SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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20–131
2005
[H.A.S.C. No. 108–36]
UNITED STATES INTELLIGENCE REFORM
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
HEARING HELD
AUGUST 11, 2004
HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
One Hundred Eighth Congress
DUNCAN HUNTER, California, Chairman
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CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania
JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
TERRY EVERETT, Alabama
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
HOWARD P. ''BUCK'' McKEON, California
MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana
WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
JIM RYUN, Kansas
JIM GIBBONS, Nevada
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico
KEN CALVERT, California
ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia
ED SCHROCK, Virginia
W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia
JEFF MILLER, Florida
JOE WILSON, South Carolina
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
TOM COLE, Oklahoma
JEB BRADLEY, New Hampshire
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ROB BISHOP, Utah
MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio
JOHN KLINE, Minnesota
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
PHIL GINGREY, Georgia
MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
IKE SKELTON, Missouri
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina
SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas
LANE EVANS, Illinois
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii
MARTY MEEHAN, Massachusetts
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas
JIM TURNER, Texas
ADAM SMITH, Washington
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
CIRO D. RODRIGUEZ, Texas
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania
BARON P. HILL, Indiana
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JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
STEVE ISRAEL, New York
RICK LARSEN, Washington
JIM COOPER, Tennessee
JIM MARSHALL, Georgia
KENDRICK B. MEEK, Florida
MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam
RODNEY ALEXANDER, Louisiana
TIM RYAN, Ohio
Robert S. Rangel, Staff Director
Eric R. Sterner, Professional Staff Member
Justin Bernier, Research Assistant
C O N T E N T S
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2004
HEARING:
Wednesday, August 11, 2004, Implications of the Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission on the Department of Defense (Part I)
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APPENDIX:
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 11, 2004
Implications of the Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission on the Department of Defense (Part I)
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Hunter, Hon. Duncan, a Representative from California, Chairman, Committee on Armed Services
Skelton, Hon. Ike, a Representative from Missouri, Ranking Member, Committee on Armed Services
WITNESSES
Cambone, Hon. Stephen A., Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
Jacoby, Vice Adm. Lowell E., Director, Defense Intelligence Agency
Odierno, Raymond T., USA, Former Commander, Fourth Infantry Division
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APPENDIX
PREPARED STATEMENTS:
[The Prepared Statements can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Cambone, Hon. Stephen A.
Hunter, Hon. Duncan
Skelton, Hon. Ike
DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Documents can be viewed in the hard copy.]
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[There were no Questions and Answers available at the time of printing.]
THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION ON THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE (PART I)
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, August 11, 2004.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:05 a.m., in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Duncan Hunter (chairman of the committee) presiding.
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OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DUNCAN HUNTER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
The CHAIRMAN.The committee will come to order. The committee meets today to continue its review of the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.
Our distinguished witnesses are the Honorable Steve Cambone, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, United States Navy, Director, Defense Intelligence Agency; and Major General Raymond Odierno, United States Army, former Commander, 4th Infantry Division, and a gentleman whom probably most people on the committee know.
And, General, we are very proud of our committee. Almost every member has been to Iraq. And, of course, most folks that went to Iraq had an opportunity to be briefed by you up with the 4th. And so we appreciate your service. Good to see you again.
Thank you gentlemen for joining us with us this morning.
Yesterday, the committee heard from the 9/11 Commission leadership and from senior Department of Defense (DOD) officials on the broad strategy recommendations found in Chapter 12 of the commission report.
Today we turn attention to the more prescriptive recommendations found in Chapter 13 of the report, specifically dealing with how to organize national Defense Intelligence Agencies (DIA).
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Our objective is to better understand the substance, merit and implications of these recommendations in preparation for the likely legislative action to follow.
As the Armed Services Committee of the House, it is our responsibility to explore in sufficient depth and detail the possible impacts that any such reforms could have on the ability of our military to fight and prevail on tomorrow's battlefields.
Some choose to characterize such scrutiny as undermining the commission's work. I simply consider it our duty and obligation to the millions of men and women that wear our nation's uniform.
And, on that line, I noticed that our commission leadership, both Lee Hamilton and Governor Kean, yesterday re-emphasized the importance and the criticality of maintaining the warfighters' capabilities to access and utilize intelligence. And I believe Mr. Hamilton commented that the commission's own recommendations might have to be refined to ensure that that is maintained.
So I think we are all working toward the same goal. And I think what we have to do is just make sure we get this thing right. If we allow a rush to judgment to be dictated by the need to simply get this done during the election cycle, then I think we are going to make ourselves more vulnerable and cause the Nation more harm. So doing it right is critical.
The 9/11 Commission's report has highlighted some very important findings.
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First, the intelligence community (IC) continues to suffer from stovepiping, meaning that sometimes the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.
Second, the commission found that the traditional principle of need-to-know often conflicts with the need to share, meaning that protecting sources and methods sometimes undermines the ability of analysts from different agencies to put together a comprehensive picture of threats based on fragmentary evidence.
And along that line, I think they gave a good description of following some of the bad guys where we had flashes of their presence, but then we would lose those flashes. And the idea that because of the fragmentation and the stovepiping, no one intelligence entity got a good look at the basket, so to speak, when we were trying to pursue.
I think you might call that an objective of achieving what you might call a seamless pursuit of a target. But that would seem to be one of the major areas that we need to work on and was brought out by the commission leadership yesterday.
Third, the commission highlighted the difficulty of coordinating multiple intelligence agencies while also running the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The commission recommended modeling the solution after the Goldwater-Nichols reforms of the Department of Defense. That legislation succeeded because it sought unity of command, developed personnel policies that rewarded joint assignments and reduced the layers of bureaucracy between the President and the commanders in the field.
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In endorsing the commission's finding, the President appears to be keeping these principles firmly in mind. He agrees with the need to improve cooperation and coordination by establishing the national intelligence director and separating that function from the management of a single agency.
He also seeks to break down stovepipes by creating a national counterterrorism center and strengthen the unity of command by ensuring that it does not undermine his authorities and responsibilities as commander in chief.
Undoubtedly, we will have a few ideas of our own. For example, I am concerned that some of the commission's recommendations, if not carefully implemented, may increase the gap between warfighters and the national intelligence capabilities they rely on to protect our forces and defeat our enemies.
And I think, again, an important point that I saw yesterday in the testimony was that the commission did not have criticism of the way our warfighters used their intelligence agencies and the capabilities of those agencies. And they did stress over and over the importance of maintaining our warfighting capability and the ability to access and act on the intelligence apparatus that is available to those agencies today.
The Department's transformation plans are only going to increase with the dependence that we presently have on these improved national intelligence systems. So transferring DOD national intelligence capabilities to an outside entity could end up dulling our military edge, which would ultimately make us less secure.
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Once again, the commission reiterated that that is not their intention. And I think it is important to make sure, as we put together legislation, we do not inadvertently put together a package that goes against those good intentions of keeping the warfighter as effective as possible.
Our witnesses this morning will help us sort through these issues, both from the standpoint of the warfighter's need for intelligence and the Department's relationship to other agencies.
I look forward to their comments, and we will go to our witnesses in just a minute.
Let me just offer something for the committee. We have a full membership at these hearings, and we went through the first panel without being able, yesterday—in fact, both panels—without having an opportunity to have everybody ask a question. Today we are going to strictly enforce the five-minute rule.
What I am going to do for the members, so that you know your time is approaching the point where you want to leave some time for the witness to answer the question, because the only way everybody can be accommodated is to make sure that the question and answer fit in the five minutes—otherwise, there is simply not enough time mathematically for all of our members to get a chance to ask a question.
And a lot of folks put aside a lot of district work to get back for this important business. So we are going to have a five-minute rule. It is going to be enforced.
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And so, I would advise our witnesses, when your red light comes on, that means you finish your sentence, but we are going to have to go onto the next question.
So what I would ask our membership to do is to watch for that yellow light. We are going to put that on after three minutes. That means you got two minutes left, and you can either—if you just want to make a statement, you can conclude with that—use that time yourself. But if you want to have an answer from your witness, it is time to give them an opportunity to answer that question.
So, gentlemen, again, thank you for being with us. And we will turn to you in just a minute.
But first let me turn to my partner, the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Skelton, for any remarks he would like to make.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hunter can be viewed in the hard copy.]
STATEMENT OF HON. IKE SKELTON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM MISSOURI, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mr. SKELTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
And let me join you in welcoming Under Secretary Cambone, Admiral Jacoby and General Odierno.
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And, General, it is good to see you here in your class A's, as opposed to the fatigues we last saw you in. You did a great job, so thank you for your service.
Mr. Chairman, as a former member of the Intelligence Committee, and now as a long-serving member of this committee, I wholeheartedly endorse the effort to reform the intelligence community.
The tragic events of September the 11th were the result of an intelligence breakdown. Regardless of the particular or the underlying cause—it may be structural, could be organizational or perhaps resulting from a simple lack of imagination—the simple truth remains: A breakdown did occur, and change is necessary.
And the time for change is now. And I will repeat that: The time for change is now.
In this age of terrorism, we clearly need to lessen the burden placed on the Director of Central Intelligence or, as we call him, the DCI. Above all, the DCI serves the President, coordinates the community, then finds time to run the CIA itself. This was the law as passed back in 1947.
The burden of responsibility at that level of government should not fall upon one individual. And as they were passed back in 1947, the world was different than it is today. And no matter how capable that person is or such individual may be, that challenge is, frankly, too great.
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During today's discussion in this larger debate, I urge my colleagues to remember the unique position of the Defense Department. That is what these gentlemen are doing here today. Simultaneously, and perhaps ironically, it sits as the largest consumer and the largest producer of intelligence, and has unique needs as well as capabilities.
Thus, as a committee, the Armed Services Committee, we are fortunate to have a panel that is before us to help us understand this far better. At one table, we have individuals representing the perspective of both the consumer and producer, respectively. And their input is essential to our understanding of this issue.
Mr. Chairman, I fully support the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. Improved coordination, unity of effort in our Intelligence Community are essential qualities.
And after a string of strategic intelligence misreads, the fall of communism, the militant rise of Al Qaida, and the issue of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, to name a few, I hope our Nation has not waited too long.
Unfortunately, the list of missteps and misreads has grown in recent times. Thus, it is a change we must initiate, and it is time for a change now.
So, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for calling this hearing, the ones yesterday and the ones today. I look forward to the testimony.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Skelton can be viewed in the hard copy.]
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The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
And, gentlemen, without objection, your prepared statements will be entered into the record, so you are free to sum them up or to present them in any manner that you wish to.
And, Mr. Cambone, thank you, Mr. Secretary, for being with us today. The floor is yours, sir.
STATEMENT OF HON. STEPHEN A. CAMBONE, UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR INTELLIGENCE
Secretary CAMBONE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Skelton. Thank you all for being here today. It is a pleasure to be here to talk about the 9/11 Commission recommendations.
And I am joined today, as the Chairman has said, with Admiral Jacoby, who, as you know, is Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), but you may not know he had a previous assignment as the Director of the Joint Staff, J–2, the intelligence section within the Joint Staff, and also served as the J–2 out at Pacific Command earlier in his career.
General Odierno you all know quite well. What you may not know is that he has quite a combat record. He was with the 3rd Armored Division during Desert Storm and Desert Shield, and he was also with Task Force Hawk in Albania during the Kosovo crisis and, as you all know, led the 4th Infantry Division with distinction in Iraq.
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The 9/11 Commission recommendations have provided the country with an opportunity to debate a topic of surpassing importance, and that is the organization and the operation of the Nation's intelligence apparatus.
Its recommendations urge us to focus closely on two important missions of the Intelligence Community. And in singling these out, I do not mean to suggest that they are the only missions, but they are two that the recommendations from the commission focus our attention.
The first is what are called indications and warning of pending events—if you will, connecting the dots—and giving that indication and warning, especially of terrorist events, in time enough to allow the executive branch to take appropriate action.
And second, the need for the Intelligence Community to provide to the operational elements of the United States government, not only the Department of Defense, but the Departments of State, Homeland Security, Justice, Treasury, Commerce and others, as well as state and local governments, with current and actionable intelligence to support their activities and operations, again, especially but not exclusively with respect to counterterrorism operations.
Accordingly, the commission's recommendations urge us to consider three major areas for improvement within the field of intelligence: an improved domestic intelligence capability aligned with the broader U.S. intelligence enterprise; updated information security policies to build cross-agency information technology systems to permit three things: one, the sharing of finished intelligence—that is, the products that come out of the analytic effort; second, the access of analysts across the Intelligence Community to any database they need to perform their job; and third, to encourage competitive analysis throughout the community.
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And there is also a need to infuse the Intelligence Community with what I will call a joint mission orientation and provide it with leadership able to adjust resources and personnel to meet enduring challenges and emergent threats.
And I will touch on each very briefly, but I want to spend most of my time with the last, and that is the joint perspective.
With respect to domestic intelligence, the Department of Defense has an interest in seeing a robust domestic intelligence capability that can assist it in its force protection obligations both here at home and abroad.
But in the continuing enhancement of our domestic capabilities, special care is going to have to be taken to safeguard the rights and liberties of American citizens. There is no good trade between liberty and security.
With respect to information-sharing and expanding information technology regimes to enable information and data-sharing, the Department is convinced of the force-multiplying effects of network operations.
Those effects have been displayed publicly in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq. The prospect of harnessing the power of networked operations and networked intelligence is one the Department supports wholeheartedly.
Now, joint mission focus: With respect to a joint perspective, the Department of Defense has had nearly 20 years of experience with jointness. It knows how powerful a joint perspective, thriving joint operations can be.
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Propelled by the Goldwater-Nichols reforms of the mid–1980's, the Department learned how to do centralized planning by combatant commanders, employing joint staffs, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, themselves directing decentralized operations by their subordinate commanders, who in turn put together joint task forces made of Army, Navy, Marine, Air Force and space forces.
In short, we have learned how to put together what we call joint task forces, and those joint task forces were the engine and are the engines of our military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. Indeed it is hard for us to imagine within the Department of Defense today how to operate any other way than joint.
Now, to approach the implement of the commission's recommendations that adopts some of these best practices—and I would not suggest that they can be adopted wholesale; they need to be adapted to the circumstances of the Intelligence Community. But adopting those best practices from the Department could yield a number of what we think would be significant benefits. And let me emphasize a few.
First, that the National Intelligence Director could include in his planning efforts the experience and expertise of collectors, analysts and operators from across the government, domestic, foreign and military incentivization, collectors and analysts alike.
Now, this in turn would suppose some responsibility for the NID and authority for oversight and direction in the career development and management of those individuals.
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Second, improvement in the all-source capabilities of the domestic and military intelligence sectors would be a welcome change. Both sectors, domestic and military, are working very hard to improve their all-source analytic capability to match that which is resonant in the foreign intelligence sector, that is to say the CIA. We would be well-served if the National Intelligence Director could bring them all up to a high level of capability for all-source analysis.
Now, this would imply, therefore, some responsibility and authority by the NID to oversee information technology builds, establish and enforce policies and standards for mutual access to the databases and to conduct periodic evaluations of performance within those agencies.
Third, a determination to form at the operating level, that is within the departments of the government, joint intelligence and operational organization similar to that which is being proposed at the national level for counterterrorism purposes would also be a welcome change. That is, there is no reason why at the national level you would not want to have some kind of organization that could bring together intelligence and operations.
And if that is a good thing not replicated in each of the departments of the government that have some obligation with respect to both counterterrorism and broader security operations, what that would do would be create a synergy within the Department and between the departments and the National Intelligence Director and National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC).
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Fourth, although, speaking of the National Counterterrorism Center, the President is seeking for us to concentrate analytical expertise on foreign and domestic terrorism in one location, the President has also made clear that that organization, the NCTC, would assure the flow of alternative analyses to the extent that they exist. And they would provide the NID with—he should have the opportunity to test hypotheses that are raised elsewhere. And this gets to the issue of competitive analyses.
And I noted in the hearing yesterday that Mr. Hamilton expressed some concern that ''competitive analysis'' was code word for ''keeping everybody separate.'' To the contrary, within the Department, what we understand that to mean is within an organization, between organizations and between those organizations and their superior reportive chain there has got to be competition.
So this is not Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. This is a joint organization taking a look at a problem, another joint organization looking at a problem, and making sure that there is some competition between them before a conclusion is reached on what might or might not be done.
So, please, if I could just reiterate, there is no way, from the perspective of the Department, that we see ''competitive'' as being code word for ''separation.''
In summary, the prospect of increased jointness within the Intelligence Community is very attractive for the Department of Defense. But, as in the case of information security, information technology and so forth, what the nature of that design for that joint environment might be, how we plan within it, how we go about execution; all are important and need to be thought through in order to get it right.
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Now, with respect to the National Intelligence Director, the President has decided to establish such a position. And he has made it clear that he, the NID, will serve as the President's principal intelligence adviser and will oversee and coordinate the foreign and domestic activities of our Nation's intelligence services.
The President has made clear that the NID will assume the broader responsibility of leading the Intelligence Community across the entire government. The President has endorsed the National Counterterrorism Center, and, again, as the President said, it will ensure effective joint action to counterterrorism and that the efforts across the government are unified in priority and in purpose. And he has endorsed changes in congressional oversight of the Intelligence Community.
Now I did not come today prepared to talk about congressional oversight. Here, I think I am obliged to take the Secretary's advice to listen and learn from debate on that subject. And with respect to the National Counterterrorism Center, I have already made the point that we believe that there is great value in a joint organization.
So now among other things that we have to look to is the precise authorities and responsibilities that will be invested in a national intelligence director. In the end, whatever those authorities and responsibilities are, it seems that the Intelligence Community ought to have the following characteristics and capabilities when we are finished.
We have to have an appropriate aligned domestic intelligence component. We have to operate under 21st-century information management and technology standards so that domestic, foreign and military intelligence components located within the departments and agencies in the United States Government have access to the databases across the entire Intelligence Community.
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And we have to take on that joint perspective to break down the institutional barriers and restrictions to integrating horizontally across the community and cooperation across agencies and permit in the end then the kind of centralized planning and decentralized execution needed to provide what the commission pointed us to, which is improved indications and warning of events, and the ability to respond rapidly to intelligence when it is received.
Now, an issue frequently raised in discussion, of course, of the IC's reorganization is the placement of the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). All are presently located within the Department of Defense.
And it turns out that the first two—NSA, the National Security Agency, and the NGA, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency—in addition to being elements of the national Intelligence Community, are identified in law as combat-support agencies.
As is, by the way, the Defense Intelligence Agency. It, too, is identified as a combat-support agency, and it, too, is identified as a component of the National Intelligence Community.
So we have at least three large organizations inside the Department that are both combat-support agencies and elements of the National Intelligence Community.
The NSA, the NGA, NRO and other elements of the IC within the Department that are part of the National Intelligence Community provide a critical service to both the Secretary of Defense and to the DCI for meeting their statutory responsibilities under the current arrangement. It is for that reason that current relationship is, in effect, a partnership: a partnership between those two that was forged both in law and in supporting executive orders.
