HEARING OF THE SPECIAL OVERSIGHT PANEL ON DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY REORGANIZATION OF THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE

SUBJECT: THE NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION

CHAIRED BY: REP. WILLIAM M. THORNBERRY (R-TX)

WITNESS: GENERAL JOHN GORDON, ADMINISTRATOR, THE NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION, THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

2212 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

10:05 A.M. EDT TUESDAY, JULY 11, 2000

REP. THORNBERRY: The hearing will come to order.

The Special Oversight Panel on Department of Energy Reorganization needs today to hear from the new administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, General John Gordon. I believe this is the first time that General Gordon has had the opportunity to testify before Congress since he assumed his new position, and we certainly welcome him and are glad that he's on the job.

I think it's helpful to take just a second to review where we've been and what brings us to this day. Beginning really with the creation of the Department of Energy in the late 1970s, there have been studies, reports, commissions, recommendations which have been critical of the management of the department, in part stemming from a number of things that were thrown together to create the Department of Energy in the late '70s. Yet despite this regular drumbeat for reform, for greater accountability, and for a streamlined chain of command, not much happened.

In 1996 this committee began efforts to reform the management structure at the Department of Energy in the area, at least, under our jurisdiction, which are the national security programs, but it was not until the revelations of security breaches last year that enough political momentum developed to make the necessary reforms. And so in last year's defense authorization bill, Congress acted upon very specific recommendations of the president's own Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which found DOE to be, quote, "a dysfunctional bureaucracy incapable of reforming itself."

That report gave Congress two options. One is that we could create a semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy, responsible for national security matters, or we could take all of that out and create a completely separate independent agency.

Congress chose to take the more moderate course, believing really that that was the last opportunity for DOE to prove that it could manage this very important national responsibility.

Since that bill was signed into law last October, Congress has been frustrated by the failure of the administration to implement the letter and the spirit of the law that we passed. But one bright spot where we have heartily commended Secretary Richardson has been his decision to appoint a blue-ribbon panel of top-rate folks to find the best person in the country to run this new agency. Their top, first choice is our witness today.

General Gordon has been deputy director of the CIA. He's been deputy undersecretary of Defense. He's been a director of Defense and Arms Control Matters in the Department of State. He's been a special assistant to the president at the White House. He has even been a physicist at -- and done research at Sandia Laboratory. It is certainly rare to have someone bring all of these qualities together, and it also rare to find someone in Washington who receives this degree of overwhelming support.

But I have to say, General, that you may actually be Superman, but even Superman is not going to straighten all of this out overnight.

Of course, the recent headlines have all been about security lapses, which are certainly serious. But the new NNSA faces many, many other challenges, which could be just as serious, to make sure that our nuclear deterrent has the confidence of the American people and the respect of our allies. Some of those challenges include: weapons that are aging beyond their design life; a decision not to test nuclear weapons; a production complex, which has been shrunk and not maintained; losing people because of retirements and age and other reasons; losing vital expertise; and a lack of confidence that the place is run well.

This is an enormously big job. General Gordon has not been on the job even two weeks yet. His formal swearing-in will be tomorrow. But we look forward to hearing from him today on what his hopes and aspirations are for the new agency. And we look forward to working with you, sir, for some time to come, in a bipartisan way.

And with that, let me turn to the distinguished ranking member of the panel, Ms. Tauscher.

REP. ELLEN O. TAUSCHER (D-CA): I thank the distinguished chairman of the panel, Mr. Thornberry.

And it's a great pleasure to welcome you, General Gordon, and to congratulate you on your appointment to head the National Nuclear Security Administration. I look forward to testimony from General Gordon. And I look forward to working with you very closely to make sure that the NNSA gets implemented in the true letter of the law, in the spirit of the law, and also to make sure that we maintain the viability of our nuclear opportunities, our secrets, and that we have state-of-the-art security for our state-of-the-art secrets.

You have only been in office for less than two weeks, and you will be sworn in tomorrow. And I know that you're just going to be making your first field visit later this week. And your initial views on the NNSA will be very helpful to this panel in our continuing oversight capacity.

But, General Gordon, as you know, you might have parked your white horse outside, and you may have a Superman outfit underneath that nice new suit, but you have one of the most difficult tasks in this government, before you.

As you note, and as my chairman, Mr. Thornberry, has alluded to, the Department of Energy has been entangled in bureaucratic kudzu since its inception. And this committee has seen report after report detailing the confused lines of authority, the lack of focus, and particularly the lack of regard to national security activities.

Last year, in Title XXXII of the Defense Authorization bill, Congress attempted to provide a framework for streamlining the Department of Energy by establishing the National Nuclear Security Administration. By walling off the national nuclear responsibilities of the department, clarifying lines of authority and establishing an administrator to oversee the nuclear weapons operations, Congress has taken the first steps toward building an agency that runs efficiently and that effectively protects our nation's nuclear secrets.

You now have the difficult job of "administrating" this opportunity. And there are many, many challenges that you face. The latest incident at Los Alamos has made clear that, while some improvements have been made, the security policies and procedures of our national laboratories are still inadequate. Questions remain about the structure of the NNSA, including the need for, and the legitimacy of, dual-hatting.

I am concerned that, in our attempts to correct shortcomings in the security area, we run the risk of implementing procedures that protect nuclear materials but make it very difficult to recruit and retain the world-class scientific minds that our laboratories depend upon.

And perhaps what's most important, I have real concerns about the financial health of our nuclear weapons complex. I am concerned that our failure to sufficiently fund our laboratories and protection facilities is quickly leading us to a point where we will be unable to meet the core objectives of our stockpile stewardship program.

I would be remiss if I did not share my concerns about the funding support for your office, General Gordon. Without sufficient resources, there is little opportunity for you to develop a qualified staff with enough people to help you face the very tough job you have ahead.

I don't expect to hear specifically from you today, General Gordon, any kind of commitments as to what you may do about security, dual-hatting, budgeting or other controversial issues, and while we all understand the need for immediate relief from the unacceptable state of management, I am convinced that your response must be measured and disciplined, with the consideration of potential unintended consequences of any decision you make.

I hope this hearing will provide the members of the panel with a sense of your priorities as NNSA administrator, the process by which you plan to address these priorities and, more importantly, some direction as to how Congress can help you succeed. And while the challenges you face are daunting, I join with Chairman Thornberry in pledging to work very closely with you in a bipartisan way to ensure that the National Nuclear Security Administration is a true success, and that our nation's nuclear secrets are protected. And that the environment that thousands of people that work at the Livermore National Laboratory -- (audio break from source) -- five years of the best science in the world and in the best opportunities for people to work in that kind of environment, and we continue to do the right thing for the American people.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

REP. THORNBERRY: Thank you. The chair would yield to the distinguished ranking member of the Procurement Subcommittee, if he would like to make any opening statements? The distinguished ranking member of the full committee?

REP. IKE SKELTON (D-MO): My only comment is to welcome you, General. You do have a great challenge ahead of you, and keep in mind the words that Ms. Tauscher gave a few moments ago, to let us know how

Congress can help you, because all of us feel very deeply about the problems that are facing your department.

REP. THORNBERRY: Thank you very much, Mr. Skelton. Thank you. General, you may proceed as you see fit.

