[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
SECOND STAGE REVIEW: THE ROLE OF
THE CHIEF INTELLIGENCE OFFICER
=======================================================================
JOINT HEARING
the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE, INFORMATION SHARING, AND TERRORISM RISK
ASSESSMENT
of the
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
joint with the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TERRORISM, HUMAN
INTELLIGENCE, ANALYSIS AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE
of the
HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 19, 2005
__________
Serial No. 109-47
Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
Peter T. King, New York, Chairman
Don Young, Alaska Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi
Lamar S. Smith, Texas Loretta Sanchez, California
Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts
Christopher Shays, Connecticut Norman D. Dicks, Washington
John Linder, Georgia Jane Harman, California
Mark E. Souder, Indiana Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon
Tom Davis, Virginia Nita M. Lowey, New York
Daniel E. Lungren, California Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of
Jim Gibbons, Nevada Columbia
Rob Simmons, Connecticut Zoe Lofgren, California
Mike Rogers, Alabama Sheila Jackson-Lee, Texas
Stevan Pearce, New Mexico Bill Pascrell, Jr., New Jersey
Katherine Harris, Florida Donna M. Christensen, U.S. Virgin
Bobby Jindal, Louisiana Islands
Dave G. Reichert, Washington Bob Etheridge, North Carolina
Michael T. McCaul, Texas James R. Langevin, Rhode Island
Charlie Dent, Pennsylvania Kendrick B. Meek, Florida
Ginny Brown-Waite, Florida
______
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE, INFORMATION SHARING, AND TERRORISM RISK
ASSESSMENT
Rob Simmons, Connecticut, Chairman
Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Zoe Lofgren, California
Mark E. Souder, Indiana Loretta Sanchez, California
Daniel E. Lungren, California Jane Harman, California
Jim Gibbons, Nevada Nita M. Lowey, New York
Stevan Pearce, New Mexico Sheila Jackson-Lee, Texas
Bobby Jindal, Louisiana James R. Langevin, Rhode Island
Charlie Dent, Pennsylvania Kendrick B. Meek, Florida
Ginny Brown-Waite, Florida Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi
Peter T. KIng, New York (Ex (Ex Officio)
Officio)
______
HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
Peter Hoekstra, Michigan, Chairman
Ray LaHood, Illinois Jane Harman, California
Terry Everett, Alabama Alcee Hastings Florida
Elton Gallegly, California Silvestre Reyes, Texas
Heather Wilson, New Mexico Leonard L. Boswell, Iowa
JoAnn Davis, Virginia Robert E. (Bud) Cramer, Jr,
Mac Thornberry, Texas Alabama
John M. McHugh, New York Anna G. Eshoo, California
Todd Tiahrt, Kansas Rush D. Holt, New Jersey
Mike Rogers, Michigan C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, Maryland
Rick Renzi, Arizona John F. Tierney, Massachusetts
Darrell Issa, California
J. Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House
Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Leader
(II)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
STATEMENTS
The Honorable Rob Simmons, a Representative in Congress From the
State of Connecticut, and Chairman, Subcommittee on
Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk
Assessment..................................................... 1
The Honorable Zoe Lofgren, a Representative in Congress From the
State California, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Intelligence,
Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment:
Oral Statement................................................. 17
Opening Prepared Statement..................................... 5
The Honorable Randy (Duke) Cunningham, a Representative in
Congress From the State of California, and Chairman,
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Human Intelligence, Analysis and
Counterintelligence............................................ 6
The Honorable Jane Harman, a Representative in Congress From the
State of California, and Ranking Member, House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence...................................... 20
The Honorable Peter T. King, a Representative in Congress From
the State of New York, and Chairman, Committee on Homeland
Security 7
The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Mississippi, and Ranking Member, Committee on
Homeland Security:
Prepared Opening Statement..................................... 2
The Honorable Alcee Hastings, a Representative in Congress From
the State of Florida:
Prepared Opening Statement..................................... 9
The Honorable James R. Langevin, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Rhode Island................................. 27
The Honorable Sheila Jackson-Lee, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Texas:
Oral Statement................................................. 30
Prepared Statement............................................. 3
The Honorable Edward J. Markey, a Representative in Congress From
the State of Massachusetts..................................... 29
The Honorable Silvestre Reyes, a Representative in Congress From
the State of Texas............................................. 8
The Honorable Mike Rogers, a Representative in Congress From the
State of Michigan.............................................. 24
The Honorable C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, a Representative in
Congress From the State of Maryland............................ 25
Witnesses
Panel I
Mr. Charles Allen, Chief Intelligence Officer, Department of
Homeland Security:
Oral Statement................................................. 10
Prepared Statement............................................. 11
Panel II
Mr. Richard Ben-Veniste, 9/11 Public Discourse Project:
Oral Statement................................................. 33
Prepared Statement............................................. 35
Appendix
Questions from Hon. Zoe Lofgren for Mr. Charles Allen Responses.. 47
THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND
SECURITY SECOND STAGE REVIEW: THE ROLE OF THE CHIEF INTELLIGENCE
OFFICER
----------
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Homeland Security,
Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and
Terrorism Risk Assessment,
joint with the
House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence,
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Human Intelligence, Analysis and
Counterintelligence,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 3 p.m., in Room
311, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Rob Simmons [chairman
of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present from Committee on Homeland Security:
Representatives Simmons, Brown-Waite, King (ex officio),
Lofgren, Jackson-Lee, Langevin, Meek and Harman (ex officio).
Also present: Representatives .
Present from the Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence: Representatives Cunningham, Tiahrt, Rogers, Reyes
and Ruppersberger.
Mr. Simmons. The joint hearing of the Committee on Homeland
Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and
Terrorism Risk Assessment and the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence Subcommittee on Terrorism, Human
Intelligence, Analysis and Counterintelligence will come to
order.
The subcommittees are meeting today to hear testimony on
the role of the Chief Intelligence Officer of the Department of
Homeland Security as proposed by the Department's Second Stage
Review. The hearing will consist of two panels of witnesses.
The witness for the first panel will be Mr. Charles Allen,
Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis, and Chief
Intelligence Officer of the Department of Homeland Security.
The witness for the second panel will be former 9/11
Commission Commissioner, Richard Ben-Veniste, a current member
of the 9/11 Public Discourse Project.
As a reminder to all Members, this is an unclassified open
hearing. Therefore, the witness may not be able to answer every
question fully in this setting. Members can, however, request
answers to questions in writing, or we can schedule a
classified briefing for certain questions on another day.
The Department of Homeland Security Second Stage Review, or
2SR as it is known in the Department, was Secretary Chertoff's
first action as Secretary of Homeland Security. By initiating a
comprehensive review of the Department's organization,
operations and policies, Secretary Chertoff recognized that the
Department must continue to improve its operations if it is to
effectively combat terrorism against the homeland. A major part
of this reorganization is the creation of a new Chief
Intelligence Officer for the Department by elevating the
position of Assistant Secretary for Information Analysis.
Currently the Department has 10 different intelligence
offices, including those in Customs and Border Protection, the
Transportation Security Administration, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Information Analysis and
Infrastructure Protection Directorate. While the Second Stage
Review does not combine these offices into one intelligence
entity, the reorganization goes a long way towards more
effectively managing the Department's intelligence activities,
led by the Chief Intelligence Officer. He will provide
intelligence in support of the Department, serve as the
Department's primary representative in the Intelligence
Community, and will help to better disseminate information and
intelligence to the Department's State, tribal and local
partners.
What is unclear, however, is how the new office will be
able to coordinate departmentwide efforts without having
management or budget authority over other intelligence
components. While sheer force of personality, experience and
expertise may succeed in temporarily bringing the CIA to the
forefront of both the Intelligence Community and the Department
of Homeland Security, I am very interested to know how you, Mr.
Allen, plan to help make that position become an
institutionalized presence within the Intelligence Community
and within DHS.
We have a long road ahead of us to ensure that this new
office can fulfill the vision for DHS outlined in the Homeland
Security Act, and we are all interested in hearing your
thoughts on how we can achieve this common objective.
Mr. Simmons. At this time I yield to the distinguished
Ranking Member of the intelligence subcommittee of the Homeland
Security Committee, the gentlewoman from California Ms.
Lofgren, for her own statements.
Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will not take the
entire 5 minutes for my statement, because I know that our
second witness Mr. Ben-Veniste needs to walk out of this room
no later than 4:30, so on the Democrat side we will ask all
Members to submit their statements for the record so we can be
sure to hear him.
For the Record
Prepared Opening Statement of Hon. Bennie G. Thompson
I am very pleased that this Subcommittee is turning its attention
to Secretary Chertoff's Second Stage Review and his specific plans for
both a new Chief Intelligence Officer and a new Office of Intelligence
and Analysis.
I hope that the Department's intelligence efforts will be better
than their scheduling skills.
I strongly support Secretary Chertoff's decision to elevate the
importance of intelligence analysis within the Department by creating a
Chief Intelligence Officer who will report directly to him.
The Chief Intelligence Officer should play a key role in
coordinating the efforts of all of the Department's intelligence units
and developing a Department-wide intelligence strategy.
Nevertheless, Secretary Chertoff has not added much flesh to the
bones of his new approach.
He has not provided specifics about perhaps the key intelligence
issue facing the Department:
Specifically, what will the focus of its intelligence work be?
Secretary Chertoff has not offered any specifics about the precise
powers that the Chief Intelligence Officer will have, or how the Office
of Intelligence & Analysis will be structured.
He likewise has not included any specifics about how information
will be shared internally among the Department's various legacy
agencies.
Mr. Chertoff also has not articulated any specifics about how the
Office of Intelligence & Analysis will serve as the primary connection
between the Department and the wider Intelligence Community.
How will it be the primary source of information for the
Department's state, local, tribal, and private sector partners?
The Secretary also has not included any specifics about how the
analysis shop will avoid duplicating the efforts of the wider
Intelligence Community.
Without these details, it is very hard for this Committee to
conduct meaningful oversight.
In my view, it is pointless to have a Chief Intelligence Officer
who does not have intelligence information that actually advances the
Department's homeland security mission.
I look forward to hearing from today's witnesses. I hope they can
help us help the Department prepare and implement its mission to
prepare for, protect against, and thwart terrorist attacks with
specific and actionable intelligence information.
[The statement of Ms. Jackson-Lee follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Sheila Jackson-Lee
On November 25, 2002, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 transferred
over 22 federal entities--some intact and some in part--and 180,000
employees into the newly created U.S. Department of Homeland Security
(DHS). According to the legislation, the Department's mission is (1) to
prevent terrorist attacks within the United States, (2) to reduce the
vulnerability of the United Sates to terrorism, and (3) to minimize the
damage and assist in the recovery from terrorist attacks that do occur
within the United States. Created as part of the national response to
the horrifying terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon on
September 11, 2001, DHS is the single most ambitious and sweeping
bureaucratic initiative undertaken by the federal government to protect
Americans against future terrorist threats.
As we all know the purpose of this hearing is to ``flush out'' the
powers, roles, and responsibilities of the Department's new CIO in the
wake of Secretary Chertoff's Second Stage Review. More specifically,
the I hope we will consider what direction the Department's new Office
of Intelligence & Analysis (OIA) should take on as it moves forward. I
am very interested in probing the specifics of the Secretary's plans
for intelligence analysis and to obtain input about this critical
mission area. Further, I hope the testimony and questioning will
provide me and my colleagues with a greater understanding of how the
Department can best leverage available intelligence resources--from
both within the Department and the wider intelligence community--in
order to generate intelligence ``products'' that are relevant to the
Department's overall homeland security effort. Those products should--
at a very minimum--help identify threats to both American lives and the
nation's critical infrastructure.
Before closing, I feel it is important to say a word or two about
The Department of Homeland Security FY 2006 Budget which includes more
than $30.8 billion in net discretionary spending--a 4.7 percent
increase over FY 2005. In total, with mandatory and fee-based programs,
the DHS budget for FY 2006 IS $40.6 billion. More specifically a few
areas worth mentioning are:
Strengthening Border Security and Interior Enforcement
Customs and Border Protection will receive $5.95
billion in direct funding to strengthen border security with
additional personnel, technology and infrastructure including
1,000 new Border Patrol agents and $270 million for
construction including $35 million to complete the San Diego
Border Infrastructure System and $35 million for other
infrastructure needs within the Tucson Sector. Consistent with
CBP's proposed consolidation, the appropriators combined all
CBP Air assets into a single appropriation. The bill provides
approximately $400 million in this appropriation, including $14
million for covert aircraft and $14.8 million for Northern
Border Airwing.
Within Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE, the
bill provides a total of $3.9 billion in direct appropriations
and fees. Significant increases in funding were provided for
detention beds ($90 million), Special Agents ($42 million),
fugitive operations teams ($16 million) and Immigration
Enforcement Agents ($9 million).
Increasing Overall Preparedness and Response
The FY 2006 Appropriations Act provides $4.0 billion
for a Preparedness Directorate to enhance coordination and
deployment of preparedness assets facilitate grants and oversee
nationwide preparedness efforts supporting first responder
training, citizen awareness, public health, and critical
planning functions to build capacity, protect critical
infrastructure, and strengthen cyber systems. Grant funding
provided through this Directorate includes $1.155 billion for
high-density urban areas, $550 million for basic formula
grants, $400 million for law enforcement terrorism prevention
grants, $655 million for firefighter assistance grants and $185
million for emergency management performance grants.
The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center will
receive $282 million to train federal law enforcement personnel
and construct additional training facilities to accommodate the
increased number of Border Patrol and Immigration Enforcement
Agents that need to be trained.
Enhancing Technology and Detection Capabilities
The Appropriations Act provides a total of $5.9
billion for the Transportation Security Administration,
including $443 million for explosive detection technology. as a
result of this legislation, the funding to support the Federal
Air Marshals was transferred to TSA as proposed in the Second
Stage Review recommendation.
The Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is funded
at $1.5 billion, which includes $110 million for counter man
pads research. The bill also provides $23 million for the
National Bio Agrodefense Facility (NBAF) and consolidates
research and development funds within S&T.
The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office is funded at
$318 million to better secure the nation from radiological and
nuclear threats.
Strengthening Department Assets and Operations
FY2006 Appropriations provides a total of $6.8 billion for the
U.S. Coast Guard including $933.1 million of the Coast Guard's
Integrated Deepwater program.
Ms. Lofgren. I will simply say that Mr. Thompson and I are
very pleased to have both witnesses here today, and we are
enthusiastic about the new leadership represented by Mr. Allen.
I will say that he has a challenge before him. I think he is
well aware of it.
In large measure much of the last 3 years was not used
well, and we are way behind from where we should be. In
particular, I am concerned that we have yet to see a completed
national asset database that accurately and systematically
identifies our Nation's critical infrastructure. We have not
prioritized the tasks ahead of us. In the last 3 years, in our
failure to accomplish many of these important tasks, we have
also alienated many of our partners, both in State and local
government, and clearly in the private sector where we need
cooperation.
So, I look forward to not only hearing Mr. Allen today as
well as Mr. Ben-Veniste, but working with him in the year
ahead, because it is absolutely essential that we clean up the
mess that we have here and that we do that as a team so that
the Nation will be better protected.
I would ask unanimous consent to put my entire statement
into the record.
Mr. Simmons. Without objection, so ordered.
[The information follows:]
Prepared Opening Statement of Hon. Zoe Lofgren
In July, as part of the Department of Homeland Security's Second
Stage Review, Secretary Chertoff announced the creation of a new Chief
Intelligence Officer, who would lead a new Office of Intelligence &
Analysis. As we now approach the third anniversary on the creation of
the Department of Homeland Security, it is fitting that we focus of
attention to such an important developments like how this Department
handles intelligence issues and challenges.
Like Mr. Thompson, I am pleased to have Mr. Charles Allen and Mr.
Richard Ben-Veniste here today to discuss these developments and to
help us obtain a greater understanding of what roles the CIO and his
office will or should play on a going forward basis.
I strongly concur that the Department--and the various intelligence
units located within its legacy agencies--could contribute valuable
information to the nation's intelligence efforts and could prove to be
a valuable conduit for such information to state, local, and tribal law
enforcement officials.
I say could, however, because I am cognizant of how the Information
Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate quickly lost its way
after the Department's creation and how that Directorate has struggled
to carve out a meaningful mission for itself ever since.
IAIP has been adrift for far too long, and I welcome the changes
Secretary Chertoff is introducing. I believe these changes represent a
fresh opportunity to get things right. Before we can understand where
the new CIO and the office he will lead should be going, however, I
believe that it is crucial to understand where IAIP has been.
Congress intended IAIP to be the nation's foremost intelligence
analysis and integration center that would collect, analyze, and
disseminate intelligence information about potential terrorist threats
to our nation. Indeed, the need for a homeland-specific intelligence
effort was one of the primary rationales for the Department's creation.
The Bush Administration, however, had other plans, and removed this
function, not once but twice, first to the Terrorist Threat Integration
Center--the TTIC--and finally to the new National Counterterrorism
Center--the NCTC--last year.