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It is true that each has independent responsibilities, but what is interesting about their relationship is that those responsibilities require that each of them exercise their authority in such a way that the other is enabled to exercise and discharge his responsibilities. It is a very interesting relationship that has evolved over time.
And this is a partnership which inevitably will have to be forged in whatever changes are contemplated and made within reforms of the Intelligence Community because of the overwhelming importance of the product of those combat-support agencies to the conduct of operations by the Department of Defense.
And, Mr. Chairman, in the course of our discussion today I am sure we will have ample opportunity to develop that theme, so I will not go into it here now.
So any proposed changes then, in conclusion, to the current structure of the Intelligence Community, I think, would need to pass a two-part test. First, how would they help solve problems identified by or subsequently recognized in the light of the findings of the 9/11 Commission? And second, would they create new problems more difficult to overcome than those we intend to fix?
Both of those questions I think are important.
The task of capitalizing on the findings of the 9/11 Commission is difficult and complicated, and we do not need to take on more tasks than are necessary.
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The latter question, ''Are we content with the problems that we may create?'' is important, because in making choices we need to be clear about how we managed the risks we face. Few choices are risk-free, and therefore we need to be certain that we know and accept the risks we may create as we move to address those problems and risks we know that we face.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you for the time and the attention of the committee, and I look forward to your questions and those of the members.
[The prepared statement of Secretary Cambone can be viewed in the hard copy.]
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.
Admiral Jacoby.
STATEMENT OF VICE ADM. LOWELL E. JACOBY, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Admiral JACOBY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman for the invitation to be part of this process. And let me begin with just a little bit of background on the Defense Intelligence Agency.
It was established in 1961 by the Department. It subsequently was included as an amendment to the National Security Act of 1947. And we designated a combat-support agency in 1986 by the Goldwater-Nichols Act.
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As the Director of DIA, I work for the Secretary of Defense through Dr. Cambone. I am the primary adviser to the Secretary of Defense on military intelligence matters. And my agency provides military intelligence support down to the maneuver unit.
The DIA is designated a member of the National Intelligence Community. In this role, I respond to tasking from the Director of Central Intelligence and provide collections capabilities and military analysis and assessments as part of my duties.
I also report to the Director of Central Intelligence as the program manager of the General Defense Intelligence Program, which is a subcomponent of his National Foreign Intelligence Program (NFIP). I respond to requirements established by the DCI as the Intelligence Community's technical and defense human intelligence (HUMINT) collector under his intelligence collection authorities.
Finally, I am the DCI's executive agent for a number of centers, such as the Prisoner of War-Missing in Action (POW-MIA) Center, the Underground Facilities Center and the National Media Exploitation Center.
Mr. Chairman, I live comfortably in two interlocking worlds, the world of Defense Intelligence and the world of the Intelligence Community.
As the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, I represent 7,500 men and women, military and civilian, located around the world.
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As program manager for the General Defense Intelligence Program, I represent an additional 11,000 civilian and Active Duty military members and 4,200 reservists in the service intelligence centers and also in the joint intelligence centers attached to the combatant commanders.
We are tasked with discovering information and creating knowledge that provides warning, identifies both threats and opportunities, and delivers overwhelming advantage to our warfighters, our defense planners and defense and national security decision-makers.
It is a big job. And today this mission is being executed with great dedication by our intelligence professionals working exceedingly long hours, often operating in austere condition in harm's way. It is important to recognize their accomplishments and sacrifice at the outset of today's discussion.
It is also important to recognize the breadth of their efforts. Their efforts extend from collecting data and determining the strategy of our adversaries for U.S. policy-makers and defense planners to providing timely and detailed intelligence to support our warfighters on the battlefield. I am committed to doing everything possible to improve their capabilities and their opportunities for mission success.
Dr. Cambone has spoken to the 9/11 Commission report from the policy perspective. From the execution perspective, I welcome the opportunities inherent in the recommendations of the commission report to improve our intelligence capabilities. The dilemma will be found in implementing fundamental change while simultaneously accomplishing assigned missions in today's hostile, exceptionally complex and fast-paced environment. Clearly there will be challenges along with the opportunities.
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The first key opportunity is to assert the primacy of all-source intelligence. By all-source, I mean intelligence and information derived from all of our collective assets, military forces, law enforcement agencies and unclassified sources. The benefit to be derived by bringing all of these sources together for analytical discovery apply equally to dealing with the threat of international terrorism or the enduring military issues like North Korean capabilities and intentions or insurgency in Afghanistan.
To put the ''all'' into all-source analysis, collected data must be broadly available, analysts must drive collection, collectors must join the analysts to create a new intelligence operations paradigm, and analytic professionalization and tradecraft must be enhanced.
Today's some-source environment must be changed. Achieving through all-source analysis will fundamentally change our Nation's and our Department's intelligence capabilities.
The second key opportunity I would like to speak to is to aggressively act on the recommendations in Section 13.1 of the 9/11 Commission report concerning unity of effort in sharing information.
Information is the raw material of the intelligence business. I strongly concur with the commission's finding that today we have immense amounts of information that are not available for analytic scrutiny. Unquestionably we must extract additional value from what is currently available, harvest and exploit new and non-traditional sources of data, and prepare ourselves to optimize data from future sensors and future access opportunities.
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We must reengineer existing information management approaches, so that instead of analysts complaining about drowning in data, they look upon the volume and diversity of data available to them as their best friend.
We must move expeditiously to adopt the need-to-share, rather than need-to-know criteria, institute process and policy changes required to make information broadly available while properly protecting sources, and incorporate best practices in the commercial sector.
We in DIA are instituting commercial practices, organizing our data so that modern commercial techniques can be applied by analysts, tagging data such that these tools can operate effectively in working to achieve the trusted information network referenced in the report.
But rather than apply these capabilities in one agency, the true power of these recommendations comes with implementing the changes across government departments and agencies, beginning with those entities that collect information relative to national security.
For example, the smart network employee modern information management techniques would recognize a company commander from the 4th Infantry Division when he logs on. It would know his intelligence needs and his approximate operating location based upon the types of questions he had asked in the past. It could be pre-programmed to sort and store data.
Upon log-in, the network would save valuable time and communications bandwidth by presenting that data and accompanying analysis, rather than requiring that company commander to initiate a search. It would know that he has a SECRET clearance and would separate the sources from the content of the information so that he could have maximum access to data at the SECRET classification level.
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And if he wanted to know what is literally over the next hill, he would get what he needs regardless of what exotic collector may have been employed to get that data.
Just as importantly, if that company commander, who is not an intelligence collector by definition, took possession of potentially relevant information from enemy documents, or interrogations reports, or visual observations and so on, that data could immediately be loaded on the network where it could be acted upon, related to other data, and subject to analytic scrutiny.
In an integrated endeavor, the operator can switch from customer to provider in an instant, even on the battlefield. That is precisely where we need to be.
The power of all-source primacy supported by unity of effort in information in arena is transformational. And I am convinced these fundamental changes can be implemented while fighting a war. These changes would enhance military effectiveness, improve operational capabilities and save lives.
If we achieved all-source primacy and truly integrate data from all available sources, we would address other issues, as well. These changes would promote competitive analysis since the data would be subject to a variety of analytical viewpoints and be the basis of an active dialogue. Often-discussed cultural issues in resistance to sharing would be swept away.
And I would reference the impact that the Internet has had in some of these areas in the unclassified commercial world and talk about those kind of impacts that those would have in our classified operating environment.
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These new approaches would bridge existing divides between foreign, military and domestic intelligence. These approaches permit decentralized executions, reducing the physical vulnerabilities of concentrating our capabilities in potentially targeted locations, while retaining a maximum flexibility to surge and reprioritize our efforts as is so often needed in military intelligence.
The opportunities presented by the commission's recommendations in these areas are fundamental and far-reaching.
As is said often in military planning, the devil is in the details. That said, I look forward to working with this community to seize the opportunities presented by the commission and improve our capabilities for the warfighter, the planners, defense and national security policy-makers, and most importantly, the citizens of the United States.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Admiral.
And, General Odierno, good to see you again. Again, most members have seen you in your leadership roles in-theater. We appreciate you being with us and giving us some perspective as a warfighter in the context of these recommended changes.
STATEMENT OF MAJ. GEN. RAYMOND T. ODIERNO, USA, FORMER COMMANDER, FOURTH INFANTRY DIVISION
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General ODIERNO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Representative Skelton and distinguished members of the committee for inviting me here today. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you and answer your questions.
For 32 months, I had the honor and privilege to serve the men, women and family members of the 4th Infantry Division as their commanding general. During my time in command, I deployed Task Force Iron Horse, a 33,000-person task force centered around the 4th Infantry Division, and its great soldiers in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
We were in Iraq for March of 2003 to March of 2004. During that time, I witnessed these young Americans fully and faithfully discharge their duties in Iraq, as they carried out their mission in prosecuting the war on terrorism. And I want to thank all of you for your unwavering support to them and all of their family members here back home.
As a former operational and tactical commander in Iraq, I cannot overemphasize the need for the tactical-level commander to rapidly target individuals with near-real-time intelligence. The importance of this capability cannot be overstated and is essential as we move forward. And this is essential to the tactical commander and all those soldiers on the ground that are doing the hard work.
And, with that, I will end my statement. And I look forward to all of your questions.
Thank you, sir.
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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, General. And you are going to get the prize for probably the shortest opening statement that was ever made by a general before this committee.
And that does give us an opportunity—we have a pretty full house here, and we have lots of folks that want to ask questions.
Yesterday, Dr. Gingrey waited five hours and never got a chance to ask a question, so I am going to yield my time to Dr. Gingrey, with the caveat to Dr. Gingrey that we are working under a strict five-minute rule.
And I want to advise our witnesses, too, that when that red light goes on, you need to finish that sentence and we will move to the next questioner. But the yellow light will go on when you have two minutes left to our members. So at that time, you may want to wrap the question so you can get an answer.
The gentleman from Georgia, Dr. Gingrey.
Dr. GINGREY. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I really appreciate that.
Of course, we were here about eight hours yesterday starting with breakfast, and we have this hearing now. And this afternoon, we will hear from the thinktanks.
But it is great to see all of you, especially General Odierno. When I was in Iraq in December and you took us to Adwar, where Saddam was captured it was an experience that I will long remember.
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You know, it seems to me that if you cut right to the chase, there is this concern obviously about the warfighters, the tactical commanders, needing that intelligence that helps them pinpoint and save lives, and concern now with this recommendation from the 9/11 Commission that all of a sudden somebody else is in a higher position, if you will, in regard to all of this intelligence gathering that comes from a lot of different sources. It is almost like an alphabet soup; a little bit difficult for us to understand.
But when Secretary Dr. Cambone a few minutes ago described what may be the role of a national intelligence director, it sounded a little bit like he was suggesting more of an inspector general role for intelligence. I do not think that is what the 9/11 Commission has in mind, certainly, Governor Kean and Congressman Hamilton.
And I wonder if you can just, kind of, describe to us—you have your concerns, we have heard your concerns from the Department of Defense. It seems like it is a little bit of a reluctance to give up some of this overall command and control of your intelligence. But I think we are calling for—and I have to tell you, these two days have helped me understand a little bit better the work of the 9/11 Commission, and quite honestly, I think they are right.
And if you could explain that to us, I would appreciate it.
Thank you.
Secretary CAMBONE. I did not mean to leave the impression of an inspector general's role at all. I think the President was quite clear about his anticipating that the NID will have serious and real authorities, first.
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Second, in talking about the need to look into improving the capacities and capabilities of the constituent members of the community to do all-source analysis, that is a remarkably important job and that one that will require that he, this NID, or she, be able to set standards for activity and personnel be able to move resources around the community in ways that make sense to include the people and so forth.
So I think it is a substantial role for the director of the community as a whole to have that kind of authority and responsibility.
With respect to the Department's interest here, it is with respect to its ability to assure that the product of the relationship that exists today between the DCI and the Secretary of Defense is perpetuated—the product is perpetuated. How we go about assuring it is something that we need to debate and be certain we understand, but I do not think there is any reluctance to engage at all in that conversation about how we might adjust to make the overall capabilities of the Nation's Intelligence Community better than they are today.
Dr. GINGREY. Admiral, General, any further remarks on that point? I think we have just a few seconds left.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to go first. I appreciate it.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
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And the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Skelton?
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
I have two questions.
First, let me revert back to the Goldwater-Nichols days, if I may. This was a multi-year effort that met with strong resistance from the leaders, particularly the military leaders in the Pentagon, over that period of time. It was finally passed in 1986, and thereafter, because of the nature of the military and the leaders, at the end of the day the military saluted and made it happen and make it work.
And to this day, I think those that are leaders within our military will say good things about Goldwater-Nichols creating jointness as a real thing and now part of the military culture.
Dr. Cambone, I will ask you and, if the other two gentlemen have thoughts, I would appreciate them, as well.
Fast forward to now. Suppose this legislation is passed basically along the lines of the Commission. And I realize there are going to be some crystal bowls broken. What would be the reaction, A, of the military side of the Intelligence Community, in your opinion, and, B, the reaction of the non-military side, in your opinion, Doctor?
Secretary CAMBONE. I think in both cases, sir, within the Department, there would be the same reaction, which is to salute smartly and make it happen. So I do not think there is any question about that.
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What will follow in training, however, is a conversation then with the new apparatus, the new director, about how we are going to work that relationship between the Department of Defense and the supplier of intelligence essential to its Title X responsibilities in a way that the commander on the front line can be assured that when he picks up the phone and says he needs it, it will be there.
But that is going to—so we worked that relationship in the current structure over the course of some 40 years or more. We would have to reset those relationships in a way that assures the same outcome.
And that is why I say, it is the product of the relationship that is important. And thus far, the best way to have assured that product has been our current arrangement. If it is decided that there is a better way to arrange ourselves overall, then we will do so.
But we will have to come back and reconfigure that relationship so that there is an assurance that the support that is going to be needed for the warfighter will be there when he picks up the phone and seeks it.
Mr. SKELTON. Admiral Jacoby.
Admiral JACOBY. Mr. Skelton, I happened to be on the staff late when you visited in the early 1990's, and we talked about Goldwater-Nichols at that point. And we were in the process of doing what Dr. Cambone just suggested. We were resetting relationships between the component commanders and the commander in the Pacific at that point in time. We will need to do the same.
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And I would certainly, from my position, be looking very explicitly at information availability, the way for the military to prioritize its needs, to make sure that the Combatant Commanders' needs are being set, and that we will have to do some changes and rewickering of our prioritization process and so forth to make sure that that happens.
Mr. SKELTON. General.
General ODIERNO. Sir, I would just comment that it is all about access to data, and the commander on the ground having that ability to prioritize and go up his chain of command and feel confident that his priorities will be met in terms of having the data available necessary to execute precision targets.
The one thing we learned in Iraq was you do not have much time. Targets are fleeting. You have hours. And so you have to have immediate access to that information.
So as we work our way through this, it is important that we understand that we must maintain that capability to have immediate access on the ground to the tactical commander.
And so, I think as long as the recommendations support that, I think we are in good shape.
Mr. SKELTON. Thank you.
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Dr. Cambone and gentlemen, let me ask this: Would you give us your top three points of concern? Or, in other words, where would you disagree with the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, the top three, please?
Doctor.
Secretary CAMBONE. The one that stands out most in my mind is the second hat they would like to give me as the deputy to the National Intelligence Director. Not because I am unwilling to wear a second hat, but because the way that they have structured those relationships, you have what is essentially a staff officer and myself, an operating officer, in the case of the agency, the CIA director, who would be a deputy, and then a person who may be one or the other with respect to the domestic side of the house.
So I think a structuring along those lines would have to be thought about a little more carefully, and perhaps might look to another way of assuring that military intelligence support.
The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Cambone, we are going to have to answer the rest of that question with the next witness.
Secretary CAMBONE. Fair enough, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Saxton.
Mr. SAXTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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In Section 13.1, Unity of Effort Across the Foreign/Domestic Divide, the commission makes the point very quickly that responsibility and accountability were diffuse.
And then they make an analogy. They say that, ''In our hearings we regularly ask witnesses, who is the quarterback? The other players are in their position doing their jobs, but who is calling the play that assigns roles to help them execute the team?
I am not sure that is a good analogy. Certainly, all of us know that a quarterback sees the situation, he has control of his offense. I am not so sure that, as we look at the chart here, which shows the responsibilities of the National Intelligence Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, that we have the same kind of a situation.
I worry, because, when I was with General Odierno in Iraq, he impressed on me over and over again how important it was to have immediate access—real-time access to information.
And so if we have a team led by a quarterback in Washington, D.C., or someplace in the Continental United States (CONUS), and we have military people depending on information that flows through that team and directed by that quarterback, does this in any way worry you, Dr. Cambone, or General, or Admiral, about immediate, timely access to information?
General ODIERNO. Sir, again, I do not want to comment too much on the—because it is not quite clear what the organization will be.
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But there is always a concern that we add bureaucracy that does not allow us to get immediate information. I am not saying it is bad, because sometimes it is very good to do that because it helps us reorganize. It might improve. But the bottom line is, at the tactical level, you have to have immediate access.
And today, strategic and tactical intelligence is interwoven. They are no longer separate like they used to be. Tactical intelligence on the ground can immediately become strategic intelligence. And so we have to have that stream that is able to control that very quickly.
And then something that might be up here in Washington, D.C.—an information that might not be important could be extremely important on the ground to those soldiers. And so we have to have a system where people can interact and all of that data is available to us.
And so that is what I would like to see. And I think there is a way with this recommendation that it can improve.
So my concern as a commander on the ground is that I need access. I need access to both strategic and tactical information, and I need it near term.
Secretary CAMBONE. Mr. Saxton, an awful lot of the signals are called as audibles and there is a lot of adjustment in the way the offense is run in the intel business.
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I think the key part here is to make sure that we end up with the possibility of centralized planning, but decentralized execution. And I think that that is a key. Not all these signals are called by the quarterback and sent in from the coach: there needs to be an awful lot of flexibility if we are going to meet the military missions.
Admiral JACOBY. And, sir, I think that in part they were making reference to the orchestration of elements of national government with respect to the counterterrorism activity. And I think they were looking to see if there wasn't some way to improve that orchestration. And I do believe that that was what led them to the proposal for, and the President's interest in, the National Counterterrorism Center and its director.
Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I know that you share this concern, as well. And I would just like to make sure that as we proceed with whatever legislative program that we are going to proceed with, that we ensure that we build in the kind of flexibility that is necessary here so that our commanders and people on the ground have as immediate access to information as is possible.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
And the gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Spratt.
Mr. SPRATT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you for your testimony.
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Mr. Cambone, at the end of your testimony you suggest that we do not want to create new problems that are more difficult than those we set out to solve. I get the impression from that rhetorical statement that you are concerned that some of these proposals would indeed worsen the situation and create bigger problems than you have right now.
Let me just go to the central point made in Chapter 13. In Chapter 13, the commission notes that, ''The current DCI is responsible for community performance, but lacks three authorities critical for any agency head: control of the purse strings, the ability to hire or fire senior managers, and the ability to set standards for information structure and personnel and to task operations.''
