[Senate Hearing 108-759]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 108-759
BUILDING AN AGILE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY TO FIGHT TERRORISM AND
EMERGING THREATS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 8, 2004
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs
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WASHINGTON : 2005
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine, Chairman
TED STEVENS, Alaska JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio CARL LEVIN, Michigan
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois MARK DAYTON, Minnesota
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey
RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama MARK PRYOR, Arkansas
Michael D. Bopp, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Michael L. Stern, Deputy Staff Director for Investigations
Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Minority Staff Director and Counsel
Kevin J. Landy, Minority Counsel
Amy B. Newhouse, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Collins.............................................. 1
Senator Lieberman............................................ 3
Senator Coleman.............................................. 18
Senator Lautenberg........................................... 20
Senator Sununu............................................... 23
Senator Durbin............................................... 25
Senator Shelby............................................... 28
Senator Pryor................................................ 30
Senator Specter.............................................. 32
Senator Levin................................................ 34
Senator Voinovich............................................ 37
Senator Dayton............................................... 39
Senator Carper............................................... 41
WITNESSES
Wednesday, September 8, 2004
Hon. Robert S. Mueller, III, Director, Federal Bureau of
Investigation.................................................. 5
Hon. John E. McLaughlin, Acting Director of Central Intelligence,
Central Intelligence Agency.................................... 11
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
McLaughlin, Hon. John E.:
Testimony.................................................... 11
Prepared statement........................................... 70
Mueller, Hon. Robert S., III:
Testimony.................................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 57
APPENDIX
List of items CIA has not provided to Senator Levin requests
(SASC)......................................................... 85
Post Hearing Questions for Director Mueller from: (Responses to
these questions were not received by press time.)
Senator Levin................................................ 86
Senator Akaka................................................ 87
Post Hearing Questions for Director McLaughlin from: (Responses
to these questions were not received by press time.)
Senator Levin................................................ 88
Senator Akaka................................................ 93
BUILDING AN AGILE INTELLIGENCE
COMMUNITY TO FIGHT TERRORISM
AND EMERGING THREATS
----------
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2004
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:39 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Susan M.
Collins, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Collins, Voinovich, Coleman, Specter,
Bennett, Fitzgerald, Sununu, Shelby, Lieberman, Levin, Durbin,
Carper, Dayton, Lautenberg and Pryor.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS
Chairman Collins. The Committee will come to order.
Good morning. First let me apologize for the late start for
our hearing. Senator Lieberman and I were among a group of the
Members of the House and the Senate who met with the President,
Vice President, and Dr. Rice to discuss intelligence reform
this morning, and as our two witnesses know better than most,
you do not tell the President, ``Gee, I have to go. I have
another appointment.'' So Senator Lieberman is on his way back.
He will be here very shortly to join us.
Today the Committee on Governmental Affairs holds its sixth
hearing on the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission regarding
the restructuring of America's Intelligence Community. I thank
my colleagues for their dedication to the vital mission
assigned to our Committee, and I welcome our distinguished
witnesses whose testimony will help to guide us.
In just a few days we will pause to commemorate the third
anniversary of a monstrous unprovoked act of war. September 11,
2001 was a day of unimaginable cruelty and inspiring heroism.
It is a date all Americans, indeed all civilized people, will
remember for all time.
For the purposes of this task before this Committee,
however, it is what happened, or more precisely, what did not
happen, 3 years ago today, that is instructive. In the
chronology of events leading up to the terrorist attacks,
September 8, 2001, 3 years ago to the day, was not a remarkable
day. Rather, it was like far too many other days for far too
many years, a day of missed opportunities.
On the night of September 8 one of the hijackers, Ziad
Jarrah, began driving from Baltimore to Newark. Along the way
he was pulled over for speeding. The Maryland State trooper who
made the stop had no way of knowing that Jarrah had been in
violation of his visa for more than a year, a violation that
should have rendered him inadmissible on each of his six
reentries into the United States, a violation that should have
brought an abrupt end to the flight training he received in
Florida. Nor could that trooper have known that foreign
governments had advised U.S. intelligence of Jarrah's suspected
ties to terrorism, of his possible attendance at al Qaeda
training camps in Afghanistan, and of the likelihood that he
held two passports in order to disguise his travels. Without
access to any of that information, the trooper had no reason to
do anything but write him a ticket and send the motorist on his
way. Three days later Ziad Jarrah took the controls of Flight
93.
Also on September 8, a memo received at FBI Headquarters
outlined the concern of an agent in the Phoenix Field Office
that Osama bin Laden had mounted a concerted effort to enroll
al Qaeda recruits in American flight schools. The memo was not
read that day, just as it had not been read since the agent
sent it nearly 2 months earlier.
On September 8, Zacarias Moussaoui was in his third week of
detention on an immigration violation. His extremist beliefs,
his strong ties to al Qaeda, and his interest in flight
training were known to field agents in several components of
the Intelligence Community. Despite the continued urging of
those field agents, September 8 was just another day in which
this information was not shared. No top intelligence officials
were briefed and no action was taken. The 9/11 Commission
observes that a maximum effort to investigate Moussaoui might
have brought investigators to the core of the September 11
plot.
Also on September 8, the CIA had in its possession what the
Commission describes as the final piece of the puzzle,
information linking Khalid Sheik Mohammed to an alias that he
used in planning acts of terrorism. Had this piece been
connected to other pieces possessed by various intelligence
agencies, a clear picture might have emerged of a top bin Laden
lieutenant who had been recruiting operatives to travel to the
United States to carry out acts of terrorism and who had
definite links to Moussaoui.
But September 8, 2001 was no different from the days
before. The pieces remained unconnected. The puzzle remained
unsolved.
Much has changed since that time. There have been many
improvements. We have created the Department of Homeland
Security. The Joint Terrorism Task Force Program has been
expanded. The Terrorist Threat Integration Center is up and
running. The cooperation and coordination among our
intelligence agencies have never been better and have been
vastly increased. The two agencies represented here today, the
FBI and the CIA, have been leaders in this effort.
We have strengthened our defense against terrorism and we
have gone on offense against the terrorists. But we have not
yet transformed an Intelligence Community designed for the Cold
War into one with the agility to respond to threats that range
from nuclear missiles in North Korea to an al Qaeda operative
on a highway in Maryland.
An important step was taken less than 2 weeks ago when the
President issued a series of Executive Orders to strengthen our
Intelligence Community, but as the President noted at that
time, these orders are not an alternative to congressional
action. They are a starting point. We need to institutionalize
through law many of the reforms that have been implemented by
the leaders before us today. We must continue the dramatic
progress that has been made since September 11. The
intelligence structure we create must be designed for the
demands of the 21st Century, for the current war against
terrorism and for new challenges that we do not yet even
envision.
On September 8, 2001, America was a Nation asleep. Three
days later we were jolted awake. Three years later, as we again
prepare to reflect on the attacks on our country on that day,
we must remain alert and committed to doing everything we can
to provide a more secure future for our country.
Senator Lieberman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LIEBERMAN
Senator Lieberman. Thanks very much, Madam Chairman, for
that excellent statement, and for the leadership of this
Committee that you have shown with such perseverance and
steadfastness. I really feel as we convene this hearing, as the
Congress reconvenes, that thanks to your leadership we have set
a pace and also pursued a course of substantial inquiry that
puts our Committee with this hearing and at least one, maybe
two more that we will hold next week, in a position to meet, in
fact, to beat the deadline that the Senate leadership has set
for us, which is to mark up a bill and report it out to the
Senate in response to the 9/11 Commission Report before October
1. I cannot thank you enough for that, and I would also like to
express my continuing pleasure in working with you on this
critically important task.
I extend a good morning to our witnesses, Director Mueller
and Director McLaughlin. Thank you both for literally decades
of public service, and for standing strong on this particularly
critical post-September 11 era of American history in working
so well together to improve our security. I look forward to
your testimony this morning.
I want to say, just looking back quickly over the several
hearings that we have held since the 9/11 Commission Report,
that my own initial positive reaction to the Commission's
recommendation of a National Intelligence Director has in fact
been strengthened by the testimony we have heard about the way
the Intelligence Community's budget is developed, and
particularly about the respective roles of the Department of
Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence.
It seems clear to me at least that this partnership has not
been as equal as we would want it to be, nor has it really in
fact mirrored what the law seems to ask of and give to the
Director of Central Intelligence. That begins with the fact
that though the law gives the DCI certain authority, 80 percent
of the Intelligence Community's budget is under the Department
of Defense. The DCI is then held responsible for any
intelligence failures that occur, leading to a situation with
accountability but a lack of authority. That never works. I
think one of our main goals here should be to give authority
where it belongs, to a strengthened DCI, which we now call the
NID, the National Intelligence Director.
We have also heard concerns expressed that creating a
strong NID will make it more difficult for our war fighters in
the field to receive the intelligence they depend on to
prevail. But we have heard ample evidence that the NID will,
indeed must, continue to make sure that the National Security
Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National
Geospatial Agency, and all the other national assets serve the
needs of the troops in the field, but to do so while also
ensuring that the other critical national intelligence and
security priorities we have are being met. That is the function
of the new NID.
Personally I conclude that the Director of Central
Intelligence today lacks the budget and personnel authorities
necessary to achieve the kind of unity of effort that we did
not have prior to September 11, as the examples that Senator
Collins has just given make amply clear. For example, while the
present DCI has authority on paper to transfer personnel or
funds between agencies, we have heard testimony that with so
many qualifications and approvals necessary, that process can
and usually does take as long as 5 months. That is no way to
run a national intelligence operation in a time of war.
I believe that our hearings have thus far also answered
several critics of the Commission's recommendations who contend
that the intelligence failures that did occur prior to
September 11 were solely at or between the FBI and the CIA. As
more than one witness has stated, when George Tenet, the
Director of Central Intelligence declared war on al Qaeda, as
far back as 1998, the heads of the other major intelligence
organizations, including some of the national assets that the
DCI does not have effective budget authority over, did not
respond. I think the lack of real authority by the head of the
Intelligence Community is clear and is a major problem that we
must address.
That was not the only example. We have heard other examples
of times in the National Security Agency when there was a tug,
justified understandable, between the Intelligence Community
and DOD for National Security Agency assets, and because of the
strength of DOD too often DOD wins those struggles, when in
fact there are times that the DCI and the National Intelligence
Community, in the national interest, serving the President,
should win them. I think the balance we are talking about will
change that.
Madam Chairman, as you said and we are all aware, there
have been some very important improvements and advances in
cooperation among the different agencies, particularly the two
represented before us today, the FBI and the CIA. I know that
some have been led by that to argue that the Commission's
recommendations are based solely on the pre-September 11
situation, and do not take into account progress since then.
Chairman Kean and Vice Chairman Hamilton have testified to us
otherwise. The men and women who work in our Intelligence
Community, in the CIA, in the FBI, and the many agencies that
we have considered, are working to overcome the institutional
barriers that have been revealed that made us vulnerable on
September 11 and to keep the American people safe. But it is
clear from the many hearings we have had in this Committee and
other committees that we have made progress but we still have a
long way to go, and the best way to get there is through the
kind of statutory change that this Committee is in a position
to recommend to the full Senate.
I just add very briefly that Senator Collins and I, and
Senator Levin and others, both parties in both houses, had the
privilege of being at the White House today for a meeting with
the President. I think the President made a very significant
announcement, which is that the administration will support
strong budgetary authority for the National Intelligence
Director, certainly over what is called the National Foreign
Intelligence Program, which constitutes well over half, in fact
well beyond that, of the intelligence budget of our government.
That is a very significant step, including an endorsement of
the concept in the 9/11 Commission Report of the centers that
are proposed to make sure all parts of our Intelligence
Community are working together.
This position taken by the President this morning gives me
certainly high hopes that we will do what I know Chairman
Collins and all of us want to do which is to adopt strong
bipartisan reform and reorganization of our Intelligence
Community, which builds on the strengths that we have now as
represented by the two strong leaders who are before us, but
improves to the point that history has shown us we must
improve, and we can do so soon. I think we all know that in
this case, I believe, the phrase ``proceed with caution'' could
just as easily mean ``move slowly at your own peril,'' and I do
not believe this Congress is going to allow that to happen.
Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator Lieberman.
I would now like to introduce our two distinguished
witnesses. Each of them has devoted a considerable part of
their lifetime's work to public service and we are very
grateful for their service to our country.
Robert Mueller became Director of the FBI on September 4,
2001, just 1 week before the terrorist attacks. He immediately
became responsible for spearheading what is perhaps the most
extensive reorganization of the FBI since its inception in
order to strengthen the Bureau's antiterrorism efforts.
John McLaughlin became Acting Director of Central
Intelligence on July 12 of this year. He had been Deputy
Director of Central Intelligence since October 2000, but I
would note that he is a long-time intelligence professional. I
believe his career with the CIA actually started in the 1970's,
if I remember correctly.
I want to thank you both for sharing your experience and
expertise and judgment with us today, and Director Mueller, we
will start with you.
TESTIMONY OF HON. ROBERT S. MUELLER, III,\1\ DIRECTOR, FEDERAL
BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
Mr. Mueller. Thank you and good morning, Madam Chairman,
Senator Lieberman and other Members of the Committee.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Mueller appears in the Appendix
on page 57.
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I appreciate the opportunity to be here today to provide
the FBI's views on intelligence reform. I would like to start
by expressing my gratitude for the efforts of so many inside
and outside of government, and particularly the 9/11 Commission
and this Committee, who have worked to ensure that our national
intelligence capability is postured for success against the
adversaries of the 21st Century, and the overarching objective
must drive all efforts for reform.
To understand our views on Intelligence Community reform it
is perhaps important to first understand how we, in the FBI,
believe intelligence should be managed and how it should be
produced. We believe that the management of intelligence should
be centralized, the management centralized, but that its
production should be distributed. For the FBI that means that
the Office of Intelligence provides guidance to ensure that we
focus intelligence collection and production on intelligence
priorities and on filling gaps between what we know and what we
do not know. This centralized management overlays our
headquarters divisions and our field offices, which themselves
remain responsible for intelligence collection, operations,
analysis and reporting. The result of this approach is that
intelligence and operations are integrated, that the users of
intelligence, not the producers, are the judges of the
intelligence value. These principles have guided the
development of our intelligence program at the FBI since
September 11.
The FBI's Office of Intelligence manages intelligence
production based on requirements, apportions resources based on
threats, and sets standards of intelligence cadre training,
source development and validation and collection tasking. The
actual production of intelligence occurs within our 56 field
offices, 400 resident agencies, our four operational
headquarters divisions and perhaps most importantly, by our
800,000 partners in State, local and tribal law enforcement.
The Office of Intelligence continually monitors performance
through embedded intelligence elements in the field and in
headquarters and adjusts tasking and resources based on
nationally directed intelligence requirements. The authorities
and responsibilities of our Office of Intelligence allow it to
carry out two broad areas of responsibility: Management of the
FBI Intelligence Community Component; and direction to it to
ensure that its activities are in keeping with the priorities
established by the President and the needs of the users of
intelligence.
Turning to the proposals for intelligence reform, there is
widespread agreement now existing as to the necessity of
creating a National Intelligence Director as the manager of
intelligence production across the 15 Intelligence Community
components. We also think that the National Intelligence
Director should not be directly responsible for the conduct of
operations. The role of the NID should instead be to ensure
that appropriate activities and operations are conducted by the
constituent elements of the Intelligence Community.
Given the model above, we believe that the NID should have
a mechanism by which the principals of the National Security
Council and the Homeland Security Council, and the Directors of
the CIA, the FBI, and other relevant departments and agencies,
are charged with ensuring the responsiveness to the direction
of the NID in managing implementation of that direction. These
individuals represent in large measure the users of
intelligence, and will bring to the National Intelligence
Director the views of the users as they set priorities and
evaluate Intelligence Community performance. In reality, the
principals would delegate that responsibility to a subordinate,
and in our case in the FBI it would be to Maureen Baginski, the
Executive Assistant Director for Intelligence.
Madam Chairman, the model I have outlined incorporates
three core principles for intelligence reform that we think
this Committee should consider as it seeks to enact
legislation. These three principles are: First, providing
analysts transparency into sourcing; second, understanding the
value of operational chain of command; and third, protecting
civil liberties.
Turning to the first principle, we believe it is important
that analysts be provided transparency into intelligence
sources. Just as agents need to question the background,
motivation and access of their sources, analysts must also
examine the credibility of sources who provide intelligence
information. FBI analysts do not blindly receive source
information and then develop intelligence reports and threat
assessments based on that information. Instead, our analysts
have transparency to our sources, and the result is a high
quality intelligence product.
