr. Shays. Well, I have a sense that we've gotten pretty
lazy. In other words, the cold war threat we are pretty clear
that it was containment, reactive nuclear destruction. What's
unsettling for my constituents is that it's probably detection,
prevention, maybe sometimes preemption, obviously based on
better information than we had, and sometimes maybe the
lateral, and I'm just talking in a general sense.
When I look at National Security, the matrix that you have,
purpose, scope, and methodology it does not address problem
definition and risk assessment; does not address resources
investment and risk management; does not address organizational
roles and responsibilities and coordination; does not address
integration and implementation; does not address--and only one
is partially addressed, and that's goals, objectives,
activities performance measures.
Tell me why I shouldn't be hugely concerned about that.
Mr. Yim. Again, what we were trying to avoid is to give a
score card, an absolute measure.
Mr. Shays. You don't have to give a score card on this.
Mr. Yim. But the point would be that perhaps such a high-
level strategy--in fairness, in something at the top-level
strategy, the National Security Strategy, it's not surprising
that it would be vaguer or use more general language.
However, we still have to ask that things have changed
since 1947 when we first were required to develop a National
Security Strategy. Things have changed since 1988, when the
statutory requirements for the National Strategy were
promulgated by this Congress.
Have the world changes now, with the changing terrorist
threat, the pace of technological development, required the
strategies to become more specific?
I think that is our general conclusion; and I think, yes,
Mr. Chairman, you should be concerned that the National
Security Strategy isn't as specific as some of the other ones
are.
Mr. Shays. Tell me this: Of the so-called desirable
characteristics, which is the most important?
Mr. Yim. Well, of course, we will say that all are
important or we wouldn't--but to answer your question
seriously, we would say that the resource investments and the
performance metrics ones are the keys.
You have to be able to sustain the effort. It's not enough
to have high-level goals if the money isn't going to follow
along. If people aren't going to invest the money, the people,
the prioritization to achieving those objectives and if that is
the most important objectives you want people to implement,
then you have to have some way of telling whether or not they
are spending their money correctly, and that's why the
performance measurements--
Mr. Shays. Give me another one that's most important,
second one that's way up there.
Mr. Yim. I think integration is the key. We talked about if
you consider homeland security as a stand-alone item, it's
going to be enormously expensive.
Mr. Shays. So I would have picked out goals, objectives,
activities and performance measurements. That's what I would
have picked as No. 1. Tell me why that doesn't top the two that
you mentioned.
Mr. Yim. Again, it's difficult for me, but because I
believe that where we're focused on implementation--it's a
question for us--is can we afford to do everything people are
identifying that needs to be done?
Mr. Shays. Right.
Mr. Yim. It's fine to set goals and objectives, but the
reality is we are not going to be able to achieve all of those
goals and objectives immediately, so how we resource and set
priorities I think is going to be the key, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Tell me which is the least important of that
group. I mean, they're all important, but which is the least
important?
Mr. Yim. I think every strategy has a general purpose
statement, so in terms of utility to the user, something that
says promote the common defense, ensure domestic tranquility,
that's a burden of proof statement that would have been
addressed in our criteria.
Mr. Shays. Purpose and scope?
Mr. Yim. Purpose and scope--
Mr. Shays. I'm sorry, is that the one you said?
Mr. Yim. That's the one I said--
Mr. Shays. I understand they're all important.
Then tell me--oh, jeez.
Let me just ask you: I just was verifying that I was
looking at the matrix; and my staff said, ``Yes.'' I was
looking at the matrix on page 2, and then I said on figure 1 on
page 8 what am I looking at? And the comment was a mess, a
chart that is hard to understand.
Do you want to break this down in a Top Secret briefing or
do you want to just quickly tell us what that means--a strategy
of hierarchy?
Mr. Yim. When we put that graphic out, people said, you put
a dunce cap in your testimony. We would prefer to consider it a
wizard's cap, Mr. Chairman, but basically what we're trying to
point out is that there is a hierarchy. We expect that the
strategies are not the ``be all and end all,'' that we expect
the strategies to have some general statements, to be at the
top of that cone or pyramid and that we expect that the
responsible parties charged with implementation are going to
develop further documentation, and it's going to get more
granularity as you move down the cone.
So as you move from the top of the cone, the National
Security Strategy, to implementing documents such as the
Homeland Security Presidential Directives to specific agency
strategies, that's as you move down the cone, you're getting
more specificity and you would demand more performance
measures.
Mr. Shays. Are there Members that have another question of
this panel?
Mr. Schrock. Yes.
Mr. Shays. Before you go, I want you to tell me, are there
any national strategies that have been left out, plus the eight
which we are going to have under closed door; but if you could
just start to think about what strategies should be there that
are not. Ed, why don't you go. Is that all right?
Mr. Schrock. Just a couple quick comments, Mr. Yim. We were
talking about the hierarchy could be the problem. Is the
strategy the point or the mentality of the bureaucracy to put
this together? You mentioned a couple of times the coordination
of the agencies, the butting of the heads of Cabinet members,
everybody has their own turf and nobody wants to give it up. Is
that the problem?
Mr. Yim. I think that is one problem that the strategies
have to address.
Mr. Schrock. How do we solve it?
Mr. Yim. I think that there needs to be a clear directive
to our Federal agencies that they must admit that certain
things are beyond their jurisdiction and scope, they must rely
upon others to assist in these areas; that it is not
exclusively the province--homeland security is not exclusively
the province of a particular agency, a Cabinet Secretary or
Department and that a topic like bioterrorism is going to
overwhelm the resources of a single agency. That is the value
of a strategy. How we make that realization come to pass has
been a classic question.
Mr. Schrock. Clear directive from whom?
Mr. Yim. I think the administration clearly has that
responsibility.
Mr. Schrock. The President of the United States?
Mr. Yim. Yes.
Mr. Schrock. You talked about a borderless society. We all
love that. The fact is that is probably never going to happen
again. How much interaction or coordination in this effort do
you think needs to be made with some of our allies, some of our
partners in this, a little, a whole bunch, none?
Mr. Yim. I think that is going to be a crucial aspect of
it. The burden of defeating terrorism on a global scale is not
going to be able to be met solely by the United States.
Mr. Shays. Could you say that again?
Mr. Yim. The burden of fighting terrorism on a global scale
cannot be met solely by the United States. And certainly the
impact of terrorists' attacks is not only felt by the United
States even if the attack was only on U.S. soil. We know that
47, 50 or so countries had citizens in the World Trade Center
attacks. The financial market ramifications were extended well
beyond the U.S.' financial systems. So the international
community being aligned in the fight against terrorism is going
to be crucial.
Mr. Schrock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Could I ask you on that point, I want you to say
it again, and I want you to tell me under what basis you can
say it. I happen to believe it, but I believe it intuitively.
Is it so obvious that it stares us in the face, or is there
work to be done that says categorically you can make that
statement?
Mr. Yim. I think we can use examples. The cargo container
security work that we have been doing, Mr. Chairman, could not
be done--we can't interdict all of the cargoes without
cooperation from the superports in the foreign areas telling us
what is going in or having some protocols to secure who's
loading what onto those containers. And containers aren't the
only problem. There are great bulk carriers that are coming in,
too. You could put a bomb in a grain ship as well as a
container ship. When we talk about cybersecurity, we certainly
know that it's not just that.
Mr. Shays. Thank you for your patience.
Mr. Ruppersberger. I do agree with the issues.
Bottom line questions: First, what are some scenarios--and
I'm not sure where you can answer this--where poor risk
management could lead to being unprepared against terrorist
acts?
Mr. Yim. I think that there are several scenarios that we
have. When we talk about, for example, the bioterrorism attack
in an urban area, poor risk management leads to everyone trying
to do the same things. So we can have a lot of different
entities begin to stockpile chemical, biological protective
suits as the military did following the gulf war in 1991. And
we can come back 7 years later in 1998 in the military and find
that the shelf life had expired in most of those suits and our
protection was illusory.
I think if we don't have coordinated activities, we may
have the illusion of greater preparedness, but not the actual
reality of being able to fulfill the responsibilities. I think
that is an example, sir, that is very troubling for us. People
need to enhance capabilities over a long period of time, not
just the capability to do something within a particular budget
cycle.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Any other examples?
Mr. Yim. I think cyberterrorism--that if we have systems
that have identified security holes, and that we don't have
coordination so that there can be cascading impacts, or that
the vulnerabilities are not clearly made known because people
wish to hold back that information for whatever reason, their
share value, etc., that we could have significant impacts from
a lack of coordination.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Wouldn't you say that a terrorist act
has clearly a cascading effect in other population centers,
financial markets, infrastructure? Are we prepared, do you
think, based on that scenario at the local and State level?
Mr. Yim. I think we are not to the extent that we should be
because we have not completed in general the vulnerability
assessments that are required. There are some vulnerability
assessments that are being done. It is 2 years after September
11 and 5 years after many of the commissions have recommended
or identified terrorism as a major threat. We really need to
expedite these vulnerability assessments.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Another question: Which agencies in
particular bear the greatest risk with the fewest resources?
Mr. Yim. We have just seen the 2005 submission. We've seen
which ones got plussed up and which ones did not a bit.
Certainly the Department of Homeland Security is getting, in
certain areas, increased funding and some downgrades in others.
I think the Department has been under tremendous stress
with this reorganization. I know when we have talked to members
of the other Departments, they are not fully staffed in many
ways. They are having difficulties responding to some of the
deadlines that are self-imposed as well as externally imposed.
And they're talking about, well, we just don't have all of the
management structure or resources in place. I think that's an
area that needs to be looked at.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Based on the President's budget that was
submitted yesterday, what areas in homeland security do you
feel were cut that would have a negative impact on our
security?
Mr. Yim. Just with this, I know there has been a great
concern about the way that money is going to be distributed to
emergency and first responders, State and local. There have
been a lot of debates about trying to have that on a risk
management basis as opposed to purely a per capita or fair
share type based on population approach. I think that is an
issue that bears a lot of watching. Are we funding enough for
preparedness at the State and local and private sector, and is
it going to the areas that, based on good intelligence data,
deserve to receive?
Mr. Ruppersberger. Based on the cuts in the first
responders, what negative impact do you feel that would have on
national security?