GEN. GORDON: Mr. Chairman, members of the panel, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here, as you said, as my first hearing as the first administrator of this new agency.

The members of this panel, Mr. Thornberry, Ms. Tauscher, yourselves have been particularly supportive of the establishment of this administration and you've been particularly supportive of me, and so I thank you very much on both of those accounts, and I would say that I will need very much, as will the administration, your continued support, and I think I've already heard comments to that effect, so I will take you up on that as it comes along.

I would like to spend maybe a couple of minutes longer than most people would in starting, to put few points down, and then turn to any directions you would like to take. I can tell you first off, I've had more than a few friends question why I would be interested in taking such a job as this. They think the problem's too vexing and the bureaucracy too complex and political support too weak for a mission that may not be -- that may be fading and too draining of resources that could be spent on other priorities.

So I have to admit, there is some basis for skepticism, and there are certainly tremendous problems which we must address. But I think that's no reason to turn aside from this task.

And so first, I want to be very clear that I absolutely support the need for NNSA, and I support each and every one of the mission statements that is in Title 32. And perhaps most importantly, what NNSA does in this regard is to create a full-time advocate for the mission, and I think most importantly, for the people that accomplish the mission. And the establishment of NNSA can go an awfully long way in and of itself in convincing the people that work with us and for us in this that they have a long-term mission and that we're supportive of their endeavors.

Secondly, this is just a major challenge. And with any luck, it'll be great fun to attack, and I'll try to do that. It also has the potential of being one of the very best technical management jobs in the country, and so therefore a very exciting opportunity.

You do know that I have personal attachment both to the elements of the new organization and considerable affection for the people. That's another reason I'm interested. I've worked closely with, again, both the organizations and the people for many years, and I have great respect and admiration for their accomplishments, the professionalism, and the dedication they've shown for all these many years.

And finally, I don't accept the contingent that there's little chance for success. While not underestimating the challenges in front of us, its broad support and its time for positive change.

As you all said, I think I've had four or five full days in the office, and I had a full-time job until the day I was sworn in. So you don't expect full perspectives or plans. But I will talk to some initial perspectives and some initial ideas on this issue.

First, in the environment, the threat is dramatically different than it was in the Cold War. The Russian threat has changed qualitatively and quantitatively, but it's certainly not gone. New nuclear states are appearing. Proliferation and terrorism are quite real. Yet our nuclear security enterprise has not adapted fully to this. We have not -- no new weapons are being developed, no tests are being conducted, funding is very tight, and political support for the mission is not broad-based. In this environment we've lost energy and we've lost cohesion within the enterprise. We do not fully understand our priorities and the requirements we're trying to meet. We're not attracting the best talent, we're not attracting the quantity of the best talent that we need for continued success, and we're probably not retaining that we will need for the very difficult task of stockpile stewardship. Infrastructure is aging and, in some cases, failing. The enterprise is not very efficient as in adopted -- most modern business practices, and we do not enjoy the full support and confidence of Congress, our partners or our own employees. And I think I say that with considerable understatement. For these and other reasons there is now a significant lack of confidence in the enterprise's ability to manage itself, accomplish its missions, and prepare for a very dynamic future.

To me, really what needs to be done can be encompassed in a very simple statement, and one that's a lot easier to talk about than it is to actually accomplish, and that is to restore the trust and the confidence in the management and leadership of the Nuclear Security Enterprise in this country by the Congress, by our partners, and by the people who actually work on the enterprise itself.

In effect, Mr. Chairman, what I need to do is regain your confidence that we can actually run the administration, the enterprise, gain, in effect, your permission to run the organization in a day-to-day basis, and -- it's kind of hard to envision a metric for that goal. But, you know, in a year or two or three, one measure of some degree of success might be a significant reduction in the number of reports we have to send up here, in the number of committees that we choose ourselves to come in and look at us from the outside, but without in any way minimizing the absolute need for tough congressional oversight and the insight that comes from outsiders. Right now we're spending an awful lot of time talking about history, and we need to find a way to get moving forward and spend less time, and really put our human resources to work on those issues.

Now, I recognize this is a -- this degree of attention is largely of the enterprise's own making, and there is also the problems that Congress and others have identified. But if we can rebuild this trust and confidence, we're going to have a lot more energy and a lot more people to do the real work of the missions.

Beyond the key point of this restoring trust and confidence, there are several issues I would want to take on quickly, if practical and possible. And these include, in very broad terms -- is really quickly to gain the agreement within the enterprise itself on the mission of vision and goal: if you will, the strategic plan that we're going to try to follow. We need to bring to the NSA -- NNSA organization sound management, leadership in a fiscal footing, to sharpen the efficiency of the enterprise, strengthen project management in (DP ?) and (NN ?). And this is one area where I think by putting naval reactors into this organization we can draw on some of the expertise that Skip Bowman, Admiral Bowman brings in these areas in particular. And we need to ensure that we're operating on agreed and understandable set of requirements with the Department of Defense.

Finally, and maybe as important as any, we need to find the right balance between needed near-term stockpile work and the longer development of the tools and the techniques that will ensure the future of the stockpile. We can't let current systems atrophy, or we certainly can't fail to do the necessary maintenance, but we can't fail to be ready for the long-term issues we face. We cannot remain static in pushing for the deeper understanding of the underlying physics and chemistry and engineering so that we can continue to ensure a safe and secure and reliable stockpile for as long as America requires nuclear weapons. And we cannot continue to let our infrastructure decay. It's unprofessional, it's inefficient, it's wasteful of resources, it's potentially dangerous, and it sends exactly the wrong message to the professionals we want to attract and keep in this endeavor.

Mr. Chairman, let me take a second just to tell you what my starting point is. First, I need to get this organization on a sound operating footing with a degree of flexibility and speed in which it can act. And I plan to bring in as soon as practical, and I hope very soon, a couple of senior advisers on a temporary basis who would be senior people that would, hopefully, be known to you. I also expect to bring in a number of individuals, many as detailees, to begin to fill the functional roles outlined in Title 32. This dual-hatting of individuals is not going to be a problem. I hope to be able to move very rapidly on these positions, as soon as we can identify individuals and get them into place.

Secondly, and several of you alluded to this in the beginning, I need to come to my own conclusions on the state of this enterprise. I listen to many people describe the problems we face and their ideas on solutions. I hear problems of culture and of morale and infrastructure and lack of mission and lack of resources, problems in program management and prioritization and confusing reporting structures and lack of accountability. I hear that everyone is in charge or no one is in charge. The picture that's painted for me is not very pretty, but I would like to be able to assess it for myself, and I start tomorrow, immediately after the public swearing-in, with a trip to Los Alamos. And I intend to visit each of the major facilities over the next couple of months, trying to take one trip a week and spend literally a couple of days at these sites.

The visits will permit me to see first-hand the conditions, meet with the employees and the managers, and look at the programs and the infrastructure. Frankly, I will use those trips as a beginning to tell the folks that there are changes afoot and to play the point that the establishment of NNSA itself sends a strong signal to the folks that we do support them, we do support the mission, and that there's a long-term -- a future in this business.