Historically, individual FBI agents would collect
information, analyze that information in the context of their
particular case, and then use that analysis to guide their
investigation. But the FBI, as an institution, had not elevated
that analytical process above the individual case or
investigation to an overall effort to analyze intelligence and
strategically direct intelligence collection against threats in
all of our programs. Today we are doing so, and I believe are
doing so successfully. Not only does the FBI remain among the
best collectors of information in the world, we now have
enhanced our capability to exploit that information for its
intelligence value. Ensuring that our analysts, not just our
agents, have access to information about our sources plays an
important role in the development of thorough and reliable
intelligence products.
In the ongoing debate regarding intelligence reform, some
have suggested that a new entity composed of analysts be
created, as well as a separate entity for the intelligence
collectors. We believe that creating such stovepipes would be a
step backward in the progress we have made since September 11.
Our success has been enhanced by co-locating our analysts with
those who must act on the intelligence. The physical and
logistical proximity of the analysts to the collectors results
in increased transparency for the analysts, which in turn, in
my mind, results in better analysis.
The second core principle to consider in reforming the
Intelligence Community is the value of the operational chain of
command. The 9/11 Commission Report recommended the
establishment of a National Counterterrorism Center as the
logical next step to further enhance the cooperation between
intelligence, national security and law enforcement agencies.
That was first initiated by the Terrorist Threat Integration
Center subsequent to its establishment in the wake of September
11. As you know and have referred to, Madam Chairman, the
President recently issued an Executive Order establishing the
National Counterterrorism Center. Among the provisions of the
Executive Order is the directive that the NCTC assign strategic
operational responsibilities to lead agencies for
counterterrorism activities that are consistent with the law.
The Executive Order also explicitly states that: ``The Center
shall not direct to execution of operations.'' This directive,
which comports with the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission,
recognizes the importance of leaving operational control in the
hands of the agencies.
At least one of the pending legislative proposals for
intelligence reform would transfer the Counterterrorism and
Counterintelligence Divisions out of the FBI and into a new
entity. We believe that such a proposal fails to recognize that
most of the FBI's investigative work is accomplished not at
headquarters but by its 56 field offices and 400 satellite
offices located throughout the country. An interdependent
relationship exists between FBI headquarters divisions and our
geographically field offices, both in terms of operational
coordination of investigations and a routine exchange of
personnel. This interdependent relationship and chain of
command between field offices and headquarters divisions cannot
be disrupted and still continue to be effective.
The FBI's components, particularly the Counterterrorism and
Counterintelligence Divisions are not distinct and severable
entities. Rather, they are fluid combinations of a variety of
personnel. They include long-term professional employees such
as analysts, who have spent decades developing a subject area
expertise, mid-career field agents serving 2- or 3-year tours
of duty to expand or hone their counterterrorism or
counterintelligence experience before returning to management
positions in field offices, and senior FBI executives who have
proven themselves in leadership roles in the field or in other
headquarters components.
If the operational divisions are removed from FBI
Headquarters as some have proposed, a large portion of the
FBI's counterterrorism and counterintelligence program will
still effectively remain within the FBI in the form of the
counterterrorism, counterintelligence squads, and task forces
in field offices, as well as designated counterterrorism and
counterintelligence agents in our various satellite offices.
Separating our counterterrorism and counterintelligence leaders
from the information collectors and investigators would result,
in my mind, in less effective coordination and a less safe
America.
In addition, it is important to understand that the FBI's
intelligence capabilities are enterprise-wide. Intelligence is
integrated into all of the Bureau's investigations, not just
counterterrorism and counterintelligence. Some of the reform
proposals would carve out sectors of the FBI, but fail to take
into account that our counterterrorism and counterintelligence
efforts benefit enormously from the intelligence garnered
through our criminal investigations, our cyber crime
investigations, the work of the FBI laboratory and many of our
other programs. Altering the operational chain of command for
any FBI program would impair the integration of intelligence
that is proven effective in our national security efforts since
September 11.
The third, and for us perhaps the most important core
principle, is a need to protect civil liberties. As former DCI
George Tenet stated in a hearing earlier this year, the way the
CIA conducts operations overseas is very different than the way
the FBI conducts operations at home. Concentrating domestic and
international counterterrorism operations in one organization
represents a serious risk to American civil liberties. It is
difficult to expect an agent trained in conducting operations
overseas to fully appreciate the necessary legal constraints
placed on operations conducted within the United States when we
are conducting operations that would and could and often does
adversely affect the privacy rights of our citizens.
Let me turn for a moment to the words of the 9/11
Commission's Report, which stated, ``The FBI does need to be
able to direct its thousands of agents and other employees to
collect intelligence in America's cities and towns--
interviewing informants, conducting surveillance and searches,
tracking individuals, working collaboratively with local
authorities, and doing so with meticulous attention to detail
and compliance with the law. The FBI's job in the streets of
the United States would thus be a domestic equivalent,
operating under the U.S. Constitution and quite different laws
and rules, to the job of the CIA's operations officers
abroad.''
The legal limitation, the oversight mechanisms and self-
regulatory practices of the Bureau effectively ensure that our
operations are carried out within the Constitution and
statutory parameters. Indeed, a number of outside entities,
including the Government Accounting Office and the Office of
Inspector General, have looked at our operations since
September 11 and found that we have conducted them with full
regard to civil liberties. I might also add that just last
month the President issued an Executive Order creating a board
on safeguarding American civil liberties. That effort will be
launched this month, and the FBI will be a participant in that
board.
Recognizing the significant progress the Bureau has made in
the past 3 years, the 9/11 Commission recommended that the
counterterrorism intelligence collection in the United States
remain with the Bureau. We are pleased with the progress that
we have made since September 11, and I have spent some time
testifying on that in the past. Today I would like to spend
just a moment in giving you a brief update on some of our most
recent efforts. I will not cover all of those that are included
in my statement, I will just touch on a few of them.
We are moving within the Bureau to the creation of a FBI
Directorate of Intelligence, a service within a service, as
recommended by the Commission and recommended by some Members
of Congress.
We have established field intelligence groups in each FBI
field office to integrate analysts, agents, linguists and
surveillance personnel in the field to bring a dedicated team
focus to intelligence operations.
We have set unified standards, policies and training for
intelligence analysts, and as part of a new recruiting program,
veteran analysts are attending events at colleges and
universities throughout the country, and we are offering hiring
bonuses to analysts for the first time in FBI history.
We are establishing an intelligence officer certification
program for agents, analysts, surveillance specialists, and
language analysts. Once established, intelligence officer
certification will be a prerequisite for advancement, thus
ensuring that all FBI senior managers will ultimately be fully
trained and experienced intelligence officers.
We are establishing a career path in which new special
agents are initially assigned to a small office and exposed to
a wide range of field experiences, and after approximately 3
years agents will then be transferred to a large field office
where they will specialize in one of four program areas:
Intelligence, counterterrorism/counterintelligence, cyber, or
criminal, and will receive advanced training tailored to their
area of specialization. In our special agent hiring, we have
changed the list of critical skills we are seeking in
candidates to include intelligence experience and expertise,
foreign languages, and technology.
We have placed reports officers in our Joint Terrorism Task
Forces to ensure that vital information is flowing to those who
need it, and since September 11, where we had 34 Joint
Terrorism Task Forces, we have now expanded that number to 100.
We have issued the first ever FBI requirements and
collection tasking documents to our field offices. These
documents are fully aligned with the DCI's National
Intelligence Priorities Framework, and we have published
unclassified versions for our partners in State, local, and
tribal law enforcement. This year we are on course to triple
the volume of intelligence reporting that we disseminate to the
Intelligence Community as well as to State, local, and tribal
law enforcement.
In conclusion, Madam Chairman, the FBI's combined mission
as an intelligence, counterterrorism, and law enforcement
agency gives us the singular ability to exploit the connections
between terrorism and criminal activity. Now that the Patriot
Act has removed the wall between intelligence and law
enforcement investigations, the FBI has a unique capacity to
handle both the criminal aspects and intelligence gathering
opportunities presented by any terrorism case, giving us the
full range of investigative tools. We are concerned that some
pending proposals would erect new walls between our law
enforcement and our intelligence missions. We also would hope
that Congress would renew the Patriot Act because no matter how
the organizational charts are drawn, we will continue to need
these vital tools in both the law enforcement as well as the
intelligence arena to prevent acts of terrorism against the
American people.
Over the past 3 years the Bureau has made great strides,
yet I am the first to say there is a great deal of work that
remains to be done. We have a plan in place to get to where we
need to be, and we have the hard-working, dedicated men and
women of the FBI to take us there.
Madam Chairman, I thank you and the Members of the
Committee for your support and your advice. I look forward to
working with you to develop legislation to strengthen our
intelligence apparatus and better ensure the protection of the
American people. As always, I welcome any suggestions you have
for improving our counterterrorism efforts in strengthening our
national security.
Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you
today, and I am certainly happy to answer any questions you
might have.
Chairman Collins. Thank you for your testimony. Director
McLaughlin.
TESTIMONY OF HON. JOHN E McLAUGHLIN,\1\ ACTING DIRECTOR OF
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Mr. McLaughlin. Madam Chairman, Senator Lieberman, Members
of the Committee, thanks for the opportunity to be here today
and to talk to you about all of these matters and to answer
your questions. It is very important to us, and I appreciate
that opportunity.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. McLaughlin appears in the
Appendix on page 70.
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As you consider reorganization proposals by the President,
the Kean Commission and the Congress, I would like to take a
few minutes to talk about the capabilities of the Intelligence
Community as it is today, not as it was in 2001. And I do this
not to suggest that there is no further need for change, but to
emphasize that the foundation you have to build on is stronger
than many people realize as they look at the Intelligence
Community today.
That said, we can still do better, and I am going to close
with some suggestions on how that can be accomplished.
Three years of war have profoundly affected the
Intelligence Community. Since September 11, our capacity and
effectiveness have grown as our resources have increased and as
we have addressed issues highlighted by our internal reviews,
by the Commission, and by others. We have adjusted to new
challenges, we have built on successes, and we have learned
from errors. This has been the most dramatic period of change
for intelligence in my memory, and you alluded to some of the
changes, Madam Chairman. Some further examples:
Our priorities, the Nation's, and the Intelligence
Community's, have changed dramatically since September 11. As
you said, Madam Chairman, we are on the offensive worldwide
against terrorists, and many of the most dangerous are captured
or dead.
Our practices have changed. Intelligence, law enforcement
and military officers serve together and share information in
real time on the front lines in the war on terrorism at home
and abroad. Here in Washington, I chair an operational meeting
every day with Intelligence Community representatives, military
and law enforcement elements there. At that meeting we review
and act on information that arrives in real time. We follow up
earlier streams of reporting. We ensure that someone has the
responsibility to follow up and get the job done, and we have
gotten important results.
Our worldwide coalition had changed. It is broader, deeper
and more committed. Where terrorists found sanctuary before,
they now find our allies working against them, and we are
seeing the results around the world.
Our laws have changed. Director Mueller referred to the
Patriot Act. It has given us weapons in the war that we did not
have before. It has given us access, critical access, that we
did not have before in the foreign Intelligence Community.
Our institutions have changed. The Terrorist Threat
Integration Center enables us to fuse intelligence collected
abroad with law enforcement information collected here at home.
Twenty-six different data networks now flow there, and they are
shared there by officers from the widest array of foreign and
domestic agencies ever assembled in one place. People who think
we cannot break down the so-called stovepipes ought to visit
TTIC, and I know a number of you have.
Now, here are a few real-world effects for those changes:
Many of al Qaeda's pre-September 11 leadership are dead or
detained. In almost every case, the take down was a result of
aggressive clandestine human and technical operations involving
effective cooperation among various intelligence disciplines
and with law enforcement.
It was imaginative operations and analysis, CIA officers
working with the U.S. military, that helped drive armed forces
operations and ousted the Taliban from power in Afghanistan,
destroying the al Qaeda sanctuary in the process.
CIA, FBI, and Treasury officers, working together as
partners at home and abroad, are starving al Qaeda of its
financial lifeblood.
CIA worked with the FBI as it took down extremists in
Lackawanna, Columbus, and New York City.
One area of crucial change for the Intelligence Community
is its dramatically increased support to the war fighter,
especially in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the terrorist
challenge remains substantial. I believe such support can and
will be preserved in any option that we consider. Everyone in
the Intelligence Community understands that NSA and NGA in
particular, both integral parts of the National Intelligence
Community, have a vital role to play in supporting combat, as
does the CIA, and that role would have to be preserved
regardless of who they report to or how this community is
ultimately structured.
In short, the situation has changed pretty dramatically
since September 11, where the 9/11 Commission left off. Two
things however are still true: Al Qaeda and other terrorists
remain very dangerous; and there is still room for improvement
in the Intelligence Community. But the caricature that many
seek to perpetuate of a community that does not share
information or work together, a community of turf-conscious
people competing for influence, that frankly, is not the
community that I see and lead today.
Looking ahead now, it is important to note that the threat
from terrorist organizations is not stagnant. These
organizations learn and adapt. It is not enough for us to keep
up. We must anticipate and stay ahead. As we seek to build on
the improvements we have made in recent years, we should keep
in mind a few of what I would call first principles, just as
Director Mueller referred to a few core principles.
First, speed and agility are the keys to winning in the war
on terrorism, and profoundly important to the Nation's other
intelligence challenges. Speed and agility are not promoted by
complicated wiring diagrams, more levels of bureaucracy, dual-
hatting, or uncertainty about who is in charge, but speed and
agility are promoted by having the right tools to do the job,
such as the essential tools provided by the USA Patriot Act.
Second, form should follow function. The functions
intelligence must perform today are dramatically different than
during the Cold War. Back then we focused heavily on large
strategic forces and where countries stood in the bipolar
competition of that day. Contrary to what is often said, we
long ago moved on to the new challenges of today, locating
people, tracking shipments of dangerous materials, and
understanding politics down to the tribal level in a world
where the only constant is change.
Third, most important to knowing how and what to change is
a consensus on what we actually want from our intelligence
agencies, along with constancy in resources and moral support
for them through good times and bad.
Fourth, some competition is good. Because intelligence
reporting can often be interpreted in many different ways, we
want all interpretations on the table and an Intelligence
Community that facilitates rigorous debate.
Fifth, our foreign partnerships are absolutely critical and
serve as a force multiplier in the global war on terror.
Changes in our structure must ensure that there is no harm done
in how we build, manage, and strengthen these invaluable
relationships.
As you know, on August 27, the President signed four
Executive Orders and two Presidential Directives intended to
address several recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. The
President's actions strengthens the foundation upon which you
can build. In those Executive Orders there are some significant
changes.
First, the DCI will have access to all relevant
intelligence relating to transnational terrorism and weapons of
mass destruction, including information from the FBI and the
Department of Homeland Security.
Second, the President made clear that the DCI must be able
to determine--and that is the key word in that Executive Order,
determine--the annual and consolidated national foreign
intelligence program budget, with the advice of heads of
departments or agencies that have an organization within the
Intelligence Community. This clarifies significantly the DCI's
authority over the national foreign intelligence program.
Third, in establishing the National Counterterrorism
Center, the President underscored the government's commitment
to create a central and shared knowledge bank on known and
suspected terrorists. For the first time, strategic planning
for counterterrorism activities, integrating all elements of
national power and integrated all-source analysis will occur in
one place, overseen and orchestrated by a director reporting to
the DCI, and should you create a National Intelligence
Director, ultimately to that person.
Regarding the leadership of the Intelligence Community, I
have argued and continue to believe that a significantly
empowered DCI could fulfill the spirit of the 9/11 Commission
recommendations. Nonetheless, now that the President has
committed to create a National Intelligence Director, my sole
interest is ensuring that this person, this individual can
succeed, and I think this will require new authorities and
structures. Ideally, a single person responsible for all
national intelligence activities should, for example:
Maintain independence and objectivity as the President's
principal intelligence advisor; have full authority to
determine, reprogram and execute all funding for the core
national intelligence agencies, principally, CIA, NSA, NGA and
NRO; have clear authority to provide strategic direction to
these agencies and drive their collection and analytic
priorities; have the authorities necessary to reorient
intelligence capabilities to meet emerging threats and
priorities; have direct access to substantive experts to help
fulfill his or her responsibilities as the Nation's principal
intelligence officer; have the authority to bridge any
remaining divides between foreign and domestic intelligence
activities in the area of policy and particularly information
technology; have the authority to determine education and
professional development standards and personnel management
policies and incentives; and finally, to ensure the continued
synergy that results from the close interaction of operators
and analysts at a number of places now in our Intelligence
Community.