Mr. Yim. Certainly any event is going to be local. Everyone
uses that phrase. I believe that wholeheartedly. We need to
have our State, local and private sector to be prepared for a
wide variety of hazards. If we're not, I think the whole Nation
suffers.
Mr. Ruppersberger. If you would be able to recommend to the
President to reconsider that cut, what would your main argument
be?
Mr. Yim. Again, I don't have enough details on the
specifics and the justification, but certainly when we talk to
State, local and private sector, that's the people that
Congress and the administration serves.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Training, equipment.
Mr. Yim. Training, equipment. It's not only that, but
generally being prepared to deal with a wide range of events.
And the same type of preparedness in the Midwest for a tornado
is going to help us in an explosive attack. The same level of
preparedness in California for an earthquake is going to help
us on a wide range of attacks.
Mr. Ruppersberger. I represent Maryland's Second
Congressional District, city of Baltimore, port of Baltimore,
BWI Airport, the tunnels, but one of the--and we did a survey
on who had received moneys from Homeland Security, and we
checked with every volunteer, career, police departments, all
the different areas, and this was about maybe 8 months ago, and
I believe the results of the survey was over 73 percent of all
those entities had not received a penny from Homeland Security.
But more importantly as it relates to your comment, it
seems to me that the No. 1 issue that I personally received
from this survey from the police, fire, paramedics was the
inability to communicate with different systems of
communication. And that is very important in a crisis. And New
York City, as an example, the Pentagon and different agencies
come together. Have you had the occasion to look at that, and
what is your opinion as far as the underfunding of that topic?
Mr. Yim. Our infrastructure technology team has looked at
that and the issue of bandwidth and what frequencies and
compatibility of the communication equipment the people have
studied. The World Trade Center identified areas in which the
first responders, because of incompatible equipment, did not
know--people inside the towers did not know what the people
outside knew and therefore did not receive some of the
warnings. That will continue to be a problem.
Are we confident? I think our IT team is fairly confident
that technology will be able to solve that problem. What they
are concerned about and what we are concerned about is once we
are able to talk to each other, what are people going to say to
each other; what information are they sharing; what activities
are they going to be using to coordinate once they can
physically talk to each other.
So the immediate problem, yes, enable communications,
interoperability absolutely; but we have to address what are
they going to say when they can talk to each other.
Mr. Shays. This is our second hearing.
Mr. Ruppersberger. We have had a lot of witnesses before
this committee, but I think he's very direct in answering the
questions.
Mr. Schrock. He sure is.
Mr. Shays. I agree with the gentleman. This is our second
hearing now on strategies. We had a hearing on standards. And
Mr. Ruppersberger as well as others in this committee, we put
our name on legislation, and it's now part of the draft of the
Select Committee on Homeland Security saying to DHS that
they've got to establish standards and get them set up sooner.
So, for instance, in my State, I had asked local
communities what had they gotten from the Department of
Homeland Security, and they said, no, until I did a little more
investigation. And what happens, the Department of Homeland
Security had given a substantial sum to the State, and the
State had given every department--they had viewed before they
set up standards that everyone, fire, police, first selectmen,
mayors, all needed better radio equipment. Then protective gear
got out to a lot of the communities. And they were getting it
from the States, and they didn't realize it was a pass-through.
Our point, and I think it's your point as well, and this is
what I was going to ask you, sir, so it's a nice lead-in, you
also specialize in the whole issue of standards besides
strategies. What is or should be the relationship between
national standards and national strategies?
Mr. Yim. I think there is a key relationship, and I wish to
be sure when we talk about standards--many people talk about
individual product or equipment standards. That is an important
aspect; an example, the thickness of a Kevlar vest. You were
talking about systems standards.
Mr. Shays. Why should Westport, CT, get the same as
Stamford, CT, or why should a small town in Connecticut like
Canaan up north be getting anything necessarily?
Mr. Yim. That is the goal of national management or systems
standards. What you want to identify is that everybody should
not be doing the same thing. They should be doing slightly
different things, and we have to be developing capabilities.
They may be resident in different entities or different
locations, but there has to be some way to mobilize that
capability together in a time of crisis or contingency.
That is the beauty of national standards. National
standards based on the ISO, the International Standards
Organization, or the American ANSI standards, they were
designed in the manufacturing business, in all honesty, and I
think that is a great analogy for Homeland Security. When Ford
Motor Co.--in looking at its business model, they had to rely
on a whole bunch of people in the chain of command. They had to
adhere to certain standards as to the quality of the material
and the tensile strength. The part suppliers, they had to
adhere to certain standards so when it was incorporated into
your Ford, that it operated as expected efficiently. They could
rely upon that.
That same standards approach could link the Feds, State and
local together. We assign responsibilities to the private
sector. We give them performance measurements and self-
certification to standards, can you meet them on a consistent,
reliable basis so we can depend upon them coming to the table
when the Feds need them or the States need them. I think that's
the key.
Mr. Shays. Is it realistic to expect these strategies that
we have been talking about to yield to an overarching concept
like containment to guide the long-term effort against
terrorism?
Mr. Yim. I think that goes back to the classic feeling that
where you sit determines what is the most important thing to
you. Where you sit on certain areas, containment may be the
most important. Where you sit in other areas, response and
recovery may be the most important. I don't think that right
that we have some sort of overarching goal, because I think
different parts of our sectors, government and society have
different priorities, and the strategies have to be flexible
enough to recognize those differences.
Mr. Shays. I don't know if I agree with you, but then again
I don't have any basis to disagree. It would seem to me that
you're going to want--I want to ultimately have a sense--are
you saying this? Are you saying the good old days of the cold
war don't allow us to have a fairly concise sense of strategy?
I mean, I worked for a year on what we should do to help
cities, and we had pages and pages, and it just got bigger, and
then it came down in the end to one thing: We needed to bring
businesses in to create jobs and pay taxes.
What I'm asking is, after we develop all these strategies,
are we going to find some kernels that are going to be found in
each one of these strategies that will be--that is what I'm
asking.
Mr. Yim. I would not disagree with that. I think there are
some overarching drivers that should be there.
Mr. Tierney. I wanted to say something. I'm shocked to
think that you would think a Governor is passing out Federal
money without letting people know. What Governors are we
talking about?
Mr. Yim, this month, the Assistant Secretary For
Infrastructure and Protection at the Department of Homeland
Security stated that the comprehensive terrorist threat and
vulnerability assessment is unlikely to be completed in the
next 5 years. What can we do to speed that up, and ought we not
be focusing on trying to get something before 5 years are up?
Mr. Yim. I think that most experts would agree that we
hopefully will have the luxury of 5 years, but it's unlikely
we'll have the luxury of 5 years. Definitely, how do we enforce
greater timelines? We obviously don't want a bad product, but
it doesn't have to be all or nothing. There are many phases
that could be put in to a vulnerability assessment and break it
down into manageable chunks, set some milestones. If 5 years is
the end state, maybe we ought to live with that, but that
doesn't mean nothing can be done or measured within that 5-year
period of time. So even if we had a 5-year goal, what is the 6-
month goal, what is the 1-year goal, what is deliverable in 2
years, and how often are you going to refresh that?
I think that is the real focus, not on the ultimate end
state, the timeframe for the ultimate end state. We may never
have an ultimate end state. In 5 years, that is an eon in
Washington, DC. It is an eon for most agencies and certainly
beyond the life of a political appointee's life. In light of
that, I think you have to set interim steps, and that's one of
the deficiencies we pointed out.
Mr. Tierney. On the homeland security issues, do you see
any importance to educating the local populace with respect to
reaction to an event? Do you see that as part of the strategy
in homeland security? And where do you put that in the level of
importance with other things we might do?
Mr. Yim. I think the communication strategy and the
education strategy is vitally important. Our citizens have to
have confidence in the ability of our governments to protect
themselves. If you look back at the anthrax attacks immediately
following in October 2001 and the somewhat confusing
information that was promulgated, I think that needlessly
alarmed or caused people to take actions that perhaps were not
only unnecessary, but may have been counterproductive. The
broadband use of--or the widespread use of a broadband
antibiotic could have other deleterious effects.
And information--I think to the education, what people need
to do for their own protection how they interact with other
people, things that they can't do, there's no way that I'm
going to be able to protect against a nuclear attack or even be
able to really protect myself against a nuclear attack, and I'm
just going to have to live with that, but other things I could
do.
Mr. Tierney. Did you see much of that in the Homeland
Security Strategy?
Mr. Yim. It doesn't get down to that level of granularity.
I think the National Security Strategy talks about an education
component. I don't recall that any of the other strategies deal
with an education component, and I think that's a gap.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Schrock.
Mr. Schrock. Mr. Yim, the chairman said that--he talked
about Stamford, CT, and talked about Canaan, CT, and I thought
I heard you say maybe everybody doesn't need to be doing the
same thing, which indicated to me that you thought maybe the
small towns didn't need to worry as much as some of the bigger
areas. But over the holidays, while the big areas were getting
a lot of chatter, the Town of Tappahannock, VA--it is a
wonderful little town, very, very small town, and there was a
lot of chatter that was going to be a target. Now if something
had happened there, what does that say for every little berg
and town in America? It is out in the beautiful boondocks, I
should say, but it's a magnificent place. But what does that
say for other little towns that might think, oh, my gosh, now
we are going to be targets, because towns in the Midwest think
they are safe, and they are not.
Mr. Yim. I think there are some minimal levels of
preparedness that no matter where you are, we would expect our
towns to be able to respond in certain matters, and because of
resource constraints or their location, maybe the only thing we
are asking them to do is do a holding action until other
resources can be mobilized and arrive. I think that's part of
the strategy development. You can't expect that small town to
defeat a major bioterrorism attack, but maybe they can triage
the patients and hold them in isolation for 48 hours until
something can arrive.
Mr. Schrock. Mr. Ruppersberger talked about the ports. Port
security is my No. 1 issue. I represent the Port of Hampton
Roads, which is the Norfolk, Virginia Beach area, and every
ship that comes into the massive port has to pass by the
largest naval base in the world. And I worry about somebody
trying to sneak a major container ship behind our piers and
lock our ships in, sort of like what they did in Pearl Harbor.
