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9/11 Panel Urges U.S. Government Take All Steps in Report
Aired July 30, 2004 - 11:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: We've been listening to President Bush. He is in Springfield, Missouri this morning kicking off what they're calling the "Heart and Soul of America" tour. This is just about 12 hours after his opponent, John Kerry, gave his acceptance speech at the Democratic national convention.
You heard President Bush pick up on some themes that we heard about last night, including tax cuts, and national security, small businesses, dependence on foreign oil, the choice for the American voter over the next 97 days, deciding which candidate he or she believes will best lead America into the next four years.
Much more from the campaign trail straight ahead. Right now, let's take a look at what is happening now in the news.
The first congressional hearing on the 9/11 report is set to begin at this hour. A live picture from Capitol Hill as the Senate governmental affairs committee delves into the report's recommendations. They call for overhauling U.S. intelligence gathering.
The chairman and in vice chairman of the 9/11 panel will testify. We will have live coverage of that hearing.
Two people are dead after explosions rocked the capital of Uzbekistan this morning. Officials say a blast at the entrance of the Israeli embassy killed two Uzbek security guards. The explosion may have been triggered by a suicide bomber. U.S. officials say another explosion went off in the vicinity of the American embassy.
There are new projections on this year's federal budget deficit, which could reach a record $450 billion. The White House is expected to release its latest forecast next hour. The numbers are likely to heat up the political battle over President Bush's handling of the economy.
The U.N. security council votes today on a resolution dealing with the crisis in Sudan. The word sanctions was dropped from the final draft. The resolution still threatens economic action against the Sudanese government. It calls on the government to disarm Arab militias in the Dar Fur region.
Keeping you informed, CNN, the most trusted name in news.
We are just a minute past 11:00 a.m. on the East Coast. And good morning to those of you on the West Coast where it's just after 8:00 a.m. From CNN Center in Atlanta, good morning. I'm Daryn Kagan.
We will take you live this hour to Capitol Hill for a Senate hearing on the 9/11 commission's findings and recommendations. The chairman and the vice chairman of that panel are on hand this morning to urge a fast-track approach to intelligence reforms.
Congress is getting to work on the 9/11 report. It is just eight days after it was issued. In Washington terms, that is practically a speed record.
Let's begin our coverage with congressional correspondent Ed Henry on Capitol Hill.
Ed, good morning, once again.
ED HENRY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning again, Daryn.
That's right. The Senate governmental affairs committee will be gaveling into session any moment now, as you mentioned, a very rare session in August. They want to act swiftly. There's obviously a lot of pressure from this commission. It was a bipartisan commission that had a unanimous report that has given it a lot of the momentum for reform
We are going to hear specifically two proposals today, two of the proposals from the commission. They will focus in on the creation of a national director of intelligence and also the creation of a new counter, national counterterrorism center.
But it's very clear from Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, the co-chairs who will be testifying, that they're not going to be satisfied with just those two changes. They actually have 41 proposals in the final report that they want. And they're making it very clear that they are not going to be satisfied with just two changes. The commission is putting a lot of heat on Congress. And it's an election year. Obviously, that's adding even more pressure.
CNN has learned that in order to deal with some of the pressure, in order to get this done quickly but also do a good job and not rush it through, this Senate panel, in fact, is now talking to the 9/11 commission about hiring some of their staffers, since they will be losing their jobs at the end of August, actually bring them on to the Senate committee, help them push through these reforms since they have so much knowledge about it. As well, they're going to bring in detailees from the FBI and CIA to try to sort through all of this.
Another aspect of this is that the actual commission is going to increase its pressure next week. CNN has also learned that starting on Tuesday, individual 9/11 commission members are going to start traveling the country giving speeches to try to drum up support for their proposals.
And finally, I want to point out that the chairman of this committee in the Senate, Susan Collins of Maine, is known for being very independent. I spoke to her yesterday. And she basically said in the interview that she is going to act swiftly, but she is not going to act in haste. They are not going to be pressured into doing anything too fast -- Daryn?
KAGAN: Well as we standby, it looks like we're getting very close to Kean and Hamilton beginning their testimony, what about the question about how long this commission should stay in place, the idea it should be in place 18 months, the suggestion also that possibly they're going to set up their own private foundation to keep going?
HENRY: That's right. The official government funding for this commission will expire at the end of August. Senator John Kerry took the initiative this week, tried to come out and seize the moment there and say that he wants an extension of 18 months.
A lot of people are panning that here, in particular, chairwoman Collins told me yesterday she does not support that. A lot of people have been saying that they think rather than having more government money go, instead, what 9/11 commission members are saying is that they may seek those private funds that you mentioned, keep a very small office here in Washington.
But I think they're sensitive to the idea that they don't want to be seen as a major, bureaucratic operation sucking in a lot of government money. They want to use private money instead.
And also, I'm hearing from 9/11 commission members that I've interviewed that they want to volunteer their own time and do this travel and have a report card on what Congress is doing -- Daryn?
KAGAN: And yet again, as we are waiting for this testimony to begin. And you can see the commissioner and co-chair on the other side of the questioning here.
Why, Ed, after Congress saying that they really were too busy to look at this, why do you need so many different committees having their own hearings?
HENRY: You're right, initially in the House, for example, Speaker Dennis Hastert said he wanted a "go slow" approach. He didn't want to rush into anything. And now just this week Speaker Hastert has sort of reversed himself. And he said instead he's going to have at least six House committees holding at least 15 hearings in August.
So, you're right. All of a sudden there's a lot of speed. I think that has a lot to do with the election year pressure. It has a lot to do with the pressure from the commission itself. They are not going quietly into the night.
Normally, blue ribbon panels take a report, they hand it off to Congress, and then they just disappear, and Congress may or may not do anything about it. This commission has made it clear that because of the impact of 9/11, they're going to follow up and they are not going to go away.
I also want to point out that Republican aides close to the speaker stressed that he also wants to make sure the country is safe. It's not just about election year pressures. He feels that since there have been these warnings from government officials that we are likely, that there is a possibility of more terrorist attacks before the election, they say that with those threats out there, they have to act. They have to follow up on this report. And they do not want to go home without acting on it -- Daryn?
KAGAN: All right, Ed, we'll have you standby. It looks like there's a bunch of opening statements taking place on Capitol Hill. We can skip that part as the Senate governmental affairs committee goes about that business. We will go back as the testimony from former Governor Kean and from Lee Hamilton, as that begins on Capitol Hill.
Meanwhile, I want to go ahead and welcome back Jim Walsh from the Belfer Center at Harvard University, the Kennedy school of government, to talk about the potential changes that could take place here in the U.S. in fighting terrorism.
We talked about one of those ideas in the last hour. Jim, good morning, once again. I'd like to ask you about this idea of setting up a counterterrorism committee or department that could be within the White House. Again, good and bad sides to this idea.
JIM WALSH, BELFER CTR., HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Good morning, Daryn. There are both pluses and downsides.
The plus is, obviously, that if you have a center of coordination that is actually in the White House, hopefully you increase the possibility that important intelligence is getting passed to the president and that there's communication between the president and the CIA director.
You'll remember that, according to the 9/11 commission report, some people in the government, it was their understanding, that President Clinton wanted bin Laden dead. But there were other parts of the government who said that they didn't get that message.
And the idea would be that if you had something that was centrally located, everyone would be on the same page.
The downside of doing that, however, is, as we mentioned in the last hour, the possibility for group think. There's also been some concern that when you have someone who is too close to the president, whether it be in a cabinet level position or something similar at the White House, that politics and the needs of the White House may influence or somehow constrain the work of people who are doing intelligence analysis.
So those are some of the advantages and disadvantages of those structural changes.
KAGAN: And there's also people who get nervous when you start talking about covert operations run from inside the White House. And looking back at things like Iran-Contra which turned in to a huge scandal. WALSH: Absolutely. There are -- we have lots of evidence from years gone by, decades gone by, the sorts of problems you have when things are too cozy. And so, as I said, there's this tension, a tension between having better coordination but it not being so centralized that it can be dominated by one person, that is to say, the president; or so centralized that there isn't competition and exchange and battle of ideas, which is what we didn't have with respect to the Iraqi intelligence.
But let me add quickly, Daryn, that those are two of the centerpiece recommendations that are in the report, and that's what they'll be talking about today.
But the 9/11 commission report has over 40 recommendations on everything from weapons of mass destruction, an issue close to my heart of how we should be protecting nuclear materials, keeping them out of the hands of terrorists, to things like setting up scholarships and libraries and engaging the Muslim world.
So there's lots that can be done, even if we move more slowly on some of these other structural changes.
KAGAN: I wanted to ask you about an idea that I just bounced off of Ed Henry on Capitol Hill, and this is the idea of some of the members of the commission talking about that their work is not done, now they need to turn into a watchdog organization if they can get the funding from the government, going private and becoming a private foundation. Might that, if they're taking money from somebody, blur their objectivity?
WALSH: Yes -- well, there are lots of folks who take private money from foundations, for example, and are not tainted by that. And so, it's certainly possible that could work.
I personally don't have any problem with them extending their mandate for another 18 months. I don't think the American public is going to think of this as a growing bureaucracy.
But I think the core issue is, whether they're extended or not, whether it is private or public money, the most important thing is that there is accountability, that a year from now we have a report card or an audit or something that tells us, have we made progress.
Because in the absence of that, it will be easy for things to slow down. And we'll focus on presidential election. We'll forget about this. You need to know that a year from now and every year afterward, someone is going to be watching and seeing how much progress are you making and that will help propel some of these proposals forward.
KAGAN: All right, Jim, we'll have you standby. Let's bring out Ed Henry back who is on Capitol Hill, as we watch as the Senate governmental affairs committee get underway.
The housekeeping items are taking place right now, and the welcoming. And once the testimony begins, we're going to listen in a lot more closely.
Ed, you were talking about all these different hearings taking place, not just on the Senate side, but on the House side. One compliment that was paid to the 9/11 commission, it was a bipartisan commission that was able to work rather well together. We are, though, starting to see partisan politics begin to work and some sniping taking place on Capitol Hill.
HENRY: That's right. Just yesterday the House intelligence committee, which is going to start having hearings themselves next week, had a little spat between the chairman, Porter Goss, the Republican chairman, and the Democratic ranking member, Jane Harmon.
The bottom line is there was an exchange of letters. Jane Harman sent a letter saying that she believes that the way the House hearings in the intelligence committee are structured, they are really not going to directly get at reform, they're too broad and they really will not get to the major point. And she feels it will be a stumbling block.
That really met a sharp rebuke from Mr. Goss and his staff. And it just was a sign, basically, that this may not go as smoothly as some people hope. Obviously, once it hits Capitol Hill, it is an election year. You would be naive to think that partisanship will not play a role.
And I think obviously that will be part of the salesmanship that Kean and Hamilton will try to start today in the Beltway. But then, as I mentioned earlier, they are going to start going outside the Beltway, some of the commission members, next week to also sell it directly to the American people.
Go around the Congress, go directly to the American people around the country, outside the Beltway and say, we need to enact all 41 proposals, not just two or three.
