SPEAKERS       CONTENTS       INSERTS    
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20–131
2005
  
[H.A.S.C. No. 108–36]

UNITED STATES INTELLIGENCE REFORM

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

HEARING HELD
AUGUST 11, 2004

  
  

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

One Hundred Eighth Congress

DUNCAN HUNTER, California, Chairman
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CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania
JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
TERRY EVERETT, Alabama
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
HOWARD P. ''BUCK'' McKEON, California
MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana
WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
JIM RYUN, Kansas
JIM GIBBONS, Nevada
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico
KEN CALVERT, California
ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia
ED SCHROCK, Virginia
W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia
JEFF MILLER, Florida
JOE WILSON, South Carolina
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
TOM COLE, Oklahoma
JEB BRADLEY, New Hampshire
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ROB BISHOP, Utah
MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio
JOHN KLINE, Minnesota
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
PHIL GINGREY, Georgia
MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
TRENT FRANKS, Arizona

IKE SKELTON, Missouri
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina
SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas
LANE EVANS, Illinois
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii
MARTY MEEHAN, Massachusetts
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas
JIM TURNER, Texas
ADAM SMITH, Washington
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
CIRO D. RODRIGUEZ, Texas
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania
BARON P. HILL, Indiana
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JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
STEVE ISRAEL, New York
RICK LARSEN, Washington
JIM COOPER, Tennessee
JIM MARSHALL, Georgia
KENDRICK B. MEEK, Florida
MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam
RODNEY ALEXANDER, Louisiana
TIM RYAN, Ohio

Robert S. Rangel, Staff Director
Erick R. Sterner, Professional Staff Member
Justin Bernier, Research Assistant

C O N T E N T S

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2004

HEARING:

    Wednesday, August 11, 2004, Implications of the Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission on the Department of Defense (Part II)
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APPENDIX:

    Wednesday, August 11, 2004

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 11, 2004

Implications of the Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission on the Department of Defense (Part II)

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

    Hunter, Hon. Duncan, a Representative from California, Chairman, Committee on Armed Services

    Skelton, Hon. Ike, a Representative from Missouri, Ranking Member, Committee on Armed Services

WITNESSES

    Hamre, Dr. John J., President and Chief Executive Officer, The Center for Strategic and International Studies

    Odom, Lt. Gen. William E., Senior Fellow, The Hudson Institute

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    Wood, Dr. Lowell, Senior Scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

APPENDIX
PREPARED STATEMENTS:
[The Prepared Statements can be viewed in the hard copy.]

Hamre, Dr. John J.

Hunter, Hon. Duncan

Odom, Lt. Gen. William E.

Skelton, Hon. Ike

Wood, Dr. Lowell

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Documents can be viewed in the hard copy.]

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Questions and Answers can be viewed in the hard copy.]

Mr. Abercrombie
Mr. Cooper
Mr. Ryan
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Ms. Sanchez

THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION ON THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE (PART II)

House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, August 11, 2004.

    The committee met, pursuant to call, at 2:05 p.m., in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Duncan Hunter (chairman of the committee) presiding.

    The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order.

    The committee concludes its 2-day series of hearings on the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission with a distinguished panel of outside witnesses, and we are pleased to welcome to the committee this afternoon two-thirds of that panel.

    The Honorable John J. Hamre, president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former Deputy Secretary of Defense and a real friend of the committee, a guy who is provided his expertise and his wise counsel on many occasions, and also Dr. Lowell Wood, senior scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a gentleman who similarly has been on a number of our Blue Ribbon panels and has served the Nation very well and has had, I think, some very cogent remarks and very instructive positions on this 9/11 report.

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    So this fourth hearing is primarily concerned with the implications of the 9/11 Commission's proposed intelligence reforms on the Department of Defense. And while there is broad agreement that we can, should and must do better in the intelligence business, the public debate so far has largely taken place with a fairly narrow focus on avoiding a repeat of the failures that led to September 11.

    While that is understandable, we must ensure that reforms don't have undesirable and unintended consequences. For example, recommendations to weaken the relationship between warfighters in the defense intelligence assets that support them could undermine our military edge and put our soldiers at risk. And it is very clear, and I think the panel, the Commission leaders, Mr. Hamilton and Governor Kean both emphasized over and over that there is no intention to weaken in any way the effective relationships that our fighters in the warfighting theaters have with the provision of the assets that give them near real-time intelligence.

    So that question was beyond the purview of the 9/11 Commission, but it is an issue with Congress and the President, and we have to deal with it as we work to reform the intelligence community.

    Today we are going to review a few of these ideas with some expert witnesses. And Dr. Hamre, of course, once again, is familiar with us and has a very distinguished record as comptroller and Deputy Secretary of Defense in the last administration, and Dr. Wood is one of the most creative people at Livermore National Laboratory and I think a real national asset. You have given us the benefit of your wisdom, always unvarnished, on many, many issues. We appreciate that. And I know we have the staff checking to see if General Odom is nearby, and I understand that his plane was late, and so he is on his way. But what I thought we would do is go ahead and fire up the hearing and we will turn to General Odom when he arrives.
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    So having said that, I don't know, gentlemen, if you had a chance to watch our earlier hearings, but I think we have had some very productive hearings to this date, and I think it is appropriate that we have some outside commentary at this point, and I think there is nobody better to do this than you.

    So at this time, I would like to recognize my colleague, my good partner from Missouri, Mr. Skelton, for any remarks he might want to make and then we will go to the witnesses.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. Hunter can be viewed in the hard copy.]

    Mr. SKELTON. General Odom just walked in, Mr. Chairman.

    The CHAIRMAN. And, General Odom, welcome. You become more distinguished all the time.

STATEMENT OF HON. IKE SKELTON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM MISSOURI, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

    Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, in light of the fact that we have three witnesses, very important witnesses, and in light of the fact that some folks may end up trying to catch airplanes tonight, I ask unanimous consent to put my opening statement in the record at this point, and of course I will elaborate on questions at a later moment.
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    [The prepared statement of Mr. Skelton can be viewed in the hard copy.]

    The CHAIRMAN. Without objection. And I thank the gentleman.

    And why don't we just go—unless our staff has set up a different batting order here, why don't we just go left to right, and, Dr. Wood, what do you think?

STATEMENT OF DR. LOWELL WOOD, SENIOR SCIENTIST, LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY

    Dr. WOOD. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for the invitation to comment. As I noted in my prepared statement, I have been a long-term consumer of the products of the American intelligence community and a shorter-term student of it. I am a friendly critic to the IC, or the intelligence community as it is generally known, and a strong believer in its purpose, indeed its necessity and in its fundamentally good performance, especially during the Cold War.

    In any case, I am speaking today purely as a private individual, not representing anybody or institution. The opinions and advice that I offer are entirely my own. I will speak incisively for purposes of brevity and clarity.

    Mr. Chairman, the single most notable problem afflicting American intelligence as a basic governmental function is the lack of effective governance from both the executive and legislative branches that it has suffered for the past half century and the resulting lack of real hard-nosed accountability that too often burdens it at levels ranging from its senior managers to working-level folks in the field.
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    There are, to be sure, thousands of (IC) Intelligence Community managers, dozens of true leaders in the IC and some very capable senior officials over the IC, and indeed you heard one of the most gifted of them just before lunch. But I submit that governance in the sense of article 1, section 8 of the Constitution is nonetheless deficient.

    Congressional providing of good government for the IC will go a very long way toward remedying all of the problems that have recently become so prominent and to which the 9/11 Commission addressed itself. Only the Congress can really address these problems, as the necessary changes are intrinsically statutory ones.

    We all recall that the IC has grown a bit like topsy, created and modified mostly by a succession of Presidents over the last five and a half decades in a generally ad hoc manner, primarily to support by other means the historic American-led confrontation of the Soviet empire. These distinctive features make it a large-scale anomaly in the Federal Government if not an all together singular case.

    The bottom line, the President is the only honest-to-goodness real authority-wielding supervisor of the IC as a whole. This, in actual fact, amounts to little traditional American type governance at all. Moreover, with even less demonstrable accountability for its product.

    This brings us naturally enough to the set of issues concerning congressional oversight to the IC. It is my distinct impression that, paraphrasing Churchill, ''net real oversight by the Congress of the IC is modest with a great deal to be modest about.'' In major part, this is due to a firmly held viewpoint throughout much of the IC that legislative oversight doesn't add that much net value at all to the governance that it does get from the President—a viewpoint that seems to be crucially shared by a long succession of Presidents who understandably appear to regard the IC as one of their most interesting and potent instruments of office.
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    History undeniably relates the tangible will of Congress, though definitely not flimsy, as not exceptionally strong either in this entire area of oversight. This, I believe, upon considerable reflection, lies at the root of the present, essentially tragic, situation.

    The American system of government, for better or worse, is structured for and expects dynamic tension between, more or less, equally powerful legislative and executive branches. When this tension is largely absent, especially for prolonged intervals, it is remarkably difficult for good government to occur with any reliability, especially in highly cloistered circumstances often demanding intellectual and other forms of entrepreneurialism and when other than pro forma accountability is intrinsically challenged.

    My recommendation to the Congress with respect to IC reform thus is a remarkably simple one. First, provide by statute for genuine accountable governance of the IC within the executive. That is the comparatively easy part. hat's what the 9/11 Commission primarily addressed. Then—and here's the hard part—the Congress should provide for truly effective legislative oversight of these new executive structures and their functions.

    Each of these two steps is utterly necessary. Together, I suggest that they will suffice to essentially completely fix the fundamental structural problems that currently bedevil the American Nation in intelligence matters.

    The single best paradigm for what is now needed in the way of executive governmental structures is provided by the historic example of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), a novel structure created by the Congress to manage the development to the national interests of what was then perceived at utterly novel means of overwhelming power, promise and danger.
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    Over a general manager exercising plenary day-to-day power of the then gigantic atomic energy empire, the Congress put a full-time commission of distinguished citizen members, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate to staggered terms. The Commission elaborated basic national policy specified by the President to the Congress and supervised the general manager in its implementation.

    Most crucial of all, the Congress created a Joint Committee on Atomic Energy to recommend both authorizing and appropriating actions to both houses. It was this committee, far more than any other consideration, that made the atomic energy enterprise of the American republic the outstanding, indeed the historic, success that it was for nearly three decades in the middle of the past century. I respectfully commend consideration of this particular history to the Congress in the strongest possible terms as it now contemplates intelligence reforms.

    I must add that some intelligence function, those of a tactful nature, and particularly those immediately concerned with combat operation, are innately military and would be removed from the armed services only very foolishly, likely at the cost of many American lives in time of war.

    The AEC structure and operation accommodated such intrinsically military functions very naturally and highly effectively simply by double-hatting the cognizant military officers into its organization. The extraordinary record of safety, reliability and operational effectiveness of American naval reactors over the past half century is incontrovertible testimony, not only to the exceptional personal qualities of Admiral Rickover and his successors but also to the superb legislative craftsmanship of those senior Members of Congress of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy who created in statute the basic executive structures within which these notable officers worked and then oversaw their optimal operations.
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    Similar double-hatting would serve equally well the present-day needs of an intelligence commission, providing fully for the undeniably legitimate interests of DOD's warfighters while also providing the benefits of tactically derived intelligence to America's key strategists and senior-most decision makers.

    It is entirely reasonable for you and your colleagues to wonder if such drastic changes are truly needed and specifically if a joint committee must be called into existence. I specifically suggest, and respectfully so, that the Congress clearly isn't starting with a fresh sheet of paper in addressing this problem. In football terms, it is third down and 25. More time has lapsed since the 9/11 attack and the present day than elapsed between Leslie Groves taking over the brand new Manhattan Project and the nuclear raids on the Japanese that ended World War II, and yet we Americans are still cowering under vague but stern threats from our imperfectly informed national leadership in the war against global terror.

    We are admonished routinely that the threat of domestic attack is as great as ever, three years after the war got seriously underway. The problem simply isn't getting fixed by business as usual approaches, and rather drastic changes are by now quite clearly called for.

    I respectfully suggest that history now summons the Congress to take all of the drastic steps that it traditionally takes in real wartime, including entrusting plenary oversight responsibilities into the hands of a relatively few of its senior leaders, implicitly instructing them to continually and closely engage the executive in the successful prosecution of the conflict as only a joint committee is able to do.

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    In a war against transnational terrorism, one in which the enemy has no specific addresses, only very diffuse centers of gravity and troops that don't wear uniforms or inhabit barracks, intelligence operations comprise the key battlefields. Thus, if the American republic is to triumph in its traditional manner, it must engage far more effectively on these strange new intelligence battlefields than it has to the present day. Our de facto hunker and endure tactics must be replaced by advanced and triumph ones, and vastly more effective, far more efficient intelligence will be required to reliably chart the course to victory.

    The American people rightfully look to their elected leaders to take all steps necessary to win this war. Some basic restructurings of both the executive and legislative branches of our national government are sorely needed to martial America's strengths along quite new lines in order to meet the novel challenges posed by global terror. Indeed, this marshaling will, in Kennedy's memorable phrasing, send forth the word to all, whether they wish us well or ill, that the United States is now purposefully engaged in this utterly new type of global conflict and that we are determined to win it. The American cause will be notably advanced thereby.

    I respectfully request that my prepared statement be included in the hearing record. I look forward to responding to any questions or comments that you and your colleagues may have. Thanks for the opportunity to comment. Thank you, personally, Mr. Chairman, for your outstanding and invaluable leadership in these vital matters.

    [The prepared statement of Mr. Wood can be viewed in the hard copy.]

    The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Wood, and part of that leadership means being able to get your telephone number in Maine, and I hope that your daughter who is in the math class, math camp, continues to do well up there. I know you were having a good vacation when we called you. We greatly appreciate your input, and as usual it is very good and very provocative and brilliant as always.
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    General Odom, thank you, sir, for being with us. We appreciate your help over the years on some tough issues. The floor is yours, sir.

STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. WILLIAM E. ODOM, USA (RET.), SENIOR FELLOW, THE HUDSON INSTITUTE

    General ODOM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is an honor—is that on now?

