[Senate Hearing 107-207] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] S. Hrg. 107-207 RESPONDING TO HOMELAND THREATS: IS OUR GOVERNMENT ORGANIZED FOR THE CHALLENGE? ======================================================================= HEARING before the COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION __________ SEPTEMBER 21, 2001 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs 76-801 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON : 2002 ____________________________________________________________________________ For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpr.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512�091800 Fax: (202) 512�092250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402�090001 COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman CARL LEVIN, Michigan FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TED STEVENS, Alaska RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio MAX CLELAND, Georgia PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi JEAN CARNAHAN, Missouri ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah MARK DAYTON, Minnesota JIM BUNNING, Kentucky Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Staff Director and Counsel Holly A. Idelson, Counsel Michael L. Alexander, Professional Staff Member Hannah S. Sistare, Minority Staff Director and Counsel Robert J. Shea, Minority Counsel Jana C. Sinclair, Associate Counsel to the Minority Jayson P. Roehl, Minority Professional Staff Member John T. Daggett, Minority Professional Staff Member Darla D. Cassell, Chief Clerk C O N T E N T S ------ Opening statements: Page Senator Lieberman............................................ 1 Senator Thompson............................................. 4 Senator Cleland.............................................. 6 Prepared statements: Senator Akaka................................................ 37 Senator Voinovich............................................ 38 WITNESSES Thursday, September 21, 2001 Hon. Warren B. Rudman, Co-Chair, U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century.......................................... 6 Hon. Gary Hart, Co-Chair, U.S. Commission on National Security/ 21st Century................................................... 10 Hon. James S. Gilmore, III, Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia and Chairman, Advisory Panel to Assess the Capabilities for Domestic Response to Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction.................................... 12 Hon. L. Paul Bremer, III, Former Ambassador-at-Large for Counter- terrorism, U.S. Department of State and Member, Advisory Panel to Assess the Capabilities for Domestic Response to Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction.......................... 15 Hon. David M. Walker, Comptroller General, U.S. General Accounting Office.............................................. 17 Alphabetical List of Witnesses Bremer, Hon. L. Paul, III: Testimony.................................................... 15 Gilmore, Hon. James S., III: Testimony.................................................... 12 Prepared statement........................................... 41 Hart, Hon. Gary: Testimony.................................................... 10 Prepared statement........................................... 39 Rudman, Hon. Warren B.: Testimony.................................................... 6 Walker, Hon. David M.: Testimony.................................................... 17 Prepared statement with attachments.......................... 53 Appendix New World Coming: American Security in the 21st Century, Major Themes and Implications, The Phase I Report on the Emerging Global Security Environment for the First Quarter of the 21st Century, by the United States Commission on National Security/ 21st Century, September 15, 1999............................... 65 Seeking a National Strategy: A Concert For Preserving Security and Promoting Freedom, The Phase II Report on a U.S. National Security Strategy for the 21st Century, by the United States Commission on National Security/21st Century, April 15, 2000... 76 Road Map for National Security: Imperative for Change, The Phase III Report of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, by the United States Commission on National Security/ 21st Century, January 31, 2001................................. 90 RESPONDING TO HOMELAND THREATS: IS OUR GOVERNMENT ORGANIZED FOR THE CHALLENGE? ---------- FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2001 U.S. Senate, Committee on Governmental Affairs, Washington, DC. The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., in room SD-106, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I. Lieberman, Chairman of the Committee, presiding. Present: Senators Lieberman, Cleland, and Thompson. OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN Chairman Lieberman. The hearing will come to order. I apologize to witnesses and to everyone in the room that we had to delay the hearing because there were two votes on the floor of the Senate. If this does not sound, to two of our witnesses, Senators Rudman and Hart, like deja vu all over again, I would be surprised, but I welcome all of you here this morning. This morning, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee will be considering a question of whether the Federal Government, and specifically the Executive Branch, is adequately organized to meet threats to the security of the American people in the 50 American States. Today's hearing complements the series of hearings that the Committee has been conducting on protection of the Nation's critical infrastructure. It is, also, of course, a response to the terrible attacks on America that occurred on September 11. My personal response to those attacks has probably been like the response of most other Americans, most other members of Congress. I have gone from shock to anger to remorse to determination that we must, together, do everything we can to make as certain as possible that nothing like what happened on September 11 ever happens again. The nature, scale, and motivation of the attacks were unprecedented and so must be our response. This Governmental Affairs Committee is primarily an oversight and investigative Committee. What we must now attempt to understand is how this violation of our Nation was possible. In particular, we must ask the difficult question of whether our government did enough to protect its citizens. With the horrifying images of devastation at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania still fresh in our minds, the answer to that question must, sadly, be no. The purpose of these hearings, in one sense, is to make sure that we never have to give that answer to that kind of question again. After the attacks, the people who are our government did all that was humanly possible to respond. We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the firefighters and police whose courageous efforts saved countless lives at the cost of so many of their own, to the EMT personnel, and doctors, and nurses who administered aid to the injured and dying, to the public servants who manned the crisis support machinery at all levels of government, managing priorities, handling logistics and making key services of relief and rescue available, to members of the military who were deployed to guard against further loss of life, to elected leaders who brought a sense of hope, unity, and purpose to a Nation stunned by this tragedy, including, most recently, the magnificent statement of American principles and purpose that President Bush delivered to the Congress, to the Nation, and indeed to the world last night. Our primary purpose here this morning is not to assign blame, it is to prevent future attacks. Even before last week's tragic attacks, we had important warnings that our government was not as well-prepared to meet these new threats to our security to the American homeland as it should have been. For that, we can thank the dedicated efforts of at least two important commissions that recently looked at this issue: The U.S. Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, also known as the Hart-Rudman Commission; and the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism involving Weapons of Mass Destruction referred to as the Gilmore Commission, which have identified serious deficiencies in our Nation's efforts to prepare for, respond to, and prevent terrorist acts. And, I am proud to say, we can also thank our own General Accounting Office, whose oversight committee this is and whose Comptroller, David Walker, will testify this morning. GAO has given us repeated warnings that are relevant to our agenda this morning. The chief members of the two panels that I referred to are with us today: Senator Hart, Senator Rudman, Governor Gilmore, and Ambassador Bremer. I should note that Ambassador Bremer was also chair of another commission, the National Commission on Terrorism that, in some respects, laid the foundation for the work that has followed. Though they differ in their approach and recommendations, I do see agreement between the Hart-Rudman and Gilmore Commissions on three key points: First, they concluded that there was a growing threat of homeland attack and how painfully accurate they have now been proven to be; second, that the Nation lacked a clear strategy to prevent and protect against these threats; and, third, that responsibility for homeland security was spread among too many agencies without sufficient coordination. In fact, current responsibility for addressing terrorism and other homeland threats is diffused throughout all levels of government--local, State, and Federal. At the Federal level, coordination, operational planning, and implementation are divided and subdivided among at least 40 agencies, bureaus, and offices which spend over $11 billion a year. Both commissions criticize this state of organization and offered recommendations to improve homeland security. The Hart-Rudman Commission proposed the establishment of a National Homeland Security Agency, an independent agency whose director would be a member of the President's Cabinet. The Agency would be responsible for coordinating an array of Federal activities related to homeland security. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, the Border Patrol, and other entities that are relevant here would be transferred to the new organization, which would be functionally organized around prevention, protection of critical infrastructure, and emergency preparedness and response. The Gilmore Commission went in a different direction, recommending the creation of a National Office for Combatting Terrorism. This new White House office would report directly to the President and would be responsible for formulating antiterrorism strategy. It would also coordinate terrorism policy and have some influence over national budget allocations for antiterrorism activities. I must say that I come to this hearing favoring the Hart- Rudman approach, but I want to hear from all sides in this important discussion. I favor the Hart-Rudman approach because it seems to me that creating a Homeland Security Agency has special merit. If you want to get a job done, there is no substitute for having an organization with a budget and line, as opposed to advisory authority. Because in such a context, real people are responsible and accountable for making decisions and taking the necessary and appropriate action. Within an executive agency, all of the policy, budget, and programmatic activities can be integrated and focused toward very specific programs and goals. Now, as we all know, last night a funny and good thing happened on the way to this hearing about a National Homeland Security Agency. President Bush, in fact, endorsed such an idea. In fact, he went beyond that and, by Executive Order, created a National Homeland Security Agency with Governor Ridge of Pennsylvania as its designated head with cabinet status. This morning it is not clear what the contours, makeup and powers of that agency will be. I certainly look forward to having this Committee meet with Governor Ridge and others in the administration to discuss this proposal, but I feel very strongly, though I greet President Bush's action last night as a welcome and significant first step toward greater homeland protection, that Congress needs to pass a law, after deliberate consideration, to make this Homeland Security Agency permanent because it is clear that we crossed a bridge on September 11, and in a way that has not been true for most of our history for the future as far as we can see. We are going to have to be prepared to protect the American people as they live and work in the 50 United States. In the history of America's Government, major organizational changes have occurred during times of crisis. General Marshall transformed what was a small peacetime Army in 1939 into the planet's most powerful military force by 1945, helping to bring victory in World War II. President Truman's realignment of our national security infrastructure in 1947 helped us successfully prosecute the Cold War. More recently, the sweeping defense reorganization mandated by the Goldwater-Nickles Act of 1986 was an essential factor in helping us win the Gulf War just 5 years later. Similarly bold organizational change is demanded of us now, given the events of September 11. This Committee can lead the Congress to that change, and I hope and believe that we will. I am very pleased to be working shoulder-to-shoulder on these critical questions of national security with my friend from Tennessee, the Committee's Ranking Republican, Senator Fred Thompson. I am proud to call on him now. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR THOMPSON Senator Thompson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I cannot think of a more timely hearing than this one or a more important one. Speaking of coordination or lack thereof, as you know, both parties have conferences going on right now which will probably keep some of our people away or some may be coming in a little bit later. We very well may be discussing some of the issues we are discussing here. You and I have discussed what Congress should do, in terms of its organization or reorganization. I would certainly appreciate our alums here commenting on whether or not we need a select committee or a different committee or what we should do about current jurisdiction. As you know, we have jurisdiction over Capitol Hill, as well as the Executive Branch. So I am going to leave briefly, and hopefully come back, if that is satisfactory. I want to start out by thanking the gentlemen at this table. I think the whole Nation owes you a debt of gratitude. You have all been telling us what we needed to hear for a long time. Our country, and I suppose maybe all democracies which are not interested in matters of war or aggression or anything other than enjoying peace and freedom, was a little slow out of the blocks. We have been very slow out of the blocks here with regard to something that you have told us should be the Nation's number one priority. You also told us that it is not a matter of if we get hit, it is a matter of when we get hit. This is pretty serious business. You have been steadfast. You have been voices in the wilderness for the most part. We get these reports up here. They do not filter up to the Executive Branch, they do not filter down to the average person. They show up; we have a hearing; three or four of us are around; or maybe not. Maybe you get to page 16, in a report, but nothing really happens, even though we know it is a different world we live in. We are dealing with different kinds of people than we ever have before, and we have vulnerabilities that we have not had before. We have let our guard down, as other countries have on other occasions. Other democracies have done so after other wars. Ours having been the Cold War victory. While we have enjoyed discussing and consuming our peace dividend, things have happened around us that we have not responded to. I am very pleased, especially that the people we work with so closely on a daily basis, and we inundate them with all of our little pet ideas sometimes, that GAO has kept a wonderful focus on all of this. I read their strategic plan, several months ago, and told them I thought it was the best document that I had seen. Every member of Congress ought to be required to read it, and this was in there. It had to do with a handful of issues that are important, as most of the things that we deal with up here are not. Of course, this is No. 1. I hope that, in terms of Senator Rudman, Senator Hart, and Mr. Bremer, that we will be able to keep your services somehow, some way, as we go forward, and continue to enjoy the contribution that you have made to this because more expertise reside in you gentleman probably than anywhere else. I was noticing, with regard to the counterterrorism organization or lack thereof, staff pulled together some points here that I think bring it home. who is in charge of these activities depends on a number of factors, such as the nature of the incident and the perpetrator. For example, FEMA is the lead Federal agency in charge of consequence management. The Federal Bureau of Investigations is the lead agency for crisis management and for domestic terrorism events. The State Department is designated as the lead agency for counterterrorism overseas. The Federal Aviation Administration is the lead for hijackings, but only after the plane doors have been closed. We have had presidential directives which have placed substantial responsibility within the NSC. With regard to the announcement last night that the President made, I share your enthusiasm not only for the move, but for the gentleman who will be taking this position. Obviously, we need to know more about what the President has in mind there. I would agree with you, without having talked to him about it or thought it through, that we are going to need some legislation. I am not sure at all that the new person, Governor Ridge, will have the authority he needs in terms of the reorganization problem that we have got or the ability to reprioritize budget matters and things of that nature. So I think we have got to move forward on it. One approach would be to put the right tools in the hands of the President and let him decide what to do and when to do it. I think it is important that we not tie the President's hands and decide up here unilaterally, precisely in great detail, exactly what should and should not be done. I think we need to work together with the President and take the lessons put forth by the commissions, the GAO, the Department of Justice, and FEMA, and apply them. One way to do this would be to reauthorize the Reorganization Act, which sunsetted in 1987. That act allowed expedited consideration for any presidential proposals to reorganize Federal agencies and would be a foundation upon which a new and effective strategy for defeating terrorists could be built. It is just another idea to go along with the very good ones that you have set forth, Mr. Chairman. So I think that we are now on the right track, and I think there is going to be a lot of good come out of this, and I think that what we are doing here today is a part of that. Thank you very much. Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Thompson. Senator Cleland. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CLELAND Senator Cleland. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank our panelists, especially our dear former colleagues here. A W.C. Fields' quote comes to mind that we have got to take the bull by the tail and face the situation. [Laughter.] I think we have to face the situation that the whole counterterrorism, the homeland defense issue was very much on the back burner, uncoordinated, buried deep in the bowels of the Pentagon and the Justice Department until Tuesday. Now what do we do? Mr. Chairman, I look forward to our panelists as to how we move forward. I do know that we need to coordinate these more than 40 different offices that deal with homeland defense better. I just wonder how our panelists feel about the President's decision last night, if they embrace that or not. So I am looking forward to our panelists, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Cleland. Let us go now to Senator Rudman and Senator Hart. I would say, very briefly, that the two of you proved that there are ample opportunities for public service after one leaves the Senate, and the two of you have just done admirably in that regard. I think I am just going to go without listing your credentials. You are both very respected spokespeople on matters of foreign affairs, defense, and intelligence and have been leaders for a long time. Senator Rudman, we are pleased to hear from you now. TESTIMONY OF HON. WARREN B. RUDMAN, CO-CHAIR, U.S. COMMISSION ON NATIONAL SECURITY/21ST CENTURY Senator Rudman. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and Senator Cleland. It is an honor to appear before this Committee which I served on for my entire service in the Senate, sitting in this room. Chairman Lieberman. Welcome home. Senator Rudman. There are many questions that you have, and I am going to try to brief and direct in my answers to summarize on behalf of our commission what we did, and Senator Hart, of course, will do that as well. A little background. This commission came about after a conversation between former Speaker Newt Gingrich and President William Clinton, in which they commiserated about the fact that there had been no ongoing study of America's national security since 1947, which resulted in massive reorganizations of our entire government. Thus, our commission was established. There has been some misunderstanding, our commission, as opposed to the other commissions, did not start out to study terrorism per se. This report, which you have seen, covers the entire panoply of the Federal Government security apparatus: State, Treasury, trade, education, intelligence, and law enforcement. The curious thing is that the 14 people--seven Democrats and seven Republicans--who worked for over 3 years on this, at the conclusion, unanimously came to the consensus that the single most important issue facing America was how to deal with domestic terrorism. So that is why we are here today. It became Chapter 1 of our report which deals with security, in general. Our deliberations resulted in something rare in Washington: A consensus amongst 14 people of divergent political views and ideologies who came together on the 50 recommendations that are contained in the report, seven of which deal with what we are talking about here this morning. We reached a consensus that an attack on the domestic homeland was not a question of if, but a question of when, and we reached the consensus that the Nation was, and is, largely unprepared to respond here at home to such an attack. More important, I believe, is that the commission also reached a consensus on the core elements of a road map to allow the Nation to move forward, and we were unanimous on that score as well. We proposed and still believe that any solution to this problem must address issues of strategy. It must address issues of Federal, State, and local organization and cooperation, and it must address issues of capacity and cooperation. In general, we said that the United States must replace a fractured ad hoc approach to homeland security with a sustained focused approach, emphasize integration of existing agencies and departments, rather than wholesale invention, and recapitalize our existing assets and capabilities rather than try to create redundancy. Is this plan ambitious? It is, without question. Is it going to take the patience of the American people? Certainly. Is it going to require a whole new way of thinking about our national security? Absolutely. We believe that given the evidence that we heard--all over the world we heard this evidence--the history of our government and the resources available, the best way we could help would be to come up not with a philosophical approach, but with a series of specific recommendations for the Executive and Legislative Branches of government. After all, the charter of this commission, founded by the Congress in 1998, was to give the incoming administration in 2001 and the incoming Congress in 2001 a road map to America's national security. That is what we have tried to do. The first step, and I will go through a number of steps, is for the President of the United States to declare unequivocally that homeland security is the primary responsibility of our national strategy, not a peripheral responsibility. Mr. Chairman, I think that happened last night, and I want to just depart from the previous prepared remarks, just to give you a few thoughts on that, which I know you have mentioned, and Senator Cleland has mentioned you would be interested in. The President has moved quickly to establish an office of homeland security. We do not know yet the details of the office, but would appear to be what is generally called the czar approach. We have had drug czars and others. Why we have ever picked that particular name, I am not sure, but that is the one we tend to use. It is a very good method to bring attention to a recognized problem. Moreover, it is a very good way in time of crisis to encourage improved coordination between disparate agencies which, in normal times, tend to pursue their own bureaucratic purposes. We applaud the President's initiative and heartily endorse Governor Ridge, who is known to all of us. It is a great choice. For an enduring solution to what we feel certain will be a long-term problem, we believe the President must move beyond this White House office and establish a major department with homeland security, with a seat at the cabinet table, as its singular mission. We believe that without budget authority, command authority, accountability, and responsibility to the Congress and to the President, nothing in this government ever works very well, but we applaud this step, and we believe that the Congress and the President can build on it. The President should propose, and the Congress should agree to create a new National Homeland Security Agency. The nucleus of this agency would be the current Federal Emergency Management Agency, the nucleus. While retaining its 10 regional offices, the new agency would have the responsibility for the nationwide planning and coordination and integration of the various government activities that now involve homeland security. I believe there are about 51 of those activities in various places, and we believe the Director should be a member of the cabinet and a statutory adviser to the National Security Council. Third, the President should propose, and the Congress should agree, to transfer the Customs Service to the Border Patrol and the Coast Guard to this new agency. This transfer would be for common purpose coordination, not bureaucratic consolidation. Each of these entities would retain their own distinct identities, structures, and internal operating procedures. They would just be located in another cabinet department. If you look at the details of the report, you will see the logic of why those three agencies, in particular, with FEMA are to be in one place. I want to stress that under our plan, each of these three entities would receive long overdue increases in resources. Let me just summarize that shortly. We were shocked to hear that the Customs Service currently has the capacity to inspect only 1 or 2 percent of all shipments received from overseas and our country. This has to change. We were shocked to learn that the cutter fleet of America's Coast Guard is older than 39 of the 41 world major naval fleets. That has to change. We were somewhat disappointed to hear the continuing challenges, the horror stories facing the U.S. Border Patrol. Consider this: Each day 1.3 million people cross our borders; 340,000 vehicles cross our borders; and 58,000 containers arrive at America's seaports. These figures are expected to double by 2005. Mr. Chairman, this is not a case of wanting to create a political carrot to entice people to sign on to a reform proposal. It is a matter of creating the political will to do what we should have done a very long time ago. Fourth, the President should ensure that the National Intelligence Council include an analysis of homeland security and asymmetric threats, particularly those involving infrastructure and information technology. That portfolio should be assigned full time to a national intelligence officer and the national intelligence estimate, the so-called NIE, should be produced on these threats. Fifth, the President should propose to Congress the establishment of an Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Security within the Office of Security of Defense and reporting directly to the Secretary. Along similar lines, we propose that the existing Joint Forces Command and Joint Task Force for Civil Support be broadened and strengthened. For those who may not be familiar with those two organizations, these commands are DOD's current mechanisms for planning and dealing with homeland attacks. Sixth, it is time to emphasize the ``national'' in National Guard. Specifically, the Secretary of Defense, at the President's direction, should make homeland security a primary mission of the National Guard, and the Guard should be organized, properly trained and fully equipped to undertake the mission. However, these requirements, we make clear, should be in addition to, not substitutes for, the current state of readiness for sustained combat overseas. Parenthetically, Mr. Chairman, to use the vernacular of the military, the National Guard is forward deployed in the homeland. It is where we would need it, in time of crisis. Finally, we recommend, Mr. Chairman, and I say this with some hesitancy, but directness, that the Congress reevaluates its organizational approach to issues of homeland security, counterterrorism and protection of information security. Currently, the Congress has roughly two dozen committees addressing these issues in a very scattershot way. We think there ought to be two select committees, one in the House and one in the Senate, and we believe that the members of those committees ought to be carefully selected for their expertise in foreign policy, defense, intelligence, law enforcement, and appropriations. Mr. Chairman, as I said, I wanted to keep these remarks brief. Let me just say that many of the commentators in recent days have tended to portray the types of changes that we talk about here this morning as a zero sum game. They argue that doing more here at home means that we will have to do less overseas, that homeland is a code for a retreat to unilateralism or that doing more on defense means less for weapons and missiles. The commission did not and does not subscribe to that point of view. We firmly believe that an engaged, enlightened, and unilateral foreign policy, and defense policy is still America's first line of defense. America not only has interests in the rest of the world, it has obligations. As we said in the report, to shield America from the world out of fear of terrorism is, in large part, to do the terrorists' work for them, but to continue business as usual is irresponsible. We think that, ultimately, our challenge is to balance the openness and generosity of the American spirit with the security and well-being of the American people. Essentially, we address the issues that are the hallmarks of homeland security. They are to prevent, to protect, and to respond. As someone who has had the privilege to serve this country on both the field of battle and in the halls of this Capitol, I implore you to take action on the recommendations of these panels that sit before you today. You have an obligation and a duty to the American people to do no less. Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Rudman, for that excellent statement. I appreciate it very much. Senator Hart. TESTIMONY OF HON. GARY HART,\1\ CO-CHAIR, U.S. COMMISSION ON NATIONAL SECURITY/21ST CENTURY Senator Hart. Mr. Chairman, thank you and Members of the Committee for holding these hearings and for the opportunity for us to appear here. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Hart appears in the Appendix on page 39. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ``Americans will become increasingly vulnerable to hostile attack on our homeland, and our military superiority will not entirely protect us. Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers.'' This was our first conclusion of our commission after almost a year of investigation of what we called the ``New World Coming,'' which we described in our first public report. That conclusion was delivered September 15, 1999, almost exactly 2 years to the day before our prediction came true. ``The United States is today very poorly organized to design and implement any comprehensive strategy to protect the homeland,'' our commission also concluded in its final public report on January 31, 2001. Eight months later, regrettably, that same assessment is true. In light of the dark, satanic events of last week, further delay in creating an effective national homeland defense capacity would be nothing less than a massive breach of the public trust and an act of national folly. As Senator Rudman has pointed out, our commission was appointed to conduct the most comprehensive review of U.S. national security since 1947. The commissions of that era, post-World War II, pre-Cold War, ended in creating a statutory base for the conduct of the Cold War and created, among other things, the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Air Force, and a massive overhaul of this Nation's defense structures. Those of us on this commission represent almost 300-person- years of public service, almost all of that in the field of national security and foreign policy. As Senator Rudman has pointed out, although we debated issues such as the structure of a homeland defense agency at great length, in the final analysis we were all unanimous. Senator Rudman has more than adequately summarized the seven conclusions that relate specifically to the creation of what President Bush fortuitously last night called a new Homeland Security Office. What we are really here now to discuss, that decision by the executive having been made, is what the nature of that office or agency should be. As Senator Rudman has pointed out, we particularly called attention to the role of Congress in this effort and would do so again today. The events of the last 10 days--and the President's speech last night--have presented to the Congress both an opportunity and an obligation to help the President put form, structure, and content on what was essentially a two-line commitment. We believe this should be a statutory agency. We believe this agency should have budget authority. We believe it should consolidate, under one authority, one civilian authority who has the accountability to the President and the American people for homeland security. Our commission strongly believes that any lesser or more tenuous solution will merely perpetuate bureaucratic confusion and diffusion of responsibility. No homeland czar can possibly hope to coordinate the almost hopeless dispersal of authority that currently characterizes the 40 or 50 agencies or elements of agencies with some piece of responsibility for protecting our homeland. May I recall to you when we had an energy crisis in the 1970's, a czar for energy was created. It happened to be a former governor of my State of Colorado. It turned out to be obvious within a matter of months that a czar approach to the issues of energy security in this country was not going to work. And whether you agree with the result or not, we ended up with the Department of Energy. We have heard, particularly before a week ago Tuesday, that Washington bureaucracy will not permit our solution to be adopted. Mr. Chairman, I would like to hear a cabinet officer or bureau head in this government make that argument today. I would like to hear the Attorney General or the Secretary of Transportation or the Secretary of the Treasury explain to the President, and the American people, and the Congress why it is more important to keep that piece of bureaucratic turf in that department than to protect the people of the United States. Bureaucracy matters nothing right now. The lives and safety of the American people are at stake. Of those who have taken the trouble to read our recommendations and the reasons for them, some have said that we have gone too far in creating what some have called an ``Interior Ministry,'' a rather ominous phrase. Others say that we have not gone far enough to incorporate intelligence, counterintelligence, and military components. There are thoroughly debated reasons of constitutional principle and practical effectiveness that caused us to strike the balance we did. The Homeland Security Agency should not have police or military authority, it should not be an intelligence collection agency or have responsibility for counterterrorism. It should not be a military agency. It should be the central coordinating mechanism for anticipating, preventing, and responding to attacks on our homeland. The executive director of our commission, General Charles Boyd, who is here with us today, has, I think, made a very apt analogy to the situation. We are now, where homeland security is concerned, as if we were in the situation before we had a Department of Defense and a Secretary of Defense. Those who argue against an approach similar to ours would essentially be saying the Army should be in one department, the Navy should be in another department, the Air Force in another department, and by the way, we will have a coordinator of those services somewhere in the White House. We think the logic of our circumstances require a statutory agency under the accountability of one individual. This is a daunting task, but, Mr. Chairman, we owe it to our children to begin. It would be a mistake of historic proportions to believe that protection must await retribution, that prevention of the next attack must await punishment for the last. We can, and must, do both simultaneously. We do not know when we will be held accountable for the next attack on this country. I believe, personally, it will be sooner rather than later, and we are still not prepared. Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Hart, very much for very strong testimony. Governor Gilmore, good morning and welcome. I know you had some difficulty with flight arrangements getting here, but we are very grateful for your persistence. For the record, Governor Jim Gilmore is, of course, Virginia's chief executive and also vice chair of the National Governor's Association, an Army veteran. He is here in his current capacity as the Chairman of the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction. Welcome, Governor. TESTIMONY OF HON. JAMES S. GILMORE, III,\1\ GOVERNOR OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA AND CHAIRMAN, ADVISORY PANEL TO ASSESS THE CAPABILITIES FOR DOMESTIC RESPONSE TO TERRORISM INVOLVING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION Governor Gilmore. Thank you, Senator Lieberman, and also, Senator Cleland, of course who is here, and other Members, for the record. Thank you for inviting me to discuss recommendations of the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction and local response, a national panel that was established by the Congress in 1999. We have a statutory duty to report to the Congress and to the President. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Govenor Gilmore appears in the Appendix on page 41. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have served as chairman of this advisory panel, Senator Lieberman, and it has been my privilege to work with experts in a broad range of fields, many from outside of the Washington Beltway, including current and former Federal, State and local officials, specialists in terrorism, such as L. Paul Bremer who is here to speak in just a few moments who has chaired his own commission and has been a faithful member of our commission, people from the intelligence community, the military, law enforcement, emergency management, fire services, health and medicine, and public health. And this is the unique quality of the congressional panel that was assembled. It includes the local and State responders as a primary force and input into our panel which I think makes us unique and different. I might take a moment to say that one of our panel members, Ray Downey, the deputy fire chief for the City of New York, is listed as missing, as he was trying to help people in the City of New York at the World Trade Center, when he was lost, together with about 300 other firefighters in the City of New York, and we will miss him on our panel. Our panel has had time. We have been working for almost 3 years. We have been able to deliberate quietly and without any type of pressure of crisis. For many generations to come, Senators, September 11, 2001, is a day that is going to stand out in the history of the United States, and indeed I think the entire world, as the day that the tyranny of terrorism attacked American freedom. The criminals who committed these acts on the people of the United States in New York and in Virginia sought a decisive strike that was designed to remake the world and the post-Cold War period. Sooner or later those who inflicted these injuries will feel the full weight of justice and the free world's combined efforts to hold them responsible, and I believe no one can exceed the President's eloquence in this matter, as we heard last night. This brings me quickly, Senator, to the work of the Advisory Panel and the work that lies ahead for the Congress, the Executive Branch, and for our States and for our communities. To date, our panel has issued over 50 specific recommendations in two reports. The first report was issued in December 1999 and the second was issued in December of the year 2000. In quick summary, the first report was devoted to the assessment of the threat, concern over the issue of who was to be in charge of any particular response effort, and an increased concern, particularly to recognize that weapons of mass destruction, while less probable, could not be dismissed, but that in the meanwhile, that a conventional attack was nearly inevitable. This was our conclusion in December 1999. The next report, in December 2000, recognized that there was not a national strategy, that there was an absolute essential to have a national strategy, including State and local people, and to make sure that there was, in fact, a separate approach on response itself, particularly emphasizing State and local people in combination with FEMA and other Federal agencies, and of course recommendations for enhancing and improving our intelligence capabilities. I want to focus your attention today, Senator, on two central recommendations concerning the role of government organization and inner-agency coordination in this war against terrorism. In our December 2000 report, we proposed at that time the statutory creation of a new national office for combatting terrorism, to coordinate national terrorism policy and preparedness in the Executive Branch located in the White House. The President has done this last night. Our recommendation was that the director of this office should be a high-ranking official appointed by the President; that, foremost, that the office should have the responsibility to develop a comprehensive national strategy to be approved by the President. The issue is the need for the central direction on this issue among the different complex, solid, different issues, including budgetary concerns, a need for the development of the national strategy, as the President said last night, but including Federal, as the President said, State and local response. Otherwise every agency up and down the line, vertically and horizontally, will assert its own authority in, of course, an uncoordinated way. Senator this is an important distinction here with our panel and others. Our proposal is an office located in the White House reporting directly to the President of the United States, not a separate homeland agency that competes against other agencies or even other cabinet secretaries. Instead, this office will invoke the direct authority of the President to coordinate various agencies, receive sensitive intelligence and military information, and deal directly with Congress and State and local governments on both domestic and international counterterrorism programs. This defines the difference between our panel and that of Hart-Rudman. The central point is this: America needs a White House- level office for a White House-level crisis, and that is the plan that the President adopted last night. Senator the Annual Report to Congress on Combatting Terrorism of July 2001 points out that we spend about $10.3 billion per year now. Approximately 8 percent of that goes to preparedness and response. About $300 million, only, is designated for State and local government concerns. Our third report, which is due December 2001, will now be accelerated in an executive summary, although completed on time in December 2001. We propose to accelerate our meetings and to accelerate our report for the benefit of the Congress to which we report and the President. We will, at that time, define five areas of further study in our third year: Health and medical, use of the military, cyber security, local and State response, and border security, as well as filling out some of the additional points on intelligence and other matters. The second point that I wish to address to you this morning, and that is the area of border security as a prime example of the need for White House coordination. As you know, on September 11 hijackers entered the United States. The question is how did they get in. Senator, as was previously read, we have 100,000 miles of national coastline; 2,000 miles of land bordered with Mexico; 4,000 miles with Canada; 500 million people cross our borders annually; 127 million automobiles cross annually; 11.5 million truck crossings annually; 2.1 million rail cars; 200,000 ships annually dock; and 5.8 million containers enter annually, less than 3 percent are adequately inspected. The answer calls for interagency coordination. If America is to be secure, we must coordinate immigration enforcement and border securities at all levels of entry in the United States, air, sea, and land. It will require unprecedented coordination between the appropriate agencies. Our report on this one single issue of the five we will address in our new report will propose that border and immigration agencies all be included in intelligence collection analysis and dissemination process, that there be an intergovernmental border advisory group within the Office of Combatting Terrorism, a coordinated plan for research and development, particularly with sensors and warning systems, trusted shipper's programs to begin to address the issue of containers, and full coordination with Mexico and Canada, and we will have identical and more comprehensive detail in the other four areas as well, as we conclude our report back to the Congress and to the President. Senator we must start preparing the Nation to defend freedom within our borders today. There is certainly not a moment to spare. The President and the Congress face solemn decisions about how to proceed, and there is certainly little time for deliberation. This is not a partisan political issue. It transcends partisanship. It is about the preservation of freedom and the American way of life. The American people deserve to be prepared, and they deserve to be prepared now. We must take bold action to defend our freedom at home and abroad. Thank you very much. Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Governor. We appreciate your service and your testimony. I look forward to a question and answer period. Our next witness is Ambassador Paul Bremer, formerly Ambassador-at-Large for Counterterrorism in the Reagan and first Bush administrations. He is clearly one of our Nation's leading experts on terrorism and, in fact, as I mentioned earlier, chaired the National Commission on Terrorism. He was also a member of the Gilmore Commission. Ambassador Bremer, thanks for being here, and I look forward to your testimony. TESTIMONY OF HON. L. PAUL BREMER, III, FORMER AMBASSADOR-AT- LARGE FOR COUNTER-TERRORISM, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE AND MEMBER, ADVISORY PANEL TO ASSESS THE CAPABILITIES FOR DOMESTIC RESPONSE TO TERRORISM INVOLVING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION Mr. Bremer. Senator, I will be brief because the governor has summarized our report. I am just going to make two or three points. I think there is a lot of value in both of these panels. These are not mutually exclusive. There are some things that can be borrowed from one or the other. There is a fundamental difference on the structure. And I think one of the reasons there is a difference on the structure has to do with one of the most important trends in terrorism, which we saw dramatically last week, and that is the fading distinction between domestic and international terrorism. As you said in your opening statement, Mr. Chairman, since 1985, our government, has been divided between the State Department being responsible for international terrorism and the Justice Department being responsible for what we call domestic terrorism. This is a nice distinction. It just does not happen to be one that terrorists follow, as we saw last week. And one of the places where this is the most dramatic the governor has just referred to, and that is in the question of immigration and border controls. The State Department is responsible for issuing visas to people overseas, but it is the INS which is responsible for deciding whether somebody gets into the country and then monitoring, to the extent the INS can, whether that person remains in their visa status in the United States. The intelligence involved in this problem of immigration control is not seamless; that is to say, there are lots of databases around, they are not all interactive. For example, the consular officer who issues a visa, until today, does not have access to important FBI databases dealing with people who are suspected criminals. There is legislation in the bill which was sent up yesterday, by the Attorney General, does try to deal with this issue, but it is just an example of the fact that you cannot make a distinction any longer between international and domestic terrorism. Indeed, I think that is one of the problems with trying to set up an agency, one of the substantive problems of trying to set up an agency whose role is essentially just to look at domestic terrorism. You cannot do it. You cannot cut it that way any more. And as our report pointed out, it is very important to get a seamless connection between intelligence collected by various agencies overseas and intelligence collected in the United States. A second point I would make is we look very hard at the necessary attributes for the office, whatever the office is, whether it is the one that the distinguished gentleman on Rudman-Hart proposed or one we did or what the President came up with. First of all, I agree with you, Mr. Chairman. I think it should be established by statute. I think it is important for two reasons. It is important for the political reason that the Congress should embrace whatever the new reorganization is going to be. Second, it is important because of the overriding importance that both of our panels stressed on budget. We looked at the attributes of what a new office should have, and in my view came up with four. The new office should have political accountability; that is to say, the person in charge should be appointed and given the advice and consent of the Senate. He should be responsible to the American people through the Senate. We said that should also be at the cabinet level, which is the second attribute. The person in charge of this office should have access and visibility. Third, that office must have budgetary authority, as both of our panels have stressed. In our view, it is important for this office to have an ability to design a national strategy and then to certify whether various departments of the U.S. Government programs are consistent with the President's strategy, and when they are not, to decertify those budget requests as, indeed, has been the case with the Office of National Drug Control for the last decade. Finally, it is important, we thought, for that office to have a certain degree of autonomy and neutrality, not to be seen as an active member of the bureaucratic fights which are so familiar to all of us here inside the Beltway. These fights are almost a necessary part of life in Washington, but in this particular case we thought you need to rise above it. The final point I would make, Senator, is a political point, even though I am not a politician. I have followed this subject now, on and off, for almost 30 years. It is the case that over those 30 years attention to terrorism has been very episodic. In the wake of a terrorist attack, as we are now, there is a lot of attention. There are congressional hearings. There is a lot of stuff on television. There are interviews and articles. After a couple of months in the past, that attention span has gone away. The spotlight moves on to some other subject. One of the problems this country has had in coming up with a coherent counter-terrorist policy is precisely that we do not get sustained attention in a balanced way to this problem. I would urge this Committee and your colleagues in both Houses of Congress to work now with the administration and all of us in trying to keep a sustained attention. It does not mean we need hysteria. We do not need hysteria. As the President said last night, we need to get back to work. We need to show again the great, wonderful resilience of this society, but we need a sustained and balanced attention to this problem that is going to outlive the immediate emotions of this week. Thank you. Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Ambassador Bremer. That was very helpful testimony. I think the last point you made is a critically important one about the attention to terrorism having been episodic over recent decades. When we talk now about a war on terrorism and talk as the President so eloquently did last night about this being a long, sustained struggle, that is what we are talking about. Part of the problem is the elusive nature of the enemy here. It is not as if we can say at any point, well, we have won one battle, but the enemy is still occupying Country A, and the war is not over until it ends. They blend into the darkness, the shadows. But if we are not persistent and do not break the episodic response, we will lower our guard again and once again be victims of attack. So I think your last point is a very important one, and it is part of why a permanent agency, however we decide to shape it, is critically important. Mr. Bremer. People ask how do you define victory? What is our goal? It seems to me our goal is to delegitimize terrorism. We will not, as you point out, ever capture all of the terrorists, but we can delegitimize the practice, and that is our goal. Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much. Our final witness today is David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States, head of the General Accounting Office. He and his extraordinary staff are a constant source of good counsel for this Committee and Congress, generally, in making the government more efficient. Welcome, again, Mr. Walker. Thanks for your testimony. TESTIMONY OF HON. DAVID M. WALKER,\1\ COMPTROLLER GENERAL, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE Mr. Walker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today to discuss a framework for possibly addressing the need to enhance homeland security. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Walker appears in the Appendix on page 53. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- As Senator Thompson said, GAO's past and present strategic plan includesa number of key themes, one of which has been the changing nature of the security threats that this Nation faces in a post-Cold War environment. We have issued over 65 reports dealing with homeland security-related issues during the past 6 years, and we have issued three in the last 3 days, including this report, which is entitled combatting terrorism, selected challenges, and related recommendations. I might also add, for the record, that of the reports that we recently issued, we let the administration know about them at least 6 weeks ago and had an opportunity to be able to relook at them to consider classification and other factors before we released them this week, and we will continue to do that. According to a variety of U.S. intelligence assessments, the United States now confronts a range of increasingly diffuse threats that puts greater destructive power in the hands of small States, groups, and individuals, and threatens our values and way of life. GAO's work indicates that we face a range of challenges in this area that will have to involve many Federal agencies, as well as State and local governments, the private sector, and even private citizens. The Federal Government must address three fundamental needs. First, the government needs clearly defined and effective leadership with clear vision to develop and implement a homeland security strategy in coordination with all relevant partners, both foreign and domestic, and the ability to marshal the necessary resources to get the job done; Second, a national homeland security strategy should be developed based upon a comprehensive assessment of national threats and risks; and, Third, a large number of organizations will need to be involved in addressing homeland security. They need to have clearly articulated roles, responsibilities, and accountability mechanisms in order to get the job done. Crafting a strategy for homeland security involves reducing the risk, where possible; assessing the Nation's vulnerabilities; and identifying the critical infrastructure most in need of protection. To be comprehensive, the strategy should include steps to use intelligence assets and other means to identify attackers and prevent attacks before they occur, harden potential targets to minimize the damage from an attack, and effectively manage the consequences of the incident. In addition, the strategy should focus resources on the areas of greatest need and measure performance against specified goals and objectives. Because the plan will need to be executed nationally, the Federal Government can assign roles to Federal agencies once the strategy is developed, but also will need to develop coordinated partnerships with State and local governments, as well as with private and not-for-profit entities. Effective homeland security will require forming international partnerships to identify attackers, prevent attacks and retaliate if there are attacks. It will also require efforts by both the Executive and Legislative Branches of the Federal Government. As I mentioned, Mr. Chairman, just yesterday we issued this report which discusses challenges confronting policy makers on the war on terrorism and offers a series of recommendations. One of these recommendations is that the government needs a more clearly defined and effective leadership to develop a strategy for combatting terrorism and assuring the security of our homeland, to oversee development of a new national threat and risk assessment, and to coordinate implementation among Federal agencies. Similar leadership is also needed for the broader issue of homeland security. President Bush, as has been noted, announced the creation of a new cabinet-level office of homeland security and the nomination of Governor Tom Ridge to head that office. Important details have not been provided. It is important to understand what the nature and extent of this office will be, what control it will have over resources, what responsibilities it will have with regard to the determination and the implementation of the strategy, whether or not this will be a statutory position, whether or not this will be a term appointment, and there are a variety of questions that we believe are important that the Congress needs to ask in order to make sure that, in substance, this can be an effective approach. I think the fact of the matter is that whether we end up having a particular vertical silo or a department agency deal with this or whether you take a horizontal approach because we believe this is a horizontal issue, you will never be able to combine all of the different entities that are going to have to address this issue. In fact, as has been mentioned, there has not been a recommendation to combine the military elements, the law-enforcement elements, the intelligence elements, and certain other elements. Therefore you need to consider whether or not there should be some combination, but in any event, there is going to have to be coordination across a number of boundaries, across a number of silos, both foreign and domestic, not just at the Federal Government level, but also State and local, the not- for-profit and the private sector because, after all, the private sector owns a lot of the critical infrastructure that is exposed. The United States does not currently have a national threat and risk-assessment mechanism to guide Federal programs for homeland security. Given the tragic events of Tuesday, September 11, a comprehensive national threat and risk assessment that addresses all threats has become an urgent need. In addition, as this report notes, neither the Executive Branch nor the Congress is well-organized to address this issue. In my statement, Mr. Chairman, I summarize a number of areas where GAO has done work relating to these issues, combatting terrorism, aviation security, cyber security, international crime control, public health, a variety of areas. Finally, let me note that we believe that there are four key questions that need to be addressed in connection with this issue, as noted on this chart:\1\ (1) What are our vision and our national objectives to make the homeland more secure? (2) What essential elements should comprise the government's strategy for homelansecurity? (3) How should the executive branch and the Congress be organized to address homeland security issues? and (4) How should we assess the effectiveness of any homeland security strategy implementation to address the spectrum of threats? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ Chart referred to appears in the Appendix on page 64. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- As you might imagine, Mr. Chairman, homeland security issues are now at the top of the national agenda as a result of last week's tragic events. Obviously, our work has not been able to be updated to reflect all of the actions that the administration has taken in the last 2 weeks. We expect that at some point in time we will be asked to do so. We stand ready to continue to assist this Committee and the Congress in addressing homeland security and a range of other issues. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Mr. Walker. Thank you all for your very direct and relevant testimony. Again, I want to express my regrets that the other Members of the Committee are not here, and I know it is because both parties have chosen to hold caucuses this morning, so hopefully as they end, they will be here. But for better or worse, I have a lot of questions that I want to ask all of you, and I am sure my colleagues will review the record. Let me begin, before we get to the discussion about which is the appropriate response structure for the Congress to choose, to ask you to talk just a bit more about what we mean by ``homeland defense.'' And I am just going to throw something out and ask you all to put some more leaves on the tree here. I take it that what we mean is taking efforts to prevent or secure potential targets of terrorist or other enemy attack on the homeland, and then if they, God forbid, occur, to be certain that we are prepared to react quickly and comprehensively in a way that diminishes human suffering. But I wonder if you could just go through this a little bit in terms of what you saw, what you learned and the considerable work you did, to help build a record, but also help inform the public as to what we are actually talking about here when we say ``homeland defense.'' Senator Rudman, you want to begin? Senator Rudman. I will be pleased to. I think probably all of us would agree on this at this panel. We have all determined that there are major threats out there. We define the threats as weapons of mass destruction, and we specifically referred to weapons of mass disruption, which is what we saw on September 11. We must look at the three things with which the government has to organize itself in order to deal with that. One is to prevent, if possible. The second is to protect. And the third is to respond. And that is a Federal, State, local responsibility, particularly the response. Obviously, the most important one, in terms if you could make it work, would be the prevention. But I can tell you, having served, as you know, for many years on the Senate Intelligence Committee, having chaired the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board for a long time, I have to tell you, Senator Lieberman, and I wish more people would be saying it, we should not let the American people think that intelligence, no matter how good, is ever going to be good enough to prevent all of these things from happening. Historically, intelligence agencies throughout the world, going back to the late 1800's, are very good at assessing capabilities and threats. They have been very poor at figuring out people's intentions. If they were good at figuring out intentions, even though they knew what the threat was, we would not have had Pearl Harbor, we would not have had the Battle of the Bulge, and Saddam Hussein would not have got into Kuwait, because we had the basic intelligence. We did not know what the intentions were. So we talk about prevention, we talk about intelligence, and Ambassador Bremer is quite right, we leave most of those activities where they are now. They should not be transferred. When we talk about prevention, a lot of that is intelligence, but a lot of it has to do with the kind of physical security that we have seen here in Washington over the last few years, and which unfortunately, we will probably be seeing more of around the country. That will be an inconvenience, but I do not think a loss of freedom. It will be an inconvenience. When we talk about response, we are talking about what I think Governor Gilmore has very eloquently laid out, this response depends heavily on local and State organizations, but you do not get these things to work right unless you do a lot of war gaming, if you will, long before these things happen. And one final thing. We have all admired Mayor Giuliani and Governor Pataki and the extraordinary job that they have done, and they have done it in an incredible city that has incredible resources of fire and police and emergency workers, and they have done war gaming in New York. I am aware of it. Their hospitals have gone through a number of exercises to deal with things. But the fact is that most places in our country do not have that capacity or that experience or have not exercised these things. And that is why the response side of it is so very important, and I think to some extent the Gilmore Commission properly, because of its charge, has dealt more directly with the response side of this than certainly we have. We have talked about it generally, but not with that kind of specificity. Chairman Lieberman. So one of the responsibilities of the agency or the office would be to aggressively see to it that local, State, and Federal agencies are better prepared than they are today to respond to such attacks. Senator Rudman. The major responsibility. In fact, it is being done now. It has been done by a number of cities with the aid of the military in some cases. One of the Marine divisions has done exercises in the Southwest in local communities to try to help them. But the fact is, it is sporadic. The resources have not been there, and we have got to get the resources out there. Let me just say one other thing, because I know we are going to get to it, and I would rather say it now and then let the other panel talk about it. This is an honest disagreement about organization between people of good will who respect what each other have done, and I admire what they have done, and it is a major contribution. But, I come at it differently based on my experience in government, and let me just lay it out in a way that I think everybody can understand. We have an intelligence czar in this country. He is called the Director of Central Intelligence, and everybody really believes that he runs intelligence in this government, but anybody on the Intelligence Committee can tell you that--and I cannot talk in detail because it is classified--but with a relatively small percentage of the intelligence budget being in the CIA. He is also dual-hatted. He is the Director of the CIA and he is Director of Central Intelligence, and some people do not understand the distinction. He has no control over the budget authority, the activities of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He has little control over the National Security Agency and many other defense agencies. And everyone who has studied it has said that it does not work as well as it should because he does not have the budget authority for the command or the control. We have come at this by saying that at least when it comes to our borders, Border Patrol, Customs, Coast Guard, and FEMA, because of what it does, which the Gilmore Commission has written about, we believe that that consolidation is important because it belongs more properly there than where it currently resides. We certainly are not talking about taking all of those other activities and moving them into this new agency, certainly not. But I want to answer your question more broadly than you asked it. Thank you very much. Chairman Lieberman. The kind of straight talk we have come to respect from you, Senator Rudman. Thank you. Senator Hart, before you answer, let me add an addendum to the question as you are prepared to answer in this way. But one of the things, I think, we are all feeling now after September 11, as we saw the insanely inhumane acts of these terrorists, that one of the things we are not doing is thinking like they are. So as we talk about preparation, we have to really begin to think beyond what would be normally unthinkable for us, and one of the things that I think we have to think about, and I know that your commission looked at, is the possibility of a chemical or biological attack on the United States. So I wonder, as you give the answer to my initial question, whether you would give us some help in examples of what a homeland security agency would do to, in some sense prevent, but also protect and respond to such an attack if it ever occurred? Senator Hart. Well, obviously, such an agency would not itself combine either the military or the police functions of our country which are, as Governor Gilmore said, distributed on at least three levels of government. The direct response, counterterrorism, if you will, will come from the military and come from police agencies broadly defined. Senator Rudman accurately stated the way our commission broke down the threat. Try to find out who has evil intent against this country, who they are, how they are organized, how they are financed, and to the degree possible, what their intentions are. Now, their intentions are to do harm to the United States. What you try to find out is when and how, and that is the hardest part. Then if you get a sense, any sense that this threat is imminent, you try to stop it at the borders using all the assets that we have presently uncoordinated. Chairman Lieberman. It is a very important point. Excuse me. And that is why you focused on the coordination of the agencies that control access of people or goods into the United States. Senator Hart. And the reason why I stress, frankly, this problem with bureaucracy is that those agencies had a different mission. I mean they are where they are for a different purpose. Border Patrol is in Justice because it is a law enforcement agency. It is trying to prevent people from illegally entering the country. Customs is the Treasury because its purpose originally was to collect revenues. Coast Guard regulates incoming and outgoing seaborne traffic, makes rescues and so on, but that historic function was a Transportation function. Now these are front-line defense organizations. It frankly makes little sense for them to be where they are given their new responsibility. If we are in fact in war, and I believe we are, in a prolonged war, the nature and function of these agencies has changed. So the reason why they are where they are, frankly, makes very little sense any more, and to protect that bureaucratic turf, as I have indicated, under these circumstances is folly. If the bad guys get inside our country, then the prevent is to try to get them before they act, any way you can, and again, this is FBI, local law enforcement, every asset you have. And finally, if they act, to limit the damage, bringing together FEMA, State and local agencies, and so forth, under one command. I think what is important, on September 11 the nature of warfare changed. You have to get your mind around that concept, the nature of warfare changed. Now, it has been changing since the colonial area. The rise of guerilla warfare, that gave way to terrorism. In the Cold War we helped support some people that are now--these people that are now trying to kill us on the theory that the enemy of our enemy is our friend. But the nature of warfare has changed, and the distinction between war and crime has changed. Had there been a couple of fewer zeroes, had 50 or 60 people been killed, it would have been a crime--6,000 to 7,000 is war. Now, how many people have to die when it quits being crime and becomes war is a matter that theoreticians can debate. So what we are seeing now, what we have to think about differently is to bring assets of the military and policy together, and frankly, I think it will lead to the creation of an entirely new kind of paramilitary capability, something combining Delta Force, Rangers, Seals, some Special Forces of the Marines, and maybe they will not wear uniforms. But that is another whole subject. I think Senator Rudman, for the commission, has very accurately answered your original question. Chairman Lieberman. Do you want to take me up on the question of how, just to give an example, a homeland security agency would prevent or protect and respond regarding chemical or biological attack? Senator Hart. Try to find a way to inspect more than 2 or 3 percent of the containers coming into the country. We had one scenario we discussed of a small tactical warhead, nuclear warhead, begin in one of the inspected sealed containers, shipped from Shanghai or from Singapore to Newark by way of the Chicago Rail Yards, off loaded in the Long Beach Port, put on a train. The train is reorganized in the Chicago yards, and you use global positioning triggering to blow up the nuclear warhead. Got to stop them at the borders I think. Now, you get the chemical, everybody knows chemical is hard to do. All the experts will tell you how hard it is to disperse the chemicals. Biological agents is a little bit different, and here, Ambassador Bremer is much more an authority than I and many members of the commission were, but I am told you can disperse smallpox virus from an aerosol can. now, how we are going to find every aerosol can coming into this country is going to be very, very tough. The only answer I can give you is do our very, very best to stop whatever the agent is at the border. Chairman Lieberman. Thank you. Governor Gilmore. Governor Gilmore. Senator Lieberman, there is so much to say, let me see if I can organize this in a way that is efficient. Our panel evaluated chemical, biological, nuclear, and radiological. These are the classic weapons of mass destruction. We evaluated them. We were absolutely unwilling to dismiss the possibility of those kinds of attacks, although we examined very closely the difficulty of delivery of those kinds of attacks. Yes, you can certainly deliver them in an aerosol can and so on like that, so we have focused our attention, for example, on the organization of health and medical, which will be discussed in our next report, so that physicians and the communities will begin to trigger those kinds of responses with the Center for Disease Control in a rapid way so that we can address those kinds of issues. Biological is an extremely serious matter, nuclear as well, although we considered them relatively unlikely, although catastrophic, and that is why we must address them. On the other hand, a conventional attack, such as the one we have just experienced we thought was highly likely, and that is why we call for a national strategy not a Federal strategy, a national strategy that absolutely incorporates in the locals and the States. They are the cops on the beat. They are the State troopers. They are the local physicians in the local clinics. They are the people in the hospitals that are going to be the responders who are going to see these issues first, and then allow a circumvention of the problem at the earliest possible moment. I know you are going to go to the issue of the national office and coordination types of issues. That has been the central point of our commission, and we are anxious to talk about that, but we have not discussed moving agencies because, as has been so widely discussed by everybody on this panel, it is fairly fruitless to move agencies. They are doing other things, too, besides terrorism. But aside from that, there are so many, that it requires not movement or restructure, but coordination, and we will be happy to return to that topic, but we will put it aside for just a moment so that I can be responsive to your question. The terrorist has the absolute advantage. He picks the time