KAGAN: OK. And as somebody who works inside the Beltway yet is very good at talking to us outside the Beltway, Ed, explain to us why it has to work this way.
It seems like we watched months and months of the 9/11 commission holding hearings and now for something to take place and get done, we have to see the commission members -- now they're on the other side of the mic.
Why -- I think there's a frustration on the part of the American people. They just want to see something done instead of a bunch of hearings.
HENRY: There may be a little bit of redundancy, there's no question about that because you do see hearing after hearing. And were going to see that in the following weeks as the House and Senate, multiple committees, end up really going over the same ground.
But obviously, there are serious constitutional issues here. And I think that you can't undervalue that as well, the fact that the Congress, as an actual branch of the government -- whereas this commission was just appointed by the government and not actually a part of, you know, one of the actual branches of government -- the Congress needs to take a serious look at it.
And I think that's what you are seeing members in both parties saying is that they need, they can't just take what the commission said and adopt it totally. They need to go through it with a fine- tooth comb. They have to be careful about not going to quickly. And I think while there will be some redundancy, clearly Congress has to play a role.
This is going to be the most massive reshaping of the intelligence system in the United States. And it's not like just tinkering with any old government agency. There are lives at risk, obviously. And since we're dealing with such a serious issue like terrorism, they want to make sure they get it right.
KAGAN: All right, Ed Henry on Capitol Hill, Jim Walsh from Harvard University, thank you to both of you. We're going to keep you both standing by.
As you can see, a little slow to get going there at the Senate governmental affairs committee on Capitol Hill.
As soon as the testimony begins, we will go back live. Right now looks like a good opportunity for us to fit in a quick break.
We're back after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: We are keeping an eye on the Senate governmental affairs committee. They are looking into the 9/11 commission report before them. About to testify are the co-chairs of that commission, Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton. When that testimony begins, we will go back live to Capitol Hill.
Meanwhile, let's use the opportunity to get in some more news here, including a possible development in the Sandy Berger investigation. Berger was the national security adviser under President Clinton, and he admitted that he took classified documents from the National Archives.
Well, officials now tell the "Wall Street Journal" that no original materials are missing from those files. And according to the paper, nothing Berger reviewed had been withheld from the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAGAN: And with that, John Kerry rallied the party faithful and reached out to undecided Americans. He accepted the Democratic presidential nomination.
In a rousing speech last night, Kerry took direct aim at President Bush over the war in Iraq. He told the cheering delegates, "I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into a war," from the senator.
From the convention to the campaign trail, Kerry and running mate John Edwards set off this morning on a 3,500 mile campaign road trip. Our national correspondent Bob Franken looks at the road ahead for the Kerry-Edwards ticket.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: John Kerry and John Edwards were not about to rest on their laurels from the Democratic convention, whatever laurels they were.
Here they were this morning, bleary eyed but ready to begin a grueling tour, taking their political show on the road.
KERRY: My pledge to you that I made last night, John and I will keep. We are going to restore trust and credibility to the White House. I will begin, as he will, by telling the truth all across this country and asking Americans to hang on to that truth.
FRANKEN (voice-over): They'll cover 3,500 miles, 21 states, the first stop Pennsylvania, one of the major battleground states.
They left behind Massachusetts, definitely not a battleground, hometown of John Kerry.
KERRY: One if by land, to if by sea. And the message was right, come to think of it, they had better intelligence back then than we do today about what's going on.
FRANKEN (on camera): Candidate Kerry called on candidate Bush to run a polite campaign. There are questions, did he really mean that? Would the Bush campaign comply? Most people believe that the answers to both those questions would be, no.
Bob Franken, CNN, Boston.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: Political pundits and analysts are weighing in on John Kerry's acceptance speech. Did he hit the mark and accomplish what he needed to? A former Bush speechwriter and a former Kerry speechwriter share their opposing views earlier on CNN's "AMERICAN MORNING."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDRE CHERNEY, FMR. KERRY SPEECHWRITER: I think what he did was put his policy positions, put his agenda, put his vision for the country in a way that connected to his own life story.
He talked about his service in Vietnam, why he did that, what that meant to him and what that meant for the way he would look at going to war today.
He talked about his career as a prosecutor and what that meant to the way he would approach issues like crime. He talked about his career in the Senate where he bucked his party on a lot of issues like fiscal responsibility and what that meant for what he would do for the economy.
He connected those things perfectly, I thought.
DAVID FROMM, FORMER BUSH SPEECHWRITER: That's the problem with this speech and this convention. This is very much about John Kerry's psychic needs, his party's psychic needs. But for those people out there who don't think that we're living through the great -- a replay of the great depression and don't think that George Bush is a moron and a liar.
This was very satisfying for Kerry, I'm sure, but I don't know that it did what it had to do, which was to make this rather awkward person an attractive person.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAGAN: Some observers are calling this Kerry's best speech ever, while others say it will be criticized for the lack of new policy initiatives.
Copying the headlines out of Iraq today -- a surprise visit to Baghdad by Secretary of State Colin Powell. He acknowledged that the recent escalation of kidnappings could have a chilling effect on other nation's willingness to help rebuild the country.
Kidnappers have demanded that a Kuwaiti trucking company leave Iraq by 7:00 p.m. tonight or it says it will kill one of the seven truck drivers now held captive. Three of those drivers are from India, three from Kenya, one is from Egypt.
Meanwhile, militants attack Marines and Iraqi troops on a joint patrol in the volatile city of Fallujah. At least 13 deaths were reported, no casualties, though, among the Marines.
CNN has learned new details about the conditions of Saddam Hussein's incarceration and his overall condition. Our producers in Baghdad sat down with Iraq's human rights minister to talk about the former Iraqi leader's health.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BAKHTIAR AMIN, IRAQI HUMAN RIGHTS MINISTER: He has certain health problems, but generally his health condition is good. He has suffered from chronic prostate infection. He got antibiotics for that and he seemed to be OK.
They did a chest, CAT scan for him, and a back MRI, and some blood tests and they didn't show any cancer. He refused a biopsy in order to be able to determine whether he has really cancer or not.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAGAN: That was Dr. Amin, Iraq's human rights minister. He recently visited the facility where Saddam Hussein is being held and spent some time with the former Iraqi leader.
Let's go live now to Capitol Hill, the Senate governmental affairs committee. And here is the co-chair of the 9/11 commission, Thomas Kean, reading his opening statement.
THOMAS KEAN, 9/11 COMMISSION CHAIRMAN: The United States government must take all the steps it can to disrupt and defeat the terrorists and protect against and prepare for terrorist attacks.
Our recommendations to address the transnational danger of Islamist terrorism rest on three policies: to attack terrorists and their organizations, to prevent the continued growth of Islamic terrorism, and to protect and prepare for terrorist attacks.
The long-term success of our efforts depend on the use of all elements of national power. We must use diplomacy, intelligence, covert action, law enforcement, economic policy, foreign aid, public diplomacy and, of course, homeland defense.
If we favor one tool while neglecting others, we are still going to leave ourselves vulnerable, and we will weaken our overall national effort.
Our recommendations about what to do encompass many things: foreign policy, public diplomacy, border security, transportation security, protection of civil liberties and setting priorities for national preparedness.
We also make, of course, several recommendations on how to do it, how to organize the United States government to address the new national security threat of transnational terrorism.
We understand and appreciate the topic of today's hearing, governmental organization.
We will address in detail some of our key recommendations in this area.
But I would be wrong if I didn't pause for just a moment to make clear that changes in government organization are vastly important but are still only part of what we need to do. If we do not carry out all important recommendations we have outlined in foreign policy, in border security, in transportation security and other areas, reorganizing government alone is not enough to make us safe and more secure.
I know there's a fascination in Washington sometimes, I guess, with bureaucratic solutions: rearranging the wiring diagrams, creating new organizations. And we do recommend some important institutional changes. We will articulate and defend those proposals. But, of course, reorganizing government institutions is only part of the agenda that's before us all. Some of the saddest aspects of the 9/11 story are the outstanding efforts of so many individual officials straining, often without success, against the boundaries of the possible. Good people can overcome bad structures; they shouldn't have to.
We have the resources, and we have the people. We need to combine them more effectively to achieve that unity of effort that we are all seeking.
This morning we will address several major recommendations on how the executive branch, we believe, can simply work better.
They have to unify strategic intelligence and operational planning against Islamic terrorists across the foreign-domestic divide with a national counterterrorism center.
They must unify the intelligence community with a new national intelligence director.
They must unify the many participants in the counterterrorism effort and their knowledge in a network-based information-sharing system that transcends traditional national boundaries.
And we must unify our national effort by strengthening the ability of the FBI and homeland defenders to carry out their counterterrorism mission.
Now, we'll address each of these in turn.
The national counterterrorism center: Our report details many unexploited opportunities that we could have used, really, to disrupt that 9/11 plot: the failures to watch list, the failures to share information, the failures, as so many have put it, to connect the dots.
The story of Hazmi and Mihdhar in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000 is a telling example. See, there we caught a glimpse of the future hijackers, but we lost their trail in Bangkok.
Domestic officials were not informed until August 2001 that Hazmi and Mihdhar had entered the United States and were living very openly. They started then to pursue some late leads, but on September 11th, time simply ran out.
We could give you any number of other examples, and will if you would like, where we find no one was firmly in charge of managing the case. No one was able to draw relevant intelligence from anywhere within the government, assign responsibilities across the agencies -- and that's foreign or domestic -- track progress and quickly bring these things forward so they could be resolved.
In other words, as we've said, no one was the quarterback. No one was calling the play. No one was assigning roles so the government agencies could execute as a team and not as individuals.
We believe the solution to this problem rests with the creation of a new institution, the national counterterrorism center.
We believe, as Secretary Rumsfeld told us, that each of the agencies needs to give up some of their existing turf and authority in exchange for a stronger, faster and more efficient government-wide joint effort.
We therefore propose a civilian-led unified joint command for counterterrorism. It would combine intelligence -- what the military, I gather, call a J2 function -- with operational planning -- which the military calls the J3 function. We put them together in one agency, keeping overall policy direction where it belongs: in the hands of the president and in the hands of the National Security Council.
We consciously and deliberately draw on the military model, the Goldwater-Nichols model. We can and should learn from successful reforms in the military that were done two decades ago.
We want all the government agencies that play a role in counterterrorism to work together, to have one unified command. We want them to work together as one team in one fight against transnational terrorism. The national counterterrorism center would build on the existing Terrorist Threat Integration Center and replace it and the other terrorism fusion centers within the government with one unified center.
The NCTC would have tasking authority on counterterrorism for all collection and analysis across the government, across the foreign and domestic divide. It would be in charge of warning.
The NCTC would coordinate anti-terrorist operations across the government, but individual agencies would continue to execute operations within their competencies.
The NCTC would be in the Executive Office of the President. Its chief would have control over the personnel assigned to the center and must have the right to concur in the choices of personnel to lead the operating entities of the departments and agencies focused on counterterrorism: specifically, the top counterterrorism officials at the CIA, FBI, Defense and State Departments. The NCTC chief would report to the national intelligence director.