Do you have problems with reassigning each of these to a new national director of intelligence? Do you think this would create problems that could be harder to solve?
Secretary CAMBONE. Again, it depends on how we go about doing it. It is not the proposal to do so; it is how it is done.
So on the information technology (IT), for example, I said in my prepared statement that it is absolutely essential that that person, the National Intelligence Director, have the ability to forge and force those relationships. What comes with that then is not just setting standards, but he is going to have to have, if he is going to succeed in that endeavor, some ability to push the money in the right places to get it done or to withhold it if it is improperly done.
With respect to personnel, he already has—the central intelligence director does—a concurrent role with the Secretary, for example, and the appointment of the head of the NSA and the NGA and so forth.
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Mr. SPRATT. But the commission calls into question whether or not these paper powers are actually realistically exercised today by the DCI.
Secretary CAMBONE. And that is fair enough, sir. And so my question would then be—let me go back to where I was on the nature of the relationships—for a problem to be created that we need to think about solving, if the National Intelligence Director had the budget and the personnel for, let us say, the NSA, and the implementing instructions that came with it said that all tasking could come only through the National Intelligence Director to that person, we would have to find a way then to forge a new set of relationships between the Department and that person, because there has to be some accountability horizontally to Major General Odierno.
Mr. SPRATT. Sure.
Secretary CAMBONE. Okay, so that is all I am suggesting. I am not saying that we ought not to be considering the changes. What I am saying is once you think about what the change is, what problem do we create and can we resolve it in a way that we are happy? And if we are, then let us go ahead. And if not, then we need to back up a little bit and reconsider.
Mr. SPRATT. Going through Chapter 13, do you have objections then to creating a National Intelligence Director who would be in the White House, immediately in the executive branch, next door to the President, operating with his proxy, setting a budget, choosing senior personnel and tasking operations?
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Secretary CAMBONE. The President has made it plain that he would not be in the White House. And so there is that.
In terms of setting the budget, no. Again, the question is how to process; how are we going to do it. How much of the budget? For example, we have talked in this committee yesterday about Joint Military Intelligence Program (JMIP), programs that are in the Department of Defense, and those things that are in the service budgets that are related to intelligence. How much influence over that? We need to discuss that and work it out.
Mr. SPRATT. One side question: you mentioned in your testimony in discussing on networking, that the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) over the next six years includes $30 billion for——
Secretary CAMBONE. Rough estimate, sir.
Mr. SPRATT. Does this include the space-based radar, satellite?
Secretary CAMBONE. It is not the radar, but the laser communications satellite.
Mr. SPRATT. The transformational satellite?
Secretary CAMBONE. Yes, sir.
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Mr. SPRATT. That is a pretty extensive piece of the $30 billion you are talking about.
Secretary CAMBONE. Yes, it is. It is probably a third or so, and then there is the fiber-optic network that we are putting on the ground around the world, the connection for our combatant commanders in their headquarters in order to be able to gather all that data.
And, sir, all of that is designed—to go back to my point about IT, it is being designed to accept Intelligence Community information.
Mr. SPRATT. The question I have is, is enough left over to put together all of these databases that are not now inoperable and to create that kind of unified——
Secretary CAMBONE. It is my opinion that we could spend that $30 billion in such a way that we could get both the advanced communications capabilities and the lash-ups to those databases——
Mr. SPRATT. Which do you think is more important if you do not have enough money to do both?
Secretary CAMBONE. If I cannot—I have got, over time, to do both. Because if I cannot move the data at the volume that the laser permits, the access to the databases will be very slow and ineffective. So I have to——
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Mr. SPRATT. Would the new National Director of Intelligence have final authority over that decision, the allocation of resources between your——
Secretary CAMBONE. On that one, in terms of the interest of the Department in having a laser satellite communications system, probably not. In terms of its ability to accept and transmit the data from the Intelligence Community, absolutely.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman for his question. And any additional—incidentally, any members who have additional follow ups that they want to make when they run out of time, we will make sure we get those to the panel and they can respond in writing.
But I thank the gentleman.
And the gentleman from New York, Mr. McHugh.
Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, thank you for being here. Welcome.
Last week, a government reform commission member, former Senator Kerrey, made a number of very interesting statements. But I am just going to read a final sentence to one of a longer response he gave with respect to this question on how do we reconfigure intelligence gathering vis-a-vis warfighters.
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The last sentence reads, ''Please do not tell me it is going to deteriorate our capacity to support the warfighters. We do not touch tactical intelligence in this recommendation.''
I think certainly from our discussions yesterday and the concerns expressed here today, and based on General Odierno's comments, there are some concerns, in that tactical and strategic are not as well-defined as perhaps they once were as it relates to the warfighter.
I think it is critical as we pursue the very laudable recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that we have fully on the record, or at least more clearly on the record, what those kinds of overlaps are. We spoke yesterday about Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) and satellite telemetry, et cetera.
But I was wondering if any of you gentlemen would care to expand on that lack of a clear line that, at least under the strict reading of the 9/11 Commission, is probably absolutely essential if we are not going to deteriorate warfighting capacity.
Secretary CAMBONE. Yes, it is an irony of this, sir, is that we spent a good deal of time, at least during my tenure, trying to merge and blur the line and distinction between what is strategic and tactical and what is national and military, since it is increasingly difficult to distinguish, either in the product that is produced or in the capability that is applied.
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So Global Hawks, which are built by the Air Force, are as significant and important as signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellites that are built by the National Reconnaissance Office and whose take is managed by the National Security Agency.
Let me give you three examples of where these things overlap.
We have spent an enormous amount of money, for example, on building aircraft that can evade surface-to-air missile systems or on Global Hawks that can provide persistent surveillance. Without the support from the National Security Agency to help us route those in a way that avoids surface-to-air missile systems, we are vulnerable. So we need that interchange between the two.
When we talk about trying to get our Navy to begin operating in littoral areas, their dependence on both the imagery and the SIGINT capabilities that come from those national agencies is paramount, that they have absolutely got to have that information to support their operation.
When ground forces—and I will let the General speak to it—operate, they are concerned not only with finding enemy forces, but in knowing where they are, where blue forces are, in order to be able to effectively use the force and prevent fratricide.
Combat search-and-rescue—there is probably no single undertaking more dependent upon those national assets than combat search-and-rescue. Think back to the shooting down of the aircraft in the Balkans and how we had to move all of those people so very rapidly. The national agencies, so called, operating in their combat-support mode, were very much a part of the endeavor to rescue that pilot.
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So the interconnection is, at this point, very difficult for us to now begin to break apart. That does not mean we cannot find other ways to manage if there is a reason to do so.
But in finding another way to manage, it is that kind of interconnection which we work so hard to build up over 20 years now, and especially in the last three, that we have to realize we are pulling apart and we will need to put back in a way that is going to be appropriate and effective.
Mr. MCHUGH. General.
General ODIERNO. Sir, just let me comment again, for example, on signals intelligence on strategic satellites. There is information that comes through there that can be used immediately at the tactical level. And I could give you several examples of how we did that.
So it is being collected at the strategic level, but it is tactical information to capture a main target in Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever we are. So there is a clear, clear overlap.
There is also a question of bandwidth, as you challenge each other strategically and tactically. For example, the systems we use to track—in the 4th Infantry Division we have the systems to track all of our tanks, Bradleys, infantryman, and we can do that real time. And that prevents fratricide.
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And that is in competition with strategic, so who prioritizes that? So there is an overlap of the systems that are used strategically and tactical to do that. So it is not only an intelligence, but overall systems, overlap.
And it is very blurred, because in today's world something that happens with a soldier on the ground can be a strategic issue in seconds, or something of a million parts of data that is given somewhere in Washington, D.C., can be an extremely important piece of data on the ground in Afghanistan or Iraq. And we need to have the access to that. And that is the issue, and it has to be available to all of us.
The CHAIRMAN. I would like to thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Ortiz.
Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
One of the chapters that I was reading on the commission report, Chapter 11, mentions foresight, hindsight, imagination.
And, Mr. Secretary, you talk about the necessity of having domestic intelligence component and foreign components and how they play a key role in giving bomber crews and Navy personnel the required information that they need now.
If I go back, I read about all the chatter that was going on and so much information coming in that there was not sufficient people to really declassify the information coming in.
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Is this being corrected now? Do we have the imagination that maybe we do need people who speak the language, who can, you know, understand the different customs in different countries? And if so, what has been done now to correct that, Mr. Secretary? Maybe you can enlighten me.
Secretary CAMBONE. Well, I can give you two examples, sir.
One is that the President did establish the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, and it is designed to bring together people to do just what you are describing.
And each day they publish a paper that lists ongoing and developing threat streams, as they are called. And they are responsible for assuring then that, whether it is for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the DOD, State, Justice, are made aware of that information and they check to see what they are doing about that.
The NCTC, the National Counterterrorism Center, will be even more capable, under the President's plan, than is the present threat terrorism center. So he, the President, is making certain that just what you are talking about is being done.
But in addition, within the Department of Defense, having some responsibility for the National Security Agency, we have teamed with General Hayden to make sure that his language expertise goes up and that funding is available to assure that his language capabilities improve.
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We are working with our combatant commands to make sure that they have people, they are recruiting people who have not just the language skills, but the cultural skills to support the kinds of operations that we think that they are going to be engaged in.
Now, it is, as you know, not easy, first, to find those people and, second, it takes time to train people, because you want people who can not only listen and understand what they are hearing, but you actually want people who have the ability to speak the language so that they can give some texture to what they are hearing and reporting.
So it is going to take us a while, but there is money and program in place to begin moving us in that direction.
Mr. ORTIZ. So are we to assume that there will be an increase in personnel, in training so that we can handle the situation?
One of the problems we face now, Mr. Secretary, is a lot of illegal aliens coming to this country. And I think that domestic intelligence is going to play a big, big role as to how we are going to be able to defend our homeland.
Secretary CAMBONE. Yes, sir, and I cannot speak in detail to the domestic side of the house other than to agree with you that I think there is an increased role for them to play, again, with all due respect for and careful effort to protect those liberties of American citizens. And finding that balance is absolutely essential.
Admiral JACOBY. Mr. Ortiz, if I could, we have been in an aggressive hiring posture in DIA for the last 18 months. We are bringing in people with very diverse backgrounds, language skills, some native speakers and so forth across a broad spectrum.
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We recognize that our business is different today than strictly supporting conventional force-on-force maneuver. And our experience is that we are finding people with the right kinds of talents for the future.
We are putting incentive money against language proficiency and so forth, and we are putting a very aggressive language training and, sort of, retraining process in place. So it is not just with the SIGINT people but in our broader analytical efforts. Sir, I think you would be happy with the responses that we are seeing for our effort.
General ODIERNO. Sir, I would just add, as you know, it has been a significant problem initially in terms of linguists on the ground and through a system, especially Arabic linguists. And we have worked very hard in both the joint and Army world to try to correct it. We were organizing our linguists in the Army, retraining them, recruiting more in order to make them more effective.
We also established special cells at the strategic level to support the warfighter on the ground about six months ago, where you are able to send some significant data to them that they can interpret very quickly and get back to the commander.
Those are just first steps, though. There is still a lot of work that needs to be done. And we do need the support. It is a very great observation, sir.
Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you.
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Nice to have all three of you with us today. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
The gentlelady from New Mexico, Mrs. Wilson.
Mrs. WILSON OF NEW MEXICO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, gentlemen, for being here today.
I was struck by something you said, Steve, about making sure that the answers that we come up with, the changes that we implement, help solve the problems that have been identified and do not create new problems or exacerbate other problems that perhaps were not the focus of this study but have been the focus of other studies and reports when we look at restructuring the Intelligence Community.
My view is that the 9/11 report did a very good job in looking at the indications and warning problem and also on global strategy. But there are other areas and problems with the Intelligence Community, like group-think that was identified by the Senate Intelligence Committee's recent report, collection, which you have discussed some today, the analytical challenges, the HUMINT and linguistics and those kinds of challenges that we also face.
And, Steve, I would ask you to address for a moment, if you would, what kinds of structures should we put—we are only going to get one shot at this, on some kind of change to the structure of the Intelligence Community and who has what authorities and what is in place.
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What kinds of mechanisms should we put in place so that we can share information, we can do this integration and unification and jointness, but that we also do not reinforce another problem of group-think? What kinds of competitive analysis, red-teaming, black-hatting—what do we need to do so that we do not exacerbate that problem?
Secretary CAMBONE. One of the advantages that will be available to a national intelligence director is that he has, throughout his Intelligence Community, those 15 organizations that everyone, kind of, points to as a problem. They are a valuable asset to him. They can provide him with a breadth of view that any one organization, no matter how well-trained and organized and motivated, will never be able to do for him.
But he can only realize the advantages of those organizations if he undertakes to improve their level of performance in the sense of their production, and their analytic work, and the experience, and the language skills, first. Second, that he assures that those individuals have access to data across the entire community. And, third, make certain that they have the IT support to do it.
I mean, I have four computers that sit on my desk for no other reason than we have not been able to find a way to lash up all those communications nets.
So that means he is going to, in turn, then, have to have some personnel responsibilities. He is going to have to have a level of budgetary authorities on these matters. And he is going to have to have some ability to move those resources to assure that he can take advantage of the various opportunities that sit out there waiting for him.
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I think the last thing—advice is free, so this is what it is worth—the last thing he would want to do, I think, is pull that analytic skill up to his level and consolidate it in one place.
Mrs. WILSON OF NEW MEXICO. How does consolidation combat group-think?
Secretary CAMBONE. It does not.
Mrs. WILSON OF NEW MEXICO. Admiral, you mentioned about how, you know, cultural issues are swept away, if data is shared.
Admiral JACOBY. Right.
Mrs. WILSON OF NEW MEXICO. Why do you believe that?
Admiral JACOBY. I think that because the best way to avoid group-think, I believe, is to have people in various locations looking at the information from various aspects. And, obviously, we look at information basically from a military view. Somebody else, though, in the foreign intelligence business, could be looking at the same information from a diplomatic or some other view.
There is a greater chance of having alternate analyses and interaction from that kind of an environment than if we put people together, physically together in an environment where you will end up with, sort of, over time, building up a set of assumptions that are not as readily challenged.
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The other piece that happens, if we go the route that I was advocating, of all-source and broadly available information, you do not end up with filtering on the front end either. In other words, today's world you put in an intelligence requirement and the collector reports out what they get that meets that requirement. It could be on the periphery of that question you asked are very important bits of information that may take you in a different analytic direction.
If we free that information up, the chances of filtered information going to a small group that has a small amount of information to work with and coming up with one conclusion is going to head the other direction. You are going to have an awful lot of competitive discussion and analysis going on as part and parcel of the way business is done. I think it is a desperately important piece.
Mrs. WILSON OF NEW MEXICO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentlelady.
Ms. Sanchez.
Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, gentlemen, once again for being before us toady.
In particular, General Odierno, I remember right around Christmas time we were out visiting in Iraq, and at the time I had asked you, in a very pointed conversation, about how many insurgents you thought were still out there in Iraq. And we went back and forth for a while, and at some point you told me 347. Of course, three days before that, your boss, Abizaid, had said he thought there were about 5,000.
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Now, these days we hear maybe we have killed 1,000, maybe we have killed 3,000 in a week, maybe there are 20,000 out there, maybe there are 30,000 out there. In other words, I believe then and I believe today that we are still guessing.
So with that in mind, I have a couple questions for all the panelists about the 9/11 Commission report and how it would impact DOD's intelligence gathering. And the two questions are these.
With respect to the overarching goal of denying sanctuary to terrorists, are you prepared today to discuss why DOD's intelligence collection assets should remain under the control of DOD and not be placed under the jurisdiction of the National Intelligence Director? What advantages do you see in maintaining the status quo? And why would not it be beneficial to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission?
The Commission report also identifies three countries in the war on terror, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. And it suggest that the United States should have a realistic strategy to keep terrorists on the run within these countries using all the elements of national power.
In the event that one of these countries takes a dramatic turn for the worse, for example, let us say President Musharraf is assassinated and the country falls into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists, how would the United States be able to use all the elements of its national power, given such an enormous commitment of military and economic resources in Iraq?
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Maybe, General, you can start.
General ODIERNO. First, you know the question you asked was a very difficult question, and that is why we are here today: to discuss how we can better answer those kind of questions. Because it is very difficult to really decide how many, for example, insurgents there are. It is a combination of having HUMINT, SIGINT, measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT), imagery intelligence (IMINT), electronic intelligence (ELINT) all of these type of things that we use to gather information so we can answer those tough questions.
And that is why it is important that we must not filter—and the comment that Admiral Jacoby made was very important: filtering of information is an extremely important concept that we must avoid. Because what might not be important to one person could be extremely important to another person. What might not be important at the strategic level could be extremely important at the tactical level. What might not be important to the soldier on the ground might be extremely important to somebody at the strategic level.
So I think that is what it gets to. We have to be able to manage that data in such a way, and have access to that data, so it is not filtered, and so we can use it best to answer those hard questions like you asked me.
And that is what this is about. We have to be able to get all the information necessary so we can more accurately answer those type of questions.
Ms. SANCHEZ. Again, but why should we keep that within DOD instead of centralize it under some main character?
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Secretary CAMBONE. There are three elements of intelligence within the Department, I think, that we are talking about. One is that kind of activity that takes place at the service level. Those are the things that support General Odierno out on the field, and they may be anything from the tactical human collectors to local SIGINT collection.
There is another level up which is in what is called our Joint Military Intelligence Program. And that includes airplanes like Global Hawk or the EP–3s that do surveillance and take pictures.
It is already the case today that the Director of Central Intelligence works with the Secretary of Defense in deciding what that program ought to look like. However, those aircraft, for the most part, are under the direct authority of the Secretary and the combatant commanders to execute operational-level activity. So they fly, in the case of the Global Hawks, over Iraq or Afghanistan collecting the necessary information to support combat operations.
The third level are those things which are known as the combat-support agencies and the members of the national Intelligence Community. And as I said earlier, over time a partnership has been forged between a Director of Central Intelligence, who has day-to-day tasking authority over the satellites operated by those agencies and the data that is collected by them, with the Secretary of Defense having the ability to have those organizations operate as combat-support agencies under the appropriate sets of circumstances to support military operations.
So you have a tiered arrangement here which, over time, has left tactical intelligence and related activities (TIARA) primarily in the Department's control, although the DCI has some influence; JMIP, where his influence is much greater; and then the national systems, in which there is an equal partnership between the two.
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The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentlelady.
The gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. Simmons.
Mr. SIMMONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Yesterday, the Chairman of the committee—
The CHAIRMAN. Excuse me, Mr. Simmons? I have forgotten Mr. Bartlett, and that is a misdemeanor in three counties in Maryland.
Mr. SIMMONS. That would be a tragedy.
The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Maryland is recognized.
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you.
General, we remember your hospitality when we visited Iraq just before last Christmas, and you escorted us to the spider hole. And I think all of us stood down in it. I think I was the only member who laid down in it. I may have been the last one to do that, because I understand it is now covered with concrete.
Well, thank you very much for your hospitality.