In so doing, the Administration left behind an office stripped of
its once broad assessment responsibilities and incapable of completing
even the most basic of homeland security tasks.
For example, we have yet to see a completed National Asset Database
that accurately and systematically identifies our nation's critical
infrastructure.
We need such a database in order to help prioritize risks so we can
direct appropriate resources to harden facilities against terrorist
attack.
Although the vast amount of our nation's critical infrastructure is
in private hands, moreover, we also have yet to see the development of
a policy to encourage property owners to share sensitive but
unclassified information with the Department--a policy that respects
not only private sector concerns about competitiveness and liability
but also the public's right to know.
We need such a policy if we truly hope to secure the homeland--
something that cannot be accomplished without involving both first
responders and private stakeholders in that effort.
Likewise, it is still unclear what seat the Department has at the
NCTC table.
In order to have real information sharing, we must have a
Department that not only can move information up the chain to the wider
Intelligence Community but also down from the federal level to our
state, local, and tribal partners.
I suspect that Secretary Chertoff's plans for the new Chief
Intelligence Officer and Office of Intelligence & Analysis will set the
Department on a new, more effective course. I hope that that course
will help address these outstanding items.
That course should include a defined intelligence mission that
supports the Department's efforts to protect lives and secure critical
infrastructure, that seeks to boost the participation of the private
sector as part of its work, and finally that raises the profile of the
Department within the wider Intelligence Community.
To meet these goals, the Department must clearly delineate what
powers the new Chief Intelligence should have to direct a unique
intelligence mission. It must develop an office architecture that
allows for effective coordination of the intelligence analysis effort
across the Department, and it must develop useful intelligence products
that are not duplicative of the work already being performed by other
intelligence agencies.
To get there, we need specifics. I look forward to hearing from all
of the witnesses this afternoon about what roles the CIO and the office
he will lead should play, what powers they should have, and what
direction they should be taking. I also hope to hear from you how this
Committee might help advance these objectives.
Mr. Simmons. The Chair now recognizes the Chairman of the
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Human Intelligence, Analysis and
Counterintelligence of the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence, the distinguished gentleman from California, Mr.
Cunningham for an opening statement.
Mr. Cunningham. Thank you, Mr. Simmons. I am saddened that
my good friend Mr. Boswell is in the hospital. Ms. Lofgren
tells me it is not serious, and he will be back with us. He is
a good friend.
Charles Allen, we have known you for many, many years, and
I can't think of a better person that could be the Chief
Intelligence Officer, and we are glad to have you before us,
and the other witness, to learn a few items.
If I was to look out into the audience and ask the
audience, what about the CIA or the FBI, they have a pretty
good idea in mind of what and picture of what they are supposed
to do. But, unfortunately, I think when you say Homeland
Security intelligence, it is not well known or well defined on
what their implementation is, what their disciplines are. And
it is important to know that addressing their plans terrorism
overseas is important, but we also need to know what are their
plans on terrorists entering the shores of the United States
itself. I think there lies basically the definition that we are
looking for and the coordination of that.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you for hosting today's hearing, for
working jointly with the HPSCI Subcommittee on Terrorism, Human
Intelligence, Analysis and Counterintelligence. As you know,
better coordination and integration of our intelligence law
enforcement function is critical to protecting the American
public in the post-September 11 world. We must do all we can to
ensure the Intelligence Community and the Department of
Homeland Security share information and fuse their efforts in
protecting the homeland. And I emphasize share their
information.
There are three areas that I would like to focus on, Mr.
Allen. One is the training aspect of the people that we have,
and that it is across the board the same. The other is the
infrastructure, to make sure that you have the facilities, the
scifs and the things that you need. Third is to make sure that
the coordination--when you take Coast Guard, Customs, Border
Patrol, how do you put into their minds now that they have an
intelligence function instead of being just a border patrolman;
how do you put that to where they can transfer that to the
Department of Homeland Security and get it to the right people
and get it to the target itself?
I want to thank Chairman King and Chairman Simmons for
agreeing to the joint subcommittee hearing on the role of the
DHS Chief Intelligence Officer, information-sharing
relationship, and make sure it is right. I thank him for
working with my full committee Chairman Mr. Hoekstra to make
this a reality.
The Department of Homeland Security Information Analysis
Directorate mission was overtaken by events. He was going to be
everything. He was going to control everything. But then the
creation of the Terrorist Threat Interrogation Center, we call
it TTIC, and the National Counterterrorism Center.
Understanding that the DHS was no longer going to be the
clearinghouse for the fusion of terrorist information,
Secretary Chertoff launched a review of DHS's organization.
Basically, Mr. Allen, where are you going to go from here now
that the responsibilities are divided, and how are you going to
do it? That is why we are here today.
What brings our two subcommittees today together is
obviously the intelligence restructuring within the Department
of Homeland Security in one individual, the Chief Intelligence
Officer, responsible for coordinating all the intelligence
functions within the DHS. Mr. Allen, you are the person. They
had written in there, it says, ``Mr. Allen, you are the person
on the hot seat.'' I would like to think, Mr. Allen, you are
the guy. You are the person that is going to make it happen,
not on the hot seat, because we are going to be right there on
that seat with you to try to make sure it goes right. How will
you consolidate and improve the DHS relationship? What about
better leverage with the Intelligence Community?
Mr. Chertoff made a good choice in selecting Charlie Allen
as Chief Intelligence Officer. Our committee knows Mr. Allen
very well and looks forward to working with him.
All of these things I am going to submit for the rest of
the record, but I listened this morning to part of the hearing
where former Speaker Newt Gingrich spoke, and he talked about a
subject that I believe is the right way to go. The government
should be getting the information, getting the intelligence and
passing as much information as they can down to the local
districts, i.e., New York, i.e., Baltimore, and the local
districts make those decisions, right or wrong, based on the
information.
It is also the local government's responsibility to let
them know how valid they feel that that information is before
they can make those acts. But someone in Washington can make
that determination, can be totally wrong, but yet it is the
people at the local level that could not benefit from that
decision. I feel that that is important.
In this hearing I hope we go forward in looking to the ways
we are going to improve, and not that we can't talk about New
York or we can't talk about the Baltimore tunnel, but ways in
which Mr. Allen is going to make this system better and make it
safer for homeland security and how you are going to work with
the other departments.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit the rest of this for
the record, because there are about 10 pages, and I don't want
to go through it.
[The information is maintained in the committee files.]
Mr. Simmons. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Simmons. We are honored to be joined by the
distinguished Chairman of the full Committee on Homeland
Security, Mr. King of New York, and the Chair recognizes Mr.
King.
Mr. King. Thank you, Chairman Simmons. I will be very
brief.
I want to commend Secretary Chertoff for his appointment of
Mr. Allen. This is an appointment which is going to be
extremely beneficial to the Department of Homeland Security.
Mr. Allen has a very tough job ahead of him not just in the
actual mechanics or implementation of establishing the
intelligence apparatus in the Department of Homeland Security,
but also, as we have discussed, the whole idea of creating a
culture within the Department where it speaks with one voice
and also with where the intelligence is properly used and
assessed.
As far as the issues involving New York and Baltimore, Mr.
Allen and I have discussed that. I am convinced those matters
have been resolved and certainly worked out as far as the
future is concerned. I look forward to working with him. Again,
I wish him well, and I commend Chairman Hoekstra and Chairman
Cunningham for working with Chairman Simmons in putting this
committee together. I look forward to the testimony.
Thank you.
Mr. Simmons. I thank the Chairman.
The distinguished Ranking Member of the full Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence has joined us, the
distinguished gentlewoman from California Ms. Harman. We yield
to her for an opening remark.
Ms. Harman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and all the other
chairmen and chairwomen sitting up here, and hello, Charlie. I
hope your foot is better. I have been instructed to rush
through this because our next witness has to leave by 4:30, and
he is a good friend as well.
Let me just say briefly I have a unique vantage point,
perhaps because I serve on both committees; I am Ranking Member
on the House Intelligence Committee. I have applauded the
vision of DHS Secretary Chertoff in making certain finally that
the intel function of his Department works. He has hired the
right guy. Now the right guy has got to get traction and become
what he can be, which is the integrator across the community
for accurate, timely and actionable threat information.
We had what I would call two meltdowns in the last 2 weeks.
I don't think DHS was the kind of player in that that it needed
to be. I am just hoping we will hear from a very, very capable
man how he is going to make this whole thing work better. I
would like to say work excellently very soon. Our security
depends on it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Simmons. I thank the distinguished Ranking Member.
In accordance with the discussion prior to the conduct of
this hearing, we agreed that we would limit opening statements
to those who are Chairs or Ranking Members of the requisite
committees. Other Members can insert an opening statement in
the record, and we will reserve questions for members. They
will have 5 minutes to ask in order.
Mr. Reyes. Mr. Chairman, I have a statement for the record
on behalf of Congressman Hastings, our Ranking Member, if I can
just insert it for the record.
Mr. Simmons. Without objection, so ordered.
Prepared Opening Statement of Hon. Alcee Hastings
I am pleased that we have Mr. Allen and a distinguished panel of
outside witnesses to discuss the challenges facing intelligence
programs at the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of the
Department's ``Second Stage Review.''
Mr. Allen, I would like to congratulate you on your nearly 50 years
of service in the Intelligence Community. In your most recent job, as
the Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Collection, you were
responsible for developing collection strategies to tackle our toughest
intelligence challenges. I commend you for your success in that job,
and have confidence you will continue to make a positive impact as the
DHS Chief Intelligence Officer. I'm sure I speak for all of my
colleagues when I say that we want to work with you closely to help you
succeed.
Your work will be especially important, because the effective
management of intelligence across DHS is hindered by a number of
difficult challenges:
First, the Department must create a ``culture of
intelligence.'' DHS's thousands of law enforcement agents and
security officers do not see themselves as intelligence
collectors. They need training to appreciate how information
they gather at a border crossing or an airport can support
strategic intelligence.
Second, the CIO must ensure effective access to
information within the Department, across federal agencies, and
by state and local consumers. Recent incidents in the New York
subway and the Baltimore tunnels highlight the need for better
transparency within the intelligence and homeland security
communities.
Third, DHS intelligence products and advisories must
be detailed and timely enough to inform actionable security
measures at the local level.
Fourth, the CIO must coordinate DHS component
organizations' intelligence capabilities and requirements--
despite having no formal budget or programmatic authority over
their personnel or activities.
Fifth, the CIO must ensure that intelligence supports
the protection of critical infrastructure, particularly since
the Second Stage Review concluded that the Office of
Information Analysis should be separated from the Office of
Infrastructure Protection.
Sixth, the CIO must manage the hiring, training,
career development, and retention of intelligence personnel
across the Department.
Seventh, the CIO must secure better physical
facilities for intelligence staff. It is appalling that
intelligence staff work in shifts to avoid overcrowding.
I would note that, on April 21, Chairman and I wrote to
Secretary Chertoff urging that he make improvements to
DHS's physical plant and IT infrastructure. From what I
can see, few changes have been made since we sent out
letter.
Eighth, the CIO must improve IT infrastructure and
database access so analysts can examine all available threat
information.
Ninth, and finally, the CIO will have to partner with
other agencies to surmount turf battles that hinder the
effective and timely sharing of information.
I think I've given Mr. Allen a full agenda of topics to address, as
have others of my colleagues, and I'm sure he has come with his own
list of topics to address. I look forward to hearing his plans and
strategies, and those of our second panel.
Thank you.
Mr. Simmons. I also note that there are some Members
present who are not members of the subcommittees, but are
members of the full committees. I would ask unanimous consent
that they be allowed to ask questions.
Hearing no objection, that will take place.
Also our first witness is Mr. Charlie Allen, who was
appointed Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis and
Chief Intelligence Officer of the Department of Homeland
Security in August of 2005 by President Bush. In this capacity
he is responsible for intelligence support to DHS leadership,
the Director of National Intelligence and to State, tribal and
local governments and to the private sector.
Prior to his appointment, he served as Assistant Director
of Central Intelligence for Collection and chaired the National
Intelligence Collection Board, which ensured that intelligence
collection efforts were integrated and coordinated across the
Intelligence Community.
He has served with the CIA from 1958 until his appointment
to DHS, receiving numerous intelligence awards along the way.
We all welcome our distinguished first witness Mr. Allen.
Thank you. The floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF CHARLES ALLEN, CHIEF INTELLIGENCE OFFICER,
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Allen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman King, Chairman
Simmons, Chairman Cunningham, Ranking Member Lofgren and
Ranking Member Harman, thank you for your kind words, and thank
you for inviting me here to discuss the role of the Chief
Intelligence Officer in the Department of Homeland Security. I
will have a very brief statement, and I have submitted a longer
statement for the record, if you so agree.
As you know, I will be the first person to hold the title
of Chief Intelligence Officer. I feel a particularly strong
obligation to the Congress, Secretary Chertoff, my peers in the
Intelligence Community, the Director of National Intelligence
Negroponte, and the President to make it clear what this
position can contribute to the Nation's security.
First and foremost, the Chief Intelligence Officer must be
the U.S. Government's leading proponent of a vital type of
intelligence, homeland security intelligence. That is not well
understood, as I believe some of you have just commented.
Everyone here understands HUMINT intelligence, signals
intelligence, imagery intelligence and the other INTs that have
served our country so well since the organization of the U.S.
Intelligence Community shortly after the Second World War. For
a long time, most Americans associated these intelligence
disciplines and intelligence as a whole with the pursuit of a
foreign enemy on a distant shore.
Then came the September 11, 2001, attacks, and those of us
who were not already aware of its existence caught a glimpse of
homeland security intelligence in the blinding sunlight of that
fateful and terrible day. We realized that it is not enough to
know what our enemies are doing. We must know what they are
doing to penetrate the air, sea and land approaches to our
homeland. We must also discern any threats growing from within
our Nation. Then we must take the knowledge available instantly
to the men and women at all levels of government and the
private sector who have the mission and the means to act
against our enemies before they realize their ends.
My goal and my role as Chief Intelligence Officer is to see
that homeland security intelligence, a blend of traditional and
nontraditional intelligence that produces unique and actionable
insights, takes its place along the other kinds of intelligence
as an indispensable tool for securing the Nation.
The position I know now hold is not the same one that my
predecessors held. Indeed, it is radically different. First,
the Secretary intends to rename my organization the Office of
Intelligence and Analysis, as the Chairman just indicated,
which will make it clear that I am head of an intelligence
organization.
Second, I will serve as the Department's Chief Intelligence
Officer. That means Secretary Chertoff looks to me first, last
and always for the intelligence support he needs to lead the
Department, to better detect and prevent planned attacks on the
American soil.
Third, I have the Secretary's mandate to integrate all of
the Department's intelligence capabilities, not just those of
the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, responding to
Congressman Cunningham's interest in that.
There is one important way in which I do walk in the
footsteps of my predecessors, serving as the Department of
Homeland Security's principal interface with the Intelligence
Community, and with the Director of National Intelligence. One
of the Department goals is to ensure that the Office of
Intelligence and Analysis becomes a true peer of other
Intelligence Community agencies with all the rights,
responsibilities and respect that that entails.
Let me turn to the future. My first priority is to support
the Department's leadership and direction of its operational
components. Next, DHS intelligence must become fully involved
in the Intelligence Community and the National Intelligence
Program managed by Ambassador Negroponte. My third priority
involves strengthening intelligence support to and information
sharing with our Federal, State, local, tribal, territorial
governments, and private sector partners. Finally, I will
strive to cultivate a rich and new and fresh relationship with
the Congress. I don't need to tell you that we are in a very
dangerous period, and I need your continued support,
objectivity and feedback in order to improve the capabilities
of DHS intelligence to help secure the Nation.
The most important challenge we face is a persistent and
adaptive enemy determined to inflict catastrophic damage on the
U.S. homeland. Virtually any terrorist attack on the homeland
that one can imagine must exploit a border crossing, a port of
entry, a critical infrastructure or one of the other domains
that the Department has an obligation to secure.
DHS intelligence must learn and adapt faster than the enemy
so that our Department, with all its partners in the Federal,
State and local levels of government and the private sector,
have the information edge they need to secure our Nation. As
the Department's first Chief Intelligence Officer, I intend to
make sure that happens.
Thank you for the opportunity to address this panel. I will
be pleased to answer the questions, some of which have already
been raised.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Simmons. Thank you, Mr. Allen.
[The statement of Mr. Allen follows:]
Prepared Statement of Charles Allen
I. Introduction
Chairman King, Ranking Member Thompson, Members of the Committee:
Thank you for inviting me to discuss the role of the Chief
Intelligence Officer in the Department of Homeland Security. As you
know, I will be the first person to hold this title, so I feel a
particularly strong obligation to Congress, Secretary Chertoff, my
peers in the Intelligence Community, and the President, to make it
absolutely clear what this position can contribute to the nation's
security.
First and foremost, the Chief Intelligence Officer must be the U.S.
government's leading proponent of a vital type of intelligence--
homeland security intelligence--that is not well understood.