    The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

    General ODOM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is an honor to be here and appear before you and the members of the committee, and I also am asking for my statement to be submitted for the record. I think you have copies of it.

    The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, all the statements will be taken into the record.

    General ODOM. I will not read that statement to you; rather, I will just sum up what I think are the key points that I would have to try to help bring the questions to the discussion.

    You have asked what are the implications for the 9/11 Commission's proposal for the Defense Department and military services. The answer is, in my judgment, confusion and ambiguity about responsibility and some fragmentation in resource management at the national level, that is the intelligence community, into three or four blocks rather than one big one.
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    I think there would also be greater irrelevance of some of the national level produced analysis for the military and probably some of the diplomatic operations. But that I can't be sure about unless I knew more about how these so-called centers, the cluster of centers under the national intelligence director, would operate.

    One aspect of the proposal makes a lot of sense, what I thought made sense for at least 10, 15 years, and this is splitting the DCI's role from the role of the director of Central Intelligence. But this can best be done, in my view, by amending the 1947 act simply to make it two separate posts, not be enacting a new law in the creation of a national intelligence director inside the White House where I am afraid he would compete with the national security advisor and also be in control of what looks to be like a fairly confusing staff apparatus designed to support him.

    Now, a separate DCI will need enhanced staff support in two major areas: Resource management in intelligence collection of management and production at the national level. Progress has been made at least since the 1970's on that, and my own proposals for reform and a book I have written on it really build on those in kind of evolutionary sense. And I think that also could best be done by trial and error and executive order.

    Now, as a final point, let me emphasize that the DCI's budgetary authority, which has become a major issue in the proposal and in other proposals such as the draft bill for creating a director of national intelligence, it seems to me is broadly misunderstood. DCI has long had program budget management authority over all the IC elements. I have actually seen copies of memorandum written in 1970 signed by President Nixon assigning him that authority and reaffirmed by all Presidents since. And I am not sure about the sitting President today, but I expect that he too has reconfirmed that.
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    I also believe, and I have to have the lawyers check this and the accountants more fully, but I don't think that this program budget authority, that is building the programs before they come over here to the Congress, is any less than the Secretary of Defense has over the military department.

    The military departments execute the budget, and as you probably know, you write the line item so that money can't be moved around except in very small amounts, and above a certain threshold for reprogramming from one line to another the Defense Department's required to come back and ask your for authority. Same is true of the intelligence community, and when I was at NSA, if I wanted to reprogram monies above that level, I had to get the DCI's permission.

    The real authority to move money around is before it comes to Congress. It is in building the program budget that will be looked at, screened by OMB, then approved by the President and sent over here.

    I think the problem has been that unlike the Defense Department where McNamara installed fairly rigorous PPBS system, that is Planning Program Budgeting system, relating line inputs to combat outputs has never been established in the intelligence community.

    There are several reasons, but the one I would underscore is the way the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is funded. That is a procurement organization, not an intelligence organization. Letting it come to the Congress with its own budget is like letting the Army Materiel Command (AMC) have a budget outside of the Army or the Navy Systems Command have a budget outside of the Navy. You who have dealt with both of those agencies can just imagine what kind of procurement biases you would get with those arrangements.
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    So I think the problem in budget control is one of internal IC organization and process that can be managed without any change in the law.

    The CHAIRMAN. Did you say NRO is under the DCI for budget?

    General ODOM. It is part of the National Foreign Intelligence Program. The piece which Secretary Hamre will be far more eloquent in describing here than I can possibly be would be the negotiation between the DCI and the Secretary of Defense for what will be the top line of monies allowed from the Defense Department budget that go into the National Foreign Intelligence Program. Once that is established inside that line, in my experience, DCI had final say.

    He did not have good analytic methods to discover how best to spend it. That was not apparent to me for about a year, but I soon began to realize it was the absence of this ability to develop programs, and I have even gone so far as to specify what the five intelligence community programs ought to be.

    They ought to be the Signals Intelligence Program, the Imagery Intelligence Program and the Human Intelligence Program; in other words, the collection disciplines. Then there needs to be one for analysis, all sorts of analysis, at the national level that falls within the National Intelligence Projections & Planning (NIPP), which includes some in the Defense Department, Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), State and it would in Homeland Security and Treasury and Energy. And, finally, a counterintelligence program. So those would be the five outputs that I think make the most sense.
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    I think the 9/11 proposal buries this problem, it more or less ignores it, and if you solve that problem for the Defense Department, the Secretary of Defense and the military services, the joint chiefs, would have a much clearer, more transparent view in to how the intelligence monies are being spent to their advantage. And to what extent the intelligence community serves other people of government was always an issue in my own service when I was director of NSA.

    So let me add one last point that I think is lost. There is nothing radical in the reforms of the proposal or in anybody else's proposal for counterintelligence. These structural reforms will eventually increase, if they are implemented right, would increase the efficiency and the use of resources. Getting better intelligence of the kind Dr. Wood so eloquently talked about needing in my view is not a structural issue, that is a policy leadership issue. But that will be easier to achieve if you have a more efficient use of resources.

    The one structural change, it seems to me, in the not too distant future, much closer because you could have an impact on the war against al Qaida and other such organizations, would be creating not an Directorate of Military Intelligence, Section 5 (MI5) type but a considerably different national and counterintelligence system without arrest authority but with the authority to coordinate all of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) counterintelligence operations and those of the three military services.

    Today, there is no comprehensive counterintelligence picture in the government, and I have seen cases of agents running between these counterintelligence programs. Until you give an agency coordinating authority across them, you will never have a comprehensive picture, and you won't close those gaps.
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    And, finally, I think for both cultural and structural reasons, any organization with arrest authority will do poorly at counterintelligence.

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Those are my comments.

    [The prepared statement of General Odom can be viewed in the hard copy.]

    The CHAIRMAN. General Odom, thank you very much, and your appearance before this committee always makes me reflect on the fact that you and others like you are a real resource to the country. Appreciate you taking this one on and doing a very thoughtful analysis and presenting it before the committee.

    Mr. Hamre, thank you once again for all your service to the nation, and we have seen some of your writings in recent weeks in the various op ed pieces. Tell us what you think.

STATEMENT OF DR. JOHN J. HAMRE, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, THE CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

    Dr. HAMRE. First, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Skelton, thank you for inviting me to come today. I was reflecting in coming up. I think I have testified before you a couple dozen times through the years. It is always fun to come back. Especially when I am not in government, it is even more fun, but I don't think I ever was here when there was a more important issue on the table and when there was a more important issue that is we are counting on you, all of you to lead here and to deal with.
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    This is an issue of genuine constitutional proportions. We are asking you to find a formula that is going to protect us as people, both from hostile forces outside and frankly from our own government. We worry about spying and we have to have it in American society, and we have to have it in a way that it is reliable and it is trustworthy, and we are counting on you to strike the balance for that.

    So nothing is more important than what you are doing now, and I want to personally thank you for coming off of the August recess when I know you all had responsibilities back home, to break that and to come here to be leading the country on these issues. It is crucial, and I personally want to say I am very grateful that you are doing it.

    I have watched this debate ever since the 9/11 Commission made its report, and I will be honest, I am worried. First of all, let me say I think the 9/11 Commission has rendered a great contribution. I am very grateful for what they have done. But they have organized a set of recommendations to restructure the intelligence community that is really built around one problem, and that was the problem on September 11 when components of the intelligence community didn't talk to each other, and we had difficulty, both internal to organizations and then across institutions in communicating information that we collectively needed. Now, this is referred to in the popular parlance as a connect-the-dots problem. It is a real problem, it is a big problem.

    But there is another problem that is facing us. There are several, but there is another big problem, which I think has fallen a bit off the public table right now, and that is the problem of when we went into Iraq. I was absolutely of the view we were going to stumble over the chemical and biological weapons. I couldn't be more shocked that we didn't find anything. And our whole community was really convinced that we were going to find it. There was no place that we looked at more intensively for a period of 10 years than Iraq.
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    It is, I think, an extreme version, but it does reflect a serious problem we have in the intelligence community, and that is we tend to develop a narrowness of perspective around conventionally accepted perceptions. And this is called group think, where you say we all start thinking the same way and therefore we stop seeing it and stop looking at it. That is just as serious a problem.

    Now, my reservation about the 9/11 Commission's report is that they want to solve the connect-the-dots problem, but when you solve that you are going to make the group think problem worse, because you are going to bring all of the intelligence instruments under one person. I think that is a step in the wrong direction, to be perfectly honest.

    Now, if you want to solve the group think problem, you are going to have fractionated community and you are going to have a connect-the-dots problem. So we have these two that are in tension with each other.

    Now, personally, I was not keen on creating a director of national intelligence (DNI) for a collection of reasons, but I am pretty realistic politically. When both President Bush and Senator Kerry have endorsed it, we are going to get a DNI. I just understand that. And now I think it is important that we get the right DNI, and that is really what you all are going to have to do.

    Now, my reservation with the 9/11 Commission and Senator Kerry is that they are solving the connect-the-dots problem. My reservation about the President's proposal is it is going to create a very weak DNI, and it may solve the connect-the-dots problem but the unity of thinking problem or avoiding group think but it is not going to solve the connect-the-dots problem. So we have got to find a path for this.
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    Now, I am going to recommend something to you that I know is controversial. I don't think you can have a weak DNI. I think that would be a real step in the wrong direction. So how do you have a strong DNI? And I think you have to undergird this position with real resources.

    So, first, I have come to this reluctantly, to be honest, and Bill and I, we have debated this, we have argued about this, and I know he doesn't agree with me. I am inclined to think that we need to create a DNI and give him institutional strength by giving him the factories that produce raw material; that is, the NRO, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and NSA. These are the big institutions that support the entire community as well as DOD, and I would like to speak for a moment about the DOD side because I know my friends are worried about this.

    They run the factory. They produce the raw material. I do not want to take the analytic side of the intelligence community away from the cabinet secretaries. I think that would be a mistake. I think you want the diversity of perspective that the Secretary of Defense brings, that the Secretary of Treasury brings, that the Secretary of State brings. You want that diversity of perspective coming to the President so that he can make a decision. You don't want to suppress that and have it channeled through one voice. So it solves that problem.

    Now, it does raise the question of do you create an unacceptable problem by taking these intelligence factories away from the Defense Department? Will you break that link that is crucial for the military? And that is a real issue. We ought to talk about that. Now, I—first of all, let me tell you, I do not want that to happen, and we have to do everything we can to make sure that doesn't happen. We, in DOD, we need not just a finished intelligence product, we need the raw electrons, because we are going to drop a bomb on somebody based on electronic signature. We need it direct. So can we get that and yet not physically own the assets and have them working for us? That is, I think, the central question.
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    I think we can. I am not naive. I know there are going to be some challenges if we do that. Now, my personal view and recommendation is that we if we do it, first, make sure we do not sever the continuing close relationship of the intelligence community inside the services with those agencies. We send officers and enlisted personnel into the National Security Agency, into the NRO, into the NGA, and we should continue to do that. Frankly, we need to do that, because they don't have a sufficient rotation base inside the service just to keep it contained inside the service. You need to keep sending them back and forth, but we should, because I am convinced that that will make sure those institutions see it as their highest priority is to support our guys in battle. That is the first thing.

    Second, I would create a board of directors around this DNI that is comprised of the operators so that the vice chairman or the joint chief is sitting there and has a representative every day meeting with the DNI and the collection agency to make sure that any issues are resolved quickly. And you can bubbling up fast if you have to, and I think we ought to have that kind of confidence it could happen.

    Third, we are going to see, I think, an interesting change over the next several years where tactical intelligence platforms are going to become more important in the strategic picture. For example, when we start buying long dwell remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs) for intelligence purposes, we will use that on the battlefield. It is also going to be a feed into the national system. I think that is a good thing. I think that links us, continues to keep us linked between this entity, the NSA, for example, under a DNI and the Defense Department.

    I am not naive that there will be challenges, but I do not think that the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission to have the budget and the personnel inside the Defense Department controlled by an individual outside of the Defense Department is a good idea. I think that is a bad idea. I think we know that ambiguous chain of command usually creates problems in our world, and so we want to avoid that.
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    I also believe that the President's formula is going to give us a weak and ineffective DNI, and I don't think we can afford that. So I reluctantly come to a conclusion that says we have got to give genuine depth underneath a DNI so he can do his job, and then we have to manage the problems that will come out as a consequence of that. I think we can do it. It is going to depend, and I very much agree with Dr. Wood, that your oversight becomes crucial to make this work—absolutely crucial.

    And let me then finally say I strongly agree with General Odom, and I hope you took note on this, the counterintelligence mission really needs attention in this country. We do have a counterintelligence executive now, and that is Michelle Van Cleave and I think she is got great promise, but she needs help, and you all need to be meeting with her and finding out what you can do to help her in that role.

    Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

    [The prepared statement of Dr. Hamre can be viewed in the hard copy.]

    The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very much, Dr. Hamre, and thanks to all of you. You have given us, I think, good, candid, unvarnished look at this thing in a way that can help us to discuss it and think about it.

    And, incidentally, once again, we have a fairly robust showing of our committee and we are very proud, gentlemen, that they have came away from their district duties to be here for these hearings, and we want to make sure everybody gets a chance to ask a question, so we have going to be under the five-minute rule, and that yellow light will go on when you have got two minutes left.
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    So a member can either, if he wants to make a statement a little longer, he can use that two any way he wants, but at that point, he might want to hand it off and makes sure his question gets answered, because I would like to ask the panel to try to—you can finish your sentence but try to finish within the five-minute time so we have got—before the red light comes on or after it comes on so that all members have a chance to ask a question.

    So I will ask the staff to stick my light on and I am going to try to make a real quick one.

    Dr. Hamre, let me get straight again your medium position here between what you would call the panel's position and the President's take on that with respect to the DNI, the director of national intelligence. You do want to give him the assets of DOD, you do want to give him full accountability, but then you made a statement at the last you thought that would be—to give him the money and the control in DOD would be dangerous. I didn't quite understand that midpoint that you are talking about.

    Dr. HAMRE. Sir, I believe that—my objection to the 9/11 Commission is they are turning over the analytic side of our intelligence community to one person. I don't like that idea. I want the analytic side to remain with cabinet secretaries. My reservation about the President's is that he is going to have a DNI with no teeth, no power. And it is going to, by the way, diminish the CIA in the process by splitting the job.