Now, we appreciate, and we talked about this on the commission, that this is a new and difficult idea for those of us schooled in the government that we knew in the 20th century.
We won the Second World War and we won the Cold War because the great departments of government, the State Department, the Defense Department, the CIA and the FBI, were organized against clear, nation- state adversaries.
Today, we face a transnational threat. That threat respects no boundaries and makes no distinction between foreign and domestic. The enemy is resourceful, it's flexible and it's disciplined.
We need a system of management that is as flexible and resourceful as the enemy we face. We need a system that can bring all the resources of government to bear on the problem and that can change and respond as the threat changes.
We need a model of government that meets the needs of the 21st century. And we believe that the national counterterrorist center will meet that test.
I will now introduce my vice chairman, really my co-chairman, Lee Hamilton who has not only been a wonderful colleague, but has taught this country boy from New Jersey a tremendous amount about that whole subject.
LEE HAMILTON, VICE CHAIRMAN, 9/11 COMMISSION: Thank you very much, Chairman Kean.
I want to say the success, whatever it may be, of the commission is very largely attribute able to the remarkable leadership of Tom Kean. And it's been a high privilege for me to have the opportunity to serve with him.
Madam Chairman, Senator Lieberman, the distinguished members of the committee, let me also join the chairman in expressing my appreciation to the Senate leadership, to you Madam Chairman, to Senator Lieberman, for your initiative in starting these hearings so quickly and responding to our recommendations. We are deeply grateful to you for your leadership. It's been quite remarkable.
As part of the 9/11 story we spent a lot of time looking at the performance of the intelligence community. We identified at least six major problems confronting that community.
First, there are major structural barriers to the performance of joint intelligence work. National intelligence is still organized around the collection disciplines -- HUMINT, signals and all the rest of it -- of the home agencies; it is not organized around the joint mission.
The importance of integrated all-source analysis cannot be overstated. It is not possible to connect the dots without it.
Second, there is a lack of common standards and practices across the foreign-domestic divide for the collection, processing, reporting, analyzing and sharing of intelligence.
Third, there is a divided management of national intelligence capabilities between the director of the CIA and the Defense Department.
Fourth, the director of central intelligence has a very weak capacity to set priorities and move resources.
Fifth, the director of central intelligence now has three jobs: running the CIA, running the intelligence community and serving as the president's chief intelligence adviser. No person can perform all three responsibilities.
And finally, the intelligence community is too complex and too secret. Its 15 agencies are govern by arcane rules, and all of its money and nearly all of its work is shielded from public scrutiny. That makes sharing intelligence exceedingly difficult.
We come to the recommendation of a national intelligence director not because we want to create some new czar or a new layer of bureaucracy to sit atop the existing bureaucracy. We come to this recommendation because we see it as the only way to effect what we believe is necessary: a complete transformation of the way the intelligence community works.
You have a chart before you of our proposed organization. It is on page 413 of the book, the report. It's on the posterboard.
Unlike most charts, what is most important on this chart is not the top of the chart, it is the bottom. We believe that the intelligence community needs a wholesale, Goldwater-Nichols reform of the way it does business, as the chairman indicated.
The collection agency should have the same mission as the armed services do. They should organize, train and equip their personnel. These intelligence professionals in turn should be assigned to unify joint commands or, in the language of the intelligence community, joint mission centers.
We have already talked about a national counterterrorism center.
A joint mission center on WMD and proliferation, for example, would bring together the imagery, signals, and HUMINT specialists, both collectors and analysts, who would work together jointly on behalf of the mission. All the resources of the community would be brought to bear on the key intelligence issues as defined by the national intelligence director.
So when we look at the chart, from the bottom up, we conclude you cannot get the necessary transformation of the intelligence community, that is smashing the stovepipes and creating joint mission centers, unless you have a national intelligence director.
He needs authority over the intelligence community. He needs authority over personnel, information technology, security. Appropriations for intelligence should come to him. And he should have the authority to reprogram the funds within and between intelligence agencies.
The national intelligence director would create and then oversee the joint work done by the intelligence centers. He'd be in the executive office of the president. He'd have a small staff, a staff that is really an augmented staff of the present community management staff of the CIA. He would not be like other czars that we have created in this town over a period of years who really have not had meaningful authority.
The national intelligence director would have real authority. He will control national intelligence program purse strings. He will have hire and fire authority over agency heads in the intelligence community. He will control the IT. He will have real troops as the national counterterrorism center and all of the joint mission centers would report to him. We have concluded that the intelligence community is not going to get its job done unless somebody is really in charge. That is just not the case now. And we paid the price. Information was not shared. Agencies did not work together. We have to and can do better as a government. To underscore again, we support a national intelligence director not for the purpose of naming another chief to sit on top of the other chiefs; we support the creation of this position because it's the only way to catalyze transformation in the intelligence community and to manage a transformed community afterward.
What we learned in 9/11 is that the U.S. government has access to a vast amount of information. But the government has weak systems for processing and using the information it possesses, especially across agency lines.
Agencies live by the need-to-know rule and refuse to share. Each agency has its own computer system and its own security practices, outgrowths of the Cold War.
In the 9/11 story, we came to understand the huge cost of failing to share information across agency boundaries. Yet, in the current practices of government, security practices encourage over- classification. Risk is minimized by slapping on classification labels. There are no punishments for not sharing information.
We believe that information procedures across the government need to be changed to provide incentives for sharing. We believe the president needs to lead a government-wide effort to bring the major national security institutions into the information revolution.
The president needs to lead the way and coordinate the resolution of the legal policy and technical issues across agency lines so that information can be shared.
The model is a decentralized network. Agencies would still have their own databases. But those databases would be searchable across agency lines. In this system, secrets are protected through the design of the network that controls access to the data, not access to the network.
The point here is that no single agency can do this alone. One agency can modernize its stovepipe, but cannot design a system to replace it. Only presidential leadership can develop the necessary government-wide concepts and standards.
The other major reform we want to recommend to you this morning concerns the FBI. We do not support the creation of a new domestic intelligence collection agency, the so-called MI-5.
We believe creating such an agency is too risky to civil liberties, would take too long, cost too much money and sever the important link between the criminal and counterterrorism investigative work of the FBI.
We believe Director Mueller is undertaking important reforms.
We think he's moving in the right direction.
What is important, at this time, is strengthening and institutionalizing the FBI reforms. And that is what we are recommending.
What the FBI needs is a specialized and integrated national security workforce consisting of agents, analysts, linguists and surveillance specialists. These specialists need to be recruited, trained, rewarded and retained to ensure the development of institutional culture with deep expertise in intelligence and national security.
We believe our other proposed reforms -- the creation of a national counterterrorist center and the creation of a national intelligence director -- will strengthen and institutionalize the FBI's commitment to counterterrorism intelligence efforts.
The NCTC and the NID would have powerful control over the leadership and the budgets of the counterterrorism division and the office of intelligence respectively. They would be powerful forces pressing the FBI to continue with the reform that Director Mueller has instituted.
Taken together, then, we believe these reforms within the structure of the executive branch, together with reforms in Congress and the other recommendations referred to by the chairman, can make a significant difference in making America safer and more secure.
We believe that reforms of the executive branch structures are vitally important, and we're immensely pleased that this committee is focusing on those reforms today as a way of making America safer. We are especially pleased that your committee is taking the lead with regard to this.
And with these words, we close our testimony, and we would be pleased to respond to questions.
SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R-ME), CHMN., GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS CMTE.: Thank you, both, for excellent statements.
We're now going to begin a 10-minute round of questions for each member. I would note that the only lights are right here, and they're a little bit hard to see, but we'll try to help make sure that everybody gets the full 10 minutes.
Congressman Hamilton, I'd like to start my questioning with you because of the role that you played as chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as the many other hats that you've worn.
Some observers suggest that the overall effect of the intelligence reorganization that the 9/11 commission has recommended would be to diminish the influence of the CIA, to considerably increase the importance of the Pentagon and to give the White House more direct control over covert operations. Former CIA Director Robert Gates, for example, has said that the recommendation to place the new national director of intelligence within the executive office of the president troubles him because that official would oversee the intelligence operations both inside the United States and abroad.
He cites the problems caused when the White House directly ordered covert activities, noting Oliver North's role in the Iran- Contra scandal, as well as the Watergate scandal, where the CIA helped those who broke into Daniel Ellsberg's office.
He's gone even further than that and said that the commission's recommendation in this regard reflects a lack of historic perspective.
I'd like to give you the opportunity to respond to those specific comments which, as you know, are shared by some others within the intelligence community.
HAMILTON: Madam Chairman, we think that counterterrorism is the paramount national security concern of this nation today. And we think it will be that for as long as any of us are active, for a long time. And we think it really is a unique kind of a challenge because it cuts across so many areas of our government and our nation's life.
We found that the principal problem leading to 9/11 was that the agencies simply did not share information. And so we have set up this structure to encourage that sharing.
Now, why do we put the national counterterrorism center in the executive office of the president? That's one of the questions you raised. You raised a lot of difficult questions.
We do it for two principal reasons. One is that terrorism, as I've indicated, is our most important national security priority for this president or any president. And to be very candid about it, it is inconceivable to me that a president of the United States would want his highest national security priority handled somewhere else in the government that is not under his direct control.
Now, keep in mind that counterterrorism policy involves so many different things. I mean, it's diplomacy, it's military action, it's covert action, it's law enforcement, it's public diplomacy, it's tracing money flows in the Treasury Department.
And we have to organize ourselves in such a way that we can integrate and balance all of these tools of American foreign policy to deal with the threat of counterterrorism. That kind of thing can only be coordinated and done in the White House under the president's direct control.
Where else would you put it? Do you want to put all of this authority in the CIA? Do you want to put it all in the Defense Department? When you're dealing with all of these other aspects of counterterrorism policy, I don't think so.
Now, the second reason we put it in the executive office building is that the national counterterrorism center, it's not just an intelligence center, but it's a center for operations. And it is going to be directing agencies, many agencies of the government, working together on counterterrorism.
And those activities are going to involve the CIA, they're going to involve the FBI, they're going to involve the Defense Department, they are going to involve the Department of State and other areas of the government as well.
You cannot coordinate those activities from a single department. You have to do it in the White House, I believe.
Now, all of us have a different idea of how this government works best. But we concluded that we had to put this authority in the White House just because it's such a cross-cutting kind of an issue.
Is there a danger to that? Oh, sure. That's the Iran-Contra problem. I had a little experience with the Iran-Contra problem. So I'm alert to anything where you concentrate power. We do have to be careful about that.
Now, one answer to that is another part of other recommendation is congressional oversight. It has to be robust. And so everything kind of fits together here.
And, incidentally, among other things, I think it's a small thing, perhaps, it hadn't been too much noted in our report, we do recommend the establishment of a board in the executive branch to keep an eye on government intrusion, if you would.
But there's no magic solution here with regard to the concentration of power. But I think we do have some real checks and balances in it.
And, incidentally, Mr. Gates was an outstanding CIA director. Anything he has to say, even if he's critical of us, deserves a lot of attention, because he's a very knowledgeable person.