All of this, of course, would involve major changes for our
intelligence system. It would require additional legislative
changes such as a separate appropriation for the national
foreign intelligence program, and some organizational
realignment that you are considering. Given the heavy reliance
on intelligence by the Defense Department, I believe it would
be important to codify the National Intelligence Director's
responsibility for meeting military intelligence requirements.
At the same time, these national intelligence agencies must
support the missions of all the other foreign and domestic
organizations, such as the State Department, the FBI, Treasury,
and Homeland Security. All of them have vital roles to play in
protecting our people here at home. I believe though that a
fully empowered National Intelligence Director would be able to
strike this important balance.
Let me close by saying that no matter how successfully we
anticipate future challenges, we will not foresee them all. So
we will need the ability to adapt our organizations to change
easily and quickly. We will need flexibility in shifting
resources, people, and money, to respond to shifting
priorities. The new Executive Orders and Directives are a
significant and important step in the right direction, but
cannot effect all of the changes necessary to adapt our
Intelligence Community to the challenges of the 21st Century.
Thank you, Madam Chairman, and I am prepared to take your
questions.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
I would tell my colleagues that I hope to do two rounds of
questioning today, so if everyone could adhere to the 6 minutes
in the first round, we will do a second round.
Director Mueller, I very much appreciate your listing as a
core principle of the FBI for intelligence reform the need to
protect civil liberties. Oftentimes in the debate on the
reforms I think that issue, which is so critical, has been
slighted, and I appreciate your listing it front and center as
one of your most important principles. Some, such as former CIA
Director Bob Gates, have expressed concerns that the
establishment of a National Intelligence Director and a
National Counterterrorism Center, with authorities that would
bridge the foreign and domestic divide, would erode the
separation between domestic law enforcement and foreign
espionage. As we know, when the CIA was first created back in
1947, President Truman, among others, took great pains to make
sure that the lines were clearly drawn.
Do you have any suggestions for safeguards that this
Committee could incorporate into our legislation to ensure that
the protection of our safety in the war against terrorism does
not result in an erosion of civil liberties?
Mr. Mueller. I think, as the drafters go about looking at
the language, that the drafter should be very careful to
distinguish between strategic planning and specific tasking. In
other words, I believe that a National Intelligence Director,
or under the National Intelligence Director, the head of the
National Counterterrorism Center, should play a role in
coordination of our efforts across the agency lines, whether it
be the FBI, the CIA, or the Department of Homeland Security,
coordination, planning, establishing collection requirements,
but how you go about responding to that dictate should be the
responsibility of the individual agencies.
If you are clear in drafting the language, then it is clear
that the FBI, reporting through the Attorney General, collects
the intelligence according to the guidelines established by the
Attorney General and according to the statutes that guide our
collection of intelligence, and you maintain that division.
One of the things I believe in is the importance of
continuously attempting to integrate the analytical side of it
as opposed to the collection side, but also when you have
something I will call a transnational intelligence
investigation, where you have information or intelligence
gathered overseas about a threat in the United States, and we
have to investigate some persons in the United States, and the
CIA has to investigate persons outside the United States, there
has to be an exchange of information, there has to be a
coordination of those investigations. But how those
investigations are carried out should be left to the discretion
of either the Director of Central Intelligence or the Director
of the FBI.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. We look forwarding to working
closely with you on that very important issue.
Director McLaughlin, in your testimony you alerted us to
concerns about parts of the Commission's plan about which you
have reservations. You talked about dual-hatting, for example,
and I agree with you that that raises uncertainty in the chain
of command. You say, and you have said this time and again,
that speed and agility are the keys to winning the war on
terrorism. What authorities do you think that the National
Intelligence Director should have in order to improve the speed
and agility of the Intelligence Community? I know you would
prefer to have more authority vested in the DCI, but since we
are headed towards a NID, how can we achieve your goal of
improving the speed and agility of the Intelligence Community?
Mr. McLaughlin. I think a National Intelligence Director
would need the authority to move money and people quickly. We
have talked in other committees, and I have spoken with you
personally about some of the hurdles you go through as you try
and do those things today. So those are the principal things.
In today's world, unlike the world of the Cold War, issues
come and go with blinding speed, and sometimes your chance to
exploit the opportunity to attack that issue, to pool resources
on it, to get your best heads together, both collectors and
analysts and operators is quite fleeting, and so a National
Intelligence Director needs to be able to say to his or her
operating agencies, ``I need five from you and five from you
and five from you, and I need them in 2 or 3 days, and they
need to be up and running in this room with these computers and
these systems, with these databases flowing to them in order to
move with maximum agility and speed.'' Those are the kind of
things you need.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Your example that you have
previously given to me in a private meeting of it taking 5
months for you to reprogram money, I think lends credence to
what you are saying, and we want to make sure that there is
sufficient authority for the new NID, so that he or she can be
truly effective.
Senator Lieberman.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thanks again,
gentlemen.
One of the more interesting and in some ways important
recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that has not received a
lot of public discussion but is something that this Committee
will have to reach a judgment on is their recommendation ``to
combat the secrecy and complexity we have described, the
overall amounts of money being appropriated for national
intelligence and to its component agencies should no longer be
kept secret. Congress should pass a separate appropriations act
for intelligence, defending the broad allocation of how these
tens of billions of dollars have been assigned among the
varieties of intelligence work.''
So I take it to be their recommendation based on, in part,
what they describe as our failure, Congress' failure, to
exercise appropriate oversight of intelligence. I would bet,
though I certainly have not done a survey, that the great
majority of Members of Congress, in both Houses, could not tell
you what the bottom-line spending today on intelligence is, let
alone what appropriations are going to individual agencies. And
it is hard to do real oversight or talk about budgets and
accountability and authority if you do not have those baseline
numbers.
Now, let me say a final word there. I think the Commission
argues that change will allow Congress and the American people
to make judgments on if we are giving too much to one agency
and not enough to another. Perhaps it will help inform this
question that has gone on about whether we have spent too much
on technological assets, SIGINT, and not enough on human
intelligence. But it will also allow another kind of
comparison, which is to compare what we are spending on
intelligence with what we are spending on health care or
agriculture or environmental protection, that kind of balance.
So I think as a general principle, it is a very interesting
and important idea to consider. Obviously, none of us want to
do that in a way that will compromise our national security,
and just before I invite your response, the Commission deals
with this concern about American enemies learning about our
intelligence capabilities by tracking top-line appropriations
figures. But they say, they answer, that the top-line figure by
itself provides little insight into U.S. intelligence sources
and methods. In fact, the government already readily provides
copious information about spending on its military forces,
including military intelligence. The Intelligence Community
should not be subject to that much disclosure. But when even
aggregate categorical numbers remain hidden, it is hard to
judge priorities and foster accountability.
So, Director McLaughlin, and then Director Mueller, I would
welcome your counsel to us on this important question.
Mr. McLaughlin. Well, this is a difficult question and I
think there are very divided views on this. I will give you my
personal view. I think we do not keep secrets well enough as a
government, so I start with that proposition given that we are
up against an enemy that keeps secrets very well and
compartments those secrets down to a handful of people in a
remote area somewhere in a cave.
That said, I come out a little differently on this
question. If there is a separate appropriation for the foreign
intelligence program, the national foreign intelligence
program, as distinct from the current arrangement where that
appropriation is buried in the larger Defense Department bill,
I think it would make some sense to declassify the overall
number for the foreign intelligence program. I would not go so
far as to declassify the numbers for the individual agencies. I
think that gives too much opportunity for adversaries to
understand how we are moving our money from year to year, from
technical programs to human source collection and to other
objectives.
But establishing an overall number and acknowledging it
publicly for the national foreign intelligence program does a
couple of things. I think first it reinforces responsibility
and accountability on those receiving the money because you can
see whether it is going up or down and so forth. It also does
the same thing for Congress because it is then apparent whether
Congress--I have a phrase in my testimony that talks about
constancy of resources. One of our problems over the years is
that resources have gone up and down. We have lived on
supplementals. Programs that require year-to-year constancy
have not had that. And so I think this would be one way to
maybe address some of those issues, and I do not think that
declassifying the top line would be a major security threat. My
personal view.
Senator Lieberman. I appreciate that answer.
Director Mueller, I invite your response, and I suppose
specifically on the matter, if I get it correctly, the
counterintelligence budget of the FBI is part of the national
foreign intelligence program budget. Certainly I would hope
that it would be part of what is given now to overall authority
to the new NID. Would you have concerns specifically if that
number became public?
Mr. Mueller. Let me see if I can address the two issues.
Senator Lieberman. Please.
Mr. Mueller. One is I think you raise a consolidation of a
budget that is understandable to persons--in other words, one
budget. I myself find the Federal budgeting practice an arcane
science. I do not purport to have grasped it.
Senator Lieberman. It may be one intentionally so.
Mr. Mueller. But putting in one place all elements of the
Federal intelligence budget makes some sense to me, whether it
be in having the NID as that person who is responsible for that
and then having a committee in Congress that is fully--has
transparency into that makes a great deal of sense.
In terms of the portions which you then publicize, I think
it depends on what you ultimately end up with, and having a
bottom-line figure is a lot different than having certain
categories I think everybody in this room would agree should
not be made public.
Senator Lieberman. How would you feel about the
Intelligence Directorate that you are forming now having its
bottom line made public?
Mr. Mueller. I would have problems in having that budget
publicized. It would immediately be perused by our enemies,
whether it be terrorists or other countries in terms of how
many agents we have in our counterintelligence program, where
they might be, what their support is. I would have real
problems on that. I do not think we should be giving out that
kind of information to our enemies. They will sit there. They
peruse the budget figures. They can discern from the budget
figures what the implications are, and I think that is
something we have to be very concerned about.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you both. Thanks, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Coleman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLEMAN
Senator Coleman. Thank you, Madam Chair.
First, gentlemen, thank you for your service. It is greatly
appreciated. I would like to explore, if I can briefly, the
relationship between the changes at the top--we are talking
about major changes here at the national level, but the
interrelationship with those at the local level, because those
are the guys that are going to be making the stops. Madam
Chairman, in her opening statement, talked about an
opportunity, a local stop being made for a speeding violation,
and had there been the right connection, something might have
happened.
Can we talk a little bit about that, about what is
happening down at the local level? For instance, Minneapolis
and St. Paul both have, as I understand it, local ordinances
that prohibit, tell their local law enforcement not to ask
about immigration status. Can you talk to me a little bit about
the impact of specifically that kind of ordinance, what impact
it would have, and any other things like that that are out
there that would hinder our ability at the local level to
interact with the things that are going on in our national
counterterrorism effort? Director Mueller.
Mr. Mueller. Well, there may be local ordinances out there
in various cities indicating that you cannot on a stop ask
about immigration status. Nonetheless, we have made substantial
strides since September 11 in putting in our databases and in
NCIC information on those who have outlasted their visas, those
who are in dereliction of their responsibilities with the
Immigration Service so that there now is a mechanism that a
person who is out of status and deemed to have been out of
status will be picked up, and that status of the person will
become known to the officer.
So while, yes, in those cities where there are such
ordinances it can hamper the ability of State and local law
enforcement to identify those who come from outside this
country and are illegally inside this country, we have other
mechanisms in place to identify those persons once they have
been deemed illegally here.
We have made since September 11, I think, substantial
strides in working with State and local law enforcement to
gather intelligence such as this. We have one consolidated
watchlist. It is in NCIC. Contributors are the State
Department, Customs, and the CIA. If it is international
terrorism, it goes through TTIC for placing on the watchlist.
If it is domestic terrorism, it goes there also. And,
consequently, if there is a name on that consolidated watchlist
which is in NCIC and a person stops somebody there throughout
the United States, there now is the ability to understand and
recognize that that person's name is on that watchlist for some
purpose.
The Joint Terrorism Task Forces now, going from 34 to 100,
give us an intersection with State and local law enforcement
that we did not have before. And while there may still be gaps,
as you have pointed out, in our ability to gather information
in certain communities, we have made substantial strides in
eliminating many of the other gaps that were there prior to
September 11.
Senator Coleman. Director McLaughlin, I am not sure whether
you want to get into this, but I do know that the CIA before
was out of the domestic, and now you are there. Is there
anything from your vantage point that you see that would hinder
your ability to effectively interact with folks at the local
level?
Mr. McLaughlin. Not really. The way it works now is that
when something happens at a local level that has a foreign
intelligence dimension, it migrates to us either through our
interaction with the FBI or through TTIC. Of course, if it is a
purely domestic issue, we do not get involved, nor should we.
Senator Coleman. Madam Chairman, are we going to have a
second round?
Chairman Collins. Yes, we are.
Senator Coleman. Let me ask you then, Director Mueller, one
other question on this round. In your testimony, you raised a
concern that as we make these structural changes that we don't
ignore the relationship between the basic FBI functions--
laboratory, cyber crime, and our counterterrorism efforts--can
you give me a little bit of sense, a little more detail of
where you see potential problems in restructuring as to how
they may negatively impact those relationships?
Mr. Mueller. If you identify that portion of the FBI that
is counterterrorism or counterintelligence and you try to pull
that out, what I think one misses is that--and your main focus
is terrorism. Let's just take terrorism for an example. You
take out the Counterterrorism Division. Terrorists now
increasingly have to rely on criminal organizations to travel
from country to country for false identification, for
smuggling, being smuggled in or through a country. They have to
rely on other criminal organizations for money laundering. We
have had a number of cases where Hezbollah in the United
States, for instance, has utilized cigarette smuggling to
generate revenues to support Hezbollah.
And so if you try to compartment terrorism and pull it out,
what you are missing is that terrorists are criminals. And,
increasingly, with the pressure that has been brought overseas
by the great work that the CIA has done, the military has done,
we have done overseas and here, when the pressure is put on,
they lose their facilitators, they have to go to others. And it
is often our investigation of criminal enterprises that leads
us to the terrorists, and I think that will increasingly do so.
And if you seek to split that out, I think you are doing a
disservice to the effort on the war on terrorism.
Senator Coleman. And I would suspect then that the
importance of the Patriot Act comes into play which gives you
many of the same tools that you use for standard crime now to
use in the war on terrorism?
Mr. Mueller. Well, the Patriot Act breaks down the wall
that inhibited our sharing of information from those criminal
cases to the intelligence side and the information from the
intelligence side to assist in our criminal cases. And in the
past, we were inhibited, we were limited. We had one arm tied
behind our back in terms of that sharing of intelligence and
criminal information. And the Patriot Act has broken down that
wall and gives us the ability to take the information from our
criminal cases, bring it over to the intelligence side. And
likewise, if we have on the intelligence side information as to
statutes that have been broken, illegal activity on the
intelligence side, we then can use it to wrap up somebody in
this United States who has broken the laws.
Senator Coleman. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Senator Lautenberg.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LAUTENBERG
Senator Lautenberg. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and I
commend you for your excellent opening statement and
clarification of the mission. And the thing that concerns me is
that we tip our hat to a lot of the ideas. The question is: How
long might it take to implement the changes as they are
described? You have merged these various departments, and I say
to each one of you, be proud of what your departments have
done. There is no shame, because second-guessing is the easiest
game to play, and when we talk about our offense against
terrorists worldwide, I would ask you: Has the population of
terrorists grown in your estimation?
Mr. McLaughlin. I have to give you one of those
intelligence answers that starts with, ``It depends.'' In other
words, if you look at a discrete population of the terrorist
movement, the original leaders of the September 11 era, al
Qaeda, you have heard the figure often mentioned that three-
quarters of those people, the original chart that we had, are
either dead or in captivity.
If you go beyond that, we have had significant success, I
believe in wrapping up al Qaeda leaders. In Pakistan alone,
working with the Pakistanis since September 11, somewhere
between 500 and 600 important al Qaeda figures have been taken
out of business.
That said, there is a worldwide movement here that draws
support and draws inspiration from the example and the ideology
that bin Laden has propagated. And I think it is really
impossible to measure whether that is growing or shrinking. But
I would say it is still substantial and certainly growing in
some parts of the world. So that as we are in this tactical
phase of terrorism, we are quite aware that we are taking down
terrorist networks, but that new ones are popping up in their
place.
Senator Lautenberg. So have the gains been sufficient to
give us any comfort level? When I look at the people----
Mr. McLaughlin. That is the important question.
Senator Lautenberg [continuing]. Who we identify as the
principals, the bin Ladens, Zarqawi--when I was in Iraq,
Senator Levin and I were there on the same trip, and we saw a
screen identifying the parking place of Zarqawi's car and so
forth. And the statement was made to us that they were not
minutes but very close to a significant capture. Well, he is
still on the loose, and----
Mr. McLaughlin. Well, the successes that we talk about have
had important consequences, and to answer your question
directly, yes, they have made a difference in our degree of
safety. If you look at someone like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the
architect of September 11, when he was captured and detained,
he was in the middle of at least two other major plots that
would have had an impact on the United States. So that was
interrupted, and we continue to follow ancillary aspects of
those plots.