    So I want to get a strong DNI, and the only way I can conceive to do that is to give him the institutional power of giving him the factories, the collection institutions. That would be NRO, NGA and NSA. He would be responsible for running those institutions on behalf of the entire intelligence community. The rest of the community would remain with the cabinet secretaries, and he becomes a utility provider to the rest of the community. That would be my position, sir.
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    The CHAIRMAN. Okay. But the CIA director would remain the——

    Dr. HAMRE. CIA director.

    The CHAIRMAN. And the human intelligence (HUMINT), obviously, if a function of that.

    Dr. HAMRE. Remains.

    The CHAIRMAN. But now that is under the DNI?

    Dr. HAMRE. No. Sir, it would be under the head of the CIA. They would be accountable to the CIA. I would not move the human intelligence function out of the CIA.

    The CHAIRMAN. Okay. But the CIA would be subordinate, if you will.

    Dr. HAMRE. Just like one of the other cabinet secretaries inside the community.

    The CHAIRMAN. He would be subordinate to the——

    Dr. HAMRE. Subordinate to the DNI.
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    The CHAIRMAN. Okay. And let me just ask you real quick—well, I will tell you what, I will have further questions as we get down through the line and get the rest of our members to get a chance to ask questions, but I am going to want to follow that in some depth with respect to the warfighters, because we have had a lot of testimony on that today.

    Let me turn to the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Skelton.

    Mr. SKELTON. I will limit my questions to just one. I have several others.

    Dr. Wood, explain how you would improve congressional oversight?

    Dr. WOOD. Sir, I believe the essence of it is having a single point of contact in the Congress for the intelligence community in what, as I said at the present time, is fundamentally an intelligence war. The war against terror is combat against a type of enemy that we have never faced before but one which is nonetheless already showing the ability to attack us twice in a serious manner, once in a catastrophic manner on our own territory. This is real honest to goodness war, and it is war like we haven't seen since 1812, at the very least.

    So we have to do things in a fundamentally different manner, and one of the key things in this respect is giving the executive a single point of contact on Capitol Hill to come to when they need authorizations, when they need appropriations, when they need counsel, when they need guidance. So a crucial aspect of fighting the war from a congressional standpoint is the single point of contact.
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    That is the joint committee I recommended, which is not only joint between the two bodies of the Congress but shares authorization and appropriation responsibility so that the government has great agility when the executive needs to do things which are fundamentally different to fight the war it comes to the joint committee and requests the authorization and appropriation recommendations to both houses of Congress, and it gets action on those recommendations swiftly.

    This is almost a sine qua non for making sure that our enemies don't continue to turn inside our tactical radius. That is what they are doing at the present time. They are small in numbers, they are small in resources, but they are very agile, and they are exceedingly opportunistic, and if we don't behave in a fashion that confronts that effectively, we will continue to lose, we will continue to cower in our own national territory.

    We haven't done this, sir, for a very long time, and it is time we put a stop to it. The Congress has to take the necessary step and that is to provide the agility to the executive and that agility will come, sir, I believe, only through a joint committee. Thank you, sir.

    The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.

    Gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Saxton.

    Mr. SAXTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me turn the subject just slightly. Over the past 2 days, there has been a fair amount of conversation, particularly generated here on the Armed Services Committee, about the potential effect of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations on our ability to carry out military actions vis-a-vis the new enhanced necessity of using intelligence in perhaps a slightly different way than we have traditionally used it.
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    And I would just like to give each of you an opportunity to comment on—obviously, you have looked at the 9/11 Commission report, its recommendations, and can you relate to us what your thoughts are with regard to its effect on our military capability?

    Dr. HAMRE. Mr. Saxton, my reservation about the 9/11 Commission report is that it basically leaves the intelligence agencies inside the Defense Department but it gives the control of them to someone outside of the Defense Department. I don't think that is healthy. I am more confident if I know I have go to someplace to get the help than when it is ambiguous over who is in charge. I would prefer to have a clean alignment.

    I would like to keep the assessment side of the intelligence inside DOD. I would like to keep the operational side when we do—for us, we have got very specific needs for our operations. But for running the satellites, for running the listening stations, the machines that produce the intelligence, I am convinced that we can find arrangements that will give us reliable access to that knowledge and not have the institutions actually owned by the Defense Department.

    General ODOM. I think it would build walls that fragment Defense intelligence from homeland security intelligence and from other foreign intelligence, the three deputies. It would essentially—I don't see how the new NID would implement his budgetary control except to those three deputies, because they are on the resource management side. And it is precisely that across-agency problem in resource allocations that won't overcome, not reinforce.

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    Now, I cannot let pass points that Dr. Hamre made here. If you pull those agencies out of the Defense Department, I can tell you the Defense Department will abandon them because two-thirds of the personnel in NSA belong to the military, and they will take them and recreate their own units.

    When I was the director of NSA, I had a constant struggle with most of the services about their relations with NSA. Some were more inclined to be cooperative with us than others, and one of my major problems was getting the civilian force inside NSA to agree to do these real-time tactical support missions. Move them outside of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and they will abandon them entirely. We will go right back to the prioritization problem where if you wanted to shift civilian assets to deal with a crisis on Saturday, they say, ''Well, we can't do that until Monday morning, until the Intelligence Committee (SECINT), meets and reestablishes the collection priority.'' It took years to overcome that.

    To break that would be to reverse a rather dramatic but slow, progressive change in orchestrating national and tactical systems in SECINT, and I suspect that Imagery has gotten only a small distance toward the kinds of tactical national symbiosis that has been achieved in NSA. And this would just set it back. I mean it really would go right back to what you had when before in the imagery community most of what you had with the CIA before and which Director Deutsch agreed to put together and which the committee in the Senate supported. So I see no positive things out of the proposal, and I see several negative things in the 9/11 proposal.

    Dr. WOOD. Sir, two things. I thought the comments of Secretary Hamre and General Odom on these points were very cogent. The two things that jumped out at me on the 9/11 report along these lines was that they spoke very much to what could be done and they really didn't address that sharply some aspects of what should be done. They focused on the politically feasible rather than the things which are necessary in the national interest.
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    In particular, they admitted two very large subjects necessary changes in the Congress and necessary changes with respect to the artificial division between foreign and domestic intelligence that we Americans have set up in the last three decades in this country. Our enemies don't respect the distinction between what happens inside the United States and what happens outside the United States. They mounted the 9/11 attack almost exclusively within our own country where our intelligence gathering capabilities were weak to nonexistence. They are still not strong. They will not be strong until the congress changes fundamental national policy along these lines.

    So my basic critiques of the 9/11 Commission were not the active ones that my 2 colleagues here just mentioned but the omissions. Namely, they didn't say what the Congress needed to do to itself to better posture the Nation in this war, and very specifically they didn't address the absolutely gut-level issues of the distinctions that were drawn in the seventies between foreign intelligence and domestic intelligence. Those are absolutely essential.

    The CHAIRMAN. Thank the gentleman.

    The gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Spratt.

    Mr. SPRATT. Well, thank you all for your testimony. I greatly appreciate it. I am not quite sure how to sum it up with respect to where we stand. As I read the Commission report, and I think as the commissioners themselves took testimony, I think they saw their characters like characters in a Greek play who sort of sense their fate as the information, the interception, the NSA became increasingly threatening and ominous. And then they got closer and closer to home, it was obvious that their fate—our fate was looming but the characters seemed helpless to do anything to avoid it.
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    And so what the Commission has recommended is to create some entity, some individual who is got the power to bring together these 15 different entities that have some intelligence responsibility, to summon their collective abilities, to merge their efforts when necessary, to focus them, to task them.

    And Lee Hamilton, who is been around government for a long time, has a very practical attitude about it, and that is if you don't control the purse strings in this town, nobody really takes you seriously. I have been on the Government Operations Committee. Barney Frank used to call it a jawbone committee. We don't authorize anybody's budget, we don't appropriate anything. People don't like to get scolded, but for the most part they don't take them terribly seriously. Unless you control the purse strings, which the NDI would or the joint committee would, you don't get listened to.

    And by the same token, if you are supposed to be responsible for all their functions and you can't choose the senior leaders or at least have some kind of influence over the selection, removal, promotion, whatever, you once again don't have—you get relegated to the role that the DCI finds himself have to evolved to now.

    If not an NDI, what do we have? What kind of entity do we have so that we can avoid this helplessness that prevailed before the 9/11 events?

    Dr. WOOD. Can I answer that? I think the one positive thing out of the report is to separate the role of the DCI from the director of CIA. If you look at the real powers of the DCI, he has the power to do that; he didn't do it. If you look at the Senate study of what happened before 9/11, one that they put out a month or 2 ago, you will see that the DCI tended to be the director of CIA and not the DCI. That role was abandoned. That is why you didn't have somebody putting these together.
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    The DCI has a national intelligence council. He has national intelligence officers under that. He could beef that staff up with a big interagency group. He could do pretty much what he wants to without any legislation. I don't think it is a structural problem. I do think you have a structural problem in having double-hatting. It prevents the kinds of developments that would solve some of these problems and also increase the efficiency and use of resources.

    Mr. SPRATT. Well, does your DCI still run the CIA as well as become the director of Central Intelligence?

    Dr. WOOD. No, he is not. There will be a director of the Central Intelligence who is essentially the clandestine service, and I would give him bureaucratic ballast in power. I would give him—the present DI, Directorate of Intelligence, is must too large. My own experience is that the use and effectiveness of intelligence is inversely related to the number of all-source analysts, and one of the problem is that there are too many of them and I see the proliferation in these centers of even more analysts.

    Now, as far as the competition among analytic agencies, I completely agree with Secretary Hamre on that. And there is no reason to keep INR and State out of participating in the national intelligence production or DIA or the three military services or NSA or the National Imagery Agency.

    Mr. SPRATT. Well, you still have an NDI. You just call him the DCI, but that is not——
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    Dr. WOOD. Oh, sure. I don't care if you call him the NDI. I am quite happy with the name. The thing that is most important—and I do support the proposal in separating those two. That to me is its most positive aspect. That would open the logjam to do some of these other things. I would hesitate to do all the details that are recommended now, because I don't really understand fully what the ramifications would be, but I can think up a few, and the ones I see I don't think people putting together fully understood it. I think they have devoted a huge and brilliant amount of attention to putting it together but not to——

    Mr. SPRATT. Let me squeeze a question in before the light changes. You say very emphatically that you can't put this person in the White House because he would be a dysfunctional competitor to the national security advisor. Is that a necessary outcome? And if he is not in the White House, does he have the clout, the authority, the stature to go to 15 other agencies in the government, including DOD, and really be the director of Central Intelligence?

    Dr. WOOD. I agree with you on resource control. He has the resource control on the books now. He doesn't use it. If he used it effectively, they would move. He moved my money around as he darn well pleased when I was the director of NSA. He didn't do it through a PPBS project, he did it to let the NRO take my money.

    The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.

    The gentleman from New York, Mr. McHugh.

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    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am a big believer in the adage, ''A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,'' which speaking of myself makes me a very dangerous person a lot of times but especially in this process. I deeply appreciate you gentlemen being here to share your perspectives because we all want to do this right, whatever it is we may ultimately do.

    Dr. Hamre, I couldn't help but notice, and I don't mean to characterize you, sir, but I thought I detected a reaction when General Odom made some suggestions about the potential erosion of intelligence to the war fighter under the proposal that you spoke about. That is my major concern in respect to this committee, and I thought the general certainly articulated my concerns much better than I did. Whether he is right or not, I don't know, but that is how I feel. So I would like to hear your response based on that little tick I caught.

    Dr. HAMRE. Sir, no, I think that is the central worry. I think we all have that worry, and I certainly share Bill's concern that we can't let that happen. I mean, overwhelmingly, we can't let that happen.

    I, first of all, have more confidence in the success that he created and his successors have created to create a culture in NSA and in the other services where they see their first job as supporting the warrior, and I think they do. That has been very much my experience. I have been on the Advisory Board for NSA for the last three years. They take it extremely seriously. That is how they measure their success is being able to help the guy in the field.

    I don't think that is just going to revert back, number one. Second, I don't think the services can afford to reproduce NSA if NSA leaves the Department of Defense. I know they can't afford to do it. I know a lot about their budget problems right now. And so they are going to be forced to work with them, and they are also bringing a lot of assets to the collective enterprise. A lot of the collectors are still in tactical hands. So there is a lot of shared dependency in that community, and I think it will persist.
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    I am not naive to think that there won't be some problems, there will be problems, but I think they are manageable problems in the sense we know how we could manage those problems. And for that reason it isn't my presence, I don't start there wanting to do that, but when I look at the option of having too strong a DNI and too weak a DNI, I have got to come up with a new alternative. And that is all I am trying to put before you.

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you very much. Let me go to another point. One of the topics, and my friend from New Jersey, Mr. Saxton, articulated some of the internal concerns of it, in the Commission's report recommendation, take covert paramilitary activities out of CIA and bring them over to Defense. Pay grade, culture, all kinds of challenges there, but I don't know if those are insurmountable.

    Would any of you gentlemen like to comment on that specific proposal, because it seems that it is not being talked about a great deal, but at least, in my mind, if you think about it, that is a big move.

    Dr. HAMRE. Let me just briefly something and then I will turn to my colleagues. I think we need to separate the—there are two things here: Covert operations and paramilitary. They are really quite different.

    Mr. MCHUGH. Right.

    Dr. HAMRE. We can't go into a lot of the details in this session, of course. I think there is genuine merit in looking carefully at how we do paramilitary operations and the balance between the CIA and DOD. I think there is some real room for some study there. I don't think you want to bring covert operations into the Department of Defense, and so I think that in another session I think we could have a discussion about how some of the more detailed granularity of that might look like.
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    Mr. MCHUGH. The other gentlemen.

    General ODOM. I would agree with what Dr. Hamre says on that. I have always thought that you should use Defense Department assets more than they have been used, but you don't want the Department of Defense running it, and I think that is a subject for a closed hearing. I don't think that is a subject that I could make clear my views on in open hearing.