Everyone here understands human intelligence, signals intelligence,
imagery intelligence, and the other ``INTs'' that have served our
country so well since the organization of the U.S. Intelligence
Community shortly after the Second World War. For a long time, most
Americans associated these intelligence disciplines--and intelligence
as a whole--with the pursuit of a foreign enemy on distant shores.
Then came the attacks of September 11, 2001, and those of us who
were not already aware of its existence caught a glimpse of homeland
security intelligence in the blinding sunlight of that fateful day. We
realized that it isn't enough to know what our enemies are doing
abroad. We must know what they are doing to penetrate the air, sea, and
land approaches to our homeland. We must know what they are doing to
survey, target, or exploit key assets, symbols of America, and the
critical infrastructures upon which we depend for our economic
vibrancy--including the Internet. Then we must make this knowledge
available instantly to the men and women at all levels of government
and the private sector who have both the mission and the means to act
against our enemies before they realize their ends.
As I said, this kind of intelligence has always existed, even if we
have not always recognized its value as much as we should. My role--and
my goal--as Chief Intelligence Officer is to see that homeland security
intelligence, a blend of traditional and non-traditional intelligence
that produces unique and actionable insights, takes its place alongside
the other kinds of intelligence as an indispensable tool for securing
the nation.
II. Transition from IAIP to OIA
Before I tell you in more detail how I propose to do this, let me
briefly go back in time to the creation of the Department of Homeland
Security. Congress established the Office of Information Analysis as
part of the Directorate of Information Analysis and Infrastructure
Protection, or IAIP. It was one of the only entirely new entities in
the Department of Homeland Security, and my predecessors had to create
it essentially from scratch. They built a solid record of
accomplishment and I owe them a debt of gratitude. I take it as a sign
of the maturity of the organization that staff members of the Office of
Information Analysis are publishing a range of intelligence products
from daily current support to the Secretary to an increasing number of
bulletins and special assessments on threat-related topics for state,
local, and private sector customers.
But the position I now hold is NOT the same one that my
predecessors held. Indeed, it is radically different in at least three
important ways. First, the Secretary intends to rename my organization
the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. This will make it clear that I
am the head of an intelligence organization. Second, I will serve as
the Department's Chief Intelligence Officer. That means Secretary
Chertoff will look to me first, last, and always for the intelligence
support he needs to lead the Department, and better detect and prevent
planned attacks on American soil. And I assure you, the Secretary is a
voracious consumer of intelligence, and he understands how it should be
used to catalyze, guide, and inform homeland security operations.
Third, I have the Secretary's mandate to integrate all of the
Department's intelligence capabilities, not just those in the Office of
Intelligence and Analysis. That means the Secretary is counting on me
to marshal all the intelligence and information in Homeland Security's
component agencies and deliver it to him in a way that he can use to
make timely, risk-based decisions about how to deploy the Department's
human and material resources. The Secretary expects me to be a dynamic
recipient of information. On July 13 he told this committee, ``The
chief intelligence officer will have the obligation to manage the
collection and fusion of intelligence throughout the entire
department.'' To fulfill this mandate will require an even stronger
degree of integration than exists today.
There is one important way in which I do walk in the footsteps of
my predecessors: serving as the Department of Homeland Security's
principal interface with the Intelligence Community. The Office of
Intelligence and Analysis will be one of two DHS entities that belong
to the Intelligence Community: the other is the United States Coast
Guard. I am aware that the role of the Department in the Intelligence
Community is not widely understood. For instance, the Department is
scarcely mentioned in the report of the Commission on the Intelligence
Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass
Destruction. That could mean that we have been doing almost everything
right and there is little to fix. But I am afraid it means that DHS
intelligence has yet to take its place as a fully recognized member of
the Intelligence Community. As such, one of the Department's goals is
to ensure that the Office of Intelligence and Analysis becomes a true
peer of the other IC agencies, with all the rights, responsibilities,
and the respect, that entails. Another goal is to make sure that the
next time it becomes necessary to fix U.S. intelligence--and I hope it
won't be soon--DHS will be the subject of a chapter on how to do it
right.
Before I turn to the future, I want to address one more aspect of
the past: the union of information analysis and infrastructure
protection within DHS. I hope nobody takes the separation of these two
functions as a sign that the original idea of them working closely
together was a mistake. Far from it. One of the things that make DHS
unique is its ability to bring together threat streams and
vulnerability assessments in a methodologically rigorous and action-
oriented way. This practice of mapping threats against vulnerabilities
is an important part of the DHS intelligence program and we will
continue to partner intelligence analysts with infrastructure
protection specialists and dedicated support personnel to better
understand the terrorist threat to U.S. infrastructure. This joint
endeavor between the Office of Intelligence and Analysis and the
infrastructure protection elements will provide a significant
capability for the Department's new Preparedness Directorate.
You may wonder: if IA and IP are so good together, why split them?
I think the Secretary made that clear when he announced his plans to
reorganize the Department: he wants to raise the profile of both. For
IA, this means elevation to a stand-alone organization, reporting
directly to the Secretary, in order to manage the integration of DHS
intelligence activities that cut across the entire Department. IA and
IP are like two siblings who have grown up together and who now are
heading off to bright futures that will be separate but intertwined.
III. Road ahead
a. Priorities
Having covered the past, let me turn now to the future. I will
start with a brief summary of my priorities, followed by a discussion
of how I intend to pursue them.
My first priority is to support the Department's leadership and
direction of the operational components. Secretary Chertoff and Deputy
Secretary Jackson have broad responsibilities across a complex and
multi-functional Department, and I need to keep them fully apprised of
what's going on in the area of intelligence. This obligation extends to
integrating the intelligence elements of the Department so as to create
a unified intelligence culture, improving the flow of intelligence
information both horizontally and vertically throughout the
organization, and improving the reporting of intelligence information
from the Department's operating components and providing actionable,
relevant analysis back to them.
Next, DHS intelligence must become fully involved in the
Intelligence Community and the National Intelligence Program. This
means being a valued contributor to the overall intelligence effort and
a trusted recipient of national intelligence information from other
agencies. As you may know, our unique functional expertise at DHS
resides in our operational components, and a pool of rich information
gathered by these components and from our exchanges with state, local,
and private sector partners. I am seeing first hand how different
functional perspectives coupled with access to component data yield
unique analysis and products. DHS's intelligence contribution is its
ability to act as a nexus for integration and coordination between
domestic and foreign intelligence. We simply cannot afford delays or
Obstacles to the rapid sharing of potentially valuable information and
intelligence from all sources. We need to redouble our collective
effort, both within DHS and among the Intelligence Community, to allow
the right people to access the right information, on time, for the
right customers.
My third priority involves strengthening intelligence support to
our state, local, tribal, and territorial government partners.
Consistent with the Secretary's emphasis on risk-based allocation of
resources, I will focus on supporting major cities and key
infrastructure assets, but I also aim to strengthen relationships with
all our Homeland Security Advisors, local and government partners, and
the private sector.
Finally, I will strive to cultivate a rich relationship with
Congress. I don't need to tell you that we are in a very dangerous
period, and I need your continued support, objectivity, and feedback in
order to improve the capabilities of DHS intelligence to help secure
the nation.
Now that I have given you the high-altitude view of my priorities,
let me circle in to give you a more detailed picture of how I intend to
pursue them.
Support to Departmental leadership and mission
In testimony before this panel and its Senate counterpart,
Secretary Chertoff emphasized that the role of the Department of
Homeland Security is not just to ``catch the terrorist,'' as important
as that is. DHS is an all-hazards agency and our constituent agencies
need support across the full range of their activities. The Office of
Intelligence and Analysis is prioritizing tasks and improving the focus
of its analytic workforce to better support the Department's core
missions of border, transportation, maritime, and infrastructure
security. Our efforts will wed intelligence even more closely to
operations.
As I said earlier, Secretary Chertoff has given me a mandate to
integrate all DHS intelligence activities. The goal is not to create a
unitary, top-down, command-and-control structure, but rather to ensure
that the intelligence elements of the various operating components
contribute to a unified Departmental intelligence picture of the
threats our country faces, even as they continue to support the day-to-
day needs of their respective organizations. The U.S. military has
shown how proud institutions with long and distinguished histories can
partake of a joint identity even as they retain what makes them
distinctive and valuable. I believe we can do the same in DHS
intelligence. We will build a departmental intelligence culture that
will be more than simply the sum of its confederated parts.
Prior to my arrival, the Office of Information Analysis prepared an
intelligence integration plan that was an important input into the
Secretary's Second Stage Review. I intend to use this plan to identify
and implement some additional measures that will bring a more corporate
approach to the DHS intelligence enterprise in such areas as
requirements, analytic standards--including use of alternative
analysis, and human capital development.
I also plan to establish a Homeland Security Intelligence Council
as my principal forum for discussing intelligence issues of Department-
wide significance, developing a Departmental intelligence strategic
plan, and driving intelligence component integration. This council,
which I will chair, will consist of key intelligence officials from the
various DHS operating components.
Improving the flow of intelligence information throughout the
Department is a key goal. I intend to make sure that the intelligence
information generated by the day-to-day operations of the Department
gets to intelligence analysts, operators, and policymakers. Likewise,
relevant Departmental analyses need to get to the Border Patrol agent,
the Coast Guard cutter captain, and the TSA airport screener in forms
they can use. The Office of Intelligence and Analysis is developing
several tools to share information. An Intelligence Production and
Dissemination Suite will incorporate automated tearline production and
classification review as well as metadata regimes that comply with
prevailing Intelligence Community standards and incorporate
indispensable privacy protections to facilitate delivery of
intelligence to the users who really need it. Another tool that we are
exploring would maintain ``smart'' databases and archives for improved
accessibility and dissemination of finished intelligence products to
federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal customers, with cross-
matching of security clearance status connected to privacy safeguards
and cross-cutting dissemination across communities of interest. We are
also developing an in-house capability to produce high-quality printed
materials, including guides and analytic products, at all
classification levels to serve internal and external consumers.
Perhaps the most important information-sharing initiative we are
undertaking is a reports officer program designed to extract and
disseminate the intelligence information generated by the day-to-day
operations of the Department's frontline elements such as Customs, the
Border Patrol, and TSA. The Office of Intelligence and Analysis
currently has a small cadre of reports officers at DHS headquarters
reviewing operational data and determining its intelligence value.
Within its first year of operation, this program has disseminated more
than 1,000 Intelligence Information Reports, or IIRs. The next phase of
the program will place reports officers in the various DHS component
headquarters to review information closer to the source. We are also
considering placing reports officers in DHS component field offices,
and state and local intelligence fusion centers.
This program, once fully staffed, integrated with privacy sensitive
practices, and assimilated with the necessary tools and capabilities
for information delivery, will exemplify the unique value that DHS
brings to the Intelligence Community. Our aim is to better identify
``dots'' that matter for analysts to connect and, working with state
and local partners, develop trends analysis and context, thereby
increasing the likelihood that relevant federal, state, or local actors
will be able to disrupt or mitigate the effects of terrorism and other
hazards.
The Office of Intelligence and Analysis is committed to work with
the Department's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the
Privacy Office to ensure that civil liberties and privacy concerns are
addressed and protected in operations and information sharing
activities. This is particularly important with regard to information
sharing with private sector partners. Certainly, we respect the need to
ensure privacy protections in any information sharing scheme. As
Secretary Chertoff has said, ``we must calibrate an approach to
security that incorporates prevention and protection into our lives in
a way that respects our liberty and our privacy, and fosters our
prosperity.'' Thus, the systems, interactions, and relationships we
build will reflect the prominence of privacy while at the same time
putting the right information at the right place at the right time.
Participation in the Intelligence Community
All of the things that we are doing to improve our support to the
Department and its leadership also strengthen our participation in the
Intelligence Community. I will highlight some of the additional
measures we are taking to ensure that we are a valuable, and valued,
member of the IC. We will soon begin entering information about our
analysts in the Analytic Resources Catalog, or ARC, a directory of IC
analysts searchable by, among other things, areas of responsibility and
specialization. We are also integrating our best people with other IC
elements, and simultaneously inviting their best people into our
organization, consistent with the intent of Congress as expressed in
last year's Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. This
includes sending several representatives to the Office of the Director
of National Intelligence.
One area I am particularly intent on improving is the use and
standing of DHS intelligence officer staff representation within the
National Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC. We are preparing a plan that
will improve NCTC's access to the homeland security intelligence that
DHS maintains as well as to our analytic expertise in such areas as
border, transportation, and maritime security. I have spoken with
Admiral Redd, the Director of the NCTC, and we agree that DHS has
valuable information and capabilities to contribute to the NCTC's vital
mission. As you know, liaison officers assigned to and from other
Intelligence Community elements are a key to successful collaboration
and enhance the overall sense of community in our business.
One important way in which we participate in the Intelligence
Community is through our management of the National Intelligence
Priorities Framework's Homeland Security Topic. In addition, we have
led the requirements process to ensure that this topic reflects not
only the Intelligence Community's priorities, but also those of our
federal, state, local and private sector stakeholders. To strengthen
our role in the Intelligence Community as the principal entry point for
state, local, and private sector requirements, we will extend to this
set of partners the automated capability to submit requirements for
intelligence information.
Support to state and local governments and the private sector
The Department of Homeland Security was conceived in the
expectation that it would marshal the resources of state, local,
tribal, and territorial governments and the private sector in a way
that was desperately needed but had never been done. The Office of
Information Analysis pursued this objective with vigor, and the Office
of Intelligence and Analysis will continue to do so.
Everything we do to support the Department and the Intelligence
Community also strengthens our ability to support our state, local and
private sector partners. However, I wish to highlight a few additional
measures. DHS is supporting the efforts of a number of states to create
and develop state and local fusion centers to support interoperability.
The Office of Intelligence and Analysis is actively working with state
and local partners on determining how best to engage with these
centers. Another initiative responsive to our state and local
stakeholders is the recent roll-out of a classified version of the
Homeland Security Information Network, or HSIN. The unclassified HSIN
is being used in all 50 states to share information between DHS and
states and some local officials on a range of homeland threat,
protective, and response issues. We are constantly striving to add
functionality to both versions of HSIN in response to the needs of our
state, local, and private partners.
Congressional relations
I am mindful that to fulfill my obligations to the Department, the
Intelligence Community, and the Department's state, local, and private
stakeholders, I will need the support of Congress, including this
committee, its counterpart in the Senate, and the House and Senate
intelligence and appropriation committees. I aim to build that support
in a number of ways. The first, of course, is by speaking with you in
open sessions such as this as well as in closed sessions when
appropriate. But if I were to limit myself to hearings, I would be
doing you and myself a disservice. I believe in the power of bagels and
coffee to build good working relationships, and I hope I can attract a
number of you, as well as your key staff members, to our campus in
Northwest Washington for breakfast meetings to exchange information and
views. Finally, one of my management goals is to strengthen our
preparation of budget submissions, and responses to Questions for the
Record. I want to make sure that you get high-quality submissions from
us because it is manifestly in our own interest, as well as yours, to
do so.
b. Challenges
I would be remiss if I failed to mention the challenges the Chief
Intelligence Officer will face in the coming months and years.
First, we face the challenge of securing our place in the
Intelligence Community. I hope that by carrying the banner for homeland
security intelligence, I can help our peers in the IC appreciate the
unique contribution we make to the security of the nation. I realize
that this process of winning acceptance must occur in the difficult
context of a much wider Intelligence Community reorganization that has
a number of agencies adapting to changing roles and missions. That is
why we stand ready to work with our fellow agencies to increase mutual
understanding, strengthen vital partnerships, and build a culture of
information sharing.
Many of the initiatives I have outlined above require sufficient
staff and adequate space. I understand that some on Capitol Hill have
the impression that we can't fill the billets we have. While perhaps
understandable, this impression is mistaken. When I assumed my duties
last month, 94% of the billets in the Office of Intelligence and
Analysis had an incumbent or an inbound staff member. We are addressing
these internal issues, and are applying our best energies to external
challenges as well, with all haste. Our sense of urgency cannot be
higher.
IV. Conclusion
As I conclude, I want to take care not to leave you with the
impression that all the challenges we face are ones of management and
resources. The most important challenge we face is a persistent and
adaptive enemy determined to inflict catastrophic harm on the U.S.
homeland. Virtually any terrorist attack on the homeland that one can
imagine must exploit a border crossing, a port of entry, a critical
infrastructure, or one of the other domains that the Department has an
obligation to secure. DHS intelligence must learn and adapt faster than
the enemy so that our Department and all its partners in the federal,
state, and local levels of government and the private sector have the
information edge they need to secure our nation. As the Department's
first Chief Intelligence Officer, I intend to make sure that happens.
Thank you for the opportunity to address this panel today. I would be
happy to answer your questions.
Mr. Simmons. I will begin with one or two questions myself,
and then I will go back and forth to my colleagues in the same
order that we began.