Now, it seems to me this enterprise is measured now not by its accomplishments but more by its failures and its shortcomings, and that's something I'm actually a little bit familiar with from my old job. But I intend to leave the message that the establishment itself is an important measure of the value the government places on the mission and the value they place on the people. And when this is done, then I'll have a clearer sense of the baseline from which I have to work with, the problems that really need to be addressed and in what priority. And I hope, Mr. Chairman, you'll understand this will take at least some time.

There are a couple of issues -- but I don't want to leave the impression that I'm going to sit back for two months and go touring. There are a couple of issues we want to start on right away in addition to the mechanics, very important mechanics of getting the organization staffed and functioning. And that is, first, security. First, security. The PFIAB report was a very important bell-ringer for the enterprise. Frankly, much has been done to address individual and specific shortcomings that were identified, and my sense is that physical security seems strong, and tremendous steps have been taken to strengthen the system across the board. But my assessment is that we need to make these individual steps set up in a cohesive whole to build on them and better inculcate the security into the system at all levels.

Now, some say that the problems are a matter of culture. I'm, frankly, not entirely sure what that means. I think we haven't explained it as well as we should out in the field, we haven't gotten full buy-in from all, an we haven't established proper accountability in the system. Our security systems clearly have not kept pace with the changes in information technology and the pace in methods by which teams do science in America. One of the measures of science in America is team science. But it cannot be as simple as saying that scientists don't care about or accept the need for classification, although they may be more demanding and more questioning. And in just the same way, it's not as simple as making more and more regulations and rules. It has something to do with acceptance and with management and with leadership.

I have asked my staff and the folks that make up NNSA now to begin to develop a program that I will call integrated security management, modeled very roughly after a program that the enterprise actually has begun to accept over the last couple of years, called integrated safety management. This is an idea to put the entire enterprise into the equation, to work with the leaders at all levels and at all parts of the organization to achieve this degree of buy-in and to build it into the very nature of what and how people plan to do their work, while making very clear where authorities and responsibilities and lanes and in the road are. More to follow on that.

Second, I'd like to start as soon as practical on a multi-year budget and program plan. There's a crying need for a better multi- year planning, programming and budgeting plan. And as I see it today, we're really operating on almost one-year budgets, with little effort placed or little belief placed on what's done in the out-year planning. I can't do business this way, and I don't think you can either. We need to define our needs and our requirements out for several years, we need to budget to that and we need to execute to that budget. You need to see where I want to go and how we plan to get there, you need to understand what additional resources will give you, or give us, and you need to understand what cutbacks or reductions would affect.

Now, General Tom Gioconda in Defense Programs has actually made real progress in building a foundation for this, but I would hope to accelerate that work and move towards a real FYDP, if that's the right term, in NNSA, and would hope and plan to form a task force to do this, and I'm looking for the right individual with considerable DOD and (planning ?) budgeting systems to come in and lead this work.

Mr. Chairman, I really -- I don't I think underestimate the difficulty of the task ahead of us, but the conditions really may be right to give us a chance at rebuilding the nuclear security enterprise and reinvigorating the enterprise with pride and energy.

Congressional support is strong. Leaders from the enterprise realize it's time to pull together to attack the problems that they face. And I think we all know that failure in this endeavor is simply not acceptable.

That said, I have to admit I do worry about the "white horse" syndrome that you mentioned. Too many articles here lately have said, "Well, here's a new problem at the labs or someplace else, and General John Gordon will be in soon to go fix them." (Subdued laughter.)

The problems faced by the enterprise are not simple to solve. They don't lend themselves to simple fixes or simple changes in the rules and the regulations. They go to the core of how we manage and lead from Washington. They go to the core of how we organize and how the chains of command work. They go to the core of issues of accountability, responsibility, and authority. They go to the core of defining our requirements and priorities. They go to the core of how we budget, plan, program, and prioritize.

Working closely with the program managers of NNSA, we will tackle all these issues with considerable energy, and we will make some -- make real progress in each of the areas, but it won't be quick. It won't be without setbacks, and it probably will entail some broken china.

One more comment about what gives me some hope for this entire enterprise, and that is what I'm absolutely convinced about is the superb quality of the people that make it up, federal employees and contractors alike. The very greatest majority are hugely talented, they're strongly committed, they want to succeed, they want to help maintain the security of our nation, they want to be proud of what they do, and they want to be appreciated. They want our trust and our confidence, and we must keep faith with them as well. We need to give them clear statements of our mission and of our priorities. We must provide them with the resources to do what we ask of them. We owe them leadership, and we owe them support. With that, I believe, they will deliver.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my opening remarks. I'll be glad to take your questions down any line you like.

REP. THORNBERRY: Thank you, General. I think your -- the outline you have given us so far to first address the security issues, get a handle on multi-year budget, take care of our people certainly helps all of us feel better about the direction we're going.

Let me ask -- I want to step back for a second and ask you to comment. You mentioned at the beginning of your statement that there is some perception out there that the mission of our nuclear weapons complex is fading. In other words, nuclear weapons are not as important as they used to be. It's kind of a dying industry.

From -- really more from your past lives, can you comment on what role nuclear weapons play now and what role they're likely to play in the future? In other words, why should Congress think that this is important, and why is it deserving of taxpayer dollars to try to deal with some of the challenges we face?

GEN. GORDON: The main point -- one of the main points I made in the statement, Mr. Chairman, was that the Russian threat, while it's different in numbers and in quantity of late, it is far from gone. They are -- they, the Chinese maintain significantly-sized nuclear arsenals that actually can pose a threat to the United States. And I think we -- deterrence has worked well in the past. There's no reason to believe, at least for those nations, that it won't continue to work.

That -- but what we cannot do is maintain a nuclear deterrence that isn't -- that we don't have full confidence in, both in its safety and its -- in security, but also that if it's ever called up, it would actually function.

And I believe that so long as we -- as long as the government policy, as long as this nation's defense depends upon even a single nuclear weapon, we need to be able to maintain that and have the same confidence we've had in it or better than we had when we had significant numbers --

REP. THORNBERRY: It's also --

GEN. GORDON: -- significantly more numbers, I mean. (Chuckles.)

REP. THORNBERRY: It's also true that a number of our allies rely on confidence in our nuclear deterrent, don't they, and countries such as Japan or Germany might have a different view on acquiring nuclear weapons on their own if they doubt in some way our -- whether our nuclear weapons might function properly?

GEN. GORDON: I think that's exactly correct. And then you would add to that, then, the possibility that as other new nations come on with nuclear capabilities -- what it would mean to the United States if, as other countries come on and make their systems more robust, to us to not have any or to significant -- to not have the confidence in the ones that we did have, and even to the point of -- it doesn't play quite as strongly, that argument, in the nuclear terrorism side, but it is not unrelated.

REP. THORNBERRY: Let me ask one other question before yielding to Ms. Tauscher. You mentioned you're going to leave tomorrow to go to Los Alamos. Obviously, security is a key priority and very much in the headlines.

And you talked about trying to create integrated security in the way that the complex has been working on integrated safety. And that is one of the things specifically called for in the PFIAB report.

But how are you going to do that? Are you going to go out to Los Alamos and tell them to change these locks in this way? I mean, to what extent are you going to get into the details to tell them how to sign in what and specifically what procedures to follow?

REP. : We did that already.

GEN. GORDON (?): (Laughs.)