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Gentlemen, as you know, a big percent of all of the appropriated funds for intelligence goes through—the authorization through our committee and the appropriations through the relevant Appropriations subcommittee. Each of our services has embedded intelligence assets, and we have service-wide intelligence assets.
Is it your understanding that the Commission recommended that this new intelligence director have responsibility for that funding and have the ability to change it and to hire and fire? Is that your understanding?
Secretary CAMBONE. I do not think that is what they intended.
Mr. BARTLETT. But, sir, I hope that is not what they intended, because I could not possibly see some bureaucracy in Washington starving our military services for the intelligence that they need.
Now, clearly we cannot continue with the stovepipe kind of an arrangement that we have now, but in today's world with computers and so forth, isn't it perfectly feasible that we can keep on doing what we are doing? There is an old adage that says, ''If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'' There is no indication that the intelligence that we need for the day-to-day operation of our military is broken and that we need to fix that.
In today's world, isn't it perfectly feasible for the military to keep on doing what it is doing in intelligence gathering and use, and to permit someone to have access to that data?
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We may very well see things there that do not have very much meaning to us that when put together with information gathered elsewhere, by others, would have a great deal of meaning. Can't we in today's world have that happen without having this imposition on our control and use of our data?
Secretary CAMBONE. Sir, there is no question, as I said earlier, that we have spent a good deal of time improving our relationships between the Secretary and the DCI and the respective organizations.
I think the issue that the Commission—and so therefore we, the Department of Defense, can continue to operate under this arrangement if that is what is called for.
But I think the larger issue that is being raised for us is, there are other users of information now, people who are in the law enforcement community, as well as the domestic side of the house, as well as in specific counterterrorism operations and so on, who are going to need a similar kind of access that has been afforded to our front-line forces and the people who do the analysis inside the Department.
So part of the issue is going to be, I think, how do we extend a relationship such that all of those other claimants and users can be satisfied, as well.
Mr. BARTLETT. But can't they look over our shoulder without impacting what we do? Isn't that possible in today's world for them to have real-time access to that data without their limiting our use of it and our control of it?
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Secretary CAMBONE. If there are constructed databases to which access is permitted, the answer to that is yes.
But if you ask John Brennan, who is the head of the Threat Terrorist Integration Center, to come in and talk to you, and he shows you the spaghetti plate of IT relationships that he has had to establish, he would say, ''Yes, I can do it, but it is kind of hard the way I am doing it today. If I had a National Intelligence Director who could establish those IT standards and protocols, my life would be a whole lot easier.''
Mr. BARTLETT. Do we have an objection to standardizing this, so that this can be universally available?
Secretary CAMBONE. No, sir.
Mr. BARTLETT. Okay.
Secretary CAMBONE. None whatsoever. In fact, we have been pushing very hard to do just that.
Mr. BARTLETT. Do we have some assurance then that there is going to be a really strong push back on our part if there is any move to have this intelligence director control our data collection and how we control it and how much money we use and so forth?
Secretary CAMBONE. As I said, sir, the product of that relationship cannot be undone or disturbed. And how we arrange the relationships are something that I have to leave to you here in the Congress and to the President and his advisers.
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Mr. BARTLETT. If we need legislation to make the right thing happen, you will help us understand what is needed——
Secretary CAMBONE. Certainly.
Mr. BARTLETT [continuing]. So that we can make sure that our acquisition and use of data is not negatively impacted by any organizational changes that might be made?
Secretary CAMBONE. You can be assured that if you ask us to come up and talk about those things with you we will be here to do so.
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from Rhode Island, Mr. Langevin.
Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, thank you for your testimony here today.
Over the past couple of days we have heard a great deal about the difference between tactical intelligence and national strategic intelligence and who would basically exercise the authority over these two types.
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So, Dr. Cambone and Admiral Jacoby, I wanted to know if you could further explain the current policies and procedures for handling intelligence that is collected at the field level, whether through submarines, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or other systems, and how that information is analyzed and disseminated to the other services and also within DOD in general.
I know we have touched on some of this already, but if you could elaborate on that. But also, and most importantly, who decides if any of the intelligence collected at the tactical level has a value as strategic intelligence to the CIA or other agencies?
And General Odierno, I would be interested in further hearing from you and your firsthand view of how these operations actually work in the field, as well.
And finally, what would be the impact, if any, of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations on the existing system?
Admiral JACOBY. Well, let me start. First, the idea that there is some kind of differentiation between national and tactical, we need to move beyond that. I mean, the distance of who is over the next hill may well come from, you know, a SIGINT satellite or an imagery satellite that is considered national today. So we really need to move, you know, to the overused term of seamless availability to that information.
Now, today, to the question of who decides about submarine collection or UAV collection and who gets it, it is basically decided today by who has a stated requirement. Now, for me that is industrial-age approach. What we really ought to do is move into a world where it is broadly available and people who may have a need have access to it.
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But today, basically, it is news to the people who ask the question that caused the collection to take place on the front end.
We, at DIA, play a major role in this. We are the spokesperson for the Department in terms of putting collection requirements against the national systems. We speak both for the commands and for ourselves as part of that apparatus.
The other way, we are the focal point for needs from other departments and agencies for access and collection by military units. So we are, sort of, at the intersection of that.
But today it is quite requirements-driven. And what I am proposing is that we really leap on the 9/11 Commission recommendations that we move to a different way of doing business.
So we are in the business of doing the coordinating. The deciding is done based on the requirements. And then we play a heavy part in making sure that that information is made available back to the requester.
General ODIERNO. Sir, a couple comments.
First, it all goes back to the all-source analysis system that we have. So whatever information we get on the ground, we can put into this all-source analysis system, which is available down to the battalion level today, which then becomes readily available to anybody in the system that can look at the information.
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Now, it is a lot of information. So the pieces, marking it in such a way where they can see it.
But more importantly, on the ground, it is to have national reps there with you. When we have, for example, somebody from the NSA, CIA, for example, on the ground working with the tactical commander on a daily basis, you can then link into his systems and point out the most important pieces of information that we are getting and then him also to give us the most important piece of information that they are getting through the national assets.
And that is the joint concept that we all work under as we are deployed. We have to continue to work that hard. And it is getting better every day, but we still have work to do in those areas. And that is what we have to do on the ground in order to make this seamless transition of information that is so important.
The one comment I would make is, as we work our way through this, the most important thing to me is facilitating the availability of pertinent information at the right place and the right time. And that is why I see us headed here both at the tactical and strategic level—I will talk to the tactical level—getting me the pertinent information and somebody who can facilitate in such a way that I can get it quickly so I can action it very rapidly on the ground to get rid of our enemies no matter where they might be.
Mr. LANGEVIN. Have you made recommendations for a change in the past and it has not happened or is this something that—
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General ODIERNO. No, I think it is something we are working on. We did talk about these teams on the ground, which came later on once we were there for a while. It helps us to facilitate that information. And we have to make that part of the normal—as we stand up these task forces, make that a normal part of the organization. I think we are on the way to doing that.
Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, gentlemen.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from Connecticut, long-suffering Mr. Simmons.
Mr. SIMMONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am glad that Mr. Bartlett got out of that hole and came back and joined us. It is reassuring to know that you let him out.
Mr. Chairman, yesterday, you said that the 9/11 Commission report promises to break a lot of rice bowls. And I agree with that. It does promise to break rice bowls.
But what I would like to suggest is that we also build some rice bowls. And one of the rice bowls I would like to build is open-source intelligence, or OSINT.
We know from experience that it is relatively cheap. We know it is cost-effective. We know it is transferable, so one agency can pass this intelligence to other agencies without fear of loss of sensitive sources and methods. And we know it is exportable, so a military officer for the United States, let us say, deploying to work with military officers from foreign countries can actually share this information fully and completely.
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When I look at the chart, however, of the 9/11 report, open-source intelligence only appears in one location. And it does not appear under the deputy national intelligence director for defense intelligence. And this puzzles me, because I know the Defense Department has been doing some really revolutionary work in this field.
I know that the Special Operations Command Joint Intelligence Center has an OSINT cell that some say is responsible for up to 40 percent of their intelligence. I know that these special operations forces have a new draft of an open-source intelligence handbook that they are working on at Fort Bragg.
We know that open-source intelligence is taught at Fort Huachuca. Mr. Ben Benavides out there has been doing a great job. We know that it is used at the National Ground Intelligence Center down in Charlottesville, Virginia.
So my question is, what are we doing at an the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) level to create a focal point for open-source intelligence? What are we doing in the Defense Intelligence Agency to develop this capability?
And, General, for you, when you mention SIGINT, IMINT, HUMINT, MASINT, I did not hear OSINT. Did I miss that? I wonder if you gentlemen could comment on—
Admiral JACOBY. Sir, let me take the lead.
The all-source push that I am advocating, a major portion is unclassified information. And we are in the process, as part of our reengineering the way we do business from an IT standpoint, to bring open-source information in, and if it is not already XML tagged or otherwise usable in this modern environment, to tag that information and make it part of our data.
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So I think you are right on the mark in terms of the wealth of information and the breadth that it can bring to our analysis. I do not think that we need to treat it as a separate entity. We need to treat it as another input and make it part of the richness of this all-source environment.
So we are absolutely, completely on board with what you are talking about. And we are trying to make it part of this more modern information environment and make it available broadly to users just like any other bit of information that could be coming into the system from any other source.
General ODIERNO. Sir, I would just comment on, one of the issues we are working hard is what we call information operations, which is how we deal with open source information. But it is a very new concept that we continue to develop, so it is not yet developed fully where we are getting the most out of open-source intelligence that we need to.
And IO, which we call information operations, is somewhat separate sometimes from intelligence collection. We've got to get that together. And that is something we try to do together at the tactical level. We bring these two together and we try to bring that and make decisions.
So we have to work through that. That is an extremely important point.
I would last say, it might be a little bit outside of what you asked, but the other thing—and I know Admiral Jacoby is working through this, as well as the Army G–2—is the classification of intelligence.
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What happens is, we classify some things because of how it is collected, and then it is not available to users. And we got to work our way through that. And we lose some important information based on that. And I know we are working our way to fix that.
But that is critical, because what will happen is, it will be classified so high it is limited distribution, and then the people who need it do not get to see it. So we've got to work our way through that.
Mr. SIMMONS. Never gets to these people, in other words.
Admiral JACOBY. The key part of that is to separate the content of what is collected from the source and get the content out the lowest possible classification level. That is inherent to what I was talking about, sir. It is an absolute fundamental building block.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Cooper.
Mr. COOPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is an unexpected prompt pleasure. Thank you.
It strikes me that we may already have a national intelligence director. He does not have that title, but there is a man in U.S. Government who controls some 85 percent of defense spending and has the power to hire and fire. And that person would be the Secretary of Defense, Secretary Rumsfeld.
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It is little surprise to me that he may be reluctant to lose some of that power and have it shifted over to another individual. And I do not mind an individual having that amount of power, as long as it is, you know, wisely used.
I would like to ask, what is the record of the various Pentagon intelligence agencies so far? How would you grade yourselves in terms of accuracy and timeliness and things like that?
I do not question your patriotism, I know you are all fine Americans doing a great job, but a few weeks ago, retired General Jack Keane testified to our committee, and one of the sadnesses of this job is we tend to get more honest testimony from those who have retired.
And he pointed out, for example, that he thought that the Pentagon had been seduced—that is the word he used—by Iraqi expatriates in misleading us in the postwar planning.
He also indicated that the amount of prewar planning, he described it like this, a large bucketful, he described the amount of postwar planning as being about like this, a thimbleful. And this is from General Jack Keane.
So how should the American people judge the effectiveness of DIA and the other various defense intelligence agencies' work? I mean, according to the 9/11 Commission, of the 15 U.S. intelligence agencies, the one with the best track record, at least recently, is actually the INR and the State Department, one of the least well-funded and one of the smallest, but one of the most independent of the intelligence units.
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So how is the average voter back home to judge? Here you all already have the power, and when you want something done, this committee jumps to action. But now you do not want much done, and you are, as I described yesterday, sweet-talking and slow-walking this report to death.
And I want to hear valid concerns. We want to work with Pentagon attorneys to adjust the drafting, to get it right. No one wants to interfere with the fine works of our troops in the field.
But people are worried that we are not doing the job that the American people deserve today. And we have in front of us the folks—two of them, at least—who are among those most responsible for that. So let us find out, how would you grade yourselves?
Secretary CAMBONE. Let us take it in that set of categories that I gave you earlier, between those things which are part of the NFIP, or the national programs, the JMIP programs, and the TIARA programs.
From the point of view from the NFIP programs, I think our signals and imagery people have and continued to perform well. They would, probably sitting here, tell you candidly that they would like both more assets to collect and more people to do analysis. And they would like more equipment to analyze the information and disseminate it. But they respond well and quickly to the full range of requirements that are set upon them.
On the analytic side, which is what I think that you are raising—and I will let Admiral Jacoby answer this—we, in that sense, operate in two environments. One is the environment in direct support to the operation of the forces, as the admiral said in his one hat. And in his other hat, he is a member of the National Intelligence Community. And he can speak to their performance in both cases, but I think you need to understand that there are those two venues in which he operates.
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At the tactical level—and, again, General Odierno can respond to this—we have improved beyond where we were 18 months ago in ways that I think are marked and impressive. And the Army intends to do even better as a case in point. I think it is the intention of the chief to add some 9,000 people to their intelligence capabilities to support their tactical operations.
So that is, sort of, the spectrum of what we have done.
Do you want to say a few words about——
Admiral JACOBY. Yes, I think we have looked hard at the support for the planning and maneuver phase of both the Afghanistan operation and the Iraq operation. And I think that would give us good grades. We have a lot of work to do in terms of the all-source and the IT and information-sharing part that I talked to, and tradecraft and moving into new missions are clearly an area that we are working hard at at this point.
Secretary CAMBONE. But, Mr. Chairman, if I may just finish the point, I would be happy to offer, on behalf of the Admiral here, to come by and brief you and other Members of the committee on the lessons learned that we have done on the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) issue, on Iraq and on Afghanistan. Admiral Jacoby has done them all. So we are happy to come by and talk with you about those.
The CHAIRMAN. Why don't we provide that and maybe provide an answer in writing for Mr. Cooper? And the one last area that he mentioned, the statement by General Keane about the analysis with respect to the Iraqi expatriates. I think that would be an important piece of that response. Let us get that to them.
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[The information referred to was not available at the time of printing.]
The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Forbes.
Mr. FORBES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank all of you for the job that you have done and are currently doing.
And one of the things we hear a great deal about is the collection of data and then the dissemination of that data, but I am also concerned with how we make decisions from the data that we have.
And particularly, one of the things that I think is one of the greatest opportunities we have is the technology we have in utilizing, modeling, simulation and visualization, especially when you talk about some of the things you have mentioned, like joint mission focus, joint training and joint planning. I think that technology offers us the opportunity to save lives and money and time.
And my question for you today is, how are we using that technology in the intelligence arena today? And is there more we need to be doing from a congressional point of view to increase our capabilities there so we can utilize it more? Because I still think we are still on the tip of the iceberg of what we are capable of doing in that whole arena.
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Admiral JACOBY. I agree totally, sir. We are down with the Joint Forces Command battle center talking to them very explicitly about which of their models can port over to the intelligence, a problem particularly that, you know, sort of, the preplanning phase.
We are putting people there with them. We have people down for each of their exercises, and as we move into this modern IT environment we are talking about with data that is tagged so that it can be used effectively, it is not just by analyst tools, but also it can be used effectively for modeling a simulation.
So we are—it is part and parcel of our IT modernization part that we talked about and getting the information in formats where these tools can be applied without having to do an awful lot of manipulation for each scenario.
Mr. FORBES. One of the things that I would just encourage you perhaps to give us some guidance on, too, is how we can reach an even greater synergy between what we are doing from the government perspective and also the private sector.
Because, as you know, both of those just have incredible capabilities, and they are just cutting their teeth on all this now, but if we can do something to push them further and help reach that synergy, the opportunities we will have, I think, are just enormous.
Admiral JACOBY. And we are relying almost totally on private sector and commercial rather than government-developed capabilities, sir.
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Mr. FORBES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Marshall.
Mr. MARSHALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In the Commission's report, on page 344, they have a section that is called Institutionalizing Imagination. And the first sentence of that section is, ''Imagination is not a gift usually associated with bureaucracies.''
In his book, ''Against All Enemies,'' and in repeated testimony and op-eds, Richard Clarke has talked about the bureaucratic culture that exists within our Intelligence Community, one that promotes uniformity, risk-aversion, mediocrity, and what the Commission here describes as group-think.
If you read ''Imperial Hubris'' by Anonymous, you get the same criticism. And then I have also seen op-eds by others who have left the Intelligence Community—I cannot cite names right now—saying the exact same thing, that there is a culture within the community that suggests a lack of imagination, inability to analyze information in a way is going to foster greater security for the United States.
And I guess my question to you, gentlemen, is how would the bureaucratic restructuring of our defense community institute imagination? As the Commission says, how do you bureaucratize imagination? And it seems like an oxymoron right there, just mentioning that.
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But how do we do that? I am sure that these criticisms that have been leveled at our Intelligence Community are not news to you and that you have been working on trying to do that, to create a culture that fosters imagination. And I would like to hear how restructuring can accomplish that or what is being done right now to accomplish that.
Admiral JACOBY. First, I do not think restructuring addresses the issue, sir. And I agree with the Commission. We had a heavily risk-averse kind of a mindset, which then, obviously, works against imagination. So what have we done about it?
First, the key thing for us is significant hiring of young people; tradecraft, training that emphasizes very heavily, you know, methodologies for alternate analysis; new relationships that we have put in place with academic and think tank and other outside-of-the-intel centers of analytical excellence to come in and look at our work and challenge our assumptions, sometimes the assumptions being underlying assumptions that were not explicit in the process. So trying to bring outside expertise to the problem plays a big part in it for us.
And rewarding people for making a strong case that is the alternative view. And in our recognition programs, our evaluation programs and in our award and reward programs, we are emphasizing that that is something to be cherished in the process.
So we are trying to come at it in a cultural attack rather than a structural attack.
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Mr. MARSHALL. I know if I am looking for a memo from an associate as a lawyer, what I want are both sides of the argument and the proof that backs up both sides of the argument. And when you say rewarding alternative points of view, is that what you are getting at: basically insist on multiple voices being heard?
Admiral JACOBY. And the value of being able to put together that argument. I mean, the professionals are putting together that argument. Even if it is the alternate view, is it a well-researched presented argument with the fact? What do we know? What are the unknowns? What is our assessment in the strength of the conviction behind that assessment?
Mr. MARSHALL. You could almost create a scale—most reliable, least reliable, the different kinds of evidence that supports different conclusions—and make that sufficiently uniform that when people see these things, maybe completely unfamiliar with the underlying facts, they have a gauge that they are familiar with—though they are unfamiliar with the underlying facts, a gauge they are familiar with in trying to make an assessment concerning the reliability of the intelligence.
Admiral JACOBY. And the other piece besides making that, sort of, personalized assessment is then to hold it up to scrutiny by an outside group and let them go through, the doctoral dissertation process: present your case and let us poke holes at it. And those are things we are trying to institute as a way of doing business.