You mentioned a couple of things. First of all,
traditionally we as Americans have associated intelligence with
HUMINT, SIGINT, IMINT and the various INTs. We have also
associated American intelligence with secrecy. We have focused
our intelligence efforts largely abroad and left law
enforcement at home to the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
State and local police activities.
Now we have the responsibility to secure the homeland, so
the question is, will we be creating a new secret organization
that may raise issues of first and fourth amendment rights, or
will we introduce another INT into the equation, which is
OPINT, which is open sources of intelligence, which carry two
benefits: One, it allows us to collect openly and not
clandestinely within our own borders from publicly available
information, but, secondly, eliminates the problem of security
clearances when it comes to information sharing. That would be
my second point.
Information sharing is not the culture of the Intelligence
Community, and yet information sharing must become part of the
culture of Homeland Security, because if the Federal, State,
tribal and local entities don't share information, I don't see
how they can deal with the multiple problems that we face.
So I would ask you to respond on those two points, open
sources of intelligence and information sharing.
Mr. Allen. Well, I am pleased that you raised both of those
issues, because those are precisely areas where I intend to
make improvements.
I worked in that world of great secrecy for quite a number
of decades, and, of course, much of the information that we
still receive is highly sensitive and highly secret from the
traditional foreign Intelligence Community. At the same time, I
think there has been a slow recognition on the part of the U.S.
Intelligence Community to recognize the value of open source
intelligence.
For example, the 9/11 Commission made a very strong
statement. The WMD Commission, I think, was even stronger in
the need for better exploitation of open source.
During the Cold War, about 1 percent, I think, of our
National Foreign Intelligence Program went to open source.
After the Cold War was over, it declined to about a 1/2
percent. I have been a long advocate to increase that. I do
believe that our definitions of open source have been too
narrow. I believe commercial imagery is open source. And one of
the things that I wish to do in working with the Director of
National Intelligence Ambassador Negroponte and with the U.S.
Intelligence Community is to try to enhance that. I think we
can build a very substantial program of our own within Homeland
Security, and I certainly intend to try to do that and to come
back to you with what is needed in terms of resources.
At this stage Ambassador Negroponte is still sorting out
how to meet the recommendation of the WMD Commission on open
source, but he is very committed to it, and so are many of his
deputies, such as Mary Margaret Graham, who is the Assistant
Director of National Intelligence for Collection.
On the second issue, on information sharing, this is a
somewhat different world for me, but I think that my
predecessors have laid a good baseline to get information out
to State and local and the private sector. Secretary Chertoff
has continued the National Infrastructure Advisory Council,
which really does have some very prominent people from across
the sectors of U.S. private sector. There are about 17 sectors
with which we work.
We work very hard if there is threat information to ensure
that the collecting agency, the originating agency, provides
those terror lines, whether it is from one of the intelligence-
gathering components within DHS which do collect intelligence,
as well as from the U.S. foreign Intelligence Community.
I have seen great strides on the part of foreign
Intelligence Community. Now it is up to us to push that
information out quickly and timely to those who may be under
threat. And, believe me, there are threats. As the President
said the other day, there have been threats disrupted, several,
up to 10 and more, and including 3 in the United States.
So, we intend to share and to work it hard.
Mr. Simmons. I thank you for that response, and I note that
if the open source intelligence is produced organically within
your shot, it is your call as to how it is disseminated.
The distinguished Ranking Member.
Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In terms of the sharing of information, we have been
apprised of the Homeland Security Information Network, which
was designed, envisioned for other things, to strengthen the
flow of real-time threat information to State, local and
private sector partners at the sensitive but unclassified
level. We just recently heard that the Joint Regional
Information Exchange System, which is a major information-
sharing initiative that includes intelligence directors from
New York, Washington and Los Angeles, recently announced that
they would no longer be cooperating with the Homeland Security
Information Network.
I am interested in what your view of this development is,
and, if you think that it is a problem, what processes you
might use and how we might assist to address the rift.
Mr. Allen. Thank you, Congresswoman.
On the Homeland Security Information Network, that is a
much broader capability that has been developed with far
greater capacities than the JRES, the law enforcement network
that began, I believe, informally back in 2002.
The Homeland Security Information Network really includes a
flow of information not just to law enforcement, but to
Homeland Security, to State and local at all levels, as well as
to law enforcement, and certainly out to the private sector. So
this is something I believe that the HSIN, as we call it, as it
continues to strengthen, will become the overarching
capabilities.
This is not something with which I have great familiarity,
having just arrived 3 weeks ago, but it is my understanding
that JRES did very fine information sharing informally among a
variety of law enforcement agencies, a volunteer effort, but it
did not include the broader community, nor does it have quite
the information handling capacities as the one developed by
Homeland Security.
I think this will work its way out. I know that our
Director of Operations, General Broderick, Matthew Broderick,
is going to be talking to the Congress on this issue.
Ms. Lofgren. All right. I am interested, as we discussed
recently, in the use of technology in connecting information,
and there are some elements of the Department that are--to say
technologically challenged would be kind.
I am wondering how you as the Chief Intelligence Officer
will make intelligence information available to the
intelligence units that exist within the Department's legacy
agencies, some of which do face these tremendous, as we
discussed yesterday, technology challenges, and whether you
have some thoughts to create a common database or other
repository, and, if you do, what your thoughts are in terms of
protecting legitimate privacy issues so that only those who
have a need to know actually do have access.
Mr. Allen. Thank you very much for that question. I agree
with you. Individually within, for example, the Customs and
Border Protection Agency or component, they do have some very
remarkable databases and information-handling tools, and I
believe also does the immigration and enforcement component. At
the same time, we do not have the kind of integrated
centralized databases that are prevalent out in other broader
traditional Intelligence Communities. We have to, obviously, do
a much better job of building interoperable and interconnected
databases. I will get to the privacy issue in a moment. And the
problem is to rapidly and quickly share data among all
elements, all components, and back to DHS headquarters where I
oversee intelligence.
One of the things I am doing, I brought a senior CIA
officer in to look at information management so we can
understand how the information flows much better. That is one
thing I have done. Also we are going to work with the new CIO
brought in by Mr. Chertoff, Secretary Chertoff, Scott Sharbo. I
think we are going to get there, but we have a long way to go,
and that is a relevant question. Six months from now I will
have a much better idea on how to respond.
Ms. Lofgren. Fair enough.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Simmons. Mr. Cunningham.
Mr. Cunningham. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Allen, we have to be efficient 100 percent of the time.
The terrorists only have to be lucky once. If you look at
France and England, Japan, other places, they haven't had that
luxury that we have.
The key in the military is training, and you fight like you
train. My concern is how do you take Border Patrol, Customs,
Coast Guard, local law enforcement, tie them all together, now
make them have a segment of intelligence within that
organization, and then be able to transmit that intelligence to
the targets that need to get it?
We had an example in San Diego that two law enforcement
agents saw a train running on a track, all by itself, no
engineers, nobody in it. They boarded that train and come to
find out that was standard procedure, that the engineers went
to eat their lunch until the next shift showed up, but they
left the train running. The local newspapers chastised those
law enforcement agents for boarding that train.
I think that is the kind of initiative, if you see
something out of the ordinary, that you do go in and you are
not afraid to make a mistake. So training, I think, is key in
how to do that.
I also look at one of the problems that we have is with
your infrastructure itself. The question that was asked, how
are you going to do it? My answer is, you come to us, Mr.
Allen. You need a scif, you need the infrastructure, to right
now where you have three people for every chair and they have
to rotate, that is not good. We need to provide you with the
infrastructure for the people and also the technology that with
this fire hose amount of technology and information that you
get and the number of people that you have to put out the
information to, it is our job to make sure that you have the
right equipment that you need. So training, infrastructure is
important
And then the last thing I would think is dissemination of
the information. Just think about the information that comes in
from our satellites, just millions and millions and millions of
megabytes, and how do you sift that, and how you get it to the
right people? Then you have inputs from all these other
agencies, and how do you do that?
Have you ever been to Colorado, to the local base there
that coordinates everything?
Mr. Allen. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cunningham. That--I would recommend that every
intelligence officer visits that site, because, to me, those
sections work in harmony, they work with all the services
together, they work with law enforcement, and they not only can
take the information, they have the authority to act and be
proactive to execute an order to eliminate a terrorist they
see, overseas or in country. I would think that would serve in
every city if we had a site like that. You know which one I am
talking about, to take a look at.
One last thing is sometimes our own laws hurt us. You
remember COSCO? Not right down here around the corner where you
go to buy your fries and beans, but China Ocean Shipping
Company. We knew they had shipped in AK-47s. We knew they were
shipping in illegals. We knew that we couldn't talk about it,
that they actually had spies operating within COSCO, and they
were going to let them have Long Beach Naval Shipyard to
control every single container that came into that area. We
didn't mind them being a tenant, but we didn't want them to
control it, and we could not talk about the spy that was under
investigation.
So the opening statement, sometimes we can't tell the
public exactly why we think that there is a danger or tell the
media, but we can let the local law enforcement agents know
that there is a problem, and a credible problem, or at least
what the level of that credibility is, so that they can react.
Mr. Allen. Thank you very much, Congressman.
On the training, we are deficient in training our
intelligence officers and deficient in training the officers
within the various components, because many of them are, as you
say, law enforcement backgrounds at the borders, at the
airports. We obviously have to make them understand the
information and data they are acting upon operationally also
contained some very valuable information that needs to be
brought back and put into threat stream data and disseminated.
We are going to do that. I just met with the CBP this morning,
and we talked precisely about this and the need for far more
active training.
As far as facilities are concerned--and I intend to develop
a training program and set some training standards across the
DHS components, just as Ambassador Negroponte is setting
training standards across the traditional U.S. Intelligence
Community.
Second, on facilities, we obviously are short of
facilities. My own office does not have this. I have submitted
a plan to Deputy Secretary Jackson, and I will press that.
On the third issue, as to dissemination, you are absolutely
right. One of the things I have asked to do for fiscal year
2007 is start looking and see what a communication center will
cost for my office in order to disseminate intelligence
promptly.
Thank you.
Mr. Simmons. Ms. Harman.
Ms. Harman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Again, welcome, Mr. Allen.
I think every day about whether I am adding any value
around here. Some days yes, lots of days no. It strikes me that
your challenge is going to be to add value to a lot of people
and efforts that are generating a huge number of dots, some of
which are good dots and some of which are bad dots. How do you
do that on a daily basis? It seems to me the most important
thing you will have to do is to manage.
So my question is, how will you manage the information that
is all over DHS, that is generated by TSA, by the different
border functions? You just mentioned CBP. How will you manage
the information that comes from local and regional and State
law enforcement? How will you pull this together so that, for
example, our threat warning system and our decisions about
which targets to harden are as good as they can be?
Finally, how will you manage the relationships that you
obviously already have, that is one of your big advantages,
with the NCTC and with the Director of National Intelligence?
How can you become, by tomorrow morning, the best possible
manager of intelligence?
Mr. Allen. Thank you very much, I think. Your questions are
spot on. That is where I think there has been lack of real
focus, and that is how to bring together all these disparate
components and the intelligence and the information and
intelligence-related data they collect on a daily basis. And
they collect a lot of it. A lot of it they act on just very
tactically, but there is vast--I won't say there is vast, but
there is a great amount of information that does not get fully
disseminated or used as part of trends and patterns and threat
streams.
As I said earlier, we are going to study all those
information flows, because I have no blueprint to go from at
this stage on how to integrate that and to bring it to an end,
to fuse it, and to bring it into an analyzed form. It is a huge
and big problem for all of us, and it has not been done. It
must be done, because the Federal air marshals have information
that is never collected, never disseminated. We know that. It
is not just TSA or ICE. And we know at the State and local
levels there is also additional data that needs to flow out and
from the private sector.
I am going to put together a very strong management team. I
have a Deputy Director here behind me, Mr. Foust, for mission
integration, so he is going to have to carry a lot of that
burden. I am going to bring in a principal deputy, who I hope
will be ``Mr. Outside,'' who will work with the State and local
and private sector, an individual with that kind of background.
I am going to bring in a senior intelligence officer from the
CIA to increase the analytic quality that we have, to make sure
that we provide far better analysis and sharper analysis than
we have today. And, as I said earlier, working with the CIO of
DHS and a new information management officer that is going to
look at all this, we are going to put together our very best
effort. But since we do not have a blueprint, our first is to
build an architecture, an information architecture, that does
not exist today across all of DHS. We must do that, and I
intend to give it my level best effort.
Ms. Harman. Thank you.
Mr. Simmons. Mr. King of New York.
Mr. King. Thank you, Chairman Simmons.
Mr. Allen, the Intelligence Reform Act we adopted last year
provided the President would designate an individual as the
program manager responsible for the information sharing across
the Federal Government. What exactly will your role be with
respect to the governmentwide information-sharing manager?
Mr. Allen. Thank you. Mr. John Russack is in charge of the
Information Sharing Environment Program Office. Mr. Russack, a
former Navy captain, was my deputy for 2 years, so I have a
very personal relationship.
DHS plans to appoint as deputy to his program office an
individual, a very senior individual, to take on that
responsibility. In my view, and I attend personally the PCCs,
the coordinating efforts that are undertaken under the
leadership of the NSC on information sharing, what I see is
required by the program office are not just a vision and not
just plans, but specific deliverables and timelines.
I just attended a meeting at the White House where I made
that point, and that is the direction in which we are heading,
because we have to make this program office operate effectively
and efficiently. It has had a slow beginning, and I think it is
on the right course. So I intend to participate fully in that
truly governmentwide information-sharing effort.
Mr. King. Mr. Allen, I think you agree with me on this. I
think it is important for Homeland Security to establish more
of a presence with local governments as far as exchanging
information, working with local law enforcement. Are you in a
position yet to tell what plans you have as far as extending
DHS out into local communities and working with various law
enforcement officials around the country?
Mr. Allen. That is one of my highest priorities, as you
know, Mr. Chairman. New York City, we obviously have to develop
a very close relationship. This is a city that has been
attacked, thousands of people have died, and it has an
extraordinary capability under Commissioner Kelly, and, of
course, its intelligence unit is 400 people strong under Mr.
David Cohen.
It is my intention to a put an officer there full time in
the future up in New York City. Mr. Cohen is sending a
delegation down shortly to talk with me about strengthening our
relationships. I intend to visit New York City and learn from
New York City the way it handles the kind of information that
is truly nontraditional intelligence and how it functions.
We are also looking at Los Angeles. We are working very
closely with the Los Angeles Police Department. I do not have a
full blueprint at this time, but I intend to develop one. Some
of the major cities which we know have been mentioned as
targets by foreign terrorist groups in particular, we have to
develop a richer and closer relationship.
Mr. King. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Simmons. Mr. Reyes.
Mr. Reyes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Congratulations, Mr. Allen, on your appointment. Knowing
your work from my 5 years on the Intelligence Committee, it
gives me a sense of comfort that you will be going into a
situation in DHS that really needs to focus the ability to
analyze and gather and collect the kind of information that is
unique to only DHS. I mention that because, as you probably
know, I spent 26-1/2 years with the Border Patrol before coming
to Congress, and as a chief, I always was careful to tell my
agents that they were collectors of information, collectors of
intelligence, and we routinely shared that information with the
Intelligence Community.
So my question for you is, how do you plan to
institutionalize, standardize, ensure that all of the potential
intelligence that is out there, that is unique to DHS, and I am
talking about Border Patrol agents in the many remote areas of
our border, our Customs and Immigration inspectors at the ports
of entry that come in contact with millions of people every
day, that have the potential to see and report and gather what
is commonly known as pocket litter, that that is somehow
consolidated and brought together for the analysis that you
spoke about. How do you plan to do that?
The other question I would have is in terms of budget,
because all the plans in the world are not going to help you if
you don't have the budget authority to be able to carry them
out. Currently all the intelligence staffs other than the
Office of Information Analysis and Coast Guard, receive
direction, personnel and funding from their respective
component organizations, TSA, Customs and Border Protection,
ICE, all the different entities. So do you feel that you ought
to have budget authority in these particular areas to make sure
that your vision and your plans are fully and completely
implemented and integrated in a coordinated way in DHS?
Mr. Allen. On the first question of trying to ensure that
those come out the pointed end of the spear, that they
understand they are collectors, and they understand that they
must get that data together and get it back to other
components, a lot is sent back today. There is a changing
culture, I think, certainly in the CBP where you worked on the
border.
But building a unified intelligence culture inside DHS is
going to take time; it is going to take enormous energy on the
part of all concerned, and a lot of goodwill. We have to
improve our training, as Congressman Cunningham stated. We have
got make sure that they know, because their perceptions are
very different. They have a few seconds to make a decision on
whether to permit this person to cross the border or not. Is
the person's credentials in good order? Does he have a
legitimate passport? It is a very rapid decision. A million
people, something like that, enter the United States every day.
It is a vast effort. There are 317 ports of entry around the
country. So we have to truly begin to work at that.
We have to give training to those people out in the various
component elements, and we have to give them guidelines. I
don't see any great guidelines that flow, particularly from my
office, out to the various elements.