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you.

    Dr. Wood.

    Dr. WOOD. I very much agree with my colleagues that it is a subject that needs to be addressed in a separate circumstance. But the general point that I would suggest applies that we should bring out here the Defense Department, the fundamental motif is, on direction of the Congress and the President, going out and killing people and breaking things. And what the CIA does is of a different character, fundamentally a different one. It is probably a mistake of form, as to say a blunder, to try and merge the two. They really are separate and distinct, fundamentally distinct functions of government, sir.

    Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you all very much.

    Mr. Chairman, thank you.

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    The CHAIRMAN. Thank the gentleman.

    The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Turner.

    Mr. TURNER OF TEXAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate the excellent testimony we have had from all three of you. And I am struggling, as I think some of my colleagues are, to try to understand the different positions that each of you take.

    And I might mention, Dr. Hamre, when Lee Hamilton was before us he acknowledged that he had read your editorial, and he said, ''I am not convinced there is a lot of difference between our position on the Commission and what Dr. Hamre is saying in his editorial,'' and he said he needed to talk to you. I don't know if you have had a chance to visit with him since we had him yesterday. So I am not too clear what the distinctions are.

    I did note that you made the point that you did not like to see the analytical function merged because it contributes to this group think problem. And maybe I misunderstand what the 9/11 Commission report said, but my sense was that they created intelligence centers around subject matters to merge the intelligence information and analysis in those centers, and yet I did not note that they took away any of the analytical centers that exist within the cabinet departments, which, as you know, there has been a proliferation of since 9/11. I suspect that from a list I had here earlier today it looked like we may have doubled the number of analytical centers since 9/11 in our effort to try to collect or analyze the intelligence that we have.

    So is it your understanding that the analytical functions that are ongoing and now exist within the cabinet departments would be done away with under the 9/11 Commission?
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    Dr. HAMRE. No. Indeed, they keep them there, but they take the money and they bring the control of them into this DNI. So, in essence, the director of Defense Intelligence inside DOD is not going to work for the Secretary of Defense. I think that is a bad idea. That is my objection. I mean I don't think it is good because money is the lifeblood of bureaucracies, and if the money is going down a separate channel coming from a different person than the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of State, that is not going to be an independent entity over time.

    That is' my reservation about the 9/11 Commission. They leave the body organizationally inside DOD or inside Department of State, but all the funding comes down a different channel. I think that is a formula for chaos and ultimately for a very narrowing and constriction of perspective, and that is why I object to it.

    Mr. TURNER OF TEXAS. Contrast for us and maybe we could have a little dialogue here between our panelists, but contrast for us, clarify for us where the distinctions are—and you have done this to some extent—but help us clarify this. What are the distinctions that we should note between the different positions that the three of you have taken on this issue? What are the fundamental contrasts that we should be aware of in making our decision about how this should be structured?

    Dr. HAMRE. Again, very briefly, for me, I am advocating that you leave analytic capability inside cabinet secretaries so they all can be participants in the process, that you centralize the factories that provide the raw material to all of those analytic shops under a DNI and let him operate those as a utility function on behalf of the entire government. That is not where the judgment is brought to bear, that is where the raw material is produced, and I think that can be centralized and brought under this DNI in order to give him standing inside the community.
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    Mr. TURNER OF TEXAS. Do you oppose this concept of having the DNI have analytical centers by subject matter? Do you oppose that concept?

    Dr. HAMRE. No, I don't. I actually think there is some promise to it, but the problem is those are still on the supply side of the equation. Those are intelligence centers inside the intelligence community in theory trying to do what? Organize——

    Mr. TURNER OF TEXAS. I perceived it is sort of like what goes on in the CIA now with the different reporting groups.

    Dr. HAMRE. Right. I think that is right.

    Mr. TURNER OF TEXAS. But it has tried to merge a broader range of intelligence.

    Dr. HAMRE. I think that is right. I think it is a good idea to bring interagency coordination under the DNI, and I would propose that we do that. So that part of it I do agree with.

    Dr. WOOD. There is something that I believe all three of us agree with, and this is the utterly fundamental motif that was sounded by Mr. Spratt a few minutes ago, and that is anytime that you separate money control, administrative authority and the wherewithal that goes with those things, and specifically accountability, anytime the three of those are teased apart, you have generated mischief and the potential for much damage to the American cause. They must be tied together. No matter what label you put on it and what details of the structure are, money, authority and accountability have to be tied together.
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    General ODOM. Let me emphasize two things that I think might add some clarity here to where we are different in our views. I think you have to sort out what the realities are in budget control. I don't see that the present DCI lacks budget control. He has that control. Until somebody can show me a law that says he doesn't, then I think you are talking about an imaginary problem, and I have had this argument with Lee Hamilton.

    People who have not worked inside those agencies and realized that you are dealing with three budgets and what executing a budget is and what building a program is, I think fail to get this distinction. So giving him this budget execution authority will create a mess without giving him any additional real power.

    So I am all for that authority. What I have said is the present structure within the community has encouraged him to use it not very effectively. I quite agree, and I am glad that somebody made the point, you made the point, which I have been realizing we need to make, those set of standards could be organized in the CIA today. You don't have to write a new law to create a national intelligence director to allow the DCI to organize those inside the—order the director of CIA to do it if he wants to.

    And I am going to say I am a little confused about your point that if you centralize analysis so that it is just one view—we will never get rid of group think; we are going to have a certain amount of it. There is a lot of decentralization. I call it distributive process in the intelligence business. There has to be because users are different.

    It has also been my experience that competition among centers don't generate light, they generate heat. The best light on intelligence is the proof that is discovered in combat or diplomatic operations that show you were wrong. We got real light put on it in Iraq on weapons of mass destruction. That is the light. We could have had 15 different people arguing the different positions and no more light but a great deal of heat would have been generated before the war. I mean we were locked into that position, not just in the intelligence community but the policy community and the public at large. So I don't think you can sit here and come up with a structural solution to that problem. That is essentially a political problem.
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    There is one other difference that I didn't really expect to have to this degree. Having worked to get some kind of tactical national progress, NSA, and knowing that while it may look like it is going well today, it is probably not going nearly as well as in reality it should, that if you relax the Defense Department's control over NSA, it will drift right back to the business.

    I don't want to be awakened on Saturday night and have to go to work. Or if I am not involved, I don't want to come in Monday morning and discover that what I passed on Friday has been ripped out and put someplace else. And I am a Senior Executive (SES) and I will exert my authority to be sure they didn't do that. He doesn't understand or that person doesn't understand that a crisis has come up that is more important. That will grow right back within weeks or months if you don't have a strong responsive hand in the military chain of command.

    I think NSA is best understood as a functional, a specified joint command. It has three components, the Army, Navy and Air Force components, service elements. All of them run the field stations in most of the big activities. They can't turn a receiver on without the operational control and direction of the director of NSA. So just like Tommy Franks or the present commander of Central Command (CENTCOM) only had operational control in the Army, Navy and Air Force out there. They couldn't fire a round without his direction. But he doesn't own those three services. There are three service components that own them.

    If you understand that system, you are in a very good position to understand what NSA and what I hope NGA is becoming but was not, and that is the reason you never had the synergism in the imagery community which is possible and still I think great gains are to be made there. HUMINT should have the same thing. It is fragmented between the problems that go beyond what I will elaborate here that keep the director of operations of CIA from taking over and responding to military commanders the way they should. And I don't think you will change that very easily. A DCI, separate from the director of CIA, would be in a much better position, a much stronger position to go do that.
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    I you need bureaucratic balance so the director of National Intelligence or the national intelligence director, or whatever you call him, or my new separate DCI, you can give it to him. I think he needs it. He needs a rather improved resource management structure, and he needs an analytic structure under the National Intelligence Council (NIC), which you could populate from the DI at CIA. And he needs more so that he has a big buildings and he has cars and protocol support and those sorts of things, which I do think he needs. That can be given to him. This is the administrative staff. Then if he wants to exercise authority, he will have to use his budget authority right now.

    Let me elaborate that the degree of boring collection management authority the DCI has, and most people don't even appreciate. Let's suppose—well, look back at the real case. At the end of the Cold War, we suddenly did not think we needed the kind of intelligence collection on the Soviet Union or the residual states that we needed in other areas.

    Well, what is the mechanism for refocusing? The primary mechanism are the three national collection requirements list. There is a national SECINT's requirements list, a national imagery requirements list, a national HUMINT list. That was created by Mr. Colby back in the 1970's—a very effective system to go around to every cabinet agency, every department in the Department of Defense, subagencies, et cetera, to say, ''What are your intelligence needs, not time-sensitive ones, but are you interested in this part of the world, that part of that world? Weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or are you interested in economic issues?''

    Those are prioritized by NSA every year. I get that and you. I reallocate my language skills, where I am going to have things built, put in position to deal with those kinds of changes. So to change to the Middle East, you needed a DCI who was not down talking to the President but was looking at his management problem of how he is going to get those lists to shift these resources from where they are today to the Middle East into different language areas, et cetera. I don't think we drawing these charts is going to make that all that more effective. I do think separating the two jobs will leave the DCI with what Stalin called, ''the dilemma of one alternative,'' to manage the community instead of just being the director of CIA.
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    The CHAIRMAN. Thank you for that fairly fulsome answer, General Odom.

    The gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Bartlett.

    Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you. Thank you all very much for your testimony. I have a concern, gentlemen, that an unintended consequence of what we do in response to the 9/11 report may very well produce a false security in our country, false sense of security. Let me explain.

    I am not at all sure that if we had made all of the recommendations that they proposed before 9/11 that we would have avoided 9/11. Let me just go through the list of things that they said, the dots, that we didn't connect. We lost two terrorists in Bangkok. I wonder how many hundreds or thousands of other potential terrorists we lost track of.

    They mentioned that we didn't note that we had some people doing flight training. We also had a whole lot of students studying biology that could have been bioterrorists, a student studying chemistry that could have made chemical weapons, a student studying physics that could have made the energy weapons.

    Then false statements on visa applications. I wonder how many tens of thousands of people are floating around our country with false statements on their visa application. There are a whole lot of dots out there. They may be relatively as numerous as the stars in the sky that you would have to connect.
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    Then they talked about a no-fly list. I wonder how big that no-fly list would be, and the few dots they had in the no-fly list would be just inconsequential in terms of that total list.

    Then we hadn't hardened the doors up to the cockpit. Well, we also haven't done anything to protect our water supplies in this country. We haven't done anything to protect our electronics against a nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) or directed energy weapons. We have done darn little to protect ourselves against potential terrorist attacks through the millions of containers that come into our country. We have many trucks come in from Mexico and, what, we look at 1 percent of them or something? I just think there are so darn many dots out there that you would have great difficulty knowing which ones you ought to connect. And, certainly, we didn't connect those dots, but there are so many out there.

    Reorganization might help, and I was particularly intrigued by Dr. Wood's suggestion for reorganization, but I think that we need to be honest with the American people. I mentioned this yesterday, I will mention it again. I think that the way we are the terrorists must feel very much like that mosquito at the nudist convention, because there are so many tempting targets out there. We are very vulnerable people, because most of our existence we focused on openness and freedom. And freedom and security are, in a very large sense, a zero sum game. The more you have the one, the less you have of the other.

    Now, we need to do two things, I think. That is reorganize so that we don't try to fix what is not broken. And the second thing is to not lure the American people into a false sense of security. Now, I think no matter how good an intelligence system we have, it is going to be essentially impossible to connect all the right dots. Am I wrong?
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    Dr. WOOD. No, sir. I believe that you are exactly right and you have focused on an exceedingly important point: The terrorists noticed that Americans always like to fight in somebody else's strategic debt. We like to engage our enemies far from our shores, far from our vulnerable and soft points of which there are an enormously large number and they are enormously soft. We simply aren't in a position to fight any sort of war on our own territory.

    So they chose to bring us to war on our own territory, and they did devastating damage to us, and they will do it to us again and again and again. We are simply not prepared to fight in the United States. That is where they have chosen to make their fight. They will fight very effectively in spite of what I said earlier—their small numbers, their very limited resources and their intrinsically quite limited ways and means.

    And so what we must have in the context of the 9/11 Commission report and more generally in the way of improved intelligence functions is we simply have to have much more information about them, not 10 percent more but 1,000 percent more information than we have now and certainly than we had on September 10, 2001.

    We didn't know anything about the attack that was coming in. We didn't know who was involved. We didn't know what the means were. We didn't even have the vague idea that an attack was really honestly coming in September or even in the third quarter of 2001. We simply didn't have the basic intelligence that is required to be successful in combat.

    We knew no names, we knew no vehicles, we knew nothing about them. We had no penetration of their organization—not one single bit, and I mean bit in the sense of a binary bit. We didn't know anything.
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    And we don't know a great deal more about the attacks that are coming at us at the present time, in spite of three years of run-in and a huge amount of money and effort that has been expended. We have a great deal of data that comes into our national intelligence capabilities, but we have a shockingly small amount of information, and it is that which I said earlier we must have great improved efficiency and vastly greater effectiveness on intelligence.

    Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much.

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.

    The gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Cooper.

    Mr. COOPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to talk about a really touchy subject right now, which is ourselves. I think it is a lot easier to talk about reforming someone else than it is to talk about reforming ourselves.

    My tenure on this committee has only bee a year and a half, but in the time I have been here I would have to say that our congressional oversight on this committee has failed utterly, because we haven't even brought up the subject. We used to have a subcommittee devoted to oversight. That no longer exists. And in the markups that we have had in the last 2 years, this is one year's worth, there is another year's worth, close to 1,000 pages of transcript, hours and hours and hours of deliberations, I don't think one word was uttered regarding the $40 billion that we are responsible for authorizing regarding intelligence.
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    If the 9/11 Commission has performed any service, it may be simple act of getting us to do our own jobs, because for whatever reason this committee has sidelined those responsibilities. Now, Dr. Hamre was very polite in his testimony before us today, but the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), his organization, issued a report earlier that basically said our Committees of Armed Services were doing about the worst job in decades handling their responsibilities. That is a little bit of an exaggeration but it wasn't a favorable grade we received.