COLLINS: He is, indeed, which is why I wanted to give you an opportunity to respond to his concern.
Governor, should the national intelligence director have a term as the FBI director does to help insulate that individual from political pressure?
Or should the director serve at the pleasure of the president? Because after all, that individual would serve as the president's principal adviser on intelligence matters. What are your thoughts on that?
KEAN: Well, we had left it -- and we talked about this some in commission -- we left it really as "serve at the pleasure of the president, " and I think for a number of reasons.
First of all, if the served term you would, as you've just said, perhaps be having somebody who is the president's chief adviser on intelligence, somebody the last president -- and may not agree with that president -- had picked. And that didn't make a lot of sense to us.
It seemed to us that as long as you had the lever of confirmation by the Senate and the fact that this individual would report to the Congress and testify before the Congress, that it was probably better to let him serve at the pleasure of the president.
COLLINS: I support the concept of the national intelligence director. And I agree with the committee's recommendation that that would be a much needed improvement over the current system. I was surprised, however, that the commission did not recommend that the director be a member of the Cabinet or at least Cabinet-level.
This individual's going to have to deal with the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, the secretary of homeland security. Wouldn't it be helpful in dealing with cabinet members for that individual to have the stature of a Cabinet member?
Governor Kean?
KEAN: We basically decided and, again, after a lot of discussion that it should not be Cabinet-level. And the reason was that this is an operational position. It's not a policy position. This individual would be carrying out policy and carrying out directions and coordinating intelligence and moving policy.
We believe that, as you move through the various government agencies, that if this is the president's chief adviser in this area of counterterrorism, which is probably the most important priority that the next president will have for some time, that his authority as he moves among various government departments will be pretty clear. It will come directly from the president of the United States. But because it was not policy, it was operational, we did not make him a member of the Cabinet.
HAMILTON: If I may add to that...
COLLINS: Please do.
HAMILTON: ... the governor is absolutely right, of course. One feature in our thinking here is, it just takes a long time to set up a department.
If you look at Department of Energy -- some of us were around when that was set up a long time ago, 20, 25 years ago -- it's still having problems in organizing and functioning as a department.
The Department of Homeland Security is a major reorganization of government just getting under way, and it has excellent leadership, but it has growing pains.
So we were reluctant to say, "OK, let's come along and set up another whole department of government."
Intelligence is a support function, and it is a support function for the president. It's a support function for each of the key departments of government, all of them. And we did not think you should have a department of government performing a support function. And that's, as Tom has indicated, the principal reasons.
COLLINS: Thank you.
Senator Lieberman?
SEN. JOE LIEBERMAN (D-CT), RANKING MEMBER, GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS CMTE.: Thanks, Madam Chairman. Let me join you in thanking the members of the committee first for changing their schedules and coming back so quickly.
And a measure of the sense of urgency in the Congress is that we also have a non-member on the committee, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, who cares enough about this to be here with us today. And I thank him for attending the hearing. Gentlemen, in your report, you document more completely and, I'd say, more unnervingly than I've seen anywhere before, the lost opportunities to have done something that might well have prevented September 11th from occurring: the failure of the agency to share information, the failure to connect the dots, et cetera.
We're coming up to the third anniversary of September 11th. A lot has been done by Congress, by the executive branch, to try to fix some of that. But clearly in making the recommendations you have, you believe much more substantive reform is necessary.
To document the urgency of your recommendations, I wonder if you could answer a few questions that go to the status quo today, post- September 11th. For instance, maybe you have anecdotes or examples you could cite of continuing failure to share information or continuing inability to, without a quarterback, as you say, to coordinate the resources of the federal government in the battle against terrorism.
KEAN: I can say that, as we proceeded with our work, we ran into numerous occasions where we found out information that one agency had, and sometimes highly classified information, but nevertheless something that should have been shared with other agencies in this fight against Islamic terrorism. And it wasn't. It still wasn't. As of the last example of that, I think was perhaps three weeks or a month ago that we were all amazed to find something that, again, was boxed into one silo and wasn't being shared across the larger community.
LIEBERMAN: Congressman Hamilton, do you have any examples of the continuing problems today that should propel us to respond to your recommendations?
HAMILTON: Well, Senator, that's a very hard thing to tie down. I think you're absolutely right when you say that a lot has been done. I don't have any doubt about the sincerity of the officials, their willingness, their desire to make substantial improvements. And if you talk to any of these officials, they'll give you a list of 10 or 15 points that they have done.
Now, have they actually been implemented all the way? That's where it gets tough to check. But we all pick up the paper. We read about the governor of Kentucky flying in here. That was a problem. I saw a report the other day, I'm sure it's available to you, about the mistakes we continue to make in screening airplane passengers.
We all know about the cargo problem coming in.
So we find a desire to move ahead, but the whole government just is not acting with the urgency we think is required across the board, whether it's screening for cargo or checking airplane passengers or checking the air space or whatever. Lots of good things have been done, but much, much more needs to be done. And what seems to us to be lacking is that real sense of urgency.
LIEBERMAN: Congressman Hamilton, let me go back and quote in part from you. I quoted earlier in my opening statement: "A critical theme that emerged throughout inquiry was the difficulty of answering the question: 'Who was in charge?' Too often the answer is no one."
Who is in charge today?
HAMILTON: The answer you get -- and we asked that question in multiple forms -- is always the president. But of course the president has enormous responsibilities, and it's not a very satisfactory answer.
So I think you then get the second answer is: Well, the top officials, the FBI director, the director of CIA, secretary of defense and others have good working relationships and they meet together frequently. And I think they do and I think there is some genuine sharing back and forth that is an improvement over the pre-9/11 period. But I think you have to institutionalize that.
I do not find today anyone really in charge.
You can't possibly argue today that the CIA director is in charge of the intelligence community. That just doesn't stand up.
LIEBERMAN: Let me ask a more targeted question -- and I thank you for that. And the answer both of you have given argues for the urgency with which we should approach our response to your recommendations.
Clearly one of the main goals of our current counterterrorism policy is to find and capture or kill Osama bin Laden. Is it clear to you that anyone is in charge of that search in our government today?
HAMILTON: Well, my impression is that the military is in charge, the Defense Department. We have I think it's somewhere between 10,000 or 15,000 -- I'm not sure the exact number -- military forces in Afghanistan. They are not engaged in securing the country. That's a NATO responsibility which has some problems with it.
But our troops there are in the southern party of the country on the border now. And I believe the search is, my impression is really, very much under control of the military now.
A lot of intelligence assets are in place to try to locate Osama bin Laden and his team. I do not have a feeling that -- we're not critical of this at all. We did not get into that in great detail, but that's my sense of it.
LIEBERMAN: Governor, do you want to add anything to that?
KEAN: In a sense, what's going on now with Osama bin Laden, went beyond our mandate. I mean, we had to set some limit to the time of our research and our work. And I have the same information, really, that Lee Hamilton just gave you, but I don't have anything further.
LIEBERMAN: So I don't want to continue too much on this point, but the military, to the best of your knowledge, is in charge for the search of Bin laden. Hopefully, presumably, they're cooperating with the intelligence agencies and others.
But in the reform that you would recommend it would be clear who is in charge. The national intelligence director would be in charge in marshaling all of the resources of the various agencies to pursue and capture or kill or kill Bin laden.
Let me ask you a very different kind of question about our mission on this committee. I take it to be the charge from Senator Frist and Senator Daschle that we're to consider and act legislatively on any of your recommendations that deal with the executive branch of government and would be benefited by legislation.
In listening to your statements when the report was issued, I concluded that you felt that the two top priorities were the creation of a national intelligence director and a national counterterrorism center.
I want to ask you, and I think our goal here is to prioritize and just go through as many of these recommendations as possible and adopt them as quickly as we can: What would you two list as the other urgent recommendations that should be priorities of ours after the national intelligence director and the national counterterrorism center?
KEAN: Well, one that may not be in the -- the very difficult ones that are not in the purview, possibly, of your committee involve the Congress and ways to improve oversight. They're very, very important.
Most of our recommendations don't require a lot of money, frankly, to implement. One that does is border screening: to move ahead a little faster with biometric identification, ways in which we can secure our borders, national standards for driver's licenses and means of identification, things that would make us safer in terms of people who are moving around this country and without clear forms of identification, or get into this country without proper means of doing so.
LIEBERMAN: Is that something, governor, that you were talking about legislative appropriations or would we be considering that a priority to authorize by statute, to give the executive branch more authority than they have now to set up the kind of screening system that the commission has proposed? KEAN: I'm not sure whether it would take -- what it would take. I'm not an expert on how much of this is authorization and how much you can empower the president to do, but I think it would certainly take appropriations. Remember, that's the one part of our report that really is going to take some money.
HAMILTON: It's not an easy question to answer: How do you implement these recommendations? I'm very pleased that you have focused on the two big ones. They clearly are the two big ones. The third one, the reform of the Congress on oversight, we think is right up there very close to those two.
From that point on, I think many recommendations kind of merge in my mind. Some of them could be handled, like the border security problems, largely with an infusion of money. The big cost in our recommendations is really border security and not the organizational change that we've been talking about thus far. I think a lot of things can be done by executive order. Now, there's always a question whether it's better to do it by statute.
LIEBERMAN: Right.
HAMILTON: And usually, given my background, you'd expect me to say that it's better to have a statute in back of it. But I read in the paper that the president is thinking about some actions. And I'm quite sure he will move on in some areas by executive order.
LIEBERMAN: My time's up, but just very briefly, I believe I also heard you mention, Lee, the FBI changes as a priority.
HAMILTON: They're important. The information sharing across agencies...
LIEBERMAN: Right.
HAMILTON: ... very important, really has to be done by the president. I don't think that can be done by the Congress. It's setting common standards across the executive branch. And the FBI, I do not think, requires -- I don't believe it does -- legislative action. I think it can continue to be done by the director.
The president may want to weigh in there with an executive order. I don't know. But I think that could be done by the executive.
KEAN: But the FBI recommendations do, at least in our mind, really call for very strong congressional oversight. We applaud what the director is doing, Director Mueller. He is moving in exactly the right direction.
But we have a tremendous fear, after looking very hard at the FBI, that when he and his top two or three people may move on, that a lot of the FBI would like to move back to just the way they were. They'd like to go back, if you like, to breaking down doors again. And they did that very well over a number of years, brought a lot of people to justice. But we're asking them to have this other function now, of finding and disrupting plots against the United States of America. And we want to make sure that the people who are in that line of work have the same recognition within the FBI, have the same chances for advancement, have the same chances to assume eventual leadership in the organization and are not downgraded.
And we worry that if there's not executive action and strong congressional oversight, that the FBI, after this leadership departs, could start moving back in the other direction again.
HAMILTON: We do not have strong views about how you implement. I really think that's your job, more than ours, and the executive branch. We defer to you as to the best way to implement these, and we did not try to spell out the implementation.
LIEBERMAN: That's very helpful to us. Thank you very much.
I think I can speak for the chairman and say that we're very honored that the Senate leadership has given us responsibility for the executive branch...
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR, "NEWS FROM CNN": Senator Joe Lieberman, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee asking questions of the to co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission.