Mr. MARSHALL. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
Gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Wilson.
Mr. WILSON OF SOUTH CAROLINA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I would like to thank all of you for your service, and in particular, as we are talking about the Department of Defense and intelligence, our Chairman, Duncan Hunter, yesterday pointed out that the 9/11 Commission report was really not critical in any way of DOD intelligence. And, in fact, there was no real identification of shortfall or shortcomings in terms of intelligence related to 9/11 in preparation for the war on terror. And I want to congratulate you on your efforts and what you have done for our country.
Additionally, yesterday, it was really exciting for me to be here with Governor Kean and hear his presentation, to hear Congressman Hamilton. I believe that the 9/11 Commission report, as they presented it yesterday and explained it, was extremely positive. It was nonblaming, which I think is so important as we try to protect the American people. And then, additionally, it was just absolutely so constructive.
In fact, as we talk about it being constructive, I believe that the President has already initiated reforms that can be taken to another step.
First of all, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center that he had proposed in the State of the Union address, which has been implemented, and then with the additional efforts of the national security adviser, these appears to be superseded now with the National Intelligence Director, the National Counterterrorism Center.
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And Mr. Secretary, if you could please tell me how you feel that the additional reforms, transformations that have been proposed—how indeed this is a step beyond the Terrorism Threat Integration Center?
Secretary CAMBONE. In the case of the proposed National Counterterrorism Center, which would replace the so-called TTIC, or Terrorism Threat Integration Center, that the President put in place, it would have added to it, the NCTC would, responsibility for looking over the range of plans that are within the various components of the government, to assure that those plans are consistent with the intelligence reporting first; but second, in light of the intelligence reporting, whether the appropriate actions were being undertaken by those components of the government, to anticipate, disrupt or respond to that intelligence in good time.
So the added dimension here is that there is a shorter span, we hope, between recognizing that we have an issue or a problem that we have to deal with and animating the appropriate response out of the government. And I think that is especially what the President is looking to accomplish.
Mr. WILSON OF SOUTH CAROLINA. And as these reforms are put in place, would there be a dislocation of staffing or personnel or offices or whatever that could—what would be done to make sure that during the interim, as the reforms are in place, that indeed we do not have gaps in terms of what we are all trying to accomplish, which is connecting the dots?
Secretary CAMBONE. That is right. And that is the function of resource allocation, if you will, particularly amongst skilled analysts. And it will be the case, as it is today, that the various departments and agencies will be asked to contribute individuals to work in the NCTC, but a difference will be, I believe, relative to the TTIC today, where you are assigned on detail—you are there as a temporary appointment—you would, in fact, be working in the NCTC as an employee of that organization.
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But the Department of Defense or FBI or any of the others will retain—will retain the necessary capability to support their statutory missions. That is my understanding of how we are going to do this.
Mr. WILSON OF SOUTH CAROLINA. And the distinction between operational activities and reporting activities, analysis activities, all of these would be in place without interruption?
Secretary CAMBONE. That is my understanding, sir. I mean, I think people see the NCTC setup as being a relatively simpler undertaking and one that could probably be done fairly seamlessly.
Mr. WILSON OF SOUTH CAROLINA. Thank you very much.
And I particularly have an interest—I have a son who is an intelligence officer currently serving in Iraq. So he works for you. Thank you. I am very proud. Thank you.
I yield the balance of my time.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
The gentlewoman from California, Ms. Davis.
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Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you to all of you for being here. I certainly appreciated the opportunity to meet with you, General Odierno, in Iraq, and thank you for your work with the troops and also with the community.
I wonder if we could go back for just a minute to lessons learned. You mentioned that you would like to talk to us about those issues, and I know that we appreciate that. We certainly would appreciate that here, as well. And whether, in closed session, if that is necessary, but also in this session today.
We have talked a lot theoretically about what the changes that the 9/11 Commission is recommending would mean. But I think it is important for people to bring it down to real terms that they know and understand and that they have experienced themselves.
Could you please give us the most salient lessons learned as it relates to Iraq and particularly the rise of the insurgency? How do you think that information could have been differently collected, better collected, differently shared?
We talked about the filtering of information. What is it that we are not getting?
I asked yesterday about the Office of Special Plans within the Pentagon. I understand that is not something that we see, necessarily, on an intelligence chart. What about that informal intelligence, casual intelligence? How would you characterize that? How can we better understand the interplay of that kind of information?
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Secretary CAMBONE. One of the things we have not talked about—and I thank you for your question—in the phrase of the radio commercial we all hear for a particular clothing store in the Washington area, is whether we have informed consumers. Are we informed and sufficiently engaged with the information, the people that are bringing the information to the users so that two things can happen?
One, we can query them about what they know but are not reporting, because for some reason it is not—they do not think it is germane, or they have made some judgment about my interest in a subject and therefore would not think to bring it forward in a written report. But when you engage with them directly, there is a richness to that which I have found to be enormously helpful.
So this goes to Admiral Jacoby's point about information left behind as a finished product is pushed forward. And so, therefore, you need the opportunity to go in and look sometimes at the bits and pieces rather than the finished product.
The second things is that we probably ought to also talk about the responsibility that the consumer, the policy-maker has in being a little more clear about what it is he expects in the way of information.
Because if we are going to insist that the analyst bring us the answer or bring us the proof, or bring us the unimpeachable case, we have done them an enormous disservice, and we will prevent them—and have prevented them, in my view—from, in fact, doing what Mr. Cooper was asking, which is bringing forward those alternative views.
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Because if you say to someone, ''Bring me proof,'' well, they are going to be reluctant to bring forward anything but the narrowest definition of what the proof might be.
So we, as the consumers, need to open their apertures. We need to allow them to make mistakes. We need to come to the point where we say, ''It is not the intelligence which made me do something. It is that I took that intelligence, I married it up to what I see, my experiences that I have had, the purposes of the country, the circumstances in the world, and a decision is made to act.''
That, I think, is the other half of the equation that we need to talk about.
Admiral JACOBY. I would like to give 50 seconds worth of bullets.
We learned that we were too narrowly defining what defense intelligence was. Our focus was very heavily on the maneuver and conventional force employment. We did not have the cultural awareness and other kinds of skill base that it took for the post-maneuver phase operation.
We are undervalued and underinvested in tactical HUMINT, because much of what we need to feed the understanding comes from, you know, the tactical collector.
We have not emphasized flowing information up the chain of command. For most of my career, things flowed down. The best information was at the national level and it came down. So we are not set up in practice in capturing those little observations of daily events that happen at the tactical level to be able to bring them into a larger picture.
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And then, as Dr. Cambone said, we filtered out most of the relevant information for the present circumstance early on as being noise, as we focused on the military maneuver requirements. And we filtered out a lot of information that we desperately need today.
Ms. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you. I appreciate that. I guess the heart of that question is why, and going back through that.
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentlelady.
The gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Cole.
Mr. COLE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, gentlemen, for being here.
I want to put a proposition to you, Mr. Secretary, and then maybe have you respond.
I think we have gone through a process where a lot of folks read the recommendations of the report, but not many people bother to read the report, just judging by the commentary that we have had over the past several weeks.
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When I read the report, you know, I find the failure, frankly, to be more attitudinal than I do organizational. You know, we did not perceive, as a country, the nature of the threat in front of us. We underestimated the capability of the enemy that we had. Frankly, we were probably pretty complacent about our own ability to defend, in a very real physical sense, our shores and our space.
We saw the issue of terrorism as a law enforcement issue. Some still do. Seeing terrorists, really, as—and terrorist incidents as crimes rather than attacks, and I think there is a very big difference. We responded to the first World Trade Center incident as a crime, not as an attack on the United States of America.
So my instinct is, now, having gone through 9/11, we know a lot more. We really do understand, in a way, frankly, and we had to pay for that understanding a very bitter price. And the way that we did—and so my instinct is there is a lot more cooperation now. There is a lot more focus on the nature of the threat. There is a lot bigger realization of the danger.
And that, to me, is a lot more important than the structural changes. As a matter of fact, that is where I would agree with the statement you made earlier that we run a big risk—or an implication of a statement—of wasting a lot of time in structural changes, some of which can be very good, but a system—had the system the 9/11 Commission recommended been in place before 9/11, I do not think the result would have been, frankly, all that different, because I think the attitudes were not there among the personnel.
This is not a matter of we—there was some vital clue that had we known it things would have, like a light bulb, gone off and everybody would have instantly known what to do. We had a lot of education to do as policy-makers, as Congress, as a military. You know, I do not think the military was all that interested in terrorism per se, in that particular period. They certainly are now.
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There was a lot of national learning that had to go on. I am not sure this structure would have created that. Might have helped, might have made us a little bit better, but I would just like you to respond to how much of this is an attitudinal problem, or was, as opposed to an organizational problem.
Secretary CAMBONE. It goes in part to the question of bureaucratizing imagination. That is hard to do.
On the other hand, part of what is being looked for in these proposed reforms are the two things that I tried to talk about in the beginning of my statement, which is recovering, restoring the art of providing indicators and warning of threat or threatening developments in events.
And that goes in part to your point about complacency. I mean, with the passing of the Soviet Union and the imminent threat that it posed, there was less attention paid to developing that talent, that art.
And it goes, in part, as well to the question of whether we have the right support mechanisms for presenting data in different formats so you can see things differently. We tend today to do everything off a sheet of paper, and it tends to dull the imagination.
So indications and warnings are something we need to work on very hard.
The second thing we need to work very hard on is moving the recognition of a threat or a data piece so people can use it and making that happen very much more quickly than it happens today. And so if there were failures prior to 9/11 that this set of reforms would fix, maybe it is that: more attention and indicators and warnings so people would be attentive, and second, moving data more rapidly, data from the FBI to the CIA, to the people who could use it.
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Mr. COLE. I think that would help.
I would just put this, as my time concludes, as a point we ought to think about. In another lifetime, I used to do a lot of political polling. And I can tell you what the American people's interest level in foreign policy and defense was in the 1990's and I can tell you what it is today, and it is dramatically different.
You know, Harry Truman, at the beginning of the Cold War talked about how we are going to have to scare the hell out of the American people about the Soviet Union to make them understand the nature of the threat and to undertake the commitment that it was going to take for two generations to deal with the problem.
I would suggest that this was as much a failure of the political leadership to educate the public at that time and to understand, as it was some sort of bureaucratic or institutional failure.
Now, again, that does not mean we cannot get better at what we do and there aren't lessons to learn. We can.
But we ought to step back and indict our national political leadership, which I would include myself among, and look in the mirror as the American people and say, ''You know, we just did not get it. We really did not see this coming. We thought we were pretty safe and pretty secure and we did not need to worry about these things anymore.'' And we paid a terrific price for it.
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I think you gentlemen have done a great job since we paid that price in responding to it. So thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from Hawaii, Mr. Abercrombie.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good morning and aloha.
Major General, it is nice to see you again here in this context. I, too, want to add my gratitude to you and your troops, for when the Chairman and I came to Iraq, I think, first folks that actually be on the ground in Iraq, and a lot has transpired since then.
My questions go more to Secretary Cambone. We had an opportunity just at the end of our informal conversation yesterday, Mr. Secretary, to discuss some of the fundamental nature of organizational structure that is implicit or, in fact, explicit in the 9/11 recommendations.
Most particularly, if you will recall my conversation, I think, is the best way to put it, about the National Security Adviser, the relationship of the National Security Adviser to the National Intelligence Director, the relationship of the National Security Adviser to the Secretary of Defense, and the organizations associated with the Secretary's responsibility, and the proposals of the 9/11 Commission, particularly with regard to the idea of the DCI, the Director of Central Intelligence, being replaced, in effect, by the National Intelligence Director, who would assume the roles of head of the Intelligence Community, an adviser to the President, but not head the CIA.
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Now, the President has made his own recommendations within that context. The 9/11 Commission also asked that the National Intelligence Director would approve and submit nominations to the President for head of the CIA, the DIA, the National Security Agency, et cetera.
In that context, could you comment or are you prepared to comment officially at this stage as to what the relationship—how you see the relationship then of the national security adviser to the National Intelligence Director in the context of what the DOD needs to do at the policy level? Set aside the warfighter discussion that we also had yesterday and has been a central focus up to this point of the two previous hearings.
Secretary CAMBONE. I enjoyed our conversation yesterday. And I thank the Chairman for arranging it for us.
I am not sure that I think it will have——
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. My role in life is to have enjoyable conversations. It is an assignment the Chairman gave me.
Secretary CAMBONE. But I understand that he is going to make you pay for breakfast next time, was the deal.
My understanding, again, is that the basic relationships will not change, in the sense that the task of the National Intelligence Director is to be the principal adviser to the President on matters of intelligence, not on matters of policy. The National Security Adviser is a consumer of that intelligence, as, in the case of Dr. Rice, she is also a consumer of advice given by the Secretary, by the Chairman, by the Secretary of State.
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And her task, as I understand it, as she has executed it, is to pull that all together on behalf of the principals of the National Security Council, represent their views to the President, and in turn represent the President's interests back to the members of the National Security Council when they meet in the principals committee.
So I see this director as being someone who is going to have his focus unambiguously on the questions of what is evolving in the world of intelligence from his position of not having to run an agency, but being able to look across all of the community and advise the President accordingly.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, if I accept your analysis—and I do—as to what the role and the operational role of the National Security Adviser, then who is going to be in charge? Who can direct us? Why shouldn't the National Security Adviser then—well, let me ask you this before I make my point.
Do you think then—have you concluded in a hierarchal sense what the role of the National Security Adviser is in relation to the National Intelligence Director? Is he or she—and the President says she—in charge of, or over, or does the National Intelligence Director report through her to the President?
Secretary CAMBONE. I do not believe that that is the intent, sir, but I do not believe that the Secretary of Defense or the Chairman report through the National Security Adviser either.
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I mean she, in that sense——
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. You just——
Secretary CAMBONE [continuing]. Is not seen as an operational—she is not an operational—has not been——
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. No, I am not asking that. I am not asking that. I am asking what would be the relationship, as you see it now, with what the President has recommended?
Mr. Chairman, if you could just indulge me 30 seconds here——
The CHAIRMAN. All right.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE [continuing]. Trying to get this answer because we cannot make a decision in here——
The CHAIRMAN. Well, let us give Mr. Cambone a try to——
Secretary CAMBONE. I told you as much as I think I understand. I mean, at that point, I do not know——
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, in conclusion of this portion of my time, would you agree that the precise nature of the relationship and authority and obligation need to be clearly understood before we can move forward and make legislative recommendations?
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Secretary CAMBONE. And I have no doubt——
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. Thank you.
Secretary CAMBONE [continuing]. That when the President completes his review and decides how he wants to do this that there is not going to be ambiguity in these relationships.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you.
Secretary CAMBONE. I cannot imagine that.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from New Hampshire, Mr. Bradley.
Mr. BRADLEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
General, it is great to see you again. The last time I saw you we were in a Black Hawk going from Kirkuk to Tikrit, and certainly the opportunity to have spoken with about 25 Iraqi policemen in Kirkuk was one of the highlights of the time that I spent there.
Over the last couple of days we have had a long discussion about reorganization, how a national intelligence director plays in with this, stovepipes, sharing of information, but it has focused on reorganization.
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And I look at a couple of the themes of the 9/11 Commission report, and that was the failure of imagination and lost opportunities.
So my question is, how much of these intelligence failures can be laid at the feet of the fact that we have less intelligence assets today than we had in the 1990's to not only these lost opportunities, but the failure of imagination? We have less CIA human intelligence agents, less listening posts and that type of thing. That is number one.
And number two, if there is going to be a reorganized effort, how can that improve the long-term acquisition of overall intelligence in a reorganized system?
And I thank you.
Secretary CAMBONE. I will leave Jake to comment a bit as well on the first question, to which I would say that I think that there is some impact in the drawdown that took place during the 1990's in the overall intelligence capability of the country, primarily in two areas.
One would be the analytic corps, a corps of analysts who we rely upon. As a consequence of that drawdown, the average age and experience of our people is short and young, that is experience and age. That is not bad, it is just a fact. And therefore they may not have had the breadth of experience and so forth.
And the second area where there was a drawdown was clearly on the human intelligence side of the house, and that was clearly drawn down quite substantially and significantly. And that loss affected us not just prior to 9/11, but we continue to feel that loss.
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Now, in terms of a reorganizational approach, if we have an arrangement in which the national intelligence adviser is able to lay down a set of requirements for the kinds of people he wants to bring in, their backgrounds, their language skills, recruitment, and then he sees to their care and feeding and development over time as analysts, transfers them from DIA to CIA to NSA, back over to FBI, make sure they get some time over at Treasury, so that they become rounder in terms of their experience, see the problem from more than one perspective; if he can do those kinds of things and has that kind of flexibility within the system, I think what we will get are higher-quality analytic products out of those individuals.
And then, last, if he insists that those analysts now that he has worked so hard to develop, in fact, are put in the position of driving collection, they need to be the ones who say, ''I do not understand something; please go out and get me more information,'' rather than the situation we have today, where they send in a chit, sometime later some product comes back, and that is what they have to work with. That is not how we do it. We have to have a much more interactive arrangement. And, again, I think a national intelligence director can make that happen.
Admiral JACOBY. Mr. Bradley, you ask a great set of questions.
I do not think it was the drawdown of the 1990's that hurt us so much. It was the fact that we could not restock the shelves. And so we basically made no hires. And so we were not bringing in new talent and training them. And so we do have a very young workforce now that is part and parcel.
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We also did not have the investment money to put into modern information management techniques and that all-source approach that I talked about in my statement. So we are catching up. And those were desperately felt impacts.
I second Dr. Cambone's discussion about jointness. I would offer one caution. Most of the discussion so far about moving people around to promote a community approach talks about breadth of experience. We need to, at the same time, husband and harbor depth.
And so movement for its own sake has some advantages, but for those areas where we need depth over time, we are going to have to have a very specific investment program there that is a little different then, you know, the jointness in a military three-year tour kind of a way.
Mr. BRADLEY. Yes. I thank you for that answer. It would seem to me that, as we talk about reorganization—I totally agree with you—we have to refill the shells and make sure that we actually have enough assets in place, or else we can reorganize all we want. We are just moving things around to no greater avail.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from New York, Mr. Israel.
Mr. ISRAEL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, gentlemen.
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And let me say in particular, General Odierno, I want to thank you. You are very popular in my office and in my district. We have a very large photograph of Mr. Weldon and I presenting you, in Ballad, with a Bay Shore Fire Department sweatshirt. And, in fact, that picture hangs in the Bay Shore Fire Department on Long Island.
The first two Long Islanders who were killed in action both came from the same community in Bay Shore, and we were honored by your hospitality in Ballad. And I know that meant a great deal to those that I represent in Bay Shore.
I would like to take the questions literally in a different direction, because for the past two days, we have been focused on two specific directions, vertical bureaucratic reform, putting an NID atop a pyramid, a horizontal bureaucratic reform, better coordinating across a plane of different agencies and congressional entities.
