NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES

Public Hearing

Hart Senate Office Building
Room 216
Washington, DC

CONTENTS

PANEL I: COMMISSION MANDATE AND OBJECTIVES
WITNESSES: REPRESENTATIVE NANCY PELOSI (D-CA); SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN(R-AZ); SENATOR JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (D-CT);

PANEL II: INTELLIGENCE OVERSIGHT AND THE JOINT INQUIRY
WITNESSES: SENATOR BOB GRAHAM (D-FL); SENATOR RICHARD SHELBY (R-AL); REPRESENTATIVE PORTER GOSS (R-FL); REPRESENTATIVE JANE HARMAN (D-CA)

PANEL III: AFFECTED CONSTITUENCIES
WITNESSES: SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER (D-NY); SENATOR HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D-NY): SENATOR JON CORZINE (D-NJ); SENATOR FRANK LAUTENBERG (D-NJ); REPRESENTATIVE JERRY NADLER (D-NY); REPRESENTATIVE CHRISTOPHER SHAYS (R-CT); AND REPRESENTATIVE CHRIS SMITH (R-NJ)

PANEL IV: STATE OF CIVIL AVIATION SECURITY ON SEPTEMBER 11TH
WITNESSES: JANE GARVEY, FORMER ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION; KENNETH MEAD, INSPECTOR, GENERAL, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION; JAMES MAY, PRESIDENT, AIR TRANSPORT ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA; AND BODGAN DZAKOVIC, CIVIL AVIATION SECURITY INSPECTION, TRANSPORTATION SECURITY AGENCY

PROCEEDINGS

MR. KEAN: That's the gavel. Good morning. On behalf of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States, I hereby call to order this second hearing and, of course, our first hearing in Washington, D.C.

Let me begin by expressing our gratitude to members of the public who are following our deliberations, whether they're here in person or whether they're watching on television. Let me say, too, that since we held our first public hearing in New York on March 31st and April 1st, a number of individuals have contacted our staff. Some expressed sympathy and support for the families of those who died on September 11th. Others have offered us their help and have provided our investigators with some very useful information. So, I'd like to emphasize that if anyone here with us today or watching elsewhere has any information that they believe will be helpful to our investigation, please contact the Commission through its website: www.9-11commission.gov.

I also want to express my deep gratitude, and that of the entire Commission, to the families of those who died in the attacks on our country on September 11th, and to the many who survived them and their families. They have given unsparingly of themselves to see that we have the necessary resources to do our work, and they've also uncovered some very valuable information that they have passed onto us.

As we begin today, let me say that the Commission's central mission, as all of us see it, is threefold.

First, we are charged with giving the American public a full accounting of the events of September 11th. Ours is the only entity tasked by the United States government with presenting an authoritative account of those events.

Second, we will attempt to find out how and why the tragedy that took place on that day could have occurred. Clearly, something went wrong. We need to establish the fullest factual account possible so that these problems can be fixed.

The third part of our mission is perhaps the most important. We're going to make specific policy recommendations that might help prevent future terrorist attacks and make the people of our country safer.

And we're going to press for swift implementation of these recommendations after we make them.

Now let me say a brief word about what the Commission's been doing. We've opened offices in Washington, and within a month, we're going to have our opening for our office in New York. We have assembled a staff of some 55 people divided into nine research teams. Each of those teams is deeply immersed in the parts of the investigation they were specifically recruited to conduct. We're examining some very, very sensitive material. Much of it's classified, so it's not always possible to share everything we're doing with the public, but we'll try to share as much as possible and what we learn as our investigation proceeds. Where possible, we will present our findings in public hearings such as this one.

We might question witnesses we will hear from today again -- perhaps, if it's sensitive matters, in closed session -- as we continue with our investigation, to get additional information. So to those who requested us to ask particular questions today, I'd say please be patient. Some of the items you brought to our attention are going to asked today and will come up in our discussion. Others will come up in different forums.

We'll be exploring two topics at this hearing. The first will be the role of the Congress, oversight of the agencies responsible for intelligence gathering, national security and homeland security. The second is the state of aviation security -- before September 11th, on September 11th and after September 11th.

We're now going to hear from three panels of members of the United States Congress. Our first panel consists of members of Congress who sponsored the legislation that brought this Commission into existence. Members of the Commission have met with many members of Congress in the course of our work. Today, I believe, however, is the first time congressmen and senators who really supported the need for our Commission and a commission of this kind have the opportunity to share with us in public what they would most like the Commission to achieve.

Each of the three members of this first panel is well-known to us and probably well-known to most of the people in the country. They're Senators John McCain of Arizona and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, and the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi of California. And I believe we're going to begin with you, Senator McCain.

SEN. MCCAIN: I think Congresswoman Pelosi has a commitment --

MR. KEAN: Oh, Congresswoman Pelosi? Fine.

SEN. MCCAIN: -- and I'd be glad if she would proceed.

REP. PELOSI: Thank you very much, Chairman Kean, Vice Chairman Hamilton, very distinguished members of this Commission. I thank the gentleman from Arizona for yielding to me because of my responsibilities on the House side, and I'm very honored to be here today to testify before, as I said, this very distinguished Commission, in the presence of two people, Senator Lieberman and Senator McCain, who were instrumental. Their leadership, in fact, made this Commission possible, along with that of my colleague from the House Congressman Tim Roemer, who serves on this Commission. I commend him also, for his great leadership.

Since the horrific attacks of September 11th, the United States has had two primary goals: first, we must identify the individuals and the groups responsible for this horrific act and bring them to justice. And next, what you put forth, Mr. Chairman: to provide a full account of why and how -- why the attacks were not prevented and how they can be prevented in the future.

With respect for the families so affected and responsibility to the American people, many of us thought that it was important to have an independent commission to review events leading up and post-9/11. From the outset, I believed that a review of the events leading up to the attacks, including the government's response and the larger issue of our nation's preparedness for terrorist attacks, needed to be comprehensive and conducted independently by individuals who could bring fresh thinking to the issues at hand. Congressional investigations, no matter how thorough, would likely be restricted primarily to the jurisdiction of the committee or committees involved. Because the government would conduct such investigations, they would be unlikely to achieve the same degree of public acceptance as an independent inquiry.

It is unfortunate that such an inquiry did not begin much sooner, right after 9/11. Within weeks of the attack, I offered legislation to establish such an independent commission, to be conducted by people who would challenge conventional wisdom and who had wide perspective and broad experience in dealing with complex problems. Unfortunately, agreement could not be reached on how much power to give the review, and the commission I proposed was defeated on the House floor.

I was pleased, however, that through the leadership and the persistence of a member of this commission, former congressman Tim Roemer, as I mentioned, and that of Senators McCain and Senator Lieberman, this body was established and has begun its critical work. Thank you, Tim Roemer. Thank you, Senators McCain and Lieberman. Our entire country is deeply in your debt.

Fortunately, the time between the idea for this commission and its creation was not completely lost. The inquiry undertaken by the House Intelligence Committee Subcommittee on Terrorism and the nearly year-long joint investigation by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees both answered questions about the nation's state of preparedness and also identified areas in which further work is necessary.

I am aware that the committees are following up in those areas, even as they work toward the release of a declassified version of the report. I'm confident that the work of these inquiries has been and will continue to be of assistance to this commission. I hope that it is available to you.

These congressional reviews were necessary, and they have produced important records that enhance our understanding of what happened on September 11th and why. At the same time, these reviews do not tell the full story. Both reviews were focused on the work of the intelligence community, rather than the performance of the federal government as a whole, both prior to and after the devastating attacks. Whatever failures occurred in the intelligence agencies may have been matched in seriousness by failures in other agencies.

This is not to excuse either the intelligence community specifically or the federal government generally. Rather it is to say that the greatest service this commission can perform is to provide a clear picture of how the federal government, as a whole, was or was not working against terrorism before September 11th, how the pieces fit or did not fit, and the consequences of the government's performance.

For example, and very important, the joint congressional inquiry on which I served, as a member of the Intelligence Committee, did not have access to records of the National Security Council. I believe that a review of those records are essential to a thorough understanding of decisions made by the administration on terrorism matters, and I hope that this Commission is successful in obtaining access to them.

Since the attacks, steps have been taken to realign federal agencies and change responsibilities, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security -- another brainchild of the senator from Connecticut, Senator Lieberman -- and the Terrorism Threat Integration Center being among the most notable.

These may turn out to be worthwhile actions; however, my concern has been that these entities were instinctive responses -- although Senator Lieberman had suggested his department long before September 11th -- to general perception that things were not right, rather than a result of an exhaustive inquiry across the government with specific findings and specific recommendations for change. This is a critical role your commission can and must play.

One question that has arisen, and very much in the forefront of everyone's thinking, is the role of congressional oversight. The activities of the Congress before September 11th are appropriate area of inquiry, and to this point, have not been examined closely. There has been concern that prior to the attacks, responsibility for oversight of homeland security issues has been too diffused within Congress.

In the House, a subcommittee and a separate appropriations subcommittee have been created to address that concern. It is still too early for either of these entities to have produced a record on which to base judgments. Nevertheless, I expect that a separate appropriations subcommittee will ensure that the homeland security programs that are not funded through subcommittees such as Defense or Transportation, which is the case now, will receive the resources they need.

Adequate funding for homeland security presumes that it is accorded a high priority in budget submissions. But I'm sorry to say this has not been the case; for example, the Coast Guard maintains it needs $6.6 billion over the next 10 years for port security and related activities. Yet, the Bush administration has requested only $500 million thus far, despite the enactment of legislation that underscores the critical needs in this area. I bring this up because it points to the fact that resources that Congress devotes to any given agency or effort have been less reflective of the organization of congressional committees and more reflective of the importance they are given by the Bush administration.

Although it is too early to judge what impact the changes already made in the House will have on the oversight process, I do not believe that additional changes are necessary at this point. You may reach a different conclusion, and if you do, I, of course, will respect and be interested in your thinking. My belief, however, is that the mechanisms are in place to conduct effective oversight and that it's up to the congressional leaders to make sure that those mechanisms are employed vigorously. In closing, I want to reiterate the enormous significance I attach to your efforts and the high hopes I have for your success. The tragedy of September 11th is so immense that as we go forward to meet the challenges, we must always remember that we are walking on sacred ground. Members of the families of those who were lost on September 11th have told me that just mere hearing a plane going overhead fills them with terror. We must remove that fear from those families and from the American people. Any review of this tragedy must, therefore, be conducted in a way that reflects the enormity of the losses the nation has suffered; the magnitude of the sacrifices endured by the families of the victims. Your work will be essential in providing answers about why government agencies collectively did not do better in advance of September 11th and how they can improve their performance in the future.

Along with the American people, especially the families and friends of those we have lost, I eagerly await the results of your deliberation and once again want to commend Senator McCain, Senator Lieberman and Congressman Roemer for their great leadership, and to you, Mr. Chairman, and your vice-chair and all the members of the Committee.

God bless you, and Godspeed in your very, very important work.

Thank you. (Applause.)

MR. KEAN: Thank you very much, Congresswoman.

Senator McCain?

SEN. MCCAIN: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank all the members of the commission for your willingness to serve in this very difficult and daunting task.