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DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: We've been listening to President Bush. He is in Springfield, Missouri this morning kicking off what they're calling the "Heart and Soul of America" tour. This is just about 12 hours after his opponent, John Kerry, gave his acceptance speech at the Democratic national convention.
You heard President Bush pick up on some themes that we heard about last night, including tax cuts, and national security, small businesses, dependence on foreign oil, the choice for the American voter over the next 97 days, deciding which candidate he or she believes will best lead America into the next four years.
Much more from the campaign trail straight ahead. Right now, let's take a look at what is happening now in the news.
The first congressional hearing on the 9/11 report is set to begin at this hour. A live picture from Capitol Hill as the Senate governmental affairs committee delves into the report's recommendations. They call for overhauling U.S. intelligence gathering.
The chairman and in vice chairman of the 9/11 panel will testify. We will have live coverage of that hearing.
Two people are dead after explosions rocked the capital of Uzbekistan this morning. Officials say a blast at the entrance of the Israeli embassy killed two Uzbek security guards. The explosion may have been triggered by a suicide bomber. U.S. officials say another explosion went off in the vicinity of the American embassy.
There are new projections on this year's federal budget deficit, which could reach a record $450 billion. The White House is expected to release its latest forecast next hour. The numbers are likely to heat up the political battle over President Bush's handling of the economy.
The U.N. security council votes today on a resolution dealing with the crisis in Sudan. The word sanctions was dropped from the final draft. The resolution still threatens economic action against the Sudanese government. It calls on the government to disarm Arab militias in the Dar Fur region.
Keeping you informed, CNN, the most trusted name in news.
We are just a minute past 11:00 a.m. on the East Coast. And good morning to those of you on the West Coast where it's just after 8:00 a.m. From CNN Center in Atlanta, good morning. I'm Daryn Kagan.
We will take you live this hour to Capitol Hill for a Senate hearing on the 9/11 commission's findings and recommendations. The chairman and the vice chairman of that panel are on hand this morning to urge a fast-track approach to intelligence reforms.
Congress is getting to work on the 9/11 report. It is just eight days after it was issued. In Washington terms, that is practically a speed record.
Let's begin our coverage with congressional correspondent Ed Henry on Capitol Hill.
Ed, good morning, once again.
ED HENRY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning again, Daryn.
That's right. The Senate governmental affairs committee will be gaveling into session any moment now, as you mentioned, a very rare session in August. They want to act swiftly. There's obviously a lot of pressure from this commission. It was a bipartisan commission that had a unanimous report that has given it a lot of the momentum for reform
We are going to hear specifically two proposals today, two of the proposals from the commission. They will focus in on the creation of a national director of intelligence and also the creation of a new counter, national counterterrorism center.
But it's very clear from Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, the co-chairs who will be testifying, that they're not going to be satisfied with just those two changes. They actually have 41 proposals in the final report that they want. And they're making it very clear that they are not going to be satisfied with just two changes. The commission is putting a lot of heat on Congress. And it's an election year. Obviously, that's adding even more pressure.
CNN has learned that in order to deal with some of the pressure, in order to get this done quickly but also do a good job and not rush it through, this Senate panel, in fact, is now talking to the 9/11 commission about hiring some of their staffers, since they will be losing their jobs at the end of August, actually bring them on to the Senate committee, help them push through these reforms since they have so much knowledge about it. As well, they're going to bring in detailees from the FBI and CIA to try to sort through all of this.
Another aspect of this is that the actual commission is going to increase its pressure next week. CNN has also learned that starting on Tuesday, individual 9/11 commission members are going to start traveling the country giving speeches to try to drum up support for their proposals.
And finally, I want to point out that the chairman of this committee in the Senate, Susan Collins of Maine, is known for being very independent. I spoke to her yesterday. And she basically said in the interview that she is going to act swiftly, but she is not going to act in haste. They are not going to be pressured into doing anything too fast -- Daryn?
KAGAN: Well as we standby, it looks like we're getting very close to Kean and Hamilton beginning their testimony, what about the question about how long this commission should stay in place, the idea it should be in place 18 months, the suggestion also that possibly they're going to set up their own private foundation to keep going?
HENRY: That's right. The official government funding for this commission will expire at the end of August. Senator John Kerry took the initiative this week, tried to come out and seize the moment there and say that he wants an extension of 18 months.
A lot of people are panning that here, in particular, chairwoman Collins told me yesterday she does not support that. A lot of people have been saying that they think rather than having more government money go, instead, what 9/11 commission members are saying is that they may seek those private funds that you mentioned, keep a very small office here in Washington.
But I think they're sensitive to the idea that they don't want to be seen as a major, bureaucratic operation sucking in a lot of government money. They want to use private money instead.
And also, I'm hearing from 9/11 commission members that I've interviewed that they want to volunteer their own time and do this travel and have a report card on what Congress is doing -- Daryn?
KAGAN: And yet again, as we are waiting for this testimony to begin. And you can see the commissioner and co-chair on the other side of the questioning here.
Why, Ed, after Congress saying that they really were too busy to look at this, why do you need so many different committees having their own hearings?
HENRY: You're right, initially in the House, for example, Speaker Dennis Hastert said he wanted a "go slow" approach. He didn't want to rush into anything. And now just this week Speaker Hastert has sort of reversed himself. And he said instead he's going to have at least six House committees holding at least 15 hearings in August.
So, you're right. All of a sudden there's a lot of speed. I think that has a lot to do with the election year pressure. It has a lot to do with the pressure from the commission itself. They are not going quietly into the night.
Normally, blue ribbon panels take a report, they hand it off to Congress, and then they just disappear, and Congress may or may not do anything about it. This commission has made it clear that because of the impact of 9/11, they're going to follow up and they are not going to go away.
I also want to point out that Republican aides close to the speaker stressed that he also wants to make sure the country is safe. It's not just about election year pressures. He feels that since there have been these warnings from government officials that we are likely, that there is a possibility of more terrorist attacks before the election, they say that with those threats out there, they have to act. They have to follow up on this report. And they do not want to go home without acting on it -- Daryn?
KAGAN: All right, Ed, we'll have you standby. It looks like there's a bunch of opening statements taking place on Capitol Hill. We can skip that part as the Senate governmental affairs committee goes about that business. We will go back as the testimony from former Governor Kean and from Lee Hamilton, as that begins on Capitol Hill.
Meanwhile, I want to go ahead and welcome back Jim Walsh from the Belfer Center at Harvard University, the Kennedy school of government, to talk about the potential changes that could take place here in the U.S. in fighting terrorism.
We talked about one of those ideas in the last hour. Jim, good morning, once again. I'd like to ask you about this idea of setting up a counterterrorism committee or department that could be within the White House. Again, good and bad sides to this idea.
JIM WALSH, BELFER CTR., HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Good morning, Daryn. There are both pluses and downsides.
The plus is, obviously, that if you have a center of coordination that is actually in the White House, hopefully you increase the possibility that important intelligence is getting passed to the president and that there's communication between the president and the CIA director.
You'll remember that, according to the 9/11 commission report, some people in the government, it was their understanding, that President Clinton wanted bin Laden dead. But there were other parts of the government who said that they didn't get that message.
And the idea would be that if you had something that was centrally located, everyone would be on the same page.
The downside of doing that, however, is, as we mentioned in the last hour, the possibility for group think. There's also been some concern that when you have someone who is too close to the president, whether it be in a cabinet level position or something similar at the White House, that politics and the needs of the White House may influence or somehow constrain the work of people who are doing intelligence analysis.
So those are some of the advantages and disadvantages of those structural changes.
KAGAN: And there's also people who get nervous when you start talking about covert operations run from inside the White House. And looking back at things like Iran-Contra which turned in to a huge scandal. WALSH: Absolutely. There are -- we have lots of evidence from years gone by, decades gone by, the sorts of problems you have when things are too cozy. And so, as I said, there's this tension, a tension between having better coordination but it not being so centralized that it can be dominated by one person, that is to say, the president; or so centralized that there isn't competition and exchange and battle of ideas, which is what we didn't have with respect to the Iraqi intelligence.
But let me add quickly, Daryn, that those are two of the centerpiece recommendations that are in the report, and that's what they'll be talking about today.
But the 9/11 commission report has over 40 recommendations on everything from weapons of mass destruction, an issue close to my heart of how we should be protecting nuclear materials, keeping them out of the hands of terrorists, to things like setting up scholarships and libraries and engaging the Muslim world.
So there's lots that can be done, even if we move more slowly on some of these other structural changes.
KAGAN: I wanted to ask you about an idea that I just bounced off of Ed Henry on Capitol Hill, and this is the idea of some of the members of the commission talking about that their work is not done, now they need to turn into a watchdog organization if they can get the funding from the government, going private and becoming a private foundation. Might that, if they're taking money from somebody, blur their objectivity?
WALSH: Yes -- well, there are lots of folks who take private money from foundations, for example, and are not tainted by that. And so, it's certainly possible that could work.
I personally don't have any problem with them extending their mandate for another 18 months. I don't think the American public is going to think of this as a growing bureaucracy.
But I think the core issue is, whether they're extended or not, whether it is private or public money, the most important thing is that there is accountability, that a year from now we have a report card or an audit or something that tells us, have we made progress.
Because in the absence of that, it will be easy for things to slow down. And we'll focus on presidential election. We'll forget about this. You need to know that a year from now and every year afterward, someone is going to be watching and seeing how much progress are you making and that will help propel some of these proposals forward.
KAGAN: All right, Jim, we'll have you standby. Let's bring out Ed Henry back who is on Capitol Hill, as we watch as the Senate governmental affairs committee get underway.
The housekeeping items are taking place right now, and the welcoming. And once the testimony begins, we're going to listen in a lot more closely.
Ed, you were talking about all these different hearings taking place, not just on the Senate side, but on the House side. One compliment that was paid to the 9/11 commission, it was a bipartisan commission that was able to work rather well together. We are, though, starting to see partisan politics begin to work and some sniping taking place on Capitol Hill.
HENRY: That's right. Just yesterday the House intelligence committee, which is going to start having hearings themselves next week, had a little spat between the chairman, Porter Goss, the Republican chairman, and the Democratic ranking member, Jane Harmon.
The bottom line is there was an exchange of letters. Jane Harman sent a letter saying that she believes that the way the House hearings in the intelligence committee are structured, they are really not going to directly get at reform, they're too broad and they really will not get to the major point. And she feels it will be a stumbling block.
That really met a sharp rebuke from Mr. Goss and his staff. And it just was a sign, basically, that this may not go as smoothly as some people hope. Obviously, once it hits Capitol Hill, it is an election year. You would be naive to think that partisanship will not play a role.
And I think obviously that will be part of the salesmanship that Kean and Hamilton will try to start today in the Beltway. But then, as I mentioned earlier, they are going to start going outside the Beltway, some of the commission members, next week to also sell it directly to the American people.
Go around the Congress, go directly to the American people around the country, outside the Beltway and say, we need to enact all 41 proposals, not just two or three.