I am forming a Homeland Security Intelligence Council where
the heads of the intelligence elements will sit. We meet this
Friday at our first meeting, it is called the Homeland Security
Intelligence Council. I told Congresswoman Harman about it the
other day. This is going to be a decision-making body where the
people coming and the heads of those intelligence elements have
to speak to what they can and cannot do and if they have any
resource shortfalls.
So from my perspective, we are going to strengthen those
intelligence elements. If they don't have enough reports
officers to report the data that is collected, I am going to
tell them, you need more enforcement officers, and here is how
many you need. When it gets to the budget issue, I am going to
evaluate whether I need additional authorities.
At this stage I think I have the needed authority to make
changes, to be a change agent at DHS over the next year, but I
will come back to you if I need additional authority.
Mr. Reyes. Thank you.
Mr. Simmons. The gentleman from Michigan Mr. Rogers.
Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
One of the reasons I really wanted to come today was to see
Mr. Allen again, somebody who spent 47 years with the CIA and
decided to retire, and here he comes back again. Thank you for
committing yourself to public service. Apparently 47 years ago
you were one of the original spy kids, is that right, very
young when you started this operation? Thank you for doing
this. I can't think of a better person to be there.
A couple things you said have concerned me. I just want to
go over a little bit in your testimony here. You talked about
the DHS intelligence offices yet to be fully recognized as a
member of the Intelligence Community, and you want to become a
true peer with all the rights, responsibilities, respect that
that entails.
I certainly understand and appreciate the desire to do
that. The one red flag that goes up for me is in order to do
that, you have got to get bigger, and you got have to more
people, and you are going to drain more resources. I am very
concerned that everybody wants to be in the intelligence
business today. Just about every agency out there wants an
expansion and has requested Congress for an expansion of
reports officers or different directions that they want to take
in intelligence.
I am very concerned that we are creating something that was
not supposed to be this big, DHS, and even making it bigger. I
am hoping you can explain to me what value-added that you have
added to the intelligence service and what the office was
originally intended for, which was to collect and disburse
information produced by its host agencies.
Mr. Allen. Thank you.
First, on the full member to take our place along with the
traditional Intelligence Community, it doesn't mean you have to
expand into a large organization necessarily. Treasury,
Department of Energy, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research
over at the Department of State are not large entities, but
they have to be effective and efficient.
In this case, as far as our intelligence, the added value
is that not only do we focus on both foreign and domestically
acquired information, because there is a lot of information
collected by the 10 components of DHS which have intelligence
or intelligence-related activity. That information is not
available, and when I met with Ambassador Negroponte the other
day, this is one of the things that he spoke about, where he
expected far more input. When I met with Admiral Scott Redd
over at NCTC, this is exactly where he said DHS needs to help
him and help the National Counterterrorism Center analyze
information on a broad scale, because this is a war without
borders, as we have spoken before. What may be planned in
Waziristan, may occur in Detroit, Michigan. So that is where we
are working, because they have to cross the borders. They have
to come by land, sea or air in order to commit the kind of
murder that they did on September 11, 2001.
So, from my perspective, not only do we have a lot of added
value, and I don't know how much I have asked for, modest--you
all agreed to some modest increases in staff and resources in
fiscal year 2006. The President just signed the bill yesterday.
We will have some probably additional requests from Secretary
Chertoff in the fiscal year 2007. We are looking at our needs
at that stage.
What I want to do is be far more efficient. Actually, it is
not the size of my office. When you lookout at the components,
there are hundreds and thousands. As Congressman Reyes says,
there are thousands of people out there willing to collect and
help provide information on people who wish to do us harm; 99.9
percent of the people coming into the country do not want that,
but there is that percentage that does, and every day, every
day, there are incidents, quite a number of them, where people
are refused entry or they are detained as a result of the kind
of work that goes on at our ports of entry, 317 of them.
So, I think we bring a lot of that in value, and it is
recognized. It is recognized by every element of the U.S.
Intelligence Community. I was at NSA yesterday with Lieutenant
General Keith Alexander, and he spoke very strongly of the need
for cooperating with DHS in a number of areas.
Mr. Rogers. I certainly appreciate that.
If I may follow up, Mr. Chairman, we could be far more
efficient. We have been talking about interoperability with IT
since I have been in Congress 5 years ago. We don't have that.
It doesn't exist. With all these machinations of new
intelligence bureaus and expansions here and the DNI that wants
700 people, I would hope that we could come back to a committee
pretty shortly and talk about how we have all of these agencies
having the ability to talk to each other with an IT system. It
can't be that difficult. I take that back, it is difficult. But
we have spent a lot of money making it possible. I would hope,
and I know you are the guy to do it, and I think you are a
change agent, if somebody can get in there and get their arms
around it, I think it is you. We are counting on you to do the
right thing. I appreciate it.
Mr. Simmons. We thank the gentleman for his comments, and
note for the record that he did serve in the FBI for a number
of years. Thank you.
The gentleman from Maryland Mr. Ruppersberger?
Mr. Ruppersberger. Mr. Allen, I think you are the right
person. You are a pro. We need to get somebody in a position
who has experience, and you have that.
I think when you are looking at what we are doing with
respect to protecting our homeland, you have to talk about
short term and long term, the long term being the systems that
we set up and the people that we have. But I would like to get
into the short term, because al-Qa'ida or terrorists are not
going to wait for us to be ready, and we have to really do what
we have to do right away to deal with some issues, and I would
like to get into some specifics right now.
An example would be the recent terrorist scare in New York
highlights some serious information-sharing failures.
Intelligence agencies failed to develop a common position on
the reliability of the threat reports, and local officials got
contradictory assessments from FBI and the Department of
Homeland Security and other agencies.
We just had an incident yesterday in Baltimore. I am not
sure where at this point--maybe you might be able to comment,
if you can, about what was the system that we used in order to
first get the information and disseminate the information so
that local officials can make decisions, they are first
responders, so they can make decisions based on what they have
received and the teamwork approach.
So what must be done to improve the process for assessing
reliability of intelligence reports and for sharing real-time
information with local officials?
Secondly and I think this is an even more relevant
question, what happens, using New York and Baltimore as an
example, in terms of information sharing, when there is a
conflict between the FBI and the Department of Homeland
Security? What mechanism is in place to decide what information
should be used to make that decision? There has to be one
person, one boss, one individual, I think, that has to make
that decision. It is not about turf, it is about protecting our
homeland.
Mr. Allen. Thank you. Those are very good questions.
As far as New York and Baltimore, what I would like to do
is come back in a classified hearing and give you details on
what happened in each case, and certainly I am prepared to do
this, and I know that probably other agencies that participated
in this would be pleased to do as well.
I don't know of any significant disagreement between the
FBI and Homeland Security in either of those cases and would be
glad to explain how we did share, in a classified environment,
information right from the beginning of the New York threat on
the 27th, and as we began the issue with the subways back last
week.
We worked very closely with the FBI, we worked very closely
with the Homeland Security authorities in New York and also in
Maryland yesterday. We worked with the Joint Terrorist Task
Force that is run by the FBI. We also believe in each of those
cases that what New York City decided to do and what the
Maryland Transit Authority decided to do were prudent measures.
We know that there is always some uncertainty in all
intelligence activities, so I don't know of any great
differences that I have with anyone on those. In fact, I
believe the Governor of Maryland said it worked rather
seamlessly yesterday.
Mr. Ruppersberger. I would like to get to some specifics. I
mean, that is past, and we need to evaluate what occurred so we
can do it better the next time. But we don't know when another
incident will be.
What I would like to know, though, is do we have a system
in place; if, in fact, there is a conflict between Homeland
Security and FBI, what is the mechanism to resolve that? Is
there one person in charge? If we don't have that type of a
system, we are not going to be as effective as we should. Are
you aware of that system, if it exists today; and, if not, what
do you plan to do about it?
Mr. Allen. I believe in most cast cases there will not be
any substantial differences, and, of course, in this case we
worked very closely with the National Counterterrorism Center,
which is run by Admiral Redd.
Mr. Allen. As far as someone being overall in charge, I
believe that working with--certainly with Secretary Chertoff
and with the Director of National Intelligence, we can
certainly make sure that there is a very seamless way. One the
things I have asked to do--
Mr. Ruppersberger. Let me just--
Mr. Allen. Lessons learned, we are going to learn from this
and come back with probably some proposal that we can discuss
with you
Mr. Ruppersberger. I have one other question maybe to get
to what I am looking for. How do the current Department of
Homeland Security missions differ from, say, the FBI as it
relates to coordinating information and giving that information
to the locals?
Mr. Allen. Well, the FBI obviously has a real
responsibility if there is a threat as to coordinate and share
that information with Federal and local officials and with the
private sector if there is a direct threat to a particular
sector. So there are different missions here. They have to be
closely coordinated and aligned, and I think we can do a better
job of doing that
Mr. Ruppersberger. I would just try to--you are right on.
We need to create a system that works. There needs, in my
opinion, to be more focus on the type of information when there
is conflict, because I can't see you; because as far as the
incidents that have occurred in New York and Baltimore that
will continue to occur, and we have to make sure that we are
all on the same team. Good luck.
Mr. Allen. I agree with you, sir. Thank you very much.
Mr. Simmons. I thank the gentleman.
I remind the members that we have a second panel. We are
hoping to get the second panel up before 4:30, maybe even
before then. But I also would mention for the record again that
if there are some detailed questions on either of the specific
events, the New York event and the Maryland event, we are happy
to hold closed briefings on that subject.
And now the Chair recognizes Mr. Langevin.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, Mr. Allen, we
want to thank you for being here. I will try to make my
comments and questions as brief as possible.
First, I just want to comment briefly on information
sharing and just to give you some feedback from my other
committee work or direct contacts with law enforcement. I want
to make you aware, and I know you probably already are, law
enforcement with respect to information sharing is not
impressed at all right now with either the degree of contact
they have had with Homeland Security or their information that
they are getting from Homeland Security. I understand that the
HSIN network is kind of a work in progress, but it is not
nearly as robust as it needs to be.
With respect to my question, I know my colleague Mr. Rogers
already addressed this as well, but I raise it again. The--
right now I know that Homeland Security obviously wants a seat
at the table in the Intelligence Community, but the feeling
basically of the Intelligence Community is that Homeland
Security really doesn't have anything to bring to the table,
and-- although it could at some point if it is developed. Right
now they have nothing to bring to the table. So the question
is, what will Homeland Security bring to the table with respect
to the Intelligence Community?
The other thing is right now, obviously Homeland Security
has a tremendous workforce, 180,000 employees under Homeland
Security. Everything from people in Customs, Border Patrol
area, and they have the capability to be great gatherers of
intelligence and could bring a great deal to the table with
respect to developing raw intelligence. So my question is, what
does Homeland Security, from the intelligence perspective--hat
do you see them bringing to the table, and are you ready to
utilize all the talents and the workforce within Homeland
Security to actually generate the raw intelligence?
Mr. Allen. Well, I think we already have earned our place
at the table with the traditional Intelligence Community, and
speaking with Ambassador Negroponte, speaking with the heads of
other agencies, and speaking with the head of the National
Counterterrorism Center, our lanes in the road, I think, are
getting very well defined. They may have not been defined as
clearly in the past as they should have.
One of the things we do bring to the table is, of course,
first and foremost a tactical intelligence. As I said earlier,
as Congressman Reyes knows, every day we find people trying to
penetrate this country in a variety of ways, and it is due to
the components of DHS that they are turned away. And they act
upon information, upon databases that are built by the
Intelligence Community. So it is very active tactically.
In the infrastructure area, one of our great issues, and we
work very closely with the Assistant Secretary For
Infrastructure and Protection. His people look at all the
sectors and look at potential vulnerabilities of those sectors
and how to keep the country safe.
So I believe that we can contribute significantly already
and will contribute more in the future
Mr. Langevin. I have just a couple of minutes. Let me ask
you this: What obligations should or will the Chief
Intelligence Officer have to the Director of National
Intelligence, and what controls should or will the DNI have
over you, if you haven't addressed that already?
Mr. Allen. I did not address that specifically.
Obviously the DNI--and one of the things that I found that
has not been done is that we--in the past there was not a
document that spelled out the intelligence efforts of DHS in
regard to the Director of Central Intelligence. So I have asked
the Intelligence Community Directorate be set up to design my
relationship with them.
Our relationship, I think, will just continue to grow
stronger in the days ahead as we work very jointly together. We
bring a lot to the DNI. DNI wants us as part of his community.
He--we submit our budget through the DNI. Our budget is
submitted. It is a classified budget through the National
Intelligence Program. He has to--we respond to DNI budget
guidance as well as to the guidance that may come from
Secretary Chertoff. We work for Secretary Chertoff, but we also
have a dual reporting chain. I think both of us understand that
relationship quite well.
Mr. Langevin. I hope you will work with this committee and
rely on us as a resource.
Mr. Allen. I have been 3 weeks on the job so far, so I am
learning
Mr. Simmons. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Massachusetts Mr. Markey.
Mr. Markey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Allen, good luck. We have met all of your predecessors
here, and each of them has unfortunately run afoul of the
difficulty that exists in your position. You have three jobs.
One is to coordinate the 10 intelligence agencies within the
Department of Homeland Security. Then you have to coordinate
with the CIA, the FBI and other agencies. And you have to
coordinate with the State and local governments. The State and
local governments are now saying as of 2 weeks ago they don't
want to coordinate anymore with you. They are not happy. They
are not satisfied. This is 2-1/2 years into the creation of the
Department.
One of your predecessors Mr. Hughes told us that the
relationship between the CIA and the FBI was going to be
dependent upon his good personal working relationships with
them, which from our perspective is completely unsatisfactory.
It must be structural, and it must be guaranteed that that
information flow, whether they want it to flow or not.
And going back to the first point as to how effective your
agency can be with any of these other entities goes to your
coordination within your own agency of the other 10
departments. Now, you have told us here today that there is no
database which links all 10 intelligence units within your
Department. Lacking that technology linkage, how is the
information, Mr. Allen, collected by analysts and officers of
these agencies shared by your office? Do you have daily
meetings of all 10 intelligence chiefs of the 10 departments to
substitute for the fact that there is no common database?
Mr. Allen. Well, let me get back to the broader issue of--I
do not pretend to--I have great personal relationships with
both the FBI and with CIA, but I will not, I will not say that
I will make all problems go away. I think we have to develop
our lanes in the road, and that is the reason I am developing
this Intelligence Community directive to spell out the lanes in
the road for DHS with Ambassador Negroponte and the
Intelligence Community writ large. If we don't do that, if we
don't put it in writing and get a clear understanding, we are
not going to succeed. And I can have a personal relationship
with Gary Ball at the FBI or with Scott Redd over at the NCTC,
and I don't think that is very--I think it may be useful now
and then, but it is not an efficient way of operating.
Mr. Markey. Okay. I have two questions for you then, Mr.
Allen. The first question is do you have a common conference
call, each day, with all 10 intelligence chiefs within your
Department so that, absent that common database, you do have a
common conversation so that you are able to make your own
assessment each day of whether or not, in fact, there has been
an adequate gathering and assessment of threats against our
country?
Mr. Allen. We bring together every day all critical
elements including my office with the rest of the Intelligence
Community. The data that flows--
Mr. Markey. Are on you that call each day?
Mr. Allen. Not every day, but my senior officials are.
Mr. Markey. Who do you require from the 10 intelligence
branches within DHS to be on the call? Who do you require for
that; in the absence of a common database, who do you require
to be on that call each day? By the way, is there a call?
Mr. Allen. We have them every day and several times a day
with the Intelligence Community as well with elements of
Homeland Security. As I said earlier, I have just formed a
Homeland Security Intelligence Council where we are going to
meet on a regular basis.
Mr. Markey. Are you going to meet each day?
Mr. Allen. I don't know if we will meet every day. When I
ran the National Intelligence Collection Board, we didn't meet
every day. We met 4 or 5 days a week.
Mr. Markey. The President gets briefed every day on
intelligence. Are you going to get briefed each day from the 10
intelligence chiefs so that we have that common conversation?
Mr. Allen. I get briefed at 0630 hours every morning, and
it brings in all the data. We have the Homeland Security
Operations Center. We have officers there that develop the
morning briefings for me and Secretary Chertoff.
Mr. Markey. Will you be on the call, Mr. Allen, with the
other 10 intelligence agencies?
Mr. Allen. As required, but not every hour, not every day.
Mr. Markey. Are you on a conference call each day with your
counterpart at the CIA and FBI? Do you have that conference
call each day with them?
Mr. Allen. I am usually in contact every day, not
necessarily always a conference call. If we have a threat, we
have a conference call immediately with not only the White
House, NCTC, FBI and other elements as required, including the
Coast Guard.
Mr. Markey. See, from my perspective, Mr. Allen, in the
absence of a common database, which you don't have, you are the
database, and if you are not on the conference call with the 10
intelligence chiefs within your own Department, or with your
counterpart at the CIA or the FBI, then we are years, I mean
literally years, from having an intelligence-gathering and
assessment capacity at your agency. You are the person who must
enforce on a daily basis this level of connection within your
agency and with the other intelligence-gathering agencies. And
if it doesn't happen--and you have a fabulous record, Mr.