The September 11th attacks represented a massive failure in the most fundamental duty of our government: the security of the American people from foreign attack. That developed over the course of successive administrations. When Joe Lieberman and I called for an independent commission, we stated clearly that it shouldn't be a witch hunt directed at one particular administration, one particular agency or particular individuals; that it should be an honest, probing and thorough review and critique of U.S. policies, programs and practices spanning almost two decades and four administrations prior to September 11th, 2001, with the goal of understanding what we did wrong, how we can learn from identified failures, weaknesses and vulnerabilities in order to make necessary systemic corrections. A full and frank accounting of such policies, programs and practices should be far ranging and candid in assessing the failures of vision, threat assessment and policy response that preceded the attacks.

The joint congressional investigation into the intelligence failures associated with September 11th did critical work in uncovering how elements of our government failed to share and use existing information to divine the terrorists' planning and intentions. This commission should expand on the joint congressional committee's investigation of the myriad failures that prevented significant information in our possession about the September 11th plot from being pursued by the relevant agencies. The commission should also recommend additional reforms above and beyond those implemented to date, to rationalize the way intelligence information is collected, analyzed, disseminated and acted upon to improve the effectiveness of our efforts to deter, preempt and counter extremist terrorism.

Mr. Chairman, I was disheartened that members of your commission were, until recently, denied access to the report of the joint congressional investigation into the September 11th terrorist attack. Using the congressional committee's report as the baseline for your work would theoretically have allowed the Commission to hit the ground running.

Instead you've been stuck in the quicksand of negotiating access to a document you should have been entitled to examine on a priority basis at the beginning of your tenure.

I find it particularly troubling that Commission member and former Congressman Tim Roemer, who helped write the congressional report as a member of the House Intelligence Committee, was, until this month, denied access to his committee's own product.

While I don't want to believe such a basic lack of cooperation was intentional, it nevertheless creates the appearance -- and I emphasize creates the appearance -- of bureaucratic stonewalling.

The long-running dispute between the joint congressional committee and the administration over the declassification and public release of the committee report sets a troubling precedent for administration cooperation with your commission. Excessive administration secrecy on issues related to the September 11th attacks feeds conspiracy theories and reduces the public's confidence in government.

I strongly believe the commission will need access to the National Security Council documents denied the congressional committee. I hope the administration will not abuse the principle of executive privilege to deny the Commission the critical repository of day-to-day activity on issues related to the terrorist attacks.

Similarly, the Commission's ability to interview key administration officials is essential. Without full cooperation on access to documents and officials, the administration will raise more questions than the Commission will be able to answer.

The operations of the joint congressional investigations hold a valuable lesson for the commission on securing information from the executive branch. Leaders of the joint congressional committee, Republican and Democrat, have been highly critical of the administration's resistance to congressional committee requests for information related to the attacks.

The committee subpoena power was critical to the success it did not enjoy in ferreting out information related to the attacks. As with the congressional committee, it is my hope that your commission will agree to issue most subpoenas by consensus and that any votes on subpoenas will not split the Commission along partisan lines. I support the fullest possible public disclosure of all the commission's hearings and findings. I encourage you to hold public hearings like this one as frequently as possible and to publicly issue substantive interim reports on the Commission's progress. This is particularly important to the families of September 11th, will provide information the Congress and the administration can use to bolster our homeland defenses.

Let me say that Congress bears some responsibilities in this matter also. Too often its decisions are met with resistance due to the cost of the burden of the regulated industry. Many believe that aviation security should have been greatly improved after the bombing of Pan Am 103 in 1988. Congress enacted stricter security regulations for baggage screening as a result of that tragedy. However, funding issues and complaints from industry delayed many of those requirements.

In 1996, in response to the crash of TWA 800, Congress passed several security mandates on the Federal Aviation reauthorization bill. It took five years, five years, to implement some of these requirements. The General Accounting Office has pointed to industry resistance and a lack of adequate funding as two significant obstacles to improvements in aviation security.

I don't necessarily believe that we could have prevented the events of September 11th had Congress acted differently, since the improvements were focused on detecting explosives in baggage. However, time after time, Congress moves in a certain direction only to have its goals obstructed by industry complaints, special interests or the earmarking of funds that divert precious resources to other non-essential programs. This problem is not industry-specific but covers all issues on which Congress acts.

Congress has a responsibility to do what it believes is right, even if industry or other interests are opposed. Once it makes a decision, it must exercise proper oversight and ensure that proper funding is available to carry out our mandate. On the issue of priorities for the Commission's investigations, I believe no area of inquiry should be off-limits if you would determine it relates to your mandate to pursue a comprehensive investigation into the September 11th attacks.

I believe there are four specific areas that deserve particular attention from the commission: The U.S. policy response to terrorism; the rise of al Qaeda; state support for terrorism; and the role of Saudi Arabia.

An evaluation of the effectiveness of the U.S. response to a series of terrorist attacks against Americans by Islamic extremists over the last two decades is critical if we are to prevail in the coming months and years. Osama bin Laden himself regularly cited American inaction after devastating attacks on our Marine barracks and on our embassy in Lebanon as inspiration for his cause. Subsequent kidnappings and assassinations, the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103, the '93 World Trade Center bombings, subsequent planning of massive trans-Pacific hijackings, the 1995 Riyadh and 1996 Khobar Towers bombings of U.S. targets in Saudi Arabia, the 1998 embassy bombings of Kenya and Tanzania, the planned attacks against American interests on the eve of the millennium and the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole all provided a troublingly clear picture, not only of terrorists' intentions but of their ability to significantly damage American interests.

The role of U.S. policy in responding to these attacks and the ways in which American leaders fail to adequately counter the threat posed by international terrorism should be central areas of inquiry for the commission. Illustrative questions should include:

• Did the tension between law enforcement and military responses to terrorism inhibit our response by focusing on legal outcomes, indictments, prosecutions and convictions rather than focusing on the destruction and defeat of terrorist infrastructure that targeted Americans?
• Were more active responses to the threat proposed but not implemented because of legal, bureaucratic, diplomatic or other concerns? How well was the counterterrorist mission incorporated into the planning and operations of our armed forces, our diplomatic service, our intelligence and law enforcement agencies?
• How was it that a troubled youth from California was able to join the ranks of al Qaeda and meet Osama bin Laden while our intelligence assets could not?

It now seems clear that U.S. policy toward Afghanistan in the 1980s and our decision to abandon the region after 1989 played a significant role in the conditions that allowed al Qaeda to flourish. I believe the formative period of al Qaeda, not just its more recent operations, should be thoroughly examined by the Commission.

Key questions would include what we knew about bin Laden's efforts to build a terrorist training and operational network in the region, al Qaeda's role in Somalia in 1993, the partnership formed between Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, as well as al Qaeda's ideological development, recruitment practices, networks and eventual operations on at least five continents.

The question surrounding the nature and extent of foreign government sponsorship and support for al Qaeda and Islamic terrorists bear full examination. Afghanistan and Sudan, as former bases for Qaeda training and operations, are obvious candidates for inquiry. But so, too, are nations like Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Syria and Iran, whose sponsorship of terrorist organizations known to have collaborated with al Qaeda. And in Iran's case, its current support of known al Qaeda leaders merits investigating and publicizing. Finally, the role of Saudi Arabia in the rise of a global terrorist network deeply hostile to America must be a part of this commission's deliberations. The role of Saudi policy and Saudi money from both official and private sources, including members of the royal family, must be fully investigated and made public.

Until Saudi Arabia itself was attacked last week, the Saudi leadership and public had clearly failed to acknowledge and learn from the Saudi role in the terrorist attacks of September 2001. The United States and Saudi Arabia cannot enjoy a normal relationship, much less the relationship of allies, as long as Saudi leaders continue to deny and deceive us about Saudi culpability and the rise of extremist terrorism. The U.S. government's reluctance to address this issue directly must not extend to your work.

In retrospect, it's simply remarkable that the United States stood by over two decades, preoccupied by other dangers, challenges and opportunities, as a grave threat to our security formed, grew in strength, expanded in reach and conducted operations against American targets around the world and ultimately attacked our homeland.

The challenge and the privilege of this Commission is to explain to the American people how and why these developments occurred and what our government can do to provide the greatest degree of security to our people in the face of these threats, consistent with the rights and laws of a free people.

We will win the war al Qaeda and those whose support it started. The Commission's investigations and findings will help form our response and will contribute to our ultimate victory. I'm grateful for your service and look forward to your response to a historic mandate that I hope all elements of our government will actively support.

I thank you.

MR. KEAN: Thank you, Senator McCain. Senator Lieberman.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice Chairman, members of the commission. I give a special greeting to my former colleagues, Senator Cleland, Senator Gorton and Congressman Roemer.

It's an honor to be before you along with Congresswoman Pelosi and my dear friend and still straight-talking colleague, the senator from Arizona, here today.

It was in December of 2001 that John McCain and I first proposed legislation creating this commission. Our purpose was clear, and we believed non-controversial. The American people were entitled to a full and unflinching account of how September 11th happened so we could determine what went wrong and prevent it from ever happening again.

The American people deserve to know the full and objective truth as best it can be determined. They and we still have not received that, unfortunately. And until we get it, all the attempts to make America safer in this age of terrorism are bound to be incomplete.

Today, May 22nd, 2003, the mission of this Commission is clearly more vital than ever. Within recent days, 75 people have been killed and hundreds more wounded in two terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia and Morocco that appear to have been executed by al Qaeda. The remaining members of a 19-man al Qaeda cell based in Saudi Arabia, we are told, have fanned out to commit more atrocities.

And this morning we are greeted by the deadly taped voice of another al Qaeda leader, a voice that perversely invokes the name of God for the purpose of killing God's creations, innocent civilians. As Tom Friedman wrote a while ago in the New York Times, these terrorists hate us more than they love life.

The Department of Homeland Security has, in response, imposed a heightened Code Orange alert amid rumors of possible attacks on major American cities. And once again, surface-to-air missiles have been deployed in and around our nation's capital. The war on terrorism continues.

Our military victories in Afghanistan and Iraq have struck blows against global terrorism. I consider these to be victories in battles in the war, but the war clearly goes on. Neither Osama bin Laden nor Saddam Hussein have been brought to justice. Al Qaeda is still killing innocent civilians and still seeking weapons of mass destruction.

That is why our military action abroad must be complemented by an unrelenting and unprecedented commitment to strengthen our defenses here at home. And I say again that that begins with the search for truth that you are conducting as members of this commission.

The successful completion of your critical mission cannot occur without the full cooperation of the executive branch of our government. As Senator McCain has indicated, and I agree, in its initial unwillingness to provide funds that you needed to do your job, and in its failure to facilitate the release of the joint intelligence inquiry report to the public, the administration has not acted constructively.

The essential mission of this commission deserves and demands more than begrudging cooperation. You don't have much time. If you are constantly forced to fight for information, you'll never get to the heart of the problems that plagued and in many cases still plague our government's fight against terrorism.

I urge you to use every power you have been given by Congress to obtain the information you need to fulfill the mission the law gives you and to call on members of Congress and members of the public to assist you in that quest.

