Testimony from 9-11 Commission Members

On August 3, 2004, the House Committee on Government Reform conducted a hearing entitled, "Moving from 'Need to Know' to 'Need to Share': A Review of the 9-11 Commission's Recommendations."  Testimony was provided by two members of the 9-11 Commission, former-Senator Bob Kerry and Admiral John F. Lehman.  The following is a transcript of the testimony provided by Senator Kerry and Admiral Lehman in response to questions from Representative Todd Platts (R-Pa).  For additional information on the hearing, please visit http://reform.house.gov/.   

Mr. PLATTS.  Senator Kerry and Secretary Lehman, I appreciate your work and all your fellow Commissioners and your staff, a daunting task, and you've done it in remarkable fashion, both in the broad global strategy you've put forward as well as specific recommendations.

My colleague talked to you about the standards for a driver's license.  I appreciate that type of detail because it is something that amazed me when I came to learn that the majority, I believe, of our States do not require proof of legal presence in the United States to get a driver's license, yet it's one of the accepted forms of government ID deeming you're supposed to be here or allowed to be here.  So that type of specific recommendation, hopefully, will help us move some legislation that's out there and get some of these standards in place.

To follow up the discussion with the previous Member on the NID [National Intelligence Director] and the personnel authority, in your statements you talk about NID having personnel and appropriation authority, but also the Chief of the National Counterterrorism Center.  Can you elaborate how that's going to interact, since the Chief's going to answer to the NID; how their shared authority over personnel at these various agencies, how you envision that working?

Admiral LEHMAN.  Well, I think the Pentagon provides a good example.  Standards for promotion and rank in each of the military services are different.  You don't have to fly airplanes to get promoted in the Army.  Each Secretary of the Department governs the personnel policies, but they have to conform to Defense Department standards.  So you can easily take an 06 naval captain and assign him to a joint command in an Army-commanded unit, because there are common personnel standards to be met that allow that kind of joint assignment.

Now, this is different from detailing, and it's an important point.  Today, for instance, at the TTIC, the Terrorist Threat Intelligence Center, people are detailed from all the agencies, but their fitness reports are still being written by the people back at their home agencies.  That is a huge difference.

When a person is jointly assigned, it's the person who, for instance, will be running the National Counterterrorism Center that will write the fitness report and really have  a huge influence on whether that person, from whatever agency they came form, gets promoted or doesn't get promoted or gets assigned to a choice billet or doesn't get assigned to it.

Mr. PLATTS.  So more accountability from the staff to the NID?

Admiral LEHMAN.  But more real clout by the National Intelligence Director.  The key is, currently the CIA Director has exhortation capability, and people sort of think he has authority, but he doesn't have authority.  So he can say, oh, let's cross-assign people.  But if you don't have the authority to direct, and if the person being directed doesn't do it, they get fired and replaced by that NID Directorate.  That's what we're talking about.  Big, big difference.

Mr. PLATTS.  One of the other areas you touch on in a broad sense is more public diplomacy; us doing a better job of winning the battle on the front with the younger citizens, I guess, of the Muslim nations.

Is there a specific recommendation?  One of your recommendations says, "In a broad sense, where Muslim governments, even those who are friends, do not respect these principles, the United States must stand for a better future."

Is there something specific; Saudi Arabia, Egypt, any that are allies that we should be looking into?

Admiral LEHMAN.  There are two that I want to draw attention to that I think would have enormous leverage.  One is putting some money into schools in these areas.  There is no alternative for parents in much of Pakistan and the rest of Indonesia, for instance, the rest of the Muslim world.  If they want their children to have a better future, i.e., to learn to read and write, they have no alternative but to one of these jihadist madrassas.  We should take the initiative, working with those governments, and put some money behind it to create schools that can teach usable skills, and it can be done at a very relatively low cost.

Another is international broadcasting.  It's pathetic the number of hours that we're on the air to just tell the truth, in Farsi, in Urdu, and the various dialects of Arabic. 

Mr. PLATTS.  On the schools,  is one of the challenges we have that we give a lot of money to the U.N., but then that doesn't come back to us as credit to those parents that the U.S. is helping their children?  Do we need to do more unilateral partnerships with these nations?

Mr. KERRY.  Well, the context here, and this is how great a job we've done, we saved a Muslim nation, Kuwait, in 1991.  We saved Muslims in Mogadishu in 1993 from Pakistan, part of a U.N. peacekeeping force.  We saved a Muslim nation, Bosnia, in 1995.  We saved a Muslim nation, Kosovo, in 1999, and yet you go do public opinion polling in Muslim nations, and they don't like us.  I mean, that's how lousy a job we've done of communicating to the Muslim world-

Mr. PLATTS.  And we've just liberated 50 million Muslims in two nations.

Mr. KERRY.  Exactly.

But there's another issue that I think is important.  Look, when I graduated from high school, back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, 75 percent of the people on this planet were living in nations where democracy wasn't the rule.  Now it's just the opposite.  Even in China they're beginning to see democracy at local levels; not as much as I think they're going to need in order to deal with their economic challenges, but that's a separate issue.

We've got to stop, and I hear it sort of creeping back as a consequence of the problems in Iraq, saying that democracy is not suited for you, it's a Western idea.  You know, Greece is not in the West, as much as we like to think.  It's much closer to Afghanistan than we are.  So we have to stop saying that democracy only works here.

And we all know, all of us, and those of you who are still in politics, when I was in politics, the most important thing is people need to know that democracy is making their lives just a little bit better and their kids' lives a little better and their communities a little bit better.  It's not very complicated.  And if it isn't, they get really mad, and they throw you all out of office.

Well, we've go to stop saying, well, I know the Saudis, every other word from the Saudis is reform these days, and we've go to stop putting our arm around them and saying, well, we understand you can't really be democratic because you've got difficulties here and there and everywhere.  We have to stop doing that, because the people living in Saudi Arabia are mad because they don't have what we've got, which is the freedom to be able to throw people out of office when we don't like them.

I'm not suggesting that we have sort of a naïve, pie-in-the-sky attitude that doesn't recognize that for many people democracy is one vote one time, but I believe that the most important thing for us in this battle of ideas is to say that democracy and free markets, as flawed as it is, as difficult as it is to make it work, is the best way to make your life a little better, and the life of your kids a little bit better, and the life of your community a little bit better. 

Mr. PLATTS.  I agree 100 percent.