KAGAN: OK. And as somebody who works inside the Beltway yet is very good at talking to us outside the Beltway, Ed, explain to us why it has to work this way.
It seems like we watched months and months of the 9/11 commission holding hearings and now for something to take place and get done, we have to see the commission members -- now they're on the other side of the mic.
Why -- I think there's a frustration on the part of the American people. They just want to see something done instead of a bunch of hearings.
HENRY: There may be a little bit of redundancy, there's no question about that because you do see hearing after hearing. And were going to see that in the following weeks as the House and Senate, multiple committees, end up really going over the same ground.
But obviously, there are serious constitutional issues here. And I think that you can't undervalue that as well, the fact that the Congress, as an actual branch of the government -- whereas this commission was just appointed by the government and not actually a part of, you know, one of the actual branches of government -- the Congress needs to take a serious look at it.
And I think that's what you are seeing members in both parties saying is that they need, they can't just take what the commission said and adopt it totally. They need to go through it with a fine- tooth comb. They have to be careful about not going to quickly. And I think while there will be some redundancy, clearly Congress has to play a role.
This is going to be the most massive reshaping of the intelligence system in the United States. And it's not like just tinkering with any old government agency. There are lives at risk, obviously. And since we're dealing with such a serious issue like terrorism, they want to make sure they get it right.
KAGAN: All right, Ed Henry on Capitol Hill, Jim Walsh from Harvard University, thank you to both of you. We're going to keep you both standing by.
As you can see, a little slow to get going there at the Senate governmental affairs committee on Capitol Hill.
As soon as the testimony begins, we will go back live. Right now looks like a good opportunity for us to fit in a quick break.
We're back after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: We are keeping an eye on the Senate governmental affairs committee. They are looking into the 9/11 commission report before them. About to testify are the co-chairs of that commission, Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton. When that testimony begins, we will go back live to Capitol Hill.
Meanwhile, let's use the opportunity to get in some more news here, including a possible development in the Sandy Berger investigation. Berger was the national security adviser under President Clinton, and he admitted that he took classified documents from the National Archives.
Well, officials now tell the "Wall Street Journal" that no original materials are missing from those files. And according to the paper, nothing Berger reviewed had been withheld from the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAGAN: And with that, John Kerry rallied the party faithful and reached out to undecided Americans. He accepted the Democratic presidential nomination.
In a rousing speech last night, Kerry took direct aim at President Bush over the war in Iraq. He told the cheering delegates, "I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into a war," from the senator.
From the convention to the campaign trail, Kerry and running mate John Edwards set off this morning on a 3,500 mile campaign road trip. Our national correspondent Bob Franken looks at the road ahead for the Kerry-Edwards ticket.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: John Kerry and John Edwards were not about to rest on their laurels from the Democratic convention, whatever laurels they were.
Here they were this morning, bleary eyed but ready to begin a grueling tour, taking their political show on the road.
KERRY: My pledge to you that I made last night, John and I will keep. We are going to restore trust and credibility to the White House. I will begin, as he will, by telling the truth all across this country and asking Americans to hang on to that truth.
FRANKEN (voice-over): They'll cover 3,500 miles, 21 states, the first stop Pennsylvania, one of the major battleground states.
They left behind Massachusetts, definitely not a battleground, hometown of John Kerry.
KERRY: One if by land, to if by sea. And the message was right, come to think of it, they had better intelligence back then than we do today about what's going on.
FRANKEN (on camera): Candidate Kerry called on candidate Bush to run a polite campaign. There are questions, did he really mean that? Would the Bush campaign comply? Most people believe that the answers to both those questions would be, no.
Bob Franken, CNN, Boston.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: Political pundits and analysts are weighing in on John Kerry's acceptance speech. Did he hit the mark and accomplish what he needed to? A former Bush speechwriter and a former Kerry speechwriter share their opposing views earlier on CNN's "AMERICAN MORNING."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDRE CHERNEY, FMR. KERRY SPEECHWRITER: I think what he did was put his policy positions, put his agenda, put his vision for the country in a way that connected to his own life story.
He talked about his service in Vietnam, why he did that, what that meant to him and what that meant for the way he would look at going to war today.
He talked about his career as a prosecutor and what that meant to the way he would approach issues like crime. He talked about his career in the Senate where he bucked his party on a lot of issues like fiscal responsibility and what that meant for what he would do for the economy.
He connected those things perfectly, I thought.
DAVID FROMM, FORMER BUSH SPEECHWRITER: That's the problem with this speech and this convention. This is very much about John Kerry's psychic needs, his party's psychic needs. But for those people out there who don't think that we're living through the great -- a replay of the great depression and don't think that George Bush is a moron and a liar.
This was very satisfying for Kerry, I'm sure, but I don't know that it did what it had to do, which was to make this rather awkward person an attractive person.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAGAN: Some observers are calling this Kerry's best speech ever, while others say it will be criticized for the lack of new policy initiatives.
Copying the headlines out of Iraq today -- a surprise visit to Baghdad by Secretary of State Colin Powell. He acknowledged that the recent escalation of kidnappings could have a chilling effect on other nation's willingness to help rebuild the country.
Kidnappers have demanded that a Kuwaiti trucking company leave Iraq by 7:00 p.m. tonight or it says it will kill one of the seven truck drivers now held captive. Three of those drivers are from India, three from Kenya, one is from Egypt.
Meanwhile, militants attack Marines and Iraqi troops on a joint patrol in the volatile city of Fallujah. At least 13 deaths were reported, no casualties, though, among the Marines.
CNN has learned new details about the conditions of Saddam Hussein's incarceration and his overall condition. Our producers in Baghdad sat down with Iraq's human rights minister to talk about the former Iraqi leader's health.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BAKHTIAR AMIN, IRAQI HUMAN RIGHTS MINISTER: He has certain health problems, but generally his health condition is good. He has suffered from chronic prostate infection. He got antibiotics for that and he seemed to be OK.
They did a chest, CAT scan for him, and a back MRI, and some blood tests and they didn't show any cancer. He refused a biopsy in order to be able to determine whether he has really cancer or not.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAGAN: That was Dr. Amin, Iraq's human rights minister. He recently visited the facility where Saddam Hussein is being held and spent some time with the former Iraqi leader.
Let's go live now to Capitol Hill, the Senate governmental affairs committee. And here is the co-chair of the 9/11 commission, Thomas Kean, reading his opening statement.
THOMAS KEAN, 9/11 COMMISSION CHAIRMAN: The United States government must take all the steps it can to disrupt and defeat the terrorists and protect against and prepare for terrorist attacks.
Our recommendations to address the transnational danger of Islamist terrorism rest on three policies: to attack terrorists and their organizations, to prevent the continued growth of Islamic terrorism, and to protect and prepare for terrorist attacks.
The long-term success of our efforts depend on the use of all elements of national power. We must use diplomacy, intelligence, covert action, law enforcement, economic policy, foreign aid, public diplomacy and, of course, homeland defense.
If we favor one tool while neglecting others, we are still going to leave ourselves vulnerable, and we will weaken our overall national effort.
Our recommendations about what to do encompass many things: foreign policy, public diplomacy, border security, transportation security, protection of civil liberties and setting priorities for national preparedness.
We also make, of course, several recommendations on how to do it, how to organize the United States government to address the new national security threat of transnational terrorism.
We understand and appreciate the topic of today's hearing, governmental organization.
We will address in detail some of our key recommendations in this area.
But I would be wrong if I didn't pause for just a moment to make clear that changes in government organization are vastly important but are still only part of what we need to do. If we do not carry out all important recommendations we have outlined in foreign policy, in border security, in transportation security and other areas, reorganizing government alone is not enough to make us safe and more secure.
I know there's a fascination in Washington sometimes, I guess, with bureaucratic solutions: rearranging the wiring diagrams, creating new organizations. And we do recommend some important institutional changes. We will articulate and defend those proposals. But, of course, reorganizing government institutions is only part of the agenda that's before us all. Some of the saddest aspects of the 9/11 story are the outstanding efforts of so many individual officials straining, often without success, against the boundaries of the possible. Good people can overcome bad structures; they shouldn't have to.
We have the resources, and we have the people. We need to combine them more effectively to achieve that unity of effort that we are all seeking.
This morning we will address several major recommendations on how the executive branch, we believe, can simply work better.
They have to unify strategic intelligence and operational planning against Islamic terrorists across the foreign-domestic divide with a national counterterrorism center.
They must unify the intelligence community with a new national intelligence director.
They must unify the many participants in the counterterrorism effort and their knowledge in a network-based information-sharing system that transcends traditional national boundaries.
And we must unify our national effort by strengthening the ability of the FBI and homeland defenders to carry out their counterterrorism mission.
Now, we'll address each of these in turn.
The national counterterrorism center: Our report details many unexploited opportunities that we could have used, really, to disrupt that 9/11 plot: the failures to watch list, the failures to share information, the failures, as so many have put it, to connect the dots.
The story of Hazmi and Mihdhar in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000 is a telling example. See, there we caught a glimpse of the future hijackers, but we lost their trail in Bangkok.
Domestic officials were not informed until August 2001 that Hazmi and Mihdhar had entered the United States and were living very openly. They started then to pursue some late leads, but on September 11th, time simply ran out.
We could give you any number of other examples, and will if you would like, where we find no one was firmly in charge of managing the case. No one was able to draw relevant intelligence from anywhere within the government, assign responsibilities across the agencies -- and that's foreign or domestic -- track progress and quickly bring these things forward so they could be resolved.
In other words, as we've said, no one was the quarterback. No one was calling the play. No one was assigning roles so the government agencies could execute as a team and not as individuals.
We believe the solution to this problem rests with the creation of a new institution, the national counterterrorism center.
We believe, as Secretary Rumsfeld told us, that each of the agencies needs to give up some of their existing turf and authority in exchange for a stronger, faster and more efficient government-wide joint effort.
We therefore propose a civilian-led unified joint command for counterterrorism. It would combine intelligence -- what the military, I gather, call a J2 function -- with operational planning -- which the military calls the J3 function. We put them together in one agency, keeping overall policy direction where it belongs: in the hands of the president and in the hands of the National Security Council.
We consciously and deliberately draw on the military model, the Goldwater-Nichols model. We can and should learn from successful reforms in the military that were done two decades ago.
We want all the government agencies that play a role in counterterrorism to work together, to have one unified command. We want them to work together as one team in one fight against transnational terrorism. The national counterterrorism center would build on the existing Terrorist Threat Integration Center and replace it and the other terrorism fusion centers within the government with one unified center.
The NCTC would have tasking authority on counterterrorism for all collection and analysis across the government, across the foreign and domestic divide. It would be in charge of warning.
The NCTC would coordinate anti-terrorist operations across the government, but individual agencies would continue to execute operations within their competencies.
The NCTC would be in the Executive Office of the President. Its chief would have control over the personnel assigned to the center and must have the right to concur in the choices of personnel to lead the operating entities of the departments and agencies focused on counterterrorism: specifically, the top counterterrorism officials at the CIA, FBI, Defense and State Departments. The NCTC chief would report to the national intelligence director.