That's about the search for truth. Let me talk about the second part of the mission, Mr. Chairman, that you correctly identified, which is to help us by making recommendations about how we can make certain that nothing like September 11th ever happens again in the United States. And I regret to say that there is still an enormous amount to be done in that regard. I was pleased to play an active role in the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. I am confident that if properly led and supported it will help us protect the American people here at home.

But the resources necessary have not been given to this department yet. The potential for change and improvement is still there. Let me cite as examples the fire fighters, police officers and medical emergency professionals in communities across America who are the first to respond to a disaster, and the last to leave, and who can become also the first preventers, because they are out there in enormous numbers everywhere in America, still desperately need proper training, proper communications to allow them to talk to one another in a crisis so they can protect us, and they need personal reinforcements. Instead, many first responders -- more than half of the communities in America, from one statistic I have seen have been laying off first responders today, because the cities and towns are so fiscally strapped. That makes about as much sense as reducing America's troop strength in the middle of a conventional war. Yet, I regret to say that the administration and the majority here in Congress have not adequately funded first responders or the Department of Homeland Security. There is much more to be done.

We have made some strides in securing our air travel, that is true. But other forms of transportation remain inadequately protected, and require your consideration.

Our nation's seaports, I fear, remain an Achilles' heel in our domestic defenses. Too little cargo is being inspected, and too few containers are being tracked from their port of origin to their final destination. At the current rate of funding, it will take the Coast Guard 20 years to build the modern fleet it needs to fight terrorism now. And here again the president's budget under-supports basic physical security at ports for items like perimeter fencing, guards and monitors.

Our borders remain painfully porous and cry out for the Border Patrol to be beefed up. But I do want to say that to me perhaps the most significant gap remaining is the one that people can't see, and that is the gap in our intelligence community. There has been too much reluctance to challenge the status quo in the intelligence community. The best way to stop terrorism, all the experts agree, is to interrupt the plot before it's executed. And that can only come from great intelligence. Today, unfortunately, when it comes to understanding the scope and depth of the intelligence failures that led to September 11th, we simply don't have enough information.

Too many of the failures that we have already identified remain unchanged today, a full 20 months after the attacks. And I want to say bluntly it starts at the top. And today at the top of our intelligence and law enforcement communities there remains too much division, too many of the same bureaucratic barriers that I think contributed to the disaster of September 11th. And all of the federal agencies continue to keep state and local first responders and first preventers, as I call them, at arm's length, when it really is these front-line forces who have the vital knowledge to share, and most desperately need useful federal intelligence shared with them.

Mr. Chairman, the bill creating a new Department of Homeland Security established an all-source intelligence center, where all the dots of counterterrorism information were supposed to be for the first time connected. In the center was, according to the statute, to be placed within the new Department of Homeland Security, reporting directly to the new secretary, and therefore outside the counterproductive and destructive bureaucratic barriers and rivalries that unfortunately have characterized the intelligence and law enforcement communities.

But I regret to say that the administration has applied an interpretation to what I believe is the clear mandate of the law that produced a different result. It has created a weak intelligence analysis unit within the department, and a brand-new threat integration center under the command of the director of central intelligence. That may make the guardians of the status quo happy. But I fear it will not do what is necessary to prevent further terrorism from occurring.

Let me give you one final example of what remains to be done. A terrorism watch list is one of the most basic tools for keeping terrorists out of the United States in the first place, and for finding them once they are inside our borders. We know today of course that two of the hijackers should have been placed on the watch list as long as 20 months before September 11th. And the CIA has acknowledged a systemic failure and breakdown in this. Yet this glaring problem as far as I -- but not just I, the General Accounting Office has concluded, has not been fixed yet. CIA Director Tenet testified to Congress twice in June and October of last year that a national watch list center was being created that would correct the failures and lapses of the past. As we speak this morning, as best as I can determine, that has not been done yet, and that is unacceptable. And of course these watch lists, which should be made into a single unified watch list, cannot be hoarded by federal officials if they are going to be valuable, as valuable as they must be. Today state and local officials remain largely in the dark and out of the loop when it comes to these watch lists. So I plead with you and I encourage you and, Mr. Chairman, what you have stated as a goal of this Commission in its report, not only to tell us the truth about what happened on September 11th, but to help all of us to take actions that will prevent it from ever happening again.

These are difficult times for our great country. I personally find more insecurity among the American people about more things than I have found ever in my adult lifetime. These times demand that we look honestly at our failures, and correct those failures without hesitation. They demand that officials and employees of our government, who have been charged with critical national security responsibilities, be held personally accountable if they have failed or faltered in their duties. All that has become now the historic mission of the members of this commission. It is through the work of this commission that America can best provide our people with the security that is their basic right and our government's most basic responsibility.

And I would say finally, having seen some of the survivors and family members of those who were lost on September 11th, who I know you have been good and wise enough to talk to and work with -- so many words of condolence and sympathy have been expressed to them, which they deserve. Memorials will be built to their loved ones who were lost on September 11th. But I can't state strongly enough that I believe that the best memorial to those we lost on September 11th can and must come from the work that you do in searching for the truth and helping us make sure that those dead in fact did not die in vain.

I thank you for your service, and I pray that God will strengthen and guide you in the work that you do. As usual, Scripture provides the best counsel, which is that the truth once again will make us free -- in this case free from fear. Thank you very much.

MR. KEAN: Senator Lieberman, thank you very, very much. Do any members of the panels have -- Tim?

MR. ROEMER: Mr. Chairman, I just want to thank my colleagues, my former colleagues, Representative Pelosi, Senator McCain, Senator Lieberman, for their hard work in creating, along with the families, this commission, to do the hard work of trying to make sure we get the truth and the answers to try to prevent or mitigate the next attack. And we know al Qaeda is coming. I know the next panel, with former colleagues -- I see a couple of them here -- Senator Shelby and Jane Harman and others -- did the hard work of the Joint Inquiry to try to give us recommendations and put them hopefully into law that will help protect the country as well. And I would just say, Mr. Chairman, in thanking our colleagues, that 12 months from now, when we make recommendations -- whether they are comprehensive to intelligence or FAA, or Border Patrol, or foreign policy -- we very much look forward to working with you to hopefully implement successfully those recommendations, and we look forward to working with you very much. Thank you again for our very helpful testimony this morning.

MR. KEAN: Senator Cleland.

MR. CLELAND: Yes, sir. Thank you very much. It's great to see my two former colleagues with whom I was pleased to co-sponsor the legislation to create this commission to take a powerful, incisive look at what happened and why so we don't have to repeat these mistakes again. My father served at Pearl Harbor after the attack, so an attack on this nation has had a powerful impact upon my own family. It is now an opportunity for me to be of further service.

I will say that as recently as this morning's articles in the New York Times, my sense of security continues to be lessened. We are under an orange threat nationwide. We have pursued wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the real war continues. Senator McCain, one of the chilling thoughts that I came across when we were together in Vietnam was in terms of fighting guerrillas and suicide bombers and the like. Walter Lippmann said the battles we fight we win, but the battles we fight can't win the war. We have won some wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq. But those are battles, as Senator Lieberman says.

But it seems the real war is against a global network of terrorists, primarily led by al Qaeda in the Middle East. And what bothers me is that we still are grappling with the same problems we grappled with September 11th. For instance, the New York Times now reports today pre-war views of Iraq threat are under review by the CIA, raising the question as to whether or not we had, duh, adequate intelligence to go to war. We went to war. Now, did we have the adequate intelligence? Were we right? Where are the weapons of mass destruction?

Secondly, al Qaeda, duh, continues its own -- at its own pace: "New Tape Linked to Bin Laden Aide Urges More Attacks." This is today. This is 20 months after September the 11th. It does seem to me, and I'd like for both of you to comment, that this Commission better get on with its business that you articulated so forcefully in your legislation, and that the sooner the better we come to terms with connecting the dots, improving the intelligence capability of this country, so that when we go to war somewhere, we don't have to look back and say, "did we have the right intelligence? Did we not connect the dots? Where's the Pentagon? Where's the NSA? Where's the FBI? Where's the CIA?"

It always bothered when I was spending six years with both of you on the Senate Armed Services Committee that the intelligence community was referred to as the intelligence community. I never really understood who was in charge. Apparently now no one is in charge. It's a horse built by a committee winds up being a camel. We still have the camel out there and the various humps trying to talk to one another, trying to figure out who's right, who's wrong, were we right, were we wrong in going to war.

So this troubles me tremendously, and I would like for both of you to comment on the urgency of this panel to get on with this business and carry the American public along, so that we don't live constantly in fear. Senator McCain?

SEN. MCCAIN: It's hard for me to elaborate on what you just said. It's very articulate, and as you say, evidence grows daily that the threat is substantial, real and we still have not sufficient information, I think, to make the national security decisions -- and frankly the financial decisions. I don't mean to digress, but when we are looking at a 300 to 400 billion dollar deficit just this year, there will be enormous efforts at some point for fiscal restraint. And then it would be even more difficult to set priorities. And that's why I think we have to look to this Commission to give us those priorities. We are not going to have the money to address every single security threat to the United States of America. It is just not possible. And certainly even if it was possible we couldn't do it all at once. And that's why I emphasize that the importance of this committee, in not only giving us the information, but also helping us establish priorities that would guide the administration and Congress in our future actions to counter what I think we all agree is a long-term struggle. I thank you, Senator Cleland.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Mr. Chairman, very briefly, I thank Senator Cleland. I agree with everything that Senator McCain has said in response. I mean, you're in a very difficult and demanding position, because unlike most commissions of this kind which examine events that are in the past, you are examining an event that is in the past, but your work relates directly to our ability to successfully wage and win an ongoing war against terrorism, and to secure our people in the midst of that war. So you have a very difficult but critically important mission.

I said during my remarks -- I'll just say it again -- I do think that the intelligence committee, some of whose leaders you are going to hear soon, have done some very important work. I do think it's critically important that you continue that and be persistent, and just go where the search for truth takes you. Because everybody will tell you of course that in this, to use a homely phrase, in the war against terrorism the best defense is an offense, that we ought not to accept the inevitability of another September 11th. And by that I mean something as large, well planned that touched public and private entities so much before it was actually carried out. And the best way to do that, the offense I'm talking about, of course, is an intelligence network working on our behalf that is so aggressive and pervasive that to the extent humanly possible it sees the threats and stops them before they are executed.

MR. KEAN: Congressman Hamilton.

MR. HAMILTON: Mr. Chairman, I know you want to move on, and I know the two senators have much on their plate. I want to say three things. First of all, a word of very deep gratitude to the two of you and to Congresswoman Pelosi. We would not have this commission without you. Number two, we would not have the funding that we have without your support. And, number three, we would not have the access we have so far obtained to documents and people without your strong words of support and encouragement. We are going to need that as we proceed.

The second thing I want to say is that the Joint Inquiry did some very good work, and I think the members of the Senate and the House can be very proud of that work. We want to build on the work that they did. I notice two of their members are here now, maybe more, and we will be hearing from them very shortly. But I am very grateful for the work of the Joint Inquiry, and it will be extremely important to the work of this commission. And, finally, one of the tasks you gave us is to make recommendations with regard to congressional oversight of the intelligence community. I've worked on that for about 30 years without much success, and we are going to need some guidance here as to what we can do that will be constructive and helpful to improve the quality of this oversight.