And that is true for just about every terrorist that we
would talk about. If you look at the capture of Eisa al-Hindi
in the U.K., who was the individual responsible for many of the
casing reports that focused on structures in the United States,
by having him in detention, whatever he was doing, which
certainly was potentially injurious to people in the United
States or the U.K., is now interrupted.
So it makes us safer, but to quote what everyone says,
appropriately these days, we are still not safe. But we are
safer.
Senator Lautenberg. We are safer than we were before. I
think there is a question that arises, and that is, it looks
like the zeal of those who hate us continues to attract people
to their mission. It is very tough, and we have a huge job. And
when I see what you require by way of skilled personnel, Mr.
Mueller, in language and so forth and the period of time, 3
years to train people to be good analysts, if I read it
correctly, and I look at the mission--and not that I do not
want to do it. I want to do it. I want us to be totally safe,
even though right now we are beginning to look more like a
fortress. But the fact is that we have to respond to the
threats against us.
I would ask a question here to see if either one of you or
each of you has given thought to whether or not the person who
fills the NID job ought to have a specific term for duty. I
looked at the Federal Reserve, and I see that there is one
person in command sort of that the branches report in. They
have a lot of authority. And I have long been a believer that
the further away we get from the political structure, the
better off we are in our functioning. It more approximates a
business environment which is something that we would like to
see happen. I would like to see it happen, for instance, with
the FAA long-term projects. This one is a very long-term
project. As much as we rush to get the job done, the fact is
that the implementation in its full sense is a long way away.
What do you think about having a specific term of duty for
someone who has that responsibility?
Mr. McLaughlin. Well, Director Mueller and I are different
on that score. The Director of Central Intelligence does not
have a fixed term. The Director of FBI does. So we may have
different perspectives.
I think there are pros and cons to it. The pros of having a
fixed term for a National Intelligence Director would be that
it would be yet another way to do something that I included
among my various principles here, which is to ensure the
objectivity and non-political character of whoever holds that
office, particularly if you could do it in a way, for example--
I haven't reviewed for a while how the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs is chosen, but his term is, I think, 2 years renewable
in a way that staggers it so that it overlaps with Presidential
terms. So there would be advantages to that.
Now, there are some disadvantages to it, I think, in that I
have never been a believer that the President should not be
able to choose whoever he or she wants for a job like that
because a certain amount of trust is required, and trust even,
and maybe especially, when the National Intelligence Director
is bringing bad news, when the National Intelligence Director
has to walk in and say, ``Mr. President, I have got to tell you
something you are not going to want to hear, but you need to
hear it.''
In those circumstances, one can argue that intimacy with
the President and trust, personal trust, could be an important
advantage. It could work a lot of different ways. But I think
there are pros and cons to this.
Senator Lautenberg. Mr. Mueller.
Mr. Mueller. As one who has a 10-year term, I actually
think that the arguments for a 10-year term for the Director of
the FBI are somewhat different than the arguments for a 10-year
term of the National Intelligence Director. One of the
principal duties of the National Intelligence Director is to be
the adviser to the President on intelligence matters. And we
tend to focus, I think, in looking at this legislation, and
perhaps rightfully so, because it comes out of the 9/11
Commission Report, on counterterrorism. The National
Intelligence Director and the CIA do a lot more than focus on
counterterrorism. There is a view, a world view shaped that
dictates the foreign policy of the United States to a certain
extent, to the extent that one looks at the intelligence. And I
guess I think the President should have the confidence in the
person who holds that view of principal adviser for
intelligence, not just counterterrorism, not just WMD, that are
important, but way beyond that.
I do think the Bureau is somewhat different in the sense
that certainly we should play the role of objective,
independent investigators of allegations. And for the Director
of the FBI, I think that is tremendously important that that
independence and that objectivity in conducting investigations
of allegations that can reach throughout the government should
not in any way be impinged by what may happen in a particular
election.
So I think there is a distinction to be drawn between the
role of the National Intelligence Director and the Director of
the FBI.
Senator Lautenberg. Thank you each for your clarifications.
Chairman Collins. Senator Sununu.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SUNUNU
Senator Sununu. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Just to pick up on that last point, this is not a question.
This is an editorial comment, I suppose. But it is my
understanding that the statute isn't really a 10-year term at
all. It is a 10-year maximum. And the reason we have that is
because no one wanted J. Edgar Hoover or that kind of power to
be assumed by a future FBI Director. I think you are doing just
fine at the moment, and I am not saying that we want to cut
short your tenure. But as the statute reads, it is a 10-year
maximum, not a 10-year term.
Mr. Mueller. I know that well. [Laughter.]
Senator Sununu. The points you made, however, I think are
very valid.
I want to ask you both about programming counterterrorism
operations. In your testimony, Director Mueller, you said that
the NID should not be directly responsible for the conduct of
operations and that his or her role should be to ensure that
appropriate activities and operations are conducted by the
various elements of the Intelligence Community. And you also
used the phrase, ``the NID should have a mechanism by which the
principals are charged with assuring responsiveness to the
direction of the NID in managing implementation.'' In some of
the other material we have, I think a distinction was made
between conducting operations and assigning operational
responsibilities that the NID or those at the Counterterrorism
Center would have responsibility--sorry, the NID would have
responsibility for assigning operational responsibilities but
not actually conducting operations at the tactical and
strategic level.
I just want each of you to comment and clarify on these
different roles and responsibilities, one for conducting the
operations, maybe making tactical choices, but the other role
of the NID for maybe initiating, maybe assigning and helping to
coordinate operations on behalf of the broader national
Intelligence Community.
Mr. Mueller. Let me use as an example something like the
two conventions that we just had, the Democratic National and
Republican National Convention. One was worried about threats
against them. It would seem to me that the NID, as the homeland
security in the intelligence realm, would pull together the
elements of the Intelligence Community and say, OK, here we
have this particular convention that is going to take place.
What is the FBI doing to gather intelligence? And we would go
in and have a discussion about what we have done to gather
intelligence in terms of what may happen, international threats
from the CIA, domestic treats to the United States, and if
there are any gaps in that.
Then I would think the NID would have the responsibility of
doing the requirements, saying, OK, FBI, here is something that
has come in from the CIA, you go out and determine the validity
of this information that came from the CIA. But how we did it,
whether we used FISA, whether we used surveillance in this
particular case, would be left up to us.
Now, we would have to go back--there should be transparency
in what we are doing, and we could always be second-guessed and
suggestions made about how to do it differently. But ultimately
how we do it, what authorities we use, what personnel we use, I
think ought to be within this chain of command. And by this
chain of command, I mean that we have a responsibility, me
being the Director of the FBI, to the National Intelligence
Director to provide the information the National Intelligence
Director needs, and if there are gaps there, to utilize our
organization to go out and fill those gaps.
Mr. McLaughlin. This is a tricky question, and it is one on
which people have trouble communicating with each other, I
believe, because, talk about different cultures in the U.S.
Government, the word ``planning'' means something very
different to different organizations. At the Pentagon it
typically means a very elaborate, end-to-end process with an
envisioned result that is in a way foreordained or must be
foreordained. In the intelligence business, it might mean
planning, a quick meeting in my office to check the essentials
of a problem, out to the field, try something, get back to me,
see how it goes, and it is a more iterative process. So first
the term ``planning'' means different things to different
people. So how do you get around that?
I agree very much with what Bob Mueller said. The way I
would see this working in a National Counterterrorism Center is
that it would be a kind of clearinghouse for what needs to be
done, and then the doing would be passed to those who must do
it.
I will give you an example, a different one than Bob gave
you, partly hypothetical and partly real. Let's assume that we
detect through intelligence methods plans by people in two
countries in the Persian Gulf to attack oil facilities there,
both to harm that local government and to injure the U.S.
economy--a real-world example. Let's assume that we also
discover connections between one of those individuals and
someone in the United States. This happens all the time.
At that point, the job of whoever has that information in
front of him or her is to say, this is how I think it would
work. CIA, what are you doing to wrap those guys up? FBI, what
are you doing to take that information about the U.S.
connection and run it down here in the United States? I won't
tell you how to do it, but it needs to be done, and you know
how to do it, and we are going to talk about it again tomorrow.
That is kind of how I would see it working. And at the end
of the day, this is all about--I think if there was a single
thing that we would hold above all else in the counterterrorism
arena and on this particular question, it is what I would call
the fusion of data. We must have people who have all of the
data in front of them so that those connections can be made,
and someone who is looking at all of that data, as people in
the TTIC now do, are the ones who are--as we are at our daily
meeting at CIA where we have many of these people represented,
are the ones who can say there is a pattern here, someone needs
to act on this part, this part, and this part.
I hope that answers your question, but that is how I think
about it.
Senator Sununu. That does. If I can ask one final brief
question about the point that you just made about having the
information in front of you. In his testimony, Director Mueller
noted that there is a proposal out there that creates a new
entity that is composed of analysts and a separate entity for
the intelligence collectors. In the Director's words, ``We
believe that creating such stovepipes would be a step backward
in the progress we have made since September 11.''
Do you agree with that view of a proposal that creates a
collection-only entity or an analyst-only entity?
Mr. McLaughlin. I am not sure what specific example Bob is
referring to, but I firmly believe that there is merit in
fusing analysis and operators and collectors. And I am not
speaking about a hypothetical there. I am speaking about what
we have achieved in our Counterterrorism Center, where if you
were to walk through the department that deals with al Qaeda,
you would see something that, if you went back 10 years, would
have been seen as somewhat revolutionary. Go to this desk and
there is an operator sitting there, meaning a field operative,
someone who is maybe just back from overseas and has extensive
experience recruiting agents, running operations.
In the next cubicle, you will find an analyst, someone who
has spent most of their time here at headquarters, some time
overseas but mostly here, delving deeply into problems and
seeing patterns that may not be apparent to someone who has
been moving around the world with other priorities and so
forth, a checkerboard of people like that. And I think one of
our strengths that we have achieved is the fact that an analyst
can now walk in to an operations officer and say, I have an
idea, I see a pattern here that you ought to follow up on. Or
an operations officer can go to an analyst and say, I am
getting these reports from three different sources; I need some
context to understand this. And that person comes back the next
day and says, well, I have dug into this, here is the context,
here is how it all fits together.
Senator Sununu. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Senator Durbin.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DURBIN
Senator Durbin. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and thank you
both for being here today.
Director Mueller, I am glad that early in your statement
you made reference to the civil liberties issues, and I think
history teaches us that in times of great fear and national
security, freedom is the first casualty. We look back on many
things that we did where we overreacted as a government,
sometimes with shame.
I would like to speak to specifically the President's
Executive Order, which you referred to in your remarks. This
order, which came down just a few days ago, established,
pursuant, I suppose, to the suggestion of the 9/11 Commission,
a board to review whether or not our government has gone too
far, whether or not we have invaded the civil liberties of
individuals unnecessarily. That is a good thing to have such a
board.
But then you look at the Executive Order. Who will stand in
judgment of the Department of Justice and whether they have
gone too far in invading the civil liberties of Americans?
According to the President's Executive Order, it will be the
Deputy Attorney General of the Department of Justice, the Vice
Chair being the Department of Homeland Security Under
Secretary, and all the members of the board being political
appointees of the Bush Administration.
It strikes me as this board is like saying to a baseball
player at bat, you can call your own balls and strikes.
Doesn't it strike you--I hope it does--that we would want
to have some group overseeing the activities of this government
that is somewhat removed from the political realm, from
political appointment, from the actual management of the agency
which they are supposed to be reviewing?
Mr. Mueller. I can see the point that you are making,
Senator. I do think there is a value to having a board whose
responsibility is to focus on the privacy issues of that which
we are contemplating. One could discuss who should serve on
that particular board, but I think it is important to establish
such a board with that mandate.
In terms of oversight, I do think--and it has been my brief
experience up here for the last couple of years--that oversight
from Congress into the activities of that board, into the
activities and what we are undertaking, whether it be through
the Intelligence Committee, the Judiciary Committee, or this
Committee, is not--it does not pull its punches. And so I do
believe that there is merit in having this board or such a
board, and I do believe that there is oversight of our efforts,
whether it be through the Intelligence Committee, the Judiciary
Committee for the FBI, or this Committee, in terms of
addressing terrorism and whether we are going too far or not.
Senator Durbin. I serve on both of those committees,
Intelligence and Judiciary, and you give them too much credit.
We are not really as good as we should be. The 9/11 Commission
makes that obvious, too. We have got to set out not just to
reform the Executive Branch, we need to reform Congress when it
comes to the oversight of the activities involved in fighting
terrorism. And if the last refuge for protecting the civil
liberties of Americans is vested in the members of the Senate
Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, I can tell you we need
help. We need more troops. We need more people involved if that
is what we are to do.
I will not dwell on it. When I spoke to Governor Kean
yesterday about this very same composition of this Executive
Order, he said that it was their intention to get a more
disinterested perspective--I think those were his exact words--
of the members. I will not dwell on it, but I think that the
Executive Order does not serve that purpose.
Director McLaughlin, we have talked a lot about the wiring
diagrams and the budget authority. Let me go to two specific
areas I would like to ask you about. You have undoubtedly read
the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on the use of
intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq, the
preparation and analysis of intelligence, and the fact that we
failed in so many ways to assess the real threat in Iraq. The
NIE was prepared in a hasty fashion, 3 weeks when it ordinarily
takes 6 months. We were not clearly well versed in what we were
going to find in Iraq. Witness the fact we are still looking
for weapons of mass destruction. We mistakenly--some mistakenly
led others to believe the al Qaeda connection was there. The 9/
11 Commission makes it clear it was not.
Most of this was generated through intelligence gathering.
We have talked a lot about new structures, new wiring diagrams,
new boxes on the chart. Specifically I would like to ask you
two things.
Looking back now, do you think that any of the
recommendations we are making in terms of this new structure
really would have a quantitative and qualitative impact on the
mistakes that were made leading to Iraq? And, second, one of
the provisions that was raised by the 9/11 Commission I would
like to just visit for a brief moment, and that is the whole
question of the Abu Ghraib prison situation, which, of course,
is a great embarrassment to the United States.
Can you tell me whether the CIA played any role in the
Iraqi prison techniques, the interrogation techniques, the
stress and duress techniques? Did the White House or any other
agency authorize the CIA the use of aggressive interrogation
techniques? These are questions which have not been answered to
date, and I would like to give you a chance, if you would,
responding to this 9/11 Commission Report aspect, to comment.
Mr. McLaughlin. Senator Durbin, on your question about Iraq
and the intelligence before the war and whether the changes we
are considering would have affected that, my honest opinion
here is that the changes we are considering now would have a
more immediate impact and are more directly related to
counterterrorism than to the kinds of issues that emerged in
our work on Iraq and the subsequent examination of it. Because
I think principally the effect of these changes that we are
considering now would be to increase the sharing and fusion of
information and the rapidity with which a National Intelligence
Director could realign resources on a problem. I do not think
that was involved in some of the difficulties that we had in
the Iraq case. I think there were other issues that we have
moved to deal with since then that would not necessarily be
affected directly by these changes.
Senator Durbin. I will not dwell on it. My time is up
Mr. McLaughlin. You understand what I am saying. I just
think it applies more to counterterrorism to where I think it
is more direct.
Senator Durbin. Forgive me. Weren't we told by the
administration that the invasion of Iraq was counterterrorism?
Mr. McLaughlin. No, I am thinking of al Qaeda.
Senator Durbin. Weren't we told there was a linkage between
Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda?
Mr. McLaughlin. Yes, but the 9/11 Commission was very clear
in saying that the Intelligence Community understood that
correctly and got it right.
Senator Durbin. Well, the point I am getting to--well, I do
not want to dwell on it----
Mr. McLaughlin. Well, that is my point.
Senator Durbin. My time is running out, and I do want to
ask you to respond to the second question about the CIA's role
in the interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib and whether or
not there was any authorization by the CIA or White House or
other agency, to your knowledge, for these types of aggressive
interrogation techniques.
Mr. McLaughlin. We have under way an Inspector General
report of interrogation techniques in Iraq. I have to be
careful how I speak about this because that investigation is
not complete. But to this point, there is nothing that would
indicate CIA involvement in those techniques, and particularly
no involvement in the kinds of things that were portrayed in
those photographs.
There are one or two cases involving particularly the death
of one individual who was transported where that individual was
for some period of time in CIA care, and that is being looked
into by the Inspector General. But that investigation is not
finished yet.