and the place and the manner of the attack. And the freer the society, the stronger the terrorist is. That is why America becomes the target of opportunity because we are the freest society in the world. So we have tried to analyze this into two pieces. Let me just take them up quickly. One is the issue of response. The Pentagon is a perfect example, and I am the Governor of the State in which the Pentagon is located. The minute that I saw the second plane go into the World Trade Center, we triggered the Emergency Operation Response System in Virginia immediately. What that does is automatically hooks into FEMA. This is a program that has been in place for years and years. And I have some good news for you, Senator--this is something that actually works, and it works very well. You do not get competition between FEMA and the local State authorities and localities. All of these professionals work well in coordination together, and they did in the Pentagon situation, as a matter of fact. I will not dwell on some of the other issues that I took specifically in Virginia, but I want to say that our panel has concluded that there is a system in place on the response already that works well, although there is, of course, much to do to prepare for that response. That is the office of the local and national coordinator dealing with all of these other types of issues. Chairman Lieberman. Let me just interrupt and punctuate that. I think it is an important point, because though all of the work that has been done here has shown inadequacies either in preparedness or in organization, perhaps it is saying the obvious, but it bears saying at a time when the American people's confidence has been shaken, there is a lot out there now in all these three categories--prevent, protect and respond--not as much as any of you or we would like, and not as well organized or coordinated as we would like, but I appreciate your example. Governor Gilmore. And it is working in New York also very, very well. Now, when you get over into the issue of chemical, biological, nuclear, and you go into a factor of 10 or 100 times what we have already seen this week, then it requires a coordinator to do a national strategy to be prepared. But the final point that I would make is the one that you, I think, were approaching before you move onto your governmental structure issue, and that is the one of prevention. We have thoroughly addressed that issue as a matter of fact. We focused a great deal of attention on the intelligence community. I was in the intelligence community in the early 1970's as a low-level agent in the U.S. Army. I was trained on human intelligence. But it was very clear very quickly that the intelligence community was getting out of human intelligence in the early 1970's. We were moving more technologically into satellites, into your electronic intercept, which are doing extremely well. But we have been out of the human intelligence for a long time in its most complete and comprehensive fashion. We believe you must go back in. How can you determine intent of conspirators unless you make an effort to get into the conspiracy and find out the information from the inside. And there are many ways you can confirm the reliability of that kind of information. One of our points is we believe that the rule against the recruitment of terrorists and criminals overseas should be dropped. It is not fun to do business with bad guys, but bad guys are the ones that we have to try to stop. And as a result of that, you have to find--as I have said in local media and national media, the terrorists worldwide must wake up every morning wondering who in their organization is informing on them to the Central Intelligence Agency. Chairman Lieberman. Well said. Governor Gilmore. That is what we must do. And then third, we believe that there must be dissemination of intelligence up and down the line vertically, Federal, State and local. Unheard of in the intelligence business, but we believe, as a panel, that you can qualify people, that you can clear them, you can give them need-to-know, and you can have the same security that you would have inside any given agency, and we believe that begins to disseminate the information as necessary. In addition, of course, we focused a great deal of attention also in health and medical and on border. I emphasized border in my opening statement, because we believe that you can in fact apply all of these approaches in order to secure your border types of issues, and you must use the locals. When the terrorist picks the random target because of his advantage of secrecy and because of surprise, you have got to want to have the local policemen see it and be alert to looking for it before it occurs. Chairman Lieberman. Thank you. Ambassador Bremer. Mr. Bremer. I will just make two brief points. First, Senator Rudman is absolutely right about the problems of intelligence. I have been in the foreign affairs community for about 35 years now, and I know of no area where intelligence is more vital than in counterterrorism. If you do not have good intelligence, you do not have a policy. It does not matter what you have got on the borders or anywhere else, and that is really the answer to your question about how we stop the hypothetical example that Senator Hart talked about. The only way to stop that is to have good intelligence and the only way to get good intelligence, as the Governor points out, is to have human resources. So it will not stop it all. As Senator Rudman said, the American people have to be aware that there will be further attacks, but without intelligence, there is no point in talking about the rest of this stuff. You have to do that right. Second point, and here I may have a disagreement with my Chairman, in which case he can disavow me. I think in fact one of the bridging ideas between these two panels involves immigration and border control. I could imagine, myself, putting together an agency, where you could take Coast Guard, Customs, Border Patrol, and I would throw in INS, and make an agency that is called the Immigration and Border Control Agency or some other such thing, where you pull together these things that have indeed been sort of bureaucratically encrusted over the decades, in some cases, centuries, to take a really serious look at the problem of what kind of regulations there are for letting people and things into this country. And that would be consistent with our having a homeland agency, whatever it is going to be called that Governor Ridge is going to head. No contradiction there. So it is one of those ideas that maybe between the two panels one could find---- Chairman Lieberman. Mr. Walker, from GAO's work, comment about what a homeland agency would actually do? Mr. Walker. Well, first, I think, one has to focus on what is homeland security, and then you have to look at how do you go about trying to achieve it. I think on the ``what'', in our view, it is a lot broader than many people have assumed. I mean you obviously have the traditional national defense issues that we have always dealt with, but you also have the nontraditional threats that both of these commissions have dealt with. The scope is very broad. It deals with transportation issues, as we saw last week very dramatically, financial issues, cyber issues, public health issues, immigration and border issues, drugs, a whole variety of areas. I think our objectives really need to be threefold. First, avoid events; second, to maximize preparedness; and third, to manage the consequences. I would make an observation. I think last week dramatically illustrated how Federal, State and local entities, and how public and private sector entities, can rise above silos and narrow institutional interests and borders that are real or perceived, and manage consequences with outstanding results. We need to figure out how we can best (1) avoid events, (2) maximize preparation, and (3) manage a crisis if an event occur. Chairman Lieberman. Have your folks done any work on--I keep coming back to them--chemical and biological? In other words, I think what has been said is the difficulty of preventing here, apart from intelligence, very high, very difficult. So perhaps part of this is response and the state of our preparedness now to respond. Has your office done any work on that? Mr. Walker. Mr. Chairman, we have done some work on bio- terrorism and on the chem-bio area. We have got some work ongoing right now with regard to that. Some additional reports are be coming out soon. I would be happy to provide information on that if you so desire. Chairman Lieberman. Senator Rudman. Senator Rudman. I just want to add one thing that I think none of us have addressed, but I am sure we all agree with. I think it was Vince Lombardi who said the best defense is a good offense. I mean since the intelligence community is very good at assessing the threat and the capability and knowing many of these organizations and the foreign governments that support them, the best way to start to cut down the threat is to eliminate the threat. And I thought the President was very eloquent last night when he said to these people out there, ``Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.'' Now, that has not been U.S. policy for a long time irrespective of which party held the White House. That has not been U.S. policy. If that is U.S. policy and we are serious about it and the American people recognize that there will be loss of life amongst the military to protect our freedoms, then the best thing we can do is to start eliminating the threat. You will never get all of it, but you can sure get a lot of it if you work at it, and I think that is precisely how I read what the President had to say last night. Chairman Lieberman. A very important point. Apart from the eloquence, the fact that the President dealt with the public's fear and anger very constructively, what was stated last night and is reflected in both parties in Congress, this is a totally new policy to finally catch up with and meet the new threats whose reality became painfully clear to us last Tuesday, but we have turned a corner both in terms of the search and pursuit of terrorists internationally and in our willingness and commitment to defend ourselves here at home from their attacks. Senator Rudman. And unfortunately, but not unsurprisingly, in a democracy such as ours, it took what happened on September 11 to galvanize everyone to that point of view. Chairman Lieberman. Right. Let me ask the members of the two commissions now to engage directly on the question of the organizational response. I think you see the problem in very similar terms, and each commission said homeland attacks are likely, there are agencies out there working on it, but they need to be coordinated. And let me ask you each why you chose the course you did and why you did not choose the other recommendation? Senator Rudman. Well, we chose our plan for really two reasons. First, it was the collective wisdom of that panel--and if you look at that panel they are people with extraordinary experience in Federal Government, not local and State, which is very important for what the Gilmore Commission--but they are all people who have held major positions in the Federal Government. If you want to take the Border Patrol and leave it where it is, and leave Customs where it is, and leave Coast Guard where it is, and have someone in the White House, no matter how friendly the President or how good, and assume that person will strongly influence those agencies, it is not going to happen. Now, we believe that. Others may not, but we believe that. Now, certainly we set up a liaison agency here if you will. If you look at, have your staffs later look at page 17 of our report, and again, on the emergency side on page 21, you will see the organization. Why it is written that way and why it is done that way is we said let us try to protect the borders, and I think Senator Hart has said that as well as it can be said, and I think Ambassador Bremer has indicated that he thinks maybe in some other form that might work. That has to be done in our view. Beyond that, you have to have this agency, whether it is an office in the White House or a cabinet department, we think a cabinet department. Once you get that reorganization done, there will be time to do all of the things that these two commissions say need to be done, Federal, State and local. But I have to tell you, Mr. Chairman, I have enormous respect for the Governor and his commission, but I have seen others come into the White House with supposedly high- visibility positions, and a few months went by, and they were not reporting to the President, they were talking to some staff aide--I hate to be that blunt, but I am just going to lay it out the way it is--and the Secretary of Defense is not in the White House. He is sitting over in Virginia. But he is important, and when he wants to see the President, he sees the President, and we believe that you could have a cabinet secretary with the same kind of responsibilities without being necessarily located at the White House. But we think the reorganization is very important from a functional point of view. Chairman Lieberman. Senator Hart. Senator Hart. I think it gets down to one word, and that is accountability. If a White House office has authority to coordinate, the agencies that it has authority to coordinate are not necessarily accountable to that office. They are accountable to their department head, cabinet secretary or whatever. They will accept the coordination recommendations. There will be a lot of task forces and working groups and so forth, but no one is accountable. No one is accountable today. The President of the United States, but I think the President has, in his wisdom, understood that he cannot run this operation. Somebody else has to. The question is: What is most effective? What is effective? Is there a single person accountable to the President and the American people? And I do not think, whether it was energy in the 1970's, drugs in the 1990's, as much power as you give the czar or whatever you want to call that person, they are ultimately accountable. Chairman Lieberman. Governor, you have served as a Governor, you know the importance of authority and accountability, why not go with an agency such as the Senators have described? Governor Gilmore. Senator, obviously, we are very respectful of the other panel's conclusions and its suggestions, and it is on the table for debate just like every other issue, and that is what we are engaged in right now. Our sense as a panel was that a national security coordinator type of model perhaps works better. This is a single person who is in fact accountable. And as the President said last night, that Governor Ridge would be reporting directly to him. We think that is setting off in the right direction. We have to remember, Senator, that an attack by the terrorists and the entire community of terrorists can be on the fabric of a complete free society, and it can be anywhere at any time at anywhere. So how do you ever conglomerate every aspect of the society into one homeland agency? Instead the emphasis needs to be on coordination of all agencies as needed, as planned, as part of an overall strategy for the national strategy. I think it was said a little while ago that the big dogs are still going to be there to run, and we understand that, because the major people in national security, the Secretary of Defense, the Director of Central Intelligence, they all have duties to do, and they are going to want to do them in the most effective possible way that they can. If they are competing just with simply another agency on the same level in the same way, then there is going to be the danger