But we will be coming back to you again and again in the weeks ahead, and we are most grateful to you.

MR. KEAN: Thank you very much, Senator McCain and Senator Lieberman.

MR. KEAN: Okay, if we could -- our second panel is here, and we're focusing now on congressional oversight of the intelligence community and congressional joint inquiries investigation into the intelligence community's performance prior to September 11th. The joint inquiry was obviously a logical place for us to start. The legislation under which the Commission operates specifically charges it with reviewing the process by which Congress oversees its intelligence agencies and allocates its resources. And actually from the founding days, I guess, of our republic, congressional oversight has been central to the effective functioning of our government. The subject has never been more important than it is in the aftermath of September 11th.

No less authority on government than professor and future president Woodrow Wilson wrote toward the end of the 19th century that Congress's vigilant oversight of administration was more important than any of its other roles, including the passing of legislation. And actually, our esteemed vice chairman, Lee Hamilton, said recently that Congress must do more than write the laws. We must make sure the administration is carrying out those laws the way Congress intended.

The Joint Inquiry spent considerable time and effort reviewing the intelligence community's performance concerning the September 11th attacks. We intend to build on that work, using its documented findings. We will also look at the Congress in the coming months, and we'll be exploring such issues as the overall effectiveness of congressional oversight, of intelligence, how effective is it, how might it be improved, and how can the Congress avoid micromanaging the intelligence agencies.

The current structure of intelligence oversight by two select committees with rotating membership -- and if we were starting again, would we really design it that way? Given that our nation's form of government is best served by congressional activity that takes place in public, how can Congress oversee the intelligence agencies while guarding our country's secrets? Finally, did Congress allocate sufficient funds for the intelligence community to really conduct a fight on terrorism? Our second panel will help guide us through all these things. It consists of current and former leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Commission on Intelligence.

With us today are Senators Richard Shelby of Alabama, Senator Bob Graham of Florida, Representative Porter Goss, also of Florida, and Representative Jane Harman of California. And we're going to begin with Senator Shelby.

SEN. RICHARD SHELBY (R-AL): Thank you, Governor Kean.

Governor Kean, Representative Hamilton, and distinguished commissioners, it's a pleasure to come before you this morning to discuss what our nation did to prepare itself prior to the September the 11th terrorist attacks, and how our nation can be better prepared for such threats in the future. I thank you for giving me the opportunity to say a few words specifically about the role of Congress prior to September the 11th. With your permission, I will give an abbreviated version of my statement, and ask that my full statement be made part of the record, Governor.

MR. KEAN: Granted. Thank you.

SEN. SHELBY: During our joint inquiry last year, defenders of the intelligence community's performance during the Clinton administration and prior to September the 11th, insinuated that it was really the fault of Congress that the intelligence community failed to detect and deter the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. One senior FBI agent, for instance, publicly complained about how little money his counterterrorism division had been given by Congress -- amounts far less than those that they had requested and felt was necessary.

Unfortunately, a surprising number of my colleagues in Congress seemed to give credence to the suggestion that September the 11th was in some way our fault. I have at times been a harsh and I believe a constructive critic of the intelligence community. I have never asserted, however, that the attacks of September the 11th were anyone's fault other than the murderous group of thugs that hijacked and crashed those planes into the symbols of American military and economic power. We should all keep that in mind as we search for the truth here.

The truth is that the same FBI agent that I alluded to admitted to us privately later the same day, after the cameras had been turned off, that for several years Congress had met or exceeded administration budget requests for counterterrorism. The FBI agent who said in public that we had deprived him of special agents to fight terrorism, conceded in private that Congress had actually helped his division tremendously. In fact, we had added -- yes, added -- counterterrorism agents beyond the administration's request in the years 1996, '97, '98, '99, 2001, and 2002. Similarly, though CIA counterterrorism officials publicly complained about tight budgets in our public hearings, their agency's own figures showed that Congress had met or exceeded budget requests for the Counter-Terrorism Center, or CTC, in '94, '95, '96, '97, '98, '99, 2000, 2001, and 2002. In fact, in 2001, the CIA, prior to September the 11th, was reporting that it would not spend all of its counterterrorism funds. Although Congress fully funded the administration's request for the CTC that year, the CIA was not going to spend tens of millions of dollars in Director Tenet's declared war on al Qaeda. The picture changed dramatically after September the 11th.

I don't mean to say here today that this nation's counterterrorism efforts and the U.S. intelligence community as a whole necessarily got all the money they needed before September the 11th, 2001. In many areas, they did not. There are, however, many bureaucratic steps between the development of a counterterrorism budget within the FBI, or a CTC budget within the CIA, and a final administration budget request from the Office of Management and Budget. What goes in does not often look like anything that comes out. I suspect that the intelligence agencies probably did request far more funding than they ended up getting -- agencies always do. My point is that it is not accurate to lay the community's budget problems at the feet of Congress, particularly because we have emphasized counterterrorism and counter-intelligence as fundamental policy priorities for years.

During my tenure as chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee on Intelligence, I explicitly made counterterrorism and counter-intelligence two of the five highest priorities of the intelligence committee. I and my colleagues worked long and hard to ensure that these programs got ever-expanding levels of support during the late '90s, support which was critical in order to help pull the community out of its post-Cold War funding slump.

While I was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, we took aggressive steps to address what were becoming very clear indications of fundamental weaknesses in our ability to attack the terrorist target. Many of the conclusions that were reached by the joint inquiry were conclusions that had already been reached by the intelligence oversight committees prior to September the 11th. I encourage you, this commission, to examine closely the unclassified and classified authorization bills of both the House and Senate committees in the years leading up to September the 11th that I've enumerated.

For example, terrorism and our ability to combat it was listed as one of the Senate Intelligence Committee's highest priorities in every one of our bills, at least since 1996. In 1998, the committee revealed that the FBI was failing to address significant technological challenges that were degrading its ability to track the terrorist target. We highlighted serious FBI-wide deficiencies in information technology, modernization, and the absence of a plan even to address it. We provided significant additional funding to augment the Bureau's ability to analyze terrorism intelligence and train its agents. We warned of a critical shortage of language skills, including Arabic and Farsi, and directed the FBI to review its language recruiting efforts in the bill. The committee also worked consistently to remove restrictions that unnecessarily hindered our ability to collect terrorism information. Often, these efforts were met with resistance from the Director of Central Intelligence himself.

Prior to September the 11th, we amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act on three separate occasions to grant new authorities to the attorney general and the FBI to collect terrorism-related intelligence. Working with our colleagues on the Judiciary Committee, we detailed serious problems in information sharing between intelligence agencies and law enforcement organizations, including our inability to track foreign students after they entered the United States. In 1997, the committee registered its concern that no comprehensive intelligence community estimate existed on present and emerging terrorist threats, or other non-traditional attacks on the United States, using weapons of mass destruction. That was the year 1997. We directed the Director of Central Intelligence to produce such an estimate.

Finally, the committee has worked since 1990 to effect structural and organizational changes within the community. For example, the final report of the Joint Inquiry recommends the creation of a single authority that would be accountable for the success or failure of the intelligence community, and that would have the statutory and budgetary authority to lead the community. In 1996, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted out the Intelligence Activities Renewal and Reform Act of '96, which gave the DCI these important statutory and budgetary authorities. Unfortunately, it became a bridge too far and was never passed into law.

In that same year, we created three Senate-confirmable positions within the community -- management staff to address community-wide problems with coordination on collection, analysis and production issues. The intent was to give the DCI additional high-visibility managers to help him manage the intelligence community. After the community's failure to predict the Indian nuclear tests, the need for these positions and the coordination they would foster was apparent. To this day, the Director of Central Intelligence refuses to comply with the law and submit names for consideration by the United States Senate.

These are just a few examples of congressional actions, and I encourage the Commission to review the entire record, classified and unclassified. I believe you will find it to be quite extensive.

I've mentioned our efforts to increase funding for counterterrorism. As I said, this was a consistent theme, at least while I was chairman, and it continued under Chairman Graham. I wish to emphasize, however, that the performance of the intelligence community is only partly a story of resources. Money helps purchase technical systems and recruit large numbers of case officers, but you can't buy energy, enthusiasm, pride, professionalism, and aggressiveness. You can't purchase a commitment to share information with other agencies and pull together as a team in order to protect Americans from threats to their lives and well-being. You can't authorize and appropriate proper priorities, sensible management, and a vision of how to adapt complicated organizations to rapidly changing threats. You can't simply fund an appreciation of the information technology and the absolute necessity to integrate it into what is essentially an information enterprise.

All these things have to be grown and nourished over time by wise and steady leadership. Congress can encourage these things, and they should. And we have certainly tried, but the legislature merely conducts oversight. We do not and should not, I believe, direct the operational activities of our intelligence agencies. We do not decide why someone gets promoted or punished. We can legislate, but there is little we can do to compel compliance.

As you examine the record, you will discover numerous examples of complete disregard for congressional direction, not to mention the law. While we do have the power of the purse, it often presents a Hobbsian choice. Does one cut funds to compel compliance, when the cut will probably degrade the very capability one is seeking to foster, to bring about? More often than not, the answer is no. Each branch of government serves a very distinct, necessary function. While Congress oversees the intelligence activities of the U.S., ultimately, the intelligence community is led and run by the Director of Central Intelligence, who deserves most of the credit or blame for the decisions he makes and the results that he produces.

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks is a great responsibility and a daunting job to do. It is your responsibility to survey the whole range of government activity relevant to how well-prepared our nation was or was not for the modern terrorist threat.

I have spoken today principally about intelligence matters, for they have been an abiding interest and a great concern of mine since I first became chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in '97. The U.S. government's management of homeland security, however, implicates a broad array of federal activity.

Consequently, you may need to come to grips with bigger issues of congressional organization and committee jurisdiction. The House and the Senate have adopted very different organizational approaches to the challenges of homeland security. My successor as the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Chairman Pat Roberts, has spoken repeatedly about the management and policy coordination problems we face in the Senate because of our many overlapping committee jurisdictions related to homeland security issues.

These are matters which the Commission may end up having to speak on as well. In the months ahead I hope you will be able to build constructively on what we accomplished last year during our Joint Inquiry. Some of us have already issued detailed public analyses of the intelligence failures prior to September the 11th, and I imagine you probably now also have access to the classified final report of our two committees and to the substantial investigative record that we compiled.

I believe our work can provide you with important insights into the problems that we identified and into ways to ensure that Americans are better protected in the future.

I thank you for inviting me here today. I wish you all the success in your inquiry. Thank you.

MR. KEAN: Thank you, Senator Shelby. Senator Graham.

SEN. GRAHAM: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I, too, would like to submit a full statement for the record and try to summarize it this morning. And I appreciate the opportunity that you have afforded us to come before this very important commission.

I want to begin by commending each of you for having accepted this responsibility. I know something of the commitment that this is going to require in order to achieve the result of giving to the American people a full accounting of what happened prior to September 11th, your recommendations of what should happen now in order to reduce the possibility of a repetition of September 11th.