Senator Durbin. And the White House involvement, was there
any White House involvement or any other agency in the
establishment of these interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib?
Mr. McLaughlin. Not that I am aware of, no.
Senator Durbin. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam
Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Senator Shelby.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SHELBY
Senator Shelby. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
I first want to thank you, Madam Chairman, for your
leadership, and also Senator Lieberman's. I want to associate
myself with some of the remarks you made earlier, Senator
Lieberman. I think we have a great opportunity here
legislatively to do something that probably should have been
done 50 years ago, but we did not have that opportunity, and
that is to bring real structural reform to the Intelligence
Community. I trust, Madam Chairman, we will not miss that
opportunity under your leadership and Senator Lieberman's.
I want to focus just for a minute, Director McLaughlin, on
the National Counterterrorism Center that we keep talking
about. My experience over the years with the Intelligence
Community causes me at times to question whether such
entrenched intelligence bureaucracies will allow the NCTC to
live up to its potential. And while the NCTC will be new in a
sense, the analysts, a lot of them, will be the same--maybe not
totally the same--doing the same job in a sense that they have
always done.
What will change? In other words, what will change and will
it be for the better? Will it make us safer?
Mr. McLaughlin. I think the answers to those questions,
Senator, are yes and yes, and I would use the experience we
have had so far in the Terrorist Threat Integration Center to
illustrate the point. The Terrorist Threat Integration Center,
TTIC, would be the foundation on which the National
Counterterrorism Center would be built. And what is new and
different there is that one of my terrorism analysts, or one of
Bob's, who heretofore had been looking, in my case, almost
exclusively at foreign terrorist data, or domestic in the case
of the FBI, when they go into that National Counterterrorism
Center, as they have into TTIC, they will now be exposed not
just to that data but to data from 26 different networks that
are flowing into that center.
So that one of the ways I have spoken to my analysts--I
sent close to 90 analysts there. One of the things I have said
to them is as a career, think about this as a great opportunity
because you are going to be exposed to people from the FBI, the
Coast Guard, Homeland Security, and to their perspective that
you will never get sitting in our building; and when you come
back, you will bring that back into our arena as you focus on
foreign terrorism. That changes.
Senator Shelby. OK. But you are talking about creating
basically a super-analyst center, in a sense, in
counterterrorism, aren't you?
Mr. McLaughlin. Well, creating analysts with a broader
perspective.
Senator Shelby. A broader perspective. Now, how many
analyst centers do we have in the Intelligence Community? I
know the Bureau, Director Mueller, you have one. You are
central to the whole deal. The State Department has one. We
created or tried to create one at Homeland Security. I know I
worked with Senator Lieberman on that. How many others do we
have, analyst centers?
Mr. McLaughlin. Several. We have the Counterterrorism
Center, the Counterintelligence Center, the Counternarcotics
Center. I think we will move before long to a
Counterproliferation Center.
Senator Shelby. But other than the FBI, what other agencies
in the Intelligence Community have an analysis center?
Mr. McLaughlin. Well, the centers by definition draw on all
of these agencies, so that in the ones I have mentioned we have
representatives from, in the case of the Counterterrorism
Center, upwards of a dozen agencies.
Senator Shelby. You are talking about people working at the
Counterterrorism Center from all of these other agencies.
Mr. McLaughlin. About a dozen.
Senator Shelby. But these other agencies will continue to
have, I assume, their own analysis center; is that right,
Director Mueller?
Mr. Mueller. Correct, yes.
Senator Shelby. OK.
Mr. McLaughlin. That is the balance we have to strike.
Senator Shelby. So what you are really talking about--and
you alluded to it--is expanding the Terrorism Threat
Integration Center that we created, TTIC.
Mr. McLaughlin. Building on that.
Senator Shelby. Building on that. To a great extent?
Mr. McLaughlin. Well, I would say to the extent that it
will now--this all has to be determined in practice, but to the
extent that it will now have a strategic planning function that
is not resident in the Terrorist Threat Integration Center.
Senator Shelby. Director McLaughlin, in your prepared
remarks that you shared with us earlier, you said, and I will
just quote your remarks here: ``Ideally, a single person
responsible for all national intelligence activities should:
Maintain independence and objectivity as the President's
principal intelligence advisor; have full authority to
determine, reprogram, and execute all funding for the core
national intelligence agencies--CIA, NSA, NGA, and NRO; have
clear authority to provide strategic direction to these
agencies and drive their collection and analytic priorities;
have the authorities necessary''--in other words, power--``to
reorient intelligence capabilities to meet emerging threats and
priorities; have direct access to substantive experts to help
fulfill his/her responsibilities as the Nation's principal
intelligence officer; have the authority to bridge any
remaining divides between foreign and domestic intelligence
activities in the areas of policy and information technology;
have the authority to determine education and professional
development standards and personnel management policies and
incentives; and ensure the continued synergy''--which is very
important--``that results from the close interaction of
operators and analysts.''
But, ideally--you left out the FBI as far as controlling
any of their budget. Is that correct?
Mr. McLaughlin. Well, I think----
Senator Shelby. In your remarks.
Mr. McLaughlin. Yes, the way I see it is that the National
Intelligence Director ought to have--I believe there is a
portion of the FBI's budget that would be included in the
national foreign intelligence program budget, just a very small
portion, but certainly not the entire FBI's budget. And
Director Mueller, I am sure, has an opinion.
Mr. Mueller. I would say that our intelligence budget,
expanding, I would hope, intelligence budget, not just as small
as referred to by my colleague over here----
Senator Shelby. Well, to do your job, you are going to have
to expand it.
Mr. Mueller. We are, yes. But that should be controlled by
the NID, and I would go to appropriations as opposed to
execution. In other words, I think there ought to be one
appropriation. There ought to be one intelligence budget under
the auspices of the NID who could look at what the requirements
are, who has the personnel and the capability of meeting those
requirements, and then adjusting the budget appropriately,
including that portion of the FBI that addresses intelligence.
Senator Shelby. I know my time is up, but one last
statement, I guess. Isn't it true that the President of the
United States has and has always had the authority to disclose,
if he thought it was important to do so, the numbers on the
intelligence appropriations? In other words, the President has
that authority if he wanted to do that.
Mr. Mueller. I assume so.
Senator Shelby. And if he thought it was in the best
interest of the country.
Mr. McLaughlin. Yes.
Mr. Mueller. The answer is yes.
Senator Shelby. So we do not need statutory authority for
the President to do that.
Mr. McLaughlin. No, sir.
Senator Shelby. He has it. Thank you. Thank you, Madam
Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Senator Pryor.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PRYOR
Senator Pryor. Madam Chairman, thank you for your
leadership on this. And I want to thank you for your public
service. I appreciate the witnesses coming here today and
talking about these very important issues. I want to just focus
here for a minute, if I can, on your plans, both of you, your
plans to recruit, hire, and retain the right kind of people for
your agencies.
Now, I know that, as I understand it, both agencies have
done some fairly innovative and aggressive marketing and made
some pretty serious efforts to try to get the right people and
keep the right people in place. Could you all tell the
Committee a little bit about that?
Mr. Mueller. Sure. After September 11, we made the
determination that we needed to broaden the types of candidates
that we were attracting to the FBI. We have historically looked
to lawyers, accountants, former law enforcement, military--all
good. We have taken the position, rightfully so, I think, that
we look for maturity in judgment in the persons we bring on as
special agents because we give them tremendous power when you
give them the capability of operating as an FBI special agent.
So we have looked for maturity in judgment.
In the wake of September 11, we understood that we needed
skills that perhaps we had not addressed in the past in the
Bureau, so we have opened it up and looked at intelligence
officers, computer scientists, scientists to address something
like anthrax, language specialists, and regional experts. And
we have focused on bringing into the Bureau not only the
persons who show the judgment and maturity but also have these
additional skills. And we have continued to try to do that for
our agents.
This fiscal year we have almost 40,000 applicants for the
special agent position. I will tell you for our analyst
position, we had almost--well, on the agents, one other fact
that I think is important is that of those--it was actually
38,000 applicants we have had in this fiscal year. Almost
17,000 of them demonstrated one of those skills, special
skills, that we are now looking for. We have had 57,000
applications for intelligence analyst positions this year. And
so I think there are a number of factors that have gone into
that.
First, we have been out indicating we want a wide variety
of skills in the FBI. Second, persons have responded in the
wake of September 11 to the desire for public service. And we
have been fortunate to get those persons applying that will
bring to the Bureau skills that will be necessary in addressing
the threats of the future.
Senator Pryor. Have you been happy so far with what you
have been able to accomplish?
Mr. Mueller. Yes. I keep saying I am happy with where we
are, but we have got a ways to go.
Senator Pryor. Right.
Mr. Mueller. And we have made strides, and one of the
concerns I had is that if we had focused on some of these
specialties, we would lose the maturity of the judgment that is
so important. And I am quite confident that the quality of
applicants that we are getting is such that we can have the
maturity of judgment that we want for a special agent, but also
have the benefit of some of these additional specialized
skills.
Mr. McLaughlin. When I am asked what we really need these
days, I frequently say more experienced people. The
Intelligence Community, of course, started from a low point in
1995, 1996, 1997, in that time frame. We bottomed out after
about a 23-percent reduction in the wake of the dissolution of
the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. And so that
particularly in the period since then, we have been building up
again, thanks to resource increases by the Congress and the
administration. So more experienced people is sort of our
bottom line.
I am very pleased with the people we are getting. There
seems to be great enthusiasm for public service at this moment.
Typically in a week, we get somewhere between 3,000 and 6,000
resumes seeking employment with the Central Intelligence
Agency, many more applicants than we can hire.
When we look at our recent classes, which are now at record
levels compared to the dozen or so people that we were training
in the clandestine service in 1996, we are having an average
age of about 28, 29, so we are getting people with significant
prior experience before they come to the agency or to the
Intelligence Community. This is fairly typical across the
agencies.
I am most familiar with CIA's data. If we look at the GPAs,
we are up in the range of 3.2 to 3.7, typically. If we look at
languages, the one I am most concerned about is Arabic. We have
a sizable number of Arabic speakers. I will not use the
absolute number here, but in the last year, from 2003 to--
within the last 12 months, it has increased by 36 percent in
terms of people who test at the Level 3 level. We make a
distinction between those who claim proficiency and those who
test out.
So those are the areas where we have the greatest need and
shortage, and I would emphasize Bob's point that we are looking
for people with maturity in skills because, particularly in
this era of increasing demands, frequently your first tour as
an officer overseas will be in some remote and dangerous place.
And for our analysts, talking about them, too, increasingly
they operate overseas, and we are looking for similar
backgrounds there, and we are getting them.
Senator Pryor. Is the pool large enough for you or are you
competing against yourselves to try to get these qualified
people in?
Mr. McLaughlin. I think within the foreign Intelligence
Community, most of the agencies that you would talk to would
give you comparable statistics. The pool seems to be large
enough. There seems to be very high interest in public service
at this moment, and we are grateful for that.
Mr. Mueller. I would say that to a certain extent we are
competing for analysts with particular skills, and one of the
things that we are looking forward to is, in building up our
intelligence cadre, to put it on an equal footing with the
Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense and the
CIA with the appropriate SES positions, with the career
advancement, with remuneration that is the equal of the
analytical cadre at other agencies. We haven't always had that,
and that is one of the areas in which we are focusing.
Senator Pryor. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Specter.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SPECTER
Senator Specter. Thank you, Madam Chairman. In the few
moments that I have, I would like to go to what I consider the
core reason for having a National Director, and that is the
sharing of information.
I chaired the Intelligence Committee in the 104th Congress
and saw what so many have characterized as a culture of
concealment, and with oversight for the Judiciary Subcommittee
back in the year 2000, we found memoranda from the Director of
the FBI which should have been disclosed to the Judiciary
Committee, and there, again, a very heavy overlay of what has
been characterized as a culture of concealment.
I have circulated a draft bill which would take the
Counterintelligence Unit out of the FBI and put it under a
Director, leave the entire CIA under a National Director, leave
tactical intelligence with the Department of Defense, but the
rest of it move under a National Director. And dealing with
your two agencies, Director Mueller, you make a decision on
what you are going to share with the CIA, and, Director
McLaughlin, you make a decision on what you are going to share
with the FBI. What I think is a preferable course is that there
be a National Director on top who knows all of what the
Director of FBI knows and knows all of what the Director of the
CIA knows so that there does not have to be a reliance that the
FBI has shared all the information with the CIA and the CIA has
shared all the information with the FBI, and it goes for the
other of the 15 intelligence agencies or counterintelligence
agencies, that to the extent you can have a person on top--and
we have to rely upon someone to be in charge--that I have been
persuaded up to this point--and I am still prepared to listen.
I am concerned about some civil liberties issues, which I
discussed with Director Mueller yesterday. But what is wrong
with that postulation as the best idea to have somebody who
knows all of what you two men know and all of what the key men
in all of the intelligence agencies know? Director Mueller.
Mr. Mueller. Senator, I think you can accomplish that
without pulling out the divisions of the FBI. If you are
looking at an area on, for instance, counterterrorism, the NID
should have access to all of the FBI information relating to
counterterrorism. The way that person would at this juncture
would be through the National Counterterrorism Center, the all-
source information analytical center, that would report to the
NID.
I do think there are, as I indicated in my remarks, some
substantial downsides in pulling out the Counterterrorism or
Counterintelligence Division where you are pulling it away from
its roots and the sources of the information where you can give
that NID the information through the National Counterterrorism
Center and through the all-sources Counterterrorism Center, not
just the FBI information but the CIA information as well.
You allude to the presumption of non-disclosure that there
has been throughout the Bureau in the past, and I would say to
a certain extent the CIA. In part, that has been attributable
to the wall that was broken down by the Patriot Act; in part,
that is attributable to the fact that we focus on cases and do
not want the facts of cases getting into the press or going to
somebody else. But when it comes to terrorism and other areas
such as that, there has to be a presumption of disclosure.
Now, one of the things we have done to instill that in our
management is we have had all of our special agents in charge,
all of our assistant special agents in charge go through a 1-
week course at the Kellogg School of Management in Chicago. The
focus of that 1-week course for all of our 250 top management
was to take an institution such as ours through a period of
transformation. It is the same school that gives similar
courses to IBM or GE, the corporate structure around the
country.
We had a 1-week course for each of our top management
focused on intelligence information and how we treat it, how we
disclose it, as well as information technology, with the
expectation that those who have gone through that school
understand that we are an organization going through
transformation, and these are some of the obstacles that other
organizations have gone through, and this is what we need to do
as an organization to overcome those obstacles.
So I think we as an institution are changing in terms of
our understanding, our embracing of the necessity to
disseminate and to share information in ways that we perhaps
had not been in the past.
Mr. McLaughlin. I would not add much to that.
Senator Specter. Mr. McLaughlin, I have 17 seconds left,
but you do not have any limitation.
Mr. McLaughlin. I would just not add much to what Director
Mueller said, except to say that our officers are now present
in the FBI, his officers are present in the CIA. On a major
terrorist case--I can think of two or three in the last month--
Bob and I are on the phone to each other continuously comparing
notes about everything from the case itself to our contacts
with foreign intelligence services.
We have in TTIC today for the first time a senior official
and a body of analysts who work with that person, the Director
of TTIC, who has the kind of visibility that you have just
discussed. And I see the benefits of that.
So, essentially, let me just stop there and say that the
concept you have laid out, Senator, of a person who has this
visibility across this whole arena, domestic and foreign, is a
good one, I believe. I would endorse it.
Senator Specter. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Senator Levin.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LEVIN
Senator Levin. Let me first thank you and Senator Lieberman
for your stalwart, determined, bipartisan leadership here to
produce a product that we can rally around and which will make
the necessary reforms. You are both really doing great work,
and we all appreciate it.
I think from your description, both of you, of what
operations you would allow a new National Intelligence Director
to direct, neither of you believe that that Director should
have the power to task operations. Is that correct?
Mr. Mueller. Yes.
Mr. McLaughlin. I think there is a fine line here.
Senator Levin. OK. If you cannot answer it quickly, that is
OK. Just say you cannot answer it quickly, and I will go on to
the next question.
Mr. McLaughlin. I think he should be able to task.
Senator Levin. Operations.
Mr. McLaughlin. In one area.
Senator Levin. OK. Could you give us that one area?
Mr. McLaughlin. Well, this is how I think about it. I think
someone has to report to that National Intelligence Director;
for example, if the CIA reported to that National Intelligence
Director directly, and the CIA Director worked for that
National Intelligence Director, while the CIA Director would be
in charge of operations overseas, by virtue of reporting to the
National Intelligence Director, that person would certainly
have something to say about operations.