But the good news is the port of Hampton Roads has been the
guinea pig, and I think a very good guinea pig, for all this
new equipment to test all the containers and the trains that
come in and out of there with some absolutely incredible
results, and it is the only port in America that has it right
now. And the test results are so good, I can see it going to
other ports as well. Frank and I went down there a few weeks
ago, and I was amazed at the progress.
The bad news is they have to pass by the Navy before they
get there. The good news: They are being screened if they think
something is wrong. The port of embarkation is where everything
needs to be.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Murphy, are you all done?
Thank you very much. You have been a wonderful witness, and
I'm assuming you or someone from your staff will be able to
hear the panelists.
Mr. Yim. I will stay myself.
Mr. Shays. We are going to invite you to come back and make
some comments, so don't fall asleep during that second panel.
Thank you very much.
Our second panel is comprised of four individuals: Dr. Lani
Kass, professor of military strategy and operations, National
War College; David H. McIntyre, former dean of faculty,
National Defense University; Colonel Randall J. Larsen, U.S.
Air Force, retired, CEO of Homeland Security Associates; Mr.
Frank Cilluffo, associate vice president for homeland security,
the George Washington University.
You just stay standing. We will swear you in.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Shays. Our witnesses have responded in the affirmative,
I'm sorry you are kind of crunched in. We are going to start as
you are on the table. Dr. Kass, we will go with you first, and
we will do the 5 minutes. We would like you to stay somewhat
within the 5 minutes, but we could go over to the next 5. We
prefer it closer to 5. You have the floor, Dr. Kass.
STATEMENTS OF LANI KASS, PROFESSOR OF MILITARY STRATEGY AND
OPERATIONS, NATIONAL WAR COLLEGE; DAVID H. McINTYRE, FORMER
DEAN OF FACULTY, NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY; RANDALL, J.
LARSEN, COLONEL, USAF (RET), CEO, HOMELAND SECURITY ASSOCIATES;
AND FRANK CILLUFFO, ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT FOR HOMELAND
SECURITY, THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
Dr. Kass. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, gentlemen. I'm an
American by choice rather than the fortune of birth. I'm
particularly honored to be here. And I'm going to avail myself
of your generosity of a little bit more time because otherwise
I will require English subtitles.
The views I'm about to present are my own. They reflect
over 20 years experience as a teacher and practitioner of
strategy. They do not necessarily reflect official positions of
the U.S. Government.
Let me start with a quick historic vignette, if I could. In
May 1863, on the eve of the Battle of Chancellorsville, General
Joe Hooker, Commander of the Union Army of the Potomac, said,
``My plans are perfect. May God have mercy on General Lee, for
I shall have none.'' General Hooker's overconfidence had
immediate mid and long-term consequences. First, he was crushed
by General Lee. Second, he was fired by President Lincoln.
Third, General Hooker did not go down in history as a great
strategist. Instead his name became a synonym for, shall we
say, certain ladies of the evening.
Mr. Shays. You didn't tell me you were going to be
entertaining.
Dr. Kass. The joint lesson, Mr. Chairman, is that humility
is a virtue when assessing strategic plans, your own or anybody
else's. That is so because, simply put, strategy is hard to do.
Strategy seeks to balance ways and means. It seeks to mitigate
risk. It seeks to account for current imperatives, future
contingencies and unpredictable dynamics of human behavior.
Thus it operates in a realm where chance and fog and friction
and ambiguity dominate. Everything in war is very simple, but
the simplest things are difficult.
Strategy guides action. It needs to be translatable into a
series of implementing plans, but it cannot be so specific as
to delve into tactics. It is supposed to provide vision. It is
supposed to provide what in the military is called commander's
intent.
Strategic effectiveness--and, Mr. Chairman, you asked about
that--comes from a synchronized effort sustained over the long
term and guided by a clear vision of what it is you are trying
to accomplish, what is called the desired end state; in other
words, how do you want the situation to look when you are done
doing what it is that you are doing.
Foresight and flexibility are the keys to success. So is
the ability to integrate a wide variety of variables into a
coherent whole. In short, Mr. Chairman, this kind of holistic
thinking is pretty uncommon primarily because it is so
difficult. A logical systematic approach is the necessary first
step.
I provided the committee with what we use at the National
War College to educate the Nation's future strategic leaders.
Hopefully it will help you and your staff ask the difficult
questions that need to be asked when evaluating any strategic
design.
The first strategic question and the most comprehensive is
to assess, to understand the nature of the war you're engaging
in. What then is the nature, the character of the war we are
engaged in? And I will focus the rest of my remarks on this.
Clearly terrorism is not new. It has been with us for a
very long time. What is new is that modern technology has
provided individuals with destructive power which up until now
was the sole domain of advanced militaries. What is also new is
that choice can now operate on the global scale in pursuit of
global objectives. With the world as their battleground and
globalization as their enabler, they seek to destroy the
American way of life and the international system we lead;
that, Mr. Chairman, what we are fighting is an insurgency of
global proportions, what I would term a pansurgency. This
insurgency is not tied to geographic boundaries. Instead it
operates in nontraditional domains using nontraditional means
clearly and bound by accepted norms of civilized behavior. This
insurgency has invoked a legion to declare war on the United
States and to mobilize the sympathies of 1.5 billion Muslims.
The breathtaking scope of the insurgent goals is matched by
their desire to inflict casualties virtually anywhere on the
planet. They seek weapons of mass destruction and would not
hesitate to use them. They are willing to destroy everything
and die trying. They're well financed, exquisitely networked,
adaptive, flexible and patient. They also know us much better
than we know them.
The ultimate defeat of this global insurgency will only
come from the synchronized application of all instruments of
national power guided by an overarching strategic design and
not a practical plan. We must defeat terrorist organizations
which have global reach. We must deny them sanctuary and State
support. We must diminish the conditions that allow terrorism
to flourish. And we must do all that while defending the
homeland. So what we're talking about is a multidimensional
strategy which fuses offensive and defensive and integrates all
elements of national power.
Mr. Chairman, I truly believe that terrorism is the
societal evil of our time. The war on terrorism is our
generation's greatest challenge. This evil must be abolished
just like slavery, like piracy, like genocide. We are engaged
in a war which demands the long-term commitment of the Nation's
will, blood and treasure. It also demands a consistent, focused
strategy to achieve the end state of abolishment of terrorism.
That does not mean every individual act. Slavery was abolished
a long time ago, and there is still slavery, piracy and
genocide in the world. But that is the end state we should
strive to. And the mission of any current strategy is to
provide you this overarching end state that you are trying to
achieve.
The American people and your elected representatives should
not expect a quick or easy victory. I believe World War II and
the cold war are pretty useful to think about in terms of the
scope and magnitude and duration of the fight we are engaged
in. The war on terrorism is a war of necessity which we must
win.
Mr. Shays. Thank you very much.
[Note.--The National War College report entitled,
``Combating Terrorism in a Globalized World,'' may be found in
subcommittee files.]
[The prepared statement of Dr. Kass follows:]
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Mr. Shays. I have to say you are the most honest witness I
have ever had, because usually when I say you have 5 minutes
and please don't roll over another 5, everyone says, well, I
will try to stay within the 5 minutes. And you just said, I'm
not even going to try to stay within the 5 minutes, so I think
you got away with it because of your unique accent.
Dr. McIntyre.
Dr. McIntyre. I will try to stay within the 5 minutes even
though my accent is from Texas.
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I want to thank
you for the opportunity to testify today on the important
subject of our strategies for national security and homeland
security in the war against terrorism, and I want to thank you
in particular for the work this committee has done on this
subject in the past.
The United States is involved in a new, long war for its
survival, but it does not feel like war, so voters don't always
give full credit to the elected officials and appointed
officials who wage it and oversee it. I suspect the members of
this committee do not always get the credit due them for the
effort spent on these subjects so critical to the long-term
destiny of our Nation. As a former military officer and current
student of strategy who spent long years studying what happened
to nations contemptuous of strategic realities, let me thank
you for your efforts in this field.
In my written statement I have tried to do what you asked,
use my 36 years of strategic and military experience to conduct
an analysis of the family of strategies prepared by this
administration, evaluate their adequacies both individually and
collectively, so I will only summarize.
I think the administration's approach to offering a family
of strategies to formally lay out their goals in many areas and
their concepts for achieving those goals is an admirable one. I
recognized what they're doing immediately. It looks like every
major military plan I have ever seen. I am not uncomfortable
with what some have called the proliferation of strategies.
I will give you five brief points we will have to address
as time proceeds and we look to refine our strategies. No. 1,
we must clarify the fact that in the short run this is about
managing dangers to America and attacks upon Americans, not
eliminating them. In a world where technology gives big weapons
to small people, we cannot eliminate every threat. Some
attackers will get through. Some innocent people will become
casualties. This is not failure, this is reality. We need to
prepare the American people for this reality.
No. 2, clarifying the forcing function that will eventually
reduce or eliminate terrorist attacks on America is key. This
is a tough one because it involves changing the nature of the
enemy. We have to cause him to lose hope of victory through
what he's doing and accept some alternative solution to his
grievances. This is not even easy to conceptualize, certainly
not easy to do, but this is the essence of the long-term
victory.
No. 3, because we cannot kill every potential enemy and
protect every potential target, we must prioritize our spending
and our efforts. I recommend that our highest priority go to
preventing and responding to the types of high consequences of
attacks that will be the most damaging to the Nation as a
whole. Without a set of public priorities, we will be drawn
constantly forward to expanded actions overseas and expanded
spending at home. The biggest problem in this war will be
knowing where to stop. We need to set these priorities in
public.
No. 4, we must give more attention to the enemy. Many
people and even some experts are still operating under the cold
war assumption that our enemies' grievances have to do with
economics and the distribution of wealth. That is fighting the
last war. This war is about ideology and legitimacy. In the
long run, we are going to have to offer an alternative to the
enemy's ideology. I am not confident that we have yet
considered the implications of that fact.
And finally, we must understand that this war will be waged
over generations. We cannot win it if we change our underlying
strategies every time we change administrations. During the
cold war, we pursued a strategy of containment for 40 years
through a variety of administrations. The actions, the
priorities, the expenditures changed from administration to
administration, but not the underlying strategic concept that
by denying communism growth and additional resources we would
doom it.