But I thought that the most instructive chapter of the 9/11 Commission report dealt not with horizontal reform and vertical reform; it dealt with our glaring inability to see ahead, to analyze cultural conditions that are creating fertile ground for the next generation of terrorists.
We have, in my view, undervalued and underbudgeted agencies within our military that are trying to do just that. The Center for Army Analysis has extraordinary personnel who are charting a broad range of conditions—demographic conditions, population, governance, empowerment—and predicting what the military flash points are going to be over the next several years.
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In 1999, Army intelligence produced an extraordinary study that, in my view, foretold the likes of Muqtada al-Sadr and Zarqawi before we even knew their names, based on demography and population and cultural influences.
My question is, should we be thinking not just in terms of vertical bureaucratic reform and horizontal bureaucratic reform? Should we be investing more and putting more value into those rather obscure agencies and efforts that attempt to take a look at non-traditional intelligence and warn us of future problems?
Admiral JACOBY. We are reaching out exactly to those groups, the centers that the services have and so forth, for exactly the reasons that you point out, sir. So you and I are on exactly the same wavelength.
And whether it is inside government, or whether it is, you know, think tanks or academia or other places, that is where this information resides that we need to work with.
You all see in my testimony over the last couple years about a major discussion about demographics and so forth that fuel some of the problems that we have that are going to be problems in the future.
And what we have done inside DIA is some basic reprioritization and taken some of those issue areas and say, ''Those are issue areas that might not have traditionally been viewed as a defense analysis problem. They are issue areas that we need to master. We need to master so that, you know, a force on the ground understands the cultural and other associated issues that they are likely to encounter, but also to provide the earliest possible warning of either threats or evolving opportunities.''
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So, sir, we are right on the same wavelength. And we are doing exactly what you talked about, bringing them into, and making them part of, our assessment effort.
Mr. ISRAEL. Admiral, if we can arrange for me to visit with you and go into this in greater detail, I sure would appreciate it.
Admiral JACOBY. I would welcome the opportunity.
Mr. ISRAEL. Thank you, sir.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, gentlemen.
The gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Kline.
Mr. KLINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, gentlemen, all three, for being with us today to help us understand the impacts of the 9/11 Commission recommendations.
We have talked the last couple of days and some this morning about the impact on intelligence for the warfighter. We have talked about the role of the National Intelligence Director in budgeting and what impact that might have on NFIP, TIARA and so forth.
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Mr. Abercrombie raised an issue a little earlier when he pointed out that one of the directions of the 9/11 Commission report has a national intelligence director, quote, approving and submitting nominations to the President of the individuals who would lead the CIA, DIA, NRO, NSA and some others.
And so my question to you is, looking particularly at those now, where the heads of those agencies are, as Admiral Jacoby, serving military officers, how does that differ from the way we do it today in the role of the DCI and the Secretary of Defense?
Secretary CAMBONE. Modestly, in truth. I know for a fact that the President—the Secretary inquired of DCI for all of the major appointments that he has made within the Department of Defense for those agencies. That, under current arrangements, the DCI has a concurring role in those appointments. And that, by law, if the Secretary disagrees with the DCI, then he needs to make that disagreement known when he, the Secretary, makes his recommendation to the President.
Now, there is a possibility that that process could be reversed somewhat, wherein it is the DCI who seeks out the Secretary's concurrence, and then it would be the National Intelligence Director who would then inform the President of any dissent that he may get from the Secretary of Defense or any other Cabinet agency.
And I think people are trying to work out that arrangement. And to your point and Mr. Abercrombie's point, I mean, those arrangements will be made out at the leisure of the President. It is he who will decide in the end how his executive agency department, within the scope of the statutes that are here—that are in place, he would make that process run.
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Mr. KLINE. And it is your understanding, though, that having read, I am sure as you have, in detail the recommendations of the Commission that it is their intent that the National Intelligence Director have the final say there, as opposed to the current situation where the Secretary of Defense can move forward a recommendation noting, as you said, that the DCI disagreed.
And this would work just to reverse the—in your understanding, that the NID could move it forward and dependent upon, again, how the legislation and the regulations are put in place, a nonconcurrence by the Secretary of Defense would go forward.
But your understanding, I assume, would be that you, in your role as the NID's deputy, would play an important role in helping to select who those agency heads would be.
Secretary CAMBONE. Well, as I said in the opening, I am hoping to avoid the second hat.
But, again, it could be done that way. I do not know that it will be done that way. It could be done that way.
I think the commission was closer to hiring and firing, is where they were. And I think that there are—as I understand it—there may be some statutory limitations on the ability of someone outside of a Cabinet department to hire and fire people within a department.
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So there would need to be some arrangements made if, in fact, the President wishes to change the current arrangement.
Mr. KLINE. All right. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, could I get 15 seconds of your time before you yield back?
Mr. KLINE. I gladly yield those 15 seconds.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Cambone, to follow up on this, the law presently says that where the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, must come from within the military ranks. Is that not—in the military command system. I believe that is the law.
Secretary CAMBONE. I do not think so, sir, because we have at the moment a civilian as the head of NGA.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, then, I am misinformed.
Secretary CAMBONE. I do not believe so.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Where they generally come from then?
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Secretary CAMBONE. I think it is an either/or kind of thing—
Mr. KLINE. In which case, I will reclaim my time, sir, and yield back.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, it makes a difference in terms of—please do not. Just ten more seconds.
And maybe it is at the pleasure then of the Secretary. Generally, though, it has come from within the military command system. Is that not correct?
Secretary CAMBONE. That has been historically how we have done it. It is also the case, though——
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. My point being, or the follow-up being that this important, and again, it relates, Mr. Chairman, to the question of how we draft legislation or what we do, is that that is crucial then to—because the appointing authority presumably is familiar with the people like Admiral Jacoby and others and their experience within the system and knows who they are in the terms of their character, if you will, which I think, where intelligence is concerned, is vitally important.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. Both gentlemen's time have expired.
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And the gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Hill.
Mr. HILL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to depart from the normal line of questioning here and go back to September the 11th. I can remember when we were all standing on the steps of the Capitol singing ''God Bless America.'' It was one of the few times that I actually felt like I was in a nonpartisan environment. And I would hope that as we have these hearings, that we could get to that same level of nonpartisanship because of the safety of the people of the United States.
Last night and this morning, I was rereading what happened on September 11, 2001, and was again amazed by the amount of mistakes that were made.
We have 19 people in this country illegally that are plotting to kill Americans. They got through our security system. I was just reading about the hijacking of American Airlines flight 77 that actually was hijacked about six minutes after the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center, allowing—48 minutes later, it crashed into the Pentagon. And I am wondering in my mind, what happened?
You all were there at that particular time. I remember where I was. We, in part, depend upon you to keep us safe. I would like to hear from you what feelings you were having on September the 11th, where you were at the time that it was all occurring, and, in retrospect, aside from the 9/11 Commission's report, what do you think ought to be done to improve our intelligence.
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Secretary CAMBONE. Sir, I was in my office, and at the time I had been assigned the responsibility as the number two person in policy. I had been assigned the responsibility for the crisis management department.
I was completing a staff meeting when the first airplane hit the World Trade Center. I thought it was a horrific accident. I asked the people who were part of the crisis management team to assemble downstairs in roughly 45 minutes to an hour.
I turned around, returned to my office. The second plane hit. We were downstairs in 30 minutes.
We were inside the crisis command center when the third plane hit the building. We immediately evacuated the building and then went down after a period of time to join the Secretary and the Vice Chairman, who had been here on Capitol Hill at the time, to begin preparing a response.
Among the first things that were done were there was a conference call that was in session. The Chairman joined it at roughly 20 minutes after the hour. The Secretary joined shortly thereafter. In that period of time, the two of them were consulted on the defense condition that we were going to establish. It was determined that the Secretary of Defense had the authority to declare defense readiness condition Defense Command (DEFCON) 3 on his authority. There was a discussion with the Vice President and the President about it. That decision was left in place.
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And with that change from the DEFCON 5 condition to the DEFCON 3 condition, the rules of engagement for North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) changed. And they went from a situation in which, as I recall, their primary mission was to trail and report, as in the case, for example, of the Payne Stewart incident about a year or so earlier, when the crew and passengers had somehow become incapacitated. They go from trail and report to being in a situation where, depending upon the hostility displayed, they are in a position to engage.
The express authority for them to engage worked its way through a series of levels of command. And it was roughly at the time that the aircraft impacted in Pennsylvania when the flight crews were being informed that they now had authority to engage.
From that moment on, during the course of the day, the Secretary reengaged the President and the Vice President and others to work on two things. One was refining the rules of engagement for those pilots. The Secretary, having been a pilot, understood what it was like to be in that position and wanted to be certain that the pilots had the right information about engagement. Second, he began thinking about what the nature of the response for the United States ought to be in anticipation of a meeting that evening with the President and other members of the National Security Council.
Now, with respect to things that might be done differently, there is no question that we might have done better with respect to the sharing of information between the FBI and the CIA. There is no question that the meeting that was called in July, I believe—June or July of 2001, in which the threats that had been accumulated by the intelligence agencies and conveyed to the various Federal Aviation Administrations (FAA) and other airline industry people and so forth might have been better handled under a different set of circumstances.
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There is no question that we here in the Department of Defense might have had more attention to some of the reporting, threat streams that you see going back over a period of ten years about the use of aircraft.
But the fact of the matter is, sir, that the reason that the delay between the time of American 11 and the aircraft that impacts in Pennsylvania was delayed was because we were set up to look outside—the Department was.
And we did do that successfully. We had escorted a Lufthansa flight in some years earlier under these very same conditions. And the conditions were not right for us to look inside the country. The FAA cannot look inside the country. It works off of transponders, not radars. The aircraft that turned around and—it was lost to radar for a period of time.
So there were changes that have taken place since. And we have put U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) in place. They have made the proper relationships with NORAD. They have done the exercises and the training, and Lord knows all those exercises have not been perfect and all the occasions on which there have been alerts things have not gone properly well. That is all admitted.
Nevertheless, I think we are better knitted today for that kind of threat. You saw that in the case of the threats over Christmas and the work that was done. Again, escorting aircrafts across the United States.
The Joint Forcer Counter Terrorism Center (JFCT) has been put into place inside the Pentagon and it works for Admiral Jacoby. It has been manned, it is fast, and it works very hard.
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Our counterintelligence field agency has been staffed up, and it works very hard, and they are knitting themselves together with the standard Intelligence Community apparatus.
The communications have improved markedly. The DCI holds its five o'clock threat meeting every day. And I was reading somewhere where it was suggested that the DCI did not have the authority to get people to do things as a result of those meetings. Well, that is just false. It is just false.
People will sit there; they will go over the intelligence, and I know for a fact that people took action as a result of those activities, not just within CIA, but within all the other agencies that were connected.
So there is activity that goes on well beneath the service that people do not see that is keeping the country very safe, very safe. Much safer than it was—much more safe than it was in the past. There is much to be done, and so therefore we welcome dealing with the Commission's recommendation.
But let us please not forget how much has been done in the interim.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
The gentlelady from Michigan, Mrs. Miller.
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Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I thank all three of the gentlemen for being with us today. I thank you for your service to our country.
And, Dr. Cambone, listening to your response to the last question puts a human face, I think, onto all of this conceptual kinds of things that we are all talking about today as we all recommend we are one American and what we can do to go forward, certainly.
And talking about humans, humanity, I want to talk a little bit about human intel, if I could. And General Odierno, in particular, had an opportunity, I know, to echo what so many other members of this committee have said. I have appreciated your hospitality. I only had an opportunity to be in Iraq, I think, at the end of the January.
And to be in the—I know you call it the spider hole, but I call it the rat hole, which was too good of a term for him, I think, as well. And it really brought home to me, as we had an opportunity to go on the Black Hawks and going up there, the geography that you are dealing with in Iraq.
But whether we are in Iraq or Pakistan, Afghanistan, the kind of geography that we have, and as I listened to the admiral articulate all the new technology that we need to utilize, and, of course, that is a critical element in being successful in prosecuting the war on terror—but it occurred to me that there is absolutely no second for human intel, particularly when you are dealing with those kinds of situations there.
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And when your troops on the ground had an opportunity to explain to us what we had already seen on the TV, but actually listening to them how they actually got Saddam, which was certainly one of the most impactful things that has happened thus far in the theater in Iraq, having had human intel of where he was at and as they were walking over the hole several times, could not find it. And this fellow that was giving you the information kept saying, ''he is over here. He is over here.''
And so having that human intel, that is not technology. That is somebody telling you what is happening there.
And I would just ask for a comment, I suppose, on what you thought about the coordination of the human intel that you obtained on the battlefield there, how you did it through the intelligence gatherers and how you got it to the warfighters.
And, also, if the gentleman might have some comment on how we are utilizing human intel, it is distressing to hear about how we have not done what we need to know over the past couple decades, I suppose, on human intel and how it all relates, as we are restructuring here and getting ready to reorganize ourselves as we go forward against this new enemy that preys on the weak and the innocent. They are like cockroaches amongst us living in caves and crevices.
How we utilize human intel in the context of the 9/11 Commission recommendation, as well, if you could.
General ODIERNO. Yes, ma'am.
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I would just comment that over the last ten years, starting from Somalia through Kosovo through—our enemies learn from us and they learn our strengths. And they realize that our strengths are some of our great intelligence platforms that we have. So what they try to do is reduce those to the lowest denominator.
And what you see in the insurgency is they are trying to reduce our ability to collect on them with some of these great systems that we have. So it comes down to the necessity for human intelligence and our ability to do that.
And what we have found is, over time, we had to learn how to do it again, because it had not been a priority of ours. A lot of our human intelligence teams have been taken out of our force structure over time. And so we had to rebuild those on the move while we were in Iraq.
And it is not only just the collectors of human intelligence, it is also the ability to interpret information. And so we also did not have the interpreters necessary. We are working very hard now to correct that. And a lot of that has been corrected by the increase of the number of interpreters that we now have and the fact that the Army and other services have moved forward to increase significantly our human intelligence capability.
So we have realized that in the future we will continue to have this. And it is absolutely essential in an area such as Iraq.
And as we explained to you, as we went along, it was several months of human intelligence work that led us to the capture of Saddam Hussein. And it was work by soldiers and the ability to use that information, and collate that information, and share that information among many different agencies that enabled us then to move forward and understand how his network was built, how he was supporting himself, and then how we went ahead and finally caught him.
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But that goes on every day now, not just looking for Saddam Hussein, but looking for Zarqawi, and any other leaders in Iraq or Afghanistan. So I cannot overemphasize the necessity of you all to continue to support the increase in our ability to use human intelligence.
Yet, also we have gone to the fact that—I used to say every soldier is a scout. Also every soldier is a sensor. How do we then collate all that information that all of these thousands of soldiers are gathering every day on the ground and make that accessible to every one so we can make good solid decisions? So that is the next piece.
And, again, that is that data access piece, and have systems in place that enable us to put this human intelligence that we have gathered together so everyone can look at it from a tactical, all the way up to a strategic, level.
So that is, kind of, how I would put that. And it is extremely important as we move forward, because I see human intelligence as even more and more important as we continue to move forward.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
I thank the gentlelady.
And the gentleman from Washington, Mr. Larsen.
Mr. LARSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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Secretary Cambone, congratulations on your cover story of Military Geospatial Technology interview in there. And, I will tell you, the last few days I have learned—someone mentioned the alphabet soup earlier, but I have learned much more about the Intelligence Community than I thought I would, but certainly there is a lot more to learn for me; I would assume for other members, as well. And these hearings have been very valuable to help me understand the 9/11 Commission recommendations and how your role fits into that.
Just quickly, General Odierno, thanks for the hospitality in September. Some of my colleagues—sounds like they went to Iraq in December when the temperatures were mild. I think in September it was around 120 degrees or so in Iraq. But I really appreciate your service there and continued service, as well.
Just a quick point: I cannot help but think that if this book was maybe called the ''9/11 Commission Report: Intelligence Transformation,'' we would have an easier time of it, of getting this implemented. Because I really do think it really does constitute—the results of this report constitute a transformation in how we have to address many things in the war on terror.
We had a Cold War-model in many aspects. Still have a Cold War-model in other aspects, in defense. We have to reorganize for the war against terrorists.
It represents a philosophical shift, this report, in terms of intelligence and how we use it to where it is collected, and then who uses it, as well, and where we get it from.
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And also, I think the point is made, not specifically, but generally, that basically intel resources do not belong to any one department; they belong to everybody to use.
And that gets into Vice Chairman Hamilton's comment yesterday about one of the most important things we can do is to break down the wall of information-sharing. And there are some issues surrounding that, but we need to get there.
So it might—you know, if we thought about this in terms of transformation rather than reorganizing, rather than moving boxes around, it might be easier for all of us to speak the same language on this.
I wanted to—see Mr. Smith here. My colleague from Washington asked a question yesterday about the National Intelligence Director as it is envisioned in the report—and I will leave this with Dr. Cambone—versus what the President has envisioned in terms of an appointment.
The President says he wants to establish one. Should we expect an appointment for an NID anyway; can he do that anyway? And if so, would it reflect more the 9/11 Commission report or, as he has proposed it, which would be an adviser, like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) adviser was before he created a Cabinet official?
Secretary CAMBONE. I am not sure that insofar as he would separate—and then here I would have to appeal to a lawyer—insofar as he would want to separate, according to the Commission's report, the duties of the DCI, the Director of Central Intelligence from his responsibilities as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, if you are going to break those apart, those are in statute. So I am not certain that he can do that.
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I think he could, if he chose, you know, take interim steps in adding responsibilities to a DCI which are consistent with the kinds of recommendations that are here, but I think in the end, if there is going to be, as the President says he wants, that split, I think it is going to have to be statutorily done. That is my guess.
But in the interim, he is free, I would think, if he wishes to do so, to add those NID-like responsibilities to the DCI.
Mr. LARSEN. Thirty seconds.
Can he make an appointment as he envisions an NID now——
Secretary CAMBONE. Well, I do not know how you appoint someone to a position that does not exist.
Mr. LARSEN. Executive orders are written all the time.
Secretary CAMBONE. Well, but that gets to creating the position. But then separating the statutory obligations then gets to be the trick. I am way past my depth on that.
Mr. LARSEN. Yes. Just quickly, we did not create the DHS adviser either, we created the Department—
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Secretary CAMBONE. Of Homeland Security, that is correct.
Mr. LARSEN. —of Homeland Security, but Governor Ridge was there before the Homeland Security Department was there, too.
Secretary CAMBONE. That is true. That is true.
Mr. LARSEN. I see our little red light is on.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Weldon.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, thank you all for coming in. Good to see you all again.
General Odierno, it is good to see you again from our very successful trip over last January.
Two questions, and I am going to run through them very quickly, because of the time limitation.
So, Mr. Secretary, my big concern, as I expressed it yesterday, is not that we do not have enough recommendations, because we do. It is that the bureaucracy will prevent them from being implemented.
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This committee called for the creation of the Gilmore Commission, which came up with 144 recommendations, most of which were recommended before 9/11. And, in fact, 14 of the current 9/11 Commission recommendations were actually recommendations made by the Gilmore Commission in the past. So there really is not a lot that is new. It is a question of why they have not been implemented.