    I thought Dr. Wood said it right in his testimony, only when the Congress makes major changes in its own ways of doing business does the rest of the government take note. So it is kind of like physician heal thyself.

    Well, the 9/11 Commission made the point extremely clearly. Unfortunately, it is way back on Page 419 of the report, but they say, quote, of all of our recommendations, strengthening congressional oversight may be among the most difficult and most important. So long as oversight is governed by current congressional rules and resolutions, we believe the American people will not get the security they want and need.

    If that is not a mandate for change, I don't know what is. And if we do nothing else in this coming week, we have got to change the status quo here, because Congress is not exerting its oversight responsibilities.

    So I appreciate you gentlemen's guidance in helping us understand the intelligence community. There are some veterans on this committee who have been here for a long time who are learning the fundamentals of intelligence with your testimony.
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    The CHAIRMAN. Would the gentleman yield?

    Mr. COOPER. I would be delighted to yield.

    The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Let me inform the gentleman that we used to—in our markups, we used to have a closed session when we did discuss the intelligence piece that we do. The Democrat side objected to that strenuously, and as a result of that, in order to have open markups, we eliminated that discussion. So that is why the gentleman has a markup that doesn't have a discussion of the classified portions.

    The other point that the gentleman made, that we have this certain amount of money that we oversee, is just totally erroneous. It is not overseen by us. The pieces that are overseen by us are embedded in a number of platforms that we use, that we mark up, some of which are fairly open, obviously, things like Predator and Global Hawk that are embedded in the relevant subcommittees. And the gentleman, if he is on those subcommittees, has plenty of time to debate them, ask questions about them, get the packages that attend to each of those.

    But I would just tell the gentleman that we used to have a classified discussion. The Democrat membership objected to that classified discussion in the markup so we eliminated it under, I believe, Chairman Stump.

    Mr. COOPER. If the chairman will forgive me, I was not present on the committee at that time. I am not interested in finger pointing here. I just think Congress, as a whole, both parties——
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    The CHAIRMAN. But I think it is important—I would just tell the gentleman it is important to keep, to have the record clear, and that is why we eliminated it because members objected to it. We did have that discussion. The other aspect is we don't have that big piece of—and I believe the number is classified—but we don't oversee National Foreign Intelligence Board (NFIB); the Intel Committee does.

    Mr. SPRATT. Could I make just one statement, Mr. Chairman?

    The CHAIRMAN. Sure, go ahead.

    Mr. SPRATT. I really think the question before us, though, the main thing we did even when we had some classified discussion was pretty cursory. We basically delegated——

    The CHAIRMAN. It became a lot more cursory after the objections because it went to zero.

    Mr. SPRATT. We have deferred this responsibility to the Intelligence Committee, and the question before us now, the central question before us now is what sort of specific committee would that particular responsibility do we constitute in order to take on this greater responsibility? I don't think it is going to remain with us. It could in some residual or secondary capacity, but the primary function's got to go to some sort of intelligence committee. There is no other responsibility but intelligence. The question is whether it is a joint committee, how it is constituted, who sits on it, what its charter is, whether or not it has authorization and appropriation authority, all of these things. It is not about the functions of this particular committee.
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    The CHAIRMAN. Well, let me just remind my colleague that the small piece that we have here, which involves platforms that we actually have a fairly vigorous debate on, and we have an overlap with the Intel Committee on that, and when we have a difference of opinion, which the gentleman can see in our last several markups we have had on several platforms, we engage and we try to get this thing worked. In the end, we get a bill to the floor, which we have had over the last several markups, that has been consistent with what we think is good and also what the Intel Committee thinks is good.

    So we have had a fairly good working relationship with them. But we don't oversee—I mean let's make this very clear: We do not oversee operations, and this huge chunk of money that the gentleman from Tennessee talked about is not our jurisdiction, nor should it be in our jurisdiction.

    Mr. COOPER. Mr. Chairman, perhaps this is part of the problem. I think the 9/11 Commission reports that some 85 percent—85 percent—of intelligence spending in America comes through the DOD.

    The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman is once again mistaken because while it comes through DOD, that is overseen by the Intel Committee, and that is the rule that has been in place for a long period of time. There are some aspects of that program which overlap, and we have a piece of—we have platforms which are utilized, obviously, from which intelligence is extracted, that we in fact do authorize. We authorize those in conjunction with the Intelligence Committee.

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    Mr. WILSON OF SOUTH CAROLINA. Mr. Chairman, would you yield for a moment on that point?

    The CHAIRMAN. Sure.

    Mr. WILSON OF SOUTH CAROLINA. I think it is important to make those statements from this committee, because I read the same comment Mr. Cooper read in the report, and I don't know where the Commission gets those numbers because having formerly served on the Intelligence Committee and now here, I think that is incorrect, and it may be something that needs to be corrected for the record with respect to where the money comes from. And it is probably not something we can discuss here, but I have heard it discussed publicly, and I think all of us need to be able to say in our experience that that statement, that 85 percent of the budget for intelligence is run through the Defense Department, is incorrect.

    Mr. COOPER. Well, I am very interested in getting at the truth. As I said, I am a relatively new member of this committee. I think it is interesting that we are having to have a clarifying debate on a subject of this importance to the nation. Regardless of the history, let's fix it for the future because we need to make sure that our Nation is safer.

    The CHAIRMAN. Well, let me just engage with you on that point, Mr. Cooper. I think it is good to have a classified portion of the markup, and I think we should go back to the way we did it, but you can't have it both ways. You can't, in the interest of openness, eliminate the debate on the closed items and then complain that we are not including the closed agenda. So we will do what the committee wants to do, but I think we should go back to it. I think it would be healthy for us.
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    Mr. COOPER. Mr. Chairman, I have never objected to us going into classified session, in a markup or otherwise, and in fact a few moments ago I asked you if we could continue this session in a classified format because we have some remarkable witnesses. A number of questions have been raised that we could pursue better in a classified context. I asked your permission to enter classified session immediately following this open session. I am not opposed to you. We are all in this together trying to help the nation.

    So there are a lot of—when the 9/11 Commission, which is highly regarded, and 10 very serious experts think that 85 percent of the budget goes through DOD, and this is the DOD committee and we are somewhat confused about that, that is an amazing circumstance. So let's clarify the congressional lines of authority, let's have real oversight again, because as CSIS pointed out in their report, which is pretty comprehensive, we are at an all-time low point in modern Congresses for overseeing our Nation's military. We can and will do better, and this is a good starting point for that.

    The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Mr. Cooper, let me just say without embarrassing any other members who were the ones who objected to having closed sessions in our markups, I will give you their names, they are on the Democrat side, and if you can convince them that that is a good thing to do, I would love to talk to them, and I think it would be good to have a closed markup.

    Mr. COOPER. Mr. Chairman——

    The CHAIRMAN. Let me continue my point. I think that is an important thing to do. But, once again, the operational side of intelligence is not within our jurisdiction nor are the agencies that the gentleman has mentioned, even though they are within DOD, are in our jurisdiction in this body. So we are going to have to change the rules of the House to do that. So if the gentleman is interested in working on that, fine, but what this committee works on and what we mark up are the items that are within our jurisdiction.
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    Mr. COOPER. Mr. Chairman, I look forward to working with you on that. I think most members of the committee would be interested to know that a small group has veto power over overall committee deliberations. Usually when you have wanted to pass something you have done it very effectively by a majority vote. I would look forward to that happening again, because the power of majority if the power we all respect. So let's be fair about this. We are all patriotic Americans, we all want to fix this problem, so let's get about fixing it.

    The CHAIRMAN. I agree with the gentleman. Let's do it, and if the gentleman can bring some of the people who did object very strenuously with great principle about having closed markups, we will be happy to do it. But I agree with the gentleman, we need to get back on track.

    And, incidentally, I think the gentleman's recommendation that if our guests can stay for a bit after we get finished with our open session, as long as we have got you here and our members are going to be going back to their districts, we need to do a fast closed session and maybe we could walk an issue or two with respect to one of the other recommendations, especially with respect to moving some operations from CIA to standing forces. That would be beneficial. Can you hang around for a bit when we get done? Okay. I appreciate that and appreciate the gentleman's comment.

    The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Forbes.

    Mr. FORBES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for your leadership on this issue.
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    And, gentlemen, thank you for all being here today.

    Mr. Hamre, you mentioned in your article in the Washington Post on August 9 that an issue that we had to resolve is how do we do both; that is organizationally integrate and I think you equated that to connecting the dots earlier, the intelligence agency, while also fostering competition between them, i.e. doing away with group think. This is a quandary that we have got to resolve if we hope to fix the problem.

    Do you think there are any or also some non-organizational changes that need to be made in order to improve the intelligence collection and analysis? And what else can be done to foster competition, ingenuity and to preclude bureaucratic group think other than organizational things.

    Dr. HAMRE. Well, sir, I would need to think a little bit more and maybe engage with you privately to get a better feel for your concerns here. And I would like to use this as an opportunity to address what General Odom said. The importance is not that you get competition in the intelligence community, it is the importance you get competition in the policy community. I mean I think when we make mistakes it is when the policy leaders get too focused too centrally, too narrowly around an agenda.

    We can get a lot of diversity in the intelligence world. It is really the policy world. But if the policy leaders don't have access to their own analytic underpinnings to help them form their judgment, that is when we get in trouble. So that is why I am interested in making sure that the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, the CIA director have analytic underpinnings for them. And so in that sense, it is structural.
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    I think there are some procedural things we could do. I think that the NIC is a institution that is probably underutilized in order to try to develop diversity of perspective but commonality of purpose. I would like to see almost a bicameral system in the NIC so that it is not just the suppliers of intelligence that get together but there is a second house, the demand side, almost like an institutionalized Team B that looks at every problem. I think would be potentially a constructive thing to do.

    I agree very strongly with the oversight. I would like to see some streamlined oversight up here. I think you do a lot just with your own interests, the way you interact with the intelligence community. So I think there are things that could be done, but, sir, why don't I get on your calendar and find a time when I can work with you, because you obviously have strong interests and good insights to it.

    Mr. FORBES. Good. Thank you.

    And, General, could you just please illuminate further on your contention that the greatest positive near-term impact on dealing with terrorists would come from removing the responsibility for domestic counterintelligence from the FBI and specifically a question, I guess, would it be possible to continue to leave domestic counterintelligence within the FBI if we took away the arrest and apprehend functions of domestic counterintelligence agents?

    General ODOM. Well, let me answer the last part first. I don't see how you could do that. They are surrounded by and their promotions and everything else will be controlled by law enforcement officers. So the idea that you can have a genuine intelligence organization that acts like one inside a law enforcement agency strikes me as not very promising.
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    Now, let me elaborate on why that is true. Law enforcement officers are users of intelligence. They don't want to give it away. Any of you that have had any local experience with fire departments and police departments, they won't share information. If they get information about criminal activities, they want to make an arrest and get a press conference. They want to get the credit for it. So if you have arrest authority and you are helping the prosecution, then your whole view of what success is and your incentive for behavior are radically different than those of a counterintelligence officer.

    Counterintelligence officer doesn't want any public attention. He wants to be anonymous, he wants to be highly aware of what hostile intelligence services, and that overlaps very much what terrorists are doing. He wants to be very quiet about it. And then he wants to be able to take this information and give it to somebody at a critical time so they can act on it.

    Counterintelligence can't be responsible for security. Secretaries of Defense and military commanders, homeland security secretaries and the heads of their agencies are the ones that are responsible for security. They use the counterintelligence. You can't do anything with it if you want to get rewards except give it to users if you are a counterintelligence organization only.

    So that is my argument of why the incentive structure for a counterintelligence agency has to be apart from these distracting incentive structures. I have used the sports metaphor. To ask the Washington Redskins to play in American Baseball League would not be a wise thing to do if you expected them to win or vice verse, to ask the Orioles up here to play in the National Football League would not make much sense.
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    And it seems to me that is the predicament we are in, and if you look back historical, all the way from World War II on, the FBI, even under J. Edgar Hoover, has absolute miserable records where learning from the documents that have come out. Yale Press published two books on this, three books now, and it shows how they were utterly feckless against the NKBD and then later the KGB. And that is why I think you have to move that organization.

    People object that the American public won't put up with a domestic spy agency. They have one. It is called the Federal Bureau of Investigations, and its record of effectiveness is not good, and sometimes it has been known to abuse rights. I am very interested in my rights against any domestic spying efforts, and therefore when I make the recommendations it is not without a certain trepidation.

    And I have thought a little bit about, more than a little bit about, oversight for such an organization. I really think it has to have very strong congressional oversight. I would hesitate to make this proposal now that I have learned that there are so many committees, so much overlapping oversight, but it seems to me that the Judiciary Committee really ought to have some window into an agency like that, and I am not sure I wouldn't have some sort of outside organization within the Judiciary or something that could investigate. But I think that can be solved. If we can live with the FBI, I don't see why we couldn't have effective oversight over that kind of agency.

    So that is the main reason. And it is not—people use the MI5 solution. Well, there are some similarities to the MI5. The MI5 does not have coordinating authority over the military services or Directorate of Military Intelligence, Section 6 (MI6) in the British system. I think they should have it. Another thing a little different for me is that this organization would be under a director of Central Intelligence or a national intelligence director, whatever you wan to call this person, coordinate to the CIA. And MI5 is not under such a roof, and that is another reason you can't really make this proposal unless you split the Imagery Analysis (IA) director from the DCI and make that separation.
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    That is why I said earlier I think breaking those two positions allows you to do several very sensible things for which there is kind of a general evolutionary direction and it is now time to take this juncture, it seems to me, to make some of those possible. So that is why—let me say a final thing on that.

    There is a huge overlap between counterintelligence and counterterrorism. It is not a perfect overlap because terrorists are trigger pullers. Spies are not trigger pullers. But how they operate inside the U.S. is very analogous to clandestine operations of foreign intelligence services. And so that is why I think the effectiveness of that part of our government is more critical right now than the foreign part.

    Oh, yes, one other point I would make: In the embassies abroad, we have proliferated a number of so-called attache offices, which are really counterintelligence operating staffs, just like the chief of station has a clandestine service operation abroad. We don't need two out there. It is difficult to keep those operations coordinated in one operation. And you have that problem with defense units, and I don't know how that has been solved. So I think you would reduce the problems in coordinating it overseas as well, and the FBI insists on playing a much, much larger role abroad, even though it is shorthanded with agents domestically.