As in the cold war, we need strategies that will stand the
test of time. They must be bipartisan strategies that can
garner support across party and ideological lines, and that is
why the work of this committee is so important. Thank you again
for your efforts in this regard and for the opportunity to
contribute to that effort.
Mr. Shays. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Dr. McIntyre follows:]
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Mr. Shays. I just want to say that one of my
disappointments is that we haven't truly had the kind of debate
that can bring both parties together to establish what should
be that bipartisan strategy. Very interesting. Thank you for
the indulgence of the committee to make that comment.
Colonel Larsen.
Colonel Larsen. Mr. Chairman and members, thank you for the
opportunity to provide my assessment of these strategies. I
looked at six. I didn't look at money laundering or the
classified military strategy. As I said in my prepared
statement, I taught strategy at the National War College, and
we always told students how important the strategy is, but
also, how difficult it is to develop in this town. Plans, which
we heard a lot of this morning, and spending programs are
easier to write and understandably so, strategy is difficult.
Therefore, sometimes we end up with what the chairman refers to
as ready, shoot, aim.
Looking at the six strategies, I thought there were some
good plans in there. What I thought was missing was a single
unifying theme that integrates all missions that were talked
about this morning from deterrence, prevention, preemption, to
incident management, and all participants. That is what is so
different; from the President to the police officer, from a
Member of Congress to a mayor, from a Cabinet Secretary to a
soldier, a public health officer and a corporate CEO. That is
what we do not have. Some would say that's not possible today.
I disagree, and I think the members of the panel would disagree
with this also.
In 1947, it has been mentioned, George Kennan gave us a
single word and a philosophy behind it called containment. That
guided eight Presidents, Republican and Democrat, and 20
Congresses through 40 years. I think that is what we need. We
must look a little bit before we talk about the strategy that I
will propose at three things strategists all look at. We
understand here how the ways and means have changed, from the
FBI going from reactive to proactive; how we want to exchange
more intelligence information; reorientation of the military's
capabilities. When we saw a soldier, an Army sergeant, ride
into battle on horseback with a GPS receiver and a satellite
radio, and he's guiding a B-52 designed for nuclear warfare to
drop a 500-pound bomb on a machine-gun nest, we understand the
ways and means have changed.
How about the end state? That's the difficult thing. We
understood the end state when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
Unconditional surrender. That was it. We understood the end
state when dealing with Nazi Germany. We understood the end
state for the cold war. What we have to do is really truly
admit to the American people there is no end state. As Dr. Kass
and Dr. McIntyre said, this isn't going away. If we kill all of
al Qaeda tomorrow; technology will allow the other small actors
to threaten us.
I used the example the president of the American Medical
Association in 1967. From the scientific community the
president of the medical association said in 1967, ``we will
soon cure infectious disease'' because of vaccine and
antibiotics. Almost seems humorous now, doesn't it? But there
is a good lesson there, because we are curing some diseases.
Within 2 years, polio will be eradicated from the human
species, but we know all infectious disease won't. We may
eradicate al Qaeda; terrorism we cannot. We have to learn to
deal with it.
Therefore the strategy that I think provides the single
unifying strategy to those six that I looked at, for that
single unifying strategy, I recommend five points: one,
relentless pursuit on a multilateral basis when possible of
individuals and organizations who threaten our homeland; two,
aggressive programs that prevent the proliferation of weapons
of mass destruction, particularly nuclear and biological
weapons--investments in programs like Nunn-Lugar are some of
the best investments we can make; three, concentrated efforts
to win the war of ideas that we have been talking about here,
and some of those war of ideas are inside the United States
preparing the American people--the five-step program in Israel
for counterterrorism, step 5 is prepare the public
psychologically. I'm not sure we're doing that; fourth,
development of standards. And I know the chairman and this
committee has been working on this since before September 11.
We must have standards for prevention, mitigation and incident
management that are fiscally sustainable for the long haul.
And now I said how good Nunn-Lugar was. Let me tell you how
poor Nunn-Lugar-Domenici was. Remember the 100 largest cities?
We went out there and threw all kinds of money at them, and it
made us feel read good. There was no continuation training
program. Colonel McIntyre and I spent 60 years in the military.
You train a sergeant to fire an M-16 today, you better be
prepared to train him next year or he's not going to hit
anything. So we went all that money on first responders, but
their turnover rate is 22 percent a year. You have to provide
programs that are sustainable.
And finally, understanding that overreactions by Congress
and the administration could cause more long-term damage to the
American economy than the terrorists, we must be able to
contain ourselves and our responses.
So the strategy that I offer that unifies these six
strategies that the administration has produced, my offer is,
to borrow a word from the cold war, containment. We must
contain the capabilities and global reach of the terrorists. We
must contain the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,
particularly nuclear and biological. We must contain the spread
of hatred with an offensive campaign of our own in the war of
ideas. We must contain our vulnerabilities. And we must seek to
contain our response to overreact, our tendency to overreact.
This is a realistic strategy. It's one that will work, and
it's one we can afford. It's a strategy that provides guidance
for action and spending, and it's a strategy that's attainable
and affordable, and containment is a strategy and the end state
we seek.
Mr. Shays. Thank you very much. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Colonel Larsen follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Mr. Cilluffo.
Mr. Cilluffo. Thank you, Chairman Shays and distinguished
members of the committee. It's good to be back and in familiar
surroundings to discuss our strategies to combat terrorism and
secure the homeland. Like Dr. Kass, my insights or thoughts are
my own and obviously do not reflect my views and my time at the
White House and/or other organizations, the Homeland Security
Advisory Council and others I may be part of. Given time
constraints, I will try to be brief. Not one of my strong
suits.
Mr. Shays. Be concise.
Mr. Cilluffo. I will deviate from my prepared remarks and
highlight a few of its key points.
Like Dr. McIntyre, I would like to compliment the
subcommittee for its leadership and longstanding role in
helping frame and shape the strategies before us today, and
also for recognizing that we cannot march into the future
backward fighting yesterday's wars alone. We need to remember
that September 11--the attacks of September 11 were not merely
a snapshot in our Nation's history. We are in a new normalcy
now. The threat remains very real, but yet may come at us in
various forms and ways and in morphing ways. This living agile
enemy bases its actions on our actions, seeking out and
exploiting our vulnerabilities. Thus we must be willing to
learn from our successes and mistakes and effectively manage
risk by constantly reevaluating our policies and recalibrating
our programs in order to stay ahead of the terrorists.
In order to combat these ambiguous and moving targets, we
need a national strategy that is flexible, comprehensive and
coordinated; living strategies, if you will. From my
perspective, the President acted decisively on this need. In
conjunction with one another, the strategies before us today
provide a comprehensive national strategy to win the war on
terrorism on all fronts.
A comprehensive strategy to combat terrorism must employ
every instrument of statecraft to attack the enemy on all
fronts and secure our homeland. For example, you cannot
separate homeland security policy from economic policy from
foreign policy from national security policy from military
policy from health policy from science policy and technology
policy. It is messy, and I think Congress realizes it's messy,
in terms of trying to get your arms around this challenge. It
is cross-cutting by its very nature, and they are inextricably
interwoven, and you cannot treat policies in isolation. It's
not about building a little black box that says break glass
when something bad happens.
I love the term that Mr. Yim used earlier. It is about
embedding tactics, operations and existing tactics and
operations, and it is about integrating a whole wherein the
strategies feed off and enable one another.
The task of securing the homeland has been cast by some as
a choice between security or freedom or security or
competitiveness. We heard the discussion earlier today. These
are not mutually exclusive propositions. In fact, we can and we
must have both. The single tenet that underpins everything we
are doing, it is not about security or freedom, it is about
securing freedom. And we can never forget that. And we need to
do so in a way that projects our values. We need to protect
Americans, but we always need to protect and project America.
The overall strategy to combat the threat of terrorism must
incorporate the marshalling of these domestic resources with
the engagement of the international allies and assets. We
should learn from the experience of our allies. Many have had
decades of terrorism that they have had to deal with over the
years, and we should continue to build on some of the successes
that we are learning as we are prosecuting this war and as we
are moving into it day in and day out.
I think the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism
recognizes that we also need to be proactive and extend our
defenses outward. We discussed earlier some of the questions
raised by some of the Members here. What are some of those
specific international issues we need to be able to address?
And quite honestly, we want to be able to push the border out,
widen the net to stop terrorists over there, and not waiting
until they reach our shores right here. And to do this, we need
to recognize that a transnational threat will require
transnational solutions. We need to maintain a coalition of
countries dedicated to isolating not only terrorist
organizations, but also the nations that sponsor, support or
harbor them. And I think the National Security Strategy of the
United States makes that clear.
Bringing all the instruments of statecraft to bear will not
only pressure these countries to cease actively or passively
harboring terrorist organizations, but also pressure them to
take the initiative to deal with the terrorist problem within
their own borders and ultimately drain the swamp that spawns
terrorism. I clearly see that as one of the end states.
Let me just say a brief word because both Congressman
Schrock and Congressman Platt brought this up earlier about
intelligence. It is the life blood of the war on terrorism
whether in support of diplomacy, covert action or in support of
military, law enforcement or homeland operations. Intelligence
not only provides the detailed information we need to preempt
attacks, seize terrorist assets and identify terrorist
capabilities, it can also provide us insight into what the
terrorists value, allowing us to go on the offensive and take
it away.
It is critical to illuminate key vulnerabilities that can
be exploited and leveraged to preempt, prevent and disrupt
terrorist activities before they occur. And I think that the
mix between signal intelligence and human intelligence was one
that we did for years, Congressman Murphy, neglect. I think
that is slowly changing, but you have to realize it takes time.
You don't push a button, and it is not as easy as knocking on
bin Laden's cave and saying, hi, I am here to join. This is
going to take years potentially to get that right. But clearly
the objective should be to get there before the bomb goes off.
We want to be able to fragment the adversary, to fragment
its enterprise and attack the pieces, which I think is one of
the action plans we have been working toward. That said, we can
never guarantee with 100 percent success in preventing all
attacks. Immediately following September 11, the President led
an assessment to identify what policies, programs, procedures
worked, which didn't, and what are the major gaps and
shortfalls that needed to be backfilled. In a way, we were
building an airplane midflight.