And one of the things that we have heard consistently, including today from you all, is the need for data collaboration, information collaboration.
It was this committee in 1999, with John Hamre sitting in that table, that called for the creation of a national collaborative center. There is the nine-page brief. This was put in the congressional record. It was briefed to all the leadership.
And at John Hamre's suggestion, on November the 4th of 1999, in my office, John Hamre, the Deputy Director of the FBI, the Deputy Director of the CIA, sat for the briefing. Hamre said, ''I will pay for it. I do not care where you put it. White House—DOD will pay the bill.'' And the CIA and the FBI said, ''We do not need it.'' That was in 1999, two years before 9/11.
So the question is—and, this by the way, is exactly what the TTIC is today. If you read the TTIC, it is identical to this.
Why did the previous administration not do it for two years and why did this administration take until 2003 to implement what the Congress required and mandated in three successive defense bills to take effect? That is the first question.
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Second question—this is for Admiral Jacoby.
Admiral Jacoby, John Lehman, who is a very respected leader and a friend of mine, made a statement last week before the Government Ops Committee: ''It is remarkable, shocking, that the senior member of this Congress and of this administration first learned of the Iranian connection from us, not from the Intelligence Community.'' And he goes on to explain that it was the 9/11 Commission that actually briefed this administration on the Iranian connection to the problems in Iraq.
Now, as you know, Admiral, on April the 14th I sent you these 170 pages that I entered yesterday in the record in the classified format. For the past 20 months, this committee has led the effort to make the connection between Iran and Iraq. And it is all documented here. You got a copy of this on April the 14th. So my question is simple: Is John Lehman wrong or is the intelligence system still broken?
Secretary CAMBONE. I cannot answer for the previous administration on TTIC.
The new administration, when it came in prior to 9/11, was, as you have heard the Secretary say any number of times, in the process of putting itself together even as it was beginning to adjust policy relative to Al Qaida and Osama bin Laden. That is the other story, by the way, that is told in the 9/11 Commission report.
Insofar as there was increased attention being paid to the nature of the problems and the solution or the organization that you are talking about, I think this administration had begun to change its focus and was moving from the law enforcement coupled, to military power, to one in which all elements of power were going to be used in that pursuit.
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Mr. WELDON. Just quickly as a statement in here I have to make, I did not mention this, Mr. Secretary. This whole process was based on the Army's Information Dominance Center at Fort Belvoir, the land information warfare activity (LIWA). But at the time that 9/11 occurred, both the Army had a capability for collaboration at the LIWA facility and special ops had a capability down in Florida to do exactly what this was supposed to. DOD wrote the book on this.
Secretary CAMBONE. Yes, and I cannot tell you why other things did not happen.
What I can tell you is, the President put the TTIC in place. We have, in fact, taken Fort Belvoir and their capabilities much higher. General Alexander has developed it, and it is now being pursued by a successor.
And you will be interested to know, and we can talk about this off-line if you do not, that in fact U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is doing some very interesting and important things along those lines.
We got that lesson. And now I think the purpose that the President has in pursuing the National Counterterrorism Center is to, as far as possible, institutionalize that imagination and the access to the data and the opportunity to engender action in reply. That is where he wants to go.
Admiral JACOBY. On the report, Mr. Weldon, we did analyze and assess that report. And I have responded by letter to you once or maybe twice in the interim. And so I will get copies of that letter and make sure——
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Mr. WELDON. That is not the question, Admiral. John Lehman said that the 9/11 Commission was the first briefing to the senior official in the Congress—I assume the speaker or the leader of the Senate—and was the first to brief the Administration on the Iran connection. John Lehman said this; there is his quote.
So I am asking you, is John Lehman wrong or did you not take what I gave you, since it was done by this committee for the past 20 months, and brief the Administration on the Iran connection? Which was it?
Admiral JACOBY. I do not know how many briefs might have been given by other agencies. I would have to check and see whether, in fact, that was the first briefing or not, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Turner.
Mr. TURNER OF TEXAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral, I wanted to first compliment you. I heard your opening statement, and I liked what I heard. Your understanding, your grasp of the importance of moving to all-source intelligence, not some-source; your advocacy of sharing based on the need to share rather than need to know.
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I think the frustration that I think we all heard from our colleague Mr. Weldon, who is such a strong advocate of moving us forward in the war on terror—I think we all share that frustration.
You know, I was reviewing our lack of progress in information sharing among the homeland security agencies, something the Congress has mandated back in the Border Security Act, in the Patriot Act, appropriations bills that have language to do it. And yet still that is not accomplished.
TTIC operates today with analysts with four, five different computer terminals under their desk, and they have to access each one. They are not interoperable. There is no sharing there.
It is hard to get a grasp of why we have had such a difficult time accomplishing what some call the creation of an interoperable system—some call it a federated system, where the different systems can communicate with one another. And in the process, post–9/11, we have seen a proliferation of efforts that still have not gotten us there, and we have all these new fusion centers or analysis centers.
I have a chart that I want to show you that illustrates some of the things that have happened, and yet we are still not where we need to be. This shows you the government intelligence analysis organizations before 9/11 in black, and all the new ones that have been added to that since 9/11, beginning with the Terrorist Threat Integration Center.
And, of course, all of those entities I am sure are important. But we have a new problem here, and that is one that creates new intelligence analysis centers or fusion centers of intelligence, if you will, and now we have to be sure all the fusion centers talk to one another.
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James Woolsey, former Director of CIA, testified before the Homeland Security Committee. He said he did not see anything wrong with a multitude of analysis organizations so long as all of them were tied together and could talk to one another and share what they have analyzed.
So you talk to the experts in information technology, and they say this can all be accomplished. The software is here. We have even had projects to do it just within the agencies of the Department of Homeland Security, the preexisting agencies before the Department of Homeland Security. Those efforts have fallen flat.
What is it? What is the problem? You know, you have been in this business a long time and you oversee probably a greater share of intelligence collection and analysis of anybody we could have before us. What is it going to take?
Admiral JACOBY. Sir, you ask good questions.
In looking at this hard, there are a number of factors and they all come together. One is that the technology, particularly some of the information management capabilities we need, have recently arrived. I mean they are over the last 12, 18 months.
Part of the issue is one of funding. And frankly, there will be a significant amount of money required to change legacy data and to format the newly arrived data such that it can be used in this kind of an environment. The systems were not designed that way initially. And some have been in place for decades.
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There is a part of it which has to do with security regulations and culture. One of those things is a shift away from the worry about any, you know—it is risk-aversion. We have to become risk-accepting in some cases in terms of the fact that some information might be made available to unclassification levels.
So there are a number of things and they are all intertwined. But I think the key part is that technology is available now. It is standard, it is fieldable. And we should get on with the task of the folks using the information in a position of primacy and having the collectors be the supporting commander, to use a joint term. That is the key underlying piece there, I think.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
And I might remind members, we have a luncheon at 2212 that started at noon with 9/11 families. So everybody is certainly invited to come on up and have a sandwich and have a chance to chat with the families.
Now we have the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. LoBiondo.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
A lot of my questions have been touched on already, but Mr. Bradley was talking earlier about our capabilities and what we have on the ground.
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I am curious as to what you can tell us in an unclassified session with how we are doing in Syria and Iran in this respect.
Mr. Secretary, you talked about, I think, the culture of intelligence. And are we making progress there?
And as a follow-up to that, while they are not hot spots right now, at least on the front page, what is our situation in places like North Korea and the Philippines, where something could develop almost in an instant?
Secretary CAMBONE. It is a little hard answering in open session.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Okay.
Secretary CAMBONE. Can you just refine it a little? If you can refine the question a bit, I would be happy to try to give you an answer here. I am not sure where to start, and I do not want to waste your time.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Okay. Let me talk to the Chairman about getting maybe something in a classified setting—
Secretary CAMBONE. I would be delighted to do that.
Mr. LOBIONDO. I understand. I figured we might be in that territory.
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Secretary CAMBONE. I would be delighted.
Admiral JACOBY. I might add one part. Clearly, most of the discussion is about trans-regional terrorist groups. And you brought up the Philippines: obviously, a country that is struggling with sort of local or regional terrorist groups. That is a major point of analysis and assessment inside our department.
And to go to Mr. Turner's question, many of these fusion centers are working different parts of the problems. And so, one of the key parts for us is to be thinking about these other countries where it may not be Al Qaida that is the key focus of attention, but from a military standpoint we have to keep attention on all these places where we have forces operating.
And so, I would welcome the chance to come back in a classified discussion and background you on some of the things that are happening that are broader than may be the point of the Commission report or today's hearing.
Mr. LOBIONDO. Thank you.
Secretary CAMBONE. Mr. Chairman, could I take a moment to build on Admiral Jacoby's answer to Mr. Turner?
You said, what is it going to take to fix it? The interest I have been displaying here and elsewhere for the last year on horizontal integration goes to the answer to your question. And let me tell you what, bottom line, the difficulty here is.
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As a practical matter, the DCI controls all classified information. The agencies have the IT net. No one has the wherewithal to make certain that the way in which we handle classified information, which is the obligation of the DCI because he is the classification authority, over against the people who are running the IT system can get them to match appropriately.
And so, when you look at an NID and you see that recommendation, which seems obvious that there ought to be an IT information security all-source kind of thing, that is monumental in addressing.
I cannot underscore enough, again and again and again, how important it is to bring those two sets of authorities, if you will, together in a way that we can get the information out of the networks, and the networks then in turn can be secure enough that the DCI or the NID can, in effect, certify that information he is responsible for is going to be safe when it is used on those nets and transported on those networks.
That is the rub to this. We have the authorities and responsibilities in two very different places, two very different cultures, and trying to bring those together is going to be an enormously difficult thing to do. But the payoff will be unbelievable.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Rodriguez.
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Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, Mr. Secretary, thank you very much for being here with us.
And, Admiral and General, thank you very much also for your service.
I was listening to you when you were talking a little bit where you were during 9/11. There is no doubt that, you know, we all were lacking, I think. I recall myself being here in the Cannon building and, after the second plane, going directly to one of the policemen that were there and asking them to remove a group of veterans that were meeting in one of the veterans' rooms. And he said, ''I do not have the authority.'' So I went in there and asked them to get out.
And so we have come a long way. But you have to admit that, as a Congress and as a government and as an intelligence agency, we failed. We failed our people.
And our constituency now is saying—they are questioning also the integrity of the data that is there. And I would ask that maybe—and I know that from one administration to another things will change. How do we make sure the integrity of the data, so when the general gets the information, that it is accurate, that it has not been filtered as much, that it is not useless to you anymore? And there is nothing harder to find out that we have certain data there, that if we could have moved on it, that we could have made a difference. And I know that that is going to be the case in the future.
So how do we ensure the integrity of the data? And we recognize that we have not done enough in little things with the CIA, such as the fact that we have not moved fast enough on acquiring people that are multilingual. We have not. We still have to make sure that we have—and we are told time and time again we live in a global economy. We have to reflect that in terms of the language capability, collecting the data, analyzing the data, and then making sure the integrity of the data is correct, and then distributing it and getting it out there.
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One of the things of 9/11—and I want you to address the issue of integrity of the data, and I also am very concerned about, from one administration to the other, of politically putting a spin on the data. And that really bothers me. How do we come to grips with that, when someone puts a spin on to try to get whatever they want from that instead of doing what should be in terms of the right thing? And I am not sure how to do that.
The third thing I want to just leave with you, if you can comment, more to the general, we are fighting terrorists. And I know, General, that worldwide no one can take us on in a theater war because they are not stupid; we are going to beat them, and you are going to take care of us.
How do we deal with terrorists? It is a different situation. 9/11 talks about an ideology, talks about being surgical in nature, which means that they have to have the data right there with the special ops; they've got to move, as the General indicated, in a matter of hours.
How do we make that happen? Do we need another team that just specializes in zeroing in on people like bin Laden and just concentrate worldwide in moving, being able to have that flexibility? Do we need a different structure? And I know we have talked about this in special ops.
So I wanted to throw that out in terms of both, number one, the integrity; number two, you know, making sure that the future politicians or future people do not put a spin on the data.
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And number three: How do we deal with making sure we get it down to the ground troops and to the special ops that need to be moved, and whether we need a special team there?
Admiral JACOBY. You know, the data part, sir, I do not know that we need some kind of special mechanism. We need to do what I talked about in the opening statement, which is have it available to that person on demand. And I think that is the key part.
I would just offer you a comment on the language and cultural part. Of our hires this year, about 20 percent are bilingual or trilingual. And many are in languages that apply directly to the war on terrorism.
And many of them are going to be either in our human intelligence collection or our analysis piece. You know, obviously, we are hiring people that are IT technicians and so forth. You know, we are not looking for language skills specifically. It is not as high as we would like. But it is——
Mr. RODRIGUEZ. What do you do when you find out that the integrity of that data has been messed with? And I can give you examples. But what do you do when you find out that somebody did not accurately report what should have been reported?
Admiral JACOBY. Did not accurately report what should have been reported?
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Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Yes.
Admiral JACOBY. What we do is we pull that into this all-source, you know, environment and look for those discrepancies. And the discrepancies can come in all shapes and sizes, from willingly distorting information to somebody who really does not know what they are talking about and so forth.
And so, then you go back and you reexamine and you set that information aside with a tag on it that says, questionable and so forth. And you work back, do not discard it. You work back to figure out exactly why there is a discrepancy there.
The CHAIRMAN. Admiral, you need to answer the rest of his questions, if you could, for the record, because we need to make sure other members get a chance to ask their question.
The gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Ryan.
Mr. RYAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you for coming. This has been a great couple of days for us, trying to break down the Intelligence Community, which is complicated to begin with. So thank you very much for all you do.
I want to shift gears here just a little bit and talk about some of the politics lately that concerns me. And it is something I hear about at home than anything else is that, are we being manipulated? Are we being tricked? Are we being scared?
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And it is difficult to answer some of these questions, because, as being a public official, we would never do anything—and I know I would never do anything, and I am sure no body in this administration would blatantly try to manipulate intelligence data to scare the American people. Because we have all been through too much.
Given some of the things that have happened, though, I just want to give you an opportunity to clear things up.
I was reading an article just today regarding Iran. And the U.N. Commission, the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports that Iran has not enriched uranium domestically. And the U.S. is saying, ''Yes, they have.''
Given the backdrop of Iraq, given what happened with Ambassador Wilson, there are questions as to what is the reliable intelligence with some of these issues, which brings me to the question I would like to ask you. In the last few days there has been a lot made of this gentleman named Khan, the mole that Pakistan had and the U.S. had, starting, it seems like, on July 12th.
And the first question is: Did we know that he was a mole for us and for Pakistan in the war on terror?
Admiral JACOBY. I do not know the answer, sir. I will have to take that to the Director to get back to you. I just do not know.
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[The information referred to was not available at the time of printing.]
Secretary CAMBONE. You are catching me cold on this one. I am not familiar with that reporting. I am sorry.
Mr. RYAN. The leak that has been in the news the last week or so?
Secretary CAMBONE. I do not understand it the way that you do. So I am just not, I am not——
Mr. RYAN. Basically what happened was we had this gentleman who was a mole for us. I mean, you know the story, right?
Secretary CAMBONE. Yes, I know the story. I think the question you are asking though is when you start to pull on these strings, and you have so many of them that you are pulling on, how do you know that the one that you have in your hand is actually connected to what you are looking for on the other end? I mean, I think that is basically the question you are asking.
And when then you say, ''Okay, the IAEA has a slightly different view,''—as a matter of fact, the IAEA was more alarmed earlier than most about Iranian activity. It was a private group that exposed the facilities in Iran in Isfahan that went to the IAEA.
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The European Union (E.U.) has made an effort to broker an agreement with Iran. And I believe the reporting, the newspaper reporting, is that the Iranians have said that they will nevertheless, despite the agreement they have struck with the E.U., continue that front-end processing, development capability.
Mr. RYAN. And I appreciate that. And we are all concerned with Iran. My concern is with this Al Qaida mole that we have had since July 12th who was working on behalf of us, who we dropped his name to the media before we could actually have him get us a heck of a lot more information than he got us.
And my question is: Why would the Administration, if we know this guy is working for us, as a mole, as an Al Qaida operative, mention his name?
And we mentioned his name, and the only answer that I can come up with, and that the people in my congressional district can come up with, is they are trying to deflect the political pressure of the criticisms: Why are you using the terror warning system to scare the American people?
And I am concerned that the Administration would not step up and say we have credible evidence. We want to talk to Members of Congress in a private meeting, a classified briefing and tell them, so that we could go out and tell our constituents there is classified information. It is real. It is a real threat. But at this point, we cannot release the names.
And there is a communication problem here. We want to help you. And I just want you to bring the message back to the Administration that we want to be on your side. Our citizens are scared, too, when they hear the terror warnings goes up, and they do not know what to do. They do not know what to do.
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And many of us do not know what to do. We grab our bags in our office that have masks in them and we run. But other than that, people in Youngstown, Ohio, they do not know what to do. There is no bag and masks that they have.
So if you could be kind enough to take back to the Administration that they do not have to play politics. They are going to get criticized no matter what they do, but let us know so we can help try to deflect some of this.
I appreciate all the work that you have done. I am sure it has been a tremendous and very difficult few years for you. But this is something that concerns me, that the political process has gotten so combative and confrontational that we are outing moles that could potentially lead us, some are saying, to Osama bin Laden.
If we are making those kind of political decisions to protect CIA here instead of doing the right thing, that bothers me and that bothers a lot of my constituents.
So thank you for your service. I just wanted to let you know that that is something that I believe we need to work on sooner rather than later.
I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Meek.
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Mr. MEEK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I want to thank the panel for being here for so long. The end is near.
Mr. Cambone, Secretary Cambone, I heard your testimony, and I watched it, and I also read some of your statements, and you were mentioning the four computers you have on your desk. You appreciate the fact that the 9/11 Commission has illuminated many of the issues that are there that need to be addressed. Your office was created a couple of years ago in the light of 9/11 and knowing that we need to know more than what we know now.
And so now we are at the point in an area that a handful of Members of Congress really understand, if that, as it relates to intelligence. There was testimony yesterday from the Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission saying that there was a senator that said we spent 10 minutes on the budget looking at the intelligence budget in DOD, and then there was one saying, ''No, you are incorrect, we actually spent 5 minutes.''
Hearing all of that, and seeing all of that, the Congress is now in recess. I mean, we are here, and the reason why I am just dwelling on the report, I have other questions, burning questions that I would love to ask both of the gentlemen sitting on either side of you, and yourself, but we are here and the clock is ticking. And the 9/11 report is not a classified document. I mean, everyone has it. I am pretty sure that it is in some of the very areas that we are trying to pursue terrorists right now, even domestically.
Do you feel after Labor Day and coming in on a Tuesday, or what have you, that we can actually move the 9/11 recommendations prior to October 1st of October 2nd or 3rd, that we are supposed to adjourn, or do you think we need to put the pedal to the metal and start moving on this legislation? I mean, you, outside of anyone else in this scenario, and your office, should understand and appreciate the issue or the situation that we are in right now as a country.