REP. THORNBERRY: Well, that's one of the reasons I asked the question -- (laughter) -- because we considered a bill last week that got into enormous level of detail. But as you approach this problem, I guess, to what extent are you going to make decisions on your own? To what extent are you going to expect people to make decisions and hold them accountable for them?

GEN. GORDON: I hope that I have enough things to do that I don't have to personally check on when safe combinations are changed and some of those procedures come out.

We have got to find a way to do -- again -- is to convince the folks to take this upon themselves as their own burden, as an individual who is working on it; that they have a personal responsibility to the security of it, to the information itself, and to the employees that are with them. Security, like almost all the functions out there, has to be in the line of the organization. The folks that are in the line of that organization have to make it happen, and they have to be accountable for their actions. And we need to hold them accountable. We need to set the standards, and we need to set the policies.

And if there's some cases -- and perhaps we are in that case now -- where there was enough done that someone had to step in from the outside to secure the rules, we need to get away from that, in the organization, as defining every single thing that is done out there, and make it a responsibility that comes almost from within the people that are doing the work.

We need to do it. We can't take any shortcuts in it, and I don't want to apologize for that from that standpoint. But what we want to do is set the standards and then hold people accountable to the standards that are there.

REP. THORNBERRY: Thank you.

Ms. Tauscher?

REP. TAUSCHER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Well, General Gordon, I was very heartened to hear your comments. And I am very impressed, too, about your commitment to the people working at the labs and throughout the complex. I believe, I think as most people do, that they are hardworking, excellent scientists, patriotic Americans. And I think that they are demoralized beyond belief. And I think that one of your earliest opportunities, to help right things in this new administration, is to work with all of us to try to do what we can to make sure that, first and foremost, that the people that are part of the NNSA, those people that on March 1st got new badges and became employees one, two -- whatever number they are -- that they understand that they are not being abandoned or scapegoated.

In California, at the two labs in my district, Livermore and Sandia, we have a disproportional number of Asian Americans. It is wonderful, part of the diverse culture in California. And it is, I think, some of the best parts of California that we have such diversity. But I speak to many of my constituents, and they are very concerned about the sense that Asian Americans are targeted or scapegoated, as potentially coming to work at the labs because they can spy.

So I want you to know that this is an issue for us in California, but I think throughout the country. And it is certainly something that I think has a deleterious effect on our ability to recruit and retain. And that's really what I want to talk to you about, this issue of recruiting and retaining in a virtual unemployment for people that have these kinds of advanced degrees in physics and science and math and engineering.

What can we do in the short and medium term to make sure that we are continually able to recruit and retain the best quality minds in this country and that we, as we look at the aging, not only of the complex and the deferred maintenance, but we look at the aging of the scientists at the complex -- we will, over the next five or six years, lose most of the people that have, one, designed weapons and, two, seen tests. And there is not a lot we can do about the actuarial tables; I am trying to stop them myself. But there is an issue here of tremendous brain drain, in the sense that we are not going to be able to replace people with like skills and like experience. So I'd like to hear what your initial comments are.

And then what I would to encourage the chairman to do is to try to set a time, in September perhaps when we are still in session, to have you come back and give us, not an interim report because you won't be anywhere near the mid-term, but some kind of impressions on, when you come back, of what you have seen and what your impressions are.

GEN. GORDON: Let me do the last part first and say that if the chairman wants to do that, I would be delighted. Maybe you can sort of schedule it after I've had a chance to get to all the fundamental places.

REP. TAUSCHER: Sure.

GEN. GORDON: We'll then have at least a number of the folks in the NNSA up and running and we'll be able to, you know, put some mass behind our work.

What I'm going to do on the first part, Ms. Tauscher, is agree with you that this is a significant problem, both from the issues of Asian Americans and other ethnic groups, that we cannot allow that to get in the way of any of our business. It's self-defeating. For all the other -- moral and other reasons, frankly, it's self-defeating. If we can't attract the best minds or the best Americans to this business, whatever their ethnic background, we're in the wrong business, and I'll tell you that.

And I don't think I have the answer yet, and maybe never will, exactly on how to go about the recruiting and the retention in the best ways. But it has to revolve around such simple ideas as pride in what they're doing in terms of finding the right -- the people that do want to contribute to national security.

You know, in my last business, in the CIA, you know, people would say, "Why would anybody go to work for the CIA?" We had people standing in line wanting to go to work for the CIA, despite the press that's out there, because not everybody -- but there are -- even when you go out to a place where Sun Microsystems and other organizations like that are recruiting, you find some of those folks want to come and do this because it's interesting, because it's different, because it's creative, because it's contributing in some way to this country. And we have to find a way to make that -- the core in this area, I suspect -- and it's no great secret -- is that it revolves around the quality of science that we allow the folks to do and how they're allowed to interact with the people that do that science.

And we've got to find -- that's an important aspect of my interest in this position in the first place, was the non-nuclear science that goes on at the laboratories as well; that that provides not only a draw, but it provides an enrichment for all the folks that are there, and it provides spin-offs in technology go back into the programs. There's something about using that to continue to attract people and which says we need to put money and resources and facilities into where we can attract people to come and do that kind of work. If they are on the cutting edge of work that can be done, be it in lasers or in computing or in hydro, these are first-line physics and computational areas that people will come to if we make it -- we don't have to make it that attractive to them, the science itself will draw a lot of people in. What we have to not do is put up so many walls that they can't get in or they can't see out.

REP. TAUSCHER: Mr. Chairman, I just want to ask one more quick question, because General Gordon and, Mr. Chairman, you both talked about the new threat and the issue of relevancy of the weapons complex. Have we made -- "we" meaning Congress and the political arm of the American people -- have we made the political case for why we need to have a safe and reliable nuclear stockpile?

GEN. GORDON: I suspect that among the knowledgeable aficionados of that era, I suppose we all understand it. But I suspect we don't have a good "elevator speech" that would convince some of the folks from our district when we're running up in the elevator for a couple of minutes, and we need to work on it.

REP. TAUSHCER: I think that we should work on that together. I think that there is a disconnect between the American people and what the threat is, what the emerging threat for the 21st century is, what kind of armaments we're going to need, how you right-size it, how you fund it, what it all means. And I think we -- it is a failure on our part, not solely on our part, to really -- to be out there explaining to the American people why this is important, and then they can understand the context for a lot of these things about the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the ABM Treaty and National Missile Defense because I think all these things out there swirl, but I don't think we have made the case out there on the underlining issues about why it's important to have a safe and reliable stockpile.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

REP. THORNBERRY: Thank the gentlelady.

And the other part of it is we haven't made the case on how difficult it is to keep it safe and reliable without testing --

REP. TAUSHCER: Right.

REP. THORNBERRY: -- and that's an enormous challenge.

Mr. Sisisky?

REP. NORMAN SISISKY (D-VA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And thank you, General, for being here. I'm often amazed, as I travel around the country and the world, to meet our young service people, and old service people, how people take jobs, how fortunate we are, and for you to take a job like this.

You're right. I went to CIA training camp, and to see these young people in training is just unbelievable, the quality of the people who want to be -- who could go out and make a lot more money -- MBAs, lawyers -- but just want to be of service to the country. And I thank you because you're doing the exact same thing.

