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American Morning

Interview with Saxby Chambliss, Jane Harman

Aired September 10, 2002 - 07:31   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: In the skies above more than a dozen American cities, the military has resumed combat air patrols. It's only one piece of heightened security in preparation for tomorrow's anniversary. Banks, power plants, public buildings around the country are all on increased alert; subway systems, as well. And the State Department has issued a worldwide caution for Americans overseas.
Well, for the past year, one question that has not gone away, why didn't American intelligence agencies see the attacks coming?

In hindsight, there were many signs. But the intelligence community has never been able to connect the dots. And a year later, are we any better off in terms of being able to thwart potential attacks? Has U.S. intelligence gathering and sharing improved to prevent another attack?

From Washington, two members of the House Intelligence Committee, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Jane Harman of California.

Good to see both of you.

Welcome.

REP. SAXBY CHAMBLISS (R-GA), INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Good morning.

REP. JANE HARMAN (D-CA), INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Nice to be back on the show.

ZAHN: Thank you.

So, Representative Harman, I'm going to start with you this morning. What are some of your concerns as we move into ceremonies marking the one year anniversary tomorrow?

HARMAN: Well, my primary concern is about the families who still just one year later have these raw wounds. And my heart goes out to them as a mother of four. I was fortunate not to lose any immediate members of my family, but the American family lost a lot. So that's my first concern.

My second concern is that in honor of those they lost that we fix the problem. We're working on better systems at the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, all the agencies that need to do better. Our first responders are much better connected to each other. The systems are better. Even in New York, they're doing better than they were able to do last year, and that was pretty heroic. But we're not good enough and we don't have the whole country wired in the way it needs to be and we don't have enough stockpiles of vaccines. And there's a dangerous world out there. So I'm concerned about it.

ZAHN: Representative Chambliss, Representative Harman just made it clear although things are better connected now, obviously she does see some deficiencies. Even FBI Director Mueller is now saying it's going to be two years before he can get his department's computers up and operating the way he wants them to. How much does that concern you?

CHAMBLISS: Well, certainly it is a concern, but it's not all that surprising because, you know, that's a pretty complex agency. It's made up of agents all over the country. The 56 field offices and any number of offices in and around just Washington, D.C. So to get all those folks connected the way they need to be connected is going to take some time.

The thing that's particularly disturbing about it is, though, that we spent an awful lot of money over the last several years on computers for the FBI thinking that they would be upgraded, and now we find out that they weren't able to communicate internally. That part of it is particularly disturbing. But now at least we know we're moving forward, and that's a significant improvement.

ZAHN: Do you still consider it disgraceful, though, that things haven't moved further along or hasn't that happened?

CHAMBLISS: I don't know that I would use the term disgraceful, but certainly it's not the way that the American taxpayer expects the government to operate. We had a massive intelligence failure on September the 11th. There's no other way to describe it. And this contributed to that. This type of thing contributed to that. And we've simply got to do a better job in the intelligence community and with other agencies outside the intelligence community who play some role in this war on terrorism of communicating with each other, sharing information with each other. And we are not nearly to the point to where we need to be.

ZAHN: And it's...

HARMAN: I would just add, Paula, that we need leadership and we need to leverage the cutting edge private sector technologies that are already out there that find credit card fraud, for example. This kind of data mining is what we need across-the-board and vertically between the federal government and our first responders on terrorism. We're at war. This is a battlefield. We need the best technologies and the best people fighting this war and we'll win the war.

ZAHN: So when you say we need leadership, Representative Harman, are you suggesting that the current heads of the FBI and the CIA have failed us?

HARMAN: No, I'm not suggesting that. I'm suggesting that, for example, Tom Ridge, whom I admire in the White House, who is working on homeland security, he's never had the authority that he needs. We need a new Department of Homeland Security, which I strongly support. The Senate needs to pass a bill. The president needs to sign it. We need to compromise on the issues in dispute and we need the best possible person to head up that agency, as soon as possible.

I don't want to wait two years for Bob Mueller's computers. I think there has to be a much faster fix than that. We can do it at war. We've got to do it at war at home.

ZAHN: Representative Chambliss, "Newsweek" reported this week that two of the alleged 9/11 hijackers actually lived at one point with a man who was an FBI informant. And for whatever the reason, he never notified the FBI about the identity of these guys until after the attacks.

What do you make of that report?

CHAMBLISS: Well, I can't really comment on the substance of the report, although I think it's fair to say that there are going to be a number of situations that evolve and are sort of discovered after the fact that might have led to some information being found out prior to September 11. This is one of those situations. And, you know, as we have worked hard on this, we've studied hard on this, we've looked back from a hindsight perspective, we still can't say today that knowing everything that we know today in hindsight, that we could have prevented September 11 from happening.

But there are a number of situations out there that we failed to pick up on and that we failed to discover information within the intelligence community, share information within the intel community. We failed in our visa system to monitor some people who were coming in here. There are just a number of situations just like this that certainly contributed to September 11.

ZAHN: Ten seconds left.

Representative Harman, a final thought on what Americans face, particularly with this heightened state of alert we're in tomorrow as we mark this one anniversary of, the first anniversary of September 11?

HARMAN: Well, we face a very sad and a very long day. I hope that people will reflect on the strength of our country, the unity that's come out of September 11 and the opportunity we have to use our patriotism productively, to build the best possible country we can in a very, very dangerous and difficult world.

ZAHN: I don't think you'd get any argument out there against that.

Representative Harman, Representative Chambliss, thank you both for your time.

CHAMBLISS: Thank you.

ZAHN: We know how busy both of you are. HARMAN: Thank you, Paula.

ZAHN: Appreciate your dropping by.

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