Now, we appreciate, and we talked about this on the commission, that this is a new and difficult idea for those of us schooled in the government that we knew in the 20th century.
We won the Second World War and we won the Cold War because the great departments of government, the State Department, the Defense Department, the CIA and the FBI, were organized against clear, nation- state adversaries.
Today, we face a transnational threat. That threat respects no boundaries and makes no distinction between foreign and domestic. The enemy is resourceful, it's flexible and it's disciplined.
We need a system of management that is as flexible and resourceful as the enemy we face. We need a system that can bring all the resources of government to bear on the problem and that can change and respond as the threat changes.
We need a model of government that meets the needs of the 21st century. And we believe that the national counterterrorist center will meet that test.
I will now introduce my vice chairman, really my co-chairman, Lee Hamilton who has not only been a wonderful colleague, but has taught this country boy from New Jersey a tremendous amount about that whole subject.
LEE HAMILTON, VICE CHAIRMAN, 9/11 COMMISSION: Thank you very much, Chairman Kean.
I want to say the success, whatever it may be, of the commission is very largely attribute able to the remarkable leadership of Tom Kean. And it's been a high privilege for me to have the opportunity to serve with him.
Madam Chairman, Senator Lieberman, the distinguished members of the committee, let me also join the chairman in expressing my appreciation to the Senate leadership, to you Madam Chairman, to Senator Lieberman, for your initiative in starting these hearings so quickly and responding to our recommendations. We are deeply grateful to you for your leadership. It's been quite remarkable.
As part of the 9/11 story we spent a lot of time looking at the performance of the intelligence community. We identified at least six major problems confronting that community.
First, there are major structural barriers to the performance of joint intelligence work. National intelligence is still organized around the collection disciplines -- HUMINT, signals and all the rest of it -- of the home agencies; it is not organized around the joint mission.
The importance of integrated all-source analysis cannot be overstated. It is not possible to connect the dots without it.
Second, there is a lack of common standards and practices across the foreign-domestic divide for the collection, processing, reporting, analyzing and sharing of intelligence.
Third, there is a divided management of national intelligence capabilities between the director of the CIA and the Defense Department.
Fourth, the director of central intelligence has a very weak capacity to set priorities and move resources.
Fifth, the director of central intelligence now has three jobs: running the CIA, running the intelligence community and serving as the president's chief intelligence adviser. No person can perform all three responsibilities.
And finally, the intelligence community is too complex and too secret. Its 15 agencies are govern by arcane rules, and all of its money and nearly all of its work is shielded from public scrutiny. That makes sharing intelligence exceedingly difficult.
We come to the recommendation of a national intelligence director not because we want to create some new czar or a new layer of bureaucracy to sit atop the existing bureaucracy. We come to this recommendation because we see it as the only way to effect what we believe is necessary: a complete transformation of the way the intelligence community works.
You have a chart before you of our proposed organization. It is on page 413 of the book, the report. It's on the posterboard.
Unlike most charts, what is most important on this chart is not the top of the chart, it is the bottom. We believe that the intelligence community needs a wholesale, Goldwater-Nichols reform of the way it does business, as the chairman indicated.
The collection agency should have the same mission as the armed services do. They should organize, train and equip their personnel. These intelligence professionals in turn should be assigned to unify joint commands or, in the language of the intelligence community, joint mission centers.
We have already talked about a national counterterrorism center.
A joint mission center on WMD and proliferation, for example, would bring together the imagery, signals, and HUMINT specialists, both collectors and analysts, who would work together jointly on behalf of the mission. All the resources of the community would be brought to bear on the key intelligence issues as defined by the national intelligence director.
So when we look at the chart, from the bottom up, we conclude you cannot get the necessary transformation of the intelligence community, that is smashing the stovepipes and creating joint mission centers, unless you have a national intelligence director.
He needs authority over the intelligence community. He needs authority over personnel, information technology, security. Appropriations for intelligence should come to him. And he should have the authority to reprogram the funds within and between intelligence agencies.
The national intelligence director would create and then oversee the joint work done by the intelligence centers. He'd be in the executive office of the president. He'd have a small staff, a staff that is really an augmented staff of the present community management staff of the CIA. He would not be like other czars that we have created in this town over a period of years who really have not had meaningful authority.
The national intelligence director would have real authority. He will control national intelligence program purse strings. He will have hire and fire authority over agency heads in the intelligence community. He will control the IT. He will have real troops as the national counterterrorism center and all of the joint mission centers would report to him. We have concluded that the intelligence community is not going to get its job done unless somebody is really in charge. That is just not the case now. And we paid the price. Information was not shared. Agencies did not work together. We have to and can do better as a government. To underscore again, we support a national intelligence director not for the purpose of naming another chief to sit on top of the other chiefs; we support the creation of this position because it's the only way to catalyze transformation in the intelligence community and to manage a transformed community afterward.
What we learned in 9/11 is that the U.S. government has access to a vast amount of information. But the government has weak systems for processing and using the information it possesses, especially across agency lines.
Agencies live by the need-to-know rule and refuse to share. Each agency has its own computer system and its own security practices, outgrowths of the Cold War.
In the 9/11 story, we came to understand the huge cost of failing to share information across agency boundaries. Yet, in the current practices of government, security practices encourage over- classification. Risk is minimized by slapping on classification labels. There are no punishments for not sharing information.
We believe that information procedures across the government need to be changed to provide incentives for sharing. We believe the president needs to lead a government-wide effort to bring the major national security institutions into the information revolution.
The president needs to lead the way and coordinate the resolution of the legal policy and technical issues across agency lines so that information can be shared.
The model is a decentralized network. Agencies would still have their own databases. But those databases would be searchable across agency lines. In this system, secrets are protected through the design of the network that controls access to the data, not access to the network.
The point here is that no single agency can do this alone. One agency can modernize its stovepipe, but cannot design a system to replace it. Only presidential leadership can develop the necessary government-wide concepts and standards.
The other major reform we want to recommend to you this morning concerns the FBI. We do not support the creation of a new domestic intelligence collection agency, the so-called MI-5.
We believe creating such an agency is too risky to civil liberties, would take too long, cost too much money and sever the important link between the criminal and counterterrorism investigative work of the FBI.
We believe Director Mueller is undertaking important reforms.
We think he's moving in the right direction.
What is important, at this time, is strengthening and institutionalizing the FBI reforms. And that is what we are recommending.
What the FBI needs is a specialized and integrated national security workforce consisting of agents, analysts, linguists and surveillance specialists. These specialists need to be recruited, trained, rewarded and retained to ensure the development of institutional culture with deep expertise in intelligence and national security.
We believe our other proposed reforms -- the creation of a national counterterrorist center and the creation of a national intelligence director -- will strengthen and institutionalize the FBI's commitment to counterterrorism intelligence efforts.
The NCTC and the NID would have powerful control over the leadership and the budgets of the counterterrorism division and the office of intelligence respectively. They would be powerful forces pressing the FBI to continue with the reform that Director Mueller has instituted.
Taken together, then, we believe these reforms within the structure of the executive branch, together with reforms in Congress and the other recommendations referred to by the chairman, can make a significant difference in making America safer and more secure.
We believe that reforms of the executive branch structures are vitally important, and we're immensely pleased that this committee is focusing on those reforms today as a way of making America safer. We are especially pleased that your committee is taking the lead with regard to this.
And with these words, we close our testimony, and we would be pleased to respond to questions.
SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R-ME), CHMN., GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS CMTE.: Thank you, both, for excellent statements.
We're now going to begin a 10-minute round of questions for each member. I would note that the only lights are right here, and they're a little bit hard to see, but we'll try to help make sure that everybody gets the full 10 minutes.
Congressman Hamilton, I'd like to start my questioning with you because of the role that you played as chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as the many other hats that you've worn.
Some observers suggest that the overall effect of the intelligence reorganization that the 9/11 commission has recommended would be to diminish the influence of the CIA, to considerably increase the importance of the Pentagon and to give the White House more direct control over covert operations. Former CIA Director Robert Gates, for example, has said that the recommendation to place the new national director of intelligence within the executive office of the president troubles him because that official would oversee the intelligence operations both inside the United States and abroad.
He cites the problems caused when the White House directly ordered covert activities, noting Oliver North's role in the Iran- Contra scandal, as well as the Watergate scandal, where the CIA helped those who broke into Daniel Ellsberg's office.
He's gone even further than that and said that the commission's recommendation in this regard reflects a lack of historic perspective.
I'd like to give you the opportunity to respond to those specific comments which, as you know, are shared by some others within the intelligence community.
HAMILTON: Madam Chairman, we think that counterterrorism is the paramount national security concern of this nation today. And we think it will be that for as long as any of us are active, for a long time. And we think it really is a unique kind of a challenge because it cuts across so many areas of our government and our nation's life.
We found that the principal problem leading to 9/11 was that the agencies simply did not share information. And so we have set up this structure to encourage that sharing.
Now, why do we put the national counterterrorism center in the executive office of the president? That's one of the questions you raised. You raised a lot of difficult questions.
We do it for two principal reasons. One is that terrorism, as I've indicated, is our most important national security priority for this president or any president. And to be very candid about it, it is inconceivable to me that a president of the United States would want his highest national security priority handled somewhere else in the government that is not under his direct control.
Now, keep in mind that counterterrorism policy involves so many different things. I mean, it's diplomacy, it's military action, it's covert action, it's law enforcement, it's public diplomacy, it's tracing money flows in the Treasury Department.
And we have to organize ourselves in such a way that we can integrate and balance all of these tools of American foreign policy to deal with the threat of counterterrorism. That kind of thing can only be coordinated and done in the White House under the president's direct control.
Where else would you put it? Do you want to put all of this authority in the CIA? Do you want to put it all in the Defense Department? When you're dealing with all of these other aspects of counterterrorism policy, I don't think so.
Now, the second reason we put it in the executive office building is that the national counterterrorism center, it's not just an intelligence center, but it's a center for operations. And it is going to be directing agencies, many agencies of the government, working together on counterterrorism.
And those activities are going to involve the CIA, they're going to involve the FBI, they're going to involve the Defense Department, they are going to involve the Department of State and other areas of the government as well.
You cannot coordinate those activities from a single department. You have to do it in the White House, I believe.
Now, all of us have a different idea of how this government works best. But we concluded that we had to put this authority in the White House just because it's such a cross-cutting kind of an issue.
Is there a danger to that? Oh, sure. That's the Iran-Contra problem. I had a little experience with the Iran-Contra problem. So I'm alert to anything where you concentrate power. We do have to be careful about that.
Now, one answer to that is another part of other recommendation is congressional oversight. It has to be robust. And so everything kind of fits together here.
And, incidentally, among other things, I think it's a small thing, perhaps, it hadn't been too much noted in our report, we do recommend the establishment of a board in the executive branch to keep an eye on government intrusion, if you would.
But there's no magic solution here with regard to the concentration of power. But I think we do have some real checks and balances in it.
And, incidentally, Mr. Gates was an outstanding CIA director. Anything he has to say, even if he's critical of us, deserves a lot of attention, because he's a very knowledgeable person.
COLLINS: He is, indeed, which is why I wanted to give you an opportunity to respond to his concern.