and hazard. There is going to be turf battles and back and forth, but if the President is basically operating this business through his national coordinator, his national office, that it is the President's authority that then begins to coordinate and manage from the top, and then at that point I think you begin to be able to put something together in a coordinated way. Chairman Lieberman. How about the argument that the Senators make that unless there is direct line and budget authority, that the office in the White House is not going to be as effective as it should be? Governor Gilmore. We agree. As a matter of fact, we have proposed in our reports that in fact that the national coordinator have in fact budget authority within the area of terrorism, so that a national strategy goes into place each and every department and agency fits within it, including its plan for its expenditures so it can be spent in the most effective possible way, and that there be a certification process where this individual looks not just at his agency, but at all agencies in order to determine whether or not the spending and the budgetary considerations are coordinating with the national strategy. Chairman Lieberman. Ambassador Bremer. Mr. Bremer. Both of these suggestions involve pretty dramatic changes in the Executive Branch, so either way we are up to some pretty dramatic changes. I am very sensitive to the point that the Rudman-Hart panel made about the difficulties of coordination. It actually can work without direct budgetary-- without command and control authority, and the example I would give is exactly how the government has coordinated its international counterterrorist policy over the last 15 years, and I was intimately involved in setting up that process back in the second Reagan Administration. And effectively, it is a person on the NSC who does that coordination. Now, he had no authority over me as Ambassador-at-Large for Counterterrorism, nor over the CIA, nor over the other concerned agencies, but was able by virtue in fact of being located in the NSC, to coordinate. You could say, well, why do we not just do the same thing? Well, the answer is, he is not politically accountable. No President, and for very good reasons in my view, having been in the Executive Branch, is going to have NSC people be accountable to Congress. And therefore, when we got looking at this question, we came back to this question about budget authority and political accountability, and concluded you need to have it be cabinet level. It needs to be somebody with the advice and consent of the Senate appointed, and he needs to have the budgetary authority that we put in our report. Chairman Lieberman. Mr. Walker, let me ask you first, and then the others if they want to respond. Are these two proposals mutually exclusive? Mr. Walker. You read my mind, Mr. Chairman. I do not think they are mutually exclusive. Chairman Lieberman. Spending too much time with you, David. Mr. Walker. We spend a lot of time together, and I enjoy it, personally. I do not think they are fundamentally at odds. The fact of the matter is that you have 40 to 50 plus Federal entities that are going to be involved in this fight. There is no question about it. And theoretically you could say that there are certain entities that you might be able to consolidate. As Senator Hart said before, there are some entities that are merely placed where they are today based upon what they were originally focused on decades ago, and those reasons may no longer be the most important reasons or even valid in some circumstances. And, by the way, there are a lot of other government departments and agencies outside of homeland security that are in the same situation. You could theoretically consolidate a number of those that should be focused primarily on what we could all define as being homeland security. But even if you do that, a vast majority of the resources and a vast majority of the people that are going to be necessary in order to accomplish the three objectives that I talked about before, are not going to be in that entity in all likelihood. And therefore, you still have to have some means to have somebody, as Senator Hart said, who has overall responsibility and accountability, who has the ability, as Governor Gilmore has said, to be able to have control not only over the planning, but the execution, who has some direct involvement in control over people, process and technology, even if they are not in that entity that you have consolidated. And so I think there are several dimensions of this challenge that have to be addressed. Chairman Lieberman. Senator Rudman, I presume you could not have an office in the White House and an agency dealing exclusively with homeland security, or does that seem like an unnecessary overlap? The fact is that you cannot include everything in the Homeland Security Agency related to terrorism or weapons of mass destruction. Senator Rudman. Let me answer the question that you just have posed to us, because I think there are some great similarities here. Let us understand what our commission recommended in terms of government reorganization. The only area that we considered in the area of government reorganization was ``protect the border,'' because that is so fundamental. I mean, we would all agree, if you cannot protect the border better than we are doing now, then no matter how good your intelligence, how good your response, you got big- time trouble coming at you. So we said--and I think Gary Hart put it better than I can--here is what these people used to do, here is why they were created. Let us protect the border and take Coast Guard, Border Patrol, and Customs. Now, that goes into a cabinet-level agency which has all of the kinds of responsibilities that Governor Gilmore and Ambassador Bremer have talked about, and the comptroller general, in terms of coordinating, I believe it is 51, take away three after you took those three agents, but it is 48 disparate government responsibilities in the area of responding, protecting, and preventing terrorism. And I think the only difference is, that we are saying that Governor Ridge would be confirmed by the Senate. He would sit at the cabinet table. He would not be competing with other people's resource in that area. Those three entities would have their budget about to where they are now or increased by the Congress, but the only agents to be moved in would be that which protected the border. All of the others, and we all know the obvious, the Defense Department, CIA, FBI, but there is HHS and the Governor probably knows even more than that, having dealt with them as a Governor, they would still be where they are, but they would be subject to strong coordinative authority issued by the Congress in statutory language and the President by Executive Order to get it done. So I do not think there is a huge difference about what we are talking about here. But we are very firm about the fact that these three agencies ought to be where they are, and FEMA, of course, which we think is a major building block. Senator Hart said to our group, about 2 years ago, when we were debating some of these things, ``Let us not recommend to the Congress and to the President that which we think is politically doable. Let us submit, in our report, what we think ought to be done.'' And this was one of the big hot buttons, and we knew it at the time. That is no reason it should not be done. Chairman Lieberman. The big hot button was bringing those agencies---- Senator Rudman. Was bringing these three, taking them away from where they are. Chairman Lieberman. Let me ask you the question while we are on it, because I was going to ask it in a while, which is: What about the other functions of those agencies, particularly Coast Guard, but also Customs and Border Patrol, but particularly Coast Guard, that are not directly related to homeland defense, such as navigational security that the Coast Guard does? Senator Rudman. They would keep their absolute identities, just as the Coast Guard did when it went into the Department of Transportation. Its mission did not change. Its mission was the same. Chairman Lieberman. Right. Senator Rudman. All we are saying is that a very heavy part of their responsibility, those three agencies, is border security from goods and from people, and we think they ought to be together. Chairman Lieberman. Governor Gilmore, are these two proposals mutually exclusive? I mean, could you envision yourself being supportive of a kind of agency that would combine FEMA, Border Patrol, Customs, Coast Guard, that Senator Rudman has talked about? Governor Gilmore. Senator Lieberman, the essence of legislative life is a combination of different proposals. Chairman Lieberman. Spoken like a Governor. [Laughter.] Governor Gilmore. No, spoken like a legislator, I believe. Chairman Lieberman. I accept your amendment, spoken like a former legislator. Governor Gilmore. Naturally, we are all very deeply respectful of every proposal that is here, and I am confident that they could be harmonized, and that they could be accommodated to each other if that is what it takes in order to pass a piece of legislation and to get the votes. From an executive point of view, sometimes you must choose that which is best, and weigh and balance the different options as meritorious as each of them may be, and ultimately choose. Our belief has been that the answer here was not any bureaucracy, but a vehicle for management, and a vehicle for management. I believe the President has established a vehicle for management with Governor Ridge last night. I suppose that one could put these pieces together, and you could have an agency. It would then go into the cabinet I suppose, a border cabinet position or something, or an agency, something of that nature. And then it would fight for turf, budget issues, and accommodations and influence with other perhaps bigger dogs. That is all right. But ultimately, we believe the ultimate answer is the coordination, budget authority, planning of a national strategy from a national terrorism office that I believe that the President has now established. Chairman Lieberman. Anyone else want to comment on that last question? If not, let me go to another part of this. I noticed my staff gave me two articles from the Defense Trade Press today in which there were statements made, attributed to people in the Pentagon, that we are talking about defense here. So why should this not go under someone in the Defense Department? Why should there not be a new unified command for homeland defense? Presumably, although the article is not totally clear on this, that would include the border control agencies and even the preparedness that we are talking about. Senator Hart. Senator Hart. Two and a half reasons. One is the Constitution of the United States. The second is the Posse Comitatus Law. The third is this practical necessity. The constitutional argument dates to the constitutional debate. What we did then, 225 years ago, was create two armies. The Federalists wanted a standing army and navy to protect American commercial interests broad, Alexander Hamilton. The anti-Federalists were afraid, dating to classic Republican theory from the Greek city-states, that a standing army in peacetime in a republic was a danger. So they insisted that the defense of the homeland be in the hands of the militia, and the militia would be under the control of the States, and that was the compromise. Now, the militia, in the late 19th Century, became the National Guard. In the 20th Century the National Guard became an auxiliary expeditionary force, and that's the way they think of themselves. But the fact of the matter is, their primary duty under the Constitution is to defend the homeland of the United States. Now, as Senator Rudman has appropriately said, we have not said that is their exclusive duty. They have not heard what we said, but we have not said that is their exclusive duty. They can still keep their, and need to keep their ability as a follow-on expeditionary force, that a primary, if not the primary, mission of the National Guard is to defend the homeland. That is the constitutional argument. The statutory argument, as you know, prohibits the use of American troops, regular army forces, on our soil, absent declaration by Congress. And that goes back to, oddly enough, a very closely-contested national election in 1874. So you have got a statutory prohibition against the Defense Department running this thing in effect. And practically, as Senator Rudman said, National Guard units are forward deployed in 2,100 different units around the country. Now, you are going to get the argument that the Guard is ``weekend warriors,'' and incompetent. Wrong. If the National Guard can fight world wars, and it has, it can defend the homeland. It has to be properly trained and equipped. It is to today? Largely not, but if it is made a national priority and the Commander in Chief orders it done, it will be done. These are citizen soldiers. These are people in the communities and if you need--if the terrorists take over a downtown office building in Denver, it is going to be a while before the 82nd Airborne Division gets there and the damage may be done. But the Governor knows you can mobilize the Guard awfully fast and special units particularly, and if you have had any prior warning, they can be ready to go. They are in the streets of New York. They were within hours, not too many hours. So I focused my attention here on the Guard because it is the solution to the question that you have asked. It is a constitutional military power under the control of the States, locally deployed, and trainable and equipable for this mission. Chairman Lieberman. I admire your answer, appreciate it. You must have had some very interesting sessions of this commission. Senator Hart. You do not know the half of it. Chairman Lieberman. Well, I do not want to hear half of it. [Laughter.] Senator Rudman. Well, let me tell you, interesting enough, Newt Gingrich, who was the father of this idea, on the theory that no good deed goes unpunished, when he left the House, was put on this commission. And he is a historian who brought a lot of insight. Let me just add one thing to answer your question. The military made it very clear they do not want this primary responsibility. That is not theirs. They have enough to do protecting the Nation overseas, and they do not think that they should have it. However, everyone agrees, that if we had had a chemical, a nuclear or a biological incident in this country, it is only the active force military with the National Guard that would have the resources to deal with the horrendous situation that would face the country under those circumstance. That is a response issue. Chairman Lieberman. Let me ask you just a quick question here about the role of the National Guard as you contemplate it in homeland defense. If you take your tripartheid approach of the responsibilities of the Homeland Security Agency, prevent, protect and respond, is it primarily in the respond part that you see the Guard being active? Senator Rudman. Yes, it is. Some protection, but mainly response, and I think Governor Gilmore would be in a better position to tell you when they have had disasters in Virginia, hurricanes and whatnot, I mean there is nothing like the Guard, even though many are not trained to do that. We say they need specific training to deal with these kind of contingencies. Chairman Lieberman. What were you thinking about, Senator Hart, when you said there might be a role in protection as well? Senator Hart. Well, let us hypothesize, which I hate to do because in an interview a few days ago I said this could happen in Nashville, Denver and