As we go about culminating in the President's National
Strategy to Secure the Homeland, we are also going through the
greatest transformation in the Federal Government's history
since the National Security Act of 1947. Dr. Larsen mentioned
the containment word. If I were forced to put our homeland
security strategy on to a bumper sticker, that word would be to
connect; to first connect the many Federal departments and
agencies that have a role in securing the homeland. The
President came to the conclusion that the whole was less than
the sum of its parts; hence the creation and marrying up of
authority, accountability and resources with the new Department
of Homeland Security. But it also meant identifying who needed
a seat at the national security planning table. This isn't just
the regular suspects, FBI, CIA, Department of Defense. Primary
care physicians, entomologists, agricultural services
inspectors, people who have never really been part of the
national security community not only needed a seat, but a
front-row seat.
Culturally there are huge challenges. One community wanted
to string them up--law enforcement, the other community, string
them along--intelligence, and then you got the health component
that just wanted to deal with the strung out. Very different
views on the world. So we want to be able to bring some of
these capacities together.
But the Federal piece is easy compared to interfacing with
Federal, State and local. Obviously any national strategy needs
to be national, not Federal. And we all know that those first
to arrive and last to leave will be our Nation's emergency
responders. They are the ones who need the tools, the
capacities and the wherewithal and will ultimately determine
whether or not the battle can be won or lost.
We discussed the private sector. They own and operate a
majority of the infrastructure. This can't be a ``thou shalt''
from Washington. It needs to be a partnership--work with. I
personally believe it should be mitigate before litigate or
regulate, but we need to be able to put some pressure on some
of the shared responsibilities of the private sector, and it is
a shared responsibility. Government needs to lead by example,
get its own house in order, and only then can they expect the
private sector to do the same.
Congressman Tierney, you mentioned the American people. I
think this is a primary tenet of the national strategy. We need
to get information to citizens on what they can do to protect
their families and their communities; the Citizen Corps, part
of USA Freedom Corps, the ``ready'' campaign asked people to
start thinking not to ask how afraid should I be, but what can
I actually do about it. And the President's view was the best
way to defeat evil is to do some good and to reinvigorate some
of the public service that is available.
Let me also----
Mr. Shays. No. Let's close up here.
Mr. Cilluffo. Let me close very briefly to state--and I
will use the wise words of Yogi Berra, who I consider one of
the greatest strategists and philosophers: The future ain't
what it used to be. And the best way--and I think it is also
fair to say that since the end of the cold war, threat
forecasting has made astrology look respectable.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cilluffo follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Mr. Schrock.
Mr. Schrock. Mr. Chairman, we have attended a lot of
hearings, but these are probably five of the most fascinating
informational people we have ever had, and we thank you very
much.
Dr. Kass, you mentioned Clausewitz, which gives me goose
bumps because I had to read that book on war when I was at the
Naval War College, and I stuck it away, and we're moving out of
our house, and I was looking at the books, and there it was.
Believe it or not, I'm going to read it again, because I really
believe it will apply to a lot of what we are doing here. So
that is one you are right on.
You talk about patience. You talk about patience. We don't
have patience in America. We want instant gratification. We
thought the minute we went in and bombed Afghanistan the first
day, it was over and everything was going to be fine, and that
is an education process the American people clearly need to
understand.
And, Colonel McIntyre, you said something I'm going to
remember for a long time: managing dangers, not eliminating
them. As much as Ed Schrock would like to eliminate all these
dangers and get rid of these guys, I'm afraid we are not going
to be able to do that. The Vice President has said if we leave
one terrorist standing, they are going to put roots in the
ground and continue to grow. And that is nice to think we might
get rid of everybody, but if we can manage that threat, that is
probably some--and know where to stop, that is a fascinating
comment. I'm going to be thinking a lot about that, too.
And the strategies can change in every administration, and
they do. You are starting to hear that on the campaign trail,
if I am elected, I will do this, and I will take this action.
And I am not sure all that is good for the long-term role or
goal in trying to get rid of the terrorists.
And, Colonel Larsen, preparing the public, that is one of
the hardest thing we have to do, because I think they want this
thing over, and they think it's going to be over. But they need
to be educated that it's going to be a long time.
And sustainable programs, you're right. It's fully funded.
It's a feel-good thing. We do it. We think we are done with the
job, where in 5 years everybody who was there who got the
training is gone, and we need to get that up and going.
And Mr. Cilluffo talked about new normalcy. We are never
going to be the same again, and that is a very, very sad thing,
but we need to stay ahead of the terrorist.
I am not going to ask you the two longest questions. The
coordination of the agencies is real important, and the heads
of the cabinets, the butting of the heads of the Cabinet
members, how do we solve this? How do we get these agencies to
work together so everybody is talking off of one sheet of
music, so everybody out there isn't doing their own thing? I
don't understand that, and maybe you do.
Dr. Kass. The only way you can do that is exactly the way
the committee is trying to do it, namely what is the
overarching strategic design; what is it that we are supposed
to be all trying to accomplish, and only then you can go from
strategy to specific tasks that assign to the various agencies.
Right now everybody is doing everything, and you have no
clarity.
Dr. McIntyre. We are going to have to find some way to
reward people. You know, when you play in the Super Bowl, you
get paid more if you are on the winning team. You don't get
paid extra just for being really good at defense or being a
really good pass receiver. So everybody plays for the team. But
our entire system is constructed for individual or agency or
local evaluation and consequently local reward. We have to find
a way to reward the entire system when it succeeds and punish
the entire system when it fails. That is very difficult to do,
but I am telling you the individual reward is not the answer to
moving the team as a whole forward.
Mr. Schrock. What I hear you saying is that means going
into these agencies and rooting out some of the mentality
that's been there forever that wants the status quo and doesn't
want things changed for their own security?
Dr. McIntyre. The single greatest obstacle we face in
changing the bureaucracy is to undo the successes of the past.
It is not the failures of the past, it is successes of the past
is the problem, because people will continue to do that because
it has been successful in the past.
Mr. Schrock. But what is successful in the past doesn't
apply.
Dr. McIntyre. Our whole structure is built from our
academic system forward. From the 1500's, we built an academic
system that is vertical, and that is the way people are
rewarded. Our problems today are horizontal.
Our problems today are horizontal, and we've got to find a
reward structure that is horizontal in nature and not just
vertical in nature.
Mr. Schrock. We will--I think the Secretary of Defense is
trying to do that in his reorganization of the Pentagon.
Give us an example of how you do that.
Dr. McIntyre. Jointness is a very good one in that you are
not necessarily promoted for being a really good Army officer
anymore.
You are rewarded for being part of a joint team, for unless
you have proven yourself in that joint team there is no
advancement no matter how good you are in the Army or the Navy.
We are going to have more--I don't like necessarily the
word ``jointness'' to apply but more interagency--reward for
interagency behavior.
Mr. Schrock. Purple.
Dr. McIntyre. ``Purple'' is a good word. ``Interagency,'' I
think, is the proper word.
You do that, you know, the Congress did that with the
services by making the requirement that you had to serve
jointly for advancement to general officer.
When that kind of requirement becomes the commonplace
within the agencies in the U.S. Government, then cooperation
and interagencies will be desirable, in terms of where you send
the extra person out of the office.
Colonel Larsen. You used the term ``patience'' a moment ago
in talking to Dr. Kass.
Remember, that took 40 years to get it right, to get
Goldwater-Nichols, but it's a commitment to that long-term
effort because it took Congress, not the administration or the
Pentagon, to give us Goldwater-Nichols, to give us jointness so
we could work together. So it is going to take action by this
body and time.
Mr. Schrock. I agree.
Mr. Cilluffo. Congressman, two points come to mind.
First, the Homeland Security Council, in conjunction with
the National Security Council and the Executive Office of the
President, does have a Deputy Assistant to the President that
supports both the Assistant to the President for Homeland
Security and the Assistant to the President For National
Security, Dr. Rice and Dr. Gordon, but let me also say that
clearly the turf we should all be worried about is the turf we
are all standing on and the horizontal challenges in
conjunction with the vertical challenges are not easy.
I believe General Eisenhower, and it's in the Pentagon on
the way to the bubble, and it's a quote and I'll paraphrase it:
In preparation for war I have found plans to be useless but
planning to be indispensable, and I feel the training and
exercising component of this is so important. We can't afford
to exchange business cards on game day. We need to get people
to be facing one another, to understand the roles, to
understand their limitations, to understand what their actual
missions are, at the Federal level and at the Federal, State
and local level.
The words mean something very different.
Lexicon. The word ``surveillance'' to an epidemiologist
means something very different than it does from a military
perspective, from a C4ISR perspective than it does to law
enforcement.
This is a transformational change that will take some time
for us to get right. I'm not sure it will ever be right, but
one thing we do know is we are going where we can afford to
fail.
As Benjamin Franklin once said, failing to prepare is
preparing to fail.
Mr. Schrock. That's right.
Mr. Cilluffo. So I think we need to identify some of those
areas that maximize secondary and tertiary benefits beyond just
guards, guns, and gates, and training and exercising, getting
people in the same room together at the highest level and at
the operating level will go a long way in at least breeding
some of that trust, because ultimately that's the word.
It's not that people distrust one another. It's that they
don't appreciate their roles and their missions and I think it
takes time and we'll need to reach out to the American people
to garner their trust and enlist their trust.
Mr. Schrock. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
I could stay here all day but I have another appointment I
must go to, but I thank you very much.
It has been very, very beneficial to you being here.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Schrock.
Mr. Tierney.
Mr. Tierney. I don't know if I heard Dr. Kass and Mr.
Schrock correctly but there is a discussion about campaign
discussions and what people are going to do about this and I
don't know if I heard the correct statement, do you think this
is healthy or not, and, if that's the case, I think it is
absolutely healthy that we have a transparent discussion.
I think we all ought to be focused on the issue of
terrorism and that we all want to deal with it but I think how
we deal with it is essential.
To have a transparent discussion among all the candidates,
as well as the incumbent, what is our approach to national
security, what are our strategies going to be?
Mr. Shays. Will you yield?
Mr. Tierney. Sure.
Mr. Shays. What I heard was ultimately we have to have a
national agreement and that we've never had the kind of debate
that you're suggesting, that we just kind of----
Mr. Schrock. That's right. That's right.