I'm a dual-hatter, as you may know. I've had all the hearings I want to have on Los Alamos, both in Intelligence and here. And I come to the conclusion it really isn't a difficult problem to solve, believe it or not. The stupidity of some of the things that I heard on the missing hard drives is just unbelievable.

I mean, if I told you I had a credit card -- I mean a bank ATM card and I put my password on the card and I lose it, somebody else can have a good time. This is exactly what happened there. The password was in the bag with the hard disk, found behind a copy machine.

So I don't really think these problems are hard, and I like what you say, because you've got to get -- you can't check the locks every time. You've got to have people that want to do it, and really want to make things secure.

Now, having said that, I also came through last year, as you know, the commission that had really wanted to go to the Department of Defense. And we took the middle ground and said, "Let's try it one more time in the DOE." And what really happened is that we passed a bill; I tried to assure the secretary, as I talked to him, that we were willing to change the bill any time. If it didn't work out, then we as a committee would do anything we can to make it right. But the truth of the matter is that he did not follow through in the letter of the law. I will hope you will follow the letter of the law. I've got the transcript here from the Senate, where Secretary Richardson did say that he would follow the law, and I hope that will be your area of doing it, too.

But the one real question I have to ask you that really bothers me, and that's funding for your staff, which may be of concern. I understand the summary programming has been approved to provide for a small headquarters staff for the remaining part of this year, but not much else. What is your understanding of the flexibility you'll have in establishing your staffing needs, and where will the money come from to pay for them? Have you got that far yet?

GEN. GORDON: I haven't got into it in great detail yet, Mr. Sisisky. I think that with the reprogramming, there's probably enough money to get through the next couple of months, until the fiscal year starts, without any serious problems. In speaking with the fiscal folks at the department, they assured me just in the last couple of days that they knew that they would have to be stepping up to this issue and there would have to either be some reprogramming or some additional money put forth. It will require several millions of dollars, but not many tens over the next year to staff up what we're talking about; something on the order of, probably, $10 million. That'll either have to be made available from existing funds or we'll need an authorization appropriation that allows us to spend additional money.

Again, I've received assurances from the folks at DOE now that they know this is an issue that has to be sorted out, but I don't have any details to offer right now.

REP. SISISKY: Are you talking about the $10 million just for this fiscal year?

GEN. GORDON: No, no, no. I think there's several hundred thousand dollars which, frankly, is going to be as much -- because we'll probably fill most of these positions with detailees, initially. I don't expect any major problems between now and the end of the fiscal year, and in the next fiscal year, there is a budget for DP, there is a budget for NN and for NR. It's there. What we need is to be able to run a front office, and several millions of dollars, but not huge amounts of money, should be more than adequate for the next year. And then we'll have to get it into the normal budget cycle.

REP. SISISKY: Very good. (Inaudible.)

REP. THORNBERRY: Thank you. Mr. Gibbons.

REP. JIM GIBBONS (R-NV): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. General, welcome. I know you're going to be facing some important decisions now as you take over your new role in the NNSA, and some of those decisions, of course, as you've already pointed out, will lead to prioritizing some very important issues.

Number one, of course, as you've already said, is the issue of security. I know that you've said that the culture of the laboratories is one which is vague and oftentimes ill-defined. It seems to be a culture that is resistant to change. How are you -- what are your thoughts with regard to reconciling the cultures between science and security? How do you manage to see those two reconciling each other so you can improve upon this issue of security at our nation's labs?

GEN. GORDON: That's a -- it's hard to be very specific in that one, and yet you've put your finger right on the pulse of it. I think people are trained today differently than when I grew up, before we had Internets and all this -- that you did your little science project and you had a couple of people around and you brought people to your lab and you did it all in one lab, or all in one location. In American science today, people are trained from the day they come out of grad school, you know, to virtual teams, to reach out and consolidate and coordinate issues.

I don't have a magic answer on how to do that, but I just can't accept the premise that it can't be done, and I can't accept the premise that a scientist, because they were trained that way initially, can't understand that a secret or that a classified issue needs to be maintained in a different way. I'd also -- actually, people that work around me now don't agree with me, but I just don't accept the fact that if we sit down with these people and show them the right examples and work with them to do that --

I think what has happened, at least in the last -- in this decade, is that we've just kind of turned our back on these issues.

There was a period of time when the wall came down and the nuclear weapons were less important. But the management and the leadership of the organizations -- maybe "turned their back" is too strong of a word -- but failed to keep pushing for the standards that we need.

And I am going to enter this without any solution to the way you have asked the question. But I just cannot -- if we have to accept the idea that they can't do science and keep secrets, we are in a world of hurt. There has to be way that they can understand what's classified, what's unclassified, what's sensitive, what's not sensitive. They can -- there have to be a way that they can consult -- and consult with people, where there are common interests and common goals, but protect the security issues at the same time. I don't know what the answer is, but it has to be leadership, it has to be management, it has to be involvement. And it has to come, not so much from Washington, but it has to come from the lab directors and the first-level managers out there that make that a part of their everyday life.

REP. GIBBONS: General, I can appreciate your candor and your approach to this. It is a perplexing question, one which I, like many of the members of this panel, see as the biggest obstacle to improving the problem that we have seen over the last many years, lately.

And the culture, of course, doesn't have an easy answer, as you have said. One of the things I see as the resistance to change, of course, is management's resistance. And we have seen that all the way to the top. When we passed the bill, which required the NNSA to take over the security issue, we ended up getting into a conflict -- or not a conflict, but a disagreement with the secretary over the dual- hatting issue. Some of those positions, of course, are under your jurisdiction, and some still remain under the jurisdiction of the secretary of Energy. For example, General Habiger, is dual-hatted, under yours and his position.

Do you feel comfortable today in your ability to reclaim any of those positions in your new position, so that you can be assured that there is a defined bright line of responsibility and authority in security issues within the Department of Energy or within the laboratory structure and test facilities around this country?

GEN. GORDON: I just don't think -- and I know there has been a lot of controversy building up to this on the dual-hatting issue, and full of press and hearings and everything else. My discussions with the secretary and with the deputy secretary suggest to me that -- and as I mentioned in the opening statement -- we are going to proceed ahead, and we are going to fill those positions from within NNSA. I have -- there remains in the secretary's purview, the establishment of policy and some oversight issues that will fall in the areas of security, fall in the areas of counterintelligence. But I don't expect any difficulty in setting up an organization within NNSA where the policy comes down through the administrator to the field, through my security chief.

REP. GIBBONS: So you feel very confident, and you're telling this committee, that you will have clear and defined lines of responsibility for the security within NNSA?

GEN. GORDON: That's my intention.

REP. GIBBONS: Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

REP. THORNBERRY: Thank you.

Mr. Spratt?

REP. JOHN M. SPRATT JR. (D-SC): General Gordon, let me thank you for taking on this assignment.

We have spent, in my opinion, an inordinate amount of time on this committee wiring the diagrams of -- (inaudible) -- organization. I differed "quitely" with the rest of the panel about how impervious to outside oversight the NNSA ought to be. But I have always felt that the key to it was getting someone of your caliber, ability and broad experience on top of it. And I think that resolves all the other issues I have got about how this organization is wired.

I would say, reiterating what we said earlier, what Norm just said; if you have got problems with the organization, you ought to bring them back to us. I think everybody here is willing to -- has the confidence in you we are willing to listen to what you have got to say about what's necessary to run the organization.