Allen, but we have already gone through this. Even though the
title has changed, your predecessors have each, unfortunately,
come afoul of the incredible bureaucratic resistance to the
kind of change which you have to be the catalyst to effect.
Mr. Allen. We obviously are going to--
Mr. Simmons. Time having expired, and we think this line of
questioning is very interesting and very important, but we are
trying to accommodate Mr. Ben-Veniste as well.
The Chair recognizes Ms. Jackson-Lee.
Ms. Jackson-Lee. I thank the Chairman and Ranking Member
and the combined Chairman and Ranking Member of the
Intelligence Committee. I think these are helpful episodes, and
I think that we should continue them.
First of all, Mr. Allen, it is worthy to thank you for your
years of service and to echo maybe what you already know, that
I think your challenge is extremely difficult. We hold these
hearings and these questions on the backdrop of probably one of
our more severe intelligence gaps or failures, and that, of
course, is 9/11. We have attempted to improve, and I certainly
will not dismiss the efforts. I am concerned as to whether or
not we have gotten the results.
So let me ask you hopefully three questions that you may
have answered, but please accept my apology. One, I would like
to hear again how you coordinate between the Ambassador
position and, of course, the Director of the CIA, Director
Goss, and the FBI. I just still find that to be a complex
relationship.
Then I would be interested in how you plan to harness the
flow of information specifically to the far reaches of the
Department, Border Patrol for example, the Transportation
Security Administration, ICE. How are these disparate groups
spread out in many far places going to be coordinated?
And then lastly I think we have had an excellent laboratory
over the last month that frightened me, frankly. We had the
mayor of New York make large statements about trouble on the
transit system, rightly so, for a local official. He has a very
able police chief. And then to be disparaged, that is my term,
not yours, or at least to be, if you will, not backed up by our
own Homeland Security, I assume, intelligence, combined group
of individuals. Forget about what the local official look like
and the politics there. We looked like we were in disarray.
Secondary we had another opportunity with the recent tunnel in
Baltimore, and again, there was a local statement. It seemed
that we, at that point, either for politics reason--political
reasons said, you know, you were right to go ahead and do you
what you did.
Help me understand how we can lessen those kinds of
calamities, because the American people will lose faith in our
abilities if we can't find the synergism of intelligence or
relationships when we are actually trying to disseminate
information to protect.
So I have given you three questions, and I hope you can
answer them in that order.
Mr. Allen. Thank you. Let's first talk about Ambassador
Negroponte, Director Goss and, at the FBI, Mueller. Obviously
they collect information on a daily basis. We also obtain
threat information through our own intelligence components. Any
time there is a threat that comes out, we coordinate that very
carefully among those agencies. I have a direct--nd I don't
want to say that a personal relationship solves everything, but
my office, and we are very much in contact with the Bureau,
with the NCTC as well as with CIA and Ambassador Negroponte, we
keep informed on all critical issues.
Ms. Jackson-Lee. So are you talking to them every single
day.
Mr. Allen. We don't talk every day, but I said when there
is a threat. We certainly make--Ambassador Negroponte and I
discussed the New York threat together. We certainly have
discussed it repeatedly with the CIA as well as with the FBI.
So there is a very close coordination that occurs throughout
the traditional and nontraditional Intelligence Communities. It
does work, and it works, I think, very well.
How to harness, that question has been asked repeatedly,
the 10 components that have intelligence or intelligence-
related activities. They put out a lot of data, and they
disseminate a lot of data. It is not that we have it all
interoperable and interconnected. We are going to work to do
that. But as far as harnessing that information, that
information flows every day, 7 by 24, into the Homeland
Security operation centers where we have officers. We work
overnight, and every morning I am briefed, as well as the
Secretary and the Deputy Secretary on important developments
that occur. And there are developments every day.
Ms. Jackson-Lee. A regional director of the Transportation
Security Administration in Los Angeles has access to important
intelligence.
Mr. Allen. We can reach out to any element including those
along the border as required through the Homeland Security
operation center, and the data can flow to my officers for
fusing and threat analysis. Absolutely. And we do it on a daily
and regular basis. If someone--if we think someone is on an
airplane coming into the country, we have ways, of course,
making sure that that information is available.
And then thirdly, in Baltimore and New York, we will have a
closed hearing, and you will hear that we worked very closely
with both the city of New York as well as the officials in
Maryland.
Ms. Jackson-Lee. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
Just my last sentence to you, Mr. Chairman, is we have a
great panel, and we have to respect their time. My only
question to you, or at least my concern, if we can have that
opportunity again. But the point is I don't think we will at
least feel comfortable that there is that synergism, that
interoperability, using a term that we use in this committee,
that there is good reach between these three different
disparate responsibilities. And I hope that we will we will
pursue that further. Thank you.
Mr. Simmons. We will.
On the specific issues of Maryland and New York, there will
be a closed briefing where we can get into more detail. But
earlier in this hearing, with this panel, the issue of
information sharing and the culture of intelligence was
discussed in some detail. It is a huge problem not just for
individuals on this committee and for the Chief Intelligence
Officer of Homeland Security, it is a problem for the whole
country, and it is a problem we have to overcome.
And I want to thank Mr. Allen for coming today. We thank
him for his very distinguished service to the country. And I
would suggest in the next year and a half to 2 years, he has a
great opportunity to make a great contribution to the security
of this Nation, and we wish to work as partners with him in
that enterprise. We thank you very much.
Mr. Allen. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I look forward to
coming back and giving you reports on the progress we are
making.
Mr. Simmons. Thank you.
The second panel of the day will involve testimony from Mr.
Richard Ben-Veniste, a former 9/11 Commissioner and member of
the 9/11 Public Discourse Project. Mr. Ben-Veniste is a partner
in the Washington law firm of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw and
served as the sixth assistant U.S. attorney, chief of the
Watergate Task Force of the Watergate Special Prosecutor's
Office, and special outside counsel for the Senate Committee on
Governmental Operations from 1976 to 1977. From May of 1995 to
June of 1996, he was chief Minority counsel of the Senate
Whitewater committee.
I want to thank you very much, Mr. Ben-Veniste, for your
patience in being here today. We are mindful that you have
other obligations that may take you away, and so we thank you
for your distinguished service to our country, and we look
forward to your testimony.
STATEMENT OF RICHARD BEN-VENISTE, MEMBER, 9/11 PUBLIC DISCOURSE
PROJECT
Mr. Ben-Veniste. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairmen Simmons and Cunningham and Ranking Member Lofgren
and distinguished members of the Homeland Security and
Intelligence Committees, it is an honor to appear before you
today. I welcome the opportunity to testify today regarding
Secretary Chertoff's decision to make information analysis a
priority within the Department of Homeland Security, and to
create a Chief Intelligence Officer to provide intelligence
information in support of the Department, and to ensure it is
shared with State and local partners.
The 9/11 Commission did not make specific recommendations
on the structure of the Department of Homeland Security. The
Commission did make strong recommendations with respect to
information sharing across the government. The Commission did
make a strong recommendation with respect to unity of effort in
the Intelligence Community. My comments about DHS today will be
informed by these principles.
Upon taking over at DHS earlier this year, Secretary
Chertoff initiated a comprehensive evaluation of the
Department's organization, operations and policies that he has
called his Second Stage Review. As a result of his review, the
Secretary proposed a number of structural changes to the
Department. One of those changes is to designate the Assistant
Secretary for IA as the Department's Chief Intelligence Officer
and to elevate IA so that it reports directly to the Secretary.
The Secretary provided no more detail, however, as to how IA
would be strengthened, how it would be able to ensure a common
operational picture within the Department any more than it can
today, or how it would serve as the primary connection between
DHS and the Intelligence Community as a primary source for
State, local and private sector partners without a clear
mandate as the Department's lead intelligence entity.
We offer the following suggestions. First, the Chief
Intelligence officer should be confirmed by the Senate. Under
the Secretary's proposed reorganization, there is no official
below the level of Secretary with departmentwide intelligence
responsibilities who would be confirmed by and accountable to
Congress. For various reasons, not the least of which is
accountability, the lead intelligence official of DHS should be
a Senate-confirmed position.
Second, the Chief Intelligence Officer needs a clearly
defined role and priorities. The Secretary should prioritize
IA's responsibilities and clearly articulate the role of IA as
the Department's lead intelligence entity. For instance, the
Secretary should make it plain that the Chief Intelligence
Officer is his principal intelligence advisor, that IA is
responsible for providing a common operational picture across
all of the Department's intelligence components, and that IA is
to be the Department's primary point of contact with the newly
established Director of National Intelligence and NCTC.
Third, the Secretary must demonstrate support for the Chief
Intelligence Officer. Simply making the Chief Intelligence
Officer directly report to the Secretary will be nothing more
than a cosmetic change if the Secretary does not support this
new official. That support means sufficient staff and
resources, but also the less tangible forms of bureaucratic
support that so often determine who can get things done in
Washington. One way of communicating this support would be to
make clear the IA's role and authority in budget and personnel
matters. In other words, when the Chief Intelligence Officer
meets with the FBI or CIA Director, it must be implicit that he
has the backing of the Secretary in order for him to be taken
seriously.
Fourth, the Chief Intelligence Officer should have
additional authorities vis-a-vis the Department's intelligence
components. In order to coordinate and ensure unity of effort
among the numerous intelligence elements of the Department, the
Chief Intelligence Officer will need some combination of
budget, personnel and tasking authorities over their
activities. Whether the best model is the DNI or the Under
Secretary for Intelligence at DOD, the Chief Intelligence
Officer cannot be expected to be any more successful in
coordinating the Department's various intelligence elements
simply because of a new title. It is the Chief Intelligence
Officer's role to make sure that information from all
intelligence offices in the Department of Homeland Security is
not only analyzed, but also disseminated to those who need it.
We have the highest regard for the newly appointed Chief
Information Officer, Charlie Allen. He has extraordinary
experience in the Intelligence Community, but he faces a
formidable challenge. Recent reporting suggests that
communication and collaboration between the Department and the
State Homeland Security officials nationwide is not what it
should be. It is not up to us to say who is right and wrong.
Suffice it to say there is a problem, and the Chief Information
Officer has the responsibility to address it. DHS cannot expect
State and local officials to want to team up with headquarters
if it does not provide reliable and consistent leadership.
The recent controversy over the credibility of the threat
to New York city's subway system is a case in point. On October
6, the New York Police Department reacted to information from
the FBI which suggested that the system was at risk of being
attacked in the next few days. DHS, however, took a different
position and evaluated the information as less than credible.
Because I have no way of evaluating whether DHS and FBI
simultaneously provided their basis for challenging the
informant's credibility along with the specifics of the alleged
plot, it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine whether
there was a breakdown in information sharing, or whether there
was simply a difference of opinion regarding the credibility of
the underlying information. This is critical. If there is not
sufficient information sharing, simply providing information
about a potential threat could cause more problems than it
solves.
A priority for the Chief Intelligence Officer must be to
strengthen the relationship between DHS and its customers.
State and local police need to know that the information they
provide to DHS will be properly integrated and not ignored.
They need to know that DHS will provide the necessary
information to them in turn.
It is essential that the Chief Information Officer at DHS
work closely with the program manager for information sharing.
In our final report we recommended that the President lead a
governmentwide effort to create a trusted information network.
We are pleased that the information reform law, intelligence
law, rather, created a new position to coordinate this effort.
Six months ago the President appointed John Russack as the
first program manager. We understand that Mr. Allen is forging
a working relationship with Mr. Russack to help him overcome
the cultural and bureaucratic obstacles to information sharing.
This is encouraging news.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, Secretary Chertoff's recognition
of the primacy of information intelligence analysis and sharing
is critical to a successful homeland security strategy. On a
personal note, I have high regard for Secretary Chertoff's
capacity and energy, and I have met with him privately on
occasions at some length, and I am certain that he gets it. His
appointment of Mr. Charlie Allen to the key position of Chief
Intelligence Officer is a positive sign. Our Nation has a
strong interest in Mr. Allen's success. We urge Secretary
Chertoff to provide Mr. Allen the authorities that he needs to
get the job done.
I have a longer statement which I wish to submit for the
record with the Chairman's permission
Mr. Simmons. Without objection, so ordered.
[The statement of Mr. Ben-Veniste follows:]
Prepared Statement of Richard Ben-Veniste
Chairman Simmons and Cunningham, Ranking Members Lofgren and
Boswell, distinguished members of the Homeland Security and
Intelligence Committees: it is an honor to appear before you today.
I welcome the opportunity to testify today regarding Secretary
Chertoff's decision to make information analysis a priority with the
Department of Homeland Security, and to create a Chief Intelligence
Officer to provide intelligence information in support of the
Department and to ensure it is shared with state and local partners.
The 9/11 Commission did not make specific recommendations on the
structure of the Department of Homeland Security.
The Commission did make strong recommendations with respect to
information sharing across the government.
The Commission did make strong recommendations with respect to
unity of effort in the intelligence community.
My comments about DHS today will be informed by these principles.
The Homeland Security Act of 2002 established a Directorate for
Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection (IAIP) run by an
Under Secretary, and within that directorate an Office of Information
Analysis (IA) headed by an Assistant Secretary. IA was supposed to have
been the primary intelligence shop within DHS, and it had a broad
statutory mandate. However, nearly all now agree that IA has not
fulfilled that mandate.
Findings of the 9-11 Commission
In its Final Report, the 9/11 Commission concluded:
The Homeland Security Act of 2002 gave the under secretary for
information analysis and infrastructure protection broad
responsibilities. In practice, this directorate has the job to
map ``terrorist threats to the homeland against our assessed
vulnerabilities in order to drive our efforts to protect
against terrorist threats.'' These capabilities are still
embryonic. The directorate has not yet developed the capacity
to perform one of its assigned jobs, which is to assimilate and
analyze information from Homeland Security's own component
agencies, such as the Coast Guard, Secret Service,
Transportation Security Administration, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection. The secretary
of homeland security must ensure that these components work
with the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection
Directorate so that this office can perform its mission.
(Chapter 13, p. 427)
There are several reasons why IA has not been a success. First,
IA's mission has been clouded from the start. Soon after DHS was
created, the Administration set up the Terrorist Threat Integration
Center (TTIC) outside DHS to analyze the terrorist threat--to ``connect
the dots''--thus raising questions about what IA's primary role was
supposed to be. (TTIC was folded into the National Counterterrorism
Center [NCTC] pursuant to the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism
Prevention Act, based on the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission.)
Second, IA has not had the status, resources, or support necessary
to be a real player in the intelligence community.
Third, IA has been unable to ensure unity of effort among the
Department's own various intelligence units (in terms of information
sharing, common protocols, tasking and collection strategy, resource
decisions, etc).
The bottom line is that IA has had broad statutory
responsibilities, fewer authorities, minimal support, and little
respect.
Upon taking over at DHS earlier this year, Secretary Chertoff
initiated a comprehensive evaluation of the Department's organization,
operations, and policies that he has called his ``Second Stage
Review''. As a result of his review, the Secretary proposed a number of
structural changes to the Department. One of those changes is to
designate the Assistant Secretary for IA as the Department's Chief
Intelligence Officer and to elevate IA so that it reports directly to
the Secretary (rather than through an Under Secretary). When he
announced his proposed changes in public remarks on July 13, 2005, the
Secretary stated:
Today I am announcing that the Assistant Secretary for Information
Analysis will be designated as the Chief Intelligence Officer. The
Chief Intelligence Officer will head a strengthened Information
Analysis division that will report directly to me. This office will
ensure that intelligence is coordinated, fused, and analyzed within the
Department so that we have a common operational picture. It will also
provide a primary connection between DHS and others within the
intelligence community--and a primary source of information for our
state, local, and private sector partners.
Unity of Effort in Information Sharing and Analysis
The Secretary provided no more detail, however, as to how IA would
be ``strengthened,'' how it would be able to ``ensure'' a common
operational picture within the Department any more than it can today,
or how it would serve as the ``primary connection'' between DHS and the
intelligence community or as a ``primary source'' for state, local, and
private sector partners without a clear mandate as the Department's
lead intelligence entity. Nor, does it appear, has the Secretary
provided Congress with any additional detail.
The Chief Intelligence Officer should be confirmed by the
Senate.
Under the Secretary's proposed reorganization, there is no official
below the level of the Secretary with Department-wide intelligence
responsibilities who would be confirmed by, and accountable to,
Congress. Although the Assistant Secretary for IA was never a confirmed
position, the Under Secretary for IAIP required Senate confirmation.
The Chief Intelligence Officer, however, will now report directly to
the Secretary (and the Under Secretary for IAIP will become the Under
Secretary for Preparedness, without any intelligence responsibilities).
For various reasons, not least of which is accountability, the lead
intelligence official for DHS should be a Senate confirmed position.
The Chief Intelligence Officer needs a clearly defined
role and priorities.