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Secretary CAMBONE. I think we have to make certain that we do not make—as I have said in my opening statement—that in the desire to make adjustments, that we make changes that we regret. And that just takes time for reflection. And I think reflection on something this big is important.
Now, having said that, is time without boundaries here, and the answer to that is no. So what is the proper balance there? That balance is going to be struck, I presume, between the Members and the leadership in the Congress, and the President and his folks, as they work their way through the various issues and problems that they have.
But I can assure you and other members of this committee and the Congress that neither the Department, nor my colleagues in the executive branch, are leaving this to molder on the shelf and gather dust. I left my leave to come back and work this. Other colleagues have done the same, as you all have here. So we are all in the same boat. We meet daily on this, sir. So—
Mr. MEEK. Mr. Secretary, I am sorry to cut you off. My time is coming to an end. I just wanted to—I understand that part.
The real issue, even when it comes down to the war in Iraq, and when it comes down to the U.S. Patriot Act, and now the legislation keeps getting more technical and just mammoth, and it has been Members of Congress not informed or educated on what we are legislating on.
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There was testimony on the other side of the aisle yesterday from one of the members on the top bench up there saying that this whole process manipulated by the U.S. intelligence bureaucracy.
Well, I feel that we are unindicted co-conspirators for allowing it to happen. And people have elected us to govern, to have oversight. And if we do not start working on it now—I mean, Leader Pelosi has called for a special session from the Speaker to deal with this issue now, because God forbid that someone reads this report, the wrong person, and says, wow, you know, this is what we want to know, if there was a gap here or a gap there.
This is 18 months of testimony. I hope that the Defense Department and others have been monitoring that testimony and learning through that process and we start learning new things that people knew that we did not know that they knew within our structure. It is important that that happens.
So I am concerned about slow-walking, but I am also concerned about haste. And I think that the shorter period that we have to deal with it in haste, because we are talking about the election of the entire Congress. This is not a staggered kind of situation. I mean, in the House of Representatives, everyone is up.
So we talk about politicization—that is the word that I can get out. I will figure it out later—of this process. The closer we get to November the 2nd, the more demagoguery and speeches and all these things that are going to sensationalize our intelligence.
So I would hope that the Administration and your office will—you know, and I appreciate the efforts of everyone that is here, because it is a sacrifice—would really focus on the time-line that we have to deal with. And that is what we are saying. We want to move forth with the recommendations.
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So, Secretary, and to you all, I want to thank you for being here, but I just wanted to make sure that we understand the significance of the moment.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
We have a couple other gentlemen who want to ask questions.
Dr. Gingrey, did you have another—you had another round of questions and so did Mr. Abercrombie.
Dr. GINGREY. I do have a question, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Okay.
Let me ask Mr. Turner and Mr. Wilson, do you gentlemen have any other questions?
Mr. WILSON OF SOUTH CAROLINA. No, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Why don't we go to Dr. Gingrey and, then, Mr. Abercrombie. And if we have a minute, I might ask a question to finish up.
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Dr. GINGREY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, I appreciate this very much. I know you have been here 3.5 hours and heard from each member. What you probably do not know, though, is during this hearing, a certain number of members of this supposedly bipartisan House Armed Services Committee were outside of the hearing room holding a press conference.
I happened to go out to make a telephone call. I was not invited to the press conference. I bet surely it would have made it bipartisan. It would have been nice.
But I did happen to hear some of the statements made by those members of the committee to the press while this hearing is going on and we are trying to gain information as a committee on what really we should do.
It seemed that all of them had already formed an opinion about that. The President, the Administration, the leadership of this Congress, of this committee was not moving quickly enough to respond to the 41 recommendations made in this report by the 9/11 Commission.
Now, Congress received this report on July the 22nd. And I want to just quickly read to you the President's statement as of August the 2nd, 10 days after this report was officially made public.
The President says, ''All the institutions of our Government must be fully prepared for a struggle against terror that will last into the future. Our goal is an integrated, unified, national intelligence effort. Therefore, my Administration will continue moving forward with additional changes to the structure and organization of our intelligence agencies.
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''All these reforms have a single goal. We will ensure that the people in government responsible for defending America and countering terrorism will have the best possible information to make the best decision.'' That was August the 2nd of 2004.
And the President has already recommended two very important aspects, recommended by the ten bipartisan commissioners. Following a careful review of the 9/11 Commission report, President Bush announced his support for the creation of the new position of national intelligence director, NID, and looks forward to working with the Congress to move forward the necessary process—I think that has been mentioned several times, the importance of that here today by you, Mr. Secretary—of intelligence reform as quickly as possible.
And then, finally, the President also announced he will establish a National Counterterrorism Center and take other actions designed to continue the process under way since 9/11 of strengthening America's ability to win the Global War on Terrorism.
And I want to remind my colleagues on this committee, and anybody who happened to be listening, here in the room or on television, to this hearing, that it has been almost three years. And we have not been struck again. So the President certainly has not been lolly-gagging around in regard to his responsibility.
And changes had already been made, even before this report came out. I want to ask you this question, and I want each one of you, maybe starting with General Jacoby, to respond to it.
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Do you think this Administration and this Congress at this point in time is moving quickly enough in regard to this report, or do you think we are possibly moving too quickly?
Admiral JACOBY. I think there are important, you know, aspects of that report. And it is my understanding of the pace of discussions, there is due diligence that is being pursued at this point.
Secretary CAMBONE. Sir, we are moving with all the deliberate speed this requires with the kind of hard work that you would and the American people, I think, would appreciate. In the last week, I have been with my colleagues, either in the Pentagon or the White House, three and four times a day, working, not only on the recommendations of this Commission, but asking ourselves the other question, which is: Is there more that we should be doing?
This is not all that there is. There is more that might be done, and should we be pursuing those things? So people are moving with that deliberate speed. But this is hard stuff. And it is important stuff.
And it is important to the entire country that we get this one right, because, again, as the Vice Chairman of the Commission said yesterday: Once in a generation do you get a chance to make these kinds of big changes. And this is that chance. And we want to make sure we do it right.
Dr. GINGREY. General Odierno.
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General ODIERNO. Sir, I would just say, as we all know, there is lots of competing demands. And I will look at it from, again, the tactical commander's viewpoint. The important part is making sure that we still are able to get pertinent data to the commanders and soldiers on the ground so they can be effective, protect our country, save their own lives, and save the lives of the people we are dealing with.
So that is what I am interested in. And we have to make sure that we do this properly and we do not affect that or all of the other things that we must do.
Dr. GINGREY. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
The gentleman from Hawaii is recognized. He had some follow-up questions.
And, Mr. Turner, did you want to follow up?
The gentleman from Hawaii is recognized.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman—
The CHAIRMAN. But if you want to go to Mr. Turner, that is okay.
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Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Why don't I defer there, because I think my questions are in a different area.
The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Turner.
Mr. TURNER OF TEXAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I want to say, in response to my colleague's comment a moment ago, that I think that there are some of us on this committee who have advocated that we move faster and that we be a lot stronger in the effort to defeat terrorism.
And that is why it is so easy for us to embrace the 42 recommendations that are in this report. And if you go back and look at the work that some of us have done and some of the reports that we have published and some of the legislation we have introduced, it is very clear that we are strongly in favor of the recommendations of this report. Because most of them are not new. Most of them have been out there.
As Mr. Weldon pointed out, the Gilmore Commission was actually one of the early points at which some of these recommendations were made.
So I think that what we feel, and those of us who are advocating this feel, that we would like to think that because we have before us a bipartisan commission report that was unanimous, that our President would not only support two of the recommendations, but that he would embrace, as Senator Kerry has, all 41 of them.
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And as the Commission continues to tell us, it would be a mistake to piecemeal this. To carry out the mandate of that commission requires us to be more aggressive about going after terrorists. It requires us to be more active in securing our homeland. And it requires us to adopt strategies to prevent the rise of future terrorists.
And all of those have been talked about by all of us. It is not a partisan endeavor. It is the urgency, it is the action to carry it out that we are concerned about. And I hope that we can continue to share that concern.
And I hope that, mutually, in a bipartisan way, we will embrace not only the recommendations, but the urgency.
And as Mr. Cambone stated, there is much left to do. And when we are in a time when we know the terrorists are plotting and planning to attack us, and we are hearing the warnings every other day, it seems incumbent upon those of us in leadership in this country to adopt that same sense of urgency that we are hearing and the warnings that we are getting.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
And before I go to Mr. Abercrombie, let me simply observe that when we had the Commission leadership before us yesterday, the Commission leadership, upon understanding some discussion with the committee exactly what General Odierno has told us today, which is that there is now a connection between the troops on the ground, in the field, in the fight, and what are known as strategic assets, which would affect this division of control that is proposed by the Commission, the Commissioners themselves told us—and I am quoting Mr. Hamilton—''It appears that we, the Commission, need to refine parts of this proposal ourselves.''
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I think that we do not want to simply rubber-stamp a proposal when the people who wrote the proposal themselves have stated that there are parts that need, quote, refinement; meaning change.
This is a very complex thing. We are going to basically be rewriting the product of the 1947 Security Act. And it is going to require some very careful thought and analysis. And that is one reason why we have the ultimate user of this information, which is the leader, and a very respected leader of the forces on the ground in General Odierno, and then we have the special operations commander here yesterday in General Brown.
We have heard them over and over say what doctors often say, which is: First, do no harm. And if we, with all good intentions, make a mistake that ends up accruing to the detriment of the guy that is on the field and he does not get that information quite as fast or quite as effectively, then we will not have served the Nation well.
So let us move ahead with deliberate speed. I think we are having good hearings.
And, incidentally, we will have another one at 2, and we are going to have some outspoken testimony, I think, from John Hamre and General Odom and from Lowell Wood.
And so let us try to get as much commentary and as much analysis as we can. You know, I think the trademark of this issue is it is real complex. And it takes a lot of time. And that is one thing that Members of Congress do not have. And we need to invest a lot more time, I think, in understanding what we are doing before we deliver a finished product. Because when we deliver a finished product, it has to be done right.
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Having said that, the gentleman from Hawaii had further questions and comments.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I presume you are now calling on me because you know I will do things right. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman and Members, I guess I will—members of the panel, I will be finishing this part of our hearing. And I think perhaps it is appropriate because the questions that I have relate to exactly what we are talking about here.
Look, we are not amateurs. We are not naive. We are seasoned politicians here; believe me, not the least of which is the Chairman. The recommendations of the Commission are just that. Obviously, everything has to be refined legislatively. And that is where I want to direct my next question.
I hope that on the whole, Mr. Chairman, you agree that the questions and the positions of all the Members, regardless of their party, have been geared toward trying to get to this refinement of legislation, which is our responsibility.
In that context, Secretary Cambone, I presume—I mean, I think I can say with some authority myself—that you agree and certainly the Secretary of Defense agrees that unity of effort in the intelligence area is essential. All the testimony that I have heard over the last couple days relates to that.
Now, the question then becomes operational unity of effort and whether that would be compromised or interfered with, particularly when it comes to Special Operations Command, getting to the fighter. That has been the subject of a lot of conversation the last couple days.
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I want to set that then aside for the moment in a manner of speaking in that we have already—if you would acknowledge for conversation's sake with me that we have discussed that at length—whether unity of effort, where operational unity of effort is concerned, we have to pay particular attention to the recommendation about Special Operations Command.
Now, the Northern Command is in that, too. And I have raised that issue before. Special Operations Command and Northern Command now could not only be tasked by the Department of Defense, but also by the National Intelligence Director. Would you agree that that is the thrust of the Commission's recommendation?
Secretary CAMBONE. Sir, as I understand it, that is what they were suggesting or actually recommending.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. And that is where I want to direct my question then. Because the way they would do that, as I read it, is that there would be—the Department of Defense coordinates taskings among the combatant commands through the Joint Staff. But these also, under the recommendation of the Commission, could be directed by the National Counterterrorism Center.
Now, I personally think that this is, Mr. Chairman, probably—if not a contradiction, it is at least paradoxical, and it might look good on paper. But it would cause some real difficulties, especially where Special Operations Command is concerned.
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So I presume, Secretary Cambone, that you would agree, at this stage, that that needs particular attention, legislatively speaking, before we move forward with that.
Secretary CAMBONE. I do not think that we want to be interrupting the operational lines of command—
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Very good.
Secretary CAMBONE. —with respect to the Department of Defense or any other agency.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Right, but in your particular situation here, as the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, the reason I bring it up, and particularly to you, is is that if the National Intelligence Director was established with the NCTC, the counterterrorism center, housed within the national director's shop, I think you would end up reporting two different places.
Secretary CAMBONE. At least.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. That is the thing I am concerned about. And you would not be the only one. The FBI would be that. Homeland Security would be doing the same thing. You would have two places you would be reporting.
We need to work that out legislatively, for sure.
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I am going to set aside the budgetary implications to that for the moment, because again, I do not think you are prepared. I spoke with Mr. Moore yesterday and others, and I do not think that the Department is prepared to deal with that at the moment.
Now, that takes me to the last part of what I want to deal with. That is to say the Homeland Security implication. And this is not so much the Commission, although the Commission has to deal with it. It is that I still do not understand the relationship now that you have existing right now between Homeland Security, the Department of Defense and Northern Command.
I do not know who is in charge. Now, it is no secret, Mr. Secretary, that I opposed this—speaking of rushing, it is not just us. It is not just the Commission. But we went along with this establishment of a Northern Command. And it appeared, as you know, in a budget without an index, without—if I have not discovered—the Chairman will tell you, I pay attention to detail.
Now, I discovered the Northern Command. It was never presented to us. You had to look through that budget, page 62, or whatever it was of the budget presentation. All of a sudden, it is there. And there is $400 million associated with it. And I, to this day, cannot find out where this came from and what the justification was.
But, oh, we had to do it. The Secretary of Defense said we had to do it. Now, the Northern Command sits there. You have drawn down people from all these other commands in order to staff it. You have a big building out there.
And what I would like to know then, at this stage, as long as we are saying, ''Let us not move too fast,'' and all the rest of it, whether this Northern Command is also on the table, in terms of evaluation, as to what its efficacy is in being able to carry out its proper functions and what the relationship of you, as the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, in unity of effort is, with regard to the Department of Homeland Security.
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I cannot figure out who is in charge, Mr. Ridge, Secretary of Defense, or anybody else, with respect to defending the homeland, utilizing such intelligence as comes to bear, with regard to a possible attack on the interior of the United States.
The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman's time is expired, but the Chair will—
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, I had——
The CHAIRMAN. I had some time. So what I am going to do is I am going to yield my time to the gentleman to allow——
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I appreciate that, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN [continuing]. Allow the witnesses to respond.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I appreciate that, Mr. Chairman, because I hope Mr. Cambone agrees. This is not something you can just say in a sentence or two if you are going to deal with what you have already indicated as complexity.
Secretary CAMBONE. And I would be pleased, sir, to come back and bring Secretary McHale with me, who is our Assistant Secretary for Homeland Defense, and talk with you in detail. But the short answer is——
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The CHAIRMAN. And why don't we set that up?
Secretary CAMBONE. I would be happy to do.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. McHale is my good friend, and I would appreciate that.
The CHAIRMAN. Why don't we set that up, and we will have a meeting? But go ahead.
Secretary CAMBONE. But the answer here today is that, with respect to the Northern Command commander, the Secretary of Defense, he reports to the Secretary of Defense. His missions are two-fold.
One is direct defense of the country. If there is another air attack or there is a maritime attack, and the least likely, of course, is a land attack, but that could happen. So he has the direct defense mission of the United States by direction of the President of the United States in the event of employing military forces.
He also has a secondary mission, which is support to civil authorities, which include the Department of Homeland Security. And in that context, he, along with other members of the defense community, operate under the national response plan and all those other kinds of efforts that are in place by the Homeland Security folks.
And we have roles that are assigned, and people have expectations about what needs to be done. And so, if there is an event somewhere where they require the support from the Department of Defense for homeland security purposes, that effort would be channeled through Northern Command.
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Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Was he in charge; was the commander of the Northern Command in charge of the situation involving the governor in Kentucky flying his plane into Washington air space?
Secretary CAMBONE. In his North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) hat, that was a role that he had. Yes.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. So he had the responsibility, could issue the orders?
Secretary CAMBONE. Yes, sir.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Then what is the differentiation between NORAD and Northern Command?
Secretary CAMBONE. NORAD is a binational command that includes the Canadians, which has additional responsibilities for aerospace defense of the North American continent. That is a binational arrangement.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I know it is.
Secretary CAMBONE. It does not cover maritime, sir, it does not cover maritime, and it does not cover terrestrial, nor does it cover civil support. NORAD does not do any of that. It is narrowly focused on aerospace. Northern Command has those other responsibilities.
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Mr. ABERCROMBIE. It is the same person, isn't it?
Secretary CAMBONE. Sure. That is not unusual.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Had that plane been shot down, General Eberhart would have been the person making the decision.
Secretary CAMBONE. He is the man in the chain of command at the senior level of the chain of command.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Then at least I am getting an answer. The person in charge then is in Northern Command.
Now, did everybody report to him so that this decision could be made? Do we have that, an effective intelligence—a horizontal exchange of information that enables the general to make that decision?
Secretary CAMBONE. I cannot do all the forensics on that event for you. It is set up, however, such that those zones are established. There are rules of engagement for activity there. There are aircraft for them; all of that is——
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I appreciate it. It is too much to go into right now. The Chairman has been generous with me with time. Could you then provide for me and for the committee a step-by-step recitation narration—you could use the model of the 9/11 Commission in its narrative if you wish.
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Mr. Chairman, I request that we get a step-by-step narration of exactly what took place with the governor of Kentucky's plane incident so that I can be assured that the testimony that you have just given—it is not that I dispute what you are saying, but I can be assured that I understood it correctly.
Secretary CAMBONE. No, and I think that is reasonable, sir. And I will go to General Eberhart, and we will see what we can do for you.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Very good. Thank you.
[The information referred to was not available at the time of printing.]
The CHAIRMAN. Okay. I want to thank the gentleman, and thank everyone who participated in this hearing.
We are going to fire up again at two o'clock with our next panel.
General Odierno, did you have any—this has been a great—I think a great audience with you, since all the members of this committee met with you, went to Iraq, met with you. And we have a great deal of respect for you and for the service you have provided our country in Iraq.
And I just ask if you have any other—I would like you to personally stay engaged on this issue. Because one thing that everybody is concerned about is making sure that the warfighter does not get disserved by what is a well-meaning, but erroneous new structure of our intelligence apparatus.
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And so, what I would like you to do is to stay engaged. And if you could do that in this area and let us know, as we walk down through the legislative path, what your recommendations are from a warfighter's perspective, that would serve us well. Can you do that?
General ODIERNO. Sir, I would be happy to do that for you. And I feel very comfortable doing that.
The CHAIRMAN. Okay. That is very important to us.
So, once again, thanks to our panel and everyone who stuck with us here. And all of our membership will be back very shortly with the next panel.
[Whereupon, at 12:55 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]