With other members of this panel, I supported the creation of this commission because I thought the American people deserved answers to those two questions. I also recognize that our congressional joint inquiry focused on those matters that were within the jurisdiction of the Intelligence Committee. I recognize that there are much broader arrays of federal agencies which could have played a role in this issue, everything from aviation security to the issuance of visas at overseas U.S. State Department embassies or consulates.

But I do believe the Joint Inquiry's final report gives you a solid foundation upon which to begin your investigation. I'm extremely proud of the hard work that was done by 37 members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. They served on the joint inquiry with great distinction, including your member, former Congressman Tim Roemer.

I'm also proud of the dedication and skill of the special team of investigators hired to conduct the joint inquiry, led by the very capable Ms. Eleanor Hill, who is with us today. The staff reviewed nearly half a million pages of documents and interviewed 300 people. The committees held 22 hearings, nine open to the public, 13 closed. Our final report is more than 800 pages.

The report was adopted by each committee on December 10th of 2002 and filed with the House and Senate on December 20th. I'm sad to report that the final report, 153 days after it was filed, remains classified. All of us are extremely frustrated that the declassification process is taking so long.

We are hopeful that we'll be able to soon provide the American people with all of the report but those portions that are determined to address genuine national security concerns. In the meantime, we have released summary findings and recommendations, a number of which this panel will speak to.

Several of the recommendations focused on activities within the intelligence community that were ongoing at the time we completed our report. One of the tasks of your commission is keeping track of those recommendations so that the American people are assured that our government is following through on necessary reforms. Let me mention three of the recommendations which I would particularly call your attention to for purposes of ongoing oversight. First is recommendation number six, and I quote in part. Quote: "Given the FBI's record of repeated shortcomings within its current responsibility for domestic intelligence in the face of grave and immediate threats to our homeland, the FBI should strengthen and improve its domestic capability as fully and expeditiously as possible."

We then offered 10 specific steps, including, "clearly designating national counterterrorism priorities and enforcing field office adherence to those priorities."

Mr. Chairman, I wish that I could tell you that the FBI has adopted our recommendations and moving towards their implementation. Congressman Goss and I wrote to Director Robert Mueller on January the 29th, 2003, and again on April 2nd, 2003, and asked him to tell us what steps the Bureau has taken and whether legislation is required to fully implement our recommendations. We are still waiting for a response.

The second recommendation is number 15. Again, I quote in part: "The President should review and consider amendments to executive orders, policies and procedures that govern the national security classification of intelligence information in order to expand access to relevant information for federal agencies outside the intelligence community for state and local authorities which are critical to the fight against terrorism and for the American people. Congress should also review the statutes, policies and procedures that govern the national security classification of intelligence information and its protection from unauthorized disclosure."

The report from the director of national intelligence should include proposals to protect against the use of the classification process as a shield to protect agency self-interest.

The third recommendation which I would call to your attention is number 19, which offers fertile ground for additional investigation. It reads as follows: "The intelligence community, and particularly the FBI and the CIA, should aggressively address the possibility that foreign governments are providing support to or are involved in terrorist activities targeting the United States and United States interests. State-sponsored terrorism substantially increases the likelihood of successful and more lethal attacks within the United States. This issue must be addressed from a national standpoint and should not be limited in focus to the geographical and factual boundaries of the individual case."

Continuing the quotation: "The FBI and CIA should aggressively and thoroughly pursue related matters developed through this joint inquiry that have been referred to them for further investigation by these committees." Mr. Chairman, because of classification, I cannot discuss in this public forum the specifics of the Joint Inquiry's findings in this area, even to identify any individual foreign governments. However, there have been several developments since September the 11th and even since the completion of the Joint Inquiry's report on December 10th, 2002, which have been publicly reported and which cause me grave concern.

Clearly al Qaeda is reconstituting itself, as we have seen by the bombings in places like Yemen, Indonesia, and most recently Saudi Arabia and possibly also Chechnya and Morocco. At the same time, it is disturbingly apparent that some foreign governments are supporting or at the very least providing sanctuary for terrorist networks.

Within the last 30 days, Secretary Powell and Secretary Rumsfeld have met with the highest officials of Syria. They have brought, in the firmest manner, to the attention of the Syrians our knowledge, among others, to the sanctuary that has been provided for Hezbollah by that country. And we have called upon Syria to accept the responsibility for retreating from this position of sanctuary.

As another example, I would like to submit for the record three recent news articles that raise questions about the government of Saudi Arabia and its apparent tolerance of individuals and groups with terrorist ties. First is a report from the Washington Post of May 19th that munitions from the Saudi National Guard may have been used by suspected al Qaeda operatives in last week's bombings that killed nearly three dozen innocent people in Riyadh, including nine Americans.

Second is a May 10th story from the Los Angeles Times that reports a Saudi consular official was denied re-entry into the United States because of his suspected links to terrorists. It's important to note that this same individual had been employed at the Saudi consulate in California from 1996 until early in the year 2003.

The third is an article from the May 5th issue of Newsweek which says that a top-ranking Saudi diplomat in Berlin is suspected of providing embassy funds to followers of Osama bin Laden. I want to emphasize again that these articles deal with events subsequent to the filing of the Joint Inquiry's final report, but they raise issues that are especially appropriate for this commission's review.

This commission, in my judgment, should vigorously pursue the links between foreign governments and the September the 11th hijackers. I am troubled by the lack of attention that to date has been given to this critical aspect of the 9/11 investigation.

Ignoring facts simply because they make some people uncomfortable or because they might stand in the way of short-term policy goals will prevent Americans from learning the full truth about 9/11 and thereby mitigating the possibility that future terrorist attacks can be avoided. Only a full and honest accounting will help us provide a safer and more secure world for our children and grandchildren. Mr. Chairman, you asked us also to comment on recommendations for improving congressional oversight of the intelligence committee. I would make five recommendations.

One, membership on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees should be made permanent. There is, of course, an argument that members of the Oversight Committee could become captives of the Intelligence Committee. It was on this rationale that the term limits were imposed on members of the Intelligence Committee.

But the counterargument, which I find persuasive, is that it takes so much time to understand the complexities of today's sophisticated programs and the increasing number of countries and organizations to which we are directing our intelligence capability that members need the expertise of time, of service, in order to thoroughly monitor our intelligence agencies' performance.

Two, create within the congressional appropriations process a separate subcommittee for intelligence, much as has been done for the new Department of Homeland Security. If that means declassifying the top line of the intelligence budget, so be it. Director George Tenet has told me that he would support this approach.

Three, establish a closer linkage between the financial reporting of the intelligence agencies and the Oversight Committee. During my tenure on the committee, I found it very frustrating to be repeatedly told that the agencies were virtually non-auditable because of the state of their basic accounting systems.

Four, adopt what has come to be known as the Eleanor Hill approach to oversight, which means that staff should be given more authority to conduct detailed reviews under the direction of the chairman and vice chairman of the committee. Then, at the start of a hearing, the staff would present its findings to help frame the issues and outline the points of contention. Witnesses would then speak to those findings. I found this to be a highly efficient, productive use of the committee's time.

Five, and finally, make it a practice to seek testimony from witnesses outside the administration, experts from the academic community, think tanks and other sources whose views can provide an alternative to the official administration perspective.

Mr. Chairman, let me conclude again by thanking you and each member of this commission for your service and your dedication. It is fair to say that each of you has enlisted as a soldier in the war against terrorism. I will be ready to answer any questions that you might have today and assist you in any way that might be helpful in the weeks and months to come. Thank you.

MR. KEAN: Thank you, Congressman. Congressman Goss.

REP. GOSS: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Vice Chairman, distinguished members of the commission. We are advised that we are going to have House votes at approximately 11:00 to 11:30, so if we get interrupted, I hope we have your understanding.

Much of my prepared statement echoes and underscores remarks that have been made by our distinguished leaders on the Senate side in our joint investigation, Senator Graham and Senator Shelby. Consequently, I would ask that you accept my prepared remarks, hopefully review them. We spent some time on them. And I would like to try and offer instead some helpful observations and views and talk a little bit more about the recommendations that Senator Graham has just discussed.

First of all, I do feel that the national security requirement that we have requires that much of intelligence work that is done by the Intelligence Committees, which we represent, has to be done behind closed doors. As a result, our mission is probably not very well understood by many Americans, and while we have tried to explain it, it is not an easy sell.

While we serve as the principal advocates for strengthening the nation's intelligence capabilities -- this is where you get your authorization and which leads to your money for intelligence -- we must also provide meaningful oversight of the intelligence community. Obviously they have to play by the rules and stay in bounds. That appears to be a tension. Actually, it's a healthy competition, I think. There are some 15 agencies, as you know, actually in the intelligence community. That means we are dealing with some half dozen Cabinet-level secretaries and very high-level directors of individual agencies. It is a very big chore, and we are instructed to look over, without overlooking, all the activities of those people and their departments as they apply to intelligence. We in fact have taken on the position of the 1-800 number that you call for those who are seeking additional intelligence resources, and also for those who want to report alleged abuses within the intelligence community system. I am happy to report we get more 1-800 calls asking for money than we do reporting abuses.

The second thing I'd like to say is that we have tried to be as public as possible in going about our oversight work. It's hard, and we certainly tried to be as public as possible in our joint inquiry. As has been said, stated, I think nine of our 22 meetings were open meetings, and we tried to include the public in a meaningful way and get public input.

We have problems, of course. We are charged with the responsibility of not revealing sources and methods, and we need them more intensely now than we perhaps at any time in recent past in terms of our national security needs. We have a requirement not to contaminate any ongoing investigations or prosecutions by law enforcement people, whether state, federal or local. But we have to handle information very closely on that. We have arrangements with other foreign governments on sensitive matters - - exchange of information that we have to be careful that something that may not seem quite so sensitive to us is in fact very delicate in their country. All of those kinds of considerations create a legitimacy to actually having some classified information. But, equally, there cannot be abuse of classification because there is some legitimacy for classification. And I think that is an area that has recently come into some focus.

I would like to take a brief snapshot of what the House oversight committee has focused on in the past few months, and tell you the classification process has become such a chore, and appears to me to be so dysfunctional that we are taking that on as a main piece of business for our oversight committee to deal with. Senator Moynihan led the way with some changes in the declassification program. I was pleased to be associated with him with that. That was one of his last pieces of legislation. But it didn't go anywhere far enough, and it pointed out a problem that we have -- not only not enough capability to declassify when we should; we overclassify very badly. There's a lot of gratuitous classification going on, and there are a variety of reasons for them. They are not all sinister by any means.

We have discovered in trying to deal with getting our report out, which we are all anxious to do, because we are all very proud of our report, what the process is. And basically you have to understand that the first question you ask is, is this material classified? And then you get to the second question -- is, Should this material be classified? And then the third question is, How can we change it if we think it should be out there? And the processes of changing it are very difficult, and it depends on who agrees whether it should be declassified or not.

While this is easy to say in a few sentences, it is very hard to explain when you get into the details. It is a sufficient problem that we will be taking it up.

The second area I wanted to bring up was the type of thing that we are doing which I hope will be instructive and helpful for you happens to be, serendipitously I presume, reported by James Risen in the New York Times. It's amazing how often that happens that something we are talking about in committee serendipitously shows up on the front page of the New York Times. This is not a classified matter, however. We believe that good decisions were made on the best possible information coming from the intelligence community about value-added analysis on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a very important point obviously. I think the time has come to find out whether or not, as we discover more and more about what actually happened in Iraq, as the doors are opening and we are finding documents to exploit and people to talk to, how good were those judgments, how good was the value added, how well does our analytical community perform, and what problems are there?