Some time ago when these issues first began to surface, I had the privilege of sitting down with Dr. Foster (sp), Johnnie Foster (sp), and asking him for his insight into it. And he sort of echoed what you just said or said what you just said: namely, that this can't be a line management responsibility alone; everybody in the organization has to understand his security responsibilities and take it as his responsibility, not as somebody else's oversight responsibility but as his responsibility. You have to imbue and inculcate this ethic in the organization for it really to work.

I think we are probably spent an inordinate amount of time, too, looking at the labs. Lord knows, they have had enough problems, and that's focused our attention on them. But there are lots of other places in the complex where you could have security problems that have gone unnoted, where indeed we could have lost some of this W-88 material. They don't necessarily have to come from the labs. It could have come from --

GEN. GORDON: Precisely.

REP. SPRATT: -- down in Texas, come from Kirkland -- (inaudible) -- laboratory. There's information in all of these places. And we may be fooling ourselves by looking so exclusively at the labs and not overly -- and overly, given the fact that there could be leaks and security breaches at these other places -- (inaudible).

On the issue of dual-hatting, as I take it, we are going to resolve that by not having dual-hatting then, and you're going to get the money from one place to another, the few million dollars it will take to have your own people who won't have joint responsibility?

GEN. GORDON: That's the direction we're headed, Mr. Chairman.

REP. SPRATT: Well, let me just say we are glad to have you.

I think the key problem for national security purposes, is attracting scientists of top quality for the next generation of maintaining our nuclear stockpile. And we don't want to bear down on this problem in such a ham-fisted way that we turn off those top- quality scientists and end up with second-best scientists to handle one of the toughest requirements in our -- (inaudible).

GEN. GORDON: Mr. Chairman, it's attracting them and then training them and giving them the experience with the folks that have actually done it and been there, and having them -- real work that they can do.

REP. SPRATT: And then retaining them because they are excited about the work --

GEN. GORDON: Because you have given them good meaningful work. And we hold -- we put some trust in them, as well. We don't break faith with them. Too, it has to be a two-way street.

REP. SPRATT: Yeah. Well, thank you again for taking on this assignment.

GEN. GORDON: Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I hope you can say the same kind of words, you know, when we come back six months or a year from now -- (laughter) -- just along those lines.

The one question that was asked, and you alluded to, as well -- now, what I would like to do is, in the right period of time -- and it's not the September time frame; it's probably next session -- is come back and say: "Okay. We have been at it for nine months, a year" -- pick some reasonable period of time -- "What do you need? Well, how is it going? And what changes do you need in the legislation? What more do you need? What less?" You know, what -- I'd like to be able to come back and do that.

REP. THORNBERRY: And so at this point, there are no -- you haven't been there enough to give us specifically additional authorities you need, specific changes in the law yet? Is that right?

GEN. GORDON: No, I suspect I'd have all the authority I need right now.

REP. THORNBERRY: Okay. Well, I just want to reiterate what Mr. Spratt said. I think all of us are interested in doing whatever we need to do to make it work right.

GEN. GORDON: And I would just add that, since I have been there, I have had no hints or anything other than support from the senior leadership over there that this is going to go well.

REP. THORNBERRY: Great. Thank you.

Mr. Ryun?

REP. JIM RYUN (R-KS): Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.

General, I feel like I am probably going to be sort of the tail on the conference.

GEN. GORDON: (Laughs.)

REP. RYUN: I want to talk just a little bit about this dual- hatting issue.

From time to time, the administration has proven, through its approach to the labs, that maybe security isn't one of its top priorities there. And we've discussed the dual hatting issue quite a little bit. How do you see, as a result of when this transition is made with dual hatting, that it will improve security in truly making it a semi- autonomous entity there?

GEN. GORDON: Well, I think the -- I'm not sure that dual hatting itself is a root cause, certainly, to any of the problems. But what we need to be able to do is not just in the dual hatting and not just in the security area, but we need to be able to set one set of policies, one set of principles that are interconnected and are whole, that reach down into the full -- to the organization, and not have a lot of inputs from the sides. So we try to build an integrated whole, of which security is part, but morale and retention and recruitment and -- is all part of that.

So I think what we want to do with the dual hatting or by eliminating that sort of dual hatting is just to have a clear chain of authority, control, responsibility, and accountability.

And again, what we're going to do is -- in Washington is set the policies and set the directions, do some oversight, maybe have to go in and do the inspections afterwards, to make sure that these are things that -- but we really need to find a way, the right way, that you keep this square in the line and it goes right down to the individuals.

And it's -- there was talk early on: "Well, should we bring in another agency to do security and impose that?" I think that is exactly the wrong point, the wrong way to do it. It needs to be -- security, like safety, needs to be a line of responsibility for which you hold people accountable and which has to be, as you know, a significant, major portion of how they think about their mission. It's getting the work done in a safe way, in a secure way. And they go hand in hand.

REP. RYUN: I want to follow up just a little bit.

GEN. GORDON: Sure.

REP. RYUN: I don't sense that you're really battling -- I mean, we've worked through here a sense of wanting to eliminate dual hatting. General (sic) Richardson sort of fought us on that, but he's recently said at the Senate hearings that he would be happy to do whatever and support you in however we could improve the security there.

So having said that, I am sensing -- and you're saying yes, I think, from what you have just said -- that you're going to do that. But how quickly will it take place, you know, when you replace these roughly 18 individuals?

GEN. GORDON: I don't have a precise or even a really good estimate time for you how long it's going to take to find and put in the right people. My intention is to fill as many of those -- the right positions fairly quickly -- and you really don't know what that means -- but to do it perhaps by detailees, where they can come in from other parts of the organization and fill that in. That way, we can get started. Those people may or may prove to be the ones that we want to put in for long-term positions.

But I want to get the organization up, running, and started in those areas, getting a head of security, getting a head of couple of these other positions, and let them start to design that part of the organization and build it. You know, I can't sit down and do each and every one of those pieces. I need to get a person in who works for me, who takes it on as their job to build that portion of the organization properly.

And if I give you a date, you'll hold me accountable for it, too. But you know, I'm talking not -- I'm talking not very many months and hopefully not very many weeks.

REP. RYUN: Well, I appreciate your attitude. I sense a willingness to want to work with us. And that's really what we want to do, is to make sure that we have a good security system here. And I thank you for your coming today and look forward to the follow-up response we have later.

GEN. GORDON: Thank you.

REP. THORNBERRY: General, if you look at a number of the reports, not just the PFIAB report, but others, one of the features that comes through over the past number of years is that reforms get started, but then they fade away. And you have read or heard about the seeming attitude that the bureaucracy will be there after the top management has come and gone.

Now hopefully you will be there a while and can follow these things through. But I guess one of the questions I've got is, so if you go out and visit all the sites and decide "this needs to be changed," how do you make it happen? How do you overcome this resistance that seemingly has eaten up the reform attempts of the past 20 years?

GEN. GORDON: Well, the first part is, I think people need to realize that the leadership's going to be around to make it happen and watch it for enough period of time and hold individuals accountable.