Senator Levin. Something to say. As the 9/11 Commission
recommends, should that NID be able to assign operational
responsibilities to an agency?
Mr. McLaughlin. Not directly.
Senator Levin. Thank you.
Now, we have heard a lot about the declaration of war
against al Qaeda in 1998 by the CIA Director. Did the budgets
that were submitted by the CIA subsequent to that declaration
of war reflect what the Director believed should be done to
carry out that war? Did your budget request inside the
Executive Branch, first of all, implement that declaration of
war?
Mr. McLaughlin. I don't recall the specific numbers. I know
we asked for more money for counterterrorism, but I don't
recall----
Senator Levin. You asked for more than you got?
Mr. McLaughlin. I just don't recall the data.
Senator Levin. Could you get that to this Committee?
Mr. McLaughlin. I will.
Senator Levin. OK. Do you know whether or not when the CIA
Director came to Congress with the administration's budget the
CIA Director indicated that that is what he supported in terms
of the needs of the CIA?
Mr. McLaughlin. I am sure that he brought forward a budget
that he supported.
Senator Levin. And was there ever a case where he said to
us, hey, the CIA has declared war, we do not have enough money
in this budget request to carry out that war? Was there ever an
instance that you know of where that happened?
Mr. McLaughlin. I would have to go back and review the
record on that.
Senator Levin. Offhand, do you know of any instance where
that happened?
Mr. McLaughlin. I know that we needed more and wanted more
and asked for more, but I cannot take it to the precision you
are asking.
Senator Levin. All right. So that there were times when you
came to us, to the Congress, and said we are at war but this
budget request does not allow us to carry out that war?
Mr. McLaughlin. I would have to review the record to make
sure I have that correct.
Senator Levin. All right. Now, on the tug of war that has
been referred to between the Department of Defense and the
Intelligence Community over national assets of the NSA, I think
we ought to analyze any such tugs of war that exist and that
have occurred over the years. About how many times would you
say that occurred?
Mr. McLaughlin. In fact, in practice that does not occur
very often.
Senator Levin. All right. If there are any examples of
that, would you submit those for the record?
Mr. McLaughlin. Yes.
Senator Levin. Now, the budget currently that is submitted
to the OMB is developed by the DCI by law. Is that correct?
Mr. McLaughlin. That is correct.
Senator Levin. Is that a hollow authority? We have heard
that all you folks do is you staple together the request of 15
agencies, that you do not shape or influence that.
Mr. McLaughlin. No, it is more complicated than that. The
Director issues guidance to each of the agencies based on the
national intelligence priorities that are worked out with the
National Security Council. The agencies then formulate a budget
based on that guidance. The Director then looks at the budget
to see if it is in line with the guidance he or she issued.
That is then approved and goes to OMB and also to the
Department of Defense where there is a consultation at both of
those arenas.
Senator Levin. So that the guidance is issued currently
under law by the CIA Director?
Mr. McLaughlin. That is how it works in practice.
Senator Levin. And is that a hollow authority?
Mr. McLaughlin. I wouldn't say so.
Senator Levin. Because one of the things we have to decide
to do is how do we shift budget authority. I think the real
issue, at least as I read the current law, as I read the
current Executive Order, is whether or not the law means what
it says.
Mr. McLaughlin. No, the Director's authority at the
initiation, the formulation of the budget is substantial. His
authority declines as the budget is executed.
Senator Levin. And that is where, it seems to me, the key
issue is, and that is determined currently by Executive Order,
is it not?
Mr. McLaughlin. No. That is not, I don't think, determined
by Executive Order.
Senator Levin. Who determines, for instance, that it is the
DOD agencies that have that authority, that budget execution
authority, to the extent that it exists in the Executive
Branch? And I hope we all remember that when it comes to
reprogramming, Congress has got a key role. But, nonetheless,
to the extent it exists in the Executive Branch, who currently
has that authority? Is that authority which is given to the DOD
now given to them by Executive Order or by law?
Mr. McLaughlin. The authority to?
Senator Levin. To be the reprogramming engine?
Mr. McLaughlin. No. It is a result of the fact that the
budget resides in the DOD and is literally in their
comptroller's office and their computer system.
Senator Levin. By appropriation?
Mr. McLaughlin. I believe.
Senator Levin. So that it is an appropriation decision
which puts that implementation authority into the hands now of
the DOD?
Mr. McLaughlin. I think that is correct.
Senator Levin. Which means we can change that by simply
changing how that is appropriated, if we want to do that.
Mr. McLaughlin. Yes, that is correct.
Senator Levin. OK. My time is up. I just wonder if there is
still a plan for a second round.
Chairman Collins. There is, of 5 minutes each.
Senator Voinovich.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH
Senator Voinovich. I would like to thank you, Madam
Chairman, and Senator Lieberman for your leadership. I think
there is a question about whether or not we are going to spend
enough time to do this thing right, and from my observation, I
think the time has been put in by all of us, and particularly
you, that will put us in a position where we can move forward
responsibly with legislation.
I would like to thank you, Mr. Mueller and Mr. McLaughlin,
for your service. I was comforted by your testimony in terms of
the progress that we have made since September 11. You might be
interested to know that I have met with the Joint Task Force
people in Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati, and the Homeland
Security officials, and they say that there has been a sea
change in terms of the exchange of information among law
enforcement agencies and also the folks that are charged with
homeland security. So this is getting down to the local level
where I think it really makes a difference.
Director Mueller, in addition to fighting terrorists, the
FBI is responsible for combating other serious threats to the
United States, such as organized crime and corruption abroad, a
subject on which I held a hearing in the Foreign Relations
Committee last year. At that hearing we heard testimony on the
pervasive influence of the Russian Mafia in the United States
of America. Grant Ashley, Assistant Director of the Criminal
Investigative Division of the FBI, testified before the
Committee, and I asked him if the FBI had enough resources to
fight organized crime as we devote more and more resources to
fight against terrorism. He indicated that some of the
resources once dedicated to the fight against transnational
criminals are being diverted for the fight against terrorism
while noting that the problem of transnational crime continues
to grow. I am very concerned about crime and corruption
overseas, and that is what the hearing was on, and then we had
all this information about the Russian Mafia here in the United
States.
Yesterday in Cleveland, I met with the FBI special agent in
charge, Gerald Mack. He feels that the Joint Terrorism Task
Forces are working well. That is one of the things I mentioned.
I asked him if he had enough agents assigned to
counterterrorism, and he said he did but that he was taking
agents away from their normal assignments to meet
counterterrorism requirements. You have got a big job. In
addition to terrorism, we all know the FBI has responsibilities
for areas such as public corruption, non-violent white-collar
financial crimes, and civil rights. I have three questions for
you.
First, should the FBI continue to be responsible for all
these areas, or should the FBI shed some of its missions which
could perhaps be given to other Federal agencies or State law
enforcement agencies so that it can focus on its highest
priorities, such as terrorism and organized crime?
Second, do you have the workforce and the resources to do
all of these missions?
And third, does the FBI need additional personnel
flexibilities to accomplish its expanded counterterrorism
mission?
Those are three long questions, but the fact of the matter
is you are charged with many responsibilities. The question is:
Do you have the resources to get them done, or should we give
some consideration to shifting some of these responsibilities
you have to some other agencies?
Mr. Mueller. Well, going to the first question on the
shifting of the responsibilities, we have shifted
responsibilities. We have looked at what areas of
responsibility we have in the wake of September 11, for
instance, and looked at those areas in which we, in my mind,
provide something unique to law enforcement. I moved almost 500
agents from the drug program to counterterrorism in the wake of
September 11. I also have moved agents from some of our work in
things like bank robberies, smaller white-collar criminal
cases, in the belief that DEA and the other agencies that can
pick up those areas where we don't have necessarily any special
expertise. I think particularly in the drug area, we have
developed substantial cases over the years. We have a huge
degree of expertise. But it seems to me that DEA can beef up
that capability, and they are doing so.
So we have already taken and looked strategically at what
we are doing, where we can best put in our personnel. One of
the things that we need to be as a workforce, and that is
flexible. We will find that there will be a case that arises in
a place like Lackawanna, New York, and we have to be able to
push resources there, but not leave them there. Too often in
the Bureau we have taken resources, put them in a particular
place to address an immediate threat, the savings and loan
crisis being one of them. And those resources are still there
20 years later, when we need the resources elsewhere in the
country.
So we have to be much more flexible, and it may mean in a
particular division at a particular point in time, we have to
take people----
Senator Voinovich. Have you done this in conjunction with
the DEA and other agencies?
Mr. Mueller. Yes.
Senator Voinovich. Everybody has signed off on it?
Mr. Mueller. Yes, through the Department of Justice.
Second, in terms of our workforce, there are areas where we
are building up our intelligence capability where we are
looking at augmentations to our workforce in terms of how we
better provide adequate salaries to our analysts, how we
develop a career path for our analysts that has not been there
in the past. That equates, as I said before, to the career path
in the CIA or DIA or NSA or these other areas. And we are going
to Congress with a request to give us the flexibility to
develop those career paths.
Last, in terms of do we have enough money to do all that is
on our plate, we have had to prioritize, as every Federal
agency does. We put our requests for financing in the critical
areas where we need to defend the security of the United
States, the requests in counterterrorism, counterintelligence,
cyber, white-collar crime because of the large white-collar
crime cases we are addressing now. And we have through the
administration and through Congress received substantial
augmentation of monies over the years. And we continue to go
back in the 2004 budget and the 2005 budget to request that
which we need to address the current priorities, but also other
priorities that we see on the horizon, and we will continue to
do so.
Senator Voinovich. And you think that the National
Intelligence Director having the full view of what is there
will be beneficial in terms of your operation, in terms of your
resources?
Mr. Mueller. I believe so. I think the National
Intelligence Director would look at us as one of the components
and an essential component in terms of intelligence within the
United States and would look favorably on a request to augment
the monies that are spent on our intelligence program to
provide the types of intelligence that both I want, the NID
would want, and the President would want as to future threats
against the United States, not just in counterterrorism but in
counterintelligence, those who wish to steal our secrets, as
well as cyber, preventing cyber attacks and identifying those
overseas who would launch cyber attacks against our
infrastructure, against our Defense Department.
I would look to that National Intelligence Director to look
at us and the Defense Department and the CIA and be fair in
terms of what we need to do the job as an intelligence agency
in ways that we have not been looked upon the past.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Dayton.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DAYTON
Senator Dayton. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Director Mueller, at a hearing a couple weeks ago, I asked
the Secretary of Defense about the chain of command on
September 11, 2001. The 9/11 Commission Report concluded that
there was not that morning a proper chain of command
established between the President of the United States, the
Secretary of Defense, and then on to the combatant commanders;
and that as a result, the Vice President issued the President's
instruction to authorize NORAD fighters to shoot down hijacked
enemy planes within U.S. airspace about 2 hours after the first
hijacking, and an hour and a half after the first World Trade
Tower was struck, the NORAD mission director decided not to
pass that instruction on to the pilots who were airborne at the
time.
The Secretary of Defense replied that on September 11,
2001, the defense of this country from an enemy attack from
within our borders was not the responsibility of the U.S.
military or of NORAD but of the FBI. And I would like to know--
two questions. One is: Was that your understanding of your
responsibility on that day? And, second, who has that
responsibility today if, God forbid, there should be a repeat
of a September 11 type of attack?
Mr. Mueller. We certainly have responsibility for
developing intelligence about threats within our borders,
threats that may come from outside our borders but are to take
place within our borders. We have responsibility for developing
intelligence to identify those threats, and we also have
responsibility to address those threats with investigations
and, by addressing it, taking the investigations to prosecutors
and either taking those persons off the street by prosecution,
expulsion from the country, or monitoring them. I think we have
that responsibility.
I would say it is a shared responsibility. I think Homeland
Security has a substantial role to play in protecting the
borders, for instance; Customs, the ICE. And so while I think
we have a substantial responsibility to prevent another attack
within the United States from either international terrorists,
domestic terrorists, there are others that play a piece in
that.
Senator Dayton. What was your understanding, sir, on
September 11, 2001, given the----
Mr. Mueller. I think we had a role. Absolutely, I think we
had a responsibility to protect the United States. I think we
understood that responsibility, and as we do today.
Senator Dayton. Was that an operational responsibility on
that day once those planes were hijacked to take action to
defend the country?
Mr. Mueller. Yes.
Senator Dayton. And if so, what would that action--what
could that action have been given your assets?
Mr. Mueller. Well, immediately upon the incidents
happening, we had a responsibility to determine who was
responsible, whether there were any others out there who would
utilize similar methods to hijack planes. We had to do it in
coordination with others, whether the FAA or, to a certain
extent, the military. But we absolutely had a responsibility
once those terrorist attacks had occurred to identify who was
responsible, make certain there were no others out there.
Senator Dayton. But that occurred at the time of the
attacks--and I guess I am even more interested in if, as I
said, God forbid, that kind of attack should develop again, I
would like to know who is responsible operationally, who has
the authority and the assets to direct whatever must be
directed to marshal an active defense of the United States from
an enemy attack if it repeats itself from within the borders.
Mr. Mueller. Well, we had a responsibility then to prevent
attacks. We understood that before. And we have a
responsibility now to prevent attacks.
Senator Dayton. Prevent. But what happens if one, as I
said, should commence along the lines of September 11? Do you
have resources available to marshal an act of defense at that
point in time? If so, what are they? Do you need such
resources?
Mr. Mueller. We had on September 11 approximately 11,000
agents. On September 12th, we had 6,000 of those agents
addressing it.
Senator Dayton. With all due respect, Director, you are not
answering my question.
Mr. Mueller. We do have resources to address the--once an
incident happens----
Senator Dayton. Is happening.
Mr. Mueller. Is happening, yes. If there is an ongoing
hostage taking, for instance, that is our responsibility. We
would have our Hostage Rescue Team there working with State and
locals to resolve that issue. If there was another incident
such as what happened on September 11 in which planes slam into
buildings, then we would have a responsibility to investigate.
We also have a responsibility to prevent that happening if we
had intelligence. It was our responsibility to pull all the
intelligence together along with that which the CIA has and
disrupt, prevent that attack.
Senator Dayton. I guess I was astonished by the Secretary
of Defense's response, and I guess I am trying to, again,
understand because it would seem that the air defense
capabilities of this country reside with either NORAD, which is
a North American shared command, or with our own military
command directly. And I did not know the FBI had or even shared
that, again, immediate, at-the-time responsibility or had the
capabilities to take action. So I am trying to understand who
has that today and what is the understanding of who has that
responsibility today.
Mr. Mueller. I see. I didn't fully understand, I guess. No,
we do not have responsibility for the issuing of orders to
NORAD to defend against that type of attack. I mean, our
responsibility would be to coordinate with other agencies to
make certain that the chain of command through whether it be
the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, National Security
Council, to the President has all the information we have
available to us to make that decision. But we do not have the
capability or authority, for instance, to launch jets to
prevent an incident such as what happened on September 11.
Senator Dayton. Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Chairman. My time has expired. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Carper.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER
Senator Carper. Thanks, Madam Chairman.
Director Mueller, I think earlier in response to Governor
Voinovich's questions about the work that you have done sort of
restructuring and refocusing the FBI's attention on
counterterrorism, you went through a litany of a number of the
steps you have taken, and I think they are certainly
commendable. Some critics of the FBI are concerned that when
you leave--and none of us are in these jobs forever--but when
you leave, a successor or a series of successors will undo the
good work that you have done on this score. And with that in
mind, those concerns in mind, what advice would you have for
us, steps that we might take legislatively to ensure that does
not happen, or at least to reduce the possibility that it would
happen?
Mr. Mueller. I do think that the establishment of a NID
goes some ways to assuring that because then you will have
oversight of the Intelligence Community in that office within
the administration.
Second, the establishment of an intelligence directorate,
the funding, the staffing, the development of career paths, the
development of the cadre of people will certainly outlive my
tenure. That will be tremendously important. Adequately funding
and assuring the staffing will be important to enhance our
capabilities there. And there also is the Department of Justice
through whom we report, assuring that we are doing the job and
satisfying the mission that has been set out for us.
And last, there is Congress, also looking at what we have
done, what we have accomplished in various areas, not only in
the oversight committees but also in the appropriations process
that will be monitoring whether or not we are reaching the
goals that we have set for ourselves.
Senator Carper. Good. Thanks.
Director McLaughlin, if I could ask you a question or two,
please. You actually raised an interesting question in some of
your previous testimony. I believe it was before the Armed
Services Committee. Here is what you asked: ``Who will you hold
responsible not just when things are going well but when
something goes wrong with intelligence?'' You went on to say,
``Today it is the Director of Central Intelligence, even though
his authority over the rest of the community outside CIA''--
``his authorities are limited.''