So I would say that we are proceeding in our committees to do the work that the American people are asking us to do on timely matters. But it is a whole lot more complicated in trying to do our job than, “Where is UBL, why haven't we caught him? Where is Saddam? Why haven't we caught him? Where are these weapons of mass destruction?” And the way I characterize it is the fog of war is very hard to comprehend, even with CNN there. The fog of peace is much harder to comprehend, because there is so much going on everywhere, and we are not sure which may be the most important thing to focus on.

I want to emphasize that there is a problem, and I hope you will address it. The program we oversee is called the national foreign intelligence program. Let me say that again: It is the national foreign intelligence program. The reason I say that, back in 1947, when we decided to have oversight, and formalize this arrangement a little bit, have the National Security Act, the leaders in the wise salons of that day did in fact contemplate the question of domestic intelligence, and they specifically rejected it. It is the foreign intelligence program. Spying is not permitted by Americans on America in the United States of America, or on Americans overseas by American organizations. That's how it is. There have been problems over the years. Our society has evolved. We've had events take place. Matters have come to the attention of Congress. We had the Church Commission, the Pike Commission, and then we've had other actions as well many of you are familiar with.

The long and the short of it is being reinforced time and time again that Americans do not spy on Americans. This leaves us in today's world without much of a domestic intelligence agency. Now, that is a very good thing from the perspective of our civil liberties. Whether it is a very good thing from the perspective of our national security is a question that I hope you are seriously going to address.

The next thing I wanted to point out, as we went through our joint inquiry I find that this was a much more labor-intensive task than I could ever have imagined. And to have the services of Eleanor Hill and Rick Siccagranna (ph) and the others, and Brett Schneider, who started off assembling the staff. These are people who did brilliant work for us. They had a couple of dozen people who labored very, very long hours with difficult matters -- traveled all kinds of places. And even so we only touched a small bit. A half a million pages of documents is not a small bit, but in the sum of the things in the world, it actually is. And talking to five or six hundred people is helpful, but it's not all the people you need to talk to.

I would suggest that you are going to need to understand how labor intensive this in your work, and I offer that as a constructive suggestion.

With regard to protection of liberties, something has happened recently I hope you will also opine on, and that is we have created the TTIC, Terrorist Threat Integration Center of information. Now this is a wonderful thing. I think I understand how it's supposed to work, and we are dealing with terrorists on a priority basis. But understand here by putting TTIC under the CIA we are talking about the integration and analysis of value-added, hopefully, intelligence on combining foreign and domestic information under an agency that is chartered to work in a national foreign intelligence program. It's an interesting conundrum for us. Does it really matter? No. What matters is that we protect ourselves. But we are slipping over that line here in some people's eyes. The TTIC really shouldn't be in CIA. It really ought to be in the FBI or a separate agency or have different accountability. Those are the kinds of management questions we are now dealing with as a we deal with the capabilities to deal with the threats as they exist today, matched against the vulnerabilities which the Department of Homeland Security is very wisely pointing out to us are the highest vulnerabilities that we must protect against.

In the areas of what might be considered recommendations, first of all I hope you will take a look at our work. I know that access is difficult. We have made the access available. I apologize for the inconvenience of having to come to the Ford Annex. I have spent far too many hours in the Ford Annex of an otherwise useful life. It's really somewhat unpleasant there. Think of the poor staff who have labored there. We only ask you there to come for a short time to read the report, and soon you will have your own copy. I hope that will be within the next month.

Secondly, with regard to areas to go, I very much endorse Senator Graham's views that congressional oversight is an area that screams for your attention. Obviously we could not do all we should have done on congressional oversight. I think there's great questions. I think changes in the length of time and how we deal with this in the House are very important matters for you to take up, and I think you are perfectly positioned to do that, and I would be very happy to assist in any way I could on that.

The other area that I think is very important is to understand that our report really stopped doing active investigation at the end of last year. Time has passed, many things have happened, and we don't pretend to be able to connect those things in a coherent way. That really is for you.

And the third area that I would hope is that you would look is following up what I will call gaps. It's not just the update of what we didn't get. It's the things that weren't in our portfolio of intelligence, because there's a whole bunch of regulatory agencies there, a whole bunch of people charged with responsibility to deal with quality of life and safety matters for the American public on the homeland that we didn't touch, and that do need to be touched. And so I certainly hope that you would go there.

I think that completes the main points I wanted to say. I very much look forward to the work of the commission. I want to be as helpful as I can, and our committee is going to continue to be functional and operational, and I suspect we will be talking to each other regularly, and I hope that indeed is the case. I thank you.

MR. KEAN: Thank you, Congressman Goss. Congresswoman Harman?

REP. HARMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have votes shortly, and I am determined to stop speaking before the green light changes to yellow, so I will be brief. But I do want to confess great admiration and affection for my former colleagues on your panel, Lee Hamilton and Tim Roemer. In fact, I believe I played somewhat of a godmother role in the formation of this commission. I remember a one a.m. conversation with Tim on the House floor about whether to support it in its revised form in the House. I am glad we did, and I am glad he's there. I also have many other good friends on your panel.

The witnesses who have testified before you, as you well know, are enormously qualified to be here, and they are all good colleagues. And on a bipartisan basis, all of us are very interested in helping you succeed.

And, finally, I just want to say something about the families in the audience. I've seen their faces many times when I sat where you sat as part of the public part of the joint inquiry. They are here again -- incredible courage, incredible determination. I think if those faces had not been there, I am not sure we would have had the commission. So I want to add to what others have said, my enormous admiration for them.

And, last, Eleanor Hill -- they don't make them like that very often, and we were blessed in the Joint Inquiry to have here, and she's actually still there.

Three points -- briefly -- that I would like to make, and my completed, my formal statement is part of your record. Number one, don't reinvent the wheel. Number two, focus on where you can add value. And, number three, be unflinching. Let's talk about the wheel. This is the wheel. Here it is. I thought you should all see it. You probably have this on the library shelves. This is the Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security, brilliantly led by somebody named Saxby Chambliss and Jane Harman. We wrote a report to the speaker of the House of Representatives and the minority leader in July of 2002 -- lots of recommendations about the performance of NSA, CIA and FBI prior to 9/11.

Here's another one. This is the Bremer Commission. Bremer may not have been known to the world before last week, but he is now the civil administrator in Iraq. Again, there was a commission, 10 members. One of them was named Harman -- lots of recommendations, m any of which have never been implemented, but they are good recommendations and worthy of consideration.

This is Hart-Rudman. We all know who Hart and Rudman are. Lots of little volumes: New world coming, American security in the 21st century, seeking a national strategy, so forth -- supporting stuff -- road map -- good word -- for national security -- two volumes of that.

This is the Gilmore Commission, former Governor Gilmore of Virginia -- lots of the same folks served on all these commissions. These are only the first four reports. A lot of trees died to prepare this material, and a lot of it is gathering dust. Lots of recommendations that have not yet been implemented.

Council on Foreign Relations, which is still at it, now has a new committee on homeland security, which I think is a good thing, led by somebody named Rudman. And these were earlier reports -- Hart and Rudman, "America Still Unprepared, Still in Danger."

And then we have the National Academy of Science. We have here the Heritage Foundation. This is CSIS -- a huge amount of work that's excellent that has been very helpful. And then we have the Kennedy School at Harvard, "State and Local Response to Terrorism." The Markle Foundation’s brilliant work on technology and terrorism. And I can't even read this -- Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, and so forth.

And then we have the phantom report -- it isn't here yet -- it's called the Joint Inquiry, but it will be soon to arrive in June, we all hope, and on that point I am absolutely promised that there will be an all-hands meeting at the end of this month, which will meet all weekend if necessary, where those who can make the decisions about what's in and what's out of that report will be in the room, and hopefully then all of us will be relieved to put out there what was and is a very good work product.

So, please don't reinvent the wheel. Read this good stuff. Help us make certain that the recommendations of value, which is most of them, become law, become regulation, become practice in our intelligence community. All around me have spoken to a lot of the good recommendations. They should not be gathering dust. They should be helping us be safer. That's my first point.

Second point: Focus on where you can add value. Most of these reports -- not all of them -- focused on three of our intelligence agencies -- two to three, the CIA, FBI and NSA. You have a broader mandate, you know this. You can look at a lot of the other things that went wrong that should be fixed. The FAA comes to mind, the watch list problem comes to mind, the vulnerability, continuing vulnerability of aircraft comes to mind. Every time I go to a hearing everyone is worried about shoulderfired missiles -- what do we do about that? We certainly had a near-death experience with one airplane headed out of Mombassa, Kenya. This is the kind of thing that perhaps you should think about -- what can we do to increase aviation security? What can we do to increase port security? There are lots of agencies that have to do with that. Many of them have moved on over to the Homeland Security Department. But, nonetheless, as a representative of the communities around the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, the largest container ports on the planet, you have lots of work that you could usefully do.

Third subject is the evolution of the Department of Homeland Security. You've heard that we all tried to design a bill that would not just move the deck chairs around, but create one deck. We still have a lot of work to do to create one deck. There is not yet, so far as I can tell, a vulnerability assessment, one national, integrated vulnerability assessment. Money is not infinite -- until we have that vulnerability assessment we won't be putting our resources behind our most vulnerable targets, and that's something that I don't think should be a public document, because we don't need to tell the terrorists where we are most vulnerable. But, nonetheless, it's something that needs to get done. So that's where I think you can add value.

Final point: Be unflinching. Seek the truth. But, remember, at least this is my version of this -- the point of looking backward is to look forward. We can't fix it going backwards. We can fix it going forwards. Don't get stuck backwards. The best way to honor these families and those they lost is to prevent this from happening again. That's where you have to be going. How do we prevent the next one? We’ve done a pretty good job over 20 months -- lots of gaps, but we haven't had a major terrorist attack in the United States of America in the last 20 months. It could happen in an hour -- might happen in an hour. But if you do your work well, the changes of it happening in an hour will be less.

And finally, as you are unflinching, be sure you get the information you need from the Administration. Also be sure -- and I want to second something Senator Graham said -- that you fairly and evenhandedly assess the role of foreign governments currently and in the future in fostering spreading terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. That's a place we didn't get to fully, and it's place that I think needs more attention.

Thank you very much.

MR. KEAN: Thank you, Congresswoman Harman. Thank you all very much for taking the time to be with us today. And could I ask Senator Gorton?

MR. GORTON: If I found one common theme through the testimony of all four of you, and reduced it to one word, it would be "frustration." I served for a little bit more than two years on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and quit out of frustration, thinking I wasn't learning very much, and that I was having almost no effect on how the agencies acted. And so, recognizing the short time period you have, I am going to fold three separate questions into one, and ask for the comments of each of you on it.

Take first the period between January 2001 and September 11th, 2001, when the three of you at one time or another were chairmen of the Intelligence Committees -- just that period of approximately eight months -- were there any changes in the policies, priorities, or practices of our intelligence agencies as a result of congressional oversight, as a result of the suggestions that you all made? Now, if there were, some of them may be classified, but you could at least tell us whether any substantial changes were made as a result of your work, or were you totally frustrated during that period of time.