Seattle, and my phone has been ringing off the hook from people in those three cities. Take a city, Hartford. [Laughter.] Chairman Lieberman. Thanks. [Laughter.] Senator Hart. Sorry. Chairman Lieberman. What was your phone number? [Laughter.] Senator Hart. Let us say intelligence picks up a threat. Let us say the intelligence is precise enough to say probably a capital city in New England. I can see the Guard, units of the Guard, not the whole Connecticut National Guard, but units specially trained, paramilitary units of the Guard, in a protective role, working with the State patrol, the local Hartford police, to find them and prevent them from acting. Chairman Lieberman. Good example. Governor, how about the role of the military generally, why the commission decided to not ask the Pentagon to take this over, and then specifically, uniquely as Governor, how you see the role of the National Guard here? Governor Gilmore. Senator Lieberman, this is a very important question, and I want to be as forthright as I can. We also will be addressing an entire provision of our third report to the issue of the use of the military. We have had thorough discussion about it over a long period of time. We absolutely reject the Department of Defense playing a leading role even in the event of a weapon of mass destruction catastrophic attack should the President conclude that only regular military can step in to help, even then we recommend that that be subordinate to a Federal civilian agency, logically FEMA. If the military has to be engaged, they should be engaged only at the request and in support of FEMA and the combined operation of State and local people as well. We reject the use of the military in any first type of response. It is exactly what the enemy wants, is to have United States military people patrolling the streets of our Nation and imbuing our citizens with the idea that they are to be controlled by uniform military people. It is absolutely against the American tradition. And furthermore, Senator, I have made some statements, and I believe that I reflect the panel's feelings, that we should never ask any American to give up any civil right in return for security. The civil rights and human rights of the people of the United States under the Constitution are absolutely paramount, and we should not give the enemy the win to say that we should in any way compromise any of that. As a former elected prosecutor, I know that you can take actions consistent with the Constitution and security--the Fourth, the Fifth, and the Sixth Amendments. You can do these things. But we should not cross that line, and we are concerned that the use of the military, unless it is in a subordinate capacity, would be in fact moving down that direction. And all our representatives in the Department of Defense on our panel have concurred that they should not be first responders. And the second point I would make is to remember, when you start thinking about sticking something like this in the DOD, remember the key provision that we have put forward, the locals and the States absolutely must be built in to the local response. I cannot imagine a day that the local and State officials across the 50 United States will become subordinate to a military authority in the case of a crisis. And in fact, if you went the DOD route, even there are some Federal agencies that would be a little uncomfortable with that, the CIA perhaps. Chairman Lieberman. Thank you for the answer. I was thinking, as you were talking, that I have spoken to a number of people in New York, and people do not want the Guard patrolling streets in normal times, but the rapid appearance of the National Guard on the streets of New York after the attacks was immensely reassuring to the public there. Governor Gilmore. Senator Lieberman, two things. First of all, the Guard is a little different, as Senator Hart said. They are the historical militia of the United States. They are under control of the Governor of each individual State, that civilian authority, unless federalized, and I do not believe there has been a federalization in any of these disasters. So that is a little bit different, but in addition to that, even then, they should come in subordinate to the first responders, police, fire, rescue, health, medical, and then come in to provide additional hands, and then finally, as the situation or the attack escalates or becomes a weapon of mass destruction, then perhaps the regular services, but only in response to and at the request of a civilian authority. Chairman Lieberman. Ambassador Bremer, correct me if I am wrong. It is my impression, not that you disagree with what has been said, but that you have a more expansive view of the potential role of the military in these matters. Is that true? Mr. Bremer. The National Commission on Terrorism, which I chaired, which was a bipartisan commission appointed by Congress, reached a slightly different conclusion which was based on the following analysis. It is possible, particularly if one considers biological and chemical terrorism, to imagine a circumstance, as we said in our report, where not thousands but tens of thousands of casualties are inflicted. In such a circumstance it is possible to imagine that one event or several events like this would quickly overwhelm available local, State and Federal capabilities, including FEMA. In such circumstances, we said, the President of the United States ought to have the possibility on a one-time ad hoc temporary basis of asking the Department of Defense to be the lead agency in responding to such an attack or series of attacks. There are no plans for that to happen for a lot of the reasons that the Governor has mentioned and others. Our view is that under those circumstances, again, hypothesizing a much worse attack than we saw last week, the President in fact is likely to do that. He is likely to move the military into the lead agency because they do have all of the capabilities. Our commission's view, and I speak now for the National Commission, not for the Gilmore Commission, our commission's view was the best way to protect civil liberties in that circumstance is to plan for it ahead of time and exercise it. The worst way to protect civil liberties is never to even allow the possibility. And the example I have given, Senator, in testimony on my National Commission, is what happened after Pearl Harbor, the last major domestic attack, when the two great American liberals, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Earl Warren, responded by locking up Japanese Americans. Although the Supreme Court upheld that decision--most Americans today believe that was a violation of their civil liberties. So I take the opposite view precisely because of the respect I have for civil liberties, and that was the unanimous consensus of my bipartisan commission, which is, as you point out, different from where some others have come out. Chairman Lieberman. Very interesting and worth thinking about. It is true also that in the recent crisis the President did deploy military assets in response in a very controlled way. For instance, the fighter planes that were sent out over American cities, the AWACs, and in a very different way, the medical ships, for instance, that came in to New York and maybe other areas as well. Mr. Walker, a final question just to give a perspective. I believe the GAO has done some comparative work here on the way other countries in the world deal with homeland security, and the role of the military in homeland security, and I wonder if you could just speak for a moment about that. Mr. Walker. Senator, we have done some work with regard to how certain other countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and Israel, end up approaching this issue. We have already issued a report on that. It is publicly available, and it would provide some useful information for you and the Congress to consider. One of the things that we find at GAO is that we are very much in a borderless world. In many cases the United States is the lead with regard to many types of activities. In some cases we are not. And in this area we are not. And there are other countries that have been dealing with this issue for longer than we have for various reasons, and I think there are some lessons learned there that we ought to draw from. Chairman Lieberman. We will look to that. You have been immensely helpful. Any of you want to make a statement? Yes, Senator Hart? Senator Hart. Mr. Chairman, in our efforts since our commission to convey what our report does and does not do at both the congressional staff and administrative and media level, a lot of misunderstanding has occurred. And I know you get, and your staff gets, dozens of these. We obviously believe this is an extraordinary effort, a historic effort. Chairman Lieberman. We agree. Senator Hart. May I just say if any on your staff or any of your colleagues need to understand what we do and do not do, the first report is 8 pages, the second report is 16 pages. Eleven pages of this one will show you what we propose and what we do not propose, and I would really hope anyone making a decision as to what the congressional response should be, or the administrative response, should at least read those 35 pages. It is not too much. Chairman Lieberman. I absolutely agree. We will make sure that, with your cooperation, that every Member of the Committee, if they have not already, gets copies of the reports. I have been over them, and they are superb pieces of work, as is your commission's work, Governor Gilmore. I thank each and every one of you. You have been very constructive. You were ahead of your time, ahead of the rest of the Nation's time unfortunately, but it is not too late now to put into effect the recommendations that you have made to deal with the new realities that we face. This Committee will continue its consideration of protection of critical infrastructure next week with two hearings, one on airline security and then the other on what we are doing now to protect other elements of critical infrastructure, including other transportation systems, public utilities, and the computer infrastructures on which so much of our country today, including the financial systems, are based. And then I certainly hope that we can engage Governor Ridge and the administration as quickly as possible. And I would like to set the goal for the Committee, and I believe Senator Thompson shares this--we have talked about it-- to see if we can work with everyone involved here and report a bill out soon. These are not ordinary times and we should not be following an ordinary legislative schedule. The President, by his action last night, if you will, closed the gap, and now I think we have to act with the administration to create a permanent structure here to forever after protect the American people when they are at home. We are going to keep the record of the hearing open for a week. Senators Akaka and Voinovich have submitted statements, which I would like to add for the record. [The prepared statements of Senators Akaka and Voinovich follow:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA Mr. Akaka. Good morning. I commend the Chairman for calling this hearing and thank all the witnesses for being here. It is a pleasure to have such expertise on this subject here today. I especially want to welcome my friends and former colleagues, Senator Hart and Senator Rudman. In the face of tragedy, our leadership must be steady and our voice calm but firm. The President is right to say this will be a long conflict. I was a young man when Pearl Harbor was attacked. I watched as Japanese Zeros bombed Hawaii and my country. Then we knew our enemy, but today's faceless terrorist is more difficult to identify. Dreadful as the attacks were on September 11, we can imagine some which could be even more lethal. In July the International Security Subcommittee, which I chair, held a hearing on FEMA's Role in Managing a Bio-terrorist Attack. One truth became clear: We lack a national security strategy and institutional organization to address terrorist attacks. This threat is amorphous . . . amoral . . . without race . . . or . . . ethnicity and may operate from several countries. It is asymmetric in the sense that it exploits our strengths--in technology and organization--and turns them into weaknesses. This Nation's commercial airline system, piloting knowledge, and the way our institutions are designed and our people trained to react to such threats, were turned into a weapon against us. Our airline system is clearly not our only vulnerability. This was not Pearl Harbor--this was an asymmetric attack altogether different than anything we have experienced. The response last week reflected a strategy and coordination that was inadequate. Today's hearing properly focuses on how our Nation's institutions must be reorganized in a way that maximizes their ability to react effectively. Today the enemy of democracy is less definable in a world that was forever altered on September 11. I look forward to the testimony. __________ PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing this morning on the Federal Government's role in responding to terrorist threats against the United States. I would also like to welcome our witnesses and thank them for being here today. Mr. Chairman, last Tuesday, the United States of America suffered a horrible national tragedy, the images of which will forever etch the date, September 11, 2001, on the collective minds of the American people. The events of that day and the days following the terrorist attack have highlighted just how important a role our Federal agencies--and the individuals who work for them--play in the defense of our Nation. While this Committee has broad jurisdiction to examine the efficiency and effectiveness of these agencies, there is perhaps no greater function that we can undertake than ensuring that those entities of our Federal Government are properly arrayed and structured to deal with any attack on our homeland. Both the Hart-Rudman and Gilmore Commissions have released reports in recent months on this issue. Little did we know that their observations would be so prescient. In the wake of last week's tragic events, I believe we should consider more carefully than ever the recommendations of these two commissions and ensure that our government is prepared to act expeditiously in responding to any future attacks. Mr. Chairman, we have an excellent panel of witnesses with us today, and I am especially pleased to welcome Senator Gary Hart and Senator Warren Rudman. As you know, Mr. Chairman, earlier this year, the Oversight of Government Management Subcommittee held a hearing on the national security implications of the human capital crisis. I was pleased to have former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger and retired Admiral Harry Train, two of the commissioners who worked with Senators Hart and Rudman, as witnesses at that hearing. They offered excellent testimony on preparing our Federal workforce for the challenges of national defense in the 21st Century, and I will be interested in hearing the recommendations of our witnesses today on the homeland security section of their report. Mr. Chairman, like all Members of this Committee, I wish we did not have to conduct this hearing under these circumstances. However, I think it is important, in light of last Tuesday's tragedy, to get this dialogue going so that we may ultimately eliminate the threat of terrorism once and for all. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Lieberman. But you have each done extraordinary public service here, and I thank you for it. The hearing is adjourned. 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