``If in the future there will be a National Intelligence
Director, what authorities would be commensurate with that kind
of responsibility?'' That was the question you asked. A good
question, I thought.
Having posed that question, I want to just sort of turn the
tables on you a little bit this morning and ask you, if you
were put on the hook for what goes right or what goes wrong
with intelligence, what authorities would you want or need?
Mr. McLaughlin. Well, thanks for asking. I posed the
question because I wanted to force people to think about that
issue, because it is pretty clear today who you hold
responsible. And I think the answer to the question implies
certain things about resources and authorities. If you choose
to say that the National Intelligence Director is the Nation's
principal intelligence officer and that is the person to whom
you will look in good times and bad, then I think that person
does require substantial authorities and something else that I
will talk about.
Now, I have mentioned before what I think the authorities
need to be. They need to be greater than the DCI's, which are
substantial, but they need to be extending to the budget. They
need to be extending to the ability to influence substantially,
perhaps hire and fire the leaders of major agencies, so that it
is clear that this person really is in charge.
I think the other thing I wanted to mention, though, is
that if you truly are being held responsible, you need access
to troops; that is to say--I mean, there are two conceptions of
how this could work. It could be just--not ``just.'' It could
be a person whose principal duties are to handle the
programmatics of the community--budget, training, security
policies, information technology and so forth. One model.
Another model is someone who does that and also represents
the community's view substantively--testifies before the
Congress, the annual worldwide threat testimony; briefs the
President; renders a judgment for you on behalf of this entire
Intelligence Community on whether North Korea has nuclear
weapons or not.
Someone who has those responsibilities and you hold
responsible and accountable for those kinds of questions will
need to be able to reach without any impediments into a body of
experts, analysts, and operators, just as the DCI can, to gain
that knowledge, gain the expertise, gain the analysis,
understand the differences, understand the gaps, and bring them
forward.
So that is how I think about it, and if this is the person
you want to hold responsible, then it cascades through a series
of other decisions to be made, I believe, about how the person
is staffed, who reports to the person, and so forth. I can sort
of describe how it works now, but that is how I see it.
Senator Carper. One last quick question, if I could, and
just a brief answer, too, if you will, from both of you. We
have talked a lot and heard from a lot of witnesses in
excellent testimony about some of the things that we ought to
do. And, occasionally, I will ask the witnesses, What should we
absolutely not do? And if you would just give me an example or
two of something we absolutely ought not to do as we
restructure our Intelligence Community, what might be an
example or two that you would share with us?
Mr. McLaughlin. Don't create a National Intelligence
Director with no real authority because you will have the worst
of all worlds then. You will have diminished the authority of
the Director of Central Intelligence in the process and created
another competitor for authority but without clear authority.
Senator Carper. Director Mueller.
Mr. Mueller. As I understand the difference in collections,
capabilities, authorities between that which is collected
overseas and that which is collected within the United States
and keeping that in mind when drafting legislation for the NID
to assure that the National Intelligence Director has the
capability for strategic tasking, but leaves the collection of
that information within the authorities of the various
different intelligence agencies.
Senator Carper. Thanks to both of you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
We are going to have a brief second round of questions, but
I am going to take a 5-minute break. I am going to resume the
hearing in 5 minutes. Thank you.
Senator Lieberman. We will have a seventh-inning stretch.
Chairman Collins. Right.
[Recess.]
Chairman Collins. The Committee will come back to order. We
will now have a final round of questions limited to 5 minutes
each.
Director McLaughlin, as you could tell from the questions
you have had from us at this hearing and at previous hearings,
there is a great deal of interest in learning exactly how the
budget process works now and how we can reform it and
institutionalize it in the legislation that we are drafting.
In consulting with my colleagues, I think it would be very
helpful to enhancing our understanding if you were to provide
to the Committee a copy of the budget guidance that the DCI
sends out to the 15 intelligence agencies.\1\ So I would ask
that you provide that for the record.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The list of items CIA has not provided to Senator Levin
requests (SASC) has not been provided by press time.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. McLaughlin. I will.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. The other issue on which there
continues to be great debate, debate driven in part by the fact
that different agencies define planning differently, as you
have pointed out, has to do with the role of operational
planning and how we should draw those lines. In your testimony
you referred to an operational meeting that you chair every
day, ``with Intelligence Community, military and law
enforcement elements represented.'' I am told that these
meetings often focus on counterterrorism issues.
You also noted in your testimony that, ``at that meeting we
review and act on that day's intelligence.'' I am trying to get
more of a feel for what that means. Does that include
discussing operations to be carried out by the agencies
represented at that operational meeting?
Mr. McLaughlin. It is mainly focused on operations to be
carried out by CIA, but we have in that meeting, as part of the
personnel from our Counterterrorism Center, representatives
from other agencies. There is an FBI officer who is there,
stationed in the Counterterrorism Center, so that there is
transparency with the FBI. So it is mainly on CIA operations.
That said, it is frequently the case that in the course of our
operations we uncover a link to the homeland, and that is
passed on the spot to the people from the Bureau, and migrates
back to the FBI.
It is also the case that there may be a military dimension,
and so I have in that meeting the Associate DCI for Military
Support, a 3-star Navy Seal, who if we require military
involvement in a counterterrorism operation, he is there to
organize that. So this is a very tactical meeting we have and
decisions----
Chairman Collins. Are you tasking though?
Mr. McLaughlin. Yes. We are not tasking the agencies, but
it is in fact analogous to what I think might happen in a
larger setting in a National Counterterrorism Center. I do not
task the FBI and I certainly do not task the U.S. military, but
these issues arise, and I will say to my officers, ``Be in
touch with the FBI to make sure that they are aware of what we
have just heard and are acting on it. Be in touch with the
Pentagon to make sure they have forces deployed along Border X
in the event we drive a terrorist over it. Be in touch with the
National Security Agency to make sure they have these phone
numbers that we have uncovered in some document collection that
we have encountered.''
So this is a very tactical, hands-on type of operation
every day.
Chairman Collins. It is information sharing, it sounds like
as well. Is this what you would envision the National
Counterterrorism Center doing in order to free up the NID to
focus on managing the Intelligence Community?
Mr. McLaughlin. I see it as a variation of that. I think
somewhat less tactical, more strategic, and less directive,
because I do direct CIA officers and stations to perform
certain duties. I would see the NCTC as being more of a
clearinghouse for data and the development of a checklist of
things that must be done, things that must be plugged together,
things that must be integrated, and then directing--directing
is probably the wrong word--asking people to focus on that and
get back to you. This will have to be determined in practice,
but that is my understanding of how this would work.
Chairman Collins. Director Mueller.
Mr. Mueller. I also have a meeting twice a day, 7:15 in the
morning and then 5 o'clock in the evening with
Counterterrorism, and sitting at the table are representatives
of Department of Homeland Security, the CIA, but it is an
effort for me to understand what we are doing in our
organization and give direction to make certain that we are
doing what is necessary to meet the counterterrorism mission.
But apart from what I do and what John does, there also is
twice a day, a CIVITS, it is called. It is a videoconference
chaired by Homeland Security adviser Fran Townsend or somebody
under her, with each of the component agencies on that
videoconference, looking to determine whether everything has
been done to meet a particular counterterrorism threat, and
that is the opportunity, and my understanding is it does take
place once a day and once on Saturdays, and it seems to me that
it is that planning, that bringing together of the agencies
that the National Counterterrorism Center will do that is now
being done out of the Homeland Security adviser's office. And
it is that type of daily interaction of the agencies that
assures that we are agile, that we are responding to the
immediate threats that there is coordination.
So I see the National Counterterrorism Center as having the
analytical capability, but also that coordinating function that
is now being coordinated out of the Homeland Security adviser's
office.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Lieberman.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Madam Chairman. I thought that
was a very good question and very helpful answers because there
has been some debate about whether the National
Counterterrorism Center should have an operational planning
role, and the fear expressed on the extreme is that somehow the
Director of the center or the NID would interfere with the
chain of command between the war fighters, the Secretary of
Defense, the President, or the FBI, yourself, and the Attorney
General. But there has to be a way to make this work without
doing that, and it sounds like you are doing it every day
anyway. In the Counterterrorism Center everybody is going to be
around the table analyzing what has been collected. There is a
natural way, of course, in which you are all going to say,
well, what are we going to do about it? And then you are going
to agree who should have what role. I want to go to another
question, but I thought your answers were very helpful.
I am going to assume for the moment that we are heading
toward creating a National Intelligence Director and that we
are going to avoid the pitfall that you, Director McLaughlin,
quite accurately state is probably the most dangerous thing we
can do here which is create a NID with no real authority. I
think today the meeting at the White House was a turning point
because the President did explicitly support a strong National
Intelligence Director with full authority not just to form but
to receive the appropriations for the full national foreign
intelligence program, which as you know better than I, is well
over half of what we spend on intelligence.
Now I want to ask the question about how we make the NID
effective, and that is, what is the bureaucracy under there? I
ask you both as individuals who have directed large
organizations, but also because your organizations will be now
in part or in whole under the NID. We have a few models. We
have the Commission model, the three deputies: Foreign,
domestic, and military. We have the Roberts model: Ccollection
analysis, science, and technology. Some have suggested we
should just give the Director the opportunity to create a
couple of deputies and let them decide what they want to do.
Others have said maybe the centers are so important, have one
deputy for the centers and then one deputy for what your
community management team does now, all the budget matters.
What counsel would you give us? This is a slate that is not
quite blank, but that we have to fill in fairly soon and we
want to do it most effectively, about how to organize under the
NID to make this work, assuming he has budget authority.
Mr. McLaughlin. It is always dangerous to design a line and
block chart sitting here at the table, but I will give you some
thoughts on it.
Senator Lieberman. And I will accept them as first thoughts
and I would welcome them.
Mr. McLaughlin. I think the first thing that a National
Intelligence Director has to ask him or herself is, ``How do I
get my job done?'' That may be the first, even before that,
``What is my job? If I am the Nation's principal intelligence
officer, what is my range of duties?'' Let us assume that they
are a mixture of substance and management.
You have to have troops and you have to have someone to
integrate all of these things for you because you are looking
at a very diverse community. One way to think about this would
be to have the CIA Director and the CIA report directly to the
National Intelligence Director. I do not think we have sorted
out who reports to whom in any conclusive way in any of the
legislation or the bills yet. It is not clear to me anyway.
Senator Lieberman. In one way the Commission decided this
or recommended, because as you remember, the CIA Director was
one of the deputies, double-hatted.
Mr. McLaughlin. Yes. I would do it a little differently. I
would have the National Intelligence Director regard the CIA as
the institution that can integrate things for him or her in the
sense that among the CIA's distinguishing characteristics is
its non-departmental nature. It is not attached to any
department that makes or implements policy, and therefore, it
is an institution that the National Intelligence Director could
turn to for the purpose of integrating both collection and
analysis. You have in the CIA a body of all source intelligence
analysts who are multidisciplinary, global in focus, and not
attached to any policy department. And the CIA Director could
make those assets available to the National Intelligence
Director.
In the overseas part of the CIA you have not just HUMINT
collection, but under the DCI's current practice, the Chief of
Station in various spots around the world is also an
integrator. The Chief of Station is the chief intelligence
officer for the United States in that country, and therefore,
coordinates the activities in that country of other
institutions that are stationed there from the Intelligence
Community. So the CIA could perform that integration function
for the National Intelligence Director.
I raise that because I do not know what the NGA, NSA, and
NRO would be in the reporting chain here, but they are
essentially collection agencies and agencies that devise
technology, and someone needs to integrate that as the CIA
currently does for the DCI.
So if you accepted that, then the next thing to figure out
would be what are the division of responsibilities between the
National Intelligence Director and the Director of the CIA? I
will stop there, but there are ways to think about that.
Senator Lieberman. I appreciate that answer and invite you
to think about it and give us any counsel you would pretty
soon.
Director Mueller, do you have a response?
Mr. Mueller. Yes.
Senator Lieberman. The Commission recommended the Executive
Assistant Director for Intelligence of the FBI might well be
double-hatted as the Deputy NID for Domestic Intelligence. I
assume that--because I have talked to you about it--you think
that is a bad idea.
Mr. Mueller. I do not agree with double-hatting. Again,
going back to chain of command and responsibilities, my
responsibility to assure that the dictates, directives of the
National Intelligence Director are carried out now, I would
delegate that to Maureen Baginski who would be a principal
relator to the National Intelligence Director, but I do not
believe in double hatting.
Senator Lieberman. If you were the NID what is the
structure you would want underneath you to make it work?
Mr. Mueller. I would have a deputy, and then I would have
as a council of the principal players in the National
Intelligence Community that would play a role as the users in
directing down through their organization the priorities, the
requirements that I as the National Intelligence Director with
the input of that counsel believe are appropriate and hold the
person on that council responsible for the execution of our
plan. I would have one deputy. In other words, when I am not
there, I would want one deputy who is responsible as opposed to
three vying with each other or four vying with each other for
prominence across the board.
There is one other point I would make, and that is I do
believe the National Intelligence Director should have some
independence from any of the underlying agencies. We are
incorporating for the first time really in the Intelligence
Community some aspect of domestic intelligence, and to have
some supervisory advisory role there apart from the Attorney
General, in my mind, requires an understanding of how we gather
intelligence, under what authorities, what use we can make of
it within the domestic United States, which is a different
background perhaps, a different area of expertise than one
would have in the development of intelligence within the United
States. And there has to be, in my mind, that independence at
the NID that is somewhat different than having the NID an
extension of the CIA.
Senator Lieberman. Very helpful. Thank you both.
Chairman Collins. Senator Dayton.
Senator Dayton. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Director McLaughlin, there is a book out now, ``Imperial
Hubris'' written by Anonymous, so I believe it is not anyone
very anonymous.
And, Madam Chairman, I wish that we could devote a hearing
to this and get other views on this, because I think this is
the crux of the dilemma that we are facing in this country in
terms of our policy.
He writes, ``As I complete this book, U.S., British and
other coalition forces are trying to govern apparently
ungovernable post-war states in Afghanistan and Iraq while
simultaneously fighting growing Islamist insurgencies in each,
a state of affairs our leaders call victory. In conducting
these activities and the conventional military campaigns
preceding them, U.S. forces and policies are completing the
radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden
has been trying to do with substantial but incomplete success
since the early 1990s. As a result I think it is fair to
conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden's
only indispensable ally. As usual, U.S. leaders are oblivious
to this fact and to the dire threat America faces from bin
Laden and have followed policies that are making the United
States incrementally less secure.''
Moving on, ``U.S. leaders act as naive and arrogant
cheerleaders for the universal applicability of western values
and feckless overseas military operations, omnipotently
entitled''--various names here. ``U.S. leaders boast of being
able to create democracy anywhere they choose, ignoring
history.''
I wonder if you would care to comment on that, and
particularly whether we are weakening or strengthening our
national security as a result of what we have done to date in
Iraq and our continuing operations there?
Mr. McLaughlin. Of course, the author's opinions are his
own and----
Senator Dayton. Absolutely. I am asking you for your
professional response as Director of the CIA.
Mr. McLaughlin. I will give you my personal opinion then.
Senator Dayton. Fine.
Mr. McLaughlin. It is instructive to me that bin Laden
carried out these attacks on the United States long before
there was any thought of going into Iraq, and carried them out
at a time when there was arguably progress in the Arab-Israeli
situation. So I do not see these as significant motivators for
the al Qaeda movement. They are things that they fall back on
as excuses, but in the case of Iraq, I think Iraq is a cause
for extremists but it is not the cause of extremism.
Senator Dayton. As I understand what he is saying here, I
guess the crux of my question would be, we are in Iraq, we have
done what we have done, but is our continuing presence there,
active military involvement there--we have heard now from one
of our colleagues, very well regarded, that we could be there
another 10 to 20 years. I think the point he is making is that
these actions on our part are weakening our national security
by continuing to increase the radical--his term is the
radicalization of the radical Arab world, which I do not think
is justified in its stance toward the United States, but he is
saying here we are unwittingly contributing to that
radicalization and to the increased number of those who would
take these kind of disastrous actions against us.
Mr. McLaughlin. A lot of things in intelligence fall under
the category of discoverable, other things knowable, and other
things unknowable. I think the question you have posed, I am
not trying to dodge it, but ultimately it is unknowable. In one
sense you could say that Iraq can become a cause for extremists
even though it is not the cause of extremism, and in the short
term you could see it as generating some of the problems that
the author talks about.
If you take a longer-term perspective and you imagine the
achievement of what the United States is seeking to achieve in
Iraq over a period of time, it would have the reverse effect I
believe. So I think this is a very fluid and dynamic thing, and
to kind of freeze frame it the way the author does, and to talk
about it in absolute terms I think is misleading.