The second question is very similar. From September 11th, 2001 to December of 2002, were there any such changes? Now, obviously, Congress as a whole in that period of time passed the Patriot Act and created the Homeland Security Department. I'm not counting those. I'm just saying, were there any significant changes in the policies and priorities or practices of our intelligence agencies as a result of what you all did during that period of time?

And third, from December of last year until May, Congressman Goss has given us a, I think, a magnificent outline of what he can say about your joint committee report, but I don't see, Congressman, in your written statement, the slightest indication that any of those recommendations have been acted on in that time, or any of the others. And so the final question is, has the final report of the joint committee resulted in any significant changes in policies, priorities or practices of our intelligence community?

MR. KEAN: Who wants to take that one? Senator Shelby.

SEN. SHELBY: First of all, January 1 to 9/11, that was your first thing -- were there any real changes that we recommended or tried to mandate -- I'm sure there were some, but they were probably --

MR. GORTON: I know that you recommended, but they probably --

SEN. SHELBY: -- but they were probably not earthshaking changes at all. In dealing with the NSA, Congressman Goss, Senator Graham, Congresswoman Harman, all of us, we tried to -- hard, and I think NSA was moving in the right direction, is still moving in the right direction to modernize. And this was stuff coming from us. A lot of recommendations came from our joint -- our TAG team, Technical Advisory Group recommendations, and then the reality of NSA going down, you know, and just didn't operate for some hours, two days -- sure, there were some -- there was some heeding of some of our recommendations there.

As far as Langley is concerned, the first part, I know in the Senate, Senator Graham and I worked a long time, pushed a lot of emphasis on recruiting some of the best and brightest with different language skills -- I alluded to it earlier, Arabic, Farsi, you name it. Maybe just a little change, but no wholesale changes. Since September the 11th on, a lot of changes. One we had recommended before to take the wraps off the CIA that John Deutch had put on and had been continued under Director Tenet as to who the agents could recruit, their assets. You are very familiar with all this. The president was involved in that, and I think those were changes probably pushed by the White House, but also pushed by a lot of us in the Congress.

You also mentioned statutory changes to FISA and different things and how they operate, but I don't think their wholesale changes have been made. I think it's incremental, evolutionary, but some progress, yes, considering everything. I'm going to save some time for some others.

MR. HARMAN: Congresswoman Harman.

REP. HARMAN: I'm sorry, Senator, that you left the Intelligence Committees. I think they're fabulous places to be. It took me four years to get on the House Intelligence Committee, and I am highly honored to be the ranking Democrat on the full committee now.

I think there has been progress. Obviously, there needs to be more. Let me just tick off a few things. One is near to, I think, Tim Roemer's heart, the hiring of linguists. We found that we had basically zero language skills in the areas where we needed them, and the FBI, the CIA, and the NNSA have done a major job of recruiting the languages needed and training the linguists.

Information sharing -- I think we do pretty well horizontally across the federal government now. We don't do well vertically with first responders. There's a requirement in the intelligence authorization bill from last year that a new system be developed. It isn't developed yet. What we have through the NLETS and other forms of communication that the FBI uses is much better than what we did have, but we still need to go to tear sheets or some way to get declassified information in the hands of those who need it quickly.

Intelligence fusion -- Congressman Goss talked about the TTIC. I think that function is critically important. It's one we all recommended in all these reports, and we're starting to do that.

The Homeland Security Department needs to develop one deck but it is, again, a step in the right direction. And finally, on NSA -- well, both NSA and the FBI -- their technology is rapidly improving in both cases. The FBI had to transit from the 16th century to the 21st century -- I mean, it was using abacuses and ancient parchment. I think Bob Mueller would agree with this. And now it has good, possibly excellent technology systems that can do data-mining and state-of-the-art intelligence gathering. The NSA had a lot of good technology but didn't use it well. And its new phrase, that I think is very appealing, is that it has changed from gatherer to a hunter, and it goes after clues that it needs to find. It couldn't possibly sift through all the stuff it has in real time.

So, I would just put all those things out there as evidence of real progress, and I wish you had stayed on the Intelligence Committee -- you would have loved it.

MR. KEAN: Senator, I'll --

SEN. GRAHAM: Could I just add a few words to --

MR. KEAN: Yes, of course, Senator Graham.

SEN. GRAHAM: -- to Senator Gorton's question. I would say that from January of '01 to September the 11th there was a considerable amount, primarily from the Senate side during the tenure of Senator Shelby, on reform. And those reforms had one basic starting point. We have had an intelligence system which basically started in 1947, which was totally focused on the Soviet Union. And as a result of that, we had developed certain technology, certain cultural orientations. What concerned me was that the Soviet Union had become history about 10 years earlier, and yet our intelligence agencies had not yet responded to that. And I think that is a very central question, which I hope you will explore, and that is why was there such reluctance to change during the first decade after the fall of the Soviet Union.

We tried to emphasize, under Senator Shelby's leadership, some of the things that we thought were critical for change. The senator talked about increasing the linguistic capability because now we weren't just interested in listening to Russian, we also had 20 or 30 other often arcane languages that we needed to be able to understand in real time.

There were other changes. The architecture of our satellite systems were based on putting big machines over big long-time projects, primarily things like the Soviet submarine capabilities. Now all of a sudden we needed to cover a dozen different projects. And one of the unfortunate things that happened is, for instance, we had to move coverage from India and Pakistan back to Bosnia when that war broke out. So, we were urging a new approach to satellite architecture that would be less expensive, smaller and more mobile in order to respond to the conditions that we were in.

January of 2001 to January of 2002 I think is an interesting period for the policy changes that occurred. I met in February of 2002 with the people at Central Command in Tampa, Florida, and the question was, how is the war on terrorism going? And the answer was, the war on terrorism has been essentially abandoned and that what we're now doing is conducting a manhunt -- that was their word -- to seek out those people that we consider to be the key figures in al Qaeda. I think that was a very serious mistake, as was the relocation of military intelligence capabilities, and that we probably were defective in not providing an adequate oversight of that policy judgment.

As to what's happened since December of '02 until today, I would have to say that I don't know what has happened because most of the answers are contained in first examining what parts of the committee's report will be released publicly so that then the right questions can be asked. As I indicated in the area of FBI reform, Congressman Goss and I have sent two letters to the FBI detailing those 10 steps that we felt were a key to expeditious reform of the FBI's ability to conduct domestic intelligence, and as of today we have not received a response, so, therefore, are not in much of a position to evaluate how effective our recommendations have been in terms of institutional response.

MR. GORTON: Is that the right answer to everything in the final report of the Joint Committee, Congressman Goss?

REP. GOSS: Well, my take on your question, Senator, is I think that the right way to answer your question, and I think all of my colleagues have hit on very, very important points, is that there has been an extraordinary degree of attention focused on the intelligence community in the oversight committees since 9/11. What we were doing before 9/11 wasn't a whole lot different than what we were doing after 9/11 on the committee, it's just the people were changing. So, what really changed was the audience, not the message, as far as the work we were doing. And we were thankful to have the audience, but not thankful for the reason why we had the audience.

Things that have been mentioned, but one or two have been left out -- the TPED cycle, which is a critical cycle for us, and will come under a lot more scrutiny, was getting attention, but not the kind of attention it needed. What we found after 9/11 was suddenly there was more money, people were willing to take more risk. Different things assumed priority that were pretty much either off limits for discussion or too difficult to bring to the floor of the House. Some of the FISA debate would, I think, illustrate that pretty well. And that, of course, is far from over, and it should be far from over.

But I will also say that some of the processes that we have set up did work very well after 9/11, and I think that needs to be noticed, that the working relationship between the top responsible people on the Hill and the top responsible people in the executive branch actually function quite well to assist in our national security and how we have protected ourselves. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, obviously, on that.

I think that there was certainly a lot less push back on some of the things we put in our authorization bills. We saw decisions being made, as Senator Graham has said, properly so, on the architecture of our overhead structures. Our problem there was we would make strong recommendations, but we couldn't get a decision. We finally started to get some decisions.

So, I think that by our continuous attention to the areas that needed work, we created a ball that rolled slowly at first, rolled much more rapidly after 9/11, and it's not a significantly different ball today than it was in January of '01.

And one other area -- has any of this stuff been implemented? The answer is some of it has. Now, what's happened is the executive branch is taking some steps on some things we all learned from the 9/11 review. They haven't formalized the responses to us. I presume Senator Graham has not gotten his copy, but I did get an interim answer from Director Mueller to our long list of "what are you going to do about this stuff?" And then we sent -- it wasn't a sufficient answer, it was an interim answer, clearly, and we sent back specifics. And I know that some of those specifics are being addressed in the FBI. I'm not sure I want to say which ones publicly, but the record will speak. And I think that the FBI has informed me that by the end of the month that they expect to have the whole list brought up to attention, and serendipitously -- and this is serendipitously, our committee this afternoon is having the FBI in front of it as part of our authorization process, and those questions are out there.

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Gorelick.

MS. GORELICK: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mindful of the pressure on the schedules of our House member witnesses, let me say this first at the outset. I thank you for your dedication and evident enthusiasm for your work. Those of us from Washington know that membership on the intelligence committees does not offer some of the things that membership on other committee does. You hold your hearings mostly in private. You do not get to show the work that you're doing all that often. There is no obvious constituency for campaign contributions. And, therefore, you must be motivated by a strong sense of public service, and I think that is quite evident today.

My concern is that you don't have the powers, the tools or the mechanisms to align our capabilities against our threats, and that's what I'd like to probe however briefly this morning, and I know that we will have some more time with you in private. And if there is time, we can turn to the joint inquiry. I have spent time in the Ford Building -- it's not all that bad. The report is very impressive, and I know that the public, if and when it is able to see the report, will be very impressed with it. Congresswoman Harman, I will try to be unflinching and rise to your challenge. The committee's oversight is clearly the product of the entities that it oversees. And as Congressman Goss pointed out, the intelligence committee -- community -- consists of 15 agencies in six or so cabinet departments. Most of the resources actually belong to the Department of Defense and the committees that oversee the Department of Defense oversee those entities. The Director of Central Intelligence controls only the CIA, really.

Now, you recognized this problem, and what you did is you created a deputy director for community management, who is a tremendous public servant, but she has, I don't know, six people in staff, she doesn't have the CIA reporting to her at all.

And so, here is my question to you: How can you oversee the intelligence community when the agencies don't belong to any one that you have the right to oversee? And my second question is: Why shouldn't the director of central intelligence at least have the authority, if he doesn't own the agencies, to execute the budgets that he is given?

SEN. SHELBY: If I can respond briefly -- that's an excellent question. You spent some time in thinking about this.

That's part of the whole problem in the intelligence community. Fifteen agencies is, without reciting it all again, you know who controls what. The director of CIA controls at the most 20 percent of the budget. Yet, if he is going to be in fact the director of central intelligence, I believe myself, and we've made some recommendations, that we need a national director of intelligence, we need a cabinet level position. Otherwise, the reforms we talk about, which comes with power, money, direction, management, it's not going to happen -- not in the manner that we think it should. If you can't control the legislative agenda or, more than that, the funding agenda for an agency, you can't control. You can't really influence them, except on the edge. That's my judgement.