    Dr. WOOD. Mr. Chairman, I would like to very briefly comment that General Odom's basic points should be considered extremely carefully by the committee. The effectiveness of domestic counterintelligence is staggeringly low. In our classified session, I will quote you specific numbers on this, but I will just comment on the record in public that the Aldridge Ames case is the only one in modern times which was broken by classic gumshoe techniques. In every other one that you have seen in public and the American is aware of in modern times we simply purchased the identity of the bad actors with money.
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    Mr. BARTLETT [presiding]. Thank you very much.

    Mr. Marshall.

    Mr. MARSHALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think I should, for the record, that when Mr. Cooper began his remarks about our oversight he did say that it was a sensitive subject, and I think the result of those remarks proved the wisdom of his first observation.

    The 9/11 Commission, in chapter 11, identifies 4 kinds of failures, and the first failure that it discusses is imagination, and it talks about trying to institutionalize imagination. It notes that imagination is not a gift usually associated with bureaucracies and then comes pretty close to coining the oxymoron of an imaginative bureaucracy. And that is what the 9/11 Commission thinks we should be seeking.

    That rang true to me, someone who is very inexperienced in this area, because I have read Richard Clark's book and a number of his editorials and seen him testify. I have also read ''Imperial Hubris'' by anonymous. And then I have seen recently, and I apologize for not being able to dredge up the names, but I have seen two other op eds written by folks who have been in the intelligence community, left the intelligence community somewhat in disgust that the bureaucracy encourages careerism, group think is a term that has been used, CYAing, those sorts of things, obviously, something that we don't want.

    Now, unfortunately, General Odom, I have not read your book. I will observe, though, that you were kind enough to include a glossary in your book, and, frankly, I think C-SPAN would be doing all of us a favor, at least those viewing, if when you are speaking they could pop up a little glossary to explain the terms.
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    I am amused that the term, DNI, is defined here as the director of Naval Intelligence, so I guess the director of Naval Intelligence is pretty impressed at all the authority that the DNI is about to receive.

    I have it in your book—I haven't read the book, so I don't know whether in your book you discuss this same phenomena, whether you agree, and all of you have experience with this, whether you agree with the observation of the Commission in what appears to me to be the observation of Mr. Clark and anonymous and these others whose op eds I have written that we really suffer from an intelligence institutional problem of lack of imagination and if so, then how do we fix that problem by adjusting the bureaucracy or otherwise?

    Dr. WOOD. You simply aren't going to succeed, sir. It is oxymoronic to expect imagination in a bureaucracy. Bureaucracies intrinsically, actively quench imagination. It isn't going to happen. To pretend it is is a disservice to the republic because it is substituting illusion for reality. Again, I say the way that you get by with a minimal level of imagination that a bureaucracy can muster is to provide it with more and better information. There is no substitute in the intelligence field for high-quality information in plentiful quantity.

    Mr. MARSHALL. Let me go a little bit further. I have very little experience in this area but a fair amount of experience where the law is concerned, and large law firms have got bevies of folks working in the trenches that rarely see the light of day. They are stuck in the library cranking out memos. The law firm recognizes that that is a mind numbing responsibility and yet creativity is critically important to the success of the firm.

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    And so the law firm injects structures into the system that tend to maximize the likelihood that the information received by the partner o the associate that is going to take some action on behalf of the client is information that takes into account both sides of the argument. It is information that at least has gone through a process which maximizes the likelihood that creative, thoughtful analysis identifying all the issues and likely arguments on both sides or all sides has been developed.

    It seems to me that we ought to have the same kind of thing going on in the intelligence community, and I have heard your response, Dr. Wood. I would be very interested in hearing responses from General Odom and Mr. Hamre.

    General ODOM. Let me say that bureaucracy always has the tendency that Dr. Wood described, and good political leaders and military commanders who use intelligence are aware of that. And the stimulation from the user is terribly important in overcoming group think. But I also agree that you can do things like you described in the law firm and there are examples in the intelligence community outside scholars and think tanks who are asked to write parallel national intelligence estimates (NIE) on purely unclassified information for a while, and they were compared with the inside analyses. And I happened to be involved with one of the outsides and it created quite a stir on the inside, and we took completely different ideas and ended up sort of collapsing their own NIE. That was practices quite a while with the National Intelligence Council.

    I point out in my book on imagination and the use of technologies you have to have a system, the DCI or NDI, whatever we want to call him, has to have a system where the organizations when they resist technological change, which they will, he has to have some way to go out and create a stop work. But I think you ought to put a sunset law on it so that it doesn't become the same kind of deadening bureaucracy you set out to counter.
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    So, yes, you have to build those in. I don't think any of them are going to last very long. One proposal I put in my book is that I think every five to six years the head of the intelligence community ought to be forced to go through a restructuring analysis. I say in the book that what major high-tech organization business has gone for 30 or 40 years without major restructuring? The intelligence community has finished a huge in-flow of technology, probably as much or more than any high-tech organization like IBM or AT&T, et cetera, and it hasn't had anything like the restructuring to accommodate this.

    The CHAIRMAN [presiding]. I thank the gentleman.

    Dr. Hamre, I know you have got a response also?

    Dr. HAMRE. Very briefly.

    Mr. Marshall, you have asked a very good question. The community tries to do that. They try to go out and get sources, just as General Odom described. I think we could do a lot more of that. I think open source intelligence work is a good thing. I think we should encourage more of it, and I think that your interest in that would make a big difference.

    The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.

    And, Jim, I would like to do more—have a more extensive answer there. We have got about 15 members that haven't asked questions yet, so let's—I want to admonish my panel if we could, we need to have five minutes included in question and answer. So I know this is a complex thing and we like the thoroughness of the discussion, I know it is tough to do, but we have got about another 15 folks that need to ask their questions.
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    And the gentleman from Virginia, Mr.—no, the gentleman from Virginia has already spoken.

    The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Miller.

    Mr. MILLER OF FLORIDA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and in light of the time and the fact that we are going to go into a closed session, I have some questions that I want to ask and they will in fact be in that closed session. I do have some concerns that we can discuss then, but I do want to add that to my good friend, Mr. Marshall, I have a reading list that I would provide for you that is of non-fiction books if you would like it and would be glad to give you some more information. And with that, I yield back.

    The CHAIRMAN. Okay. The gentleman from Rhode Island, Mr. Langevin.

    Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and, gentlemen, thank you so much for your testimony today. This is incredibly helpful. If I could, I just wanted to turn our attention for a moment getting back to creativity and in particular competitive analysis. The 9/11 Commission report basically calls for the creation of these national intelligence centers as the best way to ensure competitive analysis.

    And I was having a discussion with Joe Nye, former dean of the Kennedy School and former Deputy Secretary of Defense for International Affairs, and one of the suggestions that he strongly advocates is rather than creating these centers is to look to the model of the National Intelligence Council, which already exists, taking it out from under the DCI and putting it under the new DNI and building on that model as opposed to this creation of various centers.
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    One of the things that he was concerned about, and I share his concern, is that you may not have enough overlap. If you create boxes in which much of this analysis is going to be done, that you are not going to have enough competitive analysis, in a sense. So what are your thoughts on that.

    General ODOM. Did you say taking it out of the—taking the DNI out?

    Mr. LANGEVIN. No, moving the National Intelligence Council out from CIA, basically, and putting it directly under DNI.

    General ODOM. Well, right now it sits out there, but it is formally and technically not in CIA.

    Mr. LANGEVIN. Okay. But putting it more directly under the DNI.

    General ODOM. If you took it out, as I make a proposal in my book, I would take the DI at CIA with it, but the problem with the DI it tries to do everything, and it can't do everything. What is important is that certain things be allocated to different parts of the intelligence community for analysis. Lots of databases in analysis for Defense, the military services, the force field, couldn't possibly be handled by DI or the CIA, although analysts there actually think they are doing that, but nobody asked them for the information to put it in use. It has to be got elsewhere.

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    I think one of the things that NIC needs to do is to be responsible for what is going on in all these analytic centers to see if they have enough resources and to see that the databases and analysis is being done. Then they at the national level should not try to do all the analysis, they should pick places where they are gaps, issues that are coming up nobody else will see or they don't want to deal with, throw some resources on it, discover whether it is a real issue and say, ''INR, State, you really ought to have this.'' And they look at it and see it is an exciting area, and they take it over and they give it to DIA.

    This puts them in the position of encouraging the kind of open willingness to think about new things, not intramural struggles to see who gets it right all the time, and I think there is a kind of competition that is good, there is a kind of competition that lowers the level among these, and I think where the DI sits right now and the failure of the NIC to be pulled up out of that atmosphere is one of the problems. That is why I want to break it into two jobs.

    Mr. LANGEVIN. Gentlemen.

    Dr. WOOD. I think it is a good idea. I would support it. I think bringing in the NIC and building a bigger NIC around the DNI or the national intelligence director (NID) is a good idea. I think that is not a bad place to start. Mr. Miller was right in what he described but you could build on what you just described.

    Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, gentlemen. I will leave it there since I know the time is short.

    The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.
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    And the gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Kline.

    Mr. KLINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the lingering but fading hope that we will get to a classified session, I will yield my time.

    The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.

    Let me see, anybody else on the—oh, Mr. Rodriguez. Gentleman from Texas, Mr. Rodriguez, you haven't had a chance to ask a question.

    Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me ask you, I think—and I don't know whether it would be good in the open session or closed session, but as I was hearing you, I know you mentioned other recommendations that are not in the 9/11 and there are a lot of items administratively that could be done now also. All three of you have made some suggestions—the restructuring analysis, the outside source utilization.

    Regarding the FBI dealing with local and then CIA internationally, as we look at terrorism, is there a need for us to look at something completely different, maybe just zeroing in? Because I really see it and I don't know too much about this but I kind of look at them as gangs that are out there very similar to the drug war that we have not been able to win and they are isolated throughout the world and we don't have the flexibility to send even the special ops to go from one side of the world to the other after them, and we don't seem to have that group that is out checking those individual gangs that exist out there.

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    Is there a team that could be developed just to specify or look at that or what kind of recommendations would you have to look at terrorism and go after them, because I don't think we are going to win with—because I think we are real good at winning a theater war. We have not been good at doing this, just like we have not been good on the fight of drugs for a variety of reasons. And I think some of the same reasons apply to terrorism in terms of the money source, in terms of the ideology and the reasons why they do what they do.

    So I was wondering to get some feedback whether we need a different team to do that approach, and I would ask all three.

    Dr. WOOD. Your question conveys a number of very insightful points. The ideology of the drug folks of course is money. It is somewhat different in the case of the terrorists but there are a large number of fundamental similarities between the two, and we need to become more effective in both types of conflict, and we need not necessarily new teams as far as membership but we need teams that are constituted and operated very differently than the teams that have been doing business for the Nation to the present time, because they have not been strikingly effective.

    And in particular, we need to get much greater penetration of the folks, the operations that we are up against, because we can have all the analytic operations in the world in the United States analyzing grossly imperfect noise-rich data streams and their efforts will come to naught. We need, and I emphasize this again at the risk of tediousness, we need much higher quality of information. We need penetration of the other guy's operations if we are to succeed, and that is true both with respect to the war against drugs, the war against global terror.
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    Mr. RODRIGUEZ. General.

    General ODOM. I don't have a lot to add to that other than to say I think within the present structure or the one I propose, you could task, organize to go after the specific problems like that.

    Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Even in the same group operating in the United States and outside and being able to follow up in those areas?

    General ODOM. You would be much enhanced in your ability to track the intelligence side if you had a national counterintelligence service than you are now.

    Dr. HAMRE. Sir, I think there is a big issue you just described, because the bad guys will walk across our border but we don't move our government very effectively across our own border, and that is a big problem. Finding a way to deal with it. I think the 9/11 Commission tried to deal with that when they talk about one of the centers involving transnational criminality and the interface with terrorism. We ought to really follow up on that idea. That is a good thing to explore, and it could be very fruitful to pursue that.

    Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Thank you.

    The CHAIRMAN. Yes. And on that point, that was one of the reasons for having a director of intelligence was so you could make a seamless track, if you will, of bad guys. And the Commission when they testified to us talked about the people that they lost in Bangkok. They had to look at them for a while, then lost them in Bangkok, and then they talked about the Moussaoui being looked at by the FBI, attempted to hand off to the CIA, they thought it wasn't their realm, and so it is this fragment, if you will, or fragmented look at the basket that you get with the disparate agencies that would somehow be healed with a single agency. Do you agree with that notion?
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    Dr. WOOD. That is it exactly. We not only have problems with respect to handoff from foreign to domestic intelligence agencies that are exploited by the bad guys, but some of our very most powerful technical means for penetrating bad guy operations are forbidden by law to operate domestically. And the gruesome thing about this, Mr. Chairman, and we can go into this in vivid detail in the classified session, there are many, many instances of where the bad guys deliberately exploit that feature of American law to make sure that their operations have enough American content so that we are forbidden by our own laws to use our own defensive means to defeat those operations.

    The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.

    The gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Cole.

    Dr. WOOD. Mr. Chairman, do you mind if we just step out and go to the bathroom, not all at once, but——

    The CHAIRMAN. Oh, absolutely. No. In fact, I will tell you what——

    Dr. WOOD. This is a hell of a long hearing you are holding here.

    The CHAIRMAN. We are taking a break right now. We will resume in 10 or 15 minutes, then we will walk up to the classified room. My apologies.
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    Dr. WOOD. You are going to save a real mess under here.

    The CHAIRMAN. We will come back here. We will finish off the last couple questioners, then we will go up to our classified area. Incidentally, for members of the committee, we have got the obligatory sandwiches are waiting in the ante room—and for our guests. That is right, Rocky.

    [Recess.]

    The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Folks, we will fire back up again. And once again to our guests, we appreciate you bearing with us here, but it has been good to have this discussion. We have had a great, great discussion about a pretty complex issue here.

    The gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Cole, is recognized.