Mr. Tierney. Then we all agree debate is important and
critical.
Mr. Schrock. Administration after administration.
Mr. Shays. But it has to be dealt with on a bipartisan
basis.
Mr. Tierney. Exactly.
I'm much assured to hear that because that's not something
we've had so far and we've had a lot of politicking and
posturing and setting things out without consulting the other
party; sometimes without consulting Congress.
This committee is as frustrated as anybody as far as
setting standards for our local communities, etc., in terms of
what has not been done, in terms of looking at the local
resources, and I think we have to know what people are going to
do in that regard, what their attitude is toward this whole
situation, and that may need to be clarified, I think.
All the things that the members of the panel have been
talking about here in terms of coordinating, I assume you will
agree it is just as important to coordinate the resources
between the national and the international level; there would
be no disagreement there, right?
Dr. Kass. Yes.
Colonel Larsen. Yes.
Mr. Cilluffo. Yes.
Mr. Tierney. I don't know there is a lot to ask in terms of
questions, so, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back to you at this
point.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
Mr. Ruppersberger.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Yes.
We're talking about plans so that we can get to our end
game strategy for implementation, and, just as an illustration,
just to have your opinion, we were very successful in the
beginning stages of the war with Iraq, and then after we were
in it all of a sudden we had problems, and there has been
allegations that the planning for the post-invasion was not
adequate, it was put together hastily, and it took a while to
get to stabilize, to be able to bring the security that is
needed to liberate Iraq.
Do you have any opinions about that plan and how it would
relate to what we're talking about here today?
Dr. McIntyre. I've heard that discussion. I think it casts
the question too narrowly. I have a problem not just with the
issue of Iraq. I have a problem with the direction of military
thinking since the end of the cold war, and it seems to me
that, regardless of party, regardless of ideological
background, regardless of service affiliation, there has been a
relentless tendency over the last 15 years to focus on how
we're going to do something instead of what effect of whatever
it is we're going to do will have on the enemy.
I think we perhaps got off on the wrong foot after the end
of the cold war, in 1989 to 1990 and 1991, when instead of
asking the question how do you defeat enemies, why do people
quit, why are wars over and then begin to construct our
military to be flexible enough to achieve that, instead we
focused on the question of how do we take new information
technology and apply it to what we are doing to make it better.
That happens to cross-administrations from both parties,
it's happened with conservatives and liberals.
I'm telling you I think we have not asked as a government,
as a Nation, in the academic communities, in the service
colleges, we have not asked the single most important, most
fundamental question: Why are wars over?
We have focused instead on why wars start and if you ask
that question why is war over and why do wars end then it takes
you to a different pattern. You buy different things. You have
a different set of planning, so I guess what I'm trying to tell
you, sir, is I understand the criticism with how this war was
waged.
My criticism, however, is much larger, and that is how all
of us have been thinking about wars since trying to recast
ourselves and our military for the last 15 years, and if you
will take that different approach, I'd suggest the same
approach to intelligence.
We keep asking the question: ``What do we want to do?'' The
central question is: ``What do we want the enemy to do?'' That
determines what we do.
Mr. Shays. What does that mean? Can you answer? What does
that mean?
Dr. McIntyre. What do we want him to do, do we want him to
surrender, to cooperate with us, want him involved along
certain borders, to simply die, change his ideology?
What is it we want the enemy to do, and until we can figure
that out, our applying different means is not going to solve
the problem.
We are getting better and better with making the military
more flexible, making the arrival of bombs more precise, the
employment of forces more rapid. I'm not sure that solves the
problem but just getting better at what we do.
Mr. Ruppersberger. We are still considered to be the
superpower of the world because of our technology but there was
an issue that I believe occurred under Carter, Stansville
Turner, where there was a policy decision made to take more
away from human intelligence and to put it into the
technological end, and, as a result of that, if you want to
look at the whole picture that's happened right now, we do not
have--we had it but we don't have it to the degree we need to
have the human intelligence, that we know the culture of the
people we're dealing with; I mean, just Iraq, we have religious
issues that are out there. We have a lot of issues that we have
to address and still--we still have to make sure we secure the
area and that we finish what we started.
Dr. McIntyre. That's precisely what I was saying.
Mr. Ruppersberger. To balance terrorism, and if you look at
DOD, it's a huge massive agency, and the culture there was to
go after as we did in the beginning of the Iraqi war and we
were successful, but we also are dealing with terrorism now and
it's a different ball game.
Dr. Kass. So it's just another aspect of education which
most people forget, and that is the total lack of language
skills, understanding of other cultures.
If you looked during the cold war, Congress legislated the
National Defense Language Act. A lot of us who learned Russian
during the cold war, myself included, benefited from
scholarships which were designed to learn about our enemy.
We do not have that. We do not understand the enemy that we
are fighting, and I would submit to you that is a critical
step.
One of the problems in Iraq is not lack of planning, but it
is lack of basic understanding of what the enemy might do, and
you've got to be able to understand what he might do, based on
understanding his culture, his history, his past behavior.
We don't have that.
Mr. Ruppersberger. I agree with you.
We also need to learn more as a country about the Muslim
religion.
Dr. Kass. Yes, sir.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Because if we're ever perceived by
Muslims there is a war against Islam, we'll have a very real
problem and it got real close in the beginning of the Iraqi
war, Egypt and other areas, but I think it turned around.
One other area I'd like to get into, you mentioned the
issue of intelligence. Are you familiar with the Office of
Special Plans in the Department of Defense?
Almost everyone involved there was more of a political
appointment instead of a long time member of CIS, NSA,
whatever, and there were concerns about that group
circumventing, say, the CIA and not vetting all the information
before it actually went to the policy of the President, and as
a result of that there was actually information that really got
into the State of the Union last year.
Do you think that there needs to be, when you have an
Office of Special Plans, that there needs to be more of a
relationship with that type of group and with the other
agencies, such as CIA, NSA, FBI, that type of thing?
Dr. McIntyre. I think it's really important, sir, when
you're being called upon to testify to your expertise, to know
when to draw the line, and I don't have an expertise in that
area, so any answer I give you would not be an expert answer.
I just don't have the expertise to answer that question.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Do you have an opinion?
Dr. McIntyre. My opinion, sir, is that we have missed
something much bigger than people are digging at right now. It
was just not the Iraqi war we missed. We missed the response of
the French, we missed the response of the Turks, we missed the
response of the Russians.
We missed the way Saddam was going to play his hand and we
missed it for a long period of time. We didn't get what was
going on, so that is structural and is not specific to either
this administration or the past one. It's a much larger
conceptual problem, cause and effect.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Why didn't we do that?
Dr. McIntyre. Well, what we taught at the National War
College, if you're not real careful believing is seeing, and
over a period of about 15 years, we built up, I think, a habit
of we thought we knew what we were seeing and consequently we
saw it, not just in this area, but in other areas as well and
it is very hard to break that.
It takes outside thinking, outside expertise, a constant
challenging, so I want to be very careful.
You asked me for an opinion. I can give you expertise as a
strategist and I can tell you the history is filled with people
who saw what they believed and you have to be careful about
that.
I cannot judge this particular office. I just don't know.
Mr. Ruppersberger. In your testimony, it was General
Hooker, correct?
Dr. Kass. Yes, sir. Yes, sir, and that's a prime example,
sir, just to reinforce: the notion of understanding your enemy
and understanding your allies and not expecting others to
behave the way you would in similar circumstances. We are not
very good at it.
Mr. Ruppersberger. One other issue. One other question?
Mr. Shays. Oh, no. Keep going. Keep going. It's
fascinating.
Mr. Ruppersberger. One other question in a different arena.
Your testimony, I forgot whose it was I read, talked about
the issue of preemption, without bringing the rest of the world
into the fold.
What do you think the administration could have done to
bring the other nations into the fold before we did the
preemptive strike with Iraq from a planning perspective?
Mr. Cilluffo. Well, I'll take not Iraq specifically but
looking at preemption and the war against terrorism and non-
State actors, which actually requires personalizing.
When we deal with States, you need the information that
exactly you would mention, and largely that's going to be based
upon human intelligence and these people were not Boy Scouts,
these aren't good people, and obviously good people don't have
the insights into the mind of the terrorist, but, ultimately,
from a preemption standpoint, obviously you want to bring along
as many supporters as you have and we have on the war on
terrorism.
We're working hand and glove and especially with respect to
the indigenous security services. With many nations, we are not
on a first name basis with them and good relationships with
them, but with the war on terrorism we actually have been able
to cooperate and coordinate with the foreign services and
many--and I'm not speaking Iraq specifically but it does
require making some hard decisions.
You've got to be willing to make mistakes. People have to
be willing. Analysts aren't clairvoyant. They're going to make
mistakes as well. If we were analysts, obviously, we would want
to be on Wall Street and identifying where stocks are going in
the future. It's an imperfect business, and all too often if
people go out on a limb and they get caught for getting
something wrong, they don't necessarily see the light of day in
the future. So I think that both in the collection side, where
people need to be willing to take risk and we need to accept
some blowback and on the analytical side we need to be willing
to make mistakes, and that is something that ironically is not
fostered, to some extent, something I think that the Congress,
in conjunction with the administration, can help play.
Colonel Larsen. Sir, in line with what we've been
discussing here, many of our allies understood the situation
better than we did--what the end state would look like. We
don't speak the language. There were 40 fluent Arabic linguists
in the State Department when the Iraq war started, that's all.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Do you feel that is a breakdown in our
intelligence then?
Colonel Larsen. It's bigger than intelligence, I'll agree
with Dr. Kass.
Dr. Kass. It's in the nation.
Colonel Larsen. We're talking about State Department,
Department of Defense, it's national security that we don't
understand who we are at war with, which goes back to Mr.
Clausewitz's first statement, you better understand what you're
getting involved in.
Mr. Ruppersberger. It's not only in human intelligence but
in analysts. We have to connect the dots.
Colonel Larsen. Analysts and policymakers.
Mr. Ruppersberger. But eventually the policymakers are
relying on the intelligence to make their decisions, and that's
why it seemed to me there was a circumvention of a standard
that was used in the past that wasn't used, and what are we
here about?
We're here to learn about what we did wrong, so that we can
fix it and make it better. Bottom line, that's where we want to
go.