MR. KEAN: Congresswoman Harman.

REP. HARMAN: Let me first commend the questioner for her enormous service to our country. To anyone who missed it, Jamie Gorelick was general counsel of the Department of Defense, deputy attorney general, and a variety of other very useful and important roles in our government -- a lawyer, a wonderful friend, and supporter of all these activities.

I think you're right. I think that there are limits on jurisdiction. There also is the dirtiest four-letter word in Washington spelled T-U-R-F, that limits what we can do, and also limits what others in Congress or in the executive branch or even you can do in terms of reorganizing. But on this point, I would like to recommend again the report of the Markle Foundation which is buried under all these trees, and its director, a fellow named Phil Zelikow, whom you may know, he's right in my line of sight --

MS. GORELICK: I think we may get an opportunity to review those recommendations.

REP. HARMAN: And -- yes, those recommendations had to do with using technology to tie together a lot of independent functions effectively. And, in fact, if you do reorganization without the technology, it won't work. So, there is a virtual reorganization option possible, which I think would go a long way to avoid the turf fights. The only place then left is the budgetary reorganization. That's what we were able to accomplish with the Homeland Security Department, at least for 22 agencies. But that's not a home run either, given the fact that where we are now with the homeland security budget is -- it's just the aggregation of 22 agency budgets. So, this is a very hard problem, which you well know. I don't think the solutions are obvious, but I just want to put out there that technology is a major way to jump over some of the turf issues.

MR. KEAN: Senator Graham.

SEN. GRAHAM: Yes. Mr. Chairman, I'd just make two remarks. One is going back to what I said earlier, the degree to which our current intelligence practices are a reflection of a past which no longer exists. In 1947, the focus of the intelligence agencies was on protecting our atomic secrets, and the congressional committee which oversaw the intelligence agency was the Committee on Atomic Energy. That fact then caused a series of other things to occur, such as, as Congressman Harman has just said, placing much of the intelligence community under the direct control of the Defense Department and placing a significant amount of its total budget under the control of the Defense Department. Those are issues which clearly need to be re-thought in the post- Cold War era.

And I think it's not insignificant that the number one recommendation of the joint committee reads as follows: “Congress should amend the National Security Act of 1947 to create an sufficiently staff a statutory director of national intelligence who shall be the president's principal adviser on intelligence and shall have the full range of management, budgetary and personnel responsibilities needed to make sure the entire United States intelligence community operates as a coherent whole."

I would hope that when you complete your review, that you might find that that's a statement that you could endorse.

MR. KEAN: Congressman Goss.

REP. GOSS: Thank you. When I first took over as chairman of the committee, the policy that we had for intelligence was SMO, support for military operations. To put it in English, it was war-fighters -- take care of the war-fighters, force protection, force enhancement. Those were the concerns. Not a whole lot of audience out there talking about or a whole lot of people screaming for, clamoring for the national intelligence program.

And so we've had this tension all along. It doesn't just measure up in whether I get an aircraft carrier or a satellite. It's measured up into various questions of what is the policy. So let's take a quick look at the situation today. We've been asked to look at vulnerabilities, in the United States particularly, in our homeland, because the two oceans aren't doing it for us anymore.

Then we're taking a look at what's the nature of the threat, because it's obviously very different. It isn't those tanks on the other side of the Fulda Gap anymore. So then the next thing we have to do is, once we understand the vulnerability and the threats, then we have to understand what are the policies that have changed. Okay, those come out of leadership, long process, a lot of debate back and forth. It doesn't happen instantly in this country.

The next thing that happens after that is when you have all of this understood of what your policy is, then you have to have the capability to accomplish it, to enforce it, to do it. Well, do we have the capabilities in the intelligence community to do it? No, of course we don't, because everything has changed so dramatically recently that we've got yesterday's capabilities on yesterday's policies, and we need today's. And we haven't quite got there yet. So I think that's what our committees are going to be basically functioning on, the oversight committee is going to be basically functioning on, no matter how we say it.

Then comes the final piece of the straw, which you've properly identified. And if you understand all this and can get your arms around all that, what would the management profile look like? And it would not look anything like what we have today. And I think you all understand that. I know that Lee Hamilton knows that very well. He has studied Congress many times.

And we try and solve the problem of overlap with other committees to deal with the other Cabinet-level secretaries by having members on the committee who also sit on the committees of those people. We've tried to create ways to make sure that we're heard in the proper space.

So if we're talking about the FBI, the part that's intelligence gets represented and the part that's not intelligence gets represented. It's a cumbersome, inefficient, foolish system that has survived very well because it's the only one we have.

MS. GORELICK: Let me follow up on that. One of the reports that Congresswoman Harman waved around was Aspin-Brown, I think. And you were on that venerable commission; very good people on it, very good recommendations came out of it. You tried to implement it and you ran into a brick wall in the form of the Armed Services Committees. Do you have a proposed solution to that?

REP. GOSS: I think the brick wall has actually been reinforced by a concrete wall as well.

MS. GORELICK: Sounds like we need a bunker buster.

REP. GOSS: My basic conclusion is that the recommendations that we made in our report that you've seen the brief summary of are the right. I would prefer to go to DNI, director of national intelligence, take Joan Dempsey as the community management position and give it the clout that it was intended to have to coordinate, because coordination is a huge problem.

It's very hard to ask somebody in a lower-level position -- although that's a high position, it's relatively lower to dealing with three stars and saying, "You will do this," when the three stars can go to the Pentagon and say, "I don't think so."

It is an unworkable system. It was an inspiration that we put out there saying, "This will solve the problem." And like most silver bullets, it turned out to be lead.

MS. GORELICK: Let me follow up with two questions, if I can, about your actual internal mechanisms. I went back and read the Director of Central Intelligence's annual reports that he makes to your committees the beginning of every year, now called, I think, the worldwide threat hearings.

If you go back and you look at his statements from '97 through 2001, terrorism is in there at, like, number three or so until 2001, when it rockets in February of 2001 to number one with some very strong language. "The threat of terrorism is real. It is immediate. Osama bin Laden and his global network remain the most immediate and serious threat." In tone and content, I would say hair-raising.

My question to you is, what were your mechanisms for following up on that? I didn't see -- maybe there were any, but I didn't see any hearings on terrorism in your committees after that. That was an inflection point, maybe at least in retrospect, but it seemed to be an inflection point. What happened?

REP. GOSS: Well, the answer that I would give you on behalf of our committee is that we had been listening for some time about terrorism. Actually, terrorism, I think you can go back to Lebanon as sort of really the place we should start. But terrorism, in terms of our committee, is that we heard those threat briefings.

Now, understand that the threat part of it and the awareness part of it is part of our education process as members of the committees. It's providing the capabilities to deal with the threat which is our responsibility to deal with.

So we took that on and said, "Okay, Mr. Director, if it is this way, what are you going to do about it? What capabilities do you need? We are concerned that you have enough people who speak the right languages in your counterterrorism center. We are concerned that you have enough people in the right field stations around the world to deal with terrorists when they show up here and there."

That dialogue does go on back and forth, but it does go on generally in closed session for a very simple reason. We're not out there making policy. We're out there trying to get capability, and we don't necessarily want to tell whoever might be listening in another country that we're having these discussions, because when it turns out we can't agree to fund the counterterrorist center, I don't think we ought to tell anybody. It's that kind of a problem.

SEN. SHELBY: In February 2001, I remember the briefing, the threat assessment. And it was real. I thought the director laid it out. There was continuous dialogue between the committee, the committee staff and the Agency on that. I know Senator Graham and I were conducting the hearing, the threat hearing.

I think the question is, you're going to have to look at what we did and what they did in the community, having laid out that this threat has escalated so highly, the terrorist threat, what they did during that time, because they were in the operational phase. We were in the oversight and legislative phase. I think that's an important distinction. And you ought to look at the record.

REP. HARMAN: I would just add that when I returned to Congress in January of 2001, I was appointed by the speaker and the Democratic leader to be ranking member of a new working group on terrorism and homeland security. The date was January of 2001. And we began work on what became our report, which we issued shortly after September 11, 2001.

So I think there was interest focused in Congress. But I think the absolutely critical thing is what Congressman Goss said earlier. What changed on 9/11 was the audience. And finally there was momentum, attention to doing things that many people in Congress and in the executive branch and the involved outside community had wanted to do for a long time.

MR. KEAN: Senator Graham.

SEN. GRAHAM: Yeah. The kinds of things that needed to be done after terrorism emerged as our highest priority were not the kinds of things that were particularly dramatic in scope. In fact, they tended to be in the opposite direction. They became more micro as we left our focus on the one big target and started dealing with all of these individual targets.

As an example, we were still spending, in my judgment, an excessive amount of our research and development money to produce capabilities that didn't line up with our vulnerabilities. And that became one of the priorities of our committees, to assess what was going to be required, to think over the horizon 10 years.

And I might say things like the unmanned small aircraft that have proved so significant in the war in Afghanistan and Iraq and no doubt in future engagements, particularly with terrorist groups, was in large part a result of the prodding of the intelligence committees over the resistance of some of the agencies that like to build the bigger, more known aircraft.

So I'm not here to say that the Congress nor the intelligence committees were totally prescient or perfect. They understood the problem. They understood the analysis of the problem and were trying to carry out our responsibilities.

MS. GORELICK: It seems to me a completely legitimate position to take that, in the first instance, the responsibility is in the executive branch agency. But I'm concerned about the mechanisms that you all have or don't for aligning, as I said before, the capabilities against the threat and to see whether they are doing what they need to be doing against that threat.

And there's some peculiarities of the way in which oversight is done in the intelligence community that I'd like to just ask one question about, and we can certainly follow up when we have more time.

The authorizations for the Intelligence Community contain these massive classified annexes, 500 pages of annexes, with very detailed prescriptions for what the intelligence community, all these individual agencies, will do, and reports that they must give.

And I look at that and I think, "Well, is that the best way to manage? Wouldn't it be better to have a more cross-cutting and strategic view of what their problems are and how they propose solutions?"

And the second thing I noticed is that unlike many departments, the intelligence community has to have both the appropriators and the authorizers before they can spend any money. So even if the appropriators say, "Here's the money to do something," unless you specifically authorize it and it's found in one of those many lines, they can't do anything. I think that that is, having been in the executive branch, where I didn't serve under such a system at Justice or Defense, that it would have been, at the very least, dispiriting. And I just wonder how you carry out your functions in such a system.

SEN. SHELBY: If I can try to answer that, because at one time I chaired the Intelligence Committee. And, of course, I was a member with Senator Gorton of the Defense Appropriations Committee that funded all of this. I can tell you there are a little different goals sometimes in the funding subcommittee, as you well know from your position at the Pentagon, of intelligence activities and what we did at times, and initiatives we tried to push sometimes were not funded, despite some of us being on both committees. It's a struggle.

But overall we had, I think, overall a good relationship with the Defense subcommittees on Appropriations in the House and Senate, but not always did we get our way.

MR. KEAN: Congressman Goss.

REP. GOSS: Thank you, Governor. I wanted to respond to that. You brought a