As discussed earlier, while IA was given a broad statutory mandate,
it was never assigned a clear role once TTIC was created. The Secretary
should prioritize IA's responsibilities and clearly articulate, whether
in a department directive or another vehicle, the role of IA as the
Department's lead intelligence entity. For instance, the Secretary
should make plain that the Chief Intelligence Officer is his principal
intelligence advisor, that IA is responsible for providing a common
operational picture across all of the Department's intelligence
components, and that IA is to be the Department's primary point of
contact with the newly established Director of National Intelligence
(DNI) and NCTC.
The Secretary must demonstrate support for the Chief
Intelligence Officer.
Simply making the Chief Intelligence Officer directly report to the
Secretary will be nothing more than mere cosmetic change if the
Secretary does not support this new official. That support means
sufficient staff and resources, but also the less tangible forms of
bureaucratic support that so often determine who can get things done in
Washington. One way of communicating this support would be to make
clear the IA's role and authority in budget and personnel matters. In
other words, when the Chief Intelligence Officer meets with the FBI or
CIA Director, it must be implicit that he has the backing of the
Secretary in order for him to be taken seriously.
The Chief Intelligence Officer should have additional
authorities via-a-vis the Department's intelligence components.
In announcing his proposed reorganization, the Secretary noted that
IA would be strengthened and that the Chief Intelligence Officer must
ensure that intelligence from across the Department is coordinated and
fused into a common operational picture. DHS currently has more than 10
different intelligence elements (within various Department components,
such as the Secret Service, Customs and Border Protection, the Coast
Guard, Transportation Security Agency, etc.). In order to coordinate
and ensure unity of effort among these various elements, the Chief
Intelligence Officer will need some combination of budget (development
and/or execution), personnel, and tasking authority over their
activities. Whether the best model is the DNI or the Under Secretary
for Intelligence at DoD, the Chief Intelligence Officer cannot be
expected to be any more successful coordinating the Department's
various intelligence elements simply because of a new title.
Unity of Effort in Information Sharing
It is the Chief Intelligence Officer's role to make sure that
information from all intelligence offices in the Department of Homeland
Security is not only analyzed, but disseminated to those who need it.
We have the highest regard for the newly-appointed Chief Information
Officer, Mr. Charles Allen. He has extraordinary experience in the
intelligence community. But he faces a formidable challenge.
Recent reporting suggests that communication and collaboration
between the Department and state homeland security officials nationwide
is not what it should be. It is not up to us to say who is right and
who is wrong: suffice it to say there is a problem, and the Chief
Information Officer has the responsibility to address it.
Historically, federal law enforcement agencies have been largely
unwilling to share information with their state and local counterparts.
Distrust continues to exist between federal and local partners. State
and local officials, for their part, traditionally have kept
information to themselves rather than input data into systems. Federal
authorities need to build confidence with state and local officials by
developing systems on which they are trained, a broad concept of
operations they understand, and a standard reporting procedure that
they know how to use.
DHS cannot expect state and local officials to want to team up with
headquarters if it does not provide reliable and consistent leadership.
The recent controversy over the credibility of a threat to New York
City's subway system is a case in point. On October 6, the New York
Police Department reacted to information from the FBI which suggested
the system was at risk of being attacked in the next few days. DHS,
however, took a different position, and evaluated the information as
less than credible.
Because I have no way of knowing whether DHS and FBI simultaneously
provided their basis for challenging their informant's credibility
along with the specifics of the alleged plot, it is difficult to
determine whether there was a breakdown in information sharing or
whether there was simply a difference of opinion regarding the
credibility of the underlying information.
A priority for the Chief Intelligence Officer must be to strengthen
the relationship between DHS and its customers. State and local police
need to know that the information they provide to DHS will be properly
integrated and not ignored. They need to know that DHS will provide the
necessary information to them in turn.
It is essential that the Chief Intelligence Officer at DHS work
closely with the Program Manager for Information Sharing. In our final
report, we recommended that the president lead the government-wide
effort to create a trusted information network. We were pleased that
the intelligence reform law created a new position to coordinate this
effort. Six months ago, the President appointed John Russack as the
first Program Manager. We understand that Mr. Allen is forging a strong
working relationship with Mr. Russack, to help him overcome the
cultural and bureaucratic obstacles to information sharing. This is
encouraging news.
Closing Comments
Mr. Chairman, Secretary Chertoff's recognition of the primacy of
information intelligence analysis and sharing is critical to a
successful homeland security strategy. His appointment of Mr. Charles
Allen to the key position of Chief Intelligence Officer is a positive
sign. Our nation has a strong interest in Mr. Allen's success. We urge
Secretary Chertoff to provide Mr. Allen the authorities he needs to get
the job done.
Mr. Simmons. If I could now go into the question phase, I
would say, first of all, I agree with your principal points. I
have no objection to the principal points, and it may well be
that it is appropriate for this committee, this committee
working with the House Intelligence Committee, to move forward
and incorporate some of these proposals in a legislative form,
to make some of these recommendations more permanent. And that
is one of the issues that we have been concerned about, that we
try to establish a system that goes beyond personal
relationships. I reminded my colleague that a few years ago,
John Foster Dulles had a very good personal relationship with
Allen Dulles, but that is it not the way our government
operates. We try to operate under the law and within a system.
You, a number of years ago, served in an important capacity
in the Watergate investigation, and the Watergate investigation
led to the Church committee and the Pike committee
investigations of the Intelligence Community. And that led to a
perception here in America that there was a culture of secrecy
that invaded our government, and that somehow the American
people had to get their arms around that secrecy system.
I remember in the early 1980s as staff director of the
Senate Intelligence Committee dealing with Gerry Berman and
Warren Halpern from the ACLU Project on Government Secrecy and
trying to frame our policies in such a fashion that the
American people were reassured that their government was not
too powerful and doing things in secret. At the time, when it
was proposed that we have a counterintelligence or a
counterespionage database, an integrated database, that was
rejected as giving the government too much power. And yet just
a few minutes ago, the distinguished gentleman from
Massachusetts was discussing in some detail his concern that
DHS does not have a common database, and other members of this
committee have expressed concern that at a larger level the
government's database data sharing, information sharing is not
adequate because it is not integrated. So it is almost as if we
have come full circle from a point where integrated national-
level databases were anathema to our Nation to the point where
now people are saying we absolutely need it.
How do you see our balancing these two goods? One good is
national security. We know now that people can kill us with
weapons of mass destruction, and they can do it within the
continental United States. On the other hand, we know that too
much power in government can abuse our liberties. How do you
see the balance today?
Mr. Ben-Veniste. Well, you have been a leader on the
question of declassification and too much overclassification,
and I applaud that. It is an interest of mine, and I have
spoken out on the subject. Indeed, I am recently informed that
from 2001 through 2004, there has been a fourfold increase--80
percent, I am sorry--an 80 percent increase in classification
in just those 4 years, at tremendous cost to maintaining the
classified files, but perhaps even greater cost to openness in
our society.
So it is true, there is too much classification. On the
other hand, there are privacy interests and civil liberties
interests that have to be factored into the equation, and
applaud Secretary Chertoff for speaking to those issues.
The proof of the pudding, however, will be in how this
balance is effectuated. We cannot sacrifice our civil liberties
and our way of life in the face of this kind of a terrorist
threat. Now, we have to be smarter. We have to be more focused.
When we talk about a database and collection of materials, yes,
we need to collect materials. We have to be smart about it.
The problem that the Church committee found was that
elements of the Intelligence Community, for example, the
Department of Defense, had undercover operatives collecting
intelligence within the United States against such well-
respected organizations as the Civil Liberties Union, as the
various other entities, and indeed they infiltrated the
Republican convention in collecting information on the floor of
the convention. So obviously, you have to have some kind of
guarantee that the information that is collected is not
information that impinges on our first amendment rights to
assemble and to speak out.
And so as we go forward, and as the 9/11 Commission has
recognized in several places in our report, great attention has
got to be paid to the central fabric of our society, what we
are about is an open and inclusive and diverse society, and not
to allow either legitimate fears or the politics of fear to
interfere with our basic and fundamental liberties.
Mr. Simmons. I thank you for that.
If you have time, I have a second question, but I now yield
to the Ranking Member.
Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Ben-Veniste, for spending your
afternoon with us. And I know that you have to leave, so I will
be very quick.
First, I met with Mr. Allen yesterday for our getting to
know you because I think all of us on the committee recognize
that he is a qualified person, very well experienced. We are
very hopeful that he will be able to clean up the Department,
but the issue I raised with him privately, and really that you
have raised here today, is whether he has sufficient tools in
the structure to actually accomplish what he has the capability
of accomplishing.
So my question to you, just bluntly, is, number one, do you
believe he has sufficient budget and personnel authority to
really accomplish what we have asked him to do?
I also wonder--and the privacy issues are very much a
concern of mine in the civil liberties issues, and I believe
they are also a concern of Mr. Allen's. I don't know if you've
had an opportunity to take a look at the Markle Foundation
recommendations to us. If you have, do you think implementing
and adopting the Markle Foundation recommendations would
accomplish what we want to accomplish by way of protection of
civil liberties?
Mr. Ben-Veniste. Well, let me start first with budget
authority. To my knowledge, there is no formal budget authority
provided. I don't know that I would go so far as to say that
this should be legislated, and that there has to be a decision
by the Secretary to formally provide such authorities to Mr.
Allen. On the other hand, I think it is important to get a
sense from the Congress of your concern over that issue, and
that Mr. Chertoff ought to make clear that this is a process in
which Mr. Allen has more than a simple seat at the table, but
this will be a collaborative process that he will be involved
in these budgetary decisions, because as we all know in
Washington, whoever writes the check gets the most attention.
So that is my feeling about that. Others on the Commission,
I must say, feel more strongly about providing specific
authorities to Mr. Allen.
With respect to the civil liberties, we note that the
position is unfilled at DHS at this moment. We are extremely
concerned that the Civil Liberties Board, which was a
recommendation by the 9/11 Commission, and which was enacted
into the reform--Intelligence Reform Act, has not yet met. It
was a year late in being appointed. The names for the Chair and
cochair were recently sent to the Senate for confirmation. I
must say there has been virtually no progress made in that
regard. At this point the DNI has not identified or appointed
his civil liberties person, point person within the DNI, so
there is much to be done and good reason for concern that civil
liberties is getting the type of attention that is necessary.
Ms. Lofgren. Just a final question. I believe that we do
need to have some commonality of databases, and I think that
the civil liberties and privacy protections can be built into
the technology. I mean, the fact that you want to have privacy
doesn't mean you don't want to have information. But I am
wondering if you or anyone on the Commission has had an
opportunity to take a look at the state of our technology at
the Department.
Mr. Ben-Veniste. Well, I would like to be able to think on
that and then get a response to you, Ms. Lofgren.
Ms. Lofgren. Thank you very much.
And I yield back, Mr. Chairman
Mr. Simmons. The Chair now recognizes the Chairman of the
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Human Intelligence, Analysis and
Counterintelligence, who has cochaired this hearing this
afternoon, Mr. Cunningham.
Mr. Cunningham. Thank you, Mr. Simmons. Some of us have
been fighting for an instant check for about the last 8 years
just to register a handgun, a system that goes in, and, where
it may fall through the cracks at a local level, that if we had
a system, we could use it not only for registration of any
weapon, but we could use it for the means that I think that you
are talking about, too.
I see a yin and a yang with the Civil Liberties Union. My
current situation, I think you are going to find a new recruit
for yourself for the Civil Liberties Union. I have seen--
Mr. Ben-Veniste. I am sure we will be glad to have you. And
let me say that I am not speaking for the Civil Liberties Union
per se. And I am not a member of the ACLU. But I must say, I am
greatly concerned about how we engineer this balance. Our
history has shown us that the greatest challenges to our
liberties come in time of crisis.
Mr. Cunningham. I agree. And I have seen the power of the
government and just how a normal citizen is helpless from it.
And seeing that, you get-- you kind of gain a new respect.
Now, let me give you the other side of the equation and
sometimes why some of us feel put out by the same organization.
There was a report called the Phoenix Report, and that report
was about the pilots that trained in Arizona that crashed into
New York City. Those pilots and their cohorts spoke about
supporting Osama bin Laden. They spoke about supporting al-
Qa'ida, of killing Jews, of killing Americans, nonbelievers.
But yet, when the local law enforcement and some of our
agencies wanted to go after them--and this was briefed to us in
the committee. First of all, they had a real action thing that
in Libya--it wasn't Libya, it was Yemen. They were trying to
get out two of our operatives because they were in a safe
house, and that was their priority. But one of the other things
that they feared, that if they went after these individuals,
they would be brought up by those organizations in court, and
they were limited so much with all the deployments and
overworked that they would be brought up before the courts, and
they couldn't do that. So in that case, the Civil Liberties
Union and the ACLU, I thought, was a disservice.
But I have also seen the other side of it, and there was
another hearing that I sat through that you learn things, I
guess, as you get older about good and bad and ugly. And it is
not all--I used to think they were both all bad, let me just
say that. But I have learned that that is not the case, and I
would like to thank you for your service.
The sharing of information is very, very critical, but I
can also see-- sitting in the service, I was on a mission once,
and the controller called black bandit; and I said, what is a
black bandit on the radio? And they wouldn't tell me because it
was classified. They wouldn't share the information. I, as the
pilot, didn't need to know what this meant. Is it the
Vietnamese pilot was low on gas? And they wouldn't tell me. I
thought that was pretty important stuff, and I didn't find out
until I got back to the Pentagon. And you can imagine the anger
about the sharing of the information, but yet they didn't want
to give up the source that they knew that he was low on fuel,
and if they had told the world that he was low on fuel, the
Vietnamese would know it.
So there is a mix and a balance of these things. And I want
to thank you for what you do, Mr. Ben-Veniste, and the issues
that you bring. We may disagree on some of the issues, but I
thank you for doing it. And I yield back.
Mr. Ben-Veniste. Well, thank you. I think you are--may I
comment, Mr. Chairman? Your point is very well taken in terms
of how we have to be smarter and focused. Obviously, al-Qa'ida
knows how open a society we are, and how vulnerable we are, and
how we cherish our protections. That cannot mean that there are
areas where they can operate where we may not go. For example,
we cannot allow an institution, a building, a mosque to be
specific, to be completely prohibited from any kind of
intelligence activities because that would provide sanctuary in
an unrealistic way, given the information we know. By the same
token, we cannot have willy-nilly agents operating in mosques
throughout this country. That would be grossly unfair to our
loyal and patriotic Muslim population in this country. So that
the FBI, for example, has set up rules that require very high-
level, at the highest level, authorization to conduct
investigations within houses of worship, such as a mosque,
under circumstances like this.
So your point is well taken. There has got to be a balance.
But as I say, to meet this challenge and preserve our
liberties, we have got to be smarter and more focused than we
have ever been in our history.
Mr. Simmons. If you would indulge me for one final
question.
Mr. Ben-Veniste. Yes, sir.
Mr. Simmons. If my colleagues would indulge me.
Ms. Jackson-Lee. Mr. Chairman, I didn't--
Mr. Simmons. Oh, I am sorry. Ms. Jackson-Lee. I apologize.
Ms. Jackson-Lee. I am cognizant of the gentleman's time.
Thank you very much, Ben, if I might call you that, because I
want to thank you for your work.
Mr. Ben-Veniste. Richard would be good.
Ms. Jackson-Lee. I got the middle part, didn't I?
Mr. Ben-Veniste. Thank you.
Ms. Jackson-Lee. Thank you for that work. And as well work
that we did some years ago and your leadership on that as well.
It troubles me with the questions that I asked Mr. Allen on
how we could be more synergistic, if you will, I used that term
before, with the Department of Homeland Security and the
intelligence. And I would ask your comment on that. I feel
uncomfortable in his new position, that we are not well
integrated with our Intelligence Community. It was one of the,
I think, egregious areas of 9/11, if we highlight anything
about the Intelligence Community. Now, with the Homeland
Security Department, which I think is a positive step, I don't
think the glue is there.
Would you comment on how this new position, or the position
that was now filled by Mr. Allen, can be utilized to improve
efficiency in the Intelligence Community, and then you would
add to that whether or not Mr. Allen's position could be viable
without budget authority and whether or not budget authority is
needed? And then if you would comment as well on the question I
asked him, though he offered that we would have a closed
briefing, how would you analyze the way we performed with
respect to the two incidents, the one in New York dealing with
a threat to rail security and then now the one in Baltimore,
just from your perspective as you sat on the Commission. And I
thank you very much for that service.
Mr. Ben-Veniste. Thank you, and it is a pleasure to see you
again, Congresswoman.
Let me start with your last question first. And I think it
would be irresponsible for me to comment on that because you do
need a closed briefing to know what was said and when it was
said and what was provided to the local authorities. If I were
sitting on the committee, I would want to know whether the
specific information that was provided in New York and in
Baltimore was accompanied by an assessment of the credibility
of the underlying source, because here we learn that very
quickly, after New York reacted in the way it did to the threat
information, the Department of Homeland Security was, through
various briefings here in Washington, saying that the--that
they did not regard it as a credible threat.