Dr. McIntyre. Let me give you two brief points on
preemption, since it is such an important topic.
This is actually what I did my dissertation on about 5
years ago, modernization forces, and I came to the conclusion
in 1999 that the United States was going to be moving
inevitably toward a doctrine of preemption during the last
administration because that's just where the logic of war takes
us.
I concluded in looking at previous wars that there were two
things that caused a Nation to preemption, to attack
preemptively. One is if it decides that the threat against is
so overwhelming that it won't be able to survive the first
strike, then it will have to preempt.
The second is, alternatively, if it decides that its own
capabilities are advancing to the point that a strike would be
relatively easy and relatively low cost.
What we had in the Iraq war was the perfect storm. Both of
those things came together. We had a situation where we had
every reason to believe that an attack against us, for example,
of biological weapons, would be a one-blow knockout. No. 2, we
had every reason to believe we could take care of this
relatively quickly and with low cost and I guess what that
tells me is that we need to be really, really careful because
the momentum for any administration will be to be pulled
forward by such circumstances.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Thank you.
Mr. Cilluffo. Mr. Congressman, and your intelligence should
support decisionmakers, that's key. It's not the decisionmaker
itself. That's something that's underappreciated or
misunderstood.
Mr. Ruppersberger. OK. Thanks.
Mr. Shays. This has been a fascinating panel, and the
questions asked. I feel in some way like I'm losing track of
the original effort of our committee.
Mr. Ruppersberger. All esoteric.
Mr. Shays. If you ran against an opponent, ultimately you
would want your opponent to lose. You would then maybe bring it
up one level and say you would like to get out of the race
before you lose, and third would be you would like them to
actually endorse you.
Mr. Cilluffo. Right.
Mr. Shays. I mean, I would love al-Qaeda to just love us
and the world would be peaceful. I know that's not going to
happen.
I am fascinated though by certain concepts. I've been to
Iraq four times, one time just without the military entirely,
two times without the military and then with the military and
one time just with the military, so four times total, and there
was one individual named Mohammed Abdul Hassan and he grabbed
me by the arms, by the shoulders practically, and he said you
don't know us and we don't know you.
That was in April, and I just came back to our folks. We've
got to get our Arabic speakers in there and Iraqi Americans as
fast as we could.
Now, what's surprised me, Dr. Kass and Dr. McIntyre, is I
put the blame on this squarely on the military and the White
House, because I agree with Mr. Ruppersberger. We went down in
April, May, and June, and July and we've been clawing our way
up since August, and we've made some progress, so if in Iraq we
were here in April and we're here now in February, there's some
slight incline. It's more significant because we got ourselves
deep in a hole.
How in the world, though, given what you all teach, which I
totally accept, how would we have blown it? Why would the
military have been the one to have blown it in that sense; or
let me say this: Was it the military saying in your judgment we
better be careful, and it was maybe the political leaders not
listening to the military?
I know this is a little sensitive, but this is big stuff
for me.
Dr. McIntyre. Sir, we'll go wherever the chairman wants to
go in the discussion. I don't place the blame for this on the
administration. I do not place it on the political leaders, and
I do not place it on the military. I place it on the academic
community.
We have been thinking about the wrong things for 40 years.
It is not just the intelligence community that was caught
totally by surprise by September 11. It was the academic base
from which the intelligence community is drawn. That's who
educates our people.
Dr. Kass. Yes. Yes.
Mr. Shays. But you were both there and you're persuasive; I
mean, I wouldn't have been in your class and this not been
memorable if you had discussed these things.
Dr. McIntyre. At the military colleges where Randy taught,
they draw what they teach from the civilian academic community,
and so there is a limited amount of discussion to draw from,
and I'm just telling you, sir, since 1950 or 1960 we haven't
talked about how to end wars in the academic community. We
talked about how to prevent them, so there is a very limited
body of knowledge out there to draw on.
Colonel Larsen. Let me give you a very specific example
that answers your question.
Strategically, I think many of us agree Saddam had to be
done away with, perhaps establishing a democracy that's going
to make the world safer. Tactically, our troops did a marvelous
job. Operationally is where I saw some failures. One hard
example and this is from Lieutenant General Paul Surgeon, who
is retired and in charge of rebuilding the entire Iraqi Army.
It was a great plan. Unfortunately it ended up like General
Hooker's because the troops were supposed to lay down their
arms at the barracks, in place, stay in uniform, we would take
them over, so we had a bunch of good Iraqis that had some bad
leaders and now we have a police force and military that we can
quickly put leaders upon.
CENTCOM Headquarters when the war started a couple days
early said lay down your arms and go home. They threw off their
uniforms and went home and blended back into society. We don't
know where they were, so our whole plan for controlling the
country afterwards fell apart at the operational level.
Mr. Shays. Well, there was a big discussion because they
were--I mean, not big distraction, but we could spend a lot of
time here, because, for me, Dr. Kass, you started out not the
Hooker part but the humility part was what caught me.
Dr. Kass. Yes, sir.
Mr. Shays. Because given what I thought and the President
thought and the French even thought and the Germans even
thought, that we would find weapons of mass destruction. There
were a few Members of Congress who didn't think that and I
acknowledge that, but it strikes me that a little less hubris
is in order.
Dr. Kass. Yes, sir.
Mr. Shays. And what struck me is that there was just
tremendous arrogance having won this war, even without the
Turks' help, because that was a whole theatre we weren't able
to enter in and we still did it.
It's hard not to feel like, boy, things are going well and
then it just kind of fell apart for a few months, and hubris is
the thing that I put in the biggest challenge.
Yes, what were you going to say?
Dr. Kass. Yes, I couldn't agree more with you. We are the
victims of our own success. Being the world's superpower,
having our products, our music, our entertainment spread
globally makes us believe everybody likes us.
They don't. They don't want to be just like us, but we
somehow fail to understand that.
You asked, couple of minutes ago, sir, why don't we
understand the adversary?
The simple answer is: We don't study them. We apply our own
modes of behavior, our own standards of rationality to the
universe, and that is why we are quite often incorrect in our
assessments.
Dr. McIntyre is exactly right. It comes down from inside,
what we teach in our universities, in our colleges.
We are still wedded to the cold war paradigm of what we
teach. That horizontal integration that we all talked about
needs to be taught to our kids in high school and in college.
It is not. By the time they become general----
Mr. Shays. I get your point.
It gets me, and I'm looking at Mr. Yim and I think he's
probably thinking, what does this have to do with what we
talked about; but I'm going to ask you to tie it up, Mr. Yim,
or Doctor, because it gets to what John Tierney and I talked
about.
As soon as we start reorganizing, we developed a national
strategy, and one of the tragedies I think has taken place,
tragedy is a strong word, but we have never fully had a dialog
about what the threat is. So, for instance, I believe strongly,
in the Patriot Act, not some of the other losses of authority
by the general public and civil protections, but the Patriot
Act I believe in strongly, and a lot of people don't in my
district, don't because they don't think there's a threat. They
honestly don't think there is a threat because we have stopped
talking about what the threat is, and why we need it and that
people, when our intelligence community had better intelligence
and blame them, that they in my judgment don't want them to
have a very important tool to get intelligence.
I realize we can all look at this differently but this is
the kind of thing I'm sorting out. I'm thinking I hope that the
Democratic candidate forces a dialog on this whole issue.
You know, what is the threat and how are we responding, and
maybe in the end we are all going to come to an agreement that
we all need to do all the things that we've done, but at least
we'll all be in agreement. I don't know what you ultimately
decide.
Let me ask this: What happens in the end if we can't agree
on a strategy; in other words, one of the arguments is maybe we
can't debate the strategy because maybe we can't agree to it. I
mean, one of the important elements is there has to be a buy
off, I think, with the general public, so maybe you can talk
about that.
What happens if the public doesn't agree on a strategy?
Should I assume that ultimately we can, we should do it, or
should I assume that if we can't, something happens? What
happens?
Dr. Kass. So let me take a stab at it.
Passion is good. Consensus is not necessary. I would submit
to you that we have shied away from even identifying the enemy.
If you read the strategy skillfully, they tell you who the
enemy is not. The strategies will tell you we are not at war
with Islam, and so you mentioned that, but the strategies do
not tell you positively who the enemy is or what the enemy is.
That is where you need to begin to build consensus. That is
too fundamental an issue to skirt or void and jump immediately
to. This is what I'm going to do about this.
This is another example of ready, fire, aim.
Mr. Shays. Anybody else?
Dr. McIntyre. Based on the discussion I had previously with
Colonel Larsen, if we don't get a consensus bureaucracy takes
control of the administrative part of this government.
Mr. Shays. If you don't consensus.
Dr. McIntyre. If you don't get a consensus on the strategy,
the bureaucracy takes control of the future and local interests
take control of Congress and the bureaucracy determines what we
do and the local interests determine what we buy, and we find
ourselves in a significant problem 10, 12, 15 years down the
road, because those are the two things that will seize control.
Mr. Shays. Bureaucracy and what?
Dr. McIntyre. Bureaucracy and local interests. It's more
the case that the people in your district will want certain
types of spending in your district, so that's not exactly
special to say I want you to take care of me in our district.
Mr. Shays. Can I put it in my words: They may not know what
they need because there's nothing, so they just think--in other
words, I want to understand this a little better: Are you
suggesting that without some consensus or without a national
strategy that everybody buys in, we go in a lot of different
ways?
I don't understand.
Dr. McIntyre. You have to have a fire shield, I think, as a
representative, in the same way that the only way we were ever
able to close bases is if we were able to establish a set of
priorities and rank the bases and then say local Congressmen
can't be blamed by the fact that you didn't meet this priority.
You see, we've built a fire shield. I think we have to have
some system of priorities to help build a fire shield for you
and for other Members of Congress; otherwise the pressures will
be to continue spending at local levels regardless of
priorities. So two things will happen. I think bureaucracy will
run things at the top and local requests will overcome and will
be a constant strain on the budget.
Colonel Larsen. I agree completely. The focus will be on
Americans in your district as opposed to defending America.
That's the sound bite for you. I agree completely.
Mr. Cilluffo. Mr. Chairman, I think we do have some of the
overarching strategies in place. It needs to be an execution
and implementation and, as the old military adage goes,
amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk tactics, they talk
implementation and execution.