Mr. Chairman, you know, I really have spent some time in preparing for this with the directors and -- of the labs and some of the other senior folks out there, and I think they have finally reached the point that they know that we're in trouble and that there has to be some change. And they profess, you know, the willingness to build a team to where we run down this road together.

And again, there's no magic solution to this kind -- it's leadership and management and follow-up that tries to bring the focus together and just -- you just have to sit down and make it happen. You're trying to make your life -- your mark on the world, and there's somebody running around behind you with an eraser. So you need to secure it, you need to -- and I think as -- one of these areas and how fast we're going to go in these issues.

My approach to most of these kinds of issues is a fairly go-slow approach, but with every step locked in place. We can make a lot of flashy changes and break some china now and think we've done something. But if we haven't brought the managers in, the folks that are going to do that, if they don't take that on in some way as their own, you know, whether -- when I leave or somebody else leaves or they -- somebody leaves, you know, it's back to where we were. I really would really have -- go off at a much more gradual approach, as long as we're making positive progress in those areas, and secure each piece of ground as we move up it.

REP. THORNBERRY: Let me just add to that from my perspective. One of the reasons that employees in the department and the public and Congress have a lack of confidence is because there is a perception that it's been more about press releases than it has firm action that you do lock in. And I just want to support what you said. I think taking it a little slower, worry more about doing the right thing and locking it in rather than a perception of activity that really doesn't -- more than press releases would be helpful.

Let me ask you comment briefly on any impressions you have about the other two elements under your jurisdiction, namely the nonproliferation programs and naval reactors. They are also part of NNSA, they also have very important missions for the country's security. You mentioned naval reactors; maybe we could learn some management lessons there and impart it to the rest of the complex. But do you have any impressions, for example, the nonproliferation programs? Have they been useful in working with the Russians and others? What would you like to share with us on those areas?

GEN. GORDON: I -- probably my opening statement was -- it didn't address that issue. And I don't mean that we haven't spent some time thinking about it and working with the acting chief in that organization now. I think there's been really some good progress made in that area, and what we need to do is continue to move down that road, to work reactor and weapons safety and security, and secure what's been done. I need to -- again, I'm going to ask you (for) some time to reach my own conclusions as we get into this area. But my sense -- and, you know, even whether we're invested right in it or not. I just don't know. But the questions are, you know, we're making good progress, but are we making enough progress, are we making -- are we securing the progress we make, and what kind of cooperation are we getting from the other side in this issue? That seems to be very much an issue: how -- and we saw it in other (lies ?) as well -- how confident are they and how willing are they, really, to play this out, or are they just sort of taking the money?

I need to come back after a little bit of time and talk about, you know, are we -- I think the goals are exactly right, you know? We're trying to strengthen security and safety in all areas. We're working -- you know, watching our deterrent and seeing what happens with theirs. So the programs are good. The question is how much progress are we making and at what price. And I know there's been criticism that it's too expensive for the progress we've been making.

I think in one sense, though, the reports have underestimated some of the very good work that's done to go in and do some of the quick fixes. And where they're doing -- where NN has been doing some of the work with the Russian facilities, they've gone in and sort of fixed the most broken things, and -- get the fences and the lights and some of the very simple things done. I don't think they've gotten really full credit for that. It's very correct as the GAO and others reported out that only a small percentage of the sites they've been working have the full suite of work been done to them.

But I want to put -- I think there's a very important part. And I think by bringing these three organizations together there's a chance to build some synergy off of them. The expertise that's in these areas can help in the nonproliferation area.

Naval reactors, you know, I got to tell you, is running like a clock. (Laughs.) It's running like a clock. And Admiral Bowman and his predecessors -- superb. They had a flat management organization. They reach into the organization, folks are charged up with their mission. They don't get a lot of outside help, they don't get a lot of outside interference. And we can learn from those lessons there. I don't think I have a lot to do. There's nothing I have to go fix in naval reactors that I'm aware of. Maybe they can help me fix some stuff. And I've actually talked to Skip about that a bit. So --

REP. THORNBERRY: Great. Thank you.

Ms. Tauscher?

REP. ELLEN O. TAUSCHER (D-CA): General, the state of the security issues have had me concerned for quite a long time. I guess I have been concerned that for a long time we've been unable to wrap our brains around the changes that you alluded to in your opening statement of information technology, the miniaturization of computing, the fact that it's ubiquitous -- every wall has a modem, every desk has a computer on it -- and that we were standing outside of the labs waiting for someone to walk out the front door with a three-ring binder that said "Secrets" on it, "Going to meet Mr. Big," and the truth is that they were on little computer disks and hard drives and things.

And I think we all kind of found our own little way of saying that the disappointments we had about the Los Alamos hard drive disaster was that, you know, that Target can protect $12.99 CDs, and why can't we figure out how to protect our secrets?

What are you thinking about doing over the next four, five, six, seven months to really shake the cage of the so-called "experts" in security that we see on the government side, and kind of make them look a lot like the people on the outside, in the private sector, that seem to be able to protect the socks at the GAP and understand how to do it in a way that is not offensive to people shopping, and take very low-wage workers and not make them feel as if they are being questioned for their patriotism, and not break faith with them, when we can't seem to do that with the very smart people at the labs?

GEN. GORDON: You've given a suggestion that there's a guy in one of these -- in one or more of these organizations that can give us some pretty good insight. I think I need do take you up on that idea.

The scientists have been working in a secure environment for 50 years, you know? And they're bright, smart people. But they're just not -- we haven't set up the right standards for them and we haven't set up mechanisms that, as you point out, are straightforward and easy to do in these -- relatively easy to do. And they need to be done professionally without huge interference in how people can go about their life. That shouldn't -- it conceptually doesn't seem like it should be that hard. But I think I need to take up your idea of maybe there's a couple outsiders who understand some things that we don't understand as we sit around and sort of ponder these momentous thoughts of security, as opposed to socks.

REP. TAUSCHER: Yeah. I think, you know, the loss prevention business in the United States is a multi-billion-dollar business, and they grapple with a lot of the same challenges that we do to try to create state of the art nuclear security secret protection. And they have another piece of it, which is called the customer. And, you know, you don't want to have a customer walk out of Neiman Marcus with a $2,000 something and have the bells go off and feel as if they're now going to, you know, have all their neighbors say, "Oh, you were trying to steal that coat." So I think that there's a lot of stuff about this that has been worked on in the private sector. And, not surprising, the private sector has a lot of things that those of us in government haven't been exposed to or don't have the money to pay attention to.

And that's the second part of this question I think it's about the money, eventually. And I hope that you know that the chairman and I and the rest of this panel are very interested in hearing, as soon as you start to understand that this is a big number or a number that you need to address sooner than later, that we want you to feel comfortable coming to us and starting to talk about that, because this can never be about the money, as far as I'm concerned. This is a priceless set of secrets that we are attempting to secure, and I think that if we have to spend money to do it, I think we need to do that.

GEN. GORDON: I think the money issue will come to us from several fronts. The security, obviously, we just cannot let this kind of data slip out. We just can't. It is a pass-fail test for the organization. Money will come at us from many fronts, though, too. And I alluded to infrastructure as an issue. I don't know whether the amount of money we've got now is right. Most people tell me it's not.