    Mr. COLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to begin by complimenting the panel, because I have to tell you, in my brief time here I have never seen anybody demand and get a bathroom break. So I was enormously impressed at your assertiveness and your willingness to be independent.

    I would like to pull back and pursue something I discussed the same line of questioning with a different group and see what you all think. Because, again, as I read the 9/11 Commission report, I find the interesting parts not just this box of intelligence or that line or this relationship, but the total failure of the American public and the American political class, and I mean that in a very bipartisan, and just to grasp the nature of the danger during the course of the 1990's. We have a whole series of incidents and attacks, people's lives were lost. It wasn't like this came totally out of the blue. We had a terrorist declaring war against us in 1998. And yet I look back, I don't see any Churchill in the 1990's on either side of the political aisle warning that this is coming.
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    I think one of the big problems that you have as intelligence professionals or as people who have a background in this is, one, even if you have the right information, how do you convince the political elite? And then, honestly, how does it convince the American public? I did listen to Mr. Clark's testimony, Dr. Clark's testimony very carefully and have read some of the things he is written, and it strikes me as he is totally unrealistic about the process of employing force. I don't care what he thought he had found.

    I mean he hadn't in eight years convinced anybody to deploy American military force boots-on-the-ground fashion in Afghanistan. He certainly wasn't going to do it in eight months with Bush, and Bush wasn't going to turn around and do it to the country after winning an election with half a million votes fewer than his opponent.

    I mean there really is—you have to develop a consensus to sustain a conflict like I think we are in and like I think the 9/11 people point out. It is not going to be a year or two, it is going to be a generation or two generations. It is going to take a long time like the old Soviet Union did.

    So given that, what are some of the strategies and things that we can do to educate the political elite in this country about the breadth of the danger and the American people so that they understand the commitment that they are going to have to make long term?

    General ODOM. I am glad you raised the issue of the political side—the user side and the intelligence side. The big emphasis on fixing the intelligence community as the solution to or as a way to prevent a future 9/11 strikes me as quite wrong here. I mean certainly you need to do some things about community, but toward your question, it seems to me to highlight brilliantly is that——
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    The CHAIRMAN. General Odom, could you pull that mike a little closer there? Okay. Pull it a little bit closer. There you go.

    General ODOM. Is that good?

    The CHAIRMAN. That is good.

    General ODOM. Okay. It seems to me your question has highlighted precisely what needs to be highlighted, and that is this is not just an intelligence failure problem, it is a user-political leadership problem and a military command problem, and that has been my experience in the intelligence community. Every time we had an intelligence failure, yes, you could say, sure, we were inadequate in some ways, but it was the intelligence policy interaction failure that really explained what was going on. And I have been haunted by the very points that you made.

    It is easy now to look back and say that the Clinton administration should have done more or the Bush administration should have started earlier, but I don't know how you would have generated consensus.

    I remember my four plus years in the National Security Council as Burzynski's military assistant and we could see in the intelligence side that some things would drive us to do X but politically that just wasn't going to wash in that climate, and it took some catalyzing event. Well, Afghanistan was one, for example, and the fall of the Shaw was another. So I am afraid that I conclude that these periodic disasters are the price you have to pay to get the corrective feedback to folks on the problems.
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    I would just say right now, going forward, I am really disturbed about confusing the war in Iraq with the terrorism problem. We may have merged them. We had a huge international coalition behind us until that. And how you go back and get that for this bigger war on terrorism seems to me cries out for some solution, but that is all can offer on that.

    Dr. WOOD. Sir, the basic point is that the American republic is and always has been and I hope always will be vulnerable to Pearl Harbors. We don't overreact as a Nation or as a government to illusory threats, and that is an enormous strength of the American system. The downside of that is that when we are taken by surprise by treachery in particular, as at Pearl Harbor or in the 9/11 attacks, we will bleed, and we will continue to bleed thereafter until we get our act together and do what we have to do to win. And we traditionally take advantage of our geographic isolation, our enormous natural resources and our strengths as a people to come back and win and win pretty crisply, but we will always be vulnerable to surprise and treachery, at least I hope we will.

    And the thing that we have to understand that we mustn't do is the warning of the second Rumsfeld Commission when they said we have been given notice but we have not noticed. When we are given notice by something like the 9/11 attack, we must be on notice and we must act accordingly.

    Dr. HAMRE. Mr. Cole, I will just say what you are doing today, what I know you have been doing all year, has been what we need to have for this country—bring people's attention——

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    The CHAIRMAN. Pull that thing up a little closer to you there, John, I am sorry.

    Dr. HAMRE. Thank you, sir, I am sorry. What you, Mr. Cole, you, Mr. Chairman, and this committee are doing this is exactly what we need to do in this country. We need to hold hearings. Millions of people are going to be watching this on C-SPAN and the follow-up clip. That is how we educate the American public. Your personal leadership back home with the intellectual elites and the media elites in your community, we all have an obligation to talk to them, and I think if you do that, and I know you are doing that, that is going to be the strongest thing we can do to bring the country around to realize we face peril and we have got to be ready for it. So I thank you for doing it, thank you for leading here.

    Mr. COLE. I think Secretary Hamre is exactly right on that point, and I will just comment that in the classified session we will go into how much notice we had and how detailed the notice was on exactly what would happen on 9/11. There was lots of notice that that was coming, but it was part of a total package, the threats that we kind of didn't pay too much attention to. We kind of thought, well, we grabbed the guy that issued these threats and planned these attacks and we had him in our cell for the rest of his life and this, that or whatever, and so why worry too much about it? It turned out that other people picked up his architecture for attack and executed his plans just exactly as or almost precisely as he laid them out. But, yes, we had lots of notice, we just ignored it.

    The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.

    The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Reyes.
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    Mr. REYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and, gentlemen, thank you for being here and sharing your expertise.

    I am struck by your observations, especially your statement, Dr. Hamre, that this is part of the education process for the American people. Because as I was coming here a couple of days ago, I came through the Dulles Airport. This was the book that most everybody was reading, and in fact I had one of the employees of American Airlines ask me if I could get her a book because they couldn't keep them in the stores there at the airport.

    And I also wanted to apologize to you because I was at the Intelligence hearing that was going on simultaneously, but today my friend and colleague from Minnesota tells me that he was at a meeting with about 100 bankers and he asked the question, how many of you have read this book, the 9/11 book, and none of them had.

    It seems to me like there is a part of the country that really hasn't focused on the threat that we are facing today, and that really brings me to the question that I would like each one of you to comment on, and that is in the hearing upstairs a couple hours ago, Former Speaker Newt Gingrich made the observation that we want to be careful that we are not focusing on the case du jour, which is 9/11, although as important as it is for our country, and that we are not fighting the last war, that we are preparing for the challenges and the war or wars of the future. And he meant that in the context of the threat represented by China, by Iran, by Syria, North Korea, among others.

    So I would ask each one of you, if you would, to comment on that observation that we want to make sure that we are not exclusively changing our whole system and threat appreciation level to prepare for one particular challenge while ignoring the others. One of the things that we know of today is that in China we have got almost 300 million people that are learning to speak English. Former Speaker Gingrich made the observation that, conversely, we have got, I think he said, less than 2 percent that speak Chinese of our population here.
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    So could you, each one of you, please comment on that? And, again, I appreciate your testimony here today.

    Dr. HAMRE. I think he is exactly right that we can't structure our intelligence services strictly around just one problem, and I think we need to strike a balance between this problem and the other problems we have in the community. And I have tried to offer a suggestion on how it might be. There might be other plans to do that. I think that is right, Mr. Reyes, and it is your responsibility to make sure that these other threats we face are integrated into our ultimate plan so that it isn't just organized too narrowly around the connect-the-dots.

    General ODOM. I would second that and make one additional point. I am impressed with the virtue of the 9/11 report that Mr. Cole raised. If you read that report and you reflect on it, it does give you a detachment where you do see this political problem. My objections are over in the details of the proposal, not in the report. I think the report has made a major contribution, and political leaders, I think, can use it for that purpose if they think great faith in the American public will understand that. That is, just say, just one more reason why I think looking forward is a critical thing to do.

    Dr. WOOD. It is indeed crucial to look forward as well as to look to our current problems, and it is absolutely essential that we prepare for the huge challenges in time to come that can threaten our existence as a Nation as well as the problems of the present time that are frankly very substantial but are non-threatening to the existence or the continuity of the American nation.
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    Losing 3,000 people in an hour is an enormous tragedy but it is not a catastrophe or a cataclysm on the scale of an all-out nuclear exchange or even a small-scale nuclear exchange or even one nuclear bomb going of in one city. Those are the sort of things that the Committee on Armed Services would be very well advised to resolutely focus on and remain focused on into the foreseeable future.

    The type of structure a Joint Committee on Intelligence that I have advocated here earlier today is specifically aimed at addressing resolutely and very vigorously the current challenges and problems. It would be a warfighting committee aimed at winning the current war on global terror, which is, as I said, fought on intelligence battlefields, not on conventional battlefields. If it is done extremely well, as was pointed out in the earlier colloquy, it would also probably serve us very effectively in the war against illicit drugs, which is also fought on primarily intelligence battlefields—different ideology but basically similar in many other respects.

    So these are two different scales of problems. They are problems that have two different time frames within which they are concerned. They also are very, very different in the degree to which they threaten the integrity and the survival of the American nation.

    Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Thank you.

    I see that I am almost out of time, Mr. Chairman, so I will yield back the balance of my time.

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    The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman's appreciated.

    And the gentlelady from New Mexico, Ms. Wilson.

    Mrs. WILSON OF NEW MEXICO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Building on what my colleague from Texas talked about in the testimony that he heard upstairs focusing on the next potential conflict, one of the things I think all of us have kind of dog-eared copies of this, but one of the things I found most fascinating on the recommendations, on page 413, they have kind of this notional structure of the intelligence community, and I know that it was only illustrative but they have these new national intelligence centers, and it has one for China and East Asia, one for the Middle East, one for Russia and Eurasia.

    What fascinated me was nowhere is Africa or Latin America even mentioned on the structure, and sometimes that way we define things in our heads causes us to leave some things in the darkness. And I think that is worthy of a note of caution.

    I also, like my colleague from Oklahoma, found the front end of this report to be helpful and fascinating in forming some thinking, and I wanted to pursue something, General Odom, that you were talking about, and that is competitive analysis or ways in which we can cause people to think very critically about their assumptions and question themselves and question each other.

    I think you are probably right that when agencies come to the table with their forms, solutions in hand, you do probably generate more heat than light, but there are mechanisms, and you mentioned some of them, that cause us to share information and come up collectively with more ideas or insights than any one of us could do individually.
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    I wonder if there are other mechanisms you are familiar with in your experience that we should, whether legislatively or programmatically encourage the intelligence community to adopt as a routine rather than the exception because some boss says, ''I want you to go back and rethink this part.''

    General ODOM. I would hesitate to try to write that into stone or make it a rule from here. A system that works for a while will probably soon stop yielding what it did once before, and you will want to change again. You cause me with your question to think about techniques I have used myself.

    One, when I was chief of Army Intelligence, was to reach down to analytic centers spread out, way out of sight of Washington, and to find somebody who was really doing a first class piece of intelligence and get him up and let him brief the chief of staff of the Army or the Secretary of the Army, and sometimes we could even bring them over to here for a subcommittee's closed hearing.

    And that really lifted that fellow, and he wanted to get it right. It wasn't a matter of whether it was going to be politically correct or non-politically correct. It was a matter of how do I really use this evidence to unvarnish the truth so we can see if plain? And there are other techniques like that, and I think this surely is a matter of leadership and organizational design can ensure it. Some organizational designs make it more difficult, and that is why I think the position of the DI at the CIA, the weakness, relative weakness of the National Intelligence Council tends to obstruct it. But those would be my primary thoughts.

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    Mrs. WILSON OF NEW MEXICO. Dr. Hamre, I also read your editorial and found it to be insightful, and I wanted to ask you about counterintelligence. You talk about trying to be able to share data across lines from all sources and heard that Steve Cambone has four computers on his desk because even the defense systems don't work with each other.

    Of course, if we do that, we have a lot more people with a lot more information in the system. What do we need to change the counterintelligence, they spy hunting within our own systems to try to make sure that we protect ourselves from the next set of spies trying to penetrate?

    Dr. HAMRE. Representative Wilson, this is the subject of a hearing just by itself, and I hope that you would give me a chance to be one of the witnesses if you can do that and certainly call on General Odom. This is a huge area that needs attention. Our current approach to counterintelligence is case file driven. It grows out of the event having occurred. And what we need to do is to get more of this community trying to stop things from occurring rather than catching things after they have occurred.

    So we have got an incredible mind-set shift that we need to create in the community. We need a whole new training regimen. This needs to not be a discipline that grows out of the law enforcement community but a discipline that grows out of the intelligence analysis community. We need to properly integrate the role of counterintelligence with security. Security should be overt, counterintelligence should be covert. We want the overt security channels to shape the bad guy coming at you, and you want to be hiding in the shadows and catch them. I mean there are all sorts of things that we need to be doing in this area.
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    I think there have been some important advances. PPB 75 created a new kind of intelligence executive for the government. We have not gotten that off the ground very well. It is starting now. I would really encourage you to link up with those people, give them some support, they need it right now. Congress really gave it the kick to get it going, and I think that is a positive thing. Those are things we need to do.

    We need to develop analytic capabilities in the counterintelligence community that doesn't exist. These tend to be case-driven, evidence-bound individuals, because they have grown out of law enforcement, and we really need to change that. We need to find a way for counterintelligence professionals to be able to move and serve in other parts of the government. The counterintelligence community needs to grow across the stovepipes of departments, even more than the intelligence community does.

    The bad guys will tend to try to find the soft underbelly into our system and then grow from there into more serious parts of the government. So we have got a lot we need to do in this area. It is an incredibly important field. General Odom has been a pioneer to try to bring attention to it, and we would welcome the chance to have your leadership in this area.

    Mrs. WILSON OF NEW MEXICO. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Thank you also for holding these two days of hearings. I think these are some of the best hearings we have had in this committee, and I appreciate it.

    The CHAIRMAN. Certainly.