That said, I think your point, in terms of raising it and
in terms of a debate and dialog, is absolutely crucial. We need
to enlist and marshal and mobilize everyone in our generation's
war against terrorism.
I spent a lot of time speaking, I've got four young
daughters of my own and spend a lot of time speaking in public
schools and other schools, and how do you send that message,
while at the same time having it not become a self-fulfilling
prophecy and creating fear. So I don't think we even had full
consensus on a containment policy, so consensus shouldn't be
the goal.
Mr. Shays. We did during the cold war, correct?
Mr. Cilluffo. Not completely.
Mr. Shays. We may not have gotten a consensus on whether we
need a missile defense system or something, but generally it
was containment, reactive, mutually assured destruction.
Mr. Cilluffo. For the most part, but it took a while to get
to that point, and even at the end-state some would argue we
were too hard in areas and not hard enough in others. It took a
couple of key people who bridged, Scoop Jackson and a couple of
others, parties to help mobilize the thinking along those
lines, but I don't think we need to look for consensus, but I
do think there are different actions that different
constituencies need.
I don't want the general public being all that afraid, so
if they're not worried about something happening tomorrow,
that's one thing. If those that are on the front line, those
that are going to turn victims into patients, our first
preventers and our first-responders, if they're lulled into a
sense of complacency, then I've got problems, and the same can
go in terms of the international issue. So this is a long term
challenge.
I think it would be arrogant to think we know the answers
today.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Ruppersberger, do you have questions?
Mr. Ruppersberger. Yes. First I believe your issue of
implementation is extremely important. As far as your issue of
bureaucracy and the local level, our system of government is a
representative democracy and what really works is a strong
leader.
If the strong leader has the plan and sets the goal and
then works on the consensus and works on getting the votes, the
system usually works.
The best defense against a strong bureaucracy is a strong
leader, and it's about leadership, and if you really look at
the politics in this country now, in my opinion, why
Republicans control the Senate, the House, and the Presidency
is because I feel Americans feel Republicans are better at
national security and probably feel for some reason, and I
don't agree with it, that Republicans are more patriotic. But
if you look at polling, as far as general issues of education
and other issues, people like what the Democrats do, but I
think that issue more than anything else is the leadership. The
issue of national security and the patriotism is a strong
issue. So I'm not as concerned about the bureaucracy, whichever
party is the leader at the top who is setting the agenda. What
I'm concerned about though is the plan and the information that
is getting to the President or to the leader and where he's
going or she's going to make the judgment on where they're
going to go, how they're going to implement the plan.
You talked about it, Mr. Cilluffo, and I think that's where
we need to look, and, if not, that's why I think the argument--
I remember, I wasn't here--but term limits. I think term limits
were extremely dangerous, because if you have term limits the
bureaucracy controls.
Mr. Cilluffo. Yes.
Dr. Kass. Sir, leadership is key and I totally appreciate
you raising that issue.
What helps a leader is having a bold idea that can light
up, galvanize, support, both domestically and internationally,
and that is why I suggested the pretty bold idea of
abolishment. Containment to me is too passive.
Mr. Shays. Before we break, I'd like Mr. Yim--for you to
just make some comments on what we've been talking about.
Also welcome you all responding.
I feel in one way like we're getting totally distracted and
equally so, because maybe it's an indication that we were
talking about things rather than theory, so I can gravitate
more to that than others can.
Also, I think we were talking about some, I think, really
fascinating issues.
Tell me, put some perspective on what you've heard, and
also I wanted you to tell me if it was a strategy that was not
part of the seven that I saw, and also I would like you, this
panel, before we leave, and I don't want to drag this on, but
I'd like to ask about the list of strategies that we were
talking about and whether they are just countless strategies or
should be or shouldn't be.
Yes?
Mr. Yim. I think, as an overall perspective, Mr. Chairman,
I actually am, perhaps because of my success or failure rate,
I'm willing to accept less than 100 percent solution, because I
very rarely in my life have been able to achieve 100 percent
solution, and I think when we talk about this issue of
consensus I don't think it's absolutely necessary in the sense
that I don't believe we would ever have 100 percent consensus.
I don't think we need 100 percent consensus.
When I was working with the military, I could never get the
Navy and the Air Force and the Marines and the Army to agree,
but for OSD there was some commonality in the debate and we
have so far to go in improving the debate that even if we only
got a 70 percent solution, I would be pleased with a 70 percent
solution.
Ms. Kass talks about Clausewitz. There's another
philosopher Goethe. I'll paraphrase it and destroy the quote.
Just start something because when you start something there's a
whole other bunch of events that come to play that you may not
even have imagined once you started embarking on that path and
things may have come to your assistance that you may not have
anticipated.
I think for Homeland Security we are so far at the
beginning that if we can arrive at a 60, 70 percent. solution--
--
Mr. Shays. Define what you mean by solution. We were
talking strategies and standards and you're talking solutions.
I'm confused by that term.
Mr. Yim. I'm talking an all-hazards approach, for example.
If people are talking about we have to focus on bioterrorism as
opposed to a bomb in the port or as opposed to agriterrorism,
we have to buy this type of equipment versus this type of
equipment. If you really look at those scenarios, let's look at
the five high-risk scenarios, a bomb in the port, a
bioterrorism, agriterrorism, a cyberattack, something like
that.
If you really think about it, probably each of those
different scenarios, even if in different jurisdictions of
different agencies, they're probably about 60 to 70 percent of
what you would do. The prevention and recovery is probably the
same.
Why don't we do that stuff; and I don't think we focused
enough on the common stuff that we can do. Other things are
going to happen. There is going to be new technology. Nobody
would have predicted the dramatic fall of the Soviet Union. I
don't think we could have predicted that.
Things just happened, and I think that's really important
for us. That means for me answering your second question what
strategy are we missing?
I mean, I think we are focusing too much on Homeland
Security Strategy. I think the strategy that we're really
missing, Mr. Chairman, if I could be so presumptuous, this is
not a GAO position, I've been increasingly concerned about the
gap between the condition of our infrastructure and the ability
or what we're going to be demanding of our infrastructure in
the future, the capabilities of our infrastructure to meet 21st
century challenges, and by infrastructure I mean not only
bricks and mortar, but people, the skill sets, the education
level of our people.
We are not devoting enough money to recapitalizing our
infrastructure. We can talk something as simple as bridges. We
all know that many bridges are deteriorating. They are not
going to be able to handle the traffic load.
Talk about our hospital systems. They were not being
recapitalized in a way that can handle SARS, a major league
bioterrorism attack, and the gap is going to increasingly
widen.
Mr. Shays. Let me see if I understand. So if we decide--
it's fairly obvious that our electricity grid is just
substandard, shouldn't that be part of a national strategy
related to the war on terrorism or not?
Mr. Yim. Yes, but we are debating energy policy and
security energy recapitalization. Those debates are to focus on
certain things.
Why aren't we building in energy security, homeland
security into fundamental decisions in recapping the power
grid? We are talking. Why aren't we talking about making the
transit systems more secure while we talk about recapping
Amtrak?
Mr. Shays. Let me just go to the panel and go to Mr.
Ruppersberger and then we're going to end here.
Any comments to be made?
Mr. Cilluffo. I fully support Mr. Yim, especially the
maximizing secondary and tertiary benefits to get a return on
investment beyond just guards, guns, gates, and you can splice
that so many ways, and the President in his budget for 2003 and
2004 actually did put a close eye toward achieving that; for
example, enhancements in improving our biological warfare
really is about epidemiological surveillance and disease
surveillance, which was really a public health structure that
was broke and broken, so there was attempts to try to maximize
some of that.
I think we can go further, but I think one of the points
here is that security for the American people is always too
much until the day it's not enough, and that's something we
need to keep in mind. It's not fun. It's not easy.
There are no ways to--defining success is a huge challenge,
but I can tell you one thing I think the President and the
Congress as well--and I honestly do appreciate in terms of the
actions that were taken. We can't go to the American people and
say what I coulda, shoulda, or woulda but didn't because of
this or that. We need to act and act decisively.
Mr. Shays. I would go on forever, but we have a 1 o'clock
closed-door briefing and I think with you, Mr.Yim.
Mr. Yim. With Mr. Decker.
Mr. Shays. With Mr. Decker, I'm sorry. We'll do that at 1.
We need to end up.
Just any closing comments?
Mr. Ruppersberger. Just infrastructure. I agree with you
but infrastructure costs money. Gets back to leadership again.
Leadership has to prioritize and if the economy isn't doing
well, and I'm not, in any way, making this political. I mean,
do you stay with a tax cut, do you stay with funding education,
do you stay with all these different issues? So we know that
infrastructure makes you stronger and it's probably pretty wise
politically in the end, but it's the will to top, and again the
decisionmaker, getting the advice on where to prioritize and
put the money.
I can tell you this: If and when there is another incident
like September 11, all of a sudden you will see
reprioritization of money going back into homeland security,
and in a way that's unfortunate but that's the way it's going
to be, and if you could just comment on that.
We could go on forever. This is an enlightening panel, and,
Mr. Yim, you've done a good job, and why we've gone off the
subject matter is because we want to get to the bottom line.
Dr. Kass. Yes.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Hopefully, we can learn from our
mistakes and move forward.
Mr. Yim. I think one of the keys is long-term strategy.
Even when we budget for recapitalization, we look at the value
within the OMB scoring period, which is typically 2 to 5 years,
and most of the value recapping an infrastructure occurs in the
10th year, something like that.
We have too short-term of a perspective I think in
analyzing the strategies. The terrorists have 100, 500-year
plans. We have 2-year plans.
Mr. Ruppersberger. That's a culture, though.
Look at Scheiner vs. the United States. We want it now and
we get it now. We're effective in doing it.
OK, thank you.
Mr. Shays. Yes, we get it.
Thank you all.
Mr. Tierney, any closing comments?
Thank you all for your participation. It's been very
interesting. I appreciate it and I appreciate the indulgence of
the audience here.
Thank you. This hearing is adjourned.
We will be having a closed-door briefing in room 2003 at 1
o'clock.
Thank you. Just to finish up. It will be a fairly short
meeting, I think.
[Whereupon, at 12:49 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]