Senator Dayton. Again, I would agree. As Yogi Berra says,
it is always hard to make predictions, especially about the
future. He does quote Ayman al Zawahri in late 2003. That would
be well after we are into the Iraqi operation. Quote: ``We
thank God for appeasing us with the dilemma in Iraq after
Afghanistan. The Americans are facing a delicate situation in
both countries. If they withdraw they will lose everything, and
if they stay they will continue to bleed to death.''
Would you concur that we are bleeding to death if we
continue to persist in Iraq for this period of 4 years, 10
years, or 20 years?
Mr. McLaughlin. Once again, I think it is just impossible
to say. This is a very tactical day-to-day situation, and it
is, of all the situations in the world, the closest that I can
see to what I would call a multi-dimensional chessboard. In
other words, if there is success on the political arena,
success on the economic arena, the security problem will
diminish. If there is not, the security problem will continue
to grow. And as we look at the political situation now, it is a
mixed picture. The recent convocation of a conference is a good
sign, selection of 100 people of varying background.
The next question will be, can they achieve their goal of
having an election for a constituent assembly in January? If
they do, that will be another milestone. If they do not, that
will be a bad thing. I think you just cannot talk about it in
absolutes. It is very fluid and it is very dependent on all of
these variables. I think it is one of those situations where
only time will tell.
Senator Dayton. Thank you for your response. Thank you,
Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator Dayton. Senator Levin.
Senator Levin. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
The two big reports that we have been looking at recently,
one is the 9/11 Commission Report, and the other one is the
report of the Senate Intelligence Committee. One has to do with
the intelligence failures before September 11 to a significant
extent. The other one is the intelligence failures prior to
Iraq. In none of the 500 pages of each report that I can find
is there any relationship drawn between any lack of power over
budget or personnel on the part of the CIA and those failures.
I will make that as a statement because it seems to me, unless
you know there is something in this report that I have not
seen, that is just a statement of fact. There is no connection
between what we are looking at, which is greater budget and
personnel power for a new intelligence director and the
problems to be corrected which were identified in those
reports. That does not mean we should not give greater power,
by the way, because I think there are some things we can do
more efficiently and effectively, so I am not opposed to giving
greater power. I think we ought to realize, however, this is
not the--this does not address the issues which were raised.
The issue raised in the 9/11 Commission Report essentially
was the lack of coordination, and the lack of sharing of
information, which TTIC has now done a lot to address, and
other efforts, including the Executive Order recently signed by
the President also addresses.
The issue though, which needs to be focused on heavily is
the question of the objectivity and the independence of the
intelligence which is received both by the Executive Branch and
by the Legislative Branch, because I think you both pointed
out, we are a consumer of those assessments. It is not just
that you folks, you particularly, Mr. McLaughlin, brief the
President. We rely on this before we vote on authorizations for
use of force and for other purposes, for budgeting purposes. We
have got to be able to rely on those assessments, and frankly,
we cannot. If anyone wants to know why we cannot rely on it,
read 500 pages of the Senate Intelligence Committee report as
to how far off assessment after assessment after assessment
were.
The part that I would like you to address though, Mr.
McLaughlin, is this. There were many occasions where the
underlying intelligence was different from the public
statements of the administration. One was presented to you.
That issue was raised with you by Senator Durbin earlier today,
and that had to do with the relationship between al Qaeda and
Saddam Hussein and Iraq. I want to just give two examples of
this. Your underlying assessment relative to this famous report
of a meeting in Prague, your classified assessment was that
there were great doubts that meeting took place. The 9/11
Commission found that there is no evidence that meeting took
place. You had an unsubstantiated report which you had doubts
about in the CIA in your classified document, and yet the
administration was repeatedly referring to that report of a
meeting as being strong possible evidence of a link between al
Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, constantly. As a matter of fact, in
one of the statements of the administration, it was stated to
be that it is likely that meeting occurred, at the same time
your underlying intelligence was saying you had real doubts
about it.
Why is it that the CIA then in its public statements
relative to that meeting did not reflect what your underlying
intelligence said, which is that you had doubts about that
meeting? What you said publicly was that, we cannot prove that
the meeting took place. That is what you said publicly. But
what you did not add was something which is critically
important, which is that you had doubts about the meeting, that
it ever took place, and as a matter of fact, you have concluded
there is no credible evidence that the meeting took place. Why
that public difference between what your underlying
intelligence said and between what you were saying publicly
about that meeting?
And then there is one other issue I would like to get to,
which relates to the same point.
Mr. McLaughlin. I know this is a serious concern of yours,
Senator, you have raised it a number of times. I will try and
address it. First, our understanding of that meeting evolved
over time, as most intelligence does. The skepticism came in as
we continued to look at it and develop intelligence on it. I
cannot give you a timeline as to when that skepticism became
more pronounced, but it did.
Senator Levin. Could you do that for the record?
Mr. McLaughlin. Sure.
Senator Levin. Thank you.
Mr. McLaughlin. Also I do not have in mind precisely what
we were saying about it publicly, but I know that we were not
at any point publicly endorsing the idea that that meeting was
somehow conclusive.
So what we have done is be very forthright, and I would say
very objective in what we have said in our intelligence
reporting about that meeting to you and to the President. The
9/11 Commission had access to that and rendered a judgment
about the accuracy of our work.
I think what you are raising is a difficult issue because
it implies that every time a public figure of some importance
makes a statement that is at variance with our intelligence, I
ought to stand up and say ``foul.''
Senator Levin. You do not have to say ``foul.'' You can say
it accurately when you speak publicly.
Mr. McLaughlin. That would be a very difficult job for us
because it happens in every arena. I heard Members of Congress
on television this weekend say things that I thought were
highly inaccurate about our work and about the conclusions of
our work.
Senator Levin. I am only asking you to state things
accurately when you speak, that you give us the full picture
when you speak.
Mr. McLaughlin. If every time I heard a public official say
something that I disagreed with based on my knowledge of
classified information, if I stood up and said, ``Excuse me, I
would like to correct the record,'' I would be doing that quite
a bit.
Senator Levin. You missed my point, but I will try it
again. My point is that when you do speak publicly that you
give an accurate reflection of the underlying intelligence. We
have to rely on that. The public relies on that. And when you
leave out----
Mr. McLaughlin. I agree with that.
Senator Levin. OK. But you left it out on that key meeting
relative to Prague, which was used over and over again by the
administration as being a principal source of their conclusion
about whatever links exist between al Qaeda. But let me go on
to the next one.
Mr. McLaughlin. I would have to go back and parse the words
on what we said publicly, but I would just assure you there is
no intention on our part to speak inaccurately in public about
our intelligence.
Senator Levin. Or to leave out critical----
Mr. McLaughlin. Or to leave out critical parts.
Senator Levin. Now on the other one, if I may. This has to
do with your judgment that there was, as to the relationship
between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, you reached a conclusion,
``you'' being the CIA, that as a matter of fact it was highly
unlikely that Saddam Hussein would share a weapon of mass
destruction with a terrorist group such as al Qaeda. That was
your conclusion, that only if attacked, only in retribution,
would that action possibly take place. That was your
conclusion, that it would be, in your words, classified words
at the time, an extreme step for Saddam Hussein to share a
weapon of mass destruction with al Qaeda, at the same time the
administration was saying that he was very prone any day, any
moment to give a weapon of mass destruction to al Qaeda.
So you had a significant difference between your conclusion
and the conclusion and the statements which were made by the
administration. Did you not have some obligation, at least when
speaking publicly about the difference between the
administration's statements and your underlying statements,
your classified statements, did you not have an obligation when
speaking publicly to accurately reflect that difference?
Mr. McLaughlin. Well, we do not often speak publicly about
classified information, so automatically there is a limitation
on what we are going to end up saying publicly. But I do recall
an exchange that you and I had in the Senate Intelligence
Committee in which you asked me similar questions, and I
answered them quite clearly in a classified setting, and you
requested that I declassify those answers, and I did, and they
were answers that generally were along the lines of what we
have just discussed in terms of the propensity of Saddam
Hussein to use weapons, and that was unclassified after I
agreed to your request.
Senator Levin. And you said then, when you responded to the
request from the Intelligence Committee, on the eve of a vote
on the authorization amendment, Mr. McLaughlin, you then gave
us the declassified answer, that it would be an extreme step
for him to hand one a weapon of mass destruction; is that
correct?
Mr. McLaughlin. I do not recall.
Senator Levin. Assume for the moment, that is what you said
publicly. But then what the Director said was exactly what you
say you do not do. He characterized the intelligence. He spoke
up and said: There is no difference. There is no inconsistency
between the CIA views that you had just declassified and those
of the administration. He did exactly what you say you do not
do, which is to speak publicly about comments of public
officials relative to this kind of information, Director Tenet,
and this was front page critical news. This goes to the
question of whether or not Saddam Hussein attacked us on
September 11, because if he did, everybody wanted to go after
him. And so what the CIA Director did after you, at our
request, declassified that critical statement that only if
attacked would he share a weapon of mass destruction with al
Qaeda, it would be an extreme step for him to do so, then the
Director initiated a call to the media, saying that there is no
inconsistency between those two views, those of the CIA which
you just declassified, and those of the administration which
were consistently that he is just prone to hand a weapon of
mass destruction to al Qaeda.
My question to you is--and it is something which should I
hope trouble you, I hope trouble someone there, because we have
got to rely on objective independent assessments. And before we
hand more power to a Director to do that, we, it seems to me,
are duty bound to be comfortable that we are going to be
getting straightforward, unvarnished, independent, objective
statements when statements are made publicly.
Can you explain that statement that there was no
inconsistency in your views which were so different from the
administration?
Mr. McLaughlin. I would have to go back and revisit that
whole incident. What I would tell you to frame it though is
that there is no revealed wisdom on questions like that. People
have different views. I stated a view.
Senator Levin. CIA had a view, Mr. McLaughlin. Your view
was it would be an extreme step for him to hand a weapon of
mass destruction to al Qaeda unless he was attacked. That was
the view of the CIA.
Mr. McLaughlin. That was my personal assessment based on
your question to me, and----
Senator Levin. That was not the CIA view?
Mr. McLaughlin. I did not take a poll. I gave you my
personal view, and I guess what I am saying is I would have to
go back and revisit the particulars of the incident, but I
think it is a question on which reasonable minds can differ.
Senator Levin. That was in the NIE. It was not a personal
assessment. You declassified the NIE on that issue for us, and
then the Director undermined it by saying there was not
inconsistency, and that is where the lack of trust comes in. So
it was in the NIE. It was not your personal assessment.
Mr. McLaughlin. I was reflecting what was in the NIE. That
is for sure, but I was responding to you in a very, as I
recall, a very tight exchange in which you were asking me very
particular questions, and I gave you my view of what the
intelligence had to say.
Senator Levin. The Chairman has been very generous. Thank
you.
Chairman Collins. I want to promise our witnesses that this
hearing truly is almost over. Before I adjourn it, I want to
clean up one issue about budget authority over which I think
some confusion has been created. I see that Larry Kindsvater is
sitting right behind the Director, and at the risk of putting
him on the spot, I would like to ask him to come forward and
answer this question very briefly.
Just to be clear, if Congress wants to appropriate funds
directly to the National Intelligence Director, would we have
to change the law?
Mr. Kindsvater. As most things regarding appropriations
law, I probably should talk to my attorney first, but my
understanding is if you want to specifically appropriate
funding to the NID, yes, you have to change the law. But again,
I think before we go too far on that, we ought to contact our
appropriation lawyers and make sure that is perfectly correct.
Chairman Collins. OK.
Mr. Kindsvater. I believe it is.
Chairman Collins. There has been some confusion on that
point, whether an Executive Order can do it, or whether there
should be a law changed.
Mr. Kindsvater. The only thing I could add is we would have
to go back and check if there is a law today that requires that
appropriations for NSA, for example, go to a defense-wide
appropriation account. Again, I need to contact one of my
attorneys to review the law to find out if that is correct or
not.
Chairman Collins. OK. Thank you.
Senator Levin. Two requests of the Chairman, if I may?
Chairman Collins. Yes.
Senator Levin. One is that we have heard a lot about a
Scowcroft Report recommending some reforms----
Chairman Collins. We have requested it.
Senator Levin. Thank you. I apologize. I interrupted you.
Chairman Collins. No, go ahead.
Senator Levin. And the other issue has to do with--this
goes to the oversight issue. A lot of emphasis has been made
about the importance of congressional oversight as a way of
assuring that there be objective and independent intelligence.
I want to just be blunt. I talked to Stan about this earlier,
and I talked to Mr. McLaughlin about it as well. There is a lot
of material which is owed to the Armed Services Committee by
the CIA, a lot of questions which have been asked which have
not been answered. And it is like pulling teeth, and we have to
change that. If we are going to rely on oversight, we have to
get a much more responsive Intelligence Community. I have a
list which I will give to Mr. McLaughlin of the items which
have not been provided despite longstanding--this is months--
requests for information.
I only bother this Committee with this issue because of the
importance of oversight and the need that Congress has,
particularly when these are Committee requests. This was not an
individual Senator's request. These were Committee requests. So
I would just like to make that point part of the record. I will
make this list of items be part of the record. We got a few
more answers today, but frankly, they dribble in, and we have
got to have a much greater responsiveness. Mr. McLaughlin, you
and I have talked about that issue as well, and we will provide
the list to Stan.\1\
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\1\ The list of items CIA has not provided to Senator Levin
requests (SASC) appears in the Appendix on page 85.
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Chairman Collins. We will include that in the record.
Since many of the requests really have been done through
the Armed Services Committee, I would encourage you to bring it
up to Senator Warner. Senator Lieberman.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Madam Chairman. I cannot resist,
and I will do this briefly.
I have followed this last dialogue between Senator Levin
and Director McLaughlin, and perhaps I will begin it by making
this larger point to put an exclamation point after something
you said. We are focused on intelligence and organizing our
intelligence well. We are focused on the best collection we
can, and then the best analysis and breaking down the
stovepipe, sharing, centralizing authority and accountability.
But in the end a lot of this is not mathematics of two plus two
equals four. It is looking at data and reaching conclusions to
the best of our ability, and different people can reach
different conclusions. And perhaps I will enter this
specifically by saying with respect that I disagree with the
conclusion, based on my own analysis--and I have spent a lot of
time at this--of the intelligence, that Saddam Hussein was not
likely to share weapons of mass destruction with terrorist
groups. I disagree with the conclusion that he did not have an
ongoing relationship with al Qaeda. The stuff that I have read
and seen says to me that it went on from the early 1990's, and
in fact after we defeated him in the Gulf War, he convened a
series of conferences in Baghdad of Islamist terrorists. And
the dialogue went on.
The 9/11 Commission Report, though makes it clear that
there is not sufficient evidence to find any involvement by
Saddam Hussein in supporting the attacks against us of
September 11. That is the failure to have evidence to reach a
conclusion. They document quite a series of connections between
the Iraqi Government under Saddam and al Qaeda, including for
the first time I saw it, what they say was an invitation, an
offer of asylum by Iraq to Osama bin Laden, which I believe was
in 1998 or 1999. So I am happy to disagree with your
conclusion.
But to make that larger point, and just to say one last
word, it gets at something. Senator Levin is quite
appropriately and justifiably focused on seeing whether we can
create a system that not only coordinates intelligence and
makes it effective to the decisionmakers, both Executive Branch
and Legislative, but that depoliticizes it, and that is a goal
I share. But in trying to achieve that goal I think we all have
to understand that if you reached a conclusion or the CIA did,
different from me, or let us say the same as whoever happened
to be President, maybe that did not happen because your arm was
twisted for political reasons, maybe it did. But there is at
least the same chance that it did not, that maybe that was your
best conclusion based on what you saw.
Mr. McLaughlin. I assume the exclamation point you are
trying to place, Senator Lieberman, is after my statement that
there is no revealed wisdom on these issues.
Senator Lieberman. That is the exclamation point,
absolutely right. Final word is thank you to both of you. You
are really extraordinary public servants, and whether one
disagrees or agrees with whatever conclusion you reach on a
given occasion, I think just listening to you during this
hearing, you give me, and I hope insofar as others in the
country have watched, just a lot of confidence about who is in
charge at this point, and bottom line, I am glad you are on our
side.
Mr. Mueller. Thank you.
Mr. McLaughlin. Thank you, sir.
Chairman Collins. I want to echo those thanks, and we very
much appreciate your testimony. We look forward to working very
closely with both of you as we draft the reform legislation.
Thank you for your testimony. The hearing record will remain
open for 5 days.
This hearing is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:55 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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