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    Dr. WOOD. If I could just comment very briefly, because I thought that you identified an exceedingly important point with respect to competitive analyses. There are two excellent examples that I would commend to the attention of the committee and indeed the entire Congress with respect to securing competitiveness analyses and just very briefly remind you the first one are the Team B approaches that have been used generally highly successfully over the last few decades where a group of outside experts is brought in, is relatively fully briefed on the existing intelligence and then is asked to provide competitive analysis of the intelligence relative to that which the intelligence bureaucracy has developed. And there have been some historically important examples of that in the last few decades.

    The other mode is one in which the Congress has been exercising, I think, rather productively, and I say this with a bit of self interest, in the last half dozen years. It constitutes ad hoc commissions which effectively provide competitive analysis of problems the Congress identifies as being of particularly great importance.

    One that everybody remembers is the first Rumsfeld Commission to assess the ballistic missile threat to the United States, and that, of course, caused a sea change with respect to national perceptions of that particular threat area. Second one was the second Rumsfeld Commission that assessed the management and operations of national security operations in space and also caused somewhat less dramatic but no less substantive changes over the last several years.

    I served on another example of the Commission to assess the electromagnetic pulse threat to the United States that just reported to this committee a few weeks ago. There are other ones that are in the works that may or may not come into existence, but these are sources of intensely sustained competitive analysis that come back and inform the Congress.
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    So these are two extant means whose results are on the table for everybody to look at that can provide the competitive analysis on major national security issues for the Congress and specifically to this committee.

    The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentlelady.

    And the gentleman from Hawaii, Mr. Abercrombie.

    Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much for being here today. I want to move to another area here, the section on global strategy of the Commission report. This was referred to somewhat indirectly but nonetheless again and again, particularly by the governor and Representative Hamilton, with regard to dealing with the issue, the global strategy, and more than just military and intelligence per se.

    If you will give me just a moment, I want to read to you just a couple of brief sentences from the section on global strategy and seek to have your perspective. I want to mention—well, I will go on. Let me do this: ''Osama bin Laden and other Islamist terrorists,'' I am reading from page 362 right now, ''have drawn a long tradition of extreme intolerance within one stream of Islam, the Wahabism idea. The stream is motivated by religion and does not distinguish politics from religion, thus distorting both. It is further fed by grievances stressed by bin Laden and widely felt throughout the Muslim world against U.S. military presence in the Middle East, policies perceived as anti-Arab and anti-Muslim and support of Israel.

    It is not a position with which Americans can bargain or negotiate with it. There is no common ground to which to begin a dialogue.'' They then go on to say, ''Trying to come to grips with this in more than just a military way or intelligence per se, tolerance, the rule of law, political and economic openness, the extension of great opportunities of women, these cures must come from within Muslim society themselves. The United States must support such developments.''
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    They then go on to state, ''Our effort should be accompanied by a preventative strategy that is as much or more political as it is military. This strategy must focus clearly on the Arab and Muslim world in all its variety.''

    Now, by the nature of the charge given to the Commission, they could not develop and did not develop at greater length what that might be. I wanted to suggest to you something that I have had a conversation with the governor and Representative Hamilton about and for which they were enthusiastic, I think I can say with certainty.

    At one point during the careers of you three gentlemen, you were aware that we had something called the United States Information Agency. It was the subject of much derision and accusation especially during the time of Vietnam as being a tool of the State Department or a tool of the executive. Yet in my estimation, it did enormous good work throughout the world on behalf of the interests of the United States by presenting alternative to strictly military contacts or State Department contacts, per se.

    By representing the United States culturally, representing the united States as not necessarily ideologically, although that was involved, but as a people, as a civilization, as a way of thinking, as a methodology to approach a world view. Sometimes it might have seemed a bit naive or even silly to some people. Swimming coaches for Burma, tennis lessons in Indonesia, picnics on the 4th of July.

    But I hope you will agree, and I think an examination of history will show, many contacts took place in those informal and extracurricular ways, if you will, which allowed information to be shared, intelligence to be gathered in a way that was not threatening.
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    The reason I go through that preamble with you is, could I have your views on the suggestion in the global strategy section tat we have to look at this politically, that we simply cannot address is solely in military terms and intelligence terms, which lead only to military solutions or scenarios.

    And do you have a view with respect to something like the reemergence or the reestablishment of something like the 21st century version of the United States Army Intelligence Agency (USAIA) as a method for also working the question of how to deal with and confront the issue of terrorism?

    Dr. HAMRE. Well, I think it is absolutely going to be essential that we do that, and that is get a multidimensional full perspective strategy that isn't just on military but has to do with the full range of powers. Now, American is comprised of both powers of intimidation and inspiration, and we have got the powers of intimidation down real good, but our powers of inspiration, frankly, have atrophied and we are——

    Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I am not so naive as to think that a USAIA or its equivalent person would be invited to a camp somewhere in Afghanistan or a Taliban gathering but that is not the point is if this is a long-term operation, then we have to also have long-term ideas about those areas especially in Islamic nations in which the presence of the equivalent of a USAIA might be at least tolerated if not welcomed so that they could make their attempts.

    Dr. HAMRE. Sir, would you permit me to get myself in trouble by asking you to look at how we are managing our visas for students coming into this country?
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    Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Oh, that is entirely in order.

    Dr. HAMRE. It is a disaster how we are treating visas for students.

    Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I am well aware of that in Hawaii, I can tell you.

    Dr. HAMRE. Please, please, we have got a generation of youth that is going to other countries rather than to learning about us, because we are making it too hard to get into this country to become a student.

    Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I was one of the original supporters of the student of the East-West Center in Hawaii, which now has 40,000 plus graduates located throughout the world, particularly in Asia and South Asia, and I can tell you that that is 40,000 people who are now in positions to have a great deal of influence with respect to the view of the United States.

    Dr. WOOD. But it is hardly possible to overemphasize the importance of Secretary Hamre's point about student visas. This is a major self-inflicted wound the United States is imposing on itself at the present time for, essentially, no purpose whatsoever. It simply must be stopped, and the Congress is a fine sort of area of the American government in which to call it to a halt.

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    The CHAIRMAN. Appreciate the gentleman, and the gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. Simmons.

    Mr. SIMMONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, as well, to the members of the panel. A particular welcome to General Odom who I knew many years ago when he was Army chief of staff for Intelligence and when he was also the director of NSA, and then we shared some time in New Haven as fellows of Berkeley College,Yale. He was much more successful there than I was, but that is not surprising.

    I am intrigued, General, by the simplicity of your first recommendation, which is that we simply amend the National Security Act of 1947 and take three hats, I guess, and make them two. And I agree with that, and I think that is a proposal that would be relatively simple to do legislatively. And I would be interested in the thoughts of the panel on that subject, but I have a second question which I think is perhaps more difficult, and that is the creation of a National Counterintelligence Service.

    I agree with you that the problem is there. The problem was there 20 years ago. The proposal made 20 years ago was that we have a centralized database for counterintelligence and counterespionage. Because of the Soviet threat and the threat of other countries during the Cold War, we are being eaten alive in the area of counterintelligence and counterespionage. We weren't getting the job done.

    And it was felt that the only way we could combat foreign intelligence operatives in our country was to have this centralized database. But groups like the American Civil Liberties Union said, ''No, no, no, we can't do that. We can't put all the information in one place.'' And so it never came to pass. In other words, the politics of the issue defeated the proposal.
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    Today, you are recommending a National Counterintelligence Service, which is similar, in my view, to the recommendation for a centralized database on counterespionage-counterintelligence. Today we have a Patriot Act which many groups violently oppose. People in my district and elsewhere around the country would like to see it repealed. I don't concur in that judgment at this point in time, but nonetheless that is the politics of the Patriot Act.

    How do we go forward with a significant proposal like this given these political dynamics, and does the impact of the 9/11 attack change the politics of the issue sufficiently that we can do that? And I would be interested to know your response.

    General ODOM. Well, Mr. Simmons, I appreciate your comments on our previous associations, which have been very rich, and I have been as much a beneficiary of it as you have, probably a great deal more. Again, let me say I am glad that you brought up the simple solution of amending the 1947 act. I think that is a cleaner way to do it, and if you find that some of these other things need to be done, such as moving NSA out or this, that and the other, you can do that later. But it would not be a bad first start at all to see how that is going to work.

    On the politics of creating a National Counterintelligence Service, I am not a politician so I really don't know. I never thought before I redid a draft which came out in this book that it would be possible to do that. I could say that it made sense, but I thought it was politically impossible.

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    It seems to me in the post–9/11 climate it might indeed be possible, because I think it now would be easy to get up and say with great accuracy that you have a spy agency, it is called the FBI. And I also think that rather than emphasizing a common database, that you create the agency first and then look at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) requirements for how you keep things segregated or don't and work that problem then. So I guess, just thinking out loud, that I would create the agency and then deal with those authorities internally, as you see necessary.

    I am not a great enthusiast for breaking down protections of our civil liberty, and my experience at NSA showed me that you really can, for the most part, respect them, fully respect them. And I would also say in my counterintelligence experience with the Army showed me that if you take enough resources, you are going to be able to convict a spy but you can't do it on the cheap, and I am prepared to do it the expensive way and respect their rights.

    Someone asked earlier here what this committee could do about counterintelligence. You could with your authority over the Defense Department split law enforcement from counterintelligence and the Air Force department and the Navy department. They have it combined, and I think their record shows that it would be better off if it were split.

    Dr. HAMRE. Sir, may I just take 30 seconds to add one point, though, and that is I think for counterintelligence to be effective you don't want to create barriers between the secrets you are trying to protect and the people you are trying to do the protecting. So if you create a separate counterintelligence service, frankly it may be a barrier that you want that committee to work very closely with the intelligence community and the people that are protecting our national secrets. So I would ask you to think about how you are going to engineer that close working relationship, because that becomes crucial.
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    Mr. SIMMONS. I appreciate that answer. I wasn't necessarily recommending it. I was simply pointing out that that issue has been around for a long time, but the politics of the issue have been very difficult. And the politics of the issues today are very difficult. And I thank you all for your testimony.

    Dr. WOOD. I would just like to add that I am personally very sympathetic to the opinions of my two colleagues with respect to the respect and the very careful treatment to be given civil liberties. We will make an exceedingly fundamental mistake if either the war on terrorism or the larger scale, longer-term aspects of national security to which Congressman Reyes referred if we compromise in any significant fashion our civil liberties.

    I believe that we have over the last three-quarters of a century come to terms semi-successfully with the existence of a secret police organization in this country, namely the FBI, but we need to exceedingly careful with respect to how we proceed down those lines, because it could just end the American way of life as we know it and value it.

    Mr. SIMMONS. I agree with that, and I thank the chair.

    The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman, and we have one more set of questions with the ranking member, but the gentleman from Texas has asked unanimous consent that he might just follow on with a fast comment on the proceedings, speaker, so without objection, Mr. Rodriguez is recognized.

    Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Real fast. Nothing angered me more than around this time knowing that there were some problems, in fact, El Paso that I knew about between the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the FBI where they were both almost fighting each other. And we have got to make sure that—well, I guess we can't make sure, but as we go and move on some of these things that we don't create situations where they are both fighting for turf in some of those areas.
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    And I don't know how we can—you will be the best ones to guide us in terms of how to make sure we don't do that or how we can prevent that, because it is existing now. Because I know have situations like that in this country and we still do, and I know it angered me to hear about one incident that occurred in El Paso between the DEA and the FBI over drugs, while at the same time 9/11 occurred.

    The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman.

    And the ranking member, the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Skelton, has got the last shot here at our witnesses before we go into classified.

    Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.

    I do have a question for Dr. Hamre; however, first, General Odom, you said something a few moments ago, would you clarify for us, something to the effect that the war in Iraq is being confused with the war on terrorism? Did you say something to that effect?

    General ODOM. Yes. I think——

    Mr. SKELTON. Would you explain that, please?

    General ODOM. The 9/11 Commission said there is no necessary link. They found no links between Saddam Hussein's regime and al Qaida in operations, and it is well known publicly that Osama bin Laden would like to have Saddam overthrown and other secular Arab leaders and that they were hostile to one another rather than cooperative.
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    And I think most of the public, as public opinion polls have shown, believe that Saddam was supporting them. And if you look at the war in Iraq and what it is done to our relations with other parts of the world, we have lost allies very rapidly over this, and we need allies in this war. We had an unprecedented counterterrorism coalition up until early mid–2002.

    Mr. SKELTON. Thank you.

    Dr. Hamre, earlier you said the budgetary power is all important, am I correct? You do have or make the recommendation that the NRO, the NSA and NGA come under the director of National Intelligence and away from the Department of Defense. Would that hinder or would that not hinder the collection of military data?

    Dr. HAMRE. I don't think it has to. Now, General Odom and I have exchanged here today his worry that the agency almost immediately start lowering its priority to support the military. I personally don't think that would be the case. I recognize it is a potential. I think that the Defense Department has a lot of leverage. First of all, NSA couldn't exist without our military personnel. I mean if we tried to pull them out in a heartbeat, they would be at their knees. And to be honest, you have got a lot of leverage that way. They depend on our platforms. They get a lot of their capability from our platform.

    Now, General Odom said rightly that many of those listening posts around the world they can't be turned on or turned off without the DNSA, the director of NSA's, say so. He also can't operate them without our operating them. I mean this is a highly interconnected community, and this can be a genuine partnership. I am not worried that we would have leverage over the NGA and NRO and NSA if push got to shove. I am not at all worried about that. We can make that work.
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    Is it enhanced if you control their budgets? Well, to be honest, we don't have that strong of control over their budgets right now. I was a comptroller for four years. We did not exercise strong control, budgetary control over those agencies. They lived in a very ambiguous world because of their reporting up to the DCI.

    So look well below the surface here. I am not sure we are going to lose that much simply by having the dollars registered at another place. The physical, tangible control of people and things and real estate is very strong, and we still would have that.

    Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. It has been an excellent hearing.

    The CHAIRMAN. Well, I thank the gentleman.

    And, gentlemen, thank you, and we are going to resolve or dissolve very briefly to 2212. We have got it swept, and we do have a couple of classified questions we would like to ask you. So thanks a lot for being with us. Why don't we take a 10-minute break and show up again at 2212. Thank you.

    [Whereupon, at 5:10 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]