The program was scoped internally at sort of $5 billion or $5 billion and a little more. It was never funded at that level. But I don't think the $5 billion was done with a lot of detailed assessments, either. There were decisions made, as you all know this better than I do, I think, decisions made to fund the front end or the science front end of it, hold back on the infrastructure side of it. That probably was -- almost certainly was the correct decision at the time. Somewhere along the line, we've got come back and address not only the security side of it but the full infrastructure side of it. We've got wood buildings with nuclear materials in it, fire safety issues that need to be thought about through this, systems that we pay a lot of money for that are not even used simply because we've got to keep the lights on but nothing's going on inside them. I need that money for something else. And we need to come to grips with that.

And I don't know whether, you know, there's enough -- my sense is there's not enough efficiencies in the rest of the system to go fund that, but that is one of the things we'll want to come back to you on in significant areas.

REP. TAUSCHER: Great.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

REP. THORNBERRY: Thank you.

Mr. Sisisky, you have additional questions?

REP. SISISKY: Just a couple of comments.

I jokingly said, when the chairman said about the locks, we've already taken care of that! And we already basically took care of the polygraph, too. I think. I think we took care of that. What do you think of polygraph? Because you're going to be questioned when you go out, and it's been a big issue here.

But before you answer, I've been here a good number of years and I've watched the micromanaging of things, and it usually comes about out of frustration up here. Most members do not want to run agencies, but the frustration of bureaucracy that happens, that's when the micromanaging comes in. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying what really happens.

But polygraph is going to be a big issue for you. And I don't know if you want to make a comment now or not.

GEN. GORDON: I'd like to beg off on the polygraph question, if I could, for today --

REP. SISISKY: Okay.

GEN. GORDON: -- until I can get into that a little bit more deeply, simply because it is such a sensitive issue. I came out of an environment where polygraphs were used regularly, and they work when they're used as a tool to help get at issues. But certainly a degree of caution needs to be -- as it comes up. I'd like to give you a more thoughtful answer later.

REP. SISISKY: And I'd also like you to comment about the nuclear -- Naval nuclear reactors, being from an area that probably has more nuclear reactors than any place in the whole world, active nuclear reactors, Norfolk, Virginia. I was remarking here, coming to Washington yesterday, there were four nuclear carriers in port.

And you know the amazing thing? Nobody ever -- people have such great confidence and satisfaction in these reactors. I never hear a complaint or anything on them. I hear plenty about airplanes, but I never hear anything about the Naval nuclear reactors. And, I mean, it's a tribute of how it got started, as you know, and they just kept adding to it, and they still keep that discipline that they've had from the first day they developed a nuclear reactor, I think.

GEN. GORDON: I think there's a little known fact, at least when you get outside of, again, the society in which we run day to day here in Washington, that that portion of NNSA NR actually runs, I think, the last day I looked into it, exactly the same number of nuclear reactors as in the civilian endeavor. There were 103 or 106 or something, and there happened to be that day the same number of licensed civil reactors. It's a massive program in that standpoint, with tremendous success, as you pointed out. Tremendous success. And they do it with a relatively small organization, well run, well directed, but with that excitement and energy that we want to get back into the rest of the system. And I'm going to need help -- let Skip help me draw on some of that.

REP. SISISKY: You know, Mr. Chairman, if you don't think times have changed -- I think I'm correct in this -- the "boomers", the SBNs, are down in Georgia. They do not tie up in Norfolk, but one came into Norfolk for a couple of weeks and they let the public on them. I've never known them to do a Trident submarine for -- but that's how things have changed. That used to be our absolute most secret weapon. Nobody could even get on that thing. But I think they opened it up to the public.

GEN. GORDON: I've had some real privileges to operate in that business, back when I was a missile wing commander, to go off for several days on a couple of those, and then I've been off with Admiral Bowman (sp) on attack submarines as well, again, trying to understand this operation very carefully. And it's just -- it's just -- it's fun to go down and visit those folks and see the excitement in which they operate.

REP. SISISKY: And to see the youth and the experience that they have altogether. It's amazing.

GEN. GORDON: Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

REP. THORNBERRY: But it's also an organization that does some good science and research. So it is not just a bunch of engineers out running submarines. And that's I think the gentleman is correct. If we could take the confidence in that organization and in their product and impart it to the rest of the complex, it would be an enormous achievement. And that's why I think all of us want to learn some lessons from there.

Let me ask about a couple of other areas we haven't really touched on.

One of the recommendations of the PFIAB was for some sort of a excepted service block a number of the intelligence community elements have, where you are not -- where you have greater flexibility in personnel decisions.

The law that we passed created some number of excepted service positions. Is that something that you've taken a look at yet? Do you think it would be applicable or helpful for you, in running this place, to have some excepted service-like positions?

GEN. GORDON: I don't have a highly informed answer on that, but you offered 300 -- you assigned 300 such positions. I fully expect to be using a number of those. I couldn't tell you the number or even how we're going to run into it.

But one thing I have learned over there that everyone has cautioned me about is the personnel system is very lengthy, to pull those people out, and I'd like to have the ability to bring people in both more quickly and with some of the -- with some greater ease and some fewer restrictions in those areas. I have a little bit of experience, again, from a previous life. But let me say, in principle, this is a great idea. We want to be able to do it. I don't know exactly how we're going to take advantage of it yet.

REP. THORNBERRY: Another area of great interest and concern throughout the complex are the number of contracts that are coming up for decision. There was a decision, I think last week, relating to the University of California contract, with the labs, with some changes there, but a number of the other facilities have contracts that are up. Have you had a chance to look into that process at all, yet?

GEN. GORDON: I don't have any --

REP. THORNBERRY: Are you involved in it at all?

GEN. GORDON: I'm going to get involved in it. I haven't had a chance to make an informed statement in those areas. With respect to the University of California contract, the intent there is simply to find a mechanism that allows them to bring more security expertise into their fold; not to have a huge re-doing, but to find a mechanism that allows them to reach out, bring more security expertise in to help with this management structure.

REP. THORNBERRY: Is it more security expertise, or also more management?

GEN. GORDON: Well, it's --

REP. THORNBERRY: There was also discussion about --

GEN. GORDON: -- we talked to security -- we talked to security and we talked about project management, yes.

REP. THORNBERRY: Good. Right. General, thank you for being here. We realize that it is early on in your tenure. We appreciate your being here and as every panel member has said, we appreciate your willingness to take this job. At the same time, I think we realize that it is entirely possible, next week or next month, we will open our papers and see some other episode that confounds us all. These problems are not going to be fixed overnight. It has taken us 20 years to get to this point, and all of us have to try to dampen, I think, expectations a little bit that they can be fixed overnight. And no mortal will be able to do that.

But what we can do is promise to work with you in any way we can, whether it's changes in the law, whether it's funding issues, or even letting the folks out there know that we appreciate what they do, that they play an important role in the country's security. Whatever it takes to make this enterprise a success, we want to work with you to do that.

GEN. GORDON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I intend to take you up on that. (Chuckles.) And I thank you very much for this opportunity to come to chat today. I know we were not very precise in many issues, and, as we go into this, what I will pledge back is not immediate and fast responses on these things, but I'll pledge a lot of hard work and a lot of energy and, hopefully, a lot of clarity and direction.

Thank you very much.

REP. THORNBERRY: That's what we're counting on. And the hearing stands adjourned.

END