Now, particularly with foreign intelligence information, it
becomes very difficult, as this information passes through
various channels and gets to State and local authorities, to
provide the kind of evaluative information, information that
would help them determine whether a specific threat is credible
or not. I could give you a very specific threat that someone
was going to put $50 in your office drawer, but if I told you
it was the tooth fairy, you wouldn't be worried about that. So
you have got to know who it is that these people are talking
about. And the problem is the same information sharing and
willingness to provide information, you can't give half a loaf.
If you give half a loaf, you may be costing a tremendous amount
of money in terms of reaction, and not just the cost of the
police riding the subways and that, it is also the cost of
instilling fear in a certain segment of the public, and people
will be at varying levels, much more vulnerable to hearing this
time and again.
On the other side, you are going to have the Chicken Little
effect; that is, when there is a true and credible threat that
they have to react to, people will not take that threat
seriously because of all of the false alarms that they have
heard before.
So whether it be Chicken Little or the boy who cried wolf,
it is imperative that we keep faith with our State and local
authorities. We can't expect mayors and Governors to act
responsibly with only a portion of the information. They have
to become full partners here, and this is one of the things
that we have talked about at great length and highly
recommended with the Commission's report.
Budget authority, I think I have addressed my own views on
that. I think that Mr. Allen has a great storeroom of knowledge
about how things work in the Intelligence Community, and I
think the personal relationships are very useful in that
regard. He knows where to look for things. He knows the kind of
dodges that are put forward. He knows, you know, the difference
between shoe polish and other stuff. And so that is very
helpful. But it is not going to happen without leadership, and
there's got to be consistent leadership from the President on
down. The President has got to want this to happen. The
Secretary has got to want this to happen, and then hopefully,
hopefully it will start to happen.
But we are dealing with decades-long resistance to sharing
of information, and in order for us to be the smarter, more
focused kind of Intelligence Community that is necessary here,
we have got to break down those walls, that resistance, because
obviously, the greater efficiency in getting this information
collected and analyzed, the better off we will be. 9/11, in our
view, might have been prevented had we utilized the information
which had been collected in advance of 9/11 in an efficient and
effective way, and that is the lesson in its simplest form that
we have got to apply as we go forward in the next months, years
and indeed decades.
Ms. Jackson-Lee. Both our time is up. Let me just thank you
for appropriately answering the first question with the
appropriate dodge of asking to relay that in the context of
sharing classified information. But that was the gist of the
inquiry, which is we could have done it better, or we can do it
better; however, we may be briefed in a classified manner.
And I will just close by saying to you and to this
committee that there is much agreement that we could have
avoided 9/11, saved lives, and our best intent of the Homeland
Security Department was to be able to save lives prospectively,
and that is what I hope we can do with a better intelligence
system, and I don't think we are there yet. And I thank you for
answering.
Mr. Ben-Veniste. I commend the subcommittees here today
because it is critical that Congress, in its oversight
capacity, do the necessary. I mean, we have got to work
together with the executive branch here to really hold their
feet to the fire. It is not enough just to talk the talk here.
You can't just give lip service to these problems. It is an
every day job that requires hard work and, I have to say,
focused and intensive oversight by the Congress
Mr. Simmons. We have had a very exceptional hearing this
afternoon. I will note for the record that page 413 of the 9/11
Commission report has an outline or a line and block chart of
recommendations, and included within the recommendations is an
open source agency. I assume, Mr. Ben-Veniste, that you support
the concept of open source.
Mr. Ben-Veniste. We certainly do. This is an area in which
we felt had been neglected over time there has been a much
greater focus on gizmos and gadgets and a substantial lobby to
get those items purchased. I don't denigrate their usefulness,
but there is a tremendous amount of information that can and
should be collected, and that information should not then be
classified. I mean, this is--in your questions to Mr. Allen,
you make the obvious point, you know, this is open source
material. So let's use it in an open and constructive way. It
sounded to me like Dr. Strangelove, no fighting in the war
room. This is open material.
Mr. Simmons. And if we take the thought just a little bit
further, if, in fact, there is a concern in America that there
not be too much secrecy in government, doesn't a Department of
Homeland Security intelligence capability lend itself to the
concept of open source, of specializing in openly acquired
information that is then processed analyzed and disseminated?
Isn't this a sort of a natural home for this discipline?
Mr. Ben-Veniste. It is, but my own caution is that in
collecting the information, you have got to be sensitive to
where you are collecting it as well as how you are collecting
it, and disseminating it with a regard for civil liberties and
the sensibilities that are associated with that. So it has got
to be focused. We have got to be smarter, and we have got to be
more focused.
Mr. Simmons. Absolutely.
We thank you very much for your testimony and for answering
the questions. I thank the staff for coordinating a hearing
among two subcommittees of two different committees. That is a
huge challenge. I used to be a staffer myself. I know how
difficult it is. I thank them, and I thank you, Mr. Ben-
Veniste, for your testimony.
Ms. Jackson-Lee. Chairman, names are important here. So may
I just say thank you, Richard Ben-Veniste. Thank you very much.
Mr. Ben-Veniste. Thank you, Sheila Jackson-Lee.
Mr. Simmons. This hearing is now concluded.
[Whereupon, at 5:07 p.m., the subcommittees were
adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
Material Submitted For the Record
Charles Allen Responses to Hon. Zoe Lofren Questions
(1) Mr. Allen, will you have direct line authority whereby you can
direct the various intelligence units within the Department to gather
specific kinds of information for particular analysis needs and--
perhaps most importantly--will you have budgetary authority over those
intelligence units in order to drive a common intelligence mission?
Response: As Chief Intelligence Officer, I draw on two main streams
of support to exercise authority over the intelligence offices in the
DHS operating components.
First, I use the Homeland Security Intelligence Council (HSIC),
which I chair, as a key instrument for exercising authority over the
DHS intelligence enterprise. The HSIC, a decision-making body that
meets at least every other week, consists of heads of the intelligence
offices of the DHS operating components.
Second, I exercise my oversight authorities with the support of the
Department's Chief Financial Officer and Chief Human Capital Officer
within the Office of the Under Secretary for Management. With respect
to budget authority, overall DHS intelligence requirements, as defined
by me, will be coordinated with the Chief Financial Officer and the
Under Secretary for Management to ensure they are accurately reflected
in budget documents submitted to Congress. As an example of my
budgetary authority, the DHS Future Years Homeland Security Program
(FYHSP) for FY2008-2012 will include language from the Chief
Intelligence Officer requiring components to provide programmatic
detail and requested resource levels for their intelligence programs
and activities to the Chief Intelligence Officer, to include services,
requested FTEs and requested budgets, so that I can review the proposed
cross-Departmental capability of the DHS Intelligence Enterprise for
FY2008-2012 and advise the Secretary as to whether this will meet the
Department's and its customers' needs.
As I noted in Congressional testimony in October 2005, I believe I
have sufficient authorities to lead and manage the DHS intelligence
activity.
(2) If not, how will you get the intelligence shops to do what you
want them to do without control over their budgets?
Response: In my role as Chief Intelligence Officer, I am currently
leading a strategic planning effort across the Department's
Intelligence Enterprise, which includes all the intelligence components
in DHS.
The first phase of the strategic planning concluded on 10 January
2006 with the production of the first ever DHS Intelligence Enterprise
Strategic Plan, which sets forth the vision, mission, and strategic
goals and objectives for the entire DHS Intelligence Enterprise.
Later in January, the second phase of the strategic planning will
conclude with the production of a DHS Intelligence Enterprise Action
Plan, which will lay out a roadmap the intelligence components of the
Department will follow as they integrate and move toward realizing the
goals and objectives of the strategic plan.
Finally, the Department's FYHSP, scheduled for release early-Feb
2006, will include the first ever guidance for the intelligence
components in the Department to build their intelligence programs
toward the end-state of becoming an integrated DHS Intelligence
Enterprise. This guidance will shape the program build for 2008-2012
and help ensure the realization of the Department's vision of an
integrated DHS intelligence enterprise, optimized to support the full
spectrum of the Department's missions and customers.
(3) As you pull the Office of Intelligence & Analysis together, how
will you judge your progress--specifically, what metrics will you apply
to gauge improvement and areas in need of improvement?
Response: The Office of Intelligence and Analysis, under my
leadership as Chief Intelligence Officer, is currently participating in
the Department-wide Intelligence Enterprise strategic planning. In
January 2006, the Office will examine the action plans it has developed
across its mission areas/services (plans that will be grounded in
timelines and deliverables in both the current fiscal year and the out-
years) and develop performance measures, to include outcome-based
metrics, to gauge the Office's progress. The Office of Intelligence and
Analysis is currently also working to hire at least two intelligence
professionals with strong backgrounds in performance management,
program review, and budget-performance integration. These professionals
will reside in the Planning and Integration Division and provide a
continuing capability to review not only the Office's progress but also
that of the entire DHS Intelligence Enterprise. The Office of
Intelligence and Analysis will continue to work closely with both the
Department's Program Assessment and Evaluation Office as well as the
equivalent office in the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence (ODNI) to ensure its approach, as well as that of the
entire DHS Intelligence Enterprise, to performance management is
consistent with the Government Performance Results Act, the President's
Management Agenda, Departmental and Intelligence Community guidelines,
and the best practices both in the government and the private sector.
(4) What obligations should or will the Chief Intelligence Officer
to the Director of National Intelligence and what control should or
will the Director of National Intelligence have over the Chief
Intelligence Officer?
Response: In my role as the Chief Intelligence Officer and as
Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis, I report to the
Director of National Intelligence as specified in the Intelligence
Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, the Homeland Security Act
of 2002, and Presidential Directives and Executive Orders.
(5) In your assessment, what has the quality of the Department's
intelligence analysis staff work been to date in terms of providing
information to state and local governments and to the private sector
regarding threats to their communities and/or facilities?
Response: Since its inception two and a half years ago, the Office
of Intelligence and Analysis has made progress in providing timely,
actionable intelligence to its non-Federal partners with regard to
threats to their communities and/or facilities.
The Office of Intelligence and Analysis regularly communicates
threat information with State and Local officials and the Private
Sector. Typically this threat information is communicated in warning
products that include protective measures that State and Local and
Private Sector officials can take to increase security in their areas.
These include specific procedures, as well as information regarding the
present situation. In the past, reports have included recommendations
to maintain surveillance of critical locations, assess emergency plans,
screen personnel, and provide a visible presence as a viable form of
deterrence. Past reports have also detailed such actions as the use of
random or rolling patrol operations and have included information on
test kits and valuable public websites. Additionally, I&A has published
a number of Red Cell reports focusing on issues of concern to State and
Local officials and the Private Sector. DHS Office of Intelligence and
Analysis works closely with the Under Secretary for Preparedness and
the Office of State and Local Government Coordination to ensure it is
communicating threat information relevant to its non-Federal partners
along with actionable recommended protective measures.
But much more needs to be done. Since my arrival in October 2005, I
have made the improvement of the quality of analysis one of my top five
priorities for the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. My commitment
to this priority is demonstrated by the significant investments we are
making in training to ensure the continuing maturation of this critical
analytic support to the Department's partners in state and local
government and the private sector.
The quality of DHS' intelligence analysis work to date in terms or
providing information to State and Local governments and to the private
sector regarding threats to their communities and/or facilities is
maturing as I&A works with both our State and Local partners, and the
private sector owners and operators to develop information
requirements, appropriate forums, and intelligence products tailored to
the respective customer. Specifically, the Homeland Infrastructure
Threat & Risk Analysis Center (HITRAC) provided guidance for the
development of the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP) to
provide risk based analysis to the critical infrastructure sectors.
Additionally, as directed by Homeland Security Presidential Directive
(HSPD)-7, HITRAC threat analysts work very closely with our
Infrastructure Protection specialists and sector specific agencies to
provide threat tailored threat briefs, products, and assessments to
senior executives and of the appropriate sector Government Coordinating
Council and Sector Coordinating Council. Recognizing the inter-
dependant nature of both critical infrastructure/key resources (CI/KR)
and large urban areas, HITRAC has also produced ad hoc products
specifically for State and Local authorities based upon threats to
infrastructure located within their governance, including information
bulletins regarding threats to chemical facilities in New Jersey and
critical infrastructure located in the Gulf Region following the
aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma. HITRAC threat analysts have
met and worked with Protective Security Advisors in large metropolitan
areas such as Chicago and PSA's and local police authorities in New
York City to develop relationships and share threat assessments with
private sector owners and operators. These initial efforts will enable
HITRAC to develop the appropriate relationships to further improve
information sharing at both a strategic and ad hoc level based on the
prevailing threat conditions to municipalities and CI/KR at any
specific period.
Many of the employees within the legacy agencies that comprise the
Department do not view themselves as either collectors of intelligence
information or contributors to the Department's intelligence analysis
mission. Many of them nevertheless come into possession of information
on a daily basis that--if given to the right people--could help
identify emerging terrorist threats.
(6) What specific efforts should the Chief Intelligence Officer
make to establish an ``intelligence culture'' at the Department where
all employees will instinctively consider how the information they
obtain might contribute to the Office of Intelligence and Analysis'
efforts?
Response: As the Secretary said in his Second Stage Review Remarks
from July 2005, intelligence is at the heart of everything we do in
DHS. These important remarks set the stage for the full realization of
the Department's role in gathering, analyzing and fusing information
from across all the components and disseminating the resulting
intelligence to a broad spectrum of customers, both within the
Department and without, and both within the Federal government as well
as to our non-Federal partners.
As the Chief Intelligence Officer, I have tasked my Director of
Training to develop a learning and development strategy to meet not
only the needs of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis but also the
requirements of the entire DHS Intelligence Enterprise, which includes
all the intelligence components of the Department. The Director of
Training is partnering with the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center
to ensure its intelligence courses, both for future DHS intelligence
professionals as well as for its officers, agents and inspectors, are
consistent with the vision that everyone in the Department consider the
information they obtain through their operations for its potential
intelligence value.
In addition, recognizing the priority of establishing a culture not
only of intelligence but also of information sharing, we are
participating in the Intelligence Community's Information Sharing
Training and Education Plan. In this manner, we will establish a
culture that not only is sensitive to the intelligence value of all the
Department's information--but is supportive and proactive in sharing
this information appropriately, securely and in full accord with civil
rights and civil liberties.
One area of ongoing concern is sensitive but unclassified
information--information that is often in the hands of the private
interests that own or control the vast majority of critical
infrastructure in this country.
(7) How will the Chief Intelligence Officer encourage the private
sector to share this type of information, given private industry
concerns about business losses due to public disclosure of proprietary
information, private sector fears of liability for disclosure, and
private citizen's fears of inappropriate and overreaching government
secrecy?
Response: DHS is aware of, and maintains strict adherence to, the
Protected Critical Infrastructure Information requirements for
protecting private sector information. Analytic products, which deal
with threats to the infrastructure, are coordinated via HITRAC with
members of the Office of Infrastructure Protection, now part of the
Directorate for Preparedness, who work to ensure the interests of the
private sector.
In addition, DHS I&A has jointly published with the FBI a Terrorist
Threat Reporting Guide tailored to the private sector to provide
indicators of what activities they encounter may be of interest to DHS
and the FBI.
DHS IA personnel participate in regular training on the handling of
intelligence information and maintain a strict adherence to
intelligence handling policies and laws, particularly with respect to
the handling of U.S. persons information.
From what I have heard to date, Secretary Chertoff has not included
a continuity of operations (COOP) plan for the Office of Intelligence &
Analysis in the event of a catastrophic national, regional, or local
event.
(8) What should a COOP plan for the Office of Intelligence &
Analysis look like, and what are your plans in this regard?
Response: DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis has been an
active participant in Departmental COOP (continuity of operations)
planning and guidance since its inception, formerly as a part of the
Directorate for Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection and
now in its new role as a direct report to the Secretary. As part of
IAIP, DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis exercised its COOP
readiness and operational ability in 2005 as part of the TOPOFF 3 and
PINNACLE exercises. As a stand alone component, the DHS Office of
Intelligence and Analysis recently participated in the Department-wide
review of which functions are required and survivable in COOP
conditions; the Office of Intelligence and Analysis used the results of
that study to update its COOP Implementation Plan in light of the
Office's new role and that of the Assistant Secretary, now designated
as the Chief Intelligence Officer. The Office of Intelligence and
Analysis COOP Implementation Plan was approved by the Chief
Intelligence Officer in January 2006 and will be tested at the 2006
Forward Challenge/TOPOFF 4 exercise.
(9) Please advise if any contractors assisted in the preparation of
the answers to these Questions for the Record; the names of any such
contractors and the companies with which they are associated; the
precise role of any such contractors in preparing the answers; the
percentage of the work in preparing these answers the contractors
performed; and how much the contractors were paid for their assistance
in preparing the answers.
Response: No contractors assisted in the preparation of the answers
to these Questions for the Record.