Governor, should the national intelligence director have a term as the FBI director does to help insulate that individual from political pressure?
Or should the director serve at the pleasure of the president? Because after all, that individual would serve as the president's principal adviser on intelligence matters. What are your thoughts on that?
KEAN: Well, we had left it -- and we talked about this some in commission -- we left it really as "serve at the pleasure of the president, " and I think for a number of reasons.
First of all, if the served term you would, as you've just said, perhaps be having somebody who is the president's chief adviser on intelligence, somebody the last president -- and may not agree with that president -- had picked. And that didn't make a lot of sense to us.
It seemed to us that as long as you had the lever of confirmation by the Senate and the fact that this individual would report to the Congress and testify before the Congress, that it was probably better to let him serve at the pleasure of the president.
COLLINS: I support the concept of the national intelligence director. And I agree with the committee's recommendation that that would be a much needed improvement over the current system. I was surprised, however, that the commission did not recommend that the director be a member of the Cabinet or at least Cabinet-level.
This individual's going to have to deal with the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, the secretary of homeland security. Wouldn't it be helpful in dealing with cabinet members for that individual to have the stature of a Cabinet member?
Governor Kean?
KEAN: We basically decided and, again, after a lot of discussion that it should not be Cabinet-level. And the reason was that this is an operational position. It's not a policy position. This individual would be carrying out policy and carrying out directions and coordinating intelligence and moving policy.
We believe that, as you move through the various government agencies, that if this is the president's chief adviser in this area of counterterrorism, which is probably the most important priority that the next president will have for some time, that his authority as he moves among various government departments will be pretty clear. It will come directly from the president of the United States. But because it was not policy, it was operational, we did not make him a member of the Cabinet.
HAMILTON: If I may add to that...
COLLINS: Please do.
HAMILTON: ... the governor is absolutely right, of course. One feature in our thinking here is, it just takes a long time to set up a department.
If you look at Department of Energy -- some of us were around when that was set up a long time ago, 20, 25 years ago -- it's still having problems in organizing and functioning as a department.
The Department of Homeland Security is a major reorganization of government just getting under way, and it has excellent leadership, but it has growing pains.
So we were reluctant to say, "OK, let's come along and set up another whole department of government."
Intelligence is a support function, and it is a support function for the president. It's a support function for each of the key departments of government, all of them. And we did not think you should have a department of government performing a support function. And that's, as Tom has indicated, the principal reasons.
COLLINS: Thank you.
Senator Lieberman?
SEN. JOE LIEBERMAN (D-CT), RANKING MEMBER, GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS CMTE.: Thanks, Madam Chairman. Let me join you in thanking the members of the committee first for changing their schedules and coming back so quickly.
And a measure of the sense of urgency in the Congress is that we also have a non-member on the committee, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, who cares enough about this to be here with us today. And I thank him for attending the hearing. Gentlemen, in your report, you document more completely and, I'd say, more unnervingly than I've seen anywhere before, the lost opportunities to have done something that might well have prevented September 11th from occurring: the failure of the agency to share information, the failure to connect the dots, et cetera.
We're coming up to the third anniversary of September 11th. A lot has been done by Congress, by the executive branch, to try to fix some of that. But clearly in making the recommendations you have, you believe much more substantive reform is necessary.
To document the urgency of your recommendations, I wonder if you could answer a few questions that go to the status quo today, post- September 11th. For instance, maybe you have anecdotes or examples you could cite of continuing failure to share information or continuing inability to, without a quarterback, as you say, to coordinate the resources of the federal government in the battle against terrorism.
KEAN: I can say that, as we proceeded with our work, we ran into numerous occasions where we found out information that one agency had, and sometimes highly classified information, but nevertheless something that should have been shared with other agencies in this fight against Islamic terrorism. And it wasn't. It still wasn't. As of the last example of that, I think was perhaps three weeks or a month ago that we were all amazed to find something that, again, was boxed into one silo and wasn't being shared across the larger community.
LIEBERMAN: Congressman Hamilton, do you have any examples of the continuing problems today that should propel us to respond to your recommendations?
HAMILTON: Well, Senator, that's a very hard thing to tie down. I think you're absolutely right when you say that a lot has been done. I don't have any doubt about the sincerity of the officials, their willingness, their desire to make substantial improvements. And if you talk to any of these officials, they'll give you a list of 10 or 15 points that they have done.
Now, have they actually been implemented all the way? That's where it gets tough to check. But we all pick up the paper. We read about the governor of Kentucky flying in here. That was a problem. I saw a report the other day, I'm sure it's available to you, about the mistakes we continue to make in screening airplane passengers.
We all know about the cargo problem coming in.
So we find a desire to move ahead, but the whole government just is not acting with the urgency we think is required across the board, whether it's screening for cargo or checking airplane passengers or checking the air space or whatever. Lots of good things have been done, but much, much more needs to be done. And what seems to us to be lacking is that real sense of urgency.
LIEBERMAN: Congressman Hamilton, let me go back and quote in part from you. I quoted earlier in my opening statement: "A critical theme that emerged throughout inquiry was the difficulty of answering the question: 'Who was in charge?' Too often the answer is no one."
Who is in charge today?
HAMILTON: The answer you get -- and we asked that question in multiple forms -- is always the president. But of course the president has enormous responsibilities, and it's not a very satisfactory answer.
So I think you then get the second answer is: Well, the top officials, the FBI director, the director of CIA, secretary of defense and others have good working relationships and they meet together frequently. And I think they do and I think there is some genuine sharing back and forth that is an improvement over the pre-9/11 period. But I think you have to institutionalize that.
I do not find today anyone really in charge.
You can't possibly argue today that the CIA director is in charge of the intelligence community. That just doesn't stand up.
LIEBERMAN: Let me ask a more targeted question -- and I thank you for that. And the answer both of you have given argues for the urgency with which we should approach our response to your recommendations.
Clearly one of the main goals of our current counterterrorism policy is to find and capture or kill Osama bin Laden. Is it clear to you that anyone is in charge of that search in our government today?
HAMILTON: Well, my impression is that the military is in charge, the Defense Department. We have I think it's somewhere between 10,000 or 15,000 -- I'm not sure the exact number -- military forces in Afghanistan. They are not engaged in securing the country. That's a NATO responsibility which has some problems with it.
But our troops there are in the southern party of the country on the border now. And I believe the search is, my impression is really, very much under control of the military now.
A lot of intelligence assets are in place to try to locate Osama bin Laden and his team. I do not have a feeling that -- we're not critical of this at all. We did not get into that in great detail, but that's my sense of it.
LIEBERMAN: Governor, do you want to add anything to that?
KEAN: In a sense, what's going on now with Osama bin Laden, went beyond our mandate. I mean, we had to set some limit to the time of our research and our work. And I have the same information, really, that Lee Hamilton just gave you, but I don't have anything further.
LIEBERMAN: So I don't want to continue too much on this point, but the military, to the best of your knowledge, is in charge for the search of Bin laden. Hopefully, presumably, they're cooperating with the intelligence agencies and others.
But in the reform that you would recommend it would be clear who is in charge. The national intelligence director would be in charge in marshaling all of the resources of the various agencies to pursue and capture or kill or kill Bin laden.
Let me ask you a very different kind of question about our mission on this committee. I take it to be the charge from Senator Frist and Senator Daschle that we're to consider and act legislatively on any of your recommendations that deal with the executive branch of government and would be benefited by legislation.
In listening to your statements when the report was issued, I concluded that you felt that the two top priorities were the creation of a national intelligence director and a national counterterrorism center.
I want to ask you, and I think our goal here is to prioritize and just go through as many of these recommendations as possible and adopt them as quickly as we can: What would you two list as the other urgent recommendations that should be priorities of ours after the national intelligence director and the national counterterrorism center?
KEAN: Well, one that may not be in the -- the very difficult ones that are not in the purview, possibly, of your committee involve the Congress and ways to improve oversight. They're very, very important.
Most of our recommendations don't require a lot of money, frankly, to implement. One that does is border screening: to move ahead a little faster with biometric identification, ways in which we can secure our borders, national standards for driver's licenses and means of identification, things that would make us safer in terms of people who are moving around this country and without clear forms of identification, or get into this country without proper means of doing so.
LIEBERMAN: Is that something, governor, that you were talking about legislative appropriations or would we be considering that a priority to authorize by statute, to give the executive branch more authority than they have now to set up the kind of screening system that the commission has proposed? KEAN: I'm not sure whether it would take -- what it would take. I'm not an expert on how much of this is authorization and how much you can empower the president to do, but I think it would certainly take appropriations. Remember, that's the one part of our report that really is going to take some money.
HAMILTON: It's not an easy question to answer: How do you implement these recommendations? I'm very pleased that you have focused on the two big ones. They clearly are the two big ones. The third one, the reform of the Congress on oversight, we think is right up there very close to those two.
From that point on, I think many recommendations kind of merge in my mind. Some of them could be handled, like the border security problems, largely with an infusion of money. The big cost in our recommendations is really border security and not the organizational change that we've been talking about thus far. I think a lot of things can be done by executive order. Now, there's always a question whether it's better to do it by statute.
LIEBERMAN: Right.
HAMILTON: And usually, given my background, you'd expect me to say that it's better to have a statute in back of it. But I read in the paper that the president is thinking about some actions. And I'm quite sure he will move on in some areas by executive order.
LIEBERMAN: My time's up, but just very briefly, I believe I also heard you mention, Lee, the FBI changes as a priority.
HAMILTON: They're important. The information sharing across agencies...
LIEBERMAN: Right.
HAMILTON: ... very important, really has to be done by the president. I don't think that can be done by the Congress. It's setting common standards across the executive branch. And the FBI, I do not think, requires -- I don't believe it does -- legislative action. I think it can continue to be done by the director.
The president may want to weigh in there with an executive order. I don't know. But I think that could be done by the executive.
KEAN: But the FBI recommendations do, at least in our mind, really call for very strong congressional oversight. We applaud what the director is doing, Director Mueller. He is moving in exactly the right direction.
But we have a tremendous fear, after looking very hard at the FBI, that when he and his top two or three people may move on, that a lot of the FBI would like to move back to just the way they were. They'd like to go back, if you like, to breaking down doors again. And they did that very well over a number of years, brought a lot of people to justice. But we're asking them to have this other function now, of finding and disrupting plots against the United States of America. And we want to make sure that the people who are in that line of work have the same recognition within the FBI, have the same chances for advancement, have the same chances to assume eventual leadership in the organization and are not downgraded.
And we worry that if there's not executive action and strong congressional oversight, that the FBI, after this leadership departs, could start moving back in the other direction again.
HAMILTON: We do not have strong views about how you implement. I really think that's your job, more than ours, and the executive branch. We defer to you as to the best way to implement these, and we did not try to spell out the implementation.
LIEBERMAN: That's very helpful to us. Thank you very much.
I think I can speak for the chairman and say that we're very honored that the Senate leadership has given us responsibility for the executive branch...
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR, "NEWS FROM CNN": Senator Joe Lieberman, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee asking questions of the to co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission.
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